You may read all 12 previous episodes beginning with Episode 1 by starting here: Episode 1
“Yeah. Yeah.” Hiram waved the map like a signal flag directing her toward the exit ramp.
They crossed the Colorado River twice on its southwestern looping tour of its namesake county on its voyage to the Gulf of Mexico.
“What’s the best junk you ever picked up?” Zoenelle asked. “You know, besides me.”
“You are the prize. I’d like to take you home to meet mah pap, he’d like you a lot. And mah brothers would go crazy over you.”
“Where’s home?”
“You mean mah home?”
“Yes.”
“I live out on Old Katy, past the airport, you know the area?”
“No, sorry.”
“Me and mah pap and mah brothers have a place. Mah older brother, Ben, lives in half of the house. He’s got a woman and two young-uns. I stay in the half with mah pap and younger brother. Ben, he’s like to move soon, back to Houston. He don’t like the junk, er salvage, I’m s’posed to call it, business much, is why Pap is giving me the business when he retires. If I had a fine woman like you, we could move in there. We’d have our own kitchen, bathroom and…” He hesitated, twisting the knobs of the radio tuner, which had intermittently delivered Christian biblical phrases and gospel chorus sounds to those out of sound reach of the asses pressed to pews and desired the amplitudinal modulation version formulated for the shut–ins and expanding to command the attention of the shut outs.
“Bedroom,” he cleared his voice.
“That sounds so nice. I know I would like your family, especially if they’re as sweet as you, but I have to get to Luckenbach.”
“You’re not from Texas, or the south; you’re a north’ner, ain’t yah? I guess you got some other kind of business there. I don’t know exactly where it is, seems to me I heard of it, they a lot of small towns in this big state.”
“How did you become a junk man?” Zoenelle asked.
“Mah pap was a repair man for the city. And then the swamp coolers, they was called, in all the gov’ment buildings got something that made folks sick...”
“Legionella pneumophila, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease,” Zoenelle offered.
He gestured with his right hand primarily, but added occasional emphasis with both hands, clenching and unclenching his fists and flipping his palms upward. The driver’s and passenger’s windows were completely recessed in the doors, whether they could both regain closure or if the glass even existed, Zoenelle wasn’t sure; the window crank and door release handles were all missing. Zoenelle’s hair attempted escape; it flew out of the open window and flapped against the roof of the truck cab.
“When they begun pulling out those units, Pap borrowed mah uncle’s truck and they hauled ’em out to mah uncle’s place. When we was growing, Pap would take us sometime to see our cousins, out of the city, when the heat was so bad, and it made folks worse. But at mah uncle’s, they wasn’t nobody to be mad at, just cows and chickens that don’t bother nobody, and you could walk as far as you liked, and nobody chasing you. Less it was our cousins playing a game. They had enough to eat but not much of anything else, shared a pair of boots and just the clothes they was wearing. Pap brung the clothes that went past me and mah brothers; they was nine of ’em all together and we was just three.” Hiram pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, blotting the sweat from his upper lip, and the spit that emerged with his words. He tugged at the corner of a white cloth in his front pocket; eventually a large handkerchief appeared, and he wiped it across his face.
“And there they was, covering the yard, piles of them things from ever’ gov’ment building in Houston. And then what do you s’pose happened? The price of copper went up, up, up. Remember that? Folks cashing they pennies at the bank for five times more, free food at the restaurant when you paid with pennies, folks stripping wire and water pipes out of abandoned houses and buildings and ones ain’t yet built. And can you guess what those old coolers had in ’em?”
“Copper,” Zoenelle said.
“That’d be right,” Hiram nodded. “Me and mah brothers and cousins and Uncles and mah Aunt Germaine, she liked that kind of work, funny for a woman, she even wore coveralls like us. She moved away, to California I think it was. We were out there day and night cutting the copper metal out of them coolers. And then Pap bought the junk yard with the money he made on that copper. A big ol’ field a cars.”
“A bumper crop,” Zoenelle said.
Hiram laughed in a series of exhalations, “heh, heh, heh. And not just cars. Ever machine that been invented: tractors, mowers, washing machines, and not just machines, they’s old bottles and crates, bathtubs, sinks …”
Zoenelle did not interrupt Hiram’s listing of the items that could be found in the salvage yard, apparently, they didn’t need to keep written inventory records with his total recall abilities. South of Austin, TX 71 West merged with US 290 West until it seceded from their united path and diverged northward. They followed the western route of US 290, encountering the only town in fifty miles, Dripping Springs, inspiring them to stop for rest room relief and directional advice. The gas station attendant told them, “I ain’t never been there. But you should find it going this way, about forty mile. There’ll be a sign to turn off for it.”
When it was quiet for a few minutes Zoenelle realized Hiram was slumped against the door, asleep. She saw the brown sign for the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park. Zoenelle remembered the sad face of Ellebeejay on television and the sad face of Grandma Flynn when she moved in with them in the fall of ’65.
Her mother always moved quickly in the kitchen, placing plates and silverware and coffee mugs and small juice glasses on the round Formica-topped table, then turning back to the small gas stove, adjusting the blue flames under the frying pan of bacon, then eggs, and under the aluminum glass-topped percolator where the brown liquid rhythmically appeared and disappeared.
“Is your Grandma Flynn up?” her mother asked, without turning around. “Will you go tell her breakfast is almost ready?” she added before Zoenelle could reply.
Zoenelle knocked and then opened the door to the room that used to be hers. Now, Grandma Flynn slept in the bed with the pink striped sheets and bedcover, and Grandma Flynn’s clothes hung in the closet with the sliding doors that pinched your fingers, and the dolphins splashed Grandma Flynn’s feet when she swung her legs off the bed and jumped to the rug on the floor. The bed was made, the closet doors were closed, the maple dresser drawers were pushed in, and not a single sock lay on the floor. In front of the window was the rocking chair that had been brought, with her suitcases, by a neighboring farmer from upstate. If Grandma Flynn wasn’t in bed, or in the bathroom, or in the kitchen eating with Zoenelle and her mother, she was in that chair looking out at the treetops from their second story apartment. But Grandma Flynn wasn’t there.
“Grandma Flynn’s not there,” Zoenelle announced to her mother, who had already transferred the eggs and bacon to the plates and had poured the juice and coffee.
“Inez?” Zoenelle’s mother called, pausing in front of the open door of the bathroom, and opening the doors to each of the two bedrooms before reappearing in the open living room, dining room, kitchen area, designated only by a change of floor material, carpet to linoleum.
“Did you hear her get up? Did you hear her go out?” Zoenelle’s mother asked, looking at Zoenelle over the cup of coffee she was drinking.
Zoenelle hadn’t heard anything while in her mother’s bed, except the baby’s cries and her mother rising to nurse him, and then returning his sleeping form to his crib.
“Where in the world would she go?” Zoenelle’s mother asked.
“The library. Jackson’s Garden topiary maze. Central Park. The science museum and planetarium. Schenectady’s Finest Ice Cream.” Zoenelle listed her own favorite places, destinations of the past summer’s weekly outings; just Zoenelle and her mother, lingering at the diorama of the earliest Americans crossing the Bering land bridge chasing Woolly Mammoths from Asia 25,000 years ago, sitting through the entire planetarium presentation of the solar system’s accelerated celestial cycle, uninterrupted hours of reading and selecting stacks of books to check out at the library, butterscotch-topped banana splits for lunch and then home for sandwiches or whatever was handy in the fridge, or cupboard, for their supper for two. On the days they just stayed home, Zoenelle read, while her mother, in full-blown nesting instinct mode, vacuumed the floors, furniture, and refrigerator coils, removed the curtains, laundered, and re-hung them, and cleaned and organized the entire contents of the kitchen and bathroom cupboards. Zoenelle held one end of the heaped laundry basket that traveled down to the basement laundry room and back upstairs, as her mother sorted and readied the clothes she would be able to wear again. Her mother attempted to help organize Zoenelle’s clothes, and Zoenelle put her cotton shorts and jeans and long and short sleeved jerseys away in her dresser, but with the school clothes, dresses and skirts, she couldn’t even feign interest for her mother’s sake, and shrugged disdainfully at each hangered appearance. Her father’s clothes didn’t need sorting, they occupied a small fraction of her parent’s bedroom closet and a two-drawer cardboard storage box held his remaining clothes with one pair of boots and one pair of dress shoes parked on top.
In August, Zoenelle’s mother’s mother, she was Grandma Stanton then, flew in from California and the Stanley furniture company delivered the Isabella crib and four drawer single dresser changing table in an antique white finish that had to be disassembled and reassembled to fit into the apartment. She and her mother took a taxicab to the other side of the Mohawk river, crossing each Isle of the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, to the Stockade Inn to meet Grandma Stanton for dinner. They ate in the Stockade Inn restaurant with cloth napkins and three knives, three forks, two spoons, and four glasses, although only one of hers was filled, and her mother told her in the taxi on the way home that she had eaten a seven-dollar salad. Grandma Stanton had asked Zoenelle what grade she was in, although it was summer, and Grandma Stanton looked skeptical when Zoenelle responded that she was ‘going into the third grade’ and Grandma Stanton had turned to Zoenelle’s mother and said, “kind of small, isn’t she?”
“Should we go look for her?” Zoenelle’s mother asked. “Did she say anything about going anywhere today?”
“No, Mom. She hasn’t said anything since she’s been here.”
“Yes, honey, I know. Maybe she just needed something at the grocery. She didn’t take anything with her, just her coat. I think we should go out and look for her. I’ll get dressed and get the baby ready.”
Zoenelle sat down with a book to wait. She listened to the voice of her mother. humming and singing, while she changed and bathed and fed her baby brother. Zach was tucked in among the quilts in the baby carriage that was parked in the foyer of their apartment building. They automatically turned west along Van Vankren Avenue and then north on Union Street toward the park, but her mother turned west again on Liberty Avenue, two blocks before the main entrance, and they turned onto the walkway into the park through a side entrance. The people in the park had applied a first layer against the approaching winter’s temperature changes, multicolored sweaters, and hooded sweatshirts, while the skeletal structure of tree trunks and limbs were emerging from behind their leaf covered cloaks. Zoenelle scrutinized each older person sitting on a park bench, identifiable by their fleece-lined raincoats and hats. Her mother wore a blue wool skirt and jacket over a white blouse; she was hatless, but her raincoat had been folded and placed in the carriage. Zoenelle stubbornly put on shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, but at her mother’s insistence an unbuttoned cardigan clung to her arms and flapped open at her sides as she skipped to keep up with her mother’s fast walking pace. At the centrally located duck pond, Zoenelle’s mother hesitated before following the walkway’s easterly direction. They had not brought stale bread to feed the ducks, but the ground was littered with crackers and bread and torn cellophane wrappers; the ducks were well-fed on Sundays.
Zoenelle realized they were at the main entrance to the park. Across Union Street was the University; she could see part of the funny dome-on-dome Nott building where that past May they had watched her father and a hundred other figures, in black gowns and flat hats with tassels, march down the steps.
Her mother stopped abruptly, and Zoenelle’s chest banged into the carriage handle that she was holding onto with one hand.
“Let’s go home, now…” her mother’s voice broke, her chin tucked against her breastbone, she clasped her elbows with her hands, and her shoulders heaved up and down.
“Let me push awhile Mom.” Zoenelle had to lean at a sixty-degree angle to the ground with her arms fully extended to move the carriage; each step transferred the force along her spine across her shoulders and to her outstretched hands on the handle so that the carriage moved in a series of steadily applied jerks.
Grandma Flynn was home in time for supper but didn’t offer any explanation for her absence and Zoenelle was too shy, and her mother was too polite, to inquire. That week when Zoenelle and her mother resumed their schedules of school, infant care and household duties, and Grandma Flynn continued to disappear after breakfast and return before supper, Zoenelle suggested that she be allowed to stay home from school to track Grandma Flynn. Zoenelle’s mother instructed her that it was Grandma Flynn’s business, not theirs, although a month later it became theirs, when the police regarded as their business the daily presence of the old woman at City Hall. Zoenelle’s mother defended her mother-in-law’s right to peaceably assemble in front of the public building and packed her lunch every day, often walking the fifteen blocks to bring it to her.
Three years later the marble steps of the City Hall were covered with megaphone-bearing, sign-carrying, guitar-strumming, chanting revolutionaries. America’s second revolution in almost two hundred years to overthrow the tyranny of kings.
What had her grandmother known? That the president’s war (not a war declared by congress) was based on false premises and deliberate misperceptions, on an enemy attack on US warships in the South China sea that never happened, on a failed foreign policy that was so ignorant of the cultural, religious, and historical realities of the people it claimed to want to save that it backed a Roman Catholic puppet government leader in a country of Buddhists, that it was justified in invading a country and turning it into a battlefield to fight -ism there instead of on American soil and that it would require citizens like herself to say ‘no more’ before the administration would begrudgingly, but finally, admit defeat and bring the soldiers home?
She could not have known that, then. She must have known that it was the arrogance and ignorance of men who aggrandize their own self-importance as the dominating force in the creation of the political and social sphere of influence to control the course of events, who desire to fatten their chapter in history textbooks as war presidents, who readily create enemies of the non-white, non-christian, non-american, and who devalue the lives of the collaterally damaged, expendable civilians, by reporting their losses in approximates: two, three or four million, while each lost American life was counted, each an individual with an identity, who employ national security as a justification for violating civil rights and freedoms, and wartime as an excuse for unethical and inhumane treatment of persons antagonistic to their schemes, plastering the US flag on every available surface and accusing anyone who opposes their militaristic mission as unpatriotic.
Or, she had just known that they had taken her son, her only child.