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The Rollicking Adventures of Tam O'Hare
An excerpt from
ThePaper Boys
PROLOGUE
The crickets sing to me.
Thirty generations ago, their ancestors sang me to sleep with the very samesong. Like lake water lapping or the surrogate hum of an electric fan, thecrickets' summer lullaby was the white noise of my youth. Many nights I lay on the top of the garage, watching the drama of the night sky; the cricketswere the incidental music, playing to me softly, rhythmically, hypnoticallyerasing the troubles of my day. Their's was the sonatta that bid me escape.
I'll never kill a cricket.
I sit here tonight on the grassy hillock just across the street from thecorner house where I grew up. I've been still long enough that the cricketsclosest to me have begun chirping again. This very spot used to be our neighbor'sfront yard, or at least a part of it. Now it's a small steep slope runningup to the barrier that separates my old street from the new freeway.
The moon wanes, but the brightness of the stars belies the warm weather,foretelling the coming of autumn. Midnight dew has left a fine sheen ofwetness along the tips of the grass, and I know that the seat of my suitpantsis probably indelibly stained.
Burgundy has replaced the avacado green trim, but the body of the houseis still painted white.
My house.
I never owned it, never made a single mortagage payment on the place, Ido not live there now - nor have I in some twenty-five years, but I claimit as my own. Parts of me are still in there. And sitting here tonight,I wonder if there is ever a way to reclaim the lost and missing pieces ofmy childhood locked inside those walls. It is said that places can takeon the charcter of the people who lived there and loved it. A chill runsup the back of my neck as I think that thought.
It's one A.M.
My pipe has long since gone cold. I tap out the ashen tobacco against theside of my brown wing tips. The crickets go silent. In habit, I raise thebowl to my lips and blow a quick, susinct puff of air into the cavity, thenrun my little finger along the inside, checking for any stray ash. A pipe,of all things. Who'd've thought that I would be a pipe-smoker? "Thelittle kid without a dad grows up all distinguished," says nobody.
I'd smoke a cigar like the rest of the guys down at the club, but I reallyhate the taste. The pipe, though, is different. How many thirty-somethingbusinessmen smoke a pipe? Not many. To me it lends an air of...of singularity,individuality. No, legibility. All intellectuals smoke pipes, right? I'mnot really trying to be something I'm not, but I do have to keep tellingmyself that it makes me look studiously elegant. Aloof yet readable. WhenI first bought it I stood in front of the mirror and worked at just theright way to hold the thing in my teeth. All that's needed to complete thefacade is a cardigan and some argyle socks.
With a wry smile to myself I return the pipe to it's place inside the pocketof the suitcoat I left lying in a clumsy bundle on the grass. I'm not asmoker. Not really. But I like the picture it makes. Were my pipe a woman,it would chide me for not taking it out more often.
They do that a lot. Women - not pipes. The nurturing gender are expert atdoling out grief. With the slightest provocation they lash out. Then leave.I can almost believe that they care of nothing other than self, feigninglove and faking orgasms. Thespians all. Wives and mothers; mothers and wives.They act out their daily routines as dutiful domestics and coddling moms,all the while, deep down inside, hidden out of site, is their well-laid-outplot of escape. Apathy and abandonment.
A distant siren shakes me out of my reverie. "My God! Listen to thebile coming out of me!" I say out loud. And I stand and brush the loosegrass off my ass, disgusted by my own mental gymnastics.
A car slowly comes up the street and rounds the corner. I quickly sit backdown so I wo'n't look like some strange guy wandering around their neighborhood- as if sitting here will look any better. I clasp my hands around one knee,and nod to reassure them of my harmlessness as the headlights pass overme. After all, this is my neighborhood, my house. But they aren't my neighbors.I'm an outsider to them. An alien.
They drive on.
So why am I so drawn to them...to women, that is? Why am I so distraughtover the loss of another one? It's obvious I don't believe my own misogynisticwords. They're just the machinations of a hurt, bitter mind. I love women,I just don't know how to make them want tostay.
I stand again, throw my suitcoat over my shoulder and step into the emptystreet. The warm yellow glow of the humming street lamp illuminates a circlearound me, reminding me of refuge.
The breeze stirs, resurrecting another sound from my childhood, this onelong forgotten. The leaves of the twin poplars in my front yard dance andrustle on the moving air. The thought occurs to me that I've never seena poplar since I moved away from this house when I was thirteen. Funny.
I stand here in the middle of the quiet street and close my eyes, listeningto the leaves. You can almost imagine the sound of a gentle surf or theprattling of a hard, straight rain on a mid-summer sidewalk. The sound isdissimilar to, yet mimicks the dulcient undertone decible of a bagpipe echoingin some distant glen.
A little boy lying on a garage roof; the stars; the crickets; poplar leaveson the breeze. It's like a layered canvas. Oil upon oil, color upon color,building a translucient picture. Creating a place I want to be. A placeI wish I could run to. A Yeatsian wattle and daub cottage.
I open my eyes. Reality.
The pebbly asphalt crinkles under the soles of my shoes, amplified in thequiet of the wee hours. Ever notice how sound echoes more at night? At thismoment and in this place, it intensifies both the emptiness of the street,and the welcomness of the nostalgic grassy yard before me. I want to takeoff my shoes and socks and run through my old lawn.
I exercise better judgement.
All my life I've been running somewhere. Driven to escape. From what I don'tknow. Wherever I run, it all comes with me. It's a part of me. There isno escape, there is only acceptance and resolution. Absense of pain is thecore of denial.
I'm standing in front of my old house in search of something. It is so buriedthat I can't get my fingers on it. It is out of reach hiding in the dark.
I don't even know why I'm here.
I turn away from the yard and round the corner, heading back to the neighborhoodpark a block away where I left my car. At least I got the car . Well, itwas mine before the marriage. And I got the stereo. Isn't that all a guyneeds anyway? A car, and a stereo? Oh...and a bed?
Up ahead, my old Mercedes stands out in the dark. Coincidentally it wasmanufactured the same year we moved away from my old house. The Germanspainted their iconoclastic automobiles some pretty wild colors that year.My '74 is a light yet luminescent sky blue, almost white. As I make my wayup the street it beacons me back to the present.
The deja' vu here is nearly overwhelming.
Standing on the street-side of the car, I shove my hands in my pockets andgaze over the roof and across the field to the playground where I spentso much time while growing up. Rain or shine, summer or winter my friendsand I would meet almost daily at Bellvue Park. Park Board sports and activitiesin the summer months kept us busy and out of our mothers' hair. An ice rinkand warming house during the frigid Minnesota winters kept us from gettingcabin fever. Two slides, a jungle gym, a swingset and two sandboxes werethe park's compliment.
Along the western perimeter of Bellvue ran an eight-foot-tall chain linkfence dividing the park from what we kids called, "The Woods."The Woods, was in actuality, a triple city lot that up to the late sixtieshad still survived development. It had one old boarded-up turquoise housein the middle that we all considered haunted, therefore unapproachable.Today there are three modern homes on the site.
When I was a kid, there were dirt paths running through the Woods. We'dsail through there on our bikes with the banana seats, avoiding the paththat took us closest the old haunted house, and come flying out where theWoods met the park's chain link fence. In order to miss the fence, the dirtpath veered out onto the street. The street was relatively quiet, and relativelysafe. But one day a kid come flying out of the Woods into an oncoming car.
Looking down at the pavement below my feet, I realize I'm standing on theexact spot where Billy Hornschemeier passed into eternity.
I shake off the chill and utter a brief silent prayer for the anonymouswoman who sat weeping in shock in her big black car that afternoon. Allof us kids gathered around and silently watched Billy's face turn grey,and his eyes turn to glass. It was the first time I had seen death up close.
ON VIEWING
A CHALKY HILLSIDE
by Scott Alan Roberts
©1997 by Scott Alan Roberts
Equine blude an' nobles' breeds
Their sons and daughters mount their steeds
While carving out their chalky creeds
Frae u'r the hillside sod.
On the crest beneath the grove
Druids chanted, children strove
Tae etch the god-breed spirits luve
Now seen frae Henry's Tower.
Whitened hands 'came cracked and dry
The spirit, freshened, feign belies;
Equine elegance 'fore the eyes
Time's no' worn awa'.
'A horse! A horse! My kingdom fer a horse!'
The cry tha' altered hist'ry's course;
When a' I do is gaze 'pon the source:
O' timless Beauty's mount.