Settling Old Scores: BWWM Second Chance Romance (8 page)

Kevin
was left with the impression that the cops didn't work too hard on
any crimes that were committed. Instead, they were focusing on a big
PR campaign to not look like the racists they were. There was a push
put on to hire "community service" officers; not cops any
more. Those cops would of course include more people of color. It was
all the standard stuff the rest of the country did at the time; no
novel solutions there. No mention was made of the missing Sylvia
either. Kevin instinctively knew that someone could have literally
gotten away with murder during those nights of looting and burning.

It
was very depressing to read about the events, eleven years after the
fact. All the rhetoric had translated into nothing. White flight had
occurred. The police had integrated somewhat reluctantly. Some of the
worst projects were torn down. Commerce in the old neighborhood,
except the illegal kind had disappeared. At least in the South, they
are out in the open with their discrimination. Here, they cloak it in
a code that guarantees nothing will get better while giving the
appearance of being open minded, Kevin thought.

Since
he was taking a class on the subject, Kevin tended to put some of
what he saw in contrast to what he had seen in South America. For one
thing, they were more Catholic than Protestant in their outlook. More
inclusive than exclusive was perhaps a better way to put it. The only
place Kevin knew of that had significant mixing in the states was
down around New Orleans. There, they had the Creole culture.
Interestingly, the Jesuits had a big influence there too. To this
day, they have parishes, not counties. They looked at the mixing of
the races differently. Everyone was mixed in places like Brazil. They
were way ahead of the United States as far as integration was
concerned. They looked at labor, and unions differently too. They
revered education and learning more, and Capitalism less. Octavio Paz
knew what he was talking about, Kevin thought.

His
musing and reading morphed into browsing some of the local socialist
newspapers. They tended to see the riot as a class struggle. Fair
enough, Kevin thought. Everyone has a viewpoint and a lens they look
through. It caught his eye that one of the authors of one of the
articles referenced a Clarence Washington some years before. Plenty
of people named Washington he thought. But he did make a little note
to himself to see if he could find out who Clarence Washington was.

The
other item on Kevin's list was seeing if he could help Matt T. He
easily determined that he could get help for Matt at the local VA. He
went looking for Matt one morning downtown where Pat had seen him. It
took all of a couple of minutes to find him. This morning Matt was
out of it. He must have drank most of the night. His head lolled, and
he couldn't focus his eyes. He didn't seem to know Kevin when he
tried to talk to him. He reeked of urine and vomit.

All
Kevin could do was hail the police over when he saw them go by in a
squad car. They tried to talk to Matt but found him incapable of
reasoning or speech. They loaded him up and took him to the tank to
sober up. One cop was on a first name basis with Matt. Kevin thought
he would wait a day or two and come looking for him again.

As
he came back to his apartment, Kevin heard music coming from inside.
He stopped to listen, Pat was in there practicing. She was playing a
violin version of Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, Op 34, No. 14. In Kevin's
opinion, it was one of prettiest and most haunting pieces of music
ever written. The Irish, like the Russians, seemed to go for that
haunting sad brand of masochism the piece showcased. Kevin listened
to her play it over and over several times, before he came out of his
reverie and into the apartment. Pat gave him a big smile and kept
practicing. Kevin watched her play the violin. She closed her eyes
when she played, retreated to some inner place. Her hands were
delicate. Her movements were quiet, precise and rhythmic. There was a
sexiness to her that drew Kevin in.

When
she finished, she opened her eyes and saw him watching her. "What
do you think?" she asked.

"You
do the music justice. I own a Itzhak Perlman version of this, a piano
version, and a
Anna
Moffo
operatic
version. So I should know," he said.

“
Eric
Carmen
got
himself in trouble over Rachmaninoff. I suppose your favorite
Eric
Carmen
is
Please
Go All the Way
."
Pat said just to dig some more at Kevin.

Pat
then said with a smug look, "Speaking of going all the way, I
saw your old girlfriend Brenda on the bus today. She just had her
third child. She looks like a cow these days."

"My
dad used to tell me that if you want to know what the girl will look
like as she ages you have to look at her mother. I did see her mother
back then, so I ain't surprised. In her day, Brenda was more than I
could handle. So, I am sure you are udderly right," Kevin said
while smirking and making a cow milking gesture with his hands.

"Your
hands weren't big enough to handle her! So what do you think I will
look like as I age?” she said as she provocatively struck a
sexy pose.

"I
haven't seen your mom in a long time, but I suspect you and her will
both weather pretty well. She was always pretty hot. Jealousy doesn't
become you by the way," Kevin said, digging back.

"Jealousy,
me? Bullshit, you are udderly wrong!" she said, making her
version of milking back at Kevin with disgust.

"Will
you help me on Saturday to move some boxes up here from my house? I
have some of them packed, mostly music and books. It will be a
perfect opportunity for you to check out your daughter/mom theory of
looks. I don't know why, but mom has no problems with me sleeping
here on occasion. She always made some kind of exception for you.
Maybe she just knows how clueless you are about women," she said
digging back at Kevin again.

"I
would be glad to do that. In some ways, it would be good for me to
revisit your place. Today is Wednesday. Will you stay here Friday, or
should I just come up there Saturday morning?" Kevin asked. It
worked out that Kevin was to meet her up there Saturday morning.

Then,
Kevin told Pat he had been at the library reading the old clippings,
and was rather fascinated by all the different viewpoints that were
offered at the time. He told her about the Octavio Paz book too. She
wanted to read it. He made his copy available to her.

Kevin
continued on, "I would love to be able to read this one in
Spanish. English largely lacks the subjunctive mood compared to
Spanish. In music would this parallel counterpoint? It's not about
what you hear so much as what you feel. The other thing is that they
are inclusive, not exclusive down there."

Kevin
droned on, "They never went the separate route at all.
Consequently, separate but equal never happened either. In America,
we separated the Indians out and excluded them. We did the same with
the slaves. The Jesuits, converted the native population, and
intermarried with the natives, though they still enslaved them. It's
no wonder I'm cynical about religion. They did take diversity way
farther, way faster than we did, though. Even now, the Norwegians,
Swedes, and Germans up here would rather pay minorities off with
generous AFDC benefits, rather than hire them. They won't hire the
men, especially to do shit though." Then, he laughingly told her
the "On our plantation story".

"Jesus
Christ Kevin, do you know what you’re saying? Last time I
looked, you were white, for Christ sakes! As far as AFDC goes,
remember that I am the product of that system, and I am extremely
fortunate for the generosity you fail to appreciate." Pat
started to say something about diversity, and stopped herself.
"That's what I mean about not knowing you sometimes."

Then
Kevin decided he better change subjects. He told her about seeing
Matt T again. He told her he was going to go find him again tomorrow.
Sooner or later, he would catch him relatively sober. Then he could
at least have a conversation with him about things.

Pat
circled her arms around Kevin, gave him a gentle kiss, looked him in
the eye, and said, "One thing about you is that you are
relentless once you get committed."

Kevin
replied, "I do have a global theory about that too. Want to hear
it?”

"Sure,
let me hear it. Maybe, I can understand you better if I listen more
and talk less," said Pat.

15.
The Terrier

Kevin
started out, “I am not insanely proud about being Irish. It’s
another accident of birth, and everyone has to be something. My
ancestors were Celtic slaves brought to County Cork in southern
Ireland from God knows where. The Romans brought them there, gave
them some sheep and put them to work. They came back on a regular
basis for wool, and hides. They beat the shit out of them and
generally intimidated them enough to keep them in fear for their
lives. The herders quickly learned that being obsessive about your
sheep paid big dividends.

"The
rewards come in terms of your sheep success. In the sheep herding
business, attention to detail results in healthy sheep, low
mortality, high birth rates, and happier slave masters. The masters
are not prone to praise. Slave masters never reward you for your
efforts; they just don't beat you as much. It's that old negative
motivation that most of history is steeped in. These Celtic
transplants even bred dogs that were obsessive. Think about it:
Border Collies and all herding breeds are bred to the point of being
borderline mentally ill."

"The
Irish were so goofy that they bred and cherished excessive dogs that
also had an attitude. They called them terriers. When you get to the
point where you are breeding obsessive dogs with an attitude, then
you are Irish. The obsessive gene definitely became dominant with
these people. Being that way is great for things like herding; it's a
disaster for growing potatoes in a potato famine. You end up with
that classic definition of insanity. You keep doing the same thing
repeatedly and expect a different result."

"The
upshot of all this was that my ancestors were forced to come to
America. They retained the gene, which still works great for some
things, but not for others. The Industrial Revolution started in
England but was powered to a large extent by people with obsessive
dominant genes. Put those people on a production line and they go
crazy. When they came to America, it was the same thing. Now, there
are more Irish people in America than there are in Ireland."

"The
world had never seen the production rates we achieved in World War
II. I'm not saying the Irish did it; I am saying the obsessive did
it. During World War II, we built a Merchant Fleet so huge that
nothing in the history of the world could even come close to matching
it. I still sail on those ships. Places like the California shipyard
in Los Angeles were turning out a liberty ship a day. It's something
the rest of the world could never match; and something to marvel at."

Kevin
concluded, "We literally produced everything faster than it
could be sunk, shot down, or blown up. That was the logistics that
won the war. The Merchant Marine had higher per person losses than
any other branch of the service. These guys would get a ship
torpedoed out from under them. If they lived, they would go sign onto
another one. They delivered no matter what. I always liked the war
propaganda film
Action
in the North Atlantic
,
featuring Humphrey Bogart, and Alan Hale, Gilligan's dad. Talk about
a strong resemblence even down to the voice prints."

"The
rest of me is French, that's the lover part," Kevin said with a
smirk.

"You’re
not going to start waving the flag now are you?" she asked
smiling.

"No
flag waving for me. Remember that obsessive people are mostly
iterative thinkers. They go back to the same problem time and time
again and keep tweaking it. They may get creative occasionally and
borrow an idea from somewhere else and adapt it to another genre, so
to speak. Most of the history of invention is about that sort of
thing because most people operate at that level," Kevin said.

"The
really sharp people are ahead of things by several steps all the
time. That would be the people that work at your level. You are in
that grand master category that doesn't even let yourself get put in
certain situations to begin with because you're ahead of the game and
not reacting to it. Another example of the strength you get from
diversity is the strength you get from the two kinds of intelligence.
Take someone like Matt. He probably was descended from some reindeer
herding and milking slaves in Finland. Think you had to be obsessive
to survive in that climate?” Kevin asked.