How Do You Spell "Arriba?"

Insane,” thought Mike Stencil, “absolutely insane. There is no way you'd get me up there.”

Mike was watching a climber on a rock face somewhere near Mount Lemmon, Arizona. The climber was making good progress – stopping every now and again to shake out a limb, flex his fingers, catch his breath. The rock face was hot and dry, and it was being buffeted by winds to match. Mike was conscious of that weird sound that you sometimes hear when it is hot – kind of a high-pitched buzz, that seemed to be more inside of his head than outside. It was not the really cheap vodka from the night before, either. Damn that Preston – he was always selecting the “high quality” beverages for their climbing trips.

“Absolutely insane,” he thought again. He drew his glance from the distant climber back down to his own current situation – about forty feet up a relatively simple pitch about three hundred and fifty feet away from the other climber. Insane, it appears, is a relative term.

The buzz got louder, and Mike realized it was not inside his head after all – it was one of those insects, he decided. What do you call them? Cicadas? Crickets? “Whatever the hell they are, they're annoying,” he thought. He reached back into his chalk bag and grabbed a few fingers' worth. Grab a handful of jug, switch hands, repeat. Up we go. Crimper after crimper...fingers getting raw.

The buzz subsided for a minute and Mike thought back to a night in the Twin Cities, a meal shared with friends at a Mongolian restaurant – the rice, the undercooked egg, the undercooked pork. The several days spent on the toilet. He remembered how his limbs shook and the sweats that accompanied each rather eventful trip to the commode. A nice evening in Dinky Town turned into a gift that kept on giving.

His limbs shook - “sewing machine leg,” he and Preston called it. Sweat was pouring out of his brow and evaporating, it seemed, as soon as it broke the surface. To be honest, his bowels seemed a little loose as well. Hard to distinguish, he thought, between undercooked Mongolian and climbing with a hangover in high altitude. “Up we go, Michael,” shouted Preston from below, “andale, andale!”

“Piss off, Preston,” he shouted back, “don't rush me.”

“No pro-ble-mas, amigo.”

Mike hated it when Preston tried speaking Spanish – hated it and loved it. It was rather reassuring and made him feel pleased that at least his Spanish was a hair better, but Preston tended to sprinkle Spanish into the conversation at the most inappropriate times – especially when there were groups of Mexicans within earshot.

Mike took another breather and watched as the four Mexican climbers sauntered past on the trail down below. “Hola, amigos,” he heard Preston say to them as he casually belayed him without a care in the world. Mike just shook his head.

Another couple handfuls of chalk, a few more feet up the rock face. Mike made his way slowly but steadily until suddenly he began sweating like a thief in church ('not the same way his father used to use that idiom, by the way) – he felt something like a small rodent at the back of his tongue, a strange noise rumbled inside of him from the depths of his digestive tract, and he half expected to send a jet of liquid fecal matter down his leg. Surprise, Mike. Half a dozen really cheap vodka sours that had not made it very far through the metabolizing process, along with two power bars, a banana and three cups of instant coffee came roaring out of his stomach, burning his throat on the way. The multi-colored concoction cascaded down the rock face, and as Mike lost his grip and hollered “falling” through a mouth full of vomit, he heard Preston laugh like an idiot and he felt the rope go taut. Preston had him tightly belayed while he laughed and laughed and laughed like an idiot. “Muy malo, paisano,” he shouted up through his laughter.

“That's Italian, you ass,” Mike coughed back through chunks of banana.

Half a mountain away a climber looked down at a sick fool and his climbing partner who was laughing like an idiot.

“Insane,” he thought aloud, “absolutely insane.”

A Tale of Two Jerries

When Mike Stencil was still in college - well before anyone had ever dreamed of calling him "Father" and a long time before he ever met Jerry O"Brien - there came a winter of confusion and a winter of sadness and a winter of wild introspection.  A small airplane with his brother at the controls and a lot of December winds took them south from Salt Lake City to a coastal town in southern Mexico, where Mike was able to stay up late listening to music in a hotel bar, drink cerveza before noon, stroll through a sleepy little village, write poetry in the afternoons and wish that he had studied Spanish in High School.  The better part of a month was spent in a Mexican haze, looking at people in the streets from behind his sunglasses and growing the first real beard of his life.

A wild New Year's Eve in a club brought many, many beers and an invitation to go sailing the next day - from another Jerry, fancy that, a Jerry much better off than the one who would enter Mike's life many years later on some dirty streets in a city in Upstate.  This Jerry sailed the coast, plying the beautiful waters of the Pacific, drinking beers and giving day trips to Americans he met in exchange for more beers.  "Come around noon," he told Mike, "we'll have something to eat and drink."

A sunburned afternoon of sailing and drinking left Mike woozy and probably staring too much at the young lady from NYU who also happened to be along for the ride.  "I'm Jewish," she kept telling him, cheerily, in different contexts.

"As if I care," thought Mike.

The afternoon lolled along with the waves, and the beer flowed freely.  Captain Jerry steered his gorgeous boat back to the tiny harbor from which they had begun and after swinging at anchor while the last of the beers were finished off, the captain and passengers watched the sun dip low in the western sky.

Suddenly the young Jewish girl sprang up. "Let's go," she cried, grabbing Mike's hand.  She hit the water before Mike really knew what was happening, and like a fool he followed after.  The rush of cool water brought him to his senses, and when he hit the surface he looked up to see Jerry smiling and waving adios.

Mike looked around while he treaded water, and saw the Jewish girl backstroking away from him, smiling and laughing.  "Who the hell is she, and what am I doing in the water swimming after her?" he thought to himself.  Having nowhere else to go, he began lazily paddling toward her and toward the shore, some 150 yards off.

Streaks of orange and yellow sunlight played over the top of the water all around him, the sounds of the tiny harbor bouncing around the inside of his head that was woozy and already hurting from too much beer, and the smell of the salt water and the diesel of distant boats filtered into his nostrils.  "Beautiful," Mike thought.  "Absolutely beautiful."  It was then that he saw the shark.

No, there was no shark in the water - this story does not end with a shark attack and missing limbs.  It ends with a young Mike Stencil asleep in a lounge chair on the veranda of his hotel, hours after swimming to shore in the midst of a panic attack over a non-existent shark.  It was a shark that he saw in his mind's eye - a shark that bared its hideous teeth and sank them deep into his legs and violently thrashed him about from side to side.  It was a shark that he then saw go and attack the young Jewish girl and rend her limb from limb.  It was a shark that had been in his sub-conscious all his life, perhaps.  It was the same shark that would haunt him all his life - those dead, black eyes staring at him whenever he felt insecure, whenever he felt the grip of self-doubt and failure seize him.  The shark that would surface and make a deadly bee-line for him whenever he was at his lowest - it would play upon all his fears and upon all of his insecurities.  Those sharks can be real bastards, and they don't care who they eat...who they dismember...who they leave washed up on life's beach.

Mike Stencil awoke with a pounding headache.  It was Sunday and church bells were ringing.  Fresh clothes and fried bread and a walk and some Kerouac read in the open air of the village square made him feel human again.  He swam no more for the rest of his time in sunny old Mexico.

Pick Your Mulch Piles Well

The first time Father Stencil ran into Jerry O'Brien he nearly ran into Jerry O'Brien - quite literally.  Father Stencil ambled out of his rectory one brisk fall morning in a dirty urban landscape in Upstate (do you capitalize "Upstate," Father Stencil always wondered, when you are referring to upstate New York simply as "Upstate?"  He tended to do this.), and he spotted the crumpled woolen and denim pile on the sidewalk, filthy golden tresses of unkempt hair cascading out of a sweater and onto the pavement.  He walked up to the face-down body, bent over and tried to discern if there were any signs of life.

"You ain't gonna' bless me, are you?" creaked Jerry O'Brien through a pasty mouth, opening one crusty eye at the middle-aged priest.

"Only if you want me to," replied Father Stencil.

"Naah.  I'm OK," said Jerry, "I'm OK." He closed his eye, exhaled a long breath and stretched a little bit.

Father Stencil walked away, amused and saddened and puzzled and cold.  The months ahead brought many meetings between Jerry and Father Stencil, none more memorable, perhaps, than the afternoon when Father Stencil exited the church into the back alley, only to find Jerry O'Brien defecating in the large mulch pile the sexton had just had delivered for the church gardens.

"Jerry O'Brien, you stop crapping in my mulch pile!!" cried the priest, red in the face and shaking his fist.

"Sorry Father...when a man's gotta' go..." came the reply from Jerry O'Brien, fumbling with his trousers and trying to pick bits of mulch out of his tighty-whities.  At least it appeared to be mulch he was picking out.

The wind on that spring day was not nearly as cold as the wind on the autumn day when the two had met, but prayers and a blessing were every bit as much needed on the former as on the latter.  A middle-aged priest realized that when a man has got to go, he has go to go.  A middle-aged vagrant realized that some mulch piles are not as well concealed as they appear.  Life is like that.