My uncle had the best cow­boy boots and also em­phy­sema. I asked him for his boots and he said no. I said look here old man you are not long for this world and he told me to fuck my­self. I said you can’t take it with you and he said the hell I can’t and he put a cod­i­cil in his will that he was to be buried in those boots. I tried to bribe the kid at the fu­neral home but no dice. We buried him last Sun­day and tonight I am going to Wal-Mart to buy a flash­light and a shovel and some of that hand san­i­tizer.

In­her­i­tance - Amelia Spin­ney

The last time I tried to bury a bi­cy­cle it wasn’t so hard. But it wasn’t so hot and I was only sev­en­teen, my first time out of these moun­tains, liv­ing in a busted up old San Fran­cisco house where I got my name, Can Eyed Carl, nice to meet ya.

We were plant­ing the bike up to its top tube in leeks going to seed. It was my sec­ond morn­ing in that pad, and I’d al­ready lost ac­count of my cousin Henry who I’d con­vinced to run away with me. We’d shot for the bor­der on his daddy’s horse, with my brother Abe’s hounds bark­ing at the backs of our imag­i­na­tions. We felt safe enough by Grant’s Pass to sell the horse for some bus tick­ets out and down the coast to San Fran­cisco - the only city we knew of. I don’t feel so bad about los­ing track of Henry, that house got busted up the next week on grounds that no one in par­tic­u­lar owned it, which was true. So I lit out for Port­land with a cou­ple of folks.

A cou­ple of years later Henry passes through the strip club where I’m bounc­ing and tells me of his feed busi­ness in Eu­gene, which is where the VW bus he got on in San Fran lost an axle and died. Now I’ve worked about every imag­in­able job in Ore­gon ‘cept gov­er­nor and I can tell you that none’s more em­bar­rass­ing when fam­ily shows up at your strip club. Not even knowin’ that Uncle Bill musta’ had a hard night ‘caus I got a whole dol­lar worth of emp­ties from his back porch this morn­ing.

After all a name’s a name and I try to live up to mine. I ain’t lived out­side a re­fund­ables state in twenty-five years and I don’t plan to any­time soon. Well, I done lived up to my name, when­ever times got tough, any­ways, until I got pulled back into these moun­tains. Oh I’d feel the pull of home plenty strong plenty of times, but Pa lived longer than any­one would’ve bet. It turns out he gave up drinkin’ for a bit after I left and one of his dredges, now that he had the money to run it, hit a seam. A dredge? Ya take a lawn­mower en­gine and some vac­uum cleaner hose and put it to­gether on top of an old pon­toon boat and let her suck the bot­tom.

A rich seam, well, rich enough to win the gen­eral store in town from his old drink­ing buddy Perry Wright in a game of poker, re­tire from min­ing, and start drinkin’ store bought whiskey in place of the white moun­tain light­ning he had been so par­tial to.

So well after I got word of the fu­neral (one has to be sure about these things) and the next time I hit a broke spell, I headed back with the idea of fix­ing up the old shack, growin’ a patch of gar­den, and livin’ quiet and peace­ful for a while. But I got down there and found that Abe had got­ten the fire men to burn the home­place down for prac­tice. So I go down to Perry’s store and find Abe man­ag­ing away.

“Now brother it wouldn’t do to have you liv­ing up there. I just got Jeanne - fine woman you need to meet her. An’ I got the Wright fam­ily breathin’ down my neck - Johnny’s run­nin’ for mayor against me this year, and you re­mem­ber Tim - that SOB is try­ing to open up  a motel just across the street from mine, and lis­ten to this - Jeb walked in here and flat out of­fered to buy the car wash from me, seein’ as how I was short on cash. Now maybe that’s true and maybe it ain’t - the point being brother - how about I set you up with a job. Would you help your brother stay on top in this town?”

Which is how I came to be on top of this hill. This is my eighth sum­mer back in these moun­tains, prospect­ing some of Daddy’s old claims (and a few that ain’t in the fam­ily too). Mostly I’m lookin’ for se­le­nium, some for moly, and, sure, gold, if I see it. I take soil sam­ples, put a mark on my maps, and keep movin’. Abe dri­ves me up here with a sum­mer’s worth of canned food which I bury the bulk of and come back to, from time to time. This is the first time I’ve taken a bike, doesn’t seem like such a good idea of Abe’s now, I think I’ll just hide it in these bushes. Abe picks me up in Sep­tem­ber, same place, and he sends off the tubes to a lab in Fresno or some­place like that. And I live on the re­built home­place for the win­ter. Abe doesn’t visit much. He’s busy with bein’ mayor, and his fam­ily, and the store, and all them goose egg soil re­sults, and keepin’ an eye on the Wrights.

The lit­tlest Wrights have been growin’ dope just out­side of town, and he goes back and forth wor­ryin’ about the money they’re bringin’ in and schemin’ on how to run them out of town for good. The older Wrights and Abe are still fightin’ over con­trol of the town’s busi­ness and spendin’ each other into debt, to boot. Naw I ain’t em­bar­rassed or wor­ried by Abe. He’s em­bar­rassed of me, to be sure, his older hobo brother, livin’ up in the shack he tried to for­get he came from. (He doesn’t even know how I fixed up the old still.) That’s why he shuf­fles me off to the moun­tains be­fore the tourists ar­rive for the sum­mer, and see me col­lectin’ their cans each mornin’. But like I said, I’ve met rel­a­tives’ eyes with worse shame. At least I’m home now. And Abe? I feel sorry for him some­times. He ain’t seen the world, or missed these moun­tains. He don’t know any bet­ter, only enough to try and con­trol that lit­tle town down there.

Well, I’ve yam­mered on enough and it’s only get­ting hot­ter. If you don’t mind, an old hobo gets right squir­rely when stashin’ his bread. Maybe I’ll see you on up the trail.

On week­days I would re­turn home from teach­ing at a local school to my apart­ment com­plex, a short mo­tor­bike ride, and find my land­lord perched on a bench be­side a ce­ment table, cig­a­rette bal­anced be­tween his wiry fin­gers, out­side his mod­est first floor apart­ment.  More often than not, the table was cov­ered with small dishes of food and his glass filled with beer and ice, sweat­ing with con­den­sa­tion in the Thai hu­mid­ity.

He kept com­pany with neigh­bors and fam­ily, gos­sip­ing about the com­ings and go­ings of par­tic­u­lar ten­ants, the chat­ter punc­tu­ated by the grat­ing rep­ri­mands he dealt out to his 4-year-old nephew as he ran through the ad­ja­cent park­ing lot, hid­ing be­hind cars and pick­ing off un­sus­pect­ing ten­ants with an imag­i­nary pis­tol.

I would seat my­self be­side him, and we would pick up where we left off, con­tin­u­ing an in­ter­view that I an­tic­i­pated to last only a few min­utes.

The in­ter­view ran through days, weeks and months. It ran through the sea­sons: the sti­flingly hot, the hardly cold and the tor­ren­tial mon­soon. It ran through the hol­i­days, mine: Thanks­giv­ing, Hal­loween, Christ­mas and his: The King’s Birth­day, Loy Kra­tong, Wan Awk Pansa. It ran through school se­mes­ters and the sum­mer hol­i­day. It ran through count­less bot­tles of Sang­som Whiskey and Leo beer, ash­trays over­flow­ing with acidic Falling Rain men­thol cig­a­rettes. It ran through a po­lit­i­cal up­ris­ing, from the fes­tive be­gin­ning to ten­sion-filled stand­off to the vi­o­lent end of a Red and Yel­low color war played out in the streets of Bangkok and media out­lets world­wide.  

The sub­ject of the in­ter­view was my land­lord, one of the first peo­ple to speak to me, the farang - for­eigner - who had con­spic­u­ously taken up res­i­dence in the build­ing he looked after for his brother-in-law on the out­skirts of Phit­san­u­lok, a city in the cen­tral plains of Thai­land.  

Tourism in Thai­land ex­ists mostly on the fringes of the coun­try. Ca­coph­o­nous Bangkok is the entry point to the pop­u­lar is­lands that pep­per the deep south and to Chi­ang Mai and Pai in the north. The cen­ter of the coun­try is only seen by most for­eign­ers through the win­dows of trains, planes and buses.  My pres­ence in this cen­tral province at­tracted at­ten­tion, but mostly from a cau­tious dis­tance. But this awk­ward buffer zone was non-ex­is­tent to him and, only a few days after set­tling in, the en­thu­si­as­tic “Mr. Tim!” be­came his fa­vorite greet­ing and a segue into the next seg­ment of our in­ter­view.

He was a small man, stand­ing a lit­tle over 5 feet, his linen fish­er­man pants tied tightly around his thin waste, wa­tery eyes dis­torted be­hind cir­cu­lar tor­toise shell eye glasses he cleaned with an ob­ses­sive fer­vor on his shirt. Al­though 65 he ap­peared much older, the prod­uct of the un­re­lent­ing South­east Asian sun and a life lived for a long time day to day, try­ing to get by. I re­ferred to him as pee chi, older brother, a term of re­spect and one that was al­ways met with a laugh from vis­i­tors.

I pep­pered him with ques­tions. Food, Bud­dhism, Thai pol­i­tics, sports, lan­guage, movies, cus­toms, the Viet­nam War, sur­round­ing coun­tries, su­per­sti­tions, music, at times, I imag­ine, I was as both­er­some as his nephew tug­ging at his shirt. But in par­tic­u­larly un-Thai fash­ion, he an­swered my ques­tions un­guarded and openly, prac­tic­ing the Eng­lish skills he had learned while a physics teacher at the Chris­t­ian Boys’ School in Bangkok.

The ca­dence of his speech re­flected a gen­eral pace of life adopted by those who were for­tu­nate enough to suc­cess­fully move out of the ex­haus­tive and mea­ger pay­ing agrar­ian rou­tine still so com­mon in that part of the coun­try.  It was a sense of ease and en­joy­ment, mak­ing up for time lost.

He spoke slowly, his sen­tences filled with long pauses that orig­i­nally made me un­com­fort­able, but from this came three pieces of wis­dom that I wrote down, re­peated to oth­ers and wrote again.

1

“When you are old, you don’t leave. Peo­ple come to see you.”

 Rel­a­tives and friends cy­cled in and out through the day, bring­ing with them food and bits of news. Even an oc­ca­sional po­lice of­fi­cer and the post­man took time chat, but he never left, al­ways re­ceiv­ing with smile, but rarely even ris­ing from his bench.

In many ways this wasn’t much dif­fer­ent from my own grand­fa­ther. Sure the scenery was dif­fer­ent, a porch on Long Is­land not a table in Phit­san­u­lok, but the prin­ci­ples were the same. See enough your­self, do enough and peo­ple will come to see you.

The prin­ci­ples, un­for­tu­nately, have faded in the United States. Older gen­er­a­tions are being stowed away in re­tire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, looked upon as fam­ily em­bar­rass­ments. In Thai­land, there has been a slow and grad­ual ero­sion of re­spect for el­ders as West­ern views en­croach on the once staunchly held tra­di­tions.

2

“Don’t marry a woman like your mother. Bad idea.”  

He shouted this to me, shak­ing his head and laugh­ing as his old­est niece and boyfriend bick­ered in the park­ing lot late one night, their fight dis­solv­ing into a de­press­ing af­fair of sobs and slaps.  

“Al­ways fight­ing. No good,” he went on, telling me of his tu­mul­tuous first mar­riage and re­it­er­at­ing his first line with an ob­ses­sive fer­vor, until I agreed with a smile, never, ever to be ro­man­ti­cally in­volved with any woman who re­minded me of my mother.

We had talked about women be­fore. He had jok­ingly tried to set me up with a local 7-11 man­ager who lived on my floor, in­sist­ing that she was going to do big things, but this ad­vice had se­ri­ous­ness to it, a tinge of per­sonal re­gret in his in his de­liv­ery that made dark­ened his con­stantly light tone ever so slightly.

3

“Don’t eat durian and drink whiskey.”

“Ex­cuse me?” I asked, puz­zled.

“You eat durian and then drink whiskey and then you die,” he said it just like that, a sim­ple mat­ter of fact state­ment that every­one al­ready knew or should know, com­mon sense.

I found durian to be of­fen­sive to all of my senses: a fes­ter­ing stinky blob of a fruit that tasted like a stag­nant air in a pub­lic bath­room stall. My chances of per­ish­ing from this sup­pos­edly lethal com­bi­na­tion were quite lim­ited. The state­ment, how­ever, fas­ci­nated me. I asked my other peo­ple about it and they all told me it was true with con­vic­tion, de­scrib­ing some­thing to do with the heat of the durian and the heat of whiskey mak­ing a fatal cock­tail.

In many ways this line summed up much of what our best con­ver­sa­tions had been about: a mix of per­sonal knowl­edge and local lore passed on to me with a sense of pa­ter­nal pro­tec­tion.

There are facts and there are ex­pe­ri­ences and some­where in be­tween, where the two meld, there is wis­dom. To cre­ate your own takes time, and there is per­haps noth­ing as ig­no­rant as fail­ing to bor­row other’s along the way to­wards your own.

It’s mid­day. No­body goes to sleep each day. Maybe he drank too much haha. No eat­ing, no drink­ing. Lazy like lions.

The pro­fes­sor tapped his com­puter with pink fin­gers, webbed with dark veins. A room of white blank-faces crowded his vi­sion. He looked down.

Yes. 1:57 AM in Kenya right now. Yes, peo­ple are busy asleep.

Let me just give a story about what hap­pened in Kenya while my com­puter wakes haha. It was 1990. I was trav­el­ing back to the Nairobi, no the Mom­basa. It was one of those jit­ney-ve­hi­cles. You know, those con­tainer ve­hi­cles. It takes you way out where the plane was parked. The air­line re­main un­named. Yes, the plane was not ready. We stayed in the con­tainer. It was hot. Then came the prespit— Pres­by­te­ri­ans ha­haha pre­split—pre­cip­i­ta­tion? That one haha. We waited for an hour and the plane was over­booked. Peo­ple were sit­ting on the floor. We started going but the road, the tire on the road makes that roar. Rrrr haha, yes. Peo­ple were sit­ting on the floor. They’ll sur­vive haha. But it was like one of those race cars. The run­way was of con­cern. This is Kenya. What­ever pop­u­la­tion is there let it be there. The mo­ment you put there the road in these com­mu­ni­ties, set­tle­ments will ad­just to these net­works.

Talk about the devil.

His lap­top blinked on, low bat­tery. He turns to ad­just the adapter.

 It be­comes much dif­fi­cult. I don’t know; it de­pends on how long it goes. Ah yes, you see this adapter I bought for $5 in Kenya. Here they charge $20. Maybe there’s a rea­son. Haha. As more you in­crease the price.

The first time, obliv­i­ous to the world.

Dab­bling in aca­d­e­mics, de­vel­op­ing so­cial prowess -

we were fresh­men in high school.

The next time, en­ter­ing the world.

Com­pleted man­dated course­work, ma­tured con­sid­er­ably -

we were grad­u­at­ing.

Our paths never crossed.

Two years later,

and here we are.

Wednes­day

The sun peeks into the win­dow, re­veal­ing the car­nage of the night be­fore. A mu­tual friend's party. We sit on the couch, still ine­bri­ated, ex­chang­ing hel­los. You tell me su­per­fi­cial de­tails about your sum­mer, about the time spent work­ing in Chicago. I re­count my days spent in Nashville, shar­ing mean­ing­less sto­ries.

The next thing ei­ther of us know, it's two hours later. And you've told me about your fam­ily, your school, so far away, and, well, your im­mi­nent death. You have cys­tic fi­bro­sis. You aren't sup­posed to live past thirty-five.

We're twenty.

You didn't want to tell me, the whiskey thought oth­er­wise. You al­most died in high school. Twice. You no­tice the tears welling in my eyes, I'm an open book, you tell me not to worry. You didn't die, you run cross coun­try at your uni­ver­sity. Your lungs are fully func­tion­ing de­spite all of the odds and his­tor­i­cal data and doc­tors' pre­dic­tions. You're happy, you're un­afraid. Is your death in­evitable? Whose isn't? You're ready to go to sleep. My school mail­ing ad­dress is en­tered into your phone.

You're gone when I wake up.

Sat­ur­day

The day­light faded to black hours ago and I'm swept away in a friend's car to a wed­ding re­cep­tion.  We know no­body. We dance be­neath paper globes and Christ­mas lights, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the wan­ing crowd and the open bar.

It's two in the morn­ing and I'm dri­ving your car as you play DJ, we're on an ad­ven­ture, you are the nav­i­ga­tor. Through wind­ing roads and open fields we reach our des­ti­na­tion; I've never been here. The banks of the Mis­souri River, the route to the is­land is flooded, rag­ing, dan­ger­ous. Toes in the water, lit by a full moon, you apol­o­gize for the other night. You in­sist it was self­ish and weird, too open, too per­sonal. You sug­gest we'll make it even if I spill my life story.

I talk and you lis­ten. At­ten­tively. I triv­i­al­ize my fears, down­play my am­bi­tions. It's quiet for few min­utes, the water's un­even rush­ing is enough.

This isn't fair. You told me every­thing, I have noth­ing to tell, my ac­com­plish­ments are min­i­mal.

Then I talk, say things I have never even ver­bal­ized to my­self. I admit my true goals in life, my true feel­ings to­ward the mun­dane, lin­ear path that seems to have been set for me. I let slip se­crets, feel­ings of in­ad­e­quacy. I feel light.

I taper off and you di­gest for a minute, shades of em­bar­rass­ment color my face. But then you tell me with such con­vic­tion that I have po­ten­tial and owe it to my­self to go for what­ever it is that I want to do, and that I think too much, and that I de­serve bet­ter than what I have. I'm float­ing.

Then you say let's go for a drive, there's a me­teor shower tonight.

At four in the morn­ing, we're tres­pass­ing on an old farm through light­less, ex­pan­sive fields. The night sky is our own. We laugh, we sing, we count stars and wince at uniden­ti­fi­able noises in the dis­tance. Po­lice? Coy­otes?

It doesn't mat­ter, it couldn't mat­ter.

I think of liv­ing with a set date of death, I think of dis­re­gard­ing the words of doc­tors, par­ents, gov­ern­ment and all other au­thor­ity. You're en­tirely free, un­teth­ered. De­lib­er­ately liv­ing and only tak­ing in­ter­est in what you can di­rectly con­trol.

As your car flies from my dri­ve­way I en­vi­sion you as a mys­ti­cal bird fly­ing into the early morn­ing.

I am, and have al­ways been, ter­ri­fied of birds.

Tues­day

The fra­grant smoke flows out of the hookah in a dingy base­ment as you bound down the stairs.

It's been for­ever since we've seen a clock, but it must be three in the morn­ing. You're leav­ing for school in two and a half hours, for school and then Eu­rope - you're leav­ing home for at least a year. You felt com­pelled to come over.

The group awk­wardly rem­i­nisces of high school days, the only shared mem­o­ries and com­mon ground we have any­more. You're oddly quiet. The time comes for me to leave and you re­al­ize you're due at the air­port in thirty min­utes.

Car-side, you give me a mix CD and a firm hug, a promise of a let­ter to my col­lege box soon. You don't have a set ad­dress yet, your phone doesn't work at school, you've evac­u­ated the trap­pings of so­cial media. You take off, we turn in the op­po­site di­rec­tion at the main road.

The four lines of my ad­dress in your phone is all that con­nects us.

That, and a car­di­nal landed on the table next to me -

usu­ally I'd move, but I just watched. 

But soft­ware, what light through yon­der chat win­dow breaks?

I thought we were just talk­ing. The way all cou­ples do, the chat­ter that be­gins and ends with­out much ef­fort. A thought floats by: grab it, bend it slightly, angle it to­wards the light, arrange it well, pre­sent it to your part­ner, “Hon, I was think­ing about how ot­ters have to give birth at sea and I had a ques­tion...”

Then she pre­sents an an­swer, he snorts hap­pily, they amuse each other's sen­si­bil­i­ties. Or do they amuse each other's con­ceits? Ei­ther way they tol­er­ate the earnest­ness of the other and go back to their put­tered apart­ment. I thought we were just talk­ing.

We have, she and I, talked about talk­ing a good num­ber of times. We could leave a restau­rant and say, “Oh the dis­course dur­ing the soup was just amaz­ing, but when the large plates came, well, I can't stand that kind of meaty, down-home talk.”

Re­gard­less, we never talked about sea ot­ters. We had busy things to talk about, very urban things. 

The whole point of the story is this, I wanted to know what an in­ter­view was so I asked her, being the smartest per­son I know, and she was in­clined to an­swer. I knew she recorded every­thing that hap­pened, as it was still the Sea­son of the Live­blog. “Doc­u­men­ta­tion,” she said, “was the dif­fer­ence be­tween an in­ter­view and a con­ver­sa­tion.”

I saw a vi­sion clearly. I saw the buck­led thread of our friend­ship come into focus. For years we had chat­ted on gmail, then face­book, now skype. The miss­ing bit of in­for­ma­tion miss­ing from the face­book -> skype tra­jec­tory is that she would mute the mi­cro­phone.

Our pos­tures trans­mit­ted on the screen we could fid­get and fart in pri­vate si­lence, the only words that passed be­tween us were writ­ten. It was care­fully cu­rated po­etry, a the­ol­ogy of in­stant mes­sag­ing. We had lived in more cities than you can count on one hand and not in that many years. Never to­gether, but with enough words be­tween us that we were both the clos­est and the far­thest away, until this sum­mer.

It was sum­mer and she had left New York for time to breathe in Oak­land and then was back home, here in Seat­tle, ready to start some­thing. We con­nected like we had al­ways meant to. We’d been too pained by ado­les­cent men­tal ill­ness be­fore. Lan­guage flowed like candy, lube, sun­shine, break up. It's al­ways sud­den isn’t it? Bet­ter to admit it soon, or that's what I'd say.

Be­fore the end, in the ten­der sum­mer within sum­mer, was when she'd said it, “doc­u­men­ta­tion.” I al­ways knew some­thing about his­tory, some­thing about “to the vic­tor go the spoils,” some­thing about who it is that gets to write the book. What I didn't know was that I had been on record the whole time. Tic-tak-tik-tak.