The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Two Toke doesn’t talk much about his past. Hell, he never talks about his past. Some people are like that, the mizzus is, they just want to leave what came before back where it lies. Me, I’m the opposite, sort of the king of reminiscence. Not sure why but probably I just hate the thought of forgetting all those memories, the bad and the good. They’re what formed us so why not learn some lessons from them. Tom, though, you won’t get much of anything from him, not where he was born, not where he used to live before he came to the South End, not if he was ever married or had kids, none of that will you discover from him. And if you google him, Thomas Richardson, assuming that’s his real name, you’ll be wasting your time on dead ends, wrong ages, different addresses. The man is a cipher, at least the man before I knew him.

One fairly stoned night many years back when we first were getting to know each other, and trust me, Two Toke doesn’t let people know him, he slipped up and mentioned a night long ago on the Delta. “What Delta?” I asked and judging by the look on his face, realized I was definitely prying into something I had no business prying into. The Delta, it turned out, was Viet Nam. “Nam,” he said after a long pause. “You were in the War?” I asked and he made it clear it was nothing he cared to talk about. What I realized later, over the many years we’ve known each other, is there’s nothing he cares to talk about beyond maybe a few weeks earlier.

‘Be Here Now’ is pretty much a running punch line for us. Not that Tom is a child of the 60’s exactly. He lacks that burned out hippie ethos a few of us others down here have, cynical refugees from the culture wars of those days. Could be he was drafted and missed the cauldron of campus radicalism back then, marched off to war, witnessed horrors others were fortunate never to see, came back and left all that back in the jungle. When he exiled himself to the South End, he bought an old dilapidated cabin and a couple of acres of nettle fields down the road from me, worked part-time as a janitor in the elementary school in Stanwoodopolis, drank occasionally in the Hotel after work and that’s where we first met. I would see him at the bar, his ponytail poked out from under a battered Yankees ballcap, while I would be at a corner table, notebook and pen in hand with a pint at the ready for literary inspiration so that eventually he parked himself next to me and asked what in hell I was always scribbling at.

“You writing the great American Novel or what?”

I said, “Or what. Nothing much, just taking notes on the current state of affairs here in town. Mostly an excuse to drink.” If I was worried he might want to read what I was scribbling, I was happily mistaken. Instead we ended up talking about the current state of affairs. Not only in town, but the island, the state, the nation. Alcohol, the great uninhibiter.

We’ve known each other as friends and neighbors for 30 years come next year. That’s a long time to know someone and not know anything about their previous life. But I know Tom as well as anyone else does. And even I think it’s probably best to leave some mysteries.

It wasn’t more than a month ago we were quaffing a few at the Pilot House, me, Two Toke and a few others trying to find an excuse to stay another round without jeopardizing marriages. T.T. was mid-sip when he suddenly put his glass down and went, how does the expression go?, white as a sheet. A new arrival was at the bar talking to Jerry, the bartender, and they were both looking at our table. Or more precisely, looking at Tom before the newcomer nodded and started our way.

I hate to talk in cliches but when she said, “Hi, Dad,” you could have knocked me over with a sneeze. Tom half rose out of his chair and said, “Hey, Donna. Kind of a surprise….”

I know I should have gotten up, gotten scarce, left them to … whatever reunion was on tap, but I guess I was in shock. Tom certainly was. “Been a long time,” he mumbled before finally offering her a seat. “Donna, this is Skeeter, an old friend. Skeeter … well, this is my daughter, Donna.”

Neither of us managed much more than a muttered hi. Donna sat down. Tom sat back down himself. I stayed right where I was, stupid as a frog in water coming to a slow boil until T.T. asked her how she’d been and she answered “What the fuck do you care?”

“Hey listen,” I practically yelled, scrambling up, kicking back my chair, “I’m gonna leave you two to yourselves.” No nice to meet ya, no have a nice night, no adios, just left my half finished pint on the table, paid my tab with Jerry and hit the road.

A few days later I ran into Tom, guess where, the usual watering hole. “You doing all right?” I asked sheepishly when we’d hauled our glasses to a corner table. T.T. said sure, sorry for the …. He didn’t know quite how to characterize that father/daughter reunion. And, of course, I said, no problem.

“The past,” he said, shaking his head, “it has a way of sneaking up on you.”

If you think I got any more from him than that piece of profundity, well, you don’t know Tom.