19
Some days I wake up from a drinking spree and feel downright disgusted with myself. I am nothing but green moss on the most abandoned branch in the forest, all sick and gross and non-blooming. The general gloom and sadness of my entire life rears its ugly head out, red, angered, and shouting incomprehensible nonsense through the thin bones in my skull.
On these foul mornings, I feel no love around me. I feel nothing calling in the beyond. I bemoan all the litanies of sorrys I feel. Sorry for what I’ve done and sorry for what I haven’t. I find myself the lowest piece of flaming garbage one ever passed on the side of the road forgotten, unworthy of even the least sacrificial departure. Just trash, burning hot and ashy and useless, poisoning the sky and everything it touches. One great negativity. And I wish to paint none, talk none, be none. If fortunate, I’ll put a pen to paper, drown myself in black coffee and bang my throbbing head on the table ‘till the truth comes spilling out thick and painful in its viscosity. But today, I can’t even bring myself to do that. Sometimes, it’s this feeling or the drink, and on again. Flip a coin.
Hours have passed, and I’m with Prince chopping wood in his backyard. We smoke, have a few beers, and talk business. He has a sprawling dense green yard that lends itself to the cover of towering pines all around its borders.
Prince says, “I did some real thinking over the weekend pal.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. There’s just no way around the fact that we gotta do it.”
“I’ve been thinking the same.”
“I know this puts a pause on our migration west, man, but that don’t mean it’s over.”
I throw my ax into an oak stump while he continues.
“When we get the thing up and running how we want, we can always make sure it’s secure, in good hands or whatever and then make our way at that point, just check in from time to time taking gains, money won’t be the problem. Money ain’t why we’d go anyway man, so.”
He had a point, and I was in no rush to leave anyway. It sure is refreshing to see Prince made alive again by something. With his ax leaning against a stump, leg bouncing and blowing smoke down to Earth, he is thoroughly enthralled.
“I agree man,” I say, taking a drag of my own and wiping away the sweat on my forehead. I have no desire to slow his momentum, there was nothing worse than that.
Prince lives on his parents’ old property, and what a property it is. It’s a big old American house in the country, built with beige bricks and giant gorgeous windows where you can see the whole sprawling yard which leads out to a massive crop field and further, as far as the eye could see. Prince takes care of it all apart from the crop field which a farmer down the road owned. This is his sanctuary. In the evening, the sun sets over that field, and you’d find it nearly impossible not to think pure, immense thoughts. I always marveled at the never-ending rows of tall swaying corn so far out there, rolling on forever, and how that ocean of green floods the Midwest every summer without fail. Prince and I would sit on his porch for hours and watch over this kingdom, sometimes saying nothing at all. But today, with his hair slicked back all the same, Prince holds an ember of hope, and he can’t help but talk about it.
He starts going on about real business and logistics, saying things about what he learned from his father all those years just by listening.
“You fix your eyes on the point.” He says it with conviction, a real aptitude for the ins and outs of how to make things possible. It’s insane to me that I’m one of two people on Earth that knows he has all these opinions inside, all these bulletproof ideas of success. All I do is nod and nod some more, smoke my cigarette and chop a few logs. He just needs me to let him roll, and I’m more than happy to oblige. I find that thankful pulse beating in my chest, for my brother, for someone I can chase down mad ideas with.
So, I listen and chop as he talks longer than he has in months about all the plans he has for the place.
“Cash, it’s just lost a step in some way. Don’t you think? You remember, when we were young, that place was, God, it was—what? God, it had a magic to it, man. Whole world stopped when we were there.”
“Still feels that way to me.”
“Yeah, but something’s missing.”
“Well. We were kids.”
“Fuck man we’re still young.”
“Yeah, we are.”
“Most important part is on you, pal.”
“What’s that?”
“Saul.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“You’re the only one he’ll listen to.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Guy’s got one friend in the world, Cash. One.”
“I don’t know about that either.”
“Fuck off. Saul loves you, man. Always has.”
“Deep down yeah, deep fuckin down.”
“All I know is he better not get strange like he gets. And scared.”
“He is desperate, man, for something. I know he is.”
“Right.”
“Needs change.”
“Just like us.”
“Just like us.”
“Hell. He’ll listen to you, Cash. He will. Just say it how you know how. Pull the heartstrings, yeah?”
“Yeah yeah.”
Prince nods to himself, assured enough for now. He has a nagging fear his plans will foil underneath the loose soil of Jimmy’s lackluster son, bored and depressed and jaded. Prince has little to no faith in Saul whatsoever, the two of them have never gotten on. It’s true what he said though, Saul doesn’t really get on with anyone. I have much more love for Saul than the next guy, but Saul has always struggled to show me an obvious kind bone one way or the other. We grew up together in the caverns of that bar, and anyone would tell you I have a soft spot for him. Our fathers were best friends, and they always seemed more fond of one another than they were of us, and in that, I knew Saul. I knew how that one simple truth broke the poor kid’s heart, and I knew how a truth like that can change the course of a life. When I see Saul, I see that part of myself, and I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the guy.
Well, Prince made the appointment earlier today while he was buzzed up on coffee and fresh with morning possibilities. Saul knows we plan to see him tomorrow around noon. Just like that, it’s happening, but what is it inside of me that is unsure? It’s not that the plan doesn’t seem plausible and all that, or that it doesn’t inspire me with promise, I suppose it’s just that Saul is such a variable. I’ve learned a few things in this life, and one thing I’ve learned is until it happens, it hasn’t, ya know? Sometimes that’s just how I navigate my mind. I’m patient in that way. I’m convinced we can sway Saul, but people are people, and Saul might get in his own way in the end.
The smoke fills me with a growing sense of alignment regardless. We’re in the pocket. We’re the center of some great calling, and though I’m prone to wander at length, searching for unknowns, today is not that day. Today, I’m where I’m supposed to be. The right place, at the right time. The pocket. When by luck or by vision, I find the universe conspiring for my future because I’ve finally taken root in something I was destined to take root in. When all creation around me puts that infinite knowing hand on my shoulder and smiles. God, talk about a feeling. Looking at Prince, squinting out to the field of green crop and sun, I know that he feels it all too.
“We’re in the pocket, man.”
“You better believe it.”
And all of a sudden, that almighty buzz, that true high of life comes alive. It climbs up my spine, one solid branch at a time. Destiny, smoke, and the drink. Completely reborn.
I don’t feel so hopeless and dark dead anymore.