smooth

GRAVEL

5.  A few weeks before he died, my teacher David Daniels said, "We're going outside." He was in his wheelchair, it was six in the morning, and my friends David Tickton, David Juda, and Marlyn were there to be of whatever assistance we could. I was sensing the upper right side back of my neck as he'd taught me years earlier. "You want to sense the right side back of your neck," he'd said. "It's close to what you really are. Not many people will tell you this." We were right with him as one of us helped push his wheelchair down a ramp into the back yard, through the side gate, and out onto the front sidewalk, where David began propelling his own wheelchair off to the left crying out, "Mr. Barnes! Mr. Barnes!" in a booming voice that carried itself all throughout the neighborhood. It was six o'clock in the morning! Something inside my chest opened wide up, and unbeknownst to me at the time, some sort of childhood fear overcame me, and I walked over to where he was still booming out, "Mr. Barnes!" as loud as he could and decided we had only one opportunity to get to the bottom of this. "Is it something from your childhood?" I asked. He turned to me and said, "Get back inside, Richard! Get back inside!" I was so mystified, though did as I was told and went back into the house where Marlyn had already been sent. I talked to her for a second, then realized I'd missed something, and immediately went back outside where David Tickton and David Juda were carefully wheeling him off to the right. He promptly demanded for all of us to go away, leaving me alone with him. "Go away!" he repeated. I stood slightly behind him on the right. After a while he said in a normal voice, "Are you still there, Richard?" I had been very quiet, even quieter than quiet, "Yes," I said. "Why won't you go away?" he asked. That was easy. "I'm having too much fun!" I said, moving around to the front where he could see me.