Pick-Up Sticks

This is dedicated to (what Andrew calls) the Wine Night Crew. I, however, dorkily call them the Urban Family

My dear friend Alison had posted on our Facebook wall that she was experiencing a "memory drop" in times that we shared with Max. I don't want any of us to forget Max, or the times that we all had together. So....seeing as how I cling to memories like life itself, I am going to go ahead and share some. It is a "memory pick-up," if you will....

Springerville nights were always the best. Being up in the mountains, away from the Phoenix inferno, wearing sweatshirts, drinking Campari straight from the bottle, and playing "screw your neighbor" until, um, blacking out. The cabin where we all slept had belonged to Max's great-grandfather, who, if I remember correctly, had known Brigham Young and was a hardcore Mormon, and the great-grandfather's "female companion" had emptied the cabin of everything. Shower doors, cabinet doors, faucets. All that was left behind were some towel racks, a shower chair, and a creepy wheelchair that gave me nightmares. His name was Lee, and Max's middle name honored him--a one syllable rest between the fabulous double syllables of his first and last names. Maxwell Lee Saunders. A good, hardy name. The name of a detective, or a smooth-talking cowboy, or someone decked out in pinstripes. Max was none of these things (thank goodness), but I loved the poetry of his name. They symmetry. I never told him this, 'cause I knew that he would give me that amused-but-confused look ("I love you, but WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ON??"), and that chuckle. That chuckle is what I still hear in my dreams at night, and what I miss most of all.

I wrote in great detail about my visits to Springerville in a journal that sits on the other side of the world in a big box in my storage unit. I'm so glad that I wrote it all down, that it's all preserved.

There is one memory that stands out among all of the rest. Andrew, Kasey, Bryce, Alison and I had all gone up to Bear Wallow--Max's grandmother's restaurant, where Max spent the summers working--to drown our hangovers in fantastically greasy food. After the meal we crossed the street and visited the fudge shop, where we used the large scoops to fill paper bags with sugary goodness (my selection? Gummy peaches...mmmm....sweet and sour at the same time...) With our bellies full and our teeth well on their way to rotting, we hopped into Max's grandmother's Denali (which is basically a studio apartment on wheels), with Max at the wheel, and went for a drive.

I snapped half a dozen pictures of the backs of my friends' heads as we wound through the mountains (with Max's thick curls partially contained by a blue handkerchief). I needed to preserve all of it. I was soon about to leave it all behind, and I needed pictures of that day to be among the things that I packed up and brought with me. I felt so elated to be with my friends, friends that I would miss so unbearably, and my heart was pounding in joy and pounding in panic...with each rotation of the rather large wheels I wanted to just stay still for a minute. I wanted to just stop and stand still and never move away from this safe metallic womb, from these people who just FIT. And I never asked anyone, but there was a very quiet energy in the Denali that day. Maybe it was the home fries-induced coma, maybe it was the sleepy sway of the mountain roads, but I can't help but think that everyone else was feeling the same way.

We stopped on a thin stretch of road and dismounted (yeah...you don't so much "get out of" the Denali as much as "dismount"...) and started hiking. There was a collection of boulders that we clambered up, grunting in our hangovers, and our reward at the top was a smattering of large animal bones (elk? Deer? T-Rex?) that had been picked clean and bleached in the alpine sun. We climbed a little higher until we found a large fallen tree to sit on and, keeping with Urban Family tradition, proceeded to indulge in a variety of, um, bad habits (candy, cigarettes...I still wish Andrew had brought his monogrammed hip flask that day!). And we just whiled away the day like that....smoking, talking, laughing at random crap, letting comfortable silences fill like balloons and settle, calmly, at our feet.

I have a picture of Max from that day that I brought with me to Thailand. Sadly, it was taken in the days before I finally broke down and bought a digital camera, so I have only this copy. He's squinting in the sun and looking up at me while Alison rests her head on his shoulder. Serene, relaxed, resting his arms on his knees, his hair flaring up like a forest fire behind his bandana. This is how I will always remember him. A happy mountain kid, surrounded by trees and by friends who loved him.

It was a great day.