The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato (36 page)
“You haven't,” she said.
“What are you talking about? I'm here right now!”
“I thought you said you weren't really here. Besides, it's not the same anymore, is it?”
“Do you want it always to be the same?”
“Yes,” Pamela smiled. “Yes, I guess I do.”
He shook his head. “There's a whole big world out there that you're missing out on.”
“I've got a whole world right here,” she said. “I would hate to lose it.”
“You might get rich and famous,” he said. “Wouldn't that make you happy?”
She laughed. “But I'm already happy!”
“I'm telling you, out in L.A., you can get everything your heart desires.”
“Except good barbecue,” she said.
He eyed my plate. “You going to finish that?” he asked.
“I'll share,” I said, and he started right in on the hush puppies.
“There are some things you have to sacrifice for art,” he said, talking with his mouth full. “I just wish good barbecue wasn't one of them.”
Blossom's middle daughter, Amity, agreed to babysit for Rosalita and me when we went to our class. We were already waiting together at Rosalita's house when Amity showed up, followed two minutes later by Rafi.
“If Amity doesn't mind, I just thought I'd hang around,” he said, looking sheepish. “In case she needs help or an errand run or anything.”
“We'll only be gone an hour,” Rosalita was saying when Billy Joe came in the door with his guitar.
“I thought it seemed like this might be a good time to give the babies some music,” he said, looking from me to Rosalita to Rafi to Amity uncertainly. “If that's all right with you.”
“It's fine,” Rosalita said, “but we'll only be goneâ”
“Hey, everybody.” It was Blossom standing at the door with a pie in each hand. “I just thought I'd drop these by and see how everything was going. What are all y'all doing here?”
“Vamonos,”
Rosalita said to me, “before anyone else comes. We'll be late.”
“Don't worry,” Rafi said. “We've got everything covered.”
I kissed my baby goodbye, and Rosalita and I got into my car and drove up to the college. We found the building and the classroom and nervously picked out two seats next to each other close to the door.
My baby had been born at the end of August. At the end of September, Uncle Joe took the bus all the way to Waterville to come see us. Danny picked him up at the bus station and brought him to my house. He looked just the same, smiled just the same. Only a little more gray hair and a few more laugh lines. He was wearing his best clothes for the visit.
“Well,” he said, taking the baby in his arms, “let's see this fine young man here. Look at those eyes!”
“He's strong,” I said. “That's for sure.”
“Well, of course he is,” said Uncle Joe. “Of course your child is strong.”
“I haven't heard a word from Mama since I wrote her,” I said. “Did she say anything to you about the baby?”
He shifted in his seat and looked uneasy. “Oh, Josie,” he said. “You know your mama. She gets busy with things at hand. I guess you heard your cousin Belle's getting married, and your mama is all up in that, of course, running the arrangements and I don't know what all.”
“Of course,” I said.
“She did ask me what the child's name is going to be. You didn't say in your letter.”
“I wanted to surprise you with your namesake, Uncle Joe. I named him after you.”
“Well, now,” Uncle Joe smiled, looking pleased. “Isn't that fine? Yes, he sure is a strong little devil. You ought to be proud.”
We went to Blossom's restaurant for dinner and Blossom made a fuss over him, bringing him extra coffee and putting ice cream on his pie.
“I'm sure glad to know you're watching out for my girl,” he said to Blossom as we were leaving.
Blossom patted his hand. “Don't you worry,” she said.
We went to the bookstore the next day.
“All these books,” he said. “I never seen anything like it. You have to wonder what's in them all.”
The day after that, I put him back on the bus to go home.
“You let me know if you ever need anything,” he said. “If you ever need anything at all, you hear?”
I kissed him goodbye and watched until the bus drove away. When I went home, I found a worn ten-dollar bill on the kitchen table with a note that said, “For my namesake. Love, Uncle Joe.”
Every week all semester, Amity came by to watch the babies, and never once was she alone. Rafi came by, or Vera, whichever one wasn't working. Billy Joe brought his guitar a lot. Or Pancho and Pamela spent the evening, each holding a baby while they sang. As often as not, Rosalita and I would come back to find Blossom cutting pie for everyone in the kitchen and Danny sitting in the rocking chair, gingerly holding a sleeping child.
Eventually it seemed silly to pay rent on my house by the river, and Little Joe and I moved in with Rosalita and Bertie and Emma Goldman. I brought all my empty canning jars with me and we decided that, come spring, we would plant a garden.
With the savings on rent, I could afford to take another class at the college the next semester. I signed up for Small Business Management and Accounting.
Rosalita's eyes got big when she saw it on the list of available courses.
“Dios mÃo,”
she said. “Do you suppose that it is possible that we could make this bookstore profitable?”
“It's worth a shot,” I said. “Miracles can happen.”
“Dios mÃo,”
she said again.
I never saw Jake again. When Jake's mother died, Blossom saw the notice in the newspaper. But there was no funeral service, and none of her sons ever came around.
I imagined sometimes that Little Joe had Jake's look around his eyes or maybe in the line of his jaw. But there was no address I could mail a snapshot to; I had no pictures of Jake that I could use to compare. Jake, wherever he was, never knew.
Above ground, the freed prisoner is finally able to see the sun. The sun is to him the light of truth and reason. Seeing all so clearly, he develops a new view of the world based on reality rather than supposition, objects rather than reflections, truth rather than shadow. He becomes, Socrates says, a philosopher.
Socrates argues that it is the duty of the philosopher to lead us all from the darkness of the cave, with its false understandings built only on shadows and echoes, out into the sunshine, where we will finally see the truth. In the light of true knowledge and reason, humans will at last come into our own.
I am sure that all of this is correct. It is famously hard, after all, to argue with Socrates. Better people than I have tried and failed.
And yet I wonder.
The enlightened philosophers, contemplating truth in the sharp glare of the sunâdo they ever close their eyes against it, just for a moment, and remember fondly the beautiful, flickering blue shadows on the wall? Do they ever perhaps imagine
they still hearâin the distanceâthe faint musical echoes of their old world? Standing even now on the very pinnacle of wisdom, do they ever sometimes quietly mourn the loss of their smoky, dreamlike, dusky cave?
Thanks to everyone at John F. Blair, especially Anna B. Sutton who has made this book much better with her insightful eye, her poetic ear, and her generous heart. I am profoundly grateful and lucky to have worked with her; Amy Fusselman, who has been through thick and thin with me for many years, for offering encouragement and support and without whom this book never would have come out of the box; Jane Hilberry for nurturing a vision of wild creative possibility for me and for everyone around her; Steven Hayward for taking time from his own writing to give feedback that was both incisive and kind; Sandi Wong at Colorado College for giving me the time and the resources to go in new directions and for her friendship; a whole raft of people who used to hang out in a bar I knew a long time ago and who often saw me at my worst, yet never turned away; Paul and Bob for the music and the books; and to Jonathan, Aiden, and Tris for everything.
