*
One of the things you do before a big trial is sit with the prosecutor and the potential witnesses and go over testimony and reports and evidence to make reasonably certain that there aren’t going to be any big surprises on the stand. A couple of days ago I sat with this old cowboy.
He come in with his son. They looked as out of place as I’m sure they felt, standing in our sleek gray conference room in their plaid work shirts, jeans and worn boots, their stained felt resistol hats in their hard, knobby hands. The boy was over six foot and baby-faced, his head lowered, his eyes not missing a thing. He stayed mostly silent, but when he did speak it was to the point and the point was sharp.
The old man was as lost as I’ve ever seen a human being. Lost, but desperate to gain his bearings back and to buck up under it. His hands shook violently with palsey and his red-rimmed eyes rattled around the room like mice looking for a way out of a cage. When his eyes lit on one of the detectives who’d been out at the scene, he hugged him tight, tears welling up and spilling over. He clapped him on the shoulder again and again, and turned to the prosecutor, telling him, “This here is a good man. A good man. You ought to know what kind of a man you have here, and he’s a good one.”
The detective turned away, wiping at his eyes.
Anyways, we sat down and for the next three or four hours we went through the photographs in evidence. We had gone through beforehand and took out all the bad ones so he wouldn’t have to see them, but there was not much use in that. The events of that day were burned into him in the way that those things get burned in, and as soon as he saw the first picture he was right back there. He pointed a gnarled finger at the computer screen and started pointing out details, and telling his story.
What was good was everyone in that room knew the deal and we let him go. You do more harm than good trying to keep them on point when they’re churned up like that. When they’re back in that awful place you gotta just let it spill out, and you go ahead and pick out what it is you were looking for in all that. You don’t try to corral him none, you just give him his head and hang on. There was a lady from victim witness in there, running out and coming back with water for the old man, looking over at the boy to see did he need anything, and whenever our eyes met she bit her lip and looked over at the ceiling behind my shoulder.
Sometimes I get so focused on the dead that I lose sight of how much the living suffer from these crimes. You ought to have seen how that boy looked after his old man. It broke my heart all over again. And you knew talking to everyone in the aftermath of what had happened that everybody in that family was just good folks. Just real good people who got visited by something evil. Some of them it killed and some of them it just left wishing they was dead.
Anyhoo.
*
It seems lately that everywhere I look I am confronted with the fragile, provisional nature of the structures we erect to protect ourselves and to give our lives meaning.
We are like children engrossed in our sand castles, ignorant of the hunger and ferocity of the sea for what we’ve built.
We move toward a more disordered state.
Entropy increases.
*
Last night we had a fancy dinner out with my mom and step-dad. Nice, semi-pretentious italian joint. They had a price fixe meal where you got an appetizer, a main course, and dessert for thirty bucks.
It was really nice to sit and listen to everyone, share a couple of bottles of great wine, taste each other’s food, and be together in a fancy place with folks in starched and pressed white shirts taking care of us, pouring our wine, bringing us more spoons, making sure we were contented.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating:
This is why we are alive.
Go you ahead and eat too much good food in the company of good people. Have you that second bottle of red. Have that white truffle oil gelato.
And don’t be shy with your hugs and kisses. With your small kindnesses and large.
We are all of us going to be rolled over by the big machine. It’s a slaughterhouse out there.
Let’s be good to each other and ourselves while we’ve got the wherewithal to do it.
***
Namaste.
***
The Dishwasher's Tears 
You wrote two books right there. You did and it reminded me of what you do for your living and how I can’t even imagine what that’s like.
Then you went and said what I was trying to say with my post today and I felt like okay, I can’t imagine the one thing but I sure do know what he’s talking about.
Thanks, Scott. As always, I am glad you’re here on this earth.
I loved your post today, too.
You know what’s what, is what.
yrs-
Scott
makes me feel like crying and going to hug someone near.
That sounds like a terrific idea!
yrs-
Scott
You wrote two books here and illustrated them to boot and good bog the fjord the crossing gave me the deep down shivers and as in all your work your art I thought I am this is who I am. The stitchless humanity that runs vibrant through your work. I am so damned lucky to know you.
As for the man and his son and the details of their clothes their demeanor the victim witness biting her lip your language all of it brilliant riveting writing not to mention the rough water underneath it all the true of it. I held my breath. I don’t know if you ever think of publishing these of changing them a little bit and publishing them as short fiction or even of putting together a book of short stories. You should. You have the goods.
Thank you. First thing I read on a Saturday morning that looks like spring and you spun the top of my head off.
love,
Rebecca
Thank you for all that. It is good to hear things like that from time to time, it is.
I do want to forge some kind of something out of all this writing, all this horror and shining beauty, I just don’t know what it might turn out to be.
But the gears are turnin’.
yrs-
Scott
Brilliant. Thank you.
Keep yourself strong. I don’t know how you do it.
Well, I guess I do it just like every one of us does.
We don’t have no choice about it is how.
yrs-
tearful
Your writing caught in my throat like a cry that can’t get out. You did write 2 books there, I agree with my bloggy friends about that. You have a gift. I hope you find some grace in the writing and sharing of it, and figure out the perfect somplace to put these gems. I do see a book here, I do. I read lots of em, lots of short stories and essays and memoirs, and you are every bit as good, and the best part is, I get to keep reading you. Your posts come like terrible little gifts of truth and beauty, and I’m glad they do not end like a book.
Oh the things you see, the things you carry around in your head, the things people do to each other. Thank you for witnessing, testifying and still managing to keep your shit together enough to come back the next day and the next.
xo
and terrible doesn’t sound right….. they are as beautiful as they are horrible. I know, from your art, that you must know what I mean to say, even though the right words fail me today….
Mel-
Terrible is my favorite word, along with awful. In their old, biblical meanings.
Terrible: Formidable in nature, exciting extreme alarm.
And awful, inspiring awe.
So, I was glad to hear you use it for my work, I knew exactly what you meant.
I am so grateful for your thoughts.
yrs-
Scott
Such a powerful post Dishwasher. You juxtapose these two events, the horrors of the court house as it reflects the tragedy of the crime on this ordinary family, followed by the pleasures of a shared dinner when people are well cared for and loving towards each other. Love and hate.
As you say it’s a slaughterhouse out there. It certainly can be when the hate overcomes the love and takes over. Thank you for your exquisite writing.
Elisabeth-
Thank you for reading, and for sharing your insightful thoughts.
I am glad to have you here.
yrs-
Scott
You write simply and powerfully about age-old things. And each time you write about these age-old things, you write about them in a way that no one else has. Bravo.
Elizabeth-
i’ll be dog.
thanks.
yrs-
Scott
Stunning. You take me right there, sitting in that room. God save us all.
I don’t have words lately so i cant really tell you how this rocked me brought me low and lifted me up too.
you. what you do. thank god you do it.
Angella-
As always, thank you.
yrs-
Scott
You know Scott, out here in the rougher, poorer areas of South Africa we live with so much violence that it often leaves me wordless, just gutted or blasted. But you are writing from the inside and you know violence too, what it does, the mess left in others’ lives, what goes on haunting those left behind.
I’d like to see what emerges, what the writing you do will turn out to be. The horror and the shining beauty.
Louisey-
I am often aware that my own reaction to horror and violence is a kind of proof that my life is probably much too easy. You know what I mean. Somehow it seems like an affront, something wrong, terribly out of place. But if I lived like the great majority of folks on this planet, it might look different to me. More like weather.
Just a feature of the place, another hard fact in a world full of them.
Anyway, thank you for your thoughts.
yrs-
Scott
Heartbreakingly beautiful writing about the old man and his son dealing with the aftermath of life crushing violence. Thanks for the juxtaposition of the joyful time with your family and the reminder to do more of the latter. Awesome art, Tearful.
x0 N2
Thanks, N2!
yrs-
Scott