Tommy, can you hear me?

It wasn’t that long ago that he turned fifteen. We sat on the cold concrete of his front porch, watching the iffy clouds discuss a storm. I always sat downwind from him ’cause he didn’t like my smoke.  That day, a brisk and cool crosswind hinted at summer’s end, and the sailing cloudbank made me think of angry giants.

When I first met Tommy, he was about nine years old.  He’d been a handful for his parents ’cause in those days there were no “programs” or government assistance for kids with “developmental challenges”.  Tommy was okay physically, but seemed muffled from what we think of as the real world.  His folks had advertised for a caregiver, to be “available once or twice a week” so that they could at least have a little respite from that daunting task.  I don’t see them as bad or lazy people, and I too would have needed some time away if he were mine.  Anyway, there must not have been very many responses.  They took me on, even though my sole qualification was that I had spent a couple of summers as a camp counsellor.

It was not without emotion that Jan and Barry Morgan left their son in the care of someone else for the first time, and I am sure they had their misgivings.  I had brought two baseball mitts with me in case Tommy didn’t have one, and we were playing catch when they made ready to go.  He dropped his mitt and ran to them crying.  I came over and put my arm around his waist, while Jan tried to explain to him that they were going into town and would be back by four o’clock.  Still he clung, so I took off my wristwatch and strapped it onto his skinny arm.  “Hey, Tommy.  That means we have lots of time to play catch.  See the short hand on the watch?  When it gets all the way around to the 4, Mom and Dad will be back.  And if you get tired of catch, we’ll fly your kite.”  I give the kid credit, for he let them go without too much more of a fuss, and we spent a pretty good afternoon.

You know, it shames me to say this.  Whenever I have come across a person who was known as a “deaf mute”, I’ve been afraid.  Afraid of not knowing how to communicate with them, or even whether or not I should try.  I felt them to be unreachable or, worse, unreasonably aggressive because they were different.  Maybe I even thought that they knew something that no one else did.  Maybe I even thought that they needed something that I couldn’t give.

And I did think that Tommy was all of these things, for he was uncommunicative, if not plain stubborn.  And yes, he was aggressive at times, punching me with his small fists when I tried to shake him out of a funk.  But, gradually, I began to learn the language of his world.  He did make sounds, and could call his Mom and Dad.  The most curious thing was that he did not call them Mom or Dad.  He called them Jan and Barry.

As my time with him grew longer, his parents came to put trust in me, and they made me feel as if I were part of their family.  And, you see where this is going.  I came to love Tommy as a son.  Although he did not, or could not, respond to being addressed in an everyday manner, he knew how to tell you what he wanted or needed.  He could even play us off against one another in order to get it.  Yes, there were the times when he scared me and showed me my inadequacies.  Times of long silences and of unexplainable aggression.  Times that I thought he was grieving for someone or something that I knew nothing of.

On that cold fall day, just after his 15th birthday, with the looming of those colossal clouds, and my behind getting cold from the concrete steps, I said “Well, Tommy, let’s go in and make some tea”.  Expecting no response, I gently took his hand to get him up.  He pulled back, wanting me to stay with him.  “Mike”, he said, with a long “M”.  The first time in those six years.  He then pointed to the blackening clouds and brought his index fingers to his eyebrows.  He looked at me full in the face and smiled.  Once more he pointed to the clouds and then, unmistakably, he traced the initials “T.M.” in the air.
Smiling even more broadly, he touched his temples and tapped them several times.
Excitedly now, it was he that pulled me by the hand, urgently wanting me to follow him.  Follow him to the big old maple tree on the edge of their property.  There had long been a hive there, and it was active with the bees wintering down.  He ran ahead, even against my call, and started to climb.  Fearing the worst, I yelled after him..”Tom!  Tom!  Stop!”

He straddled the limb just below the buzzing nest, laughing and tapping his forehead.  I felt as if he was “seeing” things for the first time, and I couldn’t help feeling happy and a little proud.  I called for him to come down and hugged him tightly, as he said my name one last time.

Old chum

There’s a feller
comes to my windy
some nights.
He tall
He skinny bones
He grey like
He looks right in
with a big face
First few times
i real scared
i cry and run to my elders
they say dreams dreams
go to bed
i say no come come i show you
and he gone
they make fun
and say tell no more lies
and so last night i see the big face again
and it sort of smile
blinking black eyes
and now i don’t run
he look up then down
up then down on the windy frame
but i cant open
new paint dried oh yesterday
then he put long wormy fingers on the glass
and push up up open
he take my hand in pyjamas
and i smell him
like spearmint gum
and i not afraid no more
he take me far far away
we sail
and i see things not one of you will ever know.
just my old chum.

***

Art by Jaroslav Panuska, via Google

And so. Just so.

Lines of vines
cling to string.
A swooping tree
dangles hard round fruit,
so green.
Rhubarb, tended,
raises its flower flags.
All this, in the brash and beautiful
life of July.

In a late afternoon cruise
I come, by chance,
to the scene of a sad and early death.
Bouquets by the roadside.
A styrofoam cross.
Tattooed tire marks, black on grey.
Fresh and smooth asphalt
covers that which was melted away.
The stains of her blazing death can’t be scrubbed.

In the small silence of an out of place town
I slow, scolded by the flashing speed sign.
Things cry out for paint.
A little care is all they ask.
A pair of toddlers pursue one another,
tan knees all scabbed.
Will they see a good life,
or seep into this stolid realm
of used-to-be.

Tonight, I tell you truly

A man walks to his usual crossroads, all right turns until he completes the simple square that brings him home.  Tonight, he goes out late because of the hot sun, something to avoid with these new meds.  As a trade off for the cool and pleasant breeze, someone has provided intermittent clouds of mosquitos.  No matter.  Without even breaking stride, he plucks up some hobbit courage and decides to take the long way home.  All left turns. She’s sleeping anyway, won’t even notice.  And besides, I have my phone and it’s still daylight.  Hey Google, play The Beatles.

He wants to hear what’s going on around him as well, so he slips the phone into his back pocket and goes without the earbuds.  The first thing that Spotify thinks of is “Yesterday”.
He knows that this route is exactly three times longer than the old one, and feels for a second that he has jumped in with both feet.  There’s a moment of doubt.  He stops and considers turning around, but stubborn pride spurs him on.  After all, you’ll be 70 next year.  Just easy…take it easy, you’ll get there.  The numb knee still works, and it’s still numb, so that’s a bonus.

Ever since, as a kid, he had found the green edge of a twenty waving at him from the melting snow of spring, he had kept his nose to the ground whenever he could.  No such luck tonight, of course.  Just the expected litter of a sad society.  His mind wandered stupidly, trying to picture what might be going on in people’s heads as they chucked things from car windows, smashed beer bottles in the ditch, crushed pop cans in a ritual showing of strength.  What if, what if all of this could be gathered somehow, from every street in the neighbourhood?  He would direct, yes he would, with his creative talent, a crew of say a hundred willing workers.  He would design, and they would construct it, a massive sculpture of a muscular man, kneeling on one knee, shouldering the great sphere of Earth.  All integrated, and all made of collected detritus.  A name?
“Atlas, the Collossus of Roads”…..Well.  Poof.  That daydream had occupied his mind for a good kilometer.  Now it was back to the slow scanning of sidewalk cracks.

And there, at the entrance to the church parking lot, a dirty spiral-bound notebook.  It looked as if it had been run over one time too many.  The metal binding was crushed, and the lined pages were splayed out like a bridge hand.  What a find, he thought, as he picked it up and brushed the mud off it.  Several of the drivers who were waiting at the stoplight got an eyeful, and one smiled and shook his head.  Must have thought look at the old bum picking up whatever he comes across.  The first page had stickers on it, saying such things as “Stay Rad!”  and “You are capable of great things!”img_20190709_220649

Most other pages were blank.  One appeared to be notes taken during a class on the abuse of pharmaceuticals.  Their effects.  Their routes of entry into the body.  Memorize this.  There will be a test.00000img_00000_burst20190709220910838_cover

On the dark blue cover of the book, someone had written in fine black marker, barely visible, the names of drugs that were commonly sold on the street:  Oxycodone, tranquilizers, amphetamines.  Underneath that, in the same handwriting:  “Hey Dylan!  These are really cool.  I can get you some.”  Spotify said TURN OFF YOUR MIND.  RELAX, AND FLOAT DOWNSTREAM.  IT IS NOT DYING.  IT IS NOT DYING.

One last page, in pencil, bore the legend “I am sure, Ace, it is best for Wags to stay home”

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Our man could see the stoplight of his destination, far off now, and uphill.  His pace slowed.  It was still pretty warm, and he took off his hat.  Damn the mosquitos.  Now, as three teenage girls approached him, the strains of A Hard Day’s Night were playing.  They giggled, as teenage girls are prone to do, whispering asides to one another, hands covering painted lips.  Just when the man thought they were having their sport at his expense, one of the girls did a fist pump and sang along with Lennon as he keened
“You know, I feel alright!”

Home.  Finally.  And none the worse for wear.  He would sleep well tonight.  In one hand was the notebook, and the other held a poor man’s bouquet of what he thought were wildflowers, but could have been partly weeds.

“For you”.

“Well, get that stuff outa here.  It’s probably got bugs!”