CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 9/10

  

A year is a very long time when you’re fourteen.  Especially when Jimmy had graduated the year before and I was yearning to see him again in the hallways

and at lunch.  Now it would be another year.    I day dreamed about us meeting outside the high school at lunch time, sitting on the iron pipe that surrounded the grass while all the girls noticed us and were jealous of me. 

But when I finally arrived at the free academy the next year, Jimmy was lost to me in a cloud of older girls who swarmed around him constantly.  Often he came down the hallway surrounded by a group of girls, all giggling and talking.  If I wasn’t so in love, I’d have been angry with him.  He just got more and more handsome and grownup while I got pimples, eczema and often had sporadic times of the month, which Irene called peek-a-boo periods.

I remember one afternoon after school when I started up Elm Street for home and Jimmy Bean came toward me, walking in a group of eleventh grade boys and girls. He recognized me and ordinarily would have stopped to say hello, but the crowd dragged him along with them.  He quickly glanced at me but kept going along with his friends.  I felt ignored and I knew that even if I were in the same grade as those kids, I’d never be invited along with them and Jimmy.  They wore the latest clothes and said smart things.  I never thought of anything to say.  Maybe I should have given up on being with him, but instead I became even more determined to somehow take him away and  have him all to myself. 

There wasn’t much chance of me pulling it off, not with a boy so popular that, even after he graduated and went to work in the fish pole factory on Whitesboro Street, the senior and junior girls still talked about Jimmy. 

When church let out on Sunday morning I got a half a minute of his time out on the street after Mass.  I kidded him about being so popular. 

“Pretty soon you’ll be in the newspaper,” I said as I caught up to him outside of Saint Francis de Sales Church.  But instead of being embarrassed or even trying to look a little humble, his face lit up in a winning smile.  I never met a boy who made me love him more by loving himself.  He was like his own cheerleader and I couldn’t help to not stand up and cheer him on.

I wasn’t very good at small talk, but I always felt completely comfortable with Jimmy, even though my heart was pumping a mile a minute whenever I was near him.  And although he always said something nice to me,  I knew he was looking at me as a little girl.  That was disappointing, because I was aware of boys in my grade starting to stare at me with that weird look in their eyes.

“Mary, you’re just the swell-est kid on Steuben Street,” he said to me.  I went home and rolled this pronouncement over and over in my mind, trying to find a hint of interest from him.

CONTINUED: CXLviii Only Once, and CXLix. Parting

(Parting appears in this chapter order in the latest version of the novel, Monk In The Cellar.)

My father left us when I was a very young man. He didn't mean to. He just forgot to take care of himself. He might have minded his health and blood pressure if he had realized he would die, that he would leave us somewhat destitute and forever heartbroken.

I think I was in my thirties before I realized that had I been a young child when Dad passed away that afternoon, I would have cried and cried and then somehow gotten beyond the loss, as much as anyone ever can. But I was a young man, home on vacation from college, ready to finally have man to man conversations with him. After all those years of being a somewhat pissy teenager, I was just beginning to really talk to him. I wanted to learn from him. Not so much from his advice, which he was always very careful not to press upon me, but from the interplay of our ideas and experiences as almost equals. I began to see in what ways I was his son and I wanted to learn more from him about his life, his joys and failures. I hoped that doing so would help me avoid a few stumbles along my own path. And he was a nice guy; I just liked talking to him.

But he died. He died in my arms, my mother up front behind the wheel of the old Ford, foot pressing the accelerator to the floor, running every stop light between our house and the Emergency Room. Dad trying to catch his breath in the back seat and me just holding him, not knowing what to do, until he was finally still. Two blocks before the hospital my mother sideswiped a car coming toward us. She didn't stop. The other car took our back bumper off and we just kept going. When we got to the ER door, an ambulance blocked it. Mom pulled the car up on the grass as close as she could get and threw the shift lever up to Park. Then she jumped out her door.

"Carry him in," she shouted at me as she ran in the doorway to get a nurse.

I did as I was told, and only later wondered how I had the strength to carry such a large man.

They took him from me. I started to follow, but an orderly, a large black man, stopped me. When I tried to brush past him, he did the strangest thing. He put his arms around me in a bear hug and he didn't let go until I stopped struggling. Then he pulled me over to a chair and pushed me into it. He sat beside me on the end table saying nothing.

"I'm OK," I said after a few moments.

He stood and patted my arm and then he left.

I was alone. And in some ways would be so forever.

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 4

Katie was a lot bigger than me as well as most of the kids in our class and she usually got what she wanted.  The big brat grabbed my sword and pulled with all her might.  She put her back into it and tried to whip the stick from me.  I held on and she swung me right up off the ground.  I slammed into the metal fence that surrounded the school yard.  I bounced off and wound up flat on my back on the ground with my skirt hiked up to the top of my legs.  When I looked up, there he stood, Jimmy Bean, a boy a year ahead of me in school.  

He stood before me with a smile on his face as I brushed down my skirt and scrambled to my feet.  His hair was almost red, but more blonde.  He was lovely.  The sun behind him lit his golden curls and I thought,  “what a beautiful boy!”

“I’m Jimmy Bean.” If he had said he was an angel I’d have believed him.

“You’re who?”  I asked, hoping he would say his wonderful name again.

He said nothing, but just kept smiling.

“Jimmy Bean?”  I finally said.

“I am.” he said, now laughing.  “And you’re Mary Grace, my friend’s neighbor.”

“I am?” I said.

“You are,” said Jimmy Bean.  He winked at me, turned and walked away. 

I watched his square shoulders move across the playground as he joined a group of boys who were looking my way and laughing.  But they stopped as Jimmy Bean came up to them and he assumed a position in the middle of the group.  He commanded respect, I saw that.  Something in his eyes and bearing, just the way he moved his limbs, told you here was someone who mattered.  Katie saw it too when she ran away at his approach.  That’s what Irene told me as we walked home from school.

“He scared her away just by looking at her,” said Irene.

“He’s not scary to me,” I said.

She hugged herself.  “Those green eyes of his ....”

“Jimmy Bean rescued me, Irene,” I said.  “He rescued me!”

“But Mary, you’re too young to have a boyfriend.”

“Jimmy said he’s your friend, Irene.”

”He’s my brother Tommy’s friend,”  she said.

CONTINUED: Ever This Day

I sleep and I dream a lot.  Mostly of standing in a river.  Not a mighty river like the Yukon.  It’s more like a gentle river you can stand in and fish.  In the dream I think at first I’m fishing, but then I realize I’m just standing there as if I’m waiting.  The sound of water flowing is so neat.  It feels like some kind of a bath, like being cleaned.  I want to go out farther, deeper.  But I can’t.  I’m waiting.  The dream comes back almost every night, but I never wade out from the shore into the deeper part of the river.

I try to stay awake late at night, waiting for Sally Pepper.  I lie in bed hoping for the door to open.  I fall asleep and dream and then wake up a few times before she finally gets here.  She always seems glad to see me.  Her face lights up with the biggest smile.  The other nurses here are nice, but they don't act that happy to see me.  I think Sally likes me.  It would be terrific if she fell in love with me.  When I get out of the hospital I want to keep seeing her.  Maybe she would move to my neighborhood.

When my Dad comes to visit he is always antsy and goes out for a smoke a lot. I ask Mom later if he's mad at me about anything.  She says he's just upset and hates to see me sick.  I think he might be mad about my not wanting to go to school.  When I was home for a while, he thought I should go back to classes. 

"I don't feel good enough," I told him.

"But all the kids miss you," he said.  "They want to see you."

"They want to make fun of me," I said.

He threw up his hands and got up and left the room.  The front door to the house closed a few minutes later.  I wanted to tell him why I just couldn’t go back to the school.  Then, maybe we could have talked about fishing.  We used to go fishing most weekends.  Just because I'm sick doesn't mean I don’t remember hooking that big trout in the river.  And all the fun we had.

Dad must think my going back to school is pretty important.  Well, I did go there for a visit once.  Last March.  A few of the students laughed when I came into the classroom.  My face was bloated from the medicines.  Mr. Bellinger tried to make me feel welcome by asking me questions like he did with all the other kids.  But I hadn’t done any of the school work he sent home and I couldn’t answer the questions.  I felt so stupid.  I had the highest average in eighth grade, but now I'm just like Stephen Walters, the class dummy. 

When I get better, I'll have to start eighth grade all over again next year with those idiot seventh graders. I will definitely get better, but I won't go back to school.  I'll get a job with a big company and work my way up.  I won't need school.  Things will be terrific.  I'll marry Sally Pepper and we'll have a family.  Everything will be just fine.

 But today the thing in my chest presses down more than ever.  It's worse than yesterday.  Breathing is tough.  The doctor never really answers me when I ask if I will get better.  All he ever says is , "We'll see, we'll see."

"Are we in the right hospital for what I've got?" I ask Mom.

"They're doing their very best for you," she says.  "If I knew there was somewhere else for better treatment, I'd have you there in a heartbeat, honey."

I wake in the middle of the night and I’m afraid.  It's so quiet, like a cemetery.  I wish Sally Pepper would hurry up and come on duty.  She'll smile at me and maybe ask about the time I won the essay contest, or tell me she hears I play the piano wonderfully.  She’ll say I’m handsome and all that silly stuff while she brushes the hair out of my eyes and rubs my chest where it hurts. 

Mom brought a new magazine today and while I wait I try to read a story about fishing for salmon in Alaska.  I hear a rustling sound and look  up and Sally is here.  She is so beautiful.  I'm turning a hundred shades of red.  That smile is gorgeous.  I love her.

“Where did you come from?” I ask.

“The river,” she says.  “Can’t you hear it?”

I don’t know if she means what she’s saying or she’s joking.  I don’t care.  I grab her hand and say, "I love you."

"I love you more than you know," she says.

"No, I mean I love you," I say.

She smiles, but her eyes turn serious for just a moment. She laughs lightly.

"In your dreams," she says.

We talk a little and then I get quiet and close my eyes for only a second.  But when I open them she’s gone.

  In the morning old Sister Mary Hymentuum comes in to give me the  bed bath,  a cleansing of the face and pits.  Sister Hy says any work below the belt is my duty.  Thank God. 

This morning her face is more serious than usual.  I wonder if there is bad news from yesterday's tests.  I'd ask her, but she always says the doctors never tell her test results.

"And how are you feeling this morning, young Mister,"  says Sister Hy.

"I'm feeling like I'm going to beat this thing," I reply, wondering how she will answer.

"Well, that's good, that's good," she mumbles without much enthusiasm. She starts my bath.

"Sally Pepper thinks so, too," I say.

"Uh huh," says Sister Hy. "Sally who?"

"The night nurse, Sally Pepper,"  I say.

"Never heard of her," she says. "Hold your other arm up, now."

I'm surprised. She’s a little forgetful, I guess.  Maybe it’s a nun thing to not remember the prettiest nurse in the hospital.

"Young man, I have a heavy heart for you this morning," says Sister Hy.

"I'm doing fine," I say.  I do not want to hear this.  Sister Hy has my arm in the air and she keeps scrubbing my arm pit, over and over.

"You know," she says, "no one here is talking to you about  ..."  She drops the arm and begins to wash my chest. 

"About what?" I say.

"About  ... " she says,  "the future.”

“The future is great,” I say.  “I’m going to pull through this.  I am.  I definitely am.”

“It’s not my place to –“ she begins

“That’s right,” I say, interrupting her.  “It’s not. We’ll let the doctor do the talking.”

Sister Hy gathers up the towel and pan of water and starts to leave.  But she stops, leans over me and places a kiss on my forehead.  She walks away and out the door and I feel relieved. And rotten.

Later I ask Sally if she is my night nurse.

"I am here for you," is all she says.

"Why don't you ever give me a shot or take my temperature?" I ask.

"They do that for you during the day," she says.

 Yes, they do. I get needles stuck in me all the time.  They're painful, but Sally Pepper says to pray, "Ever this day be at my side" while the needle goes in.  It hurts less and I remember a prayer Mom taught me when I was a little kid.  It goes “Ever this day be at my side,  to love and guide.”  I can’t remember the rest.   I’ll have to ask Sally if she’s ever heard it.

I think about Sally getting a shot in her bottom. I suppose I shouldn't.   If I were her doctor, I wouldn't be embarrassed. I'd just say,  "OK, Sally Pepper, give us a cheek."  I really don’t know if I could say it that way. It sounds profane.   I've been thinking a lot lately about how I would give her a shot.  She'd have to raise her skirt, and I’ve never had a girl do that in front of me.  And I guess you can't give someone a shot through their underwear, so who pulls it down, me or her?   Do I sit or do I stand behind her?  This would be kind of sacred for me, you know? Maybe I’d light a candle or put on some music, like a CD of a symphony.  Dad would probably choose Mahler’s 9^th.  He always plays that when something important happens, like when he got promoted at work.   I’d be a gentleman, of course. I wouldn't touch more of her skin than necessary.  I promise not to.  I’d bless myself as I pushed in the plunger. 

Sally hasn’t been to see me the last few nights.  I hope  she’s not upset that I said I loved her.  I’d be humiliated if she could read my thoughts … some of them.  I keep praying she’ll come be at my side, but she hasn’t come back.  When I try to think of us being together after I get out of the hospital, something in my mind won’t let me see the future.  I get upset and almost cry.  It’s as if the future is on the other side of the river and I can’t get to it. 

It’s strange, but I think Sally has always been with me, since the day I was born.  I can’t explain how that’s possible.   I’ve seen her only the last few weeks and I wonder how I overlooked her before.

I guess I’m sleeping most of the day now. Of all things, I dream of learning to sew while I sit by a river.  Sister Hy shows me how to use the scissors in a way that doesn't fray the material.  She puts a thimble on my finger and helps me to thread a needle.  I look around the river bank, hoping no one sees me doing a girl thing. 

"I don't like doing this," I say.

"But it's no different than tying a beautiful Royal Coachman trout fly," she says

"Well, I'd certainly say it is very different," I reply.

"We’re making something for your beloved.  You’re sewing a dress for Sally Pepper.  It's for a very special occasion."

I wonder how Sister Hy knows of Sally and that I love her.  Once I start working, I realize I’m happy for the first time in weeks.  I cut out the pieces and lovingly form every fold of the white fabric to fit each curve of her body.  I stitch a beautiful fitted gown to embrace Sally Pepper. It's like dressing her. It feels almost as nice as it would to touch her.

It’s getting harder to breathe now.  I take long, slow pulls through my nose and each time the pain is worse.  I’ve lost track of everything around me.  My whole world is my breathing and the pain.  It always seems like late afternoon.  It’s cold and I haven’t seen the sun since forever.

Sister Hy comes to me again in a dream, but this time she doesn't want to sew.

"Come with me," she says.  We're not at the river, but instead in a desert.  The sun is impaled on the edge of the sky, its top half above the far hills.  I can't tell if it’s dawn or evening.  Sister Hy stays ahead of me and leads the way.  We walk for quite a distance and the ground gets steeper.  The sun never moves.  It sits there with one leg over the horizon and watches us.  A thick mist swirls up ahead of us and the path disappears into it.   I stop, but Sister Hy reaches back and pulls me into the fog.  We edge forward, pushing our feet ahead, as if we were nearing the edge of something.  I hear a river, but this time it’s not a lazy flow.  It is running from my left to my right, a huge and powerful flood of water pounding a course from horizon to horizon. I can't see it and I don't want to get any closer. 

"Come ahead," says Sister Hy.  "You need to see this."  I can’t.  I am thoroughly frightened.  I don't want to see what is beyond.  My stomach churns and moans, and I have to go to the bathroom.  My head is throbbing and I can feel my heart thumping in my chest.  I do not want this.  Why does this have to happen? 

"I can't come with you," I say to Sister Hy.

"You must." She answers. "I won't let you fall in, but you must see this."

"I'm not going anywhere," I shout.  "Why are you doing this to me?  I want to go back to the hospital.  Where is Sally?  I want to go home.  I want to see my Dad.  Why is he always leaving me?"

I awake soaked to my skin.  I am bawling like a two year old.  I realize I’m back in the hospital.  Someone is holding me. 

"I'm dying," I say through my tears.

"I didn't want to tell you," says my father.   He pulls me closer into his arms and kisses the top of my head.  Then he lets go and stands up.  He crosses the room and leaves.  I can hear him crying.

I dream that Sally Pepper and I make love.  I don't see anything.  It must happen in the dark.  I only know we do it.  I can tell.  It's strange, as though I'm in a dream while I'm dreaming about it.

Later, I see our children.    I'm proud of them and of myself.  I come home from work wearing a shirt and a tie and Sally Pepper is cooking supper and feeding the baby in a high chair.  Our little boy plays under the kitchen table.  He looks like me.

  I say to him, "Why don't you come out and be with Daddy?"

"I'm busy," he says.

"Busy with what?" I ask.

"You know," he says. "I'm dying."

It’s very dark now.  The pain isn’t gone, but it feels like it belongs to someone else.  I haven’t taken a breath in a while.  I tried and tried and then I just gave up.  It’s very quiet, except for the breeze that blows at my back and nudges me forward.  I can hear the sound of flowing water again.  I'm on the edge of the world.  It's not a dream.  I want to call out for Sally Pepper, but I can’t get enough air to speak.

I know I'm leaving.  I'm not afraid.  I'm awfully sad. I will never be here again.

I hear a shout and turn.  Behind me in the distance great dark clouds rise up into the sky above a raging river that makes no sound.  My father stands on the far shore, almost hidden in the shadow of the storm.  Although he is at a distance, I see him place a fist over his heart.  His other hand comes up and closes over the fist.  He will always hold me in his heart.  I feel tears start, but I have no breath to cry out to him.

Turning back to the path my eyes feel as if they are opening and the world begins to glow with a new light.

Sally Pepper is at my side.  She is stunning, dressed in the gown I sewed.  She is absolutely beautiful and I’ve never seen her so radiant.  There are gorgeous velvet hills all around us and the sky is a perfect robin's egg blue.  We walk hand in hand and she brings me to the top of a hill.  Down the green slope in front of us is a valley.  At the bottom a river flows away as far as I can see.  A small group stands on the shore  and they look up at us,  waving.  Three or four  of the young women carry bouquets of flowers.  Sally Pepper walks a few steps forward, then turns and invites me to follow.   I walk up to her and she takes my hand and places it over her heart.  She leans into me and whispers in my ear, "Ever this day be at my side."   The sun is warm on my face and the wind caresses me. I am laughing.  I am crying.  I can breathe.

copyright, 2008/2012   David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Trestle

If a train came along, we might just stand still and enjoy its passing.  That would not be very safe, of course, but I’d certainly hear it coming and have time to get back to the bank where one end of the span was anchored.  I was wrong.  As we peered down at the falls through the spaces between the track ties, we couldn’t hear anything over the thundering water.  I realized my error too late.  I glanced up and saw the light on the engine moving rapidly toward us.

The trestle was built only wide enough for a train, and then a tiny bit more in case someone was dumb enough to get caught out there when a mountain of steel came beating down the tracks.  And because the builders didn’t have casual walkers in mind, there were no railings.   We stood on an emergency walkway, two parallel boards perhaps each ten inches wide, laid out in a string across the ties and parallel to the tracks.

We quickly started back off the trestle where we could step out of the way of the oncoming freight.  I held on tightly to Dave’s shirt collar to ensure he didn’t bolt ahead of me, slip off the narrow path of boards and tumble over the edge of the trestle to the falls below.  The train closed on us rapidly.  We weren’t going to make it.  Better to wait it out here, I quickly concluded.

The two locomotives pulling perhaps a hundred cars now charged on to the trestle and the structure began to shake.  That settled it.  I sat us down and wrapped Dave in my arms and legs as if I sat behind him on a toboggan.  Squeezed in between the edge of the trestle a few feet away and the rails that would carry the train past us, we sat watching the behemoth fly up to devour us.

When something that large is about to miss you by inches, it appears to be coming right over the top of you.  I grabbed on to the edges of the boards underneath us and held on for dear life, steeling myself against the urge to jump up in a heedless panic, only to slip over the edge and fall  end over end down into the water.

“We’re perfectly safe, Dave,”  I shouted .  “Just keep your head and your hands down.”

And for good measure, “Close your eyes!”  But I left mine open till the very end.

The blast of air as the train passed over us … for that’s what it seemed to do … pressed the cheeks up into our eyes and felt strong enough to blow us off the trestle. It might indeed have done so if we had remained standing.  The roar was terrifically loud, like a thunder clap that went on and on.  Dorothy on her farm in Kansas would have recognized all the earmarks of being swept up in a tornado.   We held on to the planks beneath us and with my legs I held on to this most precious bundle, my son, for as long as it took.  And it seemed to take forever.

I may have imagined it, but I thought I saw something coming toward us sticking out of the side of the train.

I flopped down on my back and forced his head down on my chest.  He resisted my effort and started back up.  “Oh, God,” I thought, “don’t bolt.”  He didn’t.  He lay back.

I had been staring over at the side of the trestle, making sure we didn’t somehow slip over that way.  But now lying on our backs, I no longer could gauge how close we might be to the edge.  Looking upward at the sky, all I could see were big puffy white clouds painted on a bright blue canopy.  A loving God lived up there, I began to fervently hope, because now it was all up to him.  Other than gazing at his front door, I could do nothing but wait this out.

And then it was over.  The train was gone.  Dave moved, but I held him down a few seconds more.

“We’re going to stay here a minute so we can recover,” I said, “before we get up and walk down the planks.”

 “Hey, that was neat!” he said, turning his head around and beaming up at me.

“We’re going to stay here a minute,” I repeated, “so Dad can recover before he gets up and staggers down the planks.”

I suppose I learned something that day.  So much for always feeling in charge, for example. In fact, I look back on the incident as holding signs of everything that would play out in my career as a father.  No matter if future calamity were brought on by stupidity or fate, I could not save my son from forces so overpowering that they were beyond our control.  I was often able to do nothing but figuratively keep my arms around him in the coming years when I stood with him as he grew to be a man.  He would sometimes overrate his own capabilities as I had, but he would own his own disappointments and grief.  I would have nothing to arm him with but hope, which was what he needed most from me.  He would face deadly disease and later the loss of the woman he loved, his own precious bundle gone off to a heaven he didn’t believe in.  Through his life, he would walk out on his own train trestles and he would somehow survive.  I may have sometimes been clueless as a father, but I loved him through it all.  And that would be enough.

And honestly, as I told my wife later, over and over, we were indeed safe.  We were not THAT close to the edge of the trestle and the train derailing on top of us had no more possibility of happening than it might the next time I waited for a passing train while I sat in my car at the crossing.  Still it was a dumb stunt on my part and I can’t really object when my son today introduces me as “my father … the man who tried to kill me … several times.”

And I won’t forget that day, as I sat up and looked around at the beautifully colored leaves of fall, and then down at the water raging beneath the trestle.  I no longer felt like a great explorer, but it was good to be alive.  In a few minutes we walked off the trestle, my legsmore than a little wobbly.

“Wait’ll Mom hears about this!” Dave said gleefully.

I could hardly wait.

copyright David Griffin, 2010

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

ave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: CXLvii. Trails End

“Not really,” I said. I was too busy watching the storefronts glide by as I hoped to recognize at least a few names among the businesses.  There were none that I remembered.  Bouncer scrunched down in his seat and looked behind us.

“It’s an older woman wearing a Boston Red Sox hat, “ he said.

“That’s nice, I replied,” but I wasn’t really listening.  Where the hell was that ice cream shop we used to go to after school when I was a sophomore?

At the top of the hill, we turned left on Eagle Street and that's when I began to realize the Cornhill before my eyes in no way resembled the Cornhill I remembered.   Half of the homes were gone, burned down I had heard, some by residents and some by the city.

How does that happen? An entire section of the city that once housed working men and their families, church goers for the most part who kept regular hours, who took vacations in the summer, bought books for their kids as well as movie tickets and tried to raise them to be responsible adults. How did it all disappear, to be replaced by poor families, many of whom accepted social welfare benefits as a right rather than a loan? What rights did the current residents possess that men and woman of our parents’ generation did not have?  What society or government had allowed it to happen? And why?

We stopped the car on Steuben Street in front of my  grandfather's small bungalow. The man had died there in 1948 and Grandma came to live with us. A black man sat on the front porch. I saw him reach his hand under his jacket and leave it there as the two of us got out of the car.

"Hi, we're religious brothers," I said unnecessarily, since we were wearing our robes. "We stopped to look around. My grandfather lived in your house." I waved to indicate the house.

The man on the porch said nothing, but continued to look from one to the other of us.

"Many years ago," I continued. "They lived here back in the 1940's. And Thirties and Twenties ...."

No response came from the porch.  I looked up and down the street and wondered when was the last time it was filled at mid day with children playing.  Girls drawing hopscotch diagrams on sidewalks and boys darting in and out of driveways and down the sidewalks on their bikes.

The man finally spoke.  "What do you want?”

Under his breath Bouncer said, “Gun, Jesse.”

"Uh huh,” I answered.  Then louder to the man on the porch, “Nothing, Thank You." I was watching where the man’s hand had disappeared under his jacket and I didn't plan to take my eyes off that spot.

"Well, Thanks," I said. “We’ll be going now.” 

It was then I heard the tractor trailer engine roar to life down the street, and an air horn begin to blast.

“Take this with you!” screamed the man on the porch. I could see something in his hand glinting in the sunlight that I assumed was a gun.  Bouncer and I stood frozen as the truck pulled up behind us.

The man on the porch got up and swung his arm around behind him as if he was winding up for the greatest baseball pitch of his life.  When his arm came down he caught his gun hand with the other and stood in the classic firing pose, slightly crouched, arms extended out in front of him, aiming at us.

A terrible sadness crept over me as I watched the agent of my destruction prepare my death and I could not tear my eyes away. Behind me air exploded out of the brake cylinders and the pads slammed down inside the wheels.  Bouncer stood slightly ahead of me and I could see he had turned to look at the truck.

“Holy Shit,” was all he said.

The man on the porch fired off three shots in quick succession and I heard at least one of them strike metal behind me.

“Oh, Jesus, Jesus,” Bouncer was murmuring.  We were both still standing and I didn’t think either of us was hit. The man on the porch turned and ran in the front door of the house.

The sound of a truck door slamming behind me brought me back to earth. The tractor trailer crunched into first gear as I turned around and watched it slowly begin to move away down the street.

“Did you see her?  Is she OK?”  I asked Bouncer.

“Was it a woman?”  he asked.

“What did you see, Bouncer?”  I asked  as I grabbed his arm and turned him toward me.

“I don’t know,” was his reply.

CONTINUED: Heaven

I just love fly fishing.  Getting down in the water and matching wits with a dumb trout  who almost always wins the contest.  When I step out on the water, I quickly say the age-old Fisherman’s Prayer: “Please don’t let me do something stupid and drown.”  Carefulness is more important as I age, because dumb mistakes seem more common now.  In the Post Office the other day, instead of a twenty I mistakenly handed the clerk a prayer card from a recent funeral service.  She passed it back, saying, “We can’t pray on government property.”

“Of all places,” I replied.

Myself, I need all the help I can get.  And so I often envision with me a guardian angel.  I’m convinced she is a fine looking woman….cute, capable and skilled in heroic water rescues.  And more than once I’m sure I’ve heard her say, “why don’t you cast over there, under that tree branch?”

I wasn’t always a fly fisherman.  I used to have a job.  No, of course we’re not all unemployed, but many of us are retired.   And certainly most of us who fish on weekday mornings are jobless, for one reason or another.  As for myself,  shortly before retirement I took up fly fishing to help the transition.  

Toward the end of my career, I had a sense there was something more important to do in life than work, but I was damned if I knew what it might be.  Forty years hard at the task made me the best worker I ever met.  I did it so well I forgot how to do anything else.  So one day I decided to hand in my retirement papers, buy a fly rod and go stand in the creek for a while.  Cool my heels, so to speak …. literally.  I’d let my inner child and  my guardian angel sort it all out.  I hadn’t  played in the water since I was eleven.  

I used to fish for hours, moving about from place to place on the stream.  I’d try one spot for a while, then pick another likely location and move upstream or down, working my way through different pools, runs and riffles.   I’d catch a decent amount of fish if I applied a modest degree of effort.

But today I move around less and stay longer in one spot.  And I really don’t care if I catch anything.  I never worry about how many fish I catch.  In his book, “Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis,” Howell Raines's fishing partner advised him, “If you're going to keep score, you might as well be on a golf course.”
So instead of applying myself to the task, I watch a blue heron as he stands on a rock in the middle of the creek, seemingly bored, but ever ready to pounce down on a trout.  Or I’ll pause while a brace of 6 or 7 ducks fly by me only 3 feet off the water, veering slightly out of my way.  They don’t get excited.  I’m just another object to fly around.  I love it when they do that; I feel like a part of the stream, a piece of nature.  To me, the birds are saying I’m welcome.

Later, as I travel home,  I have to admit that driving all this way to not catch any fish and to sit on a rock eating a sandwich might not sound appealing to many people.  But I’ve seen the most beautiful sights in the world and spent an hour or two in heaven.

copyright 2012, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTNIUED: Flight 405

At 8:47 and a half,  Sandra, a recently married 24 year old flight attendant,  told the passengers to get ready to land in a few minutes.   But the plane would meet the earth in only seconds,  almost four miles short of the runway.  The captain and co-pilot would realize their mistake just  3 seconds before their lives ended.

Much too low, Flight 405 continued to descend  through the night, rushing forward at almost 200 miles an hour.    It swooped down  over the Normanskill  Golf Club, then above New Scotland Avenue and St. Peter’s Hospital,   where some of the injured and dying would arrive in less than an hour.  As the small urban pond known as Buckingham Lake rose  like the moon up from  the plane’s port side wing tip and the maple  branches below began to feel the bite of the churning propellers,  Flight 405….a 45,000 pound behemoth of  aluminum and steel and gears and cables and wires and grandmas and fathers and Moms and sons and daughters and sweethearts … with an awful tearing screech and chest-pressing thud, slammed into 50 Edgewood Avenue at Albany, NY.

The plane hit low enough to dig out its own cellar, had one not existed, and the house collapsed on top of the wreckage.  Nothing exploded or caught fire.  Fuel doesn’t readily burn; the vapors do, but an outdoor temperature of 13 degrees Fahrenheit that night minimized any vaporization.  The fuel-laden right wing separated from the plane but miraculously remained intact, even though enough aviation fuel leaked out to turn the crash site into a potential inferno.  All of the injuries were from the plane’s  impact.   Passengers were catapulted to the front of the plane and into the forward cargo compartment.  Such G forces can cause irreparable damage to a body’s organs.  In some air crashes, victims’ hearts have burst out of their chests.   Cargo disintegrates.  In the case of Flight 405, passengers were hurled forward like human cannon balls, along with their seats, smashing into luggage and freight.  Only one of the plane’s occupants got out on his own and he didn’t remember how.  The rest, dead or  alive,  had to be pried out.

According to the NTSB report, Accident Investigation Report NTSB-AAR-73-08,  complete with charts, photos and maps,  (ignore the Wiki entry on the web; it is far too forgiving of the pilots)  the plane’s crash into  the very bottom of the house was extremely fortunate for the nearby homes.  Frankly, it was incredible no fire erupted and only one house was obliterated in the densely built-up neighborhood.  Most of the houses were only twenty five feet apart.  Of course, it was miraculous Sandra and 31 of the passengers lived.  Likewise, 5 out of 6 in the house survived.   The family of four  watching  “The Partridge Family” on television was spared any serious injuries, even though the parents were blown out through  the family room window and landed in a side yard as the plane ripped into an adjacent room.  In the tossed up wreckage of the home, their two young sons were found in a closet, just beneath a pool of leaking jet fuel.

A man out walking his dog reported the plane came in over the neighborhood and at the last second dipped its left wing, catching it in the street. The man stood in shock as the plane slammed into the ground, just where the street rises up a small hill to 50 Edgewood Ave. The left wing disintegrated. The fuselage shot through No. 50’s living room to the basement and the fuel-laden right wing, still attached to the plane, flopped over on the next lot, No. 54, where a tree stopped it from sliding into the backs of homes on the next street. There was no house at No. 54. Thirty-five years later there is still none. If you look at Google Maps, it is the only empty lot anywhere in the area. Had a home existed at No. 54, it would have been hit broadside with a wing full of aviation fuel.

A graduate student in an upstairs apartment of No. 50 was in the shower when the plane swooped down out of the sky and took his life.  His young wife, Hannah, the friend of a woman with whom I worked in Syracuse,  was watching television in the next room.  She remembered nothing about the moment of impact except for the loudest sound she had heard in her life and the last one she would hear for a  while.  The world turned upside down and the lights went out and.  She found herself in a pile of rubble, ears ringing and hurting terribly, her bathrobe up under her armpits and caught on debris so at first she couldn’t stand up.  The smell of what she thought was kerosene almost overpowered her. 

Suddenly cold in the frigid March air, she decided their house had blown up and she had landed down the block.  Hannah threw off a piece of furniture and began to walk home before she realized she was already there.  The street was quiet.  Deaf from the crash, she couldn’t hear anything anyway.   She began to look for Peter, her husband.  As the moments ticked by, neighbors came out of their homes and soon the street was crawling with police, firemen and even a reporter with a backpack and a microphone down at the end of the block.  With the strong stench of aviation fuel permeating the scene, firemen worked frantically to free the survivors and to suppress their own personal terror of an instant immolation had the fuel ignited. 

Survivors were rushed to area hospitals.  In 1980 I met a man who tirelessly worked through the night to comfort the injured and their relatives and friends who searched the hospitals for their loved ones.  He was the pastor of the Reformed Church near St. Peter’s Hospital at the time.  Bruce and I are old friends today and we sometimes talk about his experience that night and my own from a different time.  This story brings inquires from time to time and a passenger on the plane wrote me not long ago looking for the minister who had attended his parents that night as their family shook with the tragedy of the death of a sibling he had been flying with in the wreckage  I was able to connect the man with Bruce. 

Less happy was a reader who wrote to say she was related to the Captain and that he should have been portrayed as a hero.  I had to respond that I published only what I read in the NTSB report.  I offered to consider an addendum to the story with a  paragraph written by her, but she never responded.

Not long ago, I parked my car on Edgewood Avenue, got out and looked around.  It’s a quiet street just south of  Washington Avenue and not far from the University of Albany’s campus, where my daughter spent four years in the late 1980’s.   The demolished house has been replaced.  I felt a bit self-conscious, knowing adults seldom  walk around anymore on a residential street in the middle of a weekday  afternoon.  

How strange it was to hear the birds chirp and an airplane pass overhead as if nothing unusual had ever happened in this neighborhood of  families and students.   I looked around at the well-kept homes and wondered if any of the people living in them today were here on that night in 1972.  Had an airliner landed on my street, I would have moved out and never looked back.

I got back in my car and sat for another five minutes.  I wanted to pray, or somehow offer condolences … or something.  Probably, I wanted to know this couldn’t happen again.  But tragedies happen every day, when and where we least expect them.  On a bright and sunny afternoon or a sleepy winter evening as the snow falls gently on the neighborhood.

                    Copyright 2010, 2015 by David Griffin

There have been two Flight 405 accidents in the United States.  In March of 1992, US Air, the successor to Mohawk Airlines, crashed another Flight 405 into Flushing Bay at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.  The plane stalled on take off because of wing icing.

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com