March 24th :

I had just gotten off the second part of my return flight from Hong Kong and I was really jonesing for a cigarette. Added to which injustice, the humidity ensuing from the raging storm outside was playing hell with my arthritis. Nicotine was what I needed, contract those blood vessels and get the swelling out of my knee. That fucking rule about 'not smoking' on an airplane was one that I had always been considerate enough to think of on my own. So I don't like blowing smoke on pregnant women and kids, call me a softy. But then at regular ten minute intervals a dulcet woman's voice came over the speakers reminding us not to smoke and how it was a felony, blah, blah. At first I wouldn't have thought of it, now I did. Her voice pressed on my thoughts, however subconscious, and provoked a fierce need to burn the sacred coffin nail. More than just wanting to smoke out of spite for the rules and regulations of the air transport industry, I began to feel her voice turn smoking into a tempting sin. The voice sounded like a phone sex operator to me, it was really cool. I daydreamed for a bit about sharing a post-coital cigarette with this woman and after another spell the reality of the voice belonging to a computer terminal sank in as I recognized the pattern of the announcements. I imagined laying in bed with a monitor and a color printer as if Videodrome's Deborah Harry might reach out and kiss me with the tube. This notion completely deflated my daydreaming though. Videodrome had such a down ending. Pity, it seems the best of fantasies never appear as reality but as constructs of other people's heads.

Anyway, everybody, and I mean everybody smoked constantly in Hong Kong. Old women and middle school kids in uniforms behind the school fences smoked and smoked. I didn't see a 'No Smoking" sign anywhere. And yeah as a matter of fact I do know a little Cantonese so I knew what I was looking for on these signs. It had kind of taken the fun out of smoking for me. One of my favorite things in life is walking around downtown Dallas smoking on the sidewalk and listening eagerly for the feeble coughs of protest from people (preferably prima donna teenage girls) walking behind me. Better still is walking around Southern Methodist University doing the same and occasionally slapping windshields on convertible white BMW's every once in a while to set off the car alarms. These aforementioned feeble protest coughs are just so because I guess you could say that I'm a big guy. I intimidate people and rarely has anyone but self-righteous school counselors felt comfortable criticizing me openly. I stand about six foot eight and weigh in at about two hundred and twenty pounds. The body I saw in the mirror looked more vulnerable but I knew I towered over everybody so I had this built-in confidence thing going on. Moreover I was a little deluded because in Hong Kong it's okay to smoke in the airport, so I unintentionally broke the rule about "not smoking" in a Texas airport. I had the cigarette in my hand coming off the exit ramp from the plane and had it lit as I passed the exit doors which were propped open.

What I like about Dallas airport is that coffee is more abundant than in Hong Kong and the smell of it was everywhere. In fact there was a fortuitously located coffee shop right outside the flight gate. With square in mouth I ordered a double cappuccino without the foam. I call that a laitee, but I didn't see it on the menu. As I forked over two wadded bills from my pocket the cute Hispanic chick working down behind the register giggled out, "you know, you're not supposed to be smokin' inside here."

"Yeah, I realized that just now. But this one's the last I got," I lied. It was easier to lie than to say I had two. Same difference.

I backed off the coffee counter with a large coffee looking disappointingly small in my meat paw hands and headed for the bathroom. Which brings me to what I hate most about DFW and about myself the most. That airport must encourage urinary vandalism for the lack of conspicuous male bathrooms. I passed two more coffee stands and cursed myself for beginning to drink new coffee before I had dispensed with the old. What I hate about myself is the fact that I look too far ahead and the needs of 'here and now' get jealous and smite me. As if that wasn't bad enough I passed two women's bathrooms too.

I began to hate women then. I imagined them entering the door with a mocking smile cast my direction before they entered the realm of sanitized euphoria. I imagined a chorus of women peeing and sighing and feeling more fortunate than us frowning sweating guys running about the airport. At that point my imagination just became a third party and I started laughing at it out loud. This is the exact moment when a little hand from a short security cop reached up and tapped my shoulder, with me laughing out loud, cigarette and coffee in hand.

The little guy indignantly sputtered " There's no smoking here sir." which I took as a complete invitation for some fun. I dropped the butt (which had maybe two more drags on it : an acceptable loss) and crushed it under heel into the airport carpet. The little guard started to open his mouth in protest when I grabbed his shoulders and lifted him up to my face shouting "Where in hell am I?! I'm a Muslim and I need a bathroom that faces east to Mecca now! Tell me, tell me now man!". Big tears welled up in his eyes the instant his feet left the ground and when he heard the bit about a toilet facing Mecca, a new horror sank in. Now I had made up all this shit with a malicious purpose to test my theory that nobody understands the layout of DFW. His quivering fear-stricken eyes confirmed that he had no idea where East was. But I have to give the little liar credit he gave me directions going to the back of a little gift shop near baggage claim to quell my religious need. I did think it was a little weird that a security guy would cry so easily but I guess it made sense, I hadn't showered in a couple days and I do tend to give off fumes at close range that'll make you cry. At least I hoped that was why, I hate to think I had just picked on a little homosexual guy. When I put the guy down it was hard not to laugh as I walked off.

Inside the bathroom stall where I sat, the back of the door held a long skinny dressing mirror. I suppose it was too help all those guys who change suits and so forth in the bathroom, but for me to sit there and watch myself take a dump was kinda weird. I realized then what a mess I was with big rings of insomnia under my eyes and two day stubble underneath my big untrimmed sideburns. Worse my Snap-On tools baseball hat covered in grease and bill bent into a savagely tight curl cast a shadow over enough my eyes to give more weight to the blackness already there. I had a faded Lee jean jacket with a corduroy collar on, but it had gotten messed up on the trip and was splotched with red and white paint. My hands too, were a gruesome sight. All the knuckles of both hands were covered with fresh scabs, some which refused to close and let blood run periodically down my fingers. I had started these scabs before I left Dallas but added more in Hong Kong. I didn't have any cuts anywhere else so it was pretty obvious tom an onlooker that I was the successful contestant of a street brawl. Anyhow, the cuts stung and was kind of sorry that I had hit those guys with my fists, but it's a long story. "Brother you are a haggard looking son of a bitch," I insulted my reflection with. I thought then sitting on the toilet of another time I caught an ugly reflection of myself in a bathroom wiping vomit off my mouth. In a way this whole thing started with that bad case of botulism.

About two years ago, maybe in early December, I was at some friends apartment and decided to eat some old pizza on the coffee table despite the warnings of a nearby person who voiced, ' I don't know Bear, that pizza has been there a long time." Oh yeah, that's my name, Bear. Everybody has called me that since I was a sleepy little boy until I kind of grew into the specimen I am now. I got called that so much that I added as a kind of totem, a big roaring grizzly profile tattoo on my the whole outside of my left arm, I guess I really got to liking the idea before I did it and the description preceded me just about everywhere and now I didn't need to introduce myself. Anyway, I ate the pizza and started feeling sick about three hours later. I threw up some of the pizza the next day but I guess not enough. I ended up going to a clinic up in North Dallas for help. After waiting three hours an angel of a little Cantonese girl led me to a waiting room. I tried to be coy finding out about her but I needn't have bothered.

She blurted out with," My name's Melissa or at least my American name is, but my Chinese name's probably too hard to say anyway. I've heard about you from some of my friends who work at the mall- you're the Bear, right?"

"No, No. just 'Bear'." I thought,"what a motor mouth. Probably whacked on speed or some fucked up glandular thing."

"Well I don't know if you remember a guy named Tommy Wong that you saved from a fight with a bunch of guys but he's my cousin and he told me about you. I recognized you before I saw the tattoo."

I thought she was pretty damn precocious. It took me a second to remember which Chinese guy Tommy was out of the several I stuck up for around Prestonwood Mall. But then I remembered how funny the rescue had been.

It was out in the parking lot when I came out of the mall a big black Camaro had pulled up half onto the sidewalk, both doors were hanging open and four typical long haired heavy metal idiots were messing with this tough little Chinese guy. I imagined they probably shouted at him and shouted back "fuck you gwiloh" as they were driving past. It's a familiar enough scene. The part that was different was that this guy was doing pretty good. He had a fist full of one guy's hair and was punching a different guy when I came out.

The metal head uniform, at least in Dallas, was a tight black concert t-shirt probably bought at a mall record store and not the concert. The band was always some lame pretty boy bunch of we-wish-we-were- Black Sabbath poseurs. This went untucked over acid wash jeans with a self induced hole in the knee. Shoes were always crusty white high tops. I never understood how guys interested in looking tough would wear goofy soft white shoes.

The Chinese guy had on a white Clash t-shirt, baggy black blue jean cut-offs and cool suede creepers. It was pretty obvious where any intelligent persons sympathies would lie, so I decided to give the guy a hand before the extra two guys jumped him. Besides it never hurts to win the gratitude of Little China in Dallas and I had noticed that I never saw the same metal head twice, so it wasn't like I had anything to lose.

I walked a double step over to right behind the two guys as of yet not in the fight but wanting to get there. I grabbed the outside of each guy's head and pulled together really hard and heard coconuts pop. My two guys fell down, one out and one seriously dazed. I thought that was enough help and I split to walk home. This was no big fight and I saw no reason for a 'boot party', metal heads scare easy and they don't come back around for vendettas. A couple blocks away a big red pickup belonging to the Chinese guy pulled up along the sidewalk. He introduced himself as Tommy and gave me a lift home. There was another guy with Tommy, this short haired gorilla named Abdallah, who was a bodyguard for the Molieri, an Indian gang from Grand Prairie. Tommy was flattered that I let him have two and turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He liked Black Sabbath and had a cooler of beers under the seat. Shiner, no less. Abdallah was really quiet, and I didn't get to know him then. However, I would meet him again two years later, and luckily I remembered him. So in silent multicultural bliss we roared through the neighborhoods of our white oppressors. Anyway he dropped me off and I saw him every once in a while. True to form I never saw the heavy metal guys again.

Right, so back to the clinic. Here was Melissa telling me she was about to quit and walk out on this volunteer nurse stuff saying it had been too long since she got a thank you from anybody. She also threw out an invitation to come with her for lunch. My stomach screamed "No! You amoral bastard!" but the blind control tower of my nether regions had already said "Yes!@! Let's go brother!" I proceeded to sit through the hardest lunch of my life just for the sake of looking cool. I was actually still choking back the vomit when I started kissing her later that night. But actually the Nausea got me and I apologized and left her on her porch to walk myself home. So it was nausea not moralism that went on that night but she still thought it was really special that I didn't try much the first night. Her invention of my moral code really endeared me to her. I had to keep my little secret it made listening to her blow air about my gentleness kind of funny. Yeah, I guess you could say I don't talk a lot but that's from a retardation of my social skills.

At age 12 I developed juvenile arthritis and got to quit school. Well, sort of. I had in-home teachers and home schooling and took some tele courses that all raced up to me getting a GED when I was 16. So basically that meant that for two years as I idled not old enough to get all my financial aid, I got to skip the trials of competing for the groomed high school girls and learn about real working people from inner city bus-ins to heavy metal high school dropouts. My school of Hard Knocks was teaching me different lessons. I also had to go see lots of doctors. The worst of the lot were to be found at Scottish Rite. These pseudo-pediatricians have blown a lot of money candy coating their offices with big toys and statues and murals, but the staff were all surly disgruntled fuck ups who usually ended up prescribing medicine that made me blind or incoherent and responded to criticism of the side effects with,"Well, Just try to stand the pain son, and give that medicine a rest." Right, fuck you Doc; I turned 14 and threw away my glasses, quit my legal medicine and started drinking and smoking, a proven remedy for consciousness, a consciousness wracked with pain. I guess I never lost the ache but I only perceive it as a dull humming when my nicotine rush wears off. My older brother used to ask me if I used that pain to propel myself, but I always said that was a dumb question and asked him to answer the same question. He always said 'yes' but I never understood why. Whatever it was something drove me, even if it was in circles. A lot of unpained people got stuck in retail hell, but I was always sure that I'd go further just to get away from them and their slack faces.

Anyway I liked Melissa and hanging out with her was easy and it meant I had a ride. She had a really nice little black sedan, I can't remember what kind. I dated her for about six months after that. That's how I started to learn Cantonese. She gave me little lessons about profanity and slang which took no studying to remember. Then one day in a little Asian market I found a little dictionary and I was set. I had always read a lot, I mean I was home for four years straight so I developed a couple of disciplined sedentary habits. The point is, I had a surprisingly easy time learning the language. I didn't master it but a learned a few hundred characters and learned how to buy airplane tickets, ask for directions, and order food if I ever got to Hong Kong. The fact that I would end up there two years later never really occurred to me.

As I said I only dated her for six months but during that time I got to know Tommy, her cousin pretty well and we still hang out to this day. I always forgot to ask why he had been hanging out with that Indian gangster that day, but I never saw him and Abdallah together or any of the Molieri for that matter, so the oppotunity to ask never arose. Last year he got a job as a courier for this law firm downtown and got to quit the sales commission work he did at the department store in the mall. It was a cool job and it meant he had more money to spend. He invited me to come and work with him even though we both knew I didn't have a car. He was kind of hurt that he couldn't really help me out the way I'd helped him through fights and stuff. So when this new job offer came out, Tommy knew I could do it and he came right to me with it.

It turned out that the threat of Hong Kong reverting back to being part of the mainland was scaring a lot of people and a bunch of them needed to split Hong Kong and come over to America. The law firm Tommy worked for hired guys to go over to Hong Kong and get married, spend a week there expenses paid, and then come back to the US with the new bride where the marriage from Hong Kong was only so much paper and bound me to nothing. It was work I could only do once (or get stuck in an HK jail) but it paid really well : a week's paid vacation and then thirty five hundred dollars upon return. I thought that'd be really cool so I jumped at it.

So I left for Hong Kong in early March of my twentieth year. I could easily write a book about the shit I got into just during that trip, but that would be a story mainly about me and not about my brother; but, I'll get to that later. Of special interest are the only things I bought for myself, two Tokrev pistols with about five hundred rounds of ammo. The Tokrev is an amazing gun, even stateside it only runs about a hundred dollars. The Chinese in Hong Kong copied parts from a Russian pistol added some German parts and manufactured thousands of them. The bullets were like miniature rifle catridges. The back end was a 9mm but the front filed down to a 7mm. That put a big charge behind a little bullet and made it strong enough to pierce bullet proof vests. The other cool thing about the guns were that each time you pulled the trigger, a six inch fire ball lept from the barrel. I loved those little things. The girl I married had an uncle who was a Triad boss and he arranged for me to be able to pick my shit up at a Chinese restaurant in Addison, a suburb of Big D.

I realized after I got there that I had left without telling my mom where I was going which I regretted once I realized my twenty first birthday fell right in the middle of the week I would be in Hong Kong. My mom would be sure to call around all my friend's places trying to figure out where I was this week. My mom made me promise to stay in touch after the last time she had to bail me out of jail, and not just any jail but Lewd Steretts the cesspool of Dallas where the worst people on the planet could be found employed to watch over accused criminals. Actually I thought I might call her from the cellular phone in the airplane but I had already missed calling her on my birthday so I was already in trouble and I didn't want to explain why I was sitting on an airplane bound from Hong Kong sitting next to a new wife, with a wallet full of fake ID (everything said I was twenty five), four hundred dollars in petty cash and receipts for more. My mom was sure to be a little pissed off. I had a little anxiety about the kind of lie I would need to cultivate. It would have to be weird enough for me to remember, that way I could sustain the lie if I needed to.

When we landed in Los Angeles the girl I had married, Wei Wei, and I hung out only for two days (one entirely on an airplane) before she got picked up at the airport by some big bouncer guys in tuxedos who accompanied this middle aged man who slipped me four big bills and thanked me for my trouble. she gave me a little card with her address on it and asked me to write her. I think she had that West-idolization syndrome, you know where the third world sits around watching all these American movies and end up with a pseudo-American aesthetic preference. I'm not saying for sure but on the plane I couldn't help but feel Wei Wei staring at me and I imagined how 'the grass being greener on the other side' was working against me. I mean she was cute but dating a Triad bosses niece is just not a good idea. Mercifully they abruptly split in a big black limo. I got to sit around LAX for another six hours before the storm over Dallas cleared up and the planes went back on schedule. I actually liked the peace and quiet of waiting at the airport at four in the morning after the din of HK and all the wild shit I pulled off.

So that leads me back to the DFW bathroom sitting on a toilet and staring at my reflection and wondering how Wei Wei could have gazed affectionately at an ugly ape like me. I zipped up and headed out back into the crowd of people headed for baggage claim. Whenever I walk in a crowd it looks like I'm wading. In Hong Kong I was like a foot and half above this yawning black sea of heads. In Dallas I was back to just a head above a multi-colored sea. It was there swaying in the imaginary ocean of American heads that yet again somebody got the drop on me. I felt a hand on my shoulder followed with a low female voice saying, "Son, are you the one what's been causin all this here trouble? "

I sighed like someone does when they wake up. I turned to see my better half, Tanya, making a fake scowl and pointing her fist in the shape of a gun, index finger at my chest. I could hear the sound of her feet tapping with her ernormous steel cased combat boots. I smiled just before she jumped up, throwing arms around my neck and legs around my waist. I was back in the US of A for real now.

Beth Alyssa Makonen's parents had moved over from Ethiopia to Jamaica and finally to the US. where Tanya was born. I'm not sure if she grew up entirely here or not but I know she went to high school here in Dallas. I had seen the Richardson High School varsity letter jacket for basketball in her closet. She had never mentioned it so I never did but it put things into place for me as far as what she was up to before she met me. Her parents are both really mellow pacifists which probably catalyzed Beth's aggressive polarization. She was six foot four and had really dark ebony skin. She was so dark that if the lighting was right little blue streaks reflected off of her. She as far as I know never had any hair. I mean she could grow it, she just didn't like it. So at this point just imagine me hugging this big black bald amazon dripping with black leather jacket, pants, boots and silver chains hanging off every edge. Yeah, we stopped traffic.

"Bear! Baby have I missed you! C'mon I already grabbed your bag and I've been double parked for half an hour."

I noticed my black duffel bag behind her on the ground. 'Cool,' I thought. I really hadn't expected to see her because when I left her Bronco had been in the shop and I had to get a ride to the airport from Tommy. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? I decided not to ask how she got the money to fix her truck.

"How long have you had your car back?" I asked instead.

"Well it turns out your Mom knew this guy who works selling fleets of cars and she set it up so that it only cost me four hundred bucks to fix the transmission." she said carrying my bag out of the airport. I followed trying to light my last cigarette, I knew I could bum off Tanya until we got to a convenience store or something.

"You know you're in trouble don't you. Your Mom called my house the day after you left asking where you were," she continued.

"Ah shit. What'd you tell her?"

"Well I made stuff up about how I was gonna see you later at a club, and then later stuff about how I had seen you at a club. But I think she got wise after a couple days."

"Actually that's pretty lucky, cause I bet she called all the jails and hospitals and bars and figured that at least I wasn't there and might believe that I just got real busy. Thanks for the improv, I'm sorry I did that to you, I just forgot to call before I left and then every phone in Hong Kong was surrounded by people blaring Cantonese.....":

"You're welcome. And you don't have to make excuses for my sake I know what you were doing. And speaking of what you were doing how is the little flower? I'll break your arms if you just say 'fine' and grin at me the whole way home."

I believed Beth was quite capable of breaking my arms and I liked telling her stories, so the whole hour drive back to her apartment I told her about the week in Hong Kong.

We only stayed at her apartment long enough for me to shower and eat some mid-afternoon breakfast. Combine insomnia with crossing the date line and you've got somebody who wants breakfast at three in the afternoon. I wanted to bounce over to my Mom's place and hang there for a couple of days until I figured out what to do first with the little fortune I had.

I got to my house in North Dallas about four o' clock. Even though it was a weekday nobody answered when I knocked. I used my key and checked the ledge inside the front door where all the mail gets dumped. There was a special pile reserved for me. I threw away all the stuff which was return addressed "County Courthouse" and then threw away all the mail from colleges who either wanted me to come or wanted me to pay them back. There was a letter from an aunt wrapped around a check for twenty bucks. I got this type of stuff every year from relatives. However, as I got older and began to need these checks however small, they began to shrink in number. However my one crazy Aunt Beaulah still believed I was fifteen and she sent me money and cards that read "Happy Fifteenth Birthday" for the past five years. It was kind of weird for her to send a letter with a check, and not just a card and a check; but I must admit it made me curious. I usually grabbed the money part and pitched the card before I looked at it. Anyway the letter said all kinds of stuff about being a good boy from now on and how getting older meant I had become a man and had to start taking care of mom and the kids now with Dad gone, etc. The letter ended with in really big print " Happy Sixteenth Birthday!" I thought it was probably the funniest piece of mail I'd ever gotten, even better than the fish head. I was laughing so hard it was hard to explain to Beth.

That done the next piece of mail was from a storage company in Austin addressed to J. Hearn which I mistook to be me. I opened it and it read "To Mr. J Hearn: Your lock has been changed as per your request of November 1993 and enclosed are the new keys to your storage shed," I realized then it was addressed to my older brother Jim and not to me. Sure enough, a key slid out of the envelope and I was suprised I hadn't noticed the weight of this key earlier. This key was a big old-fashioned looking brass thing but the teeth were obviously for a newer lock. I realized this would get lost with my little brothers et al running around so I put the key on my chain. Then I took a second look at the envelope which had two big forwarding stickers on it. That didn't seem weird even though I didn't realize my brother moved so much, because he and I had been out of touch for about a year now. We'd had a fight of sorts over the phone and he really slammed me for not staying in college and losing the job I had then and lots of stuff. Fucker.

I started thinking about him which was kind of rare for me as I walked into the kitchen and poured two cokes for me and Beth. She and I plopped on the couch in the living room and we both fell asleep there. It was there that the two of us remained until my mom and two little brothers came thundering in the door. One of my little brothers had had a really bad case of asthma until he started taking steroids and now he was fifteen and weighed 180 lbs. My other little brother just had weird glands and looked a little like a miniature sumo wrestler even though he was only 14. The clatter of my brothers was enough by itself to wake the dead, so Beth and I bolted upright like smelling salts had been under our noses before the unlocked front door had swung entirely open.

I had been half-dreaming about a time maybe a year earlier in which my older brother, whose nickname is Bones, and I had been at a concert and gone back to back against a whole gang of Nazi scooter boys. That had been a grand fight. My brother was really quiet and economical as he dropped one by one of the onslaught. I on the other hand found brawls to be really invigorating and whooped, hollered, laughed and infused a lot of posturing into my fighting which my brother often called completely unnecessary.

Maybe it's because I had been influenced too much by my exposure to Brazilian native capoeira dance-fighting. Those practitioners believed that you could summon up great spirits to battle through your body and it was this that I hoped allowed me to summon the spirit of the Bear that I so desperately hoped that I had. I liked reading about Eskimo tribe mythology, in which the Bear is the servant of the God Raven dispatched to make men fear and respect mother nature. In contrast then I often wondered about the soulless methodical way in which my thin-lipped older brother dispatched people. I liked to think I was taking a shot at Valhalla. Bones didn't. Sometimes I'd beat up somebody the first time we met only to become friends later on. For Bones there were only enemies who would always remain enemies. The precision of my brother then started to fill the room blocking out my attention to the fight at hand.

As I hit and blocked I started to listen desperately for any sound whatsoever from my brother. He gave none. I couldn't even hear the motions of his limbs whistling through the air. In fact all I could hear was the occasional 'twack' of a shaved head hitting the floor. After the fight we left the club early and in the brighter light outside the club I noticed the extent of his injuries. Before we got out of the club I began to complain about my aching knuckles, but once I got a look at him, I had to shut up. Blood was dripping off his hand which hung clenched weakly from under his leather jacket sleeve. There was a tell-tale slash on the upper bit. He took a savage cut in his bicep. Instead of a dazed expression on his face he looked really pensive added to which his face was blackened from blows to the head. I guess he had had to fight with one hand and wasn't able to block anymore. I couldn't believe he was so Spartan about it though, I would have expected in an earlier age he would be able to cauterize himself. We got to the car and he pulled an old nasty Gerber Mark II out of his jacket pocket, dripping with blood so I knew it was the one he had pulled out of his arm. I remained silent and he gave no invitation for talking. We crossed a bridge on the way home and he rolled the window down, took the knife out of his lap and flung it out the window and over the side. By the time we got home everybody was already asleep so he was able to remain discreetly behind a locked bathroom door long enough to bandage himself up.

For weeks he wore long sleeves rather than make something up to tell mom. It is to date the only time that my brother and I have ever fought together against a third party. That fight scared me more than anybody, because I had to wonder what it must have taken for Bones to become such a machine. I stayed really creeped out and my brother and I never went anywhere together again. In retrospect I feel bad that he got nailed and I couldn't help, but he didn't ask for help or anything. It must have been an older brother thing.

So anyway, back to the present, I've woken up and here was my mom home. She rushed up and gave me a hug and exclaimed,"Hi Bear, did you get your mail?"

"Yeah I did, but one of the letters was for Bones, not me. It just had the initial J on it."

"Where was it from?" she followed. I realized then that she had failed to note my absence, which was weird, and that she had a strong note of concern in her voice when she asked this question. This concern was really weird since she never worried about Jim, she seemed to reserve that tone for talking about me.

"Some weird storage company, I dunno , probably one that Jim had some of his stuff in." As I said this it seemed weird to me that Jim would leave anything in storage. He was a compulsive collector and was so anal about all his hobbies that he couldn't stand to have any of his stuff out of reach and out of its proper place on its designated shelf for a second.

"Well, a lot of people have been calling for him"

"Why? He's still in Austin, right?"I interrupted.

"That's the weird part, I tried calling him but his line's giving me a recording. So I tried calling some of his friends, like Byron and Walt, but they all said he hasn't talked to them in a long time. Byron said Jim had said he had a big project to work on two weeks ago and he'd be tied down working on it, but the two of them has promised to go see some concert by the Borings...."

"Uh, the Boredoms?"I supplied.

"Whatever, I never remember those band names. But anyway they both bought tickets last month and then the show was last night and Byron said he had to go alone, that Jim just wasn't around."

'Weird.' I thought. Not only would Jim never stay out of touch for so long, he'd definitely never miss a concert by the Boredoms. I suddenly assumed perhaps more concern than my mom at this point. I knew when she got panicky that she was no use to anybody and I thought I could make a few calls and figure out what was up so I decide to offer her false assurances about his well-being.

"Don't worry. He's probably just picked up a few bad habits from his little brother" I intended to use this remark as an invitation for my mom to remember my unexcused absence and thereby channel her angst towards a good scolding of me. But even afterwards I could see the wheels weren't turning in her head and she continued to look down.

"I guess so. Anyway, I just got back from the grocery store so why don't you help me carry stuff in, okay?"

Groceries! This meant dinner and more than the worries I had about a scolding or the whereabouts of big brother, I was primarily concerned with the growing needs of my bottomless stomach. I was out the front door in a flash, with little Fric and Frac on my heels to 'help out.' Tanya stayed in talking to my mom. Everybody I knew seemed to have two completely neurotic unlovable parents and they tended to adopt my mom as the own instantly. Beth even called her 'Mom', actually all my friends did.

My mom had this pre-school teachers disposition that came with this gift of putting teenager problems into this perspective of manageable hurdles without making them seem insignificant. Once one of my mall buddies had been alone for a second with my mom while I was outside catching a discreet smoke break (My mom doesn't know or ignores the fact that I smoke). Anyway by the time I got back she had convinced Fred, my buddy, to give up on this girl he was hung up on. It was the weirdest conversion I had ever seen, but it worked. It's like only my mom could have pulled outrageous stunts like that, like she had some kind of telepathic ability that came through in her voice or something.

I guess I wondered then how come it didn't really work so good on me? I mean I like myself and all, but I always wondered how she evaluated my success, going from job to job, living like a vagabond couch tripping around town at all my friends places, and always trying and withdrawing from college. I hadn't even finished one college hour even though I've tried enrolling on three different occasions. Not to mention the times I gotten picked up, always for petty crimes except that one possession charge, and always getting taken to the station for good measure even if what I'd done didn't warrant it. Actually there too, my mom wove this spell of sympathetic widow-dom and the cops who had roughed me up earlier for calling 'em "pigs" would be leading me out of cell apologizing for the inconvenience the whole way. So yeah, even though I lived with my mom sometimes I don't want anybody saying I'm a 'momma's boy' or nothin cause my mom is real different from all those other weak mousy things out there in Suburbia.

We made dinner from frozen lasagna bought at Sam's. Beth and my mom talked constantly. They talked a lot about me but I was in a different world, one part post-glut stupor and one part gumshoe curiosity.

Actually after dinner and Beth's departure my mom remembered that I had been gone for too long and got real mad. We had a weird shouting match, even though I knew I was wrong and I left like a hurricane. I was really mad for reasons I find unforgivable now, but now I've learned more about keeping a family together. I stayed at Tanya's place one night and then at Roy's, Tommy's, with Alex and Bill, and after about a week I met Abdallah the Moleri bodyguard who turned out to be in need of a backup for a rumble later that night with this rival Indian gang the Patels. We won, and in gratitude he let me crash at his pad for the next week. I stayed away from home, but I always remembered to call home or at least call the answering machine when I knew my mom would be out of the house. It gave me enough time to put my money in a bank account, buy a new heavy tan corduroy overcoat, and pick up my pistols from the Chinese restaurant. Abdallah had an apartment full of weight equipment, so I got a chance to pump iron and eat lots of curry and Tandoori chicken. Abdallah turned out to be a cook by profession at this place called Akbar's (the owners did not know he was Moleri).

I idly wondered about big brother's whereabouts. It had been a long time since I talked to him and for the first time in forever I felt like giving him a call. This notion I should have recognized and trusted I realize now, because if I had started looking then, I wouldn't have had to spend all of last year hunting all over America for my lost older brother.

April the first, I woke up from a dream of attending a Mycenean banquet to Abdallah's wretched insistence to answer the phone. I picked up the receiver that I could barely reach from the couch where I was sleeping. Before I got it to my ear I could hear a voice repeating my name from the speaker. I glanced at my watch, it was noon.

"Bear, are you awake? Bear?"

"Yeah, yeah, just give me a minute to open my eyes"

"This is mom. I need you to come home today, Bear, there's trouble with Bones."

"What? Trouble with golden boy? What'd he do, fail an exam?"

"No, Bear. He's missing. I can't find him anywhere and I need you to come home."

"You want me to help you look for him?"

"No. I just need you to be here when the kids get home from school, I've got to go fill out a missing persons report."

"C'mon mom, I've got stuff I'm supposed to do today," I lied.

"Bear, listen to me, I'll pay you to baby-sit for me. I'm kind of scared and I need you to be around today."

I didn't need any more money, I'd been worried sick about what to do with what I had. The logical thing for someone in my position to do would be to blow it hustling something or investing. However, I'd been really cautious about that having seen so many of my friends get busted for grandiose antics. Plus, my mom sounded genuinely worried and I have to admit I remained a dutiful son even when I was really pissed at her."Can you pick me up?"

"Yeah, but I've got to do it quick, I want to get to the station before one."

"Allright, I guess you know where I am, so I'll be ready when you get here."

"Oh, and mom," I continued," how long has he been missing for?"

"It looks like he's been gone for about two months." These words came out of her mouth slow and heavy like she was reading from a tombstone or something. Her words hung so heavy in the air, I could hear her presence after these words but she could find nothing fit to add. She waited an unbelievably long two seconds and then hung up without saying good-bye.

Goose bumps rose up all over me. It was a really creepy feeling I was getting. Weird enough that my mom knew where to find me, and that she wasn't mad or anything. Doubly weird that she sounded so totally afraid. I was really annoyed at older brother, I blamed him for my rude awakening. "Where in hell has he got off to?" I wondered. I tried to convince myself that he must have moved again, found a new girl;friend and just gotten so busy that he'd forgot to call. I slid my legs to the ground and pulled on my boots. I reached around the pile of laundry in my duffel bag and produced a still folded, and therefore clean t-shirt, and pulled that on. I padded to the bathroom and put my head in the sink under running hot water. I heard Abdallah call from the next room.

"Yo Bear! Who was that?"

"It was my mom. She wants me to come home and watch the kids for her. She thinks my older brother has disappeared"

"Huh? Jim's missing?"

"She thinks so and... Hey wait a minute, How'd you know my older brother's name?" I didn't think Abdallah had been in Dallas long enough to remember my brother.

"The two of you are famous, man. I never said so but I met your brother once and he had my back, y'know. "

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, totally. If you find anything out give me a call here later, I still owe him one from last time."

"What! I hate my older brother, he's such a prick to me!"

"Hey man, he's your brother, your blood. You gotta forgive him for all that shit. It comes natural with being the oldest."

"Yeah whatever." I mumbled, drying my head off and heading for the kitchen. Little would my fine friend suspect the sadistic depths to which my older brother was capable of subjecting me to. Growing up I was always trying to remain in the nebulous boundaries of older brother's favor.

I can still taste the blood in my mouth from waking up with Jim's knee under my chin and raining punches all over me. That time he didn't even yell at me as was the case with beatings. Instead he whispered to me, softly so as not to alarm the surrounding household. He had caught me asleep after I returned home from one of my post-fight walkabouts. I had a fight with mom about my stereo being too loud and she wigged, tearing a shirt I had just bought. The only thing I could have done was to push my way out past her and it really wasn't my fault that she fell into the metal railing of my bedpost. I left without disturbing the kids and I thought I had done pretty good as I thought about it on my walk, but now under the freakish assault of my brother I knew what he thought I was guilty of. His whispers warned simply that after this beating I was to go and wash my face and follow him to the car where he would then take me to a friend's house. I actually complied with most of that but once we snuck out, got into the car and started driving I gave him directions to a friend's house that didn't really exist. As he got inside an apartment complex and had to slow down, I jumped out of the car and blazed. I hid out for days. I eventually did explain to Jim the whole story, he apologized and all that, and actually we continued on like normal. I mean, I respect him and all, but he should have given me a better chance even if I needed an ass-kicking. To this day, I can still hear him whispering with his fist clenched on my ear, "don't move or it'll come off."

I opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a microwavable burrito and a Coors Lite tall boy. Breakfast, as usual. When I shut the fridge door, Abdallah was standing behind it. Scared the shit out of me, especially then brooding about my spooky brother.

"Waah! Jesus, man! Give a guy some warning why don't ya?"

"Listen Bear, I'm serious. You brother is important to your mom, and he ought to be really important to you. So for real, be serious about this, and don't give me 'yeah, whatever'."

"Allright, already. You see me going don't you?"

I skulked over to the little breakfast table against the wall and munched my cold burrito and drank the beer. I thought Abdallah had lost his mind or been possessed or something. I was really grateful that after his stern advice that he went back to bed. I sat at the table and smoked two cigarettes before I heard my mom's car honking downstairs. I grabbed my jacket and my bag and hit the door. I thundered down the concrete slat staircase of the prefab apartment complex and hailed my mom who was actually parked two units down from where Abdallah lived. I jumped in the passenger door and shut the door behind me.

"Why'd you.."

"I'm sorry I honked, Bear, but..."

As she interrupted my question about the necessity of her honking, my eyes wandered down and noticed that her left leg was in a cast and she had two crutches laying in the aisle between the bucket seats of the van.

"Oh shit, mom, I'm sorry. What'd you do to your leg? If you had told me I would've waited outside for you." The fact that my mom had not told me on the phone about her leg and had only told me about missing brother put things into perspective for me. This was important, after all.

" Well I was coming down the stairs at church and I tripped and fell. I landed on my shin the wrong way and managed to snap it. The youth director and the boys carried me to the car and took me to the hospital. This cast has gotta stay on for another three weeks."

Just great. My mom was going to be out of commission no matter her intentions. I began to understand that I would be playing a big part in rescuing older brother. It was then I noticed a big manila envelope next to mom's purse whose contents had slid halfway out. These contents were pictures of Jim. Some were of him and me together while he was in high school. In those days he was taller than me, by about three inches and he outweighed me. He was on the wrestling team and used to wear his blue and red letter jacket constantly. In the picture he had on this jacket, a white t-shirt and blue jeans. He had medium length hair then, just enough in the front to fall over his John Lennon glasses. He was smiling and had his arm around me. I didn't think we looked like kin, especially here. I had a tan and sandy blonde brown hair. He was pale and had dark brown hair, the reflection on his glasses kind of hid his eyes and in truth, I didn't know what color they were; however, I was sure they had more color than a different picture in the pile.

This one was from his college days. He had gotten even more pale and grown his hair out over his shoulders. He had died his hair black, grown a goatee, and his eyes seemed to look gray. In college he lost a lot of weight, started drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and weed, and his brooding habits increased. In this photo, he was wearing a Flaming Lips t-shirt and was sitting on the edge of a fountain on the campus of University of Oklahoma. Even in broad daylight he looked foreboding. Actually he looked plain terrible.

"Those are the only recent photos I've got," mom cautioned.

"I was with you in Oklahoma for this one." I held it up.

"I wish I had one without the bruises," mom sighed.

I thought,"Aha! Those aren't shadows, those are bruises under his eyes - that's why he looks so gloomy!" then I asked "This was right after he got beat up wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I remember driving up with you and taking care of him and his girlfriend at the time, what was her name?"

"Smith. Jennifer Smith."

"She was cool. I knew she and Jim broke up but what's she doing now?"

"She moved to Chicago and she's doing fine. Her mother and I still talk so I get to hear about her from time to time."

"I think he was worse after she dumped him than when he got beat up"

"Don't I know it! He called me every night for weeks, and always after midnight. You just count your lucky stars he didn't decide to confide in you."

"Nah, he'd never trust me that much"

"Don't you believe that for a second. When he got beat up and called me, all he asked for when I told him I was coming down was to 'please bring Bear, I need him.'"

"What? You didn't tell me that..."

"Cause he asked me not to, Bear. He was afraid you were still mad at him for that fight you guys had." Mom said fight and I didn't wince even though I had wanted to correct her term to 'that beating he gave you.'

"Man! I can't believe he'd put up such a front. 'I don't need anybody' when he talks to me and then he gets you to bring me."

"But Bear, he was so glad to see you. He probably needed a friend who wouldn't pity him more than he needed a bodyguard."

"Yeah, I know, I know... just sometimes, I wish he wouldn't assume so that I know so much and grace me with a little honesty. Ah what the hell, I guess I don't need to hear it anyway."

The description of the following events are extremely tedious so "bear" with me, eh? In short, my mom took me home and went to the police station. During the drive she explained how she had gotten a recording at the number Jim had given her saying the number was disconnected. She called information to get a new number and got the last listing for his apartment. Mom also figured out by asking the operator for the address that Jim had moved to a new place and if he was receiving mail at all, it was getting forwarded to him. She tried calling his friends but she didn't reach anything but answering machines. Basically he was just gone, or so it seemed. April the first being Fool's Day I kept waiting for the punch line but none came. On the second we reached his buddy Walt, who said he and Jim had a fight over the phone over Jim's absence from the Boredoms concert and that they hadn't talked or hung out since. Weird.

After two days of hanging around the house while everybody buzzed around I almost lost my mind. In truth I was suffering from a hangover I had cultivated for the last two weeks, so a lot of the particulars of what was going on eluded me. However dazed, or possibly because I was dazed, I decided to buy a car. I called Beth and asked her to pick me up and take me car hunting. She was actually elated that I wanted to get wheels. I think driving me around all the time was a drag for her, but I was a little disappointed that she was so excited. I didn't feel like saying so on the phone and we hung up peacefully.

I heard her truck pull up just when the need for a smoke was getting unbearable. I thought I was going to have to announce that I'd be going for a walk just for an excuse. I yelled "bye" to mom and hopped out the door. Beth still had the motor running but she had gotten out of the car and met me halfway up the sidewalk.

"What's up homely boy!"

"I feel the need, the need for speed!"

" Ugh! Quoting Top Gun is not strong, young man"

"Get thee to an expressway, woman!"

We tore off towards Plano, a suburb to the north of my suburb, in search of a vehicle fit for the abuse of my hidden agenda. I had decided I would try to go and find Jim, and I hadn't told anybody else yet. I figured it would be a good chance to really figure out where he had gone, to see parts of the country I hadn't been to before, and most importantly to get the hell out of the house without fear of being reprimanded. In a sense, Jim missing was the perfect cover for a road trip.

There was a less magnificent car dealership sandwiched in between two giant competing dealerships on the main drag. It looked really inviting, and I knew that the car of cars, if to be found, would be found only in such in a place. There was a tiny shack of an office at the back of the lot next to the garage. Next to the garage was a monster of a car. An enormous gleaming black Buick. I haggled the salesman till he was down to about eight hundred bucks and I followed Beth home in it. I didn't have a driver's license, any sort of car insurance or any intention of getting either.

I went back to Beth's 1969 Buick, a car that roared when I gave it gas. It was almost midnight and it had started to drizzle a little bit. April showers, great. Y'know when you take a road trip and decide to drive straight though for more than 24 hours and you get to the last hours wired on coffee and mini-thins and you start hallucinating, seeing hitchhikers that aren't there and hear echoes from sounds that don't exist? Well, my aforementioned hangover was providing a few of these delicacies. I was glad we stopped at Beth's house even though I thought we'd be going back to mine.

We passed a sign that read ' Next Stop : 20 miles' but didn't inform us where we were or where the stop was. Situation normal.