Seven Square Miles

Seven Square Miles

It’s been a while. Good to see you. Six days late, but I’ve decided I’ll toss my hat into the NaNoWriMo fiction ring. What follows are two brief narratives. They’ll be a part of a series of stories I hope to write. Read on, if you wish. And yes: his name is Gary Oldman.

Gary Oldman washed his face and peered at the schlubby figure in the mirror. Without his glasses, he could tell it looked tired. It was also 49-years-old, overweight, balding in the back of the head and living alone in the basement of an 89-year-old grandmother of four in the Outer Sunset district of San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

He didn’t mind any of that. What he did mind was last night’s events and what it may mean for his very near future.

He had a pet. It was named Francis. Francis was a robotic arm jutting out of a metal base with a single small suction cup functioning as a hand. Francis would fetch when Gary told him to fetch, sleep when Gary told him to sleep and play when Gary told him to play — so long as everything took place within Francis’s reach. Francis also had eyes and sensors and the pieces and parts and know-how to interact with the things Gary would place in front of him — he even knew how to play chess, though poorly. Occasionally Francis would throw pieces in simulated frustration.

Gary also had a bed, a dresser, a fridge, a television — all the things you’d expect one to have in today’s society — even a mini dishwasher. He kept memorabilia from the places he visited in past years and past lives. He kept a stone arrowhead from when he was a part of the Sioux Nation. Over his bed, he hung a picture of his favorite Mexican bar — Tommy’s. Next to his bed, he kept a stack of books by Evelyn Waugh, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and — only because the author was exceptional amongst the French — Alexandre Dumas.

Gary also had a 3D printer which he won in an obscure online contest. In reality, the contest was a front for gangsters to fence stolen monies through an anonymized digital currency known as Greenbukx. Greenbukx was invented by a man in Tokyo, Japan, who wanted to discover the best method of transferring money anonymously. He wasn’t criminal in nature. He just puzzled over how to create an untraceable currency and kept to himself, much like our erstwhile gangsters.

Erstwhile because, in most stories, those gangsters would’ve foreshadowed a future conflict. Typical plots dictate the gangsters, at one point, confront Gary. Gary, then, would be challenged to overcome those gangsters, somehow. If the author was particularly depressing, they’d write on how Gary’s life was slowly deteriorating towards an inevitable death or suicide.

Gary’s story isn’t either of those — though another character will suffer this predictable arch. Under the guiding hand of this writer, however, Gary turns out swell in the end. In fact, he turns out so well that he purchases the home he’s living just so Marcie, the 89-year-old grandmother of four who currently acts as Gary’s landlady, doesn’t have to depend on Gary’s income to make ends meet. It’s a happyish story of a fatish man who’s awkward, isolated and pleasant enough for most.

If you really need a conclusion for the gangsters in Gary’s arch it’s this: they didn’t care about the $10,000 printer Gary won. They cared about the $25 million all five of them would take home after compromising one of the world’s largest banks through the simplest of methods: posing as someone else. They did this by sending an email to a banking executive’s secretary. They posed as the exec — Jeffery O’Donald — who will bear the brunt of our sad, depressing arch and who will have an extensive relationship with these gangsters. Anyways, hidden in this email was a malicious file that would swipe all the passwords belonging to Jeffery and his secretary along with access to accounts numbering in the billions of dollars.

The gangsters didn’t take much because they didn’t need much, but also because they didn’t wish to attract the attention of the authorities. After siphoning, anonymizing and laundering the money, the gangsters raided Jeffery’s personal communications by logging onto his respective messaging accounts online. There they discovered that Jeffery and the secretary — Susan — were having an affair. Sometimes they’d watch, laughing, as the two traded explicit texts. Occasionally, one of them would get excited and jack off.

It doesn’t turn out well, in the end, for poor Jeffery. After losing his job, wife and mistress he decided to jump off of The Golden Gate Bridge — a suspension bridge connecting Marin County and San Francisco. It was built as as symbol of hope in a depressed era. It’s currently considered a suicide hot-spot. Jeffery would hit the San Francisco Bay just shy of terminal velocity. His jump was witnessed by five people: a sheriff’s deputy who tried to talk Jeffery out of jumping, two lovers who were walking across the bridge from Sausalito, and two men in a fishing vessel who saw Jeffery’s body hit the water right in front of them.

The two men and their captain would fish Jeffery’s body out of the bay and contact the proper authorities. They performed basic medical procedures and were surprised to find that Jeffery had not, in fact, died. Jeffery was convinced he did. He was also convinced that he was reborn as a fisher of men. His first words after his rebirth were “sorry about that.”

Gary and Jeffery’s timelines do overlap at some point in our story. Neither of them will recognize each other. They don’t become friends, they don’t save each other and they don’t find some sort of solace in each other’s existence. In fact, they mildly inconvenience each other while waiting in line for ice cream at an upscale grocery store called “Bi-Rite.”

There’re a few other characters you should be aware of for the purposes of our set of stories, but they’re minor compared to Jeffery O’Donald and Gary Oldman. Their names are Andre Alavos, Jessica Wing, Harold Schumer, Jason Redwood and Bernie. They all have their own lives and their own passions and are just as real and complex as you and me. They all live within the seven-by-seven square miles of San Francisco though not all of them were born there. They’re all fairly nice people. Some of them will dislike each other. Others will get along splendidly.

They are, after all, human.

So that’s the situation as it stands: seven characters, a dozen or so stories and one city. Some of these stories will be absurd. Others, depressing with melancholy thrown in for good measure. Regardless, these are your stories as much as they are mine. For you, they may be meaningful or simply a throw-away read after browsing a half dozen webpages or so. For me, it’s a catharsis, an exorcism. Whatever it is, it’s aping Kurt Vonnegut and hopefully a few other admirable authors. Maybe some Tom Wolfe with a dash of Flannery O’Connor. Perhaps a pinch of John Gardner with a swirl of Joan Didion. Regardless, it’s not an original work though I can wholeheartedly promise I’ve created each story on my own. It’s a smattering of different things melted into a familiar environment.

And, really, that’s pretty okay. Scout’s honor.

Fame Finds Richard Matt

Fame Finds Richard Matt

Richard Matt lay on his side in a thicket of woods dressed in camo and with a hunter’s backpack near his legs, his head resting on his right shoulder. In any other story it would be a brief flash image of a homeless man taking refuge in what little refuge nature has to offer. The pool of blood, the congealed bullet wound entering his forehead and exiting his crown and the pink hints of brain, however, tell a different story.

It’s a story of violence and fear and desperation. And it’s a story Matt had lived throughout his 49-years on God’s green Earth. A native of Tonawanda, New York, Matt aged as a persona non grata throughout school, according to the BBC and apparent classmate, Rand Szukala. He was a bully and frequently in trouble. When the burden of his early years grew to be too much to bear at the age of 13, he ran away on a stolen horse. He found sustenance in the goods he stole from Upstate New York’s numerous summer cottages and hunting cabins.

It wouldn’t be the last time Matt would run. In 1986, Matt would flee from the Erie County Correction Facility during a year-long sentence for assault. His escape was simple: he snuck past a guard, climbed a 9ft razor-wired fence and was gone. His scarred hands would serve as a badge, a symbol of his character and thirst for criminal fame, for life.

As life progressed, so did Matt’s crimes. He strained beyond the reach of many “small-time thugs,” as the media would put it during his escape and before his eventual death, and dismembered his former boss, William Rickerson, a Buffalo businessman. Matt left Rickerson’s pieces and parts in the Niagara River before he fled for Mexico. Rickerson’s corpse was found by a local fisherman.

While on the lam in Mexico, Matt reportedly killed again. His victim was another American who made the unfortunate mistake of sharing a bar with the escapee. Matt was caught, jailed, shot for trying to escape, extradited, charged, and sentenced by United States Federal Courts to 25 to life with no chance of parole before 2032. He would’ve been 66 years old before facing the possibility of freedom.

He did not wait for that to happen.

Instead, Matt, with the help of fellow inmate David Sweat, 35, and, allegedly, prison tailor Joyce Mitchell, 51, decided to run, again. After years of good behavior, and after being smuggled goods, Matt and Sweat cut and drilled their way through the walls and pipes of Clinton Correctional Facility. The alarm was raised on June 6, 2015.

Matt and Sweat’s escape set the New York media ablaze with worry, speculation and coverage. For 21 days Matt ran, by foot, through the hills and woods of Upstate New York. As before, he found sustenance in the hunting cabins and vacation cottages so common to the area. They were heading to Canada, an apparent stepping stone to that romanticized refuge for those on the run: Mexico.

At some point during his escape, Matt armed himself a 20 gauge shotgun. He used it once on a camping trailer, occupied. The driver would escape the encounter, not knowing they had been shot on, and eventually bring the concerted efforts more than 1,000 law enforcement officers, federal, state and local, to the area.

When society found Matt, he was hiding in the woods of Malone, New York, armed but resting. He was 20 miles from the Canadian border. The officers who found him, from the federal Customs and Border Protection agency, ordered Matt to lower his firearm and raise his hands in surrender. Saying nothing, he raised himself and apparently refused. A single agent fired in response and Matt’s troubled life came to an end.

Superintendent Joseph D’Amico of the New York State Police would say that “Mr. Matt did not fire any shots at the agents, nor was he known to have said anything …” before his death.

What they did know was this: the days before his final rest, Matt was sick. The bugs, the unclean water and the refuge of nature proved unkind to Matt and his fellow escapee. CBS would report that Matt attempted to cure himself by seeking refuge in stolen booze; he had left behind half-drunken bottles and empties throughout his numerous break-ins. But no matter where Matt went he would find no rest, no refuge and no salvation from his choices.

In the end, a day after his birthday, fame gifted itself on Matt. It was delivered through a federally issued firearm with federally issued ammunition in a thicket of woods in Upstate New York.

A small toil

A small toil

Wrote a small poem.

There’s a binding coil
‘round which the world is twist
that waits for no man lest he toil
under the sun, under the wisps of concrete

Concrete! It falls and it crumbles.
The hidden man is left apart
and tumbles onto his foils
and shirks back from playing part

The Fireworks Man

The 

Fireworks

Man

Paul, with his wife, Inta.

Foreword:

Sometime in March I got a phone call. Paul passed. It was a jarring thing to hear. The world was a little less vibrant and a little bit more grey and I did not know how to feel about it. I grew older, like a person looking at yet another grey hair and pondering what it means. What follows is a brief meditation on a man I grew up with. It will be read aloud by my mother at his memorial on April 11th, 2015. His name was Paul Ertel. He was 6'4". He both was and was not my uncle. He was the fireworks man. And he’ll be dearly missed.

Paul was one of the good ones — a man so enthusiastic, so full of love, light and excitement that his passion for fireworks seemed only natural. He left an imprint on everyone he met, and for good reason: Paul stood at what felt like 6’4”. I cannot be sure because I truthfully don’t know, but what I do know is that when he talked he’d lean over, tilt his head down so his eyes just hovered over the rims of his glasses — which were expertly balanced on his large nose — and pull you in. He was always slightly hunched, with his knobby fingers working on this and that. But no matter what he was doing, he was always magnetic: for the first half of my life I was convinced that he was my uncle and I was his nephew.

It turns out that we weren’t related, but we were.

Paul Ertel was an accomplished man: he was both a veteran of the Korean War and a graduate of the University of Virginia. Paul discovered the foundation of his life during his college years when he met Inta, his soon-to-be-wife. Over the years he grew to be a respected pediatrician and pioneer in his field. His curious nature drove him to research how the human ear — across the age range — interacted with stethoscopes. His findings, much like the ubiquitous instrument, still holds influence today and has helped to develop a new variation of the iconic tool. As an entrepreneur, Paul founded a company that applied computer analysis to medical data — a massive innovation at the time. As a homeowner, he tended to his garden, trading tips and the fruits of his labor with my grandfather, another avid gardener. His projects were a constant, and reached into every facet of his life.

Paul was a husband, a father, a grandfather and uncle. He and Inta raised two children, Dace and Lynne, and helped to raise their treasured grandchild, Martino. All this on top of helping to herd and nurture the Rawson Clan’s youngest generation. He did all of this with an energetic glee.

But more than all of these things, Paul was our uncle — our exploding grandfatherly figure who manned the corn pits, beer in hand, with our Grandpa. To us nieces and nephews he was an otherworldly figure: he was the showman, he was the fireworks man. He was the man we all knew who had a firecracker or two nearby and a borderline arsenal of explosives contained somewhere in the confines of his basement. (Despite many attempts at locating these potent, and sometimes illegal under Michigan law, explosives, we never found them — perhaps that was for the best).

Paul would mark every corn roast and birthday with a fireworks show. There would be fountains, sparklers, kiddie chasers (the ones that would zzzzzzoooomp, and chase you down the gravel driveway), bottle rockets, bottle rockets with parachute toys strapped to them, poppers, roman candles, firework arrays and even mortar fireworks. And throughout the show, Paul, in his booming baritone voice, would light the night up with this rapid-fire narration of the fireworks as they went off.

“There we go, a fountain of gold and a sparkle of blue for the Maize and Blue!”

“And there’s a hint of violet sparkled with red hue and…”

(It’d be later pointed out to me that it was hard to tell who was having more fun: Paul lighting the fireworks, or the little guys watching them. In retrospect, this is true.)

And so he’d go and we’d pay attention with rapt excitement. The first thing we’d ask him when he arrived to the roasts was what fireworks he brought with him. What are we going to fire off today? Bottle rockets? Parachute men? Roman candles? That was Paul: the fireworks man. Where he went, they were sure to follow, and all of us nieces and nephews would watch (and even get to light them on occasion) with a brimming excitement and anticipation for what would come next.

There was this one time, when my then-girlfriend, now soon-to-be-wife, first met Paul. I had to be 22 at the time. From what I recall, their meeting was (from the nervous observation of a then-boyfriend, now soon-to-be-husband surrounded by boisterous family members) remarkable because the two seemed to have gotten along so well. They talked as if they knew one another. It shouldn’t have been a surprise: they both had a deep-rooted love of science and medicine and have a natural curiosity.

But that wasn’t what I was getting at. It was the damn fireworks again. This family corn roast was particular because my actual uncle, who taught classical music theory at Canterbury, was in town with his family — his wife and toddler son, the latter of which obsessed over tractors in all forms and drove a pedal-powered tractor replica around the property with impunity — while another assumed-uncle was visiting from Texas. This being unusual, we decided to celebrate the Michigan way: a corn roast and fireworks.

Manning the pits.

The fireworks were great, but one in particular gave us trouble. It was this smallish array — a box filled with 100 some-odd miniature fireworks that’d shoot off like a machine gun and make tiny pops and explosions. The problem was that the fuse wouldn’t light, no matter what we tried. We had to light it. It was, if memory serves me correctly, the grand finale. Eventually Paul, Pat (the other adopted uncle) and I gathered around the array trying to puzzle out how to keep the show going. We pried at the fuse, we fussed with the light and we mumbled reassurances to one-another.

After a good deal of clicking the lighter and tearing at the fuse, we were greeted with the sudden fizzle and spark of the firework’s lighting mechanism waking to its shortened chemical life. That’s when Paul dropped the box, the array fallen to the side.

For a moment the world paused as our brains processed what just happened: a fireworks box, filled with at least a 100 miniature rockets, fell to the ground. The fuse was lit. The array of rockets was pointed towards the three of us.

Paul’s voice broke the silence: “Oh shit.”

Then the array went off.

We tore off to the barn (and by we I mean Paul and I because Pat was quick enough to realize that stepping to the side was enough to get out of the line of fire and he did so), but no matter how fast we were the sparkling lights and peeeeeeews and pops and howls of laughter chased us down. Paul, after what felt like a solid minute, veered to the left towards a silo for shelter. I kept running and watched one rocket as it flew over my left shoulder before hitting the barn and going “pop!” After that minute and a half, we were safe. We escaped a borderline c-list action movie effect.

My uncle, the one who flew all the way from Canterbury with his family, nearly fell out of his white plastic chair in laughter. He wasn’t alone. Embarrassed, but satisfied that we put on a good show, we walked back to the platform and we enjoyed our night.

That was the last I could recall of spending time with Paul.

When we were told of Paul’s fall, we braced ourselves. We sent our best, our love and our hopes, and we waited for whatever would happen next.

In truth Paul’s passing took years. When he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the family was concerned. What could we do? Is he okay? How is Inta? Lynne? Dace? Martino? We heard the disorder was manageable at first — pants being put on the wrong way once — but its march was unceasing, unforgiving, mechanical. From a distance we worried. When I learned that Paul and Inta sold their house on the lake, there was a sense of an eerie optimism. The move, to a living center near doctors, made sense. It was good for the both of them. They could get immediate treatment when they needed it. They were surrounded by peers. They were doing what made sense. But that decision was final: the fireworks man had no more shows to give. And then he passed.

The cook.

The news of death is like a bottle rocket: a sudden, bright bang of emotion and memories that pop and echo into numb silence. But that singular explosion spurs others. Other pops and fizzles and sparklers sprout and bloom as the mind’s eye races to hold those moments together. It’s a reaction that cannot, nor should, be stopped. The rush to find his hidden cache of fireworks; the booming voice that brought each spark of color to life; the quiet gardener; the man that’d find the freshest, best cooked corn cob, husk it, and then plop it onto your plate or cob holder; the old soul helping Grandpa to turn corn and drink Oberon beer; check-ups as a child at his house; corn roasts in his backyard; a replica of the statue of liberty being planted on his property line and thusly tormenting a neighbor; the proud grandfather; the parties and family get-togethers and cooking; Christmas; the jokes; the mad dash to the barn; and his talking with Maddie.

Like a firework, those moments came and went, and they remain as echoes in my mind. They’ll be there, bouncing around the walls of my cranium for as long as I live. I count myself fortunate to have those snapshots, those bursts of light and life, popping in and out of my consciousness. It can’t be helped. That was just how Paul left his imprint on life: sudden, unforgettable moments that you’d just keep grinning at.

After all: he was the fireworks man, and he was one of the good ones.