a man walks
into a garden

matt ricke

January 2001

When I smoked pot for the very first time, my dad had just experienced several near heart attacks, my sub-lease was up at the end of the week, I had not found a new place, and I had recently confessed my perfect love to the girl of my dreams. She had recently confessed her perfect lack of interest in me. So I watched my friend Sean roll a joint.

I said, "I think I'm facing a nervous breakdown."

"No, Matt, you might be facing a life decision. A nervous breakdown is when you realize you have no more life decisions to make and you start building extra garages in your backyard." He lit the joint and I watched him smoke.

I said, "Just the same…"

"Jesus Christ, Mattie, what are you? Twelve years old?"

"No," I said. "I'm twenty."

He said, "Yeah, yeah. Just stop trying to carry the goddamn world on your shoulders." I took a sniff of the pot when he exhaled. Sean threw his head back as if to clear the hair from his eyes. I opened my mouth to ask if this was just an unbroken habit- a throwback to the days of the power haircut- but he beat me to the punch. He said, "When I was your age, I lived in a basement apartment in Salem and was stealing money from my boss to support my blossoming cocaine habit. Believe me, little Mary, things will work out just fine if you let them."

"Can I smoke pot?" I said. "I want to smoke pot, Sean."

"All right, honey, we'll smoke some pot together…"

"No. Let me smoke some of that pot now."

An hour later, I said- "I just had a metaphysical experience with my stubble."

"It won't be the last."

We bundled up and walked to Liqourworld to buy more cigarettes and beer.

I said, "I've already smoked a whole pack today."

I suddenly became aware of how much pain my lungs should have been in, and so I said, "My lungs hurt."

He said, "Yeah, yeah. Talk to yourself another ten minutes."

I said, "No, honestly, my lungs really hurt. I mean, they don't hurt. I'm scared. I know the pain is there, but I can't feel it."

For a few minutes, the snow drifted toward earth in absolute silence.

Finally, I said, "I know the pain is there, but I can't feel it."

I said, "Wow."

I said, "I'm not trying to be profound or anything."

He said, "Don't worry, you weren't."


January 2002

I set every alarm in the apartment the night before the funeral because I do not want to oversleep. For some reason, I am slightly afraid I will.

When I wake in the morning, I stumble into the kitchen, and in one fluid motion, turn on the coffee maker and light a cigarette.

Aaron is in town for the service. I can hear him composing rap lyrics while he lies on a futon that is slowly discharging its stuffing onto my lumpy brown carpet.
I cannot imagine today will be a good day.

And yet I cannot say that it feels like a bad one.

My head is still swimming in syrupy prose. I tried all night to write something heartfelt in Hallman's honor. I tried to think of poignant and touching things to say at the funeral. My mind, however, did not respond, and in the end I could not remember anything about him except the time he dyed his hair red and the selections from Annie I sang him until, beaten into submission by songs of tomorrow's sunshine, he dyed it back to brown.

I look at the notes I have scribbled on the back of an old electric bill I never paid.

Red hair and Annie songs.
The smells of the morning.
When he passed out under the bathroom sink.
When he told me he had actually joined the Army.
Hanging out with him three nights before he died.

Before the funeral, while everyone is milling around giving forlorn smiles away like they're unwanted kittens, people approach me and say, "God has a plan." They say, "God has let this happen for the good of his great design." They say, "Trust in God. He will help you through times such as this." I'd like to bitch-slap the soul from every mouth that opens, tearing their lips free of the surrounding flesh, but instead I just smile politely. And I tuck their words away.

At the church, I follow the military personnel towards the front pews. I do not try to look sad, it just so happens I naturally do. I am terrified that someone will call me out- that someone will call me the fake I might be- everyone's eyes on me as I fumble out a confession concerning my lack of appropriate tears or other grief-related actions.

And when I get up to speak, I try to walk to the podium because I am afraid I might need something to lean on. I stumble up the blood red steps, thinking of crucifixion, but the pastor tells me to step back down off the stage and use the microphone at the side of the sanctuary.

I read aloud a short passage from The Catcher in the Rye. It's the part when Holden needs to borrow some of Phoebe's Christmas dough, but instead, she gives him all the money she has. I do my best to make a weighty connection- Phoebe's charity and Hallman's generous spirit- I can certainly see the connection- but I'm not entirely convinced that anyone else is even listening.

Because he didn't read novels, opting for late night television programs and movies featuring the stars of those late night television programs, I once forced upon him a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Naturally, he lost it. The copy I grabbed to take to the funeral is inscribed- To Hallman: God Bless, Christmas 2000. P.S. Don't lose this one. I must have forgotten to mail it to him.

At the microphone, Jeremy, the second Hallman brother says only, "This isn't the way it was supposed to be."

After him, the pastor talks for a long time, telling us what a goof Hallman was; how that's really all he was- just a big goof. He has a face that exudes a certain type of smugness. His Smile says, "I am such a better person than you." And to top it off, even his humble preacher Eyes are saying, "Look at the fucking Smile, kid."

We sing an old hymn called, Turn Your Radio On. The hymn is about tuning into God's frequency so we don't miss him when he puts out a special bulletin. Then we sing the Hallelujah Chorus. Again, the pastor talks for a really long time. This time he talks about how these songs must really have been Hallman's all time favorites because he always requested them during Sunday night Singspirations.

And all I can think about is my high school English teacher and her musings on the literary onion of irony. And how my tone-deaf dead friend, Hallman, who apparently, on Sunday evenings, loved to hear the congregation stumbling through nine minutes of Handel. I smile, and for a moment, I actually believe myself to be watching the layers of the onion itself as they peel free and drop like wet petals to the sanctuary floor.


January 2001

At Sean's apartment, we sat Indian style and watched old black and white movies. He was sympathetic, and listened as I relived every concerning element of my knotty life- my father, the girl, the apartment.

He said, "I know how you feel."

And I said, "Do you? I mean, do you really?"

Here is what I know- as a boy, Sean was habitually beaten by his stepfather. He's been in rehab four times before, but this time, he says, he is holding out until Betty Ford makes him an offer that he simply can't refuse. In high school, he found his surrogate mother's body after she drowned herself in a bathtub.

He said, "My dad never had a heart attack, but I think I know what that might feel like."

He said, "Experience is all we have, Mattie."

He said, "Nobody really feels anything right away. If they do, they're lying. It takes a long time to understand what anything actually feels like."

He said, "All you know is that the pain is sitting there, like it just got released from the state penitentiary, and it's going to rape you. The first time you let whatever it is you're holding onto slip free of your hands."

I hugged Sean and walked toward the Porter Square subway station. It had been snowing lately, so I made up a game. The game was, I was only allowed to step in footprints that other people made. Before I started, however, I looked closely at the ground and realized this was a silly game. There were already so many footprints. This game would be too easy.

But no matter how hard I tried, I was always just barely stepping onto fresh snow. I had wanted to keep my feet dry. I had wanted to say inside the lines of others. I didn't want to tread new ground.


January 2002

We watch a video montage of photographs from Hallman's life. I am only in one, but just the same, I finally start to cry.

The last time I cried was the night before I left my friends in Boston to move back to Huntington. The last time before that was the night I left my friends in Huntington to move to Boston.

The coffin is much more heavy than I anticipate. It is also covered with an American flag that keeps slipping off. This makes it difficult to carry.

We bury Hallman just after noon. I watch the Hallman family and try to understand. They all look so weathered and stoic; like they are not at all surprised to be here this morning. I remember a soccer ball near Hallman's casket marked with the words, My first goal of the 1994-1995 season. Dedicated to my brother Ben. And then I remember little Ben's face- he died of a brain aneurysm when Hallman was fifteen.

When the soldiers fire the first round of the twenty-one-gun salute, we are all visibly shaken. We steal glances at each other. We try to feel solemn. We do feel solemn, but we also feel silly.

When the second round of shots is fired, I hear a voice break loudly. It is Tim, the oldest brother in the Hallman family. What I hear is not crying. It is something else entirely. It is something, I imagine, that compels God to cover his own Holy ears.

The pastor talks again. He tells us we are all invited back to the church to join the family for a potluck dinner. He says Hallman was an unusual guy, and this has been an unusual funeral, and he is sure Hallman would want us to celebrate the time we did share with him in an unusual way.

This is all I can find that is unusual- last week, Hallman and I shared a pitcher of cheap beer at O'Sullivan's. Today, I touched his forehead and it was ice.

I haven't stopped crying since the photomontage. The pastor has noticed and comes to inform me that if I trust in God, everything will work out just fine in the end. I leave the cemetery. Will work out just fine, says the pastor. I push my car to the maximum allowable speed limit, then I push it a little further.


I imagine God as an aspiring stand up comedian working the crowd in some seedy Cosmic nightclub. He's doing His best, but His hair won't stay down in the back, and the pockmarks from His acne are bothering Him immensely. There's a rather large woman sitting at the bar and her cellulite ridden legs are, quite frankly, rather distracting. God clears His throat to avoid an unpleasant crack in His voice, and He says, "So this guy named Adam walks into a garden…" But there he stops. He cannot remember the punch line. The audience, especially the large woman, stare in anticipation, and so He takes a deep breath in an effort to collect what's left of His composure.


During one such deep breath, a woman named Julie finds her husband in bed with a woman named Heather. Heather's children are playing together happily in the next room. In an act of anger, Julie forces Heather and the children to leave immediately.

During one such deep breath, Heather, in a drunken stupor, begins to drive north in the southbound lane of an interstate highway.

During one such deep breath, Heather drives her van directly into Hallman's little Volkswagen. They are both killed instantly.


January 2001

During one such deep breath, I stepped off the trolley and walked to my Boston apartment building. At my desk, I picked up the phone, as was my custom, to call a friend long distance and tell them just how wicked inebriated I was. I saw a note concerning Hallman's departure for the Army, and so I called him to wish him luck.

I pretended I was an elderly black father.

I said, "Don't look back son. You just walk away, you hear?"

I said, "Today is a different type of day altogether. I don't want you thinking on us. Today, you think on yourself.

I said, "Your future ain't here with your mother and I. You're a man now, so no looking back. You got to learn what it means, and how it means, to walk like a man that is in charge of his own bidness."

I said, "And for chrissakes, Hallman, try to have a little fun. But be careful not to catch anything that will cause embarrassing sensations during the workday."

I hung up, pulled out a notebook, and wrote-

The thing about Pot, is that you are completely aware of your pain,
physical and otherwise, and just how painful that pain is,
and yet- you cannot feel the pain at all.

I moved a few things around on my desk, including a copy of The Catcher in the Rye I'd bought for Hallman's Christmas gift. I never would remember to mail it.

I wrote again-

I am not trying to be profound.
That's really how I feel.
I know the pain is there, but I cannot feel it.

I knew I wasn't the first person to live through this type of moment. Yet for as much experience as I shared with others, I knew I was stepping onto a little ground all of my own.

Even if it was only a tiny little corner of my foot.

Even if I hadn't wanted to.

Even if I wouldn't understand it for along time.

I lit a cigarette and smoked again. I didn't feel a thing.


January 2002

Hallman has been in the ground for ten hours. I sit with Aaron on my couch watching old black and white movies.

I say, "My back hurts from carrying the casket." I light a cigarette and ask, "Am I a real bastard to feel like that?"

He says, "You might be," and takes a deep breath. "But that doesn't mean it isn't real."


During one such deep breath, God smiles at the fat lady, but she's no longer looking. He can feel sweat crawling down his back like determined ants on their way to an abandoned picnic. He says, "So, like I was saying, a man walks into a garden…." But by now, no one's paying attention at all. Someone clears her throat loudly in the front row. He squints at the bright stage lights, wishes everyone a good evening, and sets down the microphone. He puts on his coat and wanders toward the door, trying His best to ignore the voice of the host as she encourages Him to come back next week and try again.