Sunday, March 29th, 2020 @ 7:40 AM
Reading Township, Illinois
I heard from Ann my sister and Ed my brother and
by text yesterday. Ann was making a welfare check on me, just a simple,
"How are you doing?" She thought I was still living someplace near
New York City in the state of New York. She was worried. Steve was probably
worried too.
I assured her I was pretty far away from New
York City, an epicenter of the Covid-19 virus. I'm so far from New York City
that I'm in Chicagoland. I know the Midwest pretty well. It's where my people
live. I wondered if states were going to become countries, placing troopers to
search cars and take temperatures at the borders. I made it to the Midwest
before that happened.
LaSalle County Illinois had announced a fourth
positive case, again found in one of the larger cities on the Illinois River
eighteen miles north of home. Four people were touched by the virus out of two
hundred thousand. I reeled off these facts to assure her and myself. I feel
deep sorrow for those who suffer, and it seems all cases are mild, treatable at
home.
I bragged, "Since I've become vegan,
shopping at ALDI has become so easy. I just walk in, buy a bag of rice, a box
of raisins and a jar of unsalted peanuts and eight dollars later I'm good for
the week".
I wrote her a long message. We could talk on the
phone, but we can say so much by text so fast. She has had difficulty talking
after a throat surgery ten years ago. She talks well enough for her husband
Steve to understand her face to face. But the phone doesn't transmit her voice
well.
I asked after Jim, who lives in the same home
nearby. Jim and Matt took up together in the late Eighties, sparing the two
from the AIDS riddled bathhouse scene. They lived in a gorgeous apartment at
Seven Mile and Woodward, Palmer Park at first. Jim could read his collection of
first editions and hagiologies squinting with his one good eye. Matt drove the
Saturn sedan. Riley, an Irish setter and seeing eye dog, rode in the passenger
seat, where often I sat too.
The deck of the eighth floor apartment
overlooked the well-manicured golf course. I taught school five minutes away,
so I popped in to see the couple. We would go to a deli on Woodward nearby and
Jim would tell me to keep my feet off the furniture.
Matt has been gone for almost two years, two
years in June. Ann assured me that Steve took Jim for groceries once a week. I
felt better. I have often thought of visiting Jim at his home. I'll ask for an
invite the next time I'm in Detroit. I want to hear his Matthew stories. I have
to reassemble my lost brother from stories. The process takes a lot of stories.
I have a corner on all the Matthew stories from
age 1 to age 17, when he left home for Warren. Matt had a knack for Bible
verses and I have yet to tell Jim all the examples. Once Matt turned to me and
said, "Lot gave his brother first choice". We were fighting over
small boxes of breakfast cereal, not the promised land. So I let him have the
Raisin Bran. Jim knows that one because I shared it at the funeral. He said to
himself, “Lot gave his brother first choice”, and he chuckled.
Early this March, Ann and Steve had set off for
a thirty-five day drive across the country to celebrate their thirty-fifth
wedding anniversary. The two had married, divorced and soon remarried. Because
the divorce was obviously a mistake, the two count their years married from the
date of the first marriage.
The two reached Virginia by the Chesapeake Bay
Bridge. Hotels took them in but no one was serving dinners in a dining room.
What was the fun of taking a road trip if one couldn't take breakfast at the
twenty-four hours bayside diner Steve haunted after an all night shift at the
Norfolk Naval Base?
The two got tired of fast food drive in fare,
dashboard dining. Steve wanted to take selfies of his wife enjoying caramel
pecan rolls and he couldn’t. They headed home where they could sit down to eat
at the family table. Next year, they'll set out for thirty-six days in honor of
their thirty-sixth anniversary.
Ed texted me, asking about the best way to buy
train tickets to Chicago in July. He had found a ticket, Durand to Chicago, for
fifty-five dollars. I must admit. I have never taken a train trip from the holy
Durand depot. Yes, a case can be made for the sacredness of the Durand Depot.
The ferroequinologists who are the great grandchildren
of the men or women who worked the rails in Durand, Michigan from the beginning
totally restored the depot to perfection. Ferroequinologists, lovers of the
Iron Horse, might as well gather in the waiting room for church services.
Afterwards, you’ll find the faithful taking dinner at the nearby Iron Horse
Saloon, which never closes, not even for Christmas. Yes, I know why he wants to
go from Durand to Chicago.
"Hold your money", I advised. Better
deals must be coming. "I have the money set aside", he texted. “What
if Amtrak goes belly up, what then”? I don’t want him to lose his money. Amtrak
is running ghost trains right now just to keep a schedule.
I sighed. I am glad his wife and he made
adequate money at a Meijer Superstore within easy walk of their home. For
years, I have heard details of his money troubles. I really believe people do
better when they can build a money battery, money that works to make them
money. He was doing so well paying down debt. I believe he has it all mopped
up. I have often wished I could do more for them. Give his family a house and a
money battery. All I do now is blow his family to a big meal at the Wrought
Iron Grill in Owosso and buy him a few pints of local microbrew. And only when
I’m flush.
Karen and I didn't talk directly yet. She has
served as an ordained minister at a church in Traverse City. She organizes
Women’s Conferences for the women of the Grand Traverse Region. I met one of
her followers, who witnessed to me without irony. “I have been given dominion
over death. I can raise the dead.”
Thus, when she refers to scripture, she just
quotes chapter and verse. That’s all the faithful need, memorizers of the Holy
Word. She posted two references, chapter and verse, that "God had laid
upon her heart" as she prayed about the pandemic.
I looked each one up. I posted the text for each
verse in the comments, so she knew I had. I knew I was in trouble for referencing
the New International Version. If you're going to Bible thump at all, thump the
King James Version. She'll have to hit me up after I followed up on her
preaching. I await.
I cannot see my family right now. But I know
where they are, at home, as safe as possible. I can hear this in their words.
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