The Best American Essays 2012

by David Brooks

  Jenks grew up in Salt Lake City, but he has spent most of his working life in small towns. “Maybe I can describe it this way,” he says. “I like to play chess. I moved to a small town, and nobody played chess there, but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or ten games in a row. That’s sort of like living in a small town. It’s a simpler game, but it’s played to a higher level.” Jenks says that he is forced to have “a working relationship” with local methamphetamine users, treating their ailments in confidence. He explains that small towns might have a reputation for being closed-minded, but actually residents often learn to be nonjudgmental, because contact is so intense. “Someday I might be on the side of the road, and the person who pulls me out is going to be a meth user,” Jenks says. “The circle is much tighter.” He believes there is less gossip than one would assume, simply because so much is already known.

  One morning, a young woman arrives at the Apothecary Shoppe after spending the weekend in jail. She had an argument with her husband, who called the police; Colorado law requires officers to make an arrest whenever they respond to a domestic dispute. The law is intended to protect women from being coerced into dropping charges, but in this case the husband claimed that he had been attacked. In the drugstore, the woman is approached by half a dozen neighbors who have read about the arrest in the local newspaper.

  “It’s not what it sounds like,” she tells one elderly woman. “He’s lying about the whole thing, and he’s going to get in trouble for that.”

  They stand at the pharmacy counter. “It’s terrible when I have the criminal element in the store,” Don jokes.

  The young woman reads the police blotter in the newspaper. “He said I attacked him with a frying pan. He said I hit him in the arm. If I’d attacked him with a frying pan, I’d a hit him in the head.”

  “Let me tell you what you should do,” the old woman says. She is in her seventies, with curly white hair and a sweet, grandmotherly smile. “Get you some wasp spray,” she says. “It’ll put their eyes out.”

  “I can’t even have Mace, because it’s a weapon.”

  With the wisdom of age, the elderly woman explains that wasp spray is not classified as a weapon and is thus available to people who are out on bail. “It’s better than pepper spray,” she says.

  A while later, I see the young woman cutting out the arrest listing. “This way, if I’m ever stupid enough to think about taking him back, I’ll look at this,” she tells me. “I’ll keep it in my scrapbook.” (Eventually, all charges were dropped, and they divorced.)

  At the store, Don never discusses anyone’s situation with a third party, but he frequently mentions his own problems. Twenty years ago, Kretha was diagnosed with a rare degenerative form of spina bifida, and now she rarely leaves home. Their oldest son flies F-16s for the air force, but their daughter has struggled with alcoholism. After she had difficulties caring for her son, Gavin, Don and Kretha took custody of the boy. Don often mentions such issues to a customer. “If I’m dealing with somebody who has an alcoholic in the family, it helps for them to know about my daughter,” he says. “You can’t pretend that your family is perfect. My daughter is not perfect, but she’s trying.” He continues, “Almost all druggists in a small town will tell you the same thing. You are part and parcel of the community. Nobody’s better, nobody’s worse.”

  In Nucla, Wednesday is bowling-league night. The local alley shut down to the public long ago, because there are so few people left, but the facility opens twice a week for community leagues. The alley was built in 1962 and all its equipment is original, with an exuberant use of steel that you don’t see anymore: long, shiny Brunswick ball racks, dining tables with heavy flared legs. Scorecards advertise businesses that have been dead for decades: Miracle Roofing and Insulation, Sir Speedy Instant Printing Center (“Instant Copies While You Wait!”). Don is the league’s president, and he certifies the lanes every year. He took a course in Montrose in order to be licensed to use a bowling-lane micrometer.

  Don’s collection of certifications is impressively esoteric. He has taken CPR courses, and he’s qualified to use an electric defibrillator. He has a pyrotechnics display license, so that Nucla can have fireworks on the Fourth of July. When he heard about a new type of hormone therapy, he flew to California to attend two days of classes, and now he compounds medicine for four transgendered patients who live in various parts of the West. Every three months, Don talks with them on the phone and prepares their drugs; he finds this interesting. On Friday nights, he announces Nucla High football games. They play eight-man ball, although if a bigger school comes to town, they switch numbers with every possession, so that each side can practice its plays. When Nucla is on offense, it’s eight-on-eight, but it becomes eleven-on-eleven when the other team has the ball. Occasionally, somebody gets confused, and Don’s voice rings out over the loudspeakers: “There’s eleven white guys and eight blue guys, and that won’t work.” The football might not be first-rate, but the players’ names are a novelist’s dream. Nucla has Seth Knob, Chad Stoner, and Seldon Riddle. Dove Creek has a player named Tommy Fury. Blanding has Talon Jack and Sterling Black, Tecohda Tom and Herschel Todachinnie. Shilo Stanley, Terrance Tate, Dillon Daves: if alliteration ever needs an offensive line, recruiting should begin around the Colorado-Utah border.

  When outsiders come to town—loners, drifters—they often find their way to Don. A number of years ago, a man in his seventies named Tim Brick moved to Naturita and rented a mobile home. He placed special orders at the Apothecary Shoppe: echinacea, goldenseal, chamomile teas. He distrusted doctors and often had Don check his blood pressure. It was high, and eventually Don persuaded him to get on regular medication. Soon, he was visiting every four or five days, mostly to talk.

  Don referred to him as Mr. Brick. He had no other local friends, and he was cagey about his past, although certain details emerged over time. His birth name had been Penrose Brick—he was a descendant of the Penrose family, which came from Philadelphia and had made a fortune from mining claims around Cripple Creek. But for some reason Mr. Brick had been estranged from all his relatives for decades. He had changed his first name, and he had spent most of his working life as an auto mechanic.

  One day, his mobile home was broken into, and thieves made off with some stock certificates. Mr. Brick had never used a broker—to him, they were just as untrustworthy as doctors—so he went to the Apothecary Shoppe for help. Before long, Don was making dozens of trips across Disappointment Valley, driving two hours each way, in order to get documents certified at the bank in Cortez, Colorado. Eventually, he sorted out Mr. Brick’s finances, but then the older man’s health began to decline. Don managed his care, helping him move out of various residences; on a couple of occasions, Mr. Brick lived at Don’s house for an extended stretch. At the age of ninety-one, Mr. Brick became seriously ill and went to see a doctor in Montrose. The doctor said that prostate cancer had spread to his stomach; with surgery, he might live another six months. Mr. Brick said he had never had surgery and he wasn’t going to start now.

  Don spent the next night at the old man’s bedside. At one point in the evening, Mr. Brick was lucid enough to have a conversation. “I think you’re dying,” Don said.

  “I’m not dying,” Mr. Brick said. “I’m just going to pray now.”

  “Well, you better pray pretty hard,” Don said. “But I think you’re dying.” He asked if Mr. Brick needed to see a lawyer. The old man declined; he said his affairs were in order.

  Don found a hospice nurse, and within two days Mr. Brick died. Don arranged a funeral Mass, and then he went through boxes of Mr. Brick’s effects. There was a collection of old highway maps, an antique cradle telephone, and a Catholic prayer stand. There were many photographs of naked men. Don found checkbooks under four different aliases. There were letters in Mr. Brick’s handwriting asking friends if they could introduce him to other men who were “of
the same type as me.” But he must have lost courage, because those letters were never mailed. Don also found unopened letters that Mr. Brick’s mother had sent more than half a century ago. One contained a ten-dollar bill and a message begging her son to make contact. The bill, from the 1940s, still looked brand-new, and seeing that crisp note made Don feel sad. Years ago, he had sensed that Mr. Brick was gay, and that this was the reason he was estranged from his family, but it wasn’t a conversation they ever had.

  In his will, Mr. Brick left more than half a million dollars in cash and stock to the local druggist. After taxes and other expenses, it came to more than $300,000, which was almost exactly what the community owed Don Colcord. But Don didn’t seem to connect these events. He talked about all three subjects—neglecting his dying brother, offering credit to the townspeople, and helping Mr. Brick and receiving his gift—in different conversations that spanned more than a year. He probably never would have mentioned the money that was owed to him, but somebody in Nucla told me and I asked about it. From my perspective, it was tempting to apply a moral calculus, until everything added up to a neat story about redemption and reward in a former utopian community. But Don’s experiences seemed to have taught him that there is something solitary and unknowable about every human life. He saw connections of a different sort: these people and incidents were more like the spokes of a wheel. They didn’t touch directly, but each was linked to something bigger, and Don’s role was to try to keep the whole thing moving the best he could.

  Don Colcord’s birthday is the Fourth of July. That’s also when Nucla celebrates its annual Water Days, which commemorates the completion of the town’s irrigation system. Today, the theme is “Where the Past Meets the Future,” and Don announces the floats for the parade down Main Street. After that, he helps out at the barbecue in the park, and then he prepares to set off the town’s fireworks. All these events are sponsored by the Lions Club. When Don joined the club, in 1978, he was the youngest member, and he still is. Soon, the Lions Club will be disbanded because of lack of members.

  In the evening, we drive to the top of Nucla Hill. The view is spectacular in all directions: westward, the slate-blue La Sal Mountains, and the Uncompahgre Plateau to the east, where the feathered tops of cottonwoods mark the long line of the irrigation ditch. Three remaining members of the Lions Club are here, along with some volunteer firemen. Trucks and cars arrive from town and park at the bottom of the hill to watch the show. When darkness falls, the Lions prepare the fireworks in metal tubes, and Don ignites them one by one. After it’s over, we watch the pairs of headlights glide in a neat line back up Main Street, dispersing as drivers turn off toward home. Our attention drifts upward—now that the fireworks and the headlights are gone, the stars seem brilliant, clustered together like the lights of some faraway city. Don passes around a few bottles of beer. “I don’t care if it is a small town, we got good fireworks,” he says. He sips his beer and gazes up at the Milky Way. “When you see them from here, they look so close together,” he says. “It’s hard to believe they’re millions of miles apart.”

  EWA HRYNIEWICZ-YARBROUGH

  Objects of Affection

  FROM Ploughshares

  EACH SUMMER when I’m in Kraków, I make weekly trips to a flea market close to our apartment. This particular market also sells antiques, but it doesn’t aspire to a loftier name, because it also peddles secondhand books, last year’s issues of fashion magazines, handmade jewelry, items that aren’t old in the sense that antiques are supposed to be. A valuable nineteenth-century chest of drawers or a gilded mirror enjoys good neighborly relations with an electric coffee grinder and rusty door handles. It would probably be easier to attempt a list of things that aren’t sold there than the ones that are. If someone is looking for a rare item, his friends will invariably suggest going to the flea market. When I was looking for a desk, I first went there and bought a beautiful art nouveau table, which recovered its former looks after being renovated. I love the market because I love rummaging through old things and because I usually will find something that I absolutely want to have. I love running my fingers over the shapely back of a violin, tracing the grooves in a century-old high-back chair, or gently tapping a porcelain cup to hear it tinkle. I know that to some people viewing old objects with something akin to reverence is a silly affectation. But particularly there, in a country that wasn’t spared violent entanglements with History, an old photograph, a water pitcher, a clock that stood on someone’s mantelpiece and was miraculously salvaged from a bombed-out building—those mute witnesses to human life inspire awe and amazement at the mere fact of their survival. They connect us to the past and its messy materiality by making that past more concrete, more tangible. And in them we see the reflected wisdom of our simple human order.

  I was a child of the fifties, growing up in a communist country beset by shortages of practically everything—food, clothes, furniture—and that circumstance may have been responsible for my complicated attitude toward objects. We had few toys or books, and we wore mostly hand-me-downs. A pair of mittens, a teddy bear, and a chocolate bar for Christmas were enough. Once in a while we also got skates, bikes, musical instruments. “Abundance” had no place in our vocabulary and in our world, but we were happy with what we had, in the way that only children can be. We were unaware that our lives were in any way circumscribed, although the reality we lived in trained us early on that there was a huge gap between wanting something and getting it. After all, even people with money had to hustle and resort to underhanded maneuvers, including bribery, to buy things.

  For many years I had only one doll, which my father somehow managed to procure when I was four years old. Made in Germany, Gabriela had two long braids. She was a beautiful doll, not like the ones sold in toy stores, and although I had other dolls later, she remained special. When the mechanism responsible for her making a crying sound broke, we took her to the doll clinic. At that time nothing was thrown away if there was even a slight chance that it could be repaired. I had Gabriela until I turned fourteen, when, in a grown-up gesture, I bequeathed her to my young cousin.

  By the time I graduated from high school, I was a person of substance, or so I thought. The shortages never disappeared, but it was easier to get things. I had a Chinese fountain pen and two ballpoint pens, which I kept in my desk drawer and would only use at home. I boasted several records that my sister and I listened to on a gramophone she had been given as a name-day present a few years before. Some of them were by the popular Polish rock bands, and one was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the only classical music record I had for a long time. I listened to it so often that to this day I can hum the whole piece from beginning to end. I also had a bookcase with a sliding glass front that was filled with books. My parents’ books were arrayed on three broad shelves in the bottom part of a cupboard in what doubled as our living room and their bedroom. Although both my parents were readers, they rarely bought books, borrowing them instead from the public library. I was very possessive of the books I owned and only reluctantly loaned them to friends. When my younger sister took one out, I insisted she put it back in the exact same spot.

  My possessiveness may have had a lot to do with how difficult books were to come by. They were published in small numbers, and there was such a huge demand for them among the intelligentsia that the good ones disappeared from stores very quickly. On my way back from school, I often made a detour and walked by the local bookstore to look in the window where new arrivals would be displayed. That was how I spotted a four-volume War and Peace that cost eighty zloty, not a negligible sum. I had only thirty. The clerk told me this was the only copy in the store. I knew the book would be sold soon, so I decided to go to my father’s office and beg him for a loan, which he gave me at once. Clutching the money, I ran back to the bookstore, breathless and worried that the book would no longer be there. I realize that what I’m saying must seem pathetic to a person raised in the comforts of a free market economy, wher
e it’s enough to think of something to find it immediately in the store.

  It might sound more poignant if I said that books and records helped me escape the surrounding grayness and drabness and that my hunting for them wasn’t solely motivated by my newly developed acquisitiveness or a collector’s instinct. But if I said that, I’d be practicing revisionist history. The truth is that we didn’t see the grayness and drabness—not yet. This realization came much later. So if it was aesthetic escapism, it was the universal kind, not fueled by our peculiar political circumstances.

  My youthful materialism thrived in a country where materialism—unless of the Marxist variety—was unanimously condemned as the ugly outgrowth of Western consumer societies. We knew this was just an ideological cover-up for the never-ending shortages. My brand of materialism didn’t belong in a consumer society either, because it was a kind of disproportionate attachment to things that was caused by scarcity, something unheard-of in a market economy. I couldn’t want more, new, or better. Such wanting was at best a futile and abstract exercise, so I learned to practice self-limitation. Paradoxically, however, I knew what I liked and wanted, and would have had no trouble making a choice had I been given the chance. When you’re faced with overabundance, assaulted by things and more things, it’s often difficult to say what you like or want, but that at least wasn’t our problem. I don’t mean to praise privation or claim that we were somehow better or more virtuous than people who inhabited a consumer heaven and whose wishes could be automatically fulfilled. I’m only saying that my relationship to things was developed under a different set of circumstances. I did care about possessions, no question about that. I wanted to hang on to what I had and now and then replenish my stock if I came across the right item. More often than not chance ruled my acquisitions. I had to sift through what was available in the hopes of finding something special among a slew of worthless objects. That was also true of buying the so-called practical items. I might have been walking by a shoe store when I spotted a delivery truck. That sight would have been enough to make me stand in line. If I was lucky, I might have ended up buying a pair of sneakers. I might have also wasted my time because I liked none of the shoes or couldn’t get my size. People would often buy things they didn’t need or want, just in case. You could never tell when those things might come in handy or be used to barter.