The Tao of Muhammad Ali by Davis Miller

Author:Davis Miller [Miller, Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5171-9
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2013-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

NO RELIEF FROM THE DROUGHT. LYN GIVES ME quiet to rewrite “My Dinner with Ali”—and takes respite from the heat—by going with the children to the neighborhood pool all day, every day. The lifeguard, a fun and hopeful kid named Brian, who studies American lit at Western Kentucky University and sometimes comes by the house for beers and writing chat, teaches Johanna to swim and does an expert job of keeping daring-do Isaac from the bottom of eight feet of water. Lyn and the kids have a fine, relaxing time, returning home most evenings with broad, bright smiles and eventually with nut-brown skin and sun-ripe hair. And they spend nada dinero, which is almost exactly what we have left in the bank. Yet I feel guilty that they’re out every day soaking up rays. After all, ozone-depleted Sol-shine ain’t exactly healthy for anyone’s skin. I ask Lyn to buy a bottle of sunscreen; she says we can’t afford the five dollars. You know, if all things have Buddha nature, if “God” is omnipresent, some of this interconnectedness stuff sort of sucks big-time. Or at least the essence of things seems weird: sun feels wonderful on skin as it cooks moisture from cutaneous cells and propagates melanomas; vanilla ice cream slides soothingly down throats on the way to causing acid rebound and clogging arteries. Boxing skills promote coordinative elegance, a heightened awareness of the senses, and occasionally even pull someone from the swamp of his life—only to take all this away somewhere down the line. Feels almost insidious, doesn’t it?

Anyway, while Lyn and the kids are getting smilingly fried at the pool, I’m plunking away at my mom’s old typewriter. Every couple hours, I break for a round or two on the bag or maybe a few abdominal exercises. My weight’s down about ten pounds since I left video, and you can see little cuts in my abs for the first time in years. I take time out to make videocassette copies of all the Ali fights I have and mail them to Ali and Lonnie, Mrs. Clay, and Rock. Lonnie sends a thank-you note.

When I’m pleased with “My Dinner with Ali,” when I’m certain that rewriting didn’t take anything from the flow, I get the story off in the mail once again.

Still no luck with jobs. It seems that every promising position I circle in the classifieds and make an appointment to apply for, when I arrive someplace to be interviewed, ends up being a disguised Amway distributorship or door-to-door water-filter sales.

Daddy has called several times and asked us to move home. My grandmother died this past spring, and he’s offered to let us stay rent-free in her house until we sell our place. I’m so fidgety as I wait to hear back from Esquire and everything’s so ugly here with the drought—brown and shriveled and cracked and horrible—that I’m more than ready to escape. Lyn and I decide I’ll take Johanna with me to Winston-Salem so our daughter can

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