The Hollow Men - Episode 43

Rick continues to pontificate, but Drew quits listening to Rick and sees one way the pieces in a strange puzzle might fit together.

Last week in Episode 42 of The Hollow Men Drew completes his mission, Rick is back but the results aren't what Drew expected, no, not at all what he expected.

The Hollow Men is the second (but not the last) 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.

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1715 E. 11th, Odessa, Texas - the Anders’ home and the location of this episode.

All right, let me give you a quick summary of the shit that’s been going on. In January of 1983, a little over three years ago, my good friend Rick disappeared into his mind. Call it a crack-up, a breakdown, it really didn’t matter because he was gone. After a while he began to chant “dogmy.” That’s all he would say: dogmy over and over. The phrase “dogmy” was a message just for me, a dyslexic fool who learned to see the world through a warped mirror in a desperate attempt to see the world in a similar manner as I perceived others did. Over the last few days a voice has said to me “Quit looking into the mirror.” Yeah, I hear voices and sounds that no one else seems to hear. That’s one more cross I seem to bear. This morning I woke up to the voice. Awoken, I packed my clothes to return to Austin when I figured out the clue: reverse dogmy and you get “I am God.” That’s what Rick had been telling me for three damn years. It took me that long to quit looking through the mirror and realize that Rick had been talking clearly to me all that time. I went to visit Rick this morning and he woke up, clear as a bell, save for one small thing. He thinks, no, he says he is God.

I felt like every button I had was being pushed. I walked in Rick’s room thinking I had it all figured out. I had figured out what he had been saying all these years but that didn’t seem to be enough. I don’t know if I could stand much more of this. What I wanted was Rick, I wanted things to be like they had been years ago, before everything seemed to be broken.

Rick seemed to be a little confused as well, almost talking to himself. “Maybe it’s enough just to be here, to be talking to each other. Drew, I’m not trying to force anything on you, I’m not trying to change your life. I’m just trying to get you to see things differently, as you were always meant to see them, because you’ve been seeing things in just one way too long.”

That was it, last button pushed. I could take no more.

“Shit, you picked a fine way to convince me to see things differently. You go crazy, shut the world out, won’t talk to anyone, start chanting, and it takes me three years to realize you were talking to me. God damn it, Rick, this isn’t the way things were supposed to be. We had it all, we had money, we had freedom, and look what happened to us. You went crazy and I got lost.”

“Drew, its working isn’t it? You knew something was wrong, but you didn’t know what. You knew it last night, when you were talking with J.T. Somehow, someway, you lost something, a part of you so essential, that without it, you have nothing, or so it seems. But that’s a lie, because you have everything, it’s just that you’ve become blind and deaf to it. Maybe the world has gotten too noisy for you again, maybe you need to turn the volume down low enough to so you can hear the little sounds again.”

My mind slowed for a moment. How did Rick know about my conversation with J.T. last night? I didn’t tell him, and I’m pretty sure J.T. didn’t. I thought back to those last words with J.T., about his feeling of being a part of something bigger than himself and how lost and disconnected I felt.

For whatever reason, such lost and introspective thoughts don’t last long with me. Anger wells up instead, anger at not knowing what’s going on or why, anger at not being able to see the answer, of not being able to see how the pieces all fit together. And I sure as hell did not see how the pieces of the puzzle in front of me right now fit together. I started by speaking softly but firmly, as my dad did whenever he wanted someone’s attention but as I spoke my anger and voice rose, until at the end I was speaking too loudly and with too much emotion to a friend I had not seen or spoken to in such a long time.

“Man, this has gotta stop. We’re just spinning around and getting nowhere. I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, or what you’re trying to do. Hell, I don’t even know if this is real or if I’m still asleep at the hotel. If you’re trying to tell me something, you need to start over, because this doesn’t make any sense at all. Not a bit of sense. You gotta quit this God shit, and just be Rick and tell me what happened and what’s going on.”

Depending on your point of view and what you believe was really happening with Rick, either I shocked him out of his fantasy or I was the first human to cause God to actually shut up. Me? I didn’t know then what was really happening and I still don’t.

Rick stared at me for a moment, nodded his head and spoke. “All right, Drew, you made your point. You want to know what happened? You remember I didn’t want to shut down VP Tanks? Truth was at that time I needed VP Tanks. I needed the structure of work, of waking up in the morning and knowing I had work to do. Without work I got lost.”

I guess I had a guilty look on my face. I had always wondered if my insistence on quitting VP Tanks was one of the reasons Rick lost it. Then the Rick of my past spoke, the Rick I first met in the alleys of Odessa.

“Shit, Drew, quit blaming yourself. You don’t have that much power over me and even if you did, I sure as hell would never admit it. It wasn’t your fault. When we started VP Tanks we both agreed about how we would know it was time to shut it down. It’s just when it came to be that time I wasn’t ready. It’s not your fault that I couldn’t handle it. That’s my fault. I know it shouldn’t bother me but it has always pissed me off when people think they have that much control over others, or when people give that kind of control to others. Don’t forget, no one can ever hurt you. It is how one reacts to a situation that determines if that situation is good or bad. That works both ways, you can’t make someone else feel pain, and no one else but yourself can cause you to feel pain.”

“Rick, that sounded like you at the start. But who was speaking there at the end? You sound like Rick, but what you’re saying is awfully profound sounding.”

Rick laughed hard and long, slapping his hand to his thigh as he did. “Drew, I swear, are you saying your old friend Rick never had anything profound to say? I might take that as an insult if I thought you meant it. Nah, I guess what I mean is: don’t blame yourself for someone else’s troubles. We have enough troubles of our own, there’s no need to take on someone else’s. Not that it would do either one of us any good to take on the other’s problems anyway.

“Think about how I’ve lived. I always needed structure, a plan. You, you never seemed to need any of that. You didn’t mind structure and you didn’t mind planning, but at the same time you could always wing it, adapt to the moment. Sometimes I could see it pissed you off having to do that. You may have never admitted it, but you like a certain amount of predictability, of structure in your life. Not as much as me, perhaps, but a little bit.”

As he spoke I let my mind drift back over the years. Rick was always working, he always had a plan. He was one of the first of us to get a job, to get a car, to have a check book and a savings account. Rick was industrious. I was lazy, a slacker of supreme skill.

“So, as things slowed down and the end of VP Tanks was in sight I was without a purpose, a reason to wake up. Yeah, I know, that’s stupid to say so. It all came crashing down on me.

“I stayed that way for awhile. For awhile it got worse, and I was really messed up. I forgot who I was and everyone around me. I ended up hurting a lot of people doing that, a lot of good people. But, you know, it’s going to sound crazy, hell, that in itself is funny, me saying something sounds crazy.”

I nodded my head because that’s exactly what I was thinking. How crazy is it for someone who had been crazy and maybe still was to say how crazy something was. Shit, just thinking like that, going around in circles like that could drive someone, anyone crazy.

“Yeah, I hurt a lot of people. Even lost a few, people who couldn’t get beyond my change and couldn’t deal with it and so they didn’t and they don’t come around anymore. I thought you would be one of those, but you surprised me, you never let go of this friendship. I really didn’t expect that. Ah, but I’m getting off track – I hurt a lot of people by going crazy.”

I interrupted him and said “Woh, wait a second, you’re contradicting yourself. Just a few minutes ago you said you can’t hurt someone and now you’re saying you hurt a lot of people. So, what is it, either you can or you can’t, which one is it?”

“Touché. What I meant to say was what I did caused a lot of people pain. And, yeah, you’re right, I didn’t hurt them, but those people let what I did and how I acted hurt them. It was their choice. You’re right, it was their choice. But despite the pain I caused to myself and despite the pain that others felt, going crazy was the right thing. It led to this and maybe you won’t see the purpose of all this, but there is a purpose, and there is good in what has happened. You got lost and the only way I could think of to bring you back was to get you to think outside of yourself. I gave you a problem, my chant or mantra and though it took you awhile to figure it out, you did. You put all the pieces together, you quit looking through that damn mirror, and here we are.

“I’ve made sacrifices, we all do. That’s all right, as long as the sacrifice is for the right reason and in the end good comes of it. Tommy saved a dog that night he died and in his mind it was the right decision, he was willing to make the sacrifice. Daisy could have run after any car, but she didn't. She ran after that car on that day when you were right there. She made a sacrifice. I’ve been away for a long time trying to get you to see things differently and you finally did. It was worth the sacrifice.”

He kept speaking but I no longer listened to his words as my mind unraveled. I was tired, tired of this town, tired of who I was, tired of this conversation. I just wanted it all to end. I drifted, wandering from idea to idea, from memory to memory, from association to association. Every once in awhile a spoken word would slip into my consciousness, but my attention was on nothing and yet on everything. All the pieces of my life were in front of me, the past, the present and the future, but everything was mixed up, there was no definite order, no sequence. At first that frustrated me, but I let it be. Instead, I looked softly for the connections, the threads, the order of things based off something else other than time. The less I looked, the less I thought about it, the less I worried the more clearly the connections came into being. The connections still didn’t make sense, but maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, maybe there was an inherent order that I couldn’t yet recognize. Time passed, I don’t know how long, but slowly I begin to hear the words again, first just a word here and there, then two or more words, then phrases and finally whole sentences. And, then there was silence.

I looked up, focused in on what was in front of me, which happened to be Rick and looked at him. He had a quizzical look on his face as he said “Interesting, you’re listening by not listening. I always suspected you could do that but this is the first time I ever saw you do it. What’s it like? Was it hard to not listen to each and every word but instead listen to what was in between?

This time I just stared at him, I didn’t know what he was asking, what he wanted me to say. The silence grew with us both looking at him until he spoke again.

“Okay, guess you didn’t understand what I was asking. Let me try again. For the last several minutes I’ve been talking, but you have not been actively listening, that is, you’ve not been listening to every word I’ve been saying. But I can tell you have been listening, in a different, softer, more subtle way, like you’ve been listening to what’s in between the words. I want to know what you were thinking of, what you heard and how you put the pieces together. Like I said, I’ve always sort of suspected you did something like that. Too many times over the years I’ve noticed you not listening, or what I thought was you not listening. I noticed it most in classes or in a meeting. But almost every time you surprised me, because after a few minutes you tune back in and be right on track, as if you had been listening the whole time. I listened to the words and my notes showed it, I would write down damn near word for word what was being said in the class or in the meeting. Your notes were different, they were nowhere near as dense, they jumped around, from thought to thought, word to word, idea to idea, but when you put all the pieces together you had everything, you had everything.”

I still didn’t know what to say, but I tried anyway. “I just quit listening, that is, I quit thinking about listening. I don’t know what I’m doing, I just do it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, then after awhile I come back and sometimes the pieces fit, sometimes I find new pieces that I hadn’t seen before and sometimes I’m just as lost as when I started.”

“Okay, that sounds good, but it doesn’t answer my questions. Let’s try it this way. Just now, what was going on? What did you hear? What did you come up with? Just then, you weren’t listening but somewhere along the way you started putting pieces together and I want to know what you came up with.”

I thought for a moment, well, not really, but something started to happen. Words started to come to me, as if out of the air. Not a lot of words, in fact, damn few, in fact just three words.

“What I see is discipline through faith, faith through discipline.”

Rick just stared at me, at first with a look of surprise, then a smile spread slowly across his face.

“Drew, you astound me. Just think, you might be the first person to cause me to be quiet. Discipline through faith, faith through discipline. Yes, that’s it, You see it don’t you?”

“I don’t know, Rick, I don’t know. It’s not much, is it? But, it’s all I got, it’s all I got.”

“But it’s enough, Drew, it’s enough. That’s the whole point. It’s enough. How well do you know your Bible? Luke 17:21 says it well enou...”

I interrupted him and said “The kingdom of God is within you. I found that verse this morning.”

Rick looked at me with a slightly startled look on his face. “Very good, Drew, very good. Now the question I have for you is do you know what it means?”

I didn’t say anything but I guess the look on my face convinced him I didn’t know what it meant because he started telling me.

“Everything God has, that God is, his power, his peace, his abundance is within you, within everyone. You don’t lack for anything if you just believe. But that’s the tricky thing about faith, it’s about believing in something without having the proof of it. That can be a real challenge for someone like you that wants to understand how the equations work. That’s where discipline comes in, the persistence, the determination, the strength to keep believing. Then over time, faith grows and as faith grows it feeds back into discipline, strengthening it. Discipline through faith, faith through discipline. Discipline strengthens faith, faith strengthens discipline.

“What you need is right here, right there. You need faith, faith that it will all work out, faith that you’re here for a reason, faith that there is a purpose to your existence. You have to put your trust in something, then look for your purpose. If you have faith, you will find it. It may take awhile and that’s where discipline comes in, you have to be disciplined enough to be strong enough to last long enough for the pieces to fall in place.”

“You’re tricking me up again. I don’t know who’s talking. Is it you, Rick, or are you playing God again?”

“I don’t play God. I am. Try to accept that.”

Maybe I was tired. Maybe I was a little punch drunk, maybe I didn’t care anymore. Part of Rick was back and maybe that was good enough for now. So I decided to play along.

“Rick, I don’t know if the world is ready for this. You know, God with a west Texas twang? That’s just not what most people are expecting.”

Rick laughed at that and said “Maybe not, but really, is anyone ready for God? Not many people are, that’s why there’s so much doubt and so much pain. You’re good, you know that. You might be thinking you can play this game, but I know there’s still doubt in you. That’s all right, I didn’t expect you to come over in one fell swoop, but at least you’re leaning in the right direction. Let’s see if we can keep things moving and even get you moving in the right direction.

“You’re drifting, you’ve got no purpose. What are you here for? You’re not living, you’re not dead, and you’re just in the in-betweens, just existing. You need to change that. I made you better than that. What are you looking for, Drew? Make it something good, because you tend to find what you’re looking for.”

“That’s from Matthew isn’t it? Seek and ye shall find?”

“Yes, Matthew, Matthew 7:7. That’s good Drew, looks like I’ve done you some good.” He paused for a moment, then sniffed the air.

“Damn, I’m hungry. Is that orange danish cinnamon rolls I smell? I haven’t had those in years.”

I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “Yeah, orange danish cinnamon rolls. Your mom made enough to either kill me or she knew you would be hungry. Let’s go eat them.”

“Oh, man, if there’s some iced tea out there I might be forced to give thanks to myself. You know, give thanks to God.” He laughed at that one, and I’ll admit I laughed at it too.

“Rick, this feels like dangerous ground, but if you’re really God, then I guess I’m safe. It can’t be sanctimonious or sacrilegious if you’re involved, right?

“You’re safe as long as there’s some iced tea in that kitchen.”

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Author’s note: Early in this episode Rick tells Drew “When we started VP Tanks we both agreed about how we would know it was time to shut it down. It’s just when it came to be that time I wasn’t ready.” When I first wrote this chunk of words several years ago I just made things up as I went along, but lately I have come to understand Rick’s state of mind as he began to see the end of VP Tanks.

I’m 66 years old this year. My “soft” plan was to work until I was 70. My work gives me a lot of freedom. I generally enjoy it. It is not too stressful and I definitely can’t complain about the money. But… this year I’ve begun to wonder about bringing it all to a graceful end a little earlier than “four years from now.” I do have a good idea of what I’ll do when I finish my formal work and I’ve been slowly putting that plan into action for the last couple of years. More time for reading, studying, writing. More time for being outdoors creating and nurturing a little nature habitat for the real citizens of our little corner of Driftwood: the birds, foxes, squirrels, deer, butterflies and other creatures. More time to spend with my wife and daughter. And, of course, more time to spend with Louise, Margo and Sweetpea, the animal part of our little family.

With the thought of a change in plan from “four years from now” to something shorter I have felt the anxiousness and stress that Rick must have felt when he saw the structure of his days possibly going away with the end of VP Tanks. I’m a little more like Drew in that sense. I can live with adapting. I can live without a firm definite plan (mostly because I have learned from experience that us humans’ ability to accurately plan and deliver is practically non-existent). Long ago I learned the power of “discipline through faith, faith through discipline,” though I continually forget the lesson and have to relearn it all again.

Next week, the 44th and final episode of The Hollow Men. There are a lot of loose ends to pull together but not all will be.