The Ramblin' Bamblin' Young Man's Heaven Blues.

This world is so confusing most of the time. You putzed around through your days/sneaking smokes under the metal bleachers/playing with yourself before you fell asleep to the fat cricket's song of another oozing August night. Your days were baseball and chicks. Sunburst guitars and meatloaf. You were gonna get a motorcyle, ride it straight into the dusk of some dream-like horizon. You were just living your life. Then, in a 3AM rice paddy, with the dark kettle drum booms of your young heart echoing off into the sky, past treetops filled with beat-up jungle birds and off into the ether of twinkling stars, you took one more earthly step and were gone forever. Back in your room, far far away, your old catcher's mitt lay under your empty bed: a small house spider shitting out eggs into the broke-in pocket where the fastballs used to pop.

Now, you sit on the side of a river of wine by mountains made of cloud, waiting for other dudes your age to come wandering downstream. Their faces are scared/awkward. You talk to them calmly. You hand 'em smokes that can't hurt and a Zippo. What was so confusing back there, you tell them, will all make sense to you real soon, buddy.

Finally, after a while, they smile at you, all jittery.

Come on, you say. I'll show ya' around. You're gonna like it here, fella, you say.

And they follow you down easy trails, to take a gander at the kingdom.

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I remember vividly the babbling brook between me and the first deer I ever shot. It was a just a trickle, with smooth rocks the size of cannonballs. My ears were still ringing with the thunderous silence that comes after an old scopeless Remington erupts next to your skull. I walked through the water. Or on top of it. In my cheap Fayva workboots I ran to my deer; the icy pure water washing over the splatter stains on the fronts of the leather; slashing away at the month-old remnants of a vicious puke I'd earned from swallowing snuff spit so I could keep talking to a girl on the phone: a girl who was way out of my sixteen year old league. My husky body forged the stream, winter water soaking my wool socks, and I arrived at the deer's side pink and panting. The woods were still. There was no movement in the world.

He was a spike buck. Undernourished and not all that big. A Pennsylvania mountain deer. A moss eater.

His eyeball was open. There was a glaze on it. A vapid empty stare like one of the guys in Oasis. Within seconds, I knew that I hated him. I hated his stupid ass for standing there a hundred yards from the goddamn parking lot when I was on my way out of the hollow in the final moments before dark. I hated him for letting me shoot at him. And for letting me hit him. I wanted to wrap my arms under his belly guts and heave him upright and drag him around until he started kicking again. Until he ran off back into the winter evening woods where he belonged. Instead, he just layed there motionless on the grey carpet of sad idiot leaves. I still hate him for leaving me there like that. And I guess I always will.

And no I'm not sorry because that's not the point at all, is it.

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I used to think that it was imposssible to die. Everything took so fucking long that there was just no way I was ever going to see the end of all these Italian hoagies and these eighth ounce bags of Christmas Tree Bud. I would sit in my 11th grade Algebra or Chemistry and stare at a clock that simply did not know how to work. Time moved so slowly. I was a frozen lamb in a frozen pasture and at night I could get baked and watch Arsenio Hall after my mom had said goodnight and went to bed. I could swish microwave-melted mint chocolate chip around in my mouth as if it were refreshing wind trapped in a cave. On the couch made of burlap, I could untie my Nikes and let 'em fall to the ground knowing damn right well that I would be back down there tomorrow, in the morning of the day, to put them on again. Nice and tight.

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We went into a small-ass room yesterday with a guy in a Hawaiian shirt who had a kindly way. He seemed advanced in his gentleness, as if he didn't have to think about being gentle or overkill it with too much nice. He was just an easy-going guy and after a minute or two watching him rub jelly on my wife's belly I decided that I liked him a lot and was glad he was around.

He told us one good thing after another. The spine looks good. The amniotic fluid looks real good. See that? That's urine being produced, so that's very good. There's a hand. With fingers. That looks good.

Everything looked good. I liked this guy. Life Man, I call him. Looking at our unborn kid on the TV screen, pumping us full of excitement and promise. Giving us life. Life Man.

At the end, with a sweet build-up that I could tell he loved doing, he finally revealed to us that we would be having a little boy.

What else can I say? We're having a son. It's so good. We're gonna have a son.

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I picked a dried autumn booger out of my daughter's nostril today while I was making her watch the baseball on TV with me. She let me do it. It didn't phase her, really. She was more into trying to escape my clutch, to get away from the boredom. I wiped it on my pants. No biggie. When it's your kid you wanna do stuff like that; you wanna show the ghosts and the angels and whatever else is floating around the room invisible, taking notes about if you're worth it or not, you wanna show them that you love your babies with insane love. With powerful outer space love. If someone else were to wipe a boogie on my pants I would take a hacksaw and start cutting at the seams of their lips until I peeled off the top two-thirds of their head, you know? But when it's your kid, it's different. You get in there and you pick their fucking noses and you genuinely enjoy it just as much, if not more, than you would enjoy a nice steak and a baked potato, some red wine.

And then later, like today, you start thinking it isn't enough, just to clean up their crusty noses and their dried snots and stuff. You start getting irrational with your love. Super hero shit. Like maybe if I start doing sit-ups right now, and keep doing them for five months straight/non-stop until my baby boy is born, well, maybe my abs and my skin and my muscles will get so tight that I will become bullet-proof. For serious. And then, if I just walk in front of the lad every moment for the rest of his life, if a gun goes off and a bullet flies at him, it'll just hit me and ping off my sit-ups body and fly into a tree or something.

That's how much love it is possible to dabble in. Bullet Proof Nose Picker Love. Unfuckingreal.

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A Tennessee kid would have turned nineteen today. I never met him but I feel like I did. I've stared at him in pictures, his handsome face framed by a shock of thick dark hair, his thin frame usually wrapped up around his acoustic. He was the son of someone me and my wife met recently, someone who we like a lot. I cannot begin to understand her loss. No one can unless you've been there. Here's hoping you haven't.

Still, when I hear the tales of young men dying I think of that river somewhere way out there beyond the known sky. After the great big storm cloud of life melts away, after the whizzing bullets and the hydroplaning muscle cars and the dirty needles and the fistfights and the pills and the shitty cancers and leukemias and the bedroom nooses, all of it, after all of that slips away on the edge of a crisp afternoon breeze, what is left is this:

A young guy walking downstream, uncertainty in his gleaming eyes, headed right into the gaze of a kid who came before him. A good kid who's been waiting to show a newbie around.

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For Henry. We'll play guitars someday.

Fancy Ketchup.

It is a difficult thing to drive down the road in your car next to a bag of McDonald's without shoving at least one wad of hot salty fries into your mouth. Some people could do it, no doubt. Civil people. People on their way home with dinner. In the evening. Patience in traffic /NPR people maybe.

But not me.

Oh nonononono.

The young kid handing me my large drink through the window gets his 'Thanks alot!' filtered through a mini blond Medusa's Head of potato hanging half-out of my face. By the time I swerve out of the lot and onto the main road, I am a thousand calories more powerful than I was five minutes ago. I roll the Honda through Sugarhouse dropping fries inside me; up 7th East with warm salt on my lips; and turn in at the dog park which, from personal experience, I know is a good place to kill a bag of McDonald's on a weekday afternoon without getting hassled by hobos or squirrels or The Man: all of whom are attracted by the scent of Mickey D's. Seriously.

I park and leave her running and put the bag of food on the fake leathery armrest between the two front seats and grab my drink and turn on the AC: and then I'm ready so I get out of the car, shut the door, open the back door and climb in next to Violet. She grins at my move to her row. I grin too.

Then, we have our lunch together. Fancy Ketchup, I say to her as I read it off the little packet. This ain't some cheap crap, Doll-Face. This is the good stuff. The FANCY stuff. I tear the ends off some fries and rub 'em in the ketchup smeared across the cheeseburger wrapper sitting in my lap. When I hold them up at Violet's lips, she opens wide.

"Mmmmmmmmm", I say. To let her know that's what people like us say every time we take a damn bite. We've been practicing this way more than ABC or anything.

"Mmmmmmmm", she says, with gusto. Then she adds on her own thing which sounds like: Eck-a-bubble-bubbleblooo-meppa-meppa-eeeeeee. I don't know what it means. No one could. But it sounds exciting, so I just go with it.

We eat fries and cheeseburgers and fancy ketchup together, side by side. A lunch date. It's so nice. Still, I invite vipers. And I drop the bomb.

"Daddy's gonna take you to the Doctor next, ok? We gotta get some needles today." I say that shit with a pouty face, as if that is going to help her come to grips with this little afternoon twist I'm unraveling.

My daughter just looks over/up at me with dried-ketchup-cheeks and smiles. She doesn't get it at all, I can tell.

Fuck.

I hate this needle shit.

I break off a little nub of cheeseburger and gently rub it on her lips. She opens up and eats it.

Mmmmmmmmmmm, she says, without prompting from me.

I just wanna drive home and skip the needles and the tears and just forget the whole damn thing. We could stop and get more McDonald's, I tell myself.

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There are three and they are fast. One. Explosion of crying. Two. Gagging, little crimson head sagging like a melted wax face. Three. The rampaging tears of someone desperately wondering why.

Sting! Sting! Sting!

And then they are done. The doctor is lightning fast; skills galore. She knows that the pricks will melt into one another if the timing is just right. The back-alley Villain jumping my daughter is thrown off a little by the quickness of the Super Hero. Right there in my arms, under my face, I watch as Violet gets so upset so fast, that her horror actually rolls over on its bad self and sort of dies in the face of all its evil plans.

Violet cries really really hard for maybe a minute, then she bites into her Binky and looks deep into my eyes. Some sobs still trickle out of her. The doctor is long gone. She is probably ten needles into the future by now. We are simply ghosts to her.

I kiss Violet's forehead.

Alone in the room, I use my finger and some spit and rub the ketchup specks off of her cheeks and chin as she calms down and does her little best to forget whatever the hell just happened.

Long Western Afternoon Fort People.

We have a tent set up in our house. It came with a tunnel. I got it for my daughter last Christmas when she was almost one, which means I mostly got it for myself because I kind of knew that she wasn't gonna care. It isn't anything nice. It cost twenty bucks at Bed,Bath,and Beyond and I think it's made out of spring roll. Still, it was the first Christmas gift I ever went out and got her and so it has a little meaning for me.

A few weeks ago I went back into the room we set up for Violet to play/hang in and there was the tent all set up. I forgot to tell you that after I let the kid shred off the wrapping paper on Christmas morning, the tent went in a closet, still in the box. Until now. My wife must've set it up. I haven't asked her. Christ, I hope it was her; otherwise some weird-ass freaks are sneaking in this house late at night while I'm curled up tight like a fetal squirrel. Anyways, I went in there and the tent was set up and the tunnel was out in the living room, probably because we don't have all that much furniture and a nice rainbow colored tunnel lying in the middle of the floor...well, it's something.

I went ahead and got in the tent right away. Violet wasn't around. No one was. But, I got in there and squatted down in the tiny space and pulled the flaps shut. The light from the window above was washing through the bright yellow and red and blue panels and so I felt like I was young again for a second. Squatting in hot vinyl and staring at the beams of color on your arm skin, whiffing that new plastic scent, wondering what to do with your free time in such a hidden little cove tucked away from the wide open world: I don't know about you, but all that makes me feel young again. I found myself hoping that my kid might crawl up in there one of these mornings and enjoy herself. That she might come to like the tent, and the tunnel, as magic places away from the dull kitchen and the boring halls.

But I had no idea.

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Fast forward here about two weeks. I'll be lowering long slashes of Wal-Mart roast beast lunch meat out over my tilted back head and down my throat with the awkward grace of a sword swallower, when all of the sudden I feel that tiny sweet hand upon mine. I feel the soft fingers all wrapping around a few of my fingers. And I feel the precious tug of her young effort.

I gulp down my factory beef and look below. Violet is holding my hand and leading me.

Oh my.

...What a sensation/what a feeling: the first time your kid comes into a room just to get you. I'm looking for you Pops, her grip says. I'm here for you. To haul your ass back to the playroom, or wherever. I smile inside and ask her where we're going. She doesn't answer or smile gappy teeth or look up at me with Question Mark Eyes. She doesn't say anything. She simply gets a hold of my thumb/turns directions/starts leading me to where she needs me to be.

I offer little resistance, of course. (Being swept off my feet hasn't been all that common for me in this life. No girls ever grabbed me on a Friday after a tough week and said, " Come with me, Bullet Boy!". They never drove me out on the Turnpike to one of those Champagne Glass hot-tubs in the Poconos or Vegas. I guess I never inspired that sort of spark in anyone. No one couldn't wait to get me to the getaway. No one fussed mid-kiss to lock the strange doorknob behind us. No one ever kept me behind any drapes drawn tight through the sunniest parts of some Saturday afternoon. I never answered the door in a towel in a rush/keep the change Pizza-Man /slammed the door in a lusty huff.)

So. If this is my fate, so be it. A New Kind Of Swept Away. If I am to be swept off my proverbial feet by a two year old I never saw coming, well...bring it on, I say. Sure the rules have changed. And the reasons too. But, still, some little heart wants to hold my hand and whisk me off.

We go to the tent, obviously. To the very first holiday gift. To the mega-colored ultra-flammable piece of crap I bought from The Man. We go, hand-in-hand, me towering above my leader, my heart pittering. She is deliberate in guiding me. We aren't distracted by the Dora on the DVD or anything. At the front of the tent, my daughter enters in her own special way; she walks straight into the vinyl above the hole where you go in, until her head bends back enough so that she just falls inside. Me, I smoosh down and sort of roll inside like a tilted meatball. And then, there we are.

Violet looks at me with a big smile and lets go of my thumb. I attack her with a Paddington Bear who is already chillin' there in the fort. She bursts into giggles. I pull in the SpongeBob drum and do some Indian beats, some war chants. Violet sticks her face into the corners of the tent and breathes her breath into them and I can tell she likes it when the thin walls flap and pop as her air moves in and out, the tent sticking to her lips and cheeks then falling away. Max comes in and pokes his head into the side port.

"Wolf!," I cry. Violet is ecstatic and pulls the wolf's ear.

Then I think about Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. The long cold fur trader's winters spent holed up in squat caves of loneliness on the high plains of Wyoming. Then I think about how difficult it must've been just to take a shit when you were snowed in and miserable and three feet away from another tired hungry trapper who was finally seeing you for the tender Cornish Hen that you really are.

Then I stop myself, because to thrust poor Violet into a world of Mountain Man Pretend. I do enough of that in my own time.

So, we sit in the colored air of our tent, me and my kid and Max and then Milo too, their heads tucked in the holes, hoping not to miss whatever awesome shit must be about to go down in there. We all sit there and smile at each other in the late afternoon and I hit the SpongeBob drum with some weak Lakota beats. I tickle Violet with Paddington. And a Tigger The Tiger, too. She laughs and laughs. There's not a lot to do in there, but that doesn't really matter. Every two or three minutes I crawl out and walk away just to see if I'm still wanted, to make sure it isn't all just another damn dream.

And sure as hell, I'm not out in the kitchen fifteen seconds when I hear the little stumblings of her sock feet on the linoleum. I keep my hand way down my side so its easy to find.

A long moment passes. I don't dare peek.

Then, I feel her fingers on mine. Tugging again.

And we roll back towards the fort where we hang in the long western afternoon.