Here I am

I hear myself saying, "Here I am, Curt." It's a nervous reaction and I try to catch myself before I say it because it reminds me of Mom. I can still hear her saying, "Here I am. Here I am. I am here. Here I am." This was before I knew that everything inside her was disappearing. This was before she forgot that I was her son.

Long ago, in the town I grew up in, there was a store that sold fish that my mother said her mother took her to every Saturday morning when she was a little girl. The store stood on a large plot of land. But the store closed, and a young couple bought the property and flipped the building into a house. They planted a garden. And everything in their garden grew monstrously large. When this couple had children, they decided to build a pool in place of the garden.

Here I am. It snowed today, and I couldn't finish my second route on time because the roads were not yet plowed. The Ghost told me that I'm close to having one route again, but that he'd give me another chance because I looked after his dog yesterday.

I don't know if I care anymore.

When I got home, I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, even a stranger trying to sell me things I'd never use, but I didn't want to be the one to make the phone call, so I waited by the phone, hoping that it'd ring. I prayed that it'd ring. But it didn't.

I thought of Mom's favorite story. "Tell me a story," she'd say. "Any story, something I haven't heard before."

I'd tell her this story and the next day I'd tell it again. And each time I'd finish, she would smile and say, "Wonderful."

She'd kiss me then, on the cheek.

After the measurements were completed, the ground was broken, and a hole was dug for the pool. And when the first large clod of dirt was lifted from the ground, in it, were thousands of fish bones, as if an ocean had once existed where the house now stood. And when the hole grew larger, the whale bones were discovered. At first, they poked through the dirt like tiny incisors. The monstrosity of the bones did not become apparent until a crane came and lifted them, one by one, rib bones like mammoth tusks, into the sky. A crowd came and gathered by the hole. My mother said she ran her hand against one of them. In the end, the pool was built and the bones discarded. The children swam like fish. Water was where it had not been before, although it seemed to have belonged there long before the idea of its place in that spot.

"Wonderful."

A siren passed the house. Warden wagged his tail into the side of a chair, but it didn't seem to bother him. I made dinner and thought I saw something in the corner of my eye, but I didn't turn to look, because in the end, I knew I wouldn't be able to catch it in its entirety. That's the thing with seeing something in the corner of your eye. It is always moving. And if you just catch it, you will not catch it at all if you bother to move.

Before I went to prison, I told Mom the story she used to tell me and that I would tell her. And she listened because I told her that I was going away for a long time. When I finished, I thought she was going to say that she'd heard it before and my heart stopped, but she said, "Wonderful." She smiled. She kissed me on the cheek. Dad took her by the arm.

That was the last time I saw her.

The whale bones were placed in the bed of Roy Gambier's pickup. He wore waders and a group of men helped place them one by one in the truck bed. He drove down to the lake and there, another group of men, also dressed in waders, lifted the bones out of the bed, one by one, and slid them into the water where they still remain, softened by algae and boys diving into the water and carving their girlfriend's initials onto them.

Sometimes, I wish I could forget like Mom. But there are too many stories to tell. Even though some stories are worth listening to over and over again, all stories should be told at least once.

Here I am.
Here I am.
I am here.
Here I am.