Thursday, October 20, 2016
We were boys together; brothers really, as only you can be when one of you is dating the others sister. She called him Michael, but my brother Gregg and I found out his middle name and thereafter always behind his back and not infrequently to his face called him Leroy.
The Woodlawn pool was still relatively new that summer, a splash of aqua carved out of a field burnt yellow by the sun and dotted with fledgling scotch pines so as to justify calling it a park. It was the usual set up; the boys stayed in the water so as to ogle the girls who were all lying out on the wide, white hot concrete deck that encircled the cool, cool blue. Of what dreams danced in their heads we boys could have no conception.
But down here in the water other games were afoot. Leroy had already pitched several hundred jokes at us. He had varied his speed and location, but we didn’t have to swim because we didn’t have anything to prove. We weren’t trying to join a different family. The burden was all on Leroy. He spoke in terse, crisp sentences and mainly told stupid little jokes that didn’t lead anywhere. His change of pace was to tell vulgar jokes he had learned in the Navy or at least stories of his seaman’s adventure. He got some credit there. And we asked him the question any man who has not been in combat asks one who has. His answer was, “I might have.” And his story of how he was pulled off a ship at sea, dropped ashore, handed a rifle and spent the night being attached by sappers had it’s effect. Even as we floated, looking at the sky we could feel the weight of his age and experience.
When his jokes bombed (and they mostly bombed) we made a reactive sound that mimicked the boing noise that rolled towards us each time some lazy jumper bounced off the iron low board to retake the plunge. When his long stories bombed we made the splashing noise of a big boy hitting the water in a canon ball. Suddenly Leroy turned muscled back to us and swam to the edge of the pool. He didn’t use the pool ladder but put his hands on the painted turquoise lip and hoisted himself out of the water in one quick, easy press. He slicked back his dark hair as he walked towards the deep end. He slipped past the low board that rested on the west side of the central tower. We looked at each other as his hands grasped the rungs of the tower and began to climb.
It had been a slow afternoon on the boards. Too hot. But up Leroy went, his tan body and red trunks climbing upwards against his own private tide. All too suddenly he appeared at the top, holding on the chrome rails on either side of the board. We pictured him running forward, jumping upward and clasping his arms around his knees as he fell. But he didn’t. He walked easily and confidently toward the end of the board, balancing his figure etched in silhouette against the sky. Suddenly his arms reached up and captured a piece of sky under each arm. He pulled downward and the board rose. He bounced several times on the very end of the board. In the pool and on the deck hands rose to shield eyes straining to focus up high in the bright sky.
Leroy leaned forward into the empty space above the pool. The board pushed him up into it, his arms flying up beside him, legs rising behind. For what seemed like long seconds he appeared to float and flutter like a swan above an aqua sea. Then his head and arms changed attitude, legs went vertical, and he slipped into the water smoothly and quietly.
There was a ripple of noise in the crowd. And whatever ripple he created an entry reached us before he surfaced from his deep dive. He was grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Great dive, Michael!” we uttered in unison, and then individually, “Great dive, Mike!” He was never Leroy again.
Despite consistent and serious effort no way was ever found to plug the hole in Michael’s psyche from whence sprang the unrelenting torrent of stupid stories and bad jokes. While he participate3d in normal, current, topical adult discussions you could wager that not too far into all that seriousness Michael would give you that come here and listed this one expression, wrinkle his nose, and begin telling either a joke or a stupid story that had absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. This, for the past 49 years, has been a part of our family dynamics. The question as to whether Michael could take anything seriously was an open question. Then last November he and Karen made a trip to Houston that shaped the answer.
They came at the best time of year for our climate. While there were local restaurants to eat at and neighborhood stores to shop at I recognized that my sister, who had not too long before lost her precious dog Katie, had, in part, come to play with my eight week old litter of puppies. It didn’t take Karen too long to be able to identify them all, understand their character, and give each a quasi name based upon their looks or actions. All of them were spoken for save one and I discussed with her why the remaining pup wasn’t appropriate for her, and promised her a puppy from my next litter. When I stood waving in my driveway as Mike and Karen headed back to Tulsa I concluded that their visit had gone well.
Mike’s call several days later disabused me of that notion. “You made your sister cry,” he said. “I what?” He repeated himself and added, “She wanted that puppy.”
“But,” I said, “I explained to her why that wasn’t the right pup for her and promised her a pup from my next litter.”
Mike was insistent. “She wants that puppy and you need to talk to her. Only this time listen to what she wants.”
I was properly rebuked. The Margraves returned to Houston in a week to pick up their new puppy.
And I learned what Michael had taken seriously for each of the past 49 years.
Ellis West
