Refections on the Lucerne Valley, Grandfathers

Fiction:

Cooper Handly was a young man, a 20-year-old going on 21, and he was in love, or at least thought he was in love. But, you see, he didn't really know a peacock from a pigeon. The girl's name was Bethany Sarah. She was one of those girls with two first names, like a Catherine Kate, or a Sarah Collins, or a Molly Andrews -- one of those girls. 

The couple started dating in their freshman year at the University of Redlands. Cooper was the first in his family to pursue an higher education. He came from four generations of cattle ranchers in the Lucerne Valley. Bethany was from a family of lawyers and bankers. She went home to San Antonio, Texas, for the summer. Cooper was returning home to Apple Valley, California, about to pull into his grandfather's ranch.

After exiting Interstate 15 in Victorville and taking the side roads, Cooper was driving on a winding dirt road. The music by the Faces was playing on his car's stereo. The beat up blue Datson truck he drove rattled and the dirt and gravel beneath its tires kicked up dust. But the truck was good, like an old dog, it reliably kept on licking its way up the road to grandfather's house.

Cooper pulled up to the house and put the truck in park. Nothing had changed. The wooden cabin was no more worn than it was months earlier. The mountains behind the house are still growing, if only in a nominal way, like all mountains in the west, they shoot out of the arid earth like rooks out of chess board.

Grandfather sat on the porch. It was 3 p.m. His work was over for the day. He didn't do much anymore. Mostly just watched the hired hands round up the animals that needed rounding up.

"Cooh," grandfather said as Cooper approached the porch. "Go fetch us a couple beers and talk to me a bit."

Cooper did just that and sat on a wood bench beside his grandfather's rocking chair. They both opened their beers, taking a couple sips each. Grandfather lit a cigarette.

"When's mama get home?" Cooper asked.

"She'll be back in couple hours to make dinner."

Cooper's mother worked for a seamstress, sowing wedding dresses in Victorville. Cooper had not seen his father in five years. He was somewhere in the Arizona desert, but no one really knew.

"You learn anything from those classes down there in Redlands?"

"Yeah," Cooper said. "It's a good school, you know."

"What classes did you take?"

"A lot of introductory classes, like introduction to psychology, and a basic maths class -- Oh, but I took this great class about African American literature. I'm thinking about taking more literature class."

"Are ya?" Grandfather said.

The old man and the young man were quiet for a many moments. Grandfather put out his cigarette and reached for his beer. He also lit another cigarette.

"You learn anything from that girl you've been seeing?" Grandfather's face did not change, still as strong, serious and unmoving as the mountain behind the house.

"Maybe a thing of two," Cooper said.

Smiling now, Grandfather said, "Well, that's all that matters."

My pup when he was young.

Reflections on Lancaster

It's a desert community in Los Angeles County,

Lancaster, California, a strange

town, you can go through it

on your way to San Francisco,

but if you want a beer, you'll

have to pay $7, because all the bars

are on the outskirts of town --

If you're going to pay that much

for a beer, then you may as well

see helicopter tits on some well-

titted woman at a bikini bar.

Why not?

But, damn, this probably isn't

the type of town its mormon

founders envisioned; check

your gun and gang paraphernalia

at the door. You may not

be wanted here -- "You got a light?"
the small latino man asks, speaking
in one of those muffled latino tones. "Sure."
And I hand him my lighter, the rap
music still sounding like a cow getting
slaughtered in the background, Pow!

Pow! Pow!

"Can I cut through to Kramer's Junction
from here?" I ask as he hands back
the lighter. He shrugs. "Where's that?"

"It's in the desert, east of here."

He looks into the mass vacant spaces
between the stucco columns into the hills.
"I can't stand that woman," he says. "The one
dancing now, she's just . . ." And then he cursed her.

Okey.

Another cigarette lit, and I leave
the man smoking by himself
and get into my car to find out how far
Kramer's Junction was from here, not feeling
one way or the other about these morally
repugnant places and their dangerous
propensities

as long as these wheels meet the road,
they go. 

When yer Blue

There were many things my contracts professor said throughout this semester, some of them I retained, and some, of course, went over my head like flaminyon at a hamburger festival. But there's one thing that I'll always try to recall during dog days, realizations of falsities and those cold, down in the New Jersey toxic garbage dump heart breakers.

He stood at the lectern, talking about the breaching party to some contract, both hands raised and in an intonation reminiscent of the black southern Baptist minister his father is, he said, "Just another shattered dream." His hands came down to grab both sides of the lectern. Shaking his head now and looking down, this man who graduated from Harvard Law and Columbia School of Journalism put on a very disappointed face. "Just another shattered dream," he whispered.

He then stood upright and started laughing. "What happened here, class?"

So what a mantra for life? "Just another shattered dream." They break like icicles smashing on a store-front sidewalk, happening all the time.

Smile, damnit!

Chasing, Catching, But Not Giving

It will happen -- the dog will die.
But today he's chasing a ball
like any dumb dog.

He's old,
still with puppy-dog eyes though,
a serious face, a white stripe

from his nose, between his goofy
eyes, as he takes limped strides toward
the ball,
getting older.

And then it's a struggle, he returns
with the ball, but doesn't want
to give it up, taking a few steps
back, a flaw, perhaps, not

unlike humans, chasing, catching, but not giving,
lovable, though.
"He's got a good bark," Toby says.
The dog barks, and barks

and barks -- he wants us to chase him.
"Damn dog," I say, a beer
in my hand, a cigarette
in the other, taking steps
toward the dog. "You damn dog."

A full-moon night, the moon
looks fuller in California than Carolina,
probably because of the palm fronds,
swaying like jazz ladies in the Santa Ana
winds, this blind
old dog --

"We were going
to go to Lake Alice tonight, weren't
we?" I say,
picking up the ball.

"Yeah," Toby says. I throw
the ball, the dog chases, and then returns.
"Oh, well," I say. "This is fine."

Take her as she is

So you’re a young man,

and you met her at the grocery

store, huh? Alright,

she was working in the meat

department, cutting meat, blood

and fat spilled onto her apron

and dripped to the floor

while she sang the R&B songs

she learned while living and dancing

in Las Vegas. She was born in Cal-

ifornia, moved to North

Carolina when she was young,

had a child when she was young,

talks too much about this Christ

fella who you don’t put much

stock in, yeah? And when she

curses she doesn’t look so cute,

she curse how quiet Raleightown

gets when the sun goes down, curses

her station and curses you -- yet,

when downtown buildings throw

shadows over her blue eyes,

which are as complicated

as the water of Mono Lake,

and she looks into those of her child --

it don’t matter, po’ boy. It don’t

matter, po’ boy, not

one bit.

Milk and Drool

My friend and fellow ex-editor of the Bulldog Weekly and wonderful poet Sara Adams, challenged me to write a poem that ends with "I try not to drool/and take my seat." Here's what my efforts produced:

In the morning,

I eat my cheerios

and watch the sun

rise --

Milk spilling out

of my mouth,

I try not to drool

and take my seat.

The Most Simple Dream

There are a lot of things worth noting in a day; two come to mind, inspired by two favorite writers/philosophers. First, Joseph Campbell suggested writing down dreams because, while religions are myths shared by a society, dreams are the myths of the individual, they're often your unsung mantra, but the soul needs to sing these be whole. Second, Kurt Vonnegut suggested writing sometime funny everyday, because something in this horrible world is going to make you laugh and laughter makes it all bearable in the face of the most unbearable. So there you go. If I have a dream, I'll write about it. If not, then surely something funny will happen, even if it's just something made up, rolling around in my head.

Last night, I dreamed

I was a boxer, fighting

a big-time fight, dancing

across the ring, beating

up my adversary and getting

beat up too. It was ex-

hilarating --

As the lights went dim,

I only saw my adversary,

smoke rise out of the dark

face-less crowd, men

smoking cigars and women smoking

cigarettes from long cigarette

holders, and then

I saw a woman

sitting in my corner,

worrying with hazel

eyes, looking almost purple

in the dark hue --

I was fighting

and she was beautiful.

A Character Sketch From "Calipatria"

The following is a character sketch of David Holt from the never-to-be-finished crime noir novel, "Calipatria," I'm working on with my co-editor. The narrator is Ryan, a young man who had just moved to El Centro, California, to teach history at Imperial Valley College. This section will be completely omitted from the final product . . . if there is ever a final product. In fact, the entire narrative point-of-view will be different. This is just a character sketch. Enjoy!

---

David Holt wasn’t all bad. There were only a lot of bad things about him. To outsiders, they saw a young man who was often drunk and unruly. He did some drugs. But nothing he thought was too dangerous, though crystal-meth turned out to be more dangerous than many folks thought. It gave him tempers, which landed him in jail. But he didn’t do anything too bad.

Outsiders saw the bad things, like the time in Niland when he messed up the face of another local degenerate. David used a knife to cut a line from this fella’s ear straight down to his shoulder. The man bled a few quarts of blood, and from what I gathered, he was near death, until a blood transfusion in Desert Mirage replenished what he had lost.

David got a night in prison for that one. When the local authorities heard who he was -- you know, the son of an Imperial County Commissioner -- David was let go. A half-hearted effort was made by the Imperial County Sheriffs to figure out what had happened that night in Niland. The Sheriff decided that David acted in self defense and that the other fella was as much to blame for the broad-and-deep cut along the left side of his face that slid down his neck to his torso as David was. The matter never went before the District Attorney.

They concluded that David was provoked and so he acted. Was that so bad? Was that not natural? If he overreacted, was that not simply a consequence of action to begin with? So be it. It was done, folks were going to think what they’re going to think.

And the man with the broad-and-deep cut did not pursue any legal avenues.

But David couldn’t stay out of trouble in Niland. He stole a dirt bike there only a month later -- well, it was more like he borrowed the dirt bike. It was left unattended near Salvation Mountain in Slab City. David was only going to take it for one ride around the dunes. At least that’s what he told everybody.

David even had a bike of his own. That’s why he went out to Niland to begin with. He and his friends went out there to ride around the dunes. The dunes were complemented by the man-made obstacles (or should we say Holt-made? David and his father made many of the dirt-bike obstacles in Niland). It was a much better location than Glamis ever was. Niland was a local spot, a place where you didn’t have to deal with the coastal brats or the “IE” trash from Riverside and San Bernardino County.

I heard that David drank too much before going on a ride on the unattended bike, which wasn’t really unattended. He found it propped against a trailer in a gas station. The bike’s owner was in the convenience store buying a cup of coffee and flirting with the clerk, a fair-skinned latino woman with eyes brown enough to spill your hot coffee over and not notice any difference except pain, when David set aside the brandy-and-coke soda bottle he was nursing.

Only for one ride, David said.

Except, David crashed the thing, breaking his leg and sliding a disk in his vertebrae. The bike was totaled. David spent two weeks in the hospital. The owner of the bike, who was a fork-lift operator from Colton, demanded that the Holts replace the bike, which prompted the Holts to threaten to press charges of negligence ... or something. And though there was nothing to be said for those changes, David certainly stole the bike, the whole thing was dropped.

But people remember things. A clever colleague of mine on the college faculty nicknamed David the nihilist of Niland. I don’t think that title quite fits David, an appreciation that there’s no meaning to anything might be giving David too much credit. He’s more of a narcissist if anything.

But like I said, David wasn’t all bad.

You see, he fished.

And there are few things more noble than to fish and then to eat the fish caught by a fisherman. David was a part of this fraternity. Calipatria told me he believed in it too. Which is to say; first, he was no nihilist; and second, he was responsible on the waters, studied the waters, cared for the waters, ate the fish he caught and perhaps even thought there was something larger than him in the world that created the waters. I thought this was an interesting side of David, because it showed that he wasn’t so unlike me. My earliest memory was a summer vacation when I was a four-year-old in the Missouri wilderness. My father and uncle fished the entire day at one of the tributaries that fed the Mississippi River. That evening, as the sun set over the small Missouri hills, which were covered by a forest of oak trees, covering the land not unlike the green sweater that hugged my mother's curves as she cooked the fish the men had caught later that night, eating in the dark and smelling the aroma of our food as it hung over the campsite until it was time to go to make camp and go to bed. We were happy. That moment lingering and lingering and lingering into the night and onto the morning.

So the sight of a man fishing made me not only think of the fraternity of fishermen, but my parents too. My father worked hard, fishing was his pastime. He was a professor of ecology at University of Findlay in Ohio. My mother was a school teacher, educating the farmers’ children at the elementary school. She was not too pretty, but when she flashed her hazel eyes and smiled her fat Polish-Catholic smile at my father he did what he was told. They were good like that, exhibiting all the stuff midwestern relationships were made of.

What my mother saw in my father when he returned to the campsite with a pale full of fish was what Calipatria may have seen in David.

She was beginning to tame him during their final days together.

Big Ed's

Outside, cobblestone streets

and small doors and swine odors

Inside, wooden floors and old

ladies serving grits and coffee

Flags from the state of North

Carolina and the Confederates

Hanging from the walls, pictures

of a moonshine distillery

After a long night, Patrons bravely

keeping their food down

Raleigh, NC

1-11-2012

The Good Life

When Judge Manning sat

at the bench during a motion-

hearing recess at the Superior

Court and warned

the law students to not

drink booze after taking cold

medicine, because after passing

out in your wife's lap

you'll spill your whiskey all over

the neighbor's carpet; it said something

about my American Dream,

anyway:

Get born and keep warm,

taste the good things, corn

whiskey and chicken wings, see

the pretty things, like orange blossoms

and women wearing blue polkadot

blouses in early April, and

find God in the living, marry

a pretty woman who will give birth

to two beautiful daughters and die

testate, but still leave

something -- art and love --

to the imagination.

Raleigh, NC,

4-9-2012

Pretty Little Women

Instead of Church, the pretty little woman,

who, not so long ago, was a pretty little bride,

walked to the coffee house with her pretty little children,

and husband on Sunday. Another pretty little woman

stopped traffic, crossing the street to get to a pretty little car

in front of the Baptist Church -- the men all stared at the pretty little woman.