Blackness drifted across the sky, obscuring the sun with monstrous thunderheads. I felt a coolness seep from the earth, mingling with the fresh rain. Blinding flashes of light ripped open the air, sending a rumbling through our wooden-frame house. The darkness subdued the shades of green in Mom’s flowerbeds, blending them into an eerie mix of olives and limes. The petals of the flowers were struck with the wind and rain, and they scattered to the ground, almost like the raindrops that caused the death of their beauty. Puddles reflected the dark clouds and the streetlights that suddenly clicked on.
It was amidst this spring thunderstorm that we left to pick up Ham. His real name was Uncle Hamilton Charles la Follete, Dad’s brother, but Nathan and I had grown up with his name being shortened to Ham. This nickname was of my father’s making. Nathan and I had never actually met Ham, but we heard eyewitness accounts from Dad about his tremendous knowledge. He had never taken an I.Q. test, but we figured he would score somewhere in the “genius” range. Dad told us not to get our hopes up too high.
Ham was an old veteran of many troubles, yet despite our imploring, none of our relatives would ever tell us anything. Dad had invited Ham to stay at our house for a few years because he had no home of his own. He spent his life, after some unknown tragedy, staying with various relatives. I wondered why he couldn’t find a good job if he was so smart, but we decided that he must like being poor. Then Aunt Marie hinted at us that he was loaded, and we didn’t know what to think.
Nathan and I eagerly loaded into the car for the hour drive to the airport to see which of the rumors were true. The car was silent, filled with an excitement about the upcoming meeting. The dull boom of thunder and the splatters of rain against the windshield soon calmed us down to the point of sleep. We dreamed of the strange man that was about to enter our lives.
Dad woke us when we arrived at the airport. The drone of the rain had not stopped, and now it was accompanied by the swishes of cars driving through puddles. The thunder boomed on relentlessly, somewhat quieted by the increasing distance.
The interior of the airport was ignorant to the luscious tranquillity of the weather. People’s shouts and conversation rolled along with the squeak of wheels and the harsh, static voice on the intercom, forming an almost deafening mixture. Nathan walked along beside me, craning his neck to see the planes like a bird I once saw on the Discovery Channel. I had been in an airport before and had no need to resort to such foolish measures to know what was happening. I strutted through the hallways importantly like my parents.
We stopped at gate 73. It included a door to the landing strip, a few windows, and a dozen chairs set in groups of three. The plane had not arrived yet, so we plopped down in one of the groups of chairs. My brother soon became restless and ran over to the window to peer out at the scattering of planes and jets taxiing about the runways. Dad joined him to point out some of the more interesting specimens of aircraft.
“See that double-decker plane over there?” He pointed to a huge red and white jet rolling toward a hanger.
“Yeah… Wow that’s big!”
“That’s a Boeing 747, one of the biggest planes in the sky. They only use it for trips across the ocean because it’s so expensive to get into the air. That’s the kind of plane I was on when I went to Korea last summer.”
“Did you get to fly it?”
“No—that’s only for the pros. Uncle Joe can fly a DC-10, that’s that little one over there.”
“Could we fly with him sometime?”
“Sure, I suppose so. We’ll see if we can arrange that for the next time we visit him.”
“Cool. Hey Dad, what’s a twa?”
“A Twa?”
“It says over there…” He pointed to a jet taxiing toward the airport.
“Oh! You mean T-W-A,” Dad spelled out the company’s name with a chuckle. “That’s the name of that kind of airplane. I’ll bet that’s Ham’s plane. We’d better go tell Mom and your brother.”
Nathan hopped over to us and told us the good news. We huddled around the window with other anxious people at the gate. As the plane slowed to a stop, two ladies in black pushed us aside to open the door for travelers trudging in from the rain. Twenty passengers walked down the stairs of the plane and headed toward the open door. Nathan and I peered at the group, wondering which one was Ham. It was one of the few times that I lost my composure and squished my face against the glass, trying to come as close as I could to Ham.
I thought he was probably the older looking fellow with a stubby beard wearing rich clothes, like what Aunt Marie had said.
“Hey Nathan, do you suppose that Ham’s that old guy with the beard?”
“Nah—he’s to old. I bet he’s the guy with the hat and trench coat.”
“Trench coat? No, it’s not him… Hey Dad, which one’s Ham?”
He responded, “You’ll see,” a comment that did nothing to satisfy my curiosity.
We waited for an eternity. My toes wiggled at the ends of my shoes, but I was careful not to show my impatience, because I realized my mistake of pressing my face against the glass.
Mom finally stopped me from being so tense with a simple comment, clear and crisp, yet it was almost a whisper. “Hello, Hamilton.”
A man gave a curt nod and quickened his pace in the direction of our family. He was not what I had expected. He was neither tall nor short, nor did it appear that he had any sort of strength in his quiet body. His head was encircled in a short ring of dark hair, leaving a glossy patch of skin exposed. His thin blue shirt, obviously worn from much use, was buttoned to the very top, giving him the appearance of a closed up box. He didn’t smile. His entire body appeared lifeless, except for his eyes, which radiated a wild energy.
When Ham reached us, he first bent down by Nathan and contemplated his face for some time. While he was pondering the mysteries of my little brother, I noticed that he only carried one suitcase. His bag, which looked similar to Dad’s briefcase, was as threadbare as his shirt.
Ham slowly stood up from his contemplation and was soon peering into my face with his sharp black eyes, soaking up my knowledge and emotions with a glance. He could have stopped staring into my eyes after one second of his glance, but he didn’t. I was forced to stand like an unmoving tree, my feet rooted to the ground, for an infinite minute, until I was sweating beneath my T-shirt.
His legs and back straightened swiftly, and he gave Mom a quick hug. With Dad, Ham almost repeated what he had done with Nathan and me. He placed his hand on Dad’s head, and Dad did the same to Ham. They then rested their heads together. Each closed his eyes in a silent meditation. It appeared as a prayer of understanding and respect shared by the two brothers. I thought I heard an “Amen” mumbled, but it may have been a trick of my imagination. Their stance lasted only a few seconds, and when they finished, we walked to the car without conversation.
The entire interchange had been strangely quiet. With all my other relatives, we shouted and laughed and were given hugs all around, but not with Ham. My concentration focused so much on Ham that I did not realize the intercom and other people around us until after we began walking toward the car. The rain had been reduced to a drizzle, and it added to the calmness of both the meeting of Ham and the trip home. Nathan and I were again lulled to sleep, to be awakened by the creak of our garage door moaning as a small motor struggled to raise it.
It was truly dark out when we arrived home, not the fake darkness brought on by the storm. The breeze whisked cold, damp air into the garage and our bodies, sending us shivering into the house, eager to warm ourselves.
We showed Ham to his room upstairs, and while Mom was readying Nathan for bed, I watched Ham unpack his lonely bag. It contained only four items, three of which were tenderly wrapped in articles of clothing. The first one he removed was not wrapped up, it was a small case containing his toothbrush and comb. The first item unwrapped was a laptop. It was similar to the one Dad used for work, which cost his company some horrific amount close to eight thousand dollars. The perfect, unmarred black on the computer contrasted deeply with Ham’s tattered clothing and suitcase. He then removed an object covered perfectly with a pair of jeans. When he carefully folded up the pants and slid them in a drawer, I was able to see a Bible, in a state of despair similar to Ham’s clothing. Countless bookmarks and tabs protruded from the pages, marking various passages of the well-used book. The final thing removed was an odd piece of equipment, looking somewhat like a 1950’s transistor radio. I wondered why he needed that.
Ham slipped his precious bag beneath the mattresses and began setting up his radio and computer on a table beneath the window.
“Come on, honey, it’s time for bed,” Mom called at me from down the hall.
“All right, I’ll be there in a second,” I yelled back. “Good-night Ham.”
He turned slowly and caught my eye with those marvelous floating orbs of light within his head and held me for a few moments. He then blinked and turned away. As I left, I closed the door quietly behind me as so not to disturb his concentration. I went through the normal bedtime routine, and Mom read us a chapter of Redwall before she kissed us goodnight. I lay in bed awake for a long time afterwards, wondering what would happen now that Ham was in our house. I eventually fell asleep to an odd clicking noise, which never repeated itself, yet somehow it was a constant clacking and clicking, almost like a computer’s keyboard.
When Nathan and I awoke early the next morning, we found Ham already awake, eating breakfast in the morning hours before the sun came up. I joined him for a bowl of cereal while Nathan went off to use the bathroom. Our parents weren’t even up yet. They only awoke in time to wish us a good day, before the bus drove us off with our neighbors to the monotony of school. Ham was soaking up the morning’s news from the paper and only gave me a small glance when I walked in. I offered him a friendly good-morning, but the only response was a slight nod of his head.
When I went upstairs to get ready for school, I peeked into my parents’ room and asked them about Ham. “Mom, Dad, is Ham deaf? He never talks.”
“No, son,” Dad answered. “He just never feels the need to talk, that’s all.”
“Not even to say ‘good-morning’?”
“Well—,” I could tell Dad was about to tell me something important about our visitor. “You don’t need to worry about such things. Ham doesn’t feel the need to talk, so he doesn’t, let’s leave it at that, okay?”
“Okay...” I couldn’t argue with Dad, his word was law, but he wasn’t telling me anything truly exciting about Ham, only stuff I was finding out on my own.
I went to the bus and joined the normal crew of kids jabbering on about some juicy morsel of gossip. It disgusted me, like it did everyday. They chewed on some tiny tidbit of information, blowing it up like bubble gum until it popped, and they either ended up loving or hating the person or topic. This week’s story was about the cruelties of Bill Clinton. One or two of the kids had read through the majority of the propaganda thrown at him and agreed whole-heartedly with every last word. They believed that the President had no right to live, and I knew that by the end of the week, the entire group would be thinking the same thing. I tried to protest, but I was not in the mood, having too many topics to think over in my own mind. I was about to tell them about our new visitor, but then I realized that these extremely materialistic kids would squash him to the floor.
Ben was the only person in the group who shared my views on life. He was brought up like I was, in a loving family who placed values on the intangible abstract ideals of life.
The radio suddenly caught my attention as I tried to dive into my own thoughts.
“—money can buy happiness?” asked the morning announcer.
“Sure it can. I just bought a new Mercedes, and I’m as happy as I ever was,” responded a feminine voice that resembled the picture in my mind of a “dumb blonde”. The announcer went on to ask her more questions about her point of view. Her answers sickened me, so I conferred with Ben.
“Can money buy happiness?” I questioned him.
“I suppose it could—although not the kind of happiness I would like to have.”
“Yeah, it’s probably like Christmas when you get a new toy. You want to play with it and play with it for a few days, and then it’s history. You’re happy for a while, but it doesn’t last. “
“That’s also the kind of happiness that is—um—how do you say it, hollow?”
“That makes sense, hollow happiness.” We went on to discuss the history homework and our English papers due at the beginning of next week. Ben was a thinker. He always was coming up with some new twist on life or comparing our current happenings with a book. He wasn’t the smartest kid I’d ever known; his grades were slightly short of my own, but that was made up for in his ability to ponder life.
School was the normal routine, almost as normal to me as brushing my teeth. The teachers lectured on about seemingly unimportant topics. I concentrated on the information enough so that I was able to know it for the next test. I wished that I were in my brother’s second grade class, they were allowed to have some fun at least. After school, I talked with Ben about Ham. He was intrigued and wanted to meet the interesting, silent man. When we opened the door, we were greeted with the same clicking that I had heard the night before. We ignored the noise, and proceeded to find Ham. He was in his bedroom, with both the computer and the radio on, although the radio was not emitting any music. Ham straightened when he heard us step in and gave us each a quick glance and a nod. He then lifted his hand to a small pedal and began pressing it down in a pattern, each time producing a small click. He finished his movement and waited. Within a few moments a response came back, in the form of more clicks, sometimes with long pauses. The exchange of clicks continued for a few more minutes, and I beckoned for Ben to join me in the hall.
“What is that he’s doing?” I asked.
“He’s talking with a radio.”
“But why all the clicks?”
“Morse Code. You know, the dots and dashes…”
“Oh, that’s right. Like what they used to use with telegraphs?”
“Yeah. My dad used to do that radio stuff too, I think it’s called a ham radio.”
“Wow—Ham! It makes sense now!”
“What does?”
“His name.”
“Cool, you’re right. Come on, let’s go watch some more.”
We stole quietly back into the room to see if we could catch a glimpse of anything important. For a while the clicking continued, and I imagined the signals soaring across the sky between two tiny radios. Ham finally stopped the clicking with a flick of the switch on the radio. A slight static fuzzed and died. Ham nodded at us again and leaned over to his computer. He bent the screen down so that we would not be able to see what he was typing, but I did catch a few words: “India, “money”, and an address of some sort. After Ham finished typing, he shut down the computer and turned to us. He stared quizzically at Ben with his sharp eyes.
“Ham, I’d like you to meet Ben. He’s my best friend and lives just down street.”
“Hello, Ham.”
The man’s response was to rise and push us each along until we reached the kitchen, where fresh cookies were cooling on pieces of paper towel. We hadn’t noticed the rich smell of sugar and chocolate when we came in, but we were ready for some food, especially chocolate chip cookies. Ham poured us each a glass of milk and then turned on some classical music. I think he was playing Mozart, but I didn’t know the music well enough to be sure. He left us to our snack and went outside for a walk.
“So what did you think?”
“He’s weird. What’s wrong with him?”
“ I don’t know, my parents never said. My dad just said that he doesn’t need to talk.”
“That’s even weirder. He talks with his radio, but not to you guys?”
“I guess so. But he’s only been with us for a day, well—not even a day, so I can’t say for sure.”
Ben and I then finished our snacks and discussed the day’s events and homework. He had to leave after an hour, so I worked on homework by myself. Ham didn’t return until suppertime. Mom had already finished cooking the spaghetti and had the table set by the time our relative appeared through the door. After a quick prayer, we stuffed the food down our throats. Ham, however, appeared to be contemplating each bite as he slowly worked his jaws up and down on each morsel of food. Mom was wiping the table down after cleaning the dishes by the time Ham had swallowed his last gulp of water. He watched the evening news with Dad and immediately retired to his room. The rest of the family was up at least an hour after Ham disappeared, and I made another attempt at learning what caused Ham’s strange behavior.
“Dad, can you tell me why Ham acts so weird?”
“Not now, you don’t even know him. You wouldn’t understand.”
“How am I supposed to understand anything if you don’t tell me anything, and Ham won’t say anything?”
“Yeah, Dad,” Nathan implored. “Why is he so funny?”
“Just wait. You don’t need to hear about it now. You’re too young to understand.”
“Dad, come on.”
“Listen to your father, kids. You’ll learn later. Now it’s time for bed.”
Mom herded us to our room and read another chapter of Redwall before she left us alone. I fell asleep again to the clicking of the Morse code. Ham’s presence among us soon became a routine, like all the other functions of our lives. Every morning he ate breakfast and read the paper; every afternoon he used his radio and took walks; and every evening he slowly cleaned his dinner plate and watched the news.
Only one day did I notice a slight jog in Ham’s pattern. As I walked into the kitchen for breakfast that morning, I watched him slip what appeared to be a one hundred-dollar bill into an envelope. He quickly stuffed the envelope amongst the folds of the newspaper when he noticed my presence, but I didn’t question his actions.
During the summer, our neighbors, the Petersons, moved away to Connecticut. An old lady, Mrs. Alexandra, moved into their small ranch house. She invited Nathan and I over twice a week during the summer for some lemonade and her famous concoction. Mom and Dad forced us to go. The first day we met her was on a scorching July afternoon, two days after my birthday.
“Hello, children,” she shrieked into our ears. “Come in, come in. Now, just make yourselves comfortable at the table, and I’ll be right back.” She tromped off into the kitchen with her WWI army boots booming against the oak floor.
“She doesn’t even know our names,” my brother whispered at me.
“She probably heard about us from Mom and Dad.”
“Now, here you are, dearies. Eat up.” Mrs. Alexandra placed two filthy-smelling bowls of steaming liquid and two glasses of lemonade in front of us. I tasted the soup; it was awful. I could tell by the scrunching of Nathan’s face that he agreed with me. It was bright crimson with hunks of burgandy blobs. I thought I saw miniature lobsters bobbing up and down on the surface of the gruesome mixture. “That’s my mother’s famous concoction, as we used to call it. Full of crawdads and beets. Delicious, don’t you think?” she screeched at us.
“Umm, yes, Mrs. Alexandra,” I managed to choke out without gagging too much. Nathan only could nod meekly.
“I’ll be right back with some more. Oh—wait, I almost forgot, some fellows are planting my beets today. I’ll be back in a few sec—.” She rushed outside.
Her dog Bruno trotted in through the open door and growled at us apprehensively.
“Come here, doggie. I’ve got a treat!” my brother wooed at the dog, a huge dachshund. It cautiously approached the bowl Nathan held out for it and suddenly lapped it up in three huge slurps. I stuck my bowl down too, and it was disposed of in the same way. We both exhaled a small sigh of relief and swallowed our lemonade.
Mrs. Alexandra continued serving us the gruel throughout the summer. We often saw her at the stream, fishing for the crawdads that provided half of the sickening taste of the soup. Throughout that year and part of the next, she was always busy either trapping in the stream or weeding her large patch of beets. The trap she used required a sharp flick of her hand to function, and she developed a flinch in her right hand because of it. I often had the revolting liquid splashed onto my pants as she served it.
Nathan and I started a new school year. We often splashed in the water of the stream, developing a world where anything was possible on the banks of the lively water. Mrs. Alexandra visited our play area everyday to catch her needed crawdads. Ham occasionally appeared as well, silently staring at us before bending down to help Mrs. Alexandra catch the tiny lobsters.
During the Christmas of that year, Aunt Marie came to visit. She was Dad and Ham’s sister. She, along with everyone else, rarely discussed Ham; it seemed a forbidden topic. I decided to ask her anyway.
“Auntie, the only thing I want for Christmas this year is to learn what happened to Ham.”
“What?” she almost exploded. “Wouldn’t you rather have a computer game or a toy?”
“No, not really...”
“Oh! —Well, I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to see.”
I waited the strenuous two days until Christmas to see if she would honor my wish. She didn’t. On Christmas Eve I found a package from her with my name on it. I could tell from shaking it that it was another useless toy, and I would have to pretend that I liked it.
However, on Christmas morning, when I opened all of my packages, I found an unmarked one that contained a manuscript of Ham’s life. He must have overheard my conversation with Aunt Marie. I read through the entire account and was astonished at my findings. They explained every question I had ever had about his life. I will relate a summary:
When he was twenty, Ham fell in love with Briana Harleston. She was the perfect match for him, and they planned their wedding for months without rest, developing its intricacy until they had the perfect day planned. Two weeks before the momentous occasion was to occur, Briana’s parents flew in from Colorado. Ham offered Briana his car to pick them up, because her car was a small sports car. He realized a few minutes after she left his horrendous mistake. The car was not braking well.
Briana and her parents never attended the wedding. They were instead at a funeral, where hundreds of people came to say what a shame it was that all three died. The money from her parents was given to Ham, since no other relatives were living. Ham’s conscience never forgave that day, and he has lived the rest of his days devoted to the defeat of such foolish death. He considered his words, “Here, take my car,” to be the ones that destroyed his life, and he spoke rarely from that occasion to prevent a similar situation. Ham purchased the radio to learn about people in need, and his frequent letters with cash attached were to help them. The only other item he purchased, beside the everyday essentials, was his computer. He used it to keep track of everything he had ever done: transactions, radio conversations, and various other important events. At the end of his story he placed a verse from the Bible that basically described his lifestyle. Master shall become slave and slave shall become master.
I shared these secrets with no one, as requested in his manuscript. Life went on as normal, at least it pretended to be normal. There were two more occasions of Dad and Ham’s special acknowledgement of each other with their two heads together, one was after Dad arrived home from a trip to Korea.
After that school year, I joined my friends each day at the creek for our continuous acting of the stories in our imaginations. Mrs. Alexandra became a nuisance that year, always checking on us and assuring herself that we were growing up to be respectable people. She appeared every day, at exactly two-thirty in the afternoon. We set the alarms on our watches to warn us of the approaching time, and when it came, we all sat in a circle and pretended to be playing some mature game. In late August, the routine changed.
“Hey, where’s Mrs. Alexandra? It’s already 2:35.”
“I’m getting tired of this, can’t we stop?”
“Wait just a few more minutes, she always comes, even if it is a little late.”
We waited for ten more minutes, passing the dreary time by telling jokes. When Mrs. Alexandra didn’t show at 2:45, we decided to go hunting for her. We flickered in and out of the trees surrounding the creek, waiting for a glimpse of a WWI army uniform. None appeared. We extended our search range to include the street, and when that proved fruitless, we marched up to her door.
“Mrs. Alexandra?” someone yelled. “Where are you?”
A few robins nested in the nearby pine tree whistled the only response. I checked the door; it was unlocked. I peered inside. Mrs. Alexandra was lying on her couch, sound asleep.
“Hey guys, she’s just asleep. Let’s go back to the creek,” I reported.
We scampered back to our fort on the bank and finished off the day. The next afternoon had the same result; Mrs. Alexandra did not appear. When I looked for her this time, she was awake, sitting on a rocking chair.
“What’s wrong, Mrs. Alexandra?”
“Just tired, that’s all. Go on and play.”
“But don’t you need anything? Would you like some of your mother’s famous concoction?”
“Oh, is she here? Yes, tell her that I want it done right this time, with exactly two beets for every seven crawdads.” Her frail hand jerked wildly as she displayed her emotions.
“Yes, I’ll tell her.”
She had drifted to sleep. I decided that I should try my hand at making some of the soup for her. I did as she asked and boiled the revolting mix until it smelled so horrible I could not be in the same room as it. I spooned out a small bowl and gave it to her. The tremendous smell must have awakened her.
“Ah… thank you.”
I soon was mixing the soup for her everyday after school; I tended the beets and caught the crawdads too. I learned to breathe through my mouth while cooking the soup and to help Mrs. Alexandra eat; otherwise her wild hand would slop the stuff onto her clothes. My parents had no idea of my activities, but Ham saw me everyday on his afternoon walk when he came to visit Mrs. Alexandra. This became my new routine.
It was early that December when Ham packed up his belongings exactly the way I had seen them packed when he arrived. He wore the same blue shirt and his bald spot had grown slightly. We drove him to the airport and prepared to watch him depart from our little world. Dad and he performed their ritual of placing their heads together, and Ham gave Mom a hug. He contemplated the mysteries of Nathan one last time. He reached over to my head and rested his heavy hand atop my hair. He placed my hand on his bald spot, and we rested our heads together in understanding. His eyes softened, and he enunciated perfectly the only words I ever heard him speak, but he said it softly enough that no one else heard. “I’m proud of you. Take care of her for me.”
He trotted off to the awaiting plane, his head reflecting the harsh lights of the airport, and in the silence of the moment, I realized that my life had changed forever.