THE LITTLE THINGS

Nightfall descends upon the prison yard, desolate as the Nevada desert, eerie and still, lacking warmth and any sign of life, a luminous half-moon illuminates the black November sky. It’s after 10 o’clock count, I sit down at the desk to do some writing, alone, which is not common in prison—my cellmate in the infirmary undergoing daily radiation treatments for face cancer—for almost three weeks.

It is difficult to write during the day, so many distractions and interruptions: counts, walking to and from meals, and working from 8 to 3 in the canteen. But since my cellmate has been gone, I’ve been using the time to write at night, when everyone else is sleeping. My typewriter has a memory so I can store text without printing it out. It holds approximately ten pages.

Since tonight is Thanksgiving, I’ll start by telling you the things I’m thankful for: the last three weeks of much-needed solitude to reflect, to meditate, and to write, a typewriter to write with, a full stomach from the three hot meals I received today, and a cot to lay in when I tire of writing.

I’m thankful for Medicare and all the health care providers who treated my mother for throat cancer. I’m looking forward to seeing her this weekend. I’m thankful for my brother and sister-in-law, for bringing my mother for a visit.

I’m thankful I had enough stamps to mail out the legal brief I just prepared for the United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel, so the court can void and discharge the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act judgment entered against me three years ago. The MIRA judgment allows the State of Missouri to take 90% of any money deposited into my inmate account. I’m thankful that I make seventy-five dollars a month working in the prison canteen. The state can’t take any of that. They are prohibited from doing so by statute. Unfortunately, my job only lasts until March.

I am thankful for my agent, Kristin, I could not blog without her assistance. She is an oasis, a tall glass of ice water to a parched fishing-boat captain, and as refreshing as rain during a drought. I do not have access to the internet. Living in prison is like living in the Stone Age, instead of using flint rocks to make fire, prisoners use AA batteries and staples to light their cigarettes when in administrative segregation. I’m thankful I don’t smoke. I just drink copious amounts of freeze-dried coffee, agitating my kidneys until I give birth to an occasional stone. Perhaps this is one vice I should reconsider.

I’m thankful for the occasional letter from my nieces. I’m also thankful for the occasional visit from my sister, Ginger. I enjoy beating my niece Mandy in every game she selects to play. I think she enjoys losing so she can say she let me win.

I’m thankful for Rabbi Shmuel Spritzer at Reaching Out. He always sends heartfelt letters with encouraging stories of triumph over adversity.

And last, but not least, I’m thankful for you sharing a moment with me, as I reflect upon all the little things that make life feel abundant, full, and overflowing, meeting all of life’s necessities one by one.

A DAY AT SWAP & SHOP

Up early on a Sunday morning, my dad and I drove to Swap & Shop, held every weekend at the old I-70 drive-in, a place where people from all over sell and barter goods—everything from clothes to animals.

The night before, my dad and I loaded a display table, mechanic tools, power tools, and various items into his red Chevrolet van with rusted fenders, plush red bucket seats, red shag carpet, a pair of white fuzzy dice hanging around the rearview mirror, a pine tree car deodorizer, and, in the back, a twin bed. We’d usually get to swap & Shop before sunrise, avoiding the long line to get in, and find a good place to setup, which made it easier to pack up and leave at the end of the day. For those selling goods, the admission cost for cars, trucks, or vans, was around $5; admission was free for buyers. On a good day, my dad would sell a few hundred dollars’ worth of goods.

After we were there for a few hours, my dad said, “Go see how much they want for one of them goats.” A short distance away from us was a man with goats and other animals.

“What for?” I asked.

“Just do what the hell I told you,” he replied, tipsy and sounding slightly annoyed by my questioning. He started sipping on a half pint of peppermint schnapps at about 10 A.M.

I complied before he became belligerent, slow-walking over to a truck covered in racks with a flock of goats in the back, and bird cages full of pigeons stacked up against the side. I looked around to see if anyone was watching me before I asked, “How much for a goat?”

The man replied, “Twenty dollars each.”

Satisfied with myself for having completed the mission without embarrassment, I returned to my dad’s van.

My dad was making a sale. I decided to wait and see if he remembered sending me to inquire about the goat, hoping he’d forgotten about it.

He hadn’t, asking as soon as he saw me, ‘’How much for one of them goats?”

“Twenty dollars,” I answered with a smirk, acknowledging to myself that my avoidance tactic failed.

He dug into his pocket, pulled out a roll of bills, peeled off a crisp twenty, and handed it to me. I asked, “What’s this for?” playing stupid.

“Go get me one of them goats,” he said.

Realizing that plan A failed, and understanding the seriousness of the situation, I tried to reason with him. “My pitbull will kill it.”

But my dad would not listen to reason or be swayed from his decision to make me go buy him a goat. My heart dropped, my face reddened, a lump grew in my throat, a sickening feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, my social status was going to be ruined by a stinking goat.

I walked back over to the goat herder’s truck, angry and now determined to buy a goat so my pitbull could kill and eat it, proving my dad a fool for not listening to me. Eyes blazing, and without a tremor of embarrassment, I dug into my pocket, pulled out the crisp twenty dollar bill, and told the goat herder, “I want to buy one of your goats.”

Taking the bill, the man asked, “Male or female?”

“Male,” I said. I wanted it to be a fair fight, my pitbull was female. The man pulled a goat from the truck, tied a rope around him, and handed me the leash. The goat was young, mostly white with small horns on his head, and unaffected by everything and everyone around him. Unlike myself: a self-conscious thirteen-year-old teenager. Now feeling silly, I started towards my dad’s van, the goat—wild and stubborn—being dragged and pulled along.

When we got there, I tied the goat up to one of the old drive-in speakers, and climbed into the passenger seat to hide my face. The goat, laying out in the open, exposing himself to the whole Swap & Shop, began eating the rust off one of the fenders of my dad’s van.

Once my dad saw him, he gave me some money to buy the goat something to eat. Seeing that he wasn’t a picky eater, I bought the goat four hot dogs for a dollar at the drive-in’s concession stand. I also bought him a Coke to wash them down with.

At the end of the day, we packed up and headed for home. We lived in an area called Birmingham, right off 210 Highway, a short distance from where my dad worked, in the Hunt Midwest Caves, as a supervisor with a truck shipping company called Space Center. Our house was right between two train tracks, the whole house would shake when a train came by. And when the conductors blew their horns at 2 A.M., passing the railroad crossing, I slept right through it. My parents had moved there after my brother and I started getting into a lot of trouble, in our old Northeast neighborhood.

When we got home, I opened the van’s side door to let the goat out. My pitbull and other two dogs came running. The goat, unfazed, just stood there, looking at them as they barked and growled. The goat raised up on his hind legs, dropped his head and lunged, head-butting one of the dogs in his side as the other dogs scattered. Then the goat jumped up on top of the dog house, claiming it for himself. I was shocked and amused, the dogs were afraid of the goat.

LOSS OF INNOCENCE

My mother sent me to the store for a pack of cigarettes. In 1983, I was never carded, people just took things at face value, assuming an eight-year-old boy wasn’t addicted to nicotine, and if given a dollar, he most likely would spend it on a Hot Wheels car or a Bigfoot ice cream off the ice cream truck. Only every now and then would I be asked, “These are for your mother, right?” 

My childhood friend, Fat Chris—a nickname my dad gave him—had been at my house watching cartoons, and he agreed to walk with me to Uncle Charlie’s. Owned and operated by an Italian family, Uncle Charlie’s was a little neighborhood store, about two and a half city blocks from the house where I grew up, in northeast Kansas City, Missouri.

When Fat Chris and I arrived, the front doors were chained, the lights inside were off, the parking lot was empty. Uncle Charlie’s was closed on Sundays, a fact unbeknownst to Fat Chris and I, but not to my mother, who’d specifically told me to go to Amoco and come straight back. Amoco, however, was five blocks away, a distance Fat Chris did not want to walk. I disobeyed my mother because I didn’t want to walk to the store alone. 

Befuddled, standing there in front of Uncle Charlie’s, having just walked more than two blocks uphill, in the opposite direction of Amoco, where we were supposed to be, Fat Chris and I were approached by two grubby-looking teenage boys. One of the boys had something long and thin wrapped in a black trash bag tucked under his arm. Pointing to the object under his arm, I asked, “What’s that?”

“It’s a pellet gun,” he said. 

“Can I see it?” I asked. 

“Not here, follow me and I’ll show you.” 

Fat Chris and I followed the two boys behind a car mechanic’s shop half a block up the street.

Behind the shop, an eerie feeling came over me when the two boys boxed me in between them. The boy holding the object—still wrapped in a trash bag—told me to empty my pockets. Like a scared animal reacting to the threat of danger, I took flight, attempting to escape the threat I now saw, only to be grabbed by one of the boys and spun around with lightning speed, then released to crash violently into the cement wall. Dazed, and confused by the jolt of reality, I came to my senses when the boy—ripping the trash bag off his secret object to unveil a pair of bolt cutters—threatened, “Empty your pockets or I’ll cut your fingers off.” 

I reached into my left pocket, pulling out two bills, a one and a five—the dollar my mother’s, the five my weekly allowance—and threw them on the ground at the boy’s feet. The boy who’d threatened me picked them up and hurried off, his cohort right behind him. Fat Chris just stood there, petrified, watching the robbery unfold. 

Walking home, confused, humiliated, guilt-stricken, and angry, I could not keep the tears from flowing, stinging my eyes and taking my breath, much as my innocence had been taken. That day, the world turned upside-down, no longer a place of fun, mystery and adventure to me, but a place of uncertainty, danger, and violence.

KICKING LEAVES IN THE PARK

On a cool autumn day in October,

A young man kicking leaves in the park

Contemplated the meaning of his life.

The breeze ruffled trees and heavy oak leaves,

Their branches crackling as he kicked leaves in the park,

No meaning resonating in his weary mind.

Suddenly he stopped kicking the leaves in the park,

A thought began to resonate in his mind,

Stirring pleasant emotions within him.

And in a moment of stillness and clarity,

The young man realized the meaning is to

Simply be in the moment of life and enjoy.

~ Zachary A. Smith