It was 1978. He had been welding for about three years. He had known Gary for most of that time and they had worked side by side for much of it at Ace Tank and Equipment Company when it was still located on Elliot Avenue north of downtown Seattle. Gary was about the same size and build as him but with sandy blond hair that hung straight and limp to his shoulders. They both were Texans and shared lots of esoteric and colorful Texas culture and knowledge that the Washingtonians around them could not even imagine. They decided that language and thought were slightly different processes for Texans than for most other people, and the two young ironworkers formed a bond of friendship around their common heritage and slightly off-center Texas grit.
Gary was actually very lucky just to be alive and working. Both of them had done time on the bending rolls in the small-tank shop rolling shells for 500 and 1000 gallon tanks. Gary had achieved near legendary status the day he left his boot print pressed into the skin of a 500 gallon tank. He had stepped onto the flat sheet of steel as it fed into the rollers where it would be transformed by mechanical pressure into a cylinder. His attention had wandered, and suddenly his steel-toed boot was feeding into the rolling mechanism with the sheet of steel. Somehow, Gary managed to reach the cutoff switch just as the machine rolled to the back edge of the steel toe-cap in his boot. The footwear was destroyed, but Gary was unscathed except for his pride and his pounding heart. A fraction of a second more in the rolls and his foot would have been crushed, throwing him off balance and out of reach of the switch. The huge machine would have crushed every bone in his body if given the opportunity.
The tank was made, with Gary’s footprint clearly impressed in its shell, looking as if he had tried to kick his way out of it. Lectures on safety were given, and Gary was ridiculed and castigated for his absent-minded stupidity and congratulated for his big adventure. His boot print was the talk of both the large- and small-tank shops for weeks. The newer guys were impressed and a little more reverent toward the impersonal power of the massive machinery they worked with. The old-timers just shook their heads and chuckled grimly and swore quietly to themselves.
Texans fall into two broad categories: angels and devils. They tend to be staunch morally upright Baptists with rigorous ethical boundaries and taboos, or at the other extreme, hell raisin’, ass kickin’, bad-ass cowboys. There doesn’t seem to be much grey area in between. But oddly enough, even the most righteous Texas Baptist has a streak of that good old fallen nature that surfaces at unguarded moments in safe company.
Gary was impulsive and distracted and restless and a little bit off in his own world. He represented a different slice of Texas culture than his friend. There were no Baptists in his heritage. They were all white trash cowboys, preoccupied with drinking and shooting and driving trucks and big fast American cars and womanizing and cussing. Gary was outgoing and friendly and charming, with the impeccable formal manners that every southern boy learns from the cradle. He could charm the skin off a snake. But he was the most creative, prolific, uninhibited user of profanity that his Texas Baptist friend had ever met. He had a remarkable way of weaving genitalia and disease and perversion and insanity and violence and excrement into a descriptive phrase. His expressions were so vivid and original and revolting that he stirred admiration where admiration seemed immoral and reprehensible. “Cussin’” was an art form for Gary. He rarely lost his temper, and didn’t swear nearly as well when he did. Nothing delighted him more than to out-swear a hardened old irondog welder. And he could do it every time. The vivid disgusting imagery flowed freely and smoothly off his boyish tongue, his sparkling blue eyes smiling victoriously as the competition was reduced to stammering and open-mouthed, revolted admiration.
Gary was also a bar fly. He had been divorced shortly after the bending roll accident, and had taken to closing bars every night and chasing women and sleeping in his pickup truck. He was homeless, not out of necessity, but rather because he just didn’t have the motivation to find a place. It would have cut into his carousing too much. But the truck was a bit cramped. One day, the Texans were sitting around at lunch, talking about Texas, and guns, and what not, and Gary said, “How much you want for that crab-infested, diseased excuse for a canopy on the back of your truck?”
His friend studied him for a little while, picturing Gary living in the camper shell through the long wet Washington winter.
“It’s falling apart.” he answered.
“I know, so how much you want for it?” Gary shot back.
His friend thought about it for a little while longer. It really was falling apart. It didn’t leak, but it was real sloppy in all its joints and seams, and probably would leak soon.
“How ‘bout if you give me that little Peacemaker for it?” he finally offered. He thought Gary would balk at the thought of trading for the pistol. His father had given it to him for Christmas a couple of years before, and it was a treasure to him.
“I’ll bring the puss-licking slut in tomorrow.” he said without hesitation. “It’s a sweet little piece. You won’t be sorry.”
So they traded the dilapidated canopy for the classic western revolver in the parking lot the next day, and for several weeks, Gary had a home on wheels. Then one day they were sitting out in the parking lot on their break and his friend noticed that the canopy was gone from the back of the truck. He knew Gary had no place to store it, so he asked, “Where’s the canopy, Gary?”
Gary looked sheepish and didn’t want to say. He shuffled around as his friend pressed him for an answer. Finally he gave in, but did not swear at first, and then only halfheartedly. “I forgot to bolt it to my truck.”
You didn’t bolt it down?”
“No, I didn’t bolt it down. I was just cruising down the road the other day and I went around this big-assed hairy curve and the bony-assed sorry bitch flipped off in the ditch. It was gone— splinters and shit—nothing worth trying to pick up, so I left it there by the fucking road.”
His friend looked at him incredulously, starting to feel angry and sorry for Gary for being such a half-wit. “What were you thinking!”
Gary had nothing else to say. He was broken and hurt by his own foolishness. He was a little frightened with how out of control and on the edge his existence had become as his marriage had come unraveled, but he could not talk about it. He didn’t understand the hard feelings of heartbreak, and scarcely allowed himself to feel them. He would never ever talk about it. Like so many men, he had no tools with which to understand or take advantage of his struggle in order to propel his personal growth.
They finished the break, and Gary went on living in the cab of his truck for several months longer until his frazzled, broken, lonely heart began to settle and some semblance of sanity and stability started to show up in his ragged cowboy jeans. Eventually, he was a little less crazy and a little more focused, and a little less dangerous to himself. But he was always a bright-eyed charmer who hid behind his wild, putrid gift for making even the woolliest bad- ass boys feel like they needed to go take a shower after talking to him. Gary was one of a kind—yet kindred in spirit to so many hurting, debilitated men in the throes of divorce.
Twenty-two years later, and twenty years after he lost track of Gary, he found himself in a similar struggle for his own sanity, safety, and peace of mind. For the first time, as he thought about the wild, charming Texas boy, he understood the lostness and pain and vulnerability that Gary had floundered in. He had always known that Gary’s wild, reckless, craziness was related to his personal problems, but it was all understanding without empathy until now. But things had changed. He was keeping his exterior life intact much better than Gary had for the most part, but the turbulence and restless distraction within him seemed just like what Gary had been through so many years ago. A certain degree of craziness seemed to go with the territory of divorce and there was just a little comfort in this. He would give it time, and maybe go just a little easier on himself.
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