Something wakes me up seconds before her alarm goes off. The alarm is for some random time, I think. 4:48am maybe? 4:49? Some weird-ass time. And you know what? I think she sets multiple alarms on her phone to be honest. Because there’s more than one and I don’t think it’s a SNOOZE thing. It just feels different somehow, like an orchestrated onslaught, a series of early morning attacks that come out of nowhere, slicing the darkness with the terribleness, a blitzkrieg of Apple iTones that make a body crash back onto this rock, onto this diseased hunk of bat shit from outer more peaceful dimensions, and it’s throws me.
How did I know?
How did I anticipate the alarm? How did I wake up nanoseconds before the first wave hits us?
Boink/ eyes open/ where am I/ i’m in the dark/ I’m in the bed/ the phone light across the bed goes out as she hits a button on it and the sound stops too, but I was up right before it all happened and I’m trying to process this remarkable superpower I may or may not possess.
And maybe more importantly: why do I feel okay? Where is the grog of my youth? Where is that 7 iron to the jaw that predawn used to bring? I used to wake up without alarms in the heart of the night as the alcohol became sugar. Later in the afternoon that wild sugar had shape-shifted into more natural states of lethargy and blues.
I’d be mowing a lawn under the hot August sun and I’d feel dark shadows moving across my inner sun. Birds chirping/ kids laughing/ bees hovering over dandelions and flies hovering over dog shit/ and me- without wavering from my long steady line of grass cutting- I’d suddenly feel as if the best thing for me to do would be to stop the mower/ go get the keys to the car/ leave quietly/ no words/ he never even said goodbye/ and drive to the place that I have always had picked out to do the thing that I had always figured I would do.
These mornings though, I don’t feel that instant melancholy when I beat her alarm to the gates of the new day. I open my eyes and wait for the pain and confusion and most of all the deep abiding regret, but it never shows up. Instead- and this is madness, but I swear it’s true- instead of feeling like a hollow log being slow packed with moldy buffalo chips, I lay there in the dark and I am straight-up fascinated by this feeling.
I can breathe. My thoughts are clear. I can plug in the Christmas lights by the bed as the second wave of bombers comes tearing up over the distant skyline of her phone/ over there by her slowly waking body/ and I can look at my Gettysburg books on the shelves on the desk a few inches from my face/ and I can acknowledge to myself- right there/ in the wee small hours- how messed up it is that I’m 48 years old and I look at these books like I used to wake up and look at my baseball cards when I was 10.
But also how seriously beautiful it is too.
Because it really is, man. I spent so many years in the dungeons of my own self-loathing. I was a fat boy who could never shed the weight even if I lost it all. Even now, I feel odd sharing this with you. How could you understand? How could you possibly know what it feels like to have a little parking lot in your mind and it’s almost always on the screen up there, and in it: there’s my car (the car changes through the years) and there’s the Pennsylvania State Trooper car/ no siren/ no lights/ slowly rolling back the short dirt road from the main road/ State Game Lands/ no one around/ I shot my first deer, a spike buck, right over here by the creek when I was 16/ he double-parks in back of my car/ radios in the license plate/ gets out/ walks up to the windows slowly/ and sees what I’ve been seeing for so long now.
How can I expect you to know that? I wouldn’t want you to either. And don’t feel bad for me. I half brought it on myself I’m sure. I drank a lot trying to feel happy or feel adequate or whatever.
Now the trooper, he doesn’t see anything. Shit, even my car evaporated right before his eyes and he is probably checking in with his religion because he is thinking he might be hallucinating and that is the Devil’s plaything, don’t ya know. Because look: my car is not there, Hoss. Because I’m in bed at home, waking up feeling okay. Feeling clean. Feeling her rolling around over there under the Blitz.
I sneak out though I guess she knows I’m going.
I take a pill.
I wash my hands.
I don’t wanna die.
But you know how it is these days.
Trouble oh trouble/ hear you knocking on my door.
————
Charlie and Violet are under blankets on the couch.
Henry is still up in bed, I guess. So are Milla and Piper, my step-kids. It’s about 9 in the morning this past Monday and the TV is on and it’s YouTube, which…well, yeah…. of course it is. Here’s a free loose observation. Allegory, maybe? I don’t even know. But YouTube is Earth/ Earth is YouTube. This app or channel or whatever the fuck it is: it’s s a galaxy unto its own at this point, a place where anyone can eschew common sense and practicality by zipping right by ‘sensible’ videos on how to make homemade apple sauce ,or how to create your own kitschy replica of van Gogh’s Starry Night out of dollar store finger paints, or how to install a CD player in that space under your behemoth black microwave hovering over your matching black oven like a UFO hovering over all that midnight corn, in favor of watching a 17-year-old cackling high-pitched British kid who seems high on something I don’t even know about in a small screen in the corner of the TV while the rest of the TV is filled up with footage of the video game he is playing and talking to. I can’t explain it any better than that.
I would get so mad at my kids for liking these videos. How could a living breathing human being derive joy from watching another human being play a video game while you just sat there and stared at it all? Would this even make you a better player at the game? I doubt it. How could it?
And if not, then what’s the point?
I wrestled with my soul about this. I talked with Arle about it. She always has a common sense approach to things, but that’s not what I was looking for here, okay? Each time I would walk through the house there would be at least a few kids sprawled out in the living room/ dead-eyed or laughing hysterically/ and I would right away want to turn it off and scream at them that this crap would rot their brains and dull their senses and, in full disclosure, I truly believed that it was making them dumber.
I believed that watching someone else play video games on TV was making my kids and step kids dumber and dumber.
Then this past Monday, Charlie, who is 6 and who reminds me of an old-school Brooklyn Dodgers peanut seller or something because he has an absolute killer smile and a horribly short fuse like he would waltz up to you and your family during the 6th inning and:
Charlie Hot Nuts: “Hi mack, Beautiful day, ain’t it?! How about some peanuts for the gang, whadya say, three hot peanuts for you lovely folks?
Meek Dad: Well, how much are they, mister?
Charlie Hot Nuts: Ahhh, price schmice, Mister, ain’t I right? Ya can’t put a price on treating your lady and your kids can ya?
Meek Dad: Well, I suppose not. But say, mister, don’t you think just one bag would be enough?
Charlie Hot Nuts: Oh sure. One bag. Okay. Of course. One bag, ya say. One bag of peanuts is enough, he says. We HERE YOU ARE YA CHEAP MILKTOAST BUM!”
Charlie Hot Nuts shoves a bag of hot peanuts into the man’s nose and his family screeches in horror as Charlie Hot Nuts grinds the peanuts into the man’s eyeballs and up his nostrils and you get the picture.
Charlie Hot Nuts: HOW ABOUT THAT, HUH? YA LIKE THAT, YOU LIKE THAT, MISTER ONE BAG?! HUH??!!
I love Charlie so much. But he is Goodfellas Joe Pesci. And I’m never entirely comfortable around him.
Anyway, he sips his chocolate milk and looks up at me this past Monday right after I tell him and his sister to turn that crap off because it’s inane and utterly pointless.
Then I can see him about to Pesci out.
And then he does.
“Dad!”
He always starts like that. A declaration of challenge. Just my name. A gunfighter’s whistle. Meet me in the street outside the saloon. And prepare to meet your maker.
I just look at him and wait.
“Dad! Why do we have to turn it off? That’s stupid! You’re wrong, Dad! You’re mean! You shouldn’t make us turn this off when we like it!
I wait coolly for him to finish spraying his damn bullets all over town, spraying lead just about everywhere but where he was aiming for: in my heart or in my mind. I wait, squinting, just so I can draw, just so I can put him down into the terribly bored dust of this sunbaked afternoon.
But I must be getting old, hombre.
For I did not see this coming.
“You watch fishing on YouTube, Dad! And what’s that? You don’t catch anything! You never catch any fish when you watch it! It’s stupid! You watch a guy catch fish but you don’t catch fish, Dad!”
I feel the silverest bullet nick my aorta in slow time/real time/ and I stand there dazed, staring down the street as a tumbleweed rolls by/ rolls between the little man with the secret second pistol he had been fingering all along.
It dawns on you right before you die.
I know nothing.
I never did.
I smile, blood spittles down my chin.
Joe Pesci in a black cowboy hat glares at me from the couch. He has no front teeth. He is wearing a Mario Brothers t shirt.
I collapse in a final heap as a savage wind roars down off of the mesa.
It is a beautiful death. My most beautiful death of the week so far.
——————-
The last place I went was to take the recycling up the street to the bins a few days ago. Then I threw the Frisbee for Angus for a few minutes. Then I drove in my car around the back roads thinking I would listen to a podcast, steal a moment or two for myself. I never did though. I headed back to the house. I felt off.
You feel off?
I feel good some days, then suddenly I feel off. Full moonish. Cantankerous. Sober but pissy.
I try to wrap my head around it. What am I feeling?
I think perhaps I’m scared? Easy answer to come to, I guess,; I mean: we’re all a little scared, I’m sure. But what of it? Where does that bus leave you off each day? You know your way home or no?
I get to washing my fucking hands so much and I haven’t been anywhere, haven’t touched anything new, really. But maybe I have? Maybe I touched something like the dog’s leash line out in the yard and maybe when I was upstairs doing some exercising or staring at my Gettysburg books, maybe some kid cut through our yard and he picked up the leash line in his hand just for the hell of it and his little boogie fingers has the virus all over them. Tons of virus! All over the goddamn dog line.
And here I come: whistle-whistle-whistle-hummin’-a-merry-tune, hooking Angus up to the thing, and he’s watching me, Angus is, watching me with his Night King eyes, and he can SEE the virus…he can literally SEE it with his DogVision and no one knows this, but yeah, dogs can maybe see the virus, but he doesn’t say jack shit. He just watches ten thousand tiny burning pirates jump ship from the metal clip in my hand to the sleeve of my hoodie. He stares at me, his face drooping a little. He loves me but he knows that I’m done for.
Then what?
Ten days, if that?
Then what?
I keep washing my fucking hands like a crazy person. I have no idea. I wake up seconds before the alarm. I read the news. I roll my eyes at the President/at his people/at all the fools. I stare at my kids while they’re not looking at me/ while they’re laughing with each other or fixated on the thing they’re drawing/ their little tongues sticking out the corners of their mouths/ masterful concentration/ completely oblivious/ thankfully oblivious to the horrors rolling across the land/ and then what?
Tiger King with Arle in the evening?
Maybe a movie?
Pizza?
Salad?
Then what?
Before bed: Edward Coddington/ The Gettysburg Campaign/ moving slowly north/ each night a few miles further, I ride/ towards a thing I will never fully understand.
Then what?
I wake up before the alarm, just milliseconds before it all goes down?
I cough?
I cough again?
Is that how it goes?
Then what?
I get more scared?
I lay there in the dark. Awake. Feeling clean. Third cough.
Then what?
Answer me.
Then what?!
—————-
Up on the mountain, just north of town. The sky breaks, a few weak pink ribbons. Our alarm is going off back at the house. Or maybe it’s done going off and we’re still just laying there. Working from home. Staying at home. Home and not working. Working on the home. Horking on the whome.
No one cares up on the mountain. There’s no one up there this morning as the sun does what it always does whether we notice or not, whether we can even see it or not.
Still silent grey like a world underwater. Like some ancient hilltop under the sea.
A deer. Right there. See it? See its tail flicking just a tiny bit? Oh and there’s another one. Does. Two does. Oh and one more, look! That’s a doe too. There so onto us, I think. Just staring at us now. Oh wait, we’re not even here. Remember? We are not up here/ up there.
No one is.
Just the deer moving along the ridge after a night spent pecking at the forest floor and sometimes staring at the moon.
A little more light now. Pink streaks/ rare steaks.
Did you hear that??!! Oh my god! That was a gobbler! You heard it? Okay good! The first gobbler of the spring! If that doesn’t get your blood moving then…
THERE IT IS AGAIN!! HE’S THUNDERING OFF DOWN THE HILL SOMEWHERE!!
What a sound, huh?
What a wild and beautiful sound to bear witness to.
THERE! AGAIN!
Holy crap, he is going off. Gobbling his head off.
This cool air feels so good.
Or it would if we were there.
But no one is there, I know I know.
I can see the deer though. And I can hear that gobbler going off, can’t I?
Can’t you?
Did any of this really happen?
It happened this morning, didn’t it?
Tell me it did.
Even though we missed it, it’s there, ain’t it?
And tomorrow too?
And all the days to come?
The alarm goes off for the fourth time.
I get up.
Go downstairs.
Make coffee.
Get on with it.