Panorama City

by Antoine Wilson

  CHANGES

  The police had questions for me, which I answered truthfully, which is a fine strategy for talking to police, though it can confuse them. The big question of course was whether I had buried your grandfather in the yard, and when I said yes and showed them the disturbed earth, there were no more questions after that, everyone just looked at the ground, nobody knew what to do, that was the first time somebody used the word mistake, I told them there was no mistake, this had been in accord with your grandfather’s wishes, but when the police all agree on something there’s no convincing them otherwise. A scrawny policeman with a shaved head asked me to sit at the kitchen table while things got sorted out. Some flies had come in and buzzed around the kitchen, I couldn’t blame them, the sun was blazing. I sat at the table and looked at your grandfather’s Letter to the Editor still there in the corner of the room, still running through the typewriter, and I wondered what offenses the Fresno Bee had committed that day. I wondered too when everyone was going to leave so that I could ride my bicycle into Madera and find some work. I don’t need to tell you that I can be a slow absorber, I’ve always been a slow absorber, but it’s better than the opposite, your grandfather used to say, which is to be a quick absorber, or sucker. The police and authorities milled around the house, measuring things and talking out of earshot, none of them stood near me. Then Community Service Officer Mary, who wore a police uniform but wasn’t exactly a police officer, her words, finally got fed up with all of this pussyfooting, also her words, and sat down across from me, she lay her palms flat on the kitchen table, like the way a psychic puts her hands on the table, of course I had never seen a psychic, I wouldn’t meet a psychic until much later, Officer Mary looked at me with sympathetic eyes, I couldn’t imagine her arresting anyone, maybe that was why she wasn’t exactly a police officer, her shirt was too big, her shoulders drooped like her bones were soft.

  Everyone has a different way of coping with death, her words. That made sense to me, everyone is different. Then her voice changed, she was quoting someone, she said that for this situation there were some general practices outlined in the law. She explained that despite the fact that my father, your grandfather, had been buried according to his wishes, despite the fact that it had been his wish to be buried on our piece of land next to his beloved hunting dogs Ajax and Atlas, despite the fact that what I had done seemed perfectly reasonable to her, even honorable, the authorities, the Madera City and Madera County authorities, had decided that the method and location of burial were not satisfactory. By then everyone had gathered, they stood around the kitchen, they tried to look like they weren’t listening but they were listening. Mary explained that because of general practices outlined in the law, they were going to have to move my father, your grandfather, to one of the cemeteries in town. If it was up to her she would let him rest where he was, she didn’t want to move him any more than I did, but it was not up to her, she hoped I could understand. I asked if I could first talk with whoever it was who did want to move him, whoever it was who wanted to unbury and rebury my father, I asked if I could talk to that person for just a moment. I scanned the room very deliberately, looking everyone in the eye, but no one stepped forward. She said that it wasn’t like that, nobody really wanted to unbury him, if it was up to them they would just leave him be, her words. I suggested they should leave him be, then, and leave me be as well. I excused myself and stood and walked through the group of police and authorities, my hands joined behind my back, I climbed the stairs slowly, one after the other, I waited for someone to stop me but no one did. Everything is permitted until it isn’t, your grandfather’s words.

  In my room, the shades were up, it was bright in there, I could see what a mess I’d made of my sheets, there was dirt everywhere, I couldn’t bear to clean up, I didn’t even remove my shoes, I crawled under the sheets, sheets dirty with the dirt of what should have been your grandfather’s final resting place, and I covered myself, and I breathed my own air. Muffled voices rose through the floor, through my bed, through my pillow, to my ears, they were arguing, I couldn’t make out the words. After a while the voices mellowed into regular talk and after another while the house was quiet. When I could no longer breathe my own air, I made a little vent at the side of the sheet and breathed the air in my room. I made the vent as small as I could, exposing only my mouth, but bringing my face close to the vent I could sense the light changing, the day’s end approaching, time marching forward with no regard to anything, I did not want to see that, I wanted to see nothing, I only wanted to breathe and be left alone. Soon my stomach gurgled and growled, my stomach demanded I go downstairs, which I did, a hungry stomach is not to be ignored, it’s the stomach that carries the feet, not as you would expect the other way around.

  The light had gone orange, the light shot through the house from back to front, the sun was setting over town. It was cool downstairs, the house smelled like outside, like sour grapes and roasting almonds. I remembered I’d left everything open to let the flies pass through. I stepped into the kitchen and saw a figure in the corner, in the shadows, sitting at your grandfather’s typewriter. I had not forgotten that he was dead but some part of my brain had put two and two together based on yesterday’s picture of the world, and so for an instant I thought it was him. Even after I knew it couldn’t be him, it took me another little while to figure out it was Community Service Officer Mary. Her shoulders gave her away, her shoulders sloped down like she’d gotten tired of holding them up, even when she had sat down across from me, frustrated with all of the pussyfooters, her word, even then, when there had been an edge to her voice, her shoulders had a slope, her police shirt looked like it was slipping off a hanger. It was dark where she was sitting, the corner with the typewriter was hidden from the light shooting through the house, she must have been straining her eyes, she was bent over the typewriter. I said hello and she leaped from the chair, I apologized for surprising her. She apologized, too, she said that it had been a very long day, she hadn’t been getting enough sleep. She said that everyone was concerned for my welfare now that I was alone, especially after what I had done, and they had asked for someone to stick around, and she had volunteered. I thanked her for her concern then explained that I was twenty-seven years old and could take care of myself, that I had taken care of my father all these years, all the years he had decided, or his body had decided, not to leave the house, that instead of taking care of two people I would now be taking care of only one, I was actually twice as safe as before. On the other hand, I told her, if she was in the mood to stick around I was always up for making a new friend. I went to the fridge and pulled open the door and there among the foodstuffs was a plate wrapped in foil. I asked Mary if she was hungry and she looked long and hard at the plate then said no thanks. I pulled the foil off the plate, it was wet underneath, I dried it with a dish towel, I flattened it out on the countertop, folded it carefully, and put it back in the drawer for later. Mary stood in the center of the kitchen and watched, she didn’t stand next to me at the counter, she didn’t sit at the kitchen table, she stood at the center, which in the kitchen was nowhere, her badge hanging off her loose shirt like a bat hanging in a cave. I heated the lasagna in the microwave and divided it onto two plates. Mary said that your grandfather had left that food for me, it was too important for her to eat, she had no business eating it, she hadn’t even known him, she was here only by happenstance. I told her what he always used to say, which was that meals were for sharing. We ate without talking for a while, then I said I was thinking of taking the radio out of the living room, we had a radio in there, it hardly ever got used, and moving it into the kitchen. I thought it would be nice to listen to music while cooking and eating, I like just about any kind of music, it’s all interesting to me. Your grandfather had always objected to background music, he objected to music playing all day long, it bothered him deeply, I could never understand it, when he listened to music, which was not often, he sat in front of the radio
and gave it all his attention, he looked at it like it was the television, he didn’t do anything else. I was going to be alone now, changes were coming, there were going to be all sorts of changes around here, that’s what I said. Mary brought her napkin up to her face, she brought it up higher than I expected, when someone is eating and they bring their napkin up to their face, you expect them to wipe their lips, or if they have a cold maybe wipe their nose, but you don’t expect the napkin to keep going. She had bony little wrists, I couldn’t imagine her pointing a gun at a criminal, she wiped her eyes, one at a time, straight across. I asked her if she was all right. She said she was, she said she’d had a long day, she’d also recently changed medications, nothing serious, but at the moment everything was right on the surface, her words.

  With all of this talk of my so-called mistake and Community Service Officer Mary and so on, I don’t want to neglect the most important point, which was that I missed your grandfather already, I missed his goodnight kiss on my forehead, his goodnight kiss had always been like a door clicking open, the door to sleep clicking open in my head, he would kiss me on the forehead and I would fall asleep, like a magic trick. Without it, I did not know how to sleep. In the middle of the night I saw a light outside my window, a bright light that wasn’t the sun. I got out of bed and looked into the front yard, the light hung there at the street, it was a foggy night, the light glowed white, I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. Officer Mary lay on her back on the sofa, not snoring but breathing deep and loud, her hair sticking out all over the place, her badge resting on the coffee table. I stepped through the front door into the darkness and fog. The bright light stayed where it was and I made my way toward it. All kinds of ideas went through my head, I remember thinking I had seen your grandfather at his typewriter earlier when it had only been Officer Mary, I wondered whether this light could have been a visitation, the goodnight kiss, even, that I had been missing, there seemed to be no other explanation for it. Only when I was past it, only when it wasn’t blinding me any more, only then could I see that it was mounted on a tripod, there was a video camera and a tripod. The bright light was on top, there was a white van, too, with one of those dishes on a pole sticking up from the roof. I went to the front of the van and looked in the side window, two empty seats. I went to the back windows, they were tinted, it was difficult to see through them, there was a whole command center in there, switches and televisions, one of the televisions showed the morning news, or what would be the morning news if anyone was sitting at the desk, and another showed the view from the camera with the light on it, which was a view of lit-up fog with the dim outline of my house in the background. On the floor of the van was a pile of clothes, which turned out to be two people, a man and a woman, doing what men and women do, which is something no one should interrupt, I let them be, I let them go on. I went back to bed wondering why they were in front of my house. As I said, I am a slow absorber. Plus, I had never done anything newsworthy before.

  I lay in bed and tried to sleep and eventually dawn came, then the sounds of machinery, then the reporter talking to the camera in front of the house, somehow her clothes were not at all wrinkled. From the bathroom window I could see a mini-excavator, they were scraping away the soil, they had come to unbury your grandfather. Officer Mary waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail, her shirt was wrinkled, her badge was missing, she had forgotten to reattach her badge, she looked as if all that sleep had tired her out. She said she had tried to stop them, she said they didn’t really want to do it, it was the law, it was the law that made them do it, they were like a big rock at the summit of a steep hill, they had been knocked into motion. I stepped outside, I stepped out the back door. The guy who was operating the mini-excavator, I knew him, he was a friend from Madera, his name was Freddy, one of his legs was shorter than the other, I waved at him but he just lowered his head. People were arriving by the carload, there were people everywhere. The authorities pulled your grandfather’s makeshift coffin, their words, out of the ground and they put it on the back of a flatbed truck, the funeral director didn’t want to get his hearse dirty, the wood was caked with dirt but you could see the craftsmanship, the grapevine stakes held everything together perfectly, anyone could see the work that had gone into it. Most of Madera had come to watch and those who weren’t there were seeing it on the news at home. I caught a glimpse of Wilfredo’s blimplike arm hanging out of his truck window, from atop the pancake cushion and the wooden beads. Then the flatbed with the makeshift coffin headed onto the road, leaving behind two black gouges across our little patch of wilderness. People got into their vehicles and followed it into town, they made a parade into Madera. You can tell your children someday that when your grandfather died there was a parade, it was on the news.

  There was a service the next day, someone had arranged a service at a church even though we had never gone to church. Only a few people showed up to that, some of them must have been regular churchgoers, I didn’t recognize them. And then Carmen, your mother, your future mother, walked in. I hardly knew her, I mean we had been introduced, Rowdy and Manuel had introduced us, they were painters from Fresno, they had introduced me to your mother, in a manner of speaking, I can’t get into it right now, she is staring daggers at me. I hadn’t seen her since. She came straight down the pew to me but didn’t sit down. She had seen the unburial on television, she said, she had recognized my name. She handed me a bouquet of flowers, she kissed me on the cheek, she said she was sorry to have heard about my loss, and sorry too that she couldn’t stay for the service. Everyone in the church gave her stern looks, she wore clothing that revealed her figure, she wore short skirts and low-cut shirts, people looked down on her for that, which was ridiculous because she had a right to show off her assets, her later words, let them say what they wanted. Officer Mary and I sat in the pews, the pastor gave his sermon, it concerned the well-being of your grandfather’s soul, which I did not understand, which I did not comprehend, your grandfather had never mentioned anything about having a soul. But it seemed important and it was outside the areas of my expertise, which at the time were very small areas and very few, so I listened and kneeled and bowed my head when everyone else did, I mouthed the words like I used to back in school. After the service your grandfather was put into the ground for the second time, in a manner consistent with the general practices outlined in the law, he was put into the ground next to some people called Brown and next to some other people called Kutchinski, miles away from Ajax and Atlas and our piece of wilderness. The burial attracted less of a crowd than the unburial.

  Afterward, Mary and I walked to the sandwich place for lunch, it was a strange walk, I mean everything inside my head was strange, I couldn’t absorb what had just happened, everything felt temporary, like I was holding my breath while getting a shot, everything felt tight and suspended, I kept waiting for the moment to be over. But outside my head, too, things were strange, I mean even taking into account my mental state, things had changed around town. Everyone knew about my so-called mistake. Bad news has wings, your grandfather’s words. Nobody waved from across the street, nobody said, Hello, Mayor. No, the people who saw me, all my friends, they didn’t know what to say, they didn’t say anything. I had always been a target, it came with being tall, it came with being friends with everybody, it came with being called Mayor when technically I wasn’t. Ever since I was a boy, my friends had found ways to trick me one way or another, always in the spirit of goodwill, it was fine with me, it had become fine with me, because I had discovered something early on, while still in grade school. Greg Yerkovich had tricked me into eating a clod of dirt, he had pulled what he called a truffle out of his lunch box, he had asked if anyone wanted it. We didn’t have much money for food and I was on my way to being six and a half feet tall, so I was always hungry, and besides, I was always looking for, I am always looking for new experiences. It was shortly after biting into that dirt clod that I disco
vered, while breathing my own air in a janitor’s closet, I discovered in my head an idea that stuck with me all through school, that saved me many trips to the blankets and closets, which was that when those boys were making fun of me, they weren’t making fun of someone else. That idea gave me strength, Juan-George, most of what people call strength is just belief, is just believing that you’re strong, I mean mental strength, no matter what you believe you’re not going to be able to lift a car above your head. The idea that I was a shield made me into a stronger shield. After my so-called mistake, though, it stopped. Nobody mentioned your grandfather, nobody made jokes about burying him in the yard, nobody commented on my manner of walking with my hands behind my back, nobody tried to steal my binoculars, nobody tried to convince me of anything preposterous, nobody laughed, and so for the first and only time in my life Madera felt like a lonely place.

  That evening I got a call from Aunt Liz, your grandfather’s sister, I hadn’t seen her in years, she asked first if I was okay, if I was doing okay. Then she told me, despite the fact that I was twenty-seven years old and perfectly able to take care of myself, despite the fact that I had friends everywhere in Madera and made new ones all the time, despite the fact that I could ride my bicycle into town and find interesting work to do every day of the week, she told me that it would be best if I packed my things and left my bicycle and got on a bus and came to live with her in Panorama City. She was concerned for my well-being, she was concerned about my ability to take care of myself, she thought I should be with family in this time of need, her words, rather than in that drafty old house all alone, also her words. I got to thinking about what Madera had been like that day, I got to thinking about how things had already changed because of my so-called mistake, which got me thinking about whether I really wanted to go back to being Mayor, and I felt a shift inside me, a movement. I thought about your grandfather’s radio, about my idea to move his radio into the kitchen, and I thought about what other things I would like to change, I don’t usually do much thinking about change, I am not one of those people who seeks out change, it is not one of my qualities, but if I can say anything about the shape of life, if I can give you any idea of what it is like to live a whole life, even one cut short at the Madera Community Hospital, I can say this, which is that everything stays the same for a long time, and then suddenly there comes a moment when everything changes. Aunt Liz talked for a while about keeping an eye on me, she talked about my potential, and while she talked I thought, my head was somewhere else, I thought about what it would be like to be Oppen Porter instead of Mayor, I thought about going someplace where no one had ever heard of my so-called mistake, where no one had seen me covered in algae from when I went coin hunting in the wishing well, where no one remembered the time I went over the handlebars on a scooter while trying to see if the headlight was working, I hadn’t thought of sticking my hand in front, your grandfather had said it was physically clumsy but philosophically admirable, I was the type who required primary sources, his words, I wasn’t going to settle for shadows in a cave. I had enjoyed being Mayor, I was a good sport, as they say, I had been a good sport, but I was done.