Who I Am

   An old man sat crying by the side of the road. He had been making his way to Amarillo when several young men in an automobile stopped and offered him a ride. Since it was a long distance he had yet to travel, he accepted, but as he was about to climb into the auto one of the young men grabbed his straw hat and sailed it high into the air where the wind caught it and carried it far into the adjacent meadow. Upon retrieving his hat he discovered that the young men, now gone, had taken the contents of his knapsack, including an old tin of papers and photographs and scattered them throughout the roadside grass. As I helped him gather those he said to me, "I am in here," and indicated the handful of papers he was inspecting before returning them to the tin. "This is who I am," he added, nodding.

   "Have  you no family?" I asked, being concerned that he was on the road alone.

   "None."

   "Wife and children?"  "No and no. Never wanted any."

   "Father?"  "A hopeless drunk."

   "Mother?"  "Died of bitterness."

   Then he realized that missing among his papers was a letter he valued above all other things, including his straw hat, and he began crying again. After several minutes of searching, we found it farther down the road, undamaged. The old man grinned and thanked me and wiped the remaining tears from his face with his sleeve.  "This is a letter from Auntie Gallagher," he explained as he added it to the tin. He would not accept a ride to Amarillo from me, being "once bitten" I suppose, but as we parted he shouted back:

   "She was the last living person to have known me when I was a child!"

-glwarren, 2014

Have and Have-not

I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away

All this fussing and fighting,

Man, you know I sure can't stay.

Bandit

   We are driving through the park, Elphina and I, when we happen upon several young girls dancing with hoops to an arabesque. "Oh, I absolutely love rhythmic gymnastics!" Elphina effuses, and begs to stop a while. From a bench nearby we watch as the girls leap effortlessly through the cool morning mist, hands over hearts, hoops held guardedly forward, like Neruda's girls, "dreaming of bandits." 

   Thief that I am, aroused, I cross my legs to hide the fact, but Elphina has noticed and is on me in a second. "You bastard!" she whispers violently into my good ear. "You should be ashamed!" she reprimands. Pulling me from the bench by my collar, she leads the way to the car. "Son-of-a-bitch!" she curses ahead of me. "You have stolen my day!"

   "Ah, I love rhythmic gymnastics," I mutter to myself. "Absolutely," I say.

glwarren, 2014

   

Miscellany III


   Today I am 73. Somewhere amongst the detritus of a waning literary life there is a note that reads "Today I am 29."  Forty-four years and not much to show for it. The fault, if there be any, is not in my stars.

~~~~~~~~~~

   My mother always called me on my birthday. After singing the birthday song she would often remind me that she used to sing Melancholy Baby to me because "you were such a sad child!" 

   "Do you want me to sing it for you now?" 

   "No, Mother."  

   "Oh, come on!"  

   I would give in, of course, and she would sing the chorus. She had a nice, mellow, somewhat husky alto voice.  

   "There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"  

   "No. Thank you. Good night, Mother."

   "Good night, Jerry."

glwarren, 2014

Jack Joins The Circus

Just slip out the back, Jack

And get yourself free.

--Paul Simon, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

   "Sop your beans with bread, Jack!" his papa told him. "Sop 'em up! The preacher's comin' and mama needs the table to pray on. And wash your face and comb your hair when you're done. No, no, I can't be here. There's chickens to put up for the night and wings to clip for some who try to fly the coop."

   So Jack slipped out the back and caught up with us in the field behind the house as we were making our way toward the encamped Ringling Bros. Circus. That night, after the show, we double dared him to proposition The Amazing Chameleon Woman! We hid in the tall grass near her tent. At the canvas flap that was her door, Jack called softly, "Hello? Miss . . . uh . . . Chameleon? he stammered. She soon appeared, a varicolored latex skin-of-a-sort peeled loose from one shoulder. Holding a lantern before her, she maneuvered to get a good look outside the tent, her big eyes popping to see who stood there in the dark.

   "What do you want?" she snapped.

   "I'm here . . . for . . . the night," he stammered again.

   "What? You must be dreaming, sonny!" she hissed. And then, to the surprise of us all, grabbed his arm and pulled his skinny little ass inside. We waited . . . and slept. The next we knew it was dawn and the tent was down and folded and about to be taken away. The entire circus was being readied to move to the next town. There was no sign of Jack. Weary from waiting, we went home without him.

   Jack's mama was understandably upset when he did not come home. We had nothing to offer about his disappearance other than after we split up we did not see him again that night. His papa suggested he might have run off with the circus and we let it go at that. A few days later, Murphy told me that Jack had it planned from the beginning.

  "Had what planned?"

  "Getting out of Kansas! You know! He's been talking about it from the get-go! I mean, since we were kids. In fact, he dared me to go see that woman himself and I double dared him right back! He knew I would, that sneaky little sonofabitch."

   "Why wouldn't he just join and be done with it?"

   "Who knows? Maybe they had something going."

   Some say they saw Jack with the circus in the next town. A few swear they ran into him later that year on the east coast near Ringling's winter quarters. We never saw him in Kansas again . . . except . . . maybe . . . years later . . . at the funerals of some old friends.

glwarren,2014

Miscellany II



   The coastal shanty town woman whose home was made of old shipping crates with some colorful cardboard pieces placed decoratively on the outside walls. A tropical storm had gone wide of the coast overnight and then back out to sea, sparing the town. "We were worried that we might lose everything," she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

   And that would leave nothing. And at first I think that nothing is not relative. If you have nothing, you have nothing. That's it. But it occurs to me that it becomes relative when we consider that the resources available to each to recoup his/her losses will vary greatly. The woman, for instance, will have no insurance; will have no backup on the "cloud" for her digitized family photos that she also does not have; will most likely have no neighbors able to help "rebuild"; will have no online charitable site collecting funds for her. Yet the shanty town woman, because she has lived with nothing or next to nothing all her life, will be best able to cope of all who find themselves faced with nothing. "I've got plenty of nothing, and nothing's plenty for me," Porgy sings. And those who have "plenty of plenty" put a lock on their door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

   Does nothing matter to me? Yes, it does. Nothing pleases me. I will collect nothing. There will be bottles with nothing in them, postcards with nothing written on them, heirloom photographs with nothing to identify their subjects. My friends will continue to give me nothing. And while nothing comes easily to me, it is not for nothing that I continue. I will stop for nothing and in nothing flat. Though nothing is wrong, nothing is right, so nothing will be good enough for me. In the end it will be all for nothing, for there is nothing like it. So thanks, thanks for nothing.

glwarren, 2014