Dubuque Street

     When Karl calls he says he's going to take a shower and then he'll be ready. Outside
it's warming into the thirties and the chill comes from the wet earth. Karl's voice touches
 me across the distance, I see him standing  alone at his phone on the wall in his
kitchen.It's a misty morning in Dubuque and I tell him I'll be there in an hour.
     "Hey man," he says as I climb the stairs in his apartment. His hair tussled in great
waves and his smile wide and engaging, he follows me as I step down a stair.
     "Don't forget your backpack," I tell my friend and he stumbles, says "Hey," and we
move out to the car and the light fog that lifts like a veil from the downtown streets.
     "Okay to stop at Sav - A - Lot?"
     "Yeah, he says and smiles and stretches.
     At the entrance a sale on bananas: three pounds for a dollar.
     "That's a good price." Karl says and he walks toward the display, picks a bundle
of bananas.
     "These are good," he says and tempts me and I grab a few. After we pay for 
our groceries Karl leans into another display, a sale of apple juice for a dollar.
     "Good price," he says and returns to the cashier.
      "You go ahead to the car," I tell him after he bags the juice, "I've got something else.
 I'll be right there."
     Karl is a soldier. He's seen the insides of institutions where pills are dropped down
the throats of unwilling patients, where mouth pieces are pushed onto teeth to prevent
patients from biting off their own tongues during shock therapy, where the diagnoses are
 the most serious mankind has devised; though these diagnoses are right only half of
the time, the oversight for the mental health system being an abomination.
     In the middle ages we called troubled neighbors witches
and the church created exorcism and as last resorts, burning at the stake. The last
witch or warlock was engulfed in flame just two hundred years ago. Not so much has
 changed
     Karl has seen and touched and felt modern medicine. He's survived and he's
my friend and he's taught me about fear, about truth and love and being alive.
     When I walked to the car in the parking lot at Sav - A - Lot on Friday Karl was
 missing. I walked to nearby cars, no Karl. I worried he might have walked away,
the unknown and Karl being too close, an x-file connection with him, somehow.
 I decided I'd go everywhere within a certain radius, relying on hope and prayer.
     I drove toward the street and circled. No Karl. I stopped when I saw a small green
vehicle like mine. My friend's great head, the wavy still wet curls flopping around his big ears,
he seemed content as a child, waiitng for me.
     "Karl, you've got the wrong car!"
      He looked disorriented.
     "Geez, I'm glad you found me. That could have been trouble."
     At McDonald's on JFK  we bought coffee. He ate a Big N Tasty and a fish sandwich. I
offered one of my apple pies and he ate that, too.
     "I've got to get back to my push aways," he said.
     "You're exercising..." I said, "Good for you."
     He smiled and pushed at his food and I got the drift.
     As we drove toward his job near Asbury he told a story:
     "We got a noodle cutter in the other day," he said, "I didn't know what it was."
     "Oh yeah," I said, going along, dropping my gaurd and listening.
     "Yeah," he said, "I thought it was a musical instrument. I tried to play it.
I figured it out though. You can't put strings in one side and out the other."
     We laughed and then he shared one of the insights that separates him.
     "Can you see it now?" Karl began, pretending to be an announcer. "Ladies and gentlemen,
in the back row next to the bass player we have Karl playing the noodle cutter."
     Some times I think he's the sanest man alive.