“I don’t know. Like talking to each other. Like this. Like staying on each other’s wing. Wingers. Just like the old days but in a different way. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to learn how to do now. Be the same solid rounder kind of guys but in a different way now.”
“You figure?”
“Guess.”
“Still don’t gotta spill the fucking beans unless we want to. That’ll never fucking change.”
“Maybe we’re supposed to help him want to.”
“How the fuck do we do that?”
“I don’t know. I want to figure it out, though.”
“Me too. You know he don’t sleep nights?”
“No.”
“The old lady says he watches friggin’ movies all night. Stays up all night, watches flicks, and drinks.”
“He’s never pissed up. Not bad, anyway.”
“Maybe he gets to the line and stays there. He’s always got a mickey on him.”
“That’s not new. Shit, I carry sometimes myself still.”
“Yeah, but you ’n me, we got somewhere else now. I figure Dick hasn’t moved. He’s still where he was when we scored the loot. That’s what you seen when you seen him on the porch.”
“The movies,” he goes.
“What?”
“The movies. In the beginning we went to the movies. All of us. Together. To get out of the cold. Nowadays we don’t go as much and Dick, well, he’s got his collection in his room and he watches all by himself. I think we need to get back to where it all started again.”
“How do we do that exactly?”
“Well, I guess if it means staying up all night and watching movies with him, that’s what we’ll have to do.”
“Do you think he’ll go for that?”
“It’s Double Dick Dumont we’re talking about. No matter how he might be acting or what kind of stuff he has going on inside, he’s still Double Dick. Still our winger. Still one of us. He’ll be tickled pink to have us sit and watch movies together.”
“You’re right. We used to go to a flick every day. Be nice to get back to that.”
“Yeah,” he goes. “The four of us.”
“Five.”
“Well, six, really.”
“Seven if you count Merton.”
“Seven if you count Merton.”
“Do we count Merton?”
“Fuck yeah,” he goes, and we head out for the truck and the drive back home.
One For The Dead
THERE’S FOUR DIRECTIONS in the Great Wheel of Life. The Medicine Wheel. Each has things that make it special, give teachings to the People. The whole point of being is to learn to move through all those directions and pick up the teachings on the way. That’s what Grandma One Sky taught me and what I recall thinking about Dick and how our lives have changed so much so fast. Sometimes life gets so busy we forget what we’re really supposed to be doing, and I guess that’s what happened to us. We’re supposed to consider where we’ve been. The way we came together was like the spirit of the Medicine Wheel. See, there’s the east first. The east is where the light comes from and the teaching there is how to be a physical person. That’s Digger. He’s always been the tough one. Then, the south is where growing takes place and the teaching is how to be an emotional person. That’s Dick. He’s always the one who feels things the most. The west’s teaching is thinking, reflecting, and that’s Timber. He was always the one who needed to know, to understand. The north teaches spirituality, because the journey around the great Wheel of Life brings you to that if you look back at where you’ve been. That’s me, I guess, since the shadowed ones let me see them. So we came together for a reason. To be strong together. To be whole. To be a circle. Thinking about it, I could see that the only way to help Dick through this difficulty was to come together again like we did in the beginning. Dick didn’t need us poking around his insides. He didn’t need us asking questions that required tough answers he wasn’t ready to give. He didn’t need us worrying about how he was. He needed us to be a circle again. He needed us to be the tiny band of wanderers that we were. Funny, even when you forget, the Wheel is always working in your life. Sitting there in my rocker, alone, while Dick slept upstairs and the other two boys were at work in Digger’s store, I was grateful for that invisible energy that moves us. The Wheel, turning and turning, spinning on forever, relentlessly, moving us inch by inch sometimes, always in the direction of home, in the direction we all want to go, regardless.
Timber and Digger pulled up in front of the house in Digger’s truck, and as I watched them climb out and walk toward the veranda steps I saw how strong they’d become, how purposefully they walked, and how determined their faces were. I saw how far they’d travelled around the Wheel. North. They stood in the north now. Together. They stood together in the place of spirituality—and therefore, wisdom.
“We know what we gotta do for Dick,” Digger said as they entered the room.
“I know you do,” I said. “I know you do.”
Timber
IT WAS LIKE A CARNIVAL. Every day for a week we went to the movies again, and it was like a carnival. We sat in the kitchen with the newspaper spread across the table and we talked about what we wanted to see that day, just like we used to do at the mission. There were the usual good-natured debates and arguments, generally started by Digger, who although determined to see Dick through whatever torment he was going through, was still gruffly rebellious about anything soft or romantic. Dick responded like he always had: excited, antsy as a kid. He seemed happy to have us all back in the swing of things and he didn’t feel as heavy as he had. He still sat all slack-jawed at the movies like he had the very first time, only the rise of a hand with popcorn or a mickey showing he was breathing at all. We saw Pretty Woman, Reversal of Fortune, Total Recall, Cadillac Man, Bird on a Wire, The Hunt for Red October, and Hamlet all in a glorious splash of sound and light and colour. It was amazing. Amazing as a carnival for the senses, and even if we didn’t see any films that moved us spectacularly, we saw ones that told us again about the particular grace of the movies: to lift you up and away. We were happy.
I carved every morning, and as the man in the chair took shape and form and substance beneath my hands, I saw little of that moment in Dick those days. Little. But now and again, you could see it rise in him. See it in the way his shoulders slumped or in the woebegone way he looked at you. We didn’t worry, though. Digger and I took turns sitting up with him. We’d turn the volume down low in his room and watch whatever he wanted to watch, and when he nodded off now and again I made sure to make no sudden moves, no sounds that would disturb the haven of sleep he’d wandered into. When he awoke he would see me in my chair and grin like a kid caught sneaking cookies, and turn to the film again. I saw no ghosts in that room on those nights, and I knew that he was glad for the company. When morning came, I’d cover him with a blanket and leave him snoring gently in his large overstuffed armchair and head off to do my work.
Then came Ironweed.
“What do you want to watch tonight?” I asked as we looked through his shelves. We were going to sit in the living room with all our friends and watch movies. Granite, Margo, and James had come over for a supper of Chinese food and we were all looking forward to seeing something on the big screen with the theatre sound.
“Don’t matter,” he said. “Some I seen, but there’s a lot I ain’t got around to yet.”
His shelves were frightening. There was no order. Movies were stacked on top of each other, leaned crookedly, and piled haphazardly so you had to tilt your head to read the titles. He had everything: westerns, horror, science fiction, comedy, drama, and even some foreign films with undecipherable names.
“Here’s one,” I said. “Ironweed. Have you seen it?”
“Don’t think so. Who’s in it?”
“Jack Nicholson.”
“Which one’s he?”
“Hmm. Remember the one about the hitman who falls in love with the
lady hitman?”
“Yeah. That was funny.”
“That’s him.”
“Okay, sounds good to me. Let’s watch that one.”
The others were all settled into their favourite chairs waiting for us when we got back downstairs. Dick settled in next to Amelia and I handed the tape off to Digger, who had assumed the role of machine operator from the very first time we watched movies at home. Then I sat on a large pillow on the floor with my back pressed against the wall.
“What are we watching?” Margo asked, her hand in Granite’s.
“Ironweed,” Dick said. “With Jack Nicholson.”
“Oh, that sounds good. I like him,” she said and smiled.
“Me too,” James said. “Have you seen this one, Granite?”
“Yes. It’s quite good.”
“What’s it about?” Amelia asked.
“Well, it’s about—”
“Geez, will you cool it, Rock?” Digger said. “I don’t always gotta know the story before I see the flick.”
“Okay,” Granite said. “But it’s good.”
“Thank you for the friggin’ analysis,” Digger said, “but now it’s showtime, folks.”
He flicked off all the lights and the room fell into the theatrelike ambience we all loved. Digger had set the sound up perfectly and we were all lost with the first flare of light on the screen and the crash of sound. The film was jaw dropping. It told the story of three back-alley drunks in a small city near the end of the Depression, and it told it so accurately that I thought I saw myself there as I had been not so long ago. It was bleak as only a street life can be. It was heavy like the woe we had all carried. It was hard. It was tough. It was gritty and it was as on the nose as anything I’d ever seen except the life itself. When it ended we all sat there, unmoving and silent, until the tape reached its end. Digger got up to shut it off and turn on the lights. We stared at each other. No one said a word.
“I gotta go,” Dick said.
“Me too, so hurry up, pal,” Digger said.
“No,” Dick said, his chin trembling and a frightened look in his eyes. “I mean, I gotta go.”
“Where?” Amelia asked.
“Somewhere. Anywhere,” Dick said. “I just gotta go.”
“A walk, you mean?” Amelia asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, a walk,” he said.
“Hang on. I’ll go with you,” I said.
He looked at me then and I saw the man in the chair.
“No,” he said. “I gotta go alone. I don’t want no one comin’ with me. I don’t want no one followin’ me neither.”
And he got up from his chair, walked out the door, and disappeared into the night.
Double Dick
THE MAN KILLED HIS SON. He was drunk an’ dropped him on his head an’ killed him. He killed his baby son. Then he tried to go home again an’ he couldn’t on accounta he couldn’t take it back. Ever. He couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t make nothin’ right on accounta that’s the biggest thing you can do is make someone die. He was a drunk like me. He was a street guy like me. It’s where he was supposed to be on accounta when you make someone go away you gotta go away yourself. You gotta go away yourself. I didn’t know where I was gonna go when I walked out the door but I knew I had to go. I had to go away. I walked. I walked a long time an’ I didn’t worry about nothin’, not my friends waitin’ for me back at the house, not the time, not nothin’ except the fact that my mickey went dry an’ I needed another. It was real late so I flagged down a cab an’ went on down to Fill ’er Up Phil’s. I got a pop from a corner store, poured it out on the street as I walked up to his door, knocked, an’ held it through the little slidin’ window when it opened and said, “Fill ’er up, Phil,” like we gotta.
“That you, Dick?” Phil’s voice asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”
“What the fuck are you doing down here?”
“Walkin’,” I said. “Thinkin’.”
“Jesus, man. You couldn’t get a bottle of Scotch or something?”
“Nah, I just run out. You was the first one I thought of.”
“Well, thanks. But for fuck sake, you don’t need my hooch. Let me give you a nice whisky I been saving.”
“Hey, okay. That’d be nice.”
“Anything for you, Dickey. Here.”
He handed the bottle through the window. “How much?” I asked.
“For you? Nothing. It’s on me. But do you think you could lend me something?”
“Sure.”
“Fifty?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
I shoved the money through the window.
“Thanks, Dick. You take care now, man,” Phil said.
“I will.”
After that I just walked more. I thought about the man in the movie an’ how he got where he got. He was a baseball player an’ then he dropped his son. I was never no baseball player. I wasn’t no nothin’. On accounta my dad was a half-breed we never had no land or nothin’. We just kinda lived on the land that no one else cared for an’ we put up the only kinda house we could from scraps offa the sawmill piles. Once the moose milk got goin’ we could afford other stuff but mostly we just lived in a shack. A shack. I remember walkin’ in there some winter days an’ it’d be real cold outside an’ steppin’ through the door was like bein’ burnt in the face on accounta we only had the one big fat stove in the middle an’ it was hot. There was seven of us. My mom an’ dad an’ five kids, an’ we all kinda slept together in the same big bed, us kids.
Tom Bruce kinda had the same life. His dad got work more on accounta he knew how to run a chainsaw real good but they still didn’t have much neither. When we walked around draggin’ that wagon or sled fulla moose milk we talked lots an’ we liked each other pretty good. We talked about lotsa things. About what we was gonna do when we got big, where we was gonna go, what kinda adventures we could have. That sorta talk. Tom Bruce was the only friend I had. Least until I met One For The Dead.
Tom Bruce always said, “Us guys always gonna have to hump. No other way.”
So humpin’ that wagon or sled around was like startin’ to make our dreams come true on accounta Tom Bruce said that’s how it was always gonna have to be. I believed him. I never seen nobody around there go nowheres. Me ’n Tom dug a hole in our hideout. We put a moose milk jar down there once we’d drunk it empty an’ we put coins in it.
“That’s yours,” he told me. “Next time we got an empty it’ll be mine and we’ll stash it in the ground side by each.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Tucumcary.”
“What?”
“Tucumcary,” he said again. “It’s a place.”
“What kinda place?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Just a place. Some place that’s not here. It sounds like a place I wanna go.”
“Tucumcary,” I said, an’ I liked the sound it made.
So we put them jars side by each in them holes an’ we stuck whatever coins come our way in them. We was gonna go to Tucumcary. Me ’n Tom Bruce. We was gonna save our money an’ hit the road together. After that, we talked about how we was gonna get there, what kinda girls we might find, what kinda work we might wanna try, an’ all sorts of stuff like that. We talked about it all the time when we was drinkin’ up in that little hideout. Tucumcary was where everythin’ was gonna be all right. Tucumcary was where there weren’t no more sawmills an’ shacks by the roadside. Tucumcary was where we was gonna lay up in the sunshine an’ drink pink drinks an’ listen to the wind blowin’ through the palm trees. Palm trees. I didn’t know what they were back then but I remember I liked how they sounded on accounta they sounded like they was holdin’ you all soft an’ gentle, rockin’ you kinda while you slept in their shade. Palm trees. Me ’n Tom Bruce was gonna go sleep under palm trees in Tucumcary. That was my dream.
It never happened, though. We kept on puttin’ them coins in those jars an’ haulin’
that moose milk up an’ down them roads, but Tucumcary never got no closer. We just got bigger an’ we drank more moose milk. Got to be we didn’t wanna do nothin’ but hide out an’ suck up that juice. No one said nothin’. Guess even my dad knew, but he didn’t wanna queer the deal he had on accounta the cops never once looked at a couple kids with a wagon or a sled, so he pretended like he didn’t know we was drinkin’. Or he flat out didn’t care. Long as we delivered, we was okay. Once we got too big to be playin’ with wagons we got to ride around on a tractor. Big old tractor they used to pull logs outta the bush to cut up for firewood an’ stuff. We’d put the moose milk in boxes under a pile of logs an’ deliver firewood an’ firewater at the same time. We was fourteen. Them mason jars was full by then an’ me, I kept switchin’ the dimes an’ nickels for quarters, half-dollar, an’ dollars. It was full up by the time Tom Bruce an’ me started gettin’ called out to do man’s work.
We didn’t do much. Mostly I drove, on accounta no one figured I could do nothin’ more, or else I chainsawed, an’ I got pretty good at that but I didn’t like it. But we was young an’ the mill guys wanted young insteada old an’ we got called out more than my dad an’ them. Meant we could go to county dances. We’d head on down there most weekend nights an’ stand around the outside talkin’, smokin’, and passin’ a crock back an’ forth with the other boys. Didn’t bother with no girls. Dances was for drinkin’ an’ cussin’ an’ tellin’ tales. Only the sissy boys danced with girls, or the older ones who was more lookin’ for that sorta thing. Me ’n Tom just settled in at the edges an’ watched.
That was my life. Haulin’ firewood an’ firewater all over the county, doin’ whatever man’s work come along we figured we could stand, an’ drinkin’. By then we was drinkin’ with the men, but we still liked goin’ to our hideout and talkin’ best. We never noticed once we started to get sick. First it was just a little pukin’. A few heaves in the mornin’. Then it got worse an’ we’d meet each other up at the hideout all washed-out lookin’ and shaky, really kinda needin’ what Tom Bruce called a “bracer.” Kinda brace us for whatever we had goin’ for the day. Them bracers always got us goin’ again. We was sixteen.
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