Novel

Monday, March 14

Jeff and Martha came to visit Brew, on the way to Panama City, on vacation, with Henry. Henry was young.

Brew had made eggplant Parmesan. Jeff and Martha walked to the corner liquor store, to buy a bottle of wine, and left Henry with Brew.

He started crying, and Brew picked him up, to comfort him, but he wanted Martha. He was a good baby, but not ready to be left with someone like Brew.

They drove over to Paradise Garden, and toured the site. Martha got some ideas for decorating her yard.

I don't mean her yard looks like a junkyard. I mean she set the bottoms of glass bottles in concrete, or something like that.

On the grounds of Paradise Garden Brew saw a concrete tumulus with the words Twisted Seppent in bas relief. Twisted seppent became a leitmotif.

Is that the staff of Asclepius, the healer, to the caduceus, symbol of Hermes, god of commerce, thieves, and the medical profession?

That is, healing versus the medical profession became a leitmotif.

Why should anybody get rich, being a doctor?

Why should a poor person go without medical care?

These are social justice issues. A society could be judged on how it solved them.

If you judged contemporary American society on how it solved them, contemporary American society came out looking pretty reactionary, or retrograde. Pretty cruel, and mean.

And under Bush it was getting crueler and meaner.

And Bush was proud of himself. He thought he was doing God's work.

Maybe he was. But not Brew's god.

Back Azimuth played the Sweetwater Brewery 420 Pale Ale Pub Crawl, in Little Five Points.

420 is police radio code for a marijuana bust, and the 420 Pale Ale was supposed to have thc in it. I don't know if it did or not, but the band went from bar to bar, and when the band was playing, the beer was half-price. And the band drank free.

Brew went along as band paparazzo. He drank free too.

Little Five Points reminded Brew of the French Quarter, in New Orleans, or Old Town, in Key West.

Sometimes Balder and Brew would drive over to Athens to see Owen and Jeannie. They would have friends over, and everybody would pick and sing. Owen would cook on the charcoal grill and Jeannie would cook on her gas range, in the kitchen. Brew would take snapshots.

One time Owen and Jean, and Balder, spent a week with Brenda in her trailer. It was nonstop hunting, fishing, playing music, cooking, and cleaning up. It wore Brenda out.

On the way back to Athens, and Atlanta, the three stopped in and had supper with Brew, in his trailer. Then they left.

Brew called Brenda and told her the kids had come, eaten, done the dishes, and gone.

Brenda decided she'd rather be a place the kids visited, did the dishes, and left, than a resort destination. She'd rather be where she could go and see Owen and Jean, in Athens, and come home the same night. Go and see Balder play at Little Five Points and be home the same night.

She sold her trailer in Atlanta, moved in with Brew, in his apartment in Tucker, and found a job with a cable TV company as the project manager on the installation of a voice-over-IP telephone system and a predictive dialer, which telemarketed pay-for-view TV programs.

She made as much as Brew, and Brew had been taken on permanent with Suent Scientific and made good money. Plus benefits.

Brew rented an upstairs bedroom, for Brenda, from his landlady, had cable TV installed, at the house, and had them run a phone and a cable TV outlet to Brenda's room and his apartment, so they each had a TV set, on cable, and a computer, on the Internet, in their room.

Brenda had her Japanese pickup truck, but now, Brew had to buy a car, a family car, a large car, in case the family went anywhere. He bought an Oldsmobile. Your father's Oldsmobile.

Brew was turning into his father.

And Brenda was turning into her mother.

Brew flew himself and Brenda and Balder out to Seattle for his mother's 80th birthday, and family reunion. Owen had to work, and he and Jeannie didn't go.

In addition to the family reunion, Brew bought Balder a computer, to replace the one Balder gave him when he went overseas, gave him some money to help with his college tuition, paid for the rehearsal dinner, when Owen and Jean got married, in Chattanooga, bought clothes for himself and Brenda, for the wedding, bought the car, and got it insured, and was penalized for not having automobile insurance the year he rode a bike to work.

He did this out of their savings.

Back then, he still got annual performance bonuses, at Suent Scientific.

It was their last good year, financially.

Probably their high-water mark. Financially.

For good.

At least he wasn't afraid of falling out of the middle-class.

He had fallen. Or jumped. Or been pushed.

When you get pushed, remember to yell, "Geronimo."

That was Brew's advice to the middle-class.

When you get pushed, remember to yell, "Geronimo."