Windwhistle Bone

by Richard Trainor

  I’m a record breaker, or so staff tells me, but mostly it’s just O’Neill, the staff I’m closest to, who says that. I was what O’Neill calls his special, once-every-couple-a-years projects. I’m a record breaker because no one’s ever made it to Third Phase as fast as I have and I’m a record breaker because O’Neill says no one ever seemed less likely to because of the other record I broke at Acacia. But then again, you’d have to understand what phasing is and what restrictions are and how you get them and how you work them off and what the whole program is all about. You have to understand what it is we do here, as we like to say, with heavy emphasis on the do.

  Thinking about it now, looking down at the park where the players have taken the field and in this frame of mind I can’t exactly describe what it was like. It was something you had to go through, where every minute felt like an hour and every second held the possibility of explosion. Aragon was right. It was hard and not much of it made sense but then again I don’t think much of it was meant to other than to break you down and get your mind right and on the here and now which was really all you had or so everybody said.

  Here, we’re all about the here and now so leave the past behind. And I remember the staff saying that so often that it came to feel like a chime in my head whenever I’d hear one of them start with the just the here and now stuff. But then too I remember something kind of similar from somewhere else that I liked even better—when someone said that the past is another country and that they do things differently there.

  They called it Acacia because that was the name of the little grove of trees with the dusty white flowers standing alongside the creek out front—and because trees was the theme of the program itself—one tiny seed carried by the wind will find root and grow Strong and Full and Independent and Resolute, or so the sign in Indica’s office read.

  I remember nothing of my time in detox other than what a blur it was and how weak I was afterward and how, because of it I was excused from morning exercise, which meant that all I had to do was answer the call at 8 a.m. and then just take a one-lap walk around the field with Clark walking me—just to make sure I didn’t fall in a hole or wander off, he said. Sometimes in those first few weeks I’d try and do jumping jacks with the other residents but then they stopped me from doing that when some of them complained that I was so off cadence that it was throwing everybody else off too. And so after my lap I mostly just stood and watched and looked across the fields with the morning mist lying on them while the sun rose over the mountain and shone on the creek, not thinking anything, not wondering, or feeling, just waiting to feel, waiting to think. Just waiting.

  It didn’t take all that long for all that to happen and it was by design. They threw you to the wolves as quick as they could, chewing you up in the morning meetings that lasted sometimes until 2 p.m., and they nailed you for what you said and didn’t say, what you did and didn’t do, or for the look you had on your face, or what any of them—residents and staff—thought you might have meant by a look or what you said or did or didn’t—laying dead for you it was called. And you had no room or right to explain or deny really. The interpretation rested with the majority. And if you were a newcomer it was impossible to be on the side of the majority. They’d switch sides on you, crossing over and keeping majoritiness from you until you earned it from them. And that only came after a while and at the price of surrender. It was called getting humility. For me, it came through restrictions. The sentences I was given for the crimes I committed that I didn’t even know I was committing. Three hours on woodpile for a look that the blue bandana guy who was there when I arrived and who was named Fraga, said I gave him. Four hours of kitchen double scrub because Naomi the Expeditor said I had an attitude. Three hours toilets for being late to morning meeting, even though I was in Indica’s office taking a pee test at the time. Four hours road duty for not putting away the basketball at the end of Rec. By the end of my first week I had sixteen blue slips—the official form that restrictions were assigned on—and I was on extra duty from first wake-up at 6 until lights out at midnight, my only time off being meetings, my job as kitchen gofer, and meals.

  It was wearing on me—the Morning Meetings of how do you feel? And what’s going on with you today? The House Meetings with attitude adjustments, the Evening Meetings with the Sharing and Caring and Validating and Invalidating, and the once a month Marathon Meetings where all the above went on for 24 hours straight. And all that plus my kitchen job and then all the restrictions left me no time for myself and on the one day when there finally was—a drizzly February Saturday—we spent it with piles of sand filling the deep ruts and holes on the dirt road, Acacia Lane.

  One night, it was raining hard and thundering and I was out on the woodpile when I heard the cry of House Meeting above the storm. It was familiar to me now, as they were called at any hour of the day or night by anyone—resident or staff—in the house and for any reason. Anything from a bad dream to a great revelation to an attitude, real or imagined or suspected and what it meant when they were called was drop whatever it is you’re doing and come running. I already had three restrictions for being last in, and so this time, I ran. When I got in and took a seat on one of the couches I saw it was Indica Muniz himself who’d called it.

  He sat there in that way of his—on the big overstuffed leather chair in the corner, kicked back and smiling that cat smile of his, fingertips laced together over his stomach and tattoo symbols flashing looking like Buddha reincarnated as a Mexican biker. “How you doing, my man?” asks Indica nodding toward me and smiling a little wider now. When I finally figured out it was me he was talking to, I told him I was okay, and he says, “Yeah? You don’t look too fucking good. Kinda look like a wet rat to me. He look that way to you, Jackie?” said Indica to the tall woman counselor with the nice body and small eyes, the one all the tattoo guys called ‘The Stallion.’

  “Either that or something someone peed on,” said Jackie. The other residents started to laugh but she gave them one of the cold stares she was almost as famous for as she was for her body and that shut them up awhile. Meanwhile, I was looking back with my best blank face but I know it wasn’t working. It was a moment for me was what this was all about although I didn’t really know it then. I would only know that later when I saw someone else called out to stand in the center ring where the light was on you and you were pushed to do either one of three things—run, resist or surrender—although there was really only one that was accepted.

  Then Indica leaned forward, flipped his hair off his shoulders, and came in on me with his eyes and voice. “I know, man, you think you’re better than all these people, than all of us,” he gestured with one big hand, long fingers outstretched and sweeping across the room finally coming back to rest on his chest, palm down and tattoo symbols showing. “You think you’re better than all of us,” he says singsongy with sarcasm, “and you think that we see that and because we don’t like that, that’s why you’re getting all these blue slips, right?” Then Indica pulled out his other hand and held up the duplicate copies they kept in the office. “Paul, you ever remember anybody with this many restrictions?” he asked, O’Neill, smiling at him.

  “No,” says O’Neill, shaking his big curly head. “I think Le Doir has broken the house record, Indica.”

  “Man, I can set my fucking watch by the clop, clop, clop of you on that woodpile,” says Indica, coming back on me again. Still I said nothing. “Give it up, pendéjos,” says Indica to the rest of the residents. “You think this dude thinks he’s better than you?” Most of my peers started nodding, maybe three quarters of them agreeing with him, and Jackie and Clark and O’Neill too. “Look around the room, my man,” says Indica, both hands spreading out now like to the multitudes. Then he stopped suddenly, tossed his hair forward and cocked a finger at me like it was a gun. “You dig what’s going down, Essé? Know why they don’t like you, man? Know why you’re blue slipped back, Jack?”

  It took me a while bef
ore I could speak. “No,” I finally said and finally meant. And whether it was the shock of the still hard detox, the intensity of the program, or the overall general exhaustion, I couldn’t exactly say. I only knew that I’d had enough and that I couldn’t take any more.

  “Well, I’ll tell you why,” says Indica, “it’s because it’s fucking true. These people don’t like you, man, and they don’t buy your arrogance, man. ’Cause if you’re so fucking superior, if you’re so hip, slick, and cool, then what the fuck are you doing here, man? You ain’t shit, Mr. Big Shot. You’re just another dope-fiend beating time in the joint, same as the rest.” He was smiling now but his eyes weren’t. They were staring at me hard and cold, hard enough that I had to look away. “Know what you are? You’re a punk, man,” he said, after my eyes broke away. “Same as all the rest of these punks and, guess what, same as the punk I used to be before I became a man. You think the world has fucked you, but it don’t owe you shit, and you’re one lucky motherfucker to be here instead of the joint, much less dead, like you probably deserved.” Then maybe seeing the shock on my face he stopped and leaned back again, smiling and talking more softly now. “Damn,” he said. “Damn. I ain’t got but two choices with you, Ram. I either roll you up or give you a second chance. So what do I do now, Ram?” Indica said. I was going to let the residents decide. And me, I’m sitting there thinking this is it, Misericordia again, at least two years but more likely five. But then when I look up again, I see Indica has the blue slips between both big hands and he’s smiling. “Tell you what, Ram,” he says. “I’ll make you a contract. I’ll rip these up and let you start over again, from Day One. That alright with you, Homes?” He wasn’t smiling now, wasn’t kicked back in his chair, or laced up over his belly, just leaning forward with the blue slips between his hands, staring me dead in the eye and waiting.

  I used to see Indica or Clark or Jackie or O’Neill, but mainly Indica, run the same thing on other residents—opportunity in the form of a judgment—and it was Indica himself who put it that way to me when I finally cracked into the majority and was just about to be phased to Redwood. He said that what these confrontations really came down to was a resident being made to eat a shit sandwich but act as if they were chewing peanut butter and jelly. But I wasn’t knowing that then, only knew that it was some kind of test and I remembered Aragon’s words of a few weeks back and him telling me what was waiting for me if I didn’t follow their script. And so I searched down deep into me where what was left of my sincerity still lived and said that I apologized to everyone for my shitty attitude and for my stubbornness and for my arrogance and that I would be grateful—really grateful—to him and all the other staff and the whole Acacia House if they would all give me another chance and that starting from Day One again was probably better than I deserved. And when I was finished I saw that the faces of my fellow residents, so hard not five minutes before, were now starting to soften. And when he saw that theirs had so did Indica’s. He laced his fingers behind his head again, kicked back, and nodded, smiling his widest smile now. “Motherfucker,” he says, “you got yourself a contract.” He turned and smiled at O’Neill. “Paul,” he said, “make a man out of this punk.”

  In this Grow or Go Deal, I became O’Neill’s pupil and from him, I learned what it was I had to do and what I had to change to get through the First Phase. He told me that if I couldn’t figure it out myself that I should ‘Act As If’ and ‘Follow the Leaders,’ pretending and mimicking until pretense and mimicry became second nature to me. It was ‘Simple But Not Easy,’ as one of the slogans on Indica’s wall put it and I was made a leader too when Jack named me to succeed Naomi as kitchen expediter which meant that I got to go with him every Monday to do the shopping at the food warehouse and the supermarket where he had some deal going with the coupons he had me clip all week from the newspaper and then bring with me when he came to pick me up. And it also meant that I got to go to breakfast afterward—with him and Luke, the Walnut Expediter—and sometimes we even went to Jack’s apartment which was decorated with little silver and crystal knick-knacks he bought with his Tiffany’s credit card. “Baby,” he said showing me the card and the other ones he had too, “you can have all this shit too if you just keep doing what you’re doing,” he’d say. “And listen, sweetheart, don’t tell me you don’t want it—of course you do, baby,” he’d say winking. “Who wouldn’t? It’s called living, sweetheart.”

  After I became expediter, I was all the way involved—calling House Meetings on others and also on myself, adjusting attitudes, sharing and caring. And I started to extend myself to the outside members of the community who were graduates of the program and now had jobs and businesses and families and children and all the other things that signified responsibility and maturity. And a few of them would sometimes hire me for a day’s work so I could have money for zuzu’s and wham-whams—candy and stuff. And even though Fraga didn’t like it pretty soon I was driving iron with Clark and some of the tattoo guys. And though it was O’Neill who guided me I think it was probably Darrell who maybe helped me most.

  “They kind of ripped you a new asshole yesterday, didn’t they, youngster?” Those were the first words he said to me. It was the day after my showdown with Indica Muniz and I was back on dishes, where the newest resident was always put—when Darrell said that. He was the new second cook and he said it without looking up from two skillets full of eggs. I said that I guessed they did and he nodded still not looking up. “Guess you’re gonna have to learn a different way,” he said. “Yeah, guess so,” I said. Then he stopped stirring for a minute to face me. “You really don’t know what’s going on here, do you, youngster?”

  “Not really,” I said. He laughed softly but it wasn’t like it was at me. He seemed to be considering something for a minute. “What the hell,” he said, “I got nothin’ better to do.”

  I didn’t remember him coming in to Acacia which was after me but must have been while I was still in detox but I remember his partner Tommy confessing at one of the Caring and Sharing meetings of how he’d been a wino and a dumpster diver who had come here just to get out of the rain, and I sort of figured that maybe Darrell was the same way, though he never said so. But where Tommy was always talkative and cutting up, and like Darrell was about fifty or so, Darrell never said much in group and wasn’t nearly so colorful. In Darrell the color was mostly drained out. He was low-key and gray-skinned, mustache and wavy hair all that color, the color the ocean gets on an overcast day and it was impossible to tell what color it once had been because even his eyebrows and mustache roots had all gone that color too. His eyes were gray too, though lighter—like old Levi’s or young seagulls—and he was of medium height and medium build with a little paunch, and he walked with a stoop, tight-shouldered, pitched forward and wincing, a little like he was fighting the direction he was moving in.

  “Youngster,” he said after a few moments silence had passed, “the first thing you gotta learn about these places is that it’s all about the ass. You show your ass, you cover your ass, you save your ass. You get your head out of your ass, and you get your tongue out of everybody else’s. You savvy what I’m saying? It’s all about asswork, so keep yours clean, and don’t worry about nobody else’s. That way you can show it, cover it, and save it—all at the same time. You get what I’m telling you? Ram, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s Ram,” I said. “I think I got it—it’s all about the ass.”

  “No,” he corrected, “it’s all about the ass.” I didn’t know what to say at first. Then it came to me, finally. “It’s all about the ass,” I mimicked back to him.

  “You got it,” he laughed. And when he did he put his hand over his mouth to hide the front teeth that were missing there and then he wiped his hand and stuck it out for me to shake. “Name’s Darrell,” he said. “Darrell Barber.”

  “Ram,” I said. “My name is Ram Le Doir.”

  We matriculated together through the program—Darrell and me—
and because we were in the kitchen together for so long a time, me as Expediter and him as Second and then First Cook because the residents voted to keep him there after nobody else who followed him could match up to him—we started spending most of our free time together mostly on the little lawn alongside the pool and inside the hedges where we took our Rec by pitching a blistered old football back and forth.

  We found it floating in the pool one day. Probably one of the kids at the grade school next door on the other side of the creek had punted it there though nobody ever called to claim it. The water had bloated it some and caused some of the laces to bust a bit at one end, but it was still a good leather model and once you got used to its oversizedness, you could throw it almost as good as a regulation job leastways Darrell could.

  He didn’t have the legs for running anymore and like I said it seemed painful for him to move anyway and so I did most of that—going long, down-and-out, button-hook, post-and-flag—but he could sure still pitch it—lofts and fades, bombs and bullets. And in those hours we spent on the lawn tossing and catching we also spent a lot of time talking—first about nothing, sports and kitchen stuff—but then, eventually about ourselves and what we’d been and done to get here and what we hoped to do when we got out.

  He was an old LA hipster—what he called a drape-suit hair-boy from Eagle Rock—whose life had done a 180 one December night in 1945 when he was eighteen. “It was down in Hollywood, and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were playing there,” said Darrell. He said that the radio said that they were the kings of bebop, whatever that was. “Well, youngster, I sure found out what that was. It’s like it was yesterday. I’d just gone there on a goof,” he said, “thinking I could maybe catch some strange. Caught something else instead, a yen for jazz and junk.”