records to the station in hopes of getting their big break. A dozen cars behind us started to get impatient, revving their engines and honking their horns, but we didn’t know what to take. Finally, the radio station people gave each of us a random record. They all looked suspiciously like hard rock, which OK 95 wasn’t playing at the time. I ended up with a record by Krokus. It was called
Wet
At halftime of the high school football game, Dad and I walked down the bleachers and waited for our turn in the bathroom. There was a long urinal where about six people could go at once. Dad and I went side by side and he seemed to be watching me as I pulled my pants down to my knees and went.
When we were back outside, standing in line to get hot dogs, he explained to me that I didn’t have to pull my pants down to pee. He pointed to our zippers, showing me how they were made to open up so just our peters came out. I felt embarrassed, not realizing that people were probably staring at me in there, wondering why I had to pull my pants all the way down. I believe I was eleven at this time. I wore tight white briefs and probably didn’t change them enough. Soon after this talk, I also stopped wetting my bed at night.
J. V. Cain
In 1979, two years after I became a big football fan, J. V. Cain, the starting tight end of my favorite team, the Cardinals, died suddenly in training camp. It was the first time I felt shocked by a death. He died on his twenty-sixth birthday. I rode my bike to the drug store every day that week to read the national newspapers to see if they figured out what the cause was.
There was one particular J. V. Cain touchdown that I’ll never forget. It was against the Browns in a close game. He ran a simple ten-yard hook pattern to the goal line and turned to catch. The ball was overthrown but J. V. reached up with a larger-than-life right hand and pulled it down like he was tearing a bird out of the sky. It seemed unbelievable.
The drug store kept their newspapers by the magazine rack, away from the busy cash register area, so it was easy for me to tear through the sports section every day without the clerk shooing me away. I read multiple papers, speculated with friends, and even asked the family doctor about what would cause such a bewildering death. Eventually it was announced as a heart attack. The team retired Cain’s jersey number 88 and wore black armbands that season, which turned out to be another terrible one.
Silhouette
Matt and I saw a spaceship skipping through the sky. We reacted at the same time, surprised we both saw it. We stayed up late that night, sleeping outside on our side porch in our sleeping bags. We talked about UFOs and Bigfoot. We planned a Bigfoot hunt near Walla Walla when we got older.
After falling asleep, exhausted from speculation, I awoke sometime in the middle of the night. Unsure why I was dream-interrupted, I lifted my head to look around. Roughly twenty yards away, near the alley and beside the garbage cans, stood a large figure with its legs slightly spread and its arms at its sides. It was a silhouette similar to that on a men’s room door. We had a dog at the time, a shaggy black mutt named Pebbles who was about the size of a breadbox. He was looking at the figure too, but he didn’t make a sound. I froze and kept my eyes on the figure. It seemed to be watching Matt and me sleep.
The next morning we called the radio station to see if there were other sightings of a strange light in the sky. There were. We talked about it all morning until Dad got agitated and told us to zip our mouths. I’m pretty sure that Dad believed in UFOs too, so I was surprised he got angry. It was probably against the Bible for Catholics to openly believe in UFOs or something. I never got around to mentioning the shadowy figure by the garbage cans. I thought maybe I was dreaming.
Almost ten years later, while discussing that night with Matt, he told me he had seen the same silhouette, and that’s why he never wanted to sleep outside again.
Black
My brother Matt is black. We have the same mother but little was known about his father, who was an African man named Everest Mulekezi. Our mother dated Everest for a short time after meeting him at a dance in Eastern Washington. He was a foreign student attending Washington State University.
Mom and Dad had split up at this time, though they would eventually get back together and have me a couple years later.
There was only one other black kid in our neighborhood. His name was Larry, and we were friends with him for a while. One time Matt and Larry got into a fight about something though, and Larry called my brother a “half breed.”
Just two weeks later, Larry drowned in the Columbia River. We went to his funeral at a black church in Pasco. His family became hysterical. I think it was his sister who started screaming and had to be taken away. We left early.
When Matt turned thirty-five, he decided to look for his father. His search took him to Africa, where he met several family members but learned that his father had died in 1971 in Uganda. He was some sort of a district official who was executed by Idi Amin’s army after a dispute over a hotel bill. The rest of Everest’s family was hunted as well, but most of them escaped.
There was an odd moment during his African trip that Matt told me about. He had just met his real father’s sister for the first time and many of his other relatives were coming to her apartment to meet him. As he sat and talked and got buzzed on a terrible-tasting local brew consisting of smashed up bananas and alcohol, he realized that his newfound relatives were watching him extra close, almost studying him. Matt asked them if something was wrong. They paused and then smiled and told Matt that he did indeed display parts of his father. He had his dad’s mannerisms and his determination. Physically they could see Everest in Matt’s eyes, forehead, and hands. Though he never knew his father in life, Matt had been carrying his ghost for all these years. He felt this ghost become more a part of him now, and with his family circled around him, he began to weep.
Cherokee Pride
Matt and I played out some game while listening to one of our favorite 45s, “Indian Reservation” by Paul Revere and the Raiders. We would take turns playing the roles. One of us would be the sad and angry Indian in jail while the other was the guard. Around this time was when the TV commercial with the crying Indian was so popular—the anti-littering one.
“Indian Reservation” was one of the biggest hits for this band of white guys who dressed in pirate outfits. It seemed to have this great dramatic sense of impending revenge that pulsed just behind the drumbeat and the heartfelt sentiment of the singer/narrator. It was like a story song. The chorus went something like: “Cherokee
