The Book of Days

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Cal always wondered why neither of the two couples in The Honeymooners had children. Working late night at the butcher’s he finally understood. When meat has children, there is no comedy involved. When meat has children, it’s a tragedy.

  SEPT. 21

  1970: “Monday Night Football” begins airing on ABC-TV.

  Parker had wanted to sign up for junior league football this fall but Cal had been absolutely opposed. He supposed he had no right, now, to object, but he hoped Linda would keep him out of the sport.

  It was hypocritical, he knew, since he watched football on television nearly every weekend. More often than not he found it to be the most fascinating thing on the air.

  There was something almost dance-like in the game. Stylized movements emblematic of the give and take of everyday life. The taking of the ball right out of the air then running downfield with the prize. The broken-field run. The hand-off. The pass. The fumble. The sudden recovery. The on-side kick.

  But all that was from the observer’s point of view, and the comfort that came with distance, not having to be so intimately involved with the process that wore away at your life, exhausted you, and eventually defeated you. Up close, as a participant, it was an entirely different story. It was tedious, repetitious, seemingly pointless, and too forcibly organized.

  “Let’s see that one again,” the announcer said with a smile in his voice as they replayed some particularly interesting disaster. “Wow, look at that!” he cried, glorying in the witnessing, joyful at his momentary reprieve from participation.

  SEPT. 22

  1989: Irving Berlin, composer of such standards as “God Bless America,” dies at age 100.

  The old man leaned against the tree, humming. Every few seconds, he changed tunes. As Cal approached him, the sky changed color once, twice, three times. The trees and buildings altered their shapes as swiftly as the people altered their expressions, which was swiftly indeed. Cal wished his children could be here to witness how music affects the rhythm and evolution of the world.

  But by the time Cal reached him, the old man was dead. Silence filled the air like an ever-expanding bubble, until soon even Cal’s thoughts were motionless, and his dreams became still photographs, stared at until yellow.

  SEPT. 23

  1973: Chilean poet Pablo Neruda dies in Santiago.

  Whatever stories he might invent, discover, or otherwise collect during his time of exile, very few of them would have to do with his wife Linda. Love stories and poems were written to the lover of the imagination– once that lover was found, that particular kind of story or poem was unnecessary, and a lie. His mind fled in the rivers of her until he couldn’t sense her anymore apart from himself.

  There was nothing wrong with his relationship with Linda, although he knew there was something wrong with him, else he wouldn’t be here. She was the best thing in his life, the best thing there had ever been. Sometimes he tried to imagine a life with Linda without the kids, how uncomplicated it would be, and yet he could not, would not do without them. However puzzled, however desperate he might feel about them.

  So he would content himself with this one, brief tale of Linda: how she walked in that house he had abandoned to her, searching for some clue, some lost letter. How she left strands of her hair, mist of her breath, movements through dust and twilight, to fill the spaces he had abandoned at his hour of departure. How she left her eyes in the windows, her tongue by the phone, her ears in the tiny crawl spaces where secrets slept. How she wrapped her arms around their children to rock, and keep them, keep them.

  SEPT. 24

  1956: Grace Metalious publishes Peyton Place.

  “I hear it was a botched job, the only question being if Doctor Sparks had some hesitation, it being his child after all, and this girl being the preacher’s daughter and captain of the cheer leading squad, and best friend to his own daughter, who’s been getting quite a bit of counseling in the preacher’s office now that I think about it, quite a bit …”

  “I told you that stuff you put in his food wouldn’t do the trick. Now not only is he alive and kicking, but he says his manhood is restored and he’s after me every five minutes …”

  “So I told the good doctor to give me a hand up on the table and don’t you know he gave me two, and then something else …”

  “If you were to ask me a man his age has no business buying eight Brownie uniforms when he ain’t got no daughters. Of course nobody ever asks me …”

  “Hear the preacher’s counseling old Doctor Sparks these days. Hear the good doctor’s quite overworked …”

  SEPT. 25

  1493: Christopher Columbus begins his second voyage to America.

  1897: William Faulkner is born.

  The endless sea in the dark why the madman would do this again I could not begin an understanding but the children, oh, what brightness their faces when I talked of the land o’er there the land of kingdoms and land, yes land for them their sons and progeny forevermore that we might leave this mire of poverty and close quarters that shut down the mind and bind the heart if only the labor were not so long nor the sea so endless deep wide dark as the dragons’ mouths who wait o’er the edge for any luckless ship whose madman captain wanders too close to his dreams and is snatched down by their fiery tongues. Children, children, if I live to see you again what a tale of darkness and madness and the golden land beyond thrilling with savages will I have for you then!

  We left St. Louis for the children, for it were the children who would be living in a hellish city full to brim ten times over so that I and my wife Sally recognized the need to do something about it however dark and endless the plain that stretched between our intention and our dream for those children would not wither in the darkness of city smoke and depravity for our lack of courage to face an empty darkness however savage untutored its primitive inhabitants might be however dark my fear of what those demons might do to Sally and any good Christian woman like her as well.

  Cal would dream in the long dark night of someday sending for Linda and the children if they’d have him even in their anger, send for them and have them make the long flight through the night to this town where he himself had grown up in safety in recollection if not in naked truth with seemingly limited exposure to the harshness of contemporary America so that they too might make the long journey across the sea across the plains to a home of hope and simplicity where he would not have to stay awake nights without sleep agonizing over their lives their futures the contents of their dreams now that they were delivered into another America so much like the other one but so much better hidden from the rest of the land and yet it had lain here, dreamed of, all along.

  SEPT. 26

  1888: T.S. Eliot is born.

  This is the way the world ends …

  Cal stumbled out of the cabin in the middle of the night, throwing up onto the ground things he was sure he had not eaten, until he was empty. When finally he cleared his eyes and looked around him he saw that this night was empty as well– so dark he could not see the trees, or the split rail fence that bordered the property, or even the cabin itself.

  He began speaking to himself out loud, his own dried voice unrecognizable to him, unable to rise above a whisper, speaking for reasons he did not know, although he imagined it must be a kind of desperate prayer.

  “This is the dead land, the cactus land,” he said, and wanted to laugh at the silliness of such a statement, but could not.

  That first instant he had awakened, before the awareness of nausea had come he had been thinking he should check on the kids. “The eyes are not here, there are no eyes here,” he said aloud, and began to weep with eyes which were not there, because he could see nothing. He could not even see his children in memory, dream, or imagination.

  For hours he sat in this eyeless, empty dark plain, thinking of that final truth that lay like a bitter leaf in the bottom of his belly, unable to be removed however much he choked and heaved: how he no longer had
anything to give to his children, no solace, no hope, and how, indeed, they were better off without him.

  SEPT. 27

  1954: TV’s longest-running late-night talk show, “The Tonight Show,” debuts, with Steve Allen as host.

  “Our topic: Fathers Who Have Abandoned Their Children.” The host looks too young to have had children, to know anything more than how to move through an audience and elicit responses.

  “I wanted the kids, I really did, but women, they get what they want in the courts. If I’d stayed around, it would only have been worse for the kids.” The man sitting to Cal’s left on the stage looks sincere enough, but the audience obviously doesn’t believe a word of it. An elderly man stands up and calls the guest a coward and a deadbeat. As a special surprise the host brings out the fellow’s ex-wife and teenage daughter, who proceed to call him a liar. The crowd cheers.

  “Fathers want the best for their children,” said the small, weak-looking man to Cal’s right. “Even though they aren’t always up to the job.” The man blinked, waiting for some response from the crowd. There was none. He looked stupid. “They’re only human,” he offered, smiling. Someone in the audience laughed. The man said nothing more for the remainder of the show.

  “And Cal, how about you?” The young host leaned closer. “How do you live with yourself, having done the unforgivable?”

  “You don’t,” Cal said nervously, looking directly at the TV camera. “You don’t live with yourself at all. You live with your memories of your family so much you forget yourself, you don’t live in yourself. You live with them. As far as you’ve gone, you haven’t really abandoned them at all. They won’t let you go that easily.”

  The three fathers turned to each other and nodded.

  SEPT. 28

  1960: Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams hits a home run during his final major league time at bat.

  The old man tossed baseballs, sometimes hitting them, sometimes not, sighting down to the other end of the town park as if he were hitting fungoes to some imaginary fielder. He had a grass sack full of balls, hundreds of dollars worth of balls, but he seemed heedless of where they went, not bothering to retrieve them.

  Cal used to hit balls to Parker so he could work on his fielding. The boy wasn’t very good, but he had fun.

  Cal watched as the old man missed ball after ball, the bat swinging just under or just over the dropping ball, the old man’s efforts punctuated with a grunt each time he swung. At one point there was a period of at least ten minutes during which the fellow missed every ball. The balls littered the grass like giant popcorn, and the old man never stooped to pick one up, always going back to the sack for a clean, fresh ball.

  He was beginning to feel sorry for the guy when there was a sudden explosion of wood against cowhide, and the ball went sailing over the distant trees, continuing to rise until it seemed the clouds sucked it up and swallowed it. Seconds later the clouds darkened. Rain began to fall.

  The old man picked up the grass sack, turned, and saw Cal standing there. “It just takes one good one,” the man said, and walked away.

  SEPT. 29

  1978: Pope John Paul I dies just 34 days after assuming the papacy.

  Cal knew only one Catholic kid in school. His family traveled one hundred miles just to attend mass. The locals were all for religion, of course, but they didn’t think it ought to be overdone.

  “He’s sort of like everybody’s father, like God, but more like God’s messenger on Earth, I guess.” That was Johnny Baker’s explanation when Cal asked him what the Pope was. “So we’re supposed to look up to him like he’s our father. Only better. I don’t look up to my father– I hate him. But I like the Pope, I guess. I mean, he’s always giving blessings and stuff.”

  Johnny saying he hated his own father, who looked like a pretty decent sort to Cal, was as mysterious and scary as all this talk about a “Holy Father.” Lots of kids said they hated their fathers, and how lucky Cal was not to have one, and he always nodded like he understood what they were talking about, but he didn’t. “Does he do miracles? I don’t mean your dad. I mean the Pope.” Cal blushed furiously. As far as he was concerned, maybe some dads did do miracles.

  “I guess if he wanted to. He speaks to God and everything, so maybe God could tell him how to do miracles. But I don’t think he’s supposed to.”

  “Why does he wear that funny hat?”

  “That’s his Pope hat, stupid. Popes wear ’em. That’s just the way it is. My dad says that. ‘That’s just the way it is.’ And I guess that pretty much covers everything. I gotta go. See ya.”

  And Johnny just walked away, looking sad. Cal didn’t know if he had said something wrong or what– Johnny was always doing things like that, and looking sad.

  Later that day Cal discovered that one of Cora’s prize vases fit his head nicely. If Johnny had seen him he would probably think Cal was making fun of his religion, but he wasn’t.

  Cal played Pope most of the next week. Giving out blessings and forgiveness. Lots of forgiveness. He must have forgiven his father a dozen times or more. In his Pope hat he tried to bring his dead cat Missy back from her grave by the woodshed. In his Pope hat he tried to make his mother happy. In his Pope hat he tried to make all the other kids like him. In his Pope hat he tried to change his missing father into someone else.

  In his Pope hat he dreamed of what a good father he would someday be.

  SEPT. 30

  1924: Truman Capote is born.

  1949: The Berlin Airlift is officially halted.

  It was one of those tired, sad, end-of-September days, the leaves past their color and blackening underfoot. Cal’s mother had started going off with strange men– sometimes Cal and Cora did not see her for days.

  “Poor woman,” Cora would say as his mother drove off again. “Poor woman,” as if someone were forcing her. Then she’d look at Cal and say, “For some women bad men are like liquor. Can’t help themselves.” Men came to call on Cora– a black woman with property was a rare and attractive thing in those parts. But Cora would have none of it. “I have my Cal to keep me company,” she would say. “We’ve got our checkers and our Parcheesi, popcorn and apple cider in the kettle on the fire. Don’t feel no sorrow for us two!” Years later Cal heard there had been one love in Cora’s life: a black woman her age who had taught Sunday school. They’d seen each other two, three times a week, played Parcheesi and held hands. The woman’s sister had told a small group of select friends, who in turn had told their select friends. But the Sunday school teacher had gone crazy, started speaking in tongues one day, painted herself red and walked into the church proclaiming herself the “Black Lamb.” They sent her to the state place and she died within the year. Cora’s grieving had kept her hidden in the cabin until Cal and his mother had come to stay for good.

  But Cora fretted over the fact that young Cal had had no men in his life. “Young boys need their examples,” she said one day, and thereafter encouraged all manner of men to drop by and talk to Cal, in particular postal carriers, hay and coal deliverers, deputy sheriffs and others out in the course of their official duties. These possessors of manly knowledge were called upon to pass on any tidbits of male wisdom the often-bewildered guest might have. Some, like the deputy’s, seemed frivolously supplied and next-to-useless: “Don’t let your meat loaf” and “Remember to keep your powder dry.” Others, like the brush salesman on the road from Danville, had trouble coming up with anything at all until, forced and flustered, the man had finally said, “Before you meet the public, make sure your fly is done up nice and snug. That way you can meet them in the eye with confidence. That goes in business and romance, I’d say.”

  Cora even paid the local junk dealer twenty-five dollars to take Cal fishing. It had been a disaster. The worms kept slipping off his hook and the junk dealer drank so much he couldn’t drive. Cal had walked the ten miles home in the dark and Cora never got her twenty-five dollars back even though she threatened to sue.

>   Finally Cora decided that men from literature, men from the radio and movies and newspapers were her best bet for supplying Cal with fine examples of manhood. She read to him from King Arthur and Robin Hood, the works of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Mark Twain. These books were populated with men who did things with courage and a code of honor, who were responsible, and who cared deeply about at least one thing in their lives. Cora figured that was a fair definition of a “good” man.

  Then for some reason she started talking about the Berlin airlift, and how that was the one thing that had impressed her the most about that terrible world that lay outside the walls of the cabin. How those American and British pilots would fly in food and other provisions for all those German people they didn’t even know. Cora thought that was just the most wonderful thing. The most manly thing. And somehow it was a lot better than the books because it was real, it had happened during her lifetime, although to Cal the forties were as far away in his imagination as Camelot and the Sherwood Forest.

  “Them pilots, they loaded up their planes and flew through the pitch dark like it was nothing, then they just swooped down and fed all those people. Those strangers. They did it, and they did it over and over again. What a fine thing that was, Callie.” She made them sound like a cross between Jesus and Superman, but although even then the image almost made him laugh, Cal wanted to be those pilots, doing those unselfish, responsible things, providing food to the helpless and hungry just as any good father would.

  For his eighth birthday Cora gave Cal a large model of an airplane and hung it over his bed so that he could look up at it at night. She’d sent away for it mail order, then paid somebody to put it together right. Each night when Cal went to bed the plane loomed closer, the shadow of it descending as if to kiss him good night with its nose. Each night the pilot inside the tiny painted window waved and gave him a thumbs up sign. Then his secret father flew off into Cal’s dreams to feed the hungry, carry medicine to the ill, and set an example for every sleeping boy he passed over.