Walking Backwards - Episode 22

The dogs and the dead spin a lesson for Drew to ponder, and Mark lets Drew know that once again he bas been completely confident but utterly wrong.

This is the twenty-second episode of Walking Backwards, the third collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Previous collections are:

• The Cold Days of Summer - If you are new to these tales and the type who likes to know how things started I would recommend starting here.

• The Hollow Men - the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas.

New episodes are posted (almost) every Sunday. You can move easily between episodes via links to the previous and next episode.

If you are new to these not quite true tales of Texas but are the type who likes to dive right in you could start with the prologue to Walking Backwards. The prologue provides a summary of the first two collections and descriptions of the major characters you will be reading about in Walking backwards.

In our previous episode, episode 21 of Walking Backwards, seven years after Rick’s death, Drew receives a gift from Rick and Drew and Ann decides that he will be a contractor no more.

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Whirl like a Dervish

In February 1996 I had a repetitive dream. Some questions were unanswered, some were left unanswered and a few questions were posed to me.

I would wake up in the field. A shooter's moon cast light shadows on the ground. In the distance I could see the glow of the town on the horizon. I walked. In the distance a dog barked. I could hear the sound of its paws running on the ground, coming closer to me.

Out of the shadows came Socks. He trotted up to me, let me pet him then took off in a hard run. I walked after him and he began to ran in circles around me, tight circles of around 10-15 feet in diameter. Once, two, three times around and he changed, he morphed into Daisy. She laughed at the moon, laughed at me and ran around me in circles. One, two, three, four, five times and she changed, she morphed into Kaiser. He ran so fast he was a blur. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times Kaiser ran in a rotating ellipse around me, sometimes tight, sometimes ranging further out into the dark. After he completed his eighth ellipse around me he changed, he morphed into Buster. Little Buster, running hard and proud, jumping into the sky, biting at the moonbeams and the shadows. Thirteen times he ran around me and then he changed, he morphed into all of them, one single dog that had the characteristics of all of them, of Socks, of Daisy, of Kaiser, of Buster, and of Sam, the smiling dog. The morphed dog had the white, broken stub of a tail of Sam. The dogs ran with joy, they ran ecstatically. They were like Dervishes, whirling with joy.

Then they were gone. A skeleton lurched out of the darkness.

“Hello, Stan. How are you?”

“Been better, but at least the bones aren't falling off. You're changing, Drew. Don't know yet if it is for good or bad. I'm praying for good. So are a lot of the others.”

“You pray, Stan? What do you believe in?”

“Something you've yet to accept. You're a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, Drew. I had no idea how stubborn when I first took on this job, of being your reflection. If I had known then what I know now, not sure if I would have taken on this challenge. I've gone through a lot of pain, not sure if it has been worth it.”

“Sorry to have been a trouble to you, but I didn't ask you to take any of this on.”

“I know, I know. That's just me complaining, reflecting you. I've had aches and pains I never had.”

“Are you my current reflection?”

“Yes and no. Part of this is shock value” Stan said while pointing to his bones. “You're morphing quite a bit these days. Some moments you're almost whole, then there are others times you completely fall apart.”

“These days? Do you mean the last few weeks?”

“No, sorry about that. Time doesn't have a lot of meaning here. In your world, you've been morphing, whirling for the last several years, from good to bad, from suicidal to full of life, from gracious to angry. You got the whirling down damn good. You're hardly every still but you have missed the whole point of the whirling Dervishes. They spin in celebration of their God, they spin in order to achieve ecstasy, to achieve a state of oneness, of nirvana, of peace. I don't know why you spin, you just do it damn well.”

Stan raised his arms out to his side and began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster. He changed, he morphed as he spun. He spun twenty-one times and when he came to a stop Stan was gone and Tommy was in his place.

“What's up, Drew? Still fucking things up, eh? I would have hoped you figured a few things out by now.”

“Hey, Tommy. Good to see you. Where did Stan go?”

“Where did Stan go? Good question. Stan's a hard one to figure out. Doesn't talk all that much and when does he speaks in alliterations and allegories. Not a lot of practical words come out of Stan from what I've heard. I like him though. He has a good sense of humor, but I can tell you this. He's getting tired of the skeleton game. He might give up on you unless you start taking this shit seriously.”

“Seriously? How more serious do you want me to be? I damn near killed my wife and daughter. I was going to kill myself. That's pretty fucking serious.”

“If you say so. But wasn't that just a way to quit? To give up? To quit playing? Even then, the important thing is you didn't quit.”

“Not my choice. I didn't make that decision, something else did. Just as you say we don't have a choice on when we die, I didn't have a choice on when I lived. Just using your logic, flipping it around...”

“That is like you. But death is not necessarily the flip side of life. You said it yourself at Rick's funeral. A dead man can be alive while a living man can be dead. If I were to add it all up I bet the tally would be that you've been more dead than alive over the years.”

Tommy began to spin and as he spun he changed, he morphed. His features blurred. He spun thirty-four times and when he stopped Tommy was gone. Rick stood in his place.

“Good start on 'Peeling the Onion.' I liked how you choose the first puzzle to solve. When will you know to solve the next puzzle?”

“When it is time. When it feels right. I'm familiar with the format and the layout. I'll let the patterns bounce around in my head and I'm confident the structure of the patterns will start making sense to me.”

“Drew, you've always thought that way. You didn't worry when something didn't make sense to you. You just gathered up a lot of data, looked it over, then did something else, confident that your mind would work on the problem while you focused on something else. The thing is you can't explain why your mind works that way, can you?”

“Not concretely, but what I've read about how the brain/mind works, about problem solving techniques, I sort of put the problem in incubation. I frame it, I collect data, I put it away and let my subconscious work on it. Sooner or later the answer will show up.”

“You're trying to wrap logic and rational around something that isn't all that explainable. Maybe you should just trust the solution will appear and not worry about explaining the how and why. Ease your mind.”

With that Rick spun. The faster he spun the more his features blurred. He spun fifty-five times and when he stopped spinning he was no longer Rick, he was Gene Remington, my Dad.

“Doesn't that make you dizzy, all that spinning?”

“No, not here.”

“Does it hurt here at all?”

“At first, at first. It takes awhile for the body to adjust to this world and you have to shake the kinks of the old world out. We all died violently. First few days here were Hell.”

“When you're in Hell, keep going.”

“Yeah. Glad to hear you remembered that.”

“But it wasn’t you, Dad, that said that. It was Winston Churchill.”

For a moment I saw a flash of anger in my Dad’s eyes.

“Drew, you always have to be right, even where you are wrong. Always bringing up another point or fact when it really doesn’t matter. What matters is when shit happens is to keep moving.”

He then sighed and laughed. I felt bad about what I said and how I said it.

“Dad, sorry about that. Yeah, I do need to be right, even when I am wrong. I do learn from my mistakes and the mistakes of others, but sometimes the learning takes a while.

“Drew, that’s all right. The main thing is keep going. Don’t wallow in the pain. Take what you can get and move on. Soon the pain fades away.”

“Anything else fade away?”

“Some things, some times. Some times it feels like walking in the fog, you don't know what's beyond your vision. Other times everything is sharp, focused and you can see for miles. How about you?”

“Better, I think.” We were drifting in territory dangerous for me. I had cracked-up, I had been broken. I had never seen my Dad break.

“Drew, never said life would be easy but I can tell you this, it is always worth living, You've got something good, even if you don't recognize it. Don't give up on it, don't give up on yourself.”

Dad spun better than the rest. He spun fast, with his arms in tight against him like a skater. But I could still count his spins, all eighty-nine of them. When he stopped, he was no longer Dad, he was Mark and Mark fell to the ground laughing.

“Damn, that gets a guy dizzy!”

“Fibonacci.”

“Huh?”

“The dogs, then all of you, spinning a Fibonacci sequence, one time, two times, three times, five times, eight times, then thirteen, then twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five and with you eighty-nine times. You've been spinning a Fibonacci sequence. Any special meaning in that?”

“Hell, no. Doesn't mean anything at all. Save that Tommy and I thought it would be funny to see if you noticed. You have any idea how difficult it was to train the dogs on what to do?”

“Hard I guess.”

“Nope, not hard at all. We told them what to do, they rehearsed it once, nailed it, strutted around the field proudly, and then you showed up.”

“If you rehearsed you knew I was coming. This wasn't a case of me calling you, you called me.”

“Maybe, but it is not easy to say who calls who and why. All any of us, including you, needs to know is we have been called.”

“You're looking better. How are things for you here?”

“Good, Drew, good. You helped me out, you helped me to let go of my anger, my guilt. I owe you that, and that's one reason I'm here, to pay that debt. Man, I don't know where I was after I ended things, maybe it was Hell, maybe Purgatory but it was not a place I would wish on my worst enemy.”

“I tried to end it, but wasn't allowed to. Why you and not me?”

“Drew, you think you were weak. You think I was stronger than you. You got it all wrong. You got it all backwards. If you quit looking into the mirror you will see that you are stronger than me. I was the weaker one. That's why I'm here and you are just visiting.”

“No, you got it wrong. I didn't make the choice to live. I wasn't allowed to die. I wasn't strong. I just got tired of trying to complete my plan.”

“Since when did you get all knowing? Shit, Drew, you're alive, you spend time in the other world. I'm here all the time. Look who I get to spend time with. The dogs, Stan, Tommy, Rick and your Dad. They know their shit. Turns out I know mine. We know more than you, accept that. That's the thing with you, your biggest weakness, you can be supremely confident when you are utterly wrong. That's what you are about this, about you, about me. Supremely confident, utterly wrong.”

I've felt that way more than once before, maybe the first time when I walked up to the chalkboard in the first grade and confidently wrote my name on the chalkboard: w e r d. I was supremely confident, but I was utterly wrong. I had been that way about Andrea after high school, thought I had it all figured it out, knew where the relationship was going, when all along Andrea had a whole other plan in place. Andrea, I hadn't thought about her in years. Yet another person, no, another good friend I had lost contact with. I was in better contact with the dead than the living. And right now? I was out of contact with everyone. Mark hadn't stopped talking but I had stopped listening. I had drifted away from his words. I'm not sure what I missed and if what I missed would make a big difference in my understanding or in my life but I was a little too stubborn to admit to Mark I had been lost and hadn't been listening. I tuned back in and hoped I could pick things up from the context.

“... we know what happened even if you're not willing to admit it. When it came time to pull the trigger you couldn't. You choose to believe some outside force stepped in and stopped you. Do you hear me?”

I nodded yes.

“You choose to believe that because you've gotten so used to looking through the mirror that you don't even know when you're looking at reflections versus the real thing. Think about this. You don't understand how you solve the puzzles, you just do. Most of the brilliant things you have done are like that, you let it happen, you don't force it, you let it happen. You say your subconscious takes over, finds the solution for you. Fine, think that.

“Drew, let's go to your most brilliant moment. You have the gun but you can't pull the trigger. You subconscious wouldn't let you. It was no outside force stopping you, it was you. Hell, it was the outside force that was trying to pull the trigger, it was the outside force you stopped those forty mornings. You stopped the outside force. We might name it the devil, but naming it doesn't diminish it, doesn't make it less real, less evil. I don't give a shit what you call it, all that matters is you were strong enough. You were stronger. I wasn't.”

All that talking wore Mark out. He dropped his head into his hands and sat quietly on the ground. I didn't know what to say but I felt I had to say something. I let me mind go blank and spoke. Where the words came from I don't know, maybe my subconscious, yeah, that sounds good.

“Mark, I'm not ready to accept all that you said. Let me think on that. But I do think you are right on one thing. I've been looking through the mirror a lot, maybe too much. It helps, so I think, to see the world as most people see it. It helps me to fit in, always has, but sometimes it causes me to see the wrong things, or things in the wrong way. I'll try to not rely on the mirror as much, but it's an old habit. I won't make any grand promises. I don't know the pain you went through, but I know this. I've been walking around in this world since Tommy died, maybe longer. This is a good place. Everyone I know that is here has found some kind of peace.

“Last few years, I've been trying to avoid this place. It seemed to generate more questions than answers and many times I've left it not feeling any better. I can accept that's my fault, that's my blindness. I don't understand this place but I'm learning to accept it. Ties in with the solution to Rick's first puzzle: 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding.' I'm learning to accept that I won't understand all things and that is all right.

“The fact you are here is good. To me, it means you have found some sense of peace, of acceptance, of forgiveness and that is good. That eases my mind. It gives me some hope.”

“That if someone as fucked up as me can find peace, there's hope for you? Gee, thanks.”

“Mark, that's not what I meant. You were in pain when I first saw you in the field, in the darkness and rain. I didn't want that for you.”

“Drew, I know, I know. Just giving you shit. Here's the thing. Yes, there is redemption and peace. Sometimes it is a long road. We have to let go of our earthly beliefs, the things that hold us back. I had to let go of the pain, the anger, the guilt. As you told me I had to forgive myself. That's one thing you need a lot of practice on, forgiveness. Keep in mind that if you can't forgive yourself, you'll have a hard time accepting the forgiveness of others, you'll have a hard time forgiving others.

“As for me, it took a little while, but it worked. It took a while to find my way here, to where the others were. It wasn't a straight path, that's for sure. That's something to keep in mind, the path one person takes isn't necessarily the path another must take. You need to find your own path, Drew. Your path is waiting for you, go find it.”

This time I began to spin or maybe the dream world was spinning around me. I counted one hundred forty-four spins before the dream world faded away.

The dead tell me I've got the spinning part of being a Dervish down pat. They also tell me I'm not getting the real benefit of being a spinning Dervish. Sort of like hitting a golf ball dead solid perfect but not aiming at the pin. It might feel great but the results aren't always good. Maybe I should take aim before I start spinning.

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Author’s note: I write haikus from time to time and one haiku I wrote was “Whirl like a Dervish.” Some of the thoughts from that post align with this week’s episode.

For those interested in Fibonacci numbers the article Fibonacci Sequence on the Math is Fun site provides a good introduction.

Next week, in Episode 23 of Walking Backwards, a star falls from the sky.