The Juggler

I'd broken up with a woman back in Rhode Island; given away my truck, my canoe and a stereo, grabbed my guitar and went out the door, and onto the road down the east coast. I really missed her son, though, who would have been my stepson, I guess you could say; I knew it wasn't working out with the kid's mom, but that wasn't the kid's fault. It was like I'd lost my friendship with him, for no good reason at all, and I took it hard. Outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, it was foggy, and it was early morning, and a van stopped to give me a ride. Inside was a man driving, a woman, and another young boy. This little fellow was about five, big eyes, kind of sad, but playful at the same time. He wanted to play my guitar. Not in the van, his father said from the driver's seat. There was a strong tension between the man and the woman, who was in the front passenger seat. She was pulling away from him, emotionally, it seemed to me. She kept looking out the window. She didn't relate much to the boy; it was as if she wasn't his mother, I thought. And, as it turned out, I was right about that, it seemed. She was quite beautiful; I could see why the man had fallen for her. She was also close to the boy, I could tell; they were good friends, although I could see, she was sick inside, kind of like how I felt, when I realized I had to leave my little buddy, back in Providence. It wasn't his fault I had to go, it's just the way things were.

At a roadside rest area I played my guitar and watched them; I let the boy play too. At one point the man told the boy to get his balls; the boy ran to the van, and fetched five brightly-colored, but differently-colored, balls, which the man proceeded to juggle. He was really excellent at it. The balls flew, left and right, around his head, across, in front, behind. He was a master. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the woman. She'd seen it before, many times. She held the boy close to her. The fog lifted from the grasses beside the road; other travelers came and went. She watched the man a little, but in general, she had a hard time being around him. I got the feeling he wanted something from her, and she couldn't give it. I was right again, as it turned out. They were from Virginia; she was going out to LA; it was her van; and he and the boy were going to Vegas. The boy was his. His mother had died a year ago of cancer; how sad. That's some juggling skill, I said to the guy. He was a gentle guy, but hard in some ways too. The problem with it, he said, was that he was impulsive. He'd be in Wal-Mart or someplace, and have some stress, be unable to pick what fruit to buy or something, and he'd just start juggling. Five apples. Or five oranges. He'd been arrested for it, actually, when he didn't have the money to pay for the fruit. More often he'd bring home more than he could eat, a couple of them bruised.

I reconsidered my original plan, which was to stop in on a friend in Memphis; I figured, if I got a good ride way out West, nice folks, drive all night, I could be through the Plains in a day or two; they'd get me out by the Grand Canyon no problem. I'd have to give up Memphis though. I got up to walk around the rest area before we got back into the van; a broken shoelace was bugging me and making it difficult just to walk around. I cursed the shoelace; maybe I'd needed part of it, to hold my pants up, or hold my pack together. But it was making my life hell now. I needed a Wal-Mart, buy some more shoelaces. That way I could at least go for a walk.

Back with the little family, there was tension you could cut with a knife. Something had been said. It wasn't my business. I played with the boy; I could relate to him. We had some room in the back of the van and got a card game going. Central Tennessee, then Nashville, flew by, outside the van windows. His name was Ricky. He had an active fantasy life with his action figures, his toys and a few things scattered around the van. He was looking forward to school in the fall, kindergarten. He called his dad, the juggler, Scott. Scott was driving, a scowl on his face. Deb, the woman, stared out the window but both of them occasionally joined our conversation.

The hot morning sun was high over this town in western Tennessee when we got off the road and pulled into a Wal-Mart. I needed shoelaces, but that's not why we stopped; I forget what they said they wanted. Ricky was bugging them for an action toy but Scott said no, not now. Deb bit her tongue. I could practically hear her say to herself, why not, just one. Sure, times are tough when you're traveling. You never know how long the money will last; where the next work will be; how much it will cost to settle in at some new place. Sure, some of these people have trust funds, maybe they don't have to worry about it, but I could relate to Scott. He was trying to be responsible, hang onto his money, take care of his kids' primary needs. Maybe he was weighing the possibility of the bus or the train. Their time as a threesome was clearly limited. I could tell by the look on Deb's face.

At the Wal-Mart Deb left her purse in the van; the four of us walked toward the entrance, the boy asking repeatedly for an action figure. I almost went my own way, got my shoelaces, left them to their own devices, but I didn't, and that was a fateful move. At the entrance of the WalMart, a veteran selling poppies; he had them on a card table, in a loose pile, and he was doing a brisk business. They were fake, but had pins in them and a small back, so they had some substance, and they were to be pinned on you, in remembrance of the veterans. I had no problem with the veterans, but didn't have much in the way of money; I said hello to the guy anyway, and we kind of lingered near him as Deb and Scott decided what to do. Deb couldn't take it any more, wanted to buy little Ricky an action figure, was going to go back to the van to get her purse, while we decided we'd stand there a minute or two and wait. A fateful minute or two. Scott the juggler, and I, standing a little behind him, off to the side, the big blue WalMart sign behind us, people coming and going, the hot Tennessee sun blazing down on us.

The veteran, Ron Whitehall, was a disaster waiting to happen. Court testimony later showed it. He'd gone off to Vietnam; had come back damaged, anti-social; did his part for the veterans, selling his poppies, but was clearly disaffected by the people, wealthy, middle-class, even poor, the long lines of people coming and going, carrying everything- groceries, fishing poles, stereos and cd's, new pants, you name it. He was nice to people who bought poppies; inside he was a volcano waiting to blow. I could see it coming. It was like a movie, unfolding in slow motion, in front of my eyes.

The guy that lit the fuse was Mark Morris, a Texan, silk shirt open halfway down his chest, million dollar hair and some jewelry that caught the sun every time he turned around. Some heavy-set Mexican guy was walking with him, slipping back in the shadows, maybe a bodyguard or something. Talking right across Ron Whitehall, the veteran, he asked Scott if there was a Starbucks somewhere in town. Scott, a juggler, a traveler from Virginia, had no idea.

Whitehall, the veteran, probably knew exactly where one was, but they hadn't asked him. He grumbled beneath his breath. Something about the situation attracted Morris; he came closer to us; he glanced at the poppies. Buy a poppy? asked Whitehall. Gave at the office, said Morris, snidely. It came out in court, later, that he also had been in Vietnam. My guess is, he was gay. He liked Scott; he was flirting with Scott; they talked about Starbucks, good coffee, small southern towns. Whitehall held his rage; wanted to kill Morris, no doubt, but both were in pretty good shape; I had no idea how that would turn out. Morris, anyway, had two things going on. First, he was flirting with Scott, I could see, and Scott let that happen, paralyzed, waiting there at the WalMart. Second, he knew he was getting under Whitehall's skin. Had unfinished business with a guy like Whitehall.
He got more and more reckless, daring, flamboyant. It's like he was saying, I fought for my country, I'll do what I want, I'll say what I want, outside of WalMart at ten in the morning.

Another guy on the scene: Johnson Brooks, age 16, just got his driver's license, on his way to get his first hunting license; maybe he was driving too fast. He was coming down the aisle in an old Buick, one of those cars that obstruct your vision just by virtue of being so huge, but then, its hugeness turned out to be a virtue in the end. He was going too fast, but then, in the WalMart parking lot, even 15 or twenty was too fast. He was coming toward us, but turning around the center place where they had lots of shopping carts, to find a parking spot maybe in the next aisle, when his attention was distracted by juggling- Scott was juggling five poppies.

Over by us, Morris had made a comment about the town; Whitehall had taken offense; they were clearly ready to fight, for no reason at all, really. Whitehall was on his feet; the veins in his neck were about to pop; he measured Morris, who, as I've said, was also in pretty good shape; Whitehall was boiling over, was ready to strike. But he turned around at the last minute, and saw Scott, juggling poppies. That did it; that snapped him. He lunged at Scott, gave him a huge push, over toward a lawn swing, a two-person construction with metal poles, canvas seats and bricks around it, holding it up. It all happened very quickly; I saw it, as I said, in slow motion. Scott had actually paid for the poppies, put money on the table, court records showed; there was no way Whitehall could have known it, though. Scott, the poppies, the lawn chairs, the bricks, all smashed up against that cerrated wall with the big blue W sign on it, a huge pile of mess.

Johnson Brooks had seen the juggling, just like I did; the five poppies, up, around, over Scott's head, sailing with the lightness of a feather, yet fast, bright red, and dazzling. Then, instantly, he saw Whitehall push Scott back into the swing. But with his car he hit the boy, Ricky. Ricky had been coming back toward WalMart with Deb, was a little ahead of her, and ran right out into the little roadway, that area with the white stripes on it, right in front of the entrance, at just the wrong time. If he saw his dad at all, he didn't see much. The Buick hit him and in a second he was under the car; he was only five; he didn't' have a chance. Deb, across the crosswalk, by the shopping carts, turned white as a sheet. She hadn't been prepared for the boy to get out of her grasp and run out like that; she just hadn't foreseen it. She also had perhaps been distracted by the juggling or the commotion. She yelled out, and Johnson Brooks stopped; too late. The boy, run over by the car, yelled out, trapped beneath it. He ended up in the hospital for three weeks, but he lived through it. Resilient little fellow; had no idea what was going on around him, though.

His father didn't live through it. Scott was thrown so hard against the lawn chair that he tumbled down with it as it fell and into the bricks, which hit him in just the wrong way, and killed him instantly. With people screaming about the boy beneath the car, and Whitehall and Morris, not believing what had happened; even sirens, within a couple minutes, but the silence over there, under the fallen lawn swing, was deafening. Morris also had turned white as a sheet, watching the violence of Whitehall explode in front of us, but not directed at him. He knew he'd provoked it; he knew he had some responsibility in the matter. This was not how it was supposed to turn out at all.

There was an involuntary manslaughter trial, and Whitehall did pay a price. He was mentally not well; there was no apologizing for him; he had killed a man. That trial was a couple of years later, though, the first time after that day that I actually got to face him in court, and also, by the way, the first time I'd see Morris again.

About three in the morning, after a very long day and long night, I was at the boy's side in the hospital. They were having trouble finding next of kin for Scott; the boy seemed to be all there was. The boy was recovering; drugged up, but clearly going to live and recover. I was glued to the spot; I couldn't move; I was sticking by the boy. They determined that I was not his immediate relative, and they tried to get me out of there, but they let me visit him regularly; watching me every minute; in the end, after all, he had no one else that they could find. Finally Deb showed up; she'd clearly been crying, up all night. She loved the boy dearly. She'd also loved Scott, in her own way. She had no idea about his next of kin; she didn't know him that well. She really had no idea what would happen to the boy now.

She was engaged to someone else, it turned out, a man was waiting for her in LA. She'd been engaged all along. Yes, she'd had second thoughts. Yes, she was attracted to Scott; they were old friends. But no, she had a life waiting for her in LA, a boyfriend, a wedding, an extended family. She had to get out there and live that life eventually. You keep the van, she said to me, you can have it for a couple of weeks; I'll fly to LA and come back and get it later. You keep the van; stay near this boy, don't let anything else bad happen to him. I'll wire you some money, later, if you need it, and if I can get some.

She was true to her word. She came back for the van; she gave me some money; she made sure the boy got out of the hospital, and it did work out. I fell in love with a local woman after a while, and then didn't mind hanging around such a town; I worked as Wal-Mart parking lot security, of all things, for a couple of years, until I got on my feet.

Ricky lived with a foster family for a while; it took more years still for the state of Tennessee to give in and decide that I would be an acceptable family him, but they did, eventually, and I adopted him; by then I was married though, and much more stable. All those years I'd kept my eye on him; it seemed like I saw him as recovering from trauma, as still needing a lot of care, much longer than he actually was; he turned out to be very resilient, as I said. Nurses and other local people came around and took care of him for years; he had a kind of family, and belonged here, much sooner than I did.

We had another real close friend in those days, and that was Johnson Brooks. He was only sixteen on the day that he'd hit the boy, but as it turned out, they had a kind of bond; they got along really well, and after a while we'd spend whole weekends out at his place, outdoors, tromping around, doing all kinds of things together, mostly on weekends. He, Johnson, turned out all right too; he grew up, got a job, got a family. He always felt bad for what he'd done, but, he also made up for it, in a lot of ways.

The trial of Whitehall brought out all kinds of emotions, but there wasn't much to say about it. Whitehall was guilty. Morris came up from Texas and pointed that out too. Morris was as wealthy as he looked; on that day he had been on his way to Nashville, where he was underwriting a musician, until the guy made it big in Nashville. In court, he was a little different from the way he'd been on that morning, though the Mexican guy was still there, silent, in the background. Both guys, Morris and Whitehall, had been in Vietnam; though people asked both of them about it, neither gave details about what had happened. Morris, the best I could figure, had served bravely. He'd given at the office, as he'd said that day; he'd come back, and he'd gotten over it. Whitehall, on the other hand, was a much murkier story. At some point some guy came up to me, drunk, and told me that Whitehall had told the draft board he was gay, trying to get out of the service, and it hadn't worked. Worse yet, word got out, and he was harassed while he was there; who knows what happened. I never found out if this story was actually true. It didn't matter. He was a sick man, he was the guy that killed Ricky's father; in court, he seemed withered, almost dead, but he broke down, and he apologized; Ricky forgave him, I think. By then Ricky was about seven, but I remember watching him and realizing, when you're five, you think you're the center of the world, and it just naturally follows: he had assumed that the whole thing was his fault, as he had also, probably, with his mother. And he was relieved now, I think, to find out that it really wasn't.

July 2007