s u m m e r
the trouble with prosebush
I took the ferry over to Bald Head again this past weekend. Sometime Friday night found me driving a golf cart to the store with Danny. Each of us had one beer in hand and another in a jacket pocket. It had been that way since the afternoon.
The cart sounded like a toy as it wound down hills, my hands drumming out Moonage Daydream as we both sang loud, our voices not so much drifting out over the marsh but rather attacking it violently.
The store was closed and we conspired to grab another fella's smokes we new he was hiding from his girlfriend as soon as the opportunity presented itself. In the meantime we took what we had and headed for the beach. A couple container ships were lined up in the darkness waiting to be pushed into the Cape Fear by their sheer size and weight.
"You know it takes a couple miles to stop one of those things?"
"Really?"
"Yeah, just ask the Captain of the Valdez."
Laughs all around.
We lit a smoke. I took a deep draw and said, "There's no faith anymore man. I mean, do you think like faith and trust are related? And if they are then, you got faith in me?"
"Not just anybody would've called the Coast Guard for you tonight, you know that, right?"
Danny took a pull from his beer and then another, "I didn't need rescuing, I was fine."
"But we didn't know that, and you miss the point. What I want to know is where's all the faith gone man?"
"You see, back at work I've got this edition of a thing we, I mean a buddy and me, used to call prosebush. Small commitment, a little time, but no faith man, none."
(Aside: If anyone is curious I still don't remember)
"Now it's just tacked to a board on the wall, a done idea because we had no faith. Hell, man, maybe it isn't that different from the Coast Guard, I didn't have faith you'd make it over man, I thought for sure they'd pull your tired ass from the ocean, but you not only made it man, you made the perfect landing."
I opened the bottle from my pocket and continued, "I mean, that idea could've been something. So many ideas, but they all go unfinished or untried 'cause folks got no faith. They say it's a time issue, or they can't make it as perfect as it should be, or it's too risky, too far, but take all the crap away man...drag the truth out of them and you'll see. It's faith. Or lack of it."
Silence from Danny.
"I'm gonna steal a plane. Steal a fucking plane, that's what I'm gonna do. Easy man, just fly off into the clouds."
"There were plenty of times when I was flying body parts around I'd have given you my plane. Shit man, what are you talking about anyway? Oh, oh, how'd that one song go, 'love is careless in its choosing, na na na na cross a baby."
"Think you mean Soul Love."
"Yeah, Soul Love."
"So you don't feel there's a problem with faith? No crutches man, honest?"
The horrible rendition of Bowie stopped abruptly and I heard a cellophane wrapper crinkle signaling we were out of smokes. A lighter cast one heavy shadow across Danny's face and he kinda looked like Popeye as he sucked the first cherry forming draws.
"Yeah there's a problem with faith. Always has been. But the real problem is that you," he exhaled, "you, relied on someone else's."
goodnight 4.5.00