Authors: Tom Winton
For the next six weeks, I sweated the repercussions the postal service might take. I'd committed a genuine, certifiable federal offense. They could have put me away for a long, long time. But they elected not to. They didn't prosecute. And I knew exactly why they didn't. Because of the unwanted publicity such a decision would surely generate. Publicity, plus the fact that if I had to fight this thing, they knew I'd come back with both barrels blasting. Shoot, I had plenty of ammunition. They knew I'd kept notes, documentation, on scraps of paper. Dates, times, names and particulars of all the innumerable harassment episodes they had put me through. To this day I resent not going after them legally before I'd reached my breaking point. Not that I'm in any way sorry for decking those antagonists, that was very satisfying, but had I sought legal revenge, I just might have collected some serious compensation for all they had put me through. But there's no use in thinking about that now. Besides, if it happened all over again, even though I'm now forty-seven, I'd probably handle it the same way.
Ultimately, the postal service fired me. That was all they did. But, for all those weeks, I sure sweated. Only one thing, no, two things, that happened during this period made me feel I had any chance of getting off the hook. The two post office shootings. Yup, twice during those six weeks, there were post office killings in two different states - Arizona and New Jersey, I think. Regardless, in both cases, a distraught postal worker opened fire on his supervisors. When the smoke cleared, three people were dead. Though I didn't condone what they did, I knew firsthand what had driven those workers to such desperate measures.
Of course Maddy stood by me through the whole ordeal, constantly reassuring me (though she really didn't know) that everything would turn out OK. That time in a federal pen was highly unlikely. She backed me on everything I did, always cushioning the predicaments I got myself into with her indefatigable optimism. She helped soften all my problems except my hidden dark secret. Oh, she knew about Theresa, of course. When we were dating, I told Maddy all about our relationship. But, in the ensuing years, she had no idea just how strong my feelings remained for that phantom girl, how often I thought of her, how I still yearned for her. I felt awfully guilty about that, but awfully incomplete without Theresa also. She just wouldn't go away. Sure, as the years passed, I got caught up in the demands of everyday life and thought of Theresa Wayman maybe a tad less often. But that heavy sense of loss, and the intensity of my longings for her, never diminished. I felt like an adulterer even though over all those years I'd managed to never once cheat on Maddy Frances. I fought off more than a few opportunities for what some might view as recreational sex, non-committal flings where the participants rationalize that none of the unknowing parties will be hurt by what they don't know.
Over the years, I met my fair-share of flirtatious women, acquaintances as well as co-workers. During those periods when I was in sales, I even had some customers come on to me. Several ladies actually followed up the sale we'd consummated with a card, or a note of thanks, for helping them. Riiiiight! Although they had surely noticed my wedding band, those thank yous always included the sender's phone number. A few of them went so far as to call me at work. One told me, "I just wanted to tell you the bed I bought from you last month is well broken-in now and verrry comfortable. As a matter of fact, I'm in it right now!" And then there were the passes made by female co-workers, most of the time subtle invites to lunch or for happy hour drinks. But I always refrained. Each time I backed away, gently. Who knows, maybe I actually learned something that ill-fated night back in 1968. Maybe when I walked out that squalid room in the Flushing Projects something positive actually came with me.
That doesn't mean remaining monogamous was always easy. I know! I don't want to start any gender wars here, but a man is a different animal than a woman. Mother Nature must be one staunch feminist because she's damned men with a ceaseless desire to screw everything that walks. The urge may quell somewhat with age, but if you keep yourself in reasonably good shape that instinctive drive never completely dies. Some people feel it's outright unnatural to fight off such urges but our society trains males, from their crib days on, that one partner is all you get. And, difficult as it was, my conscience remained congruent with that ingrained belief. For more than two decades my record remained unblemished.
But the biggest test imaginable was yet to come.
Chapter 22
“
What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question usually posed to children. But until I crossed, ever so warily, that gloomy entrance to middle-agedness, that threshold with no welcome mat, I hadn't a clue as to what I wanted to do with my directionless life. Nothing I was qualified for interested me. My favorite aphorism was 'I'm too serious about living to be too serious about work'. I thought I'd always feel that way. But about the time I began reading at arm's length, and needed to spring for my first pair of reading glasses (four bucks at a Pompano flea market), it became crystal clear what I wanted to do with my life, whatever was left of it anyway. I wanted to write.
I finally realized that the creative well within me, no matter how shallow it might be, was the reason I never held a job for long. As necessary as the act is, soulless work ruins the best part of a man. It's an unconscionable waste of time. And that's why I never stuck with anything that my heart wasn't into. Always I was looking for something with substance. I needed everything or nothing at all. I had now come to realize that selling furniture, laying water mains, and everything else I'd sold the best part of my life for, had done nothing to satisfy my romantic or creative side.
I don't recall exactly when, but somewhere along the way, my intellect (limited as it may be) matured somewhat. My reading interests finally transcended the sports pages. I got into books; the real stuff, writings that brought to light the big picture. I started reading fiction, non-fiction, bios, whatever. It was on the pages of novels, supposed fiction, that I found the most truth about what is most important: the human condition. The older I got, the more I read. The more I read, the harder it became to find another good book, one that would hold my attention for more than just a few pages. I started thinking,
hey, I can do this, I can do better than this. What could be so difficult?
Then I found out.
For two years I stared at the same blank page of a Spiral notebook. Two years! I couldn't come up with word one. But I did read a lot about writing. Anything and everything I could get my hands on about the trade, I consumed with a passion. Passion? Me? Hrmmph! That was one long-lost emotion. This writing thing was something I thought I might really get into if only I could get started. But month after depressing month, I sat in my recliner, red notebook in lap, writing nothing. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why nothing would come. I know now. I simply wasn't ready. And deep inside my agonizing brain, just beyond my consciousness, something told me that. There were still basics to be learned before I could begin putting meaningful, interesting ideas on paper. Eventually, after feeling I had reasonably educated myself, I did put my well-chewed Bic to that curled and coffee-stained first page.
Just three chapters into the first draft, I decided on a title for my novel - 'Look What They've Done to Our Dream'.
As I continued to transfer the story from my head onto paper, I'd sometimes fantasized about the book becoming a tremendous success. Sure, I knew how minute my odds were in an industry as hyper-competitive as publishing. I knew my dreams were probably mental-masturbation. But still, I couldn't help musing that 'Look What They've Done To Our Dream' might actually sell, that my story might wake the sleeping masses, enlighten them, wake up the ninety-seven percent of Americans who were still asleep. Maybe even kick-start an eleventh-hour movement to save an America that had been all but trashed by the insatiable greed of the privileged few, the despicable ones, the handful that control big-business and politics, those 'profiticians'. I wanted everyday people to realize that 'The Dream' had become just that, and to see how close to the end of the 'Freedom Trail' we actually were.
I would tell readers how my protagonist, Billy Soles, a forty-nine-year-old power company lineman, had been beat up by an increasingly corrupt and uncivil American system. On the first line of the very first page, Billy would grab readers by saying, "I might still live in the same house on the same street as I did twenty-five years ago, but I sure as hell don't live in the same country." That would get their attention right off the starting block. Then Billy would go on to tell how, " A rich man's heaven is a working man's hell." He'd point out how, beginning around 1970, he watched the American culture and lifestyle decline. How the price of milk had risen from twenty-three cents a quart for the first time in his memory. How the cost of a cheap car quintupled from three grand to fifteen thou in just twenty short years. How a half-empty box of breakfast cereal skyrocketed from thirty nine cents to as much as four and five bucks during the same period. Bobby Soles was going to tell all about synthetic corporate inflation and how Wall Street cashed in on it while he watched his buying power and benefits steadily dwindle. I hoped that 'Look What They've Done to Our Dream' would ever so graphically illustrate how big government and big business have ravaged the souls and lives of the entire working class, how millions and millions of women, children and men like Bobby Soles had been financially and, in turn, spiritually assassinated.
Once I got the story going, my emotions and convictions spilled with the ink onto all those empty pages. For thirteen months, word by word, chapter after chapter, I plowed ahead. I wrote whenever I could, before and after work, on weekends, during lunch breaks. While driving in my van or scarfing down a meal, I'd compose scenes, watching them play out on my mind's screen. The story was coming effortlessly now because I was writing about the increasingly hard times Maddy Frances and I, along with all the other working beasts, had lived through for the past twenty years. Of course Billy Soles, my story's hero, was my own alter-ego.
There were times when I thought the story was no less than great. Other times I'd figure,
who the hell am I kidding, this is shit.
But Maddy's unrelenting enthusiasm and encouragement always kept me moving ahead. Well, almost always.
When I was about two-thirds finished with the first draft, I hit a wall. I didn't nudge it, I flat slammed into it. As if the jolt had knocked me unconscious, I just shut down. Literally overnight, my creative juices dried up. I already knew the ending but didn't know how to get to it. Nothing could help me advance it. I tried everything I could think of to get over, under, or around that wall. The harder I tried, the more confused I became. I was helpless. For a full two weeks, I failed to produce a thing. Another of my life's few passions had deserted me. I felt myself slipping deeper and deeper into a spirit-zapping black depression. My moods grew more and more foul. I actually became afraid, afraid of myself, and with good reason. Then, one ill-fated day, I hit bottom.
Maddy Frances had already gone off to work, and the kids to school, when I decided I'd dial-a-day. Hoping that a freebie day off might help my creative slump and my funk, I called in sick to Searcy's Furniture World where I was under-employed at the time. But two cups of coffee and two cigarettes later, I could see nothing was going to change. Slouched in the recliner with my pen and notebook, and a bad case of the black ass once again, all I could do was stare out the glass sliders and daydream.
After a while I started tracking a band of mean storm clouds that were quickly eating up the blue sky as they billowed high and ominous toward the house. Soon the dark clouds fused into one, and the entire sky was shrouded in a deep-purple blanket. It grew impossibly dark outside. The grumbling thunder grew louder. A fierce wind came up and began assaulting the big Poinciana in our little backyard. Birds fled as the tree's hulking limbs rocked and groaned. Smaller branches danced to a more frantic beat and the tiny leaves of the Poinciana shimmered in the sudden gale-force wind.
I became mesmerized by this apocalyptical scene. Kind of like the way you get when you're in the dentist's waiting room. With nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, you just sit there resignedly, trying to concentrate on the calm, fifty-gallon world of aquarium fish.
I sat like that in the living room for a long time, sulking. Just like the weather, my state of mind grew gloomier and gloomier. I began reflecting on my past life again. Since my fortieth birthday a few years prior, I'd been catching myself looking back more frequently. It seemed every time I got down I looked back for solace. But all I ever found there was that same old, heart-wrenching sense of loss. I also questioned everything in my life - my relationship with Maddy and the kids, the daily mundane and hopeless struggle for dollars, my own seemingly senseless, bland existence. Then I started playing that mortality numbers game again.