KEVIN FRANCIS WAGNER (1963-2010)

My mom, who has dementia and has been looking through old photos to help her remember the past, came across the one below which I don’t remember taking but must’ve somewhere between 2000 and 2002. It’s of my former mechanic, a madman and raging alcoholic named Kevin Wagner who I’ve written about in several different places, and have even drawn a few times. The drawing above is my best one yet because I finally had a photo to work off of, but the others weren’t bad. His features are still ingrained in my head along with a horde of strange and mortifying memories.

Kevin Francis Wagner (1963-2010)

A skinny, humpbacked mechanic
with a shaved head
and a scar under his eye from the blade of a hedgetrimmer,
and false teeth.

His wife just left him
for a woman in Pennsylvania,
and he
hasn’t slept
for three days.

He’s been drunk on warm Budweiser,
pacing the floors
of his efficiency off Federal Highway,
just behind

Denny’s and the Golden Sands Inn.
When I go there to visit him,
he’s lying
on his tweed sofa,
looking up at the ceiling.

He claims he’s seen angels.

I notice the drywall
near the kitchen
where he put his fist through.

On the coffee table next to him, there’s an open bottle
of screw-top Sherry,
and the dill pickle jar he’s drinking it out of.

He drinks
Sherry
in the mornings, he says.
I gave her everything, he tells me.
Corsica,
nice furniture,
a nice place,
TV
VCR. And this is what she does?

He climbs up off the sofa and goes into the kitchen
and comes back
with a pickle jar for me.

Everything! he shouts.
I gave her

a life!

He collapses on the sofa.
Then he shows
me the tattoo
on his shoulder. CARLA,
it says,
in blue cursive, with a pinkish outline.

On his other shoulder, there’s a pigmy date palm
with the word
PARADISE
underneath it.

He used to be in the tree-trimming business
until his first wife took everything from him.

This Sherry isn’t bad,
I say.

Then I notice the violin case in the corner.

You play?

Been a while,
he says.

Lets hear it.

He gets up off the sofa, limps to the corner,
opens the case,
takes out
the bow, puts the violin
under his
chin and begins.

Mozart.

And to my surprise,
he plays very well.
The music floats
around his efficiency.
It goes out the front door,
drifts over the lawn,
and the bougainvillea,
and the palm trees,
and the colorful clothes on the clotheslines
all seem to
rejoice in it.

The song lasts about five minutes,
and then when he’s done,
he puts violin and bow neatly back in the case,
sits down to his Sherry,
and I ask him more about the angels he has seen.