Speech Impediment: II of III

Walking down the corridor, I get the feeling I could be anywhere—at least anywhere American. This is one of a million such stretches. The wall art is dated and vaguely Southwestern. Turquoise, sage, and terra cotta. It’s hard to imagine the prints ever looking good, even when new. The signatures are anonymous scribbles forged by a printer.

Traffic picks up on the east wing. I suppress my pedestrian road rage equivalent behind two hunchbacked and shuffling guests. Room 185 has been converted into a makeshift dining room. A wall dividing 185 from either 187 or 188 has a passageway cut out of it, opening onto an area where the chef/waitress/janitor is stationed. The kitchen appliances consist of a microwave, toaster, and two industrial-sized coffee urns. A spread of Danish glisten in fatty dullness on a counter. Waxy apples lie in wait. Trashcans already overflow. A TV mounted in the corner is showing a local newscast. The set is outdated and the screen skews colors to blue. Half of the patrons are more decrepit than I am, which is simultaneously relieving and unnerving. People are speaking more loudly than they realize. Over the ambient din, the employee announces “Sausage!” A wave of nausea passes over me at the thought.

A plain packet of instant oatmeal with a grinning Quaker greets me as I riffle through a bin labeled ‘Hot Ceareal.’ Perfect. A steaming pot of clearish water rests on a burner. I swirl some of it into my bowl. A drop splatters and singes the fleshy part of my hand. I wipe it on my pants leg. The pain subsides. I snag a cup of coffee and a napkin/spoon combo pack. The coffee smells like nothing but extreme heat. I walk with caution.

A two-top is open in the corner and I make a gingerly beeline for it. I settle down and unwrap what turns out to be a spork.

The conference goers in the room are easy to spot by their nametags. Nametags make me sad. The handwriting is rarely precise and often calls the wearer’s competence into question. Letters are bunched, slanted, or squiggled. There’s no quicker way to make an adult seem like a child than asking him to write his name on a sticker and apply it to his chest.

The coffee is in fact molten. After many a cooling breath, I discover it may well have been filtered through a comforter. It tastes synthetic, but it’ll due. Desperate times.

“Taken?”

A heavy-set man in his mid-to-late twenties is already pulling out the vacant seat across from me. With the body control of a server, he palms his stacked-high plate. He’s wearing a black T-shirt under a black untucked Oxford.

“It’s all yours.” I rub my reddening hand.

His name is written in indecipherably light pencil. The tag may be blank. He heeded the sausage announcement. He’s ringless. We eat in relative silence for a while except for the chalky noise of his cutting on styrofoam. I am more alert after my second cup of coffee. I notice the brown liquid on his plate isn’t sausage related. It’s syrup. I prod my oatmeal with my spork.

He begins. “So uh, what brings you here?”

“A gig. You?”

He cocks his head and furrows his brow like a dog to a new sound. “Gig? Like stand up?”

“No not quite. I’m giving a speech.”

“Why’d you call it a gig?”

“It’s just what we call them in the business.”

“Oh.” The disappointment is palpable.

“It’s a lot like stand-up, actually.”

He hums through his forkful of meat. He asks, “You talking today?” between chews.

“Yeah at 11. Will you be there?”

“I sorta have to be.” He discovered the actual plastic spoons and uses his on a bowl of Fruity Floats.

“Yeah.” I pause. “But at least you have the day off.”

He frowns momentarily, squishing the lump in his cheek. “Sure. I’m not complaining or anything. I mean I’ll take any chance I can get to get away from the office.”

“You look a little wet behind the ears to be burnt out.”

I’ve caught him with his mouth full, so he angles his head back and speaks around his food. “You ever work a 9 to 5 job? It doesn’t take long. Two, three months tops.”

Watching him does nothing for my appetite. “Decades ago, yes. I was a guidance counselor in another life.”

Conversation trails off. He slurps the sweet dregs of cereal. He consumes the entire contents of his cup in two gulps. Is he in a hurry? He’s drawn to the commotion surrounding the microwave. He leaves to get something more to eat or drink. I take my first tentative bite. The oatmeal tastes like a moist paper towel. I bury the spork in the mound and leave it there.

The ladies one table over discuss the pros and cons of wool clothing, taking turns to make a statement and reply with enthusiastic affirmation. A peel of laughter erupts from a man with a horseshoe of salt-and-pepper hair. The employee appears despondent. The buzzers of coffee pots and microwaves erupt more often than a single person can manage.

The wallpaper features small bouquets of cornflowers repeating on diagonal axes atop a taupe background. A chair rail of dark wood skirts the room and a border of vintage mechanized farm implements trims the top of the walls. Most of this country is country.

He approaches our table with a cup in each hand a slice of toast in his teeth. Maybe it’s the challenge of free food that drives him. He places his toast in the puddle of greasy syrup on his plate and sits. “So do you say the same stuff everywhere you go or what?”

“Not exactly. The professionals have five to seven canned acts. I don’t have any fixed speeches. It varies.” His eyes are on me but are not focused. He blinks. Perhaps he wants more. “My material—what I say—is mostly in a notebook I keep with me. I basically write my thoughts down in script form, complete with stage directions. It calms my nerves to have it memorized." He's wiping his fingers on a napkin. "I mix all the little snippets together based on what the situation calls for from talking with whoever books me and anybody I talk to from the company beforehand.”

He retrieves a packet of Squeeze-able! grape jelly from his hip pocket and squirts it onto his bread. The deep violet jelly coils haphazardly. He eats it in a fashion reminiscent of corn on the cob: side-to-side. “Is that good?” I ask, not really interested in the answer.

“Eh.”

He leans back in his chair and nurses his apple juice. “What do you say? Like in a nutshell?”

“That’ll ruin the surprise. If I tell you now, you’ll just tune out later.”

“Well, what’s the gist then at least?”

“I don’t have a schtick, really. I think of myself as a realist. No gimmicks.”

“But others have gimmicks?”

“Sure. Most of us have marketing or advertising backgrounds. You’ve got your if-I-can-do-it-you-can-do-it guys, your life-is-too-short guys, your all-you-need-is love guys. You know.”

Two boys yell at each other and come to blows over the last cheese Danish. The mom yells louder than them both. The loser gets a final kidney shot in.

I try to alter the course of where we’re headed. “You’ve been here since yesterday, right?”

“Yeah we had to get here by like noon yesterday.”

“What else have you been doing?”

“Games and stuff. Dinner. The vice president gave a little talk, commencement type thing.”

“What do you think of the VP? You can tell a lot about a company from the people up top.”

His eyes wander again. When they return to me, it’s as though the last five minutes never happened. Burnt toast or bagel diffuses through the air. “How’s a guy become a motivational speaker?”

I cannot determine the level of genuine interest behind his queries. I want to believe he’s only curious. “D’you have a minute?”

He consults his cell phone. “I’ve got a couple hundred.”

“Mm.” I pause and drink from my cup to gather my thoughts. “I haven’t told this story in a while.” Memories tumble out of their pen like bouncy balls. The pictures are foggy and dim from disuse. “Uh... I wasn’t very happy where I was at—the school. The kids rarely listened to anybody over the age of 20. At 27, I was out of the question. The pay was pretty terrible too and my wife and I had a newborn. So, I looked around to see what else I was qualified for. Turns out anyone can be a speaker.” The TV’s volume increases to a distractingly loud level. I lean in to compensate. “The pay was better and had real prospects of improving even more. I could travel and I could help more people or so I thought. Adults are supposed to be able to listen, right?” I sip. “My wife—Debbie, her name’s Debbie—was supportive, at least to me, so I contacted an agency. There were a few of them popping up in Kansas City, which was nearby where we were living at the time—it’s centrally located—and the nation as a whole was much more open to psychotherapy and touchy-feely stuff, so yeah, I more or less signed up. They sent me a few canned lessons and told me whenever I was ready I could do my own. It was extremely liberal, the agency—very hands off so long as you didn’t get negative reviews. It’s a lot like sales—all about your numbers. So yeah I was on a plane in a couple weeks.” I recall that first flight, Debbie’s haggard face, Will screaming in her arms. The plane was peaceful, a deserted redeye to Omaha. “It was unfair to Debbie of course, but she never protested.”

“Do you like it?” He stacks one of the empty cups into the other and begins work on the third.

“Parts of it, yes. I’ve been at it for a long time and have as long of a leash as you can get. I can turn down a gig if I want. Our savings are healthy enough. I’ve missed out on a lot back home, of course, but I’ve seen a lot, too. I get to meet all sorts of people—like yourself—and I like that. Keeps me young. I get a fair amount of positive feedback and most nights when I’m unwinding I feel I’ve given three or four people something to chew on, something that might stick with them and help them get by. That’s a unique opportunity as far as jobs go.” I sip again more to break up the monologue than anything. “But I’m on the road a majority of my time and I don’t really know anybody to be frank. It’s a lonely profession. I’m kind of like an itinerant preacher.” I clear my throat. “It is what it is.”

His posture suggests he’s bored. He’s reclining as much as possible. “I don’t know you but you don’t look too happy to me.”

I’m stunned by the abruptness of his observation. Either he is preternaturally observant or I look even worse than I feel this morning. I consider taking offense but think better of it. “I’m not too happy.”

“How can you make people happier if you aren’t yourself?”

“My job’s not to make people happy, it’s to motivate them.”

“I would’ve thought happy people were motivated.”

“Not usually, no. Happiness is static, stationary. You wallow in it. Soak it up. Motivation is active though. It’s forward movement and most everything else is backwards. Most of my crowds are slipping when they take their seats if you know what I mean. My job is to give them a push.”

“Hm.”

“Happy or not, I can do that.”

We both drink ponderously. “Eggs!” rings out and chair legs squeal against the asbestos tile. The place is a lot less full. An unknown saint turned the TV back down. My oatmeal is clammy. I push the bowl away. I have some saltines in my bag.

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Your job. I mean, the life.”

“It depends on the week. We’re scheduled on one week and off the next. In on weeks, you make a swing through a section of the country, landing someplace bright and early Monday, renting a car, driving stop to stop through the hinterland, and you end up Friday morning about 600 or 800 miles away from where you started.” I rub my temples. “Then you’re supposed to go home.”

“You only work like half the year?”

“If you’re doing a terrible job, yes. If you want to pay your mortgage or alimony…” I laugh; he doesn’t. “Well, you’re on the road more than that anyway. All the money is in the extras. Make a good impression, hand out some cards, and you can schedule talks on your off weeks. The agencies let you keep a higher percentage of the fees.”

“I couldn’t do it. I don’t like travelling. You waste so much time waiting in lines or with flight delays or security or whatever.” He pauses, visibly reflecting. “God, you must’ve spent like 10 years in airports.”

“That’s probably true. Travel isn’t so romantic when it’s the rule not the exception.”

“Why are you still doing it?”

There’s a confrontational tone behind his words I used to hear a long time ago. “You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”

“You’re the closest I’ve come to meeting a rock star.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He grins. It is impossible to read him. “I’m still doing it because I’m comfortable doing it. When you get to be my age, comfort counts for a whole lot.”

“Oh.” He consolidates his trash, stuffing his utensils and napkin into the fourth and final cup of his column.

 “What about you? What brings you here? You look younger than everybody else.”

He crosses his arms and stares at what he’s made. “I am. I started in June.”

“What do you do?”

“My title’s computer support specialist. The IT department’s just me and this other guy. I basically reset people’s passwords and unjam printers all day.”

“Do you like it?”

“What do you think?” He’s tearing off thumb-sized edges of his plate to give it a buzz-saw quality. “It’s not exactly what I got a degree for.”

“Be patient. You’ve got a lot of career to go.”

“I know. That’s what scares me.”

“At least you have a job. That’s not a given anymore you know.”

“Yeah.”

I feel impotent. He does not want to be encouraged. His eyes are on me and I avert mine. The employee is frantically wiping down her area. A Leaning Tower of Pisa fashioned out of refuse will tip at any moment. A little boy asks his dad to add his plate to the top of the pile. The dad obliges.

We return to silence. The novelty has worn off. I am uneasy in at least two ways. My abdomen is audible now that the ambient noise has diminished. I cannot bare this any longer. “Well, I best be going. I need to figure out where I’m supposed to be and all that.” I pull my bowl and cup toward me. “It was good talking with you.”

He seems caught off guard. “Oh all right. See you later then.”

“I’ll be looking for you in the front row,” I say full of mirth. He glances at me but does not otherwise respond.

I stand and walk to the far corner with the less swollen trashcan. I flip my oatmeal onto the top of the trash. I push down and the contents crumple and spring back slowly. I thank the employee as I pass. She nods and says, “Mmhm,” while unplugging the urns. Checking the corner table, I see the young man watching the news. Exiting, I sidestep a grizzly man with biker garb who smells like the area around a gas pump. My elbow grazes his leather vest and I am more frightened than I should be. The grizzly does nothing.

I check my watch as I walk down the hall. Roughly two hours to go.

Time Off

A finch squeezes a sunflower seed with its beak. The black shell cracks open and a dark, scaly tongue pushes the kernel. The shell splits and falls away. The bird’s eyes are glassy black and gazing off into the trees. It seems to be chewing absentmindedly. Its movements are jittery. It punches its head into the feeder’s hole and spherical tan seeds spill to the ground below like a welder's sparks. It extracts another sunflower seed and deftly sets about splitting it, too. The claws are thin and knobby, yet they suffice for balancing. Its head cocks robotically. Spooked, it darts away in a smear of yellow. A blue jay swoops in and lands weightily on the perch. The jay pecks frenziedly and wastes a great deal of feed. I squint up at the sky through the stationary tree branches overhead. It is cloudless.

We’ve been lounging on the porch since three. My best guess says it's as early as four or as late as five. My drink is sweating but I am not. An amorphously shaped puddle accumulates around it on the crackled glass tabletop. I heard from a fellow guest the high should be 73° today.

“Something on your mind?” She’s looking up from her magazine, which is now tilted in her lap. The lighting is such that I can see one eye tinted behind a sunglasses lens and the other is opaquely hidden.

Yes. Where did that finch go? “No. Nothing.”

She angles the borrowed magazine back to a reading position. Her legs are crossed at the ankle atop a wicker ottoman with a maroon cushion. The tops of her bare feet glow in the early autumn light as if lit from within. Her toenails glisten red with chipped edges. Little white nets of dried skin frost the side of her big toe.

The blue jay has taken flight, too. The feeder sways gently from its departure.

Faintly on the air is the sound of children. One of them is either excited or upset. Genders can’t be established from the pitch, so they must be little. A family lives up the street judging from the toys strewn about the front lawn. They don’t fret about theft. These people are openly vulnerable. Who would do such a thing? We remarked on the oddity as we passed the house I'm imagining on an earlier stroll. She said she wished we could do such a thing back. I said we'd have to procure a tricycle first. Perhaps that one would do. We shared a brief laugh.

I rub the outside of my ear by the canal opening. The surface feels oily. I can afford to take another bath tonight. I will submerge into the captured warmth and melt. I will leave my nose exposed, pinch my ears shut, and hear the stethoscopic sounds of respiration. The pads of my fingers will become wrinkled like they would during long gone bath times. To finish, I will feel the eerie heft of my body return as the water recedes down the drain. The air is always has a foreign chill to it after exiting the tub.

Watchless, I pat my pocket in search of my phone. There’s nothing to retrieve. I remember my phone is dead on the walnut chifforobe in our room. How am I to know when to get moving? Hunger or boredom will have to lead the charge. So be it. We have no reservations. We are going to try the seafood place tonight. She will order a shrimp dish. We will dress up and walk holding hands. It’s not too far.

This town is not so much sleepy as it is antique. Design is neither showy nor neglected. Ornamentation does not announce itself loud colors but patiently awaits its audience. Lights do not flash at night; the iron street lamps shine steadily. Billboards do not obstruct; sandwich boards splay below eye level. The architecture whispers. The constitutive buildings of the square are mostly made of now-weathered brick. They present assertively. They will stand tomorrow, monumental and undiminished. They are like a grandfather to a toddler to passersby, tall but not imposing. Corbels coil like fiddleheads underneath ledges trimmed with repeating patterns. Each storefront abuts the next with its own tone and texture, unity out of diversity. Skinny plate glass windows reveal high ceilings edged with molding and lined with tin. Doors are topped with frosted transoms. The palate of the surrounding houses contains unabashed pastels. Wood shingles armor the roofs. The sidewalks are rumpled by the girth of sweet gum and sugar maple roots. The lawns are supple and edged to perpendicular perfection. Weeds are not allowed.

Everything gives the impression of wholesomeness here. People are more courteous. The church bells keep time. The drug store serves ice cream by the scoop. Take your seat on a chromed bar stool. It’s a tourist attraction, but I don’t mind. Locals patronize it, too. I imagine semi-annual parades down Main Street with lazily flapping American flags. How can you be nostalgic for an era you never knew?

The children have departed or found muted activities. We are alone once more. I shift my weight. This is nice, not doing anything. I feel empty but am fully here. It is so quiet now I can hear the ginger ale fizzing as I pour more over the ice. The translucent cluster rises and bobs near the surface. The carbonation makes an ephemeral fountain above the rim. I haven’t had ginger ale in ages. It was complimentary. The innkeepers know what they’re doing.

The thought of this, our vacation, ending makes me complexly sad. A fluttering heart and a dingy lifeless inner hue are where the sentiment starts. It stops in paralysis. Checkout time is a looming storm over the lake. There is no stopping it. I long for times like these and can never maintain them as I wish. Even memories will be forgotten. We have one more full day, though. Don’t ruin what's left. Do not think about work. Stop thinking altogether.

The spice tickles my nose, and I try to suppress a cough unsuccessfully.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

The soda gently sloshes in the glass as I set it down with a soft clank. I look at her. She is staring serenely into the magazine. The stillness is photographic. What is on her mind? She never seems as bothered as me, even as I am in these moments. She is simpler.

I wipe my fingers on my pants and leave a damp trail of three fat, merging lines. A turning page is all that interrupts the breezeless afternoon. The ginger’s heat lingers in my mouth.

My book lies split open on the table out of the spreading puddle’s range. I am not halfway to halfway. It is a lost cause. A lone and spartan black ant is wandering futilely nearby the novel. Its antennae twitch in syncopation. There’s nothing of interest for it there, no crumb to cart away. How will it get back down? Maybe a bird will snatch it.

Something small and hard under my shoe scrapes the ground as I readjust. The patio is made of irregular white stone peppered with dirt or maybe mold. Emerald tufts of stubbly moss frame a few pieces. Everything is newer back home but not nicer. Everything here is used but no worse for the wear. Age is not to be feared. Preservation is a virtue. These people are investors who don't seek profit. They are a part of their town. They repair instead of replace. 

I slouch, clasp my hands on my stomach, and close my eyes. I should be reading, but I can’t bring myself to try. I’d rather idle. I planned on finishing two books. That would be something to convey, a clear answer to post-trip inquiries. I know I should be taking full advantage of my temporary freedom. This was what I had been anticipating for months. It’s what we worked for, scrimping four hours off for every eighty worked, and it’s almost over. What have I done? I have not done enough. My inactivity is shameful. Wasting time feels felonious. I am a time killer. I plead guilty. Lock me up.

A part of me is uncomfortable with happiness. This part comes into stark relief before the backdrop of time off. There is no earning happiness, no taming it. It just comes and goes on its own. I would rather strive. You can always strive. Striving is practical, actionable.

Why am I classifying this as a waste? The rules do not apply here. We are beyond all jurisdictions. We are unknown and unknowing. We have immunity. It is permissible to rest.

We are different now, children again. Alarms go unset. We walk without clear destinations. There are no dishes to clean and bath towels are left wadded on the floor. Meals are the only requisite items on the list of things to do. We drift, floating on our backs to nowhere in particular. We are disconnected. There are no headlines to process. E-mails are left unread and accruing in neglected inboxes. I cannot remember being so uninformed and out of touch. We are out of touch, though. So much of our relationships have no tactile element. At home, physical distance has been traded for digital proximity. These people shake hands, hold doors, and slap shoulders. I'd rather be one of them, incorporated.

Like a child, I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and now forever.

I warn myself against listening to the Sirens. This place is unreal. It is not your home. Your home is with her. This trip is make-believe. There is more to accomplish than leisure and loafing. We must toil. The lived truth of here is buried a foot deep in snow. The smiling citizens with their cable-knit sweaters, topsiders, and half-moon reading glasses must fight the long cold season. The freeze and thaw cycle, the road salt, and the tire chains disintegrate this place annually. Transience is inescapable. Remember the grass does not stay greener. My back aches at the thought of hefting a shovel.

“Hey, I’m gonna go get ready for dinner, okay?” She closes her magazine and puts her feet down.

“Yeah okay. I’ll be in in a minute.”

She rises from her seat and smooths the wrinkles in her shirt. As she passes, she strokes my shoulder. I follow her with my eyes. A ballpoint pen poked through her hair keeps her bun together. The spiral of brunette arcs is galactic. As she walks away, I notice her neck. Her vertebrae slightly protrude, making a peapod shape. I feel the back of mine. My fingers rise and fall over the bumps. 

The feeder remains unoccupied and will increasingly be so. What can migrate is or soon will. The leaves are starting to turn. Yellow and orange are seeping into the green. The edges are going dormant despite its lively appearance. The trees will be stripped bare shortly. Emaciated winter with its skeletal limbs is closing fast. His frigid grip will clutch those who remain.

I sigh emphatically. I can and cannot move. Moving is dreadful. Sloth is hypnotic. I hate temporality. 

An oak leaf flutters downward. In its twirling, it is balletic. It falls with dignity but lands without hope.

Get up. It is time to go. 

Memoir of a Pseudo-Amnesiac: 4

As it so happened, he was wrong on one account. She was interested and she went looking for me. (Proving once more that good things come to those who wait and that luck is not made, despite the egotists who insist upon the contrary.) I was found milling around my school’s fenced perimeter, hammering out the kinks in my head of a thesis on Skinner. I did not notice her coming as I was gazing intently on the ground slightly before my feet. “You didn’t tell me your name,” was uttered without origin. Startled, I erupted with an expletive. She laughed. When I realized who had spoken, I begged her pardon. She was cucumber cool and I was cayenne pepper hot. To allay me, she observed my reflexes were stellar and that keyed-up animals live longer in the wild. The natural color returned to my ears attested to subjectively by a lack of heat in that region. We exchanged pleasantries, dealing in large part with what was new in our lives. (Although neither of us knew what was “old” for the other, it is not what one asks about). Near the end of our jaunt and at her behest, we exchanged mailing addresses rather than numbers. (Hers was one of those bumpkinny addresses—numbers followed by indecipherable abbreviations followed by still more numbers—with an air of encryption about it.) It struck me as quaint and entirely fitting the unspoken code of courtship I assumed presided over inter-gender affairs in Pike County. I was thrilled and aghast—thrilled to be pursued and aghast at the necessity of requital. I insisted she write first so that I could operate within the confines of tone she established. 

Her cursive handwriting was graceful and slightly disorienting. (Longhand is alive and well in needle-point country.) It made me ashamed of my chicken-scratch script and I admit to write more deliberately thereafter. The first twenty lines consisted of preliminary getting-to-know-you questions like point of birth to be gotten out of the way and stored for future reference. Beneath them was a set of three essay questions from which to choose one, none of which were especially personal. (This was a good-natured exercise and designed, presumably, to either pander to one of my strengths or speak in terms an undergrad could understand.) I wrote on “What’s wrong with us and why? Give concrete examples.” and made a convincing argument in 500 words or less for the dilutive ramifications of data influx on us progeny of the Information Age. After three drafts and many a minute of tapping pen-to-lip, I reciprocated with a quiz of my own. I dittoed the twenty questions* and formulated a biographical inquiry. (‘Is your father always so intimidating? If so, why? If not, when not?’ ‘What do you appreciate the most about living here and what could you do without?’, and ‘What’s on your mind when business at the produce stand is slow?’) She picked #2. What she appreciated most and least were the two sides of the same coin of time. The surfeit of leisure afforded by inclement weather or the cold season was a situationally-dependent blessing or curse.  

We kept the pen-pal relationship going in part because we couldn’t see each other constantly. I had school and she had a considerable set of filial duties. Plus, neither of us wanted to be the one to blame for dropping the ball, letter-wise. They became supplementary material to our face-to-face visits and hastened our introductory phase tremendously. We never put postage a dime on postage. Instead, we exchanged the notes at the outset of our sessions and tucked them away in hip-or-back pocket to be read later. At some point, we started folding them into exceedingly small rectangles and found ways of slipping them to each other in homage to mafia movies. Who began this ritual I cannot say.

She met me more than halfway since I was functionally a pedestrian. (Car repairs were not easy to come by in those parts and I, not trusting my mechanically-inclined colleagues, opted to let my Civic languish until my parents caved into desperation and had it towed.) She had access to an ancient F-100 with two gas tanks, which came in handy since there were two trips: one to and one from campus. (This is hyperbole, but not outrageously so. The truck lumbered along at 7 MPG thanks to being engineered in the good old days of cheap crude. The cargo of cement blocks which was the stuff of an often promised but never realized retaining wall at the Benson Farm did nothing for efficiency either.) The exterior was burnt orange and gold with pitted and speckled chrome bumpers. From inside, you could watch the road speed by through a growing hole in the passenger side floor board (which, I warned, was destined to become a real problem for spare change or an ill-fated cell phone). The miniscule maroon waffle texture of the bench seat’s cloth made me nostalgic for a decade when “greaser” was a caste. In lieu of air conditioning were triangular windows that pivoted on an axis and scooped up passing air at a rate that made your jowls jiggle wind tunnel-like at interstate speeds. The truck was the sort of temperamental jalopy that begged for a name. The passenger needed to be slightly ajar in order for the engine to turn over. The windshield wipers did not function without the cigarette lighter being depressed. I enjoyed these eccentricities and became more partial to it than a person should be to an artifact.  

We took a lot of walks together, regardless of the season. They were our dates and my exercise. Walking is an act of penance for the consumption of rural cuisine. (Pies were as much a fixture of the dinner table as forks and knives.) Either we walked the lengths of First through Fourth Street until civilization disappeared or devolved into boarded-up houses or we strode down Route 3 until one of our sets of legs began to throb. There was a lot of pointing on these jaunts. We liked seeing the same sights.  

Provided I was wearing tall enough socks, we occasionally made excursions into the family’s farmland. At dusk in the summer, you could not have a conversation over the ambulancean wail of the cicadas and katydids. An array of flora and fauna stuck to whatever cloth brushed against the tall grasses and weeds. On return, we’d retire to separate unoccupied rooms to modestly inspect for ticks scrambling towards nether regions. (This in itself shows how far I had come to making peace with nature because of her.) Once cleared by private scrutiny, we presented bare backs to each other for visual inspection of those hard to reach places. This practice was for novices like myself an emulsion of sensual and repulsive emotions. In the end, the sensual rose to the top. Removing parasites is a work of affection. (See generally: primate behavior).

This continued for months. I did not quickly ask her out (which is a phrase I’d like to avoid since “out” always struck me as a vacuous place, but is the only real prospect that fits the bill). To me, the categorization was superfluous. Giving something an official name aspired to nothing more than discourage others from transgressing against it, not because of authentic care but authoritative diffidence. (This is why security cameras are more affective at deterring than no trespassing signs.) Principal stance aside, I did not want to rock the boat and was frightened any shift in tone might land me in the sea. To her—I later learned—it was a great disappointment and a sign I was not simply bashful but altogether spineless when it counted. She had to ward off passive aggressive attacks from her ill mother nightly on account of my reticence.  

I don’t know what attracted her to me. It was not charm or mysteriousness and, despite her flattery, it was not looks. (I am to Adonis what yellow is to Tuesday.) At the time, I thought it was a certain je ne sais quoi radiating from my indefatigable candor and earnestness (a trait which I both staunchly believed I possessed and completely lacked given my self-referential obliviousness). What attracted me to her is too long a list to enumerate here. Being around her was like looking at a diamond. I felt a multifaceted sentiment around her. Firstly, there was the novelty of it all. I was not one to garner attention and if I accidently happened to, I could not keep it. She was, as I have already mentioned, physically attractive and seeing her sparked textbook arousal responses. She was smart to boot and a straight-arrow, morally speaking. Exhibit A: She had been letting her hair grow out in the fall. When she exited the truck, I noted it flipped playfully above her ears. I complimented her on this, thinking it was intentionally styled. She told me to kiss off without making eye contact. Before I could be fully offended by this outburst and counter with some barb to make the situation worse, she apologized. Apologizing was easy for her, not because she had a lot of practice, but because she indulged in no delusions about what she did and was capable of. I have never met a more sober thinker. I don’t know if it was the Bible, the cows, or the lack of any sort of pollution—whatever the source, she never hid anything from anyone, including herself. It was as though the lack of pre-processed input kept her head from getting clogged up with excuses or falsehoods. She knew she was disappointed with her appearance, that she snapped at me, and that she shouldn’t have snapped at me. So she apologized.  

I do not mince words. I do not say I love pasta or some much-lauded band because I don’t consider them objects of such momentous affection. I do not respond “good” or the grammatically preferable “well” when someone asks me how I am because I am almost always “fine” or worse. To be well is a rarified state of happiness/contentment/peace I am not often in. I was happy then in those first few months. I was happy to be near her, happy to see her walk towards me, happy to hear her recollections of Indian summers and creek beds and crawdads squirting backwards in crystal clear water. It was magical, not in the incredulous way a skeptic describes a conviction, but in the way a child knows fireflies—an ineffable glow both real and uncanny.

__________
* Her answers were: 1) Allison Benson, 2) 10/14/87, 3) Salina, KS, 4) 2 – Donnie (older) and Jimmy (younger), 5) Yellow, 6) grandma’s corn pudding, 7) strawberry mint sun tea, 8) lately Franny and Zooey, 9) I don’t watch much TV, 10) That’s difficult. Pet Sounds was my first –how about that? 11) Am I a sap if I say Shawshank Redemption? 12) Flint Hills, 13) no one, really, 14) yes, 15) not like Casper, no 16) when you said your name was Shit 17) when Pappy (my grandfather) died, 18) flying by a mile—what good is invisibility really? 19) Italy or Australia, 20) both half-full and half-empty if we are going to be accurate about it.

Deserting Deserts

Big-box stores flanked Jacob and Francis as they walked to rent a movie they had not yet determined. While waiting for cars to pull through the entrances and streets they crossed, the sun warmed their exposed skin. Upon resuming their stroll, the brisk early spring wind infiltrated their cotton clothes. Their tennis shoes struck softly on the worn asphalt, establishing a syncopated rhythm to the music of passing cars. 

"The other day I was reading Kant for a class. He said something interesting I wanted to float by you." 

"Uh huh."

"Well, I don't remember the whole discussion exactly. The point of the whole thing was that our—people's—purpose is not to be happy, but to be the sort of beings that deserve happiness."

"Mmhm."

"That's it. That's what I wanted to float by."

"Oh. Um. No. No, that's a load of shit."

"I figured you'd disagree. Now tell me why."

Francis exhaled loudly, as though explanation was a strain. "Ugh. No. I don't want to. I'm tired of this stuff. Ever since you started going to college, it's like you're a... a thought-mercenary vigilantly guarding this fair city against errors." Francis gestured towards the landscape with a sweep of his arm. "I just want to rent a movie, Jake. That's what we left the house for."

"Calm down. I'm just curious. You know that about me."

"Yes. Always just curious. But look, curiosity doesn't involve an agenda beyond learning the facts, you know. When you're just curious, you open that door in the attic, take a peek in, and shut the door knowing it has a bunch of cobwebs and old lamps and posters in it. This has more of an agenda to it. You're a moralist and you've come back to make moralists out of all of us."

"Oh, get off it. We used to have these kinds of conversations."

"Well, while you were off at college filling your head with dusty thoughts I've been here handing douche bags coffee they're disappointed in and mopping up old man piss in the men's room. I'm more worn out than I was in high school and I'm a helluva lot less curious. Shit wears on you. I've seen more of the world than you have, and it's not so great. We're not so great. I was hoping to have a little easy-going fun with an old buddy."

"What'd you call me for then? I've never been much of a fun lover."

"Because I was bored and heard or read or whatever that you were in town and figured I'd have to call you to snatch you away from your books. Because I knew you wouldn't call me on your own."

"And you were bored because everyone else was busy with their what?... jobs and drinks and the forced and way uncomfortable get-togethers that pass for parties now?"

"Something like that. Neither one of us fit that scene to a T. I thought we could both use the company to pass the time."

"And we are. We're talking."

"We're not passing time. You're trying to take us outside of time or something...to the wonderful world of ideas. But that doesn't work the same way. Time flies when you're having fun because you aren't thinking about yourself. Nothing is more tedious, more arduous than introspection. You philosophical types need to figure that out and lighten up a bit. Honestly, I don't know how you do it day-in and day-out."

Bunches of windblown hair settled out of place on the friends' heads as they entered the vestibule of the store. Past a bank of carts and through another set of sliding doors, they were greeted by a faint smell of spices. The brown tile featured a diminution of footprints from dirty parking lot water that had been tracked inside. The lights overhead cast an unnatural sterility onto the various goods. 

"It's over here." Francis pointed to a box tucked in between a green coin-counting machine and a row of automated miniature rockets, jeeps, and ponies. The two approached the automated kiosk and Francis began tapping upon the screen.

"I don't want to watch a movie," Jacob said.

"What? Why not?"

"It's too nice of a day outside."

"The sun's going down any minute."

"Let's just take a walk."

"And when we get tired?"

"Um. We'll sit down? I don't care."

Francis turned to face Jacob. "Okay, fine. Deserts, rights, whatever you want to call them—they're all made up. They're make-believe fabrications of politicians and people who have to find things to theorize about for a living. None of us deserve anything. The only obligations I can think of are legal, and we all agree those are made-up anyway. As in like, exist only on paper. The only reason why anyone obeys those obligations is because it's so damned expensive or otherwise shitty to violate them if you're caught. That or the person is scared. Either way, the choice what's-his-name gave you was between happiness and nothing otherwise known as being worth of happiness. That old coot chose the make-believe option and you're well on your way to choosing the same from the sounds of it. So, yeah, for my part, I'll try to scratch out a bit of happiness whether I should have it coming to me or not. So there. Now I've indulged you. Now would you please indulge me and watch a movie and drink a few beers and help me forget about this town and my life in it for a while."

"Well wow. Thanks for that, but I'd rather continue with this line of thinking. Nobody says we can't tip a few back in the process. Or later on. In vino veritas"

A tinny voice squawked above about a sale on paper towels.

"Ugh. Why'd you say you'd watch a movie then?"

"Because I knew you'd cave to persuasion. You like talking too much not to."

A shopping cart rattled nearby. The man pushing it was wearing black sweatpants and walking on the sides of his tattered sneakers. His large abdomen poured over the elastic waistband like a leavened dough over the rim of a mixing bowl. The pink hue of skin lightly contrasted against the heather grey of his t-shirt. "'Scuse me boys. I wanna pick something up."

The two moved back and walked out one after the other. The sun was at such an angle and orientation that its rays lodged in their eyes upon exiting. They squinted reflexively and sought temporary shelter underneath an awning that covered a cache of gardening equipment. They passed a series of smaller storefronts with fading posters and cracked paint exclaiming discounts.

"Right. So, make-believe you say. Hmmm. I don't think Kant was figuring for that. Coincidence and accident bear heavily on happiness, though, right?"

"Completely."

"And that's not fair."

"No. Look. There you go again. That's not not fair. Fair has nothing to do with it. There is no fair. Some people catch the breaks and some people are broken. It is what it is."

"And that doesn't upset you?"

"Sure it upsets me, but there's nothing I can do about it. It's not up to me so I leave it go."

"What's not?"

"Meting out justice."

A bell jangled nearby. A mother and her young daughter exited a cheap hair salon. Jacob heard the mother ask what the girl wanted for dinner as they walked past. "McDonald's!" he heard behind him.

"Not in a grand way, no. But in other ways you do. You give people back exact change for one thing."

"Because I don't want to get fired."

"And because you don't want to take some poor schlub's money."

"Not many poor schlub's come in where I work. Mostly business-people."

"You sure are difficult. You do need some lightening up."

"That's what the movie was for."

"Well, walks are nice too. Aren't you glad for spring?"

"Sure, sure."

"I think the greater point is that we ought not invest ourselves in something so transitory as happiness."

"As if nothing is more permanent than something."

Francis pulled the tab up on his zipper to close his jacket. His chest began the process of warming. "Why do you insist on calling deserts nothing? You really think a person never earns anything?"

"Oh, I suppose people earn all the time but not in the sense you're talking about. We're all earning paychecks, earning wrinkles, earning grey hairs, and ulcers. I don't think there's an earn beyond what we agree to like as a society or whatever and what nature gives us, though—some earn with a capital 'e'."

"Is that because you've not gotten what you think you should have, so you've ditched the notion of should altogether—called it nonsense?"

"Maybe."

"And if I were to tell you it was a shitty hand you were dealt and I think you deserved better, what would you say?"

"I'd say it is what it is and I don't care."

"Because you can't stand to care anymore."

Francis stopped. "Come again?!"

"You're just as guilty of imagining as you think Kant and all the politicians and the professional thinkers are. Rather than admit life currently sucks through no fault of your own and reserve some dignity for yourself by asserting that you deserve better, you'd rather deny the possibility and make light of the situation—which it is not. The situation is not light. Sticking your head in the sand in order not to see does not stop the predator from attacking. It just keeps you from feeling anxious and maybe becoming scared into doing something about it."

Francis looked into Jacob's eyes. The setting sun ducked behind a multi-tiered signpost for a shopping center. A passing car honked at the two of them, but neither were distracted from their gazes. "And what exactly do you expect me to do about it, Jake? I'm flat broke. I can't so much as afford brand-name cereal."

"Money's got nothing to do with this. Well, it hasn't much to do with this. If you can't buy generic cereal... Anyway, I'm talking about having a little righteous pride and thumbing your nose at injustice. I'm expecting you to do what you can—which is still a great deal. You're too smart to play dumb. You can't just loaf around here. It's not in you."

Francis started walking in the direction they had been headed previously. "Come on."
Jacob took his place aside his friend, who started to speak without looking at him. 

"Conversations with you still get blurry. Have you managed to make new, smart friends with that quirk of yours?"

"A few."

"A few more than me then. I'm bored. Really. I feel like I'm shriveling up."

"What've you been up to?"

"I don't know. Work. Watching my roommates watch television. I think I stare a lot."

"Hung it up already, huh? What're you... eighteen?"

"Nearly nineteen. Same as you."

"Besides recognition, what is it that you can get in college that you can't get here on your own?"

Prompted by the throbbing of his fingertips, Francis stuck his hands in his pockets to escape the air. "Vegetarian entrees?"

Both of the boys snickered.

"Seriously, though..."

"Recognition would be good for starters."

"Plenty of people are recognized that shouldn't be. You ought to know whether or not you've done something well without others patting you on the back for it."

"What am I going to do well out here? Latte art?" Francis smirked.

"Well, I wouldn't make that the only thing you try to do well, but sure... latte art can be beautiful and it would be a good thing to brighten another person's day with a nice leaf or some such."

"Yeah, yeah."

"See? You really need to pay attention to Kant's point. It's better to pursue the desert of recognition from one who is qualified to give it than to be recognized by those who may or may not be."

"Uh-huh. Whoever that someone is."

"Want to go swing on some swings?"

"Mmhm."

The two friends turned the corner and headed up the street to a local park with a patch of grass and four scrawny trees. Furry buds had begun poking their way out of branches.