Billy Coffey

storyteller

What’s your sign?


Our sleepy town doesn’t really have a homeless problem. None that I know of, anyway. Those who through choice or circumstance lose their station in life usually have family or friends who are more than willing to offer them a place to stay.

But things are different in the nearby cities, where there are more than a few poor souls who have slipped through the cracks and settled on society’s murky bottom. Forgotten or, even worse, ignored.

You see these people most often perched along the busiest intersections. Their appearance is consistent with their desperation and need—dirty clothes, often a dirtier hat, unshaven and gaunt. And there is always a sign.

VETERAN PLEASE HELP GOD BLESS.

HIV+ NEED MEDICINE.

HUNGRY FAR FROM HOME PLEASE GIVE.

I have friends who refuse to give to such people based upon the skepticism that whatever proceeds these people receive will be used for less than savory activities. They don’t want to be a part of enabling a drug addict to buy more meth or a drunk more liquor. I also have friends who give regardless, believing that their act of mercy, of helping the helpless, is an act God happens to smile brightly upon.

I happen to adopt the latter position and give as often as I can, though I’ll admit there have been more than a few times when I have questioned the validity of their statements.

Still, these signs have always fascinated me. They represent the current state of one person’s life pared down to reveal only the essentials. One story able to fit on a single piece of discarded cardboard. And they are each by necessity crafted to initiate an immediate response. They are not designed to persuade through the intellect or please the eyes. They are meant to be shot as an arrow into the heart.

After running a few errands in the city yesterday, I was on my way home when I saw a man sitting by the guardrail on the opposite side of the road. His flannel shirt hung loosely from his body, sleeves rolled up against the hot sun. The blue work pants that completed the outfit were the sort that provided the maximum amount of wear for the least amount of money. A pair of untied brown tennis shoes shuffled the gravel.

But it was his sign that caught my attention. Three words, and no more. Three words that spoke very much with very little and offered honesty rather than a plea.

DESPERATE AND TIRED, it read.

The rush hour traffic was such that I couldn’t turn around and offer him what I could. I didn’t have much choice but to keep going. As I drove I watched him through the side mirror, hoping someone would stop.

No one did. Some, I suppose, didn’t notice him. Others probably did but then decided not to. One car full of teenagers blew their horn and offered a chorus of middle fingers.

The man never moved. Never shifted his weight or lifted his head. This was not so much an insult as it was the status quo.

Yet I realized that we all were in many ways like that poor man. Like all of the lost souls who roam our streets and barely manage to survive. We’ve all slipped through our own share of cracks at some point.

VETERAN PLEASE HELP GOD BLESS? We’ve all sacrificed, given all we’ve had, only to not get the same returned back to us.

HIV+ NEED MEDICINE? We are all hurting in our own way. Some are afflicted with physical ailments. Others have their ailments on the inside. Many of us have both.

HUNGRY FAR FROM HOME PLEASE GIVE? Within each of us is a hunger, whether to love or be loved, that can only be filled by a God who at this moment is readying a faraway place for us to call home.

And let’s not forget the last. DESPERATE AND TIRED. How many times have we all felt that way?

The difference between us and them have much less to do with our level of comfort and much more to do with our level of honesty.

Because we all carry a sign that tells the story of our lives, pared down to reveal only the essentials. They choose to show the world in a bid for help. We don’t. And for that, they are better.

***

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Madness, hosted by Peter Pollock. For most posts on this topic, please visit PeterPollock.com

Signs of a season change

photo-247WARNING!!! DO NOT OPEN THIS DRAWER UNLESS YOU ARE MOMMY. ANYONE WHO OPENS THIS DRAWER WHO IS NOT MOMMY WILL BE IN TROUBLE!!!

Taped to the top left drawer of my daughter’s dresser. Saw it last night when I checked to make sure she was sleeping. Written in yellow highlighter, in all caps, and with a total of six exclamation points.

It seemed her point was clear enough. Do not open. Unless you’re Mommy. Off limits to both her father and her little brother. The latter was understandable—big sisters do not want their little brothers going through their things. But the latter was me, and my daughter was not in the habit of hiding things from her daddy.

So I was faced with a conundrum that felt more deep and profound than to merely look or not. It was more than that. It was to invade my child’s privacy or make sure she didn’t have anything in her drawer she wasn’t supposed to. Not likely (not likely at all, really), since she’s never been one to do something she shouldn’t. But still, it ate at me.

I would like to say here that I did not look then. I left the note untouched, tucked the blankets around my little girl, and went to bed. I tossed. I turned. I thought and wondered.

Given what the piece of paper said, I felt sure my wife knew what was in my daughter’s dresser drawer. She was asleep, though. I couldn’t wake her. That doesn’t mean my conscience prohibited it—by then I’d realized I would never be able to get to sleep until I knew, and by then I’d convinced myself whatever my daughter was hiding had to be important—but that I literally could not wake her. I shook her and called her name and kicked her under the covers.

My wife didn’t move. Teachers are often tired.

Which meant there was only one thing left to do.

So I got out of bed. Walked from our room into my daughter’s, checked to make sure she was still asleep, and ignored the sign on her dresser drawer.

The small lamp on her nightstand offered just enough light to turn black to shadow. I grabbed the first thing I felt, turned around, and held it up to the light.

A sock. Tried again. Another sock.

I rifled through what I could, looking for…well, I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something other than socks, I guess. I pulled out T shirts, old birthday cards, some chapstick, and a misplaced Barbie.

The something stuffed on the bottom in the back of the drawer felt like neither sock nor T shirt. I pulled it out, turned, held it up to the light, and nearly fell down.

Sweet fancy Moses, Holy Mother of God, Matthew Mark Luke and John, it was a bra.

For my daughter. My nine-year-old daughter.

I dropped it. Thankfully, it was little more than a sliver of cotton that weighed all of three ounces. It made no sound on the carpet. I stood there with it in front of me, leering at me, taunting, saying, “Ha! Didn’t expect that, did you?” to me. I looked from It to her, the little girl sleeping in the bed.

I wondered what had happened and how it had happened.

Sometime—recently or not, though I hoped it had been moments and not months—a season had changed in my daughter’s life. We gauge our passing through this life by years. Seasons would be better. Because sometimes we languish in inner winters, sometimes we burst forth to a new springlife, sometimes we rest in the sunshine, and sometimes we fall.

Years do not matter. Seasons do.

It was now springtime for my daughter. I prayed that didn’t mean I was to suffer winter.

I picked up the bra and settled it back into the drawer, mindful to next time pay heed to the warnings she posted. I gathered the covers tight around her. She opened sleepy eyes and smiled at my sight.

“Hey Daddy,” she said.

“Hey back.”

“What are you doing?”

“Checking on you.”

She smiled again. “I like it when you check on me.”

I kissed her head and said, “I’ll always check on you.”

And I will. No matter the season.

A weight too heavy to carry

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

“Daddy, can you carry this? It’s too heavy.”

My daughter. She trails behind her a sack of what may be Barbie dolls, or maybe laundry. I can’t tell from where I sit. I can, however, tell she’s right. It’s too heavy.

“Sure thing.”

I get up and make my way over, but not before turning the channel on the television. Just in time, too. My daughter craned her neck toward it at just the next moment. She got an eyeful of Sportscenter rather than an eyeful of the latest bloodshed.

I bent down and grabbed her sack—Barbies after all.

“Where’m I taking this?” I ask her.

“To my room.”

I nod and shoulder the load. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

She takes one more look at the television, says “Sorry about the Yankees, Daddy,” and then blazes a path down the hallway toward her room.

“That was Shakespeare, you know,” I tell her. “The MacDuff thing.”

Unimpressed with my literary knowledge, she merely nods and says, “That’s nice.” I know something else is on her mind. Something else is always on her mind. I deliver Barbie and the rest of her clan to the safety of her bed, ask her if there’s anything else I can do for her, and park myself back in front of the television.

I push the button on the remote control that says Previous. Sportscenter disappears in a blaze of pixels that reforms into the rest of the evening news.

It’s a habit I’ve repeatedly tried to break, this news watching. I’ve reached the point where I can bear no more and have decided to test the theory that ignorance truly is bliss. Little of what I see on the television is ever felt in my quiet corner of the world. Things here go much as they always have, slowly and with little change. But a part of me feels it is my responsibility to know what’s happening. There is a sense that I must bear witness to these times, if only to pray that God will deliver us from them.

I see a pair of eyes peek at me from around the corner, small eyes full of questions. They grow into my daughter’s face. I push the button again. Back to sports.

“What you need, sweets?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

“Sure?”

She is not, and so walks into the living room and sits beside me. Says, “What were you watching, Daddy?”

“Just some sports.”

“No,” she says. “Before.”

I have the feeling she knows exactly what I was watching, which means I can either lie or tell her the truth. It’s not good to lie to your children. Necessary at times, but still not good.

“I was just watching a little of the news.”

“How come you always turn the news off when I’m around?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “You’d probably think it was boring stuff.” It’s a lie. Like I said, such things are necessary at times.

“I don’t think it’s boring. I like to know stuff.”

She leans her head on my shoulder and we laugh at the commercial on the screen. Mine is a tired chuckle, the sort that’s given more out of expectation than genuine feeling. I suppose my thoughts were more on the newscast than the humor. Hers, though? Complete and joyous, a laugh unencumbered.

The laugh of a child.

“You know that sack I carried to your room?” I ask her. “How it was too heavy for you to carry?”

She nods against my shoulder.

“That’s sort of why I don’t like you watching the news. Your sack was too heavy for your muscles, right?”

Nod.

“Your spirit has muscles, too. Some things on the news, they’re too heavy for you to carry right now. That comes later, when you’re older and stronger. Then you can carry all of that. But for now, I think you should just carry the lighter things. I’ll carry the heavy things for you.”

I kiss her on the head, a sign she understands means that’s all I can stay. My daughter lingers long enough for the commercials to end, then she skips back to her room and her Barbies.

I don’t know if she understands what I’ve just told her. Maybe that is too heavy for her as well. A part of me hopes it is.

My finger rests on Previous, and I realize it’s done so by habit. News, always news. Another set of eyes from the hallway, these the smaller ones of my son. He asks if we can watch cartoons. I tell him yes.

There will be no more news tonight, and I decide that’s a good thing.

Because there are still many things even too heavy for a father to carry.

***

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Innocence, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more on this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com.

Selling memories

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

(This story was originally posted back in January, 2011.)

It’s funny how old memories can sink with the weight of new ones only to bubble up again. Tiny moments you thought had been long blown away by life’s continual wind circle back and stick to you like a burr. You find that memory is suddenly everywhere.

That’s what’s happening to me right now. One little memory.

I don’t know why it bubbled up again, don’t know why it’s sticking. I think God often makes us remember things in the past that could serve as the basis for some sort of wisdom now, but I can’t imagine how that’s the case with me. And it’s a painful memory, one I’d like to see sink back down in my mind for as long as possible. I figure writing about it may help. Or, perhaps, it may help you. In either case, it will serve its purpose.

I was ten years old, an age that is largely spent balancing on that thin line between knowing much about the world and not wanting to know. It was summer. I remember it was hot. I remember the crowd, too, and thinking it was more people than I’d ever seen in my life.

They were all gathered around two farm wagons that had been towed into my grandparents’ backyard and placed side by side. They sat in the open space between the garden my grandmother and I once worked and the giant willow tree I spent hours swinging from. There was a small patch of spearmint that grew at the base of the tree. Grandma would pick a few leaves and make tea with them just for me. I remember the people clamoring around the tree that day, trampling the patch.

I think that’s when I began to realize everything was ending.

The white Cape Cod my grandmother and grandfather had lived in for nearly thirty years was showing wear. The siding had been dulled to an almost gray by the sun. The shingles on the roof were brittle and stained by rain and wind. The house looked tired. I remember that, too. Everything looked tired.

The people who stood on top of the two giant wagons looked just as weary. My mother was one of them. Also an aunt and two uncles. They would each hold up what was in their hands as the man with the microphone yelled to the crowd in a language that was both foreign and fast. My mother held up a painting of a cabin that hung in my grandparents’ living room. I remember I would often sit on the sofa and stare at that painting while Grandma and I drank our spearmint tea. I would tell her that one day I wanted to live in a place like that. I still do.

The man with the microphone yelled more, numbers I knew mixed with words I didn’t. My mother kept her hands raised. One by one, others in the crowd raised theirs. I wondered why she looked so sad with all those people waving at her.

She put the painting down just after the man with the microphone said the one word I did understand:

“SOLD!”

I remember my father standing beside me. I asked him, “What’s going on?”

He didn’t tell. Instead he put his hand on my shoulder and led me over to the apple tree. He picked one from a high bough, rubbed it on the leg of his jeans, and offered it. I still remember how that apple tasted.

As I said, I was ten. Balancing on that thin line. But on that day the line was thinner than I cared it to be. I was old enough to know my grandfather had died and my grandmother before him, young enough to still believe I would still come and work the garden and drink the tea and stare at the painting of the cabin. I wobbled on the thin line that day between the memories I could keep and the memories being sold.

I suppose I wobble still.

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Home, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more on this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com

Jimmy’s long road ahead

img_4724There are fewer places more depressing to be nowadays than at the gas station. Especially around here, where those tiny hybrid cars are known as “roller skates” and spoken of in the same mocking tones reserved for liberal politicians and terrorists. Everyone has an SUV here. Or a jacked-up truck. Or both. Having to spend close to a hundred dollars to fill up your tank does not make for a pleasant experience.

It also invites certain periods of discomfort and outright sadness when waiting in line at the cash register. Which is what happened to me the other day. And strangely enough, it had nothing to do with gas.

There were five of us, all lined up in succession in front of a somewhat shaken seventeen-year-old high school cashier who no doubt was tired of being held as the person responsible for the $3.85 per gallon price. That did not stop the farmer at the head of the line from asking how in the world he was supposed to plow his fields with the price of diesel so high, diesel being even more expensive. The cashier shrugged, said “I dunno,” and then offered a qualifying “Sorry, mister.”

Their short conversation would have likely been an interesting one, but my attention then turned to the mother and son in front of me. Both wore the dull layer of weariness common to a hard life, she in her baggy sweatpants and flannel button-up, he in a pair of too-short jeans and a Wrestlemania T-shirt. The mother sighed often—I think it was the deep, tired sigh that drew my attention away from the farmer and the cashier—her hand gripping a twenty dollar bill as if she were trying to squeeze out the ink.

Bored with standing in line, her son wandered away to the candy aisle. Mama’s eyes followed him and then drifted to me. “Hello,” she said. I helloed back.

The boy was back—“Ma, can I have this?”

He held up a bag of Big League Chew, the grape flavored. Not my first choice, as the regular flavored was much better, but still a valid request. Every boy worth his salt is a Big League Chew fan, my own son included. I thought at that moment that maybe I should grab him a bag, too. He’d like that.

“No Jimmy,” said the mother. “That stuff’s too expensive.”

I stole a look at the tiny orange sticker that had been placed just under the batter’s chest on the bag–$1.29.

“Please?”

Rather than answer, mama gripped her twenty harder. But Jimmy wasn’t about to let silence be her final answer.

“Mama?”

The line moved forward. Mr. Farmer Guy was gone now, as was the lady behind him and the man behind her. It was now an elderly man’s turn to excoriate the poor cashier on evil oil companies and corrupt government officials. Mama and Jimmy were next in line, and the question of the Big League Chew was still in the air.

“Mama?”

“No,” she said, and with a sharpness that revealed the hidden facts she was trying to keep from her son. Just one word, one no, that really meant, “Don’t you see that we don’t have the money, that this twenty dollars will maybe get us enough gas to go to the store and back home and you to school tomorrow and then I’ll be on fumes again? Don’t you see?”

But Jimmy didn’t see.

“But Mama…”

“No” again. Then a very sad and very final, “We ain’t got the money.”

The elderly man left—“Damn oil companies” was his parting shot—and mama and Jimmy moved to the register.

The cashier sighed in a here-we-go-again way and said, “You get some gas, ma’am?”

“No,” she said. Jimmy had by then managed to sneak the bag of bubble gum onto the counter in a desperate attempt to somehow leave the store with it, but mama’s eyes caught it.

“I said NO.” She grabbed the bag and held it out. “Take this back,” she told her son. “And do it before I tan your hide.”

I could see the tears in Jimmy’s eyes and thought there were perhaps tears in his mother’s as well, and I thought then that the four of us—mother, son, cashier, and me—were being privy to yet another example that life is unfair. That no matter what we do or how hard we try, some children will always want and some parents will never be able to provide.

“Ma’am?” asked the cashier.

Mother’s attention snapped back to the moment, sighed again. She held out her twenty and said, “I need a pack of Marlboro lights and fifteen Powerball tickets.”

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Road, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. For more posts about this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com

Adventures in junk mail and maturity

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

My mailman—mail lady, actually—says that approximately four out of every seven pieces of mail she delivers to my neighborhood could be classified as junk. She shakes her head at the fact that most of her work goes straight from the mailbox to the garbage can.

I thought about that yesterday while walking to the porch from the mailbox, a handful of letters in my grasp. Most were destined for recycling (I thought the mail lady would somehow feel better knowing that, and I promised myself I’d tell her next time she came around). But even that didn’t seem to do all her hard work justice. So I made it a point to sit and open each and every letter. Read them, even. Then I could toss them away without feeling so guilty.

There was the usual fare—satellite television offers, a flyer from the local furniture store, a newsletter from a church my family visited five years ago.

But it was the last letter that caught my attention. A thick, linen envelope, my name embossed with gold letters on the front. Fancy for junk mail.

The return address was just that—an address. I tore it open and read:

“Dear Friend.”

Not exactly personable. Then again, junk mail never is. But then:

“Whether you realize it or not, you’re a person of influence.”

Well now, that’s more like it.

“You live with passion and purpose”—

I do!

—“encouraging and helping others”—

Yes!

—“and building a legacy for your family and future generations—”

Okay, I’ll buy that.

Way down in the fourth paragraph, I finally realized what they were getting at. It was a magazine advertisement, one “for people just like you” that offered a monthly assortment of “inspiring stories from others like you who deserve to live a hopeful, vibrant life.”

I’ll admit, it sounded interesting. Which is why I actually finished the letter. Then I turned to the inserts (full color, mind you) of sample articles, which to my surprise seemed overly populated by elderly people.

That’s when I discovered the publication’s name.

Mature Living.

And that’s when I discovered exactly what had happened.

I’d just been solicited for an old folks magazine.

I stood there in the middle of my living room, flabbergasted. Surely this was some mistake. Me? No. Surely not. I’m not old. Sure, in the minds of some I could be consider older. But not old. And yeah, I’m a little thin on top, but a lot of guys are, guys younger than me, and besides I have a tattoo and shop at Abercombie & Fitch. Old people don’t do that.

But it still bugged me. My wife said I wasn’t old, though I thought that was likely because she’s older than I am and telling me I was would make her old by proxy. My kids said I was old—“Ancient,” said my daughter—but to them, anyone over twenty is old.

I was at a loss. Why were the people at Mature Living picking on me? My family said to let it go—“Bein’ mad’s not good for your heart, Daddy,” said my daughter—but I couldn’t. So I did what any sane person would do. I called the number at the end of the letter and asked them how they got my name.

It was a lady’s voice on the other end of the line—a young voice, though I suddenly realized that young to me was twenty-five. Megan, she said. Can I help you?

“Yes.” I cleared my throat, suddenly wondering what in the world I was doing. “Megan. Hi. My name is Billy.” (Billy being a very youngish name.) “I just received one of your advertisements in the mail.”

“Wonderful!” said Megan. “Would you like to begin a subscription.”

“No. No Megan, I would not. I just need to know how you got my name. Is there some old people’s database? Do you buy your names from pharmacies or something? Because I picked up a prescription for my dad the other day, and that wasn’t for me.”

Megan didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know where the names came from, either.

“Are you sure you don’t want to begin a subscription?” she asked.

“No. I mean yes. Yes, Megan, I am sure. I am not mature. Do you hear me?”

And then I hung up.

I’m not sure what Megan thought of that, but she likely had quite a story to tell during her break.

It’s funny how we think we’re comfortable with who and where we are in this life, and how quickly we are faced with the truth.

I won’t make that mistake again. Next time, all the junk mail’s going straight to the trash.

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Adventure. To read more adventurous posts, visit my friend Peter Pollock at PeterPollock.com

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