… even more unbelievable

Christmas card, 2022

He invited us to the bar for his 30th birthday and gave out
copies of 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth.
With only a page for each thing, he threw it like a frisbee.
Two years later he took his life. His brother can’t believe
it’s been 30 years and asked you to share the invite and
give him a headcount for the bar, the same bar we were
flung 50 things to do that were too simple to say No to.

It’s written, Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter,
and we did. But you had a dream over the summer and ever
since we’ve talked every other Sunday until one of our phones
died. On the ride down you spoke of him seeing through all
the bullshit of fitting in and how comfortable you felt wearing
the small town you had come from with him around. I spoke
of him seeing me avoid places and how he walked me into
the showers and stood me at the locker of a girl I liked.

It was as if he saw us as the separate worlds we were
and in his book, we each had a page on how to be saved.
There was no end to his stepping into the shit we got in.
He was saving the world by savings ours a fight at a time.
It took a decade to see self-defense had me swinging wildly
and most had landed on those closest to me. It took another
to see I had protected the same sheepish self by scattering.

Looking up at the bar to see what’s on draft, I didn’t
see myself as one who saw the crucified Lord and said,
He could save others but couldn’t save himself. But what
do you say of someone who gives you a gift on his birthday
then takes from you the gift of his life? Deciding to come
tonight, a lyric came from my short-lived folk-song days,
the Lord’s cross may redeem us but our own just wastes
our time. How much time had we wasted giving others
the shit that was ours? Not coming could have saved us
from answering that, but this isn’t for that. This is for
him and coming for him simplified our decision. I grab
our beers and find you in the corner with his brother.

We heard theories from friends but none from the family.
His brother is certain it was the concussions from football,
all the times he was told to shake off the stars he saw after
the little white packet held under his nose brought him back
from the dead. He asks if we agree it was CTE and looks off,
smiling at the line to get in. He’s not sorry the count was low
and I’m not sorry for wanting to rip into it being that simple.
I was there. The trainers didn’t have the little packets of white
we did. We didn’t need a hit to the head to see we were stars.
It’s not Yes, but for the brother of a fallen brother, it’s not No.

I knew a pastor who wasn’t being divisive by quoting Dylan
in the pulpit, Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord,
but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. He didn’t try to
further scatter the flock by telling them as they left, Now
church begins. He shook hands with the deacons he knew
felt moved to vote him out. We weren’t looking for fights
but we weren’t looking for a good book either. What did
he expect us to do with our copies of 50 Simple Things?
Were we to follow his lead and frisbee them to others
who didn’t see it was their world that needed saving?

I recognize instantly the voice calling me from behind.
It’s Ronny, 6’5” and his face still as boyish as ever.
He calls my name again, shakes his head and says, No
shit. He extends his hand, extends the handshake into
a hug and says, I know how close you two were. His
hold on my arm starts to hurt as he says, Remember
how we took turns on the boombox for warm-up drills
and you two would stay behind in the cage and change
the song to the guitar solo on Stairway to Heaven before
running on to the court. I never saw Gilchrist get bullshit
until you popped out his Funkadelic tape. For God’s sake
we’d have gotten massacred if coach benched you two.

Again he says, For God’s sake, pauses, eases on my arm.
He used to tell that story to the troops when they needed
to forget the day, and goes on to say, Don’t get me wrong,
it’s unbelievable what guys do to each other. I’ve been there.
But what they’ll do for each other is even more unbelievable.
Thing is, they won’t tell you that’s why most guys go back.

He lets go of my arm. He doesn’t tell us he’d still be there
if they hadn’t cut him off after 4 tours. We don’t ask him
why they felt life back home would be any safer without
the brotherhood he left behind in Afghanistan. He goes
on about crushing water bottles into sandals for the kids.
When one story ends, we don’t have to ask for another.
Ronny leads us in conversation until it’s time to leave.

I still listen to Stairway to Heaven for the lyric after the solo,
And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last,
when one is all and all is one, to be a rock and not to roll.
He would sing along to, and not to roll, punch me hard
enough in the arm to know I was close, then beat me up
the stairs and on to the court. If being a rock was a Yes,
did suicide save him from a No I was too close to see?

32 years ago he told us not to waste his time if we couldn’t
make it to the bar for his birthday, as if it was a simple thing
and if we were going to complicate it, we needed to rewind
and listen harder for the Yes within our No. I had scattered
before you and on the ride home I ask if you knew any more
about the year he cut himself besides his starting a recycling
business and buying coffee for homeless Vets to listen to
what it was like in Vietnam. All you can add is his joining
an outdoor theater group and how you got a chance to see
him play Beowulf. It’s not surprising to hear he missed his
calling and his sister got her MD because of what he did
and now oversees an outreach clinic in San Francisco.

A Jesuit priest wrote, we are not human beings in search
of a spiritual experience but spiritual beings pursuing
a human experience. The church separates his later years
spent studying paleontology. I see his studies as evolving.
I can’t see the missing link but I can see being spiritual as
complicating our human pursuits and the experience being
a fight we never win until we see it was never ours to fight.

Ronny said not to get him wrong and I won’t. He was
upstairs. The cheerleaders had already called his name.
I wasn’t and it wasn’t the two of us swapping cassettes.
I saw whose finger was on the Fast Forward and who
was letting a little more of the line play before the solo,
there are two paths you can go by but in the long run,
there’s still time to change the road you're on, as if with
each play he listened harder for the tune of that line but
it never came and he was left, to be a rock and not to roll.

I can see some looking up from the invite you shared
and asking why they would waste any more time on
the life he wasted. He wasn’t wasted on us but tonight
we couldn’t be a rock like him. The road we were on
was to not come. There was still time and we rolled
with changing it. On the ride down you went through
a rollcall of names we gave kids. After each we shook
our heads in disbelief at what guys do to each other.

You can’t remember if we had a name for Ronny.
I press pause on our conversation to listen for it
but if we had one, its day is gone, forgotten, or
forgiven. Forgiveness often comes up every other
Sunday but we never figure out why it’s ourselves
we forgive last before a phone dies. Does the self
fear it’ll be forgotten once all its shit is forgiven?

It’s written, the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf,
lion and yearling will lie together and a child shall
lead them. Christmas is coming and that line came
to me after we parted ways from the Park-n-Ride.
I saw Ronny leading the wolves of former selves
and wrote it down when I got home and it led to
all these scattered lines, as if they were the tune
to come when at last, all is one and one is all.

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Joshua Winant writes from a dirt road in the foothills of New Hampshire.

Courtesy the Lydwine Archive