The Noticer Returns Read online

  “Son, if you can understand and believe that, it will be a defining moment in your journey. Do you see, Baker? If you can understand and believe that you have made choices that took you to a place you don’t like, doesn’t it just make logical sense that you can now make choices that will take you to a place you do like? Yes. Of course it does.”

  Jones patted Baker on the back and added, “So now your game becomes one of seeking wisdom and harnessing the power of that wisdom in order to make better choices.”

  The old man was right, Baker knew, and he now had a firm grip on that concept. With that shift in his thinking came hope for the future and a certainty that he and his family could . . . no . . . Baker had a certainty that he and his family would weather this storm. Exactly how that would be accomplished, he was not yet sure.

  Baker did not ring the doorbell again and had turned to leave when the door opened. A tall, bald-headed man stepped out onto the huge front porch with a friendly smile. He appeared to be in his early sixties and was trim and fit. “How’re you doing?” the man said as he approached with his hand out.

  “Ah . . . fine,” Baker said as he shook hands. “Yes, fine. Thanks.”

  Baker paused a beat too long, and sensing his uncertainty, the man quickly filled what might have turned into an awkward silence. He smiled and motioned Baker toward the entrance. “We’re glad you’re here. Man, I’m sorry it took so long to get to the door. I didn’t even hear the bell ring. Come on through the house with me. Everyone is out by the pool or on the wharf.”

  Before the man could reach the doorway, however, Baker spoke up. “Sir, I am embarrassed to say this . . .” The man turned. “Sir, I wasn’t invited to your gathering, and I know I’m intruding . . .”

  No longer smiling broadly but still with a pleasant and welcoming expression on his face, the man said, “Oh, okay. Well, no problem. Can I help you with something?”

  Baker looked at the ground briefly before taking a breath and saying, “Honestly, I’m not sure. Probably not . . . ah . . . as I said, I wasn’t invited to your party . . . um . . . I was kind of told to be here. I was told to see you.”

  The man was several inches taller than Baker and aware of the younger man’s uneasiness. Baker didn’t seem threatening to him or even strange, just extremely uncomfortable. The man moved a couple of paces around Baker and went down one step of the staircase. There, he leaned against the teak banister. It didn’t register with Baker until later, but the tall man had placed himself in a lower position, physically. And he had done it purposely so as not to further intimidate the already nervous younger man before him.

  “You were told to see me? Okay. That sounds like a story.”

  “That’s really all I know. Jones just told me to see you. I probably shouldn’t have come, and I’m sorry if—”

  Jack held his hand up, asking for silence without saying so. “Jones?” he asked simply.

  “Yes sir.”

  “White hair? Blue eyes? Jeans and a T-shirt?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Jack shook his head and looked away from Baker. To himself, he said aloud, “So he’s still alive.”

  Baker heard the softly spoken words and responded. “Yes sir. He is. He is alive. Though I almost shot him a while back.”

  Jack’s eyebrows flew up. “You what?”

  Baker shrugged it off with a chuckle and a shake of his head. “Nothing, really. It’s a long story. He just crossed my path on the worst day of my life. Kind of surprised me is all.”

  Jack nodded. Dryly, he said, “Yeah, he has a way of showing up like that.” Jack stuck out his hand. “I’m Jack Bailey. Please, tell me your name again.”

  “I’m Baker Larson, Mr. Bailey,” he answered, shaking Jack’s hand for the second time. “It’s nice to meet you. I am sorry to interrupt, but he did tell me to be here.”

  “Call me Jack, please. If you call me Mr. Bailey, I’ll be looking around for my father.” It was a line Jack used often. It relaxed people and made them smile. “So, Baker, what about our friend?” Jack asked, eager for information. “Is he still around?”

  “As far as I know . . . well, yes. I’m sure he is. My wife and I are meeting him again next Thursday evening.”

  Jack stopped for a moment. He knew there was no sense in trying to find him. If the old man had wanted, he would have come with Baker. This guy, Jack thought as he looked at the younger man, is my key to seeing the old man again. But why is he here? And what am I supposed to do?

  “Well now,” Jack said, “you are not interrupting at all. In fact, I insist you stay. We’ve fired up the grills and are just eating, talking, and letting the kids play in the water.”

  “If you’re sure,” Baker said.

  “I am. You hungry?” Jack was moving down the steps and motioned for the younger man to follow.

  Baker smiled and did so. “I’m always hungry,” he answered. “But first . . . you obviously know the old man. And he told you to just call him Jones as well?”

  Already halfway across the front yard, Jack stopped and smiled. “Yes, I called him Jones. Just Jones. I knew some guys a long time ago, though, who called him Garcia. Some called him Chen. Jones to me, though.”

  Baker looked intrigued. “A long time ago?”

  “Yes, twenty-eight years ago, in fact. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “You’re kidding!” Baker exclaimed.

  Jack came out of his thoughts back to the present. “Come on around back. Let’s get some food. I can already tell that we have a lot to talk about.”

  When Baker got his first look at the back of the house, he was flabbergasted. He had never seen anything to compare with what lay before him.

  “What do you reckon, Baker?” Jack said. “Me? I figure there’s about a million kids here.”

  The children were not what Baker had seen first, but he had to agree. Truly there were kids everywhere. They were on the slide, in the pool, jumping off the wharf into the bay, lining up to ride water toys pulled by the boats, and eating hamburgers and barbecue and pizzas. There were plenty of adults too. By the way they watched the kids, Baker could tell immediately they were mostly parents. “Who are these folks?” he asked Jack. “Do you do this every Saturday afternoon?”

  “It seems like it sometimes,” Jack said. “I know our neighbors probably think so. But this particular group of boys and girls are fishing buddies of mine.” Baker waited for the explanation that comment promised, and Jack obliged. “A lot of these children are sick. The ones who aren’t sick are friends of the kids who are. At a fund-raising event awhile back, I announced from the stage that I would take all of these kids fishing if the audience raised a certain amount of money. They did, and I’m still doing it. This was just a day right in the middle of the trips. Mary Chandler, my wife, figured to get them all together at once and let ’em have some more fun.”

  “You have got to be kidding!” Baker exclaimed. “You’re taking all these kids fishing?”

  “Yep. It’s taking a while, and I’m whipped, but it’s been awesome. For me as well as for them. We’ve only had a few postponed trips because of bad weather, so I’ve been out a lot.”

  Jack changed the subject. “You said you were hungry. Let’s eat.”

  Beyond the pool with a view of the bay was what Baker could only describe as an outdoor kitchen. Lounge chairs, a stainless sink, a refrigerator, a freezer . . . but the thing that caught Baker’s eye was the cooking station that wrapped around the kitchen in a semicircle. At least twenty-five feet in length, it was covered in polished stone and inset with six Kamado Joe ceramic grills. “Oh my gosh!” Baker was unable to hide his excitement. “You have the Kamado Joes! Good grief . . . there’re six of them! Oh man! Wow! Two Classics, two BigJoes, and two stainless-steel ProJoes. Wow!”

  Baker knew what he was looking at. The Kamado Joe is a domed-style cooker created with a special ceramic, giving it an unusual ability to insulate. It uses natural lump charcoal—no chemicals, even whe
n lighting—and the temperature can be controlled in small increments from 225 all the way to 750 degrees. “Man,” Baker said to Jack, “I like your house, and the pool is great, but this is my deal. Man! I’m in chef’s heaven!”

  Jack laughed and said, “Great, I’m glad you like the kitchen. Here, eat,” he added, shoving a plate at Baker. “They’re doing pizzas on the two at the far end. Grilled vegetables on the next one in line, two twenty-pound turkeys on number four, burgers and dogs on five, and fourteen racks of ribs—going fast it looks like—on the Kamado Joe closest to us.”

  Baker liked to cook and loved to cook outdoors. Several years before, thinking he would save some money, he had purchased one of the cheaper knockoffs being imported to compete with the Kamado Joe. Within six months the finish had faded, and the spring hardware and handle had rusted; and several months after that, the ceramic (or whatever it was) began to crack and crumble.

  Baker went online and checked out Kamado Joe. After reading all the ecstatic reviews, he paid only a little more than he had for the knockoff, cooked on it that night, and started what Sealy called “Baker’s love affair with the Kamado Joe.”

  Now, in the presence of six Kamado Joe grills, it was almost more than Baker could take. He got some of everything, including more pizza than he would have had Sealy been there, but the lure of wood-fire flavor pepperoni was much too strong. Jack loaded up, too, and while balancing plates on his arms, motioned to Baker with his head. “Let’s spread out over here.”

  They stopped at a table on the edge of the property. After a few minutes of small talk about the taste of this or that and a short but passionate speech by Baker listing the many reasons Kamado Joes “had it all over” gas grills, Jack got down to the real subject on their minds.

  “Baker,” he started, “I don’t know how you ran into that old man, but I think it tells me something about your current situation. And now you’ve talked with him a few times?”

  “Yes sir. I have.”

  Jack smiled and nodded. “Good. Well, if you have a brain in your head—which I can plainly see that you do—that tells me something about your future.” Jack ate some of the smoked turkey between two slices of bread and was silent for a bit. He looked out over the bay, watching the kids on a big banana-shaped float being pulled by a large ski boat.

  Jack took a breath to speak, but Baker beat him to it. “Why am I here today?”

  Jack’s mouth closed. He thought for a beat before countering, “That’s what I was going to ask. Why are you here? Don’t get me wrong . . . I’m glad that you are. But if Jones is behind it, there’s a reason. What am I supposed to tell you? What are you here to see? Or is it something you are to teach me?”

  “I doubt that,” Baker said and took the last bite of pizza.

  Jack cocked his head. “Really? If you seriously doubt there is anything I could learn from you, then maybe you haven’t been around the old man as much as I thought.” Baker’s head pulled back. “Kidding,” Jack said and punched Baker playfully on the shoulder. “Just kidding. Look, Baker, you and I both know that whatever it is we are supposed to do or find out, it’s probably right in front of us.”

  “Perspective,” Baker said.

  “Yep,” Jack agreed. “Perspective. So let’s explore every angle of the puzzle.”

  “Do you know what the puzzle is?” Baker asked.

  “I do not, but I know that Jones would say to persist without exception.” Jack collected his thoughts while gathering their napkins, cups, and the remnants of the meal. He moved to a nearby trash can and dumped the paper plates before continuing. Settling again at the table, he said, “As a deeper lesson about persistence, Jones convinced me long ago that most folks greet confusion with surrender. Most people, when they don’t know what to do, do nothing. The average person meets an obstacle and tells himself, ‘This is not for me,’ or ‘I am not the kind of person who does things like this.’ Average people respond to confusion in an average way. They stop. But people who achieve extraordinary results think differently. They understand something very significant about confusion.”

  “What would that be?” Baker asked.

  “‘Confusion precedes learning,’” Jack said. “That is a direct quote from the old man. Listen: confusion precedes learning. The anxious thoughts that seem so puzzling or discouraging are actually your very gateway to understanding. Only by persistently doing battle with the things you cannot yet do or that which you do not yet understand can you ever hope to achieve what average people never accomplish.”

  “The ‘yet’ part is the key, right?” Baker remarked.

  “Yes,” Jack agreed, “it is. When confronted with a difficult task, most people concede, at least to themselves, ‘I can’t do that.’ The distinction provided by the knowledge that confusion always precedes learning is ‘I can’t do that yet.’ When a person understands the concept, it opens wide the possibility of an entirely different life than the one presently lived.”

  Baker thought about that and then said, “Slow down and explain this. I’m not trying to be funny, but I’m a bit confused right now. I do think, though—when I understand this completely, the concept will change my life.”

  Jack laughed and nodded. “It absolutely will,” he said. “Okay, stay with me. A sign of a person’s maturity is his ability to live with—even in—confusion. The average person meets the edge of confusion and turns away. He runs from confusion at its beginning, at its first appearance. ‘I can’t do this,’ he says. ‘This is not for me.’ He will not live with or even near confusion and seeks an easier path.

  “The mature person—the high achiever—will understand that life’s grand prizes are guarded by confusion. The mature person senses the victory that exists beyond confusion and says, ‘I cannot do this . . . yet. I am not good at this yet, but I will work and learn and become better until I am competent, then excellent, then great! I will struggle and persist through confusion until I break through to the understanding or greater skill required for victory.’

  “‘I cannot play the guitar . . . yet.’ ‘I cannot do this algebra problem . . . yet.’ ‘I am not good at public speaking . . . yet.’ Do you see?”

  “I do,” Baker answered. “It’s a thought process, right? It opens up new possibilities for almost everything. Anything a person might want to become—a great parent, a successful sales executive, a fast reader—everything is within reach. When you think about it, it’s a mind-set based on reality. Why would anyone think they would be great right out of the box? I want to be a great cook. I am not a great cook . . . yet. Therefore, I will live with the confusion and disappointment of ruined meals as I practice until I master the skills and timing I need to be a great cook.”

  Baker thought for a moment, wanting to understand clearly and form the idea into words he could remember. “It is amazing,” he said finally. “The whole concept of ‘confusion before learning’ means that confusion guards the answers we seek.”

  Jack was quiet, nodding as Baker continued the thought. “I’ve got to be willing to enter into and do battle with the confusion in order to reach the victory on the other side. It’s like, I am here, confusion is in front of me, and just beyond confusion waits the answer or skill I need to take my life in a new and incredible direction.”

  Suddenly Baker’s eyes opened wide, and he looked at Jack as if he had just reached the other side on this very issue. “It’s simple, really,” he said, “and incredibly ordinary when you think about it. Why are we so afraid of confusion? Confusion is nothing but a word for ‘not knowing the answer.’ And really, isn’t it true that every time, right before we know the answer, we always . . . don’t know the answer!” Baker laughed in amazement and relief. “When I think of it like that, I am ready to deal with confusion and be a lot calmer—and happier—in the process!”

  The two men were quiet for a time. Baker continued to concentrate greatly as he arranged the new thoughts on the “permanent” shelf in his mind. Jack unders
tood what was taking place and patiently allowed the younger man time to cognitively cement his newfound perspective. He was keenly aware of the vast difference in achievement levels demonstrated by those who understood this principle versus those who did not.

  “You know,” Jack said when the time seemed right, “I haven’t seen Jones in twenty-eight years.” Baker nodded, though neither man looked at the other. “I obviously have known that he was gone.” Jack furrowed his brow, concentrating intently as if a specific thought was out of focus and just beyond his reach.

  He took a drink from the glass and rattled the ice. “I have been tossing around that idea since you showed up. Kind of like a cat would play with a string, you know? I’ve known he was gone, but I never felt like he was gone. It’s like he’s been gone in my head but still here in my heart . . . It doesn’t make sense really. Even to me. But I still feel that way.” Jack looked over at Baker. “I mean, right now, I still feel that way.”

  Again they sat quietly, Baker consumed with thoughts of the future, Jack having been gripped suddenly by the past. Jack Bailey and Baker Larson were very different from each other but united somehow by an old man who had touched both their lives.

  Finally Jack turned to face the younger man. “Tell me your story, Baker,” he said. “Tell me about your family. What do you do? Where are you from? When did Jones show up exactly? What does the future hold for Baker Larson? I want to hear it all.”

  For a long time Baker told him just that. He answered every question Jack asked, and with only a little prompting, Baker explained exactly where he was financially and the hope he had gained lately because of Jones. That hope, he confessed, did not seem based in reality, but it was there, deep within him, just the same.

  Baker told the story of the wheat field and every detail he could remember about that day, with only three minor exceptions. Jack listened to Baker describe how the old man had appeared with the starlings that morning and how Jones had taken the gun from him and how he seemed compelled to stay and listen. He told Jack everything he could remember that Jones had said.