The Paddock Review

Chapter 5

Don’t Ever Do That Again

…

I was standing in the parking lot of the restaurant but wasn’t really that hungry. So, I decided to just take a stroll through downtown and see what folks were up to. Since there were a few “Tow-away” signs in the parking lot, I wondered briefly if I should move my brother’s car but decided that employees didn’t really monitor the parking situation. I don’t think they really care if you wind up going into their establishment. I guess maybe there’s someone inside who cares, but I was willing to take my chances.

Walking the sidewalks was actually a real treat. It was slower here than in LA. And it was cold. So, I don’t know, seeing Christmas decorations hanging from streetlights felt a lot more authentic. In LA, they had decorations on streetlights, but it was 68 degrees and not a snowflake to be seen.

I was also surprised by how different people looked. Not racially, of course. This area was very white…but more so in how they dressed. I saw my fair share of guys my age with big, hairy beards to match their big, burly bodies, and those bodies were cloaked in bright orange and camouflage hunting gear. And it was every kind of camouflage you could think of—forest camo, winter camo, and even a sort of dessert, digital camo. (Though I’m not sure how useful that would be in these parts.) But they weren’t coming back from a hunt or going out on one. These were their shopping outfits. These jackets and hats were what they wore, I assumed, pretty much all the time. These guys tended to be hopping out of large trucks. I thought maybe they were unnecessarily large, but not in these parts. In LA, yes, I see dudes jumping out of jacked up F350s, and it’s not like they work construction or are hauling heavy shit. Their trucks are usually clean as a whistle. I think those guys in LA just want to drive around like that. Also, California has some weird law about needing a special permit to have a ball trailer hitch on the back bumper. So, those guys that drive their monster trucks sometimes have some sort of metal testicles hanging where the ball hitch would go. I always think they’re trying too hard. What’s the phrase…“Small dick energy?”

But here? Here, they seem to need these big trucks. Most of the ones I saw were beat up, and they hadn’t seen a car wash in months. There were salt lines running along the bottom of the trucks from where the plows laid the salt to clean up the snowy roads. There were some with rust and miscellaneous crap in the beds of the pickups.

It made me think back to a time when we had an old Chevy Silverado pickup that my brother and I used to haul wood from the forest out in the back of our house growing up. Our dad insisted we get in twenty cord of wood every August, or we couldn’t play football. This affected my brother way more than me, because he was so much older than I was. When he was heading into his junior year of high school, I was playing junior pee wee ball. Hell, Nate did all the work. I just helped stack a little and basically kept him company. And mind you, the forest in the back wasn’t ours, which meant we were trespassing and cutting down trees that belonged to other people. But that didn’t seem to concern my dad. Plus, it wasn’t him out there doing it, and if Nate and I got caught, you can be sure that our dad would sell us down the river, even if we were minors.

My brother once asked my dad why he didn’t get out there and help us. I remember thinking that Nate was about to get thrown across the room. It had happened before. My dad didn’t like to be challenged like that, but my brother started to learn to bend the way he said things. And he bent the heck out of this one. He said it more like “I’m curious” or “I’m sure you have a lot on your plate” rather than “Why the hell aren’t you out there helping us?” Anyway, our dad didn’t seem put off by the question. He put out his cigarette and simply said “Sometimes thinking and planning is harder than actual physical labor.” He then popped two Dexatrim and took a huge gulp of his coffee; then he lit another cigarette. (Our dad was far from overweight. He was just addicted to the amphetamine-like compound in the pills.) And that was the end of that. My brother was smart…and smart enough to know he better not push his luck with a follow up question.

Well, one time when Nate and I were loading wood in the bed of the Chevy, we had a heck of a time getting this big ass log up into the bed. Nate was tired by this point. He usually cut the logs down into pieces, and then we would chop them up when we got back to the shed by the house. He just wanted to be done. But the log was too big for me to help lift, and Nate was getting frustrated. He told me to get the hell out of the way and then proceeded to lift the log by himself and threw it into the bed of the truck. God, he was strong. Unfortunately, the log went further than Nate anticipated and smashed through the rear window of the Silverado. Yeah, he was frustrated alright.

That was a quiet ride back to the house. Nate knew he was in for it. Our dad was not only going to have to get that fixed with money we didn’t have, but he was also going to be inconvenienced…and would have to drive around with the rear window taped up with Visqueen plastic sheeting and duct tape, because we couldn’t afford to get it fixed anytime soon. But, and my brother and I never talked about this (but we knew somewhere deep down in our consciousness), my dad would be embarrassed…and this is the worst for a raging narcissist. You see, it’s true, we didn’t have money. Our mom was the only one who consistently worked, and the jobs our dad would get wouldn’t last long, because he thought they were beneath him. But our father really looked down on, well, people like us. They were “white trash,” and he used that phrase all the time talking about so many people in our community. But that was us. We were no different. However, my dad worked so hard to present a much different picture than reality.

So, yeah, this rear window/log incident thing was a huge deal, and we both knew my brother was going to get the hell beat out of him.

When we got back to the house, our dad was sitting at the kitchen table with his coffee and cigarettes, looking out the kitchen window. Nate was trembling…

“D-dad?”

“Yes.” He didn’t turn to look at us.

“Um…”

It was uncomfortably silent, which would also aggravate my dad. If you had something to say, you better say it clearly and confidently.

“What?” Now he turned to us.

“Uh, well—”

“I broke the rear window of the truck!” I blurted out and started crying. “I’m really sorry.”

I don’t know if Nate was looking at me or not. I don’t know if my dad was looking at me.

I couldn’t see through the tears, and I was trying to wipe them away. Were the tears from the fear that Nate was about to get hurt again? Were they because I was scared that I was in for it? Or did I just hate that there was always a cloud of fear and tension hanging over our family whenever our dad was around?

“How?”

“Dad?” Nate chimed in but was immediately shut down.

“I’m asking Max.”

“I was carrying too big a piece of wood, and I threw it on the bed of the pickup, but it was barely on there, and so I crawled up in the truck and threw it again, but didn’t go far enough, and so I got mad, and really threw it, and…and—”

“And what?”

I was doing that panting talk/cry thing that kids do when it’s hard to catch their breath.

But what a lie, huh? And looking back, it was so articulate. Like Shakespeare couldn’t have written it better and Brando couldn’t have delivered it like I did.

“And I…I…I broke the window!”

I could feel Nate tense up in the silence as my dad pondered my punishment.

I knew Nate wasn’t about to let me take a bullet for him. But I grabbed his hand to signal to keep quiet. I saw my dad’s eyes move down to the hand holding, and I guess it must have softened him. (He did have his moments, I suppose.)

“Well…accidents happen.”

I was shocked. I’m sure Nate was too.

“But…you’re going to have to work it off. To pay for the window. You’re going to have to take over Nate’s chores…mowing…raking when it’s time.” “Okay.” “On top of your own chores.”

“Okay.”

“You still better take out the garbage now, or I swear to God…”

“I will. I promise.”

And my dad slowly turned his head back to staring out the window as he lit his cigarette.

My brother and I lingered for a moment and then slowly walked back outside to chop the wood. When we got to the shed, Nate grabbed me, and to this day, it’s the biggest hug I’ve ever gotten. And it was long. But while he was holding me, he said, “Don’t ever do that again.”

And I cried again, because I loved my brother.

I continued to walk the main drag of Greenville’s downtown and saw other kinds of people as well. There were slender, older people out and about, but not too many. They looked as if they were professors at some university, but of course, there were no nearby colleges. I found that a bit peculiar.

There weren’t many younger adults at this time, and I wondered if they would be out and about like this at any time. Or was that uncool? Did they do all of their shopping from their phones, like my kids do? There were some moms with toddlers, and the kiddos were walking as opposed to being pushed in strollers. Maybe this just wasn’t stroller weather. I couldn’t figure that one out. A stroller, to me, seemed easier on the parent. Maybe one would need snow tires on their strollers…an all-terrain type of deal.

The sound of a long honk turned my head towards its direction, and I saw a square of a man, not terribly old from my vantage point, but certainly not young, wearing a bright red stocking cap with a poofy ball on the top, which seemed like it could fall off at any moment because it was too small for his big head. He was carrying a full, reusable shopping bag and walking against traffic on Washington. He was walking across the busy, main drag when it wasn’t his turn. Other cars joined in with different honks of their own, as the man shuffled through the crosswalk, while the stopped vehicles had the green light. For every honk that rang out, the guy would hold his hand up to them as if to either say “Sorry,” or “I’m walking here. Deal with it.” His shuffle was slow. So slow, in fact, that by the time he got to the sidewalk on the other side, the light turned red for the waiting cars, and they were unable to drive through the intersection. And wouldn’t you know it, he then walked across the intersecting street, Lafayette, just as the light was turning green for that group of vehicles. And, of course, they started honking as well, and the man, once again, held up his hand after each honk. He made it across the side street and slowly disappeared out of view with his bag of goods.

I couldn’t help but think about a few things. I wondered if the man had an intellectual disability of some sort. Perhaps he had some ailment in which he had to get back to his home as soon as possible, or he didn’t have a sense of direction or rules. Maybe he had a severe case of anxiety or really hated to be out in public. Maybe there was dementia at play. And then I pondered What if it’s none of that, and he just decided to do what he wanted to do. Maybe he didn’t want to wait. He was tired of waiting, and decided this day would be different.

I mean, those are two very different scenarios, right? The latter means the guy is just selfish and being a dick, while you must lend patience to the former, or you’re the dick.

Then I started to think that this sort of scenario is what’s dividing the country these days. If the man can’t help himself, we all have a responsibility to help him out…and in this case, that means taking a deep breath and waiting or even jumping out of your car and helping him cross the road. But if he can help himself, that means HE decided to not be responsible and figured he had the right to do whatever he wanted… which wound up affecting a bunch of other people. And, what if someone else saw the man, and said “The hell with it; I’m gonna do that too. Why should I have to wait?” We would wind up with anarchy and chaos. Thankfully the vast majority of us still feel a responsibility to follow the rules, but I keep feeling that percentage is shrinking every day with the swelling of entitlement.

Rights versus responsibilities. Of course, all of that played out in my head for a brief moment in time. Regarding the man crossing the street…I have no idea what the truth was.

I ended up at a grocery store and figured I would get something to take home for the evening.

“My cart!”

I didn’t hear it at first, or, actually, what I heard was just loud incomprehensible gibberish.

“My cart!”

I looked around and saw an older, tiny man, with an odd sort of waddle, quickly approaching me. Well, not quickly. He wasn’t fast at all, but he was intense-looking and moving as fast as he could.

“Thank you! My cart!”

I had no clue who he was talking to until he got up next to me and grabbed hold of a shopping cart just to my right.

“Thank you! My cart!”

And off he went. I watched as he headed down an aisle, and I so wanted to tell him that I had zero intention of taking his cart. Hell, I was headed towards the stack of hand baskets since I didn’t need much in the way of food, but he was gone, and I couldn’t speak.

I picked up a few things. Nothing important, but I was struck at the selections in this part of the country versus out west. They had fewer gluten-free options and vegan offerings and, well, fresh produce. And where the hell was the sushi? (Man, I had turned into such a Californian.) I wondered if the Midwest was behind on these sorts of things, or if people didn’t care about that kind of food, or if it was just this little grocery store. Maybe Meijer, the big grocer in the area, had that stuff. Or maybe there were stores that specialized in those sorts of items, but I didn’t see them around this town. I’m sure Grand Rapids has something like that.

What they did have was beef, a lot of beef…and pork…and a great cheese selection. I hadn’t had beef or pork in a long time, but I did grab some cheeses. Grabbing some smoked Gouda and Brie made me want to also grab a bottle of wine. I turned and saw a basket of airplane-size bottles of dill pickle vodka, and I immediately lost my desire to drink.

I bought a few other items and checked out. The tiny old man was finishing up around the same time, and we wound up converging near the exit.

“Next time, leave a man’s cart alone!” He really emphasized ALONE and walked away. I watched him waddle to his old, little S-10 pickup truck, and I could still hear him talking about touching another man’s cart, and how you just don’t do that. I even heard the word “disrespectful” a few times. I smiled to myself and watched him drive away. He saw me watching him, and so he flipped me off, and I let out a silent laugh. I actually couldn’t stop laughing to myself for a while. You just don’t get this kind of interaction in Los Angeles. So many people, millions of people packed together in one place, and yet everyone seems to be shopping online or having food delivered. These moments when you run into an eccentric fellow like this were rare, and yet LA is full of eccentric people.

While I was still in town, I wanted to buy something to expedite the healing in my throat, so I walked down the block to a drug store. There I found a wrap that I could freeze or heat and then apply to my neck. After finding what I wanted, I stood behind an older couple at the register. I would guess they were in their mid-seventies, maybe older. The cashier, a disinterested woman in, what imagined her to be her mid-forties, began to ring up the few items that were on the counter.

“Where’s your stool softener?” The wife asked her husband.

“I decided against it.”

“Oh no. Go get it.”

“I don’t—”

“You’ll get all cramped up.”

“I don’t—”

“You know you will.”

“I’ve been okay.”

“Harold…go get the damn softener.” And Harold started to slumber away. “And hurry up! People are waiting.”

But Harold seemed to have forgotten which aisle had what he needed. I watched him start to head down aisle five but then back up and start down aisle four. He disappeared for a bit, only to reappear and try five again.

The cashier asked, “Can I get your Value Aid Number?”

“What was that?”

“Do you have a Value Aid Number?” And the wife gave her a phone number. While the cashier typed in the number, the wife called out “Hurry up, Harold!”

“Would it be under a different number?”

“What’s that?”

“The number you gave me didn’t work. Would you like to try a different number?”

I couldn’t blame the older woman for not hearing well. The cashier seemed so bored, she couldn’t even be motivated to articulate, and so she mumbled through the entire interchange.

“Oh, for God’s sakes. Um…my husband’s, um…” The wife’s face angled up to the ceiling of the drug store in an effort to remember. “These damn cell phones. You just hit a name, doncha? HAROLD?! Who remembers numbers anymore?”

Harold reappeared, and I didn’t see a box of stool softener. Just a magazine rolled up in his hand.

“There you are. What’s your cell number?”

“My what?”

“Your phone number!” And he said it out loud.

“Start again,” The cashier mumbled.

“What?”

“What’s the number?”

“What’d she say?”

“She wants your number again.”

“6165555904.”

And a handful of taps were heard from the keyboard.

“Where’s the stool softener?”

“I couldn’t find it.”

“Harold!”

“Do you wanna try a different number?”

 

“What?”

“That number didn’t work.”

“What the hell?!”

“Just forget it, Candace.”

“Absolutely not. I’m not paying full price for my eye drops. They’re thirty dollars a bottle.”

There was this sort of standoff for what seemed to be a minute in which the cashier just looked back and forth between Harold and Candace, and Harold and Candace looking at one another.

“Just pay the lady.”

“Try 6165552834. That’s our home phone. You think I’d remember that one. We’ve had it for forty odd years…I don’t believe you.” Candace turned her attention back to Harold.

“What?”

“We came here for stool softener.”

“I didn’t want to come in the first place.” “Do you have another number?” “What?” “A Value Aid number?”

“Does anyone ever understand what you say?” Harold finally asked the cashier, and Candace was visibly embarrassed.

“Harold!”

“Oh come on, I have no idea what she’s saying.”

“I’m sorry,” Candace said to the cashier, who gave an I don’t really give a shit shrug.

“She wants our phone number for the discount.”

“6165557341” Harold yelled out and Candace looked at him in disbelief.

“That worked,” The cashier slurred.

“What’s that number?” Candace asked Harold.

“My old one.”

“You’re something else, you know that?”

“What?”

“I asked you for the Value Aid number.”

“No, you asked me for my phone number.”

“Harold!”

“What?”

“Sorry about him.” Candace apologized to the cashier.

“You want that as well?” The cashier asked.

“What?”

And the cashier pointed to the rolled-up magazine in Harold’s hand.

“Give that to her.”

Harold handed it over, and the cashier unrolled the magazine in search of a barcode. I couldn’t make out the title but there was a scantily clad woman with a long line of cleavage on the cover giving her best sexy eyes in a micro bikini. It didn’t look pornographic (more like Maxim or FHM.)

Attaway, Harold.

“Oh, Harold.” The cashier managed her first smile, albeit just the right side of her lip raised the slightest bit.

“You’re something else, you know that?”

“What?”

“What. What?! What the hell am I gonna do with you is what.”

The cashier gave them the total. One of them asked “What” again, payment was exchanged, and the couple made their way to the exit. Candace led the way, muttering something, and Harold threw his hands slightly up in the air as he shrugged his shoulders, walking behind her.

As I made my way out of the store I thought about Sophie. The older woman reminded me of her. Somewhere along the way, as our relationship progressed, Sophie would, and I don’t know how else to say it…demean. Mind you, she would always tell me I was dumb, ever since we started dating, when I would do or say something funny. But she did that with everyone.

That was her thing, and she meant it affectionately actually. I would make her laugh, and she would shake her head and say, “You are so dumb, Max” and laugh some more. But as the relationship went on, the way she talked to me, especially around others, didn’t sit right.

I remember one time at a party with a bunch of football parents (some fundraising get-together for Graeme’s high school football team), Sophie and I were standing in a circle making small talk with a few other couples. It was just some get-to-know-you banter. I have no idea how it came up or what they were talking about, but I remember one of the guys saying, “It’s hard to get that thing in there.” And I replied, “Have you seen that movie?” I used to say that instead of the ole “That’s what she said.” Some people didn’t get it. One of the wives laughed hysterically and said, “I didn’t see the first one, but I saw ‘It’s Hard to Get that Thing in There Three’.” And I laughed…and loved…that she got my humor. One of the couples didn’t get that we were alluding to fake adult film titles and just stood there quietly, sipping their cocktails. Sophie then said, “You teach them how to behave in public, but then…” and she made a face—a grimace—as she looked at me. I never knew why she said that. She had heard that stupid game of mine a thousand times during the course of our relationship. Hell, she used to laugh at it. Maybe she felt I had made the quiet couple uncomfortable. Maybe she didn’t like the one wife laughing so hard. Maybe Sophie didn’t even want to be at the party in the first place. I don’t know. I asked her on the way home why she said that, but she just said that she didn’t know what I was talking about. She said she didn’t remember saying anything.

It’s kind of like how commercials are written anymore. The easiest way to write an ad is to have an expert and a novice, and the expert introduces the novice to the product being advertised and it’s life changing. And, for a little pop, they try to add some humor. So, whenever you see a married couple, it’s usually the wife that’s the expert, and she winds up educating the husband, but not before treating him like he’s a complete idiot.

There was a phone app commercial a long time ago, and the app allowed you to talk to the phone to set a reminder so that you didn’t forget anything important. In the commercial, the wife tells the husband to not be late for the pediatric appointment for their child. The husband sits in his recliner, watching sports highlights, and mutters an affirmative “uh huh.” The wife then grabs his phone and says “1pm. Dr. Katrina.”

 “Oh wow, what’s that?” The husband asks, suddenly super interested. And the wife shakes her head, like this is just one of a hundred things during the course of a day she has to explain to this knucklehead, and then proceeds to sell the feature of the phone app.

The commercial then cuts to later in the day to the husband pulling up to the doctor’s office as the wife waits on the sidewalk. He gets out of the car, and she says, “Oh wow, you remembered.”

“Of course!” And he references the phone that’s in his hand. She looks at him for a moment and then asks, “Where’s the baby?”

With a terrified look that washes over his face, he whispers, “I’ll be right back.” And she shakes her head again. I get it. It’s a commercial, and it’s not like you’re going to sell many products with the husband telling his wife that she’s stupid. A) It’s not funny, and B) Research shows that women do most of the shopping. So, I don’t imagine corporations would sell a whole lot of what they’re marketing. But to have someone in a couple treated like they’re dumber than the other, to me, that’s just lazy writing, and it’s how a lot of commercials are written anymore. And anytime I see a commercial like that, it reminds me of Sophie. And my heart breaks a little more each time.

Maybe Sophie and the old woman at the drug store just get embarrassed or start feeling insecure and their response is to project some superiority over their husbands in a way that helps them get out from under feeling small. I don’t know.

I decided I had seen enough of town for the day and went back to my brother’s house.

….

This is chapter five from the new novel Remember That One Time? by Larry Joe Campbell (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/remember-that-one-time-by-larry-joe-campbell/

Remember That One Time, a first-person narrative, takes place over Christmas. Max Sheffield, an aging out-of-work actor, loves Christmas. But this Christmas will be very different. His wife, Sophie, has left him to be with her parents on a trial separation. His adult, collegiate children, Graeme and Briana would rather be anywhere else but at home in Los Angeles. And so, Max Sheffield heads to his older brother’s home back in Greenville, Michigan for the winter holidays…not far from where he grew up. To make matters worse, Max immediately suffers a freak accident in which he cannot speak, and resting his voice is the only remedy. 

Max’s brother and his family soon leave as well, leaving Max alone, housesitting. Over the next ten days, Max observes an ensemble of characters—of townsfolk—whose story arcs vary from hilarious to heartbreaking: There are old classmates like Andy Nelson, now a police officer, and Mitch McCoy, the old damaged, high school, heroic quarterback. There’s singing legend Mickey Shea, and then there are run ins with some folks that recognize Max from his work as an actor. Max finds himself occasionally listening in on Pat and Sue, best friends who meet up and share the town’s gossip. Intertwined in Max’s journey is an entangled web of lies, mystery, and soon to be violent storylines of two couples: Gary and Michelle and Kirk and Janice. There are also brief encounters with eccentric shop owners, an entertaining out-of-town hitchhiker, and bickering old couples. He even runs into his old college girlfriend. It’s through these observations that Max begins to look at his own past and the decisions he has made that have led him to being alone over the holidays, reflecting and wondering if his marriage can be saved.

Max is thrust not only back to a geographical past in which he runs into old classmates, familiar Midwest faces, set in stone ways and behaviors, but also old “tapes”—memories from growing up that confront Max and force him to deal with his culpability in what seems to be the likely demise of his marriage. Can he find himself? Can he save his marriage? Can he do both?