He went home. He wrote. Something started that would stay with him and progress. Of course he couldn’t know it yet, but it would stay with him his entire life. He would write. He would stop staying he was a writer. When someone asked him what he did, he would simply say he wrote.
Right now, he thought, he drove, he concentrated on driving.
Bobbie was a good sport. He understood. His father, well, that was a different story. He thought Bill was kind of gay, you know, writing poetry and all. But then his father was BIG RED 1, first division infantry WWII, POW for three and a half years in Nazi Germany, Stalag 3B Furstenburg.
And so it goes.
His father could never understand what majoring in English could get Bill, how it could earn him a living. Bill didn’t think that way. His father was dirt poor, immigrant, depression kid, dropped out of school in eighth grade to help support the family. Bill grew up working class, poor at times but not dirt poor, never dirt poor.
What it got me was busted, Bill thought as he drove. And here I am going somewhere I never thought/ never dreamed I’d be going, doing what I never wanted to do, never thought/dreamed about doing.
“You know, in Japan during the winter they keep the eggs in the freezer, not to freeze them of course, but to keep them from freezing.”
That’s what the professor who led him to the demonstration had told Bill one time. He was a poet and translator of Japanese poetry. They were meeting for lunch that day to discuss Bill’s writing.
“Wanna see what’s going on at the demonstration?” that professor had asked.
Then Bill’s hair lay there on the floor of the workhouse barber shop, gone in four zips, and he was handed the broom to sweep it up and throw it away, the only inmate that was made to do it himself. The barber was reluctant, but the guard who had it in for Bill made him hand over the broom and stood over Bill laughing as Bill threw into the garbage that which had taken him so long to grow and which had been so valuable to him.
Bill complied with the barber and the guard. Bill didn’t know yet that the show the guards had put on when the bus arrived, you know, their practiced routine to confirm their power position, was just a show, mostly, cause when and if push came to shove, they were the power players.
Bill complied because he was scared out of his wits and he didn’t know what else to do. In the scheme of things, sweeping up his hair and whatever hair was already there, if that was all he had to do, didn’t seem like so much.
He complied, and now he drove to the work that he’d never in ever thought would be his work but which he was happy to have and was thankful for because after all he was able to support himself and his wife and pay off their debts.
He had a few debts because he’d had to borrow money for rent and food from his brother and more money, a lot of it, from his boss at Suburban for the car they needed, he especially needed simply to go back and forth to work. He’d also had to borrow from his father because he had no money for his last quarter’s fees.
That was the whole thing. When he’d borrowed that money (his father had charged the fees on his charge card because he didn’t have any money), his father had made him promise he’d stay away from the demonstrations. And he would have too but for that professor who never did get to look at Bill’s writing.
On top of everything else, Bill had broken the promise to his father. Because of that, because of breaking a promise and disobeying, he could not ask for help, could not tell his father what happened.
