Category: Blog

I was walking down the street with a crate of books when I met Angel.

‘How much?’ she asked me.

‘For what?’

She smiled. ‘The books, dummy.’

I looked down at the books in the crate.

‘Oh, I’m not selling these.’

‘Why carry them in a crate?’

‘That was how I bought them,’ I said, wondering what else I was meant to be carrying the books in.

‘Who carries books around in a crate if they aren’t selling them?’

‘Look, I bought the whole crate, alright? I book all the woman’s books. She threw the crate. That explanation satisfy you?’

‘Why would you buy an entire crate of books?’ she asked. Angel was full of questions.

I inhaled and gave her a look.

‘There’s twenty-four books in here and she wanted five pounds,’ I throw up five fingers. ‘Five pounds for twenty-four books is like 20p a book.’

‘That’s a good deal, but what do you want them for? You gonna read all twenty-four of them? You don’t look like the reading type.’

I was going to ask her what the reading type was, but I stopped myself because I wasn’t going to read them. I’ve never read a book in my life.

‘No, I’m not reading them. I’m going to put them up online.’

‘So you are selling them! I knew it. Let me see them.’

I moved the crate away from her.

‘No, none for you. I’m going to put them up online for a nice profit.’

‘How much?’ Angel asked me, her words dripping with curiosity.

‘About five each,’ I said, smug.

‘What, you think you’ll make… one-twenty out of that little crate?’

‘Of course.’

I set the crate down by my feet and brought out my phone, then pulled up my store. I scrolled down the page, SOLD so prevalent that it worked as subliminal messaging. Then all the reviews. Over two hundred five stars.

‘I don’t get it. But people love this shit. So I provide for the people and they provide for me,’ I said.

‘Angels provide for me,’ Angel replied.

I didn’t know what she meant but I never know what people mean. I just let them talk and talk anyway.

‘That’s nice. I’ve got to go though, get these books up for sale.’

‘If you’re going to sell them anyway let me take a look through them.’

‘You’ll try and hustle me.’

‘Five pounds,’ Angel said. ‘I promise.’

I lowered the crate to the floor and she sat in front of it, leafing through the books piled on top of one another. Her face ranged from perplexed to disgusted. She got to the last book and shook her head.

‘You’ve got nothing good here,’ Angel said, rising from the floor. ‘Just boring thrillers and cookbooks for idiots. No one’ll buy this stuff. Don’t you have any real fiction?’

‘I knew you’d waste my time here. Insulting my goods. The world is bigger than your judgements, my friend. There will be buyers, I know. You do this for a while and you know that no matter what dogshit you put up for sale, some stranger will put in an offer for it. Trust me. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve sold before.’

‘I can’t,’ Angel said. ‘I don’t want to believe it. All the great literature in the world and people would rather read this.’

‘Great literature don’t mean shit. All I care about is what people buying. And people are buying everything. Cookbooks or self-help books or romances or science fiction or even those pieces of ‘great literature’ you’re talking about, some people buy those too. I make sure I put that in the descriptions for them. Timeless classic. Underappreciated masterpiece. Their worlds light up when they discover something others haven’t. They feel real special. I make them feel special.’

‘You’re an asshole, you know that?’

‘Oh, I know that baby. I know. But I’m making money. People like you are paying my rent, whilst they sit on their highchairs scoffing at the other listings on my page. “Who the hell would buy that?” they ask to their bookshelf because no one else is in the room with them.’

I picked up my crate and walked away, leaving her on the floor.

I probably should’ve asked for her name, her real name, but I like to tell people I was visited by an Angel.

Humidity formed into droplets on the windshield of the animal shelter’s truck as I drove to a corner of the county where farms hadn’t yet been taken over by the rows of cookie-cutter houses spreading out from the city like a rash. The address, where a dog was reportedly tied to a fence, led me to an empty clapboard house, stained plywood covering its windows like mournful eyelids. The evening sky sat low and heavy. I slid down from the driver’s seat and met the sweet scent of overturned soil mixed with manure. Reminiscent of my grandparents’ farm.

Two tall men stood in the recently tilled field next to the house. One man appeared older than the other. I pushed down the middle strand of barbed wire to duck through the fence from the roadside ditch, just as I used to.

Both men wore leather dress shoes, struggling over the damp lumps of earth. The scene was like a clothing advertisement intended to evoke a posh idea of ruggedness. The older man in jeans, ironed to a whitened crease, with a dress shirt and the younger in crisp slacks and a sweater, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

“She’s back there.” The sweatered man pointed to the back of the property. I noted the pronoun.

“We’re leaving now,” added the older man.

“I need you to sign a form after we get the dog.” The men glanced at each other and took clumsy steps backwards. I’d been through this before. “Did you tie the dog to the fence?”

The men turned toward the farmhouse.

“She’s your dog?” They staggered away over mounds of tillage, ignoring me. The younger man gripped the older’s forearm for stability. I watched their escape with patient acceptance, as I did every time my mother drove out from the city to drop me off at my grandparents’ farm.

The two men helped each other through the fence, then disappeared around the side of the house. An engine roared to life. A moment later a black sports car appeared on the road, tires squealing toward the city.

At the opposite end of the field, the barbed wire bordered a foggy creek and moisture dripped from oak leaves. The dog, a small, leggy, terrier-type, had white fur with graying rusty patches. Her deer-like ears turned forward and her docked tail wagged. Four active feet, like dainty pointe shoes, performed in the mud. A faded collar hung on her neck. Threads that had once held tiny fake jewels in a delicate design, now poked uselessly from the nylon. A tattered leash tethered the dog to a fencepost.

“What was that about?” I asked the dog. She stared up at me, her cloudy eyes full of their own questions. “I can relate.”

We retraced my path to the truck. Untied, she bounced across overturned mounds. Thick tartar on her teeth betrayed her youthful behavior.

I broke protocol, tying her leash to the passenger seat instead of stowing her in a compartment on the back of the truck. She paced on the bench seat, then settled with her front paws on the armrest and her face pressed against the window as she huffed condensation onto the glass. On my belt loop the pager buzzed, making the elderly terrier my copilot for the night.

She would never see them again.  The light sprinkling of snow drizzled over mountains outside her window, kookaburras laughing in nearby gumtrees, and the sound of waves rolling ashore at night.  She was dead.  I kissed her forehead goodbye and stepped back, small tear forming in the corner of my eye.  She had gone.  I was overcome with the realization of what being dead truly meant; what she would miss, the things she would never experience again.  Waves of guilt rippled through my body, because I knew that tomorrow, I would walk out of the house into bright sunshine.  I would put one foot in front of the other, feel the warmth of sun against my skin, and breathe crisp air into my lungs.

The small bed seemed so large around her shrunken frame.  I finally understood why people say things like, she has left us.  She was certainly no longer in this room; the one we kept vigil in for months.  She was just as stubborn in her final journey as she had been in life and refused to die.  In her place now was an empty husk, a shell of a human; wrinkled skin covering skeleton.  Her mouth lay open, frozen in time, the body’s last attempt at sucking in air. 

Family members buzzed around the otherwise serene room.  Phone calls were made, people cried and others commenced to-do lists months in the making.  But I just stood there.  Motionless.  I stared at her face trapped in time; frozen in a room filled with life and movement.

“I’ll be alright,” she told me days earlier. 

People stared into phones; faces illuminated by screens.  Others held them to ears, barking announcements down the other end.

“Don’t know when it will be yet,” they said to people who weren’t here.

An entire life lived; a human being who breathed the same air moments before.  Now all people wanted to know was when they could chuck her in the ground, and throw dirt on top, like a cat burying shit.  Only then could they squabble over inheritances, await larger bank balances and plan distant trips.

I knew that if she was free from this; removed from the materialism of life, the narcissism, and frenetic pace, then she would be alright indeed.

***

“Bullshit.”

This was her final word.

“Bullshit.”

It was spring and while I witnessed death, everything else was blooming to life.  The colors outside her room were beautiful and vibrant, in stark contrast to my darkened emotions.  These same spring blossoms also triggered allergies.

“Ahh-Choo!”

There’s nothing like a violent sneeze to break the silence that accompanies a death-watch.  I was standing at the foot of her bed when it happened.

“Ahh-Choo!”

Everyone glared at me like I was the worst person in the world for daring to wake the dying lady. 

She stirred and slowly rolled over, harnessing a final ounce of strength.  Her eyes prised themselves open and stared directly at me.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I gushed.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She listened intently, looked me up and down, and demonstrated a lifetime of perfecting being unimpressed.

“Bullshit!” she replied, before rolling over and returning to sleep.

She never spoke again.

***

I didn’t know how to speak at a funeral.  Who does? I felt oddly protective of the memories I had.  They were mine.  They were ours.  They were special to us.  So, I talked shit, hoping to make people laugh, hoping to make myself laugh.  Laughter was the medicine I needed; the drug to get me through, the only way to distract from her small, rosewood coffin and how it looked so elegant with beautiful flowers on top.

I spoke of the time she gave me gift-buying advice, how she innocently told me to buy a potential date an all-day sucker.  To my right, a group of elderly ladies giggled together, like they had transformed into the mischievous young school girls they once were. 

I talked of her opinions on rock music, how on hearing AC/DC for the first time, she jumped in horror, stared at the car floor, and muttered, “thought the guts had fallen out of it!” 

I reminisced on her dislike for dogs, but how she tended to a small pet cemetery, with more care, devotion, and tenderness that many show the graves of loved ones.

For someone who disliked most things in life, including people, she had a knack for helping others.  In her final weeks, a fellow aged care resident became stuck in a doorway, underwear around her ankles. 

“I can’t do it!” the lady bellowed.  “I can’t do it!”

“Shut up!” came her reply.  “You bloody well can do it!”

And it was those words that I clung to now.  Her blunt encouragement was something worth clinging to; something to get me through the service, something to get me through life. 

One of the elderly, giggling ladies approached me at the wake. 

“Did she really suggest you buy the all-day sucker?” she smirked, sipping her Earl Gray tea.

“Yes,” I replied.  “But I chose some flowers instead.”

“Bullshit!” she laughed.

---

It’s always the same – sitting among men feeling that confluence of senses as energy accelerates from long-taut repression, followed by a collective breath, an unexpected silence, then they rise …

I’m inside a large room – no air-conditioning, no windows, no wall hangings, no tablecloths covering the square tables with four chairs in that peculiar configuration of places like this. They don’t even bother to post the rules – everyone knows to stand in a line against the south wall of the unmarked floor within a lane not much wider than a common window where men shuffle to receive metal trays – sparsely-laden. “Take the tray they hand you, ask no questions, walk to a table. Just look around, you’ll know where to sit.” 

I have been here before.

#

Fourteen years ago, I was in my office at the state capitol building with its marble walls and gleaming columns reflecting shadows onto pristinely maintained floors. The halls abound with those on the rise, confident in their future. The subtlety-cologned, pin-striped, white-shirted, silk-tied – as uniform as teenage boys inside their group’s protective enclosure – interchangeable young legislative assistants, assistant attorneys-general, state supreme court law clerks all fulfilling their mothers’ greatest expectations.

My phone rang in that singular piercing of heavy black phones with dials. I picked up the receiver. My old law school friend, Larry, at the state Attorney General’s office, “Remember what we talked about last night? Just got the message. Johnny Cash is going to be there this afternoon. Wanna go?” Before I answered, he added. “He’s bringing the Carter Family, the Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins, June, his entire band.”

Silence.

“Well, whadaya think?”

I was a law clerk working with the newest state Supreme Court justice who was never much interested in my research. I rested the phone on my desk, walked into his high-ceilinged, six-windowed corner office. “I just got a call. There’s an opening at the dentist this afternoon. My wisdom teeth. I’d like to leave now to eat lunch before I go in.” The justice nodded. Which was about as much communication as we had.

From the third floor to the second, then inside the attorney general’s lobby where I saw Larry fidgeting near the door. “Are we dressed for this?” I asked, fingering my silk tie then smoothing the lapels of my gray pin-stripe suit.

“We are, and we’ll take my car,” he said.

#

Before the show, out of curiosity and as a resume builder, Larry and I walked with guards winding through the pathways of work areas. Watching men dressed in denim with frayed collars, the blue turned a piebald of gray and dull white. A grizzled inmate strutted up to me. His whiskered jowls and unkept hair emphasized the angry glare of a man long-deprived. “How do you spell Habeas Corpus?” He asked, laughed, and retreated inside his group near the automobile license plates machines. I was left listening to the roll and clang of metal sheets pressed into rectangles – all the same color and design surrounded by the same border, identical except for the number on the front – stamped and dumped into boxes.

With an attorney general’s escort, a Supreme Court nametag, and access behind the curtains, I was introduced to the Statler Brothers – dozing on chairs near the edge of the stage – each one rose and shook my hand. A few steps later – Carl Perkins, standing tall and gaunt wearing blue suede boots, nodded. Then quickly over to Johnny Cash who called me “sir.” Mother Maybelle and her daughters smiled including the effervescent June as she was lifted onto a chair by a dungareed man with a shaved head. She balanced herself with her right hand on his shoulder.

 The show was classic. Darkened stage, sudden lighting, then a turn. “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” Followed by Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line. The Statler Brothers’ Flowers on the Wall. Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes. Boisterous laughter at asides about guards. Folsom Prison – with Lansing inserted into the lyrics. Cheers. The Carter Family’s May the Circle Be Unbroken. Applause followed by whistles and cheers.

Then shouts of “Where’s the baby?”

“At the other place, I’ll have to feed him soon,” June grinned and looked down at her blouse.

More whistles and cheers.

Curtains closed, fluttered, then parted. An encore. Johnny Cash in front. The electric guitar’s thrumming introduction to Jackson. June twirled onto the stage in high heels, her full skirt rising to expose her thighs. The scent from the audience was unmistakable. The men rose and continued to applaud while the couple sang.

After the show, Larry rushed toward me. “I’ll meet you outside. We’re driving her, so she can feed her baby.”

“No shit?”

“Yep. June herself going feed little John Carter Cash,” he said with a smile as wide as his face. The baby’s with the women’s warden in her office.”

Within moments. June in the front seat with Larry behind the wheel of his four-door 1968 Oldsmobile. I’m in the back absorbing her profile and voice as she talked about their tour, their bus, and their home outside Nashville. No documentary. No appearance. No television show. No tales of meeting other famous people ever rivaled that heady twenty minutes. Especially today, as I sit with shoes notched for easy tracking – in case I try to escape – among others of my kind at a table on the south side of the invisible line in the mess hall near a boarded-up stage entrance.

I watch a woman carrying a briefcase, her skirt rising above her knees, walking with lowered head escorted by guards within that narrow path near the wall, And again I feel that confluence of senses as energy accelerates from long-taut repression, followed by a collective breath, an unexpected silence, then we rise …

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