Street roots
13
July 20, 2012
ROD BEAL, from page 12
catching- whether a family or ambition. He was always
waiting for the other boot to drop. He didn’t trust it when
things were going well. So he drank to make sure things
would always go awry. The ever-constant saboteur.
e came to the edge of Brookings. It wasn’t raining
now, and there were two motels and a convenience
store. Rod Beal said this would be fine. I drove into a
gravelly yard next to one motel which had only one car
parked in it — not much in the way of bumming change or
finding cans I thought. I handed him 45 bucks, which kind
of caught him off guard, but maybe he’d have enough left
later on the get a cheap room, get a shower. But I doubt by
the end of the day, he’d have much left. And giving him
money like that may have been a bad idea. It was as likely
as not, if memory serves, that he would wind up in jail
having done god-knows-what in a blackout. And by the time
he was released, if he were to be released, spring may have
wandered into summer with sunlight, along with the lure to
get out on the road and make it all the way to Santa Monica.
To start things all over again. Come what may. Better to
give when I got it, for all that was given to me when I was
“out there.”
Listening to Rod Beal I noted that he never mentioned
his birth father — doubt that he had any idea who or where
he was. In other words, his mother never informed him. He
mentioned his wife once, somewhat lovingly; somewhat
exasperated with what she’d done that got him put away for
a year and a day. His family was a source of pain, and
strained love. His constant metastatic life, moving around,
said a lot to me. We are all fragile, regardless of the face we
show. Rod Beal’s mask was his well-rehearsed story. It was
as though he had coached himself into this character or
picture he thought strangers - and who wasn’t a stranger -
would buy into. What would make him acceptable to people
who were always a foreign land to him.
And the fact that he had this approach-avoidance attitude
toward Santa Monica, where he’d spent so much bad,
wasted time, and where he had an outstanding warrant for
absconding — at least one — and the judge would surely
make him pay for all those times he’d absconded. Failed to
pay his debt to society, not completed the court-mandated
treatment.
He never completed anything that would give him real
release. Call it freedom. He was resigned, probably had
been since early childhood, that his abandonment, his
subjugation to powers much bigger than himself, was a done
deal. There was no remedy. No future bliss or hope or
aspiration. There was nothing. He was a loser and any
wishful thinking to the contrary- and how else would he
pass his time waiting for a ride but dreaming of a fantasy
existence where he was the center of his universe, (the
hero?) was foolish. Just taunting himself, making things
worse every time he went into that dream state which rode
with him nonetheless. Rode with him everywhere like the
booze.
When I dropped him off on that apron of gravel by the
cheapo motel, there was no one around that I could see.
Who would he hit up for change? What had he planned
before I gave him the 45 bucks? Maybe he just wanted out
because he couldn’t handle being in company. He’d finished
his rehearsal, so he was ready to bail. He wanted to be
alone with his thoughts. To pretend that it wasn’t all
pointless. And as he headed toward a hole in the wall of
trees, he’d already pulled out his bottle of Blue Label.”
Like I say, like all the rest of us, his fragility and
abandonment hid in a corner. Reality was, Rod Beal’s story
was always the main character.
W
MORE. INF0Ì
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