Last November, page 19
Jeremy didn’t even go inside before hauling the mower out, and managed to finish weed-eating by dusk, when the chirpers were yowling in the branches and the summer night was a little bit cooler. He went inside and poured the rest of his brewed coffee into the sink, blinking at the little folding table he had set up in the space between kitchen and the living room. And then he went to bed.
The second photo came before the mail the next morning. And this time it was a polaroid of an old man in suit with paint flecked all over it in the middle of applying a coat of paint with a roller on the outside of a Mexican restaurant. Bright yellow and green. He didn’t recognize him. But he knew the building. It was El Chico’s on Eighth and Main, not far from the coffee shop with the auburn-haired mystery. But he had to work. He set the picture on the kitchen counter as he reapplied coffee to his nervous system, ate two eggs, scratched his puzzled head, wondered if this was a trick of the subconscious or if an anonymous pal had actually figured out time travel. Two days after the funeral and his PTO was exhausted. So, he worked for two and a half hours, took an early lunch, and cast his lot with El Chico.
It was another hot beater of a day, but the painter rolled away in the shadowed side of the building, true to the polaroid. Markie walked past him on his way into the restaurant, but like the day before, didn’t say hello. Telling a stranger that you carried a picture of them in their pocket didn’t feel like the way to start the conversation. So he went inside, got his basket of chips and little cup of salsa, and pulled out the polaroid to give it another scientific examination. Was it time to handle it with gloves and take it to a personal investigator? He bet he’d stump the detectives with this one. But it didn’t matter, because as soon as he’d eaten his churro and empanada, a modest meal for the sedentary man, the picture up and vanished again, and the painter was packing up his Ranger in the parking lot, job now finished.
The next week included photos of a Latvian woman who ended up checking him out at Target, a barista who whipped out the best latte he had ever tasted, a construction worker who the cosmic photographer had caught on a smoke break, helmet off and bald head gleaming in the sun. And on Sunday night, one week after the funeral, one week of these polaroid premonitions that never produced a single conversation, Markie got a photograph of the last person in the world he expected. Someone he knew. Someone who knew him. Someone dead. Jeremy. And not just Jeremy, but Jeremy sitting at that rugged table of his that stood between the kitchen and the living room. His brother had a finger looped through the handle of the mug and was looking head on at the photographer with that half smile that could always be interpreted as a lament, a surrender to sadness.
“Jeremy?”
The last conversation they shared had been at that table just two weeks ago. Jeremy was visiting from Knoxville, where he worked at a pawn store, among other secret professions, and although Mom told him to fly out for the Fourth, he decided to make the drive. His job was terrible, he said in a call to Markie the day before he drove up. “I’d take McDonalds over this place. Who knows? Maybe I won’t leave the hometown after the holiday. I’m sort of in trouble, Markie.”
But he did leave the hometown after the holiday. He took a few wrong turns that Markie and anyone who knew him knew were going to take him to Little Rock, where he had a girlfriend and some no-good buddies who always seemed to suck him into their orbit. His ex-wife, Cassie, showed up at the funeral and stood in the middle of the aisle in the church for four minutes before the service started, turning left, turning right, and finally sitting by herself almost at the very back of the sanctuary. Markie tried not to look back at this woman in black, still beautiful, alone and without her new husband.
“I think we could make things work,” Jeremy said in that last conversation, talking about Cassie in a moment of surprising reflection. “If she’d just . . . see things from my perspective.” He shook his head, rubbing his jawline, now stubbled. “Don’t be like me, Markie man.”
They had always been very different people. So why the admonition not to follow suit? Markie adored his brother. Jeremy could have hijacked the Pentagon and Markie still would have seen him as a patriot. So, it was always so weird that Jeremy always felt like he had to temper his brother’s love with the “truth.” He could remember the litany of crimes that undercut him. Struggling with the drugs, little bro. Don’t do drugs, Reagan’s woman said. Well. Made me want to do ‘em all the more. Don’t you understand who I really am? You know I’ve taken every single kind—please don’t be like me. I found some magazines under Dad’s workbench. Listen to me, and don’t forget it. Don’t ever look at them. And I know what you’re thinking: Well, NOW I’m gonna go look. But listen. Please don’t give any of that shit the light of day. It’ll screw you over for life. Do you understand?
Markie sat down at the table and leaned into the silence. His eyes brimmed and his neck hotly trembled, like it was being fracked.
“Jeremy?” he whispered. “Are you here, man?”
No, I’m not here. But you’re here. Took a wrong turn, didn’t I. Couldn’t see what’s been coming after me my whole life. Took a wrong turn into the opposite lane. I wasn’t the only one killed. Did you know that? Of course, you know that. And still you spoke words at the funeral. You’re a better man than me. You’re holy. So holy. I don’t mean that as a joke. So don’t be like me, Markie man. It just takes one too many drinks, one too many pills, one too many glances until your wife notices you looking under Dad’s workbench, until you slam right into what’s been coming at your face your whole life. Don’t be like me.
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Remember the pictures?
“Yes.”
Talk to any of them?
“No. I didn’t know how.”
Hmm.
“Teach me.”
How to talk to people?
“Everything.”
I can’t teach you anything. You know it already. You just don’t know you know. I just want to see you happy. You know? I want to see you with a girl who gets you. She’s out there. What if you’ve already seen her around? Who knows. Maybe you’ve already seen everyone, you just haven’t realized it.
“I want to see you.”
I know. And I’m sorry. For everything. But I made some choices. Some wrong turns. You haven’t made many turns at all. That’s how we’re different. And because I told you not to follow me, you decided not to go anywhere. That’s what kills me. You didn’t travel far for college, and landed an easy remote gig in marketing and live just a mile from the parents. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. But I know how this goes. You’ll keep wondering about the road. About what could’ve been. Just because you shouldn’t be like me doesn’t mean you can’t start choosing. Take wrong turns . . . better than not turning at all. But you’re better. Better than me, Markie . . .
“No, I’m not.”
See ya, buddy. You got this, bud. I’m just a snapshot away . . .
He slept with his head on the table and woke up confused about where he was, with his laptop leaning against the wall. The polaroid was gone, and he was already tempted to think he dreamed up the whole thing in some post-funeral hallucination, if such a thing existed. One thing was sure, though. He needed coffee again, and soon.
The street was almost empty on Fifth and Brunson, but a red Mazda was parked in front of the glass windows, and when he walked in, the espresso smells billowing at him, he noticed the auburn-haired woman sitting at her usual spot by the window, reading again, brows knitted. She couldn’t be bothered.
He walked home with her number in his pocket after a long internal debate about whether he should even go up to her at all. But he did. He studied the number for a long time before picking up his phone and making the call.
He got no mail that day.
The Fisher’s Man
At first it was just the fisherman on the river, up to his waist in the water. He sent long casts out into the current with his fishing pole and slowly reeled back his catch. I was standing on a little knoll farther upstream but could see him well. I could see his green waders, his broad-brimmed straw hat, and the cigarette in his mouth producing a thin trail of smoke. The water was dark. You could see nothing beneath its surface. All you could see were the ripples caused by the little worm at the end of the fisherman’s line, and the evening sun laying golden fingers on the far bank.
I did not know where I was. I stooped to touch the water at the base of my feet. It was not as cold as I might have expected. And it mercurially clung to my hand when I drew it out, like it was asking me to stay. The air was silent. All silent, except for the fisherman’s bait making soft plops in that slow, deep, broad current of the river.
Something told me I knew this man who so passionately fished. Had I seen him somewhere before? Was he an old visitor in my dreams come to haunt me one more time? I didn’t know. There was no telling. All I knew was that I saw him raising his big arms overhead to cast, time and time again.
He brought in a fish. It was a trout, violent red. He tucked it in a basket by his side. At the next cast, he brought in a golden bass. Next, a small marlin. And finally some grubby catfish, a wriggling green eel, a cantankerous gar.
He caught each one without upset. He tucked them all in the basket like they were books being put on a long shelf.
How many fish he caught I will never know. It must have amounted to more than fifty. For a long time, he caught nothing. But he never altered the rhythm of casting and reeling. Not once did he take a break. Not once did he raise his shadowed face to look at me standing there overhead, trying to articulate the frontier before me.
Beyond the river there was a wall of pine and spruce. The front trees were ignited by the twilight. The spaces between the trees made columns of golden light but exposed no living thing in their ranks. The rest of the forest was dark. A mystery. I wanted to throw a stone into the river to see what kind of sound it might make. I wanted to swim in the river, but felt like this was not a river for throwing stones into or for swimming in. One needed green waders and a broad-brimmed straw hat to get into the river.
As I was looking across the water, a figure appeared on the opposite bank, right across from the fisherman. I could not see his face, but he wore a gray trench coat with a gray hood over his head. I had no idea where he had come from. The only explanation is that he just stepped out of the trees. There was no other place he could have been hiding. But he took out his own fishing pole, and after tying a silver hook to the end of the translucent line, made casts into the river. He made long casts, so long that the hook fell right next to the fisherman. I mean right next to him. The man on the other side of the river would raise his pole over one shoulder and loft his missile with perfect precision. But the fisherman did not seem to notice the hook. Maybe he did not want to notice. He kept up his own fishing. He drew in trout, salmon, cod, and narwhal, even a small whale, and kept tucking them in his wondrous little basket at his hip. But still the man on the other side of the river made his generous casts, pulling in no catch himself. They must have been at this for hours. Neither one showed fatigue. At least, not for a very long time.
It was only when the fisherman had caught absolutely nothing for about three hundred casts in a row that he began taking longer to reel the line in and hesitated before making the next throw. But the man on the other side of the river did not stop making his perfectly precise casts. Soon, the fisherman tucked his pole into his belt and let the line sidle in the shallows. He put his hands in his pockets and watched the man on the bank cast out to him. The hook twinkled like an ornament in the heavy sun.
It wasn’t long after the fisherman seemed to really notice the forest beyond the river and the sweep of wind that seemed to come from its general direction that he reached down and caught the line of the other man’s fishing pole and curled his finger around the large silver hook. He paused like this as if asking, silently, if this was what he was supposed to be doing. The man in the gray hood gave a single nod and tugged.
The fisherman knelt by the water, but the other did not reel. Then the fisherman took off his waders, but the other did not reel. The fisherman took off his broad-brimmed straw hat. It floated downstream. Still the stranger did not reel. Finally, the fisherman stood up and held his basket holding all his many fish before him in the water. He looked at it for a very long time with the silver hook still on his finger. The other waited. The sun was so bright on his face. Maybe he was part of the sun; he was so bright.
Finally, the fisherman pushed the basket away from himself and watched it float after his hat and waders in the dark current. And, facing the man on the other side of the bank, he fell forward into the water.
The gray man reeled him in as easy as though there was nothing on the line at all. When the fisherman crawled on the opposite shore, he looked different. Bigger, maybe. Fuller. Like he had adopted a new kind of strength in the undertow.
When he disappeared into the trees, I thought the gray man would follow him, since they exchanged words like old friends. Then I would wake up or learn a big truth and realize where I was, and things would go back to normal. But the man on the other side of the river walked farther down the shore with his pole until he was right across from me. He reached back with his bright gray arms and cast out, so the silver hook landed in the very spot I’d dipped my hand.
Send a Surfboard
The healing coach or whatever to write about what’s going on, to do an exercise that would make things good for the soul, or something. I don’t know what to write, but all can think to do is write to you, Jimmy. Don’t u remember me? We had a talk that once when I lived in La Mirada. We had a talk about the weather, and then you said something like you can do or be anything you want to be. And that meant something.
I don’t got your address. I don’t know how I’d ever be able to get that. But maybe they have ways to get this stuff to you. Well, things aren’t so bad. All things considered, I guess. This place, my mother put me here. And well, there’s this open sitting area where you can look out windows and see some other guys playing basketball, meditating, or whatever. They can’t smoke, duh. But that’s all right—sort of why we are all here.
A bit about me, and not just the nice stuff. There is a point in the morning when I start to itch all over, and sweat, and then pace the room, and I’m wondering if you have got any tips on that. If it gets bad enough they will put me in room smaller than a cell you would find in a jail. And there is nothing in this room. It is just white, and empty, with a lightbulb sticking out of the ceiling. That make it sound like this a bad place. I was trying to tell you about the trees outside, and even the beach—yeah, man, they let us go to the beach at times to have a lil looksee, and that’s pretty cool.
You tol me I cud be somebody, and to perk up, Jimmy, and I’ve been thinking of those words a lot recently. I don’t got a cell phone in here, and some ladies from a church bring by a bunch of books sometimes, but you know, I don’t read them. Not many of the people here read them. I saw some try, but they always seemed to end up holding their head in their hand and bouncing the book off their knee. I hope someday I can like reading again. We didn’t talk about when we had our little talk in La Mirada, but I used to really like to read. I couldn’t tell you what books I read. Harry Potter and stuff like that.
But I was saying that you told me I had the potential needed to be someone good. And nobody ever told me that, you know? Maybe my mother did, but can’t remember. No, here’s what it is. She told me I was good, I just didn’t know it. But you, Jimmy, all suited up, looking at the sun as you straightened your tie, you saw me and nodded and said it was a real nice day. And you popped me a twenty. Thank you for that. And said your name was Jimmy. And I said yessir it’s nice. If I could surf I would be surfing. And you said why aren’t you then? And I said I don’t know how. And you said learn then, but I said I didn’t have no board to learn on, and no stupid money to buy one with.
Then you kicked out the big guns, Jimmy. Shoot, now I know why I’m writing to you. It’s a lot of sweat coming down this pencil now sir, but I just have to say it—you give me five hundred dollars to go buy a surfboard, or put down some rent, or get a haircut—and you put that hand on my shoulder and said I could do it, I could be somebody . . . first twenty bucks, then something lots more, but you know sir I didn’t spend that five hundred dollars on nothing good, just more of the strong stuff, stronger than I ever had in my life, and it almost kilt me! That’s what made them put me in here, and I for real don’t want to go back out there like that again.
So I’m sorry. But sorry don’t cut it, Jimmy. I’ve said the word so many times I’m sick of it. I want to take sorry by the neck and strangle it in the weeds. A thousand sorrys later and I’m still pacing the floor and sweating and wanting the stuff I shouldn’t want.
Do you know what it’s like to have a sad gut feeling and to hate feeling this way but knowing that it was you who put it there in the first place, like swallowing a bowling ball? It goes in, but it never comes out. And so I go out into the little grove of trees they have by the compound and stick my fingers into the dirt and try to get that deep sadness out of me and into the ground, and sometimes it works a little bit, but not a lot. I still sweat through the fingers, still wish I was back home in Orange County, still wish I’d bought a surfboard with all that cash.
