Grist: The Journal for Writers

The morning the camera crew from the 700 Club
showed up across the street, we waited in the window
for nearly an hour before Dr. Belnap walked
outside in the white sweatsuit and sneakers
he’d worn the day Jesus opened his arms to him
under Mr. Schwenk’s sycamore tree. By then we all knew
the story of his epiphany. And would hear it again
on TV three weeks later when Jim and Tammy Fay,
mascara pouring down her cheeks, narrated a slow-motion
reenactment of how he’d been hitting the bottle pretty hard
in those days, and had been only hours away
from leaving his fat wife for his dental hygienist
when, bags packed and apartment rented, he went out
for his morning jog and returned born again.

We first learned of his run-in with Christ
a few weeks after it happened when he knocked on our door
to spread the good word. His eyes shone like glass bottles
out of the sea. His lips were moist, and he swallowed often
to clear his throat of emotion. He’s nuttier than a fruitcake,
my mother said after she feigned a stomachache
to finally get rid of him, and all of the kids
on the block were pretty sure his sons were, too,
after he pulled them out of McKinsey Elementary
a month later for Grace Christian Academy,
where they were taught, and quick to believe,
that George Lucas was a false prophet
and Stevie Nicks sacrificed white cats in her dressing room
after Fleetwood Mac concerts. Saturday afternoons
we stopped asking them to play ball with us
except for when the teams were uneven, and even then,
we kept our distance, sticking them out in right field
where we couldn’t feel their eyes on us between pitches
as if they knew something was missing in our lives
and were itchier than hell to tell us exactly what it was.

But Jim and Tammy Fay were all ears, and as we watched
the makeup girl powder Dr. Belnap’s face
on the morning of the shoot as if he were Sly Stallone
about to run through the Italian Market, we quickly saw
the error of our ways. Tell Kevin you’re sorry
for calling him a pussy, man, so that we can get into the scene,
Teddy Perry elbowed me when we joined the others
on the sidewalk. They’ll need extras, won’t they?

In our neighbors we saw the same ferocious smiles
of anticipation. Jo Jo Simrak checked her wig
in her compact mirror. Bill Kelleher had on a new pair
of trousers. And when the time came for the first take
the entire street fell silent except for the sound of my mother
sweeping cigarette butts from the front porch just in case
our house made it into the final cut.

Down past the Schwenk house the dentist’s wife and kids
bowed their heads in prayer with the film crew,
their eyes filled with joyous light. Then they stepped aside
as the star of the hour took off behind the open camera van,
a bearded man in a ball cap barking directions for him
to slow down, speed up, cry more, smile less,
as his feet smacked the pavement.

He had the part down. From the edge of the set,
we could see how well it would play on TV,
the old man clawing at the air with his fat hands
as he neared the now-hallowed sycamore.
His pace quickened. His cheeks reddened.
And by the time he finally reached the spotlighted tree,
he had us. Joan of Arc at the stake. Moses parting the Red Sea.
The whole of Amelia Avenue caught up in the mystery
of the sycamore’s branches, suddenly believing.

A lot of good things are coming your way now that you’ve crane-kicked
Johnny Lawrence in the jaw. Gone are the days when those Cobra Kai boys
ran your ten-speed down on their dirt bikes, and the trophy
that comes with winning the All-State Under 18 Karate Championship
is going to look pretty tough above your bed. The whole story’s the stuff
of movies, if you think about it. Except for one thing: I doubt
you’re going to get the girl. Not in the end, anyway.
Sure, Ali likes you enough, going on a date to Golf ‘n’ Stuff,
the two of you walking hand in hand from the bumper cars
to the photo booth. But she comes from the Hills, Daniel. And you don’t.
Think about her long face amid all those Corvettes and convertibles
when your ma gave her a lift home in the station wagon. Or how her folks
in their perfect tennis whites exchanged knowing glances when you told them
you’re from Reseda. I know that look. Saw it just the other day
from Brent’s mom when I came in from their pool to use the bathroom,
her eyes on me as though I’d forgotten to flush the toilet, or had swiped
her diamond on my way down the hall. Seems no matter how much
I smile and smooth the wrinkles in my shorts, I always come away
feeling guilty and dirty, like the time you ended up on the Country Club floor
covered in chicken Kiev when you spied Ali lip-locked with Johnny.
She might stick around. God! I hope she does. Her blue eyes,
and all those curves in the right places, kill me, too. And I want to believe
a girl like her, from the other side of town, could fall for an average Joe like us.
I’m just afraid once she gets a load of your apartment with the pink stucco
and blistered paint, or hears your ma say wooder instead of water,
she’ll run screaming back to her world of manicured lawns and Rolls Royces.
Not to mention that she’s used to other luxuries. What’s going to happen
if she wants lobster and all you’ve got is enough dough for Cokes
and a stop at the video arcade? Crazy Burger might be hiring.
But $3.35 an hour isn’t going to go very far after you gas up that
hot rod Mr. Miyagi gave you for your birthday. And I can only imagine
what Ali might think when you pull up to her house on a quarter tank
smelling like French fry grease and cheddar cheese. DonÕt get me wrong.
For what it’s worth, I think you should stay at it. But check your chin
for dried mustard, and try not to spit or cuss when Ali’s father
reminds you for the fourth time that his brother-in-law is the district attorney.
All I’m saying is I wouldn’t get too hung up on the view from the Hills.
Besides, it’s California. The roads are paved with boobs and blondes.
Before you hock that sweet set of wheels for tickets to the opera,
you might want to take another slow spin around town.

For weeks after seeing the movie we couldn’t stop worrying,
Han Solo frozen in carbonite, featureless and rocky
like an unfinished sculpture, and Kent and I crazy with suspense,
our brows creased in disbelief as we played Pac-Man
or fielded grounders that we’d have to wait three whole years
to find out if he was alive or dead. Stopping to stare at the bumblebees
droning over her marigolds and sweet pees, my mother could only
shake her head when we came to her with it in the garden.
“I don’t know, boys,” she said. “I guess you’re just going
to have to wait and see,” and me knowing this would never do,
every winter a similar contempt for mystery driving me
to search our closets and attic for my gifts, lifting a loose flap
of Santa Claus paper on each box until I knew exactly what to expect
under the tree Christmas morning. Saturdays in Lawson’s Dairy,
before sneaking into the movie again, we paged through Starlog
and other Sci-Fi rags looking for answers, our breath still
as we blinked at the movie photos and relived the moment
when Darth Vader ordered the piglike Ugnaughts to lower Han
into the carbon freezing pit, Chewbacca throwing back his maned head
in grief, and each gossip writer and so-called “insider” also confused
about what was coming. Many took the traitorous Lando at his word
that Han was “alive, and in perfect hibernation.” The teenage clerk
with the bad breath had a different theory. Ringing up our candy
for the show, he said he had it on good authority that Captain Solo
would return only as a ghost because Harrison Ford was too busy now
getting ready to play someone called Indiana Jones. “That’s pretty shitty
if it’s true,” Kent said, kicking dandelion heads on our way
to Shea’s Theater. “Who’d give up the Millennium Falcon
for a fedora and a whip?” Between bites of red licorice I had to agree,
my eyes drifting across Bunker Hill Road to the little puffs of cloud
above the Gulf Station, as if half-expecting to see the freighter ship
cut across the sky and jump into hyperspace, that whole summer
everything up in the air.

Think of him in hunting coat and naval cap
as he bucketed into Ashtabula County,

lightly crusted with the dirt of travel,
the overloaded springs of his camper sighing

under the weight of double bed and four-burner stove
in front of Dunk’s Home Diner

where my grandfather, fresh off his shift
on the docks, forked in butterscotch pie

and mulled over the Browns chances
against Pittsburgh on Sunday.

Or going over the railroad tracks near city hall,
the ceilings twice lowered to help save on heating costs,

and then lumbering past the snow-beaten houses
behind St. Joe’s, some of them crushed and deserted,

driven to earth by winter. Depending on when
he came through that September,

he might’ve heard the steam trumpet
of the Pacific Express rolling into the West Yard

or the gears of the Bascule lift bridge grinding
above schooner and sloop. Crossing the black river

into the tall oaks, perhaps he tipped his cap to children
playing ring-a-levio or sifted through a can of lures

in the country store as his poodle worked a biscuit
on the porch. He wrote nothing of our town,

neither of the lake-polished driftwood
along the beach nor the oily waves that sloshed

against the piers, but I like to think that the dollop
of Old Granddad he shared with a stranger in Michigan

came from Cook’s Drug on the corner of Prospect and Main,
or that by the time he rumbled across the county line

and continued west, it wasnÕt for lack of friendly face
or pleasant meadow to camp and cook a plate of salted pork,

but simply because the road away from here
seemed broad and straight and sweet.

–originally published in Reed, No. 62 (2009)

By first grade, I was trading my bubble gum cards
for pictures of KISS torn from Circus magazine,
this band that I loved but couldn’t hum a song,
not like “Baker Street,”
my sister curling her bangs to the dreamy sax proem
before heading out Friday nights,
not like “Yellow Brick Road,”
my head swaying to the easy refrain
from the back seat of the family Duster.
I wasn’t even sure if they were human,
those moon-booted creatures in Kabuki faces.
On Chucky Strong’s lunchbox the four of them
hovered in rhinestoned leather over a smoking wasteland,
and afternoons in the cafeteria, I scanned for clues
into whether that mesh of rubble had been Earth
or Mars, my stomach swelling on the juices
of mystery and chip-chopped ham.
The Demon filled most of my silences.
At Revco Drug he bored into me from packages
of KISS shoelaces in his armored coat and bat wings
deep with the shadows of an ancient seduction.
The leaves were down, and instead of raking the yard
into piles for jumping, I ran home and stuck my tongue out
in the mirror, my cheeks burning with effort, and bit down
on a stolen packet of Burger King ketchup,
pretending to spit blood.

Then one night in October my mother brought home
one of their records. I was eight, maybe younger.
She found it in the sale bin on her break
from the register at Hill,s, and when she slid the 45
out of the bag with a wink, my heart pounded:
my first big-boy record for a thrift store turntable
that knew only “Snoopy’s All-Stars”
and “Big Bird Sings About Feelings.”
Outside a sliver of moon appeared between the clouds
as I set the needle with shaky hands,
and in pink smock and nametag, my mother sat
on the edge of my toy box for a listen,
only to rise and make a face two verses later
as if she didn’t understand. But it was me
they were calling, not her, and without trying to explain,
I remained in my room for the rest of the evening,
passing on Saturday night popcorn and “Wonder Woman”
to get it all down, singing along with the record,
and later on my own in the dark,
my face turned toward the stars, letting them know
in their own words that I had received their message,
and was awaiting and worthy of another,
yellow-haired boy of stuffed monkey and Hulk Underoos,
instrument of the gods.

–originally published in River Styx, No. 76/77 (2008)

One day we checked the old rail yard,
the next, the parking lot behind Dunn’s Plastics.

All that week men in white coats on TV
warned Skylab could break up over parts of Maine,

possibly Montreal, and 524 miles southwest
in Ashtabula, across Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls,

we liked our chances. Will it be on fire?
we asked at supper. Our mother frowned.

She worried about her petunias. It was July,
and every time a bottle rocket whistled outside,

she cringed and told us to stay near the house.
But we wanted to touch something from outer space,

that world where Luke Skywalker, closing his eyes
and trusting the Force, fired torpedoes

from his X-wing and blasted the Death Star.
We combed the fields around the closed gristmill;

pocketed sparkler sticks and roman candle tubes
from Lake Shore Park. At night we camped out

in the backyard, paper towel roll for a telescope,
and when our neighbor’s cat tipped a garbage can

after midnight, we woke surprised to find the earth
had spun toward a new set of stars. What was

beyond them was hard to imagine. As was the news
that morning that the satellite had split apart

over Australia. On TV hundreds of glowing
pieces of space junk rained down on homesteads

as though Tinker Bell had waved a magic wand.
We looked at our mother. Where’s Australia?

we asked. She nodded toward the end of Amelia
where Mr. Simrak’s old Ford sank into the earth,

a door shotgunned, windows smashed,
and glancing back at the screen, bottle caps and cigar

bands in our pockets, we saw for the first time
just how close we’d been.

–originally published in The Florida Review, No. 33.2 (2008)