BLUE SKY ABOVE, THE WHITEST SNOW--PLUM BLOSSOMS--bedded a stretch of Klickitat Street. A solitary man, Pliny, cane in hand, companion radio to his ear, suggested a college wrestler from the lighter weight classes--his spine arched forward--warily making his way. But really, Pliny was vintage. Two years ago in 1997, he had topped, as they say, the century mark.
The crablike steps halted. Porkpie hat sheltering his bald head, khaki windbreaker, a Stewart tartan Pendleton shirt, some denim dungarees, Pliny leaned on the cane as if by a thought arrested. Here, enjoying the wayward breezes of March 20, 1999, and out walking to shake up his hundred-two-year-old bones, he saw his tombstone, what might be written there.
That is, if he finished out the year. On January 1, 2000, a new century would begin, at least the way he counted. And if he was still standing New Year's Day next, he could lay claim to having lived in three centuries because that tombstone would say, 1897--20XX. Those X's for whenever his Maker punched his ticket to fly free through the cosmos.
The feet in red socks and dingy tennis shoes, the cane, again inched forward. He liked this sidewalk: no toe-stubbers catching him off guard. He didn't know when, where he'd leave, so he tried to take the best from every day. Didn't skip his walk for rain. Only ice kept him inside. As he told his caregiver, Maud, he just didn't feel right if his bones missed a good daily shaking.
And he could've added, if he didn't get angry listening to talk radio.
He thumb-rolled the volume, pressed the radio to his ear.
"And our guest today, Dr. Jonathan Strickland, is talking about the new medical marijuana law, which has only been in effect a few weeks--so give us a call."
Those damn Baby Boomers. They get sick, gotta smoke that locoweed. And they get sick and old, they throw in the towel, ask doctors to drug them dead.
Pliny clicked the radio off.
Death with dignity, they call it. What rubbish. I'd never make it this far thinking like that. You ask me, they're yellow--got no more backbone than a slug.
Ahead, small kids played baseball cross-street. He pinched the old leather case on the transistor radio. Where was the world going? He'd tune the Sony to KGUF and in minutes some asinine topic like this medical marijuana. He wanted to find and wrestle all those airwave crazies to the ground, make them admit they were wrong. And now he was mad, could spit blood, but he felt good.
One kid swung the bat, kerplopped the green, fuzzy tennis ball, and ran.
"Foul ball. Strike two. You come back."
"No way. That was in."
"Are you crazy, that bounced behind first base, I saw it."
Pliny squinted. Those arguing youngsters, damn Baby Boomers for parents. What did they have for a future?
Environment a shambles, the politicians back East, greedy corporations throwing people out of work, when were things ever this bad? Pliny's one wish, when his time came, was to leave Earth on some kind of high note. Say, like that time the President stayed overnight right here in Irvington. But the current mess--no, messes--he might not outlive.
A kid yelled, "Time out!" Several kids said dutiful hi's. Pliny paced his way across the street and from their courtesy, gave the kids a second chance to turn out okay and set things right. But they still needed more the real life to toughen them up, not that playing video games.
An empty block before him, Pliny clicked the radio on, brought it to his ear.
"Some medical conditions pot helps."
Ha! Those kids better watch out for ol' Grandma, her secondhand smoke, she gets one of those permits to self-medicate. It's a crazy world. Say, maybe I can't leave too soon.
Pliny listened, crab-stepping, negotiating sidewalk squares, radio first pressed to his ear, then held away, then back to his ear.
Brrrmmmmm. Overhead, a commuter plane readied for a landing at the airport by the Columbia River, the pilot taking the high-wing turboprop, sun glinting off its wings, in for a slow descent.
Yes, like that pilot, he just tried to get through life the best he could--clean living, hoping his earthly journey ended with a smooth landing.
He turned off the radio. Enough of that angry tonic.
Suddenly, from nowhere and now beside him in an outsized blue nylon parka this young black kid joined Pliny's deliberate steps.
"Mister, you old be walkin' out by yourself, how old you be?" The kid's face was sullen, but the cheery voice seemed to yearn for some fun.
"What's that? I know you?" How direct this younger generation was: this kid, a complete stranger, asking him his age. "I'm Pliny. What's your name?"
"Me? Oh, my name Jared. So how old, Mr. Pliny, you be?"
"One hundred two."
Jared jumped out in front of Pliny on the sidewalk, backstepping, shifty eyes wide open. "Whoa, you that old? Better watch your back. You need protection bad."
"Protection?" Pliny furrowed his brow. What can this skinny black kid possibly be talking about, he's shorter than I.
"Check this out. I got it new, a stiletto." Jared fished from the parka pocket a long knife, eight inches, at least. The bolsters, black plastic with an intricate inlaid metal design. He pushed a knobbed lever at one end and out flipped the spring-loaded blade.
Pliny gasped and, resting on his cane, stood stock-still. That blade, razor-sharp, seemed long enough to go in his chest and out the back. The black kid waggling the knife. Pliny's hand, frozen to the crook of the cane, lifted. Cane forward. Foot forward. He had to walk, had to say something.
"Stiletto, that sounds Italian," he said, with small satisfaction his gruff tone hid his shock at the weapon Jared freely displayed.
"Italian. Oh, yeah." Jared turned, walked forward. "The Godfather he be steady packin' one these. You feel safer already, huh, Mr. Pliny?" Then, without comment, Jared folded the knife blade back and slipped it in the pocket of his baggy parka.
Relieved, the weapon out of sight, Pliny felt he could speak his mind. Kids, senseless violence. "You ever think, someone saw you carrying that big knife, they'd think it's okay to knife you first?" He raised his cane tip off the ground, pointed it at Jared.
"Man, out here it's eye for eye like the Bible done said. I got myself to protect."
"Live by the sword, die by the sword," Pliny said loudly.
His companion grinned. "Hey, Mr. Pliny, I gotta book." He glanced away. "My crew--the Thirteenth Street Slitters--we be meeting over at Alameda School, right now." And those quick words out, Jared strided across the street, up 22nd.
Pliny's bones ached with great fear for the young black.
He couldn't start thinking where that life would go and leaned on his cane, thumb-clicked the radio, and slow walk underway, took in another earful.
"And besides they outlawed Freon--when?--right after the patent expired."
Criminy, not another conspiracy nut. People like her are a big waste of time, terrible waste, but I can't listen to anything else. They stopped playing my music so long ago. Oh, Bix Beiderbecke, he was something.
"Now what's your point?"
"No scientist, no responsible scientist has proved . . ."
Wait, what's this? Cane out of my hand. Cane on the sidewalk tripping me. Legs buckling. What? Oh, hard concrete. Back of my hand hurting, pinned on the cane.
Grassy smell.
Funny leg. Not moving.
Warm taste. Wet warm running down chin.
A little rest, then getting up.
"It's okay, stay here," the comforting voice says from nowhere.
Black everywhere.
Oh, crazy leg. Twitching and lame.
Slowly, slowly, stopping the world.
So quiet. Deaf and warm taste. Lost words. Forgotten sound.
Painful throbbing hand.
"And look at all the good Jimmy Carter is doing," the voice says from far away, from nowhere, from anywhere.
Nothing here. Nothing.
I'm up again, not even a cane. Where am I? It's 16th below Brazee, a huge crowd, the street blocked off. Here with my dear Sophie behind a wrought-iron fence 'round the front yard this big old Dutch Colonial, white with dark green shutters. I point at that door, all its polished brass, and tell Sophie, "The President, he slept here last night. He's inside right now."
She turns, her hair in a tight, fussy bun. "And you, of all people, get to meet Jimmy Carter!"
Secret Service--tall, muscular guys--everywhere and giving this crowd a real lookover.
Kids, parents, they're all chattering away; they want Jimmy Carter to finish his Presidential eggs and bacon; they can't keep their eyes off that front door, the microphone booms and TV cameramen, left and right. Everyone knows that that's the door.
"Ladies and gentlemen, members of the press." The guy speaking with the Southern accent, the short blond hair, he glances our way and I realize it's Jody Powell, the President's press secretary who's always on TV, except, of course, here, no TV studio, just tall trees overhead and crows cawing away.
"Pliny, I've been looking all over for you." Mrs. Reyes--I haven't been able to find her--pulls on my arm. "Hurry up, we're supposed to be over there."
We squeeze past the front gate--unbelievable, I'm leaving the crowd, even Sophie, because Mrs. Reyes has this ID.
Sudden cheers and the front door opens.
Jimmy Carter is shorter than I thought. Oh, five-seven, five-eight, but an upright posture from the military. Got on a dark suit and tie; he's probably meeting the locals down at City Hall for lunch; though for us, a cardigan and chinos would have been fine.
He's at the microphone and my neck feels prickly in back. Less than twenty feet away it's us he's talking about: the turnaround, people moving back to the inner city, learning lessons for elsewhere.
It's a quick speech and Jody Powell steps up and says with the tight scheduling, questions must wait until the noontime briefing downtown.
The President comes this way with Powell. Some woman stops him, talks with him. Now, he's right here, grinning recognition like he knows who we are.
"Mr. President," Mrs. Reyes says, "I'd like to introduce several of the Irvington Neighborhood Association's real doers." We all mumble, "Pleased to meet you." She says a little about me.
"So you're a real spark plug for good work, getting all those trees planted," the President says. The clear gray eyes pay attention to no one but me. I know I must say something. The President is waiting. The minicams are rolling. My mouth wants to say words, but the more I try, the blanker my mind seems.
I smile so he knows I heard him. He flashes the toothsome smile and before it fades, I blurt out, "Mostly maple, yes, that's what we planted, we planted mostly maple."
I can't believe what I said. Like some green eyeshade accountant, I start an inventory for the President of the United States about what we stuck in the ground?
But remarkably, it's exactly right saying this. "Maples, oh, fine choice," Carter says. "They're a high-quality, strong tree. And they'll last long after"--the dimple between his eyebrows moves--"we've all gone to our Maker."
"I keep a watch on my trees, sir." I am aware he's from the South, where the ma'am's and sir's are habit. "I'm retired, eighty-one this year, so I have time to do what good I can. Otherwise, I suppose I'd just be living longer to grow wronger."
The President grins and puts his hand to my shoulder. "Eighty-one? You don't know how heartened it makes me feel that people like you are volunteering to beautify your neighborhood."
"Oh, it's nothing."
"Your teamwork is just fine, I'll be telling my mother, Miss Lillian, about the cooperative spirit out here in Oregon the next time I see her."
I want to warn Jimmy about that hostage thing coming up, but it's too late. Smiling eyes, toothy grin, all his attention's with Connie Brennemann next to me; she got the Neighborhood Watch program going. I'd just spoil the occasion. And who else understands this Iran thing?
He sidesteps away, greeting others, then there's a limousine from somewhere, and Jimmy leaves. The sirens of the four motorcycle escorts say it's over.
"Habitat for Humanity, negotiating peace accords." The voice is still speaking, though much more softly.
Funny, the sirens are coming back.
Maybe the President forgot something.
I'll tell him this time to watch out for that ayatollah with the dead-soul eyes.
The voice whispers, "He didn't let the fact that he was in office only one term keep him from going on and doing great things."
Maybe I better not tell him. Jimmy's achieving what he's going to achieve. It's life, gotta keep on rollin', like that big river, Columbia. How does that go? Columbia, roll on. The river must find the ocean. No turning back. Can't be any other way. It's the way it was, the way it is, the way it will be: It's all the same water.
Yes, but is poor Jimmy ever in for one surprise with those hostages.
The husky front tires of a red-trimmed white ambulance rocked to a stop. The doors swung open each side. Engine left running, the two paramedics in whites were out immediately, for on the ground, sprawled between sidewalk and grass of the curbyard was a fallen sparrow of a man.
A man whose advanced age was not readily apparent to these rescuers, but which in a synchronous play of time was expressed where the ribbed and grooved rubber of the front right tire met the street curb into whose concrete form mere decades ago was affixed a horse ring.
An indestructible horse ring for tying up the reins of that earlier horsepower that moved buggies when Irvington was the new Portland subdivision. The horse rings, mounted in curbs all over the neighborhood, were archaeology, yes, but exactly the detail that never failed to please the elder Pliny, who now lay on the ground.
In practiced motions, the two gently loaded the white-sheeted gurney with the stricken man for whom a finely postured woman standing close by had dialled 9-1-1, medical emergency, after the shock of seeing, from her parlor window, this familiar walker past her place collapse.
The gurney lifted and locked on the van bed, the driver paramedic moistened a cloth to clean blood from Pliny's nose. "Took a nasty fall, but look at this old guy's color."
His partner got busy, attached monitors, slipped a yellow plastic mask over Pliny's face.
Ah, fresh air. Now where have I been? Maybe I keep my eyes closed, I can see Jimmy Carter one more time.
"His heart's strong, look at that," the driver said.
The woman from the sidewalk moved closer, beaming relief the dear man would make it.
The driver studied then dropped a paper chart, its tail spewing out of a recording device. His partner flipped on a dashboard speakerphone, punched up Emanuel Hospital ER.
"Hey, guys, we got an O on the way."
I must have taken a tumble and now I'm going to the hospital. Pliny's eyes opened.
"What O?" a voice crackled from the speakerphone.
"What, you new? O, open mouth, a pulse. Q, tongue out and gone, man. This one's an O and we're rolling."
The driver hesitated closing the other half rear-door and the two pairs of eyes met. Pliny remained among the living.
A professional, though, the driver walked once more to where he found his client, noticed a bulky transistor radio, the leather case half worn away, and picked it up, giving it to the shotgun paramedic. "Don't make them like this anymore. Keep it with the personal effects.
At Emanuel, a medical team held Pliny forty-eight hours for observation, ordering test panel after test panel with not one positive, told Pliny he was lucky to not have broken bones and then discharged him.
Back in his Old Portland Style bungalow, in the dining room, he enjoyed a hot meal of chicken nuggets and gravied mashed potatoes and talked with his caregiver from Daily Bread, Maud.
"So what did they say at the hospital?" His putting away the food pleasantly surprised her.
"Nothing. Those doctors told me keep doing what I'm doing,
everything works fine."
"They have any idea why you blacked out?"
"Oh, I wrote it down here, somewhere." He spooned up the last of the mashed potatoes, licked his lip, and eased out a folded paper from his shirt pocket. "Says 'possible ischemic event.' But those are just doctor words to get Medicare to pay up. I fainted, that's all."
"You were lucky."
"Yep, a bloody nose and this dream I can't shake out of my mind."
"What dream?"
"Oh, a crazy dream about when President Carter slept here in Irvington. I ever tell you I met him then, back in seventy-eight?"
"No."
"Anyway, got me thinking. I used to hope that when my time was up, after all these years I put into living, things might be decent with the world, maybe people would even be singing those high notes of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Well, you see, now, I have to settle for reality--could be one little tuba toot. I'm taking the river of life as it comes. That's how Jimmy did it and that's how he still does it, bless him."
"Your appetite, Pliny. This is the first time you finished before I left."
"You bet. I want to get out, shake up my bones. Sun's shining. Did I tell you the forsythia are in bloom this week?"
Tall Maud stepped around the table, patted him on the back. She had a meal for her next client to deliver. She had to leave now and see Pliny then tomorrow.