More Monday Zen

“Zen Can Do Anything”

My zen and I 

Had a couple of drinks last night.

Oh? 

You didn’t think that zen could drink?

That it was against zen’s religion or something?

Ha Ha! 

Don’t make me laugh.

Zen can do anything!

Anyway, as I was saying,

We had a couple last night,

My zen and I.

Hmmm.

Now that I think about it,

Nothing was achieved.

I missed my dinner.

I spent my wages.

I stepped on the cat’s tail when I arrived home.

And now my head hurts.

“My Camera Helps Me Find My Zen”

My camera helps me find my zen.

I think it’s the way it makes me see the world.

To look upon things without distraction

And allow my eye to fall in love.

That’s the zen of it!

My camera helps me find beauty, too.

To see it right in front of my face

When it was there all the time.

That’s zen at work.

Beauty and zen share many traits.

You could probably name a dozen easily,

So I won’t bother, except to remind you…

That one cannot exist without the other.

“The Zen of Crows”

(Previously published July 20, 2015)

A murder of crows landed in the large oak tree 

That overhangs my home.

That’s what you call a gathering of these large, black birds.

A murder.

Who thought up that name, I wonder?

It is very zen!

Anyway, from beneath the tree 

I watched and listened,

While I drank some tea.

The crows were very noisy and active.

I might even call it confused or chaotic.

They seemed to be without zen.

I put down my tea,

And clapped my hands loudly 

As I rose from my seat.

“Where’s your zen?” I shouted.

The crows took flight

And circled overhead. 

Then as if by mutual consent 

They flew away to the north

Making a beautiful pattern 

Against the clear blue sky.

“Aha,” I said to myself.

“There’s the zen.”

“Keep Your Shiny Side Up!”

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

That is the name of a famous book

I once read a million years ago.

But I didn’t understand it too well.

Maybe it’s my fault 

That I didn’t understand it.

Maybe it’s the author’s.

Who can say?

Understanding doesn’t come easily

To anybody.

But I don’t blame my zen for that.

Who but an imbecile 

Would be stupid enough 

To find fault with their zen?

Not me.

I understand that much.

I like motorcycles.

I have since I was a boy.

I especially like riding them.

It is a very zen-like experience.

The freedom.

The speed.

The chance to empty my mind 

Of all but the road ahead.

The strangely relaxed tension

Of body, mind, and machine.

United as one,

Working in harmony 

To execute a perfect corner,

Or avoid being crushed 

By that eighteen-wheeler!

Yes! It’s quite a thrill

To ride a motorcycle!

And live to tell about it.

I guess, after reading that book, 

That I understand the zen of riding… 

Better than I do the zen of fixing.

But that’s okay.

So long as I don’t 

Confuse the two.

And remember to 

Keep my shiny side up.

Zen!

“The Odds of Zen”

“I don’t have time for zen today.”

Yeah. 

Right.

You may think that statement is true.

But it’s not.

There’s always time for zen.

It only takes a minute.

Sometimes even less.

But it can last you all day.

Maybe even a lifetime.

How do you like those odds?

And it’s free too.

I’m offering it to you now.

You simply have to reach out and take it.

I’m no mathematician 

Or economist.

But I know this much;

Zen offers a great return 

For your investment. 

Buck and the Big Mosquitoes (Pt II)

Part II

The scenery rolled by as I drove the Falcon and listened to Buck in the seat beside me. He paused to take another swallow of rum and then sat silently for a moment, looking out the window. After awhile he turned and saw me scratching absentmindedly at an insect bite on my arm.

“Ten thousand bastards!” he cursed. “The mosquitoes are bad this year! I killed one the other day that was as big as a bleedin albatross!” 

He leaned towards me conspiratorially and uttered, “It’s the female mosquito that bites, you know, lad. And, as I may have mentioned, I’m absolutely irresistible to females! Hahaha!”

May have mentioned? By now Buck had told me a thousand tall tales, many of them with benefit of stimulating and willing females, for he was fond of a good copulation, to hear him tell it. How Buck loved to spin a yarn! It was his favorite thing to do, except perhaps, if one believed his stories, fornication. It was almost as if he believed these stories he was telling, he told them with such gusto and conviction. I was a willing and eager audience, for I like tales of fornication as much as the next bloke and besides, I was young and naive and still couldn’t tell or at least wasn’t insulted when a man was telling the truth or not. 

After all, the lessons of a lifetime cannot be learned in one day.

“Blasted mosquitoes!” said Buck and he good-naturedly cursed mosquitoes in general for five minutes straight. Then he cursed, for another ten minutes, a particular mosquito who had recently attacked him. 

“Talk about persistent, mate!” laughed Buck. “I was weak from loss of blood after her first attack. She had got me in the neck,” he pointed to the spot, “right here! Blood oozed from the wound and this seemed to drive her into a frenzy! I swear she had a look of malignant evil on her horrible, ghastly face, or the thing that we would call a face, matey, if she bleedin had one!” 

Buck paused at this point for another swallow from the bottle. Then he began again, a little breathlessly, with plenty of gesturing. “Just as she came in for the kill I knocked her down with an uppercut to the proboscis. Blast her! She was so tough I had to take off my boot and hit her three times with it to finish her off! Ugh! What a bloody mess.” 

For a moment Buck’s mouth turned down in a frown of remembrance, before he lifted the bottle again and gulped down the dark, sweet rum. 

“Ha! Ha! It was her or me, mate,” he said, “but I survived to tell the tale!”

“Of course,” he continued after a bit, “the biggest, nastiest mosquitoes I ever saw were in Africa. I remember once, crossing the Kalahari, when I saw in the sky, just off the road in the bush a little way, what I took to be giant vultures. 

“They were hovering over the dead carcass of an old bull elephant, the bastards! Getting out of the car, I grabbed my gun and pith hat and sallied forth to see if I could run off those bloody, damned vultures! 

“Because I hate vultures, Rusty Boy, terrible birds of ill omen that they are!” Buck reduced his voice to a whisper. “As I silently approached, my mouth went dry and my hands started sweating. I was fair-dinkum scared mate, for Death is all around you, every minute, in the African jungle.”

Buck took another drink while I thought about death being all around me all the time. Then he solemnly uttered, “I thought to myself, ‘Buck old boy, it’s a good day to die!’” 

I glanced over at Buck. He had that look on his face now, as if it were still a good day to die. 

“I clenched my buttocks,” he continued, “sharpened my eyes, strained my ears and crept forward. Bloody hell! They weren't vultures at all, but horrible monstrous mosquitoes, buzzing and prodding that poor elephant!

“Raising my gun, I took out the biggest one with a double blast, which thankfully scared off the others. Naturally, I wasn't stupid enough to wait around and meet any of her relatives, so I buggered off just as easy as shitting in bed and kicking it out with your foot!”

Buck took another pull from the bottle while I thought about shitting in bed and kicking it out with my foot.

“Too right, mate!” he continued. “I stopped only long enough to assist that old elephant to its feet, with a native trick I learned from an old Zulu witch doctor. 

“That elephant wasn't dead at all but was merely playing possum.”

“Huh?” I said. “What?”

“You didn't know that elephants played possum?” asked Buck, pretending surprise. “Oh yes, and they also, most of them, play the accordion, too.” Buck leaned in closer and whispered, “Although that's a bleedin well kept secret, mate, you have to be an experienced elephant handler or an old Zulu witch doctor to know that one.”

I laughed, but Buck, unconvinced that I was swallowing his tall tale, continued, “You don't believe me? Well, where the blasted hell do you think all that accordion music comes from in the African night when you're trying to sleep out there in the veldt under the stars?”

“I dunno, Buck, I’ve never been to Africa.”

“Bloody hell mate!” laughed Buck. “Use your noggin! An elephant could hardly play the harmonica or the saxophone with that long trunk of his, now could he?”

Many years later, I happened through the circumstance of living to find myself under the stars on the African veldt at night, yes and in a tent close by the Kalahari dessert too, just as Buck had described to the boy I used to be. 

I’d been in Africa a few years trying to make my living as an animator. I may have mentioned that being an animator is a rather hit and miss way of making a living. Anyway, I’d run out of animation gigs, so I had come along from Johannesburg to help some archeologist friends find fossils in the petrified mud of southern Botswana. My friends spent every winter there, cataloguing bits of seashell that had turned to stone uncounted centuries ago. 

We’d worked hard in the sun all day, and now after a good dinner with lively conversation, a little dagga and some strong Cape wine, we’d said our goodnights and gone off to our separate tents for sleep. I was laying in my cot, not asleep but not awake, listening to the wind rustling through the endless African grasses (or was that the strains of accordion music I heard wafting on the air?) when it hit me that Buck was right.

It really was a good day to die.
“Keep an eye out for elephants!” I called to Death and the ghosts and the African night, and I heard my friends gently laugh at my shenanigans.

“Goodnight Rusty, you old fool,” they laughed. “Sleep well.”

“Goodnight friends,” I answered. “You too.”

Soggy Smokes

Auckland, New Zealand, 1970

                                                              

Some things are bound to happen. Why resist? 

When I was seventeen-years-old my journey from boy to man took the inevitable, some might even say false, first steps through the doors of a pub. 

The pub I refer to was the public bar of the Poenamo Hotel. The Poe was a workingman’s pub. It was filled with laborers and lorry drivers and men who made things with their hands or with their backs. Men who built things. Men who were physical. 

Our sort of place. Just a quarter-mile from the depot, it was alluringly close. 

The depot I refer to was the Northcote Depot of the Ministry of Works. The M.O.W. was widening and extending Auckland’s Northern Motorway, from its beginning at the foot of the Harbour Bridge all the way to Tristram Ave and Sunset Road and beyond as far as Albany.

It was a man’s world of earthmoving machines, dust and hard labor. And when the workday was over, there were always a few from the depot who went to the pub to unwind or blow off a little steam. I would conservatively estimate it to be about ninety to ninety-five percent. Allowing for five to ten percent error. 

Marko, for instance, went to the pub every night, usually walking the short distance still dressed, as he was now, in his work overalls and gumboots. Marko was a terrible drinker with a big thirst, so he usually wouldn’t wait for a ride, but started walking, head down looking at his dusty boots, the minute work was over.

Tonight though, we were all getting a ride. 

Marko, David from Fiji who was called that because there was another David at the depot who wasn't from Fiji, and myself whose nickname at the time was Whitey because of my very blond hair, were waiting for Arthur. Arthur was the gang boss. He gave the orders and drove the truck.

Arthur and Tom-the-Pom pulled up in the big Bedford dump truck. “Climb aboard, boys!” called Arthur.

We climbed into the back. 

Tom-the-Pom, seated inside the spacious cab next to Arthur, turned his pasty face around and grimaced at us through the window, gesticulating obscenely and mouthing profanities. He was Arthur's little toady and perpetual echo, always sucking up to the boss. Most of the men at the depot thought him an irritating little pipsqueak, myself included. He laughed at us through the window. There was no real malice in his actions though, he was just having fun. The gang was on its way to the pub, no need for insults, he just couldn’t stop himself from any kind of show of disdain towards his inferiors, as he saw us, the lowly fools who had to ride in the back. 

It wasn’t enough for Tom-the-Pom to have got the best seat, you must be seen to have got the crappy seat.

I could see Arthur inside next to Tom-the-Pom, laughing at these antics, his shoulders shaking convulsively. It was a joke of his to say that the cab was full, with just the two of them in it, and make any other riders climb into the back, where who-knows-what kind of crud or dirt had been carried earlier. 

Truth to tell, Arthur took excellent care of the Bedford and the debris from the day was hosed off nightly, but it was hardly the ballroom of the Ritz back there. Those of us interested in trying to stay clean during the short ride to the pub simply stood up, swaying and clinging to the steel mesh that protected the cab, with our faces to the wind.

In a minute we were there, joined by other workmen spilling out onto the gravel parking lot from every type of truck and car. We hailed “G’day!” to each other and lit our smokes as we sauntered through the doors into the cool interior, past the wholesale counter with its dozing attendant (he’d be busy later, at closing time, when customers purchased their take-home supplies), and into the bustling public bar itself. 

The public bar was a large room, the side opposite the entrance through which we’d come completely glass from floor to roof. The remaining walls were papered in a swirling pattern of what appeared to be highly stylized, purple flowers. 

Wooden tables were arranged about. Jugs and half filled glasses of beer cluttered the orange tabletops. 

Every tabletop or counter surface was the same shade of orange Formica, contrasting biliously with the psychedelic purple walls.  

On the opposite side ran the bar itself, also rendered in orange Formica. Patrons crowded and elbowed their way up to be met by efficient bartenders smiling behind dewey silver spigots.

Jugs of beer by the hundreds passed over the bar. 

Behind the bar neon signs beamed hideously out, casting a freakish, circus clown glow on the expectant faces of the customers, whose calloused hands, some clean and some dirty, reached out across the orange Formica exchanging money for drink. 

Beneath their feet was a beer soaked purple carpet, dotted with black cigarette burns. I say purple, but that’s just an approximation, because it was a ghastly mosaic of truly hideous hue whose pattern, thankfully, was long ago trampled into oblivion by thirsty workers' boots. 

Orange and purple, then, was the color motif of the Poenamo Hotel public bar, a design scheme whose very biliousness guaranteed to test the intestinal fortitude of its patrons, before even a single glass of alcohol was ever consumed.

When one felt the urge after a few libations, they put down their beer, unsteadily crossed the purple carpet and pushed through the men’s room door to the urinal. It was the usual contraption, a chest-high wall of stainless steel and running water against which you peed. It was usually occupied by at least three or four other patrons, standing side by side in the peculiar spread-legged way that men do while urinating. 

Being young, it only took a couple of beers to find me headed that way. 

I entered and stepped to the urinal, where I planted my feet, unzipped my overalls, and after making sure of my aim and that everything was flowing nicely, idly scanned the graffiti-covered wall in front of me.

I’ve always been an avid reader. 

I’ll read anything my eyes fall upon. 

The wall in front of me was decorated with graffiti of every possible persuasion, some with illustrations. I read a few, laughing inwardly (which is the safest place to laugh, standing at the urinal with your dick in your hand in the men’s room of a workingman’s public bar). I casually noticed the pattern certain repeated words made against the wall. Some words and phrases were repeated a lot. And written larger.

A professional looking, carefully printed sign at eye level asked;

Please don’t throw your cigarette butts in the urinal, 

as it makes them soggy and hard to light.

There’s always a comedian, I thought, laughing inwardly again.

I looked down at the drain. 

Sure enough, it was jammed full of cigarette butts.

None of which appeared in the least bit smokable.

The Ghost of Rusty Pliers

(Part 2) 

   (You might remember in our last blog we were conversing in a French castle with the invisible ghost of Rusty Pliers whose manuscript we’d found, while the creepy English butler fetched some libations.)

  “The gin’s arrived,” said the ghost.

   The butler had left ten minutes ago. He hadn’t returned. Nothing had arrived.

  “Where?” demanded my wife. “I don’t see anything.” Saucy Boy was unafraid of the ghost from the beginning, which in turn gave me courage.

   Besides, he wasn’t a very scary ghost.

   A heartbeat later there came a knock at the door and the butler entered, pushing a trolley with bottles and glasses. He didn’t look quite so creepy now, I thought, but was a welcome sight pushing a trolly of refreshments into the room.

   “Ah!” said I with enthusiasm. “The drinks!”

   “Gin and tonic please,” said my wife.

   “Nothing for me, thanks,” intoned the ghost of Rusty Pliers. 

   After a pause he added,“I’m driving! Hahahahaa!” His terrible, unearthly laughter at the horrible old joke swirled up maliciously and echoed around the room.

   My tortured ears cursed the day they were born to hear that ancient jest uttered by a demon from the bowels of hell. My wife, on the other hand, smiled with amusement.

   "He has the same sense of humor you do," she whispered to me. "Unfunny."

   "I'm three times funnier than any old ghost!" I insisted under my breath. 

   “I see you still possess the same sense of humor, Mr. Rusty,” said the butler, completely unperturbed. He wore the faintest touch of a smile as he spoke. Now I could see that he wasn’t creepy at all, he was just very dry. He finished preparing the drinks, handing one to my wife, one to me.

   “Will that be all, sir?” he asked me. 

   “Yes, thank you,” I said.

   “Leave the trolley, please,” said my wife. “We’ll handle it from here.”

   “Goodnight,” we all said to the butler.

   "Goodnight," he said to us all, then he turned and left the room.

   "He wasn't so creepy after all," I said, meaning the butler.

   "He makes a very nice gin and tonic," said my wife. "I don't suppose he gets out much, living in a castle as he does."

   "He lingered over your underwear," said the ghost, "when he put your things away."

   "Oh he did, did he?" answered my wife, getting a bit riled.

   "She doesn't like people touching her underwear!" I laughed.

   "You!" she accused me. "Don't you ever think of anything else?"

   "Nope!" 

   "I was only kidding," said the ghost. "He didn't touch your things  I heard you speak of it earlier and thought it might help me to break the ice. Sometimes it's difficult to start a conversation with new people. Especially across the line between the living and the dead."

   "You don't seem so dead," said I. "For a ghost."  

   “So, let me ask you this,” said Saucy Boy, changing the subject. “You’re a ghost because no one ever read your book? Is that it?” She sipped her drink and smiled encouragingly.

   “That about sums it up,” replied the ghost. “I’ve been cursed.”

   “Poor ghost. What do you want us to do?” asked my wife. 

   “Re-eeeeead my boo-oook!” said the ghost in a funny, fake-scary way and we all laughed again.

   “Well. I’m not much of a reader…” began Saucy Boy.

   “Why don’t you read it to us?” I suggested.

   “Like books on tape!” added Saucy Boy, delighted with the idea. 

   “Okay,” said the ghost. “Why not?”

   “That’s the spirit!” said my wife.

   “Hey!” said the ghost.

   “Sorry,” said my wife.

   We settled back in our chairs and sipped our gins as we listened to the ghost read his bittersweet tale of a young boy growing up in a strange land. As I listened it occurred to me that the boy in the story grew up to become the ghost in the room. 

   The ghost never materialized, by the way, but remained only a voice. 

   A couple hours later he finished and asked, “Well, now you’ve heard it. What do you think?”

   “I think I’d like another drink,” I said, helping myself at the trolly.

   “Uh,” began Saucy Boy. “It’s long, isn’t it?”

   “I liked it,” I said, exaggerating a little. “Especially the part about the lunatic and the car blowing up.”

   “Yes, I like explosions,” answered the ghost. “I wish I’d put in a few more.” 

   “What do you want us to do now?” asked Saucy Boy. She yawned. It was late.

   “Get it published!” answered the ghost. “So I can be free of the curse! If just one person reads it and enjoys it, it’ll finally be R I P for the once proud and previously alive Rusty Pliers.”

   “Well, we can try,” I said.

   (I should explain that this was in 2005, over ten years ago. Since then I have edited, written, rewritten and even ghostwritten HOLD THE BEETROOT, the ghost’s story from the MS we found that night, but it remains unpublished still. No one wants it. 

   That is part of its curse. 

   But it is bigger than that.

   Part of the curse was passed on to me. The unpublished manuscript haunts me now. I’ve become obsessed with it and I’ve even assumed as my pen name the ghost’s name, Rusty Pliers, while trying to write something before I die that even one person will read and enjoy. The writer's curse! 

   The MS sits in my office. Unable to resist its cursed beckoning I return to it when I have a spare moment. 

   I’m currently on the 16th rewrite and still looking for a publisher.)

   “Well, we can try,” I said all those years ago, little knowing.

   “Sure,” said my wife sleepily. “Why not?”

   “Uh-oh,” said the ghost. “It’ll soon be daylight. I’ve got to be leaving now.”

   “You can only appear at night, huh?” I asked. “Like the ghost from Hamlet?”

   “Him!” responded the ghost. “What a drama queen! None of the other ghosts can stand him!”

   “Who else is up there with you?” I asked. “Or are you in the hotter place?”

   “As near as I can figure from where I am, there is no heaven or hell,” answered the ghost. “Except what we make for ourselves.”

   I pondered the ghost’s simple words.

   “Well, I’d better be going,” repeated the ghost. “It’s almost daylight.”

   “Then you cannot walk during the day?” I persisted.

   “It’s not that,” he answered. “Day or night makes no difference to a ghost. To a ghost what matters is the penance he must do! For to be a ghost is to be punished, make no mistake about that and I’m no exception. Alas! What matters to me now that I’m dead is the time I wasted while I was alive! And the horrible penance I must do! Currently I’m doomed to work for eternity in the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. You ever been to Orlando?”

   I was about to tell him sure I’d been to Orlando and that I used to work for Big Mouse too as an animator in the 1990s, but he was in a hurry and kept on talking.

   “Twenty-five thousand times a day I have to jump into a moving car and scare a tourist! I’d love to meet the guy who dreamed that one up! ’In perpetuity and throughout the universe’ too says my Disney contract, and brother, is my shift manager a son-of-a-bitch!”

   Ha! Ha! I thought. Life or death, a boss was still a boss. Then I laughed a little at myself, for my Disney contract had also said ‘in perpetuity and throughout the universe.’ 

   “I must go!” said the ghost. “I could get onto real trouble!”

   “How much trouble can you get into?” I asked. “You’re a ghost.”

   “Oh, you’d be surprised,” said the ghost, his voice growing fainter. “You’d be surprised.”

   No I wouldn’t be surprised I wanted to say, I worked there for fifteen years and I wouldn’t be surprised at all, but what was the point?

  “Goodbye,” said Saucy Boy. “Where will you go now, poor ghost?”

   “I’m off to Walt Disney World!” he announced as if he’d just won the 1976 World Series and was on his way, but faintly and drifting off.

   “Goodbye,” I said.

   “Adieu,” whispered the ghost. “Remember me.” 

   And he was gone.  

Myths and Mind Powers

   Pat laughed out loud, then said, “That Tom-the-Pom, what a little bastard!” He shook his head in admiration of Tom-the-Pom’s bastardly ways and chuckled to himself.

   (Tom-the-Pom wasn’t present at the worksite with us, he was off searching for Ben.) 

   “Yeah,” I agreed. “He feels the same way about you too mate. Except more so.” I did my best Tom-the-Pom imitation as I continued, “That blasted Pat, what a bleedin big headed bloody bastard!” 

   “Ahaw haw haw!” laughed Pat. 

   I looked over at him, adding, “That’s what he thinks of you, mate! Hapuka Head*!”

   “What?” said Pat, his eyes flashing red. For a minute I wondered if I’d gone too far. Nobody called Pat Hapuka Head to his face. Most of the men didn’t even call him that behind his back. 

*Hapuka, fish found in New Zealand waters. Known for a large head.

   Pat was the depot foreman. He didn’t tolerate disrespect of any kind. 

  We were standing in the dust and noise of the worksite. Pat had come up to have a chat and see how I was doing. I liked Pat, and it was a relief to stop and put my shovel down, or rather to stand and lean against it.

   Pat was a larger than life character. A giant of a man with a booming voice and a Maori warrior’s stance. He loved a laugh and was good to the men. He was looking out for me, I thought, me being very young and having just started at the depot, although he never admitted he was.

   He raised his voice to be heard above the earthmoving machines rumbling past, “So he called me Hapuka Head, did he? The little shit! Ahaw haw haw!”

   Pat threw his head back and laughed heartily, showing his white teeth. 

   “Hell!” he said. “I know what that jumped-up-never-come-down-little-so-and-so thinks before he even thinks it!”

   I felt suddenly bold, and asked outright, “Mind powers is it, Pat?”

   Many myths surrounded Pat at the depot, where myths and rumors were rife. Myths about his strength and wisdom. Myths about his pranks, his manliness and his drinking prowess. Myths about the fierce justice he dispensed and the men he’d bested. It was said at the depot that Pat had mind powers effective on all living creatures to some degree, but more so on the weak minded.

   To hear the men tell it, Pat had even brought the dead back to life. 

   Years before, after weeks of rain a worker had fallen into a flooded stormwater culvert. It was dangerous, fast moving water and nobody wanted to jump in after him. That would’ve been suicide. The worker was trapped underwater against some debris, they could see him from where they were. By coincidence Pat arrived at that moment and hearing from the men that somebody had fallen in he dove straight in after him. The men watched from above as Pat fought the rushing water and dragged the lifeless body out. 

   “This guy’s dead,” said the men, and so he was according to Malcolm, who told me the story.

   Malcolm was the depot engineer, well educated and not given to believing every rumor that came his way. “He wasn’t moving and he wasn’t breathing either,” added Malcolm. “He’d been underwater quite awhile before Pat dragged him out.”

   The gathered men stood by in silence and watched as Pat kneeled beside the corpse. The only sound was the rushing water in the culvert. Pat bent down and began to give the drowned man mouth to mouth resuscitation. Where he’d learned it nobody knew. Again and again Pat blew the breath of life into the dead man’s mouth. 

   Miraculously, within a few minutes the drowned worker was up and asking what happened and did anybody have a spare smoke? His were all soggy. 

  “Sure I can read Tom-the-Pom’s mind!” said Pat to me as the earthmoving machines rumbled past. “It’s not very difficult to figure out what he’s thinking. It’s obvious he resented being told to look for Ben.” Pat turned and faced me more squarely, then said, “You were just thinking that yourself, weren’t you?” 

   Surprised, I answered simply, “Yes I was.”

   Ben had gone a little crazy over the summer from the heat and dust of the Tristram Ave worksite, and now he was missing. No one had seen him for the last week. Pat, not wanting the police involved in a depot matter, had ordered a few of the men, Tom-the-Pom included, to search for Ben. 

  “It’s no trick to read a mind that small,” laughed Pat. “You see? Even you can do it.” 

   It’s true. Tom-the-Pom had crossed my mind as I was shoveling shit from the bottom of a ditch, before Pat had arrived. It’s not rocket science to labor at the bottom of a ditch, and I often let my mind wander as my body did the work. I’d been thinking about Tom-the-Pom and Ben. I didn’t much care for Tom-the-Pom. He used to taunt me mercilessly about my youth and my naivety and my being a yank. (The other men did too, but they weren’t so mean spirited about it.) He and Ben detested each other and their bickering often made for amusing reflections as you shoveled away the shit of the day. 

   Tom-the-Pom, who didn’t care for Pat and scorned (behind Pat’s back) his authority, certainly would have felt himself ill-used to be ordered to search for Ben.

   “Hell!” repeated Pat. “I know what that little pipsqueak thinks before he even thinks it mate. 

   “It’s reading your mind I’m having a little trouble with,” he added with a wink.

   “Huh?” said I. Every time I was convinced that Pat couldn’t possibly have mind powers, up sprang an instance of apparently that very thing. It was a delicious uncertainty to me, this whole mind powers thing.

    For I was young and hadn’t yet had much experience of the world and its wonders.

   Reading books had opened my mind to some things, while at the same time it had shown me how uninformed I was about everything else. The curse of dawning wisdom is that one begins to understand just how ignorant one truly is. 

    Pat was held in the highest esteem by most of the men at the depot. Did he, as was rumored, possess special powers? Most of the men thought so. Did men need to believe in myths, I wondered, to hoist one of their humble number higher up, that he might reside closer to the gods? Did we, as humans, need something greater than ourselves to help us to greatness? Considering Pat, the mythological larger than life man-among-men whom it was rumored held sway over life and death, why couldn’t he read a mind? 

   Especially a mind as feeble as Tom-the-Pom’s.

   By someone as powerful as Pat.

   Who was I, unschooled and young, to say it was impossible?  

   I wasn’t surprised in the least to learn that my mind was more difficult to see into than Tom-the-Pom’s. 

   I’d have been mortified if it were otherwise.