11-25-2007, 03:17 AM
“I considered all and all achievement and saw that it comes from rivalry between man and man. This too is emptiness and chasing the wind.”—the words of Solomon (Eccl. 4:4 NEB)
Such was the story of Roly Fouts—a one day wonder in the lottery of life and a world stacked against him. Like any other who lived so desperately in the shadows of discontent he fought vainly for that which he would forever want and never possess.
Some might call him a mama’s boy without a mama. But not because he was ever orphaned. It began when his father split the scene during his mother’s pregnancy with his little brother and ended when his brother died horribly. Perhaps some would ask, “What does a five-year-old child of a depressed, alcoholic mother know?” To him she was just tired after a long day at work when the raucous audience of the Tonight Show had awakened him to find her fast asleep in front of the television—a smouldering cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other. He first tried shaking her. Then, stubbing her cigarette into the ashtray, he put her glass of whiskey onto the coffee table and switched off the TV.
Thus began a nightly ritual that would find him setting his alarm to a duty for which his mother would never know or give him credit. Instead, it would be a duty for which he would reward himself with many sips of whiskey and puffs of tobacco as he watched the rest of Johnny Carson’s monologue. Sadly it would be a duty ending in a tragedy greater than he could have ever imagined—the tragedy of having his mother disown him forever in her heart.
It wasn’t just any night. In fact it was the happiest night of the year when all children live in great expectation—Christmas. In his excitement he had set his alarm to be first to the presents under the tree. The next thing he remembered was the smell of smoke accompanied by sounds of crackling followed by a roar and his mother’s screams from behind his bedroom door. Then came the sirens, the smashing glass and splintering wood as firemen scooped him to safety.
She never spoke of it again. She never told him what happened to his little brother, except that her subsequent disconnection told him that life had changed forever. After moving several times without his baby brother, he finally gave up asking, and that’s how they came to be in the small, one bedroom apartment above Harry’s Hardware, between the parking lot and the local movie theatre in Mission.
Thereafter his striving but never satisfied heart searched for what he could never have. A lonely journey, it took him perpetually to the crossroads of a happiness possessed by others so blessed while ever eluding him, becoming an obsession over which he would mistakenly disguise his ultimate goal in life—to become the coolest guy in all of Mission. An obsession over which he had worked hard to attain, every day you could see him out there—polishing and waxing after each spot of rain, seagull stain, or other settled airborne debris from tractors, combines and crop-dusters. Yes, nothing could descend from the farmlands around Mission, from spring to harvest time, without his immediate attention with bucket and hose.
It all began with an old beat up 1960 Mercury Meteor given to him by his Great Uncle Charlie in Chilliwack. Then it was just a shell. But when old Charlie saw how his eyes lit up upon seeing it, he promptly hooked up the farm tractor and pulled it from the old woodshed into the tractor barn—and there it stayed until, at the age of fourteen he was sent to stay with Uncle Charlie for the entire summer.
But as their bond continued, it turned out to be the best two years of his life. Together they rebuilt the engine, transmission, drive shaft—in fact, its entire power train. It didn’t end there. With help of a cutting torch they removed sections from the pillar supports, reshaped the windows and then re-welded the roof, lowering it by six inches. Next, they found an old Corvette racing machine at the local wrecker. From there they extracted an air-scoop and a pair of chrome street legal, straight-through external Hollywoods. Lastly, with every penny he ever earned and a little help from Charlie’s converted hen-house, they borrowed a neighbor’s paint sprayer and compressor and gave it the nicest candy coated metallic grey in the Valley.
His dream finally fulfilled, Roly owned something over which others could only drool. Yet he missed again in the crossroads of happiness—a father he had never seen in Great Uncle Charlie, the man who in those two years had come to love him more than his own son. How far beyond Roly would continue his tragic quest was anyone’s impossible dream, but to Roly, ruling the streets of Mission with the coolest, meanest machine in all the Valley was something to be shared with the only friend he could ever imagine having—Buddy Malt.
Here again his dream shared a common tragedy. It could never come true, and along with that untruth came Jimmy Virgil, or Virge, as everyone knew him, a lone biker with whom Buddy shared greater affinity and thus becoming Roly’s greatest rival. If love-triangles between heterosexual males could exist it was Roly’s love to the exclusion of all others that struggled for as long as hope burned eternal in his heart—something neither Buddy or Virge understood. So it was, while all three rode in the same car, drank from the same bottle and toked the same reefer, it was a rivalry that smouldered in Roly’s heart alone. The more they ignored him, the more he would obsess to separate the indefinable—two lone wolves who enjoyed a simpler friendship.
Such was the story of Roly Fouts—a one day wonder in the lottery of life and a world stacked against him. Like any other who lived so desperately in the shadows of discontent he fought vainly for that which he would forever want and never possess.
Some might call him a mama’s boy without a mama. But not because he was ever orphaned. It began when his father split the scene during his mother’s pregnancy with his little brother and ended when his brother died horribly. Perhaps some would ask, “What does a five-year-old child of a depressed, alcoholic mother know?” To him she was just tired after a long day at work when the raucous audience of the Tonight Show had awakened him to find her fast asleep in front of the television—a smouldering cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other. He first tried shaking her. Then, stubbing her cigarette into the ashtray, he put her glass of whiskey onto the coffee table and switched off the TV.
Thus began a nightly ritual that would find him setting his alarm to a duty for which his mother would never know or give him credit. Instead, it would be a duty for which he would reward himself with many sips of whiskey and puffs of tobacco as he watched the rest of Johnny Carson’s monologue. Sadly it would be a duty ending in a tragedy greater than he could have ever imagined—the tragedy of having his mother disown him forever in her heart.
It wasn’t just any night. In fact it was the happiest night of the year when all children live in great expectation—Christmas. In his excitement he had set his alarm to be first to the presents under the tree. The next thing he remembered was the smell of smoke accompanied by sounds of crackling followed by a roar and his mother’s screams from behind his bedroom door. Then came the sirens, the smashing glass and splintering wood as firemen scooped him to safety.
She never spoke of it again. She never told him what happened to his little brother, except that her subsequent disconnection told him that life had changed forever. After moving several times without his baby brother, he finally gave up asking, and that’s how they came to be in the small, one bedroom apartment above Harry’s Hardware, between the parking lot and the local movie theatre in Mission.
Thereafter his striving but never satisfied heart searched for what he could never have. A lonely journey, it took him perpetually to the crossroads of a happiness possessed by others so blessed while ever eluding him, becoming an obsession over which he would mistakenly disguise his ultimate goal in life—to become the coolest guy in all of Mission. An obsession over which he had worked hard to attain, every day you could see him out there—polishing and waxing after each spot of rain, seagull stain, or other settled airborne debris from tractors, combines and crop-dusters. Yes, nothing could descend from the farmlands around Mission, from spring to harvest time, without his immediate attention with bucket and hose.
It all began with an old beat up 1960 Mercury Meteor given to him by his Great Uncle Charlie in Chilliwack. Then it was just a shell. But when old Charlie saw how his eyes lit up upon seeing it, he promptly hooked up the farm tractor and pulled it from the old woodshed into the tractor barn—and there it stayed until, at the age of fourteen he was sent to stay with Uncle Charlie for the entire summer.
But as their bond continued, it turned out to be the best two years of his life. Together they rebuilt the engine, transmission, drive shaft—in fact, its entire power train. It didn’t end there. With help of a cutting torch they removed sections from the pillar supports, reshaped the windows and then re-welded the roof, lowering it by six inches. Next, they found an old Corvette racing machine at the local wrecker. From there they extracted an air-scoop and a pair of chrome street legal, straight-through external Hollywoods. Lastly, with every penny he ever earned and a little help from Charlie’s converted hen-house, they borrowed a neighbor’s paint sprayer and compressor and gave it the nicest candy coated metallic grey in the Valley.
His dream finally fulfilled, Roly owned something over which others could only drool. Yet he missed again in the crossroads of happiness—a father he had never seen in Great Uncle Charlie, the man who in those two years had come to love him more than his own son. How far beyond Roly would continue his tragic quest was anyone’s impossible dream, but to Roly, ruling the streets of Mission with the coolest, meanest machine in all the Valley was something to be shared with the only friend he could ever imagine having—Buddy Malt.
Here again his dream shared a common tragedy. It could never come true, and along with that untruth came Jimmy Virgil, or Virge, as everyone knew him, a lone biker with whom Buddy shared greater affinity and thus becoming Roly’s greatest rival. If love-triangles between heterosexual males could exist it was Roly’s love to the exclusion of all others that struggled for as long as hope burned eternal in his heart—something neither Buddy or Virge understood. So it was, while all three rode in the same car, drank from the same bottle and toked the same reefer, it was a rivalry that smouldered in Roly’s heart alone. The more they ignored him, the more he would obsess to separate the indefinable—two lone wolves who enjoyed a simpler friendship.