“Uncle Ram, will you come back and see us again and tell me stories about my dad when he was a kid?”
“Maybe sometime you and your dad will come over to my house and see me and tell me stories.” I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek and Fran and I shook hands and wished each other Merry Christmas. When I reached the top of the ridge, I looked in the rearview just in time to see the moon rise. It was a brand new waxing crescent, bone white against an indigo sky.
Chapter Thirteen
The winter quit early this year. The mists of February that turned to sheeting rain in the cold squalls typical for this region instead brought a string of golden days that grew steadily warmer as we moved toward spring.
In the mornings, I’d watch steam rising off the swollen river, and in the afternoons came a breeze that was neither biting nor strong, but constant, soft and warm, stirring the water in the rain barrel until it hummed like power through a utility line.
The melodious pitch of the breeze and the heat of the sun combined to tranquilize me, and when I’d awaken from dozing on the deck, I’d sometimes find myself sitting in a mist that had stolen in while I slept. It seemed like only a moment had passed since I was looking at the redwoods skeletoned against the backdrop of Mount Armstrong, and then I’d wake up to a crystal fog dripping water from the branches and find that my field of vision had been transformed from an infinity of looking westward toward an invisible horizon to one as distinct and finite as watching a dew drop travel down a grain of wood. When that happened, it usually took me a moment to make the adjustment and downshift to the point where I knew where I was again and what day it was. Then I’d recount what I’d been doing of late until I was back in my own skin again.
The evenings were becoming finer now in the canyon, the season voluptuous in its milky roundness as winter gave way to spring. Soon, the character of the light would change, and the sun, migrating south, would sink into the declivity between Mt. Armstrong and the distant ridge whose name I never did learn. There was a pungent sweetness in the air from the ripening fruit and it attracted feeding insects, which hovered in the near distance off my deck, which, in turn, attracted bats. I liked watching the bats as they performed their nightly feats of acrobatic derring-do free of charge. The coons had now become bolder too, and on full moon nights, whole clans of them would skirmish under the deck for the scraps I left for them alongside the roses. Late in the evening, I’d listen for the wings of the two great horned owls that lived in a nest 100 feet up one of the redwoods directly alongside the deck. I’d hear them land on a branch and then listen as they hopped up the branches to their nest, making that clicking sound with their beaks that sounded like baseball cards slapping against bike wheel spokes. As I sipped my coffee in the afternoons, I’d look between the redwood planks and watch the coons become aware of the presence of the mated raptors. Their brown eyes would go on guard, and their noses would twitch rat-like as they sniffed the agitated air.
The summer folk were coming now, their frolicsome season on the river announced by the dust rising from their four-wheelers as they bumped uphill on the logging roads. But evening sealed off the dust, and with the crickets chorusing and the constellations ascending and games of dummy-crib, cementing my solitude, coupled with the cars accelerating on the highway below me, I would hear the odd burgled conversation of passersby borne by the breeze and cresting the cedars to my deck, and other incidents that connected me, albeit tenuously, to the greater world that still existed beyond and in spite of my enforced retirement. On those days that were the acme of light and ripeness, I found the foundation footings of a bridge that could maybe span the disjoint lives and eras I’d long shelved as irrational incongruities.
I kept the radio on constantly—swing jazz, mostly—certainly not my era, but the one where I felt most comfortable dwelling right then; Dorsey, Miller, Shaw, and the Duke. I imagined the rustlings of taffeta gowns on lakeside verandas and the knee-buckling wash of gardenias with wind gusting off the water… And then, hallucinating (or was I?) from the caffeine and the waltz-time measured out by the cricket’s metronome, the ghosts would begin appearing in couples for the cotillion they held nightly on my deck.
My father and mother were usually the first to float into focus, he in his officer’s uniform, and she with her long shapely legs and rosy Slavic cheeks. Then my Uncle Ram; then Fran and his teenage bride at Peter’s wedding in hippie garb; then Katie and I, my teenage sweetheart, tipsy from too much champagne at Peter’s wedding. Then, finally, Vera and I in the flush days of our marriage, eyes full with ardor and devotion, drunk on each other and on passion itself, while, behind us, an orchestra of shades in white dinner jackets with a full complement of strings and a pancake-faced crooner singing:
"Many a tear has to fall,
But it’s all in the game."
Eventually, I would come to, awakened by the full chill of night. The world beyond would now be silent, the critters departed, the cocktail glasses from the shaded soirée all removed, leaving only the electric hum from the overhead wires and the matching buzz from the crickets, which both marked and mocked time. Overhead, the stars seemed to be scurrying westward out of embarrassment. I’d listen for the owls, but it would be too early for them, while the bats had all gone to bed. Then I’d rise, gather up the coffee things, lock up, and peel off my clothes in the moonlight flooded bedroom. When my head hit the pillow, it usually took me a while before I could think of nothing other than my work with the wires, switches, and relays.
When I got to work in the morning and parked my car in the Teledyne lot, I would look upon the buildings—sleek and low-slung with smokeless metal a chimneys—and now see them for what they were—fancy, high-tech factories—and watching myself among my coworkers as we made our way across the parking lot, migrating toward the entrances to begin our shift, saw more clearly who and what I was and what they were. Like ants in tunnels or bees in hives, we served an insectoid purpose of generalized specie preservation that, in our case, was predicated on the principle of high-tech weapons of mass destruction and the omniscient and electronic guidance systems we created that piloted them to their goals. While a larger part of me didn’t object to this work or see that there was anything generally wrong with it—that we workers and what we did were mere cogs in a vast and complex economic system that produced hardware that would probably never be used, and that our paychecks translated into keeping our free-market system afloat because it allowed us to be good consumers—there was now a nerve in me that started twitching which I hadn’t noticed until then. A part of me was waking to my own personal responsibility for my actions and what I put forth in the world.
I began to look at my hands and what they were doing now more and more as they assembled the working parts, the brains, of high impact, high velocity, multiply-targeted missiles of mass distraction. And, more and more, when I went home in the evenings and turned on the news, and came across some footage of human carnage and smoking ruins somewhere in the wide world, I began more and more to wonder whether or not my handiwork was connected to the committee of authorship of the work at hand, whose results were this particular gruesome course of the evening’s meal.
What had been simple and unconscious for so long was now becoming less and less so with each dawning day, each passing night, and for the first time in years, my life now had a problem in it. After some weeks of this, I finally called Aragon, reaching him at home one early evening. We made small talk for a while, then he asked me the purpose of my call, and I told him. I was about halfway through it when I heard him start up his pipe and begin puffing. When I finished, I heard him take a deep pull and then exhale smoke.
“Well, Ram, that definitely does present a problem then doesn’t it?”
I told him that it sure did and that I didn’t know what to do about it. He took another pull then exhaled again.
“Well, what do you want to do about it, Ram?”
“Well, I want the problem to end.�
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“Okay. Let me ask you this then, Ram. Do you think that your feelings about what you’re doing will change?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, this work was fine with you until recently, right? And then your feelings about your work changed. What I’m asking you, Ram, is do you think your feelings about your work will change back to your being okay with it again?”
“I don’t know, Paul. Every time I watch the news it comes out. Every time I make a solder on a printed board, I think about what I’m doing. Every time I walk into the plant, I start seeing beyond it. I’m starting to have trouble falling asleep.”
“Yes, but can you change that? Can you let go of all that and be okay with it again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, listen, Ram. Three years ago, you came out of prison, and you were happy to get that job, and you’ve been happy with it since then. It’s giving you stability and a foundation and provided you a good living, and that’s been a good thing. But now, something’s changing and your feelings about your job aren’t the same and you don’t think you can change those feelings back to what they were, you told me. So now you’re faced with a choice, a difficult choice.”
“So what should I do?”
“I can’t tell you, Ram. Lots of people get up and go to jobs they don’t like just so they can make a living and pay their bills, and you might have to do that. It’s either that or you look for something different that seems to suit you better.”
“I’m not sure I want to go through a whole new retraining regimen and all that. I don’t know what else I could do.”
Aragon pulled at his pipe and then exhaled. The current of the phone buzzed in my ear while I waited for him to start speaking again.
“You know, Ram, there’s something else you could do right now.”
“What’s that?”
“Just wait. Be patient and wait. Do nothing for right now until you’re sure of what the next step is.”
He laughed and said, as much to himself as it was to me, “that would be something different for you, wouldn’t it, Ram? To exercise patience; to not act on impulse and expect instant results, wouldn’t it?”
I joined him in laughter, and we sat there for a couple of minutes cracking up over the phone.
“I guess it would,” I finally said.
“Well how about it, Ram? Do you think you’re now capable of entering such a foreign land?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Aragon, but I’m willing to try.”
We laughed for a couple more minutes and then engaged in small talk for a while. Then I rang off and went outside to take in the night, watching the cold stars drift through the heavens and listening to the wing beats of the owls while they hunted in the skies somewhere above me.
When I was at work, I tried as best I could to concentrate deeply on what was at hand, to do my job to the best of my capabilities, make every solder and connection as perfectly as I could to produce circuit boards that were better than the best I’d ever produced, and to leave a mark of me that was as close to a work of art as a haiku, a villanelle, or an Italian sonnet.
When I wasn’t at work, on my drive home alone along the River Road, I’d stop to watch the osprey returning home to their roosts near the ocean or look at the fresh shoots of vine beginning to climb skyward. I savored and sucked each moment down to the marrow and chewed on that which was left until it melded into my system.
I said hello and goodbye to all that I knew, and spent all the time I had on the things I still loved until my satiety was complete. I smiled at the people and things in my catalog that gave me joy and pleasure, prayed for those that didn’t, and begged forgiveness for myself and all that I’d done. I’d look at the pruned rose bushes and imagine them again in full bloom in summertime glistening with dew. I was putting my house in order and swept every crevice of cobwebs and droppings, making checklists to myself as I went and crossing off the items I’d done before I went to bed. Although my sleep was shallow, I was still able to keep the dreams at bay. The air seemed seeded with promise, but of what, I couldn’t guess. Then, out of the blue, Papa Joe Costanza showed up one afternoon.
It was a Sunday, and I had spent the morning at an Episcopal Church called The Holy Ghost. After breakfast at a diner in Guerneville, I came home to watch a basketball game and a movie. It was warm, cloudless, and bright, and I’d made it through two-thirds of Donnie Brasco before I dozed off. When I awoke, it was to a knock on the door and a voice calling, “is there anybody in there?” I called out for whoever it was to hold on, wiped the sleep from my eyes, got up and crossed the floor, and opened the door to find Papa Joe.
He was dressed in a windbreaker, snap brim hat, and heavy shoes. There was a taxicab out in the driveway. Joe nodded at him. The driver opened his trunk, fetched two bags, and put them on the porch. Joe peeled off a $100 bill from his wad, thanked the cab driver, and brought his bags into the house.
It had been ten years since I’d seen Papa Joe and he’d aged considerably. He was all gray now—hair, mustache, clothes, and skin—and he moved more slowly and deliberately than I remembered. But he still had that aura of power and his eyes hadn’t softened, still housing that menacing air.
“Sorry, I didn’t call to let you know I was coming. I had to keep below the radar screen so to speak. I think you know how it is. No. I know you know how it is.”
I nodded, said sure, and waited for what came next.
“Where do I put these?” he asked over his shoulder, indicating his bags.
“Second door on the right. It looks like an office. There’s a fold out bed.”
“Yeah, I got you,” he said, his thick voice echoing down the hall.
“Anything I can get you, Joe?”
“Maybe a coffee… no, make that a glass of wine, Vino Rosso if you have one.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” I said. I went into the pantry and searched while my mind raced. It took me a minute to get my breathing back to normal and my vision to narrow to the task at hand. I found a bottle of Abruzzo that I’d won in a raffle at an office Christmas party and washed one of the crystal goblets that were a wedding gift to Vera and me from Joe and Agnieska. I poured him a glass. In another, I poured myself some apple juice and sat down opposite him at the dining room table.
“Your health, Ram.”
“And yours, Joe.”
We sat there for the rest of the afternoon making small talk. We talked about the weather in Cleveland and the health of his family. It was bad and they were good. We talked about sunny California and the health of mine. We talked about the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers. We talked politics a little, sports a little more, then, without my asking, Joe volunteered why he was here.
“I got a problem with the family,” he said, knowing that I knew it wasn’t his wife and children he was talking about, but his other family, the Castiglione’s.
“They brought in a new counselor,” Joe said. “Some bright college boy out of Chicago. He wants us to change the business and get rid of all the old crews, including mine. Something started to smell bad a week ago, so I left. I came cross country in a car, put my head down in Denver for a couple days while I tried to find out what was going on. Nobody would say anything. I figured I’d better keep moving. Went through Idaho, down through Oregon, and sold the car in a town on the coast. I took Greyhound the rest of the way, got off in Santa Rosa. Who’d think I’d come here to lay out? I mean, how likely is it that I’d come here…?”
‘…to stay at my daughter’s murderer’s home, to come here and kill him,’ I thought, silently finishing his thought for him, making the likelihood of his visiting me more of a certain thing. Papa Joe saw what I was thinking and tensed slightly. He looked out the sliding glass doors to the view, got up, and walked over.
“Nice place you got here,” he said. “It’s quiet and peaceful, off the track.”
I nodded and smiled, wondering how long th
is would last.
“Yeah, I made a home here,” I said. “Got a good job too.”
“That’s good. That’s real good, Ram,” he said, raising his eyes, smiling. The smile didn’t carry over to his eyes, which glowed darkly. I tried to think what Joe might have been thinking, but it rattled me too much, and besides, what could I do about it? He was here, and he was here for as long as he liked. I’d have to play the hand that was dealt me, one card at a time. The moment passed and we were convivial again.
“I’m getting hungry,” he said. “What do you got here for restaurants?”
I cast about for those that were still open at this time of year, crossing out the ones that were seasonal. I remembered Paoli’s in Occidental was year-round and called and made reservations for two, making sure that Johnny wasn’t working the bar. Johnny was connected, I’d heard.
While Joe showered and dressed, I wondered about what he told me and if it was how he said it was or whether this was just to put me at my ease until the inevitable. I had no answer to that. So I put it in that compartmentalized department that Katz and Bardens told me to do; to not worry about things that I had no control over. I forwarded to the possible scenarios awaiting me and didn’t like the pictures they presented. I rewound to the past and the pictures it recalled and didn’t like them any better. It took me a while to get back to the present. I didn’t like that either. When I took my shower, I put myself under deep hypnosis. When I came to, I could take it moment by moment again.
We drove to Occidental, taking the back road through Graton and the apple country. I tensed as we climbed the grade through the woods and was relieved when we reached the downslope and could see the lights of Occidental below us. I told Joe about the town, that it was a logging town run by two families, the Paoli’s and the Assotanos. His eyes narrowed when he heard the names. “They’re Italians… from Genoa,” I said. He smiled and nodded.
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