The massive orange balloon was rocketing straight for Jerry Manley’s face when I, by instinct, reached across and belted it, as hard as I could, across the room.
“Sorry, man,” I said to Jerry, as the other folks in the
social and dining room of the Memory Care Ward either looked disgusted or
laughed at me for my fevered interference. “I think you were supposed to hit
that one.”
“That’s all right, Tim. I didn’t see it coming.” Jerry
rolled back and forth on his heels and toes and watched the balloon soar from
patient to patient in the Memory Care Ward. Or, perhaps, I should say “from
resident to resident,” since the main medical attention I’ve seen involves Jerry
lifting his shirt, so the nurse can put insulin injections in his stomach,
something that troubles my friend: “I don’t know why they have to put them in
my stomach.”
Diabetes protocol debates aside, I had intruded on the
Memory Care Ward residents’ game by accident. Jerry was supposed to hit it. One of the other folks even hollered “Jerry”
as the balloon floated across the room.
It would have hit my old friend square in the face if I’d not reacted.
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Jerry didn’t even know he was playing. They “dealt him in” on the morning’s festivities by sending the massive Volunteer-orange object toward his head. As noted earlier, my natural reaction, when an object is soaring toward the head of a pal or loved one, is to throw myself – or at least my left hand – into the path of danger. I’d do it for just about anyone who has shown me kindness, let alone a fellow who “grew up” with me, purple hazily flavoring my 20s and 30s and 40s …. etc.
The entire balloon attack incident, as shocking as it was to
us both, was not what we were expecting after we walked down the hall from his
dorm-like room to see if it was lunchtime yet.
It was 11:29, a minute to lunchtime in this world where time
is meaningless, and Jerry simply wanted to stretch his legs and see if the ham
and cheese sandwiches and chips and sugar-free pudding were ready.
The balloon then flew back to Jerry, and I – not wanting to
again risk the ire and possible trampling by this horde – simply stepped out of
the way. Jerry tapped it back toward a tall guy with a Vanderbilt
sweatshirt. That man hit it back, and it
landed on top of a woman who was napping in her wheelchair. She didn’t wake up
when another resident punched it out of her lap.
The Vandy guy again hollered “Jerry!” and sent the balloon toward
my friend. Jerry delivered a perfect punt, sending the balloon toward the
console TV where Emmylou Harris was singing her greatest hit. I love Emmylou,
by the way, she’s beautiful and loves dogs and always treats me with kindness
and respect. But she’s not a hitmaker. I
do wish Gram Parsons hadn’t died, his body stolen and burned in the desert at
Joshua Tree by my friend Phil “Road Mangler” Kaufman. Different story, but Gram
and Emmy were magic.
Up until the balloon attack, Jerry and I spent a couple of
hours down in his room, where he feasted on two eight-packs of Keebler cheese
crackers – white and orange cheddar -- and washed them down with a pint of Diet
SunDrop. I had requested my local Shell station to start carrying that beverage
after Jerry told me, weeks ago, that it was the beverage he’s missed most since
his voluntary incarceration in a place where he’s not seen the sun since
Thanksgiving. It’s a full-time total
eclipse for him, as he and roomie Milford Brown keep the shades and blinds
shut. It could be 4 a.m. or High Noon, and they’d not know the difference as “Gunsmoke,”
“Harry Potter” movies and “Wheel of Fortune” play round the clock.
The crackers and soda were this day’s contraband food, that
I snuck into the nursing home in the lining of my jacket. I worry that I’ll
have to figure out some other way to get the snacks past the watchmen and
watchwomen at the facility. (I also feel bad for not bringing any for Milford,
but I can only kill one sick, old man at a time with my kindness.)
Even on this day, when it is sunny and 70, the black Iowa
State jacket with the pockets in the lining, is a little too warm. In fact, I
took it off as soon as I unloaded the contraband goods.
“I don’t know how I’m going to get this stuff in here next
week. Summer’s coming and it won’t look right to show up here wearing this
black jacket,” I told my friend, as he began what has become a weekly feast in
recent months.
Even though he doesn’t remember it’s in recent months.
“When was the last time you were here? Four months ago?”
Jerry asked.
“No, Jerry, it was six days. I try to come at least once a
week,” I answered, as I pondered how to hide crackers and soda in my pants. (“Is that a bottle of SunDrop in your pants
or are you in love with me?” I fear the guardwoman at the front desk might ask.)
“I thought you’ve been here a lot,” Jerry responded, shaking
his head at his confusion. “Sorry, I’ve got no concept of time. You live near
here?”
I told him 5-6 miles away, and he nodded. When I told him
the nursing home was only a mile or so from my late parents’ home – Jerry used
to come over to swim in the pool and drink with me when I lived there between
lives – he smiled. That was 35 years ago. To Jerry, it could have been
yesterday or never. My mother always was
concerned by our vodka consumption out by the pool, particularly if Jerry was
headed to work that night.
He told me that famous former journalist and respiratory
therapist “John Staed was here just the other day.”
That visit was on Easter, which was last month. John, who
lives in Birmintham, Alabama, is a good guy and a News Brother of the original
vintage. “We talked about what we used to do,” Jerry said. “But I can’t
remember what we talked about.”
Other than “Street” Staed’s visit, and my weekly forays into
the nursing home where the patients now know my name, Jerry doesn’t remember
having visitors.
As for my “familiarity” here in this clean, well-lighted
place, it actually is fulfilling.
In fact, after “signing in” on a facial recognition gizmo, I
wandered through the “main” part of the nursing home. This section is for people with physical or
age-related disabilities or woes who still possess all their marbles.
I have to cross this nursing home’s width to get to Jerry’s
locked ward. I generally smile at folks as I pass right through their games of
dominoes or cornhole. When I was in college in Ames, Iowa, “cornhole” was not a
game involving beanbags and polished wood. Wood was involved, though.
I always apologize for interrupting the competitors, and
sometimes I can avoid it by swinging wide through their dining hall, especially
if it’s not lunch hour. One day – when
all of the cornholers were playing from wheelchairs -- I stopped and watched. I may even have applauded their abilities to
“put a little English” on the bean bags even while trapped in wheelchairs.
An attractive and well-dressed 80-plus woman, pearls hanging
around her neck, was happy to see me. “You are here to see your friend, Mr.
Manley,” she said.
I did wonder how she knew Jerry, who is confined to the back
half of the facility where nobody even knows their own names – or so seems.
I thought briefly
that perhaps she was an escapee from that secure mind-fogged unit, making a
brave escape out into the wilds of Brentwood, Tennessee. But she stopped at one of the tables where
other folks sat, and she fished a pack of cards from a pocket.
“Must be playing crazy eights,” I said, to myself and no one
in particular. Instead, she started
dealing five-card stud. Read ‘em and
weep.
Anyway, I like these people, both in the “regular’’ wing and
in the “behind-locked-doors” section, where my longest-tenured friend has
resided for almost half-a-year but admits he has no concept of time. He could
have checked in here yesterday or years ago, in his mind. Doesn’t matter, since
he really doesn’t know how he got here. He does have a pretty good idea of when he’ll
leave. Me, too.
As Jerry munched, greedily, on his first pack of crackers –
he had skipped the oatmeal and toast, his breakfast that remained on a tray on
the chair next to me – I struggled with the top of the SunDrop bottle.
Jerry then tried it. No luck. And he handed it back to me. It
was about five minutes of give-and-take between two old men who had been
friends most of their ever-shortening lives. (Sorry, I’ve been dwelling on
mortality lately, as my brother died a month ago and I keep waiting for his regular
10:30 a.m. call and his booming “What’s new in the world of high adventure”
greeting. Often, our conversations continued over burgers at Brown’s Diner, so
I’ll never visit that establishment again.)
Finally, I told Jerry I’d take the soda bottle down the hall
to see if one of the nurses, lovely Black women with charming smiles to make an
old man cry, would open the bottle.
“If I go down there, I’m afraid they’ll take it away,” I
said to Jerry as we eyed the greenish-yellow pint I was holding.
“We won’t be any worse off,” said Jerry, nodding toward the
bottle that neither of us could open. If the nurse took it away, well, it
wouldn’t be much worse than having it grow warm and unopened on his nightstand,
next to the empty cracker wrappers.
Preparing mentally to lose my $2.29 liquid investment, I
ambled down the hall, or ambled as fast as my cane would let me, until I found
a nurse.
“You are young and strong and lovely,” I said. “I’ll bet you
can open this.”
I thought I’d get scolded for the contraband. Instead, she
opened it and handed it back to me.
Two minutes later, Jerry was drinking his favorite
concoction and we laughed while I talked about Chico the Monkey.
I grew more serious when I brought up the subject of the
1982 murders of Kathy Jane Nishiyama and Rodney Wayne Long.
“They ever find out who did those?” asked the man who daily edited
the stories, sized the art, laid out the pages and wrote the headlines for
those horrible tales 42 years ago.
I won’t bother to go into it here much, but Kathy’s rapist
killer, Eddie Hartman – a Dickson County Jail trusty who borrowed a sheriff’s
car to pull over victims like Kathy (God knows how many he got away with) died
on Death Row. A handsome young killer, Eddie had grown old and wizened while
waiting for Old Sparky. I think lung cancer got him.
Stephen Drake and David Frey, who killed Rodney, an Austin
Peay football wideout, just so they could steal his car and escape Clarksville
cops looking for them in relation to a series of Memorial Drive burglaries, both
went to prison.
Drake got shanked in the yard over in the prison in Only. Frey
finally was paroled about a year ago and lives about 10 miles from me. I’ve tried to contact him to see if his life
turned out as well as he planned, but neither he nor his attorney will respond.
The gun they used to execute Rodney – “Good shot!” they
congratulated themselves after a powder-burn bullet to his skull – was stolen
earlier that brutal day in one of the burglaries. Rodney was at a Wendy’s
drive-thru near the Red River in Clarksville.
The young murderers tricked him, said their car had broken down out near
Oakland Road. He drove them out there, just off the Guthrie Highway, and they
executed him.
Those murders of beautiful young people and also contact
with the killers pretty much soured all of our lives at the newspaper where we
day-to-day covered the almost consecutive bloodshed. They revisit me sometimes at night.
That constant stress of covering those murders and pursuits
of killers and funerals and trials exhausted all of us. I wrote a book with police reporter Rob
Dollar – When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers & their Shades of
Glory—about those days. And we even made a movie Flapjacks: The Motion
Picture to break the tension and raise a couple thousand, more or less, for
charities.
For Jerry’s pleasure and to spark memories, I call snippets
of that movie up on my phone. (I was “Flapjacks”, Jerry was “Chuckles,” Rob was
“Death” and Jim Lindgren “Flash” in the film’s starring roles. John “Street” Staed, Ricky “Dumbo” Moore,
Larry “the photographer” McCormack, Billy “StrawBilly” Fields all played
themselves in the film. Harold “The Stranger” Lynch steals the show in the
crucial gunfight scene.
Jimmy Stewart, John Glenn, Clarksville Mayor Ted “Wild
Turkey” Crozier (endorsing me for mayor), Okey “Skipper” Stepp, diner owner
Raissa Gray and her son Judson, and Dennis “Danny” Adkins and the bouncing head
of the late Tony Durr all play smaller roles. Laura Warren cuts a fine figure
as one of the folks who run behind Rob and me in the “Rocky” scene. I always
liked Laura. Wonder what became of her?
A K9 cop, another cop who was known for fatally back-shooting fleeing suspects, motorcycle gang, the entire Clarksville fire
department and hundreds of Hollywood extras celebrating Lindbergh’s solo flight
across the Atlantic, all appear in the film.
When I play those scenes on my phone, Jerry laughs at what
he sees. His favorite memories in his life involve hanging out all night with
me, “making movies” and the newsroom
night when reporter Rob Dollar, with assists by me and Jerry, turned Chico, an
escaped pet monkey, into Clarksville folklore.
“Lifesavers, a part of living,’’ Jerry sorta sings along
during the scene when I pull a pack of that soothing candy from the pocket of
my ugly Mustard Seed sportscoat and pass them down the line of News Brothers,
all gathered on the railroad bridge over the Cumberland River, after we get
thrown out of town by “The Big Guy,” our publisher, played by “Danny” in a
Reagan mask.
“This really makes me happy,” says “Death” when the candy
gets to him.
It makes Jerry happy to see it these days. It’s a colorful
reminder that 40 years ago, we had the world by the horns (while the newspaper
execs and lawyer had us by the balls) and celebrated that fact.
Jerry’s real memories are mostly gone, but they live on in
the movie.
And, as everyone knows, Chico the Monkey is dead. Eaten by a
pack of dogs, a brutal act ending his own attempts to be free.
After we watched a few scenes from that long-ago movie,
Jerry and I walked, arm-over-shoulder, down to the recreation/dining room where
residents were laughing at each other’s reactions to being pummeled by an
orange balloon.
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