I was born in this little bayou town in Northwest Florida, born in this very same house where I'm now living. My parents have died and my sister's over in Orlando working the tourist trade. I was raised here, too, pretty much from start to finish. Oh, I've had my spurts of adventure. Just out of high school, I drove my clunker Chevy over to Biloxi for a season and worked there selling trinkets to the tour shops. That was about the only actual job I'd ever had, working as a manufacturer's rep for a national company. I've since taken over the bakery shop that my father started almost fifty years ago.
I suppose most everybody I know has taken off at one time or another. Pete went up to Jackson, Mississippi to college for four years. But, he's back running one of the motels on the beach with his fancy accounting degree. Jason tried the boot camp over in Fort Benning and did a stint overseas. The only thing he really got out of that was a renewed interest in hunting. Cynthia, well she was going to make a name for herself in New York. She got up to Atlanta; stayed with her cousins almost two years. Now she's bartending at the Pelican Lounge just over the bridge.
Yes, just about everybody has gone off somewhere, usually not very far, but this sleepy little town lures them back with its roots dug deep into our souls.
I have the house to myself, which is nice enough since the neighbors are all friendly. They're not too nosy either, just regular people living regular lives. I suppose they know pretty much about me as what I know of them. When the odd chance happens that two people are outdoors, we'll holler across the yards an "Hello" and get together for a little chat. Nothing ever exciting has happened in our neighborhood.
I suppose the most interesting people are those right across the street from me. They're on the beach of the bay. I've always envied them that. I'd have to walk half a block up the street to the park if I ever wanted to swim. They just step out the back door, walk past the two weeping willows and there they are, their very own beach. They even have a dock that used to house a ski boat, but that was back when the kids were still young. The frame is there, even the rusty old wench, but there's no boat anymore and the boards are grayed and warped.
That's Mrs. Bridges lives there. About ten years ago when she was in her seventies, she went off to New Guinea to teach missionary children. I was mighty impressed she went and did that all on her own. Half way round the world she went to some newly awakening village to help the missionaries Christianize them. Now that she's back from New Guinea, I see her pretty often enough. I see her walking around the neighborhood getting her exercise from when she had a heart attack about a year ago. Often, she's out in the yard, scrunched over the lawn, weeding. Once in a while folks from her church will come over and make a beach day, picnic affair. Her church friends are much younger than she is and they come with their gobs of children that run amuck playing their games. We talk on occasion, but not really that much. Just enough for me to get caught up on what her children are doing.
Her children are spread across the world, too. Her eldest son is up in Missouri somewhere as a head nurse up there. He comes down with his family once a year and spends their summer vacation at her house. He looks to be a quiet sort and never comes over to talk. I guess he's kind of a family man, with his wife and two children and he stays indoors most of the time when his kids are playing.
Her daughter is a Ph.D. or a medical doctor or something. I remember hearing she was at Johns Hopkins at one time and she's still up there around Washington somewhere. She came down once a couple of years ago.
The second son, man, he's off in Hawaii, if you could believe that. Like he just plopped a pin in the middle of the world and decided to run off to paradise. I haven't seen Stanley in nearly twenty years.
I got to know him best one summer he came home from college. Me and a couple of other kids from the neighborhood played touch football in his front yard. He was like a junior or senior then and all us kids were fourteen or thirteen or about that age. I can remember thinking how really cool it was of him to be out with us playing, running around, and working up a sweat. Night times come and we'd meet over at the park and drink sodas and whip out a secret stolen cigarette or two, light up and look for falling stars in the black sky. It was the hangout for the neighborhood, so a couple more kids from the other side of the park would be there with us too. That was when Mary Beth still lived in our town. Man, what a wild girl that one was. Her older sister, Rebecca, always came down and fetched her round eleven o'clock to get her back to the house and into bed.
Funny how when Stan came home from college that year and started hanging out with us, Becky would start coming down to the park early and hanging, too. It wasn't hard to see she liked the guy. After all, who wouldn't like being around this college educated guy who just acted like one of us? He accepted us for who we were and only acted like a parent when we talked about skipping school or flunking subjects. I guess his influence is what got me through High School.
Yeh, I tried a year at junior college. That was an experience. I think it took me two weeks to realize higher education wasn't for me, so I spent the rest of the semester partying with the wild friends I made back then. Most of them are dead or gone, from what I know. So when I flunked out, that was when I tried that stint out in Biloxi. At least one good thing came out of my college experience.
Stan came back to town, like I said, about twenty years ago. He had his own business, but came out anyway to spend time with his mother. I was pretty impressed with him, still slender, though his hair was thinning. He and his mom took me out to dinner one night over on the beach where all the tourist restaurants are and we had a good evening sitting out on the deck outside. That was right after I got out of the hospital for my nerves and I was still pretty strung out at the time.
Though older, Stan was still the same guy I knew, still friendly and talkative. He seemed like the kind of guy that liked to get to know everyone, regardless of who they were or what they did. I always felt comfortable around him. I guess he gets that from his mom, too. She's that way, all warm and friendly like. She's the kind of woman, when you first meet her you feel like wrapping your arms around her in a warm hug, like meeting an aunt for the first time who deserves a warmer welcome than just a stranger. She comes from about 20 generations of Tennesseans, eastern Tennessee, if you understand the difference, up in those Blue Ridge Mountains. I guess she walked out of those mountains to go to college and ran right into a marriage. Her husband though, he's gone now, gone some 20 years or more.
*****
So, you can imagine my surprise when I came home from the bakery one mid-afternoon and saw that Red Firebird sitting in the driveway. I mean, I just knew it had to be him, even before I saw the Hawaii license plates. It wasn't a situation where I'd run right over and knock on their door, but I started planning the day I'd go over there and say something. You know friendly neighbor like and do you remember when. But the next day I saw Mrs. Bridges about to get into her car and hollered at her and waved.
She waited for me to cross over and come to her, which I didn't mind. They lived on the beach and had that "come to me" expectation that people who lived on that side of the road had. They had everything they'll ever need in life and we didn't, a beach. I didn't mind either because she was a woman who allowed me to display my southern gallantry. Besides, she was nearly 80 years old and I could skip across the road before she could take 2 steps.
"Hi Chucky," she says to me with that southern innocence she has. Everyone's called me Charles since I've been eighteen years old, but she remembers me when she first met me at nine and still calls me my childhood name. Now I'm nearly forty years old, she still sees me as a child.
"Hi Mrs. Bridges. Is that Stan's car?"
"Yes, it is. How did you know?"
"Well, Mrs. Bridges, I couldn't think of anyone you'd know who owned a car like that so I supposed it must be Stan's."
"Yes, he's come back. This time to stay."
I have these little twitches when I get excited. They don't necessarily reflect my mental excitement, just my blood pressure ... kind of. I guess. I was curious to know more, too polite to ask, and this set them off. My eyebrows raised like Groucho Marx and my head kinda kicked to the left. This repeated a couple of times until I got my question out. Once I could talk, the ticks always subsided, faint little echoes bouncing off.
"So, he's come back from Hawaii?"
"Yes, he asked about you, too."
"He did?" I couldn't imagine him even remembering.
"Yes, he thought it would be nice if you'd meet us for lunch on Saturday. Would you like that?"
"Why sure." I think the last time I had eaten lunch was up to Hardee's across the bridge for burger and fries. That was about the extent of me eating out these days; there were family occasions at times, but mostly when we visited with relatives up in South Georgia. That's when we went to eat at restaurants. I didn't really feel comfortable in restaurants; so many people around; eating food prepared by strangers; wait help that was never really helpful. So I asked Mrs. Bridges if I could bring a friend along; you know, just in case I got a little lost, or for someone to talk to, or if the conversation didn't go too well.
"I was thinking about bringing Albert along if that's okay. I mean, we'll pay for our lunches and all. It's just I want to have a friend around in case I can't think of anything to say. It's been all of twenty-five years abouts, hasn't it?"
"Now let me think," Mrs. Bridges always wanted to be correct on dates. "He was here one time after Dad died. That was in 1975 and Stan came back a few years after that. That must have been in about 1984 as I recall, but what would he have been back for? Oh yes, I remember. He came back with his wife that one time and they got married in 1982 so that must have been either 1983 or 1984 when he came back last."
"Well, I guess that makes it about 18 years, then." I was never any good with years and it always is nice to have someone be that careful with them like Mrs. Bridges was. Yes, it's like some people have a particular talent for one thing or another. It really makes me feel good about humanity and all to see one person who's good with years like Mrs. Bridges was, another person who's good growing grass, another who's nice and neat and likes to put things in their place and all without complaining. Just doing things naturally like that's what they's meant to do and they're just having the pleasantest time doing them cause that's what god made them for. That's an orderly world, I say, and it makes me happy when I see evidence like this that the world is in the careful hands of people like Mrs. Bridges.
"It'll be all right to bring Albert, then?"
"That would be just fine, Chucky."
"Albert and I have been pals for a while. He went up with me when I went to Georgia."
"Does he live around here?"
"He lives over in Mary Ester. We just pal around after work. Albert works over at the lumberyard. It's across the street from the bakery, you know. That's how we met. He comes over for donuts everyday."
"Well, yes, I'm sure Stan would love to meet Albert too. We were thinking of meeting at the Gulf Shrimp House, if that's okay with you? Say noon on Saturday?"
"That's fine, Mrs. Bridges."
I turned to walk back to the house and saw a movement at the window in the corner of the house. I didn't think nothing of it at the moment. There are always birds flittering about in the neighborhood: blue jays, robins, finches, even squirrels. There was a crow that nested down by the bend in the road who would range up this way, picking fruit out of the trees and drinking from the bird bath at the Johnson's house which was next door to the Bridges. So to see a movement at the corner of the house wasn't that unusual ... 'cept I noticed the curtains swaying some. That stuck in my mind after I realized it. When I crossed the street, it just then struck me as weird, so that I turned back to look, but the curtains were still and Mrs. Bridges had already gone back into the house. So, I just shrugged it off, went back into the house, turned on the TV, ate dinner later on, and went to sleep when it was time for bed.
*****
Albert and I got to the restaurant early. I wanted to get a nice chair and order my beer before anyone else got there. Albert drove us in his yellow Camero. That car had over 150,000 miles on it and was getting pretty beat up. But it was a convertible and was fun to drive with the top down and my shirt off and the sunshine burning into my skin. That made the rust spots and exhaust smoke less visible.
We had a seat outdoors on the patio and had already gotten our beers and garlic fries. Albert was going on about a new bar that opened in Navarre.
"It's two story with the bar on top of the restaurant. What's cool is the little pier they built off the balcony. Man, the waitresses there are hot." He takes a sip of beer and puffs up. It's not something like he's boasting to me or nothing. I've gotten used to his talk. When he's like this, it's like he was talking to himself, like a kid in his bedroom talking to the mirror. That's the kind of friendship we had. He was just like this, talking free and natural to me as if I was just another part of him.
"There's this one, Janeen, she's got an ass on her, pretty as a moon pie. Remember that guy Ralph from Destin who had the transmission shop. That's his younger sister."
Albert ain't no great looking guy. Besides, he's hitting the low end of forty. I think he's gonna wind up the end of his life living alone all this time. But I'm not gonna take away the little pleasure he gets from talking foolish about women. Maybe it helps him gather the courage to face another day. I'm certainly not going to take that away from him.
"How old is she, Al?"
"I think she graduated out of Okaloosa CC ... I think it was one or two years ago. That'd make her 'bout 22, I guess."
"That's a little young for me. I'd like to meet up with someone nice about 30ish or something. I don't mind if she's starting to sag a little. I just want someone who's gonna like sitting at home and watching TV with me. Not someone who's gonna want to go out dancing on my dollar every night."
"Yeh, I guess you're right, Chuck, but I'd like to snugger down with that one ... just once Lordy, give me a nice piece of ass." His freckled face snarled into a grin and he looked around the patio checking out the girls. Albert always liked to talk about what he couldn't get. Like he didn't measure up as a man for himself unless he could talk about his conquests, but he'd never admit, to me or to himself, how infrequently that happened. Besides, I wasn't any different from Albert, 'cepting I didn't talk about it as much. I figure to just plod along and do the best I can. If the good lord wants me to be with a woman then he'll have one pass by and say something nice to me, give me some kind of a sign.
Albert kicked back in the chair, his size 13 feet throwing up those big white Nike's of his. I could tell he was antsy today. He picked up three fingers worth of french fries, scooped them through the ketchup and stuffed them down his throat, two chomps and a swallow, washed down with a swig of beer. His butt squirmed in the chair and his outstretched feet crossed this way, then back that way.
"Lordy Chuck, let's go out tonight and get laid."
"What's happening Albert? You aren't hardly ever like this anymore."
"Fucking thing," Albert squirreled his face around the mouth of the beer bottle and swallowed the last third in two gulps. "I was looking at the Class Album last night. God, all those girls I had a chance to screw, and I missed it. Just because I was young and didn't know what to do. Man, I'd like another shot at Rory again. Shit!"
"No use talking about stuff like that Albert. Those times have done gone. Now it's just thinking about how to get through the day and what you're gonna do for tomorrow."
"Man I'm telling you, I'm getting sick of this working in the lumber yard. I'm ready to take off a few weeks. Want to go with me down to Orlando and see what kind of trouble we can get into? I'm just antsy, man. I can't just sit around here and watch my life going by like nothing in the wind."
"Hey buddy Albert, you know I can't go on down with you. There's no one around here I can trust the bakery to. You know I work hard enough as it is. I can't go messing up a good thing by taking off on a trip like that." He knew me for being more settled than he was and I'm sure he didn't really mean he was gonna go taking off like that on the spur. He was just venting his angst and all.
Just then, the waitress walked by. She noticed Albert's empty beer and asked, "Can I get you something else?"
"You can get me laid," Albert came back at her with his ugliest male drawl. I swiped him across the leg with my boot and rocked him a little bit in his chair. I knew he was getting a little mean 'cause he wasn't getting any and I thought a little kick would get him back to being nice. But darned if he didn't lay out and almost punch me.
Of course, right then was when the Bridges' showed up. The dark-haired hostess had just opened the door and was leading them out onto the patio when Albert said his piece. I didn't know what but every one out there heard what he said. The hostess sure enough gave me a frown after I kicked Albert and I straightened myself up seeing who she brought out with her.
Mrs. Bridges was a real church goer. I think she went three times a week. And on Thursdays, she had bunches of people over that must have been doing some bible study or something. I'm just saying this 'cause hamming it up isn't something you s'd be caught doing in front of her. No, siree. I always wanted to be on my best behavior in front of Mrs. Bridges.
Besides that, there was something of a familiar looking face accompanying her. That's what a splash of cold water will do to you. Stan walked out, tall and slim, with graying hair and sagging jowls. Definitely not the someone I remembered twenty years ago. Definitely not the picture I expected to see.
He dressed nice, to be sure, dressed with silk shirt and light wool pants. Long black boots, dress boots, not work boots or nothing. He walked with a noble gait and pulled the chair for his mother to sit. He nodded friendly like to the waitress and said some gracious thanks to her which encouraged the prettiest smile I'd seen on her face all afternoon.
Sparkling gold-rimmed glasses sat on his nose. That was the last thing I expected to see. Couldn't think of nothing else for a moment 'cept the nights we sat out at the park and looked up at the constellations, naming them as they rose over the horizon, naming the stars in each. Months gone by and the constellations changing, but we named them all, whatever all came up overhead. Now he's wearing glasses.
Of course, my doctor is talking about me getting some soon. But I'm not one for glasses. It's not something I need, to see a lot around flour. I mean there's sugar, white flour, rye flour, wheat flour, not really much you'd need glasses for to tell the difference. You can smell the difference. And salt is always easy cause it comes in small packages. But it wasn't as much that an old man needs to wear glasses as it was an intrusion into my memories to see this man here who was part of my younger life, getting old. Of course, I couldn't see myself or remember the kinds of thoughts I was having as a young man that I was anymore different then than I am now, other than that I am older. I guess it's looking at AGE that's the difference.
Stan walked up to me something of a stranger and something of an old friend. The familiar features in his face reminded me of the times we shared together and the friendship we had. The new and unknown, the features of age reminded me of how friends become strangers, of how, no matter how well I thought I knew him, all people are to some degree unknowable.
Now in his fifties, he was acquiring a gentlemanly air. You know, the Southern Gentleman. I guess what it seemed to me was a manner of graceful actions and a mental comfort with where he was. When I introduced Albert, he reached across the table with his hand as eagerly as he met mine. His smile was genuine and enthusiastic. Though I was only a baker and he was some kind of entrepreneur, he greeted me with the familiar of long lost friends - never losing sight of the commonality that we shared, never viewing it as a weakness to be playing front yard football with the neighborhood children, never wishing to be higher than or apart from - and not ashamed to be seen with us, with flour still in my hair and sawdust all over Albert.
Mrs. Bridges took her seat and smiled and friendly in her singsong southern accent said, "Hi Chucky! How are you doing?" And that she called me Chucky at forty-two didn't bother me in the least. It fell out of her mouth so smoothly and natural as if I was one of her children. It actually made me feel warm and wanted when she called me Chucky, so I never minded and she was about the only one, too.
I wouldn't particularly call her a southern belle. It's not that she didn't have the grace and all. It's just that she's more homespun than what you'd expect of a belle, daughter of the mansion, prim and proper. Mrs. Bridges was more like the southern folk that cling to each other to survive. I picture her relatives from two hundred years ago clearing the fields and plowing single rows, just getting down to the good and honest work with the rest of the folk. And that was how Mrs. Bridges was to me, just any man's mother, could have been my own for that matter. And that was just how she was, all warm and natural.
"I'm doing fine, Mrs. Bridges. Albert and me just got off work and we came straight down here, about enough time to have our first beer."
"And how is your sister Lisa doing? Is she still working at the florist?"
You see what I mean? She knew these little personal things about your life that let you know she was curious and interested in you and your life.
"She's doing very well, thank you. She's been made assistant manager now. She opens and closes, Saturday through Monday, three days a week."
"I meant to call her for Easter and get some flowers from her."
"Lisa's still married to that nazi, Bob?" Albert had to put his nose out. He's bolder in front of strangers, sometimes outright brash. I don't know, I guess you could say it's because of his red-hot freckles that make his face shine. They're brighter red than his flaming hair. They make it look like he's got some kind of permanent chicken pox. They light up his face so much that when you first meet him you can't help but stare at those things and try to determine which dimension they're from, this reality or the twilight zone. So I guess he thinks it distracts people from looking at his face that he talks so ridiculous, but just to make sure he's got your attention, he turns up the obnoxious volume a notch.
"Yes, she's still married to Bob and he ain't no nazi." I didn't like Bob all that much, but to characterize him as a nazi kinda said something about Lisa and I didn't like that implication. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered one whit to defend Bob.
"He may not be no nazi, but he's always telling her what to do, down to what color belt to wear. If it wasn't for the fact that she had a good job and is earning more money than he is, he'd never let her out of his sight. What a control freak." Albert punctuated the truth of this with a handful of french fries, laying his head back and lifting them up above his yaw with them pinched in his paw like a crane dangling them over his mouth. The fingertips lowered and stuffed the flailing fries into his mouth with the indiscriminateness of a machine.
Chomp.
Once was all it took and with them stuffed into his mouth, he shut up.
"She's doing fine, Mrs. Bridges. She's awfully happy what with the job and all. And Bob treating her fine. Don't listen to Albert."
Stan had taken his seat and was looking over the menu the hostess had left.
"The stuffed trout is real good," Mrs. Bridges advised him.
He turned and looked at his mother. "I think I'll have the scallops." And laying down the menu, he looked around for the waitress.
"What have you been doing with yourself, Chuck?" he asked after his search proved fruitless.
"After I got out of the hospital, I took over the bakery from dad. I have a bi-polar syndrome, but I'm okay now with medicine." Every time I said that word my head twitched. But at least now, I have the courage to say it out loud so everyone can hear it and without feeling bad about it.
"Yeh, Chucky was in the nut house for six months." Albert again, like he was proud to have nutty friends. Of course with me, it was enough just to say it, but Albert had to open it up like an autopsy and let everyone see the insides.
"I'm proud of you for taking over the business like that, Chucky. Your father must be glad there's someone to take over for him and be able to run the business good like you do." Mrs. Bridges added, always gentle with compliments.
"It's a tough business right now, Mrs. Bridges, what with all the supermarkets putting in their own bakeries. Not only that but there's two new bakeries 've opened in the last few years. They've been cutting into my business pretty bad." I didn't like getting into the subject of business this early in the conversation. I actually got really depressed about it. I loved baking and getting my hands mixed up in the flour and dough. I didn't mind the running of the business aspect either, counting out the dollars at the end of the day. But I didn't know squat about marketing or how to get customers in the shop or keep them coming back. I just figured you make the best bear claws you can and thems that like bear claws will keep coming back for more. Or for whatever it is I make, they all like.
"How many employees do you have?" Mr. Entrepreneur asked.
"Well, I've got an assistant baker who helps me with the baking and a cashier who works the mornings. Another girl comes in afternoons and helps me close up and does some of the bookkeeping."
"Who does your deliveries?"
"Deliveries?" That was like asking who planted the wheat, only on the other side of the business. "We don't do deliveries."
"Then how do you take care of the wholesale end of the business?"
"Uh ... I don't do wholesale. It's all just walk in business." So, in like two questions this guy has found out a weakness of my business. Next he'd probably be advising me to take out an SBA loan or something.
Instead, to the surprise of everyone there, Stan coughed. It was one of those coughs that caught him by surprise too, like how I'd expect someone to start choking when they got a piece of meat stuck in their throat and needed the Heimlich maneuver on them. It was a quick cough at first, but it got caught in his throat and he gasped for air, coughing short sputtering coughs until he could get a full lung of air and really lay into it. Somehow, he got a handkerchief into his hand and bowed over it, coughing in long phlegmatic whoops. He doubled over and twisted to the outside to keep from coughing on anyone and had at it for a minute or so until he finished. Then he folded over his handkerchief so we couldn't see what was in it and stuffed it into his pocket. He grabbed the glass of water and took half of it in one swallow.
"Sorry about that," he said with an apologetic grin. "Cancer."
From the side of my eye, I noticed Albert giving me one of his looks, but I could only sit there with a worried face.
"What are you having, mother?" Stan asked nonchalantly.
"I think I'll have the stuffed trout." She was looking steadily into her menu as if embarrassed by something. "And what do you do, Albert?"
"Me? Oh, I work in the lumberyard. I'm just a hired hand." he snarled and belted down a chug from the fresh beer our waitress just served.
"We're ready now, I think," Stan mentioned to her before she could retreat.
"Yep," I nodded in agreement. I looked over at Albert. Just as I thought, he would have the usual.
"Sure. I'll have the Bay Burger with garlic fries," he echoed my thoughts. Of course, it was just like him to think the waitress was speaking only to him, no courteous thought in his brain. But that was Albert and we had been friends a long time. After a while I just got used to his idiosyncracies and they didn't bother me much anymore, 'cept at times like these. Course, it's been twenty years and who am I to these people? I mean Mrs. Bridges who lost a husband to the war and Stan who'd been near 'round the world and back again. They were really quite different from me. But yet, there was a quality about them that made them friendly and fit in with whomever they were with at the time. I guess that's what world traveling made you, someone who could fit in anywhere with anyone.
"Mrs. Bridges, what were you thinking of having," I said by way of offering to let her order next and bringing the waitress' attention to her even though I already knew what she wanted.
"I'll have the stuffed trout," she said in pleased acknowledgment and looked at the waitress. "Does that come with salad?"
"Yes, it does, ma'am," the waitress said. "Soup or salad."
"What's the soup today?"
"Destin Chowder. It's like New England, but with crab and shrimp instead of clams."
"Oh? That sounds interesting. I think I'll try that."
When Stan put in his order he asked for a shot of Stoli. "Make that a double," he said in afterthought and the waitress kind of nodded as she was trying to write everything down. I was curious, so I leaned forward while she was occupied like this and read her name badge. I could tell she was ready for me when her writing slowed down so I just jumped in.
"Connie, I'll have the Mahi Mahi sandwich, not too much mayo, the salad with roquefort on the side and another beer, please." She showed me how much she appreciated that by smiling and leaning into me just a little as she wrote. I felt like putting my arm around her then, but figured she got that from a lot of men and I wasn't going to be just another in a line. I thought how nice it would be to give her a big tip and make her day. Isn't that the way you talk to waitresses?
After she left, Stan leaned into me and whispered, "Seen much of Becky lately?" Well, Becky's been married with two kids, divorced, moved off to South Carolina for ten years and gol durn it if she hadn't come back to town last summer.
"Yeh, she called me up for my birthday. She's back in Shalimar, now. She asked about you, too." Stan and her could've had a thing going, but never did. Don't know why. At the time, I think she was talking too much about having kids, one of those women things when they're young and don't know what to do with themselves. Like trying to plant a seed, but Stan was barren ground. He was out for something, didn't know what, but he had a bug in him to be sure. So, I couldn't help myself. I wanted to know.
"So, what happened to you in Hawaii?"
Stan smiled and coughed again. This time he was able to get a lung full of air and cough a few hearty times to get it all out quickly. Then he looked at me with the most straight forward look I'd ever seen a man give and said, "Chuck, I failed, simple as that."
For some reason, I knew I was the only one who heard that remark. I remember thinking how strange it was for a man to be saying this straight up and plain and no one else seeming to listen or to care. I don't know what it was about that moment except it seemed natural and normal to me like he was talking to me telepathically. Albert was sitting right next to me starting a conversation with Mrs. Bridges and talking like a 38 year old teenager. Mrs. Bridges was just being her normal concerned motherly self as if all the men in the world were her children for whom she cared with her whole heart.
I was at a loss for what to say in response to that. Stan and I had been friends a long, long time ago. We weren't even alike. We were about as different as North and South. And for him to be coming forward with a confession like that, well, it made me feel as if he was some kind of spirit, like individuals aren't really different, but just parts of the same animal and here he was telling me what life was all about from what he had seen and heard and done. Like the left hand telling the right hand what part of the elephant it was feeling so they'd both know what the animal looked like.
"Hey, you can't be a failure. You went out and seen it and done it. Maybe things didn't turn out the way you wanted, but at least you got the hell out of this place." Now that's the small time guy in me talking. The guy that went to high school here and never really liked any of the people in this town. I guess you could say, I never had a friend during my school days. At least one I could call as close as Stan. I mean, there's always people around like Albert. You just gotta quit criticizing who they are, accepting the creature for what he is, but with Stan somehow, he got under my skin.
You gotta figure Albert was gonna pick up on what we were saying eventually. He's that kind of nosy guy who learns to pretend not to hear anything until something juicy comes up. Then he's ready with his double barrel shot gun to blow it wide open and embarrass as many people as he can. 'Cept this time he missed the point.
"Hawaii? Oh God, the Babes! Tell me about the babes in Hawaii!"
Stan laughed. He knew he could tickle this guy without him ever feeling his fingers. I mean Albert just laid himself open like that and said, tickle me. I saw Stan take a glance at his mother to see if he dared enter this challenge with her before him, then he surprised me too.
"Mom, Albert wants to know about the women in Hawaii. Why don't you tell him?" She looked startled and pleased. She had been there. She knew. She knew what excited a man about exotic women. But a shadow came over her. I guess the years of training, bible school and sermons, protected her.
"They are good women, for the most part. I think living in paradise keeps them a little separate from god. But there are some nice women you can meet in church."
I don't think that was quite the answer Albert was looking for. The mention of god got him defensive.
"I go to church almost every Sunday. Yes, I've met some nice women in church, but they always want to get married and have kids." He looked deeply into the hamburger he was holding before his mouth and continued, "And I've met some wild women in church, too, mostly the pastors daughters. They're something." Then he took a big bite out of the sandwich as if to say, "You can't ask me any more on that subject."
I looked over to Stan who had a saddened face.
"I married a nice woman," he said. "I didn't meet her in church though. In fact, I met her at a bar." He looked over to his mother with an apologetic look. "We're divorced now."
"If you'd married someone from church, you'd still be married now. At least in the eyes of god."
Stan didn't let that last comment phase him. He just continued.
"We were married ten years. Until the trouble with the lawsuit."
"Lawsuit?" Albert and I asked almost the same time.
"Yes, well, I sold my business and there was a lawsuit after that. It was a mess. Besides that, I wasn't working so Shauna supported both of us. After a while, she got fed up with that. So she just divorced me. It was easier. Are you married Chuck?"
"Naw."
"Me neither," Albert chimed in.
After that things got quiet for a while. I was dying to hear more about his selling the business and the lawsuit, but I couldn't get around to asking about it until we'd all finished.
"Did you sell the business for a lot of money?"
"Half a million dollars," he said. "But after the settlement I barely had enough to pay the lawyers. It took over five years to settle. The guy I sold it to was a weasel. Two months after we signed, he was trying to break the contract."
"That doesn't sound like a good deal."
"Hey, it was just the kind of person this guy was. Anybody else, and it would have worked out fine."
"I was wondering if I could sell the bakery. But I don't want to wind up in a situation like you."
"I've sold a dozen businesses after that and every one worked out fine. It was just, I didn't know anything about how to do it when I sold mine. After that, I learned fast."
"Never make the same mistake twice, eh?"
"Never." He stilled for a moment and looked into his glass. "Then I found out I had lung cancer. That was the end of me."
"It's not curable?"
"No."
I hadn't noticed how hollow his eyes were. They looked at me from out of a great emptiness.
*****
Nothing much happened for several days. Life took on its routine. I woke at 3 am and arrived at the bakery by four. I enjoy working in the quiet solitude of the early morning, feeling alive when everyone sleeps. I work with my hands, my fingers sifting through the flour. I flip on the machines to let them knead the dough. I mix the powdered milk, adding water. My nose does half the work at that early hour. The yeast and I play patty-cake. The cool of the refrigerators, the warmth of the ovens as they come up to temperature. I am alone with the bacteria and raw ingredients.
Paul comes in at six and helps me bake. He slides the trays into the ovens and sets the timers. He pulls out the pastries to cool. He dresses them like a doughty mother dressing her daughter for school.
After I've finished mixing the batches, I go up front and turn over the sign that announces to the passersby that we're open. I flip up the switches that light the room with fluorescence and illuminate the sign on the roadway. I fill the salt, pepper, and sugar shakers. I wipe the tables a good one. I give the cash register a once over and pop open the drawer to check the change.
Paul enters with a tray of glazed donuts just before the first customers. He leans the tray on the top of the glass case and looks at me. Here it comes.
"So Josie comes in last night and announces she's gonna go to the University of Miami. Seventeen and she's making these decisions on her own. It's like she's all grown up. She's quite a woman. Have you looked at her lately?
"Anna and I hadn't talked about it much. We just figured she was going to CC. I mean her grades and all were very good. We are proud of her for that. But she caught us both by surprise when she announced for Miami. It's not that the school costs that much, it's the room and board, the books and all the extras.
"'Course, Josie hadn't figured the money. She just knows where she's going. She says she's got a shot at getting a Ph.D. if she goes to Miami. Who'd expect she'd get an interest in biology?
"I couldn't tell you if having children is a burden or a blessing. But when she asks, I just can't say, no. Anna and I talked it out, way into the night. If I can come up with an extra six grand a year, we can pull it off.
"So what do you think, Mr. Schroeder? If you think you can afford an extra dollar an hour, I figure I can make the rest up doing odd jobs and stuff. I'm a pretty good handyman and there's plenty of people at church what needs a little fixing up now and then."
The glazed donut tray slipped and would have fallen to the floor had he not been standing right next to it. He turned awkwardly into the save and balanced it in his two hands while the donuts steadied. Then he slid open the glass door and placed the tray in the display case.
"I don't need it right away, but I've got to make some kind of decision by the end of the month. I mean if you can't, that's fine, but I'll need to be looking out for a job that pays a little better. Just let me know what you think you can handle.
"It's not like it's for me. I'm not going out and buying a new car. It's for Josie, she's the honey of my eye."
He brushed past me on the way back into the bakery and muttered a, "Thank you, Mr. Schroeder," as he passed. He seemed embarrassed to have put it all so bluntly. And for some reason, just because it was a Friday, I imagined he had practiced that speech all week long and knew he had to get it out before the weekend when his wife would take him to account.
A group of construction workers came in and I filled up four brown bags of donuts for them. Then they held out their thermoses for me to fill. They were regulars ever since the sewer plant renovations got funded and they've been buying a goodly number of donuts for the past four months. So I fill their thermoses and only charge them as if it were a cup of coffee. Forty dollars of donuts at opening always sets the day off right.
I pulled out a napkin and scribbled some numbers on it, writing some figures down to see if I could see what was what. Paul barged through the swinging door with more trays and dropped, "I hear Doughboy Bakery's paying assistant bakers $11.50 an hour. That's not bad money for a decorator, eh?"
"Paul, you know I pay you the best I can," was all I could manage. "If we could move to Main Street, we'd be busier. There's that spot open at the corner of Brooks Street, but I just can't afford the move right now. It'd cost me fifteen thousand dollars to move all this equipment over there. As it is, business has been slipping."
I was talking to his back as he filled the display cases. I felt like I was talking to myself. It wasn't that I was asking for sympathy, but I felt that way and I didn't like it. Especially, that he never said a word back to me except, "Just let me know when you've got it worked out. Like I said, there's no rush. By the end of the month."
Paul had been working for me for the past two and a half years and I had given him a twenty-five cent raise twice a year after he finished the first year. So what he was asking was just an advance of the raises I'd be giving him over the next two years. I figured I could just give it to him now and hold off on the raises for the next couple of years. It didn't seem like a big deal and it wasn't very much money.
It was just that everything was happening that way, like I was always trying to keep up. Nobody ever came up to me and said, "Thanks, you're doing a great job." It was always, I need a raise for this, or prices are going up because they're going up everywhere, or whatever. In small business there's never any catching up or keeping your head above water. It's always dealing with one emergency after another and hoping you've got enough reserve cash or reserve energy to keep on going.
During a break in the traffic, I strode back into the kitchen and let Paul know what I'd decided. I don't believe you should let someone hang, when the decision is an easy one to make, one way or the other. He seemed grateful that I'd managed to find the money, but a little bitter on hearing he wouldn't be getting another raise for a while. I suppose I'm just too frank with people at times for my own good. I should learn to shut my mouth once in a while, 'cause darned if Paul didn't say another word to me the rest of the day. When Anna came to pick him up at 3 that afternoon, I saw them through the windows talking about it. It's like the first thing she does is jump out of the car and confront him. That's why he'd cleaned up early and was standing around waiting for her, so's he could dive out the door when he saw her driving up.
Anna's a big woman with a no-frills face and a voice that will toll clear across any valley. And she's got a stubborn streak that won't let go, just like a pit bull's bite. It's not like she's not nice or anything and it's not like this happens all the time. But when she picks the battle she's going to fight, she won't back down 'til she wins. And she determined to have it out right then and there in the parking lot on a Friday afternoon. Turns out she'd told Paul to ask for a bigger raise than he actually did. Seeing as how he'd already accepted the dollar raise, there wasn't much she could do 'cept stomp around the parking lot for the next fifteen minutes. When she'd calmed down, she leaned her face through the door, jangling the bell that announces arrivals and said, "Thank you, Mr. Schroeder. Josie's sure gonna appreciate this when we tell her this afternoon. You're a good man, Mr. Schroeder."
I just nodded after her as she slid back through the door and waved to Paul who was standing embarrassed by the passenger door, waiting there with his hand on the knob ready to jump inside and hide.
*****
After I tallied the cash register and left Margaret to finish up the day, I drove over to the grocery store and picked up some food for dinner. When I pulled into the driveway, I noticed Stan was working on the underside of his car. So, I left the groceries and walked on over to talk to him.
"What'cha doing?"
He slipped his head out from under and said, "Oh high, Chuck. Just cleaning the brakes." and bobbed back under. I knew something about brakes, seeing as how I'd done mine every year, so I laid down beside him and held the lamp for him to see. He was having trouble slipping the pads out of the calipers, so I showed him a trick about getting them out.
"You know. We do something long enough, eventually we learn its tricks. I learned a few tricks, but there's some I couldn't learn." He looked me straight in the eye to emphasize his point.
"Sometimes you need someone just to tell you point blank what they are. Not everyone will do that for you." Not many people had talked about not much of anything in my lifetime, except who got voted off on Survivor.
"Sometimes you come home from the day and all that's there for you is just that hole you keep sinking into deeper. Running a business is tough 'cause there's no one to look out for you, no one to ask who might have the right answer for you. But what no one tells you 's that there's no right answer. It's all in the decision making.
"You like to make decisions, don't you?"
I told him about the decision I'd made with Paul today.
"Yeh, just like that. And how'd you figure that out? It's just a normal thing to you to have a puzzle and find an answer. Isn't that what you enjoy most about life? You probably scratched a few numbers on a scrap of paper to verify the value. But since you see the whole picture, the answer's pretty easy to come by, isn't it?"
"Yeh."
"And how'd you feel about it when you found that answer?" As if to ram home his point by providing an exclamation mark and the appropriate pause, the brake pads slipped out as neat as can be.
"Yeh, I felt pretty good. It made me feel confident, like people were depending on me and I can come through for them."
"Chuck, that's what a leader is all about, the kind of person that likes to stand in front of people, or a head above them; the kind of person that likes to ask the questions AND to find the answers. A leader is a doer, a solver, and above all, a decision-maker.
"Yeh, but all of that doesn't help me stay in business. For all the years I've been in business, it hasn't looked this bad. I've even used my credit cards to pay bills with."
"All you need is a picker upper."
"Yeah, like about $30,000 in cash."
"Chuck, you're smarter than that. You know the proverb, 'You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime'? $30,000 in cash is just a fish."
"Well, like I said, I don't know anything about marketing. I don't know how to start a wholesale operation. I don't know what to do anymore. All I know is how to bake."
There was a pause while Stan clinked around with the brakes. I wanted to change the subject, so I asked, "So, what's Hawaii like?" I guess I thought of Hawaii as a picture of success. Anyone who could afford to go there must be successful. I figured all the old people set out to do those last few things they have to do in life, and visiting Hawaii is tops on the list. And here's Stan who's left here to live there more than twenty years.
He goes on about paradise ... then, "They say bad things happen in threes. Well, mine happened in four. First divorce, financial loss, job loss, then the cancer. The universe looks a lot different when you've lost everything at the age of 55. You truly stand naked before God. You are stripped of the clothes on your back and have no measure of your accomplishments.
"But does that mean you've failed?" He punctuated his question by slipping in the new brake pad with a clank. He shook the pliers at me. "Every man dies naked and alone and you can't take a damned thing with you. So, what is the measure of a successful life?
"I don't know. I just figured if I could keep the bakery going until I retire and if I could have a pretty decent retirement, at least to the standard that I'm accustomed, then I'd have a successful life."
"Do you ever read Joseph Campbell?" he asked as he shifted to the other tire and removed the brake pad easier this time.
"The name sounds familiar. I think I've seen him on TV."
"He says, 'I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.'
"The way I look at it, you can be independent and chose not to be scared of life, or you can be conservative, hedge your bets, and hope fortune is kind. And, for most people, this formula of life works. They clock in to a job they don't like, put in their 25 or 30 years, and feel a great sense of relief when they can retire with a little nest egg.
"But, as much as they try to protect themselves, they're just running scared all their life. And those who think the accumulation of wealth is the most important measure of success are living a life of distress.
"I'm not saying I'm not scared. I certainly am. I'm just trying to make sense of the whole thing. In facing my fear of death, I'm forcing myself to feel the rapture of being alive. In facing my fear of failure, in the terms of material success and failure, I'm measuring my life experiences and how they resonate within my innermost being.
"But, it's the end of the day and you're just tired. Take a break and let's meet down at the park later."
*****
The park had more lights than it had 18 years ago, but the part where we used to hang by the boat ramp was still sheltered in darkness. The public bathroom was there too. It had a steep roof we could get to by climbing the outdoor shower walls made of cinder block. The trees and the incline of the roof shaded us from the streetlights. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, Stan tried to be the first to pick out Arcturus, but he got it wrong. He was in Gemini.
"Do you ever think about the universe, Chuck?"
"Not in a while."
"Some people think our universe, the solar systems and galaxies are just the atoms and molecules of another universe so large we can't even see it's there. Our Big Bang and 14 billion light years of existence could just be the split second explosion of a cap gun in some child's hand."
There was a long pause of silence.
Stan spat over the edge of the roof.
"There goes a collision of universes."
Suddenly, it seemed so funny, us sitting here on the roof looking into the distances, to imagine that vastness of our universe transposed into that spittle, us somewhere lost inside, sitting on top of a planetary electron of slobber, I burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at?" Stan asked, but I couldn't manage to get a breath to answer him. I felt as young and as carefree as when we'd played football. The stress of the years vanished and I allowed myself to fall into the convulsive abandon of the hysteria.
"Stop!" Stan commanded, "I can't laugh."
I managed a sideways glance at him before I doubled over in a new wave of excitement. He was succumbing to the infectious gaiety, his face scrunching up, and his chest heaving for air in an attempt to control it. He was soon laughing with me, finding his own humor in the situation to laugh uncontrollably.
"Infinitely small," was all I could manage between gasps. It was hilarious to imagine myself as a sub-atomic being, but also the marvel of our universe that could have such small parts.
"And infinitely large," Stan added, but the scraping of the words in his throat caused him to cough. With a lung full of air his cough turned into a spasm. I contained myself enough to grab his waist. Somehow my fingers grasped his waistband and kept him from sliding off the roof. We were not in a position to manage this gracefully and Stan was violently coughing up blood.
Without seeing more than I cared to, I held onto him until he felt stable. I was an awkward witness to his private weakness. I looked away. But, with my hand clenching his belt, I had more than a physical connection to him. Like holding a newly hatched chick in the palm of my hand, the commonality of life gave rise to a cherished bond between two living creatures. Even more connected than this, though.
I don't really believe in reincarnation. I always thought that mumbo-jumbo was for the religious weirdoes. But, I felt in those moments while he was struggling to regain control over the coughing spasms as if I knew everything he was going through, everything he experienced and felt and that, as a result of this, we had the same thoughts together. With this, the distinctiveness of our individuality disappeared and I felt as if I were inside his body, as if I were him. Even as that moment of transcendence slipped away, the brotherhood between us cemented.
Stan recaptured his breath and rolled free of me onto his back. I followed his eyes into the depth of the night and imagined the real distances between the stars.
"The universe is 14 or 15 billion years old. Ever since the big bang. Do you believe in the big bang, Chuck?"
"I suppose so."
"At first everything was plasma that had shot out from this intersecting point between the void and the all. The universe could have been just a solid sheet of uniformity, but maybe one unit hit against another that was slowing down just a little, and like a panic in the crowd, a bunch of these units started tripping over each other and collapsed into what eventually became atoms of hydrogen. These too, collapsed together and formed stars and the empty spaces between them.
"Most of these oldest stars are gone now. Their nuclear fusion created helium from the hydrogen atoms, and then heavier atoms, until all the atoms in the periodic table were created: oxygen, nitrogen, lead, silver. When the stars became too heavy and the hydrogen was mostly spent, they exploded into super novas and spread their wealth all over the universe.
"Do you know what a super nova is, Chuck?"
"Yes," I had the vague idea and he was telling me more as he talked along so I didn't want to interrupt his story with a side-track explanation.
"Our solar system was formed about four billion years ago. You might say we are the second generation in the universe. All those different atoms that were spewed out in the super nova came together and formed the earth where eventually life began and humans were created. Everything in your body, from your bones to your blood came from that first star."
"I never thought of it that way."
"Most people don't.
"So, here you are, a little fleck of star dust, looking up into the sky at your brothers. As far as we know, we are the only creatures in the universe that can do that. We are a precious gift. We are the universe looking at itself and wondering, 'Who am I?'"
He sat up to look at the lights of the bay. "Here we occupy ourselves with our selfish desires and our vanities, while the universe has finally spit out an intelligent creature."
"Are we that intelligent, then?"
"I think we act just like any other species, we grow to dominate the planet our population growing like a fungus. While we have our sciences and politics, we don't seem to be any more intelligent than an ant.
"When I die, I'll ask myself, 'What have I done to help the universe understand itself?' and my answer will be, 'Nothing!'
"So, I don't want to die, not at least until I have advanced the understanding of the universe. I want to live forever, or at least for a very long time. Now, when medicine is on the cusp of giving us the ability to live forever, we are at our greatest risk of destroying ourselves. And the question is, 'Will we survive, even another decade, long enough to turn our focus from our petty wars and rabid population growth toward our true mission in the universe?'
"What is intelligence really? We are the human race. Do we show our intelligence by proving one man richer or worthier than another? One country mightier than another? Or do we show our intelligence by proving that we can survive. Now we are faced with a disaster of our own making, the overpopulation of the planet and the exhaustion of its resources. What display have you seen of human intelligence that alerts and unites us toward our survival of this impending disaster. There is nothing but continued selfishness and avarice.
"To me, there can be nothing more important to us right now than insuring our immortality and the survival of the human race."
"What is to be done?" I asked.
"For the survival of the human race, an independent colony; a colony on the moon or on Mars that will live past a catastrophe on earth.
"For immortality, the vision to reverse this geometric population growth, reduce the population to a healthy level, and turn the focus of existence toward our purpose. We are still struggling to survive on an individual level. When are we going to turn our efforts toward surviving as the human race? Let's look at the ideal parameters for the success of the species and set those as our goals."
"You won't hear anyone spouting those in their campaign speeches."
"No, you won't. It has to come from somewhere else. Like Jesus or Gandhi. It has to be something people believe in, not something mandated by a government." He turned to me and looked directly into my eyes. "A man has to be willing to sacrifice himself, to give everything he has and is, his prized possession, to another."
*****
That was the last time I spoke to him at length. A few weeks later, when he took his last breath without lungs, he was dead.
Mrs. Bridges showed the dignity of the ante-bellum Southern Belle at the funeral. Afterwards, she took me aside, said, "He wanted you to have this," and handed me a key chain. It was a bronze symbol of infinity with the keys to the red Firebird on one loop and three unknown keys on the other.
It was late morning when I arrived home from the funeral. I didn't feel like working and the day for me was pretty much over. But, I felt like a drive and I thought I'd take that red Firebird out for a spin, so I decided to run by the shop and check in and see what kind of lunch crowd we'd be getting.
When I pulled into the oyster shell parking lot, there were a few more cars there than usual, so I figured it was a good thing I dropped by. Sure enough, the front dining room was full. Even Paul had come out from the back and was helping at the counter. He motioned with a nod of his head to a group of business people sitting in the corner booth who were trying to get my attention. So, I walked over to see what was what.
"Mr. Schroeder, I'm Mel Banks from DeLite Bakery and I just want to say what a pleasure it will be working for you. You have such a fine reputation."
Turns out everyone sitting at that table was a new employee of mine and that the three unknown keys on the key chain were for three other bakeries just like mine. 'Ole Stan had put together a merger deal that didn't cost me a dime, but put me at the head of a new bakery chain. On top of that, I had all the talent I needed. Mel Banks was good at marketing, Martha Sandborne was a whiz at wholesale, and Jon DeSoto was an organizational genius. The company was large enough that if there was something needed to be done that I didn't know how to do, I just hired someone to do it for me.
*****
That was all four years ago.
So, when Josie came into the bakery this morning to thank me for her college education, it was kind of difficult for me to know what to say.
"What are you studying?" I asked.
"I'm basically studying the mechanisms of the body and how we can assist the body in healing itself. Or even better, in staying well in the first place.
"I just want to say how grateful I am for the student loan to continue my education at graduate school. Now that I can work on my Ph.D., I can continue my studies on anti-aging processes."
I pulled her aside and told her about how that kind of generosity should be remembered, about the man who had lost everything, about the value of that gift, and about the measure of a man's strength who still has the capacity to give when he has been reduced to nothing.
