You can’t plow a row from the middle and there’s no house sans a twisted gate.
Try it. Every field has its beginning; strewn with rocks, lined with hedges, and placed for the most convenient coverage of sunlight, fertilizer, and rain. And every house has its lane of intrigue. You can tell a funny story, or a sad or a tragic one, about every row and about every lane. Ah, but how interesting is that? The secret to a good story is a good next sentence. The secret to a good next sentence is a good start. The secret to a good start is, well. That’s up to you now, isn’t it, dear reader? You’re still reading. That’s good. A good story starts as wish may wish.
Let us have a stab at it, shall we? And maybe a good row to plow or a good gate to open. And perhaps a good wish as well. And a story.
This story happens to have the good graces that it happens to be true. It really happened. It is not exactly as it happened, though. No history is. Just read Thucydides. But it is as near such a monstrosity as is possible and as near such a veracity as is memorable. I was mostly sleeping when it began. And woke up while it happened. And continued happening into reality. Sleep does that. And as we all know, memories we gain from the edge of sleeping and the pinnacle of waking are always accurate. Let that one sink in for a moment.
KNOCK, KNOCK. KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!
“Huh? What?” I slept myself awake. Sleep shlept and refused to subside. Waking wherefrom makes for a lack of coherence.
“I’m asleep,” I thought with the perspicacity of the nearly waking. “I mean. I’m awake,” I corrected myself. “I wasasleep and now I wasawake.” Consciousness intervened, sleepily.
KNOCK, KNOCK. “Oh, for the love of-“ I intoned. Or swore. Ya, swore. That’s right.
One way or the other. I’m not sure which way, actually. I’m not sure if I am actually here, now that you press the point. Sleep does that to one. As does dream. And feint. And the other thing. The thing that does not matter but makes the monkey of us all.
“Oh. Am I waking up?” I thought. “Is that what is going on inside my head? Isn’t that nice. Though I’d much rather have another fantasy, please.”
“I paid my nudes,” I said. Chucking up. Um, waking up. "Um…, dudes,” And then more coherently. “Dues,” I said, slightly more conscious. “I paid my dues. The things I pay so my knees aren’t broken. What?”
KNOCK, KNOCK. KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!
“Who’s there knocking at my door? What the… Shit? Someone’s at the door. Loudly, by the hear of it,” my teeth ground sounds into language.
And I think I heard every hear of it. Every hear has a heard. And every heard has a might have something to say. And every hearing has a memory of once having been listened to. And in the listening to is the remembering of…what? I do not know. And in the remembering of it is the might have been important to somebody somewhere or other. And in that somewhere or other is somebody other’s business. And he was right here, right now knocking on my right here, right now door!
KNOCK, KNOCK! Again, reality knocks. “Alright! Alright! All goddammed right already! I’m awake,” not quite sure that was true.
It started one morning. Many things do. I was putting in a new floor in my kitchen. It was a novel affair. The kitchen, I mean. Well, the floor, too, I suppose. I was installing a mosaic tile kitchen floor made of eight-inch square tiles that were themselves made of four tiles, four inch square each, and a tile in the center that was at a 45 degree angle to the others, left or right-you pick one. Contrarywise. I cemented them to the Schluter Ditra underlayment already adhered to the floor with thin set concrete. Unmodified, if your please. Just plain Portland cement.
The effect I was going for was lots of squares and squares within squares going against each other squares contrarywise in rows across my kitchen floor, la-de-do-da. Diagonally wise. It was a spectacle of Pythagorean perpendicularity. You had to be there. After working for a while and reaching a pivot point. I felt in the need of some rest and laid down for a bit. I had been at it for some time. Just a nap before resuming my labors. There was grout to be had, after all.
I woke up, abruptly. As I already described above. Answered my door. Outside, was nothing.
Not anything that resembled a lead in to a knock-knock joke, anyway. I looked back and forth across my front yard, front and down and all around and then there he was. A boy sitting cross legged on the grass beside the sidewalk coming up from my driveway to the steps leading up to the porch at my front door where I stood, looking puzzled. A teenager by the looks of him. He looked confused.
“Can I help you?” I said with my best adultly voice, starting to feel cogent. He started talking and it was a jumble of confusion. OK. I was confused. He was talking. We were both jumbled.
“Oh. It’s so hot!” he said. It was. “I’ve been walking all day. Since 3:00 O’clock in the morning.” “Uh, huh,” I nodded, pretending to know what I was nodding about.
I was intrigued. And wondering why this was any of my business.
“It’s so goddam fucking hot. I’m sorry. Excuse me.” He seemed almost delirious. “It’s my phone. I don’t want to bother you. But I need to get my phone working again.” “Commendable,” I thought. “I’ve been up since 3:00AM. I got my phone and then it was stolen, and I got to the T-Mobile store. No. The Metro T-Mobile store.” That seemed to be important. I made a note of it. “And they told me my phone would be working in three hours. Three hours! That was three O’Clock this morning! Does this look like three hours to you?”
I had to admit it didn’t. The boy on my lawn was sitting, Buddha like, and pitching face forward into his lap in a rhythmic karmic cycle.
“And I was in a fucking homeless shelter,” he looked up briefly to tell me. Our eyes met momentarily, showing a person there behind the delirium. That’s a start at a conversation.
But, wait. Homeless shelter? I was starting to feel beyond my depth. And a little scared. The boy on my lawn by my sidewalk on the way from my driveway to my house went back into a dreary ground state of bottom feeding and brooding. Every once in a while he looked at me, untrustworthily.
‘OK,’ I thought, trying to think diplomatically. ‘Let’s make this a little bit personal.’
“Hi,” I personaled. “My name is Jon,” kind of as a question and kind of with a great deal of trepidation. ‘What’s yours?” It seemed like a double dose of desperation.
“Rebeka,” he said, after another draining lack of trust. Though now it was my turn to feel at a loss.
‘Rebeka?’ I thought. ‘Wait. You’re a girl?’ Thankfully I didn’t say that our loud. This Rebeka was a person with short black hair, really short, but not quite buzz and definitely lacking cutsie little curls around the ears and temples like most girls with short, cutsie little hair have. Actually, she had pants and a shirt like a man might wear, and sneakers she actually showed off to me as if ready for hiking. “Here, see,” she said. “I walked all the way to the phone store. I’ve got good shoes for walking.” Indeed he had. Um, she. Rebeka was back country ready. And she was a girl.
“It’s so fucking hot!” Rebaka the girl said. She was sitting on my lawn. On the grass. Beside the sidewalk, cement that is. And rocking back and forth like a-well. Like an uncomfortable person in an uncomfortable situation sitting on the front lawn of a “Not Entirely Certain I am a Sympathetic Person’s” house. I was not exactly knowing what to do about it, either. Not really. And she might be a homeless person, to boot. This homeless… girl…? on my front yard.
“Um,” I both thought and said. Sure. Why not?
“Look,” she said. “I got my phone here. It’s my phone. I’ve got to get it working. Shit!”
“Shit?” That I understood.
My first impression, other than the presence of a crazy person on my lawn, was that she had a discharged phone and she wanted to plug hers in. This, as we all know, is the death of a thousand milliwatt-hours. Stupid, I know. But that was the most I could make of her rambling. “Do you need to charge your phone?” I asked, stupidly.
“I was in this homeless shelter,” she went on. As if I wasn’t there. Which I very well might not have been. I don’t know. At this point I wasn’t paying attention. “Please. I need to call Metro T-Mobile.” And then “That’s my carrier,” like I was an idiot. Which I very well might have been. “Can you please let me use your phone? I just have to call the phone carrier.”
Ya, OK. This was starting to make sense. Well, OK. No it wasn’t. It was making less and less sense. Less and less sense all the time.
“It’s so hot,” she rocked back and forth. Back and forth in the heat. It bore into me. Now I was starting to get hot, too. I was sitting on the wall on a step under an awning on my front door. Is it called a step? It’s too big to be a step. Maybe it’s a stoop? I was sitting on a wall on the stoop under, whatever, etc.
“Where do you live?” I asked. “Just down the street.” “Oh,” now I realized something. She was a neighbor. “Do you live next door?” I said, gesturing. The house across the street had recently been sold. I thought maybe she might be from there. That might explain why I didn’t recognize her. “No, a little further down. The house with the blue awning.” “Oh, OK,” I pretended to understand.
“Would you like to come into my house?” I said, furthering my attempt to be cordial. “It’s cooler in here.”
“Um,” suspicious. “Is there anybody else in there?”
“No. Just me,” comprehending.
“Then I think I won’t go in. Sorry.”
“Oh,’ I said. “Not a problem. Of course. I don’t blame you.” This was the first intelligent thing she had said. Then thinking on my feet, um. On my porch. Stoop. I said, “Here. The wall on my front porch is in shade. It’s cooler here under the awning. It’s cool here. There’s a breeze. You can sit here. If you like.” She looked cautious. Relented. Then came. Sat.
Communication comes with comfort. And hospitality? Probably a good idea. So I tried again.
“Rebeka,” I ventured. “Would you like a drink? A soda maybe? I think I have something inside?”
She looked cautious again. Dubious, even. Or even hunted. “OK,” she said. I went inside and found a diet coke and a ginger ale. I brought them both out. Who knows what boy Rebeka girl might like?
“Here,” I said. “I don’t know what you prefer. Here’s a diet coke and a ginger ale. Help yourself.”
She paused for a moment. Then took the ginger ale.
“I remember my mother would give me ginger ale what I was sick,” she said. Commonality.
“Ya,” I said. “So did mine. Then, “Ginger ale for stomach aches,” We both said together and laughed.
“Can I use your phone?” “Yes. Let me get it.” A phone is not something I always keep around me. It’s lucky if I pay attention to it at all.
“You know a cell phone is always something you can’t get along without.”
“OK.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Well, I’m an old guy, you know,” I said reluctantly. Trying not to sound too old fashioned. Or obsolete. Failing. Dismally. “A cell phone is kind of like a toy to me.” I don’t know how she took that. Today’s future curmudgeons are yesterday’s Cell Tower Rapunzels.
So this is what I gathered from Rebeka Rapunzel. Somehow her purse was stolen. Or lost or whatever. Her credit cards and money didn’t matter to her, but her cell phone did. Cell Tower Rapunzel Rebeka.
Once she realized that her phone was gone, she logged onto her account on her computer, back at home, I assume, and did a search for her phone. There is a ‘Where’s my fucking phone?’ app apparently. This brought her to a couple of places. One was a field somewhere in Zephyrhills, the next town over, and one was to a homeless shelter. Ah. That’s how we came to the homeless shelter. How, exactly, did she get to my front door, I wondered? I’m fairly certain her phone was never anywhere near here. I hope.
“Where are you from, exactly?” I asked. “The next house over. That way,” she waved down the street. “Oh, right,” I remembered. She was a neighbor of mine. That at least made sense.
Rebeka lost her phone. She found it using a locate app. Clever girl. It brought her to the middle of a field in the town next door, and then to a homeless shelter. She was persistent.
“Damn it. I want my phone!” she swore to the mavens of the homeless shelter. “Oh,” they said. “There’s a, well, a thief living here.” “I don’t give a fuck. I just want my phone. I don’t care about the money or the credit cards. Just give me my fucking phone. I’m sorry.” She was a very polite irate person.
The people at the shelter knew who to contact. Who to ask. Who to just say, “Please give the irate person her fucking phone back! It’s no use to you and you’ve already gotten your meth hit out of her wallet.” He gave Rebeka her fucking phone back. You can’t snort the meth-app.
But there was a problem. There always is. By this time she had contacted T-Mobile, excuse me. Metro T-Mobile, and had her account suspended. This was the three O’Clock in the morning she kept on about. Did I mention that? Rebeka said this all happened at three in the morning, which made it all the more confusing and contrary for me. Fine.
OK. Let’s organize this story. Rebeka lost, um, ‘lost’ her phone, figured out that she had lost with a “’” her phone, went to the Metro T-Mobile store, inactivated her account, went home, located her phone, went to the last few places her phone had been, found her phone, confronted some underpaid volunteers at a homeless center who then confronted the local homeless-thief, then got her phone back again. Got it? Ya, neither do I. OK. Our story continues…
“Do you kill?” she asked, taking a swill on her ginger ale? Wait. What? OK. Gimme a sec. I don’t think I killed anybody recently. Not that I haven’t wanted to… Or had the opportunity… Oh, I know what she means.
She means, “Do you hunt and kill for meat and food and bratwurst and capocolli that you then process and keep in your freezer and hang in your pantry to feed your family during the lean times when only fat, inactive, non-hunters are available for food?” It was a reasonable question.
“My family didn’t hunt to kill,” I said, honestly. “My cousins did, and we always had venison and meat from their kills.”
“My family killed. It was a thing we did.”
“OK,” I said. I had heard this question before and had a legitimate reply. “My uncle and my cousins went out in the woods and got their deer every autumn. We always got some venison. I wasn’t against the idea. Not really. I always felt that the butcher in the grocery store did my hunting, my killing, for me. I never felt that I could judge those who hunted.”
“When I was thirteen years old my father sent me out into the woods. ‘Don’t come back without a dead deer’,” he said, “I cried all day.”
“Yikes!” I thought. I would too. Hers was a whole different world. “My dad had a shop out behind our house growing up,” she said. “He would assemble his own rifle shells there.” “Wow, that’s dangerous,” I said. I had enough knowledge to know that gunpowder granules and rifle shell presses are dangerous when combined on the same bench with nothing but a meat puppet between it and ‘Boom!’.
Her name is Rebeka Garcia. Her maiden name was equally Hispanic. I don’t remember what, exactly. She told me what her name was, but I don’t remember. Like I said. I don’t remember all of the details. Fog of story and all that. She said her father was Puerto Rican and her husband now is Mexican. She has five children from two marriages. So much for a teenage boy. Three of her sons were grown men and two lived with her now. Her youngest was a toddler. She showed me their pictures on her cell phone. One was a birthday picture. They’re cute. Rebeka’s English is flawless and local. She is a woman of the today, the here, and the now. And she is one tough quesadilla.
She used my phone to call the local Metro T-Mobile store, who said they couldn’t help her. “I was at your store today, at 3:00 O’clock this morning, and I had you inactivate my account. Why can’t you reactivate it now?” she frustrated. It was a reasonable frustration. Oddly, she already knew the answer. The Metro T-Mobile website said she had to call their 800 number. The Metro T-Mobile store said she had to call their 800 number. Now the tired clerk on the phone for the Metro T-Mobile store in Zephyrhills said the same thing. I had almost memorized the number. I could hear both sides of her conversation. I was as frustrated as she was.
“1-800-Blah-Blah, something or other. Yes. I’ll call it.” She got off the call. Looked at me. I nodded. She dialed. She spent the next few minutes trying to remember her secret pass-phrases.
“What was what date? Oh, I don’t know. What. Month? May. MAY. That’s my husband’s birth month.” She toggled back and forth between my phone and hers. Cell Tower Rapunzel was a busy tower babe.
“Billing date? How the hell should I know? My husband pays the bills. Oh, wait. It’s in my email.” She looked on her phone where her emails were still available while nestling my phone betwixt cheek and jowl. “April 26th,” came the triumphant answer.
I have to admit it was a bit of a suspenseful hayride. The challenges. The journeys. The riddles. The needless conundrums and unanswerable questions, but which must be answered. “What? How should I know that?” she barked. “Wait! I know that one,” she triumphed. “NO! That’s his birthday! I should know my husband’s birthday!” she reasoned undeniably. The suspense was killing me. I hoped it would last.
“I have to answer three questions?” She said. Oh, I love triune challenges! Is there a sphinx in there somewhere, too?
Eventually she answered all of Charon’s questions. Or Osiris. Or Odon. Or whoever has the job of guardian of Techno-Hades today. I lost track, as apparently does every tech department everywhere. And then she had bars! Four bars had magically appeared on her phone alter. Four bars are the max any attendant god of communication will spare to a dutifully contrite supplicant. Oh, joy and jubilation! Or rapture and reincarnation!
No dial tone, of course. But what do you expect, immortality?
“Oh, I see them!” she was jubilant. It was unnerving in its visceral ejaculation. “OK. But I don’t have a dial tone.” Sadly, it was premature. No jubilation lacks its downfall. “Thirteen minutes?” she said. “It’s going to take thirteen minutes? I’ve got to wait thirteen minutes?” A postmature ejaculation? Sounds…fair? It also sounded rather… specific.
Thirteen minutes? Seriously? Thirteen minutes? Not fifteen? Not ten? Not some multiple of five or something? Or a couple? Or the square root of a prime number? Or right now? Thirteen? Seriously? Strange, but… Whatever.
The catch. There’s always a catch. The catch is that after Metro T-Mobile got crazy phone Rapunzel off the hook she still didn’t have phone service. Even after thirteen fucking minutes. Ya, she waited. I sat. We talked. Nothing happened. They had said that if this failed to work she could come into their store. Again. Like she had at 3:00 O’clock in the morning. Which is exactly what they had said she could absolutely, positively fucking not do a few minutes earlier. Her words. I wasn’t about to make that connection, such as it were. Not going to comment. But now it was becoming obvious.
“Oh. Fucking shit! Sorry.” “Do I look like a saint?” I thought. “I’m going to have to walk all the way to the Metro store.”
“Has it been thirteen minutes?” I ventured, trying not to gamble on time. “Do you have a dial tone?”
“No! It’s the same goddam shit.” And so it was. Shit happens, and happens, and happens, and then it never stops happening. I looked unconcerned. We finished our sodas.
Some more minutes went by. Still no dial tone. “I’m going to have to walk to the T-Mobile store,” she said and questioned at the same time. I was sure she would. I also noticed she dropped the ‘Metro.’ I looked concerned. Concerned and noncommittal. “You know, it’s a three mile walk,” she was sure to remind me. I nodded affirmatively. “My husband’s got the car in Tampa,” she volunteered unsolicited. Rebeka looked down the street. “I walked there this morning, you know.” I knew. “Three O’clock.” Yup. I can tell time. It comes with my Kindergarten diploma. Finally, Rebeka took leave of my porch. I let her go.
I suspect she was hoping I would offer her a ride to the phone store. Sorry. She felt justifiably reluctant to be alone with me in my house, which I respected. And reciprocated. Respect is everything, after all. As is reciprocation. Well, I felt justifiably reluctant to have her alone with me in my car. Respect, you know. It’s a revolving peril.
When I looked at my phone later, I saw a message from at&t. I had been billed for $109.51for something. Whatever. It was an innocuous and obvious message from the gods of telecommunications; my monthly bill. Of course, I thought I had somehow been scammed by the young man, boy, girl, Rapunzel of the overly short hair, on my front yard. How couldn’t I? I live in a world of Haves, Have nots, and Ever Ready to Pick a Pockets. Suspicion reigns supreme.
“Oh, it’s OK,” I thought. “It’s just my monthly cell phone charge. And an email notice. Nothing more.” Ever suspicious. Like Rebeka not wanting to come into my house and me not wanting her in my car. You can’t be too careful, you know. Dammit. What happened to? Never mind. “What happened to” is gone forever.
“And why is that?” I thought. “What happened to hope and the milk of human kindness?” I puzzled. “Curdled, I suppose. Not every boy in need is like that,” I thought to myself. “And not every girl in need is a con artist.” Then again, “Is she?” Then, more forcefully, “Can I really not trust anybody? ’Me, too’ drained away any trust I ever had in women like a sucking sound down the sewer pipe.”
“Maybe,” I said to myself. “Maybe,” more forcefully, denying the nihilism that welled up within me. “Maybe I said something. Maybe I did something. Maybe I was something at the right time and the right place. At a time and a place that maybe mattered.”
It’s possible. They say good things come in small packages. And the devil is in the details. Well, God is in those details, too. Maybe kind acts happen in incremental packages. Maybe God is in those details much, much more. Maybe God is the smallest, kindest act possible. The indescribable undeniable detail in each one of our lives. Maybe God happens every day, every moment, every time a boy lumbers up upon a doorstep and plops down upon a hot, green lawn next to a cement sidewalk and asks to use someone’s cell phone. Maybe.
Maybe nobody says that. But maybe someone does. Maybe some one person does. Maybe I said it. And maybe it matters. Just maybe. Maybe something I was or maybe something I did or maybe something I said mattered. Just once. Just in an instant. Just now. Maybe it mattered to Rebeka. Some one person on my lawn. How can I know? Did I help the boy on my front lawn?
Maybe.
