To the Beat Keepers

God help me, thought Donald L. Calderwood, listening to the Deftones in the morning makes my teeth ache, much as it helps boil my guts and face me toward the day like a good soldier.

The jumping crunchy hard-candy chords of “Swerve City” were blasting from the laptop their daughter recently bought them, as the morning sun cascaded through the sliding glass door. The wine-and-goldenrod paisley drapes were pushed over toward the china cabinet in the corner.

Calderwood sat in an expansive roller chair at the large rattan table with circular glass top. The walls in their new kitchen-dining area were a happy lemon color, and brightness reigned.

Dairn-dairn-dairn-Dunn-dairn-nair-nairairn, Dairn-dairn-dairn…

He was sixty-two, a six-months-retired high school US history teacher. The fact was he missed teaching that shit desperately yet had grown sick to death of the material for at least ten years — one of those complex truths, Hegelian almost.

Often in class he would find sneaky ways to talk about panspermia instead of Washington’s Farewell Address, or hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor — black smokers, white smokers — and other theories of first life on earth while his pupils with their Proactiv-plied faces broadcast expressions from gleeful acceptance to squinty-eyed disapproval.

He was terrified the ever-bristling Maria Breckenridge, at seventeen well over six feet, teeth restrained by glistening steel-and-titanium fencing and tortoiseshell glasses with horn rims, would tell on him to the principal.

Even now he could see her storming into his boss’s office like a Category 1: “He keeps talking about fatty lipids and geothermally heated water vents in the ocean and giant tube worms, Principal Myers! Tell me what do tufted microbial mats have to do with the Monroe Doctrine?” Blink-blink, wicked green eyes flashing through the lenses.

Although there was no evidence he’d ever been reported.

She had gone so far as to interject once — as he discussed the slow change in the makeup of earth’s atmosphere from carbon dioxide, ammonia, etc., to around twenty-one percent oxygen (obviously relevant to The Federalist Papers) — with “But this seems like a tangent! What happened to the French and Indian War?”

He had snapped awkwardly, “What indeed! Have you never learned anything on a tangent? One taps the richest veins in the realms of Tangential!”

Calderwood maneuvered the cursor into the search bar, typed in “jay-z dirt off your shoulder.” God he loved this beat, and he wanted so much to feel like a pimp for breakfast with his wife.

Sweet Leonora. While he adored Timbaland as a producer and beat maker — his new goal in life being to make just one hella-good rap song with him, perhaps called “RNA World” — Lee was really his favorite beatmaker. She’d kept his heart going all these years.

Right now she was on the phone with the donut shop dropping phrases like “I’ll need quite a few for my granddaughter’s recital” and “just calling to get a feeling for your types and prices.” She was wearing a snazzy candy apple red zip-up jacket with twin V shapes, one black and one white, which rose toward the collar and connected boldly to the midpoint of the shoulders.

Let me tell you, Maria: There could be No Civil War without cyanobacteria first, no Gettysburg Address or fiery razing of Atlanta, no peace treaty in Appomattox Court House. Fatty lipids played their part. Single-cell organisms were heroes of the war, too.

Their granddaughter’s recital was slated for Hitler’s birthday (Calderwood was one for remembering birthdays). Here was another figure — aside from early inventors of photosynthesis reckoned as a unit — who influenced US history more than a little, even if not strictly American.

You see, Class, Hitler’s the one who convinced our most sparkling lawyers and businessmen and Yale and Princeton political-minded beauties that the US needed to place the world in the palm of its hand like a frosted donut with rainbow sprinkles, do you follow?

Donald L. Calderwood was feeling like a rock star now, he was getting himself on a roll.

Leonora was steering his pills out, bottle by bottle, one to control blood pressure, one for acid reflux, one to boost potassium, etc. Her beautiful aged hands had developed spots, a slight tremor.

Lee was everything, the heart of all the major conjunctures of his life. They had met at the local Church of Christ — no pianos or guitars allowed! — and had a first date at the Dairy Queen out on First Avenue that was like an extravagant oasis in the blazing desert heat. Soon they were married and driving the Pacific Coast Highway together with the top down in their red MGA with side curtains, later in their black Corvair with beige leather interior.

She was his golden goddess, like Tippi Hedrin or Marilyn Monroe but better — no stewing need to screw the president.

Lee had owned one clear and one black bonnet to protect from the attacking winds on those high snaking roads. He always discouraged the black one, too funereal; the transparent one let him see her glowing locks and let them drink in the drench of sunshine.

Calderwood closed his eyes, placed Leonora by his side and conjured the ocean shimmering, rocky beaches.

Sometimes they’d see seals down in the harbors.

Lee had been perfectly loyal from their first date to her days of working as secretary at the Stanford Linear Accelerator while he pursued his completely unnecessary PhD, as it turned out, so they could eat better and do things like rocket up to Seattle and back for the weekend. God what times.

“I found your missing sock beside the dryer,” Leonora announced, placing it on the glass.

“No idea I had one of those!”

“Lee, you know you’re my favorite beatmaker? Better than Timbaland?”

She pushed a glazed ceramic sauce dish toward him filled with the battery of pills.

“So you’ve been saying every day now, Mr. Calderwood.”

Lee cocked her head, brushed her shoulder twice, and let a smile sweep across her face like a sunrise.