Talk to Jay Passer on the Fictionville blog
Byron walks amidst the tangled gray windblown matter of the road. Vehicles pass with an oblivious quickness, spraying Byron with a fine sheen of dust and exhaust. Byron, representative of humanity’s tumbleweed population. He walks with nervous, convoluted diligence, occasionally hoisting filthy denims up scrawny legs, fingertwisting mottled beard into matted helixes, bright blue eyes darting from twirling sidewalk dustmotes to evasive pedestrian eyeflicks to blinking red brakelights of the subimports lined up at the nearby traffic intersection. Byron, a derelict Walt Whitman. Face smeared with the dredge of unconscious freeway underpass nightcrawling. Dreams, unremitting interruptions clotted in the pace of traffic. Byron dreaming of the history of all the luckless miscreants ever to walk earthly terrain. Byron scratches his wide crinkled leathery brow with sharp yellow nicotine fingertips. His is the world of World Wars, lightly summarized by Hollywood typecasts.
Mickey Rooney, you know, well he starred in many of the best old films, when ol' Liz Taylor was still in a training bra, you know, in National Velvet; well Mickey played her trainer. And did you know her mother in the very same film, Anne Revere, was the first woman to swim across the English Channel? That was in '44 I believe, the film that is, not when Anne Revere swam the Channel; I wouldn't know for certain quite when she accomplished that. Liz Taylor was just a kid back then but any damn fool could tell she was headed for bigger things, you know.
Meanwhile stroking grayblack beard, twisted into greasy dreadlocks, tilting head and creasing massive, dustcaked forehead with the upward tensions of his ashen bushy eyebrows. I sneak glances over his shoulder, trying to catch the score of the Sonics game on the TV. Hell, I don't want to talk to Byron.
Yuh-huh, I absently nod.
Yes sir, that Mickey Rooney sure was a talented man, quite a versatile actor when you come to think of it. I believe he played the messenger boy in The Human Comedy, that ol' Bill Saroyan film. He wasn't no Jimmy Stewart or nothing, not Mickey, enlisted in the Army Air Corp like Jimmy was, a Squadron Commander and Combat Wing Chief of Staff, no tough son-of-a-bitch you know, but who's to say that wasn't some bigshot movie producer's put-on anyhow? And to come home after fourteen bombardier missions, decorated and all, would you believe it, and a Distinguished Flying Cross in '44, to come home and star in that Capra film you know, It's a Wonderful Life, cast as a man who stayed behind, now that's almost unbelievable! No sir, Mr. Rooney sure as hell wasn't no Jimmy Stewart, not even a Clark Gable, who was a volunteer himself you know, and at the age of 42; but Mickey had class all the same, when you look at it.
Uh, uh-huh, I nod. Combined, Kemp and Payton have the game near wrapped up. The way G. P. finds the Reign Man on an over-the-rim alley-oop for a tomahawk jam, hellfire and damnation, it's a thing of beauty...
Now in the Human Comedy, Rooney played the messenger boy, and he had the worst job in town you know, bringing the bad news home to the unknowing widow and such, to the brothers and sisters. You won't see Bogart in that role, will you now? No sir, when Bogey was courting Miss Bacall...
Byron realizes, even from the deepest depths of his nostalgic reverie, that I am not exactly listening. Especially when Utah's suddenly making a last minute comeback, the Mailman and that parasitic John Stockton burning up the Supes on their classic interpretation of the pic-and roll, breaking down Seattle's defense and breaking my heart. My gaze, permanently shifted to the TV hovering above Byron's left shoulder...
I don't mean to ask, you know, but I'm a little short... Could you spare a buck or two?