Almost True Stories

The trouble with the truth is that it is generally incoherent. There is no reason. There is no order. There is no lesson to be learned. And, subsequently, it often has meaning to nobody but you. Or, to quote Marge Simpson, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”

Throwing Stuff at Cars When we were kids, we'd go through phases, doing stuff. In the summer, we lived at the pool during the day and ran amok at night. In the winter, we'd play with our road race cars, designing new tracks, tuning up our cars, and then racing them around the table every night for the next several weeks before we got bored. Then we’d move on to playing Monopoly or Risk or chess. Always moving on to something else. In the fall, it was throwing stuff at cars. We'd crouch down in the cover of the darkness, behind the fence that separated the Huggens and the Browns. The Browns lived on the corner, and from their backyard we could see the unsuspecting cars coming from every direction. We never had to wait very long. Apples were the perfect fruit, but only if they weren't too mushy. And there were a lot of apple trees. Pears worked, too, but ever since lightning hit the pear tree they were permanently out of season. We had peach trees, but they were on the far end of the lot, and since we never sprayed or pruned them, what little peaches we did get were only good for attracting bees. Tomatoes were unreliable. First of all, there was rarely any left on the vines that late in the season, much less any that were a good throwing size. And if there were, they generally weren't solid enough to throw. They'd just go mush in your hand. Then you'd smell like rotten tomatoes for the rest of the night. Kinda makes it hard to deny you were up to anything wrong. We didn't always throw fruit. We experimented with car siding and bottle rockets. We always bought bottle rockets by the gross for the Fourth, every year thinking we'd shoot them all off in one glorious night. But that's a lot of bottle rockets. So no matter what time of the year it was, every kid in the neighborhood had bottle rockets, well beyond their expiration date, squirreled away somewhere. It was hit and miss if they'd do anything at all. Sometimes they'd fizzle out after an abbreviated flight. Other times they'd just blow up without going anywhere. You never knew. Still, it didn't stop us from trying. We'd lay the bottle rocket in the groove of the wood and play with the angle until we got it just right, where it would fly right over the street, perfectly in front of an approaching car, exploding inches from the windshield. Only it was never perfect. It was rarely even close. On top of that, the streak of fire announced exactly where you were. Rotten apples left no streak. It was hard enough to hit a car with a rotten apple. We didn't need to involve rocket science. Some kids threw rocks, but we never did. There just weren't that many rocks lying around, and beside, it was kind of a dick thing to do. We just wanted to have fun, not mess up somebody's car. You hit a car with a rock and you're going to really piss somebody off. That's the kind of thing that makes people want to run you down and beat the shit out of you. Of course, it doesn't take much for some people to want to do that. Some kids threw eggs. But we didn't do that, either. Eggs were expensive, unless you stole them from your mother, and that only worked if your mother didn't count the eggs. My mother knew how many eggs she had better than my dad knew how much beer was left. And he knew. I spent the night once with this guy named Eddie. We snuck out, which was the whole point of spending the night. Eddie shot an egg with a wrist rocket slingshot. If you've never seen one, it uses surgical tubing to fire things like ball bearings. People hunt with them. They're definitely not your Dennis the Menace slingshot. I'm not sure who in their right mind would give a kid a weapon like that. Probably the same mentality that had us all armed with BB guns. So Eddie shoots an egg out of this slingshot at his neighbor's house from like a half block away, and it goes through the window – the storm window – both pains of glass and who knows what else. We quickly snuck back in while his neighbors were out in the backyard with flashlights. The point is… well, I don't guess there is a point. And that brings us to the early October night when me and Andy and Joel, dressed in our darkest clothes, were out in the backyard, apples in our hands, waiting. It's not that we were bad shots, but like most things in life, we were average, at best. We could reliably throw a baseball to first base. But apples weren't as consistent as baseballs. And the guy on first base wasn't going 30 miles an hour. And it was dark. And… well… we were usually lucky if one of us even came close. If we did hit a car, it would usually slow down, maybe look around, and then slowly drive away. Every once in a while it might circle back, but if they didn't chase us the first time, we'd throw at them again. Mind you, we didn't throw at every car. Some teenager's hotrod… nope. They'd slam on their brakes for sure and quite possibly get out and chase you. Some old lady in a station wagon, she's gonna keep on going. Pick up trucks… you never knew. Cars with lights on top… the temptation was there, but we weren't that stupid. And that brings us back to the night in question. It was a station wagon, so we let rip. And against all odds, all three of us hit it. All of us had never hit the same car ever. Not once. I'm not sure if two of us ever got the same car. Be we all got this one. Solid. Not a glancing blow one. Resounding. Bam! Bam! Bam! The car slammed on its brakes, all four doors immediately flew open, and four older guys were running, and I mean running, coming up the hill, coming for us. And they were pissed. They just left their car in the middle of the road with its doors open. They didn't care. We were already moving when the brakes locked up. Still, there was a limited amount of directions we could go. Andy cut back up through the backyard toward the street, hoping to make it to the side of my house, where there were a few good hiding places by the shrubs and between the cars in the driveways. Me and Joel headed toward the far fence in my backyard. If we could make it there, we could slide through the hidden hole in the fence and disappear into the corn stalks. And that's when Joel ran into a horseshoe stake. A metal pole sticking out of the ground that clipped him square in the shin and dropped him. So I grabbed him and we rolled under the bush in the Stevenson's backyard. It was one of those bushes that grows from a central tangle of stems and all the branches form a big umbrella around it. And there we were hiding. Joel was in some serious pain. He was a tough kid. But, damn. You run into a horseshoe stake and see if you don't cry. So there we were. I was holding my hand over Joel's mouth so we wouldn't be heard, and at least two of those guys went running by, saying stuff like, "Where are those motherfuckers?!" You could tell they were really mad. I mean, that's back when you didn't say "motherfucker" unless you really meant it. We just stayed there. We had no idea where Andy was. Not that it would've mattered. Joel calmed down pretty quickly. Like I said, he was a tough guy, but he was still in a lot of pain, which is understandable. And even if we wanted to – and we didn't – he couldn't run. So we stayed hidden. After a few minutes, we heard footsteps approaching the bush. Joel barely whispered that it could be Andy. I barely whispered that I didn't care. If it was Andy we could catch up with him later. Come to find out, it wasn't Andy. It was those guys coming back. Andy was hiding under the three or four stairs that went from my house's back door down to the patio. They were open on each end, and there were no risers, so you could see between each step. He was lying flat on the concrete, trying to blend in, when two of those guys, probably the other two, sat on the stairs above him. They sat there smoking cigarettes, talking about how badly they wanted to hurt us. When the other two guys came back, the four of them hung there for a few minutes more, smoking and cursing, before heading back to their car. I didn't see any of that. Me and Joel stayed hidden until we heard Andy calling for us. Even then, when we came out, we saw their station wagon cruising around, still hoping to catch a glimpse. Still hoping to be able to hurt somebody. It was awhile after that before we felt safe sneaking back to our homes, Joel with a limp. We never threw anything at cars after that night. It's not like we all swore an oath or even talked about it. Just the same, when we were all trying to come up with something to do on any given night, throwing rotten apples at cars was not ever again suggested.

The Paper Wad Mr. Oelschlager taught 8th grade English at Nowlin Junior High School. He was a good teacher, not just because he knew stuff like subjects and verbs, and the difference between good and well. It was because he knew how to put up with the little stuff, like students coming in late, but not too late. He knew that kids forgot stuff. And he knew we really had to go to the bathroom, even when we really didn’t. But the biggest reason he was such a good teacher was that he knew how to ignore things. If we weren’t being overly obvious, he could ignore passing notes and talking across the aisle. He could even ignore cheating, mostly because he knew what we hadn’t figured out yet: It’s harder to cheat well than it is to study. The one thing Mr. Oelschlager couldn’t put up with, though, the one thing he couldn’t ignore, the one thing he had no patience for at all was paper wads. It wasn’t just throwing paper wads at each other across the class. That was never going to be ignored. What Mr. Oelschlager especially disliked was throwing paper wads at the trash can. The trash can that set there in the open. Just waiting. I don’t know why. He never explained, and I don’t remember anybody asking. That’s why he had a standing rule: If you threw a paper wad at the can, whether it was from six inches away or from the very back of the room, it was an automatic five eighth hours, which were – each – a full hour after school sitting in Mr. Oelschlager’s room, doing homework or reading or whatever he might have in mind. You had to do it. You couldn’t exchange Mr. Oelschlager’s eighth hours for five swats apiece, like other teachers let you do. You had to serve them. All five. Unless... unless you actually made that shot. If the paper wad went into the can and stayed in the can, there was no penalty. You were golden. After Stephanie Long missed one from, like, two feet away on, like, the second day of school, and she had to serve all five of those detentions, even though it meant she had to miss cheerleading practice, we all knew Mr. Oelschlager wasn’t kidding. And then there was Eddie Wallace. He was a kid I only remember because of that one day in April. April, when the end of the school year finally begins to seem real. Eddie sat on the very back row, in the far corner of the room. As far as humanly possible from the trash can. He’d been there all year long, just putting in his time, like the rest of us. Just blending into the backdrop of all those people you really didn’t know. Until that one day. It was toward the end of the hour, maybe five minutes left, tops, when Eddie raised his hand and patiently waited until Mr. Oelschlager gave him the nod. Then Eddie stood up, and from the furthest corner of the room he launched a paper wad. He had the form of a pro basketball player, the hand left hanging in the air while the wad arched across the room as we all watched. Nobody breathed. Mouths open in awe. It was a perfect shot. The paper wad hit that can dead center. No messing with the rim. No if’s. No maybe’s. Just the resounding “thunk” as it crashed into the bottom of the can. We all went wild as Eddie just stood there smiling, arms held out as those nearest him slapped his hands. Best of all, from the front Mr. Oelschlager gave Eddie a sharp salute just as the bell rang and class was dismissed. Here’s the thing. Eddie had to have thought about that shot all year long. We all did. Every day, that trash can sitting there, mocking us. Thinking about it, after all these years, I bet Eddie practiced that shot. There’s no other way. No kid would just launch a wad from the back of the room with so much to lose. Eddie had to have measured it off. He had to have spent every night practicing in his garage until he felt confident enough to try it. Until he was making 85, 90% of every shot. But even then, even if he had put in all those hours of practice, it’s a lot different when it’s for real. When everybody is watching. When you know the consequences of failure. And there couldn’t be anything much worse than having to stay after school an extra hour for five whole days – an entire week – when it felt so good to be outside in the Spring. Perhaps the only thing worse than missing that shot would have been if Eddie had never tried it at all.

Our Lady of the Americas Christen taught science and math and a few other things. No one was really certain what went on in her room, except maybe Christen. I’m certain, though, that she taught religion. Before the school year had started all the teachers met for a combination prayer breakfast and teachers’ meeting. The prayer part of the breakfast was Christen reading from the Bible while the rest of us silently counted the breakfast part of the meeting; there were thirteen of us and only twelve donuts. Aside from losing her place twice and mispronouncing “Ephesians,” she did alright. “I tried teaching in public schools,” Christen explained, “but once you’ve taught religion you can never go back.” We all helped ourselves to the donuts while Christen talked. Christen was pregnant, marginally less so than the amount of time she was married. She could quote the Pope’s stand against contraception and she even knew which Pope had said it; it made her very proud to be able to do so. Christen was truly remarkable. The heat didn’t help her morning sickness one bit, but Christen never let it slow her down. She kept a bucket by her desk that she would empty promptly after each class period. “We must all suffer like Christ. The heat is only a minor discomfort we need to endure. Heaven is our reward.” Christen was an idiot. “But she is a devout idiot, and that,” Marge had confided in me, “makes all the difference in the world.” I liked Marge. She had been teaching forever, maybe even a little bit longer. She was going bald and really needed to shave; she had given up trying to lose that extra fifty pounds sometime in the late ‘forties. I had misjudged Marge. I really though she would be no fun at all. Marge had been raised a Methodist, which, she explained, was alright, except you had to say “Excuse me” every time you wanted a beer, and “Pardon me” every time you drank one. Marge was hot, too. She was on the floor above me, which meant that she was really hot. The sweat would roll out from underneath her wig, straightening out little wisps of hair that would have preferred to have remained hidden, and every once in a while a glistening drop would slip from the end of her nose and land with a “plop” on some worksheet she happened to be grading. I personally don’t think the fan helped a bit. I only had one, and it just chopped the heat, moving one gust of steamy air somewhere that another gust would have rather remained. The whole problem with the fan was that it didn’t move, unless, of course, I got up and moved it. If I aimed it at one half of the room, the other half complained, and visa versa. Even if we took turns it wouldn’t work. Seventh and eighth graders never seem to be happy about anything, except about not having to button their shirts all the way up – the boys, that is. The girls could do nothing, which, I know, wasn’t fair. So I got rid of the fan. I sent it upstairs to Marilyn. Marilyn was so damned cute that she could have asked me for my desk and I would have given it to her. I offered it to her, but she didn’t want it. I can’t remember Marilyn ever sweating. All her kids were cute, too. They weren’t really her kids; they all went back to their mothers at night. A few of them went home to both their mothers and their fathers. Marilyn taught the first grade. She had gotten married the day after she graduated from college. With her teaching certificate in hand, she spent most of the summer honeymooning in various parts of the Caribbean Sea. I’m almost positive she didn’t keep the certificate in her hand the whole time, and if she did, she managed to shift it regularly so as not to diminish her tan any. Marilyn didn’t get to take anything off, either, much to Scott’s and my disappointment. We were the first male teachers ever to grace the halls of Our Lady of the Americas Catholic School. We all just called it OLA for short. You didn’t need to take two breaths in order to say OLA. It was quite an event – our being hired. Half the kids came down to look at us two weeks before school even opened. A steady line of them passed by us as we stood on ladders while wet paint dripped off the walls and onto our tennis shoes. The rumour was confirmed. I believe quite a bit of money changed hands in the process. “What’s the matter with these damned kids?” I asked. “Beats hell outa me,” Scott answered. Mrs. Ragusa smiled at me reassuringly. I had just explained to her that I had a degree in Literature and a minor in Communications – getting up in front of the class would be no problem. What the heck, as long as I had the teachers’ editions of the textbooks there would be no problem with teaching. “I’m going to offer you a contract to teach seventh and eighth grade Literature,” Miss Ragusa beamed. “Usually I start new teachers out at $9,500 a year, but I’m going to offer you $10,000 for your first year here at OLA.” Miss Ragusa was being generous because I was a man and because I had a family. Heck, with that kind of money my wife and I could even have more kids. “But I don’t want to plan your family for you,” Miss Ragusa half-apologized. I had no concept of money in those days. “I really believe the Holy Spirit has guided you to OLA,” she explained. That should have been my first warning. I had just spent two-and-a-half hours driving lost through neighborhoods where they don’t even wait for your car to stop before stealing your hubcaps. I quit asking for directions when I realized that nobody spoke English in that part of town. “Usted está en Estados Unidos, señor, pero es posible que usted no está aquí, pero entonces, ¿dónde?” Scott had just painted over a window completely. “There’s something in my room I’d like you to paint.” “What?” asked Scott. “I’ll show you later,” I said, then I continued, “Hey, did I tell you what she has me teaching now?” “No,” said Scott. He was trying to decide whether he should take the paint off the window or put another coat on and let it go. “I’ve still got my lit classes, but now I’ve got Religion.” “Religion?” questioned Scott. “I thought you said you weren’t Catholic.” Scott had begun putting another coat of paint on the window. “I am Catholic,” I explained. “I’m just out of practice.” “Oh, really? How long out of practice?” “About fourteen years.” I carefully dabbed a spot on the window that Scott had missed. “Does Ragusa know that?” Scott artistically smoothed over the spot I had just dabbed. “No,” I said, “she never asked. I figured the Holy Spirit had told her.” “Oh,” said Scott, hopping off of his ladder so he could get a better perspective of his window. The paint on the window had dried quickly in the heat. “Do you suppose anyone will notice?” asked Scott. “Naw, I’ll just make them pray every morning. That should do it.” I was confident. Unfortunately, the heat outlasted my confidence. Jesus had sworn that he had seen our patron saint sweat. The life-size mural of the Blessed Virgin Mary (which we all conveniently shortened to BVM), who was depicted as standing on the earth while groveling peasants cluttered the corners, completely covered the back wall of my room. “That is what I’ll miss most about this room,” Miss Ragusa had confided in me. “I got so much comfort out of just looking on the hands of Mary.” Mary’s hands were spread out, as if she were trying to touch the groveling peasants. Scott had quit painting long before we ever got to my room. He had just finished painting over his second window when he quit. “You really do need to come down to my room and do some painting,” I pleaded, “only the back wall – that’s all.” But it was too late. “Are we getting paid for this?” Scott asked. “I think so.” “How much?” Scott asked again. “I’m not sure,” I answered. “It’s not enough.” Scott didn’t even wash out his brush. If only Scott could have been called out of retirement it would have solved the entire problem with Jesus. Scott had made the mistake of actually calling the poor kid Gee-Zuss, which Scott thought was down-right funny. Hey-Zeus had no sense of humour whatsoever. In fact, none of the kids did. I didn’t even get a smile out of my favourite Catholic joke: Do you know why Jesus was crucified instead of being stoned? (Wait time...) So Catholics could go like this (Cross yourself) instead of this (Act like your fists are stones that are repeatedly hitting you in the face). I loved that joke. So, at any rate, here’s Jesus swearing that the Virgin is sweating. I prudently passed up a very good one-liner. “It’s only a minor discomfort that she needs to endure. We all must learn to suffer like Christ.” Oh my god! I was beginning to sound like Christen. “Now shut up and get back to your damned seat.” That was much better, more like me. Tony lit up like a Christmas tree. “Mr. Soetaert, you said Damn! We’re not supposed to say Damn. Damn’s a curse word. You said Damn. Did you know you said Damn? Damn, he said Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.” “Tony, shut up.” “But you said Damn.” “So?” “Does that mean we can say Damn, too? You said Damn so we can say Damn, too. Damn, we can say Damn.” Miss Ragusa wanted to know just two things. One: Why was my necktie around Saint Joseph’s neck; and Two: Why were all my students saying Damn? She also wanted to know who painted over the windows in Marge’s room, but she had long ago given up trying to find out. I could have had either Saint Joseph or Jesus (with a “G”). Since I had to have a statue in my room, and since Joseph is my middle name, I figured that I’d keep it in the family. Besides, Joseph was holding baby Jesus. This way I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. That’s why I had a Joseph in my room. And since it was so unmercifully hot I got to take my tie off. Saint Joseph just seemed to compel me. “I need a tie,” he had whispered to me. “Mr. Soetaert, why is it so Damned hot?” Little Christina always looked so innocent. There was a running bet that she would be pregnant by the time she was fifteen. “I really don’t know, Christina. Please don’t say Damn anymore.” “Miss Christen says it’s so Damned hot because we all must suffer.” “That may very well be true,” I said. “Please don’t say Damn anymore.” Christen snarled at Scott and me as she passed us in the hall, swinging her bucket menacingly. Christen had begun to snarl a lot more it seemed. I always thought it was because all my students wanted to say Damn in her room, too. Scott said it was because she hated him. It think Scott was right. “You missed a Hail Mary,” Scott reminded Christen. Christen had been silently wearing out her Rosary Beads in the teachers’ lounge while the coffee pot sizzled the last forgotten drops of coffee into a black crust that no one would ever bother to wash out. “What?” Christen always looked somewhat wild-eyed. It was a hard look to place – somewhere between a desperate vampire and a double-crossed pimp. “What do you mean I missed a Hail Mary?” “You said ten Our Fathers and only nine Hail Marys...” “Do you know what ‘hallowed’ means...” I tried to interject, but Christen ignored me. “What do you mean I missed one?!” Christen was beginning to look a lot less like a desperate vampire and a whole lot more like a double-crossed pimp. “You said only nine Hail Marys,” Scott calmly explained. “You missed one.” “How dare you tell me how to pray!” Christen was almost yelling, “At least I’m praying! I never see you praying!” “So?” asked Scott, becoming increasingly calmer. “It means sanctified or sacrosanct – super holy, so to speak.” I wasn’t about to give up. “What the hell are you talking about?” screamed Christen. “Hallowed,” I explained, “that’s what hallowed means. You know, ‘Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name...’?” “Please don’t say Hell,” Scott added. Christen had a way of turning very red when she got extremely angry. She also had a way of slamming the lounge door so hard that the crucifix on the wall above it would swing back and forth. Scott and I watched it swinging, swinging, swinging, moving our heads like we were at a tennis match until it all but stopped. “Double or nothing tomorrow,” I said, certain it was going to fall. The door violently flew back open. Christen grabbed her bucket off the floor and slammed the door behind her once again. “I believe that makes a whole case,” Scott said as the crucifix finally stopped swinging. Christen still carried her bucket, although she no longer needed it. The sight of it alone scared any seventh grader into submission. “What’s the matter with Christen?” asked Marge, coming into the lounge. “She forgot her bucket,” I explained. “Hey, I have an idea,” I said to anybody who cared to listen. “What if I filled a bucket with shit. That would probably end my discipline problems.” “Naw, someone’d just steal it.” Scott was trying to make a card house on the table, but the cards kept falling over. “Please don’t say Shit,” said Marge as she unloaded her lunch from her crumpled paper bag and then carefully folded it back up again – her bag, not her lunch. “Christen hates me,” said Scott, carefully lowering a card destined to be the roof. And the cards tumbled in. “And she hates me, too,” I said, coveting Marge’s apple. “She hates me because Scott and I are friends.” “But she hates you devoutly,” explained Marge, “and that makes all the difference.” Just then the coffee pot sizzled and popped as the last drop of moisture gave up its earthly existence. “Would anyone like any coffee?” asked Marge cheerfully. “Only if you’re making a pot anyway,” I obediently replied, thankful that it would never finish brewing before I had to be back in class. I had never noticed before that the teachers’ lounge didn’t have a statue of anyone in it. “Juan Valdez, patron saint of Coffee Pots, Coffee Drinkers, and those little packets of sugar previously not covered under Saint C and H, patron saint of sugar.” I chuckled out loud. “What?” Scott looked up from his pile of cards. “Never mind,” I said, still chuckling. “By the way,” said Marge after her jagged teeth marks ruined any hopes I had that included her apple, “do either of you know how to get paint off of windows?” If we had a statue of Saint Juan I would have taken it over Joseph, but that’s the way it goes. Miss Ragusa got the state of Saint Mary. She had called dibs sometime last year. Genuflect... Genuflect... Genuflect... “It is necessary to genuflect before the Chalice that sits to the right of the Altar....” But the Baltimore Catechism said nothing about Mary. I felt that I should genuflect before the Mary in Miss Ragusa’s office. Miss Ragusa had a small office to begin with, and half of it was Mary. She stood atop and ancient doilied table that had been hand-carved by someone’s great-grandfather who was still in Mexico – buried, and the doily had been hand-crocheted by elderly nuns and was actually blessed by the Pope; or maybe it was just a Cardinal. I had never given it much thought, but I suppose that a Cardinal could bless just as well as the Pope – at least things like doilies. Blessing people might be different, but, then, I’m really not sure. Miss Ragusa’s Mary had the same out-stretched hands as the one that I had painted around in my room. She also had the same complacent smile. There was a place somewhere in Kansas City that sold the statues. They had them all, even Saint Juan, I’m sure. Supposedly, the statues came over from Italy where the Pope blessed them by the truck-load before they were loaded on a boat. Only Popes can bless statues of saints. He blessed the boat, too, for good measure, although a Cardinal probably could have done the boat. But one can never be too careful. Behind the statue of Mary, hung from the ceiling by twisted bailing wires, was a portrait of Mary. The portrait looked almost identical to the statue, which looked almost identical to the Mary I had painted around in my room. The glaring difference was Mary’s halo – the Mary in the picture, that is. It was huge, almost twice the size of Mary’s head. It seemed to illume the room. “Is that black light?” I asked. “What?” asked Miss Ragusa. “Never mind.” I continued to stare at the portrait. At least it kept my eyes off of Miss Ragusa. I’m certain that if she tried Miss Ragusa could stretch her bottom lip completely over her nose with absolutely no assistance. And she constantly smoked those little brown cigarettes. I suppose she was trying to hold her lip back from the slow creeping – so slow she would never notice it until it started to blur her vision. But the truly amazing thing about Miss Ragusa was her fingernails. The lady had six-inch fingernails. It was beyond the point of arguing whether they were real or not; indeed, that was beside the point. She had to dial a phone with a pencil. I have no idea whatsoever how she ever managed to go to bathroom, not that going would be the hard part. “I’ll take a piece of that action,” Marge said, overhearing Scott and me making bets in the teachers’ lounge. I said she just didn’t. Scott said that she did. “But if she does,” I reminded Scott. “You got to prove how.” “Verification’s going to be the bitch,” Scott said. Christen violently threw open the door. Her face was brilliant red. Her eyes screamed hate as they tore us apart from the doorway. And then just as quickly as she had come, she slammed the door to the lounge as hard as she could. The crucifix above the door rocked twice and then crashed to the floor, causing Jesus to pop off the cross. “Shit!” Scott cursed. “There goes a whole Damned keg!” “Please don’t say Shit,” Marge said. “Please don’t say Damn,” I said. So I sat in Miss Ragusa’s office trying not to stare at her fingernails, becoming more and more convinced that she just didn’t. “I find it comforts me, too,” said Miss Ragusa, noticing my distraction. “Yes,” I agreed, “she does take one away from their present distractions.” “From his present distractions, or her,” Miss Ragusa interjected. “Excuse me?” I was forced to face her fingernails. “’One’ is singular, and ‘their’ is plural,” she corrected me. “Oh,” I said. Miss Ragusa’s lip started to move. Quickly she took out a brown cigarette and even more quickly I returned my attention to Mary. A crucifix was draped carefully over Mary’s hand. Had my necktie been so blessed by the Pope I might have had an argument. “I know I shouldn’t genuflect, but shouldn’t I at least cross myself?” I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer; I just had to know. “Excuse me?” Miss Ragusa looked puzzled. “Never mind.” Perhaps there was somebody else I could ask. Perhaps my life would be complete if I never knew. “You told me you were Catholic, right?” My worst fears came true. This was going to be a serious conference. Yes, I had been a Catholic. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. That’s what the nuns always told me in CCD classes. To this day I have yet to learn what CCD stands for. “When was the last time you went to Mass?” I’m not certain, but I don’t believe anyone blesses ashtrays. At any rate, I had been intently watching the ash at the end of Miss Ragusa’s little brown cigarette become increasingly longer. The longer it became, the more I wished that Marge were there. By the time Miss Ragusa finally moved her little brown cigarette toward the ashtray I would have given Marge 17 to one odds that she wouldn’t make it. “How did you do that?” I sat in amazement. Miss Ragusa had not flipped her ash; she had simply looked at it and then nodded her had, and it fell off on its own, landing perfectly in the middle of the ashtray. “Do what?” Miss Ragusa asked. “Never mind.” Still, Miss Ragusa wanted to know when was the last time I went to Mass. I knew I couldn’t count last Saturday. All the teachers got to... no, had to, parade in front of the entire congregation. We were given nifty stainless steel crosses to wear daily. I suppose they were purchased at the same place where the statues came from. I had stopped wearing mine when I had to take my tie off of Saint Joseph. Since I was wearing my tie no one could tell that I wasn’t wearing my cross. Besides that, it had cooled off. It’s not that my tie felt good around my neck when it was cool; it’s just that it no longer felt like I was slowly strangling. Of course, the kids were complaining because it was too cold. “Complain to God,” I told my class. “It’s not my fault, and I know it’s not fair. Now take out your literature books... the blue one with the dog on the cover.” Scott let it be known that he was willing to go half-ers with anyone in on a gun. “If Christen says that we need to suffer one more time, I’m going to shoot her.” That was the first thing Scott said after we finished the first six pack. I wouldn’t let him say anything until we had three apiece. Scott had a conference with Miss Ragusa, too. “And after Christen, I’m going to shoot Miss Ragusa, too.” “That’s not fair,” I complained. “I get to shoot at least one of them.” “So, what was your conference about?” Scott asked. “I’m not teaching religion anymore.” “Oh,” he replied. I had done such an outstanding job, too. I personally think I taught religion better than literature. I’ll never forget the day I gave the now famous “Our Father” lecture. I found it incomprehensible that the kids all said their numerous Our Fathers daily and didn’t have the slightest idea what “hallowed” meant. I hit on it all – everything from eschatological theory to historic Judaic theology. I was confident; they would never say their Our Fathers the same again. We even did a nifty play about the Ten Commandments. I believe that is what caused me to lose my religion class. Either that, or it was the follow-up lecture when Miss Ragusa, who happened to be observing my class that day, decided to take over the lecture after I got the seventh and eighth commandments confused. Had I not left out number nine altogether I might have been able to fake it. But still, it could have been the play. It was an entire class project, with several small groups acting out the important segments of Moses getting those infamous slabs. It looked so good in my lesson plans that Miss Ragusa invited herself to the final production. And she, in turn, took the liberty of inviting Father Garcia. Father Garcia always wore a poncho that looked more like an old rug than a poncho and sandals that had been made from bus tires. In the evenings, after the last of the kids had finally finished their detentions, you could hear Father Garcia from the rectory banging on his guitar and singing hymns in Spanish. Father Garcia was not Hispanic, although I suppose that it didn’t matter. I could imagine whole rows of monks walking hours on end into the night, outside in the freezing drizzle, while they went through their Gregorian chants, and there, in the middle, would be Father Garcia, oblivious to it all, chanting away like a trouper while his thoughts were somewhere slightly above Purgatory. He never got upset over anything. You could have told the good Father that Satan, himself, had risen from Hell and had stolen the sacrificial wine, and he would not have gotten upset; the Father, that is. He simply would have reached beneath his poncho and come up with a few loose dollars before sending you down to the corner to do the best you could before Mass. When you got back Satan would be gone, the hole boarded up, and never a mention of it would be made again. In fact, there was only one time that anybody could recall Father Garcia ever changing his expression. He and Miss Ragusa sat in the back of the room and quietly watched our production of the Ten Commandments. Neither of them got upset when Moses dropped Commandments eleven through fifteen; they didn’t seem bothered that God wore dark glasses or that Aaron started break dancing. It was when Moses stood up to the Pharaoh and said, “Let my Damned people go....” No one at that school had a sense of humour. Perhaps Miss Ragusa did, after all, have a point about my not teaching religion. I couldn’t really understand why Scott was so upset, though. It had something to do with curriculum. “It’s either my way or the highway with Ragusa,” Scott snorted. “Hell, I’ve been teaching three years and none of my principals ever watched me as much as that Damned Ragusa.” “Please don’t say Damn.” I had to take Scott’s word for it since this was my first school. I had thought it odd, though, that Miss Ragusa had observed my class on the very first day. The first day was supposed to be a half day – since it was so hot – and I suppose it really was (a half day, that is), although to this day I still get confused. Someone had worked out an amazingly elaborate schedule so no one class lost more time than the others, but every class lost different amounts of time every day until in the end it all worked out right. If that just didn’t make sense to you then you’ll probably understand why it never made sense to me. It so happened that my literature class was scheduled to lose more time the next day than the day I thought it was, which was the day Miss Ragusa dropped in, which was still the first day of school. “Weren’t you supposed to have been here yesterday?” I asked. “Excuse me?” questioned Miss Ragusa. “Never mind.” If anyone ever tells you that students are willing to learn, he is lying. He is lying through his teeth. And students are even less willing to learn on the first day of class. Miss Ragusa sat in the back of the room, tapping her pen ever so softly on her brown note pad. There are times in your life when you wish you’d learned how to do a soft-shoe shuffle. “OK, class, pick up your books and read something.” “What do you want us to read?” Joe asked. “The first story in the book, Joe.” “What book?” “Your literature book, Joe.” “Which one is that?” “It’s the blue book with the picture of the dog on the cover.” “Oh, this book?” “Yes, Joe. It’s the very same book that everyone else has out on their desks.” I waited for Miss Ragusa to correct my English from the back of the room, and she did. I didn’t like Joe. Perhaps it was a quick decision, but those are the kind we all tend to make. “OK, Joe, why don’t you read first?” “Out loud?” Joe looked shocked. “Why would I have you all take turns reading to yourselves?” “Oh, I just thought maybe...” “Just read, Joe, we’ll work on thinking later.” “Hubo un hombre que se comió mierda....” That was before the class learned that they could say Damn. Miss Ragusa quietly sat in the back and wrote a lot. She probably would have written a lot more if the students had learned how to say Damn. I was trying to drive and hit a road construction sign with an empty beer can. “It’s an exercise in coordination,” I explained. I carefully gauged the distance of the sign, the weight of the can, and the speed of the car. Then I flipped the can over the roof of the car with the precision of a professional basketball player and missed by a mile. I watched the can bounce stupidly alongside the road until the gush of a truck’s tires chased it into the curbside weeds. Still Scott was mad. So I had another beer. “What’s to get so upset about? You just go in and teach and then they pay you for it, right?” I thought about what I had just said for a moment and then added, “Well, you get a check. Whether or not you call it pay is up to you.” It didn’t matter that we were both getting shellacked. We were perpetually stuck in traffic all the way back to the shopping mall where we met each day to trade rides. We couldn’t possibly get up enough speed to kill anyone, except maybe ourselves, and that no longer seemed a great concern. “So she wants to change the curriculum? Who cares?” I didn’t. “Besides, what the Hell is a curriculum, anyway?” “Please don’t say Hell,” Scott reminded me. I really can’t explain exactly why I quit. To do that I would have to explain exactly why I took the job to begin with, and I don’t know the answer to that, either. I remember telling Marge first, but by that time Marge was getting used to teachers’ quitting. I suppose that Miss Ragusa was getting used to it, too. The PE teacher was the first to go. Janis only lasted two weeks, which was not nearly long enough to get to know her well enough to ask her why she had a tattoo, but I had asked her anyway. She had gotten “Daisy,” she explained, to cover up another tattoo that didn’t look nearly so cute. Daisy’s cute little eyes always seemed to be trying to peak out of Janis’ blouse. Daisy was a little skunk that looked like one of those air fresheners you can get for your rearview mirror. Janis had one hanging over her rearview mirror. I suppose there was a connection between the two skunks, but I never found out before Janis quit. “There’s nothing wrong with a tattoo,” Marge explained, “as long as you get one devoutly.” I wonder if just a priest could bless a tattoo. I suppose he could, unless it were on a person, but then would he have to bless the whole person? And how could he bless a tattoo if it weren’t on a person? It was Janis’ first year of teaching, too. I’m really not certain why she quit, but it had something to do with her moving to Jefferson City to be near her fiancé until he could get out of prison. It took both Scott and me to hold Janis back as Christen walked out of the teachers’ lounge saying something about suffering and Jesus (with a G). Scott quit next, or rather, as Scott put it, “It was a mutual separation. My way’s the highway.” Actually it worked out quite well, as it were, since Scott quit right after it was decided that I would no longer teach religion classes. It was decided that I would now teach Scott’s Social Studies classes, which meant I was no longer teaching literature at all. “Shouldn’t somebody tell Miss Ragusa that I never studied Social Studies in college?” I asked Scott. “I mean, somebody besides the Holy Spirit?” The Holy Spirit didn’t seem to be holding up too well lately. Scott was busy taking his few worldly possessions out of his desk drawer and packing them into an old paint can box. There was a whole closet full of all the old painting stuff that nobody ever bothered to clean out. “Would it matter if she knew?” Scott was trying to find any playing cards that might have gotten loose from the rest of the deck. “I don’t know,” I said, finding the Queen of Clubs. “What’s left for me to teach?” “Relative to where?” Scott snapped the rubber band around the deck. “If you find any cards, you can keep them,” Scott added. “Here.” I handed Scott his only plant. “Don’t forget this.” The only crusted brown leaf hung limply to the blackened stem that was anchored firmly into the moldy-white, cement hard dirt. “I think it needs water.” “I think it needs a beer.” Scott pulled a cold beer out of one of his desk drawers. We both watched the pool of yellow suds sit on top of the soil with no intention of going anywhere. “I believe it’s too far gone,” I said, wishing I had a hat to take off. “Shouldn’t we do something?” Scott gently took the only remaining leaf into his hand, lightly touched one of his free fingers in the pool of beer, and then crossed the leaf. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The leaf came off in Scott’s hand. “Oh well, at least it’s with the angels now.” I did feel better. “The hell with this, then,” Scott said, throwing the leaf, pot, and plant into the trashcan. It bonked solidly on the bottom. “Did I ever ask you why you have a Snoopy trashcan in your room? I asked Scott. “I think so,” Scott answered. “Did you ever tell me?” “No, I don’t believe I did.” I never asked Scott if he thought he’d ever return to teaching. Marge was standing on a chair in the faculty toilet when I told her I was going to quit. She was trying to tie a string to the flash button of a Polaroid camera. “When she flushes the toilet the camera will take her picture.” Marge smiled with the gleefulness of a child. “Wouldn’t it be after the fact, though? I mean, when she flushes the toilet we’ll just get a picture of her flushing the toilet.” Marge stepped off the chair and sat down on the toilet, not even noticing that the lid was still up. She was obviously disappointed. “Keep working at it, Marge.” I tried to cheer her up. “You’ll come up with it yet.” I sat down in a chair across from Marge so I could help her think, too. “How about drilling a little hole in the door?” “Naw,” said Marge after a few moment’s thought, “I’d probably just have to pay for the door if Miss Ragusa found out.” “I kicked a hole in my desk.” Marge looked up at me and smiled. “Will you have to pay for it?” Marge asked. “No.” That had been Ragusa’s first idea. But there was no money missing from my final paycheck. I did have to sit in her office, though, while she lectured me about my not being able to teach before she finally gave me my money. “I wish you would have thought about more than just money when you took this job.” Miss Ragusa was doing a very fine job of acting angry. “Can I go now?” I quietly asked. I had brought my year-and-a-half old daughter with me on my final trip to that hot brick building that sat underneath the freeway viaduct with its steeple almost touching the deck of the bridge. All the time Miss Ragusa had been lecturing me I stared in amazement. Her bottom lip really was moving up over her nose. I was so amazed I hadn’t notice that my daughter had pulled the Sacred Mary Amulet off the Mary Shrine. Blessed by the box load by anyone above a Bishop, they’re handed out on some special Holy Day to be worn around the neck, protecting the wearer from certain hell fire in case his or her brakes were to fail, or something like that. Rachel chewed on it twice and decided to put it back, safely beneath the out-stretched hand of Mary. As I pulled away from the curb for the last time, I could have sworn I saw Marge waving from the small hole she had managed to chip through the paint on her window. Either she was waving good-bye, or she was trying to motion to me that somebody had stolen the beauty rings off my car.

The Christmas Parade The cold wind snapped across the littered parking lot, pushing sleet that lightly covered the windshield on the high school principal's truck. After a few moments the wipers slid across the glass and revealed three men walking slowly across the gravel toward the truck. One of the men was Santa Claus; he would've looked better with a beard. Within seconds the windshield was misted over again. When the wipers once more sequenced, the men were waiting at the truck for Mr. Anderson to remove the key and step out into the December morning. "When do you want to start?" Santa Claus asked. "I'm not in charge of the parade," Mr. Anderson answered. "We know," said one of the other men who had his ball cap firmly screwed on his head to keep it from blowing away, "but do you want the four-wheelers to go before or after the horses?" "All I'm here to do is to make sure the queen candidate is here," said Mr. Anderson. "You're going to announce her at the end of the parade, aren't you?" another man said from the comfort of his hooded hunting jacket. "Only if necessary," replied Mr. Anderson. "That's good," said the man in the ball cap. "But what about the four-wheelers?" Three four-wheelers were sitting in the near corner of the parking lot. Two of the riders were taking turns popping their clutches and spinning gravel on the third rider, who was trying to get hers started, between cursing at the other two. In deference to the occasion, they had wreaths attached with duct tape to their handlebars. "I think the four-wheelers ought to go behind the horses," Santa Clause volunteered. "Horse," the man in the hunting jacket corrected. "We only got one horse, unless Larry shows up." "Victor's got a horse," said the man in the hunting cap. "He gots to go up front," Santa Claus reminded him. "He's carrying the American flag. The American flag always goes up front." Out in the street near the intersection, Victor, who was dressed in his full VFW regalia, was trying to keep the American flag pointing upward with one had while hold the reigns to his jittery horse with the other. Every time he seemed to have the horse calmed down, whoever was sitting in the firetruck would rev the engine and send him prancing around in circles. "There's another horse," said the hunting cap. "We can't count that horse," said Santa. "It's pulling the Baptists." Coming up the street was one slowly plodding horse, laboriously pulling a flatbed wagon. Above the wagon a banner had been erected simply stating, "Jesus Saves." Whoever had planned the banner hadn't planned well enough, for the letters became increasingly smaller and scrunched up the closer they got to the right side. Several hay bales had been thrown on the wagon, upon which were seated members of the congregation. It was hard to tell just how many might be there since they were all huddled tightly under a collection of quilts. Muffled attempts at singing escaped from underneath the covers. "So no one is really in charge of this parade?" asked Mr. Anderson. Hunting Jacket replied, "Well, Larry usually runs these things, but I ain't seen him yet. I figure if he ain't here by now he probably ain't gonna come." "Larry's got the other horse," Ball Cap added. From the back of a pickup truck parked in the middle of the street, several students whose banner announced that they were Cub Scouts had started throwing their candy to the half-a-dozen students who had gathered to watch. Only they weren't gently throwing, and the students weren't collecting the candy to keep; they were throwing it back. "OK," said Mr. Anderson, "we'll put Chester out front..." "Who's Chester?" Santa wanted to know. "The guy with the flag." "No, that's Victor. Victor's got the flag," said Ball Cap. "Whoever. The guy with the flag leads. We'll put Santa in the rear, right behind the queen candidate, and everybody else can just fall in." "Sounds good," said Santa. "Then let's get going before we all freeze." "We cain't go yet," said Hunting Jacket. "The marching band ain't here yet." "What marching band?" Mr. Anderson wondered. "Why, the school marching band," said Ball Cap. "I didn't know we had a school marching band," Mr. Anderson said more to himself than anyone else. Santa replied just the same. "Oh, we do, and it's a dandy!" As if on cue, the marching band emerged from the walkway that ran between the high school and the New Gym. The music teacher was holding a banner that was really designed to be held by two people, which the wind kept trying to wrest from her hands. On the banner, amidst various cleft signs and musical notes, were the words "NHS Marching Band." It was actually a nice banner, or at least had been for the first thirty years of its life. With luck, duct tape would see it through another thirty years. The three members of the marching band followed behind. There was a drum, a clarinet, and cymbals. All the students had on the pants and jackets that made up the uniforms, complete with the fancy embroidery work that ran down the vest. One of them was even wearing a hat. "I'm sorry we were late," panted Mrs. Murgel, the music teacher. "We were waiting for Ricky, but he never showed up." "That's alright," Mr. Anderson replied. "Just as long as you're here we're OK. We'll put you behind Chester..." "Victor," corrected Santa. "Victor. We'll put you behind Victor." "You cain't put 'em behind Victor," said Hunting Jacket. "The cymbals'll spook his horse." "Hell, wind'd spook that old horse," Santa said to the appreciation of the other men. "Alright, then, the firetruck follows Victor..." Santa nodded his approval of Mr. Anderson finally getting the name right. "And we'll put the marching band behind the firetruck." "We can't march behind the firetruck," Mrs. Murgel protested. "No one would hear us over the noise from the diesel." Mr. Anderson was tempted to say that that was the general idea, but decided it wouldn't've been professional. "OK, then, we'll put you after the Baptists." "That's not a good idea," said Hunting Jacket. "Why not?" "Well, for one thing, they'll both be playing music, which is probably not a good idea." "I'd agree," Mr. Anderson quickly added, although he wasn't considering the possibility that their songs would clash. "And another thing," Ball Cap continued, "Les has been having trouble with his stomach lately. I don't think you'll want to walk behind him." "Who's Les?" Mr. Anderson wondered. "He's the Baptists' horse," Ball Cap explained. "Then we'll put the Baptists behind the flag, the firetruck will follow the Baptists, the four wheelers can follow the firetruck, and the Cub Scouts can follow them. We'll put the marching band behind the Cub Scouts, the queen can follow the marching band, and Santa Claus can bring up the rear." "What about the other horse?" asked Santa. "We can put him behind the Baptists." The three men thought about it for a few moments. "By golly, I think that'll work," Santa finally concluded. As the parade slowly started down Walnut, the townsfolk came out of the warmth of their homes to huddle near the street as it went by. The parade made it to the second house down from the school when the firetruck died. After a few attempts at turning it over, the fireman inside stuck his head out and announced, "It's froze up!" The excuse was readily accepted. Hunting Jacket walked up to Mr. Anderson, who was still standing in the parking lot. "I reckon we'll just call it quits here. The firetruck ain't goin' nowhere, and the band's already played all the songs it knows. We can use the Baptists' wagon to announce the Christmas queen on." The wagon was a good idea. Les, the horse, had laid down in the middle of the street, and since he was going nowhere, neither was the wagon. "Oh, I don't think we'll need the wagon," Mr. Anderson volunteered. "The girl who was elected queen didn't show up. We'll just give the tiara to her on Monday, if she shows up then." "I reckon that'll work," said Hunting Jacket. Down the street, the homeowners had already gone back inside. The Baptists had all abandoned their wagon, leaving Les on his own. Victor and his flag were no where in sight. Once the parade had begun, Victor had never looked back to see if the rest were following. The four-wheelers were all chasing each other around in the field that the students used for parking, and the Cub Scouts were now throwing gravel at each other, having run out of candy. The Marching Band had headed back to the building, only to be stopped by Ricky, who had finally shown up and now wanted to play his trumpet. Since Mr. Anderson could see no reason to hang around any longer on a Saturday morning, he headed to his truck, only to be stopped halfway there by the trio of Santa Claus, Hunting Jacket, and Ball Cap. "That was a right fine parade," Hunting Cap volunteered. "Yes, it was," Ball Cap agreed. "A dandy! Best one we ever had." "We sure appreciate all your effort," said Santa Claus, patting Mr. Anderson on the back. "We couldn't've done it without you."

The Joke Many years ago, at the first school I ever taught at, I carpooled with two other teachers, a man and a woman – call them Gary and and Miss Corbell, both my age – young, novice teachers. And we – mostly Gary and I – would tell jokes on occasion. So one day I told what I still consider to be one of the funniest jokes ever – the "Sonofabitch Fish" joke. Two elderly priests were fishing, enjoying a peaceful day by an isolated lake. After a bit, one of the priests – call him Father John – pulled in a fish and exclaimed, "What a magnificent sonofabitch!" The other priest – call him Father Tom – was taken aback by Father John's language, but he said nothing. Pretty soon, Father John pulled in another fish, this one even bigger than the first, and he exclaimed, "Aye! Another big sonofabitch!" And so Father Tom said to Father John (imagine a strong Irish accent), "Aye, Father John, though we may be far removed from the ears of man, we are never removed from the ears of God, and God finds such language offensive." To which Father John replied, "Aye, Father Tom, think not that I would ever use such language unfounded, for I would never choose to offend the Lord. But that is what the fish is called. That is its given name. It is a Sonofabitch Fish." Father Tom was somewhat doubtful, but he kept his tongue. When they got back to the church, Father Tom looked it up, and sure enough, the fish was really called a Sonofabitch Fish. To say the least, he was relieved that Father John had not been cursing, and disappointed in himself for ever having doubted the good Father. That night they had those fish for supper. At that meal, fresh out of seminary, was a brand new priest. It was the first time he had ever broken bread with either Father Tom or Father John. Understandably, he was a bit nervous. After the Blessing, Father Tom took a bite of his fish and exclaimed, "That is one delicious Sonofabitch!" And then Father John, after taking a bite, replied, "Aye! That is the best Sonofabitch I've ever eaten." To which the new priest said, "You know, I think I'm going to like working with you motherfuckers." Gary, who was driving, laughed so hard I feared we might not stay on the road. Miss Corbell was offended. Not just a little offended, but whole-heartedly offended. And she told me so in no short order, and, further, that I was never to tell such inappropriate jokes in her presence ever again. Because it was just not funny! I apologized, but mostly, I wrote her off as being a humourless prude. I only worked at that school for a year, and after the Sonofabitch Fish joke, I rarely carpooled with Miss Corbell again. And I sure as heck didn't tell her anymore jokes. But that joke followed me for the rest of my career. At almost every school I ever worked at, there was invariably somebody who would realize that I was the one who had told "that joke." Educators I met at seminars, people I didn't even work with and had never met before, knew about "the joke." In more than one interview I had to talk my way out of telling that joke – I had to sooth the interviewing principal or superintendent's fears that I would behave inappropriately as a teacher. That joke could very well be why I didn't get hired at any number of districts. Had I not told that joke, my career could've – and probably would've – taken a very different path. One joke. Looking back on it all, if I had the chance to go back and not tell that joke, I'm fairly certain that I wouldn’t change a goddamned thing. A Priest and a Rabbi had been fishing together for years. One day, they invited the town's Baptist minister along. They were sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake, all patiently waiting with their lines in the water, bobbers gently rocking, when the Rabbi says, "I think I'm going to go back to the car and get some more coffee." So he gets out of the boat, walks across the water, gets the coffee, and returns, once again walking on water. The Priest doesn't say a thing. He doesn't even look up. It was as if nothing unusual had happened. The minister, understandably, was freaked. But he kept his composure. Pretty soon, the Priest says, "I don't know about you boys, but I'm ready for a sandwich." And then he got out of the boat, walked across the water, and returned with the sandwiches, once again walking on water. The minister is really freaking out now. A Catholic and Jew has just walked on water. The fate of the entire Protestant faith may very well be in his hands. There was nothing to it. He had to walk on the water, too. So he says, "I just realized I forgot my favourite lure." After which he stepped out of the boat, and "Whoosh!" – he goes under. As the minister was splashing about in the lake, the Rabbi turned to the Priest and said, "Do you think we ought to tell the fool where the stumps are?"

GAF “There are openings at GAF,” said the lady at the state unemployment agency. This was in the Spring of 1978. In Kansas City. “There are always openings at GAF. But you won’t like it,” she added, sounding very much like Eeyore on a particularly gloomy day. “What do they pay?” I asked. “It won’t matter,” she replied, and, probably because it was required of her job, she added, “They start at $5.25 an hour.” “That’s...” “That’s almost twice minimum wage,” she finished for me. “I know. But it won’t be worth it. It includes a fifty cent an hour differential because you’ll be working evenings, 3 to 11.” Then she added, “But it won’t be enough.” “What is GAF?” I asked. “They’re a roofing mill. They make shingles and tarpaper.” They also made the paper that shingles and tarpaper are made from. That part she didn’t tell me, probably because she didn’t have to. Sometimes it was just the regular pulp paper, sometimes asbestos. You take all those asbestos fibers, soak them down, and turn them into pulp, pulp into paper. Not only would the asbestos kill us in about 20 different ways, but the fumes off the tar would, too. And there had to be other things in there as well, including the janky machinery we worked on. Tar oozed out of the floor and dripped off the rafters. Dust and smoke filled the air. And the noise was constant. At that point, it really didn’t matter if you smoked as well, and worrying about second hand smoke was just silly. Here’s how you make tarpaper, in case you ever think you might. You start with a big roll of paper – asbestos or otherwise – at the back of the line, run it up and down over all these rollers, through a vat of 450 degrees tar in the middle, cool it off on even more rollers, wind it into rolls, slap a label on it and shove it onto a pallet. When you have a pallet full of rolls, a forklift takes them out to the warehouse. Fairly simple, except when you have to splice a new roll of paper onto an old roll of paper. There’s not a chance that splice is going to make it all the way through to the other end. As well, if the guy winding the paper into rolls falls behind or something goes wrong with the winder or one of the rollers gets too sticky or the paper breaks for no reason whatsoever – in short, if anything at all happens that shuts the line down – then it meant taking long metal poles with hooks on the end and then digging all the torn pieces of tarpaper out of that incredibly hot vat of tar, as well as peeling if off the rollers, and then squirting down those rollers with kerosene so the paper wouldn’t stick for at least a little while, before the entire machine could be rewound and slowly started up again. Even with gloves and long sleeves and WWI flying helmets on we still got splattered with very hot tar. Everybody got burned nightly. Many times. You only hoped it wouldn’t be too bad. Mind you, the paper would break no matter what speed we ran the machine at. But around 350 feet per minute it ran reasonably well. Thing is, to make some crazy quota we never could make anyway we were supposed to run the machine at 450 feet per minute. Never mind that every time we kicked it up to that speed the paper broke, and then we spent even more time getting it going again. Had we run it at 350, we would’ve produced way more paper than ever trying for 450. But Vincent, the supervisor, always insisted that we run it at 450. Vincent never got in there to clean the paper out. But then, we wouldn’t’ve let him. That was a Union job, and he was management. I’m not sure what qualified Vincent, or anybody, for management at GAF. It wasn’t because he knew how anything at the mill actually worked. Vincent was fairly easy to ignore. Management turned over faster than labor. And when it got down to it, Vincent couldn’t even fire us, short of our doing something incredibly stupid, like plugging 440 volts into the PA system. We were all Union. Teamsters. One time, for example, the line was down when Vincent realized nobody was even trying to get it running again. We were all just sitting around doing nothing. “Why the hell isn’t that line running!” Vincent yelled. Vincent was really good at yelling. It’s not just that he was loud. The trick is to be loud and convincing. To come off like you really have the authority to take appropriate action when necessary. I suppose that’s the key to being an effective supervisor. It would probably also help if anybody who worked for you really cared if they got fired. “Get off your asses and get back to work!” Vincent yelled at a group of guys who really didn’t care if they got fired. “Nope,” said Arnold, and he meant it. Arnold was our Union Rep. He knew how things worked. He knew, because he was the Union Rep, that he could only be fired by upper management – the guys in suits who probably didn’t even know where the roofing mill was. Even so, firing the Union Rep was ridiculously complicated, no matter what the charges were, and would probably involve a strike and litigation and in the end he’d probably get his job back with back pay. So if a problem ever found its way to upper management that involved firing anybody, it was always easier to fire the supervisor, who had obviously screwed up simply because he wasn’t able to resolve the problem and now they had to. The problem on that particular night was that in order to rethread the line, we needed to get up on the catwalk, and the lightbulb had burned out. And it was a Union lightbulb. It could only be replaced by a Union electrician, who was on a Union break. Vincent tried to get us to go up there anyway, but Arnold, the Union Rep, refused, claiming it was unsafe. Mind you, the light bulb probably had been burnt out for months before anybody noticed it, but now that it was noticed, it had to be fixed. Vincent was willing to fix it himself, to which Arnold said that if he did, the entire mill would walk out. And we would’ve, too. Vincent wasn’t in the Union. The Union wasn’t for management. And management was strictly forbidden from doing Union work. The Union electrician finally returned from his Union break – not one Union minute early, screwed in a new Union lightbulb, and we had to go back to work. Union work. Somewhere in there the logic was lost. Never mind that it might be unsafe to work up on the catwalk without proper lighting. The entire machine was inherently unsafe, no matter how well lit it might be. The entire roofing mill was a class action lawsuit just waiting to be filed. But that didn’t mean the Union wasn’t on our side. Instead of the Union getting better working conditions every time the contract came up, they got us paid holidays. Aside from the usuals, like Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving – both the Thursday and the Friday – we got Arbor Day off. Arbor Day! We also got Flag Day, our birthdays, and Mother’s Day, even if we didn’t have a mother. We got something like 14 paid holidays a year. Of course, we still had to work them. We just got paid more, which meant we got taxed more. It was often hard to tell the difference from one check to the next, no matter how many hours we worked or how much we were getting paid. Absenteeism was constant, so much so that on any given night there might be only enough guys to run one line. One of the guys who was always there was Chuck. He’d even show up early, and was in no hurry to clock out at the end of the day. For Chuck, going to work was better than staying home with his wife, and he couldn’t afford another divorce. Chuck worked in the asbestos mill. He was the guy who shoveled all those asbestos fibers into the vat where they were turned into pulp that eventually became asbestos paper. He was the only person in the entire mill who was offered any protective clothing at all, but even then it wasn’t enough – the coveralls, the hood, and the mask, complete with breather. He’d get all dressed up before going into the room that wasn’t nearly sealed enough. He would glance around with a look of complete resignment before closing the door behind him. And, yeah, even in the late ‘70s we knew that asbestos was horrible, that it would kill us. Chuck knew it, too. But if you were wanting to work days, and really needed that extra dollar an hour, there was always an opening in the asbestos mill. It was much harder to bid for a job anywhere on the shingles line, mostly because it rarely broke down. It was even harder to get a position on the far end of the shingles line, the part that dealt with the shingles once they were already shingles, the part that automatically wrapped them before sending them out to where Wolfman no longer worked on the palletizer, mostly because even if the line went down the guys on that end of the machine didn’t have to do anything to fix it. Randy Collins had one of those jobs. I didn’t know Randy Collins too well. Probably the only reason I even knew his name, both first and last, was because everybody would come up to me for about a week and say, “Hey, did you hear what happened to Randy Collins?” What happened to Randy Collins was that he got his glove caught in one of the chains on the conveyor belt, and it pulled his hand into the gears, which took off three of his fingers. They were more mashed off than chopped off. They sent what was left of his fingers to the hospital with Randy, but there really wasn’t much of a point. Come to find out, there was a set rate for missing body parts. Each finger was worth $1500. A thumb would’ve been worth $3000, but Randy still had his thumb. With his $4500 Randy bought a new Ford. A Fairmont Futura. Me? I would’ve wanted something more than a Fairmont. I imagine Randy did, too, especially when he eventually traded it in and found it had no resale value at all. Me? I wouldn’t’ve settled for anything short of a Corvette. But to be able to afford a Corvette you wouldn’t be able to drive it. And then there was Leon. Leon didn’t have either a Futura or a Corvette. What he did have was a job for life. Leon, best I could tell, didn’t do anything. When he bothered to come in at all, he just sat in the supervisor’s shack drinking coffee. Years ago he got his arm caught in one of the machines. He still had it, but it hung useless at his side. Leon’s settlement, back before they came up with set values for every body part, was perpetual employment. I’m not sure that was much of a deal. And I can’t imagine Leon did, either, especially when they closed down the roofing mill well before Leon was ready to die. Maybe, by then, he was close enough that it really didn’t matter. Rufus did have to work, but that didn’t mean he had to work very hard. Rufus ran the saturator on the shingles line, the part where the paper gets saturated with tar. So the name. And that meant he pretty much had control of the entire machine. It meant that he set the speed, and that speed was slow. Vincent probably wanted the shingles line to run faster, but Rufus didn’t, and that settled it. Unlike all of us on the tarpaper line, Vincent never yelled at Rufus. And that’s probably because Rufus was big. Really big. Not big like Skoal. Skoal was big like always having an extra serving of mashed potatoes and gravy at every meal since he was two. Rufus was big like a brick wall. Solid. Well built. Not going anywhere. It was Rufus who walked up and shoved me from in front of his fan. It wasn’t technically Rufus’s fan. He didn’t buy it. But he claimed it, and that was pretty much good enough. And there I was, just having gotten out of fishing scraps of dripping tarpaper out of the tar pit. I was hot. Profoundly hot. And there was a fan. I didn’t particularly care whose fan it was... until Rufus put both of his very large hands on my chest and shoved me out of the way. Without thinking, I spun around and shoved Rufus back. I shoved him hard enough that he almost had to take a step back. He stood there, unmoving, looking me over, and then he just laughed, before he turned and walked away, still laughing. But he never shoved me again. It was a bit like Rodney. Every day at the end of our shift, when we were gathered around the clock waiting to time out, Rodney would challenge me to arm wrestle. And every day I told him no. I just wanted to go home. Rodney wasn’t a big guy. He was somebody who would move when you shoved him. He was just a guy who, for whatever reason, wanted to beat me at arm wrestling. And he kept at it. Some days he wouldn’t even wait until quitting time. He’d sit up on his forklift waiting for the pallet to fill up with tarpaper rolls and he’d yell over at me, “Hey! When we gonna arm wrestle?” Until finally, one day while everybody except Chuck was bunched around the time clock waiting to go home, I told Rodney, “OK, I’ll arm wrestle you.” Rodney looked at me with a worried look on his face. “Right now?” he asked. “Right here. Right now,” I told him. Rodney looked at me for a minute or two before he finally said, “No.” To which I said, “Are you serious?” Rodney replied, “Man, I ain’t gonna arm wrestle you.” “Why the hell not?” “Because,” said Rodney, “I might lose.” And that was that. Rodney never asked me to arm wrestle again. Nobody did. That was probably right after Wolfman had been fired. Maybe that’s why I agreed to arm wrestle Rodney. I never knew what Wolfman’s real name was. I’m not sure he did. As far as I know, it really could’ve been Wolfman. Wolfman ran the palletizer, a nifty machine he had designed. When the bundles of shingles came off the end of the conveyor they would neatly slide onto the waiting pallet, which regularly turned so all the bundles of shingles would tie into each other, each row going a different direction than the row beneath it, and when the pallet was full, it would roll away to be hauled off by a forklift while another pallet automatically slid in place, and then it would do it all over again. As part of the incentive deal for inventing the palletizer, Wolfman got a check for $300, and two guys lost their jobs. That was before I ever worked there. Wolfman became my friend. We’d have lunch together while we watched the palletizer doing its pirouettes, and on occasion we’d go out for a beer after work at the Eastsider, a bar underneath a viaduct just down the street from the roofing mill that made no attempt to patch the bullet holes in the walls. I was there once when a really rough looking guy got right up in my face, grabbed me by the collar with one hand while he loaded the other, and said, “What the hell are you doing in my bar?” That’s the kind of bar we’re talking about here. I stammered that I was just having a beer with Wolfman. The minute – the second – he heard Wolfman’s name he let me go, profusely apologized, straightened out my collar, and bought both me and Wolfman a beer just so there would be no misunderstanding. That’s the kind of guy that Wolfman was. His name pretty much says it all. Wolfman once invited me to an orgy. Me and my girlfriend. I had never been invited to an orgy before. As far as that goes, since. It’s not like a regular party. There are certain expectations, I would imagine. It’s kind of like a costume party with no costumes. A party with interactive entertainment, a lot more robust than charades. I politely declined. But it did make me wonder. How does one arrange such a thing? Never mind who you would invite. What sort of infrastructure would you need? And then, how does an orgy even begin? Does everybody just kind of stand around, maybe sipping on a drink, polite conversation, that sort of thing, until somebody rings a bell? Says go? Blows a boat horn? Never mind how they end. There. Now you have something to wonder about. Wolfman, when he wasn’t hosting orgies, kept a bottle of cheap whiskey in a breaker box at work. That was his downfall. One night when he’d been hitting it rather hard he got to wondering what would happen if he plugged 440 volts into the PA system. It just went “pop.” It wasn’t even a loud pop. It was also the end of the PA system, not that it was really missed. And they fired Wolfman. Even Arnold couldn’t save his job. Wolfman wasn’t without resources, though. He went back to working fulltime for a call girl service. He wasn’t the pimp, mind you. He would’ve needed a nicer car for that. He was security. He’d drive the ladies to their appointments, then wait in the parking lot. If a window got broken, that was Wolfman’s signal to go in and introduce himself. I often wonder what happened to Wolfman. I hope he’s had a good life. It was Gonzo, though, who impressed me the most at GAF. I’m pretty sure that Gonzo wasn’t his real name, either. Gonzo was a chemist at the roofing mill. What that meant was he had an air conditioned office and a seemingly endless supply of porn. He also had a seemingly endless supply of beakers and test tubes and Bunsen burners and other assorted scientific equipment that he never used. The only thing remotely scientific that he ever did was to routinely tear a piece of tarpaper in two to see it if were soaked all the way through with tar. In his spare time there was the porn. Gonzo, though, had a dream. He was absolutely convinced that working your entire life until you were too broken to work anymore, much less even remotely starting to enjoy all the spare time you now had since you were no longer working, was the dumbest idea anybody had ever come up with. And that led to his Checklist. It was a Checklist so profound that it had to be capitalized. Number one on his Checklist was finding a beautiful, well endowed woman who rarely wore appropriate undergarments and believed as he did, a woman who he truly loved and she truly loved him. Number two was she had to be rich. Incredibly rich. Monopoly money rich. Number three was she had to be willing to spend all of her money now. They would simply take off on a perpetual vacation that would only end when all of the money finally ran out, and only then, if necessary, would they reluctantly start working. The rest of the Checklist was filled with sexual things that this woman would be eagerly willing to do. You laugh, but he found her. I have no idea how, but he found her. I suppose you have to know where to look. Her father was some sort of diplomat. Her mother was some sort of heiress. Henry Kessinger was at their wedding. If you don’t know who Henry Kissinger is, look him up. And then they disappeared. Not Henry. Just Gonzo and his new wife. I’d like to think they never ran out of money, that even today they’re still lying on some beach somewhere without a care in the world. But, yeah. Talk about career planning. Talk about those things they never even suggest at the unemployment office. Me? I was still employed. I was still at GAF. I’d been there close to a year when one night I showed up to work only to find that once again not enough people had shown up to run both lines, so they were only running the shingles line, slowly, and that made me an extra, along with Skoal. Skoal was a big ol’ boy from Arkansas who got his nickname from shoving half a can of Skoal chewing tobacco in his mouth at a time. I liked the guy, but he did lack a certain modicum of hygiene. By the time I caught up with Skoal – by the time Vincent found me in the breakroom and realized I wasn’t doing anything – Skoal had been shoveling shingle gravel for half an hour. The conveyor that took the fine gravel from a bin somewhere in the basement up to where it came down on the shingles as they passed underneath was broken. It wasn’t broken bad enough not to work, but bad enough to make a huge mess under the part where it was broken. It probably wouldn’t’ve been too hard to fix the silly thing, but that would’ve meant shutting down the shingles line, and then they’d have no excuse but to run the tarpaper line, and nobody wanted to do that. So, like the shift before us, they had two guys shoveling the gravel into a large bucket on a forklift. When the bucket was full, the forklift would take it to the basement and dump it back into the bin. Then they’d bring the bucket back, set it down by the leak, and the shoveling would continue. All night long. And there I am, before I ever shoveled anything, and I just had to ask, “Why don’t you just put the bucket under the leak?” It had seriously never occurred to anybody, for at least 10 hours, to simply put the bucket under the leak. The guy sitting on the forklift looks at the leak, looks at the bucket, and says, “Oh. That might work.” Of course, they still needed somebody to shovel the little bit up that ended up on the floor every time they emptied the bucket, and since Skoal already had a shovel, I let him continue, and I went off to hide back in the breakroom. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the vending machine anymore. Everybody had been shaking it to loosen chips and candy for months. Finally, when there was nothing that would shake free anymore, somebody had simply smashed out the front glass with a two pound hammer. There are simple solutions for every problem, so it would seem. It couldn’t have been a month after. Spring was quickly running out, and soon it would be summer again. It would be my second summer at GAF. It was hot in the roofing mill in the dead of the winter. In the summer it was unbearable. Standing in front of Rufus’s fan didn’t help. Even the salt tablets didn’t help. There I was, tar in my hair, on my clothing, on my skin, sitting in a tar-splattered chair made from an old cardboard barrel that wouldn’t set straight no matter how much I wished it did. There I was, running the saturator on the tarpaper line, watching the tarpaper roll by. The paper going in and out of the tar, over and under the rollers. We had just gotten it running, for like the fifth time in the last two hours. And we were just waiting for it to break again. Before Vincent had a chance to tell me to increase the speed, I got up, walked to the supervisor’s shack, and told Vincent that I quit. Just like that. Vincent looked at me with no emotion whatsoever, especially surprise, and he simply said, “OK.” As I was leaving, from his forklift, Rodney called out to me, “Hey, where you going?” “Home,” I said. “I just quit.” “No shit?” said Rodney. And as I was headed out toward the warehouse that eventually led outside to where my truck waited for me in the dimly lit gravel parking lot, Rodney called out to me, “Hey... can I have your lunch?” I had a meatloaf sandwich that night. I really like meatloaf sandwiches. But I gave it to Rodney just the same. It was maybe two years after I left GAF that I heard it had gotten closed down by OSHA. It wasn’t that OSHA had actually shut them down. They just told GAF everything they would have to fix before they’d allow them to run the place, and all those guys in upper management did the math. Since then there have been multiple class action lawsuits against the GAF corporation. For years after I worked there I’d regularly get the notices in the mail. Unfortunately, I wasn’t lucky enough to have developed any nasty diseases or to have simply dropped dead because I had once worked there. All that money went to the other guys. Some guys have all the luck. I suppose all those guys who worked there, the ones who were still able, like me, went on to other jobs. Maybe they got on down at the steel mill. They paid really well, too.

The Best Man Barbara was wearing a stunning, mostly white ankle length dress that her maid of honour had worn at both of her previous weddings. Somewhere along the line the veil had been lost. The maid of honour had also been lost. She had to be in court. Aside from no maid of honour, there were no bridesmaids, either. Sherrie had been there briefly to help Barbara get dressed, not that she really needed the help, and then she had to go, in case the maid of honour needed to be bailed out... again. And Sandy had called that morning to say that she couldn’t make it because somebody had failed to show up for their shift, and unless she worked she’d be fired, too. The groomsmen, Larry and Carl, were there, though. They had come straight from their jobs at the garage. I knew they were Larry and Carl because their names were embroidered on their shirts, although the grease stains made it hard to read. Washing their hands was something that never occurred to them. With nothing better to do, the groomsmen kept bowing at each other while saying, “Ahh Soo” with a really bad Chinese accent, and then raucously laughing. They had both recently seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon where apparently Bugs, not afraid of being racially insensitive, had been doing the same thing. “Yeah, that Bugs,” I said, “he sure can act,” “Yes, he can!” said Larry and Carl. The bride’s father was also there. He was sitting alone on the right side of the church. He wasn’t just sitting by himself. He was the only guest in the entire church. He was not there to give the bride away. He had no official capacity whatsoever. The only reason he had come at all was to show his vehement, but silent, disapproval, which would have been extremely hard to do had he stayed at home. He was wearing a conservative black suit, with a rather severe clerical collar that he wore everywhere, even to bed. He had been an Assemblies of God pastor for 26 years and counting. The only reason he ever asked anybody about their religious beliefs was so he could tell them why they were wrong. But today he wasn’t telling anybody anything. You really can’t talk and seethe at the same time. I have no idea why Barbara’s father was so opposed to the union. Not that he needed a reason. It could’ve been any of the usual objections any father might have. More than likely, though, it was along the same lines as Barbara’s mother. She hadn’t shown up at all. She wanted nothing to do with any of it. Never mind that her daughter wasn’t marrying a true believer, that he didn’t attended her husband’s church, and he didn’t come forward on a regular basis... or ever. It wasn’t because Barbara had been cohabitating with the groom. It wasn’t because she refused to wear dresses all the time, had cut and dyed her hair, listened to rock and roll music, went to movies, played cards, drank hard liquor, and even smoked cigarettes. It was all of it. She was marrying against their wishes. Good Christian women do not shout out obscenities in church, even if it’s somebody else’s church. And that’s why Barbara’s mother had stayed home. And that brings us to the groom, David. He wasn’t there, either. But I was. I was the best man. I had met David a few years prior when we were both working at the Kentwood Arms Hotel. In its day, the Kentwood Arms had been the place to stay in Springfield. It had hosted celebrities and politicians alike. I’m told Harry Truman had once stayed there, along with Dom DeLuise. Not at the same time. And like those two celebrities, the Kentwood Arms’ day had come and long been gone. When David and I worked at the Kentwood about the only people who stayed there on purpose were trainmen. The hotel had a contract with Southern Pacific or Santa Fe or whatever to put traincrews up for the night while waiting for the next train out. We also had some overflow customers from the Galaxy, which was the gay bar next door. They were better tippers than the train guys. David and I worked in the hotel’s restaurant. He was the all-night cook. I was the all-night waiter. It was the best job David had ever had. I’m not saying it was the worst job I’d ever had. There’s some pretty stiff competition for that spot. It was definitely better than making tarpaper, but not by much. And anything was better than the Navy. So there we were. Two people who really had nothing in common. But since we had to work together, and since I’m not an asshole, I was nice to the guy. I mean, he wasn’t a bad guy. I liked him. David, on the other hand, thought we were best friends. And even though I moved on as soon as I could, David still kept in touch the best he could. And when he needed a best man, I was his choice. How do you tell someone that you’re not going to be their best man? How do you explain that you have nothing in common, especially when they think you do? That you’re truly not even friends? Well... unless you’re an asshole, you don’t. So I was the best man, trying to keep Barbara calm by assuring her that David would certainly be there any minute. I mean, he really wasn’t that late. Maybe five minutes. Ten, tops. But you’re really supposed to be at the church early, well before the ceremony is scheduled to start, especially if you’re the groom. So it was understandable that Barbara was getting increasingly nervous with every click of the clock. I did my very best to sound convincing when I assured her that David would never leave her at the altar. And, thankfully, I was right. “I’m here!” David cheerfully announced as he came through the door, acting as if there was nothing unusual about stopping on the way to one’s wedding to pick up some pizzas. He had figured with a five o’clock wedding everybody would be hungry. Carl and Larry certainly were. I convinced them to leave the pizzas at the back of the church and eat them after the ceremony. That’s the sort of thing a best man needs to be prepared to do. After all, we were on a fairly tight schedule. The AA group had the church reserved for six, and the organist had to pick her kids up by 5:30. The organist only knew one song, so that’s the song she played: “In the Garden.” And, yes, it’s traditionally a funeral song. She played it while Barbara escorted herself down the aisle, slowly, one step at a time with her hands out in front not holding a bouquet. And since Barbara hadn’t made it to the altar when she finished, the organist played it again. All of it. And that brings us to Brother Simon, the minister. He was probably the youngest guy in the room. Not that that’s a bad thing. Thing was, Brother Simon had been an ordained minister for exactly one day. That’s one day in the general sense, and not 24 actual hours. This was his first wedding. As far at that goes, it was his first anything... well, as far as the ministry goes. He probably would’ve been nervous no matter what, but he knew Barbara’s father was also a minister, that he’d been preaching longer than Brother Simon had been alive. That he had married more people than Brother Simon knew, collectively, for his entire life. That he would be sitting there critiquing everything. And, as far as Brother Simon knew, Barbara’s father was in a foul mood because of him. The entire wedding ceremony came in well under two minutes, and that’s liberally rounding up. The good news is that Brother Simon didn’t pass out, even though it was touch and go there for a moment. There were no comments on the sanctity of marriage. There was no ring ceremony. No unity candle was lit. There were no vows to speak of. He asked each if they took the other to be their lawfully wedded whatever the case might be. And that was it. He didn’t even wait for them to answer. He didn’t invite David to kiss the bride, and he definitely didn’t introduce “Mr and Mrs Ross” to those gathered. He just bolted. Out the back and gone. The good news was that the organist was still there, so she played “In the Garden” one more time as the newly married couple exited down the aisle. There was no applause, just Larry and Carl saying, “Ahh Soo! Ahh Soo!” I thought about applauding, but one guy alone would’ve just been pathetic. Barbara’s father had already left, not that he would’ve applauded anyway, and he definitely wasn’t going to the reception at the Galaxy. It was a couple of weeks later, I found out, that Barbara’s father married them again, hanging around long enough to sign the wedding certificate. I’m not certain if Barbara’s mother attended that one, either. I wasn’t there, but I suppose I would’ve been had David been able to find me. I saw David a couple more times that summer, and then in the fall I moved away. And I never saw David again. It was maybe seven or eight years later that Barbara found me. She looked me up to let me know that David had died. He had had cancer. David had asked Barbara to find me. He wasn’t sure if he had ever thanked me for being his best man, and he wanted me to know.

Seconds School lunch was invariably the same until I got to high school. My mother would buy a cheap canned ham and have the butchers slice it. Thin. She’d put a piece of that ham – fat and all – between two pieces of cheap white bread slathered in cheap yellow mustard. And that was it. Yeah, there was fruit, whatever was in season – bruised apples, tangerines, and oranges, mostly. Sometimes a brown banana. And sometimes there were chips. But almost always there was the ham. Wrapped in plastic and put in a paper bag with my name written on it. By the time lunch came around that warm piece of ham had become a part of the bread. I wasn’t one of the lucky kids who brought a quarter every day and ate a school lunch. The most I got was three cents, enough to buy a milk. White milk. But there was that one day. I don’t know why. Maybe we were out of ham. Maybe my mother was as tired of making school lunches as I was of eating them. Whatever the reason, I had been sent to school with 30 cents. An entire nickel more than I needed for lunch. Five cents was a lot. It would buy a chocolate dipped ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. Five pieces of candy at 7-11. A whole pack of Batman trading cards, maybe even with Catwoman in it. It’s not that my mother was giving me anything extra. I ate school lunches so seldom that she truly didn’t know how much they cost. But I had an extra nickel. And that was the day we had strawberry cake for lunch. It was just a small piece of white sponge cake with a little bit of canned strawberries poured on top, but I truly loved it. I still do. And, with my nickel, my extra nickel, I could get seconds on strawberry cake. It wasn’t something I had planned. It had just happened. But there was a catch. In order to get seconds, along with your nickel, you had to eat everything on your tray. And that day we had beets. I really do not like beets. It wasn’t just a kid thing. I don’t know how anybody can like beets. It doesn’t matter how you fix them. They’re still bad. But I ate them. I gagged them down. And then I took my tray back to get seconds, to get another piece of that strawberry cake. The lunch lady inspected my plate, and she informed me that there was one beet I had missed. It wasn’t even a whole beet. But it didn’t matter. If I wanted seconds on that strawberry cake, I would have to eat that last miniscule piece of beet. And I couldn’t do it standing there in the line. I would have to take my tray and return to my seat. And no, I couldn’t cut through. I’d have to go back around the way I came. Then, and only then, after I had eaten that last straggling beet, could I return and get that cake. That wonderful strawberry cake. And I did. I returned to my seat. I ate that beet. Then I returned to the lunch line... only to find out that they were now out of strawberry cake. Somebody had gotten the last piece while I was eating the last beet. It was a long time before high school, when my friends and I would go out for lunch, and I could get whatever I wanted. It was even longer before I would try another beet.

Birthday Beer On my 18th birthday I went to Kansas with my buddy Dave, just so I could buy some beer. No pretending. No hoping they wouldn’t check my ID or, if they did, look at it too closely. It was all legal and above the board. I was 18, and I could buy beer in Kansas. Well, it was 3.2 beer, but who cared? If it had been .0001 it would’ve still been beer, and that’s what mattered. We went to a grocery store. Not a 7-11 or the Beer Barn or some place where buying beer before 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning would seem normal, but a regular grocery store where regular people were buying regular groceries. We went back to the liquor department and I perused the beer like I actually had an opinion, and I carefully selected a six pack. Probably Coors. Back then we thought Coors was special. We had a lot to learn. With one hand under my six pack, and the other on top, I proudly held my six pack up against my chest as we stood in line behind mothers doing their weekly shopping, waiting for our turn, slowly moving forward. I think the lady in front of us considered letting us go before her. After all, we only had one item, and she had a whole cartful. But when she saw that our one item was beer – me, grinning like an idiot while proudly holding it there in front of me – she ever so slightly huffed, turned around, and started unloading her cart. She wasn’t in a hurry. Neither were we. When she was finally out of the way, I sat my six pack on the conveyor and watched it come to a stop in front of the cashier lady. She could have easily been my mother, or my high school English teacher. Neither had a sense of humour. She was somebody who was tired before she ever clocked in, and still had the better part of the day to work. Somebody who had no room for nonsense in her life. Ever. She looked at the beer. Then she looked at me. I smiled even more than I had been before. She frowned even more than she had been before. “You’re not old enough to buy beer!” she said with a sneer. I begged to differ, and I held out my ID for her inspection. She snapped the ID from my hand, and after taking her reading glasses off the top of her head, carefully inspected the ID... both sides. Then she looked at me once again over her glasses before checking my ID once more. Then, in disgust, she threw the ID back at me. She seriously threw it, as she said, “Oh, good grief! Today is your birthday!” And she didn’t say anything more. Not a word. This was back when cash registers had keys, and those keys could be pounded. And she did. Bam! Bam! Bam! Caching! She then snatched the money out of my hand and stuffed it in the register. She dug out my change and slapped it down on the counter. There was no counting. There was no offer of a sack. And she sure as hell didn’t wish me a happy birthday. She didn’t need to. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a beer more than the one we drank in the parking lot of that grocery store. And it was just ten in the morning. I still had the rest of my birthday in front of me.

My Alligator Story Back in 1976, back when there still was such a thing, I was an Explorer Scout. Post 943. The Explorers were a part of the Boy Scouts of America, only better. There were no badges to earn or ranks to attain, so you didn’t have to do anything. And they were co-ed. There were girls. Each Explorer post specialized in something, and our specialty was the Kansas City Zoo, which meant I got into the zoo for free and could go just about anywhere I liked, like up inside of the monkey island. The monkeys were all on a concrete island with a moat of water running around it to make sure they stayed put. There were a few dead trees they could climb on, and a tire on a rope they could swing on, but they didn’t. They would just sit there and do nothing, if they bothered to come out at all. But that didn’t matter to me. I got to take the tunnel that went under the moat and came up inside to where those monkeys were hiding. They were still in cages, more or less, but they were close enough where they could reach through and grab me if I wasn’t careful. And they tried, screaming all the while. Those were not happy monkeys. They probably would’ve thrown shit if they hadn’t been so busy trying to rip my flesh off. The hyenas were a lot more fun than the monkeys. Mind you, I didn’t want to be anywhere close to them, or any other animal that could crush my femur with their jaws, as well as the leg attached to that femur. But that’s pretty much all the animals. I never even asked about going backstage with the tigers. Their cages were small, and they spent their days walking back and forth, back and forth. Heads down, mouths barely open, eyes darting furtively from side to side. Yeah... you... that’s right, you. Come over here. There’s something I want to tell you.... But the hyenas were actually trained... more or less. Their names were Bonnie and Clyde, and if I called them, they’d come out. As far as I knew, that was the only trick they would do. Normal people would be standing there wondering where they were at, and I could get them to pop out of the concrete cave, hoping to be fed. But visitors, even Explorers, weren’t supposed to feed the animals. Here’s an interesting animal fact: All elephants in the zoo are trained. That’s true. Look it up. Because if they weren’t, and you wanted them to do something – like show me the bottom of your foot or step over there so I can clean your cage... yeah. Good luck with that. Every day the elephant keeper takes them through their routine – standing on their back feet with their front feet waving in the air, looping their trunks through another elephant’s tail and walking around in circles... you know, circus stuff. Things I don’t imagine elephants do in the wild. Still, taking care of elephants is one of the most dangerous jobs at the zoo. You can look that up, too. It’s not because they’re particularly mean. It’s just if they happen to accidentally bump in to you, or you happen to piss them off, it could really hurt. Sealions can be trained, too. Like a elephants, or I suppose any animal, if they’re trained it just makes them a whole heck of lot easier to work with. And who doesn’t like to see an aquatic mammal bouncing a ball off its nose for the occasional thrown fish? I’ve seen sealions in the wild – many times – but I’ve never seen them bouncing balls off their noses. Maybe I was there at the wrong time. Sealions are also trained by the military to do stuff like look for underwater mines. It would take a lot more than a tossed fish to make me agree to that. But then, I’m not a sealion. The sealions at the zoo swam around in a big pool with an island in the middle, where they would spend most of their time out of the water barking. Really loud. They’re the loudest thing in the zoo. I could’ve gone up inside the sealion island, too, but I didn’t see much point. I could already hear the sealions fine from anywhere in the zoo. My favourite part of the zoo was the reptile house. There were always white mice running everywhere. Seriously. Next time you’re at the zoo look around for the stuff that isn’t in cages. The zoo bred white mice to feed to snakes and such, and some of them... who I am I kidding? A lot of them got out. A regular breeding population. Still, I don’t imagine there’s anywhere safe in a zoo if you’re a white mouse. The reptile house was where our sponsor, Harry, worked. Aside from birds, Harry loved reptiles. He once had a rattlesnake in his basement. It was in a cage. I mean, it’s not like it was crawling around and hiding behind the Christmas decorations. That’s what its babies did. Harry hadn’t realized she was pregnant until she had babies. No eggs, just live, miniature rattlesnakes that are easily more potent than adult rattlesnakes could ever be, and could easily get out of the cage and then easily slither off to hide. Harry’s wife stayed in a hotel for two weeks before he could assure her he’d found them all. Even so, I don’t think she ever went down into the basement again. So all of that’s just a lead in to my alligator story. And, seriously, how many people do you know who have an alligator story? Here it is: One day I was at the zoo, and I bopped into the reptile house, and Harry says, “Oh, good, you’re here. You can help me.” What Harry needed help doing was putting up a sign inside the alligator pen... while the alligator was still in there. A six foot alligator. And, yes, they can get much bigger than that, but six feet is plenty big. I suppose if the alligator had been trained Harry wouldn’t’ve needed my help. And I’m told that alligators can be trained, but I don’t believe it. I don’t think Harry did, either. For the most part, alligators don’t do a whole lot. You’ll never see them bouncing balls off their noses or walking around in circles. Chances are, that six foot alligator wouldn’t move the whole time we were in there. But if it did, if it started to come toward us, I was to hit it with a broom. A broom. Stick on one end, straw on the other. Did you know that an alligator can hiss? It’s something it does while showing its teeth. And it can lift its body off the ground as it walks toward you with its mouth open... hissing. So here comes this alligator, up on its tiptoes with just the tip of its tail dragging behind, showing me all those teeth. And hissing. And there I am with a broom. A broom. So I tap it on the nose. Not hard. I mean, I don’t want to hurt it. I just want it to stop. Just a little tap to let it know that I’ve got a broom, and I’m not afraid to use it. But it doesn’t slow it down. Not a bit. So I tap it again, just a little bit harder. Still nothing. “Harry!” I said, a definite tinge of alarm in my voice. “What?” asked Harry, not looking up, or even in my general direction, as he carefully screwed the sign into place. Mind you, it was a sign that would have worked just as well outside the pen, but that wasn’t something I was concerned with at that particular moment. “The alligator is coming at us!” I was beginning to get more than a little alarmed. “Then hit it with the broom,” Harry said with all the concern of somebody explaining how the backspace button works on the keyboard. “I am hitting it with the broom!” This time Harry did look up to see me jumping up in the air and whacking that alligator as hard as I could with the broom when I came back down, which didn’t faze that alligator in the least, no matter how many times I did it. He was still hissing with his mouth open. Still inching ever closer. Harry, not alarmed in the least, looks at the alligator, looks at me, and calmly says, “Oh. I guess we’d better get out, then.” The alligator lunged just as Harry shut the door, pushing its snout back into the pen. “We’ll have to try again later,” Harry said, safely out of the pen, “when the ‘gator isn’t so upset. Are you going to be around later on this afternoon?” Unfortunately, I had other plans that didn’t include being eaten by an alligator. That’s it. That’s my alligator story. I hope you liked it. It wasn’t long after that that I joined the Navy, and I left the Explorers. Years later, when I finally got out of the Navy, I returned to the Kansas City Zoo. I had to pay to get in. By then, they had done a major renovation, and the cages didn’t look so muck like cages at all, though I doubt if it really fooled any of the animals, especially the smarter ones that could be trained. The only part of the entire zoo that was still the same was the sealion island, where the sealions still barked loud enough that I could hear them all the way to the parking lot.

Gentleman’s Night Out Back when I was still trying to figure out what to do with an undergraduate degree in 16th Century British Literature, I sold jewelry. I was an assistant manager, complete with an assistant manager’s mustache, for a place called Mission Jewelers, which was a division of the Zale Corp. We specialized in first time buyers... meaning low end. We sold a lot of $199 trio sets. Her engagement ring and both bands. Sizing was extra. This was before I had realized that jewelry was something that nobody needed. Not really. Even if you could make an argument for a watch, how much watch do you need? A Timex and a Seiko are the same. All you’re really paying more for is the name. Still, it took me a bit more than a year to figure that out. But that was long enough to know who the big diamond guys were in town. And there was none bigger than Woody Justice. You want to give your wife a nice ring, maybe spend a grand, tops, go to Zales. If you want to tack a few more zeros onto that and get an extremely nice ring, you go see Woody. You go to Justice Jewelers. Woody was the guy. Long after I left the jewelry world far behind and was now spending my days teaching teenagers to conjugate verbs, I got invited to Gentleman’s Night Out. Gentleman’s Night Out was a marketing ploy dreamed up by Woody Justice, or somebody that he paid, and probably paid well, for getting all of the high rollers in the area together for one night, just before Christmas. And I got invited. Not because I was a high roller. Definitely not. And not because Woody knew me. He didn’t. Even though we had once met, back when I was selling jewelry, there wasn’t a chance he remembered me. Who I knew was Ron Davis. Ron was a reporter in town. He worked at a local TV station. Ron was very good at what he did. He was good enough to win the Edward R. Murrow Award. Look it up. And Ron was given two passes, two tickets to get inside, for this prestigious event. Maybe because Woody thought Ron was a high roller... he wasn’t. Or, more than likely, because he was a name in that town, a name that could throw him some publicity. Except Ron couldn’t make it. So he gave those tickets to my buddy Dan, and Dan invited me to go with him to Gentleman’s Night Out. And it was all free. By the time we got there, fashionably late, there were Rolls-Royces in the parking lot. And my Chevette. We were each given a Cuban cigar when we walked through the door, and nobody expected us to go outside to smoke them. Yeah. Sure. Cubans were illegal then. Probably still are. But I don’t think anybody there gave a damn. And if there should be any questions of legality, there were plenty of lawyers, and – according to Dan – a few judges – who were already smoking theirs. There were a lot of big names there that I didn’t know. Dan would point out the guy that owned the trucking company over here, or the guy who built the office complex over there. There were doctors and politicians and guys who nobody was sure where they got their money. And I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t even recognize Woody. But he was there. Shmoozing. Subtly steering people toward the diamond cases. Offering to show them whatever they wanted to see. You can tell when people have money. You can tell a very nice suit from a pair of worn khakis. You can tell an expensive haircut from a discount barber. Italian shoes from Hush Puppies A Rolex from a Timex. These were men who could buy any of the very nice pieces of jewelry that Woody was featuring for the evening without checking their bank accounts first. I don’t think anything there was truly “on sale.” I don’t think it mattered. Hell, even the Santa Claus that was walking around was wearing some very nice gold chains. Along with Santa there were several Christmas trees featuring diamond earring ornaments. There were garland and tinsel, and “Deck the Halls” was playing from the sound system. It was just like an old fashioned Christmas, the kind with Beluga Caviar. Not “beluga grade” caviar. This was the real stuff. Imported. The stuff runs about $500 an ounce. About $500 a serving. And it was worth it, especially because it was free. If you’ve ever had caviar and didn’t like it, then you’ve probably never had Beluga. It was so good. Incredibly good. So good that it made me sad because I knew, deep down, that I would never have it again. I thought about going back for seconds, but it would just make it worse. Besides, I was trying to act like none of this was a big deal. I smoke Cuban cigars, eat Beluga Caviar, and take shots from a thousand dollar bottle of whiskey all the time. And that was one of the cheaper bottles of whiskey. As it happened, I actually knew the liquor steward. Anywhere else he would’ve been a bartender. But not here. Here, he was a steward. I got to know Dave at the local liquor store where he worked. I knew his name, and he knew mine. I would ask him to recommend wines and whiskeys, and.. well... anything. And he never let me down. So I introduced Dan to Dave. They immediately hit it off. “Do you have a good whiskey?” asked Dan. Ever hopeful. “Most definitely,” said Dave, and he poured us two drinks from a bottle that I couldn’t afford the deposit on. And it was good. It was incredibly good. And, after we had thoroughly enjoyed every drop of that wonderful whiskey, Dan said, “That was really nice, but do you have anything that’s better?” And Dave did. This was seriously a $1000 dollar bottle of whiskey. Maybe more. We weren’t buying any, so the price really didn’t matter. Trust me on this: It’s like Beluga. If you’ve never liked whiskey, it’s probably because you were still drinking the stuff you could afford in high school. We were tempted to stay right there with the liquor for the rest of the night, but we didn’t want to seem too pedestrian. Besides, I needed to be able to drive home, which really good whiskey can come in the way of. So we decided to make our way back over to the hors d'oeuvre table and see if they had anymore of the stuffed mushrooms or the escargot in the unbelievable butter-garlic sauce. And maybe, just maybe, there was some more of that caviar. And that’s when the lingerie models made their entrance. There were about a dozen or so very attractive, very shapely women in very elegant nightgowns. Designer nightgowns. Designed to leave no doubt just how shapely that woman really was. If you wanted to see how lovely that emerald necklace would look around somebody’s lovely neck, they were glad to do it. If you wanted to buy that lovely nightgown, they were glad to sell it. They were more than happy to let those old men feel how soft that silk really was. And all those old men were more than happy to feel it. And that’s when one of these lovely young women came running up to me and excitedly said, “Mr. Soetaert! Do you remember me?” I did. It was Crystal, one of my former students. Wearing a very shear low cut night gown that rose up high on the sides and cascaded ever so gently in the back. Sure, she was now probably 20, 21, but she was still one of my former students. She was a child. And then she asked, “Have you seen Katrina? You remember Katrina?” I did. She was there, too. Another one of my students. Katrina had gotten Crystal the gig for the evening. I have no idea what company she worked for that arranged such things. Crystal wanted to visit. After all, she said, I’d been her favourite teacher. But she had to get back to work. Maybe we could talk later on. She was sure Katrina would want to see me, too. And she went off to twirl in front of well dressed gentlemen. And I had to go. After all, it was a Tuesday night, and I had to work in the morning. And if my Chevette got too cold, it might never start again.

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