Billy

 Because of the forest fires crowding in toward Portland, I was thinking of Billy Lesher last night. Not that Billy has anything to do with the fires. I was thinking of him because my ex-wife told me that she had to evacuate from her house, which is on Mt. Scott, and Billy Lesher used to live on Mt. Scott. 

When we were young, my parents used to take us to visit the Leshers, for Billy's father, 'Big Bill', had been a long time friend of my father's, and sometimes they would leave us there for an overnight stay if we liked. 

Billy's house was within walking distance of the enormous cemetery and mausoleum complex on the top of the mountain, and what better place for children to play, right--what with all those dead people lying around beneath our feet, and even a section called 'Baby Land' reserved for those who had died in infancy or at birth, having the added attraction of being particularly dreadful to the youthful imagination. 

Someone, at some point, had actually dug up bodies, no doubt in the dead of night, and lain them on the grass to be discovered in the daylight. We knew about that because we had seen it on the news. Perhaps a teen prank, some said. Perhaps something satanic. Perhaps a grave robbing. Who knows? Perhaps, indeed, those grave robbers or night stalkers were still lurking about. We sort of liked to think so, in the lurid way common to boys. 

In a wooded area beyond the cemetery there was a small lake, a green, motionless pond, and Billy told us that a boy had drowned here. 

"They found him floating face up," Billy said, "and his face was blue." 

"Were you there?" my brother asked. 

"No, but I know his face was blue." 

Later on Billy showed us a ruined remainder of a mossy little house tucked into the trees. There had been a house fire and the house was painted inside and out black by the smoke and flames and was now as cold and scarred as driftwood. We climbed a set of crunchy stairs to the second floor and there found (or were shown by Billy, our tour guide, a bedroom containing a single rusty bedframe and bits of a yellowed old mattress. 

"They burned to death in their sleep," Billy said. 

"The fire didn't wake them up?" my brother asked. 

"Nope. They burned to death in their sleep." 

Later in life, Billy's mother, Betty, was at my house visiting with my mother. Billy had met a Japanese girl and had threatened to actually marry this girl--a Japanese!, Betty said, as if the very word was something that could only be whispered lest it offend. 

"Well ... " my mom said. 

"A Japanese," Betty said, shedding a tear at the sound. "Richy," she said" (she had called me Richy ever since I was 3 years old or so)--"Richy, You wouldn't marry a Japanese, would you?"

I gave it a brief thought, rubbed my chin. 

"Umm ... Do you know one who is available?"

Later on, Billy did marry the Japanese woman, and broke his mother's heart, and had a child, and then everything was fine. 

There are two things in the world that can defeat bigotry. One of them is travel. The other is babies.