North Texas
Borger, Texas.
I remember this place
smelling stronger
when I was a boy,
sentenced to live in the
Texas Panhandle
for a year.
Though now when I drive
through this place, I feel a strange
peace, and an odd longing to have a safe
home and my own family,
though
that ship
has decades ago sailed,
sank,
and rotted
on the ocean floor.
The family went to
Borger once
though I don't know why,
maybe to see my father's
new place of
work,
the Phillips 66 plant,
where he was a pipe
fitter
or a grunt
or whatever else he
and my second oldest brother did there.
Who got who the job escapes me.
My niece was quick to remind me
they were most
likely contracted through whoever hired
them to work for the plant,
and not
actual employees,
her disgust for her
father,
and mine, for that matter,
resonated across the living room.
It was
thick,
and it floated without the chance
of going any higher
or any lower.
For our
own reasons,
the hate cloud was on
permanent reserve.
My niece, now full with a great husband,
grown children, and a new little boy in
the house is a nurse who works from home:
One patient,
a little boy of five
who has
Fox G1 Syndrome,
a rare genetic disorder
a version of it that has completely
erased a chromosome within the life
chain.
She had mentioned the word hospice
a few times last night, but I was too
tired from the drive to register the
weight.
Asked about the syndrome, she
explained it to me.
"Like a missing linkage in a transmission," I said.
"Yep," she said.
"What's his timeline?" I looked at him on the couch.
When I had walked out from
the room with the dogs, first light, he
had looked up at me and smiled what
can only think of as a beautiful, loving,
gapped-teeth smile,
limbs flailing,
completely adorable
completely oblivious
to anything
that fucked
with anyone
completely rare,
and I had sat down next
to him and he had eyed the color of my
tattoo, whatever shape it made through
near blindness, reached over and
palmed it
and I gave a spot on his ribs
a light squeeze just below
the tube and
machine
that was used to keep his lungs
stray from pneumonia
since he can't walk.
She looked down at him and smiled as if
what she was saying about him was alright,
on the off-chance he might sense
the meaning in the words
or on
the full chance
that my heart was breaking for
the boy.
"Well, he's in Hospice, so it could
literally be any day now, any
moment."
"Fuck. That is just fucking awful."
"It is. I've had him many days a
week for four years."
My border collie
walked over and licked his face and I
called her off even though it appeared
to us that he liked it.
I reached down
and scrubbed her head and watched the
boy as I held my coffee.
Hard not to love
those who have no evil
those who shine
through the darkness of everyday
survival, everyday mistrust,
worry, fear,
and even the thoughts that keep us
pinned to the room at 2 in the morning.
The love is almost always instant.
In the actual town of Panhandle,
I drove around and remembered, like a
home movie, my time going to school there.
I was in the fourth grade or fifth grade
one of those
but aside from that fog
my memory of the place was still sharp as
new glass:
The full names of the children
in my school, the park, the old house,
and
all of it hadn't changed
it was a time
capsule
I'd been through once before in
my late 20s and back then I thought
living here would be Hell
but now at 54
it looks like heaven to me,
like a place
where I would sleep right
I could wake
up and write
I could record in my booth
I could get away from all the
bullshit for good
from all my bullshit.
I really can't describe it, yet
I can
though it's filtered
the reasons
why I ran to the the road as a young man
a nomad
a writer
and the reasons it has
changed to fatigue and something like
tracing a picture from memory you once
held so lovingly sacred
but lost to the
attrition of years between.
But there's something else
something waiting
something beyond the
shore and over the curve
of the sun-torn highway
something in each place
I want to uncover
with words and images
for no other reason
than I feel I must.
The winter wind of North Texas is
coming in strong with the onset
of December,
but I won't feel it
good or bad,
I will be
west of this
place.