On November 12, I will launch my new book of essays, What's the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long, with a reading at the Phoenix Book Store in Burlington, Vermont.
The book is nothing if not eccentric, in that it consists of about seventy essays, the longest of which is four pages. Others, like the one below, tend to be in the one- or two-page category. If there is a binding concern in the collection it is this: to what degree does my version of "reality" conform to some other putative version? Clearly the incident I describe in "Short Sad Story," for instance, shows a disconnect in that regard, shows me behaving with inappropriate certainty to a circumstance that I didn't begin to understand.
Please buy the book at your local indie shop or from the Phoenix itself. I prefer avoiding amazon, though, having bought local, you might write a favorable amazon review if so inclined. To use Phoenix, go to http://www.phoenixbooks.
Short Sad Story
As he pushed open the door of room 116 at the Longhorn
Motel, I noticed the stranger’s befuddled grin. “Oh, this is–” he mumbled,
trailing off, backing out. I had hours to wait before I flew back east from
Denver, so, seated at a chipped Formica table, I’d been trying, with small
success, to rough out a piece of writing. As if it would help my efforts, I
locked the door against further distractions, even benign ones like this petty
mistake.
A few minutes later, however, the knob began to rattle. I
slid the bolt. “What’s the matter?” I snapped when I saw the same man standing
there. “Can’t you read numbers? One-One-Six.
That’s me, not you.” The other didn’t appear to hear. He leaned against the
door with one shoulder, cradling an ill-sorted bunch of clothes in both hands.
“Get the hell out of here!” I snapped, because he started
directly to lean against me. The
interloper was a younger but smaller man than I. Putting my forearms against his chest, I shoved
him hard, so that he fell outside onto the lot’s asphalt, a plaid pajama top
flying one way, a gravy-stained shirt the other, and a sock landing over both
eyes like a flimsy blindfold. Even masked, his face wore that silly smile. It
might have been a comical sight otherwise. I relocked my door.
My writing continued to go nowhere at all, so, in spite of
the time gaping before me, I decided to repack my own clothes. Then I shaved,
though I really didn’t need to. I couldn’t make those minor chores last long,
however, and soon I headed for the lobby to grab a cup of coffee from the
motel’s vending machine. On my way, I spotted the erratic fellow once more. He
was up on his feet at the very spot where I’d bowled him over, his odd bundle
of garments re-gathered, the smile still showing, though not directed at anyone
or anything in particular, least of all at the one who’d shoved him.
I asked the desk clerk. “What the hell’s the story with
that guy?”
“Seems like he’s lost,” the clerk answered. “I gave him
the key to room 124, but he keeps tellin’ me he needs to get into 116.”
“My room,” I mused, obviously.
“I figure
he’s drunk as a skunk,” the clerk snarled, turning brusquely back to his
affairs.
I went out for breakfast, dawdling for more than an hour
over my meal and small talk with the sweet old waitress at a beanery called The
Country Fare. When I returned to the Longhorn, I found the showroom-clean,
white Ford 150 still parked in front of 116, but its owner was nowhere to be
seen. I stepped into the motel lobby again.
“What became of our friend?” I asked. The clerk said he’d
found him in some other room, not 116 but not 124 either, the room he’d been
assigned. Apparently, all he could say was, “I’m waiting for my daughter.”
In the end, not knowing what else to do, the clerk had called
the police. In due course, the cops summoned the EMTs.
I don’t know what happened after that, because I left for
my flight, much earlier than I needed to. On the way to the airport in the
rental car, seated by the gate, airborne, and all through the long drive
northward to Vermont after touchdown, I couldn’t help feeling rotten about
having heaved that guy onto his backside. I understood why guilt might bother
me as it did; but I couldn’t quite sort out the other ways I felt. I tried to
console myself, of course. How, after all, could I have known that the
trespasser was not of sound mind?
Yet almost a year later, I still sense that same mix of
guilt and whatever else may be. If anything, my trouble of spirit has
strengthened, broadened, as if it may last me lifelong. Perhaps at least I can
write about it. Maybe I have always
written about it in some vague way. Whatever it is.
I remember arriving at our house that night, dog-tired in
body and heart, and, right after supper with my wife, going up to bed; but a
more powerful memory is of a dream I had some time toward dawn, in which that wonderful
wife stood by me and the second of our three daughters before a bonfire we’d
lit at the end of our woodlot road. A quiet bliss pervaded the vision, or
rather a feeling like the peace that the apostle Paul describes, which passeth all understanding.
For a moment, still pretty much asleep, I guess, I arrived
at the warming conclusion that such peace might actually remain in the world
even after I left it, and that somehow it could be available to any person
sufficiently needing it. Coming to, I felt desolate to recognize my fantasy as
just that.
There had been times when I needed such peace for myself,
and there would be other times to come. I knew as much. I hoped it would be
accessible again, though I understood I couldn’t simply will it into being.
I didn’t think of the smiling man at the Longhorn right
away, though shortly I realized I might have.
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