Man Alive by Thomas Page McBee

Author:Thomas Page McBee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

25 • Oakland

November 2010 • 29 years old

Winter came on hard. The fog rolled in early, the rain wet through my jeans. I walked home from my job as an employment counselor, work I wasn’t qualified or suited for: I worried about my clients constantly, pictured Tanya in the homeless shelter without her daughter; or Lawrence, who’d just been fired from the supermarket and stopped showing up at school. My afternoon was ragged with high school kids in need of laundry detergent, kids who couldn’t read or write, kids whose parent wouldn’t let them go to college, kids whose fathers were dead, who were about to become fathers themselves.

I walked out of the building, three blocks from where Huggins shot Jinghong Kang, the churchgoer with a degree in physics, the father of three sons. A simple guy, he only owned one suit, his wife told the Washington Post. He could fix anything, she said. A man’s man. A family man.

I let myself get cold, I shoved my hands deep in my pockets. Stooped old ladies waited for the bus, teenagers in jackets far too heavy for the weather horsed around, shifty guys hobbled by crack didn’t notice the misting rain, while guys in fancy Northface jackets kept themselves dry.

I passed them all and thought about Huggins’s court date the following week. I wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure why. “You’re compelled,” Parker said in her offhand way. “Go on, then.”

I walked past men in hoodies, men in dirty jeans, men in suits, men without teeth, men with perfect teeth. I read that when you take testosterone, you turn on different genes: this one determines how hairy you’ll be, this one your muscle mass.

I watched a group of boys shove each other playfully on a sidewalk near an intersection, too close to traffic. They made cars move around them, like little kings, until one kid almost got clipped and they were forced to stop. You could see the way they realized, however briefly, the limits of their bodies.

Men. We’re only defined by the boundaries between us. If I was going to find myself, I needed to find Roy.

•

It was easier than I expected. A Google search led me to Thompson Construction in Bend, Oregon, which listed him on their site as a vice president. I didn’t doubt it was the same Roy Lewis—he’d been in the construction business since I was a kid. Teachers used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I’d say a mechanical engineer.

I studied the site copy. “Precision, trust, efficiency,” it said.

Parker made herself a cocktail and then watched me from the kitchen doorway, her whole body backlit, a silhouette in light. In the last blast of the setting sun, her hair was so blond it was nearly white, like a ghost or an angel.

“You look like an angel,” I said, and I couldn’t make out her expression even with a squint, but I knew she smiled, despite herself.

“Come on. Whatcha doin’?”

“I’m writing to Roy,” I said in my best casual voice.

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