The Road to Camarillo

See the boy.

He is younger than the other two boys, they are all brothers. The boy is the youngest, smallest, the tall one is next, the strong one is oldest. They are all boys and they are all brothers. The tall brother has a problem. It is a problem the boy recalls from an afternoon with sun from a sycamore squinting at his tall brother go mad. The sun never looked the same after that and the boy lost something early.

There were trips the boy would make out to the hospital in the station wagon along the roads to Camarillo. He had A&W root beer afterward.

All of the brothers grew and the mad one would come to visit. The boy liked to use the bathroom as his refuge. If his parents were screaming, it would be a little more quiet in there. No one cared if he was taking a dump. Most of the time it was OK, but when his parents were trashing each other he took to the bathroom and ran the water.

Strong brother leaves to go next door, leaving mad boy and the boy. The boy is in the bathroom. Mad tall brother drags heavy feet to the bathroom door, knocks on the door...He wants to listen to music, he wants to listen to Jesus Christ Superstar. The boy opens the door and tall brother pounces on him like a mongoose with acne. "Gotcha!" he says. The boy will be his prisoner now...well OK.

There is an antique vehicle in the car port in the California sun, the boy is marched out, grabbed around the neck. It chafes a bit but there is nothing for an 8 year old to do. They study the car. There is talk of the engine from the tall brother which becomes a meditation on the Germans and Jesus Christ. The Torah, the Mail, the Lee Enfield rifle, World War II. They were all in it together. So the boy must be guilty. He is grabbed and marched through the car port to the gate that hangs off a hinge and into the back yard.

The boy sees the tangerine tree and the orange tree.

The tangerine tree brought forth the sweetest fruit, with very few seeds. The orange tree grew sour yellow oranges that were only good for juice, and even then they required large amounts of sugar added. Nothing good comes from sugar, it's too sweet for this sunshine.

The boy sees the oranges and recalls there being so many, and in such surplus, that he could use them for target practice against the cinderblock wall in the back of the yard. Now he sees the trees tossing in the wind...no it is not wind. The mad boy has picked him up and is carrying him, the crazy back and forth wind. He stomps forward with the load of the boy across his arms in front of him. He is a strong boy, and the boy himself is very young.

Splash they jump together into the shallow end.

The boy sees the tangerine tree and orange tree.

He wants to see them again, as they go down in his vision at an angle, splash, taste of chlorine, strong, runs up and through the boy's mouth and nostrils as his head goes under the force of mad brother's thrust once, twice, thrice. The boy breathes in hard through his nose and then he is marched further, but underwater, to the deep end. There is a thrashing of the water and it becomes white, then blue, then dark. The boy feels death. He can no longer see when his head comes above to the California sun, not before the next plunge.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Strong brother is standing at the edge,his arms folded. All of the brothers have a way of folding their arms. It speaks loud, and in that case, it saved the boy's life. There is something to be said for that.


See the man. His back hurts. So does his strong brother of the folded arms. The man admires his strong brother. They are all men now, even mad brother; his belly is distended and he appears in a hunched way, very harmless. The man feels the hinge of a squeaky iron thing that has run back and forth too may times; rust. They are reunited. The man can't disremember those eyes for he looked in them on the way down. Mad brother speaks of the FedEx and various non sequiturs. It is time for the man to let it go. It helps to have strong brother there. It helps a lot.

There is a moment when the man goes to get his meat from the table, and mad brother is standing behind him, when the man's neck feels, his neck feels, his whole back feels, vulnerable. It caused the man to have very good peripheral vision. There are carving knives nearby.

See the man.