Crosswinds

Crosswinds

Crosswinds blew opaque snow devils between the brick buildings lining the tight streets of the grimy little city.

Sitting on the ratty old couch, my ice-puddle-wet sneakers on the worn and sticky shag carpet, my arm rested across the sofa’s back as if I were hugging an imaginary friend.

I sat for an hour drinking wine and warming my frozen feet, staring hard out the small, undressed window onto a sudden, roiling snowstorm glistening in the streetlights and turning the small city—not quite ready to give up its summer sweat—into an odd, early, and out-of-place Christmas card.

Even on that cold October night, I remember knowing in a way I could not possibly understand that all these moments were fleeting—seconds to minutes to hours to days, running away from all of us at a speed impossible to comprehend.

The couch was once a pretty sky-blue, now more a dirty gray. From the fibers and stuffing of its cushions emanated a scent—a mix of body odor, cigarette smoke, and weed. It was Wanda’s couch. Her apartment was an easy-walk sanctuary from the bars when I was far too wasted to try and drive or find my way home. Wanda’s couch was a refuge. Take it or leave it.

Wanda was an exceptionally pretty girl—strong, smart, and independent. A body maybe only a couple of donuts away from being chubby. She said the word voluptuous with a sexiness and smile that could melt the coldest heart. It was an honor to know her—an honor she shared with only a select few. She was smarter than me and many, stronger than anyone I knew—self-assured and grounded.

She understood the things that happened while drinking and took none of it too seriously. She said that was my great failing at twenty—that I thought too much, acted too little, and offered the world nothing but my wasted time.

She’d often and randomly sing old Hank Williams songs—softly, a cappella—and sometimes the entire bar would stop talking just to listen. Wanda was oblivious to the attention, though she’d grin a little. She was just a country girl in an acid rock town.

After a good night at the bar and late-night joints on her musty couch, she’d remind me to cherish and remember all these days. She’d often remind me we needed little more than what we were given, and that wants and needs were two very different things.

I pretended to understand, but I simply didn’t comprehend what there was to cherish or be grateful for in those days.

The crosswinds blew us out of those post–high school years. Many of us, without a plan, chose to live life as it unwrapped before us. Grateful we’d not be sentenced to dying in Vietnam, but afraid of a future that presented only mystery—we were all scared just the same. Everyone but Wanda.

As the high school years faded behind us, we split into two groups: the ones with a plan who executed it, and those who stayed behind to man the barstools and jukeboxes.

Wanda mastered her role as queen of Turf’s Tavern and all its intricacies. When a young stud in a cowboy hat—with no horse or ranch to be seen, confidence pumped up on Jack Daniel’s and Lynyrd Skynyrd swagger—started his pitch, Wanda would offer: “So, you want to take me out to dinner someplace nice, then a movie, then some drinks—but your intent is just to fuck me?”

The barstool cowboy would take a half-step back. Then she’d add, “Why don’t you just save us the trouble, give me the money, and we’ll go out back so you can fuck me in the parking lot in your car?”

I’m not sure if any of the New York–born, pseudo-southern boys in fancy hats ever took her up on her counteroffer. Most just stepped away quickly and without grace. Then she’d look at me and say, “You boys are all so silly…”

Most days I was a boy, and some days I wasn’t. The days I wasn’t silly, I spent with Wanda. Life was good in Wanda’s world, where we all had what we needed, and sometimes—for a short time—I’d forget to want and just be satisfied.

She believed deeply in magic and thought herself a good witch, and she made me want to believe it too. But to be honest, I think Wanda and I both knew she wasn’t a witch—that it was just a story we told ourselves to cover the fact that we were, even then, young and unanchored, floundering toward a factory life, sometimes supplemented by a handful of misdemeanors. A life of living and dying in that dirty little city.

To this day, I find it hard to comprehend her ability to see the beauty in the bars and bowling alleys of that worn-down town. I’ve never been able to muster her gratitude for a life that offered nothing but work and want.

Wanda was the most spiritual atheist I’ve ever known. I had a gut sense her concept of the creator was far different from anything I’d learned sitting, sweating, and fearing in church or at my grandma’s knee. It seemed right and fitting to waste a few years with Wanda back when we had years to squander and burn.

Things moved fast in the crosswind. Wanda got pregnant and married a big guy named Bouncer—who actually was a barroom bouncer—and then the greasy city bars were deserted by my friends with plans, full now of a fresh crew of strangers I had no desire to understand.

I decided my time was better spent driving a truck and learning to pretend to love that life. It was a life that also demanded cowboy hats, jeans, boots, Southern Rock, and drinks of Southern Comfort or Jack Daniel’s. While living deep in this façade, I realized I was still a silly boy—no better or more suited for the world I walked in than the would-be suitors Wanda used to cut down with a smile.

Crosswinds blew and years flew past. One night Bouncer came to my door—a cold early November night. I’d been sitting in the dark drinking alone and watching Cronkite on a little black-and-white TV. I welcomed the company even though the rumors down those dirty, narrow streets said Bouncer and I had no love for each other.

Between glugs of a quart of Colt 45 and hits of a bong he’d brought, he told me he was leaving. Wanda had cancer, and he couldn’t handle the stress—or the baby. I pushed him out the door and down the stairs and went to find her.

The door to her apartment was unlocked. I walked in. She sat in the small bedroom of the third-floor walkup, holding her baby boy and quietly singing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by Willie Nelson. I don’t think I’d ever heard a sweeter sound.

She was no longer voluptuous. That had been replaced by a frail, skinny body and a face drawn and gaunt—but still somehow smiling at me. I’ll never forget the moment she took my hand, held it, and said—dying yet comforting me—it was going to be all right. She asked me two odd favors: to live my life in gratitude and think of her often and kindly; and if I lived to be an old man, to remember these young years and smile at the thought of her singing old country songs to the hippies on the barstools.

I told her she was beautiful and promised to try.

I said I wanted to kill Bouncer—that I was going to do it—but she squeezed my hand hard, stopped singing long enough to say, “But he’s just a boy… I need you to stay here with me and be a man. It’s going to get hard and ugly in the final days.”

I stayed with Wanda until she died. It was only a few more weeks. A small handful of new friends from the bar kept us well medicated on Thorazine and Seconal.

Her mom and sister took the young boy, and none of us ever heard from Bouncer again.

I sit and write this on a warm February day—the sun is shining and it’s forty-five degrees—not frozen by winter’s cold. No longer drunk or on drugs, thinking about my recently passed anniversary of sobriety, and still trying to separate want from need. Still trying to live my life in gratitude, the way she asked me to.

A therapist once told me I let survivor’s guilt color my life. I find it pairs nicely with my imposter syndrome. Be that as it may, I’ll never understand how so many better people I’ve known suffered such short and painful lives, while I managed to slide by mostly unscathed.

Now, much older—none the wiser—I sit in the silence of my tool shed and hear her voice from so long ago, yodeling just like Hank did… and then she’d grin a little and laugh.

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That’s it for me this week. Here are some books to look at.

Stay safe, it’s getting weird out there!

Bill

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