"Honey, the cat is on the roof..."

“When you wake up one fine morning with that pistol in your head; don’t cry for some God to save you, because you are all ready dead.” I just wanted to get up and write that song. I heard it in the mist of my waking as the voice of Tosh echoing away while my eyes bore slanted holes in the new day. I kept waking up last night, unsure of where I was. I had to explain it to myself in codes, again and again like following a mad man’s check list before turning over, away from the heavy tweed-ish matte of the back of the sofa and towards the closed, muted windows. This was in there, when the dreams left the other morning, waking up next to Scott’s Creek. I reached into the pocket of my paint-smeared cargo shorts to grab those words, scratched down on throw away paper and folded, then carried for the last seventy seven hours or so. Inside the folded pulp was a bright, blue and red label; “Nitrile Gloves…Nitrile Coated Knit Gloves For General Purpose Use (one size fits most)”. I thought of the hilarity of what the last print really states and then threw the label in the trash. One size fits most, and if you don’t fall into the most category, well…don’t look at me. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I remember two jokes from my childhood, and one card trick. I hardly ever do the card trick. I don’t tell the jokes. One of the jokes had to do with angels lighting candles and the cat peeing on the matches. The next joke was more complex and needed precise timing to be told. I have never been good at this sort of thing. A little girl, as I remember had gone away to summer camp, leaving behind Thomas, her cat. (Things didn’t go well at home) Little Mercy called home on the first night of camp, and after talking to daddy for a moment, she asked “where’s Thomas? Can I speak to Thomas?” to which her daddy replied “Well Mercy…Thomas is dead.” Mercy began screaming and shouting in hysterics, she was hyperventilating when she dropped the phone, hundreds of miles away. Mercy was another father’s explosion for the moment. Big sister stood next to father, aghast that he could have been so cold and break the news like he did, knowing how much Mercy LOVED Thomas, and how alone she must be feeling anyway, all those telephone poles away from her little bed. “What?” asked father loudly; and oblique. “YOU CAN’T JUST COME OUT AND SAY IT LIKE THAT!” cried sister. “Well what should I say then?” he whined in the sarcastic tone of an embarrassed cherub. “Sister started in…”well first, you tell her that the cat is on the roof…” “I’m listening…” waited Mercy’s father. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I didn’t write the song yet. It was stuck in my head good. It is a five minute deal. Picking up a guitar and playing the thing and filling in the melody lines will be the easy part; the work was receiving the gift, and remembering. The sharing will be my payment back to the souls for giving me that presence in that present. The wheel spins and the circle turns and the earth meanders slightly as we fly and fly and fly. It’s pretty outside, but hot and sticky. The traffic tells me the summer here is over but I have been living as the ghost; the come and go man, the self image stripped bare sagging and overweight prophet. I like the word historian, and I like history. Even better than the history is the macro, or nano-study of the moments that are actually lived already as we soar through the unfolding enormity creating our own time, achievements, and time itself. Humans search and never find. We understand so much that we know nothing. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Charles lived out London Oaks way. He was another guy that hung out at the Kwick-EE Mart off of High and Constitution. He worked with Naples a while before I did but he didn’t work out. There wasn’t much work and one thing led to another, but he is like a brother to Chris. We knew about London Oaks from our earliest years. That’s where the kids came from that were bused in from the other side of the Churchland Bridge. Naples told me that the pool at London Oaks has been dry for fifteen years. Charles has a wife and two kids; the kids don’t go out without Charles or his wife. London Oaks is a housing project; if you want something, or if you need something, or if you want or need to get something going or done, you can hook it up in London Oaks. Charles ain’t about any of that though, he is a straight up young man trying his best to help a woman raise two young men. We would see him sometimes in the evenings when coming in from one job or leaving for the next. The hang was a different spot at night. Naples pointed it out the first time we pulled in. He knows and shares my love for the potentially bizarre. He turned to me as we pulled in and said quickly “Oh man, this is a WHOLE different spot at night time.” and laughed a little as we got out. It wasn’t all that much really. The lighting was different. The folks were the same. There was one dude in there that looked like a broke-ass Ice-T with red jumpers and a wife beater; lots of feathery and braid stuff, crotchet pieces and all in his thin, tied dreads. He walked past me and Naples, both of us smeared in several coats and colors from earlier and still sweating on the way in for more and he said “Whaddup homies?” Then he just strolled past. “Good good…” I trailed off and Naples gave his love. This is a fun ass world to be in. We must have looked like Salvation’s clowns at a KISS concert. There is no more joyous feeling than that; to be the freer or the freed. It weighed like being lost but unafraid, on a vacation from the fake smells and lost frosted lines. It was “stand in fucking line”! Later that night I would sit outside Chris’ house, staring at the lights shimmering on the creek. Nothing ever changes there. My little friend, a young Night Heron walks by under the orange fallout of the streetlamp, moving in a funny way, and like a ninja…foot first, then stretching to catch up with the legs…the body sliding slowly forward like the shadow of a pear as the head cocked and bobbled. It was a fun gaze. My wife is sleeping silently on the big bed with my two little angels while my mom sleeps across town. Both of them are bad-asses, my mother and wife. My kids are in the darkness on it, my brothers and sisters clutch bound books while my father works like a battlefield surgeon and my mother fights with heavyweights; I move slowly and awkwardly like the creek bird at night…careful of my next step, every moment looking over the shoulder, listening, smelling, tasting and marking. The world for me is as one for a blind man, sometimes especially, and sometimes except when I am sleeping. North has fallen off of the wall, magnetic north proper anyhow. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mercy’s daddy leaned in to hear the rest from her sister…”so?” he went on…”what happens when I tell her the cat is on the roof?” Sister said calmly; “You have to let her down gently. You can’t just get into details. So after you have told her the cat’s on the roof and she freaks, you just tell her that everything is going to be alright, that the fire department is on the way now and not to worry, that you will talk to her soon…and hope she forgets for a while.” “The cat’s on the fucking roof?” shouts father in a pure blur. “What the hell is that gonna do?” Sister explains. “First; you tell her that the firemen are coming… to buy you some time and get her used to the idea that Thomas may be in trouble, it’ll be way easier that way. Next; you ‘re gonna need to tell her, like tomorrow probably that the firemen did all they could, but Thomas got a little hurt on the way down but that he’s gonna be fine because we took him to the vet.” “And that”, she said “will buy us at least another day…just tell her we won’t know for certain for a day or two.” Father stared into the wall fading with all hope of remembering the name of his first hamster that died when he was four. He could still feel that hamster, but not touch it, with his hands, cupped together beneath the pillow every night. It made some of those dreams insane. It made his breathing heavy and his nervous system a jumping electric terror storm. He looked into another wall as the snake doctors dipped and dove against the rafts of algae which covered the warm and septic waters of the the city ditch. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I don’t remember much about the day before yesterday except for the fact that I worked my ass off. It was hot, I remember that also, and sticky. The start of it was familiar; we were back at the house on Glasgow. There was enough paint to do one third of one third of what we needed to do. Naples sat in the van and waited on a phone call from the lenders…he/we had not received a check in almost six weeks. The folks owed him close to ten grand, so he was nervous. He was pissed-off nervous. I was just standing on that ladder spreading the Ghetty Grey as fast as I could, as if it would bring some pause…if not some end to all of this. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mom’s blood clots were dissolving and she was talking normally again. I tossed and turned; waking again in an unfamiliar spot, completely disoriented. Mom had the first good night’s sleep any of us could remember that night though, and the drainage from her bottom incision somehow just stopped. I have always loved Tuesday nights. It was Wednesday now and insanity was slipping away with the feigned and brittle myth that is Monday’s pain. So much has happened on Tuesday nights in my life, but never a miracle…not until this recent one. I cannot and will not elaborate on this. Three days riding in the van while listening to the new Portsmouth family class, the hobos and the creek had earned me four day’s pay. Three days waiting for the axe to fall; for the phone to ring. Three days in the natural red and accountable black had led me to a cliff in the mind. I stood now and stared across the chasm. There was no sky, no ground below the clouds and no punch line. Reason was left for those seated around lunch counters and outside the sidewalk cafes. I clung to a metal blanket against it all and hoped that the phone calls would stop. I can’t remember the rest. I thought of Mercy all week as I worked my way towards the black steel roof. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Everyone in the room waits as Sister looks at Father. “Well?” he begs quizzically, still not feeling the gravity of the moment. How does one handle the explaining to a child that their love has died? How in the fuck does this work. How is this supposed to go? What am I supposed to feel? Why am I waiting for this thirty some years later? What makes sense to me right now? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Across town in another dimension the joke plays out; “imagine this” cracks Sister, this is how you finish it. A phone rings and Mercy’s father answers. Sister had told him what to do. “Hey baby…” daddy’s voice cracked, “ha…how are you?” Mercy immediately begged for news about Thomas. He thought of the last advice Sister had given him. He repeated the lines she taught him. “Well baby, the vet did all he could, but Thomas was in a lot of pain and they tried everything they could, but they had to let him go to sleep.” “SLEEP?” screamed Mercy…”you mean...?” “Yes” said father…Thomas has gone to Heaven.” Sister went on to explain that this was the best way to let Mercy down easily. I thought of that whole thing; breaking it to you slowly. I feel like the biggest asshole in the world for this as well. It seems every day…well. Back in the world of nonexistence a father’s phone rings again. It is several hours later and Mercy has just finished soaking a summer camp pillow in the first several hours of an innocent child’s lost love; first heartbreak. Still seated there at the kitchen table Sister looks at Father suspiciously; would he hold it together she wondered. Sister has been sitting on my left shoulder all day long, threatening to knock me off of my perch. As the Father answers the phone he hears little Mercy on the other end. “Is mom home from Aunt Mary’s house yet?” Across the table Sister is cracking the back open on a Blue Crab and crunching the claws, picking all she can from the dead sea bug. Father looks over to her, gazing woefully as she leans in, having overheard Mercy’s query. Sister just looked at him through yellow-green eyes and waited, smiling as she wiped the melted butter from the corners of her sheath. “Well Mercy….Mom’s um…well, mom’s…” babbled Father. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I was hot by the end of Wednesday afternoon and ready to see my girls. Naples and I went back to his place and sat out on the back lawn beside the creek. He had been paid and he paid me. I took a shower and headed to see mom over at Maryview. She was slightly better off but didn’t want me moving too close for fear that some particle I may be carrying would send her into another tailspin. In light of the recent developments she was being slated for a possible trip back to the nursing facility in Suffolk come first of the next week, and neither of us wanted to mess that up. I sat for a moment and talked until she ran me out, citing weariness. I told her I loved her and made for the elevator, the Ford, the big road, the cold beer and the brainless. I told Naples I would be back the next day, but one thing lead to another and I ended up a hermit for the next ninety six hours. Hell, it must be good for my constitution in some way or another. I waited for the call from Mercy’s dad all week. The call never came and I decided I guess to save the roof for another week.