The Thompson Elk Returns Home After Years in Exile

It’s a perfect sunny day, and I take off my jacket and hang it over the handlebars of my knee scooter as I wait for the bus to take me across the river to my endocrinology appointment. All day I’ve been boiling with tension, a film of irritation covering a roiling sea of anxiety. It doesn’t help that the bus is running late. There are more bodies scattered across the sidewalks than I’ve seen in months.

At the first stop on Burnside, an old man in a motorized wheelchair gets on. I try to make room for him but he ends up backing up and smashing into my knees. I feel like yelling at him. 

I’m dismayed to see that the metal detector and x-ray machine are back up and running in the lobby of the hospital, manned by two beefy young men who look like they’re in high school. I put my bags in a plastic bin and instead of waving me around the detector they tell me to roll right through, causing the lights to flash. They run the wand over me and have me take everything out of my pockets, which I had forgotten to do. I roll down the hall to what they call the Tower elevators and notice for the first time that they only stop at four of the upper floors, the buttons in between are blacked out. By the time I make it up to the endocrinology/weight loss office I’m fifteen minutes late.

They call my name before I have a chance to get a good look at the waiting room. Without the Christmas decorations that were up during my last visit, it looks stark and barren. I step on the scale and just like last time it shows that I weigh much more than I expected. I’m not even wearing a cast this time. Am I really putting on that much weight? I don’t feel or look any different. But if the scale is right, I’m heavier than I’ve ever been. 

The aide pricks my finger so they can check my A1C levels, then disappears and a few minutes later the doctor arrives. I had been warned that Dr. Miller was booked solid and that I’d be seeing his assistant. Like the guards downstairs, she looks like she should be studying for the SATs. Her nametag has the same surname as one of the most toxic ghouls currently hollowing out the country from the White House. I’m tempted to make a joke about it but she seems very nice and very earnest. She tells me my A1C is 6.6 like it was last time, then connects her computer to the app for my glucose reader and walks me through what she sees. “You’re doing so much better, it looks like you’ve got things really under control,” she says. I have never had an endocrinologist tell me that in my life. I’m glad I didn’t joke about her name.

She asks what’s going on with my foot. In the three weeks since I was set free from wound care, I’ve been wearing a post-op shoe instead of my new orthotics. “You were almost healed up last time you were here…?” she asks, reading the screen. I tell her it finally healed, but after two weeks it opened up again, just like it always does. I say that after I see her I’m going to roll down to wound care to make an appointment. 

“I’m really frustrated,” I say, but to my surprise I don’t really feel that frustrated anymore, and I’m able to talk to her about it in a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice. She is very kind and says that aside from my foot problems, I’m doing really well and that I should come back in four months. 

  When I roll up to the wound care clinic, I see through the window that there is an elderly couple with an ancient woman in a wheelchair at the counter, so I wait until they’re done then hit the good old blue handicap button and roll in. I’m surprised to see Perez behind the desk, sitting next to Gladys, who instantly gives me that disapproving look I’ve grown sort of fond of. 

“I’m back!” I cry. 

Dr. Thompson comes from around the corner and leans very close to me and asks, “How are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? The question is, are YOU okay?” She looks confused so I say, “The last time I saw you, you were about to have surgery.” She pulls down the front of her scrubs to show the base of her throat, which is lightly scarred, as if she’s had her thyroid removed. 

“I’m a robot now,” she says, which doesn’t sound like a thyroid issue. Throat cancer? “I’ll tell you about it later. You’re coming back to us?”

“I’m afraid so. It opened back up again. Even though I’ve been really good,” I say, looking at Evelyn. 

“I bet you have,” Gladys says, in a tone that could be either sarcastic or sympathetic. 

I have been, though. In the past month, the only time I’ve done any walking is at work, where I can’t avoid it. And even there I try to use my heel as much as possible to keep the pressure off the thin new skin where the wound was. But apparently I wasn’t careful enough, because after a few weeks, the skin started to tear open.

“The same spot?” she asks. 

“The same spot,” I say.

“Is it bad?” she asks. 

“Not really,” I say, feeling strangely lighthearted. For weeks I’ve been slipping deeper and deeper into despair, but being here, facing this maddening issue at last, is genuinely freeing. Plus, I’ve been so lonely. I hadn’t realized just how dependent I had become on my weekly visits to provide some social interaction. So I’m genuinely excited to see Original Karen appear from the back of the office and ask, “Is that Seann?” 

“Nope, just the bell inspector.” I adjust the three bells on the counter, my hand lingering a moment on the one I so recently rang. “Just as I suspected. I think you need a fourth one.” I pick up the Oscar statuette and shake it.

Perez searches for an opening, typing and frowning. 

“It’s tricky because we’re down a room,” says Original Karen. “We’re painting them.”

“Ooh, you should let me do a mural showing all the different kinds of wounds,” I say. 

“Yes!” cries Gladys. “And a hyperbaric chamber! It would look so cool!”

And at last Perez finds me a slot at the end of the day on Monday. I’m so relieved that I don’t even care that I won’t be giving work much notice. I need to start putting my health first. I suspect that the only thing that will truly heal this up is to take some time off again, or else find a way of doing my job without walking even a little bit, which I’m not sure is possible. I feel resigned to doing whatever I need to in order to get better, even if it costs me my job. 

Afterwards I roll across the street to get blood work done for Dr. Miller. Since I was here last, the lab was taken over by the evil corporate monster Labcorp, and they have installed automatic check-in kiosks that require you to scan your photo ID and insurance card before you can talk to anyone. The fascist police state is firing on all cylinders these days.

I’m finally called up to the counter and told it’ll be a fifteen or twenty minute wait. I watch as patients are called in one by one before me, and finally take out my sketchbook.  

At some point the lab tech calls, “Rosie? Is there a Rosie?” An elderly Black woman and a young white father with a little girl both stand up at once. “Rosie R.,” the tech says. 

“I’m Rosie R,” says the old woman. 

“So are we,” says the young man. “Well, I’m not, but my daughter is.”

“How about Rosie Ross, then,” the tech says, and the man and the little girl follow her in. 

The old woman takes her seat, chuckling, “What are the odds?” 

I wait for over an hour until they call me. The tech is astonishingly fast. When I leave, line to check in stretches out the door and down the hallway. 

I catch the bus and make my connection into downtown. It’s only been three weeks and here I am, back on the merry go round of what will no doubt be a long series of weekly appointments. As we turn off Main Street, I see that the barricades and caution tape that have been littering the block for months have been removed, and that the bronze Thompson Elk statue, damaged during the Black Lives Matter protests, has at last been put back in its place. It’s been six years since they took it down to restore it, six years since the protests, six years since the beginning of COVID. It’s genuinely comforting to see the beloved stag once again standing with antlers held high beneath the trees. I wonder if he is shocked to find that in his absence the society he gazed down upon for a hundred years seems on the verge of collapse.

Don't Chase

 I spend July 4th in the apartment, alternating between cleaning and sleeping. I didn’t have too much to drink at the barbecue but I still feel sluggish and worn out. I have a pretty pleasant day regardless, and by evening feel perky enough to head down to the Goose for supper. 

There are Lost Dog posters plastered all over the neighborhood, showing a moppy little mutt with the typical admonition “Dont chase will run.” The Goose is busier than I thought but most of the crowd is settling their bills and heading out to watch the fireworks, leaving only a few of us. 

As usual, nearly everyone on the deck is coupled up, but when I walk over to the water cooler I see an attractive woman sitting by herself. I smile and she gives me a big, warm smile back. Well that’s nice, I think, but she’s probably waiting for someone. But when I go to sit down with my drink, I see her start to talk to a guy sitting by himself a few tables away from her. He has a full beard and a baseball cap. He also has a dog. 

By the time my food comes they are laughing and chatting like old friends. His dog barks wildly at every other dog that approaches the deck. “She’s just saying hello,” the man says every time. I can’t make out much of their conversation but I hear him say that he’s in real estate. She’s new to the neighborhood, and fairly new to Portland. I hear them talk about paddle boarding. They look like a good match. Even if I had a dog, I can’t compete with real estate and paddle boarding, not to mention that beard, which is full and lustrous. I can only hope that the cap is hiding a case of male pattern baldness, though I know that wouldn’t make a difference at this point. 

I take my trusty sketchbook out for company but my heart’s not in it. I tell myself this is a good opportunity to practice not spiraling down into self-hatred and misery about how alone I am, how long I’ve been alone, how the older I get the chances of this changing grow ever slimmer. It’s so easy to chastise myself for my cowardice. I should have gone right up to her when I got my drink, talk to her before that irresistible canine spell could take hold. But I couldn’t do it. I am convinced that no woman wants anything to do with me. While this might not be true, it has been many years since I’ve seen any evidence to the contrary.

“I need to get a dog,” the server says to me.

“Same here,” I say. “But I like cats better.”

“Me too,” he says. “But, you know.”

The new friends order another drink and I finish mine and head back up the hill. In an empty parking lot, a gorgeous young woman and a man who looks like her father are fiddling with an automatic ball-throwing machine that their dog is nosing warily. The girl is twitchy and holding her limbs at odd angles, like she’s on something. Dog toys and balls and various bits of throwing apparatus lie scattered across the parking lot. 

At the top of the hill, the lost dog signs grow more desperate, hanging from every telephone pole. The sky is nearly dark. Soon the fireworks will start and all the dogs I saw tonight will be whimpering under their owners’ beds. I wonder where the lost dog will hide, who will comfort him as the world around him explodes.

Clean Towels

        It’s the day before Independence Day and the second Revolutionary War has been won. After decades of fighting, the noble rich have finally thrown off the shackles placed on them by the filthy poor. For us huddled masses, it’s all pretty disheartening, but I have the day off tomorrow and am on my way to a backyard barbecue. As I sit on the bench at the bus stop, I look at the arrival time on my phone. It keeps leaping around, getting longer and shorter as some unseen force impedes the vehicle’s progress. A man on the corner shows a cardboard sign to the traffic. I don’t bother to read it. I used to be interested in these signs, in all the different ways people ask for help, the various kinds of lettering they use, but I can’t look anymore. 

        A teenage girl sits next to me, thumbs skipping across the screen of her phone. There is suddenly an explosion behind us, followed by another, and another. It seems early for fireworks –the sun is still high in the sky. I turn around to look and see puffs of smoke in the air above the bridge. The booms go on for a few minutes. 

        “What was that?” the girl asks uncertainly. She doesn’t have an accent I would guess she’s Pakistani.

        “Oh, somebody getting ready for the fourth,” I say.

        “But that’s not until tomorrow,” she says, sounding confused.

        Just then there is a crash right in front of us. An old hatchback truck crammed with junk has spilled a pile of metal shelves out of its open hatch. The truck speeds through the intersection then pulls over. Fortunately, the car behind it brakes before it hits the shelves, and I walk out in front of it, holding up my hand up. The girl runs out after me and we both gather up  the shelves. The words CLEAN TOWELS are written on a piece of masking tape on one of them. We carry them to the sidewalk and the driver of the truck comes and grabs them without a word. 

        

        The girl and I sit back on the bench. 

        “Lucky that didn’t go through somebody’s windshield,” I say. 

        “Yeah. Pretty scary,” she says. The bus comes and I gesture for her to get on first then she does the same to me and I insist and she says no then we both try to step on at the same time and laugh. As we drive off I look at the guy on the corner and finally decide to read his sign. He’s crayoned an American flag next to the words WAR VETERAN ANYTHING HELPS. I wonder if he knows that the real war is just beginning. 

The Lew Welch Memorial Expressway

I wake up beside the highway. Above it, rather. Over the past year I’ve learned the rhythms of its traffic the way someone living beside the sea learns the patterns of the tide. The traffic never stops on the 405 and its many arteries, though it does slow down at night. The poet Lew Welch ranted about the insidiousness of highways in a letter he mailed from a house one block from here that a few years later was razed to build this very road. If it was still there, I would be able to see the roof from my bedroom window. Despite all the changes to the city, I like knowing that many of the buildings he would have walked by are still standing, including this one. 

The sun has not yet crept around the corner of the building so I’m a little chilly as I sit on the balcony with my coffee. The sparrows vanished last week; I miss their frantic chirping, though I never caught more than glimpses of their beaks. I do my puzzles and read the news, even though I know I shouldn’t. I should be protecting myself from the constant barrage of horrifying updates to the story of our country’s plummet into madness. It’s  rush hour and the traffic light on the ramp is helping to stagger the traffic speeding toward the tunnel that cuts through the hills. 

Last week my mother and I drove through that tunnel on the way to the zoo. She was in town to visit and she said the two things she wanted to see were my new (to her) apartment and the baby elephant. Tula-Tu is four months old; I’d never seen an elephant so young, and while it’s always depressing to see animals in cages, my mother and I were both captivated. It’s a strange experience to stand next to the woman who gave birth to you and watch a baby elephant tuck her trunk into her own mother’s armpit to suckle. 

We had a nice week together. Growing old has not made her bitter and crabby like it did to her own mother, who never was all that nurturing to begin with. I didn’t plan a lot but we managed to pack in a lot. I dragged her along to a program dedicated to the work of a local video artist, which wasn’t great, and a production of Assassins, which was. Assassins is a Stephen Sondheim musical about the people who killed or tried to kill the president. It’s hard to believe there has only been a single botched attempt at eliminating our current president, but the show repeatedly urges us to follow our dreams.

The production was put on by a small local troupe of self-proclaimed marginalized  individuals, all of whom were terrific. They performed in the black box theater at Reed College. Lew Welch went to Reed, along with his friends and fellow Beat poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. I wonder what they would have thought of the play, its usual carnival barker narrator replaced by an imposing drag queen Lady Liberty. 

We spent a few days at the coast, staying in a motel in the sleepy town of Rockaway Beach. It was shabby, but it was clean, and it was right on the beach. We had lunch in Manzanita, which is a bustling metropolis by comparison, then went to my favorite spot on the entire coast, Short Sand. I don’t get there often because you need a car. From the parking lot you follow a creek for a mile through old growth forest, where trees sprout from other trees, their roots forming twisted structures that look like portals to the faerie kingdom. It all looks otherworldly. The path ends at a gorgeous cove rimmed with pines and beloved by surfers. 

Welch famously disappeared into the California wilderness with a rifle when he was 44, leaving behind a note.

 

I never could make anything work out right and now I’m betraying my friends. I can’t make anything out of it – never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It’s all gone.

 As I sat next to my aging mother, looking out over the Pacific, I felt grateful that she was still in good enough shape to visit me, to drive to the beach, to walk through the woods to get to this beautiful spot. It has been a hard year, as was last year, as was the year before, as was... The losses keep building up and the planet seems to be spinning faster and faster toward apocalypse. My foot is still fucked up, and as usual I’m aching with loneliness. To cope with it all I’m drinking too much, which, oddly, does not seem to be helping. I’m not ready to give up on this world yet, but if I was, this would be a good place to do so. To let go of this world with the protective arms of the cove encircling us. Juncos twittering in the branches. The sun sparkling on the water. The waves crashing against the sand like the sound of rushing traffic on the freeway. 

For the Cause

It has to be done, I know that,

but God is it boring. Unsavory, of course,

but it’s the boredom that eats away at me.

I stare out at the flies crazing

beneath the ceiling fan, feel like my eyes 

are going to start circling and looping like them 

if he doesn’t finish soon. I’m jerking as hard as I dare;

too fast or too slow and he’ll gripe.

It’s small and flaccid, but I do my best  with the material

as I wait for that final spasm so I can finally 

get some work done. In the meantime, 

I stare at the flies and think about the diagrams,

the lists, the maps, all the scraps of folded paper 

outlining the plan to bring down this gang of rejects

from Monster Island. Some of the information 

is vital –lists of potential allies,

the heights of buildings along various routes,

seating arrangements in the chambers and halls. 

Some of it is more esoteric. Secret sauce recipes

for various fast food items. Sources for exploding

seat cushions. Theories on how to keep a head alive 

once it’s been separated from the body 

so it can still watch and feel as a razor-sharp, 

many-pronged dildo is rammed repeatedly 

into the rectum. Is that really a necessary part 

of the overall scheme? 

There are various schools of thought on this. 

Some fear we will lose focus, as I am right now, 

letting my weary mind daydream about a day 

when a never-ending series of handjobs 

and blowjobs won’t be necessary 

to appease and distract these slobs. 

That day seems so distant, 

but at least this current state of semi-hardship 

is close to coming an end, his cheeks having gone 

from orange to cherry to grape 

as he puffs and groans, sweat matting 

linty cobwebs of hair against his brow. 

Finally, with a little squeak 

his whole body shudders 

and a greasy comet of spunk 

streaks across the room

to splat against the portrait of his daughter 

eying us from the end table. 

Milky tears run down her face 

as he struggles to extract his ass 

from the deep plush. 

It won’t be long now, I want to tell her.

He totters and tugs on his trousers 

and flicks a few bills at me.  

As they flutter to the carpet, 

I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. 

One of the flies follows

and I snatch it from the air with a soapy fist 

and drop it into the sink

where it swirls and swirls before 

being sucked down into the darkness.

I Thought We Were Talking

Sunday morning I wake up and look out the window. On the street below, a figure in s black coat is standing nearly doubled over, frozen in place. This is a common sight these days; dealers have taken to cutting fentanyl with an animal tranquilizer called Xylazine, or tranq, which extends the length of the high and paralyzed the recipient. 

I spend the afternoon riding the bus around. I am sickened by the nastiness of the anti-homeless rhetoric, but today is one of these days when everyone I come across seems fucked up on something or other, and it’s pretty depressing. The ones who aren’t huddled in doorways pace back and forth, muttering and twitching. The city’s once clean streets are now always filled with garbage and food wrappers. Tents are everywhere, but they don’t stay in the same place long. The cops keep doing sweeps so people are always on the move.

As I’m waiting for one of my buses, a man paces back and forth in front of the shelter. It’s a large shelter, with four seats, only one of which is not covered with globs of various liquids. He finally asks me if I saw twenty dollars under my seat. I tell him no but do a cursory check. He walks away, screams something at the sky, then returns and quietly asks if Ive seen twenty dollars. 

I get on the bus and sit down across the aisle from a young man who is talking as if engaged in a conversation, though he doesn’t have a phone or earbuds and no one was responding to him. He is clean cut in a tshirt and pair of shorts. His legs are very smooth, like they have just been shaven, or maybe he just doesn’t have any hair is his legs. From time to time he chuckles to himself, and keeps glancing over at me. I dont make eye contact and don’t pay attention to what he’s saying though I hear him say “The thing you got to understand is he really does love me.” 

I get off at the closest stop to my apartment. It’s a three block walk. At the last minute the young man leaps off the bus and walks beside me as I cross the street, talking the entire time. “You know what I’m sayin?” He asks, and looks at me as if expecting a response. 

“I didn’t know you were talking to me,” I say. 

He laughs and continues to walk alongside me. “I remember you from that place we lived in Milwaukie,” he says. (Milwaukie is a suburb of Portland.) 

“I never lived in Milwaukie.” I say. He seems confused then continues chattering about some upstairs neighbor. His speech is very difficult to follow; the sentences themselves make sense but they don’t seem to connect to form a narrative. 

Instead of continuing on straight ahead, he turns right when I do and crosses the bridge with me. I am starting to feel apprehensive; his demeanor is friendly and he seems harmless, but he obviously has some sort of brain damage, probably caused or exacerbated by whatever controlled substances he is on.

At the other end of the bridge I turn left and cross the street and finally stop. My building is just ahead and I don’t want him to know where I live. He takes a few steps then stops and turns to me, still talking. “Are you following me?” I ask, annoyed. 

“I thought we were talking,” he says, sounding confused and slightly wounded.

“I need to go home,” I say. He immediately turns and starts walking back the way he came. I watch him for a bit, then walk past my building and around the corner to go in the back way. It’s only then that I sheepishly notice how hard my heart is pounding. 

The next morning I look out the window and see a figure in almost the same spot as the one yesterday, standing hunched over with his head bowed, standing completely still as if time as stopped. As if he has turned to stone. 

Junebug

 A full year after the juncos made their nest in the eaves above my apartment, a pair of sparrows moves in. A few weeks later I hear the insistent chirping of the chicks, and occasionally spy the parents darting in and out of the crack that leads to the nest. It cheers me to hear them.

Though the night air is chilly, I leave the balcony door open when I go to bed, thinking it will feel good to crawl under the warm covers. I sleep well, though in the morning Olivia wakes me up a number of times meowing. She often does this when she’s hungry, but today she continues even after I fill her bowl. She keeps waking me up and I keep scratching her on the head and falling back asleep.

The sun is bright when I finally haul myself out of bed. I sit on the balcony with my coffee for a little while and listen to the tweeting of the hungry chicks. It’s still chilly though, and after a little while I head inside to get on the laptop. 

A few minutes later I hear a loud thump. It sounds like something heavy has fallen off a shelf. Then I hear Olivia scrambling around. Did she fall? I peer around the corner of my writing nook and see her lying on the desk, not moving. I leap up and see that she has something with feathers clutched in her paws. My first thought is that it’s one of the sparrows, but it’s much, much bigger than that. It’s a full-size pigeon.

“No!” I yell. She doesn’t move, holding the pigeon so tight it can barely move. “No!” I yell again, and try to smack her butt without touching the bird. She jumps off the desk with her quarry gripped in her mouth. I chase her around the apartment yelling but she will not let go. The bird is moving but I can’t tell what kind of shape it’s in. There’s no blood, and I don’t see any loose feathers. I finally lunge at her and she lets go and the bird flutters out the door and over the railing. She runs after it but I close the door before she can get out. I sit down panting and she scurries off to hide. 

After a little while I go back outside to finish my coffee. My hand is shaking. There is no sign of the pigeon. I close the door and Olivia peers through the glass and meows. My sweet little girl finally found a plaything larger than a Junebug and I ruined her murderous fun. The baby sparrows chirp madly, waiting for their parents to stuff them full of bugs. This is the life they have to look forward to. I don’t know how any of us do it.