Shep.

Get Well Soon.....and shine your shoes will you?

PART 4



When I finally got back to Los Gatos, I figured something needed changing. I felt strange staying at John's place, even though they welcomed me more than they should have. They weren't even there most of the time. It was nothing they were doing; it was just everything I was. I felt like a squid in a sack.. Helpless, bogged down, dying.

When they told me I no longer had the job at Adobe...I didn't know what to do. At that time I was so numb to the knocks on the head I kept getting I really don't know if I could feel anything at all. But the good news was that they fired the new nanny, and I was going to be the replacement. $100 a week and room and board, two kids who I already loved.

I could deal with that.I guess.

I spent most of the following days for the next several months in parks, at tae kwon do, or ballet, and waiting in the nanny circle after school for the kids to get out of class. Most of the nanny's there in Los Gatos were from other countries. One girl from Africa had a father who was a priest, and used to tie big American businessmen up in an old French Prison, so they could learn teamwork.

I ran at the end of every day, and I would always think of a fluffy pink sweater floating in the wind above me. I've never known why I thought of that, but I always did. Sometimes, I think of it still.

At night I'd hang in the coffee shops with the Nannys and listen to them talk to each other, and wonder what they were saying. Every now and then they'd remember I was there and say in some lusty accent.

"Are you having fun Brrrrad?"

"um hmm" and a sip of my triple mocha. "yes."

We played backgammon and I was a champion. The foreign girls all knew how to play backgammon.

I started seeing a Persian girl named Baharak eventually, and we'd do things like volunteer at the food bank in San Francisco, hand out fresh beautiful needles at the clinics in Santa Cruz. One night we took an inflatable raft out into the middle of a lake somewhere near Los Gatos and it sank. She didn't swim so I pulled her up on the shore, and she was panting, scared. I never really called her after that.

The little boy I was keeping, Trey ,told me once he'd rather be a blade of grass than a worm. He also told me that if he had any superpower it would be to ward off death. He was six years old.

On my 23rd Birthday, a friend from Georgia came out to visit. Shepherd Dunn from Fitzgerald, Georgia. He's a hard one to describe. A former champion wrestler, short but chocked full of the kind of muscles that can just tear your head clean off. I'd seen him try it many times. If you've never seen a wrestler get into a fight, they hardly ever lose. He had bright green eyes, and a long goatee, and a demeanor like a hillbilly infused with beautiful butterflies. Shepherd was not only powerful physically, but he held a power over anyone he was talking to. It was lie Dickey Betts meets Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi. You believed in him. He had this effortless spiritual way about him that drew everyone into his world. He'd say things like "Man, the day before I left to come our here, I was writing San Francisco on my hand and at the precise same moment, the teacher said the word, SAN FRAN CISCO. I knew that meant I was supposed to be here."

Whatever.

It was uncomfortable to be cynical around him. And I know he knew this. And eventually, it works.

He had his problems though, which is probably why we identified so well with each other. His fourth DUI had led him to quit the sauce too. We were both pretty near the bottom, we just didn't want to look down. While he was out we stayed up most of the night walking around San Franciso, went to the Fillmore, and a bunch of all night diners, and it was decided that when I came back out after the summer, he'd come with me.

The tentative plan was for me to head back to Georgia, work in the cotton fields all summer and get back to California with a few thousand dollars in my pocket. Shep would work the summer as well. Between us we hoped to have enough to get a place, and get started on whatever it was we were supposed to be doing.

On my way back across the country, I took hwy 40 this time. I didn't want to get too close to Mexico; I camped out next to an Old Western saloon one night. I went in to eat, and the wait staff was serving everyone while singing "Unda tha sea" from The Little Mermaid. It was all very confusing and I felt perfectly alone watching them.

Two weeks later Im back in Georgia for the summer.