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Sunday Journal

A bond of belief is reborn

By RON MATUS
Published August 7, 2005

Sometimes when we're out in the yard and the wind is tickling the pines, my 18-month-old son will tilt his face skyward and roar - a toddler roar, full of awe and wonder: Wooooooooooooooo!!!

Other times, he's just a silly goose.

A few weeks ago, while my wife was changing his diaper, he let out a rip-roarer and deadpanned, "Mo-no."

"Mo-no" is how my son says "lawn mower." My wife swears he paused for comedic effect, then cackled. I doubled over when she told me.

Every day, my roarin', pootin' joker of a son inspires me. When he plops down at 6 a.m. next to his giant Legos and demands, "Da-da play blocks, Da-da play blocks" - well, that's all it takes to lower my blood pressure by half and make me believe, again, that anything is possible.

It's nice, believing that again.

My son's name is Carter.

Carter Joseph.

The answering machine told us Joe died.

We returned from vacation to find a spotless apartment and 50 messages. People calling for Joe, asking what's up, inviting him to shows. As I listened, I saw a stack of crisp, $20 bills pinned to the message board. More than enough for rent and utilities.

Hmmm.

More messages. Listen, delete. Listen, delete.

Then Woody, a mutual friend who worked with us at the newsstand: "Where are you, Joe?"

Maybe Joe was late for his shift?

Next message from Woody: "Okay, I'm leaving. Hope you're okay."

More messages. More listen, delete. Then Woody again, from the following day: "Everything okay, Joe? Let me know."

Weird.

Then a voice I had never heard before.

"I'm trying to reach Joe's roommates," the voice says, sad and beat. Joe's sister.

More messages. Then the sister again.

"I'm sorry I have to tell you this way . . . Joe has passed away."

Somehow, in the next few minutes, we find out what happened. I can't remember who told us. I just remember slumping to the floor.

For most of a decade, part of me didn't get back up.

Joe and I worked for the school newspaper at FSU. We were housemates when he died.

Joe smoked too much, drank too much and maybe did other things too much. He liked chicory coffee and A Confederacy of Dunces. He liked Kurt Cobain and Otis Redding.

He was homeless once.

Before we got to know him, another friend and I dubbed him Possum Boy. His glasses were that thick, and he was hunched over from scoliosis - something we didn't know when we tossed out the stinger. Now I don't think of possums. I think of the bespectacled little girl in the Blind Melon video, the one in the bee costume who goes from outcast freak to life of the party.

Joe grew up in Panama City, inhaling paper-mill air, washing Waffle House dishes. I think his parents were divorced. I think his mother was oppressively religious. I think he had issues with his dad. Somehow, a writer emerged. Maybe, only a writer could emerge.

"It's like a compost heap," Joe informed us about his brain. "Who knows what will sprout?"

One night, Joe turned on the light in our kitchen to find a rat ravaging a bag of tortilla chips. In Joe's telling, the rat became Spike, and Spike had a greasy mohawk, and the mohawk wobbled like a rooster comb as Spike tore into his prey. Instead of scooting up the hot-water pipe like the other rats (our apartment was infested), Spike looked Joe up and down, shrugged his rat shoulders and resumed his plundering.

Even Joe's girlfriend was something else. I suppose it's unfair to begin a description of her this way, but the striking physical fact of the matter is, Kitty had one leg. Like Joe, she was eccentric and scary smart, a writer and an artist. She once put together an exhibit with the artificial legs she had outgrown; she called it "Leg-A-See." She died of cancer in 2001.

After Joe's funeral, Kitty told us she and Joe had talked about getting married.

What an amazing child they would have had.

Looking back, I can hear the air around Joe's head crackle. I think if I had paid closer attention, I would have smelled something burning.

When Joe was on, the rest of us surfed his brain waves.

He and two friends started a band, even though none of them could play a lick. But a couple months later, Nutty Buddy had 20 songs, including a punk-rock version of Everyday People. Joe sang and played bass.

Not long ago, I heard some of the earliest recordings by the Clash, the punks who became pop genius. The recordings are raw. Unbelievably bad. But they made me think of Nutty Buddy and what might have been.

Joe made his mark in other ways. On an impulse trip to Key West, he and I and another friend from the campus newspaper - the other friend and I were former reporters at that point - started ranting about student government. The usual gripes: How lame. How corrupt. Why doesn't somebody throw the bums out?

With Joe around, wacky ideas grew wings. Within weeks, we had formed a third party, and Joe had given us a rallying cry: "Take from the Greeks, give back to the Freaks!" We put together a platform, wrote a manifesto, lined up support. I never worked so hard on anything in my life. And in the fall, the FSU student senate had its first non-Greek majority in two decades.

Maybe it was coincidence: Less than a year after Joe's death, I'm working for The Man. I've quit graduate school. I've been booted from my band. A wisdom tooth is erupting and my sense is, it's growing into the side of my cheek.

I need health insurance.

Suddenly, being a reporter isn't a fun, college thing anymore. It's my job.

As the cop told me the details, I took notes on a piece of scrap paper.

TraveLodge . . . six pack Rolling Rock . . . six pack Bud . . . shotgun . . . pawn shop . . .

For nine years, I kept the notes neatly folded in my wallet. The crease was so well worn, the paper split in half. I still held on.

I last saw it in the Books-A-Million on S Dale Mabry Highway. Julie and I were there with Carter, then just a few months old and snuggled up in his car seat. I used to pull out the note now and then and reread it like some people do with their favorite Bible passages. Then I thought of Joe and wrote notes in my journal.

I know I put it back that last time, but it's gone.

The other day, as the outer bands of Hurricane Dennis soaked our neighborhood, I took Carter out to play. I intend to inoculate him from this bizarre, conventional notion that rain is icky, and since his mother wasn't around, we took full advantage of the puddles.

Carter splashed to his heart's content. And what else could I do but join him?

After being gone so long, Joe was there, too.

In name and in spirit.

- Ron Matus is an education reporter for the St. Petersburg Times. He can be reached at 727 893-8873 or matus@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 4, 2005, 12:44:05]