Sorta Like a Rock Star(43)

“I promise—I will never lie to you.”





CHAPTER 22





Prince Tony calls me on the phone from time to time, but I don’t really listen to what he says to me. It’s all crap about the seasons of life and the ebb and flow and other blah-blah stuff adults tell you when they don’t know what the hell to say. “Do you understand?” he always asks me at the end of the conversations, and I always say yes.





CHAPTER 23





“Father Chee?”

“Yes, Amber?”

“Why are dogs more humane than humans?”

“I don’t know.”





CHAPTER 24





Right about the same time my mom’s name starts showing up in the news, Private Jackson begins sending me one haiku a day in the mail.

He doesn’t write a letter stating that he is sorry for my loss, nor does he ask how I am doing or any of that other crap that doesn’t help. He just sends poems. And his haikus are not aimed at inspiring me or making me feel better or helping me deal with the loss. With words, he simply takes snapshots of simple things for me—like a leaf, a bottle cap, a snowflake, a bird in flight, an ant, a single breath—and when I read these haikus I sorta trip out on the image that is never good or bad, happy or sad, exciting or boring.

These images just are.

I begin to really look forward to reading PJ’s haikus, and going to check the mail is the only time I leave my new bedroom other than to use the bathroom.

Covering the four walls with Private Jackson’s haikus—one page a day—I slowly make my room into a cocoon of poetry.

Here is the first one he sends me:



I WAKE AND SIT UP





SQUIRRELS SCRATCHING FROM INSIDE





MY WALLS ARE ALIVE





At first, I read it—like a million times, wondering if Private Jackson was trying to communicate with me through metaphor.

I puzzled out all sorts of interpretations too.

Maybe it was a metaphor for the madness—or the chaos I was feeling as of late, which is sorta hidden in my chest and mind, but real?

I had been in my new room for days now.

Maybe it was a metaphor for the madness of the man who killed my mother?

Maybe PJ was telling me that I needed to wake up and see that things were still alive and moving around me, even though my mom was gone and I felt so all alone?

Maybe he meant something else, and I was just too dumb to understand?

But then I remembered what Private Jackson stood for, what he was all about—all of the Zen stuff.

I instantly understood that PJ woke up in the middle of the night and heard squirrels in his bedroom walls, so he took a mental snapshot of the moment and wrote me a haiku.

Nothing more.

The moment just was—free of the emotions and judgments or any of the other illusionary things we humans feel the need to attach to everything we encounter.

Reading Private Jackson’s haikus after my mother’s murder—I totally got why he had been writing haikus all this time, ever since ’Nam, training his mind to allow things to exist without all of the complicated emotional baggage.

Everything simply is—always and forever.



THE FALLEN LEAF FLIES





LIKE A YOUNG ICARUS AND





THEN DISINTEGRATES





I totally get haikus now. True.

And Private Jackson is my favorite writer.





CHAPTER 25





“Father Chee?”

“Yes, Amber?”

“Why does God allow horrible things to happen to good people?”

“I don’t know.”





CHAPTER 26





One day—on Donna’s iPod—I listen to Dinosaur Jr.’s “Puke and Cry” a million times in a row. I just set it to repeat the one song over and over again, and then I listen for several hours—tripping out.

I pretend that the lead singer—J Mascis—is singing me the song over and over again from Donna’s living room downstairs. Mascis—who has long silver hair, because he is old now—keeps on singing, “Come on down. Come on down. Come on down,” like he really wants me to come down from my little cocoon of haikus and misery.

I don’t come down, but I like pretending there is an obscure rock star who wants me to.

The battery finally runs out, and when I take the headphones off, my ears are ringing, J Mascis is gone, and Donna is calling to me, asking me if I want some soup.





CHAPTER 27





“Father Chee?”

“Yes, Amber?”

“When will it stop hurting so badly?”

“I don’t know.”





CHAPTER 28





GRASS TEA BOILED AND DRUNK





MY DOG ROLLS THROUGH TOMORROW’S





CUP—THERE’S ENDLESS TEA