Feuilleton 14 of 20 draft #3.0

almost done - THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE

... Jackson had swallowed the notion that God had the Devil working for him. Jackson now believed that the two of them were nudging us along some road we could not see nor resist.  Jackson also had started to want to try to believe that all the crazy wall markings were trying to say something about all of this, somehow. 

……………………………………………………….

Feuilleton 14 of 20

FUTURE PRESENT

            "Dad" Mason said, still unheard.  Mechanical sounds and shuffling scratched on dry concrete as the young dark kid in the shadows secured his blue-line weapon, considering his way out of there.  Jackson's head fell back again, mouth open with jagged grin against the impossibly blue late morning sky.  He had seen their faces, he thought.  And they had seen his.  He lapsed into unconsciousness, and barely heard the word spoken by his son.

            “Andrew, we need help.  We have to get help!”   Mason yelled.

            “OK, yah, we do – let’s get help”  Andrew replied still watching.

            "Dad!" Mason yelled now......darkness took Jackson. " DAD! "

………………………………………………………………………….

From 2000’s to FUTURE PRESENT  :   families change, lovers meet

The two kids were out there.  Los Angeles was a flat wide playground of over baked fun and hot horror.  And the two kids were out there.  Zorah and Majed had started spending more and more time on their own away from their father Amun.  Amun was faltering.  His music had not worked for him creatively nor financially. 

The three of them had lived in poverty since the time the kids’ mother, Basilah, had passed away giving birth to Majed.  The kids gave their father Amun room.  They loved Amun and respected him greatly.  It pained them to see him becoming so humbled and broken.  But as much as they loved and honored him they had their own new lives.  And always waiting for the right new recruits, the gangs were there for them.  Zorah and Majed found acceptance, some  structure, and a real sense of accomplishment in the gang.  Zorah’s natural love for people and life itself tarnished.  She became selective.  Even at this early age Zorah learned the pains that come with love. They were both small and very young.  She was older than him and still needed to look after him. They were given the lowest level work and almost no important responsibilities.  They had been initiated but they were so young when they came to the gang they were not asked to kill yet.  That day would come but for now they did the flunky work the gang members were too lazy to do themselves.  There was a lot to look after in the hot dry Los Angeles neighborhoods.  Zorah’s missions, and raising her little brother Majed,  became the center of her life and energy now.

The two of them navigated streets and alleyways plastered over and cut into with tagging markings of every kind.  They could read just a bit of it.  About who had just joined what.  About who had better stay out of certain streets.  About the death of some that had not.  But there were other statements being boldly and colorfully made that neither of them could read either.  When that happened they left those areas as quickly as they could.

            Also in Los Angeles now was Jackson Kelley’s other son, Andrew.  He had transferred out to LA for occupational reasons and was having a good time in the traditionally tarnished parts of tinsel town.  Eventually Andrew Kelley settled down, met a local woman and married her.  The two of them had a daughter in spite of the couple’s on again off again tempestuous relationship.  The new child united them for a while but as the child grew, the old resentments and separations came back again.  Continuing an unfortunate family tradition, Andrew sought meaning in his work in Southern California. 

As Andrew turned forty, and was in another plunging mid life crisis, he met a tall young girl in one of the clubs. Andrew turned to intentionally talk to the young woman. He could not know how much she looked like her own great grandmother named Snake. The young woman was too young for him, but she did not look it.  Andrew was too old for her even if she had been in her twenties as Andrew thought by the look of her.  When Zorah turned to meet and talk to Andrew that night in the club she gleamed with sleek sex power and hard determination.

Andrew confided in his brother about the meeting.  Mason Kelley told his brother he was crazy. 

            “You just don’t get involved with a girl in a club and fall in love with her.  You are crazy and you will 
regret it.  Hell, she’s at least 20 years younger than you!”

Andrew looked at Mason.  They both knew that Mason was more or less talking from experience.  His older brother’s life experiences had already sorely tempted him, then smacked him in the head with consequences so severe Mason was still digging out and recovering from them.

            “You’re right . . .” Andrew said to Mason, “ but I . . . y’know . . . I do.  I do love her.”

Mason made a “pffft” sound with his lower lip extending beyond his upper lip as he smiled and looked up at the sky.  The two brothers had shared their lives and experiences with each other even though from time to time they went at each other like two raging prize fighters.

            “Do what you gotta do, but just remember I WARNED YOU”, Mason said, “This is NOTgoing to end well, dammit” he finished up, trying to smile.

Andrew had been married in 2007 and Mason in 2012.  Both carried wounds and stories already.  But Mason really cared that his slightly younger brother Andrew was in over his head because the club was a definite gang hang out and Mason was sure this girl was tied into the gang world somehow.  Neither Andrew nor Mason had ever been a member of a gang but one close friend of theirs had been accidentally killed a few years ago and this had shaken Mason to the core.  Mason was now firmly planted in his new Hispanic family since his wedding to a lovely woman that entranced him.  Seeing his brother Andrew even get close to the world that murdered their friend shook him out of his domestic calm. 

            “You can’t continue.  You are married already dammit.” Mason said.

Andrew just looked at him.  Mason knew it was a mess, he could already see it on the face of his brother.

            “You have to break it off.” Mason said.

Andrew slid both open palms up over his face and looked at his brother through the split fingers of his hands. Andrew said through his fingers,

            “I know.  I know.  In fact I haven’t seen her in days now.  She doesn’t answer my

            texts or calls or holo’s.  I have been trying for days so I am sure she thinks I am a

            pitiful old man chasing after young pussy.”

Mason looked at him, then looked up at the sky again, then back to his brother.

            “You ARE.  That’s exactlywhat you are and even YOU know it.”

The two of them leaned against the high counter where their drinks rested.  Andrew shook his head, like a horse shaking off flies.  Mason waited, reaching for his drink.  Andrew spread both hands out on the counter.

            “OK, all right.  I will stop chasing her.  I’ll go back to my hateful wife and resentful kid and unhappy home and be much more safely miserable.” Andrew said, sliding his hands back down together until the fingers of the two hands locked.  The two brothers walked out together, climbed into their separate just washed shining vehicles and drove to their separate homes in the city of angels.

……………………………………………………………………..

2000’s - TORONTO: NO KISSING, NO HUGGING, NO TOUCHING

Jackson Kelley traveled into Toronto to drive meals to hungry people waiting in the west side Little Portugal section of the city. Once there the mixed smells of exhaust from premium gasoline and cheap diesel confused his nose as his slightly younger co-worker, “THE RUNNER”, opened their car door for the next food delivery.  The warm food, especially the hot soups that were packed in the back of the car; mixed with the exhaust smells - olfactory overload.  The people there were kind to Jackson on his very first volunteer day after the Toronto police-check came back clean.  Jackson Kelley and his aging "volunteer-vette" were ready for a MEALS ON WHEELS delivery run though the Portuguese streets of Toronto.  Gail, the organizer/dispatcher, sends them out in pairs.  One Driver and one Runner makes a working pair.  Gail puts Jackson with "Frank" just before Frank

( whose real Portuguese name is Francisco ) arrives inside the office.
Before Frank enters, she shows Jackson a paper-page-memo that Frank gave her recently.  It read "NO KISSING, NO HUGGING, NO TOUCHING, NOR ANYTHING THAT COULD BE MISCONSTRUED AS SEXUAL HARRASEMENT"
Jackson looks at the page, looks back up at Gail.  Sees a humorous smirk on her face as she says :
         " Frank will take care of you.  He's the best Runner.  

           He knows the routes, the neighborhoods, and all the best ways to assemble the meals."
          "Assemble?" Jackson asks.
          "Yes" she says, looking at him.  She looks at the big insulated food bag-containers, then looks at his red corvette parked outside on the other side of the frosted February window out there on the bitter cold West Toronto street - just ahead of the big St. Christopher van with its laboring truck engine running to warm up the inside of the van.
          "You'll need to put these in your car ..... is *THAT* your car?" she said, her eyes on the red corvette on the cold street outside.
          "Yeah.  It'll be fine" Jackson said, thinking about sliding the three long tubular winter sandbags, the snow shovel, and the long ice-scraper out of the way to accommodate all of the tall insulated food bag containers in the rear end of the fastback coupe.
          "No, wait..." Gail says, turning to walk past the beat up straight wooden bench seats, the messy Sunday schedule white-board, the leftover Valentine candies in a small bowel on the table next to the coffee machine, and right into the small dispatch office in the back.  She emerges with her binder of well-used plastic covered pages and says,
          "No, you switch to the "RED" route withTHAT red car."
Before Jackson can object to being switched from the harder "ORANGE" route with Frank as his Runner she has wiped the dry-mark letters off the white-board, and is now smoothly writing "JACKSON KELLEY" as Driver and "FRANK" as Runner on today's "RED" route.  Enter "Frank".  The four other men in the large dispatch room all greet him.  Frank is about four years younger than Jackson.  In fact, once again, Jackson is the oldest person in the room.  Frank bounces around the room, light on his feet but solid in his presence.  As Gail comes near Frank, he stops, then backpedals like Mohammed Ali saying,

            "Did you not get my memo?"

Frank looks dead serious, but the guys in the room - and Gail - all smile.  Gail backs away from him.

           "There's the truck" she says, "Load up now."

The large dented panel truck with Chinese signage and all the food for today pulls up just in front of Jackson’s car.  Frank and Jackson shake hands and they begin.   The truck and the street on which it was parked all carried enormous quantities of tagging and mark making, as though it was urban camouflage to obscure the presence of their truck on the bumpy cold weather cracked street.  Looked at individually, where that was possible, the voices screamed out through the marks.  Some understood, some frustratingly odd – odd enough to make readers try but also odd enough to leave them wondering.  Frank did not even try to read any of it.  He had become so used to it that felt like home.

For the next three hours Frank looks like the blurred figure remembered from the old FLASH super hero comic books Jackson read as a kid.  Frank's head, eyes, hands, and body all move in a well practiced choreography as he unloads, sorts, loads, and re-sorts the edible payload into the back of the 'vette.  Jackson taking orders from this fast-talking, fast-moving Runner.  Jackson settles into the Driver's seat.  Frank hands him a road-map, then physically plops down into the passenger seat saying loudly,

        "3 BLOCKS AHEAD, A LEFT, THEN 3 HOUSES DOWN"  to the first scheduled destination drop-off point.  Jackson puts the bright yellow MEALS ON WHEELS delivery sign on the dashboard, shifts into first gear, and they leap down the street.  Frank smiles and says,      

          "This is SO low no one can see me in here..."
Which, when Jackson learns about Frank's run-ins with the local uniformed constabulary, is probably a good thing.  While studying the Meal Menu combination listed on their set of plasticized pages Frank says,
         "St. Christopher, and all its people, Gail, the drivers, and the runners

         ....they all saved my life." 

His face goes from hard and grim to soft and friendly.  Returning to the menus in his hands he said,

        " Only 13 meals, some milk, some juice, almost NOsoup

        .....they are really being EASY on you Mr. Jackson."
        "Gail said she couldn't put soup in THIS car..."   Jackson replied while downshifting

around a taxi blocking the lane.
        "Gail's the boss in there" Frank thumbed toward the dispatcher's office, far behind us now....

"But WE'RE the boss out here!"
They fell into a pattern of : 1. set address target, 2. leap into action, 3. park anywhere with their flashers and the bright yellow sign on the dashboard.  4. Jackson would  watch Frank bounce up out of the car...
               " I play soccer" Frank said.

5. open up the rear hatch of the 'vette to sort and assemble the custom ordered pieces of the meal, then 

6. watch Frank blur out as he flew across the streets, over low fences, into buildings, carrying meals to the waiting hungry diners.
They finished early and Jackson was not surprised.  Jackson took Frank for a coffee across the street from the St. Christopher MEALS ON WHEELS office.  That's where Jackson learned his name was Francisco, and that he was from Madeira Island, close to Africa, but governed by Lisbon in Portugal.  Here, in Toronto, he had been beaten on the head and pushed down a flight of stairs and left for dead many years ago.  The people from good old Saint Christopher had somehow helped him back into life, piece by recuperating piece. There was much more about Frank ... Francisco... and the older Portuguese people they had delivered meals to this morning.  Even more about his paranoid-sounding violent run-ins with the local police in this specific part of Toronto over the last 20 years......but as he said to Jackson,

                  "Not all on the first day Mr.Jackson, not all on the first day."

In fact Jackson never saw Frank again. The next times he drove for MEALS ON WHEELS he was paired up with different people.  Frank did not come around for a long time they told him.  One time, staring into a shop window at saturated colour Easter Bunny display, in spite of its pagan roots or maybe because of them, he thought he could actually smell the Coming Of Spring.  Jackson mentioned that to his new and much younger partner, THE RUNNER that day, who looked at him with full faced 16 year old incredulity and said,

            "ya'CRAZY man?  We got at least one more cold giant dump comin'..... y'just leave those sandbags in     the back - and those runflat-snow-tires on the car, so we can get this food to 'em that needs it."

The mere mention of more snow, as beautiful as it had been across the winter, brought forth warmer imaginary desired aromas within Jackson’s senses.  A new warmer dream had recently taken up residence.  Warm smells of old Caribbean shores.   He'd keep that with him until the real things could come along and he could actually walk those shores.  In the meantime Jackson was building  new routines to provide stability and security in his latest life.  Almost the way magicians develop routines to perform magic.  Now in his mid fifties he would probably be well set in his old ways had not GOD, LIFE, FATE & DESTINY intervened regularly to sweep away his pitiful constructs and push him back out onto the stage of life to begin again or continue on.
            "Starting over at the bottom again?" the new tall young MEALS-ON-WHEELS Runner-Volunteer asked Jackson as he tried to piece together the identity of his older new Driver-Volunteer in the red Corvette on this very sunny snow-melting Sunday morning on the Portuguese streets.

            "Yeh?" Jackson replied.

Jackson chose the next route to the next addresses with unseen hungry people waiting for their meals to arrive at their tightly packed, paint-flaking old row houses.  If last year Jackson had been deciding which Life path to take or NOT take, then he was now experiencing the results of those decisions.  The new year saw all of Jackson’s habits, patterns, and routines come apart.  Leaving him in an uncomfortable state of freefall.  All the things that were "bad" or "good" or "productive" or “wasteful” seemed to hover just out of his reach, floating and bobbing in this new life stream.  While he did retain some basic sense of Right & Wrong, everything else seemed wide open .... or empty.

Jackson noticed that he had begun to forget what day to do laundry, pay rent, or return a phone call.  He had no previous period in his half century of living to relate all of this new floundering to.  Physically it felt similar to the joyful exhilaration or frightening despair he could recall from trendy "acid-trips" almost 40 years ago.  He thought that those had lasted over long periods of time but this new condition was rolling on not for hours and days, but for weeks and months with no sign of let-up.  Last fractured segments of Jackson’s old life moved farther from his field of view, just before all the newer chunks and pieces of New Life floated, slid, wedged, ricocheted and locked into place.  There existed a smooth clean, almost computer-machined vista.  There was no problem, but no peace either.  It was a momentary place of void .  Some sort of cosmic timing error, meant to be invisible to those of us living our lives but somehow he could see it – feel it.  It rippled out as smoothly as it had slid in. It was replaced, covered, and built over with very raw and new routines of The Next Life. 

The two men in their MEALS ON WHEELS dirty red Corvette with big fat snow tires delivered their last hot foods and then returned to base to check in and check out for the week. Jackson said goodbye, headed over to the old REX Hotel for his late lunch and dreaded the next part of the day.  He had no real work to do, no chores to look after and no errands to run.  Which left him with too much time to dwell on the past – present past and recent history.  Jackson let the car drive him homeward.  He spotted a DOLLAR STORE and parked.  Without a drop of irony Jackson purchased three small HAPPY FACE drinking cups for his small new place by the water just west of Toronto. 

His employer had let him use an old loft close to work when he first started at the little studio in Toronto, but now it was time to get really settled in his own place.  As he packed up his few things to move out of the loaned loft apartment in the down and dirty artsy part of Toronto, he found an extra set of cutlery.  The cutlery, and the plates and bowls, were given to him by his wife Shari when they had last met on neutral ground in the old college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a few weeks ago.  She had driven there from her place in Chicago and he had driven there from Toronto, sort of a half way meeting place.  Now, back in Toronto again, Jackson stood there looking at the duplicate set.  He had asked her to bring him one of everything in preparation for his next move to the small apartment ... one plate, one bowl, one fork, one knife, and one spoon.

He did not realize until now, as he repacked to leave again, that she had brought him TWO of everything.  Jackson could take this as pure female practicality, of Shari just being sensible about things or he could take this as a physical symbol that she was giving him two sets of everything so that maybe SHE could use one, when she came to see him. Jackson had already set aside the longer-term fantasy of he and his wife actually living together again on a DAILY basis.  He had quietly quipped to her, while they were driving slowly around Ann Arbor in the sports car,

            “We are probably, both of us, better suited for more intense but much less frequent                                           

              meetings and cohabitations.”

They both forced a smile at his quip as he turned the steering wheel.  He had wanted to say "conjugal visitations", but that made one or both of their lives sound like prison sentences.  That was not the case for either of them. In any case the double sets of dining pieces made him smile.  He briefly entertained the notion that maybe she had done this as a physical symbol.  That she was giving him two sets of everything so that SHEcould use one, when she came to see him - that she had started to think about visiting him in Toronto. During the long drive to and from Ann Arbor to meet with her, he passed many familiar memory-laden landmarks in Ontario, Canada.

Canada - the country where they had lived together on a daily basis with much great purpose for many years.  They had their young boys then.  They traveled with them over these same Ontario roads in their various minivans as the sons grew.  Jackson foolishly let his mind drift back.  He could hear old physical audio cassette tapes they plugged into the van dashboard to have music in those wide stretches with few radio stations ( gone now, as the airwaves were packed hourly with every stripe of digital musical offering everywhere one drove ).  Jackson remembered the bickering and giggling and singing of the two boys.  How they would all, even he, sing along to overly familiar worn out old audio tapes.  After so many repeated playing, they had become "TRAVELING WILBURYS" themselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwqhdRs4jyA

 Memories slipped through cool spring Canadian air in this newer, lower, sportier car on this trip. They made Jackson smile.  Felt warm in his heart.  A good feeling to have in this latter-day single-deck-warship of a vehicle as it flew over the roads.   When he looked into his rear-view mirror, his mind's remembering eye could see two small young boys in their car seats strapped in with the minivan's seatbelts in the back.  The cries and groans and laughs as they passed yet another field of cows in great wide Canadian pastures.  Decades ago.  Jackson, after he left his Ann Arbor meeting with Shari and headed back to Toronto.  He drove closer to the Canadian/USA border when he saw the sign that took him out of himself for a moment.

            "POINT PELEE, LEAMINGTON, ONTARIO"  He said out loud to himself with his official voice.  Point Pelee - southernmost mainland point in Canada.  Sand dunes, marshland, and forested areas.  Much like the grounds near Jackson’s new small apartment, a natural sanctuary for migratory birds.  Monarch butterflies actually still migrate to Mexico from Point Pelee in late August.  A native population existed on Point Pelee SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

By the 1840’s, only two hundred remaining aboriginal people were sharing the peninsula with new British and European squatters.  In 1890’s the Department of the Interior, which held the “naval reserve land” in custody, granted the British and European squatters free title to their land.  By that time 20 commercial fisheries were already operating along the peninsula's shores and by the late 1800's, all free ranging deer had been wiped out by over hunting. Leases for removal of beach sand were approved and the point’s shoreline receded 800 metres as a result of offshore dredging of sand for sale in and to the U.S.A.

Point Pelee became Canada's ninth national park.  In the early 1970's a new plan for conservation of natural resources made the preservation of wildlife habitat a priority.  It had been during those days that Jackson and his young wife Shari visited Point Pelee for their first time.  Having come from an already crumbling world of brick, concrete, and rusted steel in Detroit, Michigan, this place, this revitalized Canadian park, was a burst of Nature on their young senses.  Back then they were in love with each other, and to him it felt as though this land was in love with them too. This then, this Point Pelee, was the name, the euphemism, Jackson would give to the over-powering feelings he had for Shari those 30+ long years ago.  Before he could comfortably say that he loved her with his whole heart, Jackson would turn to her and just say,                 

            "POINT PELEE”

Now, with all the things failing the way they were, Jackson had three responses each time.  The first was the practical response, or at least seemed to be.  He had to do something to regain that which he was losing.  The second was his brain telling him over and over again that all of that was over.  Over and gone and there was no point in trying to regain or recapture.  The third was Jackson’s heart telling him what it had always told him.  Jackson had never really understood love.  He did not understand the giving or the getting of love.  He just knew he either wanted it or needed it. The conflict of those three voices was beginning to wear on Jackson.  For the first time in a long time he was beginning to doubt his himself.  He was not sure who he was, where he was, or what he was really feeling.  Fogs of doubt blew in and faded out at their own will.  Jackson did not seem to have much knowledge of or control over them.

It had not dawned on him until that moment, looking again at the duplicate set of cutlery, that he might have found a new version of the old overwhelming Point Pelee, with all its trails, animals, marshland, and forest to live next to, there on the water's edge.  He packed the duplicate set of cutlery into a small box and set it in the back of the Corvette.  Jackson closed the hatchback trunk lid, packed full for the new waterside place.  eH Jackson left behind all the arty wall markings when he headed further west of the city.  He saw no GANG TAGGING, and no HATE TAGGING - just LATRINE vulgarisms and political scrawls this far west at this time.  But this is where he first saw the curving swooping http://img1.etsystatic.com/il_fullxfull.112500533.jpg  Thuluth.  The medieval Islamic style of handwritten alphabet.  The best known artist to write Thuluth script had been the historically famous  Mustafa Râkım Efendi,  http://www.dunyabizim.com/?aType=haberYazdir&ArticleID=6784&tip=haber,  

a painter who set the standard in Ottoman calligraphy.  But now it is evolving on walls.  Evolving in a strong slicing curving flow over any surfaces rough or smooth.

Jackson left the deep city loft apartment behind and drove west into these markings.

………………………………………………………….

FUTURE PRESENT  :  Who is it?” 

Jackson’s ears could hear deep urban city in L.A. better than his eyes could see it now. 

At least there was some clarity to the sounds he could hear.  Gratifying as his sight blurred. 

The smooth contact of vehicle tires on hot flat dry streets blended with mixed music and sound of after-market sonic-fx mods on half of the vehicles now.  The sounds were installed for several reasons, Jackson thought.  Originally new sonic-fx were used to alert and warn blind people and pedestrians in general.  Silent runnings of newer vehicles were causing more vehicular-pedestrian accidents.  Something needed to be done.  The use of accessory sound became a fad to restore the engine-exhaust sound to new quiet vehicles, so that those that still missed internal combustion engines could have the sound.  After that, the extreme vanity-personalization business kicked in and drivers were using sounds to identify themselves or even slightly threaten others.  So now Jackson could hear the occasional snarl or growl mixed with the heavy whirring of tires.  His son Mason was still cradling his head and neck but Jackson tried to swivel to see his nearby assailants.  No use.  He felt his thinning hair crush between his skull and his son’s sleeve and arm, as his head flopped heavily back again.

Andrew turned back toward Mason and said,

            “Did you hear that?  I could swear I know that voice.”

Mason, holding up the head and shoulders of old Jackson, replied,

            “No, I didn’t . . . OK, who?  Who is it?”

On their side of the pavement back in the cast shadows, Zorah and Majed dropped their volume and were talking quietly to one another.

………………………………………………………………………………..

2000’s – TORONTO then

A funny thing had happened to Jackson Kelley on his way to sleep in his new small apartment in Toronto.  He had known the bed space in the new place by the lake was limited before he moved in.  It was a “bachelor” or “studio”  apartment that looked out onto the wonderful wide blue waters of Lake Ontario, just west of Toronto in Canada.  Because it had a water-view, Jackson had to rent it as soon as it was known the other tenant was deciding to move out - about 7 weeks before Jackson could actually move into the apartment.  That gave him lots of time to consider the bed space.  The type of bed to have.  When Jackson had toured the apartment the woman who was living here had her bed tucked into the corner, to the side of the balcony door that opened to the lake.  She was a very small woman and she had a very small bed, the kind Jackson’s sons had slept in when they were little two decades earlier.  Jackson decided not to invest in anything too permanent for this new bed, but knew that he wanted it to face the lake, and that it would be better if it were bigger than the previous woman’s tiny bed.  Jackson used an inflatable-portable, queen-sized BED, as he had slept on one of these at his son’s apartment in Los Angeles.  A bed he kept for guests.  Jackson had found the bed very comfortable in L.A.  So he  purchased and brought one to the new, small apartment.  The queen-sized air-bed ate up almost all of the floor space in the small apartment, but it was comfortable and allowed Jackson to sit up and see the seagulls drifting in the big blue sky across the coves and breakwaters, outside his new balcony window.  It was very nice.                

Then the problems began.

It was a little low.  No frame or box spring, just a mattress.  Jackson had slept on mattresses on the floor several times in his life, but had not really considered what that would be like to do again in his fifth decade.   It was difficult.

When Jackson was younger and sleeping ( or cavorting ) on mattresses on the floor, he was not wearing his new FlabJacket.  Yes, the FlabJacket gift from God for his 45th birthday.  Jackson would talk to God each morning these days, but had not had the courage to bring up the subject of this inappropriate gift.  So he just put up with it daily, sometimes causing him to do odd things he had never done before.  When Jackson sat up in the new air bed, and swung his feet around to touch the floor, he found my knees up around his ears, with his abdomen trying to roll out of the bed before he did.  Jackson imagined that he looked a bit like a bull frog on a lily pad, and seemed to make similar noises too.

Then the air mattress, the very comfortable air mattress with the built in electronic pump inflator mechanism with remote trigger button, began to develop a lily pad like undulation.  It seemed to be leaking air, very slowly.  When Jackson sat up he could feel his bottom pushing down toward the floor and discovered that was why his knees were up around my ears.  He now had a rather   asymmetrical life growing from his asymmetrical body and face.  Jackson remembered with some dread how his own father had gone from very skinny to flabby beer-belly fat.  Jackson read that males added at least one pound for every year they lived, and just got bigger and bigger.  The flab-jacket and the slow leak air mattress were a bad combination.

As the days went by the slow air leak in the mattress grew worse.  The American company that had sold it to him was apologetic and sent some new valves in the mail to remedy the problem.  The time it takes for physical mail to go from the United States to Canada was too long however.  The leak was now no longer slow enough to sleep on.  Jackson would go to bed at 11 or 12 on a fully pumped and comfortable air bed, and be awakened at 2am by elbows, knees, or nose clonking painfully into hardwood parquet floor below the air mattress.  It was not good. 

Jackson would get up and grab the remote activating mechanism and pump new air into the sagging bed.  The remote was a marvelous device.  In less than 60 seconds the bed was fully re-inflated.  And that would get him through the night - to the 6am waking hour.  Then Jackson would again be slogging in deflated plastic and sheets, much like a jerry-rigged life-raft awash at sea.  It got worse.

As the days went by the leak became faster so that the sinking-ship event was happening about every hour and half.  Jackson took appropriate guy-action.  He moved the remote activator closer to where his sleeping arm dangled its short distance to the floor.  When his fingers hit the deck, Jackson awoke and pushed the trigger button for 60 seconds of turbine-sounding re-charge inflation, and then dropped back off to sleep.  This routine went on for 4 more days and Jackson  found himself contacting the supplier in a sleep-deprived, short-tempered mood.  They agreed to take the unit back for a full exchange or refund.

So there it all was.  The cyclical collapsing sleep platform needing to go back to the supplier, but still not wanting to make a permanent commitment to a new real bed ( because somehow, in his mind, he felt that would mean he was giving up his old bed, back in Chicago, the one with his wife Shari in it ) - so Jackson Kelley did another guy-thing.   He bought two pieces of foam to sleep on.  He could sit up almost normally on them.  One firm, and one medium-firm.  He now knew he should have purchased a softer one for the top, but hey, he’s a guy. He can sleep on a firm bed.   Besides, Jackson could sleep all night now.  No more looking after re-inflation every other hour, the way one would have to tend to a newborn infant all night long.  Just sleep.

A little less comfortable, a little more firm ( Hell, Jackson wished the FlabJacket could get this firm ), but a wonderful all-night sleep just the same.  He sent the deflated air-bed back to its maker and resolved to sleep well in his temporary foam bed.

Jackson sat on the double-decker foam mattress, leaning back on a cushion against the wall, watching several couples below strolling the paths along stone breakwaters in the sparkling cove.  One small family of swans was hitting all their favorite feeding spots along the shoreline as gulls and Canadian geese soared from cove water to tree tops.  The phone rang. (actually phones no longer rang now - and clocks no longer ticked - so the phone beep-chirped) The phone was on a stack of books, to bring it up to the double foam mattress level.  Jackson reached over and answered it.  He listened to the brief call in silence. He hung up on the caller.

Over six months, Jackson had been through the SARS-Scare, the Mad-Cow-In-Canada scare, and even the  SWAT-THE-SKEETER West Nile Virus scare in Toronto.  Not one of these phased him in the least.  He had determined that face mask #M-95 was probably the best one for him and was actually prepared to shave off his beard for the first time in decades to survive the crazy deadly SARS epidemic.  Jackson noted more easily readable graffiti during this time.  Some that could have been called HATE TAGGING but was really POLITICAL, expressing hate for the powers that be.  The GANG TAGGINGslowed during this same time period, as though they were busy or hiding or both.  None of these tagging indicators bothered him at all either.

But, what the caller had said did phase him.  When the phone chirp’d it was Jackson’s wife Shari on their bed, back in Chicago.  No, it was Shari on her bed  back there.  She did not want to join him. She would not move from Chicago. The new temporary bed Jackson rested on remained firm, but he completely deflated.

Jackson Kelley just sat there on the firm foam bed trying to figure out what the right guy-thing would be to do now.  He sat on his two layers of foam in his new small apartment, looking out at the thick summer air hanging heavily on paths and trees around the breakwaters and parkland out his balcony window.  He had the small floor fan pointed directly at him. His Step-Mother had reminded him that his father had always said he could tell good stories, by which both he and she meant that Jackson was a real liar as a kid.

He would write. He knew that.  In his current state of mind Jackson could write a story about a man who had loved a woman. A seagull flew by his balcony railing, headed back out over the cove in a wide and graceful arc. Jackson opened his laptop computer and began his hunt and peck typing. He put his head back - resting it on the wall behind him, looked out over the top of his computer display at the misty waves lapping at the shores of the lake. He slowly exhaled and began to tell of a man who could see the woman he loved. Today this man had to reply to the woman he had lived with for decades. He hoped that this act of his would be honorable.

On the phone she had demanded an answer to her question, which was

            "Will you stay married to me but live apart?"

     

He dwelt on this question, as he understood it, for a few days now.  He had promised to give a reply.  When he thought about her - for he never got to see her anymore - he thought of her in the different roles, ages, looks, and attitudes that he had come to know.  Memory’s an amazing thing. Although he knew there had been days when they both hated each other, when they might have done bodily damage to one another, he could not resurrect more than a fuzzy indistinct image of those times.  No. All he remembered clearly were the good things, the happy times, and the beautiful girl-woman that joined him in Canada all those years ago. Her clear eyes, open heart, her brightness, enjoyment of life, and all the things they were discovering together as they lived together in various towns, meeting various people. They were still marginally in touch with many of the people they had met along the way. Those people always liked her, and generally wondered about him.

            "Will you stay married to me but live apart?"  she had asked.

Jackson ran this question over and over in his mind.  He remembered his original feelings about being married at all.  As a young man Jackson had always blurted out that he did not need a piece of paper to guarantee his commitment of Love to her. He loved her. He lived with her. Why did there have to be some ceremony and tradition to BIND him to her? If he did not love her, no ceremony nor tradition could bind him to her anyway. Wasn’t the idea of GETTING MARRIED to live together, to go through life together, to experience and share things together on a daily basis? And if they WERE married, shouldn’t they then live together?  For a while he had thought they might maintain what he took for their recently re-discovered closeness with the help of technology. He had hoped that the use of daily email, and even the telephone, would keep some of the vibrant passion and emotion he thought was still there thriving.  Jackson really had hoped that these strong emotions had been rekindled in the last few years, and he hoped they were a sign that the two of them loved each other as much as ever before.  It had made him so happy to think  that.  But unfortunately, she did not use the daily email methods he had hoped for.  Nor did they talk much at all anymore since she turned down his recent re-marriage proposal.  Then she  asked him not to come home for her birthday.  They had less communication now than at any point in their entire relationship.  And now she wanted to be away from him.  She wanted to

have a place that,

            " everyone can come home to ... it’s that simple" she said in a note to him.

Jackson thought that he understood her desire to build a nest, but it still made no sense to him. Did anyone ask her to build a nest for them all?, Jackson thought. He knew their sons were men now.  This single fact was more than a small part of the whole complicated and painful situation. One son was making his own nest with a girlfriend as he ventured further into independent life himself.  The other was tired of living in the expensive, superficial, isolated and faraway city he was in but was very unsure about where to complete his education and rejoin the human race. This son did not need the tension between his parents happening at the same time that he was trying to define who he was, and what he wanted to do next.

The note she had sent to him in Canada, to tell him she wanted to be away from him, to have a place that  " everyone can come home to....it’s that simple"... that note did not say "love" at the bottom, in fact it wasn’t even signed.  The note had opened with

            " You are very special to me’.  This continued to sound and feel like a girl in school telling a boy that she did not want him for a boyfriend? 

Her work situation was another factor in her reasoning to stay apart from him.  Although she did not like the company she worked for, nor the boss that would not truly manage her and her work, nor the grueling commute each day into the old downtown, she maintained that it was important to stay at this particular job, in this particular place, in that particular city.  He could not find the right words to express his thoughts, but he knew that if they did not live together, it made no difference how much or how little money either one was able to make.

The last factor that she had mentioned to him during one of their increasingly rare verbal exchanges was the closeness to her father.  But that really didn’t make much sense to him either as the distance to see him was only one hour further by air, or 6 hours further by car?  Jackson trying, but could not stay clearly focused on a clear reply to her.  He shook his head to clear it of his self-defense.  He took a break from his writing, and fired up his new local internet connection, a big deal for him in this small new place by the lake.

He wrote an email to the Pastor of their church in Chicago, Father Flamethrower. He asked the Pastor if he would meet with them or recommend someone to meet with them, to hear their story and offer advice and guidance on just what to do?  He sent the email off to this man because he had great respect for him and would listen and heed any advice this man would give.       

As Jackson tried to focus and find a solution to this hurtful problem, all that came into his mind were the good things, those happy times, that beautiful girl-woman whose sadness had been so mysterious.  Her clear eyes, open heart, brightness, the things they had discovered together as they lived together in various towns, meeting various people. He even felt that now, after all that had happened, after all the personality changes that God and Life had caused in him, that although people would most certainly always like her, they might even like him now.  He just wished that she did too.  He loved her so much.  Or maybe he just needed to love her as much or more than the first time he saw her.  As much or more than each time in the past he had tried to convince her how much he loved her. He loved her so much he was almost completely disabled in this situation.  If she did not love him anymore, he could not bear to see, talk, write to, or be connected to her in any way.  If she did not love him and want to live with him, she should stop pretending, he thought.

If she did not love him nor want to go through life together for the remaining years, then the charade must stop.  The phony act must end.  Jackson felt that Shari was certainly entitled to ANY decision she would make about her own life, but if she did not love him enough to live with him, they should be painfully honest and admit that it is over.  Jackson had offered, during one of the few intense exchanges of information, to let her come to some sort of a final decision in December.  If she still did not love him and still did not want to live with him, then they could split 50/50 in March of the following year. He had blurted this all out, spontaneously trying to "reasonable", "fair", and "understanding".  He hated every minute of it. He hated every word he spoke.  And now, he was being forced to reply again to

            "Will you stay married to me but live apart?"

His head dropped forward. His fingers froze at their keyboard.  His heart was breaking. He needed her so much.  He typed in slowly:

            "No, I cannot.  But if you must live apart from me, I will try to learn to understand.  I just cannot pretend anymore.  And I need you so much...but, no...I cannot.”

So Jackson said no to Shari.  He could not stay married to her but live apart from her. 

Shari made no reply.  She agreed to meet with their pastor, Father Flamethrower, in Chicago

to talk through their situation with him. 

Jackson never found out whether the pastor was in on it too, for Father Flamethrower described to them a separation in his own earlier life.  The pastor did this on the day that the three of them met in the pastor’s office at the church in Chicago.  Afterward, when Jackson and Shari finished a sensitively fragile brunch interrupted by her need to make a phone call in the restaurant nearby, she drove Jackson to the airport to return him to Canada. So he could go back to work in Toronto.   Jackson felt she acted even more tense and sad than usual when he was getting out of the vehicle but he dismissed it and  pulled his two bags out of the back.  When the vehicle door closed and latched Shari drove away not looking back.  Jackson walked toward the curb carrying his bags toward the airport terminal building.  That’s exactly when the sympathetic summons server walked up to Jackson and handed him papers for the divorce she had prearranged before they met the pastor at the church.  This was the man she had called from the restaurant.  The summons server said something conciliatory then left him, as all the other fully loaded airport vehicles moved slowly around Jackson standing stock still in the traffic with his vacant blank look concealed inside his closed eyelids.

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