Uncle John and the Notebook

“It's mah lahf! Mah freedom!” my Uncle John yells as I pull up to the drop-off line at the junior high. I glance over at him. He’s wearing black-rimmed, coke-bottle glasses that give his small, creased eyes an owlish look. His short, stubby fingers are balled into a fist, and he is pumping the air in front of me to emphasize his life and his freedom. His tongue is tucked into the corner of his mouth and he is for sure mad. "I only asked you to straighten up your papers a little bit bud," I reply.

His rant started minutes before as I looked over and noticed papers, pens and business cards sliding from his lap onto the floor of the car, landing into a messy pile beside his overloaded olive-green backpack. Laid out studiously on his cross-legged lap is a clipboard, and there attached to it is a small, black notebook. John has meticulously drawn a gridwork of lines on the page he is open to, and in the boxes are written an unintelligible combination of numbers and letters.

“Bye, Skunky Unc,” says my youngest daughter, smiling down at him from the window. “See you tonight, mom,” and she turns to go. “Goo’bye Monkey Face!” John calls out cheerfully, then immediately turns back to me, continuing his fist shake.

“O.K., bud, O.K.,” I sigh and turn back to face the road and try to ignore the sound of the papers sliding around at his feet. He returns to his work, “his life, his freedom”. Every so often he glances up, staring out at the cars on the road, deep in concentration. He continues to record numbers and letters, and my thoughts drift back to what I need to get done in the next couple of hours. Get the skunk dressed, get myself dressed. I’ve got to get us both fed, make sure John has had his medication. Ask John to make the beds while I shower and get ready for work. Thankfully my job as church librarian allows for me to take John with me every day – where for the most part he does his paper “work” and finds time to rig the coke machine to get two to three Dr. Peppers with only the change for one, and where I try to concentrate on getting done the business of the library.

John’s currently wearing his favorite “uniform”, navy blue pants and navy blue shirt with a large black belt. On his feet are short, wide, thick-soled shoes and on his head a policeman’s cap. He has multiple badges pinned to his chest, and handcuffs at his waist. This will not do at the church, with so many violent episodes happening in churches we have talked to him a lot about why he can’t dress as a “police office” as he calls it. So far, we haven’t had the heart to argue with him that he’s not really an officer, and that his dressing as one can get him into trouble.

Taking John to work with me has worked so far, but just last week I happened to glance up and see him sitting at a conference table with his calendar, his notebooks and clipboard, and his adding machine. Smoke was slowly rolling up from his “calcul” as he calls it, where I guess he had been much too furiously pounding the keys. We had to cut our day short at that point, me tossing the adding machine into the bathroom sink after unplugging it. The last thing I need is for the library and church to go up in smoke.

Life was so much easier only a few months ago, when my mom was alive, and my husband was still working for the company he has worked for since college. John stayed with mom on the days I worked, and with my husband's career we didn't worry about money. With the pandemic, everything has changed. I worry all the time about losing my job because I haven't been able to find care for my uncle. I worry about losing our house because my husband can't find a job. He's been taking care of John a lot while I work, but today he has another interview.

It has become a little scary – so much so that our grief in losing my mom to Covid has become lost in our fear of not knowing how to take care of our family.

John continued to grumble loudly about his freedom, and the thing is – he’s right. John has Down Syndrome. He can’t read, he can’t write. He will be 70 years old next month, and most of his day is supervised by other people. First his own mom, later my mom, and now me – his niece and a woman 20 years younger than him. John’s life and John’s freedom are limited to the “work” he does in his notebooks, with his “calcul” as he calls it, and to an occasional Dr. Pepper and cheeseburger. These are the few things he has control of in his own life... So I ignore the pile of what I think of as trash around his feet, and I decide to make him smile by pulling into his favorite donut shop drive through. As I pull through and order, the women working smile and call out their hellos, mostly to John – not really to me. John smiles back saying “Toodle-loo honey, how ah you?” and then looks over at me and insists I pull up a little more so he can survey the street in front of us, so he can be at work. “Pull up even mo’ you ol’ hy-hena,” he says and glances back to the server, blowing her a kiss and wiggling his little stub fingers at her. We get our food, pay, and I start to pull out.

That’s when it happens. An older blue car squeals in front of us from the drive right next to ours, coming dangerously close to the front end of my car. It’s the last thing I need, I’m too far out into the street - distracted by my uncle fussing at me to pull up and what he may say next to his donut girlfriends. Thankfully the car misses us, swerving in an arc and continuing on down the street at a pace much faster than necessary.

“Eeyet!” John calls out to the driver, as even more of his notebooks spill out onto the floor. He writes furiously in his notebook, and says, “Can I say it just this one time?” I smile and begin to laugh. “Yeah, bud. I feel like saying it too.” John’s face screws up and he says angrily, “DAMN!” And we laugh, the tension of the morning broken.

We go to work, and the rest of our day is pretty uneventful. John does make about fifty trips to the bathroom, and a few to the coke machine, making me again concerned for my job. I try to talk to him again about staying put in my office, but it’s hard to explain to a man with disabilities that he can’t go to the bathroom when he needs or wants to.

Later in the evening we are finally home. My girls are working on homework, John is sitting at the table as he does every night, watching the news and writing in his notebooks, his new “calcul” clicking with the rhythm of his pudgy fingers at work.

He is particularly wound up about a local news story about a bank robbery that happened earlier in the morning, a “police office” had been shot but was in stable condition. The bank had been robbed. He’s calling out to me the details of the shooting and the robbery, and I’m heating up some water for pasta, glancing over at my daughter’s Spanish homework, and John is screaming to me,

“I TOL’ YOU! LOOK! It’s that EEYET! That ol’ HY-HENA!”

The screen is flashing the local Crimestopper’s number, with a reward of $20,000 for information leading to the capture of the assailants driving a 4-door blue sedan.

I look at John, and I look at the small, black notebook in his hand - his “life", his “freedom”. John is pointing to the combination of numbers and letters that he transcribes daily in his grid - his penmanship perfect in little blocks. I see very clearly the last one in particular, the ol' hy-hena who had pulled out in front of us.

John’s work is writing down the license plate number of every single car we pass on the road or park close to. He has done it for years, he does it daily. He orders me to pull closer at every stop light and in every parking lot, just for him to take down numbers. He is pointing at the last number he had written down, the license plate number of the blue car that almost hit us as we pulled from the donut shop.

The same blue car belonging to the same person who had robbed and almost killed an officer.

I pick up my cell and call the number, ready to give the license plate information for the “EEYET” who shot an officer.

In that moment, I realize with a smile that all of John’s numbers in his little black book have possibly earned him a place as a hero. His life and his freedom may have earned him a $20,000 reward.

I’m in shock, and I tell the story to the officer who has answered, and just like that, my Uncle John has has given important evidence that may help to solve a crime. The policeman on the other end of the line assures me that they will verify our information in order to catch the “bad guys”, and I know that after years of John's special work he may yet be rewarded for keeping a watchful eye, a reward that will be put to good use at a time in his life when he needs a little extra help.

I smile and begin to laugh. The tension of the past months begin to ease, and I know, reward or no reward, that everything will be alright. I whisper to John as the officer continues taking notes, “Bud, you were right. It was that ol’ hy-hena!”

John just smiles. “I tol’ you it was.”

The front door opens, and my husband walks in, a smile on his face. John jumps up and grabs his neck, giving him his typical choke-hold hug that he gives him every day. “Hey, you ol’ skunk!” John says to Dave. Dave looks over John’s shoulder and at me curiously, pointing at the phone. I can’t even begin to explain, still speaking and laughing with the officer.

Dave then says the words that make the day even better: “I got the job!”