HALLOWEEN MOON

He was bent over. He looked okay, though. She didn’t.
I’d popped into Coco’s in Barstow after hiking in Owl Canyon north of town. It was a full moon. Hadn’t shaved in almost a week.
They always treat me good at the Coco’s in Barstow, usually after I’ve been wandering around the desert, rooting around in my Jeep, hiking, taking photos, trying to capture that eternal silence you only find in the desert. I’d found some, where you keep listening, waiting for something to disturb it like a pebble rippling a pool but it stays silent, pure.
I could feel them moving towards the counter where I was sitting. Moving, barely, so slow. They came closer, the woman holding the arm of the man. I turned and looked and saw a man bent over holding a cane and a woman with a sickly grin and no teeth, holding his arm and he looked at me with clear blue eyes, hunched over, and asked if there was room for two next to me.
Of course, I said. He smiled. She smiled. She had very few teeth yet kept her mouth open. He turned and leaned his cane against the counter and gripped the edge with his hand and I asked if he wanted me to hold the cane. He said yes, and I took the cane. It was warm from his grip and he leaned in to the seat and I pulled the cane back out of the way, my fingers curled around the black vinyl handle, holding something that had been in his hand for how many days? How many hours?
It was his back, he said, mumbling that he didn’t know if was the bed that was causing the pain, looking at me with the blue eyes framed with bushy black eyebrows. The woman stroked her chin and opened and closed her mouth, a row of incomplete teeth.
My back bothers me too, I said, working out, at the computer, writing. Locked up pretty good a few weeks ago, I said, putting the cane back in his hand. I needed more lemonade and held the glass up to the waitress who disappeared and came back with another one.
I study law now, the man said. I guessed his age between seventy five and eighty.
Like to become a lawyer? I asked.
He reached in the pocket of his white shirt, a blue turquoise bolo tie hanging around his neck. The woman stroked her chin, moving her jaw up and down, working it.
He handed me a business card.
Life & The Future as an ethical theory and a Philosophy of Law
It’s a philosophy that supports the future of life, he said.
They come to me, I thought. Let them speak.
Are you studying this? I asked. Developing this idea?
You tell one person, who lives it, the idea that all actions should support the future of life, and it influences another person, he explained. It could change the world.
My sausage and pepper fettuccine arrived.
I’m on board, I said, between mouthfuls of spicy Italian sausage and a salty marinara. It might need a little explaining, some developing, I said, to get the point across.
What needs explaining? He said. He gave the waitress his order. One order. Two plates. She scurried away.
Canals, he said. Build canals.
For what? I asked.
Develop desert property, grow crops.
We have canals, I said. The Colorado River is siphoned off to Vegas, Southern California.
He said China had canals.
He asked me if I would consider China successful, under this new ethical concept that supported the future of life, compared to the United States.
They’ve got a lot of people, I said. They’ve been at it a while. Three or four thousand years, I said. They had philosophers writing down theories of life in the fifth century, B.C. Earlier, even. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confuscius.
Well, they had canals, he said.
I’ll eat a bit, I thought, let the conversation breathe. I gulped lemonade, heavy on the sugar. Nice and cold. The waitress cruised by a couple of times, looking my way, asking if I was OK. Fine, I’d say. I probably looked exactly like what I was, a desert rat crawling out from a dusty trail, chowing down next to a local and his companion.
No difference between a child and an eighty year old man, he said.
Experience, maybe, I said. Judgement. A child is open but he lacks experience to find his way in the world. He needs guidance. An eighty year old has wisdom. Children have no wisdom.
I started a family worship when I was five years old, he said.
Did you grow up here?
Oregon, he said. What do you think of my idea?
Nice. Good stuff. Can’t go wrong with that, I said.
The woman hadn’t said a word. I’d seen women like that standing at freeway exits with shopping carts and black plastic bags and a cardboard sign scrawled with a plea for help and I’d probably driven by a hundred of them. She sat, patient, some relationship with this man who wanted to change the world.
Then I noticed the man’s hands. He had hair on his hands. Long hair, growing out of his fingers, at least an inch. Lots of hair, on the fingers, the spaces between his knuckles, on the back of his hands and on the wrist coming out of the cuff of his white shirt.
The waitress took my plate and asked if I wanted to have some desert and I waved it off, saying no, that was plenty. She left the check.
So what do you think of my idea, the man said again.
Good, I said. Good luck with it.
You think you can do anything to help me with it?
I gathered the check and the Daily Press: Victor Valley and the High Desert.
I’d like to, I said. I don’t live around here. I enjoyed talking with you. I shook his hand.
He smiled, his bushy black eyebrows giving way to wrinkled creases and he nodded his head. The woman smiled.
Maybe I’ll see you around, I said.
The cane leaned up against the counter between them. She hadn’t said a word since she’d sat down, that I’d heard. I wonder if she ever did. Wonder if she had much to say to the man. Maybe he did all the talking.
The cane was brushed aluminum with a black vinyl handle.
The big full moon was over the horizon, light dimming in the west. A young woman in nice jeans and a rust colored shirt walked across the parking area to a pay phone and put in some coins . She looked good in the nice jeans. Strawberry blonde hair almost matching the shirt, tied back in a pony tail. Neon signs were coming on at the restaurants and gas stations and motels on Main Street, Barstow. People, moving in and out of shadows and pink sunsets and the big harvest moons that shine over the desert, eating at café’s and putting coins in the pay phones. A man walked up and stood at the phone kiosk on the other side of the woman in the rust colored shirt.

I KNOW HOW JAMES DEAN DIED

I was fighting it, my lids heavy, eyes tired from getting up at three thirty, four o’oclock in the morning for a couple of days. I was snapping out of it, on the highway, out around Blackwell’s corner and the San Andreas fault and a lot of nothing out west of I-5 coming out of Paso Robles. Maybe it was the fish sandwich at Foster’s Freeze. The girl said the fish sand at McDonald’s scared her, no way she ate that stuff. ‘I make my own tartar sauce,’. Do it, I said. It was good. Maybe it was cruising Paso Robles looking for a Chevron station and settling for an Exxon. What’s the difference? Out past the wineries and vineyards and new housing projects silenced in mid-form, out into the dust and empty hills, heading towards Blackwell’s corner and Lost Hills. Didn’t want to do a James Dean. Didn’t want to find some chasm in the San Andreas and become a fossil for someone to pick up a million years from now and speculate. Hmmm…maybe he was driving one of those gas powered vehicles they used to drive. Right here, in front of the oil derricks pumping crude out of the ground, strung together with pipes and electric poles with cord running all through the patch and big steel locusts like insects sucking blood. Stay awake, stay awake.
Blackwell’s corner is in the middle of nowhere. No trees. No signs, no motels, a big steel warehouse, they’re putting in gas pumps and a big parking area on both sides. Air conditioned, snack bar, aisles of almonds in all sizes of plastic zip lock bags. Walnuts, pistachios. Roasted, raw, lightly salted, Cajun style, jalapeno, onion and garlic, get your almonds any which way and suck ‘em on down with a splash of your favorite soda.
From a distance the oil wells in Lost Hills look like a construction project putting up skinny frames of black steel, way off, a couple of miles maybe, just structure, an outline, low lying scatter in some early form of organization, and you’re looking for a sign or something announcing the development, for-sale, call this number for information. There are a couple of pickup trucks parked near the dirt road entrances, little white square signs announcing Chevron Field 29, guys sitting in the front seats behind the wheel with the door open wearing white hard hats, hell of a job, I think. No chance to take some photos without getting run off so I head on down the straight blacktop.
If you’re going to devastate a few square miles of land this is the place to do it, I’m figuring. Nobody tills this land, no one for miles. I don’t see any almond orchards in sight, no walnut trees, nothing, just dried grass making the land golden but it’s the crude that makes the dough, here. Not almonds and beer and gas stations. Lost hills is a stop light of two-story sand colored apartments and a bar or two and a Mexican restaurant and that’s the life, I guess, you go on in to Bakersfield for some real fun.
I wonder what it will be like when we drill in ANWAR. I’ll never be up there, I don’t think. I’ve been to Alaska and there’s a lot of open space but it’s pristine, majestic, mountains and streams and eagles flying off the trees next to the rivers in big looping beats of wings making their own wind, snow cap peaks and glaciers and there’s no room there for sucking the ground. I know we need oil. I know.
I pick up two one-pound bags of roasted, unsalted almonds for six ninety-nine, a couple of bucks cheaper than Von’s, and I’m good. Drinking a coke in the car to wake up and on down past the enclave of Lost Hills and I’m pushing out on to I-5 south with the trucks and cars and the funneling of effort down to the grapevine and the rush to get over the hills.
I’m back now, home. My sound system sounds better, the air conditioning cools down the house, I put away some groceries and steam some vegetables and eat some food and settle in. Out on the San Andreas the earth shifts, little by little, and we pull out what we think we need from down below. My air conditioner shuts off and I turn on the television. I need some ice in my drink.

HANDS HIGH

At the end of the first fight, the referee held up both fighter’s arms and the crowd cheered. We had cheered all through the fight. The fighters deserved our best. The boys had given it everything they had and we knew it. They were eight or nine years old.

When the bell sounded to begin the fight they stood together in the middle of the ring and planted their feet, and without moving their heads or their feet, they swung mighty punches at each other and hit each other and landed blows on their faces and their arms and their necks and chests and they didn’t back down, neither of them, until the bell sounded ending the fight after three two-minute rounds.

We clapped our hands until they were raw. We cheered and whistled and the trainers cut off the gloves and then the fighters went to the center where the referee checked both fighter's hands for his initials signifying that the taping had been approved before the fight, and he held both of their hands high.

Finally the referee held one fighter's arm high, the winner, and the fighter took a medal on a long ribbon and placed it around the other boy’s neck and I was moved by this simple act of kindness and sportsmanship in a rough sport that boys take up. He put the medal around the boys neck, and then he took the winner's trophy and held it over his head.

LARRY BOWA'S YELLING AT ME

I read today in the Sports Pages where the Dodgers staff is issuing the outlook for the second half of the season, Torre and Bowa wondering what the hell happened between New York and LA, more than a sports version of culture shock. Torre says something like ‘if you have kids you can tell them not to play with matches but until they burn themselves…” That’s not the kind of Knute Rockne ‘Win one for that McCourt guy’ speech I’d be hoping for if I was the Dodger owner.

The Dodgers have some pitching but mid-way into 2008 the manager and the coaches and the media are still wondering when the wonder kids will wake up and start realizing they’re playing for Joe Torre and not Grady Little or Jim Tracy. Torre. Guy hangs rings in his closet. Torre, the guy caught Bob Gibson, for God’s sake. Torre, manager of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and (gasp!) Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Listen to the man.

Bowa talks about professionals being consistent. “That’s what the big leagues is all about. Have a game plan, execute, consistency, work ethic, not getting distracted. Guys who do that are the guys who succeed. Guys who don’t do that have one good game and three bad games.” Perfect. So I’m writing. Day by day.

I ran into a woman I’d worked with in the cable television business the other day at the supermarket. She shouted my name! She was a real cutie, always flirting with me and wearing low cut shirts. Man, oh man. She was stacking magazines on the racks and we caught up. I told her I was done with the corporate world. Writing, going to minor league baseball games to work for a few bucks, find a way to squeak by until the 401K money kicks in. Lay low, maybe get a book signed, published, that’s the plan, I said.

In the corporate world you get paid just to show up. Results oriented pay usually comes as bonuses, but you get paid. Sometimes some pretty damn good money. I see the names of some of my old colleagues now on Facebook but I really don’t want them around any more. I know who I need to know, who I want to know. Lots of people I never really wanted to but had to. Done with that.

Thumbed through a dozen Bukowski books last night and bought one book of poetry. His picture in the back of one of the books showed him standing in the betting room at the race track penciling in long shots on the Racing Form, alone with his horses and the windows. He drank a lot, I know, and his poetry makes no excuses. Somewhere I see he said he didn’t do much if any editing, just wrote and crossed out lines and sent them to magazines and publishers.

What kind of day-to-day technique did these guys use? Bukowski, Hemingway, Henry Miller? And these guys didn’t have computers. Long hand, Steinbeck and his long legal pads and his pencils. Every Day. ‘Journal of A Novel’, his letters to his publisher each day, his daily warm-up writing, he called it, the summoning of his powers, the stretch of creative muscle, admitting the tough going.

But how many days, how many hours did I waste in the morning in corporate conference calls, waiting for some email to tell me where to dial in, what to think about, what the topic was, listening to managers and the fearful chiming in, the hastened cries of ‘I’m here!’ coming from some cat on the freeway speeding from El Segundo to Chino with a cell phone. Mornings staring at the computer screen, waiting for my turn.

I told Grace, the woman at the market with the magazines, when she said she’d put on weight, that you’re the kind of girl who could put on a lot of weight and still be sexy and I don’t think she even heard that or she didn’t want to respond.

‘You look great!’ she told me. Yeah, I got a good hair stylist, I said. She gave me one of those side hugs, where you grab a shoulder and meet elbow to neck, something like that. Can I publish a story in one of those magazines, I’m thinking? Can I get a book on the rack somewhere, with my name on it? That’s what I want.

Little bit everyday. Have a game plan, execute, make adjustments, work ethic, don’t get distracted. I could see Bowa standing in front of me at nine o’clock in the morning. Yelling, his neck straining. Time is not infinite.

DOWN BY THE RIVER

Laughlin, Bullhead City, Havasu and Parker, the Colorado River, Vidal Junction, Needles; people hiding out, getting by, laying low. So was I.

Listening to the Radio; Top Three Stories from Laughlin/Bullhead City/Parker July 7-9;

3- The ‘adopted’ son shoots and kills his adopted parents in the trailer, then wanders a hundred yards outside the metal box and puts a bullet in his brain. The Coroner’s probably trying to figure out a way to just leave all the bodies where they are and give the buzzards the day off. Don’t think he shot the dog, though.

2- DJ in Bullhead City calls up his buddy, the Friday jock, to play the new promo just cut for the Friday guy’s special show, ‘Southern Fried Firearms’, your basic radio gun show. Highlight of the call was the open, when the guy answers the phone and the live jock asks the gun-show guy if he’s shooting his guns this afternoon. The guy says no, he’s watching Battle Star Galactica. “It’s a really good one!”

1-Two Las Vegas guys arrested in a Bullhead City motel room with guns, $27K in cash and computer software used to make forged checks.

The stories that make small town news so rewarding!

Laughlin, Tuesday night; At the Crab Shack I'm drinking beers with Benny, and he wants to just go back to Boron, and take back his trailer, with his girlfriend of twenty five years who he never bothered to marry and who gave him three nice girls. He was glad to talk to me, he said, because it cooled him off, took his mind off maybe going back there to his trailer and killing the guy who’d moved in with his girl friend. Kill him, he said, with his bare hands. He’d just been in jail for domestic violence, a little three day stint of a ninety day sentence, but he said he didn’t hurt nobody. Maybe the girlfriend just said enough, and kicked his ass out?

He was on his way to Kansas, he said, to get a job, get away from it all but that fell through so he ended up in Laughlin. His dad gave him a thousand dollars to help him out. He hadn’t talked to his dad for two years, they’d had a falling out. But his dad came through with a grand.

Brian ordered another Absolut with cranberry juice and a beer for me, told the girl to put it on his tab.

Andrea, with beautiful breasts and a t-shirt that said “Diamonds are Forever but You’ll Always Remember Crabs; The Crab Shack” shucked boxes of Mexican oysters like she meant it, cracking the crank with slender arms and stealing glances at me.

"I’m going over and get one of those t-bone steaks," Benny says. "Hear it’s the bomb. I’ll be out at the pool later on if you want to come on out."

THIRTY SECONDS WITH JACK McDOWELL

I didn’t ask Jack McDowell about the thrill of winning a Cy Young. I didn’t ask him about growing up in Van Nuys California in the San Fernando Valley where I worked for eleven years and I didn’t ask him about getting to the bigs after only 27 innings of minor league ball. Didn’t ask him about Stanford or being a number one draft choice of the White Sox in 1987, fifth overall.

I asked him about the four albums he’d recorded with his band Stickfigure and he smiled and laughed. He said no, there’s no music to download in the internet, no records likely floating around in the bin racks at used record stores.

“I wish guys like you could play forever,” I said. I shook his huge hand, his fingers almost crawling up to my elbow. He’d thrown out the first pitch at the Epicenter on a sunny hot Sunday afternoon and the long right arm ended up almost in the dirt, the trademark Black Jack delivery still going strong.

He had the ‘live’ arm as they called it, nasty stuff coming down off his six foot five inch frame and he hid the ball as well as anyone, ninety-plus with movement shooting out of his hip or his elbow that he’d whip at you.

I don’t think pitchers ever shave, at least not when they’re scheduled to go live, and Black Jack had gray going in the scruff spreading on his face and on his head.

He was ready for me, for anyone wanting to shake hands and get autographs. I’d asked the girl at the table out front about Jack’s career and she smiled but said ‘don’t know’ when I mentioned the music and I pointed to the program guide and the mention of Stickfigure and Yahoo sports and the Cy Young.

I’d take that resume. Baseball and music and writing.

I didn’t ask him about Roger Clemens, I didn’t ask him about Barry Bonds. I didn’t ask him if he wishes he was still playing, in US Cellular Field instead of old Comiskey, but I don’t think he minds a bit. Didn’t ask him how he might like to play with the Sox today under Ozzie Guillen with players like Orlando Cabrera and Jim Thome and Alexei Ramirez and A J Pierzynski and maybe the best team in baseball.

Didn’t’ have time. I only had thirty seconds.

DOWNSIZING

The salesman at Van Nuys Chevy was twenty eight years old, tops, two diamond stud earrings. He grinned too much.

He did it again, as we walked off the back lot into the office.

“You are what you drive,” he reminded me. All those teeth. Then he motioned me in to his felt-lined gray cubicle with the elegance of an intern about to examine my prostate.

A half-hour later and I was a 1992 Chevy Silverado Club Cab pickup. An hour ago I was a 1998 Corvette. The difference in cost between being a Corvette and being a used Silverado Club Cab? Twelve thousand dollars. I folded the check and put it in my pocket.

Maybe, not so much like a prostate examination. More like a sex-change. With a rebate.

I love LA.