The Presence

 

“In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.”

—Alex Haley

            We all, in America, learned something from Plymouth Rock—or should have, in one metonymy or another. I’ve been an on-the-beat journalist for three quarters of my life, always aspiring to ‘crack the code’ of that iconic rock—a Rosetta Stone of sorts—and to simultaneously ‘find the good’, as Sir Alex certainly has shown. I’m retired now, but not remotely finished. You may have seen me in syndication here and there—I won’t brag about Pulitzers that may or may not have been awarded; I will say, more to the point of this finale: perhaps you’ve yet to see the best of my reporting. And that’s because the object was never really up to me, but rather how it came to be, and how somebody listened.

            In kindergarten,.. third grade,.. maybe seventh, you dug your class a time capsule—likely for a lark and what the teacher touted for curricular articulation. I remember bringing in a baseball card—the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, because I had a double—and a poem I wrote about… I really can’t remember. We buried a metal box that tried hard not to look like a little coffin—it ridiculously had a lock and key to keep the worms from getting in and regarding the content as a corpse. I asked my teacher—I think this was in third grade, but in a way it wouldn’t matter—about the difference, coffins and capsules: why do we bury the bodies of our relatives, never to be exhumed, and now these trinkets, planning on some uncalendared reunion to dig them up and say, ‘hey, we were thinking of Bob Gibson back then. Now we’re old enough to toast that memory, unaware (unless we google) if the man himself is alive or dead.’

            Of course we almost never see such an eventuality—there are countless capsules begging to be found, being crushed by forgetfulness and shifting ground.

            I’ve been looking back at the rough notes I attempted on the person in my neighborhood that neither I nor anyone I knew... really knew. For her sake, for mine, for anytown “in a pretty how town”, to quote the great e.e. cummings, I’ll leave this all anonymous. But be assured, the landscape and its creatures are quite real. The ‘quite’, I realize, is a qualifying particle naïve to journalistic code. So be it—I’m retired—and weirdly I have nothing to answer for (or everything, depending on the meaning of the universe—and yes, I’m going to take that on).

            Because increasingly, no one really does that anymore, journalistically. I’m not talking about religious cults, or dogma, or primers, prim and proper. I’ll start this dredge with an interview I had in high school, mid-seventies, when Stefani and Linda (not their names) agreed to be on record:  

            “I don’t know,” shrugged Stefani, “she’s always hanging around—”

            “That’s not quite how I’d put it,” said Linda. “Hanging around is, um… something between, um…”

            “So I don’t mean really ‘hanging out’ like we want her there.”

            “Yeah, that’s why I wanted to say: she’s there in a way that isn’t good or bad, just… present.”

            “Exactly,” said Stef. “We even call her, behind her back, ‘The Presence’.”

            I laughed at that, “sounds like a name of a band: ‘The Who’.”

            Linda had the wherewithal to contemplate ‘The Guess Who’ as an alternative, but then asked me to cross that out. “It’s all kind of a guessing game, isn’t it? Trying to figure people out.”

            “Or change them with a nickname—she must hear it when we whisper.”

            “Well, why do you whisper? Why not just go up to her and say, ‘hey Presence, we’re going to be downtown studying for mid-terms’?”

            “Yeah, good point. And she would show up…”

            “And just sit there in a booth close enough to listen, but not contribute anything; asking seems to blank her out—”

            “You mean ‘freak her out’?”

            “No, I mean…” Linda, of the two, had more empathy, always searching for the most precise word. “I mean, when asked something, she’d stop looking at the event or person trying to talk to her and just… blank her eyes.”

            “Blink?”

            “No. Blank. But not glazed over or cata-…what’s that word?”

            “Catatonic?”

            “Yeah. Not like that, either. I’m sure she’s thinking about things.”

            Stefani suddenly grabbed my writing arm. “You’re not doing a story for the newspaper, are you?”

            I honestly wasn’t, so I paced my response to ensure them in a Haley-way (though I had yet to read his works), “No, not for publication or any exposure of one of our peers, especially if she’s troubled.”

            “Is she?” Linda wondered. “I don’t know…”

            “Or if others are troubled by her. No, I just want to make a memoir—personally, so far—of how our town is… ours. Or something approximately so.”

            “You’re well meaning, I think. And a little weird.”

            “Can I quote you on that?” They both nodded ‘sure’ and went off to what they had been doing.

             

            I have to say this—somewhat off the record; I took notes on everything, which is not the spirit of how one should go to parties or find a space in a yearbook to sign. The Presence slid through teenage protocols, showing up when this was this and that was that, putting on an oddly fitting uniform, hiding acne with a double blush, loving probably something in us, though God forbid such feelings go detected or awry. I myself had a secret crush on Andy Gibb—would hate the world to know me for that fact and, well,.. back to proper journalism.

            Another anyone in our pretty how town committed suicide—so the jury stands—when efforts in his car radio heists tripped into the zones of nearby gangs.  Perhaps he was also in a gang?—no one really knew. And if that night a friend was with him, he’s been mum up to this day. Isolated, then, he pulled himself with broken legs to a playground at the outskirts of our school district, and found the strength to hang himself from the swingset bar. Or perhaps his rivals chased him there and, worse than Jesus, broke his legs to prove their point: you don’t trespass established maps, whatever loot abbreviates some tawdry legacy. This happened during the summer; most found out in ripples returning to school. I couldn’t interview him, of course, nor any ‘next of kin’—his friends, like me, were numb and devoid of things to really say.

            Yet the person I’m reporting on—not him, not any of his friends—burst lonely into tears when others in the corridor were merely shaking heads.

            The decades plodded on—or sprinted, as they also do—and I hid within the bureau where I worked, several states away. I had my toll of Reagan overload: voodoo economics and “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” His effect in putting an end to the Cold War became a strawman argument—who could disagree that he played a role in ‘who-will-blink; let-us-see’? History had its dress rehearsal with Khrushchev and Kennedy, and I tried to bring that into my reporting, critically. We feigned victory—Cuba kept its Castro while our ships set their sights on southeast Asia. To this day our troops salute with an inward palm, never having lost (excluding sense of purpose, here and there). I balanced correspondence work with newsroom editing, posted stories dutifully.

            Then flew back to my how town and abandoned any thought of World War Three. I longed to see this person I’m now reporting on, her anonymity. Being absent many years, I didn’t want to come off as creepy, obsessed with someone still unknown—so I dialed up understanding friends, like Stefani:

            “Well, yeah, she still is—whad’ya want?—showing up to things and keeping to herself. I haven’t tallied nothing on a spreadsheet, exactly, but shit, she’s gotta have some rhyme and reason for being a constant and not being so… I don’t know… in tune with things.”

            Linda, separately, gave details. The Presence showed up everywhere—town halls, football games, the crowning of the Chamber of Commerce ‘Business Queen’, the sweep-up efforts of floods that naturally would catch us unprepared. She was intuitive, I guess—catching things with not much notice, getting in and on with what the cause required, watching how a procedure was done and, given a gap, doing likewise. Those who knew what autism was wouldn’t say she had that, even in its spectrum; those who didn’t would imply that she must have some bolts loose, but ‘who am I to judge? Especially when she doesn’t do anything not good.’ Linda ended with that thought: “she’s often framed in a double-negative, if she’s brought up at all.”

            She lived with her mother, equally quiet if practically never seen. They had to have some subsistence, some life insurance pay-out, some employment past or even present. Events she showed up for would sometimes cost an entry-fee, which she always had ready. From what I understood, she was often waived through wordlessly.

            With great torment, after having failed a dozen times approaching her, I took the risk of calling their landline, listed by default in the Yellow Pages. Ten rings turned to twenty, the number I pre-determined would constitute invasion. She answered two rings later with as regular a ‘hello?’ as could be imagined, even though I imagined only what I’d say—a script, of sorts, with thoughts confined to me.

            “Um,… hello. I… you… don’t probably remember me, from high school—” and here I let some seconds pass, assuming that the sheer syllables of my voice would suffice to jog her memory. In the intervening silence, it occurred to me that I should have said my name, which I then supplied, and waited for some way to carry on. “I’m a journalist now—well, have been since university.” She didn’t respond recognition or otherwise; I went on with my premise: “I’ve reported mostly stories from beyond our shores, or people who come back from abroad and have something to share…. Well, what I haven’t done so well with is reporting on the homefront—this very town, the people in it…. And,… well, I just wondered who from high school was still here and, well that’s my starting point, at least.” It was not a lie. “I’ve kept in touch with so few; I’m kind of going from distant memory and,… you came to mind.” More silence, and my script had run out. “Are you still there—I mean, here?”

            In the same inflection as the ‘hello’, she responded “present.”

            “That’s good,” I rushed, “because I didn’t want to babble on…. I’ll let you go—didn’t mean to catch you by surprise; I guess, unless you wanted to say anything about the town—your impressions, or… I’m not collecting anything for breaking news, or Hollywood gossip…. Just,… trying to reconnoiter the past and present. And best when it comes from—”

            “You will see what pertains to your question through the stones, eventually.”

            I was dumbstruck by the diction. Even the object of the preposition—was she channeling the rock band, and should I joke, ‘you mean The Kinks?’ Or else The Cars from their Candy-O tour, where she’d been spotted in the upper deck? These, or anything that could have led to other talking points, fell from my capacity to further speak, so I rashly uttered “thanks,” and set the receiver back into its pay-phone rack.

           

            Journalism in the dot.com age was a ball of wax, and with or without my Pulitzer, I had to reconstrue a raison d’être for staying in the field. I’d gotten married and worked from home as much as I could—a boon for raising kids. But what I had to say anymore was increasingly a challenge. Remember that Y2K doomsday scenario? That kept me busy for four months. Then what? Reporting on Al Qaida from my home seemed incongruous. By the time the kids were grown, I could afford to get into the grisly details of Guantanamo, Kony 2012, ISIS, Crimea, the world’s works.

            Between each of these, I felt a need to get back to my how town, and re-find the good. Especially for my children, I was glad for occasions that had a parade—St Patrick’s Day was modest, Syttende Mai much bigger, July 4^th and Veteran’s Day when everything was streamered red, white, and blue. The same routine started every one of them: a child-like man named Marty would receive the municipal flag from city hall and its tailored harness to help him bear its weight for two hours, angled above his head. He was the self-declared ‘mini-mayor’, his girlfriend Marjorie his manager of sorts—vaudeville characters without their trying, beloved by everyone who’d see them parade (beyond these holidays) their mini-dramas on our streets.

            One drama missed by the masses had been when an ambulance came to the apartment of The Presence and took her mother to the hospital, where she died of a heart attack. Linda, who works in the cardiac ward, told me this on a recent visit, but didn’t want to say more, citing confidentiality.

            I kept in closer touch with our librarian, veteran of the referenda that constantly put her budget—sometimes her job—in question. Throughout the years, as many as mine, she’d done everything to modernize and keep the patrons happy, and they were. The great lament she shared sparingly was that this institution battled ‘relevance’ to those that lorded over, and unlike me, she couldn’t bear the thought of working from the privacy of her home. When she called me up last month, I thought that theme was on her mind as she began with: “I’m out of my element today and need some advice.”

            “Shoot,” I said, self-conscious about that word choice.

            “Well, the strangest thing was taped to the front door this morning, an envelope addressed simply ‘for the library’.”

            “A donation? Perhaps from a secret admirer?”

            “Well, semi-secret, I guess you could say. Inside was a key on a chain connected to a little baggage tag, an address written, but no name.”

            “Hmm. I’d be careful about that—could be a trap. Or maybe someone found a lost key? But why the address? Was there a note?”

            “Not a note, but a poem. Should I read it?”

            “Of course.”

            She a-hemmed and recited slowly:

“I saw you all,

as much as you

saw me—a presence

hidden in proclivity

and absent in

the very need to

be unique—I

mirrored you or

made you think,

when thinking

was beyond me.

Presently, if you

unearth each

stone that leads from

you to me—I know

some distance

must exist—note

this neighbor’s

wish that none

were thrown,

but polished

very carefully.

Forging toward

eternity, we’re

willows of a common

stream—witnessing

the wakes and

sleep and deep

beneath—we

butterfly our

chance to dream,

one by one

or you by me.

That’s it,” she cleared her throat again.

            “And you don’t know by whom?”

            “I assume by the one who lives at the address, but…”

            “That sounds worth a check-over by the police, just to be on the safe side. I wish I could be there to… I don’t know, accompany if you wanted to ascertain the origin—”

            “—naturally, I do. But you’re right, I wouldn’t go alone.”

            “Tell you what—I could use an Easy Jet this time of year, anyway. Why don’t you do the footwork with the cops and, whether or not it’s a story, I’d still like to connect it with the old haunts and this forever-capsule project.”

            “Only if you’d want to—I wouldn’t object.”

            She called later that day to tell me they’d been at the apartment. By this time I had already guessed whose it was, even though she wasn’t home. I got on the first flight to find out more.

            They were like breadcrumbs: the librarian’s embrace, the poem she showed which resonated deeper at the sight of it, the swing-by to the hospital to pick up Linda, the note they found inside the apartment—witnessed by the detective who had come the day before—stipulating, “These stones are for the library—take them there, or use this home for its annex. I’ve already gone—still present somewhere else—and yet each luster follows me.”

            Arranged around the rooms, on every windowsill and tabletop, were thousands upon thousands of gleaming stones. Polished to their inner colors, they had but tiny inscriptions, sometimes reinforced with silver paint or gold, each with a different name—usually just a first, maybe with an initial—and under that, a unique hieroglyphic somewhat like those Jimmy Page made on Led Zeppelin 4. It would take hours, I knew, to find those whom I was closest to, but we all hunkered in and turned up stones.

            “Here’s Marty—what is that symbol below? a flag—seems so!”

            “And Stef, clearly with long lashes of her eye”

            We worked to catalogue them, carefully. Linda called the bus station to verify that, indeed, The Presence had been recognized—everyone would know that much of her—the morning before, stepping on a Greyhound leading… Greyhound wouldn’t say. “Client confidentiality,” Linda relayed, pinching a smile.

            I was thrilled to be finding friends and acquaintances, deciphering their symbols, wondering what mine would be. Before that prospect would come, lest we’d forget, I turned up the car radio thief—named, of course—and under that a butterfly that seemed to sing. And nothing more essential could such journalism bring.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2017)