Jimmy, Super Kid (part eighteen)

Just before dinner Ricky shows up at our door. He carries an old, green, heavy, Coleman sleeping bag over his shoulder, the edges of a white pillow stick out of each end of the rolled up sleeping bag. Everything else he may need is rolled up in there too.

I go out the door instead of inviting him in, “My stuff is already up there,” I tell him as we walk around to the backyard through the carport. It takes two tosses to get the bag up to the deck.

“What’s your mom cooking?” as we go up the steps to the back door.

“Smells like fish.”

“Your mom makes good fish.”

“She does pretty good,” I agree as we walk into the dining area, which is also the kitchen.

“Who’s she?” my mom asks as she places a pile of dishes on the table and nods at us to spread them around.

“You are she,” I answer and start dealing out the dinner plates.

“What do I do pretty good?” she asks while putting some potatoes into a bowl.

“Some people say you’re a good cook,” I say with a quick look at Ricky.

“Thank you Ricky. That is very nice of you. I hope you like chicken,” she puts the mashed potatoes on the table and gets the chicken out of the oven. “Go find your father.”

We spread out both sleeping bags and completely cover the plywood deck. We kick off our tennis shoes; one of Ricky’s shoes slips between the railing and lands in the grass below.

“I can get that in the morning,” Ricky states.

With pillows leaning against the newly installed two by four railing we lay on top of the bags, it’s still too warm to get inside. The sky is almost black; the moon is still below the horizon, stars shine.

“This is nice,” I say while looking up at the stars.

“That was fun, working with your dad.”

“My father comes through every once in a while,” I tone it down a little so as not to get too mushy.

“What’s that?” a light streams across the sky.

“A falling star?” I suggest.

“If a star fell to earth the earth would burn up in a fiery ball long before the star got anywhere near us. Stars are huge,” Ricky informs me.

“A meteor, a falling meteor,” I correct myself.

“I think it was a spaceship,” Ricky says just looking straight up into the night sky.

“Sure, Ricky, and it just crashed into the ocean.”

“Do you really think that?”

“No Ricky. No I don’t.”

A car show took over the whole beachside town. Ricky’s dad wanted to see the cars so we tagged along. Perfectly restored cars fill every empty lot.   People have opened Kettle corn shops on wheels and there are lines in front of all the fish places. One place known for its bread bowls of clam chowder has a line half way down the street.

As soon as Ricky’s dad parks the Honda N360 he has a line of his own.   Most of the people want to see the engine – it’s very small. They seem willing to overlook all the body rust. Ricky’s dad gives the same speech over and over about the car’s mileage and what needs to be done to keep it in top running condition. Occasionally when the size of the crowd increases he gives some history that dates back to his college days. I don’t know if he ever gets around to looking at the car show cars. Ricky and I purchase the over sized bag of kettle corn to share and leave him to his audience.

Jimmy,Super Kid (part two)

And this is a summer’s day. I walk at a brisk pace a short stick in hand, poking at the ground, not for balance but to promote the image of a person hiking. My olive green shorts have extra pockets, not just for image but also for things that are found. Movement up ahead. I drop into stealth mode, silent steps, slow careful movements – movement attracts. A small figure kneels beside the water’s edge dipping into the water with a small cup and emptying the cup into a gallon can. The figure is a boy, dressed much like I am and only slightly smaller. Next to the boy a white dog stands. The dog is almost the size of the boy. The dog lifts his nose and sniffs. The dog turns and looks straight at me. My scent has revealed my presence, but only to the dog, the boy continues his scooping of water. The dog barks and wags his tail as I leave the protection of a tall bush and walk up to my best friend Ricky.

“How goes the hunt?” I ask while looking into the gallon can.

“Got eight,” Ricky answers without taking his eyes off the water, holding the cup an inch above the water.

“How many you need?” I ask counting the eight black commas swimming in the can.

“Ten,” he answers shortly. “Quiet!” he instructs in a stage whisper. I follow his advice and move back from the water’s edge. Sally, the dog, a Samoyed white wolf, follows me; she’s had enough of the tadpole hunt.

Ricky makes a quick scoop, “nine,” he announces. Sally looks to see if this means anything to her, decides it does not and attacks me. She could easily eat me alive but Ricky keeps her well fed. Sally tries to take my stick. I hold on with both hands. She grips the stick between my hands and starts to drag me toward the water, she growls, I scream.

“Quiet!” Ricky looks at me and then at Sally, “Sit!” Sally lets go of the stick immediately, dropping me into the mud and sits beside Ricky like it was what she always wanted to do. Ricky makes a last dip into the water and proclaims, “Ten!”

 

May and Mac

“From the mountain heights I will bring them down!  In their feeble thoughts they think themselves strong but I will reduce their shouts to whimpers.  They will run like chicks run to a hen’s wings but there will be no protection for them, no escape!  They will cry to the heavens but I rule the sky!”  Mac sits back down in his Barcalounger reclining chair his baggy boxers revealing a bit more then he is aware of.  He looks tired, completely spent.

“What’s wrong dear?” May brings Mac a cup of hot steaming black coffee and sets it down on the small end table next to the over stuffed gray recliner, making sure a coaster sits under the plain white mug.  May notices the  gap in Mac’s undershorts, “put on some pants and come outside with me I’m going to do a little gardening while the weather is so nice.”

“Don’t want to do any gardening.  I want this to stop!” he points to the breaking news on the television set.  Words scrolling across the bottom edge of the screen announcing yet another way for the world to end.  “First they make things up and then I really think they truly believe the words they just made up.”

“I know dear.  They are politicians.  It’s what they do.  It’s what they have always done.  It never used to upset you so.  If you’re not going to put on pants at least tuck that thing in.” May points toward Mac’s shorts.  

Mac reddens slightly and adjusts his outfit, “sorry dear.  I was not trying to scare you.”

“I doesn’t scare me anymore.  Put on some pants and we’ll take a walk.  We shouldn’t be cooped up in here on such a perfect morning.”  Mac gives in to May’s smile, as he always does and pulls on the pants and shirt he keeps near the Barcalounger just in case visitors appear at the door.  Shoes require a bit of a hunt but with May’s help they are found under the lounge chair.  The morning sun has already started to suggest a hot day is coming but so far the day is only warm.  May and Mac walk through their own flower garden and then walk toward the foothills that border the housing development.

“If I never watched the news I would think’ this is a pretty perfect place.”

“So don’t watch the news.”  May takes Mac’s hand when they get to the dirt pathway that leads into the foothills.  A startled Jack Rabbit runs on the path for fifty feet and then disappears into the tall dry grasses.

This Place

 

So…I’m not so sure I have anything to say but I do have some time on my hands.  It all started years ago.  My sister, Kathleen thought we should take a drive to the lake.  The lake is not far, on the map it shows to be only about thirty miles away.  The map also shows the thirty miles to be all thin curvy lines but we really didn’t notice them.  It all started fairly normal.  My sister made P and J sandwiches.   We stopped at a You-Pick-Um just before the mountain road began and picked up some cups of soda with lots of ice.  The first few turns of mountain road were quite tight with an outcropping of rock hanging off the sides of the canyon on one side and a white water river on the other.  I had both hands on the wheel of my old Studebaker for the first half a mile.  White knuckle driving I think they call what I was doing but after the first little bit the road widened and I got used to the rocks almost touching my mirror on the right side.  Kathy admitted she could stop gripping the bench front seat of the old sixty-two Lark after we were just a few miles into the road to the lake. We started to enjoy the back and forth of the two lane road and stopped at a rest area about half way to the lake.  The day was going well.  The two of us hiked along the river just enough to get our minds right for the second half of our journey.  Back in the Lark the road actually had a few straight sections and the curves softened quite a bit.  We made our big mistake just a couple of miles past the rest stop.  A tattered sign, the object of several hunters eager to shoot something, just said, “old road” up ahead we saw the new road, a four lane highway aggressively cut into the sides of mountains avoiding the tight curves altogether.   And then we made our mistake.  I asked, “how about taking the old road?”  Kathleen said, “sure”.

Right away it was obvious the old road received very little highway maintenance.  The black top was cracked into a light gray mass of stepping stone like sections with almost dry grasses trying to grow in the cracks.  The narrow road and the tight turns returned but the river was no longer visible and the sharp canyon wall was replaced by gentle, grass-covered mountains with a good supply of oak trees.  Mice ran across the road in front of us unafraid of our thirty mile an hour approach.   Thirty miles an hour was as fast as I could get myself to dare but there was no one else on the road and we could pretty much drive as slow or fast as we wanted.  We came around an especially tight corner and I screeched to a halt. A full sized black cow stood in the middle of the road.  She didn’t seem to mind my parking in the center of her road, she even came over and sniffed the front grille of the Studebaker and gave a moo like she was asking a question.  She looked at us with her almost black eyes under long lashes until she was sure we were not going to answer and then she took her own good time walking to the side of the road.  She mooed once more when it was safe for us to proceed.

Kathy says I took a wrong turn but there was nowhere to turn to, just one narrow road with no cross streets.

The Flash!

“It has been said he is capable of moving faster than sound itself.  That he can say a word at the end of a sentence first, if he is running,” the wise old man sat cross-legged in the dust at the edge of the foot-hardened path.

“But this is only legend.  No one has seen him for a hundred years and what man could live to be a hundred years?”  Another man stands in the path, his boyhood has just allowed his voice to lower and a sparse placement of hairs on his chin.

“You see a hundred years as unachievable but I see it as just over there,” the old man points to a vague distance.  “But he has outlived many men.  He was before my father and before my father’s father.” The old man begins the process of standing, moving one limb at a time, thinking through the process as if standing were a project.

“How can a man be that old?”

“He is not a man, not a man as we are.  Give me your hand son.”  The younger man helps the older to stand and then the younger walks behind the older up the narrow path.  The old man starts to hum a tune he learned as a small child and the younger man adds the words:

 

Today we walk a path,

A path we cannot see.

But as we walk along our path,

Others see the way.

 

Yesterday I walked alone,

Today I have a friend.

Yesterday has gone away,

Today my friend remains.

 

Today we walk a path…

The words are not learned or saved but occupy the mind only long enough to be said.  Every verse is unique and not necessarily related.  The chanted song alerts the animals along the path to the danger of two approaching humans and keeps the two men in step as miles pass.

Pull!

 

With no land in sight a lone boat moves across the still surface of a vast, blue sea.  Five men, brown from the sun and covered in sweat, determination on their faces sit in the boat.  Each man with two hands on an oar pulls in unison at the direction of their coxswain.

 

[The Coxswain]“If we could all just pull together men!”

[Man #1]“I’m pulling as hard as I can!”

[Man #2]“This oar is stuck to my hand by the blood of broken blisters!  What are you asking for man?”

[Man #3]“I’ve pulled my last pull, we’re just going in circles!”

 

Man #4, a quiet, small man sits in the stern of the small craft.  His arms hang to his sides his single oar hangs loose in its lock.

 

[The Coxswain]“You there, in the back!  We need to pull together!  Wake-up man!

[Man #4]“It is true, we are going in circles, sir.”

[The Coxswain]“And yet you just sit there, pull man!”

[Man #4]“If half of us put our oars on one side and half of us put our oars on the other side we might get somewhere.”

[The Coxswain]“That’s madness man!  We must all be together, on the same side, pulling together!”

[Man #1]“I say we toss him over!”

[Man #2]“Agreed! Toss him!”

[Man #3]“He won’t help, he’s just dead weight holding us back!”

 

Man #4 treads in the deep waters and relaxes as the small boat moves away from him.

 

[The Coxswain] “Pull! Pull! Pull! Pull!”

 

The voice of the leader grows faint to the ears of man #4 and the boat is lost to his sight. And then the shouts of pull return and grow louder as the small boat travels in its circle.

 

 

 

Fat.

At three and a half years old his grandmother tagged him as Fat Ass, I’m sure it was a term of endearment.  His friends call him Chunk.  Two men in matching tan shirts and pants, two men with matching holstered weapons, lead him to a chair and wait while he seats himself. The chains clamped to his wrists make scooting himself into position take a little longer.  His head is shaved bald.  His beady, wet, brown eyes scan the room.  His jump suit is baggy and bright orange.  He looks worried as he looks around the room. A man with a blue face tattoo at a table across the small room rolls his eyes when they make eye contact and Chunk makes sure not to look in that direction again.  They may have been friends before but now is not the time.

A frumpy lady in a decent pants suit starts asking questions.  Fast questions with lots of words.  Chunk tries to understand but is frustrated.  He would rather this woman not ask him questions at all but he does make an effort to answer.  The frumpy lady in a pants suit slows down and breaks each question into three or four much simpler questions.  Chunk doesn’t remember if he stole a Toyota but he does remember being arrested for it.  He tries to explain that he just wants to live but no one asks him that question.  The questions he is asked make little sense to him and he tells the lady that the questions seem unrelated to anything that is going on.  She suggests he should not worry about that.  He seems to take her advice.  When he does not remember he takes her word for it and agrees – she must know or why would she ask the question? “You must know.  You have the papers,” he says.

Before this time in this room, in another room, years ago Fat Ass answered a lot of questions, after all he was in a room all by himself, at least none of his friends were around.  He had been hurt, mistaken.  Lawyers, judges, cops listened.  Maybe the suits could help conditions if they knew the problems so he spilled his guts; not physically spilling his guts like out on the yard but he told them all about the gangs and yard rules.  He told them why and how he was beat up but when he wasn’t looking they wrote everything he said down on paper, page after page of paper. Now, in this room, in front of his friend, the frumpy lady started reading some of the words on the paper. She would read a few lines and ask, “Do you remember saying that?”  He answers, “no” each time and then she reads more.  His friend sitting behind the desk warns him with a look but how can a man called Chunk stop the lady from reading?  It seems like very word he said in the quiet room without friends is read by the frumpy lady.   His only friend, the man with the blue tattoo on his face no longer looks at him.  Chunks eyes water as the frumpy lady reads.  His, “I do not remember,” becomes so quiet the lady typing his words asks him to speak up.

And then the lady plays a tape, every word Chunk said in two meetings.  Chunk leans back in the leather-covered seat and pretends not to listen.  As he listens he hears the man he was over three years ago.  Three years ago he answered smart.  Three years ago he said enough but he never ratted on anyone.  He answered carefully.  He had forgotten how smart he was.  When the tape played his complete answers his friend sitting at the table across the room no longer glared or rolled his eyes, his friend even smiled once.  Fat Ass relaxed and smiled himself.  Nobody needed checked, no fists would pound on his head he might even make parole at his next hearing.   In a world where pigs can fly anything can happen.

He’s Tall

He’s tall.  He sits with his bottom on the front porch of a home, not his home, his feet on the bottom step.  There are five full steps from street to door and his knees still come halfway to his chest.  His shoulders, while he sits on the porch are well above the top of the doorway behind him.  He’s tall.

Twenty-six feet, seven and three-quarter inches without shoes or socks and maybe slouching a little.  People pass on the sidewalk.  People he knows smile and say, “hi, how ya doing?” People he doesn’t know stare, some of them trip, some shake their head trying to adjust the position of their brains.  He has been asked more than once for a weather report.  He smiles and tells them it’s always a bit cloudy and then he grins.  His grins always win them over; people want an over twenty-six foot tall giant to be a nice guy.  He stands and bends slightly in order to peer into a window on the third story of the building behind where he had been seated. One blue eye, the size of a sweet potato adjust to the darkness within the windowed room until he can read the time on the clock that hangs on a wall within.  Almost noon, his stomach growls when it receives the information.

And Then She Said:

“I was looking decent, but nothing fancy and certainly not sexy! I was going to the grocery store! I mean, I had shorts on, but not short shorts. I had on that little tee-shirt top, you know, the pale yellow with the little loop stitching on the edges? Nice, but not exactly an attention getter. Well I see a group of construction workers working on a building up ahead, so I just look straight ahead, no eye contact, nothing to lead them on. So when I get up close every single one of them goes presidential on me. I couldn’t believe it! I wanted to tell them a thing or two but that would just encourage them so I kept my eyes straight ahead and kept walking. What’s this world coming too?”

Psalm 103:12

Psalm 103:12
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

I looked at this verse differently. What if you turn around? I was excited. It fit so well into the rest of the Bible. Repentance is an abrupt about face, turn from your sin and turn toward God right? So I shared it with three pastors. I’m thinking this will preach! But not only did no one get all excited and start to make sermon notes; they didn’t even like it.
Looking into it I think I now understand why. The modern day view of Grace is that our sins are made right. But sin is never right and can never be made right. God prunes the bad branches and takes them to the dump to be burned and while we are on Earth the consequences remain. Only Godliness goes to heaven. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
So how far is my sin from me? I’m a fairly normal guy. I read books and find descriptions of people who think a lot like me. I can be driving in my car singing worships songs (Walking West) until someone cuts me off for no good reason and I ride their bumper (Walking East) and then the love of God finds its way back into my heart and I back off and look for my place in keeping the highways safe (Walking West). I’m making an effort to walk toward God all the time, but I don’t and going from walking away from God and walking toward God is always an abrupt about face.
So what is the Grace God gives us? What is this undeserved gift that we should not be able to even conceive? I believe that because of the Grace of God we can understand what goodness is. We can make a choice between Good and Evil because of Grace.