MaineCourse

Life's Lessons

Maybe he’s looking into the not too distant future, but today Noland talked about his friend Frank who died while Noland was visiting him in the hospital. We were sitting at his dining room table watching The Price Is Right, and a guy in uniform had just won “The Showcase” worth about twenty-five thousand dollars.

“Frank had emphysema and his breathing sounded like someone was squeezing his vocal cords. Loud and high pitched. The doc walked into his room with a needle this size.”

Noland held his forefingers about eight inches apart.

“And that was the end of him. My grandmother was the same.”

I somehow missed how he tied Frank to his grandmother, with “the same.” I may have been watching the winner who was hugging his new car and saluting the audience. After Noland’s mother died when he was a baby he was raised by his grandmother and a very cruel father.

“She suffered like Frank. One day she asked me for apple juice and ice cream. I went out to the nurses desk, repeated her request and came back with ice cream and juice. I gave her ten or twelve small spoonfuls of ice cream and enough apple juice to wet her lips. She smiled, closed her eyes and that was that.”

“That was that? Jesus, Nol, give me a warning. I didn’t know she was going to end up dead. From ice cream to, "That was that”?

“That’s life, I could take it.”

“I know that’s life and I know you could take it, but all of your stories end like that. The boom drops. Don’t you have any boring stories?”

He doesn’t. They all finish with someone dead, beat-up, or fired. They're short and they hit hard.

This one too, which I’ve been holding back because it’s Noland’s other side. Peter had already guessed there was more to Noland than met the blog’s eye.

“My son, Danny, was about sixteen when he asked me if he could have a motorcycle. He was with his buddy, John. I said, 'I’ve taken care of you all these years and I want you alive. You have an accident on a motorcycle and the party is over.’ He turned around and left. A few minutes go by and I was about to walk back in the house, and I see John laughing. I asked him what was funny and he pointed down the street. There was Danny on the back of his friend Jim’s motorcycle. I got in my Olds and chased them down. Cut them off. I got out of my car, opened the back door, picked Danny off the bike and threw him into the back seat.”

Noland uses his hands when he talks, and his motions, like his words, are short, economical. He moved his hands as if he throwing a bale of hay.

“I said to Jim, ‘If I ever see him on the back of your bike again, I’ll do the same to you.’ I drove Danny home and pushed him through the front door. I put the hassock up on the divan, took the pictures off the walls and cleared the rest of the room. I said, ‘You’re going to learn who runs this house.’ I punched him again and again. I knocked him down and then I picked him up and threw him against the wall. His head hit the wall and he slumped to the floor. I thought, I hope he doesn’t get up. He didn’t. Years later he told me he remembered that day. He said, ‘Dad, I couldn’t get up.’ I told him It was a good thing."

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Susan treated us to dinner last night at Daniela's Cantina, and in spite of the cold weather, we drove to Erickson's for dessert. Shinydome will appreciate this most - she had wintergreen chip in a cone. Yes, ice cream with foreign bodies.

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Yikes. Sounds like it's a good thing you are working for Roland now and that it wasn't a few years ago that you put the nail through the pipe. But truthfully I thought you were going to say he lost his son in a motorcycle accident, so the story was actually better than I thought it would be. I've got to get me to this Erickson's.

Posted by chris.

Posted by Michael at May 28, 2004 06:34 AM