Thomas Leverett - plays and writing
http://20six.co.uk/leverett
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new year 2008
December 17, 2007
People in towns as small as Carbondale sometimes get started decorating for Christmas as early as October, and by now, the end of December, they’re done with it; the stores are already bringing out their Valentine candy. But with a week to go, we’re still trying to finish the term and get started, hoping there are still trees left in town (more than once, they’ve run out). We were set back a little- a leaky roof, a sick cat, Tom's fall from a ladder- all came in December- but now, finally, we’d like to take a breath, welcome & introduce three new members of the family, and wish everyone holiday greetings.
The biggest news for us this year is that Jen’s three grown children are all now married; we’ve given up getting everyone in a single photograph. Justin’s turning twenty in France now makes five out of our combined eight in their twenties, and spread out considerably. Details below:
Josie (29) and Derek are happy in Seattle, where she has a post-doc and he works for the man, Bill Gates, in some way or another. We expect them home shortly, but they have a whirlwind social tour whenever they touch ground in the midwest, so we won’t see them long.
Natalie (27) married Ethan Zeman in a civil ceremony in June, promising a bigger one in about a year, and then she started work on a PhD in Administration of Justice at Univ.-Missouri-St. Louis. She and Ethan, however, moved to Peoria, where his job is located and where they have bought a house. Ethan's father is a local math professor; Ethan's a big Illini and Cardinals fan. They have at least the intention of staying in the area; Peoria is about five hours away.
Eric (25) married Jennifer Kruszynski in Santa Rosa, CA on Labor Day weekend; Jen, Eli and Corey represented me and the older boys who had more trouble getting out of school. All reports from the wedding were good; they live in Santa Rosa where Eric goes to school and works. Jennifer is his former karate teacher and they have each won national awards for karate. We wish they were closer in case they produce our first grandchildren.
Kylie (22) married Joshua Brewer in the country between Marion IL and Goreville in November; I can verify that this wedding also was very nice. Good weather, beautiful bride, nice families, well-behaved children, everything seemed to work out. They live in Carbondale though Josh works in Marion; Kylie says she is a "super senior" at SIU, and they also will also probably stay in the area.
Justin (20) spent the semester in Angers, France, in a program sponsored by Univ. of Kansas and a program there; he left in early September and is coming back on Sunday. His youngest brothers miss him dearly. When asked, how is school, he says, fine, and it could be because he forgot his English, or it could be because he’s been saying that pretty much for fourteen years. We eagerly await the full report.
Noah (15) has been playing video games, and some tennis, and enjoying a German class. He was Homecoming Prince- we didn’t quite know how to take that. As far as we can tell, it didn’t go to his head.
Elias (6) entered kindergarten, and that was a pretty big deal, especially since they speak Spanish half the time in this kindergarten, and he has learned that it’s a pretty clever trick, for example, to sing the alphabet song in Spanish. Some of his classmates are people he’s known all his life; others aren’t; it’s not the same school his older brothers went to, but it's challenging and interesting for him. He's moved through Cars and Batman, and now is seriously into Pokemon.
Corey (2) has learned to speak, so now we have to explain stuff to him. His older siblings are good at this. He has an active life at his preschool, where he has his own crowd of friends and lots of toys, and becomes immune to various local viruses regularly.
Jen got new administrative duties this year, and Tom suffers from her stress, but it's more likely the workload at SIU than the various weddings; she loves and approves of all the new in-laws. She also loves our new neighborhood and the house, leaky roof and all.
Tom started the year with a computer crash, but a weak dollar and the Saudi mission are keeping the ESL students coming, and it was busy year. The band produced a cd, with a song he wrote on it, but he tried to e-mail it and crashed a mail program and Safari in the process. Upon leaving work a week ago, the computer crashed again, this time more seriously, but, he went home, swept water off the leaky roof, and fell off the ladder coming down, requiring at least a dozen stitches and lots of rest and reflection. The worst thing, besides having to get up and finish grading, was having everyone assume he’d done it hanging Christmas lights..
A beautiful white snow has covered the town, making us wonder if travel arrangements will be difficult; it can be, here, when it snows even a few inches. One of our dogs, Lindy, died this year; she was a golden retriever, she loved this kind of snow, and she loved to wander around the woods. We're grateful that the rest of us are still here, including four cats and another dog, huddling under the remaining roof, but when it snows like this, we imagine her someplace where the snow is always fresh and white, and the woods go on forever. Someplace not too far away, we're sure.
Season's Greetings and a Happy New Year to all!
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Rebecca & Alice (two stories ~1998)
Rebecca
Rebecca was a pioneer. She lived in the 1800's in the American Midwest. Her father and mother were farmers; she had three brothers and five sisters. She married at the age of eighteen to a neighbor boy who was not related to her; they took over an old farmstead near the one where she had grown up, and began their new life.
She had a daughter and then a son. Her husband loved her and tried to please her; both of them loved their children. He farmed all day, clearing land, improving the house, growing crops, helping the neighbors, feeding the animals, cutting wood, keeping the horses and carriage in working order, and in general doing the things that farmers did in those days. It was a very busy life. Men came home at night exhausted, with little energy to play, read or be with the children.
She, on the other hand, spent all day with the children, reading to them, playing with them, feeding them, dressing them, and talking to them. In addition, she canned fruits and vegetables, made pies, bread and biscuits, did the laundry, by hand, and did all the cleaning. Outside, she tended the vegetable garden, got water from the well for baths, and often cut wood for the stove, when her husband was too busy. She also was exhausted at the end of the day, and did not have time or energy to share her day with her husband. They talked less and less.
On Sundays the family would go to church in their carriage. After church they would have their only social times of the week; they would talk, usually to members of his or her family, or have a picnic with other families. It was at these picnics that Rebecca would talk to other women. She eventually came to feel that her life was sadder and more isolated than the others'; that she was no longer in love with her husband. But unfortunately, divorce was impossible; it wasn't done. All of her relatives were in the immediate area; she couldn't run away, for instance, and live with a cousin, as some people that she heard of had done. She really had nowhere to go.
She had another daughter, and two more sons, one of them stillborn, and the neighbors never realized how unhappy she was. She didn't tell anyone except her sister, and she made her sister swear to secrecy. She went through her daily chores, and sometimes at night, she would become angry with her husband. But he really didn't understand her either. He never really knew how unhappy she was.
She was never able to change her situation. She loved her children and watched them grow up, but their lives reflected her own tragic unhappiness: the oldest boy was killed in an accident involving falling off a horse; her two daughters never married. The youngest boy refused to farm and became a minister; he and his wife moved back East. He had a son, Rebecca's grandson, but she never knew him, because they were too far to visit, and she died shortly after he was born. When she died, her sick husband was left in the care of her daughters, in a house that was slowly deteriorating.
Alice
Alice lived in the Midwest in the 1970's; she was 20 years old. Her family was from New York state, but she had come to the Midwest to go to school and stayed. She visited her parents about once a year. She worked as a waitress in a small restaurant.
One day a handsome man came in and ordered lunch. Alice was attracted to the man. She found out that he was a worker on a construction project on the outside of town. He had big muscles, was tan, and had wild, dirty hair. The man asked her to go to the movies that night, and she did.
Several months later, she was still seeing the man. She found out that she was pregnant. She didn't know whether to tell him or not. She didn't know if he would ask her to marry him or not. One night she saw him at the Laundromat and told him. He offered to marry her immediately, but it scared her. She valued her freedom.
However, she was unwilling to have an abortion, so she had the baby. It was a boy. She had to quit her job, but the government paid her a small amount on the Aid to Dependent Children program, and she was able to live a meager life. The man became bitter and left town.
Her life with the baby was somewhat empty. Her parents were disappointed but supported her; however, she didn't see them much. She felt that society disapproved of what she was doing, but people didn't say anything to her. In fact, her life was somewhat lonely; she liked to cook, but didn't want to cook a big meal for only herself and the child; she liked to garden, but gardening was impossible with a baby.
When the boy became five, she returned to school. She was tired of her life as a single mother. She was lonely and exhausted every night, and her son was very demanding; she had to be both a mother and a father to him. He began to get in trouble at school. She began to be afraid that she would be unable to handle him. Their town, though small, had many opportunities for trouble.
Several years later, she received another opportunity to marry, this time from the man who had been the cook in the restaurant where she had been a waitress. He now owned the restaurant. She married him. His income was not large, and they would not be rich, but he got along well enough with her boy, and that was important to her.
She had a daughter with him. He was a kind and loving father, though he was somewhat boring. She named the daughter Rebecca, after one of her ancestors, who had lived in the area. She felt that she needed a connection to history, to her family, to the past, that was missing in her life. She hoped that her daughter would be happier than she was.
(circa 1998)
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The Old Home Place
The Old Home Place
There was a guy I knew in high school who had taken a lawnmower engine and put it in a Volkswagen body- this car would not go very fast, but was unique in its general construction and of course got great gas mileage, though it sounded kind of funny. At one point he needed a horn and didn't have one, so he put an old bicycle horn on it, which sounded even funnier, and I remember him using it once in the high school parking lot. He only drove it to school that once; mostly he kept it around his family's place and used it to carry things like wood and bricks, like you would use a wheelbarrow. He and his family lived in the woods way back behind the bluffs of the river, and they made do in all kinds of ways which we cannot even imagine. They were avid hunters and also fished the river; they cut wood; they very rarely had to even come out when the weather was bad; they'd just stay holed up back there for weeks. There was Roger, his brother Ray, and their father and mother, who were getting very old but still healthy.
These brothers looked kind of alike, but were very different. Roger was able to stay home, hunt, fish, and virtually make a living selling what he caught; he probably would have never enjoyed one of those town jobs where you run a lawn mower shop or something, even though he could have done that perfectly well. Ray, on the other hand, had a drinking habit, so he had to work at a landscaping business to keep the money rolling in. And they had to support their parents.
The brother, Ray, had a feud with a local policeman that nobody cared for, a guy who would search people for no reason, hide behind the bar waiting for drunks to come out, and in general abuse his power. This guy's name was John Bobwater, or JB. JB had a thing against Ray, and the town being small and people having nothing else to do, sometimes these feuds got escalated. Sometimes I imagined JB and Ray actually being in the same high school class, but I couldn't swear that for certain, maybe it was Roger that shared the class with him. Anyway you can bet there had been some hostility going way back, to the point that who knows where it started, and surely both sides had been unreasonable. But JB had the law on his side, and also another policeman by the name of Getman. One time Ray had been present at a fight in the bar, and JB took that as an opportunity to go find him, beat him up, and get some information out of him. Only knowing JB you could be sure that the beating up would be much bigger than the getting information. Roger and the family were well aware of this and the father told JB and Getman to get lost, when they arrived at the house. Ray was at work, he said; mother was at the store, and Roger was off hunting somewhere. In fact Roger's truck was parked at the house, though, an old Ford, and JB knew this, and that made him mad, so he began cussing out the old man, and pushing him around with the butt of his gun.
Now this was kind of disrespectful, since the old man was one of these guys from the old school, that thought a young jerk like JB ought to show some respect even if he's about to search you or arrest you. But the old man didn't say anything, and neither did Getman, who was new on the force and following JB's lead at the time. JB got madder and madder and announced his intention to search the place; he'd always been curious what they had out there and was sure he'd find some ammunition, a stockpile or something. He started using the butt of his gun to paw through stuff on tables, and then he started turning over little endtables and things, just to make the old man mad. The old man's eyes burned but he said nothing. Finally he told the old man to take him out to the barn where he was sure he'd find Roger. But out there, all was quiet, except that Ray's truck was out there too, and now JB knew that both boys were on the property, but didn't know where. Now he became enraged, and he told Getman to hold the old man while he began punching him, trying to get information out of him. At this point Getman and the old man were under a large loft, whereas JB kept retreating kind of beneath the loft, between punches, so it was impossible for someone who was hiding in the loft to jump on JB, or at least this is how the story goes. In any case, Ray appeared out of nowhere- Roger was apparently hunting somewhere on the land- and Ray, from the loft, dropped down on Getman and began to fight with him, getting his hold loose on the old man. The old man began fighting at this time also.
This was all the excuse JB needed, and he drew his gun, and shot the old man; all the while, he was aiming for Ray. Aiming for Ray again, this time he shot Getman, and Getman died on the spot. Dead policeman, this was already very serious. Ray was in a panic, but JB still had the gun; JB was doing all the talking.
Now I'm giving you the mother's side of the story, because she came home from shopping at some point, and JB was knocked out on the floor of the barn, not too far from the dead people. She was in a panic due to the fact that her husband was dead, but she readily believed Ray and Roger, that Roger had just appeared sometime in this confrontation, had hidden, and knocked JB out with a door. There's also some question about who actually killed the two men, but, there was only one gun, and only one set of fingerprints on them; it was pretty clear that JB had killed them both. Later, he said it was self-defense; that the old man and Ray were charging him, and that at one point Ray had grabbed the gun and killed Getman.
Now killing a policeman is a pretty stiff charge, so there was a national hunt on for Ray, and you can bet they combed the property, one side to the other, but no sign of either boy, or their trucks. The mother had called 911; they'd come and got the bodies, had the whole crime scene investigation and everything; the mother told them Ray and Roger's story, which only differed from JB's with respect to who actually killed Getman. But JB never knew who hit him over the head with the door; even he admitted that. It could have been the mother, he always said.
So both trucks and both boys disappeared without a trace that very evening, not to be seen for years. They always suspected that one of the boys was around, because the widow always had fresh venison and was well supplied, but they kept their eye on the property, and found nothing. The boys were extremely good at hiding, if either one was around. One of the trucks, Roger's, appeared in Wyoming a few years later; police tracked down a traveler who said he'd bought it off one of the brothers and put his own plates on it. Police had no reason not to believe him and then believed that at least one of them had gotten away.
The mother had an old rambler and drove around town, freely telling her version of the story and staying away from JB. But Ray was wanted for killing Getman; Roger was wanted for hitting JB on the head with a door. They were both most wanted fugitives in the state for years. JB made sure there was a camera on the road from their house, and that that camera was watched at all times; nobody could leave by way of the road, without passing both the camera and the police station further down. Whenever JB heard stories about venison being eaten out there he'd hit the roof and do another round of searching, but come up empty. The mother would drive all over, so that no one knew if maybe she didn't get the venison from some generous neighbor; why not? There was no sign of the boys anywhere on the land or anywhere nearby.
About ten years went by, and I was thinking about the case, when sure enough, the other truck turned up, buried in the river. That would be Ray's truck; no other evidence was gained from it, and it had been there about ten years, or at the bottom of the river anyway. Now, upon thinking about the case, I figured that if anyone was hanging around, it was probably Roger, since Ray couldn't make it more than a few days without alcohol, and was a sociable type who enjoyed the company of people in a tavern. A person like that is going to surface eventually, not spend ten years in the hills. Roger, on the other hand, would be perfectly content to live without the truck, or anything else, hunt, fish, deliver food to the mother, and do it all without being seen. So I suspected that Ray had taken Roger's truck out west and sold it and disappeared, maybe to Mexico or wherever, but I had no evidence.
When the mother died, still eight more years later, interest in the case flared up again, but once again they found no trace of either boy; they buried the mother, sold the house and barn and land, and cleared the place of every trace of the family. There still were miles and miles of hiding places, caves, ravines, where someone could have been hiding, but nobody would have known it; the land was bought and occupied; people watched the cameras, and nobody left.
But at the funeral, a traveler showed up and claimed that he had in fact been there that night; he'd actually hit JB with the door. He said this directly to me as I stood at the outside edge of a small crowd at an outdoor funeral, in January, out by the old Salem Baptist Church, with old JB, looking terrible, having trouble living with himself maybe, and half a dozen other policemen. This traveler said that he had happened to be staying at the boys' place at the time, had been with Ray in the area of the barn that night, had come across the scene, and had hit JB with the door; the statute of limitations was up, though, and they couldn't get him now even if I turned him in, which I wouldn't. He said the mother's story was right, the best he knew. According to Ray, JB had shot the father out of spite; he was on the ground, unarmed, and JB was sick of his stubborn defense of his boys. He'd shot Getman by accident, as Ray was fighting with him at the time, and he had been aiming for Ray. JB was about to kill Ray too, but the traveler himself had walked in and hit JB with the door. Roger had appeared later with food that Ray and the traveller then took with them when they left. The mother had actually protected the traveler, not mentioning him to the police, as he was the one that got Ray out of there, relicensed the truck, made sure Ray had enough money to get away, etc. Ray, he said, was doing well, but he wouldn't say where he was; both boys wanted it known that they were sorry they couldn't attend the funeral. There certainly was no sign of them that gray January day as they buried the mother's body, policemen looking furtively in every direction.
But later that spring, there was a blinding rain shower, visibility was reduced to zero, and I was forced to go out on the highway by the bluffs for some reason, I can't remember now. Out there, the rain was driving so hard I could barely see the line in the middle of the road, but I drove on toward town anyway. And then, at one moment, the Volkswagen with the funny lawnmower engine came the other way. It was leaving town, going the other way, and perhaps he'd used the storm to slip past the cameras, or maybe they weren't even watching anymore. I couldn't see who was in it; it was past me in a flash, but I did hear that bicycle horn. Decades had gone by, but every memory was right in place, right where they'd always been.
1-21-07
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Free Parking
I was working register seventeen at WalMart, which meant that I could see part of the field adjoining it, out by where the rock band parked their motor home, and where a little path leads out toward the highway through a little patch of woods. A lot of police were out there, as apparently they had found a body of a man, and they were roping it off, taking photographs, etc., but I couldn't watch because of the steady stream of customers and the blasted little beeps that threaten to drive me crazy if I don't concentrate on the task at hand. You hear a lot of stuff working there, and I knew eventually I'd hear plenty: who he was, who did it, why they even looked out there in the first place.
By afternoon I'd already heard a few things: a guy in the rock band, I think the organ player, had found him while walking his dog; the victim was homeless and they were trying to figure out who he was; he'd been shot and then dragged out there, or so they thought; and, as far as they knew, it had nothing to do with the property owner's feud with WalMart, or the fact that a wealthy banker had committed suicide up on the highway only three days ago, running his car off the road not too far away from WalMart, or that the leader of the rock band had a shady history involving several ex-wives, all kinds of drugs, and various incidents in countries like the Bahamas and Italy. The rocker could actually be seen from register seventeen, explaining something to the police, perhaps how the organ player was an upright guy, he had nothing to do with this except he walked the dog regularly, which I, at register seventeen, could have verified, by the way. But once again, I was busy, steady stream of customers and all.
It's a small town kind of place, in spite of being a huge store, selling everything from gallons of milk to bicycles, with all kinds of problems, extensive parking lot security and a property line that goes halfway well into the fields and woods in most directions. It's so small town that pretty soon everyone in the break room was sharing notes and half of the people knew the rocker, his drummer, the organ player, or even the banker who had killed himself, and whose wife said it wasn't like him, he wasn't even depressed, he must have been run off the road up by the highway as he'd denied some loans or something. We kind of wrote her off as a hysterical grieving family member, unable to handle the strain of a suicide in the family, but she became the topic of conversation anyway, since nobody knew anything about this homeless guy. Who was he? How long had he been in town? What did he look like? Nobody had a clue.
We were familiar with the police, though, as several of them had been staking out William the meth man, who kept buying suspicious things from the store, presumably to make his own, and had attracted the attention of local law enforcement agents, many of whom liked to talk. William was a sallow man, dark eyes, hollowed out cheeks, obviously guilty of lots of things, if not making meth, and most of us were ready to help the police if we saw him. But he'd altered his patterns recently and wasn't buying the same stuff at the same place and time. And it's not a crime to come into WalMart at 3 am, and nobody really knew where he lived out in the country, though it was surely a trailer and it was way out there. Was he involved in this? Some people freely speculated with the police. I however seemed to get a lot of traffic at register seventeen and was stuck beeping little clothes tags until closing time, when I was exhausted and went home to bed.
By morning they'd identified the guy as one David Clayton Boone, from a nearby town, but still had very few clues about who he knew, why he was in town, why somebody might shoot him, etc. His marriage was on the rocks, apparently, with a court order to stay away from his wife, but she didn't seem to be the shooting kind, according to one policeman, though they were looking into her boyfriend, a trucker who was supposedly away in Oklahoma at the moment, but was well known in the area, especially in the bars, where he frequented certain places on his days off. So he'd fallen in love with this married woman; her husband turns up dead in a field outside WalMart, and he's off in Oklahoma somewhere. Suspicious. This was the talk in the break room when I got into work.
I got register five this time, over by the grocery, and this time I couldn't see the field, or the rock band, but I heard a lot of people talking by the entrance and some of the places where they meet each other, which are not far from register five. At the grocery you get these huge carts full of all kinds of stuff and it's a little different although the beeping is just as relentless and again it doesn't let up all day, whether you go fast or slow. We of course are trained to go fast, and be polite, and be accurate, and all that stuff, but what do they expect for that pitiful wage, of course we're going to listen to the gossip if someone has any. Turns out the property owner, one Johnson Wales, who I did not know personally, had some connection with the trucker, as well as his long-standing feud with WalMart. You can bet he was out there on the parking lot claiming that this dead guy was WalMart's fault, what are they doing building a new SuperCenter right up against his property anyway, shining their lights and traffic all night long and all that. We'd heard it before, apparently, as had the courts. But apparently the rock band had been the last straw, he didn't like a rock band parked right up against his land in the parking lot, day in and day out, and he had hired the trucker to go get a pole barn or some such structure which he was going to put on his land, right up against the parking lot, block out the light and be a little unsightly. Well, this sounded suspicious, but, such kinds of feuds are common in small towns like this, even if one of the feudees is a major corporation like WalMart. The manager seemed to think this Johnson Wales was an evil guy, but I was more curious about the trucker, since he was the only one I'd heard of so far who had an actual motive, that being that the dead guy was married to his girlfriend. Why else would someone kill an old homeless guy and toss him in the weeds? I didn't figure old Johnson Wales would do it- sure he hated WalMart, but why kill some guy over that? Or the rocker. Maybe a couple of ex-wives had overdosed somewhere in the Bahamas a couple of years back, but if he were to just shoot someone and toss him in the weeds, I figure he'd be long gone by now. And the rocker, named Deth Venice, came through register five a lot. He was always buying milk, or toothpaste, or some such little thing, he wasn't organized enough to buy a whole meal at once. And he didn't even wake up until about 7 at night.
But right when he was arguing with the manager about something, along comes William the meth man, this was about nine in the evening, and William also was buying milk and white bread and balogna, basic supplies, none of this Colemans fuel or Iodine tincture, which you supposedly use for your horses. It's certainly not a crime buying white bread and balogna, though maybe it should be, but I half expected the police to jump him right there at register five, as I knew they'd been watching him for quite some time. I raised my eyebrow a little to show I was surprised that he was just buying milk and food; just to see what would happen I mentioned the body that was found out in the field beyond the rock band's motor home, and the police coming and going all hours of the night, but he looked back at me with the hollowest of eyes, not caring, not knowing a thing that I could tell. He wouldn't have known Deth Venice from the greeter, I figured, and most likely the milk and balogna were for his dog, as he clearly hadn't eaten in months. He did however say that he didn't care at all for these police, and if they were marking up his property the way they were marking up that field out there, it would be them that was out there lying face down in the mud. But he said it with such a dull flatness that I couldn't imagine him killing anyone. He certainly had no grudges that I knew of with anyone, although in the meth business, I'd guess, you'd probably have a grudge with everyone.
But just as he turned to grab his meager groceries and go, he almost ran into Deth Venice, who was still speaking in a raised voice to the manager. The manager was more or less telling old Deth to take a hike, though he'd be permitted to wait at least until after his big show, which was well known to be tomorrow night. Deth was telling the manager that he could take his WalMart SuperCenter and shove it where the sun don't shine, he'll just get his groceries down at the Piggly Wiggly like everyone else from now on, thank you very much. But when old Deth almost ran smack into sallow old William the meth maker, it was almost like he'd seen his own ghost. William, you see, was a lot like Deth, long greasy hair, thin as a rail, except he had no confidence, no stage presence, no love of dressing up and prancing around making noise. He was just a poor guy starving out there in the woods who had according to someone started boiling down this crap to make meth all the time, and they were about to catch him, whatever he was doing he certainly wasn't eating much. He didn't even care for Deth Venice; to him, old Deth was just some dressed up clown who was about to run into his hard-bought white bread and ruin his dinner. I was looking for clues in this- I figured, with Deth parked out there on the edge, surely he'd seen something and knew something, and if homeless people were hanging around the parking lot, maybe meth was as good a reason as any, so I figured maybe one of these clowns knew something they weren't letting on. But there was no sign of the police. Deth, you had to figure, was at least a very public character- they'd already talked to him, I'm sure. As for William, I'm sure the police knew he was there, but must not have had anything on him, or they would have sprung. After all, he was just buying supplies.
As I got off work that night I peered off at the path that goes off across Johnson Wales' land, where the body was, up a wooded hill and over toward the highway out of town, where that banker went over the edge. It was not clear to me that anyone in that rock band could have seen anything on that path, anyone coming and going, judging from the way they were parked, though if I were going to drag a body somewhere, I probably wouldn't start in a WalMart parking lot. The band had a number of shady characters; the drummer was a kind of local guy, who had gone to jail for assault at one point but seemed to be ok once he took up with Deth and started getting a steady income from playing the clubs and the concerts in the area. I'd have suspected him, but none of these guys were dumb enough to just throw a dead guy not more than a mile from where their motor home was parked. And I think the police knew that.
But finally it hit me, and I think the police figured this out before I did, because they were still poking around the following day when I got back to work. The murderer didn't drag the body from the parking lot, or they would have found more tracks. They dragged it from the other way, from the highway. As it turned out , the banker's wife was right- the banker had been run off the road, up on the highway, though there were no tracks from another car. He'd been run off the road by none other than Johnson Wales himself, presumably for denying him a loan, or perhaps for giving WalMart theirs; Wales had, in a fit of temper, killed the guy, and the homeless guy was unlucky enough to see it, accidentally, as he was probably just hanging around out there in the woods on the edge of town. So he had to be killed also, or he'd surely tell eventually- and that's when they dragged him back in, toward the WalMart, before dropping him. Johnson Wales had apparently dropped him on his own land, then went out and pretended that he was absolutely furious that someone would kill somebody at WalMart and come onto his property to drop the body.
And that was all there was. The trucker apparently had nothing to do with it, though when he heard about all the fuss back home, he stayed in Oklahoma, never returned the money or brought the pole barn or anything. Deth and his band played their show, but the wind had been taken out of his sails, he sounded like a ghost, a guy who'd spent one night too many in the WalMart parking lot. I heard this from a friend who, rather than working Saturday nights, actually went places like concerts. Right then I tried to picture Deth in front of a crowd, trying to get up a good scream, but being drowned out by thousands of little WalMart beeps of things being bought, and finally giving up and going home. William, I never saw again, maybe he fell off the face of the earth, or just decided that there were better WalMarts than ones that were swarming with police and gossips and rockers, not to mention people so big they had to use those carts to drive around in. And all of this is second hand, by the way, don't quote me on it, you can read about it in the papers, if Johnson Wales ever goes to trial, and find out what really happened.
1-07-07
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happy holidays 2006
When you see a movie half a dozen times, some of its lines start coming out of you spontaneously; this has been happening recently with Cars, a good kid movie about Route 66, the racing culture, and small town folks. Elias and I spend some evenings, after Corey has gone to bed, putting together cardboard replicas of things from Cars, reliving the movie, and lately, thinking about the holiday season, friends & family.
As winter descends on Carbondale, a town that never even got a new highway, much less a highway going around it (off-ramp from life in the fast lane), we have a different view now, having moved from the far south side to the far west side. It was an enormous, complicated and expensive task making my old house presentable, but we did, and now find ourselves with a whole new set of problems. Change your address book now (106 S. Lark Ln, Carbondale IL 62901) because our post office has a very short memory. The new neighborhood (the Ornament Valley) has decorative trees that change color slowly; it's more suburban, and has wider streets that are good for Jen to walk and run in; she's also overjoyed with the house itself and especially the morning sun in the living room. I'm slowly warming up to it too, maybe the last to get completely adjusted, besides the dogs, but even they are feeling more at home.
I'd like to say we went around the world in 2006, but really we barely made it to Kentucky and Chicago, besides a couple of conferences, and even then it was difficult. Fortunately, as the movie says, it's the journey not the destination - which sounds better than it is, when you've got young kids and you're feelin' a quart low. Probably the biggest news in our immediate family was that Justin graduated from high school and moved off to Lawrence, KS to go to the Univ. of Kansas, but everyone was busy. Here's the update:
Tom is busier than ever at work, bicycle-commuting and swimming, but spending free time blogging, and playing in a band (with cd coming out shortly); he sometimes falls asleep before doing his homework or cardboard architecture (We've got ourselves a nodder!).
Jen came off sabbatical and is getting used to the grind of teaching again. Taking mornings to be with the young boys, she then has to squeeze work in on weekends and nights, which is rough. The time with the little ones has been good for them, though.
Josie got her PhD at Minnesota and moved on to a postdoc at a reputable UW lab in Seattle; Derek is now looking to use his graphic animation (computer) skills to good purpose. They say the traffic is bad but the rest of it is going well so far; one could say that they've moved from one kind of bad weather to another.
Natalie and Ethan are talking about getting married but also trying to figure out what to do when they graduate, which will be soon. Natalie will have a Master's in Administration of Justice and would like to use it around the area somewhere, but has been accepted at a PhD program at Florida State, and is trying to decide. Ethan is from Carbondale and would like to stick around also, maybe watch the Cardinals win another series, but it's hard to say what will happen.
Eric and Jen's wedding is now scheduled for the last weekend in July in Santa Rosa, CA. It's a huge production for us just getting our family to the airport, but we hope to be well represented there. They both are working and in school, and Eric is talking about transferring from the junior college to Sonoma State, which is also in the area.
Kylie is running the local Mailboxes store, and planning to graduate from SIUC next December; she plans to stay in the area.
Justin likes Kansas, though he misses the forests and all his old friends. Before he left, his band, the Shutdowns, had a farewell party that doubled as a cd-release party. He was a National Merit Scholar and that will help him pay for school, but of course now he has to decide what to major in.
Noah injured his elbow in a bicycle accident in the first week of high school; he tries to keep his video-gaming (Runescape) down to three hours a day; and is getting that tall, narrow high-school look. He'd like to say, Don't drive like my brother.
Elias goes by his full name now, though old habits die hard with family. He's a pretty good reader, but didn't turn five until October and so missed kindergarten for this year. He's got a lot of friends, a soccer team, and an active social calendar, and is passionate about all things Cars.
Corey is 20 months and is definitely on the two side of life, happier 'n a tornado in a trailer park. It's hard to describe what having a little guy like Corey does to one's life, so I won't. But I will say, he's a joy to have around, a beautiful kid, and everyone's pretty much fallen for him, especially at the daycare and in the family.
At home, the cardboard replicas keep coming, and we are getting better at the gluing and the architectural design aspects. We've made Flo's diner, Fillmore's dome, the courthouse/fire station, Dinoco helicopters, various cars with moving wheels, and half a dozen piston cups. They're delicate, but then, life being what it is, so is everything. So I'll just say, "No bumpin', no cheatin', no spittin,', no bitin', no road rage, no shovin', no oil-slickin', no road-hoggin', no lollygaggin'!"...And have a happy holidays, and a happy New Year!
-Tom
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Extended family
George was at a family wedding rehearsal dinner in the city, in a nice restaurant somewhere in River North, a fashionable district; his wife's younger sister was getting married, and his wife was quite involved with everything that was happening, at her sister's elbow, talking about what was to happen at the wedding in the morning. This left George to observe others' children; his own were bored stiff, but were at least behaving. Most of the relatives present were brothers and sisters of his wife, or cousins, though the family of the groom was represented in there somewhere. George was seated near a first cousin, a pompous psychologist who was telling another relative about the idea of karma, that a person brought karma from a previous life to this one, thus one deserved whatever one got, even a baby. The psychologist's own kids were terrorizing the waitress off in the corner, but he was involved in what he was saying, and wasn't paying attention. The lights were dim and the food was taking a long time to appear. George, out of boredom, got irritated. "You mean," he said, "that a kid with a fatal disease had it coming to him? What about a young girl who has been abused?" In this case he had someone in mind, a cousin on his side of the family, who had been through hell and was only four.
"A perfect example," said the psychologist. "I look at it from the perspective of healing= and, I have to say, who knows whether there is such a thing as reincarnation? I'd be irresponsible to bring it up without knowing. But here's the thing. She's going to think: God did it, and he didn't have any reason for it. Why did God do this to me? And she gets stuck on that. I don't have any answer for that. Either God is cruel, and does this randomly to some little kids, but not others- or, there's no God, and in that case, why her? She's stuck. So when I say, it was a previous life, at least then she can begin to forgive herself, begin to heal. So it works, and I say it because it works.
The food had come; the kids were all back at the table, eating, now; even George's wife had returned and was now sitting near him, helping his own kids with their food. George was trained as a scientist, and had very little tolerance for talk about reincarnation or the mystical. But knowing his little cousin, whose story he tried to push out of his mind even as he sat there, he could not imagine telling her that what had happened to her was caused by what she had done in her previous life. He set down his fork, as he had lost his appetite. Picking a fight would not be helpful, as the in-laws, his wife's parents, were less than a half-table away; his wife had even said, don't get all involved, just eat the dinner, relax and enjoy yourself. And she was right; there was no reason to get riled up.
Yet he couldn't help it. As they left the dinner, the subject of the young cousin and people like her came up again, as this was really the psychologist's field, and once again the psychologist maintained that using the idea of karma was the wisest way of dealing with the situation. George was hot under the collar; the guy seemed to know more about his cousin than even he did. The guy's van was in the next block, and the families parted ways; his wife had not seen her own cousin, the guy's wife, and vowed to visit with her soon, if not tomorrow, giving her a long hug. George almost spit on the guy's hand instead of shaking it, but was civil, pleasant, thanked the guy for his perspective. That's what family is, he thought; you're not always going to agree with them. He knew from his own family how helpless one could feel, watching others' lives unfold, being unable to do anything about it. Watching the guy's wife buckling the kids in, he got a sense, even then, of the tragic; the streetlights reflected on the image of the kids arguing and kicking each other in the back seat. George still had that image in his mind, about a week later, when his wife had told him that the psychologist had been killed in a car accident, a head-on with a drunk driver on Lake-Cook road in the middle of the night; there were no survivors; the guy had been alone in his car at the time, hiz wife and kids had been back in the house. Poor kids, George thought, with a kind of numbness. I'd never tell them it was something they'd done in their previous lives, he thought. But I don't know exactly what I would tell them- why do these things happen? He had no idea, nor could he figure out how it must sound to the kids themselves; he was only glad that, as an adult, he could force the issue out of his mind, and get on with his life.
11-06
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Good Tidings of Yule
GOOD TIDINGS OF YULE - a one-act play
CHARACTERS:
DEB:
ALISON:
REBECCA:
CRYSTAL:
LILA:
FRANK:
MUIR
OLONGO:
(DEB enters).
DEB: I was on a plane coming from Johannesburg one year, four days before Christmas, when the plane crashed in the jungle. About half of us survived, but the pilot didn't. We didn't know where we were, but it was the middle of the jungle. What a way to spend the holidays!
(small group sits in a circle with blankets over their heads, etc. REBECCA, CRYSTAL, and DEB are sitting and talking; ALISON is lying down but beginning to wake up. Finally she sits and starts talking)..
ALISON: (waking up) Where are we?
REBECCA: The plane crashed. The pilot and many others are dead. We are in the Republic of Congo somewhere. We don't know where.
CRYSTAL: We've made a shelter out of parts of the plane and we put you here until you woke up. We would go for help but we don't know which way to go. That's what we were talking about when you woke up.
DEB: What are the choices?
REBECCA: Into the jungle, into the jungle, and into the jungle.
ALISON: The plane crashed? I'll miss Christmas! My family was all getting together, at my mom's house! I won't make it! I have to call them! Where's a phone?
CRYSTAL: Lila has a cell, but we're in the middle of the jungle.
ALISON: Oh, no! The tree, the decorations, the stockings, the candy, the presents! Missing that will be terrible!
CRYSTAL: Listen, honey, we've all lost a lot. Half the people on the plane are dead. Rebecca here was going home for Hannukah. It's the holiday season in a lot of places.
ALISON: Yeah, but this is Christmas!
CRYSTAL: At my house it's Yule - we burn a big log and light candles. It is, after all the solstice, the shortest day of the year!
LILA: But we're on the equator! What difference does it make?
REBECCA: Ouch! Something is hurting me!
ALISON: Are you pregnant?
REBECCA: Yes, seven months. They told me that flying would be ok. But they didn't tell me we'd be crashing in the middle of the jungle! I think I might be having this baby early!
DEB: We'd better lie you down and get you some water!
(DEB leaves, others follow. FRANK and MUIR enter, put map on floor, and begin to look at it).
FRANK: By my figuring this plane must have crashed around here. (pointing to map)
MUIR: Near Mabendjaba, Egbunda, around there?
FRANK: Had to be. Not much there but jungle and little villages- Magba, Lingondo, Yule (yoo-lay)- but that's where their radio messages put them.
MUIR: But the radio's dead now?
FRANK: Haven't had any messages in over an hour. But I know somebody in the town of Baliakondo- that's over here- and he has a jeep. Maybe he can take us out into the bush.
MUIR: Call him- we have to find them!
(They fold up map and leave. ALISON, CRYSTAL, DEB, and REBECCA enter. REBECCA lies in a kind of makeshift bed, blanket over her, looking like she's in labor; DEB is tending to her.)
(ALISON comes forward)
ALISON: Right about now, my mother is making Christmas cookies and decorating the tree! It's probably snowing in my hometown (she sobs)
CRYSTAL: Oh you poor thing!
DEB: Now now, you know, someone encountered a local guy - a tribesman. He didn't speak English, but they're pretty sure he went for help.
ALISON: Yeah but there's no way I'll be home in time! I'll miss the presents! The stockings! The…
CRYSTAL: Shut up, will you?
REBECCA: Ouch! I'm in labor!
ALISON: Oh my God! We're in the middle of the jungle!
CRYSTAL: Well duh!
DEB: (tending to Rebecca): Listen Crystal! This is not a time to lose it! We have to work together to get out of this alive! Will someone bring me a washcloth?
CRYSTAL: It's just that she goes on and on about this Christmas stuff, and, you know, it's a tough subject for me.
DEB: So you said you celebrated Yule?
CRYSTAL: Yes, my mom would make a big point out of it. She said that the original holiday was actually more Pagan than Christian- that the Christians didn't really take over the date and the holiday until later. Yule logs, mistletoe, they were all part of the Yule holiday- celebration of the winter solstice, shortest day of the year.
ALISON: So you celebrated Yule, and not Christmas?
CRYSTAL: That's right, and whenever I heard my friends talking about that Christmas stuff, I kind of felt left out.
REBECCA: I know the feeling!
LILA: I'm from Iceland, and in Iceland we have the Yuletide lads- Door Slammer, Bowl Licker, Sausage Snatcher, Candle Beggar- they're little imps, playful fellows from the mountains. The children place their shoes on the windowsill and the little guys put presents in them- or, a potato, if the children have been bad!
ALISON: You celebrate Yule instead of Christmas too?
LILA: Well, really, in Iceland, we celebrate them together. After all, they are at the same time of year.
REBECCA: Owww! It's coming!
DEB: Keep breathing! Breathe deeply!
(Rebecca breathes hard- like she's having a baby)
LILA: Baby's coming! Get ready!
FRANK: So you talked to a local guy?
MUIR: Yeah, what did he say?
OLONGO: He says the crash was about 9 kilometers up the road…you come to a road that goes off to a mountainside. He gave me directions. He said the survivors are together in a homemade shelter and they are ok- the locals have given them some food and provisions. But we should hurry up- they say one of the women is having a baby. He said we'll know because we'll see the light of their fire reflect against the ruins of the plane.
FRANK: Did he say anything else?
OLONGO: Yeah- he said kutandika kua Yesu kuibuwa!
MUIR: What does that mean?
OLONGO: It's something like: Happy Holidays.
(they leave. DEB enters)
DEB: (carrying bundle, to audience): I knew a little about having babies, so I began to take care of Rebecca. She never once mentioned the father, and I never asked. The locals seemed to know what was happening, and sent us some things that we needed- they could also see that we had shelter, so they didn't try to move us. But every day food, washcloths, and fresh water arrived. The baby was born healthy and without incident.
(ALISON enters)
ALISON: Oh, what a precious baby!
DEB: Yes, mother and son are doing well, happy, healthy, in spite of everything.
(FRANK, MUIR, OLONGO arrive from right)
FRANK: We found you! Just as the local guy told us! Are you ok?
DEB: We're ok. Mom over here just had a baby! (Rebecca shows them)
You missed it, of course!
FRANK: What a beautiful baby! You'll have a story to tell, when you get home, wherever that is!
ALISON: Oh, you're not kidding!
DEB: We've had a rough time. But we're ok. People helped us with the supplies that we needed, and we survived. The villagers have been very good to us; they've brought us lots of things. And we have this little baby to show for it! How did you find us?
FRANK: We asked the locals- they knew you were here and that you were ok. They told us to look for the reflection of the fire against the steel of the plane- and we did! We followed that light the last part of the way. We brought gifts, too, that people gave us, to help you with the baby. (gives some packages, not wrapped). Before we take you back with us, that is.
CRYSTAL: I guess you can enjoy the pleasures of the season, even miles from nowhere!
OLONGO: Ma'am, you are not nowhere. You are nine kilometers from Yule, Republic of Congo.
LILA: Where?
OLONGO: Yule. Y-U-L-E.
LILA: That's what I thought you said.
OLONGO: Yes, and I've brought one more thing from the villagers: a greeting. They said: kutandika kua Yesu kuibuwa- a rough translation would be: Happy Holidays!
(CURTAIN CALL)
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