The Children of the Sun Begin to Wake
by Chad Holley
My friend John is leaving LA. I had not heard from him in well over a year, maybe two, definitely pre-pandemic, when I saw him calling a couple of weeks back, mid-morning, on my fortieth. He left a voicemail. He hoped his calendar was right, which he was pretty sure it was, and that I had a kick-ass day. Hoped all was well with the fam, please say hello for him, the boys must be fucking huge. Then: he would be leaving town at the end of the summer, had bought a neighbor’s old Silverado, totally solid, to haul his stuff, he would love to see us before he took off. All this in a voice that brimmed with amity, even verged at times on a delighted laughter, like I’d won the lottery and, honest to God, he shared my happiness.
I called him back the day I realized that, if I had to leave a message, it was probably the last day I could still say thanks for the call “last week.” But he answered, right off. It was good to talk to him. I was on a walk, into the hilly, historic neighborhood near our house, enjoying their views of the busy, palm-lined streets of Glendale, and I spent nearly an hour on the phone with him, asking my questions, laughing, catching him up. The guy is excellent company. He’s smart, cogent, attentive, knows worlds of things I know nothing about, has jobs I don’t understand (currently executive coaching), never condescends when eventually I have to ask, about a term he’s used several times, if he can remind me just what that is. He must also be the least dissembling person I know. In virtually any conversation with him, whether one-on-one or introducing him to somebody, I feel I’ve stepped into a zone of potentially unnerving candor. Though if that suggests anything maudlin or dramatic about his way, I have not said it well.
The guy is excellent company. He’s smart, cogent, attentive, knows worlds of things I know nothing about, has jobs I don’t understand (currently executive coaching), never condescends when eventually I have to ask, about a term he’s used several times, if he can remind me just what that is.
At some point in our call I say, wow, leaving LA, what’s up with that? He tells me this January made 20 years. In that time he’s been divorced twice, lost two businesses (I try to remember which these might be), he’s renting again and nowhere close to changing that, meanwhile the city’s lost its mind, with the totally unscientific lockdown and the riots and the super woke shit, oh, and the encampments, completely out of control, bro, I don’t know if you’ve driven up the 101 through Hollywood lately. Yeah, yeah, I have, I say. And I have. Also, he says, I turn 50 this year, I still want to have kids, and I can’t meet anybody out here who isn’t fucking crazy. I say I don’t see how he’s lasted out here as long as he has. He doesn’t laugh or otherwise acknowledge the tweak, kind of a thing with him, I’ve noticed. Instead he says he can get along with anybody, that from his TV-producing days—which is when I met him, me with my mint Thomas Guide, punctiliously bradded spec scripts, heady crush on Trader Joe’s—he still has plenty of friends who are way, way, like, lost-their-minds left, and that’s fine, as long as they respect me, you know, and don’t treat me like some Nazi or racist or school-shooter nut just because I have different politics. Aw, now, I say, school shooter? He says he was at a barbecue (any event out here with a grill) where this woman was trashing the judge down in San Diego who struck the assault rifle ban, and somebody said, you know John here has an assault rifle, and she fucking blew up—Are you John? Is that you? So, what, little murdered schoolchildren just don’t bother you, John? Dude! he laughs. I had, like, half a hot dog in my mouth!
When I ask where he’s going, he tells me there were two requirements: it had to be red, and he had to be able to hunt year-round. I say, huh, how did I not know he hunted? (Here’s how: he’s from Connecticut.) Oh, yeah, he says, he loves it. He says he takes a deer at least once a year, keeps a small freezer full of meat. I’ve noticed even people back in Mississippi sometimes now use this phrase, take a deer, where we only ever said shoot one, or kill one. Anyway, he says it’s down to Idaho and Utah. He’s going to get an Airbnb in each for a month this fall, then pick. I say he’ll probably see a lot of people he knows. This time he laughs, says yeah, in both states they’re vandalizing vehicles with California plates. I hesitate—it’s not like I’m trying to argue him into staying—but then ask if he’ll miss seeing the kids he’s helped. He’s active in a group that mentors first-gen college students here in town. Are you kidding, he says, only one of them still lives here and she just took a job in Atlanta. Eck, I say, Atlanta. He asks what’s wrong with Atlanta, and I realize I have no idea what’s wrong with Atlanta, I haven’t been there (except for the airport) in forever. I tell him I just never liked it. Then I tell him we’re taking off in a couple of weeks to see family back South, we’ll be leaving the boys there for camp, we should have him over before we leave. I ask how his next couple of weekends look. There is a pause, long enough to make me wonder if I’ve lost my signal in the hills. I got nothing, he says.
It was good to see him. He had bulked up a little, grayed a touch more at the temples, otherwise looked the same. He came in the door with a small backpack over his shoulder, hugged Susan, hugged me, flipped out over the boys. From the backpack he presented a pricey-looking pinot, re-gift of a lawyer he’d helped last year with an IPO (I’d forgotten he had some early years on Wall Street), so it should be good. We stood around the kitchen, in disjointed conversation, while Susan and I finished the cooking, the boys set the table. Taking our full, warm plates into the dining room (Susan refused to serve herself first), John and I were briefly alone. My God, he said, this is the first home-cooking I’ve had in . . . . I didn’t hear what he said, but it would be a number, like eight months, or two and a half years. He’s one of those people who distress me with their ability to track time in their lives, who seem able to say more or less exactly what they were doing in any given month of any given year. Seriously, this is incredible, he said. I think it was chicken.
Through dinner he talked bands and shows with Susan and our 13-year-old, both musicians. Our 11-year-old asked about the assault rifle, examined a pic, said it’s the model his uncle has, meaning my brother. We talked a lot about Glendale. John and his first wife lived here, not far from our house, though they were split up and departed years before we moved in. (I never knew her well, but they had us over for dinner once, in the days before children, and I must say I had my concerns on seeing their every kitchen appliance—stove to fridge to pop-up toaster—was a gleaming, valentine red.) I said we liked Glendale. My older son said it felt safe, the sort of remark from your child that staggers you with your insuperable incognizance. When I tuned back in, John was telling how, while he lived here, the Russians managed to move in on the Armenians, but then tried to strong-arm Caruso for a cut of the Americana, and paid for it with some high profile federal prosecutions. He told about a Latino kid stabbing an Armenian kid at Glendale High, just down the street from us, and how afterwards the chief of police called a town hall meeting at the school and said if there was any retaliation, any, he would shut it all down—the prostitution, the money-laundering, everything—and there was not one incident, zero. We were all relieved, as though hearing of it in real time. (I’ve not yet Googled any of this.) Through the evening John did not drop one f-bomb, and my younger son, the one who would, did not solicit his take on the capitol riot. The pinot, as good as advertised, I had largely to myself, since neither John nor Susan drinks much. At a quarter to nine, John hid his first yawn.
The boys and I walked him out, to see his pickup. As we approached it under the streetlight, he pointed out the new hitch and bed liner, both of which it came with, like the guy was getting it ready for him, he said. I said I’ve heard it’s hard to find a one-way trailer in California right now. Oh, dude. It’s insane. In the cab he raised the armrest to show off the old-school bench seat, confirmed for the boys the Sig in the glove compartment. Standing in the open passenger door, leaning into the cab light, I said whoa, it has that smell. And it did, an entombed aggregate of worn rubber floor mat, old tools, a hint of machine oil . . . something, more essential, I could not name. While the boys and John said goodbye in the street, I stood there inhaling, repeatedly, trying to name it, not a little distracted by my astonishment at how distinct and familiar it was, and that I should be meeting with it here, on a noisy street in Glendale, California, in a truck bought off a Filipino by a guy from Connecticut: the smell of cold mornings on the way to school, rides to the ball field in a stifling twilight, dove hunts and fishing trips, my father and grandfather and me between them and gravel road pinging in the wheel wells . . . . I shut the door. Which didn’t fully close. I shut it again. From the sidewalk we watched John crank his pickup, watched him pull it, clunk, into gear. I was hoping he would look at us once more, for a wave. He did, waved back with a wide smile, and drove away.
I woke in the night thinking of his backpack. It’s black, the size of a school bag, and he is never without it. Anywhere I’m going, as he put it at dinner, that bag’s going with me. In its laptop pocket he has inserted a bulletproof panel, large enough, he assured us, to cover his vitals. He took it out and showed us at the table. Covered in a rough, sand-colored fabric, it’s surprisingly thin. My older son, holding it, grinning, said didn’t he need a helmet? He shares my taste, this one, for teasing. John’s eyes were fixed on the panel. His brow was gathered. Yeah, well, helmets were hard to come by right now, a supply chain issue. During this exchange I was somehow left holding the pack, no heavier now, it seemed, than its own material. I squeezed it in a couple of places. I didn’t feel anything. On the outside it had two embroidered badges: “Hope is not a plan” and “No one is coming.”
Chad Holley lives in Los Angeles, where he is completing a novel and a collection of stories. His work has appeared in, among other places, Shenandoah, storySouth, Greensboro Review, and Houghton Mifflin's Best American Mystery Stories.
