“Uncle Lee’s last Go-around!”

I know what they said. They said I didn’t know Uncle Lee very well, or all that much, that he was a crazy poet and writer, who, if he didn’t die of a heart attack or stroke, would have killed himself in another year or two or three on some crazy adventure.
The good folks of the city had driven Uncle Lee local and I feel he did what he did because he knew he was on his last go-around and if he didn’t—land on White Mountain, some 16,000 plus feet high in the Andes, by way of a helicopter, and have a picnic—and then go write what he felt he had to write, that he only could write, or would write, it would never have gotten written had he not—he would have died sooner. For good or bad it was forever for Uncle Lee—a now or never thing.
Uncle Lee was the finest man I ever came to know; nobody could bend or beat him. No woman, or man, poor or rich, clergy or politician, poet or journalist, dog or cat, we can add horses in there also, he liked them, riding them, betting on them, like at bullfights, or boxing matches, or cockfights, and so forth, because in spite of them, he went on living, getting fun and adventure out of life, not making big issues out of silly things, doing the things most important to him, because I was around to observe him, and that is something no other person but his wife got to do. He didn’t meddle into other folks’ lives.
He was everybody’s uncle, I suppose you could say (or everyone thought so). He didn’t acknowledge having any children—said most kids were ungrateful little rug rats, after the age of ten, and expected handouts and felt life owed them a free living; nor did he acknowledge any kin, not at all except a brother, named Mike, someplace in Minnesota. He lived with his wife whom he called his sidekick (and of course, she had kin).
He lived in a little apartment in the city of Huancayo, in the Andes of Peru; a neat warm apartment. His wife never cooked, but she kept a neat and clean house, and would run to the drugstore when he needed medicine (he was all of twelve years her senior).
In those first years he came to Huancayo, I saw a lot of him, if not in the newspapers or on television, or on the radio, then in person, at his house or a café called Mia Mamma, among other restaurants, and cafés. He liked to sit in the sun and bake, while eating his lunch in quiet, he didn’t care to look out of windows, he said once: “The reason is, is that I never get to taste the God given fresh air, or feel the sun’s heat in those enclosures.”
So you see I knew him pretty well, or as well and perhaps even more so than most people, to include his journalist friends, whom were mostly bloodsuckers or otherwise known as leaches, other than the younger group, and even some of them; even better than his wife’s kin. And they were always protective of him.
He had a liking for ice cream; it tasted all right to me, especially on a warm August day in Huancayo. He didn’t care for most of our city’s sports, he’d never come to see us play; only his wife’s swimming. Anyhow, we’d all wait to hear about his next book, or new production, his next forthcoming book to come out, and I never missed a presentation of his. The next day we’d all talk about Uncle Lee, how he sat behind a table or podium not saying anything, just standing or sitting there all clean and neat and proper like a scholar, with his clean looking tie and suite jacket on, and a whole lot of medals on each lapel, looking more like a general than an Andean Scholar, or Poet Laureate—as he was. And then abruptly, he’d talk, answer questions, tired looking eyes behind his small glassed-in, framed glasses, and it was always short and sweet.

Uncle Lee didn’t die that one day he was ill, it was after that. He came home after a long spell in the hospital, weighing thirty-pounds less, his eyes foggy, likened to cracked eggs, near dead eyes, but still alive. We hoped he’d remember us, and he did, although he had to relearn our names. Faces he never forgot, just names. His brother remained in that there Minnesota, up near Canada, I heard him tell once “I think my brother feels Peru is a bit too dangerous for his blood.”
I remember that one afternoon when he called over the young waiter, and he looked at Uncle Lee, as if he had wide window glass eyes—the boy being his nephew, eleven-years old at the time, “You’re my waiter, hey?” he said, and the boy said back, “Yes, uncle.”
With those eyes that were now pale, and in need have something, he commented staring at the boy, “You shook my hand like a man today, it’s about time,” he affirmed to the boy.
The boy began to say something else, then Uncle Lee said, “Okay, okay. Just give me another hand shake like that and I’ll double your tip.”
The boy did it, shook his hand firm, and got two- soles. And Uncle Lee said, “All right, okay, you know a firm hand shake gives a message (the boy stood there in astonishment) it means we aren’t going to fight, we’re friends.” And that was that, a lesson perhaps, if not a confirmation to the boy, he was entering a new world, outside of his democratic home front.
And the boy took the money and put it in his pocket and went to eat his lunch, his mother, the cook had made for him.


I don’t know for sure how his religion was, I just heard he never disconnected himself of it, not even for a minute or two, he said and I heard him say it, and he said it more than once, but I’ll try to quite him the best I can: “The best of men or the worse of men are all entitled to it (religion), anybody, and everybody, but cussing and drinking, and lying and fornication, and taking what does not belong to you—all these kinds of things don’t get washed away because you got a cross in the car hanging around your rearview mirror, instead of those large white or black dice, and you say look I got religion; or you go to a fiesta, and pray for an hour prior to the drinking and dancing and eating, and drink and cuss for ten-hours afterward, spend all your money and can’t buy a dime’s worth of bread for the household, and say I got religion, it isn’t going to save you one bit, you don’t have a license to whore about and look God in the face, and not think he’s not going to slam the door in your face and say “I don’t know you,” because that’s exactly what’s He’s going to say about you and your religion, it’s not worth a plum nickel. Those are the folks that haven’t a notion of anything about religion because it means something different.”
I suppose you could say, Uncle Lee lived on the quiet side of the street, but often went over to the wild side to ponder, with the reckless, I guess in his younger day, he was very much like them.

When he got ill, this last time, I suppose we all thought, that was all of him, that this was the last for Uncle Lee, that he would surely die, because even a cat only has nine-lives, and he had used them all up long ago. But he always lived on the edge, so we were baffled one which way to think.
I went to see him at his apartment because I wanted to, because he was—as I mentioned before—the finest of men I had known, got to know, I’d ever get to know perhaps, because he made fun out of life, grabbed opportunities in spite of limitations, if indeed he had any, or if there were hurdles, or stumbling blocks in his way, it didn’t matter, he went around them, under them, or over them. Regardless, people had tried to kill him (his kin, from way back, for his money; I heard it was a son-in-law, and a daughter), and he was robbed a number of times, beat a few times—so I learned about him, but he held no grudges, he said, “It’s the price you pay for being alive.”
I didn’t understand all of him; perhaps no one did, not even himself, not even his mother, whom he lived with, and she lived with him, back and forth for 33-years, closer than two peas in a pod; as I was saying, I didn’t understand all of him, yet, in time I might, but I’d have to get old for that, yet I think I knew more of him than most folks knew, besides the surface things that everybody knew. In any case, this was Uncle Lee’s last go-around. His picnic on White Mountain, and his last writings of Huancayo, and his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, where he lived, but never cared to return to, said they all grew to be snobs back there.
He said the region, the Mantaro Valley, and Huancayo, of which he loved so dearly, had no top to it, or on it—no lid. That is, or was to his surprise, un-comprehendible, why God had so much patience with the folks of the Valley Region. That it was alive, and an un-rule-ridden, valley region full of small towns and one big city. That the folks were terrified and timed, fiesta clinging, and could be quite deceiving—but warm hearted. It was hard for me to understand all that, but perhaps he was more right than wrong.

He would not have had to ask me, no—not anymore than he did, and he never did verbally, and I would have gone with him anywhere, anytime, had he asked. I could tell from his voice though, this last time, he was not fine. Then came the sign that arrow that no one can dodge…

Note: written while still ill (the 11th-day), at the author’s apartment in Huancayo, Peru, No: 494, 10-17-2100; dedicated to Uncle Lee.