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Menelaus Meets Proteus

James Joaquin Brewer

Chapter from an experimental hybrid novel (Dublin Downs)

Helpful Note: Dublin Downs is a cartoon opera epic—a graphic novel without pictures but containing Supra-Titles [Trademark Pend.] as befits its sometimes operatic moments. The reader is encouraged to sing whenever the words suggest . . .  And, oh yes, it parodies certain classic authors who took the Trojan War as topic.

▪

The Red Ranger (thinking, returning to a half-doze):

So good, oh so good, to be home, be back home, to have my next chance, a brand-new beginning, fresh start, on square one, appropriate the timing, marriage all around us: my son and my daughter, my loving Elena and me—let us renew our vows and make it a triple! And even with my brother’s . . . marital . . . woes . . . oh with that . . . Letty . . .

He scratches his wandering beard and shakes some sleep from his head. He sighs softly at memories of the night just spent with his now-returned wife, closes his eyes and stretches his arms, blindly flexes his pecs as though posing for Elena in an imaginary overhead ceiling-sized mirror (that you. Attentive Listener, possibly think he just might yet install, now that he and you come to imagine it).

The Red Ranger (still silently musing, deciding not to doze):

I feel more like an All-Star than I’ve felt all year . . . with “renewable” wife my conscience stays clear . . . or will become clear—but oh must she first hear  . . . ?

If only B-B Brancusi could see his Mari again . . . confess inherent transgressions of being a man . . .  What to say to his son re: varieties of cheating?  How blunt should I be? Say we’ve killed off all Heroes to cap last century? Will kill them still? Seventies, Me Decade. Eighties, Greed Decade.  Nineties, Cynical Decade. Two-Thousands  . . . all decades seem the same: Fraudulent Decades of Brutal Honesty—Honest Brutality—success stories sold at suburban cocktail parties, starting too often with that tired conversational gambit: “To be brutally honest!” 

And then articulating something often dishonest. Why feel such a need to be “brutally” anything? If honest or if otherwise! Be brutally dishonest?  Lemme tell you the brutal lie! Sometimes a ring of sincerity, no matter if pessimistic, potentially depressing, the words following the intro phrase. “To be brutally honest” followed by real honesty that folks would rather not hear? Maybe honesty in earlier years we’d be too polite (or just weak)

to admit (or speak) in public conversation: the brutal “truths” about, let us say, those beggars in our streets (preferring that they just go away, afraid that some, for irrelevantly rational reasons can become human debris—a few become thieves without reprieve—even if coins trickle down from well-meaning trees). Brutal truths regarding crime,

needed related punishments (if punishment doesn’t deter future crime, does the death of serial criminals guarantee solution?). Brutal truths about democracy (worrying now if majority rule means that mediocrity often rules, if one-man-one vote really means the proverbial “village idiot,” maybe a badly educated parish priest, an egotistical statistically obsessed Nobel economist, an ignoble unemployed dropout from a “good school,” all have identical say-and-no-say about nuclear rules, the funding of schools, the frequent election of fools. Can the next generation be more sincere? Brutally sincere? Unhappier, perhaps, but more sincere? Short, nasty, brutal, but yes sincere: oh rock’n’roll, alcohol, sexually active middle school? Taught by those “smart poor,” willingly required to stay poor! Brutally praiseworthy altruism—plus others, the un-smart teachers (unfit for other jobs?) seeing help wanted yellow sticky notes on the neighborhood poor-school doors—is this free enterprise? emancipated enterprise? Oh, Steve B., it’s a liberal’s unwanted legacy and a conservative’s frustrated estate: freedom to be just as bad-off as hands-off society will allow each to be—although never to endorse actual alms-giving, for God’s sake no! Let’s have a minimal interference from the scarifying specter of un-democracy: that icky Big Guv’munt! How dare there be a President who would tell us of need in our big bureaucracy for a . . . oh, a . . . Department of Humanitarian Concern  . . . (or some such elusive something-or-other)! I’m feeling a bit guilty! Are my admittedly limited cultural interests now losing value? Or are they my own values that I’m losing? Not wanting to dictate them to others, but willing to discuss or debate ‘em! Let’s add it as topic on a Sunday-morning tee-vee talk show, alongside subsidies to marijuana farmers or highway improvement or forswearing any aid to a sworn foreign enemy. The “brutal truth,” of course, will call for some sort of stipulation that . . . my personal income is not hampered, my values to be upheld! If the dialogue can begin, will an open-minded citizen . . . listen in?

Supra-Title[Trademark Pend.] Text:

Redmund Rust was now in a state of mental and moral unrest as he remembered that in college, as an idealistic Political Science major at Portland State, he had flirted with something dangerously similar to an oligarchy—a watered-down, less authoritarian, more inclusive, generous mutation of an oligarchy. But he had struggled with the distinction between a privilege and a right—especially when it came to making voting amount to something more than checking the same boxes one’s parents would likely be checking. Should you qualify to cast important ballots only if you met a defined educational threshold? Should you have at least an eighth-grade education? Or a high-school diploma? Or be required to take some sort of voting-literacy test? He knew, certainly, that some of his college friends did not even believe that a high-school diploma signaled that a person could read, could think, could calculate, had done more than maintain a warm seat in a cold winter classroom . . .

Red’s mood continued to sour. Thinking too deeply about certain things could become an occupational hazard—which was why, he ruefully admitted to himself, he had passed up the chance of earning a graduate-school degree in History or Economics or . . . yes, even Philosophy. Did he really fear the snap-trap jaws of brutal truth? Was the need for illusion an actual addiction? But he knew there was one thing, one advantage, nothing involving illusion, about which he had done the right thing by bypassing graduate school in favor of the Planetary Football League draft: the pro scouts had all agreed—and he agreed with their assessments—that there was nothing illusory regarding his pigskin-playing potential.

Complicated Trigger Alert:O Creative Watcher Of This Theatrically Imagined World, the following scene might include a suggestion of brief nudity. Skip ahead now if this might offend you. (To render this easier, the Supra-Title[Trademark Pend.] Text has been . . . well, let’s call it “less-interpolated” . . . or . . . don’t worry—you will soon get the hang of it.

Red locks his right hand upon the nearest of Elena’s expensive breasts.

Less-Interpolated Supra-Title[Trademark Pend.] Text:

Pressing his loins against Elena’s smooth flanks, the Red Ranger (somewhat ruefully) remembered that without certain styles of illusion, he might have long ago blown a hole in his Soloflexed chest. Re-adjusting his body in the bed, he kissed the hair on his sleeping wife’s head and recalled through the haze of his still-not-fully-conscious brain a scene on the eve of the SupraBowl game: those frantic negotiations to land the lucrative endorsement, a matter of pride more than lucre, an opportunity to steal a pint of publicity from Boom-Boom Brancusi, a chance to enhance some reputations of Red’s true athletic brethren, his undervalued constituency, the ones who would support him if he ever ran for public office: disillusioned defensive players all the world over, in all walks of life—the big-bellied linemen with tiny wives and plumber’s butts, the shrinking free safeties insecure on valium (and other prescriptions as effective as—even more intense than—Elena’s pills for the alteration of unpleasant memories), safeties whose insecure identities were mostly unknown (“what has he tackled lately?”) until they screwed up (“and over his head for an easy touchdown!”) and then became trade meat for whoever’s newer, or taller. or faster, or whose latest contract payouts were lighter . . . and of course the battered linebackers whose names blur together, just mountains of bruised interchangeable flesh, the anonymous collection of knees without cartilage, lungs actually punctured (or maybe merely pocked), sides whose skin resembles grill-marked steaks (rare), sprung thumbs, mashed toes, stiff spines, groins groaning before their time . . . too many of these unsung, used up, washed away, confused . . . well, but all of it academic—business as usual in the corporate world of Wall-Eyed Street: defense is Administration, offense is Sales . . . Quarterbacks and Flankers get the orders, make the marketing quotas; defensive ends and middle ‘backers collect Accounts Receivable . . .  Big O is an exec; Big D is a clerk . . . with very few, but very notable, historical exceptions: once-upon-a-time NFL Sam Huff, NFL Ray Nitschke, NFL Dick Butkus, now real-time PFL Red Rust.

Red shifts his upper trunk, his right arm going numb and tingly—not in a good way—and more comfortably places his left hand on Elena’s other expensive breast.

Supra-Title[Trademark Pend.] Text:

Red recalled a perfect personal-experience example of where such football player insecurities can lead. The Tourist Board of Dublin had been determined to deal, to fulfill its great need, to cinch a super PR coup, get a spot on live TV worth more than any spot before—if they could sign the right star, pick the right team, corral the appropriate Hero whose on-field exploits would be winning all the marbles, that game-conquering jock who for sure would be the guy the camera would glue to when the gun went off and the champions got crowned. . .  Of course the Board had hedged its bets, would pay a player from each of the teams, the loser consoled with a kill fee as large as his share in the SupraBowl itself, the winner ecstatic with a fee twice that size . . .  pay calculations based on a small part of the overall business logic used for planning ticket prices and maximizing SupraBowl attendance from travelers from every continent, the data itself very dry (though certain risks quite juicy), minute bits of information generated by crunched numbers from a thousand computers, artificially analyzed demographic records from global tourism and terrorism: who flies or floats and when and where, how much of a factor related air safety or potential for piracy, how to influence fickle fearful travelers, how to use their Heroes, how to pander via on-line influencers to plan and plant the proper seeds to make ‘em jet or sail on a moment’s impulse . . . Travel tycoon Peter Nunn (a PFL team owner himself), it was known, was trying to do business with a competitor of respected Aer Lingus and assorted international cruise companies as well . . . yes, the Tourist Board was determined to show the world there’re no bored tourists in Dublin.

“Thank the gods for my Buck,” the Red Ranger was thinking about his strange agent, an agent who had been strangely in possession of a written telephone message intercepted at the desk of the Midea Hotel, a message intended for Ms. Mari Brancusi, a sports agent herself, who was not at The Game in Dublin, a mother who had stayed in Seattle along with her son, fearing the crush of reporters and lensmen, the inevitable invasion of privacy during SupraBowl week, but also because she was writing a memoir—and wanted to finish it as soon as she could . . . in time to show it to a dying father-in-law who was lauded within its pages. Red never asked how Buck came to have the scrawled note, because Buck would have lied—not told “brutal truth” . . . an unspoken agreement between client and agent: do unto others as it may needs to be, don’t feel it your duty to always tell me.

Redmund Rust had never been told the details—had never inquired—regarding the deal, the half-truths uttered by Buck about Brancusi, the rumors subtly spread to the Owner Peter Nunn regarding Boom-Boom and Loosa and what they maybe had done in a hotel in Boston before the playoffs began, but the bottom line stayed fine with the defensive Red Ranger: if the Seahounds were to win, it would be Redmund Rust rather than Boom-Boom Brancusi to whom the camera crew would rush—with seconds showing on the stadium clock, a split-screen pan already planned, the TV producer already bribed (this done by Peter Nunn without Aer Lingus or Disney World knowledge), the final score in an upper corner, the seconds dying three, two, one, then quick the cut to Redmund Rust, still toiling on the gridiron turf, still in pads all muddy and wet, his bellow-like lungs still heaving from efforts epically immense, then in precision coordination helmet off as the gun goes off and the immediate mike stuck in his face so the gritty Seahound linebacker could direct his All-Star stare directly to the hand-held lens, toss dented helmet toward the sky, spit out his saliva-stained mouthpiece, show off his grin, rip off his jersey, uncover the slogan—in green silk-screen on a sweaty white undershirt, big words in a script blocked out on a shamrock, the slogan to read as the camera pans past then rests on his chest: I had a fabulous time in Dublin—I bet you will too—call your Peter Nunn travel agent! Which was pretty much how it went (to the stunned surprise of a left-out Boom-Boom B.) . . . except  for the scheduled Tower shot the following day! Red let that prized one slip away . . .

Wow! So many implied but unanswered questions! But I bet you’d like to get back to your imaginary opera glasses (choose either end through which to view, depending on your understanding of Trigger Alerts).

Redmund turns to softly touch Elena’s hip, explicitly careful not to be rough in his amorous attempts to possibly . . . rouse her . . . hoping to be successful at subtly sharing (or “expending”) some more of his . . . spirit . . .  (as she continues to sleep with no hint of stir). But he changes his mind, allows it to drift downstream to dream and drowse again, hips forked gently against hers.

Now he partially awakens. Now he falls back asleep.

Supra-Title [Trademark Pend.] Text:

He dreamt  deeply—a mostly realistic reminiscence of the Tower and Papa’s great-granddaughter posing so pertly on a three-speed cycle . . . scenes laced with disappointment and haunting half-memories, almost eerie the thoughts coming back . . .

Dear Patient Participant in this Epic, in addition to being a Faithful Thought-Over-Hearer (as per our earlier experiments), you are invited now to become an “Enabling-Co-Conspiratorial-Dreamer.”

The Red Ranger (half remembering dozingly, half dreaming lucidly):

flip and simplistic to claim it all comes back to cycling. . . cycling and recycling, the ecology of the psyche: the conservation of dreams, links in the chains on that day at the Tower, the view from the top: sailboats: three, four, skinnyhulled redandwhites quicksliding away from greybay Dun Laoghaire—racing? big breeze up, bullying over battlement, fluttering tie-ends, undoing justdone hair, same air as in those sails, baywaves suddenly surfacechangng, not merely rippling but hueing: spectral shafts shifting to silver to blue to violet, fraction and refraction, sunlight piercing long stretches of stratus on the northern horizon, Howth, mountain Ben Bulben’s non-distant cousin, younger or older?  cry of gull, flap of flag, returning from the parapet, eyes windwatering, cheeks razorstung red after shaving that morning, getting rid of the naturally masquerading beard, thinking they’d film him like this for the “after” in the “before and after” segment taglines—“what a difference a day makes on this magic green isle”—but shocked to discover no one was there, no one expecting him . . . with or without a camera . . . again cry of gull, flap of flag, clang of bell, circling the gunrest thrice (fire of Hell: Seahound! Seabird! his flashing blade, his fallen beard!), then ducking through the aperture and pausing, clang of bell, cry of gull, then quieter, footfalls soft, irregular, arrhythmic, downwardwandering so slowpensive, the turnsandcurves of the blackspiralstaircase, metalsteps turningup tinyechoes until conventional thump of heel on wood sounds farewell to the stairs across the room, down brief concrete steps, the basement entrance, the greying wall of windowglass.

“An appropriately scrotumtightening day for it, eh?” Turning from the glass, acknowledging the curator’s pink young face, handsome, beaming behind impeccably polished spectacles and smoothblack moustache. “Most suitable,” Red returning smile for smile and nod for nod, liking this man, this neither condescending nor distant young man.  “Is she here yet?”

“Papa’s great granddaughter? The lovely actress? Ah, yes, I believe she’s here now several minutes. There’s a fellow with a camera been setting up early morning by the water.”

smiling at the curator, finding the man’s straight-forwardness comforting, his grindimpling lowchuckling mouth sympathetic and genuinely cheering on the greyday of allofasudden soulsearching introspection . . . caused by what? why so quickly compelled to evaluate the state of a man’s image? because of the message from Elena, suggesting as it does that he is somehow more moral than she? causing him now to assess the accuracy of such an implication? yeah, she has a drug problem but what about my drink? not exactly a secret despite Seahound Owner Holly Hill’s efforts . . . “I’ll go see if they’re ready.”

Red now picking up postcards, inspecting them (the Tower, Contemplative, Young Man, After the Eye Operation, even a beautiful study in color of an un-named silvery beach), placing the proper pence on the desk, the curator taking the cards back temporarily and ohsoprecisely, in winepurple stampink, impressing them with Meet Me on June 16, James Joyce Tower Sandycove, Co. Dublin. 

Supra-Title [Trademark Pend.] Text:

Miss Hemingway was in town to make a movie on location, a major motion picture about professional football, shooting some scene-establishing cuts, atmospheric clips, crowd reaction at the SupraBowl, pressbox inserts of her fiery character’s fierce frustrations,

she playing a female Owner in a fictionalized league, the Tourist Board of Dublin taking advantage of the chance to place her at the once males-only bathing beach and shutter some solo glossies for the American mags, she having no sense whatever that the just-shaved Red Ranger thought he was included in that afternoon’s shoot, she and Boom-Boom having concluded a paired set already that cool morning, tandem wheels and all, for an Aer Lingus brochure . . . a joke played by Brancusi? to make up for some other?

The Red Ranger (now fully and fiercely awake, more-than-half remembering):

Telling me that Boom-Boom was gone—had already shot at the Tower! Right at sunrise, no less! With lovely Miss H. (who was still on the beach) and a couple of B-B’s favorite offensive linemen, turning tables on me, who would otherwise accuse him of using only fast flankers or fleet running backs. No, this time crafty Boom-Boom was planning some personal pub relations with the best of PR professionals: look what a good guy! how grateful to his pass-protecting linemen, both rookies and veterans . . . knows they minimize the chances of his being tackled and hurt, so wants to include them . . . what a big man! enough! what bullshit from Boom-Boom!  The shot should be mine! Enough! That interloper!

“enough” . . . foolish word, almost as foolish as “complete” . . . (Red over at the Tower, patting the packet of postcards in the inner left breast-pocket of his green sport jacket), as in “complete set,” bubblegum baseball cards, vinyl record albums . . . complete happiness . . . or complete thought: how about purposely missing that test question in high school? refusing to accept the English teacher’s standard definition of a sentence: so tell me, Mr. Nibs, how can any thought capable of being expanded and clarified be called complete? “Cain killed Abel,” one of your most common examples of a sentence, don’t you have any questions? Man, don’t you want to know more? Don’t you demand that such a “thought” be expanded?  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” . . . oh now that one clearly

cries out for clarification . . .

matter of principle back then as a young high-school wiseguy (crossing road now, moving away from the Tower, picking a path over creased and cracked blocks of sandstony rock), seems trivial now, a mature man knowing no clause in a contract, football or marital, is ever “independent” or “complete” . . . today all fragments . . . fragments of imagination . . . who gives a fig? nothing that can’t be renegotiated or reinterpreted . . . yeah, just a trivial youthful conceit back then, in the long lost lonesome days of pre-college, believing growing up to be like dad was all the success for which boys need wish . . . but “enough” at least more useful than “complete” . . . nothing complete but the best of Boom-Boom’s passes . . . except nothingness perhaps . . . complete nothingness . . . beyond imagination though, whether fragments or figments as soon as you imagine it the concept of nothingness drifts out a mystical window . . . death maybe . . .is death complete? . . . not even that? but reincarnation? metempsychosis? transmigration of souls? come back as a flower? what goes around comes around? cycling and recycling, Commissioner Rose pedals, words, words, words, Hamlet up to his old one-trick peonies again, but a wrestling with ghosts not much of a sport if you think you can guess or know how it’s gonna come out . . .

THE FORTY FOOT

GENTLEMEN’S BATHING PLACE

DO NOT BRING DOGS

. . . a weathered octogenarian, an ancient son of the old salt sea clad in blackrubber bathingcap and snowy mass of chesthair, hauling himself up for another dive, phallus  shrunken beneath shaggy shield of public pubic thatch . . . chilly ritual, whose father

or grandfather or great-grandfather? suddenly turning and fixing a stare, accusing, all-knowing, a seer, an alien, empathic, telepathic, sympathetic? empathetic? turning Red weak, making him sweat in sudden heat, conscience pricked, eyes feeling fire . . . turns and walks, intending to be leaving, so suddenly afraid of something so abstract, vague but seeming spiritual . . . but simultaneously somehow physical . . . mumbling incoherently, cursing the missing buses, complaining to himself he should have been home already, should be at the airport now with his teammates . . . then bumping into her, stumbling literally into her and turning again, now toward the water, upsetting her with his bluestreaked breath of curses, as though it were her fault rather than so obviously his own . . . but now his nearly surly moody broody attitude, his “excuse me” delayed and maybe not so fully sincere, but the gracious Miss Hemingway being strong, acting unlike a victim, saying just as soon as she recognized his face and in a voice that cut straight through him, sound slashing and catching  him off guard, restoring his peerspective, shaming and shamusing him: you still but a boy without your weird beard? trace those lost roots all the way back to Samson? do you now simply enjoy feeling less than delightful? hear such emotion packed into your swearing! the aggressive method you employ in your voice! I’d think your intent was to gather an audience, a crowd of aficionados to applaud your technique! I know who you are, I’ve often admired you, but if this is grace under pressure I’m Buddha herself!

looking up, biting his tongue, familiar with her face and that of her sister from the public screen and the private player, having read of her repeatedly in People and Newsweek and Vanity Fair (including an article about her mother dying one day before Bloomsday), knowing Miss H. can be outspoken, Red attempts now to save (razored) face: apologies, Miss Hemingway, been a frustrating day, but no personal sleights were intended! I’m distracted, disoriented, perhaps even ill . . . you don’t know . . . the fix I’m in—apparently offended some volatile people in powerful places . . . Red shocked by the serious response issuing from her red-lipped mouth: 

Allow me to tell you the lay, or the lie, of the land: there’s a man here named Manuel  who can help you out, fix your frustration. He’s the European coordinator for the Irish Soda Bread. Oops! I mean the Irish Tourist Board! Got my endorsements mixed up! He’s got contacts with everyone. I recommend you trust and consult him. He set up those shots we got much earlier today. While Boom-Boom and I were doing those promos this morning, your buddy B-B shared some insightful thoughts about you. By the bye, it’s funny that Manuel is definitely no Seahound friend or fan. He lost a bundle in a bunch of big bets in the SupraBowl, really believing those Iron Knights of London would rise up to strike Seattle down. But if you approach him with subtleness, not too directly, he’ll probably help you out. Not claiming I know exactly what your problem is, but the guy’s wise, O he’s been around for a long old time, knows all the ropes, he’s still down there.

pointing exactly where Red was afraid  she would, toward the Forty Foot, toward that body-bearded ancient wearing proudly the naked wrinkled skin.

Yes, dedicated Reading Companion, some sort of suspense seems to be building. But as you no doubt are noticing, Mr. Rust is feeling exhausted by his un-restful dozing dreams. Head befogged by these part-dream/part-real “memories,” he needs—if not precisely “deserves”—a  few minutes to recover and begins by uncovering himself: slips from under the leather-bordered comforter that (in sleep) he had pulled completely away from Elena’s body (accidentally?); stands up; visits the bathroom (size of a mini football locker-room); fetches a fresh sweatsuit from a shelf in the closet; returns to the bedroom; re-covers Elena’s body with the just-messed-up comforter (smoothes it “soothingly”); slips feet into customized sandals of softened rhinoceros hide; and goes in early-morning search of Brancusi’s son. Steve is sitting outside in the carcinogen light, at an ivory-topped table in the croquet garden, a glass of fresh grape juice plus a slice of cinnamon toast in front of him. His re-bearded host extends his hand for a refreshed greeting.

The Red Ranger (soberly, congenially):

Good morning, Young Boom-Boom. Let us now talk of mysterious topics, you and me, as we should. What really brought you up to see Marin County? Your trip’s top priority! Not just the scenery, I’m sure. More likely you’ve been told you truly need to see me, to ask me for some sort of advice. Tell me exactly what species of help you think I might be capable of identifying,

trapping, giving to you.

Steve chews thoughtfully on his toast, swallows, and  focuses on his host.

Steve (at first tentatively, then more firmly):

Good morning, Mr. Rust. I hope you slept well. I welcome most heartily the profound opportunity to hear clearly and definitively what you know of my father’s situation.

The Red Ranger (not thinking out loud, but still thinking—remembering):

Manuel giving swimming lessons to a school of little boys, Irish orphans on an outing from a foster home near Sligo. Surprising they didn’t seem frightened even a bit. And then the accidental encounter with Miss H. leading to finding out my Booming teammate

had been there earlier that day, at cracking of that dawn, to shoot his commercials for

the Irish Tourist Board . . . with the dazzling young actress . . . so then my hearing
the unsettling mockery
when she advised me
oh, yes, so pompously
noting the conditions
under which ancient
Manuel can help . . .

“That wise old man down there can help you calm down—feel so peaceful about things, can put you at ease and release your needless frustrations. He is something of a wizened guru who will help anyone who greets him with the spirit of a child, plus the humility of an orphan, a voice vibrating with sensitivity to—and caring for—the sad situation of the abandoned son. But if your tone is privileged and snotty, he will consider blistering your ears with fire-storming phrases that can damage you more than a penalty-flagged illegal pigskin trap-block. And if that is what happens, you must reply gently, with words more like judo than karate. When his tirade ends, vitriol exhausted, he might relax and attend

to your needs. You might think he’s nothing but an advertising agent; but if that is what you think, your thinking is dead wrong. Manuel is not only a human potential savant, he

is a talented film director and a live-theater acting teacher with a Ph.D. in aberrant-child psychiatry. He wasn’t born in Ireland, but it’s here he’s lived for much of his life. He has several relatives and friends in Idaho. I know some of them—met them, then him, many years ago during summertime visits to my relatives in Ketchum. Manuel taught me a lot without even trying.
If you are uniquely—
or perhaps recently—
oh lost in some way,
maybe he helps
you get found.”

My heart growing heated then, beating fiercely, feelings fuming, temper fraying
at this old new-age nonsense from the red-lipped mouth of a lovely Miss H. who
had obviously engaged in forms of complicit betrayal involving our Boom-Boom:
shoot his commercials . . .
and keep it their secret,
not even mention that . . . 

All of a sudden right there at the edge of the water, near big sandy rocks the size of boulders, in the full fiery blazes of that ancient man’s gaze, fixed to my core by his

cobalt glare, a laser burning off half a victim’ height—maybe a form of  hypnosis to make an opponent feel too short . . . looking around, so disoriented, seeing those tiny young tadpole swimmers now seeming taller than I . . . oh and Miss Hemingway, too, standing up on the road,
she looking smartly tall,
I’m a dumb Tom Thumb!

Naked Manuel, the old one, stroking his leonine beard, full, soft, mellow golden, then opening his mouth and roaring, but no words emerging, just the terrible vocal notes of a being whose voice by itself was enough . . . enough to saw metal, melt iron, freeze blood, 

so screwing up my courage, mustering manners, nodding deferentially, almost close to bowing, murmuring the given name: Redmund Rust! Intending to introduce myself . . .

but when he saw I lacked rudeness this ancient of days then gentled his gaze—not that

it twinkled . . . no sweet Santa Clause, nor Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving scenes, nor uncle, nor grandpa to charm with a hot cocoa or a Hallmark card,
no smiling to let out soft sounds
but opening whisker-hidden lips,

“I knew your father, tragically troubled A.E. Rust, but why does a son visit me now? You’re interrupting water-safety lessons

I set aside for these kids. So then, why?”

A clenching of teeth like a Latin-reading nun, a postponing of words, he waiting to hear my altar-boy response, my mumbling something about a sports agent, the Irish Tourism Board, the promotional work to be done at the Tower . . . Manuel’s opening mouth wide, its roof appearing like the inside of a Russian bell from a pre-Stalin monastery: “O you Redmund Rust, son of sad A.E., you don’t respect Commissioner Rose nearly as much as you should. You should be grateful to the PFL and its Owners. There are so many subtle forms of terrorism—ask the orphans if you’re unaware. If I am you, I make it damn clear I’ve marked myself
Ms. Peterson’s friend,
am staying all loyal to
he or she who owns or
monitors or manages
certain PFL interests.”

More mumbling from me, hushed syllables implying I had always been loyal, but Manuel disagreeing. “You’re always loyal to your own best interests, but not always to the PFL. While you’re in Ireland, not a day you let pass
before calling some Owner a thief or an ass.”

I claiming quietly such comment was offered up just as copy to those favored and friendly Microphonious sports reporters—
week before SupraBowl is otherwise dead air.

The old man’s eyes terrifying, rolling high in their sockets, aqueous, white, small crystal balls, and his wiry frame a frenzy of trembling, the body language of seeming hysteria all the more horrible because no sound of laughter threatens to accompany any words. “Why should your brain contain all that mine does? My life in live theater taught me a nuanced truth: what goes on behind the scenes is not always something an actor need know, but a director had best not be left in the dark. It was Brancusi’s shot from start to finish, part of a deal with the PFL. The attempt by your tool, your agent, to muscle you in for a share of the grin is so typically American, so typically you—and has pissed people off, if I may coin an expression of the realm. You needed an excuse to stay one more day, to share

a separate slice of  glory with your teammate? That is what we could call a ‘best case.’ The sharing part, that is. Or maybe, a worse case, showing up in time to leave nothing
to share. You’d spend your time better in your own native land attending to a brother,
victim of another,
one more like you
than you’d claim
you do believe.”

Insulted, offended, alarmed, my voice slurring:
brother?
my brother?
what you know
‘bout my brother?

Supra-Title [Trademark Pend.] Text:

The Red Ranger then struck, his right palm shooting out to slap this antagonist he considered an insulter, a demented old nudist who maybe needed a lesson, but that right hand was intercepted, was held by something iron, a grip like a lion’s, Red’s wrist bent back, instantaneous agony sending him right to the rocks, on his knees, so suddenly conscious of the orphans whose gaze he should avoid, their witness now as painful as the crampings in his forearm . . . to save face in their eyes he reached deep down to find from a rarely tapped source inside himself the strength to twist his fingers back, then to set his balance aright with hips and back to get the leverage that he needed to force himself back up off his knees, and with a grunt and rush of strength bulled the old man to the brink of a rocky ledge above the frothing sea, then pulled him back with a fast and aggressive yank, away from the edge so they wouldn’t teeter-totter and risk a dangerous fall into chilling water. Their bodies seemed then to agree to disagree, enough practical pride left on each side of the ego-equation, and as though on a signal they disengaged from one another—with the ancient one’s cracked cackles carrying waves of weird pleasure, and subdued grunts from Red Rust, sonic equivalents of
landsmen trying to tread water.
At last, now these two converse.

O Reader, please imagine a unique set-design effect: sunshine from on high in the sky that resembles a reflection of blue water from a swimming pool below. Illuminated under its glow, and as though being snapped back to on-field resumption of football competition from a trance-like half-time intermission, Redmund Rust sips more coffee, rubs his re-growing beard, and again clears his throat. Steve raises his eyebrows interrogatively and furrows his forehead.

The Red Ranger (as serious as a Priest confessing to a Bishop):

Steve, your father was last seen on a bicycle, pedaling away from an old Irish Tower
at Sandymount, beach spray shooting from the silver sand beneath black rubber tires,
on his way to a train station where he had a ticket that would deliver him to an airport.

▪ ▪ ▪

Raised on the rural coast of Oregon, James Joaquin Brewer currently shelters in West Hartford, Connecticut, while completing a “re-telling” of the Odyssey via the foggy lens of the modern world’s obsession with football. Among other places, his writing in a variety of genres has appeared in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Write Launch, LitBreak, The Hartford Courant, Aethlon, Jeopardy, Rosebud, The Poetry Society of New York, Closed Eye Open, The Manifest-Station, Quibble, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, BlazeVox, Madswirl.

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