There Will Be No Miracles Here: A Memoir

by Casey Gerald

Maybe that’s what it was. The beginning of an emptying. That’s the image I see now, the one that feels true. A little boy with a heavy sack on his shoulder. He’s trying to get somewhere but doesn’t know where exactly, or how. This sack is so heavy he’s starting to limp and he can’t go any further. He stops on the side of the trail and sits down on a rock. The cool night wind feels gentle on his aching neck. He unties the heavy sack and looks at all the things he’s been carrying. He smiles. No wonder this walk has been so hard. He decides to leave some of the things here on the trail—the heaviest things, the jagged things, the things whose use he doesn’t know. These are the things that he takes out first. He sees a stick nearby and uses it to dig a hole next to the rock. In the hole, he buries the things in his sack that hurt too much to carry. He doesn’t know he will need them later. Doesn’t know that they will wash up in the next rains. For now, all that matters is that his limp is gone and his sack is light and he’s on his way—I’m free.

We also decided we would end the rationing of precious commodities like sugar. All our lives we’d been told how much sugar we could use—you don’t need that much sugar in that rice, boy!—but now we bought big bags of Domino sugar and I would pour and pour that fine white sugar until I decided the Kool-Aid was sweet enough. And all my sister said was Ooh boy that’s sweet! Never You used up all my sugar. It was our sugar now and we could get more.

Tashia and I ran our air conditioner so much and so cold that the pipes froze and spewed ice all over the carpet and the maintenance man had to come fix it twice. But we laughed so hard each time and turned the air back up and agreed that we would never be hot unless we wanted to.

Sometimes I’d sit in the bathtub and let the water rain down on my satisfied body until I felt like I was taking a nap in the womb. The water never went cold and we only turned it off when we wanted to, not when somebody came and yelled at us for running up the water bill. It was our bill and we’d run it up and happily suffer the consequences.

We had learned so well as boys to keep our mouths shut and now, as boy-men, we knew no other way.

Manufacture the Momentum: Always convince others that something big is happening, even if nothing at all has happened yet. The Illusion of Inclusion: Make everyone feel like they are helping to decide things, even if you have already decided, which should be the case. Shame and Fame: These are the leader’s most important tools of coercion, absent money or guns.

It is fitting, looking back at that Wednesday paper, that Mr. Obama and I were both there, as stories like ours have been so masterfully employed, by us and others, to show that there is never an excuse for anything—for crime, for failure, for sadness, etc. etc. Here was a flawless new president from god knows where, and here was a magical boy from Oak Cliff, Texas.

And I knew very well, as you know by now, the urge to debauch upon a different world when the one you’ve got has worn you down.