Walt and Naomi

Walt and Naomi

Chapter Thirty-Five

Little Traverse Bay

A Novel

by Randy Evans

Walt might have spent more than ten years in prison, mostly because of dealing drugs, but Sheriff Parks contacted the County Prosecutor to request a reduction in his sentence. Some months earlier, a retired agent from the CIA contacted Parks, and gave him classified information on Walt’s service.  Now Parks knew more than he could say to others.  The judge provided Walt with a light sentence, and then referred him to the local mediation agency, because Stretch was still highly irritated with Walt for burning down his cabin, and placing Flash in harms way.

Stretch attended the hearing, and said to Walt, “Ever built a house?”

Walt said, “Nope, never did.”

“Well, when you get out of jail, you’ll find out.  I’m not going to rebuild my place without help, and it might as well be you.”

Almost immediately, Walt was permitted work releases from prison, and he began to help Stretch create a new home.   Stretch had time to give thought to how he would redo things, and he designed the cabin to be bigger and better in every way.  He found a local stone mason to help him use stone to construct the exterior walls.  He decided to have a large kitchen and nook so he could invite Nick over for breakfast once in a while “to return the hospitality”;  a dog door, “for the convenience of Flash”; and a stone fireplace with a big hearth, “for Flash to warm herself by the fire on winter evenings.”   Walt and Stretch gradually and grudgingly became friends, working in the hot sun no longer shaded by the burnt trees that once circled his cabin.  After a long day working on the construction site at Devil’s Elbow, they would sometimes have meals together at the Moose Jaw, and occasionally, Nick and Zizi would join them.  Even though he didn’t have to, Stretch paid Walt for his labor.

Once he got out of jail, joined an evangelical church.  Some Sundays, he would stand up in the middle of the congregation in the middle of a sermon, and say, “Reverend, I disagree with what you just said.”  The preacher would ask if they could discuss his concerns after church, and they did...often.  Walt also joined the local Eagles Airie.  Sitting at the bar one night as a guest, he asked how he might join.  He was concerned about his past.  One of the Eagles turned to him and said, “Do you believe in God?”  

“Yes, sir, I do,” Walt replied.  

“Then you won’t have any trouble gettin’ in!!” the Eagle said.  Walt tried to buy drinks for everyone, but it was against the rules.  Later he was more properly initiated, and since he was a veteran, his first year’s dues were waived.  He actively served on committees and fund-raising events.  He even won a 14-foot Lund fishing boat, motor, and trailer in a raffle.   Walt also joined the American Legion Hall where he would make up war stories with such detail that no one could question him.  Then he would mix in some true stories, stranger than his fabricated ones.  He eventually gave up drinking, but he never gave up talking.

To supplement his income, Walt applied for employment at an ice cream and fudge factory in Petoskey.  His first job involved paddling fudge on cold marble tables and hand dipping granny smith apples in caramel. Next, he was assigned to mix over thirty different ice cream flavors.  Sheriff Parks vouched for him when he applied, since Walt had to check the “ex-felon” box on the employment application.  When he interviewed, he didn’t mention he was a highly skilled meth chemist, but once on the job, he became nearly irreplaceable.  After a year, the company gave him responsibility for orienting new employees.  He took special pleasure in reviewing the “drug-free workplace” policy.

One day, Walt was walking down Mitchell Street towards the Bay with his head down against blowing rain from a stiff northwest wind.  He nearly knocked down a beautiful middle-aged Odawa woman walking in the opposite direction.  He caught Naomi Greenleaf on his own way down to the sidewalk, and she cushioned his fall.  She looked up at him without fear or surprise, then asked him if he was hurt.  Years later, Stretch would tell the story over and over about how Naomi and he had “fallen” in love. 

 Naomi embraced people she met with a spiritual aura, sparkling charm, gentle grace, and a sense of harmony with the world-at-large.  Her skin was deeply tanned by the sun, and her thick brown and white-streaked swept-back hair framed a handsome face with high cheek bones and keen, intelligent, bouncing eyes.  She was divorced, and taught Anishinaabe language and culture at the community college.  After the sidewalk incident, Walt asked her out, and they began to see each other.  On the first date, their acquaintance could have ended.   When she told Walt she was from the native community, Walt asked,  “How Native American are you?”

Naomi was first inclined to reply, “How white are you?”, but instead, she simply said, “I am perfect and beautiful.”   Walt was struck by her kind response to what he quickly understood to be an insensitive question.  She noticed a shamed look in his eyes, and forgave him instantly.  One evening, Naomi told her story.

“Our Algonquin language and culture are not like the tribes to the West.  While we have always hunted, fished, and traded, the Ottawa, Chippewa, Objibwe, and Odawa people share peculiarities not found elsewhere.  Our precepts, not unlike the Ten Commandments, guided every facet of our lives in our native community, and taught to children daily by their parents.  Our language has a unique sound and sense unfound in other Native American languages... so sophisticated, some have thought its roots derived from a far away ancient land.

“My grandmother lived in this area in a tar-papered shack down by the Bear River on the edge of Petoskey, a place we called Hungry Hollow, a town-within-a-town; she told me our ancestors went back 2500 years.  When my grandmother was a poor Indian girl during the Great Depression, she wore flour sacking from the flour mill down the river near the Bay.  She used to watch the freight trains bring in people looking for work as fruit pickers; sometimes whole families would appear in the boxcar openings. 

 “My grandmother spent her days with her brothers and sisters rummaging through the city dump, looking for edible food, pop bottles and corks; anything they could sell or trade.  One day, when my grandmother was a teen-aged girl, a one-legged hobo appeared standing in a freight car door.  (He had lost his leg trying to catch a train ‘on the fly’ when he lost his grip on the hasp of the railcar door and fell beneath the wheels)  He was ragged and dirty, hungry and thirsty, and my grandmother observed the suffering in his face; took care of him that day, and for the rest of her days.  He became my grandfather.” 

Naomi must have seen the suffering in Walt’s pale white face in the same way her grandmother had.  After six months, Walt asked Naomi if she would marry him.  Robbed of a normal life for so long, Walt had no time to waste, and Naomi was willing, as she had also suffered, and desired a life of love and intimacy.  Walt asked Stretch to be his best man.  Nick, Zizi, and Victoria attended the wedding. The ceremony was not unlike the one Victoria had witnessed at the Hack-Ma-Tack Inn.  

In preparation for her wedding, Naomi bathed in the waters of Little Traverse Bay to be blessed by the spirit of the Earth.  The outside ceremony took place around a fire surrounded by a large stand of birch trees, with birch bark flapping around them in the breeze like continuous soft applause.  During the first part of the ceremony, “warriors” captured a tree and presented it to the couple as a gift from the earth.  An eagle feather was placed on top of the tree, and women covered the roots with soil.  The celebration ended with a pipe ceremony around the fire circle, and Stretch officiated as the pipe carrier.  (Years later Stretch would also receive an Odawa name of honor:  “Pipe Dancer.”  After the ceremony, Stretch broke with tradition, and provided Nick with a cigar.

Naomi and Walt were created for each other.  As a couple, they led a skillful, well-organized, productive, and successful life.  After several years of saving and hard work, Walt and Naomi purchased a small farm high on a hill over looking Little Traverse Bay.   On the farm, Walt raised goats, and Naomi grew vegetables.  Walt continued his work at the ice cream factory, and Naomi followed her teaching career.   Every year in June, Naomi would throw a large outdoor birthday party for Walt, giving him the adoration and visibility he had yearned to receive.  Out of Vietnam, drug dealing and addiction, Walt achieved redemption at last.

After many years, Naomi applied to the the Elder of the Tribe to grant Walt a given Indian name.  After much thought and consultation with Walt’s “Guides,” the Elder agreed to a naming ceremony and a name.   Naomi braided her hair, and wore an ankle-length dress to the ceremony adorned with handcrafted regalia.  In a circle around Walt, his friends and neighbors honored him with the name, Ableegumooch, a trickster rabbit from an Algonquin legend.   His full name,“Brave Rabbit Standing in Open Field,” aptly described Walt’s growth and identity. 

Naomi and Walt lived to be the main characters in their own story, and Walt realized his dream of having a proper identity.  Over the long years of their marriage, Naomi taught Walt how to create a home life in harmony with nature and with her culture.  After so many mistakes and so much suffering, Walt opened his future to happiness.  

As Walt was first beginning this long, happy journey into meaning and purpose, Victoria was first beginning hers.

Little Traverse Point, A Novel by Randy Evans

Chapter 31

Bright Stars

Mikage, Victoria, and Zizi decided to have dinner at a local seafood restaurant in Holland on the channel leading in from Lake Michigan to Lake Macatawa.   Along the way to the restaurant along Ottawa Beach Road, Victoria noticed the local yacht club workers busily lowering boats into the water in advance of Memorial Day Weekend.  Captain Sundae, the popular ice cream shop, opened the new season.  A line formed in front, and children sat on picnic tables licking cones and dipping plastic spoons in paper cups.  As they sat down at their table, a middle-aged waitress was tying an apron over dress clothes.  “You were at the memorial service, “ Zizi said.  

“Yes, I waited on Tom Albers and his family for over twenty years.  He was a good man...the best.  After his children died, and then his wife, he used to come here alone every Thursday night until he ended up in the nursing home. He loved to flirt with me in his own harmless way, and I loved to flirt back. He used to say I was beautiful, inside and out.”  Her eyes watered as she changed the subject, “See the boat replica on the wall up there?  Tom’s boat.”

The women looked up.  The walls of the restaurant were covered with the model boat hulls.  The name of Tom’s boat was printed on the stern:  “Bright Stars.”  

Tom called his daughters his “bright stars,” the waitress said.  

After the waitress left the table, Zizi said, “He called me his “Bright Star” when he gave me the eagle key chain.”

“He did the same with me,” Victoria said.

Two tables over, German tourists were having difficulty with the menu.  Mikage excused herself, and translated for them.  The German couple were from a little town on the Bodensee near where Mikage had lived with Axel before their divorce.  They had a short, fun conversation about three favorite German conversation topics--beer, bread and cars.  She recommended they order perch or walleye.  Mikage returned to the table as the dinner salads arrived.  

The three women all felt the need for comic relief from the heaviness of the service, so Mikage entertained them by recounting the plots of Hindu soap operas she enjoyed viewing on the Internet.  “It must be so much fun knowing all these languages,” Zizi said.

“I have a special gift.  I plan to use my gift and my love of good food together in my business.  I intend to attract people who are more fluent in languages other than English to a new restaurant, and fix them their favorite foods,” Mikage said.

“You can make it happen!” Zizi said.  Just as Zizi had said to Walt when he wanted to change his life, Zizi used her mantra of encouragement, “You can make it happen!.”  “Why don’t you move to Northern Michigan so I can help you?  The hospital’s heart and vascular center is drawing patients from all over the world.  I could refer them to your restaurant...as long as you don’t give them fried food.”

“Would you like me to move to Northern Michigan, Victoria?” Mikage asked.

“Of course, I would like to be with you in any place...I’m just unsettled right now.  The time with my father is temporary...a visit until I figure out what to do.”  Victoria had difficulty giving direct, clear answers.  Rather than a resounding, “Yes!,” Victoria saw the world in nuances, qualifications, complications, and shades of gray.”  

“Well, if I move Up North, and Zizi is already Up North, we will have to capture you so we can all be together,” Mikage said.

“You have always taken good care of me,”  Victoria said.

 “Tomorrow you both will have great food for breakfast at my place,” Mikage said.  “In honor of my new Egyptian friend, we will have an Egyptian breakfast:  bean cakes, eggs, pickles, and tea.”

“I have not eaten bean cakes since I left Cairo...thank you, Mikage.”

Before Victoria and Zizi went to bed in Mikage’s extra bedroom, they placed their open palms together under a lamp with one eagle key chain in each hand. The key chains belonged together.  Rather than reflecting light, the turquoise eyes of the eagle and the gold beaks emitted light like sparkles from a web of stars.  Now the two young women, Tom’s adopted “Bright Stars,” had a connection not only through Victoria’s father, but through this mysterious new connection to Tom, their mutual benefactor. They were talking quietly from either side of a queen bed, when Mikage entered the bedroom.  Mikage was thirty years older than the two young women.  She walked over and tucked the blankets in around Victoria, then kissed her on the forehead, and did the same for Zizi, as if she had found two lost, motherless children.  This night, for all three women, the hard edges of loneliness disappeared, past failures dulled and the future did not threaten. When the women slept, their dreams were peopled with a healing web of friends and family.

Zizi dreamed she danced through the garbage, the garbage city filled with bright, cheerful colors.  The best of the old times came back.  She was a girl with pretty bare feet, riding a mule with her brother behind her with his arms holding on tightly around her waist.   Her father led the mule with a rope, walking beside her mother.  A princess from a fairy tale wearing a paper-thin shawl, she looked confidently for a bright-eyed girl friend, feeling sad and pleasurable at the same time.  Around her, the mounds of garbage transformed into castles, cathedrals, museums, and stately homes.  She rode gently over the rough landscape, and the garbage smelled like the sweetness of spring, and everything...everything was holy and good.  She slept with a smile, and woke smiling.

The next morning opened bright and sunny.  Victoria and Zizi wore their best clothes to meet with the lawyer, then walked over to Mikage’s diner where she had arrived two hours earlier to prepare food for the day.  Victoria pointed to the factory windows of her former loft apartment, “I lived up there for ten years while I worked at the paperboard mill.”   She was going to say more, but her throat choked up.  From a loft just above them, there were cries of a child, and splashing water, a mother bathing a small child;  from a distance, the thumping sounds of cut-off presses from the board mill, and everywhere, the noise of a new work week.  The steam whistle from the mill sounded the change of shifts with a single note.

Only a few weeks ago, her becalmed, inert life had been predictable, under control, here in this small town.  Now Victoria felt suspended, uncertain about the future.  Like a spring sapling with dull roots stirred by rain, Victoria was in grave danger of growing beyond her well-constructed defenses.   Her life seemed out of order, outside the acceptable limits of her personal quality of life control chart.   Like an awkward limb reaching to grow, she felt a faint disturbance inside--deep in her pith.  She felt strange to be in this familiar place with unfamiliar feelings.

When Victoria and Zizi entered the restaurant, Mikage was so excited she dropped a white plate on the floor.  It shattered.  Not stopping to pick up the shards, she came around the counter and hugged them both.  

“I hope you slept well last night.  I’m sorry I had to leave so early...it’s necessary when you do everything yourself.”  She poured coffee and placed a teapot on the table for Zizi.  “Now tell me how you two happen to know each other.”

 “We met by accident...my accident,” Victoria replied.

“You ran into her in your car?”

“No, in a boat.”

“In a boat...”

Victoria explained the surprise visit to her father, the crash landing on the deck, and her discovery of Zizi at her father’s place.

“How did you arrive in Northern Michigan from Cairo?”

“Tom Albers visited me when I worked in a rug factory as a little girl.  He gave me this key chain.  He told me the eagle would protect me, and give me strength and courage.  Every month thereafter, he sent checks.  The money allowed me to go to school, and later the university and medical school.  I received a fellowship to finish my residency in general surgery at the regional hospital in Petoskey.   Just as your special gift is speaking many languages, my special gift is through my hands.  Weaving rugs and mending hearts are much the same.”

Mikage smiled, and began to converse with Zizi in Arabic, one of the nearly fifty languages she had mastered with her polyglot brain.  Speaking Arabic thrilled Zizi, because she loved to speak  her native language, and hear its ancient rhythms from others. 

Mikage returned to English, “And now we will fill our empty bellies.  Ten minutes later, Mikage returned with the bean cakes, eggs, pickles and sweet rice for desert.  

“So what you are doing for me now, talking in Arabic and serving Egyptian food...this is your dream of a future restaurant,” Zizi said.

“Yes, this is my dream, but also my plan.  I intend to purchase a restaurant property between Petoskey and Mackinaw City,” she said.  I have saved for years for a bigger place.  I want a business where I can prepare local food for local people, but also attract new people from outside the area...tourists, other visitors, and someday, people who come to Northern Michigan mostly to dine at my restaurant.  I have planned to do this for the past two years, but I needed to find a new place.  When I rented a cottage in Northern Michigan last summer, I decided to move.  I have already purchased a two-bedroom house on Burt Lake, and two days ago, I closed on some commercial property just north of downtown Petoskey.”

“Wow,” said Victoria.  “Why didn’t you tell me when I left to visit my father, you intended to move up there?  

“I wanted to surprise you,”  Mikage said, “and I wasn’t sure my plans would work out.”

“It is strange,” Zizi said.  We are all displacing ourselves, either by accident or design, making our up here, just as your father did, Victoria...and Stretch.”

“What an odd name...who is Stretch?” Mikage said.  

“He’s my father’s best friend and neighbor...a tall native Texan, a little older than you.”

Zizi concluded the breakfast by raising her tea cup in a morning toast.  “If I have learned nothing in my life, I have learned one thing:  ‘Celebrate the temporary!’”

The young women raised their mugs:  “Celebrate the temporary!”

When the three women rose from the booth, Victoria picked up the pieces of broken plate, as customers began to arrive.  Zizi cleared the table.  They said their “goodbyes” to Mikage, and were off to Grand Rapids.

Lizzie and me with our best friend

Way North, A Novel by Randy Evans

Chapter Thirty

Twin Key Chains     

Mikage gave Victoria an account of what happened to Tom in her brisk, businesslike way:  “Tom broke his hip the day after you left town...then he broke his other hip, became bedridden, developed pneumonia, and died yesterday.  The nursing home called me, because you placed my number in your contact file...it’s so sad...I know you and he were close. The memorial service is scheduled at the nursing home a week from today...oh, and a lawyer from Grand Rapids called me, and said you should try to find a Dr. Rozeta Zahra at the regional hospital, and bring her with you to the service...she’s a heart surgeon.”

“Thanks for getting hold of me.  I’ll be there...strange...I know Dr. Zahra.  Would you attend the service in Zeeland with me, Mikage?”

“Yes, of course...I miss you terribly, Victoria.  You can both stay at my place.  By the way, you need to buy a cell phone...then we could talk once in a while.  Don’t be so cheap!”

“Maybe I will when I can afford one.  I miss you, too.”

Victoria rejoined the others where the cars were parked.  She pulled Zizi aside, and told her about the death of Tom, and the unusual request from the lawyer in Grand Rapids.  Zizi had no idea what this was about, but she could see Victoria was upset.  She also had no idea how anyone could know her to ask about her.  She quietly placed her arm in Victoria’s, and said, “I will go with you.  I’m not on call next weekend.”

“Zizi, I didn’t know your first name was ‘Rozeta.’”

“Do you like ‘Zizi’?...I chose it to be my American name...it’s what my little brother used to call me?”

“Yes, I like ‘Zizi,’ although ‘Rozeta’ sounds pretty, like a flower.”  As everyone left the cemetery, an eagle circled the sky rounding out the day.

The next Friday, Zizi and Victoria loaded the Honda for the weekend, and headed south on Route 131.  Victoria explained to Zizi how she had worked at the nursing home part time, and how attached she had become to the patients there, especially Cal and Tom.  As Victoria talked, Zizi looked over towards her and something glittery caught her eye on the steering column.   She had to catch her breath.  In the ignition, a silver and turquoise eagle key chain dangled, catching the sunlight.  She leaned over to examine it more closely.  The face of an eagle with a turquoise eye and gold beak was etched in the round silver piece attached to the clasp. Victoria’s key change was identical in every way to the one her benefactor had given her in Cairo during his visit to the rug factory when she was a child.

“Where did you get that key chain?”

“Tom, my patient at the nursing home, gave me the chain years ago...we’re going to his memorial service tomorrow.”

  “Could you please find a place to stop?” Zizi said.

The women remained silent until Victoria exited the highway, and pulled the car to a stop in a rest area.  After taking deep breaths, Zizi reached into her purse, and with her hands shaking, she pulled out her benefactor’s key chain.  The two women placed them side by side, and examined the twin key chains.  

“My benefactor gave this to me when I was a little girl.  For years, I didn’t even know it was a key chain.  I treasured and guarded it as my only possession.”

“What is the name of your benefactor?”

“I never knew his name, but his monthly checks came from a law office in Grand Rapids.”

The two young women sat there together in the car amazed, starring out through the windshield at the highway overpass, then starring back down at their radiant objects.  Neither one of them had lived with an ounce of mystery in their lives.  Each woman was a hard-core realist, prepared to have their hopes and dreams run down by circumstances.  This coincidence arrived with seeds of hope and change.  Victoria returned the key chain to the ignition and drove back to the highway.  For the rest of the trip, Zizi asked Victoria to tell her as much as she knew about Tom Albers.  Her benefactor now had a name.

Victoria and Zizi met Mikage at the nursing home in Zeeland right before the service.  Tom had lost his wife the year before, and lost his two daughters years earlier in a car accident.  In the front row reserved for family, a single well-dressed woman in a gray suit sat erect,  looking forward as a men’s chorus gathered to sing. Patients and the nursing home staff filled the dining room, a large open space that would serve as a chapel.  Even though natural beauty surrounded the home beyond the chain linked fence, the ivory pallor of the patients’ faces showed no signs of contact with the out-of-doors, trees, grass, and earth.

The janitors arranged folding chairs around a makeshift folding table altar covered with a food-stained white table cloth.  Candles stood crooked in tarnished candlesticks.  On another table, they placed a podium with a Rotary emblem on the front, and rolled in an upright piano.  Flowers received at the reception desk, but not yet delivered to a room, were borrowed for the service.  The janitors looked like scene changers for a drama production, dragging pieces from a warehouse, and standing by to return them when they were no longer needed. 

The nursing home administrators selected a local preacher to perform the service.  He knew nothing of Tom’s life history.  A tall, rough-looking man in his late fifties, he wore a black ill-fitted suit with a black vest and a black tie.  His stiff limbs stuck out from the sleeves and pants like dead branches from a hollow tree trunk.  A large pendant holding a silver cross hung over his vest.  Briskly entering, the room was full of people he didn’t know.  He shook everyone’s hands like they were members of his flock, although he never mentioned anyone by name, and no one called him by name.  He sat down hard on a folding chair with a pained face, as if he was used to sitting on cushions.

Aides brought in extra chairs, and helped arrange people attending in wheel chairs. Tom had been a patient for nearly eight years, and he was well-liked.  There were over fifty people from the nursing home, both patients and staff, a few retirees from Tom’s company, and stone-lipped Cal, Tom’s best friend.  The residents wore pale, bleached out clothes, so the gathering looked like a faded photograph. The three women sat down beside Cal, and Victoria held his weak hand.  Even though Victoria had left only two weeks earlier,  Cal looked more vacant and frail, his eyes less focused.  The preacher’s young assistant passed out hymnals without a word.  He looked like he didn’t want to be there, but rather seemed like an indifferent guide in a museum, waiting for the quitting time.  After doing his duties, he sat down not even watching, reading his Bible.

 A plump woman with bulbous eyes and wild hair shuffled in with a walker in the row in front of Cal and the three women.  She smelled like lavender and the nip of Yukon Jack she used to get her medicines down.  Her red rouged face looked folded like a rose pressed long ago between pages in a family bible.  She wore a bright-colored, flowered sun dress, a contrast to the faded clothing around her.  She commented to no one in particular, “When you’re old, you need to wear bright colors.”   She stared down at one of the seats.  “I’ve heard a lot of good things about this chair,” she said, and sat down. She winked at Cal, but he gave no response.  After some gospel hymns and and a call to worship, the preacher rose to speak in a bull voice punctuated with periodic pauses and the repetition of certain words for emphasis:

“We pray to God that our recently departed brother, Tom, Albers was saved...saved by Jeeezus before he died.  Firstly, and you all know more than I do about this, being saved by Jeeezus is like cannin’ green beans.  Once the jar is sealed, how long are the beans good for? Now I know some of you people have canned before.  How long are canned green beans good for? (A man in the third row answers, ‘about a year’).  No sir... they are good foreeever if Jeeezus seals them!  If you are saved, you are seealed by the Lord!  Ameeen!  And once you’re saved, when your body dies, you will go to Heaven, and when the Rapture comes...and my brothers and sisters, it will surely come... in 1/165th of a second, you will be taken bodily out of your graves...if you are saved.”

Even demented Cal knew where this was heading, and nodded to his nurse for a bathroom break.  The nurse wheeled him out, and he never came back.

The preacher continued with his dramatic pageantry, holding his cross with dirty fingernails:

“Nextly, we need to ask ourselfs, what can we do here in this nursing home where you all don’t do anything.  Why, you can pray...not so much for your families, ‘cause everyone prays for families, but you can pray for other people like your pastors, people who do things.  So while you’re here takin’ it easy, you need to make intercessory prayers, and you need to pray for our country, because our country is in a whole lot of trouble, and you have to do it with desire, fervent desire.  You have to desire what you are prayin’ for---Ameeen!  I know that we all have to do this for ourselfs, because my own life is a battle with Satan...but I am convicted that prayer moooves the Hands of God.  Let me say it again, prayer moooves the hands of God.  Lastly, you have to believe this ‘cause if you’re saved, this life here in this nursing home is the closest to Hell you’re goin’ to git.  So pray for people who are doin’ somethin,’ since you all have a lot of time in this nursing home.  Jeeezus, Jeeezus, Jeeezus, Ameeen!”

As soon as the preacher said the word, “Satan,” Blackie, a jet black Scottish Terrier therapy dog, playfully called “Satan” by the patients, came running into the cafeteria stage left, and proceeded to nip at the preacher’s pant legs.  After some great entertainment, serving the residents as a talk subject for weeks, one of the attendants dragged the dog away stage right to isolated applause and muffled laughter.  Everyone was amused except the preacher who smiled while swearing under his breath.  During the rest of the sermon, the preacher’s leg twitched as if the dog were still present.  One of the men a few rows back from the front, opened up a newspaper and began to read, mouthing the print in a low voice.

After the preacher added some volume to his voice and provided more affirmations of conditional immortality, he stopped talking at last, the men’s chorus sang, the closing hymn ended, and the benediction closed the service.  Throughout the service, the preacher avoided the sad eyes of the patients looking for love; instead he looked up at heaven waiting for angels to speak.

 Mikage said,  “I don’t think he likes people...and he didn’t have much to say about Tom.  He also frightens me with his talk about the world coming to an end...it’s depressing to think we may all be blown to pieces in a fraction of a second.”

“Not a lot of love coming out of his mouth...just dusty and dull words,”  Victoria said.  “The part about the green beans...well, I’ve never put up green beans or anything else... but he seemed kind of silly to me.  And then at the end, he dismissed us like poor students, and practically ran out of the building along with his assistant.”

Zizi did not criticize the preacher like the other women.  In fact, she astounded them with another example of her unremitting compassion.  “I have met kinder preachers,” Zizi said, “but he asked us to pray for him.  We cannot regard him in the same way he regards us.  We must see him as someone who suffers like us.  I will pray for God to unseal his heart.  And besides...I could still hear God speaking to me through him, even through his silliness.  He said he is battling with Satan...I have the same battle.”

The old woman in the row in front of them wept, looking down at the yellow tennis balls securing the legs of her walker. She kept trying to arrange her skirt with one hand as she watered the linoleum floor with her tears. The three women gathered around her, and comforted her.  She said, “Where’s Cal?”

“He needed a bathroom break,” Victoria said.

“That old skunk takes a break when ever he wants to get out of something...does the same thing when we play word games and balloon volleyball,” the woman replied.  People began to gather at the back of the cafeteria to snack on dry boxed cookies and lukewarm soda from big plastic bottles.

The woman in the gray suit approached the three of women.  “I’m looking for Victoria Randall and Rozeta Zahra,” she said.

“Yes,” Victoria said, answering for both of them, and this is my friend, Mikage Hoshimoto.

“My name is Hannah Zimmerman. Black streaks of mascara showed evidence of tear stains on her face, and she kept daubing her eyes with a small white handkerchief.  Could you please come to my law office in downtown Grand Rapids on Monday morning at nine o’clock?  The matter has to do with Tom Albers.”

Victoria and Zizi agreed to meet Hannah the next morning, shook hands with her as she departed, and then accepted Mikage’s invitation to spend the night at her apartment.  

Our visit to Colorado Springs 

Alex also know as "Bubba"

Denise, Sadie, Josie, and me

Jeremy and Alex and the Sun

Laura, Sadie and Josie--the artists at work

Alex in his Michigan Hoodie

Way North, A Novel by Randy Evans

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Farewell to Carlos

After Sheriff Parks took Walt away, Victoria went over to help Stretch inspect the damage.  Charred stubs of wood, broken glass, and blackened pipe protruded from the still smoldering ashes.  Everything was wet and steamy from the rain and the torrents expelled from the fire hoses; it smelled like a campfire after dowsing with a bucketful of water. Through the smoking ruins, there was just a trace outline of what used to be Stretch’s cabin.  Stretch knelt down and turned his head sideways like he was listening to the ashes.  He scanned the scene.  “Hah!” Stretch said.  He found his aluminum coffee pot in the rubble, reflecting the sun.    He loitered around awhile and found nothing more, but seemed satisfied finding the coffee pot.  His possessions were now back nearly to what they had been when he first arrived in Northern Michigan from Texas.  Other than his Kubota tractor and contents of the pole barn, he had his pickup, his dog, the clothes on his back..and his coffee pot.  Flash seemed totally unconcerned about the loss of the cabin, and rumbled out of the pole barn with his tail wagging, happy to see Stretch, wheezing a bit from the exercise.

Back at Nick’s place, Nick and Zizi were alone for the first time since the evening before when Victoria had rammed them with the house boat.  They swam in the river for a bit, then sat down on the deck wrapped in beach towels.  Zizi pulled her wet black hair behind her, and it flowed back like ribbons of eels.  They sat barefooted, looking out on the river. The river ran urgently, heavy with spring runoff. The smoke-filled air carried a silvery mist veiling the late afternoon light.  Zizi reached for Nick’s injured arm, with the presumption of a physician examining a patient.

“How is your arm, Ick?” Zizi said, her Arabic tongue struggling with an English consonant.

“Still hurts a little.”  Zizi pressured his arm in different places with a doctor’s touch.

“I’m sorry...in Egypt they call me ‘The Scorpion,’ because I sting when trapped.”

“Did you just call me ‘Ick’?”

“Yes...best I can do for now...my Arabic tongue does not want to touch the roof of my mouth when I say certain letters like ‘n’ in Nick.”

“Well, call me ‘Ickey’ then...sounds a bit more friendly than ‘Ick’.

“Good!  “Ickey” will be your pet name just like Hepburn called Bogart, ‘Pinkey,’ in The African Queen.”

“Very interesting connection...two people fall in love while taking a boat down a river...and...”  Zizi had held his arm this entire time, and now the pressure increased to the point of hurting.  Nick responded to the pressure as Zizi’s grip tightened. “You have powerful hands,” Nick said, flinching his arm.

“I’m a surgeon, and before a surgeon, a rug maker.”  

Zizi kept going back and forwards between opening to him, and closing him out by hiding behind her professional credentials.  As for NIck, Zizi’s compassion for both Stretch and Walt over the last two days triggered in him something deeper than appreciation and attraction, not yet love, but a kind of admiration leading in the direction of love.

After a silence, he said quietly, “I know you’re a surgeon.  You’re also a beautiful woman, smart, compassionate, and probably a lot of other good things.”  He reached over with one hand and wrung out the back of her hair, dripping water onto the deck.  

“We smell like the river,” she said.

NIck drew a handful of Zizi’s hair to his face, “Yes, the river smells good.”  He looked at her face from the side, and noticed how large her eyes were in her thin face.

They were silent again until Zizi spoke.  “I must go.  I have work tomorrow.” 

 Zizi also had feelings for Nick, but wanted to leave them unexpressed for now.  Her acquaintance with him was too new.  She wanted more repetition and recurrence of her  impressions to help her warm to him.  She still did not trust men, even seemingly nice men.  He appeared to be better than all the men she ever knew outside of her father and brother, but doubt and mistrust still seized her.  She needed to develop trust very close to certainty, before letting down her well-constructed defenses, and if ever she did, the shame of her rape would still haunt her.  Developing a relationship with Nick, or any man, would be a long march.

As she turned away from Nick and stepped towards the screen door, his hand caught the hem of her blouse sleeve as she passed, and he gently tugged her close enough to kiss the wet hair on the side of her head.  She stopped, turned to him, and bowed her head towards him, bending her body in the form of a question mark.  Nick spoke to the top of her head,  “In case you’re available next weekend, do you think we could spend more time together...we’re planning a burial service for Carlos on Saturday...maybe you could stay awhile afterwards?”

Zizi turned her head abruptly up towards Nick, and like closing a door too hard from breeze gusting through windows, she said, “I’m not your type!”  She tried to shut out the feelings from his kiss on the side of her head with the dull thud of her comment.

“I’m not a type. Please don’t lump me in with your notions of men.”  Nick sounded indignant, but not angry.  The blue in Nick’s unblinking eyes seemed to be bluer.  His push back pleased Zizi, and she felt a pleasant melting sensation in her eyes.  Her face softened, and she smiled and enlivened her tone.

“Will you promise not to fall on me again?”

“Yes, will you promise not to pinch me?”

“No...but if I do, it will be a little pinch, like this.”  Zizi reached up, and tweaked Nick’s cheek in a mildly flirty way, then softly kissed it.  She laughed and Nick smiled.  She wanted to say more, but there were no words.

Nick drove Zizi back to her apartment in Petoskey.  They held hands lightly, thinking their own thoughts until Nick turned his truck onto the foot of Mitchell Street.  On the left was a large hole in the ground surrounded by fencing, a failed construction project.  His face hardened. Nick quietly said, “I hate that crater.”

“Why do you use the words ‘hate‘ and ‘crater’ for a hole in the ground?”

“Every time I come into town...every single time, the hole reminds me of the photograph of the crater the truck bomb made in Iraq...the bomb that evaporated Michael, my son.  He was my son, and now he’s gone...I worried about him when he was over there, but I didn’t think he’d be killed.  I thought other people lost their children in war...not me.”

“I am sorry you lost your son.  Someday, I will fill up this hole so you will not have to see it anymore,”  Zizi said.

Nick parked his truck, and walked her up the narrow wooden staircase to her apartment.  After they kissed a friend’s kiss, she said, “Ickey, when I see a man’s face, even yours, I feel like he’s ready to pounce, and I have the urge to smash his face in.”

“Please don’t smash my face in...I’ve had enough injuries lately.  You said you liked me... but you don’t know me if you think I’m that way.”

“You are right...I need to come home to me from where I have been, so I can know you...for who you are.”

“When you come home, I’ll try to like you for yourself, and not just your black eyes and long black hair.”

“We may not like each other then.”

“I doubt that...go on and get rid of what weighs you down...then we’ll see about us.”

“Yes...weight is what I feel.  I often dream I am carrying a heavy earthen jar full of water on my head, and I must remove it...I’m so used to carrying the weight, balancing the jar, walking to keep in balance, moving my legs the way my mother taught me.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere...when you remove the jar from your head, I will be here.”

“When I remove the jar from my head, I may fall flat on my face.”  Zizi gently smiled at Nick, then said, “Good night, handsome Ickey.”   She shut and double locked the door.  She stood there for a moment shivering in the dark, and listened through the door to Nick creaking down the steps.  She adjusted the thermostat, went over to her kitchen table, lit a candle, and watched its trembling wick and ragged flame as the furnace fan kicked on. She went to bed feeling sad and empty.

The following Saturday, Sheriff Parks temporarily released Walt from the county jail so he could see the ashes of Carlos buried.  Nick arranged to have Carlos’ remains interred at an Indian Cemetery on a hill outside Harbor Springs.  Amid the simple crosses in a field of ancient hardwoods, Zizi, Nick, Victoria, Stretch, Walt, and Parks stood graveside.  In the bright morning sun, the crosses and gravestones cast precise angles of shade across the bare ground.  The air smelled of new-cut grass.  All around squirrels muttered impatiently, complaining about the interruption to their work day.

Walt knelt down over the simple metal box, pulled out a dirty white handkerchief for his red eyes, and said, 

“Carlos, remember when you thought you was killed many years ago on that ridge in Nam...but you weren’t?  That’s when I about got my foot shot off.  Back then, you asked me to say a few words at your service.  Remember what I said?  I said, ‘Carlos, that’s askin’ a whole lot.’  I didn’t refuse... but you was askin’ a whole lot, and it pisses me off now to fog up how I feel with words...but here goes. (Silence, then slowly).  I think you probably know by now you’re dead... and I’m heart broke you’re gone.  We done a lot of things together, some good, some bad... mostly bad...but we did the best we could and stuck together most of the time. 

“I suppose you’re floatin’ around somewhere out there, and yeah, I hope there’s some Jesus up in there.  And God (I guess I’m prayin’ now), I may be out of line askin’ this, but...I just hope there’s enough room in Heaven for ordinary, practical folks like us, people that’s screwed up over and over again.  And I hope Heaven doesn’t have much to do with religion, ‘cause I don’t give a spit for religion, especially the sermons part--just give us a Heaven for people like us who don’t expect much.  Aaa-men.  Now back to Carlos...good bye, Carlos, I know death is a set back, but try to keep your chin up, and don’t start any trouble ‘til I get there.  I guess life will go on without you,...’cause it just goes.”

Behind Zizi, Nick, Victoria, Stretch, Walt, and Sheriff Parks, a dozen mourning doves stood in the twilight with their wings folded behind their backs like hands in prayer, cooing in their plaintiff tones:  oo-wah-hooo, hoo, hoo.  Draped over the wooden crosses, white ribbons and birch wreaths blew quietly in the cool evening air.  

On the way out of the cemetery, Nick, Zizi, Walt, Parks, and Victoria followed the path back to the cars single file. Victoria lingered awhile to read the grave markers--so many and so old.  She came across a poem on an Odawa woman’s gravestone:

Do not stand at my grave and 

weep

I am not there I do not sleep

I am a thousand winds that 

blow

I am the diamond glint on 

snow

I am the sunlight in ripened

grain

I am the gentle autumn rain

when you wake in the 

morning hush.

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circling

flight

I am the soft starlight at 

night

Do not stand at my grave and 

cry

I am not there I did not die.

Victoria shivered as she walked towards the cars to join the others.  She always seemed to be at the end of a parade, on a float driven by a car with a small engine, bad brakes, and running on empty.  She lived in a linear world with length and width, but no height...at the end of a line.  

When she returned to the cars, Nick said Mikage had called him on his cell phone.  Tom, her long-suffering patient, had died in the nursing home.  She returned the call on her father’s phone.