When it was overcast in Los Angeles, it sometimes came as a welcome respite from the dreary monotony of sunshine and stable temperatures. Freddy described it in this way: “God decided to be original today.”

It was for this very reason – originality – that depthless low clouds frightened and confused the mass subconsciousness of those who wielded any kind of power in the California fairytale – it meant they had no originality of their own. Anything new or different or beyond their comprehension frightened them, some more than others of course.

But the source of their terror was always consistent – the other, the unqualified. There were (and are) no real artists in Los Angeles, only artists’ reps. And Freddy had at long last begun to understand the universality of old Tommy S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”. He was in it, and he’d sold his soul long ago. He’d cut it up in his own abatoire and practically gave it away from free. And what had he now? But for his memory, which he knew would someday fail, and his health, which he never fully had and what he did have was dwindling with the years.

He’d discovered a 24/7 hair salon four doors down from his 24/7 donut shop. And at 3AM on a Friday morning, he found himself walking to the salon to have his head shaved clean.

He didn’t know why. No one knew why.

The first and previous occasion that Freddy had radically altered his lid was at the age of seventeen. He was living with his mother on the eighth floor of an apartment building (they would live there for a year before moving to the cheaper building beside it). It was three in the morning and Freddy had been tossing and turning for five hours, unable to sleep, without reason.

Everytime he closed his eyes, his brain would go into third eye overdrive. Images and memories flashed at him, something he heard that day, someone he saw, something he smelled, a haunting valve that would not turn off. It confounded him until, at 3AM, drastic measures were needed.

He rose out of bed, stumbled to his bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. “What’s your problem?” he asked his equally-frustrated reflection. “Why can’t you go to sleep?” he pleaded.

He turned on the hot water and cupped his hands beneath the faucet. Lukewarm, warm, warmer, hot; he bent over and splashed the water in his face, hoping its liquid heat would calm his nerves. He wiped his hands over his face and ran his fingers through the dark brown mop on top of his head. He grabbed the strands and yanked at them with frustrated intensity. And somehow, for some reason that only a wise man would know, that seemed to provide Freddy with an answer.

If he cut his hair, he could get to sleep.

It made absolutely no sense – what one had to do with the other, Freddy did not know. He only knew that he had to try.

He grabbed a pair of scissors from the top left drawer of the small desk in his bedroom. He stood facing the three-sided mirror in his bathroom; he looked at each of his reflections and asked them, “Are you gonna stop me? Are you? What about you? I defy any of you to stop me.”

But none of his reflections could stop him from methodically cutting off lock after lock of his rich beautiful hair, his only true vanity, his hair, the first love-hate relationship he ever had, his flowing uncontrollable hair. Cut, snipped, chopped, hacked, beheaded like royals in 18th Century France, with extreme prejudice. He didn’t know what it was, disguised in self-destruction.

In ten minutes, he was done with it; he brushed the remnants off the counter top, into the sink and sent them packing down the drain with a splash of lukewarm, warm, warmer, hot. He turned off the light and returned to his bed. He then very promptly drifted into the ether he’d so been craving.

Freddy woke up five hours later and prepared for school, not noticing the clumps and clippings of hair that were laid to rest upon his pillow. He went into the kitchen where his mother was pouring herself a cup of freshly-brewed coffee. She took one look at Freddy and, aghast, screamed and spilled her mug of joe on the floor.

“What the hell have you done to yourself?!”

“Oh I cut my hair,” Freddy replied plainly.

“When?!”

“Around three this morning.”

“Why?!”

“I couldn’t get to sleep.”

“And you thought chopping your head to shreds would help?!”

“It worked.”

“You look like you’ve been to a cancer ward!”

She was right. He did look like he’d been to a cancer ward. He’d never cut hair before, let alone his own. There were wildly different lengths atop his head, clumps and chunks missing, too short here, too long there. As the old self-effacing saying goes, he looked like he’d gotten into a fight with a lawnmower and the lawnmower had won.

“Whatever. I don’t care,” he told his mother, “I’m gonna be late for school.”

“You’re not going to school like that. Come here,” she instructed him, setting up Freddy’s old childhood high chair for the ceremony. “Sit down, I’m going to try to make you look presentable.”

She did the best she could to give his hair a more common length. There were still four or five large craters in his fallicle topography but the salvage effort was relatively successful. Rodin could not have sculpted the damage better.

Freddy went through his morning classes to the snickers of teenagers who knew no subtlety. But then, neither did Freddy by the looks of things. He stood out like chum stains on a wedding dress (don’t ever get married on a fishing boat).

Some of the “popular kids”, in all their glorious weakness, teased him about having cancer. “And what if I do?!” Freddy sniped back at them. Dumbfounded and skeptical, they had no answers. Even one of his teachers asked him if he had cancer. “No, I don’t have cancer,” he replied, flabbergasted at the teacher’s tactless stupidity. He had only wanted to get to sleep and couldn’t understand or condone the curious attention he was receiving as a result.

By lunchtime, someone had scrawled in black marker on Freddy’s light orange locker, “Keemo!”

The bourgeois insolence!

The unmitigated gall!

The poor grammar!

“It’s spelt C-H-E-M-O, you fucking morons!” Freddy yelled down the crowded hallway and echoed throughout the school. “Learn to spell!!!”

He was maverick at the worst of times.

Freddy had a dream that woke him at 5:30 in the morning. He was in a restroom – the type you would find in a restaurant or small office – a shitter against one wall, a urinal against another, a sink against a third, no stall or dividers, one door.

Freddy (or “Dream Freddy”) was sitting on the toilet having finished his business a moment before. He noticed that the door was slightly ajar; not the best scenario in which to begin a dream.

Of course, as soon as Dream Freddy realized the door was open a sliver, it opened wide and another man entered the restroom. He was tall, perhaps 6’4″, thin, black shirt, black pants, black suit jacket, middle-aged and entirely rude. His entry caught Dream Freddy by surprise.

“Uh, occupied,” Dream Freddy said. But the stranger ignored him, went to the urinal and started to take a piss. “Excuse me!” exclaimed Dream Freddy sitting on the pot, “Occupied!”

The stranger ignored him and continued pissing, his back to the dreamer. Dream Freddy got to his feet, pulled up his pants, flushed. Noticing that the stranger was finishing his business at the urinal, Dream Freddy quickly moved to the sink, hoping to cut the jerk off, force him to atleast wait for the splash of water that would clean his hands.

Dream Freddy turned on the cold water and had his hands under the stream but for a moment before he was shoved aside by the stranger. He was stunned – what had he ever done to this stranger? Was the guy paid to be an asshole? Whose payroll was he on? And what had Freddy ever done to warrant such insult?

The stranger finished washing up as Dream Freddy stood there flabbergasted, then he stepped out as unaware of the first occupant as he’d been stepping in. “Excuse me?” Dream Freddy said as the man exited. The door closed behind him.

“What the fuck?”

And a little voice inside Dream Freddy’s head which was inside sleeping Freddy’s head said, “What are you gonna do about it, boy?” Like a slavemaster or white-hooded motherfucker telling a black man, “I defy you to defy me, nigger!” Like a gob of spit landing in the eye of his spirit. A castration of the authority of oneself. The non-existence of the self. That’s how it felt to Dream Freddy. “Fuck it,” he said and didn’t bother washing his hands. He went after the dream stranger.

As soon as he went through the doorway, he was in a wide open office area, like a bank or library. Without money or books. He was in a university or college of some sort. Cheap mustard-hued industrial carpet, desks and chairs and small filing cabinets scattered geometrically around the vast room. Not a computer or modern office device to be found; no dividers, no interior walls; he’d stepped into the past (or a severely underfunded institution).

Clerks and administrators sitting at their desks sifting through papers that had no meaning, typing words without thought on old oversized Olympic typewriters, transcribing, affixing, posting, wasting their most valuable resource – time to live.

Dream Freddy spotted the stranger making his way through the nostalgic maze of vintage office furniture to the glass doors (reinforced with wire mesh) which led outside.

Dream Freddy turned to a clerk, a pasty white woman in a frilly white blouse with gray hair dyed far too blond for someone of her pallor. A large pair of glasses rested upon the bridge of her nose, their cheap faux-gold chain slung around her neck. Her eyes never left the original copy of whatever it was she was transcribing; her fingers never left the keys – she was a “A-S-D-F-J-K-L-colon” girl all the way. She typed away, something so unimportant that she forgot each word as soon as it had been typed. Sentences meant nothing to her, paragraphs even less. Her life was measured in words per minute. And every word was an average of five letters.

Dream Freddy broke into her world, “Excuse me?”

She stopped; her wrinkled face, plastered with foundation and blush, looked up at him.

“Do you know that gentleman?” he asked her, pointing at the stranger. She shook her head. “I was going to the toilet and he walked in, refused to leave and shoved me away from the sink.” Dream Freddy still could not believe the unmitigated gall.

“What do you want me to do about it?” the old crag asked.

And the little voice in Dream Freddy’s head spoke once again: “What?! What do I want you to ‘do’?! Holy fuck, lady! Does anyone here know what good manners are?! Keep taking orders, bitch! Have a blind/bland life!”

Dream Freddy followed the stranger, pursued him, moving swiftly through the mindless quagmire of typists and obedience.

Then he was outside in the open air. Dream Freddy was walking along a wide concrete corridor adjacent to another building on campus. The building’s shaded glass windows concealed the activities within. On the other side of the corridor that ran the length of the building was a grassy slope with flowers and shrubs, an occasional set of perhaps ten steps which led down to an even wider pedestrian walkway of interlocking brick. An iron railing prevented anyone from trodding upon the grass, flowers and shrubs. Hundreds of students were coming and going or socializing in small groups, eager faces, happy voices, graded.

Dream Freddy followed the stranger, ten feet behind.

“Hey asshole! Hey fucko!” he taunted the stranger. A few students glanced at him – presumably those which had been called assholes and fuckos before.

The stranger kept walking.

“Hey cocksucker, didn’t anybody teach you it’s rude to intrude on someone in the crapper?!” The stranger’s head perked a little – as it occurred to him he might be the one being addressed. “Yeah that’s right, I’m talking to you, fuckface.”

The stranger stopped and turned. Some of the students turned their heads too; most kept moving though. Dream Freddy approached the stranger.

“Are you going to apologize or are you a complete asshole?” The stranger did not respond. He stood there with a small fire kindling in his eyes – a bully or a coward. The same shallow face of the high school senior who had shoved Freddy in the ninth grade, saying “Get outta my way, weasel,” for no other reason than the illusion of superiority. It had taken Freddy another fifteen years to have this dream, a decade-and-a-half of having to put up with these undeveloped problem children, these pathetic creatures buried to their noses in self-pity and delusions of otherness. Poor sods all.

“Are you listening to me, motherfucker?” Dream Freddy asked the stranger, every slur and curse another broken link in a chain. Students moved past them, unconcerned with their argument.

“Are you fucking deaf?! You fuck! I was using the restroom, fucknuts. You come in, you take a piss, you shove me away from the sink and you leave. Are you some kind of fucking moron?!”

The stranger didn’t say anything; he turned and started to walk away.

“Where d’you think you’re going? Hey!”

The stranger continued to walk away, as if Dream Freddy had merely been a dying mosquito buzzing around inside his dew-moistened tent.

“Hey!!!” yelled Dream Freddy, pushing the stranger hard from behind. The stranger stumbled forward a few steps then turned to face his attacker and finally spoke, “Don’t push me.”

“Don’t push you?… Don’t push you?!… Don’t!… Push!… You?!!”

Almost all the students in the corridor had heard him. He had everyone’s attention. But all Dream Freddy saw was this son of a bitch standing in front of him with his fists clenched and ready; his voice silent with power. Goliath.

“Fuck you!” screamed Dream Freddy in absolute rage as his right foot swung up quickly and he fucking hoofed the bastard hard in the gonads.

Whoomp! Time stood still as every student and pedestrian in the plaza who had stopped and watched could hear the sound and feel the force reverberate in their own sex organs. When the stranger crumpled to the concrete, a little part of everyone went down with him.

But even as he lay on the ground in what must have been complete and utter pain, the stranger still managed to conceal any emotion; he was that ignorant. A few students came to his aid; they said nothing to Dream Freddy who stood there wishing the stranger would rise to take a second kick in the nuts, and a third, a fourth, a fifth.

But the stranger did not stand. He had a look on his face that seemed to ask the question, “What am I doing here on the ground?” Pretty much everyone else in the plaza continued on, going about their business, off to lessons, off to learn only those things which can be taught, not those things that must be experienced.

And Freddy, the real Freddy, slowly floated up to the surface of the world, opened his eyes, stilled shrink-wrapped in crusty salt, and saw the dull blue Los Angelean pre-dawn light coming in through a window.

He looked at the clock, jerked off, took a shower, brushed his teeth and walked to the donut shop for a coffee. 6AM and he felt wonderful, magnificent, alive, and most of all, polite.

Cities are very much like the universe. Someone pitches a tent with a big bang, then another beside, and more until there is a camp; the construction rolls out in all directions on the compass, like ripples in the water after the stone was dropped. The tents become shacks and cabins, mud to log to stone to brick to steel; some dilapidate like stars imploding their masses, evacuated of the life that once sprang from the gaseous innards.

When the forebearers emigrated from their inner city haunts, from their ramshackle flats and condensed milk-fed lifestyles, they took to the outskirts of the city, their dreams and resorts. Broad clean streats, smooth as silk under the radial tires, lush green lawns, fresh and trim, each with a tree that only recently had begun to grow, two-car, three-car, four-car garage, aluminum siding on two-storey homes to protect the family from the elements and 6′ high wooden fences and shrubs to protect the families from each other, doors and window trims awash in the dullest beige, canary, tan and olive hues. Heading for a white picket fence but never quite getting there. Water sprinklers hissing in staccato and air conditioners gurgling in low torque.

They had fled the rush of the city for the illusive antiquity of new country. And they were short-sighted. It’s the people that make the city and when they left, they brought the city with them.

The suburbs is where Freddy grew up. But that is not where he grew.

New York is a great human cycle. This can best be noticed at night, in bed, with the covers across you, with the window opened wide enough to allow the perpetual din entrance to your sanctum, from the cumbersome air sparkling with floating ash, through the blackened mesh of the window screen and into the dark and barely decorated room; the hum of humanity rolls over the body.

First comes the rumble of a garbage truck as it winds around potholes and late-night jaywalkers, grinding to a pressing stop before a line of garbage five yards long, the hollers of the filthy men and the stretching of plastic being grappled by large mitted hands; the nadir of its existence, of garbage’s existence, is in mid-air, as it flies without wings, propelled only by the strength of a unionized worker. It graces an arc off the curb until gravity finds the bag and drags it down into the mouth of the compactor, cracking and smashing amidst its neighboring contents. A button is pressed (or lever pulled) and the hydraulic hiss covers up the abduction of the garbage into the mechanical belly of the truck, taken for granted.

After the garbage truck departs, there is a calm that replaces it. The emptiness in the air is palpable, like a door opening between two temperatures. It is quiet…

Until another city vehicle arrives on the scene of the missing refuse, this time a street cleaner, smashing its hard brushes against concrete and asphalt, spraying a painfully forced mist of water, or chemicals mixed with that great soluble, upon its victimized landscape; the driver weaves his cleaner around parked cars, hugs the tightest corners, spinning on the edge of a right angle with more ease than a Democrat has cheating on his wife, or a Republican has stealing an election.

As quickly as it happened upon the spot, it is gone, and the barometric pressure wavers as the spray it left behind begins to evaporate into the air and drip down into the gutters of the city. And it is quiet again.

The street cleaner is only an interlude, though, between the first act of the garbage truck and the much louder, more climactic second act of the siren. Not the siren of Greek myth; this siren is in no way attractive. But like those nautical temptresses, this siren is first heard through a weary fog. And it is inescapable.

It bounds down the darkened corridors of late-night traffic, reflecting off the city’s many structures of brick and glass, refracting through the screens of open windows and quickly filling the air of the sleeper’s den. The noise bullies through anything that would stand before it; there is no way to contain Pandora’s screams.

The eyes have lids to blind the seer from a vision but the ears cannot be closed; they have no defense from the punch and rising wail of an emergency vehicle. Yes, even the deaf can be envied. As the ambulance or police cruiser or fire engine passes and the crescendo peaks, no other sound can be heard; the only thoughts one may have are “Someone is in trouble” or “I hope my ears don’t start bleeding.”

As the insufferable noise departs the immediate vicinity, it takes all decibels of attention along for the ride, leaving only their memory (which too will eventually fade into the subconscious).

There is a serenity here as the eardrums re-accustom themselves to the vacuum the siren left behind; the sound of traffic over there, a car horn on a perpendicular avenue, the featherweight waves of pedestrian conversations, click-clack in high heel shoes, laughter; a car door closing, the ignition of its engine, last year’s model humming under last year’s hood; gentlemen exiting a gentlemen’s club, clip-clop stepping down the sidewalk; a wetback struggling to finish his day and return to his family in a different borough, hauling an over-sized trash bag to the curb, returning inside for the second, the third, another and another, until he can finally “call it a night.”

But it already is a night and, in the distance, a few blocks away, comes the night cycle anew, another garbage truck rumbling down the street with a belly full of waste and a goal of civil sanitation.

On the occasion of Freddy’s first night in New York, at the age of eighteen, he whipped the bed cover’s away, leapt from his slumber, closed the window and crawled back towards the sleep that was the gift of his tolling day of travel.

He was more akin to suburban crickets and rustling A-C’s.

A few times during Freddy’s interview of his parents, his father coughed viciously.

“Geez, Dad,” Freddy said to him, “you’re going to hack up a lung.”

Little did he know.

Alain’s cough continued over the holidays, into January, through the month, and finally, in February, when the cancer he didn’t know he had was becoming more and more painful, Alain went to the doctor to find out he would soon be dead, within a year according to contemporary medicine. Little did they know.

Test after test after “goddamn uncomfortable” test confirmed Alain’s condition. Over the next six months, it spread like wildfire, from his lungs, to his liver, to his stomach, to his bones, to his brain. Melting, literally melting him from the inside. Shutting him down, like a rackety old boat being put to sea permanently. He didn’t tell his children exactly how serious it was, nor his wife for she wouldn’t understand. He never said how soon he would be gone until it was practically upon him.

Gordon found out early though, overhearing a doctor’s conversation with a nurse. He asked Freddy over the phone, “Did you know that the cancer spread to his brain?”

“No.”

“Well, Dad knows.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell us?”

“I guess cause he knows he’s about to go and he doesn’t want us burdened with it.”

“Burdened with it? Burdened with it? Burdened with it?! Burdened with it!!! How can we not be burdened with it?!”

“I don’t know,” was Gordon’s only answer. “But don’t ask him about it because we aren’t supposed to know and I don’t want him burdened with it.”

“Burdened with it? How can he not be burdened with it?!”

“I mean I don’t want him burdened with the knowledge that we’re burdened with the knowledge.” Like father, like son.

“Fine… Too much burden already.”

“Yeah I know.” But little did he know.

Six months in, Alain had lost 85 pounds, down from his extra-large 230 to 145. He’d eaten his own fat, not to mention other tissue.

Freddy was back in the flat, preparing some words for a poetry slam in Chicago, his first slam in Chicago. It was 10:38PM when the phone rang.

“Freddy, you’d better get back home,” Gordon said. “The hospital called a minute ago. He’s taken a turn for the worse.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I’ll call you from the –”

But Freddy had already hung up and his mind was scrambling for options. He didn’t have money for airfare. He called an airline anyways and explained his situation. They could give him a break on the cost – the terminal-illness-in-the-family discount.

He called his ride to Chicago to say he would find alternate means to get to the slam; his mind was elsewhere, his heart was beating overtime; racing. Beat the clock, beat the clock. He still needed the money – A to B, A to B, A to B. Who? First call, no one home, no answer. Second call, busy signal. Third call, answering machine. No one’s home on a Thursday night. Second call again, still busy. Time for someone to get call waiting.

He called his friend, the actress. The actress whom he’d calmed when the producers had asked her to get fake tits. He’d made her laugh with the question, “Well did they want silicone or saline? Cause y’know there’s a big difference.” She was home, shocked by Freddy’s confusion, frustration, fear. She didn’t have the money to lend him but she could get it – someone owed her.

For some reason, when he talked to her, Freddy couldn’t remember the her name, the actress. His dear friend’s name had been overrun by some brazen doom; thought, sudden, mixed, tenuous, rushed. “Thank you, thank you, call me back.”

He hung up.

He took a deep breath. He was sweating; his hands were shaking. He went to the bathroom and splashed some water in his face. “C’mon Dad, hold on.” The phone rang; he rushed to it.

It was Tammy, his friend, the actress, her name remembered in the brief respite. She was screaming, “I got you points! I got you points!”

“What? What’re you — whaddaya mean?”

“Frequent flier points! I got you enough for a ticket.”

“Oh God, thank you.” And Freddy felt the weight of a feather removed from his shoulders.

“Call the airline and book your ticket; where’s that… here it is. Here’s the information. Got a pen?”

“Yeah,” he said, picking up the cheap Bic with which he’d been planning words for Chicago, “go!”

Tammy gave him the numbers and concluded with, “Lemme know if you need anything else, okay?”

“Okay. I love you.”

It was the most he could say and, for the first time in his life, it didn’t mean “I want to screw your brains out” (though he always had wanted to screw Tammy’s brains out). This time, it meant, “Thank you, eternally.”

“You’re welcome, Freddy,” she said.

He hung up and called the airline back – he was booked, 5:45AM out of Kennedy. He looked at the clock; he had three hours. He put on the most soothing music he could find – slow ethereal trip hop and dub instrumentals. He rolled a small joint and smoked it, listening to the tunes.

“Relax. Calm down. He’s gonna make it,” he told himself.

Stoned, he began packing his clothes, grabbed his toothbrush and anti-perspirant, packed some papers, stopped, stood still for five or ten minutes, stood, thought, crawled away from the pit, stoned, continued, packed a book, two books, his favorite book, meaningful words, stopped, stood, thought, stoned, packed to the music. The Exodus Quartet came on, the last song on side two. An Eastern rhythm, a crying violin, crying, crying, crying to the mysterious beat. Disturbed by a noise. By the ring of the phone.

GOD HOLDS NO BREATH. Waits for no one.

“Hello?” It was time, no time.

“Freddy…?”

Brother, dear brother, why would you call? There is no now, only now. The emptiness was all around the voice. And the voice struggled with all the might in the heart that moved it to break through the silence which was already speaking on its behalf.

“He’s gone…”

And it broke, the Earth broke through the Heavens, the Heavens broke through the space beyond. There was no past, no future and, without either, no present to record or comprehend. Shudder, snorts and tears shot quietly from inside the receiver that had suddenly become glued to the side of Freddy’s head.

“Okay,” Freddy said. And a gush of oil suddenly began to rise from his core up the flute to the surface of his life. “Okay, okay,” then suddenly… OVERLOAD. Insanity. “Holy emotion, Batman,” he sputtered as the oil spewed from his heart and covered everything around him.

Gordon couldn’t fathom the death either and all he said was, “You better get here quick.”

“I will. I’m already there.”

They both hung up and collapsed to the floor where they’d been standing – Freddy in his room with the crying violin, Gordon at the nurse’s station with the beeping mechanics of medicine. Two piles of weeping blood with only miles between them.

Whenever Freddy had flown on an airplane before, he always feared coming down the hard way. Now, he feared coming down at all.

Freddy never knew his paternal grandfather — he had died before Freddy’s birth. But he’d heard stories.

His grandfather’s name was Jean Hebert de Longpre. He was born on January 1, 1900, in a small village in the province of West-Vlaanderen, Belgium, the oldest of three sons and two daughters.

Towards the end of World War I, Jean’s father, Alain, was killed not far from his home, murdered by a German soldier in an argument over his bicycle, which Alain refused to surrender to the retreating invader.

Shortly after his father’s meaningless death, Jean went to work on a grain and dairy farm to help support his family: baling hay, milking cows, spreading manure, avoiding the remnants of the war.

By the fall of 1920, he’d become the farmer’s most trusted worker and he’d fallen in love with the farmer’s eldest daughter, Isobel. He asked her father for her hand as New Year’s Eve became 1921 and they were to be married in June, after the first harvest of the season.

Spring came and the farmer had a bounty of grain to deliver to market. He hired some extra hands (including Jean’s two younger brothers) for the weeklong trip and left his son-in-law-to-be in charge of the farm while he was away.

Though Jean kept the farm running smoothly, it was in that particular week that the farmer’s most prized dairy cow decided to go dry, completely dry, milk no more. Whether it was the farmer’s absence or an act of God (it certainly was that), no one could say.

Perhaps the Holstein was feeling suicidal; for a beast that gives no milk is also known as “dinner”. Jean scoffed at the beast’s refusal to give it up and waited for the farmer’s return before preparing a month’s worth of steaks. The farmer wasn’t quite as glib about the cow.

When he returned to find his darling empty and doomed for execution, he blamed Jean. Sad and enraged, he told his future son-in-law, in his native tongue, “If that’s how you run a farm, perhaps I should find a more suitable husband for my daughter!” It sounded far more threatening in angry French.

Poor Jean, in all his hard-headedness, called the farmer’s bluff and retorted, “Well, now you don’t have a choice, you stupid old man!”

And so, at the age of twenty-one, he called off his wedding ten days shy of the ceremony and decided out of the blue to get as far away from the war-torn Flemish countryside as he could.

He wrote a letter to Isobel, which his brother, Frederic, delivered and within a week, Jean had booked passage to Southampton, England. He worked hard labor there for a month, employed by the same company that had several years previous built an infamous vessel called Titanic.

From Southampton, he took a ship across the Atlantic to what he hoped would be a better life.

He arrived in the port of Halifax at the beginning of August 1921, and immediately began looking for work, along with thousands of other immigrants whom had spent their last $250 on Canadian landing fees. To simplify things and make prospective employers believe he was English, he changed his last name to “Long”, a symbol of his metamorphosis — Jean Hebert Long.

Through a bilingual acquaintance, he heard of farms on the Canadian Prairies that were offering jobs to “reliable and strong hands”. With a dwindling pocket of cash, he stowed away on a freighter to Montreal. He found the French-Canadians in Montreal to be ruder than any Parisian he’d ever met and barely able to speak the French language correctly.

He hopped a train to Thunder Bay and another further west, finally arriving in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on August 22, 1921.

Jean quickly found work on a nearby farm. After all he’d been through, the journey he’d taken, it was easy labor for him, not much different than his first days working for Isobel’s father. He was the employee of the month.

He’d never experienced the Canadian prairie winter, however, and a year-and-a-half later, never wanted to again. He moved to the Southern Ontario farmbelt, about an hour from Buffalo, New York.

Jean worked three seasons there before opening up his own one-seater barbershop in the small country village of Guelph, Ontario. He met a lovely young Irish immigrant named Rebecca O’Malley whom he married in 1928. She gave birth in 1930 to Alain Frederic Long, Freddy’s father.

All of that, a future, countless journeys of innumerable descendants, roads and paths and courses of unknown circumstance, free reins upon untamed horses running beyond the horizon, the black stretch of nothingness through which eyes and minds cannot see, forever, a life led, all of that… because… the cow… went dry.

To Freddy, that, in no uncertain terms, is an act of God.