Laugh it off!
~Merle Haggard, “Laugh it Off”, from his final studio album ‘Working In Tennessee’ (2011)
The low cloud cover filtered into a blue pale, three ravens were discussing a grapefruit rind beneath the Front Street sign. The snow was lighting, gently falling down like cotton candy, floating so slowly toward the ground it almost seemed suspended, like time was on hold, adding to the streets void of traffic, sidewalks empty of people, and the doors of stores and small businesses closed: covid was establishing a foothold.
It was a Saturday morning, opening time. The keeper had walked outside for a smoke. The only two people remaining in the place, my friend and I were laughing.
We had talked at different times across the years, he quietly shared stories, books, sounded-out and explained words of his nation for me – no small achievement with a learner like me – but it was unusual to see him there without the crowd of people that seemed to approach him everywhere he went, always admiring him, passing along kind words, seeking his counsel. Still more fun was that here we stood, this celebrated, respected man of this prodigious community of love and family, laughing out loud. Together, at each other, at the snow, the girl smoking outside, the empty room, the laughter just kept going, and we couldn’t stop, we tried, my friend or I ultimately losing it every time we looked at each other. It went on and on.
We laughed about everything.
We had tears, my face hurt, and I remember, at some point, there was a fist-bump and then we both just kind of left.
That was the last time I ever saw Ray. He was gone, forever.
There is only one ‘locals’ here, and the folks that look and talk like me ain’t it. Lots of folks talk about ’50 years’ or ’75 years’, or even a lot more, mentioning relatives before them, relatives that came here. Recent U-Haul locals, in the broadest sense of large migrations throughout human history, and in comparison to, say, 10,000 years.
It took a very wise local man, a carver – one who creates shape with renown precision – meeting with the wildly random rambling and wandering, stumbling, and falling-down happenstance that put me there that morning. In this Great Land there is a magic. In a chosen silence outside of words, beyond what is easily explained, not once did my friend ever question what he saw of me.
You know, it almost seems like a chunk of time torn right out of a vision, stepping forward on its own, cherished, just the memory of him and I standing there watching that snow, the laughter. I still to this very day bust out in spontaneous, belly-shaking, side-slapping, smiling hilarity when I recall, because that is what I learned, wisdom imparted without language to a guy from the flat country, something that he really needed to truly see and hear.