The DesertLight Journal |
August 31 2000 10:52:27 The sweep hand on the courtroom clock comes to a halt. And before long, the clocks begin to freeze everywhere. Those the most beyond repair? The timepieces in my heart. The missions that these delicate instruments serve are the ones that lie at the core of our humanness-keeping loving memories alive; waiting for a better tomorrow; hanging on until someone returns; knowing when something is over, over and done with, really gone. When these clocks stop working, your body is alive, but I assure you, you are spiritually dead. The timepieces I began lugging around were just frizzed springs, stripped gears, and rusted parts. My heart was a junkyard. What changed all of this was a woman. I fell deeply in love. I wasn't seeking it. I was actually determined never to feel it, ever again. I'll tell you about her, and us, in one of these letters soon. Here it's enough to say that it has brought me hope, and ecstasy. And it has caused me more pain than I could ever imagine enduring. August 31 2000 10:53:55. The nasty codger who's just ruined my life makes a run for it and bolts toward his chambers door. He's skinny and irksome. His semen-white blue-veined skin, and talon-hooked nose are well suited to what he does for a living -- looking down on people. He twitches off, a human stick trailing a Halloween costume black robe. But the truth is: I can mock him all I want. When he clacked that mallet -- it was all over. You were lost to me. And I was helpless to do a damned thing about it. I refused to accept it for the longest time. I kept waiting for you to appear, son. I was sure you would. "Hi, Dad," you'd say. "Sorry it took so long." And we'd embrace. I'd feel your heart beating against my chest. For that first dreadful year, I waited. I was certain that, one of these days, I'd see you coming around a corner. You'd approach me with your arms out, smiling, crying a little, perhaps. You'd be the person I'd always known. I knew you'd come! We'd embrace then. I'd feel you, breathless and alive in my arms again. At long last. I'd squeeze you to me. Finally, you'd say to me, "I'm starving, Dad. Let's get something to eat." That would be when I'd know for certain that the nightmare had ended. I went on, waiting for you. Went on. Waited some more. The days grew shorter. The air was now cold. At sunrise, I'd see a luminous patina of frost on the sand. I waited. But you never came. One day, no day in particular really, the truth dawned on me. You were never coming. I knew it then, and I know it now. A father and son, who were intensely close, have now been eradicated, as though we never were. Your loss finally sank in a week or so after the first column was published. My new wife and I were on the road at the time, and we'd stopped for the night in Casper, Wyoming. I don't think you've ever been to Wyoming, son. Parts of it are otherworldly in their magnificence -- mountain ranges of staggering proportion, crystal rivers, depthless blue skies. Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons are in Wyoming. Other parts of the state, however, are as barren as the surface of the moon. Existence is harsh, unremittingly drab, and forlorn. I always see hopelessness in the eyes of the children when I pass through the little towns along the Interstate that cling to life. It's the wind that owns this land. It never stops howling. Eastern Wyoming is the Kingdom of the Wind. When you get out of your car it buffets you and shoves the door into your chest, pushing you back into your seat. Grit catches in your hair. The wind moans to you, "Get the hell out of here. You're not welcome here." Believe me -- I always try to do what I'm told to out here. But the night we stopped in Casper, I was bone tired. Casper was the only town for another two hundred miles. My wife felt just as depleted. So, we stopped for the night. But then, something odd happened. As soon as we'd switched off the lights, I found myself totally wired, my eyes riveted open. I knew that sleep would be impossible. Since I lost you, this happens sometimes. I lay there in the darkness. And as I did, I felt anger. More than anger. Way more. I wasn't just angry. I was furious. Somewhere, only a few hundred miles, I knew that you were alive. Alive! It really struck me. You weren't dead. You aren't dead. It's only for me that you are dead. Everyone else is free to drop in any old time. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Your mother. Only I am forbidden to see you. Only for me are you dead. The rest of the world can have as much of you as it wants. I wondered. How were you doing? Well? Not so well? Were you still in college? Had you met anyone special? And the more I groped for a single fact about you, the more enraged I grew. I realized the true depth of your mother's sadism, perhaps for the first time. Soon, my pulse pounded in my temples. I felt midway between having a pounding heart ready to break, and a pounding head about to detonate. I started to feel frightened. I lay there in that wind-battered motel until I simply couldn't stand it. I slipped out from underneath the covers and got dressed. I remembered the day I was arraigned on those phony Domestic Violence charges. There were five or six women I'd never seen before huddling around your mother that day like personal bodyguards. Their eyes burned with hatred, and most of their wrath was directed at me. I was baffled. I didn't know who they were even, or how they could hate someone so intensely whom they didn't even know. But I soon was to learn. These were militant neofeminists, as they are called. They hated me because I was a man. It was that simple. Your mother was in top form that morning, too. She wore a peasant blouse and pale blue dress of some light cloth that fluttered whenever a breeze wafted into the courtroom. She clutched a wad of Kleenex and dabbed endlessly at the tears coming from her eyes. But I have known your mother for twenty-two years. There were no tears. The gang of six whom I saw that morning is comprised of state employees who are called "Victim's Assistance Advocates." The whole business is blatantly unconstitutional. Men are also the victims of crime, but I have never once seen a man championed by these harpies. Have you? Whatever the city bursar chooses to call them, they're on the payroll-part of the ultimate high growth industry, the Divorce Industry. The day I was arraigned, I didn't know any of this yet. So, I just stood there like a stunned oaf, blinking my eyelids, trying to hold back my tears and missing you and your mother terribly. I stood there, being hated to death. * * * August 30 2000, a bit after nine at night. I am living in a motel. The phone rings and when I pick up the receiver I recognize my attorney's voice. He's my attorney -- my own attorney -- yet here I stand, my jaw falling open, listening to him casually tell me that you'd called him yourself, in considerable distress. "How long ago?" I ask. "Oh," he says. "A day. Or two. A day or two ago." "What happened?" "Well, naturally, I hung up on him at the first opportunity." I hold the receiver out at arm's length, staring at it incredulously. "You just hung up on him!" "He said they were pressuring him to cave in. He kept trying to refuse to ask for permanent restraining orders. Actually, he sounded a little upset." "A little upset!" "Well, I think -- maybe. He kept saying, 'I don't want to take out orders against my dad!'" My attorney runs down the rest of his list as quickly as he can. His voice reveals no emotion. "Did you do anything to try to help him?" I ask. "Nothing," he replies. "To do anything would have been unethical." It would have been unethical -- unethical -- to offer solace to a young man whose parents are divorcing, who has barely recovered from a terrible psychosis, and who has just called him distraught, asking for help. What kind of monster is this man? What are the ethics and morality of this venal profession? I am remembering this in Casper, Wyoming, at 4 AM. Quietly, I shut the motel door and, at 4:10 AM, I'm out walking. I thread my way along a railroad bed. The night is dark, moonless. I kept turning my ankles on the stone bed, so I got up on one of the rails and try to walk balanced atop it, the way a kid does. I didn't know how often trains run there, nor did I care. I keep hoping, actually, that I'll get lucky. Maybe, I figure, a train will creep up behind me so gradually that I wouldn't hear it coming. I recall reading about that somewhere -- that this can really happen. So, maybe this will be my lucky night. Wyoming? By God, this junk heap should be renamed The Miracle State. Because, Blam! It has so many railroad tracks. Splat! One more sonofabitch is out of his misery. Bet he never even knew what hit him. Then I think about my wife and how much she has had to bear... |