Doug Hennessee: Pipeline Fiction

Wed, 02 Jul 2003 20:18:22 GMT

I was kidnapped once. Well, now that I think about it, it was really more of an abduction than an actual kidnapping. But what the hell, kidnapping, abduction...it's all scary when somebody's got a gun to your head, right? I would assume it would be, because when I was abducted, I never actually saw a gun and I was still scared to death. I was scared because the presence of the gun was strongly implied shortly after my assailant grabbed me by the arm and told me that the coffee shop was closed...

Maybe I should start at the beginning. It was midnight, mid-September, 1994. I was sitting at my computer when I heard a loud car crash down the street. I decided I would step out of my apartment to go check things out. It was a very busy intersection near a college, so even though it was midnight, it wasn't like I was in any position to be a first responder. I was gonna get my gawk on, maybe scope the gathering mob for some college girls, that kind of thing. Plus, the mean season was coming; there wouldn't be many more balmy nights like this to go out for a leisurely walk.

I should also mention I was really stoned, but I say that only for context, and with no fear of self-incrimination; I'm pretty sure it was second-hand smoke from the upstairs apartment.

So anyway, there I was, walkin' reeaalll slowwww. As I got closer to the scene of the accident, I saw a really large car that appeared to be waiting inside the roadside bus stop, which was all busted up. There were a few people walking around, but there didn’t seem to be any real urgency or activity up ahead. I began to wonder if there had been anyone in the bus stop, when suddenly I was confronted with a thick, shortish man who smelled BAD, and seemed to be talking to me.

"Excuse me?" I said. He had said something to me that I didn't catch; the guy pointed his finger at me, got real pissed off and said, "I asked you where you were going." Right away, I started to perk up, because I could tell something very bad and weird was about to happen.

I didn't know what to say. Instinctually, I knew it would be a mistake to say that I was going down to look at this crash. I was starting to get paranoid that this guy saw me come out of my apartment, and he knew that I was just going down there to gawk. So instead of telling him that I was (slowly) going down there to see if anybody needed help, I instead gestured over to the coffee shop on the corner.

"I'm going to the coffee shop", I said, hopefully.

"Oh yeah?" he said, not missing a beat, "Coffee shop's closed". And as I squinted at the shop, I realized that he was right. As the situational dominos starting tumbling in my brain, he grabbed my arm hard, got close to my face, and said:

"I think you were going down there to tell them about my accident. Well I'm not going back to prison for you or anybody. See this gun?" And with that, he hiked up his shirt with his free hand to show me something wrapped in a red bandana, tucked in his waistband. He tightened his grip on my arm and said, "You and me are going for a walk."

Ten seconds with a stranger can change your night so dramatically. There we were, turning an about face as my assailant forcefully walked back down the street, towards my apartment. The evening had taken a dramatic turn for the worst; I was scared to death, and it was clear that my assailant was even more impaired than I am. He was staggering badly, and his alcohol breath gave me my second contact-high of the night. My assailant was forceful, but seemed vulnerable, too. He confirmed as much when he told me "You’re going to help me get home."

We slowly walked past my apartment, and I remember looking at it, wondering if I would make it back inside. We had walked perhaps 30 steps at that point. He still had the iron grip on my arm. I was thinking pretty much exclusively about what he had in that red bandanna. Was it a gun? Was he a Blood? Was it an ice cream sandwich? God, do I wish he had an ice cream sandwich. All I knew was he had a red bandanna with something in it that he said was a gun, and he seemed to have just been involved in a serious traffic accident that he apparently can just walk away from without anybody even so much as bothering to notice, and he seems to really not want to go back to prison. I remember thinking, "What else can go wrong?"

Well, for starters, my assailant could have told me his name, so that I could positively ID him, and thus give him a motive for really hurting me. "My name is Tony", he slurred. Thank you for telling me your name, Tony. I think that's really going to add a new dimension to our relationship. Why don't you just go ahead and tell me about an alias or defining physical characteristic, so I can give the police the best description possible? "But my friends call me T", and with that, he pointed to the back of his shaved head, where he had a two-inch tall letter "T" tattooed. Perfect.

T's ("Can I call you T?") revelations about his name were startling to me, because his manner had changed instantly. T was no longer holding my arm; his tone had softened considerably. "I got four kids, and I can't get a job", he wailed. T began a stream of consciousness inventory of lifetime wrongs that he had either suffered or perpetrated. He began to lean on me; his leg, it seemed, got knocked around in his hit and run crash. T was reeling. I noticed he was pulling up lame, which was jarring to me in a Darwinian way. Deep inside, in the very far reaches of my primal begin, I knew that I could capitalize on his physical weakness if it came to that.

But then my intellectual being joined the conversation, and told my instinctual side that kicking this guy in his bad knee in order to create a window for a getaway would be just the kind of thing that would make him want to shoot me. I mean, it's one thing to shoot a guy in the back as he's running away from you. But you take a pissed-off drunk guy with a gun, and you try to break his very injured knee, and suddenly shooting somebody seems like a great idea to him.

I immediately played through endless scenarios in my brain. Run. Kick him in the knee and run. Kick him in the knee, grab the gun, and run. Kick him in the knee, kick him in the nuts, and run. The plans quickly turned to the desperate, in search of an option where there wasn't a chance I would be shot. Distract him. Point at the sky, step on his foot when he looks up, and head-butt him when he looks down, and stick my fingers in his eyes. Every plan was foiled by the presence of the gun. The gun was trump. I took stock of the situation. Collectively, our faculties were declining. T probably outweighed me by 30 pounds despite an approximate height of 4'2". The gun. Sizing it up, I opted to employ a strategy I call Waiting For Something To Happen, while promising myself that I would look into the Run option if the opportunity presented itself. The Kick options were all still on the table, but only as the very last resort. I had a plan. Not a very good plan, but a plan nonetheless.

I checked back in to my evolving crisis to find that T was sharing a story about a difficult domestic situation he had with one of his kids. Or was it getting fired from his job for drinking a six-pack in his car over lunch? I heard so many tales of woe, it was hard to keep them straight. Why did I have to get the chatty assailant? I actually started to try to comfort T with empathetic comments. "Tough break, man." "That sucks, T." But then T would change again. He'd mention the accident again, and threaten me for seeing it. He would suddenly reference the gun, even show the bandanna to me. And that's when I really started to get scared; T was unpredictable. His moods were starting to swing so wildly, I couldn't relate to him at all. Our relationship had been complicated from the start, and it was clear we had no real future together. I was really ready to move on, but T just wouldn't let go.

I decided to get serious about the Run plan. The next intersection was about a half block away. Finally, a workable idea came to me: At the intersection, I would dart through traffic! It was perfect; the cars (and their hapless drivers) would provide cover for my daring escape.

I would explode into street, blending seamlessly into the flow of traffic. I would slide over the first car's hood, Starsky & Hutch-style. T would unsheath his weapon and drop to his good knee to take aim. He would briefly glimpse his target as the car in front of me moved. T's eyes would narrow as he started to squeeze the trigger, but no! He cannot see me now! I would drop and roll to the next lane; now I'm ducking beside an El Camino, running low to the ground with it as it moves through the intersection. I would be like a panther. T would be helplessly confused. Where had I gone? I would hear his anguished cry, "Where are yoooouuuuu!" as I sped away on foot, hiding behind a double-length bus, a 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood and a stretch limo who all seem to be tailgating the vehicle in front of them.

Well, I can tell you that plan looked a lot better on paper than it really was. One critical element of the plan was that there would actually some traffic to dart through. Without the traffic, I might as well have run into an empty street, done the Walk Like An Egyptian dance and begged T to shoot me. As we approached the intersection, I was looking for my traffic. There was none. Not a single car was to be found. I was distraught.

We stopped at the intersection. I looked up and down both streets. Nothing. I was baffled. There was a serious accident three blocks down the street. Where were the police? Where was anybody? Of all nights for T and me to be on that corner, we picked the only one with no traffic for me to dart through. What now?

As we stood there, I started to think about my plan again. Darting through traffic wasn’t going to be an option. My thoughts turned again to T's cranky knee, and his profound intoxication. His moods were swinging wildly, still. I would have had to time any attack carefully, seizing my opportunity when he wasn't alert or aggressive. I studied him carefully. His face showed the emotional stress of the crash; his eyes revealed his struggle to maintain coherent thought.

I figured I had one last chance to make the Run plan a success story, and then it was going to be time to come to terms with my Kick plan. That last chance was a 24-hour grocery up ahead. My main concern was that it was on the other side of the street, which once again focused all of my thought on the gun. T had mentioned it four or five times by now, and showed the bandanna to me twice. But I had never actually seen the gun. There was at least some doubt in my mind that T had a gun, and there was quite a bit of doubt that T could pull it out and shoot it accurately before I could make my way into the store. I was consumed with one thought: Could I get across the street and into the store before T could shoot me?

Now, I'm pretty quick on my feet; I was maybe 80% sure I could get across before he fired. But what if I was wrong, and running across to the store deprived me of what may have been a safer opportunity to escape down the road? Eighty percent was worse odds than Russian Roullette. We were getting closer to the store with every step. I knew this was a life or death decision I was about to make.

Suddenly, I remembered that this particular grocery store had a security guard at all times. Well... at least some times. I knew that I had seen uniformed officers there before. What if I were to make my dash across the street in search of a police officer, only to find there wasn't one on duty at this time of night? If T wasn't able to shoot me as I crossed, what would he do? Would he simply continue down the road? Would he wait for me outside the store? What if he followed me to the store? Then I would have led a gunman into a public place.

But perhaps that was my best chance at escape. I imagined myself tearing through the aisles, toppling displays and leaving an impassable sea of sundries in my wake. Naturally, for both ethical and safety reasons, I wouldn't just be able to run amok through the store without screaming to the other late-nite shoppers why I was there, or that they too could be in peril. "He's chasing me!" I would scream as I burst through the doors and into the produce section. I would fling cantaloupes and seedless grapes to the floor to impede T as I cry out to the other shoppers, "He has something wrapped in a red bandanna that he says is a gun and he thinks I saw his crash, but I didn't, and I wasn't going to gawk at it, I was only going to buy coffee!" T would be in hot pursuit, screaming "I'm not going back to prison for you or anybody!" T’s gunshots would miss me, hitting watermelons and bottles of ketchup instead. It would be spectacularly messy. We would run through every aisle in the store; the voice over the intercom would call our race like we were coming down the home stretch at Hollywood Park: "Cleanup in produce...cleanup in aisle two...rotisserie chicken cleanup in deli...the Express Lane is open if you have less than 10 items or are fleeing in terror..."

And hey! What do you know? We were a full 50 feet past the store now! I got completely sucked into the Grocery Store Destruction Fantasy; I totally blew whatever chance I may have had to play Supermarket Scramble. It began to dawn on me that the largest obstacle I was going to face that night wasn’t T or his mysterious gun; it was my inability to think clearly or act decisively.

I started to consider that the Run option may not present itself. Clearly, time was slipping away on the Wait And See Plan; we were now about 10 blocks from T's apartment, which I was now thinking of as my own personal Ground Zero. That's where T would be most likely to take action. T needed me to get him home, but once there, I was conceivably the last link that could tie him to the accident. I was T's ticket home, and T's ticket back to prison, in that order, and we both knew it all too well. I was determined to force the issue before we ever made it to Ground Zero. There was no point in denying what my primal being was now screaming in my ear: There was going to have to be a Showdown.

Finally, all my years of TV crime drama viewing and Walter Mitty daydreaming were going to converge in one explosive confrontation with a drunken Hobbit-sized man who could scarcely walk or talk. I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked to have been, considering this short five block walk was the most physical activity I had undertaken in many weeks, but it was too late to lament that now. I had to focus.

All I could produce was the beginning of my plan. When I had an area to run to which would provide me with at least some cover, I would raise my foot, and kick him in the side of his injured knee as hard as I could. This in itself was going to be hard to do. Trying to break somebody's leg wasn't something I did every day. But there were no other choices. The kick had to be hard, swift, and decisive. It must land with precision accuracy, as well, no easy feat when your target is walking erratically.

The problem I had was that no matter where on the street I chose to kick him, there was still a chance he was going to be able to recover in time to shoot me. Once we crossed the upcoming intersection, there were few places to run and hide; the street was practically all storefront. It would be a shooting gallery for T if he recovered from my kick.

There was an intersection nearby. Suddenly, instead of having a few more blocks in which to plan my escape, I might only have a few more feet. I began to shake and feel physically ill as we approached the next intersection. I was sweating hard; I couldn't swallow and could barely breathe. "Good God," I thought to myself as the intersection loomed some 30 feet ahead. "This is it." Fleeting thoughts of my parents, friends and cats were in my head when something quite remarkable happened.

T had stopped walking. Three businesses down from the intersection, there was a laundromat. A tall man had stepped out with a basket full of freshly laundered clothes; I could still smell the fabric softener on them. I turned to look at T, and even slowed down a bit to wait for him before I realized that would obviously be a very stupid thing to do. So, I just kept walking, slowly, looking back at T as he stepped up close to the man and belligerently asked "Is tonight laundry night?"

The guy didn't know what the hell was going on. I kept walking slowly towards the intersection. If I could just get to the corner, I would have a 30 foot head start on T, and he wouldn't be able to take a shot at me until he got to the intersection. I thought there was a chance I could get around to the alley before T could disengage the laundry man and get around that corner. If I made it to the alley, I could double back and dart through yards. Even a healthy T wouldn't have a chance to get a clean shot at me then, much less catch me. I just had to get to that corner. 10 feet away now. Five feet...

I turned to look back at T and the laundry man. T was in the guy's face, pointing at his laundry basket; I couldn't tell what he was saying. The laundry man was genuinely confused; as I looked back, I saw him turn from T to me. The look on his face was one I'll never forget; it must have been the same look I had back when T and I first met, no more than a half-hour ago. It was a look of confusion, but I also saw a glimmer of recognition, as if the laundry man realized that although I had been with T, I wasn't really "with" T of my own volition. I felt bad for him; who knew what trouble he was about to inherit?

I decided that wasn't my problem. That moment of eye contact and recognition lasted perhaps a second, at most. I was at the corner; I took one last look at T and I was gone. I ran to the alley, doubled back for about a half block, then cut through back yards to the next street, and then the next. In the span of a minute, I was probably three blocks away. I don't even know if he gave chase; it didn't matter. I took every back alley and circuitous route I could think of to get back to my apartment. I never stopped running. I hid in the bushes and scanned the street to make sure T wasn't around before I had the guts to go back inside, where I sat quietly in the dark and peered out of my windows for almost an hour.

I never saw T again. I checked the newspapers the next day, to see if there had been any killings of laundromat customers, but there didn't seem to be anything that pointed to T. I finally called the police the next day to report both T's hit-and-run and his abduction of me, but the police weren't interested! They said they had already solved the traffic accident, and if I wanted to file a report on the abduction, I was welcome.

I decided against it. I don't know why, really. Maybe the police already had T in connection with the traffic accident, I told myself. Either way, T seemed to have a lot of problems, and I figured he'd end up in prison soon enough. Besides, I didn't exactly want to have to ID T in a lineup, and then have him get out of prison again and find me walking down the street. Covering my tracks became my only priority.

Sometimes, I still think about T, and what would have happened had we crossed that street. Would I have been able to do what I needed to do to get away? Thankfully, I'll never know. More than anything, I think about the way the guy from the laundromat looked at me when he realized I wasn't ditching a friend, but was getting away from a problem that was now his. I would love to know how their relationship worked out, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. No matter what, for a half-hour, T and I had something special and unique that one of us would remember the rest of their lives.

Mon, 23 Jun 2003 14:37:52 GMT

Leah, Human Shield

It had been several months since Leah was home. Mike was thrilled that she was finally coming back to visit. He couldn’t wait to hear about his daughter’s adventures out in Oregon, what it had been like in the tree for all that time. He had been doing research on the internet on the tree-sitting campaign; it was clear that her group was having an impact on the logging practices in the region. He was so proud of his daughter; she was turning into exactly the person he and Judy had dreamed of when they thought about having kids so many years ago.

He continued to wind his way through the foothills, watching the Norway pines on the slopes of the mountains in the distance. Closer to the road, he could see the dark forest floor, covered with long pine needles and seed cones, the sunlight blocked out by the dense canopy of the forest above. He imagined her up there, living in those nets high above the ground. He smiled at the thought of the loggers, standing by their impotent machines while they shook their fists at the kids in the trees.

Within 30 minutes he pulled up to the arrivals lane of the airport, just as she came through the doors. She was beautiful, so much like her mother had been at that age. The car had scarcely stopped before he was out to embrace her. "Leah! Oh, Leah. You look wonderful. How’s my little girl?" He lifted her in the air as they hugged. She was noticeably lighter, having probably not had many full meals while living in a tree for three months.

"Hi, Dad. I’m great. But I’m so exhausted. And I’m hungry, too."

"Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got some fruit in the car, and I have a nice lasagna ready to cook at home, and no plans but to spend time with you this week."

They loaded his Outback with her bags, of which there weren’t many, and settled in for the hour drive back home. On the way, they talked about what it was like in the tree, who she had lived with, what she had accomplished. Mostly, she talked about the friendships she had developed there, how close she had grown to the people she fought together with. Mike took it all in: her achievements, her passion for the work she had been doing. Most of all, he enjoyed the company of his daughter, less a girl these days than a woman ready to take on the world.

After some discussion of Oregon, Leah turned the conversation: "OK, enough about my tree life. How have you been? Things must be crazy at school for you; I assume there are a ton of Iraq protests going on. How are you dealing with that in your classes?"

Her father kept his eyes on the road: "You know, I haven’t really altered my course content too much. Iraq certainly has been a theme, but I’m letting the students map out the discussion, as always. There are so many outlets for them to protest at the college, I’ve tried hard to keep them focused on our class content."

Leah nodded. "Yeah, I can see that, I guess. The faculty must be pretty up in arms about the whole deal, though. I remember how nuts it was during the Gulf War. Have you been organizing on campus?"

He glanced out through his side window up at the sky above the trees: "Not as much as last time. Plenty of other people are taking the reins now. So many more people are finding their voice this time around." Mike carefully considered his words before he spoke them. Everything he had just said was true. More people were finding their voice, and he wasn’t taking as active a role. He very much wanted to leave it at that. He pointed out the window of the car-"Does looking up at the top of those trees make you homesick now?" They both laughed, glad to be together again, driving through the forest that surrounded their home.

Once they arrived, she took a short nap-"It’s kind of nice to sleep on the ground, in an actual bed again."-then came down to join her father for dinner and wine.

Mike wanted to hear more about Oregon, see her pictures, hear more about her friends. Beyond those immediate details, he had other questions. Like, what was next for her, and did it involve going back to school? He was hoping that one reason for her visit home was to talk about how she was going to transition back into school. She had taken a leave three semesters ago, ostensibly for a one-semester break. It’s not that he was stressed about it, really, although he had spent a lot of money to get her through two years of school, and it might be nice to see a return on that investment in the form of a diploma. (It wasn’t about the money, of course. It was about her setting goals and following through on them. It was about her having a foundation on which she could build, from which she could do anything and everything.) He wanted to ask about school if the opportunity presented itself, but he was so happy to see her, he decided it could wait. No need to hassle her about that right now. Besides, he was pretty sure she would bring it up herself, sooner or later.

"This lasagna is great, dad. I haven’t eaten a veggie meal this good in three months."

Mike appreciated the compliment; it had been awhile since he had cooked for more than one person. "I’m just glad you’re not a vegan anymore, Leah. It’s too damn hard to cook for a vegan!"

And then, as he was pouring himself a second glass of wine, Leah started what Mike thought was going to be the school conversation: "Dad, there’s something I want to talk to you about. I feel like I’ve done what I can out in Oregon, and Page and Hugh, my two friends that I was telling you about, and me, we were thinking about what we wanted to do next."

He was mid-drink as she finished. He swallowed, replaying her words in his head. "Page and Hugh, where do they go to school?" What did Page and Hugh have to do with her going back to Berkeley? He was missing something.

"Well…Page went to Lewis & Clark, and Hugh went to a couple schools before he hooked up with the Earth First people. But we were talking about what we were going to do after Oregon, and we have a chance to maybe do something really cool. It’s something really important that we all believe in."

Mike took another drink. He felt his skin getting a little warm, no doubt in part from the wine, but also because it was becoming clear that going back to Berkeley wasn’t the next thing on her list. He told himself to stay calm, that it wasn’t a big deal. He had this conversation with himself all the time; he had dropped out for a semester, and it was no big deal. Judy hadn’t been to school in two years when they started going out. Leah was just finding herself and seeing herself as a key part of an important movement for the first time, and she probably just needed a little more time to…

"Dad, we have some friends with the Voices In The Wilderness organization, and we might have an opportunity to go to Iraq as human shields."

Mike put down his fork, still loaded with a bite of lasagna. "Excuse me?"

"I want you to sponsor me to go to Iraq as a human shield. We have some good friends with Voices, and they’re helping to coordinate the shields program. They don’t just let anybody in. You have to know people, and they go through a heavy screening program. And you need a sponsor. Page and Hugh and I have talked about it for a long time, and we really think this is the best way for us to make a difference…" Leah stopped talking. She looked at her father; he seemed to be staring right through her. She looked down at the last few bites of her lasagna. The popping sound of the fire filled the room.

Mike sat, motionless. Go to Iraq? Of all the ways to save the world, why that?

He spoke out of impulse, something he almost never did-"That’s crazy. Don’t be stupid. You’re not going to Iraq."

Leah abruptly stood and took her plate into the kitchen. She scraped the rest of her lasagna into the garbage with one hurried swipe, and then turned to put it in the dishwasher. But just as she opened the door, she slammed it back shut again, spun around on her heel, and stormed back into the dining room, plate still in hand. Her father’s expression had not changed. In truth, he had no expression at all as he stared at the wall across the room.

He startled as her loud voice filled the room, the loudest voice that particular room or that house had heard in many years. "That’s it? That’s all you have to say? That I’m crazy? That I’m stupid? This is special. This is a real opportunity to do something about this war. This isn’t about some march on Washington. This is direct action. Very few people get to go do this. I thought you would support this. Isn’t this what you and Mom always taught me to do?"

Mike wanted this conversation to end. "Listen, it’s getting late, and we’re both tired. We’ve got all week. Let’s talk about this tomorrow, OK?"

"Fine. Goodnight." She bounded up the stairs two at a time, slamming the door to her bedroom behind her.

Mike started to clean up the dinner, but instead he poured himself another glass of wine, put two more large logs on the fire and sat down in his reading chair. Soon, there was nothing but his thoughts and the glowing, hissing fire. He thought about how stupid he had been to think that he could continue to play this game of avoidance. A lot of his friends and fellow faculty could talk the talk about what it meant to protest and fight, but few had the kind of experiences Mike had. He had been on the front lines of important protests as a writer and an organizer. He was a "name" in the peace crowd. People were going to be paying attention to what he said about Iraq—and he knew what they all expected him to say.

It used to be simple for him. There was right, and there was wrong, and then you went out and did something to make people sit up and listen and see what was going on in the world. There was a time when he could say things like "Make Love, Not War", and really mean it.

But Iraq was different. Hell, everything was different now.

Certainly he was different, changed the very morning he sat and watched a plane slice through a steel and concrete tower over and over again. Changed, since read a story about an image he never actually saw, of a man dressed in a sharp blue suit with a red tie and blonde hair waving in the breeze like he was on a Sunday drive in a convertible, as he plummeted 80 stories to escape an inferno. Changed, when he realized that it wasn’t just the "us" of the various protest movements vs. "them", the U.S. Establishment. There was a whole world out there that was fucked up with hatred, and didn’t give a damn about the clear-cut logging or Roe v. Wade or dumping nuclear waste in a mountain in Nevada. To them, he was no different than your typical NRA militia-member from Michigan--he was just another ugly American.

Was he the only one who saw that, the only one who saw a new reality? Wasn’t anybody else scared? He was ashamed to say what he really felt: That we were too far gone. Even if we could change our government, how could we change the world? How could we get rid of the weapons (or the airplanes, or the fertilizers?) How could we get rid of the hate? He wondered: Would Judy have felt the same way if she had seen what the new world was going to be like?

Late in the day on that September 11^th, he had scribbled something absent-mindedly while grading a student’s paper. He wrote: "They won’t wait for us", and that was all. When the student got the paper back, she asked Mike what he had meant. He looked at it like he hadn’t seen it before, and then he remembered. He sat long after class that day thinking about those five words-"They won’t wait for us." And he thought about them again now as he sat in front of the fire. The idea played over and over in his thoughts as he felt the heat of the fire on his feet and face. "They won’t wait for us to save the world. They won’t wait for us to inform our public, to expose our government. They’ve taken their own actions. We’re too late. We’ve missed our chance. We’ve failed." And he couldn’t tell anybody in the world about it.

And now she wants to go to Iraq? She’s too late. She’s going to die there, and for what?

He watched the full logs burn to embers and then to nothing before he drifted off to sleep.

They avoided each other for much of the morning. Finally, she sat down next to him on the back deck. The smell of pine trees was in the air; the advancing autumn was offering a shorter slice of sunlight to enjoy on the deck with each passing day.

He acknowledged her quietly, nodding and offering her some coffee without raising his gaze from his morning paper.

Leah had a different idea. "We need to talk about Iraq."

He sighed and continued to look at his paper, though he wasn’t really reading it. "Well, good morning to you, too."

"Dad, I know it’s a very serious decision, but I thought we could at least talk about it."

Mike put the paper down. "OK, let’s talk about it. You want me to sponsor you to be a human shield in Iraq and that’s not going to happen. The only place I’ll be sponsoring you at is Berkeley."

Calmly, she said "Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m not going to go back to school just yet. I’ve thought about this a long time, and this is what I’m going to do. Voices will accept a variety of people as sponsors, and I have several other people who have given me their blessing. I’m not 16. I’m 22, and I don’t need you to give me permission to go. You can’t do anything legally to stop me from going."

Mike listened to what she said and realized months of being coy about Iraq with friends, colleagues and family was necessarily about to fly out the window. "I’ll just be honest with you and say that I don’t think you should go. For one thing, it’s not going to do any good. It won’t have any impact over whether this war happens or not. You can do more good here in the States."

"I think you’re wrong about that. The shields can go to hospitals and power plants and water treatment facilities to keep them from being bombed. Voices gets a lot of media attention, and if we’re there they can’t bomb those places. We can also act as witnesses to ensure that Iraqis aren’t killed needlessly, to tell the world about the brutality of war."

"Leah, don’t you know what Saddam did with human shields in the first Gulf War? They were tortured. They had no choice about where they were placed. They were placed next to military targets." His voice began rising; it was time for him to take his own stand in this fight. "You would be supporting his regime, the worst regime in the world from a human rights perspective. Is that what you want to stop, Leah? Do you want to stop the U.S. from removing Saddam, who has been making life a living hell for Iraqis for almost 30 years?"

Leah stood, her fists clenched. She bent at the waist to get her face closer to her father’s. "My God! You support this war, this phony made-up bullshit Oil War? Since when was war ever the right answer? Violence always begets more violence! You taught me that! You think this is what the Mid-East needs, for America to go in under a false pretext and kill these people?" She was yelling now, her face red and her bottom lip quivering. "You never would have said anything like that when mom was alive."

Mike hadn’t expected that, nor had he expected his face to suddenly feel flush with anger at the mention of Judy. His hands began to tremble; he picked up the paper again, and quickly rolled it up as he spoke emphatically: "You’re wrong, Leah. This doesn’t have anything to do with your mother. It’s about what’s happening in Iraq." He smacked the paper on the arm of his chair as he said "Iraq". "It’s about the way things are now. It’s about living in reality." Another smack of the rolled-up paper on "reality". "You should try living in reality sometime."

"You think I don’t know reality? You think living in a tree for three months is some kind of joyride? You think getting harassed by cops and loggers is some kind of fantasyland? I’m trying to make reality better, and all you want me to do is go back to Berkeley so you can brag to all your friends about it, like Berkeley’s some kind of ‘reality’? I’ve been out there fighting for what I believe in. I’ve taken chances. What the fuck have you ever done? You sat around and got high with a bunch of hippie burnouts and called it a protest? You sat at your desk and wrote a goddamned book? You marched in some parades and carried a sign? You’re my fucking hero. It’s so easy for you to sit on your ass in your special little class and solve all the world’s problems now that you’re so comfortable-"

Mike stood; now they were both pacing the deck, circling each other like prizefighters. He sneered and waved his arms dismissively, paper still in hand as he cut her off. "Oh, you’re so smart now, huh? You’re a 22 year-old college dropout, but you know it all now, right?" He pointed his paper right at Leah’s face-"You saved some trees with your friends and now you can save the world? I’m sure that’ll stop the bombs." He put his hands to his face in mock anguish "Oh, no! It’s little Leah Foster who saved a dozen trees in Oregon! She’s come to save the day for Iraq! Better turn those B-52’s around, we can’t hurt Leah the Human Shield!"

She was crying now, shouting through her tears. "Don’t you fucking condescend to me! How dare you condescend to me! I’m doing what I think is right. I’m going to fight this war, even you if aren’t." The tears were coming faster now; she was starting to do that thing that people do when they cry hard and still try to talk, with large gasps of air coming in and out of her mouth rendering her speechless for moments at a time, only to recover just long enough to get a short burst of words through the hard sobs.

Mike was ready, he had a comeback all planned for her, but as he watched her sob and shake and melt he was frozen in fear and anger all at once. He was angry that she was going to offer her life in an act of futility, to stop a war that perhaps shouldn’t be stopped. And he was afraid their relationship was never going to be the same after 15 minutes in the sun on their back deck.

They had stopped circling. Leah stood, shoulders slumped, now barely able to get bursts of words out as her body heaved. "I thought you would be proud of me." Mike tried to backtrack, softening his tone. "Leah, honey, I am proud of you. I’m so proud..." She didn’t hear him, or at least didn’t react: "I can’t believe how you’ve changed."

There it was. Mike had been waiting for it, almost wanting her to acknowledge what he had been thinking about for the past several months. He was earnestly asking, almost pleading when he stepped toward her, palms raised: "Have I changed so much, Leah? Or has the world changed? I really can’t tell. Am I the only one who’s changed?" She didn’t answer. Leah’s last burst through the tears came after she went down the steps and toward the cars, as her father watched her walk away and wondered how he could have fucked this all up so badly. She turned, and despite the tears, said it with a voice so steady that Mike knew she believed it: "Mom would be ashamed of you."

The words reverberated in the backyard as Leah pulled the car down the driveway and out onto the mountain road before speeding away. Mike considered them carefully before offering a response that only the squirrels, nuthatches and chickadees in the forest around him could hear: "Yeah, maybe she would."

The car pulled back in just before midnight. He had been looking out at the driveway each time he heard a car come up the road. It brought back memories of when he and Judy had waited for and worried about Leah just after she started driving. Every car that passed had them looking out the window, hoping it was her getting home safe from a party or a friend’s house. "Don’t let her know we’ve been fussing over her," they would say to each other. When they saw the headlights come in the driveway, they would scurry to act busy and pretend that they hadn’t even noticed she was home when she walked in. Judy would always overact it for Mike’s amusement-"Oh, Leah. When did you get here? Why, I never even heard you come through the door!" There weren’t enough of those memories; Judy was gone before Leah’s 17^th birthday.

He dusted off the old routine, and quickly established himself in his reading chair with his reading glasses on, magazine in hand. Leah went straight through the front door and up the stairs, so she didn’t notice that he had been "reading" his magazine upside-down.

He sat and listened. She wasn’t coming back downstairs. She was going to make it hard on him, which of course he had expected.

He knocked quietly on her bedroom door. "Leah? Can I come in?"

She said yes; she was sitting up in bed with only the orange lava lamp on. It gave the room a warm glow. It had belonged to Mike and Judy back when lava lamps were really cool, not just retro cool. They all loved the lamp. "If that lamp could talk," Mike said, pointing at the lamp as he sat down on the edge of Leah’s bed. They sat quietly for an awkward moment. They both knew they had to close the current gap between them, because another large and painful gap was about to open.

"Leah, I’m sorry about today." He sighed, not sure how to say what came next. Or what came next. "I can’t tell if I’ve changed, or if the world has changed, or what. I know that my world has changed, though. You’re all I have left. I’m scared of losing you." He paused as she put her hand on his shoulder. Feeling her supportive touch meant the world to him; it chased away his thoughts of the irreparable rift he had feared was opening between them. "I always felt like everything was so simple, but I just haven’t felt that way in awhile. First your mom died, and then you went to school, and I was here at home by myself, and everything was just so different. And then 9/11 happened, and I felt like all of the things I had believed in just weren’t going to be enough anymore. I couldn’t save your mom, and I couldn’t stop any of this other stuff from happening, either. I always thought I could make a difference. That was just always a part of who I was. But once things got really tough, I realized I couldn’t do anything at all to stop them from happening. I was just along for the ride, and I think maybe I’ve decided to step off of the ride for awhile."

Leah gave him a playful punch on the shoulder: "Maybe it’s just a mid-life crisis?"

"Thank you," he thought to himself. It was the perfect time for a little joke, because he had no idea what to say next. "Then where’re my Corvette and trophy girlfriend?"

They sat and looked at the lamp as the orange balls floated up, down and up again. "Dad, I know it’s been hard for you. It was hard for me, but I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. I miss mom, too. But don’t you still believe in what you taught me? That we can make a difference? That we need to fight for what we believe in?"

There was no hesitation in his answer: "Yes, I do. People with passion can change things. I’m just having a hard time finding my passion these days."

She seemed encouraged by this. "Maybe I can fight now, while you rest and get your passion back."

"Leah, it’s not your passion to fight that I have a problem with. It’s that you want to fight this fight, in this way. I don’t want you to go. I don’t think it will work, but even if I did, I wouldn’t want you to go. I don’t care about changing the world anymore. All I care about is you. You are all that I have left. All the things I have fought against, Vietnam, nuclear power, you name it. None of it matters as much to me as you do. I did what I can to help the world. You’re my only cause now."

He should have known she would make it hard on him again. "Then if I’m your cause, you need to sponsor me. You need to be with me in spirit when I fight this fight. Help me follow my heart and try to help these people." She paused, shrugging her shoulders. "I haven’t lived the life you’ve lived. Maybe someday I’ll understand better where you’re coming from, but you can’t take me there on your own. I have to live my own life to see where it takes me, and you and Mom taught me to do that. Now I need you to help me do that, whether it’s going to Oregon or Iraq or Berkeley or wherever. I need you, just like you need me."

He looked into her eyes. She was starting to cry again; so was he. He knew she was wrong. He knew bad things could happen to her. He knew she wouldn’t stop the war. But she was going to go no matter what he said. She needed him, and he wasn’t going to watch his daughter get on a plane bound for Iraq knowing that she didn’t have the love and support of her father. Besides, just because fear was turning him into a cynic didn’t mean that he had to raise his daughter to be one. Against his better judgment, he decided this was a fight that was OK to lose. "If you’re going to go, I guess I’d better sponsor you."

It took a month to take care of the paperwork and the logistics for her trip. With two weeks to go till her departure date, despite hoping for a diplomatic reversal that would render the trip unnecessary, it was clear that there wasn’t going to be a major development that lessened the likelihood of war.

They spent the time before her departure living simply, and enjoying each other’s company. They hiked the forest trails they came to love as a family years before. They planted flower bulbs for next spring, and assured themselves that they would be there together to watch them break through the musty earth as spring approached. They talked about so many things, but not Iraq. There was no point in it—They had resolved to move forward. Two nights before she was to depart, they polished off a couple of bottles of wine and dusted off the old carousel slideshow; it was the first time they had looked at the slides in many years, since before Judy died. They spent most of the night laughing hysterically at old hairstyles and plaid pants, and remembering friends they hadn’t seen in far too long. They were even laughed at the slides with Judy in them. It felt good to have fun with her in the room again.

On a sunny Thursday morning, they were at the airport. The itinerary called for Leah to join her group in Jordan before crossing over into Iraq. Mike had imagined waving to her as she walked down the runway, imagined seeing her turn to wave back at him as she stepped onto the plane. He then saw himself standing with his face pressed to the window wet with his tears, as he watched her jet lift off into the sky. He was startled when they pulled up to the departures level and he remembered that only ticketed passengers could get to the gates now. It didn’t make any sense to go inside if he couldn’t go to the gate.

This was it. This was goodbye.

They hugged as the skycap took her bags away to be checked. She spoke first: "I’m scared, Daddy." It was the first time she had mentioned her fear to him. It made Mike feel strangely comforted. This was real to her. She understood her sacrifice and her fear, and she was going to face it. It was so much more than he had been able to do lately. He didn’t know what to say to make their fear go away. He could only say "I love you. Your mother would be so proud of you."

And then she was gone. He watched her go into the terminal. He stood on the curb as he sobbed; he waved goodbye long after she was inside the building and on the way to her gate. He was beaming with pride. He was terrified.

Tue, 18 Feb 2003 13:57:36 GMT

Flash

He had his reasons to push her over the ledge. Nobody would have blamed him for doing it, if they knew what he knew. But that was an impossibility-she only showed herself to him, and no one else.

Only he heard the veiled public references to his sterility. She would look at him, a look seen only by him, and then sigh for the dinner party to hear: "Maybe someday we'll have kids."

She laughed with other men, and went out of her way to tell him how beautiful their children were. She would look in his eyes and smile as she said it.

She mocked his dreams to make a go of it with the band. "Not good enough," she said. "No money in it, either."

She smirked at his weaknesses.

She never went to bat for him.

He had moved for her, left his friends and his mother at her behest, and she had truly expected it. She never acknowledged his sacrifices, and made none of her own.

He was a prop, a premise, a punchline.

It would be so easy to send her over the ledge to her death on the rocks below. Step forward, a quick, hard push that not even he would see. Would his hands tremble when they asked him what happened? No. Would he look into their eyes? Yes, he would.

"She lost her footing. She got too close to the edge."

It would be so easy.

And it would be the right thing to do. He knew this. She was the one who had been getting away with murder. With no God to judge us in the end, who else was going to balance the ledger? Karma wasn't going to push her off that ledge without a little help.

"So easy," he thought, his weight shifting.

She turned. "Robert, go get the camera. I left it in the car."

He was back. "What? Oh, the camera. Where is it?"

"Are you deaf, Robert? I said it's in the car."

"Oh, right." He scurried down the path, single-minded of purpose to find her damned precious camera.

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 15:57:32 GMT

Ricky Ticky-Tac

Pete grabbed the rebound, spun, and fired a perfect outlet pass to Hollis, who was streaking down the sun-baked asphalt court for an uncontested layup, and the apparent winning basket.

Then, they heard the familiar voice. "FOUL!" Shoulders slumped; eyes rolled. It was Ricky who made the call. It was always Ricky who made the call. "Pete went over my back to get the rebound. I'm sorry, but that's the rule. He can't just go over my back like that."

This is what their games had degenerated into. You couldn't just call your foul anymore; you had to cite the rule, then give your interpretation of the rule, and perhaps even pantomime said violation.

You can't have a game where nine people call fouls one way, and the tenth calls them another. Ricky was the tenth guy, this game and every game. Everybody tried to be diplomatic about it; after all, they had been playing together as a group for almost seven years. But diplomacy had run its course on this hot day.

Sam lost it first. "Jesus Fucking Christ, Ricky. Every game it's the same bullshit. You can't call every ticky-tac piece of contact that happens. Besides, you're one of the biggest guys here."

Everybody knew what Ricky was going to say next; some even mouthed the words as he spoke them: "Just because I'm big doesn't mean you can foul me anytime you want." Now it was Pete's turn to lose it. "Ricky, I barely even touched you. And then you wait till Hollis gets all the way down the court to make a layup to make your call? What the fuck is that?"

"But you admit that you touched me. That's a foul. I took my time because I wanted to be sure I made the right call."

This same drama played itself out almost every week. It had to stop. Everybody looked to Tim in times like this, because it was Tim who had gotten everybody together back in the day. He didn't really see why that mattered seven years later, but as he usually did, Tim shouldered the burden of communicating the group's concerns with Ricky.

"Look, Ricky, we all like you. We all still want to hang out with you and stuff, but this basketball thing... I mean, it's just not working out. We spend more time debating calls than we do playing anymore. Do you even have fun playing with us?"

Ricky looked like he was either going to cry or punch something, so everybody gave him a wide berth as he stomped around fuming under the basket. They all kept one eye on Ricky, and one eye on the ball, now resting near half court.

None of this was new, of course. They had the breakup talk about once a year. Ricky always came back, and they always hoped for the best. Tim layed it on the line: "Ricky, if this is how you're going to play, maybe we just shouldn't play together."

Ricky walked off the court towards his car, kicking the ball as hard as he could on the way; it landed about 40 yards away on the softball diamond, and just kept rolling. He tried to burn rubber with his Chevy Cavalier as he sped out of the parking lot, but all he did was spray some sand and gravel around.

Nobody felt good about what happened. Somebody had to go get the ball, and now they had odd numbers. For awhile, anyway.

Tue, 10 Dec 2002 18:34:15 GMT

Piñata

It was a typical birthday party. All the kids were having a great time, and the adults were busy making small talk and simply trying to get through the event. It was a very hot day in August; the kids had the benefit of cooling off in a child-sized pool; the adults all fought for space in the shade and drank horrible Crystal Light Lemon Drink. How long had we been there? An hour? Four hours? Time had lost meaning in the sweltering heat. It was agony. We hadn’t even approached cake, ice cream, or the gifts yet. Even grandma was getting punchy, asking why we couldn’t have beer out in the yard. Nice try, Grandma. We were stuck on that ride to the end.

My sister, mother of Danny the birthday boy, came striding out of the house with a large orange dinosaur under her arm. "OK kids! Who wants to hit a piñata?" Pandemonium ensued. Wet children covered with grass clippings and at least some dog poop mobbed my sister as she hung the unfortunate dinosaur from the clothesline.

"This ought to be entertaining," said the college professor, father of the chunky kid. "Yeah, you might think that," replied the man with unknown occupation who seemed in some way related to the girl who had eaten the sand; I think his name was Bob. "But I’ve seen this whole deal before. I bet even money that an adult has to end up breaking that piñata. It all depends on what kind of bat you give the kids, and if you’ve got a heavy hitter in the group." I immediately thought of the chunky kid.

Of course, my sister gave the kids a two-foot long plastic bat. "No chance," said Bob. The patents lawyer and the corporate attorney wanted some of that action. Patents declared, "I say the big kid breaks it in two tries." Corporate wanted the little red-headed kid: "That kid’s got the desire. Look at him; he can’t wait to kill that thing." That could fairly well have been said about all of the kids, perhaps 12 or 15 in all. They instinctively knew what was expected of them, and they were ready to take their licks. "Kill that thing!" screamed Grandma. We were all ready for a little action.

First kid stepped up. It was Danny, the birthday boy. He had his hands the wrong way on the bat, which is never a good sign. As his uncle, this shamed me. I avoided the sideways glances of the other parents. Danny managed a mighty swing, missing the piñata completely, but making solid contact with my sister’s bare leg. THWACK! I suppressed laughter, though none of the other adults made any such effort. Grandma yelled out "Nice one, Danny! That’s what she gets for not giving us any beer!" Danny took another crack with his backward grip, but to no avail. He hit the piñata, but it merely swung back and forth on the line. No apparent damage was done.

Next kid stepped up. More or less solid contact was made, but no outward evidence of damage to the piñata could be seen. It swung like a grinning orange prehistoric pendulum. This continued all the way through the lineup. The Chunky Kid and the Red Headed Kid fared no better. The children’s enthusiasm turned to frustration and anger. They had batted around, and had thus far been shut out.

Concern covered the faces of the various lookers-on in the shade. Something needed to be done. The mother of the girl with the Hello Kitty sandals stepped forward. "It’s never going to work with that stupid little bat. Use this." And with that, she offered a T-ball bat she had retrieved from her car. "Here we go," said Patents. All of the adults approached the swinging area to get closer to the action.

We all crowded around. Danny stepped up to the piñata again, but this time, at least seven different people took a step forward to help him correct his grip. As his uncle, I knew that this was my responsibility, and everyone else stood down as I instructed Danny on the proper swing and grip. I also noticed that he was stepping in the bucket big-time on his swing, but this wasn’t the time for a Charley Lau tutorial on hitting. Just get the kid in position to swing. Danny’s eyes got big as he took his best cut. SMACK! Danny hit the piñata as well as he possibly could, but still no damage. The dinosaur piñata mocked us with his durability. I turned to look at the other adults. I saw the looks on their faces; no one wanted to say it, but we all knew how this was going to end. Bob was right; these kids just weren’t up to the task at hand.

More swings were taken. With each child that stepped forth to take a mighty cut, our collective anticipation was palpable. We wanted nothing more than to see this piñata explode, and reveal its sweet innards. Each swing was a letdown more powerful than the one before it. One child had begun crying. "The dinosaur can’t be beaten! He’s laughing at us!" she wailed. The party was quickly becoming a disaster.

An awkward silence fell on the backyard. Somebody was going to have to break that damn piñata. I think everybody realized this at about the same time. I saw the excited look in the eyes of Patents, Corporate, Grandma, the mother of the kid that Danny didn’t like, and others. Everybody wanted a chance to hit that thing. But there could be only one. I seized the moment.

"Give me that bat." I yanked the bat from my sister’s hands. Everybody took a large step backwards as I took some warm-up swings. "Hit him in the chest," said Patents. "No, in the back," said next-door-neighbor Jerry. "Smash him in the back." "Just kill that sucker!" screamed Grandma. "Smash his face in!"

I readied my stance, slowly swinging to the spot where I hoped to make contact. The dinosaur slowly turned on it’s string to face me; just as I saw his laughing face come into view, I cried out "Who wants some candy?" "Do it," I heard Aunt Peg say as I unloaded.

BAM! The dinosaur immediately exploded in a cloud of paper mache, candy and tissue paper. There was only silence as we watched the bottom half of the piñata sail through the air, leaving a trail of candy like contrails in the sky. Then, we heard the sound of the sweet rain of candy as it hit the lawn all around us. The piñata landed on the roof of the house two yards down, spreading candy all over the shingles on the impact. Some of the candy slowly tumbled into and over the gutter and on to the ground.

"OMYGOD," screamed one of the children. Anarchy broke out. Kids and even a couple of adults frantically ran around the yard, picking up candy and trying to catch the remaining pieces that were falling out of the sky. Some of the kids were climbing the fences that separated the yards in an effort to clean up the candy trail that led all the way to the roof two yards down.

I stood in proud silence, then turned to face my admiring gallery. "Towering" and "majestic" were the two words that most stood out, along with a lot of backslapping and high-fives. Grandma was grinning from ear to ear. "That’s just the way Killebrew used to hit ‘em back at the Met."

At the next year’s party, you could see the spots where some of the gum and Tootsie rolls melted onto that roof under the heat of the sun. Danny was by that time old enough to break his own piñata, but he requested that he have two, so I could break one, too. For years after, Danny’s parties were famous for the Smashing of the Pinatas.

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 03:27:37 GMT

What Would Jesus Do?

People ask Jesus a lot of questions. Sometimes, Jesus answers.

Mary, from Ripon, WI asks:

"Jesus Christ. This is the third urinary-tract infection my cat has had this winter. I'm already out $600 in vet bills, and the cat is still peeing on everything. At what point do I put an end to this?"

WWJD?:

Aw, Mary. Tough break. Pets can be a blessing, but also a burden. And it's not just the vet bills, is it Mary? What about all that pet hair in your apartment? All of your clothes are ruined, permanently covered with cat hair; people call you Sasquatch behind your back at work. Not to mention all of your funiture and rugs that the cat has maimed with its claws, and then pissed on for good measure. I think you've already been admirably patient. Let's be real, Mary. This urinary tract infection is just the excuse you need to change this relationship for the better; I can personally guarantee that you would lose another $1000 before realizing the cat will never get any better. Cut bait.

Louanne from Columbus, OH asks:

"Oh, Jesus, Frank and Catharine are coming over and I totally forgot about it. Should I make a vegetarian lasagna, or shrimp linguine?"

WWJD?:

Though call, Louanne. I can't remember if Catherine is a vegetarian, a vegan, or a pescatarian. Of course, it changes every day, doesn't it? The veggie lasagna is probably the safe choice, but won't that take forever? Make the linguine, and if that's not good enough for her, tell her it's tofu shrimp and a soy milk base. You wouldn't think anyone would be stupid enough to believe that, but we are talking about Catherine here.

Kobe, from Los Angeles, asks:

"Mike, I'm posting Malone up on the left block. Should I spin middle or go baseline?"

WWJD?:

Kobe, I think some wires got crossed. This soundslike it should go to the "What Would Jordan Do?" board. But as long as we're talking, Malone's going to bite hard on your head fake. Then he's gonna flop. Tell MJ I said hello.

Bob, from San Francisco, CA asks:

"Oh Jesus! I'm at this house party that has this kind of community bathroom thing going on, and this woman just asked me to pee on her hand! What should I do?"

WWJD?:

Wow, that sounds like some party! I'm not going to mince words, Bob. In a situation like that, you've got to ask yourself three questions. First, do you want to pee on her hand? I can see that she's pretty hot, and your pulse rate went through the roof when she approached you. We both know you want to.

But should you? In these troubled times, and especially in a randy town like San Francisco, that's an open question. There are, of course, the health considerations, especially if she has any open sores on her hand. But that's her problem, right?

Finally, can you get away with it without it coming back to haunt you? I would say...probably. I like your chances Bob; have a good night.

Oh, Bob, one important caveat to what I've said here. My favorable response was predicated on my assumption that you would be peeing on the back of her hand. If at any point she starts to cup her hands, move on. That's really nasty.

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 20:40:20 GMT

The Candy Bar Table of Elements Revealed

By Herbert Lindstrom

Note: This article is a look back at the interview that changed the world of candy; it first appeared in the Spring 1995 edition of "Dandy Candy"

In April of 1994, I had the honor of sitting down with Carl-Ernst VonNougat for an interview. I am still in disbelief that I was the person to help break Von Nougat's extended silence. This was actually due to an item that appeared in my article on the Snickers bar in the Spring 1989 issue of Candy Time.

In that article, I made reference to H.A. Hershey's famous almond and chocolate synergy of the early 1920's as the first real attempt to expand the world of the candy bar beyond the pedestrian chocolate slab. Naturally, at the time, this was the accepted history of the candy bar. It was a fact as commonly known as "Lincoln presented the Gettysburg address"; it was as far from a controversial claim as one could make in the world of popular confections.

Shortly after "Snickers-Who's Laughing Now?" was published, I received a call from the Von Nougat estate attorneys. This was an understandable shock, since Carl-Ernst Von Nougat hadn't spoken publicly since the mysterious disappearance of his father, the mercurial Hans Von Nougat, in 1957. Von Nougat the elder's life was the subject of wild rumor, intense emotion, and hotly debated significance in candy bar circles. It has been said that

Hans Von Nougat was a powerful mystery man, the Rasputin of candy. It was difficult to attribute anything to him concretely, yet he was an object of incredible fancy and speculation in serious candy literature. Unfortunately, rather than clarify and continue his father's legacy (whatever that may have been), young Carl-Ernst instead chose silence and seclusion, leaving others to plot the course of candy in the last half of the 20th century. But my article, for whatever reason, stirred in Carl-Ernst a need to break the silence. The history, and perhaps future, of confectionary arts was to be altered permanently as a result.

It took over a year of negotiation before I was finally able to meet with Carl-Ernst Von Nougat at his Hudson Valley estate. Despite the amount of groundwork that had been laid, I was in no way prepared for the bombshells that he would rain upon my head on that remarkable day. I fully expected Von Nougat to speak about his father, the candy bar industry of yesterday and today, and perhaps even his own seclusion. After all, what more was there to tell? I would soon know.

It was Von Nougat himself, in his very first words to me upon our greeting, that first let me see what a special day in candy bar history, and indeed my own life, that this was going to be. I waited in his large library, surrounded by dark walnut paneling and what must have been many thousands of impressive volumes, stretching practically all the way to the vaulted 20-foot high ceilings. At last, Carl-Ernst Von Nougat burst into the room with a vigor no (rumored) octogenarian should possess. He strode to his large leather chair, sat down and folded his hands over his crossed legs.

For many moments, he simply gazed at me. I expected that he was evaluating me, asking himself if I looked worthy to hear his story. I dared not speak. At long last, in a thick Austro-German accent, Carl-Ernst cried out. "Your ignorance insults me. Everything you think you know about the art of the candy bar is wrong! Are you prepared to learn the truth?" and here, Von Nougat stood and turned toward the large window overlooking the Hudson

River in the valley below. He spread his arms wide and looked to the sky. "Are you prepared to learn the truth, and tell that truth to the world?"

I wasn't about to say no. Our conversation follows.

Herbert Lindstrom-"Why have you decided to speak after all of these

years?"

Carl-Ernst Von Nougat-"That is the wrong question! You do not begin with that question! You must first ask what I read in your trivial Snickers article that made me want to speak."

(Silence. Long, uncomfortable silence.)

HL-"What was it about the Snickers article that made you want to speak?"

CEVN-"Your article was filled with untruths and lies. Naturally, this is not your fault. You are only repeating what you have been told, what everyone has been told, about our common history. But the real history of the candy bar must now be revealed."

HL-"What truth is that? What are the lies?" My heart was racing; I could tell this was not going to be an ordinary interview.

CEVN-"In due time! Do you simply expect me to utter a sentence to reveal all that is hidden?"

At this point, Von Nougat stood and began to slowly circle the room. He continued:

CEVN-"Hershey, Reese, Nestle, these are the names we all associate with the great candy bars. It is true that they have a long history in this business, but what is not known is the debt that they all owe to my father, the great Hans Von Nougat"

Carl-Ernst turned to face me, with fire in his eyes.

CEVN-"Do you remember what you wrote about Hershey, the innovator? All lies! Hershey cowered in my father's presence. I saw this with my own eyes! He fawned over my father, begged for his approval. They all did. Until my father showed them the way, they called it "innovation" when they madetheir pathetic chocolate bars a different shape! My father laughed at them, as an adult would laugh at a stupid child. Then, one night, my father heard Hershey bragging about making chocolate with the Hershey name imprinted in it. Hershey was such a proud fool! Well, Hans Von Nougat had heard enough. It was at that time that my father revealed to them his masterpiece."

And with that, Carl-Ernst Von Nougat walked to the east wall of his library, part of which was obscured by red velvet curtains. He grabbed a thick, gilded rope hanging beside the curtain, and turned to face me. "Behold!" he cried, pulling the rope; the curtains parted, and it was then revealed to me.

Placed before me, on the wall, was the Candy Bar Table of Elements. I felt as Watson or Crick must have felt when the DNA sequence was first revealed to them, or how Neil Armstrong felt upon that first lunar step. I was peering into the very fabric of the candy being. There was no turning back.

I stared in disbelief, jaw hanging open, eyes wide. After a pause, I began to speak, stammering.

HL-"Wh…What is that?"

CEVN-"You know damn well what it is!"

Von Nougat was right, of course. Intuitively, we had all known that the CB-TOE (as it is now known), or something very much like it, must have existed. But it's presence and form had only been hypothesized, never formalized or even attempted, until that very day in Carl-Ernst Von Nougat's library.

HL-"It's incredible. Did your father do this?"

CEVN-"I do not believe it is correct to say that he "did" it. For the most part, the relationships represented here are natural ones; they exist in nature. But just as gravity was waiting for Newton to discover it's secret, so to this mystery waited for it's own inspired genius to translate and share it."

HL-"How did he find it? When did he find it? Why didn't he share it with the world? What about…"

CEVN-"Ah, ah. Yes, I know. So many questions! Come, look at the table." My mind was reeling. I was utterly unprepared for this. All my questions about what Carl-Ernst had done in his seclusion seemed pathetic, trivial, embarrassing.

I approached the CB-TOE as though it was the Holy Grail, and for that matter, I still think of it in those terms. For the first time, all the bases, elements, and nuts were laid out in their proper relationships, including their proper polarities. Even the unstable nuts were listed. It was truly a marvel to see that this knowledge that we have grasped for so clumsily for so long had existed, so long ago, intact. But how long?

HL-"When was it discovered?"

CEVN-"I cannot say for sure." A dark pall cast over his Von Nougat's face. "No one alive knows the full history of the table, or exactly how my father developed it."

We both stood in silence. There was clearly more to Hans Von Nougat and the CB-TOE than his son was ready to reveal at this time. There was a pain there, a darkness. It filled the room like a special dark chocolate.

HL-"I need to make sure I understand what this all means. While the rest of the confectionary world was applauding itself for printing names in chocolate, the only publicly-known medium for candy bars at the time, your father was discovering and testing these combinations."

CEVN-"Not just discovering and testing, but anticipating! Never forget that! My father saw things that no one could have fathomed."

HL-"Yes! Exactly! He was both discovering and anticipating combinations, and establishing the very laws of candy nature that would prove to guide candy creation for decades to come!"

CEVN-"That's exactly correct. He knew what the bases would be. Chocolate, of course, was well known at the time, but white chocolate? Caramel? English Toffee? Absurd! It simply was not done. He saw a world where these things were possible. He tirelessly researched all of the combinations and elements you see here. And did he do it for money or fame? No! He did it to advance the human condition, to help us unlock the mysteries of candy so that future generations could have better lives.

HL-"But how did he know? For example, how did he know that coconut and Mint were both polar negatives? How did he know about the instability of cashews? How could he have possibly foreseen BF; foretelling of the Butterfinger bar 30 years before its existence?"

CEVN-"Do not forget, Hans Von Nougat was an inspired genius! A genius sees things others cannot see. This knowledge is not known today because no one can compare to my father's genius." He paused, looking at the floor. "Not even me."

HL-"But you said he showed it to the others. Did they not remember the Table? Did they not copy it?"

CEVN-"You have to understand how seeing the Table impacted Hershey, Reese and the others. When my father first revealed it, they all immediately and quite literally went insane. Insane with rage. Insane with jealousy. Insane with their own inadequacies. Their only conceivable reaction was to deny what they had seen. They mocked him. 'A cookie in a candy bar,' they cried? 'Peanut butter and chocolate?' They literally laughed in his face. Understandably, he flew into a rage. He grew violent. He thrust the Table into their faces. He commanded them to gaze upon it. Their laughs soon turned to screams of horror. They resisted at first, but it was futile. They recoiled as though looking into the sun. They grabbed their heads with their hands and begged for mercy, but my father showed them none. 'Look at it!' he bellowed. 'Look at the truth!' His cruelty was terrifying, even to me.

"They all fled his lab in terror; it was pandemonium. But as they tossed and turned while trying to forget the events of that night, they were all haunted by the visions of the Table. The more they tried to resist its laws, the more they understood how powerless they were, and how brilliant my father really was."

HL-"But they eventually did make their own candy bars, candy bars which conformed to the laws of the Table."

CEVN-"Of course they did. They were bound to stumble upon the natural combinations sooner or later. But each of them only mastered a portion of what the table predicted, and they did so years down the road. My father saw all of the possibilities while they were still perfecting their meager and trivial chocolate bars."

HL-"Why didn't your father simply make the bars himself? What did he let them set the course of history?"

CEVN-"Something changed in my father after he revealed the Table. Something terrible happened to him that night. He was no longer content to be confined by the laws he helped discover. He had broken down the world into the most basic of building blocks. But can you expect a man who has peered into the very vortex of candy creation to be satisfied? It was not enough to establish the laws; he wanted to exceed them!"

HL-"He needed a new frontier?"

CEVN-"Yes, a new challenge. What are laws for but to be broken? But if it takes a brilliant man to reveal nature, it takes a brilliant and troubled visionary to break through those laws, whatever the consequences may be. At first he insisted on combining negative polarity elements. Candy bars with mint and peanut butter, or cherry and BF."

HL-"No! That cannot be! I don't believe you!"

CEVN-"Oh no? I was there. I saw this with my own eyes. I saw the test tasters. It was a nightmare. I begged him to stop. I knew that he was the one man capable of truly changing the world with a candy bar, but for the first time, I began to question whether that change would be for better or worse. Of course, he knew that even more than I did. I believe he knew the risks involved, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to him was showing that he was the true master of the table! That he could not be bound by the natural laws he helped to discover! Eventually, I knew that something terrible…"

Carl-Ernst Von Nougat drifted for a moment, lost in a dark thought.

HL-"What? What did he do?"

CEVN-"It is painful to recount. Forgive me. It is so difficult." Von Nougat sighed, and continued. "He knew, by his own development of the law of Positive Correlation, that you could create a candy bar using any number of positive polarity bases and elements. In his view a common child knew that you could put chocolate, caramel, fudge, nougat, peanuts, peanut butter and wafers together and have a fundamentally sound, if not low brow candy bar."

HL-"That sounds like the Whatchamacallit Bar."

CEVN-"Indeed. But that bar is also proof of the axiom that just because a bar is theoretically sound, that doesn't mean it should be eaten. I only wish my father had ideas as mundane as the Whatchamacallit. My father's contempt for the easy way drove him to the other extreme. You see, my father attempted to validate the Law of Negative Correlation."

HL-"Surely, you don't mean…"

CEVN-"Yes, it's true! Mint! BF! Coconut! Marshmallow! Cherry! All in one bar, with no positive elements or bases whatsoever! He worked on it for months. I begged him to stop. He became obsessed with the Law of Negative Correlation. And then, late one night I heard screams from his laboratory, awful screams of terror and regret. The lights flashed; the estate's auxiliary power was activated. I ran up the stairs to the lab. I burst in, and my worst fears had been confirmed."

HL-"What? What happened?"

Von Nougat was shuddering, burying his face in his hands as the events of that terrible night came flooding back to him.

CEVN-"It's so horrible. I ran into the lab. There was only a small pile of olives, coconut, turnips and beef boullion. It was the most awful thing I have ever witnessed.

HL-"And your father?"

CEVN-"He was nowhere to be found. The window to the lab was broken. I have not seen him since that night."

HL-"You sound like you are skeptical."

CEVN-"I cannot say for sure, but I am one of the few who believes that he did not die that night in his lab."

HL-"What do you think may have become of him?"

CEVN-" I have some theories. Just theories, mind you. I do not know for certain. I believe he made his way to Brazil in the years after he disappeared. Do you recall the Ay, Caramba! candy bar that was sold there in the early 1970's?"

HL-"Of course! That was the bar with chocolate, coca powder, garlic and habanero peppers. Who could forget that? Wait. Do you believe your father created that bar? Of course! It makes so much sense to me now."

CEVN-"Well, we cannot know for certain that it was his work. No one has come forward to claim responsibility for the bar, however. But it fit perfectly with his regrettable philosophy toward the end, that a candy bar should "challenge" the eater by redefining what candy actually could be.

HL-"How do you think it all ended for your father?"

CEVN-"I don't know. Well, I hope, but I'm not optimistic. He was driven by his own demons. He danced with the devil and paid the price."

HL-"What would he say about candy bars today?"

CEVN-" He would say that they all exist as he predicted. He would claim They are all derivative of his own work, and he would be right."

HL-"Is there a bar today that you think he would respect?"

CEVN-" Once, in a moment of drunken candor, he told me he had a true admiration for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. He knew that their creation was inevitable, but he couldn't believe what a nice job Reese had done with them; he was truly humbled by their existence. Not just the taste and consistency, but the whole cup idea. That really blew him away."

HL-"Finally, what is your father’s legacy?"

CEVN-"He leaves two legacies, I believe. Obviously, he defined the world in a way it had not been defined before. He showed us the very building blocks of existence. We owe a large debt to him for that, and it is for that reason that I have spoken out. But he also leaves another legacy, a far more troubling one. When we believe we have mastered the very laws of creation, we are mistaken. To attempt to reorder a natural order is a fool’s game indeed. The world doesn’t need a chive and white chocolate candy bar; candy is already perfect. It cannot be improved upon, no matter how brilliant the manipulator might be."