The Cascading: Knights of the Fire Ring

by CW Ullman

  “This is your fault,” Cindy said.

  “My fault?” Charlie asked.

  “Ever since the accident, you two have been buddy, buddy. You stopped correcting her, no discipline; like you two were dating,” accused Cindy.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Charlie said.

  “I know what’s going on, the sly laughs, the giggles,” Cindy said.

  “Are you listening to yourself? She’s my daughter, Cindy. She’s pregnant and you’re acting like an idiot. We have to figure out what to do.”

  “You figure it out, I’m out of here,” Cindy said.

  “No, you’re not! We’re going to talk about this, now.”

  “We’ll talk about it when I’m good and ready and right now, I’m not ready,” Cindy said as she grabbed her keys and left.

  Charlie stood in the kitchen and wondered what the hell just happened. Was Cindy accusing him of…he could not even finish the thought. He wondered what had gotten into her. Had she become so jealous of his relationship with Molly? Where did she go when she left? While he was thinking of following her, Molly called and asked him to come upstairs. When he walked in she was packing a bag.

  “Where are you going?” Charlie asked.

  “I think it will be better if I live with Jenn,” Molly said, referring to her lifelong friend.

  “You are not going anywhere. You’re staying here, the baby is staying here, and I’ll straighten this out with your mother. Look at me,” Charlie said, as he walked up to Molly and grabbed her hands from packing. “This is your home. Your mother…we are disappointed, but we are going to make it work. You’re going to have the baby and you’ll both live here.”

  “I don’t think Mom is going to be cool with that,” Molly said.

  “Your mother will come around. She just has to blow off some steam. Trust me, she’ll be fine. I don’t want you to leave.” He became less intense. “Molly, it’s too hard on us when we don’t know where you are or how you’re doing. Please, let me handle this. Just unpack your bag and go downstairs and make some dinner for you and the boys.

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  Seven months later Molly had a baby girl, Cecily Rose. Charlie kidded her that she had chosen a country singer’s name. After the baby was born, Cindy was very receptive toward Molly keeping the child. While she took to caring for the child from the outset, she did not want to be called Grandma and she had still not warmed up to Charlie, nor let up on Molly, heaping chores upon her.

  Charlie was completely taken with Cecily Rose. When Molly went off to school, Cecily Rose came to the surf shop with Charlie. She captivated Darla and Tobie. It was Tobie who alerted Darla to Cecily’s uniqueness.

  “Mom, watch this,” Tobie said.

  Tobie would get face-to-face with Cecily and blink both eyes shut, and six-month-old Cecily would do the same. While Cecily could not speak, she could imitate almost any noise Tobie made. The most startling discovery was when Tobie put a pen and a pencil in front of her, told her to pick up the pencil, and she did.

  “Now, watch. Cecily, pick up the pen,” Cecily picked up the pen. “Cecily, put the pen down and pick up the pencil.” Cecily dropped the pen and picked up the pencil.

  Darla yelled at Charlie who was in the front of the store, “Charlie, your grandchild is a freak. Have you seen this?”

  Charlie came over and Cecily repeated the same thing for Charlie.

  “I have felt something different about this kid from the beginning,” Charlie said. “When you’re talking with her, she follows your mouth. I think she is very perceptive.”

  No one realized just how perceptive until she was talking at nine months and walking at ten months. She also said things that frequently had deeper meanings as she progressed into her toddler years.

  Once when Charlie was at a light, honking at a car, Cecily said, “G Pa too fast.” Another day, she had seen him on the phone arguing with a supplier, and when he took her to McDonald’s, she said, “G Pa need Happy Meal.” On Sunday, when Jordan read the funnies, he would point out words to her and she could say them aloud. On another occasion, they were sitting together in the back of the car, when Cecily tugged on Jordan’s sleeve and pointed to a billboard with beer on it and said the word Jordan had taught her the week before, “Cold.”

  “Dad, Cecily just pointed out the word “cold” on a billboard. How old was I when I knew the word ‘cold’?” Jordan asked.

  “Eleven,” Charlie kidded.

  “Dad, she is, like really smart,” Jordan enthused. Charlie was beginning to think he had a genius for a granddaughter.

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  The Knights of the Fire Ring had been sidelined for almost a year because no one had any time to meet. In December 1991, they got together at the Christmas tree lot that the Beach Rotary Club had run for twenty years. Some of the members brought their kids to the lot to help out. This Christmas, Charlie brought Bryce, Jordan, Molly, and Cecily. Curtis came with a fifteen-year-old boy he had taken into his home. Curtis took Charlie aside to talk to him.

  “You know my brother Paul? He talked me into taking this kid, Jordan Franklin, for the next few months. He’s actually a good kid; he’s been living with us since September. He’s shy, so he doesn’t say a lot. His father killed his crack-addict mother when he was one, because she was abusive to the boy. He is getting hassled by the gangs in his neighborhood and Paul said if he didn’t get him out of there, they were either going to draft him or kill him,” Curtis said.

  “How’s the missus dealing with it?” Charlie asked.

  Curtis rolled his eyes and said, “Peachy.” Then he mimicked the voice of his wife, Claudia, “‘I don’t want him around the girls. Look at how he’s dressed. He’s going to rob us.’ I told her he was only vice-president of the Crips. By the way, the girls are fine with him. You know they’re both getting a full ride to Stanford.” Curtis said.

  “Grades?” Charlie asked.

  “Grades and basketball, boy,” Curtis high fived Charlie.

  “I guess they’re not coming tonight?” Charlie asked.

  “No. How’s Cindy?” Curtis and Charlie had been talking about their mutual marital problems.

  “Peachy. I’ll tell you when the crew isn’t around. I brought Cecily Rose,” Charlie said, handing her to Curtis. Whenever she was held by anybody with black skin, she touched it.

  “Hi, Cecily. Do you know who I am?” Curtis asked.

  “G Pa’s best friend,” Cecily said.

  Curtis was shocked. He asked, “How old are you?”

  “I’m almost two. How old are you?” Cecily asked.

  “I’m forty-three. Do you know how old that is?” Curtis asked.

  Cecily fidgeted for a minute, then held up one hand showing four fingers and said, “Four.” She fidgeted again, held up three fingers, and said, “Three.”

  “Holy smoke, Charlie,” Curtis looked at Charlie in amazement.

  “I know, crazy, huh? She’s recognizing words in print,” Charlie said. “Introduce her to the kid you brought.”

  Curtis walked over to Jordan Franklin and before he could say anything, Cecily reached out for him and said, “I’m Cecily, my brother’s name is Jordan.” Jordan held her and she touched his face. Then she hugged his neck and said, “I like you, Jordan.”

  Curtis got busy with Charlie and Cecily introduced Jordan Franklin to Bryce and Jordan. Jordan Franklin was not completely comfortable carrying Cecily around, but when he tried to put her down, she would hold onto his neck. Her brother saw this and relieved Jordan of Cecily. A few minutes later, Bryce put her down in the middle of the Christmas trees to rough house with his younger brother. She became lost in the grove and panicked. Jordan Franklin saw her crying and grabbed her up to soothe her fears. What he felt seeing her in the trees, lost and scared, resonated with him. For the first time in his life, he saved someone from a fear with which he was familiar, being abandoned. She hugged his neck and buried her face under his chin.

  “Look, Cecily, there yo
ur brothers,” Jordan said. He pointed to Bryce and Jordan on the other side of the tree lot.

  “I want you,” Cecily said. He held her close and patted her back.

  “Okay, you can stay with me,” Jordan said.

  “Jordan save G Pa,” Cecily said.

  Jordan was confused by what she said and pointed to Charlie who, with Curtis, was unloading trees from the back of a truck.

  “He’s okay, see,” Jordan said.

  “Jordan save G Pa,” Cecily repeated and laid her head under Jordan’s chin and fell asleep. While she slept, he thought he would lay her down in the car, but realized she might wake up and be scared, so thought better of it. For the rest of the night, Jordan never tired of holding the sleeping Cecily.

  Surgeon, Rusty’s Labrador, was running through the trees with the Palmer brothers. When he tired, Surgeon loped over to Jordan Franklin and Cecily and stood on his hind legs with his forepaws on Jordan’s chest. Seeing this, Charlie gave two short tweets on the dog whistle and Jordan Franklin reacted to the whistle, while the dog came to Charlie.

  “Sorry about Surgeon. He still thinks he’s a puppy,” Charlie apologized to Jordan. “I saw you flinch when I blew the whistle. Can you hear it?”

  Jordan said, “Yeah, I can hear high-pitched sounds.”

  When the lights of the Christmas tree lot were turned off at nine, Charlie found Jordan Franklin in a chair wearing a Santa hat holding a Santa-hatted Cecily, both asleep. Charlie wished he had camera to take a picture of this. He gently tapped Jordan awake and picked Cecily up and laid her upon his shoulder.

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  Curtis gathered up Jordan and took him home to Palos Verdes Estates, a housing tract situated on sixteen thousand acres of unstable rock. Claudia saw the addition of Jordan Franklin to the household as Curtis exhibiting empty-nest syndrome. What Curtis hoped to accomplish by bringing Jordan into her home was anyone’s guess. She could hardly hide her disdain for the boy. She had relatives in similar situations that she never saw.

  Curtis came home from a Rotary trip to Africa determined to reach out to young black males who he thought he could help, but this was a huge problem for Claudia who did not like being dragged into his cause. Even after he showed her pictures of the trip and laid out his plan, she was unswayed. Despite her lack of support, he began, anyway, with Jordan Franklin as his first project.

  Curtis was determined to keep sentimentality out of his mentoring of Jordan. He was not going to feel sorry for him. Curtis’s father said excuses are a child’s first “introduction to seduction” and Curtis was not going to be seduced. He was reminded of something his grandfather, a slave descendant, once told him, “You cannot help someone you feel sorry for and people who feel sorry for you are dangerous.”

  Curtis laid out the rules to Jordan and told him what was expected. Then Curtis, with fingers crossed, gave Jordan the keys to the house and hoped he was not making a big mistake. His hopes for Jordan Franklin were affirmed when he started at the local school.

  One of the reasons Jordan became popular was his talent as a running back in football. Curtis met with the coach and urged him to hold Jordan to a scholastic grade standard of no less than a B. Jordan was struggling in all of his classes because of his prior learning experiences in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

  Due to Claudia’s covert hostility, Jordan seldom spoke, because his voice was like nails on a chalkboard to her. His L.A. ghetto accent ended sentences with prepositions, ended phrases with an up-tone or “yo,” and he used his hands when he spoke. He figured out early to wear baseball hats not backwards, and Curtis gave him a heads up about using “ma’am” when he spoke to Claudia. Curtis’s daughters, Gail and Stephanie, tried to run interference, but Claudia would not be mollified. Jordan stayed late as he could at school, waiting for Curtis or the girls to get home first, because it was so uncomfortable being alone in the house with Claudia.

  When Curtis pointed out to Claudia how well Jordan was doing in school, she was unmoved. However, if he did anything wrong, like leaving his room a mess or the toothpaste tube uncapped she was relentless. Gail and Stephanie told Jordan not to pay attention to their uptight mother. While their efforts were appreciated, he knew when someone did not like him. He was raised by his mother’s sister and was familiar with a hostile atmosphere. In that house, his aunt favored his two older cousins. She reminded him often that his “rotting-in-prison” father had killed her sister, Jordan’s mother.

  When Jordan missed a Saturday football practice in January, Curtis got a call from the coach. Jordan was gone for a few days before Curtis found him in his old neighborhood. Curtis was not sure what to say to him. He did not want to give up on him, because he saw Jordan’s potential, but he also was aware of Claudia’s attitude and he had no idea how to ameliorate it. He asked if there was anything he could do to help Jordan and was surprised by his request.

  “I want to see my father,” Jordan said.

  Curtis was not expecting this. He pondered Jordan’s request for a moment, then told Jordan he would call the State Corrections Department, and they would go see his father as soon as possible. He said they would make routine visits to his father as long as Jordan toed the line. Jordan came back with Curtis, went to school, and attended football practice while avoiding Claudia and waiting to see his father.

  A week later, Curtis and Jordan drove to the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. Curtis waited in the car while Jordan was escorted into a large cafeteria. He sat at a table for a few minutes before his dad walked in with a group of prisoners. Jordan’s father gave his son a long hug, then sat across from him.

  “Boy, look at you, all growed up. How’s it going?” Jordan’s father asked.

  Jordan told him about living with Curtis’s family and how well he was doing in football. His dad reminded him of his own high school football prowess and that J-Man, his nickname for Jordan, was carrying on the family tradition. He encouraged him to keep it up and it would land him a scholarship to college. They visited for four hours and had a picture taken together. It was not what Jordan’s father had to say that had the most impact on Jordan, but the way he spoke and the tone of his voice. It was succor to hear a family member speak to him with compassion and love.

  As the guard announced the end of visitation, Jordan became anxious. But what calmed him and blocked the sounds in the room was when his father reached across the table and rested his hands upon his son. Jordan’s shoulders relaxed, his eyes lifted to see his father’s soft, teary gaze looking at the union of their hands in the middle of the table. His father’s touch had been the emotional blanket absent his entire life. He was now a beloved son and what his father made Jordan feel, no one else could duplicate. He had not known exactly why he wanted to see his father. Now, he knew.

  When he came back to the car, Curtis asked him how the visit went and Jordan told him his father had been a running back in football and that he was proud of Jordan. The ride home was mostly silent, except when Jordan showed Curtis a Polaroid picture of himself with his dad. Curtis noticed a serenity in him he had not seen before. Jordan held the picture in his lap and looked at it all the way back to Los Angeles.

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  CHAPTER IX

  Charlie watched the dog stop. Rusty’s chocolate Labrador, Surgeon, was fetching a Frisbee as he had done every morning when Charlie came and got him from Rusty’s quarters behind the surf shop. Charlie’s dad received two lab puppies from one of his patients. He kept one for himself and gave the other to Charlie. Because of Chris’s contempt for the medical profession, he named his dog Medical Malpractice and the one he gave to Charlie, Surgeon. Cindy said no to a dog in the house, so Charlie took it to the surf shop.

  The dog was running back with the Frisbee in his mouth when he stopped five yards short of Charlie. He called for Surgeon, but instead of coming, he dropped the Frisbee and hung his head for a moment. Surgeon then sprang up and hovered over the Frisbee while barking at Charlie. This w
as the game for Surgeon, drop the Frisbee, bark at Charlie, and dare him to come pick it up. Charlie turned his back. Surgeon thought he did something wrong. So, he picked up the Frisbee and sauntered up to Charlie. He dropped it at Charlie’s feet and sat back on his hind legs waiting for him to pick up the Frisbee. He was hoping Charlie would play some more and not leave. He got off his haunches and forced his head into Charlie’s hanging hand. He held it there letting Charlie’s hand rest on his head.

  Charlie pulled the dog whistle out of his pocket, blew it once, and Surgeon immediately sat down. He blew twice and Surgeon got up. He blew three times and Surgeon ran away until Charlie blew it long and the dog came back to him. When Surgeon came back, Charlie blew the whistle once and Surgeon sat again.

  Charlie, with a sudden burst of energy, roughhoused with Surgeon, pushing the dog over on his side, grabbing the Frisbee and running off with it. Surgeon lived for this. He righted himself and charged after Charlie. Just as he was about to grab the Frisbee from Charlie’s hand, Charlie flung it far, skimming just a few feet above the ground. Surgeon had done this so often he could predict with regularity the place where the disc would fall. However, to keep it interesting, Charlie would sometimes peel it off his fingers with enough English that it would gain altitude when Surgeon thought it should fall to earth. Surgeon would stop, watch it rise, and when he saw the arc headed back to earth, he would run for it and so would Charlie. It was a race between dog and man to see who would get there first.

  They had been doing this since Surgeon was twelve-weeks-old, and now at three-years, he was an old hand at the competition. Charlie tried to arc it away from Surgeon so he could beat the dog to the catch, but over the years Surgeon had devised a scheme that seemed to work: when Charlie arrived first at the catch, Surgeon would tackle him.

  Charlie was sprinting, and while he had lost a little speed from his days of playing high school football in Tulsa, he was still faster than most of the sprinters on the Manhattan Beach High School one hundred yard dash team. He saw the charging brown blur coming his way. Surgeon was in full gallop and Charlie knew he was coming to cut his legs out from under him. Surgeon’s way of tackling was to throw his body into Charlie’s legs, tripping him. Charlie knew if he got to the Frisbee first, a seventy pound canine was going to barrel roll his legs. Surgeon was in full stride and closing, but the Frisbee was hanging in the air a little longer than Charlie had planned. At the last second Charlie swerved away from the falling Frisbee to let Surgeon have it. When Charlie went left, the Frisbee fell right, but it appeared Surgeon had made his mind up before he got there by taking Charlie’s legs out anyway.