T.S. Eliot began the poem The Waste Land with the lines "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land."
Perhaps he got it just right over in England (was he in England when he wrote that?), but here in Confluence, I've always thought February and March were cruel months themselves. Cruel is a stark term, I'll admit. Makes it sound like these 60 days twist little boys' arms and kick small animals just for spite. Makes you wonder about April in England.
But here is what I mean about February and March: they are dark months. They are the dying embers of winter. The momentum from the holidays and Christmastime and the New Year celebrations are all petered out. Our resolutions are more history than present tense action come February.
School children will know what I'm saying. They've nothing to mark time by. We've had a heavy winter here, and the kids have missed school many days when the roads weren't good enough to drive buses on. That, in turn, eats into the little celebratory vacation days the Confluence school system has built into its calendar--days that all happen in February or March, breaking up the weeks into livable chunks. And just as the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter, these children now stare down six long, dreary, algebra-filled weeks until any kind of day off whatsoever.
The teachers feel it, too. I've seen them about town, exercising their hopelessness in public. I ran into our second grade teacher, Mrs. Tweetenbaum, at the grocery store the other day. It's interesting what you learn about people based on peering into their grocery carts, an act that feels somewhat voyeuristic, as if you were peeking into their actual pantries. Anyway, there comes Mrs. Tweetenbaum, walking down the bread aisle with a ten mile stare if I've ever seen one. She walked behind her cart with a zombie-like amble, her eyes lost in nightmarish thought of children going stir-crazy from being in school for more than 48 straight days. Christ only had to deal with 40, she thought to herself.
She had filled her buggy with beer, chocolate, and Ritz crackers.
Perhaps this is why the liturgical calendar gives us Lent this time of year. What better way to focus on atonement, the fathers of the church thought, than to do it in a time of natural misery?
I am not a pessimist, though, and I don't think my neighbors and friends here in town are, either (for the most part). Rather, we all wake every morning looking for the first signs of spring--even in the earliest mornings of February.
We take our time turning at the corner of Broad and Green streets, because that's the corner where Miss Owens planted daffodils decades ago. We wait for their green tips to break the earth's frozen crust, rising forward to the sun.
We examine tree tips, looking for their ends to swell with buds. We smell the air. And more than anything, we wait, and wait, and wait. When will spring come?
This weekend was the first in many that didn't start with snow. The temperature, in fact, has risen to a balmy 50 degrees (F). The sun never felt so warm--it was tempting to walk around in shirtsleeves.
I let the dogs out to play, happy for once that they wouldn't come back to the house filthy with snow and mud, and I watched the smallest wander out onto the deck, her golden fur radiant with light, her tiny, book-sized dog ears perking up, her head cocking to the side as she glanced skyward at the trees.
I heard it, too: the chorus of blackbirds above us, thousands of them perched in limbs across a half dozen back yards. A small victory for the soul, and another step toward spring.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
On Lent and Drinking Jack
Aldus, my neighbor, and I made it out for a drink tonight.
We do this once every couple of months or so. We usually take his car, but since it snowed this weekend and the roads aren't completely clear, we decided to take my Wagoneer. Off we went, down the hillside and into the valley.
More often than not, we settle on my favorite pub, a place called F.D.R. and named, naturally, after our president of the same initials. The state banned smoking inside public areas about seven years ago, but there's still a deck on the back, looking out over the Tinton River, where you can smoke a cigar when the weather is warm. I do that only once a year. My lungs can't take it any more.
I worry about American pubs. It's a silly thing to say out loud, but I do. They just opened a new shopping center in the city down the highway from Confluence that houses seven bars of various themes. There is a cowboy bar, an Irish bar, a sleek, new-age bar, and so on and so forth. They are all very popular with younger people, and they are all very expensive places to drink. They are filled with pumping beat music, they smell like clothing stores where middle school-ers shop, and a decent drink will set you back eight or ten dollars. There are big screen televisions everywhere.
I'd better not get too wound up over this. There is no point. When I was a young person, there was a joint down on Lake Buchanan that played punk rock and served drinks that could potentially kill you if you absorbed too many. There was only one bar for service, and there were no televisions to be seen anywhere. They weighed too much to mount on the wall, and who wanted to watch TV, anyway? We were there to get drunk, to work on getting laid, to figure out something important in our lives that was missing.
One night we were at the lake bar, dancing to a great band, when I noticed, sitting over in a corner booth, was none other than Jake Lemmon. Since Lake Buchanan is on the other side of the state (I was ten years out of college before I ever stepped foot in Confluence), you might not have known this, but Lemmon kept a winter cabin down on the lake. I never got to go inside, but some of my friends did. We would sometimes go out there in the summers on my pal's ski boat because he wasn't there. I don't think he spent more than a handful of days there at any given point, but nobody made a big deal out of it when he came to town.
Anyway, he's sitting over in the bar by himself, nursing a drink, wearing a long tan coat, a wool scarf, and a hat. He wasn't hiding, but he wasn't out in the middle of the place dancing with the coeds. I had just enough beer in me to feel brave, so I went over to him. It was about this time of the year.
"Aren't you a bit warm with your coat on?" I shouted over the music. Keep in mind that the following conversation took place bit by bit, often repeated, and never with either party entirely certain of what the other just said.
"NOT YET," he yelled back at me.
I was sweating from bopping around with the music. I introduced myself.
"MY NAME IS JACK," he said. "GOOD TO MEET YOU."
I'll admit that I was terribly amused at the fact that I was hearing Jack Lemmon's voice in person. Much more so than that I was sitting across from him. He sounded exactly like he did in the movies, a point that is laughingly obvious to me now.
"I didn't think this would be your kind of place," I yelled.
"IT ISN'T."
"Well why on earth would you come here?"
"I GAVE UP DRINKING BY MYSELF FOR LENT."
"What?"
"LENT," he repeated. "I'VE GIVEN UP DRINKING BY MYSELF."
Nobody knew at that point in time that he'd battled alcoholism. But I had to admire his tenacity--coming out to the only bar open in the February off-season, filled with sweaty college kids dancing to beats that must have sounded entirely foreign to a man like Jack Lemmon. The floors were sticky and smelled of day-old beer, the lights glowed neon blue and red. The bathrooms had no doors. Yet there he was, together there with us, in the dead of a blustery February night.
We chatted a bit more back and forth, and he was awfully pleasant for a celebrity dealing with a drunk college kid. Before long I went back to dancing, trying my hardest to get this blond girl to come home with me. I even mentioned that I'd just been over at the bar talking to Jack Lemmon, but when we turned back to look, he was gone. Only his glass remained, with a crisp twenty dollar bill folded like a tent beside it.
I imagined him driving back around the lake to his cabin, leaving the lights turned off, dropping the car keys on the Formica counter top, walking over to the windows by the deck that looked across the lake to the bar he'd just been in, its neon lights melting across the water's ripple. Perhaps he could hear the music blaring from within, but I doubted he could still feel its raw energy. I don't think he felt it even when he sat inside.
I'm certain, now more than ever, that somewhere in Jack's mind, he thought to himself that he ought to be worried about the state of American pubs.
We do this once every couple of months or so. We usually take his car, but since it snowed this weekend and the roads aren't completely clear, we decided to take my Wagoneer. Off we went, down the hillside and into the valley.
More often than not, we settle on my favorite pub, a place called F.D.R. and named, naturally, after our president of the same initials. The state banned smoking inside public areas about seven years ago, but there's still a deck on the back, looking out over the Tinton River, where you can smoke a cigar when the weather is warm. I do that only once a year. My lungs can't take it any more.
I worry about American pubs. It's a silly thing to say out loud, but I do. They just opened a new shopping center in the city down the highway from Confluence that houses seven bars of various themes. There is a cowboy bar, an Irish bar, a sleek, new-age bar, and so on and so forth. They are all very popular with younger people, and they are all very expensive places to drink. They are filled with pumping beat music, they smell like clothing stores where middle school-ers shop, and a decent drink will set you back eight or ten dollars. There are big screen televisions everywhere.
I'd better not get too wound up over this. There is no point. When I was a young person, there was a joint down on Lake Buchanan that played punk rock and served drinks that could potentially kill you if you absorbed too many. There was only one bar for service, and there were no televisions to be seen anywhere. They weighed too much to mount on the wall, and who wanted to watch TV, anyway? We were there to get drunk, to work on getting laid, to figure out something important in our lives that was missing.
One night we were at the lake bar, dancing to a great band, when I noticed, sitting over in a corner booth, was none other than Jake Lemmon. Since Lake Buchanan is on the other side of the state (I was ten years out of college before I ever stepped foot in Confluence), you might not have known this, but Lemmon kept a winter cabin down on the lake. I never got to go inside, but some of my friends did. We would sometimes go out there in the summers on my pal's ski boat because he wasn't there. I don't think he spent more than a handful of days there at any given point, but nobody made a big deal out of it when he came to town.
Anyway, he's sitting over in the bar by himself, nursing a drink, wearing a long tan coat, a wool scarf, and a hat. He wasn't hiding, but he wasn't out in the middle of the place dancing with the coeds. I had just enough beer in me to feel brave, so I went over to him. It was about this time of the year.
"Aren't you a bit warm with your coat on?" I shouted over the music. Keep in mind that the following conversation took place bit by bit, often repeated, and never with either party entirely certain of what the other just said.
"NOT YET," he yelled back at me.
I was sweating from bopping around with the music. I introduced myself.
"MY NAME IS JACK," he said. "GOOD TO MEET YOU."
I'll admit that I was terribly amused at the fact that I was hearing Jack Lemmon's voice in person. Much more so than that I was sitting across from him. He sounded exactly like he did in the movies, a point that is laughingly obvious to me now.
"I didn't think this would be your kind of place," I yelled.
"IT ISN'T."
"Well why on earth would you come here?"
"I GAVE UP DRINKING BY MYSELF FOR LENT."
"What?"
"LENT," he repeated. "I'VE GIVEN UP DRINKING BY MYSELF."
Nobody knew at that point in time that he'd battled alcoholism. But I had to admire his tenacity--coming out to the only bar open in the February off-season, filled with sweaty college kids dancing to beats that must have sounded entirely foreign to a man like Jack Lemmon. The floors were sticky and smelled of day-old beer, the lights glowed neon blue and red. The bathrooms had no doors. Yet there he was, together there with us, in the dead of a blustery February night.
We chatted a bit more back and forth, and he was awfully pleasant for a celebrity dealing with a drunk college kid. Before long I went back to dancing, trying my hardest to get this blond girl to come home with me. I even mentioned that I'd just been over at the bar talking to Jack Lemmon, but when we turned back to look, he was gone. Only his glass remained, with a crisp twenty dollar bill folded like a tent beside it.
I imagined him driving back around the lake to his cabin, leaving the lights turned off, dropping the car keys on the Formica counter top, walking over to the windows by the deck that looked across the lake to the bar he'd just been in, its neon lights melting across the water's ripple. Perhaps he could hear the music blaring from within, but I doubted he could still feel its raw energy. I don't think he felt it even when he sat inside.
I'm certain, now more than ever, that somewhere in Jack's mind, he thought to himself that he ought to be worried about the state of American pubs.
Friday, February 12, 2010
All Creatures Here Below
It snowed here again in Confluence. It seems like every time the town clears off the streets, gray clouds come in and blanket our little valley with bone-chill cold. In a matter of minutes, all of that tiny human progress is quietly, steadfastly returned to its bed and covered once more in white.
Life goes on, however. No matter how hard it snows through the night, morning's sun rises, and with it comes the early stirrings of the hardiest stock. If you live up on the hill, you can look down onto Confluence proper to see smoke wisps rising from the neighborhoods below, and soon you'll hear shovels' metal scraping sidewalks--nothing carries sound like a fresh snow. Neighbors call out to each other, checking in, offering a cup of coffee. Later, when we're all huddled around plates of steaming eggs and bacon, we all hear the heavy rumbling of the snowplow as Nate guides it 'round the curves and up the road to free us.
Then, our stomachs full with breakfast, we go back out, shovels in hand, to clear some more, making little tracks in our driveways, clearing off the pansies, carving out a horseshoe around the mailbox. So it was this Friday morning, when I looked up to see my neighbor, Aldus, his heavy coat wrapped around him, his bright aluminum shovel bouncing light about his yard.
"Aldus," I said, "good morning!"
He smiled and walked toward the pin oak that cleaves his yard from mine. He has kind eyes. "Tired of this winter yet?"
"Tired indeed." I reached out my hand to shake his. "I ought to offer you my formal congratulations!"
I should mention that Confluence, though paralyzed by three long weeks of snow, participated in a successful special election. One of our school board members, Cpl. Thomas O'Brien, respectfully resigned when he learned his unit had been activated. He would leave for Afghanistan in just a few weeks. Aldus was elected to replace him on the board of education.
Perhaps it was that civic duty has long been ingrained in the citizens of this town, a trait that could be traced back to its involvement in the American Revolution. You may or may not know that Confluence quartered reserve forces for General Greene's army and contributed eventually to Cornwallis's defeat. There's a historical marker on the highway out to Harold's Peak that tells the story quite nicely.
More than likely, though, voters braved the snow and ice out of supreme respect for Cpl. O'Brien, a young man who'd joined the board of education at the ripe age of 22. He ran for the post to honor his grandmother, Mrs. Helda O'Brien. Helda always told him to serve his country and uphold his responsibility as an American, and this was his way of doing just that. She held the Bible when he was sworn in at the city courthouse.
So many of us watched Helda raise her grandson here in this valley. Helda's only daughter left Thomas with her one January morning to watch him while she went to the store. She never came back.
If it broke Helda's heart to lose her daughter, she used whatever strength she had left to mend it with the unique bond between a grandmother and her grandson.
It was the kind of bond that overcame shame or embarrassment. The first Sunday after Helda found herself in sole custody of her grandson, they both arrived together at St. Michael's Episcopal, and they both collected the offering and brought it to the altar while we sang the Doxology. He was awfully shy then, hiding behind Helda's church dress, her hand clasped over his.
She raised him in her own quiet manner, hushing him when he talked too much, calling for him to sit up straight when his posture slouched. He might have a 60-something year-old grandmother as his only guardian, she seemed to reason, but he wouldn't have an excuse for appearing in any intolerable way.
When Thomas was in the second grade, Helda slipped off the back porch steps and broke her hip. Dr. Williams operated on her, and she wound up with a metal replacement and needed a cane to walk after that.
I remember some years ago running into them both at the grocery store the day before the weatherman was calling for snow. The stores were crowded with people overwhelmed by silliness, buying every loaf of bread and gallon of milk with the conviction that they might be entrapped for weeks by the approaching blizzard. (I always speculated that, come the next morning when we found ourselves surrounded by only a few inches of snow, we should host the world's largest French toast party in order to expend all our supplies.) Anyway, I pulled into a parking space at the Constellation General Store across from Helda's old mini-van. Thomas might have been in the fifth grade or so by then. He got out of the passenger side, shut the door (still dented from when a deer ran head-first into her car, but that's another story), and ran around to help his grandmother climb out.
I watched from the warm cocoon of my car, breathless, as the young boy, his eyes wide with simple honesty, reached his hand out to her, her gloved hand barely covering his, her other hand leaning on a hickory cane.
They turned, hand in hand, Thomas stepping slightly out in front as they managed the corner between our cars' bumpers, and I saw her, and the way she looked at him, the way his static hair floated up and over his head in impish electricity. She smiled, a smile she knew he'd never see. He was leading her, as if it were always that way.
"I'm more than twice that boy's age," Aldus said, snapping my mind back to the blinding white of the snowy yard. "But Lord knows, he's got twice the heart. It's an honor to take his seat."
"I'll probably use that quote in next week's Spectator," I said.
"No," Aldus said, digging his shovel into a crust of snow to lean on. "I'd rather you write that I'm just watching over his post until he gets back."
So it ran that way, just as Aldus corrected me, under a picture of Thomas in his uniform shaking hands with him after he'd been sworn in. And later, the last weekend before he reported for his tour of duty, we said our prayers for Thomas at St. Michael's, blessing him with our hands and thoughts and words. Father Jack, our priest, asked Thomas to join him as they recessed at the end of service, and we joined hands and sang again for him,
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
praise him all creatures here below,
praise him above, ye heavenly host,
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Life goes on, however. No matter how hard it snows through the night, morning's sun rises, and with it comes the early stirrings of the hardiest stock. If you live up on the hill, you can look down onto Confluence proper to see smoke wisps rising from the neighborhoods below, and soon you'll hear shovels' metal scraping sidewalks--nothing carries sound like a fresh snow. Neighbors call out to each other, checking in, offering a cup of coffee. Later, when we're all huddled around plates of steaming eggs and bacon, we all hear the heavy rumbling of the snowplow as Nate guides it 'round the curves and up the road to free us.
Then, our stomachs full with breakfast, we go back out, shovels in hand, to clear some more, making little tracks in our driveways, clearing off the pansies, carving out a horseshoe around the mailbox. So it was this Friday morning, when I looked up to see my neighbor, Aldus, his heavy coat wrapped around him, his bright aluminum shovel bouncing light about his yard.
"Aldus," I said, "good morning!"
He smiled and walked toward the pin oak that cleaves his yard from mine. He has kind eyes. "Tired of this winter yet?"
"Tired indeed." I reached out my hand to shake his. "I ought to offer you my formal congratulations!"
I should mention that Confluence, though paralyzed by three long weeks of snow, participated in a successful special election. One of our school board members, Cpl. Thomas O'Brien, respectfully resigned when he learned his unit had been activated. He would leave for Afghanistan in just a few weeks. Aldus was elected to replace him on the board of education.
Perhaps it was that civic duty has long been ingrained in the citizens of this town, a trait that could be traced back to its involvement in the American Revolution. You may or may not know that Confluence quartered reserve forces for General Greene's army and contributed eventually to Cornwallis's defeat. There's a historical marker on the highway out to Harold's Peak that tells the story quite nicely.
More than likely, though, voters braved the snow and ice out of supreme respect for Cpl. O'Brien, a young man who'd joined the board of education at the ripe age of 22. He ran for the post to honor his grandmother, Mrs. Helda O'Brien. Helda always told him to serve his country and uphold his responsibility as an American, and this was his way of doing just that. She held the Bible when he was sworn in at the city courthouse.
So many of us watched Helda raise her grandson here in this valley. Helda's only daughter left Thomas with her one January morning to watch him while she went to the store. She never came back.
If it broke Helda's heart to lose her daughter, she used whatever strength she had left to mend it with the unique bond between a grandmother and her grandson.
It was the kind of bond that overcame shame or embarrassment. The first Sunday after Helda found herself in sole custody of her grandson, they both arrived together at St. Michael's Episcopal, and they both collected the offering and brought it to the altar while we sang the Doxology. He was awfully shy then, hiding behind Helda's church dress, her hand clasped over his.
She raised him in her own quiet manner, hushing him when he talked too much, calling for him to sit up straight when his posture slouched. He might have a 60-something year-old grandmother as his only guardian, she seemed to reason, but he wouldn't have an excuse for appearing in any intolerable way.
When Thomas was in the second grade, Helda slipped off the back porch steps and broke her hip. Dr. Williams operated on her, and she wound up with a metal replacement and needed a cane to walk after that.
I remember some years ago running into them both at the grocery store the day before the weatherman was calling for snow. The stores were crowded with people overwhelmed by silliness, buying every loaf of bread and gallon of milk with the conviction that they might be entrapped for weeks by the approaching blizzard. (I always speculated that, come the next morning when we found ourselves surrounded by only a few inches of snow, we should host the world's largest French toast party in order to expend all our supplies.) Anyway, I pulled into a parking space at the Constellation General Store across from Helda's old mini-van. Thomas might have been in the fifth grade or so by then. He got out of the passenger side, shut the door (still dented from when a deer ran head-first into her car, but that's another story), and ran around to help his grandmother climb out.
I watched from the warm cocoon of my car, breathless, as the young boy, his eyes wide with simple honesty, reached his hand out to her, her gloved hand barely covering his, her other hand leaning on a hickory cane.
They turned, hand in hand, Thomas stepping slightly out in front as they managed the corner between our cars' bumpers, and I saw her, and the way she looked at him, the way his static hair floated up and over his head in impish electricity. She smiled, a smile she knew he'd never see. He was leading her, as if it were always that way.
"I'm more than twice that boy's age," Aldus said, snapping my mind back to the blinding white of the snowy yard. "But Lord knows, he's got twice the heart. It's an honor to take his seat."
"I'll probably use that quote in next week's Spectator," I said.
"No," Aldus said, digging his shovel into a crust of snow to lean on. "I'd rather you write that I'm just watching over his post until he gets back."
So it ran that way, just as Aldus corrected me, under a picture of Thomas in his uniform shaking hands with him after he'd been sworn in. And later, the last weekend before he reported for his tour of duty, we said our prayers for Thomas at St. Michael's, blessing him with our hands and thoughts and words. Father Jack, our priest, asked Thomas to join him as they recessed at the end of service, and we joined hands and sang again for him,
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
praise him all creatures here below,
praise him above, ye heavenly host,
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Thursday, February 11, 2010
A Shotgun Wedding
I have thought and thought about a good story to start off with, pondering in my head all of the history of this place, but at lunch last week I overheard a conversation too interesting not to share.
My office sits on top of the downtown post office, a second floor perch with windows that open wide to a narrow balcony ledge on main street. It's a nice place to work and write from, as I can see people walking here and there, ducking into the shops, holding hands with their children as they stroll, or arguing with Lloyd Mathers, Confluence's one and only traffic officer, as he issues a parking ticket from his Easy-Go golf cart.
I happened to be looking out when I saw the familiar black Lincoln belonging to Judge Bexler pull into a parallel spot. The judge and I have known each other since he was appointed to his seat twelve years ago. I owed him a visit, so I grabbed my coat and went downstairs just in time to say hello. We headed across the street to Mary's for lunch.
We took our usual seats at the counter and gave our orders to June. She's a classy girl, June. Knows just what to say and when to say it. Anyway, the Judge and I always come here for a cheeseburger, so there's never much debating with a menu.
June went back to the kitchen, and Judge Bexler and I began to catch up. Bexler's a federal judge and a fly fisherman. There is an art to fly fishing. I know this only because I've seen the movie A River Runs Through It, and I use that as my visual reference any time we talk about fishing. I'm not much of a fly fisherman, but I always ask how the fish are biting.
"Too cold," he said. "River's too cold this time of year, and the fish are all sunk down."
The town, as you may or may not know, is in the shape of a V, and at its point, the Tinton River and the large creek that runs from Upper Point converge into a single, broad river. Everyone calls the latter the Upper Point River, but having seen it trickle in drought years, I can hardly think to call it more than a creek.
"When do you expect to get out there again?" I asked
"March," he said, as our cheeseburgers arrived. "Maybe March."
We talked further. His mother is in decling health. She lives up on the hill, and she is getting quite old. We bordered on a discussion involving politics, which I try to avoid with the Judge, since we belong to different parties and partisanship as of late hasn't been a civil subject nationally.
Nonetheless, we were halfway through our cheeseburgers when in through the door burst a rotund woman of maybe 30 years. I did not recognize her, which was fine, as she quickly introduced herself as Margaret Gladstone Brown.
"Judge Bexler, I have to see you!" she cried.
The Judge swiveled around in his chair. "Yes?"
"I've got to have a judge!" she continued, breathless. "The man at the courthouse said I'd find you here."
I caught a frustrated glance from Bexler. "He did?" the Judge replied. "I'll have to thank him. Now, Ms. Brown--"
"You can call me Margie," she corrected.
"Yes, Margie, if you don't mind, I'd be happy to see you in my chambers, but at the moment I'm somewhat predisposed with this gentleman," he pointed at me, "and a cheeseburger."
Tears of great substance sprang up from unseen wells, and poor Margie's lip shuddered. "Well..." she paused, stuttering over her words, "I'm...we...it's just that there's no time!"
Most males who've lived past the eighth grade have the keen sense of timing when a woman is close to bursting into sobs. The Judge, for better or worse, had little patience with these kinds of matters, as they were a common occurence in his courtroom. He turned back towards his lunch. Margie looked at me helplessly.
I decided to pipe in. "What do you mean, there's no time?"
"Ricky, my fiance," she said, wiping phlegm from the corners of her mouth, "is going to jail tonight, and we've got to be married before he goes away."
Now, I am a sucker for hearing the stories of how couples meet and court and elope, but I must admit that this was the first time I'd ever heard of such matrimony. "Ricky who?"
The Judge turned around, his eyebrows raised. "You're not talking about Ricky Whiteman, are you?"
"Yes, Judge Bexler. And I know that you're the one who's sending him away--"
"Why, woman!" the judge interrupted. "Are you sure you're wanting to marry Ricky Whiteman?"
Margie didn't say anything in response. She appeared about as taken with guilt as Rick was when the Judge sentenced him to five years for arson.
The story of Ricky Whiteman made a big splash in my local weekly, but perhaps you didn't hear about it where you live. There were passionate editorials penned by Confluence's citizens on either side of the matter of what to do with Ricky, and many coffee conversations here at Mary's brewed over whether he should be let off or locked up.
His guilt, I should point out, was never in question. His was merely a case of unfortunate and unpredictable consequence.
Ricky worked as a mailman in the tiny, two-room post office that sat off the highway ten miles north of the town limits. The office, which still carried the Confluence zip code and was always called Confluence North P.O., was one of the last points of civilization before the highway zig-zagged up and over Harold's Peak, and many of the folks who live up that way stop in to drop off their mail and talk with Zeke, the postmaster. Zeke is a funny Austrian fellow, but that is beside the point.
About seven months ago, though, Confluence had a mid-summer heat stroke. The temperature nearly baked every human who had the misfortune of working in a building without air conditioning--and there are a lot of those still left in these parts.
Well, the heat wasn't kind to critters, either. They came out of the woodwork, so to speak. The wildlife official from across the mountain had to come in and help our town vet tranquilize a bear found wandering through the village. The president of the bank called the police when he found three deer swimming in his back yard pool one morning. Mrs. Jarman, our town librarian, nearly had a heart attack when she discovered a rattlesnake cooling itself on the second rack of the biography shelves. And Confluence North P.O. had a minor infestation of skunks, which somehow crept in overnight and presented their unpleasant surprise to whomever the first person to open the post office happened to be.
Ricky Whiteman happened to catch the business end of a skunk one Monday morning last July, and having spent a considerable amount of time that evening in a lemon juice bath, he was angered beyond reproach Tuesday morning when he encountered the creatures once again.
That night, he went to his house and picked up a can of kerosene to bring back to the post office. His idea was to soak the baseboards around the heat register vents, where he suspected the skunks were gaining entrance to the office. The unpleasant fumes from the kerosene should drive them back, he thought.
And he was right. The next morning, there wasn't a skunk to be found in Confluence North P.O. Ricky propped open the doors for the rest of the day to let the place air out, but he did so with a bit of pride in his chest, pleased as he was with his ingenuity.
Thursday morning, though, as Ricky unlocked the back door to the filing room, he heard a clicking of little toenails on the opposite side of the mail counter. As he edged around the corner, his eyes had just enough time to see a flash of black tail flying vertical, and then he took a direct hit.
Ricky, now literally blinded by fury, stumbled back out of the post office, just as Zeke pulled in. "Vat on urt!?" he shouted. "Vat eez it?" Ricky, his face steaming with skunk goo, stumbled past towards his pick-up and reached for the ten-gauge shotgun he kept on the rack behind the driver's seat.
I doubt I need to explain the sheer physics of it to you, but for the sake of completion Ricky marched back into the post office, Zeke still shouting outside, stomped back around the corner where, over near the stamp machine, the offending skunk again reared its haunches to let its flagrance fly. Ricky pumped the shotgun, his teeth gritted, and pulled the trigger at point blank range, the discharge roaring through the building. He subsequently reduced the skunk into a dozen scattered bits.
Regrettably, though, rage knows few limits. And in Ricky's defense, getting skunked three times in one week will do something to a man's mind. So he pumped the shotgun and blasted away again, too close this time. The fire belching from the barrel of the weapon was just hot enough to ignite the baseboard, which had been soaked two days earlier with kerosene. Within moments, the entire wall was on fire, then the bulletin board pinned full of For Sale ads, then a bundle of Penny Savers, then three crates of mail, and finally the entire place was up in flames.
The scene following was quite a spectacle. Forty-five volunteer firemen (all 28 of Confluence's force and 17 from across the mountain) responded, as did the town's police force, whom Zeke had rightly summoned after he'd arrived to find his normally quiet colleague raging, shouting, and charging into their place of business with a Winchester.
Unfortunately for Ricky, the entire place burned to the ground, soaked in kerosene and dry as it was, and he soon found himself charged with felony arson, the destruction of United States property, mail tampering, and cruelty to animals. Since it was a federal case, Judge Bexler presided over the proceedings.
The Judge is a conscionable man, and I've never had much cause to question his reason. He was rather forgiving to Ricky, dropping the animal cruelty charge and the mail tampering charge. Jonas Parker defended him, and together they entered a guilty plea for arson. There was little else to do but send him away.
Which brings us back to the lunch counter at Mary's, where poor Margie had dissolved into a fit of weeping. She loved Ricky, she cried, and she wanted him to at least have the comfort and dignity of knowing he'd get to serve his time up at the penitentiary a married man. It'd give him something to look forward to.
Somehow, this pitiful woman inspired something I never expected. Before I knew it, the Judge, Margie, and I were climbing into the black Lincoln and driving to the town jail (I went out of sheer curiosity and because there had to be a witness). And there, in the cell next to the detox tank, Margaret Gladstone Brown and Richard Gerald Whiteman became lawfully wedded as wife and husband, she wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt, and he in his prison orange.
It was the first wedding, I later wrote in the Confluence Spectator, I'd ever seen that actually began with a shotgun.
My office sits on top of the downtown post office, a second floor perch with windows that open wide to a narrow balcony ledge on main street. It's a nice place to work and write from, as I can see people walking here and there, ducking into the shops, holding hands with their children as they stroll, or arguing with Lloyd Mathers, Confluence's one and only traffic officer, as he issues a parking ticket from his Easy-Go golf cart.
I happened to be looking out when I saw the familiar black Lincoln belonging to Judge Bexler pull into a parallel spot. The judge and I have known each other since he was appointed to his seat twelve years ago. I owed him a visit, so I grabbed my coat and went downstairs just in time to say hello. We headed across the street to Mary's for lunch.
We took our usual seats at the counter and gave our orders to June. She's a classy girl, June. Knows just what to say and when to say it. Anyway, the Judge and I always come here for a cheeseburger, so there's never much debating with a menu.
June went back to the kitchen, and Judge Bexler and I began to catch up. Bexler's a federal judge and a fly fisherman. There is an art to fly fishing. I know this only because I've seen the movie A River Runs Through It, and I use that as my visual reference any time we talk about fishing. I'm not much of a fly fisherman, but I always ask how the fish are biting.
"Too cold," he said. "River's too cold this time of year, and the fish are all sunk down."
The town, as you may or may not know, is in the shape of a V, and at its point, the Tinton River and the large creek that runs from Upper Point converge into a single, broad river. Everyone calls the latter the Upper Point River, but having seen it trickle in drought years, I can hardly think to call it more than a creek.
"When do you expect to get out there again?" I asked
"March," he said, as our cheeseburgers arrived. "Maybe March."
We talked further. His mother is in decling health. She lives up on the hill, and she is getting quite old. We bordered on a discussion involving politics, which I try to avoid with the Judge, since we belong to different parties and partisanship as of late hasn't been a civil subject nationally.
Nonetheless, we were halfway through our cheeseburgers when in through the door burst a rotund woman of maybe 30 years. I did not recognize her, which was fine, as she quickly introduced herself as Margaret Gladstone Brown.
"Judge Bexler, I have to see you!" she cried.
The Judge swiveled around in his chair. "Yes?"
"I've got to have a judge!" she continued, breathless. "The man at the courthouse said I'd find you here."
I caught a frustrated glance from Bexler. "He did?" the Judge replied. "I'll have to thank him. Now, Ms. Brown--"
"You can call me Margie," she corrected.
"Yes, Margie, if you don't mind, I'd be happy to see you in my chambers, but at the moment I'm somewhat predisposed with this gentleman," he pointed at me, "and a cheeseburger."
Tears of great substance sprang up from unseen wells, and poor Margie's lip shuddered. "Well..." she paused, stuttering over her words, "I'm...we...it's just that there's no time!"
Most males who've lived past the eighth grade have the keen sense of timing when a woman is close to bursting into sobs. The Judge, for better or worse, had little patience with these kinds of matters, as they were a common occurence in his courtroom. He turned back towards his lunch. Margie looked at me helplessly.
I decided to pipe in. "What do you mean, there's no time?"
"Ricky, my fiance," she said, wiping phlegm from the corners of her mouth, "is going to jail tonight, and we've got to be married before he goes away."
Now, I am a sucker for hearing the stories of how couples meet and court and elope, but I must admit that this was the first time I'd ever heard of such matrimony. "Ricky who?"
The Judge turned around, his eyebrows raised. "You're not talking about Ricky Whiteman, are you?"
"Yes, Judge Bexler. And I know that you're the one who's sending him away--"
"Why, woman!" the judge interrupted. "Are you sure you're wanting to marry Ricky Whiteman?"
Margie didn't say anything in response. She appeared about as taken with guilt as Rick was when the Judge sentenced him to five years for arson.
The story of Ricky Whiteman made a big splash in my local weekly, but perhaps you didn't hear about it where you live. There were passionate editorials penned by Confluence's citizens on either side of the matter of what to do with Ricky, and many coffee conversations here at Mary's brewed over whether he should be let off or locked up.
His guilt, I should point out, was never in question. His was merely a case of unfortunate and unpredictable consequence.
Ricky worked as a mailman in the tiny, two-room post office that sat off the highway ten miles north of the town limits. The office, which still carried the Confluence zip code and was always called Confluence North P.O., was one of the last points of civilization before the highway zig-zagged up and over Harold's Peak, and many of the folks who live up that way stop in to drop off their mail and talk with Zeke, the postmaster. Zeke is a funny Austrian fellow, but that is beside the point.
About seven months ago, though, Confluence had a mid-summer heat stroke. The temperature nearly baked every human who had the misfortune of working in a building without air conditioning--and there are a lot of those still left in these parts.
Well, the heat wasn't kind to critters, either. They came out of the woodwork, so to speak. The wildlife official from across the mountain had to come in and help our town vet tranquilize a bear found wandering through the village. The president of the bank called the police when he found three deer swimming in his back yard pool one morning. Mrs. Jarman, our town librarian, nearly had a heart attack when she discovered a rattlesnake cooling itself on the second rack of the biography shelves. And Confluence North P.O. had a minor infestation of skunks, which somehow crept in overnight and presented their unpleasant surprise to whomever the first person to open the post office happened to be.
Ricky Whiteman happened to catch the business end of a skunk one Monday morning last July, and having spent a considerable amount of time that evening in a lemon juice bath, he was angered beyond reproach Tuesday morning when he encountered the creatures once again.
That night, he went to his house and picked up a can of kerosene to bring back to the post office. His idea was to soak the baseboards around the heat register vents, where he suspected the skunks were gaining entrance to the office. The unpleasant fumes from the kerosene should drive them back, he thought.
And he was right. The next morning, there wasn't a skunk to be found in Confluence North P.O. Ricky propped open the doors for the rest of the day to let the place air out, but he did so with a bit of pride in his chest, pleased as he was with his ingenuity.
Thursday morning, though, as Ricky unlocked the back door to the filing room, he heard a clicking of little toenails on the opposite side of the mail counter. As he edged around the corner, his eyes had just enough time to see a flash of black tail flying vertical, and then he took a direct hit.
Ricky, now literally blinded by fury, stumbled back out of the post office, just as Zeke pulled in. "Vat on urt!?" he shouted. "Vat eez it?" Ricky, his face steaming with skunk goo, stumbled past towards his pick-up and reached for the ten-gauge shotgun he kept on the rack behind the driver's seat.
I doubt I need to explain the sheer physics of it to you, but for the sake of completion Ricky marched back into the post office, Zeke still shouting outside, stomped back around the corner where, over near the stamp machine, the offending skunk again reared its haunches to let its flagrance fly. Ricky pumped the shotgun, his teeth gritted, and pulled the trigger at point blank range, the discharge roaring through the building. He subsequently reduced the skunk into a dozen scattered bits.
Regrettably, though, rage knows few limits. And in Ricky's defense, getting skunked three times in one week will do something to a man's mind. So he pumped the shotgun and blasted away again, too close this time. The fire belching from the barrel of the weapon was just hot enough to ignite the baseboard, which had been soaked two days earlier with kerosene. Within moments, the entire wall was on fire, then the bulletin board pinned full of For Sale ads, then a bundle of Penny Savers, then three crates of mail, and finally the entire place was up in flames.
The scene following was quite a spectacle. Forty-five volunteer firemen (all 28 of Confluence's force and 17 from across the mountain) responded, as did the town's police force, whom Zeke had rightly summoned after he'd arrived to find his normally quiet colleague raging, shouting, and charging into their place of business with a Winchester.
Unfortunately for Ricky, the entire place burned to the ground, soaked in kerosene and dry as it was, and he soon found himself charged with felony arson, the destruction of United States property, mail tampering, and cruelty to animals. Since it was a federal case, Judge Bexler presided over the proceedings.
The Judge is a conscionable man, and I've never had much cause to question his reason. He was rather forgiving to Ricky, dropping the animal cruelty charge and the mail tampering charge. Jonas Parker defended him, and together they entered a guilty plea for arson. There was little else to do but send him away.
Which brings us back to the lunch counter at Mary's, where poor Margie had dissolved into a fit of weeping. She loved Ricky, she cried, and she wanted him to at least have the comfort and dignity of knowing he'd get to serve his time up at the penitentiary a married man. It'd give him something to look forward to.
Somehow, this pitiful woman inspired something I never expected. Before I knew it, the Judge, Margie, and I were climbing into the black Lincoln and driving to the town jail (I went out of sheer curiosity and because there had to be a witness). And there, in the cell next to the detox tank, Margaret Gladstone Brown and Richard Gerald Whiteman became lawfully wedded as wife and husband, she wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt, and he in his prison orange.
It was the first wedding, I later wrote in the Confluence Spectator, I'd ever seen that actually began with a shotgun.
Confluence
Welcome to Confluence, our little corner of America and home to many fine people and their stories. There are mountains in the distance, two rivers in our valley, and flatlands not too far away. There are neighborhoods, and downtown shops, and people walking in the streets. We have good weather here, too.
Come to town now and then, and you'll hear good tales. We're big for a town but small for a city--and the gossip (as any publisher of a weekly newsletter would know) gets around quickly. You'll see some of that here.
See you around.
Come to town now and then, and you'll hear good tales. We're big for a town but small for a city--and the gossip (as any publisher of a weekly newsletter would know) gets around quickly. You'll see some of that here.
See you around.
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