Uncle Ron

From the clouds, the land looked quilted, woven with green and gold thread. The roads were silver seams. Along the seams people traveled from home to home celebrating holidays, healing sickness, bringing food during drought, giving long embraces when children were born, delivering gifts when lovers married. No thorns or thistles grew in this soft blanket, reinforced by the soft bellow of cattle. Here and there something hid underneath the quilt—it bulged up slightly but the crops grew just the same, keeping it hidden. All small squares were tightly sewn together, one square mile each.

Between 1st Street and Lincoln Road a square of farmland was split up the middle with an irrigation canal and a new railroad track running side by side, creating a permanent barrier between the two plots of land. On the tracks, slow heavy trains carried potatoes, barley, and wheat. The sloshing canal, ten feet wide, delivered clear water filtered by grassy banks to the fertile crops which huddled alongside it. The railroad and the canal worked together, carrying wealth back and forth across the valley.

Years passed unnoticed. The railroad and the canal were successful. Crops grew in plenty and the trains carried it away. Crops grew in plenty, crop prices fell; home prices climbed. Big corporate farmers got more efficient, crop prices fell; home prices climbed. More lovers married, more children were born, years passed unnoticed. Crop prices fell; the farmer sold the land to a real estate developer.

An estate was developed. Two estates: Mobile Home Estates on the west side of the tracks and Cloverdale Estates on the east. The mobile homes were trucked in on big wheels and dropped side by side. The sides of the homes were fitted with plastic skirts that concealed the wheels underneath. Trailer hitches were hidden by flower pots with wilting plants. Shallow holes were filled with leaning fence posts to divide with chain links the few feet of space between trailers. Large guard dogs entertained children and protected toolboxes. Aluminum car ports were erected. Aluminum sheds were erected. Aluminum television antennae began to deliver loud signals, first grey and then in color, to the hard-working inhabitants of Mobile Home Estates. Large holes appeared in Cloverdale. The holes were filled with firm footings of reinforced concrete. New homes with basements were built. Homes in Cloverdale had wooden siding painted with color, and were filled with wooden bookshelves, wooden tables, wooden cabinets, and warm carpet. Small trees were planted in anticipation of immense growth to be witnessed over multiple generations. Rocks were replaced with topsoil mixed with grass seedlings. Fresh shingles and clean glass sparkled under blue sky.

From the clouds, the look has changed. Cropland is replaced with alley, drive, lane, loops, and cul-de-sac, making indistinguishable the silver seams. The canals run lower every year, the tracks less used. Like ants, cars spread the seams and line up for busy errands, digging up what lies beneath.

---

Ron lives in Cloverdale and doesn’t listen to his parents, who tell him that Mobile Home Estates is off-limits during bike rides. His girlfriend lives there. Her name is Taylie. She has brown hair, always in a braid. She wears sneakers, T-shirts, and freckles. She fights hard and likes Ron.

Taylie is a quarter Native American and a quarter French. Grandparents on her mother’s side were an unlikely couple. Taylie’s parents were also an unlikely couple. Her mother was probably the most beautiful woman in the state and her father was bald on the top with a bad comb-over. He was also confined to a wheelchair. When Taylie’s parents were young the community pulled together some money through bake sales, sewing and craft sales, and farmer’s markets to help them afford a new place to live. The casino on the Shoshone reservation also helped. It wasn’t the man’s fault he couldn’t work, the community said. Their new home was a mobile home in Mobile Home Estates, the newest community in the county at that time.

Now Ron and Taylie attend different schools, different churches, and their parents shop at different stores. The two friends stay away from Taylie’s house as much as possible to keep Ron’s parents happy. “We don’t mind the girl, but we don’t want you wandering around her neighborhood. Bad influences are there,” they say while leaving for work.

Ron watches television while they go. He listens to the radio. After a productive morning, he searches for Taylie. He meets her where the tracks meet the canal. Over the years they’ve spent most of their time near the canal telling stories, building forts, floating boats, looking for fish, laying Abraham Lincolns on the tracks to be flattened by the next train. Taylie suggests a new activity every day. Between the two, Taylie has the brains, but Ron isn’t far behind.

Ron uses his brains for reading magazine pictures. They give Ron an idea of all the things he could have but doesn’t. Ron watches more music-TV, looks through more magazines, and makes a mental inventory of all the things he should have but doesn’t. Ron tells Taylie that one day he will have it all. He can’t think about anything else.

“Of course. You’re smart enough,” answers Taylie. “Just…be patient. The best thing is to focus on your schoolwork. You don’t seem to care anymore.”

Years pass. Ron behaves patiently. His frustrations grow faster than his body, and neither grow as fast as his ever-growing clothing size, which are now far too large for his body. It is his style. His friends follow his style and everything else. He finds a new type of music that speaks to his frustrated desires.

"I know you want to suceed, but it'll be hard if you don't do well in school," Taylie reminds him.

Ron tells Taylie that she doesn’t know what she was talking about, that rappers make a lot of money and don’t need school. One evening Ron and Taylie decided to spend time at her house. While walking up the wheelchair ramp Taylie’s strange neighbor Tom calls after them.

“Have you two seen my cat?”

“No,” Taylie and Ron answer at the same time. The neighbor Tom looks tired, anxious, and dirty.

"My cat has disappeared. I can’t live without my cat."

Ron tells Tom that if the cat is that important, he should find it fast before dying.

“What do you think I’m trying to do? Huh?” Tom the neighbor wanders away quickly, every few seconds taking a look under imaginary things. “Smart-aleck,” Tom says under his breath.

Ron gives a short laugh at the crazy neighbor and follows Taylie inside.

“We haven’t seen you in a while Ron. Welcome back,” says Taylie’s father warmly.

Ron says thanks.

“How are your parents?”

Ron shrugs but doesn’t say anything.

“They’re good to let you visit us finally. Tell them we missed you.”

Ron and Taylie make their way to Taylie’s bedroom. She shows him all of her college brochures.

“It’s never too soon to prepare. I think I can go to a good university if I keep my grades up. I might even get a scholarship because of my Grandpa Rabbit-Tail. Look at how nice these places are! These have excellent chemistry programs, and these have really good Biology teachers. There are so many choices.”

Ron looks away from the vinyl records in his hands to glance at the college brochures and pretends to show interest. Taylie’s father looks in from the hallway.

“We’re going to the corner store to get some bread. We’ll be back in half an hour. Think we can trust you two to hold up the fort ‘till then?”

“Bye Dad,” was the last thing she ever said to her father.

Ron didn’t wait long after Taylie’s parents drove away before making unwelcome advances on her. Ron was unsuccessful and stormed out of the house. The events of the evening left Taylie in a sour mood. When her parents came back home she had already showered. Her beautiful mother came in to check on her before going to bed. While lying in bed, Taylie decides to break off the relationship with Ron and plans to do it the next time she sees him.

The next evening is the next time she sees him is, a warm summer evening. She rides to his house and leans her bike against the large willow tree in Ron’s front yard. She can feel the cool blades of grass reach around her flip-flops to tickle her feet. The boys in the house, Ron’s friends with baggy clothing, start to trickle out the front doorway. His friends spend their time at Ron’s house, having less parental intrusion.

Ron is the first out the doorway, and does not look happy to see her. He looks at her as if she is from an enemy gang--an imaginary gang--or worse: a threat to his manhood.

“Ron, I need to speak with you in private.”

“That’s Ronsta to you, woman,” says one of the boys standing behind Ron, bending his knees as he says it while tilting his head to the side to match his New York Yankee baseball hat, which is also off to the side to protect his left ear from sunburn. This boy isn’t interested in baseball, or any other kind of sport, which is clear by his scrawny white body under his baggy clothing. When he says “Ronsta” he flings out his hand. This makes his excessive amount of fake jewelry bounce, while his clothing threatens to fall off his shoulders and waist.

Ron says that his friends are allowed to hear anything she has to say. Taylie states that their relationship is over. Ron slaps her. His demonstration is a claim of his superiority, but the claim is not complete until he calls her a name referring to female dogs while the onlooking boys make noises of victory.

Taylie rides her back towards home tearless and relieved. She passes the homes in Cloverdale. The yards have large trees. The homes have wood siding and wood bookshelves and clean windows. She crosses over the border between the two estates, the railroad tracks and the canal. The canal runs dry and the railroad track is covered in weeds, having nothing more to do here.

She arrives home and parks her bike. There is no room in her mind for distractions, so she barely notices the conversation she has with her neighbor Tom. The neighbor is unloading his rusted old van and has a metallic container under his arm. During the conversation he gives to her a golden locket and Taylie thanks him. Inside the gold locket are pictures of his lost cat and his lost wife, one on each side. The picture of Tom’s wife doesn’t look pretty, and Tom’s cat doesn’t look healthy.

“You are a good girl. You deserve a better life than the three of us had,” says Tom.

“Thanks.”

Taylie walks up the wheelchair ramp and goes inside, locking the door behind her.

Her mother greets her and gives her a long hug. She noticed Taylie’s stress. She tells her mother about the breakup and her feelings of relief. Her mother, too, feels relieved. Taylie goes to her room and sits at her desk and places the locket on top of the stack of college brochures. Colleges all over the country are interested in having her attend their school.

Taylie takes a long breath. The oxygen stretches her ribs and feels cold in the corners of her lungs. She holds it in for as long as she can and releases it. It feels like she hasn’t breathed like this in years—or ever. The only sound is the ticking of her alarm clock. For some reason the ticking brings her to her senses. She realizes something isn’t right about the locket Tom gave her. She can’t think of any reason why he would give her the locket. He had worn it for as long as she knew him.

Taylie was too overwhelmed to notice the conversation with Tom, and is now too far away to hear Tom lighting the suicidal fuel in metallic canisters in his mobile home. The explosion destroys Tom’s home and sends an aluminum support beam through Taylie’s bedroom wall. It misses her clock, misses her vinyl records, but strikes her from behind, piercing her heart, killing her.

Ron and his friends do not hear the explosion. It sounds much like the video game they are playing. They remain oblivious to the incident. They are still celebrating Ron’s superiority by giving each other high-fives, guffawing, drinking beer, braying, and emitting odors.

.
soil and oak, both toil, but

oak alone can reach that shelf, that topmost shelf.
oak sees soil’s legs are short, his torso is abrupt. Poor choice, says
oak, who finds a pie on top that shelf with views of sky. up there,

oak spies a Wealthy life.

oak eats the pie and drinks sunlight which helps him grow.
oak suggests, you should try some—get your own.
oak dies the day soil tries to choose a taller height.

soil eats oak, tastes pie.

'Taken' is the film we finish watching in the big city movie theatre. After the film, we eat as much of the large pizza and buffalo chicken wings as we can. Failing to finish, I end up with a few wings and pepperoni slices in one of those white to-go boxes.

Walking is such a burden with a full stomach, almost like being off-balance, leaning to the left.

Nights on the city streets look like nothing else, except for a weekend night on the city streets. Mostly locals, mostly young, always wealthy, never satisfied with one bar per night, people roam from one place to another smelling poorly and acting someone else’s age. The same is true this night.

I see an unusual man under the glow of flashing neon beer signs. He wants money—it appears he needs a haircut, a shave, and new clothes—and for money he is asking everyone in sight, apparently desperate enough to brave the strong smell of hairspray and hard liquor.

The way he moves from person to person reminds me of the way a senior in college moves when bouncing from booth to booth at a career fair. Then I remember one college class in particular.

The economics class, which had the highest concentration of Libertarians west of Stockholm, reported that fifty percent of the homeless have drug or alcohol problems, mental illness, or criminal records. I was about to ask the professor if he knew who made up the other fifty percent, because I assumed that it must be people who don’t have drug problems, have no criminal records, and quite possibly are children and families, but the class moved to the next subject so quickly, never to return, as if the problem were solved, being attributed to poor choices.

I thought 'Libertarian' would be a good name for hand soap. At the same time, I made a mental note that there were impoverishing consequences for choosing to be mentally ill.

My leftover food in a white box—which keeps changing colors under the neon Bud sign—is all I have, and I am confident this college-fair-impersonator isn't interested in food. No, I'd been warned, he wants money for alcohol and drugs.

Still, he keeps his eyes on the white box.

'I don’t have cash. Pizza?' I ask.

He takes it. His brief but sincere expression of gratitude is cut short while he rushes to a safe enclave to eat. He opens that to-go box in the same way I opened that white envelope containing my first job offer—ferociously.

My Childhood Home I See Again
--by Abraham Lincoln

[I]

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

[II]

But here's an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,
A fortune-favored child--
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man wild.

Poor Matthew! I have ne'er forgot,
When first, with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
And mother strove to kill;

When terror spread, and neighbors ran,
Your dange'rous strength to bind;
And soon, a howling crazy man
Your limbs were fast confined.

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd,
With burning eye-balls glared--

And begged, and swore, and wept and prayed
With maniac laught joined--
How fearful were those signs displayed
By pangs that killed thy mind!

And when at length, tho' drear and long,
Time smoothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose.

I've heard it oft, as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet, and lone--
The funeral dirge, it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

To drink it's strains, I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Air held his breath; trees, with the spell,
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past; and nought remains,
That raised thee o'er the brute.
Thy piercing shrieks, and soothing strains,
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well--more thou the cause,
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs, by time's kind laws,
Hast lost the power to know.

O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince,
That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost thos tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him ling'ring here?

.
At it all day is he
With three minutes to sit
Under gnarled old tree,
Feeling free, loving grass,
Thanking the breeze,
Thinking dirt is soft after
Teaching it honesty,
Finding respite in shade,
Resting sore hands and worn,
Loving Rich watermelon is he.

Yes, his young successors
Avoid dirt, neglect trees,
Think less of grass,
Withdraw from breeze,
And assess melon to be
A Poor choice for filling
Full bellies at play, having been
At it all day.

.
Feel inside; try to
Fill round holes with this season's
Shiny squares you buy.

A Snake

A Silent thief,
from the shadows
uninvited,
Breaks in. Almost

Motionless.
No! The dark
silhouette
moves closer.

He'll take all,
Everything
Most precious.
But he can't see:

She, too, sneaks
to slice his
face. She'll use
sharpened steel.

.

Hot
Desire
Is the Liberator.
Takes us new places; we meet new faces.
Ennobles, emboldens. We grow wings,
It compensates empty spaces, fills our heart,
Then breaks our heart,
And never
Lets us
Go.