Redwoods Baseball

This story begins with explanations. It’s all true and the characters are real, but the point of view is distant, filtered and subjective, so it must be called a work of fiction. This version all happened just as it is written. It is a story of love and loss, death and denial, alienation and loss. The happy dénouement is only suggestion. Conflicts with nature/god, others, and self move the story, but the truth is fluid. This account is like a Homer Winslow still life watercolor -frozen in time, and/or a Brian Eno or Philip Glass composition about the meaning of change. The story is about wine and hippies, religion and physics. It’s about classical music and the sound of the “Summer of Love.” There is a hero, and she is magnificent. All the characters are good and trying to be better. San Francisco provides the backdrop and becomes it’s own character, a kind of sidebar narrative or Greek chorus. We go there now; the chorus speaks.

In San Francisco it rains more days in than in Seattle, or so they say. The greatest surfing wave in the world is at Mavericks, just south of the city. In the summer, it disappears. But around Christmas and January, the monster roars full force and the word goes out across the globe that the wave is right and a surfing competition begins. Just as quickly, the wave is gone again. Things are like that in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s great legacy is the tumultuous 1960’s and early 1970’s, when a generation of children symbolically put flowers in their hair and dreamed new dreams. The famous symbolic heart of that era, capture by a famous poster of a street sign at the corner at Haight and Ashbury ,is now home to a sad row of tattoo parlors, dives and spiritless tie-dye shirt shops. The co-ops and open couches, street dances and park bands of that era are all gone. San Francisco could once name an entire summer after love, and it was pure, un-cut truth. Not even a credit card can buy love now. Illusions dance in memories of Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and Moby Grape. Around 1967, the first bearded male transvestites danced in a review called the Cockettes and everyone knew everything would forever be different. Now, in the greatest contradiction of all, the most vibrant, alive, and reckless city in the world seems spent. From the north end of the great San Francisco Bridge to the callow, digital Google fields to the south, a city waits for its Stravinsky to usher in a new Rite of Spring. Uncle John’s band is silent.

It was Clinton’s bombs in Eastern Europe and the promise of a job that brought Boris to San Francisco. Reducing meaning to “+ and –“ was changing all communication, and Boris had the knack for computers, as well as the will to move to a strange, new country. When you use an Internet phone now, Boris probably had a hand in it. Fortunes came and went and then mostly came again for Boris. His children grew up Americanized but with a keen sense of their homeland. They all talk about the day they went to the redwood forest and played baseball, speaking their native language but immersed in California culture. It is a great story and a great family. They miraculously kept their feet in two worlds. Boris and his wife Mirjana created a safe harbor for their cultural heritage and enjoyed an extended family of fellow Croatians along the wondrous San Francisco Bay. Boris taught his children to take the time to prepare fine meals and then to linger over them. He loved a great wine and liked it all the more when it cost less than $15 a bottle. A committed atheist, Boris honored facts and scientific proof. Nothing scared him, and when he first saw Mirjana, the story goes that he courted her on his motorcycle with an unwavering faith that they would be together.

A cancer diagnosis and then a lingering, painful death took Mirjana, the wife and mother, in 2007. Mirjana was exceptional. She brought a family to a new world, learned the language and ways, mastered it all; but kept her core. At her memorial service, speaker after speaker explained M. had been the rock. M. had diffused the hardest situation. M. was the one they wanted to be like one day. A picture of her just days before her death tells the story best. In her face you can see the spirit that the cancer could not ever take.

Mirjana was central station to the lives of her husband and two children, Lana and Igor. Every departure, every incoming train, every connection to another destination came though Mirjana. She was the huge sun around which her family circled, held in check by the unalterable forces of gravity and light. Lana, the youngest child, and Mirjana’s treasured daughter, circled in her orbit taking so much life from a mother sun. Lana turned her back from time to time, but her rotation continually spun forward toward the light held secure by the gravity of love. Her elliptical orbit and the seemingly unending cycle created a glorious endless summer. Lana would not be ready for winter.

Mirjana ran a daycare for children. It was a natural calling for somebody who cared so deeply about children. Everything she touched carried her signature of quality and personal attention. Coming to Mirjana’s home was an invitation to join the amazing extended family she had helped create. Mirjana defined graciousness. Every detail was attended, but all was inviting and made soft by grace. When Mirjana died at home, the mirrors went dark, reflecting no light. The trains stopped running, and the chaos of earthquake came upon the City by the Bay.

Lana is beautiful. Her kindness and sensitivity sparkle in dark Eastern European eyes. Hands that comfort and arms that hold are graceful reminders of a good heart and caring ways. Her hair shines black and her lips twist, smiling when she’s trying to find her way to help. She has all the gifts, all the basics made even sweeter by her personhood. She is a social genius mastering every situation that involves human contact with such apparent ease as to make one think all relationships come easy for her. She too has contradictions -- a delicate beauty with tomboy surfer-girl ways. She laughs too loud and seems too vulnerable to handle social vagaries with such ease.

Lana is so California and yet, has never seen ‘Star Wars’. She can look like a girl next door one day and then show up at the Absinthe bar looking sultry and gypsy, telling futures in smoke and palm. You would never know the challenges she faced with language, culture and society as a small girl. Lana is a survivor. To know her now, you must look deep in her eyes. Like a Van Gogh painting, every stroke means something that means something more. What you might see first is not what you get. What you get, depends. Her mother’s death brought a loss of course, light and balance.

San Francisco, the city and the idea, is a force of nature. Like the winter storms that cause Mavericks to erupt, there are times the city can mark its will on every thing and person. Moth to flame, the kids come to see how close to the sun they might fly. The lawyer bar exam in California is legendary hard. A law career in the city proper belongs only to the rich, connected and crazy smart. Renting a “room” in a house costs $1,300 a month for the lucky person who finds it on Craig’s List. Still they come to the city to paddle out to a four-story wave, or to work 80-hour weeks in the financial district and to test youth’s metal in the earth’s hottest furnace.

Like the great earthquakes that will one-day devastate the city, a zeitgeist fault line runs under San Francisco. Somehow, every few decades the connections crack and the city shifts. It burns and shakes, roads ripple and pipes burst; but in theses times of crisis; genius, resilience and ingenuity also ooze out from the fault line. Artists and composers, dancers and poets, chefs and confectioners, vintners and prophets, peacemakers and earth lovers, sky pilots and needle dancers --all the children know San Francisco’s core, and they come, pounding the pavement with giant sledges of creativity and change. San Francisco is their distant drummer. They say great wine must rest, but the truth is a chemical firestorm changes the grapes. San Francisco is resting now, spent from the rigor of many magnificent harvests. Still, young people and dreamers must come. Their music is forming, taking spirit from the very ground and air where so much meaning still remains. The artists are starving, but the ground is cracking; its 8:05, and we are leaving soon.

Before Mirjana’s death, Lana and her then boyfriend Zach moved in with Lana’s Mom and Dad. They would bring comfort, concern, witness and presence to Mirjana’s death. Unfortunately, California Christianity barged in as Hospice help. For the already hurting, heaven and all the hope of meeting again in some fantastical afterlife is aggravating, insulting nonsense. A difficult time was made worse. The edges became jagged and then chunks of life’s meaning broke off and disappeared in the sadness. A sun was going out. Such times enter the realm of raw emotion live in great music. Beethoven found that what is not accessible with words, can be approached in sound. It was his powerful Fifth Symphony that played as six months of unrelenting death drained even the shadows from the lives of those at the epicenter. Mirjana suffered beyond comprehension, railing against the unfairness and the diminishment of her living. The swirling banshees of anger, relentless pain and grief consumed both light and air for Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach. Everyone gave all they had to ease Mirjana’s journey, to salvage dignity, and to hold the soul’s light for as long as they could, but all were dying in the dark.

Zach is rare good spirit. He has had to fight hard for even the smallest doses of recognition in his life. Administrators would not put him in advanced math as a third grader until his mom pitched a fit. He then became one of the stars of the class. That story was repeated over and over, from college to law school, from the bar exam to staking a claim to a professional life. Zach was always underestimated and sometimes misunderstood. He could be cranky and defensive as a result.

Z is the glue that holds circles of friends together. Z is the tour guide who makes everything better. Z caries the pain of others, Z is an utter failure at lying, reading minds, and playing cool. He is the heart that reaches out and is all-encompassing, the visionary that seeks to make a difference.

San Francisco drew him because California was the hardest law bar to pass. He wanted to make it big in the biggest show. Zach likes fine things, and for a child from modest means, he had to earn his way to San Francisco with grit, sacrifice and sheer guts. He would not hurt, use, or intimidate people to get what he wants. He could not sacrifice his values or his personhood to succeed. The limits, then are tangible, and the rewards elusive. Still, he states his case, defying odds.

Zach too is a survivor, a dreamer and lover of the arts. And though he is too slow to admit he is wrong and too smart for his own good at times, he can learn. When the call came to support Mirjana, it was not a choice for Zach. As a result, San Francisco, like most everything else in his life, would become a winding road. Like the San Franciscan he had become, he should have known that underneath the present situation, fault lines were ever shifting. Zach too would be spent.

Zach and Lana have the same birthday in the same year. She was born in Croatia and Zach was born in North Kansas City, Missouri. Both were living the life of liberal, young intellectuals when they met through a common friend. Zach was in law school in Tucson. Lana was an accomplished young contract wizard in San Francisco in her first year of law school. They shared an interest in a band and would travel to hear the music and enjoy explorations and friendship. Eventually they just started visiting each other without the band. Zach graduated from law school and planned a move to California to take the bar. Lana told Zach he could stay at her place while she traveled in Asia for the summer. The two ended up living together in a very small apartment  when Lana learned her mother’s health was bad. Lana could not, would not leave her mother. Zach failed the bar on his first try. Lana left law school. Mirjana’s illness was just beginning to take its toll.

They did seem to love each other. When traveling to wine country they would bend over maps and Lana would laugh her wonderful laugh and Zach would suggest one adventure after another. They had a life in San Francisco, an apartment, their neighborhood bar and their drink – a devastatingly dangerous French 77. Zach passed his bar exam, and it looked like some good things were about to happen. Then they moved into Lana’s parents home to give support to Mirjana and Boris. Choices were put on hold. Life got complicated. Some important things were unsaid. Other things were assumed. The dark tones of a hard death began to fill the time and space of their living. After Mirjana’s memorial service they moved back to San Francisco. Lana got a job. Zach got contract legal work. Both were unsatisfied and unsettled in new ways. The fault lines broke and the earth began to move.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is to San Francisco what the Statue of Liberty is to New York. They are reminders of what has become a core value for each city. New York loves its liberty and freedom. San Francisco is a bridge to the next new thing. That the road from the San Francisco Bridge leads north to the Muir Woods and wine country is significant.

All the religion anyone needs is in the Muir Woods. Cathedrals, a sense of place and purpose, forgiveness and praise are constant, natural elements. Mix in a liturgy of hope and understanding, all blessed by a brook sheltered under a canopy of leaves, and you have as much religion as we all might ever need.

Further north in wine country a miracle of mind is happening. Almost nobody in wine country is from there. They all had callings of nature and chemistry, worth and being, that brought them to the vines. They had some kind of other life and it did not fulfill. Life moved too fast and they missed connection to earth and people. As a result, they are now working harder for less money that at any time in their life, and are happier than they have ever been. They make wine that is communion, and their wine carries the tastes and flavors of the soil, light and rain of their daily existence. They love what they do. That spirit flows south, down through the redwood cathedrals, over the bridge and into the city. It is a part of San Francisco now. A real taste for wine is acquired. It takes time and work to appreciate the complexity. The hot days, cold nights, picking, barreling and resting all change the final product. In the fall, the grape leaves turn colors and the wine is best served with bread, cheese and a companion on a blanket overlooking a field. While the city waits for a revival and its earthquake, some things still nourish the artist and the dreamer who waits as well.

Lana and Zach separated. They have reasons. Like the city they live in, they wait to move on – young, beautiful artists fashioning amazing lives. Over this grand landscape, the first rites of spring whisper the notes of an awakening new day. Crocus and daffodil emerge. Vintners are pruning the last of the vines and wondering about the taste of tomorrow. The slow drips of forgiveness and understanding are seeping through the hard days, breaking the ice and softening the soil for new growth. The night winds carry voices and the branches make music. They both are waiting for wines from older days to have their full depth and meaning. They might drink them one day and understand the complex overtures and understate hues …but, then again, maybe Zach and Lana are just bitter and angry—happy to be apart.

This then, is for Mirjana; the story’s hero. May her light and gravity once again, and oh so slowly, move the planets, though they are newly aligned and still lost and cold. The long reckoning that must finally grip reality will come. What bitter taste there might be from taking a wine too soon will, in later years, mellow and smooth through time. As there is peace in the still earth, there is a hope of peace in the new landscape.

Before her death, Mirjana wore a smile and gave exquisite oriental bowls as a gift to Zach’s parents. The parents cherish that gift and its connection between two families. The old folk know we all live life on fault lines and that earthquakes happen. Moments of beauty and meaning, connection and love, are rare. They are worth the holding and honoring.

The story ends as it should. The picture of Mirjana once wordlessly left at Lana’s door hangs on a wall. Mirjana’s great, good spirit can still permeate the room. On the shelf below is a bouquet of lavender generously wrapped with a purple ribbon. The old ball and chain is so many little pieces of heart now, at last given place, soul and sound. Somehow, somewhere, there is a happy memory of Mirjana singing a Croatian folk song. The music is light and clear; children are listening and smiling.

When things are done right and the last person is properly cared for with written thanks; when all guest are graciously welcomed and the place settings and napkins are perfect; when all children are honored, cared for, and included... there is Mirjana. A way has been set. A cascade of thoughtful, thankful mementos continues from her life. A fierce, unrelenting love of family that honors and holds both old world and new lingers on in Boris, Lana, Igor and Zach.

Mirjana’s rich tapestry with its woven strands of steel and velvet, tradition and youth, lover and mother, protector and provider, creates a comforting backdrop for lives that can, and somehow do, go on. The fault lines that cracked open and took so much have been given to artists and dreamers, caring elders, and still young but healing hearts. Now is Mirjana Krtolica’s dénouement.

It’s another day in the city by the bay. Riding his motorcycle up the coast highway, Boris sometimes remembers the Aegean Sea and still feels Mirjana’s young arms and hands holding him close. Up at Stinson Beach a quiet, confident surfer is on her board, alone, waiting the next wave. It is morning and the rising sun on a blue ocean brings a special peace to Lana’s life. Just a few miles away a fine young man is planning adventures. He has gone north over the Golden Gate Bridge to drink good wine and eat worthy food with close friends. When the Grateful Dead comes on the radio, Zach laughs and remembers the box of DeadHead tapes he and Igor sent his old hippie dad. Both Zach and Lana are again survivor spirits anxious once more to be on their path.

In a redwood forest clearing more toward Saratoga children play Mirjana Redwoods Baseball which means errors are forgiven and everyone gets a second chance. There is laughter as the children pose for a picture that will one day mean more than they can ever know. Things find their place. Different worlds coexist. Time heals. A powerful life-giving sun shines on the ancient redwoods, and the Mirjana stories will go on as long as the tall trees stand.

THANKS BE - BLESS BE

I never hear a rainbow brag, or see an ocean sunset care who got the credit.

No political position, law, or moral principle ever made aptly defines our relationship with life itself. The amazing touches of clarity, meaning and purpose we sometime have all come from an unearned grace. 

Only grace and love are big enough to hold our human condition. Nothing of final importance is ever earned or achieved. It is life’s favor that we have received.

The flaws of feeling and the inaccuracy of intellect leave us defenseless against true meaning. We can have our moments of light, awe and direction only because grace and love left the door to understanding open for us.

I do not pretend to fully know the reality we live each day or the people and places in it. I can’t comprehend what is on the other side of forever, or the significance of chance in an endless universe. Grace and love are all I can begin to grasp, and because of them I am surrounded by art and music, dance and literature. I lam lifted by unknown forces, protected by unseen hands, and made forever real by my split second of existence.

That is why it is no small thing that I am thankful for my family and friends on this Thanksgiving. I am thankful for undeserved love and grace that holds me up despite my imperfect human condition. I am thankful for the migration of mystery across the fall sky and the delicate dance of surrender that marks all living. 

I am Thankful for you.

We are the rainbows and the sunsets. We are the manifestation of an unearned and freely given moment of meaning. We are the dancers, the dreamers, the artist in the mountains and writers standing at the wall. We are the holder of hands and the keepers of heart. We are forgiven by the mere fact that we exist.

I am so thankful that in my time of being I am blessed ty the presence of love and grace.

Moving Time in Tuscon

Prelude

The Saguaro cactus takes about eight years to grow an inch-and-a-half tall. During that time, it lives under a mesquite tree or some other Sonoran Desert bush hiding from the sun. About year 10, the Saguaro cactus begins usurping the food supply of its host plant and eventually kills it.

The Saguaro cactus is unique and original. Its outer layer of sharp prickly spines ensures it is best studied from afar. You certainly never touch a Saguaro without paying an awful price. Once impaled into an unsuspecting finger the sharp needles will not come out. It is a hateful plant up close.

Lindsay
The product of a desperate adoption, Lindsay lay in wait the first eight years of her life. She was playful and quiet, but she was hiding out. She hid under her mother’s steely rules waiting for the layered expectations of a doctor’s wealth and a privileged life to peel away. Year by year Lindsay’s whitewash of hope faded until a darker, colder core emerged. First, it was dressing like Madonna, which to the country club set, meant dressing like a whore. At thirteen she flaunted her nubile sexuality prancing around airports leaving people wondering. At sixteen she was working at MacDonald’s and sneaking out of the house every night to meet with the Hispanic boys she met selling Big Macs. By now the rules, the mores, the ought’s and should’s of upscale suburban living had peeled away leaving her tight skirt and unbuttoned blouse in clear view for all to see. Her mom responded. She locked Lindsay in the house at night and installed a backup alarm system; but the Mexican boys got to her night after night after night. She drifted from one broken promise to another heading down and out, away from the life most of us know.

Then came a Goth period and Lindsay turned black. She painted the walls of her bedroom black, her clothes, then her lipstick and fingernails, all were black. The floor of her bedroom disappeared under layers of dirty clothes, fast food boxes, empty cans and candy wrappers. At 17 she graduated, just barely, and was finally left home, gone for good. Lindsay met a man who worked on air-conditioning units in Phoenix. Part of his pay was an apartment and Lindsay moved in. She had two iguanas for pets, smoked anything that was put in front of her and tried heroin for the first time. Lindsay was drifting further into the desert away from marked roads and city limits.

Enigma
After sunset, the Saguaro cactus fades into the rocky waste of sand and scrub only to find new life as a moon’s shadow. In the moonlight the cactus become ghostly human, a tall and sometimes menacing silhouette. Like the terra cotta armies of ancient China, the Saguaro cactus seems to be guarding something. It issues silver edged warnings that this is not a place for the soft living people of our current times. This is not a home to the normal, easily understood, gifted, and special people who inhabit kinder, gentler climates. This is the desert where nothing is left unburned or undamaged by the sun and wind. Go to the desert at your own risk. Touch the Saguaro and you will pay its price.

When Lindsay’s mother Shera married for the second time, I went down to sing at her wedding. My wife is Shera’s sister, and so I had followed Lindsay’s downward journey for many years. On the few occasions, she came to Missouri to be with her family here, Lindsay was always an interesting challenge. There was one Christmas I remember especially well. We took Lindsay with us to cut a Christmas tree. The tree farm we went to was well picked over, and we extended our search into an adjoining field. A rainy mist that had been falling most of the day turned icy in the late afternoon and then an ice coating glazed the shivering trees.

It did not take long before Lindsay discovered the ubiquitous mud puddles would explode in icy delight when she jumped on them. She didn’t seem to care her shoes were getting soaked along with everything else she wore.
“Hey Lu-Lu,” I laughingly called, “stay out of the mud.”
Lindsay looked right at me, took a moment to make sure I was watching, and then jumped into a monster puddle just three steps away. Then she stomped the nearby skims of ice, hands in the air, and a watery mud flying everywhere. I had not had a lot of experience with a little girl deliberately disobeying a direct command and rushed over to start wiping her off with my gloved hand.
It is hard to describe Lindsay’s reaction to my attempt to clean her up and then assert some modicum of discipline. Most of us have a core understanding of how the world works. We can assess threats and opportunities and know that most pleasures eventually have consequences. Lindsay Lulu responded to life differently. Maybe she had already decided that whatever shed did, it would be wrong so she gave up caring about anything, and lived her life squarely in the present tense. Lindsay went docile and let me clean her up. She seemed almost numb when I tried to explain why wearing wet clothes and tracking mud in the car might be a problem later. “But enough of rules,” I told her. “Let’s go find a perfect Christmas tree.
“OK, Uncle Jimmy,” she said and off we went.
After that my tree searched quickened. I picked up the pace running from tree to scraggly tree with no luck. Eventually and deciding to give up. It was getting colder; the ice was getting thicker. The sky was almost dark by now.

“Lindsay,” I called. We better get going before it gets too slick. “Lindsay,” “Lindsay” “LINDSAY”
I kept calling, and then I was frantically running up and down the tree rows. After about 10 minutes, I found her hiding behind a wagon that had been used at one time to haul cut trees.

“Did you hear me calling?” “Yes.”
Why didn’t you come?”
“I don’t know.”
You heard me calling and you didn’t say anything”
“Yes, Uncle Jimmy.”
I scooped her up and held her in front of me. “You must answer when I call,” I said. “It is getting icy, we have to go.”
I could have been talking to a stone. She was looking at me but nothing I said caused the slightest bit of recognition or understanding. I carried her to the car and we all drove home. The car veered and fishtailed on the icy road. Inside the car out, everything was slip-sliding away. Lindsay turned even more slippery and hard to figure out. As if nothing had happened she asked me if she could have a cigarette. I did not even know she smoked.
“I don’t have cigarettes,” I said. “I don’t smoke.”
Can you stop and get me some?”
“No,” I said, “but I can get you home.”

That is how my relationship with Lindsay would work. I would try to save her now and then and take her home. I did not ever, and never will, give up on her. And, I admit to a strange fascination with her alternative lifestyle, complete disregard for convention, and appalling lack of morals. Lindsay lives in world I cannot even visit. What I know of her life is only a deeply distorted reflection of whatever her reality really is. Often, I think I am no more than a guardrail she plunges into now and then before careening on down the mountain. I may save her at one turn, but I will never help her steer her car to safety. She is an enigma to me, and I am the uncle with $20 for cigarettes who will one day come to Tucson Arizona to move her ratty, bug infested trailer from one hell hole to another hell hole hoping only to save her life.

It is a stretch, but I am lost to find another analogy. Lindsay is like a cactus. From far enough away she is manageable, but come closer and all around there are Hell’s Angel’s wannabes, strange creatures who want to use her for illicit purposes, and horrors of a kind that make me question life itself. Try to touch Lindsay and you will be pulling needles from your hands the rest of your life. The desert is a powerful draw, however, and I cannot help loving Lindsay. And so, from time to time, I put on my high boots to make it harder for the snakes to bite, and then walk off toward some ancient Saguaro cactus to do a rescue. I’m thinking that one purpose of my life is to at least try to keep Lindsay alive.


Skinwalkers
The desert has many stories and its Native Americans know them best. You must be worthy of hearing them however. Most are not. Outsiders never get to hear about the Lady in White who haunts the Vallecito Station in Anza Borrego Desert Park, or the Phantom Stage of Carrizo. No true native mentions Ghost Lights of Borrego or tells the horrifying story of a lantern-carrying skeleton. Outsiders will never hear of the Ghost Dancers at Yaqui Well from a native Indian.

Oh, you can hear the tourist tainted manufactured myths from the carnival barkers. They make for an evening of frightful fun on one of the ghost town tours.
The original desert dwellers cringe when they hear strangers tell their stories. They think it is a heresy, and an ignorant provocation of evil. They bitterly resent the commercialization and bastardizing of the sacred. As a result, there is one story above all others you will never hear from a true Native American of the Southwest. It is the mysterious and frightening truth of the Navajo Skinwalker.

Deeply buried in the religious lore and cultural heritage of the Southwest Indian tribes are stories of witches who can disguise themselves as animals and then take on the characteristics of that animal. They are Skinwalkers. Their disguise imbues them with that animal’s physical qualities like speed and cunning, power and endurance. The newly created, partly human creature has other powers. It can convince someone to harm themselves, perform abnormal acts, or even commit suicide. The Navajo Skinwalker is a powerful witch who can leap over a canyon, run alongside of a speeding car, or snatch an unsuspecting child. The Skinwalker can make an unsuspecting desert tourist decide to jump to a sudden death below.


Shera
Lindsay’s mother Shera drained her spirit well trying to raise her enigmatic daughter. At age two, Lindsay would not willingly wear shoes. As if Lindsay came from an alternate universe, she seemed to reject everything her mother believed or stood for. Lindsay mysteriously developed deep connections with her stuffed animals and became picky with food. Then a death spiral took its toll on Lindsay. First it was her Guinea pig. Death took her dog, and then it was her beloved grandmother who died leaving Lindsay to fend for herself alone it seemed.

Shera was a professional woman with a hard, time-consuming job. Lindsay’s dad was a doctor with a busy practice. Together they had tried to protect Lindsay with a thick coating of complacency and cast her in their own image. They had her path set. Lindsay would do well in school and go to college. She would shop for clothes and bring interesting and exciting friends by the house. They would all read books and go to art museum, travel to France, and make the grandparents proud at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

By age 13 that veneer had completely disintegrated. Lindsay stopped cleaning her room; she picked up bad habits like smoking and lying. The friends she did have were from the fringe. Lindsay became an outlier, a Goth, an enigma; and for Shera, her mom, a Skinwalker. Mysteriously, Lindsay could disappear and reappear at will. When angry, an animal-like essence permeated her being. Her black woodwork room crawled with half-eaten food, wrappers, cigarette butts and ash. By now Lindsay’s wardrobe had grown skin tight and obscenely short. She could stop the entire crowd at the airport baggage claim as they watched what was then a very young girl who seemed built and dressed for sex. More and more Lindsay defied convention as she slipped into a narcissistic world of cheap, quick pleasure, sloth, and an uneasy connection with reality.

Shera fought this descent every step of the way. She poured her resources, intellect, personhood and well-being into saving Lindsay. Eventually, she gave her marriage as well -as her physical and mental health- to Lindsay. Shera gave up boundaries and values inch by inch as Lindsay snuck out of the house, used drugs, slept indiscriminately with boys, and then corrupted every dream Shera had once had for her daughter.

As a Skinwalker, Lindsay could will her mother into believing that her daughter could and would change. She could control every atom of their home. Slowly Shera began to slip into her own abyss. At the wave of Lindsay’s hand, her face froze up in pain and Shera sensed demons in her room at night. She turned to prescription drugs and prayer sticks. She drew counsel from a cadre of modern day medicine men who plied her with pills and strange stories that recreated her youth in a darker hue. Lindsay willed her closer and closer to the cliff and eventually Shera died an emotional death.


Dream Veneer
Skinwalkers are real for those whose ancestors lived in the desert for centuries. For those who have lived on a reservation their entire life and walked many time into the night desert, the thought that a human can take on the properties of an animal is as real as rain. As real as meteors predicting death or a coyote that can’t be killed.

Shera is still recovering. But that journey has taken her through cancer, a loss of faith, and a sad alienation from the people who loved her most. Her saving moment came when she finally realized that to survive she had to get away from Lindsay. She had to commit the unspeakable act of physically disowning her own daughter. For a while she completely cut the mother-daughter tie. Lindsay’s power to control had grown so great that Shera feared for her life. In her Skinwalker form, Lindsay could seemingly slip through walls or show up on the side of the road and then run with Shera’s car as she drove home across the desert. Shera had to get away.

Today Lindsay has two children, a girl and a boy. They never visit Shera’s house and Shera sees only one of them, usually about once a month. Shera and her current husband, Doug, financially support both children, and, of course, Lindsay. Shera must keep her distance however, or she will fall again. Still, she constantly worries about her daughter and keeps a sad picture of Lindsay in her house. In that picture, Lindsay still has the veneer of Shera’s dreams for her. She is young and pretty in the days before the demons took both their lives away.

Lindsay is the desert’s child. She is cactus and scrub, cold and searing heat. She is a flash flood and a field of sand and rock, unable to sustain anything but the barest forms of life. She is a Sleepwalker who can ruin any event and cheapen even the most cautious benevolence. She is also completely misunderstood by the outside world. A culture eager to blame life’s victim has standardized her mythology. She is just a number to politicians and judges, police and educators, the comfortable and content. They explain she has a personality disorder, the “addict” gene. They point to that terrible death shock which shook her system in those crucial growing up years. But, I have known Lindsay for almost 40 years and at her core has a kindness and generosity that is uncommon in our culture. She possesses a goodness that shines at times, and I am drawn to her. I find myself wanting to help and even love her. I am proud to be her uncle and, in truth, she has given me much more than anything I have ever done, or will do, for her.

Doug
Doug married Shera and fell into Lindsay’s life. That may be the best thing that ever happened to Lindsay. A successful businessman and financial advisor, Doug always had the resources to pay her phone bill, provide monthly care packages of household and toiletry supplies, and then be her sugar daddy when a big-ticket item was needed. I think he has bought her three cars, two trailers, maybe ten phones over the years; and, every medical supply she has ever needed. When Lindsay got a cash settlement after a car wreck, Doug put the money in the bank and dolled it out to her a week at a time. She would have spent it all in a weekend if she could.

Lindsay knows how to work Doug. As a result, he, in return, has learned to send gift cards instead of cash. He is wary of any request for money and buys her toiletry supplies and delivers them to her each month. Lindsay seems to have a crisis each month that requires some meaningful amount of cash to pay car insurance, get a TV out of hoc, pay a court fine, or any number of a million other questionable needs. Who knows where that money goes? Doug knows he gets played. We are sure she smokes marijuana when she can, but all of us in the family doubt she is using heroin right now. It’s a fine line Doug walks with his disabled chosen daughter. He always errors on the side of soft love.

What may be more important is the social and emotional support he so generously gives. He calls Lindsay almost every week. He tries hard to calm her down when she has one of her many anxiety attacks. To my knowledge, he has never raised his voice or gotten angry with her. He has been unfailing in saying he loves her, and he believes in her even when he knows the odds are long. He is willing to be a fool for Lindsay, though his love for her has been tested time and time again. She let marauding misfits, so low on life’s totem pole that the Hell’s Angels would not let the join, destroy a trailer home he had bought for her. She wrecked a car he gave her and just left it. The car was in Doug’s name so he had some explaining he had to do when the Tucson police called. She has quit heroin at least five times. Add to this prostitution, selling drugs, and Lord knows what else; and you can see why Doug is a candidate for either sainthood or bamboozled harlequin.
He is not her complete patsy however, if that is what you are wondering. I have seen him wear her out by staying positive and use honey to sweeten the hard medicine she sometimes must take to simply survive. He makes her go to court, go to the doctor, go to the drunk driving classes, and on and on. She would have died by now without Doug. He does all this from Anthem, AZ, which is an hour and a half away from Tucson where Lindsay lives.

You Don’t Want to Know
Here is where my part in the story really begins. I was on a quest one summer to find the grave and then pay my respects to Art Decker, a man who had been my “Doug” in a younger day. I was on my way back to Missouri after finding a memorial marker to Art in the back yard of his daughter’s house in Lake Havasu, AZ when I stopped to see Shera and Doug at their home in Anthem AZ. I got to it first thing.
“How’s Lindsay?” I asked.
“She has a few challenges right now,” Doug replied.
“Like what?”
“Well, Lindsay has been evicted from her trailer park and must be out in the next two weeks.
She has no place to go, and she doesn’t know where to go or what to do.”
“.... OK,” I said with ample hesitation.
“It gets worse.” Doug continued. “She has to move the mobile she lives in out of her current trailer park. Apparently, Lindsay has worn out her welcome there, and the trailer park manager called me to say he ‘wants her out, now.’” Lindsay had “worn out that welcome” by hosting all night parties with her wannabe Hell’s Angel friends.
“You don’t want to know what went on in that trailer,” the trailer park manager told me later.

Doug was contemplating going down to Tucson to do the following:
Assess the situation and find out what was really going on down there.
Help Lindsay find a new trailer park to live in.
Arrange to have her trailer moved out of the mobile home park she is in now and into to a new one
Get her set up with utilities
Talk with her about why she was kicked out of her current trailer park and impress upon her that 

Doug is a financial manager by trade. He wears ties, wool slacks and shoes with tassels. His next major birthday will be 80. He is a whiz with the Arizona geriatric set. He could hold his own with the welfare, unemployed, criminal record crowd, but I could tell he wasn’t looking forward to a Tucson trip. To make matters more complicated, he has a business to run, and Doug just can’t take 3-4 days off at a moment’s notice. We decided I would go. I taught school and liked the kids who had major life challenges. I had knocked around a bit earlier in my life and knew how to hustle, and how to make things happen. I often dressed like I lived in a boxcar. I have learned how to get along with almost everybody because I genuinely like people. But the real reason I decided to go was I felt I owed it Lindsay and Doug. It’s what families do.


Scratch

Early the next day I drove to Tucson and booked a room in one of the cheaper chain motels just off of Interstate 10 at Speedway. We had already called Lindsay the day before and arranged for her to meet me at a MacDonald’s. It was a hot day (They all are on a summer day in Tucson). I waited about a half-hour nursing a diet coke, started to worry, and finally called her on my cell phone. Lindsay’s ride had ditched her. She was coming but maybe an hour or two late. I went outside to wait. What I saw when she finally arrived broke my heart. She was a mess. Lindsay had gained weight and her hair was dirty and tangled. Her clothes were wildly inappropriate. She slouched and her face was pale. All over her body she had red splotches that she itched constantly. She did seem genuinely glad to see me and came over to give me a hug. We went inside, and I bought her breakfast.

Two things happened. Lindsay kept checking her cell phone and texting. And, she kept scratching her legs, stomach and arms. I could not carry on a conversation. I knew something was up when Lindsay threw her phone in her purse and screamed something like, “Oh shit!” and kept scratching.
“Lindsay, talk to me,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“One of my friends is in trouble,” she said. “The problem is she owes me money and now she’s gone.”
“Bummer” I said trying to stay in neutral. “What’s with the itching?”
“I don’t know. It’s been going on about a week. It is driving me crazy.” All the time she was talking, she was fidgeting and itching. She used her little girl voice. She was angry, wary and worn out.
“Did you call a doctor?” I asked.
“Yes, can you take me?”
“When?”
“Right now!” she said as if I had asked a very stupid question.
Let’s be clear, though Lindsay was profoundly suffering, she could not go to a doctor. She didn’t have the money.

Lindsay did not want me to go in to see the doctor with her so I waited outside in the car. She came out with three prescriptions.”
“Can you pay the doctor?” she asked.
We went to CVS and she got the prescriptions filled. I paid. We each got a bottle of water and went outside.
“What did the doctor say,” I asked?”
“He just said to take this medicine, and that there are some other things I need to do.” Lindsay was beginning to tear up and for some unknown reason we sat down in the hot sun on the curb of a busy street, outside CVS. I put my arm around her as she cried.
“What’s up? I asked.
“I have scabies,” she said. “I have to put these different creams on three times a day and wash my hair with this special soap. I have to get an exterminator to come to my trailer, and I have to wash and then dry all my clothes in a hot dryer.”
“Scabies?” I said to myself. .... slowly, I lifted my arm up from around her back and shoulder slightly leaned away.
“We’ll get through this,” I said with no confidence.

I took her back to her trailer park. I went for a walk while she washed her hair, put on her cream, and gathered up clothes.  I was in a panic, so I did what I always do when I panic. I called my wife.
“Look up scabies,” I said (yelled). “Lindsay has scabies! We must fumigate her trailer, wash her clothes and get her and me disinfected. I’m already itching.”  Here is where I get to brag on my wife. She took charge. Within an hour, I knew more about scabies than any doctor or social worker. I knew my itch was psychosomatic and all I needed was a hot shower. Thank God for Kathy!


Dale Jr.
Armed with information, I started calling exterminators. The first two or three I called were no help. They clearly wanted nothing to do with me or my Scabies. The next call was to an exterminator with a bunch of letters for a name. Something like BBB or CCZ. The guy who answered turned out to be a lifesaver. Within hours, exterminator Dale Jr. roared up to Lindsay’s trailer on a dirt bike. He was about 5 foot 8 inches tall, 105 pounds, including the weight of his huge backpack. He looked like he was going to a Grateful Dead concert, and then he started talking. Dale Jr. was a machine gun. No, he was a fire hose, on full blast.

In the next five minutes, I knew his life’s history (think 20 jobs in ten years and using his body for medical testing). He went on to the history of scabies, bed bugs and all kinds of mites. Dale Jr. was a human encyclopedia. He told me the entire history of barbed wire, and then started to talk about the Kansas City Chiefs.
“Now there’s a football team that needs some help. I’m sorry cause you are from Kansas City and all. But I gotta tell the truth, and the truth is ... your teams sucks.... Now Oakland, that’s a team...”
“...Hold up!” I said. We got scabies to kill.
“Let’s look,” he said.
We marched into the trailer and he looked around. The trailer was a wreck. Every flat surface had something on it. The sink had been stopped up for about a week and every dish Lindsay owned just sat there covered with leftover food. Bugs who live in bat guano had better lives than this trailer offered.
“Can you give me $150 dollars, cash on the line?” Dale Jr. asked.
“Yes,” I said. “If we can find a Bank of America.”
“Deal,” he answered
Dale Jr. took off his backpack and pulled out a harness connected to a clear plastic tank filled with a white liquid. He slung the harness on his back and picked up a sprayer. He pulled out a red bandanna and tied it around his face, then pulled his stocking cap down to his eyes. He rolled down his sleeves and put on surgical gloves.

“I’m going in,” He said. “I can get ‘er done... it should take about as long as I can hold my breath.” He gulped air and went in.

I could see vapors coming out of the trailer. A toxic odor permeated the air. After what seemed an eternity, Dale Jr. came running out of that trailer throwing of his bandanna and cap, and gasping for air. Completely covered in sweat (and a slick film of lethal scabies poison) he stood bent over, hands on his knees for a couple a minutes. He coughed up a lung and maybe his liver. Then he looked up to start talking.
“Whoa baby! That’s a trip! Now you gotta track every place this girl has been and kill any scabies she left behind. I got a can of my special agent in my backpack. It kills bedbugs. I’m trying to get a patent ...stuff will make me a fortune.! But, it will kill your scabies mites too, honest to God. This shit is powerful stuff,” he said, and started spraying the passenger seat of my car. “Take this can,” he said, “and if you start itching, you start spraying.”
I follow him to Bank of America where I gave him $190, --$20 for the spray can of magic poison, and $10 for a tip, justly earned tip.
“You call me if you need anything, man. I mean anything.” And with that Dale Jr. of BBZ.. Extermination roared off down the street and into my memory as one of the most amazing people I have ever met. That title would not last long. In two days, I would meet Big Dog.


Jan
The trailer park manager came out to see what was going on. I told him who I was and that I had come down to help Lindsay move her trailer. I confessed I had no idea what to do, no idea who would move the trailer, and no idea where we would put it. “I’ve no idea how long it might take to get it all get done.” I admitted
“The sheriff will be here Saturday. You got till then,” He said.
Then curiosity got the best of him. “How did you get yourself into this mess? He asked.
I told him my story, and we began talking. He told me he was “trying real hard to clean up this trailer park.” His renters were mostly retired people, a few snow birds, a couple of mothers with kids, old ladies with no place to go, and some “loners,” he said. “They just want safety, peace and quiet.”
He talked about Lindsay’s life and why she had to leave. It was a harrowing tale filled with drugs, booze, loud motorcycles, midnight fights, and lives lived outside the lines of decency and law. I found myself apologizing for Lindsay. Then it all got worse. Jan explained Lindsay owed him $200. He would need it before we could take the trailer out.

The trailer park manager, his name was really Jan, joined the list of amazing people I met in Tucson. He took me to his office and gave me the number of a man who could move the trailer. His name was Big Dog. Jan called a handyman for me who knew how to disconnect any trailer and get it ready to move. That same man would reconnect Lindsay’s trailer when we got it moved to a new home. Jan gave me the number at city hall to call to get the permits to move the trailer on Tucson streets. He earnestly shook my hand and told me if I needed anything to come by.

“If you need anything, just ask me.” he said. Jan felt sorry for Lindsay. Said deep down she had a good heart. Bad people just took advantage of her, and she let them. It was a kind gesture to tell me these things. That was Lindsay to a tee.

Give Me $20
That evening we went out to all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. It was there I learned that Tucson apparently has no laws about food safety, cleanliness, or bathroom sanitation. Lindsay loved the place, and the people there loved her. They all said hello to Lindsay and seemed genuinely concerned about how she was doing. Truth is, Lindsay was doing a bit better. She still itched like crazy but the red blotches mere noticeably smaller. Her hair was cleaner and her face had a little color. She smiled when she told me about he the yummy lemon cookies she would have for dessert. It was clear she felt comfortable in this restaurant and being with these people. Then she played me.
“Uncle Jimmy, thank you for coming down to help me.” She said. “I wonder if I could ask you a favor?”
“What is it?”
“You know that girl I talked about at MacDonald’s. The girl who was supposed to give me a ride? ...she texted me and wants to go out tonight. Neither of us have any money and I wondered if you would give me $20 to go out?”
I just stared straight ahead.
“I need to have one evening to have some fun. It would mean a lot to me.”
I kept staring.
“We would just hang out, you know. Please, Uncle Jimmy. Let me have one fun night.”
I pulled a Doug and gave her $20, then drove her over to the CVS drugstore where she would meet her friend. I was exhausted and just wanted to go back to my motel to sleep.
In retrospect, the next morning, I think maybe I shouldn’t have given her the $20. I also should not buy her cigarettes and cokes. My justification for enabling her bad behavior is that she was so miserable and itching that maybe she did need a few cheap moments of pleasure. Lindsay has a mental illness and an addictive personality. She is easy to judge, but spending a day in her shoes is sobering and sad.

I spent the night listening to the roar of 18-wheelers heading north and south on Interstate 10. Shera came to my mind. Shera had used up every drop of her good will reservoir trying to help Lindsay. Doug’s reservoir was being drained. Now it was my turn. How much of a fool should we be for your family the people we love? When do you switch to tough love and draw back? The rule I usually go by is that you should never do more for another person than they are willing to do for themselves. That sounds good, but if Shera and then Doug had done that with Lindsay, she would be dead now.
Lindsay has born two children out of wedlock. She almost lost the first one when he got into her stash of methadone and took a lethal dose. She lost custody of her second child because she cannot stay off heroine. Lindsay has worn out every helping hand ever extended to her. The trailer park manager, Jan, was right however, you cannot help sensing that there is something in Lindsay’s core, some spark of goodness of redeeming value. She is a survivor extraordinaire. Lindsay is like the skinny, worthless wolf that ranges through the frozen arctic night defying suffering, starvation and the elements to eke out a miserable existence. Morality means nothing to that wolf, and it means almost nothing to Lindsay. I honor the wolf for surviving the hand it is dealt, and I honor Lindsay for keeping alive something in her core that still searches for the light.

I was up early the next day heading down Speedway into downtown Tucson. I help that street earns it name. Today we:
1. start looking for a new trailer park,
2. get the handyman to start working on the mobile home we must move,
3. get in touch with somebody named Big Dog,
4. wash and dry all of Lindsay’s clothes,
5. work on Lindsay’s hygiene,
6. start to clean up her miserable, bug infested, stinking mobile home.
I stopped first at the CVS that is quickly becoming my all-purpose “go to” store. I bought laundry detergent and got $40 worth of quarters for the washers and dryers. I stopped at my now favorite MacDonald’s for a cup of coffee, and then drove on to pick up Lindsay to take her to breakfast. I was curious as hell how her night of fun had gone.


Wagon Wheel Chance
Of course, Lindsay was in funk. It had not been a good night. She had gotten into a fight. Her friends were upset with her. She did not want to talk about it. We grabbed some MacDonald’s breakfast biscuits, came home, ate up and got to work.
I started to do the dishes. Because the sink did not work, I went outside and ran a garden hose to fill a sudsy tub of water containing grease cutting Dawn dish detergent. I did not have the scalding hot water I thought was important to kill all the germs on those plates, but I am here to tell you that Dawn works on grease. Lindsay started putting the last of her clothes in plastic bags. I made her wash her hair again and put on more itch cream. Finally, we both sat down in lawn chairs up by the trailer park office to talk about where she could move. Google had given me a list of phone numbers for trailer parks in the area.
“You start calling,” I said.
“I can’t” Lindsay said.
“You have to,” I said. “We have to move your mobile home.”
“I can’t.
For a while I planted my flag on that stupid mountain before I gave up and started making the calls myself. I found four places that had a vacancy and were in our price range.
Visiting the Tucson mobile home parks in Lindsay’s price range is like visiting a third world country. At the first two nobody spoke English. The trailer parks were dusty and hot, junky and run down little patches of dirt that had no right to use the word “park” in their name. Lindsay and I nixed the first two. The third was on the edge of town and acceptable, except that when they learned Lindsay had a drug record, the answer was a big “NO.” The last place we visited was about a half-mile from Lindsay’s current mobile home park and “...not bad.” It was named, Wagon Wheel, and the trailers were not right next to each other. There was a shade tree next to the vacant pad the lady had for rent. We both liked it. Lindsay began her interview.

Lindsay can barely speak in these situations. She is anxious and petrified. The lady doing the interview got right to it.
“There is a strict “no drugs” policy here. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes” Lindsay said.
“Do you use, or have you used, drugs?” she asked
“Yes,” Lindsay replied. “But I am clean now and want to stay that way.”
“How do I know you will pay your rent? Do you work?” she asked
“No,” she said, “but my Uncle Jimmy and Doug will pay you every month.”
“Are you Jimmy or Doug?” she looked right at me.
“Jimmy,” I replied. “I’m her uncle from Missouri. Her stepdad Doug and I will vouch for her and cosign the lease.”
“Missouri?” she said and her face lightened up. “I lived in Missouri. Do you where Independence, Missouri is?” she asked
“Are you kidding?” “I live in Liberty. I go to Independence Center all the time,” I lied.
Lindsay was looking pathetic. She was scratching compulsively, staring at her fidgeting feet. “Look honey,” the lady said to Lindsay. “I am going to rent you that space, but you will have to stay clean. Do you understand.”
Lindsay nodded.
Then it was if the lady had read Lindsay’s rap sheet.
“No Parties! No group sex! No gangs!”
“No making noise after 10 pm. No motorcycles.”
“You have to get up and make something of yourself, or I will kick you out faster than you can say jack rabbit!”
Lindsay stopped itching and pulling out her hair.
“OK,” she whispered.
The turned lady turned to look at me.
“Hey, this is favor,” she said, “Because she brought you along.
“But I’m holding you responsible too. I’ll need signatures, a deposit and the first and last month’s rent in advance.”

Then she said in an altogether new tone of voice, “I am going to pray for your niece.”
I used her fax machine to send papers to Doug’s office and I paid the deposit, first and last month’s rent. Then I hugged that lady. She was shocked, and I thought she might think I was being a bit to forward, but she let me hug her. I cried a bit and told her how thankful we all were. On the way home I asked Lindsay to try to make the best of this situation. Told her she was getting a second chance. I might as well have been talking to a stone.

But OK. Here’s the deal. In just 24 hours we had conquered scabies, found a place to move her mobile home/ trailer, lined up a handyman to disconnected and then reconnect everything at the new place. I would call Big Dog and get the laundry done. Things were looking up. (I should not have gotten to optimistic however, I was soon to have one of the most embarrassing moments of life.) Back at Lindsay’s trailer park, we set in the lawn chairs to set our plans and made calls. I called the handyman and Big Dog. Both could come tomorrow. Big Dog said if I had the trailer ready to move, he could be there by 4:00 p.m. Lindsay needed to go back to the trailer and pack up stuff so it wouldn’t break in the move, and I headed to the Laundromat.

Folding Lingerie
I know how to wash clothes, and this was not my first Laundromat experience. The Laundromat I found was fairly crowded so I quickly claimed every washer by dumping clothes on the top of any empty machines. I didn’t worry about colors or fabrics, yet. My job was to claim as many washing machines as I could and then get things separated. When I was finally ready to drop in quarters, I put a little extra detergent in every load --Death to Scabies! Within forty minutes, every piece of clothing was in a washing machine. It was time to start claiming dryers.

I noticed the other people in the Laundromat were beginning to look at me. I hadn’t paid attention, but I began to feel some stares. I was the only male in the place, and the only white person in the room. About 10 or so Hispanic women were gathered into tight groups looking at me.
“Hello,” I said. “Good afternoon.”

But they weren’t buying anything I was selling. They kept staring. It seems I had broken an unwritten law about how many machines and dryers you could use at one time. I pretended to check my cell phone and pray the washing machines would not break down. As the clothes got washed, I quickly put them into the dryers on the highest heat possible. I did not overload the driers. I wanted to ensure the clothes got real hot, and the scabies got killed. It felt like it took forever! The Hispanic ladies kept staring at me. I noticed they had stealthily commandeered every folding table. There would be no place for me to fold clothes.

I chose to fold clothes on top of the washing machines as they were still running. The clothes from the dryer were hot and hard to hold. As I picked up each piece of clothing to fold, I began to notice the nature of the clothes. There were tiny little bras with holes where nipples go, crotchless panties, and see-though blouses. Lindsay owned leopard skin tights, exotic lingerie, and Jeans with holes where holes should never be. Her wardrobe was a Fredrick’s of Hollywood discard bin. I held up a pair of particularly revealing panties and stared at them in disbelief. It was then I noticed every woman in the place was looking right at me. I was so shocked and embarrassed that I kept holding the panties in the air as I blurted out,
“These are not mine!”
“They belong to my niece.”
“She has scabies.”
“I have to wash and dry them.”
“I am so sorry!”
A mother yanked her daughter to her side and hustled out the door. A few other ladies up and left. The rest kept staring. I realized that they didn’t think these clothes were mine; --they thought I was some sort of pimp washing whore clothes. I stood there red-faced and shaking.

A Hispanic lady about my age, began to move. She walked to the end of the line of washing machines, and then she turned toward me. She came right up to me.
“You obviously don’t know how to fold clothes,” she said. “Let me help.”
She grabbed the panties from my hand and folded them. Then she took the leopard skin tights and folded them.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said to me. “Fold!”

The Laundromat began a slow, cautious laugh. It was a kind of snickering laugh that flirted around the edges and then became a chuckle. A lady said something in Spanish and everyone giggled out loud. They laughed some more as they began talking about me and my nasty laundry in Spanish. Everyone spoke at once. Their eyes twinkled and they began doubling up with laughter. For the next 45 minutes the Laundromat ladies enjoyed a risqué show as my new friend and I folded those naughty, naughty clothes.

When we finished, the lady helped me put the folded clothes in the new trash bags I had brought, and I thanked her profusely. I think I had about $10 in quarters left, so I just put them on the folding table and made my exit. As I left, I held my head up high and walked out like I owned the moment. I even felt a little sexy. Damn, I was make-believe pimp! Back in the car I did what I always do when some amazing thing happens in my life. I called my wife. She laughed too, but she also told me that after folding all those sexy clothes I better not to get any ideas.
I was having quite an adventure.


Searching for Drugs
By the time I got back at the trailer park Lindsay was making some progress getting her mobile home ready to move. On my way home I had gone by the bank to take out about $700. I put payments and tips in carefully labeled, white, letter size envelops for Big Dog, the handyman, Jan, utility deposits, and food for the move. Upon arriving at the trailer park, I went to talk to Jan and gave him his envelope containing the money Lindsay owed him. He gave me some more tips on how to get the mobile home ready to move and what to expect from Big Dog. “Big Dog is nobody to mess with,” he said. “But he is fair, and he can put mobile home on a postage stamp. Every trailer park uses Big Dog.”

He asked again how Lindsay was doing, and I told him about the Wagon Wheel and how the lady there had been willing to take a chance on Lindsay. I worked hard for about an hour picking up stuff outside the trailer and then called the handyman again to make sure he could still come. By now, some of Lindsay’s neighbors were coming by to say good-bye. The same neighbors who had to endure her all-night parties, rowdy men, and illegal activities wished her well. “Let us know if you need any help,” everyone said.
We decided on pizza for supper and went to her favorite spot. This place was fantastic. We ordered an extra-large pizza, way more than we needed or could eat. It was great pizza --one of the top five ...ever! We both got comfortable and for the first-time Lindsay and I began to talk.

Lindsay had come to Tucson with John. They both got hooked on heroine and lived the junkie life for years before they had a son, Johnny. Their life was a constant search for drugs. Deep in the underbelly of society they lived in one skuzzy apartment to another. They learned to trust nobody, but they developed casual friendships with the street people of Tucson. People came and went often in their world. There is a strange code on the street. People try to help each other when they can, but will betray you in a moment if money or drugs is involved.

Many of their “friends” were mentally ill and some sounded like sociopaths. Lindsay talked almost fondly about driving around Tucson at night going from place to place trying to score drugs. They both tapped their extended families for money and sometimes they worked at different jobs. John was an able refrigeration man, and there was always plenty of work for that in Tucson. I drank a few beers and really enjoyed talking with Lindsay. In some ways, she was the most open and honest person I have ever known. Things about her life that other people keep hidden, she talked about freely. We even talked about her sex life, and I know I sat there like a completely clueless old man unable to comprehend what I was hearing.


Bear
It was dark when we got back to her trailer. I was anxious to get home. I had to be back at the trailer at a 6:00 a.m. the next morning to meet the handyman. He said we had a lot to do to get Lindsay’s trailer ready to roll. We sat in the darkness talking. Lindsay was smoking a cigarette when a very well dressed older man with German Sheppard dog came walking by. He stopped and asked Lindsay for a cigarette. She said, “no.” I was eating a piece of leftover pizza and offered our visitor a piece as well. Again, Lindsay said, “no.”
“Lindsay, we will never eat all this Pizza,” I said.
“Take some if you want,” I told the man. He was obviously hungry and quickly ate one piece and then asked for another.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.
“This is Bear,” he said and patted his dog. “Bear is good dog. A very good dog.”
“I love Bear,” Lindsay chimed in.
We sat around in silence for a bit. It was awkward, and Lindsay kept watching the man as if she needed to be cautious.
“You know Lindsay,” he said. “I am going to miss having you around. Believe me when I say if you ever needed anything, I will do whatever I can to help you.”
The man stuttered just a little when he spoke. He shook just slightly. I realized he was drunk. “You need to leave,” Lindsay told the man.
Nobody moved and we sat together in silence. I petted bear. It was a very strange moment. I had never seen Lindsay be so wary of anyone.
Once again, Lindsay’s life seemed so foreign. What was it like at her core? How did she process the challenges that filled her life? It seemed Lindsay Lu-Lu was on automatic pilot. She expected very little from life. Her job was to stand there and take the outrageous heat, the yearly floods, the loneliness and misfortune. She was made for the desert and her defenses were impenetrable. Like the Saguaro she hosted and provided comfort to countless desert creatures.  But Lindsay was also death to touch, impenetrable, merely standing, only aware of an unending, constant, and all-serving need for water.

Driving back to my hotel (down Speedway of course) I listened to James Taylor sing “You’ve got a friend,” on the radio. My friends and family back home know almost nothing about the life and times of the people I have been meeting on this trip. I found it fascinating that even enemies in this underworld end conversations with, “Let me know if you need anything?” They forgive huge failings in each other, like Jan asking about Lindsay’s welfare. They take chances on each other, like the lady at the Wagon Wheel renting out to Lindsay (Lindsay will eventually abandon the mobile home Doug paid for and I helped move. It will end up wrecked by a group of squatters who refuse to move out. Doug will finally sell it for almost nothing to some people who will take it to Mexico to be their home.)  The Hispanic women who laughed with me at my laundry escapade, and the lady who helped me fold Lindsay’s obscene clothes, flashed in my mind. Cruising down Speedway trying to make sense of my day, the song I was listening literally jumped into my moment. All the people I had met today were aware that in one way or another I was, “down and troubled and need a helping hand”, and so they were “knocking on my door.” Don’t you know, you got a friend.


Manny
I was at Lindsay’s trailer at 6:00 a.m. sharp. Lindsay was still in bed. The handyman who was supposed to be here by now did not come till after 8:00 a.m. I felt Lindsay’s packing efforts left a lot to be desired and redid some of her work. Over and over again, I went down the list of things we needed to get done today. I had never moved a mobile home before and did not know what to expect. I found myself hoping the handyman and Big Dog would even show up.

Manny showed up a little after 8:00, two hours late. He had a 1971 era pickup truck, mostly rusted, with tall panels on the side of the pickup bed used to haul trash. He got out of his truck and walked slowly over to shake my hand. He was about my age or older. He had on a weathered baseball cap, cowboy shirt, faded blue jeans, and cowboy boots. His hand was a piece of rough leather.
“Good morning,” I said. “I’m Jimmy. You don’t know how glad I am to have your help.” “Glad I can help.” he replied. “I’m Manny Ortiz, what have got here today?
I think of him now as Manny and the Miracles because he made so many miraculous things happen.
First there was the miraculous way he knew how to unhook the water and electricity. Both had been installed wrong. “It’s a wonder they ever worked,” Manny said.
He knew how to fix the mobile home’s two flat tires with stuff he had in the back of his truck. The front wench used to raise and lower the trailer nosepiece so it could be attached to a tow truck was broken, so he fixed that.
He fixed Lindsay’s water line and stopped up sink.
He fixed her air-conditioner and the lock on her front door.

 Mobile homes rest on adjustable support struts, two of which were stuck. He tinkered with them and got them ready to go.

When we got to the new trailer park he knew how to level the trailer, and he solved what seemed like an impossible issue with hooking up water and electricity in the new place.
He even brought an extra sandwich for Lindsay and me. We ate it for lunch.
He didn’t win a national tournament, he sure earned the name, Danny and the Miracles as much as KU ever did.

I guess I always knew there are people in this world who can figure out stuff and make or do anything with their hands. My dad was like that. But Manny! Oh my God! Manny was a Michelangelo of repair and innovation. He went through Lindsay’s mobile home fixing closet doors, silverware drawers. He repaired light switches that had never worked since Lindsay had the trailer.
I kept telling him how grateful I was for his help.
“We couldn’t do this without you,” I said over and over.
Manny was married and had six kids. He worked full-time as a maintenance man in a large factory and had come to help us because he owed a favor to Jan, --the guy who managed the trailer park from which Lindsay was being evicted. We had the trailer ready to go by noon. Manny was about to go back to work at the factory when an enormous engine roar echoed through the mobile home park. The ground shook! Big Dog had arrived four hours early!


Big Dog
Coming through the gate was an enormous 1959 Pacemaker edition, cherry red, Cabover Peterbuilt truck. The truck had four sets of mirrors, two of which were motorized for on the fly adjustment. Every square inch of that truck had been rebuilt, replaced, or reconditioned over the years. It sounded like it had no muffler. The oversized ball and hitch that would connect the truck to Lindsay’s mobile home was ingeniously controlled by a homemade electrical motor that moved it up and down, left or right, forward and backwards.

The truck sounded its horn as it came through the gate and the noise shook the ground. Behind the truck was a phalanx of pimped-up ancient pickups and motorcycles that came straight out Fury Road. “My God,” I thought. “I am in Mad Max movie.”

The gigantic Peterbuilt pulled right up to the trailer. Huge squeals erupted and the sound of air breaks permeated the park in an effort to stop the truck. The mostly open-air driver’s side door opened and there was Big Dog.

Big Dog was six feet, four inches tall and weighed about 220 pounds. He was all muscle and tattoos. His blonde shock of hair was tied in a tight ponytail that came halfway down his back. He wore a blue jean vest and outrageous short-shorts cutoff blue jeans. His feet were encased in size16 light brown, scuffed and scored leather boots. His grey wool socks came almost half way up to his knee. Big Dog liked bracelets and necklaces in bright colored fabric and leather, decorated with silver and beads.

“Who’s Jimmy,” he commanded after leaping from the cab to the ground below. Big Dog was the sultan supreme of the trailer park world. Everything about him seemed transient and enigmatic. He was an emperor with an entourage of orcs and gnomes, jesters and hangers-on. He was the most imposing figure I have ever seen. Did I tell you he carried a hunting knife on his belt?
“I’m Jimmy,” I said.
“What the hell is going on here?” Big Dog commanded. He had no interest in greeting me or shaking my hand.”
Off-balance and slightly in shock, I blurted back to Big Dog.
“You’re moving this trailer (I took a moment to point to Lindsay’s trailer) from this trailer park over to lot number 8 at the Wagon Wheel.” I said, trying hard not show my utter terror.

“God Damn, let’s get rolling,” Big dog ordered and maybe six Hispanic men emerged from the Mad Max phalanx and stationed themselves at strategic points around the trailer.  Big Dog’s truck would never make a slow start or stop the entire day. He gunned his cabover Peterbuilt both forward and backwards at alarming speeds. All the while the men with him were shouting out instructions like “Left, 2 inches” or “Right, three-quarter.” They flashed numbers with their fingers and showed how much room Big Dog had to maneuver by holding up their hands up, palms parallel and moving them together or apart. In seconds, he had positioned his ball and hitch directly under the nose hitch of Lindsay mobile home. Manny cranked it down into place. Chains miraculously appeared connecting the truck to the trailer as a back-up safety measure.

A few shouts echoed through the air, and Manny came running over to Lindsay and me to jerking us out of the way. Without warning, Big Dog gunned his truck and the mobile home lurched forward gaining speed. Around the trailer park circle drive Big Dog roared. Then the entire circus parade disappeared out the front gate.
“Lindsay has left the trailer park,” I whispered to myself
Manny jumped into his truck and Lindsay and I got in my car to follow Big Dog. We could barely keep us. Big Dog kept the pedal to the metal down narrow Tucson streets. Big Dog burst through the front gate at the Wagon Wheel, down the main drive, and then off on the side road that led to pad number eight. He stopped right in front of the pad, his cab sitting in the shade of the lone tree that would grace Lindsay’s new home.
Again, Big Dog leaped from the cab and took command.
“Where do you want it? He asked.
“Pad number eight, right here,” I said.
“Hell man, I know that.” Big dog barked. “Exactly where on the piece of shit pad do you want this piece of shit mobile home?”
I walked over to the concrete slab that that would serve as Lindsay’s front patio and looked around.

“I want the front door of this mobile home to run exactly parallel to this slab of concrete. The middle of the front door needs to exactly match the center of this patio, about right here,” I said pointing to a middle spot on the concrete slab.
“Got it,” Big Dog said, and he called his tribe together.
They talked. Big Dog Pointed a few times, and then they talked some more. Without warning or any discernable signal, the men broke up and took positions around the new lot. Big Dog, in an impressive acrobatic feet, leaped back into his cab and started the engine. Back and forth the trailer went with the men barking out directions. This time there were not jerky motions, just a continuous flow of movement as Big Dog jockeyed the mobile home forwards and then backwards into position. Simultaneously, all the men yelled, and then, all movement stopped. The trailer was in perfect position. Levels came out, the supporting struts were put in position, and the trailer was made level and secure. The men unhooked the chains and Big Dog used his electric magical ball and hitch machine to unhook his truck from the trailer. Up to the cab Big Dog went to move his truck three feet forward so he was clear of the trailer.
Almost instantly he was out of the cab again and stood in front of me. I remember exactly what he said.
“We good?” he asked.
I looked over at Manny, and Manny nodded yes.
“Yes.” I said
Big dog looked me over, top to bottom.
“Then, there is the matter of the legal tender.” Big Dog said.
I pulled out the envelope with the name Big Dog on it and gave the envelope to him.
“Thanks,” I said.
Big Dog did not reply. He did not open the envelope to count the money. He just climbed back into his amazing truck and drove off. His men raced to their pickups and motorcycles and followed him out the gate. I guess he was happy with his payment and the tip. I never saw or heard from Big Dog again.

Manny’s ongoing miracles finished up the day. He got all the utilities working. He got the air- conditioning working correctly, maybe for the first time ever. Manny alerted me to some possible future issues, and then explained them to Lindsay. I learned Manny had taken off work the entire day to help us. He had done so much more to help us than we had asked him to do. It became embarrassing, and then overwhelming.

At one point Manny asked me to ride with him down to a hardware store to get some things to properly connect the plumbing and electricity. On the way to the store, Manny wanted to know all about Lindsay and her story. He asked me if I wanted him to check on her now and then to make sure she was OK, and that everything in her trailer was working properly. I told him yes, and he followed up on that promise. Manny came by several times on his own to check on Lindsay. I know Doug called him at least once to go over and fix something for Lindsay. When I asked him what I owed him he gave me a quote that was half what we talked about on the phone. He said he was sorry everything had taken so long. I had already slipped all the cash I had left into his envelope. He too took his envelope without opening it or counting the money and left. I think about Manny and the Miracles from time to time. In Tucson’s darkest, most dangerous neighborhoods and among its poorest and sometimes most questionable population, I found Manny. What a find he was, and what a good man he is.

Before We Judge or Blame
I really haven’t tried to put everything in the best light. Hopefully you understand Lindsay has some real problems, and you know my trip to Tucson to move Lindsay from one trailer park to another was only a Band-Aid on a much larger problem. I hope you got a sense of how hard is to help some people, and the strange and wonderful results that sometimes may come from being a fool for somebody in need. Every bit of this story is true, but I admit my memory fails me from time to time, and I cannot help embellishing a story just a bit. Lindsay still lives in Tucson, now with a man named Greg. Her daughter Allison lives with her but Lindsay has no custodial rights. She never sees her other son Johnny. You can still wear yourself out trying to help her. It continues to be true that without Doug’s help and support, Lindsay’s life would be almost unbearable (or over). Shera still must keep a safe distance, but that does not mean she does not care. In fact, it may mean she still cares, and hopes, too much.

I visited Lindsay in Tucson just last week, and she is doing well. I am tied to Tucson for a lot of reasons. My son went to law school there and I have great memories of visiting him. But I must tell you that all the characters in this story live in my memory. And what a wonderful memory it is! What a great adventure it was, filled with some of the finest people it has been my privileged to meet.
Back in Anthem with Doug and Shera, I rested for a day or two before heading home. Doug insisted that he cover every penny I spent to help Lindsay down in Tucson so I made up a number and gave it to him (he will smile when he reads this now). I told all the stories over and over, and made them as funny as I possibly could. We laughed out loud honoring the Laundry Ladies, Jan, Dale Jr., Manny, Big Dog and all the rest of those memorable, special people. They still reside in me. I think about those days and am grateful for the chance the Tucson trip gave me to witness love and sacrifice to my family and myself. People live on the desert’s edge. Some lives are not pretty or easy. We should be careful when we judge or blame them for their poverty, mental illness, or ignorance. We should be quicker to throw out lifelines whenever can. Our chosen family of brothers, sisters, and children, all need help now and then. If you try, unsung heroes will join you in those efforts. There is amazing beauty all around us, even in the worst of times. We become better people when we selflessly help others. Thank you, Lindsay, I love you.

Desert Dénouement

The desert creates its own brand of misery and mystery. They call Phoenix the Valley of the Sun because it is ringed with bare mountains. Morning and evening the animal shaped mountains slowly appear and disappear against the horizon. The stark lines they offer between earth and air circles the valley floor changing its colors and causing a confusing depth of field. From a dark nothing, edges begin to appear and then entire mountains turn smoky blue, their misty- black waves extending back into the mists. The desert is enchanting, almost surreal just twice a day before the dust, heat, and dehydration separates the morning and evening magic from the murderous mid-day.

You either love or hate the desert. Nobody is ambivalent. It is hell for some. They find themselves running for every shadow in hopes of finding shade. The desert’s dry heat can overcome a child left in a car in less than 30 seconds. That same heat can severely incinerate unaware bare feet. The careless desert sun will burn uncovered skin until the tops of hands become like crusted, dried paper; the skin cracking at the merest touch.

Then there are those who connect spiritually with the desert. A select few experience the desert a wormhole into an alternate existence. For them the desert’s challenges and assaults become its calling card. They find a beauty there you can never have or touch anyplace else. It is a beauty that leaves them aching and longing for something more. The unfair cruelty of pure chance in an unforgiving environment brings them a strange solace. They become mindful sojourners in a land stripped of comfort and second chances. Here, in the desert, they are fully alive in each moment, overdosed on exploration, and keen on knowing the meaning of every second. The desert hooks itself into the skin on your chest and you must resist until the tearing gives way to a stark freedom. Cauterized by suffering and made mystical with pain, a newly born desert walker no longer touches the ground. Visions appear in a mist of understanding and acceptance. The desert air condenses in the open wounds and forms a holy water that can quench the thirst of a long-parched soul.