Brick

Copy­right 2008 Ben S. Pollock

Over the decade (since Feb­ru­ary 1998) that we’ve lived in North­west Arkansas, Ginny and Nick Masullo have thrown the most fan­tas­tic and mem­o­rable, sur­real and com­fort­ing par­ties. Some involved cos­tumes, a num­ber had mod­est bon­fires, and all had warmth, lots of food and a truly wide assort­ment of guests. The one Mon­day night, the 8th, was no excep­tion. That it was Nick’s funeral almost was beside the point.

Mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis isn’t con­ta­gious, but Nick’s joy, humor and zest con­tin­ued to be infec­tious through­out his house and yard. In the driz­zly dark­ness, we had light.

Robert, MC’ing at the start, claimed Nick chore­o­graphed his memo­r­ial in detail. The crowd of 60–70 laughed. Nick’s ill­ness began slow­ing him down about six years ago. All cir­cles of friends had been wish­ing this week wouldn’t come. Yet we laughed a lot Mon­day night.

The com­mu­nity loved him. His friends loved him. I loved him. Was I a friend? When the call went out about five years ago for friends to be vol­un­teer care­givers, I held back. My rea­sons made sense then and since. Yet

Nick and I were not best friends nor in the next cir­cle or two of close­ness. Com­pared to most of Monday’s tribe, My Beloved and I are new­com­ers to the Fayet­teville artis­tic com­mu­nity. That we were wel­comed as deeply and quickly as we were remains a big rea­son why we’ve stayed here, even through job losses and stuff.

M.B. and I were more friendly with Nick’s wife. Ginny is a poet and for sev­eral years wrote the poetry col­umn in the North­west Arkansas Times. The Masul­los’ “cou­ple” friends were long-established. On his own, Nick hung out with song­writ­ers and other musi­cians, Kelly and Donna, Emily, Keith. Nick was a folkie, a gifted, witty, not-quite-sentimental-at-the-end lyri­cist. Com­posed with a gui­tar. Nick also wrote poems and per­formed them com­i­cally and with great stage tim­ing, even when short of breath. In the last year he turned colum­nist as well, for the Fayet­teville Free Weekly. At that point he com­posed in his head, mem­o­rized those sen­tences then waited until one par­tic­u­lar care­giver came to take his dictation.

On these, Nick and I could talk, He was brought to par­ties, read­ings and other per­for­mances. He lived for these, build­ing up energy to get there, stay­ing a good hour and putting on a hearty front. Nick attracted a crowd each time. Friends — in my cir­cle or fur­ther out, who weren’t com­ing to the house on that weekly sched­ule — mobbed his wheel­chair. Thus at each Nick and I had just a few moments. The con­ver­sa­tion was effi­cient yet sin­cere. I’d leave him with a kiss on his fore­head. Is it cold or is it right to say that was enough?

From the announce­ment to the tribe of Nick’s diag­no­sis in about 2002, it felt ghoul­ish of me to turn sud­denly into the friends we likely wouldn’t be if Nick stayed healthy. I’m not one of those peo­ple who glom on to oth­ers in dire cir­cum­stances, sort of a cross-double-reverse Munchausen.

It was right, going by the exam­ple of what went on before. Ginny and I had the Ozark Poets and Writ­ers Col­lec­tive, with her the admin­is­tra­tor and me the Web mas­ter for its site, both on its board.

This is an appraisal. It’s what was. It could be just right, or else it could be that I’m a self­ish scoundrel. I’ll think about it some more. I thought about it more Mon­day night in their yard.

The Rup­ple Road house is small and decades old, sit­ting on a good acre. The road is just months away from becom­ing a four-laner. Even in this skit­tish econ­omy, sub­di­vi­sions within a cou­ple of years will sur­round the cot­tage. But there’s enough woods and pas­ture still to feel like the country.

We’ve gos­siped around bon­fires and sung with flash­lights in this yard. The other night a card table held sev­eral pic­tures of Nick and a cou­ple dozen votive can­dles. A half-dozen yard torches on posts were staked among the six dozen fold­ing metal, wood, plas­tic, webbed and dining-set chairs as well as a ham­mock and army cot.

A light mist fell every so often. String instru­ments not played at the moment sat on their stands, cov­ered in a blan­ket. A garage lantern — the elec­tri­cal alu­minum kind with a hook — served as flood­light for the grass-covered stage, hang­ing on a tree branch. Kelly and Donna sang a cou­ple of Nick’s songs. Ginny cried as she spoke, with inti­macy, admi­ra­tion and humor. Every­one could relate funny sto­ries. One son made it though what he had to say, between sobs. The other related a riotous and sur­real tale of Nick’s failed attempt to res­cue a lost chick and duck­ling — over there, he pointed, past the clothes­line. One sis­ter cried more than spoke and the other the reverse. Both women, with man­dolin accom­pa­ni­ment, sang the Lennon-McCartney “In My Life.” Steve and Ralph per­formed once again as the tribe’s des­ig­nated sto­ry­tellers, with Borscht Belt punch lines. They were the only two who did not bring notes up with them.

When peo­ple quit ris­ing to offer words, song sheets were handed out: “Amaz­ing Grace,” “I’ll Fly Away” and “Will the Cir­cle Be Unbro­ken.” All who ear­lier had played got their instru­ments and the rest of us had the words. There was no note of reli­gion pre­vi­ously, and despite being gospel stan­dards this was not a Chris­t­ian ele­ment. I believed the songs were cho­sen because they’re also folk stan­dards and that those of us who are Mus­lim and Jew­ish would know these songs too. M.B. says I over­thought this, that these are just clas­sics Nick loved.

Between the instru­ment stands, pic­ture table and music table an old iron floor lamp with cloth shade stood on its five-foot stand. It worked as the spot­light. It gave all of us who brought scripts (I read an Auden poem) just enough light, but also set mood.

The pole lamp was a Brauti­gan touch, bring­ing the indoors out. It was the lamp to stand by the arm­chair or the wheel­chair, hold­ing Nick and a good book or Nick and an acoustic gui­tar or Nick and blank paper. Nick

–30–