When the moon is round and full
Gonna teach you tricks that’ll blow your mind
Mongrel mind
It’s that time again. Time for installment number four from the archives, that is. AA-OOO-WOOOOOOO!!
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HAUNTED
My cousin and I were out riding around one afternoon in his pickup truck, around the rice field roads out west of town, drinking beer and listening to an Astros game. It was an activity we really enjoyed.
There was something so peaceful and calming about riding around those empty two-lane roads, some of them barely paved, some of them no more than caliche and dust, riding around on the front end of a buzz, and listening to the ball game. We would do that for hours. Out there, we were just outside the city limits, so we didn’t have to worry about cops; and there was just enough rural-ness about to make it seem like we were really out in the country, even though in most places we were no more than ten to fifteen minutes from town. Still, sometimes we could ride along for miles and never see anything but levees, irrigation canals, rice fields either flooded or fallow, rows of tallow trees along the fence lines, and every so often a collection of farm buildings and a house. I suppose the lack of visible clutter lent to the calming effect, that and the cold beer. But the Astros announcers – Gene Elston and Dewayne Staats on that particular day – lent to the good feeling, as well. We’d been listening to those guys broadcast Astros games on the radio, in one configuration or another, since we were kids.
One of my clear childhood memories is of being eight or nine years old, lying in my bed one night and listening to Elston and Harry Kalas and Loel Passe broadcasting a game against the Dodgers. I was listening on this Philco radio I had, listening under the covers with it turned down low, because it was past my bedtime. It was late in the game and the Astros were down by a run. They were up to bat, and had made two quick outs, but then had got a man on. And up to the plate came Jimmy Wynn, The Toy Cannon. He was the Astros last, best hope, for that game anyway. It seemed like Elston’s play-by-play during Wynn’s at bat, and the commentary from Kalas, just heightened the tension of the moment. The entire time I lay there with my fingers crossed on both hands, and my toes crossed on both feet, hoping against hope that Wynn would get hold of one and really drive it. I was giving it everything, everything I had, as I am sure Jimmy Wynn was. . . but, alas, on that night it wasn’t to be. Wynn went down on a weak pop up; one could sense the disappointment in Gene Elston’s otherwise even tones. Damn! The Astros were on their way to another loss.
Of course, had I been more sensible back then, I’d have realized that the late, dramatic home run was pretty rare, probably a silly thing to wish for. But I wasn’t that sophisticated in those days. Had I been, it might also have occurred to me that baseball was full of disappointments, particularly if one was an Astros fan. But I didn’t realize that yet, either; and in retrospect, I am kind of glad I didn’t. Most of life’s disappointments were still ahead of me, and I was always naïvely hopeful when it came to the Astros. Good for me.
Now here we were, a decade later, all-knowing teenagers driving around drinking beer in a pickup truck. Still listening intently to the ball games, creating our own mental images of the action to go along with the commentary, as the countryside passed us by. I have often felt that one of the only true connective threads running through my by now pretty long and often turbulent life, is my affiliation with and affection for the Houston Astros. It is poignant to me to think that all along, no matter how fucked up I or my life was – or how un-fucked up, for that matter – I always kept up with the Astros, made as many games in person as I could, listened to the broadcasts when I couldn’t. Those days of riding around the rice fields, listening to the broadcasts, are just one example.
On that particular day, a gloomy Saturday afternoon and drizzling rain where we were, the Astros were taking on the Cubs, I think at Wrigley. The game had been going along for a while, and it was tied or maybe Houston was behind by a run. We’d been through most of a six-pack and were coming around a ninety degree turn on one of the farm roads in the rain when the back tires skidded across the pavement and the truck spun out, and ended up nosed in against a barbed-wire fence, facing across some guy’s field. It wasn’t any big deal, we hadn’t been speeding or anything. I think the beer and a pre-occupation with the game on the radio had caused my cousin to forget to compensate for the fact the asphalt was wet and slick, and we sort of gently skidded partway off the road.
We sat there and collected ourselves for a moment and kind of laughed; a moment of quiet, before my cousin would put the three-speed in reverse (three-on-a-tree, remember?) and back us onto the roadway again. He was about to do just that when we saw it. Out across this field we were facing, almost all the way to the back of it, was a gray wolf, standing there in the straw, looking over to see what the commotion was all about.
I’d seen red wolves before, out duck hunting; but they were pretty small, and very elusive. Pretty much the most I’d ever seen, in the half light, was the ass end of one as it disappeared over the side of a levee and off into the marsh. But this was a big wolf, and gray, no doubt about it. I don’t know what it was doing out there – I don’t think big wolves have ever been indigenous this far down (I’d seen signs of them around our place in Tyler County, in the Piney Woods, but never on the coastal plain), and this was pretty close to the city, which wolves generally avoid. But, whatever – it didn’t really matter. It was an amazing sight. My cousin and I sat there for several seconds, mesmerized. Then, before we knew it, the wolf was gone; and almost immediately we went about trying to confirm with and affirm to each other what had just happened. I don’t know why, but we were almost giddy about it for a minute or two. Eventually, though, the moment passed, and we got back to our beer, and the game. The Astros rallied late that afternoon, and pulled the game out in the end. Hah! Fuck the Cubs!
***************
I never told my cousin, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the wolf we saw that day, not for a long, long time. Mainly, I couldn’t stop thinking about how he was free. But, not really free. He was being fenced in, and he was probably not long for this world. But, he had it in him to be free. He knew what it felt like. I couldn’t get over that. I kept thinking if I could have just looked into his eyes for a few moments longer, I would have been able to feel what that felt like, too. Ridiculous, but that is what I thought. For many years after, on the odd occasion I had to pass by that field, I would stop my vehicle and get out and look. I didn’t really expect to see a wolf again. But sometimes I would see one, just as it had turned from looking at us, not caring at all, and loped off across a field and then faded into the brush, as the pipes and flares from the Mobil Chemical refinery rose off in the distance, through the gray and misting rain, beyond the rice fields.
Maybe it was the ghost of that wolf I saw. Or maybe I was a ghost of myself, back to see that wolf again. I’ve never been able to work it out, and after a while I get really confused trying to. But, God … I have realized I am haunted; by a wolf I barely saw, thirty years ago. I am haunted by a freedom I never had, was never meant to have, never will have. And I am haunted, I think, by the scariest ghost of them all.
That being myself.
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IN FROM THE COLD
I have in my mind a mental picture from a dream I once had about Roy Oswalt, the former Houston Astros pitcher. My dream was set sometime after Oswalt’s playing days ended. In it, Roy was living at his place in Mississippi, out in the country. It was late fall or early winter, and there were damp leaves on the ground. It was kind of wet out. The air was steely cold, under a grayish-white sky, and a stiff wind was blowing out of the north. Roy was inside his house, but realized he needed some more wood for the wood-burning stove he had in there. So he walked through the front doorway and around to the side of his house, where he had neatly stacked a couple of cords of split hardwood.
Outside, just beyond this tableau, a car had passed by on the road out front, and a young boy in the back seat idly witnessed this scene . . . No – better yet – a barn owl was sitting up in a tree in the yard, wise and solitary, its huge black eyes taking in everything . . . No, no . . . wait a minute . . . okay, I’ve got it.
Just beyond this tableau, a red wolf was moving across Oswalt’s property, unhurriedly on his way to wherever it is wolves go. He suddenly sensed movement, in the periphery of his vision, and glanced up in time to see Oswalt carrying a seeming disproportionately large amount of wood across the deck in front of his house, and back inside. The wolf’s glance only lasted a second or two, just long enough to discern there was no immediate danger to himself. But in that few seconds of time, our wolf formed the wolf-equivalent of a coherent thought, in the front part of his lupine brain. And he voiced that thought to himself, in whatever the language is that wolves speak to themselves in. He said, “Damn, that little guy is bad-ass.” And then, imperceptibly, he nodded. It was a nod only wolves can see. It was really just a minute motion of the wolf’s head, from looking straight ahead to tilting slightly upward, back, and to the left. In the wolf world, this type of nod is a sign of grudging respect for an individual from a non-wolf species. The wolf nodded in Oswalt’s direction, but Roy was already gone. The wolf seemed to consider this for a second – probably me projecting a little here – and then he moved on, as well.
For a man, if he even knew the wolf was there, which Roy didn’t – red wolves are famously stealthy . . . for a man, a nod of respect from a wolf would be a great honor, I would think. I certainly would be honored. Either way, I am with the wolves on this one. Roy Oswalt was bad-ass. And for an extraordinary length of time in the baseball world, he was our bad-ass. Despite the bouts of whining and the demanding of a trade and accusations that he was not always the best teammate, I was sorry to see him go, when the Houston Astros traded him away for prospects, late in his career.
Like the red wolf in his yard, I gave Oswalt my imperceptible nod of respect. He was bad-ass, and I knew I would miss watching him pitch for the Astros.
***************
I knew this girl once, back in school, and she was really pretty. I don’t mean “hot” or anything like that. Neither did she have the classic good looks – high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and a delicate facial bone structure. She was just pretty, kind of fresh and wholesome looking. For lack of a better descriptive example, she was kind of like Mary Ann, to everyone else’s Ginger. She had longish dark brown hair, and even darker eyes. She was never a girlfriend of mine or anything, or even really a friend, I just kind of knew her. On the odd occasions when we met, walking across campus, or at a party . . . just seeing her always made me feel good, and kind of made my day.
This girl’s whole face lit up when she smiled, which was pretty often. She literally beamed. But from the beginning I thought I detected something else there, too. When she smiled at me, all her facial inflections and body language signaled that she was wholly sincere, and I never doubted that she was. But just beyond the borders of her face, from somewhere just behind her, would emit something that seemed like a physical incarnation of something else, something approaching profound darkness. At least, that is what I thought at the time. The thinnest ribbon of darkness outlined her beautiful, beaming face, and for a brief moment a shaft of dark light would glint over her shoulder and onto me. What was that? I would think about it awhile, and eventually convince myself I didn’t really see it. But by now I am pretty sure I did. I cannot adequately describe it, really; but it almost appeared as if she had a second shadow following her around, a darker, heavier version of the original.
I don’t know what happened to that girl after school. For all I know she went on to a great career, a storybook marriage with wonderful kids, and a life of true happiness, mostly unmarred by the darkness that is out there.
I certainly hope she did. Maybe the menacing darkness that seemed to stalk her in our college days decided she was too bright and good for even an extra shadow to fuck with, and so this extra shadow moved on, to dog the footfalls of some other poor soul.
***************
The red wolf that happened by Roy Oswalt’s house several winters from now, just as Roy was coming outside for more firewood, had intruded briefly into our dreamy little vignette set at Roy’s place, and then just as quickly had left. But he didn’t exactly leave. He moved outside the frame of the picture, and out of our direct vision, as wolves will do. But something – I have no idea what (and neither did he) – something made that wolf want to linger there on the periphery of the scene for another moment, just beyond the lines of our collective sight and awareness. He hunched down silently behind some brush, and a small, fallen tree at the edge of Oswalt’s property, and he stared back at Roy’s house.
When Roy had been outside earlier, the wolf had noticed the interior of his house, through the slightly open front door. The wolf did not see much detail, but somehow processed the idea that the home emitted warmth and light and a certain level of comfort no wolf in this world will ever likely experience for very long, if ever. And deep down in his emotionless natural soul, this wolf felt a tiny, brief tinge of something he’d never known, something like regret. This cold-blooded predator and howler at the midnight moon experienced, for just a second, a sort of longing.
He longed for something he did not know, and never would know, from a time so far back in history this fuzzy fellow, as apparently bright as he was for his kind, could not begin to comprehend it, or know how far back in time the object of his longing really was. Actually, we are talking mega-time here, hundreds of thousands of years (times seven for a canine, remember), too many years to be sensibly comprehended even by the bipeds the wolf occasionally saw in his roaming around; like the little guy he saw earlier, carrying all the wood. In truth, the time frame this wolf was attempting to contemplate went all the way back to the time when his genetic branch had suddenly and dramatically split, back in the mists of pre-history. A time when some of his ancient ancestors left their brethren and made one of the biggest leaps of faith ever made by anyone (or anything) in biological history. They did this despite all their instincts and accumulated common wolf sense that compelled them not to. These ancient wolf ancestors had hunched down in the cold, outside the mouth of a cave, just like their modern counterpart did at Oswalt’s house, and they saw the glowing light coming out of the cave opening, and they could smell cooking meat, and could hear the sounds of grunting camaraderie coming from inside, and they could sense the warmth there; and they could almost feel the comfort present in that bright, warm and relatively safe place.
Then, this is what they did next. One of the wolves – because it had to be just one very brave one at first – one of the wolves befriended a caveman one day, while both were out hunting for their dinners. They had both stopped to rest, and warily, silently, they sat next to one another on a log. The dirty, hairy bipedal human dragged his paw-like hand across his protruding brow; and then, following a built-in instinct he had no clue about then and his descendants still don’t understand, he tentatively reached out and lightly stroked the back of his new canine acquaintance, right on the scruff of his neck. Right at the spot where the wolf’s mother used to pick him up with her teeth and carry him around, back when he was just a pup. And this wolf, at being stroked on his scruff, experienced something like appreciation, for maybe the first time, certainly for the first time towards a human. And he opened his terrible, tooth-filled mouth, and extended his rough sandpaper tongue, and lightly licked the back of the caveman’s hand.
And after that, of course, it was all over. Man had got himself a best friend, St. Bernard had someone to bring him his brandy. And I had bestowed upon myself a beagle with a mind of his own, who is barking like a harbor seal out in my backyard just now; which always brings a quiet smile to my face, when I hear him doing it.
What our crouching wolf’s ancestors did, some of them, against all reason and good wolf sense, was form an alliance with this often stupid and mindlessly destructive race of mammals, who slaughtered wolves among other things with abandon and would continue to, forever. Those early wolves crossed the gulf between them and the two-legged cave dwellers anyway, because somehow they knew they had to do it; they had to befriend the humans, and allow themselves to be mutated and dumbed down to accommodate human needs, to become companions and even servants to these humans, and to gain their trust and affection. All so that the rest of them, the wolves who did not cross over and all the descendants for the rest of time of the wolves who did not cross over, would have a chance, at least, to dodge extinction. A chance to survive.
What those early wolves did was mull over what they perceived as their options at the time. Then they decided it was time, for the first time ever, for some of them to come in from the cold.
***************
Oswalt’s wolf had the germ of an idea and presence of mind to tap into whatever it was inside of him that allowed him to peer back into time, all the way back to his early ancestors. That is a remarkable thing, and reminds me of something from way back.
We were just kids, and visiting my mother’s family in western Pennsylvania, and one day several of us kids, my brothers and cousins and some neighborhood boys, were playing in my grandfather’s pasture, firing crabapples at one another. My grandparents had stubby-looking crabapple trees all over the place on their land, so ammunition was readily available; on the vine (unripe and hard) and on the ground (beginning to rot, all nice and squishy.)
Then one of my cousins spotted a rather large hornet nest hanging from the bottom limb of one of the crabapple trees, maybe six feet off of the ground. We stood and looked at it for a while, transfixed. Then we walked off a distance and began throwing crabapples at the nest.
I was 10 years old at most, but even I knew what we were doing, while entertaining, probably wasn’t such a great idea. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before one of my older cousins delivered those hornets a message pitch; some chin music, high and tight. The next thing we knew, hundreds of really pissed-off hornets were swarming all around the pasture, looking for someone to fuck with.
I did not know at the time I was mildly allergic to some varieties of the western Pennsylvania hornet, but I was. I got stung on the cheek, about an inch-and-a-half below my right eyeball. Almost instantly, that side of my face began swelling, a welt that eventually grew to golf ball size. My grandfather slapped some pre-chewed (by him) Red Man on my face, which was nasty. But the tobacco juice drew out a lot of the poison, apparently. It wasn’t long before I was back out in that pasture again, squinting out of my bum eye, and firing crabapples around with abandon.
The odd thing was that just before my cousin’s toss found its mark, sending the hornets swarming, I happened to be looking at the nest, and saw a hornet crawling down the side of it. Then the crabapple hit, and I literally watched that particular hornet take off from the side of the hive, spot me, then make a direct line across the pasture for my face, and plant his stinger into my cheek. The whole sequence lasted probably two seconds, but to me it unfolded in slow motion, almost.
I won’t forget that day. In a twist on the old World War I adage that you always heard the bullet that would kill you coming, I can say you sometimes see the hornet that’s going to sting you heading your way.
And, I would add, you can always see a certain kind of trouble coming, from way, way off, just like that hornet . . . you can always see it coming, the darkness that is going to do you in.
I identify so much with that wolf crouching outside Roy Oswalt’s door in my dream, the wolf with the savant-like ability to see into the distant past; to see, from somewhere like here, straight back through the time tunnel to his thousands-of-years-old great-great-grandfather. I think part of the reason is because I, too, have stared back through that tunnel. Not back thousands of years, maybe; but at least as far back as 1899 or so, to the hardscrabble coal mines and oil fields and company towns of north-central West Virginia. Into the front room of a damp, cold, house in late January, 60+ years before I was born, I saw that my fate was essentially sealed.
My paternal grandfather, my father’s father, was born on that day in that place, and from the moment of his first breath he had the hellhounds on his trail. Looking back, I could see the shadow lurking over my infant grandfather, through the time tunnel, from my vantage point here and now. I could see it attaching itself to him, knowing that what it was really doing was setting out to get me in the end, three generations before I was even born.
The demons which hounded my grandfather drove him to an early death. He had started a career and family, but it all kind of went south for him, I never understood exactly why. The shadows had clearly descended upon him by then, though. He died in a in a house fire at age 48, one he started by passing out in bed with a lit cigarette.
***************
My grandfather’s son grew up to be a father, himself. That son had realized, as a child, that already he was doomed. And so he passed on some of the existential blackness in his soul, passed it onto someone he dearly loved, his own son … his oldest son, who was too young and naïve to know what was happening, to see whose instructions were being carried out, to defend himself from it, at all. This son of his . . . I have along the way tried to deal with the darkness I inherited from my old man, any way I knew how. I tried to kill the demons outright for a while, with various killing agents, but that did not work. I tried to think my way around them, to ignore them, to sic Jesus on them. None of that ultimately worked, either.
I think I finally realized it was best just to go the way of my friend and mentor, a man called Jim Duncan.
Jim Duncan, you’ll remember, was the wraith-like apparition/former U.S. Marshal who materialized out of the heat and dust of the high plains one day, and rode into the lakeside town of Lago, and then systematically exacted from it the most brutal, soul-cleansing revenge imaginable. At one point during the near-biblical mayhem he induced, Duncan and the town midget sat in a tavern, drinking whiskey shots, contemplating plans to ambush and slaughter some people they wanted dead. The midget turned to Duncan and said, “What happens after?”
“Hmmm?”
“What do we do, once it’s over?”
“You live with it.”
The son of the demon-haunted father, who had himself come from a demon-haunted father, and had grown into a demon-haunted man … the son of the demon-haunted father looked through a dark tunnel like the one the wolf looked through. Like the one I had seen my grandfather through . . . the innocent baby’s beginning, and the drunk man’s end.
But this time, instead of looking backward in time, I looked forward. I wanted to see if there was a light at the end of that tunnel for me; which of course would mean I was about to be run over by a train.
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