The Hollow Men - Episode 41
Drew hears voices and goes on a mission
Last week in Episode 40 of The Hollow Men Drew goes to his 10th year high school reunion and comes to a realization he is isn’t too happy with.
The Hollow Men is the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas. If you have recently subscribed and like to read things from the very beginning feel free to start with The Cold Days of Summer, the first collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Each episode of The Cold Days of Summer and The Hollow Men contains a link to the previous and next episode so you can easily move through the story line.
Then things get strange
“Quit looking in the mirror.”
Nothing will startle you out of a deep sleep more than a disembodied voice speaking to you. I was awake instantly, looking around the room and hoping that I was waking up from a strange dream. There was no one else in the room, no one for the voice to belong to, no one but me.
Twice in the last two days the voice had spoken to me. It had spoken to me when I was with Rick Saturday afternoon and now again Sunday morning. The voice was somehow connected to Rick, but I didn’t know what the voice meant or who was actually speaking.
When I get nervous I get busy. I start doing something, anything, just to get my mind off what’s bothering me. That’s why I have the greenest lawn in my neighborhood back in Austin. Lawn work is something I can do that drowns out the noises and images that make me nervous.
There was no lawn in the hotel room so I had to cope another way. I started packing. I gathered up my dirty clothes and put them in the plastic laundry bag one finds in every hotel room. I picked out what clothes I would wear for the drive home, laid them out on the bed, and packed everything else up. The last thing I picked up was the belt Jason gave me back in high school. I laughed to myself, remembering that day in the first grade, that first time I was supremely confident but utterly wrong. I remember hearing my first grade nickname in the halls of Permian. I remembered werd = Drew. I remembered I had been looking in the mirror my entire life. That’s how I had to live because I saw the world differently. I saw the world in a sort of reverse image, a collection of puzzling reflections. I had to look at the world through a mirror so I could see the world in the same way as everyone else.
“Quit looking in the mirror.”
Damn. Damn! Damn! I knew what the voice meant. I knew what the voice meant. I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote
Dogmy
And then I wrote it in reverse
Ymgod
I stared at what I wrote. Things were starting to make sense. God was part of the puzzle. But what did ym mean?
Phonetics, phonetics. It was crazy to assume I had everything spelled correctly. After all werd sounded the same as word. I thought of letter patterns that would sound like “my” reversed.
Ym
Im
Iam
I stared at that last one and realized what Rick had been chanting.
I am God.
Damn, Damn.
I am God.
Rick had been chanting “I am God” over and over, only he had been saying it in reverse, just like I had spelled my name the first day of first grade.
Three years before the voice told me to quit looking through the mirror, to quit reversing things so I would see and hear them like everyone else. Three years ago my friend Rick had tried to talk to me and I didn’t understand. I was so used to looking in the mirror I didn’t see my friend was talking to me in the most natural way for me.
For over three years he had been waiting for me to understand him and speak to him. For over three years he had been alone.
Well, I couldn’t do anything about the past but I could do something about the here and now. I looked at the clock beside the bed, it read 8:15 am. I called Rick’s house. The phone rang twice and Rick’s dad answered the phone. I told him who I was and that I wanted to drop by this morning to talk to Rick before I left for Austin. He said the three of them usually went to church at 10:30, perhaps I could come by afterwards and join them for lunch. I didn’t want to wait that long and I didn’t want to go to church with them so I made a suggestion.
“How about if I stay with Rick at the house while the two of you go to church? It will be good to spend a little more time with Rick and it will give the two of you a chance to be out of the house and not worry about him.”
Rick’s dad didn’t say anything at first, but I felt I could hear him thinking. I heard him call for his wife, cup his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, and I heard their muffled voices. A moment passed and Rick’s mom was on the phone.
“Drew, that is awfully nice of you. Are you sure you want to do this? Rick can sometimes be tough to handle.”
I laughed and said “Don’t I know it. Remember I worked with him for nearly four years.”
She laughed and said lightly “If there’s anyone who could put up with him, it would be you. Thank you, Drew, this is a very nice thing you’re doing. When can you be here?”
“I’ll be at your house by 9:30. then you two can go to church.”
“Wonderful, we will be waiting for you.”
I hung up the phone and looked around the room. I had a little work to do before I left for Rick’s.
“I am God”
That reminded me of a bible verse. Not that I’m that much of a bible scholar, but I do remember a little bit from Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church. I opened up the night table drawer, lifted out the Gideon’s bible and began to leaf through it, hoping my eye would catch what I was looking for.
As I leafed through the pages the verse I was looking for began to form in my mind’s eye. “The kingdom of God is within you.” I skimmed through the bible twice and could not find it. I was a little desperate and annoyed when another thought came into my mind “trust God with all of your heart, and let him solve your problems.” That was something my Mom would say when I let things get to me. I had never taken her words to heart, I was too stubborn.
It was time for a change of heart. It was time to trust someone, something other than myself. I heard the words “the kingdom of God is within you” over and over in my head. I closed my eyes and listened for several seconds. I then opened my eyes, but softly, almost without focus as I began to page through the bible. The chapters passed by one after another. I wasn’t really seeing the words on the page. I was seeing patterns of characters, of black space and white space and I kept turning the pages. I was well into the New Testament when I began to feel I was close to what I was looking for. I was turning the pages of the book of Luke, letting my eyes lightly scan the page when I saw it. “The kingdom of God is within you” was verse 17:21 of Luke.
I stared at the page, stunned at what had happened. I had found the pattern amidst all of those words, all those characters. I wrote it down on a sheet of paper and closed my eyes. Across my vision I saw words form, words very similar to what my Mom had often told me, but different. Instead of “trust God with all of your heart and let him solve your problems” I saw “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
Okay, when you start seeing very formal words in your head, you know something is going on. I tried the trick again. I opened my eyes softly, turned to the first page of Genesis and started flipping pages, letting my eyes softly scan across the pages, the lines, the words, the characters, the whitespace. I was about halfway through the Bible, flipping my way through Proverbs when I found it: Proverbs 3:5. Something weird was going on, something I sure didn’t understand, but it was happening, and I had to go with it. So I wrote that one down, then waited to see if anything else showed up, but my mind and my eyes went blank. Apparently that was enough for now.
It was time to shower, shave and get dressed because I was going to see my good friend Rick and for the first time in a long time I was looking forward to it. As I always have I shaved first and fast, nicking my face a couple of times along the way. I’ve always hated shaving and never had the patience to grow any facial hair. I’ve learned to live with the shaver burn and the blood. That’s why I shower after I shave, to wash away the blood and to clean the scrapes and cuts on my neck and face. The shower was tepid, just like I like it, cold enough to wake you up from not only sleep but any other attempt to keep you from seeing the world clearly.
I stepped out of the shower and stood there, drip drying myself. It doesn’t take long in Odessa to drip dry. The low humidity starts wicking the water off your skin in just a few seconds. One good shake and a quick towel over and I was done, dry as a bone. I walked into the bedroom and put on my clothes. I had to unpack some, because when I first woke up to the voice my plan was to get out of town fast and I had laid out shorts, a shirt and some sandals. That wouldn’t due for a Sunday morning at Rick’s house, but I wasn’t willing to dress up either, so I settled for a pair of jeans, boat shoes and a button down oxford shirt. I’ll have to admit, I looked rather good.
I packed up the rest of my belongings, looked around the room, under the bed, in the closet, in the bathroom, making sure I had everything. When I was satisfied I had all my things I zipped up my bags, picked them and walked out the door. Down the hall, down the elevator, into the lobby, I walked without thinking. Well, that’s not true, I was thinking, I was thinking about what was going to happen next, but my conscious mind was on automatic as my subconscious tried to put all the pieces of the last six years together.
I checked out, walked to my truck, loaded my bags in the back seat, got in, fired up the engine and drove toward 1715 E. 11th. It didn’t take long to get there. A good chunk of Odessa was still sleeping in and the other part was getting ready for church, with the net result being not too many cars on the road.
I pulled up to the curb of 1715 E. 11th, put the truck in park, then just sat there for a moment. I had been in that house hundreds of times and knew the people that lived there as well as I knew myself. I said a silent prayer, so silent I couldn’t hear the words, a prayer of emotion more than words, a prayer of hope. I was out of practice when it came to praying and I hoped if I opened myself up to whoever might be listening something good would happen.
Orange Danish Cinnamon Rolls
I stepped out of the truck, locked the door and walked up the driveway onto the sidewalk and onto the front porch, the same porch where one summer that seemed so long ago Rick and I laid out the ideas and plans that became VP Tanks. I knocked on the door and waited.
Not long did I wait. Rick’s dad opened the door, welcomed me in and shook my hand hard, as he did every time he saw me. I walked in the house following the scent of orange Danish cinnamon roles that tempted me from the kitchen. My favorite breakfast treat, which goes to show I’m no connoisseur of fine foods. The surest way to my heart has long been orange Danish cinnamon roles by Pillsbury, popped out of a can, baked at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15-19 minutes then smothered with orange icing. Rick’s mom knew me well. She sat at the kitchen table. On the table were three plates, two cups, a glass with ice cubes, a pitcher of iced tea and the orange Danish cinnamon rolls.
Rick’s dad and I sat down. Rick’s mom poured coffee into the cups, poured tea into the glass and placed two cinnamon rolls on a plate for her husband, one on a plate for her and three on a plate for me. In an orange Danish haze we talked. We talked around things, paying no attention to the dead body in the middle of the floor. Well, that’s not really true, that is, there was no dead body on the floor. That’s just how Mark described those uncomfortable situations where everyone knew what was going on, but no one wanted to admit to it or even acknowledge it. Like there was a dead body on the floor and no one, no one would admit to seeing it. But, hey, orange Danish can do strange things to a person, and for awhile we reveled in the sense of a quiet, peaceful, normal Sunday morning.
Of course, I was the one who broke that sense of peace, but I needed to know, I needed to know how things really were that morning.
“How’s Rick doing this morning?”
Rick’s dad slowly put his coffee cup down on to the table, then looked out the window for a moment, then back down at the table, then straight through me as he said “Just like yesterday. He’s in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, chanting away. I wish I knew what was going on with him. I just want to be able to talk to him and for him to be able to talk to me.”
He sighed and continued “I guess I ought to be grateful and I am. This is so much better than he has been in the past, but still, it’s like he’s not there, it’s like we’re not there.”
Everything fell quiet and we all stared at the ruins of our orange danish feast. Rick’s mom broke the silence.
“We better be going. You know how the parking lot at the church fills up on Sunday’s. Drew, you’re sure you’re up to this?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m up for it. It’s been awhile since I’ve spent much time with Rick and I really wanted to see him before I started the drive back to Austin.”
Rick’s dad stood up and said “Well, we won’t be gone for long. We’ll be back home by 11:45.”
As I nodded my head, he helped his wife up from the table. She gave me a good hug, whispered “Thank you” in my ear and walked toward the front door. Her husband shook my hand and followed her. I walked behind them to the front door and watched them walk out to their car, get in, start the engine and drive off.
Author’s note: Orange Danish Cinnamon Rolls are still one of my favorite breakfasts, one that we save for special occasions. I’m just as much a connoisseur of fine foods as Drew.
There are only three more episodes of The Hollow Men left. Lots of loose ends left to be tied up. Glad you are here for the ride and hope you stay for the finale. And, if you are wondering if there are more “not quite true tales of Texas,” yes, there are, but more on that in the weeks to come.
Next week in Episode 42 of The Hollow Men, Rick wakes up, makes some astounding declarations, and aims to convince Drew to make some long needed changes in how he views and interacts with the world. As per usual, Drew’s grand plans get tossed to the winds and the wind is always blowing in west Texas.
I understand the orange danish fixation....never fails