Because when you smiled like spun golden daybreak, planted your palms on your hips and said “I play a bimbo on TV!” there had to be a place to tell the story.
It was July. Blisteringly hot on the Chicago Lakefront. This was a couple of summers after “The Blues Brothers” was shot, reviving Chicago as a movie making location. Even movies that would someday be “put on the shelf.”
I nodded and said “Mmm” when you used that phrase. Pretending I knew what it meant. This was an hour or so after you had swung your leg up above your head, slipped it into the stirrup, and with a grace that looked as if you had the whole move planned, sailed over the horse and back down splat into the just watered-down mud on the other side.
And I was the only one in the beehive of people and cables and cameras and 3rd assistant directors and people—like me—who had just stopped to watch; I was the only one who didn’t laugh.
Which wasn’t easy. Because you were born funny. Funny falling from the horse. Funny when you grabbed the soap from me in the shower later that night and started singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” Funny was something that was in your blood.
The really funny part, though, was that every time you said “you really don’t know who I am?” – and I would answer with a different name each time – I really, truly did not know who you were.
I believe my first guess was “Gandhi?” To which you answered. “How did you figure it out?”
“Blondie’s hot sister” came next. Later it was “Gidget with the Truck Stop Mouth.”
You thought it was both wonderful and disappointing that I had never seen your TV show.
After I handed you my beach towel to get the mud off and said, “Guess you don’t ride horses much, huh?” You smiled hesitantly. Then gave me a top to bottom look as if you were an x-ray machine and said, “What?”
And I said, “So do you want to do what TV people do or do you want some Italian Food where the real people eat?”
“Where I come from, there are no real people.”
“Oh, so you’re some kind of surfer chick huh? How does a surfer chick come to make a movie about medieval knights. . .”
“In white satin.” It was as if we’d always finished each other’s sentences.
“That dress looks like it weighs as much as a small car,” I said.
“Pretty close. But I got a tank top and cut off shorts and flip-flops in that trailer over there. If I go put them on, will you wait?” she looked up at me.
“Don’t you have to ask someone permission to just leave?”
And again that smile of yours. “I play a Bimbo on TV. I can do what I want!”
So we walked over the North Avenue bridge and onto where the water met shore and started heading south towards the giant DRAKE HOTEL sign and the Four Seasons where you kept saying you were staying and every time you did I said, “Yeah, right.”
About half way to the Drake Hotel you said, “OK. Let’s just say I’m not staying there. Let’s just say I DON’T play a bimbo on TV. Let’s say I live right here on this piece of cement.” And you sat down, swinging your legs over the side, above the water. I sat down next to you. And we started talking. About Los Angeles. About your Dad. Your TV show. The talk came like some sort of thousand mile river. Winding and flowing, wild and raging, then soft like a hidden forest pond.
The sun started going down behind the buildings. And in the early easy darkness I took your hand as we got up. Your long blond hair tumbling out as your red baseball cap came off. You reached down and snatched up the cap. “I don’t want to be recognized, not now.”
“Yeah, me neither.” And you stuck your tongue out looking like Lucy trying to stare down Desi and I remember thinking, this is what a star looks like.
At the Four Seasons you walked into the lobby and people started bowing and scraping like some sort of Queen just showed up and you whispered, “Just look down till we get to the elevator.” And when the elevator door glided shut with a whoosh, you looked at me and said “Whoosh!” and you kissed like sunlight.
Up in the silence of the big suite I opened drawers and tapped on walls and played with electronic stuff I didn’t understand while you got ready to go out.
There was a Linda Ronstadt song playing. “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.” You came out of the bathroom just as thunder crackled across the city sky. We went to the window and the rain was coming down on Lake Michigan in sheets. Linda Ronstadt sang, “Don’t get me wrong, its not that I knock it. . .” We started dancing.
And we didn’t leave that room for two straight days.
Ernie Banks died tonight. And in the summer green fields of heaven, they are playing baseball. Later on, I’ll go listen to Steve Goodman sing “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.” But not right now.
Tonight I hear the crack of the bat and the rumbling roar of the crowd in the sunshine. Mr. Cub has just hit his 500th home run and when you watch him lope around the bases, head down grace in motion, you’ll run those bases with him and it will be a trip that will last your whole life through.
Tomorrow there will be a news conference. There will be tributes. Tributes galore. But not right now. Right now there is a still, grey pallor that hangs over the city on this cold winter night. It’s like the opposite of baseball. The night Ernie Banks died.
6 blocks east, Wrigley Field lies in tatters. A renovation that won’t be done in time for the start of the season. A construction site that hurt my very soul when I first saw it. Place looks like someone took a giant cleat and stomped it into bits of broken toy.
So Ernie’s gone to greener fields to finish out his double header.
Here, we’ll still be expecting him on TV for just one more interview. I remember not too long ago he had an idea about ending hunger. That was Ernie. He made no small plans.
Here in this big shoulder city, as the years go on, if you look real hard when you’re walking down a street or a path through a park, and if you catch a glimpse of a smile like summer, or if you hear somebody talking happy, or if you see a gleam in someone’s eye like a warm day in June with the sun sprinkled soul of a giant; if you see any of that, you’ll be seeing Ernie Banks.
The best of us. That smile.
Everybody now, “Let’s Play Two!”
Here’s to Ernie. God bless him. Playing baseball in the sunshine.
Fritz died on Christmas Day . . . and I remember . . .
Years ago. I’m stepping off the curb, about to cross Damen Avenue one spring Sunday when this car creeps up behind me slow and rolls on to the grass and sidewalk. Lumbering like some chrome and blue sheet metal monster, Fritz is wide eyed and grinning at the wheel pretending like he’s going to hit me. I start laughing and don’t stop till he’s parked. We cross together and walk into the church.
Ever visit Chicago’s famed Berghoff Restaurant? Back when the elegant wood paneled center of the action was operating in full German efficiency mode, the smell of the sausage, pot roast, potatoes and always the famous creamed spinach was like a culinary bridge back to the old world. Service that was quick and elegance that was for everyone. That famous creamed spinach recipe that Herman Berghoff always kept a secret. That was Fritz’s recipe.
Stop and Shop was another Chicago institution, now gone. But when it thrived, it too was a bridge back to the most joyous and bustling European marketplace. Old world marketplaces that reached across the centuries. The smells of spices and the meats and cheeses and freshly baked bread.
Stories of Stop and Shop. Stories of catering for the wealthy clientele, the elite on Lake Shore Drive? Stories of another time brought alive and made real for right now. Right this very second.
Stories that showed the eternal hope in hard work, generosity, spectacular food, good friends, church family and most of all love.
If you wanted stories like that, you could listen to Fritz.
You could look in his wise and knowing eyes and understand that he’d lived those stories.
Generosity? I remember more than once, agonizingly long meetings in the basement of the church, trying to somehow find the money to keep the lights on, keep the music going. And Fritz would sit, on one of the brown metal folding chairs, off to the side. Legs crossed. He would watch. Say nothing. Up until we got to the point of saying just how much money we were short. Often no small sum. There would be a second of silence as we took in the number. There would be that doubt that always comes with true faith. And then as that doubt would sink in, Fritz would raise his hand and say. “I’ll take care of it.” And he did.
Fritz, for all the stories and the laughter, commanded respect. I remember watching one of Chicago’s premier chefs first meet Fritz. And when she was introduced, when she realized who he was, I saw her nod in respect and simply say to him, “Chef.”
Fritz could communicate by his presence. Simply by the way he walked into a room.
Like when he would walk into the church. His beloved Sylvia on his arm. The way he looked at her. The way his eyes would shine. These two wise souls.
Alone on an empty sidewalk in an arctic blast of Chicago winter wind that could easily crush a soul. He looks up from his phone. Normally there would be hundreds walking this slight rise in front of the Prudential Building, across the street from Millennium Park. But the cold is here now. So it’s just the two of us. And he says, “Can you please help me?”
“Sure. What are looking for?”
“Giordano Chicago deep dish pizza. Is somewhere near here?”
“It’s in this building. C’mon. I’m walking that way. Good day for hot pizza.”
“Oh yes! Chicago pizza!”
“Where are you from?
“I come from South Korea. From Seoul?”
“Really! I have a niece from South Korea now. She and my nephew and their daughter live in Wales. But she is from South Korea. And at their wedding I had the Korean food made by her mother and I loved it! Today would be a great day for Kimchi!”
“You like,” his face showing true surprise, “Kimchi?”
“I love it!”
“You know, every family has their own. Every family makes it different.”
“I did not know that.”
He nods. I point at the Giordano sign at the corner just as a blast of wind almost blows us both off our feet. “Well, time for you to eat some pizza and I’ll go find some Kimchi.”
“Kimchi! You like Kimchi!” He nods his head vigorously, thanks me, turns and walks off into the wind and his pizza.
And somehow the world gets just a tiny bit warmer.
Looking up at two skyscraper mountains of sweet potatoes when the woman walks up, stands right next to me and asks the exact same question rippling silently through my mind.
“What’s the difference between a garnet and a jewel sweet potato?”
“That,” I answer back as if answering this stranger’s questions came as natural as breathing, “is a really good question. Let me find out.”
So I ask the produce guy walking by. I’m not even looking at the woman. And in the time it takes the produce guy to answer, “no real difference at all,” I notice the guy standing behind the woman.
And the fact that the woman is now staring wide eyed at me.
A second passes and she says, “Roger?”
It takes me at least 5 seconds. She’s got to be at least 10 years younger than I (boy, was that wrong…we’re the same age).
That same sparkle in her eyes as if she knows the joke and also thinks it’s hilarious. A musical laugh that resonates every rainbow color. She looks at me. Laughing. Knowing something I don’t know.
I do not know who she . . . . .
“No,” I finally blurt out.
Nodding her head smiling she says “Yes!”
All I can manage, because any attempt to say something clever or even intelligible would end up a verbal puddle on the floor in front of the sweet potato mountains, is a hoarse “No!”
Then she turns to the grim-faced guy behind her and says, “This is my husband Jack. . . Jack, meet my ex-husband Roger.”
I shake hands with Grim-Faced. I smile and say something stupid to him like, “Well, you sure have good taste!” So much for the whole “I’m a writer” thing; I can’t even speak.
She asks, a catch in her voice that probably no one else can hear, (except for maybe Mr. Grim-Faced) “Well, how is Rachel?” And my stock line of “that ended before I even sobered up from the wedding” is nowhere in sight. All I can mumble is a “that didn’t last very long.”
I grab for a fact, any fact, as if it were a sweet potato from the pile behind us. Something solid to hold onto. I say, “But I’ve been with the same person for 14 years now.” The “fact” label shattering like a cracked mirror beneath the weight of the true message of “Hey, I don’t mess things up anymore. Not like I used to. Not like I did with you.”
“How are your parents?” she asks.
“Oh. they’re great. Just great. They live in a senior community outside of Princeton and. . . . how long has it been? It must be almost 20 years now? Do you even live in Chicago? I lost you so long ago.”
“Well,” she points a shoulder back at her husband, “He found me! We’re on the east coast. We’re just here to see my Mom. Haven’t been in Chicago in years and years.”
“Is your Mom OK? Is she still in . . .”
“Yep. She’s doing great. Same place! We just stopped in here by chance to pick up some stuff to take out to the suburbs. What are the odds?”
“What are the odds!” I repeat.
“This would be too unbelievable for a movie,” she laughs. “Unless it was a Woody Allen movie! How are Ben and Sarah?” Ben and Sarah are my niece and nephew.
“Oh, Ben just got married!”
She puts her hand over her mouth. Then down to her knee. “He was this tall the last time I saw him! And Sarah?”
“She lives in London. Managing a bake shop last I heard.”
The capacity for asking questions was starting to return along with the feeling of blood in my extremities. The Husband was clearly not enjoying this little scene. It could not have been easy.
We chatted for maybe a minute or two. Mostly about the coincidence. “It was really good to see you again,” I said to her.
That’s when it happened.
She opened her arms to give me a hug. And here’s what rushed back.
Just for a moment we had parked the car barely within the sounds of the rock and roll band streaming out from the stage of a big outdoor arena called Poplar Creek that used to be on the outskirts of Chicago. Traffic was bad. We were late. But in the distance we could hear the band Dire Straits skating over their song “Romeo and Juliet.” And we started running. Zigging and zagging around the cars as if they were stones in the rushing river of our life.
We had to step on one slippery clean river rock before stepping on to the other. Get to that next rock or fall in to the river. We had to get to our seats before the song ended. Before we heard that one line.
Then the river rushed in fast forward motion. Another scene. This one very different.
Me and 2 pals moving my stuff out of that deathly sad house she and I had bought on Carmen Street while she sat quiet on the basement stairs.
That house like a gothic dungeon. After I was gone, she told me about the time the squirrel chewed its way inside.
Looking in her eyes in the grocery store I thought:
You were alone. I was gone. And I start repeating to myself. “I am sorry, I am sorry, I am so, so sorry. I tried so hard to never let you down.”
From the sorrow of that dark and empty house where none of the walls ever got painted. That house where no one breathed. Back to that parking lot at Poplar Creek.
We are still holding hands running though that parking lot. The river’s wild. We don’t have much time.
Then another time shift.
This one to the future. The day after I saw her at the base of Sweet Potato Mountain.
Talking with my wife about the shock of this encounter. How it turned into an answer to a prayer I never knew I made.
And my wife says, “You couldn’t really see the full picture back then. All you could see was all the ways you disappointed her. All you couldn’t do for her. That’s all that you could see. You couldn’t see the rest of it. You couldn’t see she loved you. You couldn’t see she really loved you.”
Then it is back to that river of that parking lot running towards that music. We toss our tickets to the gatekeepers. We keep running. And scrambling down the aisle. The song is still playing. Mark Knopfler is still singing. We get a firm footing on one more slippery rock together, jump as hard and as far as we can and land in our seats, just as Knopfler sings her name and says, “I’d do the stars with you, any old time. . . . . .”
How true that was.
And we are back at the foot of the Sweet Potato Mountains.
A long hug goodbye. A short wave. A nod to the husband.
When the writers who are Chicago’s eternal gift to literature gather in the smoky dark spilled beer taverns of heaven to share their best work, Bill Granger will be bringing along Time For Frankie Coolin. Granger left us with a bunch of terrifically entertaining, solid stories. The November Man series — even with the marketing mischief done in the reissues in changing titles and making a horrible movie–will stand the test of time. But it’s Time For Frankie Coolin that will earn Granger a place at the table with the masters.
I first read the book in 1982, the year it came out and around the time it takes place. Back then, I knew enough to put it on the shelf next to my favorites. But I couldn’t tell you why. Now in 2014, having just read the reissued book, I can tell you why it spent all those decades on the shelf next to James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonnigan, Richard Wright, Algren, Royko, Bellow, Bill Brashler and Studs Terkel.
First, because of the pitch perfect dialogue. This quiet gem of a book is a series of conversations that masterfully tell the story of that time and place. Which means that they are not always pretty. But they are always authentic. They show the way people talked to each other. The racism (or the pretzel logic denial of racism) rising up today in the national psyche was also bubbling over in 1970’s Chicago when this story took place. So racism was part of the conversation. Woven into the fabric of the character’s lives.
But it’s the full spectrum of eternal themes like family, loyalty, hard work, craftsmanship and flat out love, that run beneath these conversations and make the book quietly resonate 32 years later.
The title of the book carries all sorts of meanings. Frankie has the specter of jail time hanging over his head. His “crime” being that he is part of a family, a culture and yes—a time. All this set against the question, where does all the hard work, the hustle, doing the right thing, where does it lead? And if you don’t ask questions, if you don’t share, where does that get you? Granger’s genius is the realism shown both by what is said and often more importantly, what isn’t said.
Time For Frankie Coolin is not for everyone. No car crashes or terrorists or sexy conspiracies.
But in these times of racist horror shows, the disappearing middle class and all the changes in what it means to be a family, maybe this book is just what the world needs again.
Especially in the pauses, the silences in conversations when so much is left unsaid.
If you choose to listen, you’ll find that in Time For Frankie Coolin, Bill Granger left the world a gift. Like all the great writers do. Because in this book, Granger started a conversation.
Just before she snapped this picture, I had brushed some dirt off your gravestone. We were in Asheville, North Carolina. Breathing in that pure mountain air like it was a cool, cleansing tonic that really could clear tubercular lungs.
I wondered if that air could make me write like you.
As I knelt at your grave, I never imagined you as a Thanksgiving Day guest.
That would be impossible. Right? You being dead and all.
Of course, back then I also thought it would be impossible that she’d dump me. I thought we were for keeps.
She never even bothered to say, “It’s not you. It’s me.” Always a good line. Especially when it’s not true.
We spoke by phone a lot. She lived in a small town in Missouri. I lived in Chicago. Not the best set up for destiny. And when I started hearing stories about how much fun she was having going fishing with this guy she knew from town; when she told me that he owned a jewelry store. When her voice got more and more faded and distant with each call, I kind of figured that the jeweler would eventually close the sale and make them a couple.
It happened just before Thanksgiving. I got the call that there would be no more calls. I finally saw destiny drift away on a warm southern wind.
Yeah, I know. Old story. It’s not “Look Homeward Angel.” It’s just a young guy, who would not be venturing out from Chicago to her Mother’s house in Gulfport, Mississippi for Thanksgiving that year.
Which left me alone at Thanksgiving. And I’d been through that once. Had to take some action. Did not know what. But I had to do something.
I would not be stuck around some dinner table where everyone gathered because they thought they were supposed to gather. Following some genetic instinct of what holidays and family are supposed to mean. A rhythm unstoppable by anything else than a nuclear blast because most times, if you’re dancing to that rhythm, you don’t even know it’s there.
What does that mean? Sorry for that last sentence going on forever. I think I’m a little nervous telling you this story Mr. Thomas Wolfe. And I tend to go on and on when I get nervous.
All I was trying to say was that I didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with someone just because I was supposed to spend it with them. I didn’t want it to be about obligations. Even if I liked the people. I didn’t want obligation to be the orchestra leader.
Or, worse yet, I didn’t want to be that last minute guest with nowhere else to go. Sitting in the chair with the nametag in front that said LOSER.
What I was missing though, was an actual solution. I really didn’t know what to do.
So going down to the local tavern seemed like a good choice. Thanksgiving was two nights away. Maybe if I drank enough between now and then, I’d figure it out.
It had just started to snow, the Chicago winter winds like jet engines revving up for takeoff. Coming into the bar, a joint over on Wabansia, I opened the door under the faded neon of a Hamm’s Beer sign, and there was a shout of “Hey, close the damned door, kid!”
I wasn’t sure at first, who had yelled. The bartender, faceless in the shadows at the back of the dark bar. Or was it the guy with wire-rimmed glasses and very intense eyes sitting at the bar?
Stomping the dusty snow off my boots and unzipping my big down coat, I looked again at the guy hunched over at the bar. He was like a shadow. He seemed to fade in and out.
Thinking I better drink quick, I ordered a beer and a shot of Jack Daniels before I had even sat down. That faceless bartender put it down, I put a $10 on the bar, turned to offer a toast to the guy with the glasses, and once again, he seemed to fade away. Where he had been, was only an empty bar stool. The bartender had retreated back to his corner. So I felt totally alone. And as soon as I felt most alone, the ghost on the bar stool faded back into view, gave me a wink and said, “Yeah. It’s me. Sorry about the whole Thanksgiving thing, kid. I know what it’s like getting dumped. Me and Frenchy. . . . . “
I interrupted. Couldn’t help it. I knew who he was. I knew Frenchy is what he called Simone deBeauvoir. “No way. Algren? Really? Nelson Algren?”
“Do I look like Papa Hemingway, kid?”
“How did you . . . what is. . .why am I. . .what the . . .”
“Easy kid, We’ll let you ask your questions. But first, lets get a table. We’re gonna have some company.”
Algren motioned me over to an even darker corner of the bar. And that’s when I saw you, Mr. Wolfe. This time, alive as you could be! Wild hair, eyes darting all over the room. I could see you writing without even having a pen or paper or typewriter. Just sitting there fidgeting in your chair, you were writing!
You said to me “Sorry about the Thanksgiving thing kid. Thought I’d pop by. See if I could help. Awful nice of you to come by the grave that time.”
“Yeah,” said Algren. “We figured we’d have Thanksgiving tonight. See, where we come from, the exact day doesn’t really matter too much.”
“I have,” I said, close to losing the ability to speak, “so many questions!”
“Well, that’s nice. kid. But why don’t you wait till everybody gets here.”
“Who else is . . .” and just then the barroom door opened. Framed with another swirl of snow, in walked perhaps the greatest of all American male vocalists, Joe Williams. As if reading my mind while he watched my jaw drop, he boomed out a laugh and said, “That whole being the greatest male vocalist? Not the way Frank Sinatra sees it. But truth told. Does it matter?”
“No. I guess not. But why are you here, too? I mean this has got to be the greatest Thanksgiving night I’ve ever spent. And it’s not even Thanksgiving night! But there is so much here I don’t understand…”
“Which is why you get to ask each of us one question,” said Thomas Wolfe.
“But—why can’t I ask more?”
“How about this, kid. If you asked us each more than one, it would make the story too long. Christ kid, you already tossed in the bit about getting dumped at the beginning. What was the point of that? To make us like you more or something? Ever hear of editing, kid? Ever hear of getting to the point? Story is already too long. So you get one question answered by each of us.”
“Well sure, but I . . .well Mr. Wolfe . . .gee, I remember when I first started reading you, how many times did I think, why the hell do I want to write? I’ll never, ever, ever be as good as Thomas Wolff! So why bother? I guess that’s my question. Why bother trying to write? What’s the point?”
”Ok,” answered Wolfe, “you ready for your answer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Here’s the answer: I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You’re Thomas Wolfe! If you don’t know why we bother to write—especially now, with you being dead and all—how will I ever figure it out?”
“You won’t, kid. You’ll never figure it out. Because the answer is a mystery. No one knows. That’s the point. No one knows.”
“So what do I do?”
“You stop asking questions like that. You just write. Because here’s the thing kid. When I write—and of course I still do it now—when I write I am never alone. So I just write. So enough on that. Nelson, it’s your turn.”
Nelson Algren had sold books all around the world, Hemingway considered him one of the greats; he is still read today. Yet his books were never in the Chicago Public Libraries. He wasn’t all that well-liked in his home city of Chicago. So little liked that he, towards the end of his life, eventually left Chicago. If I had to choose one of the million questions I had for this teacher it would be the one I spoke out loud that night in the dark bar. “Mr. Algren, what if people don’t like your writing? Don’t like or don’t care. If people don’t respond to your writing, what do you do?”
And this is what he said. “Kid, let me ask you a question. Is this about you or about the writing?”
“Well, I. . .”
“Do the people who really matter to you like your stuff?”
“You mean the people who will buy it?”
“No kid. I mean the people who matter to you. The list is different for every writer.. Take, for example, you. You remember that lady writer from Ohio? You know the one. She’s living in my neighborhood now.”
“Karen Novak?”
“Of course Karen Novak! Do you remember what happened when she wrote you and told you that you were the real deal? That you could write? Do you remember what that did for you? How your self-confidence shot up like a rocket? Do you remember the fact that Roger Ebert has tweeted your stuff? Do you remember that writers read you? Writers you respect?”
“Well I. . .yeah.”
“Then that’s the answer. When somebody doesn’t like or worse yet, doesn’t care, about your work; when no one comments on what you do, then what do you do? You ask yourself, do the people who matter most to you care?”
There was silence for a moment. The wind had started to pick up outside.
“Oh. Well then I guess I got one more question. Mr. Williams sir, I am honored you are here. But I’m not sure why. So I guess my question is this, why are you here?”
“That’s an easy one, son. I’m here because good writing is always full of music. So everywhere somebody is talking about writing, I’m there too.
But there’s another reason I am here today. A more important one. It’s to tell you this: Every time someone writes, every time someone tells a story, it’s an act of Thanksgiving. That’s what it is, son. Telling a story is an act of Thanksgiving. And when you are giving thanks, you are never, ever alone.”
As I let that sink in, it was as if the wind had stopped blowing for a moment. I closed my eyes to think about what he had said, and when I opened them, my three Thanksgiving companions had vanished.
Left with their answers. Left with Joe Williams’ words:
“Every time you tell a story, you are giving thanks. And when you give thanks, you’re not alone.”
I said that out loud again as I put on my coat and opened the door to walk out into the snow. I thought about my Thanksgiving. The one I ended up sharing with three of my teachers.
“Every time you tell a story, you’re giving thanks. And when you give thanks, you’re not alone.”
And as I spoke his words out loud to the snowy winter wind, I could hear Joe Williams sing.
A song of thanks.
Originally published as “The University of Thanksgiving” in fictionique.
AUTHOR TAGS:
Tonight. Chicago cold winds howl outside while Bonnie Raitt, Emmy Lou Harris and music royalty names too numerous to list start singing inside the golden light bulb warmth of the storied Auditorium Theater honoring Mavis Staples at 75. Inside the walls of Adler and Sullivan’s acoustical masterpiece of a building, fresh and alive as it was when in first opened in 1889, Mavis Staples gets recognized for being one for the ages.
The hard, gritty and sweet street song tones pouring out the very soul of the big city. First Pops, then her sisters and now she is still out there singing. Then go back. Even before. In other ages, you can almost hear her then. Look! Mavis Staples! Singing right next to the swampy river bottom paths leading up from the lakeshore, the very first time a wandering European said to the native American, “Psst. Yeah you. Would you like to buy some land?”
Go back then start listening, whistling, clap your hands and dancing. And she’ll be here. She will. Through the blues, and the funk and the jazz and the folk songs and the rhythm of the night then a brand new day. ‘Cause if you don’t respect yourself ain’t nobody else gonna give a good cahoot’.
Listen to Mavis sing and you know, you just know, that once there was a time when she, like so many of us, could not afford the price of a ticket into tonight’s gala. So you relish the fact that she made her way inside, and on the way forged a connection between her sweet home Chicago and the world. You celebrate what she earned. And then suddenly . .
You smell barbeque ribs on the grill. Fried chicken and greens. Buried deep inside the same frigid wind outside you smell a new inside. You smell the memory of summer in that barbeque. A side yard up against a three flat apartment building. At the Staples family home on the south side of Chicago. Mavis is here but she is upstairs laughing in the kitchen. Somewhere someone is tapping out a rhythm, the beginning of a harmony and the tables are weighted down with a feast for the ages because everyone is invited here. And everyone showed up. In the last sunny light of a late summer afternoon, Mavis and her sisters will start singing, you will get to listen, you will see her smile.
So the odds of recovery are 94-99%. Pretty good, huh?”
We were two middle-aged guys whose morning routine included a walk to the corner to buy a newspaper from a blue, metal stand. Sliding our quarters in the slot, pulling open the door and lifting the ever-thinning tabloid. Wondering if we were the last two guys to do that.
He’d just told me about his cancer diagnosis. The message from a doctor saying ‘page me.’ (Never a good sign.) Waiting on hold after grabbing an empty office in the cubicle farm where he worked. Then the news.
“Only thing I know about cancer,” I said, “is that every cancer story is different.” Thinking, as I spoke, that I had to say that a lot these days.
“Mine is like,” he paused, tapped the blue newspaper box with his rolled up paper and looked up at the grey, cloudy sky as it began to drizzle, “mine is like ‘cancer for amateurs,’ or beginner’s cancer.” He took a breath. “Hardly anybody ever dies of it, Skin cancer. You catch it early, you carve it out. Bada-boom, badda-bing. You’re done.”
He paused again before he said, “Worst part? Telling my wife. She reminded me that I had promised, all those years ago, that I wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to me.”
“Mmm.” I nodded.
“And believe me, I’ve seen serious cncer. I remember a couple who were friends before they had kids and moved away. His cancer was major league. We were over at their apartment for Thanksgiving. I was looking for something in the kitchen and I came across his pill collection. It looked like a storage room at Walgreens. Or another friend who also happened to be in Manhattan on 9/11. His cancer was Godzilla. Mine is a gnat.”
“Hard to compare when everybody’s story is different, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
A garbage truck rumbled by. Delivery truck backed into the loading dock of the Trader Joe’s across the street. He folded his arms across his chest and said; “You know what really amazes me about becoming a junior member of this cancer community or whatever you want to call it?”
“What?”
“What stuns me is the courage I see. I mean raw courage. One guy I knew? Got to be with him for part of the time he was dying. And you know what? He never, ever, ever complained about anything. Oh, he communicated. When something sucked, be it the latest whack job politician, the income gap or the fruit cup for desert–he didn’t hide the problem. No false stoic. But I can’t ever remember him complaining or feeling sorry for himself. Same thing is true for this other guy who had cancer with a capital C. He’s still here doing fine. He’d write these truly poetic exaltations of joy when the chemo went well. And when he’d go into remission? The world would be singing for everyone. These guys? True courage.”
“So you going to tell anyone besides your wife?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I mean, what am I gonna do? Post it on Facebook?”
“You could. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I could come off as complaining. The guy who stubbed his toe in a room full of people with broken arms.
But even worse, I’d be ignored. I mean, I have people I’m genetically related to on Facebook who wouldn’t throw me a “Like” if the world stood still. Course I also have people who feel like family that I’ve never met. I’m lucky enough to have a couple voices from the past. One of them, I can remember once actually feeling her smile as I read the words, “I found you!” There are strands of an on-line community of writers I still cherish. First person to ever tell me I was a good writer and somehow make me believe it was a lady writer from Ohio, Gone now, from cancer. But what she left me is still here,
But then if I put this little cancer story on Facebook, who knows how I’d say it. I mean, last night I was up for hours convinced I could feel the cancer growing and soon I’d lose a leg.”
“Active imagination huh?”
“I’m a Cubs fan. We need those.”
“Reminds me of faith,” I said to him.
“What, the Cubs?”
“No, something you just said reminded me of something I once heard about faith. Guy named Paul Tillich. He said that doubt was an essential element of faith.”
“So I can pay attention to the 1% chance this will get worse,” he laughed.
“I guess.”
“Ok, then if doubt can be a part of faith, how do I deal with that doubt as I’m praying? How do I face that doubt?”
“Maybe that’s where the courage comes in.”
“Handling the doubt is where the courage comes in. Hmm. I like that. Course, I still don’t want to put my story on-line. Even if anybody read it, it would pass quicker than you can say, pictures of a dozen cute kittens and babies.”
“You might be right,” I said.
“But hey. Wait a minute. You’re a writer. Maybe you could do it?”
For these two spirits, it could be any year. They were the loves of some other life.
But It was always, every year, in the sticky spattered rainy heat of late August that they’d both come back and take their places diagonally across on the intersection of Belmont and Sheffield streets in Chicago. Each of them sitting slumped against wet concrete storefronts. Street people no one ever really sees. So it was questionable. Were they really there or not? Neither of them made a sound.
Neither paid the other any mind.
If just for a moment you did see them, and you listened very hard beneath the rumbling elevated train and the tire slick pavement, you’d hear a raspy cigarette toned singer upstairs at a bar where there was always the music of being inside on a rainy night. In that bar, called The Quiet Knight, a cigarette smoke singer pleaded to his piano that I hope that I don’t fall in love with you.
And that plea would bring thunder.
Every year, that plea would bring thunder. Wild, lightning splitting skies and apocalyptic winds. Inside that bar there was the glowing orange warmth of the soul that only comes alive in the deepest, crazy corner of the city. And as the rains would beat down harder on those two solitary souls outside, neither of them acknowledging the other, cartoon thought bubbles floating above their fading forms were empty. As if even the doubt that gives faith its shape and form had disappeared and there was just that empty intersection at Belmont and Sheffield in the rain.
But then, and this happened, every year, as the raspy toned voice sang that it was closing time, and the rain calmed to a steady cleansing river of the city night, the two faint forms on the sidewalk would start fading to a gentle mist and in their place, there on the rain soaked sidewalk, there between the cracks in the concrete, diagonally across the intersection, two tiny new green shoots and the most miniscule of the strangest, strongest flowers. Purple and yellow and totally out of place as if some unhearable voice had asked a question. Every year the same question, can old songs be made new?
