This is a story about my cousin, Carlson Curtis. I have relied on my own memory as well as interviews with family and friends to flesh out some of these scenes. I tried to be as honest and as close to the truth as possible, allowing that there are many truths and many versions of the same story. All mistakes, omissions or errors in this piece rests solely with me. - Paige Cavenaugh aka Paige Gent-Curtis
He squirmed his way, three weeks premature, into this world on January 28th, 1974. At least, that's what his birth certificate claims. But that ol' winterized Shaman, Father Time, weaving through the hospital nursery with the deftness of Ali, masqueraded himself as a trickster in scrubs and latex gloves. Because while the print on his birth certificate firmly puts his birth in 1974, I know the truth: my cousin, C.D. Curtis, is a time traveler.
To anyone who ever knew my cousin there is neither shock nor the crumb of an epiphany in this statement, and that in itself reveals the Vegas light truth.
I look down and sweep the nugget crumbs into my napkin. We sit in a nearly empty McDonalds, the two of us, now separated by distance and divergent lives as much as we are golden-arched tied by blood and childhood.
The waxing moon conceals itself like a rat's nest under the serpent braids of the only tree still standing on this street. The light from the moon is faded, the tail end of an echo.
Across from the tree the McDonalds sign shines so bright that it instantly cures the hypersomnia that forces my eyelids to close and open and close again like accordions. "You think YOU produce light?!" the sign screams at Selene, "look at ME! Look at my light!"
Under the familiar golden arches, black bullet letters encourage us to enjoy a 'chicken salad.'
I wonder if our time traveler knew that one day McDonalds would sell salads?
Selene knows the truth, in thirty minutes the lights on the sign will go off, leaving only her and the street lights who surround her like baby ducklings, alone to illuminate.
And the sign: bright and garish and proud and magnetic reminds me so much of the man sitting across from me.
Between these warring forms of light who exchange echoes and barbs into the starless night; we; me with my strawberry blonde hair and green eyes and he, with his cool grey eyes and faun brown hair, sit; not eating salads.
Instead, we scarf down on milk shakes, apple pies, chicken nuggets, fries and childhood, before the clock rings midnight and we must leave castle. Half open packages of barbecue, sweet n' sour and honey mustard cover our table like chess pieces on the board.
As the late shift manager is staring at us with impatient, overworked eyes, the oblong florescent light hits C.D.'s Shamrock Shake at the exact angle to form a plastic shadow against his blue work shirt. He tells me that he knows he had a reputation for being a "tie-dyed in the second-hand-store-woolly-bully-flower-power-to-the-people-leftover-of –the-let-bygones-be –bye-bye-birdie-gones -(don't shoot, I'm a rich WASSP-HOLE!)-aged-out-age-of-Aquarian."
His voice has the cadence of jazz and Jack Kerouac reincarnates before my eyes.
He's not high, he's C.D.
There is a pause and in that space only the drip-drop sound of the mop glides through the air like plans on a summer day. I look around, see one man still drinking his soda, and feel relieved that we aren't the only customers in this place, I'd feel guilty.
Jack knocks his fist against the granite and plastic tabletop, "but you know that's bullshit?"
I do.
Growing up, C.D. claimed to be Abbie Hoffman's son both in the physical sense (and people, okay one person, actually bought it!) and in the revolutionary sense.
A Yippie in the Yuppie age he would say with sigh.
But I think my cousin is also wrong. Because despite the radical newspapers, the various pets named after the Chicago 7, even the gonzo prose that earned him 'honorable mention' in a Harvard Lampoon competition; his true antecedent lies not in the 1960s but the 1860s, not in Abbie Hoffman's America but Fyodor Dostoevsky's Russia.
"Wait a minute, let's hold our horses," Daphne exclaimed, pink and purple finger paint covering her hands. "if we do this 'Secret Santa' exchange, the real Santa is still going to come, right?"
Aunt Cathy had just decided that we should do a family wide Secret Santa for Christmas.
My Dad got C.D.
Filled with enough dog ears to populate a kennel and a dry, pulpy scent that Dad said reminded him of the half-way house for draft protesters, where he met Mom, Dad gave C.D. a copy of The Brothers Karamazov.
C.D. reads the book every night until he's finished, and then every night again. He calls Uncle Darry "Darrel Darrelovich."
And he cries.
C.D. doesn't cry, unlike myself who cries at a drop of a hat. When his Great-Grandma Baker, the matriarch of the family, passed away, C.D. was the only Carlson at the Wake nowhere near event the sniffle of tears. He tried to cry. He tried to squeeze his eyes shut, to force the tears out. But nothing comes.
He feels a swell of emotion when watching his mother, puffy eyed, her arms around her own mother, but as soon as one of Great-Grandma's friends calls for him, "come over here Huey," he grimaces and grunts. Dried eyed, makes his way over to the gaggle of Banshees.
But Dostoevsky makes him cry, or rather, the little serf boy naked, ripped from limb to limb by a pack of dogs at the order of the landlord, makes him cry.
He reads the scene over and over again he can see the little boy's flesh shredded and flayed. He closes his eyes at night and can't stop seeing that scene, can't stop hearing the little boy cry. One night he dreams again about the little boy, but something is different. There's another boy, a few years older, in a red peasant shirt and black felt boots that reaches up to the knees. The boy is staring with blank indifference as the little boy screams and shrieks in pain.
"Do something! You numbnut!" C.D. screams at the older boy, "don't just stand there, you jag off!"
The 'jag off' stands there, finally he looks up at C.D.
What would you know, they have the same face.
Around this time, Uncle Darry talked about maybe getting a family dog, like the one he and his brothers had growing up.
"No!" C.D. barked.
Uncle Darry and Aunt Cathy exchanged tilted glances, C.D. always liked dogs.
They look at their son, C.D., struggling to maintain his cool, merely shrugged, "I just don't think it's the time." He cleared his throat, he tries to swallow the bone.
Dostoevsky was a devout Christian, yet it is because of Dostoevsky that my cousin became Agnostic.
I thought it was strange that C.D. who had an opinion on everything, had one area where he claimed not to know the definitive answer.
A few years later…
"You read The Brothers Karamazov, right? Of course you read it. Anyways, who do you think I am?"
I did not read it. Um, the oldest brother?
"You're probably going to say the oldest brother, Dmitri, right?"
Nooo….
"Sure, there are some surface similarities between me and Mitya, but he's such a fucking tool for most of the book."
I nodded like I had any clue what he was talking about.
But who was he? In truth, wasn't he as dashing as Dmitri, as smart as Ivan and as well-loved as Alyosha?
"What about our dads? Who is Ivan, who is Dmitri and who is Alyosha?"
I hemmed and hawed; luckily C.D. had no patience and drove his Mack truck mouth through my wide open highway of uncertainty.
"Uncle Soda is Alyosha", he said firmly. "I don't mean because of being all ga-ga-goo-goo for God, but I read that Dostoevsky planned a sequel and he was going to turn Alyosha into a revolutionary. That's Uncle Soda, Paige, if he lived in a different time and place he would have been a revolutionary."
There is a deep sigh in his voice.
"Do you know what makes the best revolutionaries Paige?" I expect a glib answer or worse, a political treatise, but C.D. looks at me with somber eyes, "suffering. That's while Uncle Soda would have made such a good revolutionary."
"It's suffering, Paige."
I saw a few pictures of Uncle Soda and Aunt Mary when they traveled the country, living in communes or cheap motels or the sleeping under the stars or on the street. Uncle Soda always made it sound like a great adventure, so much so, that I ached that I couldn't have joined them.
It was only when I got older that I learned the truth.
"He looks like Jesus," I said to C.D., smoothing out a photo folded up like a fortune cookie. There in the faded, exposed light stands our uncle with his long beard and hair that reaches the middle of his back, his eyes grave, as if the weight of the world bore down on him like Atlas.
C.D. takes the picture out of my hands and studies it, holds it at different angles against the light of the only window in the room.
"He looks like Rasputin."
It wasn't Dmitri or Alyosha who had the biggest impact of C.D.'s spiritual journey, but Ivan.
"It's not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God's, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I must give it back as soon as possible…It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I must respectfully return Him my ticket." –Ivan, The Brothers Karamazov
C.D, Billy and Tommy's personalities diverged like branches on a tree, but they were rooted in two things: an obsession with baseball and Yogi Bear. Even as a well-respected, hard hitting attorney, C.D. would wind down from a day in court by watching Yogi on the old VHS player in his office.
My cousin who loved collisions of all kinds, loved the Yippie collision of radical politics with pop culture flair.
And C.D. Curtis wore flair the same way he wore a smirk, with ostentatious bravado.
When he was ten he declared himself a Marxist, and, my Uncle joked, the family wasn't sure if he meant Karl or Groucho.
His fashion sense combined bottom of the barrel thrift store bargains with political t-shirts he found thumbing through the curled up back pages of leftist magazines, ordering both from a rotary phone in his bedroom.
This was augmented with buttons and pins; some purchased others 'discovered' amongst the hidden crooks of Tulsa. If the occasion called for it, he added glitter or cheap jewels 'discovered' from his sister's Karen's bedroom.
A mix tape in cotton and nylon.
A typical outfit: a t-shirt mourning murdered South African activist Steve Biko, a pair of camo pants (my cousin was never a pacifist in beliefs or actions), a yellow bandanna, disintegrating sneakers tied with Snoopy shoe laces, and the piece-de-resistance: right above Biko's famous quote: "the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" a red button that proclaimed him 'Agent DDD Boob Inspector.'
Oh. He was also a card carrying member of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.
My father seeing the button chuckled to himself, "that DDD stands for Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata, huh C.D.?"
Standing outside the kitchen, pretending I was Paige the Spy, I didn't get it.
But C.D. did and flashed my father a look of such earnest gratitude it made me feel warm inside, the way I do today watching my children on Christmas Day.
C.D. stood up, his eyes unfocused as if in a trance and recited what I later learned was T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
He stopped at "oed und leer das meer." He shook his head and his mouth still open as if the sea was pressing on his gums and sat down.
My father looked worried and put his arm around his nephew's shoulder but C.D. only shook his head in amazement, "you get me."
My dad saw me and drew me into his orbit with his fishing line smile. He looked at C.D. then at me starring at the button, and in a gentle, firm voice, "take it off."
Growing up, at least once a week I could be sure to see my cousin, his feet swinging back and forth like flaps in a paper fan, talking to my dad about politics, philosophy and books. Occasionally my cousin would allow my dad to answer back.
"Dad's going to lose his shitake mushrooms when he sees I'm reading Tropic of Cancer," C.D.'s cheeks puffed up with Eggo and ego.
My own father drew in close to his nephew, as if a dying man whispering his last bequest: "your Dad read Tropic of Cancer when he was a couple years older than you."
C.D. was for a moment, dumbfounded. He couldn't believe that his father, his straight laced, conservative father, read a book banned for obscenity. He then remembered why the book was banned for obscenity and for a few weeks at least, couldn't think of his father, toads, bats or lizards the same way.
His father tried to reach out to him, "read any good books lately?" (He knew all about my cousin's reading habits from my dad).
For a second, C.D. paused and he wanted to tell his dad all about the book. He had questions, a lot of questions. He hadn't kissed a girl yet and parts of the book made him feel weird. But then he thought about the toads, the bats and lizards, his father and his mother and ewww. He quickly shook his head no and before Uncle Darry could say anything else, ran out the house to play a game of catch with Billy.
An essay written by thirteen year old C.D. Curtis.
We had to endure a visit from "Uncle" Paul and believe me when I say endure, I mean it! First of all "Uncle" Paul, if you can't tell by my extraneous quotation marks, is not really my uncle. He's a guy my dad played football with back in high school and they are still buddies to this day even though neither of them play football anymore and the closest they get is either A) watching the game on T.V and bitching about it or B) playing a half-ass game of touch football in the backyard which is also subsequently followed by both a bitch fest and a visit to the kitchen for ice packs.
They are two middle aged men who like football and who like each other; kind of like the movie, Brian's Song, except both Dad and Paul (let's drop the 'Uncle' nonsense) are white and neither has cancer, so I guess it's nothing like Brian's Song, but that is the only football movie I can think of and since YOU like when we put similes and metaphors in our writing I am stuck with the LIKE Brian's Song comparison.
Which by the way I do NOT like Brian's Song. If I wanted something that corny I'd go to the store.
Paul is married to "Aunt" Gretchen, who as you can probably figure out by now, as you are a junior high English teacher and therefore presumably possess a nominal amount of intelligence; does not claim kinship with me (lucky her!). Here's one thing you should know about "Aunt" Gretchen she is hot. I know this will probably get me sent to the principal's office, but since I'm sent there almost every other week, I might as well write it. Gretchen Holden is a babe. I have recently discovered there are certain jeans I can't wear around her (read between the lines).
Also it makes me feel like a pervert to keep referring to her as "Aunt" Gretchen, so anyways, GRETCHEN is very blessed in the physical appearance department. You however will not be blessed by Gretchen Holden's presence because Paul and Gretchen do not have children. What they do have in plenty of disposable income and despite nominally belonging to the subspecies CHILDISIUM I think I'd rather have money despite it being the root of all evil and yadda, yadda, Yoda, than a bunch of whiny brats.
But, here's the real kick in the can't wear around Gretchen pants, Gretchen used to date dear old Dad. Decades ago Dad played football, Gretchen was a cheerleader and I'm about to vomit. Despite Gretchen climbing on top of other girls and shouting 'ra, ra, ra' for Dad, they didn't date in high school, but a few years later.
Now you'd think that Mom would be one nervous Nellie (or crazy Cathy) when hot Gretchen comes and visits us, seeing how Gretchen has earned the sobriquet "hot" and she used to date her hubby, but nope.
Without getting all mushy or maudlin, I guess Dad loves Mom and vice versa, so I guess Mom has no reason to be jealous.
I think both of my parents are crazy. I'll leave you to conclude if it's hereditary.
But take a breath (really, I don't want you to die on me, the subs they've hired this year have been horrible!), and get ready for the next twist n' shout. Mom used to date Dad's brother, my Uncle Pony (yeah, I think that name is an act of child abuse as well).
At one point I asked Dad how he was SURE I was kid. With a sawed off smirk he told me "nope, I'm the winner, you're mine." By the way, 'sawed off smirk' is a phrase Uncle Pony OR should say dum…dum…dum… DADDY (?!) used in one of his stories.
A visit with Uncle Paul always ends up in a trip down memory lane with these two gridirons recalling their glory days. Personally, I hate trips. I always get car sick.
You know who doesn't get car sick? My brother Billy. The guy is a human hoover! He can stuff anything in his mouth and yet he never gets car sick or air sick, it's pretty dang remarkable. I told him that if things get tight around here we'd market him as freak show act. Billy thought that was funny. Here's the thing about Billy he's the only guy I know who doesn't want to punch your guts out (me) or cry his eyes out (Tommy) if you insult him.
Now while praising Billy's digestive skills, I must say, in the spirit of fairness that if he drinks milk too fast, he farts and his feet stink. (Sorry, Bill, just tellin' it like it is!).
I kid, well not about the farting and stinky feet, but Billy is a fun guy. But as Newton (Isaac not, Huey) said once goes up, must goes down. So too it goes with brothers.
My brother Tommy enjoys practical jokes, playing the piano, Saturday morning cartoons, bathroom humor and baseball. All that would be fine and dandy except for his favorite activity, kissing Mom and Dad's butts and tattling.
He can't remember NOT to touch my baseball card collection, but he sure as H-E DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS remembers the time my pitch broke a vase and despite bribing him with a Snickers bar, went straight to Dad to snitch me out.
Then there's my sister Karen. Talk about having a sweet life! She has the biggest bedroom of us kids and her own bathroom. But anal retentiveness aside, she's usually fine and dandy like candy…
C.D. received the essay back. Above the line "does not claim kinship with me (lucky her!)" his teacher wrote "got that right." C.D. was one of those people who for all of his bravado got hurt very easy, he also held grudges. For the rest of the year he made his English teacher's life a living hell.
The teacher called C.D.'s parents in for a parent-teacher conference. Afterwards Uncle Darry knocked on C.D.'s bedroom door before barging in.
"You have a crush on Gretchen?" He said with a twinkle in his eyes. If his son couldn't talk to him about the books he was reading, maybe they could talk about women?
But C.D. had one answer. He grabbed his pillow from under him and threw it at his Dad. Before Uncle Darry had a chance to react,C.D. slammed the door shut and rammed his head like a bull into the door.
C.D. is an Island
"We're lone rangers Paige, you, and me, your dad. No one else in this family, hells bells probably no one in this town, reads as much as we do."
I nodded, "we're different" I said with resignation, I didn't want to be different.
"But we are different! We're our own island Paige, we toll our own damn bells!"
He threw his arms up into the sky, they shook like a wet dog in from the rain. But then something great happened. With his arms still jabbing Dyeus, he let out a small peal of laughter.
It was like finding a wonderful, unexpected joke at the tail end of a fire and brimstone sermon.
C.D. was charismatic. The only person who I ever knew who had magnetism like C.D. was our Uncle Soda. As I watched my cousin adjust his kilt (yes, kilt) he made me in that moment not only happy but in love with being different. I felt a warmth lit by Shakespeare and Lee, Faulkner and Austen glow inside of me. We had no need to worship, let alone rely on the garish sun for our subsistence. It was here. It was all around me. It was in me.
YES! We we're different, but we were different together. For a second I felt like I belonged to a special club or a cult. Maybe we were not only different, but better?
I had never been better than anyone before. I raised my chin to meet my new house guest arrogance.
When shall we three meet again?
Soon, on the island and we'll have our books.
I closed my eyes and imagined myself on an island. Our island.
The water is cool and soothing, and though it moves like wind wind through chimes, I am still. Rooted. My feet wade through turquoise jewels that shimmer a smile as bright as any Naiad. Aura dances before me, whirling like a dervish, my hair leaps and jumps across my face, before Aura catches her breath and we slip into stillness. She carries the faint smell of salt that tickles my nose like glitter. I breathe her in, softly, deeply. Wind, Water, Lungs, we move together.
And the sun! A ripe apricot, her rays extending like wings on a butterfly across our beautiful island.
I open my mouth to taste the sweet nectar that floats down from the sun and splash onto my lips.
And there were books! So many books!
But where was my mom? Where was my sister? Where were my friends? I needed them. The books stacked around me like cinderblocks cutting me off from everyone I loved. Even my dad. I tried to reach out for his hand, but I couldn't, thick tomes the size of Encyclopedias grew from my limbs like pus-filled boils. As much as we tried, we couldn't touch each other.
And I began to lose my balance and shake like C.D.'s arms.
I cried out to C.D. to help us, but he was sitting in his lounge chair, reading his book, ignoring us.
"What about Patrick?" I broke in, C.D. loved Patrick. C.D. shrugged, pulling on the string of his hoodie, struggling to maintain indifference.
"He has his wife and kids, he doesn't have time to read." I had to laugh. Only C.D. would act like getting married and having a family was a personal slight against him. I also laughed because Dad had two girls and read all the time.
"What about Billy?" C.D. looked down at his shoes, torn and ripped by his insistence on renouncing everything that gave the appearance of wealth (he did not renounce money itself, needing it he claimed to buy the newsletters and books that would help develop his revolutionary mind).
"He's not really into books," C.D. said softly and with the wince of condemning a man to die, because for C.D. saying that someone did not like reading was condemning them to die a death by a thousand unread paper cuts.
"What about…" I was about to ask about Karen, she and C.D. got along great, if you understood that their banter and back and forth was a type of love.
C.D. cut me off, "we're different Paige, no one gets us Paige, my parents…" he let out a little laugh that was as cold and isolated as his first laugh was warm and inviting.
His eyes intense yet sparked with mischief, now blazed with the ravenous flame of a mad man setting his own house on fire.
He extended a long arm to me and held out his hand. Don't you want a bite of the apple Paige? See how juicy and succulent it is? See how red? On our island we have plenty of apples.
"We're nothing like the rest of them." His mouth contorts like an acrobat but then he smiled. It was a smile thin, a smile tight, a smile unyielding as a razor nestled deep within the apple. It cuts me.
And I realized that the warmth I felt was the flames going up in our compound while Carlson Koresh stood back and read.
And I realized that I didn't want to be this person who used my intellect to build a wall of indifference between myself and everyone else. I didn't want to be my cousin.
I, who craved solitude, whose own bedroom was an archipelago of books, with a heavy sigh said goodbye to the island. My throat constructed with the unbearable weight of grief for everything lost, stepped one foot onto my small boat and paddled back to the continent.
I look back at the island and see C.D.'s shadow limber like a dark, moonless night.
"Come!" I want to tell him, "come join us on our continent! We have plenty of room for you."
I see him wave to me, and just as I'm about to wave back, I realize he's not looking at me at all. His ticket lies under my oar.
But his arms, oh how they shake.
Karen, C.D., Billy and Tommy's uncle had Schizophrenia, but I only remembered the existence of this uncle when I was with C.D.
His charisma meant not only a steady stream of followers to his 'off the cuff' agitprop, but it also meant a steady stream of female admirers who came to his every swim meet.
C.D. thought it was because they were interested in his political ideas, or at the very least, they found him to be physically irresistible.
They were not, and did not.
Instead of seeing him as a revolutionary Eros, or witty Poseidon, they saw him as well, according to Karen, "a teddy bear."
"Shut up Karen!" C.D. snapped.
But Karen only laughed and pushed her feet into her crimson faced brother's thigh.
"A teddy bear! I heard it myself. 'He's so little and cuddly looking." She mocked.
Could it be? Could it be that the girls who followed him like Hare Krishnas at the airport saw him, C.D. Curtis, Tulsa's answer to Abbie Hoffman, as innocuous and benign as a fucking teddy bear?
Shitake Mushrooms!
With his short stature, but long limbs, long nose, pointed ears, grey eyes accented by heavy lashes and brown bark hair, he resembled Najinski's faun; but he lived his life as a Satyr.
He got in a fight with his parents and lived with Uncle Soda for a small stretch of time. I was just glad he didn't move in with us.
He was, to everyone's delight and surprise, accepted into Harvard. It was a crapshoot getting in, but there just where his life was: in the crapper.
Mustard Seeds
At thirteen, Tommy discovered God. Or, as he would put it with a revelatory grin and Zora Neale Hurston eyes, God discovered him.
He didn't wade into the pool of faith, tip-toeing around Galatians and cooling his feet in Philippians. No, Thomas Curtis's conversion was a deep dive, a leap of faith from his messy second story bedroom into the pool of belief.
There was no room for waders in this pool.
He declared himself openly and boldly a believer. He wore his faith on his sleeve in the form of a yellow WWJD bracelet, in his hands in the form of a Bible and in his heart in the form of everything else.
He stopped going to the church he went to as a child, because they did not emphasize the purpose he saw for himself, to spread God's word.
He prayed before baseball games, at first quietly and to himself, the prayers taking the rigid form of a first dance at a debutante ball: 'Dear God. Thank You for this game. Amen.' Then he asked his double chin, tobacco chewing coach if they could have a team prayer before each game.
The coach squeezed his eyes and his patience against the midday sun. What the hell was going on with Curtis? He was so damn earnest. Was this the same Tommy Curtis who played practical jokes at every practice? The one who almost got kicked off the team for putting rotten eggs in the locker room of the opposing team?
It was only Tommy's prodigious pitching skills and public apology (in that order) that kept him on the team.
"If ya think it would work Curtis, go for it. Hell, continue to pitch the way you do and I couldn't care if you worship your mama's undies." He haw-haw at his own wit and grinned at my cousin.
Then the coach paused, pushed his foot deep into the ground (or so I'm told).
" 'Scuse my language," he muttered with the uncomfortable fidget of a hefty man forced into a three piece suit two sizes too small.
Tommy wasn't offended; he was use to catching the coach's wild pitch words on the fly.
The coach felt slightly better when he found out that before coming to him with his prayer request Tommy had knotted all the players shoe laces together. At least he wasn't trying out for Sainthood.
At first, the pre-game worship was just Tommy and one or two other guys, but soon more joined him and before each game the team dropped to their knees in prayer, Tommy explained with a mix of Paulian awe and Saulian pride.
"There we were, and you know God just called to us, and soon everyone was on their knees." Tommy gesticulated like a Baptist preacher on Easter Sunday. "Cept Coach," Tommy drew his shoulders up and dropped it into a sigh.
His parents nodded, confused as they were respectful of their son's fresh faith. Billy stuffed his face with mashed potatoes, but it was C.D. who could barely contain a haw-haw of his own.
He too had a talent for causing people (or at least female people) to kneel before him in the same darkened dugout. Haw-Haw.
That most of his teammates were praying that God would rain His glory onto their bats and smite the balls of their opponents with the drought of fouls was left out of the young pastor's testimony.
As Tommy told us, one day after they had lost 3-4 to the Stillwater Sharks and now faced the prospect of playing the unbeatable Broken Arrow Choctaws. The coach, tar climbing out of his lips like a groundhog ascending from his den, his arms simmered with meatball pitches (the reason he was coaching a traveling youth team instead of playing in the minor leagues), walked a bent line across sand and chalk. He pressed his hands onto the metal bench, accidently knocking over a bottle of Gatorade, and kneeled.
God told Tommy to take the coach's hand, the 80 degree sun pressing against his fingers and began to pray; and when Tommy was done, and the other boys rose to their feet like the ribbon vibrator on a typewriter, the coach was still kneeling.
At first Tommy was worried that the coach couldn't get up. It was only when he saw the coach, his double chin marbled with tobacco stains, wobbling like fat off a pork chop, his breath smelling of hot dogs drenched in mustard, that Tommy leaned in closer and realized that coach was crying.
It wasn't a wailing cry, or a Come to Jesus cry, even though that's exactly what the coach was doing, but one that ended as soon as it began. His tears as small as a mustard seed, but isn't that, Tommy would tell us, his palm cupped open, all that it takes?
Our Success
Success, no matter how humble its origin has a tendency to beget hubris because having converted the coach, Tommy moved onto his family. He tried to convert Patrick, telling our cousin straight out that he wasn't going to heaven unless he renounced his Buddhist faith.
He had learned that at youth group and the words that came out of him, like that of most fundamentalists whatever their stripe, was sincere and appalling in equal measure.
Patrick with the patience of a Bodhisattva politely shrugged him off.
C.D. until then lolling in a lounge chair like a cat in the lap of a well fed Pasha, shot up. "Hey," he ordered Tommy, "C.C.H. Pounder this, shouldn't YOU renounce baseball?"
Tommy, Karen, Patrick and I all scrunched our noses in confussion and looked at C.D.
With no patience, C.D. sighed, "a diamond?! Baseball is played on a diamond, like the Sutra, the Buddhist Sutra."
C.D. then went on to recite in an exasperated tone the first few paragraphs of the Diamond Sutra, occasionally looking over at Patrick who was bouncing Cash on his knee.
"Wow, you memorized that? Impressive." Only later did Patrick tell me that C.D. had messed up the entire second stanza.
"I didn't want to hurt his feelings."
Tommy and C.D. started to argue about God, about religion about whether prayer works. Tommy said yes, C.D. said people only prayed when they wanted something, like an item off a wish list.
"And what about slavery, Tom? What about the Holocaust? Did they not PRAY hard enough?"
Despite being six years younger Tommy had a fervent passion to match C.D. It was strange watching my little cousin, best known for his in-depth knowledge of fart jokes, now discuss theology.
I think, though he loathed admitting it, C.D. secretly like having someone to spar against. Karen had no interest in involving herself and Billy fought with no one. It was the same rebel spirit that sparked so many of his fights with Uncle Darry. Father, Brother or God, C.D. Curtis needed an adversary to go up against.
I hated, and still hate, arguments and fights of any kind, drawing my shoulders up to my ears to muffle the sound, I tried to escape. As I was walking back into the house, my bare feet pressing against the cool patio, I heard Karen, now possessing a honeysuckle on the vines accent and a garland of hickies around her neck, both the result of her Sophomore year at Wake Forrest; drawl out to her warring brothers, "I do declare, y'all is speaking bullshit."
Bullshit or not, I hated it and wanted it to end.
Even though I had no dog in this fight, even though I loved both Tommy and C.D., I prayed that Tommy would lay off.
God answered my prayer. Tommy walked away.
That night, Tommy told me later, prayed that his pastor was wrong and God would make an exception to His perfect way and allow his Buddhist cousin into His fold.
With the same fervor he tried to convince Uncle Soda and Aunt Mary to leave the Catholic Church the result bore the same fruit as his attempt to convert Patrick.
The War
But there was one person that Tommy had to convert, needed to convert, his oldest brother. So with a zeal born out of love but also shame and anger, Tommy set to work.
At first Tommy felt overwhelmed being only 13 and leading a one person crusade to save the soul of his brother, but wasn't it a little child who shall lead them? Was that blasphemous to think that? Tommy didn't know, he only knew that his brother was sick and he had the cure.
Then one night his brother came home with a bruised cheek and busted lip.
"A guy was harassing a woman, so I gave him a dose of his own medicine," he explained.
No one believed him.
But the cut on C.D.'s lip was just the opening Tommy needed.
But first, I need to give some background:
Around the same age Tommy became a disciple of Jesus, C.D. had become a disciple of Jean-Michel Basquiat, leaving graffiti art and messages across bridges and empty lots. He also left messages on tiny scraps of paper ripped from the newspaper or an old Mead spiral. In hand writing that resembled a mad genius taking an heiress hostage; he wrote jokes, quotes and CDisms. Occasionally they had the feel of a ransom note: the beginning of one quote ending in the words of another. Swallow the Bodhisattva, belch out Yogi Berra, he exclaimed.
After a visit we were sure to find tiny scraps of paper all around our house. "Think of it as little Easter eggs," he said to me.
Or like rabbit droppings, I did not say to him.
When my dad found one of C.D.'s messages, hidden in a book or in a saucepan, or one time dangling from the toilet lever, a grin slipped out of his mouth like a soft boiled egg out of buttery hands.
Then one day, C.D. woke up to find an Easter egg slipped under his door.
"If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." Matthew 5:39
To which C.D. replied, "I prefer to keep my cheeks dry today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don't waste this breath, if your heart isn't crazy, since "the rest of your life" won't last forever." –Blind Melon, Omar Khayyám.
The next morning Tommy put a response under C.D.'s door, "The Lord is my Shepard." –Psalm 23:1
That night, just as he was about to close his eyes in prayer, Tommy noticed a small piece of paper sticking under the door.
"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day things are gettin' closer. Rama Lama Ding Dong!" –George Carlin, Buddy Holly, The Edsels.
"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. "For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened." Luke 11 9-10
To which Tommy found under his door this message,
"Walk right in, sit right down, Baby, let your hair hang down."-The Rooftop Singers
Undaunted, Tommy responded: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. "Micah 6:8
Then another message appeared under Tom's door.
"She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart."-Albert Camus
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.-1 Peter 3:15
"I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man, pieces of man."-Primo Levi, Gil Scott-Heron.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.- John 3:16
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.-Lenny Bruce
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. – Philippians 4:6 . "Everything" was underlined in black marker.
"O Krishna, the mind is restless, bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk for surely there is an end?" – The Bhagavad Gita, James Joyce, The Bible.
It was then that I got pulled into the war. Lying on my bed, my toes curled around the bed spread that was sliding off like jam on toast, my cousin gave me a call.
"Paige, you know that book that you and C.D. like, The Brothers Kazmikov?"
Oh yeah, that book, the one I never actually read. I also hadn't read The Brothers Karamazov.
"Mmm hmm," I stretched out the telephone cord, as if I could stretch out my ridiculous lie. Tell them Paige, why can't you just tell them that you never actually read The Brother Karamazov? It's not like it's a big deal. It's not like anyone would care.
"I'm looking for some quotes from it, know any good ones?"
I didn't. But luckily Harold Bloom did.
And two nights after C.D. slipped the last quote under Tommy's door, Tommy decided to kick him where it hurt, right in the Dostoevsky.
"Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me. Let me pass by Thy judgment ... do not condemn me, for I have condemned myself, do not condemn me, for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee." –Dmitri Kamikazov (cross out) Dmitri Karamazov
C.D. wrote nothing and Tommy thought that maybe he had finally reached his brother.
Our Grief
Uncle Darry and Aunt Cathy were involved parents, they knew what book C.D. was reading for Philosophy and saw everyone of Tommy's baseball games. What they did not know, what they could not see, was the war that was taking place just a few feet from their bedroom.
But Billy knew.
Though there were no blows, nor even a hash word exchanged between C.D. and Tommy; Billy could sense the ties of brotherhood were quickly, violently and perhaps permanently, ripping apart.
He had to do something.
But what?
He thought about using his muscles and manhandle both those dumbasses into his room, lock them in there. Force them to duke it out and not letting either one leave until they made up.
He tried to skim through the Bible and one of C.D.'s books (he forgot which one) to find a quote that would get his brothers to stop this bullshit. But he felt overwhelmed.
He had an idea, a stupid one, he thought, but he was desperate. And besides what's making an ass of yourself compared to seeing your brothers hate each other?
That night at dinner C.D. with uncharacteristic sobriety announced that he was going to take a little trip, take his car and head out west. He would be back in a few weeks.
"Do you have money?" his father asked.
C.D. shrugged and tipped his chair back, "I have friends."
Billy felt relief, then guilt for feeling that relief. With C.D. gone for a few weeks it would give both Tommy and C.D. time to cool off.
C.D. didn't say goodbye to his brothers, he barely said goodbye to his parents.
The night after C.D. snuck out with a cooler filled with sandwiches, chips and Little Debbie cakes, Billy snuck into his older brother's room. There on his desk, right next to a copy of Penthouse magazine was a quote in blue and red ink:
"Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house? Grieve and distress thyself no longer. We'll meet again, we'll part once more."-The Bible ,The Bhagavad Gita, James Joyce.
Then because this is C.D. below the quote Billy noticed in microscopic slanted handwriting another message: "Hey Bill, you jizz on my Penthouse and I will fuck you up six ways from Sunday. Comprende?"
That made Billy smile; it was a hint of the old C.D, and what Billy wouldn't get for C.D. to call him a jizz monkey face right now!
But as he scanned the bedroom, despite the two dressers, the desk, the bed, even despite the dirty sock lying on the floor, everything felt so empty.
And Billy looked down at his own piece of paper, the cartoon figures of Yogi Bear and Boo Boo he planned on giving to each brother to break through the tension, Yogi Bear admonishing them with mismatched hands, a bulbous leg and an oversized, lopsided mouth (Billy wasn't that great of a drawer): "Hey, You're both smarter than the average bear. Verily I say unto you: Cut the Crap Fellas!"
Instead, sitting his big brother's room, he buried his face in his hands. Yogi, Boo Boo and the picnic basket fell to the floor. And Krishna's advice notwithstanding, grieved for them all.
While he was on his sojourn C.D. who thought himself to be a fairly successful juggler thanks to a stint at clown camp, unsuccessfully auditioned to join The Flying Karamazov Brothers.
C.D. did return to his father's house and Tommy's zeal to convert his brother took on added urgency with C.D. going back to college at the end of the month.
At dinner Tommy asked if he could say a prayer out loud (he already prayed silently before each meal). Tommy looked at his older brother, who, Tommy decided with disgust, smelled like pot. He pretended not to notice a blonde pubic hair sitting on his brother's shoulder like a parrot.
"O' Lord, Thank You so much for bringing my brother back to us safe and sound." The prayer started off normal, pedantic even, and Tommy could tell no one in the family was truly paying attention. But his focus wasn't on his parents or Billy, it was on C.D.
Desperate, he walked up to his brother, moved his upper lip to guard his nostrils and placed a muscular grip on C.D.'s other shoulder.
"Please, accept Jesus as your savior. He loves you so much."
Aunt Cathy's fork crashed against the plate.
"Tommy, we're not…"
But Tommy wasn't deterred. "You need Jesus, He's the…" His voice became faster and faster, running like the nubile girl in a teen horror flick. He gave his brother a firm squeeze. He looked his brother in the eyes.
His voice caught, he was nervous, but he had to continue. He couldn't stop, even if he wanted to.
C.D. crossed his arms and snorted. Good, Tommy thought, rebellion, he could handle rebellion, after all Jesus was the original rebel, maybe he was approaching it the wrong way, maybe he should emphasize Jesus knocking over tables, clashing with the moneylenders.
"Jesus was a reb…"
"Stop it." Uncle Darry's voice cut through the air like a knife through a leather jacket.
Tommy wouldn't stop, he couldn't stop. He didn't care about getting yelled at or grounded, he continued.
"You're going to hell."
Billy winced.
"Tommy, come on, man," he said in soft, stern voice, reaching out his thick arms towards his brother who was shaking like a hypothermia victim, trying to pull the drowning man back to shore.
Tommy, his face covered in tears and sweat (the sweat being the result of an ash burned Oklahoma August) moved up and down like a buoy, but did not move back to his seat.
C.D. also sat still. Not saying anything, his face blank. His eyes, usually animated, now the same dull grey of television static. Why in the hellacious cats did he return home in the first place? Shouldn't Jerry Falwell Curtis be protesting Murphy Brown?
It was his father who came to his rescue.
In a voice tight roped between calmness and full throttled anger, he asked C.D. and Billy to kindly leave the table. Tommy started to leave as well, when Uncle Darry yanked him back and into a chair. "Sit down."
Tommy sat.
These lectures were a common occurrence in the Darry Curtis household; the only difference was that it was usually C.D. roping his limbs around the legs of the dining room table.
"You have your beliefs, Tom. We're not trying to change them. But C.D. has a right to his beliefs too, and I'm not gonna sit around and listen to you harass your brother. This ends now. Comprende?" Uncle Darry's voice was low and quiet, which meant that he was angry. Angrier than he was when he yelled.
From the kitchen C.D. heard his brother sit in the chair, and his father stand up for him.
The Gift
C.D. went out that night and returned with a black eye.
"Please stop this C.D. Please, baby, stop," his mother pleaded with him; cupping his battered face in one hand, a cold compress turning the tips of her fingers pink, in the other.
For a second she could see the trace of the little boy she once knew, the one who dragged his Stretch Armstrong everywhere, the one who loved Uncle Soda's 'booger burgers.' He looked past her and at his reflection in the toaster. Something flickered behind his eyes and Aunt Cathy wondered if C.D. could see the same little boy she saw.
Yet he only turned away, "I can't," he whispered.
He got up and with an unsteady gait walked towards the door, then with his hands pressed deep into the frame turned back to his mother. "I'm getting two As and two Bs," he said in a barely audible, monotone voice.
"Think of it as my gift to you and Dad."
He had nothing else to give.
Letters
C.D. returned to school. He rarely called his folks. We didn't see him. It killed Uncle Darry and Aunt Cathy.
Almost a year later he wrote Billy a letter.
"Dear Bill, or Billy or Mac or Buddy,"
Here's the old HICKstory I'm a DICK Baby Doc Duvalier.
I feel so overwhelmed here. Grade wise I'm doing fine, better than Ezra fine, I'm doing great (one of my B's has turned into a C, but other than that, I'm flying Aces (or two Aces, one B*itch of an ex girlfriend, one See). Yet compared to everyone else I feel so low, undeserving. It's not that everyone here is smarter than I am, they aren't. It's that they are BETTER than I am.
I don't belong."
What was left unsaid but deeply felt inside Carlson was the rest of this sentence: "I don't belong on this earth."
Knowing that Billy would understand the true meaning of this letter, that his pain oozed out like toothpaste, that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop squeezing, and knowing that his family would fly out to try and save him, and watching his sink fill up with water and then that same water fall onto the floor, he never sent the letter.
C.D. walks downtown, it rained for three nights and the dirty water slurped up by the sewers regurgitate onto the streets. He looks down and sees his reflection: his thin, pointed nose, his sad, frightened eyes. But then he wonders, what is his face doing on the body of a rat?
One day, I received a letter in the mail, the envelope stained with dirty thumbprints, the flap half crooked. There was no return address, but when I saw the Yogi sticker the sealed the envelope shut, I knew exactly who it was from.
"Dear Paige,
Is there room on the raft?"
A week later another letter.
"Dear Paige,
I apologize for my pithy riddle of a letter I sent earlier. But let me prevaricate no further: I've been doing a lot of thinking of late. Not thinking in some abstract sense of the word, an intellectual exercise, but thinking deep into the marrows of my bone. Here's what I have discovered: I am vermin. Yes, Mitya Karamazov is still with me like a diaper rash. I can't get rid of that bastard!
My entire life I felt pulled by two oppositional forces. I have stomped through the hedonist cauldron of sex and drinking, thinking (or rather, this is the point, NOT thinking) that the more sex I had the better I'd feel about myself: a mathematical equation that doesn't quite add up.
When that didn't work I tiptoed through the tulips and into the garden of Gnosticism. Or as close to Agnostic Gnosticism as someone with my temper and base needs can achieve. Do you know that at one point I self-fancied myself A secular Stylite? Can you believe my ego?! But there I was perched up pillar, reading my texts and law book, apart from it all.
And it Paige. What is IT?
In Medias Res.
Terra Firma.
But whether it was drowning my sorrows in books, booze or boobs, it bore the same result in the end. I isolated myself, first from my town, then friends, then family and finally, I realized, myself.
It is lonely on this island Paige. So very lonely and so very cold.
I don't believe in hell, at least not a physical manifestation of the place, no more than I believe in a heaven. But if there is a hell, it is as Father Zosima elucidated: "hell is the inability to love." I would add an addendum that: the worst hell is the inability to love oneself.
And so, as weak as I am, as much as my knees are wobbly and my heart races, I am trying to learn.
C.D. lost his job.
A young paralegal stole from his law firm; C.D., who mentored the young woman, saw a bit of himself in her, "except she has a far brighter future than I do."
He knew her life story: her mother a crack addict, her father in prison. But more importantly he knew just how smart this woman was, how much potential she had. As he explained, he made "a lifetime of stupid mistakes, but never had to pay for any of it; she made one stupid mistake but now faced paying everything for it."
He took the blame.
On his last day of work he saw her, her face half illuminated by his flash light.
"You get another chance" he whispered in a no nonsense voice. "Don't fuck up."
Then, just as he was about to walk out the door and through security, his stuffed Snoopy's ears flopping over his lone box of possessions; he turned around and with his ankles clicked together, his knees slightly cocked, gave her a small smile. He places his palms together, lifts them so his index fingers rest against the bridge of his nose, tilts his head every so slightly and bowed deeply into that good night.
He told his father what happened. He expected Uncle Darry to get mad, talking about how he shouldn't sacrifice himself and his career for others. Talking about all the sacrifices he and Aunt Cathy made to send him to Harvard so he could get a job with a big Manhattan law firm. Instead, Uncle Darry was stunned into silence.
"Dad?" C.D. yelled into the telephone.
"You're a good man," his father replied.
In his apartment eating his "Hare, Hare, Rama Ramen Noodles" Snoopy, still sitting on top of the box, seemed to nod his head.
A third letter.
Paige!
The most wonderful thing happened. I was walking down 5th Avenue, and it starts to rain, pour actually. Of course, I don't have my umbrella and yet standing there, being pushed by the mass of humanity trying to get home, I laughed!
Despite the physical discomfort, despite my temper, my dark side, my talent for pessimism, a thought came to me: our house (meaning this earth, this LIFE) is a very fine house indeed! Everything IS good.
I never received this letter.
Around this time I found out I was pregnant. I was also in an abusive relationship.
My face was pale white, the result of morning sickness, genetics, and fear. Unfortunately, I thought, so too were my arms and legs. Meaning, I had no bruises on me. Since Drake's abuse was mental and emotional rather than physical, I carried no physical scars of my hell.
What I was carrying was our baby, and my only thought was protecting my baby.
My parents and my sister rallied around me, so too did my extended family. But that didn't ease my concern. So me, with my pale moon skin and growing moon stomach spent most of my days filled with gnawing fear, the Drake wolf howling, ready to sic my moon world and rip it to pieces.
But I was surprised one day when I saw a familiar figure knock on the front door of my dad's house.
"Heard you needed an attorney?"
Thanks to C.D. I was able to get sole custody of my son and a restraining order preventing my ex from coming in contact with me and James.
Tommy told his family he had an important announcement.
"Knocked up some co-ed." Billy stage whispered to C.D.
Tommy tried to smile but his lips sank into a cringe. When was the last time he smiled, heck, when was the last time he laughed unprompted? Tommy couldn't remember. Karen also cringed and tightened her fists; she and her husband David were trying for a baby of their own.
He told his family that he was gay. It was easier than Tommy, who didn't get any sleep the night before, thought.
"We love you," Billy stated with easy conviction.
His mother and father nodded and his mother, trying to hide her tears, hugged him.
"This is okay, this is okay," Aunt Cathy kept on saying to herself. Tommy didn't realize how small his mother was until she tried to envelope her youngest in a mama bear hug. He didn't realize how much he still needed his mother's warm touch until he felt her arms wrap around him.
Uncle Darry walked up to his son and though is path was as crooked as the one treaded by the coach years ago, he gave his youngest son a firm grip on the shoulder. Though he looked like he was just beaned by a ball going 90 miles per hour, he gave his son a smile.
Though Tommy could tell it would take them, especially Uncle Darry, some time to get use to the idea, he also knew that his parents without scruples loved him as much as they did when they woke up that morning.
Karen said something affirmative even as she still looked as if the same wayward ball that beaned her dad knocked her out as well. That left C.D. sitting at the end of the couch, like the 5th family member on Family Feud. Tommy looked at his brother.
The buzzer went off.
C.D. sat quizzically silent: his mouth silent, his face quizzical.
Fucking hypocrite, Tommy thought. Sure C.D. made a show of being 'open minded' he bragged about calling in sick at work to listen to Larry Kramer give a lecture, about his exploits with ACT-UP, about being arrested in front of the White House.
But here, now when he has a brother who just came out of the closet, Mr. Open Minded ACLU can't even bother to utter a stinking word of support?
What also made him mad is that no one, despite their various words of support, mentioned anything about the cross in the room: God. Tommy was a Christian although he left the fundalmentalism of his youth behind. He knew deep down God loved him, but he also wanted someone else to affirm that love. He had spent years praying that God would change him, years praying that he would change, he saw a psychiatrist who told him that he could "cure" him, he endured years of thinking he was going to hell. Throughout it all he wore his pain like a hair shirt. He prayed without ceasing and when he woke up in the morning, he still liked boys.
C.D. disappeared.
Anger has a remarkable way of cutting down distance, and before Tommy knew it, he made it from the house to the end of the driveway and was slamming his car door shut.
He tried to tell himself it didn't matter that C.D. was an asshole, or a hypocrite, or… Tommy slammed his fist against the glove compartment, and noticed a piece of paper sticking out like a red tongue.
Because it's C.D. he starts off his quote "Hey Babes in Toyland," Tommy gritted his teeth before reading on.
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love."
If he (I'm not going to capitalize it, Tom) exists, I know that he loves you. I'm no one's Jesus but I also love you little brother! Be at peace, know that you are loved and so very important."
He gets me, Tommy thinks with amazement. He reads on.
P.S. I'm staying at the Motel 6. Room 203, I'd be honored to have you as my guest.
P.P.S. I'm sorry I was unable to say anything earlier tonight. But I looked at you and I felt such awe and love for you I couldn't speak.
Rama Lama Ding Dong.
And Tommy, for the first time in what seemed like ages, broke out into laughter.
In the end it wasn't Dmitri, Ivan or Alyosha who C.D. found a kindred spirit, but Fetyukovitch, the brilliant defense attorney.
"A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel." –Dostoevsky
Dear Paige,
There is no hidden message, meaning nor Iman in this letter. Let me be blunt: I hate my job. Let me back up and invite my old nemesis, nuance, to explain: 90% of time (nuance prefers to quantify everything) I'm fine with my job. In fact, I love it. I love not only arguing (old habits die hard) but standing up for those who, because of the color of their skin or lack of resources, are all too often railroaded and beaten down by a blindfolded woman with a toga fetish.
Then there are cases such as the one that ended up on my desk earlier this week. Attorney-Client privilege prevents me from going into details, but it is a horrific case. I read all of the notes in the case file, the police report, the suspect interview tape. I saw the pictures and now I know what it means to be artistically cruel, picturesquely cruel. I am not speaking of the crime scene photos, as fiendish as they are; but the artistic cruelty which rises within me when I look at those photos.
This entire week I haven't been able to sleep a wink. I've tried Ambien (didn't work) I tried reading my undergrad thesis paper, seeing how I was half asleep when I wrote it in the first place (didn't work). The only way I am able to get to sleep is to dream of my client.
I dream of bashing his head in. I dream of meeting him in jail (they have him in Solidary for his own protection) of extending my hand and as his hand slips into mine, as I feel the pulse from his wrist beat against my fingers; I slam his head against the metal table.
It only takes one hard slam (I'm no more humble in my dreams as I am in real life) to do him in. Not very sophisticated, I'm afraid, but artistic! Picturesquely artistic!
There's blood Paige, blood that fills every inch of the windowless room. Then there's the brain matter. Do you know that brain matter has the exact color and smell of salmon?
Can you picture it Paige?
All of the fishies in the deep blue sea?
I smile.
I know I smile because when I wake up my wife asks me if I was having a good dream. I look at her and nod, "the best," and I watch her slip into her bra. I don't need to tell you what color it is.
It's times like this that I wish I believed without scruples or doubt in a higher power. Not the god of love and mercy, but the GOD of vengeance and wrath; the one who smites and smokes, the one who his followers are willing to transform themselves into little Eichmanns for.
Because only HE will give this man his just desserts.
But here's what's going to happen. Tomorrow, I'll go into the office. I have a quote on my wall, you may, though I'm hesitant to use this word, call it my mantra. "But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity." Yes, returning bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, that old Duke of Despair, Dostoevsky.
Yet in my case, despair rings the insidious truth. The more I hate this man, this one, insignificant man, the more I realize how much I love the idea of mankind and hand in hand with that love comes justice and yes, mercy.
As much as I wish to manhandle him out of the fishing boat called S.S. Humanity and throw him overboard to the sharks, I cannot. I will not Paige; because he is a part of Humanity and therefore, a part of my humanity.
You're thinking of Donne right now, aren't you?
I'll meet the man in court. I'll extend my hand and after a brief moment of hesitation, he'll take it. I'll smile at him and ask him how he's holding up? Then the judge will come into the courtroom and we'll all rise, and I'll introduce myself in a voice clear and steady, "Carlson Curtis, for the defendant."
I'll sit down in my chair, crack my neck, and get to work.
Shantih shantih shantih
A/N
Whew. Well, that's C. for you. ;) And if YOU'RE exhausted, just think of how I'm doing! I have to LIVE with this boy in my head!
First of all, thank you for reading, if you read all 11,000+ words, you are a candidate for Sainthood. I truly appreciate it. I'm sorry for writing so much of the next generation. I do so partially because I love writing it, and partially because I feel SO intimidated writing the brothers, since y'all are so good at writing them. So I very much appreciate you indulging me.
A few credits: Shantih Shantih Shantih is from the last line of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the same poem C.D. recites as a boy to his Uncle Pony. It means peace, calmness or tranquility. T.S. Eliot translates it into "The Peace which passeth understanding."
Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata according to a few translations, they are Sanskrit for Give, Sympathize, Control.
"Billy, Buddy, Mac or Buddy" is from Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna to Do."
"Our House" is from Crosby, Stills,Nash and Young.
S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders.
While I added my own twist and circumstances, the idea of the philisophical conversation via notes is from David James Duncan The Brother's K.
The toads, lizards reference is from Tropic of Capricorn, although it's definitely an M /MA excerpt.
The 'Huey' reference at the Great-Grandma Baker funeral scene. In my Billy narrated story about C.D. he says that towards the end of her life, Great-Grandma Baker suffered from dementia and thought C.D.'s name was "Huey" something that her friends apparently also, to C.D.'s consternation also believes.
I think that's it. Thank You.