Self-Esteem (36 page)

Then, for some strange reason, Crawford remembered a documentary he saw on TV years and years ago.

It was black and white footage: Adolf Hitler riding in a motorcade through the streets of Berlin, his body erect, his wave confident and rigid — serious in a way that was both comical and appallingly childish.

Crawford started up the car and stared at the boy.

Crawford had been a paperboy, just like so many other boys. He had been just 13 years old when Elmer Dodson, a friend of little Jimmy Crawford’s famous Uncle Jerry (Gerald Crawford), had gotten him a job delivering papers for the
Daily Press
, a small-town rag with a circulation of less than seventeen hundred. Jimmy was enormously excited about his new job, which would bring a whopping twenty-two dollars a week to an otherwise allowance-less early teen. On that monumental first morning of gainful employment, Crawford’s mother had awoken him to document the occasion with a Kodak snapshot she would later hang on the wall next to her own high school diploma.

“Now do a good job, Jimmy. Remember, Uncle Jerry is counting on you.”

Uncle Jerry is counting on you.
That was a big responsibility.

Uncle Jerry (actually Crawford’s great uncle) was a retired Army Colonel responsible for writing a column called “Prior Prattle-Tattle” — a bi-weekly diatribe on all-things-wrong in the little community of Prior, Texas. Jerry chose to have his work published anonymously as “Nitpicky Nick” because he didn’t want his good name “to add credibility to his ideas.” He wanted them to stand on their own. Some of the issues he addressed were carhops not giving enough ketchup packets at the local drive-in hamburger joint and women wearing “too much makeup on the eyes and not enough on the lips.”

Jerry was famous not just to little Jimmy, but to much of the Prior community — a famous writer whom everyone knew even though he used a pen name.

Nitpicky Nick was a Crawford, a military man who had fought and killed in Korea. But more importantly he was a modern Mark Twain who deserved a nationally-syndicated column but probably couldn’t get one because, as many of his close friends would say, he was “too honest.” But in Prior, Uncle Jerry was famous.

“Damn, Colonel,” Jimmy once heard someone say to his uncle at a grocery store. “I never thought about that make-up thing. Women had ought to read that one and take note. I’m buyin’ some lipstick for my old lady right now. And gosh darn it, she’s gonna wear it,” the local man said with an affected laugh. “And that damn mascara, well that’s going in the trash.”

Uncle Jerry would smile and nod, closing his eyes with satisfaction after planting another seed of much-needed insight into a community starving for wisdom.

Uncle Jerry was the first writer Crawford had ever known, and accordingly young Jimmy formed his first impression of what a writer is from his uncle’s unusual example. Writers were not just men, Jimmy thought, but tough men who killed people and spoke their minds.

“Ever heard of Ernie Hemingway?” Uncle Jerry once asked Crawford, speaking of the novelist as if he were a close friend. “He used to kill big game in Africa and wrestle large Negroes when he wasn’t writing. That’s the kind of man
he
was,” he once said without explanation.

“Why did he kill big game? Why wrestle Negroes, Uncle Jerry?” Crawford asked.

Uncle Jerry’s response was equally arcane. “Because he had to.”

Crawford had thought that killing a lion was perhaps a favorite pastime for writers, but he was pretty sure Uncle Jerry had never killed one, though he might have wrestled a Negro.

Every morning, young Crawford would get up at dawn and ride his bicycle to the
Daily Press
and receive his parcel. After he neatly tucked the papers in his side bag, Crawford would feverishly pedal towards the eight square blocks that made up his route. And every morning Crawford threw every
Daily Press
with the gravity of a professional pitcher struggling to wrap up the ninth inning. But on Tuesdays and Fridays, when Uncle Jerry’s
Prattle-Tattle
appeared on the second page, it was the World Series of paper delivery. Every paper had to be
at least
on the walkway, if possible on the front steps. No driveways, and certainly no yards. The wisdom Uncle Jerry was bestowing could not be hindered by a clumsy delivery, so young Crawford imagined he was a pitcher in the World Series or even Paul Revere peddling like a revolution depended on it. That was until one very unusual
Prattle-Tattle
hit the walkways.

It was just after his morning route. Jimmy’s mother was in the kitchen peeling potatoes for a casserole she was making for a church gathering that evening. The
Daily Press
lay open on the kitchen table. As usual the words
Nitpicky Nick
jumped off the page — as did the words “Was Hitler Wrong about Everything? Nick Thinks Not.”

Mother Crawford was peeling quickly, nervously watching the backyard as if an intruder might appear on that ordinary Tuesday morning.

“How was your route, dear?”

“Same. I only had to get off my bike once and throw again.”

“That’s good, dear,” she said.

Young Jim read the first line in the body of the essay: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Am I right?”

“This is today’s?” Crawford asked.

“Yes,” his mother said mechanically before letting out a hefty moan. “I don’t know why Jerry thinks he has to say
everything
on his mind. I thought that business about the death penalty for reefer smokers and homosexuals was bad enough.”

“What’s a homosexual?”

“Oh, never mind,” she said, returning to her potatoes. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”

Young Crawford scanned the page.

“Hitler was trying to protect German culture from those who were assertively trying to change it, most notably Jews and Gypsies. Can we blame him for…”

“Mom, what’s a Jew?” young Crawford asked.

“Jesus was a Jew,” his mother snapped back. “Why don’t you get ready for school?” Crawford couldn’t understand his mother’s irritation.

And Uncle Jerry wouldn’t either. Jerry certainly couldn’t understand why Ed was so mad. Apparently Ed Proctor, the editor of the
Daily Press
, had gotten so cozy with Uncle Jerry that he had stopped asking to review each article before it went to print. Only the proofreader would see it, and she was an elderly deaf woman who couldn’t speak a word. Uncle Jerry’s article “Was Hitler Wrong about Everything?” would end
Prattle-Tattle
forever, and with the help of Ed Proctor, it died with a whimper.

As well-liked in the community as Uncle Jerry was, as open as they were to criticisms of “non-Christians” and “non-native-born Americans,” a sympathetic take on Hitler went too far.

It was strange to Jimmy how Uncle Jerry’s personality changed after the incident. As one lady at church had put it, he seemed to have lost his confidence. He no longer walked into a room with the command of a decorated colonel. The man who had once told Crawford “You can get people to believe anything as long as you act like you believe it” didn’t seem to believe in himself any more.

Jimmy Crawford’s job as a paperboy officially ended two weeks later when Uncle Jerry decided to go out to his utility shed in the backyard of his home early on a Sunday morning and put a Ruger Mark II 22 (
American made since 1949
) in his mouth and pull the trigger. At the funeral, one of Uncle Jerry’s drinking buddies told Crawford that Jerry had died “just like Ernest Hemingway — with his boots on.” The fact that they were blood-stained boots from his own gun didn’t seem to matter. “He went the way he wanted,” the man said.

“I guess so,” young Crawford replied.

Crawford wouldn’t discover until a few years later, when he read a Hemingway biography, that the man at Uncle Jerry’s funeral was probably referring to Hemingway’s suicide. Crawford had always assumed that Hemingway had been killed by a lion while loading his gun or something. Maybe he had been wrestled to death by a large Negro. But the young Crawford thought that he understood Hemingway’s decision to end his life, and after reading the infamous drinking stories, particularly those in Cuba, Crawford’s burgeoning picture of what a “writer” really is was finally complete — tough men who drink hard and live hard and kill animals until they finally kill themselves. End of story.

A great paradox was that Crawford never learned to appreciate Hemingway’s writing. Much of it seemed lackluster and pointless — with intermittent commercials about what was right and good. But what Crawford did learn to love was the idea of Hemingway, the idea of the guy who created and destroyed with a cocktail in his hand, then won a Nobel Prize less than a decade before ending his life. Poor Uncle Jerry wanted to be Hemingway, but he only got one part right.

And how silly, Crawford now thought. The idea of Hemingway — the idea of trying to be Hemingway. It’s as silly as Hitler riding in a motorcade and trying to be… well… Hitler. And oddly some people thought Hitler was right, even if it was just about “a few things.”

Yes, we worship the famous. We worship the prominent. We worship them because we know the world can’t be filled with winners; mostly it has to be filled with losers — people who shine shoes and deliver papers. It’s just the way it is. We worship the famous (from the world-famous to just the locally-famous) simply because they are famous — famous and therefore beyond our small, little lives. We read about them. We think about them. We defer to them even when we know they are just human beings, even when we know they are wrong, all because they have the
will
to appear to be right, to be “with it,” to be “on it,” whatever. Most of them are idiots like the rest of us, and they probably know that more than anyone. The only difference is that they’re too damn stupid to admit it. Or too smart — whatever the case may be.

Uncle Jerry was just too stupid.

Crawford put his foot down on the accelerator and rolled down his window.

“Hey!” Crawford yelled at the paperboy. “Hey you!” he said, pulling the car to the curb next to him.

The boy stopped his bike and stared at Crawford. “What do you want, mister?”

Crawford put the car in park. “You know that job you have isn’t so important.”

The boy looked taken aback. “Sorry?”

“Throwing those papers is not such a big deal, you know. It’s just a job. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

The boy looked at the ground, then reached inside his side bag and pulled out a paper.

“Besides,” Crawford continued, “it’s all bullshit in those papers.”

Carefully he took the rubber band off a paper before unfolding it. “Mister?” the paperboy said with trepidation. “Is this you?”

The boy held up the front page. There was a picture of Crawford in mid-hurl.

Self-Help Writer Loses It on Hershey.

Crawford unlatched his briefcase and pulled out the bottle of Scotch. With his thumb and forefinger he unscrewed the lid and carefully placed in on the dash. He brought the bottle neatly to his lips, then, after taking a deep breath, poured himself a mouthful.

The boy took a step back from the car.

After putting the bottle down, Crawford exhaled as if coming out of unfathomably deep water — eyes wide open, mouth protruding, dribbling Old Arkansan.

Crawford turned to the kid, with watering eyes, still trying to catch his breath. “Yeah, kid. That’s me.” Crawford put the lid back on the bottle and put the bottle in the briefcase. He put the car in gear. “Just don’t take your job too seriously, okay kid?”

“Sure, no problem,” the boy said.

Only a mind diseased by alcohol would stop to give advice to a paperboy while his wife and son are being held prisoner by a psycho who thinks he’s the host of a children’s show.

Crawford was worried about what he would say to Peters, especially considering Peters’ inclination to downplay panic. But Crawford was panicking for good reason, and how to communicate that was a real problem.

Crawford reached Santa Monica Boulevard, the boundary that symbolized his departure from the cocoon of Beverly Hills, and opened the bottle again, pouring a liberal amount into his stainless steel coffee cup.

Normally, Crawford would have taken North Beverly Drive to Cannon to West Sunset to get to the University, but he decided to take an alternate route. At first he rationalized that driving south would reduce the chance of being pulled over by the cops. But he needed to give himself extra time to think about what he would say to Peters. He decided to drive south on South Beverly Glen until he got to Wilshire, then head north just before the 405.

That part of Wilshire Boulevard always reminded Crawford of his drinking days in college — those
glorious
drinking days of long ago, the undergrad days, days unregulated by worry or guilt or the responsibilities that caused them. Wilshire had a little joint called the Backwoods Bar that was a popular hangout among psychology undergrads at the time. It created feelings of nostalgia for Crawford simply because it was the first time he gave a reading of his own material. Crawford composed a humorous piece based on
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
that he shared with his lowly undergrads at the Backwoods, and it was an inspiring success — something that would give him a source of encouragement for years to come.

In the middle of “H.H.” (what the psychology crowd called happy hour), with two-dollar pitchers of beer scattered on a long wooden table, Crawford, already drunk with beer in hand, stood in front of his classmates like an Irish captain addressing a boardroom of ragtag sailors inside the belly of a ship.

“If I could have your attention,” he opened, clearing his throat for effect. “I would like to read to you a new paper I’m going to publish in the
Hogwash Journal of Clinical Psychology
.

Many laughed and cheered, some raised their glasses.

“I’m published in that fucker,” Dax Davis, a research student, yelled.

“Yeah, me too. So what?” someone else added.