Steve

My wife’s brother Steve lives in a scenic mountain town where people go on vacation. It’s a world-renowned destination for adventurous souls. People work their whole lives to be able to live there. Steve lives there. He’s part of a close-knit community mostly separate from the tourists who visit. He also has schizophrenia, but he’s on the miracle drug.

Janet and I live thirty minutes away to the north, but she keeps tabs on Steve and they spend a lot of time together. On special days she gets multiple calls from him, and by the end of the day I understand once more that he’s disabled. He’s a capable, athletic, loving, intelligent and understanding human being, not to mention hilarious, but his emotions are forever that of a youngster. The struggle to tie the pieces together is Steve’s life challenge.

I make time for Steve, but nothing like my incredible wife. Sometimes you see a mother whose child has a severe physical disability happily struggling to shuffle the kid into the car for a road trip. Janet has that same smile on her face as she browses the bargains in Steve's favorite thrift store. They are brother and sister and you feel the love whenever they meet. It’s a deep bond, and always has been after the loss of their mother to suicide when they were adolescents. It’s deeper now after Janet saved Steve’s life.

When she turned eighteen Janet grabbed all her worldly belongings and hightailed it north to the mountains. By the time she settled into her new surroundings her older brother had already been on the street for years. In and out of mental institutes, homeless, a vagabond, he wouldn’t stay put. He wasn’t a menace. He caused no harm. He just wandered. Janet did everything possible to help him when finally, after years of evaluations, they had a diagnosis. He was a paranoid schizophrenic.

According to Steve himself he wandered across the United States at least ten times. He’d call Janet when he needed help, and she would Western Union social security money to him wherever he was. Sometimes he would wander up to get direct help from her. She’d take him to the doctor or get his tooth pulled, but no matter how much she pleaded he wouldn’t stay.

Steve left home by the time Janet was thirteen. Later their father died from a long battle with alcoholism, smoking and cancer. Steve was Janet’s only remaining immediate family. She needed Steve more than ever, but the longer he was on the streets the more “wild” he became. He was close to death every time Janet laid eyes on him. She was desperate to help him and enacted more drastic measures. Enlisting services from the District Attorney she picked Steve up and placed him in a new progress house in town. She struggled to make him stay put. Then one day they gave him the miracle drug.

He finally stayed, and eventually got a job. Then he bought his own trailer; a beautiful Airstream, and surrounded it with lawn tattoos; multiple knick-knacks, stickers and statues, plants and animals. It’s a 70's pop-culture garden mimicking the tattoos that run up and down Steve’s arms. You can’t help but look around his yard with wonder. Like his early life and his tattoos, everything in Steve’s garden is a bug jumble.

Steve is my sons’ uncle and my wife’s brother and we face life’s obstacles together as a family. Not just obstacles, but life events too. Steve spends the night at our house and takes care of our animals. We take him on vacations and out to the hot springs. One day after work the three of us planned to soak at “The Fountain of Youth.” It’s an open-air, naturally flowing mineral hot spring, temperature regulated through an intricate PVC cooling and filtering system. A hydropower operator would have a tough time deciphering the contraption.

I was foolishly trying to multi-task that day. I don’t know why I try. I can’t whistle and spit at the same time. I had to buy a new chainsaw before we soaked, and I was running late. Janet, Steve and I were supposed to meet my brother and his wife at The Fountain of Youth. I was already flustered when Steve called. He needed something. “Can you help me put up a board and cut some branches before we go to the hot tubs?” he muttered.

“Yeah Steve.” I grumbled, “but not sure how long I’ll be at the hardware store. If I have time we’ll fit it in.” I was frustrated because I couldn't do two things at once, Janet planned to meet me at Steve’s, and I was pushing for time. I wanted to charge down the hill, but the thirty-minute drive is a speed trap. I begrudgingly locked the cruise on sixty-nine. Then my sister-in-law called to confirm The Fountain of Youth meet-up time and my phone died before I could say “Hi.” Incommunicado. All this stuff to do and people to meet. I tried to whistle and spit. No luck.

The truck was locked on cruise with a twenty-minute drive and no phone. I realized there was nothing more I could do. I exhaled and sat back. I remembered I was driving this beautiful scenic highway, and my gaze pulled left and right toward every vista. I dropped the cruise to sixty-five. The drive was memorable passing between three huge mountain ranges, but in Steve’s mind it’s “where his sister lives.”

I pulled up to Steve’s gate and ran to his door hoping to get my phone charged as quickly as possible. I don’t go inside Steve’s place. It’s like Gandalf walking into the Hobbits’ house. I handed over my phone and asked Steve to wall charge it while I was at the store. I was in a rush trying to do too much crap all at once and Steve felt the tension. He was eager to get me out of his sight. I sped off with a scowl.

What seemed really important to me that day was getting my chainsaw and making my deadlines. Gotta be here, gotta be there. No time for extra shit. When I came back from the store I jumped out of the truck and began yelling for Steve. I was like a spoiled brat demanding my toy. I practically ripped the partially charged phone out of his hand, and offered a lame shrug of appreciation. I switched it on and squinted at the upper right corner where the little battery symbol shows battery life: 44%.

There it was – my number: the number forty-four. It pops up a lot in my life, so much that I started using it to remember things. I gravitate towards forty-four for various reasons. One day I was at the grocery store and my card wouldn’t read in the card slider. I looked up and asked how much the damages were. “Forty-four dollars flat” the cashier said. “Forty-four flat, huh” I replied, trying not to get carried away.

I dumped out my pockets. Nothing. I opened my wallet and saw some bills – forty-four dollars flat; two twenties and four ones in the money pocket. Dumbfounded, I handed the cash over to the checker. I still have trouble calling it a coincidence. Why did it have to be my number? Why not ‘forty-one’ dollars flat and ‘forty-one’ dollars in my wallet, or twenty-three?

On this particular day, before arriving back at Steve’s, my own little stress world was in full swing. I pulled up to his pop-paradise, gathered in my phone and a sign showed up. I was gone exactly long enough for Steve to charge the phone to forty-four percent…but I had to get back to business, “What time is it?” I wondered. The phone read “4:44 pm.”

A proverbial hammer hit me in the head. Standing in Steve’s front yard while looking at my partially charged phone I realized that none of the self-imposed deadlines mattered. None of the schedules mattered. No agenda mattered. What mattered was that Steve had asked me for help and I was doing nothing but making his life harder.

I looked up from the phone. I looked slowly around the garden. If you nudged me, you’d knock me out of a trance. I was suddenly surrounded by Steve’s world and pop culture was going on. Oblivious to it before, I slowed down and began to appreciate the moment. Steve was facing me on the Airstream doorstep with that hopeful look of excitement.

I closed the gate with the Motorcycle Crossing sign, threw the chain link over the post, and walked through the garden. I pushed aside the canvas motor oil banner that hung from the awning above the porch. I squeezed through a small gap between a giant Goldwing Motorcycle and a rusted metal tool rack, sort of like a move you make in a narrow slot canyon. I nearly banged my head on some plastic bird thing with a plant hanging from a steel hook before I made it to his doorstep.

Steve wanted help cutting back some branches so he could put up a shade canopy. The bush had over-grown dangerously to the point of being a fire hazard. It was wrapped around pop culture and dry as a bone. I told him earlier I would bring my tools, but of course I completely forgot. When he showed me his shears they were perfect for the job, and instead of my usual hurried, sarcastic reaction I was much calmer, being in the moment and all.

The nut and bolt holding the blades together needed tightening at which point they’d be thrift-shop new. Little things like the nut and bolt give Steve trouble, but I know his real problem stems from a chemical imbalance. It can turn the smallest project into a scary nightmare. We worked productively together to tackle the bush and talked in detail about fire hazards making sure we pruned the whole thing.

After soaking we dropped Steve off at his trailer, but before we drove away Janet thought he had a funny look on his face. “What’s the matter Steve?” she yelled out. “I smell smoke,” he said. “Where do you smell smoke Steve?” Janet urged. “I don’t know. It could be the big fireplace back there.” Steve was fidgety and Janet went into action. She jumped out and saw smoke and flames in the trailer next door. We called 911, fire trucks arrived and a sure disaster was averted.

No doubt, while pruning his bush, the talk I had with Steve about fire danger was important. Had our talk not occurred you could say a different outcome was plausible. If it’s not on his mind, maybe Steve doesn’t smell smoke. I also like to think that my number had something to do with it; my own personal miracle drug that helps me make sense of this crazy world.

A few weeks later Steve asked me to come by again, so I made a pit stop. “You have skulls and bunnies in your garden, but no flamingos,” I laughed as I walked down the path. “That’s Florida!” Steve said. I waited for a minute outside his door by a Harley Davidson dinner plate sitting on a rusted furnace; a makeshift bird feeder. The hose that fed water to it was dry, but it’s a challenge to keep water flowing when you live at high altitude. The temperature can drop more than fifty degrees on any given day, or even forty-four degrees.

A rabbit molded from cement in the classic chocolate bunny shape sat near the feeder in the front yard looking toward the street. “Well if you have no flamingos Steve, then how is this a legitimate pop-culture garden? You have no flamingos, and no Bob’s Big Boy statues.”

“I have this,” he half giggled. I watched him squeeze past the hippy-bead curtains hanging in front of his door, twist left, then shuffle around the handlebars of the giant Goldwing he can’t ride because he doesn’t have insurance and it’s too heavy for him to handle anyway so he wants a Harley one day. He reached out with a plastic bag full of poker chips hanging off his fingers. He was on the lookout for them since I mentioned I’d like to have a set someday.

They were old compressed paperboard chips and probably of no value except they reminded both of us of the days when we found them in our fathers cigar boxes. The chips were soft and you wanted to bite one like Shoeshine Boy but worried about cracking your teeth. Then you’d lay it on your thumb, flick it in the air and catch it like you owned the day.

I thanked Steve for the poker chips and he urged me to say goodbye to things in his garden: his plant, Tiger, and his cat, Sprout. He was done with me for the time being. He didn’t want to wait around for Mr. Multi-Tasker to show up. What he did care about was the smile on my face, and he got a big one when I grabbed the chips, then he wanted me outta there.

I suppose if I’ve learned anything spending time with Steve it’s that I need to stop looking for signs and pay more attention to the important things right in front of me. The real miracles are right there. I know Steve wishes for the old days, those days before he started hearing voices.

He surrounds himself with memories and lives by himself in his pop-culture-plot, a space in a trailer park where his sister can visit every day and he feels kind of normal. Little does he know he’ll never be normal. He doesn’t have a normal bone in his body. His bones are nothing but happiness and love. He’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever known. Steve is, and has always been, remarkable.