Exile on Kalamazoo Street

by Michael Loyd Gray

  On this day, I slid the deck door open more than a foot wide, stood in the doorway in just stocking feet, and stuck my head out into the raw outside air, careful not to violate exile’s edict of no full foot outside. The air was cool, not cold, and fresh. A soft breeze washed over me and felt cleansing. Squirrels dashed across the yard from tree to tree, and one stopped near the deck and stood on hind legs to look at me a moment before scampering up a tree onto a branch. A vee of geese appeared abruptly overhead, honking loudly as they started their descent onto a nearby pond.

  Standing there in the doorway—tasting ever so slightly the vast outside world, but still very much in the powerful gravitational pull of the tiny universe of my house—I thought of the irony of being tasked to write a film about a man with the ability to travel the world searching for some eternal truth. I thought of truth as just a word and a good idea, but something that did not really exist. There were actions and reactions, statements and replies, but there was little that could be called truth.

  It was damn nice to stand there in the doorway and smell the cool, fresh air. I looked back once and saw Black Kitty sitting well behind me but showing no inclination to approach. I slipped off a sock and stuck that naked foot out the door and into space, feeling the cool air run across it, tickle it, caress it.

  Was I truly afraid to go out? I couldn’t believe that was true in the strictest sense. If the house caught fire, I knew I could dive out the door to the deck or slip out a second floor window with Black Kitty under my arm and slide off the roof into the yard. I doubted those actions would even require thought, or much thought. Self-preservation is surely our strongest instinct.

  Maybe I feared going out before it was time, before I knew why I was going out, and where I was going, and what I would find there. I guess on this day I was back to trusting fate again, to wanting to believe that fate would reveal when it was time to go out and that in going out I would end up where I should be.

  * * *

  I read The Old Man and the Sea for a time from the sitting room love seat, where I could look out and enjoy the sprouting green grass and the antics of scurrying squirrels. At night I closed the windows because it could still be quite cool then, but by late morning the windows were open again and the air was fresh and I was adjusting to the sounds of civilization penetrating the house. Black Kitty sat by the deck door screen and was captivated by a blue jay walking rather arrogantly along the deck. He lunged against the screen several times, but the blue jay grudgingly cocked its head toward him as though barely acknowledging a mere distraction.

  I realized I was restless. I walked about the house, looking for things to do, cleaning things here and there that didn’t really need cleaning, picking up clothes upstairs. I washed what few dishes were in the sink. Later, while I was back upstairs sorting through clothes in my closet, I heard a siren and went down to the deck door, but by the time I got there I could tell the siren was outbound and soon it faded and then dissolved altogether. I wondered where it was going and what the result would be.

  When I sat back down on the love seat and picked up my book again, Black Kitty strolled into the sitting room with something in his mouth. It was white and at first I had no clue what it was, but when he reached me I saw that he had the mysterious blank envelope in his jaws. He sat down and began to chew on it. It seemed a fitting end for a mystery. I watched him chew a moment, and then an idea struck me and I reached down and pried the envelope loose from his mouth. I retrieved a pen from the kitchen, sat down again on the love seat, and took the blank sheet of paper out of the envelope. On it, I wrote, “Fill this page.”

  What did I want—had I ever wanted—from writing? Certainly more than I ever got from drinking. But what had I gotten from writing? Two novels that sold and a stinker third that hadn’t. A mention or two in the Times. But the stinker was coming back to life. Being reincarnated. Did that mean I was being reincarnated, too?

  * * *

  At first I doodled a bit at the top of the slip of paper. There was no plan. Just the notion of doing … something. Anything at all. I made several cat faces with long whiskers and large ears. Black Kitty bounded into the room and I showed him the faces, but he only sniffed the paper and then sauntered to the deck door to look at the sparrows sitting pretty on a power line. I wrote my name on the paper three times and also Black Kitty’s name three times, and I doodled some more—clouds and clown faces. I ran out of space to write anything at all and so I found an old writing tablet in a kitchen drawer and doodled some more—for nearly an hour, actually—and then I eased back into the love seat and stared at the ceiling.

  The ceiling tiles had flaws: a few were stained from drops of water that somehow had penetrated the roof. The stains were small enough, though some were in the shape of amoebas and some resembled paramecia, both the tiniest of organisms. Or did smaller ones exist? I could not remember my high school biology very well. What I remembered was that big things start off small. And that good could be spawned from bad with enough nurturing, hope … and effort. I thought of Mavis, and Dylan, and Marci, and Paula, and my sister, and Paul, and even dumb-ass drunk Bennie. In their own ways, they all wanted me back to doing good. Well, maybe all Bennie wanted was a Crown Royal partner. But even he sort of meant well. As well as a tribe member for life can ever mean. Well, maybe not … all Bennie really wanted was not to swim the Whiskey River alone.

  I had stopped letting myself down, finally. Yes. That was finally the truth. A winter’s exile and no drinking had proven that. Drinking was no longer my crutch, my friend. It had once been an exquisite friend. But only on the surface. When you finally looked drinking fully in the eye, seeing it as the enemy instead of an ally, you didn’t turn to stone after all; instead, you turned away from it. You had your chance to escape the tribe and Whiskey River and not go back. And so, if I was through letting myself down, I no longer had any excuse to let others down.

  For the first time in several months, I powered up my laptop and stared at the screen for a long time before adjourning for a lunch of chili and tuna salad sandwiches. After lunch I was back at the laptop, but mostly reading about the Bears in the Tribune. Then I read the Times and knew far too much about the state of the country, which was not good just about anywhere one cared to look, especially in the conservative Congress, which had grown quite comfortable with school massacres and government shutdowns. I paced a bit, looked out through the thin mesh of the screen door, and smelled spring slowly settling in.

  Slowly the mental constipation seemed to clear. It was ever so gradual. By not thinking so hard, I began to think more naturally and clearly. I let thoughts come to me instead of demanding that thoughts show up and make sense or offer direction. Instead of staring at the blank screen, I looked out at the backyard and watched the squirrels dash from tree to tree. I listened to the birds and their songs.

  Start at the beginning, I told myself many times, and it became a mantra. Start over. Begin again. Start over. At the beginning. I typed Exile on Kalamazoo Street onto the laptop screen. Step one. I sat back and stared at that for several minutes. It was not a bad title at all, I thought. It flowed. There were possibilities. I said it out loud. It sounded good. It sounded like a movie. I wished I had titled the book that instead of the bullshit Reflections. Would that have made the book better? Who knows? A different name, a different point of origin … maybe a different book.

  “Why the fuck not?” I said loudly, which caused Black Kitty to swivel his head toward me from his spot by the screen door.

  I started typing furiously. It came out of me easily. At first it was gibberish I erased, just jumbled words pouring from a mental spigot, but soon there was sense to it, a story, a cadence, a rhythm. The movie people had bought into the ‘Jedi Mind Trick’ concept and so I figured it was time I did, too. What you create is bad only if you don’t believe it can be good.

  I wrote the first scene after only a couple false starts. Then a second, a third, and in just six days
I had a 120-minute script about a convenience store clerk in Tallahassee, Florida, who wins the lottery and travels the world looking for his soul, or perspective, or both.

  The movie people loved it. Much of it was improbable and far-fetched, but that was what they wanted. I delivered. The slate was clean regarding my stinker third novel. And while the story in the screenplay was still a desirable mess, I no longer was. I had learned that I was a mess only if I believed I was. If other people believed I was, that was their problem.

  And so it was time. The day of days had arrived. I set the alarm so I could have tea before sunrise. It had been years since I’d been up that early. My body and mind resisted at first. Sitting on the side of the bed, I stared at my bare feet, my eyes fluttering. Finally I managed to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt. Black Kitty watched me dress from the window sill. I rubbed him behind the ears, and we stared out into the blackness for a minute. We both yawned.

  The kitchen light seemed too bright and made me wince. I sipped tea and looked out the small window at the morning twilight. The sun would be up in full soon. In the lane between my backyard and the next one, a man passed by, walking his dog. The dog was white, but I could not quite tell the breed. The man had his head down and his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat. The morning would be cool at first, I reminded myself as I washed out my cup and set it in the sink. I selected a light jacket from the rack on the wall and slipped it on.

  “It’s time,” I said to Black Kitty, who was finishing his breakfast. “Wish me luck, boy.”

  Black Kitty cleaned the sides of his mouth with his tongue and then licked a paw. I walked past the coffee table in the sitting room and noticed the mysterious envelope. I looked down at it a moment and then picked it up and slipped it into a jacket pocket. I slowly slid the deck door open and stood in the doorway, smelling the sweet air. I lingered there several minutes. I could see the first streaks of daylight coming. Over my shoulder I saw that Black Kitty had jumped onto the love seat. He watched me closely. I leaned forward and planted a foot on the first step.

  The Prime Directive finally violated.

  “No going back now,” I said, looking back at Black Kitty and then stepping forward and planting the other foot on the next step. I was outside. Out-damn-side. The real world. For the first time in four months.

  I looked back inside, at Black Kitty.

  “Boy, if Elsa shows up, tell her … tell her I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  I walked a few steps on the deck and at first I felt quite exposed, even vulnerable, but that passed, and I stepped off the deck into the yard and knelt down to feel the growing grass with my hand. The grass was wet and I smelled my hand and I relished the earthy aroma. I heard a rustling in the branches above and a squirrel gazed down at me from only a few feet away.

  “Don’t mind me,” I told the squirrel, which climbed to a higher branch. “I'm new at this.”

  I walked through my yard to the lane and looked in both directions, but there was no one, and I continued on through a neighbor’s side yard to the street. A flatbed truck rattled by slowly, and then I crossed and descended a bank to another lane that led to a small lake. When I reached the lake it was daylight and the sun had crept over the horizon. There was a public dock at the lake and I sat on it and listened to the water lapping the shore. Soon a pair of ducks cruised by noisily, happily, and then sailed out into the center of the lake.

  It was as if I was thawing out slowly from having been frozen in a melting iceberg during an ancient ice age. There was no breeze and the lake surface was glassy. Soon the sun gained strength and I shed the jacket and was warm enough in the sweatshirt. Fish began to breach the water’s surface, creating ripples.

  Down the shore a large man came out in his bathrobe and stood on his deck holding a coffee cup. He surveyed the lake and then noticed me and raised his cup in salute. I waved back and the man lingered a moment before going back inside. Once he had disappeared and I remembered I could speak, I said, “Have a nice day.” My voice sounded too loud, very anxious.

  Overhead the sky was blue and cloudless. The two ducks in the center of the lake suddenly erupted into flight and circled the lake once before clearing the tops of trees to fly west. I could hear them quacking for a few moments after they disappeared. Soon several swans appeared and sailed silently by the dock and then along the shore before easing out of the lake onto land.

  I sat there without much awareness of time passing. The sun grew stronger and I pushed up the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I leaned back on my hands and closed my eyes. The sun bathed my face. I thought about exile, about where I’d been and where I was going. I was in no hurry to find out. This place, this dock, this day, was all there was, and all I needed for now. I didn’t even think much or long about Elsa. She was a bird testing her wings. Learning to fly. Working up the nerve to truly soar toward the horizon.

  I sat there for what I would later realize was a long time, my eyes drinking in everything around me—the plants, the trees, the water, the blue sky, the ducks and geese practicing takeoffs and landings on the lake—and my mind slowed to a low, cool flame. I remembered the mysterious white envelope in my pocket and retrieved it. As best as I could, I fashioned it into a crude paper boat and pushed it out onto the lake. It drifted away slowly until it was very small and finally out of sight. I slipped off my shoes and socks and luxuriated in the feel of wet grass beneath my feet as I walked toward the far end of the lake.

  The sun tickled the back of my neck and I walked until I was beyond the lake and at a road where I could look both ways and see that the town was awake. Listening to the sustained mechanical sounds of a city at work made me think of the rare instances where someone deaf regains hearing and everything is an overwhelming symphony of sound, both wondrous and terrifying at once. I leaned against a tree for a few minutes and watched traffic along the road before crossing, socks and shoes still in my hands. From the other side I looked back at traffic: any car swooshing along might contain a voice from the past—Bennie, Paul, Rev. Mortensen—even Elsa.

  I wandered along until reaching a small strip mall and a café I had never visited or even noticed, despite many trips along that road. Inside, the lighting was soft, the walls brown and warm, and people sat singly or in clumps at tables and at a wooden counter, drinking coffee. There were kinetic children and animated teenagers. And contemplative men and women from generations much closer to the end than the beginning. Many of the patrons smiled, and some frowned. Some gestured dramatically and wild-eyed in the middle of stories. The air seemed electrically charged. A shiny copper espresso machine hissed and belched loudly behind the counter. A freckle-faced girl in a stained green smock and a ponytail swishing back and forth yelled out orders. A child ran excitedly across the room into his mother’s embrace.

  * * *

  Michael Loyd Gray was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and grew up in Champaign, Illinois. He earned an MFA in English from Western Michigan University and has taught at colleges and universities in upstate New York, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Texas. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a Journalism degree and was a newspaper staff writer in Arizona and Illinois for ten years, conducting the last interview with novelist Erskine Caldwell.

  Michael’s most recent novel (August 2013), The Canary, which reveals Amelia Earhart’s final days, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

  He is the winner of the 2005 Alligator Juniper Fiction Prize and the 2005 The Writers Place Award for Fiction. Gray’s novel Well Deserved won the 2008 Sol Books Prose Series Prize. His novel Not Famous Anymore was awarded a grant by the Elizabeth George Foundation and was released by Three Towers Press (2012). His novel December’s Children was a finalist for the 2006 Sol Books Prose Series Prize and was also released in 2012 by Tempest books (an imprint of Sol Books) as the young adult novel King Biscuit.

  Gray has written a sequel to Well Deserved called The Last Stop and another four novels entitled: Fast Edd
ie, Blue Sparta, The Salt Meadows, and The Armageddon Two-Step.

  Michael Loyd Gray is a lifelong Chicago Bears and Rolling Stones fan. You can find him online at www.michaelloydgray.com.