I must have been about halfway up when I realized that as much as the Stickum was keeping me on The Pole, it was making it extremely difficult to pull my limbs off and up once they were stuck. Just as I was starting to realize my exhaustion, my head hit a metal arm. It was at the peak of an up-pull, so my head hit hard. I had made the climb so much more difficult in my mind that I was only mentally halfway up when my skull cracked the crossbar. Blood dripped into my eye from what I knew must be a pretty big gash right at my hairline. You couldn’t see it from the ground, but there were little steel supports under each arm right at the point where they connected with The Pole, and my head had collided with a little steel burr on that support bar, causing it to sink straight into my scalp and rip it open. Steve McQueen sensed that something was very wrong and barked up at me. I looked down to shush him.
It wasn’t until I looked down that I realized that I hadn’t made the climb more difficult in my mind at all. It was difficult. It was high. It was far higher up than I had estimated from the ground. If I fell, I would die. I knew it. Steve McQueen smelled it. And the blood obscuring my vision was magnifying the probability of me falling. I wouldn’t allow myself access to any mature logic at all, and went instead with my abundance of youthful idiocy to calculate the risk-to-reward ratio of retrieving her 95s. I must’ve spent about four one-thousandths of a second on this estimation.
Yeah, she’s worth it.
Now, everything up to this point was nothing but an athletic endeavor. But what happened next was one of the most surreal, hyper-focused adrenal experiences of my life. Time, and every one of my senses, seemed to slow way down. The pain at my hairline was gone, my lungs no longer burned, and my blood droplets seemed to float to the ground, peppering the concrete all around Steve, who was still smiling up at me, his barking muted, flickering in time lapse.
I would get her shoes.
I’d climbed this mast a thousand times in my head, and knew exactly how I would navigate every millimeter. So, I set out across the steel arm for her shoes, fifty feet up, going backwards, hand over hand, hanging with only my arms, my legs dangling into nothing, until I was about four feet out. I swung back and forth until I could snake my legs around the horizontal bar right where it joined the vertical. I hung upside down, and felt the vertical with my foot. I managed to hook their intersection with my right foot, just as I had in my mind’s rehearsals, and slowly I inched myself to right-side up. Creeping all the way out across that steel arm, I touched my very first pair of 95s. I touched her 95s. They were double-looped around the end of the spar, so I had to fling them around twice until they were freely draped over the arm, one shoe on each side. Both sneakers were suspended in a perfect balance for a moment, defying gravity, until one shoe dragged the other higher and higher and it leapt over the arm, set free. They landed about five feet from Steve McQueen with a clunk, but Steve never took his hunting-dog eyes off me.
Once her shoes were free and I was out at the end near that big chrome ball, I realized that the top of the horizontal metal bar was coated in fine Texas clay dust. And, as a result, my adhesion was gone. The Stickum had picked up every molecule of debris. I could feel the boom swaying. I could feel myself rotate just a bit with every sway. I could feel my heart throbbing. I could hear the blood leaving through the hole in my scalp. I could see the Dairy Queen in the distance. I could see the Shakey’s Pizza. I could see FUN Stadium by The Hole. I saw my entire life as a child concentrated into one singularity. I reached in my underwear and I pulled out the hat—the hat that had fallen off that fat tub of shit’s head in the bathroom as he jammed his finger in my chest, the hat that I saw on the floor in a puddle of pee as I stared at the ground—the hat that I had tied a length of my mom’s thread to with a noose on the other end.
Carefully, I slid that noose over the chrome-plated ball that glittered in the moonlight. I cinched it tight. I watched it dangle. It was the first time I actually read what that hat said. Nothing Runs Like a Deere twirled in the breeze. I was about forty-five feet off the ground, and I remember thinking, Well some things probably do, but certainly not a fat fuck like Jonathan.
I was hugging that chrome beam with my arms and legs like a little tree monkey, but the chrome spar’s sway grew more and more severe, like a snap reverberation of my passion to survive. I could see my moonlit Weimaraner moving to and fro underneath me as I clung to that arm, but Steve McQueen sat perfectly still, staring up at his errant protégé. The motion was mine. The top of The Pole probably wasn’t moving any more than a foot in either direction, but when it would stop and snap back in the other direction, the acceleration was enough to make me slip and rotate on the steel arm. I clasped my hands together around the horizontal arm of The Pole and tried to cross my feet, but as gravity pulled me down and I rotated completely upside down, my feet came apart and I hung by my prayer-clasped hands, swinging by the sheer force of inertia from side to side.
Not a single fiber of my being doubted that I was going to die in the next thrust of that pole’s torque. I would die because I knew I would have to separate my hands on the horizontal in order to hand-walk back to the vertical pole. And I knew that if I did, my hands would no longer hold. In that moment, I wondered if Steve would stay by my body all night like those World War II army dogs. I wondered if she would think that I had stolen her shoes, and had just died trying to get them so I could brag about my thievery. I wanted her to know that I was trying to save her 95s. I wanted her to know that I saw her every day by the pool. I wanted her to know that every single time we crossed paths, she had embossed an indelible image on the back side of my eyelids. I wanted her to know that I thought about her more than I thought about race cars or fighter planes or sports. And that I thought about her through every piece of music I cherished. But really, in that moment there on The Pole, swaying out of control, I just wanted my mom and dad. I wanted them more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. I was embarrassed to end my life this way. I did not want to die an idiot’s death.
I threw my legs up to try and regrab the horizontal, but the debris that had collected on my body made my feet too slippery to hold. Slick from Stickum coated with dust, my hands were too slippery to unclasp in order to walk them hand over hand, and I knew in that instant that the Stickum that had assisted me in my ascent would now most certainly cause my death. I had to try to keep my knuckles squeezed together in prayer-lock in order to maintain my slowly faltering grip. But, in my failed attempt to swing my legs up, the sheer momentum of my kick had slid my clasped hands about an inch closer to that pole. What I thought was going to kill me might actually save my life.
It must have taken me fifty kicks to come within reaching distance of that pole of life, but when I got close enough, I flung my lower body around the vertical like a newborn to his mother. I got my legs wrapped around The Pole while my hands still kept me up, prayer-gripping that metal arm. I knew how slippery I was, and that as soon as I let go of the horizontal bar I would slide much too quickly straight to the ground no matter how hard I hugged. I knew it would hurt, but I also knew that I would not die. I looked out at the city in front of me, and this was the most reassuring sight that my memory provides to this day. It was the view that no one else has ever seen of my Dairy Queen, my Shakey’s, my stadium, my church, her house, and my life.
As soon as I let go of the horizontal arms, I slid down at what seemed like fifty miles per hour. I hit hard. A sprained ankle was of little notice to a boy who had just transcended fear and lived to know he would see his parents again. Steve licked my face, and all my senses came back into a much more recognizable acuity. Time accelerated. The crickets seemed to be chanting. The Pole’s shadow seemed to be dancing, and the 95s were the most brilliant shade of faded blue and red I’d ever seen. I looked up at The Pole and saw streaks of my blood from top to bottom, and all the way out smeared in blotches and drips across the right arm. I looked at the ground around Steve and me, and it looked like it had been sprinkling blood just like fat raind
rops before a Texas storm. I had no idea how I would explain my forehead to my mom and dad. But I was alive. I was alive, and I had her 95s.
I wore my Speed Racer baseball cap the very next day to hide that huge gash, and I put those 95s in her forest green mailbox on Sunday after sleeping with them clutched in my arms. Grabbing my bike from under the giant bean tree in my front yard, I rode right up to her curbside mailbox and stuck her 95s inside. I took my time, hoping she would see me as I retied her laces perfectly. And I rode away without looking back.
I wanted her to know it was me. I prayed for her to know it was me. All through school I never found out. But I did see her walk down that creek, barefoot again, with the 95s dangling around her neck. This time, she smiled at me, every time she smiled.
When my mother dropped me off for school on Monday, the whole lawn was filled with kids and teachers alike. Standing outside Mom’s smoke-filled car, I looked up at what everyone knew was Jonathan’s most prized possession. It had never before left his head in public till that day in the bathroom, and it was now flapping in the wind sixty-five feet up, out of his reach, with a big red LIAR written across the white bill. Everyone stared at his hat, knowing he had no way of getting it back. Jonathan never said another word to me about those 95s.
“Who put the baseball cap up on the flagpole? WHO PAINTED MY FLAGPOLE RED? Lest you forget, this is my school, and heads shall roll, you buncha ingrates, unless someone steps forth!” Mr. Totter’s voice rasped over the intercom. All Jonathan’s buddies at his lunch table that day knew it was me, but even as rumors spread, I never said a word. Not even to Firefly. When the rumormongering finally rippled the truth to the principal’s office, Mr. Totter called my parents to school for a conference. When Mr. Totter asked if I was involved, I lied. I looked my mom and dad right in the eye and I lied. This is the first they will read of that lie.
I’m sorry.
* * *
My Mamau and Grandaddy arrived a little late at our house that same night after the Totter conference. Smelling like a real man in his Pinaud gentleman’s powder, my Grandaddy was groomed to the nines, his brown shirt pressed and tucked in his brown polyester trousers. His whole life, he’d never wear a T-shirt except under a proper shirt, because he said it was like wearing your underwear on the outside. Mamau was all gussied up in gold as usual with good gold jewelry and a gold hair thingy securing her mass of freshly dyed brownish golden maroonish hair, humming “My Sweet Lord.” I never saw my Mamau without makeup. She always looked perfect for my Grandaddy. He called her his unicorn. They were with us most weekends and often after school if I had practice. My Mamau set to making her fried chicken everybody loved while Mom, Dad, and my sister were arguing. My Grandaddy called me out onto the porch, same as always.
“Seedlin’, get the hell out here!”
My ankle was aching and swollen, and I tried not to limp. I ran outside and sat right next to him in the lawn chair that his best friend James usually occupied. He took a moment before he spoke, glancing at the Speed Racer baseball cap glued on my head. He eyeballed my leg, then kept staring out at the horizon. No one conveyed more information with fewer words than my Grandaddy. Nobody.
“Your daddy told me about that flagpole.” I just looked at him. He kept gazing out at the horizon. “You know, your daddy rolled a fifteen-foot Civil War cannon out and left it in the main intersection when he was a boy, your age, and I asked him the same goddamn question I’m ’bout to ask you. I reckon you got the same goddamn answer.” My Grandaddy never once asked me if I had done it, but instead said, “I can think of some good reasons to climb it, and some bad reasons to climb it. Which one did you have, son?”
As I stared at him watching out over the land, I took a very careful moment to decide exactly what I’d tell him.
“A good one,” I said.
My Grandaddy turned to me and looked clear into my soul, then slowly he nodded his head up and down before going right back out to the horizon. He took one of his trademarked gargantuan inhales of air, held it, and let a tiny little grin escape.
“Go get your Grandaddy a wing.”
“Charlie?! Where’s Charlie?!” My Mamau came yelling, clutching her giant breasts draped in her gauzy gold dress as she stuck her head out onto the porch. She called his name in a panic the same way she always yelled out for him when she lost sight of him for more than five minutes. “Oh, that man gon’ give me a heart attack one’a these days. Charlie, here ya go.” She handed him a plate with two small bits of chicken and retreated to the kitchen, where my sister was still screaming at my dad.
“And, Seedlin’, give your Mamau back that saucer.”
I’d brought my Mamau that same plate back many times, and I asked my Grandaddy about those two bits, and why he never ate one. He told me that those two pieces were called the Bull-Yawn. He said it was the absolute best part of the bird, and that if you could measure the “delicious” in a fried chicken, 90 percent of it would be in those two tiny pieces. I loved the imagery of that term: A vicious bull, violently pulling at the ground with its front legs, suddenly so tranquilized by something that it just gives in, relaxes, and yawns. I asked him why my Mamau got them every time, and why he never wanted one for himself. He just looked out at the horizon for a moment like he was trying to find something, something that had been there for years and suddenly vanished. And whenever he would do this, I knew that as soon as his lips were to start moving, another piece of life would slip out. Some of the absolute best things I know came from that porch. Then he began, and he said, “You know, son, it’s always better to live without good stuff than it is to live without someone you wanna give all your good stuff to.”
I wanted to bottle every single thing he taught me on that porch.
“You gotta deserve ’em to taste ’em,” he said. “Your Mamau deserve ’em, now go get your Grandaddy that wing.”
Chapter Two
Jane came into my life headfirst in the early 1970s when I was eight years old. I was staring into my bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, listening to my new 45 of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” when I heard a repetition of small, passion-filled breaths. My eyes followed the sound through the sliding glass window, across our backyard, up the fence, and collided intermittently with what I can only describe as the perfect embodiment of everything that I find wonderful about this life. Even doing my timed laps around the block on my Sting-Ray every morning, I had never noticed anyone moving into the house out back behind us, much less that they had a trampoline, or a lot much less that Jane would bounce on it. My hatred of gravity was punctuated by the fact that it would only allow me short glimpses of Jane’s face before calling her back down, never failing to notify her long black-brown hair last so it hovered in the air just that much longer, like an echo, before it fluttered below the slats of the brown wooden fence. From that moment on, Jane would be the catalyst for all my ideas, secrets and dreams, never allowing my passions a moment’s rest.
The next day, although she was completely unaware of it, Jane became the star of my very first short film. I documented her rhythmic bouncing on an old windup Bolex movie camera that my Grandaddy had confiscated off a criminal and given me—one five-minute shot of the top of my fence with Jane’s head appearing at regular intervals. I crawled, completely hidden in the bushes, slowly pulling branches out of the way of the lens.
I kept the film in an old Charles Chips container in my closet along with all my other prized possessions. Either projected on my bedroom wall or out my back window, Jane bounced all through my youth to “The Sounds of Silence.”
I don’t know how he always knew, but he just did. “Seedlin’, get the hell out here.” So, out I’d go, straight to the front porch, where my Grandaddy was perched in his lawn chair next to his friend James as always. James was a second Grandaddy of mine, a black man who was born on the bayou about fifty yards down from my Grandaddy and exactly four months after him. They had been best friends and sheriffs together for
more than half a century. My Grandaddy looked at me. “What you filmin’ back there?”
“Oh, uh nothin’ really.”
“Well, thing ain’t got no zoom-up lens on it, so you want that ‘nothing’ to be in focus, you gonna have to get closer, hear me? A lot closer.” James shifted his big butt in that rickety lawn chair the same way he always did before he spoke.
“Ya Grandaddy know.”
* * *
That boy was filming me today so I jumped higher.
And pretended I didn’t notice him.
Fed Donovan, and then he layed there and watched me paint in the garage. A lot of purple and orange.
* * *
If I couldn’t see Jane jumping when I looked out my bedroom window, she was in her garage painting. I knew. Always. And I always went. Jane must’ve just come from the shower, her wet hair hung tousled and wavy around her face and jumbled down over her olive-tan shoulders to her waist. Watching her through the bushes as she painted, my heart swelled listening to her. She had a beautifully unconscious rendition of “Song Sung Blue” by Neil Diamond. She’d sing a bit and then break off mid-lyric as she considered a brushstroke or choice of color. On her head she wore big padded black phones whose spiral plug connected her to the old turntable on the concrete floor. She was restricted, and when she’d reach for the darker colors at the far end of her paint palette, the headphones would come unplugged. She would escape for those colors. She would escape the tether of her headphones—even escape music for those colors—whereas I would have escaped colors for music. She’d swirl fresh globs of deepest cobalt blue oil paint into solar yellow. The isolated beauty of each slowly became a rich rainforest green. At times the purple hippie fringe along her sleeve would drag through the paints accidentally, so, unperturbed by the fact of indelibly stained clothing, she’d deliberately drag the leather tassels across her canvas, striping it with all colors.
Jane Two Page 2