Jerrold

THE WRITER’S BLOCK Jerrold was a Vietnam Vet in trouble, living alone with his ghosts in a 3-story house inherited from a patriotic uncle who died of an aneurysm. With several mortgage payments late, my friend had decided to quit his pot and beer, put the past behind and start a new life. We knew he wasn’t serious, but we were wrong. He truly wanted to become a writer and solve all his problems creatively. As an ex-military ambulance medic, he would have indeed a lot of stories to tell, the missions, the whistling bullets over his head, the shell exploding around all night why he was fumbling in the dark to find more of that morphine for the dying around him, in defeat of his goal of saving all the wounded, pilots fished earlier from their sinking aircrafts still smoking from a recent hit, others so peppered with shrapnel as to be inoperably lost. Then there were the drugs, the cries, the crap, the lies and the VD infested whores of Da Nang. A lifetime of stories to tell as we all thought approvingly. But Jerrold only wanted to write poetry, a million miles from Vietnam in spirit. I can’t say I blamed him! Two months and several threats of foreclosure later, Jerrold had still not written a line. But neither had he hit the bottle or so much as sniffed a joint. He was clean but awfully stressed and miserable. A writer’s block weighing a ton was crushing his spirit and making him more than a little insane. What I learned later while talking to his family would amply prove that last point. This veteran has a sister that described what happened to him on New Year’s Day 1999. Jerrold, she said, had wanted to be a writer as far as she could remember. He had bragged to her that one day he would live off his poetry, pay off the mortgage and take her to Greece to show her the birthplace of western civilization. That new year day Jerrold popped a fresh sheet into his Smith-Corona. Staring at it he noticed that his reading glasses were dirty. He went to the kitchen and doused them in rubbing alcohol, rubbing them for ten minutes with paper towels from a dispenser near the stove. An hour later he still hadn’t written a word, preoccupied with several spots moving about the page. This was due to a retina defect that had no cure, most probably the result of a documented concussion suffered in Vietnam. Jerrold had chosen to start his new life as a poet on that day precisely, a rock-hard new year resolution. He became so upset with this Vietnam reminder that he went to the bathroom, took a syringe and shot morphine into one of his buttocks. The drug was from a secret stash he had gotten from another vet who had died recently, probably his only friend left. Staring into the mirror and still seeing those virtual flies, he decided to drain that eye and wear a makeshift eye patch, this after dousing the entire area with more alcohol. His training as a Marines medic had shown him that technique for the safe removal of a damaged eye in combat. He then went back to his typewriter and felt his elbow acting up again, a bursitis that had prevented him from sleeping well for several years. This was not the day for aches and pains, or so Jerrold thought as he was tempted to do some more morphine. He did and then went to the basement and proceeded to amputate off his right arm. From a careful reconstruction of events, it seems that using a set of knives and saws he kept for garden work he methodically cut the skin, muscles and bone above his elbow. Those tools were equally doused with much alcohol from the large bottle. Stopping by his bedroom where a pillowcase was turned into a competent bandage, cauterizing the entire site carefully and capping the stub with a clean Styrofoam cup. He then went back to his typewriter, slightly drunk from the fumes and proud of his newly-found decisive attitude. He was to start his real career, finally, after a detour in Vietnam and another one in procrastination. When typing with one finger, the left hand is almost as good as the right one he was now missing. And a problem eye that’s been removed is one problem less. But the page was whiter than ever, staring at him, pure as snow. This is when the ten-ton writer’s block hit him. He could not make himself type the first letter of the first word of his first poem. And he was aching to get going as much as aching from the morphine losing its effect. That’s when he climbed to the attic and pulled a dusty Scrabble game box, sat on the floor and threw seven letters that he arranged into the word SNEPPAH. He put those letters into his left shirt pocket and grinned: modern poetry, randomness, fractality…that would be his karma, his art…He had found himself! That word sounded magical to him, and he could not wait to type it on his machine downstairs. He threw four more letters that formed the word TIHS and stuffed them in his right shirt pocket. He was on a roll. The spell was broken as he felt himself to be a full poet with two great words to his credit. He was smelling success already. No one would know of his scheme. They would see total creativity and interpret his micro-haiku in every direction, no different than what critics do all the time with modern paintings. At that precise moment Jerrold smelled something other than success, as black smoke was spilling upstairs from the trap door to the attic. When he tried to climb down, a wall of flame came up to meet him. The Omaha Fire Department later found that the fire started in the kitchen by the stove as they detected traces of alcohol sub products there with even more in the basement and in the bathroom. Had he set the house on fire? They knew about his mortgage problems. Other than his veteran status, what saved Jerrold from criminal pursuit was the fact that both his legs were amputated that same week. Trying to escape the fire through the attic window, Jerrold jumped forty feet to his concrete driveway, shattering both femurs into splinters. A nurse told someone that when they brought him in his hair was half burned away and the bandage on his fresh stump singed with melted Styrofoam. He was under treatment for over a year at the Veteran’s Hospital. His mind was at peace. No more mortgage payments, no more pains, and the tiny wood squares in his shirt pockets, seven on one side and four on the other. He would have his poetry career and all the good stuff that comes with literary success. Of course, the old wood house had burned to the ground. When his sister Lilly took him out of the Vet, he insisted on being downtown near where some vet buddies hanged around and sipped cheap Thunderbird from paper bags. He would try to change their patterns by the sheer force of his poetry. This is when Lilly called me in Santa Fe. Something was very wrong with Jerrold. I had to go there and see if I could help. After his release, Jerrold became a permanent fixture on the corner of Main and Melrose. Every morning Lilly, a waitress, single mom and once an aspiring writer herself, she had to push her brother’s wheelchair downtown otherwise he would scream and raise a riot in the small apartment building where they stayed. At least until the Veteran’s Administration could find him a permanent home. There he would laboriously pull the letters out of his pockets and lay them out on the plastic tray attached to the chair. After several long minutes the words SNEPPAH TIHS would appear, and he would then raise his head and relax with a sigh. It turns out that his other eye had gone bad after the loss of his left eye. A sequel of his exposure to flames, we were told. Lilly had put a jar in the tray with 2-3 dozen of yellow pencils to sell. Jerrold could in this way help with the rent. He was scary, wiggling three stumps to attract readers to his two-word poem, sometimes chanting those bizarre words as if to conjure the sale of a pencil. I saw all that and my heart just broke. I can certainly identify with writer’s block; in truth I too once dabbled in modern poetry. But I have all my limbs, my eyesight and my mortgage still. What I did then was not right for poetry. But the results were good for Jerrold and his sister. Let me just say that if you went to Main and Melrose in Omaha on a sunny day, you would see a man with a neatly cut goatee sitting in a shiny motorized wheelchair, holding in his only hand a few pencils. He is beaming in his sunglasses as citizen after citizen bend down to read two scrabble words glued to a tray on his lap. Literally all of them react the same way: they smile from ear to ear, sometimes mumble a few words of sympathy, then they stuff a one, a five or a twenty-dollar bills into our friend’s pocket. After they leave without taking a pencil, many turn back still smiling for a last look. At the end of the day, his flannel shirt has two huge breasts, hard from the stuffing down of all those bills with one happy finger. Gone is the VIETNAM VET NEEDS YOUR HELP sign crudely lettered by Lilly. As far as Jerrold is concerned, Vietnam never happened. He is now a recognized poet, appreciated and supported by his fellow men. In truth this man of letters now earns a good living, enough to send his sister on a cruise every year, twice to Greek islands. His mind is now too altered by anti-psychotic drugs for him to travel with her, but he makes enough money to give some away to his buddies with dry throats who take good care of him. Finally, at sixty, he is living of his art, his poetry. When I was asked to glue down those letters for him, I used a poetic license that some could view as an unethical breach of trust. It’s not that SNEPPAH TIHS didn’t sound right to me. It does have a little bit of a poetic aura to it. But when I was about to position the letters, I accidentally aligned them backwards, creating two different words that the reader will agree give so much more clarity and meaning to the whole affair. I changed for the better my friend's and hid sister Lilly’s fate. Bystanders after approaching that prosperous-looking triple amputee with a giant smile below dark shades, as they get closer now read what I set down with Crazy-Glue on his lap-held tray: SHIT HAPPENS Jai Poirier, Edited in May 2022 from a 2007 original.