Dance of the Fountain

For Dorothy Estes

The fountain is dry
Mud cakes its surfaces
Reminding me of a recent time
When the water flowed
    gaily,
        gently,
            furiously,
                freely.

Light and shadow dancing
    in joyous beauty
We gathered there
    young,
        old,
            furious,
                free.

Some of us pondered
On the nature of the water.
Most of us enjoyed its bounty
With little thought.
We all drank
    deeply,
        hungrily,
            lovingly,
                greedily.

We took and rarely gave;
She gave and rarely took.
We saw her as our
    friend,
        enemy,
            slaver,
                mother.

And with her we
    worked,
        cried,
            laughed,
                struggled.

But we never thought she’d go,
Abandon the fountain
Leave it
    lifeless,
        loveless,
            joyless,
                hopeless.

I weep.
And those tears raining down
Contain water from the fountain.
She lives in every cell of our bodies.
And through us she lives on.

— C.D. Walter
     August 16, 1999

Light

Lightning flashes

illuminating the room

through rain-smudged windows.

I awake

struggling to emerge

from the depth of slumber,

eyelids weighted, drug-heavy,

my body pulling me down,

earth to earth.

To the arms of Morpheus.

Light floods the room

warming my hand.

A breeze caresses my cheek.

I awake

Grave faces watch—

searching for signs of life.

A clock ticks,

loud in the silence,

marking the time passing,

so quickly,

so slowly,

as we all wait, and wait, and wait.

For the passing of my time.

Lightness of being.

The weight of my flesh dissipates

as the morning sun burns away the fog.

I awake

The mortal burden—

so heavy, yet unnoticed,

drops away,

my essence rising,

lighter than air.

Buoyant, joyful, free.

Light fills me

All the colors merged, yet separated

A prism of colors unimagined

I awake

Unbearable clarity of meaning

I am separate

I am one

I am in unity

love, light, God,

the universe, quarks, dark matter,

my eye, my heart, my soul,

us, them, you.

Eternity, mortality, time.

Enlightment.

I am Light.

—C. D. Walter

In memory of
Larry J. Palmer
1936-2003

Cleaning

Susan stared out the window of her father’s office.

“I’ve babied you kids too much, and you most of all, Susie.”  His voice was stern.  “I had to work to get to the top and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have to.  It builds character, you know.”

Susan had heard endless variations of this lecture all her life.

“But, Daddy, a janitor?  Couldn’t I do something else?”

Susan hated the whiny tone in her voice, but she hated more the idea of working as a janitor .  And she especially hated the thought her friends discovering it.

“If you really want to be a surgeon, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.  I want you to see what’s involved before I throw any more money into your education.”

Susan turned to face him for a moment, responding in the most pitiful tone she could muster, “But night shift at County?  Do you really want me around there in the dark?”

 “Damn it, Susan, the world is a tough place, and you’ve got to get tough or you’re not going to make it.”  After a pause, he added,  “It wasn’t easy to get you this job.  I suggest you either take the job, change your major or start paying your own way.”  He turned away from her and back toward his desk. 

“You’ve sold me into slavery,” Susan whispered.

Her father turned to looked at her, the ghost of a smile passing his face, but Susan didn’t see it. His face became grave again as he gathered up some papers and turned to leave the room.  “If you’ll excuse me, Susan, I have a lot to do.”

~

The mask made it hard to breath.

“Ironic,”  Susan thought,  “that something made to save lives makes me feel like I’m losing mine.”

She tugged on it as she entered the surgical unit.  Pausing, she wrinkled her nose at the smell — antiseptic and some unidentified odor.

“Death,” she thought, raising her eyebrows dramatically.

She laughed at herself as she continued down the long, steel-sink-lined hallway, passing countless steel doors with little round windows.  At the end of the hallway, an older, black woman was bent over, slowly mopping the floor and humming an old gospel song in a deep, rich voice.  The sound echoed eerily down the long hall.  Susan stopped a moment, listening, unwilling to let the moment pass. 

The woman stopped humming and straightened wearily. Susan bounced up to her.

“You must be Grace,”  Susan said breathlessly.  “They told me you’d show me what to do.  I’m Susan.  Susan Green.”

Susan smiled radiantly as she extended her hand.  Grace looked at the proffered hand skeptically and back up at her face.

“I’m s’posed to do what with you?”

Susan’s smile faded as she flushed to a bright red.

“I thought you were supposed to train me.”

Grace narrowed her eyes and gazed at the young girl.  Susan tried to read the older woman’s face, but the mask half covering it made it impossible.

 “How old’re you?”

 “Nineteen.”

Grace rolled her eyes, shook her head.

 “Ever work in surgery before?”

 “No.”

 “Work in a hospital before?”

Susan paused, flushing again.  “No.”

 “Don’t know why they sent you.  I need help.”  Grace glared at Susan significantly.  Susan stubbornly maintained her silence.  Grace resumed shaking her head, grabbed the mop and pulled it down the hallway.  Susan stood uncertainly, watching her go.

Grace spoke over her shoulder.  “Don’t s’pose you can help me out just standin’ there, do ya’?”

Susan followed tentatively behind as Grace rolled the bucket down the hallway.  Grace arrived at a closet, opened the door and handed Susan the dirty mop.

“Change the mop head and fill the bucket.”

Susan looked puzzled. 

Grace sighed.  “It’s not rocket science, you know.”

She snatched the mop from Susan, removed the mop head and tossed it into a container partially full of dirty rags and mop heads.  She grabbed a clean one, attached it to the end and handed it to Susan.

“You can, I presume, empty that bucket in the sink and fill it up again from this tap?”

“I’m not stupid, you know.  I don’t even know why I’m here.  I’m going to be a surgeon.”  Susan straightened and jutted out her chin as she said this.

Grace looked amused.  “Are you now?  Seem like this a good place to be, then.”

Grace reached down and turned on the water, picked up a bottle from the shelf and squirted some liquid in the basin.  Susan watched, dumbfounded, as the bucket filled with suds.  Her mind reeled.  “Who the hell does she think she is?”  Susan thought.  “The old, ignorant hag.  I can’t work for her.”  She had almost resolved on leaving Grace to finish the night alone, when the thought of her father stopped her short.  He would never understand.

Grace filled a small bucket and grabbed some rags.

“You bring the mop,” she said to Susan, then turned to enter the nearest operating room.  Susan followed.

“Blood is the enemy here,”  Grace said as she handed Susan the disinfectant.  “You got to get every drop.  And I mean every.”  Grace held Susan’s gaze for a moment before turning away.

Susan started wiping down equipment.  Grace wiped another piece of equipment, then returned to inspect Susan’s work.  As Susan watched Grace peer at the equipment, she had a passing sensation that there was some hideous deformity hiding behind Grace’s mask.  She shuddered slightly.

“You missed a spot,”  Grace announced in a tone that sounded triumphant to Susan.  Grace pointed out the spot.  Sure enough, there was dark brown circle of dried blood.

“Fine,”  Susan retorted.  She grabbed her rag and scrubbed it hard until the spot disappeared.

“Maybe you think I’m too picky, but I ain’t gonna have no patient die of an infection because my OR wasn’t cleaned right.  So do it right or go somewhere else.”  Grace turned and continued wiping down equipment.

Once again Susan felt like leaving and, once again, her father’s image interfered.  They continued cleaning and this time Susan was careful to remove every bit of blood.  She was doing it for the patients, not for Grace, she told herself.

This time she passed inspection, and they returned to the closet to silently replenish their supplies.

Suddenly the door to an operating room burst open and a doctor emerged.  A loud continuous beep could be heard through the door.  He threw his mask and gloves into a trash can and continued down to the men’s locker room.

“Damn, I love my job,”  a nurse said to another as the two exited the room.  They walked to the sink and began to undress and scrub.

“Lost one?”  Grace asked .

“Yeah.  The funny thing is, he should have made it,”  The nurse looked at Susan.  “Had one a few days ago that should be dead now, but he made it.  Now this one’s doing fine and we lose him out of nowhere.”

She shook her head and went back to scrubbing.  “Sixteen years old.  Damn kids.  Took a knife in the chest and shoulder.”

The two nurses finished scrubbing and exited the hallway.

Grace gathered her cleaning supplies in a small bucket and headed toward the recently vacated OR.

“Grab that,”  Grace called to Susan, indicating the mop bucket.

Susan followed Grace into the room, then stopped cold.  A young man, almost a boy, lay on the table with a bloody gauze pad on his shoulder and chest.  Blood oozed out from under the gauze, dripping down the side of the table and pooling on the floor.  She had never seen so much blood.  It was like some nightmarish movie scene.  The blood looked fake—a bright red.

Susan sank down into a crouch, staring at the blood. She counted eleven empty pints of blood abandoned on the floor. 

Grace glanced at the corpse and shook her head.

“Mmm-mmm-mm.  They gettin’ younger and younger.”

She pulled her mask down and let it hang below her chin.

“You can breathe a minute now, if you want.  We’re not givin’ this baby no infection.”

She turned and handed the broom to Susan.  “You take care o’ that,”  she said, indicating the blood puddle.  Grace began wiping down the equipment.

Susan stood up and walked over to the dead boy, gazing at his face, so peaceful, immobile as stone.

“Who are you?”  Susan thought.  “Where is your family?  Why am I here sharing this intimate moment with you?”

An orderly came to move the patient out of the room. Susan slowly began mopping.  The mop reddened quickly.

Susan felt a sudden rush of hopelessness.  What is life about anyway?  One minute you’re worrying about how to achieve your hopes and dreams and the next you’re gone.  Susan stopped mopping and just stood, staring at her reflection in the blood.  An entire life soaked up in a mop head.

“You loafin’?”  the harshness of Grace’s voice dispelled her reverie.  “Look, if I gotta keep my eye on you all the time—“  She stopped short as she met Susan’s forlorn gaze. A tear welled over and slid down Susan's face. They looked into one another’s eyes for a long moment.  Grace’s eyes softened.

“It’s break time now, honey,”  She said gently.  “You go on get a cup of coffee.  I’ll finish up here.”

Susan continued staring at Grace as the older woman came forward.  They stood face to face—young and old, light and dark, inexperienced and mature—and gazed at one another a long time.  Grace took the broom from Susan’s clinging grasp and gave her a gentle push.  “You go on, now.”

As Susan obeyed,  Grace stood looking pensively at the door for a few minutes.  Then she shook her head thoughtfully, and bent down to finish mopping.

Daring to care

by C.D. Walter
Staff Writer
Prism Magazine, Spring 1993

Like a raging fire, AIDS devastates its victims, relentlessly reducing lives to rubble. But amid those ashes, a human spirit glows like live coals, igniting love and compassion in those daring to draw near.

Social work senior Bryce Reed took that dare. He volunteers two or three days each month to cook dinner and clean for AIDS patient Terry Bailey.

Reed works on a 12-member care team through Tarrant County AIDS Interfaith Network (TCAIN), which provides non-medical services for AIDS patients with a six-month or less life expectancy.

"I’ve learned a lot, Reed said. "here he is—very sick—and still determined to live. I’ve learned a lot about life and how different people look at life differently."

Reed also received friendship from Bailey. Though TCAIN volunteer training advises maintaining a certain distance, Reed believes it’s impossible to avoid closeness in these circumstances.

He realizes this friendship will make Bailey’s death more painful, but he is preparing himself for the inevitable.

"I really haven’t lost anyone close to me yet, but I think I’ll be able to deal with it," Reed said. "I try to visualize things happening and then maybe I’ll be more prepared when it happens."

Since his diagnosis in 1987, Bailey has reflected greatly on the subject of death.

"If you’re HIV-positive, you may as well say you’ve got AIDS," he said. "You sure can’t take a pill for it or a shot. It’s like signing your own death warrant."

Bailey prepared his will—everything goes to his companion—and his living will. "I don’t care to have some machine breathing into me when I’m not even alive," he said.

Bailey has faced death several times, once with an accidental Phenobarbital overdose and another time during a bout with pneumonia during which he shrank to 110 pounds.

"He amazes me," Reed said of Bailey. "I thought we were going to lose him. Since then, he’s gained weight. He has no T-cells. It must be his determination to live. Because he’s been through a lot." 
 
Bailey isn’t sure what is keeping him alive, though he credits medication. But he feels sure that no AIDS cure will be found in his lifetime.

"I had a friend who died in Dallas," he said, his eyes filling with tears. "We went to see him and he looked like a skeleton. I had to walk out. I knew I’d say the wrong thing, and I did. ‘How you been doing?’ Stupidest damn question you could ever ask." Seeing friends die forces Bailey to confront his own mortality.
 
"I like life, and I don’t want to die," he said. "But that’s the way it is. I’m more or less ready. I believe in God and Jesus, so they’ll take care of me when my time comes."

"Terry’s pretty stubborn," Reed said. "He likes to fool the doctors. They told his family he wouldn’t see his next birthday. Now he’s past that one almost to the next one."

Bailey turns 40 in September.

Death is the most obvious result of the disease. Victims live to see their whole ways of life transformed. They are robbed of dignity in a thousand little ways — loss of means to support themselves, loss of strength and physical beauty, loss of memory.

The most tragic loss is family and friends.

After announcing that he had AIS during a television interview, some friends from his small West Texas hometown turned their backs on him.

"I think they act silly," Bailey said. "All people do, unless they’re gay or they have AIDS. I don’t like that, but that’s the way it is in this old world."

Bailey said his mother has been supportive through the ordeal.

"I hate that I have to put her through this," he said. "When my father died, it almost killed her."

His father died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1956, when Bailey was 3.

Though his mother is understanding, the rest of his family took time to recover from the shock. Bailey’s older brother, a Southern Baptists music minister, was cold until a 50-year-old lady in his church was diagnosed with AIDS.

"I think it hit him pretty hard then," Bailey said. "He turned out to be a pretty nice person."
 
Bailey believes most people turn harsh because they fear catching the disease. "They think it’s going to jump right off me onto them."

But Bailey has more cause to fear them. With a T-cell count of zero, the common cold becomes an emergency. Care team members stay away when they feel the slightest illness. Reed didn’t see Bailey for almost a month while battling a cold.

AIDS patients watch carefully for signs of infection, particularly in the bloodstream. Pneumonia kills many patients who have no immunities.

"I don’t think I’d live through another case of pneumonia," Bailey said.

Bailey experiences side effects of both the disease and the medication, including sluggishness, muscle weakness, sensitivity to smells, hair loss and teeth deterioration. Retinitis pigmentosa is causing him to lose his sight.
 
"If I went blind, I don’t think I’d want to live,’ he said. "I wouldn’t want someone to have to lead me around."

A recurring theme in his conversations is the loss of independence.

"I’m lucky to have AIDS and still be able to do things," he said. "But I can’t walk far before my legs give out."

When he recently tried to help move a washing machine, Bailey discovered how much the disease has changed him.

"It makes you so weak. I used to life weights, so it kind of hurts my pride. When you try to go back to what you were used to, it just don’t work that way."

He tried to return to his old ways a few months ago when a medication made him forgetful. He got up every day and prepared to go to work, forgetting he no longer has a job. His companion had to send him back to change.
"I miss getting up and going to my job," Bailey said. "I’ve been doing it all my life."

The disease also affects the brain and nervous system, causing the most disconcerting of consequences — forgetfulness and confusion. Bailey’s overdose occurred when he took the drug twice because he couldn’t remember taking it.

Now his companion, "D," who asked to remain unnamed, prepares Bailey’s dosage daily in a little black cup.
If he can’t remember taking it, he looks to see if the cup is empty.

Bailey said he didn’t know what he would do without his companion to care for him. Nursing care costs about $70-$120 a day, according to Nursefinder administrator Maureen Buergler. She said her agency charges roughly $35 an hour. Twenty-four hour care could cost $840.

"For that reason, we teach family members and volunteers as much as possible about medical care to reduce costs," Buergler said.

D, who tests HIV-negative, prepares Bailey’s IV catheter, shots and medications.

"People carry on about how courageous I am," D said. "I don’t know if it’s a compliment or if they’re telling me I’m crazy. We fight and carry on like anyone else, but it’s the commitment we made to each other. He gave me the option to leave when he first told me he was sick."

D discovered Bailey’s illness six months after diagnosis when a seizure sent him to the hospital. When he arrived at Bailey’s hospital room, the stickers plastering the door and the cart filled with masks, gowns and gloves revealed the situation clearly.

"I figured he’d leave and that would be the end of it," Bailey said. But five years later, D remains, caring for him in a way paid strangers never could.

D, showing maturity for his 28 years, said it hasn’t been easy. AIDS has become their whole life, dominating every conversation. He said many friends find it depressing and quit coming around.

"You know the saying goes, ‘I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy?’ This is one of those things. It’s awful—emotionally and physically. And I’m not even the one who’s sick," D said.

They lowered their standard of living, moving into a trailer and spending carefully.

"But it’s been worth it if we can keep him out of a shelter," D said.

D appreciates the help TCAIN offers through its care team program. Though they don’t help with medical needs, their cooking and cleaning up while D works has been helpful.

"We worried that, since it was a religious group, they would come preaching and Bible thumping," D said. "But they’ve been great."

Though Bailey later joined the church that produced this care team, he did so without team member coercion.

According to TCAIN Executive Director Duane Bidwell, many volunteers consider their work a mission, though the organization is not evangelical in nature. During training, instructors tell volunteers to share their beliefs only if clients request information.

The main focus of the respite-care program is to help AIDS patients who are nearing death and their loved ones.

"We do a little of everything," Bidwell said. "Volunteers cook, clean, feed, diaper — anything to keep them (clients) out of the hospital so they can die at home if they want to."

Bidwell said TCAIN currently cares for 62 clients with about 350 care team members. Clients waiting for a care team fill a long list. "Sometimes people die on the waiting list," he said. "The demand is much greater than we are able to fill."

The organization also offers an HIV wellness program for newly infected people, and volunteer chaplains staff HIV clinics and hospital floors.

"What I like about our program is that it’s a community program," Bidwell said. "It works at a very humane level. And it helps the volunteer sometimes more than the client. It can promote spiritual growth—and personal growth."

But care team volunteering is not for everyone.

"There’s no dishonor in trying it and saying, "I can’t stomach this. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened," Bidwell said.

Because Reed can handle it, he has the opportunity to know Bailey. "I think we’ve gotten to be pretty good friends," Reed said. "I’ve learned a lot about how people deal with things from Terry."

And Bailey has 12 new friends, including Reed.

"He’s a good person all around," Bailey said. "Me and Joyce (Palmer, another care team member) went down and heard him play. He sure can play them drums."


Author's Note: Terry Bailey died in October, 1993, about six months after this article was published.

An American passion: She's batty for baseball

by C.D. Walter

Staff Writer

The Shorthorn

April 16, 1995

"Batter up!"

In the game of life, Crista Tompkins has stepped up to the plate. She has gone back to school.

First pitch: strike one. As an older student returning to school, the interdisciplinary studies senior must deal with work, family and instructors who tolerate her unbridled passion for America’s pastime. Her enthusiasm for baseball, ignited in ’72 at an otherwise unmemorable Houston Astros game, gets her through.

"It’s my identity," says Tompkins, 45. "I’m the Baseball Lady."

She knows all the baseball trivia anyone would want to know. She loves the Rangers, Cubs and Red Sox, loves the game for its symmetry and drama.

"If I have to write a paper for school, I always try to write it on baseball if at all possible" she says. "I wrote two on baseball for astronomy, if you can believe it. They were like hopeful extra credit."

Another pitch: ball, high.

Baseball makes life bearable — even wonderful.

"When you’re there," Thompkins says, "there’s no place else you’re supposed to be. You just happen."

The third pitch is another ball.

Seeing two no-hitters have been highlights of her life. The first was when she was coaching her son’s team. The second was Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter.

"It was the most orgasmic experience," Tompkins says. "I hope it was as good for Nolan as it was for me."

Strike two: her husband had to decline a promotion in Tulsa.

"Not a big-league town," she says. "I won’t be sent down to the minors."

Another pitch: a foul ball. Not exactly a strike, just a temporary holdup.

She and her husband generally take separate vacations. She makes an annual pilgrimage to the shrine—Fenway Park in Boston. She once went on a six-day bus tour of seven games in five cities. Her fellow travelers—all baseball nuts—pitied her because her family all hates baseball.

"My husband was all for it (the trip)," Tompkins says. He thought it would cure me."

The couple recently took a vacation together and like it so much they decided they’ll probably do it again. Ironically, they owe the trip to baseball—Tompkins won free air fare to anywhere at a Rangers game. They went to Banff in Canada.

"No baseball (there)," Tompkins sniffs. "Just to prove I’m not addicted."

Aside from her family, everyone in her sphere (doctors, dentist, etc.) have to be baseball fans. The first question she asked her current boss was, "American or National league?"

Another pitch: a base hit! A roar fills the stadium.

Tompkins publishes baseball-related works in Spitball, The Washington Post and USA Today Baseball Weekly.

She steals second with strength and meaning derived from baseball.

"A guy at work said baseball is a metaphor for life, but I say it’s life that helps us understand baseball," she says. "I put everything in terms of baseball."

Tompkins steals third, risking all by quitting full-time work and dedicating herself to finishing school.

She waits on third base, poised to steal home. It will be the end of the game, but not of the series.

She’ll begin working on her master’s degree after graduation this spring.

She’s ready for her next game.

Pete and Repeat (In progress)

So Pete and me are hanging out at the new Alpha Group, not to be confused with the old Alpha Group, which actually lived on Alpha Road. The new Alpha Group is on Webb Chapel, down by the Love Field. It's a good place to hang out during the day, being so near everything important—lots of good restaurants—lots of good dumpsters.

We stay at Alpha some nights. Most of the old coots who lock up and open the place don’t care if we flop there, but a few are self-righteous somebitches who feel the need to 12-Step us. Tonight, Bob R is closing. He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't kick us out, either. We are grateful.

I wish we could stay here every night. Dumpsters are fine—usually pretty comfortable and relatively warm in the winter. The odor’s not as bad as you’d think, either, once you get used to it. But the smell ain’t pleasant for people around you, and I like to stay under the radar. Besides, dumpsters can be dangerous, when you’re too drunk to pay attention to pick up times.

Pete enters with both hands full of half-smoked butts. He holds his cupped hands out to me reverently; it puts me in mind of communion. I grab a handful and toss all but one in my jacket pocket, then sit down and set about uncrumpling the remaining one. It's a beaut, hardly smoked at all, though it's menthol, which I don't much care for on account of the fact that I'd got sick on Kools once. Now, the menthol smell kinda makes my stomach flip. But you take what you can get. 

We're in the hanging out room (the one with all the couches, where discussion meetings happen). After we finish smoking, Pete grabs two paper plates from the kitchen and tosses them on the coffee table. He pulls out a squashy brown paper bag full of food that he got from his favorite dumpster, the one behind the Dixie House nearby. He hit the jackpot—almost a full meatloaf. He divides everything equally between the plates. He pauses at a sole corn on the cob and looks at me. I nod for him to take it. He grins and takes it, transferring a bit more meatloaf to my plate. I can afford to be generous; this is a feast!

After eating, we light another set of butts. Our couches are perpendicular to one another, and I stretch out on my couch, feet toward Pete. Pete reclines back, and lifts his feet onto the coffee table, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. We light up several, smoking in silence. We would normally conserve, but there's so many ashtrays full of butts, we know can replenish any time.

"He never hit me, you know." Pete says. I nod. "He didn't have to," he adds, bitterly. "He messed with my mind. All the time, tinkering around in there." Pete made a motion with his hands, illustrating the point. "Like a shrink."

"Well, that's what he is," I say.

Pete shrugs. After a while he adds, "I think I'd've been all right if he'd just stayed outta my head."

"I'm sure you're right," I answer. It's a conversation we've had repeatedly.

Pete lies down and we fall silent. I'm thinking of my own father, a hard drinker, and hard-fisted man, who died when I was nine, killing almost a whole family and himself for good measure in a car accident he caused while driving drunk. I feel mostly shame when I think of him. So mostly I don't, if I can help it. One thing I've never done, not even once, is drive drunk. I suppose I owe that one good thing to the old man.

I turn my thoughts to Pete, now sleeping on the other couch. The light from the kitchen lights up his face. He looks looked angelic. At twenty, he looks about fifteen, handsome, with blue eyes, tanned skin and curly, sandy hair. A few freckles sprinkle across his nose.

I feel contented, lying there on a comfortable couch, drowsy, with a full belly, looking at this beautiful kid. Pride surges through me, as though he were my own son. I close my eyes and fall asleep.

---

“So Pete and me, we’re headin’ over to give some blood. Anyone wanna go?”

I'm hoping for a ride. Everyone shakes their heads. You can’t blame a guy for trying.

This morning, there are about a half dozen others with us at the Alpha Group, smoking and drinking coffee in the hanging out room. We're all the kind of people who can hang out on a weekday morning—retired or unemployed. Christie is a high school student on summer break who doesn’t have much else to do during the day. Debbie is unemployed. I'm sweet on her, but she’s only been sober eight months, and, though I've been coming here for almost five years, I haven’t been able to string together more than three months at a time. I think she looks a little kindly on me, though. Steve is unemployed as well; about three months sober this time around. He's noodling on the piano, singing "Bad Company" in a soft voice.

A woman enters and sits down.

“How you doin’, Susan?” Christie asks.

“High,” she says, kinda dreamily.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Debbie cries. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It just sort of happened. Out of nowhere. I came here to be somewhere safe.”

She doesn’t seem inclined to talk more, and nobody here is the kind who feels the need to preach at everybody. We’ve all been there. We just let her zone a bit while we continue talking. It seems to comfort her. Then she catches sight of Christie’s feet.

“Oh!” she startles.

We all look at her.

“You have very small feet,” she says. Her eyes move slowly from Christie’s feet to her face. “Don’t you?”

Christie smiles. “Yes, I do.”

She closes her eyes in relief. “Good.” We all laugh. She smiles, too.

Charlie enters the hanging-out room and shouts, “Hey! Pete and Repeat, you bastards! How the hell are you?” . He slaps me on the back and ruffles Pete's curly head.

Pete giggles and grabs his arms. The two wrestle a bit, laughing. I smile, again feeling that strange sense of pride in my young companion. When they stop wrestling, Charlie sits next to Christie, kisses her, and takes her hand. He turns his gaze on us.

“Either of you two useless excuses for human beings finally got a job?”

“We were working at Pizza Hut,” Pete says. “Free food—that was the only good thing. ’Course, I can get that from the dumpster any time, but this was hot.” He looks a bit wistful.

“Why didn’t you hang in there, man?” Carl asks.

“It’s Society, man,” Pete says fiercely. “It’s always Society. It’s The Man keepin' you down. They want you to bow to their ways. They don’t care if makes sense.”

“What, they want you show up on time or something?”

“I don’t mind that. They just want you to be their slave, do whatever they say. It wasn’t just one thing.” Pete is an amazingly cheerful kid, for someone who lives skint. I think that's why I hang with him, even though I'm close to double his age.

“How about you?” Charlie looks at me.

I shrug and point my thumb at Pete, sitting next to me. “He left. I left.”

“Living up to your name, ay?” Charlie grins.

I shrug again. Charlie's the one who started the trend of calling me, “Repeat.”

Pete stands. “Well, let’s roll then.”

I put out my cigarette, drain my cup, and stand.

“Need I say more?” Charlie asks.

I shrug a third time and follow Pete out the door.

---

The blood bank is a no-go; we’ve given blood too recently. It will soon be that time of day when we'll  have to get some alcohol in us. Pete starts heading east along Northwest Highway.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Not sure,” he says. “I’m thinking.”

So I follow along. I can walk a pretty long ways, so I don’t mind just following. I was in construction for many years, before I became unhirable, and I'm still in pretty good shape. We walk south on Lemmon, almost all the way around Love Field, then we head east on Mockingbird. My comfort level is dropping with each passing block.

Pete's taking us to Highland Park. There is no way, no how, that anyone there wants us anywhere near. I feel certain that a cop'll jump us any minute. But we make our way unmolested, and Pete stops near a house. A very big house. I’d call it a mansion. I can see which one he's eying, but he can’t seem to make up his mind to approach the door. I hope he isn’t thinking about breaking in; if so, he's going about it all wrong.

“What’s up, Pete?” I ask, kind of timidly.

“Don’t say anything, Mike,” he answers. “Let me think.”

Well, whatever else are my flaws, I can be patient, even in the midst of a paranoiac episode. And whatever else are Pete's flaws, he can definitely think. So I stand stock still, hoping like Hell that nobody will notice me.

Sudden-like, he speeds toward the door. I have to trot to follow along. He knocks, and a middle-aged Hispanic woman answers.

“Mister Pete!” she cries. She stands dumb-founded for a moment, then her face takes on a determined look; she opens the door wider and ushers the two of us in. “You come in, Mister Pete. You come right on in here.”

We wait in a marble vestibule. I believe I can say that this is the first vestibule I’ve ever been in, and it is so big and clean and richly furnished that I feel small and dirty, like I have no right to be here. I kinda shrink into a corner.

The woman returns with a distinguished-looking, gray-haired man who seems reluctant to come. She's practically pulling him along and talking quickly and quietly into his ear. I can’t hear what she's saying.

Finally he shakes her off, straightens his sweater and his spine, and enters the vestibule. He stands stiffly, just inside the room.

“Peter,” he says.

“Hello, Father,” Pete replies.

“Out with it. You only come here when you need something.”

Pete drops his head and breathes out a long sigh. Then he raises his head and lifts his arms, as though to welcome his father, “My dear son. Here’s your ring. Here’s your cloak. We’re preparing the fatted calf.”

A laugh escapes me. Pete’s father turns cold eyes on me, and the mirth evaporates from my whole body.

“And who is your friend?”

“This is Mike. He’s my best friend.” Pete smiles encouragement at me. I stand a little straighter, extend my hand, like to shake his, and say, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr.—”. Damn, I don’t even know Pete’s last name.

“Dr. Hamilton.” Emphasis on the “doc.” He stares at me a moment, but makes no move to take my hand. I drop my hand. He turns his gaze back towards his son.

“You’ve worn out your welcome, Peter,” he says grimly. “Don’t you dare blame me for that!”

“Okay, so I just need a little money.”

Silence. Pete’s father glares at his son.

“Look, man, I really am getting back on my feet. I got a job. I stayed almost three weeks!”

“Pride overwhelms me. Where did you work?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pete mutters.

“Where did you work?”

“Pizza Hut! Okay? You happy?”

“Delirious.”

More silence.

Pete starts, then says, “You’re not giving me any money.”

“Oh, I’ll give you money, you little shit,” he injected incredible venom into that final word. “But that doesn’t mean I have to make it easy for you.”

After a moment, he sighs. “How much do you want?”

“Five hundred?”

Pete’s father looks at him sharply.

“Three hundred?”

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars and not a cent more. Can you find a way to cash a check, or do you need cash.”

“Cash?”

“Wait.”

Pete and I stand awkwardly in the vestibule for a while. Dr. Hamilton returns and mashes the cash into Pete’s hand, grabbing Pete’s hand and the money between his two hands, hard, crumpling the money.

“I don’t want to see you again until you are completely clean. At that time you will treat me with respect, and you will NOT ask for money. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

"And you can leave your... friend at home! That is, if he has a home." He looked at me as though I were a disease. Any worth still clinging to my soul evacuates the premises.

“I mean it, Peter.” He yells as we scram out of there. “Leave us alone!”

---

Pete is shaking when we finally slow down on our return to the Alpha Group. “Fuck him,” he says, so quietly I have to lean in to hear him. A tear squeezes out of his eye. “Fuck him!” he screams. He throws the crumpled money to the ground. I drop to my knees to rescue it, quick-like.

“He’s always messing with my mind.” He bends over as though in pain. “You know that, right? He’s just messing with me. It’s all a game for him.” Tears roll down his face. “When I was kid, right, I wanted to please him. More than anything! But I never could. I never could. And you know why? He didn’t WANT to be pleased!”

I put my arms around him and let him cry it out, kind of patting his head, like he's a little boy. In a way he is, but he's a smart boy. In another life he would have been a leader. I have never regretted following him.

---

That night, as we're settling down on the couches at Alpha Group, I hear him mutter, “Fuck him.” 

Later, as I'm starting to drowse, he says, “Hey, Mike, we don’t need Society, right?

“You got it, buddy.”

“You know, it’s like quantum particles, how they talk to each other over long distances. They’re never really separated. We’re like that, you know? We’re like quarks. The strong nuclear force. It’ll always be you and me.”

"You and me, little buddy," I say, soothing-like.

 

---

Now I’ve been sober three years, and have held down a construction job for almost that long. I’m going to school to become a computer technician. I married Debbie two years ago. Charlie and Christie and lots of other Alpha people were there. Even Susan, with a shiny new six-month chip on her keychain. Pete was my best man, though I rarely see him these days. He thinks I’ve sold out—given in to Society.

Tonight, I'm at the Alpha club, stamping off snow and hanging up my coat. Then I enter the meeting room, blowing on my hands, and rubbing them. Charlie shakes my hand and then hugs me.

“Mike, how are you?” he asks quietly.

“Pretty good,” I answer. “You?”

Charlie looks at me a long time, looking tired and sad. He hands me a newspaper, pointing at an article: “Homeless man dies in dumpster mishap.” My heart skips a beat, and I read:

Peter Alexander Hamilton, 24, was found dead when a waste collection vehicle deposited his body into a local landfill. The coroner's office released a statement saying that the multiple injuries on his body were consistent with those caused by the machinery that compacts garbage after it is collected from a dumpster.

Hamilton graduated from Highland Park High School and attended one year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he had received a full scholarship to study theoretical physics. After returning to spend the summer with his parents, he disappeared. His parents have seen him only occasionally over the past few years.

He is survived by his father, Alexander, a prominent Dallas psychiatrist, and his mother, Marsha, who serves on the board of several local charities.

The family has officially released no comment, but a family friend, asked how such a promising young man ended up dying in a dumpster, answered, “Dr. Hamilton says that they’ve given up trying to understand.”

The Dallas Police Department is investigating, but a spokesman says that no foul play is currently suspected.

I grab my coat and head back out into the cold. I barely feel it.

I walk, not noticing where I'm going, until I arrive at the Dixie House on the corner. I head around  back to the dumpster. Tears stream down my face. I try to wipe them off, but eventually give it up and just stand there, leaning against the frigid metal of the dumpster, sobbing.

“Oh, little buddy! What have they done to you?” I cry.  "What have we done to you?"

Dr. Hamilton’s face rises in my memory. How does it look today? Is he crying, too? Is he relieved? Is Pete’s mom crying for him? I don't have a picture of her face to conjure up in my memory, so I think of my mom, tears streaming down her face. I hope she's crying. I can't imagine Pete’s father crying, and a fresh wave of sorrow washes over me.

“Fuck them, buddy," I say out loud. "Fuck them!” I shout. The falling snow muffles the sound.

Watering Flowers

In loving memory of
H.R. Labidee
1913-1988
Dedicated to Mary M. Labidee
Your legacy of strength and spirit
will carry on for generations to come.
❀ ❀ ❀

Today is Mom’s birthday. I fully intend to call her, but work has a funny way of interfering with one’s personal life.

Instead, she calls me.

“Oh, hi, Mom,” I stammer out. “I’ve been meaning to call you all day, but it’s been so busy…”

Silence.

“Anyway, happy birthday.”

More silence.

“Are you there?”

“Daddy’s dead.” I hear a deep, trembling breath.

A stunned silence. Grandpa’s doing well now, isn’t he?

“How?”

“He just … died. A heart attack, I think. Mom just called.”

“When?” All of the monosyllabic questions one ponders when struck with disbelief.

“Just now, I think. Mom just called.”

“I’m coming out. See you in a few hours.”

“Okay.” Then in a small voice, like a child, “Cathy?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not ready for him to go.”

My tears begin to flow.


❀ ❀ ❀

I drive along the highway to my mother’s house in the country, wondering why I’m not crying. I have just begun to really know Grandpa in the past few years. Now he’s gone. Suddenly, the beauty of the red-stained sky intrudes upon my thoughts. Cooped up in the city I don’t much notice sunsets, but here in the wide-open Texas spaces the sky is big. I feel a longing for something indescribable. I wonder where Grandpa is now, and an overwhelming feeling of awe envelopes me at the new adventure he has begun.


❀ ❀ ❀

Nine hundred miles we drive, my brother and I, and arrive in sixteen hours. We argue little—a record, I think. I feel closer to him during this silent journey than ever before.

Jim sleeps as I drive through the night along remote two-lane highways. I feel dwarfed by the sky’s black vastness. The trees and farmhouses loom then melt into the night. These images are darker even than the sky, as though they are the void and not the substance surrounding me. I feel alone in the world, yet protected, resting in some cosmic womb—once again longing for something incomprehensible. I wonder again what Grandpa is experiencing, and if he is with me. The car’s rhythmic clicking along the road comforts and soothes, like the roaring of the sea. Like the breath of God.


❀ ❀ ❀

Jim and I drag our weary bodies up to Grandma’s door, where my uncle meets us. Forgoing a merely mundane form of greeting, he thrusts a plate toward us.

“Would you like a danish?” Doug grins as laughter floats in from the house.

Jim and I stand gaping. His grin widens.

“Or would you, perhaps, prefer ham?” More laughter.

Doug has become self-appointed food pusher for the overabundance of food brought by well-wishers about town.

Of course, if it’s there, it must be eaten. It would be a sin to waste it.


❀ ❀ ❀

A flurry of kisses and hugs. More laughter, though under the surface flows the current of grief. Something is wrong here, I think, that we can’t freely show our feelings.


❀ ❀ ❀

I’m ten years old again and my father has just died. Alone in my bedroom, I listen to my dad’s Simon and Garfunkel records over and over, as if the repetition will drown out the noise in the living room, the ebbing and flowing sound of chattering well-wishers. They hover out there, waiting to swoop down on me when I venture forth to get some food. That done, I scuttle back to my comfortable, lonely haven.

I used to dream that my dad was alive. I’d tell him, “I knew you weren’t really dead. I saw you breathing in the casket.” Aunt Bonnie had forced me to touch his waxy flesh, saying, “This is the empty shell. His spirit has gone to heaven now.” But I knew she was wrong, because I saw his chest rising and falling with the breath of his spirit. And here he is alive, just like I’d said. The dreams were always bathed in light, like heaven, and I would awake wrapped in the sweetest joy. I would smile, saying, “I knew it.” Then, realizing it was only a dream, the joy would vanish into an aching emptiness more bitter than before illusion had awakened my hope.

I don’t suppose I ever learned to mourn properly. The rest of my life has been about avoiding grief —suffering of all kinds, actually. But this grief, for my grandfather, I mean, is different. Perhaps because I feel no guilt.


❀ ❀ ❀

After my father’s funeral, when the family was all sitting around the living room, Grandpa entered the room wearing my mother’s wig. That curly mess lying askew on his balding head sent the whole room into hysterics. I laughed so hard I feared I would suffocate.


❀ ❀ ❀

Not too long after my father’s death, the attacks began. I was at summer camp the first time, when I felt tingling all over my body. My heart racing, I tried to cry out, to move—anything to beat it, to stop it from smothering me. The harder I fought the more it held me, waves of intensity trying to squeeze the life out of me. I felt sure I would die. But it passed. After the tingling abated, as on all the occasions when it reoccurred, I lay in fear lest it happen again. Sometimes it did. Sometimes over and over again, leaving me spent and trembling in the early morning light that always banished the fear. Until darkness returned.


❀ ❀ ❀

Grandma sits at the kitchen table, telling me of her husband’s death. Gently, unconsciously, she strokes the tablecloth as she speaks, and her hidden grief lends her an air of fragility. This is my first glimpse into her depths. The Great Depression made her strong, capable, critical, seemingly devoid of romanticism, and her natural vitality and sharp tongue made her seem superhuman, particularly in the eyes of a child. Now, through 24-year-old eyes, I see a spark of her driving spirit, and love her for it.


❀ ❀ ❀

He awakens early that morning, that last day of his life. Contrary to his habits since retiring, he eats breakfast with Grandma, then spends the morning visiting his four closest friends. “It’s as if he knew,” Grandma says in hushed tones. After lunch, he goes outside and turns on the water, but before he can begin watering the flowers, he falls to his knees, clutching his chest. A neighbor runs over to help. Grandma, working in the basement, doesn’t hear the pounding on the door nor the ambulance’s arrival, doesn’t see the circle of neighbors standing on the lawn, watching silently as the ambulance drives away.

Hours later, when Grandma returns alone from the hospital, she finds the hose lying on the ground, water flowing uselessly onto the grass. She walks numbly to the tap and turns it off.


❀ ❀ ❀

That evening, the night of grandpa’s death, my aunt is preparing to go home for her father’s funeral, when she hears laughter drifting down the hallway of the Benedictine monastery where she lives. Voices call, “Come quick!” She joins the others on the lawn and sees a gorgeous sunset—reds and golds radiating above the jagged, black outline of the New Mexico mountains. The circle of people stands on the lawn, gazing in hushed amazement at the glorious scene above them. This is a rare occurrence here; the mountains usually hide sunsets.

Susan recalls childhood days when her father would share with quiet joy some newly discovered beauty—a flower, a sunset.

“It’s God’s earth, Susie,” he’d say. To his last days, he never seemed to lose that awe of nature.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Susan murmurs as she stands on the monastery lawn, weeping like a child at what she has lost, and what she has gained.


❀ ❀ ❀

I’m not sure when the rains begin. They become so omnipresent that one feels they have always been. It rains for days, almost nonstop. I think it’s Doug who says it first, that Grandpa is making sure his flowers are watered.

After days of rain, it begins to beat on your brain, like the rhythmic click in the car, like the roar of the ocean. You stop noticing the sound.


❀ ❀ ❀

The morning of the funeral dawns gray and listless. The drizzling rain makes it hard to wake up. Sleep sucks me back into its blissful death—a welcome relief from waking death. But in from the kitchen floats laughter—another escape with a stronger pull, for no nightmares hide in its depths. I arise to join the group gathered round the kitchen table.

Doug’s wake-up call has just been delivered—a four-foot box of danishes. The group, stifling giggles, heads to his doorway. Susan leads the funeral procession, carrying the tray over her head like an icon. Doug groans at the prize awaiting his sleep-drugged eyes, and we all laugh heartily. Perhaps too heartily.


❀ ❀ ❀

I’ve heard it said that you learn a lot about people from the books they collect. Grandpa loved them, filling every nook and cranny of his house with books on every conceivable subject. Grandma told us all to list the books we want, so I’m down here in the basement trying to scan all the titles. The task is rather futile, considering the fact that he has more than 6,000 of them. Books are part of the house, its look, its smell. But until now, I had rarely noticed them individually. As I consider the vastness of the collection—history, philosophy, science, religion—my amazement grows at the knowledge this man must have carried. A lifetime of learning is gone, and I never suspected it existed. He was just Grandpa, who was born, raised, married and died in the same small, South Dakota town. Grandpa, who liked to make silly puns and returned home from work with grease-blackened hands.

Then I thought of the hopeful young man I had seen in pictures. A football scholarship took him to the University of Wisconsin, away from his hometown for one year. After he returned home for a summer job, a large oil company offered him management of his own station. It must have been a painful choice, but during the Depression, young men couldn’t afford to pass up such opportunities.

I run my fingers lightly over the books, patting them as though I can comfort him through time and space, sadly sure that this library symbolizes his grief over education lost. Yet it must also have been his salvation. Resourcefulness brought the university to Grandpa. He may have been better educated than many college graduates. Why didn’t I appreciate him more while he was still here?

“Maybe he is still here,” I murmur. An uncanny feeling ripples over me like a breath of air.

“I love you, Grandpa,” I say out loud, in case the dead can’t read minds. “I can’t wait to see you again.”

And I believe I will.


❀ ❀ ❀

I enter the church, and see his body for the first time. Pain hits with amazing strength. Seeing him lying there as though asleep, it strikes me that he is truly gone. I never realized how animated his face was until now, when death has robbed his features of their spirit.

Grandma strokes his hand, and I am touched because I’ve never seen her treat him so tenderly. I feel again the sensation that there is much more to her than I ever suspected. My grief is strong for her. She has lost her partner, her love.

The rain continues streaming down the window, as tears stream down our faces. The family no longer laughs, but grieves—together. My brother plays guitar, sweetly, softly. His face is serious. The service is beautiful, as Grandpa would want it, in the small, intimate church he had attended most of his life.

One prayer I ask, that the rain will stop for the burial. That the sun will shine on our last good-byes. But as we emerge from the church into the beating rain, it seems fitting that the earth should mourn one who loved her so.


❀ ❀ ❀

At the cemetery, the rain slows as the burial service ends. As the crowd begins to disperse, the sun breaks through the clouds. A faint, watercolor rainbow arches across the sky. I stand gazing it until everyone else has passed me by.


❀ ❀ ❀

It is now the night of Grandpa’s funeral. We are all laughing again, though I no longer hear an ominous undertone. I suspect it existed only in my mind.

In the flurry of funeral preparations, we all forgot that today is Doug’s birthday. To make up for it, we crowd thirty-nine candles onto one danish and light it up. The candles circling the danish are so close together that the individual flames merge into one flame. In the time it takes us to carry it to him and sing, wax melts all over the pastry. We gather round to watch him laughingly blow out the fire, leaving a misshapen lump of motley-colored wax with candle stumps and burnt-black wicks jutting out in odd directions. It is hideously beautiful, and Doug, an artist, decides to preserve it as a work of art.


❀ ❀ ❀

The night of Grandpa’s funeral, I sleep soundly. My dad comes to visit me, here, in Grandma’s house. He sits on the couch talking with my sister and me. This time, I know he is dead. As with the previous dreams, I wake wrapped in joy, but this time no bitterness waits. The feeling lingers the entire day.


❀ ❀ ❀

Whether or not Doug’s lump of wax can be considered art is debatable, but Doug finds he never has to preserve it. Years have passed now, and it refuses to deteriorate.