Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

“He told me I could lose weight,” Billy said, “by imagining bees pollinating soap bubbles.”

  “That sounds like him, all right.”

  “Maybe he meant I was supposed to do that instead of eating. Karly says he doesn’t bother her.”

  “He doesn’t bother me either,” Maura said. Except he’s a metaphor, she thought. He had arrived to make tangible the difference between her life with Mick and her life without him. Subtract Mick and she would wind up with some monster truck like Vex.

  The van arrived and took her into the weekend.

  DAYS 9 & 10:

  “He’ll live with me,” Jimmy always replied to the question his parents often raised, usually without quite saying it and sometimes without saying anything, one merely catching the other’s eye, a specific look of concern reserved for this topic:

  What would Pook do when they were no longer able to care for him?

  Or: What should Pook do with his life?

  Or: How would Pook get by in the world?

  Or: What to do about Pook?

  To Jimmy, Pook seemed uncomplicated, without pretense or artifice of any kind, but that didn’t mean he was predictable. He could surprise you. Boy, could he.

  One day early on in that same summer, following an angry tirade by Frederick Candler against Pook, Jimmy and Billy decided to resolve the problem by making a list that would explain Pook to other people, including the family. This was needed, they understood, because Jimmy’s father had gotten upset for the reason that Pook would not get on the roof and sweep the rain, meaning Frederick Candler had to do it. (Jimmy and Billy volunteered but no one wanted those two on the roof.) “You’re so goddamn stubborn,” Mr. Candler accused Pook. “And selfish.”

  The boys knew that Pook was not selfish (there was no arguing with stubborn), he simply did not do certain things, and while he would happily climb a ladder, he would not step off it onto another surface. To expect him to do so was like asking a cat to swim or a dog to walk on those metal grates they can see through. They made the list to define and explain Pook.

  1. Pook is enormous. This was not, strictly speaking, true. His actual height was six feet two inches, but he seemed much larger, partly because of the way he would stare and partly because of the quiet he kept. His hair was short—his mother ran a battery-powered clipper over his skull every Sunday morning—and he shaved himself daily with an electric razor. He had broad, muscular shoulders, and he was fierce when angered, and these things also increased his size. The source of his anger was not always evident, and he could rarely, afterward, explain what made him angry, but he was protective of his siblings and parents and Billy Atlas and all animals everywhere, and to Jimmy and Billy, he was enormous.

  2. Pook doesn’t like to talk much. He carried his silence with him the way another person might carry a briefcase—one with a lock and full of papers no one would ever see. Jimmy and Billy, at least, believed there were papers inside. Others, including Frederick Candler, seemed to think the briefcase was empty. Conversations with Pook were never long.

  “Is this your sock on the branch?”

  He nods.

  “Is it supposed to be there?”

  Nothing.

  “Do you want it there?”

  He nods.

  “Why do you want it there?”

  He says, “It fits.”

  Or he says, “If the wind moves it.”

  Or he says, “I thought daytime.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nothing.

  3. Pook stays on one level. He would not climb trees or dive into the cistern, but he would go up a ladder and stand on thetop rung, or he would lean over one of the canals and dip his face or some other part of his body into the water. But he would not step off the ladder and into the tree house, and he would not slide off into the cistern. The roof was out of the question.

  4. Pook makes sense in his own way. By which they meant he was consistent and logical within the terms of his own understanding of the world, but (unfortunately) those terms were not evident and were completely mysterious to others.

  5. Pook likes shaking things. This was an erroneous generalization. He enjoyed shaking martinis for his parents because he liked the way the jigger turned icy in his hands. He did not particularly care to shake other things, and both of the boys were dimly aware that they were not quite hitting this one on the head. Nonetheless, they left it in.

  6. Pook doesn’t like to have no clothes on. He took baths in his underwear. He slept in pajamas. He wore layers of clothing, even in the Tucson summer.

  7. Pook doesn’t do one thing after another. By which they meant that he had trouble with sequential tasks. He would willingly turn any of the horizontal steering wheels when directed to by a parent or sibling or Billy Atlas, but he could not, on his own, water first the distant green patch, then the trees, the garden, and so on. He used a push mower to trim the front patch of the Candlers’ lawn every week without being asked and whether it needed it or not, but he would not cut any of the other splotches of grass on the property, no matter the extent to which their father directed him or yelled. Jimmy believed that Pook would mow the other, scattered lawns if there was a mower for each different patch, but he never brought up this idea with his father for fear of inciting Pook-directed rage.

  8. Pook can’t digest with talk going on. He did not like conversation when he ate and he did not like visitors, except Billy, and when conversation at the dinner table reached a certain—never to others—identifiable point, he would take his plate and drink and flatware into his bedroom, where he would put the plate on his desk, which faced the wall, and eat in silence. (He never asked for seconds, and May Candler learned to overfill his plate.) Yet he would not begin a meal in his room. Even if guests were over, he would not start dinner at the desk. A plate of food set there would go uneaten and seemingly unnoticed. He had to begin at the table and then slink away.

  9. Pook likes doing the dishes. He washed the dishes every night with his siblings or alone, and he knew where to put every pot, pan, plate, cup, and utensil.

  10. Pook doesn’t like TV. He had no interest in television, including cartoons or shows that featured comic book characters. He liked comic books, but it was never clear whether he was reading the panels or just looking at the pictures. He would accompany others to the movies, but he never enjoyed them, sometimes openly moaning during them, sometimes falling asleep, and one time lying on the carpet between the rows of seats with his hands over his ears (Crocodile Dundee).

  11. Pook is not a picky eater but he is a picky drinker. He drank water and milk and nothing else, but he always cleaned his plate, even when Frederick Candler made the dreaded onion enchiladas.

  12. Pook is never sick. He never got the flu or colds, and when he had the typical childhood illnesses, he stayed in bed as his mother directed but didn’t seem to understand that a fever made him feel bad. He would just lie there.

  13. Pook walks in his sleep. This item on the list was inaccurate. Some nights, for reasons no one could determine, he would leave his bed and sleep on the porch or in the yard or in the station wagon. He was always awake when he went out the door.

  14. Pook sees himself and is surprised. Mirrors made him turn to look behind him, but after that requisite gesture, he might stare at himself or he might not.

  15. Pook only draws Pook when he draws people. Same Man was Pook and Pook was Same Man and everyone looked the same as Same Man.

  16. Pook doesn’t like noon. He would go inside no matter what they were doing at or near noon. Later that summer, Jimmy would figure out why, but at the time they created this list it was merely an unexplainable fact, like the existence of black holes or the nature of evil.

  17. Pook doesn’t like seats on bikes. Pook would permit no seat on his bicycle. Their father insistently put the seat on, and Pook insistent
ly took it off. The sight of the bare post would send Frederick Candler into a rage, and he fit the seat on with locking nuts, using a giant plumbing wrench to tighten it down. Discovering the seat once again on his bicycle, Pook would begin working it off. He never used tools, just waggled the seat back and forth until it loosened—a project that might take an hour. He approached the task calmly and never complained to his father about the seat’s recurrence. When Frederick Candler took the bike to an auto shop and had the seat welded on, Pook quit riding his bike altogether until Jimmy and Billy sneaked a hacksaw out of the garage and sawed off the post—a project that took most of a day. They rode their own bikes to the Safeway and tossed the seat into a dumpster. No one—not Pook and not Frederick Candler—ever said a word about it, although Mr. Candler must have known that it had not been Pook who sawed through the post. The battle of the bicycle seat came to an end.

  18. Pook is liked best of anyone by animals. The Dog preferred Pook above all others, and the cats, who would have nothing to do with the remainder of the family, ran to him and let him stroke them. Several times, Jimmy and Billy came across Pook in the shade of one of the ruined outbuildings watching the cats sleep. He would be on his haunches, like a catcher in a baseball game, watching.

  19. Pook knows something about shadows and colors. Some mornings Pook would stand or crouch on the porch and watch the sun grab hold of the yard in increments, coloring the pump handle and pump, the low wire fence around the garden, the tomatoes hanging on the spindly plants, the white of the concrete canals. The light progressed like a slow wave, washing the yard, sweeping away everything, even the house, flooded and looted by the light. And Pook liked to watch.

  20. Pook loves the people he knows and they love him. The summer sky in Arizona was the size of eternity, and within every cubic inch of that floating transparency—secured to each constituent of the Candler relations, bound to them and trailing them like the smoke of existence—was the enigma of Pook, in whom their sense of the world did not reside in any recognizable form.

  TYPE OF EVALUATION

  A three-day evaluation of abilities, needs, talents, and shortcomings. (See full description of the three-day evaluation in Addendum A.) Assessments that require a psychologist’s input and interpretation were administered by the evaluator under the tacit supervision of the supervisory psychologist. (See Addendum A for details of counselor-administered psychological assessment.)

  REASON FOR REFERRAL

  Client articulates as follows: “I want to see what’s possible that I could do at some point down the road, and the sh_t that no way can I do, now or ever.” In concert with the evaluator, the reason for the referral was refined as an examination of vocational and educational aptitude, as well as a measure of emotional and psychological predilections and readiness.

  CLIENT BACKGROUND

  Guillermo Mendez is a twenty-one-year-old male of Hispanic ethnicity. Both parents are living and are second-generation immigrants from Mexico. His father is employed as a foreign-car mechanic by Griffin’s Auto Repair Services in San Diego; his mother is employed as a cashier at Big O Tires in Imperial Beach. Client reports that his family life as a child was loving and busy. He has four younger siblings, all of whom live with the parents in National City, California.

  Client has a high school education (Sweetwater High School, National City) and is currently employed by the United States Army, holding the rank of private first class. His grades in high school, by his own admission, do not reflect his intelligence or aptitude. Client reports being a “lousy” and largely unmotivated student in high school: “I was pretty crapadaisical [sic] because I couldn’t see the point. Now I see the point. Jesus and Joseph, do I see the point.”

  Client reports no history of arrests or substance abuse.

  Client worked part time during high school at a number of businesses, including the following: Burger King, Von’s, Griffin’s Auto Repair Services, Subway, and Big O Tires. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during his senior year and began his service immediately upon graduating.

  Client has never been in therapy.

  EVALUATION METHODS

  Review of Medical and Employment Records

  Counselor Interviews

  Standardized Assessments

  ASSESSMENTS ADMINISTERED

  American Identities Artistic Aptitude (Full Inventory) Assessment

  American Identities Personality Inventory

  American Identities Spatial Aptitude and Reasoning Assessment

  American Identities Systemic Work Values Inventory

  American Identities Vocational Aptitude and Interest Assessment, Advanced

  California Psychological Inventory

  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2

  Novak Mental Status Examination, third edition

  Otis-Lennon School Ability Test

  Stennis-MacLean Anxiety Inventory

  Strong Interest Inventory

  Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, fourth edition

  Valpar Component Work Samples

  VCWS01 - Small Tools Mechanical

  VCWS02 - Size Discrimination

  VCWS04 - Upper Extremity Range of Motion

  VCWS10 - Tri-Level Measurement

  VCWS12 - Soldering and Inspection

  VCWS15 - Electrical Circuitry & Print Reading

  VCWS17 - Pre-Vocational Readiness Battery

  Valpar Whole Body Range of Motion

  (For a full description of each assessment, see Addendum B. For the client’s individual scores for each assessment, see Addendum C.)

  INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS

  In terms of Guillermo’s general physical mobility and strength, he . . .

  As far as Guillermo’s general intellectual skills go, he seems . . .

  Guillermo’s grooming and dress were . . .

  Results of the mental status assessment show . . .

  His interests and talents coincide with . . .

  The possible personality traits that might conceivably hold him back include . . .

  Guillermo stated his vocational goals as follows . . .

  In terms of Guillermo’s willingness and ability to resume life-threatening violence at the behest of his country’s major oil interests, he . . .

  CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

  Guillermo’s personal desire to discontinue active combat should be thoughtfully considered by the appropriate person or persons in charge. Even though there is nothing in Guillermo’s assessment that shows definitively that he is physically or psychologically incapable of continuing his duties as a soldier, the assessment is far from infallible, and the client’s own statement of preference should . . .

  An examination of the Social Introversion subscale of the MMPI-2 may not seem noteworthy unless one adds personal observation to the analysis. The term alienation or social alienation is frequently . . .

  It is within my purview to recommend a full psychological evaluation even though none of the assessments point in an obvious fashion to . . .

  How does one assess the ability to continue doing that which no one should be asked to do . . .

  Hell no, he won’t go . . .

  I have been asked to write—in the crippling language of this discipline—another man’s memoir, and end with a life or death recommendation. To do this, I need not only weeks of examination but something like an omniscient understanding of his psyche, and I would need the same all-knowing comprehension of the conditions of the war, and, for that matter, the reasons for the war. While I am accustomed to assuming this type of role, in terms of this client’s situation, I am feeling a tad uncertain or unreliable in this specific case, as if I have bitten off more than . . .

  Guillermo Mendez is a man of integrity. He approached each of the assessments honestly, even though he had a private agenda (which he did not reveal until the exit interview) that could hav
e been advanced by a dishonest approach. I must not cheat, Memo thought, despite the dire circumstances of my life. Even in the final interview, he did not reveal all of his thoughts, but you need to hear them before you decide to send him back to Iraq, and my measurements permit me to offer an articulation of those thoughts with a degree of precision that . . .

  Jesus, god, help me write this thing . . .

  DAY 11:

  Over the weekend Maura read a book Barnstone had given her about a man who went to Alaska, deep in the sticks, and died there, and she got into a long, unbelievably tedious conversation with another girl on the at-risk floor about ways to release bad energy from your body (the girl had scars up and down her arms), and she read a second book Barnstone had dropped off about biologists measuring the beaks of finches to prove the theory of evolution. It didn’t sound like a page-turner, but she got into it, finishing it at three Monday morning, reading with her lamp under the blankets because it was way after lights out. A few hours later, at the sheltered workshop, the assembly butterfly jammed, and Billy Atlas could not get it to run. Maura wanted to roll out a cafeteria table and take a nap. Her work scores were shit without sleep, and the broken assembly machine seemed like a wish come true.

  “You want it fixed?” Vex asked.

  “Don’t let him touch it,” Maura said.

  “Thanks for offering, Vex,” Billy said. “I appreciate your offer, but I need to make a call.” To everyone, he added, “You guys take a break.”

  Billy had trouble, as he often did, finding the right key on the facility key ring, and before he could open the door to the office, Vex had the machine running again.

  “Vex stuck his arm in the assembler machine,” Rhine said. “We’re not supposed to stick our arms in the assembler machine, Mr. Atlas, and Vex did.”

  “Mr. Billy Atlas,” Alonso said.

  “Just Billy, guys,” Billy said.

  “It’ll jam again,” Vex said, having already resumed his relentless box assembly.

  It did jam again, and this time it took Vex almost a minute to get it running. “Once I’m off the clock,” he said, “I’ll fix it permanent.”