The whispering of aspens around you, flittering in some northern current, keeps grabbing your attention. You were trying to recall how many years you’ve been single and if the breakup was before or after the Deftones album “White Pony” came out, (the correct answer is before, sorry). But you were walking to a restaurant, a Perkins, with your friend Able. You see the sign in the distance, smiling down on the chilled concrete and frosty fourth generation pickups of central Ave. Again the susurrus breeze kisses your ears, making you haunch your shoulders and duck your head. Again that white pony gallops through your head, 1990 something? 90… what? 98? 99? God, a long time. A good album, (though it was actually the year 2000, sorry. And it apparently has some unconscious connection to the cold or the trees or the wind for you.)
Anyway.
Once inside, your server places you and your company in a booth by the window and starts you with a glass of water, no ice. No need for ice, no need to add insult to the early winter injury.
Able sits across from you. He briefly looks gorgeous, smiling, scraggly beard, almost so beautiful that you for forget to say something. But you do. His lips rise to a gentle crow’s feet, formed from half a lifetime of laughing. It nearly stuns you, as if you forgot other normal people live their whole lives along side you, happy, friendly, and deeply.
“Well that wasn’t so bad huh?”
“It feels a little shorter every year you know.”
Able glances at his phone “I wanted to show you this- Now I’m not going to make any jokes,” Able begins, making you laugh already at the impossible thought that he wouldn’t make any jokes. “But, I saw it this morning, I was looking through pictures and look-” he holds up a picture of you two. “It’s from last year, when we were ice fishing on Oshkosh, remember?” You remember. It was an ice fishing tourney that you two participated in, casually rising to 12th place out of 24. But you were just there to fish, catch and release, wholesome fun.
Though at that time, as you see clearly in the photo, it was Blue Moon in cans every week day and then some. Not so wholesome. You remember having a good time, but when you look at the you in the picture it makes you reflexively shudder. It’s embarrassing, shameful, and your face heats up with blood under the skin of your cheeks.
“Oh wow…” is all you say.
“But yeah,” he takes his phone away finally, “I thought it would be nice to show you how far you’ve come. I know that’s cheesy to say, but…”
“No no, it’s good- I’m feeling a lot better that’s for sure.” You question for a moment if that’s a lie, but it isn’t.
“Well good, that’s really good.”
The server comes back and takes your order. Able asks for a burger, and for you, a modest salmon. Fish must have gotten stuck on your brain.
You ask Able about Josie, his longtime lover, and mentally prepare to be the listener for a few minutes while he serenades you with anecdotes from their life. To an observer it’s a conversation about nothing, and yet, when it’s your friend, it’s everything. You really care about how Josie wore an Alf tee shirt to get her passport photo, or that Able hilariously miscalculated the number of days in September. You pay attention to the melody of his voice, and how his one eye, every now and then looks just a little bit lazy and then fixes itself. For a little while he looks beautiful again.
He winds down his part of the program as the food arrives and turns the lamp toward you. “What have you been up to, since we last spoke.”
You realize how empty of meaning your days have been, and in an instant recognize how much richer his life is than yours. You scramble to think of some anecdotes. You decide to mention how you’ve been going to the local theater to see classical music shows and how you’ve been getting into that old stuff again. But the flame of your thoughts burn quickly and you keep looking out the window and noticing that the overcast has parted and the fish was fried a little firm for your taste and he keeps looking at you like a question and god is it really that late in the day already.
“Anyway…” you officially trail off, off on a trail of thought entirely your own.
Able reins you back in, “Yeah so, anyway, I’m glad we still got to go this year. You know soon it’ll be so long in between seeing each other we’ll have to recap the whole previous year every time we meet.”
“Nah, no, c’mon we can do better than once a year.”
“I dunno, we’re gettin old…”
“Now that I agree with. Next time I see you your beard’s gunna turn white, and you’ll have a couple mini-you’s hanging off your shoulders.”
He just looks at you, all coy. Your expression drops. “Actually,” he says quiet, “We’re trying for one.” He holds his hands in front of his smile.
Your heart sinks in a familiar way, “Oh, wow, that’s- great man. You two seem really happy together.” You watch his face to make sure your delivery sold the sentiment, which it didn’t really, but Able either ignores it or chooses to be generous in his interpretation.
“I’m really excited. I haven’t even told my family yet though, or hers.”
It strikes you that you’re close enough in his circle for him to tell you this, and yet you might the most hurt by it. You dismiss the hurt long enough to say, “Well I’m sure your family will be excited too.” The feeling resurfaces. What’s wrong? Don’t you like Josie? You do. You won’t arrive at the answer tonight, but truly you are jealous. Maybe jealous of what you see as his idyllic life, or that he’s achieved some marker of success before you, or perhaps deep down you’re jealous because Josie has him for good now and you never can. You never could before, but now it’s painfully obvious.
“Well we’ll see about it anyway… Nothing’s guaranteed. We’re still looking at the finances of it too. Never enough money, you know, and kids are expensive.”
“Quite the investment…”
“Yeah, well, life’s not fair you know?”
“It’s certainly not predictable.”
“No… not at all.”
“It’s equally unfair for everyone though, so in a way it is fair.”
“Ha, sure, but I mean like, all this” He looks around, “The life I’ve built, it could all be gone in an instant.” You try to read into his words, maybe he does want to give it all up (He doesn’t). “It’s crazy.”
“Yeah,” You start in, “But I think that’s what I like about life. It conforms to my view of the world as a big Skinner Box.”
Able chuckles and it makes your bitter expression turn for a moment. “Whaddya mean?”
“A Skinner Box? You know what that is?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It’s a box, and scientists put a pigeon in it. And the pigeon gets a treat every once in a while, on a timer. And the pigeon tries to figure out how to get the treat. Flapping its wings, pecking the wall. But nothing makes the treat come out; it just comes when it does. But the pigeon always thinks whatever it did just before the last treat came out is whatever makes it come.”
“That seems like a strange punishment for an animal.”
“It’s like life. We’re just trying to make some kind of contentment or fulfillment appear, with jobs and love and everything, but really, it just comes when it wants and there’s nothing we can do.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you.” Able says it as a matter of fact.
“Maybe I do.” You let on for a moment, then let a smile crawl across your cheeks. Able smiles too like it were some sad joke, but you wonder for a moment if you really do believe it. It makes a kind of twisted sense to you now.
Something now about white ponies and radio tower punks and Skinner Boxes and Annie Patchouli makes so much sense to you now like it never will again.
You watch his headlights arc down the driveway. You fold your scarf over your chest and step out into the bitter predawn. The cold shocks your skin and you rush to take up shotgun. Able greets you, “Mornin’ sunshine.”
“Morning” you say back, though you feel more like a little black raincloud than a beam of sunshine. He ignites his ride and pulls out among the upland prairies and rolling hills, all still draped in blue-black with just stray shots of ruddy pink near the horizon you now aim towards.
“You ready to roll?” He asks.
“I’m still warming up to the idea, frankly.”
“You want some music?”
“Sure.” You agree and peruse his CD collection. Nothing seems to fit the ambiance of your low dark crawl across the north, at least that you recognize. “What’s ‘Annie Patchouli’?” You ask.
“Ooh,” Able glances over, “She’s good, give ‘er a go.”
You do. She plays guitar and sings. You follow the contour of the melodies over the whirring landscape. Her songs start to give you shivers that you’re not quite comfortable with, so you try to focus on other things. Able’s face, the pattern of frost on the edge of the window. But it doesn’t go away till Annie feels like it.
As the minutes pass the sky grows brighter from the point of origin,and spreads out into the whole wide arena, that you, among few others, zip through, straight on track West to East.
Able speaks up again, “Whelp, should be there any minute now.”
You chuckle although you’re not really in the mood to. Fate hasn’t spun you that way this morning and Able hasn’t won you yet either. (Which is too bad too because you could really use it. Why does everyone have to win you anyway, can’t you just put out your best side first for once?)
Anyway.
Hours pass, Ms. Patchouli’s record ends, and the sun is finally overhead.
Able’s usual self has unthawed too and he says, “Well, what the hell huh? What’s on your mind, what’ve you been silently stewin’ about over there.”
You suddenly (pitifully) realize you’ve been waiting for him to check on you. You say, “It’s a nice morning. Kind of relaxing.” You didn’t believe it before you said it, but now that you have you try to retroactively believe it.
“Yeah, to watch the sunrise…”
“And with that album it was like- scoring the sunrise.”
“Yeah, didjya like that album?”
“It grew on me, you know?”
“Yeah. She makes ya feel things right?”
“Yeah yeah, honestly at first it was a little too much feeling for five in the morning, but it grew on me.”
“Yeah. She’s good. Wanna pick another?”
“Sure.” You return to thumbing through the CD’s. “What time is it anyway?”
“It is seven-thirty.”
“Oh damn, I didn’t know it’d been that long already. You gotta get gas soon?”
“Yeah let’s wait till we get at least to Medina though.”
A half hour later, Able pulls over in one of the many rest stop towns along the I-94. A train crossing, a grain depot, a gas station, and an on ramp. You two stand outside, Able at the pump, and yourself leaning against the yellow sedan. All around you, out of the blue blue sky, the first snowfall of the year begins. Unannounced, the lone forerunner flakes drop slowly at first, then altogether as a white mist, raining down.
You comment, “Well, Merry Christmas Able.”
“Happy Hanukah.” He returns with a grin, “Ain’t she purdy?”
“It sure is.”
You both return to the relative warmth of your vessel. You set out again quickly, so as not to let the snow accumulate while your back is turned.You‘re a hundred miles and an hour and a half away now, nearly three quarters of the way there, snow steady a-fallin’. Time slips across the landscape with you. On the road again, you spy a tower bleeping red at its peak, a ways in the distance.
You wonder aloud, “Do you see that tower out there.”
“Yeah, it’s probably a radio tower.”
“…What do you think it’s playing?”
“Probably… I dunno, country?”
“Yeah? I think it’s playing jazz, like bebop. Or punk- maybe it’s supposed to play country but it’s been co-opted by the punks and now it’s playing their music.”
“You think there are a couple of punks sitting at the top with a record player plugged into the tower, spinning their hand cut vinyls?”
“Probably. They’re probably freezing in the wind, but they don’t care because their too cool to feel cold.”
“Stickin’ it to the man.”
“Let’s try to find the signal.” You click the radio into FM and scan across stations, beginning in the low 80’s. You find a few scratchy sources, a news station, MPR maybe, then you hit a clear classical frequency at about 90.3. You linger there for a moment but conclude, “That can’t be them.” You go higher, passing by the usual country fare until you hear a woman’s voice, crystal clear at 102.9.
She says, “And I can’t believe it’s snowing out there now! I look away for one minute… I’m of course bundled up here in the studio, I hope you’re bundled up wherever you are. I think I’m supposed to read the sports but no one told me if we won or not so, I think I’m going to skip that. No one’s here anyway, they all went home over the long weekend. I’m the lone vanguard of North Dakota radio- Speaking of which it’s coming up on hour two of Jasmine’s Rock Renaissance, you’re listening to KATY 102.9, North Dakota State’s radio of choice, I’m Jasmine, and I’ll be back in a moment after these words…”
The program switches to local ads. You both had been listening intently and now suddenly lean back in your chairs. Able says, “Oh, it’s college radio, I think…”
“Are we close to the school?”
“I… Don’t remember, honestly.”
“This is nice, huh?”
“Yeah I can’t complain. You’re doing alright? Faculties still in check?”
“Well, that’s debatable… but I’m doing good anyway. It’s nice to get out-“
Jasmine cuts you off as she returns to the mic. You follow her show almost all the way to Fargo, but she bids farewell just as the sign reads, “Fargo, 10 miles”.
So anyway what the hell, I guess. The more you ask for the less you get.
This story is an adaptation of a poem of the same name by John Steininger
everything & nothing 