Sammie

In the wake of Sammie’s death, aside from the grief, I am swamped with guilty feelings, that I should have known something was wrong, should have noticed his decline sooner. I was responsible, and he died on my watch.

My mother would say, oh, for crying out loud, it was just a cat. Then I remembered an incident when I was 12 or 13, when I came home from school and noticed my pet chicken was not in her pen. Now this chicken was named Gemma, my name, because her feathers were the same auburn color as my hair. I’d had her since she was a tiny ball of yellow fluff, when I was, I think, about five. Unlike my first cat pet, Pinkie Tiptoes, who broke my heart when he couldn’t be found when we moved from Ft. Smith to Miami, Gemma had been crated up with a couple of other hens, and joined us in our new home. I don’t remember her accommodations at the first two rent houses where we lived that first year in Miami (4^th and part of 5^th grade) but at the last rent house on “B Northwest,” the pen was about 10’ x 12’ and the ‘barn’ was an upside-down enamel washing machine tub propped up on one side so the hens could get inside.

I would sit in the sunshine with Gemma, stroking her warm smooth feathers, making chicken noises just to be friendly. She knew me, would come to me and huddle next to my legs. I imagined she was lonely and bored in that tiny pen without a blade of grass left standing. Now she was gone.

Without Sammie’s help, the chair would float away

After growing increasingly panicked in my fruitless search for Gemma, I raced inside the house to ask my mother. She confirmed that she hadn’t seen Gemma and said I should look for her, that maybe she got out of the pen. She stated further that maybe I hadn’t given her water and that was the reason she got out of the pen.

I spent an hour wandering the neighborhood, especially the overgrown vacant lot across the street, swallowing down tears and calling “Here, chickey chickey chickey” until I was hoarse.

I don’t remember anything further from that day, but the guilt assigned to me by my mother has remained part of my psyche. It was years before I thought about that and asked my mother if she knew what had happened to Gemma. She had no memory of the event, only faintly remembered the chicken.

But I know what happened. My mother lied to me. She knew that Gemma had died and had been part of the parental decision to remove the dead body. I doubt my dad would have made up some story about her escaping her pen, much less assigning blame on me for her disappearance. But Mom never missed a chance to assign blame. For her, life was about assigning blame; this is still her default reaction to anything she judges to be problematic. Someone must be blamed.

It’s useless for me to attempt any further discussion of the issue with her, as her memory by now has disintegrated into a five-second attention span, if that. Now I mostly feel sorry for her, that her life as the middle child of nine had been so fraught that she could only adopt her mother’s habit of judging and negativity. I think I understand—to a mother or a child of the Depression, a person couldn’t afford to invest much emotion into the welfare of an animal when deprivation constantly lurked at the kitchen door.

What’s left for me to do is always remember, especially with my pets now, that I must go out of my way to take care of them—cats, primarily, as my medium and spirit animal. What happened to Sammie was a function of undiagnosed feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus (cat AIDS). How or when he was infected with those viruses I have no idea. My neighbor, who obtained Sammie from an older man down the road, who more or less fed a feral female cat and generations of her kittens without a fucking care in the world that he should have had her spayed or at least vaccinated, belatedly confirmed to me that when he got the kitten, he did not have him vaccinated for anything.

Somehow, Sammie knew early on that he wanted to be here instead of next door with the neighbor, whose immaturity meant that Sammie might or might not get fed. I first saw him here when he’d been treed by Cu and Weezy, watching me call off the dogs from his perch high in an oak tree just outside my yard fence. After that he appeared at the edge of the yard, uneasy about the dogs but clearly very hungry. I started putting out food, talking to him. It was months later that finally I asked if I could ‘adopt’ Sammie.

The neighbor agreed, even though I could see the young man felt affection for the cat. But he knew he wasn’t being a good pet owner and, I think, was relieved. The first thing I did was have Sammie neutered, as the evidence of his masculine pursuit of females had begun to scar his face. I should have asked about vaccinations then, but I didn’t.

Guilt.

So began a little more than two years of Sammie at my house, well fed and slowly being accepted by the existing cattery of four other cats. Hellion considered it her duty as top cat around here to run him off, while Esmerelda and Nali tolerated him, even came to play with him and respond to his polite throaty trilled greeting seeking permission to join their company. Finnegan was a different kind of adversary, being male (neutered) and seeing his duty to eliminate another male. But slowly they too settled into a benign tolerance, thanks to careful work by myself and whichever adult child of mine was spending time here as the two males often ended up in that part of the house.

It occurred to me sometime over the past summer that Sammie had not been as active as usual but I put it off to the terrible heat. About a month ago, I noticed that he wasn’t always showing up for dinner, and I put that off as maybe another neighbor was feeding him. I didn’t notice that he was losing weight; it was subtle and over a long period of time. BUT, guilt, even if I had noticed sooner that he was struggling, there was nothing I could have done. He might have had these viruses since birth.

I’m trying not to linger over my failures, as I have no clear evidence of any role I might have played in his death. I loved that damn cat. He was full of personality. A true gentleman, he never bullied the other cats, always took the submissive role, and just wanted to have a good time. Like other ginger cats, he was easy-going, a laid back cat, just wanna have fun. And eat whatever I might offer. And snuggle, get petted. His purr came readily, sometimes before a hand actually touched him.

As I watched the vet sedate him and then return a short time later with the slender hypodermic of bright pink death, I thought of so many other cats that need rescue, and tried not to cry.

But I did cry. I hardly made it out of the clinic before ugly sobs racked my throat. Hot tears ran down my cheeks and even though I’m an old woman worn with the losses in my life, I felt like my heart was breaking. I brought him home, wrapped him in a soft towel as his still-warm body lolled loosely in my arms, and laid him to rest in the hole I had already dug in my garden.

Sammie will be missed. He had a special talent for making me and my kids feel good, and that’s what pets are for. I will keep trying not to feel guilty, but when you take someone into your care, it’s part of the contract that you are responsible for his life. I’ll never escape that no matter what my mom might have said oh so many years ago.

Best Burger Ever

brendas — Brenda’s Bigger Burger circa 2012. The metal railing was added when a street widening took half the parking lot. Photo from an article by Dustin Bartholomew, November 8, 2012, in the *Fayetteville Flyer*, Fayetteville, Arkansas

Today was one of those days when I came face to face with the passage of time. In traffic at a stoplight, I studied my surroundings and realized that Brenda’s Bigger Burger property sat vacant with a big ‘SOLD’ sign on the parking lot. A pang of nostalgia twisted in my chest. I knew it had closed. I just hadn’t thought about what it meant.

Through no fault of its own, the place always marked a pivotal moment in my life.

I never knew Brenda’s Bigger Burger existed until December 1970. Never mind that it stood on the corner of 6^th and South Hill, an intersection I had passed countless times growing up. Several blocks further down South Hill nestled the modest little white building where my parents dragged us kids to church every time the doors opened.

On this particular weekend, my church-going days had long since passed. Finally. Now at the end of my first semester back at university after nearly three years living in California, I sat in the front passenger seat of Sam Holloway’s white Ford Galaxie waiting impatiently for our food. I was starving.

In retrospect, I realize that my ravenous appetite had not just a little to do with my first marijuana ‘high’ the previous night.

Momentous enough in its own right, my initiation into the drug culture hardly topped the chart of radical changes that occurred that night. Even more staggering was the fact that I had unexpectedly become unfaithful to my husband.

I could lay all this at the feet of Sam Holloway, a friend of an old friend whom I’d encountered on campus just a few days earlier. Old Friend and I were both married, him in grad school and me finishing my bachelors. We agreed to get together sometime.

‘Sometime’ turned out to be one evening a few days later when he called and wanted to stop by with a friend. They brought a six-pack. I was on my second glass of Chablis.

When Old Friend and Holloway arrived stamping snow off their shoes at my carport door, I was baking banana nut bread to send to my husband. He was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines earning a captain’s hazardous duty pay as a courier flying in and out of Southeast Asia with top secret missives. Our separation had begun in late September, an eighteen-months’ tour for him before he could get out of the military and enough time for me to finish my degree.

I’d been lonely. I’d fretted over whether to dally, an inclination I’d fought even while still in California. We’d been together five years, married for nearly three. We’d discussed new ideas like open marriage but hadn’t made any moves.

That doesn’t excuse what I did. In an open marriage, there would have been an agreement. This was more delicious and awful than that, unplanned, unexpected, and entirely outrageous.

Old Friend passed out on his fourth beer and snored at the end of the couch. Having no other furniture, I sat in the middle of the couch and Holloway leaned back on the other end, his hand-tooled alligator cowboy boots crossed at the ankle. Twirling one end of his elaborate mustache, he pulled a skinny yellow cigarette out of his jacket pocket and flicked his Zippo. Sweet smelling smoke spiraled from the tip.

Several minutes later, the ‘high’ hit me with a warm caress on the back of my neck. My forehead floated upward. Lights dazzled. Colors like the black and white plaid sofa and the big red and yellow candlesticks I’d made out of flower pots began to pulse. Even more intriguing were Holloway’s green eyes.

Incredible as we found it, we’d been born on the same day in the same town. His mother and my father both taught school at Rogers before we moved away. My father was remembered there, Holloway said.

It was the Chablis. It was the weed. It was the strange coincidence of our connections and the scintillating repartee that flew back and forth between us. It was a slice of time cut from both our regular lives and set aside for this experience.

The next morning every icy surface including the streets glistened in bright sunshine. The ground had been white with snow for two days. Just driving across town to Brenda’s had been an slippery adventure. He insisted on Brenda’s, so that’s where he took me.

The food came out steaming hot, a sizzling beef patty on a big round bun. My teeth sank into the burger and saliva instantly flooded my mouth. Yellow mustard! Fresh sliced onion! Dills lovingly arranged so that each bite included just enough pickle. Tomato when real tomatoes were all you could get.

The burger and fries came wrapped in thin tissue paper, enough layers that when Holloway spread out the fries on the seat between us, the fat didn’t seep through to the upholstery. Heaped in long limp strands, the fries were salty golden treasure.

My hands trembled as I ate. I savored my Dr. Pepper down to the last crunchy nugget of ice. For the third time in less than 24 hours, I died and went to heaven.

I broke two more promises before it all ended. One I broke immediately, my promise never to smoke cigarettes again. After we’d crumpled the mustard-stained tissue papers, Holloway pulled out his pack of Winstons. My brand.

The other, the promise to myself that I’d never do that again? I lasted ten days. The affair lasted a scant two months before we both moved on. The marriage lasted another three years.

When the day arrives that Brenda’s building falls before the bulldozer blade, I can tell you right now—I will shed tears. Not only for Holloway or what we had. Not only for the marriage or the man I never quite stopped loving.

My tears will also fall for the fact that there’ll never be a better burger than the one I ate that day.

[From an untitled work in progress which may or may not see print in my lifetime…]

Ten Lives

I could spend ten lifetimes reading the stories of humankind and still not know enough. Sumeria, Greece, Egypt, Rome. China: the Records of the Grand Historian, Bamboo Annals, the Five Classics. Popol Vuh. Genghis Khan. Charlemagne. Tesla. Secret writings of ancient and medieval women.

I could spend ten lifetimes carrying out the ambitions of various parts of myself and still not do it all or well enough. Art—the swirl of vibrant color on thick white paper. Music—Bach fugue played a nine-foot grand. Literature—a turn of phrase that takes away breath, stories that ache to be told.

Plant, cultivate, and harvest, dry, freeze, slice—onion and butter sizzle in a hot iron skillet, ready for potato. Goats— chewing alfalfa hay at the barn door, watching me with yellow slit eyes. Weave and sew fine cloth, yards of it filling my arms. Gather fallen twigs to kindle a fire, add more wood and watch the flames spread, leap, fall to pulsing coals and pale ash.

I could love ten thousand men and a thousand women and still not have loved enough. Never have touched enough soft skin. Never have kissed enough lips or marveled enough at the mingling of color in the iris of an eye. Lens to the soul I worship with my body.

With endless days would come endless shapes of clouds racing across the sky, dark and turbulent rolling in with thunder, thin wisps high in frozen air. Rain lash the walls, wind bend the trees. Deep in the forest an open glade glows chartreuse. Sun sears dry ground, bakes the insects scuttling for shade. Hoar frost coats the grass and fence wire, forms iridescent lace of spider webs. Snow drifts down at dawn, five degrees and the air is blue.

In these things and countless more, the joy of physical being fills my heart, tells me why I exist. More than the grief, the suffering, the despair, it is the supreme excellence of incarnation that drives me to my stubborn end.

Waah!

I admit it. Displays of emotion bother me. I’m not talking about a quick hug or peck on the lips in greeting, or a quiet dab of handkerchief at the corner of the eye. And laughter of just about any level slips past my discomfort zone.

It’s the wailing and shrieking of grief that sets my teeth on edge, a face wadded up with tears streaming, shoulders hiccupping. Whoever is suffering to this extreme shouldn’t be watched. Grief on display is, to me, a bit of fakery, or at least exaggeration, an attempt to garner attention and sympathy.

Similarly, I don’t want to observe someone convulsing in pain. If it’s an emergency, I would be the first to summon medical care or do what I could to relieve the injury. But if there’s nothing to be done, if the person is recovering from surgery or an illness and the moans and groans tumble from his lips in a constant agony, unless it’s a loved one who can benefit from my bedside assurances, I don’t need to be there.

It’s not that I deny soul-stirring experiences. But to me, these moments of extremis should be kept private. This was how I was raised, likely a tradition hearkening back to my cultural origins in the British Isles where a stiff upper lip practically goes without saying. I suspect an evolved survival instinct at work here. Indisposed by injury or seized in grief, a person is unaware of a lurking threat who means to take advantage.

And it’s not that I myself don’t wail and sob in sorrow, or writhe with a crushing headache. But I do it alone, behind closed doors, where I’m assured that no one observes. Alone, I am safe to let down my defenses and lick my wounds in solitude.

I’m one of those people who don’t want a hospital stay to become the next big event. I’m very appreciative of new laws requiring the hospital to gain my explicit permission before allowing anyone to wander into my room. Once, years ago, as I lay in a hospital bed in considerable discomfort following surgery, I was set upon by do-gooders from my mother’s church who stood at the bedside and murmured various platitudes as if (a) I could actually comprehend what they were saying through the fog of pain meds, (b) their words somehow provided me important comfort, and (c) we could all pretend that their visit had little to do with anything but a kind of distorted voyeurism. I hardly knew them. I was outraged, but of course I couldn’t leap up and show them the door, which—I think—may have contributed to their pleasure in being there.

Like church do-gooders, many people evidently get off on watching other people expose themselves. This would explain the otherwise incomprehensible rise of various types of television shows where people intentionally throw their bodies through sadistic obstacle courses, or wade into a competition for a love partner, or allow cameras to track their every private moment. Who are these people? And I don’t mean just those crazy or desperate enough to submit to this kind of “challenge.” Who watches this stuff? Who wants to observe someone farting, or gasping for air, or sobbing in humiliation? Ye gods! Spare me.

Is it a good thing that people are recently more willing to exhibit their pathos for public consumption? Some argue ‘yes,’ that it is only when we acknowledge our feelings that we can breathe through the suffering and grow as a person. But please note—I’m not advocating for denial of feelings. I for one am confident I can acknowledge my feelings and ‘grow’ without subjecting those around me to the process. Please explain how exactly internal growth benefits from an audience? If anything, the audience factor dilutes the event’s vehemence and immediacy.

Is emotive denuding a new kind of drug? Are we reducing our most heart-felt moments to ridicule and (excuse me, it’s time for popcorn) commonality as another way to avoid really feeling what we’re feeling? Are we watching gladiators fight for their lives while laughing in the stands? At what point do we connect the dots between routine trivialization of sensibilities and killing without compunction?

But pardon me while I change hats. I am not only an extremely private person but also an author, striving to create stories that someone wants to read. And while I myself will not let my personal emotions slip past my mask, I have to keep in mind that my characters will gain no purchase among readers if they do not spill their guts all over the page. In order to breathe life into made-up people, I must make them laugh, cry, tremble in terror, and contort in agony. Whether the descriptions of these various feelings are torrid or restrained as befits the tone of the story, characters must reflect their intimate experience of love or battle in ways that reflect what the reader would expect of a real person. My bias against overt expressions of passion thus works against me in my writing.

Consolation in this conflict between what I do and what I write lies in the fact that my stories are a private experience between the reader and the page. Even more to the point, the way in which I develop and expose characters to events that wring their hearts and tear their flesh is in itself a private process contained within the scene and its circumstances. Beyond that point, if the day arrived that a story of mine appeared on television or the big screen where all those intense moments were exposed to the scrutiny of large audiences, I myself would not be able to watch.