VAN HALEN FOR PRESIDENT. I study the white decal still plastered to the inner reaches of the rolltop desk Garrett bought for me as a study incentive when I was twelve. The decals, obtained from the rock group’s fan club, were handed out by a few of us to the student body of my alma mater, the University of Montevallo, in protest of Ronald Reagan’s imminent sweep of the White House in ’81. The remaining contents of the desk, a crystalline arrowhead I found on a Boy Scout camping trip, a tiny photo of Billy Wade, Patience and me at a high school toga party, and a set of rattles from a snake my father killed with a stick on my sixteenth birthday, have been pushed to the back to make way for the things Garrett accumulated during his tenure in the business world: a picture of him shaking hands with pharmaceutical bigwigs on a ship somewhere, the name plate from his desk—GARRETT BOYD STALWORTH—and the gold Rolex he received at thirty years of service.
You’ve got mail.
I glance at my laptop, a token from Frances on my first day of service, and find two other messages from Her Highness. Frances’s idea of being respectful of my time here entails calling me no more than three times a day and emailing me no less than fifty. Ignoring the emails, I open my writing program and stare at the blank page.
I’d told friends on more than one occasion I’d never felt anything of consequence had ever happened to me. Despite half a life lived in Tinseltown, I’d never reaped the benefits of any substantial achievement. No long-term relationship, no job satisfaction, no real home to hang my hat. After reaching into the top desk drawer for my secret stash of SweeTarts, I place the roll of candy next to my laptop and type this sentence:
Yesterday morning I awoke in a self-sustained cooperative in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Several minutes pass before I type the next sentence and, in some sort of involuntary act of rebellion, toss the SweeTarts into the trash.
* * *
With my encouragement, Tina became obsessed with the lifestyle. Justin and Marsala cut out all bread, meat, sugar, and dairy, and Tina investigated anything she could dig up on macrobiotics. Driving away one Sunday, Justin and Marsala waved from the Village. “Drive carefully! You’re in the fold now. Wild and wonderful things will begin to happen!”
And they did.
I have been a runner since reading Jim Fixx’s book as a senior in high school, just before he died of a heart attack during an afternoon jog. Although the incident placed the fear of God in me for months, the fact that running had allowed me to unload the thirty pounds of baby fat I had still been carrying keeps me running to this day.
When one jogs in the heat and humidity that is the Deep South, the goal is to always be done before the rising sun changes the surface of the Tombigbee from ochre to silver. To finish any later would be dancing with the same devil that took Jim out of this world. Like a day had never passed, I grab my shoes by the sunroom entrance and dash through the carport, trying my damndest to make it past Jewel Ann’s front porch before Puffy rouses herself from old dog slumber.
Pushing as hard as I can up the biggest hill on Blue Cove Road, I spy her from the corner of my eye, sleeping on the mat at the top of the old wooden steps. I entertain the possibility that she may not even be lucid before noon. “Hello, Puffy,” I say, under my breath like a warning, “you ugly little motherfucker.”
She bolts, nipping my heels in no time with a series of threatening wheezy yips.
“Pig-eyed piece of shit,” I say, remembering how, even though the varmint’s attacks rarely drew blood, they hurt like hell and threatened to sabotage one of the few joys in my life. Attempting to block out the ruckus, I remember poor dead Jim’s advice to move effortlessly, hands at your side, as if pulling your way on a fixed rope. I feel a slight pain in my chest and wonder if Jim’s final run around the track started like this, until I hear Jewel Ann’s voice cracking under the hill, “HEEEEERE, PUFFYPUFFYPUFFY!”
And that, at least for the present, takes care of that.
* * *
“HEY, HOLLYWOOD!” A baritone voice startles me out of my endorphin-induced contemplation as I run back through my parents’ neck of the woods. “OVER HERE!”
Running in place, I track movement atop the bare-bones frame of a house camouflaged by a row of cedars straight ahead. A lone figure in jeans and a T-shirt waves his hammer in my direction from atop a second story of construction scaffolding. Shielding my eyes from the rising sun, I jog tentatively down the oyster shell driveway.
“Hey, how far do you run, anyway?” The lanky carpenter flashes an amiable smile from underneath a Braves baseball cap, a sign he must have connections at New Era, a local factory making hats for major league baseball teams. Although the public was occasionally allowed to purchase a few of the caps, the Braves had always been a hard commodity to come by.
“Did you hear me?” he says, “I asked you how far—”
“I heard you,” I shout. One of the most maddening things about going home again is dealing with those who, since they never left, remember high school like it was yesterday. Everyone recognizes you, but you remember no one. “I’m not sure,” I say, hoping that much will suffice so I can get on with my constitutional.
Braves Cap waves his hammer in my direction and leans across the top of the door frame below him. “I heard you were back in these parts. You got killed in some soap opera, right?”
“Yup,” I say, pushing down the familiar shame of failure.
“What’s that?”
I clear my throat and say it a bit louder. “I did, yes, that was me.”
“Well,” he says, painfully earnest. “I suppose one could coast on something like that for quite some time.”
“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“Hey, you’re making me dizzy,” he says, pitching a nail into the side of his mouth for safekeeping.
“Huh?”
Braves points his hammer at my still-jogging feet.
“Oh, sorry,” I say, making a feeble attempt to stand still.
“So. You don’t remember me,” he says, holding up a level to a two-by-four. “At all.”
Since my only available sightline consists of a straight shot up the legs of his shorts, I study the row of red-berried nandinas to my left, nudging my memory one last time. “I’m—nu-uh,” I mumble.
“I was a couple years ahead of you,” he says, removing his cap for a moment, “but I was in public school, and I had more hair back then. We lived on Main Street.”
I study the carpenter again. He’s more than a bit handsome, still a pretty impressive head of black hair from where I stand, only a few grays in sight. Still drawing a blank on the face slightly craggy from too many days in the sun, I shrug, shaking my head with a half-smile.
“Still no?” he says, like a disappointed child.
I shrug again, and he drops the hammer, leaps down from the frame and circles me, dribbling an invisible ball. Heading to the phantom net on the nearby poplar, he jumps, torso twisted behind him. “He shoots, scores! Two points for the Jackson Bobcats!” he hollers, with just a hint of desperation.
I say it fast like a forgotten mantra: “Irondick Tischman?”
He laughs, pulling the cap down over his eyes. “Well, there’s a name I don’t hear anymore.” He sticks out his hand. “The name’s Joe.”
I shake, embarrassed, temporarily lost in the recollection his visual had conjured up of countless Friday nights sitting in the stands, the legion of Bobcats fans chanting the salacious moniker for one of Coach Benton’s golden boys. The origin of said nickname was unknown except to a few seniors who weren’t talking, at least to us pathetic underlings. More than once, Gleason Hadley, the principal, threatened to stop the proceedings mid-game if the licentious chanting wasn’t curtailed.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, still pumping his hand, “Joe. Right.”
“It’s okay. Old habits die hard.” He sits on the ground beside me, one of the few folks I’ve seen get more good-looking with the passage of time. “I was sorry to hear, you know, about your mom.”
“Right. Thanks,” I say, looking up into the branches of the poplar, the underbelly of the emerald leaves silver dollars in the breeze.
Joe etches nothing in the dirt with a crooked pine stick.
“So,” I say, pointing to the skeleton of the home in front of me.
“Oh, this,” he says, turning around. “My folks’ place. They bought it a couple of years ago. Now it’s pretty much a casualty of the last big storm. They’re in Gulf Shores while I do what I do.”
The endless barrage of hurricanes through the Gulf Coast breeds tornados like rabbits. After the most recent, Garrett had called me in California to brag about standing just outside the cellar door, hanging on for dear life while watching as a series of twisters curled down Blue Cove Road like giant Slinkys.
“Is that yours?” I say, pointing to a family-sized camp tent pitched under an old chinaberry behind the house.
“Yeah. Just till I get the walls up. Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the first floor, since that’s all we’ve got yet.” He waves over my shoulder in the direction of the road behind me. “Hey, isn’t that your dad?”
I turn around to see Garrett staring curiously through the windshield of his pickup at the two of us. No doubt he’s headed to the “coffee-drankin’,” an appointment he’s kept for decades at Joe Brown’s Pharmacy, the insides of which don’t appear to have changed since the war, probably the first one. “That’s him,” I say, remembering I’ve forgotten to grill the tempeh for today’s lunch.
“So what about that tour?”
“No thanks,” I say, finding my idling pace again. “You take care.” I round the poplar before making my way back down the driveway to the road below. “Good seeing you.” I wave once over my shoulder, glancing back at the small-time basketball hero before he disappears behind the wall of cedars.