the "Had"

I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia in a blizzard. The hospital where I was delivered was blanketed in ice and snow and as my mother Mary labored to pass me my father Joseph and my grandma Jordan watched the doctors with eyes like an eagles. The birth was a terribly difficult one for mother. As I emerged there were pipes bursting from the freeze and a flood inside the old Naval Hospital as somewhere in New York Jimi Hendrix was recording Stepping Stone. It was 9:28 in the evening when I finally emerged and began screaming as his guitar wailed along and he sang “I’m a man…at least I try to be, I’ve lived before; the other half of me, I heard before that you loved, me but I ain’t gonna search for nothing desperately…and I’ll try, try not to be a fool…” It was January 7th, 1970 and in another two hundred fifty one days Jimi Hendrix would be dead and the world would hardly even know the cries of a young Peter Butler. I like to think we had a connection, Jimi and me. Portsmouth was an old highway town. In 1620, the future site of Portsmouth was recognized as a suitable shipbuilding location by John Wood, a shipbuilder, who petitioned King James I of England for a land grant. The surrounding area was soon settled as a plantation community and was later founded by Colonel William Crawford, a wealthy merchant and ship owner, who dedicated the four corners of High and Court streets for a church, a market, a courthouse, and a jail. It was established as a town in 1752 by an act of the Virginia General Assembly and was named for Portsmouth, England. The Portsmouth I was born into was a far cry of that early colonial heritage. All that remained was an atrophied downtown and the humble beginnings of suburban sprawl that had begun to crop up where the old plantation land once yielded food and held humans in slavery; Highway 17 and the waning business of a seaside shipping town and The Norfolk Naval Shipyard. My father worked at that shipyard. My mother quit traditional work when I was born and took up the honorable work of motherhood. When I was born mom had a brand new ’69 Camaro, burgundy and dad had a ’65 Bonnevile drop top. They decided that now that we were a family that mom would give up her Camaro. She told me when I was a young boy that she had traded it in for me. I could never figure why she would have done that. I had seen pictures of it. It was a sweet looking ride. During my early days we lived in the Portsmouth Garden Apartments off of High Street and when I was nearly a year old we moved into a rental home, the downstairs of a duplex at the corner of Constitution Avenue and Leckie Street. Grandma Jordan lived right around the corner in my father’s childhood home on McDaniel in a modest waterfront house built in the 1940’s beside a small tributary of the Western Branch of the Elizabeth River known even as far back as the American Revolution as Scott’s Creek. At low tide we would trudge through the black mud in search of old bottles and Fiddler Crabs, and when the creek was full we would crab and skip smooth stones. Grandma’s driveway would be freshly paved with oyster shells every summer and the smell of the creek mud and creosote were always noticeable from the constant maintenance of the neighboring resident’s piers and bulk heading. It was a great place to grow up. The expansive roots of large oaks cracked the sidewalks and dropped acorns for us to crunch with our bikes in the summer and the frigid Tidewater winter’s would cause the creek to freeze over but never solid enough to support us. I remember throwing bricks and large stones into the thin ice to break holes and expose the different layers and the changing tides. The water was dark and brown and supported nothing but Blue Crabs and Bull Gudgeons. In 1975 my father had managed to save enough money to move us to the other side of town to a neighborhood in Churchland called Westwood. We lived at 4716 Haywood Drive. There was a large yard in the front and back with towering pines and red, white and pink Azaleas. I remember racing through the new house with my two little brothers, Francis and Saul and sliding on the new carpet like we were sliding into home plate. We didn’t have carpet in the old rental. None of us except mom and dad knew that we were buying this house and had been renting the other; we were just thrilled to have carpet to slide on in every room and plenty of pine cones to throw. There were a few other children my age in the new neighborhood but I have long since lost touch with them, and their names don’t matter to me anymore, friends can turn to strangers as the world turns children into adolescents and the ideals of youth into points of debate and argument. I left that neighborhood in 1988 just after graduating high school and have seldom gone back. Dad retired from the Navy yard in 1999 and they moved out into an old house in Suffolk, just farther North on 17, off of Bennett’s Pasture Road. With all of the children grown, graduated and gone to start their own families, dad took to gardening and mom took to sitting on the couch and smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. It has always been my opinion that once we were gone mom felt as if she had completed her career. She began feeling the stresses of Rheumatoid Arthritis a few years before but was allergic to any medical treatment, so she would sit, read the Bible and pray away the pain. The long and painful process of dying from an attacking, systemic illness had begun, and she refused to discuss it. She just looked forward to being a grandma.  I just got back from a 96 hour stay in the old home town. Mom and dad have since moved to Suffolk, where my middle brother Francis works as the Deputy City Manager. Saul lives in West Friendship, Maryland. Saul and his wife both graduated from Virginia tech with engineering degrees. Saul’s wife Gloria works for a big telephone company and Frank’s wife is a dentist. They both have two daughters, just like Holly and me. Holly waits tables at a couple of seasonably busy restaurants here in Kitty Hawk while I work as a reservationist at a large, semi-corporate adventure and retail outfitter. My job is seasonal as well. I started in the warehouse and moved up a month later, about two weeks ago. The pay is the same but the cerebral component is much greater. I liked it pretty much until the last four days, well, today really. Four days ago I rose at four a.m. and left Kitty Hawk for Portsmouth to stand and hold space as my mom underwent cancer surgery. Today I drove home exhausted. Mom seems to be on the mend after a touch and go ordeal that lasted just under eight hours. The surgeon says she was happy with the results they got, or rather; they got all that they wanted to get out. There is nothing left for us to do now except wait for the pathology report on the margins of the removed flesh and tumor while mom lies in the bed awaiting physical therapy. I may have slept a total of ten hours in the last ninety six. On the morning I left, everything was draped in a cool mist from the Atlantic which covered the Eastern Coastal Plain as I drove from first light northward and westward from my barrier island home towards the dirty metropolitan Tidewater and Maryview Hospital. Just after my quick breakfast I passed an accident on the road. It appeared as if a body was lying in the highway as I approached. As I got close enough to take a full gaze I realized a tourist had just collided with a young Black Bear. A harbinger, I thought? Soon after I watched my brother the Red Tailed hawk taking off from a fresh kill of squirrel on the roadside into the rapidly brightening sky. It was reassuring that all was as it should be. As for me, I was decked out in full talisman and supernatural girding. I was wearing a light blue shirt, mom’s favorite and boot cut Levi’s to keep me warm in the hospital. Under the shirt along with my regular prayer beads I had a necklace given to me on my graduation day by Grandma Jordan; a gold necklace I haven’t worn in twenty five years, but it served as a nice retainer for the first ring my mother’s dad had ever given her and her high school class ring. I also carried an antique charm bracelet from her childhood which now had charms for all of us brothers, my father and her other siblings. I carried in my pocket a printed transcript of Psalm 116, her favorite. I got to the hospital as she was being wheeled into the operating room. Dad and Saul were already in the waiting room. I asked them where the free coffee was and after making myself a styro foam cup full I sat and joined them. It was seven a.m. and the anesthetist was on reserve until two. I was prepared for a long wait. There was a large television screen full of colored boxes with numbers. Each color meant something and each number was a patient scheduled for surgery. Yellow meant pre-op prep, lavender meant recovery and green meant the person was in surgery. As the day wore on many different numbers appeared on the board, but my mother’s 344311 remained green throughout. The families of the other patients came and went as we sat, as still as the potted plants. There was a silver lining to this otherwise overcast day of waiting and nervous hope. Our ninth grade geography teacher Mr. Franks was now retired and serving as a volunteer in an adjacent waiting room. He was one of my favorite teachers. He was a round man, short in stature and with thin but not thinning hair. He would get excited and animated, mixing humor, often risqué in nature with lesson plans and always held our attention. He would sweat through his shirt by mid-morning in the hot summer months and the front of his shirt was often dusted with colored chalk from his brushing against the blackboard while he wrote and then erased the many lessons he taught us. We all loved him very dearly. When I went in to speak with him he rushed back over to me and Saul. “Okay” he said “I have two geography questions for you; one is easy and one is hard.” I smiled while Saul stood nervous. We had no idea what to expect but I knew it would be golden. “Alright, the first one is easy” he started in, “How do you spell Mississippi with one “I?” I covered my one of my eyes with my hand and started “m.i.s.s.i.s.s.i…” “You got it” he continued and quickly came with the next one. “Okay, now for the hard one…if you’re an American when you go into the bathroom and an American when you come out; what are you while you’re in there?” he asked in that old familiar accent that none of us could ever place. His cadence was on par with Robin Williams’ as was his passion, but with a tender but firm southern drawl, like from savannah, which buffered his confident delivery; it was as if, in between words, and canvases of the visions he would invoke, held themselves suspended, singularly in mid air, strung lightly together as if by an almost dripping wire of amber nectar connecting each thought…each phrase. Saul and I looked at each other and then at him bewildered as he began the punch line “ you’re a’ peein’…” he giggled as we laughed, and just like that he continued without giving us a chance to catch our breath or catch up to his wit and train of thought, “unless you are in a hurry…” he continued “ then you’re a’ rushin’” while we laughed even harder and bang, bang, bang like that he continued “and if you’re done than you’re finnish;.” He laughed along with us as we not only enjoyed the joke but the flash back to a familiar soul and mentor and one of the best teachers any kid could have ever known. He left as quickly as he laid us out to go and tend to sick people and nervous folks. He hadn’t changed one bit. Later as he escorted us up to ICU after mom’s procedure was done Saul asked him about when he had retired and whether or not he missed teaching or the students and I interrupted; “I bet you don’t miss the smart asses.” I joked, to which he replied “exactly, I was always worried another Butler boy would come along, mhh hmmmm hummmmmm…” he tossed back, no latency…just professionalism and a tack sharp mind. That inherent and ever present laugh of joy we’re a gift as school children and was gift on this day. He showed us into the Intensive Care Unit and then disappeared back downstairs to the ones still in limbo. Before we left for ICU, Saul had gone out and left me there with my dad. I haven’t always been proud of the kind of son I turned out to be and we had some rocky years a long, long time ago. He doesn’t like to get into those details so I usually leave it alone. That day however as we sat waiting for our escort to the Intensive Care floor, I looked up at him and said “dad, you’re the strongest and best man I have ever known.” He looked up and asked me what I had said and I repeated myself. “I’m not that…” he replied softly, looking down again. “Well, you are to me.” That was the end of it.  Once inside the unit we got our first glimpse of mother. She looked still and quiet but the nurse assured us that she was coherent. We entered the room and she did a mental check of who was there. “Well,” she said “you two have one up on Francis this time.” We knew she was joking as Frank would have been there if he could have, but he was traveling with the Mayor and City Manager on a very important business trip to New York. He would be in the next day we thought. We knew it was killing him to not be there. Mom motioned me to come in close and asked me, “Did you read 116?” I told her I had and that it was in my breast pocket, right next to my heart. She was thankful. She was in a great deal of pain and still weary from the anesthesia. She had multiple incisions with one running down the center line of her abdomen and two others, one on each side. One incision was for a colostomy bag and the other was a drain. The last incision which was over her anus had been sewn shut. This one, we were told, would probably take the longest time to heal, possibly six to eight weeks. The surgeon did brief us however and as I said before, she was happy with the results of the very “technically difficult” procedure. She was also a bit of a condescending witch. She stared at the floor as she talked in five and ten dollar words and only looked up to explain the difference between the rectum and colon. I had already grown tired of her due to her slow approach to surgery. Here we were in late June and mom had finished chemo and radiation treatments back around Christmas. I had to hold my tongue when she stated that they like to do the surgery no more than eight weeks after those treatments but due to mom’s lack of cooperation on one matter or another it had been delayed. My father was in charge and had already dealt with enough stress so I remained silent when I really wanted to bite her. There was really no point in it anyhow. Mom had survived and we were now with her in the Intensive Care Unit. The arrogant surgeon was in the rear view mirror for now. On the second morning mom looked much better. The doctors had removed the tube from her nose that stretched into her stomach to keep it empty so she wouldn’t throw up. She was more like mom; opinionated, particular and to the point. Mobility was a prime concern as she has severe rheumatoid arthritis and has a problem getting around on any given good day. Now that she has had this mega surgery, there was a valid concern that if she did not quickly get with the program and try hard to regain mobility she may never walk again; maybe get transferred to another facility. She was not a happy person when it came to the discussion of this fact. She is dignified, set in her ways, and doesn’t like to feel as if she is burdening anyone with her condition. Saul has gotten on her over the last twenty years as her condition has deteriorated, but I never have. She is and always will be my mom. She lives by her rules and I respect that. Saul has more of a proactive agenda. Perhaps the difference in our views on life and mortality differ such that I appear cold when it comes to mom’s potential end. I can assure you however I am not, not on the inside, I am a scared and emotional wreck, I just don’t show it in public, especially around her. Not much happened that second day, Mom just laid in the bed and eventually conceded to the morphine pump. She was at first saying that with her arthritis she has been in pain for so long that she feels like its normal to be in pain. The nurses and I told her to take a “pain vacation” and use it for its intended purpose. Mom reluctantly complied, eventually getting some rest. We left her that night to return to Frank’s house a few miles down the road. I didn’t sleep well either night. Saul had a few beers, and I had none. I wanted smokes, but Saul was a good little brother, he wouldn’t let me buy them. That second night before hitting Frank’s house we stopped at a neighborhood Thai restaurant. I half believe it is because Saul wanted me to identify a dish he liked; tell him how to make it. So I was game, and we had a great dinner. I had Som Tum or green papaya salad. It is a wonderful rollercoaster of sweet, spicy, cool and crisp. Saul had the basil rolls, kind of like a fresh rice paper roll, but heavy on basil. Next I had Lad Na, which my brother chef Jojo describes as a Thai version of chicken and dumplings, very home-style. First a very wide and thick rice noodle is stir fried with oyster sauce and transferred to a serving vessel. Next, chicken and broccoli are cooked with oyster sauce and sweet soy sauce and thickened with corn starch to make gravy and then poured over the “dumplings.” It is extremely savory and filling. Saul ordered his garlic pepper chicken. This is the dish he wanted me to identify and formulate a recipe for. As a former chef I am pretty good at figuring out what is in something. I took a small spoonful of the sauce alone at first and slowly swished it around my mouth. Next I took a bite with the chicken, closed my eyes, and chewed very slowly, thinking, savoring and cross referencing my known ingredients. I opened my eyes and said “oyster sauce, sweet soy sauce and soy sauce.” After we had nearly finished eating I asked our server if I might speak with the chef, informing her that I was also a chef and wanted to ask about the dish if I may, and I was certain as well to compliment it heavily. A young man appeared and I bowed in the traditional fashion and greeted him. I told him I had an idea what was in the dish and wanted to guess and he agreed to help. I told him what I thought and all I missed was a bit of sugar. We discussed a few other things and I complimented him, expressed my thanks and he returned to his duties while Saul and I finished up and waited for the bill. Saul bought dinner and I thanked him. As we left I walked over to the young chef and handed him a ten dollar bill, bowed again and said thank you in Thai. He replied and we were gone. Saul was impressed with my knowledge and I felt like a winner. It was a good meal. We headed over to Frank’s. His wife Kathy was up and greeted us. She put a movie on the set and we watched as I grew weary. I walked up the stairs and closed my eyes but sleep was not there, only a restless darkness. I laid there in and out for the next few hours and eventually got up and waited for the rest of the crew to wake up before heading back over to the hospital.  Day three came early and we headed out through the streets of Churchland and over the Churchland Bridge to the hospital again. Mom was doing much better and they decided to move her to another floor, out of ICU and into recovery. This came as wonderful news to us all. She had to be lifted by strong men from the bed to a recliner and then she and all of her hoses and wires needed to be transported up to the fifth floor. The nurse told her to go ahead and take a couple of extra pulls of Morphine. Mom was reluctant so I said I would have two of those and one nicotine patch please. The nurses laughed, but I got nothing. The new room was older and a bit musty, like an old motel room where smoking was allowed. There were a host of new nurses and mom went about the business of choosing her favorite and putting her to work. About mid-day we were all sitting there discussing various topics and mom got tired of the voices. When her meds kicked in she wanted to be still and quiet. She told Saul and I to leave and have lunch. We went to another favorite spot of his; a greasy spoon on County Street called Pop’s Country Cookin’. It was in the first floor of an old row house and the fraternal order of police was on the second floor so needless to say there were cops everywhere. The menu featured a regional oddity, the square dog, which consists of two hot dogs split and fried and then laid on a large bun and topped with ham, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. It looked good, and dad used to make them for us as kids but it was the first time I had ever seen one on a menu. I was intrigued and snapped a picture. I ended up ordering the special which was hamburger steak with mashed potatoes and green beans, a chili dog with mustard and onions and a large sweet tea. As I began Saul said that there was no way I would eat it all. It was quite large. I took it as a challenge though and did finish every last bite. I have never been so full. After lunch we decided to take a drive down memory lane. We passed the first house on Leckie where we lived until I was five, and Grandma Jordan’s house right around the corner, dad’s childhood home. There was a foreclosure notice on the door and Saul pointed out that the mailbox on the porch was the same one from our childhood days. I talked of stealing it, but again, Saul talked me out of it. He has always had more sense than me. From there we drove past dad’s elementary school which is now condos. We took London Boulevard downtown to West Park View and looked at our Great Aunt Virgie’s old house. She passed away in 1997 but the house looked the same whereas all of the others looked smaller for some reason. Perspective is a strange thing from youth to middle age. Along the way I took snapshots on my new age Polaroid camera to later post on a large blue wall located in the center of the universe for all to see. I chose no physical contact on this journey, and no correspondence other than that of a human leopard, scratching at various areas and then leaving my mark in the form of the photographs on the wall to document my journey through time and space in downtown Portsmouth. We passed mom’s childhood house, and that of our Nanny, mom’s grandmother Pauline. I remember a Crabapple Tree from childhood and it had grown to the sky it seems. All I could see was trunk, but it still stood firm after all these years. We finally ended up at the old boat rental place in Port Norfolk, another constant from childhood, even from dad’s. We stopped and talked a bit with a man we had never met but who knew mom and dad. While we stood there talking, the biggest Osprey I had ever seen dove into what I would call three feet of water and snagged a fish. We thought she had a big one as she had trouble with the take off. She was really struggling. After a couple of tries she made it out and the fish was less than spectacular, a Croaker it looked like, maybe six or seven inches, but with a hook in its gut and a bottom rig attached to the hook and a three ounce sinker. The mighty bird flew off and as she made her way skyward we saw the silhouette of the bottom rig and sinker trailing her as she went. This was Portsmouth in a nutshell. Saul and I returned to the hospital after that and mom gave us a load of mess about how late we were. She didn’t care that we had fun and walked down memory lane, she had other issues. The drain in her side had come loose somehow and she was being moistened by her own fluids, and this made her very concerned about infection. That could end her quickly. She had tried to call the nurses but to no avail so she had gotten really worked up. When we all returned she chastised us for not knowing the meaning of shift work and leaving her all alone. Never mind the fact that she had sent us home, she was scared and that changed everything. As it turned out the bandage securing the drain had come loose and caused some seepage. The nurses fixed it but mom needed a new gown and we had to step out for a moment. Her tome turned to that of a scathing lunatic for a while thereafter. She was afraid, and we had abandoned her. She couldn’t help herself and we were not there. As we sat, soon there would be another leak and she got very nervous. She asked dad to recline the bed and he did so in such a way that it stretched her belly and caused her great pain. Things were not going her way. By this time Saul had left to return to Maryland and I was scheduled to stay at Frank and Kathy’s, but as the situation was not fixing itself I felt inclined to stand watch. Mom and I got into a mild argument over my disrespect of Kathy’s work schedule and staying out too late and I told her I had decided to stay with dad, but by this point I was thinking of old friends to stay with, where I could drink some beers and play guitar. Before we left mom turned an erie sort of quiet; observant, inward and still. She asked dad to come close so she could hold his hand. She asked him not to squeeze it, but just to give her something of home to hold. They sat there like that for maybe five minutes. All was silent. I feared everything at that moment. Was my mother dying? I didn’t know anything. I know now that she was just scared and needed to ground herself. I also know now that she is dying, just like we all die. There was one hell of a storm brewing and mom kicked me and dad out for the night, she wanted to press her pain button and go to sleep. The day had taxed her and she was done. As dad and I left I told him that I was going to hit a burger joint in Churchland and maybe stay with a friend. He wasn’t keen on it at first but I explained that the last few hours had freaked me out to the point of needing a different comfort zone. I told him I would call him in a half hour. I called my buddy Santos and he said to come over, so I went and bought a six pack and did just that. We sat around in his garage for a while as I went over the events of the previous days. I called dad and told him that I was freaked and needed a break. He tried to reassure me that it was fine to stay with him, that he had made a bed and all, but I just told him that I had reached my limit and although I didn’t take mom’s attitude personally, I had done all I could for three days to remain calm and steady, a rock, but I was now genuinely freaked out. I admitted that it was a product of my own stupid sensitivity and he agreed but I told him that whatever the case, I would be five minutes from the hospital, and I just needed to drink a few beers with a friend and play some guitar. He realized it wasn’t worth fighting and just said “okay, that’s cool.” I was a runaway at seventeen, so he knows I have limits. Once I got to Santos’ house I spent a few moments talking with his mom and then she went up to bed. As I said we hit the garage and listened to some great Hendrix outtakes and bootlegs. We listened to Stepping Stone and I told him I was being born while it was being recorded. He said that was nuts. After a few beers each we went upstairs to jam. He was playing a new old Fender Strat and I was on an even older Mustang, a ’62 I think. It sounded sweet and felt even better. We just jammed over a few chords I had scratched down and a half hour in we were both done. I bid him goodnight and headed to the guest room to crash. This time I slept. It may have been three in the morning and I needed to be up at six, but I crashed hard. I had a very strange dream that actually made all the sense in the world. My dream only had a few characters. There was me, my father in law and a really great bass player and idol of mine Mike Volt. Mike was born in Portsmouth but moved to San Pedro very shortly thereafter where he grew up and resides today. We were all in Norfolk near the old Boathouse venue. My father in law for one reason or another opted to take a kite he had into an old warehouse to fly it and disappeared. I stumbled over to the Boathouse, mobile phone in hand as I had been in the waking life for quite a while, ready for anything. As I neared the front entrance the load in was going on. I was supposed to be home soon but I noticed a familiar face, Mike Volt’s. I had interviewed him before. He started very enthusiastically pushing the show which I knew was hours away and to attend it meant to not get home on time and miss another day of work. I sent a digital message to my boss to cover work and now all I was worried about was the wife. I was also flat broke. It was lucid, everything seemed so real. I walked up to Volt and he went into his pitch. “Aww man it’s gonna be a great show, as an opener we have…wait for it now…the Had!” I played it off as if I knew what he was talking about but had no clue. He seemed pumped on it so I went along. After a few minutes I knew I wasn’t getting in without a little love so I walked up to Volt and extended my hand and said simply “Peter Butler.” He went nuts. He hadn’t really seen me in a couple decades and the interview I did was over the phone. I said “yeah man, it’s been a long time, I haven’t seen you face to face since a gig at Lewis’ in Norfolk with your old band Firehouse, and then I saw you once again opening up for Sonic Youth here, at the boathouse, you had two drummers and an ass kicker on guitar, it was HEAVY!” He noted that he remembered that boathouse show and then he saw what looked like a recording device in my hand and said “man I can answer any questions you have.” I told him I didn’t need any of that, but asked if he has any room on the guest list and he told me no. He said that he was maxed out, and they were worried about getting thirty nine minutes worth of material out after “the Had” finished their set. Dreams are crazy, the thirty nine minutes thing made sense then, but not now, not as I recall it for all of you. Nevertheless I was bummed, and all of a sudden it seemed as if hours had passed, a feeling that I had missed my ride came over me and I felt like I wouldn’t get home to see Holly. I was inside now, staring at a bunch of guitars on stage and my eyes traced over them and to his old bass guitar; “Fucking Mike VOLT!” I thought to myself, smiling. Almost instantaneously I woke up in the guest bed at Santos’. It was 7:44. I got dressed and got my shit together and talked to his mom a bit before I split for the hospital. I felt crusty and beaten, but I had to chew some gum and get ready to see mom, hide the smell of freedom from the night before and put on my mourning clothes again.  I called dad and he said that mom had had a good night and I told him I would be right there. We hung up. I chewed that gum to cover the abuse of the hours before, rubbed my eyes, drove over and went up to room 512. Mom was complaining to dad that he had let her teeth dry out and she couldn’t get them in. She was really letting him have it. “Bring me a full cup of water Joseph, not two ounces!” she snapped “I can’t do ANYTHING with that!” I just sat there for probably three minutes. She turned towards me. “So what are you doing?” “I was just stopping in on my way home to say bye and I love you…” “Well, BYE!” she snorted. “Okay then, I will call later, have a good day, I’m only a phone call away…” and “BYE!” she repeated. “Bye” I replied, “I love you” and headed out the door to “Joseph…you let them DRY OUT! That’s why they won’t hook in, they have to stay moist!” She’s doing okay I thought to myself. I hit the nearest gas station and bought twenty bucks worth of low grade and a Coke and headed for the downtown tunnel. Along the way I snapped a few more shots of famous landmarks to post on the big blue board. I turned onto Effingham Street and found myself in a five way “hopper” of sorts. There was a continual but carefully orchestrated and technical five part merge going on. It took me maybe ten minutes to get from the street to the entrance of the tunnel. Once inside it was bumper to bumper. When I reached the other side my exit for Chesapeake and 664 South was an easy hit. As I pulled onto the exit I notice that I was the only car all of a sudden, it was surreal and peaceful. Nobody was going my way. I hit the expressway but opted for the old road, the toll bypass, figured I would save three bucks. I passed rows of corn looking uniform and green, head high, and dotted every so often with sunflowers. I smelled the Mimosa, Honeysuckle and Hemlock again. In the winter this road smelled of fields of onion, but it was hot outside now, summer was really here to stay a while this time. Soon I would be back in Carolina. I thought of all that had transpired in the past ninety six hours, give or take…. I felt a sense of relief and also unsettled, nevertheless I kept the radio off as the story in my head was rapidly unfolding. I passed the farmer’s market as I got closer to home and read all the signs painted on hayseed characters. There were cantaloupes, watermelons, honeydews, boiled peanuts, fresh corn, pickles and sauces, tomatoes, plums, squash, peanut brittle, fudge, hayrides, snap beans and crabs. I love being back in Carolina I thought to myself. As I approached the Wright memorial bridge Holly called. We talked briefly about me just getting home to rest and write, and about how the past four days had really changed my perspective on everything. A person doesn’t come as close as I did to the death of a mother and not change from it, not if you are walking the path I have chosen. It doesn’t make me any better or worse than anyone, but it makes a person tend to not sweat the little things quite as much. I thought of how glad I was that the Ford had made another haul. When I was sitting in traffic back on Effingham an hour and a half before in the gridlock of downtown Portsmouth I had to turn on the heat as the broken radiator was low on fluid and threatening to blow, but once I hit the open road and cruising speed she cooled right down; sucking at that sweet southern breeze. Holly and I talked all the way across the bridge and through the US158/Route 12 interchange as I pulled her onto Duck Road. I started to feel a familiar rumble and hear a suspicious sound. I told Holly I had better get off the phone as I thought a tire was going flat. It turns out I was right. By the time I was a mile from the house I had a decision to make. Should I pull over and leave her and walk it, or limp on the rim all the way to my driveway. I chose to limp, so I turned on the hazards and drove about 15 along the shoulder until I got home. The rubber was shredded but the rim was alright. I was as careful as one could be when doing something very extraordinarily stupid by conventional common sense standards. But I had made it home. It was high noon. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to write. But instead I picked up the phone and called the big boss of my company. A week ago I applied for a position in the top ranks, Human Resources Director. I hadn’t heard anything in a week and I was growing tired of all of the emails and protocol that comes with my eight dollar an hour job. I asked the main man if I had a chance for consideration or if it was a fool’s errand. “Well, nothing is a fool’s errand” she said. “I saw the letter you wrote but not the application or the resume…hang on.” “Yes ma’am.” I replied and waited as she perused my documents. I was sure she would tell me that I hadn’t the educational requirements for such a position, but she didn’t. She asked if I could meet with her Saturday to discuss it, and surprised I answered her “Yes ma’am!” and “Thank you!” You never know really what will happen. I had called my old boss as well in a pre-emptive strike just in case I decided to drop the reservations job. The reason I quit in the first place was because of arthritis and pains. I was really just laying out, looking for pain meds and being lazy. But something snapped in my brain after leaving mom. I realized that if I went back to doing kayak tours, doing what I loved I could make the equivalent of a week’s salary in two days from tips alone, not to mention the twelve bucks an hour. They assured me that I was always welcome back. So I left it with the plan of searching my options and the souls of my current taskmasters on Saturday to see if I may get security and a year round position in exchange for the low wage, and if they couldn’t promise me that, then I will serve notice at the end of that interview and go back to work for big tips. I will grow a pair as they say, put my pains in my pocket and do what I need to get paid. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I guess the next forty eight hours will tell the next story. I feel strong; indestructible now, and I refuse to let any job take that spirit away. I guess I am “the Had.” Everyone has had a piece of me and for cheap. Maybe it’s time I started setting the rules and the prices. Who knows?