Brothers
April 23, 2023
It’s 5:21 p.m. on March 5. Mike’s last day.
Three of us are in the bedroom.
Mike is fading in and out of consciousness in the hospital bed, covered in a blanket and comforter, breathing deeply and steadily. Donny bends slightly forward in a chair next to the bed facing Mike, left hand cradling the neck of his old Epiphone guitar as he strums. I’m lying crossways on Mike and Judy’s king-sized bed, staring at the ceiling, listening. . .
“What If”
March 20, 2023
In theory, we’re all one of a kind. I know. But some are more one-of-a-kind than others.
My friend, Mary Angela Cooley, was one of those. I knew her for almost 20 years but it was at the most unexpected place and time—a Bible study—that she left me in awe . . .
Weaseling
October 4, 2022
Crazy Leg
December 23, 2021
I’m about 1/2 hour into Peter Mulvey’s first set, my first in-person concert since BCE (Before the Covid Era), when I realize what I’ve missed most about live music in small places . . .
Feast of the Fallen Leaves
November 27, 2021
I love dogs, but I hate cleaning up their messes.
Same goes for trees.
Luckily, trees make a mess only once a year, but it’s big one in my yard, with our eight deciduous trees packed into 1/4 of an acre. And one of those trees, Mother Gingko, as we call her, dumps a fruit that smells so much like dog shit that after you rake the leaves and come inside you keep checking your shoes.
So I had come to dread the end of fall and cleaning up after my arboreal pals.
Until my neighbor, Tony, stepped in.
Booster Bob
November 20, 2021
Bob Skaggs had a mouth shaped like a jet engine intake. If you ran next to him during PE, he sounded like one, too.
A nice guy, but he got excited about unusual things.
Like the time we were supposed to give a presentation on “the most important thing you don’t know about me” in high school freshman speech class. Elizabeth Payne—sweet, willowy, straight-brown-hair-down-past-her-shoulders and doe-eyed Elizabeth Payne—had confided in us her infatuation with the singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, and now it was Bob’s turn. Wearing a leather jacket and slacks, he strode to the front of the room and said, “You can’t tell, but I have a lot of stuff in my pants.”
Bob got the biggest laugh of the year in that class. He seemed a little surprised but rolled with it, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and pulling out a thin, black wallet, some silverware, a pair of scissors, and a box of Jujubes. He laid them down on the teacher’s desk, looking up and smiling as he finished. Then he reached into his front pants pockets and extracted a Payday, a small notebook, a couple of pens, a roll of Sweettarts, and a small black bat that looked like something he might beat us with.
He really did have a lot of stuff in his pants.
Maskaphobia
May 5, 2020
When the CDC started telling us to wear face masks when we went shopping, I stopped going to the grocery store.
I didn’t want to walk into Kroger looking like I was there to rob the place. Or scare children. Or look like I was pretending to be a doctor or a nurse, or like I was a rapist, or a serial killer, or a terrorist, or whoever else wears masks in the movies and tv shows that are my reality.
Just grow up I thought as I sat in my car in the Kroger parking lot watching masked shoppers emerge from the darkened exit like extras from an apocalyptic horror film. I had a job to do—feed my beloved and myself. And for a moment, that was what I needed to fix my resolve—I put on the homemade mask our neighbor the nurse had given my wife, got out of the car, and started walking toward the cast of Contagion like I belonged. Then my glasses fogged up, I almost got hit by what I assumed from the horn was a good-sized truck, and I changed my mind: Forget it—I’ll just eat the ramen and beans we’ve had in the cupboard since I can’t remember when and my wife, if she’s so hungry, she can mask up and join this Halloween party, but I’m not invited and I’m not crashing it, because someone in there is carrying a chainsaw.
Thirsty
April 30, 2020
I woke up this morning thirsty, but I didn’t know for what. Drank a Diet Pepsi. The bracing burn of those bubbles on a dry drowsy throat opened my eyes a little wider but didn’t slake the thirst.
The rising sun was growing shadows on the dining room’s striped wooden floor and all was peaceful but I was listening for noise—the whoosh of a car or the rumble of a truck down Water Street (for a desert boy to live on Water Street still feels like an accomplishment), the whine of a trimmer, growl of mower, pop of a hammer, anything to indicate anyone else was up and around and doing anything, but it’s eerily quiet in April, a silence that gives new meaning to T.S. Eliot’s line “April is the cruelest month.”
Bandelier Deer
(October 12, 2020)
I’m up for a morning walk among the juniper trees, the dry cool air suddenly warmed by a rising breeze as the edge of Frijoles Canyon gathers and reflects the sun’s heat. My tennis shoes are scuffing up dust into the yellow, gray, and green ankle-high brush the mule deer and elk eat like candy. All I get is stickers.
I’m walking early and alone because I’ve developed the annoying habit of waking up at sunrise, then going in and out of my wife CJ’s and my 19-foot camper trailer multiple times as I cook my breakfast. Which causes the door to squeak. And no amount of WD-40 can silence it. So about the third time I come back in from the outdoor grill for, say, butter, CJ wakes up before she’s ready. And the morning could begin on a brighter note for both of us.