Soldiers In The Water

I’d swim through shit for my kids, just like Joe.

My eyes are cloudy again. I don’t cry as much as I used to, especially in public. I miss it sometimes, the naked rush of desperate grief that sent me so many times to my knees in the cereal aisle at the store, in between the stacks at the library, in the darkness of a movie theater, even in church. Grief and I have at long last come to terms; she is allowed to take control in quiet moments when we are alone in my closet, my car, or the shower, while I maintain my composure (for the most part) in public places.

I sit in the rec center hot tub and watch my youngest march off the high dive. He mimes a moment of confusion as his long walk down the short blue pier comes to a sudden end. He windmills his arms and legs in imitation of a cartoon character before making a splash. I smile and raise a thumbs up salute as he climbs out of the pool and looks my way for validation.

He walks on the verge of running on his was over to the ladder. The lifeguard ignores him in favor of monitoring the three chubby teenagers wrestling in the shallow end.

I sit in the hot water and try not to think about Jadin, Joe, and Jared.

A few jumps off the high dive later Solomon makes his way over to the tub.

“Dad, come play with me in the river,” he pleads.

I look across to the shallow play pool. It isn’t crowded, but that doesn’t mean that someone’s three-year-old hasn’t pooped in it. I don’t want to play; I want to sit and stew in the hot salt water, allowing the emotion to melt out of my pores rather than my eyes.

“Dad, come on, you promised,” my son reminds me.

I put on a smile and climb out of the tub. Hot water drips from my body, and I shudder in the sudden cold. Solomon jumps into the playpool and swims for the river. For him the water is clear, clean, and warm, but all I can picture is dark sludge, diapers, and band-aids.

Jadin, Joe, and Jared.

My feet are at the edge now. Solomon looks back, expecting me to be there, right behind him. He wants to play soldiers-in-the-water, a game where we take turns dragging each other against the current, like a soldier pulling his wounded comrade through gunfire.

“Dad..,” he says, his tone full of playful warning.

I suck it up and slip into the sludge head-first in a low-profile dive. I spin onto my back and kick my way underwater, towards my son.

An arm wraps around my chest as I break the surface. “I’ve gotcha, man, just stay with me!” Solomon gasps, the effort of pulling my large frame against the current already punishing his lungs.

I lay on my back, with my legs and arms stretched out to drag through the water. The ceiling high above passes by slowly.

“You’re gonna be okay,” my son assures me.

 I close my eyes to picture Joe and his son Jadin, and their bittersweet reunion.

Joe Bell was hit and killed by a truck last week, while walking across the U.S. in memory of his son Jadin, who killed himself earlier this year after being bullied for being gay. (My little brother Jared died by his own hand in 2009.) I never met Joe, but I plan to someday, and until then I hope to follow his example of unconditional love.

The King's Vampire

One of my teachers in high school claimed to have been babysitter to a young Stephen King. He told us that even as a boy, the best-selling author of horror was a "weirdo." I wasn't completely convinced that his claim to have known Mr. King was true because he was drunk most days of the week, and therefore spent the better part of class time wandering between moods of nostalgia, indifference, and belligerence, and lecturing us accordingly.

I read a lot as a teenager, but I didn't read any of King’s books. The made-for-TV adaptations of his works were a series of cheesy disappointments that didn't send me running for the library to check out an armful of them to read. It wasn't until a vampire drove Elizabeth into my arms that I took an interest in the "weirdo's" macabre scribblings.

The first movie Elizabeth and I watched together as we were dating was Disney’s animated version of “The Jungle Book.” Not exactly a roll-around-on-the-couch-and-make-out flick, but more a sit-close-and-hold-her-hand-to-prove-that-you-would-make-a-kind-and-sensitive-husband-and-father movie. (It worked.)

The next movie that we watched together was suggested by Elizabeth herself, with the disclaimer that it had always frightened her to a thrill. I began to realize that she wasn't anything like the girls I had been running with, and looked forward to sitting beside her when she got scared.

“Salem’s Lot” is another of King’s TV adaptations, and although it is dripping with cheese, if you watch it in the dark after the sun goes down, it leaves a mark on your soul. (You’ll please excuse the pun; David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame stars as the hero.) There are a few terrifying moments spent with the vampire, but the best is when he confronts the family’s priest, who has come to talk sense into the teenage son that believes that a vampire has come to their small town. Moments after the mother tells her son that “nightmares seem real,” the creature rises from the floor like a black curtain of death hoisted by Satan himself. The pale undead skin of the vampire’s face stretches tight over his ancient skull, his eyes glow bright yet lifeless, and his fangs appear as a work of disgusting, terrible, yellow beauty.

Elizabeth sought shelter in my puny arms, and I have loved that vampire ever since.

After watching “Salem’s Lot,” I read a lot of Stephen King’s books. I liked most of them, and learned a greater appreciation for him as a writer. Prolific, yes, terrifying, yes, twisted, most definitely; the drunken declarations of my High School teacher seemed very plausible. Stephen King was most certainly a weirdo, but he was a weirdo that I could admire.

Years later, Elizabeth began to tire of my own constant and vocal wishing to someday become a writer. The trouble was that I almost never wrote, and when I did it never amounted to more than a page of dreadful musings. Having no writing discipline, I had no claim to the title of writer.

That all changed in a moment, however, on the day that Elizabeth said to me, “Would you please either start writing, or shut up about becoming a writer!?”

Her words were not harsh in their honest delivery, but still I felt hurt and humiliated for a moment, before realizing that she was right. I didn't start writing, but I did take to thinking more about the actual writing process and promised myself that I would start writing very soon. I just needed more time.

But I wasn't allowed any more time. Elizabeth didn't stop with her demand that I pen up or shut up. She found a local writing group that met every month at the Wiggin Memorial Library in Stratham, New Hampshire.

And then she had the nerve to make me join it.

I wrote a story about "durt" and the group loved it, in spite of it being almost fifteen pages of terrible writing. They voiced their praise along with a few edits, and in one hit the writing group became a drug. I couldn't wait for the month to pass so that I could get my next fix. I started to write almost every day, even if it was just a few lines at a time.

Still, Elizabeth didn't stop there. She also bought me a book; a book about writing, written by Stephen King. More a memoir than an instructional text on how to become a writing legend, the book put my dream into perspective and inspired me to keep at it. I was encouraged to learn that Stephen King had not just fallen out of the black sky at midnight with an armful of pre-written best-sellers and a fat stack of cash in his backpack.

No, he didn't succeed out of nowhere; he labored at it. He wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And while he wrote he lived, and while he lived he worked, suffered, loved, laughed, cried, survived, and went a little crazy. But through it all, he wrote. Even after being hit by a car and suffering debilitating injuries that left many unsure as to his continued success as a best-selling powerhouse, he wrote.

So I kept on writing. And while I wrote, I lived, and while I lived, I suffered, loved, laughed-you get the idea.

Then Jared died.

So I wrote. And went a little crazy.

Crazy enough that it came time to move. We needed to find some happy in a new and unfamiliar place, a place where we could drive for miles without passing the dark forest where we had found Jared. But halfway through our move west, with houses nearly sold and bought, I started to panic at the thought of leaving a successful business, a beloved neighborhood, and a number of dear friends for a new life which promised no certainty other than challenge. Elizabeth's response over the phone while house-hunting 2,500 miles away left me with no doubt that we were doing the right thing.

“If we don’t go for it now, we never will,” she declared, adding, “I want you to come to Oakley and take a break. No job, no worries, just writing,” she said.

“But-“ I began to worry at once.

“No buts!” Elizabeth sliced my worry in half with a gentle shout. “We’ll make it work. I’ll find a couple of jobs if I have to. Enough already; you need to finish this book! If you don’t finish it now, you won’t ever finish it, and then you’ll always wonder if you could have done it, and so many people will never hear Jared's story,” she concluded.

So we moved to Oakley. I finished the book. It’s called “Westof Independence.” That’s it in the picture, sitting on a library shelf beside one of Stephen King's.

So I write, but not to have my book(s) beside Stephen King’s. I write because I love to, even when it’s hard to. I write because it gives so much back to me, even when the readers are few and the sales are slow. I write because my little brother Jared died of loneliness, and I feel terrible at how I treated him, believing that he would always come back to hug me and hang out with me in spite of my abuse, self-righteousness, and callous indifference to his suffering. I write because I want my kids to know that no matter how impossible your dream, you have to try, because if you don’t try you have already failed.

And I write because a vampire chased a beautiful woman into my arms.

Thank-you Mr. King.

Reading About Me

The large auditorium was filled with tables, every table was filled with books, and every book was filled with words. My two sons and I wandered about, picking and browsing our way through it all. We had been at the Park City Library book sale for about twenty minutes when it happened.

“Dad, come here,” Caleb said, his hand reaching out and pulling lightly on my arm.

I turned, and found myself facing a familiar and very formidable enemy: Self-Doubt.

Caleb’s presence crackled beside me as I reached out and picked a copy of my own book, “West of Independence” from the table of books in front of us.  It felt heavy in my hand, so much so that the bones in my forearm threatened to snap under its weight. My heart dropped into my gut, and the air around me grew thick with the syrup of dread. I suddenly found it difficult to breath.

“Bad enough to see it here, but please don’t let it be the library’s copy,” I prayed without words as I peeled back the cover.

It wasn't, but that did little to keep my spirit from slipping further down the treacherous slope of failure towards the dark and depressive despair waiting below.

Standing beside me was one of my biggest fans, one of the four living people that I hate to disappoint. In the long moment that followed, I wondered what it meant for Caleb to watch me pluck my work from a library book sale table; did he feel sorry for me? Would this be the moment that changed forever the way he felt about his father? Was I as much a failure in his eyes as I was in mine?

I swallowed hard and said aloud with feigned confidence, “Someone must have read it, and then donated it to the library for the book sale. That’s nice.”

I stuck the book between two large hardcovers that I had already picked from another table. I didn't want anyone to see my picture on the back cover and feel sorry for me.

“Are you going to buy it?” Caleb asked.

“Sure, why not? I’ll buy it and sell it to someone else, or your mom can send it to someone for a review,” I answered, turning away so that my son would not see the forced optimism in my eyes.

I wandered in and out of the tables, trying to ignore the heavy burden I carried with me. Within the short course of a few minutes, I had rifled through piles of my favorite authors, looking for anything they had written that I hadn't read.

And then it hit me…I was rifling through books written by my favorite authors, in the same book sale where my son had found a copy of mine! I felt my self-worth claw its way back to the top of that slippery slope and up over the edge. Exhausted, he lay on his back and sucked in the sweet air of victory.

Between the three of us, we picked out two bags of books. Together we made our way to the checkout table, where a woman offered to help us tally what we owed. I emptied the first bag and handed over the stack of books.

“Do you have to pay for it if you wrote it?” I asked, a joke in my tone.

“Oh? Did you write one of these?”

“Yes, I wrote that one,” I said, pointing at “West ofIndependence.”

“Oh my, I've been reading about you, and I have been wanting to read this!” The woman exclaimed, dropping my fellow authors onto the table so that she could cradle my work in her hands.

“Well, that’s kind of you to say, let me buy it and I will give it to you,” I offered.

“Oh, no, I want to buy it. Would you sign it for me?”

So I did. With my sons watching.

Suck it, Self-Doubt.

Thick Skin

When I published West Of Independence, I did not expect a never-ending stream of five-star reviews. The topics of homosexuality, suicide, and family relationships are white-hot emotional launch buttons when dealt with individually, and my story blends them all together.

 

An interesting two-star review of West Of Independence was posted on Amazon today. I am not sure what the reader wanted, but it sounds like they were expecting a manual with all the answers, a black and white map detailing the motives and emotions of every character, followed by sweet redemption for all involved.

But I am a writer, not an explorer or a cartographer; I couldn't draw a map of my own bedroom, let alone a map of the human heart (mine or anyone else's). I don't think it was my duty to tell my readers what to take from the story; this is neither a textbook or an operations manual.

I will say this: the suicide of a loved one brings everyone involved to their knees, and leaves them with more questions than answers, more guilt than redemption, and more turbulence than peace. Jared has been dead for almost four years, and just yesterday I stood in the garden center of Home Depot amidst a rush of people, with a bag of fertilizer in my cart, tears falling down my cheeks, and panic in my chest. These moments come and go in waves, without any sort of forecast or pattern to provide warning.

I didn't write West Of Independence to explain, absolve, empathize, or lay blame, and I certainly didn't intend to answer any questions (especially since I don't have the answers). I wrote it to tell the story as it happened (from my point of view), so that others might learn from it and spare themselves the same experience. Judging from the feedback that has been flowing in over the past month, that just might happen for some. People of all ages and circumstances have reached out with their own stories, their own challenges, and to share with me their own change of heart upon reading West Of Independence. To hear them share their feelings is thrilling; not just because my writing has had an impact on their lives, but because I have learned that the more we share of ourselves, the more able and willing we become to bear one another's burdens and sometimes even help to remove them altogether.

And so I don't mind that someone sees the book as too ambitious, or feels that it falls short of the mark that they have chosen for it. I had a mark in mind when I wrote it, and it wasn't to become an overnight literary success and a standard for writers in general. It was to help at least one person, and yes, that one person was me.

 

Anyone else was to be a bonus.

The Perfect Sunday School Lesson

I was seventeen. She was in her late twenties, and the car was brand new. Every Sunday I would skip out of Sunday School and stand in the parking lot next to that red custom Porsche, taking in the beauty of the slant-nose, marveling through the windows at the black leather interior, and itching to run my hands along that whale tail. How I loved that machine, and how I longed to peel open her door and slide into that soft, inviting, leather seat. I would turn her on and make her purr as we sped together down the back roads of Madison, Connecticut.

“Wanna ride?”

For a quick sliver of time, I believed that the sultry voice came from under the shiny red hood. The car had sensed my desire, and through some mad miracle had crashed mechanics into lust, finding amid the wreckage a magical solution to all my teenage frustrations.

“I said, do you want a ride?”

Reality kicking in, I turned towards the actual source of that lusty query. My cheeks ran instantly to warm; I was sure they matched the color of the car (now all but forgotten) as I faced the other object of my Sunday morning lust; before me stood the nameless beauty who had in recent weeks become a regular visitor to the morning services. Who she was and why she came every Sunday morning I could not imagine, because she herself was worthy of worship, and I was convinced that somewhere out in the wide world was a shrine built to her name. She smiled, the question hanging in the air and mingling with her scent. I could find no voice within myself, and so I took the muted moment to drink in the sight of her; long, dark hair, eyes as green as young blades of grass, and skin that looked to be fashioned of the softest stuff on earth. She wore a dress that made no effort to hide her shape, and she seemed to be made of nothing but curves leading down to legs so long a man might need a map to navigate their course.

She cleared her throat, and I startled just a moment before gathering my senses.

“In this car?’ I squeaked, gesturing at the Porsche with an arm that had gone numb for lack of blood.

“Of course, climb in.” She laughed, and as the sound of it faded my ears begged for more.

         I opened the passenger door, doing my best not to make too much a display of my excitement. I slid down into the leather, and it was even more smooth and dreamy than I had imagined, yet firm and supportive in spite of the comfort.

         “Buckle up.” She suggested.

         I reached behind me to the right, but my hand did not immediately find the seat belt. I was about to turn my head to look for it when I saw her reach down between those two marvelous pillars of soft flesh and pull up the straps to a four point racing harness. My hands went numb again, and my heart began to smash against my chest walls as she snapped the buckle together across her curvy chest, pulling it tight. As she did so, that dress rode up her thighs, making my love life up to that point in time nothing but a waste of breathe and angst. Every girl, every touch, every kiss and every caress was forgotten in that second. Had the angel of death arrived to rip me from that car, he would have had to employ all of the hosts in hell to do it.

         The engine purred into action; she must have turned the key while I was staring at her legs. I fumbled the seat belt across my chest, snapping the buckle into place. I wondered then where to put my hands.

         “Sorry I don’t have a four point for you,” She said, “I don’t make a habit of giving out rides.”

         ‘Heaven! This must be heaven, and I am dead. Is this my reward? To ride around the rest of my days with such beauty in such a beautiful car?’ My imagination mused, and I smiled at the thought of eternity as a road trip worth dying for. The engine revved high as we peeled out of the parking lot and onto the road. She hit a button and the windows slid down, letting in the cool spring air.

         “I love to drive!” She laughed, shifting up a gear as we hit a straightaway. The wind lifted her hair, and my spirits flew with it; I was in love.

         “I love to ride!” I exclaimed, almost shouting the words, a sort of Hallelujah chorus on such a glorious Sunday morning. She smiled, and then nodded her head as she down shifted around a sharp curve. The car hugged the road tight, the way I longed to hug this strange, crazy, beautiful creature sitting so calm beside me in the driver’s seat. The wind rushed through our hair, the road rushed underneath us, and the blood rushed through my veins. For those minutes I was happy, so happy that time meant nothing and reality was nothing more than a skid mark on the pavement of that church parking lot.

         She never returned to church. I waited outside for her the following Sunday and for many more after that, but I never saw her again. I don’t know why she offered me that ride; maybe she just took pity on me, saw me standing there and thought she could make a difference in some dork’s life.

         She did.

Whoever Closed The Door, Would They Please Open A Window?

Dear heaven above, that smell, what is that smell? Oh my, that's bad. It's her, or rather something wafting out of her. It must be coming from her; I am the only other person in the room, and the door is closed. Look at her; she sits behind her desk, crushing that tiny, desperate, overworked chair with her mass, pretending nothing is rotting inside of her, that nothing is trying to work its way out of her before it dies inside her bowels. She is teasing it, setting it free in little gasps, making it believe that soon it will be out, clouding up the room and poisoning the air around her like an airborne infection.

Oh, that one was bad, are my eyes actually watering? Can I breathe through my mouth? Will it taste like it smells? Would it be better to taste it than to smell it? Should these be my last thoughts? Shouldn't I be thinking of family and friends? Whatever I am thinking, I don't want to pass into the next phase of forever with this smell in my face. Will my last living act be to suck her warm cloud of stink into my nose, filling my lungs with invisible death?

It's so hot in here, why the hell has she got the heat on? How can she be cold with that inside of her? She is like a walking methane gas pocket, and I am without my canary in a cage. Would it hurt to open a window? I imagine I can see the air outside taunting me, but that may be a hallucination, a side effect of breathing in too deeply.

Oh no, she's on the move. She is going to walk right past me. I want to hold my breath, but I can't suck in a chest full of air and hold it, that would give some of it time to settle inside of my lungs, and I might become a carrier. No, it's best to take short, shallow breaths and hope my immune system can fight off the raging hoards of infection that surely cling to the air molecules in this room.

The door is opening, at last a savior! Oh no, that look, I know that look; they think I did this! Come on! Do I really look capable of bringing about such a smell? Ok, scratch that, I probably do, but that is stereotyping, and aren't we as a society past all that? Should I make a face, wave my hand past my nose, wrinkle it up in disgust? Would that make me look more guilty? Too late, there is no doubt in her eyes, the window for quietly passing blame is closed. Speaking of windows, my kingdom for an open one! My silent accuser grabs what she came in for and leaves, eager, I am sure, to escape my wrath. Soon I am alone with my tormentor once again.

Time crawls. Hours in misery pass. The afternoon is spent at last, and my work is done. Double-checks completed. Everything is running smooth, my tasks are finished. I can leave this room for cleaner pastures of air. I say my goodbyes, reach for the doorknob, and pull open the door. Cool air rushes over my skin; I breath it in, smile, and walk into the hallway. I close the door, leaving her behind with her sins. I am free at last.

On the way out, I think about her job title and laugh out loud.

ASSessor.

Little Squirt

When we were very young, my parents would drive us across the country to visit relatives out west. My father would pull the seats from whatever van we were driving that year, and build a wooden platform to fit in their place. Underneath the platform would go the luggage, and on top would go their bedroom mattress. We kids would pile in, sitting, laying, rolling, on the soft mattress together as the miles passed below us. Mom would tape aluminum foil to the windows to reflect away the sun and its heat, and we would eat sandwiches from a big red and white cooler. There was no air conditioning, so the windows would be open for most of the drive, and the hot wind would rush in and stir up the pages of our books.


Dad would drink "Squirt," a sour grapefruit flavored soda that came in yellow cans. I would steal a sip or two when I dared, and as I did, I would imagine driving my own wife and kids across the country someday. I would drink "Squirt," wear a Farrah Fawcett tee shirt with faded blue jeans, and block out the sun with big black sunglasses. My left hand would hold the wheel, and I would bend my right arm up over my head, fingers clasping the seat belt strap that hung from the door frame above. My wife would sit all pretty in the passenger seat, handing out crackers coated with squeeze cheese and bacon bits. I would listen to the kids sing along with John Denver and Olivia Newton John on the radio, then smile at their cheers when I pulled over at fireworks stands along the way.


After driving all day, Dad would pull over to the side of the road, grab a sleeping bag from the back of the van, and drop to the ground for a long nap. I would worry about my father out there on the ground; I imagined his body being crushed by a passing truck, or wild animals tearing him from sleep with their sharp claws and cutting fangs. I wouldn’t sleep much, restless from  the thought of losing him playing on a loop inside my head. Come the dawn, I would wake to the creak of the driver side door opening, and then listen for the rustle of his sleeping bag as he crammed it into the space between the two front seats. The door would close with a click, and he would murmur something softly to my mother as she stirred. Only then would I feel safe again, and as he started the engine and pulled the van back onto the highway I would drift off to sleep with a smile on my face.


I could really go for some Squirt right now.

Framed

"So Dad, have you written any more chapters for your book?" Caleb's voice tugged at my mind, a tether to hold me fast to the present and prevent me from running too far and long into the past.

I turned to answer my oldest child, and noticed that framed as he was by the doorway of my bedroom, his height was remarkable. "Yes, I have written a few, and I made some changes to the ones that you have already seen."

"Anything I can read tonight?"

"Sure, I think I have most of them printed out here somewhere," I said, and began to search the pile of paper on my nightstand.

"I can't wait for your book to come out; it will be a bestseller, and they'll probably make a movie of it."

"Well, I am glad you and your mother have that kind of faith in me, because I sure don't," I laughed, pulling from the mess before me a short stack of papers held together by a paper clip. I held out the chapters, then pulled them back before he could take them from me and said, "You know, this is a tough thing to write about."

"I know it is." He looked me in the eyes, making me feel safe for the moment.

"Some of the stuff in here is pretty heavy, but it is the truth, you need to understand that. There's a lot of love in this family, but there is a lot of harshness too. I don't want you to think less of anyone in here." My voice cracked a little, and I paused, holding my breath and pushing away a breakdown.

"Dad, do you want me to hug you? I mean, you look like you are sad right now, and maybe you need a hug, if that's what you want."

"Yes, I could use a hug, I am in bad shape," I shuddered.

"I know you are."

As we hugged, I felt his strength and became aware of his stature. I felt a moment of panic, fearing that I had somehow missed the last eight months of his life and that his childhood was passing like a breeze through my hair. I squeezed him then, perhaps a bit too much, but I couldn't let go because I didn't want the moment to end. Then I thought about the strength in his arms, and noticed the width of his shoulders and the height of his head so close to mine. I was happy; my son was hugging me, an outward expression of love and compassion for me in my moment of great need. Yes, he was leaving childhood behind, but as he did he was becoming a man, a great man who knew what it meant to love someone and show it.

I could have passed away in that moment, happy and fearless for the future, but I have two more to finish first, and I think Elizabeth needs my help.

The Burning Family Bush

Hello, my name is Despair, have you met my family? My parents, Denial and Martyrdom, have been married for many years, and nowadays they bounce around inside a grand monument built to honor (on display) the trials of so many decades together. I have many siblings; first, there's Ignorance, he's right jolly if not a little selfish, but not in a spiteful way. He is hard not to love, but can be a tad tiresome. My sister Hate is next in line, and her name says all you need to know about her, at least for now. I came next to the family, and I have not the time nor the will to detail my faults. It is enough to say that I am incapable of self, and appear to need to be needed in order to survive. Something of a work in progress for me is the shaking of that self-imposed mantle. After me there was Loneliness, but he is gone now, a victim of himself. I wonder if Loneliness ever imagined being missed as badly as we miss him now. It strikes me now, how ironic it is that he has caused so much of himself for others. Loneliness is followed by The Bouncing Ball, but that is not his real name, we just call him that because he can only seem to be up or down, and travels rather quickly and without warning from one to the other. He can be fun to play with, until he bounces away from you, seemingly ever-unwilling to return. Not long after The Bouncing Ball came Submission, eager as she is to please others. It's sad, the fact that she doesn't see herself as fine the way she has been in the past, and so feels the need to adapt to others. The last of the litter is Drama, and her name follows her wherever she goes, but only because she demands that it does. She must feel that without her name she would be somehow less of a person, and more of a blind spot in everyone's eyes, and maybe she is right, but we don't remember; it's been years since she traveled alone.

Hope springs eternal, as they say...