The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Guitar Bob and I were sitting out with the dogs and couple of 6 strings, enjoying the last of what must be the warmest summer either of us have ever seen in our combined 70 plus years of living here in Pacific Northewest. The sun had set over the South End, traffic has slowed to a dribble, the hounds were lounging at our feet and a contemplative mood was descending on all four of us there on the porch while we played some blues and drank some beers.

Right before darkness settled in completely, the dogs set up a racket slightly out of rhythm with ours then raced to the fence on the highway to menace a passerby walking on the shoulder. Bob hauled the beasts back onto the porch and a voice floated across the summer lawn. “You mind if I play some guitar with you?”

I’d forgot Bob’s not partial to uninvited guests. Or even invited ones most of the time. So I mistakenly said, sure, c’mon in, the dogs won’t bite now that they’ve been fed. Bob hauled his guitar, his beer, his dogs all into the house and left me to play host. I gave the kid my guitar and he played something loud and a little troubling, but hey, music’s a universal language and he was doing the talking. My job was to listen.

He was, he explained when he’d finished his concerto, living down the road, trying to deal with ‘the auditory hallucinations’. He was a spiritual man, he blurted, but sometimes the spirits were intrusive. In the dark I couldn’t see his face or his expressions, just this voice explaining himself, his lack of work, loss of faith, those voices talking to him all the time. I asked if it helped to live down here all alone, end of an island, end of the world. He was thinking maybe he’d move back to the city. More work. More company.

After awhile I said it was nice talking with him, but I had to get on home. He got up and walked down the drive into a dark moonless night. Maybe voices were talking to him, I don’t know. I had the feeling they weren’t guiding him toward any light and I felt bad I wasn’t either. It can be a lonesome place, the South End, no worse maybe than other places, but when you lose your way down here, it can seem like a long ways back to the place you came from, the place you tried leaving in the first place….

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