Seven Days I: On Monday, A Funeral

The clouds defiantly kept the sun at bay on the day that Sarah Josephson was buried. Malcolm Josephson thought the deep grayness all too appropriate as it mirrored the only feeling that he had held since the day she died. Malcolm stared at the box containing the body of his mother with his face, as usual, betraying nothing.

The woman seated to his right, an enormous woman with skin nearly as black as his mother's big skillet who had introduced herself as "Aunt Amelia" just before she'd crushed him to the impossibly soft cushion of her huge bosom, was sniffling (quite demurely for such a large woman, Malcolm noted with passing amusement) yet again and reaching over to pat his hand. Malcolm kept wondering why this strange woman was seated in the first row separating him from his brother Robert and his older sisters Amanda and Mary.

To Malcolm's left, his little sister, Alice, tears streaming down her cheeks non-stop, little gasping noises escaping somehow from her tightly-closed mouth, listened intently to the man in the shiny black suit who was addressing the small gathering.

Malcolm couldn't hear any of the man's words, of course, since all sounds outside of a very tight radius of his body were as the roar of the ocean to him, constant and indecipherable.

Alice held his left hand tightly...too tightly at times, but Malcolm didn't complain...his Mother wouldn't have wanted him to make a fuss...of all days to the "good boy" that everybody thought he was, none was more important than this one.

Beyond Alice, Robert Josephson glared, numbly and angrily, at the coffin containing his wife's mortal remains his head nodding constantly to an insistent, lethargic rhythm that only he was privy to.

Malcolm's eyes lingered on his father, regarding him coolly, with vague but nagging hostility. Why is she dead and you're still alive? Robert turned and gave his son a small, hollow smile.

Malcolm frowned and turned his gaze back onto his mother's coffin. He wondered if it would be okay to scratch his neck where the goddamn tie was making him itch like crazy. He decided that it wouldn't be and endured the tie in roaring silence.

And just so he endured the occasionally painful grip Alice had on his left hand and the unwanted "comfort" of Aunt Amelia's fleshy hand and the sidelong glances and half-hearted smiles of his father. All of these things he endured in gathering, roaring silence.

The man in the shiny black suit finished murmuring whatever it was he had been murmuring and came over to the front row of chairs where Malcolm and his family were sitting.

Looking very concerned and interested, the man bent close and murmured to each of them...to Robert Jr., dapper in his Army uniform, looking very much like the son of the father he had been pointedly ignoring since his arrival...to Amanda, only her quivering lower lip and liquid eyes betraying her otherwise impassive face's turmoil; and Mary, weeping openly and without shame.

The man in the shiny black suit came closer, exchanging words with a man who had been introduced to Malcolm as "Uncle Samuel" and who was Aunt Amelia's thin, mustard-skinned husband whose haunted, bloodshot eyes had inspired both empathy and revulsion in Malcolm earlier that morning when first they met.

The man, whose coat was slightly but distinctly frayed when seen up close, stooped to exchange words with Aunt Amelia and lingered longer than he had planned to as she seized his arm as soon as he was in range and had refused to release him until she finished saying whatever it was she wanted to say. The man eventually freed himself from Aunt Amelia's fleshy grasp and seized Malcolm's right hand with both of his own. The man's hands were cool and moist.

Malcolm frowned slightly and nodded absently at the man's murmuring; the roaring in his ears had swollen to a symphony and even at closer range the man's words were unintelligible gibberish. The man in the shiny black suit released Malcolm's hand and moved on to Alice and to Robert, Sr.

Malcolm's father rose to his feet and took Alice's hand and moved towards the casket...which was open though Malcolm had pointedly refused to look into it during the entirety of the service. Malcolm felt the lump in his throat swell and hot tears sting at the corners of his eyes but he could not move.

And then Amanda was there...looking too much like their mother and gently taking his hand. Amanda tugged on Malcolm's hand and led him to his feet. They walked in their father's wake toward the coffin. Ahead of them, Alice jerked back with a start and buried her head against her father's side.

All about him voices were murmuring...or were they singing?...but Malcolm couldn't understand any of it.

He wanted to run...run as long and as hard as he could. He wanted his mother to smile and rub his head and tell him it was going to be okay...he wanted her to frown and tell him to be a good boy...he wanted her to do or say something...anything...just sit up and say something...

With his hand holding on tight to that of his big sister, Malcolm look at the body in the coffin. Her eyes were shut and she looked as if she were merely asleep...her skin glistened like new caramel candy...her mouth was set in an expressionless expression so unlike his mother (a woman of great laughter and great anger and other quite tangible and vivid emotions.)

The lump in his throat shrank and the tears died before they were fully born and Malcolm felt very cold and very alone. This was not his mother. Whatever it was, it wasn't Sarah Josephson anymore.

Amanda's grip on his hand tightened as her resolve to be strong weakened and a plaintive shudder coursed through her body. The roar in Malcolm's ears was subsiding and he could hear the soft prayer/plea... "Mama"... that escaped from Amanda's trembling lips. Behind him he could hear Aunt Amelia's dainty sniffling again.

Malcolm wondered if he was supposed to be crying, too...and if so, why wasn't he? He squeezed Amanda's hand reassuringly instead; she looked down and smiled and then bent over and kissed his cheek. Amanda put her arm across Malcolm's shoulders and they followed their father and Alice out of the church and onto the parking lot. The skies were darker and they were greeted by the cool, demanding breeze of a gathering storm.

Robert Jr. relieved Robert Sr. of the still-sobbing Alice and the old man went glad-handing the friends and family who had come. Malcolm stood with his brother and his sisters for a while but slipped away as Aunt Amelia and some other large women beckoned them. Malcolm went and leaned against his father's big blue Cadillac and stared up at the grey clouds dancing ominously in the sky.

He looked over the buzzing groups of people...Amanda nodding solemnly as Aunt Amelia went on about something or the other; Robert Jr., still holding Alice in his arms, talking to someone else; Mary talking to the man in the shiny black suit. Uncle Samuel was off to himself smoking a cigarette and constantly glancing at his watch. Robert Sr. was talking softly with a large black woman who seemed to know him quite well.

And then Lloyd was there. Lloyd West was Gabriel's best friend. A light-skinned boy with a boisterous nature, his friendship with the reticent Malcolm was something that was not widely understood at school. But Malcolm didn't care. And, just as importantly, nor did Lloyd.

Lloyd looked uncomfortable in his dark blue suit but he mustered up a smile for his friend just the same.

Malcolm tried to smile back but could only muster a fleeting grin. That seemed to satisfy the atypically-silent Lloyd who nodded and leaned back against the car next to Malcolm.

Malcolm wondered, again, if he was supposed to be crying...and if so, why wasn't he? And then he heard his mother's voice. Through the swirling din without and the dampening roar within, she spoke...softly, soothingly...but he couldn't make out the words.

Malcolm suddenly felt warm and alone and safe and afraid. He felt a tugging on his sleeve. Lloyd was holding out a handkerchief for some reason...Malcolm took it as he noticed that tears were, quite suddenly, pouring down his cheeks. The clouds disappeared. Lloyd disappeared. Everybody in the parking lot disappeared. Except for Amanda.

He tried to call out to her but the lump in his throat had swelled up again and he couldn't speak. He clawed at his tie, yanking it away before it squeezed the very life's breath out of him.

Amanda looked over at him with her mother's eyes...with his mother's eyes. Malcolm cried out Amanda's name and broke and ran for her. Amanda caught him on the fly and hugged him to her as if she would never, ever let him go.

"Oh, baby boy...baby boy..." Amanda said, these being the first distinct words Malcolm had heard in hours.

The rest of the world faded slowly back into Malcolm's view. Lloyd was standing a couple of steps away holding Malcolm's discarded tie gingerly.

Aunt Amelia was murmuring and sniffling again. Robert Jr., still holding Alice who had cried herself to sleep, and Mary were standing protectively next to them. And Malcolm's father stood over them...his eyes ablaze with love...and jealousy...with anger and sympathy and disgust. And, more than anything else, his eyes were ablaze with embarrassment.

But Malcolm didn't care that he was making a scene. Amanda didn't care either. Malcolm clung to his sister, whimpering and crying, until the grey skies stopped threatening and actually opened up. The people in the church parking lot scurried to their cars as the rain began to pour down.

Robert, Jr. carried Alice over to the car he had rented and Mary followed close behind. Robert, Sr. reached down and took Malcolm from Amanda's embrace and carried him limply to his Cadillac; Amanda followed close behind.

Malcolm slumped into the back seat. Lloyd, his hair soaked and matted, tapped at the window. Malcolm rolled down the window and accepted his tie back with a grateful, embarrassed nod.

Lloyd's mother, a creamy skinned thin woman with finely-detailed features, stood behind him holding a big blue umbrella over the two of them. She bent down and spoke softly to Robert, Sr. and then to Malcolm and then she led Lloyd away towards their car. Malcolm rolled up the window.

Amanda climbed over into the back seat with Malcolm and pulled him into a protective embrace. Malcolm snuggled as close as he could to his big sister and shut his eyes tight. He slipped into a brief but deep sleep. He awoke with a start as the car hit a rut in the road, disoriented by the hum of the engine and the rhythm of the rain on the roof.

"It's okay, baby boy," Amanda said, smiling down on him with their mother's eyes. "You're okay."

"'Course he's okay, girl," Robert, Sr. said impatiently. "Ain't you, Mal?"

Malcolm swallowed hard and coughed. "Yeah, daddy," he replied in a tightly-coiled voice, "I'm fine."

Robert, Sr. cleared his throat and reached for the car's radio. "That's my boy." Amanda frowned and tightened her embrace on Malcolm.

Malcolm closed his eyes again and from somewhere distant...through the hum of the engine and the pounding of the rain...he could hear music...Jackie Wilson swooping and swirling over and about an infectious melody...your love keeps liftin' me higher than I've ever been lifted before...

He drifted back to sleep hearing the engine and the music and the rain and wondering if the sun was ever going to come back again (part of him hoped and prayed that it would not.)

Amanda woke him when they got home and he followed her out of the car. Robert Sr. mumbled something and Amanda closed the door behind her. Malcolm and Amanda stood there in the rain as their father's Cadillac roared off.

They stood there until Robert Jr., his face hard and unforgiving, came and led them out of the rain and into the house their mother had lived in and died in.

Robert Jr. had to return to the Army; Mary had to return to her husband. Amanda stayed with Malcolm and Alice until their father returned, some three days later defiantly sheepish and smelling of other places and other women. Malcolm had no more tears after his outburst…he spent most of the three days holding his little sister while she cried and thinking dark thoughts.

It would be years before Malcolm would forgive either of his parents.

On Tuesday, An Awakening

Seven Days: introduction and prologue

Seven Days is the story of one character's life as told through 7 days of his life. Not 7 consecutive days but rather 7 days stretching from his childhood to his dotage.

Each day of the week is represented along the way in order (Monday through Sunday)...some of the stories are told in first person, some in third, and one is epistolary...with the goal towards giving a (hopefully) telling overview of the life of one very complicated, utterly ordinary man.

First, a prologue delivered by our protagonist:

My name is Malcolm. Malcolm Eli Josephson. I was born black in a small town in Mississippi at a time when being black in Mississippi wasn't the most prudent thing to be.

I was the second (and final) son and the fourth (of five) children of Robert and Sarah Josephson. They had thought themselves done with making babies but then, after a gap of seven years, I was born. And two years later, my sister Alice came along.

My father coaxed crops out of another man's tired, overworked dirt until we were turned out with no fanfare or apologies. When we moved to New Orleans my father went to work for the government... delivering the mail...until he turned 65 and was turned out with a gold watch and a pension. He and his second wife retired to California.

My father taught me that both love and pain came from the end of a well-worn leather belt and he taught that a dizzying hodgepodge of feelings...love, fear, hope, anger, regret, recrimination, resignation... could be displayed for all the caring world to see on a seemingly impassive mask. He was angry much of the time...and gone (working or whoring) other times...and we never seemed to want to really speak to each other.

My father punched my mother once in the presence of my sisters, my brother, and I. Only once. She wiped the blood from her lip and the tear from her eye and told him in a cool, low voice that if he ever hit her again in front of her children that she would kill him.

To the best of my knowledge, my father never hit my mother again regardless of our whereabouts.

My mother washed Mississippi mud, sweat, blood, piss, and shit off white people's clothes because we needed the money...and because she wouldn't let our father take us out of school to work with him.

She washed the same things off our clothes because that was her real job...or so my father often reminded her (especially when he was drunk...or there was only pot liquor for dinner...or when he needed to say something that he had wanted to say to a white man hours earlier.) She was tired all of the time and we never seemed to have time to speak to each other.

When we moved to New Orleans, my mother mopped floors in a hospital at night after mopping floors at home during the day. By the time I was 12, my brother and older sisters had left to make their own way. The same year, not long after my little sister Alice turned 10, my mother laid down to rest.

She never got up again.

My father showed little emotion during my mother's funeral. And afterwards, he disappeared for three days. Alice cried in my arms for those three days but I found that I had no tears to shed and just rocked her and took care of her the best I could. Our oldest sister Amanda stayed and took care of both of us.

My father came back...smelling vaguely of stale cigarettes, old beer, and dime store perfume...without a word of explanation. It was not the first or the last time something like that would occur...but it would be the last time that I would care.

I graduated high school and went into the army. Alice got pregnant and went to live with my mother's sister in Tupelo.

My brother Robert Jr. made a life for himself in the military; my sister Amanda made a life for herself with a man much like our father. My sister Mary got lost in drugs...and then got lost period. Alice found a man who loved her like a queen and lived the life I would have wished for her.

My father delivered the mail... drank himself into a stupor on weekends...and married a very fat and very black woman with three little kids of her own. She made him become the husband and the father that my mother, my sisters, my brother, and I had always hoped that he would become for us.

I didn't see him much after that and I didn't cry when he died.

I left the army after four years. I let the government put me through college. I became a banker. And then a real estate salesman. And then a car salesman. And then a banker again. I made money and I moved to California and I bought things. I got married twice...and divorced twice. I had three kids and seven extramarital affairs. I have had sex with a total of 29 different women in my lifetime and I remember them all distinctly and fondly.

I have loved and been loved...or at least I think I have been...sometimes I was just not sure (and sometimes, truth to be told, I just didn't care.)

I am afraid of authority...and I cling to it just the same. I don't trust white people (or any other color of people for that matter) and I don't trust women to stay (and so, of course, my second wife was a white woman...and she didn't stay.) I don't believe in happy endings and I don't believe in the happy hereafter but I have known happiness from time to time..

I have made countless mistakes in my life and done any number of things right at the same time.

My name is Malcolm...and this is part of the story of my life...

On Monday, A Funeral

Random Notes (Grey Friday edition)

Bah. No football this weekend (yeah, I know that it will true for every weekend after next Sunday...I do not count the Pro Bowl as a serious football game and neither do most of the guys who play in it...until August but I'll deal with that when we get there) and it's raining again.

A grey weekend seems likely...especially with having to tackle the task of pulling together information to give to the accountant so that he can sort out the tax situation (it could be that we all become Bush Republicans...no matter what our real political stripe...when we're figuring out what we owe to the tax man...cut them taxes, Mr. President! :-)

(The tax thing isn't really that...well...taxing since records are kept online and receipts are neatly stored in a filing cabinet.)

Good weekend to see one or two of those Oscar-nominated movies perhaps (or take the time to watch those Netflix movies I've had sitting on the shelf for the past week.) Maybe make a dent in my ever-burgeoning reading stack. And there are poems to be edited and formatted for a project. Or perhaps I can make a stab at finally finish the novel I've been working on for far too long.

Hmm, maybe not so grey after all (the cynical optimist suddenly seeing that glass as half-full...)

A week-long writing experiment begins to be presented in this space on Sunday (for reasons that will make sense then.)

*****
Currently in my CD player:
"Get Away from Me" Nellie McKay
"Waltz of a Ghetto Fly" Amp Fiddler
"Bigger is Always Better" Deni Bonet

Currently sporting selections from my collection of colorful bookmarks:
Chronicles, Volume 1 - Bob Dylan
A Serious Way of Wondering - Reynolds Price
The Godfather Returns - Mark Winegardner

DVDs patiently waiting for my attention:
Talk to Her (from Netflix)
Anchorman (from Netflix)
Swept Away (the original, not the Madonna misfire...from Netflix)
Batman: The Animated Series, Volume 2
Alfred Hitchcock: The Signature Collection (Xmas gift...thanks again, Barrett :-)

Lisa-Anne and the Lonely Woodsman (a folk tale)

In a quiet village near a quiet forest, the people were neighbors of the truest spirit and rarely spoke in hushed whispers about others.

Save, that is, for the man known to most only as the Lonely Woodsman.

Though few can claim honestly to have seen him...his comings and goings for supplies are the stuff of ghost stories and old wives' tales...he is known to live in the deepest, most foreboding depths of the great forest tending a garden of exotic flowers and protecting the property that has, legend has it, been in his family for more generations than anyone could put number to.

He is said to be a man of dour continence, monstrous strength, and withering melancholy. A terrible, lonely hermit foregoing the company of his fellow man in favor of a sad, solitary existence in the shadows of his corner of the quiet forest.

The Lonely Woodsman will take you if you're bad...the Lonely Woodsman doesn't like bad little boys or bad little girls...

Lisa-Anne had grown up hearing these admonishments...parents all throughout the village invoked the Woodsman's name to cow their children into proper behavior...grown up hearing the hushed tales of the Lonely Woodsman shared over fences and over coffee on those rare occasions when he came into the village, soft and unobtrusive as a whisper, and stole away again, the storekeeper being the only one to tell the tale.

Lisa-Anne never believed the tales...for they were always lurid and fanciful...nor the threats. In her heart, she had always known that the Lonely Woodsman wasn't frightening...or supernatural...or malicious.

He was, she had decided at a very early age, just misunderstood. He was, in fact as his nickname stated, just lonely.

Lisa-Anne's heart had reached out to the Lonely Woodsman...from her nights as a little girl including him in her most heartfelt prayers to the Lord God to her maiden's nights now knowing that her love could make him free. If only he knew...somebody could love him and he wouldn't be lonely anymore.

In the summer of her nineteenth year, Lisa-Anne gathered her courage, her chaste love, and her steely resolve and slipped out of her parents' house and down the path towards the forest one clear, portentous morning.

Making sure that she had not been followed, Lisa-Anne stole away off the path she had been admonished to stay on from the day she could walk and lost herself in the gathering shadows of the deeper forest. Though no one ever went there, everyone knew well the way to the land guarded and kept by the Lonely Woodsman.

Lisa-Anne's courage began to falter as the woods grew denser and less familiar...as the way home seemed lost in the shadows behind her. In an instant of panic, she turned to run back to the path and was lost. The curious cry of a sleepy owl, his rest disturbed by her frantic thrashing in the brush below, startled Lisa-Anne and she stumbled against a dead tree. She lost her footing and went tumbling, head over heels, into a crevice she hadn't even known was there.

The old dead tree, dislodged by her futile attempts to regain her footing, followed her down, wedging itself securely on top of her in the damp crevice.

Lisa-Anne, stunned and scraped but otherwise unhurt by her fall save for a dull ache in her right ankle, struggled against the old tree but it would not budge and she could not get out from under it. Her first instinct was to cry but she knew that tears were of no use to her then and there. And so she continued to struggle against the tree...but her strength was not up to the task and she lay back in the cool grass and damp earth and looked up to the tops of the trees above her. Here she would die, she thought, and no one would ever know what had happened to her.

They might even blame the Lonely Woodsman as they had when others had disappeared from the village (even though it was generally known that most of those who had "disappeared" had in fact escaped to the towns and cities beyond the great forest for reasons all their own.)

Lisa-Anne began to cry...tears for herself, pride and folly leading to a fall as her father had often warned they would...and tears for the Lonely Woodsman, who would never know that somebody loved him.

And then, he was there.

He was dark and massive, a giant with massive shoulders and broad powerful hands (with, Lisa-Anne noted to herself, tapered, heartbreakingly-evocative fingers); a great black beard and dark, unsmiling brown eyes that bore into hers.

Lisa-Anne gasped and tried to speak but found that she could not. The Woodsman slipped down the incline into the crevice without saying a word. He took hold of the dead tree and hefted it casually up off Lisa-Anne and tossed it aside.

A shudder went through Lisa-Anne as she witnessed this confirmation of the Woodsman's fabled strength. She gasped again when he reached down to pick her up but instead of being crushed by his awful strength she found herself lifted from the crevice with wounding tenderness. The pain in her ankle grew suddenly sharper and she went limp in his arms, fleeing consciousness to escape the pain.

Lisa-Anne woke disoriented sometime later. She found herself alone in a neat, warm cabin. She on a sturdy sofa and covered by a handmade quilt of many subtle colors and her ankle was expertly bandaged.

She sat up and looked around the cabin. There were books and candles, sturdy wooden furniture, a red-brick fireplace, and framed photographs that reached back into someone's storied family history. From behind a closed door, she could smell a fragrant aroma teasing her senses.

She heard singing...deep and masculine and melodic...in the near distance and she rose, unsteadily at first on her wounded ankle, and made her way to the door.

A cool breeze was dancing through the clearing...for that, she now saw, was where this cabin was...and in a garden of bright flowers and healthy fruits and vegetables, was the man...the Lonely Woodsman... the great, muscled expanse of his torso basking in the late afternoon sunlight, contentedly singing as he worked the soil and tended his plants. He was not, Lisa-Anne noted, nearly as old as her elders’ stories implied he was. Perhaps there were a succession of Lonely Woodsmen, she mused, wondering in that instant where his parents were…where his…wife…was…

The Woodsman noticed Lisa-Anne on the porch of his cabin and stopped singing. He rose and walked towards her. He picked up his shirt where he had tossed and put it on without fastening any of the buttons.

"How’s your ankle?" he said as he drew closer.

Flustered by the sound of his voice, Lisa-Anne stammered wordlessly and then found her voice. "It's fine, thank you..."

The Woodsman nodded. Seeing that he wasn't going to say anything else, Lisa-Anne said, "Thank you for saving me...I thought I was going to die..."

"We're all going to die, girl," he replied softly. "Your day just wasn't today."

"Thanks to you."

The Woodsman started to say something and then thought better of it. Then, after a pause, he said, "Why were you so deep in the forest? I thought you villagers knew not to get too far off the path."

Lisa-Anne winced at the hint of sarcasm she thought she heard in his voice but let it go. "I was looking for you..."

The Woodsman's eyebrow rose. "Why?"

Lisa-Anne blushed and took a deep breath. "I didn't want you to be so lonely," she said in a small, self-conscious voice.

The Woodsman looked directly into Lisa-Anne's eyes, looking for something though Lisa-Anne couldn't begin to fathom what. "I'm not lonely, girl," he said, not unkindly. "I am just alone."

Lisa-Anne frowned, not completely comprehending his words but noting that there was no wife in his world. The Woodsman smiled, not unkindly, for the first time. Lisa-Anne was wounded again by the giant man's tenderness.

"You do not have to understand," he said. "I do and that is all that matters."

He walked up the stair to the porch. "Come," he said, holding out his massive hand. "You have been sleeping all day and it will be dark soon. We will eat and in the morning I will take you home."

Lisa-Anne's heart filled with longing and dread at the thought of spending a night in the heart of the quiet forest with the Woodsman. She took his hand, marveling at its rough-hewn softness, and followed him back into the cabin. They passed through the room where she had slept into the kitchen.

On an immaculately maintained wood stove was a kettle full of vegetable soup.

They ate their soup at the small kitchen table in silence.

"I'm not much for conversation," the Woodsman apologized at one point. "I don't have many visitors...."

Lisa-Anne nodded. "I understand."

"No you don't," the Woodsman said. "But I thank you for saying that just the same."

As darkness fell, the Woodsman lit candles and lit a fire in the red-brick fireplace. He installed Lisa-Anne in what was his favorite chair and gave her a book he thought she would enjoy.

And, in fact, the book was one that reached into her very heart and she wondered how he knew.

The Woodsman settled down by the fireplace, barefoot and comfortable, and took up a book of his own.

After several hours, Lisa-Anne grew tired again and she started to yawn.

The Woodsman looked up from his book. "Perhaps we should retire," he said.

The pangs of longing and dread filled Lisa-Anne's very being and she could only nod. She rose from the chair and, forgetting her injury, put too much pressure on her right leg. She cried out and started to fall.

With speed and grace belied by his size, the Woodsman caught her on the fly and drew her up into his solid arms. Without saying a word, he carried her towards another door and gently pushed it open. In flickering lamplight, Lisa-Anne could see that it was the Woodman's bedroom...sturdy and solid in unpainted natural woods.

The Woodsman placed her down on the huge bed and Lisa-Anne, braced expectantly for whatever was going to happen next.

The Woodsman moved to the back of the room and lit a candlelight lamp in a small bathroom just off the bedroom. "I don't have a bathtub," the Woodsman said. "But that shower pump brings fresh water directly from the well."

He moved to the door leading to the living room. "I'll be out here if you need anything," he said. "Good night." And he was gone.

Lisa-Anne sat up on the bed, watching as the candlelight from the other room slowly disappeared and there was only the faint glow from the fireplace left.

She listened as the Woodman shed his clothes and threw them over his chair and then heard him take the quilt of many colors and settle down on the floor of the living room.

Lisa-Anne rose from the bed and hobbled into the bathroom. She took off her clothes and washed herself with water from the shower. She extinguished the bathroom lamp and went back into the bedroom. She folded her dress and her undergarments and put them at the foot of the bed. She put out the lamp and slipped naked under the downy blankets of the Woodsman's bed.

Lisa-Anne laid in the darkness waiting. But only the steady rhythm of the Woodsman's breathing from the other room and the soothing night songs of the birds and animals of the forest could be heard. Lisa-Anne, disappointed and relieved, slipped into a peaceful sleep.

In the morning, Lisa-Anne woke momentarily disoriented but she quickly composed herself. She slipped into her clothes and went out into the living room. The soreness in her ankle was all but gone.

The Woodsman wasn't there and she was briefly worried. But then she heard his song coming from the forest. He entered carrying a small basket full of apples.

"Good morning," he said. "Did you sleep well?"

“Very well, thank you," she answered. And indeed she had. They ate apples and toasted oats and fresh honey at the little kitchen table. "Isn't it awful living here all alone?" she ventured to ask at one point.

He smiled, a bit wistfully Lisa-Anne imagined. "No," he said resolutely. "It is neither good nor bad...it simply is."

Lisa-Anne had no answer for that so she said nothing else.

After breakfast, the Woodsman put on a backpack and said, "Come, I will take you home now."

Lisa-Anne wanted to protest but she did not.

They walked through the forest in silence until the Woodsman, completely comfortable in the foreboding woods, started to sing a song that reached up into the sky obscured by the majestic trees...that reached down to the deepest depths of Lisa-Anne's heart.

In a surprisingly short time, Lisa-Anne could smell the distinctive aromas of the village’s morning and she knew that they would soon be there. The moment was slipping away and her heart was breaking because of it.

As the path to the village loomed in the distance, Lisa-Anne put her hand on the Woodsman's arm. The Woodsman turned around and looked at her.

"I need to tell you that you don't have to be alone," she blurted out. "I need to tell you that I love you."

The Woodsman looked into her eyes. He reached out and gently touched her face. "You don't know me, child," he said not unkindly.

“I’m not a child,” she replied, just a bit petulantly. She started to say something else but he put one of his great fingers to her lips to shush her. He bent down and brought his lips to hers softly. He brushed the tear from her eye and then he took her hand and continued to lead her to the path.

As they reached the path, they could hear voices...the men of the village were searching for her, Lisa-Anne surmised.

The Woodsman reached into the backpack and brought out the book that he had given her to read the night before. "I want you to have this."

Lisa-Anne, a tear tracking down her cheek, took the book and clutched it to her chest.

"Lisa-Anne!" a voice called out. It was her father and she turned to see him rushing up the path towards her followed by a dozen other men. Lisa-Anne's father gathered her up into his arms and showered her with tears and kisses.

When Lisa-Anne turned, the Woodsman was gone without a trace.

Lisa-Anne allowed herself to drawn into the celebration of her safe return but as the happy throng ambled up the path back to the village, she strained to hear the Woodsman's song echoing from the darkest depths of the quiet forest.

Sometime later, Lisa-Anne disappeared again. She would not return this time.

For her parents she left a brief note: Please don't cry...I am safe...and I am not alone.

the commuter trains

The man apparently wanted to commit suicide (it's said that he'd attempted the act before.) So in the cool darkness of a grey, rainy morning, he parked his SUV on railroad tracks north of Los Angeles and waited for a commuter train filled with people on their way into the city...on their way to their places of employment in and about the downtown area of the City of Angels. He parked his SUV on the tracks and waited for the thundering train to do the deed he thought he wanted done.

But, as the southbound train hurtled into view down the tracks, one of the better angels of human existence...the usually formidable will to live and survive...took hold of him and he left his SUV and fled to safety. And, from that place of safety, he watched (in horror one would hope) as the commuter train struck his SUV and careened off its tracks. Watched as the commuter train tumbled awkwardly off its tracks and collided with freight train on another track and into yet another commuter train going northbound.

The man didn't flee. He waited (praying for forgiveness from whatever God he believes in one would hope) while the authorities rallied to the scene. He waited, perhaps hearing the screams of the dead and injured, the trapped and the terrified...waited looking at the carnage his supposed wish for suicide had created. He waited until he was taken into custody by horrified policemen undoubtedly daunted by the task of comprehending the whole incomprehensible scene.

As of this writing, there are at least 10 people dead and 200 injured (some unknown number critically.)

He apparently wanted to commit suicide. He failed. And in failing he sent other unknowing souls who had no desire to die this day...people just living their lives...to their sudden, awful deaths. One hopes the bitter irony isn't lost on him.

And the Oscar goes to...

Every year when the Oscar nominations are announced, I tell myself that I'm going to go out and see the movies nominated in major categories that I haven't seen yet. Most years it proves to be a hollow promise.

I love movies but making myself squeeze out time to go the local multiplex is increasingly hard...the lack of free time on weekends, the rising ticket prices, the scarcity of interesting offerings in said multiplex, and, of late, my Netflix subscription conspire to give me leave to wait for the (increasingly rapid) DVD releases.

I didn't sweat the promise so much last year because Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was a mortal lock to collect a bunch of the little naked guys and I had indeed already seen that so I figured I was cool (and it turned out I was right.)

This year, I've already seen only one of the Best Picture nominees (Ray) but a couple of them are only just breaking wide (listen to me with the Hollywood insider talk :-) and showing up at the aforementioned multiplex in my community (there are, of course, other theaters throughout the city but with an 18-screen complex just down the road one would expect to be able to find at least 1 or 2 interesting movies there...though, that said, one is often disappointed on that score...)

It probably says something significant about me that I've seen all 3 of the movies nominated for Best Animated Feature but I'm not going to linger there too long (but hey, I'm not ashamed to say that I still think that watching The Incredibles was probably the most fun to be had in a movie theater all of last year.)

So I have a month or so to make myself a more knowledgeable Oscar viewer (the Oscars and the Grammys are the only award shows I sit through these days...I am quite content to give the other 5 dozen or so televised awards show a collective pass without a hint of regret.) A month to discover if the rampant critical hype about Sideways and Million Dollar Baby is justified. A month to get over my lingering (and undoubtedly unfair) impression that Leo doesn't have the gravity to properly portray Howard Hughes. A month to decide if Martin Scorsese will deserve his long overdue Oscar for The Aviator (as opposed to them giving it to him for his remarkable body of work) if he wins this year. A month to see if Jim Carrey's sweet and nuanced performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (another movie I actually did see last year) was really outclassed by the eventual nominees in the Best Actor category.

I'm not kidding myself, I'm probably not going to see them all...but it's Oscar time and the promise is made to myself out of habit. So wish me luck just the same.

Ghosts

The old black Cadillac disappeared in an impressive cloud of dust and invective as it roared up the Ranch’s entry road towards the highway in the distance. You had to hand it to the fifth Mrs. Johnston, the woman really knew how to make an exit.

I watched her go from the far end of the sturdy porch that wound around the entirety of the house. Her departure was a matter of neither surprise nor sadness to me. I wiped my hands with the towel slung over my shoulder as the dust cloud churned towards the wooden gate with the faded sign (“Johnston Ranch”) that mocked the remnants of a once-thriving enterprise.

Abraham Johnston, his broad leathery hands clutching the railing with undirected fury, stood on the porch in his beloved, bedraggled robe watching his wife take her final leave of him.

We’d both played this scene before.

The Cadillac swerved on the highway with an angry squeal and charged off towards town. The morning silence reasserted itself as the mustard cloud of dust settled down to the parched earth and the growl of the Cadillac engine faded into the distance.

Abe Johnston, still holding onto the railing for dear life, glanced at me those hard gray eyes of his filled with something liquid, something hot and remorseful. “What’re you lookin’ at, boy?” the old bear growled feebly. “Ain’t you got no work t’do?”

I shrugged and scratched at my always-unruly beard. “You ain’t mad at me, Abraham,” I said evenly. I nodded at him with defiance, understanding, deference, and a modicum of pity. His resolve deflated, he frowned ruefully and nodded back just so.

I turned to walk back down the porch to the kitchen door. “You ain’t mad at her either,” I called back.

In my 20 years at the ranch I’d seen any number of women come into the house on the arm of its inebriated master. They were all distressingly alike: desperate party “girls” who used too much makeup, drank too much cheap liquor, and who deluded themselves into thinking that no one could tell, with but the briefest of glances, that platinum blonde (or bright red or jet black) wasn’t their natural hair color.

Abe Johnston was a powerful figure of a man even with 67 long, hard years under his belt. When I first met him he had a casual swagger that was undeniable and compelling.

Back then, at 18, fresh from the city and longing to find someplace to belong, the imposing cowboy had seemed something of a godsend. Now the solid, muscled body the photos from his youth celebrated had given way to a leathery, tanned beefiness that he carried with weary but undeniable grace when he was sober (and still well enough even when he was drunk.)

The women he met in the forlorn bars in town liked him. Most of them were from nearby towns…or even from the city…and they were drawn to what they saw in him. He’d buy the women drinks and charm with robust tales of his father and his grandfather; tales of carving a vast, thriving ranch out of arid nothingness. Tales of real men accomplishing the bold deeds that made up the tapestries of their lives.

These women were, as a matter of course, far too self-absorbed to recognize the crushing sadness that came into Abe Johnston’s eyes whenever his storytelling drifted too near to the present. They would just run their fingers through the woolen bristle of his gray beard or put his cavernous Stetson on top of their brilliant hairdos and eagerly agree to go with him when he would invite them back to the ranch for a “nightcap”.

In the still hours of the night Johnston Ranch was still a relatively impressive sight, something to perk up the imaginations of the women looking for one last refuge with a man who will take care of them. On those nights when Abe would invite one of the women home I would hear them stumble in together, laughing and whispering, as they took the stairs onto the grand porch and clambered into the house. Listening from my room, which was right next to Abe’s bedroom, the ritual quality of the process never failed to amaze and bemuse me. Abe Johnston’s boots would clump loud on the hardwood floors, the masculine thumping masking the more dainty tapping of bright (most often red) high heeled pumps. The rest of the ritual was invariably the same: boots thumping to the floor followed, in short order, by giggling, moaning, the rhythmic squeaking of worn bedsprings; and then grunting, an occasional feminine yelp, and, eventually, humid silence followed by satiated stereo snoring.

If I was still awake after all that, and most often I was, I would sigh deeply and wonder yet again why I had stayed at the ranch for so long. I would wonder, yet again, what I was looking for…or what I had found. Then I would laugh, briefly and ruefully, at both Abe Johnston and at myself, and then roll over and go to sleep.

In the morning the lovers would follow the smells of coffee and biscuits to my kitchen. Abe Johnston would always be wearing the robe his first wife had made for him, even though it barely fit across his solid girth, and nothing else. His companion would be squeezed back into her rumpled party dress which was, almost needless to say, much too loud for morning. Abe would acknowledge me with a grunt and a weary shrug as I filled his old mug with coffee; his companion would usually only acknowledge me only with apprehension and some measure of embarrassment.

“That nigger work for you?” was inevitably the question overheard as I left the kitchen to tend to the horses.

“Yep,” Abe Johnston would reply softly. “He been with me a while.”

In the regular course of things Andy Taylor’s taxicab would come rumbling up the entry road and honk. From the barn or the corral I would watch as the woman gave Abe Johnston a wet, hopeful kiss just before he closed the door of the cab behind her. (One of the more brazen of his companions reached into his robe and gave his penis an affectionate pat. Abe Johnston didn’t react one way or the other.) Abe would be back up the stairs and into the house before Andy’s cab was halfway up the entry road.

The women rarely made return visits.

On some nights there would be but a single set of footfalls…a drunkard’s precarious ballet in the enveloping darkness…and I would know that no one had come home of Abe Johnston. On such nights he substituted even more whiskey for a woman’s company and he would be barely vertical. I always wondered which angels were charged with getting the old man home on such nights. I would get up from my bed and go help him to his bed. He’d relax heavily against me as I guided him into his room.

“…you’re my only frien’…” he would slur affectionately. “…you’re a good boy…”

“Ain’t been a boy in a while, Abraham,” I always replied without rancor, “but I am probably your only friend…”

Letting him rest down on the bed, I’d pull off his boots and help him undress.

“…why…why d’ya stay wit’ me…?” he would often ask forlornly. “Ain’t no damn good t’nobody…ev’rybody else lef’ me…”

I would gently push him down to the bed and cover him up. Often I would have to resist the urge to kiss his cheek. “Go to sleep, old man,” I would say firmly. I’d shut off the light and, as I made my way back to my room, I would find myself wondering about his question. Why was I staying on a dead ranch with its sad ghost of an owner? But the question was fleeting and the answer was all too apparent. I would know that I was exactly where I was needed to be. I would know, for better or for worse, that I was exactly where I was needed. I would think about my father…the father I never knew…and wonder if he was anything like Abe Johnston. Then I’d curse myself for a sentimental fool and take myself back to bed.

The fifth Mrs. Johnston first came to the ranch one hot yellow day in her ragtop Cadillac. She was looking for directions to the majesty of the West she had been dreaming about for years…the same majesty I had come looking for some 20 years earlier. Abe Johnston had been sober for a while then…having gone on the wagon after a particularly nasty fall…and he made for an impressive sight as he rode up on the calico stallion. They talked for hours and, even though he was more than 30 years her senior (the fifth Mrs. Johnston being two years younger than me), she found herself utterly charmed by rugged old Abe Johnston.

After she’d left that evening, Abe proclaimed that she was going to be his salvation. I reminded Abe that he had been down that road twice before in just the time that I had been employed by him but he chose to pointedly ignore me.

Two weeks later they were married in the courthouse in town. I was the best man. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston went to New Orleans for their honeymoon.

Not long after their return, the fifth Mrs. Johnston came to me after breakfast and announced that there were going to be changes now that she was the woman of the house. “I want you to move your stuff into that bunkhouse in the back,” she said, her arms crossed defiantly across her chest.

“Nobody’s lived in that place for years,” I responded patiently as I continued to wash the dishes. “We ain’t had a crew here since we sold the herd off for back taxes so we’ve had no reason to keep the bunkhouse up. I go in there to write sometimes but I have no intention of living there.”

“Well, you’re hired help and I don’t want you in my house,” she said crisply, “so you’ll be living out there from now on.”

I chuckled derisively and shook my head. “Don’t think so.” The fifth Mrs. Johnston’s eyes narrowed murderously.

“I can’t abide no uppity niggers,” she spat, her face growing flush. “I moved outta the city to get away from your kind.”

“And I can’t abide no uppity redneck bitches,” I shot back. “I ain’t going nowhere. This is my home and that’s the end of the story.”

Her eyes flashed fire. “You think Abe won’t bounce your black ass outta here if I ask him to?” she hissed.

I shrugged and went back to putting the dishes away. “Why don’t you ask him and find out.” She started to say something but thought better of it. She sighed angrily and stormed out of the kitchen to find Abe.

Abe and the fifth Mrs. Johnston had a heated argument. After it was over the fifth Mrs. Johnston never said another cross word to me during the rest of her 11-month stay at the ranch. She rarely said anything to me at all in fact and that suited me just fine.

The fifth Mrs. Johnston quickly came to realize that Abe Johnston was less a dashing, romantic figure from a time gone by than he was a tired old man who had all but given up on life. She wanted his mythology; he wanted her youth and vigor and passionate devotion. Neither of them got what they wanted.

The two of them embraced their disillusionment in different ways: he started drinking again and she started disappearing into town for hours at a time.

Every other week or so I would take the truck and go into town myself. I’d drink beer in the cantina at the far end of town with Rosa, the wide-hipped Mexican woman who owned it. We’d sit in the booth by the window and talk about dreams we would never make true and all the places that we would never make time to visit. Rosa would work the room every now and again…flirting with and badgering the regulars…and then she would come back to the table and shoot the bullshit with me until the evening slipped slowly away. I would always take special note of the interstate bus that stopped up the way from the cantina three times a week. It was the same bus that I had taken from the city so many years earlier.

It had grunted gamely, roaring off belching oily black smoke in its wake. I had glanced at the dingy little town…everything was shaded of washed out brown and gray and blue…and I wondered why no one had told the people wandering languidly in the merciless midday heat that they were shades in a ghost town that didn’t know it was dead. I had taken my father’s suitcase…the only thing the bastard had given me in all my 18 years on Earth…and wandered away to find someplace to belong. Wandered away to find someplace where somebody needed me. But now telling the woman at the bus station back in the city to give a ticket that would take me as far West as my cash would allow didn’t seem like such a bright idea.

I quickly became aware of the fact that I was the only black person anywhere in sight. I’d never in my life been anywhere where I was the only black person and the realization filled me with more than a little apprehension. But the people on the street….most of them in cowboy hats like they were living in some goddamn John Wayne movie…regarded me with only passing interest. I was more of a curiosity than a threat and they went about their business without giving me a lot of thought.

I wandered about for a while until I met Abe Johnston. He was hefting a bale of hay into the bed of his pickup when he looked up and met my eyes. He said that I had the look of a man who needed a job. I warily said that he was right. He asked me if I could cook and I said that I could (my Mama had taught me to cook early on…”you won’t have no reason to be lying to some woman just so’s you can eat regular,” she used to say.) It seems his cook (“a Mexican boy name’a Pedro”) had just quit and needed another one for him and his hands. And just like that I took up residence on the ranch.

And eventually I’d been around so long that nobody in town was even cursorily apprehensive anymore (I was one of “theirs” so I was okay. That attitude probably should have bothered me more than it did.)

Some times on my nights out I’d see the fifth Mrs. Johnston clinging to some lanky, besotted cowboy as the two of them went up the stairs to where Rosa had rooms that rented by the hour. The fifth Mrs. Johnston often came to the cantina even though…or perhaps because…she knew that it was where I hung out when I was in town. I never acknowledged her presence there. And I never told Abe about her trysts (though, knowing the old man, there was nothing he really needed to be told about her activities. Nothing he didn’t already know all too well.)

After she’d closed the place for the night, Rosa would take me up to her room and I would lay with her, laughing and bullshitting and finding comfort and release in the tangy humidity of her plump, pleasing body, until the moon turned cold.

There were a few times when I came down to the street in the still hours before dawn when I’d find the fifth Mrs. Johnston sitting in her Cadillac…too drunk to drive with her clothes rumpled and, sometimes, torn…crying bitter tears. I’d always sigh and shake my head with both contempt and pity. And then I’d walk down the street and leave a note in the door of Andy Taylor’s storefront office asking him to come pick me up at the ranch in the morning. I’d trudge back down the street and drive the fifth Mrs. Johnston home in her Cadillac. We never spoke during these rides. She would pretend to doze off in the passenger seat while I listened to the radio…most often the plaintive songs of George Jones or Patsy Cline played by a local graveyard shift DJ who apparently stopped listening to new records sometime in the early 70’s…on the short ride back to the ranch.

Once we were home, she would slip out of the car and stumble into the house. I’d park her car and go up to my own room so that I could get a few hours sleep before daybreak. In the morning, Andy Taylor would pick me up and take me back into town to get the truck. This series of events happened at least a half dozen times during the fifth Mrs. Johnston’s stay at the ranch. If he noticed…and, of course, he had to notice…Abe Johnston never bothered to ask either of us about it.

After 11 months, the fifth Mrs. Johnston decided that she’d had as much as she could take of the faded ranch and the faded old man and she left cursing and furiously downshifting. I took a plate from the table and put it back in the cupboard. It would not take long to erase the physical traces of the fifth Mrs. Johnston, she had stopped trying to put her imprint on the house quite early on (neither Abe Johnston nor myself allowed much change to come into the house.) I poured two cups of coffee and sat down at the table.

Before too long, Abe Johnston trudged in and slumped into his chair. He took a long sip of coffee and looked up. His lips parted as if to speak but then he sighed and took another sip. I waited patiently. He looked up again and, in a small wounded voice, he said, “She said I was an old man…no good to nobody…”

I nodded and sipped at my own coffee. “You are an old man, Abraham,” I replied. “Everybody gets old…it’s part of the deal…”

He winced and frowned and then shook his head sadly. “…yeah…suppose so…” He picked up his cup and stood. “Guess I’ll get dressed,” he said soberly. “After breakfast we can take the rest of her stuff into town and then pick up the horse feed.”

“Okay.”

Abe Johnston walked over to the door. He paused and looked back. For an instant he looked scared and lost. “You ain’t gonna leave me, are you?” he asked earnestly in a small voice.

I looked over at him. “No, Abraham,” I replied without hesitation, “I’m not.”

His body gave a slight, involuntary shiver of relief. He winked and turned through the door. “Good…you’re a good boy…”

I shook my head and chuckled patiently. “I love you too, old man,” I said to the now empty doorway. “I love you too.”