Story

—I don’t want no characters. I’m not going to have any. 

—What do you mean? You’ve got to have characters. 

—No I don’t. I don’t want any. I want to be alone. 

—What are you going to do then? You can’t just sit there. 

—Yes I can. Why can’t I? 

—You’ve got to have a plot. You need action. 

—No. Who’s writing this thing anyway? 

—What about a title? 

—What about it? 

—Nothing. Forget it. 

—Exactly. I’m not going to have a setting either. And no diction and no conflict and no theme. 

—What about an audience? You’re not going to have an audience either. 

—Yes. Yes I will. 

—No, no you’re not. You know, with no plot you never could call this, this whatever it is, a story. And now if you say there’s no theme, then you can’t really call it anything. 

—I don’t want to call it anything. You’re the one trying to call it something. 

—Okay, never mind. But the point is, who’s going to care? Who’s going to give a shit? If it won’t have any substance why should anyone bother. 

—I don’t want substance. I especially don’t want the shit. 

—Right. But you want an audience. You just said that you even expect one. 

—That’s right. But let me tell you something. Maybe this will make you see. Last Tuesday I was taking a walk through the park. It was noon and I saw this old bum curled up on the edge of the sidewalk, eyes closed, not doing anything. And I stared at him for a little while. He didn’t move. Flies landed on him and he didn’t brush them away. He might have been dead. 

—Maybe he was. 

—I don’t know. But I stood there and stared at him for I don’t know how long and he never did move. He was positioned in such a way that I couldn’t tell whether he was breathing or not. I think he was alive though. I’m pretty sure he had some sort of soul. 

—But what’s the point? 

—Maybe there is none. 

—So what are you trying to say? 

—I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just saying it, there was a bum in the park and I happened to notice him and I think he had a soul. 

—And for that you think you’ll have an audience. 

—Hey look. Someone will notice this some day and maybe even several people will stop and stare and eventually someone will tell somebody else, like I just told you. They’ll even come up with the standard speculations: he looks dead, but I think he’s alive. He’s just a bum, but what was he yesterday and what will he be tomorrow? Who knows? Who cares? Maybe it’s a mental illness, or maybe it’s a statement of choice ...or maybe he really is dead. He’s motionless, but he’s got a soul. People will wonder, I promise. Wait and see. 

—Is that your story? Kind of depressing. And you can’t just end it like that. 

—Settle down. That’s not my ending. It’s not even my story. 

—Whatever. 

—Right. 

—So will you bring your readers to any conclusion? 

—No. No one ever does, really. 

—Now that’s arguable. Platitudinous even. 

—Of course it is. Everything is.

          ...

—So that’s your story. 

—I told you, call it what you will. 

—But it is a story you know. Whether you pretend it’s something else or not. 

—That’s your conclusion. But it sounds like you changed your position. 

—Sure. You’ve got everything in it that you said you wouldn’t have. 

—What are you saying? 

—There’s theme, there’s conflict of characters, style, even a plot of sorts... 

—All incidental, I tell you. 

—...and you’ve got lots of thought. 

—All incidental. 

—What do you mean, incidental? It’s there, isn’t it? And you said it wouldn’t be. 

—But there’s no one here. 

—Sure there is. Me and you. And an audience, maybe. 

—No, there’s no audience. Not now. The audience hasn’t come by yet. They will, later, but not now. 

—And I suppose we’re two bum characters on the edge of the sidewalk. 

—No. There are no characters. 

—What are we? 

—We’re the writer of course. 

—But we’re fighting. There’s conflict, so we must be characters. 

—No, we’re just the writer. We’re just words.

A Novel Without a Hero

“Maybe a story is better without any hero,” scrawled Ernest Hemingway in an early manuscript of The Sun Also Rises. He was well into a story in which his narrator, his omnipresent point of view, was a man who was made sexually dysfunctional from a war wound; at this point heroism, though it might have been difficult, still could have been reached by circumvention. But a line of thought had been running through Hemingway’s head and was already woven into the novel, and perhaps he already had in mind the epigraph to this thread: an opening passage from the book of Ecclesiastes. This, with that passage in mind, would have to be a heroless novel; it would have to continue in the direction of thought of Qoheleth, the biblical philosopher [Qoheleth is the Hebrew equivalent to the Greek “Ecclesiastes,” which means preacher or leader of the assembly], because after all, whether it was written down or not, the epigraph was already being followed.

Rather than scrutinize those several famous verses from which the novel’s title came, and from which the standard Hemingway theme of a generation passing away was also born, the point might be made as clearly by looking at the verses in Ecclesiastes all around those of the epigraph and seeing how Hemingway did in fact parallel the philosophy of Qoheleth. Consider the two verses preceding the epigraph’s source: “Sheer futility, Qoheleth says. Sheer futility: everything is futile! What profit can we show for all our toil, toiling under the sun?” (Ec. 1:1,2, New Jerusalem Bible)  In other words, the Hebrew preacher asks, How can a story of a suffered life ever have a hero? “What was, will be again,” the preacher continues after the epigraph verses, “what has been done will be done again and there is nothing new under the sun!” (Ec. 1:9)

On the surface, Jake Barnes is not nearly as pessimistic about life; but then, as always, there is that Hemingway iceberg, looming largely under the surface. Jake Barnes only occasionally lets show the “feelings of things coming that you could not prevent happening” (146), but in the same breath he reveals an “ignored tension” built around a memory of the war; and after the war he is emasculated, a fact he rarely talks about in the novel. “It’s all right,” he tells Bill, who had touched on the subject, “I don’t give a damn anymore” (124).

Qoheleth continues, and it might have been Jake himself writing at this point: “What is twisted cannot be straightened, what is not there cannot be counted” (Ec. 1:15). And in the second chapter the preacher finds, with less than heroic gesture, an ever-temporal solution: “I decided to hand my body over to drinking wine, my mind still guiding me in wisdom; I resolved to embrace folly, to discover the best way for people to spend their days under the sun” (Ec. 2:3).

In The Sun Also Rises, chapter two is devoted to a comparison between the philosophies of Jake and Robert Cohn. They are in a bar, “a good place,” with “a lot of liquor” (11). Cohn opens the discussion: 

          “Listen, Jake. . . Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is

     going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve

     lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” 

          “Yes, every once in a while."
          ”Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?”
          “What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell?”
          “I’m serious. “
          ”It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
          “You ought to. “
          ”I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or another. I’m through 

     worrying.“ (11)

Qoheleth, too, had come to this. Everything, even worrying, is futile and even vain, and it is better just to eat, drink, and enjoy whatever lies under the sun.

In the same chapter, Robert Cohn wants to go to South America, and Jake discourages him. “I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.... If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same” (11). As if one mirrored the other, Qoheleth writes “Better the object seen (the here and now) than the sting of desire; for the latter too is futile and chasing after the wind” (Ec. 6:9).

It is clear that Robert Cohn, a hopeless worrier and a futile dreamer, cannot be the hero of Hemingway’s novel, but there are several other possibilities, and in the course of the book Jake briefly considers each of them. Mike? He practically boasts that he is a loser with no medals, and most of the time he is “tight.“ Bill? He is a “lazy bum,” and usually ahead of Jake and Mike in the “utilization” of wine. Brett? No, Jake decides. “To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Brett Ashley” (148).

Again the mirror: “This is what I think, says Qoheleth, having examined one thing after another to draw some conclusion, which I am still looking for, although unsuccessfully: one man in a thousand, I may find, but a woman better than other women---never. This alone is my conclusion: God has created man straightforward and human artifices are human inventions” (Ec. 7:27-29).

Then Jake considers the bullfighter Pedro Romero, and at first he idolizes him, standing him next to erstwhile hero Juan Belmonte, who doesn’t stand a chance. Pedro Romero, though, has an unseen iceberg himself: he will one day be, provided he survives the cycle, an aging Belmonte to some other rising star. Furthermore, even within the novel and on the surface, he is shown to be painfully human. His face swells up from Robert Cohn’s punches, and in the end even Romero cannot hold on to Brett for very long.

“Another thing I have observed under the sun,” muses Qoheleth once more, “that the race is not won by the speediest, nor the battle by the champions; it is not the wise who get food, nor the intelligent wealth, nor the learned favor: chance and mischance befall them all”(Ec. 9:11). 17.

In Jake’s story, Romero almost got away with becoming the hero. He did in fact fight the battle and win the race, and as in a stereotypical hero-novel he even left town with the girl, riding off, as it were, into the sunset. But Hemingway devised a staggered ending to work against Romero. First we learn that his victory gift, the ear of the bull, was allusively left behind in the back of a bed stand drawer. And then we are shown, after everyone has gone off in different directions, Bill here and Mike there and Romero and Brett together and Jake alone, that just as the title told us from the beginning the setting sun also rises and continues on its never-ending cycle. Brett comes back to visit Jake and Romero is left to his bulls. “How sweet light is, how delightful it is to see the sun!” (Ec. 11:7).

The two enjoy their impossible life together again, and in the end, for a brief moment, Brett considers how sweet---and heroic---it might have been if their own sun would never have set at all. “We could have had such a damned good time together,” she says, and Jake replies with the book’s famous close: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (247) In this we can hear Qoheleth’s closing comment, too, sounding less pessimistic and more matter of fact, concerning the mere prettiness of dreams and “couldabeens. “ ”Sheer futility,” he says once again, “everything is futile” (Ec. 12:8). There are no heroes, and isn’t it futile to pretend?

An Additional Thought for an Extended Paper 

Certainly there is plenty to The Sun Also Rises that does not match directly with the book of Ecclesiastes, just as there is much in Ecclesiastes that doesn’t even get skimmed by the citing of several scattered verses, or the incorporation of four verses into a book’s epigraph. By the same token, there is much more that is comparable that1haven’teventouched on. For instance, Qoheleth’s and Jake’s ideas on fishing and solitude and companionship, on love and hate and on the contemplation and deference to God. But then, as Jake says, “You’ll lose it if you talk about it” (245), and as Qoheleth says, “Be in no hurry to speak. . . (and) be sparing of speech.”

Engl.355, 7/9/90, Prof. Messenger

Rush Hour

          every day, Chicago, every morning we crawl
          down your lethargic distressways, the rivers named

          with dignity — the Stevenson, the Kennedy,

          and all the paths aimed purposefully at your heart.

          we want to beat with you; the coffee in our blood

          would have us flow through these veins to offer you life

          but every morning, Chicago, every day, life

          is slow to start as each cell of our self must crawl

          through the same veins/at the same time/with angry blood

          meeting on that hour so insistently named— 

          unwittingly converging, en route to your heart,

          with words, the very rush, of John F. Kennedy,

          “countrymen, ask what you can do,” cried Kennedy,

          speaking now to citizens, who choose to do life

          by committing themselves to fuel a city’s heart

          yet sacrificing themselves—to wit, their great crawl.

          to you, Chicago, our commitment is duly named;

          for you, Chicago, we submit this daily blood.

 ⇋

Points of View

I

In a central atrium of a Chicago university, an old professor stepped unassumingly onto an up escalator. He had white hair and the red face of high blood pressure, and even though the stairs would do the work for him he looked up at them wearily. 

At the same instance, a boy appearing to be in his early teens stepped on to the down escalator on the second floor. He was a black youth, too young to be a college student and darker than most of the students around him, yet he exuded the confidence of one who had come in from the surrounding neighborhood.

Facing each other from a distance, the old man and the young boy made coincidental eye contact, and the professor looked away; but as the white old man and the young black boy approached the point where their escalators made them parallel, the boy did not stop looking. They drew closer. 

“Hi,” the boy suddenly said, staring right at the man. 

“Hi,” the man replied, diverting his eyes. 

“You hate me, don’t you?” the boy said, still looking at him. 

Their paths had reached a juxtaposition, but it was brief and the man had no time to react. The boy was suddenly moving behind him. He was looking back at him, waiting for a reply, but the man did not turn around and he did not say anything. His face became like an old stone, and behind it he hid his fear or his confusion or —surely he would deny this —his hate.

II

I was on my way to the campus bookstore. I used to like to take the stairs, but my heart is not what it once was. A few years ago, I had to start taking the escalator, but after today I might start using the elevator.

One of Chicago’s glorious youth was riding the down escalator; I noticed him a level above me just as I had stepped on to the up escalator. The two escalators run alongside each other, so the boy must have noticed me looking up at him. He was certainly not a college student; he was only thirteen or fourteen and probably skipping school. He was black, so I assumed he had come from the neighborhood just south of here. We’ve seen a lot of neighborhood kids around here these days.

Just before we reached a parallel point, he turned and greeted me. “Hi,” he said, and suddenly he was looking right at me. I’m sure I had never seen this boy before, but I returned the greeting with a half smile and a nod, not sure what more to make of it. The boy was now moving past me, and as he looked back at me he said, “You hate me, don’t you?”

As quick as he had said it, he was behind me, continuing to move down as I moved up towards the bookstore. I tried to hide my surprise, but as the escalator slowly rise I could not help but consider the odd exchange. “No,” I thought to myself at last, “I do not hate you. I don’t even know you.”

III

I will speak for the boy. He has a name, you know. In fact, the only time he should be called boy is when I call him that. That’s my boy. But you can call him by his name. His name is James. James Addams. 

And yes, you could say that he belongs here. Yes, this is his neighborhood. It’s our neighborhood: we have lived here as a family for a hundred years, ever since my grandfather Isaac Addams made his way up here from Louisiana. He was not much older than James at the time, but he had it in him to make a life for himself here in Chicago. This neighborhood has been our neighborhood ever since. It has been James’s neighborhood for all of his fourteen years, and it has been our neighborhood, the neighborhood of the Addams and the Morgans and the Jacksons and the Taylors for longer than there’s been a school here. 

We do not begrudge the school being built here, though. It pushed aside some of our homes thirty years ago, but people have been displaced by worse things. And it does add a certain liveliness, a sense of hope to this part of town.

I’d like to think that James will one day be here as a student of the University. But that’s a few years away. For now, James is part of the neighborhood. He’s my boy, and he’s your neighbor.

Engl. 212, 7/9/90, Prof. Allen; Part III appended in 2011

Out in the Cold

July 5 - July 10

July 5

My throat started scratching a little on Sunday, and by Monday night it was a full-fledged energy-draining cold. Summer colds are the worst. Maybe it was poor judgment, but I went to school, to bible study, to work on Tuesday. The next day was the Fourth of July, a day off, and I figured I could endure until then.

On the morning of the Fourth I was feeling a little better. The Koehns were coming over, and it was to be another family social thing. I was still drained, so I wasn’t looking forward to a long afternoon and I wasn’t really hungry either, but I’d be polite about it. 

I kept to myself for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, and then the doorbell rang.   I opened the door for the Koehns. “Come on in,” I said, then went up the five stairs to our kitchen, where Mom was standing.

“Jon,” she said, “is it all right if you eat in the kitchen?” 

I didn’t understand at first, then —of course, it was because of my cold. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll just go downstairs, in front of the TV.” After that I kept completely to myself until the Koehns left, which they did four hours later. 

For the rest of the day I still avoided the family, but while I was in the kitchen, later in the evening, Mom called from the living room. “Jon, I’m sorry.” “It’s all right,” I said, but really I didn’t want to talk about it.

That was yesterday. Before I move on to today’s episode, I should explain why I was moody about being quarantined. After all, it was reasonable that I should stay away from Don and Josh. They have fewer white blood cells because of their chemotherapy, so they are more susceptible to and more in danger of the cold virus. And I shouldn’t be selfish, but yesterday, before the Koehns came, the potential problem hadn’t really occurred to me. It was certainly my ignorance, I’ll admit, and when Mom brought it up I think I realized immediately that she was right. But I wasn’t going to sit in the kitchen, apart from the family but still in view. I didn’t mean to offend by this decision, and I think if Mom had told me a few minutes before the Koehns came, there might have been a little less drama. I still wouldn’t have sat in the kitchen —a question of dignity, I guess —but maybe I could have got Mom to understand. As it was, while my cold and my standoffishness was offending, I appeared, and was, offended.

Anyway, Mom said she was sorry, five or six hours later, and I said it was all right.

Until today. I was feeling a little better when I went down for breakfast. I had the kitchen to myself. I was reading the paper and had just finished my bowl of cereal when Mom came in and said, “Jon, I meant it about you staying away from people. Will you please leave the room?” And I was offended all over again. I blew up. I swore, I breathed offensive germs in her face. She kicked me, slapped my face, told me to go to my room, no, get out of the house. And I said, okay, I would. But what was she sorry about yesterday, I wondered. She was sorry for being brash, she said. She wasn’t sorry for wanting me away from those who didn’t have a cold. Understandable, but still I argued. “I didn’t ask for the cold,” I said. “And nobody in this house asked for cancer,” she said. No, that’s true, and with that she rendered me speechless.

I went upstairs, packed my overnight bag. But I had a response for her, bubbling within me. “They didn’t ask for cancer, and they didn’t have to ask for the love and respect they’ve been given. I’ve just got a measly cold, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect very much love or respect at all. And you sure are delivering it proportionately.” Of course I was being very selfish, but as I drove off to find a motel I considered that I wasn’t screaming for love, just a little respect, enough to eat breakfast and read the paper in the kitchen alone. Didn’t she originally say the kitchen was my confinement anyway? I was still steaming, several hours later.

I’m in the cheap motel right now, for tonight and maybe for tomorrow. Maybe this is for the best. I will recover here and I won’t be contagious, and I might get some long needed rest. And I’ll have time to think and catch up on school work, and maybe I’ll even write a story.

God, it’s foolish of me to ever have to ask you for humility. It is always there for the taking, and I might have simply accepted it a dozen times in these last two days, but each time I would not let go of my pride. Even now, I could return home, apologize and go quietly up to my room until I got better. But I’d probably screw it up if I tried to do that. Help me God to humbly accept whatever you give me. Forgive me for passing up the chances. And see me through.

⇋

          He’s living, he’s dying

          she’s quiet, she’s crying,

          and look at me, I’m none of these

          and slowly going crazy.

          And he’s working and she’s playing,

          and —how would they term my deliberating?

          Poor dullboy Jack, 

          he’s never gonna win.

          They’re praying all the time,

          and I’m praying right beside them

          but it’s what we’re doing in between

          that’s gonna save us in the end. See?

          He’s living and he’s dying

          and she’s quiet and she’s crying,

          and I run on like my prayers 

          hadn’t said a goddamn thing.

          So let him live, God, he deserves it,

          and let him die, he’s well-prepared.

          Let her find her peace in you

          and let her cry right in your ear.

          But God just let me be

          among the living dying sitting crying

          God just let me be

          no more in limbo

          that’s my prayer.

⇋

July 6

I’m still here, for at least one more night. I still have the cold.

It’s a weird guilt I’m trying to sort out. I’m feeling sorry, because it’s been hard for Mom, with her husband and her youngest son both stricken with cancer. And I have no justification to make matters worse. But then I can’t help wondering —maybe being away from home is the best thing while I have this cold. What good could I do at home? This isn’t feeling sorry for myself. I’m being logical. And I want to feel sorry for what I’ve done, but I want to keep coming to this logic, as if I’ve inadvertently done the right thing and just can’t deny it.

Oh, I’m still ashamed. I called Mom every name in the book, I coughed in her face, I raised a fist —and I walked away with the lousy rationale that I had been provoked. And I’m still feeling like leaning on that rationale, even though I know I shouldn’t.

Tomorrow will be a hard day. On top of everything, I’m not sure my cold will be gone. Maybe I’ll call first, apologize and offer to stay away until the cold disappears. That sounds phony, I know, but I should propose that sincerely. God stay with me tomorrow, as ever. I need you.

July 8

Still in the hotel. Called Mom yesterday, patched things up nicely. I am forgiven. But I stayed one more night here, trying to beat the last of the cold. I’m recovering, but now I’m all constipated; I think it’s from all the medicine I’ve been taking. Anyway, last night at 4 am I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to a nearby 7-11 and bought some Ex-Lax. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep.

My homework is done for this week. This has been a productive time. I still have to write one more short story that I feel good about, and that’s hard to do. It’s not due for a couple more weeks, but time has a way of flying.

Two weeks until Parul gets back.

Will it always be the same? I talked to Josh tonight. He’s very tired after taking a round trip sailboat ride between Chicago and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Well, Josh, you know how to live. Anyway, we talked, and I realized some troubling things about myself, selfish thoughts beyond the imbalance of his weekend and mine, and now the lead question rings in several directions.

Will I ever be able to forgive Mom for kicking me out of the house for having a cold? Will I ever forgive myself for a foolish provocation? Will I get over the uncomfortable feeling that it’s best that I had been out of the way? God that’s a scary feeling, and yet it feels like it will eternally recur. Does it have to be this way?

As I talked to Josh, I privately thought that things would be okay once I got past some “X” stage of my life. But what stage? When I move out for good? When (and if) I ever get a career going? When I’m married, have kids? When I retire? When I die? God I don’t want to go through any of that if it’s just more of the same. It all seems so scary. Will it always be this way?

I realize, too, that nothing I’ve written in this journal will impress anybody, but after today I feel like at least doctors will want to take a look. God, God, God, God, God, God, God, you’re out there, aren’t you? Bless Mom. Bless Don. Bless Josh.

July 9

Everything is tied to the ego, and it’s either paradoxical or its cyclic. My ego does not get fed, I feel bad, I work to do good, I achieve, my ego is fed, I feel good, I work less, I don’t produce, my ego isn’t fed again and once more I strive. So it is cyclic, and it’s beautiful to achieve, but it’s still paradoxical. I’ll never do good, never be a good writer, unless I fell like shit now and then, and I’ll never feel like shit except that I do less than good, and even bad, now and again. The challenge is to find the beauty on this side of it.

July 10

Sometimes it works for me. Sometimes I put something down in writing and it feels good, both to write and, later, to read.

I’ve got to stop thinking it’s something that just happens though. I’ve got to start looking at it as something to work towards, with the diligence that the desire demands. I recently saw, in some of Hemingway’s notes, how he worked at it and how he developed his talent with the help of people he knew and/or read. This is not to say that I have to develop my skills by the Hemingway method, but just waiting for it to happen is probably not a good alternative.

I’m feeling better now, compared to several days ago. Part of it is the writing —I’ve written a lot of pages these last few days —but also this: my return to the routines on and around campus included my weekly bible study, this morning on Luke 16. We had a good look at a hard chapter.

I shouldn’t be proud though, I guess. Really, today I should feel terrible. This morning on my walking routine I covered the area south of Maxwell Street. What a sad part of Chicago! It’s several blocks of what is basically a junkyard. No, worse than that. There’s nothing enterpreneurable about it, nothing like Sanford and Sons, that is, but you still see people trying to sell tires and hubcaps. And even worse than that, people live among the junk in make-shift tents of boards and metal, in busted up cars and buses, alongside the piles of tires. It is not all junkyard: there is a border area of condemned buildings, boarded up and broken down. And several blocks away, in several directions, is the CHA. I am ashamed.

The Disappearance of Walter Herring

Walter Herring, age 29, was doodling on paper yesterday when he got carried away. Literally. According to witnesses, Herring had been scribbling on a paper place mat in a local restaurant when two men in collar-up overcoats came in and stood on either side of him Herring and the men had a brief moment of what seemed to be conversation, then suddenly the men took hold of Herring’s arms, stood him up and walked him out of the restaurant. They pushed Herring into the back seat of a black car and inconspicuously drove away. 

Tom Smith, the restaurant’s manager, had been working in the back when the incident occurred, but he was immediately called into the dining room after the abductors had left. “Everyone was gabbing away about what they had just seen,” said Smith. “After a few minutes I was able to piece together what had actually happened. ”

“It was Walter Herring, he’s my neighbor,” said Mrs. Harriet Lockwert of 872 Maplecourt Road. “He lives right next to me, so I know it was him. Yes, 874.”

“Oh, he was just sitting there, doodling, you know,” said Trent Dagnow. “What? Oh yes. He had this kind of absent face on, so he couldn’t have been writing anything seri... What? Oh, well, yes. No, you don’t need my address.”

“They just talked in whispers for a while and then they grabbed him,” said Archie Baldwin of Bensenville. “Yes, I was at the next table.”

“They looked like mobsters,” added Archie Baldwin’s wife, who asked to remain unnamed. 

“Oh, Marcy, no, they were G-men, I’m sure,” said Constance Labelle. 

“No, you didn’t get a good look at them,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “One of them had a scar.”

“They were from the State Department,” said Jack Lloyd. 

“How do you know?” an unidentified voice in the crowd asked. “It was on their license plate. A government seal,” said Lloyd. 

“Jack, you wouldn’t know a government seal if they stamped it on your forehead,” said another unidentified voice. 

“Maybe so, but I saw it. It said, ‘U.S.A. State Department, Secret Service.’” said Lloyd. 

“Jack, sit down,” said William Richter of Peoria. “Last I checked, you couldn’t even read.”

“Shut up, Billy, I can read.” 

“What’s that say,” said Richter. 

“I don’t have to prove anything,” said Lloyd. 

ζ

Detective Morley Bright of the Chicago Police Department arrived approximately forty five minutes after Herring’s disappearance. Bright questioned the several restaurant patrons who had remained behind waiting for him, then he talked with Tom Smith, who had taken notes from the diners who had left. 

“Very concise report, Tom. ” 

“Thank you. ” 

“But I hate to tell you...” 

“What’s that, detective?”

“The Secret Service is part of the Department of the Interior.” 

“I know. I was just reporting what I heard.” 

“So do you put much value in what Jack Lloyd said?”

“No.”

“Why did you record it then?” 

“Oh I don’t know. ”

After further questioning, Detective Bright determined that only the quotes from Harriet Lockwert and Trent Dagnow were of any worth in Smith’s report. It was certainly Walter Herring, and he had apparently been doodling. 

The other witnesses, whom Bright had interviewed directly, were able to confirm many facts about themselves and that they had all been eating lunch at Denny’s on 1213 Rowday Drive when “the hell had broken loose.” They used these words several times, but no one would elaborate. They asked Bright if he thought the TV news was going to come, but Bright was already done talking to them. 

ξ

“This is Brad Kopak of the Channel 4 Eyewitness News Team, live at the scene of Denny’s Restaurant at 1213 Rowday Drive, where just moments ago a most unusual abduction occurred. Behind me are Jerry Lyman and Mimi Peters. Jerry, Mimi, can you tell our viewers what just took place here.”

“Hi.” 

“Hi.”

“Uh, Jerry, Mimi, we understand that a Mr. Walter Herring of 874 Maplecourt Road was forcibly dragged out of here tonight by two mysterious men. Can either of you confirm this?”

“Today.”

“Pardon me?”

“It happened today, not tonight. About eight hours ago. The hell broke loose.”

“So you’ve been here since two o’clock?” 

“Well, sure.” 

“Why not?” 

“Uh, right, well —then what happened?” 

“Since two o’clock? Not a whole lot.” 

“What happened at two o’clock?” 

“They took Walter Herring...” 

“He was just sitting there doodling away...” 

“And then the hell broke loose...”

“...And?”

“And that’s it.”

“Uh, well! So there you have it. Obviously not all has been answered yet, but we’ll keep you posted. From the Denny’s at 1213 Rowday Drive, this is Brad Kopak, investigative reporter. Back to you, Judy.”

ϰ

“What was Walter Herring doodling? That is the question —the mystery of the week here in Chicagoland, and it is very mysterious indeed. Mr. Herring had been at Denny’s waiting on a late lunch last Friday. The meal had not yet come and he took out a pen and started drawing on his place mat with what one witness called an “absent” face. Suddenly, two men wearing trench coats and dark glasses burst into the restaurant. They went immediately to Mr. Herring and picked him up out of his chair, talked to him for a minute in hushed tones and then escorted him out of the restaurant. But here’s what no one noticed right away: They also took the place mat! It was not until after they had left with Mr. Herring that anyone noticed that the place mat was gone!

“What was Mr. Herring doodling? We may never know for sure, but that is the question we will try to uncover in this week’s episode of... ‘It Really Happened.’

“We will return to ‘It Really Happened’ after these messages.”

ϕ

“Hey Obert, will ya take a look over here?” Harrient Lockwert of 872 Maplecourt Road was leaning over her sink, peering out the kitchen window. “There’s somebody snooping around at Walter Herring’s house.”

“Let it be, Har. Stop snooping.” He was reading the paper. 

“But Obert, they look like criminals.” 

“Exactly. Don’t get involved.” 

“Don’t you care, Obert? Don’t you want to help Walter?” 

“Harriet, I barely know Walter Herring. In the five years he’s lived next to us, we’ve barely waved at each other.”

“Yes.” Harriet pondered, went back to the window, this time peeking more discreetly through the curtains. “But suppose they come here next?”

“Why would they do that?”

“They’ve got my name in the police report.”

“Harriet, will you get away from the window.” Obert put his paper down. “Look, Har. You saw that show on the television last night. Those guys are all concerned about a doodle, right? But it has nothing to do with us, so let’s keep it that way!”

Harriet went back into the kitchen and closed the curtain all the way. But she couldn’t resist one last peek.

Ω

Epitaphs

June 24-June 30, 1990

June 24

On a Sunday morning, amidst my sins and thoughts and actions, amidst my shame and self-pity... I don’t know. Maybe there’s a bible verse, and maybe it will pop out at me by chance.

“Yahweh is all I have, I say to myself... It is good to wait in silence for Yahweh to save... to sit in solitude and silence when it weighs heavy, to lay one’s head in the dust —maybe there is hope... Yahweh, I called your name from the deep pit. You heard my voice... You are near when I call to you. You said, ‘Do not be afraid.’” (Lamentations 3:24a, 26, 28, 29, 55, 56a, 57)

“...Take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of God’s glory, wrap the cloak of God’s saving justice around you.” (Barach 5: 1, 2a).

“The whole world will remember and return to Yahweh, all the families of nations bow down before him. For to Yahweh, ruler of the nations, belongs kingly power! All who prosper on earth will bow before him, all who go down to the dust will do reverence before him. And those who are dead, their descendants will serve him, will proclaim his name to the generations still to come; and these will tell of his saving justice to a people yet unborn...” Psalm 22: 27-31a.

June 25

Why doesn’t Steve Sullivan want to talk about God? That’s a foolish question. Steve is one of several bible belt fundamentalists who work with me at Maxrad. We went to dinner tonight at the end of our shift, and, being hungry for a discussion of faith, I looked forward to Steve bringing up God, and he didn’t. Maybe he’s not as much of a Christian as I had thought.

But here’s another question: Why doesn’t Jon Vold want to talk about God? Now that is a question I would do better to consider: I should realize that there is no good answer I can conclude with Steve as long as I cannot confess the answer for myself.

And really, the answer to Steve’s question, the question about Steve, is irrelevant, because if I even get close to the point where I can be rightly concerned about someone else’s conversational faith I would have to be talking about God all the time; if I were ever quiet about God, I would have no cause to judge others for being quiet; and if I was talking about God all the time, I would never have time to wonder why anyone having dinner with me was talking about anything else. I would be forever steering the conversation back to God, and we would be talking about God from dusk to dawn, and I wouldn’t let anyone get a secular word in edgewise.

I am not that way, though. God knows I don’t even try to be. I might have a million answers to why Jon Vold doesn’t talk about God and not one answer is a good one: “I’m ashamed,” “I’m afraid,” “I want to talk about something else right now,” “I don’t know what to say,” and so on.

I am a sinner, Lord, perpetually falling short. I’ll use every excuse a million more times, and still I will come to you for forgiveness. You give it to me every time, too, and why I don’t talk about that to everyone I cannot say. All I can do, it seems, is ask for forgiveness one more pitiful time. 

June 26

I had a good talk with Dan tonight. We will be all right. God will take care of us.

And I had a great talk with Rebekah Choi at University Bible Fellowship. 

[Footnote: The presence of University Bible Fellowship (UBF) at the University of Illinois at Chicago prompted a 1990 student newspaper editorial to call the organization an objectionable cult, but in the year I spent with UBF I did not find cause for concern. Its leaders promoted a protestant Christian theology with a focus on in-depth interactive bible study, encouraging students to devote as much time to studying the bible as they would to a college course with writing assignments, weekly meetings and homework. Weekly “sogams” were written, hymns were sung. I never cared for their three hour Sunday church services, preferring my Lutheran hour, but they still kept the weekday bible study door open for me.]

Rebekah told a wonderful story about “wanting to die.” She was looking inward during a sufferable time of her life —recuperating from kidney stone surgery —and with the persuasion of a chance antagonist (”Stop worrying!”) she got religion, so to speak. She decided that as long as she was going to die she may as well die for Jesus. But after a while it became apparent to her that it wasn’t all smooth sailing, this dying for Jesus. For one thing, at the end of each day she still worried, so much that she couldn’t sleep. During the day, she kept herself busy dying for Jesus by attending bible studies, going to church, reading; but during the night, with nothing else to do, she was reminded again of her pain and it kept her awake. Well, one day, she “went fishing” (a UBF evangelism term), and she suddenly found herself with five new students to study the bible with. She put everything she had into building a fellowship with these new students, and before she knew it she found herself feeling exhausted at night. And it was wonderful.

There’s no way I can tell Rebekah’s story as well as she did; it was beautifully told by her because it was a personal testimony. But I hope the sense of what she said stays with me.

I also had a visit with Josh today. The hospital room was crowded, so it wasn’t too personal, but maybe that was for the best. I look forward to a brotherly talk tomorrow, though, so I can tell him about my conversations with Dan and Rebekah.

June 28

Yesterday was a good day. I walked (still doing that daily) to the hospital, had a good visit with Josh. Saw Aunt Grace there, too. And I had an extremely productive staging session at work. That’s it, but it was enough to count for a “good day.” The productive effort at work was so incredible that I’m thinking of calling at 8:00 am to get their reaction. Maybe that’s being too proud, but what the heck. And I’m looking forward to another walk to the hospital today and another visit with Josh. Oh, one other thing: while walking I finished reading “In Our Time,” the third of four books I need to read for my Hemingway class.

I am still waiting for a letter from Parul. She’s been gone almost three weeks. But rationalizing has been keeping me sane, and it might even be irrational to be worried about her delay. One way or another, I won’t see her for three more weeks, so I’ll just have to be patient. But I sure would like to hear from her.

Don is still at home, recuperating from last Friday’s chemotherapy. I have been simply giving him space. He prefers to be left alone, I think. He doesn’t like the question “How are you?” and I guess I can’t blame him, since he’s heard it asked so much and hasn’t often had a good answer to give. I wish I could think of something else, something better to say, but I can’t, and I guess I’ve resigned myself to that. Don’s condition is improving —the tumor is half size and the lymph node growths have receded —but I’m still cautious about my enthusiasm. God, are you there?

June 30

Parul’s letter arrived today. It had taken two weeks to get here, and now, at last, I am happy. So I have no reason to continue with the thought that had just crossed my mind. Church is tomorrow, and suddenly I have an obligation to go.

God bless Parul, and thank you for her presence in my life and in my heart. God I once prayed for someone to come to be my companion. God I also prayed that my companion would be someone to provide a support for my weak faith, even as I could support her in return. I still pray that, Lord, and I pray that while I might be a catalyst for Parul’s faith, she enhances my own faith in the process, so that mutually we grow together. Lord I want you to take priority in my life. But I want Parul, too, and this is the only way I can think of to ask for her continued presence. I want her to be my number two, God, with your great blessing, and I want to be her number two. So I guess I’m just praying, God, that you would keep standing in front of and in between us, reminding us that no matter what, you are number one.

Resurrection

It was Monday morning, two hours after midnight. Two brothers lay motionless in a ditch on the side of a country road. Beer cans had scattered on either side of them and behind them towered a fat oak tree. Nineteen and eighteen years old, they were in the early morning stage of drunkenness, full of philosophical questions and profound shrugs.

“Could you picture us being old farts?” the younger one asked.

“No.”

“Sitting around all day, lying under the trees, farting...”

“And drinking beer.”

“Sure. Where do you think the farts would come from?” He giggled.

They finished their beers together and started in on two more.

“What do you want to be remembered for?” asked the older one.

“I don’t know, the other answered. He paused, considered. Finally he said, “I just want to live.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

They breathed together for a while, looking up at black sky through the tree branches, then the older one sat up and leaned against the tree. The younger brother sat up with him.

“I mean it, Sal,” he said. “I just want to live, that’s all. That’s the whole answer.”

“Hey, it’s a good answer,” Sal replied. “And it’s what I’m going to remember you for now. I’ll even put it on your tombstone: ‘Dave Nekro. He wanted to live.’” His hands framed the epitaph in the air and he pronounced the words with exaggerated drama. They laughed together. It was funny to be irreverent, to pretend that they would die, one before the other. But then they fell quiet and lied down again, because it was serious to be thinking of death at all, and strange to be laughing at it. A third brother, older than both of them, had died not so long before, and suddenly they were sober again.

He had crashed his car into the same fat oak tree —it would come to be known as “the family tree” —that loomed behind them. He had got drunk, passed out while driving and veered off the road. Now Dave and Sal were sprawled next to the same tree, lying flat against the same ground. And one was talking about writing the other’s epitaph.

“So you plan on outliving me.”

“Yes,” Sal answered. “Maybe six, seven years. I guess I just want to live a little bit more than you, that’s all.”

Dave tried to match his brother’s wit. “Then we’ll have to put it on your tombstone: ‘Sal Nekro. He wanted to live longer.’” He swept his hands in the air, just like his brother had done, and they laughed again. “That’s how you want it, right?”

“Yep, just like that, remember me that way,” Sal said. The beer was making him speak more slowly. “If I’m the first one to go, I mean, which like I said, I won’t be. But put it in stone. I’ll do the same for you.”

They shook hands and called it an old wine pact. “That’s what the old farts would call it,” Sal explained, and they sealed it, in lieu of wine, with their last two beers. Dave suggested that the pact be written down, but Sal reminded him that the key word was ‘remember,’ and ink would be a hypocrisy. They didn’t have a pen with them anyway, Dave pointed out.

Then they began to meditate on this pact, and each separately thought how they could not be hypocrites now, how they would have to remember each other in a special way. And each was reminded again of where they were, at the sight of their brother’s death, under the family tree.

“What’s on Jim’s stone?” asked Dave, after they had been quiet long enough. They were getting sleepy, but had not fallen off yet.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Me neither. I think it’s a bible verse.”

“Try to remember.”

“I am...”

They lay next to the oak tree quietly. Sal picked bark off the tree, reaching mindlessly behind his head, and Dave returned to staring at the pre-dawn sky. Eventually Sal stopped picking bark, and Dave closed his eyes, and they both slipped away into the darkness of sleep.

It was the same night, exactly one year before them, that Jim had rested against the tree. Metal caged him in and separated him from the bark and the stars and the ground, and when it was light —Sunday morning light then —he did not wake up. There was no one there to shake him at the sunrise, and he would not have responded anyway. When he was finally discovered several hours later, it took blow torches and power saws to get to him. Even then, with all of the racket and commotion he did not rouse. He just lay there, with his head covered with drying blood, in the middle of metal and beer cans and broken glass, next to the big old oak.

Dave had dreamt the scene many times in the last year. They were bad nightmares at first —Jim would not move! —but they evolved slowly to a kind of afterward serenity. In the early dreams he had tried to shake Jim awake, but eventually he would come to just sit with him. Sal would always be there, too, and after a while they began to take on a sleepy sameness, Jim lying there, Dave and Sal next to him, and the fat oak standing like a monument.

But on this commemorative night something different appeared in the dream. Above the wreckage Dave noticed —and they must have been there all along —three tombstones that read like a roll call: “Jim Nekro: He wanted to live ...Sal Nekro: He wanted to live... Dave Nekro: he wanted to live.” Dave thought, in his dream, that he ought to start screaming, but he found he had neither energy nor will.

When it was daylight, both Dave and Sal continued to sleep. Finally, several hours after dawn, Dave was the first to stir. His eyes opened, fluttered, closed. He raised an arm up to his forehead, brushing against empty beer cans beside him, and he groaned. His eyes opened again and he saw oak leaves and blue sky. As if these conscious senses had rung an effective alarm he sat up and reached over to shake his brother.

“Sal. Hey, wake up, we’re in deep shit.”

Sal grunted, rolled over with his face to the ground, and covered his ears and head with both arms. Dave shook him harder.

“Come on. We were supposed to go see Jim this morning.”

“No.”

“Sal, we never made it home. Mom’s probably just now telling Dad how our beds haven’t been slept in. We’re going to get it big this time.”

Sal rolled over again, uncovered his head and opened his eyes halfway. “Dave, will you please cool it?” he said. “My head hurts and yours ought to, too.”

“But Sal...”

“Yeah, okay.” He started to pick himself up slowly; it was clear that he was in no hurry. Dave tried another tactic.

“Sal, Mom wanted us all dressed up and at the graveyard this morning. She’d probably be crying as it is, and here we are making it worse.”

“All right, all right. Let’s go.”

They stumbled over to their car and got in. Sal started the engine up and began driving straight to the graveyard. They would not have time to go home, he said. Dave agreed, but he was convinced that one place or another their father was going to kill them and their mother was going to cry.

For the better part of the drive they were silent. Dave finally spoke.

“Hey Sal, do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Last night. Our pact.”

Sal paused, thought, and said, “Yeah. We were going to live forever, right?”

Dave looked at him, didn’t answer. Sal thought, remembered more clearly. “We were talking about our epitaphs.” Dave nodded, and they continued the trip quietly.

The graveyard was a large estate on the edge of town. It smelled of drying lawn and withered flowers. A scattering of trees gave character to the rows of marble and granite, and the green leaves balanced the yellowing of the late August grass.

The family was already at the graveyard, standing in front of the family plot. Their mother wore a summer dress with a big floppy hat. Their father had on one of the same sport jackets he wore every Sunday. Their little sister Susan was dressed up like her mother but without the hat. She stood between mother and father, who each had an arm around her. She looked like an only child, sure to be held tightly in the years to come.

The three were looking down at Jim’s grave marker now. “James Allen Nekro,” it said, giving his life span of twenty one years. “Rest in peace” was inscribed below it. “I am the resurrection. Even though a man dies, yet shall he live.”

Sal and Dave had stopped their car a hundred yards away and were standing beside it, inconspicuously watching the family’s frozen pose. For several minutes the brothers stood frozen themselves, not daring to approach. They smelled of beer and their clothes were dirty and ruffled, and their stance, up to that point, had a sway from the night before. But now they did not move.

Sal finally said, “Dave, let’s not go.” Dave nodded, and they quietly got back into their car, opening and closing the doors without giving themselves away.

“Are we going home then?”

“No. We’ll go back later, when they’re asleep.”

“What about Jim? His gravestone, we were going to see what it said,”

“We’ll have to come back after they’re gone.”

And they left the graveyard and drove off as quietly as ghosts, back to the family tree where they decided to kill some time.