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Fender promised not to ever again, swore to it when saying grace
(Thank you Lord for this food . . . I will not climb telephone poles),
when uttering his prayers (NowI layme down to sleep . . . Iwill not
climb telephone poles). But a few months would pass and there he
was again, nimble as a squirrel, scampering above the TV aerials.
– I can hear people talking up there, he told a group of us one
night, those emerald orbs sparkling mischievously. I know everyone’s
secrets . . .
The claim was, of course, a feature of his particular looniness.
Still, I imagined Fender listening in on calls I made to my girl Sadie,
his ears twitching in the chilled air while I muttered the insincerities
I believed all women wanted to hear.
When the mood seized him Fender could be seen from blocks
away, a pimple-faced Jack in the Beanstock disappearing into the
clouds. He was eavesdropping on our arguments and our bullshit,
on our complaints and confessions, an uninvited third party to our
declarations of love.
Eventually someone would flag down the sergeant. The firefighters
would extend their ladders. Mrs. Rhodes would be called away from
her cleaning job at the hospital.
– How ’bout them Canucks, eh, Fender? Sgt. McManus shouted
up to the boy in an incident I remember well. It’s time they traded for
some defencemen, doncha think?
– You can sit up in the cab with me! the fire chief promised,
addressing him through a bullhorn.
But Fender wouldn’t budge. He seemed as content at the top of
the pole that day as I had ever seen him— more so, if truth be told,
than those at the bottom looking up. We were curious, distracted,
bored. And the boy? Positively exuberant.
Because at the top of that pole there were no miscreants like my
brother Burt exhorting Fender to swallow dog turds, no snickers as
he chatted with secret associates. He clung to the pole’s creosote surface
like a child clasping a teddy bear, eyelids heavy, the trace of a
smile on his lips, the steady hum of the current racing along the
cables an elixir for his tormented soul.
It was as if, at the summit of a telephone pole, Fender Rhodes
was . . . a step closer to God.
Libros Libertad 