The Things Other People Do
On Saturdays my uncle'd sleep all morning out in our garage with his red El Camino hunkered down in our driveway and the whole time I wouldn't know what to do.
So I'd sneak cigarette butts from the ashtray and sit in the shade or shine of the El Camino and wish I could draw or put models together until one day a kid came by riding circles on his bike and said his dad had a Trans Am.
I said I didn't give a damn.
“It's blue,” he said and popped a wheelie to show his bike blue too.
I asked him did he want a cigarette and when he did had to go find a good butt. I crawled out of the El Camino and he was holding a piece of glare.
He lit his and mine off the Zippo and said that was his dad's too. He showed me how to open and strike it with one hand, how to strike it on my leg, how to snap my fingers and strike it.
We watched how each other smoked and he kept running the flame from the lighter around his hand like it didn't hurt. He let me try and it didn't if I kept moving.
The lighter fluid smelled like the time my grandfather died sleeping on my bed.
Natural causes, the man said, and they opened a window that didn't open I didn't think and the wind came in and moved my Grandpa's hair around. People sat with me knowing what to say, then wouldn't.
My uncle, Vaughan, gave me a whole cigarette on the back porch and didn't say anything about anybody catching me and I never knew if he thought I was getting old enough or if he thought with my grandfather dying on my bed people should let me smoke if it's what I needed.
When the boy on the bike asked if I knew how to drive I told him I went to the high school parking lot and learned how to use a clutch and he rode off and I never saw him again.
I'd have the buckets and brushes out and rags ready before my uncle'd wake up. The mayonnaise open and the hose run and tested.
He'd get pissed off if I got him wet, but besides that he'd get in a better mood as the car got shinier and at some point he'd get hungry and we'd go get burgers and sit in the car and eat and I'd look around at all the people with their music (I could never believe all the different kinds of music) coming out of their cars and I'd love my uncle so much I'd decide right then and there I'd be something you’re supposed to be.
He taught me how to look at girls. How letting them know you’re looking's not always bad and not always good and the difference in new country and old country. I told him I hated both equal and he made me sit and listen to Waylon and Johnny Cash until I understood those guys were on my side and he taught me how to tell the difference in cars.
Taught me what to listen for in a motor and how to detail out a car.
We'd shine the interior with Miracle Whip and toothbrushes and if I asked him, which the smell always made me do, did he take mayo on his sandwiches, he'd say, “Only enough to lubricate,” and laugh like all hell.
He taught me how nobody can teach you anything.
“I ain't about shit,” he'd say eventually, drinking. “Don't listen to me. I’m everything you don't want to be. A big bunch of bullshit in a body,” he'd say until I'd tell him I thought he was cool and he'd put me in a headlock or something.
Uncle Vaughan died in Pelican Bay Prison trying to keep from being raped I always figure. He wasn't going to put up with that shit but he wasn't as big as he thought, he used to say.
I never knew what happened to his car when he went in. Probably somebody he owed money got it and didn't nobody care including the law Mom said.
I would’ve I told her and she took me on the only family vacation we ever went on and we were gone three weeks, staying with people I didn't know, a couple of nights in a hotel with a pool. One night we slept in the car at a rest area and Mom promised we'd stay at the beach all the next day and we did.
It was cold and windy when we got there and nobody on the whole beach except for this man and woman walking way off in white windbreakers and rolled up pants and two golden retrievers running around them.
I told Mom I wish we knew those people.
It looked like she was going to cry. I went in the trunk and made her a ham sandwich with our last two end pieces and when I got back she was still standing there looking out at the ocean with her arms wrapped around herself.
“I don't ever see the things other people do,” she told me without taking the sandwich.
I asked her what she was looking for.
Where I thought she was looking I couldn't see anything either.
“I’ve never looked for anything,” she said, “but I'd still like to see something every once in a while.”
I took a bite. I knew she probably wouldn't eat that sandwich in the first place, but wanted to bring her something.
I had a hard time swallowing though.
When the people on the beach got so small they weren't even dots any more she sat down in the sand, pulled her knees to her chest, balled up.
I thought about what she said while I picked up seashells and put them in a little pile around her.
Finally I told her something like when I walk home at night and see somebody's TV through their window I always try to find that show when I get home and never do.
“Your uncle loved you,” she said, “He was buried at sea, you know, out there. That's what they do with their ashes when they don't know what else at Pelican Bay.”
She picked up one of the shells and put it to her ear for a long time.
Craig Wright is Fiction Writer at Southern Oregon University, a short story and songwriter, guitar player, professor, father and husband. From Ashland Oregon, born in Louisiana, Wright has published stories in national journals and magazines and has one book of stories, Redemption Center.
In the last few years Craig has performed as part of Zero, Steve Kimock and Friends, as well as his own band, Cast of Clowns, which features all star musicians such as Melvin Seals, Bill Kreutzmann and Jeff Pevar. Craig, along with The Clowns, has headlined Oregon Country Fair, The Starbelly Festival in British Columbia, and played numerous sold out shows up and down the West Coast and in Hawaii. In just the last few months Craig has performed sold out acoustic shows with Steve Kimock and a very successful New Years Eve show at Applegate Lodge with Craig Wright and Friends.