“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska
On the way to Toad Corners
No Throwing the Corn
Amanda found an article in the newspaper about some guy that had cut a series of mazes into his cornfield, about a half -hour east of the city – and was charging folks to walk around and get lost. It sounded like fun, so we bundled the kids and a friend up and headed out of town.
It was getting late, the sun was setting as we pulled up. It was a fun place, although everyone was tired and grumpy.
They have a number of mazes. One made out of hay bale tunnels – with instructions posted on the hay. It’s more of a puzzle than a maze. Then there are three labyrinths made up of fencing right near the parking lot. Jim liked those the best.
The main attraction, though, are the two labyrinths cut into the cornfield itself. They are huge, covering about a square mile or so. One maze is more twisty and complicated, the other more open, with long straightaways.
The rules are simple: no running, no pulling the corn, no picking the corn, no throwing the corn, no cutting through the corn. The smell of the ripe, dry cornfield was wonderful.
I can’t speak much of what it looked like because by the time we hit the cornfield maze the night was pitch black. A lot of people were in the maze had flashlights and/or glow sticks – plus some light (and noise) filtered across the freeway from the drag races going on there.
It was fun, wandering around in the dark, dodging the clumps of screaming kids (many ignoring the rule about no running), and trying to figure out the overall layout of the corn. It was easy to get truly lost, especially in the dark. There are clues to help you find your way out, plus a lot of workers in there checking on the customers… though we never needed any help – simply a lot of walking.
It took us about forty minutes to get through the Phase I maze – we probably walked two miles or so. Jim’s knee was aching, so he sat it out while Amy and I made it through Phase II a little quicker.
The kids kept getting frustrated in the maze when we would hit a dead end or realize we were at a spot we had passed before. I told them not to be so bothered, to relax and keep moving. “You have to walk down the wrong paths to find the right ones,” was my fatherly-zen advice.
“Canoes, too, are unobtrusive; they don’t storm the natural world or ride over it, but drift in upon it as a part of its own silence. As you either care about what the land is or not, so do you like or dislike quiet things–sailboats, or rainy green mornings in foreign places, or a grazing herd, or the ruins of old monasteries in the mountains. . . . Chances for being quiet nowadays are limited.”
― John Graves
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, March 13, 20008.
Into the wind
There’s this thing about being in a canoe, or a small sailboat even, on a lake in the wind. When you are going into the wind you’re going very slowly and in the case of a canoe you’re working very hard to push against the resistance. But since the waves are going the other way, opposite you, it seems like you’re moving very quickly, rushing along. It’s only when you watch the shore that you see the glacial progress you’re making.
On the other hand, when you turn around, and go with the wind at your back you, hopefully, will move right along with the waves and appear, when you look at the water, to almost be standing still. Again, it takes some proper point of reference, some object on the shore, to gauge your true rapid speed.
Nick, Lee, and I rented a canoe today, and went from one end of Cedar Lake to the other.
We started at the little park store, which has rentals. We had to wait because the operator who lives in a recreational vehicle beside the store and lives by himself had to close up for an hour and go into town. When he came back he could rent us the boat. He made us fill out all the paperwork, apologizing, “Please fill this out in case the State audits me.”
Candy asked, “Well, have they ever audited you?”
He said, “Yes, once. They came out a couple years ago but I told them that my wife had passed away that week and I couldn’t deal with it so they went away and haven’t come back.”
So we rented the little aluminum canoe for an hour, six dollars an hour, and we went out in it while Candy waited on the shore with the giant killer dog. The rental place is in a cove down at one end of the lake and due to the drought we’ve been in for the last couple years the lake levels are way down. It was difficult to get out of the cove because the water was so shallow.
I wanted to go the length of the lake, all the way to the dam but as we moved out into the center I wasn’t sure we would make it. The stout wind would catch the front of the canoe, where Nicholas sat ineffectually flailing at the water with one paddle, and spin it around so I would have to paddle hard and carefully to keep us pointed at the dam. Two other families had rented canoes right after us and they were unable to get out of the cove due to the wind.
After being spun twice I decided to move over to the west coastline, as close as possible, and pay close attention to steering the canoe – we were able to make progress that way. It was work, pushing against the wind, taking all the strength I had in my shoulders. It felt good to be paddling a canoe again; I’m really pretty good at it. I had a canoe of my own once, for a little while when I lived in Panama – a hollowed out log really – that I could take down to the lake and paddle around with. I guess that’s when I learned how to handle a paddle with some dexterity. In college sometimes in the spring we would go down to the Ozarks, rent canoes and shoot some easy rapids. Over the years Candy and I have gone to Caddo lake or some other camping place by the water and rented a boat.
Nicholas and Lee had never been in a canoe before. Lee was surprised to find out it was made of metal, he thought they were all made of wood. They both said the canoe was more stable than they thought it would be, they thought it would be harder to keep it from tipping over. I told them a lot of that was because I was working pretty hard at keeping it straight while they flailed around. Especially Nick at the front trying to paddle.
Today we made it all the way to the dam. No big deal, no great feat, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. We circled the concrete drainage structure, a tall cylinder sticking out of the water with a wrought iron valve wheel on top. Then we turned and headed back.
The wind and waves bore us along at a rapid speed on the return. It took us maybe forty minutes to reach the dam and only ten to get back. Poor Lee knelt on his knees in the center of the canoe during the whole trip and could barely stand when we pushed up onto shore. His young legs recovered their flexibility quickly enough.
I’m afraid my shoulders didn’t recover quite so fast.
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Nasher Sculpture Center
Dallas, Texas
Ghosted
“I haven’t heard from Elana,” Sara said to the ghost of her nephew Jimmy.
“Really? Did you expect to?”
“We’ve been friends for years. We used to meet for coffee almost every week and lunch on Fridays.”
“And now?”
“She ignores my texts.”
“She ghosted you.”
“Yeah.”
“That sucks. I would never do anything like that.”
“But you’re a ghost.”
“Sure. But still. I never liked that term. It gives us a bad name.”
“Do ghosts ghost people?”
“Well, eventually we move on. To another plane – hopefully higher, but sometimes not. If we have been visiting people, live people, ordinary people, that can come as a shock. We disappear. Like ghosts.”
“So you do ghost people. As a matter of fact, you ghost people inevitably.”
“Well, it doesn’t count. We have no choice. It’s always a surprise, unexpected, when we have to move on. That’s how it works.”
“So you are going to ghost me? You said it was inevitable. You just don’t know when.”
“I guess. I’m sorry.”
“You and Elena. Both of you.”
“Which one is worse? Who will you miss the most, me or Elena?”
“That’s a hard question. With you, there is that feeling of guilt.”
“Guilt? Because you were driving. That drunk hit the passenger side of the car. You never saw them. That’s not your fault.”
“I know. I know. But I feel guilty. I was driving. You didn’t want to go. I talked you into it.”
“You didn’t twist my arm.”
“Yes I did, a little bit.”
“What about Elena? Do you feel guilt for her too?”
“Why? Well, maybe. I must have done something wrong.”
“Maybe she just moved on, like I will some day. Living people move on too.”
“Moved on? What, moved up? Without me? How does that make it better?”
“Maybe she moved down.”
“That makes it even worse. And I am so lonely. You are the only friend I have left.”
“You need more friends. Living friends.”
“Finding new friends, now, today, at my stage of life… it’s impossible.”
“Your stage of life? How about mine? You need to get out there more. You need to do something.”
“What?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“I miss Elana. I miss her so much. Does she miss me?”
“I’m sure she does. I’ll bet Elana misses you even more than you miss her.”
“Will you miss me? Will you miss me when you move on?”
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Found by a photobooth,
Molly’s At the Market, French Quarter, New Orleans
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, December 14, 1998.
The city at night
I’m writing another entry sitting in the van, waiting in a parking lot. This time it’s a long way from home. I have a focus group at eight thirty, on the tenth floor of a big office building, at Park Central on the northern arc of Dallas’ LBJ freeway loop. I have better things to do with my time than sit here, but they’ll pay me a hundred dollars, cash. Allowing an hour to get here, it only took twenty minutes, so I found this lot in a commercial strip right off Central Expressway. About a half hour to kill before I drive back to the building, that’s how long the batteries in this old Dell can hold out.
I had wanted to go exercise after work and there is a club located between there and here. I fogot my damn shoes again, can’t very well work out in steel-toed safety boots, so I stayed in my office a couple hours late. Time is becoming so precious, it drove me nuts. Nowhere to go, no money, nothing much to do .(I was so sick of work, it was tough to get anything extra accomplished). So I sat and did some light computer stuff and watched the hands turn.
At least the van is a good place to type. The middle bench seat is roomy enough for me to hold the laptop on my lap, there is enough stray light from the parking lot to illuminate the keys without washing out the screen. Also, the van isn’t stalling. I was about to give up yesterday, when I put another fresh tank of fuel in her, and presto- no more problems. My guess is that the recent cold snap condensed water into the gas tank, it took a refill to work itself out.
Across the street from here is a big hospital. This is where both Nick and Lee were born. It seems like I’ve been there a hundred times, for childbirth classes, medical emergencies, routine checkups. We don’t have the HMO anymore, so we don’t come back here now. One reason I dropped it was because I was concerned about the drive from Mesquite, it scared me to think of Candy driving over here in the awful traffic with a sick kid strapped in beside her.
The traffic is scary. The intersection of LBJ and Central may be the busiest in the Metroplex, maybe the country. Lines of white, lines of red. Going either seventy or stopped. I constantly look at these thousands and thousands of cars speeding past and wonder where all these people are going. What are their dreams? Are they happy? Do they really want to go where their car is pointing? Why are they in such a hurry to get there?
Honk! Honk! Honk! The car alarm on a big sedan is going off. A woman gets out. Is it her car? Is she confused by the alarm and can’t shut it off? Or is she stealing the thing? I don’t care. It stops, she gets back in. Nobody calls the police. There the car goes.
Behind this strip, this line of office supplies, fast food Chinese, medical equipment, and podiatrist, is the dark slash of a creek. I know that linear wilderness better than I know the wild street; the White Rock bicycle trail runs back there. It starts five miles to the south at the lake and winds along the creek embankment, using the floodplain to cut through these civilized islands unseen and undisturbed. The day was dry and warm, I wish I had my bike and was able to get some late season fresh air back there today. Or I wish I had a nice light and could run the trail now. Swooshing along in the dark, heart pumping, legs pumping.
Oh, well.
I think I’d better wrap this up, save the file and get going. I’m not sure exactly where to park (there is a maze of garages around the office complex) and I don’t want to be late. They won’t give me my money.
Thanks for listening to me ramble, thanks for helping me kill a few minutes away from home, thanks for the memories and the city at night.
“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” ― Mark Twain
View Skyward, near the Pearl/Arts District DART station, Dallas, Texas
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, October 30, 2000.
Home Alone
After school, Lee went to a friend’s house while Nick played basketball at the recreation center. Candy did some yard work in front of the house. Lee and his friend came over, walking in the back door and not seeing Candy – but seeing the van was there and assuming she was home. They never thought of looking in the front yard.
Candy’s mom called the house and Lee answered the phone, upset.
“I’m home but Mommy isn’t here!” said Lee. “Now, Lee, you know you’re mother wouldn’t go off and leave you,” Candy’s mother replied. “I’m afraid she’s been kidnapped… No, I’m afraid she’s been Mommynapped!” cried Lee.
Candy’s mother called Lee’s friend’s mother (they live across the alley) and she came over, finding Candy working in the front flower garden.
“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
Leaning Tower of Dallas, Dallas, Texas
The Tower
Dean4217 was at the base of the tower, picking up a load of concrete and it was time for a Gathering. He was excited to see it in person. At the present height it took him a week to reach the top and another to come back down. Usually, he watched the Gathering speech on the tablet in his cab; so seeing it live would be a rare treat.
He was shocked and frightened by the size of the crowd. He had worked on the tower itself his entire life and he didn’t realize how much support was needed on the ground – several times the people working at the top or along the sides. The speech itself was familiar – they never seemed to change – a dry recitation of feet gained, tons hauled, how many accidents, people injured (Only fifteen killed this quarter!) and so forth. Then, at the end, the usual exhortations – how his Broadway tower compared to the other two hundred-odd towers going up all over the world (as always – somewhere in the middle) and how important it was to keep climbing.
The Leader looked so small surrounded by the vast crowd, even flanked by the giant video screens. Dean4217 though how much better he could see and hear on his tablet and vowed not to waste the time if he found himself on ground level during another Gathering.
His truck was loaded when he reached it after the Gathering had ended and he saw the mechanics had checked out and green-tagged (it no good to break down on the way up) everything so he followed the leader’s advice not to waste and time – starting the engine and heading right for the entrance ramp.
There was always something about entering that ramp – to a driver like Dean4217 it represented the entire enormous project. Yet it was so nondescript, only a wide concrete ramp arching out of the end of the huge staging lot up against the south wall of the tower. Looking up, you could see how it rose and rose until it became a barely visible ribbon and then turned around the southwest corner to continue on up the west side. Another, similar ribbon, the downward ramp was visible above it, a diagonal slash that Dean4217 knew ended on the opposite side. That ramp too was nondescript – and to Dean4217 it represented relief, a job well done, just as this ramp meant the excitement of a new trip.
He took out a sharp saw blade and cut another notch along the metal edge of his dash as he entered the ramp. He had to reach far over to find fresh steel and had stopped counting many years before.
The first few days of the climb were always the easiest. At the lower altitudes the wind wasn’t that much of a problem and the thick atmosphere meant he could drive without his oxygen mask. Still well below the usual cloud level he could look out and enjoy the view. It changed constantly as he drove around the tower, rising with each circuit. Twice a day he would stop at a corner station for fuel, food, and a bit of a rest. These high stops would serve both the ascending and descending ramps and would give him a chance to catch up on the news and gossip from the higher sections of the tower.
On the third day he had risen to the point where he could see the Samsara tower to the east. This was the nearest tower to the Broadway, the only other one that was visible. He wasn’t sure how far away it was – one day some of them had tried to calculate the distance, using the height that it became visible at. Dean4217 didn’t believe it however, the distance seemed too far away. It looked so solid, so close, even though the curvature of the earth caused the Samsara to appear to tip away from the Broadway as it climbed.
He couldn’t help but look at it out his side window, trying to imagine a concrete driver crawling up that vast expanse, like a microscopic ant, looking over at him in similar wonder. It always bothered him that he had never seen the Broadway tower from a distance and had no idea what it looked like, although he assumed it was a twin to the Samsara over there. A dirt hauler in front of him had to stop to tighten a break line and Dean4217 reached across out his left side window to touch the vast concrete wall, trying to make some sort of connection with the overwhelming size of the thing he had spent his whole life helping to build.
At the first refuel stop on the fourth day, Dean4217 stealthily slipped the attendant a credit coupon to get him out of the station quicker than was his turn. One of the water drivers stared at him in frustration, but Dean4217 didn’t care. He needed to get to that night’s stop on time.
His girlfriend Jenny5309 was a rebar driver and she was on the way back down. They had worked out by tablet message that they could get to the same overnight stop on the same evening, if Dean4217 wasn’t delayed. It was always tough trying to arrange a meeting – the rebar trucks took a lot longer to load and it would throw everything out of kilter.
But this time it worked and Dean4217 had barely had time to secure his truck in its spot and get the safety straps down (he was at a height where wind storms could come up without warning) and he heard a knock on his door.
Dean4217 and Jenny5309 slipped their oxygen masks off for a quick kiss, and then then crawled back into the sleeper compartment. He had spent the previous night’s rest period cleaning it out and straightening everything up and had spent extra credits on oxygen bottles so he could charge the whole cube.
“So we don’t have to wear our masks,” he said.
“That’s so thoughtful,” she replied while hanging her mask and bottle on a hook he had provided. “Are you sure you can afford it?”
“Of course, what else am I going to spend my credits on?”
They both had a little laugh at this, then settled back to talk about what had happened since they had last met. Dean4217 thought about how nice it was to hear a familiar human voice. Each had read most of the stories they told each other – Dean4217 and Jenny5309 sent tablet messages to each other constantly. But they didn’t mind the repetition – hearing each other speak live was such a treat. Dean4217 always laughed at her little jokes, even though he had heard them all before and always sighed when she spoke of delays or problems getting her loads up the tower and he empty truck back down.
“You are so lucky, hauling concrete,” she said. “A few minutes of pumping in and you’re off. At the top, all you have to do is dump into the mixer. It takes so long to get all the rebar loaded and tied down.”
“You get a little more rest time.”
“Rest? I have to watch those loaders like a hawk. They don’t care it won’t be their ass if something blows off near the top of the tower.”
They both giggled at that, even though neither was really sure what was funny about it.
The next morning, as she was getting ready to leave, Jenny5309 suddenly became serious. Dean4217 thought it looked like a cloud had passed over her face.
“Dean4217,” she asked, “Why do you think we do this?”
“Why? I’m a concrete hauler and you bring rebar. Without us… and the dirt haulers and the water haulers, and the supplies, and… well, you know, everybody, the tower couldn’t go up.”
“I know that, dummy. But what I mean is that I don’t know why we build the tower. What it is for?”
Dean4217 paused. His father had worked on the tower all his life. He was a dirt hauler. Dean4217 was born in a rest area. At the time it had seemed like it was very high, though now it was barely a tenth of the way up the tower. His father was so proud when Dean4217 had saved enough money working as a steel bender to buy his own truck and start hauling concrete. It was all he had ever known.
“What do you mean why? What else would we do? Where else would all this concrete, steel, water, and dirt go?”
“I know, but I wonder some times. I wonder too, when will it be done?”
“Done? What do you mean done?”
“I mean finished.”
“It will never be finished. The point of a tower is to grow. It can always go taller. There is no end to up.”
“I know what the Leader says at the Gatherings. I’ve heard it all my life, just like you. But I was thinking, surely, someday we will reach an end. Someday… maybe not in our lives, or in our children’s, but someday the tower won’t be able to go any higher.”
Dean4217 had never thought of that. He sat there silent, staring at Jenny5309.
“What will we do then.”
Dean4217 thought of looking across the vast space at the Samsara tower and remembered thinking of the tiny ant, just like him, working his way up.
“I guess we could build another one.”
“I guess you’re right.”
It was always difficult to continue driving on the day after he had met up with Jenny5309. He thought of her on the down ramp, getting farther and farther away from him every second as he climbed. This time was worse; he was bothered by her questions. He was bothered by the fact he had never thought about them before.
At a rest, instead of using his tablet to contact Jenny5309 he called up all the stored speeches of the Leader and searched them for what he was looking for. He found nothing. The Leader had never talked about the purpose of the tower, if there was one, or what they would do if the tower couldn’t go any higher. It was only the usual platitudes: “There is no end to up” or “We must improve our standing in the universe of towers” or “The tower must grow and the faster the better.”
Dean4217 assumed these bothersome thoughts would leave his head as he climbed, day after day. As he neared the top of the tower, the work began to grow more difficult. The air was thinner and he sometimes he had trouble keeping his head clear even with the oxygen. The wind was now a constant howl and keeping the truck on the ramp was a chore, especially rounding a corner and getting used to the gale which would now be swirling from a different direction.
He couldn’t look while he was driving, but he found himself staring outward at every rest station instead of talking to the other drivers. He was now well above the tops of the cloud layer and looking out all he saw was a vast blanket of white, interrupted by the gray mass of the distant Samsara tower. He found he could not take his eyes off it – it was tough to tear them away when it was time for him to head out.
He had to wait behind two other concrete haulers at the top. Everything had to be strapped down across the flat top of the tower because of the incredible force of the winds. He watched the water trucks loading into the mixer and the bundled workers struggling to unload, bend, and place the rebar off of a steel truck.
When it was finally his turn to dump, he hooked up his safety line and carefully inched out of his cab and down to the surface. First he bent down and felt the top of the tower in the same way he had the wall at the bottom, over a week ago. It felt the same. It was, after all, part of the same structure.
Dean4217 fought his was over to where the mixer operator was tied to a steel chair, manipulating levers to add concrete and water to the rolling tank, and then pump it over to where the rebar benders had finished a section. The operator paused, surprised to see a driver out of his truck under these conditions.
“Hey,” Dean4217 said, “I’m Dean4217.”
“I’m… uhh, I’m Willard3309.” There was a pause, as if the operator had to think for a minute to remember his name. The air was very thin.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” said Dean4217, “How much farther do you think we can go? The air’s getting pretty thin.”
“Well, there’s no end to up.” Willard3309 repeated the mantra. “And there’s been some engineers up here already. They’re working on pressurized cabs, helmets, and armored worksuits. I don’t think there’s any stopping us once they get all that figured out.”
“I see.” Dean4217 stared at the mixer operator for a long time, trying to decide if he should say what he was about to say. He realized he had no choice.
“Why do you think we are building it?” he said.
“What do you mean why?”
Dean4217 started moving his mouth, as if he was chewing, trying to figure out what to say next, when both men noticed an excitement among all the iron workers. It was strange they were silent in the constant roar of the wind, but they were all unhooking their straps, adding safety lines, and moving off toward the edge of the tower. Dean4217 realized he didn’t know for sure which edge it was, but the crowd began to grow, everyone looking out and gesturing wildly.
Dean4217 and Willard3309 hooked their safety lines together and Willard3309 began to move them toward the gathering crowd. They moved quickly, Willard3309 was very used to the top of the tower and knew all the handy clip rings and tie-off points.
At the edge, they put their heads up against another and found out what the excitement was about.
“Another Tower! We’re high enough, we can see it!”
Looking out over the edge, Dean4217 could make out a tiny sliver of light gray against the dark purplish blue sky.
“We think it’s the Wildsmith. The engineers have said it would grow into our view sometime soon. We need to wait until nightfall, we should be able to see their lights.”
Dean4217 was filled with excitement. Another tower! Imagine!
His heart was beating so hard he could barely stand. He stood and stared, though he wanted to get back to his cab and tablet so he could tell Jenny5309 about what he saw.
He remembered that he had a question that was bothering him, but in the excitement, he completely forgot what it was.
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton
View Skyward, near the Pearl/Arts District DART station, Dallas, Texas
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Wednesday, August 12, 1998.
Dreams of the South Rim
The last week has been so difficult I keep escaping by thinking about what I want to do for vacation this fall.
I am drawn inexorably toward thoughts of Big Bend. The river, the desert, the mountains. The backpacking, a long uphill hike from The Basin trailhead, up and up until the very world itself ends in a spectacular and remote sheer wall down to the blasted desert almost a mile below.
The South Rim. It may be the best campsite in the world, the most special of special places. I can sit back in my desk chair and close my eyes and….
I see the lava, flowing up from fissures. Liquid heat born in the oven of the earth. It flows, it cools, it forms a layer – a huge cap. The years accelerate and the land all around wears away leaving this dried massive layer behind. Red-Black-Purple rock, shelf, cliff, mountain. Tilted slightly, the edges cracked away forming a huge precipice.
Now I sit on the top edge of this sheer mountain wall, a shotglass of Tequila in my hand. The setting sun glints off the gold liquid. It cost a lot, a price of sweat and weight, of other things left behind, to get this liquor up here. Yet it is a fermented child of the desert agave, it is at home here, the land of spikes and rocks.
The very earth is being eaten by black-purple shadows – crowding the yellow sun from the steepest canyons first, then the shallow arroyos, then the eastern sides of the hills. I toast my shot glass to the last red rays striking the highest spires of rough rock and drain it down.
Night comes quickly, the cloudless sky loses its glow faster here than in the city with its opaque air. The desert night sky is a vacuum, pulling heat upward; I can feel the cold – see the warmth rising – given to the rocks by the sun all day and pulled back by the moon at night.
It is amazingly quiet. The only sound is made by the slight breeze as it moans softly, pouring over the giddy edge.
In the distance, to the south, I see a small cluster of yellow lights. This is the only mark of man visible in the darkness. I feel some kinship and imagine for a moment the people living in that rocky, hardscrabble ranch. Their children play in the Mexican dust. The feeble sounds of a radio would be heard there – too far for TV, no cable reaching there. The lights look weak, yellow, pulsing; they must use a diesel generator.
I pull my pack open and replace the shot glass and the aluminum flask. The night clanks as I assemble my tiny gas stove, my Sierra cup. I pour out some murky water I collected in a plastic bottle from a puddle down in a deep canyon this morning. I strike a match and yellow flames flick from a puddle of fuel until, a Whoosh! of blue flame as it primes and kicks in.
I boil my precious water and drop in a tea bag, squirt in a dollop of honey from a tiny squeeze bottle. The cup’s wire rim is hot on my lip but the bitter tea gives a welcome taste of civilization as I sip the boiled liquid.
“Buenos Noches” – “Good Night” I silently say as I tip my cup towards my unknown friends thirty miles to the south, on the other side of the Rio Grande.
“One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Big Lake Park, Plano, Texas
The Ants
Even with her new cane, the walk to the park was difficult. Joann needed her artificial hip replaced again and didn’t want to go through that pain another time. The excitement of the day sped her up, though, and thoughts of the past decades made the time go by quickly. She found her bench – dark green paint peeling a little more than it did a year ago – and sat down.
She pulled her birthday card from her grand-niece out of her purse. It said “I always think of you as my grandmother,” and that made her smile. She had been coming to this bench on her birthday for fifty years now, she had been looking forward to the silver anniversary.
Joann jumped with excitement as a few birds landed on the little-used playground equipment next to her bench. She chuckled as she thought that the scene was so similar to the one out of that old horror movie, “The Birds,” – though this wasn’t scary. Slowly more and more began to show up, lining up along the bars.
She couldn’t help but think back to the first time she had come here – thinking about James… when she still was in college down the road from there, a half-century ago.
Joann hadn’t actually been out on a date for over a year and she wasn’t sure she was out on one now, but it was close.
That afternoon – she had been working on her graphics assignment in the sixth floor lobby – her room wasn’t large enough to stretch the huge canvas out. She was working on two large horizontal triangular sections. While the rest of the piece was made up of geometric shapes of solid colors, fitted together in what she hoped was a clever, attractive, and subtly symmetrical design, these two triangles required, in her mind, a graduated hue of orange. It went from a bright saturated color a the pointed end to a pastel, almost white at the other. She worked slowly and carefully with an airbrush, slowly layering the colors, learning as she went.
She had been so intent and concentrated she didn’t even notice the boy walk up and sit down in an extra chair.
“Hey! Whatcha doin?” he said, a little bit too loud.
The unexpected sound startled Joann enough that the airbrush spray drifted out of the border a bit.
“James! Look what you’ve made me do!”
She angrily picked up a razor blade and began carefully scratching off the errant pigment. She shook her head at the mistake.
“Sorry Joann, I was just tryin’ to be friendly.”
The still-wet paint came up easily enough and after only a few seconds she looked down at the fixed error. Then she realized that the boy knew her name. For the first time she tilted her head away from the canvas and looked at him. He was a few inches shorter than her, stocky in a pasty sort of way, and had an unkempt shock of long, thin, red hair. He peered back at her through a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses.
She remembered him. His name was James… something… James Ellsworth. She had met him through some mutual friends at some informal group gathering or party or something. He didn’t live there – he couldn’t afford it… she seemed to remember. He was always hanging around, though. Didn’t seem to have anything better to do.
“That’s OK, I guess,” she said. “I didn’t see you come up and you startled me.”
“Sorry. What are you working on?”
She explained her ideas on the piece, how they fit in with the assignment from her graphics class. He listened intently. He even asked what seemed to be half-intelligent questions. After a while Joann began to forget her aggravation at being startled and started to enjoy the conversation.
“Well,” he said, “How much longer are you going to be working on this?”
Looking back at her work, she realized that the paint had dried and she would have to wait until it cured, at least twelve hours, before she could start blending again.
“That’s it for tonight, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to leave it sit to cure before I can work on it some more.”
“You gonna leave it here?”
“Yeah, it’ll be good – I leave big stuff out all the time. Everybody knows to leave it alone.”
“Cool. You hungry? You wanna go get a bite?”
Without thinking, Joanna nodded yes.
James had no car and no money. The only thing he had to offer was some food and some wine at his apartment.
“It’s not far. We can walk it no prob,” he assured her.
It wasn’t far, across the highway on the pedestrian overpass and then down into an older neighborhood of once-wealthy big wooden mansions now run-down and subdivided into tiny apartments for college students.
The only tough part was getting up into James’ place. He rented an attic space in a high turret of of of the largest, but now most decrepit homes. It was little more than a garret and after climbing up three stories past countless wooden doors, each leaking some genre of overblown music; they had to twist up a final spiral stair into his place. He pushed open the thin, unlatched door.
“No reason to lock it. Nobody comes up this high, and nothing inside worth stealing.”
The place was a large single, round room. The entire floor was cheap patterned linoleum. Blankets hung from cords divided up a kitchen, living area and a bedroom peeking around one side. Joann used the bathroom and was relieved to find it clean, although small with only a sink, toilet and narrow standup shower.
When she came back out to the kitchen, he had set out plates with microwaved chicken breasts, mixed vegetables, and rice. He had a cold bottle of some generic white wine and was pouring it into a pair of mismatched jelly glasses.
The meal was surprisingly good. Joann had been eating in the cafeteria or various fast-food places around campus for so long, a sort-of home cooked meal, no matter how humble. After they finished eating, James rinsed and piled the dishes in the sink and they finished the wine and another large bottle of something red.
The wine was gone and Joann was feeling more than a little tipsy and she began to wonder whether she was on a date or not. She was beginning to like James more than she thought she would – and he had fed her and given her wine. He hadn’t driven or taken her to a restaurant, but it wasn’t his fault he was a poor student – there were plenty of those around. She fell silent, thinking for a minute, when James spoke up. His voice was a little slurred and Joann realized that she didn’t know if he had drank more wine than her or not.
“Hey, Joanne… I wanna show you something.” He stood up from the table and walked over to the couch. He reached behind and pulled out two cardboard boxes – one a small shipping box and the other the kind you use to sell shoes in. It was a bit bigger than usual – maybe a boot box. Joann noticed that it had holes cut in the lid and pieces of fine screen glued over the openings.
“Watch this!” James said, his face flushed with wine or excitement. “I’ve been working on this for two years.”
He gestured for Joann to back her chair up and then folded the table and set it away. He cleared the other chairs and pushed a shelf back to make as big a space in the center of the kitchen area as he could. He turned on some lamps to illuminate the linoleum as much as possible.
Then, with a little bow and a flourish, he opened the small box up and poured its contents out onto the floor. At first, Joann thought it was only little pieces of paper, like confetti or something, but she saw that each one was glued to a tiny stick. They were a pile of miniature flags, a fraction of an inch high, some were bright red, the rest were green.
James how had the large shoe box and was getting ready to take the lid off. He was getting excited now – he sort of hopped from one foot to the other as he pawed at the box.
“Watch closely! This is really something.”
He slid the lid off and poured out a mound of what looked like some sort of reddish coarse powder. At first Joann thought is was a copper colored rough sawdust, but as soon as it hit the floor it began to flow and move. She realized with a start that it was alive.
“Ants!” she shouted. “Dammit, you dumped out a bunch of ants.”
“Don’t worry. Relax and watch.”
James had some sort of an odd flashlight in his hand. He pointed it at the ants and pushed a button.
“Ultraviolet. The ants can see it but we can’t. It’s what I sue to train them with.”
Suddenly the roiling movement of the large pile of ants began to setting into a shape, a square. James flashed again and the ants swarmed over the pile of tiny flags and Joann realized that they were picking them up – each and was emerging with a flag in its tiny jaw.
Another click and James began to yell.
“Watch this – it’s what took so much time to teach.”
Joann felt her eyes widen and her breath catch in her throat. She simply could not believe what she was seeing. There, on the cracked linoleum, the ants were marching in formation – moving geometric patterns of green and red, colored by the tiny flag that each insect was holding aloft.
They started with a checkerboard of red and green and then the ants marched past each other, forming two separate grids apart. Then they wheeled and separated into two linear ranks that moved past each other. Then they moved in a confused heap until they lined up in one square – red on one side, green on the other, with a graduated mix in between. Finally the square dissolved into a triangle, then a hexagon, then, finally, a red circle. A smaller green disk began to roll around inside the larger circle.
“That was the hardest to do. It took a long time to train them to do that,” James said.
He flashed another code onto the insects and they dutifully dropped their flags in a neat pile. He laid the larger box on the floor sideways with the lid off and the ants swarmed back inside.
“See, they like it,” he said.
Joann was speechless. Five minutes ago she was worried about how to deal with this dumpy, nerdy guy, now she was faced with something fantastic and unbelievable. She felt as if the floor had been pulled out from beneath her feet. She jumped up, breathless.
“Umm, I gotta go!” was all she could blurt out.
“Wait! Don’t you think that was cool! Aren’t you amazed?”
“I… I don’t know what I saw. That was impossible. That scared me.”
“It’s only a bunch of trained ants.”
“But… I feel… I feel the world isn’t the same as it was when I got here.”
“The world is the same, maybe you saw something you didn’t know before.”
That was all she could take. She stammered out an “I’m sorry,” and staggered to the door. The stairs down were steeper than she remembered, the brick sidewalks outside more uneven, the blocks home longer and lonelier than she could imagine.
As she feared, James kept calling her every day for a week. She was so confused. He explained that it was all a simple, though ingenious process, to train the ants. A combination of rewards for proper behavior and an electrified grid that provided punishment for errors – the ants were able to learn amazingly complex tricks. He said it was his ambition to expand his techniques to other species and types of animals.
She would talk to him on the phone but asked that he not follow or try to meet her. The thought of going back to that attic apartment gave her chills.
Time went by and she began to thaw a little.
Then one day, one her twentieth birthday, he asked her to go to an isolated spot just a bit off campus. There was a bench in a little used park. She sat down and waited, more than a little nervous. Then the first one came, followed by the rest.
And now Joann was in the same place, fifty years later. The bench had been replaced twice, but she supposed James had made sure that the city put the new one in the exact right place. It was funny, she had never seen any children playing on the equipment – though she supposed some must have. Somehow, they all disappeared on her birthday. She was sure James had something to do with that too.
She had not actually seen him in twenty years. After they had left school his life became more and more disjointed. He said that his innovative animal research had made him some serious enemies in the government and that he would eventually have to disappear.
Joann always wondered how much of this was real and how much was paranoia from the strange recesses of James’ brilliant mind. Almost certainly a little of both. Even though she never saw or heard from him anymore, and missed him terribly, she knew he was still out there, somewhere. Otherwise, where would the birds come from?
She sat back and watched the last of the dense flock of birds land on the playground equipment. Most years there were only one type of bird but this year half were some small brown wren and the rest were large gray doves. She purposely had avoided learning types or species of birds – the mystery made her birthday present all so more special. She knew that James had planned something special for the silver anniversary – and having two kinds of birds reminded her of the dual-colored ant flags from so long ago.
She smiled as they lifted into the air, as if on a signal, all at once, in a mass. Rotating in a whirlwind above her, they began to separate into smaller groups and these groups began to form patterns.
Her fiftieth trained bird presentation, her seventieth birthday present, was beginning and Joann was very happy to get to see it.
“Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End
Molly’s at the Market, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Thursday, February 3, 2003.
Disappointment
We never did bring those crabs back from Galveston – I was worried that they needed deeper water so we put them back in the surf. Nick really wanted some though, so Candy bought him a couple at a kiosk in the mall. The things had gaudily painted shells – one looked like a soccer ball and the other was bright red with yellow stars.
Nick really liked his hermit crabs, though they seemed awfully shy. I remember the shoreline in Panama along the Atlantic reef. I wasn’t much older than Nick then, really. We would walk along, looking for shells (I had a thing for cowries). There would be a little inlet full of shells and when I’d walk up they would all pick up and scatter – they were all hermit crabs. Those weren’t really too scared of people – if you picked one up and held it still on your palm it would come out and start to walk around pretty quickly. Maybe it was the heat.
At any rate, Nick liked his two crabs even though they would rarely come out where you could see them. He’d give them baths – little spritzes of distilled water. He said they liked that.
Today he picked one up to spray him and he fell out of his shell, dead. Nick said he thought he’d been dead for a while – he didn’t smell too good. On the phone, I asked Nick if he wanted to bury the crab in the back yard. “I’ve already flushed him,” Nick said. I told Nick I was on the way and would be there soon.
When I drove up, Nick had obviously been crying. I didn’t really talk to him much, mostly let him tell me about it and said I knew how bad he felt. We offered to get him another, but Nick hasn’t decided. He’s scared that one will die too.
I didn’t tell Nick what I thought to myself. I don’t think it’s a very good idea to get too emotionally attached to something you bought at a mall kiosk.
Molly’s at the Market, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans
“Fame you’ll be famous, as famous as can be, with everyone watching you win on TV, Except when they don’t because sometimes they won’t..”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
You May Already Be A Weiner
Doyle Nash knew life would be tough when he decided he would make a career as an actor, that he would have to take every opportunity to make a buck – but this was too much. He stood naked in the rusty metal shed behind the hotdog and custard shop – Jerome’s Hot & Cold – facing Jerome, the owner. There wasn’t much space and they were way too close to each other for Doyle’s comfort.
“Hey, I don’t see why I couldn’t at least keep my underwear on,” said Doyle.
“Costume’s too tight, once you’re in you’ll be glad you went commando. Here, put these on, that’ll make you feel better.”
It didn’t. The shabby looking yellow tights were too loose, had lost their elastic, and made of some cheap fabric that started to itch something awful as soon as Doyle pulled them up around his waist.
“Okay, now. Let’s get you in,” Jerome said. He reached up to the top of a mottled tan curve, like a leaky canoe leaning up against the wall. There was a ragged clatter as he pulled a rusty zipper down to the ground.
“Step in, and I’ll zip you up.”
Doyle pressed his face into the zippered opening and Jerome gave him a shove from behind.
“There, now, lift your legs up through those holes… your arms go in there.”
Doyle fought back panic, blinded by the mass of the costume, until his face popped out through an oval in the front. He felt Jerome strap some elastic band tight behind his head until his eyes bugged. He stepped up into the leg holes and his arms wriggled through some sort of tubes. There was the groan of a zipper from behind and the costume closed around him.
“Okay, back up now, lift it, it’s got some weight but it’s not as heavy as it seems. Now turn, let’s get you out of the shed and see how you look.” Jerome managed to shove Doyle and the costume outside where he stood up fully.
Doyle was encased within a long red cylinder – a hot dog, with his face poking out a hole near the top. His legs emerged at an odd angle, forcing him to waddle around. Around his back was a giant fiberglass and foam bun and his arms flailed out from between the two parts.
“Hey this is really uncomfortable!” Doyle cried. The curve of the hotdog kept him hunched over, already his back was beginning to throb. He tried to reach the zipper in the back of the bun, but his hands couldn’t come close.
“I can’t reach the zipper! I’m trapped in here!”
“That’s the idea,” said Jerome. “That way you have to stand out here and get customers into my store. Otherwise you’d bolt. Here’s your sign.”
The sign said, Jerome’s Hold and Cold on one side, and Hot Dogs and Frozen Custard on the other. Doyle took it and stabbed the air with it.
Outside of Wild About Harry’s
Deep Ellum
Dallas Texas
“Hey, I just thought of something. What if I have to take a piss?”
“There, on the front.”
Doyle looked down and found a rectangular patch Velcroed into the front of the hot dog.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. I don’t think it’s in the right spot.”
“It’s close enough. Figure it out. Now get out there and start walking up and down. I’m paying you to drum up business, not to goof around.”
“I’m not sure I can do this. I’m an actor, sure, but this….”
“Don’t worry, you’ll do better than the last pair.”
“Last pair?”
“Yeah I had a custard costume too. This couple – Matilda and her boyfriend Hubert – they seemed awfully happy to do this. Too happy as it turned out.”
“What happened?”
“Turns out they were really, really into costumes. You know what I mean? On their second day, as soon as I turned my back, they sneaked off down the alley, into that blind spot behind the closed Chinese restaurant. You wouldn’t believe what I caught them at down there.”
“Oh, God…” Doyle stared with despair at the Velcro flap on the front of the hot dog.
“Yeah,” Jerome said, “Ruined a perfectly good custard costume too, tore it to shreds. Now, you’re on your own.”
Despondent and morose, Jerome waddled out to the sidewalk and started to figure out how to best hold the sign.
“Hey look at the hot dog!” shouted a crude voice from across the street. “Yeah, lookit… Haw Haw!”
Doyle looked over and saw two men wearing stained canvas shoes, tattered knee-length shorts and filthy olive drab military surplus jackets, rolling back and forth on the sidewalk in front of a butcher’s supply company, pointing and laughing at him. Both had long, dirty hair matted into irregular dreadlocks.
“Damn gutterpunks,” Jerome said, “Watch out for them two – they’re over there selling crack again. They’ll rob you or anything that moves if they think they can get away with it. Scared Hubert and Matilda half to death.”
“What the hell can I do about it?”
“Well for one thing, take your wallet here.” Jerome retrieved it from the pile of clothes in the shed, “And keep it on you, I’ve seen those two snooping around the shed before.”
Doyle held the wallet in his hand, “Where can I keep this?”
“Oh, there’s a pocket built into the costume, right under your left arm, between the dog and the bun.”
Doyle felt for the pocket and shoved his wallet inside, being careful to turn so that the two gutterpunks couldn’t see. As his hand slid inside he felt a couple of objects already there, one hard and irregular, the other a soft rectangle. Hubert, in his haste and excitement, must have left some stuff behind. Doyle thought it best to wait until Jerome was inside before he checked it out.
So Doyle started waddling up and down the sidewalk in front of the joint, waving his sign in as non-threatening a manner as he could. Still, it seemed like he was scaring more people, especially the children that might enjoy some frozen custard, than he was attracting.
Every time he passed the two gutterpunks across the street they would shout obscenities at him. They seemed to have a series of rude hot dog jokes already prepared – Doyle guessed that they had worked these out at Hubert and previous walking dogs. He imagined they were disappointed that there wasn’t a female in a custard costume any more.
After a couple of hours, Doyle was trying to decide if the costume or the boredom was the worst part of the job when he remembered the items he felt in the pocket. At one end of his walk, he leaned his sign against the building and turned to hide himself. Fishing his hand in, he withdrew a good-sized ziplock full of what looked like poor-quality weed and a small, cheap, twenty two caliber revolver – the kind they call a Saturday Night Special. It felt so tiny in his hands, but he checked and confirmed it was loaded.
He supposed that Hubert was afraid of the gutterpunks and decided to pack some protection. As far as the weed – Doyle decided that the next day he might bring a pipe and look for that hidden blind alley where Hubert and Matilda had their ill-fated tryst.
He stuffed everything back into the pocket and began his monotonous back and forth, trying to think of something, anything, other than where he was and what he was doing.
Doyle’s reverie was interrupted by the squeal of tires and a loud thud. Looking up he saw that a big black Tahoe had run up on the curb across the street and slammed to a stop.
Radio Antenna Hot Dog Man – I don’t remember where I took this.
The two gutterpunks immediately started running down the sidewalk. The passenger door opened and a huge man wearing a crisp leather jacket slid out and using the door as protection and a gun rest, leveled a mean looking submachine gun and fired a burst at the retreating gutterpunks. Doyle saw the two tumble to the ground in a spray of blood and ricocheting bullets.
Stunned by the murder he just witnessed, Doyle stood stock still until the man turned and looked right at him. He began to swivel his gun and Doyle realized the guy didn’t want any witnesses, no matter how silly they were dressed. He turned to see Jerome quickly locking the front door of the Hot & Cold from the inside and sliding down under a booth.
His instincts told him to run, but the costume would only allow a waddle. He began to totter and weave when the burst of fire hit him. It felt like a giant hand shoving him in the back as he jerked forward and fell into the parking lot.
Doyle cursed his bad luck as he waited for the pain of the machine gun bullets. It didn’t come. He realized that the fiberglass shell of the hot dog bun and the thick foam underneath must be, at least somewhat, bulletproof. As he rolled he saw the man still coming, running across the street, with his gun raised. Doyle’s hand reached into the pocket for the little twenty two and as he spun onto his back, raised his arm and fired.
A tiny handgun may be no match for a submachine gun, but the bullets are still deadly. Doyle saw a red circle appear on the man’s forehead as he pitched forward, falling right on top of Doyle, now stuck on his back like a turtle. The machine gun rattled to the ground.
Looking back to the street, Doyle saw, to his horror, the driver’s side door opening. He heaved the dead man off his chest, grabbed the machine gun, and used it to lever himself up to his knees. Then, grunting with all his strength against the weight of the ungainly costume, he rose to one knee, then stood.
Doyle barely had time to turn away before the fusillade from the driver blasted into the armor of his costume’s bun. Absorbing the shock, he crabbed sideways and shot the submachine gun into the side of the Tahoe.
That suppressed the driver’s fire for a second and Doyle tried to waddle his way to safety but another burst came and buried itself into his bun.
Suddenly a wave of anger came over Doyle and he turned again and fired. Instead of a short burst, though, he kept shooting. Letting out a hideous roar of fury, fear, and humiliation he tottered as fast as he could toward the Tahoe, spraying bullets.
The sight of a machine gun firing giant hot dog, complete with armored bun, running at him and screaming was too much for the driver. He turned and tried to flee as Doyle gunned him down. Without mercy.
His anger spent, Doyle saw the blue lights of the police as they sped down the street toward him. The machine gun clattered as he dropped it in the street. The cops screeched to a stop and leapt out, guns drawn.
“Put your hands on top of your… hot dog!”
Doyle complied. The cops tried to cuff him behind his back, then gave up and put his hands in front,
“Wait, wait, he’s innocent.” It was Jerome coming out of the Hot & Cold. “It was self-defense. Hey! We better unzip him. Uh, I’ll fetch his clothes.”
“Now you come out,” said Doyle.
Doyle noticed two bystanders huddled behind a low brick wall down the street. They were both standing there, phones held in front of them, filming.
“Oh, great. This is going to go big on YouTube now, isn’t it.” he said to the cops.
“Serious publicity,” said Jerome as he fetched the sign and waved it in front of the filming bystanders.
Doyle sat on his couch and remoted to one of the true crime channels. At first he wasn’t going to watch the show, but the more he thought about it, he decided he couldn’t really miss the thing.
Sure enough, they had everything wrong. The worst thing was the actor in the show was zipped into a giant peanut suit.
“A peanut! I wish. A peanut would be a piece of cake.”
Of course he had tried out for the part on the show, to play himself. The producers had given him an audition. Doyle figured it was only a courtesy. In the end they said he “Just wasn’t right for the part.”
That was when Doyle decided the acting thing wasn’t going to work out. When he can’t even get a job playing himself, well, it was time to pack it in.
He had taken a job as a salesman in his father’s car dealership. It seemed to make his dad happy. He shook his head at how he had ended up. He had always hated those salesmen and couldn’t believe how they had to run around in those cheap suits all day.
Now, of course, he realized that there were worse things you might have to wear to work.
Bill Chance 