As we are riding Donna’s bike back to her house from the old folks home I ask BBB if he needs some good lovin’ and he barks once, so I make a detour and we ride toward the ghetto, toward Private Jackson’s house.
It’s past five, so no diamond running for BBB today, as we’ve missed Ms. Jenny’s daily sprint around the bases, but B Thrice can still get some kissing and spooning in, so when we arrive, we stash the bike around back and then knock on PJ’s front door.
When Private Jackson opens up, BBB sprints into the house in search of Ms. Jenny and disappears into the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. My dog can get quite randy from time to time. He needs a release every once in a while.
“I’ll put on tea,” PJ says to me as I enter his house and sit down on his old-ass couch.
I listen to PJ preparing tea in the other room—the sound of water running into a metal kettle, the clicking sound of the electric gas stovetop starter, the ignition of gas—I imagine the blue flames and the bubbles rising in the kettle, and I start to feel better.
Time sorta stops when I’m in PJ’s house—it’s sorta like stepping into a real church, not like Father Chee’s converted-store-strip-mall church, but like some ancient holy stone church that smells of centuries worth of praying and hoping and believing, sorta like in the Catholic church where I was confirmed, St. Dymphna’s, and PJ’s house feeling holy is strange, because—after reading so much of Private Jackson’s poetry—I’ve sorta gathered that he’s in the Nietzsche-Donna-Ricky camp. I’m pretty sure PJ’s an atheist.
Here is the saddest haiku I have ever read:
CUNNINGHAM PRAYS WHILE
BAGGING OUR CASUALTIES AND
I AM SO ALONE
Private Jackson wrote that one back in ’Nam. He doesn’t know that I read it, because I flipped through the back section of one of his haiku notebooks when he was making tea.
He had said I could read any poem in the sections segmented by the blue and red and black plastic dividers, but he didn’t want me to look at the pages between the green dividers. Of course, I turned to the green section just as soon as PJ was out of the room, and he seemed to stay in the kitchen for a very long time—way longer than it takes to make tea—so maybe he wanted me to read the Vietnam haikus, I don’t know. But from what I have gathered from reading his haikus—because he doesn’t tell me squat about his life—it seems like Private Jackson started writing haikus in the jungle, maybe as a means of staying sane, and he just never stopped writing haikus when he came home.
CHAPTER 11
“So what is bothering you today?” PJ says as he hands me a steaming hot cup of green tea.
“What? Can’t I just visit you for no reason at all?”
“You only come when you’re sad.”
“Joan of Old hit me with a whole bunch of new depressing Nietzsche quotes, but I eventually made her smile,” I say, and then sip my tea, which tastes like mown grass. Green tea is an acquired taste that I have not yet acquired, but I drink it like a woman for Private Jackson, mostly because it’s all he keeps in his house other than water. He mostly eats rice and roots, so no snacking here either.
“How’d you get her to smile this week?” he asks, which makes me pause, because he usually never asks me any questions about anything. This is as lively as PJ gets when it comes to conversation. This is Private Jackson on speed.
“I kissed her. And I said a bunch of funny stuff too. Hey, do you think I have a dinosaur face? You can be honest with me. If you were seventeen would you want to get all hot and heavy with me, or no? And if no, is it because I have a dinosaur face? You can be totally honest with me.”
“I think you are exactly as you should be. You are perfect for this moment.”
“More Zen hooey.”
“Do you have any poems for me?”
I reach into my pocket and hand him a sheet of paper housing eight doggie haikus written by yours truly.
Private Jackson reads my poetry very slowly as he slurps his tea with this very determined look on his face—almost like he is taking a dump or something.
“Which is your favorite,” I say after—like five minutes. He’s still reading, contemplating each set of seventeen syllables as if they were new constellations that suddenly appeared in the sky one night. He’s a crazy serious cat sometimes.
“They are all perfect,” he says without looking up.
“No Zen bullcrap. Which one is your favorite?”
“I cherish them all equally and will hang them on the wall just as soon as you leave, finding the perfect spot for your words.”
“Which do you think is the funniest then?”
Private Jackson reads them all over again and then a little smile blooms on his face. He reads number four very dramatically, saying, “Dogs go into the—bedroom and get funky wild—humans drink green tea.”
“Tried to capture the present moment,” I say.
“You certainly have.”
“You want to meet Donna?” I say, because I’ve been telling Private Jackson that I could hook him up with the sexiest woman he has ever seen in his life—and she’s rich ta boot!