father and son.

There are two partners in the bankruptcy law firm where I work, a father and son.  Mr. Lawyer, Sr. lives vicariously through his younger son who, despite Sr.'s beliefs, is quite a bit less interested in law than his father.  I think he'd much rather teach Russian or Spanish in a University somewhere up north, but he is waiting in line to take over his father's law firm. Dad continues to press son to do things that I believe he himself would rather like to do but thinks he can't because his prime time is over.  One of these ventures is a local civil service position. 

Son lawyer recently ran for this position of Environment Overseer in the elections.  His name was buried in the pile of indiscriminates on the back of the ballot that are hardly ever read and less often marked.  The position is one that less than three percent of the population has any care about and, to top it all off, his was the last name on the list.  

Going into the elections he knew that he was unlikely to win based on voting trends and statistics on how locals know almost nothing about their local elected officials.  However his father spent hours creating visually appealing advertisements for the local papers, meticulously editing slogans, making phone calls and collecting a band of voters to back his son.  Lawyer Jr.'s mother made buttons that she distributed to her friends and placed in buckets on the counter at her nail salon and dry cleaner.  This was a family affair which, by some unfair default, I was dragged into.  Apparently the position of "Receptionist" has no clear limitations or boundaries.  Several hours of my time on the clock in the law office were spent stapling signs to metal stakes to be stuck on corners around town.  One morning of sign construction I was even chastised for placing my staples too far apart.  "Do you think those will really hold up?!" Lawyer Sr. asked me exasperated. Good grief.

He took the day off on November 4th to campaign at the polls on the outskirts of town. The two paralegals and I waited with bated breath for the results.

He didn't win.  I came in a few minutes before nine on Wednesday morning and Rene told me he'd come in second out of four with twenty-seven percent.  The other guy got thirty-four.  I was surprised by my own disappointment.  It was raining too, and cold.

At 9:45 he came into the office, a few minutes before his first appointment of the day.  He was red-faced and his short hair was pressed down matted on the left side.  His collar was flipped up on one side revealing the neck of his striped tie.  

"Morning," I said kindly, quietly.  He responded with a somewhat spastic hello and he seemed flustered.  After getting a brief summary from Rene, he retreated to his office.  Nobody had mentioned the election.  Everyone knew he'd lost.  It was bizarre, a big fat orange elephant in a very small parlor that had, over the past thirty-six hours, grown in importance to everyone.  Everyone, that is, except Lawyer Sr., to whom the election had always been of the highest importance.  

His first appointment was a no-show, so he stayed in his office.  At one point I poked my head into his door to ask him about a file.  As I left I said, "hey, sorry about the election."

"Oh! It's okay! Those things happen, you know?  That's just the way it goes sometimes!"  He exclaimed it like a city hot dog hawker selling lunch to passers-by.  I was startled and nodded, eyes wide.  

A gentleman came in not long after that.  He walked through the door regally, though his clothes were worn out with his rumpled white hair.  He walked right up to the window and said, "Is Mr. Lawyer Jr. in today?"  

His confidence took me back, considering most of the people who come to that window are generally beaten down and pretty miserable.  He asked if he could see Lawyer Jr. and I asked if he had an appointment.

"Oh, no appointment necessary! I just wanted to commend him on the election! It was a good race, commendable." 

I went back to the office and pushed the door open.

"Wil," I said, "an old client of yours is here.  Says he wants to commend you on the election."

He did come out of his office to the window and that old bankrupt businessman shook Wil's hand and told him what a fine job he'd done running for the position and what a fine man he was in this community of Winston-Salem.  And all Wil could say was "thanks" and nod his head.  But when the man walked out the door and Wil walked back to his office, it finally felt like the tension had broken.  Wil even made a joke about having fewer meetings to worry about.  Of course, when his father came in I thought he might just break down into tears.  But I guess there are some things that just have to be left alone.  

off of Pine Valley road, autumn explosion!

some night.

After a long evening they drove back to her apartment in the dark.  These nights were fun because they got to help out with the meetings and see their friends, but they didn't really see much of each other.  A couple times during the night he had come up behind her and touched her to tell her, "here, behind you!"  He'd smile at her across the room in between conversations and she would wink back.  They'd stay late afterwards to help clean up.

"My paycheck is late again," she said as they wound around streets on the residential shortcut that gave them a fifteen-minute catch-up window.  The trees, which were so brilliant by day, looked various shades of gray and black in the cloudy evening.  "Maybe if I was making decent money that wouldn't matter, but I'm not.  Four hundred dollars matters!"

"That's obnoxious," he said.  "What's the hold up?  Did the boss tell you when you'd get it?"

"He said late Thursday. Maybe Friday."  She was annoyed.

When they got to her apartment, he turned off the car and they both got out.  She went before him down the walkway and unlocked the door.  They went inside and he stood in the doorjamb as she put her purse and plastic coffee mug on the island.

"Alright, well I hope you have a great day at work tomorrow," she said as she turned around and stood face-to-face with him.  She hugged him and stood there for a minute.

He wrapped his arms around her back and rested his head on her temple.  She looked out the window into the black nighttime and he, looking at the mirror on the wall across the room, said, "I wish I could get an artist's depiction of this, right now."

"Of what?" she asked.

"My big arms wrapped around your little self, and your beautiful hair.  It's just cute."

She laughed pulling her head back to see his face and kissed his cheek.

"Love you."  He walked away from the door and she quickly lost his silhouette with the kitchen light behind her and the moonless night outside.

Patty Griffin.

Patty Griffin sings from her soul.  You would know it even if she sang in Portuguese because of the way you can hear her guts coming through the sound of her voice.  Her music moves my spirit in a way that no other music ever has.  It is full of her deepest appetites and her simplest stories and to listen is to quench some unidentified hope for sweet, sweet music.

Her songs are honey in this fall season; her strumming is the perfect soundtrack for the rustling leaves and her voice sounds the way the rust treetops turn bronze in the five o'clock hour when the light is most scintillating.  She has wrapped her voice around the essence of autumn.  And like fall, when everything is so beautifully dying so that it can spring up later and begin again, Patty narrates the reality of life--all of its death and living and struggling and breathing.

Fall has a bewitching power over me.  The sky is almost the bluest blue that can be found outside of poetry and the way that the afternoon light pushes through the cracks of the leaves that canopy across the streets makes me forget where I am.  I could live with this forever.  And as I have found myself lately at a loss for words, Ms. Patty's folk songs seem to be the solution.