ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching
Book Two, Chapter 284: Wake-up Calls
Still at our window table at the North End Cafe, Joshua and I are talking so much that we haven’t looked at the menu until now. We each order a cup of tomato-basil soup. He also orders a smoked salmon sandwich with a side of potato salad.
The soup arrives, and I taste it. Like warm pasta sauce.
“The deer hit may be a wake-up call for you, Joshua.”
“It’s a wake-up call all right. It’s time for me to leave this town. The other day a feeling came over me as I was making tea. I thought to myself: What am I doing here? This is not where I’m supposed to be, living with my two uncles in their childhood home. It was a strong feeling. It overwhelmed me. And now this deer hit. After I put the car back together — and I will — I’ll head back to California. That’s my home.”
I quote the Serenity Prayer to Joshua. Higher Power, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Sometimes, if Joshua doesn’t want to hear what I’m saying, he’ll block the conversation — suddenly start talking about the weather. But not this time.
“I can’t change what happened to the deer. I didn’t put the deer there, and I didn’t have enough time to react. I have to accept it.” Then he tells me about a film shoot he was on last week in woods outside a small Kentucky town.
“I’d only read three pages of the script, the pages with my lines, so I had no idea the full scene involved the killing of a turkey. The director asked if I had any moral objection to his doing this. I’ve directed three films. I know how to shoot the scene without killing the turkey, but I said to myself: This turkey is doomed, whatever I say. He’ll be killed today or another day. So I said: ‘You do what you have to do, bro’, then moved as far from the action as I could. A second turkey on the scene screamed and squawked the rest of the day. Maybe the turkey who was killed was the second turkey’s mate or buddy. It was a horrible thing to hear. A terrible scene to watch. I just wanted to be out of there.
“That day I didn’t have the courage to speak my mind. If I’d said to the director: ‘I do have an objection to killing this turkey. I can show you how to shoot this scene without killing the turkey’, I’m ninety-nine percent sure the turkey would not have been killed. And I have the wisdom to know the difference between the turkey and the deer.”
