OF 2012 - The Writing Disorder

the writing disorder
presents
FICTION AND
NONFICTION
THE BEST
OF
2012
edited by c . e . lukather
The Writing Disorder Presents
The Best Fiction
and NonFiction of 2012
Published by
THE WRITING DISORDER
a Literary Journal
C.E. Lukather, Editor
www.thewritingdisorder.com
© 2012 THE WRITING DISORDER
1
ISBN Number 978-1-300-33859-8
This book may not be reproduced in whole, part or miniscule pieces, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical or supernaturally, including photocopying, ghosting, recording or by any
information storage and retrieval system now known to man or hereafter invented without the written
permission from the author(s).
Designed and edited by C.E. Lukather
Initial edit by our wonderful writers
Proofread by someone on our staff
Published by The Writing Disorder
All rights reserved.
©2012
Cover Image: Apartment building in West Hollywood, CA, where F. Scott Fitzgerald died.
Photograph by C.E. Lukather
The Writing Disorder
P.O. Box 93613
Los Angeles, CA 90093-0613
Website: www.thewritingdisorder.com
Contact: [email protected]
Submit: [email protected]
We read submissions all year long.
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Remember. Forget. Forget. Remember.
Sometimes we forget about people—who they were, what they
were saying, or even what they mean to us. The written word
can be a powerful reminder. While it’s difficult to remember
everything we’ve read this year, what we’ve included here is
the best—work we feel is worth reading again and again.
We love reading the work that’s sent to our offices every day.
Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s great, and sometimes
it’s not quite what we were hoping for. There’s always room
for improvement. We strive to publish the best work we can.
Sometimes we miss out on certain pieces, but when we do we
try to replace it with something better.
With this edition, we present you with our best work of the
year. Once you’ve read through it, we think you’ll agree.
It’s something to remember.
C.E. Lukather
Editor
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TABLE
of
CONTENTS
SPRING
ELIEZRA SCHAFFZIN...................................................... 8
MELISSA PALMER..........................................................15
PAMELA LINDSEY DREIZEN.........................................20
CLAIRE NOONAN. . ..........................................................30
BEN ORLANDO. . ..............................................................40
JOE KILGORE. . .................................................................51
FRANCIS CHUNG............................................................62
KEVIN RIDGEWAY.. ........................................................72
KAROLINE BARRETT.....................................................75
HENRY F. TONN..............................................................79
LILY MURPHY.................................................................84
SUMMER
BRIAN S. HART. . ..............................................................89
JESSICA L. CAUDILL......................................................93
AMANDA MCTIGUE. . ......................................................99
LESLIE JOHNSON..........................................................102
BRANDON BELL. . ..........................................................108
MARIJA STAJIC.............................................................114
RACHEL BENTLEY.. ......................................................118
REBECCA WRIGHT.......................................................124
ORLIN OROSCHAKOFF. . ...............................................131
J.J. ANSELMI..................................................................134
MELANIE L. HENDERSON.. ..........................................141
S.M.B...............................................................................150
ANNETTE RENEE..........................................................156
4
the
BEST
of
2012
FALL
CAROLINE ROZELL......................................................169
LORRAINE COMANOR.. ................................................179
MARC SIMON.. ...............................................................193
LEN JOY.........................................................................198
PRISCILLA MAINARDI.................................................211
HARVEY SPURLOCK....................................................218
MAX SHERIDAN............................................................224
KATJA ZURCHER..........................................................240
LINDA NORDQUIST......................................................247
STEVEN MILLER...........................................................250
COLLEEN CORCORAN. . ................................................253
CHELSEY CLAMMOR...................................................259
ALIA VOLZ.....................................................................265
WINTER
RADHA BHARADWAJ...................................................268
BARRIE WALSH.. ...........................................................278
EMIL DEANDREIS.........................................................288
BRETT BURBA. . .............................................................298
MAUI HOLCOMB...........................................................301
DAVID S. ATKINSON....................................................307
SHANNON MCMAHON.................................................312
FRANCES O’BRIEN.......................................................324
SHAE KRISPINSKY. . ......................................................328
DAVID B. COMFORT.....................................................332
CHASE S. WILKINSON..................................................339
5
6
FICTION
SPRING 2012
7
THE PUZZLE
by Eliezra Schaffzin
I
was an ordinary child, ordinary even in the things I did extraordinarily,
such as my high marks at school, my energetic pursuit of the arts and of
volunteerism, my adherence to my parents’ rules and vocal support of their
religious and cultural values, et cetera. It was all this ordinary extraordinariness
that clinched my acceptance to a premier university, the name of which will
be unimportant to this account, as will my own name. (Even now, I write
under a pseudonym, a fact that will also be irrelevant here, as you’ll soon see
for yourself.) In my first term I continued to cultivate my extraordinary wellroundedness with coursework in mathematics (infinitesimal calculus), in the
social sciences (education), the humanities (intellectual history) and the arts
(African Drumming and Dance was a favorite at the school, and I enjoyed those
autumn afternoons when I pounded, barefoot, on the sloping green outside the
Theater Department, losing myself in a swirl of white limbs and colorfully
dyed skirts). I enjoyed everything with the proper zeal and considered nothing
too deeply. As part of an agreement with my parents I took a position at one of
the school’s late-night eateries, preparing portable dinners ordered by campus
phone. It was there, at the place called “The Gate,” that I met Castor.
This young man’s name was as improbable as his appearance, six-foot-nine
and paper-thin, a long, wan face punctuated by distant emerald eyes. He wore
a red apron that designated him, a senior, as my supervisor (I wore white), and
the only garment long enough to cover his frame was also too wide, its edges
overlapping one another on the plane of his back. Instantly I was in love. Cas
noticed my flushed cheeks, my carelessly scribbled orders, my pony-tail askew;
he soon made a habit of leaning against the wall beside me where the phone was
beginning to loosen from its mounts, and, when there was a lull in its usually
frantic ringings, he would tell me something of himself. It seemed that though
his weight had always been thinly spread across his skeletal form, he had lost
much of the meat beneath his skin during the previous school year, which he’d
spent abroad, writing a paper under the auspices of the foreign studies program;
no academic department had seen fit to accept his subject matter as appropriate
to its own concerns. He would explain the topic of this paper, he promised, when
I visited the private room he rented off-campus, one of the many privileges of
upperclassmen. I devoted much of my waking thoughts to the prospect of this
visit, and so many of my dreams. My hopes were cut short mid-term, however,
on a night when the televisions suspended at perilous angles from the walls
of The Gate broadcast the outcome of that year’s presidential election and I
confessed I was too young to have cast a vote. It was true: I had matriculated
8
at the age of seventeen, not due to any impressive grade-skipping, as many of
my peers suspected, but because of the awkward placement of my birth date on
the first day of a new calendar year; some nursery-school matron had deemed
it appropriate for me to join the children born in the previous year and my
parents had concurred. I had never been forced to face a single consequence of
this formerly amusing discrepancy until that election night at The Gate, when I
declared I was not yet “legal” and saw Cas back away from me with his eyes.
That was November of my freshman year. In my humiliation, I threw
myself into poetry, another of my high-school pursuits, and in my fervor applied
to several competitive writing workshops that rarely admitted first-year students.
I was accepted to all of them, and I returned triumphantly to campus after the
first of the year to pursue my studies in the literary arts with not one, but two
of the school’s highly celebrated authors. With my parents’ blessing I left my
position at The Gate, promising to look for tutoring work more suited to my
intellectual skills and which I could ensure would not interfere with my already
advanced studies. I had not, however, seen the last of Cas: our encounters were
inevitable, as my workshops met in the evening and I was forced to miss dinner
in the traditional cafeteria, leaving me no choice but to collect my meal from
The Gate before I retreated to the library for the night. Cas had gained little body
mass over the holiday, and once again my eyes were drawn to that place where
his apron curled in excess scrolls in the small of his back. On my very first
visit, he shyly wished me a belated happy birthday; on my second, I received an
invitation to his apartment at last. Did I resent the delay, my forced subjugation
to the false construct of a new calendar year? In those days, I barely had time
to contemplate such a slight to my fledgling womanhood. Other tunes—of
staggering beauty, of grandiose suffering—sang in my head, and they occupied
the pages I submitted to my workshops. On a February evening, I stood aside,
my book-bag over one shoulder, while Cas flung the day’s collection of garbage
into the dumpster behind The Gate. Then I walked in trembling silence through
the icy night to his apartment.
Cas had promised to tell me of his travels, and it was a promise he
honorably kept. We spent the first eager hours of my visit on his fold-out
couch—first perched at its edge, then, as the night wore on, reclining against
its cushions, and then later (when I returned, still transported, from the
restroom) sprawled on our stomachs across the bed he had in the meantime
unfolded—examining the most curious book I had ever encountered. It was
not a particularly lengthy text—it owed most of its thickness to curled and
cracking pages that would not let the leaves fully touch—though its surface
area was something like that of an atlas, or an oversized children’s dictionary.
I did in fact come to think of it as a children’s book, with its bright colors and
the round-faced figures that populated its illustrations. It was a sort of abridged
encyclopedia, Cas explained, of the land where he had spent his junior year.
I watched with delight as he turned to a map on the book’s cover-leaf and
indicated a tiny island-state equidistant from two coasts joined at a right angle—
it might have been the Bay of Bengal he showed me, his island wedged between
the waters of Myanmar and Bangladesh, though perhaps the crook of the arm
formed by the Alaskan and Canadian coastlines more accurately reflects the
topography Cas traced with his elegant fingers that night. “Untouched,” Cas had
9
called it, and I nodded, enchanted by his pronunciation of the word, though I
gave little thought to what this could mean.
Cas had learned to speak the country’s language fluently and even to
read its elaborate script, which he translated for me as he read his favorite
pages, those depicting the National Circus. From what I understood of Cas’s
explications, “circus” was a very loose translation for the traveling, year-round
festival that was the topic of his academic paper; his name for this people’s
practice of “circus” was meant to connote neither the brutality of Rome’s
ancient diversion, nor the formalized sort of performance to which we in this
country take our children, hoping they will be charmed and not terrorized by
the daring of the animal tamers and acrobats, the antics of the clowns, but rather
something more loyal to the root of the word, to its circular nature, or even to
that British landmark, that open, circular place where many paths meet. The
book contained no photographs, but its lively illustrations depicted something
wondrous: a spectacle both earnest and joyous—I could see this illuminated in
the participants’ expressions—a ceremony of costume and mask, of plain dress
and honest face. The ornate text remained impenetrable to me, even as my host
recited the words in my mother-tongue; instead I was deafened by the images,
which overcame me with their noise and with their light. The particular view
that captivated me had a vantage point low to the ground, and I had not the sense
of arena nor tent nor of any structure whatsoever, the sort of picture a bird’s-eye
view may have provided. Yet my heart beat painfully when, with unfamiliar
suddenness, I saw nonetheless what was meant by circle: in this gathering of
foreign masses everyone faced everyone; I saw actors and audience locked
together in performance, and I witnessed a story told, one which was not in the
world but was the world itself—and with this realization the circus bled across
the page and beyond it into my very own hands. The illusion startled me, to be
sure, but I could not find the strength to push the book away, for it had stirred
in me a sensation I distinctly felt myself fail to understand, and this failing
frightened me more than anything in my ordinarily extraordinary life up until
that moment.
But the sensation did not last; in a split second after these thoughts crossed
my mind—thoughts I believe I was meant to forget—I felt the young man
I’d followed home reach for me, and I heard the miraculous book slip down
the sagging mattress and fall to the floor. I’d kissed a boy before; I’d kissed
in a horizontal position such as this one with little delight, with even less
anticipation—no more, I’d say, than the ordinary sense of one’s adult destiny.
But the flush that had stolen across my face each night of my fall semester now
found its meaning in the arms of this creature, this man I’d pined for without
reason ever since I’d left my parents’ home, and anything I’d experienced since
I’d come to his room disappeared in the glow of that reality. I understood I was
to lose my virginity to the boy called Cas, who reached one long arm up the
wall to the light switch and brought darkness upon the room before he brought
himself upon me, feather-light and infinite. I closed my eyes—as I have said,
I was an ordinary girl, and I believed closed eyes and a beating heart were all
I was meant to contribute to this encounter—and in one final thought of that
odd, cheerful book I imagined Cas’s thin form towering above those unified
masses, an alien standard waving in the festive circus air. Then, with my breath
10
still tremulously held in my lungs, instead of the music I’d so long expected, I
felt his struggle. I would soon understand the obvious anatomical implications
of my chosen lover’s proportions and my own body’s inexperience, but at the
time, I forgave myself nothing, understood nothing, consumed as I was with
shame: the words crossed my mind—as so many did in the early stages of my
artistry, so many words filling notebooks I would later destroy with further, more
enduring shame—my heart has opened but my body will not receive him. Then
with the pain I thought of the blood—this I’d been taught to expect, and even
so the thought of it caused me greater shame, and even as Cas lay atop me, his
face not matched with mine but somewhere beyond it on the mattress, his stillclothed torso the only sight hovering above me, a lean-to propped by his polethin arms—I glanced beside the bed, into my open book-bag, where wedged
between too many library books I was relieved to see the sanitary napkin that
I was certain would soon receive my bleeding. That deluge, however, never
arrived. In my innocence, I comprehended only my failure: I did not receive him
in time. His body rolled away from mine and without another glance I collected
myself, my soiled clothing, my book-bag with its mocking contents—literature!
Overnight pads, extra heavy flow!—and, after another, frantic stop in his filthy
bathroom, I fled.
***
So now you think yes, she is not modest in her protestations, she was an
ordinary girl. You have heard this story before; perhaps it is your own. You
should not think differently when I tell you that twenty-four hours had not
passed since this episode when I learned that Cas was dead. Like any ordinary
girl, I had lingered in bed longer than usual the following morning, refusing
to face the obligations of the day: a morning seminar in aesthetics, an exercise
class at noon, tutoring at three-thirty, workshop at six o’clock. I finally crept
from my room at ten that night, when I knew The Gate would be busiest, and
sought the consolation of food. I told myself I could avoid my would-havebeen beau in the crowd, though of course my desire was for just the opposite:
despite myself, I longed to see him. He was worldly; perhaps he would be kind.
To my great surprise, The Gate was crowded but quiet. The phone at my old
post was off its hook, even the hanging televisions had been silenced, and in the
center of the serving area stood a woman from the deans’ office, come to tell
Cas’s co-workers, and anyone else who wished to affiliate him or herself with
the deceased, that the boy had fallen while he competed in a casual sporting
event, fallen and not risen again. It was his heart. A girl beside me nodded, said
a famously tall athlete had died in just that fashion a few weeks before. An
arrhythmia, the girl pronounced. The woman from the deans was there to excuse
anyone from work who needed excusing, and to talk. I returned to my room.
I tossed my book-bag (which I had planned to take with me to the library
after I dined, the second thwarted trip to the stacks in as many days) onto my
bed, and I followed it there absentmindedly. For once, I felt truly extraordinary. I
was eighteen years old; I had a dead almost-lover. This, I thought, would be the
defining moment of my life. In my youthful fashion, I’d misread the nature of
my circumstances, but I had not overestimated their significance: as I collapsed
11
against my pillows in a mixture of sorrow and self-pity and excitement—and
words, of course, the imminence of words!—my foot spilled the contents of
my open bag across my blankets. There, among the borrowed library texts, the
composition notebooks worn from use, and that feminine accoutrement, wrapped
in plastic and pink, which had mocked me in my distress, was an envelope
decorated in an artistic style I immediately recognized as that of the mysterious
book Cas had shown me the night before. It mirrored the book in shape as
well—a robust rectangle—though it was slightly smaller in its dimensions than
the text itself. It occurred to me, with a twinge of embarrassment, that it must
have slipped into my bag during our clumsy writhings on the bed. Like the book,
the envelope was weathered and lumpy, but as I reached for it I realized this
condition was not solely due to age and wear. A thing of some volume had been
stuffed inside, and with a swift break of a seal at one end I discovered what that
thing was: a collection of puzzle pieces, all marked with the ornate lettering and
colorful brushstrokes that had distinguished Cas’s book. Like its boldly rendered
faces, these pieces were large, the contours of their edges obvious, and I knew
it would take little time to assemble the image and discover its subject. Another
obvious feature of this toy was its clear demarcation of two separate surfaces:
though it was painted on both sides, each side adhered to a different color
scheme, so there was no mistaking the proper linkage of any of the pieces, or
any question as to whether they all were properly turned in the same direction.
Pulling one of my writing journals from the mess on the bed, I set to snapping
the pieces together against its flat surface.
How had I moved so swiftly from such tragic heartache to the vigorous
pursuit of a child’s game? Let me assure you I had not forgotten my fallen
companion. In fact, the discovery of the puzzle had led to a heightened
consciousness on my part of the relevance of Cas’s death. Had he lived, I
realized, I would have most likely uncovered the envelope in the calm of the
library, where, amid the sober volumes, I would not have found the gall to
break what was clearly an unopened seal; indeed, being my parents’ daughter,
I doubt I would have even considered the act. Instead I would have gathered
my books and retraced my steps to The Gate, where I would have reunited
envelope with owner. And yes, I would no doubt have seized the opportunity
to look once again into those green eyes and see how they might regard me in
return. But I had met, at The Gate, with bad news, so I had not continued on to
make my discovery in the hallowed stacks, nor was Cas aware of the envelope’s
absence, and it was becoming apparent to me, as I realized the puzzle was much
larger and more complex than I had originally thought, and I was required
to lay another notebook beside the first, so that both poetry and fiction were
summoned to the puzzle’s service, that this circumstance was more than a mere
tweaking of fate. With each satisfying interlock of one piece with another—and
the snap of the thin wooden pieces was remarkably satisfying, palpably so, as
if something within me warmed to the process in a way of which even I myself
was unaware—a certain sensation from the previous night returned to me, bit by
bit, piece by piece, a memory I had been destined to forget, drowned as it was
by others, but which now resurfaced with increasing force: I had seen something
incomprehensible in the leaves of that bright and raucous book, in its bizarre,
ecstatic circle, a thing reciprocal and omnipresent and utterly impossible—
12
and its impossibility had nearly blinded me. Now it drove my fingers to grasp
for another piece of the puzzle, then another, slinging my thoughts from
despair—where had all the pieces come from? How could I possibly fit them all
together?—to rapture, each time one piece of the world linked with another. And
it seemed it was precisely the world in which this puzzle dealt: on the side I had
chosen to configure, I recognized my native land, and the lands directly south of
it, though to the East the boundary of the puzzle dropped off in a straight line,
suggesting the rest of the world would constitute itself to the West, an order to
which I was unaccustomed. Still, as I labored on, the world as I knew it took
shape across my bed. It comforted me, this world, dulling the various horrors
I’d felt fleetingly and enduringly the previous night and which threatened, for
some unknown reason, to overtake me again now; I was certain that if I could
finish this puzzle, all would be right with the world, so to speak; order would be
restored, and I could rest.
Rest! Why did I feel it had eluded me for so long? I had slept little the night
before, that is true, and though I’d passed the better part of the day in bed, it
was in waking torment, not in dreams. But this weariness I now sensed within
me as I persisted with the pieces still left in the envelope felt entirely new and
stretched back several lifetimes. I felt soon I could not go on, yet I would have
to; I was compelled to complete the puzzle; my life—my life!—depended on it.
Already you’ve dismissed this rant: the dramatic hallucinations of a young girl
new to loss. But you’ve stayed with me thus far, with the familiar imaginings
of an ordinary girl, so perhaps it is familiarity that will urge you on with me
now. A fever had overtaken me, yet I was not overcome; I could do nothing but
complete the puzzle, and complete it I did—perhaps in minutes, perhaps hours, I
cannot be sure which. And the relief I had anticipated descended like waterfalls,
thunderous and refreshing. I stood beside the bed and stretched my aching limbs;
below me lay the completed puzzle, the globe, intact, and as I basked in the
glow of accomplishment a thought occurred to me, a memory of the island from
which this puzzle was certain to have come; I knelt at my own bedside to look
for it, though surely on this map it would appear as only the tiniest of specks—
would I truly find an island, or some errant piece of dust? Yet before I could seek
it out, I was seized by another compulsion—not violently, but with a steady sort
of momentum that had crept up behind my sense of satisfaction, my peace with
the world, and now loomed larger within me than my sense of the world itself:
what of the other side?
I had not forgotten: there was another image on the reverse, one I had
forsaken in favor of this satisfying one, though when I set out to assemble the
puzzle I could not have known I’d chosen the surface that would depict my
world in such absolute and edifying terms. Instinct may have drawn me to
this side, but now instinct forced my hands beneath my notebooks; I gently
flipped the image and gazed at its verso. My brow furrowed as it had numerous
times that evening: though the edges joined as smoothly here as they had in
my world on the reverse, here they formed no picture at all, just a mélange of
shape and color, hardly different from the opposite side’s appearance before I
had accomplished my task. A clever trick, I thought: surely the pieces of the
puzzle—so numerous, so curiously shaped—could come together in some other
order than the one I’d already followed. One side would have to be disassembled
13
for the other to be complete. And before I knew what I was doing I was seated
again at my notebooks, tearing the pieces apart that had only just delighted me
with their juncture. I set to constructing the puzzle’s other side.
Oh, why could I not remain satisfied with the colorful world I’d discovered
first? I had triumphed once, fashioning the world as I knew it to be. It had its
flaws, to be sure, its terrors, its tyrannies, but I had heard its music ringing true
to my ears—if only I had left it at that. I was an ordinary girl, one who could
have slipped that picture into her bag and skipped along as she had done before;
perhaps she would have been a prolific writer, one whose words came easily,
full of knowable beauty and lyrical suffering, a professor at a premier university
with workshops in the evening. Not the writer that I am, the other sort you know,
alone in her study, with her books, her manuscripts, nothing she can show for
herself, how does she spend those dusty hours, and whatever for? Or perhaps I
could have been a lawyer—have I said my mother was a lawyer? And my father
a doctor, always disappointed I hadn’t found faith in the sciences, since he had
and was saved. Not I: I sat at my notebooks, and, recalling a circle I was never
meant to understand—not I, with my high marks and clever looks and ear for
music and eye for beauty—I tore my beautiful world apart, and reassembled
it (after all, I was a clever girl) to find another world, one so perfect it is
impossible to look upon without pain in one’s eyes, and then the pain in the eyes
disappears because one’s eyes are gone, one’s self is gone, and the only way to
return is to rip this better world, the one barely discovered, to pieces.
I would like to ignore the puzzle, but that is not my fate. If it is I who
stopped Cas’s heart then it is I who brought this life upon my own self, and if
other forces brought him down, then that the puzzle fell into my hands is nothing
more than chance. Either way, I am its prisoner, assembling and reassembling
two worlds that cannot co-exist, one world that I cannot let lie, another I can’t
bring myself to see, for fear it will obliterate me. Indeed, it should have fallen
into other hands, not the hands of an ordinary girl such as myself. But who else
to bear the burden? Should it have been you?
Eliezra Schaffzin taught writing for ten years at Harvard University and the
Rhode Island School of Design, but she has recently turned herself over to her
own fictions. Her short pieces have appeared or are forthcoming with Fifty-Two
Stories, Agni Online, Post Road, mixer, SmokeLong Weekly, elimae, Barrelhouse,
Word Riot, Knee-Jerk, PANK, and other publications. She is at work on a
novel—a story of magic, seduction, and the first American department stores, for
which she received a research grant from the New-York Historical Society.
14
MRS. MacMILLAN’s GARDEN
by Melissa Palmer
T
he entrance to Twin Oaks was guarded by the two eponymous giants.
They flanked its wrought iron gates with an air of certain permanence
though the neighborhood smelled of fresh paint and newly laid sod. And
despite the hint of belonging that clung to the summer breeze, they acted more
like outsiders, forbidden lovers ousted from the circle within, branches stretched
from either side of the street with yearning fingertips that would never touch.
Mrs. MacMillan loved those trees. They served as dutiful reminders every
time she returned home that someone would be there waiting, even if it was
a pair of deciduous sentries. The trips to the big warehouse had become more
frequent than she would like to admit now that the warm weather had kicked in
full swing. But they were a necessary evil, especially here in Twin Oaks.
She turned left hard into the entryway and immediately felt her hands relax
just a touch. The little hamlet had all the shape and good luck of a horseshoe
turned on its side and she settled a little knowing that she was back where she
was meant to be. One turn removed her from the harshness of the world she
briefly visited for the base needs: a jug of milk, a can of coffee, three bags of
diatomaceous earth. Hers was a world of thick emerald greenery and sweet
delicious smells, a tiny universe where doors were left open and no one cared
that there were no fences to block the view into a neighbor’s yard. There was
chubby Mrs. Womack walking the golden retriever she swore was as smart as
she was and as far as Mrs. MacMillan was concerned, the matron was not that
far off. Her dog and she had the same puzzled look as she gave a wobbly and
hesitant hello. As if she didn’t recognize Mrs. MacMillan’s van?
The woman kept busy, that was for sure. Her home, the Grandview, was the
largest in the whole lot visible even from outside the gates, standing at the head
of what looked like a giant beetle, a circle of glorious homes built to suit the
better needs of the best suited to fill the prime estates that were Twin Oaks. Hers
was the flagship, the masterpiece, the mother of all the homes. It was mirrored
by none but the plantations of yore, wrapped in an old-fashioned lemonade
drinking porch, with rocking chairs and oversized hanging plants bursting from
their pots. It was a vision in white, two large picture windows on the second
floor set off in ebony panels lacquered dark to match the double door that
marked the entryway. It was simple in its elegance, just like Mrs. MacMillan.
It was only a five minute trip to the megastore at the shopping complex but
she had gone on three separate trips just today. Hers was the biggest and oldest
in the crop of homes that had sprouted within the past five years. The upkeep
was exhausting but none so much exhausting as the inescapable fallout that
15
follows a house of that caliber showing any sign of disrepair, not to mention the
shame. That kind of disgrace would be insufferable and she wouldn’t have it.
Three years ago the homeowner’s association, then a burgeoning group of
well-doers had honored her for the second year in a row for the assorted flowers
that grew in her garden out back. It was a repeat of the inaugural year. They had
been so good they’d named her twice, Best Blooms. And she had worn that blue
ribbon with honor, nodding humbly at the well wishers who whispered about
the scarlet beauties that graced the small Shangri-La she engineered off the back
porch, the bravest of which who asked to sit there amongst the wonders that
defied the laws of nature.
She pulled her packages out of the car and waved absently to the youngish
mom of two from down the street who ran up and out of the neighborhood at
least twice a week. She didn’t know her name but admired her begonias and
taste in social etiquette. She was not part of the association that insulted and
ignored. She was also new enough to the neighborhood to avoid silent judgment
and whispered critiques. She didn’t look as she passed in front of the empty
space that used to be Mrs. MacMillan’s garden, not once for what she was too
new to remember and not twice for a wonder she couldn’t forget.
Mrs. Granger would be having tea by now. The faint scent of cinnamon
toast came wafting from the house to the right. It was the Victorian Hempstead,
not as large as Mrs. MacMillan’s but a handsome home, ornately detailed with a
nod to the craftsmanship of times gone by, an ode to the decade the woman was
born. She had no idea how old Granger was, a woman of diction and stature who
had no first name. She carried herself with grace and the air of someone worthy.
But her wizened face and paper hands betrayed her to all witnesses. Her house
did not show the same wear as her body or disappearing lips, her teeth that
seemed unnaturally long, the slight hump she tried to hide under designer suits
and sweaters from across the pond. She spoke with the subtle confidence of one
who knew she would be queen someday, and the patience of a lady who could
wait forever if she had to for her ascent to the crown.
She said this morning smiling into Mrs. MacMillan’s yard, “Perhaps this
will be your year,” accented syllables through the whitewashed planks behind
her shriveled lips.
That had sent the younger of the women out the first time for three bags
of a mix that was certified organic and a morning spent tilling the soil with
a sprinkling of tepid water. There were no gardeners or husband for Mrs.
MacMillan to speak of. It was just her, the house and the soft earth just out back.
She fixed herself a snack and brewed a pot of coffee out of habit to take the
edge off after settling down her third batch of bags from the last trip out.
The Pollack’s to the left had been grilling just after she’d finished up the last
of the organic bags. They didn’t say much. They ate quietly snubbing her barren
patch, wrangling their 2.4 catalog children back into their Gabled Homestead, a
newer and smaller model on the lot that made up for what it lacked in space with
gaud and high tech construction. Much like the Pollack’s, the Gabled Homestead
lacked panache and held for Mrs. MacMillan zero interest.
She washed the sticky, fetid mess from her hands before her second trip
to the megamart, this time for lye and a roll of thick plastic to deal with pests
who might interfere with her plans. She would cover every angle, account for
16
every variable. As her neighbor had said, this would be her year.
She was patting down the dark patch just in front the bench meant for
admiring what was there when the young couple from the far end of the U had
walked past again, a ritual the newlyweds shared, looping up and down the curl
of their new neighborhood in attempts to master their new surroundings, as if
the learning curve here was one of any actual difficulty. They were getting used
to things, to each other. She could only assume they were from the way their
measured steps matched in rhythm and how the pace was punctuated by inward
turns and hopeful glances, the kind of hope that only comes with youth and love
still fresh. They lived in the Newstead, a relatively tiny model, relegated to the
outermost stretch of the Twin Oaks’ circle. But they kept their lawn manicured
and their paint neat. Even the smallest house in the circle was fit to sit on the
cover of a greeting card, just as the couple was. They made a handsome picture
together and from the looks of their house, they were a lot like the walk they
took, headed in the right direction.
She looked up to give them a courteous wave and they returned the
pleasantries although their faces looked quizzical. They had walked through
the neighborhood enough times to hear the condemnations of the homeowner’s
association. They were wondering why there were no shrubs or tomatoes, but
mostly they were demanding in that one unguarded moment a view something
spectacular, the likes of which they wouldn’t forget. They were disappointed in
her inability to deliver. She was sure by the way the young missus held to her
husband’s elbow just as they walked away and how she looked back over her
shoulder when they thought they were out of sight. That kind of judgment from
one so young, she wouldn’t have it.
That’s when the last trip had become so necessary. A touch of diatomaceous
earth here and there would bring life where she needed it most.
Her back and hands ached. There were streaks of white on her dark culottes
and smears of blackish brown on her pale skin. Leaves and twigs stuck out from
her grayish white bun that now sat sidesaddle and loose on her damp head. She
was a camouflaged warrior, a strategic solider with an ache inside that rumbled
her from within. It was almost time for a late dinner by the time she finished it
all, the sun just losing itself beyond the horizon, only a slight glimmer of blush
left on the fat cheek of the sky. Mrs. Womack was out with the genius dog for
one last lap through town. She held a wad of plastic bags in the free hand she
used to wave. How the woman could look so confused at every given moment
was beyond Mrs. MacMillan. At heart she didn’t care enough to give it any more
thought. She had bigger things on which she needed to focus every shred of
thought.
She wasn’t interested in television or music. The day had sucked her dry.
As soon as her dinner settled she was curled up in bed, resting, planning for
tomorrow morning when there had to be a sign of life. But any time her mind
faded into the sweet blackness that was sleep, any time that a small blossom
of color pushed its way up from the dark, she was interrupted. It wasn’t by the
splashing of the Pollack children swimming into the late hours of evening. It
wasn’t the genius dog howling at an unknown emissary. It was something else,
throbbing in her head, a pulse that pulled her up into consciousness and away
from her bed. She left the blankets slack, not bothering to smooth them out
17
before taking leave, an act that would normally weigh on her heavily like an old
secret. But this was too important. It was so much more. She simply would not
have it any longer.
Under a cloudless sky the woman began to dig. On her hands and knees
without the aid of a shovel or spade she sunk her fingers into the moist dark
earth and pulled away at the smooth surface so long without blemish or growth.
It came up in clumps that sailed through the air. Others settled on her back like
sweets on a coffee table. It was cool in the moonlight but her nightgown began
to stick and clutch where it hung in the mixture of damp earth and sweat. There
was no noise she could hear, only the throbbing that had awoken her from
sleep and the labored sounds of her own breath as she dug in and dug deeper
using hands and elbows, feet and knees. She pushed with her arms in small
circles expelling handfuls of ground, disrupting nothing in the night but a few
earthworm homes. She was swimming in it now, silent and determined.
The sky had gone from pitch to gray when she disappeared down into the
hole. It was late enough for birds to just begin singing but not early enough
for the paperboy to come wheeling by with his news. Neither the birds nor the
paperboy heard the sharp sound of nails worked to bone. No one got to see how
her face lit up when she knew she had finished and emerged with what she’d
found.
They were brilliant in the moonlight, exactly as she’d remembered. She’d
extracted them from deep in the earth where they’d been waiting, placed there
more out of fear than necessity, the looming threat of critters and prying little
hands guiding her every move. The first was in perfect condition, so round and
defined, still white and firm to the touch. Some were long and slender, slightly
worn and yellowed with time. They looked as though they might fall apart, but
all were intact as she’d secretly hoped. Held in the pockets there where she’d
dug was the promise of a life the yard had not seen.
When she woke it was later than she’d slept in years but she’d earned that
rest with what she’d done. So much of her had gone into the prospect of this
moment. She had pulled off the antique lace nightgown for something more
suitable and preened for a second or two longer than usual. She wanted to be
fresh. She bounded downstairs with youthful steps that challenged her age. Her
footfalls were tentative leaving the house, a child’s tiptoe to the Christmas tree.
Though it was late, the dew was still sticking to blades of grass in tiny diamond
dots that tickled her ankles and cooled the pads of her feet as she entered the
yard. The day was warmer than expected but this was not surprising. It was the
scent that was unmistakably new. Mrs. MacMillan’s breath caught in her throat,
swept away by the sweet fragrant smell of summer luscious roses and honey
dipped blossoms, fat with dew. Their ripe petals were open and rose to the sky
awaiting the sun’s kiss. They grew tall and full climbing the sides of the bench,
underneath it, around it in bright paralyzing blues and electrifying oranges, deep
dark fuchsias and magenta dotted with tiny buds of purple, flowers she didn’t
remember planting, blooms she’d never seen before. And the smell, it was too
much to take in.
But in the center of it all was her gem, the treasure for which she’d toiled
without the help of a gardener or son; no other set of hands was there to help her
extricate the marvel that would surely bring the association to her door. Amid
18
the bright white Calla Lily, plump and flirtatious, the miraculous rainbow that
burst around the bench like a Technicolor frame comprised solely of fireworks,
sat the wonder that made everything so.
It was almost difficult to make it out, the flora overtaking the bench like ants
on a dropped candy, so that it lost the stone look completely, instead becoming
a plush, multicolored sofa bursting with light, interrupted only at its center
where the figure rested. Two pockets sat in a canvas of dazzling white, only now
instead of dark and emptiness they were overflowing with turquoise sweet peas.
A hat sat slightly askew atop the shiny globe that had maintained its bleached
white complexion among the tendrils of cosmos and thick leafy green, a
discovery that took Mrs. MacMillan’s heart soaring. There were no whitewashed
planks, only two neat rows of ivory smiling on the accomplishment, on the good
morning. One slender hand was raised as if to say so.
His suit looked so good. The whole neighborhood looked good.
Bees buzzed, birds chirped and the sweet smell of her garden drowned out
Mrs. Granger’s midmorning tea.
From here the woman could see all the way out of Twin Oaks. She could
see the cars approaching all the way from the road, her favorite trees outside
the gates looking in, and her own neighbors as they approached her proud site.
Some came on foot, pointing and staring. There were children on bicycles,
perhaps the Pollack’s children or of the lady who ran. Others drove slowly from
further down the U.
Mrs. MacMillan stood in front of the thick luxurious blooms and the
treasure she unearthed, waving exuberantly to anyone and everyone who came
past.
Mrs. Womack came closest with her genius retriever. She stood with her
mouth hanging wide just as the dog. They both took in the wonder, finally
looking as if they understood.
Melissa Palmer was a teaching fellow at Seton Hall University. While
at the university she continued to follow her passion for poetry and creative
writing publishing multiple works in Chavez, the university’s literary magazine,
and on several online outlets and writers groups. During those years she
published several poems and short pieces, one of which was a haiku about Bea
Arthur honored by Spaceghost himself on Spaceghost Coast to Coast. After an
unfortunate turn of events, she found herself writing at the Cape May County
where she wrote stories on budgets, murders, and fires. Though that was not
her thing, what she did find was the offer to write columns during her tenure as
the Wildwood reporter. It was then that she picked up on creative writing again,
becoming an honored poet of the Rogue Scholars Collective with “Brueghel”
and “In the Frame,” and wrote “Mom’s Song” and “Things I forgot to tell
you,” two pieces featured in Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems by Women
Who Were Girls When Their Mother’s Died. She is currently working on several
companion pieces to “Mrs. MacMillan’s Garden.”
19
DEEP TISSUE
by Pamela Lindsey Dreizen
M
icroscopic tailors, a factory full, live in Tanya’s upper back. They sew
between her shoulder blades, pleating the thin layer of muscle that
saddles her backbone. Sometimes their thread turns to razor wire,
stabbing and burning. Other times it’s icy fishing line, causing a dull, ceaseless
throb. They knot their work in large, careless lumps that Tanya has, more than
once, mistaken for lymphoma.
They’re a persistent bunch, stitching away even as the receptionist installs
Tanya in the Dancing Buddha treatment room. He’s breaching protocol; this
is Ruthie’s job. Ruthie had phoned, he explains. Stuck in traffic. Running late.
Tanya gathers from his eye rolling and head shaking he’s covered for Ruthie
before. He flits around the room, lighting tea candles under oil burners. The air
fills with a foresty scent. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the full two hours,” he says,
and departs.
Tanya sheds her clothes. She climbs onto the table. The crisp sheet beneath
her is boxed at the corners with military precision. If she had time and a clue
how, she’d try bouncing a quarter. But Ruthie could arrive any minute.
Tanya drapes the top sheet over herself like a drop cloth. She rests her face
on a padded loop that projects from the table’s end. The weight of her head flattens her sinus cavities against the face rest; she shifts twice, but each time sinks
back into the same position. It’s a minor discomfort compared to the sweatshop
under her scapulas where the maniacal tailors work day and night, twisting
her muscle fibers. Gentle heat rises from the table and catches under the top
sheet. Piped-in music, recorders and drums, mingles with burbling from a small
electric waterfall. Tanya shifts again. Her eyelids slit open, then fall closed in the
womblike light. She permits herself a pleasant vision: her spine, ripped from her
back and dangling by its end, uncoiling like an over-wound electrical cord, flinging the entire garment workers’ local to its doom.
There’s a tap at the door. Tanya grunt-mumbles to come in, her caved
sinuses making her sound adenoidal. The door opens. A smoke-scarred, breathy,
high-pitched voice says, “Hiya.” This must be Ruthie.
Tanya’s had a woman, whose name she has forgotten, and Greg before. But
not Ruthie. Tanya didn’t care for the woman, who wasn’t strong enough and
sniffed back the mucus in her nose the whole time. Greg was wonderful, though,
powerful and quietly attentive. He complimented her ability to withstand pressure but didn’t bore her with chitchat. He took deep, sensuous breaths as he
worked, and at certain points asked her to do the same, exhaling with her as he
forced his way deep into her tissues. His jeans heated her side while he screwed
20
his elbows into her lubricated back. It wasn’t thrilling so much as comforting.
Tanya and her last boyfriend, David, broke up over a year ago, much to her
mother’s chagrin (“What’s not to like? Has a good job, comes from a nice Jewish family. And he loves you. Believe me, it won’t get any easier for you after
forty, Lady Jane”). Since then she hasn’t been cozy with anyone possessing male
genitalia. It’s been so long, even Greg was starting to look pretty good; perhaps
the happy memory of their deep tissue sessions would cancel out the double chin
and comb-over. She asked for him this time, but he’s booked solid for the next
six weeks.
“Anything I should know before we start? Injuries? Problems?” Tanya’s
eyes crack open. She sees a single bare foot that resembles a cypress knee. Then
a matching one, gnarled, brown, and veiny, attached to a twiggy leg.
“I hold tension in my upper back, between my shoulders.” Her anxiety
crackles over her vocal cords. She knows she sounds snippy. Serves Ruthie
right. Tanya’s got her pegged: a passive-aggressive type who asserts herself
through chronic lateness.
“Don’t worry, I’ll pry those shoulders out of your ears.” There’s a happy,
oblivious chirp to Ruthie’s voice.
Tanya continues her standard spiel. “My legs are sensitive. So go light on the
shins.”
“No problem. Relax. Enjoy.” Ruthie’s California-girl-cadence swings “enjoy” into “enjoy-ee,” and she relevés on her knobby toes. She presses down the
length of Tanya’s still-covered back, Tanya’s body rocking with each touch.
“One more thing,” Tanya says. As if she’ll hear better, Ruthie stops midpush, her hands still on Tanya. Scolding Ruthie for tardiness crosses Tanya’s
mind, but since it’s useless with her sort, she just says, “I’m a noisemaker. I
purr.”
“Oh, I love that,” Ruthie says, and chuckles. “It makes me feel rewarded.
Like my own private cheerleading section.”
This is, in essence, what David said about Tanya’s coital noises. Even
Ruthie’s tone seems disconcertingly similar. Tanya weighs this impression while
Ruthie loosens her up through the sheet. She writes it off as tension-induced
sensitivity.
There’s a momentary chill when Ruthie draws the sheet back, releasing the
pocket of heat that has gathered underneath. Tanya hears several faint, rhythmic frrrrts pump from a bottle, then Ruthie rubbing her hands together. The oil
makes a sloppy, licking sound.
Ruthie slicks Tanya’s back. “How do you get your back like this?” Ruthie
asks. “Sit at a computer all day?”
Tanya considers. “Yes,” she says.
She hopes this will be all that Ruthie needs. Ruthie will imagine her a data
entry clerk or a technical support phone operator and conclude further conversation would be a snooze. Or she will imagine her an accountant or a corporate
lawyer, like David, more boring and more intimidating. Ruthie’s thumbs probe
like the tips of steam irons, planing wrinkled wads into straight, smooth surfaces. They stumble on a knot that cracks audibly when moved. Tanya purrs.
When people on airplanes or in line at the post office, people she’ll never see
again, ask Tanya what she does, she says she is a sculptor. A little role-playing
21
about her occupation spices Tanya’s life. And although sculpting is not how she
makes her living or why her back is a mess, it’s all she’s ever wanted to do. She
works in bronze, marble, and sometimes clay and wood. Since her fortieth birthday two months ago, a hefty slab of virgin Carrara marble has been sitting in the
living room of her Eichler in Mountain View, California (for people on planes or
in line at post offices, the Eichler is an artist’s loft in the SOMA district of San
Francisco). The marble poses something of a problem: a deadline. It tugs at her
with the stultifying urgency of a hungry child.
“What do you do?” Ruthie asks again.
Tanya considers asking Ruthie to stop talking. But Ruthie is leaning her full
weight into the knot. Tanya feels it melt in stages as her blood circulates under
the pressure. She is afraid to disrupt Ruthie’s momentum. Answering seems the
best strategy. “I do design and 3-D rendering for a software company.” While it
isn’t all she does, it’s enough to stop conversation with most non-techies. Even if
Ruthie responds, this exchange is over.
But the unthinkable happens. “No kidding,” Ruthie says. “Do you do
games?” The knot is smaller than a raisin now, jolting slowly toward sandgrain size, and Ruthie scores a bull’s-eye on her first shot. The truth is, Tanya
does do games. She’s on an award-winning design team that will, in six weeks,
release the next generation of 3-D action game built on a game engine the entire
industry is calling Tanya in tribute to her. Their Banford Hollander shoot-‘em-up
series is wildly successful, but old news. The new game, the first in what they
hope will be an even more successful series, features a female player-character,
Sabina Dublin. One critic wrote of a preview copy: “Sabina is everything Lara
Croft was but more: more brains, more substance, and — yes, believe it — more
sex appeal! So grow up, boys — you’ll need to!” With the ship date for Sabina
approaching, Tanya has been working eighty-hour weeks. Hosts of tailors have
hatched like locust larvae in her back. David phones her at work every few days,
concerned about her stress level. She suspects he may want to get back together,
which isn’t lessening the stress.
The knot’s remnants sweep away under Ruthie’s broad strokes. She begins
kneading Tanya’s neck. Tanya vocalizes a string of Ms as electric prickles dance
down her vertebrae. “Fabulous,” Tanya drawls. She is in Ruthie’s power. She
would bark like a dog or walk across the street blindfolded if Ruthie asked.
Though she’s successfully killed the conversation, Tanya finds herself saying,
“Yes. I do games.”
“Get out,” Ruthie says, and Tanya detects a distant hint of New Jersey in
Ruthie’s speech. “My son is so addicted to computer games. He just loves Banford Hollander. Can’t wait for the new one with the girl. What’s her name? The
one with the huge bazongas?”
Tanya’s sigh is easy to mistake for a long, contented exhale. “Sabina Dublin,” she says, weakly. She no longer has the energy or willpower to exit the
conversation, and the huge bazongas are a nagging sore point.
It started with the email from Todd, the eighteen-year-old head of in-house
game testing, after he’d spent two whole minutes futzing with the first version of
Sabina. “She’s too flat-chested,” he wrote. “If I have to play as a girl, GIMME
A HOT BODY.” Tanya thought Sabina’s proportions stunningly normal. She
had erred on the generous side of a B cup, which gave Sabina nice curves but
22
kept her from seeming to tip forward under the weight of her own chest. “And
another thing,” Todd’s message continued. “Make her blond.”
Tanya hit reply and composed a flame mail so livid it could qualify as a
weapon. When she’d finished, she thought better of sending it. Todd was a great
tester with a serious work ethic, a smart kid, and her window onto millennial
culture. He was also the only one of the four in-house testers who actually had
a real girlfriend, whom he treated so sweetly Tanya felt envious. She sent back:
“Point one, noted. Point two, no.” She did not, however, change Sabina’s bust
line. Her all-male Board of Directors did, on the recommendation of senior management, unanimous except for Tanya.
Having lost this battle, Tanya felt compelled to equip Sabina with a selfprotective device. She hid an undocumented feature, an Easter egg (file name:
afikomen.bop) in the code. In multiplayer mode, any challenger who tried to undress, feel up, or otherwise get familiar with Sabina activated a special weapon
option, the Vagina Dentata. With the option selected, a set of snapping dentures
emerged from Sabina’s low-slung utility belt, munched the masculinity from the
offending player’s character, and resulted in an automatic game over. Just this
morning, Todd found it. She could tell by the “Holy fucking shit!” so loud that
concerned heads popped over cubicle walls across the entire floor. When she
trotted over to gloat, Todd was still staring at his computer screen, pale-faced
and clutching his crotch.
“Sabina Dublin. Yeah, that’s her,” Ruthie says. “Don’t tell me your company
does Sabina Dublin. My son will be so impressed. I’ll have to call him right after
this.”
She seems so excited, Tanya considers telling the truth. On the other hand,
Tanya’s not here to make friends, and by the time she can work another appointment into her schedule, Greg will be available. She’ll probably never see Ruthie
again. Ruthie holds Tanya’s left arm by the fingers and gives it a few shakes, like
she’s fluffing a towel. Then she bends the arm at the elbow and lays the wrist
against Tanya’s back so that her shoulder blade pokes up. She digs into the flesh
under it and hits a nerve. A delicious spasm flutters the skin. “Whoa, Nellie,”
Ruthie says, causing Tanya to think of the way a horse’s buttocks twitches to
shake off flies. Tanya emits satisfied hums and a series of diminutive Os. The
tailors flee in panic before an undulating tsunami. What the heck, Tanya decides.
She’ll come clean.
“Yeah, Sabina’s ours,” Tanya says.
Ruthie lets out an enraptured sigh as she fluffs and folds Tanya’s other arm.
“Such a beautiful body,” she says.
Something in Ruthie’s voice makes Tanya wonder, with renewed unease,
whether this comment is meant for her or Sabina. She thinks it unlikely it’s for
her. She’s not a spring chicken anymore and carries some extra poundage. In her
job, Ruthie must see a multitude of far more pleasing shapes. Besides, it’s not
exactly professional of Ruthie to be commenting on her clients’ physiques. She
must be talking about the marketing shots of Sabina, the double D version.
“I think all women’s bodies are beautiful,” Ruthie continues. “There’s something majestic about them. Even old ones, fat ones. They remind me of paintings.” She chuckles again, a dry, gravelly sound. “God really played a joke on
men. They look so funny naked.”
23
This statement strikes Tanya as arguable. She admires the male body’s
aesthetic. Or at least, that of certain male bodies. She enjoys poring over The
New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. She admits to being a stickler for
proper lifting form when she’s in the gym, but would never admit the real attraction, those pictures — hard, oil-glistened, ripped men. The black-and-white
photographs work magic, something about the play of light and shadow on the
muscles’ cuts. One sentence impresses her every time she reads it: “Bodybuilding is a sport of form, but instead of movement the form involved is that of the
body itself – the size, shape, proportion, detail and aesthetic quality of the physique as developed in the gym, prepared by dieting, and displayed by performing
bodybuilding poses.” It’s sculpture.
The unsullied marble slab strides forward from memory to silence the rest
of Tanya’s busy mental chatter. From time to time it does this, to toy with her,
plague her. She’s moved her couch and coffee table against the wall so it can
recline comfortably. So she’ll pass it tens of times a day. Her tools are in the
garage and eventually she will have to get the marble from here to there. But
first, she must learn what it wants to be. Lately, Tanya’s sculpting has focused
on abstract forms suggestive of male nudes. They’re technically sound, pleasing
to look at, and the process of making them transports Tanya to the place where
she likes herself best. But objectively, like all her work, they lack some essential spark that evokes in the viewer cardiac arrhythmias and intestinal taut-line
hitches, beatitude and despair. They’re good, not great. She supposes her day job
doesn’t help; making consensual art like Sabina deadens her instinct.
And then there’s this marble. Its voluptuousness doesn’t seem male, but it’s
giving up no other hints. Even though she’s sat on the floor across the room and
gazed at it. Laid next to and run her hand along it, like a lover. Slept on the rug
beside it and awakened to a sheer face, blank and mocking. At those times she’s
wanted to wound the thing. Hack random chunks away with a pickaxe. Splash
acid over the surface and watch the scars smoke. It’s frustrating because her
materials usually don’t play hard to get, and all the more so because she senses
she’s on the verge. She feels the possibility of an evolutionary jump to something uniquely hers, something no one else can vote down. She’s been on the
edge for weeks, tense and exhausted. Still nothing comes.
David is expecting the marble to be a sculpture in six months. He’s doing her
a big favor; he’s talked one of his clients, who owns a San Francisco gallery, into
a spot for Tanya in a show called “Bay Area Marble.” Tanya has exhibited pieces
before, but never with this degree of exposure. She’d never have landed this
show without his help. The chance may not come again. She can’t fuck it up.
But the truth is, she’s never sculpted a stone this size in less than five months,
and she’ll lose most of the next to Sabina Dublin. And a part of her is just plain
procrastinating: the part that isn’t convinced sculpting would mean as much if it
became her job, the part that wants to keep it reserved for escape and rejuvenation, like a mountain cabin or a seaside villa. When David asks how it’s going, she lies and says she’s on schedule. She almost mentioned the show to her
mother the last time she called, just to talk to someone else about it. But Tanya
was afraid she’d say to focus on Sabina; art by consensus pays the bills. Tanya’s
mother never understood how she feels about sculpting, and she wouldn’t understand now. Now that time is closing in, and can eat her dreams.
24
David, on the other hand, had been after her for years before they broke up
to quit her job and sculpt full time. “You don’t need that job,” he’d said, more
times than she could count. “I’ll take care of you.” When that didn’t work, he’d
started to add, “Until you get established. And if you don’t like how it’s going
with sculpting, you can start working again. But you owe it to yourself to try.
You’re good, Tanya. You’re really good.” It got to the point where he seemed
more interested in her success as a sculptor than in her.
Ruthie covers Tanya’s back with the sheet. Then she lifts the bottom corner,
revealing Tanya’s left leg. She chuckles and repeats, “Yep, God really did play
a joke on men.” She gathers and tucks the sheet between Tanya’s thighs. Tanya
can’t imagine it’s going anywhere fast wedged between her legs like that, but
after a pause, Ruthie gives it a bit more tuck way up between the inner thighs.
The muscles there fire and flex. There’s a twinge in Tanya’s groin. She is anesthetized, flustered, lost.
She hears herself say to Ruthie, “What about Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“Bodybuilders,” Ruthie says. “Nothing worse. Tiny little heads on huge bodies, way out of proportion. So vain, always looking in the mirror. Nothing worse,
even male ballet dancers.” Ruthie glides her hands up to Tanya’s gluteus medias
and down to her Achilles tendon in great, sweeping strokes. Things are moving
along with them; blood, lymph, lactic acid, sensations of heat and pressure. The
tailors are jumping into lifeboats. Ruthie finishes the leg and starts the foot.
“I thought he looked great in the Pumping Iron movies,” Tanya says. “He
had gorgeous proportions.” The truth is, Tanya has become a rabid fan of the
young Arnold Schwarzenegger. One day, his beauty slammed into her and
mowed her down. She never saw it coming. She’s collected all of his bodybuilding films on video. They’re amusing to watch on rainy nights; amusing and disturbing. Those skimpy black trunks, those vibrant red ones. The pernicious cuteness. There’s Arnie’s voice-over, the innocent, Austrian-accented confession that
he admires dictators’ strength. There he is again, squeezing out the most-muscle
pose to the theme from Exodus. She wants to take him home to her mother and
feed him potato kugel. Dress him in cashmere turtlenecks. Sit at the opposite end
of the bathtub, while he squirts water at her through his gapped front teeth.
Ruthie presses on Tanya’s arch. This same foot cramped a week ago. Tanya
had forgotten, but her foot hasn’t and it kicks from Ruthie’s hand.
“Oh, sorry,” Ruthie says.
“I should have remembered,” Tanya says. “I had a cramp there last week.
I’ve never had soreness go for that long.”
The joints crack when Ruthie pulls Tanya’s toes. “Mind if I ask how old
you are?” Ruthie asks. She bends Tanya’s leg at the knee, back so far that heel
almost touches buttock. When she’s straightened and lowered the leg, Ruthie
covers it and begins the right.
She’s answered before she considers whether to lie: “Forty.”
“Hey, me too,” Ruthie says. “Forty-one, actually. It sucks, but after forty
your arches start to go. Do you wear high heels?”
“Sometimes. Not often.”
“Try arch supports. You can get them at Walgreens.”
Ruthie then describes the trouble she has with her own feet. Basically,
they’re ruined. That’s what comes from starting on pointe too young. They put
25
her in toe shoes almost from the time she started dancing, she was that good.
Now no shoes fit her, so she never wears them, ever. Goes everywhere barefoot.
Her son, who is twenty-one, finds this embarrassing. Whenever he’s home from
college, he’s always yelling at her to put on some shoes before she goes out for
groceries.
Tanya is skeptical. “What about in winter? Don’t your feet get cold?”
“They’re always cold, even in summer. I don’t notice much difference.”
There’s a short silence, then Ruthie adds, “I guess that’s not completely true.
Sometimes in winter I wear those Eskimo sock bootie things.”
“Mukluks?”
“Yeah, mukluks.” Ruthie giggles. She chants as she does Tanya’s right calf
and hamstring, giving an extra glottal kick to each K. “Mukluks mukluks mukluks. Mukluks. Hey, you know something? That’s really fun to say.” She covers
Tanya’s leg and leans near her ear. “Okay, now. Turn over for me, please.” She
lifts the sheet from Tanya’s body and holds it over her, like a dressing screen.
Tanya rolls to her back under the sheet, her eyes closed. When she opens
them, she knows, she’ll see Ruthie. Ruthie has seen more of Tanya than most
people ever will, but Tanya has seen nothing of Ruthie except her root-like feet.
The imbalance makes Tanya feel exposed, as if she’s in a behavioral experiment
being watched through one-way glass. She doesn’t know why, but she’s nervous. There’d be tightness in her abdomen if she hadn’t spent the last hour being
wrung like a washrag. The tailors have been relocated; banished to the gulag for
crimes against her state.
Ruthie places her hands on Tanya’s belly. They’re warm through the sheet.
No longer under pressure, Tanya’s sinuses drain quickly. She smells a warm
whiff of cinnamon from Ruthie’s mouth, a trace of breath-freshening gum.
Tanya gathers her courage and opens her eyes.
She understands now why Ruthie sides with Todd on Sabina’s bra size. She
is shaped a bit like a kidney bean, large breasts, rounded middle and sway back
on thin legs, but she’s so graceful and deliberate she seems to move without displacing the air. Her complexion is olive; her hair black, in long layers, framing
her face like parentheses. Her eyes are dark and heavy-lidded. She is of indeterminate ethnicity, one of those people mistaken for Greek in Greece, Mexican in
Mexico, Egyptian in Egypt. She could be Jewish, Native American or French.
She looks down at Tanya and smiles. There’s a moist sound as her lips pull
back from her teeth. Even and straight, they light her face. Something about her
excites Tanya.
Ruthie gives Tanya’s belly a gentle pat, then walks to a counter and spritzes
more oil into her hands. She sits behind Tanya on a stool and shoves her hands,
palms up, under Tanya’s back, almost to her waist. She pushes up against the
back with her fingertips and rests there for a moment, then draws her hands, still
pressing upward, slowly toward her and out from under Tanya. “That’s wunnerful,” Tanya mumbles. “Do that again. And again.”
Ruthie repeats the movements four times, five times. “Mukluks,” she says.
She bends Tanya’s head down to her shoulder and rubs the side of her neck,
from shoulder to ear. The muscles give like clay under her hands; with every
stroke, Tanya is shaped, undone, and shaped again. Ruthie pulls Tanya’s head.
The neck lengthens. Tanya envisions her head popping off like a Barbie doll’s,
26
the twisted tendons and muscles that attach it to her neck whipping like live
electric wires. “You should have been a sculptor,” Tanya coos.
Ruthie pulls Tanya’s arms by the wrists, stretching them in a straight line
above her head. Tanya has always thought being stretched on a rack sounded
more like pleasure than pain. If she was threatened with torture, she would
plead, “No, no, anything but the rack” to assure that’s exactly what she’d get.
She pictures Ruthie tying coarse, yellow ropes around her wrists and cranking a
giant wooden wheel. Confess, imaginary Ruthie commands before each crank.
Confess and live.
“I’m awful at art,” Ruthie says. “Except dance. I loved it so much.” Her
voice has a bittersweet quality, as though she’s remembering a lost friend.
“Do you still dance?”
“No,” Ruthie says. “I stopped when I got pregnant. That and smoking.”
Tanya thinks about the joy that comes from sanding wood, when grain, shape
and texture coalesce. From removing the ceramic shell on cast bronze, the moment when the vision becomes instantiation. The moment she feels most alive.
Nothing compares. This is what her mother couldn’t understand; she saw only
the practical side, that every dime Tanya made went into her workshop and what
came out was given away, or sold for far less than the time and materials she invested. This being the case, she argued, Tanya should be realistic, not waste her
energy on fantasy. This is what David couldn’t understand, either. Why wasn’t
she sure sculpting full time would fulfill her every dream? She couldn’t explain
her need for refuge in a mound of clay, and her fear that taking up permanent
residence in this refuge would poison its delicate ecology.
Her forehead unclenches under the pressure of Ruthie’s hands. “My son’s
father got to keep dancing,” Ruthie says.
The phrasing strikes Tanya as impersonal, yet to inquire further seems rude.
But Ruthie goes on. “It’s funny. I mean, I’m glad, because I have my son. But
I don’t know what possessed me. He was just so beautiful when he danced. So
chiseled and fine.”
Hearing this, Tanya knows why Ruthie excites her. She knows, as she feels
the luxurious heat of Ruthie’s body penetrate her scalp, what the marble wants
to be.
Ruthie apologizes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on like that.” She rubs Tanya’s temples in circles. Tanya remembers childhood slumber parties where one
girl would rub another’s temples like this, while the others watched. Supposedly,
this would cause the one rubbed to go into a “trance,” a hypnotic state as juicy as
truth serum. Ask her who she liked better, Brian Laramie or Aaron Baumgarten.
If she answered, she was in a trance. If she cracked up giggling, she was faking.
“That’s okay,” Tanya says. “Really.” Her mouth spreads as Ruthie’s thumbs
pull down from the sides of her nose, and her lips flap when Ruthie releases
them. Tanya imagines touching Ruthie’s face, seeing the features through her
fingers like a blind person. Touching Ruthie, then touching the marble, transferring Ruthie’s form to the living stone. Goddess of carnal pleasure. An epic,
heroic figure. The anti-tailor, vanquishing the sewing hoards. Ruthie’s hands
smooth the tops of Tanya’s pectorals outward from her sternum. Her fingertips
are within inches of Tanya’s nipples. Touching Ruthie’s body, then touching the
marble. Feeling it vibrate with her lush earthiness, watching her form imbue and
27
heat the cold, soften the hardness, turn a slab of rock into something worthy of
love.
Ruthie says, “I would have had to stop anyway. I was thin then, but when
I was eighteen I grew boobs, if you can believe it. They just popped up out of
nowhere, and suddenly good parts in ballets were hard to get. Balanchine didn’t
believe in breasts, and he pretty much set the standard when I was dancing. They
wanted me to have breast reduction surgery.” She makes a sound laden with
disgust. “Can you imagine?”
“No,” Tanya says. The thought has never crossed her mind. It is the last
surgery she’d ever need to have. But it’s true, she can’t imagine a post-surgery
Ruthie.
Should she be blunt? Ask something like, “How do you feel about taking off
your clothes for art?” Try to befriend Ruthie first? As she is considering, Ruthie
lifts the sheet from her leg and tucks it between her thighs again, preparing to
work on the front of the leg. Her hand grazes Tanya’s bikini line and as she’s
pulling away, Tanya feels a pricking sensation. Ruthie’s little finger has caught
in the curl of a pubic hair and yanked it out by the root.
“I’m so sorry,” Ruthie says. “Did it hurt?”
“Nothing you’ve done has hurt,” Tanya says.
“You know, I like you. You’re a lovely person,” Ruthie says. “I don’t mean
that in a — well, you know. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m very comfortable. Really, don’t worry about it.” The way she sees
forms in lumps of clay and stone as though they emanate from the things themselves, Tanya sees a path, the one she knows would work were she in Ruthie’s
place. “I expect you miss dancing.”
“Something terrible. It’s like a part of me was left behind with it. Most
people think I’m crazy when I talk about it. That’s the hardest part.”
“I understand. I sculpt.”
Ruthie looks up from the ankle she’s rotating and meets Tanya’s eyes. “I’m
flattered you said I should have been a sculptor, then.” She smiles, and asks
Tanya what media, how long it takes, how it’s done, all as though every word
captivates her. It’s not just what she asks, it’s the way she does it, and how she
listens. Tanya thinks this must be why men like women, this powerful feeling,
this sense the words matter.
She draws the sheet over Tanya’s legs and again lays her hands on Tanya’s
tummy. “We’re done,” she says. “I’ll see you outside.”
“Thank you, that was wonderful.”
“Thank you,” she says, and leaves the room.
Tanya lies still for a few moments. Then she dresses, and walks into the hall.
Ruthie is not there. Perhaps she ran to the phone to tell her son she’d just met
Sabina Dublin’s designer. Tanya walks out to the lobby. She pretends to look at
the soaps and candles for sale. Then she gets a glass of cold water with lemon,
and sits sipping it, waiting. After twenty minutes, she decides that Ruthie must
have started another customer. She takes a tip envelope and a pen from the front
desk. She tears a piece of paper from her Filofax and writes, “Thank you again.
I’d like to talk to you more about dance. I also have a proposal for you.” She
writes her phone number, folds the paper with some bills, and stuffs them into
the envelope. She puts “To Ruthie from Tanya,” on the envelope and drops it
28
through the slot in the tip box.
She will give Ruthie a few days. Then, she will call. If she can’t reach
Ruthie, she’ll come back and wait for her here. She’ll bring a beta version of
Sabina for Ruthie’s son, with the entire design team’s autographs on the DVD.
She’ll take Ruthie to dinner somewhere shoes are optional. Whatever it takes,
until she can touch Ruthie. Touch Ruthie, and then the marble.
Pamela Lindsey Dreizen‘s fiction has appeared in Image: A Journal of the
Arts and Religion, Flashquake (where it was an Editor’s Pick), The Binnacle,
Lynx Eye, The Powhatan Review and other journals. Her story, “A More
Forgiving Light,” received Honorable Mention in the August 2011 Glimmer
Train Short Story Award for New Writers competition. She lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area with her boyfriend and two young sons, and practices law
at a large technology company.
29
THE LOCAVORE’S TALE
by Claire Noonan
“Y
ou want to know what happened to Ethan? He’s lost.”
In the hospital room, muffled by the wadding that covered Ethan’s entire head,
those words came from Beth as she talked, saying ‘he’s lost’ over and over.
Ethan feebly wagged his head back and forth, thinking ‘not so, not so.’
“That’s all. Not a cruel dude, you know, from the Eagle’s “Life in the Fast
Lane.” Not a right wing nut. Just lost.”
Who was his sister talking to this time? Ethan opened one eye, but the bandages practically blinded him, and it was impossible to tell anyway. She was on
her iPhone.
“Bye, Tom. Be home soon,” she sniffled.
Beth leaned over, peering into the swath of gauze, long, dangly earrings
ready to catch in the bandages.
“You awake? How’re you feeling, Ethan?”
“…not a loser, Beth. Just a losing streak,” he mumbled, jaw barely moving,
tongue thick.
“Wait’ll I tell Tom that one,” she said.
A response she’d hoot over with her husband. Ethan pictured the man’s selfassured grin. Ethan hated that look and tried to frown, but it hurt the stitches on
his forehead.
“What time is it? Have to pee,” he groaned. “Need the nurse.”
“I got here as fast as I could, you know. It’s about 5 o’clock, so you’ve been
here all afternoon,” Beth said, pushing the nurse’s call button, fiddling with her
earrings, preparing to wait.
Beth didn’t appear to be in any hurry, brushing back her brown hair, smoothing her blouse, rearranging her necklace. He lay there feeling an overwhelming
physical desire to go, but he wasn’t going to let his sister put a urinal around his
dick, no way.
She patted a finger against her cheek. “I don’t think they had to shave your
gorgeous black hair to get to the cut on your forehead. But you do have a fat lip,
you know.”
Beth’s chair scraped on the floor and the hospital bed jostled as she blurted,
“Jesus, it’s that bitch’s fault.”
She meant Ethan’s ex-wife. Actually, Ethan hadn’t signed any papers yet, but
it satisfied his sense of gloom to refer to Lottie as ex-wife. Beth peeked at him
under the bandages. Ethan sucked in breath, trying to ignore his bodily desires
and stop the stimuli sparking his brain.
30
Why did Beth hate Lottie all of a sudden? That bitch and ex-wife was Beth’s
college roommate. Of course, Ethan didn’t know Lottie in those days because
his sister, the clever, organized one, and Lottie were off doing Berkeley things.
She who, since kindergarten, had always expected to get her way had settled on
UC by middle school and never wavered. He was at home in rural Morgan Hill,
a year younger in age but far younger than that in ‘social graces,’ as his mother
had called them. His mother would say, “Oh, Ethan, you’re just a late bloomer.”
“I have to go too, ha-ha,” said Beth, “home I mean. Soon.”
As if Ethan could crack a smile with a fat lip and stitches, but he did manage
to croak, “No, wait for the nurse. Please.”
Was Beth mad because Lottie had dragged her into their marital mess not
long after his sister had said to thank God he’d straightened his sorry life out?
He blinked to drive out those images. Then he thought it’s not as if Beth had
done everything right all her thirty-six years. Maybe so far, but there was lots of
time left to screw up.
For one, maybe it would have been better if Beth hadn’t introduced him to
Lottie all that time ago at their first house-warming. Beth and Tom, her stringbean bicycle-riding husband and lawyer for wealthy venture capitalists, were
flying high when they bought the Atherton home. She’d done exactly what Dad
told her the first time she went on a date—just as easy to love a rich man as a
poor one. Dad said it was a joke, but Beth never laughed.
Ethan had been minding his own business, walking around the manse,
examining the garden designed by the best of the best landscape architects on
the Peninsula, when Beth called him over and introduced Lottie. He took her
hand to shake and looked up to see a woman, pretty even without make-up. Nice
clothes, just tight enough, not skin tight. Smart and funny, not cranky or touchy,
at least when they first were in passionate love. It was the proverbial love at first
sight that evening. The love of his life, Ethan thought. Maybe he loved Lottie
because she was kind like his mother, not so bossy like his sister who thought
she was his mother all the time now that Mom was gone.
Ethan was never an ebullient guy, so he appreciated Lottie’s way of going
with the flow. He’d decided to take her to a baseball game on the first date when
he finally got up the nerve after Beth badgered him for days. He was certain
the action on the field could keep them going if he couldn’t think of anything
more to talk about. Adding to Ethan’s certainty that he’d been handed the right
woman, Lottie knew a lot about baseball and kept up a steady rap on the Giants.
“Did you know that the Giants are one of the oldest baseball teams in the
country? I mean they started in New York in the 1880’s or something like that.
So they got 17 pennants while in New York. But now only 3 pennants since
they’ve been in SF. Maybe it’ll get better now that they’re in ATT Park. Nice
place, isn’t it?” she offered. “How much you want to bet #25 will eventually
admit he took steroids?”
No matter how much he thought he loved her, it took nerve to finally ask her
to marry. They found a tiny place in the Oakland hills and he spent long hours
at a small Internet business, financial analyst for Cymbals, Inc. He was the guy
who analyzed the charts to see how they were doing, saying go for it or hold
back. Bruce, the CEO, was a sharp guy, really into making money, but thoughtful too, ready to listen to anyone’s story.
31
That’s how his short, happy, he thought, married life had fallen apart. At a
party held at Bruce’s house, Lottie told Bruce about her NGO that redesigned
and distributed cooking stoves in third world countries so people wouldn’t die
from inhaling carbon particles in the smoky haze of their hovels while cooking
tortillas or injera. They sat on the long leather sofa, heads together, Lottie’s eyes
glistening as Bruce questioned her. At least, that’s what Ethan, drinking merlot
and thinking that he might try to grow wine grapes on his Oakland hillside,
remembered as he sat across from them.
Bruce had loved the idea and gave a lot of money to the NGO. He swept
Lottie off her feet and she slept with him. Well, OK. Not Ethan’s style, but it
happens. As long as it un-happens.
When Lottie told him about her affair, Ethan knew enough to insist on family counseling. They opted for acceptance therapy, the new thing according to
his research on the Internet. It promoted a better understanding of the partner’s
flaws and, Lord knows, he had flaws, but by now he knew Lottie had some too.
Like she threw herself into everything, including Bruce, not only baseball.
In the meantime, when not trapped at his computer in the office, Ethan spent
a lot of time fixing up the tiny house built into the hill, oak trees all around.
Also, being a solitary type he always loved animals and photographed the squirrels, rabbits, owls, deer that pissed Lottie off because they ate the flowers, raccoons he heard scrabbling around at night, and the Schnauzer mutt, Bunky.
Late one night, a full moon shining over the house, the end came when
Ethan took a quick trip to the market for milk and eggs. He should have known
the raccoons would sneak down the hill, snooping for food scraps and water.
Bunky’s food and water were up for grabs. Why the dog bowls were left out, no
one owned up. The dog raised a racket, leaping and barking at the back door,
and Lottie went downstairs to stop him. When she saw the raccoons, she opened
the door to shoo them away, but the foolish dog ran out to attack the nasty
beasts. The smallest yowled and clawed back. Meanwhile, Lottie got a broom to
whack them, but instead, a gigantic raccoon with long vicious claws slapped it
out of her hands and grabbed her arm. Just back, Ethan heard the screeching and
grabbed his baseball bat. The raccoons scattered after he’d smacked one of them
on the top of its masked head.
Bunky had mostly danced out of the raccoons’ way, barking and howling,
but only collecting surface scratches and patches of fur ripped off. Telling the
awful story, Lottie was drenching the deck with blood from the gashes on her
arm, so Ethan put both the dog and Lottie in the car and raced downhill to the
Oakland Kaiser emergency. He was beside himself with guilt that he’d left his
wife to the wild side of Oakland. The doctor said Lottie was filleted and stitched
her up.
Lottie cried all the way home and Ethan assumed it was because of the pain
from the stitches. In the morning she said to go to work, and he called about
every hour, but she only mumbled that she was all right. Still crying when he got
home, she burst out that she couldn’t go on. She wasn’t only swept off her feet
one time. She was in love with Bruce.
“I can’t help it. I’ve tried to stop myself. Didn’t you see something was
wrong?” she apologized as she confessed the whole story.
But Ethan had not seen any of it.
32
He called Beth. Who else was he going to tell that Lottie was moving out?
He rubbed his head, took deep breaths, and finally said, “What a joke. I saw
love, but not out of love.”
Ethan quit his job, of course. Some people might not, but how could he bring
himself to keep helping his wife’s lover? Lying in the hospital bed under the
cool white sheets, Beth smoothing the blanket, Ethan assured himself that he
wasn’t completely off his rocker.
The Kaiser Redwood City nurse came in waving the urinal and said, “Now,
young man, it’ll take awhile. Morphine relaxes your muscles, so just let it go,
don’t try to force it.”
So embarrassing, Ethan thought, his sister did have to help because on top
of everything, he’d dislocated his shoulder and peeing’s a two-handed job for a
man lying down.
Beth held the container matter-of-factly, placed it in the tray, and waved,
“Ta-ta, see you tomorrow.”
Still, that’s not the only time Beth helped Ethan when he was groveling
in the dumps after the separation. Lottie decamped to Bruce’s fabulous house
overhanging the road up to Tilden Park in Berkeley. Ethan was left with no job
and the mortgage ready to balloon on the tiny house. Looking at the options, his
bank agreed to a short sale. All he could think of was hoarding the money he still
had. He wasn’t Beth’s husband, Tom, a regular Midas when it came to collecting
wealth.
Ethan signed his house over and huddled in his tiny abode for a couple of
days while he tried to compose himself before buyers and sellers interrupted
his seclusion. He was lying on his bed, drinking a beer from the micro-brewery
down the hill, and watching Michael Pollan talk about being a locavore, when
Beth waltzed in. She put her hands on her hips.
“What’re you going to do with yourself?”
“Michael has talked me into it. I’ve been thinking about living close to the
earth.”
To tell the truth Beth had pissed him off with her arrogant smirk, and the
idea escaped from his mouth. Still, it sounded good, like he had a plan. She
would never know he had no idea what he was talking about.
His idea did throw Beth off guard and she stood there for a few moments
staring at Michael Pollan on TV. Ethan finished off the beer and smacked his
lips. By then, when she still hadn’t spoken, he suspected she, in her super-organized head, had a plan in mind.
“You know that place we bought up in Los Altos Hills, thinking to fix it up
and resell it?” asked Beth. “Well, the market is an ef-ing mess and we’re going
to hold onto it. Do you want to sort of, like, house sit for us?”
Why not? The more he listened to Michael Pollan, the better it sounded.
The property was at least an acre. Grow vegetables and sell them at the farmer’s
market in Los Altos or Mountain View. Maybe grow grapes. He could do 4-H
stuff like he used to do in middle school when they lived in Morgan Hill. Raise
rabbits...no, not rabbits. He couldn’t thump them on the head and skin them
and sell them. Maybe chickens. He could sell the eggs at the farmer’s market.
33
He didn’t think he’d mind twisting a chicken’s neck when it was too old to lay
anymore. Taj Mahal’s “Cake Walk Into Town” echoed in his brain. His mother
used to sing “stealing chickens from the rich folk’s yard.” I’ll get those chickens
and cake walk into town, he hummed.
“OK,” he said. “When can I move?”
“Tomorrow. The place has some furniture. It just needs to be cleaned up. I’ll
send my housekeeping service to help,” she said as if she’d already planned it
out, knowing he’d say ‘yes.’
It was that easy. Start over. Ethan had hardly realized how downhearted he
was until he turned into a smiling maniac.
In May, slightly late for planting vegetables in the coastal mountain area, as
he found out from the trusty Sunset Gardening book, Ethan wrapped his iPod
around his bicep, plugged in the earphones, and dug up the yard out behind the
deck, planting zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes, and chilis. Easy to grow, easy
to sell. Then he got to thinking about chickens again and looked up a bounty of
information on the Internet. Next thing, he’d ordered and received a dozen puffs
that in no time scrabbled for bugs around the huge yard. The packing slip indicated the chicks would eventually turn into the common Rhode Island Red and
he counted out the days for the red feathers speckled with white to appear.
Taking care of the house and garden was a full-time job. Ethan drove around
in his mother’s hand-me-down ‘86 Toyota stick-shift, piling bags of feed in his
trunk and a bale of hay on the back seat. Then suddenly Henny, Penny, Chicken,
and Little vanished into the toothy mouth of a coyote, fox, or raccoon. Who
knew? He never saw the enemy, nor heard a single terrified cluck.
Live and learn, he ordered a chicken coop from the loads to select on-line.
Voila! An easy-to-clean plastic chicken house kept eight fowl pecking and peeping for months until they were full-grown layers: Peep, Peep-Peep, 3 Peeps, 4
Peeps, Cheep, 2 Cheeps, 3 Cheeps, and Chanticleer, the rooster. After the four
hens disappeared he stopped worrying which was which, except Chanticleer and
3 Peeps with the slightly unhinged wing feather that identified her.
Then Ethan got to thinking about an animal that could be a friend before
it became dinner. Talk to it and scratch it behind the ears. Bunky was off with
Lottie. Not another dog anyway, he’d never eat his dog although he’d heard
the meat was tasty. But a pig or a cow. Plenty of space. Even when he let the
chickens out to scratch in the yard surrounded by chicken wire while he cleaned
the roost, there was plenty of room. He bought a three-month-old Hampshire pig
because it was too much trouble to milk a cow and pasteurize the white frothy
stuff that he remembered from the county fair. He was no dairy farmer.
He knew luck was on his side. His sister kept the electricity going, plenty for
his laptop and iPod. He had a grill with a propane tank. The self-serve laundry
was only a fifteen minute drive away, right next to the micro-brewery and Peet’s
Coffee. All he had to do was watch his farm flourish.
Still, he was uneasy. Hardly another person in those hills was visible. Everyone lived on one-acre parcels in mansions set way back behind trees and shrubs.
Once in awhile, Ethan would have to go after wandering 3 Peeps, who liked to
fly over the chicken wire, and he’d nod to a girl in her fancy jodhpurs, exercising
her horse along the public path.
34
Two weeks after he moved in, his neighbor, Mac, a burly guy with Popeye
muscles and a scar on his lip, showed up. His old house was close to Beth’s
property line, though hidden behind tall bushes. Mac bragged about his millions
made at Intel like many of the high-rollers behind the hedges up and down the
road into the hills. He and his buddies bought their houses around the same time
when bonuses fell from cyberspace. And then Mac said he’d joined a biker club
and invested.
Ethan countered the boast. “I was in the East Bay as financial analyst for a
small Internet business, Cymbals, Inc. Heard of them?” He said no more about
the start-up because, still angry, he wasn’t going to provide Bruce with any capital investors. “Now I do suburban homesteading.”
Mac asked for a card and introduced his black lab, Biff, burly like his master,
that was panting and sniffing around the chicken roost fence. Pig waddled up
for a scratch and Biff rolled out a deep growl, but Pig snorted and Mac pulled
on the retriever’s leash. The dog’s hair line along his back stood straight up. Biff
snapped at the black and white porker.
Mac and Ethan entered the house through the sliding glass patio door. Ethan
searched for an old business card and realized he needed one for his new profession. Mac roamed around the four musty bedrooms, three cracked-tile baths, and
living-dining-multi-purpose rooms covered with peeling paint and water-stained
ceilings. He examined the refrigerator and stove even though anyone could see
how cruddy the kitchen was. Maybe he had heard that Beth wanted to sell.
Three days went by before Mac came a second time. He hadn’t come by to
be inquisitive, but to complain about the chickens that squabbled, Cheep-Cheep
that crowed at 5 a.m, and Pig that patrolled along their fence to snort at the hefty
black lab, making Biff go wild with a loud, hysteric bark. Pig was smart and
certainly did it to annoy the dog. Pig probably snorted to annoy Mac, too.
Once a week Beth drove over from her Atherton estate to shoot the breeze.
She reported on Lottie although Ethan had told her in no uncertain terms that he
was over the woman and not to bring her up. One day Beth came when he was
trudging up the gravel drive with Pig, a collar and leash around his white neck
so they could walk and Pig wouldn’t get between the horse’s legs if the woman
rode by. Pig and Ethan had gotten friendly with the blond pony-tailed horsewoman who wasn’t as young as Ethan thought at first but was still kind of cute.
She’d stop for a few minutes and let the horse graze on the grass in the ditch
while Pig wallowed a bit in the ditch’s mud. Her name was Susan and she lived
up the hill where her family had a horse stable so she knew every local thing going on. She told who was mad about trees closing off their view and about horse
pies on the public path, for instance.
Beth laughed her head off at Pig on the leash, but the young snorter just
waddled in his piggy way up the slope where he’d established himself. She liked
the chickens, especially Cheep, whom she distinguished because of her bright
brown eye with the yellow speck and her odd comb, almost serrated. She threw
out a handful of feed and that’s when she said she was worried and hoped that
Ethan would find a real job soon. She stepped away when her brother squinted
and balled up his fists.
“I have a real job,” Ethan said. “I’m doing fine with my eggs, and the vegetables will be ready for the farmer’s market pretty soon. I’m going down to the
35
city council office to get a farmer’s market seller’s permit next week.”
Ethan unfolded his fists and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. Beth looked
at him, disbelief in the way she tilted her head and arched one eyebrow.
“So leave me alone, I’m being an adult. And I’ve been fixing up your drafty,
rotting house until you get your know-it-all husband to look at his investments
and agree it’s time to renovate the place and sell it for a pile. A farm right here
in suburbia. Who would guess?” Ethan was yelling, worked up by the ‘real job’
remark.
Tom probably told her to ask. Then Ethan shut up as the lightbulb went on
in his head because, of course, he had about three years before Tom would do
anything considering the mess the economy was in. By then, he’d have a thriving homestead going for himself. That would show Tom.
Beth threw up her hands and said she was going to her ‘real job’—she was
the owner of a bar and brasserie in Palo Alto. She hollered her parting taunt,
“I’m sending Lottie out to talk sense into you.”
Then she tossed out that Lottie had broken up with Bruce. He’d helped another woman at another NGO. Beth told her to get over it. That was the Berkeley
way of things. Ethan didn’t think that was so, but he didn’t want to be caught
again so didn’t say one thing. Beth went on that Lottie had asked about him,
wondering if he was still angry. What was she talking about? He completed his
therapy and accepted what had happened. If she thought Bruce was better than
he was, then so be it. Now she’d have to fend for herself. He wasn’t going to be
trapped by love again.
“You’d better not tell Lottie to come over here,” he shouted at Beth as she
walked to her car at the bottom of the row of snap peas he’d planted.
That night Ethan lay out on the deck and Pig trotted over to place his snout
on Ethan’s stomach. Pig was almost like a dog, so amiable and loyal. It was a
dark, clear night with only a sliver of moon so Ethan raised his binoculars to
the Big Dipper. He’d heard on NPR about the star Alcor above the middle star
Mizar on the Big Dipper’s handle, called the rider on the horse, another name
for the old constellation. Beautiful. Pig snuffled to be scratched behind his ears,
the chickens settled down to roost for the night, and the deer and rabbits couldn’t
munch on his ticket to riches because of chicken wire around the vegetable
garden. As he gazed at the Heavens, he contemplated how to keep the pocket
gophers from eating the roots of his tubers without using poison. He sighed at
how knowledgeable he had become. He put down the binoculars and stretched
his legs. All was peaceful in the world.
Then scar-lipped Mac flipped on every one of the outside lights surrounding
his house to blast leaves off his roof with his mammoth blower. Ethan thought
the low rumble was the start of the Big One until the steady whine set off the
rooster’s screeching, the hens’ clucking in chorus, and Pig streaking to the fence,
snorting as loud as he could which turned the labrador into a frenzied barking
dog, louder than the machine.
“You miserable wretch,” yelled Ethan, “A pox on you and that nasty little
beast.”
Only later, ranting at the top of his voice, did Mac defend himself, insisting
that he was fed up with leaves clogging his drainpipe so that water, overflowing from the gutters, made an obnoxious drip-drip-drip outside his TV room,
36
interrupting the Giants’ baseball game. What was more goofy, the guy blowing
leaves at eleven at night when it hadn’t rained for three months or the menagerie answering the racket? The scar gave Mac a crazed look, and he threatened
to send for the sheriff. A quirky smile illuminated Ethan’s face as he riffed the
reggae song “I shot the sheriff but I didn’t shoot no deputy.” But then the feeling
arose that Eden was doomed.
Each man retreated to his redoubt, Mac to watch ESPN and Ethan to
contemplate his desire to retain Paradise. He had been thinking of setting up a
picnic table at the driveway near the street with a sign to take some fresh eggs,
50¢ each, put the money in the box, honor system. All night he worried the hens
were too excited to lay, but he could have slept as they had already put down
seven lovely eggs. Early next morning he saw how silly it was to only have
seven eggs and spent the morning on the Internet using his credit card to buy
another dozen puffs. Of course, it would be another three months before much
more than $3.50 a day would be the reward. According to his father’s aphorism
he needed a rich woman, but all he had was a rich sister who had already done
her duty. He wandered around that day unable to concentrate, not even to pull
weeds.
Two days later the FedEx truck came up the drive, setting off clucks and
crows and squeals, animals carrying on in their farmyard way as the guy
dumped the box on the deck. Twelve yellow powder puffs hopped around, pooping and peeping, while Ethan carried them over to the chicken pen. They weren’t
so little that they needed a mother hen, lucky for Ethan because 3 Peeps was not
a friendly lady. She clucked and pecked and chased the ones lacking nerve. Then
Pig, fresh from a mud wallow, came over to survey the scene and snorted that
he wanted to go for a walk. Ethan got the leash for his collar and bent to hook it
when all hell broke loose. The lone rooster decided to guard the newbies, crowing and flying spurs at 3 Peeps, who managed to flap her wings and cling to the
top of the five foot high fence and then disappear, shrill clucks coming from the
neighbor’s yard.
Next thing, growls and thumping paws and a screech. Ethan grabbed the
ladder and climbed the fence to see the retriever’s mouth open, drool and fangs
just reaching the hen’s neck. He hollered, “Get away you filthy brute,” jumped
down, kicked the dog, and wrestled the chicken from the animal’s jaws. With the
bird under his arm like a football, he ran like a defensive end to hop back over
the low part of the fence. The hen was squawking, so little did Ethan know that
Pig, loyal as always, had been snorting and squealing to infuriate Biff, goading
the dog to pursue Ethan to the low fence and take a running leap.
Once on Beth’s property Ethan dropped the hen who limped to the pen, all
the others scratching and clucking, ignoring her, except the yellow puff balls that
scurried behind their new protector. Just then, a piercing squeal and Pig took off,
the labrador closing in. All was a blur before his eyes, but Ethan tried to grab
the leash, thinking to catch the pig and kick the bejeezus out of that crazy dog.
Instead, his ankle tangled in the leash and he slipped into Pig’s muddy wallow as
the animal raced down the slope. Ethan fell back, dragged by the leash through
the field of muck with its rocks and roots and sharp stinging weeds. Besides the
gash on his forehead and the large cut on his lip, that’s when he dislocated his
shoulder as he turned to grab onto something.
37
But, of all things, he was saved by Susan, Princess Valiant on her horse.
She heard the vicious barking cur and turned onto the driveway just as the leash
broke and Ethan came to a halt. Pig hid behind the horse and the woman used
her crop to beat back the dog. Roaring around the corner on his motorcycle, Mac
separated the dog and the woman, shouting at her, waving his fist, as the dog
growled and backed up.
Ethan’s lip split more when he yelled, “Kick that disgusting beast!”
Susan, the brave, pointed the crop to Biff and commanded, “Shut up, Biff!
And you too, Mac. Ethan’s hurt.”
That’s when she called 9-1-1, got off her horse, and comforted Ethan, saying
you poor man, as he lay sprawled on the ground with Pig at his side until the
paramedics arrived.
A voice said, “He’s been sleeping a lot.”
Ethan recognized Beth. She leaned over and pulled up the bandage.
“You’ve been out of it from noon yesterday until now, Ethan. It’s 2 o’clock.
The doctor said your handsome face will be OK. Probably no scars. It’ll be
awhile before your shoulder heals enough for physical therapy so it doesn’t
stiffen up. That’s the other painful part, I think.”
“Stop telling me that stuff,” he mumbled.
“What? What, Ethan?” she said. “My God. The doctor said you should stay
one more night. They think you had a concussion when you fell, but they’re
disconnecting the morphine button.”
She cried. Ethan heard the sniffing and Kleenex rubbing the tears off her
face. He put his hand out to take hers and pat it, but he couldn’t see and was
waving his hand around in the air so he dropped it back which made her cry
some more.
“Lottie and Tom are here with me,” she murmured. “We’ve been taking care
of Pig and the chickens, Ethan. Lottie’s made sure the vegetables get watered.
The horse woman came by to ask about you.”
Why was she saying this? He waved his hand again and she could see his
lips saying “no, no, no.”
In a voice more like her assured self, Beth said, “Oh Ethan, that’s the good
news before I tell you the bad. You know that crazy chicken with the loose wing
feather you call 3 Peeps? She was ostracized from the coop, and Cheep has taken over as head hen. So this morning 3 Peeps flew up onto the top of the fence
again. Pig ran up and began to snort which made that mad dog leap up against
the other side of the fence, until the shaking made the hen fall onto the other
side. 3 Peeps squawked and then there was silence. After awhile, I heard that
man next door, hooting and swearing, and the chicken came flying back over the
fence, neck half bitten off and blood leaking down onto the ground by my feet.
“Just then tail feathers were tossed over the fence and floated down. Mac
yelled, ‘Those other chickens’ll be sorry too. And that pig better stay out of the
way because Biff learned how to jump this fence, right Biff?’”
Ethan slurred, “Pig is too smart to let that idiot dog get the better of him.”
Tom and Lottie and Beth laughed, but Ethan thought of Michael Pollan’s
words about preserving “the quality of wildness.”
38
Tom interrupted, “Cheer up, buddy. You’ll feel better soon.”
That rich guy. Beth probably made him come and say something nice. Lottie
sat down on the bed next to him. He took deep breaths to force his brain to settle
down.
She said, “Maybe we can go to a ball game when you feel better, Ethan.
I’m renting a place in the Oakland hills and working for the west coast Doctors
Without Borders, setting up teams to go to Central America. It’s so important.”
Ethan nodded slightly, and said, “Not now, Lottie. Not now. I like being over
here in these hills. Remember the best line of that R.E.M. song ‘It’s the end of
the world as we know it and I feel fine?’ That’s me.”
Waving them off with his hand that still worked, they left as the nurse came
in to look at the bandages and massage his shoulder. Ethan lay there in the
half dark, thinking Pig loves that horse. Maybe he should see if he can work at
Susan’s family stable while he preserves the wildness around the homestead. He
liked living close to the earth.
Claire Noonan (aka C.J. Noonan) graduated with a BA in Humanities from
the University of California at Berkeley and received her MA in Curriculum and
Instruction at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. She taught elementary
school and continues as a teacher-consultant for the Bay Area Writing Project. A
short story and other short works have appeared in the online magazine Digital
Paper. Currently, “What Lovers Are Supposed To Do,” can be read in Issue 12,
Spring 2011. She writes nonfiction posts on education issues to her blog at www.
takecareschools.com. Information about her novel The House on Harrigan’s Hill
by C. J. Noonan (Sea Hill Press, April 2011) is found at www.cjnoonan.com.
Ms. Noonan lives with her husband in Los Altos, California. She has two grown
daughters.
39
IT MIGHT HAVE
HAPPENED IN NIAGARA
by Ben Orlando
E
uripides S. LeGrande, eyes still closed, pulled the bed sheet from his
chest and listened to the roar of the falls somewhere in the distance. For a
while he lay in bed, imagining himself caught up in the current, struggling and then letting it sweep him over the edge, into the frothy white below.
Sliding the sheet away from his legs, Euripides paused as his fingers slipped
across skin that was not his own.
“Mmm, stop moving Euri…”
“Josephine?”
Euripides realized there was a girl in his bed the same time he saw the
twenty-something blonde, not Josephine, throw off the pillow and grab the sheet
to cover her small naked frame.
He did not remember this girl, or this room, or the previous night.
“How bout some coffee,” the girl said, suddenly awake. Euripides wobbled
to his feet, but as his brain moved from horizontal to vertical, two invisible
hands twisted and squeezed the ligaments that connected his eyes to his brain.
He collapsed onto the bed, hands on head.
“Did you get my coffee already?” the girl asked with a mischievous grin.
“Give me a minute.”
“If I don’t get my coffee, I’m going to scream.”
Experienced in awkward morning afters, Euripides once again struggled to
his feet, stumbled to the bathroom and ran his head under the tub faucet until the
girl screamed, “My coffee!”
Eventually he found the pot under the sink, and brewed a few watery cups
while attempting to push his fingers into his brain.
“You sure did talk a lot last night,” the girl told him as he set the plastic tray
on the nightstand.
“What did I say?” He did not want to know what he said.
“You were in the circus?”
Euripides mumbled an affirmative and handed her a Styrofoam cup.
“So what was your thing?”
“I didn’t have a thing,” he told her. “I was just there.”
“But didn’t you say something about a—”
“No.”
“Well…” The girl took a sip and narrowed her eyes, “It’s all pretty weird. So
you said you’re a doctor, then?”
40
Euripides winced and bit his tongue. Was she just going to sit there and bombard him with irritating questions, this complete stranger?
“Not yet,” he told her. It had been “not yet” for the last twelve years. Twelve
years of sleeping in cars, paying thirty dollars a month for a twenty-four-hour
gym membership until the wonderful day his residency began.
Euripides S. LeGrande was thirty-one-years old, and had been attending
medical school for more than a decade, never able to enjoy one moment of accomplishment because there was always something. Like the unread letters from
his mother, piled up in his closet. Like his ex girlfriend Sue Noems. There was a
mistake. One of those four-year regrets. And now?
“My mother’s dying,” he told the girl in the bed.
A week ago he’d received a letter from the ageless Solomon Morse of the
Morse Brothers Circus.
“We’ll be outside Toronto for the next week,” Morse wrote in his psychotic
chicken scratch. “Don’t know how long she’ll hold out.”
Five days of that week had already slipped by in a haze of crowded bars and
sexual encounters. Euripides had traveled from Syracuse with mixed intentions,
deciding to spend a night in the gaudy, trashy, Vegas-like atmosphere of Niagara
in order to think things over. But the more he thought about his mother, and his
past, the more he wanted to drink.
“So what’d she do to you?”
Euripides stared at the girl through his fingers, wondered for a moment
where she would be this afternoon, if people would see her—at the store, on a
bus—and know what she was.
“She stabbed me in the back.”
The girl reached out, lifted his shirt.
“Not literally,” he said, slapping her hand away. For a moment, the embarrassed look in her eyes reminded him of Mary Louise Polk, the moment after
his mother had humiliated him in front of Mary and fourteen other ‘normal’
witnesses.
Mary Louise had talked to him, sought him out during the shows. For three
months, while the Circus moved through northern New York, the petite fourteenyear-old was always there, smiling, inviting him for a walk—looking at him like
no girl, no person, had ever looked at him. Until his mother found out, and put
an end to it, her way.
“Well maybe your mom’s sorry,” the girl suggested.
“Or maybe she’s just dying.”
Euripides thought about saying more, but figured he’d probably said enough
the night before.
After slipping a Syracuse sweatshirt over his throbbing skull, he grabbed his
pants, and his wallet, and hesitated. This was by far the worst part.
“Um, how much do I owe…”
The girl’s brown eyes bulged. “I’m not a whore, you asshole.”
Euripides dropped his coffee onto his boxers and cried out, quieting for a
moment the offended blonde. This was the fourth time he’d mistaken an amateur
for a working girl.
After Sue Noems, Euripides had slept exclusively with prostitutes. He
enjoyed the lack of effort, the lack of commitment, and the low probability that
41
he’d wake up the next morning to a burning mattress. But in the game of blind
man’s sex, a promiscuous civilian was bound to slip into the mix.
“Sorry, sorry, I…”
“Fifty dollars,” the blonde said through a mouthful of coffee.
“What?”
“For calling me a whore,” she argued and grinned as she held out her hand.
Maybe she is a whore, Euripides thought, and this is her technique. Everyone
had a technique.
“Besides,” the girl added as Euripides crumbled three bills into her delicate hand, “all that circus talk, and stabbing whatnot, and you’re tail … yeah I
know.”
“It’s not there anymore,” he said in defense, but the girl merely shook her
head. “I should go to the cops, you freak.”
Last night, had she called him a freak, he would have probably overreacted,
done something … regrettable, like the time with Sue, and her bicycle chain.
But now in the morning light, his head pounding, Euripides did not want to act.
He closed his eyes, and let the roar of the falls wash away any context of time or
place.
“Hello? Hey, loser?” The girl shimmied into her Rainbow Brite skirt and
tried to get his attention, but instead of responding, Euripides breathed in the
faint scent of watery coffee, and her deoderant: Spring Bouquet, or something.
Through closed eyes, he listened to the girl pack her small bag, slip on her
sandals, and walk to the door.
“Not that I give a shit,” she said, “but last night somebody called.”
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know, from some place called Sugar Bees. See ya, freak.”
Eurpides opened his eyes and mouthed these strange words. “Sugar Bees.
Sugar Bees.” He jumped off the bed and searched the room, found a nightclub
receipt on the floor next to the night stand, small words etched in ink on the
back: “Paul Hornsby, Dooshomp sword. Sugar Bees?”
“Ahh!” he shouted and instantly regretted the shout as a small grenade exploded inside his skull.
“Sotheby’s.”
Searching his wallet, Euripides found the number for the Manhattan auction house and picked up the phone. Two days ago, anger and financial despair
and vodka getting the better of him, he’d called Sotheby’s to inquire about his
mother’s treasured heirloom, inherited from his father when his father died in a
make believe duel.
Euripides did not always hate his parents, and occasionally, he even thought
he loved them. Mostly, however, he simply wanted to forget and move on.
Maybe if I take the sabre, he irrationally rationalized, and say what I have to
say to her once and for all, it will end. He knew this outcome was not likely, but
still he wrapped the idea around his head like a warm blanket around a shivering
pup.
But when he’d called the auction house and asked for an appraisal on a dueling sabre once owned and wielded by Marcel Duchamp, the man on the other
end snorted a bit too loudly.
“Duchamp?” the man asked. “The French painter, a sword fighter?”
“Yes,” Euripides replied, but before he could explain, the man hung up.
42
Staring at the note scribbled by the girl who’d never given her name,
Euripides dialed Sotheby’s and asked this time for Paul Hornsby. A minute later,
a fast-talking British man came on the line, sounded as if he were eating the
mouth piece.
“So sorry for that ignoramus.” Hornsby was an antiques expert specializing
in French Twentieth-Century duels.
“Not many people know of Duchamp’s prowess with the blade,” the expert
told Euripides. “For a surrealist, Duchamp had great footwork.”
“It wasn’t his feet,” Euripides told the nasally Brit. “It was his balance. Anyway, how much?”
“There is only one known Duchamp sabre,” the man said, clearly excited
and rushing his words, “so if this is, I mean, if you really do have another, and
the authenticity can be proved, well, well, the first sabre resold last year in London for eighty-thousand pounds.”
In his mind, Euripides saw his debt, all ninety thousand dollars of it, standing next to his crying mother. He’d take the sword, and leave them both crying.
This was the motivation he needed, something beyond regret, remorse, familial
duties.
“May I ask,” the man said, “how you’ve come by this, um, quite valuable
item?”
In his drunken stupor, in the presence of prostitutes, Euripides had probably
told the story a thousand times in excruciating detail. But now, sober and ailing,
he gave the antiques expert the abbreviated version.
“My father stabbed Duchamp in a duel in 1967. The sword was his prize.” In
truth Euripides’ father had stabbed Duchamp and then stolen the sabre, but this
type of story, Euripides thought, would not sit well with an auction house.
Before Hornsby could summon a response, Euripides hung up. In the next
half hour, he gathered his things, ran to the drug store for a bottle of aspirin, and
boarded a bus for Toronto.
One gift the circus had given Euripides was the ability to sleep anywhere.
Growing up a freak wanting to leave one world for another, he’d often wracked
his brain for a normal job that required this ability, thrived on this ability. He
came up with doctor.
Another tenet, though he wouldn’t call it a gift, inherited from The Morse
Brothers, was a fervent policy of never borrowing anything from anyone, a
policy that would degrade his body and soul over the next fifteen years.
After he’d walked away from the circus at the age of sixteen, Euripides
had nothing. He lacked possessions, clothes, money, and most importantly, an
identity.
Working mostly as a busboy or landscape laborer, and moving on when
people began to ask questions, he forged addresses and parents’ signatures, a
birth certificate (he kept his father’s name) and a social security number, in order
to get his paychecks, and later, his GED. He then proceeded towards his goal of
becoming an emergency room surgeon.
Euripides was accepted into one program, at Syracuse, but without student or
private loans, he could not pay his tuition and survive at the same time. He went
without a car, an apartment and three meals a day. When not studying or poking
43
through a bloated cadaver, Euripides worked mostly in fast food restaurants,
taking home each night as many cheeseburgers and subs he could cram into his
pants.
Yet even with all these sacrifices, he could still not afford the tuition, and
against his principles, against the nature drilled into him for sixteen years, Euripides applied for student loans. With this new debt, however, he felt guiltier than
ever and worked even harder to keep the damage to a minimum. It was a losing
battle he simultaneously fought and ignored.
The best job by far was security guard. Without this cushy gig, he might not
have survived. For five years Euripides caught up on much needed sleep, night
after night, guarding locked buildings from would-be thieves, until one day these
thieves arrived, and while Euripides slept, they cleaned the place out, completely
and utterly.
The morning after the robbery, the store manager woke Euripides from a
deep sleep.
“One,” said the manager, counting off with his fingers, “you got robbed.”
While Euripides’ eyes moved across empty shelves and broken televisions
scattered across the floor, the manager moved onto number two, “You’re fired.”
As Euripides stumbled to his feet, the frightening vision of a return to McDonalds or Wal-Mart brought tears to his eyes. The manager saw his tears, and
placed his hand on Euripides’ shoulder.
“Tip,” the man told him. “Don’t try to get another security job. You’ll be
blacklisted in about a week.” And so it went. Walking through days and sleeping
on car seats and gurneys, Euripides dwelled on the life he’d led, the life that had
brought him only struggle and hate. “If only I had a nuke,” he often fantasized,
“I’d blow that fucking circus to kingdom come.”
Right cheek pressed against the cold Greyhound window, a light rain
crawling across the glass, Euripides wondered if his mother, the normal who’d
married a freak, deserved his animosity, for it was not fair, was it, to throw out
a lifetime of deeds in exchange for one act? But it wasn’t one act, it was every
day, his mother telling him “You can’t go out there, they won’t accept you,” the
silhouette of his father shadow fighting on the other side of the tent. Sometimes
the silhouette could barely stand, but always, it found the equilibrium. Until it
died, along with the man attached to it.
No one in the circus was inherently nasty. The other performers, and even
cold, deliberate Solomon Morse, had treated Euripides with respect and affection. They taught him to love books and appreciate individuality, but because
he had chosen not to perform, there was something missing in the greetings,
the exchanges and celebrations within the camp. For all of the years he could
remember within those fabric walls, Euripides felt like a mutt standing on a
fence between two worlds. He’d look out at the patrons, knowing he was not
like them, and he’d look to his extended family of freaks, and know there was
something missing here as well. He understood the circus, and what it represented, but he also hated these people, especially his mother, for molding him into a
man who could not easily exist outside of them.
In the back of the Greyhound, Euripides flinched awake when he sensed
someone next to him. He opened his eyes, and saw the girl he’d slept with in
Niagara lowering the arm rest he’d intentionally lifted to discourage intruders.
This was not the blonde girl who’d called him a freak. This was a prostitute, a
44
genuine prostitute, named Josephine. Euripides remembered the name because
of its out-of-time feel, and because the three previous hookers went by Misty,
Onyx, and the elegant Sapphire. All in all he’d spent five nights with five different women, and collectivity, he recalled less than ten minutes of his deadening
escapades. Except for Josephine. He remembered, somehow, enjoying his time
with her.
Josephine was younger than the blonde, maybe college graduate age, Euripides thought, even though he defied this classification. Josephine had tired eyes
on a young face, but she seemed genuinely content.
“So you headed to the circus?” she asked him and rested the palm of her
manicured hand on his crotch. She’d sought him out three nights ago, made a bet
with him that he was not too drunk to get it up. Euripides lost, and paid up the
next morning.
“You’re a good sport,” she’d told him, and slid off the bed into her denim
skirt. “So how about you buy me a waffle.”
As the bus lurched over a bump or maybe a dead goose, Euripides looked at
the girl with jet-black hair pulled tight in a bun, a pair of wire frames hanging
for dear life on the end of her nose. Was this the same girl who shoved dinnerplate-sized waffles into her mouth, one after the other? How much did she
know? Did he tell all the girls everything? Of course he did. In the mornings he
always pretended that maybe he hadn’t said much. But always, he’d said it all.
This, to Euripides, was the largest benefit of a one-night girlfriend.
“I’m not going to a circus,” he lied, at which point Josephine leaned over the
arm rest, crammed her hand down the back of his pants, and squeezed.
Euripides jumped into the window.
“I was just going to visit my mom,” she told him, “but I can go with you to
see yours.”
“Thanks, Josephine, but I told you—”
“C’mon Euri, and call me Josie. You confessed to me, and now I’m yours.
Didn’t you ever hear that old Chinese proverb?”
Euripides backpedaled, but his back was already plastered against the window.
“I know you now,” she said. “I know how she embarrassed you, pulled down
your pants in front of the girl you thought you loved.”
“I did love!”
“The girl you thought didn’t know about your secret.”
“I never performed, never showed them” he said, hearing the ridiculousness
of this logic but not caring, because he had to believe Mary Louise Polk didn’t
know, that she would have accepted him…if it wasn’t for them. He sank back
into the seat and took a deep breath.
“It doesn’t matter that your mother, the rest, they were only trying to help, to
get the truth out sooner than later.”
“Enough.” He turned towards the window, but Josie continued.
“She wouldn’t let you go to school, buy anything, see anything, and when
you left, you felt like you had to start from scratch.”
“Jesus shut up! I told you to stop.”
When Josie touched him, wrapped her arm around his twitching back, he
didn’t protest, and when she leaned close to his ear, he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of Peppermint Altoids.
45
“I was just kidding about that confession thing,” she told him. “But seriously. We’re soulmates. Your father was a performer, right?”
“A drunk.”
“My father was a performer too.”
Euripides turned and addressed her with different eyes.
“When I knew him,” she said, “he was all washed up, but he acted like there
was still a chance … of something, you know?”
Euripides slowly nodded, as if his neck ached with every motion, when in
fact he was surprisingly pain free.
“My father,” he told her, “brought the largest crowds in the history of our,
their circus, even half in the bag. He was the world dueling champion, 1971-74.
I guess I told you his special weapon.”
“You mean his tail, for balance? Yeah, you told me. But your mom—”
“You don’t think a tail is … strange?”
“There’s a woman in Nairobi,” Josie said without missing a beat, “who has
no tongue but can talk just fine. And in Calcutta, there’s a guy with three eyes on
his face, radiation or something. But he’s got twenty-twenty vision in all three.”
“Okay,” Euripides said. “I see your point.”
“Once you open yourself up to the possibilities,” she said, “everything’s normal, and nothing’s normal … that sounds like bullshit, sorry. And your mom?”
“No tail, no talent.”
“And then there’s you.”
Euripides did not respond as Josie’s hand moved over the scar on his lower
back. “So both our dads,” he said, “were drunks. Did yours get himself killed?”
“Both our dads,” she replied, “had, at one point, achieved something spectacular. They made people appreciate life, showed everyone what a human being
was capable of.”
“They came to see his tail.”
”Maybe,” she said. “But they came back for the performance.”
“How would you know?”
“Imagine, Euri, stepping outside yourself, slowing down time, achieving
perfection. Can you imagine that?”
Searching for the best stinging reply, Euripides sighed, and finally answered,
“No.”
“Me neither,” she agreed, and pulled the tip of something red from her front
jeans pocket.
After Sue Noems, Euripides had not been with the same woman twice. He
wanted to avoid the familiarity that bred grudges and jealousy and burning mattresses.
Josie, for all of her insight, exhibited some of the same nervous energy he
remembered from his nightmarish years with Sue. But there was something in
Josie’s grin, or was it in her eyes, that convinced him of her bedrock sanity. He
knew she would never erupt, would never swear out a warrant for his arrest,
just like he knew the last fifteen years of his life, the last twelve years of school,
were somehow ending, about to turn into something else. He didn’t know why,
but picturing tomorrow, Euripides could not imagine his current self.
“You’re scared,” she said, and loosened his belt. The only other passengers,
two elderly couples and a large Native American man, slept or read near the
46
front of the bus.
“You know,” she whispered into his ear, slipping her fingers under his boxers, “I would’ve screwed you for free.”
Euripides gulped. Not again. “So you’re not…”
“No, I am,” she reassured him. “But usually if I like the guy, it’s just sex.
With you, I had to bet.”
“Why?”
She had the answer ready, as if she’d given it a dozen times. “Some people
need an excuse. Now.” Slipping her jeans around her ankles as she adjusted her
panties, Josie unzipped his pants and shifted herself on top of him.
“Anyone looking?”
Euripides, too amazed to properly express himself, focused on the rear view
mirror in the front of the bus, but the driver did not notice or did not care.
“I don’t have a condom.”
“And you didn’t before, either. Do you have anything?”
He wasn’t sure if she meant condoms or sexually transmitted diseases. He
replied “No,” for both, because Hepatitis A was something you could get rid of.
“Well I’m all set,” she said, and for some reason, Euripides took this to mean
everything he wanted it to mean.
Peeking over her shoulder in both directions, Josie pulled a long piece of red
ribbon from her front pocket, an act that reminded Euripides of their first night
together.
“Where are the handcuffs?” he said, hearing in his mind the click as his
hands became one with the bed post.
“Different place, different symbol,” she said while tying his hands to the
back of the head rest. Euripides wanted to touch, wanted to sink his fingers into
her soft snowy flesh, but he would not complain about this strange compromise.
As they moved west along the coastline of Lake Ontario, the United States
fading away with the rest of his life, Euripides had sex with a woman, on a bus,
twice, all the while completely and utterly sober. Today was the beginning of his
reinvention. But knowing things are going to change is not the same as knowing
how.
Hands strapped behind his head, he leaned into her breasts so she wouldn’t
see his tears, and they remained in this state, more or less, for the next hour and
a half.
The circus was not as he remembered it. More specifically, he hadn’t remembered it being so completely disheartening. Squeezed into a three-acre plot in a
small park twenty miles from Toronto, the Morse Brothers Circus was a wounded deer struggling to reach the shoulder.
A few dozen tents sported torn seams and window-sized holes, while ragged
animals (a mule, a zebra, a black bear, and a handful of dogs) roamed the
grounds like confused senior citizens let loose at the mall.
He tried to picture this place before he’d left. Was it always this bad, so
ominous and depressing?
“This place is the pits, right? “Josie forced a laugh and followed his eyes
from one sorry animal to another. “Someone should drop a nuke on this place,
put them out of their misery.”
“Yeah,” he said, not really listening. As he stared at the tents, the ghosts
47
moving around in the background, Euripides did not think of the circus. He
thought of life with Mary Louis Polk, if somehow they’d ended up together.
That life, even if only in his mind, was ripped away by everyone here.
“I just need five minutes,” he mumbled and swallowed a mouthful of rancid,
fetid air as he climbed over a sagging rope and took one step towards the interior
of the camp.
“Wait.” Josie grabbed his arm. “Let’s make a deal.”
“Josie, I don’t really feel—“
“Don’t go in there.”
Euripides turned and stared at this girl, woman, this strange surprise in his
life. Since taking his seat on the bus, Josie had been nothing but confident,
relaxed and philosophical. Now the doubt in her voice, and the look on her face,
caused Euripides to see her anew, someone he hadn’t yet met.
“I don’t think this was a good idea,” she said, and forced a smile. “You
should get on with your life, finish your degree, or training, whatever.”
“Are you insane?”
Josie parted her lips, ready to speak, but her words turned into a sigh.
“I’m not leaving without the sabre,” he told her, and took one step before
noticing the small, hobbled figure in the distance. A little old man shuffled along,
carrying a cane, wearing a tattered top hat, and walking alongside a mule, his
hand on the sickly animal’s back for support.
“Oh my god,” Euripides whispered, and stepped back into the rope.
The recent letter had confirmed Euripides’ gut feeling that Solomon Morse,
original founding member of the Morse Brothers Circus during the Great Depression, was somehow still alive, but seeing the man preserved in actual flesh
seemed to Euripides like the final stage of some pact with the devil.
“C’mon,” Sophie insisted. “Lets go back to Niagara. I have some money. We
can get a place on the lake.”
“What the hell are you talking about!” Euripides pulled away as the old man
passed the last tent, parted company with the mule, and screamed with surprising depth, “Ho there, visitors!”
No one spoke until Solomon Morse hobbled to within a few feet of the
perimeter rope. Up close, beyond the wrinkled, sunken skin and half-dollar-sized
liver spots, the owner’s dark eyes still produced the shrewd glare of a man in
charge of many things, his feet still solidly planted in this world.
Solomon leaned forward, his faded black barker’s hat almost falling off his
shrunken head. Euripides remembered Solomon constantly buffing his top hat,
once grand, now holy and worn through, and bare of the red ribbon that once
circled the base.
Euripides turned to Josie, who was staring at the old man with genuine affection. Without believing it, he watched her pull the red ribbon from her bag, lean
forward and carefully wrap the satin cloth around the old man’s hat.
Solomon kissed Josie on the cheek and turned to Euripides, his leathery hand
extended.
“And how are you, Euri?”
Euripides stepped back. “What’s going on?” he whispered, not sure he
wanted to know.
The old man glanced at Josie, and then turned back to Euripides with a sigh.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
48
Over the old man’s shoulder, Euripides watched a handful of misshapen,
unrecognizable figures drag an unwilling mare into the center tent. From somewhere inside the tent, the animal whinnied and snorted.
“My mother,” Euripides said, and closed his eyes, and thought about those
wasted days in Niagara drinking and fucking. Stalling, perhaps wishing this
would be the end result.
“When?”
Again, the old man looked at Josephine before answering.
“Two years ago.”
Not thinking about his feet or any part of his body, Euripides retreated,
tripped over the rope and fell backwards into a shallow puddle of mud.
“Don’t worry,” the old man assured him, reaching forward as if to help, as if
he could. “The sabre is still here. Naturally, as the oldest heir, you are entitled.”
“Oldest?” As Euripides sat on the ground, numb, unable to focus on any one
thing, the two people next to him continued to speak.
“It’s done,” she told Solomon.
“How do you know already? You can’t know already.”
“I know,” she hissed. “Some things… There’s no need for him anymore.”
“But what if he wants—”
“He doesn’t.”
“What are you talking about!” Euripides used the perimeter rope to pull
himself to his feet, unable to decide whom to confront and how.
Glancing once more at the concerned, stubborn young woman, Solomon
Morse subtly bowed towards Euripides. “I hear you are almost a doctor,” he
said, and smiled as he began to shuffle away. Euripides noticed, only half the
face smiled.
Euripides and Josephine said nothing, until the worn, slanted top hat disappeared behind a distant tent.
“So you still don’t know?” Her tone was kind, considerate, but slightly annoyed.
When Euripides did not reply, Josie turned, and stared at him with the innocent, horrified expression of the fourteen-year-old girl on that day…He was no
longer staring into the eyes of a strange hooker.
“Mary Louise? No. No?
Euripides felt his stomach compress into a fist.
“No.”
“Well I couldn’t tell you my name was Josephine LeGrande.”
“Mary was blonde.”
“Don’t be stupid, Euri. Didn’t you think it strange that a little fourteen-yearold girl would show up in Milton, and then appear at the next show a hundred
miles away?”
Flipping through his memories, one by one, Euripides tried to picture Mary
Louise Polk hanging around the camp, wanting to talk to him, ask him questions, hold his hand. Yes it was weird, but he was a child, and Mary Louise was
a friend. Motives didn’t matter. The little girl’s reasons didn’t matter.
“When your mother grabbed your pants?” Josie said, “yanked them to the
ground, she knew I wouldn’t care, but you didn’t know. She wanted you to
leave. She didn’t want us to…”
He turned away and looked at the ground because staring at her was not
49
helping.
“When your father died, Solomon said I could move into the camp, but first
he wanted us to…”
“To what?”
“To fuck, Euri, he wanted us to fuck.”
Euripides turned and looked up. “Us? Why would Solomon want us to…”
His mind unable to keep up to the present developments, Euripides rewound
the tape and listened to Josie’s words from a few minutes earlier. Josephine
LeGrande. She said her name was LeGrande.
Josie shrugged. “You said it yourself. Henri LeGrande was the best draw this
circus had ever seen. You wouldn’t believe how hard, impossible it is to find a
tail, a real tail.”
He’d been staring at her eyes, so green, so familiar, when a seemingly random memory entered his mind. Three nights ago, on the bed, Josie handcuffing
him to the bed post. On the bus, Josie strapping his hands to the head rest. In all
their time together, he’d never touched … her back.
In a moment of clear, unencumbered, rational thought, Euripides stepped
forward, stared into the eyes of the woman he’d slept with but never touched,
and wedged his hand down the back of her jeans.
Eyes opening wide, Josie smiled. “Not as big as yours … was,” she whispered. “Or your father’s.”
“Our father’s,” he mumbled.
This time, Euripides’ legs simply gave out, and he fell back into the mud.
“Not to be inhuman,” she told him, and stepped over the rope, “but I need to
talk to Solomon. I think you should wait here. Sorry Euri.”
Euripides looked at the ground, looked at Josie. “You and I…”
“Nobody’s forcing you to do anything. The loaf’s in the oven. We didn’t
think … anyway, you can go if you want, become a doctor, save lives. I promise,
we won’t ever bother you again.”
As he lay in the mud, staring into the dark clouds, Josie faded from his periphery, just as everything else had faded, leaving Euripides to wonder what he
would have tomorrow.
Over the years, Ben Orlando has roamed the globe, attempted many
professions and finally settled on writing as the career that would pay the least
and cause the most frustration. Ben teaches at the Columbus College of Art and
Design while attempting every day to write a story that will stop traffic, alter the
course of tropical storms, and finally win the war on war.
50
A GRIM, DARK BAR IN
A COLD, WET TOWN
by Joe Kilgore
T
he sidewalk wept. Rain, like tears, trickled from cracks and seeped slowly
toward the curb, pausing momentarily at the edge before sliding into the
gutter and joining a fetid rush of discarded dreams.
Watching his step, being careful not to slip as he slogged through the charcoal
mush that had settled contemptuously atop the cement, Hank looked at the black
stream of silt and saw his future floating there. He was no more depressed than
usual. He simply chalked it up to fatalistic calluses he had developed over the
years. Scars on his psyche that kept him from seeing silver linings behind clouds
or wildflowers among weeds. Especially in winter. Especially on gray mornings
when wind and sleet sliced his cheek like a careless shave.
In the alley, he took the key ring from his overcoat pocket and unlocked a
metal door freckled with rust. Inside, he pulled the chain that turned on the light in
the stock room as he started marching in place and banging his feet down hard to
jar the crud from his shoes. Once his coat was draped over a four-inch nail in the
wall, he walked across the floor and pushed open the swinging door that lead to
the bar.
The bar was a relatively square room with one wall fronting the street. The
only windows were small, oval and set high on that wall just two feet below the
ceiling. Even on a sunny day very little light made its way inside. There was a
stained glass window in the front door. But its dominant colors were forest green
and rose and it kept out as many rays as it let in.
Years of repetition had honed Hank’s morning routine. Since he always
cleaned up the night before, all he had to do to open up was throw the switch by
the swinging door, pull the upturned chairs from the eight tables that almost no
one ever used, empty the dishwasher of glasses that, like vampire bats, hung upside down to drip dry, and unlock the front door. The door that had the word B A R
in yellow, outlined in lead and set dead center in the stained glass.
Other than the bar, Hank hadn’t gone anywhere for years. He knew he wasn’t
about to go anywhere. That’s probably why his wife, Erma, left him, he reflected
as he walked back from the front door and ambled behind the bar. She knew after
six months that Hank was a lost cause. Of course he knew it too. He just didn’t
want to admit it. Who does? Who wants to face the fact that the rest of your days
are going to be as bleak as all the days that have come before. Certainly not Hank.
That’s why every morning he took the few minutes before his regulars began to
51
straggle in and stared unblinkingly into the big mirror behind the bar.
He stared at his face. A face etched with deep horizontal lines across his forehead and vertical trenches down his cheeks that looked as if they were carved by a
particularly ill-tempered sculptor. But in truth had only been chiseled by monotony
and repressed despair.
The more he looked at his face, the more he was drawn to the spiky silver hair
protruding from the front of his forehead while the hairline on either side of it
raced toward the back of his skull like illegals at a well manned border crossing.
Where had it gone, he wondered. When did it start to abandon ship? Was his hair,
like his life, inexorably vanishing? Would this bar, these glasses, this unpitying
mirror frame his soul’s stockade for the rest of his days?
All were passing queries only. Hank had made a kind of peace with the fact
that the world was on a slow boat to hell and he had the drink concession. A credo
he felt was reaffirmed daily by the detritus encountered on the patron’s side of his
bar.
It wasn’t that Hank was scornful of his customers. He just saw them for what
they were. Jailers. His jailers. Dispensing damp, wrinkled greenbacks that kept
him imprisoned behind five feet of bourbon soaked mahogany.
The front door creaked, signaling an end to Hank’s morning reverie. The first
of the regulars was arriving.
Preston always shook the shiny droplets off his worn navy pea coat before he
hung it on the rack. The ritual never failed to put Hank in mind of a mangy dog
twisting himself dry.
“Hey,” Hank said, pointing to his head as he did every morning. Preston reacted in rote too. He reached up, removed his skull cap and looped it on top of his
coat. It wasn’t that Preston was stupid, well, maybe he was. Nobody really knew
for sure. He never said enough to make it obvious one way or the other.
Hank didn’t ask Preston what he wanted. He knew.
“Coffee be ready in a minute. I’m a little behind this morning cause’ of the
weather.”
Preston drank a lot of coffee. A lot of Irish coffee. He’d fold his lanky frame
over the far end of the bar and burrow into the newspaper he brought with him every day. It seemed to Hank as if the skinny loner with the long nose, deep set eyes,
bushy mustache and knuckles round as gum balls, read the damn fish wrap word
for word, page after page and front to back day in and day out. Was he looking for
something? Did he really care that much about current events? Was he even reading or just counting the damn letters like one of those idiot savants? Hank couldn’t
tell you. Generally, Preston’s only method of communication was to plop a bony
elbow on the bar, hook his finger in the handle of his coffee cup and raise it off
the saucer. He’d keep it held up like that until Hank saw him and gave him a refill.
Hank always put the whiskey in first. Apparently Preston found that acceptable.
He never complained. Which could not be said of Crystal, who came in next.
“Jesus fucking Christ. It’s cold as an Eskimo’s balls out there.” Crystal knew
something about balls. And it wasn’t from giving hernia exams. “Good thing I got
my caribou panties on.”
“Yeah,” Hank responded. “They’ll keep your ankles warm later today.”
“Very fucking funny, Hank. You ought’a give up bar keeping and take your act
on the goddamned road.”
52
Hank didn’t mind Crystal’s foul mouth. As long as there were no new customers in the bar. Preston never voiced an opinion on it.
The only thing redder than Crystal’s straggly hair were the veins in her watery
emerald eyes. Crows feet jutted out from each like the state highway lines on a
road atlas. She was probably somewhere between forty and sixty Hank guessed,
but he’d be damned if he could nail it down any closer than that. How she kept her
body in reasonably respectable shape he had no idea. Must have been her unique
diet.
“Give us a little start, will you, hon,” Crystal purred.
“You ever consider solid food for a change?”
“What are you Hank…one of those know-it-all nutrition experts or a goddamn
barman?”
“You can pay I suppose?”
“What do I look like, a fucking charity case?”
“You don’t really want to know what I think you look like?”
The sneer on Crystal’s mouth melted into melancholy. She put a hand to her
hair to brush it back off her forehead. Her eyes got even wetter. Hank knew he had
gone too far.
“I ain’t on the clock yet,” Crystal mumbled. “I’ll fix myself up after a little
start. Then…you’ll get it back. You know you will, Hank.”
Preston’s eyes never left column three. Hank pulled the Maker’s Mark down
and poured three fingers in a fat glass.
“You’re a prince, you are, Hank. A by-god prince,” Crystal said softly as she
sat at the bar and started to sip her breakfast.
Something close to an hour passed. Preston was on the front page of the metro
section and into his third Irish coffee. Crystal had slipped into the ladies’ room to
put on her war paint and blast Binaca down her throat. The graveyard shift would
be getting off soon. And guys who had been dial watching and recording read-outs
at the refinery all night just might be in the mood for something more than a drink
on their way home. Hank made sure he had more than enough cold beers for the
day.
With a blustery howl, the door opened letting in a stoop-shouldered bundle of
brown. Brown overcoat. Brown scarf. Brown fedora. Along with an icy swirl of
snow and sleet and wind. The bundle closed the door quickly and started unwrapping itself. Hank didn’t have to wait for the unveiling. He had seen it over and
over again.
“G’day Mr. Tanaka. Pretty lousy out there, huh?”
Tanaka, in a tattered tweed suit, checkered sweater, blue tie and shoes the color
of his outerwear, walked methodically toward the bar as he answered, “Will be
worse before it is better. That much I know.”
The old Nippon was over seventy but still stout as a load bearing column. His
straight flat nose and thin lips topped a strong chin and jaw line. Tanaka’s lids
hung low hiding the color of his eyes but his gaze through those slits missed little.
Hank opened a Kirin and poured part of it in a glass that he set in front of the
old man when he took his seat at the opposite end of the bar from Preston. If history was any judge, and it was, two beers followed by a Saki would be his limit
before he’d bundle himself back up and be on his way. Though the Japanese senior
only shot the breeze with Hank or other patrons on occasion, he seldom missed a
53
day at the bar. Unlike his physique, his need for human contact hadn’t aged very
well.
Forty-five minutes later the refinery crew and the construction workers had
descended causing the noise level in the bar to rise a number of decibels. By then
Preston was going through the basketball stats. Crystal had talked a rather burly
type into a bourbon. Tanaka was about to begin his glass of rice wine and Hank
was dispensing cold beers by the handful.
There were few saving graces to being a drink jockey during the busiest part
of the day. Unless you counted the actual act of simply staying busy. Hank did.
The busier he was the less time he had to think about the nut he barely made each
month. Or the fact that any life he had ever envisioned for himself outside the confines of the four walls that surrounded him was only that, a vision. A fantasy that
had little chance of ever becoming anything more than a pipedream.
But by the time the roofers and the carpenters and the clock punchers had
started to drift away, a number of things began to happen that left Hank with the
distinct impression that today just might be a little different than all those other
days had been.
Oh sure, Preston was still holding his cup aloft as he made his way through the
obits, but Tanaka had ordered a second Saki, Crystal had gone out and come back
in three different times and appeared to be flush enough to put cash on the bar in
advance of her orders, and a man was coming in from out of the cold that Hank
had never laid eyes on before. A young man who caught his attention the minute
he stepped inside.
The guy was dark skinned. Not black. Maybe Puerto Rican or Mexican. But
maybe not Latin at all. Maybe one of those islanders or middle eastern types for all
Hank knew. He had no idea. The neighborhood that used to be packed with Irish,
Italians and Jews, now seemed to be mostly Asians, Pakistanis and God knows
what else. Hank didn’t have a problem with that. He didn’t care about the color of
their skin. His big complaint was that they simply didn’t drink enough.
But there was definitely something different about this guy. To begin with, he
was not dressed for the weather. No topcoat. No hat. No scarf. No nothing. Just
a blue serge suit, white shirt and black tie. He had a black briefcase he seemed
to cling to with both hands. Hank thought he looked like one of those low level
guys at the bank who kept turning him down for loans. But the real kicker, even
stranger than the fact he wasn’t winter proofed at all, was that he was sweating.
Sweating like a marathoner in Miami.
Pulling the briefcase up under one arm, he walked haltingly away from the
front door. He scanned the room as he walked, his dark eyes darting from side to
side. He would look down at a table then up toward the bar. It was obvious he was
having difficulty deciding where to alight.
“What can I get you?” Hank asked, thinking the question might help the man
decide to come to the bar. Hank wasn’t keen on waiting tables.
Still looking like he was concerned with who might or might not be in the
room, the young man stammered, “Wha…what do you have?”
What a stupid question thought Hank. “It’s a bar, man. We got pretty much
whatever you want to drink.”
“Maybe he ain’t looking for something to drink. Maybe he’s looking for something else,” Crystal slurred as she hiked her dress over her knee and crossed her
54
legs. “You looking for something else, sweetie?”
“No,” the young man said, clutching his briefcase tighter, and moving to a
barstool as far removed from Crystal’s as possible. “I would just like a sparkling
water please.”
“Bubbly water. Coming right up,” Hank said.
By the time Hank found one of the few Poland Springs he had and turned
to set it in front of the perspiring young man, he couldn’t help but notice how
agitated the guy continued to be. The young man kept holding tightly to the black
briefcase. He held it so tightly the veins stood out on the back of his hands drawing Hank’s eye to an intricately carved silver band on the fellow’s ring finger.
Hank couldn’t really tell if it was a wedding band or not.
While his hands were on his case, the man’s attention seemed to be on the
other people in the bar. An interest that was far from reciprocal. Preston was deep
into the real estate section. Crystal was checking her makeup in the mirror. Tanaka
was sipping and smiling. Maybe at Hank. Maybe at the nervous man. With those
slits you couldn’t be sure.
“You are the owner of this establishment,” the young man almost whispered to
Hank.
“If that’s a question, the answer is yes,” Hank replied, still unable to detect his
nationality. The fellow had virtually no accent.
“I must ask a favor of you.”
“I’m big on drinks, Mac, not favors.”
“I have to be someplace. Very, very soon.” Then, moving his case forward in
his lap, he asked, “Do you have a safe place? A safe place I can leave this for a
short while?”
“Look buddy, this is a bar. You want to store your case somewhere, get a
locker at the bus station.”
“I don’t have time,” the young man said pleadingly. “I don’t have time to go to
the bus station. I must make my appointment.”
“Well, hell, it doesn’t look that heavy. You brought it in…take it with you.”
“I can’t. I can’t have it with me at my appointment. But I’ll come right back
for it. I’ll be gone less than an hour.”
“Look, man…I can’t—“
“Please…I’ll pay.” Then reaching into the breast pocket of his suit, he pulled
out a wallet. Counting out five twenties, he said, “Here’s a hundred dollars. It’s
yours. Just for watching the case until I return.”
He couldn’t explain why, but Hank was still a bit wary. “It’s just not a good
idea,” he began, “suppose you come back and say I took something out of it.”
The sweaty young man put his right hand into his pants pocket. He fumbled
around for a moment, then his hand came up holding a little gold key.
“The briefcase is locked. I have the key. I won’t accuse you of anything.
Please. Here…here’s another hundred,” he said, pulling a Benjamin Franklin from
the wallet he dipped into seconds earlier. “Please. Take this too.”
Caution is no match for cash. Hank said, “Okay, look…give me the case, I’ll
put it right here behind the bar. I’ll be here the rest of the day. So when you come
back, I’ll give it to you.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the young man said.
“But I keep the two hundred, right?”
55
“Yes. Yes. It’s yours for being kind to a stranger. Thank you. I’ll be back within
the hour,” said the tense young man as he handed the case to Hank. Then he rose
from the barstool, cut quick glances once again at the three others in the bar and
walked hurriedly to the door leaving his Poland Springs untouched. Opening the
door to a blast of wind and wet, he then cautiously stuck his head out, looking left
and right. Apparently satisfied, he stepped outside and shut the door behind him.
“Tell me I didn’t just see what I thought I saw,” Crystal bellowed over her once
again empty tumbler.
“Forget it, okay? Just forget it,” Hank said.
“Forget it. Forget it! Do you know how many dicks I’d have to suck or how
many times I’d have to bend over to come away with two hundred bucks plus
somebody’s goods?”
“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Hank replied. “It’s not an image I’d
care to conjure up. Anyway, the guy’s gonna’ be back soon and it’ll be done.”
Crystal couldn’t let it go. “What do you suppose is in the case, Hank?”
“Doesn’t matter what’s in the case,” he said. “It’s his and he’ll be back for it.”
“If it’s worth not one…but two hundred clams just to hold the thing…can you
imagine what must be inside?”
“Something very valuable perhaps,” Tanaka said to no one in particular. Or to
everyone in the bar.
“You got that right, my…banzai brother,” Crystal warbled, finding it difficult
to get the b’s out cleanly.
Hank looked over at his Japanese customer. “No point in speculating. He’ll
pick it up later and we’ll never know what was in it. But I’ll still have two yards.”
“Yeah Hank, you’re a fucking negotiator…a hell of a businessman. But you’re
also still a goddamned bartender. So give me another Maker’s Mark,” Crystal
screeched, slapping a sawbuck on the bar she had earned earlier.
An hour went by. Preston moved meticulously through the want ads. Tanaka
decided to stay and asked for coffee. Regular coffee. Crystal went to the ladies
room a couple of times and threw up. Only to return for another three fingers. The
sweaty man didn’t show.
Two hours went by. The occasional customer came and went. A scotch and
soda here. A vodka martini there. The streetlights came on. Still no dark young
man in a blue serge suit.
“I’m telling you…we got something big here, Hank.”
“Crystal…we don’t have anything. I’ve got it and I’m just holding it. That’s
all.”
The red head’s focus, what little there was of it, changed when she realized she
had once again consumed her profits. She turned toward Tanaka and squawked,
“Hey Hirohito…how’d you like your knob polished?”
The old gentleman looked across the bar and said to her, “You ask me that each
time I come in here.”
“Oh yeah,” Crystal replied, her elbow on the bar as she rested her head in her
hand. “And what do you answer each time?”
The sides of Tanaka’s mouth went up and a smile creased his cheeks as he
replied, “No thank you.”
Then the door opened and a man walked in. It was not the man who left the
case. This was a bigger man. Over six feet. Well over. Even though he was wear56
ing a heavy overcoat, an expensive cashmere one, it was obvious to all in the bar
that he was way beyond two hundred pounds. He wore no hat. His hair was wet
from the weather. His face was expressionless.
Preston, immersed as he was in the comic strips, didn’t really see him. Crystal
looked his way and saw dollar signs. Tanaka, like Hank, saw trouble. Particularly
when the big man pushed the door to and slid the bolt across, locking it.
He opened the buttons of his overcoat but didn’t bother to take it off. “Anybody in the toilets?” He asked as if he was used to getting straight answers right
away. And he got one.
“No, I don’t think so,” Hank answered. Then added, “But listen, we have to
keep that front door unlocked. It’s the law.”
“As of now I’m the law,” the big man said and started toward the bar.
He took long strides. His heavy legs came down hard and his heels clacked
loudly on the wooden floor.
There had been trouble in the bar before. It had been broken into a couple of
times in the early morning hours when it was empty. Graffiti had been spray painted on the outside walls and had to be removed. Hank had to oust unruly drunks on
a couple of occasions. One time he even had to call 911. But in the few seconds it
took for the big man to walk from the front door to the middle of the bar, Hank got
the weird sensation that all those previous occurrences had been mere child’s play.
“A young guy came in here earlier today. A young guy in a blue suit,” the big
man said, looking directly at Hank.
“Lots of guys come in,” Hank replied, “now about that door.”
“Forget the door,” the big man said loudly. “The guy left a briefcase here. I
want it.”
“This is a bar,” Hank said, “do you want something to drink?”
“Don’t fuck with me,” the big man said coldly. “I don’t have the time.”
Preston closed his paper and began to slide off his barstool. The big man’s
head turned quickly his way.
“Sit down, stretch. Nobody leaves til’ I get that case.”
Preston did as he was told. Hank started to say something but Crystal cut him
off. She slid off her bar stool and took a step toward the big guy saying, “Well
look, tiny…if we all have to stay, maybe you can buy a girl a drink, huh? What do
you say?”
“Get away from me, skank.”
Crystal’s drunk eyes opened wide as half dollars. “What did you call me?”
“Crystal, sit down,” Hank said.
“Did you hear what he called me. He called me skank. Skank! Who the hell
you calling skank…fat ass!”
“Get her out of my face,” the big man said to Hank. “Now.”
“Crystal, damn it. Sit down. Look, here’s a drink,” Hank said grabbing the
bourbon and pouring some into Crystal’s glass. She was still staring at the man,
defiance turning to revenge in her eyes. But she went back to her stool and the
drink.
“Time’s running out, now give me the case,” the big man said again to Hank.
“Or everyone here’s going to be in a world of shit.”
Hank looked from Tanaka to Crystal to Preston. Then he looked to the locked
front door. “Look, the guy paid me to watch the case for him,” he said.
57
“Don’t care about the money,” the big man mouthed. “Just give me the case,
now”
“He said he’d come back for it.”
“He ain’t coming back.”
“But he said he’d be back for it,” Hank entreated.
The big man started reaching inside his overcoat as he growled, “I said he ain’t
coming back.” He pulled a wadded handkerchief from his pocket and quickly
opened it over the bar. “And he ain’t fucking coming back.” A finger rolled out. A
finger encircled by an intricately carved silver band.
Hank’s eyes opened wide and the back of his hand came instinctively up to his
mouth to keep him from retching. But he didn’t have time to get sick. With one
huge paw, the big man grabbed the front of Hank’s shirt and pulled him forward.
His other mitt reached inside his coat and came back out with a service automatic
that he shoved under Hank’s chin.
“Now…for the last fucking time…give me the briefcase.”
Tanaka, sitting several stools away at one end of the bar, saw the fear in Hank’s
face. He saw the seriousness in the big man’s eyes. And he saw Crystal’s hand
coming out of her purse.
“Perhaps I have the case…over here,” Tanaka shouted.
The big man turned his head left toward the old Japanese. When he did, Crystal opened his neck with a razor blade.
Her desire to help Hank, fueled by a fierce need to avenge the mammoth’s
tacky insult, combined with an intense swipe and an extraordinarily lucky landing
along the man’s carotid artery, sent blood spraying like the Spindletop gusher.
The big man’s hand flew off Hank’s shirt while his other simultaneously
dropped the gun. Both sprung instinctively to surround the geyser spurting from
his throat. He stumbled backward from the bar while the fingers of his hands
turned red with the life that was now spilling through them and running down the
lapels of his cashmere coat. Head back, mouth open, eyes rolling in his head, he
careened from one empty table to the next knocking chairs asunder.
Hank, Preston and Tanaka looked on in horror while Crystal wailed like a banshee. “Ayeee…ayeee…call me a skank will you! Who’s the tough guy now? Drain
out you big piece of shit.”
The big man crumpled. His hands, slick with blood, slid from his neck as the
breath escaped him like air from a balloon. Knees banged the floor first. The he
fell forward on his stomach and face. His last heartbeats pumping out what was
left of the red rain.
For a few moments nobody moved. The force of Hank’s grip on the bar turned
his fingers pink and his knuckles white. Preston had tumbled from his stool and
onto the floor as the bloodbath began. He continued to sit there in shock. Tanaka’s
elbows were on the bar with hands together and fingers laced. Crystal slumped
against her barstool, the blade still in one hand while a glass dangled from the
other, it’s contents long since spilled.
“Jesus,” Hank finally said.
“Jesus had nothing the fuck to do with it,” Crystal stammered.
“What are we going to do?” Hank asked himself as well as the others.
Tanaka separated his hands and raised his head. He spoke softly but surely.
“We contact the authorities. This was self-defense. Miss Crystal thought he was
58
going to kill you. We all did. We will all say so. Miss Crystal acted to save your
life.”
Hank looked at the old man even after he stopped speaking. It took a moment
for him to take in what he was saying.
“Yes. You’re right,” Hank said, “Crystal just swung…trying to make him drop
the gun. It was an accident. An accident that happened because she was trying to
keep him from killing me.”
Preston was still on the floor. Crystal hadn’t moved either.
“That’s what happened,” Hank said to Crystal. “That’s what we’ll tell the cops.
We’ll all say that…because it’s the truth…it’s what really happened.”
Crystal’s gaze slowly moved from the big man’s body on the floor to Hank’s
eyes searching her face. “Yeah,” she responded. “Yeah, sure. That’s what happened.”
Hank tried to gather his thoughts quickly. But he couldn’t seem to keep them
to himself. He said out loud, “So, I should call them, right? I should call the cops.
Should we do anything? Should we check to see if he’s still alive?”
Tanaka could tell the barman had not fully recovered from his own shock. “If
the man were still alive his heart would be beating. If his heart were beating, he’d
still be bleeding. The man on the floor is dead.”
“Yeah,” Hank responded. “Yeah, that makes sense. I‘ll call the cops.”
“Hank,” Crystal said slowly, looking first to the barman, then to Tanaka, then
back to Hank, “what do you suppose is in the case?”
Hank didn’t answer for a moment. He looked at Crystal. Then quickly to
Tanaka who gave no sign of a response. Then he stammered, “What… what difference does it make? Who cares what’s in the damn case!”
“Somebody cared a lot, Hank,” Crystal said, more glassy-eyed than ever now.
“The guy who brought it in cared. He gave you two hundred bucks just to watch
the damn thing. This fat fuck lying on the floor sure cared. He was willing to take
you out…hell, probably all of us…just to get his hands on the case. There’s gotta’
be something in there Hank. Something good.”
“Perhaps there is something of value,” Tanaka said just above a whisper. “Two
men. So committed to it. So anxious that it be safe. Perhaps it is most valuable.”
“Look,” Hank said, “forget the damn case. A man is dead here. Maybe two,”
he added, looking over at the finger with the silver ring still lying on the bar.
“What did they die for, Hank? What did they die for? Lets find out,” Crystal
purred.
“You’re nuts. You’re out of your head,” Hank came back. “We can’t do that.
We can’t look in the damn case. It’s not ours. And … and it’s locked, remember?
“Perhaps the dead man has the key,” Tanaka said quietly. “He had the other
man’s finger. Perhaps he has the key the young man showed you.”
“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” Hank recoiled. “You sit there, quiet. keeping
to yourself. But you don’t miss a thing, do you?”
“Lets see what’s in the case, Hank. Lets see,” Crystal continued.
“Look,” Hank argued, “it’s my ass on the line. I took the money to watch it.
“I’m the one who’ll get in trouble if anyone thinks … well, if they think…”
Tanaka stepped into the void Hank’s addled pause left. “Who’s to say what
anyone will think? Perhaps no one … other than the young man and the brute lying on the floor here … even know of the case.”
59
“But what if he doesn’t have the key,” Hank shot back.
Before Tanaka or Crystal could answer, a voice came from the far side of
the bar. “I’ll find out,” Preston said. Then he uncoiled himself from the floor and
started walking.
“Oh great,” Hank barked. “Now you’ve even got him into this. Preston, where
are you going?”
The lanky one didn’t answer. He simply marched over and reached into the
outside pockets of his pea coat hanging on the rack. Pulling a leather glove from
each, he slipped them on and walked back to the body on the floor.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Hank said loudly. But no one seemed to be
listening.
Crystal had poured herself another drink from the bottle Hank had left on the
bar. She was sipping as she watched. Tanaka had turned on his stool so he could
look directly at the skinny man gingerly searching the frighteningly pale corpse.
Preston was methodically going from pocket to pocket. First the overcoat, outside and in. He had to roll the body on it’s side to get into some of the pockets. He
didn’t seem to mind. Nothing in the overcoat. He progressed to the suit coat, found
a wallet, put it beside the man and continued into the pants pockets. By touch
alone, he could tell there was nothing in the back pockets. He had to reach under
the body to check the front. From the right side he pulled out a handful of change.
When he spread it out in his gloved hand, he saw the key.
“Is this it?” Preston asked, holding the key so all could see.
“This is stupid,” Hank said. “It’s crazy.”
“Get the case,” Crystal said. “Lets open it.”
Preston put the key down on the bar in front of Hank.
“Sure, you want me to do it. You want me to open it,” Hank railed. “Then my
prints will be all over the thing.”
“Your prints are already on the briefcase,” Tanaka said, walking over to where
Hank and Crystal were at the bar. Preston had turned back to the body where he
began to study the dead man’s wallet.
“As for the key,” Tanaka continued, “you can easily wipe it clean or simply
lose it. The police will have no way of knowing if the case was locked or not.”
“This is not a good idea. We should not do this,” Hank moaned. “It can only
lead to more trouble.”
“Listen Hank, you’re forgetting something. You got two hundred out of this
and we…we got nothing,” Crystal crowed. “And don’t forget the bigger fact…that
I saved your fucking life. That guy would have blown you away. That’s what you
were ready to tell the cops, right?”
Hank took a breath. And put both hands on the bar.
Tanaka looked at him and said, “We only want to look. We only want to see
what all this was about, Hank. This is a mystery. A mystery we can solve. It is
something we will take with us forever. Think how we would feel never knowing.
Never knowing what was so important that it cost two men their lives and almost
ours as well. Is your life so full, Hank? Is your life so full you have no desire to
solve such a mystery?”
Hank looked at Tanaka. He thought about what the old man was saying. He
thought about what had run through his mind earlier in the day. That one day was
pretty much like every other. That he was stuck behind this damn bar dolling out
60
drinks to…what had he called them… not customers…oh yeah, jailers, his jailers.
He thought about the idea that maybe the only way some things ever change is if
you actually get off your ass and do something to change them.
Then he looked at Crystal. And he said to himself, why not? Why the hell not?
Why not do something to change things? He reached in his pocket and pulled out
the money the young man had given him.
“Here,” he said to Crystal, “that’s for saving my life. Hell, you’ll just wind up
giving it back to me for booze anyway.”
Then he turned to the old man. “No, Mr. Tanaka, my life ain’t all that full. I
was just thinking about that this morning.”
Crystal whispered, “Come on Hank, it can’t hurt to take a little peek.”
Hank let out a huge sigh. He picked up his bar rag and wiped a clean place in
front of him. Then he reached down, got the briefcase and set it on the bar.
“Okay,” he said, “lets solve ourselves a mystery.”
Crystal leaned in close. Her mouth opened into a smile that almost made her
look pretty. Tanaka stepped closer too. For once you could see his brown eyes.
Hank took the key, put it in the lock, turned it and heard it click.
Then as Hank’s thumbs started sliding the tabs that would open the snaps, the
three heard Preston say, “Hey, this was the guy I was reading about in the paper.
He and some others been knocking over banks using explosives and—“
Then no one heard another word as the world turned into a blinding white
light.
And where once stood a grim, dark bar in a cold, wet town, the sidewalk bled.
Blood trickled from cracks and seeped slowly toward the curb, pausing momentarily at the edge before sliding into the gutter where it joined a fetid rush of
discarded dreams.
Joe Kilgore’s fiction has been published in magazines, online literary
journals, anthologies and more. He has one novel to his credit, THE BLUNDER,
and is currently under contract for another to be delivered this summer. Two of
Joe’s western stories can be found in the anthology AWARD WINNING TALES
available from MoonlightMessaAssociates.com. Austin, Texas is Joe’s home where
he resides with Jezebel, a French Bulldog, three cats, and his wife Claudia, who
did the illustrations within this story.
61
MASTER OF NONE
by Francis Chung
I
was watering my leafy green coca plants when a couple of spies broke in
and saw my stash. One of the two teenage girls brought out a portable camera and snapped off a few. I dropped my porno mag and watering wand. I
typed out an encrypted message to Thirteen Gulls on the two way: “Got a couple
magpies in the crop. Initiating skip trace. Code Tri-Deca-Gamma at 10 minute
intervals.” They must have intercepted the transmission because as soon as I
touched ‘Send,’ they turned and ran with fleet steps, light taps on the ground and
out of my compound.
“Achtung,” I said. I spat hitting the porno mag in the crotch. Then I gave
chase.
I hit the block fast and saw their had motorized skateboards: the kind with
all terrain tires and hydrogen boost. “Achtung Diebe,” I said. I had nothing but
my ancient electric roller skates. Nevertheless, I had ordered the skip trace and
I couldn’t stop now—mostly because my boss had written me up for a ‘coaching’ the other day for failing to adjust the reflector shades on the newest batch
of clones. This was complete bullshit. Slightly irked that my boss may have
actually ‘reached’ me, I touched the side of my sleeve to activate the wheels
from the bottom of my shoes. Thirteen wheels on each foot inflated into 6-inch
diameter translucent red polyurethane donuts. I pushed off and accelerated with
electric aided momentum. I tucked like a speed skater and shorted my glide for
a few quick intense accelerating bursts. Then lengthened out my strokes for a
higher top speed. Still skating hard, about a mile down the road, I caught sight of
the spies who had slowed thinking that they got away.
The mousey smaller one turned, she looked about thirteen. Her lip lifted in
sneer. I read her mouth: “That fucking farmer is following us.” In her defense, I
was wearing blue denim overalls.
The pair split like a smashed atom. Each took a 45-degree vector and increased speed. I choose to follow the younger one, thinking her more impatient
and that I could fluster her long enough while tailing her in order to get a solid
satellite trace. A small sonic boom resounded: her hydrogen booster. The brown
hair was now a pinpoint on the horizon and getting smaller and smaller in the
distance. I glanced at the other girl. Still within range. As I angled to her, the
lactic acid began burning. The thought of getting ‘coached’ again was too much
for my ego. (Have you ever been ‘coached’ by someone who does your job and
her job worse than you do?) I grunted and decided to go all out for 10 more hard
skates. If she hit the hydrogen boost, I could give up.
Surprisingly, I began to gain ground. She saw my overalls skating large, one
62
arm tucked behind the back pro-style. She locked eyes with me and grinned.
Once I was in earshot, my lungs quaking, she said easily, “No body reads porno
anymore, Cock-Twisting Pervert.” She then jammed down the hydrogen boost
button on her handheld accelerator. “See you in Hades, Farmer,” she said. She
crouched readying for super sonic speed. Nothing, but a small wisp of black
smoke escaped from the engine and the whole skateboard shuddered and lost
momentum. I was nearly on top her then. I reached out, but she escaped my
hand and veered hard right towards a Loma Vista gated community. She ollied
over a 10 foot brick wall and was out of sight.
I couldn’t jump that high on my ancient electric skates. But I roller-skated
straight up the trunk of a Yew Tree the way old cartoon characters do. At the first
branch heading toward the brick wall, I did a forward flip and landed bearing
directly towards the brick fortification. I caught a glimpse of the girl: she accelerated towards a huge mansion on the corner, her hair trailing in the wind. When
the branch began to bend with my weight I stopped breathing and vaulted myself
over. Twenty-six red wheels landed smoothly on a expanse of concrete inside
the Loma Vista gated community. As my lungs were heaving, I beelined into the
back yard of the mansion where the girl ran. Beyond the wooden side gate, glass
sliding double doors squeaked and slammed shut. I slid them open and retracted
my skates. As tired as a 3:00 a.m. jizz cleaner at a porn theatre, I cautiously
took the stairs two by two. The grand staircase was a pink and yellow spiral
cleaving through the center of the compound. Who lived here? Jay Gatsby?
The culprit scurried to the third floor where I glimpsed long dirty blonde hair
and an oversized magenta sweater with clumsily stitched geometric shapes. At
least the spies had good taste. The door to a bedroom slammed shut. I crept to it
and decided that I was gonna take her in. Maybe I’d get a raise? Maybe, I’d be
Employee of the Month for this one? I knocked on the door and said, “Who are
you?”
“Who are you?” Was her reply.
“I’m Farmer 337b.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Now you.”
“No.”
“That’s such a rip off.”
“So?”
“Whatever. You trespassed. Give me the data and readings from my place
and I might not take you in.”
“What data?”
“The pictures you took.”
“Listen Farmer 337b. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know
why you chased me.”
“’Cause you ran. That’s admission of guilt when you run.”
“Look, I don’t admit anything. I was just riding my skateboard.”
I tried to initiate a satellite trace at this point. But it was thwarted by some
other communications interference which came from the room proving the girl
legitimately financed. I initiated my own blocking program hoping that she
wouldn’t be able to call for help either. But I found that one transmission had
already gone out. As I tried to decode it, the door sprang open and a golden
63
swath of hair attacked me with whirling sai. I managed to dodge and roll into
the room scanning for a weapon or a defensive wrap; anything. Nothing. She
attacked again, very low this time aimed directly at my balls. I threw myself
backwards and landed on the bed where my hand reached under a pillow and
found a 15 inch soft neon pink silicone dildo. I Jose Canseco’d the proxy phallus
and hit my assailant squarely in back of the head. Her momentum carried her
into the wooden corner of the bed frame. Geometric Magenta Sweater Girl’s
neck twisted ugly, angled awkward and she collapsed to the ground like a spent
condom.
A Glock focused into my vision and I heard shots. I dropped the nasty dildo
and upended myself rolling backward and making myself, the target, smaller.
Pointy Legos that some kid hadn’t cleaned up poked into my chest and belly.
Ignoring them, I crawled to cover. I hated this kid’s room and the slovenly little
kid’s horrible toy clean up habits. More imminently, I thought: who’s attacking
me now? Peeping, I glanced the mousey 13-year-old who Sonic Boomed away
earlier. She must have gotten the emergency transmission and now she was only
7 feet away. Close range panic saved me. I threw a plush teddy bear at her. The
bear sailed across wallpaper rainbows, Pegasi and unicorns. Upside down, tufts
of cotton stuffing exploded out its furry cute back as hollow point slugs landed
in the wall behind me. Bullets bounced around inside the drywall and I couldn’t
know how many shots she fired. I counted maybe 30 shots while more fucking
Legos pierced my palms and thighs.
With all my strength hoping to create a barrier, I lifted and rolled the large
object next to me. It happened to be a mahogany wardrobe. The only wood grain
I know is mahogany because the small tight even patterns and reddish color
represented my childhood desktop for years. Anyway, It fell towards the girl
and she jumped away with a tiny squeak. The room was an intense mess of neon
colored shredded kid’s bedding and horribly disfigured toys and stuffed animals.
Thousands of multicolored neon Legos littered the floor. The random thought
zapped into my hysteria: What is this kid doing with a huge dildo?
An empty clip clicked out. A full clip loaded. A familiar clicking sound
meant that a bullet was chambered. The mini-Assassin sprang up with the
wanton recklessness of a fearless computer generated enemy unleashing her fury
from behind an all white vanity with oval mirror. The mahogany wardrobe took
in all the fire. I heard the bullets ricochet inside it. Again it was impossible to tell
how many shots had fired. The shots stopped and Justin Beiber’s “Baby” began
to play underneath my left butt cheek.
“My phone,” exclaimed the 13-year-old death merchant. I got a good look
at her then. She was dressed in skinny jeans and a matching jean jacket with the
collar turned up. Just like Beiber Immortal. I thought I saw his visage on her
t-shirt. I showed the bejeweled smartphone over the side of the wardrobe. She
gasped.
“Do you want to take this call? It might be important.”
“Who is it?”
“I’m not gonna say.”
“You motherfucker. Bobby’s supposed to call.” She put my head in between
the sights.
I flicked the phone Frisbee style at her head. She went to catch it.
64
As the exit door grew larger in my sight, she caught the phone and answered
it in a totally sweet voice.
“Bobby? Yeah, totally. I know, it’s so crazy. But, can I call you back? I just
didn’t want to miss your call ‘cause I missed it the other day. I’ll call you in a
minute, K?” She hung up concurrent to my running out of the room.
“Uuuuuugggggh, “ she cried in exasperation. “You almost made me miss
that call. You’re a jerk, Farmer.”
I was halfway down the pink staircase when she began firing at me again.
“You stupid farmer. I hate your outfit.” One of her crazy shots hit my foot. The
hole quickly filled with blood and pulsed with Pain. I stumbled and stopped. I
looked up to see the mouse Bieber girl flying through the air with a jump side
kick. I dropped to the ground to slip the blow. She pulverized the marble wall
and landed on her feet one step above my head. Pink dust from the ruptured
granite clouded the whole stairway.
“I can’t believe you killed Irma. She must have underestimated you, dumbotronic farmer.”
I reached up and grabbed her jeaned leg and rolled into it with my neck.
She toppled. And with blazing reactionary speed she slashed out with a large
knife. I could do nothing except hide my eyes. The blade hissed through the air
and landed with a large THUNK cutting off my left ear. A clean strike. But very
superficial. The pain didn’t register so I used my good right leg for one more
solid push and mounted her. She was smaller than I thought, maybe 90 pounds,
so I leaned all my weight on her and she panicked picking up strength. She
went into a solid guard position with her left leg wrapping my leg and her head
pushing back on my chest resisting contact. Very well trained in hand to hand. I
took what I could and got partial underhooks on both arms, but I couldn’t drive
her over due to my foot being shot up. She began to reach for some weapon on
her body. That was a mistake because I being in Ghandi Guard locked in decent
Good Evening Ladies and Gentleman Choke Hold. She was trapped. As she
exhaled, I choked tighter like the anaconda who squeezes whenever it’s prey exhales. She gasped and switched her tactic to give a short knee at my groin which
knocked into my thigh. Bone mashed muscle and fire and numbness exploded.
At this point, I used my internal computer to shut all pain receptors off because
my adrenaline surge had lapsed. I caught and held her knee in my crotch. I
leaned in and let go of her arms and grabbed her head and shoved it into my
stomach for a Reverse Cross-face Samoa Special.
She knew it was over and began to tap on my arm. I anaconda’d her even
more.
“Who sent you?” I said.
“The Bilderberg Group.” Was the muffled response that vibrated into my
chest. She then tried to bite me through my shirt. But couldn’t.
Bilderberg? Those demented grotesque eugenics based globalist banker
tyrants were always shoving their quintillioniare noses into Thirteen Gulls’ business. As I looked around for the gun, I choked harder and pressured the carotid
arteries to shut down her brain. Still alive, I dropped her. I had to get ready for
the worst. My foot was broken from the gun wound and my ear began to spray
blood. In the bathroom, I found a box of tampons and put one into my ear hole
for max absorption. A microfiber hand towel with an embroidered tarantula
65
wrapped my head. A bumble bee pillow pet wrapped my foot, but I still needed a
crutch or a cane to walk. I sat down in an old leather study chair with wheels and
rolled myself towards the closet door.
Skating ancient electric or otherwise was not possible. I thought. Blood
loss was countered by an increase in blood pressure readings from my internal
computer.
Then the floor to ceiling three story windows on the front of the mansion
imploded. The sound muffled up into itself.
“What did you do to my daughter?” Cried a huge male voice resonant and
deep. I held my head from the decibels.
I keeled over.
“Irma? Pria?” said a female voice. The vowels held concern.
“Protect them.” Said the male voice. “I’ll make him sing.”
As he said these words my whole body rose in the air. I had lost control.
Telekinesis was my opponent’s skill. I needed a reactive brain scramble. That
implant is over 400 million dollars. I didn’t have that and I was transported to
my days in Basic. Squad leader Peter was a telekinesis user and used to bully
me all day. He could move small leverage points which proves useful in a fight
when a slight tip of your blade or barrel means the difference between life or
death. But this Bilderberg Agent was much more powerful. Able to lift me (over
190 pounds) and pin me against the wall, implode glass and voice amplify with
apparent ease. I guess eugenics had paid off for those demented grotesque eugenics based globalist banker tyrants.
“Who are you?” He said.
“I’m a farmer.” I said. My electronics halted and jammed. He had broken
through the last of my defenses. Pain from my recent battle grew vivid and fiery.
“Why did you kill my daughter?”
“She attacked me.”
“What?”
I screamed. All the flesh from hip down to my feet had been flayed from
the bone. I looked down to see the bright sheen of blood, the brilliant white of
dried and cleaned bone and the leaking yellow-clear, grease of my marrow. In a
spilt second my skin was cut, pulled back and stuck flat on the wall like a grade
school pig dissection. Each nerve ending screamed tasting air for the first time.
The meat was ground up in piles on the ground ready for the fridge or grill. My
legs looked like the Mr. Bones silk screened Halloween costume.
The pain settled down and I was able to answer, “Fuck you.” I coughed
blood from biting my tongue.
“Your girl was a whore, a trick.” I goaded.
“Angering me will not hasten your death.” He said and waved with his hand
casually.
I yelled again in pain from both my arms exploding like water balloons, flaying up to the shoulder and pinning open in the same manner as my legs.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH, I’m just a farmer hired by Thirteen Gulls.”
“Darling, stop,” said the female voice. The pain ceased. Sweet surrender of
exposed bone.
“What, I’m clinically dismantling this one like a Fiat currency in America
circa 2012. Why stop? Would you like to eat of his flesh?” asked the male po66
litely.
“We’ve company.”
Heavy .50 caliber machine gun fire tore through the room. Code Tri-DecaGamma in ten minute intervals had gone through. Wood splinters flew brilliantly. Everything around me wallpaper, furniture, the metal balustrade was
shredded by a gigantic hyper invisible cheese grater. Spasmodic barrel flash
burned my retinas and a gigantic flood light cast its warmth on the inner sides of
my skin.
“Farmer 337b, we’ve got you. Please hold on.”
“Ok,” I said and passed out.
I opened my eyes in liquid. I was breathing it. Panic. They had suspended
me in highly oxygenated water. Relax. I could see the doctor outside of the tube
giving me a “thumbs up.” I returned it and saw my hand was a baby’s. I held it
up to the light. Baby hands connected to a baby arm that connected grotesquely
to a man sized torso. I examined my legs to see the same. My penis looked huge.
The water flushed clockwise out of the tube and I was able to stand a good three
feet lower than where I’m used to.
I coughed out oxygenated water and said, “Why the baby arms?”
“There were no full sizers left in the warehouse. It’s lucky that you even
have these right now. You’re a very rare blood type.”
“How long will it take for them to grow out?”
“Grow out, ha! You’re stuck like that for a year while we grow you full sized
ones.”
“What?”
“Forget about that. We still have the guy that did this to you.”
“Where?”
“Cell Block 32. Neon Green. The girls are there too.”
“Give me some pants.”
“Here.” He handed me a pair of bright yellow corduroy toddler pants. There
was absolutely no room for my penis in them.
“My dick can’t fit in these.”
“Well, that’s what we have.”
“A multi-trillion dollar Thirteen Gulls operation with advanced humanoid
grafting techniques and you can’t get a decent pair of pants?”
“Hey, you can always go naked.”
“Fuck you.” I used my baby hands to wrap the pants into a rough diaper format using the legs to cover my crotch. I waddled around unused to the immense
weight of my head and torso. The legs were pretty strong albeit small.
“Not bad Farmer 337b.”
“Do you have a shirt?”
“Pick one up in the commissary. Your insurance only covered the pants.”
“Will do.” With that, I walked out of the infirmary. The metal doors slid
open when I walked towards them. The weight of my new body was becoming
familiar. Feeling all the stares of various Thirteen Gulls members, I kept a steady
plod. I tried to be dignified, but I didn’t really care too much about it. I wanted
answers from the guy that unwrapped my skin and flesh as easily as a Christmas
present.
As I pivoted the corner, Nurse Practitioner Juanita Flores’ perfectly shaped
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large curvy behind lined up directly with my face. Everyone always talked about
it. I had seen her at the local happy hour and took note of it myself. But I had
never been able to examine it with the intimate detail that my new short height
gave me. I marveled at how smooth and rotund it was. How thick and pleasant
the curves were. Feeling my eyes on her ass, she whirled and looked down.
“Oh, my poor Farmer 337b, We all heard about what happened.” She wrung
her hands in front of her bosoms. I could do little else but look up at them. Luscious even though covered in the prim white uniform.
“You will visit my quarters for an after hours sexing session, yes?” She
blinked her long lashes.
“Uh, sure.” I mustered. I had forgotten that duty injury insurance included
the use of sex therapists. I had never really been a fan of this ever since my parents got me one when I was 14. I later found that Dr. Agave had mediated to our
sessions under the influence of 15 to 20 different pills. In some sort of trance,
we’d have sex. Never fuck. Never fully engage with the person. Just polite discourse during the act itself:
“Here?”
“Yes, that’s good. Excellent. Very good.”
“Yeah?”
“Very good. Yes, right there.”
Thereafter, she would to profess her Love for me. Then have sort of savage or equally reactionary titular response: cry violently to the point of physical
exhaustion or academically interrogate what I thought about her performance:
“Did you like it when I was on top?”
“Very much so.”
“You must tell me honestly.”
“It was delightful.”
“And the angle of my hip?”
“It was a little different from last time.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“I held my torso five degrees forward. Did you like it?”
“Yes.”
Later, I learned this is completely against the whole purpose of sex therapy
and that Dr. Agave had been banned from the practice of medicine in the state
of Washington and California. Since then, no more sexing sessions for me. I’d
sooner use my hand. But, I knew the Good Nurse Practitioner would hound me
for a while. I was fine with that.
Another frantic looking male patient got her attention and she walked to him.
I walked away. More like waddled. Figuring the prisoners to be in the special
psychological warfare section, I oriented towards the Psy-Ops wing of the compound and at the threshold of the Infirmary I reached up my hand to the thumb
print scanner.
“Welcome, Farmer 337b.” Said the console. I was glad that they had updated
my personal information on the database.
A Butch Lesbian in a grey uniform with a gigantic muscular neck walked
directly towards me.
“Farmer 337b,” she said with as much warmth possible. She saluted. “I’m
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Amanda Protendo.”
“At ease, Captain.”
She visibly lost the tension around her massive shoulders. You can never
trust these pysch warfare people because they are great actors. This stems from
their constant manipulating and testing of their own emotions due to the fact that
they are ordered to create many various realities for the population and the members of Thirteen Gulls. With words and top of the line surveillance technologies
and expendable human assets in the hundreds of millions, Thirteen Gulls PsyOps manufactured Reality. The Captain extended a hand and I like a fool took
it. She grabbed a hold and swung my whole body up and around onto a harness
strap she had hidden behind that monstrous neck of hers.
“I have been assigned to be your personal transport courier.” She said. She
strapped me in between the thick muscles of her broad as Texas back. “Please,
I’m honored to be of service to you. I am also to help supervise your visit with
Anton Rockefeller Kissinger, the man who wounded you.”
I buckled the plastic harness and adjusted the leveling system so that my
head was aligned slightly to the left of Amanda’s. “Good.” I said. She cocked
her head to the side to listen to my voice. So close, I only needed to whisper.
“Good Amanda. Now, are you a telekinesis user? Do you have any powers that I
need know of?”
“No, Sir.”
“Alright, now, take me to him and run top speed.”
“Yes, Sir.” Amanda took off like the wind down the hallway and into an area
of pencil pushers and cubicles. We stopped at one. A Sergeant Ji Van Jung. The
slender youth looked up, saw two hulking heads and snapped to attention. He
stood up flipping out the paper and pad he was working with and caused large
mess of cascading documents. He ignored it all and saluted sharply.
“Farmer 337b, Sir. You are here to see Prisoner #52012. I have arranged it to
be so, Sir.”
“At ease. Where is he?”
“He is held currently in cell block 32 Neon Green of our maximum prison
with a General Electric Mind Sink.”
“Take me to him.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Top speed.”
“Yes, Sir.” He brushed past Amanda and sprinted out of the cubicle world.
The three of us moved quickly and I could feel Amanda unlocking her Second
Chakra Gate in order to increase blood flow. Sergeant Ji Van Jung was a few
steps faster than her. Or maybe it was my weight. Either way, she needed extra
power and was clumsy in controlling her flow from the abdomen area.
“Easy, Amanda.” I whispered. “Use the output above the norm from your
solar plexus. Directly. My onboard Computer is picking up a 15% leak rate from
that area.” She made the adjustment flawlessly.
“I didn’t realize, Sir. Thank you for the lesson.” She said with a strain in
her voice. Soon we were running neck and neck with Sergeant Ji Van Jung. We
flowed into large ceremonial meeting hall that was at the entrance of Thirteen
Gull’s underground complex. We ran straight into the ornately craved gateway
made of Thirteen huge arched Elephant tusks and jumped the 40 foot pit full of
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vipers. We crawled through a mud pit covered by barb wire adorned with severed rotting human body parts. On the other side of this there was a small guard
station where we rinsed off. The guards inside resembled two fully mature Silver
Back Gorillas. Upon seeing us, one raised a huge microwave gun and the other
wielded a Gatling Gun and a wicked serious scimitar. They took our credentials
and then lifted the iron gate. Ted, the gorilla with the Gatling gun, escorted us to
the 100 cube ft concrete penta-box that was one of 100 such cells in the buckminsterfullerene shaped building that housed some of the Thirteen Gulls numerous political enemies.
“We’ve got him in a Gantrellis Vise. He’s fought every single step of the
way.” Ted said nonchalantly. “But we’re the original Pentagon so no one tops
our security.” A finger the size of a French baguette pointed to emphasize the
number One. The Pentagon was the most insidious gang of Satan Worshiping
Warmongers in existence. They had refined with scientific patience and ingenuity all forms of human torture and confinement. It just so happened that Thirteen
Gulls was currently the Coalition the Pentagon had chosen to band with and I
was just pleased with the thought that Ted was not my jailor.
“Let’s see him.”
“Sure.” Ted pulled out a small laser key and inserted into a pentagon in the
five sided wall. Everything had five sides inside this structure—the walls, the
hallways, even the light fixtures. The wall slid upwards and vanished into the
ceiling. Anton Rockefeller Kissinger was a lean man hanging from arm restraints, he was stripped naked except for a large shiny metallic spherical helmet
that tapped directly into his cerebellum with 1,000 telescoping nano-tendrils. No
thing with a flesh/silicone brain could escape the Gantrellis Vise. I could tell he
was middle aged because his pubes were gray.
“He is sleeping at the moment.” Said Ted. “But I’ll wake him up.” Ted
walked up to him and knee’d him repeatedly about the thighs.
“By the Dark Lord, cease.” Came a small whiny voice. Surprised, I remembered a deeper menacing voice, but he no longer had his psych-amplification.
“Wake up, Kissinger. Someone’s here to see you.”
The black Gantrellis sphere lifted up and even though I couldn’t see the eyes,
I knew he was staring right at me.
“Ah, a newly warped, baby sized man is in our midst. Farmer 337b, I knew
you’d come.”
“Well, The Bilderberg Group will be happy to trade something for you.”
A laugh escaped from the Gantrellis Vise.
“You have nothing. We own you already. We are the Pentagon. We are the
Fallen.” He shrieked. Ted moved the butt of his gun to strike Kissinger’s abdomen but froze in his tracks. The Gantrellis Vise broke in two and the halves
clanked to the ground.
“What the fuck?” asked Ted. “Put that back on, Prisoner #52012.” He drew
his scimitar and began a downward slash.
I knew Ted was about to die.
“Run.” I whispered to Amanda. “He’ll kill us all.”
Amanda did two backward hand springs and a back flip with a twist, landed
a good way down the hall and began to sprint. Sergeant Ji Van Jung started to
turn but couldn’t help but watch all the flesh melt off Ted. I remembered how
70
painful that was. The scimitar clattered on the concrete.
“Run.” I yelled. Kissinger freed himself instantly from the hand cuffs and
then dropped to his knees upon the bloody pool of Ted flesh. He scooped up
huge rich red handfuls of viscera and ate it in gigantic gulps. In between swallows, he yelled in his nasally whine.
“Farmer 337b. I’m coming for you. Slurp. Slurp. If not here, then in your
dreams until we meet again.” He laughed a sick sardonic cackle that sounded
like a circus clown who kept a million pictures of mutilated little boys and
girls tacked up in his basement. He didn’t pursue us. We had made it out of the
buckminsterfullerene and to the guard station when the first earthquake struck.
It opened a huge crack in the ground above the Pentagon compound. The bloody
figure of Anton Rockefeller Kissinger jumped out of a five sided window and
flew with the body of the mousey Beiber 13 year old in his right arm and an
older woman in his left. I didn’t know he could fly, too. Apparently, he could.
The other guard aimed his microwave gun and fired a few shots. They echoed
and distorted the air in a line towards Rockefeller. The alarm for natural disasters went off.
“Vereemmmmmmeeeep. Verreemmmmmmmeeep.”
Rockefeller veered left to avoid the microwave blasts but knocked against
the Bucky Ball and dropped the 13 year old Beiber girl. A second tremor rocked
the whole complex and enlarged the hole above the flying Kissinger. Building
buttresses shuddered and a large apache helicopter intercepted the nude flying Bilderberg Eugenics Tyrant above ground and he with woman boarded and
quickly sonic boomed out of sight.
“You saved us,“ said Sergeant Ji Van Jung. “I was going to try and stop him,
but you told us to run.”
“He’s a new brand of Bilderburg.” I said. “We need to take news of his
escape to one of the Gulls.”
“What about the girl?” asked Amanda.
“I don’t know.” I said. “Achtung, I hope she’s still alive.”
Debris from the above crack in the ground fell all around us.
“Continue the training.” I whispered to Protendo.
Francis Chung lives and works in the Bay Area.
71
THE SUPER COOL
SUMMER FUN SET
by Kevin Ridgeway
H
arrison was biding his time behind the cash register at Wayside Drug,
reading the latest music beat sheet and imbibing the second can of Diet
Vanilla Coke of his day, which he didn’t pay for. It was wrapped in
the receipt from the first can he consumed in between the first laxatives sale of
the morning and dusting the Metamucil. The store Manager, Cal, approached
the registers with a tangled mess of Wayside Bargain ads twisted in his shaking
alcoholic hands.
“Harrison … um, hi guy. I need you to help these folks locate an item on
special … er, The Super Cool Summer Fun Set.”
“It’s on sale for $8.95,” a portly woman in a sagging fisherman’s cap said,
getting the ends of her extra large Tweetie Bird t-shirt entangled in the Summer
Fun Umbrellas.
The store was tiny, storefront property downtown in the state capitol. The
aisles were a maze and special sales items could be exceedingly difficult to find.
Harrison did what he was told and grabbed an ad from the front stack.
“It states that it has three inflatable pool rafts, two beach balls, cooler ice
packs and a small canopy with nets to keep out the skeeters,” the woman’s
other half said dreamily. He was a hefty man dressed in car harts, a white t-shirt
and red white and blue suspenders all paired with a baby face that had aged
ungracefully.
Harrison looked at the ad. Sprawled out on a beach towel display in a grainy
photo spread was The Super Cool Summer Fun Set. Two young men, one clad
in white chinos, the other in white shorts, were holding court in folding chairs.
They wore dollar rack Hawaiian shirts, had tropical drinks in their hands, and
were tossing a beach ball between them in an awesome example of tableau
multi tasking. A black woman was sprawled out on an inflatable raft, her young
daughter splashing water across her. An Asian guy stood at the grill, laughing.
All for $8.75.
The damned thing was no where in sight in that cluttered mass of a store.
They would inevitably stumble upon something called simply The Cool Summer
Fun Set.
“That’s not the Super…” the man declared.
Chugging his third unpaid-for Diet Vanilla Coke and washing it down with
three daytime cold capsules, Harrison puzzled over the showroom floor. He had
helped stock it nearly to its entirety that previous week—where the hell was it?
72
He would not have been surprised if the warehouse had shipped ten of them to
their rinky dink store and turn it into a veritable sardine can of memorabilia,
bargain coffee and high pallets of Wayside brand protein shakes.
“We’ve got to find it soon or later, damn it…” the woman chimed in after a
long awkward silence.
Harrison was feeling woozy from the daytime cold medication. He had
been sent to rehab for cannabis dependency by his parents the season before.
His forehead was sopping wet with sweat from the cold medicine and his overall
intestinal nervous disposition, Harrison spotted it, set up high atop the cosmetics
display case: the Super Cool Summer Fun Set.
“There it is—the kid found it, Mabel!”
“Oh, boy, this is going to just make this summer! I can feel it!” she said.
Harrison procured a step ladder and carried the trapezoidal packaging of
the Fun Set down to the glowing faces of the couple. Just as he was formally
presenting it to the man, a loud clatter broke loose. JJ, a morbidly obese man of
a thousand pounds who got around in a motorized chair, appeared on the scene.
He rode in this chair that was practically invisible, tucked away beneath his
outer flaps. He barreled through the shampoo and conditioner display, green and
blue bottles flying every which way.
“I had that Fun Set on rain check!” said JJ.
“Do you have a copy of your rain check receipt?”
JJ pawed through his fanny-pack and could only produce several crumpled
receipts, none of which pertained to a rain check.
“If he doesn’t have it, it’s ours!” said the man.
“I got it somewhere, maybe at home … it’s mine!” said JJ. “I’m not moving
until you give it to me!”
JJ was blocking the entire aisle. They were between him and a brick wall.
“Umm, Cal? We’ve got a customer issue on aisle 9!” Harrison said into his
walkie talkie. Cal arrived promptly.
“You’re going to have to leave or I’m going to call the police,” Cal
announced to JJ.
“Fine, but you’ll regret it!” JJ said in reply, backing up towards the exit
door, knocking over four more displays along the way.
“I’m sorry folks; Harrison will ring you up at the front.”
As Harrison was midway through logging his pin number at his register, he
noticed a stack of rain checks wedged underneath it. The first one at the top was
JJ’s, for the Super Cool Summer Fun Set.
“Cal … we have an issue.”
“WE JUST … WANT THE DAMN SET.” The man was furiously adamant
about this.
“You’re going to ruin our summer…!” the woman said.
***
Harrison bolted out the front door in search of JJ. He only ran north one
block when he saw him inside the Christian Bookstore at the corner of Elm,
having knocked over a display of Bible Diaries. Harrison entered the store.
“JJ, the Super Cool Summer Fun Set is yours. There was a mix up; we
73
found your rain check.”
“This is going to be the most amazing summer,” JJ replied, beaming with
pride.
Harrison was lassoed into pushing the Fun Set on a cart up five blocks to
JJ’s apartment. JJ was a speed demon on his chair, having glided several feet
ahead of a haggard Harrison.
“Are we almost there?” asked Harrison, dying for a menthol cigarette.
“Yuppers,” said JJ.
They were in the front living room when JJ told him to put the Fun Set in
the corner. The room had no furniture. Just a dilapidated square coffee table that
was stacked with prescription pills, hairs of marijuana and the remnants of a
chicken dinner. Harrison plopped the product on the torn shag carpeting.
“Okay, well thanks again, Harrison.”
“No problem, uh JJ.”
“My real name is Jean Valjean.”
“Like in the Victor Hugo book?”
“Yep, like in the Victor Hugo book.” JJ paused. Y’know, you could come
over in the backyard this summer and we can sit in the inflatable pool, work on
our tans.”
“Maybe.”
Harrison walked back down to the Wayside, having fulfilled a good deed
for the day. He stood behind the cash register during the last hour of business
when a 14-year kid approached the register with a large bottle of cold medicine.
“You gonna chug this or is it for a cold?”
“Chugging it.”
“Well, you don’t have to live this way. I take these daytime cold capsules
that give you a mellow buzz all day long.”
Harrison chucked the five bottles of daytime cold medicine into a bag and
handed it to his apprehensive customer.
“You’re sure this will work?”
“Well, yeah…look at me!”
Harrison closed out his register and Cal told him he could go home for the
night. Harrison walked up State Street with a menthol cigarette smoldering in his
hand and made a right at the corner and onto Elm Street.
“I wonder if I should get one of those Fun Sets,” he thought to himself.
Kevin Ridgeway is a writer from Southern California. He studied creative
writing at both Goddard College and Mt. San Antonio College. Mr. Ridgeway’s
work has appeared in Ray’s Road Review, Red Fez, Breadcrumb Scabs, Full of
Crow, Calliope Nerve, Haggard and Halloo and Larks Fiction Magazine, among
others. He currently resides in a shady bungalow with his girlfriend and their
one-eyed cat.
74
ATLANTIC CITY, 1980
by Karoline Barrett
W
hen I saw my Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Jerry’s light blue Mercury
Grand Marquis parked on Boston Avenue in Atlantic City, it should
have surprised me. First, because they live in Brooklyn, New York.
We live right outside of Atlantic City, and rarely see them; maybe for Christmas
and Easter, if we were lucky. Not that the two cities were so far apart, that’s just
the way it was.
Second, my mom was just whispering the other day to someone on our
yellow kitchen wall phone that Jerry, on occasion, hit Beatrice. When she
realized I was in the kitchen and heard what she had whispered, her mouth
dropped open as if I’d caught her in bed with our thirty-something year old
mailman. I grabbed an apple while she told the person on the other end—a
little too loudly and slowly—that she didn’t need any more Avon products. It
must have been code for “my daughter’s in the kitchen, I can’t talk.” I hoped
she didn’t have aspirations to go into the Secret Service; she was no good at
deception.
“Uncle Jerry hits Aunt Beatrice?” I asked.
My mother dried her hands on her apron. “Did you wash that apple?”
“Of course,” I lied. “Uncle Jerry hits Aunt Beatrice?”
She went to the sink and turned on the water, scrubbing dishes to within
an inch of their lives before they were allowed in the dishwasher. “I was just
repeating to Charisse something your Aunt Cecelia said. I certainly don’t believe
it. You know she’s jealous of your Aunt Beatrice, and me, too. She’s always
been cranky and difficult.”
Charisse was my mother’s hairdresser and best friend. I nodded, as if I
understood. I didn’t really. Aunt Cecilia, like all my mother’s sisters, seemed
sweet and harmless. I could tell my mother wasn’t going to have a heart-to-heart
talk about it with me, so I let the subject drop.
Considering these things, it should’ve been weird that I was staring at Aunt
Beatrice and Uncle Jerry’s car right now. But I was a huge believer in Kismet,
Destiny, Chance, Karma, and the rest of the Fate family, so seeing their car on
my way to the beach made perfect cosmic sense to me.
Their back door was wide open, and as I came up to the car, I saw them
in the back seat, drinks in hand, feet planted on Elvis Presley floor mats. I was
relieved at how happy they looked. Would a wife whose husband hit her be
sitting in the back seat with him drinking what I figured were probably martinis,
75
their very favorite drink? “Aunt Beatrice, what are you guys doing here?”
“Christine, oh my God, Christine, is that you?” my aunt gushed, not
answering my question. She was the only one in my family that called me by my
full name, which I actually preferred. “What on earth are you doing here?”
I looked at my aunt. She was forty, but looked at least fifty-five. She
reminded of Edith Bunker, Archie’s wife on All In The Family. Stick legs on a
stuffed body. Not fat, just stuffed. Mousy brownish blonde hair chopped short,
sparse bangs curled under. I thought that a strange question given that she knows
I live in the area. “I’m on my way to the beach.” I pushed up my sunglasses, and
raised my red canvas beach bag that held my towel, Coppertone, and radio. Oh,
and a book, in case I got adventurous.
“Chrissie, get in, get in,” my uncle boomed. “Move your ass over, Bea, let
the girl in.”
My aunt giggled and scooted over on the plush blue velour seat, somehow
managing not to spill her drink. My Uncle Jerry was a study in tan and plaid.
Plaid brown and tan sports coat, plaid brown and tan pants (not matching), and
these big tan plastic glasses. His wavy, thick dark blonde hair even looked tan.
Unlike Aunt Beatrice, he did look like forty, which he was, and for some reason,
my nineteen year old self found him sexy in some bizarre way. He threw his
arm around the back of the seat, touched my shoulder, and winked at me when
I swiveled my head to look at him. “Where can we find a private part of the
beach? You know, to be alone for a little while?”
Seemed to me they were alone enough right here, but I could understand
wanting to be in the sun and by the water; they both looked like they had spent
their entire lives indoors.
I grinned. “I know lots of private parts of the beach, but I don’t know that
Aunt Beatrice would like to be left by herself in the car.”
Uncle Jerry withdrew his arm so he could slap himself on the knee as
he flung his head back and guffawed. “Good one, Chrissie. Wasn’t that a good
one, Bea?” He elbowed my aunt, and this time some of her drink sloshed on her
flowered shirtwaist dress. Neither of them was dressed for the beach.
“We’re here to see Frank,” my aunt finally answered my earlier question as
soon as she stopped tittering at my joke.
“Frank?” I parroted. “As in Sinatra?”
My aunt bobbed her head up and down, then looked at me as if I had
sprouted an extra head. “Of course, dear; why else would we drive all this way?”
To see your family? I thought, but I kept my mouth shut. I was afraid to
know why they never called and rarely visited us. “He’s playing at the Golden
Nugget?”
“No,” my aunt dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Jerry’s got a friend
who’s showing a home movie of Frank when he appeared in Vegas. On the
strip.” She looked at her watch. “We got thirty minutes till show time. Want to
join us?”
“Come on, Chrissie,” my uncle said. “Join us.”
I shook my head. There was something depressing and lonely about a
middle-age couple driving from Brooklyn to Atlantic City to see a home movie
of Frank Sinatra, and not their family. “That’s okay. I don’t want to intrude.”
I leaned in and hugged my aunt. She smelled like my uncle’s cigar smoke and
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Emeraude perfume. She smelled like her sister—my mother—except my mother
didn’t smell like the cigar smoke part. I slid out of the car. “Have a good time.”
My uncle held his glass up to me. “Watch out for the sharks, and the ones in
the water, too.” He laughed.
My aunt rolled her eyes. “Have a good time at the beach, dear.”
A few blocks later I was at the beach, laying my towel on the sand. I pulled
out my radio and found an oldies station. Maybe they’d play Frank. I peeled off
my white shorts and New York Mets t-shirt. I favored them because my father
did. Slathering on the Coppertone, I lay on my back. The sun heating my skin
gave me goose bumps. The salty ocean smell and the rhythmic, bubbly whoosh
of the blue/green waves rushing home to the sand instantly made me sleepy.
I wished I hadn’t heard what I did about Uncle Jerry. I closed my eyes and
thought about the invisible heartstrings that bind family. I wished Aunt Beatrice
and Uncle Jerry would visit us every weekend. We would all play Gin Rummy
in the kitchen. Aunt Celia could come too, just so she could be gathered in by
the rest of us, and see that she didn’t need to spread ugly rumors. My father
would win all the Gin Rummy hands, of course. He always wins. I couldn’t get
comfortable, so I flipped onto my back. I thought about the purple and green
bruise I saw on my aunt’s arm.
Karoline’s fiction has been published by Short Stories for Women, Necrology
Shorts, The Other Herald, Scribblers on the Roof, Eastown Fiction, Wild Horse
Press, Flashshot, Read-A-Romance, The Storyteller, True Love Magazine, Slow
Trains Literary Journal, and Long Story Short. Karoline is currently at work on
her first novel.
77
NONFICTION
SPRING 2012
78
DEMONS
by Henry F. Tonn
S
eptember, 1976.
His name is David. Six feet, two inches tall and two hundred and forty
pounds. His brown hair is thinning. He walks with a ponderous tread, shoulders
bent, eyes cast down. He barely communicates. During the first ten minutes of
the interview he sits hunched over in the chair breathing laboriously and grimacing. It appears he wishes to speak but cannot gather his thoughts, and is frustrated by this verbal impotence.
I lean back in my chair and put my feet on the desk. “Take your time,” I say
softly. “I’ve got all day.”
This is true. I’m not busy at all. I have just arrived in Brunswick County, a
primitive, sparsely populated area on the southeast coast of North Carolina. At
age thirty-three, I’m the only psychologist in the adult services unit for this new
mental health center. During the first year our facility is housed in a small church
located roughly in the center of the county. We have a secretary, a nurse, a child
psychologist, an alcoholism counselor, and myself. It is a satellite of the main
center located in Wilmington, twenty miles away, and the psychiatrist there only
visits our facility once a week, on Fridays.
The attitude of the main center has been clear from the very beginning: take
care of business and don’t bother us because we have our own problems. This
arrangement suits me fine. It gives me the opportunity to make decisions without
some bureaucrat hanging over my shoulder second- guessing me. Consequently,
the patients will receive better treatment—nearly always the case when bureaucracies can be avoided.
The county is so primitive that a considerable proportion of the population
do not have telephones. Looking up a phone number would be difficult for many
of them anyway because of the high illiteracy rate. Consequently, people are
prone simply to walk into the facility and announce that they wish to see the
“mental man.” If asked why, they reply, “‘Cause I’m mentally.”
Nobody seems to mind that our facility is as primitive as the county: rough
wooden walls, hard floors, curtainless windows, no air conditioning. We have
modern bathrooms, though I wonder how recently they have been installed since
there is an outhouse in the back that appears only recently to have been abandoned. On the edge of the church is a small farm, and nearby a narrow, swamplike river flows leisurely toward the sea, bordered by thick, moss-covered trees,
and inhabited by alligators and a considerably larger number of nasty-looking
water moccasins.
79
I love the place.
So we sit for a while, David and myself, and relax. Gradually I learn that he
is forty-six and has been hospitalized ten times in the past twenty-four years for
violent schizophrenic episodes. He first entered Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh in 1954. They administered the usual treatment regimen for schizophrenics, but nothing seemed effective. Finally they decided on insulin shock therapy.
Five times a week he went into a drug-induced coma, having no choice in the
matter—sixty of them altogether. They also gave him medicine, everything that
was available at the time—to no avail. Finally, desperate to escape this constant
torture, he assured them that he was better, that he was capable of leaving and
getting along just fine. They released him after sixteen months and he returned
home and tried to work. Soon he was back in the hospital.
They gave him new medicine, but this was ineffective also. They tried
electroshock treatments—the latest rage. They blasted him into unconsciousness
week after week, but it did not help. They tried group therapy and even individual counseling. Some of the people were nice and he remembered one psychiatrist
who really took an interest in him and tried to help him. But the man was unable
to make any headway and eventually gave up, considering David to be hopeless.
Once when Oral Roberts came to town David obtained leave from the hospital and attended the revival. He went up to the podium and allowed the great
man to place his hand upon his head to heal him of his illness. It was unsuccessful. Hallucinations continued.
I find David to be an interesting man, certainly more interesting than the
typical schizophrenic I have met over the years. He had graduated as salutatorian of his high school class in the late ‘40’s where he was also a basketball star,
then entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the intention
of becoming a mathematics major. But already the illness was eating away at his
cognitive processes, and before the first semester had elapsed he realized he was
unable to concentrate on the problems at hand. He dropped out of school and
went home to help his father on the farm. As the years progressed his condition
deteriorated, and finally he was forced to admit himself to Dorothea Dix Hospital. Hallucinations now dominated his life.
What makes David interesting is his awareness of his own illness and his
willingness to confront it. Schizophrenics have a peculiar way of ignoring their
symptoms and being resistive to treatment. However, David has been paralyzed
by his disease and unable to carry out any kind of constructive activity. Voices
have called him filthy names and forced him to perform humiliating acts. Nighttime has been the worst. He would sit in his swing on the back porch facing the
highway and listen to the taunts. “Go out to the highway and lie down. Wait
until a car comes. Go out there and lie down.”
“No, I won’t. I’m not going to do that. I’ll get killed.”
“Go out to the highway and lie down. Do it now. You’re better off dead. ”
“No.”
And they would throw him off the swing on to the floor and bang his head
against the boards, smashing his head over and over again until the pain was
finally too great. He would relent and rise and make his way to the highway in
the darkness and lie down on the cool asphalt and wait for a car to come, a car
that could smash his body into a lifeless hulk. And no matter how late it was, a
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car eventually appeared, and a terrible fear would rise up in him because he did
not want to die, but also felt he could not leave the road because of the terrible
condemnation by the demons, because he was a vile and evil person unworthy
of living. And so the car would draw nearer and nearer, the headlights growing
brighter and brighter, and a trembling would take over his body as he wondered
if this was indeed his last minute on earth. Paralyzed, limbs frozen in place,
afraid of dying, desperately wanting to live, he was unable to move because of
the guilt and condemnation that would occur. So he would wait until the car was
almost upon him when, the fear of death finally surpassing the fear of demons,
he would begin to crawl to the side of the road toward the bushes which bordered the edge. But it would be too late. And the car would almost be upon him
when he finally rose up and threw himself across the road to the shoulder just in
time as the car sped by, the driver perhaps unaware of what had just taken place
before him.
Was that a deer in the darkness?
And he would remain huddled in the bushes shaking and perspiring, animal
sounds emanating from his throat. And the voices would return and order him,
“Go into the highway. Take off your clothes and go into the highway and lie
down. Do it now.”
“No.”
“Take your clothes off and go naked into the highway. Go now. You’re going
to die naked as you came into the world. Take off your clothes and go into the
highway.”
“No, I won’t.”
And they would smash his face into the dirt, forcing him down violently,
filling his mouth and nostrils and cutting off his breath. He would moan and
struggle but find himself helpless to resist. Finally, unable to bear the pressure
any longer, he would rise and shake himself from head to foot, gasping for air,
and then remove his clothing, slowly, piece by piece, and walk into the highway,
tears streaming down his face, and lie once again on the dark asphalt and wait
for the next car, wait for the same scenario to repeat itself, over and over again,
because there was no other choice, because the demons would have their way.
However, I believe I can help this man where others have failed. I have studied schizophrenia for years and understand the disease. I know it is biochemical
but also suspect that there are psychological components that can be addressed
to ease the symptoms overall. Give the patient tools to fight the terrible hallucinations and all the havoc they render and this in itself will improve the situation.
And medication, the proper medication needs to be determined. This is mandatory. I know there is always a best medication combination−the mix that reduces
the symptoms by the maximum amount with the least side effects.
I have been searching for a patient like David for a long time to test my
theories. He possesses three qualities I consider invaluable: 1. Intelligence 2.
Awareness that his hallucinations are, indeed, hallucinations and not real people
talking to him 3. A willingness to fight.
“Why don’t you come in and see me on a regular basis for a while?” I suggest after two hours. “I think I can help you.”
He regards me skeptically. “How old are you?” he asks.
“Thirty-three.”
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“You look younger.”
“I got a master’s degree at twenty-two. I’ve been a psychologist for eleven
years.”
“You don’t look that old.”
“Good genes. But I think I can help you.”
“You’re not going to experiment on me, are you?”
I shake my head. “Not a chance.”
He shrugs his massive shoulders. “Okay. How often should I come?”
“Let’s start off at three times a week. Let’s really hit this thing hard. I’ve got
the time. Can you come in that often?”
“Sure. What else have I got to do?”
“Come in this Friday first and see the psychiatrist and we’ll get your medications straight. Then we’ll go from there.”
He visits the psychiatrist on Friday, and we fiddle with his medication over
the next three months until we fall on the right combination. That in itself helps.
He starts coming to the center in the early afternoons on Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays for therapy. My plan is to start slowly and drift into the core of his
illness. I have a library of reference books at home and can consult them whenever needed. I feel all these preparations are more than adequate for the task at
hand, and have little doubt I can handle whatever comes up.
I am wrong.
His illness explodes on me like a titanic bomb. Fifteen minutes into the first
session he throws himself to the floor and begins screaming. His head twists to
the side as though being wrenched by some macabre spirit, and his eyes roll up
out of sight. “Get off me! Get off me!” he hollers, and writhes with what seems
like an epileptic seizure. He wails and covers his head with his hands. He rises
on all fours and shakes himself violently, like a dog trying to expel flames from
its fur, all the while making strange guttural sounds. Then he returns to the floor
and curls into a fetal position, moaning quietly, apparently exhausted by his
exertions.
I am speechless and I contemplate what to do. The books don’t say anything
about this kind of behavior when you are treating someone on an outpatient basis. How many books on schizophrenia have I read? A dozen? Fifty? A hundred?
What have I missed? How many experts have I consulted? How many seminars
have I attended? Eleven years I’ve spent preparing myself and now I sit here
completely impotent, confused, and even frightened. I’m like a graduate student
seeing his first patient. I’m clueless.
Eventually David recovers, and slowly picks himself up from the floor and
sits back in his seat. He is obviously shaken by the experience, and gives the
appearance of a trauma victim. He lets out a deep sigh and stares down at his
hands.
“Tell me what happened,” I say.
His eyes are twin pools of pain. “The demons rule me,” he replies.
And so we begin.
82
Henry F. Tonn is a semi-retired psychologist whose fiction, nonfiction,
poetry, literary and book reviews have appeared in such print journals as the
Gettysburg Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, and Connecticut Review, and
online journals such as the Summerset Review, Front Porch Journal, and
Eclectica. He writes monthly reviews for NewPages.com. “Demons” is an
excerpt from his recently completed memoir, I NEVER MET A PARANOID
SCHIZOPHRENIC I DIDN’T LIKE, which covers the first twenty years of his
career as a psychologist in various mental health settings.
83
HIPSTERS: A SPECIAL
SPIRITUALITY
by Lily Murphy
O
ne Spring day while sipping cider in a beer garden with my friend, a conversation emerged regarding counter cultures. My friend stated that a spectre is
haunting the 21st century, that of the Hipster. I scoffed at such a statement
“that is just ridiculous, Hipsters are not new, they have always been here and will
remain.” The conversation got heated and not with the aid of the blisteringly hot sun
shining down on us. “Hipsters are a new counter culture” my friend went on and the
conversation resulted in glasses being turned over and a barring order for the both of us
from the barman so I went home to re-read my very worn out copy of Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road.
I knew that in order to find the Hipster, I needed to read the roots of the Hipster
and I was hell bent on proving my friend wrong. Google can kiss my ass on this one
I thought as I stumbled in the door and searched for the Hipster in the one place from
where it sprung from, that 1957 publication about one man’s mad journeys across
America with his even madder friends. On the Road was a book I didn’t read until after
I graduated from University, I now know it should have been a book to be read while I
was a student but parties on campus and pure idleness got in the way of that. It was the
day after my final exam and feeling incredibly idle I wandered into town to my favourite bookstore where I picked up a copy of On the Road. I still don’t know what made
me pick it up and spend 10 Euro on it, a 10 Euro note which I could have easily spent
in a bar but I purchased the book, went home and spent the rest of that summer sinking
into it under the summer skies out in my back garden accompanied with buckets of
beer.
By the time Summer transformed itself into Winter and then Winter made way for
the Springtime, that heated conversation with my friend regarding Hipsters had taken
place. By then I had read On the Road several times over and had been in the grip of
a host of other works from the beat generation but it was On the Road to which I kept
going back to. The poet Allen Ginsberg once said that he saw the best minds of his
generation destroyed by madness, well it was that book which generated that madness,
the only thing it destroyed was anything mundane that got in its way.
Nearly every generation of youth have been labelled with some sort of tag. The
Hipster tag is a slang which may have emerged with the jazz aficionados of the 1940s
but its social awareness came about with the Beatniks and as my friend had informed
me that culture, the Hipster culture, is haunting us now. I had told my friend and told
in the most snapping of tones that the Hipster is nothing new, yes it has transformed to
84
set itself into modern world mechanics but I stressed that the Hipster counter culture is
not new. In today’s world it is used to describe the urban chic, young adults who reject
aspects of mainstream life such as music and fashion, some may call them Scenesters
but what ever they are and who ever they are, they have always been with us throughout the generations and they all have one thing in common, they are all the mad ones.
I sent a text to my friend later that night after the episode in the beer garden that day
which saw us at each others throats. We organised a meeting for a few drinks for the
next day, all animosity quickly goes under the bridge, especially if it’s a river of booze
flowing underneath it!
Hipsters now champion the underground music scene as they did in the ‘40s and
‘50s with music such as bebop, a music which transcended the great divide of that
time: race. Black and white jazzed together, used the same slang, dressed the same
way, smoked the same drugs, flouted the same sarcasms, they adopted the lifestyle
some frowned upon or some could only dream of. Back in the beginning of it all Artie
Shaw, a legend of the swing age, went so far as to call Bing Crosby the “first hip white
person in the United states,” even the squares wanted in on the new culture, a culture
which emerged from the jazz underground and writings of so called mad men, now it
transcends out of Indie music and the tweeting of know alls.
So the following day I met with my friend. We went to a different bar at a different
side of town of course and I was armed to the tooth with Kerouacism‘s. Two ciders
later and it’s a free for all beatnik induced talk, its wall to wall Kerouacism! “The only
ones for me are the mad ones…” the most quoted of all sentences in On the Road
describing in its utter simplicity who the Hipster were and are, they are “mad to talk,
and to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or
say a commonplace thing but burn burn burn…” My friend was not impressed, “well
they didn’t burn enough,” she said, “because they are still here with us!” I rejoiced,
finally she understands that Hipsters were always here, that they are not something
new and nothing to fear. Ah yes therein lay the next hurdle, my friend has a fear of the
Hipster, something I failed to notice the day before, something lost in the translations
of altercations.
“I am not a fan of the Hipster” my friend bluntly stated, “I am off for a top up,
you want another?” I nodded while handing over a 5 Euro note and while my Hipster
fearing friend went to the bar for another two glasses of cider I was left to ponder the
outcome of that day’s prospective argument regarding Hipsters. Oh fuck you Hipsters I
thought, fuck you for causing such conflict between my friend and I on such a fine day!
If On the Road is the Hipster guidebook than Howl is the Hipster’s verse. I must
confess that I do not have much interest in Ginsberg’s meandering words but Howl
does have the mother of all beginnings “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” Hipsters can attribute that to their own stance in society. Mad is
a word which pops up over and over again regarding Hipsters, it is a word not to be
fooled with or a status not to be fucked with, the mad minds made that way by madness can enjoy what so many long for: freedom.
Even if it means a life of poverty, it costs nothing to have freedom of the mind.
Hipsters in the beginning had freedom of the mind and in great quantities but I fail to
think today’s Hipsters have the free imaginations as much as their predecessors had,
here’s hoping though and here came my Hipster fearing friend with the promised top
up of cider. “What is it that you do not like about the Hipsters?” I asked and before my
friend could answer I just kept on talking, “you know Hipsters have great ecstasy of the
85
mind, unlike you and me they are not restrained to the modern world, such as sipping
cider in a beer garden in town in the middle of the day, where’s the freedom in that?
And hey where’s my change?”
Kerouac’s road was a route found only in dreams, he was a dreamer yes but aren’t
all hipsters just that. Somewhere in part one chapter seven of On the Road Kerouac
wrote that “the air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so
great that I thought I was in a dream.” Well it was a dream Mr. Kerouac because that
America and that world is gone, by Christ it wasn’t even there in the first place, it was
all a dream but a mighty one at that. I must not be controlled by bitterness and instead
state that that dream is constant, it still carries merit today with those mad minds of the
new Hipster generation. But to bring the bitterness back for just a minute and state that
that dream is in danger of being watered down by people such as me and that dream
is also in danger of being wrecked by people such as my friend, the one who fears
hipsters and the one who left me short changed!
Kerouac wrote in that great Hipster manual that “they were like the man with the
dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America,
a new beat generation that I was slowly joining,” well I may be somewhat sinking into
the cauldron of Hipsterdom myself but I still had a lot of convincing of my friend to
do, to convince her there was nothing to fear from the Hipster.
“You don’t bode well with Hipster ideology?” I enquired of my friend, a nod was
the reply. “Well I’ll soon fix that,” I said with a fake smile, faked because I knew I
couldn’t fix anything at all. “Now I know that we are not middle class like the Hipster,”
I said, “but we can lie through our working class teeth, the Hipster does pretty much
anything to play down their middle class back round, so we’ll fit right in, the problem
may lie within the adoption of a carefree life style, I can adopt it, can you?” A shake of
the head and a scornful look was the reply from my friend so I stopped talking and let a
brief breeze come by and fill in the forthcoming silence.
I think the bohemian type life is the life for me, not my friend the cider sipping hipster fearing anti-free thinker. The Hipsters gained their quality from the anti-establishment attitudes they freely threw around, these days Hipsters are still anti-authoritarian,
to a point. Non-conformity is the back bone of modern Hipsters, spontaneous creativity
seems to have been lost to the beat generation but it may rear its hedonistic head again,
for as long as the world turns, so too does culture. The beaten down is from where the
beatnik name sprung from and when they were turned from being the beaten down into
tired beatniks they jumped up and developed into Hipsters. Kerouac’s circle of friends
gave birth to craziness, craziness gave birth to the beats, the beats gave birth to a natural generalization: the Hipster. It spread and prolonged through the decades.
“I’m cool whether or which,” my friend let me know as we ventured onto the next
drink from where count was therein lost. “Anti-conformist bastards usually in the end
join the masses,” she spat out and I agreed, somewhat. Well I sipped my cider, took in
the cider soaked air and went off on another cider induced rant, again. “The Hipster
may in the end JOIN the masses but the Hipster will never be ONE of the masses,
the Hipster may join them on the street, you may pass one and not think twice as to
whether he or she is a member of a counter culture but the Hipster mind will NEVER
be part of the masses, the Hipster mind is a kind which REJECTS the mainstream.”
When I finished my mini rant my friend pointed out to me, “Of course a Hipster will
stand out on the street, a hipster is quite visible on the street,” then I jumped in, “Ah
with the Elvis Costello type glasses,” I suggested, “no,” she stated crossly, “they stand
86
out as the one with little or no body fat, the one who looks starved for days.”
The skinny jeans, shoulder strapped bag and bored to death expressions may carry
the Hipster through life but the conversation between my friend and I regarding this
counter culture did not carry through us through the day and many glasses of cider later
and many slurred words and flapping of arms and pointing of fingers later, the conversation ended and we both parted ways that evening. All went well I thought, we didn’t
get into a hot headed argument and get thrown out of that juice joint! But just as Sal
Paradise sat on the pier at the end of On the road looking into the sunset he thought and
thought deeply on religion, on America, even on the crying of children and not knowing what would happen in the future and he finished his thinking with thoughts of his
road buddy, Dean Moriarty the maddest of them all, “I think of Dean Moriarty, I even
think of old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
I went home that night and looked out my window at the grey road outside and the
red sky above it and thought of the alternatives who walk amongst us and those who
are weary of them, my friend, the one who fears the Hipster. I went once more for my
favourite book and turned the pages until I found the page I was looking for, “What is
that feeling when you are driving away from people and they recede on the plain till
you see their specks dispersing? — its too-huge world vaulting us, and its goodbye. But
we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
Lily Murphy is 24 and comes from Cork city, Ireland. She graduated from
University College Cork with a B.A. in history and Politics and has had a number of
fiction pieces appear in publications such as Hulltown 360 journal, Pot luck magazine,
Sleet, Pom pom pomeranian from Bank Heavy press, The delinquent and The toucan
among others. Lily also contributes political and cultural pieces to magazines such as
New Politics, 4Q, Monthly review, The Chartist and Ceasefire. When she is not writing,
Lily enjoys sipping Jack Daniels at the race track or hanging out with nature!
87
FICTION
SUMMER 2012
88
CHAPTER 5:
THE GREAT SNOWSTORM
by Brian S. Hart
[Excerpt (“Chapter 5 The Great Snowstorm”) from The Diamond Kings of Clarence Checkeredfish. Note: at this point in the story, Shays’ Rebellion, the great
agrarian revolt of 1787 is underway, taking place in one of the largest snowstorms
ever on record in Western Massachusetts. The images are modern or post-rebellion because the rebellion is only a backdrop for a second event in 1986 that
takes place along the same city streets. Here the mystic librarian Mrs. Winchester
stands on the spot where the rebellion took place, as the children watch her cook.
Some of the phrases are clues to a word puzzle that solves later in the novel.]
|snow * roof-longings of sheltered lives * “…library reopens at…” * dead *
Squirrel * Hill * yuk! * Mrs. Winchester! * please! * Forbes and Murray * “…
really a friendly neighborhood…” * Taylor * series * “…Allderdice quite a
frenzy!” * at it! * at what! * again * the cauldron-mind * finds its * circle! *
pieces make the whole * stew! * toss! * in! * seasons! * go by! * broom service!
* stir! * Round 1 * “Toni…” * th’ G-g-great… * ((12) “Go hous’back riding is
I! Salvador painter! On bill o’ Manila thrilla’” (8, 3 2 wds. 207 127 216 46
202 254 178 64 152 176 78)) * or * wonder * how! * distraction * get ready to *
do it again * do what again! * “…ght! Won’t be…” * wait! * long * for * “…
Tony, Tony! Only you…” * G-g-great… * ((12) “The Greatest Missouri disk
jockey pins award on me!” (8, 3 2 wds. 207 127 216 46 202 254 178 64 152
176 78)) * board * off * to ceiling of * DCA ATO * “Jumble…” * the elephant,
friend of * Norway! pretty clown-helper! * makes living * thrilling * through *
((13) “DJ’s booed creative tasks!” (3, 4 2 wds. 94 59 145 243 56 57 22)) * too
much! * tusk-a-gee! * harder * tooth! gal! * nervous! * shivers! * picks * fur! *
from COAT AD! * said it! * said what! * repeat * the technique! * might have to!
* try more! * circus * gets * cold * travel specialist * make * capeskin * ringmaster, who…! * sculpt! * discuss it! * discuss what! * wages * bet! * “Can anybody give…” * good teacher helps * asks * “definition” * of entangled * “Ooo,
ooo, ooo,…” * excited student raises hand! * waves, like fluttering insect wings!
* fly! * fris… * …bees in pants! * …sticks * glue, blobs, various * shapes 24 lb.
* umbrella! * paper * machete… * …a spoon, Hawaiian pineapples… * package!
* balance-wish! * whatever! * happened * to * textbook! * logic! * conclude *
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deal * with * kitchen sink! * ready! * to attach! * hangs * a little closer! * to *
stringer- cub * from gazette * news * flash! * teacher calls on * “Statue!” *
excellent guess! * “almost…” 12 x 13, but “…not quite!” * bear * in mind *
“…travels, bobs, weaves about…” * life! * Impossible! * Immortality can’t… *
wish-to-be man o’ steel, run-o’- mill, doubting student continues * “…it imitates
what again…” * consider * out-of- town * Charlie Plume, originally from *
Paris plasters! * over by * clock * soar above * the gray-sky * Monongahela *
pretend… * Lollipop * look! * …smokestack is easel… * teacher smiles * “…
good question, Adam… move by…” * silence “the wind of…” * the cosmos
never left itself * “…I see…” * Ginger! * boy thinks! * gets it now! * gets what
now! * comes from * near * Mobile! * that’s it! * that’s what! * bin! * in
Smithsonian! * undo! * fly! * Wilbur and Orville * endeavor * sky * necessary *
heart- pounding! * ball * stud entertains presence of filly, exciting, but… * rib! *
…a surprise! considering * it’s * homerun * derby * …Menelaus by a head… *
great * Clemente * throw * balletomane * to * scratch horse * another run! * can
Ollie Dazumbai do it! * can he do what! * …at the far poll… * round! * bases,
coach waves in * …at far bend, into home stretch… * going, going… * Helen *
gone! * Mrs. Winchester! * stir! * Round 2 * of * ((18) “Center goooal!
Disheveled! A Room I, o!” (7, 1 wd. 229 26 77 217 139 69 146)) * or * ((18)
“Penguin shout: ‘Chairman has grande nothing!’” (7, 1 wd. 229 26 77 217 139 69
146)) * bird * can * separate * a person’s * life * is * “…what …” * he! * makes
of it * “…a…” * Sonny, spleen-did! * zounds! * delicious! * try! * Princeton *
ivy * foreman * …order it with… * …order what with… * Sphinx bro. * coffee *
house treat * counter * example * Yale * riddle! * missing diamond! * lost! * …
caffeine… * break! * …keeps up… * jump! * in thought! * …start conversation… * Fermat’s last! * drop! * Trixi! * break it! * break what! * ice * climb *
through! * tower above * Cubism * nuts! * …about… * whipped! * cream! *
change * top * I.C. * pings! * young, Oyster Island * immigrants! * jimmies! *
Jerry… * couldn’t! * have it! * have what! * faith! * know * ful’ * wel’! * 139 lb.
* wife * for * bi-… * …lingual! * fans * des * “Bumaye!” repeat “Bumaye!” *
Saturday night * …sweet it is… * sweet what is * song ’n’ * Th’ In Man… * no *
ways! * at least! * 127,729 * pounds! * on Moon! * mirror! * Mr. * Smokin’ * to
you, sir! * hoarse! * heavyweight! * sings * with glee… * son Mar… * …athon *
anthem! * next J.F, J.H.! * kid not! * maybe W.S.! * doubt that! * sincerely! * …
in air, gave proof to… * Wiles * stanza * Dylan * chance! * … and Thomas… *
verses “Sugar!” * sure! * knows * ropes * better * than Dopey * mice * agree! *
don’t mess! * …seems they’re all… * bored of * Grumpy * name * Ed. * break *
up * Va. * you! * I * agree! * on lo… * go! * …cation! * with Mrs. White! *
exciting! * elephant * join! * parade! * don’t! * fight! * school rule! * border *
line * Norton * better! * can’t * take it! take what! * broken * jaw * patrol! *
more serious * shuffle * of deck * cards * a- snaKish, shaKa-ins, Kinshasa! * cut!
* back * Robin * ward * Hood * of * steel * good! * luck charm! * bat! * box! *
cereal * of * real * life! * has * poet * tree * butterfly, sting ’saur * wheeler-dealer
* type * surprise! * set * manu… * in motion! * lot of rounds * graceful! * e…
leg…ant! * ginger! * like! * Mr. Stairs * check! * top hat * of a silhouette dream!
* sensitive! * show charm! * spelling! * 3 times! * craft * master * “…piece of
work…” * or! * “…is…” * apt, apt, apt! * swirl! * mike! * Buffer! * “L-l-let’s
get ready to…” * announce! * …the new… * amazing! * hot! * Auntie * bee! *
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buz-z-z! * Neil * at mike * burns * audience * fuels * disagreement * “…greatest
day in…” * hysterical! * mankind history * with * Gracie! * …how… * heavenly
* …a Rd… * live report! * fish-advice- column * Dear… * Harp * O! * ((16)
“Popular movie has reverse film! Exists! Types A, B, C…, e.g.” (9 1 wd. 1 201
17 184 192 91 214 114 181)) * rotary cuff! * intestines! * digest * systems * links
* down * …doesn’t even talk to me… * and out * …what do I do… * signed *
Knockout in Vegas * stars! * spruce it up! * spruce what up! * Wayne * in at! *
new! * ton! * oooh! * Dear K.O… * …it’s o.k.… * stan’ * pat, pat, pat! * twist! *
hand * raised! * shaky! * arm * hold * world * torch * …take risks… * champion
* cause * call! * on * poker * girl! * …for a change… * boy * enjoys * peace *
…life is… wild! * …what… * shoulders! * …you… * as * exciting! * fight on! *
…Jamaica… * go to * as * 3 * card * Charlie! * hi! * lau…gh’…d! * Roller *
weight * angelic * hump * chap… * whale! * of a * 100th! * l’ * Frenchman! *
running * de * Derby * de * feat! * ((11) “Comes in 1st, 2nd, 3rd.… winner!
Sounds almost like Robeson hit!” (4 3 2 wds. 172 25 133 126 136 170 85)) *
on horse * mete I…! * Positively smashing! * record II * revolving away *
<“Dino’ talk!” the young girl explained. “He’s nervous on his first day of
school!” Shorty laughed.> “…is…” * …King III * on * …a… * starring * roll *
in * a * go-go * tap, tap, tap! * save by bell * crescendooo! * {1!, 3!, 9!, 27!…} *
infinitely * round! * <“A star student,” said the young girl. “Stellar!” said Shorty,
also impressed with the toy.> NOT! * a * …Fred of… * dance! * around the ring
* “…man…”! * theater-in-the… * another! * number o’ * conquest for Mrs.
Winchester! stir! * Round 3 * about * to be a * boy * wonder * ((19) “’e
regrets only ’as one life to live! Ten too concerning back! Auto carries in
reverse horse fifty! Makes wire- bender!” (9, 6 2 wd. 80 71 19 14 239 6 141
135 117 124 96 101 130 30 89)) * or * ((19) “Kinetic sculptor becoming!
Everything endless! Everything endless! Has ex-dancer dancing with Dr.
Einstein inside!” (9, 6 2 wd. 80 71 19 14 239 6 141 135 117 124 96 101 130 30
89)) * circa. * igloo * Punta * ball * Puck * o’ Dream * woodsman * Tombo… *
break! * in * …yell! * ow! * hat * trick * of * don’t trade it! * trade what! *
away! * power! * first! * announce! * play * over * Hall… * Mike * assist! * “…
doesn’t know whether to cry…” * defense! * pick! * up! * pace * “…or…” *
pocket! * change uniform * “…wind watch…” * accurate! * exciting! * well
spoken! * 2 minutes for * roughing it! * roughing what! * finally, one-eye * Jack.
* K. * now! * can tell! * odd! * penalty…! * short! * Padre! * off * handed *
Felix! * who * reprimands! * “Tony, Tony, Tony!” * …or was that… * phenomenal! * center! * more help! * one * another! * the G- g-great * no. 66 * slapshot
* Clarence gonna’ score? * Hodges * hit! * Barney and Max! crude! * cross *
town * Bar * no! * Point * dwelling on * to ceiling * slap * rebound! * stick *
handle! * “Ha!…” * …pp…y…e… * “…llelujah, Hollywood…” * … o’… *
absolutely amazing! * shot! * in! * put * comb * on! * siren! * mask! * tend *
water bottle * empty! * hair * net! * none! * so e…leg…ant! * round and around!
* together they * sound! * a * like! * …a… * …r-r-rolling… * thunder! * is! *
lightning! * on ice! * z-z-…! * hold! * take picture! * say! * gets! * confused! *
stutters! * no, no…! * wrong! ad! * dress! * er…no wonder! * goal… * i.e. * in
life! * award-winning * girl teacher * surprise * show! * nobody! * called her! *
yet! * just you wait! * sounds * ready! * for * luv * hap! * pen * in’ * fishy! *
name! * for Point-man * J.A.H. * simply! * written! * pro’s * choice * of *
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Golden Quill * English * Lang…u…ag…e * “Look out, Loretta…” * P.H. *
unlocked * Rosetta! * Mr. Sam * quite a * feta! * mike * goes! * off * again *
translate! * cheese! * for us * personality * magnetic! * cloth captivating! * easy!
* touch… * …S…t… * …one…! * more * a * round * of * Stanl… * appl… *
…e’s… * …aus’…! * …Pi’c… * …e’s * of * headline! * 12th * in * …z… *
world! * Saturday’s! * hockey! * night! * …am boni… * f…ish! * saves! *
Cup…! * show! * …I.D.! * be there! * or * E * be square! * in * round! * up! *
down! * town! * Pittsburgh! * snow|
Brian S. Hart is a first time author with a background in physics. He has a
Master’s Degree in Education from Westfield State College and is a teacher in
multi-cultural education. He is interested in mathematical structures and puzzle
forms within experimental writing. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
92
EXCERPTS FROM THE
MOTHERLY EPISTLES
by Jessica L. Caudill
The Letter of Mother to the
Wanderer
1Mother, part-time Christian, full-time caregiver, avid reader of The Word,
2which was laid down by our most gracious heavenly Father (praise him!), 3appointed by the great Lord above to bring forth children into this wretched world,
to raise them up in a wholesome religious fashion (hallelujah!), 4beating the
Good News into their heads and leashing them off to weekly morning service
(glory be!), 5to prepare them to be cast off blindly into a world of thieves, whoremongers, and the most vile and malicious of unclean and ungodly yard apes,
(thank you Jesus!)
6 To my onliest and blessed fruit of my tired loins, whom I waveringly call
my Daughter,
7 Mercy and blessings to you from God our Lord and heavenly father of
sweet Jesus Christ, our gracious Savior, our Spirit in the Sky who laid down his
life so that we may have life more abundantly during these dark ages of war,
disease, and nay faring Godless hippies!
8 Firstly and foremostly and above all, I give thanks to our God through the
Lord Jesus Christ for you, my esteemed and slightly misguided daughter, for your
years of servitude in our household have proven to be beautiful, holy, and most
importantly obedient in the eyes of our Lord. 9For in most every way you have
pleased him and moved
him to rain his blessings down upon your weary head, 10despite your unfavorable and potentially embarrassing situation which is seen as despicable and
undesirable especially unto me, 11though it is my unwavering belief and solemn
vow that you will one day be steered from your improper ways and be delivered
from your unchaste … proprietor, 12and come back to the loving arms of our
forgiving Savior and our family, for it is the only way out of your dismaying situation. 13For it is written (pray for me),
“Son, thou art ever with me,
and all that I have is thine.
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It was meet that we should make merry,
and be glad: for this thy brother was dead,
and is alive again;
and was lost,
and is found.” (thank you, Jesus!)
14 For I also know deep down in the most clandestine crevices of my saddened and disappointed heart that once you have been bluntly struck with the
realization of your wrongdoings, 15that you will come crawling in a submissive,
exposed and ashamed fashion that is pleasing to our great Lord on high, 16and
falling to your knees, as you have probably been accustomed to doing so by now,
17saying,
“I have recklessly forgotten Your glory,
O Father;
And among sinners I have scattered the riches which You gave to me.
And now I cry to You as the Prodigal:
I have sinned before You,
O merciful Father;
Receive me as a penitent and
make me as one of Your hired servants.” (Blessed be, oh God!)
18 Even so, my hope for you is undying; girl, and my prayers go out to you
every day. 19And, my hopelessly lost daughter, never forget that God’s justice is
swift and right against those that willfully commit wrongdoings, and you yourself
fall into that pit of devilish deeds. 20The Lord has no partial respect over persons,
his blessings are not suited for the richest, the brightest, or the most beautiful,
21just as his wrath exempts no person that goes against his Good News, 22and no
mercy shall be laid upon those that lie in sin as adulterers, and harlots, and … fornicators. 23You remember that well, darling, you remember that good and well.
24 Make no mistake while your mother may be past her prime, and may be
behind in these modern savage times, I am not so aloof to the unholy behaviors
of my own flesh and blood. 25For some time now, I have known that you have
been in cahoots with that “nice young man,” as the neighbors think of him, who
works at that dilapidated eyesore ‘hoochie coochie’ bar downtown. 26That boy,
who shall remain nameless — or so he claims to be, but under all that disgusting
display of effeminacy who can tell — who comes over unannounced and saunters
around my kitchen like he owns the place, asking me, “What’s for dinner, mom?”
27and raising that drawn-on eyebrow when I sharply yet politely tell
him, “I dunno, Boy George, why don’t you go home and see if your family is
roasting an orphan for supper?” 28That much older slick Nancy boy that flops his
raggedy jean ass on my couch that I just had steam cleaned from the last time he
sat on it, and tries to tell me, in my house, 29that Jesus was just some homeless
“dude” that spiked the water by adding some absinthe from a flask hidden under
his robe when everybody wasn’t looking; 30and all the while he’s got one arm
draped around your neck like a leech trying to suck the very life from you, and
the other is holding a copy of some book written by that Antwon Levi fellow —
when the only book he needs to be reading is the Good Book.
31Now I know that a bright young child such as yourself, who was brought
94
up in a loving and strict by-the-book house founded upon faith, can plainly see
with her own eyes what tears the very core of your mother’s soul to shreds.
32You know it was my wish — never you mind what your father said about
“cutting the cord” so you could find your own way — that you would attend the
Soldiers of Christ Bible College, which is not even twenty minutes from our
house, 33so that you could stay here at home and receive an education what’s
better than anything you could get at some big fancy university. 34But of course
you went against my wishes just as I had feared you would, and instead decided
to run off to that school in the city, which just happens to be the very same school
that he goes to. 35Night after night before I lay my head to another restless sleep,
I whisper a prayer and conversate with my God — your God too, child — about
my fears and concerns surrounded by the lifestyle which you have chosen to live,
36and that you would be soon flee from the grip of Satan’s lustful hand, and fall
back into the pure and gracious arms of Jesus. 37One Sunday of every month,
much like today, I sit in the same pew, fifth row on the far left, of
the First Self-Righteous Baptist Assembly, hymnal in hand, and request
prayer for all my loved ones who are lost and without guidance from our sweet
lord and Savior. 38I offer my two dollars to the Sunday offering — or whatever
loose change I have lying in the bottom of my purse — while singing along to
the first verse of Amazing Grace, 39and my heart is filled with the hope that next
month you will be sitting in that pew with me, discussing sister Mable’s Godawful new dye job.
2But no, the snow-white dove of grace has yet to light on your head. For
only yesterday I received this letter from you, talking about how you and your
“Puddin’” have decided to move in together, unwed, mind you. 2Might I remind
you, precious child of mine, that this decision goes against the Law of our Father?
3Must I stand over you, like I have countless times before as when you were a
little heathenistic child, 4with my open Bible and quote the very commands of
the lord?
“Flee fornication.
Every sin that a man doeth is without the body;
but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body,” 1 Thess.4:
3,
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
Be not deceived:
neither fornicators,
nor idolaters,
nor adulterers,
nor effeminate (he’s speaking about your precious Puddin’),
nor abusers of themselves with mankind.” 1 Corinthians 6: 18,
(might I also remind you of where you got your nickname, Jezzy)?,
“Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee,
because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel,
which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication,
and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication;
And she repented not.
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Behold, I will cast her into a bed,
and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation,
except they repent of their deeds.
And I will kill her children with death;
and all the churches shall know that I am he
which searcheth the reins and hearts:
and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” Rev. 2: 20.
3How often have you heard these scriptures from me, from preacher J.C.
Walker, from your late grandmother Blanche? (God rest her soul, she made the
best chicken and dumplings this side of eternity) 2The good Lord spoke of these
things for a reason and it wasn’t so that this new-age batch of liberal college hippies could trample over our Ten Commandments on their way to their philosophy
classes, talking of pagan religions and dropping shrooms — or whatever you do
with those things — and then skipping off through the daisies to Bonnaroo. 3The
Testament of Jesus Christ was laid down to guide the weak and meager through
this wretched life and warn us to stray away from these very evils that plague our
daily lives. 4And since you have left the confinements this house and the watchful eye of your caregivers, you have turned to walk down the same wicked path,
5and no thanks to that makeup mongering albatross that has slithered his way into
your life and into your pants. 6Don’t think I don’t remember the night when you
would come home, pert near 3 in the am, smelling like Southern Comfort and that
stink leaf that the kids are smoking nowadays. 7Don’t forget I was your age once,
I know what goes on during these “study groups.” 8Ain’t nobody I knew growing
up that spent 6 hours reading War and Peace. 9I’ve dabbled in the forbidden fruits
myself, sneaking out of my mother’s house (may she rest in peace) in the middle
of the night when I was 16 to meet that Johnny Price that lived down the street
from me; 10hopping in his ’74 Gremlin and driving off to Makeout Mountain.
11 But that was a long time ago. 12Have I not told you time and time again,
“Do as I say, not as I do?” 13Did I not thrust you from my womb and distort
my body so that you would be raised to walk in the path of light? 14Have my
years of teachings, lectures, and my house arrests, all been in vain? 15Did I quit
my job at the Piggly Wiggly when you were born and stay home with you so
that you could be home schooled and not have to go to the public schools and
be surrounded by all that blasphemy, secular garbage about Big Shebangs and
Dinosaurses just so you could throw it all away without a second thought? 16And
here you tell me that you want to be a pharmacist or some sort of scientist and
search for a cure for cancer. 17I suppose this means you found my stash of Xanax
in my left top dresser drawer. 18Honey, the only cure for any ailment is the Man
upstairs. 19I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beat in my life! 20Never in all my born
days have I seen such a disrespectful and ungrateful daughter such as you that
would willingly allow herself to be deterred by her carnal desires and completely
brush off her family as if we never cared. 21And what’s more you say everything’s “fine” and not to worry about you and you’re going to get a part-time job
while going to school to pay the rent. 22The only place you need to be is at home,
making sure that the house is clean and the couch is sanitary and there’s supper
on the table, 23because you know when “Puddin’” gets home the first thing he’s
going to say is, “What’s for dinner?” 24I can only hope with the last thread of
96
faith left in me that you have been using some kind of protection, because this
world doesn’t need 2 or 3 more of him running around, 25polishing their fingernails and carrying those sadistic tarot-farot cards in their back pockets and putting
hexes on everybody.
4Don’t think that I write to you merely to find fault with you, my poor
misguided dear. 2I only write to remind you of the commands of our Lord Jesus
Christ that speak against everything you are doing. 3As I come to a regretful close, I say that it is written in plea to all those that follow a path of earthly
desires,
“Live by the spirit,
I say,
and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit,
And what the Sprit desires is opposed to the flesh;
For these are opposed to each other,
4To prevent you from doing what you want.” (Glory to God!)
So you see there is a time and a place for this folly, which must be short-lived.
5You have had a chance to experience the things, 6which are of this world and
surely you can see that they are not of God. 7Surely you can see that the dim-witted freeloader you are seeing is not of God, but from the bowels of Satan himself!
8It is not the Lord’s will that you succumb to an eternity of damnation, 9but I
fear that is exactly where you are being lead to, headfirst into the fiery pits of
hell! 10I have detected you in such a transgression, but all is not lost. 11You still
have a chance to repent for your sins and return to the life you know you should
be leading. 12You must purge that perversion of nature from your system, forget
about that college you’re going to, and pack up your things and come straight
home this very minute you read the last words of this letter. 13This has nothing to
do with you and the dreams you have concocted in your sleep, 14but the very law
of Christ. 15And trust in the Lord that he will provide you with a suitable path to
follow, 16one that is surely pleasing unto him and one that glorifies him; not you,
but him. 17For we are nothing without our God, which is in heaven. 18In time I
know that you will come around to this idea.
19Once you are back home with me, you will get back into the swing of
things; you will enroll in the Soldiers of Christ Bible College as I had originally
planned for you, 20take the kinds of classes you should be taking, learning
the kinds of things that’ll prepare you for a job at the library, 21working in the
Religious Text section — the part of the library that hardly anybody goes to.
22That way, you won’t have anybody to bother you, and you can spend all your
time reading up on The Purpose Driven Life and those wonderful and inspirational books by that Joel Osteen (Bless him, Lord, that man knows what he says!)
23You’ll forget all about what’s-his-name and meet a wholesome and decent
boy- preferably Ronald James, the bag boy at the Christian Book Store (why that
place needs a bag boy, I don’t know, but that’s beside the point; he’s working for
the Lord. Have mercy!)
24This is the right way, the only way to get you back on track. 25Nothing you
are doing right now could ever prepare you for your walk into the afterlife. 26I
beseech you turn away now!
97
“…be strong in the Lord
and in the strength of his power.
Put on the whole armor of God,
so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”
“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right,
for we will reap at harvest time,
if we do not give up.”
27I haven’t yet given up, daughter. Neither should you. 28I write this letter
with my hand, which is guided by our most gracious heavenly Father. 29May the
grace of our God and his only begotten son Jesus Christ be with you, and slap
some sense into the back of your head. Amen and A-men!
Jessica Caudill is a life-long resident of Kentucky. She received her BA in
Psychology from Morehead State University in 2010 and she is currently enrolled
in Spalding University’s MFA in Writing Program. Her writings have appeared in
Morehead State University’s Inscape Magazine (2009, 2010). Her piece entitled,
“The Motherly Epistles” received a Kentuckiana Metroversity award for fiction.
98
I WON’T TELL
by Amanda McTigue
B
ack off. Keep a clear distance. Yes, move over there by the road.
There is no story here. None. The casita behind me, it’s mine. At least for the
moment. I put money down to rent it. They were not to disturb me. But then they
did. Now they won’t.
And then the girl came. She keeps coming no matter where I go. I drove
quite a long way down that one-lane jeep track with groceries. The owners said
there’d be water here and there is. Water and nothing else. A bunk to sleep on.
That’s it. I came this far precisely because there wouldn’t be anything else here.
Arrogance. Every story ever written says you don’t get to run away from the
dead.
Her face is bright turquoise. As are her hands and feet. She’s still so pretty,
even blue. She’s holding something of mine. That’s my jackal. Carved for me
by my mother’s boyfriend, the last one. Out of cedar. Pointy ears. Pointy tail.
Rather large in the girl’s little hands. She stole it.
I catch her out of the corner of my eye. She’s on the other side of the casita,
just off the trail, the path of rocks that winds down to the creek. She’s bright,
bright blue. Amazing with the paleness of her curls.
The most important thing for you to know is that there is no story here. To
insist that true things, real things, can be spoken of in any way that gives them
meaning, that’s arrogance.
Nothing means anything.
She runs off. Out of sight. She wants me to follow. That’s why I keep running the other way.
A shaman sent her. This I know. Because the wise ones say that if you’ve lost
something, a spirit must go and get it back for you. How clever of them to send
the thief herself to return that which she stole. Tempting me to—what?—think I
can get it back? Get her back? Both of them?
I want to snatch what’s mine out of her hands because she’s laughing, I can
sense it. She’s laughing at me. She’s been sent to laugh at me. To get me to follow her down to the creek.
Well, I’ve already been down there. Many times over the past couple of
days. It’s incredibly beautiful. And quiet. The cottonwoods—great big, running
the length of the creek—the cottonwoods cotton the sound. You can’t hear birds
over the ridge. And the wind, if there is any, goes on way above the chasm.
Below, perpetual quiet and shade.
Cottonwoods have lovely leaves. Like hearts, but round. And yellow green.
99
It’s a green you could eat. It makes your mouth water.
That’s where the shaman wants me to go. I won’t. Even as I pull on my
boots. Even as I take one of the staffs by the door. I don’t lock things. Silly to
lock. There’s no one here but me anymore to open a door.
I won’t go, even as I do. Down the switchback. Planting the staff carefully
as the owners of this place advised. How sad of them. As if slipping on the path
were the great danger here. They know different now, if they know anything. If
one knows anything in death.
The girl knows. Though she is perhaps nothing but the shaman’s dream sent
to tempt me.
I’m stronger than he is. I’m stronger and brighter. And most of all, I don’t
care. He seems not to care. He affects an evenness, the way the elders do. The
men anyway. I’ve known shamans who are women. Lightweights. This guy’s the
honcho, so they put him on my case. But I’m stronger. I’m brighter.
I’m walking down the path. No scorpion can get into my boots. The fangs
of a rattler cannot penetrate the leather. They’re tooled. In shapes. The shapes of
snakes that can’t bite them. Shapes of things writhing.
I follow the switchback. There’s only one path. Down into peace. Instantly
out of the sharp sun, stepping into shade.
There’s a horse’s skull in the barbed wire fence. And a horse on the other
side watching me. Shaking flies off its ears. A horrible existence for a horse
alone. No herd mate to stand with nose to tail, to help swing off that plague of
bloodsuckers that come out of the creek.
There are footprints in the mud leading to the water. Not mine. Small. Barefoot. Human. They’re hers. Who knew she’d have enough weight to make them.
I step exactly into each footprint. Obliterate each one with my boot. Water
seeps into the craters my boots leave. And then I’m in the creek. I can see her
foot marks even in the water, established among small gleaming rocks, the shatterings of quartz-like jewels she was walking on.
My boots kick through the stones. Following and obliterating. Which is
precisely what I’ll do when I catch her. Which will happen. Shamans don’t send
spirits for nothing. Haunting comes for a reason.
And yet, be aware. Be very clear about this: there will be no story.
There will be an obliteration. There will be, at some point, the vanishing
of the blue girl. There will be my footprints everywhere for a while. And then
they’ll be gone. The horse will muddy them in the creek. Birds will disturb them
on the banks. Raccoons. There will be what’s left of the owners out in the garden
which won’t be much since coyotes lurk. They’re like jackals. They’ll eat whatever you leave around, including you if you’re dead, and howl about it.
There’s nothing to explain. You can’t explain how a person can see perfectly
well the peace under the trees, the neatness of the counter in the casita, the carefully scrubbed bathroom, the thought that went into the hooked rug at the door.
Yes, I see that someone carved the staff that I hold. I not only see it, I appreciate
it. I know what beauty is. It’s just that I can’t feel it.
That’s not true.
I can.
It’s just that I don’t care.
It’s just that the girl has my jackal. And the shaman has me. And she knows
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it. And they are making fun of me.
But you see, that’s what country like this is for. Back places. Roads that
curve over mountains into lane-less valleys. The owners, here, they fancied
themselves artists. They thought remote was quaint. You see how wrong stories
can be? How much they can get us into trouble?
The stones in the creek. I look back from the far side. Beams of light are cutting through the cottonwoods, fissures opening and closing for the light that cuts
through, dancing on the water and into the water so that it seems like air coming
and going and playing over those stones and it’s quite beautiful.
I assure you, it’s quite beautiful.
Amanda McTigue is an author, director, teacher—and a storyteller on the page
and for the stage. Her debut novel, GOING TO SOLACE, arrives in 2012, published by Harper Davis. She’s already got two children’s books, DREAMTIME
and ONCE UPON A LULLABY out in the marketplace along with a companion
recording of original lullabies, BEAUTIFUL SONGS FOR BEDTIME. Numerous works for the stage include all kinds of works from opera (THE MERRY
WIDOW AND THE HOLLYWOOD TYCOON, first produced by the Minnesota
Opera) to avant-garde musicals (KRANK, first produced at Sonoma State University) to odd one-offs (CHILDREN WILL LISTEN, first produced at Carnegie
Hall). Amanda also works as a concept thinker/writer for international design
firms, helping folks imagine, then articulate their vision. Clients include Walt
Disney Entertainment, Thinkwell Design and the Hettema Group. She coaches
actors and actor-singers through affiliations with the National Association of
Singing Teachers and Sonoma State University. There’s lots more information
about her at www.amandamctigue.com.
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BIGGER THAN YOU
by Leslie Johnson
T
o enter Washington Street Elementary School, Dave has to press a button outside the opaque double-doors, then stand on a red line in front of a
security camera and wait for the door on the left to go “click.” And even
though he’s been here before, at the “click” Dave yanks on the wrong door, the
right-hand side, which doesn’t budge, so now he has to start over again. “Sorry!”
he mouths into the small laser eye of the camera, pretending to hit himself on the
head in slow motion.
He signs in at the reception station, a raised circular kiosk where a security
guard sits on a pedestal surrounded by video screens and control panels. As Dave
receives his Visitor’s Badge, he waves across the lobby at Mrs. Livesy, who is
waiting for him with the other volunteers.
At age 62, Dave is the youngest of the “Let’s Read Together!” tutors. He steps
with determined jauntiness toward his group: three old ladies who go to the same
Catholic church and Grampy Jay, dressed today in a Yankees shirt and matching
cap, his veined cheeks and nose flushed red with what Dave can tell is over-excitement.
Grampy Jay likes everyone at Washington Street School to call him Grampy
Jay. Everyone, not just the kids. Grampy Jay is a long-term volunteer, and he eyes
Dave head to toe, as usual, with a squinting glare of suspicion. Well, Dave knows
Grampy Jay’s type. Control freak. Self-important. Dave got a lifetime’s fill of
Grampy Jays during his years at the Department of Transportation in Newington,
squadrons of Grampy Jays vying against real and imaginary adversaries for their
measly little state promotions. Baring his teeth, Dave gives Grampy Jay a huge
smile and then turns toward the ladies.
“I’d be willing to place a bet that you like CATS!” Dave says heartily to the
frailest one.
She bats her eyelids, which seem to have no lashes. “Why, yes I do!” Her
fingertips flutter to the huge broach — a cartoon cat face with plastic whiskers and
a red felt tongue — fastened to the neckline of her scarf. She has taken the advice
of Mrs. Livesy, the “Let’s Read Together!” coordinator, to wear something the
first day that can be turned into a fun conversation piece. Dave couldn’t think of
anything for himself. He considered the orange apron he wears for his weekend
cashier job at Home Depot, but that seemed too obtrusive. He grabbed one of the
freebie orange Home Depot tape measures instead, which he’s carrying in his back
pocket, although they’re not supposed to give gifts or trinkets of any kind to the
students. That’s one of the rules.
“So today’s the big day!” Mrs. Livesy beams. “Are you all ready to meet
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your Reading Pals?” She’s dressed in black pants and a baggy sweater that falls
from the mound of her breasts to the middle of her thighs. Her brownish hair is cut
short, slightly curled; rimless glasses rest in the center of her wide, pleasant face.
Dave has listened to her speak at all four training sessions, but he can never quite
remember what she looks like until she is standing right in front of him again.
“I have two cats,” the lash-less old lady is telling Dave in a high, trembling
voice. “A tabby named Celeste, and then there’s Big Boy. That Big Boy, now he’s
a trouble maker, let me tell you!”
Grampy Jay clears his throat with a loud “Aaah–HEM” and places his knobby
hands on his hips. “Before we get started with the youngsters, I want to say a few
words.”
Dave thinks, of course you do.
“What we’re doing today is bigger than you. Bigger than me!” Grampy Jay
lifts his finger in the air and stares hard at them from beneath his Yankees brim.
“Because when you help one child — just one! — you’re helping the future of the
whole world.”
Despite himself, Dave feels a little rush of adrenalin. He said he was going to
do something positive with his time, and he here is, actually doing it. Following
through!
Mrs. Livesy leads them down the third-grade wing, past crayon-colored portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr. on one side and snowmen made from cotton and
silver glitter on the other. Dave likes the smell of the hallway — a mixture of glue
and rubber sneakers and disinfectant that doesn’t seem all that different, really,
from his own school days. Dave recalls being happy at school when he was a kid.
The subjects came easily for him, especially math, and the teachers liked him, at
least in the younger grades.
Two of the old ladies are directed into a narrow supply room with a copy machine and a table with chairs. The rest of them walk on to another corridor where
desks have been placed for them along one side of the hall. Dave takes the station
in the middle of the hallway, and waits in his plastic chair while Mrs. Livesy goes
to get the kids. He taps the desk, then straightens up his materials: the book, his
goal sheet, the purple smiley-face stickers, and the stack of handouts he’s seen
before with all the directions for the volunteer tutors.
Mrs. Livesy comes around the corner again with three kids, two boys and a
girl with long red braids. She leaves a lanky African American boy with dreadlocks and camouflage pants with Grampy Jay, who jumps to his feet and warbles,
“WHAZZUP, Jamal!” Dave knows that the other boy — a fat kid wearing
sweatpants and a tee-shirt that stretches tightly across his stomach — will be his.
As Mrs. Livesy proceeds down the hall toward Dave, the boy shuffles awkwardly
behind her, chewing on his hand. Why did Grampy Jay get the cool kid? They stop
a few paces away from Dave’s desk.
“Hector, I would so much like to see you take your hand out of your mouth,”
Mrs. Livesy says in her kind voice. “Thank you very much Hector!” She reaches
one hand toward his shoulder, not quite touching him, and beckons with her open
palm for Hector to step closer. “Hector, say hi to your reading pal, Mr. Dave!”
Hector’s lips, red and swollen from chewing on his hand, gather in a moist,
unspeaking pout. Messy black hair covers his forehead and ears in oily strands,
and a big smear of dried ketchup streaks the front of his cartoon-character tee103
shirt.
“Okay, have a super time reading together!” Mrs. Livesy says, and leaves
them.
Hector just stands there, looking at the floor. His upper eyelids look fleshy,
like pieces of cooked mushrooms. His hand creeps up and over the curve of his
stomach and into his mouth again.
“Have a seat, buddy,” Dave says, but gets nothing. At the end of the hallway,
Mrs. Livesy has deposited the little girl with the cat lady and is now disappearing
around the corner.
“Take a load off,” Dave says.
Hector, still gnawing his hand, turns away, hunching his round shoulders.
Dave thinks, so now what? In their training, the volunteers were told not to
feel badly if their students were reluctant or even obstinate. Most of the kids do
not choose to participate in “Let’s Read Together!” of their own free will. They
have all been identified by their teachers as “at risk” on the literacy scale, and
their parents have signed the agreement form that allows the kids to be plucked
from the normal activities of the after-school program to work one-on-one with a
literacy volunteer. The tutoring sessions run from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., when the kids
would normally be playing on the playground or making crafts in the all-purpose
room. Mrs. Livesy’s advice about bad attitudes was don’t take it personally! They
were not to reprimand or criticize the students in any way. That was not the role of
the volunteer. They were to speak in positive “I” and “We” statements.
“I would like to see you sit down in your chair,” Dave says, trying to mimic
the kind but firm tone of Ms. Livesy’s voice. “And then we can start reading this
fun book!”
The boy sidesteps to the middle of the hall, away from him, and Dave panics. He stands and walks to the nearest classroom with an open door. The teacher
inside has her back to him. She is talking on a telephone that is attached to the wall
behind her desk. The teacher is holding the receiver to one ear and supporting her
body as she leans at a weary angle against the wall with her other. The volunteers
are not supposed to bother the teachers unless it’s an emergency. After school
dismissal at 3:00, most of the teachers are in their classrooms, the volunteers were
told, but they’re busy grading papers and preparing lesson plans and returning parents’ phone calls. Dave guiltily withdraws his head from the doorway, and to his
relief he sees Hector is sitting down now in his chair. The little shit was probably
afraid that Dave was telling the teacher on him. This makes Dave dislike the child
even more, but hey, he reminds himself, he’s here to be a mentor. If the kid wasn’t
screwed up, he wouldn’t need a mentor, right?
“All-righty, bud,” Dave says. “Here’s the book.” He holds it up. “THE PANCAKE MAN.”
Hector looks blankly at the glossy paper cover, breathing through his mouth,
his tongue pressing against lower lip. His irises are so dark brown they blend into
the black of the pupils. The two flat plates of his eyes roll in the direction of the
book cover without seeming to actually focus on it. Hector is a stupid kid, Dave
realizes. Smart people can’t keep their intelligence from showing in their eyes,
even when they try, even when they’re trained actors — you can still see it. You
can tell a lot just by looking straight into someone’s eyes. Maybe not what they’re
thinking — Dave never believed much in psychic powers or mind-reading, at least
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not completely — but you could definitely discern to a significant degree their
mental complexity. Their capability for strategy. Dave knows this from his years of
playing blackjack, and he looks deeply now into the boy’s muddy orbs, searching
for a glint of emotional ambiguity, a small sparkle of internal calculation, but finds
none. Hector, Dave concludes, is a classic dumb-lucker.
Grampy Jay’s kid is probably smart. Over Hector’s head, Dave can see
Grampy belly-laughing at some joke his dreadlocked tutoree just told him. There
are a lot of smart kids that do badly at school. They’ve got a chip on their shoulder.
They’re rebellious or emotionally troubled, but they’re still smart. They just need
someone to recognize their potential and pull it out of them. That’s the kind of kid
Dave wanted.
“So, buddy boy, what do ya think this book is going to be about? Just by looking at the cover?”
This is called Pre-Reading. During his training sessions, Dave and the other
volunteers learned all six stages of the reading process. Pre-Reading is stage one.
Grampy Jay and his kid have already opened up their copy of The Pancake Man
— well on their way to stage two or maybe even three.
Hector is bobbing his head up and down very slowly. The kid has a double
chin, and he seems to like the feel of letting his head drop forward till the flesh
pushes out on both sides of his jaws, then lifting it up again in slow motion.
“Pancakes, right?” Dave answers his own question. “Pancakes and the guy
who makes them, right? I mean, there he is with his apron and a poofy chef hat
and a big frying pan with a big pancake in it. What else would it be?”
Hector’s head is lifting now, slowly, his chin tipping up, and Dave sees a roll
of sweaty, dark blue lint embedded in the crevice that rings his pudgy neck. Greenish snot has congealed around the inner edges of his nose, and a yellow bubble
pulses in one nostril. Dave can feel the vein in his left temple start to twitch. That
was one of his tics in the old days at the blackjack table, before he learned to control it. He’s out of practice. It’s been over two years since he quit the casino. Two
years and a couple months now. If he was back at the table right now, would he be
able to stop his vein from hopping like this?
Dave takes a breath. “The guy makes pancakes so they call him the pancake
man. Maybe he makes really good pancakes.” He shuffles through the handouts
of directions and suggestions for volunteers. “I bet you’re good at a lot of things,
too! What’s something you’re good at? Let’s make up a title for a book that could
be about you and something you’re good at doing. Like maybe a book about you
could be called Football Player Boy.”
Hector’s head has dropped forward, but this time he doesn’t lift it up again.
“No football. Okay. How ‘bout Baseball Boy? How ‘bout Paper Route Boy?
How ‘bout Cartoon Drawing Boy?”
Hector’s head falls all the way down onto the desk, where he cradles it in his
forearms.
“How ‘bout Bubblegum Bubble Blowing Boy? How ‘bout Bike Boy? How
‘bout Fishing in the Reservoir Boy? No? Gee, ya stumped me then, bud. Those are
all the things I liked when I was your age.”
Dave glances over his shoulder to the other end of the hallway at the cat lady.
She’s moved her chair so she’s sitting right beside the girl with the red pigtails,
and she has her arm around the girl’s small shoulders as they read together. She’s
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tapping on the girl’s shoulder blade in a rhythm, maybe sounding out syllables.
Which is so against the rules! Volunteers are not allowed to touch the students. Not
ever. That was one of the first rules they went over, and that old lady knows it. If a
child hugs you, Ms. Livesy told them, stand still for just a moment and then make
a gentle movement of retreat. A step backward. A shift of the torso. Dave has never
been the kind of guy to squeal on someone, but he hopes Grampy Jay takes notice
of the way the old lady is patting that little girl’s back. Why should she get away
with rule breaking?
Dave feels a rush of anger, and he knows he’s over-reacting, but still. He feels
it.
It’s something he’s learned at Gambler’s Anonymous: to acknowledge an
emotion when it comes to you. Not to pretend it’s not happening.
“I want you to sit up, kid. I mean business. Sit. Up.” Dave’s low voice comes
out much more harshly than he’d intended. He remembers using that phrase with
his own daughter, Leanne, years ago when she acted like a brat: I mean business.
Immediately he regrets snapping at the boy that way, but it works. Hector
straightens up in the chair, and for the first time Dave sees his eyes waver with
emotion, his puffy upper lids slanting into triangles of anxiety or maybe resentment. He starts chewing his hand again, on the flesh beneath his thumb.
Dave says, “People are always telling you to just stop doing that, right?”
Hector jerks his hand down and uses the back of his other wrist to rub off the
saliva. They both stare for a minute at Hector’s hands, which are chapped and
scaly, with patches of wet purple scabs, and Hector’s eyes turn flat again. He pulls
his hands underneath the desk.
From down the hall, Grampy Jay is cheering, “Whoo, Whoo! Way to connect
to the text, Jamal!”
Dave sighs. “Always telling you.”
Hector says, “Sometimes I can stop.”
“I know.” Dave nods. “I know about sometimes.”
Dave picks up the book and taps it on the table. He should ask Hector about
breakfast, as suggested on the handout. What would you like The Pancake Man
to cook for YOUR breakfast? A pang of sharp desire stabs Dave in the gut. This
happens to him sometimes. He’s picturing himself sitting alone in Denny’s at 3:00
a.m. after a good night at Mohegan Sun Casino, digging into a Grand Slam Breakfast special with grape jelly and maple syrup covering everything on the plate,
stuffing his face with it. He hardly ever eats a real breakfast anymore. Just coffee.
Maybe a protein bar or a banana.
“Hey!” Dave says. “How many inches tall is this book? What do you say?
Guess! How many inches?”
Hector’s mouth opens.
“What do you think? Three inches? Three hundred inches?”
Hector giggles, and the sweet sound of it takes Dave by surprise. The boy’s
laugh is quick, pitched high, and reminds Dave of something clean, like the squeak
of a squeegee on a just-washed windshield.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a range. Between one inch and ten inches.
One to ten. Okay? One to ten.”
“Ten!” Hector blurts, barely glancing at the book cover.
“Okay, okay. I’m going to have to say seven, bud. Seven inches for me, ten
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inches for you, right? It’s a bet. You in?”
When Hector doesn’t answer, Dave tells him to say “I’m in,” and the boy
repeats it. Dave takes the Home Depot tape measure from his back pocket, and
Hector leans forward on the desk as Dave slowly releases the bright orange metal
measure along the edge of the book. “Nine inches!” Dave announces, which he
knew it would be. “You beat me, kid.” He presses the button on the tape measure,
the metal snapping back inside its holder.
Mrs. Livesy appears around the corner of the hallway; she stops by the old
lady with no eyelashes, smiling and nodding as the little girl with braids holds up a
piece of paper. Dave grabs the “goal sheet” from his stack and begins checking off
the six boxes while Hector fiddles with the Home Depot tape measure, pushing the
button repeatedly, giggling softly at each sharp SNAP.
Dave says, “You won the bet,” and Hector looks right at him and smiles.
There’s no mistaking it. When he smiles, his cheeks push up and his eyes practically disappear. “Quick,” Dave says. “Put it in your pocket.”
Leslie Johnson’s fiction has been broadcast on NPR and published in journals
such as Colorado Review, Glimmer Train, Cimarron Review, Third Coast,
Threepenny Review, Chattahoochee Review, and others. She in Connecticut, where
she teaches at the University of Hartford.
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AFTER YOUTH
by Brandon Bell
T
he nose hair hypnotized the boy. He watched the hair jostle out of Dr.
Alizadeh’s nose as the braces came off. The words chewing gum floated
on the orthodontist’s breath. The boy rolled his eyes to a ceiling poster of
a smiling chimp, its teeth perfect.
“And Tyler, we’re done,” Dr. Alizadeh said. He held the metal square in a
pinch.
“Dr. Alizadeh,” Tyler said.
“Call me Milad.”
“Who gets them now?”
“How about a peek,” Milad said, picking up a hand mirror. “Who gets the
braces? Nobody gets them.”
“Can I keep them?”
“Take the mirror in your hand. No, you can’t keep them.”
Tyler did not smile at his reflection. He didn’t even open his mouth.
“Where’s my beard?” Tyler asked.
“Beard,” Milad said.
“What’d you do with it?”
Milad studied Tyler, smiling. “Can you even grow a beard?”
In the waiting room, Joan stopped flipping through Vogue and jolted at the
yelling coming through the wall. She smirked back at the mother and daughter
sitting across the room. “Did he say give back my beard?” Joan said. Then she
realized the voice was her son’s.
#
Tyler trained at dusk in a playground surrounded by a sewage creek. The
smell made him scowl like an old man talking life or death politics. He did the
monkey bars, rocking between strides, and fell off before he reached the other
side. He flung a swing and crawled under it, the swing firing over his head like a
lost ark booby trap. He lied in the dirt patch worn by the dragging feet of swinging children and printed his cheeks in the dirt.
Dusk on the nine o’clock sky backlit the monkey bars. He was alone. From
his butt pocket he dug out a wad of ripped poster. Chimp teeth smiled at him.
“I’ll show you what beard,” Tyler said and punched the chimp. Then he wadded
up the paper and ate it.
#
Joan drove Tyler to see her sister, Debbie, who wanted to see Tyler without
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his beard. As Joan parallel parked, Tyler said, “I know you’re patronizing me.”
Joan looked at Tyler in the rearview. “What do you mean?”
“You think I never had a beard.”
“Why would I think that?”
“Crazy, I guess.”
Gerald, Debbie’s son, was lying facedown on the porch of the duplex. Joan
nudged him with her shoe.
“I’m dead,” Gerald said.
“Is your mom home?”
Gerald pointed inside and then let his dead arm collapse. The front door
opened to the living room. Debbie sat on the couch, holding the remote. She
snapped off the television and said, “Tell me what’s different.”
“Don’t,” Tyler said.
“No no no. Now you did something. Did you cut your hair?” Her hippy
necklaces clacked as she joined Tyler at the door and tried to fluff his hair. A
monkey scurried into room. The monkey wore a doll’s vest and held a gnawed
apple.
“What is that?” Joan said. She hid behind the inward open door and
shrieked.
“My baby,” Debbie said, patting her thighs and kissing at the monkey. The
monkey perched on the couch and nibbled the apple fast like a rat.
“Where’d you get that thing?” Joan asked.
“Stork brought momma her baby,” Debbie said.
“Baby,” Tyler said.
“My iddie biddie baby.”
The monkey threw the apple and hit Tyler in the head.
“It’s gone crazy,” Joan said.
“You little shit,” Tyler said. He scrambled after the monkey, furniture rattling on the slanted floor. The monkey hid under a cabinet in the dining room.
Tyler beat the floor and said come out. He told the monkey to take his lumps
like a man.
#
The midmorning street was empty, cool and blue. Tyler hid in a neighbor’s
bushes and watched Milad’s house. Ants lined out of a crack in the brick foundation and the mulch was dewy. Milad’s front door opened. There stood Ms. Allie,
Tyler’s eighth grade science teacher.
Tyler remembered St. Patrick’s Day. Ms. Allie was erasing the blackboard,
blonde and perfect, barely overweight. There was something about her that Tyler
hated—something he could not name. St. Patrick’s Day. Tyler was wearing a
blue shirt and red sweatpants. Holding the eraser, Ms. Allie asked, “Where’s
your green?” Tyler slid down in his desk. They were alone. “No green, I get to
pinch you.” She approached, fingers crabby, and turned back to the blackboard
when another student entered.
In the bush, Tyler slunk forward to improve his view. Ms. Allie checked her
mail. An automatic sprinkler kicked on. Mist floated on Tyler’s skin. Ms. Allie
went back inside and Tyler drank a Yoo-Hoo, condensation everywhere.
Late afternoon. Milad parked in the driveway. Tyler was sitting on the curb
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facing the house. Tyler tapped the empty Yoo-Hoo bottle on the concrete.
“Tyler? Is that you?” Milad said. He smiled at the mulch hanging from Tyler’s cheeks. “You got your beard back.”
Ms. Allie stood at the front door. She saw Tyler throw the bottle and watched
him run away and did not see the bottle explode at Milad’s feet.
#
A week of training and Tyler could cross the monkey bars easily, no back
swing. He climbed atop the bars and ran the slats. He collected stones and in the
morning walked to Milad’s house, stood in the front yard and aimed at the bay
window.
Ms. Allie was straddling a low branch in the maple tree. “Bet you miss,” she
said. Tyler froze, stone in hand. She said, “What are you doing, mister?”
“Ain’t doing nothing.”
“Isn’t a little weird to walk by here and watch our house?”
“You’re the one in the tree.”
“You really pissed Milad off last night.” She kicked her legs as if pacing a
swing. “High school next year.”
He waved her off. “Milad is your husband,” he said.
“Don’t remind me we’re married.” She locked her legs on the branch and
hung upside down. “Upside-down your skin looks green.”
Ms. Allie followed him to the playground, hanging back a block. She wore
a plastic barrette and ripped jeans. He paused on the foot bridge leading to the
park, sewer creek underneath, arms folded like a gatekeeper.
“What do you want?” he said.
She strayed to a tree, pulled down a thin branch and smelled a leaf, pretending it was a rose. As she turned to walk away, she waved at Tyler with her
fingertips.
#
Ms. Allie dangled on a swing, chains twisting, eating a Sour Apple Blow
Pop. Blush winged across her cheeks and she wore heavy blue mascara like a
cartoon concept of sexy. She watched Tyler run figure eights around the monkey
bars.
“This your whole summer?” she said.
“You should cover your face.”
“What?”
“Your face. It shouldn’t be just out like this.”
“You think I’m ugly.”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just not proper.”
He walked to the edge of the drainage creek. It was a ten-foot drop to the
concrete basin, the water level low. Illegible graffiti names covered the walls.
Ms. Allie sat on the ledge and kicked her heels against the wall.
“Dare you to jump,” she said.
“What did Milad do with my beard?”
“Beard.”
“He collects them, doesn’t he. And shows them off to his idiot friends.”
“That was you with the beard. He told me about that.”
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“Do you love him?”
She shook her head and then nodded.
“Why are you here?” he said.
“I guess I love him. Milad was married before.” Water in the creek rolled by,
gray and fast. “Do you want a bite?”
Tyler accepted the Blow Pop and spun the stick. He studied the coating of
saliva on the fluorescent top.
“Do you have a car?” he said.
“Yes.”
She flinched when he faked to hit her with the sucker, and giggled and
brushed her hair behind her ear when he didn’t.
#
The television said rain likely. Tyler drank the milk from his bowl of Apple
Jacks. Leaning against the counter, Joan opened her mouth to speak and took
a sip of coffee. Tyler pushed the bowl forward for her to take it, wash it, put it
away.
“Say what you got to say,” he said.
“Deb, your aunt. She called this morning. Antoine—”
“Antoine.”
“Her monkey.”
“Antoine.”
“He’s dead. Or kidnapped or I don’t know. There was just blood left. And a
tooth on the floor. A tiny tooth like a weird Monopoly game piece.”
“Well my god.”
“It’s serious, T.”
“It’s a monkey.”
Joan dumped the Apple Jacks in the trash.
“So why are you looking at me?” Tyler asked.
“Gerald saw them. One’s a woman wearing a ski mask and the other one—”
“He’s a liar.”
“Deb called screaming it was me and you.”
“I bet Gerald did it.”
“Gerald’s just ten.”
“I’m like thirteen, fourteen.”
“Thirteen.”
“Okay then.”
Joan kneeled before the open dishwasher and squeezed in the bowl. Her back
to Tyler, she said, “So you don’t know anything.”
“I was asleep,” Tyler said.
“You were asleep.”
“I was asleep.” He waved his hand like a magician casting a spell.
“Asleeeep.”
#
Ms. Allie told Tyler to get off the porch. They shouldn’t be seen together, not
for a while. She went inside and looked out the living room window at Tyler on
the stoop, chest puffed at the street. When Milad came home, he squatted behind
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his open car door like it was a shield.
“I said don’t come back,” Milad said.
“Give my beard back or it’s eye for an eye.”
“You little shit.”
“I’ll take blood,” Tyler said.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Not your blood, either. It’ll be somebody you love.”
#
The detective stood in the door so Joan couldn’t close it. Joan told the detective Tyler had been home all last night. She played the door on its hinges and
repeated her story—Tyler was in his room all night long.
“He’s asleep right now,” she said.
“Can you account for him all day yesterday,” the detective said.
“He was here with me.”
“Well we need to talk to him. You can be present, but we need to talk.”
“What about?”
“What is his connection to Milad Alizadeh?”
“Milad.”
“He’s the orthodontist.”
“Dr. Alizadeh is Tyler’s orthodontist.”
“Milad said his wife didn’t come home last. Your son had issued a threat.”
“A threat.”
“According to Milad, one week ago your son said he wanted,” the detective
held up his notebook, “said he wanted blood for beard.”
Joan promised to bring Tyler to the station. Leaning against the closed door,
she waited for her breathing to settle. Then she went to Tyler’s room, opened the
closet and parted the hanging clothes. Tyler was pressed to the wall holding a
screwdriver.
“He’s gone,” Joan said. She helped Tyler out, holding his hand as he climbed
over the cell of boxes.
#
Tyler spun around and heaved the sheers like a shot-put. The sheers, nearly
as tall as Tyler, landed a few feet away, nowhere near Milad, who was crouched
in the front yard and shielding himself with his arms. A diagram of car brakes—
connectors, what to snip, ripped from an auto repair book—fluttered across the
driveway.
“You’re cutting my brakes now,” Milad yelled as Tyler ran. He drove to the
park and found Tyler standing on the monkey bars, feet splayed on different
slats.
“She told you about our special place,” Tyler said.
“Where is she?” Milad swiped at Tyler’s shoes and banged the structure, trying to shake Tyler loose. “Come down.”
“Get away, beard stealer.”
“Where’s my wife you little shit?”
Tyler stomped Milad’s left shoulder. The impact made Tyler fall forward
and slam his face on a bar, busting his top lip and knocking loose a tooth. Blood
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stuck to the bar as he lifted his face. Milad groaned, doubled over, wind gone.
Tyler scrambled across the bars and jumped to the ground, keeping his footing
for a few stumbles toward the creek. He bent back to try and stop but the momentum carried him over the edge.
He slammed into the foot-high water. Trash and papery filth floated against
the ripped and bloody knees of his sweatpants. Downstream, two older kids
spray painted a blue tag on the wall. One of the kids said, “White boy busted his
ass.”
Milad landed on Tyler. Gray streams in Tyler’s eyes, a mouthful of chewy
water. Milad jerked Tyler up by the hair.
“Tell me where she is.”
Milad dunked Tyler back under. Tyler choked on filth and gurgled and felt
his heart amiss.
“I will drown you right here.”
Dunked again, arms windmilling. Tyler saw long shorts and pulled up white
socks appear through the waves. He felt himself floating. The high school kids
pushed Milad against the wall and beat him with their spray paint cans. One of
them kicked Milad in the stomach.
Tyler waded to the wall, coughing and squinting. He waited for Milad’s eyes
to meet his own. Milad fought back and was overpowered and Tyler smiled.
#
Summer rumors: A fisherman found Ms. Allie tangled in a tree downed
across the creek. The police identified her by dental records. They did not release a description of the body. They questioned Tyler, but decided a child was
incapable of the crime. They believed his alibi.
“He was in his room,” Joan told the detectives.
Kids spread rumors of mutilation, missing fingers, missing face. Tyler overheard these details. Kids didn’t speak to him directly. They called him weird.
He let his Apple Jacks turn soggy. Joan caught him staring into space, at her, her
coffee mug.
“We’re late,” she said. “What are you looking at?”
He stroked his chin where the beard would be, eyes pierced through the present, deep in plans for what came next. He pushed back his chair and stood.
“Don’t slouch. And hold your shoulders back,” he said, and she did.
Brandon Bell lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His stories have been (or will
be) published by Tulane Review, Whiskey Island Magazine, Alice Blue Review,
Apiary, Fiction Fix, LITnIMAGE, Storychord.com, Work Literary Magazine, and
Inkspill Magazine (United Kingdom).
113
BROKEN MIRROR
by Marija Stajic
D
octor Petrovic, a gentle man with long fingers like a pianist’s said:
“Take these vitamins, don’t drink, and come see me in a month,” put a
box of pills next to Nada’s hand, and rushed out of the office, looking
at his watch.
She sat still on the white cotton sheet, her legs slightly swaying. There was a
mirror on the wall across from her, and she looked for her own eyes in it. After
some time, Nada slid down the bed, scratching her thigh on the metal bed rail
and pulling the white sheet down on the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up.
She didn’t have the energy or the will.
She went behind the white cloth partition and quickly got dressed—white
shirt, long black skirt with small flowers, black shoes with small holes in them
for decoration. Her blue eyes and dark hair must have looked even bluer and
darker in contrast to the whiteness around her, she thought, when she caught a
glimpse of herself in another mirror behind the door, above the sink with a pink
soap bar on its side. She quickly looked away.
Nada dragged herself out of the office. She could smell the alcohol and
iodine in the hallways, and the smell made her nauseated. She pinched her nose,
and rushed down three flights of stairs, passing people with casts on their arms,
legs and heads, kids with bandages over their eyes, women so pregnant they resembled hippopotami. Finally she saw light through a dirty white door, and slid
through it, like a snake, trying not to brush herself on anything or anybody. She
was disgusted by illness and weakness.
In the light of day and with busy, whole people roaming around, loudly
talking to each other or rushing by her as if she were a ghost, she suddenly felt
small, as if she were a bacteria herself. She slowly moved through gray hospital
roads, feeling invisible, through its broken iron gate, to the bus station, just in
front of its yellow, chipped walls. There were another three people waiting there:
a woman in her 70s, with a thick, wool cardigan in May, and a black headscarf,
long shapeless skirt, and some kind of thick, rubbery shoes. Her white hair
peeked under the headscarf, frail and suffocating. She held a big straw basket,
with a kitchen cloth on top, covering and protecting what’s inside from dust and
germs, but Nada could see home-made bread, its corner peeking; a blond high
school kid with red face and braces, jeans, sneakers and a black sweatshirt with
chalk traces on it, who looked appalled by the old woman as if she were the
devil incarnate; and a blonde, brittle-looking woman, in her mid-twenties, whose
face had a distorted expression as if she were in severe pain. Their eyes met at
one moment, heavy lids and the sparkle turned off, then they both looked away
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as quickly as they could, as if they could catch each other’s misfortune just by
looking at each other.
Nada could smell petrol in the air as the cars passed people in waiting, often
honking, and yelling obscenities to other drivers through open windows: “You
horse, who gave you the driver’s license? I knew it, I could have sworn, it’s a
woman! Who let women drive?!”
Nada thought she’d been used to nervous and impulsive Serbian people,
especially the ones who have lived in the same city since they were born, like
her husband. She thought Croats were more well-mannered and civilized. More
patient. It had been hard for her to adjust to these short-fused people and the
pace they took every day, the nerves they would burn since every little thing,
every moment was a fight, a struggle. She still missed her mother back in Croatia, her courteous neighbors, the views of the pastures and mountains from her
mother’s small estate near Varazdin, tamer spirits. At first, she didn’t care that
her blue-eyed, blond-haired, gentle husband was a Serb, and that she had to live
in a polluted, industrial city of 300,000 daily unhappy, complaining people. She
didn’t even mind that they were mostly Orthodox, and she was Catholic. Close
enough, she thought. What, their sign of the cross ends on the left, ours on the
right, that’s about it. But as the time went by, she felt more and more foreign,
different, and not even her husband and children could fill a hole she has had in
her chest for a decade.
Serbs were impatient people to begin with, she had been warned, but whatever patience they had left, they claimed to have lost during consecutive historical struggles. “There’s always a war, or a crisis,” Nada thought. “There’s always
an excuse.”
The bus finally came, and people rushed to its front and back entrance, trying
to get in before passengers got out.
“Wait, man, don’t you think I should get out first,” a woman in her forties
said.
“Come on, hurry up then, why are you dragging,” a man in his 50s responded, pushing his way in. The woman finally slid past him, like a cat, squishing her
small body past his big, soft, sweaty one, pulling her red skirt above her knees
and her black shirt out of it in the process.
“My God,” she said, his sweat on her, her clothes wrinkled. She made the
sign of the cross in the front of the door, tidied herself up, and as she stepped on
the sidewalk, she yelled at the man who bullied her out of the bus.
“You, redneck!”
The door was still open and he replied as if burned by an iron, sticking his
head and spitting saliva through the closing door.
“If you’re such a lady why do you take the bus, huh, like cattle, why doesn’t
someone drive you, madam?”
Nada shook her head “no,” sighed and got in the back door. She managed to
find a seat next to a window, all the way in the back, by passing sandwiches of
people and feeling as if her organs have been shifting in her skinny frame. Next
to her was an old woman with glassy eyes, taking half of Nada’s seat as well.
Nada, like a child against the window, began observing details of the rundown streets of Nis and gray-colors of a Socialist country as the bus drove,
the ugly buildings which were built to serve a purpose, never to be pretty. She
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glimpsed at the old pre-war houses which still had a little bit of that royal charm,
but which were neglected and chipped away, decaying.
People loudly talked on the bus, but Nada has managed to tune them out.
She silently sang one of her favorite songs, an old Serbian folk song: “Don’t
clack with your sandals,” by Nedzad Salkovic: “Don’t make that clacking sound,
when you’re coming down the castle, I keep thinking, my darling, that my old
mother is coming down…”
The bus’s slow, steady pace and the fact that she was far from home somehow relaxed her and she imagined, for a moment, leaning on that dirty bus window, closing her eyes, that she was that beautiful woman from the music video
she recently saw on TV. This woman came down a flight of stairs, in some beautiful castle somewhere, in a white, willowy dress and wooden sandals, the latest
fashion craze that made this distinct “click-clack” sound every time a woman
would step. And Nedzad looked at her from the bottom of the stairs, adoringly,
mesmerized, waiting for her and only her to come down to him. Bliss!
“She obviously wasn’t pregnant and there were no children around,” Nada
suddenly said out loud. People turned toward her and looked at her wide-eyed,
as if she were crazy. A couple of teenagers laughed, pointed. A few moments
later, they all looked away and continued talking to their friends, reading the
papers or just looking through the windows while clenching the bus handles.
Nada looked through the window again, her skin sprinkled by goose bumps, her
face burning.
Maybe I am crazy, Nada thought.
Five minutes later, she tidied herself up and got up from her seat. Her stop
was the next one. She got off across from an old World War I cemetery, adjacent
to the building she lived in. It didn’t bother her before, but now, she said loudly
to herself: “What were they thinking, building next to a graveyard?! Fucking
socialists, nothing is sacred to them!”
She walked into a small building with white doors, only part-open. She
opened a broken wooden mail box, and picked up the electricity bill. She didn’t
look at it. She walked up four flights of stairs. She unlocked another white door,
with a number nine on it, and walked into a narrow, dark hallway, with thicklywoven wool carpet. She smelled the staleness. The pantry was on the right,
stacked with sugar, coffee, salt and similar golden metal containers, and the
coat rack was on her left. She walked another two steps and was now in front
of the bathroom. She was all alone in there and grateful for that, for the silence.
She looked into the bright bedroom, across the bathroom, and her eyes landed
on the made king-size bed with white, old fashion lacey linen. She frowned,
looked away. Then, holding on to the door frame as she would fall otherwise,
she glanced into the small living room with an old brown sofa, a chipped coffee table, two armchairs, and a TV, with dark oval screen and brown wooden
frame, and a small sticker that read: Made in Nis, Socialist Federative Republic
of Yugoslavia. Then she leaned into the kitchen, as if she were afraid to cross
its doorstep. She could see the tombstones through the big kitchen window, all
shapes and sizes, moldy and green. She could smell the mold, and the bones.
And the old tears and dried blood. She could smell the worms.
She stepped back, turned and opened the bathroom door. It was a small
square bathroom—tiny bathtub adjacent to the washing machine, an old, broken
116
mirror closing the medicine cabinet above the sink, cheap black and white tiles.
She saw herself, her face cut by the line in the mirror. She was pale, dark under
the eyes. Eyes blue, deep but with no shine, web of capillaries. She pulled her
cheekbones down and dropped her mouth and chin, and held that position for
about ten seconds. Then she ran her bony hands through her short, thick brown
hair.
“Where are they?” she said.
She began tossing the bathroom ferociously. She knocked down a little
basket from the top of the washing machine with mini-soaps and perfumes. She
pulled all three plastic shelves under the sink, filled with her daughter’s hair
brushes and clips, make-up, maxi pads and cotton balls. Pulled wet laundry onto
the floor. And finally, as she were afraid of looking at the broken-faced self in
the mirror, she opened the medicine cabinet. That’s where her husband’s things
usually laid—comb, shaving cream, cologne, toothbrush, paste and razors. She
shivered, felt warmth and moisture on her cheeks, nose, chin, neck. She was
suddenly cold and she rubbed her arms. But then she stopped. She picked up a
razor in slow motion, ran her fingers over its orange, plastic handle, closed the
medicine cabinet and looked down and away. She looked at the tiles. She looked
at her watch. It was 2:43pm. She wasn’t sure if it was Wednesday or Thursday.
She sat down on cold, dirty looking tiles, like a rag doll, legs spread left and
right, orange plastic handle peeking from her right fist.
Marija Stajic is a Serbian-American writer, journalist and a linguist
who has been published by The New Yorker and many other online and print
publications, and who has published three books of poetry. She has a B.A. in
Linguistics and Literature from Faculty of Philosophy, University of Nis (Serbia)
and an M.A. in International Journalism from American University.
She has written a collection of interwoven historical short stories placed
in Yugoslavia from beginning of the 20th century until today. She also blogs:
belgrade-dc. blogspot.com
Her fiction and poetry has been published by The Writing Disorder, Orion
Headless, Gloom Cupboard, Imitation Fruit, Inertia, Thick Jam and the Burning
Word literary magazines.
117
PROMISED LAND
by Rachel Bentley
F
ive-thirty in the afternoon on a hot Friday in August: It is always a long
journey home on summer weekends, and I am making the trip less often
now. I wear the usual dark blue dress, nondescript and corporate, and I
carry the usual brown handbag. I have a small suitcase for overnight.
The trip starts underground, five stops on the Number Two from Wall Street
to Penn Station. We stand in clusters where we expect the subway door to appear, straining over the platform’s yellow danger line, gazing down the tunnel
for the lights of the oncoming train. When the cars roar by in a hot wind, we
recoil, and when the train stops we twist and squeeze past sluggish bodies while
the loudspeaker squawks: Stand back and let ’em off.
Everything is familiar: the odor of salami and garlic on people’s breath, the
hurtling, side-to-side roll before we pull in at the graffiti-marked stop beneath
Penn Station. The same mechanical voice: Stand clear of the closing doors.
I change trains at Jamaica, the beginning of Long island The loudspeaker’s
voice becomes less cramped and commanding: It sings, leaving for BALD-win,
FREE-port, BELL-more, WAN-taugh, SEA-ford, Massa-PE-qua, but none of
these pleasantly named towns is mine. My train doesn’t go that far. My train
heads south, sliding past places that don’t have names—factories, storage buildings, machine shops—until I get closer to home, near the Sunrise Highway
with its unsynchronized lights and its shopping centers, where carloads of local
greasers cruise up and down the road all evening waving crude signs out the car
windows and making faces. Nobody out here trusts Manhattan. They call it The
City, as if Queens were The Country. I wanted to go to The City all my life, and
so I went. Now, my father wants me to come back and live with him.
He has been a widower these past few months. A few neighbors have been
sympathetic, but he has not been open to their compassion. There are two parts
to him: the one that takes in everything clearly, and the one that stays back, withdrawn and hidden. Lately, he seems to have retreated to a place inside his head,
thinking in a different language.
A man in a wrinkled business suit sits nearby, watching me. I open my
handbag and look inside. It’s filled with nothing, just small fragments of my life.
A smile starts to play at the corners of my mouth. I have to tighten my lips to
make it go away. Everything you do in life gets so mixed up with strangers you
have to be careful, even just looking at them. It’s safer to gaze out the window
as the used car lots and funeral parlors slide by and think about what I’m going
to say to my father. No. No, I’m not coming. Get someone else. Get Bobby and
Melissa and their two teenagers. Get Helen to come back from California with
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her salesman. Get somebody else.
The man I’ve been seeing, Richard, thinks I’m being childish about it.
“You’re almost thirty years old. What’s all the terrible conflict about?” He wants
me to move in with him. He’s The City. He’s Manhattan, the glittery Manhattan.
He says he’s related to the Bush family. I ask him, “Cousins?” He says, “Distant.” He is sweet and funny and easy to see through. He can also be kind.
This is the not-quite-suburbs. In spite of the distance, when I get off the
train, I’m still within the city limits. The platform at the Rosedale station is a
great concrete slab that leads to an arching bridge over the tracks. The bridge
has wire mesh sides to prevent public atrocities. When the trains pass below, the
noise of metal on metal blends with the surge of overhead jets as they descend
into Kennedy airport, making a dreadful music. For a few years my parents
rented in East New York. Then they moved here—a step up the ladder. I guess
that’s what it means to be settled down—all the imagined journeys you trace
for yourself across the maps and globes in a schoolroom reduced at last to just a
daily commute, a repeated voyage past houses with lights on and people inside
eating supper.
My father traveled farther. He came across the sea from Yugoslavia before
the slaughter, long before the shells of the Serbian artillery. There was always
puzzlement in his eyes as his family grew up around him. The older and noisier
we became, the lonelier he seemed to feel. Perhaps we, too, were sort of an escape, his flight from the past without destiny or calling. Often, when I asked him
about growing up in that distant country, he would lower his eyelids, turn down
the corners of his mouth, and swat the air with one hand, as if the first part of
his life had been an insect. So I had to imagine the country that he would never
talk about, and all I could see was forlorn villages surrounded by waterfalls and
wolves, where farming was still done by hand and people traveled everywhere
in carts. Then I imagined the endless pop-pop of snipers in the hills, teenagers
with their shoulder grenade launchers, closed shops, blasted buildings, listless
walkers in shattered streets. My father said the family farm overlooked the sea,
but this vision seemed too sunny for anything I could imagine. I suppose he had
a childhood, but whenever I asked him about it he would struggle for an answer.
“What do you want to know?” he would say.
I swing my suitcase up the front steps. Its weight provides enough momentum to carry me through the front door, and I slide it across the floor. My father’s
chair, in the kitchen, scrapes back and he emerges holding up his hand, looking
at me the way people look through windows. Then he stops, slumps his shoulders, and stoops to pick up my bag. He wears his gray pants and shirt, with Tony
stitched across the pocket. It is cleaned and pressed, but its metallic dullness,
which matches the color of his hair, makes him look like a man stubbornly dedicated to sadness.
“What’s new, Daddy?”
“Nothing. Stomach pains. And you?”
“I’m so glad to see you.”
“Why are you looking around?”
He leads me upstairs, carrying my suitcase. Inside the house, piles of newspapers and mail cover every horizontal surface. With Mother gone, the rooms
seem large and dim, the carpets heavier, the ceilings higher.
119
In my bedroom, my mother’s primly shaped dresses are spread out across the
bed. “You should have those,” my father says, setting down the suitcases. I can
hear the labor of his breathing.
“Daddy, I’ve already looked through this stuff. The dresses are not my size.
They’re old-fashioned, I can’t wear them.” Saying this suddenly seems blasphemous. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I just can’t wear them.”
“You should go through them again. Make sure.” He holds one of them up,
shaking out the wrinkles. “If I put them in the Goodwill box, some punk just
sets them on fire.” “What about the fur coat?” It’s the only thing that remains in
Mother’s closet, next to several bottles of old perfume.
He frowns. “It’s got a tear in the sleeve. But I keep it for a while. Maybe I
find something else for you. I look around. Something in the metal box, maybe.”
I cannot imagine what something else might be. The metal box is full of nothing
but old papers: the deed to the house, my father’s Yugoslavian passport with his
picture in merchant seaman uniform. Nothing we have is of any value except for
the coat, a new battery in the car, and an ancient lathe with worn out belts that he
keeps in the basement (an awkward sentence). I can’t use the battery or the lathe.
***
Next day, we’re sitting on the front steps, each of us with a can of soda. I
wish I could blurt it out, tell him I don’t want to move back. I want nothing of
my father’s grip on the smallness of life, or the old people I’ve known since they
were young, and the middle-aged people I knew when they were my present age.
The street is potholed, and the sidewalk in front of us is crumbling and
cracked. Some local entrepreneur is building a duplex in the vacant lot across
the street. In the day’s heat, the workers remove their shirts, soak them in buckets of water, and squeeze them over their heads.
I’m like a child when I come to Rosedale, fearful of my father’s judgment
of me: a frivolous person. Richard says, “Love to come out there and meet your
dad sometime.” But it won’t happen. Not ever. Richard is Manhattan.
He doesn’t need me. I like that. It means he doesn’t judge me. Is that love? If
it is, it’s a new kind of love for me.
If my father knew about him, he’d quickly see my lazy self-indulgence.
That’s how fearful I am. But only here, in this house, are my mind and energy
drained by such fear. My father’s lips are pressed together now. He looks steely
and quiet, his face expressionless, his eyes fixed and remote. He is thinking to
himself in his native language.
The grass in the two small rectangles that front our house has turned brown.
The workers across the street have their wet shirts hanging down from beneath
their hard hats, like soggy burnooses. The studs of wood they are handling look
warped from the heat, glistening with spots of resin.
“Daddy,” I say carefully, “are you angry, are you sad that I don’t come out
here more often?” He is quiet. Then I say it, “Daddy, I’m not moving back here
with you.” There is an up-spin of relief, and then it is gone. The oak trees stir
slightly, then we’re caught again as a deafening jet thickens the air on its way to
Kennedy.
His head lowers, then his face tips up and his eyes come into view, harden120
ing. “I’ll be home on weekends more. I promise,” I tell him.
I stand up, getting my blouse unstuck from my stomach and my skirt from
the back of my legs. The big oak tree in front of the house casts a shadow that
ripples across the hot gleam of cars passing in the street. I sit down again,
watching the workers across the street, their dull hammering drowned out by the
intermittent sound of jets.
It is a longer wait than I had anticipated for him to answer. The shadows
seem to stretch out further as we sit here. We are going into the worst part of the
afternoon. My father moves his head from side to side, without removing me
from his stare. I frown at my lap. I scratch at a spot on my blue skirt.
He gives me a long, shrewd stare. “But I understand,” he says, in an alarmingly different voice. Everything is strained, unnatural. Then: “You sleeping
with some guy?”
My ears start to burn. “Daddy, I’m going to live with some guy.” My words
seem blurred and indistinct. “I’m sorry if it bothers you. Is that enough? I’m
sorry.”
The heat and noise seem endless, draining us of everything but simple
thoughts. It’s too hot for feelings.
He presses his lips together, as if my answer is impertinent and slightly irritating. “You know something?” he says. “We moved out here twenty-five years
ago. Twenty-five years ago, today.”
He could live here for another twenty-five years too. I could live with him,
surrounded by the house he once ran (ran?) and would soon be running us, with
its demands for paint and new plumbing, the dampness of its basement, the
squirrels in the gutters, the moths beating night after night, with their big wings,
at the window screens.
“Twenty-five years ago,” he says. “Now everybody’s moved away or died.
Even D’Ambrosio’s dying.” He glances at the house next door with its drawn
shades. “But you’ve always hated him.”
“I don’t complain about him. I’m a happy man. I know something about
laughter. You know who he is? One of the family.”
“Family?”
“You don’t know who the family is? You’re such a baby. Half of Rosedale
belongs to them. They keep order here. They help the cops. Smart people. You
don’t get money without being smart people. D’Ambrosio, he always wanted to
be gunned down in some nice little restaurant off Mulberry Street. But look at
him now, just dying behind the window shades.”
I begin to think again of what it is going to mean, moving in with Richard.
It is going to mean not being on my own. It’s going to mean having someone to
bitch at, someone to lean on, someone to tell me I am essential to his breathing
and being. Lots of things seem better than that.
I listen to my father, polite but neutral now. Because I remain detached, he
wants to tell me more: life in Queens, the way the neighbors looked down on
him because he had an accent and wasn’t Irish Catholic. When I say nothing for
a long time, he adds, “Where will you go when this guy is through with you?”
It’s as if I’ve been expecting the question all the time he’s been talking, and
with no answer prepared, I just lean forward, with my face and part of my body
leaning over the steps, and say, “I’ll go somewhere. I don’t know where yet, but
121
somewhere.”
He edges back into the shadow of the porch. “I will go somewhere,” I say,
emphasizing each word carefully.
I cannot tell, by his hard gaze, whether he senses this feeling I have. But
whatever purpose is emerging, he looks like he wants to grasp it for himself.
Suddenly he starts forward and catches my arm. I watch his face as it is smitten
by something I haven’t thought to display before him, much less brandish: my
youth. I can see that he wants it. His grip tightens on my arm, and it seems to
strengthen this feeling.
I do not pull away from him. Then he inclines his head as if to accept
responsibility for my frustration. Too weary to move, he stares at me and says,
“The land.” He clears his throat. “You should have it someday.”
The dry leaves on the oak tree rustle. I do not understand what he is saying.
“I said I would look around for something to give you. Your mother’s coat,
no.”
He gazes through his thoughts at the oak tree and continues. “Ten hectares.
Karla writes me from Yugoslavia, ‘When are you going to sign it over to us,
Tony? You don’t need it any more. We could add it to the farm.’” But I never
sign it over.
“Land?”
“On the hill near Kraljevica. It still belongs to me. It looks down on the sea. I
never sign it over to Karla. Some day, maybe, you can see it yourself. I still have
it. It’s in the metal box upstairs. It’s a deed, ten hectares. Maybe you can use it
someday, maybe not. If not, then dream about it. It’s yours.”
That was all he said, as the heat continued to press into darkness. The construction workers across the street set down their tools and began to leave. A few
moths appeared and we hoisted ourselves up and walked back into the house.
The gathered heat of the day, sultry and depressed, was worse than the outside.
The sweat sprang from my skin. I tried to force the windows higher in their
sashes, but there was no breeze anywhere. No air.
I saw him standing in the living room, staring at the ceiling.
I was reminded, then, of how he would wait at the foot of the stairs for my
mother when they went out, just the two of them, for an evening. My mother
would walk about overhead, and I could hear her high-heeled shoes clattering as she moved from her bureau to her closet mirror. Her staccato footsteps,
patternless at first, would become more purposeful as she stopped to pick out
earrings or brush her dark hair. All at once she would march across the floor, and
the sound of her shoes’ percussion would burst out like a tap dance as she came
down the stairway.
My father, as if signaled, would go to the hall closet for her fur coat. He
would hold it out for her as she passed, and she would always say, “Tony, Don’t
you look terrific!” Now, I tried to continue our conversation, but my father
seemed exhausted. His gaze moved down from the ceiling, looked around the
room. His head retreated into the collar of the shirt with Tony stitched across the
pocket.
Suppose he was once a boy? What were the summers like? Maybe there
were flowers and mulberry trees stretching across the ten hectares down to the
Adriatic shore. Maybe he ran through fields of grass, but who wanted to remem122
ber? Those days and nights were all weighted down for him like stones. No one
said it was poetry finding a promised land (awkward) or giving up an old land
whose bitter memories kept him reaching doggedly ahead.
I usually do not believe things people tell me before nightfall. Only when
there are cool and melancholy shadings in the air do their words become real.
This was the only time, before he died, that my father ever mentioned this land
as a legacy, this field somewhere on a hillside, in a country I will never see. But
that night, he showed me the deed in the metal box, and that evening I set out on
my travels. I may never possess this field as my own. But I might take a gentle
step toward it and then, realizing that I am not alone, I might see the outlines of
a new shore and strain in the sunlight to see it clearly.
Rachel Bentley’s books, Post-Freudian Dreaming and A General Theory of
Desire, are available at Amazon & Powell’s. She’s a Pushcart Prize nominee,
and won the Paris Review/Paris Writers Workshop International Fiction Award.
She has published over 200 works of fiction, poetry and memoir in Literary
Magazines and Quarterlies in the U.S., the UK, France, Canada and Brazil.
123
BITTER BROKEN BONES
by Rebecca Wright
A
doorbell chimed and tiny feet skidded around a corner. Dirty blonde hair
fell into jade eyes as a pudgy hand reached for the doorknob. Fingers
tightly gripping his wrist stopped him.
“Luka! You know better.”
The young boy’s face fell as his hand dropped down to his side. He backed
away to stand behind his mother’s skirts. She turned the handle and the door
opened with an audible click.
“Yes?”
A large woman clutching a canvas bag stood there, a grim smile painted on
her face.
“Ma’am, I was told to deliver the offering to this house.”
“Ah yes. How old is it?”
“At last check, six.”
“Well, where is it?”
A shadow moving behind the woman caught Luka’s attention. He tugged
quickly on his mother’s skirt. Her hand reached out and smacked his away. A
hushed “Stop that!” escaped pursed lips.
“I’m supposed to have you sign this paperwork first to ensure delivery.”
“Of course.”
The mother snatched the pen from the woman’s hand, causing her body to
flinch. She began going through the paperwork as the shadow moved again.
Luka gripped his mother’s skirt and tugged harder. The pen came down hard on
his hand and the tugging stopped.
“All right. Is there anything else?”
His mother passed the papers back to the woman.
“No, ma’am, that should be everything. Here are the belongings.”
The woman handed his mother the canvas tote before she put her arms behind her back. The shadow moved and a small girl was pushed out from behind
the woman. Dark brown, almost black hair covered her face. The woman ran her
fingers through the girl’s hair, pushing it out of her face. Azure blue eyes met
Luka’s.
“And this is Indigo, the offering.”
“This is a big responsibility Luka. You will be in charge of everything.”
“I know. But I’m a big kid now.”
Twelve-year-old Luka grinned up at his mother’s face. He sat on the couch
across from her, a coffee table separating them.
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“All right. If you think you can handle it, then I know you can.”
His mother dismissed him and he ran to where the guest room was. Knocking on the door to announce his arrival, he opened the door. A lump was in the
middle of the bed, covered by a pile of covers.
“Indigo!”
A head shot out of the covers. Luka grinned when he saw the haystack of
hair on Indigo’s seven-year-old head.
“C’mon! We have things to do.”
“But I don’t wanna.”
Walking to the bed, Luka tugged on her hand. It didn’t take much for him to
get her out of the bed.
“Get dressed. We’re going outside.”
Luka headed towards the door but turned around when he didn’t hear anything. Indigo was just staring at him with her mouth open.
“What?”
“O-outside? Your mother says I can’t go outside. I’m to stay indoors in case
someone sees me.”
“But I’m in charge of you now.”
Indigo walked over to him and grabbed his hand.
“Really? I get to go outside?”
Nodding, he pushed her over to the closet and motioned for her to get
dressed. He ducked out of the room and headed over to his own across the hall.
He grabbed the tote he had packed and waited in the hallway for Indigo to finish.
Luka grimaced at the sign outside of the performance house. It wasn’t
unusual for there to be a doll auction announcement. It was the name on the
sign that left a sour taste in his mouth. His mother used a stapler to post the announcement listing Indigo as that evening’s performance.
“I’m only going to assist you for the first couple. After that, you’re on your
own.”
“Yes, mother.”
He stumbled but regained his footing as they quickly moved through the
performance house. His fifteen-year-old body was still adjusting to his recent
growth spurt. His mother pointed out the dressing room she would use to prep
herself and the entrance they would come in.
“Why do we hold an auction?”
“Because that’s the only way the dolls are sold. No one would know about
them if there wasn’t a public auction.”
“But why Indigo?”
“Because she was offered up for this.”
“Can I keep her?”
“No.”
Her glare stopped the questions that were on the end of his tongue, barely
hanging on and staying quiet.
“Now, if everything goes correctly, you should only have to do the auction
once. If not, well, the results won’t be pretty.”
He cowered from the glare she sent him.
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“What do you mean you want to return her?
Luka stared down the balding man in front of him. Sweat beaded on the
Alfred Clark’s red forehead as his suit collar dug into the rolls of his neck. He
glanced at the figure kneeling on the ground, a tight leather collar around her
throat.
“She isn’t what I need.”
“What is it that she lacks? We can train her to suit your needs.”
The man gripped the armrest of the chair he sat on and released a heavy
breath.
“She won’t cooperate. It’s too much of a hassle to deal with.”
Luka sighed and nodded.
“What form would you like your money to be in?”
“You don’t have to return the money. Consider it an incentive for the future.”
Luka grimaced but it quickly disappeared of his face.
“All right. Thank you sir for your patronage. We’ll tell you of any future
events.”
He shook the man’s hand before showing him out the front door. He returned
to his office to see Indigo still kneeling on the floor. He kneeled down next to
her and put his hand under her chin. He lifted up her face to look and frowned.
Teardrops leaked from an eye that was swollen shut. Dark black and purple
bruises surrounded the eye and down the side of her face. He moved his hand to
rest against the normal side of her face.
“Oh, Indigo. What did he do to you?”
A whimper escaped her split lip. He remembered the collar and quickly
removed it.
“That should feel better.”
A slight nod was all he received. He stood and held his hand out to her. She
moved her hand into his and he pulled her from the ground.
“Come. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He pulled the frosted yellow cake from the fridge and placed it on the tray.
“Happy 14th Birthday Indigo” was written on it in his sloppy writing. Grabbing
two plates and forks, he added them to the tray before lifting it. He headed to
Indigo’s room, pushing the door open with his hip. Setting the tray on the desk,
he moved over to the bed to wake Indigo.
“Indigo?”
He nudged the pile of blankets but nothing moved. He grabbed the pile and
pushed it off the side of the bed, leaving it empty.
“She’s not there.”
Luka’s head whipped around to look at the doorway. His mother stood there,
arms crossed across her chest.
“Where is she?”
“I sold her last night.”
“Why?”
“You’re getting too attached. She’s nothing more than a doll.”
She moved her gaze from him over to the cake he had spent the morning
baking. Walking over to it, she placed one of her hands on the tray handle.
“Was this for her?”
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Luka nodded, not understanding why she was asking. He jumped when she
pushed the tray off the desk, covering the floor in splattered yellow cake.
“Damn it Luka! I knew you were too young to get involved in this.”
“No! I promise I’ll do better!”
He shook from the glare she stared at him with.
“You better. Or you’ll join her.”
“How soon would you like your refund, ma’am?”
“As soon as possible. I need to replace this one.”
“Of course. It should be returned within two business days.”
Luka scribbled down the message on the paper in front of him. A woman
with a beak for a nose sat in the chair in front of him. A broken figure lay next to
the chair. Showing the woman out, Luka rushed back to his office. In his twenty
years, he had never seen a person so defeated.
“Oh, Indigo.”
He noticed the broken arm she had tucked against her chest and her swollen
ankle. Sighing, he released the rope collar from around her throat and rubbed the
tender skin.
“Let’s get you fixed up.”
He lifted her body into his arms, listening to the painful whimpers escaping
her swollen mouth. He moved her to the guest room, waiting for the doctor to
show up.
“It won’t be much longer.”
Two soaring sparrows were inked into the arm that cradled her head. He
held her as she lay on the floor of the guest room with no thoughts in her mind
and no voice in her throat. This was nothing like the vibrant life he remembered
her having, her previous owners having sucked it out of her. He watched her
chest barely move with each faded breath, another fragment of her souls escaping through her cracked lips. Pieces of a broken picture frame littered the floor
around her, glass embedded in her skin. He hated how she had been discarded,
destroyed, demolished on the floor. Violent thoughts and memories swirled
around in his head, taking over, controlling him. He wanted more for her than
this life. They were skeletons escaping the closet and coming to life. Bitter broken bones lay beneath her failing flesh, failing to hold everything together with
glue mixed from blood and lies.
“Ready, love?”
He lowered her head to the ground and stood up above her. He hovered
over her, unsure how to help her. The door opened behind her. His mother stood
there, watching and critiquing. Tonight was his only chance. His hand reached
out and gripped her hair, pulling her up. He knew she couldn’t cry. There were
no liquids left to release, no pent up anger, no emotions.
“C’mon, we don’t have time for this. They’re ready.”
He lifted her, slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes but mindful of the glass in her skin. Following his mother out of the apartment building
as he carried her, he pushed her into the dark car outside. Telling the driver to
go, he passed her a duffle bag.
“You know what to do. Get to it.”
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As if on strings, she acted with jerky movements from his command. He was
her puppeteer, she his marionette. Luka hated how she dressed in the uniform,
not caring that the driver was leering at her or that Luka’s mother was glaring at
her. Just as she finished tying the ribbons on the shoes, the car came to a stop.
“It’s time. You better be ready. There’s a lot of money riding on you tonight.”
Exiting the car after his mother, he turned to see if she had moved but she
still just stared forward with blank eyes.
“Move.”
He waited for her to acknowledge his voice but the sound flowed through
her ears and bounced around her barely functioning brain. He walked back to the
car door and grabbed her hand, pulling her from the vehicle. As they walked, she
followed behind him as if he was pulling her along with a leash. Her white skin
glowed from the marquee above them that announced “Indigo Torrie: Performing Tonight Only.”
Leading her backstage, he motioned for her to enter the dressing room.
“There you go, love. Everything is ready for you. Make yourself pretty.”
She moved into the room and he shut the door behind him as he left. He
headed to the gallery to greet the buyers that had received an invitation to the
event.
***
“Luka Santino! How have you been?”
Turning away from the couples and singles that were mingling, he looked at
the older, balding man that headed towards him. He shook the hand that the man
held out.
“Alfred Clark! It’s been a long time.”
Luka knew that Alfred had wanted Indigo ever since he had first had her
when she was twelve. He lost his wife soon after the return and believed Indigo
was the perfect replacement.
“Indeed it has. Did you send Indigo through more training?”
“I did. She should cooperate now and agree to everything.
Luka frowned as Alfred nodded, grinning like a fool. If everything went
Luka’s way, Indigo would not be going home with anyone but himself. He had
groomed her specifically to his own preferences. No, she only belonged to him.
“Good luck.”
The older man nodded and grinned wider, the dark spaces of missing teeth
prominent.
“There’s no way I could persuade you?”
Alfred pulled his wallet out of his suit jacket and opened it. Luka glanced at
the large amount of green bills that were bursting from the leather bi-fold.
“You know very well that everyone gets an equal chance.”
Luka grimaced as Alfred clapped him on the back of his shoulder.
“That’s what I like about you. You make sure everything is straight.”
“Thanks. But now I must go check on the star of the evening.”
***
Luka opened the door to the dressing room and watched as Indigo got ready.
After she washed the dirt off her skin, she began applying concealer to the
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bruises covering her scarred body. He frowned at the blacks, the greens, and
the yellows that stood out against her pale skin. They were the gifts, the lies,
the punishments left behind from previous owners, ones that grew old and left
her behind. He hated how each time she had to do this performance; there were
more to cover.
“Ready, love?”
Luka smiled at the thought that this would be the final act of her profession
as a puppet. He had been planning this since he took over for his mother.
“Just one more thing before you go.”
He walked over to a table where a single case sat. Reaching into it, he
pulled a needle out filled with a pale blue liquid that shined when the light hit it.
Bringing it over to Indigo, he motioned for her to hold her arm out. Gripping her
elbow, he injected the liquid into her outstretched arm.
“There. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
He led her to the red curtain blocking the stage from the spectators. He could
hear the faint murmurs of those there to watch and those there to buy. He didn’t
acknowledge them, instead staring at Indigo’s blank face, wishing he could take
her away.
“Good. Now dance.”
Leaving her there, Luka headed to his place to stand next to his mother just
in the wings of the stage. Nodding to the stagehand, the curtain rose.
***
The audience watched Indigo with pity, with remorse, with glee in their eyes.
Those looking to buy focused on the way her body twisted and bent in pirouettes. Rain poured above them, seen only through the glass-tiled roof. Shadows
danced across the onlookers’ faces, casting them in greens and blues. Dirt from
the rarely used stage stained her skin as she moved, ruining carefully done
makeup. The music rhythms in the background became her heartbeat.
Luka knew Indigo wanted to stop but he didn’t tell her to, especially with his
mother standing next to him. Seeing the faces in the crowd sneering at her made
him wish for a different life for her. He could see that she wanted to scream but
words can’t pass her lips. Not in this moment.
When she turned her head towards him, Luka knew it was time for the final
curtain call. Luka walked to the center of the stage to announce the winner as
she continued to dance
“Attention everyone!”
As the audience quieted down, he turned to look at Indigo. Her hands went
to clutch her throat as the burning began. He knew she had never felt a pain like
this before but it was necessary. He watched as she stopped dancing and bent
over, trying to force air into her lungs. A sticky, wet cough and cabernet colored
candy syrup came out. Her cracked lips parted with gasps of hot air and failure.
With another cough, Indigo fell.
***
He stood in the dark corner, just outside the sight of room. Luka watched as
Indigo opened her eyes to see darkness with only a faint glow from the moonlight coming through the barred windows. The room had no exit and no entrance
129
for her. Hope leaked from her broken lungs as she watched the freedom of
people pass by. Faces pressed against the glass, fog escaped their gaping mouths.
He knew that she recognized Alfred’s face as he came into view of the window.
He hated how he had to use shackles to hold her thin arms to the wall. Her skin
was dry and bleeding hidden beneath dark silver metal. Shivers rocked Indigo’s
broken body.
He watched as she searched for an escape from the room. Blood covered
fingertips and nail grooves were scratched into the wall. Fragmented faces of
those that didn’t win the bid screamed of lost time and made-up lies outside the
window of the room. He hated listening to them but that wouldn’t be able to
change it now. Her teeth sunk into her swollen lip and concealed her cries.
Luka moved forward and opened a portion of the wall, sliding across the
floor with a scraping sound.
“Hello, love.”
She cowered back from him into the darkness of the room.
“Are you ready? A new home is waiting.”
There is no life for the broken doll.
Rebecca Wright is a 21-year-old graduate of University of South Florida
with her BA in Creative Writing. She wants people to analyze why she wrote
something and what it means, when in all actuality, she wrote it because
she could. She currently resides in Tampa, Florida, with her polydactal cat,
Huckleberry Fynnigan. She plans to receive her MFA in Creative Writing and in
the future, change the world.
130
VERY GREEN ELEPHANT
by Orlin Oroschakoff
I
already told you. We must give him a name. In order to make him feel welcome. You know what happened last night . . . I know you won’t believe me.
You were already in bed. Asleep. I was reading in my room when I heard
this solid thumping noise. It must’ve been around midnight. I thought it must
be from the radiators, cooling down. But then it happened again and this time it
didn’t sound like a radiator at all. I got up, turned up the light and went straight
to the Fellini room. It’s dark when the light is switched off. I can still see him
from the landing, through the doorway some light streaking through the French
door to the garden. Not last night. The darkness’s transparent pendant was
blocked by something immensely alive. The immersion of the night, that nocturnal face of things was occupied by something breathing. The presence of this
apparition seemed to swell to a fearful dimension. I reached for the light switch
when my knuckles brushed on the rough overheated texture of distinct epiderma. I know it might sound ridiculous but maybe you can already guess what
I saw under the diminished streaks of the wall lights. There he was. Our brand
new porcelain elephant. Expanded into a life-size, not yet fully grown African
elephant. The same seductively smooth porcelain form enlarged to the optimal
scale that the room could handle. Huge, jade-green live content obediently
standing on his massive fours slightly sunk into the dark blue and green striped
thick carpet. For some reason his imposing presence didn’t make me nervous.
Doubtlessly, his sharp hearing could detect your sleepful purring in the bedroom
across the hall. I knew that even if he wanted to pay a visit to your room and express his considerable disappointment about your unwillingness to name him, he
wouldn’t be able to do so. His size wouldn’t allow him to pass through the door
in the first place and leave the Fellini room. But, what if the circumference of his
body was a bit smaller, let’s say similar to that of a young bull. Then certainly
he would have stormed your room and you’d have been quite shaken when he
picked you up out of your bed and elevated you under the ceiling. What would
you have told him, why have you neglected him for the entire four days after we
found him there, not far from the vast river, abandoned among other scattered
embodiments of gathered material data of time gone. Forms protected and oppressed by the predictable narrative of stingy minds. You saw him first and your
cat-like eyes ceased to be easily fed with the vanishing voluptuousness of the
departing autumn. The unobtrusive fragrance of past times, the raw radiance of
color, the scent of childhood forever enclosed and snowed in in the crystal ball
of your memories, divagating the valley of the green . . . where horse, skies and
smells, sun bleached the milky streak of your chestnut hair, where the protective
131
darkness of the mountains was your divine measure, majestic self-supporting
pillars of unspoken truth and order . . .
You know, we took him home. Over the bridge . . . Over the silent red towers
of unveiled autumn and the prey of golden shadows over the blooming colors
of descending leaves, over the railroad of the languishing afternoon, upon the
forgotten face of the rusty steamer next to the obliterated canal with swimming
ducks, upstream against the unlit lampposts. We carried him with all his green
secrets. Some say elephants are never reduced to forgetting, but the exitless orbit
of time will reduce the two of us to the dusk of null passions. The moondial of
our life together will preserve his precious green secret before death liberates the
flesh of its sorrows. We must name him. Hand in hand . . . You see, the silhouettes of the turning world are oblivious to his indecipherable mystery. You can
sense his presence is affirmed by the cool of his green. A captive of his porcelain
greenness he beckons the invisible path, the green direction of unknown destination. He can carry the pangs of our love across his strong back. Jade green magic
apparition, I know he wants to be named by us, so he can guide us through the
evening’s marvels, redolent of astral copulations and multiplied tenderness. His
vibrant green, abundant in inner motion will cool my eternal impatience and my
esoteric concupiscence. While skin engloved by skin, we let the incarnation of
our thoughts dominate the belle époque of youthful days, confined to the monumental scaffold of descending time. His green will be bemused, bemist negation
to the darkest blue of our contemplations.
I know . . . It’s not an easy task to name an elephant. Shall we ever know how
he’s lost his tusks? And . . . what if the name we . . . Isn’t a name going to be
such a limiting feature to such a majestic creature? Isn’t the name going to
deroot him from the sharpness of his green? We must decide that, my love.
Tomorrow night . . .
Orlin G. Oroschakoff grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria and attended the Academy
of Fine Arts in Sofia. Orlin defected from Bulgaria in 1983, escaping across
three borders by train and taking refuge at a United Nations camp in Belgrade.
Two months later, Orlin traveled to San Francisco with $5 in his pocket and
no knowledge of English. Orlin taught himself English and supported himself
through his artwork. Orlin now lives in the New York area.
132
NONFICTION
SUMMER 2012
133
LIVING THROUGH
PANTERA
by J.J. Anselmi
S
itting in our living room, watching TV, anxiety crawled into my throat when
my dad’s truck pulled into the driveway, gravel popping underneath his
truck’s tires. He slammed the front door. Wine glasses in the china cabinet,
next to the front door, rattled. He dropped his keys into the key basket. I knew that
he had another shitty day reading electric meters. I waited for him to walk into the
living room.
“Did you find a job today?” He shut off the TV. He filled the room.
“I was going to pick up a few applications,” I said, “but I ended up riding my
bike at the skate park.”
“Goddamnit, son. It’s always the same shit. Every day. You need to find a job
and start trying harder in school.” His harshness reminded me of the way my Godfearing grandpa talked to my dad and me.
I told him I didn’t want another bullshit job like the maintenance job I’d
been doing for my uncle. I had recently quit working for my dad’s brother, at the
hotel my grandpa built, which my uncle now ran. I worked there for two years.
Thoughts I wanted to escape were encapsulated in that hotel. Seeing how bluecollar labor affected my dad made me not want to get another job. But I didn’t say
any of this to him.
“What are you going to do for money?” His voice was louder.
“I’ll just get a paper route or work at McDonald’s or some shit.”
“That’s another thing. You need to clean up your language. I don’t want to
hear you cussing anymore.” He sighed. “You need to have a better attitude, son.”
Gravel laced his voice. Hearing the amount of cuss words that came out of his
mouth every day, it seemed ludicrous that he would tell me to stop cussing. Behind
his words, I heard the statement, “Do as I say, not as I do,” which his Catholic
mother had been saying to him, and me, for our entire lives. Hearing him repeat
her hypocritical words fanned my resentment. As with his father, my dad wouldn’t
admit that his mother had some serious flaws as a parent. Instead of directly interacting with my dad, I focused anger for my grandparents onto him.
“Fuck you, Dad.”
Like every other time I’d said this to my dad, he looked at me for a few
seconds, eyelids widening around his whites and blue irises. We screamed at each
other for a few more minutes.
“How can you give me life advice?” I asked. “You’re just a stoner that dropped
out of school.” Ever since I found out that my dad smoked pot, I saw his desire for
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me to build a productive life as another aspect of his hypocrisy. He wanted me to
follow a socially acceptable path, but, in my mind, he was a criminal. Not attempting to understand my dad’s drug use, I took it as a personal insult.
I got up from the chair, grabbed the keys to my car and left. I drove down a hill,
over a bridge with a brown, litter-strewn creek flowing underneath. Gnarled sagebrush jutted over creek banks. Eroding sandstone cliff faces surrounded gas stations,
bars, and trailers at the bottom of the hill. Thinking about living in Rock Springs,
Wyoming with my dad for another three years, anger flowed through my veins.
I needed to listen to Pantera.
I skipped The Great Southern Trendkill to its eighth track, “Living Through
Me.” As Phil Anselmo screamed, I broke your fucking mold, then threw away the
cast, in his guttural voice, intensified by Vinnie Paul’s driving drum rhythms, the
crunch of Dimebag’s guitar, and the rumble of Rex Brown’s bass, I felt like someone patted me on the shoulder, saying, “You fucking should hate your dad.”
I had been playing drums for four or five years. Listening to Vinnie’s technically ridiculous double bass drumming, combined with Phil’s lyrics—lyrics that
seemed to tap into my deepest emotions—and Dimebag Darrel’s shredding guitar,
I didn’t think I could ever make art on the same level as these guys. Pantera would
always be better than me at expressing my own emotions.
After driving west across vacuous plains on I-80 for about a half-hour, then
turning around, I wished I had somewhere to go besides my parents’ house. I
drove home, still listening to ... Trendkill. Inside, my dad and I ignored each other.
I went up to my room and shut the door.
Lying on my bed, I looked at a picture of Phil Anselmo on my wall. Black tattoos on white skin. Long hair. Beard. The trademark Phil Anselmo sneer. I looked
at myself in the mirror above my dresser, adjusted my hair so it looked more like
Phil’s from the picture—parted down the middle, gnarled split-ends on both sides.
I wondered when I would be able to grow more facial hair. Sixteen, I could only
grow a patchy goatee. I pictured tattoos covering my skinny arms. I wished Phil
Anselmo were my real father. I didn’t articulate it in this way, but, as I examine
my obsession with Pantera’s singer, and the rest of the band during my high school
years, it always comes back to that desire.
I had so many fights with my dad when I was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen,
fights that started and ended almost exactly like this one, they blur together in my
memory. We had the same fight once a week for three years.
I chose Phil Anselmo, and, to lesser extents, the other members of Pantera, to
fulfill my need for an admirable father figure, partly because of the space in each
band member’s projected image. Phil, Dime, Rex, and Vinnie: they seemed more
like fictional characters than real people. Although I consumed pictures, magazine
interviews, and video images of the band that spanned fifteen years, I didn’t see
any change in these guys. From my bedroom walls, each member of Pantera told
me I could understand and depend on him.
In most pictures, Phil looks pissed, his mouth twisted into the same scowl as
he shouts into a microphone. Dimebag Darrel, with the same dyed-red goatee,
camouflage shorts and maniacal grin, rips solos on his guitar. A black bandana
on his head in almost every picture, scraggly mutton chops sprouting out, Vinnie beats the shit out of his drums. Rex head-bangs, his long blond hair swirling
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around his bass. I imparted each character with the things I craved in a father
figure. I couldn’t change my dad, but I could shape these characters.
Pantera’s music made these characters real. Most of their songs are honest,
concentrated expressions of anger. Emotionally raw slow songs also appear on
their albums. I was privy to some of these guys’ real feelings.
These fictional father figures allowed me to avoid my complicated relationship with my dad. My interpretations of Pantera’s members, combined with their
aggressive music, told me it was OK to bypass complicated emotions, and just be
angry. At the time, I thought I was finding therapy through Pantera.
Phil Anselmo lived in a narcotic bubble, but, unlike my dad, he would never
get stoned with one of my classmates, Drew, on a hunting trip with one of his
buddies, Drew’s older cousin. If Phil was my dad, I wouldn’t have to deal with
most of my peers from high school—rumors travel very quickly in small towns
like Rock Springs—knowing and asking about my dad’s pot smoking after Drew
told anyone that would listen. Phil Anselmo often got so fucked up before Pantera
shows that, on stage, he would lie down, mumbling into a microphone, pissing on
his band mates’ art. But, in my mind, I wouldn’t have to deal with the resentment
and humiliation connected to my real father if Phil Anselmo was my dad.
I wouldn’t have to deal with these situations at all.
I wouldn’t think about my dad’s father calling him a failure because he
dropped out of college; because he would never be like his business-savvy older
brother (the uncle I worked for); because his mind worked in ways my grandpa
didn’t understand. My dad’s Catholic, status-obsessed mother, telling him that
he fried his brain doing LSD and smoking weed when he was a teenager, that he
would never amount to anything—these thoughts, always connected to my dad’s
need to encapsulate himself in a padded haze, thoughts I constantly tried to distance myself from, which arose every time kids at school asked about his drug use,
wouldn’t be a problem if my version of Phil Anselmo was my dad.
Trying to hate my dad seemed a lot easier than trying to understand him. His
hypocritical ranting; his weird hang-ups about not throwing things away, including food past the expiration date—if someone threw away moldy cheese, or
foul-smelling deli meat in our house, he would often pick these things out of the
trash and eat them—as well as rotting deer, elk, and antelope hides in our garage;
the many times he switched, very quickly, from a good mood, talking and laughing with me, my mom and sister, to being highly irritable: all these things should
have told me that my dad was fucked up beyond my understanding, that I needed
to examine him in more complex ways. I know now that hating him wasn’t doing
either of us any good, that I responded to my dad in the same way as his parents.
But Phil Anselmo and the rest of Pantera told me that this was the best, the only
way to approach my relationship with my dad.
***
At a concert in Ohio, a man named Nathan Gale climbed on stage, during a
song, and shot Dimebag Darrel, after which a police officer shot and killed Gale.
I was a freshman in college. Thinking about Dimebag’s death, I felt like someone
killed one of my family members. I didn’t understand how Gale could justify the
murder. It seemed incomprehensible. I’ve come to realize Nathan Gale and I had
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more than a few things in common.
In the patchy biographical information I’ve read about him, there are a few
narrative strains. Most speculation about why he murdered Dimebag seems to
stem from two facts: Nathan Gale was a rabid Pantera fan. Nathan Gale was
fucking crazy. Reading about him, I catch myself trying to latch onto details that
differentiate him from me. Those two facts are always at the core, though. When I
think about him in these ways, it becomes a lot harder to tell myself that we were
not at all alike.
Nathan Gale conversed with Pantera, in his head, on a daily basis; so did I.
Gale told his friends and family that Pantera planned to come to his high school
and play a concert, just for him. When I was in high school, I daydreamed about
moving to New Orleans, where Phil Anselmo lived. The city’s metal scene would
embrace me immediately. Phil Anselmo and I would become close friends. We
might start a band.
During my adolescence, guns and physical violence terrified me—an angry
kid, but I never gave serious thought to killing anyone. Still, in Gale’s obsessive
fanaticism, which perpetuates a disconnection from reality, I see a lot of similarity between him and myself when I was an obsessive Pantera fan. Viewing my
Pantera worship through this lens is terrifying.
We live in a world that encourages obsessive idol worship. In the cult of
Pantera worship, this encouragement is taken to a grotesque extreme.
During the summer when I was seventeen, Superjoint Ritual, the band Phil
Anselmo formed after Pantera broke up, played at Ozzfest. Pantera had already
broken up when I became an obsessive fan for the band, so seeing the members’
post-Pantera bands would be the only way I would get to see them in concert.
The idea of seeing Phil in a live setting seemed incredible. Unlike Dimebag and
Vinnie, whose post-Pantera music I didn’t like, I loved all of Phil’s music after
Pantera. He still seemed to know exactly how I felt. I bought a ticket, drove six
hours to Denver to see the show.
After a long morning of metal-core bands, cigarette and weed smoke emanating
from stinky dudes and scantily clad women, I learned that Superjoint Ritual was
doing a meet-and-greet. I just had to buy one of their CDs or DVDs to get a pass
to meet the band. Holding Superjoint’s A Lethal Dose of American Hatred, trying
to decide which part of the CD booklet I wanted the band to sign, I waited in line.
I talked to some of the other Pantera fanatics. Talking to devout Pantera fans, you
don’t hear “Dimebag Darrell Abbott,” “Vinnie Paul Abbott,” “Rex Robert Brown,”
or “Philip H. Anselmo” as they reference band members. You hear “Dime,” “Vinnie,” “Rex,” and “Phil.” We talked about band members like they were family.
Some fans had the letters ‘CFH’ etched into their skin, usually in black ink. In
a circular shape, the CFH logo has become Pantera’s emblem—it stands for Cowboys from Hell, which is the first album Pantera recorded with Phil Anselmo. The
tattoo is a rite of passage for “true” Pantera fans. At other metal concerts, I also
met several people with CFH tattoos. A month or so after this show, I paid a tattoo
artist sixty-five dollars to engrave Pantera’s logo into my skin. As the needle shot
burning jolts into my wrist bones, regret lodged in my throat, which I smothered
by thinking about the ways people would react to my tattoo. Anyone who saw my
tattoo would know, right away, who I was.
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I needed to prove my life-long loyalty to the band by branding myself with
their emblem. I needed to gain membership into the cult of “true” Pantera fans. I
needed an absolute to counter my unstable relationship with my dad. Although a
lot of rock and metal fans are outspokenly anti-religious—I was a glaring example
of this—they seek acceptance into groups that serve the same purposes as organized religion.
Like The Grateful Dead, Slipknot, Led Zeppelin, Slayer and The Beatles, there
is a weird, cultish rabidness about a lot of Pantera fans. Being a rabid fan for a band,
you find an instant sense of community with other rabid fans. Creepily, this community takes on an illusory, familial quality. Like myself, people who gravitate toward
obsessive fandom are often social outcasts. Adding to angst from my home life, I
felt isolated in my high school, where boys were pansies if we didn’t love hunting,
fishing, and team sports. To counter isolation, it’s understandable that people would
want to join a group whose members, without even having to meet each other, feel
connected. But this fandom, and the community that comes with it, fucks people up.
Trying to fill the void of isolation with fictional relationships and superficial selfperception destroys your ability to see the complex, human aspects in real people.
Music reaches people on intimate levels, leading to feelings of identification
with musicians. As with any art, music provides a concentrated, pure form of emotional expression. Combined with narrative information about artists, this expression often creates the illusion of one-on-one interaction. But there is an important
difference between artistic communication and personal, one-on-one communication that I didn’t see when I was a Pantera fanatic. Nathan Gale didn’t see this
difference, either. This differentiation separates obsessive fans of music, movies,
visual art, television, and any other type of art, from people who know that the
snippets of emotion and communication in art only illustrate a portion of an artist’s
personality. The idea of personally knowing artists is also supported by the cultural
assumption that we are our stories, which perpetuates the illusion of knowing after
we consume biographical narratives. When you think you can know people, entirely, through narrative, image, and the art they create, you start to ignore aspects
of people you can only experience in person.
My favorite artists seemed to occupy an elevated realm. Instead of digesting
how fucked up everyone is, it can be easier to believe in an ideal of flawlessness. This view of artists also stems from self-worthlessness, from the idea that
only a select, elite group of people can make art. Once you believe these ideas,
idol worship is only a small jump away. Seeing anyone through such an unrealistic lens intensifies disconnections from reality. Trying to replace complicated,
hard-to-digest real relationships with convenient fictional ones, like I did with my
relationship with my dad, can help fool yourself into believing that you can escape
inter-personal problems.
I didn’t see holes in my logic while enveloped in this culture. Waiting in line, I
was just excited to meet people I felt connected to.
Superjoint Ritual also consisted of Jimmy Bower from Eyehategod, a band I
was just getting into, and Hank Williams III. But Phil Anselmo was my reason for
waiting. I finally saw him. Like an original painting you have only seen in prints,
an aura surrounded him. I wasn’t nervous because I felt like I had already met him.
Shaking his hand, I said, “Everything you do is fucking genius, man.”
He held his fist in the air, as if we were fighting for the same political cause,
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and said, “Thank you, brother.”
Watching him live, later that evening, a distinct sense of drifting outside my
body overwhelmed me. I snuck past security guards to get into the VIP section,
just a few feet away from the stage. Through my eyes, Phil Anselmo and the rest
of the band looked like hybrids of Claymation and cartoon characters.
Waves of music tingled my spine.
I was nineteen when Nathan Gale shot Dimebag Darrell at a Damageplan
show. I saw Dimebag a few weeks before the shooting, in Denver, where I attended college, on the same tour. Seeing Damageplan—a generic, radio-friendly
metal band that Dimebag and his brother, Vinnie Paul, formed after Pantera
broke up—would probably be my only chance to see the Abbott brothers in a live
setting. I saw Phil Anselmo with Superjoint Ritual a year-and-a-half before this
Damageplan show.
As Damageplan played their first few songs, giddy pulses tickled my stomach.
Soon, though, after the novelty of seeing Dimebag and Vinnie in person wore off,
I started to feel pity for the former Pantera members. Dimebag gained a lot of
weight since the last pictures I had seen of him. He had the same long, curly hair.
The same dyed-red goatee. The same cargo shorts and sleeveless shirt. He acted
out the same on-stage antics—taking shots, throwing cups of whiskey into the
crowd, and head-banging wildly—from all the Pantera videos I’d seen. That night,
I understood for the first time that Dimebag imprisoned himself in his own image.
Hearing Damageplan’s music before this show, I thought they were trying
to pick up where Pantera left off, but in a watered-down way. Seeing the band
live told me that Dime and Vinnie couldn’t move beyond the past. The singer,
Pat Lachman, with a shaved head, tattoos, and tough-guy persona, aped Phil
Anselmo’s on-stage moves, which became more obvious when the band played a
few Pantera songs, “Becoming,” and one or two others. Thinking that they were
smothering themselves with their own shadows, I felt disloyal, like I was betraying
Dime and Vinnie.
Later in the set, Dimebag, Vinnie, and Damageplan’s bass player, Bob Kakaha,
came on stage without Lachman. Dime played the opening riff from Ted Nugent’s
classic, “Stranglehold.” After the drums and bass established a solid, grooving
rhythm, Dimebag launched into a series of epic solos. The pity I felt, seeing Dime
and Vinnie as locked within their own caricatures, dissipated as I saw flashes of
two brothers who fucking loved to jam. Sibling musicians can attain a groove that
borders on psychic interconnection. Feeling this connection between Dimebag and
Vinnie Paul is a memory I still value.
A few weeks later, Nathan Gale shot and killed Dimebag Darrell in Ohio. I will
never really know who Nathan Gale was, and I don’t necessarily want to. But I
think I understand him on a few levels, as a result of my own experiences.
Nathan Gale worshipped Dimebag Darrell. Like me, Gale needed to dismantle
his idol worship before he could understand himself, and, by extension, the people
around him. I think he knew this on some submerged level, but felt like he couldn’t
articulate it. Like he wasn’t valuable enough to articulate it. He thought Dimebag
was endowed with a God-like ability to create art. Like me with Phil Anselmo,
Nathan Gale didn’t distinguish between his fictionalized version of Dimebag, and
the person behind the caricature. Instead of searching within himself, challenging
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his assumptions that Dimebag had some super-human ability to create art, it made
sense to Gale that, in order to eradicate God from his mind, he had to actually kill
Dimebag Darrell. One of the only real differences I can articulate between Nathan
Gale and myself is that, when I started to realize that idolizing Pantera was fucking
up my ability to see reality, I knew that eradicating idol worship from my life had
very little to do with the people I idolized. I realized that my problems lied within
the ways I constructed my identity. My struggle to dismantle God has been violent,
too, although in ways very different from Nathan Gale’s.
Shortly after Dimebag’s death, Phil Anselmo posted a video on his website,
of himself, sitting at a table, ranting. Over and over, he says that he will not let
Dimebag’s death keep him from making music. Before shutting off the camera,
he says, “You have not seen the last of Philip H. Anselmo.” I saw a stark contrast
between my version of Phil Anselmo and this narcissistic dip-shit, realizing that, in
my fandom, I never wanted to know who he really is.
Seeing Damageplan, and watching this video were catalysts for a long, difficult
process of self-examination. A process of trying to eradicate idol worship from my
life. A process I am still trying to deal with.
***
Dedicating myself to making art—writing and playing drums on a more
serious level—has helped me dismantle the idea that my favorite artists are more
capable of expressing my own emotions. Consuming other people’s art can lead
us to our own feelings, but I understand now that we need to create our own art to
examine and understand those feelings. Writing nonfiction and playing music have
helped me understand myself, and my dad, in deeper ways. My dad is fucked up. I
think it’s fair to say he is crazy. But we are all fucked up and crazy.
I still catch myself latching onto the idea that my dad’s back-story can fully
explain what it’s like to be around him. Never examining his parents’ flaws,
I think, has damaged him in a lot of ways. To him, they had solid reasons for
the verbal abuse they subjected him to, which engrained worthlessness into his
self-perception. While this narrative does explain some things about him, a gap
remains between understanding my dad and actually being around him. Reaching
toward an understanding of my dad has been about admitting that I might never
fully understand him. Trying to deal with some of his idiosyncrasies in person—
his mood-snaps; how pissed he gets when I criticize his parents; seeing pain and
escape written into his stoned, blood-shot eyes—is probably always going to be
difficult. But I still have to attempt to understand him. I had to stop worshipping
other artists to reconcile myself to these truths.
Exploring my own feelings, and expressing myself artistically, have helped
me understand that my dad destroyed his body—two herniated discs in his back
and bad knees—through physical labor, for my mom, sister, and me; that, during
the screaming matches we had when I was in high school, his underlying message
was, I want you to have a better life than me.
J.J. Anselmi is a nonfiction MFA student at CSU Fresno. His work has
appeared in Jackson Hole Review, Connotation Press, and Pulp Metal Magazine.
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LOVE LIKE A LION
by Melanie L. Henderson
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid
and durable happiness there is in our lives. —C.S. Lewis
W
hat I really wanted was a lion, but I wasn’t unreasonable. I was willing
to start small.
Even when I was shorter than a yardstick, I was happiest with some small,
beating heart to care for. On picnics and camping trips I’d gather a nursery
of ladybugs or find a puddle of tadpoles to tend. But live creatures weren’t
always available, so I was committed to caring for my personal zoo of stuffed
animals, a diverse group I arranged around myself in bed at night—every last
bear, hedgehog and duck—so no one would feel left out. Nested down with my
animal family, we could all sleep well.
There were also two actual, living cats in the house, but my attempts to
include them in my Benetton-of-the-animal-kingdom bed routinely failed.
Knowing that cats didn’t respond well to forcible containment didn’t stop me
from trying. The unlucky feline I’d dragged under the covers to squeeze against
my chest would wait, taut and alert, for the slightest reduction in hug-pressure—
then spring away as if I’d delayed the pursuit of a gazelle. I didn’t blame the
cats; they were grown-ups and probably didn’t get scared at night. Or maybe
they couldn’t get any sleep surrounded by an almost complete depiction of the
food chain, brightly rendered in plush.
The cats were pleasant and pretty, and like other cats before and since,
these ones found us—so I never understood why people bought kittens from a
pet store. In my experience, cats were free and readily available. The eagerness
of cats to impose their presence was a gesture I took as a great compliment, but
my parents took feline impositions somewhat differently. To me, a cat arriving
on the doorstep was a gentle visitor who hoped only to share a meal with a kind
face. To Mom and Dad, a cat arriving on the doorstep would probably drop a
litter of illegitimate kittens in that one, odd, humanly inaccessible nook behind
the garage cabinets. Again.
I lavished affection on our cats, unselfconsciously aware that while I
adored them, they tolerated me. I suspected that if cats could talk, they probably
wouldn’t. Cats communicate so effectively with so little exertion; how many
times had I thoughtlessly barged into a room (already claimed by a cat) and
inadvertently disturbed him? He’d stop licking something just long enough to
register distaste for the intrusion and to deliver a look that says, You again?
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The harder I tried to envelop the cats with maternal doting, the more they
avoided me—but their indifference didn’t stifle my affection. I didn’t want to
give up. I hadn’t figured out yet if I was failing to make my true devotion clear,
or failing to earn their affection in kind. It didn’t occur to me that cats may not
share all of my needs.
As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.
—Ellen Perry Berkeley
House cats were nice, but patently unoriginal. Everybody had cats. Some
people even had cats without knowing they had cats. But I had dreams of one
day raising my own lion cub, and I blame my first-grade teacher: she read The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to our enraptured class. When the book ended
and we had to exit the land of Narnia, I was so upset that I startled myself. I had
been drawing pictures of Aslan in Narnia, pictures of Aslan as a baby, pictures
of other lions and lionesses, and even sketching the bunk bed where my own
lion would one day sleep beneath me. I rallied some classmates and led the
charge to persuade our teacher to read the book to us again—Please-pleasepleaaase, Miss Taylor?—Miss Taylor did. God bless Miss Taylors everywhere.
In the meantime, I knew I needed to practice being a pet owner. I learned all
I could about cats and thought I’d like to be a veterinarian when I grow up. By
the third grade I was certain I was ready for a new animal stewardship, but the
trick was convincing my parents and I had my work cut out for me there: I was
a born animal lover with a mother and a father who both denied responsibility
for the trait. Dad grew up on a farm and believed humans and beasts should
only share living space as a last resort—when your four-legged food would
otherwise freeze to death. Mom grew up in a large European city and attended
private school; she could appreciate “elegant” animals, like horses and jaguars
(and some housecats—as long as they were pretty and thus aesthetically selfjustifying). And then there was me: a child who wept the tears of a widow to see
a squirrel flattened on the highway.
Dad always described me as bright, energetic, and a joy. That said, I’m
told I could also be a bright, energetic, intense, demanding kid. Whatever. At
one point, under the heady influence of Beverly Cleary, I somehow persuaded
my parents to let me have two white mice. (Dad didn’t understand why he was
buying mice from a pet store; in his experience, mice were free and readily
available.) Dad didn’t leave the store until he had confirmed beyond a shadow of
a doubt that both mice were female—and thus incapable of spawning—as long
as neither escaped to find a rogue rodent boyfriend.
One of the mice had two brown spots on her back, so I named her
“Cookies.” Naturally, then, the albino one would be “Cream.” My resourceful
big brother helped me make a sophisticated tunnel maze for the mice out of
empty toilet paper tubes and masking tape. This was intended to entertain the
mice, but it really entertained us. We’d lay the maze on the floor and put each
mouse into one of several tunnel entrances, then listen intently to their tiny
scurrying claws against the brown paperboard to try to guess where each mouse
would emerge. Occasionally, a mouse boycotted the event and refused to run
through the tunnels, just parking herself somewhere inside the darkened expanse
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of the maze. The only way to get her out was to shake her loose—a maneuver
that invariably peppered the brown, camouflage-like carpet with mouse turds
(which alarms me now and would have horrified Mom at the time, so we
thoughtfully protected her from this information). Eventually, given enough
shaking and spinning, the mouse was ejected from the maze—which I imagined
was a lot like getting shot out of a cannon. I hoped she loved it, but I felt guilty
for not providing a helmet.
But the foremost achievement of my mouse-keeping career is how I
successfully trained them—so I believed and so I professed—to stay on top of
my dresser when I let them out of their cage to play. After hours of catching
falling mice and returning them to the dresser top, they actually seemed
to recognize and avoid the edge. I never contemplated the possibility that
raising free-range mice in my bedroom might be ill-advised. Dad feared that
Cookies and Cream would escape in search of illicit sex, but those fears proved
unfounded. Instead, my delusions of being the Mouse Whisperer ended abruptly
and tragically, because—well, we had cats.
After indulging a nine year-old rage (what kind of cat just takes a mouse
who is minding her own business from a little girl’s bedroom?), I calmed down
enough to confront the cat, who naturally denied all wrongdoing. From that day
on, he pretended to relish my neglect.
I observed a brief mourning period, followed by a not-so-brief period of
staggering self-doubt. This was undeniable evidence of colossally misguided
caretaking on my part. Maybe I wasn’t the sort of person who should be trusted
with cats—or mice. Or even ladybugs or tadpoles. But my dad explained that the
cat was just doing what cats do, which I understood to mean, “ . . . So when the
time comes for you to have your own lion, it would be best to not have mice at
the same time.” My longing to be the caretaker of a lion cub returned with fresh
vigor.
I still nested down at bedtime with my plush menagerie, and I (sometimes)
still tried to snuggle with resistant (lying, criminal, sadistic) cats. But I only got
truly excited about the future when I had dreamed about my lion so long and so
hard that I was bold enough to say it out loud: It was time to turn my wish for
lion cub ownership into a serious quest.
I was in the fourth grade, but I knew convincing my parents would require
some preliminary research. My mother raised us not to settle for ignorance.
You’re surrounded by books. You want to know something? Go find out. So I
did. I hunted down everything I could find about humans raising lion cubs—and
also tiger and bear cubs—from infancy. In case a lion cub was even harder to get
than I feared, I it was smart to have a plan B and C.
I read every book I could find on wild animals in my elementary school
library and saved my money to build my personal library from the book order
flyers they sent home from school—titles like The Gentle Jungle and Born
Free. My bedroom was wallpapered with animal posters, wild and domestic. I
watched Grizzly Adams and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom every week. I
was actively, conscientiously fortifying my knowledge base, just like I’d been
taught. It was important to have all the facts before I brought home a cute little
fur ball that would become a muscled, 600-pound predator.
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I shared what I was learning with my parents. Their heads bobbed above
their dinner plates with polite interest to hear that a lioness gives birth to up to
four cubs at one time though a litter of two is most common. But whenever I
tried to direct the discussion to specifics (there is an animal trainer in California
that I saw on TV who has a lioness that just had cubs—can we call him?), Mom
or Dad would hijack the conversation with peripheral concerns, like wondering
if there is a city ordinance that says you can’t have a pet carnivore the size of a
sofa if you live within a mile of an elementary school.
But I was tenacious. Dad was a born teacher who planned to burst my
bubble gently. His strategy was to offer questions to inspire my own deductive
reasoning, certain that I’d conclude on my own that raising a baby lion was
impractical. Have you ever seen this done? I mean, here, in our town? I admitted
I hadn’t. Nobody I knew was that interesting. Then I asked if he wanted me to
limit my goals in life to just those things I had seen others do. He was briefly
speechless. Maybe even a little proud.
But Dad was tenacious, too. Lions are hunters, honey. Does it worry you
that they’ve been known to kill people? I presented hard data illustrating that it
is possible for giant cats to cohabit peaceably with humans, if raised correctly
from infancy. (An assertion hotly contested by most experts, but I dismissed
all faithless critics—regardless of credentials.) Wouldn’t a lion be expensive to
feed? I knew this was a legitimate point, so I was already saving my money, and
I’d found out that lions raised in captivity don’t have to eat nearly as much zebra
or wildebeests as they do on the savannah. So that’s good news.
Dad was undaunted. How would a lion living in a house get all the exercise
he needs? I was glad he asked: I would ride my lion to school every day—
maybe even taking the long way, just for fun—after which my lion would walk
straight back home. Because, of course, that is what I will have trained him
to do. I had perfect confidence in my ability to train wild animals. Previous
misadventures of the Mouse Whisperer notwithstanding.
Dad’s approach, while admirably Socratic, was ineffective because it
always left me with a scrap of hope. His questions were simply obstacles an
astute teacher was challenging me to overcome, and I was knocking every pitch
out of the park.
Conversely, Mom was a born anti-sugar-coater. Her strategy was to smother
hope before the seed ever germinated. When I told her I wanted to raise a
lion cub, her exact, un-minced words were, “Don’t be ridiculous.” She often
reminded me that when I’m the mom, I can have all the lions and monkeys and
baboons I want in my own house. And I silently rolled my eyes, because—
hellooo—who would put carnivores and primates under the same roof? (It had
escaped my bright, energetic awareness that I, of course, am also a primate.)
It was hard not to get discouraged when my constant appeals went
unheeded, no matter how aggressive. Almost daily, Dad would chuckle politely
and wave me off, saying he needs a few minutes to decompress after work. The
brush-off was disconcerting, but the chuckle was insulting. I was dead serious.
It’s not like I thought I would die if I didn’t get a unicorn with pink ribbons in its
mane. In my case, chuckling was unaccountably rude.
I had to face the facts: I had made zero progress in my pursuit of a lion
cub. It was time to re-evaluate my strategy. I identified and grudgingly admitted
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my rookie mistake: my primary target was just too ambitious. (What was I
thinking? My parents would never agree to drive all the way to California just to
pick up a pet!) I cursed my wasted time. What I needed to do was close the gap
between a housecat and a lion with some intermediate steps. I needed a pet that
was natural to our locale, something manageable and low-profile—something
that didn’t raise questions about city ordinances. And I desperately wanted my
next adventure in pet ownership to succeed. I wanted proof that I was not, deep
down, an inadvertent animal-killer by way of mismanagement.
After careful consideration, I embraced the first step in a multi-year protocol
for getting a lion cub: I would pursue a dog. My research commenced at once.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. —Mark Twain
At the library, I checked out a fat, authoritative volume on dogs. I loved
the syrupy introduction touting the near-sainthood of the canine, applauding
the noble species’ unconditional love and loyalty. The book contained a
pictorial directory of all the recognized breeds with a detailed description of
size, proportion, substance, ideal physical characteristics, temperament, life
expectancy, and need for exercise and companionship. It also indicated the
country of origin—where the breed had “emerged.”
I was awe-struck. To my nine year-old sensibilities, the magnificent
“emergence” of wondrous dog varieties was miraculous—like the emergence of
butterflies—except with dogs, it was even more astonishing: no stray mongrel
puppy ever curled into a cocoon and emerged weeks later as a vibrant golden
retriever.
I had formulated my own theory, and I believed it was sound: I had seen a
mother dog who had puppies that didn’t look like her at all; in fact, the puppies
in her litter barely even looked like each other. It stood to reason that once in
a magical while, a very special new dog would arrive amid a litter of ordinary
puppies. If providence was smiling, somebody who was smart and qualified—a
specially certified dog-ologist—would be present to witness the birth, examine
the exceptional puppy, and declare to the world: Huzzah! A new breed has
emerged!
One evening during my season of dog research, my dad noticed there was
some sort of documentary on TV that had something to do with dogs. Maybe I’d
enjoy it, he said. I readied my pencil and a notebook and parked in front of the
TV, innocent of the fact that my notion of the beauty of spontaneous dog breed
emergence was about to be blown into disturbing little fragments. (I should
mention that my shock was not due to ignorance of the basic birds and bees; my
mother’s supreme value was education, her favorite setting was “matter-of-fact,”
and her pet peeve was “silly hang-ups.” Hence, when she says that at age four, I
told my pediatrician how his reproductive anatomy differs from my own, I have
to believe her. This may be the line where “precocious” crosses into “yikes,” but
let’s return to the documentary.)
In simplest terms, the documentary told the story of how a particular breed
of dog—I don’t recall which—originated overseas in the laboratory of a certain
down-on-his-luck dog-ologist, a man with a name I couldn’t pronounce, and
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when he brought the breed to the United States, he enjoyed a brief season of
celebrity in the American dog world. The end.
However, the way I experienced the documentary was something entirely
different. My education that night plays in my memory more like this:
Sometime after World War II, a disenfranchised former military surgeon
from an Eastern Bloc country took up shop with his exiled assistant, a former
nuclear physicist (whose name documentarians agreed to conceal) in a muddy,
goat-herding border village, where they labored for decades to roll the dice just
right in a twisted game of genetic Yahtzee. Tirelessly mating various existing
breeds, they kept at their sordid game of mix-n-match in pursuit of combinations
that yielded offspring that not only survived but were free of major heart,
neurological, and musculoskeletal defects, were aesthetically pleasing, had
a temperament conducive to human companionship—and most of all, could
viably reproduce puppies of approximately the same physical health and mental
capacity for at least three generations. As long as a dog wasn’t born missing his
kidneys or his frontal cortex, these creeps in their dirty lab coats were in the gold
zone. They went to America, got rich, yada yada. The end.
I was horrified. Aghast didn’t begin to cover it.
My giant book of dogs lost all its charm and the magnificent African
cat looked all the more wholesome: creatures not easily manipulated by the
machinations of greedy humans deserved respect. I looked at a picture of two
frolicking, fox-faced Pomeranians and wondered, What did you guys used to
be, before people like that messed with your family? I studied a glossy Irish
setter and was comforted to think he looked less “invented.” Maybe his family
had been around for a long time already. When I came to a picture of a smiling
veterinarian in a white lab coat, I snorted and snapped the page over. Wipe that
smirk off your face, Mister. Dog-ologists can’t be trusted.
I became a self-appointed, indignant, canine-ethics cop. Suddenly,
everywhere I looked, suspicious-looking people were lording over dogs. On the
way to school, I was sure the number of paunchy, retired men walking fluffy
dogs they obviously didn’t choose themselves had doubled, but I wasn’t sure
what it meant. I noticed more Labradors confined to the backs of pickup trucks
and more Malteses pleading for their release from Lincoln Town Cars. There
were more fashionistas exploiting Chihuahuas and Yorkies in their Chanel bags
and more boxers jogging alongside suspiciously muscled masters than I’d ever
seen before.
I paid abnormally close attention, but soon, I had to stop. I had to admit
it: with a couple rare and explainable exceptions, almost no dog exhibited any
discernible sign of depression. No dog was bent by the dark, sober aura that
marks a survivor of an oppressive regime; no dog groaned beneath the twisted
burden of the muddy border village’s legacy. In fact, almost every dog—
regardless of breed—was inexplicably happy. Maybe as long as a dog was fed,
loved, and got to ride in a car once in a while, he didn’t care where he came
from. I was denied my justification for being repulsed at how dogs got here.
But the good news was that I could in good conscience start dog shopping
again. I embraced it.
I admired the pair of glossy, black Scottish terriers that passed the house
on their red leashes every morning. I loved to pet the neighbor’s dachshund;
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its fawn-colored coat was so short and soft it was like petting a baby deer. I
was smitten by how consistently my teacher’s golden retriever acted like it was
Christmas morning, every single time the woman stepped into view. I wanted a
dog to do that, to be in love with me. I fell in love with so many different kinds
and sizes and colors of dogs that I decided it might not matter what I ended up
with. This, as things turned out, would be a good thing.
I was relentless in my pursuit of dog ownership until my parents caved—
which was, fortuitously, just in time for my eleventh birthday. I was allowed
to adopt a three year-old, pedigreed, overweight, male toy poodle. He became
available when a friend’s grandmother found out her new condo organization
didn’t allow poodles. It’s possible that Dad was persuaded partly by the dog’s
obesity and the attendant likelihood of a heart condition; a pet might be more
attractive if its days were numbered. But the greater appeal, I’m sure, was
getting the dog for free.
His name was Taco, and I was ecstatic. He was much smaller than a lion, of
course. To a lion, a poodle is popcorn. But my dream was coming true: a poodle
today, maybe a lion cub tomorrow. In home video shot on my 11th birthday, I’m
joyfully cuddling an unkempt, moppish creature, unsanitarily close to a birthday
cake. I was beaming as if I’d given birth to him myself.
My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet. —Edith Wharton
Taco came with a few quirks: spoiled by his first owner’s cooking, he
turned his nose up at actual dog food. When he lifted a leg to mark a tree, he’d
lift and point both rear feet high, walking in a graceful handstand worthy of the
Cirque du Soleil. But his most memorable quality was his most troublesome
one: Taco had the unmitigated libido of a dozen randy sailors. (Today, I confess
to some shameless hyperbole on this point. In truth, it was more like a half
dozen.)
Nobody escaped Taco’s affections entirely, but he had a particular affinity
for one special person—a shy and excruciatingly proper man who had visited
our home faithfully once a month as a visitor from church. Taco must have
known he’d see his crush only rarely, because he always gave this gentleman his
most earnest attention.
I remember the strain in my father’s voice as he called for me to “get
the dog out of here, please . . . quickly . . . please . . .” as I rushed to extricate
Taco’s trembling, iron grip from a woolen pant leg and isolate him behind a
closed door—denying his sexual freedom. This “rush-extricate-isolate” process
would recur when a younger child unwittingly opened the door and unwittingly
released the hound, who would run full-bore again for the object of his
affections.
The visitor never stayed long. He’d deliver a brief message, bestow a plate
of brownies or lemon bars, and head for the door. We’d thank him and apologize
for the dog, say our goodbyes, and apologize for the dog again. After the door
closed, we’d try to put the whole debacle out of our minds by relaxing with
a treat and a glass of milk in the kitchen. The dog relaxed on the patio with a
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cigarette.
It was only a matter of time before Dad had had enough of the canine
libertine. He made a call to the nearby university’s animal sciences program
and offered up the dog to be neutered in student practice. (The greater appeal,
I suspect, was getting the dog neutered for free.) I wasn’t eager for Taco to go
under the knife, but I couldn’t deny the need. The amorous madness had to stop.
On a rainy autumn day, Taco the Wonder Stud became Taco the Poodle Eunuch.
It was heartbreaking to watch a decommissioned lothario struggle with
anatomical confusion. For at least a month, all of Taco’s licking activity was
broken up by long, pensive pauses, some ear scratching, then a return to lickpause-lick. After passing through a brief depression, it was clear that although
the testosterone was gone, most of the raw aggression remained. Taco would
muster all his ferocity to try to chase off anyone but me, with or without just
cause, including my harmless little sisters. A misguided attempt to recapture
his stolen poodle manhood, perhaps. His selective decency was ungentlemanly,
and I wasn’t proud of that. But as my devoted little buddy, he lived up to all
the syrupy hype about a dog’s unconditional love and loyalty. He terrified the
neighbor boy who liked to tease me, he acted like it was Christmas every time
I came home from school, he slept on my bed (and in my bed), and when I
cuddled him, he snuggled me back. I loved the crazy little beast and he loved
me. This, I congratulated myself, was pet ownership success.
I never got to raise my lion cub, but I never stopped wanting to. When I
had to give an oral report on a non-fiction book of my choice in seventh grade,
I chose Born Free, the story of Joy and George Adamson, game wardens in
Kenya in the ‘50s who raised an orphaned lioness cub they named Elsa. (The
pictures were the best part. An image search of “Elsa the lioness” will leave
anyone smitten.) My hands shook as I stood in front of my English class, but
I soldiered through the summary, cautiously pleased that my voice wasn’t
betraying my nerves. Yet. When I told about Joy and George returning Elsa to
the wild, my composure collapsed. I hated that part of the book; it killed me to
imagine climbing back into the jeep and driving away. But as I pushed back my
embarrassed tears and finished my report, I caught a glimpse—just a wink—of
understanding that part. It was much, much harder and braver to love Elsa the
way she needed to be loved. They gave Elsa what she needed, not what they
wanted her to need.
As for my own relationship success with a socially maladjusted poodle, it
really is pure happiness when all your love and affection come back to you as
naturally as breathing in and out—even if that love is just from a pet. But the
chance that I could get affection back from my pets wasn’t the reason I loved
them. The ladybugs were beautiful and fascinating; I loved them just to love
them. And children, at least for a while, are loyal to the mission of loving, even
when there is nothing to gain by it. Maybe joyful surrender to that purpose is
what victory really feels like.
I never did win the housecats over completely. Being rejected by an animal
is disappointing, but it doesn’t have the power to batter and drain the heart.
Animals probably taught me some resilience before life delivered the kinds of
things that do batter and drain. Even being denied my beloved lion probably
helped. The most dangerous thing in the world is not something wild, like a lion.
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It is the fear that stretches like an invisible wire between two people, sensitive
to every vibration—even the whisper of air that draws back when an almostgesture of affection is reconsidered and withheld. No lion can tear a person
up like that invisible wire. It’s harder and braver, but even acts of fear can be
reversed and turned into festivals of resilience. Maybe I learned that in Narnia.
What I really want is to love like a lion. But I’m not unreasonable. I’m
willing to start small.
Melanie L. Henderson stubbornly avoids narrowing her creative focus,
opting to write in every direction she loves: Creative non-fiction is a delight, she
is working on a fictional memoir project for her creative writing Master’s thesis,
she is presently co-writer on two different film projects (the one for a cable
network begins shooting August 2012), and she is finishing a children’s book
specifically commissioned to feature in the cable film.
Henderson lives in Utah with her husband Dave, her three sons, dozens of
fish, and one small, socially maladjusted dog.
She is still hopeful that the cat will come back.
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FROM THE ASHES
by S.M.B.
A
ll that survives of my grandpa is fragments. His body was cremated and
his ashes hidden in a heart-shaped box at my grandma’s house. If you
shook the box, it wouldn’t rattle. There isn’t enough of him left. And
so it is with what I remember of him. What memories I have are not enough
to complete a picture of him in my mind, so I try to sift through what little
evidence there is to understand who he was and why I never knew him. I’ve had
to sift through the ashes to find reason, meaning, and healing.
—
My first memory of my Grandpa turns out to be from the last time he
came to visit. Employed by the US Forest Service, he brought with him a large
Smokey the Bear doll. I was so excited—the bear was almost as tall as I was!
But after he left, Mom took the bear away. “You can’t play with it,” she said.
Before she wrapped it in garbage bags and hid it in the attic, I stole the doll’s
wooden shovel. It was a prop; the first time I tried digging with it in the yard, the
wooden blade snapped off. I glued it back onto the handle and hid it, afraid my
mom would see it and punish me for keeping it. Later, Mom found the shovel in
the cupboard and asked what it was from. I pretended I didn’t know.
—
vFirefighters visit my elementary school. They distribute stickers, rulers,
and comic books. I open mine and see a picture: Smokey the Bear holds a
replica of the shovel I broke. He demonstrates burying the ashes left over from a
small campfire. Only you can prevent forest fires!
Nothing could have prevented Mount St. Helens from erupting.
—
An earthquake shook the mountain awake the morning of May 18th, 1980.
It had slept restlessly and then suddenly, violently, it roared wide awake. In a fit
of ash, flames, and smoke, fifty-seven lives were taken by Mount St. Helens. My
mom, living in Logan, Utah, heard about it first from a friend because her own
newspaper was stolen for the first and only time. A landscape was swallowed in
ash and choked, smothered, for many barren years before the land forgave long
enough to grant new life.
—
I’m six years old. It’s after my bedtime but I’m hungry. I come downstairs
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for a snack and see the kitchen light already on. My mom sits at the kitchen
table, a pencil in hand and a paper placed before her. “What are you doing up
so late?” I ask. She jumps. She always jerks when startled; her eyes fly wide
open with an expression of terror, and it scares me every time. I’m careful not
to sneak up on her, but sometimes I still catch her unawares. I walk over and
rest my head on her shoulder. She tells me not to read what she is writing; it is
a private letter. I remind her that I can’t read and ask why she is writing, then.
“Burning bridges,” she says.
I didn’t see anything on fire. If I had recognized words, I would have known
she was writing to Grandpa. She accused him of abusing her and her sister and
warned him to never come near me again.
—
A few years after the mountain’s eruption, my mom returned to the
Northwest to work for the US Forest Service at the Mount St. Helen’s visitor’s
center. She told international tourists of the destruction caused by the eruption,
of the ash that buried the region roundabout. The ravaged land attracted
thousands who came to see the collapsed mountain; none stayed to plant trees.
Volcanic eruptions were sensationalized as fantastic natural feats; the rape of the
land was overlooked or forgotten in the excitement of smoke and lava. For the
next decade, the tragedy of Mount St. Helen’s was buried beneath the artificial
ashes of baking soda and vinegar that fizzled from science fair volcanoes.
—
I’m a sophomore in high school. A tree falls into our backyard, destroying
the neighbor’s fence and narrowly missing our house. There is a thud and the
earth trembles. We think a car has hit the telephone pole again, then look out
the window and see the cloud of dust. The air is thick with it. Dad opens the
back door and steps onto a carpet of needles. I see the culprit lying prostrate, a
ponderosa pine over sixty feet tall; heavy, it would have destroyed my bedroom
had it tipped any nearer. I cross the flattened fence into the neighbor’s yard and
examine the tree’s roots. The roots are dead. The neighbors offer to call a tree
removal service. Mom says she will call her brother. He, too, has worked for the
U.S. Forest Service and is skilled at tree removal.
My uncle doesn’t come alone. “Stay inside,” my mom tells me. I go to the
window above the stairs and look outside. There is an old man standing beside
my uncle. His hair is all but gone; brown spots heavily decorate his scalp. An ear
is pierced. He turns his head in my direction and I duck.
Later, I go outside. My uncle and the stranger have left. The tree is now a
bunch of logs. The air is thick with the scent of pine: tree blood oozes from the
freshly split kindling. The wood shavings are soft, the splintered chunks bright.
I will not hear this tree creak anymore or watch it lean dangerously towards my
bedroom window. I am relieved it is gone.
—
On a bookshelf I found a new copy of The Grimm Fairy Tales. The spine
creaked as I opened it, perhaps for the first time anyone ever had. I flipped
through the pages and paused to examine a particularly grotesque illustration
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of a woman whose back was hunched. Her long hair hung tangled and grizzled
past her warty elbows. “A witch,” the caption read. A note fell from between the
storybook pages and I picked it up. It was written by Grandpa; the book was a
gift for my mom’s fortieth birthday. He reminded her that he used to read these
stories to her as a child, though he didn’t remember the illustrations being so
creepy. The note is signed: “Love, Dad.”
—
Mom takes me to visit Grandpa once when he is dying. We drive to his
house in Portland, Oregon. The scenic route is no longer fully scenic: the B&B
Complex Fires destroyed many trees between the town of Sisters and Detroit
Reservoir only a few years before. The blackened pines are bare and sparse;
smoke still seems to rise from them, and ashes shift with the occasional sigh
of mountain air. Deep in the Cascades there is a cross on one of these trees
that miraculously escaped the flames. We pass through the scorched area and
eventually merge onto I-5, northbound.
Portland has many bridges. Mom clenches her teeth when we drive over
them. Unlike the straight, short bridges crossing narrow rivers at home, these
ones are long and curved, winding over one another. I wonder what she fears
from them. She has never been afraid of heights, yet as we navigate our way
through the city I see anxiety grip her whenever another great concrete monolith
rises before us. I wish she wasn’t afraid and I wish I knew how to help her.
Instead, I silently pray she’ll keep her eyes open and that we’ll make it across.
We reach the house. Grandpa lies on a couch, weak with cancer and
incapable of moving beyond turning his head. He tells me to keep my distance
because he’s undergone radiation therapy. The warning is unnecessary because
I wouldn’t have approached him. We do not stay long. He does not have long.
Though we have never spoken, there is nothing to say. The silence lengthens.
Finally, he breaks it, barking across the room: “Any boyfriends?”
—
I did not see my grandpa again. On my next visit, his ashes were concealed
in a white, heart-shaped box that promised to be all-natural. Attached
was a consoling poem, a packet of wildflower seeds, and instructions: the
decomposable heart was to be buried somewhere over which the seeds were to
be scattered. Grandma shook her head. “Your grandpa never let flowers grow
in life; he’s not going to start now.” She carried the box with her from room to
room and was still holding it when we said goodbye.
—
Returning from my third year of college on a flight from Salt Lake City to
Portland, my plane slips through deceptively serene clouds and enters a violent
storm. The Irish woman sitting beside me clutches my arm and tells me, don’t
panic! We jolt roughly as we pierce the thick, black clouds. Suddenly, Mount
Hood jumps out on the left. We sweep close enough to see individual branches
on the trees. The mountain’s peak is white and imposing, a deadly invitation
beckoning climbers to a final, fatal ascent. Their bodies will be recovered in
more seasonable weather. Klickitat legend tells that Mount Hood was once a
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lover of Mount St. Helens, but as a result of the destruction caused by a battle
with a bitter rival, the two were transformed into mountains to be kept forever
apart. Mount Hood still raises his head in pride. I look around but cannot see
what’s left of Mount St. Helens through the gloom. Then I remember that her
head has exploded.
I wait by the baggage claim, wondering if my aunt and grandma will
remember that I’m coming and whether or not I’ll recognize them if they come
to pick me up. When they don’t appear, I start digging through my backpack
in search of my cell phone. I hear someone call my name. I look up. Limping
towards me is the witch from Grandpa’s fairy tale book, hunched with crooked
shoulders and a spikey halo of grizzled white hair sticking out from her wildly
swinging braid: my aunt. She is reminiscent of Gothmog, the deformed orc
lieutenant from the film version of Tolkien’s The Return of the King. Close
behind her trails a hobbit—my grandmother—with her thick white hair curled
and her glasses (they are new) askance. They stop before me and we stand,
staring at each other. I’m considering whether it’d be appropriate to hug them
when my grandma turns to my aunt, angry. “I wanted to see her come off the
plane!” I begin to explain the impossibility of this due to increased airport
security since the last time she flew—pre-9/11—but she grabs my arm and tugs
me towards the exit. My aunt escorts me on the other side. “We’re not letting
you escape,” she cackles.
—
My grandpa never let my aunt get away. I suspect that her physique and
social eccentricities are the results of the verbal, physical and possibly sexual
abuse she endured since she was a child. Grandma was powerless against
Grandpa’s temper and cowered beneath his oppressive thumb since marrying
him over fifty years before. It was a miracle my mom had the courage to leave.
So when my aunt mutters under her breath, I try not to think of her as a witch
casting spells. I laugh at her cynical words because I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t know what to do.
—
In grandma’s house there is a mountain of chocolate spilling from the
pantry and piled to the ceiling. Hansel and Gretel would have picked this house
over the one made of gingerbread. All kinds of candy are heaped haphazardly
from the ground up. I spot seasonal treats alongside year-round brands, some
with names I’ve never heard of. When my aunt stalks past, the floor shakes:
the candies threaten an avalanche but decide against it, settling into a more
dispersed pile. “Help yourself,” Grandma says, materializing by my elbow like
a phantom. I see many of the bags are already open, as though a single piece
of chocolate has been sampled from each. I check dates on the packages and
discover that many of these chocolates are expired. “Your grandfather never did
let me have sweet things,” Grandma sniffs. She appraises her dragon’s horde,
then tugs at a half-buried bag until it comes free. She opens it, selects a piece of
chocolate, unwraps it, and pops it into her mouth. She closes her eyes, savoring
it. My aunt stumps towards us and nudges me with her elbow.
“That’s why we have so much now,” she grins. “Dad’s gone, heh heh heh.”
153
—
My aunt is at her secretarial job for the U.S. Forest Service. Grandma is
ashamed the yard is such a mess. “I always wanted a garden,” she says. We sit
for a while in the dirty lawn chairs before she can’t take it anymore. She musters
the strength to stand and takes a rusty shovel left leaning against the tool shed. I
watch her walk out to the dying plum tree, and, with effort, root up a dandelion.
The grass is carpeted with them. The work of raising a second weed leaves
her hot and panting for breath. “It’s too warm out,” she says. “I’m tired.” She
abandons the shovel against the tree and goes inside. After a minute, I rise and go
to the shovel. It’s heavier than I thought it would be. The wood is rough against
my hands. I turn to a bright yellow flower and hope grandpa’s ashes aren’t buried
beneath it. I dig up the dandelion. And another. And another. Soon there is a pile
of dandelions and patches of dirt surround the tree, cankerous scars left from the
weeds’ removal. I don’t stop until all of the dandelions are in piles. My grandma
comes back outside, carrying lemonade for both of us. Her eyes are sparkling.
—
My mom arrives to take me home, but first she wants to show me Mount
St. Helens. The four of us—Mom, my grandma, my aunt, and I—leave late in
the morning. The air is warm and we drive with the windows down. Grandma
shouts so we can hear her words, but they float away before reaching our ears.
We follow the Columbia River in a north-west direction. The scenery is lush and
leafy. We miss our exit, but the next six will all take us where we are going.
Brief cloudbursts wash the trees bright, glassy green, and the world feels
new. The mountain approaches gradually; with each bend in the road it swells
more into sight. We pass stands of trees, each section perhaps a mile long, in
various stages of growth. Signs indicating how recently they were planted flash
by. The land is oddly artificial in its manufactured renewal.
We stop at a gift shop. Armed with my grandpa’s bank account, Grandma
unloads $700 on a carved black bear nativity set (one of the three kings is
missing) and jewelry made of ash from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
The stones are green, several shades grimmer than the pines we passed on the
road. Grandma asks if I want one and I say no. I don’t want to bring the disaster
home with me. I’ve seen enough evidence of violent explosions to go without a
reminder. She insists on buying me something, and I choose the cheapest item I
can find. Grandpa might’ve liked that.
We return to the car. Clouds roll in more thickly overhead, threatening
further rain and hiding the sun. What remains of the mountain’s peak is obscured
by thunderheads. Still we climb higher and higher into the surrounding,
deepening hills. A river winds far below the road, etching a path through the
jagged landscape. I trace it with my eyes and then I notice the ash. The river is a
ribbon in a dark streak of ash, still remaining thirty years since that fateful spring
morning. The scars run deep, hidden and less noticeable. Mount St. Helens is
lopsided like my aunt; the trees are slowly regrowing, like my grandma with her
newfound independence; but the river below ... I think of Mom.
We come to a bridge, long and straight and daunting. Mom’s hands whiten
on the wheel as she slows to half the recommended speed. I sense her panic
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and offer to drive. She shakes her head and we start to cross. My aunt laughs
evilly from the back seat at my mom’s terror: she has known worse. I coax my
mom gently across the bridge, distracting her from the gorge below, a river still
blackened by the fiery wrath of the mountain. The fragments seemingly all fall
together. Grandpa’s legacy is one of fear and damage, but it’s not too late. The
scars below are healing, and I realize that even if I couldn’t have prevented the
fires or the eruptions or the abuse, I can stop their effects. I rest my hand gently
on my mom’s shoulder and she nods, acknowledging my support, her eyes fixed
on the bridge ahead. I hope to cross many more with her.
S.M.B. recently graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in
English. She is enjoying a lazy summer full of reading novels and attempting to
write one of her own. “From the Ashes” is her first published work. She hopes
her aunt never discovers that she was described as an orc.
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FERTILITY
by Annette Renee
W
hen I was seventeen, I portrayed a shepherd in my family’s annual
nativity play. This was a landmark event, as it marked my first
departure from the role of Mary. In girlhood, I relished the opportunity
to don the blue sheet and stuff a baby-doll up my shirt, annually testing the role of
mother. I took my role very seriously — the timing of the birth scene was crucial,
but careful costuming made all the difference. There were only seven words in
St. Luke’s script, six of them monosyllabic, in which to achieve the birth with
minimal evidence of the baby’s incorrect passage from “womb” to life. Probably
my earliest reenactments took more the form of Mary rather ostentatiously lifting
her shirt and allowing Baby Jesus to simply drop free, but my later efforts were
more successful. My task didn’t end here though; once born, the newborn had to
be securely wrapped in a brown towel, and laid in the expectant wicker basket.
In my childhood mind, there was a single correct way to wrap the baby, which I
suppose I picked up from watching my mother wrap my baby brother — one of
many performances I learned from her. In any case, “Mary brought forth her first
born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger” is a
lot for a girl of any age to act out with adequate degrees of dramatic timing, but I
think I generally managed to pull it off.
But not on my seventeenth Christmas. Even then I didn’t question the logic
dictating that I, the only daughter among six unruly sons, should play Mary. Yet
I couldn’t help feeling I was missing out on the fun of our annual productions:
playing different roles. Our male cast included, in varying years: Joseph, three
wise men, the angel Gabriel, assorted concourses of heavenly hosts, the innkeeper,
Zacharias, John the Baptist, Baby John the Baptist, an assortment of shepherds
(including one year an Arab sheik) and, on one notable occasion, a wine-guzzling
King Herod. My brothers seemed free to explore almost a new identity every
year, while I was perpetually limited to a single role. Thus, at seventeen I rebelled
against the type casting I had previously been complicit in and made my break as a
shepherd. The following year I resumed the role of Mary.
*****
In the early months of marriage I crochet the blanket begun in singledom,
humming as I go, making of it a labor of love. I weave a mellifluous web
of lullaby, cotton fiber, and preemptive affection for the as yet physically
unconceived infant who might be a boy and might look like his father, and might
become everything I hope as I fashion for him a blue baby blanket, intertwining
in every stitch images, thoughts, suggestions of the man he might become, as
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though wrapping him in a blanket of my own design might transfer to him the
roles I hope he will take up in life. If he ever comes.
*****
Infertility is a reproductive disease. It is not necessarily permanent. It is not
exclusively a woman’s condition. Infertility affects 7.3 million couples in the
United States, roughly 12 percent of reproductive-age men and women. There
are many causes, 85% of which are treatable if not curable, 20% of which are
inexplicable though perhaps treatable. A couple is generally defined as infertile
and admitted to a specialist for examination after one year of consistent fruitless
attempts to conceive a child. Infertility is emotionally draining, conjuring
feelings of failure, fear, isolation, loss, despair, relentless gnawing emptiness.
I first met an infertile woman when I was twelve. Her sorrow eclipsed my
embryonic hopes for a future family, tainted them with fear. Of all the problems
I might face in life, please not infertility, I prayed.
*****
Isaac was his mother’s only child, conceived after years of bareness. As
such, Sarah took great pains to secure a suitable wife for him. Rebekah proved
her suitability by hauling gallons of water from a hole in the ground for a man
and his camel. I don’t suppose a pretty face detracted any from her value though
her primary worth was perhaps in supporting her husband, and she doubly
established her worth by producing male twins who each fathered nations.
Fortunately my husband is one of six children. His parents don’t expect nations.
I make their son happy, most of the time. My suitability thus far is secure.
*****
A wedding ring is a configuration of metal and rock, but mine is also an
anchor to the past, an heirloom for the future, an eternal round of womanhood.
My ring once embraced my mother’s finger but broke a few years into her
marriage, before my parents had money to repair it. Later the money was
accessible, but the ring no longer suited my mother’s finger, swollen with
age, and she replaced it with a newer band. When she first detected the scent
of love on my breath, she had the ring repaired with gold from my deceased
grandmother’s simple wedding band, “just in case” I might find a use for it. Now
it is truly mine, given by my mother to my brother who passed it to my husband
who passed it, four days later, to me. The tiniest of accessories, it nonetheless
becomes the only costume I never remove and never replace.
*****
If the world is a stage, my brothers have been among the most dedicated
stage directors and costume designers I’ve ever had. Not content with Halloween
costumes and my annual appearance as Mary, they undertook to create for me
such roles as Chiquita Banana Queen, Mini-Me, Sock-Haired Lady, and Troll
Baby. My parents expressed displeasure when they happened upon my eldest
brother placing the last few blue banana stickers (acquired by my father in
Panama on a two year religious mission) on my diaper clad body, but by the
time I came staggering out of my bedroom one Sunday evening a couple years
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later appareled in an outlandish assortment of clothes with a pair of tights on my
head, they didn’t bat an eyelash. They proved equally stalwart when my brothers
dressed me in Dad’s work clothes, and they only took a small step back when I
appeared on the front porch at the age of three, hair adorned with twigs and clad
in nothing but leaves and mud.
The role of “sister” to many brothers thus proved so fully developed
that I had no difficulty acting it out — apart from all five (eventually six)
brothers neglecting to write me a script. This unfortunate lack evoked a deal of
resentment in my young self, but somehow no one ever linked my reactionary
nature to a frustration over not getting any good lines in the perpetual play
sometimes referred to as life. I gradually, mostly, ceased my outbursts and fell
into the incommunicative state sometimes referred to as shy. When I began
preschool, I communicated with the teacher by way of my best friend who
served as interpreter. I whispered my improvised lines in her ear and she relayed
to the teacher.
I have since come to understand that many people besides myself are
encouraged to supply their own lines in the perpetual play, and that a reasonable
percentage become generally adept at doing so. I have never been among
that percentage. I perhaps spent too much time in early years trying to write
a script for myself such that I never learned how to perform it. Or perhaps
the vital switchboard that links thoughts to speech was damaged from the
start. I derive innumerable joys from stringing words together on a page, but
if I alter the procedure to a form of speech, the thoughts, sound and whole
when they departed the Central Nervous Station, inevitably arrive at the oral
platform suffering from agoraphobia and mild schizophrenia. If writing initially
perpetuated this condition, the condition now perpetuates my dependence on
writing as the truest means of communication.
*****
My mother was delighted when I began to demonstrate a leftist leaning
— that is, a left-handed leaning. My mother is left-handed, as was her mother.
We share a special bond, the three of us, linked by direct genetic inheritance
of a relatively rare trait. My mother though is pure left-handed, while I am
imperfectly so. I write left-handed, eat left-handed, chop and stir left-handed,
crochet left-handed. Everything else I do right-handed — throwing a ball,
brushing my hair, cutting with scissors — I can’t even operate left-handed
scissors. Perhaps this is why I exhibit only half the creativity expected of rightbrained people.
My mind is not a constant swirl of lovely creative thoughts. My days are
not consumed with escaping the box in which so many think. I do however
enjoy crafting beautiful sentences with my left hand, inventing recipes with my
left hand, shaping webs of yarn with my left hand. My left hand, wearing the
wedding band inherited from my mother and grandmother, is my instrument of
choice as I identify my womanhood.
*****
My left-handed grandmother was a great cook, before she got old and
stopped cooking. She made dinner from scratch every night, timed the cooking
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perfectly so everything always came out hot and ready at the same time, and her
pies were works of art. I know this because my mother told me so. My mother
also told me how my grandmother didn’t teach her how to cook. The kitchen
was off limits while her mother was cooking — she needed everything to
come out perfectly in some part of her imperfect life, and my mother underfoot
and trying to help cook would have meant sacrificing perfection. Perhaps my
grandmother might have taught me to cook, if her mind had not succumbed so
early to Alzheimer’s disease. My mother though took great pains to teach me
and each of my brothers to cook, though it resulted in many a meal missing
an ingredient or two, and once pies baked with salt-infested sugar. What my
mother never told me is whether or not she struggled with wishing to copy her
mother’s cooking, even as she feared copying her mother’s mothering, and if she
struggled how she found resolution.
*****
During my engagement, “it’s ruined” became my signature phrase, uttered
at least once in the preparation and consumption of every meal I cooked for
my fiancé. This phrase was among the handful of possessions I carried into
marriage, much to the dismay of my husband who soon wearied of building
me up after every “ruined” meal. Though I felt I was falling short of my own
standards, I suppose I truly struggled to reach my mother’s culinary standards
even as she struggled to achieve her mother’s.
In time, “it’s ruined” adapted itself for all aspects of married life – washing
dishes, cleaning rooms, folding laundry, being a supportive wife, becoming a
mother. “I’m a failure” was more the form by our third month of marriage. The
problem, you see, was this: My husband’s copy of the script for “My Married
Life” called for a wife who shared household responsibilities with him. Mine
called for a martyr of a wife who agreeably took on 100% of all household
duties. If I did everything, he felt slothful and superfluous. If he “had to” help
out, I felt inadequate and failed. But at least I no longer proclaimed every meal
“ruined,” finding instead delight in the creation process itself, even with its
imperfections.
*****
In the twilight of childhood, I try yet again to copy my mother, my every
nerve spellbound by her hands, performing impossible feats. They weave a
seeming enchanted web as her left index finger and thumb flex, as though
propelling pen across paper, catching another loop of yarn on the tiny crook
of the crochet hook and drawing it through the latest in a row of similar loops
supported by her right hand, simple in themselves, yet part of an intricate
network of delicate lacey blanket. I’m quite certain web-weaver is one role I’ll
never successfully take on. She assures me it’s perfectly acceptable and even
expected that I need to rip out rows of stitching to correct a dropped stitch. But
she never drops stitches, never makes mistakes.
“Not like that, Annette, let your left hand do the work,” she corrects for the
umpteenth time.
I long ago surpassed my average ten-year-old attention span, so eager am I
to learn the subtle art of crocheting, believing it “what women do.” None of my
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friends do it. Their mothers don’t do it. Their grandmothers might do it — I’ve
never met them. My grandmother does it. My great aunt does it. My mother does
it; therefore, “women” crochet. Ten is really too young to want to be a woman,
but I am too young to realize this.
*****
Five years earlier, the air rushes past my face, hands, chest as I leap
superhumanly through the air, my skintight star-spangled blue and red leotard
providing minimal wind resistance – crucial in my haste to save the puppy
from the incarnation of evil undertaking to kidnap it… Dressed in a USA print
swimsuit, my five-year-old self lands on all fours having flung herself from her
wild-rocking-horse — which she rode at maximum speed — in order to mimic
the leap of Wonder Woman. I don’t suppose that little girl had any notion of
the gendering in which she was participating, recognizing only an admirable
female super hero, but she later grew up to be a bigger girl, even daring to take
on the title “woman” at which time the notion of being a “wonder woman”
became troubling. Her mother seemed a wonder woman, but her mother stayed
home with seven children while the real Wonder Woman had a career. Could
she manage both, children and a career? Surely this was the real definition of a
wonder woman? Eventually she determined “wonder woman” a mere cultural
construction (refusing to acknowledge the influence of such in her life) and
decided she didn’t need to be one after all, didn’t even want to be one if it meant
short-changing her greatest dream – motherhood.
*****
Mother Eve was instructed to “be fruitful and multiply” and she complied,
seemingly capable of willing a condition of fruitfulness and recurring pregnancy
in her eagerness to fulfill her primary role as mother of the race of men. Her
costuming for this role — a coat of skins — was incidentally rather different
than that of her first role of disgraced co-inhabiter of paradise, which comprised
the scanty coverage of fig leaves. For some reason the fallen woman attired in
fig leaves is the more popularly perpetuated image, though the vast majority of
her life was spent in animal skins bearing and rearing children.
*****
In eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a writer, a mother, and a wife.
I hoped I could start liking boys, thought I mostly loved babies, and knew I
absolutely adored stringing words together. English teachers along the way
suggested I might not be entirely lacking in talent in the word-stringing area, and
I found myself six years later with a husband and no baby enrolled in my first
creative writing class midway through my English major. I cried a lot, fumed a
lot, despaired a lot, nearly threw my notebook at the professor once, and came
away more devoted than ever to the sacred art of writing.
*****
There is something innate in every little girl which desperately wants
to assert itself in regards to babies and small animals, or any manufactured
depiction thereof. It asserted itself in me with gusto when I first beheld the
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wrinkly ten pound bundle destined to become my exasperating six-foot-plus
little brother. I was barely halfway through kindergarten and already battling
emotions beyond my comprehension and control. No matter how many times
Mom remonstrated, “the poor boy doesn’t need two mothers” — no matter how
many times I agreed with her — I continued to mother my baby brother. He
seemed in such desperate need of love and help and I needed so desperately to
love and help someone, desired perhaps to have a say in how he would turn out,
to engage early in the greatest creation process by which a reproductive cell
splits and becomes a man, but a man defined by influences, one of which I might
undertake to be.
*****
My first-year-of-college roommates may have thought me odd, perhaps
merely naïve. Certainly they must have known the impracticality of crocheting,
though I ostensibly did not. I knew only that none of them crocheted – one more
trait to add to the many qualities of “woman” lacking or differing in them from
the model I’d constructed for myself in lieu of a proper script. Even if I had
recognized the excessive cost of endless skeins of yarn, I doubt I could have
relinquished the ecstasy of creation, coming as close to making something of
nothing as is ever possible under Physics’ illustrious regime. The first loop of
yarn, a blanket in embryo, became two, then four, doubling and tripling at a
speed at once painfully slow and dizzyingly swift, growing miraculously into a
fully matured and functional baby blanket. I suppose a scarf or hat would have
been quicker to crochet, an adult sized afghan more pragmatic, but always I
crocheted baby blankets. The first was ostensibly meant for a niece, the second
for a nephew — her brother — but neither made it to their intended recipients.
Somehow I always miscalculated the rate at which babies and blankets grow: the
former always too fast, the latter too slow in the confines of procrastination. I can’t
recall now where or how the first blanket left my company (though I know from
its present absence from my life that it did), but the second followed me through
the remaining semesters of college — through courtship, engagement, and on into
marriage.
I can see it now as I write, piled, somewhat haphazardly, on the single shelf
in the closet I share with my husband. The mass of baby blue yarn (you’ll recall it
was meant for a nephew) drapes over the edge in some places, as though longing
to escape its discarded fate. Bits are less pristine than in happier times, times
when this web of baby blue yarn had a clear purpose in life, when there was an
impending newborn definitely waiting to fill its intricate knots. I suppose even as I
crocheted it in my apartment of singlehood I knew the blanket would never go to
my nephew, sensed perhaps — or merely wondered whether — it might someday
find its way to a child of my own making, a literal piece of myself.
*****
The program cover for “My Married Life” features a photo of my
mother and father on their first wedding anniversary. My mother’s hair is
the improbable shade of crayola burnt orange, her entire face exhausted but
beaming. My father stands to her left, drawing her close with his arm wrapped
around her shoulder, his hair an inverted jagged-edged black bowl from which
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a wedge is entirely missing above the right eye (the best free haircut my mother
could procure at that point). He too is smiling, and both are clearly in love as
they face the camera lens head-on. Nestled securely between them, a month old
dazed and slack-jawed baby boy — my brother — demands acknowledgement
of his place in my parents’ young marriage. The image becomes my model for
married life, the ideal I naively expect to achieve as I sign the marriage contract.
*****
In the stifling humidity of our Pennsylvania kitchen, my next eldest brother
and I stand balanced precariously on the seat of a kitchen chair – not quite
fitting, but each determined not to risk the other getting to dump two consecutive
ingredients into the mixing bowl while he or I drag a second chair from the table
to the counter at which our mother mixes a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough.
At eight, he is three years older than I, yet we are mutually entranced by the magic
of food creation, our young imaginations captivated by the process which allows
raw ingredients to coalesce into anything as divine as a warm gooey cookie. He
wears a chef’s hat of which I am undeniably jealous; however, I console myself
with the knowledge that I will grow to be a woman, and women don’t need chef’s
hats because cooking is part of their job description.
*****
My life consists of a variety of metaphoric dramatic roles, some of which
are thrust upon me, others of which I read through, consider, and — if fortunate
enough to be cast in the part — either adopt or discard, and a very few of which
I create for myself. Of the roles for which I’ve read, my favorite to act is my
husband’s wife. It is of all the roles the one in which I had at once the most
and least say in contracting — choosing to commit to marriage but subject to
his mutual commitment; choosing to accept his love for me but helpless before
the sway of mine for him. Love is one of those tricky abstract concepts that
refuses to surrender to mere words. Words are the indelible strands of crystalline
yarn with which we weave intricate patterns of narrative, communication,
information, essays. The entire world of economics, politics, diplomacy, society,
runs on words. They capture the whirling of the cosmos and the churning of the
bowels of Mother Earth. Words perpetually loop back on themselves, forging
connections and expanding at once ever outward and ever inward. Words
capture meaning, shatter prejudices, confine the laws of physics. Love eats
words for breakfast.
It might eat them for lunch and dinner too, according to one ubiquitous
avowal of poetry, if it didn’t prefer a more delectable source of nourishment:
human relationships in all their delicious complexities, at once sweet, sour,
bitter, spicy, savory, and every possible variant among, between, within, or
beyond these. This complexity and more shone out from my husband’s eyes
when he first beheld the fruits of my long labors to procure the perfect bridal
costume, suitable to convey me between the stages of girlhood and wifehood.
Incidentally, “stage” refers here to the theatrical variant, though it might just
as easily and accurately signify a stretch of life. Perhaps the many metaphors
preceding my own that link theater to life informed the use of the word “stage”
to describe transient steps in our progression from child to adult, or perhaps
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the life terminology informed the naming of the theatrical platform. Then
again, perhaps the apt dual applications of the single arrangement of letters are
essentially unrelated and are yet another fortuitous offering from the obliging
universe that has so mercifully aligned itself to my essay in an attempt to elevate
it, not unlike a mother aligning herself to the needs of her child in order to
elevate and shape him.
*****
My grandmother supplied the money that bought my very first baby-doll,
gifted to me on my first birthday. The doll cost ten dollars, and her prepackaged
name was Love Doll. Incredibly, the name stuck — possibly due to my relative
lack of comprehensible say in the matter — and Love Doll (incidentally the very
doll annually cast as Baby Jesus) became the bedraggled companion of all my
childhood adventures until I was no longer a child and my mother and I packed
her up in the attic. On the whole, I think I was a good mother to my hybrid plastic
and plush infant, mimicking feeding, bathing, diaper changing, and of course
rocking to sleep. In one respect, however, I proved a woeful mother. I adored my
five big brothers and trusted them implicitly — a bit too much as it happened.
When one of them taught me to body slam my doll, I took it as a wise parenting
procedure which he had the courtesy to pass on to me. Never mind that my parents
certainly did not practice such on myself (though I was certainly deserving at
times) nor on any of my (perhaps deserving) siblings: beloved brother spoke, and
I, ever obedient to the will of my stage director, performed – zealously.
*****
A few weeks before entering high school, I browse the endless rows of book
spines in the local library, wondering again as I have so many times before what
my name will look like in print. Will my mother and grandmother beam with pride
at the sight? Will my brothers refer to me as “their sister, the writer”? And my
beloved English teachers – will they read my book and connect the printed name
beneath the title (and perhaps a certain familiarity in the writing) to their former
student? Like so many times before, I can almost picture the spine of my book
peeping out between its fellows on the shelf until, unlike any time previous, I link
my plans for marriage and authorship and realize I’ve no idea where my book will
sit — I’ve no idea what my name will be. I’ve yet to encounter a woman who kept
her “maiden name” in marriage, thus the identity crisis crashes upon me as two
intended roles inexorably, needlessly, clash. In coming years I learn to consider
both surname options in context of publication (and wifehood), but remain
conflicted in which created identity to perpetuate in print.
*****
“Is it ready now?”
“I think — I’m not sure — maybe?”
“We don’t want to burn it…”
“Okay, go for it.”
Without further ado I hoist the stockpot off the burner and upside down
over the well greased cookie sheet, letting the amber gloop ripple and ooze into
its polygonal mold. My husband applies force where necessary, driving the last
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of the viscous toffee from its refuge at the bottom of the pot. As I spread it into
the corners of the pan I know something is wrong — it’s not malleable enough,
tearing apart in multiple places. The creation process hasn’t come full circle
after all, and we apparently have some version of brittle caramel instead of the
toffee we anticipated. Yet the time invested pays off in other ways — for almost
the first time in our marriage, my husband and I cooked together, our separate
roles and diverse wife expectations reconciling themselves into a cohesive scene
in “My Married Life.” The candy is odd, but we eat it in complementary silence,
wearing complimentary smiles.
*****
Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel struggled to find fulfillment as a woman
without children — a wife without children. The children of other women
perhaps dredged up bitterness in her soul, perhaps anger, perhaps sorrow, or a
toxic potion of all three. She ultimately produced two sons, though the birth of
the latter abruptly ended her life. I suppose in a sense, her longing for children
literally sealed her fate, yet she found joy in Joseph before dying in childbirth
with Benjamin. For Joseph, she wove a “coat of many colors,” and in so
enrobing her son, cast on him a heritage, an identity, and a prophetic destiny not
unlike that of Joseph’s descendent, Moses. Moses’ mother, Jochebed, wrapped
him in a blanket imbued with properties of destiny, identity, and protection by
virtue of a mother’s love – the selfsame love that might someday enable me to
wrap my son in similar inheritances if only I am cast in that role.
Jacob’s less beloved wife Leah produced many children but perhaps
struggled all the same to find fulfillment as a woman, desiring greater love
from Jacob who would always harbor greater affection for her younger
sister. Her situation, though undesirable, offers a modicum of sanity to my
beleaguered soul as I recognize the full felicity of a devoted husband, even in
the face of impending infertility which is not, after all, exclusively a woman’s
condition, and might prove treatable if we reach the year mark and meet with
a specialist. Cool logic cuts through my desperate fears of unfulfilled potential
and interminable longing and restores a partial belief in me as an independent
capable woman shaped by more than motherhood, elevated by multiple forms
of creation. I continue to struggle establishing my own role as wife, but my
husband and I gradually abandon our stubborn readings of incompatible scripts
for wife gleaned from a variety of (ir)reputable sources and turn increasingly to
adlibbing which proves by far best suited to negotiating our unique complexities.
*****
At nineteen and in my first year of college, my experience with young
children is somewhat limited. My eighteen-month-old niece starts crying, again,
when I presumptuously attempt to transition her from playing to eating, giving
me a look of such scathing indignation that I cannot fail to realize I’m really
quite inept with children. She is my first experience with a real live toddler since
my younger brother exited the terrible twos when I was only seven years old,
and continually resists my efforts to charm her with my doll-gained mothering
expertise. Children, you see, don’t believe in scripts — or rather, they want a
new script and a new role for themselves every five minutes, complete with an
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entire new cast of characters, all of which are to be played by their caretaker —
in this case, me. I ought to be adept by now at filling twelve roles at once, but I
struggle all the same at filling one.
*****
My first year of marriage is six months gone, fruitful in so many ways but
not in the way I most desire: we still haven’t conceived a child. The almostfinished blanket still sits on the shelf, taunting me. I long to rip out rows and
rows of stitching, unraveling the past of unfulfilled desires, obliterating the
tormenting hope that “this month might be the one, the one when he finally
comes.” But somehow I can’t. Somehow, it would be too much like unraveling
myself, and my mother, who wove so much of herself into me even as I once
undertook to weave myself into my longed-for-son. My mother never taught
me the secret destructive art of unraveling self; nevertheless, I innately sense
the cost of doing so and know I cannot undertake such a procedure — cannot
risk unraveling m mother in me, nor bear losing my only present link to my son.
Tormenting, relentless as the hope is, I cannot relinquish it. Tears accomplish
quite a bit: aching head, swollen nose, burning eyes, blotchy face, externalizing
of mucus, hiccups. Unfortunately none of these are particularly productive
beyond the age of six. I’m left feeling empty, defeated, betrayed by my own
body. But I don’t unravel the blanket.
*****
Kneading is infinitely cathartic. Each press of the palm expels a little
more anger, a little more heartache, a little more joy, a little more love from a
tumultuous soul into the semi-live mass of flour and water and tiny “fertile”
organisms. The continual expansion of a mound of rising dough, the work of
metabolizing yeast, perhaps suggests to the mind the expansion of a woman’s
womb as fertile cells divide and grow within, both types of swelling domes
beautiful representations of the creation process, dwelling securely within the
domain of womanhood.
*****
Women compromise half of their school days identity when they adopt their
husbands’ last name, and relinquish the remaining half when their firstborn baby
utters “ma-ma.” Nevertheless, I wait with mounting impatience in the plastic
seat of dubious sanitation in the social security office for the chance to finally
take on my husband’s name and thus entwine our lives linguistically together —
the final and greatest push to oneness. With greater impatience I await the day I
can call my husband “daddy” and thus impress upon him impending parenthood.
These identities, wife and mother, are two of the only three roles I have desired
since eighth grade. The first I have eagerly adopted, the second stubbornly
denies itself to me, and the third — the third is the role I wrote for myself, the
role I literally write for myself even as I compose this essay.
*****
If my husband’s wife is my favorite role to play, caretaker certainly follows
closely behind — perhaps at once the most trying and most rewarding role I’ve
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ever filled and one I long to resume with motherhood. My grandmother lived in
my parents’ converted garage for five long years in which time I undertook every
Saturday to temporarily relieve my mother of the burden of caring for her mother
with Alzheimer’s. I delivered dentures to, prepared bran cereal for, administered
medicine to, and bathed in hot water, and dressed in fresh clothes the woman
who often forgot my name and sometimes forgot she was my grandma. Every
evening I again brought her pills, helped her dress for bed, and hoped she wouldn’t
fight me when I requested the return of her dentures for the purpose of soaking
them in mysterious blue foam. It’s not the avenue I would ever have chosen by
which to learn compassion, patience, a soft voice, and a gentle touch, but once
traveled I cannot imagine a more beautiful road to the same end than one in which
a granddaughter nurtures her grandmother. Even in the midst of perpetually
overcast memories, my grandmother’s experiential wisdom shone through my
stained glass eyes into the cathedral of my soul, revealing networks of unexplored
passages, chambers, and chapels in which my un-costumed self might freely exist,
in sanctuary from the demands of stage directors, script writers, costume and set
designers, and the ever critical audience.
*****
My husband understands for the first time, as I don his mother’s apron at his
family’s home in the golden days of our courtship, that if he proceeds with his
plans to marry me, I will come to fill the same role in our home that his mother
plays in the home of his childhood — understands, perhaps, that I will make of
our sons something akin to what his mother made of him. The costume pleases
him, and he proposes a month later, in my childhood home.
*****
In my ninth month of marriage, I listen to my mother’s voice distorted by
the phone, not wanting to understand the implications of what she tells me.
“It says on this clinic’s website that women are considered infertile after
one year of unsuccessfully trying to conceive.” Nine months. I could have a
child now, if I’d conceived early on, if we’d conceived early on – infertility is
not exclusively a woman’s condition. Three months more and I’ll – we’ll – be
infertile, by medical definition.
“You know, you might have inherited a condition that sometimes causes
infertility. I never had trouble with infertility, but I had complications with my
pregnancies. And your grandmother was barren eight years between having
my brothers and me. It was a very easy fix once they diagnosed it.” Inherited.
Left-handed, a wedding ring, my deepest fear, all through the same line of
womanhood. But this trait is one I don’t want.
I reflect on the sorrows, pains, barrenness of Sarah, Hannah, Rachel,
Elisabeth, Rebekah, wonder if they ever fell prey to stage fright before an
excessively critical audience, ever questioned their decision to set foot on a stage
at once visibly public and perpetually doomed to privacy by the constraints of
societal taboos. I wonder too how they persevered, how they overcame their
circumstances — whether they were ever able to do so prior to the miraculous
conceptions and births of their longed-for children. Did they ever rebel against
the title “barren”?
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I realize I must find fulfillment in myself beyond motherhood, must allow
writing, cooking, crocheting, all varied forms of creation to fill my unfulfilled
womanhood. For the first time, I allow myself to link “infertile” to me – not
surrendering, merely trying it on as another of the many roles I’ve explored in
the perpetual play – and as I do so, a tremendous burden of fear is lifted.
*****
I can’t identify the precise occasion on which I first explored “woman” in
application to myself. Perhaps it was the first time I applied sharp metal to the
hairs on my legs, or when I punctured my ears at twelve for the sake of beauty,
or perhaps my tenth day living in a college apartment, perhaps the day I married
my husband. Or, perhaps it started as far back as the time I smeared lipstick
across my mouth for Halloween or the time the kindergarten bus stop moms
witnessed me land a kiss on the boy who lived across the street, or the time I
donned a swimsuit and jumped off a galloping rocking horse. This is one script
that no one ever even attempted to write for me, leaving me instead to glean
what I could from social, religious, historical, and familial cultures and mostly
forge my own way — a difficult feat for one adept at crafting but perpetually
unable to deliver her own dramatic lines.
*****
Understanding is not fully healing, but it takes the edge off uncertainty,
longing, pain. Of the creative processes in which I engage, writing is perhaps the
one that affords the most understanding. Writing — essaying — comes down
in so many ways to discovering identity, to allowing refreshing candid sunlight
drive feared unknowns to the forefront of the consciousness where the “I” may
freely explore misguided conceits, long-buried prejudices, and among them
deeply buried refined gems of inspired thought, slowly metamorphosed under
extreme conditions in the tumultuous recesses of the mind. As the cathedrals are
again flooded with light, the un-costumed self awakes and finds she has purpose
after all.
Today I work again on the blanket, after a four month hiatus. The ring that
is my mother, grandmother, husband, me, molten and shaped into one dances
and sparkles, tracing — or perhaps directing — the motions of my left hand
as it fights to keep the loops just the right size, the yarn perfectly balanced
between taughtness and slackness. Perhaps my mother played out a similar
struggle, weaving identity for her sixth child, loving her boys but wondering
all the same, as she had with all the rest, if this next baby — this fabric identity
which she now alters based on her own experience to suit the baby destined to
be me. Perhaps as I reenact this scene of years long past, I will discover with
certitude those traits which she wove into me, discover the secret of a woman’s
creator identity refined by men and passed through generations from mother to
daughter. Perhaps my son will be a daughter and I will sagely pass these secrets
to her, and she to her daughter, and on. Or perhaps I will finally understand as
I fail to bequeath them that the secrets of a creator are never passed on because
she alone can ever comprehend them, can ever understand that the vital core of
woman’s identity cannot be inherited but only defined — created — by herself.
167
FICTION
FALL 2012
168
THE BITE
by Caroline Rozell
F
riday morning, the mirror reflects a face that no longer feels like mine.
My bottom lip is swollen to three times its normal size. I look like I got
in a fight with a vacuum hose and lost. If I squint, I can see angry teeth
marks below, just where membrane turns into skin. He bit me hard. He bit me
for hours. That was not a kiss; that was consumption. I wonder how long this
will take to heal.
It was my birthday, and I am old enough to know better. If I’m honest with
myself, I did know better. I thought I was mad to imagine there could be anything
but purest friendship with a man like that but really — I knew. He was the last man
on earth who should have kissed me. He was the last man on earth who I would
expect to look at me. There was a very good reason why he should never look at
me but I can’t tell that. Some parts of this story can never be narrated. They aren’t
necessary anyway. What matters right now is that last night should not have been
possible but I knew that it was. Parts of me always knew where we were going. A
few days ago we grabbed a drink in a dim pub and his eyes stayed bright. When
we said good night, he took my hand and I think, I think he reached out for my
chin. That might have been my imagination; it might have been that his stare felt
like a touch. Imaginary or not, even with all the platonic ideals running through
my head, I knew. Knowing only lasted for a half a second. Once I’d turned the
corner I was sure I’d seen only compassion in him. Once I reached the end of the
block I thought I’d dishonoured him by imagining interest and I scolded myself all
the way home. There were little things before that, too. He grated on my last nerve
the first time I met him and everything I feel seems to start with irritation. Once,
we went for dinner with a group of other people but talked as if we were alone.
He left when I did. A couple of times I was in a crowded room with him and even
though I wasn’t looking for him, I knew where he was. Whenever I saw him alone,
he smiled and stalled like he didn’t want me to leave. With a little more vanity, or
a little more anger, I could say he pursued me. It would be a defensible claim, but
that’s not what happened. That was not a pursuit. We were playing chicken, and,
thank God, I swerved. I declined to think that’s what we were doing. I ordered
myself to think that nothing with him could be less than right, but I knew. That
was how last night happened. I knew, but I actively refused to know.
I’ve got a long day ahead, and I don’t know how to get through it with my
mouth swollen like this, maimed like this. I try five different lipsticks and an array
of powders, looking for something that will hide the evidence. It doesn’t work at
all. Colours and shine just make me lurid, like my mouth is not bruised but diseased. Maybe it is. Maybe only some sort of disease would make a man like that
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want to touch me. I wash it all off and go on to work.
I don’t remember who proposed it, that we spend the day together. I may have
been hinting but if I was, he took that hint and ran with it. We decided to get out of
town and indulge in — something. As the train pulled away, something else was
pulled off. A restraint, a boundary we’d been pressed against for weeks dissolved
and left its residue on the tracks. We said we should go away for the weekend. I let
my hair down. He commented. When that friendly man selling tour tickets implied
we were together, we just laughed. We got on that ridiculous tour to pretend to be
different people, tourists out for a good time, and it worked. He gave me a wink
like he was trying to pick up a girl he’d just met and I batted my eyes back at him.
It was all in good fun. Nothing could be wrong with a man like that. I didn’t see
it, but all day long, we created a climate. I shouldn’t have been surprised when a
storm broke out.
All morning, my students stare me out of countenance. They see the swelling, they see these marks, and they are curious. In some, the boys, I see concern.
They’d never ask, and I’m sure they don’t dare imagine. When I’m working I am
the picture of distance. I know how to enforce boundaries, but yesterday they were
all just gone. I’m kidding myself saying it was just yesterday. I’ve been neglecting
my walls with him since we met and yesterday was just the day they fell. I ask myself why. I really don’t know, except that there was that in his face which seemed
to demand openness. I was compelled to give it. I think that man gets anything he
demands.
We left the tour and went for dinner. He said I was dwindling without food and
I think we were both glad to get away from all the voices. The restaurant was empty and we sat side by side at the counter, watching the sushi revolve. My edamame
stuck in my throat and grew bigger as I chewed. It was tough and salty, but the
wine helped. I told him that I liked that he was quiet and that most people would
have bored me by that point. I truly meant it in friendship, but I wonder now how
he heard it. I wonder if it was an invitation or an admission. He said he didn’t
want to talk about going home, and I said I wanted to run away to Belize. He told
me to give him my hand and I did without a thought, without hesitation. He slid
his thumb across the backs of my fingers and then he turned to me. He asked me
or maybe he told to kiss him. I pulled my hand away and sat stiffly, wrenched
between want and terror. I tried to say that I was shocked and I tried to say that I
never expected this from him but he knew that it wasn’t true. It wasn’t a lie. Part of
me, my conscious mind, was shocked but the rest of me was not. I didn’t kiss him
then. We walked off to I hardly knew where. First he was a few steps ahead of me,
but then I caught up and passed him. We were trying to run away from each other,
but not trying hard enough.
I struggle through my classes, and I know that they know there’s something
wrong. He told me last night that I had sad eyes. If he could see them now. There’s
more, worse. I’m stumbling over sentences, struggling to speak like myself. It’s
because of all this swelling and cracking. My teeth catch on the raw spots inside
my lips and it hurts. I never thought any man could stop my mouth. I’m not usually like I was last night. I don’t respond to people, especially not people like him.
Snobbish. Demanding. Male. I think, for the thousandth time, that I must be the
dumbest, blindest girl in the world to have expected different from a man. Then I
think that I must be the wickedest, most intrinsically debased girl in the world to
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have found a touch of earth in a man like him.
We wandered into some sort of restaurant or bar or something, I didn’t notice. I
said I wanted coffee but there was wine in front of me and he warmed his cold fingers against my feverish wrists. I talked and he just looked at me with something
between impatience and curiosity. Finally, he kissed me or I kissed him or both.
I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. What I know is that his kiss was hard
and searching, and he bit me. I liked it. I liked it for a long moment until the pain
became too much and, all unwillingly, I pulled away. I didn’t go far, and his hands
lingered on my arms, my knees, my hair. I thought it strange that his touch could
be so gentle and his lips so insistent, but I was past caring. I leaned into his hands.
I wanted more because I knew there couldn’t be much. He looked at me as if I
were already far away and he wanted to bring me back. I just wanted to stay close
and still. When he kissed me, I saw with surprise a kind of delicacy in his skin.
Around his eyes, it looked thin, tender. I touched his cheek, shocked at my own
daring, afraid of the contamination in my fingers. He kissed me again, and I stayed
with his bite for as long as I could take it. We talked, and he said a lot that I’d like
to remember and a few things I wish I hadn’t heard. He said I needed to be tamed
and even though I wasn’t sure what he meant, that scared me. It scared me because
if he wasn’t the last man who should ever touch me, he could do it. He asked if we
had to go home that night.
Friday afternoon, my boss stares at my face with undisguised wonder. He’s
always had a soft spot for me, a little too soft, and I hear something between
compassion and resentment when he asks if I’m in a bad relationship. He asks if
someone hurt me. I tell him it was nothing. He sees the scab forming on my lip
and shakes his head. He watches me talk through my hands, covering my mouth,
and tells me he’ll do anything for me. I know that I could tell my boss this story in
a different way. I could tell him this story in a way that would infuriate him, make
him go and punch that man for me. I don’t. That’s not the way it happened and,
even though it was nothing, I don’t want to make it something it wasn’t.
We left in a hurry. He stopped to give a pound to a boy with a guitar and I
watched him. I thought, furiously, and I tried to stop feeling. I couldn’t. I had to
decide where we were going to go. I wanted so much not to decide. I wanted not
to want him, but I couldn’t. I knew that I wanted to be there with him, and I knew
that in the morning I would want to be a thousand miles away from myself. I
didn’t dare think about the state of my lips or my conscience if we stayed. I told
him I wanted to stay with him. I told him that I wanted to stay and pretend tomorrow would never come, and I told him that we had to go home. He pulled me to
him and for a moment I thought he would try to change my mind. I wondered if he
knew how easy it would be. He didn’t say anything. He would have gone as far as
I was prepared to take him, but I think he was relieved. He saw the morning coming too and the irrefutable fact of tomorrow was working into his lips when he bit
me again. He took my hand and we walked away.
Friday night, I look in the mirror. I’ve imagined all day the swelling is getting
worse, but I can see the outline of my own mouth again. I still look beaten. There
are dark spots and indentations on my lips so that, from a distance, it looks as if
I’ve been guzzling hot chocolate or red wine. I touch my mouth, and feel something between pain and a peculiar numbness. Running my tongue along the inside,
I taste blood and feel the roughness his teeth left behind. I wonder if he tasted it
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too. I wonder how much of me that man consumed. I wonder how quickly and
with what a sense of cleansing he will disgorge me.
We were at the tube station before I knew it. I fumbled in my bag for so long
and was so befuddled with remorse and wistfulness that I couldn’t get through
the turnstile until he was out of sight. I feared and I hoped that he would go on
without me, but he waited at the bottom of the stairs. On the platform, he watched
as I rubbed my lips and asked if it hurt. I told him I liked that. He didn’t know how
true that was. I was already thinking that the pain would force me to acknowledge
what I’d done. I was already thinking that I deserved for this to hurt. I wondered
if that was why he did it. I thought he must know I ought to be marked, damaged.
Still, he wrapped his arm around my waist and kissed me again, not ungently.
There were so many people around that a mad part of me was surprised no one
stopped us. Of course, no one else knew that he was the last man who should ever
touch me. To them, we must have seemed almost normal. Looking through their
eyes, I saw a thousand embraces end that would never begin. Looking at him, I
thought there might have been something past his teeth and beneath the fast-approaching morning and wondered if the softness that I’d seen in his eyes was not
just the lighting. On the train, he bit me harder and more insistently than before.
We had only one hour before home and all the remorse waiting there. We knew
nothing much could happen on a train, so he bit me and gripped me tight, as if he
could break away from the pain of morning by breaking me. He held me close,
and I don’t know what was desire and what was despair. I didn’t want to stop him.
I wanted all the same things. When the train stopped and I kissed him, tomorrow
wasn’t just coming into his lips. It was there. He didn’t bite me.
Saturday, I wake with a dull ache in my mouth. My stomach, too. I haven’t
eaten since that indigestible edamame, and the thought makes me queasy. I am
downing water by the bucket, though. I just want something cold and clean. I
make myself look in the mirror and the swelling has subsided, but it might be
worse this way. At least the swelling drew the eye away from the scratches beneath
my lips. They are more present now, darker and uglier and a hard crust forms over
them so they no longer look like teeth marks—just a gash. It stings a little when I
brush my teeth.
I check my email in the library, and it is there. I thought it would come today,
but still I’m surprised by what is in it. The first thing I see is an attachment.
He’d like me to edit one of his reports. For a minute, I want to jump through my
netbook and strangle him. He wants me to work for him? He thinks he can ask
me for help, now? Then I read the rest. He hopes he hasn’t harmed me. He thinks
we should talk because he wants to be very honest. He tone is clipped, curt, and I
think everything about him was hard. From his mind to his lips to this message, he
could crack a diamond, and I was never that. I know what he wants to say. I fret,
playing with my mouse and scratching my lips while I decide how to respond. My
first thought is that I should tell him to write to me, if it’s really necessary. I should
tell him it isn’t necessary because I know. I don’t think I can face him. Even
though I know what he will say, I think also that reading is not the same as hearing. I don’t know how he will say it. He could say it with contempt. He could say
it with disgust. If he’s the man I thought he was, he might even say it with regret.
Maybe I can’t understand his message unless I read what he doesn’t say. I tell him
I can see him tonight and edit the report. I’m still mad about that, but maybe he
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thought he needed a pretext. Besides, that man gets whatever he demands.
Saturday afternoon, I study myself anxiously in the library bathroom. I
shouldn’t have worn this dress. It’s too short, much too short for a conversation
like I’m about to have and I cannot find anything to tie up my hair. I ought to wear
rags. I ought to shave my head. He’s going to think I wore this on purpose, as a
message to him. I wish I had time to go home and change but I don’t. It might not
be all bad, though. There are advantages to a dress like this for a talk like this that
he couldn’t understand. He’s only a man, after all. It will make me blush while
I’m talking to him, but it might help later. I hope it will help me go home, look in
the mirror, and tell myself that it wasn’t me. It could help me tell myself that I’m
not scratched and sore right now because I’m only worth a bite, and nothing more.
That’s what I hope and that’s what I’m going to say but I already know I won’t
believe it. I look at my lips and wonder whether I should try to cover it up. The
gash is terribly obvious in this fluorescent light. I rub my lips as if I can rub the
darkness off, but only raise sharp little flakes. It looks worse than if I’d left it alone
and now they are stinging again. The numbness was better. I press the hardening
gash and turn it red again. I put my lipstick away; he probably won’t even notice.
When I see him, I lie through my teeth. I tell him I’ve been very productive,
very focused as I always am. I haven’t done a thing. I sat in the library trying to lift
the cold lump that’s been bearing down on my heart. I tried to breath. I even tried
to stop my watch so the time wouldn’t come when I had to meet him. Now, it is all
I can do to keep from running down the street, away from him and away from this
autopsy, this post-mortem analysis of a bad decision that we are about to perform.
I will myself to keep walking and I wonder if he knows I’m lying. He asks when
I’m leaving town and the one thing I am grateful for tonight is that I can honestly
say, soon. He says he’ll miss me and I fight not to laugh. I fight even harder not to
slap him. If there is one thing I know without doubt tonight, it is that that man cannot wait to see the back of me. We find a restaurant, we order. He says he is going
to be a teetotaller now and I think that’s perfect, because I’m going to be an alcoholic now. He asks if I have anything to say to him. If I knew what I wanted to say
to him, I would have said it already. I can only tell him, that I’m awful. I tell him
that I am full of guilt and shame, and I wonder if he understands all that encompasses. He tells me I ought to get married and asks why I don’t have a boyfriend
and now, now for a second I hate him. I wonder if he thinks he’s my pimp now. I
imagine that he thinks I’m a tramp with no discrimination and that I’m happy to
flit amongst men until I find one that sticks. I think he thinks that because I’m not
a man like him, I am not real or whole. All I tell him is that I don’t want to be married, that it’s because I don’t want to feel. That is entirely true, but what I don’t say
is “and damn you for making me.” He’s about to give me a lecture on how that’s
not a life, on what he saw when I felt something for him, and I stop listening. I
can’t hear this from him. I can’t bear to hear him say that I felt something for him.
This man doesn’t know the meaning of saving face; he’s not supposed to assume
that. I would never take such a liberty of imagination with him. I desperately
believe that he could not possibly have felt anything for me, and I wish he could
show me the same courtesy. I want to tell him he’s wrong, but I don’t. He wouldn’t
hear me; he thinks this is his story. I work up the courage to ask him if incidents
like the other night happen to him often, and he doesn’t understand what I mean.
He thinks it’s a pointless question, and I want to explain why it matters. I would
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like to explain that girls like me are only toys. Toys are replaceable, interchangeable. I would like to tell him that when I ask if incidents like that happen often,
I’m asking if he understands that I am a person, but I don’t. He says things like
that never happen, but he hasn’t answered my question. He never could because
he could never hear it. He is, after all, only a man. He starts talking about what
happened then, and he tells me, that it was not only lust. He asks if I agree, and I
say yes, but I want to say no, I want so badly to say no. I wonder if he has any idea
how much it troubles me to admit that. I understand “only lust”. That is a familiar
narrative, and I know exactly how to respond to it. If this was only lust, I know
exactly what to think and have no need to feel. I wish he could leave me that, my
comprehension, my unfeeling response.
He tells me he feels dead. He looks dead. I have been trying to meet his
eyes since we got here, but I can’t. Whatever you call this thing in his face, this
remorse, this death, I can’t look at it. I really must be the stupidest girl in the world
not to have guessed this. I should have understood that, to a man like that, I could
only ever be death in a short skirt. I know that isn’t really what he means and the
deadness I see now is bigger than that. The death he is talking about is something
I can scarcely comprehend but I can’t think about that right now. Instead, I let him
remind me of things I haven’t heard in a long time. I had a lover once who called
me a femme fatale and said my eyes were deadly. It was flattering, but this is different. I have never heard what is in his voice now and I pray I never will again.
He is talking about my eyes too. He says I have a way of looking at people, or
maybe it is a way I look at him — but he can’t describe it. I honestly don’t know
what he means this time. I wish he could describe it so I could stop. Never mind. I
will never look at him again.
When we leave, he says he is going to walk with me to the bus stop, to wait
a while. I don’t understand. I know, I know with an absolute and unshakeable
certainty that that man wants nothing more than to get as far away from me as possible and to be sure that he will never see me again. While we walk he tells me, for
the second time, that we ought to keep in touch. He says it would be a shame if we
couldn’t stay friends. I say, I agree. I say, of course we will keep in touch. I have
never kept “in touch” with anyone in my life. I don’t just burn my bridges. I bomb
them into oblivion and I poison the river so nothing can live there again. I do not
believe that anyone means it when they say you should stay friends. I don’t think
that has ever, in all of human history, been backed with a true sentiment. I sometimes think that I am the only person on earth who understands that this is cruel.
He should understand that it would really be kinder to tell me to never contact him
again. It would be kinder because, if I were dumb enough to believe him and I did
get in touch with him someday, I would only be shaken again when I realized that
he never wanted to hear from me. I’m not that dumb, though. I will never reach
out to anyone if I’m not sure that they are reaching back. I’d rather cut my hands
off. Still, there is something in that man’s face that makes me think I could think
again. I wonder if, maybe, he is setting a historical precedent. I wonder if maybe
he means it and if maybe, if I did get in touch with him someday, he would actually be glad. I thought that he was no ordinary man and maybe it is just possible
that I was right. I’ll think about that tomorrow. I’ll think about the way he said
it, his tone and his eyes, and I’ll try to decipher what he might have meant. The
skeleton of this bridge could stay standing but what would I really want with an
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uncrossable old construction? I don’t know. I’ll think about that tomorrow too.
I say something that makes him turn his head and chuckle with what might
have been irritation or sadness or both. He leaves quickly and rounds the corner
before I see him move. I’d always thought he was serene, unflappable, but he
flies away from me. Not five seconds after he’s gone, a dishevelled man weaves
towards me down the sidewalk. I smell the whiskey ten paces away. “Hey, beautiful,” he leers, and wavers closer. I duck my head, but he’s still coming. “Come
on”, he says. He’s got me backed against a wall and his words are rank and stinking on my neck. “You can’t just look at me like that and turn away,” he grunts.
I didn’t mean to look at him, but maybe it was like the look that man couldn’t
describe. I wish he had stayed just a few more seconds so this drunk would have
walked past me, so I wouldn’t have his sour breath in my face. I wish I had a
burqa, the kind with netting over the eyes. I clench my shoulders, I clench my fists,
and the drunk punches the wall over my head. I’m too cold and lifeless to move,
and I don’t care what happens next, this drunken wretch is exactly what ought to
happen next. I don’t scream; no one would come anyway. He leaves, but my nails
keep digging into my palms. I bite my own mouth, wishing I could finish what that
man started. I try to bite through the stinging and rip my lips clean off. That would
keep me out of trouble. At home, I look in the mirror and my eyes are too blurred
to make out much besides shapes and colours. I can’t see lines or features, and I’m
not sure I have a face anymore. I can still feel though, and the scabs are beginning
to prick and scratch my fingertips when I touch them.
Sunday morning is cold and white and I am not getting out of bed. I am not
going to look in a mirror, because I am done. I am done with life and long past
done with feelings. I touch my face, press my lips together, and scarcely realize
I’m doing it. The scab, the gash, all the scratches have turned into a hard film of
dead cells. It’s like the transparent layer of cow’s horn that was once used to coat
children’s spelling books. It’s thin and you can barely see it, but it is impenetrable.
You cannot touch or damage anything underneath. I think I like this encrustation,
this armour. If I cannot feel my own pressure, if I cannot find a sensation in my
body, then nothing can touch me. That man gave me precisely what I have always
wanted, in his own backhanded way.
I have to get up; I am not so numb that I can stave off the headaches of 72
sleepless, starving hours. When I stumble into a cafe, the eggs that end up in
front of me make me slump with exhaustion. They seem insurmountable, a pile
of greasy normality that I will never be able to climb. I smoke instead, scowling
at my eggs like they are the only thing wrong today. My cigarette feels different
against these unassailable lips of mine. I can smoke it past the filter, suck it down
into a flaming scrap and it doesn’t burn. When the butt falls apart in my fingers,
I sigh and approach my plate again. The first bite won’t go down, and I cough. I
make them a little too salty, just enough to make me wince and it helps. My fork
feels strange against my lips, as if my hard coating has disrupted my hand-tomouth coordination and the tines bump and jab against me. I am so concentrated
on trying to swallow that I stab myself in the lip, and a small corner of the hardness falls off. I pick it up to examine, curious and a little wary. It is transparent,
colourless, and thicker than I’d imagined. There are teeth marks on it, the unmistakable impression of a sharp incisor. I’ve had flaking lips in the winter before,
but this is different. This simply falls off in one sharp-edged piece. I find the spot
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it came from with the tip of my tongue and it is a little sensitive but smooth. My
eggs are almost a third gone now, and I decide that’s enough for today.
Sunday afternoon, I take a rambling walk. This park is my favourite place
in town. The rowers on the river beat out an even tempo that calms my agitated
pulse. I breathe to their strokes, and I think for a moment that something evaporates in my chest. I used to run here every morning even though I hate running. I
hated my thighs more, and this is the perfect place to outrace emotion. I sigh as I
remember my thighs and wonder if I can slim them down by simply not eating.
Of course I can. I have before, but it’s been a while since I had the will to do so.
Maybe that man gave me more than I thought. I find a bench in a green corner by
the river and I decide that I’m going to think. I try to think about why I did what I
did and I can’t come up with anything. That was not who I am. I am not impulsive
or reckless; at least, I haven’t been in a long time. I like to think, to fret, to worry
over every last detail of my plans. I like to conceal. The normal me, would never
have gone anywhere with him. In my right mind, I would never have responded
to him. At least, not these days. There was a time when who I was that night was
who I was every day. I used to feel everything deeply and display everything I felt.
That did not work out well. This was not the first birthday to leave me bloodied
and heartsick. For years, I have guarded every inch of me, inside and out, with
such success that I thought no one would ever touch me. I have rationed my words
too, never giving anyone too many and never letting them signify too much, but
then I met that man. Something snapped in my head whenever I was around him.
A filter broke, and before I could think of stopping myself, I told him anything and
everything. I felt anything and everything. I knew I should never, ever touch him,
never look at him, but I did. I flung myself between his teeth and sighed as he bit
down. I examine myself for a reason but can’t find anything.
I give up on me, and turn to him. I try to read his eyes, his voice as they were
in all my memories. I start with the time I met him. He came over, asked me a few
questions about my work and my life and dragged me into a pointless argument
about Emily Dickinson. I hate Emily Dickinson, but he wouldn’t let up. Once he’d
disposed of Dickinson and treated me to a self-satisfied little lecture on the crudeness of bourgeois tastes, he started in on the nature of God. Nothing he said made
any sense at all. He grilled me, interrogating my muddled concepts with an infuriating, superior calm. I could only stare and shake my head at his questions, but he
didn’t back off. I ask myself now what he was really trying to ask me. All I know
is he baffled me. I think back to an evening we went for a drink. I was too personal, too unreserved. I found myself telling him things I should not. I remember his
looks of surprise, of bemusement, and try to make them add up to an explanation.
I can’t. Then there was that night. I replay the details in my head and I try to scan
every word and every touch for a reason. I’m still stuck. If there was any reason in
what we did, it was too frail for my benighted brain to capture. Saturday just made
it worse. His expressions cycled so fast between remorse , fake cheer, and lingering kindness that I could not capture any of them. I don’t even remember what he
said, only that it was pained and final. I should never have gone. I thought it would
help me understand and forget that night. Maybe it would, if I had been able to
read past his inadequate words.
I’m chewing my lips and watching the river because my thinking is only making things worse. I will never get anywhere asking why so I back up, and try to
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ask what. I ask what I feel now, if I hate him. I try to say yes, but can’t. I would
feel so much better if I could label him a manipulator, an unscrupulous seducer,
but it will never do. Every time I try, I remember what I felt beneath his teeth and
my bitterness flees before it. I will never understand him, but I will never hate
him. I ask myself if I like him and still can’t answer. I would like to say yes but I
cannot forget that he was the last man who should ever have wanted me. I’ve been
breaking my head for days trying to figure out what that means about me. Now,
I wonder what that means about him. I make a last effort and ask myself how,
exactly, he has marked me. I ask how I am going to fit that night into my story. I
pinch my lips and concentrate as a few more flakes fall off into my fingers. These
are smaller, finer, and I let them slide to the ground with only a cursory look.
Stories are important to me, more important than almost anything else. I have
believed, and argued at some length, that every story matters. However tragic,
however wicked, however strange, I believe that there is value in every story if we
only know how to frame it. I have thought and written that no narrative need be
discarded, that everything we are has value when we find the right story for it. It is
not impossible that there is something in this story too. I try to believe that these
marks on my mouth can encode more than pain and a punishing kiss. I search for
it, search for that meaningful something in my scraps of a story with him. Perhaps
it would help to find a precedent, and I review the saddest, strangest stories I know.
I know far too many stories, but I can’t think of an exact fit. My interpretive efforts
are moving along now, nonetheless. At least this is the question that I really want
answered, not why I have stiff and splintering lips or how long they will take to
heal, but what will lie beneath when they do. I go home and I still can’t sleep but I
can lie quietly. My pulse stays with the rowers’ rhythm even as my mind races and
I unclench my fists. All night, my lips tingle.
Monday morning, I look myself. My reflection is a pale, sharp-angled version
of my face, but recognizable. My lips are back to a normal colour, all redness
gone. They may be even more wan and thin than they were, or maybe the last bits
of dead shell just make them look that way. The gash beneath my mouth is smooth
now and only a little pink. It’s not that bad, really, almost interesting. I try different
angles in the mirror and wonder if the pinkness doesn’t add shades and depths to
my lips that were slightly missing before.
At work, I review my notes and either laugh or cry, I’m not sure which. This
is really not the day for Daniel Deronda or, maybe, it is exactly the day. I wanted
a precedent, and this could be it if I will let myself read it as such. The trouble is
that I don’t like Gwendolen. She’s self-involved, spoiled, parasitic. I’ve always
thought that if I were Deronda, I would have shaken her off, told her to find another semi-lover/mentor to harass, to stalk, to suck dry for her spiritual awakening.
Deronda, too, strikes me as either more or less than a man. He is so very fastidious. He recoils from the vulgar and the small with such instinctive dread that I
have never believed in his compassion and wonder if he was not just chasing an
aesthetic thrill. He is so nearly monk-like in his enthrallment to the sublime that I
am always surprised that he can marry any woman at all. Then again, I am not sure
if Mirah qualifies as one. Perhaps that is the real reason it was not Gwendolen;
with all his grand talk of love, Deronda’s love is a strange self-emptying, almost
cruel in its loftiness. But, there is that letter. My students always want to know
how it will be better with her for having known him, and I never have an answer.
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I believe her, though. I think that may have been the first entirely true thing she
ever said. It may not be visible but somehow, in the sequel that was never written,
it is better with her for having known him. I wonder what could be better with me.
Almost everything, almost anything could be better with me. Everything has been
so static with me, so pinned back and impenetrable, that maybe even a bite or a
bruise is better.
One of my students is entranced with Deronda. She’s a bright girl and she
looks at me like I can open the doors not just to this book but to the world of unknown meanings that made her want to read it. She was disappointed; she hoped
for Deronda and Gwendolen to walk off the page together, and is a little annoyed
with Mirah. She calls her bloodless and thinks she is unappealingly austere beside
Gwendolen’s battered, vital humanity. I know how she feels, but this is not the
way I want her to read it. I press her, I push her, willing her to understand why
Deronda and Gwendolen can’t see each other again. I ask her over and over again,
what Deronda gave Gwendolen. I make her think about what could have been
better with her. I remind her that she is truly changed and we talk for an hour about
what is visible in her at the end that was not in the beginning. Finally she smiles at
me and cries, in her youthful voice, so clean and hopeful that I drop one more tear
for myself, “It’s better than a love story!” She’s excited, exhilarated with her own
interpretive skill. “No one will ever love her, but what he gave her is better than
love.” I knew she was a bright girl, but I wonder where she found this reading.
We are both delighted now, and the last dead flake falls from my lips. When I tell
her she’s a good reader and I am very proud of her, her glow of boundless feeling
touches even me.
Originally from Harlingen, Texas, Caroline Rozell just completed a DPhil
in English from the University of Oxford, focusing on eighteenth-century
women’s writing. Her thesis was entitled “Women and the Framed-Novelle
Sequence in Eighteenth-Century England: Clothing Instruction with Delight.”
She also has an MA in English from St. John’s University in New York, and
studied English at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia. She has not previously
published any fictional work.
178
THE LOCKER
by Lorraine Comanor
N
iki was on her knees, a bulb in her left hand, a trowel poised to attack
the earth in her right, when the study phone rang. Damn. She pitched
forward on all fours and considered not answering. It was a perfect midOctober afternoon for gardening. The air smelled of that “mellow fruitfulness”
Alastair often mentioned. Some poet he liked to quote. One of the Romantics
he’d tried to introduce her to along with his beloved theologians — St. Augustine,
somebody Lewis and a de Chard — something or rather, but she’d found them
dull company. After a couple of attempts, Alastair hadn’t pressed further, resigned
to leave her with Better Homes and Gardens. The garden at least was common
ground; although Alastair spent no time in its creation or up-keep, he did admire
her efforts.
The bed she was presently preparing was in anticipation of his birthday.
Up to now, she had limited her gardening to hybrid tea roses and a few English
legends, but when Alastair had commented that it would be nice to have flowers three seasons of the year, she’d sent away for some hyacinth bulbs. With
his simple English tastes, he was a fairly easy man to keep happy, provided the
Church and school ran well and he had some uninterrupted time in his study. Of
course, there were occasional issues with Jonathan’s behavior in his sixth grade
classroom — (Thank God, Alex, his nine year old brother, managed to keep his
nose clean) — and also with her lack of frugality, so this simple birthday present
should meet with his approval, especially when an expensive kitchen remodel
loomed ahead.
The rest of the bulbs needed planting and watering before she left to pick up
the boys from school, but on the eighth ring, she dropped the trowel alongside the
unfinished bed and headed towards the house. From the pocket of Alastair’s worn
windbreaker which she had draped over her shoulders, an old Lenten card fell to
the ground. Busy with horse shows, she hadn’t helped much with church decoration during the previous Lent — another bone of contention between them. But
if this bed turned out well, she might just make a lovely, albeit small, contribution to the next Easter season. The phone was still ringing as she pushed open the
door leading from the garden to Alastair’s study. She ran to the desk, not taking
the time to remove her garden crocs, which deposited a few clumps of dirt on the
cream-colored center of the Tabriz rug.
“Mrs. Bainbridge.” Niki recognized the voice immediately: Wyona Matthews
was Alastair’s assistant principal at St. Tim’s, a pinched-faced spider of a woman
with black hair pulled back into an old-fashioned chignon. Unlike her predecessor who’d had sons of her own and something of a “boys will be boys” attitude,
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Wyona was unwilling to let even the slightest infraction pass. She had already
initiated several calls about Jonathan.
“Why’d you hire that woman?” Niki had asked Alastair some months before
following an unpleasant conference — Jonathan had managed to collect five
demerits in one marking period. “She loves to be bitchy.”
“She takes care of day-to-day tasks I don’t have time for,” Alastair had replied in his crispest British diction. “And you can hardly blame her for Jonathan’s
behavior.”
“Couldn’t you find someone who was efficient and pleasant, too?”
Unpleasantness, Alastair responded, wasn’t grounds for firing. Her harsh
judgment of Wyona showed an unwillingness to acknowledge her son’s — not
their son’s, she’d noted – contribution to the problem.
“Yes,” Niki answered the voice on the phone, while standing on one leg to
remove her garden shoe. A small clod of earth looked like a dog turd on the rug.
She had no intention of acknowledging the caller’s identity.
“Wyona Matthews.” After a short silence, “Sorry to disturb you, but there’s
been another incident with Jonathan.”
“Oh,” Niki said, wondering why Wyona had not called Alastair first. Alastair
should be back by now from the off-site meeting of the Council of Episcopal
Schools. It was one of those rare days when the bishop was presiding at morning
chapel and she knew he wanted to catch him before he left.
She listened as Wyona recounted what had happened after Jonathan acquired
a bathroom pass.
“Is he all right?’ she asked. “How long before you found him?”
“He’s perfectly fine. Mr. Andrews heard the banging and got him out.”
“But how long was he stuck for?”
“Not that long.”
“When did all this happen?”
“This morning.”
“And you’re just calling me now?” She needed to hide her irritation. Wyona
could make Jonathan’s life miserable. Her watch indicated 2:25. Another thirtyfive minutes before she was supposed to pick up the boys. It would have been so
much easier if they stayed for after-school sports, but there was no elementary
school tennis for Alex and, although the track coach really wanted Jonathan on
the team, Jonathan said he’d rather be a mediocre swimmer than a track star; he
wasn’t spending a minute more at St. Tim’s than he had to.
“There was another incident this morning that required my attention.”
“I don’t see the need to contact the police,” Niki said after Wyona went on
for a few more minutes. She was curious about the other incident, but decided not
to ask. “Sounds like a bad prank. Have you talked to Alastair?” Alastair would
have handled everything without getting the police involved.
“The head had enough on his hands today. Besides, St. Tim’s is a closed
campus. If there’s any question of trespassing on school grounds, the law has to
be involved.”
“You’re not going to let the police interrogate a kid without a parent present.
Not my kid, anyway.”
“It’ll just be a short interview. They’re en route as we speak.”
“Where’s Jonathan now?”
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“Sitting outside my office.”
“I’m on my way. No one’s to question him until I’m there.”
Niki hung up. Damn Jonathan and his continual scrapes. In first grade, he’d
been overheard referring to the teacher as an idiot after she made the class estimate the number of ice cubes their freezer produced overnight. The second-grade
teacher had asked her class to edit anonymously each other’s stories. Jonathan,
who’d had a tiff with one little girl, wrote “This story sucks.” Recognizing his
handwriting, the teacher had called home. Niki had wanted to ask if the story
really did suck, but she’d held her tongue. No use sparring with a teacher who
assigned editing to a bunch of seven-year-olds. She’d expected Alastair, a big
Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fan, to laugh over the episode, but to her
amazement, he hadn’t found it funny.
Unfortunately, in addition to his frequent tardiness, there were other incidents
she couldn’t brush off so easily: pushing a younger kid in the playground, tying
a cat to the swing, drumming — his latest passion — in religion. Plus occasional
use of bad language. And now this.
At Jonathan’s last appointment, Dr. Tuttle, their pediatrician, had advised
some counseling. PK’s (preacher’s kids, as he referred to them) often acted out
when they felt too much was expected of them. Making it as a principal’s son was
like climbing a steep mountain; fitting in as a priest’s and principal’s son was akin
to tackling Mt. Everest.
“He really doesn’t belong in a school that expects kids to sit at their desks
with their hands folded,” Niki told Alastair after the appointment. But Alastair
had resisted the idea of either a school change or a counselor. How would it look
for a minister, a counselor by profession, if he sent his own child to therapy or to
another school? She hadn’t pressed the issue further.
There were times she could strangle Jonathan. Still, he was just a kid, and the
police could be cagy in their questioning — forcing a person to admit to something he didn’t do. An eleven-year-old, even a smart one, would be no match for
them.
She looked at her hands. Despite her gardening gloves, her nails were a disgrace. French nails weren’t practical for a gardener or for someone who planned
to spend more time in the kitchen; they didn’t last the three weeks between
manicure appointments, but they seemed a small compensation for her current
stresses. And Alastair was proud of her appearance, even if he usually didn’t
comment on it. In the hall mirror she inspected herself: hair in shambles, brown
spots near her jaw line. Another IPL treatment might have to wait until after the
kitchen remodel.
Below, on the table, sat the accumulation of three days’ mail — a sore point
with Alastair and a detraction from the beautiful Clodion vase her parents had
given them last Christmas. The previous Christmas, a French carriage clock had
arrived. The home she grew up in had been filled with such art. While Alastair appreciated the vase, there was a puritanical side to him that kept him from enjoying ownership of an objet d’art, especially one he had not purchased himself. She
ran her fingers over its hard-paste Sèvres porcelain and gilt bronze, bringing them
to rest on the face of the stag who stood beside two does. Jonathan was like a
stag, the way he ran. She looked at the mail again, afraid to check for bills. She’d
stuff it in a grocery bag later. She couldn’t be seen at school without a shower.
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Jonathan was indeed sitting on the bench outside Wyona’s office. He had a
few Pokemon cards in his lap and was picking at a hangnail. In a few minutes
the bell would ring, and the hall would be flooded with kids. They needed to get
out of the traffic pattern, not have everyone see the two of them going into the
assistant principal’s office. At least it was on the other side of the building from
Alastair’s, so she might avoid running into him until she’d gotten the whole story.
“Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. The back
of his shirt had come out of his pants and his belt was missing.
“Shitty day.”
“Language. Tell me what happened before we have to go in.” She rummaged
in her purse for a comb for Jonathan’s hair, then thought better of it. He’d just
been through an ordeal and should look the part.
At that moment, Wyona opened her door, stuck her head into the hall like a
turtle, and nodded at Niki.
“Officer Kramer is already here.” The assistant principal glanced at her
watch, as if to note the time Niki had taken to arrive. “We’ve been down to the
locker room while we were waiting.”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened, Jonathan,” Officer Kramer began
once Niki and Jonathan were seated across from Wyona’s desk. Her billy club
extended the full length of her thigh and her gun was prominently displayed in
the holster on her left hip. She looked prepared to take on a group of terrorists.
Jonathan’s take-offs on adults were usually not flattering — more than once she
had heard him refer to Wyona as “The Hydra” — and a stocky, bleached- blonde
dyke would be no exception. Last week he had done an impersonation of their
stuttering rector giving kids detention for passing notes in chapel. It was so spoton, she had doubled up laughing. Even Alastair had started to chuckle before
he caught himself and said, “That’s quite enough, Jonathan.” A cop skit would
definitely need some editing before tonight’s dinnertime performance.
“I got a pass in homeroom to go to the bathroom. The one in the hall was
locked, so I went down to the gym.”
It was odd that he’d asked for a pass right at the beginning of school. Still,
his demeanor gave Niki confidence. Despite his difficulties, Jonathan was usually
unflappable. His nails, bitten to the quick, however, belied his composure. That
bitter-tasting stuff you painted on them might help him kick the habit. His fourth
finger was tapping out some rhythm on the arm of the chair.
For months Alastair had been urging Jonathan to take up the piano or clarinet, but to his dismay, her parents had given him a coveted five-piece drum set
with fourteen inch hi-hats and eighteen inch coast ride cymbals for his last birthday. Niki had been saving some of her household money for drum lessons. While
Jonathan wouldn’t stay around for track, he did want to be part of the band, if he
could pass the audition.
“You know you’re supposed to use the facilities before class.”
Wyona couldn’t pass up an opportunity for correction.
“I had a late religion assignment to turn in. There wasn’t time.”
“Another late assignment?”
“We had to find a hymn based on a poem. It took me a while.”
“And once you were in the gym?” Kramer asked, obviously annoyed at
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Wyona for derailing her interrogation.
“I was walking past the lockers toward the urinals and I heard a noise. I
turned around and there were these two guys.”
“What two guys?”
“Just two guys.”
“Not St. Tim’s students?”
“No.”
Wyona would have already told Kramer this. Had the boys been St. Tim’s
students, there would’ve been no need for police contact.
“What’d they look like?”
“One was tall. Dark, maybe from India. Black hair. Grey hooded sweat shirt.
Nike tennis shoes.” Jonathan was very good with details.
“And the other one?”
He hesitated for a second and Niki panicked until he continued: “Shorter, but
bigger than me. Not as dark as his friend.”
He needed more specifics. She was relieved when he added: “His khakis
were kind of dirty, had a rip above one knee.”
“And then what happened?”
“They asked me if I’d like to get into one of the lockers. I said I wouldn’t.”
Niki watched Kramer, who’d been eyeing Wyona, turn her ferret eyes on
Jonathan. His drumming had migrated from the arm of the chair to his thigh.
“And?”
“They pushed me down and shoved me in the locker.”
“Did you resist?”
“Sure. I kicked. I hit one of them.”
“And they hit back?”
“The big one held me down.”
“Any scratches or bruises? Mind if I look at your arms and legs?”
Of course Jonathan would mind, but Niki wasn’t sure there was much she
could do about it.
“Is this necessary?” she asked. “Don’t you think he’s been through enough
today?”
“It’s routine, Ma’am.”
Officer Kramer pushed up Jonathan’s sweater sleeves and rolled up his pants
to the knees. Jonathan stared at the opposite wall, his lips pursed.
“Don’t see any battle scars.”
“If I’d fought back more, they’d have hurt me.”
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it take two boys to get you stuffed into a half-sized locker?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about time.”
Niki could see where Kramer was heading. “He’s only ninety pounds,” she
added. Kramer continued her questioning, not acknowledging Niki’s comment.
“So, now you’re in the locker and then what happened?”
“They slammed the door shut. I couldn’t open it from the inside. I banged
hard and told them to let me out. They laughed and then I heard them walk
away.”
“And you’re sure you’ve never seen them before?”
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“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“He told you no,” Niki said. “If you’re finished now, we’d like to go home.”
Once she saw the police car pull out of the parking lot, Niki found Alex and
put the boys in her car before going back inside to speak privately with Wyona.
Alastair should not get wind of Jonathan’s story. The two strange boys were really a stretch. Jonathan had probably just got bored in homeroom, gone down to the
locker room and put himself in a locker, not realizing if he closed the door he’d
be trapped. Still, in the off chance he was telling the truth and she had falsely accused him, she’d lose his trust. Alastair, on the other hand, didn’t tolerate “drama
queens” and probably wouldn’t give Jonathan the benefit of the doubt; he’d call
him a fabricator and indirectly he’d hold her responsible.
She’d have to get a copy of the police report, be sure there was nothing too
damaging in it. Then after a few days, she could have a heart-to-heart with Jonathan about what had really happened in the locker room. Orchestrating a private
talk might be difficult, but Jonathan did need a new pair of swim goggles, and
Alex probably wouldn’t want to come along.
She knocked tentatively on Wyona’s door. It was a few minutes before the
assistant principal opened it.
“Forgot something?” she asked.
“Just wanted a word with you.”
Wyona hesitated. “Come in then,” she said, holding open the door.
Niki didn’t take the seat she’d occupied during the conference, electing to
stand by the door.
“About our conference,” she began, shifting her weight off the foot that was
beginning to rub in her heels. “I’d appreciate it if it were kept between the four of
us — just between you, me, Jonathan and the police woman.”
Wyona shuffled a pile of papers on her desk. “Mr. Andrews extricated Jonathan from the locker. He usually doesn’t say much.”
“Of course, but aside from him, no one else needs to know.”
“You can count on our discretion.” For the first time, she looked Niki in the
eye. Something about the curve of her mouth wasn’t quite right. “I hope we are
not going to have any more incidents like this one,” Wyona continued. “Jonathan
has taken up far too much of the school’s time.”
“Thanks for your cooperation,” Niki said, opening the door to the hall. A few
white dots appeared in her right visual field, dots that often preceded a cluster
headache. She hadn’t had one since the conference about the five demerits; she
had coped with a couple of Tylenol, making veal stew Marengo for dinner, serving it with a crisp Voignier, Ravel’s “Bolero” on the stereo. It was one of the few
classical pieces from Alastair’s collection that really touched a chord. Not that she
could imagine him doing a bolero; he was really a foxtrot kind of guy. But maybe
he realized how incredibly sexy it was, as they had made love that night — first
time in ten days — Alastair unaware of Jonathan’s behavior until his report card
came out two weeks later.
She planned to drop Jonathan at the pool and Alex at tennis, but Jonathan
said he wasn’t up to swimming; he just wanted to go home. She was encouraging
him to swim — it could help him relax after a bad day — when Alex interrupted.
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“How come you had to go to Matthews’ office?” he asked.
In the rear view mirror, she could see him elbowing his brother.
“Got locked in a locker,” Jonathan said, giving his brother a nudge in return
before elaborating.
“Gee, man. You let two guys stuff you into a locker? Watcha do in there?
Play the drums?”
“Shut up, Alex. Where’re you going, Mom? I told you I’m not swimming.”
“You’ve already missed three days this month. Your coach is not going to be
happy.”
“Fuck the coach.”
“Jonathan.”
“I just spent two hours in a locker. I got a headache.”
You and me both. She took the next turn off to the tennis club.
As soon as she and Jonathan pulled into the driveway, Jonathan bolted for his
room. A chance for a couple of aspirins, a cold face cloth over her eyes, maybe
even a short nap to fortify her for the evening. Any inkling of a Jonathan problem
could turn a pleasant dinner into a row, Alastair not understanding why his older
son was such a constant embarrassment. As if the bad behavior genes belonged to
her, and couldn’t possibly come from Alastair’s side of the family. Did he really
believe that, or was it just his pissy side, his way of getting back at her? Revenge
for a messy front hall table, housekeeping skills that fell short of his mother’s,
failure to help the altar guild with flower arrangements, frustration over a son
who didn’t meet his expectations, his own lack of advancement in the Church? ?
If he could just get past the deacon level, out from under St. Tim’s rector, and be
appointed to the recently vacated rector position at the neighboring parish church.
Hopefully, his noon meeting with the bishop had gone well and they’d have
something to celebrate tonight. She put a bottle of sauvignon blanc in the fridge.
Given the afternoon, take-out was appealing, but recently, she’d made a serious
attempt to expand her menus in anticipation of the kitchen remodel Alastair had
finally agreed to. She’d bought Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking
and, to Alastair’s delight, had learned to make suprêmes. If she could muster the
energy, she might tackle chicken Milanese tonight. Get up some steamed broccoli
with toasted almonds, rice pilaf, a salad with sliced persimmons from the tree out
back. She’d prompt Alastair to read the poem with the “mellow fruitfulness” and
tell him she was thinking of it while planting today. He might not notice Jonathan’s funk. He might even abandon his study in favor of their watching a TV
movie together.
She put on fresh make-up and chose a navy wool dress she often wore to
church, not wanting to give the appearance of staging an evening, and went down
to the kitchen. The light was beginning to drain from the patch of sky visible
from the window over the sink. After pounding the boneless chicken breasts vigorously with her new mallet, she dipped them into separate bowls of egg, flour,
and a bread crumb-Parmesan mixture. An egg-slippery chicken breast slipped
from her hand. She stooped to pick it up — it wouldn’t acquire germs in less than
five seconds on the floor — hopeful that all her new efforts could narrow the
widening gulf in her marriage.
Jonathan was still in his room when she finished prepping the chicken. He
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could stay there while she went to pick up Alex. The aspirin, along with an escape
from the drumming that reverberated through the walls of the house, would help
the incipient headache. The familiar rhythm stopped her for a moment before
lyrics popped into her head: Fire all your guns at once. Explode into space. Steppenwolf. Born to be Wild. He’d almost got it. She laughed, pleased her son was
taking up music of her generation. Music might be an even better way to unite the
family than a new garden or gourmet dinners. Alastair wouldn’t relate to heavy
metal thunder, but there was bound to be other music he and Jonathan could agree
on. He’d had piano lessons as a kid, so he should be able to do something with
an electric keyboard. Tomorrow she’d check out available rentals, pick up some
Seals and Crofts or Eagles sheet music. Maybe get Alex started on a sax. She’d
always wanted to play electric guitar, do a rendition of “Classical Gas.”
“We’re not going to talk about school issues tonight,” she told Alex, thinking
about “far away troubles” as she enjoyed the wistful sound of “Yesterday” playing on the car’s sixties pop station.
During their brief courtship, Alastair had made light of his clerical side and
had surprised her with tickets to an outdoor concert that featured Beatles’ hits.
She’d brought a picnic and they’d spread a blanket on the lawn, Alastair feeding
her bites of roast chicken, between chaste kisses, as the band played “ I Wanna
Hold Your Hand.” Even when George Harrison’s stand-in started in on “My
Sweet Lord,” Christ had not joined the party; to her relief, Alastair had left Him
at home. Nothing against Christ, but He tended to push the conversation towards
topics like the poor inheriting the earth, which didn’t sit so well after a Ferragamo
shopping spree.
She opened the driver’s window, half hoping to catch the intoxicating scent
of jasmine laced with pot that she recalled from the concert. Alastair had never
been as turned on as he had been that night when they’d later made love in the
back of his Buick. The memory made her nostalgic for her high school pot-induced escapades, evenings ripping around in the T-bird her dad had given her and
then taken away at the time he imposed a strict curfew and counseling sessions.
In college, she’d exchanged drugs for a series of affairs, and not with anyone
whose dad was listed in Dun and Bradstreet.
At one point, her father told her she’d sufficiently sullied her reputation that
no decent man would have her. If it hadn’t been for that remark, she might never
have taken up with Alastair, although she didn’t want to believe she’d married
him just to prove her father wrong. Away from school and church, Alastair could
be fun. His hysterical John Cleese and Robin Williams tapes. That one about the
definition of golf. They’d died laughing listening to them together, before God
had become a full time occupation and the Church, the other woman in her life,
before they got into arguments over Jonathan. What he needed now was half a
joint before dinner. Could you put pot in chicken Milanese?
Alex was full of tennis gossip. He’d had a good practice and his coach was
going to put him in the line-up for next week’s match with the neighboring
elementary school. Great, she told him, fearful she was shortchanging the kid
who wasn’t having a problem and at the same time wondering how tonight’s dinner would unfold. Alex was invariably up when Jonathan was down, the family
somehow always out of equilibrium.
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As soon as they were through the front door, Alex turned on a sit-com, a
forbidden activity until homework was completed. She didn’t stop him, unable
simultaneously to negotiate a gourmet dinner and an argument. Besides, she and
Alastair had made the TV rule more for Jonathan than Alex; after dinner, Alex
would get down to his assignments without prompting.
The crash of the hi-hats almost obliterated the clatter outside the study door,
which occurred simultaneously with her draining the broccoli.
“For God’s sakes. Do you have to leave stuff right in the middle of the path?”
The dropped trowel and box of bulbs, the start of a birthday present, forgotten when she ran to get the phone … Alastair had tripped over them.
“So sorry,” she said, running from the kitchen to open the study door. “I
was gardening when the phone rang and I just dropped everything. Then it was
time to pick up the boys.” She brushed off the knees of his trousers, looked at
his scraped hand; a bandage and a glass of wine might still salvage the evening,
although the lines in his forehead suggested the rector position in the neighboring
church had not been offered. “Dinner’s ready. I have a lovely sauvignon blanc.”
“Where’s Jonathan? I understand there was quite a scene at school today.”
“Could we just have dinner now?” Niki asked, wondering, if Wyona had kept
quiet as promised, how he’d found out. “It’s been a trying afternoon.”
“This is not going to wait.” He dropped his briefcase by the door. “I can’t
have this sort of disruption at school. Jonathan?” He shouted up the stairs.
“Alex,” he said, turning to his younger son. “You know the rules. No TV until
homework is done.”
Niki disappeared into the kitchen. The butter for the broccoli had browned in
the frying pan. Alex had turned off the TV, come into the kitchen, and opened the
fridge door. Staring into its bowels, he announced he was famished.
“Why is Jonathan not coming when he’s called?” Alastair asked.
“What’s for dinner?” Alex watched Niki tip the colander of drained broccoli
into a new combination of butter and oil. “I hate broccoli.”
“Ask him,” Niki answered Alastair, running the pan with the browned butter
under the faucet and wiping away the remaining scum. She turned to Alex. “I
don’t want to hear about it. Eat the chicken.”
A package of sliced almonds that had been sitting on the counter a minute ago had magically disappeared. She poured a glass of sauvignon blanc and
handed it to Alastair.
“I’m not in the mood for wine tonight. Jonathan?”
“He probably can’t hear you while he’s playing.” For the first time she was
grateful for the thumping that pulsated through the house. Get your motor running/ Head out on the highway. Steppenwolf lyrics had taken over her brain. The
highway in her old T-bird, top down. Preferable to the Bainbridge’s dining room
tonight.
Alastair went upstairs and shouted through Jonathan’s door, “Stop that
blasted drumming and come downstairs at once.” By the time Niki served the
chicken Milanese, he and Jonathan were standing by their chairs, Jonathan out of
school uniform and into a Grateful Dead T-shirt and jeans.
“This is undercooked,” Alastair said, after he cut into a breast.
“Gee, Mom, are you trying to give us all salmonella?” Alex asked.
Without a word, she took the plates into the kitchen and slid the chicken
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breasts back into the frying pan, turning up the heat, as she listened to the unraveling drama.
“So Jonathan,” Alastair began, “I need a forthright account of what happened
today, starting from when you arrived at school.”
Jonathan began his story. He’d asked for a bathroom pass in homeroom, then
found the hall bathrooms locked.
“The hall bathrooms are never locked,” Alastair interrupted.
“They were today, or the door was stuck. I couldn’t get in.”
“I’m not buying this, but go on,” Alastair said.
Niki re-entered the dinning room, plates in hand, silently praying that the
chicken breasts were now cooked through.
Jonathan continued his tale, giving a detailed description of being confronted
by the two boys and being pushed into the locker.
“I don’t think two guys could get me into one of those little lockers,” Alex
said.
“No one asked you.” Jonathan gave his brother a poisonous look.
“What were you doing before school?” Alastair asked.
“Couldn’t this wait until after dinner?” Niki asked again.
“What did these boys look like?” Alastair took a bite of broccoli and bypassed the breast.
“Mom, the chicken is still pink,” Alex said.
“One was tall, dark, maybe from India.” Jonathan had cut the broccoli florets
into miniature trees which now floated in a butter soup.
“Why do we always have to talk about Jonathan? I’m in next week’s tennis
line-up.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A Snoop Dogg T-shirt and jeans.”
Niki looked up from her plate and met Jonathan’s eyes. He looked down at
his plate immediately and attacked the chicken breast with his knife. The Indian
guy Jonathan described in Wyona’s office had a gray hooded sweat shirt. Alastair
would be unaware of the first rendition, unless, of course, Wyona had given him
a blow-by-blow description of the cop interrogation. Unlikely, even for Wyona.
If Alastair had an inkling that Jonathan was fabricating any part of this story …
the punishment? No swimming for a month? That might not bother Jonathan that
much. The new drum set? Alastair would love an excuse to get rid of it. Which
could start World War III.
Alastair looked over at her. Something in her face must have given her away.
“I’m not listening to this poppycock,” he said, standing suddenly. “You didn’t
tell me what you were doing before class.”
She looked from her husband to her son. Since when was before school an
issue?
Jonathan pushed back from the table, toppling his chair. “I’m not staying in
this shitty school.” He ran from the dining room and out Alastair’s study door.
“What’s for dessert?” Alex asked.
Niki looked at the chicken and broccoli sitting on his plate.
“Homework,” she said.
“Why do you stick up for him when he tells these cockamamie stories?”
Alastair asked Niki, his face contorting. “I understand you cut the policewoman
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off when she was trying to get at the bottom of things.”
So, there it was. Wyona had probably gone to the rector as well, the little
witch.
“How come there’s never anything good to eat around here?” Alex headed
towards the fridge again.
“Why don’t you acknowledge he needs help? Dr. Tuttle tried to tell you.”
Niki put her fork and knife down and looked at her husband directly.
“Help? He needs a good canning.”
“That seems rather excessive for a cover-up story to an embarrassing situation.”
“An embarrassing situation? The whole school was in an uproar today.”
“I thought only a handful of people knew.”
“There were more than a handful of people at chapel this morning. It was the
bishop’s visit.”
“The bishop didn’t see Jonathan in the locker.”
“No, he didn’t. What he saw was…” Alastair’s hands were shaking and he
couldn’t get the words out.
“What?”
“During Jerusalem, his favorite...”
“Jerusalem?”
“You know, the hymn set to the William Blake poem.”
Her look said: “What on earth are you talking about?”
Then he added, “Oh, of course, I shouldn’t expect you’d be familiar with the
Prophetic Books, given your reading habits. The third verse starts: Bring me my
bow of burning gold. Bring me my arrows of desire. Bring me my spear, o clouds
unfold.” The words seemed to carry him away. His ruddy English complexion
turned a deep plum. “And just at that point, when the music swells, these … these
c-condoms,” he stuttered, “came raining down on the congregation. Apparently
someone had fitted them over the organ pipes.”
Niki, who had just taken a sip of her neglected wine, covered her face to contain the fluid that was emerging from her nostrils. Her panties suddenly felt a bit
damp. So that was the other incident at school Wyona hadn’t wanted to mention.
Condoms exploding into space. Surely Jonathan wouldn’t have embarrassed his
father that way.
“At least it wasn’t Jonathan’s prank. He was in the locker during chapel.”
“And where was he before chapel? What do you think he was doing last
weekend with that bicycle pump and those balloons in the garage?”
A torrent of condoms was just the sort of thing Jonathan might think up.
Could they have been forced up by the air in the organ or did he have some other
contraption in place? She’d have loved to have seen the expression on the faces
of the rector and the bishop when the condoms started landing in the congregation. But of all days to pull such a stunt. Surely the children must have known
about the bishop’s visit. Jonathan, however, wouldn’t have been aware of his
father’s anticipated critical meeting.
“The bishop left immediately after the service and the rector kept all the
middle school boys in the chapel for the morning,” Alastair continued. “They’d
already missed two classes and recess, when I returned. No one had confessed.
And as long as they remain silent, none of them will have any privileges. No
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recess. No after school sports. No school outings. That’s what your innocent son
has imposed on his peers.”
“My son?”
“The one you refuse to discipline. Just wait ‘til I find him.”
“Well then, you’d better hustle.” She nodded in the direction of the door, annoyed by the repeated reference to her son.
“Where’s my windbreaker?”
She’d worn it that afternoon and now couldn’t think what she’d done with it.
She was relieved when he located it on the coat rack.
“Better change your shoes,” she said, looking at Alastair’s churchy black
shoes. In the running department, he was no match for Jonathan.
The door closed with a bang. Returning to the kitchen, she was scraping the
uneaten chicken down the garbage disposal, when she heard a clatter: Alastair,
no doubt, kicking the trowel and box of bulbs out of the way. Did he understand
that even if there had been no incident today, getting the new post was not necessarily a slam dunk, given that the bishop’s views seem to align with those of St.
Tim’s rector who Alastair openly differed with? The archdeacon was a social
advocate, while Alastair maintained Christ had come to offer redemption, not to
do social work. And the rector had an evangelical bent Alastair didn’t share. He
also pushed for low-church austerity and Alastair occasionally went for “smells
and bells.” Despite these differences, Alastair would now always believe his son’s
behavior kept him from acquiring his own parish.
Little white spots in her visual field pulsated with a new rhythm of the house.
It took a few moments to recognize its source: Alex was trying out his brother’s
drum set.
She switched on the outside light by the study door and found the trowel and
overturned box of bulbs. Gathering them up, along with her copy of Julia Child,
she walked into the garage and dumped them on a shelf with discarded water
guns, skate boards, and an old badminton set she’d been meaning to take to the
hospice gift shop. Hyacinths, what had she been thinking? A floral tourniquet for
a bleeding family? Chicken Milanese? About as much of a sham as Jonathan’s
Indian with the gray sweatshirt or Snoop Dogg T-Shirt, whichever it was.
Back in the kitchen, she downed the dregs of her wine, contemplated a
little retail therapy, and shouted upstairs to Alex to quit the drumming. Then she
fumbled for the address book in her purse, and left a message for Dr. Tuttle. She
was just thinking about starting a movie to pass the time, when the garden door
opened to a sweating and out-of-breath Alastair.
“Damn kid,” he said. “I don’t know where he’s off to.”
“Why couldn’t you have just said, ‘I understand there was an incident today
in chapel while you were stuck in a locker? Would you like to tell me about it?’
Instead you had to set him up, trap him, didn’t you?”
A small muscle was twitching above his left eyebrow. The drumming resumed.
“That does it. Those drums are history.”
He started up the stairs. In a minute he was on his way down again, carrying
the bass drum.
“I was done with my homework and I just wanted to try them,” Alex called
from the top of the stairs.
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“You can’t take his drums, Alastair. Especially when you’re not positive he
was responsible for what happened in chapel. His band audition’s next week.
Find some other privilege to take away.” Niki stood on the second from the bottom stair, blocking his passage.
“I can and will take the drums. I don’t care if they were a present from your
folks. It’s high time he had some meaningful consequences for his stupid behavior.”
He was coming down the stairs quickly, beads of perspiration popping on his
forehead, Alex following on his heels.
“Dad, Jonathan needs his drums.”
Alex grabbed the back of his father’s belt. Alastair’s foot rolled over the edge
of the carpeted stair. As he tried to stop himself from falling into Niki, he released
his grip on the drum which catapulted over the banister, knocking into the Sèvres
vase on the hall table. Niki, using the banister to brace herself against the weight
of Alastair’s shoulder, saw the vase fall against the marble-topped table, shattering into several jagged pieces. The mail floated off in different directions and the
pieces of the vase clattered to the floor, one piercing the skin of the drum as it
rolled through the living room. For a moment, her eyes met Alastair’s and what
she saw in them was not distress, but triumph.
“Look what you’ve done! The two of you!” she shouted.
“I didn’t mean to. Honest, I didn’t.” Alex was crying. “I can fix it with Krazy
glue.”
Alastair regained his balanced and moved past her.
“I know you didn’t mean to,” Niki said to Alex, as she watched Alastair
stoop to pick up first the large triangular piece with the head of the doe and
then a smaller fragment. He tried to fit them together. “But some things can’t be
mended.”
“I’m sorry,” Alastair said, turning the shard over in his hand as he limped
towards his study, past the ruptured drum. He had probably twisted his ankle
when he fell into her. She felt no sympathy, hating him for the inadequacy of his
response.
“Sorry about the vase or the drum?” she asked after him, picking up another
piece with the intact stag. The eye stared at her. The most beautiful art piece in
the house. How would she explain its absence to her parents?
“This isn’t a problem for the theologians,” she called into the silent study.
Slowly she collected the other pieces from the floor, as Alex made his way
quietly back up to his room. She’d get the two Alastair had picked up later. Perhaps there was something that could be done with them. Not likely.
She was holding the punctured drum en route to the garage, when Jonathan
opened the door from the garden, looking a bit disheveled, but certainly less
frazzled than Alastair had appeared ten minutes ago. Seeing her, he froze.
“What are you doing with my bass drum? Jesus, what happened to it?”
“It had a little accident. I’ll get it fixed in the morning. First we need to talk.”
“You bitch,” he said. “What makes you think you can fix everything? My
audition got moved to tomorrow.”
“Jonathan, I ...” but he had turned on his heels and run back into the night.
The b word stung. She’d been about to tell him to watch his mouth, but then
again, he probably didn’t really mean it. But the fixing … she’d thought she
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could fix most things, although she had just told Alex there were some things that
couldn’t be mended.
Light was visible from underneath Alastair’s study door. Was he really reading or was he sitting there thinking about how the world had shortchanged him?
She continued into the garage and climbed into her car, putting the drum on the
passenger seat, still clutching a shard. Being pinned behind the steering wheel felt
like being wrapped in a safe cocoon. Her own locker. A place to hide while all the
commotion was going on. Clever Jonathan. Still she could brain him.
The broken piece of the vase was hurting her hand. The eye of the stag stared
back at her. She began to concoct various stories she might tell her mother about
what happened to the vase. The cat knocking it over was the best one, but the cat
had disappeared two months ago. Everything she came up with was about as convincing as Jonathan’s Indian in the Snoop Dogg T-shirt. She stared at the battered
drum. Tomorrow she could get a new skin for it at the music store where she’d
intended to check out the rentals, but suddenly she took the shard and cut around
the drum’s circumference, peeling back the torn skin. Getting out of the car, she
retrieved the remainder of the bulbs, the trowel, and the potting soil from the
garage shelf where she had placed them not ten minutes before. With the same
zest she’d used to attack the hyacinth bed that afternoon, she scooped soil into the
drum, planted ten bulbs in the body, and arranged the shards like rocks in a Zen
garden. Removing the weighty drum from the front seat, she waddled it over to
Alastair’s study. His head was buried in a book when she opened the door.
“Early birthday present,” she said, depositing the drum garden on the floor.
The French carriage clock struck ten. Time to look for her boy.
Lorraine Comanor is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford
University Medical School. A board certified anesthesiologist and industry
consultant, she has authored or co-authored over thirty-five medical publications,
including a book chapter. In a past life, she was also the U.S. figure skating
champion and member of the U.S. world team. A memoir piece appeared last
year in Skating Magazine. The Locker is her first short story and features
characters from the novel she is now finishing. This January she’ll complete her
MFA in fiction at the Bennington Writing Seminars. Married with three children,
she lives in Truckee, California.
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THE HONEYLOCUST TREE
by Marc Simon
W
e pull up on Millerdale Street, and the first thing I notice, my Honeylocust tree is gone. There’s nothing but a flat stump. Now why would
anyone take down a perfectly good tree without asking me first?
The City of Pittsburgh planted that tree in our front yard 40 years ago when we
moved here from the apartment on Negley Avenue, after I had Randy, my second
boy. Randy and my oldest, James, played Tarzan of the Apes up in the branches,
screaming like banshees. It’s a wonder they didn’t fall and break their heads
open. All us neighborhood ladies used to sit out on summer nights under that tree,
talking about this, that and the other thing, slapping at our arms with flyswatters
to keep the mosquitoes away.
I pay the cab driver and wheel my little suitcase up the front walk. It’s quiet
on the street. My lawn looks green and neat. James or Randy must have come by
to cut it. It’s been a rainy April. The crocuses came up good. My daffodils and
tulips are ready to open.
The front door is locked. Now that’s funny. In all the years I lived in this house
I never locked my door. No need to. All us neighbors looked out for each other.
I put my key in the lock, but it doesn’t turn. It could be it’s the wrong key, the
one for the apartment. I keep all my keys on a red elastic coil around my wrist. At
Sunset Towers you need one key for your apartment, one for your mailbox and
another one for the storage locker. They all look the same, those keys. Anyone
could get confused.
I try them all but nothing works. Arlene Lennon, my neighbor from across the
street has an extra key to my house. She doesn’t work, so she’s home all day. Her
husband never let her drive a car. I don’t know why. I haven’t taken my car out of
the garage since the boys moved me up to Sunset Towers. The battery is probably dead by now. My late husband Al always said run a car at least once a week
or the battery goes bad. It’s a good thing Al taught me to drive before he had his
heart attack; otherwise I couldn’t get around on my own. Taking a cab everywhere would cost an arm and a leg. It was fourteen dollars plus tip from Sunset
Towers to here.
I hope Arlene has some coffee on. Not that her coffee is any good—all she
makes is instant—but I could use a cup right now. I haven’t had one since early this
morning, after that mouse ran out of my cabinet. Could have been a rat, the size of it.
I’m about to go to Arlene’s when my front door swings open. There’s a tall
young woman with red hair standing there. She comes out on the porch and says,
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
This is a shock. I say, “What are you doing in my house?”
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“Your house?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Wait a minute, ma’am—are you lost or something?”
“Lost? I’ve lived here for 40 years.”
Al and I paid $17,500 for this house on the GI loan in 1949. We were married
in 1946, after he came back from the war in Germany. Before that, I worked as
a bookkeeper at the Edgar Thompson Steel Works for Mr. Walter T. Kelly from
1941 to 1945. Al was the second boy I dated. He popped the question at Rainbow
Gardens, a very nice dance hall in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. They tore it down
years ago. Al had a good job grinding eyeglass lenses for Shields Optical. I still
get his pension plus my Social Security.
“Well I can tell you, you don’t live here now.”
This woman claims says she bought the house three months ago. Which is
ridiculous. I didn’t sell it to her. Maybe my boys had a hand in this somehow.
“Hold on a second,” I say, “I need to call my sons about this. Maybe I could borrow your telephone.”
“Your sons? Wait—what’s your name?”
“Lila Gross. What’s yours?”
“Maggie Wolfe.” She looks at me again, like somehow she knows me now.
She says I can come in and use her phone. In the middle of my living room
there’s a baby in a playpen. She’s a cute little thing, lying there so peaceful. Her
hair is red. Both my boys had blonde hair until they were five, and it was so fine
it pained me to get it cut, but Al said he didn’t want them looking like girls. Now
my older boy James is almost as gray as I am. He’s the worrier of the two. For
some reason, Randy shaves his head. I think he’s going bald and doesn’t want
anyone to know it, but I tell him, what’s the difference. You can’t fight nature.
Over to the right is a dark wood desk with a stack of folders and a computer.
“You must be doing some work.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “So, you’re related to James and Randy
Gross.”
“Of course I am, I’m their mother. You know them?”
She smiles kind of sideways. “Yes, I know them. Listen, why don’t you just
wait here a second, all right? I’ll get the cordless and you make your call.”
James is my older boy. He’s 51 now, divorced, no children. His wife was
flighty and had a quick temper, but then James does, too, so I can’t put it all on
her. Randy never did marry. Don’t ask me why. It pains me to think I’ll never
have a sweet little grandchild like this one here.
Besides the playpen, my living room is all changed around. There’s a sofa on
one side and a matching loveseat on the other, with a stone and glass coffee table
in the middle. It has a pretty floral arrangement with purple and white African
violets around a philodendron. I have to keep artificial flowers in the apartment
because I don’t get enough light for real plants.
I’m picking the dead leaves off the philodendron when Maggie comes back
with the telephone. She says, “Here, Mrs. Gross.”
“Call me Lila. The only people that call me Mrs. Gross are my doctors. You
have a trash can for these leaves?”
“I’ll take them.” Her manicure is nice. Up at Sunset Towers they have a
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Russian woman that comes in twice a week to do nails. You can’t understand a
word she says. She charges seven dollars, and that’s about all it’s worth, the way
she slops on the polish. But you can’t complain to her since, as I say, she doesn’t
speak the language.
“That’s a lovely wedding ring you have, Maggie.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“After my husband Al died, I just couldn’t wear my rings anymore. It didn’t
feel right. I had the engagement ring made into a diamond pendant.” I should
have packed it before I left. I look at my little suitcase and wonder what else I
forgot. I feel woozy all of a sudden.
She leans toward me. “Are you all right?”
“Oh yes, I’m fine.”
She looks as if she doesn’t believe me. “Lila, why did you come here today?”
“To tell you the truth, Maggie, I don’t have much use for Sunset Towers. That’s
the place my boys found for me. Just a lot of older people sitting around, trying to
figure out what to do with themselves. Half of them don’t understand what you say
to them. The other half is hard of hearing. They give you a nametag to wear. As if
you don’t know your own name. I don’t know where mine is but I never wore it
anyway. It wasn’t my idea to move up there, but when I fell down the basement
stairs James told me I was too old to be running up and down the steps all day.
“Anyway, this morning, I was getting a box of corn flakes when a mouse ran out
of the cabinet. It could have been a rat, the size of it. It went right for my bad ankle. I
can still feel its fur rubbing against my skin. Then it shot into my bedroom.”
“Did you call maintenance?”
“What can they do? Anyway, I had to get out of there after that. You’re supposed to sign out, but I didn’t tell anybody I was leaving, not even Sally Jessowitz. She would blab it all over the place. I’m not saying she isn’t nice, but sometimes with her you can’t get a word in edgewise. You know how some people go
on and on.” Maggie laughs for a second. “Did I say something funny?”
“Yes. I mean no.”
“Of course, there’s no rats in this house. The basement is dry as a bone. I keep
the boys’ school papers and family photo albums down there. I could show you
some pictures.” I start for the kitchen.
Maggie says, “Lila, hold on a minute. You need to call your sons.”
“I want to show you those pictures.”
You have to go through the dining room and kitchen to get to the basement. I
stop at the top of the stairs. “I must have been up and down these steps a million
times. I don’t know how I fell. I was carrying a basket of whites and the next
thing I know, I was flat on my back at the bottom.”
Maggie says, “You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.”
I touch her arm. “That’s just what my boys said. My ankle got twisted up
under me. They kept me in the hospital for four days. Four days for a twisted
ankle? I said wrap it up and let me be on my way, but they had to do their tests.
They even took some kind of X-ray of my head. Now why would they do that? I
fell on my ankle.”
We’re halfway down the steps. Maggie’s got a hold of my elbow. She says,
“There’s that dripping noise again. It drives me crazy.”
“That? Come on, I’ll show you.” Behind the furnace there’s a plastic bucket
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that hangs off the drain valve. It’s ready to spill over. I explain to her that you
have to empty the overflow every week, or else you’ll get water on the floor.
She looks surprised. “I didn’t even know it was there.”
“Also, it’s time to change the batteries in the smoke detectors. I do it every
April when it’s Daylight Savings Time, so I don’t forget. My husband Al used to
take care of all this.”
“Mine, too.”
“What? Did something happen to him?”
She frowns. “You could say that.”
“He didn’t have a heart attack, did he?”
“The bastard walked out on me a month before Nora was born.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
“He left me, just like that, in the middle of the night, without a word or a note
or anything.”
I say, “You poor girl.”
She takes some clothes out of the washer and puts them in the dryer. “We
were together for eight years, married for five. We hardly ever fought. That
should have been a clue. But I thought everything was fine, you know? If someone had said to me, ‘Maggie, are you happy?’ I would have said, ‘Well, yeah,
sure.’ Stupid girl.
“So a couple of years ago, we decide to have a baby and then buy a house,
live like real adults, and everything is hectic and scary and exhausting, but sweet,
too, and I thought, we can really do this, but now it’s all turned to shit.”
“Don’t say that, Maggie.”
“What the hell did I ever do to deserve this? I’m not a shrew. I’m not a bitch.
I’m nice, goddamn it. Nice. Maybe that’s my problem. But you know what the worst
part is? Sometimes at night, I miss him so much I ache all over. It pisses me off, but
I can’t help it.” She looks at me. “Christ, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“It’s all right. It’s good to get it off your chest.” I give her a hug, and she hugs me
back. We stand there with our arms around each other. It makes me wish I had had a
daughter like her. After a few seconds we let go. I think she’s a little embarrassed.
We’re back in the kitchen when the baby starts crying and the phone starts
ringing all at once. She runs into the living room. I hear her say, “Maggie Wolfe
… Arthur, how are you? Listen, can I put you on hold for one second?” Then she
yells, “Lila, could you come in here, please?”
I head back into the living room as fast as my bad ankle will let me. The
baby’s bawling her eyes out. She could be hungry or wet, or both, even. Maggie
hoists her up on her hip. She says, “Can you mind her a minute?”
It’s been a long time since I held a baby, but she fits right in the crook of my
arm, as if she were meant to be there. She has the bluest eyes. I know people
always say that, but she does. I could look into a baby’s eyes forever. I rock her
softly and say, “Hi, little Nora, I’m your Aunt Lila.” Right away she calms down.
Maggie looks at her computer and says, “No, I’m fine, Arthur. Thanks for
holding. Listen, I need the cost basis for that Class A Enterprise Fund you sold
last year ... cost basis … it’s O.K., your advisor will know … yes, ASAP …
thanks, you too.” She takes the baby. My arm feels warm where I held her, but
I know it won’t last. “Look, Lila, you can see I have my hands full right now. I
need you to call one of your boys to take you home.”
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I say, “But I am home.”
“But you’re not.” She points all around her. “ Look, I’m sorry, but you don’t
own this house anymore. Do you understand? Your sons sold it to me on your
behalf. They have power of attorney.”
She’s wrong there. “Attorney? I don’t know what you mean by that. James
is a high school teacher and Randy fixes cars. He owns his own garage. He takes
care of mine for me. I don’t know if it will start. The battery may be dead.”
“Lila, what I’m telling you is, they sold your house to me, in your name.”
“They can do that without asking me?”
“They must have explained this to you.”
I remember the day the boys moved me up to Sunset Towers. They got the
furniture set up in half an hour. The place is so small, there are only so many
ways you can arrange it. They told me how much I was going to enjoy it there. I
said to them, well exactly what I am supposed to do with myself all day. Randy
said something about arts and crafts and shopping trips, and James said that I
should just relax and enjoy life now, and that they would take care of the house. I
thought they meant they’d mow the lawn and such.
Maggie tugs my arm and says, “Lila?”
“I thought the reason they got me that apartment up there was just because
I hurt my ankle falling down the steps, that it was just a place to stay until I got
better, not for good.”
“You understand now?”
I look out the front window. “You never did tell me what happened to my
Honeylocust tree. The city planted it for us.”
“We had to have it taken down. It was rotting from the inside.”
“Is that right? Funny, I never noticed. I guess I’m getting old. But if had to
be done, it had to be done. I wouldn’t want the tree to suffer.” I get a little teary.
“Look, Maggie, I don’t mind if you and the baby live here. You take the master
bedroom. I could take the spare, or if you don’t want me going up and down the
stairs, I’ll sleep on the pullout sofa.”
“Lila.”
“It’s a queen size. The sheets are in the linen closet. Does the baby sleep
through the night yet? It won’t bother me to get up to feed her, I’m a light sleeper.
Unless you’re nursing.”
She looks away, and for a second I think she’s getting mad at me. But then
she puts her arm around my shoulders and kisses me on my cheek. Her voice is a
little shaky when holds out the telephone. “Call your sons.”
I feel shaky, too. I need some air. I get up and go out the front door, pulling
my suitcase behind me. It looks like rain. I wonder where that cab is.
Marc Simon’s short fiction has appeared in several literary magazines,
including The Wilderness House Review, The Shine, Flashquake and Poetica
Magazine. His first novel, The Leap Year Boy will be published this December,
and his one-act play, Sex After Death is a winner in the Naples Players Readers
Theater new plays competition and will be staged in December as well.
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DON’T LET THE STARS
GET IN YOUR EYES
(Novel excerpt, from American Jukebox)
by Len Joy
PROLOGUE
November 1934 — five miles north of Maple Springs, Missouri
D
ancer’s first memory is of the fire. There is a frost on the ground and the
cold seeps into his bare feet as he stands by the water pump between the
hay barn and the farmhouse. Flames peek from the upstairs bedroom windows and tease the edges of the roof. His eyes sting. Neighbors from the nearby
farms have rushed to help. Dancer’s mother works the pump and the water gushes
into the milking pails, which are handed from one woman to another down the line
to their men who swarm over the burning house.
His father Walter runs across the top of the front porch roof and empties his
buckets through the window. The flames hiss and retreat, but then snap back again.
He jumps down and grabs two more pails. A ladder is propped against the porch,
and Walter, with a bucket in each hand, races up the ladder like it’s a staircase and
hurls more water on the flames. Over and over again he runs from pump to porch
to roof and back while Dancer waits for him to put out the fire. His father can hoist
seventy pound bales of hay with one arm. He can fix any piece of equipment ever
made. He can do anything.
The flames reach the roof. When the embers leap from the farmhouse to the
barn, his mother stops pumping. She walks over and picks up Dancer. Her cheeks
are shiny with tears.
Two of the men grab Walter as he tries to climb the ladder one more time.
The roof collapses and then the feed silo ignites and the barn explodes. The flames
make spooky shadows on his dad’s sweaty, soot-streaked face.
Most people remembered Dancer’s father as a whiskey-runner. As the man
who could outdrive any revenue agent in southeast Missouri or Arkansas. But that
wasn’t who he was. That’s just what he became.
Summer 1939 (five years later)
For a while it was an adventure. Walter Stonemason hired on with Cecil Danforth, delivering his moonshine all over Missouri and Arkansas. The family lived
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in a shack close by Cecil’s whiskey-making operation. Cecil lived out of his truck
and whenever he moved the still — which he did every few months so the revenue
agents couldn’t find it — the family moved too. Some of the places were better
than others. Up north in the hills around Salem they had a real cabin with a wood
floor and a bedroom for Dancer’s parents. But mostly it was one-room tarpaper
shacks with dirt floors.
With all the uprooting it was hard to make friends and after a time Dancer
stopped trying. During the summer when folks were extra thirsty, his father was on
the road six days out of seven and his mom worked in town cleaning houses. For
most of those long summer days, it was just Cecil and Dancer. Dancer spent hours
bouncing a rubber ball against the cinderblock wall that protected Cecil’s still.
Cecil Danforth was an ugly whip of a man — gray and grizzled and twisted
like a dog’s chew strip. His overalls were grease-shiny and his hair long and matted. He only shaved when he bathed, so once his beard got heavy, Dancer kept his
distance. That set fine with Cecil – he wasn’t much for kids. But one hot summer
day after he got his batch percolating he came out from behind the wall, hunkered
down on a hickory stump with his corncob pipe and watched as Dancer hurled his
rubber ball against the cinderblocks.
“You got yourself a good arm,” Cecil said. “How old are you, boy?”
“Eight,” Dancer said. On the next toss he tried to throw extra hard and the ball
bounced wildly off the wall and almost hit Cecil perched on his stump.
“Hey, you got to get control. Make that ball go where you’re aiming, just like
Dizzy Dean. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw him pitch?”
“No sir,” Dancer said.
“Cards were playing the Cubs,” Cecil said. “That son of a bitch Stan Hack slid
hard into second base, spikes high. Took a big slice out of our boy, Leo Durocher.
Let me tell you, that didn’t set right with Mr. Dizzy Dean.”
“Was Leo hurt?” Dancer asked.
Cecil spit a fleck of ash off his tongue. “Nah, old Leo’s tough as a walnut tree.
But that didn’t matter, none. Baseball team’s a family, just like your old man and
all those other boys out there running my whiskey are part of my family. Dizzy
looked out for Leo just like I look out for them.”
“What did he do?”
Cecil sucked hard on his corncob pipe. “Next time Stan Hack came to the
plate, Dizzy planted his fastball right in Stan’s wallet.” He cackled at the memory.
“You should have seen the look on Hack’s face. Goddamn that was sweet.” Cecil
stood up and headed back to his still. “Yes sir. Dizzy knew how to play the game.”
All that summer Cecil captivated Dancer with his baseball stories. Baseball
was more than a game. A baseball team was a family. A baseball player was never
lonely. He always had his teammates and everyone looked out for each other. That
was part of the code they lived by. And the pitcher, more than any other player,
protected the team. Dancer wanted to be like Dizzy Dean. He reckoned that being
a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals might just be the best job in the whole world.
When Cecil wasn’t recounting some baseball story, he’d talk about Walter and
his hard-driving exploits. Walt was his clean-up batter. Walt always came through
in the clutch. Walt knew all the backroads and could outrun anyone. Walt was like
a son to him.
Cecil Danforth was full of talk about loyalty and honor and family. But in the
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winter of 1945 when Dancer’s father got caught by a revenue agent in Fort Smith,
Cecil’s notion of family changed. They were holding Walt in the county jail, but
the local sheriff offered to release him on “bail” for five hundred dollars. Dancer
and his mom called on Cecil for help.
“Five hundred dollars?” Cecil said, his face all scrunched up like it had been
that day Dancer dropped one of his cases of whiskey. “Can’t do that. Got everything tied up in inventory.” He turned away from them to toss another log on his
fire.
“What are we supposed to do, Cecil?” Dancer’s mother asked, spitting the
words at him.
Cecil shrugged. “It’s his first pinch. They’ll go easy on him,” he said.
But Cecil was wrong.
CHAPTER 1
September 5, 1953
Dancer Stonemason drove through Maple Springs headed for Rolla. His
left-hand rested gentle on the steering wheel and in his pitching hand he held a
baseball — loose and easy — like he was shooting craps. The ball took the edge
off the queasy feeling he always got on game day. His son Clayton sat beside him
and made sputtering engine noises as he gripped an imaginary steering wheel,
while Dede just stared out the window with other things on her mind. Dancer
turned down Main Street, past the Tastee-Freeze and Dabney’s Esso Station and
the Post Office and the First National Bank of Maple Springs and Crutchfield’s
General Store and then, at the outskirts of town, the colored Baptist Church with
its neatly-tended grid of white crosses and gravestones under a gnarled willow.
The graveyard reminded him of the cemetery up north near Chillicothe where his
mother was buried with the rest of the Dancer clan. She had died in the flu epidemic of ’47, while Walt was away in prison. Across from the Baptists, A-1 Auto
Parts blanketed the landscape with acres and acres of junked automobiles. His
dad’s Buick was out there somewhere.
They turned north onto Highway 60 and the ’39 Chevy coughed and bucked
as he shifted into third. The Chevy had been his father’s car, but when Walt Stonemason was released in the spring of ’50, Cecil Danforth gave him a new Buick
Roadmaster as a welcome home gift. It had more whiskey-hauling capacity than
the Chevy so Cecil probably figured it was a good investment. Dancer had pleaded
with his father not to go back to Cecil, but Walt didn’t reckon he had any better
options. With his wife gone, he didn’t care much about anything. Six months after
he got out, on an icy October evening with the highway patrol in hot pursuit, he
lost control of the Roadmaster and ran it into a hickory tree, killing himself.
As he cruised north on Highway 60, Dancer’s fingers glided over the smooth
cowhide as he read the seams and adjusted his grip from fastball to curveball
to changeup. He had a hand built for pitching — a pancake-size palm and long,
tapered fingers that hid the ball from the batter for that extra heartbeat. It was the
Saturday before Labor Day and Dancer’s team, the Rolla Rebels, was hosting the
Joplin Miners. Rolla was only an hour’s drive from Maple Springs, but Dancer
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had his family on the road early. This was going to be a special game. Not for
his team — the Rebels were in third place going nowhere — but today would be
Clayton’s first baseball game. The first time he’d see his dad pitch.
The hot-towel Missouri heat, which had suffocated them through July and
August, had finally retreated to Arkansas. A few puffy clouds dotted the sky and
the air was light and fresh. Dede’s head lolled backwards, her eyes closed as she
let the cool wind from the open window billow her white cotton dress. She only
wore that dress to church and special occasions. It didn’t get much use.
Her short blonde hair, which wrapped around her ears and curled down the
nape of her neck, was still damp from her morning escapade. While Dancer was
trying to shave, Dede had slid open the shower curtain, fogging up his mirror. Her
hands were draped over the top of the shower head as the hot spray pelted her
breasts. “Soap me, honey. Do my back.” She wiggled her ass.
”You’re getting water on the floor,” Dancer said.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “You know if I squint really hard, with
all this fog you look just like Gary Cooper.”
“He’s taller. Close the curtain.”
She grabbed a washcloth off the shower curtain rod and turned to face Dancer.
She slowly rubbed the cloth down her belly and over her pubes. “Come on, Coop,
do my back.” Water was pooling on the floor.
Dancer had set down his razor and stepped over to the tub. “Turn around. Put
your hands on the wall.”
“Anything you say, sheriff.”
He took the washcloth and soaped her back and her little butt. As he brought
his hand up between her legs she reached around and slipped her hand into his
boxer shorts.
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” she said.
Dancer had managed to resist. Dede knew he couldn’t fool around on game
day, but she didn’t care. She could never get enough and now they had a problem.
They’d started dating when Dancer was a senior. Even though she was two
years younger than him, she had been the one to make the first move. He’d never
been with another girl, but Dede made it easy. She seemed to know too much for a
fifteen year old.
Traffic was light and Dancer had the Chevy cruising along at close to sixty.
Beside him, Clayton pressed his foot down on a phantom gas pedal and his
sputtering engine revved into a high-pitched whine. He drove hard just like his
whiskey-running grandfather and he looked like him too. The wheat-colored hair
and the dirt tan and the perpetual motion energy — neither Walter nor Clayton
could ever sit still for an entire meal.
Dancer glanced over at Dede. She had a crooked mouth and a gap between her
two front teeth that he hadn’t noticed when they first met because of her eyes. Her
eyes were big and wild and crazy-blue and when she looked at him he was lucky if
he could remember his own name.
And now with her face half-covered by her wind-tossed hair she looked so
innocent. She didn’t look like she was two months pregnant. Her belly was still
flat and her breasts hadn’t swelled, not like they had when Clayton was on his way.
Maybe the doctor was wrong.
After Clayton was born, Dancer had found an offseason job at the Caterpil201
lar plant – parts inspector – dollar an hour and boring as hell. He wasn’t cut out
for factory work, but they needed the money. When they moved him up to Rolla,
the pay was better and he thought he’d get out of the factory, but Dede fell in love
with the red brick house on the hill east of town, so they bought it and then he had
a wife and a baby and a house and a mortgage and another offseason back in the
factory inspecting parts. And now with a new baby on the way, he’d have to work
overtime just for them to survive.
Dancer reached over and tugged down on the brim of the Cardinals baseball
cap he’d given Clayton. It was several sizes too big and Dede had bobby-pinned
the back so it wouldn’t fall off.
“Hey, Dad, don’t do that.” Clayton pushed the brim back up, and then yanked
his imaginary steering wheel hard to the right, while making a throaty, gargling
sound. He buried his face in his mom’s lap.
“What happened?” Dancer asked.
“Crashed. I couldn’t see,” Clayton said.
Dede ruffled his hair. “Oh no. You won’t get to watch Daddy pitch.”
Clayton shot back up in his seat. “Daddy’s going to strike them all out, aren’t
you, Dad?”
“Your daddy can’t strike everyone out. He’s not Superman,” Dede said. She
winked at Dancer.
Dancer squeezed the ball into Clayton’s small hands. “I’m going to try.”
Dancer walked through the parking lot to the centerfield gate where all the
players entered the stadium. On the warning track that ringed the outfield, Mr.
Seymour Crutchfield, the owner of the Rebels, stood with his hands clasped
behind his back listening to his son-in-law, Doc Evans, the manager of the Rebels.
Doc had that look men get when they’re trying to explain something to an important person like a boss or a father-in-law and that important person doesn’t get it.
Mr. Seymour Crutchfield, wearing the black wool suit and bow-tie he was born
in, looked like an undertaker who’s been told the family doesn’t want the deluxe
eternity package.
As Dancer crossed the track and headed toward the infield, Doc Evans signaled for him to come over. Mr. Seymour Crutchfield nodded sternly as Dancer
approached the men. “Morning, Mr. Crutchfield,” Dancer said. He turned to Doc
and waited.
“Stop in my office before you go out for warm-ups, son,” Doc said.
The locker room was a concrete bunker under Crutchfield Stadium that even
on the hottest days was cool and damp and smelled of liniment and sweat and
mildew and Doc’s cigars. The only player who had arrived before Dancer was
Ron Bilko, who sat on the bench next to the row of banged-up metal lockers that
lined the front wall. Bilko was in his underwear, eating a hot dog and studying a
crumpled issue of The Sporting News like it was a foreclosure notice. Next to him
on the bench was a cardboard tray with a half-dozen more hot dogs.
“What’s the problem, Ronny? Someone take away your homerun title?”
Dancer asked as he opened the locker next to Bilko.
Bilko shook his head. “Hell no. Still leading the goddamn league.”
“So why you look like your dog died?”
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Bilko smacked the paper down on the bench. “Goddamn Enos Slaughter,” he
said. He grabbed another hot dog.
Enos Slaughter was the right fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. The one man
standing between Bilko and the major leagues. Last few months a man couldn’t
have a conversation with Ronny without Goddamn Enos Slaughter joining them.
“Slaughter? He’s not still playing is he?” Dancer said, pretending like that was
a serious question. Dancer and Bilko were the top minor league prospects in the
Cardinals organization. At the end of the season, most of the major league clubs
had started to bring up their promising young players to give the veterans a rest
and check out the prospects. But the Cardinals’ skipper, Eddy Stanky, didn’t want
a player if he didn’t have a spot for him. The Cardinals had an all-star outfield led
by Stan Musial and Slaughter and a rock-solid corps of pitchers that never seemed
to get injured. There was no place for Bilko or Stonemason.
Bilko showed Dancer the stat box for the Cardinals. “Look at that. That old
man’s batting .294. Thirty-seven goddamn years old. SOB ain’t ever going to
retire.”
Dancer flipped the paper over to the minor league stats. “Hey. Siebern’s got
twenty-seven homeruns — only three behind you. He could hit that many today.”
Norm Siebern was a power-hitting lefty for the Joplin Miners. Twice this year
Siebern had smashed Dancer’s fastball out of the park.
Bilko picked up another hot dog. “I ain’t worried. No son-of-a-bitch going to
hit three homeruns off Dancer Stonemason.”
“Glad you’re so confident.”
“…’cause after the second homerun you’ll plant your fastball right between
his numbers. Give that son-of-a-bitch a decimal point.”
“Good idea, Ronny.”
Bilko winked. “Have a hot dog, Dancer. Put some meat on those bones.”
Bilko pushed the tray towards Dancer. “Dede coming today?” he asked.
“Already here. We brought Clayton. He’s never seen me pitch.”
“You’re a lucky man, Dancer. Got a good woman and a boy who looks up to
you. Ain’t nothing better than that.”
“Dede says we’re going to have another one.”
“Another kid?” Bilko jumped up and thumped Dancer on the back. “Goddamn
Dancer that’s great. When’s she due?”
Dancer pulled his uniform out of his equipment bag. The Rebels wore a gray
pullover wool jersey with two rows of decorative buttons running down the front.
It was supposed to look like a Confederate officer’s longcoat. When Doc had taken
over as skipper he had the Stars and Bars taken off the back of the jersey. That had
pissed off some of the boys, but Dancer didn’t mind. It was hot enough pitching
in those wool uniforms without having a Confederate flag plastered on his back.
“March or April, I guess. Probably right in the middle of spring training.”
“Well this time make sure you get her to the hospital so you don’t screw up
the date.”
Dancer was playing in a day-night doubleheader the day De de went into
labor. Waiting for Dancer to return, she delayed too long and had to get help from
the midwife who lived down the road. Clayton was born at home just before
midnight on August 30. It was a difficult delivery and when Dancer got home an
hour later he rushed Dede and their new baby to the hospital. He told the admitting
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nurse that Clayton had just been born and she put down the 31st as the birthdate.
Later they tried to correct the error, but the hospital wanted an affidavit from the
midwife and it didn’t seem to be worth the hassle. Clayton’s official birthday
remained August 31, 1949.
“Nearly went broke paying the hospital bills last time. Don’t know how we’re
going to pay for this next one.” Dancer grabbed a hot dog and stuffed it in his
mouth. “And that boy eats like a horse,” he said. “Hard to get by on meal money
and eighty bucks a week.”
Bilko put his hands on Dancer’s shoulder. “Major league pay, that’s how. I
hear the Cardinals get ten dollars a day just for meals. When I play for the Cards
I’m going to have a t-bone every night.”
The locker room door flew open and Billy Pardue stuck his head in. “What the
hell you doing, Dancer? Stop playing pattycake with Old McDonald and get your
ass out here. We got work to do.”
The Rebel players were either young hotshots like Dancer and Bilko or aging veterans on their way down and just trying to hang on for a few more years.
Billy Pardue was one of those guys on the way down. But he’d had his day. Not
only made it to the big leagues, he got to play in the fifth game of the 1943 World
Series — Cards versus the Yankees.
Billy had forgotten more baseball than most players ever learned. And he’d
shared it all with Dancer. Even showed him how to throw a tobaccy-spit pitch.
That specialty required the pitcher to glob the ball up with juice. When thrown
properly, the ball would squirt out of the pitcher’s hand and waggle its way to the
plate like a leaf in a windstorm. It was, in Billy’s words, “a fucking unhittable
pitch.” But Dancer couldn’t stomach tobacco-chewing and besides he figured with
his fastball he didn’t need to cheat. Not too much anyway.
Dancer tied the laces of his spikes and pulled on his gray Rebel cap, which
hadn’t set right since he got a GI-style crewcut last month. He took off the cap and
rubbed his hand over his bristly head as he checked himself out in Bilko’s cracked
mirror. The sun had turned his light-brown hair almost blond.
“You’re pretty enough, sweetheart,” Billy said. “Get out here so we can go
over the line-up.”
“I’ll be right there, Billy. Doc wants to see me first.”
Billy spit his tobacco juice in Dancer’s direction. “Doc ain’t going to be the
one out there on the mound when the shit hits the fan. Make it short.” He spit
again and slammed the door.
Doc was in his office, feet propped on his desk, reading the New York Times.
Before every game he studied that Yankee paper like it was the Bible or The Sporting News. Doc was from someplace back east.
He knew his baseball, but he was skipper because he’d married Mr. Seymour
Crutchfield’s wall-eyed daughter, Melissa. He wasn’t really a Doc either, but he
wore wire-rim glasses and his gray hair was always brylcreemed real slick. What
with the glasses and the gray hair and the newspaper-reading and the rich wife, he
seemed a whole lot smarter than the rest of the boys, so they all called him Doc.
He’d been a pretty fair shortstop before the war. Had an invitation to spring
training with the Tigers back in forty-two, but enlisted instead. He was part of the
45th Infantry Division that landed in Sicily in July ‘43. Got his right arm shot to
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hell, just outside Salerno. That was it for his baseball career. There wasn’t much
demand for left-handed shortstops.
Doc motioned for Dancer to take the seat, and then kept reading the paper,
like he’d forgotten about him. Dancer tried not to fidget. Billy would be pissed if
he didn’t get out there while the Miners were taking batting practice. Finally Doc
folded up the paper and placed it on his desk.
“I don’t know what this world’s coming to, son.”
“Yes sir.”
“Eisenhower’s a damn fool to settle for a tie in Korea. Truman would have
never let that happen.”
“No sir.”
“And now look at this. Russians just exploded an H bomb.” He poked his
finger at the headline.
“Yes sir.”
“The world’s a dangerous place.” He shook his head. “Do you have children,
son?”
“Yes sir. My boy Clayton just turned four and we got another one on the way.”
Doc took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You aren’t
Catholic are you?”
“No sir. My mama was a Baptist. Dad wasn’t much of anything. They both
passed, sir.”
Doc gave a sympathy nod. “How you going to feed a family of four on what
we’re paying you?”
“Well, I was kind of hoping…” Dancer caught himself. Doc wouldn’t think
hoping was any kind of plan.
“You’re planning to make it to the big leagues, right? Get that major league
paycheck. That boy Mickey Mantle just signed a new contract — seventeen thousand five hundred dollars. That’s a lot of beans.”
“Goddamn Yankees.”
“I just got off the phone with Mr. Stanky. Haddix has a sore arm and he’s
thinking about shutting him down. Cards ain’t going anywhere. So...”
Doc pulled out a cigar, sniffed it up and down and bit off the end. Dancer
crept to the edge of his chair. Doc could spend ten minutes farting around with his
goddamn cigars.
“So…?” Dancer asked his voice breaking.
“They might need you for the Labor Day doubleheader Monday.”
Dancer jumped up. “Holy shit! The Cardinals!” His spikes almost slipped out
from under him and he had to grab Doc’s desk to keep from falling.
“Try not to kill yourself before you get there, son.”
Dancer sat back in his seat. “But I’m still pitching today, right? My boy’s out
there. He’s counting on me.”
Walt had always been on the road when Dancer was little. And then just as
Dancer was about to enter high school, he went to prison. Dancer had hoped that
after he got out they would have time to build something, but it never happened.
His father never even saw him pitch. Dancer wasn’t going to let that happen with
Clayton.
Doc cocked his head to one side. “I can’t send you up to St. Louis with your
arm dragging around your ankles. Mr. Stanky would rip me a new asshole.” He
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puffed harder on the cigar. “Tell you what. You can go three innings. That’ll keep
you fresh enough so you can still pitch in two days if Stanky needs you.”
The Joplin Miners were still taking batting practice when Dancer joined Billy
in the dugout. Billy pointed to the umpire out by home plate, Lester Froehlich,
who in the offseason was Fish & Game Warden for Howell County.
“Asshole fined me twenty bucks for poaching last year. Got my deer one
fucking day before the season.” Billy leaned over and spit. “Here’s the deal on
Froehlich. He’s got a low strike zone. He’ll give you a pitch down by the ankles,
but anything above the waist he’s calling a ball. So keep the goddamn ball low.”
After he finished on Froehlich, Billy started on the lineup, reminding Dancer
where he wanted him to pitch each batter. Dancer wasn’t paying attention — he
was far away, trying on his new uniform with those two red Cardinals perched on
the baseball bat. The same uniform Dizzy Dean had worn.
Billy backhanded Dancer’s hat off his head.
“Listen, boy. I know you got the call. You earned it and you’re going to be
aces. But right now we got a game to play. You want to stay up in the Bigs, remember this — respect the goddamn game. Play every game like it’s your last.”
“I’ll always respect the game, Billy.”
“I know, kid.” He picked up Dancer’s hat and put it back on his head. “Holy
shit.” Billy pointed to a new batter, who had just hit a ball off the Crutchfield
General Store billboard behind the centerfield fence. “That’s Connie Ryan. Played
against him back in forty-seven when he was with the Redlegs. Didn’t know he
got sent down.”
Ryan knocked the next two pitches over the left field fence. “We need a bigger
ballpark,” Dancer said.
“Don’t sweat him, kid. He’s a swinger. Keep it out of the zone, we’ll get him
to chase. Just keep your head in the game.”
While they sang the national anthem, Dancer scanned the crowd and found
Dede and Clayton in the third row behind first base. He got a warm feeling thinking about Dede’s morning shower. He was half-sorry he’d passed up the opportunity. But tonight they’d have a good time especially after he gave her the news.
The St. Louis Cardinals. Next year he’d make five grand, maybe more. Next year
they could afford all these kids. Next year their lives would be different.
As Dancer trotted to the pitcher’s mound there was an easy buzz to the crowd,
as though the fresh-scrubbed families from Maple Springs and the gang from
Paddy’s Lounge and the hillbillies from Cabool and the Klansmen from Mountain
View had all been blended together into one big happy family all out to enjoy the
last weekend of the summer. The afternoon sky was a great-to-be-alive blue and
the air had a trace of autumn crispness. It was warm enough to work up a sweat,
but not so hot that Dancer would be worn out after three innings.
It was a goddamn perfect day.
Dancer nestled the baseball in his glove as Billy signaled for a fastball. He
gripped the ball across the seams, torqued his body so he was almost facing second
base and then whip-cracked his right arm toward the plate. The ball exploded into
Billy’s glove for a called strike. He struck out the first two batters on six pitches.
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The third batter was Connie Ryan. Billy made a target wide off the plate and gave
him a thumbs up meaning he wanted the ball high. The pitch was chin-level and
Ryan swung and missed. The next two pitches were even higher and he missed
those too. Nine pitches — three strikeouts.
In the bottom of the first, with two men on, Bilko hit his thirty-first homerun
of the year. Dancer greeted him as he returned to the dugout. “Thanks for the lead,
Ronny. I promise not to let Norm hit more than three today.” A safe promise with
Siebern on the bench nursing a sore hamstring.
Dancer cruised through the second and third innings without a ball hit out of
the infield. He was in a groove — his fastball overpowering, his curveball buckling the batters’ knees. As he jogged toward the dugout at the end of the third inning he spotted Clayton jumping up and down on his seat waving his cap. Dancer
had only thrown forty pitches. A couple more innings wouldn’t tire him out.
Doc greeted him as he returned to the dugout. “Nice work, son. Bullpen can
take it from here.”
“Don’t take me out, Doc. I haven’t even broke a sweat. I got plenty left.”
Doc shook his head and walked over to where Billy was taking off his shin
guards. Billy nodded, then trudged over and sat down next to Dancer. “You done
great, Dancer. Let someone else finish the job.”
“Got a perfect game going, Billy.” A perfect game — no hits, no walks, no errors – was something special. A baseball player couldn’t walk away from a perfect
game. That wouldn’t be respecting the game.
Billy stared down at his shoes and spit. “I know.”
“Don’t seem right to quit now. Gotta try, don’t I?”
Billy put his gnarled hand on Dancer’s knee. “Okay, Dancer.” He walked over
to Doc and whispered in his ear.
Doc stood up and pointed his finger at Dancer. “As soon as they get a hit, I’m
pulling you out.”
Bilko hit another homerun in the third to give the Rebels a five run lead. When
Connie Ryan came up again in the fourth inning, Dancer waved off Billy’s sign for
a curveball and Ryan hit his fastball even farther than the balls he had hit in batting practice. It was just foul. Billy raced to the mound and told Dancer if he had
any fondness for his teeth, he best not shake off any more of Billy’s signs. Dancer
didn’t think he was joking about the teeth. Billy called for a curveball and Ryan
popped it up for the third out.
By the fifth inning his fastball had lost its pop and there was a hot spot on
his index finger that burned whenever he threw the breaking ball. But somehow
Dancer kept getting them out. When he took a seat on the bench after the sixth inning he was all alone. Nobody dared talk to him.
Doc just stared at his feet, shaking his head and mumbling. Didn’t even smoke
his cigar. Doc couldn’t take him out with a perfect game on the line. And Dancer
would still be able to pitch on Monday. Three days rest was for old men. Dancer
was young and strong. He’d be ready, no matter what.
The first two batters in the seventh worked full counts — Froehlich wasn’t
calling anything above the belt a strike — but Dancer got them both to fly out.
Connie Ryan was up again.
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Billy Pardue called for a curveball and Ryan again smashed it over the left
field fence, but just to the left of the foul pole. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief.
Billy called for a changeup and Ryan hit a bullet over the first basemen’s head.
Dancer scuffed the mound in disgust, but Froehlich signaled foul. Billy called
time.
“You ain’t fooling him kid. Throw this the way I taught you and let’s go sit
down.” He handed Dancer the ball, a glob of tobacco spit nestled between the
seams.
Dancer looked over toward first at Dede and Clayton. He wiped the sweat off
his brow and gripped the ball with his fingers between the seams like Billy had
shown him. The ball floated toward home and Ryan smiled as he stepped into the
pitch, but as it reached the plate it dive-bombed into the turf. Ryan missed it by
two feet. As Dancer hustled to the dugout he could feel Froehlich staring at him.
In the eighth the Miners batted as though they had somewhere else they
wanted to be. Seven pitches and Dancer was out of the inning. One more inning.
Dancer massaged his arm as he walked to the mound for the ninth inning. It
was sore, but it was a good sore. Nothing was going to stop him now. Froehlich
stood at home plate, hands on hips, staring at him. Dancer offered a nod, sort of
humble-like, as he reached the pitcher’s mound. If Froehlich noticed he didn’t
show it.
First batter, Wagner, had struck out twice on curveballs. Billy called for another curve. Dancer’s pitch missed the plate by five feet. The hot spot had turned
into a blister and the blister had popped. Billy called time and walked slowly to the
mound.
“I can’t throw my curve,” Dancer said, his voice tight.
Billy laughed and thumped Dancer on the back like he’d just told him a dirty
joke. “Don’t look at your hand. Smile. Work the corners — in out, high, low.
It’s the bottom of the lineup. Just three more outs. This is the game that counts,
Dancer.”
Billy walked back to the plate like he was on a Sunday stroll. Laughing and
joking with Froehlich and Wagner about Dancer’s wild pitch. He called for a fast
ball inside and Wagner smashed it deep to right, but the wind kept it in the park
and Bilko caught it at the wall.
Heinz, the Miners slick fielding shortstop was the eighth batter. Heinz couldn’t
hit his weight, and he didn’t weigh much. Billy signaled fastball and Heinz
squared around and bunted the ball to the right of Dancer, toward the shortstop.
Dancer dove headlong and speared the ball before it could get by him. He pivoted
on his knees and flung the ball sidearm to first base. Heinz was out by a step.
Billy had run down the first base line to back up the play. As he trotted back
to home he glared at the Miners. “You’re down five runs — swing the goddamn
bats.”
Dancer rubbed down the baseball and waited for the pinch hitter. Norm
Siebern bounded out of the dugout. A murmur rolled through the crowd as they
recognized the Joplin slugger. He took a couple vicious practice swings, then
stepped up to the plate, smiling at Dancer like he was an old friend.
Billy gave him a target off the outside corner and Dancer’s pitch was kneehigh three inches wide of the plate. Siebern took the pitch for a ball, then moved
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closer to the plate. Dancer’s next pitch was in the same location and Siebern drove
it out of the park, but foul by ten feet. After he hit it, he stood at home plate admiring the flight of the ball. Froehlich threw Dancer a new ball and Siebern stepped
back into the batter’s box. He took a slow, deliberate swing and pointed his bat at
Dancer’s head. Siebern wasn’t respecting him. Dizzy Dean would have never let a
batter get away with that.
Dancer nodded at Billy and then unleashed a fastball right at Siebern’s chin.
The slugger hit the turf like he’d been shot, but as he was going down the ball hit
his bat and bounced harmlessly foul down the first base line.
Billy cackled, “Hey Norm, I think the kid wants your ugly mug off the plate.”
Siebern dug in, but this time a respectful six inches farther back. Dancer
caught the outside corner with a waist-high fast ball, but Froehlich called it a ball.
Two balls, two strikes.
Dancer came back with a change-up and Siebern started to swing, but at the
last moment held up. Froehlich called the pitch high.
Full count.
Dancer stared in at the plate. Siebern wasn’t smiling anymore. Billy crouched
low, holding his glove practically on the ground. Dancer exhaled through his teeth
and threw with everything he had left.
As soon as he released the ball, he knew it was a bad pitch. Right down the
middle, but chest high. Billy came half out of his crouch to catch the ball, then
pulled it down ever so slightly and held it there. Siebern dropped his bat and
headed for first.
“Strike hreeee!” Froehlich croaked as he punched the air with his left fist.
The next thing Dancer knew Billy had him in a bear-hug and all the guys were
grabbing him, pounding him on the back. A sea of teammates carried him toward
the first base seats. Dede was in the aisle with Clayton and he lifted them both
over the rail. Dancer’s throat ached as he kissed away Dede’s tears. Her tousled
hair tickled his face as she wrapped her arms around him. He wanted to tell her
how much he loved her and how things were going to get better and better, but the
crowd cheered so loudly he couldn’t speak. He could hardly breathe. Together they
hoisted Clayton on to Dancer’s shoulders. Clayton clung to his dad’s neck with
cotton-candy sticky hands, as the three of them paraded along the fence from first
base to third base while the crowd chanted, “Dancer! Dancer! Dancer!”
It was a goddamn perfect day.
The next day Dancer was on his back porch soaking his hand in ice water
when Doc pulled into the driveway in his navy blue Mercury cruiser. Doc smiled,
an unnatural look for him, as he walked over to Dancer. “How’s the hand, son?”
Dancer jumped up from his chair and wiped his hand dry with Dede’s dishtowel. “It’s great. Just soaking out some of the soreness.”
Doc stepped on to the porch. “Let me see.”
Dancer held out his hand. There was a nickel-sized open sore on the pitching
side of his index finger. Doc frowned. “You pitched a great game, Dancer. You’re
going to remember that game for the rest of your life. Hell. We all are.”
“What about the Cardinals?”
Doc shook his head. “You can’t pitch with your hand like that.”
“I can still throw my fastball.”
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“Son, it’s the big leagues. You got a good fastball, but you ain’t no goddamn
Bob Feller. Without a curve they’ll kill you. I can’t do that to you.”
Dancer hung his head and stared at his wounded finger. Doc patted him on the
shoulder. “I’m telling Stanky you can’t pitch on Labor Day. He’ll probably bring
up that kid from Columbus.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll get your shot. Next year. Take care of that hand.”
Billy had told him to play every game like it was his last. He had done that.
He’d respected the game and honored the code. But Doc was right. He was young.
He’d get another chance.
Dancer went back to the Caterpillar factory for the offseason. He took a job in the
foundry because it paid better than being a parts inspector — over two dollars an
hour plus overtime. It was backbreaking work and it took its toll on a man, but
with another kid on the way, they needed the extra money.
Len Joy lives in Evanston, Illinois. Recent work has appeared in Annalemma,
Johnny America, Pindeldyboz, LITnIMAGE, Hobart, 3AM Magazine, Righthand
Pointing, Dogzplot, Slow Trains, 21Stars Review, The Foundling Review and
The Daily Palette (Iowa Review). He has recently completed a novel, American
Jukebox,about a minor league baseball player whose life unravels after he fails to
make it to the major leagues. His blog, Do Not Go Gentle…(http://lenjoy.blogspot.
com/) chronicles his pursuit of USA Triathlon Age-Group Championships.
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FAMILY OF ONE
by Priscilla Mainardi
S
he hoped he was waiting. They had a pact to meet Fridays at this time on
the weekends she spent with her father, but today she was late, very late.
Her father had held her up with his ridiculous idea that he would move to
California and she would go with him. She bounced on the balls of her feet at the
light, cars racing by, until she saw her chance, then darted across the four lane
road that circled in front of the art museum. She ran around the museum building,
panting, army bag bumping her hip with every flying step. Down along the edge
of the park, the boathouses flew their medieval flags above the dank sullen river.
Would he be here, waiting in their little patch of woods away from the road, with
a joint or some beers? School was out now and they hadn’t met since it ended, but
nothing had changed; they were each just a grade older. Then she saw him, sitting
on the grass whistling “Heart of Glass.” He hadn’t seen her yet, so she slowed to a
walk. Oh, she could look nonchalant if she tried. It was practically her specialty.
He still didn’t look up, intent on the dusty ground or his red laces or the black
cuffs of his jeans. If only Jenny, her very best friend, could see him right now, with
his long lashes and hair jelled up, earrings glinting from his nose and ears and right
eyebrow. Then he looked up and the song ended. It seemed like the real thing but I
was so blind — He smiled. She dropped down on the grass beside him and kissed
his lips that tasted of smoke.
“My father held me up,” she said. “He had to talk to me. He’s moving to California and wants to take me with him.” She had blurted it, not knowing she would.
“Hey, Alicia, that’s pretty sweet. Where in California?”
“Napa. My uncle has a farm there, or more like a ranch, with horses to ride.
My dad said he’d get me riding boots.” Her mom had promised her boots for her
birthday, way back in May. “But I don’t think I want to go. I mean, my whole life
is here.”
“Well, don’t get all worked up yet. He might be just playing you against your
mother, like always. He might not even want to take you.”
Ouch, why had she told him anything about her parents? True, she felt like a
cat toy sometimes, batted back and forth, but why would her father say he wanted
to take her if he didn’t? Now Holt was kissing her again, his mouth like smoke,
and reaching around to unhook her bra that she didn’t much need yet. Her breasts
were so small but Holt didn’t care; she seemed to have everything he wanted. He
made this quiet patch of grass feel like their own place apart from everyone else.
She put her face in his neck and inhaled, smelled sunshine and grass. It was June
after all, summertime, and she should be happy. He pulled her down next to him
and she closed her eyes, her hand small in his as he pressed her fingers to him, the
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hard bump there. Then he was unzipping her jeans, his fingers inside her, stroking her faster, faster, the pleasure growing stronger until it burst, a cascade of fine
sparkles filling her head. She clung to him, wanted to hold on forever while the
roar of the traffic came back to her ears and the wind whispered in the branches
above them.
Then she heard a rustling sound and Holt pulled away. He sat up and opened a
little square of plastic.
She put out a hand to stop him. “No, Holt wait —”
“I don’t get you, Alicia, I thought you’d want to. Especially if you’re leaving.”
Leaving? Oh yes, her father, how could she have forgotten even for a moment?
Don’t think about Dad right now, no thoughts of Dad. “I want to but — ”
How to explain she wasn’t a virgin. She hadn’t led Holt to believe she was,
hadn’t said one way or the other. She was embarrassed to say she’d made it with
Jordan under the Boardwalk last summer. How trite was that but what really got
her was that the jerk hadn’t called her again. She didn’t want this to happen with
Holt, didn’t want to string him along either. Smiling, she took the rubber from
him, but instead of putting it on, she bent her head and took him in her mouth. He
was so smooth, he slid in easily, and it was over in a moment.
Holt was holding her and grinning. “You’re not bad, Alicia.”
She grinned too, felt relaxed and smoothed out, her limbs gone limp on the
grass. She closed her eyes and heard the flare of a match, then smelled pot. Holt
took a big hit and leaned over and put his mouth on hers and blew smoke into
her. She took a few more hits and her thoughts began to fall down around her like
something just smashed. Jenny without a clue about any of this and how much
Alicia wanted to tell her about Holt, maybe just to see if how she felt was real.
Her dad wanting to take her away, trying so hard to get her interested, showing her
pictures of the ranch in Napa where her uncle lived. Juliet, her mom — she only
thought of her as Juliet now, though her Dad, Eric, was still just Dad — would
want her to stay, or would she? Had her parents even talked about her going?
“Here, Alicia.” Holt was holding out a joint for her. She wanted to say no, I
don’t want to carry it, it’ll show all over my face I’m guilty of something. But Holt
would think she was uncool so she took it and stuffed it in the bottom of her bag.
“I gotta get back, I only said I was taking a walk.” Dad hadn’t minded, probably wanted to get drunk alone like always, sitting in the dark apartment. She got
up, buttoned and fastened her clothes, dusted herself off. “Do I look okay Holt?”
The apartment was hot and stuffy and empty. She tore back the living room
drapes, opened the window, inhaled the gritty air, and fell back onto the brown
leather couch, a cool animal. Dad must have gone out to drink. Too much silence. Turn on the television, flip around to a rerun of “Full House.” Memories of
afternoons at Jenny’s when they were kids running back and forth to each other’s
houses, playing Parcheesi on the porch with Jenny’s sister, Naomi so little she
didn’t go to school yet. Upstairs Jenny smoothed pattern pieces onto fabric, red
and blue plaid for a skirt, showed Alicia how to set the fabric under the needle,
pull the thread to the back to break it off, press out the seam. The fabric smelled
clean and the humming machine of oil. They baked a cake from a mix and licked
batter from the mixers, the metal sharp and cold on Alicia’s tongue. Vanilla was
the absence of chocolate. Her mom came to get her and chatted over coffee in the
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kitchen with Jenny’s mom, Mimi. Alicia and Jenny sat side by side on the porch
couch not touching, Naomi on the floor, watching television as night closed in
around them. The moms ignored them until it was dark, then pulled them apart.
Alicia was dazed, blinking. “Say thank you, Alicia. Say goodbye, you’ll see each
other in the morning.” Such a long time to be apart. Jenny’s dad, Philip, came in
and kissed Mimi hello, setting off an ache inside Alicia that she didn’t understand
yet. Walking home with her mom, skipping ahead, singing a whole new world,
a new fantastic point of view, ponytails bouncing, homework dashed off. Dinner
with Dad in a stony silence, wolfing down one thing at a time in order of worst to
best.
Then she was eleven and her father was gone and she cut off her long brown
hair with Jenny’s sewing scissors. Her father moved downtown and she started
spending every other weekend there, sneaking off to South Street to gets her ears
pierced and smoke cigarettes. They sold the house in Drexel Hill and Juliet made
her move to the condo in Germantown, dragging her away from the quiet shady
street where she had lived from birth two doors down from Jenny and Mimi and
Philip and Naomi. Alicia demanded to go to public high school instead of Catholic
girls’ school, then ditched school to smoke pot and drink in back of the Wawa. She
kept waiting for the ax to fall, but Juliet had gone back to work downtown and
was too busy to notice. Alicia doctored her report card, forged Juliet’s signature,
dyed her hair black in the bathroom. She plucked her eyebrows out completely,
and fucked Jordan Lowry under the boardwalk. Really that was the only thing she
regretted.
She was starved when “Full House” ended, her stomach a void. She put frozen
pizza in the toaster oven, its wire shelves crusted with old cheese. The cold french
fries she ate standing with the fridge open were greasy and pasty and salty all at
once. The pizza sizzled. Smell of smoke. Don’t burn your tongue, Alicia. Stale
chocolate cupcakes in greasy cellophane, loops of white icing, a handful of raisins
like little dried turds, so sweet and chewy. Milk so cold it tasted white, another
cupcake, more milk. She would never fill up. She went back through the living
room, the brown couch hulking and the tables a sinister gray in the blue light of
the television, to her bedroom where her dolls stared back at her with blank faces.
Her skin itched in patches, the way it did when she came out from swimming
in Ocean City, running up from the beach with Jenny to the outdoor shower, slamming its flimsy board door, standing under the water until Philip called down from
above to save some for everyone else. Now she went to the bathroom and dropped
her clothes on the floor, ran water for a bath, poured in a dollop of Mr. Bubble.
Innocent flowery smell. The water, a warm caress, filled her mind with Holt touching her, his eyes on hers, his intent look as she moved against his hand. She craved
that quick rush of feeling, had to have it, needed it so often and so suddenly, no
matter what or where or who she was with, had only to think of Holt’s mouth or
hand, or see the word sex somewhere, anywhere, for the need to come on her. She
pressed her legs together, or used her fingers, or anything, her make-up brush, a
couch pillow, the hard edge of a dresser drawer. After, the feeling of regret, almost
of shame, that was part of it: heat, satisfaction, shame.
Thoughts drifted through her head like a sea breeze. She moved her hand from
the edge of the tub, where the scummy metal soap dish hung, across her nipples,
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down her belly to her crotch, and what about the soap? How would that feel?
She reached for it, knew she’d hate herself when she was done, but couldn’t stop
herself. At least she’d smell clean. She edged the bar from the dish. Could she fool
herself that she was just washing?
Bang! What the! — out in the hall. Not her father, he always called her name.
What then? An earthquake?
Hold still, Alicia. Listen.
Nothing. Silence. The humming silence of the air conditioner, distant roar of
cars below. Stay still, keep alert. There had been an earthquake when she was a
baby. Juliet said she heard the brooms falling over in the closet. It was possible,
even in Philadelphia. What about California? She could never move there. Fires,
too. Wildfires, everyone evacuating, pets trapped and roasted. What if the apartment was burning down right now? Had she turned off the toaster oven? Here she
was, naked on the fourteenth floor. She’d never make it down the stairs in a fire,
the idea made her dizzy. How would she ever fly?
Stealthily she got out of the tub, wrapped a towel around herself, and opened
the bathroom door. She put her head out, listened for a moment, then quickly
crossed the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door. Her bag was on the floor,
contents spilled out into a big mess, her notebook, make-up, wallet and key ring,
a little flashlight her father had given her along with some pepper spray, the joint
from Holt. That must have been the crash, her bag falling from her dresser. Not an
earthquake. She squatted down in her towel and shoved everything back in.
Jenny’s room, framed photos on the wall: an old church, boats floating in a
harbor, Jenny and her mother in bathing suits lying together on a towel. Tall trees
waving outside, now and then a car crawling by, Naomi asleep finally down the
hall.
“Wow, California. Are you excited?” Jenny sat at her desk, her face round,
flushed, eager to hear whatever Alicia had to say. Alicia sat on the bed, dipped
the brush in the bottle of black polish on the bedside table and smoothed it on her
toenails. Their tiny pearly shapes reminded her of shells.
“Not really. Everyone is here. You, Holt, Juliet.”
“But you could get away from your mom. You’re always complaining about
her.”
Was she? Juliet wasn’t that bad. Who was Jenny to say she was? Juliet was a
little preoccupied with fighting with Alicia’s father was all, maybe a little preoccupied with work.
“Anyway, you’re lucky, it sounds great.” Jenny was happy for her. Alicia
wanted to hit her happy face, wanted her to say, “Stay, Alicia, I need you here.”
“I don’t know if I want to go,” Alicia said. “Maybe I want to get away from
my mom but I don’t want to get away from you or Holt.”
“Did you tell Holt? What did he say?”
“He said the same stuff you did. You guys should get together, put me on the
plane.” Maybe she would go. That would show them. She lay back on the bed.
Jenny sat down and picked up her foot. Warm hand, jolt of heat running up her leg.
“You have the teensiest feet.” Jenny held out her own big foot, in its Indian
moccasin. She wore moccasins, winter and summer. “Can I draw your foot?”
How odd. But kind of flattering. Jenny turned her foot this way and that, fin214
gers tickling Alicia’s ankle. Alicia flipped around on the bed, laughing.
Jenny posed her foot and went back to her desk. She picked up a pencil, her
red tongue caught between her lips. “I want to get my ears pierced. Do you think
you could do it?”
Alicia felt a nervous flutter at the top of her stomach. One Saturday soon after
she met Holt, he’d put another hole in each of her ears and one in the top little
swirl of cartilage. She’d told her parents she’d had it done at the mall. Not a word
out of either of them. Typical.
“Mimi won’t take you to a jewelry store or something?” she said.
“She doesn’t want me to. I’m too young. How do you get away with all your
stuff?”
“I don’t ask.”
She watched Jenny shade in each tiny toenail. She wanted Jenny to give her
the sketch to hang on her own wall. She could see herself slipping it into her bag
carefully so it wouldn’t be creased. If Jenny gave her the sketch, it meant Jenny
loved her and she shouldn’t go to California. If Jenny kept it for herself, she would
go.
Jenny dropped the pencil, picked up the sketch, frowned at it, and let it drift
down onto the pile of junk on her desk. Didn’t even put it up on the wall!
Alicia hated Jenny now, wanted to hurt her, get back at her. She sat up, pushed
out her breasts, braless in her tank top, and touched her nipple lightly with her
fingers. “Did you ever let a boy touch you on top?” she asked.
Jenny’s freckled face reddened. Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, gross, Alicia.
Don’t.”
Alicia could see the gleam of Jenny’s braces. She felt a pulse of heat, the way
she felt with Holt. She dropped her hand, embarrassed, mad at herself for embarrassing Jenny. Why did she always try to shock Jenny, when Jenny was the one
she loved the most?
“Jesus, Alicia, I’m only fourteen, I don’t even have a boyfriend.” Jenny
jumped off the bed. “I’m going to check on Naomi.”
“Jesus, don’t leave. I’ll stop, I promise. C’mon, we’ll do your ears.”
Jenny grinned.
Take charge, Alicia. You can do this. “Go get a needle, an apple and some ice.
And some alcohol to clean these.” She took the little silver balls from her ears.
“We can sterilize the needle with my lighter.” Alicia got it from her bag. Jenny ran
downstairs for the other supplies. She came back with an orange, a safety pin and
a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
“Is this okay? Naomi ate the last apple.”
“We’ll make it work. Peel it.”
“Alicia, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Of course.” She took a pen from the desk and made little dots on Jenny’s ear
lobes to mark where to put the holes. She lit the lighter and held the pin to the
flame until it was almost too hot to hold. Jenny pressed a section of the orange to
the back of her ear lobe and Alicia jabbed the safety pin into the little dot. Blood
poured out. Gush of red, smell of metal. Alicia jumped up and screamed, knocking
over the bottle of alcohol.
“Shhh,” Jenny said, clapping her hand over Alicia’s mouth, “you’ll wake up
Naomi.”
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Alicia took a deep breath. Clean smell of Jenny’s hand. Jenny took her hand
away and gave her the earring. Two drops of blood ran down the side of her neck.
Alicia wanted to lick them off. She pushed the earring through the hole, then did
the other ear.
Limp and exhausted, she lay back against Jenny. Jenny felt warm and strong.
Alicia wanted to lie like that all night. But Jenny shrugged her off and went to the
mirror and smiled at her reflection. Alicia got up and stood next to her. Jenny was
her best friend, she loved her still, more than ever. “You look beautiful,” she said.
She hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.
“We forgot the ice, didn’t we?” Jenny said. That was hilarious, they had to
laugh together over that. Then Alicia caught sight of the bed. Blood stained the
bedspread, and the room reeked of spilled alcohol. Alicia blotted the bedspread
with a towel, then used a corner to clean off Jenny’s neck and ears.
They went downstairs and watched “Titanic.” Alicia loved it: the sinking
ship, the fear, the highs and lows of hope and despair, the impossible shipboard
romance. Would anyone ever give up their life for her? Unlikely. No one was even
trying very hard to keep her in Philly. She looked at Jenny, engrossed in the movie,
earrings gleaming. She wanted to sleep next to Jenny in her big warm bed, but
when Jenny’s parents got home, Mimi took one look at Jenny’s ears, figured Alicia
for the culprit, and sent her packing. Dark streets of West Philadelphia. Silence in
the car, Philip’s hands white on the wheel. She was a bad influence. Not that she
cared. They could blame her all they wanted. Soon she would be gone.
Fuzzy-headed daylight. Nothing on television. Dad at the Phillies game. Damn
him for waking her, calling the whole thing off. Your mother says you can’t go.
Why can’t I? She’s not even here for me anymore, even when she’s home she just
phones it in. Forget it, Alicia, it’s over. Why are you caving so easily?
Bite of soggy Lucky Charms, cardboard taste, stale mouth, eyes leaking tears.
Bowl in sink. Staring hard at dish drainer, tiny dish drainer big enough for a family
of one. Her sad sack of a father. Now he would go without her.
She took the subway to 5th Street, then headed down to South. Pavement melting. Punishing heat. Stupid father, stupid leaking eyes. Zipperhead swarming with
teeny-boppers. Crinkling stiff leather boots, burgundy, matte black, army green,
metallic silver-blue. Burgundy, please, size five and a half. Lace them all the way
up, take a couple of steps, smile sweetly at purple-haired salesgirl. Can I try a five
please? The girl left to look for them. Slip out the door.
Run, Alicia, run. Don’t look back, don’t look around. Run.
Run north, zigzag through back streets and alleys to Market Street. No one was
chasing her. No one even noticed her. She plunged into the subway station and
rode back up Market Street, then walked over to the park. Holt would be there. It
wasn’t Friday but he would be there lying on the shady grass. Once I had a love
and it was a gas—
She turned up the path to their spot. There was Holt, but it was quiet, too
quiet. He was pressed up against a tall skinny blond, his mouth on hers. Asshole
couldn’t even wait until she was gone. Throw something. No, Alicia, don’t. Don’t
let them see you. Run.
Run back down to Market Street, boots squeaking, stabs of pain at her heels.
Wait on the platform, screech of the train, then the rumble and swerve out to 69th
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Street. Wait again. Finally the 102. She slumped on the seat, rested her face against
the greasy window, closed her eyes on the day.
She jumped down at Garretford Station. A rumble approached from the other
direction but she darted across anyway, dodging cars, horns beeping, sprinting to
beat the oncoming trolley. Seconds later a metallic screech, whoosh of air. She’d
made it.
Then she was walking up Jenny’s street under limp leaves, along shimmering
cars, picturing Jenny’s house, cool, welcoming. She looked in through the window.
Jenny sat with her parents and sister around the porch table. Pink and yellow paper
plates covered in cake crumbs and smears of dark frosting were scattered around
a game board. Philip set down his plate and leaned over and kissed Mimi on the
mouth. Jenny reached out her hand to shield Naomi’s eyes. Naomi laughed and
shook a cup and rolled the dice onto the board. They were playing Sorry.
Priscilla Mainardi was born and raised in New Haven and now lives
in New Jersey, where she is a registered nurse. She is currently working as
a freelance writer and editor, and completing an MFA in fiction at Rutgers
University in Newark, New Jersey. Her work appears in Nu Bohemia, Toad,
and Nursing Spectrum.
217
DELIRIUM TREMENS
by Harvey Spurlock
T
their waists were bound in cords of wild green hydras,
horned snakes and little serpents grew as hair,
and twined themselves around the savage temples.
Dante — Canto IX of Inferno
he Top-of-the-Wall airport lounge is atop a wall reaching one foot less
than a thousand into the sky. On a starless night its twinkling lights reflect
the jovial mood of patrons celebrating the arrival or departure of loved
ones—or ones not so loved. Two of the women sport Snaky Lady hairdos. One
of them, Alecto, is short and hefty and entrenched in a bar chair, a beer in front of
her, a fat slumbering hydra wrapped around her waist. The other, Tisiphone, tall
and pale, her smaller head bobbing above a long neck, traipses toward the bar,
a wild green hydra, awake and restless, coiled around her waist. Her handbag,
brown as the skin of a shedding reptile, contains a copy of Dante’s Inferno and a
pistol. She slinks onto the bar chair next to Alecto.
A large hand slaps the bar. “What’ll it be, sweetie?” The bartender chuckles
heartily.
“An iced tea.” She regards him coldly. “Unsweetened.”
Tisiphone turns toward Alecto. Her large brown eyes pop open wide. “I love
your hairdo. Those horned vipers and tiny serpents twined about your temples
become you.”
Several of the short, thick snakes above Alecto’s eyeballs rear their heads and
hiss. “They’re pissed off, cutie-pie. They thought they were the only Snaky Lady
in town.” Alecto’s eyes, behind black-rimmed glasses, are a bit out of focus. Her
bright blouse is splashed with purple and red flowers, their thick stems jutting up
out of a murky substance. “They’re liable to grind up those candy-asses around
your hoity-toity temples and eat them for breakfast.”
Ninety-nine miles from the Top-of-the-Wall Phlegyas, the pilot of Flight 999,
tips up yet another bullet of bourbon while the co-pilot dozes. Before the takeoff he swept through the plane’s serving area and stuffed the tiny bottles into a
satchel. Now, groping in the satchel at his feet, his fingers tally four or five live
ones. With luck he will drain the last drop of the last bottle the instant the nose of
the plane makes contact. It will be a hell of a sound: metal crashing into concrete.
The mirth in the barroom will burst into shrieks, screeching and screams, then die
into silence. No one in the Top-of-the Wall will wake up tomorrow morning with
a hangover.
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In Flight 999’s rearmost seat I, Hiram Winesap, imbibe an alternative, due
to an unexplained dearth my preferred bourbon. For the past three days I’d been
holed up in a cheap hotel room next to a liquor store, cringing with every footstep
in the hallway, expecting an authoritarian knock on the door and a gruff voice
ordering me out with my hands up. The paranoia had set in when I came to on
the flight to Ohio and realized Barbara wasn’t with me. The sole purpose of the
trip had been for me to accompany her, before our divorce became final, to my
parents’ home so she could retrieve the few possessions she had stored there.
I brave another swallow, fraught with fire and nausea, and think back to
the events leading up to the midnight flight to Ohio. Saturday evening I left Iris
passed out on the living room floor of our 14th Street apartment and rode a trolley
to East Bay Terminal. Iris and I had barhopped most of the day, spending much of
the time in the 99 Club, the scene of our meeting a mere three weeks ago; Saturday’s return to the raucous skid-row environment had given her spirits an evident
lift, and provided me with some relief from the drumbeat, “I can’t believe you’re
doing this to me again,” her reference to my second short leave-taking since she
had moved in the day after we’d met.
Reclining in the rearmost seat of the Market Street trolley, I drew a half-pint
flask from the inside pocket of my sport coat and killed the last of the bourbon,
wondering why Winesap—I’d caught myself with increasing frequency slipping
into the third person of late—was flying to Ohio instead of delving into Circle V
of Dante’s Inferno in preparation for his fast approaching San Francisco State oral
exams. In fact, why had he allowed Iris to move in before the exams were out
of the way? Why was he even pursuing such a course of study when, instead of
driving to California upon his military discharge, Barbara and he could have appeased his parents by making a beeline for the law school awaiting him with open
arms? Why had he married Barbara in the first place? My … Hiram Winesap’s
entire existence—as his mother would be the first to point out—wasn’t making
much sense.
At East Bay Terminal Winesap dropped off of the bus and crossed the street
to Terminal Drugs. Back out of the drugstore with a fresh half-pint, he ducked
into the shadows of rubbish-strewn Terminal Playground, disposed of the dead
soldier and uncapped the new recruit. He stepped into a porno-film stall designated Deluxe.
The title in white, “Physical Therapy,” flashed for a split-second against a
black background then a camera panned in on a pretty blonde-haired woman’s
face. A white nurse’s cap atop her head, her mouth was working on an enormous
organ that seemed to have a life of its own. The camera traveled the length of the
patient’s body, which was wrapped in white bandages from head to toe, the only
exposed areas, aside from the penis, being the mouth, nostrils and eyes. The eyes
were two totally immobile holes, yet gave off an impression of cognition as they
stared unflinchingly down on the therapy. The camera began playing back and
forth between the patient’s eyes and the therapeutic activity. Then it focused on
the therapy for several seconds—until the woman’s face froze, held the pose for
a moment then released the therapeutic object. Her fingers pressed it as if taking
a pulse. Upon the camera’s return to the patient’s eyes there was no lingering
flicker of awareness. The woman—naked from the waist down—rose, scribbled
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on a clipboard and sashayed away. After zooming in on her buttocks, the camera
ceased all activity. Winesap left Terminal Playground.
“After one unbearable marriage,” says Tisiphone, “I’ve decided to do something special for our last night together. I’m going to put a gun to the sot’s head
and order him to bang me until his whanger is wet spaghetti. Then I’m going to
chomp down on another humongous piece of pizza and turn my snakes loose.”
Fitting retribution, she deems, for a bastard who had had the gall to pen a twelvehundred page novel detailing his affair with a Chinese girlfriend during the year
he’d spent overseas. “If they don’t unmercifully mutilate his sexual parts, I’ll
simply start jerking the trigger.”
One of Tisiphone’s snakes curls its head down and around until its horns are
in her face.
“You heard me. Replacing you is as easy as ordering another pizza.”
“I doubt if you know what a sot is, honey-bunch,” says Alecto. “I thought I
drank a lot until a real one waltzed into the Ninety-Nine Club, pretending to be
Sir Galahad. He’s as sneaky as a snake too. He lied about being married and he
keeps disappearing on mysterious trips.” Not to mention that the day she moved
in she had found a blue album, hidden way back in a closet, stuffed full of pictures of him with an Asian woman. “My plans for getting rid of him don’t include
your brand of highfalutin’ fireworks though. When I get good and ready, I’ll just
stick a knife in his gut.” She’d come to the airport only to find out whether he really was on Flight 999 or was lying about that too.
Tisiphone’s eyes have strayed away from the conversation. “Now I’ve seen
it all.” Approaching them is a middle-aged woman, her long face sagging. Even
her snakes, those on her head and the hydra draped around her waist, look like
they’ve lost their best friend. She introduces herself as Megaera.
Phlegyas gulps bourbon. The laughter of the bartender roars in his ear. The
Top-of-the-Wall he knows is jam-packed with joy-seekers and glee-freaks. He
has spent the afternoon reading and rereading Cantos VIII and IX of Inferno. By
the time he hits the ground he’ll be in Circle V crossing the River Styx en route to
the City of Dis. A single bullet of bourbon remains in the satchel.
“I certainly can commiserate,” says Megaera. By now the other two ladies
have unloaded a dose of the woes they have suffered at the hands of their respective Flight 999 expected arrival. They have moved to a table that momentarily
opened up in the midst of the near nerve-jangling merriment. “Oh, I suppose I
should have given up when he pulled a no-show at the law school his father had
set him up with.” She had sensed trouble brewing when the acting lessons his
father suggested each undergraduate semester never materialized. There was no
question that, as his father—who had it—had pointed out, he didn’t have the gift
of gab—but still. “Still here I am, bound and determined to make a last-ditch
pitch to get him off of the booze … his father finally sobered up before his practice went completely belly up … and into law school.” When he’d pulled another
no-show this past weekend she had weaseled the information out of the airport
that he had supposedly been on the flight to Ohio and was to return on Flight 999.
She booked an earlier flight. Megaera leans far over the table, her chin dipping
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almost to the lip of her coffee cup. “Perhaps I shouldn’t even say this out loud.”
One of her little serpents lazily lifts then lowers its eyelids. “But, if I knew then
what I know now, I might have considered an alternative to birth for this one.”
A throat clears. Megaera’s eyes arise to golden hair billowing halo-like
around a radiant face. “Ladies,” the youth intones. The ears of the jury inside of
Megaera’s head are stirring. “I believe you have the only seat left in the lounge.”
One wand-like hand is on the back of the empty chair, while the other fans his
face, as if pushing away putrid air. Viper eyelids are arising. Megaera’s sunken
cheeks are aglow. The throat is more golden than the hair.
Due to the hospitality of the bartender, I had intended to drink for a while in
The Terminal Bar. But upon emerging from Terminal Playground I was so sexually aroused that I hurried toward the boarding ramp, hoping to see a Berkeleybound bus cutting thin air faster than a bowstring ever shot an arrow off. If the
door banged open and a solitary steersman shouted, “Aha, I’ve got you now, you
wretched soul!” so much the better.
During the ride across the bay I lounged in the rearmost seat of the half
empty bus that eventually did turn up. Occasionally I raised the bottle, aware that
my span of consciousness was growing more precarious with each burning swig.
In Berkeley, on a dark, tree-lined street, I finished off the flask and flung it into
the weeds of a vacant lot. Up the street, lights from the large, old house Barbara
lived in drew me on as if toward an eternal fire burning within. Stepping onto the
porch, through the window I viewed a room full of young men and women engaged in deep discussion. Barbara was not among them. She generally preferred
less weighty chatter where she could be the center of attention. It dawned on me
that I was in no City of Dis, this was not a house occupied by fierce citizens in
a city guarded by rebellious angels, but one brimming with individuals building
new worlds of eternal harmony, love and freedom all wrapped into one package,
worlds where no man or woman could imagine the need to exhibit a dangerous
emotion, where no nincompoop would devote his life to reaching for bliss in a
skid-row gutter.
Winesap swung open the door and stalked, red-faced with booze, straight
through the circle of conversationalists, who paid no attention to him. He cut
down a short hallway and shoved open another door. Barbara stirred on the mattress. Her eyes popped open wide. “You startled me. I was dreaming of a gigantic
pizza with everything on it.” He strode over and began unbuttoning her jeans.
Glancing into a mirror, he half-expected to see a body coated with a thick layer of
white bandages.
Saturated with booze as he was, Winesap sought to prolong the encounter,
even after he sensed Barbara on the verge of slithering away and scrambling for
her clothes, pulsing beneath her skull a heaping platter of spaghetti or a thick
steak, any one of the myriad culinary delights vying for the swiftly diminishing
number of sensual seconds remaining in their fading relationship. Contemplating
the demise of this phase of his life only fueled Winesap’s immediate desires. He
let his mind entertain the thought that, since the closing curtain was almost drawn
anyway, why not finish off the final performance with a flourish? Couldn’t Barbara herself be blamed for having introduced the concept? Hadn’t she less than
a year ago confided that she had been on the brink of poisoning him with a jar of
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tainted mayonnaise? And not long thereafter she related a dream in which she had
been gliding down a street, a pistol in each hand, cheerfully gunning down anyone she laid eyes on. As keyed up as he was, it would be a simple matter to place
his hands around Barbara’s neck and squeeze, stifling any scream, until her last
breath was extinguished. He could drag the body out of the window and deposit it
in the weeds where he had hurled his bottle.
He would find a bar with a pay phone. “This is Winesap’s former helpmate,”
he would say to one of her super-intelligent housemates. “We were on our way to
a restaurant when we had a disagreement and she ran off. I expect her to be at the
airport, but in case she does head back that way would you give her the message
that there are no hard feelings on my part and she is more than welcome to meet
me at the airport … that is, if she still wants to go?”
“Got you,” his reformer’s voice would reply, his mind leaping ahead to civilizations where disagreements were impossible.
Winesap’s next call would be to his mother. After he told her of the change
of plans, she would emit an ironic chuckle. “I won’t pretend to be shattered by
Barbara’s decision not to come. But I do wish you would reconsider. It’s been
ages since we sat down and had a good heart-to-heart talk.”
That was his last flicker of awareness until he came to on the plane.
Phlegyas’ last bullet of bourbon goes down the hatch. He levels the nose of
the plane into the center of the Top-of-the-Wall. The booze sears his stomach,
maybe the only earthly sensation he’ll sincerely miss.
“Practicing law has always been my dream,” says Golden Throat. “But my
Law School Admission Test score has been deplorable every time I’ve taken the
test.”
Her husband already has a spot reserved in a law school. Who could possibly
know the difference?
Tisiphone can’t wipe the wince off of her face or those of her snakes. The
LSAT admission has put a damper on her initial impression that the throat would
be a welcome addition to any circle of conversationalists. Alecto is still wondering whether the fake Galahad is on the plane. Repose is the predominate mode
above her bleary eyeballs.
“May I buy you a drink?” Megaera reaches for her purse.
“As long as it is non-alcoholic. My worst nightmare is slurring a word.”
If only she could get him as far as a courtroom…
“The pilot isn’t responding,” blurts the overhead intercom, inadvertently
activated as the result of a wine spill in the control tower.
“Who is the pilot?”
“Phlegyas, according to the flight plan.”
“His flying license has been suspended!”
“You and I both saw him scoff at the thought that that could keep him out of
the cockpit, especially when he got good and ready to take out the Top-o...”
Any more from the control tower is lost in the roar of engines.
The last empty trickles from Phlegyas’ fingers to the floor. Passing out, his
head bangs into the control panel. The course of Flight 999 is altered enough that
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its belly brushes the Top-of-the-Wall roof and the plane soars off into ebony.
The co-pilot awakens and takes in the state of affairs. The serenity on Phlegyas’ comatose face touches off a shiver of pity. The poor old boy, he muses, won’t
be making it down this go-around for a River Styx reunion with the ancestors he
so reveres. He calls the control tower and arranges for an orderly landing.
As Flight 999 taxis toward Gate 99 the Top-of-the-Wall is in recovery mode.
The remains of those who suffered cardiac arrest have been carried out. The three
ladies have weeded out the few snakes that have succumbed and respectable
hairdos have been restored. Relief is pervasive for Megaera; the roar had rattled
her into blaming herself for the impending disaster because she had said what she
shouldn’t have out loud. After a silent countdown out of respect for those who
had passed on, the bartender reopened the bar, booming, “The first drink is on
me, folks. It isn’t every day we survive one of these.” Tisiphone is considering
vacating the premises and saving her fitting retribution for another day. The roar
had reinforced Alecto’s belief that the fake Galahad was not on Flight 999. It was
just her luck to get wiped out on a wild goose chase. A barrage of insane screams
has reduced Golden Throat’s vocal cords to wet spaghetti.
Winesap is the last passenger off of the plane. Weaving into the waiting area
he sees nothing but snakes, all of them writhing. Then three stony faces crystallize before his eyes. Any slim chance of appeasing Megaera seems far in the
past. And he has an eerie sensation that he has burned his last bridge back out of
Tisiphone’s bedroom. He takes a tentative step toward Alecto.
Harvey Spurlock has a B.A. in English from Denison University and a M.A.
from the San Francisco State University Creative Writing Program. His stories
have appeared in The Evansville Review, Westview, The Chariton Review, Buffalo
Carp and Conceit Magazine. Now employed as a computer systems programmer,
a trade acquired during a stint in the Marine Corps, he is married and lives in
Conway, Arkansas.
223
THINGS
by Max Sheridan
M
eeks Farms had made a fleeting name for itself in 1861 when Colonel
Carnot Posey had almost marched through it on his way East to deal
with General Jackson. When two years later Posey fell at Bristoe Station, Thurmont’s great-grandfather, Amis Meeks, seized on the near legacy and
rediscovered the dead man’s footsteps out among his snow peas and okra and became a war profiteer of sorts. Posey’s Snow Peas sold big in the decimated South,
in burlap bags left over from courthouse amputations, and this Amis, a maternal
appendage, soon had a plaque put up and Posey’s decisive footprints lacquered
in a brassy, mud-colored hue on their way to a clean little cabin built on the sly
out of sacked Confederate timber, where Posey was to have slept for a night en
route to his fateful bullet. Every time Thurmont looked out at that log cabin from
his own place across his dusty eight residual acres, he couldn’t help thinking of
Thurmont III, of how the little fellow had, already at ten, taken after the worst
rascals in the family line.
Thurmont was riding a mule these days. He thought he would be going back
to something pre-Amis by doing so. He didn’t feel much of it though and was
surrounded by Negroes anyway. To be among his own people he’d have to drive
out to Calhoun City or Coffeeville, and there to undergo undue pestering into his
basic condition. How was he holding up out there among the Zulus? Had he spotted any angry pitchforks lately? Were the do-rags on the rise? In fact, Thurmont’s
snow peas were in decline, his okra not much to look at. He grew musk squash
without pesticides. He could cover his entire family history from before Lincoln’s
War, his whole legacy in dirt, in a brisk twenty-minute jog if he wanted.
He stared out from a non-specific distance at Route 12 in a way he imagined
might be picturesque for a cruising Yankee to see. It was too late in the summer
for a proper summer storm, Thurmont felt, and yet as he sat there under the wide,
oppressive blue of day, he could feel one coming. He rode back to the barn to
check again.
Let them take his land, let them plough up his measly eight acres and turn the
whole concern into a modern cinema complex of gray pavements and pyramidal
glass structures, but they would not take away his barn. In that barn, where Thurmont slept most summer nights on a Coleman folding bed, was his own private
legacy, what he would one day pass on to Thurmont III, if the little cardsharp was
even interested in such things. And what a legacy it was.
Thurmont had what he was willing to bet was the finest collection of consumer testimonials for household abrasives in the whole Deep South. He had
functioning and non-functioning kaleidoscopes. He had flotsam from a hundred
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perished typesetters, doorknobs of all kinds and degrees of dereliction. He had his
collection of little porcelain fighting men. The Meeks were not historically athletic people, but Thurmont had made sure to get his hands on the boxing gloves
“The Old Weasel” Archie Moore had used in London in 1957 to defeat Yolande
Pompey with, this through a kindly request to Moore’s aged wife made surreptitiously on behalf of the nearby Marzella Church of Tchula. Thurmont, otherwise
a great hound of moral lapses, felt he was doing posterity a fine turn by claiming
those gloves for the state of Mississippi, for Tchula.
Under Thurmont’s cot was the Persian carpet great-grandfather Amis had
handed down to his only grandson, Amis, Jr., Thurmont’s sickly father. This
sleek, particolored beauty had almost made its way into the coffers of a traveling flea market when Thurmont was eight, and surely would have, for a lousy
twelve bucks, if not for the high-pitched, ear-wracking yowls Thurmont had put
up during negotiations. From that point forward Thurmont had been known as an
appraiser of things. It was why he alone had staked out the family acres upon the
death of Amis, Jr., why his brother Skinny had gone up North to study law and
died of something up there, some degenerative Yankee disease, and why brother
Lucius had lit out for Yazoo City to move pet food. They didn’t understand the
value of things.
But lately things had begun to go missing from the barn. Thurmont’s brilliantine tins, one by one. His library of defunct baiting gear and his bumper sticker
collection. For years Thurmont had been holding on to those stickers for offer
at motels and restaurant waiting rooms, the kind that seemed to be purposely
designed to leave you and your loved ones stumped for ages. Jesus Punched Out
For You; Snyder Bluff IS Dynamite Fishing; Cheese Demon, etc.
His Miss Belzoni Calendar, 1952, was gone. This theft was particularly punishing for the fact that all the runners-up were featured in it and that whoever had
stolen it knew that Thurmont had fallen for one of them long ago, that he’d kept
the calendar for years thumbtacked to the wall above his boyhood dresser, which
now shared the Persian carpet with the cot and supported a fine filigreed mirror
dating back to Jefferson Davis’s presidency, kept it permanently flipped to Miss
June, Rose Bascomb, who was to bloom forever just for him and who was now
gone. No question he was being looted and unfortunately he knew just who the
thief was.
Like Thurmont, Bueler had taken his land from his daddy, Bueler, who had
gotten it from his daddy thanks to Abe Lincoln. Four generations of Buelers
working Meeks land, five, six, seven. Who was to keep track? But where Amis
Jr. had taken to selling off parcels of the Posey legacy to men driving by in
bad-fitting suits, the Buelers of Tchula had quietly amassed, so that now theirs
was the finer dominion by far. Forty acres of richly manured and sodden fields
that grew produce chain stores far afield of Tchula paid handsomely for. Mung
beans, Greek butter beans, daikon radishes, burdock root, this was the difference. Early on Bueler had set his sights on something called the ethnic market.
He had grown a belly from his prescience. He was expanding in places that
drove Thurmont nuts. On the Internet, for one. And now he was coveting what
he could not possibly have, or have mastery of, what he could only obtain by
thievery, Thurmont’s things.
Thurmont left the mule there in the barn to rest and changed clothes in the
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cabin. Out his right window was Meeks land, the Posey cabin and the highway.
Out his left, all that was Bueler’s. He scrubbed under his nails with a wire brush
and changed into a leisure outfit he’d succumbed to recently at a charity shop in
Coffeyville, a rust-colored ensemble with a wider lapel than he was partial to and
trousers that would show he’d been eating. He wanted to look comfortable, not
accusatory, when he confronted Bueler downtown at Ike’s Poolroom, where he
knew Bueler would now be reading the paper, or if finished with the paper, then
haranguing those who couldn’t keep up with his views on world issues, asking
Ike for things Ike never had on the menu or things Ike couldn’t possibly prepare
in his greasy little kitchen.
But Bueler wasn’t at Ike’s and this puzzled Thurmont, who stood outside for
a while looking about in the sunlight with his hands on his wide hips moving his
lips over some ideas. Petie Peterose had said Bueler’d been by and gone — in
the middle of something. When Thurmont asked what kind of something Bueler
had been in the middle of when he’d left, Peterose hadn’t been able to specify.
Something, in other words, that had just come to Bueler. Thurmont knew these
Negroes well so he knew they would help him if they could. He was one of them
more or less.
Thurmont felt his scalp getting redder, toasting. He sniffed for rain and got
back in his truck and felt his scalp again and it was still hot. He cruised around in
the dust for a while.
There was a tourist couple hobbling about in the heat on Mercer Street with
their necks craned forward, maybe Europeans. They were pale but not as cumbersome as Americans. They both had maps. Thurmont conjectured that one of them
dealt with topographical information and river names and such and the other with
restaurants, points of interest, etc. He guessed that they were now in the final
stage of some doomed restaurant search, that soon they’d be getting desperate
and critical of their decision to decamp in Tchula, wishing they’d taken a bus to
Disney World instead. He ignored them as he rolled by.
On his way home he saw a jack rabbit chasing a black snake across Route
12. In pursuit of these two was a naked Negro shaking a key. Still yards off,
Thurmont slammed on the brakes as the queer three-creature circus shot over the
baking asphalt and into the fields, disappearing quickly from view.
When he awoke at four it hadn’t yet rained and Thurmont felt momentarily
disoriented. In the wash of amber light falling into the shadows at the barn mouth
stood two skinny petitioners. They were speaking at him.
Thurmont got to his feet and secured his spectacles and only then recognized
the couple from Mercer Street. They looked like they’d been picnicking in hell.
The man entered tentatively with his map.
“Carnot Posey?”
How many times had he told the tourist bureau people to take Posey’s Cabin
off their brochures? That it was a fake, that no battalion had ever marched
through Meeks Farms and left their footprints? He would not go through with it
again.
“Sorry,” Thurmont said. “There’s the Cottonlandia Museum in Greenwood.
They’ve got a model of the Battle of Pemberton. You all got a car?”
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The man visibly deflated. He’d been hunting this landmark for hours, he’d
convinced his lady to hunt with him, and now it didn’t exist. He looked miserably
unfed too. All of a sudden Thurmont got the idea that this marriage was hanging
by a thread and that their great Posey letdown might just snap it.
He said, “Carnot Posey got shot in Virginia. He died of an aggravated thigh
wound and he was buried there. That cabin in your guidebooks was built by my
great-grandfather, who had this very day in mind over a hundred years ago in
1861 when he built it. He sold snow peas. We’ve still got those. I can show you
the snow peas if you’d like.”
When they slunk back off into the dust in their Ford rental car Thurmont still
didn’t know if they’d come from Europe or not. It was nearly six and still no rain.
Thurmont noticed then with a prick of alarm the shape of the sweat rings he’d
grown under his arms just talking to the couple. How the humidity and dust coexisted in Tchula was a mystery to him, why they just didn’t conspire finally and
take the form of mud and have done with the inhabitants. He went to the cabin
and breaded a plate of pork chops. He mashed a bowl of potatoes. He waited for
as long as he could and then he lit a burner. He ate alone.
He was still waiting at half past seven when Thurmont III appeared at the
table and began to feed himself. Thurmont had long lectured the boy on tardiness
and keeping one’s promises but this was a foolproof Amis legacy he was dealing
with and he knew he would not win. He cheered himself with the thought that the
boy was not even his blood, fully. Technically he belonged to Lucius. Thurmont
had never tired of pursuing this New York tale for some logical backbone.
Think, Lucius’s daughter June had gotten porked by a private in the US Army
who’d done a single tour in the deserts of Iraq and then gotten this bug for Las
Vegas he needed to take care of, and she’d packed her things. They tried their
best at a household but June eventually came to see that there were the wiles of
Las Vegas and the growing up of a child and that you could not have the two side
by side. The boy showed up on Thurmont’s front porch a week later, three weeks
shy of his eighth birthday. It wasn’t clear who had dumped who.
Lucius, of course, wouldn’t have the boy in his life, it would just pollute
his self-image having him around. He had no place in the back of his shiny red
Jaguar besides. And could you blame him? For all the deviousness of the child,
he was recognizably a Meeks. The long, wobbly head and jug ears, the black
pouches under the eyes, the dourness, the suspiciousness. Thurmont loosened his
bib as the boy knotted his around his stringy, old man’s neck.
“Boy, where you been?”
“Fishing.”
“Funny.”
“No it ain’t.”
Too often conversation disintegrated like this. Thurmont wondered if this is
what it would be like trying to talk to a senile old relative living in your attic who
would, when he’d had enough of you, fling a spoonful of cottage cheese at you.
He said, “I mean I don’t see any tackle. Where’s your tackle? You need tackle to
fish.”
“Bhupinder’s got it.”
“That’s the Super 8 boy, isn’t it? The Hindu’s son? He took your bait? I told
you not to be lending out your things.”
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“Bhupinder caught a foot.”
“A foot?”
“At the Copper Road bend.”
“Lost his footing, you mean.”
“He reeled one in is what I mean.”
Thurmont felt the blood pooling in his cheeks, prickling his scalp. He felt a
pleasant subdued hum inside which meant a good rain was coming. But a foot?
Had he raised the boy to fish for human parts in secrecy?
“Listen to me, boy. You fished a foot out of the river and you gave it away to
a Hindu, is that what you’re telling me? It didn’t occur to neither of you smartheads to call Sheriff Clymer who was, what, five minutes away? I’ve got to call
the boy’s father now. That the Super 8 in Durant or the other one, the Lexington?”
But Thurmont III’s beeper had gone off, and then he was gone, leaving in his
wake the pungent odor of Dixie Peach hair pomade, Thurmont’s own pomade of
choice. Thurmont couldn’t possibly have foreseen this, that his influence would
have been so pernicious. If June ever came back to collect her seed, say in a year
or two, would she find that he shopped for leisure suits in Coffeeville too, that
he’d grown a belly and rode a mule?
But Thurmont had had enough for today. He would call the motel in the
morning, by which time he hoped the Hindu would have alerted the authorities
and returned his tackle box. Now he had a thing or two to discuss with Bueler.
The lights were off in Bueler’s cabin and it was night. Bueler, who couldn’t
stand to be alone in the dark, was obviously not in. That is, Bueler had not come
back.
Thurmont stood there on Bueler’s porch with his fifth of sour mash contemplating the puzzling gulf between Bueler’s net worth and the shabby state of his
personal habitat. He could not explain why, for instance, Bueler, when he found
his old wooden beams to be infested with poria fungus, had insisted on leveling
the antebellum timber and putting in gypsy tin. Thurmont had urged Tuff-Rib, a
durable PVC alternative with a reliable distributer in Vicksburg, but Bueler, who
could afford such luxuries, insisted that the pinging of rain on a roof soothed
him. Had his people put up with pinging, historically? Thurmont wondered. Or
perhaps Bueler was thinking of some glorious Brazzaville of the mind where the
Buelers had once been suckled under such tin roofs. Surely this was an asinine
memory to champion even so. But Bueler was rife with such self-deceptions and
total misformulations. His recurrent dream of a floating warship piloted by Marcus Garvey and destined for a sunken continent of sparkling ebony, for instance.
His claim to understand the Egyptian mindset. The shackles he kept on the wall
that he claimed were the very ones his daddy’s daddy’s daddy had been wearing
when he’d received manumission but which Thurmont recognized clearly as half
a bear trap.
Thurmont took his liquor back across the fields, admiring the health of
Bueler’s beans and the quiet he had out there with the Meeks’ land as a cushion
between what was his and Route 12. He retired the bottle without taking a sip and
fell asleep moving in his sweat.
The next morning he rose mechanically at seven and checked his things.
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Nothing seemed to be amiss. He locked the barn and went to the cabin and
whipped eggs for himself and the boy and they ate without disturbance. Thurmont III had his head buried in the Clarion-Ledger, in the obituaries.
“I see you’re a Dixie Peach man,” Thurmont said, so as not to have to say
something about the other thing, the death notices.
The boy grazed his head with a palm as if Thurmont’s comment implied that
he hadn’t greased up enough or that something was out of place, a single stray
piece of hair like an obdurate tine of speaker wire. Thurmont did the same, however.
“A man got stabbed in Marcella,” Thurmont III said.
“That so? Well, there isn’t much of Marcella to get stabbed in. Mustn’t have
been from around here.”
“A nigger.”
“Negro,” Thurmont said. “We don’t use that other word.”
“Bhupinder uses it.”
“Your Hindu friend?”
Well, well, Thurmont chuckled to himself, the pot and the kettle. The boy was
carrying on with a caramel-colored bigot. He would not like this to be repeated
around Bueler however. For when he finally chased Bueler down, there would be
no talk of skin pigment, it had to be as man against thief.
“Well, don’t use it,” Thurmont said. “At school you might even say black
person.”
Thurmont III put down the paper and sipped his coffee.
“Ms. Cloggs said the Mississippi flows North, to Duluth.”
“I find that hard to believe. Where’s Ms. Cloggs from?”
“Arkadelphia.”
“Arkansas,” Thurmont grimaced. “Third worst educational system in the
Union, outside of here and Louisiana. Tune her out. The Mississippi flows down
to the Gulf of Mexico and that’s just eye physics. Maybe you’re thinking of some
of those bends it takes.”
They both unbibbed. Thurmont III finished his coffee while Thurmont
scrubbed the dishes.
“I’m going to call the Hindu to discuss that foot,” Thurmont said over his
shoulder.
He never did. Instead he raced back to the barn to take a more thorough
inventory of his things. When he reached his Shriner kazoos, his jaw dropped
at what should have been the most obvious of thefts. The Old Weasel’s boxing
gloves were gone! Pilfered from his dresser top in his sleep along with a decorative tin of Fiebing’s mink oil. Thurmont realized with not a little stab of anguish
that with Bueler prowling about like a wolf in the moonlight he could no longer
sleep with the barn doors open to the stars.
He drove the truck straight out to Bueler’s in a black funk but took no satisfaction from his second visit. Again the man was not in. At Ike’s he spread the
word that he was now looking for Bueler.
In Tchula Thurmont loaded the flatbed up with mule feed and bean poles and
a ten-yard spool of chicken wire. He drove out to Lexington for a piece of sweet
potato pie. There, behind the counter at Di’s, was the girl from yesterday, she of
the shot intercontinental romance, the Carnot Posey seeker. She took his order
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without indicating anything of her great disappointment.
“Carnot Posey,” Thurmont said to jog her memory.
“What?”
“You came by yesterday to check out the cabin. You’ve stayed.”
“Malcolm’s out looking for the grave of Elmore James.”
It still wasn’t clear to Thurmont if she remembered him. He supposed she
must have. He said, “I meant you’re still here. You’ve got a job? They gave you
one?”
“While Malcolm writes his book.”
“I see.”
“We’ve decided to plant our roots in Tchula,” she said.
She was pretty, Thurmont decided, even with her nest of unwashed auburn
hair and her patent foolishness. Plant roots in Tchula? Might as well talk of a
weed setting up house, because that’s all there was in Tchula, weeds. And humidity. But this Malcolm, he sure was a lucky fellow to have kindled such devotion
in his lady that she would work for him while he scouted out the graves of dead
Negroes.
“You all from France or something?” Thurmont said while he waited.
“Fairlawn, New Jersey.”
“Gosh, you don’t sound like them. Look, if you ever need snow peas—” Now
this sounded monumentally foolish. “If I can help you all with anything,” Thurmont said, “just let me know. You know where to find me.”
She smiled, and what a graceful act of charity that was. Thurmont felt everything sagging on his old body rise up at once and he flushed to his scalp. “Should
of rained yesterday,” he said. “It just keeps getting stickier and stickier, don’t it?”
He took his plate to a booth under the gaze of a big black woman line cook he
had always assumed was Di but who could have knocked out the prison warden
and jumped the fence just as easily. He ate with this woman watching him.
It wasn’t until midnight, when he was in bed with the barn doors locked
drowning in his sweat, that the thought crept up upon him. What if Thurmont
III had been telling the truth and there really was a foot and the foot belonged
to Bueler? What if Bueler had been that fool stabbed in Marcella and this whole
time while he, Thurmont, was pining for his things, Bueler had been DOA at the
bottom of the Mississippi on his way to New Orleans?
Once this ugly seed had taken root, Thurmont couldn’t sleep. They had played
mumblety-peg together as boys, slung dirt clods at unleashed mutts. They had
drunk water from the same tap. What would happen when the high river came?
Would Bueler wash up, unrecognizable then, on the banks of some redneck town
far from his people and be tossed into a compost heap, mistaken for a lump of
bad cow meat?
The hammer of remorse had fallen upon Thurmont and he tossed and turned
on the cot, which now seemed to him to offer a ridiculous substitute for sleep. In
the shadows, in the darkness, he could hear his things settling in, creaking and
pinging, expanding in the slightly cooled night air. He pulled his sheet up over his
head. He was surrounded by worthless junk.
He was up at six and had nothing to do. He walked around the cabin, making
laps. He straightened his bean poles and tossed some feed to the mule. Mid-morning he drove out to Ike’s to get the word out that something, he didn’t know what,
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may have happened to Bueler. Then he drove back out to Durant, to the Super 8,
to see about that foot.
Of all the fool decisions that were in this fallen world to make, why, Thurmont wondered, would a Hindu decide to relocate to Tchula? The motel vestibule
was a stifling pall of spice. Thurmont imagined a source for this odor, a nearby
room where great cauldrons of the stuff were left permanently fired up and puffing. There was a plate of cinnamon donuts from the morning check-outs temptingly placed on top of a little rumbling brown refrigerator that Thurmont periodically envisaged helping himself to. They had brochures for Cottonlandia and a
number of local churches, but nothing else, certainly the most pitiful selection of
collectible literature Thurmont had ever come across in his limited travels.
The little, smartly dressed man at the register he was now talking to must
have been the Hindu’s father. He appeared to be listening to Thurmont, to grasp
the severity of what had befallen the boys, and the owner of the foot. And then,
just when Thurmont thought the man was going to pick up the phone and dial
Sheriff Clymer, he let out a gut-buster of a laugh that sounded to Thurmont like
the solitary cackling of a mental patient. Thurmont was literally blown back a
foot or two by the ferocity of the little man’s pleasure.
“A dead foot!”
“Actually,” Thurmont said, “a dead body. The foot is what they found. Your
son didn’t say anything?”
“My nephew. Please wait.”
Thurmont was joined moments later by a fat lady in a purple scarf she’d managed to make a whole dress out of. He saw a dark red spot on her forehead and
decided it couldn’t have been a shaving cut. She was pretty, maybe even beautiful, but she was fat and her features bloated. Thurmont felt uncomfortable when
this lady led him by the hand to an awfully neglected couch next to the refrigerator and sat down next to him so that her breast was rubbing against the side of his
arm. He explained again.
The lady took a deep breath and flared her meaty nostrils, where Thurmont
saw a little diamond-like stud was impacted.
She said, “Are you a jackass, Mr.—?”
“Thurmont.”
“Mr. Thurmont?”
“I think that maybe you’ve got me wrong,” Thurmont said. “I’m not making
up the story, I’m just telling you what my boy said.”
She helped herself to a cinnamon donut and she and the little man had a good
laugh, and didn’t stop, so Thurmont tipped his hat and left.
In Lexington Thurmont stopped off at Delta Burial and spoke to a fat Negro
with shiny skin whose name was Rivers. Rivers laid out the basic casket rates and
delivery and burial costs while he ate pulled barbecue out of a takeaway container
using no fork or knife just his lips, leaving Thurmont to wonder what they would
do in terms of presentation. Could they have an open service for just a foot? It
would certainly reduce casket fees.
He then spoke with Reverend Carlton at the New Jerusalem Church where
Bueler was known to periodically renounce his earthly vices.
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“Dead?”
“Maybe.”
“I see. Of what may I ask?”
“Well, it’s tricky,” Thurmont said, and he told Reverend Carlton what he
knew.
Reverend Carlton shook his head gravely and compressed his thick pink lips
and said, “It’s always devastating for the family.”
“There’s none that I know of,” Thurmont said.
“I’d like to prepare a little something. When are you planning on having the
service?”
This was something Thurmont wasn’t sure about. He supposed Bueler would
have to be officially deceased first, and that would mean seeing Sheriff Clymer to
match up the foot and the body, provided the Hindus hadn’t already done something with the foot. He drove to the police station feeling flustered, his head full
of loose ends and the vaguest of regrets.
Sheriff Clymer wasn’t in so Thurmont spoke with his deputy, Guthridge.
Guthridge was young and clean and he seemed to respect his job and people in
general. Thurmont warmed to him immediately and noticed with a little local
pride that when he and Guthridge sat to discuss Thurmont’s business Guthridge
offered him a donut.
“So you think this foot is related to the stabbing in Marcella, do you?” Guthridge said. “Did you see what color the foot was? Was it a black foot?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“But you feel you may see it?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m guessing probably not. I mean, now that it’s in your
hands.”
Guthridge was writing in a pad. Thurmont looked around the station while the
deputy sheriff labored on. Handcuffed to a vinyl chair in the waiting room was
the man from New Jersey, Malcolm. Malcolm’s lower lip was split wide open
and his shirt was torn at the armpit, but despite this he wore an idiotically defiant
expression.
When Guthridge was finished, he said, “Well, Thurmont, you thought right to
come here. I can tell you right now that Sheriff Clymer will be very interested to
hear this, especially since we don’t have a body yet.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s right. Only a witness report.”
“Poor Bueler. I told him — Well, I think I told him to work at not being so aggravating. He had that about him. He was an honest man, in most respects, a good
friend. I mean, he was a good man to have a farm next to when he wasn’t taking
things from you. I’ll miss him.”
Guthridge’s eyes too were moist.
“What about we get down on our knees and say a little prayer for Bueler?”
Guthridge said.
On his way out of the station, Thurmont stopped to talk to Malcolm. As soon
as he sat down, Malcolm, recognizing a fellow seeker in Thurmont, began a lunatic tale of pursuit involving a group of bloodthirsty assailants from up North.
“They got me,” Malcolm tittered maliciously to himself at the end of his
story.
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“Who got you?” Thurmont asked.
“Durant and Tango.”
“They’re the ones that beat you up?”
“Let me tell you something,” Malcolm said. “Musical ethnography, it’s a
battleground. You think this is nonsense, I can tell, but a man can make a name
for himself out here.”
Hatless, Thurmont listened to the story of Country Boy Simms.
Malcolm had not come to Mississippi to see the gravestone of Elmore James,
of course not, that was just a smokescreen, he had come to get an interview with
Country Boy Simms, the last of the living pre-war blues legends. Columbia
musicologists Durant and Tango were on the same hunt and the two parties had
crossed paths in the cemetery in Canton. Tango had pulled a knife that turned
out to be a cheap hair grooming instrument. Malcolm had acquired a piece of
funerary statuary in self-defense and this is how the police had found the Yankees
when they’d answered the pastor’s phone call. Now it was just their word against
his, Malcolm said.
“Durant and Tango’s word?” Thurmont said.
“You can bet that whatever kind of groomer that was there was a knife option.”
“You defaced a gravestone. That won’t wash around here.”
“It’s a battleground,” Malcolm shrugged.
“I’ll put in a good word with Sheriff Clymer,” Thurmont said, knowing he
wouldn’t see Clymer today.
On his way home Thurmont prepared himself for the solemn talk he now
knew he would have to have with Thurmont III. He would speak of the fragility
of life. He would try to instill in Thurmont III, against his gut instincts and his
many years of pleasurable solitary hoarding, that life was not about the acquisition of things, but about creating enduring friendships, something he wished he’d
spent a little more time on with Bueler. He would wrap the whole talk up with a
mild rebuke about the misplaced foot and give the boy a dollar or two to spend on
some sucking candies.
He found Thurmont III shucking snow peas at the kitchen sink in a suit difficult to assess. He was mostly at a loss as to how and where the boy had acquired
the miniature outfit, and for what purpose, but he was pleased when the boy followed him into the living room without argument. They sat down thigh to thigh
on the living room sofa and watched the weeping willow chase its shadow across
the dirt yard. The heat was a color all its own but it was cool here. The sofa was
cool.
“Our friend Bueler is dead,” Thurmont said.
Thurmont III didn’t register any great misery at this announcement. If anything, he became momentarily more animated.
Thurmont said, “I said Bueler, a man who treated you like a son, sometimes,
was the man you read about in the paper. You are a material witness.”
This was not the tone he wanted at all, Thurmont realized, to come across like
some hectoring TV prosecutor. He said, “Son, Bueler might have had his faults,
but the Buelers and the Meekses, we have more in common than — Let’s just say
we’ve grown more alike over the years than us and those Hindus who are hiding
Bueler’s foot will ever be. Friendship is important in life, you see. Not worrying
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about things so much.” Here Thurmont paused because he realized his eyes were
welling up. He would not want for the boy to associate grieving with sissiness,
per se, or to in any way connect this important growing up message he was giving him with anything but fortitude of the soul. “Do you mind if I ask you where
you do your shopping?” he asked.
Later that evening, at Ike’s, Thurmont bought the boy his first beer. He
introduced Thurmont III to all the characters there, the old Negroes who were
regulars at Ike’s. They called the boy Little T. They said he was the spitting image
of Thurmont and compared both, favorably, to a set of father-son undertakers that
had had that job in Tchula once. When it began to get dark, Thurmont told the fellows that he would let them know when Reverend Carlton would be holding the
service and he bought a round for everyone in Bueler’s honor.
Out on the street minutes later, he said to Thurmont III, “Remember this. This
is the day you became a man.” He realized that this was somewhat premature, the
boy wasn’t even eleven, but there was no use taking it back.
Thurmont III, though, was his ornery, secretive self. He didn’t appear at all
interested in their social successes at Ike’s. Rather, he stood there moodily in the
heat inspecting the length of his jacket cuffs, measuring them against Thurmont’s.
Thurmont himself was naturally a little wobbly on his pins; he’d been drinking
in Bueler’s honor since five. Still, he was floored when Thurmont III offered to
drive.
“Who taught you that?”
“Bueler did.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I suppose that wasn’t bad. You want to try?”
Thurmont III drove with one arm out the window, like a Greyhound bus
driver. Thurmont could only shake his head at the boy’s unconcern for all things
extraordinary. He began to think of the bottle of sour mash he’d been saving. He
wondered what Reverend Carlton might chose for the title of his little talk, what
psalm of mourning.
Just then, he realized that they were no longer moving, that they’d skidded to
a stop in the middle of the road in a cloud of risen dust. He peered anxiously over
his shoulder.
“Jesus, boy, what is it? You can’t just stop wherever you please.”
“There.”
“What?”
“Over there.”
Thurmont followed the boy’s finger to a naked human form darting antelopelike through the twilit fields. It was the Negro from the day before, retracing his
route.
“My good sweet Jesus,” Thurmont said.
“Bueler.”
“He’s alive.”
Thurmont sat on his porch stewing with his sour mash until long past dark.
Now that Bueler was alive, if that were truly Bueler, and it clearly was, then
Bueler was no longer dead. If Bueler was no longer dead, his diplomatic immunity, so to speak, he was a thief again and Thurmont’s whole speech about friendship and not having things had been wasted breath, moral fornication. Worse, the
boy would grow up trusting his fellow man when in fact they were all Buelers at
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heart. He caught himself before he went past the bottleneck and corked the liquor
back up. He wouldn’t want to be fall-down drunk when he cornered the man in
his lair.
He made a clumsy effort at getting up and off the porch rocker.
“Let’s go, boy.”
When they were safely hidden in the dark of Bueler’s porch, Thurmont said,
“What do you see?”
“Two people,” Thurmont III said.
“Good people or bad people?”
“White people.”
“White people? Naked or clothed white people?”
“Clothed.”
“Well, what are they doing?”
“They’ve got Bueler talking into a box.”
“My God.”
“He’s getting up.”
“What now?”
“He’s pointing at the wall.”
“The bear trap?”
“He’s pointing at the bear trap.”
“That’s enough,” Thurmont said. “We’re going in.”
Inside it was as if Bueler had never left. There was the telltale stink of Bueler’s Happy Star sardines and sprouted mung beans. The Italian leather sofa where
Bueler slept, illogically, through the roughest nights of summer was a study in
sloppiness, piled high with overdue library books and old newspapers and the
marbled composition books Bueler kept his fiscal and social observations in. Far
into his manumission tale, Bueler was showing Malcolm and the girl his trident
and net. He would tell you, if he judged you capable of believing such nonsense,
that Amis Meeks used to put the Buelers in a specially dug rooster pit and have
them pick themselves off with such ancient Roman instruments.
“I think this has gone far enough,” Thurmont said.
At this Malcolm jumped with crazed rat eyes. He plucked the trident out of
Bueler’s hands and threw his body in between the two farmers. Ignoring the girl
entirely, Thurmont was amazed to see. Malcolm had been doing some drinking of
his own. He couldn’t hold it.
“I’m on to you,” Malcolm leered at Thurmont. “Oh, yes, I’ve checked you
out, Tippu Tip. Too bad but your slave trading days are over and Country Boy’s
got nothing to say to you.”
“Country Boy?”
“He’s had enough of your harassment.”
“Listen to me, you fool, that is not Country Boy Simms. If Country Boy
Simms is even alive, or was alive. I’ve sure never heard of him.”
“Keep talking, ofay.”
“I sure don’t like your tone, boy.”
“Whip me then. Come on, what are you waiting for? Whip my black ass.”
Thurmont had no response for this.
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“I’ve already called the Tourist Bureau in Jackson,” Malcolm went on. “I’ve
registered a complaint. You don’t want anybody to see Posey’s Cabin because
of what they might find in there. Slave traps, tridents, S&M equipment. Oh, yes,
I’m on to you.” Here Malcolm sort of waltzed across the room to help himself to
another cup of Bueler’s homemade sour mash.
“Wait right there,” Thurmont said. “You say this is Country Boy Simms. How
old would Country Boy be? Ninety? One hundred? Does this man look one hundred to you? He’s fat and he can’t play the guitar. Have you asked him to? And
another thing, you’re not black.”
“I’m not black?”
“Jesus, no.”
“Says who?”
Thurmont knew he wouldn’t win this one, so he appealed farmer to farmer to
Bueler. When Malcolm and the girl were safely out of sight on the porch, he said,
“Where you been, Bueler?”
“Nowhere.”
“What you being doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
“Funny.”
“No it ain’t.”
“I seen you running naked twice across Route 12, me and my boy. That’s not
funny?”
“That’s my business. Good enough?”
Two minutes into Bueler’s second life on this earth and Thurmont was already
sick of dealing with him. He said, “Why’d you tell that stupid Yankee you were
Country Boy Simms?”
“I didn’t.”
“No?”
“No, sir, he told me.”
“And you just went along with it?”
“Didn’t he just tell you he was a nigger?”
Thurmont cast a troubled glance at Thurmont III, who was no longer inspecting his jacket cuffs. “We don’t use that word around here,” he said.
“Did he or did he not tell you that he was black?”
Thurmont nodded.
“And did you win that argument?”
“I think I’d like a little sip myself, if you don’t mind,” Thurmont said.
Bueler brought the sour mash and two jars over and the two men sat on the
leather sofa facing some very fancy entertainment apparatus and the machinery to
run it.
Thurmont said, “You’ve been stealing my things, Bueler.”
“What now?”
“You took Archie Moore’s boxing gloves. You took other things. You took
my Miss Belzoni calendar, 1952, with the picture of Rose Bascomb you know I
can’t live without. You’ve been prowling about under the moon while I’ve been
sleeping.”
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Bueler cast a glance of his own at Thurmont III, who couldn’t return it.
“And you brought your boy by to teach him a lesson?” Bueler said.
“That’s about the short of it.”
“Thurmont, do you see any things in here? I got my couch and my color TV. I
got my subscription to National Geographic and that’s it. Look for yourself. And
tell me something. What business could I possibly have with your Miss Belzoni
calendar?”
“No things?” Thurmont spluttered. “And what do you call that?”
The bear trap.
“Historical evidence,” Bueler said.
Thurmont took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t believe you. You might as well
fess up and tomorrow we can take care of the particulars.”
“I ain’t got your things, Mr. T,” Bueler said.
“Sure you don’t. Who’s got them then?”
“Why don’t you ask the boy?”
“Ask him what?”
“Where’d he get that beeper from maybe. All those little old man suits.”
There had been the suits, true, the hair jelly, all the little entitlements Thurmont III had been helping himself to on what meager allowance? Five dollars a
week? His two-tone gentlemen’s shoes with arch supports. Casually, Thurmont
turned to look at his blood, who sat quietly next to him on the sofa. He could not
bring himself to do it, however, and the boy knew it. Thurmont stood and they
walked in silence back through the moonlit fields hand-in-hand.
At some point Thurmont felt his hand being squeezed. It could have been the
darkness that had unnerved the boy, the darkness and the baying of dogs. Those
Mississippi mutts were bad enough in daylight; at night you were sure you were
the only piece of meat on the wind for miles around. Why had he never shown
the boy how to protect himself with a slingshot and a dirt-impacted rock? he
wondered. Their Mississippi snowballs? It was too bad that he would never have
that opportunity because first thing in the morning he intended to call Lucius to
collect his thieving seed.
At the cabin Thurmont III slunk off to his room without waiting for bedtime
words, his head held exaggeratedly low to the ground. Like a trained hyena,
thought Thurmont. The light didn’t come on, which meant that the boy must have
gone to sleep in his clothes. So be it. Thurmont went to the barn and switched on
the lights and let them run, pulling in many queer bugs. He left the barn doors
open. Across the fields, as usual, Bueler’s cabin was lit to excess.
Thurmont didn’t call Lucius the next day. Instead, he spent the morning
boxing his things. He’d woken late and hadn’t bothered shaving. Exhaustion
overtook him early on. Not any tiredness attributable to the goings-on of the past
few days, but a general life exhaustion. He was tired of his things and depressed
that he would feel this way. He took a nap. He passed the afternoon staring up at
the barn ceiling, watching the cobwebs in the rafters whisper like clouds. In the
evening he couldn’t bring himself to spend another minute picking through his
junk and went to the cabin to make dinner.
The boy was in bed with the lights out, dressed in the suit of the night before.
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He looked to Thurmont, squinting through the keyhole, like an embalmed dignitary from a country with very small people. It was barely eight o’clock, not yet
dark. The temperature had dropped. Could the boy actually be sleeping? Thurmont wondered. When he should have been out enjoying the twilight? Chasing
dogs, throwing knives, shooting things? Where were the boy’s friends?
Thurmont didn’t knock. He went back to the barn and fell into a deep slumber.
The sky was a wide pale blue but there were clouds in it that looked like they
might stick and grow into something. Thurmont waited on the porch for Thurmont III, pondering rain. It was still very early and the boy had asked to change
out of his old clothes. He came out in overalls and an undershirt, his fishing suit.
They were in the truck with packed lunches by six and at the Copper Road
bend minutes later. They sat down on the red dirt bank with their backs to the
road.
Thurmont brought out two antique red and white bobs and set them both up
and then attached the dough balls. He cast first and then Thurmont III cast. The
boy’s wasn’t much of a cast.
“There was no foot,” Thurmont said, keeping his eyes on the very placid
water.
“No, sir.”
“You took my things here and you sold them.”
“Yessir.”
“To buy your suits.”
“Yessir.”
“And your hair jelly and beeper. Do you feel neglected, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you miss your grandpa Lucius in Jackson?”
“No, sir.”
“You feel comfortable here in Tchula, you mean to say? Here on the farm?”
“Yessir.”
“With me, you feel comfortable?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, I’ve made some decisions,” Thurmont said.
Thurmont III looked up from his line. His eyes had started to well up, a peculiar thing to see on a Meeks.
Thurmont said, “First, I’ve decided not to live in the barn anymore, if that’s
ok with you. That old bed is killing me. The second one is that I would like you
to help me box my things. I’d like you and me to sell them together. You see, I’ve
accumulated quite a bit of collectibles and such over the years, like my straight
razors and shaving gear.”
It was going to be the whole works, Thurmont could see. Tears, webs of
mouth mucus, hyperventilation maybe. The boy wanted to atone for his crimes.
“You sold those too, did you?” Thurmont said. “That’s ok. I don’t need them
anyway. How many razors does a man need to shave? The point is I’d like to
show you how to make a sling shot. You’ve got to know how to protect yourself
against those mutts and if I understand right, living in Las Vegas, you probably
never learned how.”
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Just then the boy’s bob came undone and started to drift away on the current.
He jumped up but Thurmont put a hand on his shoulder and kept him there and
he eventually settled down.
Thurmont rifled in the antique tackle box and found another older, prettier
bob and gave it to the boy to tie on himself. He did and recast and it was better
this time. They watched the lost red and white bob slowly make its way south on
the sluggish current to the Gulf of Mexico as the first raindrops fell and the sky
began to rinse itself clean.
Max Sheridan lives and writes in Nicosia, Cyprus. Some of his recent work
has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM Magazine and Atticus Review.
His latest novel Hubble is looking for a home. You can find him at: www.
maxsheridanlit.com.
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THE GARDEN
by Katja Zurcher
I
t was raining slightly. Not enough to notice as we walked to the truck, but it
misted the windshield and created a film as the wipers flicked across. I still
remember how I clutched both sides of the seat. The leather was dingy and
cracked, crumbs ground into the creases. My stomach hurt for some reason. It
twisted deep inside me like those giant pretzels they sell at the mall.
“Hey,” Adam said. I leaned the side of my head against the window, the
motor vibrating my teeth. I could feel him staring.
“Hey,” I replied, not looking at him.
“You want to go get some ice cream or something?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Or we could do coffee or whatever.” I glanced over at him
and shook my head. He cleared his throat. “Are you ok?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He was silent for a moment, then, “You’re not upset or anything?”
“I’m fine. Seriously.” I turned to smile at him. My skin was still cool from
the window. “Promise.”
“Because if you’re upset I want us to talk about it. You didn’t have to do
anything you didn’t want to. You knew that, right?” He was staring hard at me
now, not watching the road. The air freshener hanging from the mirror swayed
violently as the truck swerved.
“Yeah, I said I was fine.” I could hear my voice shake a bit at the end, and I
pretended to cough.
It was dark when he pulled into my driveway, and the headlights scattered
the shadows. When I opened the car door he leaned over to kiss me and missed.
His lips brushed the side of my mouth. Waving awkwardly, I closed the door
and took the front steps two at a time. I could hear Mom humming tunelessly in
the kitchen.
“Madeline, is that you?” she called. Her shadow loomed around the
corner like a witch from a fairy tale, and I ran the rest of the way up the stairs.
“Madeline?” she called again. I ripped at my clothes and turned on the shower,
slipping behind the curtain as she walked into my room.
“I’m taking a shower,” I said over the gush of water. She didn’t say
anything for a moment, but I could see her silhouette in the doorway, tinged
pink by the frosted shower curtain.
“Are you okay?” she asked. I clutched my arms close to my body even
though I knew she couldn’t see me.
“Yeah. How come?” I had never been a good liar, but I hoped that the
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pounding of the shower muffled my voice so she couldn’t tell. I was surprised
she could hear me at all.
“Are you sure?” Her silhouette moved a little closer.
“Mom! I’m in the shower,” I yelled.
“Ok, ok,” she said. “How does pizza sound for dinner?”
“Great. Now can you just go?” As I watched her outline move away, I saw
that I was trembling.
My hair was plastered to the side of my face the way seaweed attaches
to your legs in the ocean, and my skin was already too red from the heat. I
squeezed shampoo in my hand and started working it through my hair. It didn’t
need to be washed. It used to be long and heavy, weighed down by thick curls.
But I decided that the curls made me look too young, and I had my hair cut
short. My neck felt strange, exposed and thin beneath my hands. Mom told me
that I looked like a red headed Aubrey Hepburn. My cousin Beth and I tried to
dye it black, and she convinced me that it looked good until Mom pointed out,
horrified, that my eyebrows were still very red. My hands followed the suds as
they slipped down my body. I kept waiting, but I didn’t feel any different at all.
That night I lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Mom had offered to
help me redo my room a few weeks earlier, and I told her I would think about
it. Her new “calming color” was cobalt, and she was covering the house with
it. My room was filled with old basketball trophies and posters on the walls.
I played when I was younger, and Dad drove me to every practice. We rolled
down the windows and sang Beatles songs at the top of our lungs, even when it
was freezing outside. During sophomore year, I realized boys would pay more
attention to me if I wore a cheerleading skirt instead. Dad didn’t say much
when I quit, but he never came to the games anymore. I wasn’t sure what to do
with the trophies. They had been there for so long the room would look empty
without them, not like mine. Adam had never been in it.
I buried my face in the down of the duvet cover and breathed in. Adam’s
comforter had been rough against my bare skin. After I got out of the shower I
noticed that it had left a place on my shoulder, slightly red like a rug burn. His
room always smelled a little sour, but that afternoon his mom had been baking
something downstairs for the Junior League, and, sweet and rich, its aroma
rolled in from under the closed door. There was nothing on his dresser except
for a bowl of cereal and picture of him with his arm around a girl I didn’t know.
I still hadn’t asked who she was. The floor was covered with dirty clothes, and
when he left to go to the bathroom I kicked them into one of the corners. After
he came back, his hands smelled of Dove soap, and when he touched my face
the smell reminded me of Mom.
Mom was on the phone in the living room, and her voice carried up the
stairs, soft and wordless. Concentrating, holding my breath, I tried to listen, and
through the hum of her voice I thought I heard my name. The wooden boards
under the carpet groaned as I crossed the room to pick up my upstairs extension.
She was talking to her mother, Nana. I walked back with the phone, pausing at
each step to disguise my footsteps. With a final leap I crumpled onto my bed
with the phone pressed to my cheek.
Inhaling shallowly through my mouth, I listened as they talked about my
little brother. Nana was telling Mom that the theater thing was just a phase he
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would grow out of. She punctuated each sentence with a high sniffled laugh.
Suddenly she stopped.
“So how is the boyfriend?” I felt a tingle spread from my chest to my
shoulders and down my arms.
“Adam?”
“Adam. Of course. I can never remember his name.”
“He’s fine. She was out with him tonight.”
“They aren’t getting too serious, are they?”
“Mother.” Mom’s voice was sharp, and Nana didn’t reply. In the silence I
realized that I had breathed in a tiny gasp. “Hold on for a second,” Mom said,
and there was a slight thud as she set the phone down on the coffee table. Her
footsteps echoed as she walked down the hall and stopped at the foot of the
stairs. Pressing End with sweaty hands, I rolled over and dropped the phone
down the side of the bed where it got caught between the mattress and the wall.
Adam had called a little earlier, and we’d talked like nothing had
happened. I don’t know what I was expecting. Some part of me thought he
wouldn’t call at all. Before he hung up I asked him in a small voice not to tell
anyone. He seemed confused at first, maybe even hurt.
“Why not?” he asked. “Are you embarrassed or something?”
“No!” I said, even though it was a lie. “It’s just, you know. My school and
everything. If people found out it would be a big deal.” He let out a strange,
quiet laugh that I had never heard before, but he said ok.
Adam knew all about Harvest Hills Baptist. We do it by the Book! One time
in 9th grade health class they split up the boys and girls. The school nurse came
in to talk to us about our purity. She held up a decorative bird cage filled with
plastic flowers and greenery. Wire filled tendrils curled around the bars of the
cage and crushed up against the top.
“You are a beautiful garden,” she said, setting the bird cage down with a
flourish. We all stared blankly back at her. I leaned over to scratch at a bug bite
through my knee socks, and Beth poked me hard in the ribs. Heads turned in my
direction as I swallowed my squeal. Keeping my eyes on the nurse, I pinched the
flabby part of Beth’s arm.
“You must learn how to tend your garden, keep it pure. Because the world
wants to destroy your garden.” She yanked at one of the flower petals, twisting
at the plastic until it snapped.
“Do you prune your garden?” Beth whispered to me. A few of the girls
around us giggled.
The nurse glared at us. “It is up to you to always be on guard.”
We heard later they had talked to the boys about the dangers of
masturbation.
I sat next to Beth the next morning at church. I could feel the spot from
Adam’s comforter against my blouse. I found myself reaching up to touch it
when no one was watching. It seemed warm through the fabric.
My dad’s family was big, and we always sat in the first two rows. The rows
were nothing more than folding chairs lined together in a giant auditorium. The
cushions were red, smelled like someone’s attic, and when Beth and I were little
we picked the pills off the cloth and collected them in our pockets. Two large
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screens flanked the wooden cross that hung above the podium. Once, a couple
from out of town sat in one of our rows. My grandfather shuffled over to them,
his Sunday jacket stretching tightly across his back as he moved. Smiling, he
welcomed them to our church, and then asked them to move. My grandmother
shook her head. Bless their hearts, they didn’t know.
We bowed our heads to pray, and Beth kicked at my leg, the tip of her heel
pressing into my calf. As I kicked her back I noticed Mom glance down at me
from under her eye lashes, and her lips pursed together. She shifted her weight
so her leg was also touching mine. Beth tried to stifle a giggle, but it came out
in little choking puffs. As the overhead lights dimmed, the stage lights flashed
yellow and blue, and the large screens powered on like two waking eyes. We
stood to sing, and Beth smirked at me through her dramatic lip sync.
When people stood up to greet each other I grabbed Beth by the wrist. “I
have something to tell you,” I whispered. We stayed seated, and, grinning, she
leaned closer. We sat angled in, knee to knee with foreheads touching. I tore off
a page in my devotional notebook. I did it with Adam, I wrote and passed it to
her. Beth’s eyes grew big as she read the note. She looked up at me, and I could
feel my face getting warm. Everyone began to take their seats as she yanked
the pen out of my hand. What?! How was it? she scribbled sideways across the
paper. I tilted my head to read it and then shrugged. Suddenly, she crumpled the
paper into a ball and slipped it under my fingers. I heard Mom clear her throat,
her eyes on my face, as I stood up and made my way down the row, bumping
knees and stepping on purses. The wad of paper was still clutched in my hand.
The door of the auditorium shut behind me, stifling the preacher’s voice
with a heavy snap. There weren’t any windows, and the artificial light created
strange muted shadows. I walked carefully as if I were trying not to wake
someone, and I listened for my mother’s steps behind me. My blouse felt
strangely stifling, light hands pressing at my neck. I unbuttoned it and breathed
deeply.
The woman’s restroom smelled like powdered roses. The scent was thick
and got caught in the back of my throat. I went into the first stall, the toilet water
still blue from the cleanser put in that morning, and tore the note into tiny pieces
until it wouldn’t tear anymore. All of the pieces twirled down into the bowl
except for a few that still stuck to my palms. I brushed my hands together, and
they fell too. Steadying myself with the walls of the stall, I lifted my foot and
pushed down on the toilet handle.
Beth found me after church and grabbed me by the crook of my arm. With a
quick glance at our parents who were still mingling in the lobby, she pulled me
past the exiting congregation.
“Why didn’t you call me last night?” she asked.
I laughed and shrugged. “I just wanted to go to bed.” She stared at me,
waiting for me to say more. “There isn’t really anything to tell.” I hesitated and
remembered squeezing my eyes shut. I didn’t want to look at him and in my
head: I’m sorry I’m sorry until the words didn’t mean anything anymore. And he
kept his socks on. “It was kind of weird.”
“Everyone thinks that at first.”
“How would you know?”
“Does this mean you guys are in love now?” she asked.
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“No.”
She saw my face. “It doesn’t matter.” She touched my shoulder so lightly
that I could hardly feel her hand through my blouse. We both looked at the
ground, and I didn’t know what to say to her. She scratched at the back of her
head and swayed a little to the side like she was about to leave.
“You know they make such a big deal about it, but—” I squeezed Beth’s
hand to shut her up.
In line with family tradition, we went to The Guenther House for Sunday
brunch. Dad dropped us off at the front door, so we could get a table while he
and my brother parked the minivan. Mom and I stood shoulder to shoulder
in the crowd of fellow church-goers, and standing next to her I felt awkward
and clunky. I was painfully aware that my feet were much too big and that my
hair was still that awful shade of black. Mom was tall and elegant, and people
complimented her red hair like they never had done mine. Today, she wore a
wrist full of thin silver bangles that tinkled when she moved. She told me that
I looked exactly like she did in high school, but I had seen pictures; I knew she
was lying.
“I’ve been thinking, how would you like a shopping date after school
tomorrow?” she asked, leaning her head towards me to be heard in the crowd.
“We can get dinner and make an evening of it.”
I looked up, surprised. “I have a lot of homework on Mondays.”
“We could get coffee? Have some girl time.”
Dad suddenly appeared behind her. “What are you two scheming about?” he
asked, kissing her lightly on the cheek.
She laughed, and the bangles on her arm chimed softly. “Nothing at all.”
Adam said that he wanted to come over and talk that night, so I sat on
the front steps to wait for him. A few worms lay shriveled on the cement and
I scraped at them with a stick. They peeled up like scabs, leaving discolored
marks. Even though it was only six o’clock when Adam pulled into the
driveway, the sky was almost completely dark and shadows leaned away from
the street lights. I didn’t stand up to meet him as he walked up the front walk.
His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, and he walked with a
slight sway.
“It’s kind of cold out here,” he said, sitting down next to me.
“Feels ok to me.”
He drummed his fingers on his knees and looked at me. “Do anything cool
today?”
“Not really. Just church.”
“Cool.” He scratched at his nose while I looked up at him expectantly.
Instead of meeting my eyes, he picked up a leaf and started tearing it apart in
little pieces.
“Are you sure you’re ok?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I nudged his arm with my elbow. “I already told you.”
“I know,” he said. “You just seem mad at me or something.”
“Adam, I told—”
“I really care about you a lot,” he said. I don’t think he even realized that he
was interrupting me. He was still staring at his leaf.
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“I care about you too.”
“No, like,” he hesitated. “I just feel like I really hurt you or something. I
know how uptight you get with that kind of stuff.”
“What, do you think I’m a prude or something?” I demanded. I could hear
my voice, high and childlike, but I couldn’t help it. He didn’t answer me. He
didn’t even look at me. He just kept looking down at the leaf, twirling it in his
fingers. Its stalk and veins hung limp where he had torn off the papery flesh.
“No,” he finally said.
We sat a while staring into the street. Slumping over, I rested my chin in
my hands. The street was quiet, and I felt quiet and empty. Adam slipped his
hand around my waist and tugged me closer. I gave way like a rag doll and let
him hold me. He always smelled piney, probably his cologne, and a little like
pencil shavings. I’d told this to Beth. She laughed and told me it was weird. But
I liked it. He lifted my face and started to kiss me, timidly for a moment but then
harder, gripping my leg with his hands. And I could feel where he was probably
going to leave a bruise. Something warm started somewhere deep in my chest
and spread to the rest of my body. He pressed himself harder against me, and
I let him. He kissed my neck, whispering something in my ear. Suddenly I
stopped and pulled away. He grabbed at me, and I pulled away again. He looked
like I had slapped him. Before he could say anything, I walked up the front steps
and went inside.
Keeping my head down, I hurried through the kitchen and out the back
door. I could hear Mom calling after me, but I didn’t stop. As soon as the door
closed behind me I broke into a run, stumbling a little on the last step of the
deck. I didn’t slow down until I made it to the woods at the end of the property.
Collapsing on the grass, my breathing sounded loud and harsh in the silence.
The sky looked strange, almost grey, and there were barely any stars. I stared
up at it until my vision grew hot and blurry, and I had to wipe my eyes. There
was a grumble from the front of the house as Adam started up his truck, and I
imagined him peeling out of the driveway.
Mom called my name from the deck, but I pretended I didn’t hear her.
Maybe if I kept still enough she wouldn’t see me. I heard her clomp down the
steps in her ugly garden shoes. We had made fun of them for years, but she still
wore them.
Lowering herself down slowly, as if her knees hurt, she sat down next to me
in the grass. Without speaking, we both stared into the woods. They stretched
out open before us, darker and wilder than they ever seemed during the day. The
black trees grabbed at the sky. Mom sighed and squeezed my shoulder.
“How have you been?” she asked. She didn’t look at me, only gazed out at
the trees. I thought about it and slapped a mosquito.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered.
“Do we need to put you on the pill?” she asked. Casually, matter-of-factly.
It stunned me.
“Mama!” I squealed, covering my face. “I don’t do that stuff. I’m not like
that.”
“Like what?”
I didn’t answer but was thankful for the dark, so she couldn’t see my face.
Taking me by the shoulders, she folded me into her like she used to do when I
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was little. I lay my head on her chest and felt her heart right beneath my cheek.
It seemed so close to the skin, as if it could bounce out if it beat any harder.
The shadows teased my eyes, extending and pulling at the shapes in the
woods, until I could actually see them moving. They changed, violent and
foreign, before I could distinguish one shape from another, and the wind rattled
though the branches. Mom tucked back my hair, and her fingertips brushed my
ear. Her skin was surprisingly coarse. When she stood up to leave I wanted to
tell her to stay, but I didn’t.
“Mom?” The light from the house shone behind her, and she was beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing back something.
She frowned and pursed her lips. “Don’t apologize,” she said. Her voice
sounded dry, like a little bit of sadness was trailing it.
I watched her go and then turned back to the woods. I could hear the
crickets now, and around the flicker of stars the darkness was alive and
throbbing.
Katja Zurcher is a graduate of Rhodes College. She is the recipient of the
Allen Tate Creative Writing Award in fiction and a finalist for the 2011 Salem
College International Literary Awards. Her work has been published in the
Rhodes College literary journal, The Southwestern Review.
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PUDDLES
by Linda Nordquist
T
he rain is a deluge day and night. It bloats the rivers and saturates the
ground. The overflow courses down the mountains, giving birth to
shallow gullies in the rocky paths. When the ground levels off for brief
stretches, the water slows and puddles appear. That changes everything.
We set out on our hike during a break in the downpour—me, the boy and
the dogs. Rust colored mud oozes underfoot. The dogs race ahead, stopping
only to mark their spots. They set a frenetic pace, darting from boulder to bush,
driven by their exquisite olfactory talents.
The Doberman is in the lead, his taut hindquarters rolling side-to-side. The
mutt, thick-as-a-stump, lopes along, ears forward, tail up. He has fashioned the
trot to fit his needs: racing trot for chasing chickens and rabbits, coasting trot for
low impact travel.
Running to catch up with them is the boy, small in stature, thin, with eyes
the color of mink and lashes that cast shadows on his cheekbones. He stops at
the edge of the first puddle. Swinging his arms out wide, he marches through
it, splashing water into his rubber boots. Then he is off, chasing the dogs and
squealing like all eight-year-old boys running free. He surges forward, limbs
moving with abandon, joints flush with synovial fluid—never a thought to a slip
or fall.
When the boy comes upon the next puddle, he slows and examines the
possibilities. Backing up, he pauses, swings his arms and sways back-andforth. Suddenly he bolts. Leaping like an Olympiad, he performs a near perfect
long jump. Both feet touch down in tandem. Water sprays in all directions.
Again, knees bent, he springs up, stretches his arms above his head and jumps
kangaroo-style out of the puddle. The movement springs from his imagination—
after all, he’s never seen a properly executed long jump. He turns with a grin,
exposing holes where teeth used to be. His expression is the essence of joy.
I bring up the rear with a tentative stride, the possibilities of a mishap
foremost in my mind: an exposed tree root, a slippery stone, a rock jutting
upwards. Confidence in movement is a thing of the past. My joints jerk
like R2D2. The walking stick is a third leg. A titanium hip represents new
opportunities tempered by the fear of falling. At 9,200 feet elevation, depleted
oxygen adds to the challenges.
But, where the boy exudes confidence, I have determination. And so I
trudge along the slippery path in a steady ascent.
The first puddle is motionless. I begin to walk around it but stop and look at
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my reflection. A silver-haired woman with wrinkles and sagging cheeks gazes
back at me.
Should I accept or deny her? There aren’t many options, especially since
I ran out of ash-blonde hair coloring a year ago. In the Andes, store shelves
are stacked with shades of auburn or black. A financial investment in blond
dye would be risky. Embracing my gray, however, is easier than reconciling to
everything that comes with it.
I move on.
The next puddle is shaped like a banana. It looks harmless enough. I decide
not to squelch the whim. I press the walking stick further into the mud and
walk into it. The cool water flows over my rubber muckers, sending a chill
up my legs. I walk the length and am pleased with myself for not engaging in
avoidance.
I am not well-equipped for avoidance. I look the world straight in the eye,
always have. I would like to say I never look back, but I do—often—curious as
to why of it, why this road traveled and not that. At night, my ears throb with the
silence of this place. There are no hooting owls, no crickets, only the occasional
distant bark of a dog. It is fertile ground for probing regrets and they are easy to
find. Whenever a life zigzags like a windsock in a storm, there are bound to be
regrets. But I don’t dwell on them. It was a life lived.
Up ahead, the dogs have disappeared and the boy is throwing stones into a
puddle. He stutter steps, squats, picks up a stone, takes aim and hurls it into the
water—everything in motion at once. I can’t remember the last time my body
moved as one.
We round the curve just as the sun cuts through the clouds, shining a
brilliant light upon the glacier before us. My eyes squint from the glare. It is
breathtaking, a mantle of pure white ice spreading in all directions. The glacier
is two miles away across a narrow gorge and up another 7,000 feet, but it seems
close enough to touch. Silent and imposing, it is reminiscent of the Cathedral of
Notre Dame at dawn.
“Wow,” he says. “Look at that!”
“Yes. Wow,” I respond, my voice muted with sadness.
What else should I say? Do I give him the scientific prognosis? “Listen, kid.
Don’t get too excited. In four years that glacier will be just another puddle.”
I do not want to crush his spirit with any hint of cynicism. But, questions
abound: Does truth equal cynicism? How, when the Andean nations are
dependent upon glaciers for water and electricity, will he be prepared for the
catastrophes to come? Is it my responsibility to teach him? Teach him what?
How to survive in a land without water?
I am speechless.
A sigh escapes as we turn around. The dogs launch themselves downward,
gaining speed like an alpine skier. The boy lets out a yelp and chases after them,
his feet barely touching the ground.
For me, down is worse than up. The jarring of ankle and knee joints makes
me cringe. I dig the walking stick deeper into the lumpy mud.
Up ahead the dogs, tongues flopping, stop and eye a frothy cascade hurtling
towards the river at the bottom of the gorge. They lap a puddle instead. The
boy races past them with a “whoop.” Their heads rise, hindquarters engage, and
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piercing barks ensue as they follow the boy around a bend, disappearing from
sight.
I reach a flat stretch and lean against a boulder to rest. The balls of my feet
are hot and my calves ache. It wasn’t always this way. Four years ago I hiked
above the clouds—all of them. Mountain peaks cut through them like candles
on a whip-cream cake. With my legs set wide apart bracing against the wind, I
stood at the top of the world. I want to tell the boy, “See? In my life, I have had
joy.” But he is nowhere in sight.
Except for the occasional rustle of branches, all is still. There is a large
puddle in the middle of the lane. Images of clouds float upon its placid waters. I
look up and down the path. I am alone.
The urge is strong and I do not resist it. I walk to the edge, raise my foot and
stomp. Mud spatters. I move closer and stomp again. I tramp into the puddle, my
arms out wide for balance, the walking stick dangling from my hand. I stomp
harder and harder, squeal louder and louder.
The glaciers are dying. The world is awry.
In that moment, I thirst for life.
The dogs take the curve on an angle, their bodies hovering close to the
ground. As they roar towards me, the sound of barking drowns my shrieks. The
boy is close behind them. He plunges into the puddle while the dogs dance and
yelp along the edges. We laugh and splash, stomp and shout until we are spent,
our hands on our knees, lungs gasping for air, clothes drenched.
In that fleeting moment, I am giddy with being alive.
When we get underway, the dogs lope ahead. This time the boy hangs back.
He walks along side of me, a look of anticipation on his face. Perhaps he hopes
for another burst of excitement and wants to be in on it from the beginning.
I hope for a hot bath, an Ibuprofen and a nap.
Writer, photographer, activist, and lapsed psychotherapist, Linda Nordquist
is the author of “The Andes for Beginners,” a memoir/guidebook that is available
in Peru. Her short-story, “Promises” is to be published in the 2012 winter edition
of The Write Place at the Write Time. Runner-up in round 7 of NPR’s ThreeMinute Fiction contest with “Honor.” Author of three e-books: “Molten Murder,”
“Beyond the Tipping Point,” and “Say Goodbye, Say Hello”.
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BEFORE THEY
WERE DEAD
by Steven Miller
B
efore they were dead, they pasted witty slogans to the rear bumpers
of their vehicles, slogans that were as much other-challenging as selfexpressing. Mostly, these slogans were concerned with how other people
should spend their money.
Each morning, before they were dead, they snapped out great sheets of
ink-dirty paper filled with negativity. Many took it to heart, so much so that
they hurled their own negativity at the sheaves, going so far as to carry on about
the subjects in said papers, long afterward, with other folks yet-undead. If the
negativity seemed particularly important, they would enter into an informed but
calculated duel involving opposing ideologies and piles of statistics. Statistics,
they believed, were absolute truths that varied from year to year.
Oftentimes, they would hide from one another in the grocery store. Once in
a blue moon, this was because of a murder or a house burning, but usually it was
over a word poorly chosen from the dictionary or their many words, or a phone
call left unreturned, or a chip bowl dropped and broken but not replaced.
They made love, they married, they gave birth to tabula rosai, whom they
both loved and hated because of the uncanny resemblance to themselves, whom
they both loved and hated.
They worked extra hard so that they might retire early, and then they died of
heart failure — from plaque or loneliness – before taking that long awaited sail
around the world. They spent whole lifetimes building snowmen, and then when
their boat finally did arrive, they were too terrified to sail it. Terrified and utterly
exhausted.
Before they were dead, they were like molecules of all different chemical
make-ups, moving always against and away.
Then they were dead.
They waited in the auditorium counting their soul-fingers and soul-toes,
nothing to debate, no entertainment news to discuss. And finally, across the
hall a tiny porthole opened like the aperture of an old-timey camera, letting in a
sphere of light. They followed it as it entered and grew, this essence the single
focus of their attention. It filled the space between their soul bodies, filled them,
and, together again as they had always been even if they’d forgotten it for so
long, they stepped out into the light.
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CRACK
by Steven Miller
W
hen I was smoking crack — I’ll let you digest and comprehend this
seemingly incongruent piece of my history — I didn’t care about a
whole lot. Then I beat it, beat drink too at the same time, and then
finally beat nicotine, which everyone agreed was killing me and annoying them.
And then this morning, the sweet faced, omniscient nurse delivered my doctor’s
advice that if I wanted the pain to stop I would have to quit coffee, and I felt that
old rebellious carelessness rise up to my rescue, because that, my friends, is a
sacrifice I will not make.
Steven Miller’s fiction has appeared in various online journals, Cavalier
Literary Couture and elimae, to name a few.
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NONFICTION
FALL 2012
252
EVERY PERSON I
HAVE EVER MET
by Colleen Corcoran
I.
“MY JOB WAS TO TAKE THE ESCALADE OUT AND BUY
CHAMPAGNE,” says one former employee. “Well, not every day, but that was
memorable.”
He had been working as an executive assistant to the CEO of Bechtel, one
of the world’s largest engineering companies. Bechtel built the Hoover Dam, the
Alaska Pipeline, the Hong Kong International Airport, the mass transit systems
of several cities, and the first commercial nuclear power reactor in America. It is
responsible for some of the world’s largest mining projects and was named by the
United Nations as a supplier of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein.
It has, also, been targeted for war profiteering and environmental degradation.
The Bechtel office building lies in the dark heart of San Francisco’s financial
district at the corner of Mission and Beale. The building: brown and unadorned,
and everything about the place anonymous. In front of it, every weekday morning,
the woman running in tall black boots with tall black heels will be running late to
work, this just past the person handing out Examiner newspapers and the homeless
man standing with his back to a brick wall selling Street Sheet for $1. “Have an
absolutely magnificent day,” the homeless man will be saying.
“There’s always some Bechtel protestor wandering around wondering
where to stand,” or so they say.
“I worked there for a year,” according to the former employee. “I left when
I decided I had enough of being completely miserable every single day of my
life … I didn’t do anything interesting. I was there to like pat him on the back
and stroke his ego.”
“I used to work on a farm, and one day I was birthing a calf and suddenly
thought, ‘This is disgusting,’” someone else recalls of the day he decided to seek
out alternate employment.
Or the job might be sent to a country whose citizens are willing to work
for a bowl of rice a day, where airports dance to the hum of mechanical ceiling
fans. The inner working of the place are sometimes erratic — communications
breakdowns, system failures — a fractured existence limping along in last place,
a cascade of desperation and inconsistency. Dealings are in tragedies and poor
timing, remoteness and misinformation. The common language is gibberish.
A dusty yellow haze settles over all things, and wild boars walk the unpaved
streets. There is nobody rational at the wheel.
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“I hope you enjoyed your stay,” management will say upon dismissing an
employee from the crumbling empire. “If you didn’t have a good time, well you
could have had a good time but you chose to focus on the negative things instead
of on the positive things.”
II.
OVER 40 YEARS AGO, A STUDY WAS CONDUCTED in the basement
of Stanford’s psychology building. Called the Stanford Prison Experiment, it
was to last two weeks but ended after six days following a series of emotional
breakdowns and a general state of things rapidly and irreversibly becoming
deeply disturbing.
The experiment began with a classified ad: Male college students needed
for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks. Pseudoprisoner subjects were arrested, fingerprinted, blindfolded, searched, deloused,
and dressed in numbered uniforms. Guards were armed with clubs and told to
create an environment of powerlessness. Why did things go the way they went?
Why didn’t everyone just sit around staring at the wall? This is how things
went: It’s hard to say exactly when the prisoners started to revolt. Someone
has it written down. But they did indeed, and retaliation was swift. Where once
were lilting melodies bouncing brightly through the air-conditioning vents was
now the sound of chainsaws and thick-soled shoes echoing across concrete
plains. Prisoners were stripped naked, their beds removed, and the leader of the
rebellion placed in solitary confinement — a janitor’s closet. But not a janitor’s
closet — a windowless cell rather where the most insolent of offenders would be
locked away for days and relieved only by the occasional sliver of light and by
scraps of food tossed inside at random intervals.
In order to maintain the illusion of incarceration, guards placed
bags over the heads of prisoners during transfers throughout the prison.
Punishment was administered in the form of press-ups and sleep interruption.
The International Committee of the Red Cross calls it “prolonged stress
standing.” In these cases, the victim might be handcuffed and shackled to the
ceiling, and bolted to the floor.
One prisoner developed a psychosomatic body rash. Professor Philip
Zimbardo, orchestrator of the experiment, walked the halls with his hands
clasped behind his back and a scowl on his face, no longer a student of the
meandering mind but rather a middle-class monarch monitoring the master
laboratory for negative reinforcement. Over the course of many days, the walls,
it seemed, grew to an industrial thickness. All sounds were blocked from the
outside world. The prisoners became pale and wasted, the guards deranged.
Nothing stirred save for the inner workings of many a disintegrating mind.
People sometimes find it hard to believe that someone can become a
different person, as it were, that moment of stepping off the front doorstep,
boarding a train or a bus, and becoming whatever title the world has assigned to
them. Can good people commit acts of evil, and were they not perhaps evil all
along? Zimbardo calls it the Lucifer Effect: The social norms associated with
the role become all-consuming regardless of who that person was yesterday or
what they might have been if only. Independent thought is compromised. When
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you’re in it, you can’t see it. Something like that. The power of the situation to
transform human behavior – that had been the focus of the study.
In the free world are stacks of people, reporting to one another and then
again to others in parallel and in sequence. “I wish,” someone might say, “that
I had more power. But that is by the way.” This person will lack defined ankles
and shuffle about as though atrophied in the art of walking. They will gaze upon
the world through grey eyes which lack both depth and humanity.
There were private jets once. “We had a private jet once,” someone else
might recall wistfully, as if remembering a time when Santa Claus was real.
These are, in their heart of hearts, an ancient and warlike people, of irritable
nature, demanding respect. When night falls, the lights of vacant offices might
be lanterns, the dark places forest, and skyscrapers trees. Distant and mythical,
like wizards, they talk always of winning and wanting and things reminiscent of
world domination — all things of the earth in numerical order, cross-referenced
from the beginning until the end of time.
III.
“BEFORE THE LAW,” WROTE KAFKA, “STANDS A DOORKEEPER.”
Franz Kafka worked a lawyer for much of his life. He worked, specifically, as an
analyst of industrial accidents for the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for
the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague.
The word “Prague” means, in the Czech language, “threshold.” The city
has stood at the crossroads of history, its very existence a constant cause of
inquiry. Someone quite old but alive in at the beginning of the 21st century,
having lived in that city their entire life, has seen its ownership change hands
something along the lines of nine times. WWII, it is said, ended there in 1989,
when the country was finally freed from the Soviet Union. A statue of Stalin
was built on a hillside park by 600 men and women — the largest monument
in the world of its kind at 50 meters high and 17,000 tones, a single button half
a mile wide. Unveiled on May 1, 1955, one day after its creator committed
suicide, the statue was blown apart with 800 kilograms of explosives and
1,650 detonators seven years later. The head, they say, rolled into the river.
The remains were driven around town in a truck and the driver of that truck
died in an accident less than a year later.
Down a quiet street at the edge of town, an unmarked door at basement
level opens. Someone enters. Another exits. There is movement inside, a
light faraway, and the door closes. Things are neither here nor there nor fully
understood. Later on, for one slow minute, an elevator stalls and its single light
goes dark in the socket. In that moment, the sun ceases to rise, the trees to lose
their leaves. Nothing grows old. Nothing grows at all in fact.
Before the law stands a doorkeeper. Before an escalator stands a guard.
Before the guard, an entrance hall, and before the entrance hall, the world. Every
now and again, something surfaces — a dusty bottle, an anchor chain. The San
Francisco financial district once lay underwater. Between 1867 and 1869, a
seawall was built. The remains of ships abandoned in the hasty departure of gold
prospectors lie beneath the streets. Below what would later be condominiums
was unearthed a 125-foot long wooden sailing ship and a three-masted whaler.
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In 1849, an estimated 80,000 arrived in California, half by land and half by sea,
around Cape Horn or across Panama. The new settlement was built in great
haste with bottles and matchsticks and cheap pieces of wood. Within a span of
18 months, the city burned to the ground six times.
One afternoon, midweek or thereabouts, someone wearing a long canvas
cape and leather boots, a cotton vest and a three-sided wide-brim woolen hat
walks briskly towards the sea past men in suits and women with heels eating
Thai takeout. The look is piratical and yet benevolent. He does not, however,
appear out of place, or at least no one takes notice. It seems there is business
to be done, and yet it also seems that the coat has been through more dark and
questionable establishments than most, the warmth it provides the result of
layers of grime and salt water. His ship was perhaps burned to the bilge in the
Great Fire of 1851, back when a house was a large piece of canvas stretched
across four tall wooden posts.
Before the waterfront, the bay, where half a dozen sails turn beneath
a heavy sun diffused by a growing breeze. And at the edge of the bay, the
bridge. Past the Golden Gate Bridge, chop turns to swell and flows south with
the California Current where, at the edge of America, gringos, licor, y playa
give way to a long, narrow stretch of absolutely nothing. The monthly wage
decreases with distance, and the time per transaction — in places where slow
and lackluster represent the height of excellence — increases exponentially. But
the breezes are warm, the orchids hardy, and the cabanas on stilts.
IV.
FOR MONTHS, AN AUSTRALIAN HAS BEEN LIVING ON AN
ISLAND THE SIZE OF A TRACK, sleeping sometimes in a hammock. He
keeps a journal on unlined paper and writes at a rate approaching 1,000 lines per
page per hour in very small script. Sometimes there are drawings. At a very long
table inside a makeshift building without windows where every morning, noon,
and night rice and fish are served, he writes. Sometimes he writes in between
times, as the case may be.
“I want to buy a house here,” he says. “Can I buy a house here?”
“Only if you marry a Kuna,” Robinson responds. Robinson’s Island the
place is called. It is one of approximately 400, all of them lying within the
territory of the Kuna Yala natives off the north coast of Panama between
Columbia and the city of Colón, part of Panama, yes, but also its own
semiautonomous lost world. This is where, if a person is looking for a pile of
sand and a single palm tree, they will ultimately arrive, where someone starts
conversations with: “If you were a serial killer, it would be so easy to come here
and kill all of us and no one would ever know.”
“In America, there are like 15 serial killers at any given time.”
“What would the serial killer look like?”
“I think he’d be all scruffy and disheveled, with dead eyes. The killer is
always the one you least expect.”
“What if he walked in right now — someone we’d never seen before — and
just sat right down with us?”
“I would just play dead.”
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“Yeah, well, then he’d come and shoot you just to make sure you were dead.”
“And then someone goes to dial 911 and he’s intercepted all the phone
lines, and you’re like, ‘Hello, police officer. There’s a serial killer.’ And he’s
like, ‘Why, hello.’”
“What if he killed everyone and we woke up and everyone was hanging
from the rafters?”
“Everyone except you and me.”
The Australian carries a machete and lops off coconut heads like a Maori
chief. He wears his hair long and dreadlocked and is, of late, walking around
in a pair of pink swim trunks. (“At first I was like, ‘Why do I own pink swim
trunks?’ But what the fuck do I care? I wore them to a party in Sydney.”)
“You missed the festival in town the other night,” someone else says. Town
is half a mile away by motor-powered wooden canoe. The streets there are paved
with sand, the homes piles of weather-beaten planks, the general store a long shelf.
“They were so drunk,” she says. “It was so horrifying, I wanted to throw myself
off the pier.” People screamed in the night as though they had just discovered fire.
“I spent a few weeks in Panama City,” the Australian says. “The girl I was
staying with wanted to go to the bars on Calle Uruguay and stay up all night.
Talking, she just wanted to talk. I want to be dropped off on one of these islands
and left there for a few days, by myself.”
Besides Panama, one of the best places in the world to be dislocated with a
large stack of first world dollars might be the ghettos of Montevideo, a smallish
coastal city in Uruguay and the country’s capital. An accountant once owned a
house somewhere, Arizona it might have been. Perhaps he owned a dog. He quit
his job in any event, divorced, sold the house, shot the dog, and moved to the
roughest neighborhood in Montevideo. “Someone was killed in the middle of
the street,” he says. Reports are of high-ranking public officials being mugged
between the car and the front gate, and of people killing each other for an illfitting jacket. He didn’t shoot the dog actually.
Someone might arrive like this, to Buenos Aires or Rio or Montevideo, and
return two years later to New York City to open a maté bar and wear unbuttoned
white linen shirts. Maté — a drink tasting something like very bitter green tea
— stands alongside large slabs of steak, red wine, and tango as an obsession in
certain very southern parts of South America, tango danced, that is, at 3 a.m. in
dark, mahogany-lined halls where the smoke is thick enough to cut with a knife.
“Hello. How are you? Can I see your passport? Hello. How are you? Can I
see your passport?” In the hotels, that is what they say all day.
V.
AN OVERLY-SYMMETRICAL EXISTENCE MIGHT GROW
TEDIOUS, as tortuous as sleep interrupted. Against it, all struggle in vain. The
world is eaten up by it, and so are all those who contribute to it.
Late Wednesday morning, across from the Bechtel Building, an office
employee steps out for a coffee perhaps, an errand at the bank. Few know this
man, don’t remember ever seeing him in fact. That is to say, they know him as
well as most do. He steps off the curb into the lane of traffic, is hit by one bus
then pinned to it by a second and crushed beneath the first.
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At that moment of realization, he would lose his appetite. It is a delirium
of sorts, albeit short-lived. Maybe it all appears like a cave, as cavernous
as time itself: the pipes – bows and arrows drawn with berries and ash on
a steel canvas. There would be the sound of metal on metal, a staggering, a
splitting in two like a pack of ice cracking and popping before disappearing
below the surface.
“I feel,” he would say, “that my mind is in a weakened state. I may not
return.” He has not long to live now. His eyes fail. His hair grays. Time is not
good to him. The experiences of many years gather together in his head at a
single point. “Maybe I will be one of those near death experiences interviewed
on television under large lights of equal color temperature.” Someone of whom
others would say, “He was gone for an hour at least,” then back in his body and
vomiting all over the place. “A major turning point in my life,” he would later
say, and seem forever after to have uncanny abilities at the Ouija Board.
“Every person I have ever met came to greet me in single file…” He
experiences, in that instance, perfect memory: the gas station attendant who first
washed his windows, the waitress who also worked part-time at a nail parlor, the man
with the metal briefcase at the public internet terminal and what the weather was like.
There once was an English teacher who stood outside the classroom door
reciting pieces of Shakespearean verses. Entry was granted to those who finished
the phrase. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” “Eye of newt and toe
of frog…” “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought…” And in response:
“I summon up remembrances of things past. I sigh the lack of many a thing I
sought, and with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.”
He can feel no pain although the injuries are grave. Like walking through a
heavy fog, the moment swallows him whole and even his hand disappears before
his face. What’s done is done and cannot be overdone or un. He should be
buried there – the sidewalk broken up, a pile of rocks placed in the middle of the
street and a cross built of two street signs. His office should remain like a time
capsule – record poised for play on the gramophone, icebox dripping, stacks of
papers, a cup of coffee half empty, pencil stubs. For several hours, the transit
lines are disrupted in the outbound direction. Firefighters use a hydraulic lift and
wooden planks to extract the body.
A passerby might ask, “Is he asleep?” For he might be mistaken for one
who has nodded off of an afternoon at a computer terminal.
“The worst way to go,” someone once said… “Eaten by ants.”
There exists a street performer who, as a profession, lies himself down
across a bed of broken glass many times throughout the day. “La vida,” he says,
“pasa por los calles.” Life takes place on the streets. He does not juggle live
chainsaws, but rather walks barefoot across shattered bottles in a daily triumph
of life over injury. “Lo que camina por los calles, sabe la vida.” And those who
walk the streets understand life. That sort of thing.
Colleen Corcoran’s writing has appeared in a number of newspapers,
magazines, and literary journals, among them Knee-Jerk Magazine and The
Wanderlust Review. She recently completed a book about adventure sports titled
Play: Voices of Adventure. Additional examples of her work are available online
at www.colleencorcoran.com. She lives in San Francisco.
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FORTY-TWO BLUE
FIRES BURNING
by Chelsey Clammor
1. Suppose I were to say I fell in love with the idea of mountains burning.
Suppose I were to sit on the deck, the yellow sun encased in a gray smoke
turning the deck a hue of orange and the shadows into a steady collection
of blue, and think that the billows of white smoke were here for a reason.
The reason being that we brought them here, and they are here for me to be
fascinated by the way in which the steady mountains suddenly twist.
2. And I would smoke my cigarette on the dry orange deck, curious if I, too,
would accidentally light my own fire. It is not the fire that I crave, but the way
the mountains cannot control themselves.
3. Though there is the color blue. In Bluets, Maggie Nelson poetically discusses
her love for the color blue. What I read in her cream pages dancing with black
text is the way the blue of a fire blisters towards something going on underneath
its spell, something hotter than the orange flame that spurts up from this brilliant
color which descends into a core of dark.
4. In the forest of trees burning, I imagine a strikingly fervent layer of blue that
stays close to the ground. I want to dive into this color, to zing sideways along
its silent raging, to know that feeling of something going.
5. But I must admit, I am scared of this fire. I have been twisting my hands
around the idea of evacuating for the past three hours. The smoke pushes me on.
When does one know it is time to leave, to stop waiting, and to start praying?
6. “Prayer is meditation with words.” Marya Hornbacher says in her book
Waiting.
7. So I write, which is my own type of meditation with words, a prayer perhaps.
And so I wait. Wait for the fire, wait for more smoke, wait to receive emails that
will possibly change the trajectory of my life. Publications, jobs, updates on the
fire. The blue continues to rage.
8. My mother texts me to tell me that the wind is pushing the fire away from me.
This is not what I smell, not what I see, not what I feel as the wind pushes into me.
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9. I would like to think that the concept of waiting is not the same as feeling
something ominous seep into the air. That we do not just wait for the bad things,
or for the things that will suddenly change our lives. But that waiting is a continual
process, one that makes us consider where and who we are in the now. This is
what Hornbacher says in her book, that waiting is a life-long process. I wonder at
how long I will be able to wait in order to fully settle in with this thought.
10. I wait for the fire to get closer, wait for my writing to ignite into something
more, uncontained.
11. This is not about fire, per se, but the way we wait for it to threaten, the way
the smoke teases, then terrorizes the blue sky of air. My grandmother warms me
about smoking, tells me that one ash can start a fire. I flick my sleeve of ashes
off of the deck and watch it separate as it flutters to the gravel ground. Nothing
starts with this, but it is the beginning of getting closer to the end of my cigarette
when I will have to find something else to do with my time.
12. About the threatening. As where we have no control over this nature, cannot
know which way the wind will blow. I can prepare to stay. I can prepare to
leave. Either way I am getting ready for something to or to not happen to me. I
would like to think there is a constant in here, though I am unsure of what it is.
13. I think the fires are decreasing as I realize that men (and most likely in
these small Colorado mountain towns it is men and not women) have started to
contain them, to harness the wind into a stand-still, to press their waters deep
into the blue raging. Perhaps I am saddened by this eventual end, by the way the
fire, the blue, my writing will in time fitter out.
14. I am not good at this waiting. The blue continues to rage inside of me,
leaving me wanting the color of orange, to ignite me away from this waiting.
15. The sun burns yellow now, a white almost. Where the shadows have
regained their black, and the only blue around is that of the stubborn southern
sky that is still uninhabited by smoke.
16. The town was snowing ashes this afternoon. Outside the restaurant where I
work, I saw the white flakes smashing into the ground. We are twenty-five miles
away from the fire, though the cook says as the crow flies it is a mere fifteen
miles. At home, I see a large crow expand her wings, her body gliding towards
my porch. She is here to check in with me, to tell me about the smoke, to nod
her head at me in recognition that this may become her new home.
17. What it is I am impatiently waiting for: to hear back from an agent on
whether or not she likes my words, my collection of essays about finding the
concept of home in the body. And the minutes tick by, and the emails slowly
drip into my inbox. Non from her. The background scene of my email is of
mountains waiting patiently, their Buddha-esque bodies trying to teach me
something.
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18. I am waiting for my anti-anxiety medication to kick in, which perhaps is not
the lesson.
19. In Bluets, Nelson says, “...this is why I write all day, even when the work
feels arduous, [it] never feels to me like ‘a hard day’s work.’ Often it feels more
like balancing two sides of an equation—occasionally quite satisfying, but
essentially a hard and passing rain. It, too, kills the time.”
20. I wrote an essay about boredom a few weeks ago, wrote something to try
and fill my time while I waited for life to happen. The essay bored me when I
re-read it last night. As where the words contained no purpose, did not ignite the
page, and, like boredom, dragged their feet across my skull. I would like to now
apologize to the journals of which I submitted it to.
21. We are in a drought. And the orange has picked up its own rage. And I have
stopped checking the news, knowing that I will sense, will smell when it is time
to leave.
22. I have now been smoking for sixteen years, and did not know until this
morning, curtsey of the cigarette pack, that cigarettes contain carbon monoxide.
I knew about the elements of rat poisoning, which for some reason never made
me want to quit. But I am an anti-pollutionist, and am now bothered by what
it is I exhale into the air. And the mountains are still burning, and I watch with
fascination as I light up another smoke.
23. Waiting is Hornbacher’s book about atheism, spirituality, and the 12-step
recovery program. How to kick an addiction by letting go of the fallacy of
control, by settling into the moment and try not to steer the culminating
seconds in your direction. The world will turn without my input, she says.
How time passes as I wait for this thought to course through me, to know that
I am powerless over these obsessions, over what others will say about my
words. But will learning how to wait fill the spaces left open, left sore, left
unknowing? I look at my cigarettes in disgust, but continue to smoke them
with nothing else to do.
24. I leave my email open in case something comes in. I am constantly checking
it, constantly waiting for my life to change in some direction, the wind of
someone else’s decisions to blow me elsewhere. The feel of the blue to fully
explode into its orange.
25. Perhaps this too is about boredom. The fascination with the fire now gone
as it consumes mountains other than the one on which I am sitting, living.
Perhaps the fire has become bored with itself, has lost that initial spark of
imagination when it first conceived of all it could consume. Perhaps it is full,
now wants to die.
26. That of which we have no control over, must let go of. And in its absence,
something waits, something rages. The sense of the color blue, perhaps,
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smoldering. Or will it pick back up and continue to grow?
27. It is the next morning, and over night the fires expanded to consume 500 acres.
28. Even the cowboys knew the word I could not remember to place my lips
around yesterday. Plume. There are plumes of smoke. Which makes me think of
plums and William Carlos Williams. This is just to say this is not a poem, but I
realize now that the words cowboys speak are poetry. Plume, farrier, Clydesdale.
The words twirl in my head, majestically slip out. The definitions of these words
may not be as tantalizing—cloud, horse shoe-er, big horse—but the sounds of
them slide into my mind, unfurl their beauty into my blood.
29. I have never read cowboy poetry, though I am curious about it now.
30. How the cowboys keep their lips closed, to only say what is necessary. To
let slip out those lyrical texts. What it is they say between a pause and a story.
The silence, in a way, is its own stanza.
31. To wait and watch the world growl around me. The sense of blue between
the caesuras. But it’s a quiet waiting, silent until it finally becomes one that
explodes into my eyes. As where the cowboys cautiously create this space
between their lines of the poetry.
32. Cowboy poetry: “Come along, boys, and listen to my tale / I’ll tell you of
my trouble on the old Chisholm trail. / Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya, youpy ya,
/ Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya. / I started up the trail October twenty-third, / I
started up the trail with the 2-U herd. / Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar
saddle, — / And I’m goin’ to punchin’ Texas cattle...”
33. I actually knew this poem before I looked up the phrase “cowboy poetry”
online. Though I do not know what a “2-U herd” is. But there is something
heard in that phrase that says the cowboy knows his stuff, that drudging along
the Chisholm trail with the 2-U herd is quite an endeavor, something worth
etching down in lines of poetry, something significant with which to fill the
lines, the time.
34. Further more about the smoke: it has become a soft haze this morning,
even though the news reports I have again started to check, as there is nothing
to check in my inbox, say an increase in acreage is burning. 1,000 acres now.
But I do not see an increase in smoke. Perhaps the skies have over-powered the
smoke, the blue having subtle-ized the plumes’ burning desire to be, to show.
35. More about this morning: I ran 10.5 miles in the mountains. I could not see
any smoke when I woke up, so I smoked my morning cigarette watching the
blue sky and gathered my energy for the run. While I was running, my mother
called me to give me fire updates, and said you better not be running right now.
She worries about smoke entering into my lungs. I ran because I needed to feel
my legs stretch out onto this mountain landscape before it escaped, before it was
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possibly consumed by flames. I felt an urge raging inside of me, a flicker of blue
energy needing to just go, to zing along a trajectory. By the end of the run, my
exhaling lungs had extinguished my energy.
36. Later, at a coffee shop, I continue to check the news and to check my email.
Sucking down a medium sized americano in a mere collection of minutes, my
eyes wake, spike up to the blue sky. But there is nothing more to report, nothing
that can fuel my fizzling blue. It has been a week since I first emailed a potential
agent, a week spent cuddling with my anti-anxiety medication and waiting for
the world to further roll.
37. The waiting is not lifting. Though the smoke is again. It sways as the fire
decides which way to go. And in its space is a wondering if the winds will
change their direction towards me, if my email will suddenly be pluming
with responses, if I will have something to do with the now. Which way will
the fire go?
38. Maggie Nelson, more from Bluets: “Why is the sky blue? —A fair enough
question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I
try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like
to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a
sieve, that I am mortal.”
39. My mind forgets to remember that this is about the journey, not the
conclusion. An AA phrase: “I am responsible for the effort, not the outcome.”
I look at this phrase in order to inform my thoughts on writing. I can ignite the
writing, but I cannot tell the wind to blow the erupting fire of my text towards
publication. I can remember these phrases about efforts and outcomes, but they
siphon right through me, the answers funneling downward from the open space
of my mind, into the blank space underneath my unknowing toes. I wiggle them
to get the blood to reach that far down, to get the meaning of journeying to
course throughout my body whole. But what is left is a hole, is a waiting for the
waiting to end, to outcome itself towards me. The acreage of possible responses
to burst into blue flames.
40. In this prayer of writing as I meditate, wait with my words, I have lost my
track of thoughts. In this space of which I feel directionless, I hope the reader
will understand, will follow through with a re-reading and explain to me why the
pressing of the wait gains power in my flesh, consumes the air of my impatience,
why my flesh furls inside, wants to crawl away from the feeling of not knowing.
All that I have sieves through me and into you, into your understanding of me,
for I am nothing but mortal, a being impatient for its eventual end.
41. I still do not know how the fire started, though some report it may be from
men shooting guns at a propane tank. There is more wondering to do about the
human race here, more considerations about what it is we do in order to stave off
boredom, to fill our time. The cowboys write poetry, the hopefully soon-to-be
published writers check their email obsessively. The alcoholics drink (though in
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this small mountain town they are called regulars), and I continue to smoke my
cigarette, to look at what the sky now inhabits—its plumey self.
42. Forty-two has always been my lucky number, and so I will end here, not
wanting to break the chain of luck, to endanger my hopeful belief that something
positively ominous will seep out of this waiting.
Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola
University Chicago. She has been published in THIS, Revolution House, Spittoon,
and Make/shift among many others. She is currently working on a collection of
essays about finding the concept of home in the body. You can read more about
her here: www.chelseyclammer.wordpress.com
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GET YOUR HEAD ON
A Conversation with My Father
by Alia Volz
I
was hitchhiking cross-country. I think I was eighteen, so it had to be maybe
1971. I traveled from Walnut Creek to Long Island, to see my grandmother,
and then I headed up into French Canada. That area was very different then,
totally rural. And of course, everyone was speaking French, which was great,
since we had lived in France for a time, when I was a boy, and I could still speak
enough to communicate.
Hitchhiking was so easy back then, really safe and fun. Only groovy hippies
picked you up and everyone you rode with was cool and most people smoked
dope. So I was with some people and we stopped at a swimming hole by the side
of the road. There were some high rocks that looked pretty good to me. And I
was showing off for this girl and I dove off a rock without checking the depth of
the water. Well it was about waist-deep. I slammed right into the riverbed. When
I came out of the water, my head was bent to the side, at like a 45-degree angle,
and it was stuck there; literally, I couldn’t move it.
You could tell I’d really messed myself up. The people I was with kind of
got scared, and they had to move on, so they took me into the nearest mountain
village and left me outside the local doctor’s office. He was just a country doctor
and I believe I was a little beyond him. He gave me Tylenol.
My Aunt Donna was living down in Chicago, so I decided to hitchhike there
to get help. I was on the Trans-Canadian Highway when this guy picked me up
in a van and he was on his way to an ashram right near the U.S.-Canada border.
So of course I went with him, and it was fantastic! We lived together in a rustic
home and a barn. The men worked the orchard and the women cooked and cared
for the goats. In the afternoon, we all meditated in the same space. Each person
was seeking his or her trip in the universe and our paths all intersected on that
farm.
Everyone was expected to pull their weight at this place. I couldn’t go out
to work with the men, because of my neck being stuck sideways, so they asked
me to stay behind and paint the outhouse. That’s what I did for days. And, you
know, I really enjoyed it. I felt like I was working out some heavy karma by
painting this shitter white. And they couldn’t believe what a fine job I did on it. I
guess they didn’t expect that from me.
I wanted to hang out and see what I could learn. But I met a cute girl there
and we fooled around a little bit. I guess she felt guilty about fooling around at
the ashram and told someone about it. The next day, four men surrounded me
and suggested rather strongly that I leave the ashram to get medical attention. I
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remember one of them looking at me with this intense vibe and saying, “I think
you’d better go get your head on straight.”
I did go down to Chicago, and my Aunt informed my mother I’d been
hurt, and of course she flipped out. I had to return directly to Walnut Creek. I
don’t remember ever seeing a chiropractor about my neck, but it did eventually
unbend.
I don’t know how long after the accident it was when I had my first seizure,
but I was in Berkeley. I was sitting on a stool and making art, using a drafting
table, when I felt this pressure coming down on me from above. The pressure
knocked me off the stool and held me against the ground. It was as if the room
had become a vice and I was being squeezed inside of it. I remember my bed
was just a mattress on the floor and I saw the mattress like a rectangular black
hole, like the deepest black, like a grave, and I somehow crawled over and dove
into the hole, down into this total darkness.
After that, it was different. I always know I am going to have an epileptic
seizure because I see a light, off to one side, in my peripheral vision. It’s
the most beautiful light, all colors of the spectrum. Like a mandala. I feel an
irresistible attraction to it. I just have to look. And when I look, I go into a
seizure, and then it’s black until I regain consciousness. If I can resist looking,
I know I can avoid the seizure. But the light is just so incredibly beautiful. Like
looking at God.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is part of a longer work. “Eat it, Baby: Stony
Times with the Sticky Fingers Brownie Company” is a book-length project
chronicling the rise and fall of a high-volume marijuana brownie business my
parents operated during the 1970s, and it’s impact on San Francisco culture. I’m
working with hundreds of hours of interviews from all walks of life, including
politicos, literati, celebrities, punks, GLBT activists, artists of all stripes,
healthcare providers, growers, dealers, and even cops. To accompany the stories,
I have a vast collection of photographs and original artwork used as product
packaging. It’s a gas.
Alia Volz is host and producer of Literary Death Match in San Francisco—a
raucous reading series that throws naturally timid, introverted authors into a
vicious battle for domination. Her fiction and fact appear in ZYZZYVA, Dark Sky
Magazine, Nerve.com and elsewhere. Stalk her at www.aliavolz.com.
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FICTION
WINTER 2012
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IN PERFECT BALANCE
by Radha Bharadwaj
E
“…
verything in its place in the world, in the right amount. Not too
little, not too much. Everything as it should be—in perfect balance,” Trotter
said for the trillionth, zillionth, gazillionth time—but who’s counting?
Not that Liam could count much past sixty-seven, anyway, and that too
erroneously, with skipped numbers and numbers all out-of-order, things that had
earned him cuffs on the head and skinned knuckles from his fish-lipped, stormeyed mother who died when she was sixty-seven, and who was determined
when she was alive to have a college-going son (“…like the Chinks in the next
block even if I have to kill you to do so, goddamit,” the quote from the aforementioned mother, mother of Liam, Mariam Elspeth McNeely.)
It all fitted together, like odd pieces thrown together in a quilt and coming to
form a pattern of singular symmetry and balance: his mother and the basement
apartment in the Halifax brownstone (number 67) leading up to Trotter and
this expanse now of the uncompromising, anonymous, incalculable white that
he had to trudge through. A white so cold it separated your self from you, and
you watched from some place safe and warm and distant as your doomed self
trudged, like one in a chain-gang, through crunches of snow and bunches of
ice, everything you touched crackling and turning into filthy slush, everything
untouched still a poached-egg white as far as your snow-blind eyes could see.
A cold so real it made everything else unreal—the ice on your lashes and the
mist from between your teeth. Everything unreal but good old Trotter, who
was talking loudly and boisterously, like schoolboys do in the face of imminent
danger.
Liam, all six feet six inches of him, lumbered steadily through the cold and ice
like a beast of burden, a Tibetan yak. The cold touched him, too—but only so far.
Deep inside were places he could dive to, hide in. So he smiled gently, for he was
primarily a gentle man, as Trotter explained his theories on the need for balance.
“Too few fish in the sea means the big guys—the sharks and whales—go
hungry. Then they start to eat each other, or eat us. See what I mean? That’s
why everything needs to be in proper proportion. But good luck getting those
turds shouting slogans to understand that!” a hoot at this from Trotter—a bleak
bittern-like cry that scurried away in an echo and came back, like a boomerang
flung by the prismatic dunes of primordial snow.
A thin sleety rain had started, piercing their eyes and skin with minute
needles of fish-bone ice. The line groaned collectively. Liam did not. He
looked at the punctured sky with his round blue eyes—the sleet hit his face and
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open eyes, but it did not hurt him. The elements had never hurt him, not even
when he had been a child.
They trudged through the remaining miles to the Paradise Hotel. It took
them a few minutes to leave behind the unforgiving cold—they stood in a
huddle by the massive front door like a bison herd, stamping their feet and
steaming through their nostrils. But flesh is stupid—at least, the flesh of other
men, Liam observed, for they soon forgot the cold, and Trotter’s blather of
balance and proportion, and every terrible thing that they had done to earn their
pay that day. They charged to the fire where a spread was spread: grease and
fat and things fried and turned and slathered in what would clog their pumps
and turn them blue in a few years. But who cared? Here it was warm and there
was food and drink, while the next day waited outside, concealed by the cold,
camouflaged; like a snow leopard….
Trotter had told him everything would smell of their workday; that he,
Liam, would perhaps never lose that smell, no matter how long he lived. A
thick smell that was sometimes all things sweet and sometimes acrid salt; the
smell of the flow of life; the throb and thrust of things. It was the one true thing
Trotter had ever told him.
Liam looked around the cavelike fire-lit lobby, and everything indeed
seemed drenched with the smell, its viscous stickiness. He wondered if the rest
of the crew smelled it—and surmised, by the vast amounts of food that they
shovelled uncaringly into yawning mouths, that they did not. You couldn’t eat,
not a bite, not with that smell no amount of washing could get rid of—not that
this lot washed, anyway. They were shoving meat and bread into their mouths
with fingers stained and sticky from work. The food made Liam nauseous. He
took a stein of beer, the froth stilled into a pissy fizz by the fire. That was all
that he could manage.
That was all Trotter could manage, too, Liam noticed, as he walked up to
the crew leader. The latter was huddled by the fire, beer in hand, his narrow
head bowed in some conspiratorial conference with the men who owned and ran
the operation. They all had the same look, of furtive cornered rodents leading
slow-witted goliaths by a deft game of con and connivance.
“We need to hit a target of 140,000 each day. 140,000! We’re way
behind…,” someone’s whisper, dripping with worry, was thrown to the group
and chewed upon collectively, like a bone by dingo dogs. Someone else saw
Liam and shot the rest a warning look: a worker nearby. They turned to Liam,
feral-eyes gleaming and hackles raised, on guard. Only Trotter thumped his
tail in greeting, his expressive brows raised in a question. Liam merely lifted
his stein in a vague gesture of goodwill, and the rest followed suit, half-hearted,
begrudging. Trotter got up: “We’ll hit the target,” he said to the bosses, his bark
as cheery and optimistic as ever. “I’m not worried. We’ll do it.”
The owners watched Trotter as he joined Liam. Liam noticed that the owners
looked at Trotter with a mixture of admiration and envy—it was what Trotter
always evoked in people. But Trotter himself was oblivious to other people and
what they thought of him. Which is perhaps how he misses signs, thought Liam.
Signs and configurations and repeated patterns that are like signposts on a trail—
he missed them all, poor Trotter. Didn’t even know they existed.
Filled with warmth and tenderness for his friend, Liam threw a giant
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arm around Trotter’s thin, neurotic shoulders and ruffled the dark hair that grew
thick and silky on Trotter’s fine-boned head. They watched the frigid sky as
it gathered force outside the hotel windows. They raised their beer steins in
unison and drank at the same time, like choreographed dancers.
“You never asked me why I agreed to come here, Trotter,” Liam said.
He looked at Trotter, waiting for the latter’s response.
Trotter chuckled: “The money’s great, Liam.”
Liam asked, quietly: “You think I came for the money?”
Trotter shot him a quick look, as if skinning Liam to his core. “Not for
yourself. You’re like a saint—money means nothing to you. You’re a martyr to
your cause.”
Liam asked: “And what is my cause, Trotter?”
Trotter didn’t say anything for long. Then, a bit grudgingly: “Her—Ruby.
You want to give her a good life.”
A wolf loped past outside the window, its lean belly close to the ground,
eyes green-gold in the dark.
“I would have liked that,” Liam said, quietly. “To have given her a good
life. But it ended that summer.”
#
Her name was Ruby, but Liam had called her Ruby Red—first to her face,
and then, when he learned it displeased her, in his own head. It was the first and
only word-play he had ever created, and he was very proud of it, its alliterative
vigour. It also made her seem rare and precious, like a small stone nestled in
silk and spitting fire—like the stuff on display at the jewellers near where they
lived. For they had been neighbours for a while, when her father was laid off
and had to leave Toronto where she was born to live in bleak, dead-end Halifax.
“Nothing red about me,” she used to say when he came up with the Ruby Red
sobriquet, her voice thin and brittle, her fine nose drawn in a disgruntled snarl.
That was how she was with him—always whining and complaining and moaning
and whimpering, and when the spirit was strong in her, snarling and growling
and cussing and fighting. And he had thought that that was the way she was, she
didn’t know any better, she was a grouch and a curmudgeon—and who wouldn’t
be, if they were forced to leave a vivid, vibrant city for this dump where he
couldn’t even find the sort of presents that would make her smile. Understanding
and indulgent he had been, like a father with a persnickety, colicky child who
puked and crapped all over the clothes he had worked so hard to buy.
Ruby had been right, though. There had been nothing red about her—not in
those days, anyway. She was transparently pale, like the icicles forming outside
the hotel windows. Even her hair was colourless, like the colour of cold made
solid, the colour of the arctic air.
#
Snow fell thick and steady in large misshapen flakes from a sky that merged
with the earth and the sea in one vast, grey-white sweep. The crew was huddled
in a tight fist out of sheer instinct, to keep the cold out and the warmth made by
their bodies in, but also, perhaps more importantly, to demonstrate to the crew
leader their unity. And unity is always a frightening thing, especially when
demonstrated by the dull.
The 140,000 goal had been announced that morning at breakfast, before the
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crew left the hotel. The murmurings began on the way to the site. A man called
Sasha had started it, a Quebecois from some hole near Trois Rivieres. Liam had
warned Trotter about this man, asked Trotter to fire him, and Trotter had paid no
heed, like he ignored all signs—spoken and unspoken. And here was Sasha--an
integral part of the team now, having burrowed to its core like a worm to the
heart of a living thing—here he was, winding them up to wage his war.
“140,000 a day—on the same wages they’re paying us?! No raise in pay?
Not that money can wipe off the terrible nightmares—“ he gave an eloquent
shudder, the Quebecois, while his sharp eyes shot darts around the group to pin
down pockets of support. And it came: one man remarking how they all looked
like babies, with their round faces, big black eyes and high voices; and someone
else from the back of the line remembering his mother in her last days, tethered
to her bed by tubes and needles, her skin white with approaching death, her
eyes made large and black with atropine. Their steps slowed, Liam noticed, as
he marched on at his usual steady pace. They were like gigantic children being
dragged to school by some unseen parental hand.
They reached the site, and the usual two things were waiting for them, like
posterns of fate: the victims, and the protestors. The protestors usually greeted
the crew with slogans and pleas—this time, they were silent. They’ve sensed
the mutiny in the herd, thought Liam. And mutiny was the crew’s intent: they
refused to pick up the tool they needed for the job—a heavy, blunt-edged club.
They stood, as if frozen in a tableau, as the snow fell on them and around them,
and Trotter finally arrived.
Trotter looked at the crew and understood the situation. For a beat, he
looked confounded, almost helpless, and Liam felt pity for him. Then Trotter
began to speak, his voice tremulous, thin and unsteady like a trickle: “I see what
you’re feeling.” Trotter took a deep breath, peering through the snow at the
crew, who looked like eerie mammoth snowmen.
Trotter resumed: “No—I feel—“ that last word seemed to be the key he
needed, for his voice became stronger—a trickle with the promise of a flood: “I
feel what you’re feeling. This is ugly work. In horrible weather. With these
people here—“ a sweeping wave at the protestors—“—to make you feel like shit.”
Everyone was quiet—even the protestors.
“But this is when you remember why we’re doing what we’re doing. How
we need balance. How everything now is imbalanced—“
“Like you, ass-hole!” this from one of the protestors, who could no longer
restrain herself. “You’re mentally imbalanced. You’re mad!”
Liam chuckled softly. There was nothing mad about Trotter, that Liam
knew. He had known Trotter since boyhood, though Trotter went away when he
was eighteen to seek his fortune in the big cities out west. But Trotter returned
to Halifax, older, more sure-footed; smooth with good-living, and mighty
mysterious about what he had done to live so well; crowing a bit since he was
back on home turf to hire men—big, burly men—for whom he was going to pay
very good wages to “put things back in balance…” That was how Trotter had
talked about what they would be doing in Newfoundland. But there was nothing
mad about him. He was sane. Given to occasional delusions of grandeur—but
these delusions, Liam knew, were the most solid proof of Trotter’s sanity. The
truly insane present themselves as meek and humble, which is why they end up
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inheriting the earth.
“Look at him, now,” Liam thought, as he watched Trotter striding in front
of the crew, waving his arms, talking in a rush about how too few many in the
sea would make the seas imbalanced, and how that imbalance would make the
whole world imbalanced. “Like the hero of some big American movie—that’s
who Trotter thinks he is,” Liam remembered films he had taken Ruby to, films
she had wanted to see. Films with vital, vibrant men so unlike Liam, who
moved their troops to action with their power of speech.
And like those heroes, Trotter, too, was undeterred by his naysayers—the
protestors—who were now roused to hiss and boo, pelting Trotter’s winding
flow with their outraged shouts, their cries meeting Trotter’s rhetoric in a
singular blend: “The choice is simple—“ “You idiots!” “—walk away from
work—“ “Like the morons you are!” “—or know that what you’re doing is
important to the world. It’s—“ “It’s the ecology, stupid!” “—“like saving the
world, with—“ “Slaughter!”
And that last word echoed and touched the sky, like a battle cry. Through
it all, the crew did nothing. They remained standing, staring at Trotter
impassively—all that was missing was cud for their mouths.
Sasha the Quebecois piped up, after clearing his throat: “That was a fine
speech, M. Trotter. Like all your speeches. This one, too—first class.” More
throat-clearings, as if Trotter’s speech was stuck in Sasha’s craw. “But it comes
down to this: we cannot meet your 140,000 a day goal at these wages.”
Shocked gasps from the protestors. But the crew stirred slightly, like a
gargantuan body stirring from a coma. This sign Trotter read, and correctly.
“All right,” he said, with a weary sigh. “Let’s see what we can do…”
Trotter and Sasha started to work out the pay raise, shouting through the
snow to each other, at each other. The crew waited patiently. The protestors
began their slogans and their pleas. And as if having sensed that their fates
were decided, the seals and their pups lying by the frozen bay began to bark
wildly, releasing the stench of their fear into the air. They beat their flippers, as
if drumming up support for their lost cause. Their liquid eyes were full of an
almost human anguish and outrage.
The pay raise was agreed to by both sides. And it turned out to be a work-day
like any other: the cries of the seal-pups; the futile barking of their mothers; the
steady drone of the protestors’ shouts—their prepared slogans, their spontaneous
screams--as if they were receiving the blows. The crew worked steadily through
the din, oblivious to it as they were to the constantly falling snow.
But missing from the usual pattern was Trotter’s incessant exhorting of the
crew, which he kept up everyday as a counter-balance to the protestors—about
how they were doing good work, necessary work, work that would eventually
save the world, for the seals were multiplying rapidly and eating up all the fish
and that would upset the ecological balance, the delicate ratio of predators to
prey; that that was why they were killing the pups—at least, that was the main
reason. Liam saw some of the other men glancing around as well, and knew that
Trotter’s absence was noted, observed, filed away. It was Sasha the Quebecois
who spotted Trotter—he was in the distance, cell phone in hand. He seemed to
be sending an e-mail, his fingers punching away furiously.
“He’s making arrangements to get a new crew for the old wages so he can
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fire us,” Sasha said to the crew, smiling to indicate he was jesting, but planting
his seed as insurance, in case the pay raise deal did not materialize, and the crew
turned against him.
His remark made them all pause—but only for a brief minute. They were
bred to work—it was in their cells, it was what they did, on auto-pilot. And
there was plenty of work to do. So they went at it—blow upon blow; the
smashing of the bodies; the crisp crackle of breaking bones; the fountaining of
blood—hot and thick like a volcanic gush; the writhing, then the stillness; the
liquid eyes growing hard, like stones, soon too cold to melt the snow that fell
thickly on their marble-like surfaces.
Around mid-day, the usual break: thermoses of bitter black coffee and hot
rolls. The crew threw their clubs down, elbowing one another for food and
drink. Occasional fights broke out between them—half in jest, an equal half not.
Liam did not eat or drink. He stood silently in a corner. Not that he needed a
break—he could have worked the whole day without a twinge of exhaustion.
He took a breather from work solely to keep in step with the rest of his crew.
A flurry among the protestors: a new arrival, in a splendid snowmobile. A
pale slight wisp of a girl, accompanied by an older woman. The girl was dressed
head to toe in white faux fur, with gleaming boots made of fake leather pulled
up to almost her non-existent hips. The protestors cheered. They crowded
around the girl, like she was visiting royalty, like she was much-needed fuel to
their engine.
“She’s a movie star,” said one of the crew, eyeing the girl glumly.
Liam peered through the snow at the girl, who read a few lines from a
piece of paper to her fellow-protestors. He caught a few snatches: “big business
greed,” and “rape of Mother Earth…”
The protestors clapped loudly when she was finished, then swept her—quite
literally, as if she were a feather on a tide—to the work-site. The girl took one
look at the bleeding, mangled pups, and immediately turned away, refusing to
look any more. The crew sniggered. Someone said, loudly: “Wimp…”
The girl was kneeling on the ground, retching violently. Nothing came
out of her. The older woman tailing the girl like she was grafted to her side
explained to everyone that the girl had had nothing to eat, some new diet she
was on. She was a pale girl to begin with, but now she was whiter than the
snow. Some strands of her hair had come loose from the hood, and her hair was
the colour of cold made solid, the colour of arctic ice.
Liam found himself moving towards the girl. Her protestor-friends were
helping her to her feet, but she kept slipping on the ice, falling, pulling them
down with her. Liam pushed through the crowd, grabbed the girl’s arm, and
held her straight. Some protestors flew at him with shrill cries, like irate
penguins. But another restrained them, telling them in a whisper that was not
meant for Liam’s ears, but which he heard anyway, that it would give the star a
chance to “change the enemy’s heart…”
The childishness of these people! But Liam said nothing. The girl was
shivering in his grasp. She said, to no one in particular: “I want to go back to
the hotel. I can’t stand this…”
So Liam found himself almost carrying her to her snowmobile. Sasha the
Quebecois joined him. Sasha was staring at the girl with open curiosity. He
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tried to hold on to some piece of her—her arms, her legs, her waist. He said to
Liam: “Why should you have all the fun, huh?” This was clearly supposed to be
a joke, for Sasha slapped Liam on the back and laughed loudly, his eyes never
leaving the girl’s face. To the girl, Sasha said, in an exaggerated French accent:
“I’m from Quebec. I’m French. I’m not like these people…”
The girl said nothing. Her eyes were very wide and dilated, and her teeth
were chattering. The woman who followed the girl everywhere was following
them now, too. She introduced herself as the star’s acting coach. Then she
turned to the girl and talked non-stop—about how this showed how sensitive the
girl really was; the truly great and gifted are like flowers bruising at the slightest
touch; and how what the girl had seen that day--the poor dead pups--would help
her with her work; it was all raw material, grist for the mill that was Art; could
provide excellent sense-memories….
Liam glanced at the chatter-box—it was just an ordinary passing glance.
But the old witch must have seen something in him, for she shut up immediately,
her dark eyes glowing with fear. They walked quietly. The sound of the snow
was like silence—only richer. The girl spoke—so suddenly that Liam started.
She had a thin voice, brittle; a bit breathless. She said: “They told me that those
babies that aren’t properly killed are piled up in Beluga Bay…”
The three men looked at her, confused. The girl was looking at Liam, her
huge eyes burning: “You’ve got to kill them in a certain way or their fur will be
damaged, isn’t it? And all those babies that you didn’t hit right and whose fur
you damaged, they’re dumped like trash in Beluga Bay. And they set fire every
morning to those poor, ruined babies. So much for your crap that you’re killing
them for ecological balance…” Two thin tears were squeezed out of her eyes,
becoming bullets of ice with the touch of the air.
The two women got into the snowmobile. The acting coach turned it on,
and it spurted like a bunny. The girl’s small head bounced up and down with the
motion of the vehicle, limp and useless as a rag doll.
Now Liam knew why she had been sent to him—this girl shaped and
coloured such that he would have had no choice but to be drawn to her side
and hear what she had to say. The way was emerging, like a path through the
woods. The snowmobile had vanished into the thicket of falling snow—the
incessant snow was another necessary part of the pattern that was forming,
pristine and precise, from the seeming shapelessness of things. His heart full,
Liam turned—and then remembered that Sasha was with him; that he, too, had
heard about Beluga Bay.
“Did you know that—about a pile of bodies in Beluga Bay?” Sasha asked,
casually, lightly. Liam shook his head: No. A shrill whistle from the work-site
signalled the end of the break. Sasha and Liam headed back to work, and the air
was charged with the energy of infinite possibility.
The workday had ended, all ten brutal hours. 138,000—they had almost
made their goal. Trotter’s thin face was pink with pleasure as he encouraged
them--he knew they would hit the mark the next day, surpass it the day after.
The day after….
The trudge to the Paradise Hotel began. They fell in line out of habit, each
man behind the man he had followed the day before.
Not Liam. He waited until all the men were in place, then caught Trotter’s
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arm as the latter was about to take his place at the head of the line. Trotter
looked at Liam, and Liam shook his head briefly. Then Liam led Trotter to the
end of the line, placing himself in front of Trotter. Though puzzled, Trotter
acquiesced. The line began its weary march.
The snow was falling thick and hard now, and it was impossible to see.
The wind rapidly picked up pace, and everything and everyone was almost
horizontal with its force. Each man clutched the man in front of him, everyone
in turn trusting the internal compass of the man heading the line.
Trotter followed Liam, his hands tight on Liam’s waist. Liam lowered his
head and ploughed through the blizzard. It did not affect him—the elements
never did. His pace was slow but steady. So steady that Trotter was unaware
when Liam stopped, and butted his head hard against Liam’s immovable bulk.
“What’s up?” asked Trotter, but did not wait for an answer. It was as he
feared. They were separated from the rest. Just falling snow all around—a
shifting curtain of blinding white. “We’re lost?” Trotter asked, and Liam did not
answer. Not that Trotter really wanted one. It was clear to him that they were
lost, and he talked because talking calmed him down, gave him space to think
things through, come up with a plan.
“We’re lost,“ Trotter answered his own question, “And the thing to do,
when you’re lost,” all this in the manner one uses with a very slow child, “is to
stay right where you are and wait until they find you. Until they find you.”
“If they find you, you’re dead,” said Liam quietly. And he raised his club
and listened to the wind, on guard, alert.
Trotter felt the first real pinpricks of fear—it shot heat through his system;
a volley of fire through ice. He looked at the solid, implacable figure in front
of him, seen now and then through bursts of clarity in the snow. Then peered
past Liam to see where Liam had led him: a pile of rotting seal-pup bodies. The
bow-shaped curve of the beach. Beluga Bay.
“Sasha knows about this,” Liam pointed to the pile. “And,” Liam
continued, “…he thinks you aren’t going to come through on the pay raise…”
An involuntary twitch on Trotter’s face--and Liam knew that Sasha’s guess had
been on target, that Trotter was not going to honour his part of the pay-raise deal,
had no intention of ever doing so. Liam said, quietly: “What’s one more body, in a
pile? And who’d even think of looking in here? They’ll just burn everything…’
Now it was becoming clear to Trotter—the light breaking on his mobile,
expressive face, showing every emotion from guilt to outrage.
“You get it?” Liam asked. “For a smart guy, you sure are dumb, Trotter.”
And Trotter smiled, weakly, stupidly, like an idiot. “I seem to have been—
at least in this case,” Trotter admitted. Then, as a sudden thought struck him:
“This is why you took this job, Liam? To protect me?”
The grandiosity of the insect! Liam smiled and shook his head, the smiles
becoming irrepressible chuckles, and the chuckles swelling in size and shape,
becoming mighty guffaws of laughter. Liam laughed and laughed and laughed.
Trotter had the fleeting thought that it was the most heartbreaking sound he had
ever heard. And that thought was a sign—but he, being Trotter, did not heed it.
Abruptly, like a tape being switched off, Liam stopped laughing. He
stiffened, eyes rapt, as if seeing something in the distance. All that Trotter could
see and hear was the sound of the falling snow, white and soft, beguiling.
275
“What’s it, Liam? “ Trotter asked. “What do you see?” And his voice
trailed away into silence, because he could see what was holding Liam in its
thrall: it was not the snow and the approaching night and this moment now, but
a long-past summer in Halifax when Trotter had returned, a local boy who had
made good, in town now to hire workers to “put things in balance…”
And what Liam saw were the lost days of that all-too brief Halifax summer,
with light the colour of ripe oranges that spilled its juice far into the night. It
was Liam who had introduced them to each other—his Ruby Red and Trotter.
Proud of her and of him; feeling his own worth rise at his having hooked such a
rare girl, at having such a smart friend.
Strange that he who had seen all the signs, the posterns and premonitions, the
patterns and signposts—he had missed everything that must have been dancing
like dervishes in his view. Until it was a sight on open display, for all to see: in a
public park, one in a sea of entwined couples soaking up the last slop of the sun,
Trotter and Ruby. She was relaxed in Trotter’s arms and laughing. Her pale skin
had taken on the light’s liquid gold, becoming burnished, and she was loose and
liquid herself, like a glass of red-gold wine. Her colourless eyes were shot with
the red of the sun. Even her arctic hair had become a blaze—the sun seemed to be
setting in its waves and whirls, streaming out from behind her head like a crown
of rays. And she wasn’t grouchy or crotchety or irritable or ill tempered—no; she
was the essence of everything sweet and heady, easy to please, quick to delight, a
rare and precious stone, spitting fun and fire. His Ruby Red.
Liam saw himself then, turning away from what he had seen like that
movie-star girl had turned away from the dead pups; retching on the street,
then running, haphazard and blundering, the object of jokes and jeers of those
he passed as he stumbled past, a red-faced, sobbing stupid giant. And what he
saw then, through his grief, was not the warm rust of summer—but some bleak,
ice-bound wasteland in the future where it would all be set right, with the wildly
crashing scales of justice finally settling into a perfect and inviolable balance.
So much red, in such a pale girl. He knew he had named her right after
the killing. That magic summer in Halifax was staring at its own end, so he
dumped her in a pond, knowing it would soon freeze all over and wrap her in
ice. It was a clean job in one sense: she was reported missing, but her body
was never found. But it had been a messy killing—he had been all emotion and
misery when he had clubbed her, and it showed in the aftermath—bits of Ruby
everywhere. It had left him with a hankering for perfection. He hoped he was
up to the task now. He smiled at Trotter gently, for he had managed to remain,
at his core, a gentle man: “No. This is why I took the job.”
He touched Trotter’s face with his club—it brushed Trotter’s cheek lightly,
like the wings of a passing bird. He held the club there for a beat; then, with a
broken sigh that came from everything that was unmended in him, lowered it.
Trotter stood rooted to his spot, not daring to breathe, to blink.
Liam’s sudden shout made him almost shoot out of his skin: “But I don’t
want anyone to beat me to it!”
Out of nowhere, the club came at Trotter, crashing on his head. A rush of
air into what housed Trotter’s brain. Another blow on Trotter’s jaw, sending his
teeth flying out of his mouth like kernels of corn. The third landed on Trotter’s
eye, turning half the world a spinning red. Blow upon blow; the crisp crackle of
276
breaking bones; the fountaining of blood—hot and thick, like a volcanic gush;
the writhing, then the stillness; Trotter’s eyes growing hard, like stones, soon too
cold to melt the snow that gathered thickly on the open orbs.
When Liam was finally done, Trotter was smooth pulp. But Liam had
thought ahead, and left the feet intact. He dragged the mess by its feet and
piled seal-pup carcasses on it until the human corpse was completely covered.
He then arranged everything carefully until it made a perfect mound, with the
upturned nose of a tiny pup making for the pointed pinnacle.
He stepped back to survey his work: the falling snow had covered the bloody
tracks. The sky was black—no stars or moon in sight; no witnesses. Even the
elements are my friends, thought Liam, serene and happy. He turned to go. But
the movement of his large body moved the air around him as well, and a carcass
or two shifted, and the perfect hill collapsed with a wheeze, like a fallen cake.
So he had to go back and re-arrange the mound. This time, the tiny pup with the
upturned nose would not stay on top; for whatever reason, the miniscule corpse
kept sliding down. He had to use snow and ice to gum the body to others below it.
And this mound, too, was perfect—until he moved away and the mound collapsed,
this time revealing Trotter. So Liam had to start all over again.
Which is why he missed the signs and symbols, the premonitions and
posterns of fate: the cessation of the incessant snow; the burst of dawn in a
pale gold shower in the frosted skies to the east; the furious hoot and widewinged flight of a snow owl, heralding the approach of intruders; and the men
themselves—the crew that came to set the damaged seals ablaze each morning,
raucous and bawdy and full of mirth and high spirits—until they saw him.
Liam did not hear them or see them. He was setting the finishing touches
to the mound, making sure, for the millionth, zillionth, gazillionth time, that
everything was in its proper place. As it should be. In perfect balance.
Indian-born Radha Bharadwaj is an award-winning feature film writerdirector. Her short story, The Rains of Ramghat, was the basis of a screenplay
that won her a screenwriting prize when she was in film school.
Bharadwaj’s screenwriting and directing feature debut is Closet Land. The
acclaimed surreal psychological drama has gone on to become a cult classic.
Closet Land starred Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe. Ron Howard’s Imagine
Entertainment produced the feature. The screenplay won the prestigious Nicholl
Screenwriting Fellowship sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences. Kate Millet devoted an entire chapter to Closet Land in her book, The
Politics of Cruelty. The film was featured at international film festivals, and her
stage adaptation continues to be performed around the world.
Bharadwaj’s second feature was the Victorian gothic mystery, Basil. The
period thriller was set in the United Kingdom, and starred Christian Slater,
Sir Derek Jacobi, Claire Forlani and Jared Leto. The director’s cut was twice
selected to be the closing night film at the Toronto International Film Festival,
and chosen for the Los Angeles Film Festival.
She has completed two literary suspense novels, and is at work on her third.
Her short stories have appeared in various literary journals. Bharadwaj is an
award-winning theatre writer-director-actress.
277
FREQUENCY OF
STEALING INFO BY
APPOINTMENT
by Barrie Walsh
T
oday it’s the ‘coathanger’, but the Sydney Harbour Bridge was called the
‘iron lung’. He doesn’t know the consensus for change or timing, just
March 19, 2012 was its opening’s 80th-anniversary. He’s at Sydney’s
1st-landmark construction, only Sydney Opera House surpassed, for its original
sobriquet on Friday March 30, 2012 as 3/30/12 is sacred 333=9; this month’s
4th-alignment, after reconnoitering the site 3rd, 12th, & 21st without contact.
That’s today, or later tonight when America’s Mega Millions’ drawn, as its
$US640-million Jackpot’s a lottery world record & Monty’s curious if its 5-balls
numeric 5, like its mega-ball.
A lot depends on what happened Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras
Parade Saturday March 3 regarding 7/31/211/2311 Prime sequence, as its
5th-entity 30zero31 climax at the “iron lung” didn’t eventuate. Intel the RIO
float’s unfounded isn’t a given in espionage. His codename Montgomery’s
testimony to that, recently learning it reflects 17th UIA Congress Montreal
1990. Christchurch earthquake 1st-anniversary fallout’s immense to an Israeli
operation 12.51pm February 22, 2011 when the 6.3-magnitude hit. 3-agents
were among the 185-deaths. One with multiple passports in the control van
street-parked with 3-others, who fled to Latimer Square extraction & left
NZ same day, replaced by diplomats & agents tried infiltrating mortuary &
emergency rescue. New Zealand Police claim a 7th-agent’s in the country
illegally & NZP computer centre was hacked.
Monty’s identity crisis began 2/22/2012, as his existence stems from a
conference’s “four” to “golf” is “gulf” difference OU=1521 Mayan ‘short-count’
calendar 5th-World End as psychological warfare of Cortes capturing the Aztec
Empire nears “long-count” 5th-World End’s 2012 completion.
At The Rocks CBD end of SHB, Monty recalled what his controller said
Lefthander’s Day August 13, 2011. Molly Dooker’s codename is Australian
slang for left-handed person & Mayan calendar’s 5th-World began August 13,
3113BC so its 3113+2012=5125 code was now as sacred is inclusive math,
not exclusive. He thought Molly paranoid giving him a code to access it if
something happens to him. But 6-months later on February 22 Molly’s reported
278
as the agency’s most wanted in going rogue. Monty accessed the deposit box &
went A.W.O.L. If its contents didn’t convince him, then his life being threatened
did. He doesn’t know Molly’s fate. He’s in Australia following the file’s insight,
as Monty’s codename’s also 3113+2012=5125 connected to finding Elene
Fontana.
5125=ELE but he hasn’t deciphered what ne: Fontana is.
He doesn’t get TRES/MONTREAL difference S/MONAL is SALMON,
in Umberto Eco’s Traveling With Salmon. Molly’s file cites Eco’s novel
Foucault’s Pendulum refers Tres code’s present day status of year after Knights
Templar Black Friday October 1307 arrests they met St Johns Eve to regroup in
36 & then every 120-years. 1308+36=1344; 1464, but 1584’s missed due 1582
Gregorian calendar & re-seek 120-cycles. codeX2000’s 1308+62=1344+666
new millennium diabolical plot as 1344+666=2010, a 2-year missed rendezvous
to Maya 2012 Dark Rift climaxing 5@5125=25,625 years as Earth passes the
Milky Way centre to Earth’s 1-degree reverse of the heavens every 72-years, an
approximate 26,000 cycle as 72x360=25,920.
Tres is Spanish for three & T-RIO in RIO float’s rendezvous 3/3/12=333.
Frustrated & needing action to find Elene Fontana, he walks to a snake charmer
beside a bridge stone-pillar, saying. ‘Can’t you play another tune?’
‘You not like my snake,’ the Indian stops playing his flute. ‘I tell fortune. I
from Lucknow & see you find woman named Elf.’
‘ELF,’ startles Monty. If “ene” & “ontana” is dropped, it’s Elene Fontana.
‘Yes, ELF; let’s see you hand?’ The Indian began chanting, but Monty’s
transfixed on the snake in the basket, as it spoke coherently to him, saying.
Follow the Lucknow cash cow rhyme to
Gabriel’s Gully of horses & angels go fallen
RIO+20 is ECO ’92 as 2MR Montreal YNOT
3@666=1998 The STIFF Code that Rests in …?
Key to Rebecca’s Elene Fontana & 966931-entity
Nines times the Space that measures Day & Night
Is Milton’s 3339 “And it was day” Lost Paradise.
‘You’re a ventriloquist,’ said Monty when the Indian stopped chanting.
‘You put Mafia “L12” Misfit in “vanquish trio”, I see.’
‘I don’t believe your snake talked,’ Monty’s confused. ‘What vanish-trio?’
‘I only have license. Snake watch too much Monty Python & think fate’s
Anthony Hermit saint-day PYTHON/ANTHONY is PAN reverse NAPLES to_’
‘What d-you see?’
‘Spook legend The Three Sisters.’
‘What d-you mean spook legend?’ Monty bewilders undercover identities.
‘I read; how you elicit say person doing?
‘Elicitor, elicitation,’ Monty thinks aloud. It’s part of spycraft.
‘You say_ I see regular meetings, many secret & invited only. All talk,
show ideas is how master plans watch each other; gauge all plan status. From all
type meetings, countries plot & its news of day someone’s folly.’
‘You mean Molly?’ Monty’s uncertain what to think.
‘If say Molly new landscape to name, when only new to namer. It named
many times over till forget. Sometime part or whole are embellished new.
Sometime new vanquish old; sometime it both.’
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‘Some spirits & souls don’t mix, or unexpected. Time big change plan;
some places prone to game play. You ELF is duende see to tilde no see.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Monty alarms Montgomery place names.
‘No me no. I read duende is Montreal “Tres”, & tilde is Montreal “Ares”.’
‘That it?’ Monty’s unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed.
‘Yes, you pay $51.25.’
‘$51.25,’ Monty’s number spooked. Is it today’s 3339 sacred operations?
Not wanting a scene over whose soliciting & eliciting whom, he paid,
satisfied its food for thought & returned to his post. On his BlackBerry to scan
Molly’s file, he ponders ARES/MONTREAL difference AMONTLS, but can’t
place TRE is in MONTREAL, as where’s S from in SALMON. About to check
for ELF, a passing comment distracts.
‘Sacred could easy coax Griffin to Lucknow, India. It doesn’t mean ritualsacrifice’s the reason, but its cause & effect.’ They’d walked arm & arm until
Hogan broached her city namesake Canberra.
‘So?’ She knew Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin won 1911-12
International Design competition. He’d hurdles supervising the city until
1921 dismissal & struggled in decline, so seized Lucknow University Library
commission by moving to India for other work while architect-wife Marion
Mahony closed their practice. But before she arrived, on February 6, 1937 he
fell from scaffolding supervising LUL & died in hospital 5-days later.
‘An angle to India’s January 26, 1950 Republic Day as January 26, 1930
Declaration of Independence to Australia National Day’s 1788 British penal
colony settlement, is Waitangi Day February 6, 1840 is New Zealand’s Day.’
‘Only centurion’s 400-diviable as leap-years isn’t proof.’ She considers
Gregorian’s 97-leap-years per 400 instead of 100 isn’t 1937-1840=97.
‘Duntroon is Canberra-Dunedin connection, as 1809 merchant-shipper
Robert Campbell chartered Brothers sealing expedition to New Zealand under
Captain Robert Mason is 1st-recorded European landing present-day Dunedin.
In 1825 Campbell’s reimbursed 700-sheep & land by New South Wales
government for loss of chartered-ship Sydney to India, naming today’s Canberra,
Duntroon Station after Campbell castle in Scotland.’
‘We went to Mount Annan Botanic Gardens for last week’s Poetry Day
because it’s in between Sydney suburbs Campbelltown & Camden,’ she’s
shocked. ‘You weren’t into Paradise Lost, but chasing March 21, 2012 as 3339
sacred. Is this why we’re at SHB, for 30/3/12?’
‘Dunedin’s axis-mundi is an octagon dedicated to Scottish poet Robbie
Burns,’ Hogan’s worried about World Poetry Day & Robert Ludlum, not her.
Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series concerns a MK-Ultra mind-control assassin &
JD Salinger’s The Catcher & the Rye 1951-novel is from Burns Comin Thro’
the Rye lyric ‘If a body meet a body, coming through the rye.’ Holden Caulfield
observes a boy walking down the road singing ‘If a body catch a body coming
through the rye’ & imagines standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. At the
top, kids are playing in a rye-field. Holden is to catch them if they fall. Salinger
changed Burns’ “meet” sexual-reference to “catcher” saving children from
vulgarity of society’s corruption & immorality.
It reflects Hogan’s Both Sides of the Lefthand “Jungle Gym Conservatory”
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2-O’clock Rock, as Mark Chapman had Salinger’s novel on him when he shot
John Lennon outside New York’s Dakota building, December 8, 1980. Jungle
Gym Conservatory’s a prototype circular stairwell modelled on a Timaru
cliff-site of 11-viewing platforms as upper & lower 5-finger-spread with palm
between for “touch, feel: bringing out our human nature” 7th Osaka Design
competition 1994-5. The hand’s face-up & face-down & thumb’s the polarity of
politics & literature, as December 8 is 128=LeftHand.
Bourne’s a CIA 1970’s disbanded political black operations’ minefield,
after WWII acquiring Nazi mind-control scientists as Project 63 became MKUltra. Cold War countries were perfecting the assassin. It continues today.
Some nations prefer private contractors. Hogan’s conspiracy includes private
enterprise entities doing it for their own agendas.
Alarmed, Ludlum’s a Spontaneous Human Combustion victim, catching
alight at his Naples, Florida house on February 10, 2001. He spent weeks
in a hospital burns-ward & continued home recovery to die of a suspected
heart-attack March 12. Hogan’s School House Comet to 1st-leg The Chair
competition 1996 The End Los Angeles is SHC, & March 12, 2001 is previous
3339 sacred to 4-Corners of the Metaphysical Tomb’s product first two primes
plus one is prime has 5th-entity to 2x3+1=7; 2x3x5+1=31; 2x3x5x7+1=211;
2x3x5x7x11+1=2311, as February 10 is day before 211.
Hogan continued. ‘In 1833 Campbell built Duntroon House & next
generation added 2-storeys of today’s Royal Military College’s Officers Mess,
whom report ghost of granddaughter Sophia Campbell’s 30 May 1885 death,
falling from her 1st-floor bedroom window, aged 28.’
‘Get real!’ she screams. All she needs is a ghost to her city-namesake.
‘It started in the Campbell family & servants household, but the legend’s
spread into Australia’s elite military academy with many cadets experiencing
Sophia paranormal activity. Curiously 2012-1885=128 LeftHand_’
‘Forget numbers & change the subject?’ she interrupts.
Numbers define sacred, thought Hogan. O-Ring failure due extreme frost
to early morning launch caused space-shuttle explosion. 7-astronauts killed
included 1st-school-teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe. If climate manipulation
climaxed Challenger 51-L’s 6-day delayed blastoff January 22 schedule to
January 28, 1986, its 128=Left-Hand 2-MR Left-Foot=126.
Crazy, as aligns Foucault’s Pendulum 1584 missed due 1582 Gregorian.
The concept’s similar to 186=Ri ghtHand & 188=RightHand if 9-digits
of Magic 3-Square is 1988 Uncanny A*topia Fiction international architecture
program endorsed by Umberto Eco is Regiomontanus “doomsday-prophecy”
Comet 4th-centurion that 1588 gripped Europe, so 1986 is 2MR loaded bases.
What’s certain is 1986 was Halley’s Comet last appearance.
Top-row as 2nd-millennium is 1492 Columbus New World discovery.
3rd-column’s remaining 76 approximates Halley’s Comet cycle, whose 1607
appearance coincides Jamestown settlement of North America, but wasn’t
proven until Edmund Halley’s 1696 prediction of Christmas Day 1758 return
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after observing 1682-comet. Remaining 4-cells is ACHE code.
‘Milton was Central Otago gateway with streets named after writers.’ He
tacked. ‘Today it’s Lawrence 35km further inland, after gold at nearby Gabriel’s
Gully began the Otago gold-rush. Australian Gabriel Read had worked Victoria
& California goldfields. It’s an anomaly to local history.’
Conspiracy, she thought, captivated by a town named after John Milton, her
favorite poet. It’s when she realized they’d stopped in the proximity of a person,
who now stepped forward & asked if she’s Elene Fontana.
‘I’m a busker, not a hawker. It’s my spot,’ yells slackattack & on guitar
sang:
So bye-bye, Miss American Pie.
Drove my chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die”.
‘I’m post-Christian, but know an attack, no matter how dimensional, &
Christchurch 6.3-mag earthquake 12.51pm Tuesday February 22, 2011 was
technology, not Mother Nature.’ slackattack maintains the stage. ‘Aussies call
their trans-Tasman neighbors the Shakey Isles. Christchurch had major quakes
late 19th Century, so it’s arguable it was due for another. But 12.51 reversed
is 1521 Mayan short-count calendar. February 22 as 222+1776 American
Independence is 1998=3@666 & 1776-222=2@777. Geological time isn’t
human scale symbolic i.e. 1776=2@888. Triple numbers, you ask. Isn’t ‘six-sixsix’ the Mark of the Beast? The Bible’s KJV’s Revelations 13:18 says:
Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the
number of man, & the number is six hundred three score & six.
Some sources give 616 as the Antichrist. 666’s generally accepted with
616 thought a copying error, but scholars have long argued & the oldest known
version isn’t Greek words but Greek 616 Gematria letter-number mystery. I’m
no preacher, but sum 1-thru-36=666 is why Magic 6-Square secret number’s
111, & 2@111=222, etc.’ slackattack paused to see if anyone contests the stage.
A lot’s at stake. New World Americas the epicenter.
slackattack recalls interior architect in San Francisco stopover on return
flight from Montreal only talked of it’s 1989 quake, as did hotel staff. Not
picking-up ‘earthquake chatter’ at architects conference doesn’t mean it’s
absent as with access limited to mainstream events, slackattack interfaced
TIDY deconstruction DITY Do Information Technology Yourself to DIY-series
coverstory & busker DITTY deception. For in 1990 the ‘Wahine Investigation’
probed Titans aren’t Greek myths as slackattack didn’t believe technology
created earthquakes to order. What’s today’s comprehension for some is Past
tense for others & majority’s Future, hasn’t changed for millennia.
New Zealand’s Cook Strait ferry Wahine sank between South & North
Islands on April 10, 1968. The 100th-day of year is 101 leap year, as
1968/4=492; Magic 3-Square’s top row aligns Mexico City Olympics 1968.
Hindsight is time’s comprehension, as Wahine’s previous vernacular workings
where formalized in TOA to Arc*peace for ECO ’92 Earth Summit Rio de
Janeiro. Wahine is Maori for female as suffix in male culture, where TOA is
warrior; TOA-wahine is female warrior, etc., etc.
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RIO+20 Earth Summit insights slackattack’s DITTY at Sydney Harbour
Bridge, as Christchurch 7.1-mag quake 4.35am September 4, 2010 damaged
CBD historic district, but early Saturday had no deaths. Darfield epicenter
46km inland is unknown faultline, & September 4 is 94=ID or DI=49=72,
while 4.35 reverse reflects slackattacks HEGA wait-weight loss program DIY
manual to Copenhagen Climate Change Summit December 2009 to Vitruvian’s
Archimedes coined Eureka after body’s mass displaces equivalent amount of
fluid. But jumping from a bath & running naked in the street shouting eureka:
“I’ve found it” is Solomon gold’s purer density, as Eureka’s “I’ve got it”
Gematria’s 534 to 52=32+42 Pythagoras Theorem to older “What is it” myths
confirm Archimedes was divining earthy gold from lighter heavenly Solomon’s
Gold floatation. What’s certain, 1st-major quake 2010 was California’s Eureka
6.5-mag, 4.25pm January 9 is DY & I=9th-day.
slackattack’s busking Don MacLean’s American Pie, as its chorus codes
426-hemi to Boobquake show of cleavage April 26, 2010 global women’s
provocation of Iranian cleric’s media-quote “Many women who do not dress
modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity & spread adultery
in society, which increases earthquakes.” It litmus test’s a 6.5-mag quake
190-miles off Taiwan. Boobquake-initiator Jennifer McCreight at USA’s Prudue
University said USGS data determines a 95% confidence interval of 0-to-148
daily earthquakes. slackattack’s problem is probability as coincidence, as
TAIWAN is Wahine Investigation acronym in TOA if AN=1+14=15=O.
‘Careful “what you will” Malvolio?’ a heckler in the crowd shouts.
slackattack knew 12th-Night as 41st-blueprint is 12x41=492. Is there an
antidote to misrule? Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What you will as a missing
letter-code. Malvolio falls for the trick letter, so thinks Olivia’s in love with
him in Act II Scene 5’s line-106 “M.O.A.I. doth sway my life” ciphers 1527, as
M.O.A.I. is Malvolio 1st-5th-2nd-7th letters. 106’s a Rosicrucian secret-number
as founder Christian Rosenkreutz 1378[13@106] birth & 1484[14@106] death.
Marlowesque connotations to Contact-Zero reminds Glenn Cooper novels
Library of the Dead & Book of Souls are set in 2007 with 2027 deadline with
1527 & 1947 flashbacks incite 120-year cycles is 1647, 1767, 1887 & 2007, as
1947 Roswell’s last sexagesimal-base.
MALVOLIO/VIOLA difference MLO aligns 1584/1644 soLOMOn
codex to 1996/97 The Mafia “L12” Misfit’s ALICE messages BOB to EVE
interception is standard encryption/decryption code-speak to Alice=L, Bob=M,
Eve=O, & other “O” Gordon missing-in-action Contact-Zero. Prime Meridian
espionage is Elizabethan Mystery Theatre of Longitude tactical & economical
advantage solution to navigation. SOE agents compromised in WWII occupied
countries without hope of rescue reactivated myths playwright-spy Kit Marlowe
escaped May 30, 1593 right-eye ritual stabbing at Eleanor Bull lodging house,
on Deptford ship Peppercorn to establish Contact-Zero spy-haven.
bLOOM codes James Joyce’s Ulysses novel. Part-I acrostic-code S-Y-I
letter-number pairing 19-25=6 & 25-9=16 to June 16 Bloomsday setting, & 616
is other-half 161616 comprises 666 with Magic 6-Square’s 111. slackattack’s
Frieze: Vitruvian Wave 161 Architecture to 22nd-UIA Congress Istanbul 2005
interfacing Boxing Day 2004 Banda Aceh tsunami as frieze to scotia-&-dado
architecture, juxtaposing Vitruvian’s “3-conditions for good architecture” as
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Firmness=Stately; Commodity=You & Delight=Inelectable. XYXYXY: all
triple doublet digits are 777-dividable i.e. 161616/777=208.
To hold the stage, but uncertain why England’s Charles II renamed 12th
Night, Malvolio, he took a punt. ‘What’s 1492+62 installation architecture is
1527 to you?’ demands slackattack, to get an unexpected reception.
‘I’m not Elene Fontana,’ Canberra redirects. ‘But we meet her at_’
‘Her codename,’ Hogan chimes in. ‘As a Tetraphobia fearing number four
said Elene Fontana codes ELF secrets “energy” to Montana hides M=13=4.’
‘ELF,’ startles Monty, changing focus to the woman’s companion.
‘Extremely Low Frequency transmission communicates with submarines.
It’s being developed as a weapon to destroy underground bunkers i.e. Iran’s
nuclear facilities. Critics see it as a force to create the next Polar Shift,’ replies
Hogan. Introductions are exchanged & 333=9 sacred previewed.
‘What’s ELF to 30zero31 climax at the iron lung?’ asks Monty.
As a disgruntled Canberra went to Shakespeare’s 12th-Night at nearby
speaker’s corner, he put aside the later domestic, to recall another fleeting
person at Mount Annan Botanic Gardens. Memory-rhyme 30-days have
September, April, June & November. All the rest have 31, except February’s
28 & leap year’s 29 was 966931-entity’s JASON 30zero31 pitch. 5-months
July August September October November negates no 5th-Prime sequence
as 2x3x5x7x11x13+1=30031=59x509, & Sydney Mardi Gras Parade’s
RIO float failure ensures 6th-Prime’s “five-ten five-eleven” isn’t dead &
buried, even if 2x3x5x7x11x13x17+1=511510=19x97x277 in JASON
think-tank’s 1st-consultancy was Project Sanguine development of ELF
technology. 966931-entity juxtaposed sanguine: hopeful; optimistic from Latin
sanguis=blood, with sang-nine to the RIO float’s intended Snow White & the
Seven Dwarfs duality with Sleeping Beauty as glass-coffin variation to Quiz.
But if Monty knows of 966931-entity, why ask about 30zero31 unless iron
lung’s key. He code spoke. ‘59x492=29zero28 is its other.’
‘Before & after code Charles Lindbergh,’ Monty’s surprised 28-29-30-31
is years between the aviator’s Spirit of St Louis wins 1st-transatlantic-flight
1919 Orteig Prize, flying New York to Paris May 20-21, 1927 & March 1, 1932
kidnap of 20-month-old Charles Junior from Hopewell, NJ home.
5-years after being 1st-global celebrity, Lindbergh’s “crime of the century”
embroiled. Later he pioneered a heart-pump that others develop into heartlung machine for transplants. In 1927-32 Sydney Harbour Bridge is called
iron lung as iron construction supports many families in the Depression. True,
but Depression’s 1930-38, so Hogan returns to Gabriel’s Gully test-case of
Lawrence as Central Otago gateway, in how sobriquets, like sacred have
multiple meanings, & even their changes don’t happen by chance.
‘Henry Montgomery Lawrence was hero of Lucknow Military Campaign
1857,’ said Hogan, explaining how New Zealand’s gold-rush town Lawrence
was named after the British military leader in India who died in Lucknow 1857,
citing suspicions Gabriel Read wasn’t the prospector’s real name. Prospecting’s
no reward or incredible wealth, so only middlemen make living, i.e. Lawrence.
Petty crime to survive & disputes amongst a secretively transient workforce rife
to fever rumor means names would regularly change at a fresh stake, without
284
being the “one-in-millions” striking gold. PR, crisis management & spin doctors
aren’t a recent invention.
He concluded. ‘Embedding realty in truth doesn’t mean it hasn’t been
manufactured for alter motives. Gabriel Read is 1861 meaningful.’
‘What’s it to a Lindbergh code?’ bewilders Monty. Molly’s file includes
COAT is Christchurch-Oamaru-Ashburton-Timaru & hanger is aircraft shed,
but are claims Timaru aviator Richard Pearce flew before the Wright Brothers
why’s iron lung become coathanger. Pearce living in Milton for a time is said
behind 4-Corners to the Metaphysical Tomb, as 4-city COAT hides Dunedin in
5-city CATOD infers CAT-OD is “31 time-of-death” & whatever else codies
want to make it, while DOTAC reads DOT 13 & DO 2013 etc. All bullshit to an
operative & Lindbergh’s a man of action.
‘Cash cow rhymes Lucknow. The British term derives from the Indian
ritual of offering money to temple idols in the form of sacred cows, whereas
sacred cow rhyme means immune from question or criticism.’
‘So?’ Monty knew US-President’s Air-Force-One jet is called sacred cow.
‘A gold-rush is the ultimate cash cow, typifying they’re not without end.
Gabriel Read conjures imagery in re-AD Christian context of Abrahamic
7-archangels, beginning Uriel & ending Michael, whereby Uriel with flaming
sword guarding The Garden of Eden begins again. 15th Century Trithemius
sacred-doctrine claimed ruler-of-the-Sun cosmic-fire Gold would institute new
arts, astronomy, astrology, science of architecture, & predicted the Jews return
to their homeland. Following reflective-Moon archangel Gabriel 1525-1881 is
Archangel Michael. Gabriel Read found gold May 20, 1861.’
‘Exactly 66-years later, Lindbergh departs New York.’ But Monty focuses
the decomposed baby’s recovered 72-days later May 12 with head fractures,
both hands & left-leg missing. Identification’s overlapping toes on right-foot.
‘Fame & fortune results in miss-spelt 50,000$ ransom-note of last 2-lines:
The child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are singnature & 3-holes.
Lindbergh paid the ransom, but still lost son.’ Hogan knew its circling-square/
squaring-circle machine geometry conceals Magic 3-Square’s 1930-to-1938
Great Depression. Symbol’s too intelligent for petty-crim/would-be carpenter
Bruno Hauptmann. Fall-guy to Lindbergh is BERLIN DHG=487, the latter only
Prime as 93rd, equates 2012-487=1525 Archangel Gabriel.
‘What’s it to Elene Fontana?’ Monty wants to get back on track.
‘Fontana is TOA FANNY to YNOT code 4-Corners of Metaphysical
Tomb.’ Hogan knew Fanny is thought from Frances, but British slang infers
female genitalia & bum is American, so Francis possible. Stephanie is
alternative. Fan is Latin vannus winnowing basket. Sydney Harbour Bridge
SHB=1982 to Hogan’s Bourne Identity interface of Ludlum’s novel with
SHC=1983. It’s his awakening TOA awareness, after Christchurch & Dunedin
staff acquisition resulted in #17 squaring corner March/April/May with
hypotenuse twist to duplicate #26 format. Crazy if it’s activity’s foul-play in
celebrity chef Matt Golinski of TV’s Ready Steady Cook loosing wife & 3-kids
when Sunshine Coast Tewantin home’s engulfed by fire, early morning Boxing
Day 2011.
‘Why the code-speak?’ Unable to remember the snake’s prediction, Monty
recalls Molly saying its spy cliché, but if I told you I’d have to kill you.
285
‘Because 59x492=29zero28 is 30zero31=59x509 other to 5th-Prime_’
‘Maya 5th-World End heralds a new beginning, not Westerner End Times.
Next you’ll say Truman authorizing MAJESTIC-12 isn’t conspiracy.’
‘But Roswell Army Air Field July 8, 1947 press-release of 509th Bomb
Group recovering crashed flying-disk & next-day’s radar-tracking weather
balloon statement is Roswell basis late-70’s after ufologist interviewed Major
Jesse Marcel in Foster ranch debris found by foreman Mac Brazel, over military
covered-up Alien spacecraft & bodies at R&D Area-51, Lake Groom, New
Mexico. 3x509=1527 & 33x59=1947 is 333=9 sacred_’ Hogan halts.
A speaker’s corner disturbance has him rushing to the scene.
Heckler going to ViP “vortex to the heart” of slackattack’s HEGA:
wait-weight loss program DIY manual has pseudonym reeling over “what’s
1492+62=1527 to you?”, having not foreseen 12th-Night’s What you will
abstracts WUWT climate change skeptic website to YNOT code.
‘You’re a leftie we can do without,’ the heckler adds. ‘Next you’ll say 12thNight’s 41st-blueprint to “t-w-ELF-th” code-speak T-double-U global warming
TH=208x777=161616/364=444 hocus pocus conspiracy 1344+444=1788
Australian settlement to 222 Christchurch quake is Mark of the Beast.’
‘Pritzker Architecture Prize Bronze Medallion includes Sullivan-design
& commodity/firmness/delight of Henry Wotton’s 1624 The Elements of
Architecture translation of Vitruvian’s Ten Books on Architecture highlight
quote: “The end is to build well. Well-building has 3-conditions: CommodityFirmness-Delight,” reversing original Firmness-Commodity-Delight.
CFD=364,’ slackattack scrambles to interface Aldo Rossi’s Autonomous
Researcher.
13th-anniversary of Milan architect’s single-car death driving to his Lago
Marggiore House on September 4, 1997 is Christchurch 2010 quake. Sacred
is Rossi’s 14th-recipent on 13th- Pritzker giving, as 10th to Philip Johnson
1st Laureate 1979 was 2-laureates 1988. But before slackattack activates
Autonomous Researcher in science-art prize to father-of-skyscraper Chicago
architect Louis Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats as 13-years later 24th/25th
laureates receive 23rd-prize in 2001 months before 911, a woman yells.
‘Henry Wotton’s hedonistic-views influenced Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s
commissioning by the American publisher of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine
for a serialized-story after 1889’s The Portrait of Mr. W.H. success. 1890 The
Picture of Dorian Gray was heavy criticized for depravity & reworked for its
1891 novel publishing, both mentioned in his sodomy trials.’
‘What?’ slackattack’s become entangled in the Autonomous Researcher.
‘Literati would connect “onlie begetter” of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 1609
Mr. W.H. dedication to Henry Wotton of Vitruvian mistranslation, letter-wrote
only casualty’s a man’s breeches caught fire rescuing a child, but he dowsed
them with his drink when Globe Theatre burnt down June 29, 1613 during
Shakespeare’s All Is True, today’s re-titled King Henry VIII. Its Breeches Bible
identifiable from KJV by Genesis 3.7: made themselves breeches.’
‘Shutup,’ the heckler confronts her over June’s 4th-month Julian.
‘Wilde reaffirms intent coinciding trials, claiming his Shakespeare’s
Sonnets & 2nd-draft The Florentine Tragedy, The Portrait of Mr. W.H. extended
286
version & the much sought-after The Duchess of Padua & Cardinal of Aragon
manuscripts were stolen from his 16 Tite Street London residence in 1895?’
‘Scholarship cites there’s no evidence they ever existed,’ the heckler argues,
saying quietly to Canberra. ‘Mention WH/HW is August 23, 2011 largest US
east coast quake at 5.8-magnitude since 1886 felt from Georgia to Toronto at
1.51pm of Virginia’s Mineral epicenter shutdown nearby North Anna nuclear
power station, & I’ll deal to you.’
‘Hogan believes that earthquake bullshit. I’m into Literature_’
‘Correct,’ Hogan shoves the heckler away from her.
‘You’ll regret that,’ the heckler with knife charges.
‘Leave,’ Monty intervenes. Itching for a fight all day, his attention turns to
the knife wielder. ‘Break a leg. This isn’t Queensbury Rules.’
As Canberra dragged Hogan around The Rocks, Monty easily subdued the
aggressor. Remembering the fortune teller saying “ELF is duende see to tilde no
see”, he began his interrogation. ‘Why take the Wilde offense?’
‘SID is Sybil Isabel Dorsett split-personality case study of Shirley Ardell
Mason is SAM. You don’t know if 5-balls is 5th-World End or 30zero31’
‘I’ve your company until tonight’s Megaball to find-out.’ Monty put his
victim in a sleeper hold, telling the crowd it’s the coathanger appointment at the
iron lung wavelength. slackattack getting-up Autonomous Researcher did the
rest, as everyone rightly thought its part of the show.
Barrie Walsh is a fruitpicker in Griffith, NSW, Australia, with a background
in practical & theoretical architecture. For the past 3-4 years he has been
writing a collection of short stories on conspiracy architecture under NUTS:
Noctural U-Turn Suite working title with the following publications:
3 @ write this – pretend press
2 @ Booranga Anthology [4W20, 4W21] Wagga Wagga Writers Writers CSU
2 @ Twisted Tongue Magazine
1 @ Emprise Review
1 [poem] Chapbook “No One Hears Me!” The Soliloquy Competition,
Melbourne Shakespeare Society.
287
FAIT ACCOMPLI
by Emil DeAndreis
L
akota has just fucked herself. Not literally; pit bulls rarely display such
advanced thought. But she has spent the last hour maiming the compost
bin and assigning its contents to digestion. Notable substances that
are currently being mulched in her stomach are egg shells, burnt cupcakes,
napkins, and one pound of discarded marijuana butter. She was not previously
in the market for a hallucinatory voyage, but has just lapped up enough pot to
incapacitate a small civilization of stoners, so she no longer has a say in her
sobriety levels.
Quickly, her life is melting into an asylum of tremor. Her shaking is
uncontrollable. Usually an athletic specimen, she is presently collapsing into
walls and forgetting how to walk. Her brain and heart are likely burning like a
volcanically-tempered cocktail of battery acid, rubbing alcohol, and shrooms.
Occasionally, she pisses. On the floor. She looks like baby veal walking for the
first time, having lived her entire life in a cage. Her primary caretaker, Chase,
believes she is acting skittishly because she is still emotionally healing from when
he lightly spanked her butt for drinking toilet water a few hours ago. Chase and
the rest of the roommates can’t seem to make the connection between the thrashed
compost, which contained pot butter, and their presently retarded canine.
All that can be confirmed is that Lakota is in terrible shape, and no one can
make her feel better. She’s just going to have to wear this one on her chin. Or
snout. Poor baby.
Another housemate, Juke, pets Lakota on the head as she cowers into a ball
wishing she knew how to end her life. Juke’s friends are waiting for him in the
car outside. They are calling him and telling him to come out so that they can all
get to this party, a party they have been looking forward to for months. For the
party, Juke has put on a shirt that masks the reality of his man tits. He has also
applied his contact lenses; nights he wears his contact lenses are nights he takes
very seriously.
It’s the annual high school holiday party. Everyone from high school
gets together and asks each other catching-up questions and no one listens to
the answers but it’s a lot of fun either way. They are in their mid twenties.
Everyone has a job now, and if they don’t, they at least have a well-rehearsed
decree on the state of the economy as an excuse. Anyone who still lives
with their parents has an even better rehearsed decree on said economy. But
deep down, the source of this bitterness can scientifically be credited not to
the flourishing unemployment, but to a more basic science—the science of
maturation, of years piled on years piled on years.
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At these parties, anyone with new partners usually brings the partner, at
which point this partner is usually introduced and interviewed by the masses and
then assessed later. The party goers who are still single usually get drunk and
fuck one another, thereby quenching some strange sexual tension that has been
strengthening and fermenting since high school when sex drive was something
new and fresh. Juke is not investing himself into such endeavors tonight, or
ever; he is a bit simpler than that.
“You be a good girl,” Juke soothes to Lakota, whose eyes are glazed
and fixed upon nothing. “She doesn’t look too good,” Juke tells Chase as he
heads out the door.
“She don’t know how good she has it,” returns Chase, a sort of
unprepared and nondescript remark that suggests he is currently as mentally
disfigured by marijuana as his dog.
Juke leaves Lakota a pile of apocalyptic misery and walks out the
door to the car. He decides to bring a twelve pack of non-piss beer to the
party: Sapporo, another indication that he means business tonight. The car’s
population—the old baseball boys, as it were— recalls the different high school
cliques. They forecast who will show up. They wonder if so-and-so is still fat,
or if so-and-so ever broke up with her opossum-nosed boyfriend, and if anyone
heard about how ‘so-and-so moved to Tibet to bike through the Himalayas’.
They place bets on which guys will show up sporting the I’m-a-man-now beard.
They wonder if anyone has gone off the deep end and really changed, really
severed ties with their youth.
When the door opens, the muffled house party noise becomes more acute,
and the crisp San Francisco winter air is quickly buried under a surge of
alcohol-muggy fog from inside the house. Juke is in heaven. He walks over to
the alcohol table and introduces his cultural beer to the community of corona,
Jameson and Grey Goose bottles. Quickly Juke is hugging the rosy sloshed
faces of his once-classmates. He cracks a few of his beers and drinks them to
catch up with the masses, who appear to have been drinking for quite some time
already. Juke separates from the friends he arrived with and branches out to old
classmates to exchange the due futile conversations that go something like this:
“So how’ve you been?”
“Great, and you?”
“Great.”
“Where’d you go to college again?”
“UC Davis.”
“That’s right, I knew that. What’d you major in again?”
“Molecular Engineering and Business Management.”
“Wow. I think I remember you telling me that before. So what do you do
now?”
“I just started my own business. Molecular engineering.”
“Oh no way. Sounds heavy. What’d you major in to get into to that?”
And so forth. Eventually, the conversation switches sides, and it is the
other person’s turn to ask questions, not listen to answers and then repeat
the questions due to the ever-cohesive bond of disinterest and inebriation.
Periodically, the calamity of loose socializing and celebration is silenced by a
cheery soul who elevates himself on a chair to necessitate a unified toast. Juke
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raises his beer along with the hands of his mid-twenty year old peers to say
cheers. Cheers to the old days, the days that feel like yesterday but are steadily
coming to be remembered as the best days, and also the lost days. The days
when staying out late was still monitored, before driving became boring, when
they got money from their parents for lunch, when fucking up meant trash duty
at lunch and not a criminal record, when they drank because they wanted to, not
because they needed to. The days when it made them happy to hear Hey Ya! by
Outkast; not sad.
Juke is deep into a few beers now. The scattered toasts have bled some
shots of whiskey into him, leaving a warm smile plastered to his face. In a
corner, he lethargically intercepts pieces of surrounding conversations. The
smile does not leave his face. No one notices his strange tranquility. He looks
at a girl who, in high school, was so adamantly against the use of marijuana that
she would occasionally cancel a friendship if she learned of a prior affair with
the herb; her system for admittance of friends was as strenuous as the CIA’s.
Juke listens as she explains how these days she is on a panel for the legalization
of marijuana in Portland, where she went to college. Additionally, she works
at a medical marijuana distribution clinic in Portland, and is quite pleased to
deliver these facts. Smiling, Juke thinks that if he were talking to her, he would
say “quite a turnaround for you”, but he is in the corner. As it turns out, the
boy who is actually talking to the girl does not react to her news because he
simply isn’t listening to her. Juke finishes a beer and sighs out an airy burp
and smiles. He looks at a boy who, in high school, was a sexually abstinent,
commandment-abiding Christian who would melt girls’ hearts when he played
his acoustic guitar during lunch. He could have had any girl in the school
simply because he genuinely wanted none of them, so naturally they were driven
into barbarous, narcissistic pursuit of his phallus with hopes that they could
be the one that he ultimately couldn’t resist, the one that he threw everything
away for. He never boned any of them. He just brushed his blonde hair out of
his eyes and strummed his guitar, which brought moisture to the vagina of any
female within a listening distance. He also arranged missions with his Church
to third world countries where he fed the children and played games with them
in the street and informed them of the one-time, yet ever-continuing existence
of an entity called Jesus. Wherever he went he was loved. Now, he’s gay.
His boyfriend is at the party and they are being neither secretive nor boastful
in their displays of affection. Girls realize that the reason he avoided them in
high school was not entirely due to his devotion to Christianity, but because he
was turned off by them, and somehow, if it is even possible, the girls appear
more infatuated with him as a result. He could go around the party and honk
every girl’s tit if he wanted to right now, and they would only laugh and smile
for more. He still wears a cross around his neck. Juke has drained another half
of a beer. It’s funny to look at all the guys who wore baggy sagged jeans in
high school, himself profoundly included, now walking around the party with
testicle-suffocating jeans painted to their legs in a white-flag-waving surrender
to fashion. Juke can barely even walk in his denim leggings. God help us, he
thinks. Where are we going? He knows where.
“Juke, good to see you.”
Someone has tapped him on the shoulder. It’s Gary, an old classmate.
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Back in high school, Juke and Gary would take turns doing the French
homework and letting the other copy the next day before class. Their teacher
was a flagrant stickler about homework; she felt that nightly academic efforts
indicated much in a young scholar, like promise, drive, durability and Cancer
immunity.
“And if you don’t do your homework, you will be passed up. You will be
forgotten. This is not just a fact of this class, ladies and gentlemen, no. This is a
fact of life, prearranged and not up for debate. Fait Accompli. Life will not wait
for you, and it starts with your homework. French homework, yes?”
Manifestos like this often inspired all Francois students to take school
profoundly less seriously. Nonetheless, this was stupid busy work, nothing
more, and Juke and Gary had a very nice system in place that enabled them to be
viewed highly by their French teacher without putting forth any real effort; the
beauty of high school.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’ve read some of the stories you’ve had
published recently,” Gary tells Juke.
In the event that Juke chugs another beer, his mind will be sent into an
alcohol-assisted delirium unsuited for a deep and philosophical conversation,
even if that conversation revolves around him. Juke, however, does not know
this, so in order to lube his vocal chords for this materializing discussion with an
old classmate, Juke pours beer down his throat.
“I had no idea you spent so much time thinking. You alluded to no such
activities in French class, of course. But your writing is impressive,” Juke’s
classmate says.
Juke shrugs, chugs.
“It like, you know, flows smoothly like good writing does. Not that I’m a
scholar by any means.”
Juke finishes his beer and releases an exhausted sigh of submission to
alcohol.
“Thanks for taking the time,” he dribbles warmly, and proceeds to be
deliberate in his pursuit of more flattery. “What stories’dya read? What’dya
like specifically?”
The classmate excavates through the part of his mind that stores fairly
useless information, like what dish he liked so much last time he got Thai food,
or how old he was when his fish died.
“I read the one about the guy, uh… he was on the fishing pier or something.
He was old I think, and he was talking about girls.”
“Ah yes,” Juke gloats. His eyes are half-shut. Juke pretends he’s being
asked about the secrets of his writing, the secrets to all his success. He pretends
he is being interviewed about a published book. Maybe he is at a book signing.
“Thank you. With that story, I—”
Another energetic soul has just navigated to the top of a stool and merrily
silenced the party so that he can make an announcement. Evidently, the house
segment of the party is over and now an exodus is being arranged to a nearby
bar for continued festivities. This alert commences a raging flurry of shots.
Tiny Chinese girls are slamming whiskey after whiskey like navy boys on their
night off, blowing Juke’s mind. Toasts are being enforced among various pods
of people—toasts to their high school basketball team, toasts to Cal Berkeley
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alumnus, toasts to Obama, toasts to the bacon-wrapped hot dogs that everyone
will purchase on the street at the precise moment that the bar closes, toasts their
class of ’04.
Juke tells his ex-French partner, Gary, that they will continue catching up
at the next destination, for there is only one thing more powerful than Juke’s
eternal search for ego-boosting, and that is his inability to resist free booze,
especially when he has already had too much, especially when he is around
high school alumni. So he sacrifices literary acclaim and lines up at the liquor
table and clinks shot glasses a few times with people he knows only by vague
recognition. He washes the vodka down with beer, and now his mind is
processing things at the pace of a baby turtle wading through quick sand. In
a moment of calculated thought, he decides that the one-third-left bottle of
Bushmills will be left unenjoyed, unemployed, if he doesn’t do anything about
it. So he jams the long glass container into his very snug jeans like a baseball
bat into a condom, and stumbles to his friend’s car.
“Check out this acquisition,” snarls Juke, hoisting the ball-sweat-glazed
bottle of whiskey like an MVP trophy. Juke’s friend rolls his eyes, electing
to let the spicy human precipitation dry before grabbing the Bushmills and
swigging it. This allows Juke to take a hearty swig. He has just ensured that he
will not remember arriving to the club, or anything that follows. He will more
or less bump and wade through the night completely disqualified from mental
function—and he will go this path alone.
After parking, Juke’s friends are showing interest in avoiding him because
his communication is proving to be ceaseless and foul. In the bar, he quickly
finds himself standing alone, and what he does to combat the social idleness is
approach congregations of interaction and simply stare into them. Being that the
groups are courteous, they open to Juke and offer salutations. Juke bulldozes
his way in and continues to stare, only now he’s smiling. He asks everyone’s
name and says nice to meet them, which is stupid considering they were all his
classmates a short time ago. Once they realize that he is nothing more than a
breathing corpse, they resume conversing as if he’s not there. That is of course
until minutes later when Juke ends his mute streak by proclaiming “I hate
iPhones.”
The group is stunned by the irrelevance.
“You know what I mean?” Juke slurs, his eyes fixed on someone’s armpit.
Having provided no details to support this claim, his audience unfortunately
doesn’t know what he means.
“Remember when everyone had the old phones? And we played snake?”
Standing there, Juke forgets what has just said, then takes the lull in the
conversation as his cue to pinch a girl’s ass.
“Huh?!” Juke blubbers, startled, when the girl makes a prompt exit.
Replacing her is Gary.
“You just pinched my ex girlfriend’s ass dude,” he says. Juke rolls his eyes.
“Where?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where’s her ass is going?”
“Just don’t do it again.”
“You really wanna walk outside and fight?” growls Juke.
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“No, I’d just much rather you not colonize handfuls of my ex’s ass.”
At this moment, Juke kisses Gary’s cheek. Then he makes a remark about
how his ex- girl’s “real estate” is “eligible,” thus ending the correspondence
between he and his old classmate for good. Juke is staring off into the crowd
of his high school’s alumni. Maybe he is targeting new people to haunt, maybe
he is having a revelation or perhaps thinking nothing at all. It is impossible to
speculate the thought process of someone who is truly blacked out; no detail of
the faded voyage can be personally recounted, not a cab ride or a confession or
a surprisingly predictable late night ingestion of Taco Bell, so it is even further
impossible to get to the bottom of one’s internal thoughts and motives. For
all we know, blacking out can bring a man to the peak of human intellectual
capacity. While one may potentially arrive into the custody of a rhinoceral
bouncer or law enforcement officer, one may also arrive at the meaning of life,
or the cure for cancer, or the explanation for why each year, communities of
lemmings gather and march themselves off of cliffs to a self-provided death.
No one will ever know heights of enlightenment one reaches in a black out,
however, because those potential life-altering revelations are left trapped in the
molasses-paced skull of the plagued and are then erased in the morning when all
that commemorates the prior night is a house-clearing defecation and an archive
of infuriated text messages.
Juke has invited himself into another congregation. This one includes an
alumnus whose younger brother was killed in Afghanistan earlier this year. The
girl’s friends and other alumni have spent the months since his death being there
for the girl’s family. The funeral was about six months ago— a crowded and
paralyzing illness of an affair, the way funerals for premature and undeserved
deaths tend to be. Classmates stood at the podium and wept about his loyalty
and innocence and good nature, and how they could not believe they lived in a
world that could take someone like him early. Adults had to be escorted from
the service early, faint and claustrophobic from the proximity of death and
youth. This was not the kind of tranquil funeral that brought closure to an ended
existence, rather it was the kind where the wound was torn open to gape and
glisten and reflect and gush under the rising and setting sun.
“So’d they ever catch ‘im?” Juke asks, swaying back and forth. He spits on
the floor.
“Who?” asks the slain soldier’s sister.
“The motherfucker that did it. Killed your brother.”
Juke’s eyes are rolling around, swimming, barely treading water.
“I’m pretty sure he died soon after,” the girl says gingerly, looking around
the bar for some kind of escape.
“I’ll beat the shit out of him,” Juke boasts. “Just tell me where he is. You
know? Trust me. I’ll choke him out, stick him in the fuckin’ ground. You
don’t do that shit to one of my friends. Remember this one time we were
outnumbered in high school, in the parking lot after one of the basketball games.
We took on their whole school. Shit, we might not’a won, but we weren’t
scared of nothing. Remember?” he asks this mortified girl. “Remember??”
One of Juke’s friends walks by and hears Juke digging himself a hole, and
pulls him out of there by the arm.
“How bout we get you some water,” Juke’s friend says.
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“You wanna fight?” Juke dares; Juke’s friend walks off without getting him
water. Juke doesn’t notice.
He is standing alone again, ogling at different situations, losing and
regaining his balance, losing and regaining his balance, falling forward and
then stopping himself just before he face plants. He walks over to some old
classmates and sticks his hand out for someone, anyone, to slap in the form of a
celebratory acknowledgment of nothing. Generously, someone complies, and
slaps it. Juke nods, as if he and this borderline-stranger have established a secret
that no one knows. Juke does this to some more people and gives the same
confusing reaction.
Juke is not the only one having a rough night. One guy just puked in his
lap and was promptly dragged out by his belt loop while his girlfriend followed
and dramatically shrieked at the bouncer as if the world was crumbling before
her eyes. Another guy, and girl, were just excused from the bar for being caught
fornicating indiscreetly in a corner. Neither of them has any idea they were just
fucking, or that they are now on the street flailing for a cab, unable to recite their
own address to whoever picks them up. More or less, this reunion is dissolving
into the night, one classmate after another. People will wake up tomorrow,
ranging in health and spirit, with another winter reunion in the books; another
night spent ignoring the fact that each party means they are one year further
from the last, one year further down the dark and thinning tunnel of age.
Juke’s friends tell him that they’re headed outside. Juke is appalled by this.
They tell him he should get his jacket from the couch in the corner; it’s cold
outside; Juke tells everyone to fuck off; they do. The bar is soon empty. Juke is
staring at emptiness with the same drooling curiosity he had when staring at live
humans. Eventually, he wanders outside. He has left the warmth. He has lost
his friends. He has entered the winter of San Francisco, without a jacket.
He phones his friends and gets a blockade of voicemails. As he instructed
them to do, they have fucked off. Disturbed people scaling endless roads travel
in all directions around him. The pavement is iced from rain water. Juke calls
the girl who hosted the house party. She does not pick up. He shoots her a
text message saying he would be advantaged to invade underneath her roof for
lengthy refrigerator usurpation.
When this message is not responded to in hasty enough fashion, Juke
becomes particularly offended. Chinese chicken wings, for fuck’s sake is the
follow up text. This also goes without acknowledged receipt.
Now Juke is bordering insanity. He paces up and down Market Street,
muttering to himself in the fashion of the drug addicts and bums that presently
surround him, all the other ones who have had a rough night, or a rough couple
of nights, or a rough couple of years, years upon years upon years.
“Where the fuck is home?!” he cries dramatically, stunning some people
out of a cheap-vodka stupor and out of their fort of garbage bags. Juke’s nipples
are the consistency of machine gun bullets. Juke jumps on a bus, the 38 Geary,
which will take him to his neighborhood. That he is taking the bus home alone
after a high school reunion is derailing his psyche. And on this bus ride around
the city, he has ample time to sit, and think, with his phone in his hand.
I hope you have fun cupping your hand around the asses of your new best
buddies leaving me in the dust on a bus you little hippie germ. This city will
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swallow you like you get it, like I am.
Juke sends this cryptic blast to the friends who have mysteriously ditched
him tonight. An old Russian man is watching a loogie fall from his mouth to
the floor next to him. Other alcohol victims are sitting, their heads swaying as
if their necks are broken. A homeless man is vocally castrating every human on
the bus and challenging them to various death-resulting endeavors. The scent
of one person is reminiscent of a clogged toilet. Not a single soul is of mild or
presentable temperament, and the bus bumps riotously into an oblivion of dark
and cold.
The spell of whiskey dick that is about to infect you will leave you widowed
by your girlfriend, and she will cheat on you with a real man like me because
there has never been a doubt about who is a bigger man. Choke deliriously on
chicken fingers, faggot.
This text has just been dispatched to a bigger audience, including some
friends who were not even at the party tonight. The drudgery of the night is now
being blamed on people who were not remotely involved. Now Juke, disgusted
by the universal ignorance he is receiving at two thirty am, commences a
feverish rampage against his entire mobile community.
You’ve always been one to prove time and time again that the purpose of
your heartbeat cannot be proven.
Juke scrolls through his contacts and assigns this conundrum to about ten
people, including some acquaintances from college that he met only once, some
classmates whose name never even learned, some kids he met in the library
during the first week of school when he was trying to make friends.
Congratulations, your girlfriend is insecure and dates you because she
thinks she is a worthless clod, which she is, and fears she cannot do any better,
which she cannot.
This is sent to Juke’s best friends, his childhood friends. This is also sent
to some girls, which makes no sense.
Your counter productivity on this earth cannot be quantified, nor can your
closet gayness. In essence, you are no better than Hitler. Every day you wonder
why you’re alive and I don’t blame you.
Juke scrolls through his phone and blindly delegates this zinger to an illadvised number of recipients. First he targets a kid from high school who is
now a reputed brawler in a local Asian gang. Next, he checks off his good
friend’s younger brother, a sophomore in high school now who has always
quietly looked up to Juke at family get-togethers. Juke used to work at Hot Dog
on a Stick. He once contacted his coworkers frequently in order to trade and
replace his shifts, but hasn’t spoken to any of them since terminating his employ
at the prestigious institution. Because he never got around to deleting their
numbers upon quitting, he has just used his thumbs to arrange for all of them to
receive this message. Any of them who still work at Hot Dog on a Stick will
read Juke’s message and probably give their lives a serious re-evaluation. Juke
continues down the list. An old baseball coach, who essentially taught him how
to pitch: check. Juke’s uncle: check. A college professor: check. The mother
of a child to whom Juke used to give baseball lessons: check. An old teammate
who now plays for the Oakland Athletics: check. Send. Sent; and now, for a
good morning message from your old pal Juke.
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Juke looks out the window of the bus. It’s dark. He has no idea where he
is, where this bus is going, where everyone on the bus is going. His phone is not
exploding with replies, and this is even worse news.
FUCK YOU he reminds the friends he was with tonight.
The bus driver is yelling LAST STOP to Juke, as he is the only survivor on
this goon-trafficked conveyance of hell.
Hi he sends next to another friend—a male—at four in the morning. The
bus is stopped for a noticeable amount of time. Juke wades his way up the aisle
to the driver who tells him this is the last stop. Juke gets off, stands out in the
cold unaware of where he is. Juke looks around. With the exception of a distant
streetlight here and there, it is dark everywhere. There are hills and trees and
sidewalks but everything is dark and wispy. Juke has no idea where he is, only
that he was just traveling in the same direction as the city’s saddest people, and
now he is by himself in the dark. He gets back on the bus. The bus driver has
no interest in explaining to blacked-out Juke where he is, or how to get home,
so he permits him to sit on the bus and sleep, or text, or whatever, as the bus
goes back downtown where it began on this infinite merry-go-round through
darkness.
I think this is hell he notifies everyone via mobile device.
“Each year, its further, further deep, further darker, closer, god damnit,” he
says.
The bus driver tells him where he actually is, which is back downtown at
the train station. Juke asks him why he isn’t back home. The driver, in broken
English, tells him that his home is now on the other side of the city, a long way
away.
“You gotta take me back, man.”
“I cannot.”
“Please, I don’t even know where I am at the moment. Please.”
“This is my break. Forty minutes.”
“Just—I wanna go back. Take me back.”
“What can I do?”
Juke cries. The door of the bus opens and releases Juke into an onslaught
of unforgiving wind. Juke doesn’t know it, but he catches a cab. He pays fifty
dollars, like any other adult, to be taken home from the exact destination he
found himself hours ago.
After jingling all of his keys in the gate for ten minutes, all the while
cursing the entire world, Juke is finally inside. Now in a home, it is no longer
Juke’s priority to sever his friendships via text messages. Juke charges into
Chase’s room and startles him and even worse poor Lakota, who is still coming
down from her holocaustic marijuana excursion.
“Give me Lakota,” Juke says. Lakota is squinting even in the dark. Only
a few hairs on the tip of her tail are wagging, whereas it is usually her ritual to
nearly level the house in flippant excitement whenever a visitor enters her lair.
“She’s still a little fucked up. I think she got into some weed butter,” Chase
expertly mumbles.
“I do not care. Only she knows what it is like to be where I am.”
Lakota clumsily rises onto her paws and stumbles after Juke into his room.
“She pissed the bed earlier man! Right under my ear! She can’t control it
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right now! Just a warning,” Chase calls.
Lakota is showing a pitiful glare. Her neck can hardly hold her head up.
Before Juke’s head hits the pillow, he is snoring. Lakota climbs onto his bed
and curls into a ball next to Juke’s ear. Juke, snoring, rolls over and wraps his
arm and leg around the dog, holding onto her, holding onto anything he can, just
holding on because it is in everyone’s nature to hold on; she pisses, right under
his ear, as scheduled. Juke does not wake up. Little can save him from the
lonely feeling he will have when he wakes up and shakes the cold piss from his
head. His head is so soaked that he will have to shake it until he has strained his
neck, making it difficult to turn his head side to side, and especially painful to
look backward.
Emil DeAndreis is a twenty six year old substitute teacher and high school
baseball coach in San Francisco. He is published in over twenty journals. His
book, Beyond Folly, will be released in 2013 by Blue Cubicle Press. In his free
time he plays inadequate rounds of golf, and jazz gigs— jazz being the only
artistic vocation which pays less than writing. His pilgrimage toward an MFA
began this year at San Francisco State.
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SUNDAY SCHOOL
LESSONS
by Brett Burba
M
arcy overhears one of the nurses calling it a halo, but the man sitting
across the hospital waiting room doesn’t look anything like an angel.
If he even has wings, they’re cramped underneath the plastic vest
strapped to his upper body. Four steel rods shoot up from his shoulders, fencing
in a steel ring around his head. Already, Marcy can’t wait to tell her friends.
Sunday school never covers any of the good stuff, like robot angels.
Marcy fixates on the ring.
It doesn’t hover like a halo should. It doesn’t glow gold either.
Marcy’s eyes widen. The halo is set with 2 inch pins drilled straight into
the robot angel’s temple, medieval torture disguised as a modern orthopedic
practice. Each quarter turn of every screw serves as stability for his fractured
vertebrae, or maybe penance for past sins.
Marcy looks down, touching her own forehead, praying she doesn’t find any
screws there.
Good Housekeeping lays open across Mom’s lap. Mom stares at the
article’s title, “10 Tips for Talking to Your Kids,” rereading it over and over
because her mind won’t follow her eyes to the next line without wandering off.
Today is Marcy’s appointment for an MRI.
Mom catches Marcy feeling around the side of her head with her fingertips.
She leans in.
“Marcy...” Mom stretches the long “e” of her name even longer, as if
holding on to that last syllable will delay the answer. “Your head hurt again?”
Marcy’s migraines always start as tiny, star-shaped sparkles in the corner
of her eyes, collecting like snowflakes until her periphery whites out altogether.
Last Wednesday, Mom received a call from the school nurse. Marcy wouldn’t
open her eyes during science class. When asked what was wrong, she said here
eyes were outgrowing her head. Clenching her eyelids would keep her eyes from
popping out. At first, Mom bargained with the pediatrician. Marcy’s too young
for migraines; too young for an MRI and whatever condition that machine thinks
it’ll find in her seven-year-old brain. But the pediatrician insisted, and after that
incident on Wednesday, Mom promised she would make it better.
“No Mommy I’m ok. It’s that guy over there with the halo thing.”
Marcy locks her wide eyes on the robot angel. The pins in his temple jut
out like stern index fingers, pointing; shaming little girls who stare. It’s not
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polite, but manners don’t account for encounters with one of God’s mechanical
messengers. Probably he’s just scheduled for a tune-up before flying back to
Heaven. Those kids at school will never believe her.
A nurse emerges from the hallway next to Marcy.
“Robert?”
Does she mean Robot?
He moves with all the grace of a Dorothy-less Tin Man. His brace casts a
cage-like shadow over Marcy as he approaches her side of the waiting room.
Marcy reaches for her necklace, pinching a dangling cross between her thumb
and middle finger; a First Communion gift from Dad. Whenever her head hurts
real bad, Dad rubs her back and hums The Little Mermaid soundtrack. That same
deep voice that soothes her to sleep during a migraine also says that the tiny
cross is faith, and as long as you have that, you’re safe.
Another nurse walks into the waiting room.
“Marcy?”
Marcy follows Mom to another area of the hospital, nurse leading the way.
A technician greets them at the radiology department. She explains that little
kids have a hard enough time staying still for 5 minutes, let alone a 30 minute
MRI. Marcy will be sedated. It’s standard procedure with patients her age. Mom
signs the agreement. She bends and kisses Marcy on the forehead.
“Okay, honey. Don’t be scared. This is going to help us make your
headaches better. Give me a hug.”
The technician takes Marcy’s hand and leads her down the hall into a dimlit room. A giant white tunnel towers over her.
This must be the MRI thing all the grown-ups have been talking about.
The machine waits like a gaping mouth; a bed extends from lip of the
opening like an outstretched tongue, taunting unsuspecting victims, daring them
to enter. Marcy looks over her shoulder toward the doorway.
Mom isn’t coming.
She creeps closer to the tunnel, twirling the tiny cross between her index
finger and thumb, hoping Dad is right. The technician lets out a quick gasp.
“Oh, sweetie. We’ll have to take your necklace off in case it’s metal.”
Marcy steps back from the machine, pouting. She slides the tiny cross
back and forth along the necklace. Without it, the giant mouth will swallow her
whole.
“It’s okay. You can give it to your mom – she’ll keep it safe for you. Go
ahead. She’s outside this room just down the hall.”
When Marcy returns, the technician leads her to the tongue of the tunnel
where she’s supposed to lay. Marcy tenses her arms and legs, stiffening her
back against the bed in an effort to stay as still as possible. Even the slightest
movement might anger the machine. Her eyes dart across the roof of the tunnel’s
mouth. It’s all white with curved surfaces. No visible teeth, but that doesn’t
mean it won’t tear her apart. It can probably sense her breaths getting shorter,
quicker.
An anesthesiologist approaches with a silver tray of plastic tubes, thin
rubber hoses, and hypodermic needles.
“Ok Marcy. I’m really sorry but you’re going to feel 2 little pinches. The
first one is something that will help us see your brain better. The second one is
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just some medicine that’ll make you sleepy, ok? It won’t hurt after the pinch. I
promise.”
The anesthesiologist locates a vein and the needle pokes through. Marcy
tilts her head backward, peering deep into the machine’s throat. She thinks
about Pinocchio and how scared Geppetto must have felt when Monstro gulped
down his entire ship. Copper floods her tongue while a second needle pokes
through her skin. The tunnel is only 7 feet deep, but maybe the machine extends
downward, the rest of its belly lurking beneath the floor. Marcy swears she can
hear it gurgling. She squirms and lifts her head, ready to jump from the tongue
and run, but a sudden tiredness overwhelms her.
Starting in her chest, warmth rushes in waves to her arms and legs, tiny
tides collapsing into her fingertips and toes.
“Relax, Marcy. You’re doing so good.”
Marcy nods, eyelids fluttering. Pressed between her tongue and the roof
of her mouth, the tiny cross dislodges. Her tongue relaxes under the sedative’s
influence. The cross slides toward the back of her mouth. Her throat, lined with
muscles lulled into rest, opens wider. Without meaning to, Marcy swallows and
falls asleep.
***
At first, the technician wasn’t sure what happened. She heard a strange
pinging sound echoing from the machine, like metal on metal.
The technician takes Mom to a private room. Inside, she and another doctor
take turns explaining the accident, how the MRI exerts an intense magnetic
force, and how that magnetic pull overpowered the thin barrier of skin between
Marcy’s throat and collar bone.
Mom drops to her knees.
The doctor’s voice is a dial tone, far away noise delivered at a steady
frequency.
“The technician found Marcy with the base of her throat punctured and
bleeding open. There was a tiny stained cross next to her body.”
Brett Burba is a marketing professional who recently graduated from
Illinois State University. He lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois.
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SHROOM SOCCER
by Maui Holcomb
I
would’ve been spared memories of Strauss if it weren’t for a case of cabin
fever. After days of April rain, the clouds parted, and I felt the urge to venture
out to the Studio City Farmer’s Market. Traffic cones blocked off a sidestreet, and shoppers navigated booths sporting baskets of strawberries and grapes;
apples and oranges by the bushel; nuts, roasted, glazed and dipped in chocolate;
piles of vegetables sorted into every shade of yellow and green; great sheaves of
flowers; miniature palms, rootballs bursting from burlap; strings of fresh garlic and
piles of herbs; tables littered with homemade candles and dog treats; plastic tubs
of wheatgrass and jars of vegan fudge. The newly washed air had lured young
parents pushing strollers; dapper elderly couples pulling metal carts; hipsters in
their little hats and oversized sunglasses; even anti-social weirdos like me. At one
end the reek of a petting zoo overpowered the fragrance of flowers and produce,
and the kiddies shrieked on a carousel yards from Ventura Boulevard exhaust.
Having penetrated to the center of this mess and already regretting it, I was
comparing two tomatoes when a nearby laugh sparked a glimmer of memory.
I turned and locked eyes with Strauss’s old flame, who I hadn’t seen in, what,
seven, eight years. Since soon after college anyway. My eyes twitched, maybe
hers did, too, but the opportunity to pretend we were strangers slipped away, and
she stepped over from the banana display.
“Max?” She cocked her head to one side.
I dropped the tomatoes against their buds.
“Wow! Hi Julie.”
What a coincidence, what are you doing here, you look good...
She did look good and had recently returned to town after cutting her teeth in
New York. She introduced me to Pablo, a tall dark type draped over her shoulders.
I mentioned the writing—no, nothing yet, working for a production company
in the meantime. She asked for the company name, and I said, sure, send over
a headshot. We exchanged news on common acquaintances, but I sensed in her
distraction that she was, like me, thinking of Strauss. I suppose to spare Pablo’s
feelings she didn’t mention him, and I sure wasn’t. Guilt crept in as I realized
how long my old roommate had been absent from my thoughts. Now I could
see him hanging out between us, a bit to the side, looking reproachful. Her eyes
flicked over there, too, and when there was nothing more to say neither of us was
reluctant to move on.
Cured of the impulse to be around other humans, I wandered back to my
building, pausing by the flood control channel (“river” to Angelenos) to watch
storm runoff tumble to the sea.
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Strauss and I leaned against the thick roots of a eucalyptus at the edge of
the world at the end of time, a carpeted wasteland spread out before us, and
the lacerating sun beating down. We were probably the last inhabitants in the
area, and as far as I was concerned he wasn’t really there. I avoided glancing
at him—to catch his eye might be fatal, or maybe I wouldn’t be able to pull
away. Distant figures traveled across the grass, but I knew they were figments
of the haze. There had been others with us, but they had dropped away. All
that mattered existed here, as the dying star leached the last moisture from my
decaying body. An ant climbed onto my hand, and I followed its journey to the
other side, was its journey, and felt another piece of me crumble away when it
disappeared into the grass.
Sometime before my thoughts had been caught up with these gossamer
tendrils connecting everything around us, from the tree branches to the receding
roofline of the dorm, to the clouds above and a distant passenger jet. I had
felt that if I moved I’d snap the bonds and cause the jet to plummet and the
buildings to collapse. In my stillness the life around me died away, the grass
withered, and my body melted into the cowardly, arrogant shit I’d been masking
for so many years, and then I realized Strauss no longer sat next to me; instead
it was Randall Morris, the fat kid from seventh grade with a penchant for
crying, resonating with resentment. And then he became what’s-her-name, the
girl from tenth who I toyed with, my mind always on an unattainable blonde.
Then I floated above my body as it oozed into the earth, where my atoms were
obliterated in great spasms by fat burrowing worms.
Eventually I had felt myself reforming, chiseled and somehow cleansed.
Without looking, I knew it was Strauss again, and here we sat.
“Sup,” came a muffled Voice. The silhouette of a visitor from another
dimension had appeared, a skateboard floating up to his waiting hand. Strauss
stiffened. Then the speaker shifted to the shade, his features softened into place,
and I remembered him as a dude named Cedric.
“Oh. Hey, what up, Ced,” my voice scratched. I coughed and felt my tonsils
do the Cha-cha-cha.
“Game over?”
“Game?”
He spit something onto the pavement and a puff of dust rose into the air and
dispersed as I watched.
“Shroom soccer.”
Yes, there had been a game.
“Uh, yup. Yeah. I mean, I guess so. We just kind of left, I think.”
“Mm.” He flopped down against the tree, and Strauss shuddered. Cedric
ignored him. My eyes traveled up Cedric’s arm as he yanked at his sleeve. His
eyes were unfocused, and he rubbed at the marks in the crook of his elbow.
He slipped on his shades and opened a thick, grungy paperback. I returned to
witnessing the world dropping away beyond the edges of existence and wondered
if I’d ever be normal again.
Sometime earlier, Strauss had loped across the field like some top-heavy
alien, huge shaggy head with grinning eyes and elastic lips teetering atop his
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skinny frame. The ball swung towards me and ricocheted back to him like a yoyo. The mushrooms we’d forced down in the dining hall at breakfast were clearly
kicking in.
I skimmed along the grass, and my foot swung at the black and white
pentagonal bug that was hightailing away from everyone. I landed a sideways
smack against its rear, and it scuttled out-of-bounds. Strauss and I pirouetted
around each other. The bug was joined by more of its kind, and the other grinning
players chased them toward the goals. Shroom soccer involves multiple balls,
which appear from every which way as the game wears on. Players’ faces
twitched, all dancing caterpillars and sparkling saucer eyes, and at our feet the
grass twisted and snatched at ankles. In no time dust caked my tongue, and
I stumbled to the sideline where the two lovelies Sloan and Julie lounged by
the grub. Julie was still Strauss’s on-again, off-again, but Sloan was currently
unattached. They were flat on their backs, laughing and pointing at something.
Clearly still in the giggly phase.
This game is not about the final score. No timekeeping either. Not sure a
match has ever reached a conclusion in the traditional soccer sense. More about
pumping the toxins along and getting everyone outside, so you don’t get trapped
in your room as the trip creeps in and your brain loses or ignores the ability to
distinguish between the important and the insignificant. When everything in your
vicinity becomes equally fascinating it can be hard to break inertia.
The snacks loomed towards me, each richly tangible in its own uniqueness yet
integral to the whole—like a Cezanne still life, my art history mind noted before
the idea dropped out the back of my head. Paper plates stacked with dining hall
fruits; saturated bottles of Gatorade; a quivering bag of Chips Ahoy. The shouts
of the soccer players drifted back to me as I struggled with a tangerine. My hands
didn’t work right, fumbling in slow motion against the rind’s texture. Got a chunk
off and bit into the thing. Juice dribbled down my face, gleefully free-diving to
the ground. I half-watched my friends chase each other around, as they whispered
to each other and pointed at me. Suddenly a cigarette thrust itself into my field of
vision. It ended in Sloan’s hand, her drooping eyes focused on my chin.
“Oh, thanks.” The stick vibrated and oozed as I secured it between my fingers.
“You gonna get back out there, Max,” Julie asked, materializing on my
other side.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess...”
I pulled hard on the cigarette, distracted by the sizzling tip.
“Gotta finish this orange...”
The pulpy mess clung to my fingers, and I gazed at it slack-jawed. The girls
stared with appalled expressions.
“Woah, whoa!” came a call, and with a thump-thump-thunk, one of the beetle
balls scampered up to us.
“Ack!” Julie shrieked and executed a backwards somersault out of nowhere to
escape.
“That’s you, Max,” Strauss called, and I massacred the ball, sending it to the
other side of town, or, as it turned out, dribbling a few paces. The guys careened
towards us, grins flailing.
“Nice try!”
“Aah,” I yelled, and pounced on the bug again as more dribblers zipped by
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from separate directions.
Then, after a rapid exchange of glances, Strauss and I and the girls were
running away from the field. Small campuses are great for wild tripping—no cars
required, and your bed, your friends, and entertainment all close by. Easy to come
together, easy to get away.
Later, Cedric put down his book.
“What’s with him?”
I blinked, and my focus returned to the present. The quad had flattened and
dimmed. I rubbed my eyes. My hands worked again, and some students playing
volleyball no longer seemed like an alien race. The sun was just the sun, and
the Earth had put itself together again. Snatches of profundity from a short time
earlier now sounded hollow and trite.
I shrugged and glanced at Strauss, who stared at the ground, beads of sweat
percolating on his forehead.
“Whaddya think? He wigged out.”
I nudged Strauss.
“Hey String Cheese, it wearing off for you, too?
He flinched, but after a moment he managed a tiny nod.
Living with Strauss could be challenging. Mostly because the guy never
slept. Not that I was early-to-bed. Up till midnight all week, much later on the
weekends. Eventually, though, groaning with pizza or cheese fries, I’d stumble
from the party in his room (he had the bigger one; I was next to the bathroom we
shared with a neighboring suite) and collapse into a dreamless pothead slumber.
Often I’d be pulled awake by a guffaw from the next room, or he’d “tiptoe”
through my room to use the can, always failing to negotiate the darkness without
bumping into my crap. You’d think he would sleep in, but invariably he was up
before me. I’d blink at him and scratch my ass on the way out to catch the last ten
minutes of breakfast.
“What the fuck, man, don’t you ever sleep?”
Shrug.
“Don’t need much.”
One night when I returned extremely late, or early, after ineptly pursuing
some hottie, I crept towards the doorway between our separate spaces. A moan
rose from his bed before I got two steps. I froze, afraid he and Julie were onagain. He was tossing and muttering. He sounded younger, less sarcastic, and as
my eyes adjusted to the dark I realized he was talking in his sleep.
“I know…I know,” he said softly, but then louder. “I tried. I TRIED,
DAD...”
I shivered. Strauss’s dad was an asshole—I knew that much. Some DC
bigwig Strauss insulted out of the side of his mouth, in a completely different
voice then this one.
“STOP. I’ll do it...”
Another moan.
“Ow ... okay, okay ... OKAY...”
He started to thrash. I unlocked my legs and crossed the threshold, closing
the door just as his bed creaked violently. I heard his shade snap open. As I
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lowered myself into bed dawn crept into the sky outside. In a minute a lighter
flicked and muffled bongwater rumbled through the wall.
Eventually I realized he napped in the afternoon when I was out. One day
near the end of the semester as we traded shots he mentioned his nightmares and
looked at me searchingly. I didn’t let on what I’d heard, and in the spring I went
abroad, and we never lived with each other again.
That soccer match was the last time I tripped hard. Didn’t need to scrape my
psyche raw anymore. You gain some insight, but it’s like blasting a mountaintop
apart in order to expose a handful of gems. Strauss stayed away from head trips
after that, too. He told me later that he’d thought he was dying, and that when
Cedric showed up he was convinced it was the executioner. I feared I’d never by
normal again, but Strauss had thought he would have his head chopped off.
After the trip wore off, though, and he found Ced was just Ced, he was so
grateful he kind of glommed onto the guy. They started shooting up together.
Guess Strauss just wanted to float on a cushion of contentment. That’s what you
get with smack for a few hours the first couple of times. By the third day you
don’t see the point in being straight, and if you can get your hands on a dose,
you’re hooked. Most need supreme will power and strong family support to get
clean. Cedric had both; after he bottomed out he graduated from another school.
Now he makes bank as some sort of engineer.
I saw Strauss some after we left school, at the house I was sharing in
Hollywood. My housemates and I worked as production assistants on crappy
movies and music videos, partying hard between gigs, and Strauss stopped by
from time to time, heading straight for the bathroom—“Shooting up in here!”.
Julie had moved on, and he was working in the mailroom of Elektra Records,
living with some speed freaks in a dark apartment in a shady neighborhood.
Eventually he lost the job, and even the tweakers got sick of him.
Months later he followed a girl down to Rio, and before we knew it he
had overdosed on bad junk in a motel. The news smothered another night of
Hollywood depravity. For some reason I always imagined a ceiling fan sifting the
muggy air over his undiscovered body, the cacophony of the street carrying on as
he finally slept.
I can’t really follow what Sloan is saying, despite seeing letters and words
tumble from her mouth and knock around before turning to dust.
“We’re all just floating on this big...”
‘We’re’ bumps into ‘all’, then breaks in half and skids against ‘just’ and I
miss what we’re just.
She laughs and I see ‘ha ha ha’ dribble out and explode, littering the grass
with sparkling confetti. She waves her hands in the air, and the word ‘hands’
bounces out. I’m not sure if she said it, or I thought it. Is there any difference?
Is she saying what I’m thinking? Fuck. Get out of my head, girl. Did I just say
that? She looks startled but recovers, seemingly unable to stop talking.
“I mean, what does it all mean?” ‘Mean’ echoes out and liquefies in the grass.
“This is crazy. We’re just like, like pieces of this whole big mash of a…a…
AMAZING-ness. Right?” ‘RIGHT-RIght-right’ bouncing to the ground.
Julie is silently giggling, then trying to talk, stretching her lips this way and
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that. She shrugs and pantomimes laughter again, as her buddy continues to vomit
nonsense.
“You know you’re saying what you’re saying?” I spit out in a rush, and Sloan
falters.
“I’m saying,” she goes, “I’m saying? I...I forget what I’m saying.”
“It’s right there!” I unsuccessfully point out the words in the grass before
they vanish.
She blinks and starts up again. I shake my head and realize Strauss is
missing. I catch sight of his sandals just outside some bushes.
“Yo! Dude!”
No answer, so I creak to my feet on wobbly muscles. Manage to duck under
the trees, as branches reach around and pat my back. Leaves all around are
vibrating and fluttering. Strauss kneels in a little depression, swaying side to side
and moaning. There’s something odd about it. Oh. He’s taken off all his clothes.
“Crap, dude, you, uh, you alright? Where’s your,” I say, trying to focus over
the chatter of the branches and the chomping of the multicolored centipedes.
He looks at me through the corner of his eye. His face is streaked with grime
and he’s scrabbling in the leaves with the end of his shirt as if trying to wipe
something away. I reach out but stop short of his shoulder, my hand bumping
some sort of barrier, feeling the heat rise from his skin. His moaning turns to
gibberish, a fetid stink rises from the earth, and nausea starts to overpower my
throat. He beats me to it, and spews greenish slime in the dirt. Somehow this
makes me feel better. With difficulty I collect his clothes, mostly puke-free, and
help him dress. Everything’s inside out and there’s no chance I’ll get it right, but
finally I get him mostly covered and succeed in grabbing his shoulder.
“Come on, come on…”
We rise to a crouch, and crawl out of the hollow.
The girls have disappeared. I lead him to a drinking fountain and somehow
manipulate the controls, splashing water on him as he continues to blather
nonsense. I take a long drink, most of which gets passed my tongue and down my
throat.
We reach a sunny part of the quad, and I prop him against one of the friendlier
giant trees that march along the edge of the grass, drooping their lazy branches
towards the ground.
And that’s where Ced found us, beached on the edge of a blistering land at the
end of time.
Maui Holcomb grew up in the Northwest and currently lives and writes
in Burbank, California. He attended Pomona College in the ‘90s and toils in
the lower echelons of the film industry attempting to make movies sound good.
Previously published in Hobo Pancakes, The Cynic Online Magazine, Stirring,
Specter, OneTitle, and Crack the Spine, he spends his free time cleaning up after
two rapidly growing daughters.
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THE WAR
by David S. Atkinson
I
zip up my coat. It’s dumb. It isn’t even that cold out today, but my mom
makes me wear it anyway. I can’t go out to play without it. It’s too bulky to
be able to run around in good. All thick and stiff and blue. It isn’t even one
I got to pick out. My grandma got it for my birthday when I turned six. At least
I don’t have to wear my mittens today.
I see Jeff over with Steven as I come out my porch. It looks like they’re
playing football out in the street. Jeff’s standing over Steven like he’s blocking
and Steven is all crouched down hiding a ball. Like he’s trying to keep it away
from Jeff. It doesn’t look so hard. All Steven’s got to do is run around. Jeff is
tall, but he’s skinny. That’s no good for playing football. Steven can run either
way and win.
I start to hurry. Maybe Jeff and PJ came over to play. They live a couple
blocks over so they only come to play once in a while. It’s fun when they do.
We get to do different stuff because it isn’t just me and Steven or me and Nicky.
I don’t see PJ, though. Nicky’s there, but he isn’t over by Jeff and Steven. He’s
standing off all by himself, just looking.
“Cut it out! It’s mine,” Steven yells at Jeff.
Jeff pushes Steven and knocks him down. Nicky is just looking at them.
I grab a log from the pile next to my porch. It’s from that big branch that
fell in the backyard. I couldn’t play back there for a week because it was all
over and my dad said I’d get hurt. Then he chopped it up and said we were
really going to have fire in the fireplace this year. It all just sat there, though,
next to the porch.
I run at them and hold the log above my head with both hands. I yell really
loud. I go right for Jeff.
He looks up at me suddenly when he hears me yell. I don’t think he even
knew I came outside. He sees I did quick enough, though. He turns and runs
fast down the block before I can get to him. He’s all the way to the alley and
disappears behind Nicky’s house before I stop running.
I drop the log. My dad will get mad if he sees me. I’m not supposed to
play with sticks.
“Run, you chicken,” Steven shouts after Jeff. He gets up from where Jeff
knocked him down. Nicky walks over.
“What happened?” I ask.
Steven clutches a football. “He tried to say this was his. It’s mine. He was
just trying to take it.”
I frown. I like PJ and Jeff. They just came walking up one day while we
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were playing freeze tag and asked if they could play too. They looked kind of
funny together. PJ was really short and had a buzz cut. Jeff was really tall and
had dark brown hair. We thought they were really cool, even if they did look
funny together. They even said they had a junkyard at their house.
But they aren’t cool. I can’t see why Jeff did something like this. We’re
their friends and Jeff tried to take Steven’s stuff. Friends don’t do that. Friends
share. Steven didn’t do anything to him.
“He said it was his.” Nicky wipes his nose on his sleeve and sniffs.
“He lied! He just said that so he could take it,” Steven yells at Nicky.
“Why’re you even here? I’m not playing with you! You’re always hanging
around and nobody wants you. Go home!”
Nicky doesn’t say anything back.
Steven rolls the football around in his hands. “I told him if it was his then
where did he leave it. He said he left it up on the hill by the graveyard but I
found it over on the sidewalk by Nicky’s all the way across the alley. I found
it fair and square and he wanted to steal it by lying and saying he just left it and
was hoping he’d guess right and I’d believe him.”
“You didn’t fall for it, though.”
“Nope,” he smiles. “That’s why I made him tell me where he left it first.
He asked me where I found it but I wasn’t going to tell him until he told me. He
was going to say he left it where I said I found it. I’m not stupid.”
Nicky looks over at his yard. “Maybe it rolled down the hill.”
“Don’t be a dummy!” Steven throws the football at Nicky.
Nicky flinches, but it hits him anyway. He shrinks away a little. Then he
bends down to grab the football and hands it back to Steven. Steven catches it
and smacks it a couple of times.
“He’s a jerk,” I say and look where Jeff ran off. “He should get his own
toys. Not lie and try to take yours.”
“Yeah.” Steven smacks the ball again, like he’s getting ready to throw it.
“Well, they’re in for it now.”
“In for what?” I look at him.
“We’re at war.” Steven grins. He looks mean like that. I look at Nicky.
“Their block and our block. It’s us against them.” He throws the football in the
air and catches it.
*****
“It’s over here,” Nicky says as he runs. “I found it this morning but I bet
it’s still there.”
I run after him. “Why’d she throw it out?”
“I dunno. She could get fifty or sixty cents by turning them in but she just
threw them away. Maybe she doesn’t know you can get money for empties.”
We run up by the trashcans and there’s a white cardboard box sitting next to
the cans. It isn’t big, like a couple things of soda stuck together. It’s got BEER
written in big black letters on the side.
“See,” Nicky says, pulling open the box. The top lifts open like somebody
cut all the way around and just left one side hanging on. Like a trapdoor. Inside
is a bunch of crisscrossing cardboard pieces. Like honeycomb cereal. A bunch
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of little boxes inside the big box. There’s a brown glass bottle in each of the
little boxes.
“We can throw them,” I suggest. “We’ll need weapons for the war.”
“Yeah. Maybe Steven will even let me throw one since I found them for
you guys. PJ and Jeff got the junkyard so we need something, too.”
“The junkyard’s not much,” I shrug. I’d seen it. I snuck over one time even
though I wasn’t supposed to leave the block. I followed them past the block
over and cut through a space behind a garage to their block. The junkyard was
just an old garden on the side of PJ’s house with nothing growing in it. There
was just some pipes and sticks in it. Not worth getting grounded.
I even had to find my own way home. I tried to go the long way around
because they said the guy with the garage got mad if you walked through there
more than once. The street didn’t look right, though, and I couldn’t find my way
back. I just ran through the space behind the garage so the guy couldn’t catch
me.
“There’s no beer in them, is there? We’ll get in trouble if we have beer.”
“No,” Nicky looks around. “Nobody’s looking. They won’t know if we
take them.”
I grab the box and we both run off toward the alley. We stop just around
the corner from his house and look to see if anybody’s following us. The block
is quiet, though.
“We got to figure out what to do with them.”
“My mom might let me keep them in the garage,” Nicky offers.
I shake my head. “That won’t work. PJ and Jeff would get us before we
got the bottles. We got to have them ready to throw.”
I look around. Maybe we could keep them on the side of Nicky’s house.
They’d be right there. Then I remember Nicky’s dad keeps their trash there.
He’d just throw them out. I shift the box. It’s getting heavy, even though the
bottles are all empty.
“I got it! Hide them in the hole in that tree up there,” I point up at the hill to
the graveyard. “PJ and Jeff won’t find it and we can run there when they attack.
They we can throw the bottles down so they can’t follow.”
“Yeah!”
“ Now we just got to get them to chase us.”
*****
“Quick!” Steven runs up to me.
“Huh?”
“I just saw PJ and Jeff! We can get them! You got to come!”
Then he turns and runs off toward the alley. I’d been rolling my dump
truck on my sidewalk. There’d been snow everywhere for a while but it finally
all melted so I hadn’t been allowed to play outside for a while. I get up and run
with Steven.
We run through Nicky’s yard. I guess they’re down that way. I see a
broom as we’re running and I stop.
“What’re you doing? Hurry up!”
“Getting a weapon,” I say. I grab at the broom and I start running again.
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The broom part comes away and I’m just running with the pole. Good. A
broom isn’t as scary as a staff. Now I look like a ninja.
We go running down the alley and out onto the next block. I run and don’t
think about it because we’ve got to catch them, but I’m not supposed to be off
the block. I start worrying, but I don’t seem to slow down. I’m running even
faster than Steven. He’s falling way behind.
“You’re going to get us?” PJ yells at Nicky. PJ and Jeff got him between
them. PJ pushes Nicky at Jeff. Then Jeff pushes him back at PJ. “Come on and
get us,” PJ says, pushing Nicky back at Jeff again. “I dare you.”
“Aaaaaahh!” I run at them, swinging the broomstick above my head and
yelling like a ninja. They move apart as I charge. PJ runs off and even Nicky
gets out of the way. Jeff just stands there. He does back up a little, though.
I’d been all ready. I was going to run in and just swing at somebody. It
didn’t really matter who. Just swing. Run in and hit. Smack!
I pull back, though. I almost trip because I’m running up so fast swinging
and I have to try to stop so I don’t just run into Jeff. Steven almost runs into me,
too.
I hold the broomstick like a staff. Steven gets on one side of Jeff and Nicky
gets on the other. Jeff holds up his fists like he’s going to punch one of us. He
looks back and forth at us all real quick, like he’s trying to see us all at the same
time. PJ ditched him. It’s three against one now.
“Hit him!” Steven points at Jeff.
I whip an end of the broomstick at Jeff. I don’t hit him. I just scare him.
He flinches. Then I do it again.
“Come on,” Steven orders. “Get him!”
“Yeah,” Nicky says. “He can’t get away.”
Jeff looks to each of them when they talk. He looks back at me when I
swing at him again. I still don’t hit.
I’m going to hit him. I’m just getting ready. I got to get ready. I can’t just
hit him without getting ready. It’s hard to swing the broomstick around with my
coat all zipped up. Especially with the hood on. It’s tough to move.
“Do it!”
I go to swing for real this time, but something hard hits my head. It makes a
pop sound. It feels kind of like a whap, though.
Jeff freezes and his mouth hangs open. Steven and Nicky are looking like
that, too. Their eyes are all open wide. Nobody moves. They seem like they’re
waiting on something.
I turn around. PJ’s standing there. He must have been the one that snuck
up and hit me. I don’t see anything in his hands, though.
There’s stuff all over me. I shake and it started falling to the cement,
tinkling. Pieces of brown glass.
I look at the pieces as they fall. I sort of stare. Then I see PJ running away
down the alley toward his block. Jeff’s running the other way around. Steven
and Nicky still look at me after PJ and Jeff run out of sight. I wonder if I got
cut. I put my hand up to check.
“Wow! That was awesome,” Steven says when I start feeling my head to
see if I’m okay. Nicky looks over at him. Steven looks back at him and then
at me. “You just got a bottle broke over your head and you didn’t get hurt or
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nothing!”
I’m still checking my head. I don’t think I got hurt. I can’t think whether I
want to cry or not.
“Wasn’t that awesome?” Steven asks Nicky after I don’t say anything.
“Yeah,” Nicky agrees.
“You must be invincible or something,” Steven continues, “or have a superstrong head. Nobody else could get hit like that and not get hurt. Not me.”
“You think so?” I finally ask.
“Yeah! Did you see how they ran off? We won! They won’t be back after
seeing something like that.”
Nicky nods.
I look over where PJ ran off and then where Jeff ran off. I don’t see them
coming back. I guess we did win.
NOTE: This story is part of a collection that follows the same characters over time.
David S. Atkinson received his MFA in writing from the University of
Nebraska. His writing appears or is forthcoming in “Grey Sparrow Journal,”
“Interrobang?! Magaine,” “Split Quarterly,” “Cannoli Pie,” “C4: The
Chamber Four Lit Mag,” “The Lincoln Underground,” “Brave Blue Mice,”
“Atticus Review,” “The Zodiac Review,” and others. His book reviews appear in
“Gently Read Literature,” “The Rumpus,” and “[PANK].” His writing website
is avidsatkinsonwriting.com and he spends his non-literary time working as a
patent attorney in Denver.
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LILIES OF
THE NIGHT SHADE
by Shannon McMahon
PUTAINS! TRAITRESSES!
Four women prodded by shoves, arm-length pieces of sheared off buildings,
and swatted with belts were wrangled to the threshold of the square Place Saint
Marc where the roads branched off to the Seine in Rouen, France. The crowd
closed in on the four women in the center and Claudine Cagnion watched as
they were swallowed up from her view.
Claudine waded nervously at the edge of the crowd, carrying a small crate
full of left over cheese and milk from the close of the first market day since
the American liberation. Place Saint Marc, once the center of commerce, was
now framed by bombed out half-timbered buildings leaning drunkenly against
one another. The crowd rolled with predatory swiftness and over ran the
market. The people in the crowd were familiar to her in the ways war makes
people familiar. They had the broken down, boarded up look of refugees who
were fighting for sanity and safety in a world that no longer made sense. And,
something here had broken loose.
A small gap opened up when a man plucked a child in front of her and
placed him on his shoulders. Despite the sharp jab of her good sense, Claudine
stowed her crate on an abandoned table at the back of the crowd then pushed
through. She made it nearly to the front of the crowd who, it seemed, could
be barely contained from rushing at the four women she saw standing in the
middle.
The woman with the fuzzy chestnut braid was late into a pregnancy. Her
stomach strained nearly to bursting the front of her dingy, over-washed grey
dress. One of the two blondes wore a red-checked apron with flour still dusting
her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She appeared to be praying, Claudine
thought with a shudder. The other blonde with the long curly hair visibly shook
in her rubber boots of the style many farmwomen wore to milk cows. Claudine
blanched. She had a pair just like those herself. The fourth woman was in a
defiant posture. Her chin was raised, and her thick black hair was twinned into
a twist at the back of her head. Some wisps blew around her face in the breeze
giving her a majestic look. Claudine couldn’t take her eyes off of her. She
was immaculately dressed in a gabardine blue suit and black pumps. She was
Madame Suleyman, the proprietor of the dress shop in the merchant district. She
was the best tailor in town and widely respected. A shiver of confusion swept
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over Claudine as she watched Madame Suleyman stare down the crowd.
The crowd continued to shout at the women, thrusting their fists, pounding
the air. Whores! Traitors!
Claudine turned to the man beside her wearing a sweat stained shirt and red
suspenders. He was the cobbler in town and clouds of spittle sprayed from his
mouth every time he yelled.
“What did these ladies do?” Claudine asked loudly. “What’s happened?”
The man turned to her with those soft eyes that now were suddenly flinty
and hard. “They’re not ladies,” he said with venom. “They are the putains who
spread their legs for the occupiers.”
Claudine felt the blood drain from her face. For the past several weeks she
had been hiding a young German officer in the haymow of the barn. She was
indebted to him for saving her from a group of young German soldiers who
had cornered her in a small alley near the market place just weeks before. He
had stepped in, grabbed her gently by the arm, something that surprised her in
the midst of the aggressive young storm troopers, and led her away from them,
barking orders. Yet, with her his voice was soft, almost childlike but with the
bravery of a man of many years older.
“Je m’appelle Heinrich,” he had said pleasantly and led her to a safe place
in the market. “You’ll have to excuse my comrades. They’re not much more
than wild dogs sometimes,” he paused and took her hand. He was handsome.
She remembered his face in that moment—lushed under wheat colored hair and
large, expressive blue eyes. He wanted to ask her something, a favor, Claudine
could sense it. She looked around at the market place. The wolfish young men
had dispersed. The fear that flashed throughout her body had dissipated.
After a week of secret meetings, he expressed to her that he wanted to leave
the German army. With little hesitation she agreed to hide him in the barn
until the time came when he could escape out of the country. In the last few
days her father had become wary of her activity in there. Claudine had actually
thought about telling her father about Heinrich, but now in the midst of this
hostile crowd she knew that she couldn’t take the chance. Recently, he had been
pressing her to run away with him before the Americans came. On the evening
he had proposed this plan to her, she was clearing away the food she pilfered
from the pantry when he touched her arm. It was late at night.
“Nous serions libres,” he said with his awkward French. “We will be free
from the war. No one has to know.”
“Mais mon pere,” she said softly. “He’s old. I can’t leave him.”
“In time he will understand,” Heinrich said. Then he pulled a small bundle
wrapped in a handkerchief from his knapsack. When he opened it, she saw
it was a locket. A delicate etching that looked like ivy was on the clasp. He
opened it. Inside was a picture of him taken just before he entered the German
army. “I meant it for my mother, but I want you to have it,” he said. “To
promise you happier times.” Claudine held the locket in her hand. It was warm
and small like a bird’s egg. She looked up at him and he pulled her close.
Claudine felt her body cave into his. But that was two nights ago. Things were
not so clear now. The locket felt heavy against her throat.
The crowd churned violently behind her when she saw a woman with
upholstery shears place a fruit crate behind the woman with the braid.
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“Oui! Oui!” cried the crowd. “Do it! Do it!”
The pregnant woman shook visibly and she cried out when with a quick
chop her braid fell behind her like a dead animal. The crowd roared. The
small woman with the scissors moved to the woman in the apron. She grabbed
huge hunks of hair and hacked them off so that they fell in uneven strands like
tossed hay at her feet. The woman in rubber boots looked down at her feet,
but the small woman yanked her head back and chopped savagely at her curly
hair leaving bloody scrapes in her scalp. The shorn pregnant woman held her
belly protectively as sobs heaved her body into various postures of despair. The
woman in the red checked apron had placed her floury hands over her face, but
Claudine could see the blotchy skin on her neck that showed bright flowers of
blood. The woman in the boots bent down to pick up her hair, but the little
woman kicked her hand away and she stood up, her hands rubbing her arms
rapidly as though the weather had turned suddenly cold. Claudine touched her
own long blonde hair absently with shaky fingers. All three had crumbled looks
of the damned on their faces.
The little woman moved to Madame Suleyman. Even standing on the
fruit crate the woman was only barely tall enough to reach her shoulders. So,
Madame Suleyman knelt down and unwrapped her hair. She tossed her head a
little to loosen it. Claudine felt her stomach churn watery and sick. The small
woman’s mouth dropped open in surprise. The crowd chanted at the women
crumpling before them, but aimed fresh aggression at Madame Suleyman whose
face was as still as a statue. Her dark hair fell in great waves on the back of her
stockinged legs and on her shoulders where they slid down her front and caught
in the buttons of her suit. Madame Suleyman picked at the hair as though it
were so many threads she pulled.
Claudine felt the hot breath of the satiated crowd lift and slowly, still
punching the air at these four women, the people dispersed. The four women
were lead away by the one who cut their hair. A small boy in knee pants and
a rough cotton shirt swept up the hair with a stiff bristled broom. Claudine
suddenly remembered her father and ran to the dairy stand where he sat on milk
crates, his head in his hands. His soft, snowy hair was wet and sweat slicked his
face, which made it hard for Claudine to see that he had been crying.
“Papa,” she said and touched his arm. The image of the three women was
still fresh in her mind, but the vision of Madame Suleyman unnerved her. Her
defiance and the residuals from the fresh, hot vitriol from the crowd had her
body in the grip of a strong convulsion that made her teeth chatter. She wanted
to sooth her father, but was afraid to ask him why he was upset.
“Ma fille,” he said hoarsely. “Les autres, les autres. Never you my dear,”
he wept.
***
The Americans liberated Rouen in the first few days of September 1944 and
some army personnel had stationed themselves in the city at the hospital. The
city had been heavily bombed, nearly half had been destroyed, leaving gutted,
craggy building remnants like broken teeth. Bombings evicerated much of the
city, but after a few weeks Place Saint Marc held regular open-air market on
Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Claudine accompanied her father
on these days, bringing eggs, cheese, and butter to sell to the increasing number
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of G.I.s. She succeeded in hiding Heinrich during the invasion, but he was now
in greater peril, as was she, when the thought of the shorn women nagged at the
edge of her mind. It was then an American, who was slightly wounded in the
left leg and using an elegant cane, the type Claudine had only seen in the finest
haberdashery in Rouen, began frequenting the dairy stand.
Colonel Jim Smith came to their stand at precisely 7:00 a.m. each market
day to buy provisions for his men who were in the hospital or staying in a
farmhouse near the abbey on the outskirts of town. He was smartly dressed,
neat, well-fitted uniform and piercing green eyes. His French was impeccable
and her father was impressed with his farming acumen. He handled the eggs
deliberately and carefully and addressed all of the dialogue to her father. Her
father, a man desirous of male company, introduced his daughter to him the day
he induced her to wear her best blue dress to the market. Colonel Jim Smith
approached the stand and her father pushed her around so that she was facing
the colonel and he extended his hand. At the not so subtle urging of her father,
she took it and felt the warm, firm hand grasp her own. He took off his cap and
looked her straight in the eyes. His hair was dark, peppered with grey at the
sides, and his eyes crinkled gently in the corners with the jovial smile he offered
that brought to mind the word mechant, little devil.
“Enchante,” he said with a perfect accent.
Her father was clearly taken with the Colonel and at every opportunity
offered up Claudine’s services to help him deliver the food to the troops.
It had been several weeks now that she had been hiding Heinrich and the
pressure of it was keeping her head throbbing well into the night. She fingered
the locket at her throat. The Colonel noticed the slight movement, but instead
mentioned, politely, that she looked fatigue.
“Oui, oui,” her father said brightly. “She’s a hard worker. Would work
herself to death in that barn if I didn’t keep an eye on her.”
Claudine felt her insides turn over. The Colonel eyed her directly,
examining the finer features of her face as though divining her secret. But his
look was not unpleasant. She looked down and smoothed the front of the blue
dress her father kept insisting she wear.
“Dites on,” her father said. “Would you like to come to dinner tonight? We
have fresh lamb marinating and all of the fixings. It’s more than enough for just
the two of us. We’d be honored if you joined us.”
“Why yes,” the Colonel said when he shifted his gaze to her father who was
smiling ridiculously up at him. “I’d like that.”
Her father nodded and then elbowed Claudine. “He’s tres sympathique,” he
said. “You’ll see.”
That night Claudine tried to convince Heinrich that he had to leave, that she
couldn’t guarantee his safety any more. But he was insistent. They must leave
together and tonight. She was scared out of her wits. Sitting in that haymow
every sinew of her body screamed for her to take up the traveling case she had
hidden in the corner and just leave, but her calmer self told her that rash actions
would be reckless. They must wait.
The Colonel arrived with a sergeant who hovered behind him. When the
Colonel walked into their parlor, he switched the cane from his right to his left
hand and swept his stiff cap from his head and nodded. For some reason her
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father giggled, delightedly she noted, while her stomach churned painfully.
When the Colonel moved to approach Claudine, the sergeant slipped silently
across the threshold and stood slightly a part by the bowed window. Her father
had that giddy grin on his face again as he poured aperitifs all around. Claudine
greeted them, warmly she thought, but in a way that caused the Colonel’s right
eyebrow to arch. Her father waved her into the sitting room, stationing her at
the Colonel’s side.
“Take his hat,” her father said. “Go on, chat. Heloise and I will set the
table.”
Claudine wasn’t totally useless in the kitchen, but her father wanted
something special for the Colonel. So, he brought in the woman from the farm
down the road who was arguably the best cook in the countryside and known
particularly for her marinated lamb.
The Colonel set his hand on the sideboard near the fireplace. He introduced
the sergeant to her, then the sergeant quickly returned to his position at the
window, gazing intently in the gloaming for what reason, Claudine didn’t know,
but it made her chest clench uncomfortably.
The Colonel turned to her and asked her pleasantly about her schooling.
Claudine explained to him that it was interrupted because of the occupation, but
that after the war she hoped to take up her studies again.
“What would you like to do with your studies?” the Colonel asked. He
raised the aperitif to his mouth and sipped at the amber liquid with that devilish
look that made Claudine think he was ready to hear a joke.
She could smell him, clean, starched. A luxury during war times. “I thought
maybe I could be a teacher,” she said. She hoped that that was an acceptable
answer even though the truth was that her plans were to take her some place
else entirely. During the moment when she was talking to the Colonel, her
eyes darted to the window where the sergeant had disappeared. The Colonel
followed her gaze coolly and finished off his aperitif.
When her father ushered them to the dining table, the candlelight cast
a buttery gleam in the room that would have been romantic if it hadn’t been
for the last time the room had been used was for her mother’s funeral. The
solemnity of the room was entirely lost on her father when he motioned for
the Colonel to sit at the head. The Colonel declined and pulled out a chair for
Claudine instead. Her father was thrilled and his pale wrinkled face flushed with
color.
Heloise served the dinner expertly. The sergeant did not join them at the
table and Claudine was increasingly disturbed by his disappearance. But, she
pushed it from her mind because her father was clearly so happy about the
Colonel’s visit. During the tarte tatin and coffee, the Colonel explained that his
troops would be leaving soon and that he regretted he didn’t have more time to
spend with Claudine and her father.
Claudine’s father petted his close-cropped white beard and cleared his
throat. He had a glint in his eye that she remembered from Christmases past
when he always had a big surprise for her and her mother.
“I am an old man,” he began. “And, my time is short here. But my
daughter has many good years ahead of her. I do not want her to live in this
wasteland of war and turmoil.”
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Eloquence was not her father’s strong suit, but the words that were spilling
from his mouth were clearly measured and practiced. For whose benefit, hers or
the Colonel’s she wasn’t sure, but when he asked the Colonel to take Claudine
with him back to America, her breath caught and crashed in her chest. She
coughed and sputtered, spraying tarte tatin crust. The Colonel drank his coffee
slowly, watching Claudine nearly retch into her napkin.
“But, papa,” she said, trying desperately to keep the alarm from punctuating
her voice. “I can’t leave. What will become of you?” After a moment, she
swallowed hard. Then barely above a whisper, “Papa, what is there for me in
America? It’s so far away.”
“Life, ma fille!” he said. “There is room to grow, a nice city to go to
that doesn’t know the devastation of war. He will take care of you,” he said
and nodded to the Colonel. Claudine looked at the Colonel askance, fearing
direct eye contact would further show her confusion and terror. She thought of
Heinrich waiting for her in the haymow, offering much the same thing: a new
life.
Claudine didn’t want to be impudent in front of the Colonel who was now
placing an empty coffee cup on her mother’s best china saucer. She felt trapped.
“Think about it, ma fille,” her father said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
The Colonel rose from the table and shook her father’s knarly arthritic hand.
“She’ll come around,” her father said. “You’ll see. Get his hat, ma cherie.”
Claudine went to the parlor to get his hat. When she passed in front of the
bay window, she saw the sergeant sitting in the jeep parked by the oak tree near
the barn. He sat perfectly still and looked straight ahead into the high beams
of the jeep. Smoke from a cigarette coiled into the air from his hand on the
steering wheel.
“Thank you for the evening,” the Colonel said and bowed slightly. Then
he addressed Claudine who was hovering nervously behind her father. “Your
father wants the best for you,” he said. “And, so do I.”
She and her father stood in the doorway until long after the jeep had left.
“Papa,” Claudine said with tears streaming in ribbons down her face. “Why
would you do this to me? Force me to leave you.” She slapped at her wet
cheeks.
“Cherie, you must be brave. There is no good for you here,” he said and
kissed her gently on the top of her head. Heloise emerged from the kitchen to
clear away the dishes and Claudine moved to help her.
“No,” her father said. “Rest. Think about what I’ve told you.”
Claudine felt weighted with worry climbing the stairs to her tiny room.
From her window she could see into the haymow where Heinrich was waiting
for her to come to him. She was too tired to sneak out across the yard at that
moment and decided instead to lay down on top of her perfectly made bed in the
dress Madame Suleyman made for her sixteenth birthday until her father went
to bed. The locket was warm in the hollow of her throat. She didn’t have to
open it to recall Heinrich’s boyish face creased into the grimace of a young boy
wanting to be much older. It usually made her smile, but at that moment sadness
spread over her, making her heavy. She would lay down for a little while, then
go to him.
She woke the next morning with strong beams of a late summer morning
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on her face. She looked at the clock. It was almost noon. Her father had left
without her for the Sunday market. She jolted out of bed, ran down the stairs,
and out the door barefoot to the barn. She climbed the ladder to the haymow,
heedless of the splinters needling her feet, and called to him. Whispering at first,
then more shrilly when she realized that he was not responding. She looked all
over the haymow, throwing first handfuls then armfuls of hay around the loft
searching for him. Her suitcase was still in the far corner, but his knapsack full
of old clothes was gone. So was he. There was no trace of him anywhere.
Claudine sat cross-legged in the center of the haymow and cried into her
hands, gulping the thick dusty air, which made her cough violently in between
sobs. She wracked her brain. Why would he leave without her? She felt as
though all control over her life had fled her somehow and in its wake was a
wave of uncertainty that spread dread like a thick skin over her body. Her fate
had been decided without her.
Maybe her father was right. A new start was what she needed to leave this
life behind. The fact that she barely knew the Colonel was a barrier that she
needed to reconcile. She could only imagine him in his uniform, clacking along
with his ebony headed cane watching her with those eyes that didn’t seem, in her
latest reckoning, to be unkind. But what he was supposed to do with her was still
unclear.
Her father drove up in the apee around 3:00 p.m. and parked it in the shade
of the old oak tree. Claudine had just enough time to splash cold water from the
pump on her face. She walked to him from behind the barn and collapsed into
his frail, but wiry arms.
“Ma fille, ma fille,” he crooned into her hair. “It is for the best. My life is
over here and yours must begin.” Then when the sobs wracked her body again
he said, “The Colonel is a good man. He will take care of you in ways that I
no longer can. You are a young woman now. This war is no place for you to
grow.”
Colonel Jim Smith wanted to be married in two weeks and leave there after
for America. She was unsure about the marriage aspect, but the Colonel had
mentioned that it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to bring a woman who was
not his wife under his charge according to army regulations about war brides.
After crying herself to sleep for a week, a resolve crept into her. She needed a
traveling costume and she wanted Madame Suleyman to make it. The last time
she saw Madame Suleyman was in the square, kneeling defiantly while her hair
was shorn. She waited until after the market closed at 3:00 p.m. on a Tuesday
afternoon before she went to the little dress shop in the merchant district of the
town.
The formerly red door was painted with a thick black paint and Claudine
could still see the outline of the word, putain written in large, awkward letters
across the door. The dress in the window was a modest two-piece charcoal wool
suit with large upholstered buttons and a yellow scarf. A tinny doorbell chimed
when she walked into the shop. Madame Suleyman emerged from the back
room with a piece of dark thread and three pins in her mouth. She took the pins
out one by one, pushed them into a tomato red pincushion on the counter, and
smiled at Claudine.
“You remind me of happier times,” she said and took Claudine’s hands in
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her own which were hard at the fingertips and firm of grip.
The room was spare. The dress form in the window was the only one of the
three forms to be dressed. The other two stood in the corner by the counter like
truncated, naked women with their backs to Claudine and Madame Suleyman.
The rack along the wall was nearly empty, only a couple of garment bags with
small tags waited to be picked up.
“What can I help you with today,” she said and adjusted the scarf on her
head. It was a silk scarf with a large fleur de lis pattern in gold against a cobalt
background. A few ragged strands of raven colored hair strayed at her neck. She
wore a simple short-sleeved red frock. It was an impeccably tailored dress with
a slim waist and short cap sleeves. Her mouth was shiny with red lipstick and
when she ran her tongue over her mouth, it gleamed brightly in the dim shop.
Claudine was heartened until she noticed how her skin looked withered and grey
and how, coupled with the few dresses on the rack, she looked tired and pained.
“I need a good dress for traveling,” Claudine said. “I’m leaving for
America in a week.”
Madame Suleyman’s eyes dimmed, but creased at the corners when she
smiled gingerly. It was as a result of the Americans liberating Rouen that she
had been singled out for having a German lover during the occupation. But she
was canny and asked in a gently prying way, “Are you going alone?”
“No,” Claudine said and rubbed the goosebumps that erupted on her skin
when Madame Suleyman scratched at the scarf wrapped around her head. “I’m
getting married.”
“Really!” Madame Suleyman said suspiciously. “Such a big step for a
young girl.” In the days before the war, she was the center of the town’s gossip,
but since the liberation her shop had been severely boycotted. “To whom?”
Claudine felt blood rush to her face when she said, “An American.”
Madame Suleyman’s face darkened a little. “A soldier?”
“Yes,” Claudine said, almost disbelieving it herself. “A colonel.”
Madame Suleyman stiffened perceptibly and slipped around the counter and
moved a stack of catalogues toward Claudine.
“Well, then,” she said. “We need something special.” She opened the top
one and pointed to a green suit with a calf-length skirt and a wide-collared white
shirt and smart jacket. Claudine’s glance traveled up Madame Suleyman’s
arms. Her skin seemed withered, lashed to her thin limbs. She flipped through
the catalogue quickly and pointed out a two-piece suit much like the one in the
window.
“I saw you in the square,” Claudine said not looking up. Madame
Suleyman stopped flipping the pages and licked the tip of her right index finger.
“I don’t agree with what they did.”
Madame Suleyman turned the next page slowly and smoothed it by pressing
it flat with her hands.
“That was a dark day,” she said finally. “And, it was a mistake.”
“You mean it wasn’t true?” asked Claudine. Madame Suleyman
straightened her arms and lowered her gaze.
“He wasn’t a soldier,” she said and moistened her lips with the tip of her
tongue. “He was a businessman, a client from before the war.”
“But were you,” Claudine began.
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“No, not at first,” Madame Suleyman said and turned over the catalogue.
“But it was brief, just a few weeks. Then the Americans came and it was
impossible for him to leave so I hid him here in my shop. It was only supposed
to be temporary. Until things quieted down at least.”
“But how did you get caught?”
“One of my clients grew suspicious when she heard me talking to someone
with a foreign accent in the backroom. By then most of the other women had
been rounded up and it was only a matter of time before the mob came for me.”
“What happened to him?” Claudine asked. She was choked with fear about
what possibly happened to Heinrich.
“He was arrested by the Americans. After that I don’t know.”
“Did you love him?” Claudine asked, the word carrying more certainty than
she meant it to.
“We were friends, mostly,” Madame Suleyman said. “Then the war made
us into lovers. But we knew it couldn’t last so about the time they found him,
we had decided that it was best to part ways. It’s just we hadn’t figured out how
to get him safely out of Rouen.”
Claudine felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to unburden herself of her own
secret, but instead she reopened the catalogue and began running her fingers
over the pages.
“Do you regret it?” she asked.
Madame Suleyman unwrapped the scarf around her head and Claudine
looked at her. She touched Claudine on the arm, which caused her pale blond
hair to stand on end.
Claudine saw her hair was chopped to the roots and the jagged marks all
around where the upholstery shears had bitten into her scalp. She blanched and
felt her legs soften. She caught herself on the counter. Madame Suleyman came
around and helped her to sit down on the tufted chair next to the counter.
“He was a good man,” she told Claudine who was trying to catch her breath.
“Now,” she said and took the catalogue from the counter. “Let’s find you a
traveling costume.”
***
After a long flight from England to various bases in the U.S. before landing
on the air strip at the Glenn L. Martin Bomber Plant in Center City, her husband,
Colonel Jim Smith, installed her in a dark-wooded, bow-windowed Victorian
house on Elm Street.
When the Colonel first ushered her into the house, she carried her only
suitcase with both hands. Her eyes contracted to adjust to the darkness and her
body felt crushed by the heavy red brocaded curtains and the wainscoting.
“My grandfather built this house,” the Colonel said and took her suitcase
from her hands. Immediately her hands clutched at her green gabardine skirt,
bereft of purpose.
“It’s been in the family for 60 years and the land 50 years before that.” Her
skin was used to the warm buttery sunlight that flooded the rooms of her father’s
farmhouse, the one that had also been in her family for over 60 years.
The Colonel guided her through the different sitting rooms with the largeknobbed furniture and somberly upholstered chaise lounges. The fireplaces in
these rooms were nearly as tall as a man and made of finely veined pink marble.
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He took her to the library on the first floor and waved proudly at the books on
shelves behind small glass panes that opened with a twist of a latch. There
must have been hundreds of books, from floor to ceiling, and not a speck of dust
thanks to his sister who maintained the house while he was gone. There was a
large, elaborately wrought oak desk with stout legs and a blue velvet cushioned
chair carefully pushed up to the edge of it. Near the fireplace, the third she
counted, was a row of books that the Colonel showed her. He lifted the latch,
opened the case, and ran his finger along the perfect leather spines. Claudine
knew the colonel was an educated man, and felt deeply inadequate because
her own education effectively stopped once the Germans invaded Rouen. The
Colonel spoke excellent French and even took marriage vows in the language,
but once on American soil, he switched exclusively to English and expected
Claudine to do the same.
“Sister and I would like it if you spent some time in here,” he said and
walked her around the perimeter. There was tendril of cigar smoke that lingered
not unpleasantly in the room.
When the Colonel showed her upstairs to the nursery, he walked around
the pale yellow room, opening large ornate wood toy boxes full of stuffed
animals of every species, including exotic ones like zebras and giraffes. There
were pink-fleshed baby dolls with curly blonde and brown hair, the things, she
noted, that he tossed aside rather roughly by their heads. He drew her to one
wooden box in particular. He motioned for her to come and she walked gingerly
as though trying not to disturb the spirits of all of the Smith children who had
played there. He reached inside and grabbed a leather, webbed bag. He untied
it and out tumbled green army men molded in all postures of warfare: holding
a machine gun, crawling on the stomach, launching a grenade, and hollering a
salute. He righted all of these little men quickly into a platoon on the floor.
“Here’s where it all began for me,” he said with a gleam in his eye.
Questions streaked through her mind, but she was too tired to acknowledge
them.
“It all comes down to strategy,” he said and moved several of the standing
army men shoulder to shoulder. “Your German friend knew a lot about strategy,
didn’t he?”
He looked at her with his right eyebrow arched to see if she was following
along. Claudine looked wide-eyed back at him, trying to suss out the gist of
what he was saying, but she knew enough to understand that the tiny men were
in attack formation.
“Your German friend,” he said again, careful this time to enunciate. Then
when she still didn’t understand, he relented. “Votre ami Allemand” he said in a
tone that wasn’t meant to show parental exasperation.
Claudine swallowed a hard knot in her throat. “C’etait…il est?,” she
began, but her voice was squeezed to a hissing sound. He stood up and her
gaze followed him confusedly across the room where he turned to face her at
the window. She thought of Madame Suleyman in that instant, kneeling in the
middle of Place Saint Marc with that look of defiance that sent the crowd into a
frenzy. Claudine was not born with that stripe of bravery. When she looked at
the Colonel and watched his mouth move the words, she felt the atmosphere of
the room collapse on her. Strange words hung loosely in the air between them.
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She didn’t understand all of the words, but one word in particular hung there,
deadly, accusing.
She could feel him watching her closely, waiting it seemed, but she couldn’t
look back at him, at any part of him. Other words were strung along between
them. The ones she understood were “father” and “money.” So, he had paid her
father for her and for Heinrich. The thought so stupefied her that she thought
halfway about running up to him and slapping him across the face. But the
intensity of his feral gaze told her that it would be pointless and ill advised.
The Colonel walked to where she sat on the tiny chair and unfolded her
hands from across her chest. He held them a part in a way that suggested that
she was to lift herself up, which she did, shakily.
“We aren’t so different you and I,” he said and dropped her arms gently to
her sides. With both hands he smoothed her creased sleeves in a gesture that
would have calmed her with Heinrich but that instead reminded her of how
small she felt in that room with the Colonel. “You’ll see how quickly we get
along here.” Then he put his hand in the small of her back and steered her out of
the room.
“I expect you’ll spend quite a lot of time up here when the children come,”
he said as they left the room. Claudine shuddered at the word “children” and
everything it implied. All of these things and the house converged on her at that
moment and she felt deeply that all of this had been a grave mistake. A sick
feeling spread over her and she moved to sit down on one of the white-painted
rush-bottomed children’s chairs again.
“You’re tired,” the Colonel said kindly, but firmly, like a diagnosis.
Claudine nodded. “Oui, yes, I am fatigued.” Those were the first words she
uttered in English and they felt strange, prickly on her tongue.
The Colonel directed her by the elbow downstairs to the largest bedroom
and let her sit down on the edge of the bed with the embroidered duvet cover for
a moment.
“It will pass,” he said and that kindness again ebbed into his voice. “Why
don’t you rest for awhile and then Sister will make us something to eat.“
The relief she felt leading into the bedroom, knowing that she would be left
alone eventually, fled at the mention of food. She wasn’t particularly good at it,
though her elderly father had never complained.
The Colonel stood in front of her as though inspecting every twitch in her
face and told her Anna, whom he called Sister, would be here to help her in the
house.
“Just until we get settled in and you get used to the place,” he said and
brushed his already slicked back hair with his right hand.
The wind picked up outside and she heard the house creak loudly. It
chilled her, causing her flesh to tingle. She rubbed her arms and then slipped
her hands in prayer formation between her knees. The Colonel loosened his
tie. She could hear the rough material slide through the knot and didn’t have
to look up to know that he was unbuttoning his shirt. She felt her stomach turn
watery as though whatever was inside it was about to flood out of her. Her legs
shuddered and her knees bounced off of her hands that were now kneading
against themselves and knuckled white. The sound of the belt whipping through
the loops in his pants made her cringe and she turned her face away. When he
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touched her hair he pulled her face closer. She could smell him. It was a thick,
heady scent, the smell of wet bark. He tilted her chin up and showed himself
to her. Her eyes widened with fright. It looked like a baby’s arm, full and hard
with a purple fist at the tip. He took himself in his hands and began to shuttle
his hand back and forth rapidly. Claudine turned her head away and felt alarm
flash through her body. He took her by the chin and forced her to watch him.
Her cheeks were slick with tears. After a long, hard shudder, he finished and
Claudine closed her eyes. She was so distraught that she hadn’t noticed the
cloudy liquid splattered on the front of her good suit. After a moment, he handed
her a neatly folded handkerchief for her to wipe her suit jacket, which she did
absently, her lips quivering like tugged strings. Tears streamed down her face
and she tried to swallow them away. Without looking, she knew that he was
fixing up his pants and he stepped away from her.
“Sister will be over shortly to show you the ins and outs of the kitchen.
You’d best rest up before she comes,” he said and tapped his cane on the floor.
In a deep recess in her mind, she was thankful he had not yet pressed her
about other thing because he would know that it would not have been her first
time. That she had been spared for the moment.
Claudine removed her suit, carefully hanging it in the huge armoire, and
laid down on the bed with her stockinged feet crossed at the ankles to try to stem
the shaking of her body. The locket was heavy at her throat and she thought
about opening it, but when a fresh round of sobs cracked through the resolve
she had failed to cultivate, she knew she couldn’t look at that gentle face in the
picture.
After what seemed a minor eternity, the house echoed the old oak door
opening on the first floor and the Colonel’s “Hello, Sister,” punctuated his
uneven stride in the hallway. So this woman had a key, Claudine thought. She
went quickly to the sideboard where there was a pitcher and a glass for water.
She wasn’t surprised when the water was chilled. She took small draughts
directly from the pitcher then moistened the tissue to dab at the collar of the suit
jacket hanging in the armoire.
Claudine was in her slip when the Colonel opened the door to the bedroom.
She instinctively crossed her arms over her body when she felt the air from the
hallway burst through the door. The Colonel looked her up and down.
“Pick something comfortable,” he said not unkindly. “Sister’s waiting for
you downstairs.”
Shannon McMahon grew up in a small farming community in Nebraska.
She received a B.A. in French and an M.A. in Creative Writing at Creighton
University in Omaha, NE, where she taught in the English department for eight
years as an adjunct. In 2011, she received a PhD in American Literature from
the University of Nebraska Lincoln. She is currently a full-time faculty member
of the English Department of the College of Saint Mary in Omaha, NE.
323
NEIGHBORLY
By Frances O’Brien
F
irst, let me say this: I would never intentionally strangle anyone. Not
even if that person were coming at me wielding a lit cigar like a weapon,
and my only hope of escape were to wrap my hands around his neck and
squeeze. Strangling takes too long under the best of circumstances, you need
to have a strong grip, and if you happen to be dealing with a neck of greater
circumference than average, well, it just isn’t a very efficient way to get your
point across. Besides, I’m a lady – a church-going lady – not a strangler. Lord
knows we religious folks have passed much harder tests than putting up with bad
neighbors.
Secondly, I’m a dog lover. Lover. Ask anyone. I grew up in a household
with a dog who was practically a member of the family. Whenever I go to
someone’s house, if there’s a dog, he invariably comes over to me wagging his
tail like we’re best pals. I could walk into a kennel unaccompanied and instantly
be one of the gang, because dogs can tell from a mile away if you’re a friend or
foe, and they always recognize me as a buddy. Never fails.
The third thing you should know about me is that I am not obsessed. What
kind of person has the time on her hands to sit by the window waiting for some
paunchy old neighbor to saunter by smoking a giant, malodorous stogie, walking
his yappy dog, with no legally-required excrement-removal device in sight,
simply to see whether or not that balding, boxer-shorts clad neighbor allows
his mange-ridden beast to destroy her carefully-manicured and remarkablyexpensive lawn? Especially on a daily basis.
Why am I telling you these things? Because an enormous injustice has been
perpetrated upon me. Me. I, who’ve gone out of my way to be a good neighbor,
a moral person, a fine example to follow.
But I realize that’s a bit much to ask you to simply accept at my word. So,
I’ll start from the beginning.
About a year ago, my beloved next-door neighbor, Harry, passed away, God
rest his soul. Whether or not Harry and I were having an affair is irrelevant.
The fact is that he died (in his own bed, thank you very much), and his wife sold
their house and moved to Montana to live with their kids who, I’m sure, were
thrilled to have their elderly grandma shoved into their all-too-adorable family
pictures.
Naturally, when the new family moved in next door here – the husband, the
wife, the way-too-old-to-be-living-with-his-parents son – I knew they’d never
be as wonderful to me as Harry, who could fix anything at all hours of the day
and night and who never, not once, accepted a single red cent in payment for his
efforts. He was just that kind of guy. His wife never appreciated him enough.
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But as for the neighbors, I tried to make friends with them, really, I did. I
was over there as soon as the movers pulled away, with a homemade cake in my
hands, introducing myself and offering to show them around the neighborhood.
I even tried making friends with the wife. I said, “Zelda (or Zorda or Zoona
or whatever it was),” I said, “I belong to a book club that would just love to have
you as a member. We meet every month.” Now, I didn’t know what her cup of
tea was, so, when she didn’t respond to that, I said, “There’s also the pinochle
club that meets bi-monthly.” That caused little more than an eyebrow raising.
“How’s about the knitting society that makes blankets for the children’s hospital
every Thursday?” I’m telling you, that woman looked at me like I was nothing
if not insane.
“No thank you,” she said. Just like that. Almost like I’d asked her to lick
the back of my neck. Well, far be it from me to try to change a person’s mind. I
am not here to judge. If she doesn’t want to so much as try a single one of those
heartwarming, soul-fulfilling activities, that’s her prerogative.
So, I moved on. I thought I could still show some neighborliness by having
a chat with their son. I know how difficult it is to tell your own child flat out
that it’s time to find himself meaningful employment and an apartment of his
own. I had to do it myself. And I sincerely believe my son is the mature,
responsible man he is today because of it – so responsible, he almost never has
time to talk to me. Anyway, I waited until one day when I saw the neighbor
boy sunning himself in their back yard. Lord knows I almost broke my neck
climbing up onto that patio chair I’d put the upside-down planter box on just to
see over their fence, but I’m always willing to help.
“Hey, there, Sonny,” I said. They’d told me his name no fewer than three
times, but I couldn’t understand it. Oogledeck, it sounded like they were saying.
Frankly, I thought they were just having a little fun with me, but who knows.
Anyway, after I was finally able to get his attention, I asked “So, what do you do
for a living?”
“Nothing,” he says, barely turning his head in my direction and not even
opening his eyes.
“Nothing?” I asked. “Are you a full-time student?”
“Nope.” Real charmer, this kid.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one,” he said, turning over so his back faced me. I’m telling you:
youth today.
Well, I told him all about this job fair being held that very week at the
convention center downtown. I even offered to drive him there and told him I’d
take him to dinner afterward as a little added incentive. But poor old Oogledeck,
I guess he was just too exhausted even to respond. This boy will never be too
busy to give his mother a call, that’s for sure. Anyway, I let it go.
Their dog, Lola was another story altogether. She went off like a fire alarm
every time anyone had the audacity to pass within two blocks of us. But far be it
from me to complain. No, what I did was stand well within my property limits
and speak soothingly to her. “Lola,” I would say, “please be quiet now, honey.”
Sometimes, after asking her politely eight or ten times, I’d grow the tiniest bit
impatient. “Sshh, Lola, ssshhh! Ssshhh now, Lola, sssshhhh! Ssssshhhhh
sssshhhh! Lola, Ssssshhhhh!” And it may be true that one time I used the word
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“bitch” accidentally, but really, she is a female dog. Simply because the word
“brainless” came out before it does not change its essential definition. Nor does
it render it a threat.
However, my decision to be the good neighbor and not to bother them
in any way does not give that evil, irresponsible man the right to allow his
godforsaken beast to poop on my lawn. Am I right? When I first approached
him – in a friendly way – about the problem, he denied it. Then he claimed he
always cleaned up after Lola. I have seen that tobacco-smoking Neanderthal
walking her day in, day out, and I have never, not once, witnessed so much as
a tissue in his hand. Then came the day when, next to the poop I found a cigar,
and I tell you, I lost my cool, just the tiniest bit. The first thing I did was pick it
up – the cigar, not the poop – with a pair of tweezers just like they do on “CSI”
and send it off to a lab to be analyzed for DNA. I had no idea that could take so
long; it never does on TV.
After four straight days of being told they were “working on it, lady,” I
purchased myself a little video camera, as backup. It’s simply not true that I sat
in the window all day every day waiting for him to walk Lola. I just happened
to catch them one day in the act. And, when Lola was all done, I went out to
speak to him civilly. Of course, immediately Lola exploded viciously and began
pulling at her leash like she wanted to break it. I kept trying to tell the man what
I’d witnessed, but he kept pretending he couldn’t hear me over her. So I showed
him on the camera. Do you know he had the nerve to accuse me of being crazy?
He started going off about how I’d trespassed onto his private property, I’d
harassed his wife and flirted with to his son, and that I’d threatened his “poor,
little, defenseless” dog, who was at that point hysterical, and tried no fewer than
three times to bite me. Then, get this: he said I’d been stalking him. Me. He
claimed he’d seen me watching and videotaping him for months.
“My wife heard all about you from the neighbors,” he tells me.
“Oh, really? And exactly what did she hear?” I asked. “That I volunteer at
the soup kitchen? That I donate blood on a bi-monthly basis?” What else was
there to be said, right?
He paused a moment, then leaned in closer, with that enormous incendiary
bundle of arson protruding from his face not two inches from my own and said
to me, “She’s heard all about how you steal other women’s husbands.”
Well, you can just imagine how I felt. I was out there all alone and
unprotected. I had that ferocious beast trying to eat me alive, and this monster
trying to set me ablaze. Seriously, what would you do in that situation? Of
course I pushed him away with my hands. I did not wrap them around his giant,
sequoia-like neck; that’s absurd. Nor did I kick his dog. If that depraved little
brute chose that very moment to jump over to the sidewalk and lie down, that
was her right entirely.
You can try to envision my shock when I heard the sirens a moment later.
Apparently he and his little strumpet run a two-man operation. One of them
sets up the trap, and the other calls the police after it’s sprung with its innocent
victim inside.
Anyway, long story short, that’s why I’m here behind these bars. The
problem is the authorities have confiscated my video camera, and I’m afraid
my own evidence will be used against me. See, I had to run a few tests with
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the camera. I’m hardly an electronics whiz, so I had to practice recording a few
times to make sure I had the hang of it, and it turns out I forgot to erase those
little experiments. Of my neighbor. And his son. Who really spends entirely
too much time laying out in the backyard semi-naked and glistening like some
sort of magazine model at the beach.
Anyway, I hope the judge will believe me. I took those videos because
I saw an injustice. And it’s not like I’m the only one who lives around there,
after all. What I did was for everybody’s well being. I was just trying to be
neighborly.
Frances O’Brien is a fiction writer living in Los Angeles. Her other short
stories have appeared in PENsieve, Genre Wars and The Shine Journal. She is
currently editing her novel PUSHING PUDDLES. In 2010, she received a B.A.
in English from California State University.
327
WAITING FOR GOD
by Shae Krispinsky
S
imone starved herself to become lighter for God. She wanted Him to
carry her home in His omnipotent but forgiving arms. But maybe He was
too busy—the children, after all—or maybe He, like everyone else before,
just didn’t care all that much. While she waited, hopeful but breaking, for God
to come, she sang.
Though her parents had been religious—her mother in the church choir, her
father an assistant minister—God had never had a real place in her life before.
He was like Siberia or Antarctica: something cold and distant, something she
had on occasion read about out of curiosity but would never see in person. That
out there, in the plains, beneath a midnight sky white with stars, she began to
think of Him, began to hope for and expect Him, took her strangely at first.
What was this intrusion? And why now? But then she began to ask, Well, why
not? What could it hurt?
But there had to be a reason. This was a sign—wasn’t it? But for what?
That she wasn’t worthy. What else could it be? That’s why He didn’t come to
her. That’s why she sang out to nothing, to no response from Him. So began
her atonement. If she in her body were sin, as it had to have been—what else
did she have?—she’d whittle it away. Ossified, she would be worthy of His
love. Boots shined but loose around her ankles, she’d be invited to enter His
home, His hand outstretched in greeting. In time, hope replaced the hunger
and she felt certain He would show. Her cupboards were bare. She sang out to
Him, her voice warm and smooth. Prone on the carpet, she sang into the twisted
threads. Curled on the porch swing, she sang out into the night. As loud as her
weakness allowed, she called out to Him. But He didn’t come. Instead, her
lawn, overgrown with ragweed and darnel, filled with strangers who began to
stop outside her house to listen.
“Come,” they called, hands grasping. “Come out.”
People! Her voice warbled with fear but she kept singing. People—she
was not used to people. In college she had a few friends, a few girls to sit with
in the dining hall and to drink wine with, except she didn’t really like wine and
all they wanted to talk about were the boys they were fucking. At the time,
Simone had a boyfriend, but he lived eight hours away, so—being too loyal,
more loyal than he had ever been—she wasn’t fucking anyone. During these
talks, she smiled weakly and pretended to drink the tepid red wine in her neon
green plastic cup. After graduation, she dumped her boyfriend, deleted her
friends’ emails without reading them and moved out there to the plains where
she rented a small shanty on a deserted plot of land and did data entry from her
laptop that was missing the A key.
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Remembering her ex-boyfriend, her old friends, she felt torn between
stepping down off of the porch and joining those who called to her, and shutting
her mouth, running back into the house and slamming the door. She had never
learned the art of interaction. With her boyfriend, she thought she was doing
him a favor by asking nothing of him, by refusing to see him. When he told her
of the other girls he kissed in her absence, the girls she remembered riding with
in the marching band bus back in high school, she smiled and assured him it
was okay, though her insides were torn to bits. She smiled and said she hoped
he enjoyed it, because that’s what she thought she was supposed to do: wear a
pleasant, silent mask. She resented the mask but it was easier to run away than
tear off the plastic smile. Somewhere on the way out to the plains, the mask fell
off and she hadn’t worn one since.
Now with the milling faces staring at her expectantly, she felt the cold
plastic, the suffocating layer pressing closer to her skin. Would she have to run
farther away? Would she finally see Antarctica? She sang to God to intervene,
to save her, to take her to His home but again, He never showed. You fucker,
she seethed. You fucker! You failed me.
Her first steps off of the porch were tentative, weak-kneed. The earth,
though dry from drought, felt like quicksand, but soon she recognized it as only
her fear. Strangers latched onto her, told her they were her friends, told her
they loved her. Love was more foreign to her than they were. Her relationship
with her ex had been serviceable at best, more out of what she felt she was
supposed to do than affection. She had thought God was supposed to be love,
but he turned out to be nothing more than a bitter delusion. At least her ex had
admitted to his cheating. If anything, the closest she had ever crawled to love
was in watching those old Gene Kelly movies on the classic film channel, Cover
Girl, Summer Stock, and her favorite, Singing in the Rain. Watching Kelly’s
deep Steel City eyes and his cheek with the scythe-shaped scar. His perfect
smile with the top lip curled under made her smile, which, really, was all she
wanted out of love.
These people as they surrounded her didn’t make her smile at all but they
begged her to keep singing so she complied. A lanky man with dark, dusty hair
and oily skin approached her and offered her a trip to the coast. Simone shook
her head, not because she didn’t want to go back there, but because she did.
The pain it would cause, she already knew; best to kill it before its first breath,
but the man insisted, charming as he was, and slightly, when she squinted,
resembling Gene Kelly.
“You don’t belong here,” he promised, wrapping his hands completely
around her waist and lifting her into his sparkling gunmetal-grey convertible.
This is what she had wished of God. She wondered, Is he Him? She let him
close the door beside her. She had never pictured God driving a BMW.
The drive to the airport sweated with silence. He knew better than to ask
her to sing then, she decided. They were too oddly close, and besides, she got
the impression that he didn’t care much for her songs. As she studied him, she
yearned to wipe his forehead with a cool cloth though she didn’t understand
why. Mothering had never been an instinct of hers. The captor captivates the
captive, she thought but forced the idea from her mind. This was her fear again,
and she had to kill it if she wished to survive. Did she wish to survive? She felt
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the mask lock tightly into place.
On the plane – two first class seats, the leather cool on the backs of her legs.
The attendant brought expensive champagne wrapped in linens. Those around
her eyed it greenly. Can we get some for everyone, she whispered.
“Already extravagant?” He winked. “A true star.” He snapped his fingers
and more bottles appeared. No one thanked her as they drank her champagne
and drank her down. She curled over on her side and pretended to sleep,
ignoring his hands as they grated up her ribcage.
There in the city, surrounded by people—more, different. She had never
thought of herself as pretty, but they assured her that she was. And so thin, they
cooed, zipping her into slinky black dresses, brushing her hair. They pushed her
out onto a stage under hot white lights that melted her make-up and told her to
sing. She felt like she was Lina Lamont, a phony, twisting her hands in time,
all wrong. Worse, they knew it too, but didn’t care. She sang even though they
really wanted her to unzip and step out of her dress. Cameras in hand, they’d
get the photographs eventually. She’d see the images of herself, skin laid bare,
mascara pissing down her cheeks, and by this time, would not feel violated, just
empty. Emptier. No longer could she sing, no longer did she want to. Still,
they tried to sell her but hands stopped reaching out. Bottles of champagne
became bottles of Ativan became tar-thick nights. The man who had put her
on the plane had long since left, moved on, found another thin-hipped vacuum.
Gene Kelly wouldn’t have left. She didn’t miss the man or his hands but she did
miss singing without an audience, missed the hoping for something she always
knew in the back, mildewed corner of her mind would never come.
If she returned to the plains. If she apologized to God. If she could find her
voice once more, and use it only for herself, not for them. Hope, however, is not
like water, does not come in cycles or bottles. Starved of hope, Simone starved
herself once again. Better, this time. Her heart stopped beating. Lighter for
God, the burial was easy.
Shae Krispinsky (dearwassily.tumblr.com) grew up in sub-rural western
PA, and graduated from college in Roanoke, VA. Now living in Tampa, FL, she
is the singer, songwriter and guitarist for her band, ...y los dos pistoles (http://
ylosdospistoles.tumblr.com), contributes to Creative Loafing Tampa, and is an
aspiring crazy cat lady. Her work is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, In
Between Altered States and Corvus Magazine.
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NONFICTION
FALL 2012
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WRITER 911!
Historic Tales from the Literary ER
by David B. Comfort
“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell
and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”
—Gustav Flaubert
Even before being racked by hemorrhoids, epilepsy, and the German
croupiers, Dostoyevsky declared: “In order to write well one must suffer
much!”
God seemed happy to bring great artists to their full potential. Before
the twentieth century, most surrendered to consumption, the clap, cirrhosis,
and/ or lunacy. Many also seemed accident-prone. Survivors published their
misadventures eventually, but most would have preferred their health.
Cervantes had his arm shot off, an insane nephew gunned down Jules
Verne, Tolstoy’s face got rearranged by a rogue bear. Samuel Pepys was
sterilized during a gallstone operation. Lowry barely escaped being castrated
in Mexico under the volcano. Marlowe was shanked in a bar brawl, Dashiel
Hammet got stabbed in the leg, Beckett took a shiv to the chest from a Paris
pimp, Monsieur Prudent. When later asked by the existentialist why?, Prudent
replied: “I do not know, sir. I’m sorry.” Then there was Sherwood Anderson
who, just before his liver shut down, swallowed a martini toothpick and died
of peritonitis.
Historically, drunk or sober, novelists in or around cars have been accidents
waiting to happen. After declaring, “I know nothing more stupid than to die in
an automobile accident,” the absurdist Nobel prize winner, Camus, took a lift in
his publisher, Michel Gallimard’s, Facel-Vega and an unused train ticket was
later found next to his body.
Returning to LA to grieve the death of his friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Nathanael West ran a stop sign and, with his wife of two days, was killed in a
collision. By that time, F Scott’s wife, Zelda, was a long-time asylum resident
who, before being committed, had lain down in front of her husband’s town car
and said, “Drive over me, Scott.”
Another southern belle, Margaret Mitchell, stepped off a curb on Peachtree
& 13th and was delivered to the hereafter by an off-duty cabbie. Otherwise, one
of the luckiest novelists in history, she’d started Gone With the Wind while laid
up with a broken ankle from a less serious mishap.
Stephen King earned even more than Mitchell from the misadventures of
his heroes. Then during an after-work stroll in 1999, he was struck and nearly
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killed by a minivan. At the time, he was busy with his On Writing memoir as
well as another thriller, From a Buick 8, about a man-eating car from another
dimension. King’s fear that the accident might kill his muse proved unfounded,
but his subsequent output was seriously reduced.
By contrast, near fatal ordeals stimulated other authors, bearing out John
Berryman’s argument proposed the year before jumping off a bridge in view of
his University of Minnesota MFA students: “The artist is extremely lucky who
is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him,” he
told The Paris Review in 1970. “At that point, he is business.”
Flannery O’Connor considered her debilitating lupus a creative blessing.
Katherine Ann Porter caught the writing bug after her obituary was written
and funeral arrangements made while she was in a flu-induced coma. Anthony
Burgess finished five novels after he was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer
in 1959 and given a year to live; he pressed on till 1993 to finish twenty-five
more. In the introduction to his first novel, Queer, William Burroughs confessed
to coming to the “appalling conclusion” that he never would have become a
writer had he not accidentally shot and killed his common law wife in 1951
during a drunken William Tell game which caused “a life long struggle … to
write my way out.”
***
Historic authors seem to have suffered more from the fates, or from the
Almighty himself, than from critics.
The disaster-prone Hemingway declared through his hero, Nick Adams,
“other people get killed, but not me.” His fisherman, Santiago, echoed, “To hell
with luck, I’ll bring the luck with me.” Papa had had a thing about luck ever
since taking shrapnel on the Italian Front during a chocolate run, then being
struck by a falling apartment skylight while he wrote A Farewell to Arms. Even
so, he found it amusing that his Catholic colleagues, Fitzgerald and Joyce —
who sustained most of their injuries in and around bars — were terrified of
thunder and lightning.
After the skylight mishap, Hemingway drove his former EMT colleague,
John Dos Passos, to hunt in Montana and -- to the relief of the local wildlife
-- missed a cliffside turn. He broke an arm. Later, while the two fished off Key
West, Papa winged himself while shooting a gaffed shark. Dos again escaped
unscathed. Then, in 1947, he drove into a parked truck, losing an eye and
decapitating his wife, Kitty.
Hemingway went on to suffer many other automotive misadventures. His
luck wasn’t any better in airplanes. In his final bush crash in the Belgian Congo,
1954, he was rescued by a riverboat, which took him to another plane which also
crashed, prompting the newspapers to print his obituary.
By the end of his career, fearing that he was being tailed by assassins, Papa
was diagnosed as a paranoid psychotic and sent to the Meninger Clinic for
shock-treatments. En route there, he tried to walk into the propellers of a Cessna
at the Rapid City airport.
When hauling his shark-ravaged trophy marlin ashore, Santiago explained
his creator’s misfortunes not as random, nor as Joblike purgatory, but as a kind
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of divine blowback such as Icarus suffered. “You violated your luck when you
went too far outside,” the old fisherman told himself.
Many literary masters might have fared better had they used Kafka’s
hardhat. A Workers Accident Institute personal injury specialist, the surrealist
(according to industrial expert Peter Zucker) is said to have made the invention
while composing The Metamorphosis, about his alter-ego’s “hard, as it were,
armor-plated, back.” Though the sedentary safety specialist never got run over
by a minivan like King, or crowned by a skylight like Hemingway, he never
enjoyed their professional good luck. He published only a few of his stories
and ordered the rest to be burned, saying: “There will be no proof that I ever
was a writer.”
***
Books charge or change thinking. So, many novelists, essayists,
historians, poets, pamphleteers have tended to be enemies of the status quo.
Revolutionaries. Troublemakers. Stormers of the Bastille.
Since the Good Book, authors have been exiled, racked, crucified, burnt,
and beheaded by monarchs and popes.
Most take up the pen to be praised and loved. But a cursory review of
history reveals why this has not been the case and how the sword has proved
mightier than the pen in the short run. Wrote Cervantes, the tilter at windmills:
“Let none presume to tell me that the pen is preferable to the sword.”
The first step to building a Republican utopia, Plato proclaimed, was to kill
all poets. He might have included novelists but they weren’t around yet except
for the ones in the Middle East working on the Pentateuch. And the trouble this
chapbook stirred up bears no repetition.
Plato’s teacher, Socrates, was executed for “subverting the morals of
youth.” The few students who could tolerate the acropolis gadfly arranged to
rescue him from death row, but he drank the hemlock instead. Why? Because
he preferred death to exile. And, like most philosophers who wrote their own
material – Plato simply took his dictation – he had a persecution complex. And
he was fed up living without royalties.
Back in the Middle East, the apostles suffered the same fate. At his request,
Peter, a masochist with a flair for the dramatic, was crucified upside down. But
not before dictating his own memoirs to Mark. As for the fisherman’s garrulous
sidekick, Paul, the Romans -- unable to endure another chapter to the Acts, much
less another Tweet to the illiterate Corinthians – chopped off his head.
Which is what befell another wordy ancient: Cicero. But it was almost
as if Rome’s Conscience, as he was called, wanted the ax. After Caesar’s
assassination, the Republican columnist started dissing Antony. The thinskinned tyrant exiled him to Greece. Here Cicero escaped his suicidal thoughts
by blogging about such riveting topics as old age and civic duty. Meanwhile, he
vented to his penpal, Atticus: “Don’t blame me for complaining. My afflictions
surpass any you heard of earlier.”
Eventually, the senate pardoned Cicero. But no sooner had he returned
to Rome than he rattled Antony’s cage again with his op-ed Philippics in the
Tribune. When Antony’s muscle arrived at his villa, the writer barred his neck,
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but not without one last flippant aside: “There is nothing proper about what you
are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.” And so they did: at Antony’s
order, they also cut off his hands which had penned the Philippics and they
spiked them, with his head, as a collector’s set, in the forum.
These purges might have put a damper on the classic lit blogosphere had
Cicero not enjoyed a groundswell in posthumous book sales in spite of being
pedantic and boring. The Roman bloviator was only outsold by Lucian “the
Blasphemer,” who parodied Homer’s Odyssey in his A True Story, the first
Roman Sci-Fi novel, and was devoured by mad dogs before being deported to
the moon like his protagonists. 1
***
After the New York post office burned 500 copies of Ulysses in 1922, the
sequel to the Dubliners’ burn, James Joyce declared: “This is the second time
I have had the pleasure of being burned while on earth. I hope it means I shall
pass through the fires of purgatory unscathed.”
Earlier roasted writers are too numerous to name. But their variety was
impressive.
The Rennaissance’s first women’s libber, Hypatia, was lit up by a band
of monks under the command of Peter the Reader, the pope’s censor. The
Swiss YA book critic, Simeon Uriel Freudenberger, was thrown on the pyre
for arguing that William Tell never shot an apple off his son’s head. Jacobo
Bonfadio, the 16th century Italian Dominic Dunne who penned a tell-all on
the murderous Genoese bluebloods, was beheaded then his torso torched for
sodomy.
The thrifty Swiss soon devised an energy saving two-bards-with-one-stone
m.o.: burn the books with the author. Michael Servetus, the freelance religious
and drug blogger, was the debut sacrifice. The Spaniard was cooked on a slush
pile of his bestseller – On the Errors of the Trinity – with one strapped to his
leg for kindling. He had committed the unpardonable heresy of calling Christ
“the eternal Son of God,” rather than “the Son of the eternal God.” Which even
pissed off his Protestant colleague, Calvin. Adding insult to injury, Michael redpenciled John’s own gospel and overnighted the corrected copy to Switzerland.
The Calvinist was apoplectic.
“Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings,” he wrote a friend.
He added that if his rival ever came to Geneva, “I will never permit him to
depart alive!”
Troubled by the case of Servetus, John Milton wrote in “Areopagitica,”
a defense of free speech: “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s
image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of
God.” But after his Puritan protector, Oliver Cromwell, the bane of Irish writers,
died along with the Reformation, Milton was imprisoned and “Areopagitica”
burned. Also destroyed was his “Eikonoklastes” (The Iconoclast). Parliament had
commissioned Milton to write this essay rebutting King Charles I’s memoir
“Eikon Basilike” (Royal Portrait), an apology for monarchal excesses. After the
king’s essay outsold Milton’s, Cromwell had him tried for treason and beheaded.
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But the good Puritan Lord Protector allowed his majesty’s head to be sewed
back on so his son could pay his respects.
When Cromwell died of malaria, Charles II reclaimed his father’s throne,
exhumed the Puritan pamphleteer, decapitated him posthumously, and
displayed his head on a 20-foot pike above Westminster Hall. Here it remained
for the next three decades (except for a brief removal for roof maintenance in
1781) glowering at Parliamentarian scribes scurrying through the Great Plague
of London.
Spared both the Black Death and the fate of his benefactor, Milton went
on to knock Dante himself off the bestseller list with Paradise Lost. The title
of the blockbuster took on additional significance for the blind poet when his
publisher paid him £10 for all ten volumes which had cost him his eyesight and,
very nearly, his mind. He didn’t get a raise for its sunnier (and less convincing)
sequel, Paradise Regained, and soon died of kidney failure while Cromwell’s
head was still a Halloween exhibit on the roof.
Finally, taking the cake, there was the sobering tale of Theodore Reinking,
the Dane who denounced King Christian IV for losing the Thirty Years’ War to
Sweden. The crown generously gave him a choice: part with your head, or eat
your book page by page. Reinking chose the latter. Again showing Scandinavian
sympathy, his jailors provided him French sauce so the ms would go down
without requiring a Heimlich. 2
***
Most 911 writer calls in history could have been avoided if somebody had
just kept their pen dry. But writers simply can’t do that. History reminds us
that most revolutions have been triggered by bloggers, texters, and leftist op-ed
columnists. Their populist rabblerousing backfired on many when the old guard
retaliated or sociopaths usurped their utopias.
Stalin had Trotsky ice-axed in Mexico after the publication of his Diaries
in Exile and Revolution Betrayed. The Cardinal’s Mistress romance novelist,
Benito Mousalini, had his colleague, Giacomo Matteotti, done in with a
carpenter’s file after The Fascisti Exposed hit the shelves. George III would have
had Jefferson’s head for the Declaration of Independence had he not lost his
own.
Literary decapitation enjoyed a comeback during the French Revolution.
The first casualty, Jean-Paul Marat, an MD with herpes, began his writing career
with a dissertation on gonorrhea. Then he made a seamless transition to politics.
Of the royal pox afflicting the masses, the doctor wrote in his newspaper, L’Ami
du Peuple (The Friend of the People), “Perhaps we will have to cut off five or
six thousand; but even if we need to cut off twenty thousand , there is no time
for hesitation.”
Marat declared that the “patriotic” writer must also be ready for “a
miserable death on the scaffold.” He explained: “I beg my reader’s forgiveness
if I tell them about myself today…. The enemies of liberty never cease to
denigrate me and present me as a lunatic, a dreamer and madman, or monster
who delights only in destruction.” But, in the end, Marat didn’t find himself in
his colleague, Dr. Guillotine’s, apparatus, but in his own bathtub, bloody pen in
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hand and Charlotte Corday’s kitchen knife in his chest.
A year later, Robespierre, another Revolution staff writer, found himself on
the scaffold in spite of having been deified at his Festival of the Supreme Being
only weeks before. “Look at the bugger,” another journalist gasped, “it’s not
enough for him to be master, he has to be God!”3 Indeed, the “Incorruptible,”
as he was called, had always delighted in the beheadings of his colleagues. The
last had been the proud Danton whose last words to his executioner – spoken
like true Frenchman — were: “Don’t forget to show my head to the people. It’s
well worth seeing.”
Things went south for Robespierre at the next death panel party of his
writer’s group, The Committee of Public Safety. When the other members
demanded justification for the Danton drive-by, Robespierre found himself
at a loss for words. “The blood of Danton chokes him!” cried his colleagues.
Smelling the coffee, Robespierre excused himself to the men’s room of a
next-door hotel. When the gendarmes arrived, the Reign of Terror writer
shot himself in the jaw. The next morning, the Incorruptible, age 36, was
guillotined -- face up.
***
Thankfully the old Storming the Bastille joie de vivre is still alive in
today’s writer dying to give totalitarians a taste of their own medicine. “There
are palaces and prisons to attack,” Norman Mailer told the Paris Review. “One
can even succeed now and again in blowing holes in the line of the world’s
communications.”
Ken Kesey was on the same page. “It’s the job of the writer in America
to say, ‘Fuck you!’ To kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and
tempting and powerful,” he told the same magazine. “To pull the judge down
into the docket, get the person who is high down where he’s low, make him feel
what it’s like where it’s low.”
Indeed, with the dawn of the twentieth century and the founding of the
literary SPCA, Society for Prevention of Cruelty of Authors, the lot of the writer
improved. He was no longer racked, burnt, decapitated, exiled, or thrown in the
Tower – literally. Only metaphorically at the hands of publishers, critics, and
irate readers.
There are of course exceptions to the rule. After publishing The Satanic
Verses, Salman Rushdie changed his name to Joseph Anton (honoring his
favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov) and went into a witness
protection program for nine years to escape the thirsty swords of Khomeini’s
jihadists.
“Until the whole fatwā thing happened it never occurred to me that my life
was interesting enough,” the Indian novelist told the Paris Review in 2005. He
had started his career as the “Naughty but Nice” copywriter for the Ogilvy and
Mather ad agency while working on his first novel, Grimus, a sci fi fantasy.
“Really, nobody—even people who were well disposed towards me—wanted
anything to do with it.”
Though the holy warriors wanted nothing to do with Verses, his fourth
effort, there was a silver-lining to their price on his head: the fatwā earned
337
Rushdie a French Ordre de Arts Commandeurship, a British knighthood for
“services to literature,” and six-figure advances. Not to mention, serial wives
(in lieu of seventy-two virgins) who played beauties to his literary beast. His
infidel predecessors – Cicero, St. Thomas More, Sir Walter Raleigh, et al – did
not enjoy the same good luck. Nor did his Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi,
fatally stabbed in ’91; his Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, also shanked; or his
Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, who was shot.
Today the Islamic Association of Students provides both jihadists and
devout readers an opportunity to virtually decapitate the blasphemer in
their just released video game, “The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and
Implementation of his Verdict.” Had developers heard the novelist confess that
his 2010 life-affirming title, Luka and the Fire of Life, was, in fact, “inspired by
video games”? If so, perhaps they will send Rushdie a complementary copy of
“Verdict,” allowing him an opportunity to reciprocate with a signed copy of his
eagerly anticipated fatwā Hide & Seek: Joseph Anton, A Memoir.
With such an exchange, ulcerous writers and choleric readers can bury the
age old hatchet, and drink to one another’s health.
David Comfort is the author of three popular nonfiction trade titles from
Simon & Schuster. His most recent title, The Rock and Roll Book of the Dead,
was released by Citadel/ Kensington in 2009. The author’s latest short fiction
appears in The Evergreen Review and The Cortland Review. He has have been a
finalist for the Faulkner Award, Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren, America’s Best,
Narrative, and the Pushcart Prize. He is a graduate of Reed College.
1 - Robert Hendrickson, The Literary Life And Other Curiosities (New York: Viking, 1981)
2 - P. H. Ditchfield, Books Fatal To The Authors (New York: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1895)
3 - David Andress, The Terror (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)
338
FROM CHASE TO
SUPERMAN:
A THEORETICAL
TRANSFORMATION
by Chase S. Wilkinson
T
here is a conspiracy sweeping across the town of Katy, Texas and I
believe that I am caught in the middle of it. Somewhere in the time that
I was away at college, all the attractive girls in town decided to get jobs
at McDonald’s. As a frequent purveyor of the McDonald’s franchise I believe
that this staff change was designed as a direct attack on my confidence. I can
no longer relish in the sweet taste of the fifty-piece nugget meal while Miss
Hottie McPretty-Eyes is judging me as she hands me the bag. The brunette with
the cool lip ring definitely won’t give me her phone number after she watches
me sulk away to my car with my score of three McRib sandwiches. This is a
travesty and a horrific blow to both my libido and my oh so fragile ego!
The thing that legitimately angers me more than embarrassment and
lowering of my self esteem is the fact that this little joke that I’ve been putting
together for quite some time now has made me realize the frequency that I
actually go to restaurants such as McDonald’s. It is alarming. I began to notice
that it was really a problem when I would go to McDonald’s not just twice
a day but twice in a single worker’s shift. I never want to be recognized at a
McDonald’s or be known as “Mr. One of Everything”. It started to feel like it
was time for a change.
I’ve never exactly been the healthiest kid in town. While I always played
sports and had a pretty active outdoor life when I was younger I still managed
to find new and exciting ways to pack on the pounds. I ate a lot. That was kind
of my thing. I was like the left overs Godfather. No one was allowed to throw
away anything from his or her plate without first checking with me. But who can
really blame me. I grew up in New Orleans, there were several restaurant owners
in my family, the food was ridiculous. And I ate it all.
Recently that addiction to food has only made things worse. After I got to
high school, I chose to pursue theater over baseball thus collectively seizing any
strenuous physical activity that I would happen to do. I tend to stick to myself,
choosing to stay in and watch TV shows instead of going out and doing things
339
with others. It’s about as boring as it sounds. And because I’m bored I tend to
fill my time with my favorite activity, eating.
The bright side is that I am part giant and therefore have refused to stop
growing since I started despite my grandparents’ playful pleas for me to stop. So
all my extra poundage is able to spread out and hide away on my now 6’4”ish
frame. I still have a gut that I am very much ashamed of but I don’t look as bad
as I feel I would if I was have my size.
For a long time my weight was only really a private insecurity, one readily
exploited by my father. Any time I decided to spend the day watching a TV
show or made the mistake of walking out of my room without a shirt on, he was
there to make a joke or try to persuade me to do some sit-ups during my Buffy
the Vampire Slayer marathon. But recently I was faced with a new reality that
my lifestyle of all you can eat fast food buffets and hermitage is damaging to
more than just my ego.
This past December I went into the dentist for a routine check up. Growing
up, my parents were never really strict about making visits to the dentist parts
of my routine. I guess they never went to the dentist growing up so they never
thought to do it with me. Anyway, as I sat down in the dentist’s chair for the first
time in five years I was justifiably nervous. The plucky dental assistant came by
to do all the regulation pre-check up activities before the doctor came by, patient
history, blood pressure, etc.
I tried to calm my mind and get all Zen, trying to dispel fears of
unnecessary root canals and painful drilling as the assistant wrapped to blood
pressure gage around my wrist and waited. I felt the usual discomfort of having
your veins casually strangled before the buzzer went off, the wrap deflated, and
she checked the numbers.
“Oh that can’t be right.” She replied in a voice all too bubbly to have just
seen something unexpected. “That’s a little high. Are you nervous?”
“Well now I am.” I said, trying to keep my hypochondria at bay.
“How about we just try it again?”
She reapplied the blood pressure gauge and waited again. Anxiety climbed
inside of me and refused to get out until the gauge was off of my wrist. She
checked it again after it deflated and was forced to accept the result that I had
elevated blood pressure. Somewhere in the limit that is not exactly kosher for
young men at the age of nineteen.
Fear set in really quick after that experience. I tried to write the anomaly
off. I mean I did just finish a really tough quarter of school and my grandfather
had recently passed away. Surely my blood pressure was only elevated due to
the vast amount of stress that I had recently been exposed to.
Since that day I’ve had my blood pressure taken three more times. The first
two by different dental assistants who displayed the same reaction as the first
which makes me think that they were all rehearsed in training as to how to react
in situations such as mine. The last time was in a Kroger’s pharmacy last month.
I had visited the grocery store with my roommate and his girlfriend and
spotted the damned machine as we waited in line at the pharmacy counter. It
was old and worn. The stickers and instructions peeling from the wall. But I was
curious. It had been a month since the dentists. I had calmed down considerably.
Maybe nerves and stress might not be such a factor now. However the armhole
340
for the gauge looked a little slim for my big masculine arms and I was terrified
of getting stuck. So my roommate decided to test the death trap for me first to
put me at ease.
He stepped up, sat down, and slid in his arm. A few minutes later the
procedure was over and he was able to safely remove his arm without the help
of the Jaws of Life. So I sat down and slid my arm in and hit the button. I took
several deep calming breaths and meditated on the peaceful image of baby
otters. But as the blood pressure band began to tighten around my arm I began
to feel nervous. There was a very real pinch and my fingers began to go numb.
My left arm was caught in this vice grip as my arm began to slip into a state
of pain. I struggled to remain calm as I watched the device try to calculate its
specific numbers. I was loosing patience as my arm began to feel more and
more uncomfortable. I looked at George to make sure that this was supposed to
happen.
Finally the mechanical beast let go of my arm and spat out two numbers on
its red digital screen. 153 over 90. Stage one hypertension.
I removed my arm and from the stand and stared at the readings in
disbelieve. This wasn’t just stress or nerves. This was my body saying you are
killing me. My blood pressure was easily thirty points higher than where it is
safe to be.
“Cool, I’m gonna die now.” I said to George before continuing on with my
day, now thoroughly depressed.
I spent the next few weeks researching ways to lower my blood pressure
without having to start the endless cycle of medication. All my research came
back to the single, unavoidable, goddamn irritating conclusion: Stop eating so
much fatty and get your ass on a treadmill.
The solution is so easy it’s almost a joke. Eat better foods and workout.
I tell myself that all the time. It’s so easy. It’s so easy. It’s so easy. But I still
haven’t done it. I still frequent McDonald’s on a quad-weekly basis, I still get
winded from walking up the stairs in Arnold Hall, and I still am forced to hate
Tom Welling every time he takes off his shirt while I’m watching Smallville.
I’ve never been very good at self-discipline. At least when it comes to being
physical. I can force myself to write a twenty page paper in a night because I’m
bored but when I can’t seem to get myself to do more than five pushups a week.
But I have the drive. I sincerely do. I make plans and do vigorous amounts
of research. I read all the latest fitness magazines and jot down helpful new
workout plans. I have them written on dry erase boards all around my room. But
I can’t stick with anything.
I live in fear lately about what might happen to me if I don’t make some
attempt at self-improvement. I have always suffered from an irrational fear of
death, whether it be from a burglar or a drive by shooting or a tiger that escaped
from the zoo. But the beauty of irrational fear is that it is in essence implausible.
But when I read in Men’s Journal that men between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-five with high blood pressure are at a greater risk of stroke I can no
longer hide behind the defense of irrational fear. It’s very rational at this point. I
can’t cross my legs for more than a few minutes before my foot goes numb. So I
get scared every time I lay down because it’s like playing Russian Roulette with
my circulatory system.
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I recently started reading books by a writer named A.J. Jacobs. Jacobs is
an editor for Esquire who writes books and articles about these crazy social
experiments that he performs on himself. He has read the entire Encyclopedia
Britannica from A to Z and he’s lived an entire year of his according to all of the
laws laid out in the Bible, among other experiments. I find myself envying him.
This man devotes huge chunks of his life in the pursuit of trivial bullshit while
balancing a family and a demanding career. I can’t muster the discipline to get
up an hour early to go for a jog.
But during spring break I decided to take a page from his playbook and
bestow upon myself a challenge. I drafted what I call the Superman Challenge. It
is in essence a month long challenge to fulfill a set of goals from three different
categories: Health and Fitness, Literary and Creative, and Disposition. It is
designed to test and mold the body, the mind, and the soul. Basically it is my
blue print to turning myself into a superhero. And for a reclusive nerd like me,
the prospect of becoming a superhero is the exact motivation that I need to
actually take positive steps at self-improvement.
I look at myself and then I compare myself to Tom Welling, who played the
young Clark Kent himself on TV’s Smallville. And I see many similarities. More
or less we have the same body type. We are both tall, broad shoulder men who
are ridiculously attractive and irresistible to the ladies. The only difference is,
you know, fat is keeping my muscles a secret and the ladies still make fun of me
at McDonald’s. But my point is that I can look like that if I wanted to. That’s not
me being factious. That’s the honest to god truth. The way my body is designed
is to look more like Superman and less like the Michelin Man. So that’s stage
one, workout, eat better, and become Tom Welling. Easy.
Superman was also a writer and what a coincidence, that’s what I want to
do with my life! So stage two is basically designed to strengthen that area of
my life. I want to read more. And I’m talking literature, not Maxim magazine.
I want to eat Russian novels for breakfast. I’d probably get more fiber in my
diet if I went that route. I want to write more outside of class. I want to seek
out publishing. Basically I want to do all the things that I find are holding me
back from being really successful. But that whole section is more for the sake
of general self-improvement and not directly related to lowering my blood
pressure. Unless I read more medical texts. Maybe I should add that.
Finally the third category is the key on which this whole challenge rests,
disposition. I am a hopelessly negative thinker. I’m not sure if that is evident in
my self-deprecating approach to humor but it’s true. The biggest thing that has
held me back from actually making a difference in my own life has been the
fact that I deliberately tear myself down. “You’re never gonna stick to a diet.”
“You can’t look like that if you tried.” “Just eat another hamburger. If you die
at least you’ll be full.” These are the things that I tell myself every time I start to
stumble in my self-improvement plans. It’s also why I’m so stressed all the time.
I turn insecurity into internal self-hatred. I hate myself a lot of days and I get
angry with myself. The habitually stressed and angry also deal with a great deal
of blood pressure issues. I bring all this upon myself and then I tell myself that I
don’t have the power to make it better.
But I do. For the third part of the challenge I began to study Buddhism.
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It was always a fleeting curiosity for me. Since the ninth grade I have always
wanted to call myself a Buddhist but never actually knew anything about
it. I changed that recently. The biggest aspect of Buddhism is love. Not just
of a girlfriend or of Miss Hottie McPretty-Eyes that you stalk at your local
McDonald’s. But of everyone and everything. And that starts with you. It’s not
vanity or narcissism, but the profound belief that you can be the best you can be
and that you can affect the world. Through love. And that’s something I need to
be reminded of from time to time.
I was supposed to start the Superman Challenge at the beginning of spring
break. Since the starting date I have eaten at a fast food restaurant probably
fifteen or more times and worked out once, but that was a grand total of five
pushups and a few stretches. It’s shameful really. I had all of these plans, this
passionate rubric to make so much better than I thought I could be. I had to the
key to changing my life in the palm of my hands and I let it go, just like I’ve
done so many times in the past.
But the thing that makes superheroes so interesting are not all the things
that make them “super”. It’s the things that make them human. And who doesn’t
love a story of triumph. Who cares if the big villain in my piece is myself? There
is a part of me that legitimately believes that it’s not too late. There is this one
bit of hope in me that believes that I’m not a total screw-up. I’m nineteen years
old for Christ’s sake. I talk like I’m on my deathbed!
For the first time in a long time there is more hope than fear in my mind.
I believe in myself. I can turn myself into someone that people can look up to.
And isn’t that what a superhero is? Someone who inspires you to be better than
you thought you can be. It all starts by inspiring yourself. And let me tell you,
I’m really inspired right now.
Up, up, and away … to the Stairmaster.
Chase S. Wilkinson is a multi-genre writer, storyteller, and humorist.
Currently enrolled in the Writing program at Savannah College of Art and
Design, Chase strives to expand his talents across as many fields of writing as
possible. He is a successful playwright, winning many competitions including
the Houston Young Playwright Exchange at the Alley Theater in Houston. He
has also participated in The Moth’s StorySLAM events in Savannah, Georgia.
Recently, his creative non-fiction essay “My Imaginary Competition with Aron
Ralston” was published in SCAD’s Literary Journal District Quarterly.
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