In the Know

“I'll bet poetry readings are just about the most boring thing there is.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I’d say they’re boring alright, but Hungarian movies give them a run for their money. College graduations shouldn’t be left out either.”

The boy and his father were driving back from Ojai. It was hot. Ojai is always hot except for two weeks in winter when a cold snap arrives and threatens the citrus growers. It brings on a panic of prevention. Smudge pots, huge fans run by generators; the crews work around the clock, same as fire season. But it was March.

“Did you like your sister’s poem?”

The boy considered a moment, “Not really. I didn’t understand why she put French in it. This isn’t France. And her voice was so phony.”

The road down from Ojai is only two lanes until the freeway. Most everything was green, most everything but the broom plants which were taxi-colored, and the wild mustard. The boy held an inhaler in his lap. His asthma was chronic and had begun giving him trouble beneath the oak trees. The reading was on the grounds.

“Dad, how come Daniel didn’t have to read? I’ll bet his poem would have been cooler than Hannah’s, or that girl who was so scared. Least he surfs and could have written about the waves or sunsets. Something cooler than French.”

“Oh I don’t know, I liked her poem. It’s tough to write a poem. At least she put Georgia in it and some real things. Things she knows about. Some poems don’t have anything real in them.”

Georgia was Hannah’s horse. Hannah chose her school in Ojai because it was near the stables where Georgia was boarded. After school, she’d work around the stables and help her trainer to offset the cost of lessons. There was a bus. Teenage girls and horses inhabit a private country.

“What about the music?” His dad quizzed him. “I think her flute is cool, and the boy with the Sitar was pretty fun. Did you like that?”

Traffic was light for a Saturday. He felt foolish talking down to his son, using stunted language as if kids were puppies that only understood the most rudimentary words. He’d always talked to him this way, but knew it was ill-advised.

“Afterward he let me play it. The sitar. It has 22 strings. Must take forever to learn how to play.”

“That was pretty co . . . generous of him. To let you play it. Do you ever think about learning an instrument? You’re older now and your Mom and I will look into lessons if you’d like.”

“I like drums.”

“What kind of drums . . . bongos, conga drums, rock and roll?”

“Like the guy in Nirvana that Hannah has on her wall. His drums. They’re called kits.”

Along this stretch, the road followed a creek which was nearly always empty, but the recent rains had filled it bank to bank. It was muddy and fast. It made the narrow canyon look more normal somehow. That’s how the father thought about California, that it was freakish, barren. His idea of a proper landscape he’d gleaned in his own youth from television commercials during football games. Maple trees framing two-story homes somewhere in the Northeast, maybe Connecticut. Life insurance, or Campbell’s soup. Everyone in flannel raking leaves, or digging up bulbs in their Wellingtons. California, at least Southern California was desert, no matter the lawns or swimming pools, it wasn’t right somehow. The run-off stream seemed right.

The boy had a t-shirt with Bart Simpson on it. It had a quote under his round face that said something daring or borderline perverse. That’s where comedy lives, even with kids.

“How about the piano? You have mom’s piano at the house. She could even help with your lessons. She can read music and plays pretty good.” He was testing the waters. He knew his son’s mom would like him to learn piano. She felt slighted when Hannah chose flute. Rejected somehow.

“She’s taught me some chords and I can play a couple songs already, but I like drums.”

The boy never looked at his father, just as the dad rarely took his eye off the road or glanced toward his son. They both looked and spoke forward as if addressing the road up ahead.

“She wants me to learn a Clara Schumann piece, but it’s hard. My fingers can’t reach like hers can. And no, I didn’t like the song Hannah played on the flute . . . She says her music teacher’s a lesbian. So’s her writing teacher, Karen.”

“You have an opinion about lesbians one way or the other?”

“No, not really. Karen is cool. I don’t know her music teacher. She only has classes once in awhile and I’ve hardly ever seen her. I like her art teacher best, Roz. Last week she let me sculpt some bowls the way Indians used to. She’s gonna fire them once she gets more stuff from the class.”

“Mom’s birthday’s coming. Maybe they’ll be ready by then.”

“I don’t think so. Mom wants a book. She told me.”

“What kind of book?”

The father had been separated from the boy’s mom for close to two years. He’d always been interested in what books she read. Sometimes he’d read them as well. His own copies. It helped him feel in the know.

“I forget. A German woman I think. Something about the holocaust. I think she died.”

He shook his inhaler and took two quick puffs, sucking in the Albuterol cloud. He replaced the nozzle cap.

“You ever think about that, dying?”

“Me? Hmm, well I suppose I do from time to time. The big mystery and all that. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just wondered if other people think about that stuff.”

“I would venture that everyone thinks about that stuff once in awhile. Was the reading so terrible that you’re thinking about ending it all? A rope, or the big jump from Golden Gate Bridge?”

The previous summer, the boy and father had taken a road trip to San Francisco. The boy had been focused on Alcatraz for months prior, and had exhausted his local library branch on the subject. They’d stayed at a Best Western near the Presidio, with a pool. Out on the island they’d both dressed in prison garb and had a Polaroid taken behind bars. They saw where Clint Eastwood made a movie. Where Al Capone grew old. One day they drove across the bridge to Marin and took a hike in the redwoods. Upon returning over the bridge, the father pointed out a parking lot where suicides often left their cars. He’d read that police check it conscientiously for what could be considered evidence. The father felt a quick rhythm under his tires from the girders. His mouth tasted bad.

“I think mom could teach school about the holocaust. She has so many books.”

“True enough. She’s fascinated alright . . . Does mom talk about dying?”

“No. Just the people who were gassed and stuff. The Jews mostly.”

The two lane road was dissolving into a long on-ramp to highway 33. They picked-up speed. The sun was hiding behind a steep hill to the North as they headed toward Ventura and the fog-banked Ocean.

“You know I love you don’t you Bud?”

“Yeah, I know.” He waited a while to size up the moment. “Dad, if you want, I’ll trade you my Storm for Magneto.”

“You mean the trading cards? Thought you liked Storm?”

“Yeah I do but I got doubles this week at Comics’ Corner. Plus, you should have Storm.”

The father knew Magneto was common, you couldn’t give them away. He’d given Storm to his son weeks prior, in a lop-sided trade. The kind dads and kids always do. He wondered if his son really had doubles. Then spoke to the road up ahead.

“Yeah, that’s cool. I’m crazy about Storm.”

To their left the late sun hit the hillside high above Mission Avenue. The father rolled down his window. Half way up the bald face of sandstone and scrub, a lone building, a hospital, reflected a coral glare.

“I go to meetings there sometimes. There’s no-one around. I swear it’s deserted up there. The halls, the rooms. Weird.”

The boy’s eyes were fluttering. They were tired eyes. He’d done all he could do.




(The above image is from a Marvel trading card of Magneto, one of the X-Men superheroes, 1992 or so).

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