In The Between

By John Chapman

My name is Frank Baker. My story takes place in that part of the South, where you have the hindlick maneuver and say doodie instead of duty. You have light doodie, heavy doodie, and super doodie; with the use of each you make a joke; where intellectualizing may employ a complicated term such as Topsy Turvy, or Incite, pronounced excite, as in excite a riot, or Substantial pronounced sustantial; where, if something is as good as shit, or goodern shit, it’s good; where it’s good to be “The Shit”. Where before sex she might say: You’re too fat Daddy, let me be on top.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Chapman
• Release date: Jul 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301536283

John Chapman

We started the 'A Vested Interest' series in 2007 and it took over a year before I came up with an ending we were happy with. At 170,000 words A Vested Interest was too long though for a printed book. We cut it heavily but still ended with a 140,000 word book. There was no alternative, we had to split it into a two book series. Doing that, we thought, would allow us to put back some of the content we had cut and expand the second book (Dark Secrets) a little.Well that was the plan. We ended up splitting the second book and making a trilogy by adding 'No Secrets'. The original ending didn't quite fit now so we moved it into a fourth book - Stones, Stars and Solutions.And so it goes on. We are now writing book 10 and 11 of the series. Shelia has written a spin-off 'Blood of the Rainbow' trilogy. Altogether it's 2 million words so far! In terms of time, we've only covered a few months. There is an end in sight but not for another 5,000 years. Maybe I'll get to use my original ending then?About the AuthorsJohn and Shelia Chapman are a husband and wife team who met on Internet and crossed the Atlantic to be together. John, an English ex-science and computer teacher contributed the technology and 'nasty' bits while Shelia drew on her medical experience in the USA and produced the romance. The humour? That came from real life.

Book preview

Part One

COLD START

WARM START

COMPUTER/STROKE: One important difference is that during a cold start (aka cold boot – initial application of power), volatile memory cells will power-up in an unpredictable way such that their contents will contain random data, and any configurable ports etc. will power-up into either unknown or default states. In contrast, following a warm start (aka warm boot), although memory/port configuration etc. may no longer contain desirable values (that may be why a warm boot is being called for ? ...) and they will no longer contain completely random data, as power will not have been removed from the system following the initial initialization routines.

A Fictional Story about Frank Baker and His Friends

By

John E. Chapman

Preface

My name is Frank Baker. My story takes place in that part of the South, where you have the hindlick maneuver and say doodie instead of duty. You have light doodie, heavy doodie, and super doodie; with the use of each you make a joke; where intellectualizing may employ a complicated term such as Topsy Turvy, or Incite, pronounced excite, as in excite a riot, or Substantial pronounced sustantial; where, if something is as good as shit, or goodern shit, it’s good; where it’s good to be The Shit. Where before sex she might say: You’re too fat Daddy, let me be on top.

The year is 2009. I’ve decided to write a kind of memoir. I live alone and need to express my opinion about things and this is the way I’ve chosen to do that. It will in no way be a formal type of writing, or account of things that have gone down in my past. I intend also, to write about most anything that comes to mind, and do it much as I would when writing an e-mail to a friend, only you are that friend, as is anyone else who wants to read what I have written. I guess that means friends are a dime a dozen, although a dozen may be optimistic.

I reckon everyone at one time or another thinks it would be nice to write a memoir. Well I decided to do it, though I’m not certain how the writing will transpire. There may not be as many things remembered as with a normal memoir. Being as opinionated as I am, I’m sure I’ll delve into a number of topics, so you have been fairly warned. I trust though that along with opinions, current events and such, things remembered will also transpire in my writing so I’ll forge ahead. It will be an adventure for me. I hope you, the reader, will also have a favorable experience.

CHAPTER 1

CANAL STREET

The date is January twenty first, two thousand and nine. Yesterday Barack Obama was sworn into office as the forty fourth President of the United States of America. I watched the proceedings and festivities on TV. It was a moving experience, and while sitting here alone with my cat Mali close by I was moved to shed a couple of tears during his speech. Por old George just sat by and endured. I’ll bet he can’t wait to get to Crawford and fix himself a lata, or maybe he’ll just open a beer.

I wonder if, when he walks to the refrigerator for another beer, he walks with his arms bowed at his sides like a gun slinger, like he has every time I’ve seen him walking on TV. I guess he will. And, if he does, what should I infer from that? I know: that the walk is his normal walk and that he is not, in his mind, playing cowboy, gunslinger, the high-sheriff, the toughest dude in town. I would but I don’t think I can. If he looks like a kid, walks like a kid and acts like a kid, I got’a go with kid.

My next door neighbor Lena Freeman just knocked and borrowed another bit of coffee. We drink the same brand and she is out. I tried to give her enough to last through the weekend but she declined my offer saying that she needed to be out so she wouldn’t forget to get some when she goes to the store Monday. So I guess she will return on Saturday or Sunday for more.

I’ve known Lena since I moved here three years ago. She is sixty-seven I think, about three years older than me anyway, and reminds me of my mother who would be ninety-nine if she were alive. But Lena is very knowledgeable about most anything, and thinks deeply about life and the implications therein, and my mother was simply my mother, a great mother but headed for a heaven gotten into only by specific means, a means that excluded me and my kind entirely. That could be Lena too. But I think mother never gave up hope for me. She thought that at heart I was a good person, and she wanted to believe that I would somehow get there.

I may have wanted to go there when I was a child, streets of gold and all, but now that all seems so tacky, almost as tacky as seventy two virgins. What a tossup, and to think the people who believe such are at war with one another. It’s enough to cause permanent depression. Of course proponents of both religions can talk circles around such a simplistic observation. They won’t take no for an answer, and they each have arms to prove it. What a man! And women just want to kiss and make up. Sissies!!

I’m not sure why Lena reminds me of Mom but she does. Maybe it is no more than the fact that she seems concerned with my wellbeing and that she is a woman. We have no obvious attraction to one another though we have never talked about that. I have wondered if Lena still has sexual urges but I suppose I’ve not really wanted to know the absolute facts. She is not unattractive. On the contrary I think she is beautiful. But at her age she seems beyond any sexual concern.

I have also wondered if her clitoris, or any woman’s clitoris, was as large as my Mr. Peeny is, and got hard and throbbed as convulsively as Mr. Peeny, AKA Old-Man Peeny, does on a regular basis, would she also look at internet porn like I do. OK, I’ll not be writing porn, but I probably could if I so desired.

Lena has a computer and is on-line. We e-mail each other about the weather and other such small-talk subjects. I suppose if I left Mr. Peeny alone my sexual interest would wane, go south, and allow me to go through these latter years unhampered with the burden of sexual thoughts …..nah. I was born holding on to the throbbing Mr. Peeny, and I expect I’ll go out the same way.

Well, talking about Mr. Peeny is no way to start a memoir. But if I intend to be truthful I think I should include that aspect of my life in my writing effort, as it has always been a major player. You?... or maybe it is a Mrs. or Miss Peeny I’m alluding to here. I’ll try and change the subject.

Momma and Daddy wanted me to believe that sex was meant for a married man and woman only, married according to the laws of God. How or why they thought anything was meant I can only speculate about. But they did and most people believe that also. I can’t say for certain that it was or is not so, but I can’t be certain about anything where life is concerned. It is happening, I think, but how much can I really know? The happening stays ahead of me always. I am only part of it.

I believe the gorilla, and the flea born on the gorilla, and spends its life on the gorilla’s body, are one. I think it would be my own ego that would see them as being separate. There are other, even smaller, life forms on both the flea and the gorilla. Until they are witnessed, and separated according with the human concept of self, they, the smaller life and their host, live as one, as I believe them to be. I think the world is people’s gorilla. And by projecting my imagination into outer space and looking back at the earth, I see that it is earth that is life, and I see that death is an integral part of that life, and I think, should be considered as life also. And as the right hand cannot know what the left hand is doing, a living person cannot know specifics about an afterlife, an after-death life. But one can imagine. The trouble starts when someone believes what they have imagined to be the shit: Streets of gold, seventy two virgins? Give it a rest please. Living and dying is life in the material world. It always has been, (I think), and it always will be. Who have you believed you are… other, beyond, better, more, in God’s image? You are just another deck hand, and there is no captain you are privy to on this ship. The ship is captain, if there is a captain, and it is one with the ocean. It is all God! There is life, and life only, and nothing can change that. How do I know? I don’t, I’m just tooting my horn because I can.

***

I live on Canal Street in Langston Tennessee. Who knows why the street was named that? Why is there a Paris Tennessee, a Rome Georgia? Shit happens, and that is that. This is not the seediest part of town but seeds are everywhere up and down the street.

For the most part it is quiet around here. Except for the yay’whos somewhere far down the street, I rarely hear those thumping radios that only an ijit would have. The world, I think, is largely populated with ijits, and most ijits prefer a street more modern and more user friendly than Canal Street. Fine by me.

The mailman stops every day between two and four, and the garbage man picks garbage up every Monday, usually in the afternoons before five. My electric/water/sewer/ bill, etc. and phone/internet bill, and other monthly bills are paid by bank draft. The money is automatically withdrawn from my bank account each month, so I don’t have to remember to write a check. My social security and disability checks are automatically deposited. Automatic withdrawal by the Volunteer Electric Company and Telephone Company and others is how it should have been all along. But when I was younger I had specific ideas about what should and should not be happening in my life, and I liked to make decisions like ol’ Matt Dillon drew his six-gun and fired. I thought I was in charge.

You might be in charge of the rock you choose to throw into the pond, and for a short time you may be in charge of counting the ripples made, but where specifically those ripples go and when on the shore they strike is of a cosmic nature and out of your jurisdiction. To my way of thinking you and I are no more than ripples ourselves, ripples whose origins one cannot know simply because one wishes to know. I believe life is not, nor ever about knowing about the big picture. But ijits don’t see it that way. I am reminded of the monkey who, when screwing an elephant, heard the elephant grunt when a coconut fell from a tree and struck the elephant on the head. The monkey, (it was a talking monkey into bestiality) said: What’s’a matter ol’gal, did I hurt’ya?

I have another neighbor named Jim Long. We have known each other only as long as I’ve lived here, about three years, and yet it seems that we have known each other always. You’ve met and have known people like that. Well Jim is a very good friend, and a very good person I think. He is my age, kind and considerate, thoughtful, trustworthy, all the right things a good boy scout is supposed to be. And I think he is funny, though his humor often originates in the bathroom. I call him a very fine commodian. As for humor, he probably thinks something similar about me. He lives only three houses away to the north.

When the weather permits we visit one another and trash mouth about everything and whoever might get in our way. If it weren’t for folks like Jim and me, the goody-two-shoe people of the world would all be out of anything to do, anyone to point their fingers at. So we hold forth with an honorable purpose in spite of whatever else we might be.

Jim tells a story about a young girl who lived in this house before I moved in. Her name was Yvonne Pritchett. I made that name up but what do you care? Yvonne was very young, not quite twenty, and lived alone. She was pretty and sexy looking, and had often lain in the yard sunbathing. One day she saw a man hiding in the bushes watching her. Then, when he saw that she had seen him, he up and ran. Well go figure. Anyway, Jim said the girl, from that day on, suspected that she was being watched at night when she took her clothes off before bed. She had not thought about it before, she said, but guessed she had undressed at night before an un-shaded window many times while he watched.

On several occasions, since seeing him run away, she had heard something or someone outside her window and thought it surely could have been the same man. She told Jim this while he was in the company of two of his former male friends who suggested that they try and catch the guy. They suggested using Yvonne as bait and she liked the idea.

Jim told me he did not like the idea as it was obvious to him that it would be a kind of entrapment that would snare almost any man because Yvonne planned to undress in front of her window. Hell I’d watch at, he said. But Yvonne and his two friends, two younger men, did like the idea and would do it whether he participated or not. Jim said the two friends talked excitedly about catching a pervert, and could not be persuaded to think differently.

So for several nights in succession Yvonne pranced half naked in her bedroom, in front of the window with the curtains pulled back. Jim sat grumpily in his house while his two friends hid in the bushes with binoculars and watched. Of course their thoughts were as white and as pure as the driven snow, and they were only doing their civic duty. On the fourth night the peeper was seen hiding behind a tree in Yvonne’s yard, just outside here, and he was tackled and subdued and the police were called.

He was a young boy only sixteen years of age. I’ll call him Nathan. Nathan’s story was that he was walking down the street and saw Yvonne through her window taking her clothes off. All he had to do was step into her yard and behind a tree and he could see her plainly. He told the police that she was half naked, and then he asked them what they would have done.

The police would not answer him, and he was promptly arrested. Nathan vehemently denied ever being there before but the police stood by their resolve that he was the afore-mentioned peeper. I’ll shorten the story here. Nathan was sent to a juvenile detention center where he spent a year and a day. Yvonne had a nervous breakdown after realizing what she had done and left town, and Jim’s two friends joined the police force. Piss on Jim’s friends, but as for Nathan and Yvonne, talk about losing your head over a little piece of tail. What goes on here? Why are people so screwed up about sex? I think I know the answer. I suppose I’m asking you to consider the question.

Nathan and Yvonne were kids. Their lives forever marred by an attitude, a belief, that sex is a bad thing unless it has been sanctioned by marriage and ordained by the right religion. People all over the world feel that way. And yet sex sells and people buy. Women tease and men slobber. The forbidden fruit taste best. The tighter you pull on the reins the wilder the horse gets. Is that not obvious?

Consider the Bonobo ape. Of course I don’t really think many will actually consider the behavior of an animal in direct relation to humans, even though we share with the Banobo 98 percent of the same genes. There is almost no aggression among them. They are famous for settling all their differences with sex. And of course anybody with any sense knows they are all going to hell where the Devil will jab them in they asses with his red pitchfork until the cows come home. People in general would rather bask in the notion that we humans are cast in God’s, His, image. I wonder what dickhead first came up with that notion. Actually I think I went to the same school as him. We were in the same class together. I failed that year and he passed with honors.

***

I got married in 1980. I was thirty five years old. I married a woman named Nina Fowler. We first had a sexual relation and tried for a couple of weeks to screw each other to death, I think. She had long blond hair and was built like a super model, and I felt like a rabbit that had fallen into a vat of carrots, alfalfa maybe. I’ll not speak for her but I thought she was as happy as I with the situation. She initiated the sexual encounters we shared as often as I did. That’s my memory of it anyway.

Well it is not my intention to harp on that relationship, per say. We did what we did and it lasted for three years and then dissolved because of a lack of interest on both our parts, and then we went our separate ways, and I have not married since. But many of my friends have gotten married, and have divorced. A couple of those relationships lasted ten years and some longer, and a couple are still struggling after all this time, almost thirty years. But the players seem very miserable and the relationships destined to end eventually with a nasty whimper.

I do have an opinion about relationships, if you can believe that. I’ll cut directly to the chase here. I think relationships are a social setup, an imagined, yeah though assumed social imperative, bound to fail except where the matches are naturally good. I suppose one might ask, how could a looser like Frank Baker know diddly about relationships? I think everyone knows about them. The question should be, I think, who will give up the beans, the true beans, the shit, about relationships, and not hold back like a cowardly little girl. Well, I jest. Relationships are serious business and maybe that is where I find objection, with the dire seriousness supposed. If I had a solution to what I perceive as a problem, I would defiantly have something to crow about. Well I’m crowing anyway. Sue me!

Relationships all over the world are grounded with religious assumptions, religiosity. God wants these two to be together. God knows the good of this relationship, this union, and will see to its fulfillment. People everywhere want fulfillment, Godly fulfillment. They pray, hoping, even assuming, that their prayers to the all mighty are heard, considered, and often, according to His Godly intent and demeanor, answered. Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil: an epitome of human assumption. And the valley of the shadow of death: very poetic! But still an assumption and it is a human assumption that death is the end of life. From the appearance of the sail-dogs and sail-cats and frogs etc., lying flat on the side of the road, it looks like the end. Uncle Ben sure couldn’t get out of the coffin and walk around anymore. His race was run!

But what does anyone actually know about an end of life, or even being born? What can be known about the underlying exactions of the birth or death of anyone? Anything put forth by people about either can be no more than an assumption, a guess, educated though it might be, but still a product of imagination. I don’t think that is a bad thing, but it should be taken for what it really is and not what man has deemed, yeah though told by God, or by science (science: possibly in the future a new religion) that it is.

Well he must just be an atheist, the woman said of me. Not so! An atheist says there ain’t no God. That is another silly assumption. I say, all you might think you know about God can only be a guess, speculation. But I don’t know that that is a bad thing, that it is not a plan devised by God even. Don’t know are the key words. Well that ain’t the cowboy way, is it?

No, it is not the cowboy way, and the world is overrun with cowboys and their cowgirls. And the cowboys, most of them, are armed and itching to use those arms, and they do use them often. I don’t have much good to say about the cowboys and cowgirls of the world. They hold the purse strings and keep their fingers on the triggers of their weapons, and demonstrate on a regular basis that they are not beyond or above using those physical powers to achieve their objectives. And you can hold a mirror up all day to them and their folly, and it does absolutely no good because they will not give it a rest. Gawud will see to it that we are served well!! they say. Such is the strength of fear and the audacity of arrogance.

Here I reckon is as good a place as any in my memoir, if that is what it is, to bring in JorEl and Hector. I may even write a bit of dialogue. Why not?

I have known those two guys since moving to this house and they have both been a great help to me since. I think Hector is Hector’s real name but I believe JorEl adopted his name. I haven’t asked him about it but I think I will soon. I know that JorEl was/is Superman’s father’s name, so he couldn’t have invented it, but I feel pretty sure JorEl’s parents did not name him that. I spell it JorEl because that is how he signed his name on a note he left on my door back when I first moved here. Maybe it is spelled that way in the funny book too. It has been so long since I’ve looked at a Superman comic book I can’t remember.

I Googled the name JorEl and found that in the Superman comic strip it was spelled Jor-El. So this JorEl simple adopted that name.

I don’t know a lot about gay men but from what I can gather Hector is basically the pitcher and JorEl the catcher. That doesn’t mean that Hector does not also catch, but I think what I have described is the general alignment. I expect that my point of view is a bit red-neckish and I’ll have to admit that it probably is. They are both nice, good guys, as in hey you guys, and they are my friends, but therein lies something between us that is like unto a rift, and forever it shall be. It must have something to do with sucking dick, I think. That activity apparently offers no problems for them, but for myself I take objection to it, either catching or pitching with men, and it might show. But they each have never let me go for very long without somehow reminding me that the possibility of it happening with them is still open. Well thank you, I was so worried. I am a most desirable hunk of meat, so I’m told.

A true object of my seamy desire lives at the end of Doral Street, the street out front here. Her name is Malinda Kingston. She is only twenty I think, about the age of a granddaughter if I had one, and knows me for what I probably am, a dirty old man. But she waves back if I wave to her, and I do, though I sometimes feel guilty for what I might be thinking at the time. I’m thinking something like that right now. For some reason, at this moment I’m not feeling guilt. Could it be that I am now free from feeling guilty? Negatory! But maybe one day, though it is best to not count my chickens before they hatch.

JorEl is the crying type. He is slight of build, about a foot shorter than Hector, and has in the past knocked on my door often, his face red and puffy, with eyes watery and swollen from hours of sobbing. I think Hector will throw the root to anything, anyone, and it greaves JorEl to no end. I made a casual suggestion once that he find, and take, a lover on the side like Hector did. I’ll not do that again. JorEl brightened up quickly and, though I’m nearly three times his age, promptly made a most direct pass at me. I feel certain that now both men know that I’m never going to be interested. Actually I don’t think either has cottoned to the word never. But I think that as long as I have there is nothing to worry about. Actually I know nothing about never or forever, but I’m not worried.

They seem fatalistic. There is something fatalistic about both, and about their relationship. Hector is so self-assured and rambunctious, a bonafied risk taker. He rides an old Harley motorcycle, and rides it like Evel Knievel might. JorEl is reticent, cowardly even, and very emotional. Maybe it is my redneck up-bringing that causes me to think this: but I can’t understand how anyone can expect to be successful in trying to put a square peg in a round hole. And that is what homosexuality is to me, a useless try. I wish I could say, consider the Banobo.

But, I can’t. Animals are animals. Not only do certain animal species engage in infanticide, homosexuality is prevalent among the Banobo species. But they do make love, well sex anyway, and not war. I agree but I certainly don’t want to suck a man’s dick, nor do I want any man to suck mine. I’ll get my nut some old fashioned way, or get no nut a-tall.

When I said Hector and JorEl have been helpful, I meant it. I had lived here only a month or so following a stroke I had down in Georgia in 2005, and as I was hobbling down my concrete stairs out front one day going to my mailbox to check for mail, Hector came riding his motorcycle down the street. He stopped, killed the engine and got off and asked me if he could get my mail for me. I definitely let him because it is a struggle to get down the steep concrete stairs to the mailbox, and then back. He said he had seen me before at my mailbox and figured I was going there then.

Hector is in his mid-twenties and wears black leather clothes. His leather clothes, shirt, pants and jacket, seem always to be dirty, and are covered with stainless steel studding for decoration. His hair is shaggy and natty looking and he does not bath often, so one’s first impression is usually, I would say, not very favorable. I thought at the time when he first stopped that he might be trying to somehow take advantage of an old guy with a cane. But he simply wanted to be helpful. He told me he lived down the street and had seen me often.

Well, I saw him several times during the following week as he would come by on his motorcycle and wave. It was summer time and I often sat on my front porch. He came by one day with someone riding with him, and they stopped and came up to the door of my porch. I told them to come on in. Hector opened the screen door and he and his friend came in and took a chair apiece. When we were all seated we talked.

This here’s JorEl, he said. JorEl, this here’s Frank Baker.

Howdy, I said. Nice to meet’ya JorEl. Nice day to be out ride’n round, ain’t it?.

Sure is, JorEl said, with no pretence to hide his femininity. There may be men like him with a voice kinda like Truman Capote’s, who are not gay. I’ve know of one or two. But I knew immediately that he was. There were other telltale signs, such as his long fingernails and his use of a most pungent and sweet smelling perfume. Hector’s perfume is his body odor, but JorEl’s was most definitely store bought. And he sat close to Hector and kept his hand on Hector’s knee. Hector seemed proud that he did. I thought then that they must be an item. I was right. At that time they had lived together for three years. That was almost three years ago and they are still living together today. But I think they struggle with their relationship, and I think both fear that it might not last much longer. But who knows?

Tuesday Jan 27:

Lena knocked on my door this morning. She brought a cup of coffee with her, and sat at my dining room table, and I could tell that she had something important on her mind. I poured a cup of coffee and sat with her. What are you thinking about Lena? You seemed concerned about something.

I am concerned about something, she said. You won’t take medicine and you refuse to ever go to a doctor. I had a dream about you last night and it has me very upset.

I have expressed my opinion to her about doctors and medicine before, and did not want to have to repeat myself. I can’t change just because you want me to, I said.

You’re not getting any younger Frank, she said, and you just float along like there is no tomorrow. You died in my dream.

I don’t know what to say, I said. I’m still alive. That ought to mean something to ya. Don’t it?

It means you’re stubborn.

I might be, I told her. Lena is like a lot of people who want to believe they have some kind of communication with the all mighty. I don’t know for a fact that for them, they do not, but for me there is nothing about the all mighty that is black and white, or a cinch to accept and specifically involve myself with. And I can’t rely on dreams for any kind of certitude. It all seems to require a measure of imagining, which is what derails me. But she apparently is totally prepared to do that and thinks of me as being stubborn.

I’ve explained my opinions about doctors and hospitals in detail to Lena, and she refuses to take me seriously. I tell myself I’ll never be involved again with trying to explain my reasoning to her, but I forget how blocked her mind is to my way of thinking, and before I know it, I am back again dealing with her deaf ears, and her unwillingness to think about what I am trying to put forth to her. She reminds me that doctors saved my life, the very doctors I rail against. That is true. If not for them I might have died.

If you save someone’s life you are a hero. That encapsulates her reasoning about this subject in total. Saved from death, from hell, from the jaws of suffering, from illness, from pain, from… the point to me is, saving someone is a concept devised by the human ego and sense of self, which hinges on a logical assumption that deems death to be equal to life lost. I can’t agree with that assumption. I suppose I can’t disagree also, but primarily I can’t agree. But I do doubt it. I mean, what can a person truly know about the loss of life, or the acquiring of it? As I have said: I think life and death are together life: one cannot exist without the other. I have no proof, of course, but I don’t feel the need to prove it.

This same assumption of saving has aided the rise of medical doctors and their medicines. Where in the vast scheme of things does prevention fit in? Not much, or very often, I think. What? You want to put the hero doctors out of a job? (To use a popular phrase: exactly! and another: absolutely!) So what does that make Frank Baker, a criminal? No doubt, and not a good cowboy. And I might have died without the help of doctors. That is true. At the risk of sounding ungrateful or glib, I was born to die. And I can’t forget that truthful paradigm. Prolong the inevitable with prevention yes, but I can’t cotton to the perceived magic bullets modern doctors make an obscene living prescribing. I have a friend that might suggest a question: what is the difference? I ask again, saved from what, the inevitable? Oh yes, there is the element of time. Let’s not forget about time. The clock is ticking!

Lena accuses me of being ungrateful, sarcastic and boastful. I appreciate the extra time of life provided to me by the efforts of the doctors in Kennesaw Ga. when I had a stroke. I appreciate the better quality of time provided by doctors performing the hernia operations I received in 1958 and again in 2006. I have been grateful for doctors and can be again. Doctors and Medicine are often very useful and necessary. But, and for me it is a big but, in the medical profession, where lies the importance of prevention? If disease is prevented there is no need for many doctors. So what doctor wants to deplete his usefulness? But if prevention is not the future of the medical profession there can be no future, as I see it. But for the time present, doctors in general can own big boats and enjoy high praise among the peoples of the world who need their medicines.

You are only human. You are not God, Lena said once. I can’t imagine what saying that might have meant to her. But she said it, and I have to think there was some sort of a thought responsible for it. She must think I’m an audacious person, getting above my raise’n. I’m certainly not a kid anymore, but as a kid I thought the idea was to work hard and rise above your raise’n. I think I might have done that to some degree. But that is just an opinion, and I am not interested in proving it as truth. I believe truth will take care of itself. People are not the keepers or caretakers of truth. Maybe they could be, but I don’t think they now are. In fact I believe they are just the opposite. They, we, need help, maybe a complete overhaul.

Following is a list of a few human concepts that I think represents a reasonable cross section of presumed human achievement. Southern American ( but not exclusive only to the South or America) presumed human concepts: Deserve, time, hero, winning, saving, success, a new lease on life, achieve, sin, Gawud, angels, Santy Clause, heaven, hell, high, low, right, wrong, good, bad, right, left, democrat, republican, and on and on. Well, for a while anyway, maybe a short while. And here is a list of popular phrases used by people, especially people on TV: Not out of the woods yet, Pulling out all the stops, At the end of the day, Exactly, Absolutely, Right, Kicking the can down the road, The bottom line, Closure, Talk about it, Rest assured, Get ahead, Dodged a bullet, Watching it very closely, Keeping a close eye on it, Speaking out, Caught on tape, Red flag, Always been there for me, I’ll be there for…, Thinking outside the box, Holding their feet to the fire, As it goes forward, Working closely with, On a much lighter note and a much, much lighter note, Please do-be careful, Talk about, The white stuff, Cracking down on that, Leaving no stone unturned, Caught on tape, Litmus test, and switching gears now.

So you’ve thought of others. And there are thousands more!

Yes I worked at making those lists.

Lena did not badger me long. She sipped her coffee, and I thought I could detect her mind at work. What are you thinking about? I asked her.

Well I’m worried about you, that’s a fact, but I’m also worried about Hector and JorEl. They are both so, I can’t express what I’m thinking.

I think I know what you mean. They are pitiful in many ways.

Yes they are. You don’t think I’m being silly?

Well no, but, they are in charge of their lives and all you can do is try to be helpful.

Well how can we do that?

We?

Of course we. You want to help them don’t you?

Yes but how and not be meddling?

I guess that’s what I’m thinking about.

All we can do is be their friends and be there for them if they ever need us, I said. Lena looked at me as though I didn’t quite understand the problem. She appeared tired and in need of sleep. Did you sleep well last night?" I asked.

I had bad dreams, the one I told you about for one. Why, do I look it?

You look like you could use some sleep.

I used to be pretty, sleep or no sleep.

You’re still pretty, I said.

I’m old, my wrinkles have wrinkles, there’s nothing pretty about that.

Wrinkles show you’ve had a history, that’s all, you are still pretty.

Thanks, but I guess I just don’t care. But you wouldn’t know me if you could see how I looked when I was, say twenty.

Is that right? Got any pictures?

Sure, I got lots. Wanna see some?

Sure, when?

What’s wrong with now?

Nothing, let me get my cane and I’ll be ready to go.

Her house smelled good, like cinnamon. I had been in her house before but I am always surprised with the neatness of it and the good smells. Women! You can’t live with’em, and they can’t pee standing up. I think Charlie Sheen said that. I don’t know for certain but I heard he did. Awesome, huh? I Googled the phrase and it appears that the character Rube Baker, actor Eric Bruskotter, said it in the movie Major League. There seems to be some discrepancy as to whether the quote is can’t live with’em or can’t live without’em. Wha’ ye know? I wonder who first came up with it. Boy howdy!

Anyway, Lena’s house is very nice. She has nice clean carpet and a lot of old antique furniture. Most of your furniture is antique isn’t it? I asked her.

I guess it is. It all belonged to relatives. I wouldn’t want to part with any of it.

I don’t know diddley squat about antique furniture but I had just seen Antiques Road Show on TV that featured a chair similar to one in Lena’s living room. That one there sure looks old. Do you know how old?

It was my Great, Great Grandmother Wilma’s. She would be about two hundred years old if she were alive, so the chair is very old.

She had no idea how old it was and didn’t care. I was directed to sit on the couch while Lena brought a tin box of pictures from a book shelf, and then she sat on the couch beside me and put the box between us. I need to put these in an album sometime. I’ve been saying that for years but I keep putting it off. She rifled through the lot, pulling first one then another from the box and laid them on my lap. They were pictures of her in the late nineteen-forties and early fifties and sixties. I was amazed. The young girl in her black and white, glossy photos looked wonderful and you could tell, I thought, that she was aware of her good looks. But I would never have known they were pictures of Lena without her first telling me.

She noticed me looking first at a photo then her. What’s’a matter, don’t you believe it’s me?

I’ve only known you three years. I’m not used to seeing you so young.

They are all me. I’ve got grammar school pictures and earlier pictures. I can get my sister over here to vouch for me if necessary.

Oh no, I believe you. I can now see that they are all you. Ever win any beauty contest?

No, I was never in any.

Well you should have been, and I think you would have won.

Well aren’t you complimentary? What about now?

Beauty contests are for the very young. What are you trying to do, trap me in some kind of lie?

Men are full of bull where women are concerned. I don’t see why you would be any different.

"Yes, you don’t see why. I love these pictures. Were these taken here in Langston?"

Most of those were taken in Blue Ridge, Georgia. I was raised up there you know."

No, I didn’t know. How long have you lived in Langston?

My husband was from here. I met and married Tom in 1960. So, close to fifty years, I reckon. Time flies when you are having fun.

Are you having fun?

Not near enough, but I’m doing OK.

There was a picture of Lena wearing a two piece bathing suit. She looked like a swimsuit model. I looked at it and then at her, and she blushed.

We didn’t talk anymore about my health, or her dreams, or Hector and JorEl, but I could tell she had not forgotten. Lena never lets something rest once she has it established firmly in her mind, or on her to-do list.

We had two cups of coffee while sitting on her couch looking at old photographs. Then I came back home and continued to try to outline a story I wanted to write. Writing dialogue puts me back in my fiction state of mind.

***

Jim just called and asked me to supper. He said he had a fresh pound of ground round and was going to make chili. I declined his invitation to eat, but said I would join him a bit later. When you are raised eating meat and everyone you know eats meat, it is not an easy thing to stop doing. Well why would anyone want to stop? Why would they even consider stopping. I’m sixty four and I have just about completely stopped, and yet I’m not certain my reasons are, as they say, the shit. Jim would want to argue about it so I haven’t told him yet.

I started cutting back two years ago, and also, I am nearly done with salt, though so many processed foods contain salt. I can’t seem to get away from it as completely as I would like. But I now eat very few processed foods which puts me close.

No meat, no salt and very little white sugar. But white sugar and salt are essential ingredients of Little Debbie Cakes and Pies, so I may never cut those two out completely. I have considered making my own cakes and pies using honey and brown sugar. I eat something sweet after supper each evening. I have a friend who sees my top desk drawer always containing three or four different kinds of Little Debbie’s and he is certain, I think, that I munch on them throughout the day. No so, I eat one, sometimes two, if they are small, after dinner only, and don’t touch them again until after my next dinner.

I had a stroke in May of 2005. In four months it will have been four years. I didn’t keep my records from the hospital in Kennesaw Georgia, though I think I could still get them if I just would. So I don’t know the details about my stroke, the kind, type etc., but it was a stroke on the left side of my brain. According to the nurses there, I was close to death. They said it was as if all my lights had just about gone out, then suddenly they came back on. No one would offer an explanation except to say that stranger things had happened to stroke victims. Well thank you.

I don’t remember much about my stay in the hospital there, or my five month stay in a nursing home in Woodstock, Georgia afterward. I remember things but they are disjointed and incomplete, and at times erroneous. I’ll write more about those times later on.

A stroke is a strange thing. Just before a stroke you have everything you’ve always had plus potential. Then, after a stroke, you come-to, maybe, and realize you don’t have a full deck anymore. It’s like a thief broke in to your house and ransacked it, taking things vital to your well-being.

Of course all strokes are different, like snowflakes I think. There are similarities, yet they can occur in different degrees. And strokes can affect different areas of the brain and body. So a person can have the same kind of stroke as another person, but the variations of difference can be vast, and much of the difference can be attributed to the different personalities of the ones afflicted. It makes more sense to prevent strokes than to try and treat them.

I’ve likened my affliction to a feeling of having a bushel basket full of loose kite cord dumped on my head, or more specifically my whole physicality. There was never any pain, just a startling mental and physical realization that I am not the same and will never be the same. The cord fell down all around me and on me, and I have to be careful with everything I do lest I get tangled in it or stumble on it. I can muscle my way through some things, snapping the frail string, but my balance was affected, and I can’t see well because the string is partially covering my vision. And because of that, and being extremely cumbersome, always hampering my progress going forth, it will cause me to fall if I am not careful. It is always there obstructing every move, except when I sleep, if I don’t dream about it.

It is like a dastardly visitation in your brain of a phantom thief who takes things important to you, such as balance for instance, as much of mine is now gone. I have to be very careful even with simple functions like walking and turning around, even on a flat, hard surface. I can lose my balance and fall at about any time, so I must always keep a walking cane within reach and use it everywhere I go. Sometimes in my house I’ll not walk with it from here to there, but usually I do. No balance is no balance. I’m sure I’ll write more about my stroke further along in this memoir, though it is not turning out to be much of a memoir.

I’m hungry so I’ll eat the meatless soup I make pretty much the same each week, and then a little Debbie, and then I’ll go see, Jim the commodian.

Jim is sixty-four, the same as me; only I want actually be sixty-four until March. I think he was sixty-four last December, so he shall remain my senior, and I shant let him forget that. It’s good being the youngest.

Jim was married for thirty-five years, until his wife, Lois, died five years ago of a heart attack. He told me he grieved for a couple of years and thought he was going to die because of it, so he decided to force himself to quit grieving. He said he had to force himself or he would have grieved himself straight into the grave. It was a show of strength if you ask me.

He takes pretty good care of himself, though I don’t understand how a person can expect to live a long life and eat as much meat and salt as he does. Of course people have been doing that for a long time. I was raised on meat and salt, but even in my twenties and before, I think, I was thinking both might be bad for me, especially in the long run. And when you get to be my age, a longer run becomes most important.

Jim saw me approaching his house, I think, and answered the door wearing the new boxer shorts he got for Christmas. His shorts are white and covered with about a hundred red ants, each printed-on ant about one inch long.

I knew you had ants in yer’pants, but damn, them are big’ns.

Yeah, he says, they’re from Texas. They’re big’ns. And they smell my ass and think there’s food about. You gonna come in or just stand there?

I’z wait’n to be invited.

What, you think you’re special or somethin’?

Or somethin’, I said.

If you didn’t bring me some pussy you ain’t nothin’.

I never touch the stuff. It’s just me an ol’ Minnie here, I said while entering his house and holding up my right hand.

He looked at me like I had a loose screw. Does Minnie ever go out with other guys? he asked.

He saw the bewildered look on my face and laughed heartily. Jim doesn’t always stick me with a good one like that, so he took full advantage of my defeat and guffawed.

Fuck, I said, looking down at the floor, and shook my head.

He howled with laughter upon seeing my look of defeat. You walked smack dab into that one, he said. You ain’t gonna get shit faced on me are you?

I’m thinkin’ it over. I just don’t deserve that. And I’m a damn good lookin’ man, I said, borrowing an old Dabney Coleman line.

You are one lost ball in the high weeds is what you are, he said. Can you handle some coffee?

Shor, black.

Hell I ain’t get’n it for ya. You know where it’s at.

You rub my face in shit and now you won’t even get me a cup of coffee.

It’s a rough life, then you die, he said.

Jim could definitely use a house keeper. His place is always messy and needing to be cleaned. I used to give him a hard time about it, but I had to stop because he started taking it personally. I ain’t never been good at that shit, he said one day. Lois kept things clean and well organized but I just can’t get in the right groove. Sue me! I haven’t mentioned anything about it since.

You missed some damn good chili, he said.

I’ve about quit eating meat, I told him.

What the hell for?

I’ve always thought about it I reckon, even when I was a teenager. And then after the stroke, when everything pretty much tasted the same and I didn’t seem to care anymore about food, and I needed to get as healthy as I could, I just started cutting back until now I hardly ever touch it.

You’ll get anemic as hell, he said. God made meat for man to eat. You ought’a know at.

You’re in pretty tight with ‘im I guess, the man upstairs, I said.

Why yeah. I know that much anyhow. I still got some chili. Let me get you a bowl of it.

I’ll pass Jim. Thanks anyway.

I knew you were weird but I didn’t know you were that weird.

Tip of the iceberg my man, tip of the iceberg, I said.

So, you’re queer, too, zat it?

No that would make you just too happy. Ah yes, I see now. That’s why you was showin’ interest in ol’Minney.

Not on yer life old man. I got me some real nice pussy standin’ by.

You ain’t seen no pussy since you went to the bathroom this mornin’.

Shoo, I got some. I got some last week.

"Who was’e?

"Her name is Drusilla."

You made that up, I said.

I’ll bring’er down to meet’ya tomorrow. She’s ‘pose ta come see me in a-mornin’.

His face said he was either telling the truth or he was a very good liar. I’ll have coffee on, I told him.

I bantered around with Jim for a while then came on back home and crawled into bed and read for an hour. And then I went to sleep. I’m usually asleep by eight PM, and I have my alarm clock set for four thirty AM. It rarely goes off because I’m usually awake by four and don’t go back to sleep. It sounds weird I know, but there’s nothing going on at night and only rarely do I watch anything on TV, a special maybe. But usually I fall asleep while it is on, and wake up at eleven and go to the bathroom, then turn the TV off.

Tuesday Feb 3:

It’s been a few days now since I sat here at my keyboard, a week to be exact, so I have a few things to write about. I’ll start with Lena. She came by Sunday and informed me that we were going to cook dinner on Thursday and invite Hector and JorEl.

And if they want to eat with their feet? I asked.

Then we’ll let ‘em, she said. "We’ll eat over at my house and they will be nice I’m sure