rainbows and visitors

My English friend who lives on a unstable hillside in a newly thrown together shed, with his cat and his memories, stopped by the other morning to tell me there was a rainbow.

I immediately left the bookshop to rush out into the mixed rain and sunlight and stare at it.

I have very few rules in life, but one, as I told him, is to never miss the opportunity to stare at a rainbow. There aren't enough in a lifetime to take the risk of missing one.

He's a good man, married four or five times ("why on earth did you bother?" I once tactlessly exclaimed). He's a twin, adopted at four or five months of age with his pretty blonde sister. He was, he said, the extra--the dark and crying boychild. Much of his life...well, I don't probe where it hurts. But I see the pain.

"Stinky old dog" he greets Champ, and Champ is delighted. And because it is said with warm affection I don't get upset. Sure, call my old dog stinky and chat with my cats, it's fine.

There is an odd privilege to being the bookstore lady, the person who can be found with ease, who will take a moment to listen, who has some bowls of good fruit and a well known box of warm socks and a sort of Mary-Poppins grab bag of what-might-be-needed. I'm pretty lucky.

And people like my English friend do alert me to rainbows.

Yesterday was exceptionally full of visits and revelations, amongst the chat about the latest mystery novels, and whether someone who likes Steinbeck would like McPhee, and poetry, and rain.

What struck me was the common thread though, amongst the stories I was told.

Poppy's companion came, as he does most days, for apples and water and some bread and a biscuit for Poppy. Poppy's a little black and tan dog with white paws; to my untrained eyes she looks like a beagle, but she dances like a poodle and her person once told me she was a particular fancy sort of hound. Her person showed up last summer with her and asked for a needle and some thread to repair his sleeping bag. I had those on hand, but I also had a light sleeping bag not in need of repair, which I gave him. He said then he was moving north, just here for a day or two. Fine, said I. He said "I was once a meteorologist". Handy knowledge, I said.

So he came yesterday, got some apples. I offered him some kiwi fruit as well. He confided that pears were his very favorite. And he told me how his mom used to leave offerings of bread and fruit in the garden when he was very young, for the fairies.

We thought there were fairies, he said.

Well, maybe there were, said I, you never know. And I asked if he had many sisters and brothers or what.

And he told me. He told me his mom had been 15 when he was born, the eldest of her children. He told me his dad was drafted and sent to Vietnam, and the young girl said to hell with that, she wasn't gonna wait for a dead soldier.

And she gave her son to her sister to raise.

"How old were you?" I asked.

Four, he said. And he said when he was 15 his mother got in touch, but he didn't want to have anything to do with her. "I was 15, I didn't need a mother".

I said nothing.

"And when I was in the Navy later she wrote...well, she emailed...she had three children, she didn't need four. So that was that."

She's a nurse in Ohio. High up in some hospital, he said. He said he was proud of her. And his dad died, and his wife died, and there wasn't much to live for, so he walked out of the house with his dog, with Poppy, and that was a few years ago. And so it goes.

No sense in getting close to anyone, he said. And then he seemed a bit ashamed that he'd told me all too much, so I got busy looking for some biscuits for the dog, and wished him a good day, out there along the roads.

The next guy, with his pitbull puppy, had been thrown out again by his girlfriend. "So, I'm back beneath the bridge" he said, and he said he was sorry, cause he'd told me he was getting money together to replenish the dogfood and he didn't.

I understand, I said, things come up, don't feel bad. His girlfriend had taken up with some drugs he doesn't do, and some guys who can supply them.

I'm sorry, I said.

I know about his mom, who died long ago, and he found her. I know about the jail time and the series of girls, young women, who cling to him a while and then drift off.
The pup is looking good, though.

And then John came in. Now, I haven't seen John for a few months. The last times I saw him my heart was full of trouble. He was lean, and dirty, and desperate and sick. He was using, he was drinking, he was looking for some quick way to fortune or some quicker way to death. I'd run into him at night and his eyes were haunted.
Yes, his story has abandonment in it too, and foster care, and hardening.
John used to bring me small treasures. Small, stolen, treasures. I'd quietly try to get them back to where they belonged. He would offer me his gifts with hurting, pleading eyes.

Women liked John, especially women who shared his drugs. Oh, there were stories.

So he came in, after some months of no news, and he said "Kathy, I had to come see you. I'm clean, I'm okay. Took some jail, but I'm okay".
He'd been picked up for something minor, and had done a bit of county time, and then decided to go to a clean and sober house.
"Kathy, it's been 124 days. I'm not using, I'm not drinking, I have a job. I'm living up north, but I had to come see you".

I hugged him. I thanked him, I told him he looked great. He'd put on a little weight; had cut his long ragged black hair. He was smiling.

"You never gave up on me" he said. "You never did. So I'm not giving up either".

And then I cried.

(the photo, oddly, comes from Finland. But it so looks like my part of the world)

Lost and Found

In August, as the days grow hotter and the fields turn paler and my pitbull joyously falls to his back in the long weeds, wriggling and sounding like a dolphin, huge emoting, moans of joy--as the days of August come to an end the dust on the roads grow thicker, it seems the more desperate or broken find their way to my stairs or my door or perhaps my heart.

"There's a...girl, passed out by the steps" said my partner to me one evening as the heat baked from the stones and the sun began a slow slide in the west. "you should check on her" he said, not wanting to startle or alarm a young woman.

And he's right, a mild middle aged or aging woman is far less alarming, surely.

So I went to the foot of my steps, and yes, there was a girl. She lay in the gutter, curled on her side. Her hair was in short rastas, covered with dust. Her bare legs were folded to her stomach. Her long, tan hands bore a couple very worn silver rings. She wore a very short shift, which once may have had flowers patterned on it but had been worn and washed so often the flowers were simply memories. Her feet were stuck in old tennis shoes with holes, several sizes too big.
Her long eyelashes made faint shadows on her cheeks; her lips were pale and gently curved.

I stood there a moment, looking down at her. Yes, she was breathing. Fairly evenly. "Sweetie" I said, using the endearment that comes so quickly to my tongue, the one my children, I fear, hate, "sweetie, are you okay?"

I asked a few times. My partner came and stood beside me. A sherrif's car passed by. "We could take her to the emergency room" said my partner. But I said, "We'd have to wake her first, and if this is an overdose they'd probably send her to jail instead". Unfortunately, we've had experience like that.

I kept murmuring to her.

"You'll have to shake her" said my partner. "I don't want to scare her" said I. But then I knelt beside her and put my hand on her thin, bare shoulder, still talking. Her temperature seemed pretty normal. I took her pulse...yeah, steady, firm.

She moaned and spat, twice, still sleeping, her head pillowed on a rock. "This is not a good place to sleep" said I, hand on her shoulder. "Have you taken something? Can you speak to me?"

And then the guy with the brindle pitbull came up. "She shouldn't have been drinking so much in the sun" said he.

"Athena, wake up!"

And she opened her hazy blue eyes. And swore. And said "why did you wake me? Now I'm hungry, and I don't have anything to eat".

So we got them both some food, and the dog as well, and the guy said he'd get her to her camp.

But late that night I saw her again, wandering the road in her thin shift, eyes glazed. I've looked for her since. If she's 16 I'd be surprised, this thin and beautiful wanderer. I've got to get a better grasp of where the new ones are, where the camps are, how the children are.

When they are sleeping at your stairs, well, you wonder.

The young couple who came by the next day were in better shape, but they'd been crying, and they had two puppies much too young to be away from their mom. Brutally hot days then. The little pups were limp and dehydrated. We talked a long while, got them food--all of them, yes, of course the little dogs too--thought out strategies, heard their stories. They've been back a few times now, and each time the pups look better. Yesterday they were playing and romping and Champ my pitbull--who had seemed woefully concerned at the first meeting, nudging them and whimpering--finally gave up and gave me a glance of disgust and went into another room to escape their bouncing and pouncing.

What did you call them? I asked. The one in the black collar is Mocha; the one in the purple collar is named...Athena.

Okay, fine. I do inhabit a realm of coincidence.

Today's first customer stood in the store talking to himself quite a while. I kept typing. I talk to myself sometimes; it's not very alarming. I figured if he wanted to talk to me he could, but meanwhile, fine, talk to the bookshelves and the dog and the air, that's okay.

After a while he came and said "I do want something". I waited. "Do you have any borscht?"
I said unfortunately I did not, though borscht is very good. "Then,maybe, do you have squash baked slow with honey?" Again, sadly, I could not provide. "But I do have fruit and bread" I said, and offered him some.

He stared at an apple.

No, others have been here, I can feel them, he said.

Well, yes, this is a bookstore, we have a lot of people come through.

So maybe, said he, you have what I am looking for. I lost it so long ago. It is a box with three parts, and in it are roses and feathers. And there's a gold frame around it, like wheat, and there are pictures of everything that matters. And there are maple keys spinning over the surface of it, and when you have it you are okay again.

No, I said, that sounds so beautiful, but I do not have it here.

Someone is mistreating it, said he. And he went to pick up my broom.

Oh, I understand, said he. You are a witch. I see your broom. And your cat. And your dog. But I think you are okay.

I think so, I said.

He looked at a few more books, and brought me one on mythology. Here, he said, look.

Athena and her owls.

(the photo of Palas Atenea now at the Louvre, was taken by someone calling her or himself purolipan. Amazing lighting)