Examples of Our Work Referenced in Episode 6
Harley’s space-rock song:
Harley’s farewell song to Louisville, KY:
Here’s the little story draft Trauman wrote in response to this picture:
I’m about two or two and a half years old in this picture. That jumper is killer and my hair looks like I picked it out at the clown shop. I probably haven’t slept that soundly since that day.
It must have been 1977. Which would have made my dad around 27. I don’t think anyone plans to fall asleep in this position. He was probably watching tv with me lying on his chest. Maybe the Rockford Files or Lost In Space reruns. When he realized I had fallen asleep, he must not have wanted to disturb me. To feel this little body at rest. So tired, so safe. But what to do with that right arm? No choice but to let it hang over the couch. And that arm has to be falling asleep. When he nodded off, he must have been holding my little fist which has slipped from his grasp. He must’ve been exhausted. Didn’t even have a chance to take off his glasses.
This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen asleep lying on his chest. I remember another time, him lying on the brown carpet talking with my mom in that same living room. I remember feeling my whole body rise and fall as he breathed. I could hear the slight rasp of his lungs and his voice sounded so different with my ear pressed against his shirt. Maybe I crawled up onto him this time hoping for more of that rising and falling and breathing.
My mom must have taken the picture. I’m not sure why she framed us this way. It’s almost as if we’re sinking, sliding together off the lower edge. I’m going to say she was smoking a cigarette. Almost surely. Maybe she was holding that hand away from the cheap camera to keep smoke out of the picture. Holding the camera one-handed and squeezing the shutter button probably knocked off her aim. But that’s not the point.
She recognized something. A moment that wasn’t going to last. A gift. A boy falling asleep to the sound of his father’s breathing. And a father happy to oblige.
And here are a couple of pictures of Harley’s desk we built together ten years ago, and a picture of the little shelf I built for my kitchen, which Harley now has in his house.
