Oh but I could be so bitter.
Trying. hard. not. to. be.
Worse than the twilight homesickness that takes over every night after dinner for pretty much every single night of my life, a weird twinge, gone as fast as it arrives is that empty feeling when Ben goes away.
The first trip was over and done before I could register, the promise of regular commuting being the free pass that was supposed to make this painless and uneventful. Only with the first short return and subsequent six hours of driving, (WHICH WAS HIS IDEA) Ben is too tired to do this and he said as much as he was walking to the gate tonight.
I can't get back until next week, he said.
He knew and he didn't tell me because I'm a belligerent, spoiled little girl. I would have given him a hard time, I would have asked him to come anyway because this is about me. Only it's not and he goes off and shuts down this part of his life to make it easier for himself to work and focus and not worry about Bridget because Bridget is worrying about Bridget and there's no redundancy in ignorance.
So fuck it.
Just fuck it.
Argh.
Sunday 28 June 2009
When it rains we catch up on movies.
I don't know youI firmly believe that hearts speak through music, because they don't have a voice of their own. Sort of like how Bumblebee plays the car stereo to talk to Sam in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and how Glen Hansard sorted out his life in Once. Or maybe my weekend simply had a theme. Music as heart. It's always been something that makes perfect sense to me but I can openly appreciate the...uh...cheesier aspects of life as easily as you'll make your disdain for them known.
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now
In other news, wet wooden painted steps and Bridget in a hurry always equal bad things and I took one hell of a fall yesterday. So Ben was reduced to very incredibly gentle missives last night so as not to make anything hurt and that is so not fun in the way I like my fun to be had. Gentle? Fuck that. Tenderly? No, thank you. Softly? Move along now. Ignore it and go for broke? Yes, please!
But he doesn't listen to my head. Just my heart. It sings so much louder. For that I'm always appreciative.
Saturday 27 June 2009
The notion of a heart to wrap around.
Waking up at the farm this morning was the salve on the open wound that is my life. Ben flew in yesterday afternoon, trading a case full of dirty clothes for the case full of clean ones I had already packed and we were off, latching the kids into the backseat of the truck and headed off down the rainy highway to Nolan's farm.
We got here around seven-thirty last evening and Nolan ladled up some of his beef stew with buttered rolls that warms me better than the fires he builds and my eyes were so heavy I think I barely registered Ben pulling me to my feet and walking me to our room at the end of the hall. I'm sure I registered the part when he undressed me and pulled the quilt up to my neck and then he went and took a shower because for some reason when he flies now all we smell is airplane fuel afterward. Like he's a sponge soaking up the smell of travel and it's not pretty. I think I smelled soap in my dreams though, that's good.
This morning it's still raining heavily, too wet for a comfortable trail ride or even an umbrella walk but we were up fairly early to relieve Nolan of his morning chores in exchange for the safe refuge and hopefully the weather will clear before we have to leave here. I don't want to leave here, I think I could happily draw a line in a lazy oval shape around this property from the tree up by the Kentucky rail fence where the driveway begins to the picnic rock by the stream on the other side of the pasture and burn the line right through until we separate from the rest of the planet and drift away into outer space.
But only once the boys are here. I couldn't be without them. They were sweet this week too. Lochlan watches over us at home and August tried and failed magnificently at being less like Jake and won the mother of all meltdowns when he came over for dinner on Thursday and tucked into his food like he hadn't eaten in days and it was a flashback to something wonderful that's gone. Gone but not forgotten. Gone but missed every second of the day, gone and not coming back so stop finding him in everything. August has had to pick up a lot of the emotional slack that Joel used to manage and Ben still can't manage, and for gosh sakes, Bridget doesn't manage but Joel is still forbidden fruit and August is still too much like Jake and really, all I could do was count the seconds in the minutes and the minutes in the hours and after 25,000 seconds and then some Ben was home and August wasn't Jake anymore and no one blamed me for what has become a trend of late. Miss Jake? Find August.
It can be worse. Miss Cole? Find Caleb.
I never said I was healthy in those areas. I'm probably a lot less healthy and a lot more twisted than I would lead you to believe. And I refuse to hide behind missing Ben or being afraid he will never come back (bad things, they happen in threes!) to have my bad behavior excused so easily. No, I seek them out and I take what I want and it makes me feel better for a few thousand of those precious waiting-seconds and then it makes me feel a whole hell of a lot worse on the other side because it magnifies the truth and the truth burns like hot iron.
But for now, nothing burns. The fire is out and I'm watching Ben wash dishes and when he's done I'll go over and stand on his feet and he'll put his arms around my head and I'll put my cheek against his chest to get the reassurance of the pulsing heart inside and then we'll have to find something to do because card games are getting old and it doesn't look like the sun will shine today.
It's okay. I don't need it to.
We got here around seven-thirty last evening and Nolan ladled up some of his beef stew with buttered rolls that warms me better than the fires he builds and my eyes were so heavy I think I barely registered Ben pulling me to my feet and walking me to our room at the end of the hall. I'm sure I registered the part when he undressed me and pulled the quilt up to my neck and then he went and took a shower because for some reason when he flies now all we smell is airplane fuel afterward. Like he's a sponge soaking up the smell of travel and it's not pretty. I think I smelled soap in my dreams though, that's good.
This morning it's still raining heavily, too wet for a comfortable trail ride or even an umbrella walk but we were up fairly early to relieve Nolan of his morning chores in exchange for the safe refuge and hopefully the weather will clear before we have to leave here. I don't want to leave here, I think I could happily draw a line in a lazy oval shape around this property from the tree up by the Kentucky rail fence where the driveway begins to the picnic rock by the stream on the other side of the pasture and burn the line right through until we separate from the rest of the planet and drift away into outer space.
But only once the boys are here. I couldn't be without them. They were sweet this week too. Lochlan watches over us at home and August tried and failed magnificently at being less like Jake and won the mother of all meltdowns when he came over for dinner on Thursday and tucked into his food like he hadn't eaten in days and it was a flashback to something wonderful that's gone. Gone but not forgotten. Gone but missed every second of the day, gone and not coming back so stop finding him in everything. August has had to pick up a lot of the emotional slack that Joel used to manage and Ben still can't manage, and for gosh sakes, Bridget doesn't manage but Joel is still forbidden fruit and August is still too much like Jake and really, all I could do was count the seconds in the minutes and the minutes in the hours and after 25,000 seconds and then some Ben was home and August wasn't Jake anymore and no one blamed me for what has become a trend of late. Miss Jake? Find August.
It can be worse. Miss Cole? Find Caleb.
I never said I was healthy in those areas. I'm probably a lot less healthy and a lot more twisted than I would lead you to believe. And I refuse to hide behind missing Ben or being afraid he will never come back (bad things, they happen in threes!) to have my bad behavior excused so easily. No, I seek them out and I take what I want and it makes me feel better for a few thousand of those precious waiting-seconds and then it makes me feel a whole hell of a lot worse on the other side because it magnifies the truth and the truth burns like hot iron.
But for now, nothing burns. The fire is out and I'm watching Ben wash dishes and when he's done I'll go over and stand on his feet and he'll put his arms around my head and I'll put my cheek against his chest to get the reassurance of the pulsing heart inside and then we'll have to find something to do because card games are getting old and it doesn't look like the sun will shine today.
It's okay. I don't need it to.
Friday 26 June 2009
The halo is for radar. Bridget-radar.
The door is like any door you would see in a place like this.
Wooden with iron supports and a throw bolt the size of my arm, underneath which rests a pull ring I can fit both hands around, which is good because I need all my strength to pull this door open. It swings out, into the hall where water drips like the slow burn of rage and the bare light bulb illuminates exactly nothing.
He sits inside, in the center of a windowless room. The walls, floor and ceiling are concrete, of the kind built by hand. Layers that appear straight but probably aren't, and more standing water in puddles all around him. His beautiful white wings are folded close to his back, almost glowing in the oppressive dim. His head is down, hands clasped around his knees, naked and dirty save for the wings which serve to provide dignity as well as glory.
I speak and he doesn't answer. He only briefly raises his head in acknowledgement before returning to his private hell within this hell. Save for the fact that his knuckles have gone white I would believe that he doesn't really know I'm there.
That's as far as I ever get into the room because always and without fail the music cues up, the screaming distorted guitars, beautiful folk melodies barely audible, tangled with power chords that throw my progress off. The other one descends so quickly I only have time to raise my hands up in front of my face and I feel the darkness complete as his wings brush my hair and knock me back.
One black feather hovers in the air in front of me before dipping back towards the floor.
He screams in my face, an inch from me and I feel the heat of a thousand suns on his breath but I don't recognize his voice because it comes out in seven octaves of sound that washes over me in a drone. It doesn't appear to have come from his mouth but instead from his mind perhaps. I scream back and he stops and turns, because the angel with the white wings stands up now, casting light into all corners of the room, burning the flesh off the black angel who reacts by unleashing another thundering, unholy bellow before returning to the safety of his high perch.
Go back, the white angel says and he smiles gently. This is an order, not a suggestion.
I don't want to, I tell him. Jacob, I'll take you back with me!
I reach forward to take his hand, maybe I can pull him out of here, maybe I can somehow sneak him away from this place. And then in the light I see that all around his face is blood and there is just empty blackness where the back of his head used to be. His arms are bent at funny angles and his back isn't really doing anything at all. He's a bag of bones held up with his magnificent love for God and locked in this hideous purgatory with Cole because I won't let them go anywhere else.
He shakes his head and doesn't say anything but I hear him so clearly inside my head.
Go back, Bridget. I'll see you tomorrow.
I'm blown back to the other side of the door, falling over the threshold and landing on my ass. The door creaks with a huge heavy sigh and slams shut. I run back down the hall in the sketchy light, splashing through the puddles until I reach the sunlight at the end of the tunnel and...
I'm awake.
Wooden with iron supports and a throw bolt the size of my arm, underneath which rests a pull ring I can fit both hands around, which is good because I need all my strength to pull this door open. It swings out, into the hall where water drips like the slow burn of rage and the bare light bulb illuminates exactly nothing.
He sits inside, in the center of a windowless room. The walls, floor and ceiling are concrete, of the kind built by hand. Layers that appear straight but probably aren't, and more standing water in puddles all around him. His beautiful white wings are folded close to his back, almost glowing in the oppressive dim. His head is down, hands clasped around his knees, naked and dirty save for the wings which serve to provide dignity as well as glory.
I speak and he doesn't answer. He only briefly raises his head in acknowledgement before returning to his private hell within this hell. Save for the fact that his knuckles have gone white I would believe that he doesn't really know I'm there.
That's as far as I ever get into the room because always and without fail the music cues up, the screaming distorted guitars, beautiful folk melodies barely audible, tangled with power chords that throw my progress off. The other one descends so quickly I only have time to raise my hands up in front of my face and I feel the darkness complete as his wings brush my hair and knock me back.
One black feather hovers in the air in front of me before dipping back towards the floor.
He screams in my face, an inch from me and I feel the heat of a thousand suns on his breath but I don't recognize his voice because it comes out in seven octaves of sound that washes over me in a drone. It doesn't appear to have come from his mouth but instead from his mind perhaps. I scream back and he stops and turns, because the angel with the white wings stands up now, casting light into all corners of the room, burning the flesh off the black angel who reacts by unleashing another thundering, unholy bellow before returning to the safety of his high perch.
Go back, the white angel says and he smiles gently. This is an order, not a suggestion.
I don't want to, I tell him. Jacob, I'll take you back with me!
I reach forward to take his hand, maybe I can pull him out of here, maybe I can somehow sneak him away from this place. And then in the light I see that all around his face is blood and there is just empty blackness where the back of his head used to be. His arms are bent at funny angles and his back isn't really doing anything at all. He's a bag of bones held up with his magnificent love for God and locked in this hideous purgatory with Cole because I won't let them go anywhere else.
He shakes his head and doesn't say anything but I hear him so clearly inside my head.
Go back, Bridget. I'll see you tomorrow.
I'm blown back to the other side of the door, falling over the threshold and landing on my ass. The door creaks with a huge heavy sigh and slams shut. I run back down the hall in the sketchy light, splashing through the puddles until I reach the sunlight at the end of the tunnel and...
I'm awake.
Thursday 25 June 2009
Old habits die hard.
So hold your breath and make a wish for meIt's Thursday and today will be Godsmack day. And did you hear I'm quitting coffee?
Yes, finally, Jacob.
Well, I'm down to twelve ounces a day now from probably forty and dropping like a rock at ten each night, worn out. I'm not anxious anymore either. I can't wait to see how my moods shift when I'm down to four ounces, or nothing even. Amazing the sort of damage seven hundred milligrams of caffeine can do on top of everything else. And sleep does seem to be a little better quality-wise but let's give it a month or so, it's only been two days. So far so good. I need to do this gradually so I don't get headaches.
I don't like to need things. That's all. Coffee is a crutch, and it's doing me more harm than good. I have a whole list of things I need to quit, unfortunately most of them are human and will be harder to give up. Let's start with the small things then, and work our way up.
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Second watch.
The world has caught on fire from what I've been told.Lochlan appeared on my back steps right around the end of dinner last evening, seven beers into his evening and looking for comfort and a fight. Lochlan's been on the wrong side of a lot of beer and anger and need lately and I promised I wouldn't write about him and I guess I lied about that too, because he's my friend and overtly he hasn't done anything wrong other than show up in his tux at the alter just a little too late because the bride married your new best friend and they rode off into the sunset an hour ago, buddy.
These city lights are killing ever slowly the sanity within me.
Maybe I lost in my creation.
This isn't how I thought I'd turn out.
In your eyes I'm picture perfect.
In your eyes the grass is greener.
Have you seen it though my eyes.
Cause through my eyes.
Stars are burning brighter.
So bright we can't ignore.
Lochlan always tried to be above the drama and lately he is ALL of the drama all by himself. He's now concerned that he'll be made out to be the bad guy in my life, with a drinking problem and an obsession to boot. He's afraid Ben is somehow using the quietest moments we spend together to whisper into my broken ears that Lochlan is bad for me and I should stay away from him. Lochlan dares to have that much ego that in our darkest hours of deep conversation, he is that important that we're talking about him. Last night he was told the world doesn't revolve around him.
It can't, because it revolves around me.
He was fine with that.
Because in my darkest hours I have bigger ghosts to fight off, and for Lochlan's handwringing over having lost at love and lost his way and lost everything, in sober daylight he hasn't lost anything, really. He let go and things didn't come back and that's how you know something isn't yours.
He hasn't lost anything, not when we're comparing scars. I can lift up my shirt and you see the living autopsy I have become with the hole in the front where Cole died holding my heart and then the big tear in the back where you see where Jacob grabbed for it when he fell, and closed on air because it wasn't there. I guess he forgot he was already holding it and he didn't pull it out of his pocket in time and that's why sometimes I lose track of the pieces now. They were given back to me and I gave one to everyone because I wasn't ready to have any of it back, truthfully. Honestly.
Lochlan hasn't done the hard jobs, he's danced along the top of the wall while we dug under it. He stood back and leaned against it, supervising, while we rebuilt whole sections, and he hid behind it while we stood with our backs to it to fight so many times I've lost count.
Ben and Lochlan have created a forever-argument in the moment that Ben had to tell me Jacob was gone, because Lochlan couldn't do it, even though Lochlan should have done it. He was supposed to do it and he should have stood up and spared Ben from that. Instead he hoped that I would transfer the mask of pain onto Ben's face and begin right there to put up a wall between Ben and myself.
So everyone is well aware of how magnificently that plan backfired and Lochlan is out in the cold.
Only he's not, because he's one piece of my puzzle, holding one piece of my heart, so tightly it keeps squirting right out of his fist and he has to go chasing after it. He's the glue that holds the memories to the wall so I can go look at them when I want to, he's my link to happier Bridget before the boys fell in love with me, before death, and before life turned out so strange, he's my voice of reason. I'm so selfish I can't ask for that piece of my heart back from him. (KeepitandIcankeepyou.)
And he has lost things too. Love, above all else. Friends. Time. Ground. Me.
If there is one thing we have learned about having the upper hand is that it isn't about making sure the people you love suffer as much as you have, go through what you've been through or be forced to experience the same pain you have so they really get you, it's about making life easier for them, as much as you can, easing their suffering in the best ways you know how, and making sure they're protected for the rest of your days. Making sure they are safe. Happy. Loved.
He tries to do that for me now and Ben lets him. Because Ben knows the sort of desperation you can find at the bottom of a bottle or when you're fresh out of hearts or when the need for Bridget overtakes plain old good common sense. And for that, everyone wins, and we get pulled back up to walk along the top of the wall for a little while again.
The view from up here is so nice, I like it, and so much easier when the ghosts aren't reaching for my ankles. And as long as I stay here sandwiched snugly between Ben and Lochlan, the ghosts can't get close at all, let alone reach out and grab me.
I brought Lochlan coffee this morning out on the patio where he sat with the mother of all headaches. He thanked me profusely.
Being an asshole to him doesn't help you.
He's generous with both of us.
He's not going to do to you what you've tried to do to him, Lochlan. Be grateful.
You don't think I am?
No, sometimes it doesn't seem like you are.
How did you get so far away from me that you don't see these things anymore, princess?
The wall. It's in front of you.
What?
Nevermind.
Tuesday 23 June 2009
I have figured out my television but this isn't about that.
It's like Christmas only with meat.
I think I make Ben laugh sometimes. Unwrapping the paper packages from the butcher in order to barbecue some dinner, I said that without thinking and he just roared. This after already having a mini-Christmas (!) when he bought me a pretty pink phone case and a copy of Heavier Than Heaven (!!) to read, a book I was having trouble finding. Later on he roared again with laughter when we collapsed on the couch, watching Dirty Jobs. Mike Rowe was directing some mules to carry fallen trees out of the woods with a set of words that would send them in various directions and I said it was cool that mules speak English, it makes the logging job easier.
(Thank you, I'll be here all week.)
No, I think it's a combination of the heat, some recent flu-bug issues and trying make plans and keep up with life that have left us failing to match our brains to our mouths lately.
Yesterday most of the day was spent separately with Lisabeth and then with Sam. Their separation is full steam ahead, the brief spring reconciliation not being successful and I'm sad for my friends. I'm sad that the church has tested another heart that I love and I'm sad that subconsciously I'm taking sides because that's what people do. Lisabeth understands. She knows damn well that Sam will be here more and I'll talk to him first and so she let me off the hook for that. She's moving so it won't be a dance of avoidance for them, just a chapter in Sam's life that he will keep fondly because he chose the church before his marriage. Few professions would call for that, but God beckons long and loud, I think.
I told Sam he was being foolish. That God doesn't expect him to be a saint, denying himself things people need to survive in this world. He told me I didn't have to worry about him so much, and for the first time ever I wished I could make Sam laugh, give him a little levity at a time when things are more sober than ever. I know he'll be okay. He has GOD on his side.
I have meat on mine, apparently. Meat and English-speaking mules.
I think I make Ben laugh sometimes. Unwrapping the paper packages from the butcher in order to barbecue some dinner, I said that without thinking and he just roared. This after already having a mini-Christmas (!) when he bought me a pretty pink phone case and a copy of Heavier Than Heaven (!!) to read, a book I was having trouble finding. Later on he roared again with laughter when we collapsed on the couch, watching Dirty Jobs. Mike Rowe was directing some mules to carry fallen trees out of the woods with a set of words that would send them in various directions and I said it was cool that mules speak English, it makes the logging job easier.
(Thank you, I'll be here all week.)
No, I think it's a combination of the heat, some recent flu-bug issues and trying make plans and keep up with life that have left us failing to match our brains to our mouths lately.
Yesterday most of the day was spent separately with Lisabeth and then with Sam. Their separation is full steam ahead, the brief spring reconciliation not being successful and I'm sad for my friends. I'm sad that the church has tested another heart that I love and I'm sad that subconsciously I'm taking sides because that's what people do. Lisabeth understands. She knows damn well that Sam will be here more and I'll talk to him first and so she let me off the hook for that. She's moving so it won't be a dance of avoidance for them, just a chapter in Sam's life that he will keep fondly because he chose the church before his marriage. Few professions would call for that, but God beckons long and loud, I think.
I told Sam he was being foolish. That God doesn't expect him to be a saint, denying himself things people need to survive in this world. He told me I didn't have to worry about him so much, and for the first time ever I wished I could make Sam laugh, give him a little levity at a time when things are more sober than ever. I know he'll be okay. He has GOD on his side.
I have meat on mine, apparently. Meat and English-speaking mules.
Monday 22 June 2009
The ten-second interview.
What three things do you look at first in a man?
Um, what? Oh Lord. Smile, hair and the width of the shoulders. I can't believe you asked that.
Moving on. Last album download.
Rev Theory's Light it Up.
Latest time consuming activity?
Learning to use Ben's old iPhone 3G. He got the 3G S yesterday.
How many freckles do you have now?
This interview is over, Duncan.
What did I say?
I liked your beat poetry better than your Larry King.
Um, what? Oh Lord. Smile, hair and the width of the shoulders. I can't believe you asked that.
Moving on. Last album download.
Rev Theory's Light it Up.
Latest time consuming activity?
Learning to use Ben's old iPhone 3G. He got the 3G S yesterday.
How many freckles do you have now?
This interview is over, Duncan.
What did I say?
I liked your beat poetry better than your Larry King.
Sunday 21 June 2009
Lights off.
Yesterday Ben won me a giant stuffed Hello Kitty at the fair. My freckles were activated, though the power of our sunblock held strong, and I didn't refuse to go on a single ride that was presented to me, which meant I found myself swinging far out over the midwestern sky in the broilerplated heat two stories in the air with only slick metal chains keeping me from certain death more than a dozen times.
I ate pizza on a stick, which is one of those magical foods where the first bite is the best one and it's all downhill from there, I climbed up the Euroslide, had a change of heart, and then Henry talked me back into it, because Henry's 52 inches tall and you have to be 54 inches.
Mommy's 60 inches tall so she HAS to take me because Ben is 76 inches and might make for some drag on our speed and we want to have a race.
Pffft. That ride right there? Death trap.
Besides, Ruth in all her 54 inches of height and newly-big-kid glory won hands down. Because she jumped the gun and that's fine, you do that when you're nine.
And there were carnies everywhere, under the darker shade of the tents, charming us out of our cash and enticing us to stay longer and throw harder and take our time and come over to the next booth and ride the coaster again later after we've stayed here for a while and not leave through the big white gates at the magic hour, you don't want to go just yet, the fun is just beginning and you might miss out on the greatest summer of your lives if you go now. I can stamp your hands and you can come back for more.
It was then and only then that the tears began to sting behind my eyes. He's missing out. He didn't want to go JUST yet, the fun IS just beginning and dammit, there is no stamp for reentry. The sun has gone down and the fair has packed up and left town for him and you know what was dumb? That I have that one stupid memory of him here, walking along the dusty road between the games with their barkers, hands in his pockets, smiling politely because he always felt like they wanted him to sell his soul for the price of picking a duck with a letter on the bottom. The games made him uncharacteristic, superstitious, uncomfortable. He would spend a couple of dollars only, and then we'd leave that whole area, returning to the rides and the barns and the light, the open sunny skies because he was never comfortable with trying his luck, even though he had a knack for that kind of magic and so many illusions of his own making.
I watched Jacob walk down the road yesterday in my head until I couldn't watch him anymore and then I turned back to the living, where no one blinked as the boys pulled out bill after bill, hoping for one of those tiny Henry-sized motorcycles and the biggest teddy bears I have ever seen. I let the memory burn in the sun and I didn't get my hand stamped, because I'm not coming back to this.
I ate pizza on a stick, which is one of those magical foods where the first bite is the best one and it's all downhill from there, I climbed up the Euroslide, had a change of heart, and then Henry talked me back into it, because Henry's 52 inches tall and you have to be 54 inches.
Mommy's 60 inches tall so she HAS to take me because Ben is 76 inches and might make for some drag on our speed and we want to have a race.
Pffft. That ride right there? Death trap.
Besides, Ruth in all her 54 inches of height and newly-big-kid glory won hands down. Because she jumped the gun and that's fine, you do that when you're nine.
And there were carnies everywhere, under the darker shade of the tents, charming us out of our cash and enticing us to stay longer and throw harder and take our time and come over to the next booth and ride the coaster again later after we've stayed here for a while and not leave through the big white gates at the magic hour, you don't want to go just yet, the fun is just beginning and you might miss out on the greatest summer of your lives if you go now. I can stamp your hands and you can come back for more.
It was then and only then that the tears began to sting behind my eyes. He's missing out. He didn't want to go JUST yet, the fun IS just beginning and dammit, there is no stamp for reentry. The sun has gone down and the fair has packed up and left town for him and you know what was dumb? That I have that one stupid memory of him here, walking along the dusty road between the games with their barkers, hands in his pockets, smiling politely because he always felt like they wanted him to sell his soul for the price of picking a duck with a letter on the bottom. The games made him uncharacteristic, superstitious, uncomfortable. He would spend a couple of dollars only, and then we'd leave that whole area, returning to the rides and the barns and the light, the open sunny skies because he was never comfortable with trying his luck, even though he had a knack for that kind of magic and so many illusions of his own making.
I watched Jacob walk down the road yesterday in my head until I couldn't watch him anymore and then I turned back to the living, where no one blinked as the boys pulled out bill after bill, hoping for one of those tiny Henry-sized motorcycles and the biggest teddy bears I have ever seen. I let the memory burn in the sun and I didn't get my hand stamped, because I'm not coming back to this.
Friday 19 June 2009
Fair warning.
His name was William, and he was just another unrequited crush.
My job was to get sunburned and grow freckles and white streaks of sun in my hair and brown legs with pink shoulders and nose.
My job was to eat blue cotton candy (my favorite, always) and hold up one tiny wrist at the carnies as I made my way onto the Scrambler to wedge in beside Bailey and her friends.
My job was to stay with the group and not spend too long in the barn petting goats and oxen.
My job was keep quiet so I watched the Ferris wheel operator do his job. He looked like Gregg Allman. He had a beard and kind, world-weary eyes. He was tanned and blonde and he never cared if we had bracelets or not. He counted extra turns when we were on the wheel and he never made us get off until someone stopped smiling. He wore dirty jeans and a ripped white shirt and he had tattoos from some other life before the one in which you live in a broken-down camper, towed from one small town to the next.
One late night he asked me what I was staring at. I told him the lights were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He walked over to the canopy where the rainbow lights were and he reached up and unscrewed a round red bulb and he brought it over to me and told me I could keep it so I would always remember the fun I had that night. He became a fixture after that, and every year he gave me a different colored bulb that I would collect near the end of my evening. I brought them home and kept them in a cardboard box pushed far underneath the big iron bed with the mattress that sagged in the middle. The cocoon bed, I called it, home away from home at my grandparent's house.
When I was twelve I decided when I was eighteen that I was going to marry him if things with Lochlan didn't pan out (because they weren't anyway because I was twelve), and I'd wear a pretty yellow embroidered apron and fix him nice dinners at the three-legged table that was bolted into one corner of the camper and at night we would sleep in the tiny bed in the other corner with a threadbare blanket and he would sing me to sleep while the carnival traveled to the next town.
Pay cheques were dispensed in cash and time off was where ever and whenever you could find it. There were no shopping malls, no school and no long car trips, there was only the gleeful screams of the people on the rides, the food that hasn't changed in sixty years, since his grandpa operated the wheel and the lights that always, always make me dizzy. Those lights are better than the northern lights and better than fireworks to me, because those are the lights of true adventure around every bend. Familiarity in rusty bolts and discarded paper cones, ripped paper bracelets and discarded, dusty prizes.
I never had big dreams. Mine are so very small and simple. And I still have one of the lights that he gave me. It's rusted now, and even if I had a socket that it fit I doubt it still works. He would be probably late fifties, early sixties by now, maybe he still travels with the shows and maybe he closed up his trailer and stopped somewhere nice when the carnival passed through a town that looked appealing. Hell, I'll never know. But it makes me feel happy to think about sometimes.
Got a taste, can't be saved, I'm a junkie for lifeI had my arms raised over my head just like the teenagers, freckles mixed with dirt, sprinkled across the bridge of my nose and my cheeks, braids loosened and tied in knots to keep them out of my way, too long bangs swept impatiently behind one ear, green eyes open wide as evening approached, the colored lights of the midway forming a glow around this huge field on the edge of nowhere, the small town where I was born and where still nothing happens, and still they greet me by name when I enter the small diner down on the road beside the river that empties into the sea. I never know which direction to take to get to Green Bay or to get out of town and go to the city. I never know which end is up when I'm there. I was never required to.
She fuels my fire and adrenaline high
My need for speed's got me gunning
One touch, she screams to keep it coming
Are you ready for the best damn ride of your life?
Gimme a "hell"
Gimme a "yeah"
Stand up right now
My job was to get sunburned and grow freckles and white streaks of sun in my hair and brown legs with pink shoulders and nose.
My job was to eat blue cotton candy (my favorite, always) and hold up one tiny wrist at the carnies as I made my way onto the Scrambler to wedge in beside Bailey and her friends.
My job was to stay with the group and not spend too long in the barn petting goats and oxen.
My job was keep quiet so I watched the Ferris wheel operator do his job. He looked like Gregg Allman. He had a beard and kind, world-weary eyes. He was tanned and blonde and he never cared if we had bracelets or not. He counted extra turns when we were on the wheel and he never made us get off until someone stopped smiling. He wore dirty jeans and a ripped white shirt and he had tattoos from some other life before the one in which you live in a broken-down camper, towed from one small town to the next.
One late night he asked me what I was staring at. I told him the lights were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He walked over to the canopy where the rainbow lights were and he reached up and unscrewed a round red bulb and he brought it over to me and told me I could keep it so I would always remember the fun I had that night. He became a fixture after that, and every year he gave me a different colored bulb that I would collect near the end of my evening. I brought them home and kept them in a cardboard box pushed far underneath the big iron bed with the mattress that sagged in the middle. The cocoon bed, I called it, home away from home at my grandparent's house.
When I was twelve I decided when I was eighteen that I was going to marry him if things with Lochlan didn't pan out (because they weren't anyway because I was twelve), and I'd wear a pretty yellow embroidered apron and fix him nice dinners at the three-legged table that was bolted into one corner of the camper and at night we would sleep in the tiny bed in the other corner with a threadbare blanket and he would sing me to sleep while the carnival traveled to the next town.
Pay cheques were dispensed in cash and time off was where ever and whenever you could find it. There were no shopping malls, no school and no long car trips, there was only the gleeful screams of the people on the rides, the food that hasn't changed in sixty years, since his grandpa operated the wheel and the lights that always, always make me dizzy. Those lights are better than the northern lights and better than fireworks to me, because those are the lights of true adventure around every bend. Familiarity in rusty bolts and discarded paper cones, ripped paper bracelets and discarded, dusty prizes.
I never had big dreams. Mine are so very small and simple. And I still have one of the lights that he gave me. It's rusted now, and even if I had a socket that it fit I doubt it still works. He would be probably late fifties, early sixties by now, maybe he still travels with the shows and maybe he closed up his trailer and stopped somewhere nice when the carnival passed through a town that looked appealing. Hell, I'll never know. But it makes me feel happy to think about sometimes.
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