Fiction

Eulogy
October 26, 2009
By Brandon Caro
Brandon Caro is a 27 year old prior service Navy Corpsman. He served 5 years on active duty, including a 12-month deployment attached to an Army advisor team in Afghanistan. He enjoys reading, listening to music, traveling outside the US among other things. He resides in Austin, TX.

      The sun shone hard and the wind bellowed in from the West on the day I first killed a man. In a more hospitable climate, a gust of wind through the tree tops and down across the red earthen terrain would perhaps have offered a welcomed sigh of relief to the poor fools out on the line that day, sauntering through the nearly uninhabitable landscape of the Southwest Asian Steppe. But the cruel Afghan summer heat turned even the gentlest breeze into a suffocating wave of hot air and filth. The heat alone might have been enough to drive a man mad, or at least put him out of his suffering. I remember one day when the sun was particularly fierce, we had one guy fall out of formation and start convulsing. He was promptly flown out on a MEDEVAC and I never saw him again.
      After so many days, and weeks and months, so many birthdays and anniversaries and Halloweens and Mardi Gras spent toiling in the inferno, minds begin to wander. Eventually time stagnates, and what ensues is a seamless, miserable experience that stretches out on all sides, in all directions until the misery is palpable.
      When I first landed in country, my eyes widened and my breath was taken from me. The physical beauty of the place was overwhelming. The winter had just taken hold, and snow capped mountains haunted the perimeter of the airstrip. I remember stepping off the C17 and walking out onto the Tarmac unable to keep from spinning around in circles. The mountains went on indefinitely, and surrounded Bagram Airforce Base just as they had when the Russians were there, and for centuries and centuries before that I suppose. The air was clean and felt pure going in, getting lost for a moment, and then returning to the early morning twilight in a frosty huff. I was enchanted. It didn't take long, of course, for the glow to fade into shadows and for reality to sink down, deep down into my abdomen, the sinking feeling of a nightmare waiting to happen, content to wait for as long as it takes, but always there within arms reach. Within a few weeks it was impossible to tell where the dream had ended and the nightmare began.
     A series of very close calls had occurred during my tenure in the central province of Kabul, but I had not yet seen any blood. The Afghan "government" was heavily defended within the capital city,  making enemy activity minimal, and relatively ineffective. So by the time I pushed out east to the lawless province of Kunar, which shared a border with Pakistan, and was notorious for harboring scores of enemy Taliban and Al Queda fighters, my situational awareness had eroded almost entirely.
     Within minutes of our arrival at our new FOB, (Forward Operating Base) one of the bridges we had crossed on our way in was destroyed by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device.) It had been meant for us, but the blasting caps had failed to go off at the opportune moment. The shoddy work and ill-timed attack were indicative of a second or third tier Taliban sponsored group struggling to find competent, experienced operatives that were willing to bring the fight to the Americans. Most of their top shelf commanders and soldiers had been killed off during the invasion, and in the short months that followed. It had been several years since then, and they were no where near where they needed to be if they really wanted to win this thing. Most of the guys we were relieving had seen intense combat in the Iraqi cities of Falluja and Ramadi. They laughed off the incident and finished loading their gear into their trucks. I laughed too. Then I went inside the hooch, unpacked my gear and changed my underwear
     The nagging fear of death and/or dismemberment is an exhausting weight to tote around on a daily basis, especially when any sign of incompetence or hesitation on the part of a soldier, (or sailor, as the case may be) will permanently compromise his credibility among his brothers in arms. As a combat medic, for me, this only intensified the pressure. It was summer now, and our new base was considerably closer to sea level and saw temperatures that topped out at around 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and didn't drop below 100 for at least six months. I'm not really sure when I fell off the grid; when my consciousness and unconsciousness began trading places. There are a few months sandwiched in the middle of the combined twelve I spent in country that seemed to have run off on me. The things I do recall are all strewn together and not in any particular order. To this day, it is difficult for me to recall even the trivial moments; something as banal as Sgt Rago telling me about how he was planning on suing his ex-wife for custody of his eight year old son Patrick, without the flash flood of memories and fragments of conversations with old friends streaming through my scatter-brain, as though they were a waking dream, completely self-governed and wildly unpredictable. But I don't think I'll ever forget that day.
     I think most people have an unclear perception of what really goes on in country. The lion's share of unnatural deaths and brutalities occur during sporadic skirmishes that often begin with an improvised explosive device, and usually don't last longer than a few minutes. There are often great lulls in violence between these instances that inspire unimaginable boredom for which the only remedy is constant internet porn and pirated DVDs of HBO's original series. There really is nothing quite like watching a 19-year-old private or private first class stroll over to a porto-potty in full battle rattle, laptop in toe, and emerge a few minutes later in a brazen sweat with a look of much need relief on his soft face. It was always the little things that got us through. We were not hit everyday, or even every other day for that matter, and it was rare that anyone on our team actually fired his weapon in combat, even though we all wrote each other up for awards that we ourselves signed off on. When we did get hit by the Taliban or Al Qaeda or whomever, by the time we'd turn around to hit back, they'd be long gone; evanesced into the red earth and hot sun.  The man I killed, however, was not so fortunate. He might have been as young as 16, and was so thin, that it only took one of us to throw him into the humvee to be evaluated for medical care. He was spotted near the site of an IED that had ripped through the belly of an up-armored truck, killing one US Army Soldier, and seriously wounding two others. Amidst the chaos that broke out in the wake of the explosion, one of our soldiers spotted what looked like a silhouette leaping up from a ditch in the road and making its way for the wooded high ground nearby. He put three 5.56 rounds through the center mass of that figure, and the figure abruptly stopped running. The teenaged boy writhed around on the ground in terrible agony for a while and shouted what I imagined were obscenities in his native tongue. After we finished loading our dead and wounded onto the trucks that had not been damaged by the blast, we secured the area and headed toward the trembling body just up the hill. Two of the rounds had entered and exited the boy's midsection, while the third had grazed his left arm. He was bleeding profusely and had clearly gone into shock. The proper procedure would have been to wrap up the abdominal evisceration to his stomach, tie a tourniquet two inches above the wound to his left arm, and insert an IV with the blood-volume solution Hextend. His fragile level of consciousness contraindicated the administration of morphine. I was the only medic on scene, so the task of looking over his wounds fell to me. But I just looked at the poor kid, who was clearly unarmed, and perhaps not even responsible for the attack altogether. He was so far gone, he probably wouldn't have survived the ride back to base anyway, but I made no effort to treat any of his injuries. Instead I just stared at him, strangling him with my eyes. And though it was not my finger that had pulled the trigger and ended his life, when I watched the last signs of consciousness trail away from his soft face, that boy murdered the best part of me.


Voodoo Dolls
October 29, 2009
By Kipp Wessel
Kipp Wessel’s short fiction has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Big Sky Journal, CutBank and other publications. He was recipient of a Fiction Fellowship at the University of Montana where he earned is M.F.A.  He is at work on a novel.
Joey used to compare the two of them to starlings – ruckus birds from a distance, but up close, creatures of imaginative beauty – their meandering rain kissed flecks of white against purple iridescent wings like stars along a dark shoreline.
Post punk, post goth, post coital, Joey and Amanda’s connection had merged into one mostly of friendship.  Previously, though, it had traversed a muddy ascent --  turbulent nights and long, wandering mornings – tangles in the same mess of sheets, their moist fingers tracing one another’s tattoos – Amanda’s ankle-twisted viper and the star and moon welting the small of her back, Joey’s nighthawk wings stenciled along his shoulder blades, blue feathers nested in a spiral stream towards his wrist.  They woke in soft murmurs in each other’s arms, always feeling as though they had fallen a thousand miles from sky, gravity pooling in their fists and emptying through the seams of their laced fingers.
In truth, their romantic love was too much for either of them to bear.  So much alike, they resembled twins of one another, their dark, lilting hair, smoldered eyes, studs and rings through ears, cheeks and lips, the slow shuffle they each made toward new things, the nonplussed look they seemed to perfect, disheveled and wavering, and the slow rhythm of their hearts, falling in syncopated cadence in the same tentative hold of attention, the simple things that lighted against and bruised them in soft, permanent marks.  They were too much alike to merge romantically permanently.  It was as if they risked melting into a single being, one becoming the shadow behind the other, shadows stretching farther into the distance as the sun receded.  By keeping each other whole, they instead settled on friendship.
Lately, their friendship revolved around the simple goal of keeping Amanda’s heart afloat following the sudden crush of a more recent romantic entanglement.  Joey was well aware of Amanda’s heartbreak, the smart she clutched deep, the cadence of storms that muted her spirit in soft, stretching whispers, blue mornings that lasted and spilled across her floor and pulled on her sleeve and weighed her down until mid-afternoon.
Donnie was a musician Amanda met a few months after she and Joey had broken up, and he had quickly had moved in with her.  He was a drummer who said little, slept as late as Amanda did, liked drawing faces in the yokes of eggs as they sputtered across a frying pan, and he disappeared after five months of being with Amanda – leaving a wound, for some reason, that sunk her lower than she had sunk ever in her past.
“These things are utterly conquerable,” offered Joey.  “And I’ve a plan as simple as the sputter of a star falling through sky.  Just as pretty.  Just as simple.  As simple as rain.”
Joey steeped black tea in Amanda’s kitchenette while she lay in crumpled sheets, her bent knee exposed and extended over the rim of mattress.  Her eyes were pools of mascara.  She watched Joey and held a half smoked cigarette in her lips, her eyes partly hoisted lids.
“What you need…what we both need is a field trip.”  Joey rescued the bleeding tea bags from steaming mugs.  “I’m buying us train tickets to New Orleans.  Around the corner of Bourbon Street is a place we can buy voodoo dolls – real live voodoo dolls with stitched teeth and soft hair.  And with a simple, twisting of pins, we’ll weigh down the curtains of this heartbreak of yours.”
“Voodoo dolls?” Amanda questioned.
“This thing has you by the ears like Lucifer,” said Joey.  In two soft, wet landings, he dropped the tea bags into Amanda’s sink and walked the tea mugs to her bed.  “Take a long look at Amanda Carmichael.  Her eyes are a raccoon’s.  She’s tangled in her sheets until 2 pm every day and drowning in fourteen hours of daily sleep.  Whatever the depth of this ghost, we’ll go find something that will ride it soundly out of town – your own personal voodoo lynch mob.  My feeling is it’s worth a shot.”
“I’m starving,” said Amanda, rooting for a new cigarette through her bedside collection of magazines and half-read novels folded like clamshells on the floor.  “I feel like eggs.  Eggs smothered in sour cream and Tobasco.”
“Tobasco hails from Louisiana,” said Joey, tossing her a Lucky Strike.  “See.  You crave the Dixie south.  Your heart is crawfish stew waiting for Creole sauce, a perfect rue.”
Amanda inhaled huge gulps of smoke and exhaled long, stretching ghosts.  “I’m afraid of the way you are always searching for solutions,” she said.  “Sometimes things just are followed by what will be.”  She tucked her knees into her chest and pressed her head into the deep pit of pillows, her eyelids heavy and dark, two inching guillotines, as she stared at the growing ash at the end of her lit cigarette.
Joey filtered through her closet and withdrew an old, leather suitcase.  He set it on the floor and popped the latches.  He pulled free a twisted leather whip, a handful of garters and a pair of handcuffs.  “Ooh, la, la,” he said.  “Me and you, we gonna have some fun on the bayou.”  He stretched the whip out beneath his chin and grinned the teeth of Cheshire Cat.
Amanda, wordless, pushed the smoldered cigarette between her lips and inhaled all the life yet buried within it before stabbing it against the floor.
“It’s a simple vacation, Amanda,” said Joey.  “One long overdue.  And there might be something to this Cajun black magic, some funky spell fueled by Dixieland jazz, accordion zydeco and Creole hussenfras…your eyes have been clenched shut forever and it’s leaving a permanent hurt across the arc of your life.  I’m tired of seeing you so sad, your heart full of mope; let’s just try this.”
With a sharp flick of the wrist, he snapped the whip across the room and brought a lamp down with a halting crash. Hunks of porcelain danced across her floor like chiclets.  “Sorry about that. I’ll be by this afternoon to whisk us to the train station.  Be ready,” he said on his way out the door.

Joey drove an ice-cream truck in the summers.  It was his uncle’s franchise, and he drove slowly enough through parks and near public pools and clustered housing projects, tinkling, spry music seeping past the speaker bolted to the van’s roof as he pulled over to huddled groupings of anxious children with sweaty dollar bills clenched in their fists.  Joey grinned while handing out neon green, purple and yellow popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and frozen dipped cones sprinkled with chopped walnuts.
With his tattooed shoulders and arms, shaggy, tangled hair and studs through cheeks and lips, children seemed to embrace him as sort of a cartoon character.  The transition was easier for them than it was for their parents and Joey’s sales improved dramatically when the children approached him unchaperoned.  More than a few occasions, Joey observed a child being yanked from line for fear, he imagined, he was pushing more than frozen cream, juice and custard to neighborhood youth.
Lately, Joey had been taking liberties with his sales territory, speeding through his normal route and then looping past a municipal park and wading pool across town.  He pooled the additional sales commission into his travel fund for New Orleans – a destination Joey had in mind for some time.  The end of August, Joey gunned the engine and pushed bomb pops and push-ups as though they were methamphetamines, hoping to swell as much additional pocket money as he could before labor day and the official close of his circuitous summer career.
Joey’s push of ambition was tempered by his continual and inherent need to pause.  As often as he drove himself to exceed his daily sales, he would also give whole sunny afternoons away, the contents of his van giving into melt, a soup of cream and popsicle dew, as he lay yards away, his back against soft summer grass.  He stared up into the leafy oaks, watching gray squirrels leap from limb to limb and scramble through leaf clusters, the squirrels’ white bellies exposed to him below.  Joey was especially fond of this past-time as the summer wore on and the first rash of acorns bloomed – he loved watching the squirrels pounce on new acorn bouquets, loved watching them sit on their haunches and twist acorns from acorn caps and gnaw on them while others hailed to the earth where they were later retrieved and furiously pushed into the soft soil for winter with hunched squirrel shoulders.
The scramble of squirrels in acorns held the same virtue for Joey as a rocked cradle for an infant – momentary rests beneath fluttering oaks became whole afternoon naps while the shadows of the tree limbs and butterflies stretched longer and longer across his still body and the warm lawn.

Amanda was barely awake as their Amtrak car sped over the rail through Iowa.  She had not yet completely bought into the reason behind the voyage, having little faith in the supernatural when it came to matters of the heart, but had given into a “what the fuck” when Joey packed her bag and pushed her into a taxi cab outside her apartment.  She had gotten used to letting Joey take the lead some time ago.  His was often the stronger voice.
As their tv screen-like train window filled with stretching, open field, rolling green hills and swaying corn stalks, Amanda lit a cigarette with the smoldering butt end of another while Joey sat hypnotized by the rhythmic, unified sway of passenger heads.
“He had a heart of gold and feet of clay,” she said, exhaling a long stream of menthol.
Joey looked at her.
“Donnie,” she answered.
Joey nodded, familiar with her need to analyze her most recent former lover – the vandal of her broken heart.
“Stellar intentions.  Horrible carry through.”
“In defense of Donnie,” said Joey.  “Relationships are dives we take into beautiful pools of water.  Once in the heart of the pool, sometimes we panic and head back toward the concrete perimeter.”
“So you’re saying panic is the primary reason Donnie screwed up my heart?”
“The reasons for leaving a relationship are probably as random as stars and sand.  Pretty much always, panic figures into the ending somewhere.   Or the opposite of panic, which is pretty much worse for all parties involved.”
Amanda tangled her arms like snakes and craned her head into the aisle.  “Check out that fat kid’s head up there,” she said, and she and Joey smiled as they watched the child’s wide head nod and wave in sync with the swaying train’s hurry over rail.
“I’ll be more at ease when I stop assessing the girth of a child against how many bomb pops they might consume,” said Joey.
Later, as Joey was returning from the dining car with sandwiches for himself and Amanda, deviled ham and turkey and swiss, two sandwiches made with perfectly square bread slices and wrapped so tightly in cellophane, Joey felt he could bounce them off the floor, he paused in the windy channel connecting two cars and stared at the speeding gravel and rock he spied through a seam in the channel.  Soft, cool streams of wind puckered his t-shirt and tousled his hair and Joey imagined he could smell the warmth of the soil.  The rush of train hurdling through pasture and open field thrilled him.  He felt himself leaning into the sweet, stretching promise of journey and later that night, as Amanda softly snored, her mouth parted and eyelids soft blue, Joey stared at the burning stars and speeding purple terrain and felt as close as ever to the warm opening of tears.

Sometimes, on the hottest days of summer, days of unclouded sun and ninety plus degrees, Joey would take a break from his route and wander over to the perimeter of the public pool and dip his legs into the water.  Often he would stand poolside, staring at the pattern of snake-like ribbon waves and ripples slithering across the concrete floor and at the soft bodies of children in bright red, gold and blue swimsuits, their shoulders glistening, their movements terse and sudden while their parents, a line of mothers reclining in chairs, their expressions hidden by sunglasses and sunblock, ruled the perimeter.  Joey thought the pool a beautiful cache of promise, the children untold ingots, and he found his gaze moving from child to child, observing each expression and wondering the story their lives might unfold.
He would sit and immerse his legs into the water, feeling the cool from the bend of the knees down, and he’d wiggle his toes and imagine himself diving headfirst, his arms extended, past the kicking short legs and soft bones of children, deep into the bluest depth of pool, swimming toward remove with the arcing grace of a bird in flight.

The marble-topped tables outside Café du Monde were slick from morning drizzle.  What looked to be the morning manager was busy toweling off chairs and the tables and Joey and Amanda found a dry set and placed their chicory coffee and beignets on the table and sat.  Weary, still, from their train journey, their eyelids as heavy as tree limbs, they hadn’t yet fully realized their place in the heart of New Orleans.
Amanda fell instantly in love with her beignet, a piping hot wedge of nutmeggy doughnut dusted with powered sugar.  She dunked it into her au lait and gobbed the sweet, soggy mass.
“What now?” asked Amanda.  “Dixieland jazz at Preservation Hall?  Crawfish gumbo and zydeco?  Should I walk down Bourbon Street shirtless and collect a wheelbarrow of beads?”  She lodged a hunk of au lait-soaked beignet into her mouth; a dribble of coffee ran the length of her chin.
“Sounds like the right itinerary,” said Joey.  “But first we need to find a cheap hotel and set up base camp.”
A mime, a short man in black stretch pants, striped shirt and white face and black lips approached their table and began a strange, sad-faced routine, pulling imaginary rope, climbing imaginary stairs and running in place in slow motion, each of his moves pronounced and drawn, and Joey politely attempted to shoe him away, motioning silently with his hands, realizing, mid-motion, he was miming his own communication.
The mime was inspired by Joey’s attempt to thwart his act and began a mock crying fit, a silent, pained expression with his clenched fists beneath his eyes followed by kneeling and begging for reversed judgment.  When this attempt was greeted by solitary cold stares, the mime leapt to his feet and mocked a fighting pose, raising his clenched, white Mickey Mouse gloves and circling Joey and Amanda’s table with flitting, Charlie Chaplin feet.
Joey waited for this scene to end.  And when it didn’t, he stood and soundly punched the mute so hard the street entertainer was authentically silent a long while after his body hit the concrete beneath his black ballet slipper shoes.

Amanda waited patiently in the New Orleans police station lobby, her body scrunched in a corner of a wood bench while she chewed blackjack chewing gum and listened to the colorful accents of the flurry of characters parading past her while the police staff processed Joey’s paperwork and settled the charges.
“You pummeled Mick the Mute,” said the processing officer as Joey leaned his chest against the counter, his hands cuffed behind him, hands joined like a bird’s wings.  “Not twenty minutes in town and already you’ve pummeled one of our mimes.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” said Joey.  “I wish I hadn’t.”
Of course, Joey also felt hesitation in admitting the incident was completely his fault and muttered something about “public harassment self defense” which was greeted with a roll of the eyes from Officer Pinsonat.  But, too, Joey in his lean, 140 pound wiry frame hardly seemed like a general public threat.
Mick watched Joey’s arraignment through the glass window of a separate retaining room.  As Joey and the arresting officers turned their heads toward him, Mick mimed his own recovery – a short routine that began with him touching his jaw and moving it back and forth as if to see if it were in one piece and culminated with a strange, flickering pattern he made above his head with fluttering fingers that Joey could only imagine was meant to resemble post-trauma stars.
“What the hell,” said the officer.  “I probably would have decked him, too.”
Lucky for Joey, his slate was clean – no priors.  He was held for several hours while checks were run.  The officers barely looked amused when Joey offered to make up for his transgressions by donating money to the underprivileged mime fund.  “There must be some charity for those mimes who can’t keep silent or get out of the imaginary boxes they create.”
Despite the failures at wit, Mick the Mime dropped all charges, an ultimate act of mime graciousness, and Joey was free to leave with nothing more than a verbal warning.
“Make the remainder of your visit here unremarkable,” offered Officer Pinsonat as Joey’s cuffs were released.  Amanda smiled at Joey broadly as he rubbed his wrists, her lips and tongue tinged black from the licorice chewing gum, her eyes glistening.
“Now what do we get to do for fun?” she asked.  “The bones of those seventy year old musicians at Preservation Hall are as brittle as popsicle sticks.  Want to kick some Dixieland butt?”
“Please tell me these comments aren’t going to percolate through our entire vacation.”
“Yep,” confirmed Amanda.  “This fish is a keeper.”
Joey smiled, joyful at seeing Amanda fully woken and engaged for the first time in some while, her luminous smile easily transcending the humility following satire.

Leaning into the dark wood barstools at Pat O’s on Bourbon Street, devouring the soft, earthy hours of afternoon, quieting the ennui of being tourists, Joey decided “the hurricane” was a drink appropriately named – the sweet, frozen concoction of sugar, rum and ice.  Like their namesake, the hurricane’s initial introduction is pretty and soundly leads to ruinous terrain.  Joey and Amanda slogged down a series of hurricanes, wrapping napkins around them and setting empty glasses in a line.
“Being in a new city does have its happier advantages,” said Amanda.  “Distraction is the main thing – I’m hardly thinking about my own personal web of trials anymore.”
Joey ran his tongue over his cold lips – they felt like smooth rubber.  “Just don’t forget the main purpose of this trip is exorcism.  We’re gonna get us some of that old black magic and pummel your ghosts good and sound.”
“You actually believe in that solution, don’t you?”
“Voodoo dolls,” said Joey.  “They make ‘em good here.  The spirit of the bayou swarms up and tangles our hair.  But first we gotta get ourselves into a trance-like state so the magic is less intimidated to pour into our souls.  One more hurricane and we lift the storm warning.”
They wended down Bourbon Street like paired buoys in a windy bay, bouncing into one another, leaning and lurching.  They pointed into a Cajun nightclub where the whirling accordion sound of zydeco permeated in arcs and gashes.  They pointed into strip clubs where fully naked women stretched across countertops with mirrors above them, a display not unlike the butcher counter at the corner grocery.  They stopped into a tattoo parlor and Amanda plunked down thirty-five dollars on the counter and chose a bluebird in a ball of flame and had it stenciled on her calf as she and Joey slowly gained momentum towards sobriety.
Weary still from the hurricane/tattoo combination, Joey and Amanda wandered into the Acme Oyster House and ordered a plate of shucked oysters, quickly learning the trick of tipping the oyster shucker prior to their order and getting the larger prospects in return – gray, cold and wet on half shells.  They dotted each oyster with Tobasco before gulping them down whole and silently considering their next move as the world seemed to get prettier by the inch.


Amanda leaned into Joey with a sudden sense of urgency.  “I’m not sure if the alcohol or oysters are good for the tattoo.  Or maybe the tattoo isn’t so embracing the oysters and alcohol.  Either way,” said Amanda.  “I have this butterflies in my stomach top of the double ferris wheel feeling that there’s not much below me but a huge, impending fall.”
Joey hurried his attempts to unlock the door at the small cabin he had rented, a six by eight foot thirty-five dollar a night dwelling at the St. Charles Guest House on Prytania Street in the lower Garden District.  “Our humble chateau,” he said, ushering Amanda and her bags in.  She weaved her way to the bed, collapsed, overwhelmed by travel, hurricanes, tattoos and oysters in scattered order.
Joey helped her remove her shoes and sundress.  With a long, smooth pull, he stripped off her chartreuse tights and tucked her beneath a pile of worn, chenille blankets.  He brought her a glass of water, lifted her head to the glass and made her drink the entire contents.  She smacked her lips and scrunched her pillows.  In a moment, she was asleep; her eyes were like stitches.
Joey watched Amanda sleeping a while – observing the slow rise and fall of her chest, the pulse along her pale, soft neck.  In the silence, he felt more alone and closer to sadness.  He pushed the front door slightly ajar and peered up at the stars and listened to the traffic.  In a moment, he was wandering the Garden District, following Washington Avenue South, through the Irish Channel and all the way to the wharves.  He stood for a long while just staring at the wide, dark brown Mississippi, muddy in the low yellow moon.  He skipped stones, distorting the moon on water and began to feel the miles between where he stood and home like slow moving clouds.
Joey wandered the streets, paying no attention to direction or where he was heading.  He ended up at the Ponchartrain Hotel on St. Charles Avenue and wandered into the Bayou Bar, an earthen room of brick, wildlife canvas murals and wood as dark as steeped black tea. Taking a tip from the menu card, Joey ordered a Sazerac – a local drink mixed with rye, bitters, lemon and ice – all stirred together in a glass rinsed with aniseed liquor.  After he downed his first, he began to line the empty glasses the length of his sleeve.
“Sazerac is a poet,” he told the well-dressed, distinguished patron to his right.
“You’ll never guess who’s throwing a party on the twelfth floor,” said the stranger.
“Sazerac?”
“Merv Griffin.”
“No kidding.”  Joey half remembered the physical appearance of Merv Griffin from the man’s days as a celebrity talk show host – a young, gray haired man with colorfully lined sports coats and who sang cute songs like “My What a Lovely Pair of Cocoanuts” or something close.  Drawn to the idea of mingling with celebrities, Joey held his half consumed glass of sazerac like an eagle clutches a snake – an unthwarted commitment against letting go – and he headed toward the elevator and the twelfth floor.  There, he wandered the hall until he heard the dull rumble of a party, waited outside until the door parted, and he merged himself amongst the clattering throng of party guests, each clutching a beverage, many looking windswept as partygoers look near dawn.
As he had learned since childhood, Joey blended so successfully into the background, he failed to receive notice.  Famished, he saddled up alongside a disheveled buffet – scattered deviled eggs, luke cold rumaki, oysters on the half shell, and he helped himself to a cheese blintz, the shape of a new moon.  It was smooth and sweet and creamy and went down in a single swallow.
“You must try the raspberry tart,” urged a deep voice behind him.
“I must.  I must,” answered Joey, hiding momentarily behind the last gulp of his Sazerac.  “Another poet murdered,” he mumbled.
Pretty much then, Joey felt himself sinking beneath the salty surface of the present.  He half remembered finding a soft armchair in the dark corner of the room.  And he half remembered an image from the woods, a distant memory from his childhood in northern Wisconsin, a memory alien from this huddled, murmuring gather of strangers in Louisiana.  In memory, Joey had been hiking through the woods, trying to catch up to his brother who had dashed off ahead of him, his brother’s red boots flickering through sugar maples and balsam as he ran.  Out of breath, Joey stopped.  With a thunder through the leaves, an eight point deer cut past Joey, not eight feet from where Joey stood.  The buck’s eyes were wet saucers as he caught sight and scent of Joey – Joey had never seen so much exposed white in another living creature’s pair of eyes.
The deer’s breathing was loud, raspy.  Joey remembered the surging sound of the deer’s lungs and then the fast galloping steps of the deer receding into the distance.
As the memory faded, Joey became hypnotized by the silky, billowing balcony curtains at the corner of the party.  He remembered licking the sweet tailings of blintz at the corners of his mouth as he watched the curtains part and dance like ghosts.  He thought of nothing else.


When Joey woke, his head throbbed.  He found himself tucked into smooth linens of a bed in a small room at the Pontchartrain Hotel, the location given away by the stationary found in the night table drawer.  The orange morning crept through the parted curtains like a lithe cat, its feet moving softly over window ledge.
Joey showered and dried his hair with a towel while stuffing the pretty bottles of complimentary shampoo, mouthwash and body lotion into his jeans pocket.  He discovered a handwritten note on the coffee table:  “Thank you for attending my party.  And thank you, in advance, for checking yourself out of this complimentary room by 11 a.m. – M.G.”
Joey tucked the crisp, white note into his pocket and made his way back into the streets of the Garden District.  The emerging sun, streaming past the spiraling Spanish moss – ragged, gray streamers that hung from leaning oaks, felt good against his face and neck.
When he found his original hotel cabin, he wasn’t surprised to discover Amanda sleeping soundly, her usual refusal to emerge from the covers prior to noon.  He slipped into the warm bed sheets and held her and with the momentum borne from some newfound sadness, he slowly removed her tank top and underwear and he and Amanda wordlessly began a slow, soft merging into one another as the gold sunlight inched carefully across their room.

Their hands clasping hot, steaming paper cups of café au lait from Café du Monde, Joey and Amanda wandered along the riverfront promenade named Moonwalk, passing iron benches and gazing out at the Mississippi River Bridge and at the seagulls that dove like stones into the chocolate, swirling river eddies, emerging with writhing catfish in their beaks, awkwardly breaking into flight in dips and sharp angles.
“I slept like a dog last night,” said Amanda.
“Log, I think, Mandie.”
“?”
“It’s work like a dog, sleep like a log….Sleep like a dog means you turned in circles all night, chasing your tail.”
She whispered a long line of steam across her coffee.  “I slept like a loggy dog.”
Joey thought of telling Amanda of his midnight adventure romping through the party thrown by a world famous talk show host, but instead remained silent on the issue.
“I’m feeling better,” said Amanda.  “Clouds lifting.  You were right about taking me here.  Something about pooling of new miles erasing the old ones.  I feel less worse about Donnie here.”
They watched the river silently, the swirling gulls and pitching, eddied current.
They held hands as they walked up St. Ann Street, past Jackson Square framed by the St. Louis Cathedral and its tall steeples, the cavalier Andrew Jackson statue in the foreground – the general astride a rearing horse, hoofing at clouds.
“The Union must and shall be preserved,” said Joey, reading the statue inscription aloud.  “I’d like to say the same about my head.”
They strolled past St. Anthony’s Garden and the marble Sacred Heart of Jesus statue.  They passed huddled brick, plaster and stucco buildings with tiled roofs, some that looked as though they were built in Spain, some in France and some in the Caribbean and transported by hurricane, a jumble of odd shapes and contrasting sizes, steep pitched roofs and tall dormer windows, louvered shutters and wrought iron balconies, filigree fences and fluted columns.
At Bourbon Street, they veered right and the usually swarming sidewalks, the daiquiri stalls and “French styled” entertainment halls, were quiet in the daylight.  Around the corner, at Dumaine and Bourbon, Amanda and Joey paused in front of the Historic Voodoo Museum.  “This is the reason for our entire, misguided journey,” said Joey.
They entered the odd building slowly, drumming and chanting murmuring from speakers, a fifteen foot python curled in the corner of a large plexiglass tank and cluttered shelves of ceremonial objects, mysterious potions called gris-gris, stark, folk art paintings and witchcraft knick-knacks and polliwogs.  Snatching a brochure, Joey read Amanda the museum’s list of tours:  “French Quarter cemetery and voodoo tours, nightly undead tours and van trips to haunted swamps and plantations… Hey, these people don’t kid around.”
“I forget whether we’re here to purchase dolls or potions,” said Amanda as she plucked a bag of gris-gris, a packet of roots, oils and herbs, all authenticated by voodoo practitioners, the ol’ black magic seal of approval.
“Voodoo dolls, Mandie,” answered Joey.  He pulled her toward the shelves of colorful dolls.  “This is your message from Garcia, your holy grail and holy ghost, your secret map to sunken treasure…this is your hidden seam behind the stars.”
“You believe in this stuff?”
“I believe it’s time to pounce the Donnie Logerston blues, ceremoniously or otherwise.  If this hocus pocus helped elevate African slaves above the fierce injustice of the plantation, it ought to have a shot at kneecapping this broken hold Donnie has over you.”
Amanda perused the cluttered line of moss dolls, clay faced dolls, juju dolls covered in colorful beads, dolls made of straw, dressed in little felt suits and skeleton headed dolls wearing top hats.  Her favorite was the “No Mo’ Blues Man Doll,” a small, happy looking figure in a blue felt suit said to help chase the blues away.  But she settled on the “Mister Man Doll,” a white cloth doll with mismatched button eyes, stitched mouth and an obvious endowment, marked with a red “x” and accentuated by dark thread pubic hair and two red fuzz balls.
Joey surmised immediately where Amanda aimed to settle the first pins.
“That’ll work,” said Joey, sifting two ten dollar bills from his wallet.
With Donnie doll in hand and urged by the advice of the voodoo specialist behind the museum counter, Joey and Amanda wandered St. Louis Cemetery Number One, north of the museum, a cluttered, world worn cemetery of sloping marble mausolea.  They paused at Marie Laveau’s tomb, the tomb of a woman described at the museum as the “voodoo queen,” a woman of the 1800’s who prepared gris-gris for wealthy Creoles, Americans and Africans.  Marked by a myriad of brick-dust crosses engraved against the crumbling tomb, surrounded by candles, plastic flowers, color beads and rum bottles, Joey commented, “She must be the Jim Morrison of voodoo or something,” and they wandered through the Italian Benevolent Society mausoleum, a massive, circular, marble structure, adorned with a cross and angels and a headless Statue of Charity said to have been decapitated by an LSD-marred Dennis Hopper during the filming of “Easy Rider.”
“Another sacrifice of art for the sake of cinema,” said Joey while the two of them stared at the headless torso.  “Method acting takes its toll.”
They wandered silently through the cluttered field of leaning crosses and worn gravestones.  Exhausted from their walking and the endless reminder of mortality, Joey and Amanda knelt and then sat, leaning their backs against the bulging tomb of Charles Everett Metairie, 1809-1834.  The sun bled low through the trees and cast long shadows of leaning graves.  The wind was soft.
“Do you ever feel like you’re not paying attention?” asked Amanda, turning her head toward Joey, her voodoo doll clutched on her lap.
“Always,” said Joey, gazing at the stretching shadows and the graves, awkwardly spaced and leaning like bad teeth.
“Or wonder if you should be?” she added.
“Sometimes simple truth can radiate like a sonofabitch,” answered Joey.  “No one really wants to spend their days staring mortality in the teeth.  Maybe that’s why Hopper decapitated the statue back there…better to behead than to become the beheaded.”
Amanda lifted her voodoo doll and ran her fingertips over its stitched teeth.  “Where do I stick the god damned pins?” she asked, removing them from their packet.
“I think you just follow your instincts on this, Mandie,” said Joey.
One after the other, Amanda inserted every last pin into the doll, including the extra packets of pins she had covertly pocketed.  In mere moments, Amanda’s Donnie voodoo doll had transformed into a silver porcupine, punctured in each region of his body, nearly every open space.  She lifted him with her slightly bloodied hand, wounded from a few more motivated pushes of pins, and set him near the leaning grave tablet of Charles Everett Metairie.  Tears ran the length of her face, and when she set the doll against the earth, she smiled and exhaled a laugh, a tiny snot bubble swiftly blooming from her nostril, and she wiped it away, sniffling.
“I think that pretty soundly touches all bases,” said Joey, softly rubbing his own shoulders.  “God rest his soul.”
“Yep,” said Amanda.  She rested her head in Joey’s lap.  Joey ran his fingers through her hair and caressed her neck.  The wind tousled the leaves of crepe myrtle trees at the perimeter of the graveyard.
“Do you feel any different?” asked Joey.
“I feel tired,” she said.  “I feel like my heart and body are creeping over the horizon line like a lead moon and there’s not enough sleep in the world to fill my body and breathe it back to life.  I feel like each consecutive breath begs the question: ‘why?’.  And the twisting, starry milky way above our heads is its permanent question mark.”
Joey smiled.  “Keep in mind, Amanda.  You are continually mourning a man who admitted until he reached adulthood, he believed peaches to be mammals.”  He ran the tips of his fingers over her lips and felt her mouth curve into a tight smile, her cheeks swelling.
  “Do you know what I really think, Amanda?  I think you’re smarter than this.  I think you have a world of energy inside you, an untapped, endless supply and you’ve fallen against a momentary glitch of heartbreak as an excuse to pretend it’s not there.”
She grabbed his hand and kissed it.  “Don’t sully my well-worn reputation,” she said.
Joey stood and wandered a few steps between grave markers.  He turned to her and said, “Come here,” and  Amanda followed him through the worn paths of the yard, toward a framing hill.  Joey took Amanda’s hand and drew her toward him, backing her against his chest, and he locked her in his arms.  They stared out at the sloping graveyard peppered with crumbling and leaning markers, a swirl of clouds in the distance and a tight-knit pull of birds – painted buntings – swarming the farthest corner of the yard, some popping through branches of trees.
“If you pulled each of the buried souls from their earthen perches and crowded them all into a room and asked the single question, I’m guessing not one of them would answer they wished for less time on earth to settle their scores, reach toward new things or dive into new love, risking heartbreak, and muck around.  Not one.”
“Point taken,” said Amanda.
Joey thought about telling Amanda he was thinking of not joining her on the train ride back to Milwaukee, how he had begun to wonder about his own heart, its inability to light against anything close to purpose.  He wondered if he forced himself to stay in a place as foreign and new to him as New Orleans or if he forced himself to continue his journey along the coast to somewhere new, Biloxi or Mobile or Tallahassee, maybe then he’d be able to follow his own advice and find himself lost and reaching toward something new.
“The truth is, Amanda, you’ve only been sidetracked by a temporary wound.  You’ll pull yourself out of this and find yourself facing a whole new set of heartbreaks in no time.”
Amanda laced her fingers tighter around Joey’s arm and leaned her head against his chest.
Joey wondered if it was true one could exercise demons symbolically, pins in a doll, letters burned into ashes, and he thought about all he held within him he wished he could as easily run out of town, the wide, nomadic trail his heart ever led him down, the failure at attachment, resonance, anything good lasting.  Sometimes he merely wished he would learn to want something fiercely enough he’d be clear about what that one true thing was and it’d come to him like morning sunlight through trees, gold and reaching, enveloping him in warmth and purpose, the promise that certain disparate points merge and move forward as one.
He thought about the geese he fell in love with as a child, how his father would dress him in rubber hip waders in the blue bruise of autumn dawn and how the two of them would drive silently through the soft, leaning wheat fields north of Sheboygan off Highway 57 to marshland near the reservoir and how the sky would begin to lift in soft oranges and warm his face just slightly and how he and his father would sit in duck blinds, dug, earthen pits reinforced with 4x6 treated posts, only their two heads puncturing the soft blue horizon line.
They’d sit wordlessly, staring out over the reservoir, listening for the collected chatter of pre-flight geese and silently noticing the soft whispers of their own clothes shifting each movement they made, each deep breath.  They would hear the slow percolating collected sound of the geese, their voices gaining strength and pitch, rising into the sound of urgency and then quieting, if only slightly, as the geese spilled into flight, their beautiful, dark and long necks pointing forward and their soft, gray bodies cascading through sky in twos and threes, their sporadic, individual honking and the swoosh of their wings the only sound as they passed overhead.
Joey remembered being drawn and moved by the passing geese, low in October skies, and he forgot all the world around him, his awkwardness at tasks, his shyness around others, the sadness that stretched for miles past each terse conversation and argument his parents shared.  During those early morning moments alongside his father in the fields, all there was were geese against sky.
He watched them gather into the distance, as they passed, arcing into patterns, v’s and serrated combs, and he wanted more than anything to be one of them, to know sky and understand the strength of what must be.  Geese were clear on their direction, clear on the meaning of flight.  Joey imagined how their hearts must fill, warmth spreading across their breasts when they lifted into the morning and, above the rolling hills and soft wheat, shaped their way into place.
Joey and his father’s silent walk back to the pick-up truck, the geese vanished in the distance, always filled Joey with a genuine sense of loss, as if the last fragments of blue dawn seeped into his skin, blood and marrow, as though he had just come across a secret well and discovered nothing there but the deepest, faintest echo.
As Joey stood next to Amanda at the perimeter of the cemetery, his life fell past him like the slow, spiral of fall leaves.  Memories came to him in glimpses and soft, reverberating images, saturated colors of old ektachrome slides and super 8mm film, blues and reds and the golden, incandescent glow of sun on skin.  The wavering, swimming images emerging of a shy child, red mittens hanging by yarn from his wrists, a boy used to peering at the world from behind his parents’ legs; the fast, ecstatic runs across dewy, summer lawns; the eleven year old who became overwhelmed and distracted by the cold woods and fields his father dragged him into, the blue silence that seeped into his skin and bones when he stood in the shadows of trees; the same boy who carefully walked on newly frozen ponds all the way across until the ice split and ran schisms from his boots; the young and angry teenager who bolted shut his bedroom door, drove safety pins through his own skin, painted his fingernails black, fell asleep in the corner of his room, a set of headphones sifting the muted, fast reverberations of punk rock through dawn; the young man who dropped out of art school midway through the first semester, dropping his etch pads, charcoals and pastels into the swirling river beneath the bridge from campus; the same young man stooped over thick travel books in the public library, books about Asia, Africa, Antarctica, Alaska, Prague, Constantinople, but who had never journeyed past the confines of Wisconsin until his train trip to New Orleans at twenty-four years.  And his inability to draw a direct line between his earliest youth and the place he now stood with any promise of points forward made Joey feel deeply lost, the swirl of images of his life emptying like stars over the wide, dark sea.
Joey ran his hand softly down Amanda’s back.  He wanted to fold himself into her sweet, accepting warmth, her undeterred commitment to their friendship – no matter its direction.  He wanted to hide inside something larger than himself – something that stayed past dawn.  Instead, he told her:  “This whole hope to shape our lives into something healed or certain pretty much sucks.  Where do you even start when the answer is a hundred miles from resounding?”
“I don’t know,” answered Amanda, caressing her pinpricked palm with her thumb.
Joey held Amanda and inhaled her sweet warmth, like jasmine tea, and wondered about how it would feel not to have her directly in his life awhile, how they’d both fair and how long before he’d find her again to share it.  He pulled her into his arms, his eyelids softly fading the image of St. Louis Cemetery Number One, its twisting nexus of square tablets and pitched crosses and the colorful mix of swooping and flitting painted buntings, some green with yellow bellies, some dusky brown with blue patchy heads, some with purple hoods and bright red breasts – many darting through trees and tombs, and many, still, circling Amanda’s voodoo doll, tugging moss and button eyes and stitched teeth with long pulls of beak before, like an airborne New Orleans jazz funeral, they lifted the frayed doll in circular reaches toward sky.


Hibernating
November 4, 2009
By Nels Hanson

Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher, and contract writer/editor. He grew up on a small farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley and earned degrees from UC Santa Cruz and the University of Montana. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and a citation in its Joseph Henry Jackson competition. His short stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Long Story, Short Story, South Dakota Review, Starry Night Review and other literary journals. His work currently appears on the Web at The Green Hills Literary Lantern, The 3rd of November Club, The Write Place at the Write Time, and The 13th Warrior Review, and stories are in press at Caveat Lector, Danse Macabre, Ruminate Magazine, The Iconoclast, and the Overtime Chapbook Series at Blue Cubicle Press.

      At 7:30 sharp I was waiting at the curb in front of the Elgin Hotel in Kootenay, Montana. The elevator where 50 years ago a construction worker had fallen was shut and I’d come down the marble stairs. I saw the time on the bank sign. Already it was 61 degrees.

      Someone tapped on the thick glass doors of the Elgin Theater lobby and I turned and saw white-haired Birdie Johnson waving.

      As a girl she’d found a dime frozen in the ice in Anaconda and her father had told her she was lucky.

      Behind her in a blue denim shirt and suspenders Ralph Weeks stood holding a toolbox, under the darkened 5,000-piece chandelier you could lower on a cable to dust the hanging crystals.

      In 1936 he’d been hit by lightning on the sheep ranch in Dillon and deafened for a year, and the owner’s 17-year-old son had been killed instantly, the tremendous shock turning his black hair the color of fresh snow.

      Birdie and Ralph lived together, to save on rent.

      I waved back to my next-door neighbors I’d met the night before as Tug pulled up and I jogged across the main street.

      “Morning, bro,” Tug said through the empty passenger window. “Ready to hit it?”

      His hair was pulled back with a leather band and he was wearing his earring and the Grateful Dead t-shirt that said, “Jerry’s Kids.” Joyce or Denise must have washed it.

      “All set.”

      “You sleep all right?”

      “Fine,” I said, getting in.

      I’d dreamed of crashes and gunfire, of the Cinnamon River and Turtle Lake, then of Ray’s new rifle as he burst into his wife’s bedroom—

      “I made a lunch.”

      “Oh.” Tug glanced at my bag. “Joyce fixed you one.”

      On the crisp brown sack Tug’s married sister had written “Bill Ryder” in a flowing feminine script. Under my name she’d drawn a little five-pointed star.

      “I’ll put it in the fridge for tomorrow. Tell her thanks.”

      “Sure thing.”

      Tug drove to the first cross street, turned left, and passed the Stockmen’s Café where I’d eaten last night, a hot-roast-beef sandwich with hash browns and a beer for three dollars. I hadn’t wanted to stay at Ray and Joyce’s for the barbecue, with Tug and Denise, Ray’s sister and Tug’s new sudden girlfriend.

      And Joyce.

      Through Stockmen’s front window I could see the card players in back, in the green alcove, under the hanging sign that said, “The Game Never Ends.”

      We went parallel with the river, the Clark Fork of the Columbia, toward the black volcano stack, past wholesale parts outlets and warehouses and oil-stained garages with plywood squares for missing windowpanes. We saw wrecked cars and old houses with drawn blinds and sad yards, beside vacant lots strewn with trash and wire.

      We crossed unmarked curving railroad tracks and followed them through a field of littered dry grass.

      “Perty, isn’t it?” Tug said. “The Big Sky.”


                                              Big Sky Forest Products, Inc.
                      “Wise Management of Montana’s Precious Resources”
                              Raymond L. Everett, General Manager


      “Do you want me, Bill?” Joyce asked from the bed as she lay beside the baby.

      Raymond was Ray.

      The cyclone fence was topped with a coil of razor wire. We entered the open swinging gates.

      The big chimney was going, forklifts and log trucks driving in and out past the sheds. Tug drove beyond the workers’ parking lot, where four or five cars hunched low among fifty or sixty pickups.

      He pulled up in front of the main office, a new wood-sided mobile home, beside Ray’s new Dodge Ram and I felt my stomach cinch.

      “Back Off” Ray’s mud flaps said below Yosemite Sam and his raised pair of revolvers.

      “Well, here we are, safe and sound,” Tug said, “through shot and shell. All the way from Ore-e-gon.”

      Though Tug’s shot-out window from Turtle Lake I stared up the long black slope of the incinerator, to the burned cone grate where white smoke was rising in a slanting ribbon toward the east. The mill looked like a factory in Dis, the infernal city.

      “Ready to return to the land of the Deadheads?”

      “You wish,” I said. I took my two lunches and got out and followed Tug up the wood steps to the office.

      Beyond a room with a radio and microphone and two secretaries, sober Ray was wearing slacks and a crisp white shirt, leaning back in his swivel chair at his desk, talking on the phone.

      I felt queasy at the memory of kissing his unhappy pretty wife in the kitchen, and then holding her in the bedroom as she started to cry, yesterday, the first hours in Montana:

      “Just tell me you love me—”

      Ray saw us now, waving us back and covering the receiver.

      “Take these out front to Sherry. She’ll tell you where to go.” He handed us two printouts with carbon backs.

      “The cedar’s substandard,” Ray said into the phone, “Just like I fucking told you—”

      It was Tuesday—he’d taken Monday off to celebrate our arrival—and Ray was all business again, no two cases of beer or bear hunting stories, no dynamite wrapped in bacon or the snow-cat slingshotting the sleeping grizzly across the gorge from the cable looped between pines.

      Tug gave me my paper and we went to the first desk.

      “Don’t tell me,” said the woman with bright red hair puffed out at her ears. She wore a tight, starched white blouse with half the buttons undone.

      Her tan breasts had dark freckles.

      “You’re Tug.”

      “Tug’s my name, work’s my game.”

      She grinned.

      “Ray’s been talking about you non-stop. His favorite brother-in-law! He’s been real excited—”

      “Us too. So what’s next?”

      “Just a sec.”

      Sherry leaned forward, quickly made out two cards, just our names on the top and code numbers and initials in the blanks. It was hard not to look at her chest.

      She wrote down our social security numbers and handed a card to Tug and one to me.

      “You go to C shed,” she said to Tug. “Your friend goes to A.”

      “We working in different places?” Tug asked.

      “I guess,” Sherry said. “Ray did the paperwork.”

      Tug looked at his card. “Thanks.”

      “You’re lucky. Ray’s a great guy!”

      “That why we came.”

      We went back down the steps.

      “Ray’s got some scenery,” Tug said.

      “I noticed,” I said.

      “You don’t say.”

      The humming sheds looked like airplane hangars. On the wall of each one a ten-foot letter was painted in yellow.

      “The old ABC’s. Here we go,” Tug said. “Hold your breath. Remember, don’t screw with Idaho.”

      “You’ll lose another window.”

      “By the way,” Tug said, “if Joyce mentions the window, stick with the bear.”

      “Black bear or grizzly?”

      “We’re going with brown. See you later, bro.”

      He started walking off across the yard. I turned and went over to the A shed.

      I heard a forklift come up fast and looked over my shoulder.

      A man in a blue hardhat leaned forward.

      “What you got?”

      “Card from the office.”

      “You the new man, shed A?”

      “I guess so.”

      “Let me see it.”

      I handed it up to him and he scanned it.

      “I’ll meet you over there, that cabin off the shed. Get you straightened out.”

      He hit the gas and the yellow forklift hurried toward the little house.

      When I went through the door he had safety glasses and a yellow hardhat laid out on a bench next to a time card.

      “You can put your lunch over there.” He nodded toward an old refrigerator.

      I squeezed my bag and Joyce’s in among a crowd of pails and brown sacks and turned back to the driver.

      “I’m Bob Burns,” he said. “Your supervisor.”

      “Bill Ryder.”

      “See that time clock?” He nodded at the big buzzing clock on the wall. It ticked like a bomb when the second hand reached 12.

      “Punch in every morning, as soon as you hear the horn.”

      He stepped over and put my card into the slot at the bottom of the clock, the printer bit it, and he pulled it out and stuck it in the “R’s” on a wall file.

      “Half an hour for lunch, you don’t have to bother with it. Just when you leave at night. I filled that one out for you.”

      He touched a slanted tin box on the wall.

      “Blanks are here for the first of each week.”

      We went out and into the big shed of raised machines and catwalks. Men with hardhats and long poles with spiked hooks walked back and forth 20 feet off the ground.

      “Ray’s wife your sister?”

      “No, my buddy’s. Tug.”

      I could hardly hear him. Everything roared and shook, the air clattered and a steady rain of sawdust fell down.

      Burns pointed.

      “Some set-up, huh?”

      To the left, down one wing of the shed, big six-inch rollers moved the skinned logs toward a raised bumper. To the side of the superstructure, at the top of a spiral stairwell, a man stood at a bank of levers.

      He lowered the bumper, threw another lever, and a log came out onto a chain conveyer. Cleated feet on hydraulic rams shot from both sides and held the log tight, the rams moving on rails. The log went forward onto another conveyer like a cradle that lined it up with a heavy band saw with a four-inch blade.

      “Watch this.”

      Two upright metal tabs pushed the butt of the log toward the whirring toothed band.

      The saw cut off one rounded edge that fell through a long narrow slot onto a belt, then a bell rang and the log came back. The cradle conveyor moved the log to the left, the rams holding the log firmly but not so tight that the wood would pinch the blade, and it went through again, then came back as the bell rang. Now it had two square sides.

      “Neat, huh?”

      “Yeah,” I said.

      The rams pulled back, a third ram with a steel foot came out and pushed the log over on a flat side, the two rams gripped it and the log went through the saw, came back at the bell, shifted, and passed through again. It went on as a horn sounded and another log was let past the lowered bumper onto the cutting platform.

      With each different movement of the conveyers, horns went off and I could hear other bells and horns sound farther on under the high roof. I watched it all from below, through a steady fine snow of white sawdust.

      Burns pointed again, this time at something below the new log.

      “Here’s your station.”

      Under the platform a sharp V of long steel sheets let the sawdust fall into gutters where water took it out.

      Burns handed me two squeegees from a rack on the superstructure, a wide one and a narrow one, both with long handles.

      He put a hand to my ear.

      “Both sides,” he said. “Keep the gutters moving, the floor clean under the saw.”

      “Okay,” I said.

      He tapped my shoulder.

      “You’ll get used to the noise.”

      He turned and jogged to his forklift.

      I took the big squeegee and stuck it under the conveyer, where the sawdust had lodged in a long wavy line. I walked along, pulling the sawdust down into the gutter. The gutter filled and threatened to run over where the water piled up against a jam.

      I took the narrow squeegee and broke the jam, then went back and ran the squeegee the length of the gutter to clear it. The water ran free.

      I moved past the man on the spiral stairway and under the roller conveyer, watching the big naked square log pass over my head.

      I cleared the V on that side, then the full gutter so it ran clean. Then it was time to clear the other side again.

      After a while, from the rhythm of the sounds, I could tell which cut the saw was on, how many round sides and flat sides the log had. Each of the four cuts sounded different, the trimmed edges changing the roar that after a while hummed nonsense words.

      “The Sleeping Child knows . . . .”

      “Kill the yellow fish.”

      I worked at the saw end and blinked at the dust and watched the blurred toothed band cut the length of log like a skill saw through a two-by-four and remembered Stivers’ swerving black car and the lumber flying from the semi by the Cinnamon River.

      Once I worried that one of Rick Speaks’ ecology friends from Mussel Bay had nailed a spike and the blade and log would explode and throw shrapnel and splinters.

      At first the sawdust smelled clean and sweet but as I got sweaty I could feel it caked around my neck and under my arms and on my face where I’d sweated. It burned.

      I worked until a louder horn went off and the man on the stairwell shut down the saw after trimming a log’s second side.

      Men in safety glasses and boots came back through the shed from either leg and stood outside, talking and smoking. Some of them had snacks and coffee they’d brought from home, and others gathered at the Coke machine outside the clock room.

      I leaned against the warm wall of the cutting shed, taking in the silence and morning sun. Nothing moved. I started to think about Joyce, then the horn blared and everyone went back to work.

      Again the building shook and the horns and buzzers went off and on. I felt like I was breathing sawdust and tried to clear my nose, then got a drink from a fountain at the corner of the shed wall.

      Bob Burns came up.

      “How’s it going?”

      I nodded, swallowing water.

      “Fine.”

      “I forgot your breathing mask.”

      He handed me the white felt-paper mask with the elastic strap.

      “You get some down your throat?”

      “I’m okay,” I said.

      “You’re my man—”

      He tapped my shoulder and grinned, then said something I didn’t catch.

      “What’s that?”

      He leaned closer, cupping his hand to block the noise.

      “I said, did Ray introduce you to Sherry?—”

      I nodded and he winked and strode back to his waiting forklift and I grabbed the wide squeegee.

      Then I set it down. It was time to clear the gutters.

      By stopping to take the drink I’d got off my rhythm, which had fallen into time with the rams moving the log from side to side. I could sweep one side of the V in the time it took to trim two sides of one log, and clear the gutter in the time it took to cut one and a half sides.

      You’re late, you’re late, you’re late, said the blade eating through the passing log, like Alice in Wonderland’s white rabbit.

      The shaking overhead platform and the bells and rams and the saw and the two squeegees that I pushed seemed to fall into an eternal ratio: two to three and a half, or four to seven, counting both sides of the V.

      Yesterday as we’d pull up at Joyce and Ray’s, Tug had smoothed his long hair in the rear view mirror and asked how he looked. “About a minus 10,” I said and Tug had joked about his math skills and his knowledge of graphing and negative numbers.

      The shed was a god of steel and electricity and pressurized oil and I was learning its pulse, I’d been gobbled up and was a part of its bloodstream.

      It seemed right that some engineer hadn’t figured a better way to clear the sawdust, so a man would bear witness in the very guts of the monster. I remembered Rick Speaks and his hero Thomas Malthus, M’s famous geometric and arithmetic ratios, population growth versus food supply, and his grudging nod toward the chance of human morality to stop war, disease and famine.

      When the horn went off again I didn’t hear it and kept working the squeegee in the gutter until men walked by and I realized the shaking and saw had stopped. Stunned, with a ringing in my ears, I stepped outside into the sun, looked around, then went to the little house to get my lunch.

      My sack and Joyce’s were the last ones left in the refrigerator.

      “Did Ray introduce you to Sherry?” Burns asked.

      I saw Ray’s big hands at Sherry’s open blouse. I grabbed my bag and went out, toward a brick wall that threw a strip of shade where clusters of men leaned back and lifted sandwiches.

      “Hey, buddy!”

      Somebody yelled in my ear and I bent my head away. I turned and saw Tug.

      He was grinning, wearing a shiny blue hardhat, his Grateful Dead t-shirt clean as when he’d picked me up at the Elgin.

      “Hey, Tug.”

      “I yelled at you three times.”

      “I didn’t hear you.”

      “You still got your mask on.”

      "Oh.” I took it off. The outside was caked with sawdust.

      “So how’s it going?”

      “Noisy. Dusty.”

      “It’s noisy. But union wages.”

      “Right.”

      “Listen, I’m going to eat with Denise and Joyce. You want to come?”

      “No, you go ahead. Tell Joyce thanks for the lunch.”

      “Will do.”

      Tug ran off and I turned back toward the brick wall.

      A man was on his feet, spreading his arms wide as he looked down at the sitting men.

      “Just like this,” he said.

      “Bullshit!” said a man holding an apple.

      “I swear to God!” the standing man said.

      He kept his arms apart.

      “Sleeping Child’s full of ’em—”

      I stopped, watching him describe his catch, but he didn’t mention the lake again. I touched my pants pocket and felt the antler Sleeping Child.

      Yesterday at the kitchen table, trying to feed Charlie, Joyce’s baby, I’d taken out the Sleeping Child and he’d laughed and waved it in the air and let me put the spoon of orange food in his open mouth.

      Joyce carried him to bed and came back with lipstick and her long hair combed, wearing tight jeans and the blue tank top, and put out her pretty palm that held the carving before she sat on my lap.

      “It’s a door to another world—”

      I walked along the wall past the last group in yellow hardhats. Twenty yards away an Indian with a ponytail ate alone.

      I sat down. The man looked my way.

      “How you doing?” I said.

      “Fine,” he said. He chewed his lunch, watching me.

      I opened my sack and popped the cold Coke and drank until my throat wasn’t rough. I set down the can and took out the sandwich and started to unwrap it.

      “You don’t like fish stories?”

      I looked up.

      “What’s that?”

      “Fish stories,” he said.

      “Oh. Yeah,” I said. “No.”

      “They’re all the same.” I thought that’s what he said. I put a hand to my ear.

      “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

      He watched me take a bite of sandwich, then drink from the Coke. I remembered Joyce’s lunch in the refrigerator, on the brown sack my name and the star. I hadn’t looked inside. An empty log truck went by. The man said something.

      “What?” I looked up.

      “This your first day?”

      I nodded.

      “This morning.”

      “I thought it was. I ain’t seen you before.”

      He held out a piece of brownish meat on some foil and I remembered the yellow fish on the Blue Fin.

      “You like salmon?”

      “Thanks. I got my lunch.”

      “You don’t want it?”

      I looked at the fish in his outstretched hand.

      “Sure.”

      I leaned over and broke off a chunk. It was strong and salty but full of flavor, like a rare steak.

      “That’s good,” I said. “You smoke it yourself?”

      “Yeah. I speared it. Up north.”

      I wiped my palm on my pants and stuck out my hand.

      “My name’s Bill Ryder.”

      “Wes Blackdeer.”

      “Glad to meet you.”

      “You need cotton.”

      “Cotton?”

      “For your ears.”

      He reached in his shirt pocket.

      “Here.” He handed me a wad of clean white cotton.

      “Thanks. The shed’s awful loud.”

      “You just get to town?

      “Yesterday.”

      “Where you from?”

      “Oregon.”

      “I been there,” Wes said. “Fishing at Crater Lake.”

      “I worked on a salmon boat. Out of Mussel Bay.”

      Wes shook his head.

      “I never been there.”

      “Mussel Bay?”

      “The ocean,” he said. He was unwrapping a Hershey bar.

      “Let me buy you a beer sometime,” I said. “Pay you back for the fish.”

      Wes broke off a piece of chocolate and held it out to me.

      “I know a place.”

      “How about after work?”

      “That’s good. You better eat now. Time’s about up.”

      Wes was right.

      I had just finished my sandwich when the horn went off and we got up and walked back to the long shed.

      This time I heard the horn for afternoon break and had a Coke with Wes, and then later the final horn. I was waiting for them. I heard them through Wes’ cotton.

      The conveyors and saw shut down and I hung up the squeegees on the rack. I took off my mask and safety glasses and stuck them in my pocket and walked out of the shed with the others.

      In the daylight I brushed off sawdust with both hands. I walked 30 yards before I remembered I hadn’t punched out.

      Tired men in hardhats passed me as I walked back to the room off the shed and found my ticket. Bob Burns had put my name on a red adhesive label with a label gun. I let the clock bite the ticket when it was my turn, then stuck it back in my slot and hurried out into the yard.

      I started toward the main gate before I realized I didn’t know where I was going and stopped.

      On cue Tug came up from the office, grabbing my arm.

      His clothes were still clean. He wasn’t wearing a hardhat.

      “You make it?”

      His voice was blurry. I took the cotton from my ears.

      “I’m glad it’s over.”

      “Ray says in two weeks he can get you in with me. Hey, let’s get going. I’m taking Denise to the movie.”

      “Go ahead. I got a ride.”

      I saw Wes standing by a blue pickup in the parking lot.

      “Denise said to tell you that Joyce says howdy.”

      “Tell her hello.”

      “Mañana, compadre.”

      Tug hurried to his truck still parked by Ray’s office.

      I walked out to Wes.

      “You still thirsty?” he said.

      “I’m buying.”

      We got into Wes’ new GMC pickup and he drove back even with the river, past the Stockmen’s, and turned left at the Elgin. We passed the stores and six or seven stoplights to the end of the downtown, by the Amtrak station.

      An old warehouse had been done over, with sandblasted brick and painted metal supports. Blue and yellow leaded-glass windows showed the 7th Cavalry banner waving from a brown staff as feathered arrows shot past. A carved sign hung from an outflung bronze spear over the door:

                                                              Custer’s

      Inside gilt reproductions of pistols and bugles, rifles and sabers covered the walls. Fake battle flags and factory feather headdresses and bows and quivers were suspended from the open rafters. Custer’s looked like a franchise.

      It was empty, except for a man and two women who sat on stools at the brass-railed bar, in front of a mirror and a big reproduction of “Custer’s Last Stand.”

      The blonde glanced at Wes and me as we came in. Wes nodded and we went to a tall booth in back.

      The bartender called to us, asking what we wanted, and Wes ordered two bottle beers. I noticed the blonde girl watching as the bartender brought our beer and mugs and I paid.

      “She seems interested in something,” I said, nodding toward the bar.

      She wore a short powder-blue skirt and a white jersey. She looked like she’d just got off work. The man wore a gray suit and tie and the brown-haired girl a peach-colored suit and heels. Her hair was the color of Joyce’s.

      “Could be.”

      Wes studied the blonde for a moment.

      “Don’t let me get in your way. I got to get groceries, anyhow,” I said.

      “It’s too early,” Wes said. “I’ll wait for the season.”

      “What’s that?”

      “Deer season. When they’ll all be gone.”

      “Who?”

       “The husbands.”

      I thought of Denise giving me a ride to the Elgin Hotel, saying Joyce wasn’t going hunting this year. I took a gulp of cold beer.

      “It sounds dangerous.”

      Ray had shown off his new Mossberg rifle with the high-powered scope as everyone sat drinking beer around the kitchen table. “Real sweet, huh, Tug?”

      Tug offered it to me but I was holding the baby.

      “Yeah,” Wes said, “but I just have to do it.”

      He lifted his mug.

      “Call me Custer.”

      “I like what Chief Joseph said.”

      “What was that?” Wes took a drink.

      “‘I will fight no more forever.’”

      He didn’t have a choice.”

      “I guess not,” I said.

       In the mirror behind the bar I saw the blonde girl smooth her hair.

      “Hey,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

      I reached in my pocket and handed Wes the Sleeping Child.

      “You ever seen something like that?”

      He turned it over in his fingers.

      “It’s elk horn,” Wes said. “Where’d you get it?”

      “A kid in Idaho gave it to me.”

      “I know it,” Wes said.

      “He said it was good luck. Something to do with Sleeping Child Lake.”

      Paul Banner had mentioned it, when I’d brought him the live yellow fish from the Blue Fin.

      Tug asked if I wanted to go work in the mill in Montana and Paul glanced up from the bucket, he said Kootenay was two hours from a green lake called Sleeping Child.

      I’d dreamed about it, wide and turquoise-colored, before the shooters opened up at Turtle Lake and hit Tug’s window.

      “Maybe,” Wes said.

      He handed it back.

      “You ever go up there?” I asked.

      Wes looked over at the blonde.

      “Where?” he said. “Idaho?”

      “Sleeping Child Lake.”

      “Naw.”

      He turned to me.

      “You like to fish?”

      “It’s okay.”

      “You want to go sometime?”

      “To Sleeping Child?”

      I remembered the man at lunch showing the length of the big fish.

      “Another place,” Wes said. “You want to go Saturday?”

      “All right.”

      “You want another beer? This one’s on me.”

      “Okay. Then I’ve got to find a store, get some groceries.”

      “I’ll take you.”

      Wes lifted two fingers toward the bartender. The blonde girl was watching in the mirror.

      The bartender brought our beers and Wes asked me why I’d come to Kootenay.

      I told him about the fishing boat in Mussel Bay, about getting laid off the same day I found the strange blue and yellow fish that looked tropical, from warm water, like something on a TV show about Hawaii. A guy on the boat, Ed Roper, tried to gaff it in the net and I got in a tiff that cost me my job.

      “It must’ve been good luck,” Wes said.

       I asked him about himself and he said he’d worked at the mill three years, after working in the woods on a logging crew. He liked the mill better.

      “You don’t have to get up so early, drive all day. It’s more like a factory.”

      “It’s a factory all right.”

      My ears still rang. I thought I could feel the saw’s high-pitched vibration in my bones.

      “It’s all a factory,” Wes said. “We just don’t know it yet.”

      It was something Rick Speaks might have said, something he might have underlined in the book he lent me, Requiem for the Earth.

      “They wrecked it all. Nearly fished out the river.”

      I looked closely at Wes, at his wide, full-lipped mouth and strong nose and dark eyes under the black brows.

      I was tired and half-expected an eagle feather to sprout from the top of his ponytail. I could see him as the Last Indian, telling me the Last Pine and Buffalo had gone down, the Last Stream dried up.

      When we went fishing, we’d go after the Last Trout.

      Wes glanced up at me and smiled.

      “Hell, I don’t know. Your body is a factory. Isn’t that what they said in school?”

      “Something like that.” Then I laughed.

      “What’s funny?” Wes said.

      “If the mill is a body, I hate to think what part of it I’m working.”

      “It’s all an intestine,” Wes said.

      “I’m at the bottom.”

      “It’s better to be at the top.”

      “That’s right,” I said.

      We drank our beers.

      “How long you lived in Kootenay?” I asked.

      “Two years. I moved in from the country.”

      “Do you miss it?”

      “I miss the good fishing,” he said. “Clean air. The smoke from the mill fills the valley when the wind blows wrong.”

      He raised an eyebrow, nodding toward the bar.

      “There’s other things, though.”

      The man in the suit was holding the door for the two women. Sure enough, the blonde girl in white and blue looked back at us.

      “You know her?” I asked.

      “I knew her once. About two years ago.”

      “You go together?”

      “A few times. It was during the season.”

      “Deer season,” I said.

      “No.” Wes smiled. “Elk.”

      “Joyce isn’t going hunting with Ray this fall. She doesn’t like it anymore, you know, killing things,” Denise had said. “She’s staying home with Charlie—”

      I shook my head. “You want another beer?”

      “You got to get your food.”

      “I got time for another. I have to pay you for the salmon.” I waved to the bartender.

      “I got that during salmon season.” Wes chuckled, showing white teeth.

      “Be careful,” I said.

      Again I saw Ray snoring on the sofa and his new gun in the deer-foot rack next to the moose head. In Kootenay the hunting season was the social season too.

      “Remember Custer.”

      “He got it backwards,” Wes said. “Die with your boots off, rubbers on.”

      The fresh beers came and we drank.

      “Anyway, the money’s so good.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “It’s all free.”

      “I should grab that bugle,” I said. “Sound the retreat. I’ll warn the husbands you’re on the loose.”

      “They wouldn’t hear it,” Wes said. “They’re too greedy.”

      He told me about the rock pool on the stream we were going to fish, how he’d caught some big trout and no one went there, nobody knew about it.

      He’d fished it as a boy with his father. He said you could use flies or worms.

      “I try to go each weekend,” Wes said. “To get rid of the mill.”

      “I thought you liked the mill.”

      Wes set down his empty glass.

      “It’s okay.”

      We got up and went out past the mirror and the bartender and the painting of yellow-haired Custer on the hill of dying troopers, his silver Colt revolvers throwing sparks and blue smoke as he fired his last cartridges.

      Wes took me to a Safeway. He got a few things while I filled half my cart. I bought some better soap for the sawdust and a box of cotton balls. Then Wes drove back through the dusk down the long street of stoplights, past the closed shops and lit bars to the Elgin.

      “You got it?” Wes said as I stepped out of the truck.

      “Yeah.” I balanced the three sacks.

      “So we’re going fishing Saturday?”

      “That’s right,” I said.

      “See you, Chief,” Wes said.

      I laughed. “Okay, General.”

      Wes smiled and drove off and I turned to enter the hotel.

      The bright movie marquee was lit but no moviegoers stood in line. The girl in the seashell booth still read her book about the depressed Danish prince. The 12-foot, five-tiered chandelier in the theater was lit, the 5,000 crystals blazing red and pink and blue.

      “Go shopping?”

      The elevator operator sat on the leather sofa beside the open elevator. I hadn’t seen him in the hotel’s narrow dim lobby. He was wearing his tam-o'-shanter.

      He got up carefully, favoring his braced neck.

      “I can take you up.”

      I followed him into the elevator. He sat down slowly on his stool, then hung his cap on the hook and closed the screen. The doors shut. He gripped the bronze wheel and the elevator went up.

      “You settling in?”

      “Getting there,” I said.

      “That’s good. It takes a while.”

      “Little by little.”

      “I see you’re following Mr. Gable’s rules.”

      “What’s that?”

      I glanced down at his thinning crewcut. I wondered if the elevator operator was the hotel spy. He looked straight ahead.

      “Your friend. The one who dropped you off.”

      “What about him?”

      “You didn’t bring him up.”

      “He had to go home.”

      “No.”

      He titled his head stiffly to look up at me.

      “There’s no Indians allowed.”

      I stared at him, then looked away at the case of gaudy jewelry. When the elevator stopped the doors creaked opened and he pulled back the bronze screen.

      “Don’t work too hard.”

      “No.”

      I stepped out with my groceries and heard the doors close and the elevator rumble down.

      I reached with my key and Birdie’s door opened.

      “Hi, Bill.” She touched the collar of her blue housecoat.

      “Hi, Birdie.”

      “You tired?”

      “I’m beat.”

      “Ralph and me are tired too. We finished 10 seats today. We’re going to the cafeteria.”

      “Have a good dinner.”

      “You too, Bill.”

      She stepped back and closed the door as Ralph called, “Birdie?”

      In the shadows, Chief Joseph stared out from his poster and I remembered Ralph had been hit by lightning.

      On the carpet lay a small folded piece of paper. I set the groceries on the coffee table and picked it up.


                              Tuesday, 5:30

                              Dear Bill,

                              I was shopping downtown and thought I’d stop by,
                              to thank you for feeding Charlie! Take care—
                              Hope to see you soon—

                              Love, Joyce


      I put the groceries away and had a bowl of cold cereal and milk as I watched the red and blue lights on the river and the shadowed brick train tower with its black pyramid roof.

      After dinner I took out my thick encyclopedia and looked up the word “race.”

      The article said:

"Any of the different varieties or populations of human beings distinguished by: a) physical traits such as hair, eyes, skin color, body shape, etc: traditionally, the three primary divisions are Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid, although many subdivisions of these are also called ‘races’; b) blood types; c) genetic code patterns; d) all inherited characteristics which are unique to the isolated breeding population."


      “Don’t screw with Idaho!” the man had yelled from the trees at Turtle Lake and fired again, exploding the unlit lantern on the picnic table.

      The clerk at the crossroads store hadn’t liked Tug talking back, about Custer and White Eyes—she’d warned us about giving money to Indians, after I’d handed the long-haired boy 10 dollars and taken the Sleeping Child.

      The end of the definition said “the human race” meant “all people collectively.” It mentioned nothing about Adam and Eve or Lucy, the prehistoric woman the scientists claimed was the mother of everyone on Earth, whose bones they’d found in Africa.

      I turned to the back and read the table for the planets of the solar system.

      It took Pluto 248 Earth years to orbit the sun but it rotated on its axis every six Earth days. Mercury was almost the opposite. The planet closest to the sun took only 88 days for one orbit, but 58 days to make one complete spin on its axis.

      On Mercury, like on Earth, the years were short but the hours and days were long.

      I looked up Sleeping Child Lake and read that it was 1,200 feet deep, the third deepest in the United States, that its green waters were colored by feldspar.

      A French explorer, a lieutenant of Champlain’s, discovered it and noted the unusual rock formations that resembled a submerged city. The lake was considered sacred by local Indian tribes and once had been a pilgrimage destination.

      I closed the book and picked up the carved child, looking carefully at his sleeping Buddha’s face and his open basket like a boat and the prow like a monk’s hood above his head.

      Joyce had been to Sleeping Child Lake before she was married. She said the water was the color of the sugar bowl on the kitchen table.

      Her hair brushed my cheek as she set down my cup. Then she was sitting in my lap.

      “Kiss me, just once.”

      “You’re married.”

      “It was a terrible mistake—”

       I was going to ask about Joyce and me, but decided against it and left the yellow Book of Changes on the shelf. I already knew the answer. I looked up at Chief Joseph’s sad noble face and his words underneath.

      I didn’t want to play the radio, to hear about the wounded girl Otis Stivers had shot by the Cinnamon River, before he passed the lumber truck on the curve and I swerved Tug’s pickup against the cliff wall. I didn’t want to read about Indians. I took my Poe book from the bookcase and laid it on the bed while I undressed and set out my clean work clothes and brushed my teeth in the kitchen.

      The book was my temporary bank for paper money and I took out the bills and set them by the radio.

      I lay back in bed and read again Poe’s one happy story, about Sullivan’s Island and the strange scarab beetle and the scrap of “foolscap” that bore a secret code in invisible ink—the insect and the map that led the nervous recluse, his concerned friend, and Jupiter, the kind freed slave, to Captain Kidd’s treasure.

      The unstable genius broke the cipher because he knew that “E” was the most common letter of the alphabet. He had to use precise geometry, triangulation, to find the hidden spot—it was a matter of miles and inches.

      At first loyal Jupiter dropped the plumb bob through the wrong eye of the pirate’s skull high in the tree and they couldn’t find the buried chest.

      I loved the list of the treasure that went on for two pages, the doubloons from different countries and the numbered loose gems, and especially that there “was no American money” and “not a particle of silver,” that everything was gold and jewels.

      Poor Poe must have loved writing it, like a starving man dreaming of a sumptuous meal:


“There were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal.”


      Under my bed, in the theater lobby, the big chandelier glowed with all the hanging colored crystals.

      The story was racist, Poe was from the South, but Jupiter was the kindest and smartest of the three, he knew everything from the start, when he said that the living beetle was made of gold and that his master had been bitten by the deadly Gold Bug—

      I remembered the saffron and indigo fish in the Blue Fin’s net.

      I fell asleep thinking about pirates and Joyce, about all the gleaming stones plucked from wedding rings and tossed like pebbles into Kidd’s chest under the giant tulip tree.

      In the early morning, in my Levis, I went along the dark hall to the bathroom and heard the elevator rumble down and stop.

      The doors opened and through the screen I saw a thin, very handsome Indian boy about 20 standing next to the operator with the brace. He wore tight slacks and a fancy blue sport shirt and he turned his face as he saw me.

      I walked past and pushed open the restroom door. Behind me I heard the boy’s boot heels echo quickly along the tile floor toward the stairs.

      The night I’d moved in the operator had told me not to believe what people said. Before he could finish Mr. Gable rang the bell for a ride from his penthouse down to the movie theater.

      I dressed and had coffee and cereal and then a second cup watching the Clark Fork when I remembered I didn’t have to make a lunch.

      I looked above the blue river, toward the gold morning ridge where Joyce lived with Ray.

      When it was time to go I laced my work boots and locked my door and walked past the closed elevator for the stairs where the boy had secretly hustled down.

      The operator was sitting on the leather sofa in the lobby.

      “Why didn’t you ring for a ride?”

      I ignored him and started out the door to wait for Tug.

      “At least you could say good morning.”

      I didn’t know if it was true about the Elgin and no Indians or only his private story he’d made up after seeing Wes.

      It didn’t matter, I was through with him and didn’t care.

      Mr. Gable could sleep with anybody he wanted but I had a feeling the boy had been paid and told to stay out of sight.

      Tug pulled up and I crossed the street to the truck.

      “You got your lunch, bro?” Tug asked as I got in.

      “I have it at work. The one Joyce made.”

      “That’s right,” Tug said. “I forgot. A lot’s been happening. Everybody’s aflutter.”

      I didn’t ask who or why and we started toward the mill. Things at the Elgin had suddenly turned sour.

      At morning break Tug asked if I wanted to eat dinner that night with him and Denise and Ray and Joyce.

      For a second, I was tempted to say yes.

      After all, Ray seemed disappointed when I’d skipped his barbecue and was sorry I hadn’t stayed at the house with Tug.

      I knew the sweet smell of Joyce’s brown hair and the warm openness of her kiss, the way she pressed her blue tank top hard against me in the bedroom as I touched her breasts and her drunken husband slept under the moose’s wide antlers.

      “Do you want me, Bill?” she’d asked from the bed, before I turned and went out to lie down on the dry bluff above the town.

      Yesterday she’d left the note at the Elgin while I was at Custer’s.

      I told Tug I had to go somewhere with Wes.

      “Another time,” Tug said. “That’s cool.”

      At the noon horn Tug was waiting for me outside the A shed.

      He mentioned a picnic on Saturday, just Joyce and Denise and us. Ray was going to a shooting range to sight the scope on his new deer rifle. Denise was making fried chicken and potato salad and Joyce was getting a baby sitter. We’d eat at Swan Lake.

      “There’s a little park, with honey locust trees.”

      I told Tug I was going fishing on Saturday with Wes.

      “You sure?”

      Denise had cut Joyce’s hair short. Tug said it looked good, real cute.

      “I promised Wes I’d go with him. He’s got some special fishing spot.”

      “It’s cool,” Tug said, nodding. “I dig the thing with Joyce. You’re a good soldier, bro, a straight arrow.”

      “Not so straight. I don’t have much trajectory.”

      “That’s all right. You’re biding your time, like an outfielder. He’s just relaxing, till the ball hits the bat.”

      “How’s Denise?” I asked.

      “She’s sweet, Billy, really sweet. I think maybe my number finally came up. I was due, after Dixie.”

      “Good,” I said. “That’s good, Tug.”

      Dixie was the Viking exotic dancer at the Gill Net in Mussel Bay, the girl that Ed Roper on the Blue Fin used to rave about and claim that he’d slept with one night on the boat.

      I went in and got Joyce’s lunch. Again I saw my name in her handwriting and the little five-pointed star.

      I sat down against the wall next to Wes. I opened the sack and found a short, more-than-friendly note from Joyce.

      I folded it and put it in my shirt pocket.

      I thought about the lunch being the only one in the refrigerator overnight, with a love letter from the boss’ wife. The morning before, when Tug picked me up and gave me the lunch, I’d told him to tell Joyce thanks and now Tug was inviting me places.

      I felt like Denise had asked him to do it, for Joyce, that maybe Joyce told Denise to ask Tug to invite me. Joyce had left the message at the Elgin.

      No one seemed too worried about Ray—not his sister, wife, or brother-in-law.

      Maybe Ray wasn’t either, I thought, remembering Sherry.

      After work I had a beer with Wes at Custer’s and walked home early and heated a frozen lasagna.

      This time there was another folded paper slipped under the door.


                              Wednesday, 5:45

                              Dear Bill,

                              I missed you again—

                              Love,  J

                              P.S. Can’t you come to the picnic on Saturday, at Swan Lake?

                              Please—


I got out my rod and creel and went over my gear for Saturday, then put it away.

      I looked again at the Sleeping Child, turning it over in my hand— “No, take it, it’s big medicine,” the boy had told me, closing my palm over the carved antler as I tried to give it back.

      I saw Chief Joseph and got up and picked a book from the low shelf against the wall.

      I had two or three books about Indians—Ishi in Two Worlds, The Ghost Dance Religion, and Black Elk’s transcribed autobiography.

      I read that part in Black Elk Speaks, after Little Big Horn, when the last of the buffalo are slaughtered and Crazy Horse is bayoneted in the jail.

      To be loyal to his vision of the blooming tree growing in the hoop at the center of the world—to make the dying tree grow and lead his people from the selfish black road back to the red—Black Elk joins a Wild West show, hoping the whites have knowledge that will help him mend the tribe’s broken hoop.

      But Black Elk realizes the whites don’t care about one another or the animals. In a storm at sea the sick Indians dress for dying and sing their death songs as they wait to drop off the end of the water and the white men throw the dead buffalo and horses off the ocean liner.

      Queen Victoria tells Black Elk his people are the most beautiful in the world, that if they were hers she wouldn’t make them perform in the show. In Paris, dressed in Western clothes, only his long hair left to mark him as an Indian, Black Elk collapses at breakfast.

      For three days his French girlfriend and her parents hardly feel his heartbeat while he rides a cloud across the ocean.

      He sees all the Lakota bands gathered in one camp, his mother and father outside their teepee, his mother cooking.

      But the cloud is too high and he’s afraid to jump. Over a town a turning house rises and touches the cloud and takes him down, spinning, until he hears the French girl talking, and she and her family and a doctor are standing by his bed.

      The owner of the show buys Black Elk a ticket to America and he returns to Pine Ridge. All the Lakota are there because they’ve sold more land to the whites. His parents’ teepee is just where he saw it in the vision. His mother tells him that one night she dreamed he came to visit on a cloud but couldn’t stay.

      He’d been away three years. At the end of his life, after the Ghost Dance and fighting at Wounded Knee, Black Elk was certain he had failed.

      But maybe the story he told the professor was the finished work—Black Elk didn’t know his book was the mending hoop.

      I closed the cover. It showed Black Elk standing in a red blanket, wearing eagle feathers and wide elk horns. I remembered that before battle Crazy Horse painted a yellow lightning bolt on his left cheek.

      I sat for a while, looking out at the river, then listened to the radio, the country channel that played Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline.

      The Reed girl shot at the A & W in Idaho was in stable condition in Walla Walla, out of intensive care. One of the bullets had bruised but not severed her spinal cord, and she was regaining the use of her legs. Her parents had brought her yellow lab to the hospital.

      Tomorrow Otis Stivers and Lloyd Fleming, the boy Stivers had killed, would be buried.

       I turned off the radio and lay back in the bed’s dark alcove, watching the headlights play across the ceiling and disappear as the cars crossed the bridge and the stars above the Clark Fork shone again at the window.

      Again I saw Stivers shoot by in the black car and behind him the white two-by-fours sailing past my window and into the Cinnamon River and oncoming traffic as the lumber truck zigzagged with locked brakes.

      Then the flashing sheriff’s car roared by and at the A & W we saw the ambulance crew leaning over the bloody girl who lay in a sea of glass.

      Five miles later, about the time Stivers must have drowned in the river, we stopped at the country store to get beer and sandwiches for dinner and I gave the boy with the Sleeping Child the 10-dollar bill as the clerk watched through the window.

      She wore a pink muu muu and had black dyed hair and said we could camp at Turtle Lake, before she griped about Indians buying liquor and Tug told her to tell it to Custer, that she shouldn’t offer such fine wines.

      We’d been asleep in our bags, I was dreaming of the striped yellow fish and a green lake and when I asked a pretty girl by the shore she whispered that it was called “Sleeping Child,” before the men yelled “Fucking Indian lovers” and opened up from the pines, Tug’s truck window blew out and the lantern exploded and the table caught fire.

      Cheryl Reed’s boyfriend was murdered and she was 17 and in the hospital in Walla Walla, coming out of paralysis, shot by her drowned ex-boyfriend, while I was 33 and lay safely in the Elgin Hotel in Kootenay, Montana.

      Other renters had known the pattern in the plaster ceiling, I thought, hundreds of people had lived in this room, slept in the Murphy bed.

      Fifty years of renters, each one lying on top of the other, would make a Tower of Babel higher than the Elgin, and for a second I could see the swaying human skyscraper doomed to fall.

      I heard the muffled movie playing through the wall, not the words but the music and the rising and falling voices of the Wilderness Family. Ray had snored while Joyce sat on my lap in the kitchen, before we went down the hall. She’d left the note on top of the cheese and salami sandwich she’d made me.


                              Monday Night

                              Dear Bill,

                              I hope you enjoy your lunch on your first day of work.
                              I like you a lot and hope we can become good friends.

                              Love, Joyce


      I thought of my ex-wife Jenny in the empty apartment in Mussel Bay, the pretty curve of her nose and the way she said my name and her hair glowed brown and red and how we might have made love before she took her kids to see the lions at the zoo in Portland.

      “What’re you looking for, Bill? At first, I thought it was me.”

      “It was you.”

      “It was? I wasn’t sure—”

      On the way from Ashland she’d stopped to pick up a box of dishes while her druggist husband and two boys waited in the car.

      Then I was with Joyce again, kissing her hard in her bedroom with Charlie asleep on the bed, skipping work sometime and going over during the day, meeting her at Sleeping Child Lake, at the fancy place she’d stayed for the paralegal convention, before she was pregnant and got married to Ray.

      Joyce met him at a party in Helena where she’d had three martinis.

      She’d looked at the antler Sleeping Child and said the lake was very deep and clear green and some people said it had a monster. There were boats you could rent, with periscopes, to view the rock formations like cliff dwellings, like Mesa Verde, though no one had ever lived there.

      Like Paul Banner, who kept the yellow fish safely in his special aquarium in Mussel Bay, Joyce said the Indians believed the lake was the door to another world.

      “What world?”

      “One better than this,” Joyce said and touched her lips to my mine.

      Finally I went to sleep.

      I didn’t dream of Joyce or the amazing fish and the green lake and the slim girl in soft buckskin sewn with blue beads, who answered, “It’s Sleeping Child.”

      I dreamed I was working at the mill.

      I wanted to sleep straight through to Saturday but Thursday morning Tug picked me up outside the Elgin and when he parked next to Ray’s pickup I put my lunch away and clocked in.

      Tug hadn’t said two words, no jokes, no invitations to dinner or picnics. He wore a pale blue t-shirt with the words “What Happened?” in small white letters across the chest.

      The horn blew and I put cotton in my ears and worked under the rams and roaring saw blade and the falling sawdust.

      I ate lunch with Wes against the brick wall and again shared his smoked salmon.

      “Let me tell you how the thing at Custer’s works,” he said.

      Wes liked to joke, but I realized he was serious about the women we saw in the bar. He went to Custer’s to scout, to get the lay of the land for when he’d make his move.

      Two falls before, he’d gone home with a married woman whose husband was gone hunting. Every male on the block past 16 was hunting.

      “I have some friends I’d like to introduce you to,” the woman said.

      She was pretty, with frosted hair and a good figure.

      “I think they’d like to meet you.”

      “I’d like to meet them sometime,” Wes said.

      The woman’s kids were at her mother’s and Wes sat at the kitchen table drinking bourbon and coffee, in the husband’s velour robe and fleece-lined slippers.

      I felt a shiver and saw Ray’s autumn kitchen, felt the touch of his clothes.

      “Joyce is staying home with Charlie,” Denise said.

      Through deer, elk, moose, and bear seasons, and during salmon spearing, Wes had slept with much of the neighborhood, some daytime bridge club the women all belonged to.

      “Pretty risky,” I said.

      Wes acknowledged that it was both dangerous and wrong, but he had about 500 years of history to pay back.

      I smiled to myself as I thought of him trying to cuckold Columbus.

      I thought it made him feel better, having slept with the wives of many of the men who snubbed him when he moved around town, through restaurants and stores and bars where most people treated him like an Indian.

      After high school, on the reservation he hadn’t been around white people very much. He wasn’t used to women who dressed up and had the leisure and money to do whatever they wanted, who were high enough that they got a kick out of stooping down to slum.

      I had a Coke with Wes at the afternoon break and five minutes later the emergency whistle shrieked and all the saws shut down.

      All the men left the sheds.

      Outside in the milling crowd of hardhats I saw Wes.

      “What happened?”

      He said he’d heard a man in B shed had slipped from a catwalk when he tried to free a log and his leg got caught in the rollers.

      “Bad?”

      “Pretty bad.”

      Wes turned and I saw Ray striding past with a grim look.

      Ray recognized me and without stopping he said, “Careful you don’t lose something—”

      I wondered if he knew Joyce had come by the Elgin. He reminded me of Ed Roper, lifting the gaff on the Blue Fin to murder the fish before I caught his wrist.

      I watched Ray walk off swinging his heavy arms, ready to manhandle the emergency into shape.

      Five minutes later I heard a boom from the shed and for a flash I saw the boy with Ralph Weeks when the lightning struck and his black hair turned white as snow.

      I didn’t see the injured man or know his name. I wondered if he’d been the one by the brick wall that first day, who’d spread his arms to show the fish he’d caught at Sleeping Child Lake.

      The ambulance came with its siren and they closed the mill for the last half hour.

      Custer’s was empty, the blonde girl from elk season didn’t come in, and Wes and I drank three beers and talked about fishing until he dropped me off at the Elgin and I went up to my room to eat.

      This time there wasn’t any note from Joyce. I realized I was disappointed, then remembered Ray’s threat and the bad accident.

      Friday the mill was going again full blast and at morning break I saw Tug and asked him what had happened to the man who was hurt.

      Tug said an artery in the man’s leg was cut and some skin stripped away but the guy at the controls had seen it happen. He stopped the conveyer in time, before the rollers pulled him down and the next log crushed him.

      Tug said it was lucky they didn’t have to take his leg to get him out.

      “There was blood shooting five feet in the air.”

      They’d put on a tourniquet while they cut him free with a torch.

      “He going to be all right?”

      “Over time,” Tug said. “The union’s going to sue.”

      Everyone had been running around in a frenzy and a lift driver had punctured a compressor with a fork. Ray fired the driver.

      That was the bang I’d heard that sounded like a lightning strike, after Ray warned me on his way to the shed.

      “I guess it threw shrapnel,” Tug said. “Ray got nicked on the arm.”

      “What was his name?”

      “Who?”

      “The driver.”

      “Burns,” Tug said. “Ray’s got a wasp up his ass. Home life’s a bitch—”

      “You want to go to Custer’s with me and Wes?”

      “I certainly do,” said Tug. “I’ll meet you five sharp.”

      Bob Burns had thought he knew something about the red-haired secretary, Sherry, and now he was out of a job.

      After work I smoked a joint with Tug in his pickup with the shot-out window, before the two of us went into Custer’s to join Wes.

      Wes had said he didn’t like marijuana, it made him mean, but he’d smoke some if Tug wanted him to.

      Tug thought Wes was serious, said that was all right, he didn’t have to if it took him that way, before Wes laughed and tapped Tug’s chest and walked into the bar.

      “I guess I’m prejudiced,” Tug said. “That old firewater, peace pipe thing. I’m not thinking clearly. This trip with Ray isn’t good.”

      “You mean the accident?”

      “I mean the whole shebang,” Tug said. “It’s a bloody mess. It’s tough on Joyce.”

      “You want the roach,” I said, holding it out.

      “I better,” Tug said. “Denise bought a pack of cigarettes. I’ll stick it in the end.”

      Tug had two beers with us, then called Denise and told us he had to go, he had to help get ready for the picnic in the morning. At least Ray wasn’t going.

      “You sure you don’t want to come? You and me can take a hike.”

      Thanks,” I said. “We’re going fishing.”

      “Okay then. You’ll surely be missed—”

      “Don’t you want me, Bill?”


                                      I missed you again—

                                      Love,  J

                                      P.S. Can’t you come to the picnic on Saturday, at Swan Lake?

                                      Please—


          Tug nodded and started slowly toward the door, past the hanging painted guns and bugles and bows and arrows, to get in his truck and drive home to Ray’s.

      I almost changed my mind, about the picnic, as I saw Tug go out.

      I wondered what kind of trouble Joyce was in, if there’d been a fight over the secretary or something worse that had an ugly life of its own.

      “He said her name was Denise?”

      Wes rubbed his chin, wrinkling his forehead.

      “I guess I don’t know her.”

      “You’re like the plague,” I said.

      “Like a blanket full of measles,” Wes said. “I’m the only one immune. Then I’ll be the last man on Earth.”

      “Then what’re you going to do?”

      “I’ll have to go to Mars.”

      “During hunting season—”

      “When they’re all on Pluto,” Wes said.

      “It could be a long wait.”

      On the farthest coldest planet a season took 248 years to return. I felt a chill.

      Then I remembered that Sleeping Child Lake was 1,200 feet deep and two hours away, Paul Banner and the encyclopedia said it was green from the feldspar.

      “There’s an Indian story, about how the lake’s a door to another world.”

      “What world?”

      “One better than this,” Joyce whispered and softly kissed my lips.

      “That’s all right,” Wes said. “I’m patient. Till then I’m hibernating, like a bear.”

      He glanced at the mahogany bar, at the Friday crowd who laughed and drank and flirted as the Earth tilted north toward fall and he surveyed the land before the armed men filled the woods and the lonely women stayed behind.

      Then the leaves would turn and the antlered bucks run from Ray, while someone stepped from the street and started up his curving red-brick walk and Joyce waited with the boy who loved the Sleeping Child—

      Black Elk was trying to find the lost red road and leave the black, to repair the broken hoop.

      In my pocket I felt the carved Sleeping Child.

      “Big medicine,” the boy in Idaho said beyond the Cinnamon River.

      “Yep,” Wes said. “Another two weeks.”

      I saw Ray’s new rifle in shadow beside the moose head on the wall, and Roper and his gaff, the yellow fish bright as gold in the Blue Fin’s net, bright as Poe’s magic scarab, the Gold Bug.

      “I’m not waiting for the season,” I said.

      Wes turned and grinned.

      “You got her picked out?”

      “She’s a paralegal.”

      “Where’d you meet her?”

      That’s why I’d saved the beautiful fish and got fired and taken it in the bucket of sea water to Paul’s apartment of big tanks, to meet Tug and go to Montana to work for Ray.

      “Chief?”

      “At her house. She’s the boss’ wife.”

      “What boss?”

      “At the mill.”

      “Ray Edwards? That’s real good, Chief Joseph—”

      It was the same as when I’d caught Roper’s hand that held the upraised spear above the lovely flashing saffron fish.

      “Careful you don’t lose something,” Ray said before the compressor exploded—I’d thought of Ed Roper the bully, not the boy hit by lightning whose hair turned snow white.

      Now the grizzly in Ray’s cable slingshot woke and roared:

      “It’s a good day to die!”

      “We’re going to Sleeping Child Lake.”

      “That’s the weed talking, Chief.”

      “Before deer season starts—”

      Joyce and I would look down through the periscope, at the lost city—like Mesa Verde, “Green Table”—where the ancient cliff dwellers lived in peace.

      “I can’t go fishing tomorrow,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

      “Sorry hell— You want to go out like Custer, with your boots on?”

      I finished my beer.

      “I got to go to a picnic.”

      Wes grabbed my shoulder as I started get up.

      “You better watch your step, Chief. Like the guy at the mill—”

      “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve got it worked out.”

      “Sure you do.”

      At Swan Lake we’d have fried chicken and potato salad and a beer, Denise and Tug and Joyce and I.

      Joyce and I would take a blanket and find a late-blooming honey locust, make love and then talk it over while I held her.

      “I’m going to take her away from Ray,” I said.

      “You’re nuts,” Wes said, watching me.

      I looked up at the gold-painted bugle dangling from the rafter. Next to it a blue-feathered dream catcher webbed with fishing line made a large hoop.

      “We’re taking the boy.”

      “You better stop, look and listen. Right now. Like they said in school—”

      Wes gripped my shoulder and I shrugged off his hand as I got up to call Ray’s.

      I didn’t care if Ray answered. I’d ask for Tug.

      “If you don’t,” Wes said, “you won’t be Chief anymore—”

      He reached for my wrist but I jerked my arm away.

      “Lay off, Wes.”

      “Bill, you won’t be anybody—” He pointed a finger. “You’re crazy.”

      “Then call me Crazy Horse,” I said and started through Custer’s for the phone.


 excerpt from Birdcage Melodies
November 9, 2009
By James Bent
James Bent is a 30 year old British-born New Zealander, currently based in Sydney, Australia.  He works as a Learning & Design Consultant, having traveled, worked and lived across North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia for the last 10 years.  He holds a BA (hons) in English and Creative Studies from the University of Portsmouth (UK) and has just completed his first novel “The Birdcage Melodies”, which is currently unpublished. 
Author's synopsis of Birdcage Melodies (yet to be published, November 2009): 4 friends: a 30 something writer living in Northern Italy, secretly watched by a girl living across the street; an abstract painter embarking on a volatile affair with a tormented, addictive socialite; a wealthy playboy chasing a string of sexual encounters; and an art dealer seeking to quench his insatiable lust for life.  All of them at some point must find the real meaning behind their desires and discover what love means to each of them.  A 77,250 word, literary fiction novel, set in a nameless Italian city based on Rome or Milan.  It follows 4 friends through an imaginative and lively journey of feelings and desires, meeting a series of eclectic and colorful characters, and bizarre twists and turns.  Readers of Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino or Henry Miller would enjoy this humorous, sometime dirty, detailed account of finding out how to love and be loved in all manner of different ways.

Calder, Hepworth, Moore, Duchamp, Picasso and Mondrian

He opened the door.
“Hi.”
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good.  Can I come in?”
“Of course.  It’s a bit of a mess.”
“You should see my place.”
Imilia stood in the hallway wearing an alizarin red halter dress, blue-grey eyeliner, her black hair in a ponytail.  He held the door open for her.
“Do you mind me coming over?” she asked.
“No.  Of course not.  Come in.  How did you get in the front door?”
“An old lady downstairs let me in, she was sweeping the steps.”
Imilia stepped inside his small room, ran her hand along a chest of drawers just inside the door, a wooden batten screwed to the top.  She sat on the end of his bed and smoothed the sheets, pressing them flat with her hand.  Milos, his back to the door, watched her.
“What made you come?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.  “I just did.  Because of what you said last night.  It sounded interesting, the idea of being painted.”
He went over to a sink bench in the corner, filled a kettle with water, switched it on.
“Is this where you do your paintings?” she asked.
He nodded.
“So you bring girls here?”
“Yes.”
“How many girls have you brought here?” she asked.
“A lot.”
“Where do you find them?”
“The art school.  Adverts in the paper.  Posters in cafes.  A few street girls.”
He filled a press with ground coffee.
“Do you sleep with them?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“If it happens that way.  Do you want coffee?”
She nodded.  “Are you going to sleep with me?”
“I’m going to paint you, I think.” he replied, poured hot water into the press.  They waited silently for the coffee to infuse the water.  He pushed the plunger down, poured two cups, passed her one.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Just do whatever.  I'll stand here and you do whatever.  It's best if you can try and ignore me.  Or at least just treat me like an object, like the bed.”
She smiled.  “Like the bed?”
“Just do whatever until I tell you otherwise, okay?”
“Okay.”
Imilia pushed her hands on the soft foam mattress, stood up and walked over to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold tap, anti-clockwise, opened it fully, cold water streaming out.  Passing her fingers side to side she broke the stream, the water fell and splashed in the sink, running down the plug-hole.
“Is it all water, like, the whole stream, is that water?  Or is water just one drop, and the stream is a collective of water drops, only the word doesn’t change?  Like, water is the plural of water?”
No reply.  She turned the tap off, dried her hand on a towel.  A small bookshelf next to the chest of drawers.  Art books on Calder, Hepworth, Moore, Duchamp, Picasso and Mondrian.  She pulled out Barbara Hepworth, flipped opened the book, a page with a photograph of a sculpture titled: Molla.  She traced her finger over the surface of the photograph, around the edge of the smooth bronze sculpture, dark brown, dark green, green, white green, shaped like an egg with a hole burrowed through the middle, twelve wires pulled through the hole.
“What do you think it means?” she asked.
No reply.
“I think it’s a big testicle.  Maybe an elephant or a whale testicle.  What do you think?  And the lines are sperm, figurative sperm, waiting to be spunked.  Have you ever eaten testicle?  People eat goat’s testicles in the desert.  I haven’t, but I should imagine it’s a bit like eating a cream donut, don’t you think?”  
She laughed, closed the book, slid Barbara Hepworth back on the shelf, sandwiched between Calder and Moore.  Milos lit a cigarette, waited, felt the hardness of the solid wood door, clear finished, polished wood.  To the side of the sink bench, a four paned window, horizontal and vertical wooden beads formed an equal cross.  Through the glass the world opened like a pop-up book, old red tiled roofs, buildings of different sizes, of different styles, rising up a hill.  Small, windowless storage sheds, large buildings with pediment and portico entrances, domes arched up from the centre of selected roofs, old houses with plain stone walls and wood shuttered windows.  On the horizon, a row of green trees grew unevenly and freely at the bottom of the sky.  
“If I came back in ten years, will everything have changed?  Maybe it will all have been pushed to the side, then they could call this place Olinda.” she said, lamentably.
“Don't move.”  Milos put both hands in front of him, framed her image between his fingers.  “Don't move.” he repeated.
He took a canvas from the stack beside the bed, placed it on top of the chest of drawers, the bottom edge against the wooden batten, the top edge against the wall.  From under his bed he pulled a paintbox, placed it on the top of the chest, opened it.  He looked at her, studied her pose.
“Don't look at me.  Continue looking out the window.  I’ll tell you when you can move, okay?”  He looked back to the canvas.  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking about the city.”
“What about it?”
“It’s such a fucking mess.”
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”
She stared at the world outside the window, her face close to the glass, the fingers of one hand on the window sill.
“If you were a shape, what would you be?  The first thing that comes into your mind.” he asked.
“I feel like a dot.” she said.  “Is that a shape?”
“A dot?”
“Yes.   A small dot.  A very small dot, like a pin prick.”
Milos pulled a roll of masking tape from the paint box, tore off long strips, taped around the edge of the canvas forming a continuous border the width of the tape.  Using a measuring tape and pencil he made two marks at the top and bottom of the canvas, divided it in three, tore two more long pieces of tape, vertically aligned them with the pencil marks and stuck them down, running his thumb over the edges.
“What color is the dot?” he asked.
“Black.”
“Anything else?”
“No.  Just a black dot.”
On the canvas he drew the outline of two small squares with the pencil, one to the left division and one to the right, both starting in the borders around the edge.  The square from the left turned thirty degrees anti-clockwise from horizontal, the square from the right at thirty degrees clockwise.  To the right of the first small square, he drew a much larger square, forty degrees anti-clockwise, overlapping into the centre.  From the bottom left hand corner of the canvas he drew a line fifty-five degrees anti-clockwise into the centre, three quarters of the way up turned his hand and drew a perpendicular line to the top edge toward the right.  He tore small strips of tape and masked inside the lines of the small square to the left and the larger square, and to the right of the two right-angled lines and outside the small square to the right.
Imilia stared out the window into the sky, birds flying, small black dots against the enormity of the clear blue.  “How do you know what to paint?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea.” he replied.  “It’s just something I have to do, and it just happens.  It’s whatever I feel at a particular moment, or what someone else makes me feel.”
“Do you know what I feel?  I feel like I could be a white dot drifting in a sea of black, and in the distance there is a light and everything is perfectly still.  It is up to me whether I move or not, or whether I stay still.  But then I can feel like a black dot drifting in a sea of white, or if I want to be obscure, a white dot in a sea of white.  I can be something, or nothing.” she said.
“So you can choose?”
“If I want.” she replied. 
He took a tube of black acrylic paint, squeezed blobs into the spaces around the squares to the left and in the middle, inside the small square on the right and to the left and above the right-angled lines.  Using his fingers, he worked the black paint around, used his nails to scrape lines back to the white gessoed canvas beneath, covered over the top with more paint to create textured lines.  He pulled the paint between his fingers as he passed them over the surface forming ridges and troughs.  “What’s the light?” he asked.
“A torch?  A light bulb.  You tell me.” she said.
“No.  I asked you.”
“Maybe it’s not a light.  Maybe it’s another white dot and whoever it is, they’re just fine swimming around, just like me, and that’s all good, you know?”
“So the light is a person?”  He took a tube of red acrylic, squeezed a continuous thin line at forty-five degrees anti-clockwise between the large square and the first long line, through the middle of the canvas.  He pressed his first and second fingers on to the surface and pulled them down creating a single, long line of pure red mixed at the sides into the black.  “Who is it?”
“I’m not sure Milos.”  She drew small boxes on the window pane with her fingertips.  “All I know is that it’s a light.”
Milos replaced the tube of red acrylic, went to the sink and washed the paint from his fingers, dried his hands on the towel.  From the paintbox, he took a tub of vaseline, a fine-haired brush and a thin pad between two pieces of cardboard bound with masking tape on three sides.  He carefully peeled back the tape, laid the pad on top of the chest and flipped over the top piece of cardboard revealing loose leaves of pure gold between pieces of tissue paper.  Taking a pair of sharp, stainless steel scissors, holding a single leaf between two pieces of tissue paper, he cut two rectangles, then cut the two rectangles into four squares, approximately geometric.  “Did you ever believe in love?” he asked.
“Maybe.” she replied.  “Maybe it’s one of those things that you believe because other people believed in it, but then one day you realize that it’s not true.  I think that’s what I believe.”
He removed the lid to the vaseline, stroked the end of the brush in the tub, dabbed his finger against his tongue, wetting it, touched the tissue paper and lifted it off one of the squares.  The unmistakable and irreplaceable shine of the gold.  Slowly, lowering the fine-hairs of the brush on to the surface of the leaf, he lifted the square up, positioned it to the left of the red line and near the top edge, twenty degrees anti-clockwise from horizontal.  He let the air settle, held his breath.  Moving his hand forward ever-so-slowly, he touched the square onto the acrylic paint, watched as the wet surface sucked the leaf on to the surface, the gold highlighting the ridges and troughs in the paint, the texture of the canvas.  He replaced the remaining gold squares back in the pad with the other leaves, laid a piece of tissue paper on top, turned the cardboard cover over and re-taped the sides.  He put the lid back on the vaseline tub, replaced everything back into the paintbox.  “It's finished.  You can move now.” he said.
She took her hand away from the window.  “That was more than I expected.  It felt like being in therapy.”  She turned to him, looked at the painting.  “Interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“I thought I would just sit on the bed and get naked.”  She stood next to him, stroked one finger on the side of his arm.
“I have to remove the tape.” he said.
With a craft knife from the paintbox, he lifted the corners of the masking tape, used his nails to peel the tape from the canvas.  Crisp, sharp lines, black on white, definite and absolute boundaries.  The red line across the black. 
“I like it.”  She looked at his face, brushed his long fringe and tucked his, dark brown hair behind his ear.
“It’ll take an hour or so to dry.”  He washed his hands under the tap.  “What do you like about it?”
“I like the red the most.  The red on the black, it’s a great contrast.”  She sat down on the end of the bed.  
Milos turned and faced her, drying his hands in the towel.
She opened her legs, pulled the red dress up, revealed her naked flesh.  She wore no underwear.  “Come here Milos.”
He put the towel on the bench next to the sink, went over to her, crouched down on his knees, his hands on her legs.
“I want you to fuck me.” she said.
He stared into her eyes.
Her mouth held open, her lips wet.  “I want you to fuck me.”
He looked down at the floor, the space between her feet and his knees.  “I can’t.  I can’t fuck you.”
Imilia closed her eyes, closed her legs, pulled her dress back down, touched the back of her thumb against her lips.  Milos stood up, went to the side of the chest of drawers and looked at the painting, heard her moving behind him.  She walked over and opened the door and left, her footsteps rapidly descending the stairs.  He closed the door behind her.
He looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes, shook his head slowly.  He opened his eyes and looked back down at the painting.  At the bottom right of the canvas, the black box drifting in a sea of white.


God Bless America
November 13, 2009
 By Michael J. Cohen

MJ Cohen lives with his wife and two cats in Carmel, New York. He divides his time between writing and teaching Yoga, having recently been certified as a Yoga instructor.  He has twice been nominated for a Push Cart Prize and once for a Publisher's Choice Award.  The inspiration for many of his stories comes from the people and events in his town and from the several visits over the past few years that he has made to Europe.

On the Friday before Columbus Day Edward DiNapoli walked into a bank in downtown Boston and handed a note to the teller demanding the money in her cash drawer.  He lifted his shirt and revealed a silver pistol tucked into his waistband.  As he exited the bank and rounded the corner brightened by a glaring sun he was shot dead by arriving police. The gun he carried, a toy cap pistol, was still in his waistband as he dropped to the pavement.
Up until the time of his death Edward’s only encounter with the police was a reprimand for lighting off firecrackers when he was twelve-years-old. In high school he was polite, easy going, somewhat shy, and a better than average student.  He was overshadowed by his twin sister who was exuberant, quick-witted and flirtatious.  They were both stunningly good-looking, male and female bookends of the ideal.  Their family was solid, the father an electrician, the mother a nurse. On parent-teacher conference night they came as a couple to see how well their children were doing. Edward was a freshman at Boston College when he pulled the aborted bank job; his sister was at Albany State. 
Two years later Mark Greenbaum’s younger brother was killed in Boston when a police car in pursuit of a stolen vehicle smashed into the younger Greenbaum’s Volkswagen Beetle, killing him instantly.  Mark Greenbaum’s parents were Holocaust survivors who doted after their boys with almost smothering love and concern.  Mrs. Greenbaum thought the gift of a car an extravagance for a boy just off to college. She was especially upset that it was a car of German manufacture. Mr. Greenbaum saw it as a reward for his son’s good grades. He also was not happy that his son had sought out the product of German engineering, but both parents wanted their children to live unencumbered by the nightmarish horrors of their own lives. As he left for school Mark Greenbaum’s brother promised his worried parents that he would drive carefully and not speed.     
The carefree summer after our freshman year in college Mark and I drove cross-country.  We drove in a Ford Fairlane that was loaned to us by Mark’s uncle, a wealthy real estate broker.  A Holocaust survivor like his brother, he told masterful stories of revenge after he had escaped from his Nazi captors proudly exposing his barrel chest to exhibit a deep scar just above his appendix, inflicted, he claimed, by the steel point of a German bayonet.   Whether or not these stories were true was beside the point.  They made us feel good and we never questioned them despite the dubious expression that surfaced on the face of Mark’s father during the uncle’s retelling of the numerous encounters with his enemies. Pulling out his wallet and handing two one hundred dollar bills to Mark, the uncle explained to his reluctant brother that his son should see America. “It’s a wonderful country and beautiful too.  Let him go with his friend and enjoy.” 
On our first day we drove the length of the New Jersey Turnpike filling up on cheap gas.  We sprinted across Delaware through a rainstorm that twice washed over the wheels, sending us hydroplaning crossways into the passing lane and just missing by inches the taillights of the big trucks pushing south.  When we crossed into Maryland we stopped to eat a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches stuffed into a paper bag with small boxes of raisins that Mark’s mother had packed along with a note warning us not to pick up hitchhikers.  Then we headed towards Fredericks to spend the night with a cousin of my mother who she had not seen in twenty-five years, my mother sending me with an envelope of family pictures that I never got to show.
The cousin, along with his wife and a brood of kids controlled by him with military discipline, lived in a rented farmhouse, a stand in for Grant Wood’s American Gothic, husband and wife bearing striking similarity to the couple in the portrait, the stern countenances almost identical.
Somewhere between hot biscuits fresh from the oven and mashed potatoes with gravy the dinner conversation turned to politics and the state of the nation.  Following a comment by the cousin, meant to be a joke about the hippies in California who were burning flags, draft cards, and brassieres, Mark retorted with the “Better off Red than Dead” postulate so popular amongst liberal college students.  My mother’s cousin one of the first on line at the recruiting office the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed and who again returned to that same recruiting office at the start of the Korean War, unexpectedly exploded at the treasonous adage arrogantly spilled across the dining room table.  With bulging eyes that seemed to press against the lenses of his glasses he denounced Mark as “a commie loving bastard.” Mark smiled, reached for a biscuit, and asked someone to pass the butter. “Not in my house,” angrily countered the cousin regaining, his composure and more importantly, his authority. We left before dessert, which was homemade apple pie.
I think of these things now, perhaps because I have the time, and because my mind is empty of the care and concern of work, and because one line of thought leads to another. Mark is dead, almost five years, from non-tobacco related lung cancer at age fifty-eight, three years from the date he was diagnosed, at the time shaking his head in wonderment at the poor prognosis his lungs had received. His mother is still alive residing in a nursing home in Rockaway Beach and I often wonder what she must think of life.  Edward DiNapoli’s sister is also alive.  I recognized her when I went to visit Mark in the hospital. She was the floor supervisor, older though still stunningly beautiful, and divorced with three children.  We never spoke of her brother.
Mark and I talked, recalling our cross-country trip, a seminal moment in our lives because it was just that and because it was by now all we had to share with one another. We drove to Dead Wood Gulch, South Dakota, to visit the grave of Wild Bill Hickock and his girlfriend Calamity Jane. We learned “Billy the Kid” was buried somewhere in New Mexico, and we went there too, hundreds of miles off the main road to a small graveyard surrounded then by chain link fencing. The “caretaker,” an old man dressed in work boots and overalls with a packet of Beech Nut chewing tobacco poking out of his shirt pocket, told us this was the “absolute genuine spot where The Kid is buried… every other place is bull.” “ The Kid” is still resting there as far as I know, alongside two other kinsmen, all three shot dead, I suppose, by lawmen. They lie beneath a large headstone engraved with their names and dates of death.  Above that “PALS” is carved in what must be Western Bravado tribute.
We explored a cave where Kit Carson purportedly held off an onslaught of Indians for almost two weeks. We visited Mt. Rushmore and Little Big Horn then stopped in the town of Paradise, South Dakota, ate at a local bar where the owner served up generous portions of fried chicken and fries, and beer fresh from the tap.  Refusing to take the tip we offered he directed us to a cornfield just outside of town where we rolled out our sleeping bags and spent the night.  In the morning, just as the sun came up in a blush of yellow light that widened across the fields, I woke up to walk along a spur of railroad sheltered by tall stalks of corn. In the quiet of that morning where not even a breeze was blowing I followed the tracks deep into the fields and thought how god awful beautiful was America.
In a small town in Kansas we pulled curbside taking lead from the other cars on the road as a funeral procession passed through and watched as everyone stood silently, the men removing their hats. We assumed it was someone of local importance but the cop directing traffic told us it was no one special.  He explained the town had a long-standing tradition of paying respect to anyone who had passed on. “Rich or poor, black or white.” He placed great emphasis on the latter two, this being the height of the civil rights movement, and no one, especially a police officer wanted to appear out of step. 
When I went to visit Mark we hadn’t seen or spoken to one another for more than ten years.  Holiday cards with ambiguous gestures of intimacy kept us in touch.  He left college and spent a year at home with his parents after his brother was killed. They kept him close, bought his favorite foods, and a colored television for his room, installed a separate phone for his personal use and volunteered to drive him or pick him up anywhere, night or day.  The few times he left the house to spend an evening out they paced the floors with worry until he safely returned.  They cried when he went back to school, but he graduated with honors and went on to become a dentist specializing in periodontal work.  He made a fortune, bought real estate in Manhattan and Miami and made another fortune.  He invited me to his house once; it was magnificent.  I never invited him to mine.  Wealth is a great barrier between friends and it’s pretty much insurmountable.  Dying closes the gap quickly.
This morning as I was out in the yard picking up some fallen branches, I stopped to wave at the two children playing in their yard, calling to one another, laughing and running after a soccer ball that looked to be half their size.  A boy and a girl, they appeared to be about the same age, fraternal twins, I assumed. Unsure of how to respond to my greeting they took off after the ball and ran into the house as I walked to the edge of my yard with a handsaw to cut a large limb that had broken off from a willow. I thought then of twins, the twins I knew or met, the Rohms, Brian and Donald, their father a carpenter and a maker of intricate birdhouses that he freely gave away, my uncle’s second wife Sophie and her sister Isabel, each born with a crossed eye amplified to the size of an egg yolk by the matching pair of thick glasses they wore; David and Rachel Fienburg, who spent the first year in kindergarten sucking their thumbs and fingers, moving in tandem and crying whenever they were separated and the DiNapoli’s, the surviving twin a nurse tending to a dying friend. 
As far as I know neither spoke of the other’s loss so many years before.  Perhaps if their time together had been longer they might have but that day was also the last for Edward’s sister who had been hired for an administrative position at another hospital.  In her office, passed by necessity on the way to or from Mark’s room, was a half eaten cake carefully cut so that the center portion wishing her “Good Luck” was still intact?
In San Francisco Mark and I roomed in a skid row “flophouse.” It was as bad as the name implies.  It smelled of sweat and urine, and the toilet at the end of the darkened hallway wouldn’t flush.  We stayed there because we thought that that’s what Jack Kerouac would have done. It was rumored that Kerouac lived with his father above a row of stores on the boulevard, not far from where we grew up while writing On The Road, the fictional account of his cross-country travels.  We felt a connection I guess, and after reading his book tried in some small manner to duplicate his experience. We bought six packs and cigarettes for the sallow faced alkies that sat around in the lobby and one time slapped some bread and cheese down on a table and invited them over. They ate and drank and then wandered off. We were hoping for a good story or insights into life that our parents or teachers left out or never knew, but they told no stories, ate in silence and taught us nothing other than the dullness of their own lives.
We gave change to the other alkies hanging outside by the front door who were too broke or too drunk to hold onto the few dollars they needed to get a room. We walked around Haight Ashbury, the heart of America’s psychedelic experience, got drunk on apricot brandy shared with a shoeless guitar player while we sat on the hood of a car, then drove to Berkley and stood outside the administration building and sang “God Bless America,” accompanied by the strumming of the shoeless guitar player who pulled on a pair of Mark’s socks to walk across the wet grass.  It was two am and the security guards were so thankful to find patriotic college kids that they bought us coffee and waited until we were sober enough to drive back to San Francisco. It was the first time Mark had ever gotten drunk.
“You were pretty shitfaced,” I reminded him, looking away as he shifted and grabbed for the hospital gown that gaped open to reveal the shallowness of his skin.  “I really did sing God Bless America?… I must have really been drunk.” I told him my cousin would have been proud. For a moment his face furrowed in confusion, the memory of his radical sentiments at the dinner table all but erased by his prosperity.  Then he started to laugh, laughing so hard that one of the multitude of monitors attached somewhere to his body misinterpreted the moment and began emitting voluminous signals of distress.  Almost immediately the hallway filled with a cadre of nurses rushing forward with the tools and mechanisms used to restore life when it was feasibly possible.  Mark was dying but he was weeks if not months away from death.
We drove to the edges of the Grand Canyon, far from any tourists and posed for pictures with an old Native American woman in tattered Indian garb camped along the roadside, trying to eke out a living selling hand decorated clay bowls. We had no use for bowls and instead gave her a fifty-cent piece, then reached into our pockets and gave her more change, all of which did not seem to make her very happy. We toured the great Boulder Dam. In Yellowstone National Park, against all rules, we lured the bears to our car and jumped out to pose for portrait photos, tossing potato chips into the air and onto the ground so the bears would ignore our presence. We drove into Los Angeles where Mark had a cousin, who, unlike mine, was a war protestor, a civil rights activist and a television producer with a house and a swimming pool in Tarzana. We stayed there for two days, lying around like a scene out of the movie “The Graduate,” then drove to Las Vegas on a double lane highway, pushing the Fairlane to over 110 miles an hour, the fastest either one of us had ever driven. Ahead a massive electrical storm crossed the desert horizon with violent arcs of lightening filling the crest of the sky. We turned on the wipers and waited for rain that never came, and then on a downhill saw the speedometer jerk past 120.  
I praised the Ford’s performance, reminding Mark how well it had handled at those speeds, then quickly dropping an ill advised reference to our perilous speed, as I remembered that Mark’s brother, who in keeping with his promise to his parents was cautiously proceeding through an intersection when the police pursuit rushing along like a canon shot ended his life.
I thought then of Edward DiNapoli, his silver cap pistol, his sister as beautiful as you can imagine.  I was hoping she would come in, adjust a tube, check on a monitor. She had the kind of looks that attracted attention and idle talk. A nurse did come in and she was very attentive and pleasant, but she wasn’t Edward DiNapoli’s sister, who had earlier gone home.
In Las Vegas, Mark tried his hand at Black Jack and lost, quickly.  I played the slots and kept on winning nickels at the Golden Nugget far down the strip from the glamour of the big named casinos with the Who’s Who of the entertainment world.  We bought gas and beef jerky and paid for it with a pocketful of nickel winnings and left Las Vegas backtracking abruptly after Mark decided he wanted to find a hooker and get laid, using one of the two saved hundred dollar bills his uncle had given him.  Instead we forked over the money to a tow truck operator who came to our assistance after we rammed into a hidden drainage ditch while making a wide U-turn back to the city. We paid another twenty-five for a used tire and rim that the tow operator guaranteed for another 10,000 miles, handwriting the guarantee on the back of his business card.   
My brother remembers Edward DiNapoli. He called on my cell while I was out in the yard.  He remembers the sister more but she was unattainable for either of us.  He remembers Edward died, “stupidly,” he told me but didn’t recall exactly how.  I told him.  “Fucken dumb,” was his only comment, relegating any thoughts on the matter to inconsequence.
But I was stuck there.  It happens a lot now with little events from the past, some as irrelevant to my life as Mark’s brother or Edward DiNapoli. So I carried the thoughts to the end, asking questions that could never be answered. The same questions that had come to mind when I first learned of his daylight robbery and the tragic ending, not believing the details until they were confirmed by newspaper reports, and even then doubting the accuracy, sure that there was some failings in the details, some facts missing or deliberately obscured. But as time passed, the grim events as they unfolded and were reported by the police and newspapers proved to be accurate, standing up to the scrutiny of a private investigator hired by the family and a subsequent grand jury investigation. 
Those of us who knew Edward, and some who didn’t speculated on his inexplicable actions (there were several hundred dollars in his wallet at the time and the family never appeared to be wanting) conjuring up theories and scenarios appropriate for psychologists and fiction writers and asking the questions that couldn’t be answered. Did Edward intend to die the day he entered that bank.  Was he there on a suicide mission?   Was it a college prank?  Research for a term paper? A psychological experiment gone horribly wrong?  It was so out of character.  He was always smiling, Edward was, enjoying other people’s jokes, or maybe other people’s happiness.  Was something lurking deep within… something so dark that it could only be obliterated by death?  But surely there were other methods… leaping from a bridge, sticking one’s head in an oven.  His plan, if indeed it was a plan, was certainly not foolproof.  He could have been wounded or captured alive without a shot being fired.
Mark’s brother was on his way to pick up a date when his car was rammed and his neck snapped on impact. There was no cause for speculation.  Two police officers were injured mostly with cuts and bruises.  Their police cruiser held up remarkably well during the impact.  The Volkswagon was sliced in half though the radio was still working and had to be shut off by the rescue workers when they removed the body. Later that night someone was arrested for stealing the car the police were chasing.  He was a kid and was sent to a state training school instead of prison.  Maybe he became a model citizen after he graduated…but I doubt it.
Two years after his brother’s death Mark got married. I was in Vietnam and didn’t get an invitation.  I couldn’t have gone anyway.  He wrote to me once.  We just didn’t see much of each other after the trip. Maybe we were just tired of one another.
After we left Santa Fe, New Mexico, we agreed to push as hard as we could to get back to New York. We quickly veered south to Texas, knowing the trip would be incomplete without a visit to The Alamo. We stood on the parapet looking out onto General Santa Anna’s army and envisioned Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett standing defiantly alone on that final day, dying a Hollywood’s hero’s death. We bypassed New Orleans to get home sooner, and I’ve regretted it since.  Somewhere in Virginia we got a ticket for speeding.  Mark was driving, and he said I told him they don’t care about speed limits in Virginia.  I never remember having said that…in Virginia.  I said that in Wyoming.  He wanted me to pay half the ticket.  I didn’t think I should have to pay any of it.  He told me it was his uncle’s car we were driving and we were lucky to have it.  I was so pissed at him I wanted to get out and take a bus back to New York.  I didn’t, though but I pretty much stopped talking the rest of the way back.  At his brother’s funeral I put my arm around him and apologized. He didn’t know why and honestly it didn’t make much difference.
Edward DiNapoli’s funeral was private, family members only.  No reporters, no questions.  Two months after Edward’s death I passed his sister in the frozen food aisle of the A& P.  I gave her a quick nod of recognition afterwards chastising myself for my immature behavior, then years later, when we met in the hospital, momentarily considered the opportunity to rectify my inappropriate response with a belated expression of condolence by extending my hand and telling her how sorry I was.  I wondered then as I wondered during the brief uncomfortable encounter in the A& P aisle if she had inkling as to why or what happened. Perhaps there was a note or a last minute phone call or maybe there wasn’t …besides why should she want to share with me. I held out my hand, told her who I was (she had not recognized me) spoke briefly and broke away with flat expressions of pleasantries.
Across the country when we could Mark and I slept in parks and fields and little cutoffs on the highway that were designed for free camping. I don’t think it’s possible any longer to throw out a sleeping bag and spend the night.  Someone’s bound to call the cops.  We’re a paranoid nation now. The threat of terrorists and television broadcasts of serial killers and child abductors have made us such. We washed up in gas stations and parks anticipating a cleansing bath when we arrived at Salt Lake City.  Our intention was to pitch ourselves into the great lake and cleanse our bodies entirely, the salt acting as a natural aspirator.  During the sixties the water level of the lake was at it’s lowest.  Not knowing this we rushed to the shoreline in swimsuits we wore since our last stop for gas, preparing to plunge into a lake not unlike a placid Atlantic on a hot summer’s evening.  We instead found ourselves swallowed up in a shelf of mud that stretched infinitely out to a small bay of water that could only be effectively reached by wearing hip boots and even then the muddy mixture would have been a formidable adversary. Bound by mud that stiffened along our legs and ran up into our crotches we grabbed some hoses lying nearby and rinsed off the muck that had caked around our bodies, and left without bothering to tour the city.  
Mark asked if I still ate Spam, that canned meat amalgam that I bathed in barbeque sauce and threw onto a small charcoal grill to broil and that for days on end served as supper. “Only when we have company,” I answered. “My brother liked that stuff too and one day my mother came home to find an open can festering on the table …she was furious,” said Mark laughing.
I left telling Mark I’d be back again.  I wasn’t.  On the way out I poked my head into Edward’s sister’s office.  Her nameplate had already been removed and replaced with the name of the new supervisor.  The cake was gone too. 
The dead return in movie frames of nostalgia, young and vibrant, with their lives ahead of them.  Families at breakfast, getting ready for school in the morning, peanut butter sandwiches, dressing for the cold…you can sink your memory in all the details and remain there.  Perhaps that’s what Mark’s mother is doing as she waits for her life to end in that nursing home in Rockaway Beach, and just maybe her life ended at that intersection in Boston. 
It comes to mind that in a cross current of coincidence Mark’s mother and Edward DiNapoli’s sister might meet just as in the past when hospital lives unknowingly converged, sharing the city of Boston as a catalyst for tragedy.  Could time and circumstance allow the revelation of their common misfortune and heartbreak? Complete the circle that years before went unconnected?  Again those inane questions of no consequence. 
Along our cross-country route, before he got the speeding ticket, Mark and I talked about making another trip, up through Boston, to walk “The Freedom Trail,” to climb the steeple in the Old North Church where they hung the lanterns that started Paul Revere on his famous gallop, then onto Maine and Canada, coming back through Vermont and over to New York to Fort Ticonderoga and the battlefield at Saratoga.  A week’s time during spring break was all we needed.  I told Mark I could borrow my brother’s car.  That trip never happened. Mark went to Boston without me.  He went with his parents to bring back his dead brother. 
Two years earlier Edward DiNapoli’s parents made the same trip. They looked for answers and found none.  Edward went to Boston to play baseball.  He loved the sport. He played in high school and went to Boston College with high expectations but lost interest. No one knew why. He then tried his hand at bank robbing.


Sinners in the Hands of an Amphibious God
November 18, 2009

By Jeff Foster

Jeff holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of New Haven. His work has appeared in such publications as decomP, NANO Fiction, Ampersand Review, The Foliate Oak Online Literary Review, Kimera, Chiron Review,Confluence, and Change: An Occasional Magazine Dedicated to the Memory of Richard Brautigan.

     New Jersey DOT crew chief Calvin Ashby, clutching a broom, hopped out of his dump truck and ambled across the highway toward his four workers, who were jabbing at each other with shovels.   
     “You still have ten minutes until lunch, so stop screwing around with those goddamned shovels,” ordered Ashby, who then dove into a mass of thickets on the side of the road.
     Preacher, theologian, and sanctimonious asphalt mixer Jonathan Edwards raised his sooty hands toward the sky and, with a voice that resonated across I-95, recited a portion of his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.
          His words floated over the heads of his co-workers and into the treetops.
          “Are there any questions?” Edwards asked.
          “I didn’t understand a single word you said,” someone complained.
          “I have a question,” called out another man. “How many Presbyterians can you fit into a Volkswagen?”
          Just then, Calvin Ashby stumbled out of the thickets; he clutched a loaf of rye bread and a jar of mayonnaise.
     “What keeps a person out of the fires of hell?” Ashby asked Edwards.
     A Presbyterian stuck his head out of a nearby pothole.  “God’s grace,” he answered before disappearing back into the hole.
     Spreading a gelatinous dollop of mayonnaise onto a slice of bread, Ashby inquired, “So, even if I continue to be selfish, mean-spirited, callous, and unscrupulous, I could still be on the fast-track to Heaven?”
     “You got it,” Edwards assured him. “Now, how about giving me that sandwich?”
     “Sure.” Ashby pulled a frog out of the pocket of his orange safety vest and slapped the amphibian between the two slices of bread. “Here you go.”
     “Pray for God’s Grace!” the fiery orator admonished as he brought the sandwich to his sulfur-scented mouth.
    “I’d taste better with spicy mustard, you son-of-a-bitch,” cried the frog as it entered Edwards’ mouth to begin its swift descent into the bottomless gulf of Edwards’ best contrivance.


Getting Used to Being Alone
November 23, 2009
By Jessica Langan-Peck

Jessica Langan-Peck grew up in upstate New York, a place she visits often and really likes to write about. She now lives in Brooklyn, NY, and edits travel books by day. 

At five o’clock Maxi sinks down onto the couch, her legs in short cutoffs spread wide. She blows her curly bangs off her forehead and flares her nostrils dramatically. I wonder if she’s trying not to cry, but I don’t move from my spot near the windowsill. I am leaning, wilting in the heat, watching Maxi’s daughter Anna eat a popsicle that is dripping down her little forearms. The green rivulets are drying and sticking in the fine hairs there.
 “Anna, honey,” Maxi turns her head without lifting it from the back of the couch “You need a napkin. Are you thirsty? Jesus, I have no idea where the glasses are.”
“I’ll see if I can find them,” I say. It is June, and suddenly the days are full and summery. This morning, Maxi had called and said, “Hey, I know I haven’t talked to you in awhile, but are you free to help me move today?” I tried not to pause before I said I could be there in twenty minutes. She was moving out of her husband’s house and into a new place on Center Street, an apartment in a small corner of a big old house with sloped ceilings and faded wood floors.  I look at the piles of boxes, which are making dark shadows on the floor, and put my hands on my hips.
 “Hey, Anna, why don’t you come help me? We’ll see if we can find the glasses.” She stares at me, her faintly green lips tightly closed.
Later, Maxi is sucking down her iced tea, eyes wide and spacey.
“Despite everything, I feel surprised,” The boxes are halfway unpacked and Anna is at her father’s. “Things have been rough for a long time. We have different ideas about the way things should be. But when you have so many fights that end with the ‘maybe we shouldn’t be married’ conversation, it feels like it will never actually be over. You get so used to climbing your way out of the lowest place you think you can go.” She makes her hands in to claws and climbs. We’re at a café, sitting on the roof deck, smoking cigarettes and looking past each other at the street.  “We worked pretty hard.  And we have Anna, so we’ll still be working hard, at least for her sake,” she pulls on a piece of her hair, straightening and then letting it kink again. “I was really young.”
I want to say she is still young, young for a divorce, but this seems inappropriate somehow. “How is he taking it?”
“I think he’s sad, but he doesn’t really show it, you know. He throws himself into the pottery and the farm like a maniac when he’s upset instead of talking about it.” Her eyes are dry. “I’m always saying ‘tell me how you’re feeling baby, why don’t you ever tell me what is going on?’ Eventually he can’t take it anymore. I think I drive him crazy, but I don’t know any other way to communicate.”
I nod as if I’ve experienced the exact same thing.
“It mostly started after we moved here. He always wanted to come upstate, he’s from the country, you know, and I didn’t want to leave the city.”
 I watch the street for people I know and blow out smoke slowly.  “Yeah, it must have been quite a change. You grew up there, right?”  I think of her in Brooklyn—her big leather purse, high-heeled boots. I am conscious of my flip-flops and my sunburned forehead. I have been wearing the same purple tank top and cut-offs for days.
“I’m getting out of here soon,” she says finally, holding her dewy glass against her face. “As soon as I can save a little.”
Maxi is older, by maybe five or six years, but she sat next to me in Drawing 102 last semester.  She was small and stylish and no one knew who she was.  There were rumors that she was married to some artist, but that she had flings with college guys sometimes. The boys were always watching her, especially when she first came in the door, hair wild, and jeans tight. They tried to play it cool when she drew some very realistic breasts that resembled her own. I sat next to her and said “Those are nice,” and she looked down and looked up at me and said thanks. She lived out in Middle Creek with her husband, way out in the boonies, she said. I thought she seemed too pretty for that.
“I have a four year old daughter named Anna,” she told the whole class when someone asked her who the little girl in her drawings was, and there was a second or two of silence. Her stuff was good, much better than mine. She drew a sloping hayfield, and the saplings crowding in on all sides of it. She drew a grey dairy barn with a pale roof and small windows.  Every day I watched her leave and I thought about her driving that beat up white car west on I-88, turning onto dirt roads and pulling into an overgrown driveway. Maybe her daughter would come out to meet her, run out of the house and down the grassy hill.
Near the end of the semester, in December, Maxi drew a run-down looking house with a man standing in the doorway. He was far away, leaning on the doorframe. I watched her, looked hard to try to see the details of his face. When she looked up I looked away.
“Hey, lets go get coffee or something,” she said. We sat in the Coffee Cabin and sipped and she told me that they’d moved here three years ago, had driven up from the city in an old green panel truck, and she had felt this overwhelming sadness, at the time. But also maybe some excitement.
 “You know, I felt artsy then. I met him in his pottery studio on Mulberry Street. He had these fantastic hands. I thought I could love it here, living out in the woods and going to craft shows on the weekends.” She gestured vaguely with one hand. We were in the middle of town, but beyond was green farmland and woods and streams.  She didn’t tell me what he looked like, or what his name was.  I pictured him as serious and talented, tall and skinny. She didn’t tell me then that things were not going well, or that once after a fight he had slammed the door so hard all the glass broke out of it, just shattered and dropped smoothly out of the frame and onto the floor.
 On a wintry Saturday we met at a diner for breakfast and she brought Anna. Anna, whose hair was dark and so fine it looked like an extension of her delicate head, stared at me with brown eyes and did not say hi when Maxi asked her to.
“So here she is,” she patted Anna’s arm. “Here’s my girl.” I smiled at Anna with my lips closed, a mellow kind of smile. Her face was fine and thin like Maxi’s.
   Anna sat with her head mostly down and colored intently on the paper tablecloth. Stick figures, in different shades of blue. “Mom,” she said, pointing to the small figure with a big head of curls. “Dad. Anna.” Maxi patted her skinny arm.
A month after Maxi’s move, I wake up sweating. The fan in my window is moving humid air around and my sheets are damp. Since it’s Saturday and I go to the farmer’s market and buy six ripe tomatoes and two zucchinis and a pound of green beans. I take the car out to Cherry Valley and wade in the creek, slipping on the rocks and waving at the deer flies buzzing around my head. I am practicing being alone. My roommates have all moved out, and it is still strange. Sometimes I walk around in my bare feet, opening empty cabinets and looking at the holes in the fridge where their non-fat milk and diet coke used to be. I’m lying on the floor in my underwear, directly in front of the fan, when Maxi calls and invites me over for dinner. I look at the vegetables on my counter.
“Sure, that’d be fun.” I say. “I’ll bring over some produce.”
In Maxi’s living room I get right down on the floor with Anna, lean in a little bit. We’ve just finished unpacking the last of her toys. We sit in the middle of her blocks, which are spread out in the dusty living room. She is small for four. We build a rectangular fortress with blocks, some painted bright colors and some just plain, smooth wood.
“You could put that one there,” She says and points at a corner tower. I set the red cube down gently and she nods. “You could put that green one there.” I wonder if she is always this businesslike. Maxi is in the kitchen putting away dishes, stacking plates and singing along with the radio. Her voice turns airy and off pitch on the highest notes. I touch Anna’s head and stand up, brushing dust off my shorts. Maxi is dancing at the sink while she washes her hands, shaking her hips with her head tilted back. I watch for minute and then I dance too, shimmying right over to her at the sink. I wave my arms above my head and stomp my feet out to each side and Maxi laughs, laughs so hard she can’t stand up straight and we both end up sagging against the cupboard, holding our stomachs. When we look up Anna is standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a block and smiling shyly, her tiny teeth showing.
 “I know this is so uncomfortable,” Maxi sounds far away on the phone. It is nine in the morning and I am hung over. Last night, I was suddenly worried that I was squandering my youth hanging out with a divorcee all the time. I did my eye make-up wore a black tank top. At the bar, I ran into girls from school and I did have fun, in a hazy kind of way.
 “I did enough of this in college,” I tried to yell to some guy who was buying me drinks. He had a beard that smelled like dirty hair but he had nice eyes and when we kissed it didn’t get in the way as much as I thought.
Now I shake my head and press the phone closer to my ear. “Hi Max, what’s going on?”
Her voice sounds choked up. “I know this is so fucked up, but I need you to do me a favor.”
I feel dizzy, so I sit slowly on the couch.
“It’s his night with Anna, and my car is in the shop. He’s working and he can’t come get her. Can you pick her up and take her over there? It’s just in Morrisville.” She says all of this very quickly.
“Sure, yeah.” I pull on shorts and a tank top, wash my face with cold water.
I roll the windows down and sing along to an old Best of Simon and Garfunkel CD, tap my hands on the steering wheel. Anna is in her car seat behind me and I keep turning my head to make sure she’s ok.  I’m driving slowly. Some red car with Jersey plates is riding me, but I don’t swear at him or make terrible faces in the rearview. I keep both my hands on the wheel.
“Hey Anna,” I try to turn my face towards her without taking my eyes off the road. “What did you do in school today?”
She shrugs. Her wispy hair is blowing like crazy so I roll up my window most of the way. It is hot in this car and I am nauseous.
“Ok,” I turn on the fan. “It’s ok, you don’t have to talk.” Anna inspects her toes, which are painted pale pink. We drive on route Seven towards Morrisville. Anna’s father works at the Upstate Home for Children, an institution for handicapped kids that consists of a large grey house with rows of oddly shaped windows. I used to try to see in the windows every time I drove by, a habit I picked up when I was eight and I got my first pair of glasses. I could see so far.
“We’re going to see my dad,” Anna says from behind me.
I stop the car in front of the Upstate Home, wrestle with the seatbelt holding the little plastic car seat down.  I set it on the grass and Anna folds her skinny arms, watching the door of the grey house. I look at my watch. He comes down the stairs after a little while. He’s not so tall, and more solid than I imagined. His hair is thick, and dark like Anna’s. He doesn’t look at me.
“There she is,” he says and she stands still next to me, smiling. She doesn’t run to him, just walks slowly and gracefully to where he is squatting in the grass. I am aware of my dirty hair and sweaty tank top and I look up towards the house, back out towards the road. I lean backwards on the car. He stands up and stretches out his hand that’s not holding Anna’s. I take it. He has square hands and blunt fingers.
“Hi, I’m Jean.”
“Kevin,” he says.  “Hey, we really appreciate this.” I think of Maxi’s drawing, of the man in the doorframe leaning on one hairy forearm.

The air is cooler suddenly, one day in late August.  Anna and I are wearing sweaters in the park. Usually it’s the two of us now, once or twice a week since Maxi started a job at the craft store on Main Street.
“Listen, kid,” I am trying to braid her flimsy hair. “You have to help me practice, ok? I have to start teaching in a few weeks, and you have to help me.”
Anna nods seriously. “I’m not even in Kindergarten,” she says.
I make a big show of standing up in front of her and clearing my throat. “Boys and girls, welcome to second grade. My name is Miss Benedict.”
 Anna giggles, something she does not do often.
“Who knows what color this blanket is?” I hold up a corner of Anna’s security blanket, smiling as hard as I can.
She screams, “Blue! It’s blue!” and snatches it out of my hand. We lie on our backs looking up at the leaves, which are still green but not for long. “We’re not going to my Dad’s today,” Anna says after awhile.
 “No,” I say. “Nope, only on Fridays, right?”
Later, when Maxi and I are most of the way through a bottle of cabernet, I tell her that I really like her kid. We’re sitting at her tiny kitchen table with our elbows propped up, complaining about how cold it is all of a sudden and about how bad her feet hurt from standing all day. “Hey, thanks for taking her.”
 She never looks at me when she says things like this and I always answer “my pleasure.”  The wine is dry and bites on the way down and I feel myself swaying a tiny bit in my chair.
“Do you ever talk to Kevin when you drop her off?” She is slouching in her chair, watching me.
“I usually just stay in the car,” I say. “You know, once in awhile we talk about the pollen count or the kid he takes care of who loves school-buses.”
She doesn’t smile. She looks down at the table, twirls her wine class between two fingers. “He probably thinks you’re so cute.”
 “Jesus, Max,” I say, and her chin falls to her chest. “I don’t have some kind of crush on your husband, ok?”
“Sorry, that was irrational.” She is shaking her head over and over. “That was nutty. You know, you’re young. And you have that long hair and those long legs.” I stare at her.
“Don’t say crazy things, Max.”
“I just don’t know what I’m doing, ok? I have no fucking clue. I feel like the worst mother in the world, you taxiing my kid around like this.”
Then she is crying in big shakes, sucking air in and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. I reach out to her bony shoulder, hold it and squeeze it gently. I pull her curly head into my collarbone, rubbing my hand on her back for what seems like a long time until she is gradually still.
“I just feel pretty sad and messed up,” she says quietly. “I know you’re not after Kevin or something. I’m sorry I said that.” She attempts a laugh. “You’re too mature for him anyway.”
“That’s for sure.” I tell her that Kevin seems like a nice guy but he’s actually too old for me. Max is quiet now, staring ahead with her hands cupped around a wine glass and I get up to leave. I pat her head and wobble a bit down the stairs.
Anna and I have worked out a routine in the car. She gets in the car seat and dangles her arms down to the sides, which means she needs help buckling in. She eats her zip-lock bag full of cheerios in the first five minutes while I get us out of town, tapping my feet through stoplights and swerving around parallel parkers on Main Street. Then I say, “What music do you want to listen to?” just as a formality, because she always says “The rock song.”
So I put it on and we sing together as loud as we can. “I am a rock! I am an Iiiiiiiiiiisland!”  We leave the windows down, because it’s Indian summer now and she taps the back of my head if she’s getting too much wind.
“Here we are, Miss,” I say when I pull into the circular driveway. “At your service.” Her father, who still shakes my hand but holds it too long almost every time, stands in the grass in his short shorts and asks me how the classroom prep is going. I tell him about the progress of my When is Your Birthday? Calendar and the Classroom Rules Bulletin Board.
Kevin’s house sits up high, at the top of a small grassy hill. I walk up between the overgrown gardens on either side of the path. There are Brussels sprouts leaning at crazy angles, the tips of their leaves turning brown in the cold nights, and broccoli with crumpled yellow flowers.  The house is old, shingled and sagging a bit. It has a new porch though, and clumsy scaffolding outside the second floor windows. It looks like he’s tearing off the shingles slowly, replacing them with wood siding.  There are maple trees stretching up the side hill, and infant evergreens planted between the house and the dirt road.  On the drive here I rolled down the windows but not all the way, and smelled leaves turning and creeks running again after the late summer drought. “It’s Fish and Game Road,” Maxi had said. “I mean come on, isn’t that ridiculous? You won’t miss it.” She was taking on another extra shift and I was feeling stir-crazy in the apartment, waiting for the school year to start, so I had agreed to drive to Kevin’s.  I turned left at the sign for the Fish and Game club, bounced through pot holes past hay fields with big round bales. Kevin comes to the door. 
“Hey, what do you think of the hedge?”
I turn to look at the spindly evergreens again. “Very nice. Spruce?”
“In twenty years or so they might be big enough to block the road.”
I nod, standing with my hands on my hips. “Seems like you have a real traffic problem around here.” He laughs, looks past me at the road, where the dust from my car is still settling.  It is Sunday and I smell bacon. I look over his shoulder for Anna.
“Come on in,” he says and steps to the side, holding the door open. I sit down in a rounded chair at the kitchen table and look at the ceiling.
“Max says hi,” I say. “She’s working an extra shift this morning.” They aren’t talking much these days. He pours coffee. To the left of the table, the living room is a weird collection of furniture—an easy chair that is made out of some scratchy grey material and a velvety, burnt orange couch.  He sits down across from me and I straighten up a little, sip my coffee. It’s strong.
“There’s more milk,” he says and I shake my head. I hear Anna upstairs, light footsteps fast like she’s running. He puts his elbows up on the table, rests his chin on his knuckles.
“What is she doing up there?” I say in the quiet.
“I’m not sure. This morning when I went up she was playing school, standing up in front of her stuffed animals.” He mimics her folding her arms in a strict teacher pose. “Did you show her that?”
“Could you tell what grade it was? Was she talking colors, or fractions?” Kevin puts his coffee cup down, looks at me. I look back, somewhere near his moustache and sharp nose. I imagine him and Maxi in this house, maneuvering around each other in the kitchen while they cooked breakfast or sitting on the couch, looking out the picture window at the baby hedge. I watch them at the table, sitting on either side of Anna’s high chair, feeding her cheerios and avocado. When they fought, I think it must have been standing up, he in the kitchen and she next to the front door. I check the door and its smooth pane of glass for smudges or cracks, evidence of slamming.
 Anna comes downstairs in her sock feet and climbs
“Hi kid, how was your weekend?”
“We picked raspberries,” Anna says, pinching the loose skin between my thumb and my first finger. “We ate hamburgers.”
Kevin reaches across the table and roughs up Anna’s hair. “That’s all we did?”
“That sounds really fun,” I tell her. “I really like raspberries.”
Anna runs down to the car ahead of me as fast as she can and takes a few turns around the driveway. She’s pretending to be a horse a lot these days, so she does the two-legged human gallop. I feel strangely relaxed, standing next to Kevin in bare feet. I turn to face him, to ask him why some spruce trees in the hedge are growing faster than others, but I don’t say anything because I notice how my forehead comes to his chin and how his teeth are a little crooked on the bottom. He should back up a few steps, but instead he stands with his chin near my forehead, breathing in and out through his nose. He smells like coffee and faint sweat and my stomach feels empty suddenly, almost hungry.
 “You’re not as tall as I thought you were,” he says, and tilts his chin forward slightly and rests it near my hairline. So I tip my head back and kiss him quickly, just let my lips touch his for a second. He looks down at me and puts one big hand on my hipbone. Anna rounds the corner of the driveway at a full gallop and I turn and walk carefully down the sloping grass to the car.
After I drop Anna off, I sit in the chair at the Cut Above and tell the woman she should take it all off. She pauses behind me, looks at me in the mirror.
“You sure?”
I nod. I stuff my hands, which are still shaking, under my thighs. She snips with her delicate scissors and my hair falls down and piles up in straight brown stacks. I think of a book I read to the kids last week about a little girl whose grandmother cuts her hair on the porch. The girl has downy blonde hair and the next day they see it, glinting gold, wound in with twigs to make a bird’s nest. We’re on Main Street though, and there are no birds. I stare at my face in the mirror. My hair is wet and slicked back up off my forehead. My cheeks look round, my eyes tired. She cuts and cuts and I leave with a pixie as short as a boy’s. I shake my head and it feels light.
 Maxi and Anna come over before her friend Tom’s gallery opening and I am queasy waiting for her car to pull into the driveway. She screams when she sees me, wants to feel the back where the lady used the buzzer.
“I can’t stop feeling it,” she says. “I can’t believe how different you look.” She is tense, snapping at Anna to please hurry up in the bathroom and pacing the length of my bedroom. “I know Kevin will be there,” She looks in my mirror and pulls at her dress. “I know we are both responsible adults,”
“Max, you’ll be fine. Just do that deep breathing thing we learned the other day. In for six, hold for four, out for eight.”  We park on the street and climb the stairs to the gallery, where we hold Anna’s hand and sip wine from plastic cups. Kevin shows up, wearing a brown tweed sports coat, and I don’t turn around. I feel sweat on the back of my neck, where my hair used to be. Maxi is talking animatedly to a couple, gesturing at Anna and the paintings and the food table. I can see that her smile is too big. I make small talk with people I don’t know and watch out of the corner of my eye, until finally Kevin and Maxi are standing across from each other. I imagine their conversation. Hi, I’ve been pretty good, thanks, just working on the place. And I love working at the store; it’s been a great way to meet people. I stare at a painting of a crooked old apple tree with lovely shades of grey and do the deep breathing technique quietly. Maxi’s face is stiff when she tells me she’s had enough for one night; she’s going to catch a ride with Nancy. She kisses my cheek.
When Kevin comes over I am still looking at the painting. He says hello, and I say very politely that it’s a school night and I had better go home soon. He is cool and he nods. I walk past Tom, the artist, and smile at him. I close the door harder than necessary. In the street I lean against the car, avoiding the streetlights.  I stare into the dark windows of the bank, feel my hot cheeks and rub my arms in the chill. Maxi had squeezed my shoulders on her way out. And Anna, her eyes glazed and sleepy, had come at me with her arms outstretched.
 After awhile Kevin comes up next to me and I can feel that brown tweed against my sweater. I wonder what our heads look like from behind, his dark and curly and mine fine and newly cropped.
“What can we do?” he looks straight ahead.
“I don’t know,” my throat is dry. “I’m not sure.”  Behind us the last people are leaving the lit gallery and clomping down the wooden stairs, tipsy from free wine. They would be able to see us, if they were looking. I feel dizzy, so I wrap my hand around his wrist, holding on to the dark hair and bone. I squeeze once, hard, and he lowers his head down to where my neck meets my shoulder and breathes out slowly. For a second I lean towards him, feel his hair on my ear, hold my breath. Then I step sideways and walk back around to the driver’s side, shielding my face against the sudden brightness and the cloud of moths clustered around the streetlight. I sit down hard in the front seat, and pull clumsily out into the street. I can see Kevin in the rearview mirror, standing still on the sidewalk and watching me go.
My stomach is clammy in my cardigan, leftover night air mixed with sweat, and I hold the wheel lightly. I drive slowly through town, smelling his wine breath and feeling the flushed skin near my neck. When I pass Center Street I look for lights at Maxi’s. Anna is probably asleep, her small lips straight, her nose long and pointed like her father’s, and for a second I see all of us sitting around the long pine table all the way out in Middle Creek. We are watching Anna build a block castle on the rug. Maxi sits low in her chair wiggling her toes. She is saying how good it feels to sit down. Kevin is leaning forward to inspect his fingertips, which are cracking from the winter weather and dry heat. I’m sitting sideways, with my legs on his lap, and as he bends his chest is warm on my knees.


Crossing Over
December 25, 2009

By Nick Kimbro

Nick Kimbro is a graduate of the creative writing program at Berry College. His fiction has been featured in Underground Voices, and is forthcoming in Vivid Magazine and  TuesdayShorts.com. You can keep up with him or drop him a line at his blog: youarebeingredirected.blogspot.com

I remember the expression on the guru’s face as I prepared to leave; back straight, shoulders level, chin tipped slightly forward so that his beard curled like a blanket of moss against his chest… how his features, which up until that point had seemed so light and ageless, turned suddenly grave, and he warned me not to tell anyone what he had said to me. Talking about it or taking pains to see it accomplished could only compromise the fate he had divined, and I have taken the fact to heart. I haven’t told a soul anything the guru said to me. Some things you are better off pretending not to know.
It was my driver who first told me about him, on the long ride in to Varanasi from Mughal Sarai. The trains that ran direct from Agra had all been full, so I’d opted to take an overnight car to a town 25 kilometers out, and arrived just before sunrise. I had not planned on traveling alone, but rickshaws were much roomier that way, I found. I imagined my extra airline ticket reserving this luxury.
As we crossed the bridge into the city, my driver, Shivesh, pointed out the Ganges flowing beneath us, ochre and glistening in the early sun. “You must see the fires,” he shouted back to me, straining over the engine’s cry: “Where they burn the bodies.” He pointed down the riverbank to where several pillars of smoke could be seen billowing above the water. “This is not something you have seen before.”
Varanasi is older than history, once wrote Mark Twain, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together. When we at last entered the city, I was struck first by its tranquility. It was only 6 am, and besides those who, like me, had yet to find a bed for the night, the streets were relatively empty. I gave him the name of my hotel and after navigating the streets and some scattered livestock for a while we finally came to a stop.
“This is as far as we go,” he said, killing the engine and turning back to face me. I looked around. The street was empty in both directions, and still no sign of the Hotel Alka. I pointed the latter fact out to him, and he responded by pointing to a narrow alleyway cut between two buildings. “This way to the Old Town,” he said. “Not enough room for rickshaws.” He slapped the side of the vehicle and climbed out, removing my backpack from my lap and helping me out onto the asphalt. He was a young, handsome man—well dressed except for a pair of ratty sandals and dusty feet. “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I will show you where it is.”
During the time I had already spent traveling abroad, my senses had become finely tuned to the various ploys and scams that face travelers. The price he had quoted me originally, I could assume, referred only to my conveyance by rickshaw. How much extra this foot-service would cost, I could only guess, but in any case, chances were my guess would be short. But what could I do? Not follow him? Again I imagined Kaitlyn, and how much different things would be if she’d come. So long as I had someone to look out for, I felt capable of being exactly what I needed to be: A man of action. Alone I felt vulnerable, but more than that, I felt bored. There is a certain bliss in solitude that is self-elected. When it is not though, there is this deep sense of monotony, of exasperation with one’s own thoughts and perspective on the world. Even the accomplishment of your desires somehow feels dull and stilted, as if desire itself were just a word, and its completion an end stop. It doesn’t matter if you’re alone in a cabin or navigating one of the most overpopulated cities in the world, that kind of solitude is chronic.
The Old Town was a tightly bound network of alleyways, storefronts, and the occasional siddha wrapped in orange cloth. I followed Shivesh for what must have been half an hour, our expedition obstructed now and again by a cow paused in our path, and thus rendering it impassible. A young boy in rags came and tugged at my sleeve, but Shivesh waved him off in a manner which reminded me of two buzzards disputing territory, though I did not argue. He mentioned that his guru lived nearby. Within walking distance, actually. “A great man,” he said. “Good for spiritual advice, telling fortunes, giving blessings…” I mentioned that I had hoped to visit a guru at some point on my journey. “This is perfect!” he exclaimed. “I am happy for you to meet him. He is not for tourists, but for you he will make a exception.” Shivesh stopped and looked around, as if recharting our course.
“Not yet though,” I pleaded. I had not slept in almost twenty-four hours. “First the hotel, then maybe later your guru.” He nodded, and in another ten minutes we’d reached the steps of the Hotel Alka: a narrow, rundown little place which, despite its appearance, boasted showers in every room and a bar on the top floor. I cringed, waiting for him to announce the exorbitant fee that was sure to follow, but to my surprise when I reached for my wallet he waved it away. “Do not worry,” he said. “We’ll settle later.” And we set a time later in the day to go and meet his guru. In my room, the pillow smelled vaguely of mildew, but I buried my head there as if tunneling downward, into the earth, retreating from the day even as morning streamed in through the windows.

We met again at two o’clock outside the hotel, after I’d had a chance to sleep and have a bit of breakfast at the restaurant upstairs. From there I could see, between building tops, the shifting brown surface of the Ganges creeping by.
“Rest Ok?” Shivesh asked as I strolled into the alleyway.
“Not bad,” I answered. He gestured for me to follow him. It turns out he’d been telling the truth about his guru being close by. Scarcely had we rounded three corners than again we were faced with an old ruined building.
“Through here,” he motioned. ‘Here’ was a leaky cement hole in the wall, and the ensuing ‘This way’ referred to a set of wooden steps that wound their way around an open-air courtyard inside. On our way up to the third floor we passed several open doors, the interiors of which I could see were covered mostly in blankets. In one, a yoga teacher was performing a set of asanas with two western students. This did not bode well for Shivesh’s claim that his guru was “not for tourists”, but it did manage to put some of my other more sinister imaginings at ease.
At last we reached a doorway, and Shivesh paused respectfully outside, calling something in Hindi to the occupant, who responded faintly, signaling us to enter. The room, like those others I mentioned, was empty of furniture and covered in blankets—cheap looking ones that resembled in quality the Indian-style knock-offs sold in the US. The guru was a little man by appearances, and sat against the far wall, legs crossed and seemingly in the middle of a prayer. Shivesh motioned for me to take a seat in front of him.
“Namaste,” he said after several moments, opening his eyes. “I am Swami Sengupta. My friend tells me you come from United States?”
I told him that I had.
“And that you are interested in knowing what your future holds?”
I told him that I was.
“Good!” he chimed. He climbed slowly to his feet and shuffled over to a corner of the room where a packaging crate housed several large books, and brought them back over, stacking them on the ground between us and returning to his seat. “What would you like to know?”
My mind drew a blank. For some reason I had not thought that far into it. The future itself, fearsome thing though it was, relative to my present circumstance seemed appealing enough. “Just some good news, I suppose.”
His eyes rose and met mine, and he gestured for me to extend my hands, looking very closely at my palms before turning them over and peering at my knuckles, and back again. He glanced back and forth between my hands and my eyes, and finally let them go. “You are in suffering,” he declared, and did not wait for me to respond. “You travel alone, but this energy follows you. This is your present, not your future.” He watched my reaction, and must have seen that what he said was true because he turned to his books and lifted one from the top. “What is your name?” he said.
I began to answer, “Rowan—” but he waved for me to stop, sliding across the ground a worn piece of parchment and a pencil.
“Write it down.”
I did as he instructed.
“When were you born?” he continued, and I wrote that down as well. “What was the time of day?” I answered that I wasn’t sure but thought it was sometime early in the morning, and for a period of about fifteen minutes he quizzed me over the geographic, social, and familial circumstances of my birth. He asked if I knew anything about astrology, and I answered ‘little’. Numerology? ‘Littler’. These were the methods he was going to use to divine my fate, he said. I nodded. He looked through several of his books some more and jotted some unintelligible notes on the piece of parchment, then pulled out a bundle of pictures and began flipping through them. These, he said, were all of the people who, over the years, he had met with and who kept in touch with him after they’d gone home. The pictures all looked different, taken from different angles and their subjects all in different poses, though I thought I recognized in each case, different portions of the same ruined building behind them.
“Now,” he said, coming to the end of the exhibition, “you must go.”
I stared at him for a moment, then glanced toward Shivesh, half-expecting him to explain to the man a little about what westerners expect for their money. But all he did was nod with his head down. The guru continued: “I must take this day and prepare your insight. You come back tomorrow and I will tell what awaits you.
I prepared to go, having little choice in the matter, at which point he mentioned awkwardly—in a manner that was probably intended to be polite—that there was still the matter of a deposit for me to attend to. So after handing him a 100 rupee note Shivesh and I departed, and he led me back to my hotel for lunch.

There are lots of things that sometimes keep travelers indoors during their journeys: lost wallets, passports, bad drugs, the monsoon, 130 degree heat, and—last but not least—that national malady known morbidly as “Delhi Belly”. It is for these reasons, and a whole lot more, that exotic locales are experienced as such in the moment. It takes the mind’s retrospective faculties to recognize much of the beauty in our experience, although I had been traveling for over a month now, and was either used to, or had learned how to avoid most of those afflictions listed above. So why was I held up in my room then, thumbing through postcards? I wanted to get out. Explore the city. Varanasi, my guidebook reminded me, was probably the most holy city in the world. So holy that those who bathed in its river were said to wash away a lifetime of sins, and those who died there attained instant moksha, or liberation from the bothersome cycle of death and rebirth. Surely the place had something to offer me.
In the hotel restaurant I met several other westerners: one from Great Britain, a pair from Australia (which isn’t exactly ‘western’ but you know what I mean), and one American journalist who said only that she was there on ‘personal’ business. The British guy and the Australian couple had met earlier on in their journeys, and had been traveling together for some time by that point. The journalist and I both had been traveling alone. It turns out they had made arrangements already for a boat to take them down the Ganges and there was room, they said, for two more. We arrived to meet the boat at
Dashaswamedh ghat at six (following a playful dispute over controversial words like schedule, advertisement, and aluminum) though at that time our two oarsmen had not yet arrived; just the owner slouched across the bow in chinos and a button-up shirt. When he
saw us approaching he leapt to his feet and scanned the alleyways for his two employees, his frustration transforming instantly to enthusiasm as we came to a stop in front of him. “Namaste!” he called warmly, and looking toward his bare wrist: “You are early!”
Our British companion opened his cell phone. “Right on time by my clock,” he said, more amused than annoyed.
“I am sorry, we must wait on my boatmen,” he explained. “Do not worry though. They will be here soon. Right now you go and see the dead. This man will show you.” A short Indian man stepped forward, who wore shorts and a loose-fitting shirt, a variety of beads draped about his neck, and a mangy beard.
“I will show you the fires,” he said, nodding. “This way please.”
Beside the river there were what seemed to be a limitless amount of woodpiles, each as tall as a person, and dark and damp-smelling from the monsoon. We walked among them, following our guide toward a yellowed building close by. “Firewood costs five hundred rupees for one person,” he explained to us as we walked. “But many people do not have these monies.” He led us up a stone flight of stairs and into an open room where several aged women crouched in separate corners. Besides them and some cobwebs, it was totally bare. “This is my hospital,” he explained. “These old ones are here to die.”
We glanced around at the women, to see whether they would react to this information, but they just crouched there, eyes nearly shut, lips moving silently as if chewing on their prayers.
He continued: “They are alone here with no families. I bring the tourists so they can ask offerings for their firewood.”
Our hands moved mechanically toward our pockets, and we each placed notes of differing denominations into the old ladies’ hands before ascending another flight of stairs on to the rooftop. Most of us had, by that point, developed thick skins with regards to the beggars there. Surrounded by poverty, it is easy to take sympathy and react as if you were a fount of everlasting rupees, but eventually reality sinks in and you realize that even with your fancy clothes, passport, and camera, your wealth does have limits, and so does your compassion. The ‘old ones’ here though represented something more than poverty—more than starvation and homelessness—something the five of us, class and nationality aside, had rather more sympathy for.
Our guide led us to the eastern edge of the building. “No cameras, please,” he said, and we each allowed ours to hang impotently about our necks. “It is not respectful to the dead.” Our eyes teared up immediately as we peered over the edge, from the smoke, and we had to dry them again before we could see the pyres burning there in rows on the rooftop beneath us.
“These fires are always going,” our guide explained. “Families bring their dead here to be purified.”  We stared into each of the mounds at the vague outlines of human form. From one of the furthest pyres a leg jutted out, blackened as if on a spit and fire chewing through it. We covered our mouths, unable to take our eyes away, curiously transfixed by the body’s destruction like a fairytale we’d been told but had never taken seriously.
Below, several families waded into the shallows, carrying pots of their loved ones’ ashes to deposit before bathing themselves in the soiled water. The ashes formed a film on the surface which the current stretched into the shape of a hand, reaching downriver.
At length the oarsmen arrived, and our river guides call interrupted our dreaming. Our present guide led us back toward the steps where, single-file, we abstractly descended. Just as I was about to duck my head into the darkened passage I noticed the guide slip away from behind me and shuffle back to the ledge, where the American journalist continued to gaze at the bodies below, frozen in fascination. He beckoned her gently by the arm, and she followed this time obediently.
“Enjoy your tour?” our river guide asked once we’d returned to the boat. He stood on the rear holding a long wooden pole, while beneath him his two employees sat, each grasping an oar. We nodded grimly and each tipped the hospital owner before climbing carefully into the boat. We drifted first with the current, several yards out from where the stone steps sunk beneath the surface, and from that range we could make out each of the men and women’s features who bathed there, and the naked children playing on the shore.
“It’s septic, you know,” the British guy said to me, leaning forward. I looked at the brown water they rinsed themselves with—how it did not seem clear even as they lifted it from the river. “There are sewage outlets all around here: a paradigm for modern religion, if you ask me.”
“This is good luck,” said our guide, having not heard our conversation. “These people wash away a life of sin here.” His hand fanned out over the surface which, I noticed with growing anxiety, rose nearly to the lip of our boat and threatened to spill over. Further down, the spire of a sunken temple jutted upward from the water and a pair of teenage boys were playing on it, shoving one another and jumping out into the water before climbing up again. They had just managed to re-ascend as we approached, and I watched their gaze level upon us.
“Oh no,” I heard the journalist breath beside me, and time seemed to suspend along with the boy as he reached the top of his arch, knees pulled tightly against his chest, and formed a perfect cannonball. He hit the surface with a splash that sent a spray of septic river water into the boat with us, and we stood, stupidly tried to avoid it by thrashing around.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” the Australians shouted.
“Fucking wankers!” yelled the British guy. Meanwhile, the boat rocked and Ganges continued to spill in.
“Still please! Be still,” our guide pleaded. “Do not shake the boat. The water is good luck!” But the damage was done: our feet were soaked, and at length we had the good sense to quit sloshing around and return to our seats, acutely aware of where the water had touched each of our skins. The rest of the ride we sat in silence, and I noticed that the journalist was seated closer to me than she was before, and that she was also more wet. “Godammit,” I heard her mutter under her breath after a few moments. “Godammit to hell.” And she moved still closer.
---

She was in from Sasaram, I found out, for the day, and had no place within three hours’ train ride to rinse off. It was nearing nightfall, and knowing that the last train was bound to leave soon, I invited her to rinse off in my room. We climbed the hotel stairs and parted with the rest of our company one floor at a time, each retiring to his/her own chambers with loose plans to meet in the bar later on, though the journalist and I never made it.
I watched the bathroom door while she showered with a sort of abstract longing, imagining her there but, for the moment at least, appreciating her invisibility. I watched the steam curl beneath the door, could feel the suction-like contact her wet feet made against the concrete. We made love afterwards in the dark, my own body feeling heavy and abrasive on top of her smooth wet skin. All I could see was her silhouette, and it reminded me of those bodies in the fire—haunting, yet somehow fluid. We both were shadows, bending and penetrating each other’s form as we lay there, loosing ourselves in that flame that quickened and burned everywhere around us.
The act had an almost religious aspect, the passion we felt emanating from a place outside of ourselves. In the morning she was gone before I woke, and I later returned to the guru and he told me many things, citing astrological charts and scrolls and books, some of which seemed to pertain to nothing at all, and in the end he bound me to secrecy; revealed to me my destiny, then bade me to forget it. There are certainties that give form to the human experience, frame it and give it a presence and tension that can only exist against an impending void, and those that cripple it. Every certainty is but the shell to a shifting realm of possibility that is just as crucial, just as necessary to the human psyche as its limitations, and it is funny sometimes how fine the line is that separates them.
My name is Rowan Jeffrey Elders. Eighteen letters. One plus eight equals, nine, and for that reason the guru assured me I must pay in multiples of nine. “Nine thousand rupees,” he demanded. I gave him nine hundred, and he seemed easily satisfied by this.
I am not naïve. I know well the likelihood of my having been scammed. That my driver and guru were in cahoots together, and that by now my picture may very well be among the rest of those who validate the guru’s foresight to unsuspecting tourists. It doesn’t matter. The space between certainty and uncertainty is more often than not a matter of choice. What would you believe? The question is rhetorical. In the end we are reduced to silence. To faith—the untold secret. And mine stays with me. I will never tell a soul.


Bohemia Hum
December 31, 2009

By Eric Bennett
Eric Bennett lives in New York with his wife and four children.  He loves trees without leaves and the scratchy silence between songs on vinyl records.  His work appears in numerous literary and art journals including Foliate Oak, Bartleby Snopes, Ghoti Magazine,  LITnIMAGE, and PANK.  

Provoked by Manhattan’s chaos, I reveled in its fictitious thrill for years.  In time, however, I began to feel like a hitchhiker dropped off in the middle of nowhere, the trip over before arriving at a destination.  Suffering the need to discover the satisfying thing life is supposed to be, I move out of my midtown apartment where people live like fish in bowls and rent a flat in the Village above Tails and Snails Pet Store.  Its 1953, the year poetry is as popular as pot.  

My new apartment building is the G spot of Greenwich Village, hard to find and fraught with sensitivity.  Most of the tenants are writers, artists, or musicians – I am none of these.  But living here makes me feel like I’ve acquired a new set of relatives, second cousins perhaps.  We, every one of us, are the black sheep of our family which creates an air of scandal over the entire complex.  Yet looking out my ninth-story window, arms folded, I watch my neighbors come and go through the reflection of me on the glass thinking, these prodigals are all the family I need.   
The thing about apartment living is that there are no innocent bystanders.  Everyone is involved, like it or not, in everyone else’s business.  Just this afternoon, for instance, I was foraging through my cupboards like a ruminating animal when there’s knocking.   I open my door and filling the frame is Frigg, my across-the-hall neighbor.  Frigg is a long-limbed, unkempt man with a bony bird face and nervous hands.  He’s convinced he can’t use his left brain.   He tells me I smell like wisteria and that he can hear the universe hum.
“Universe means one song.  Get it?  Uni – one.  Verse – song.  We live in the one-song.”
“I get it – I get that you need medication.”  
But Frigg listens to me like second hand smoke, nose squinched, arms waving in front of his face.  Then he lifts his hands to his mouth and speaks through his fingers, “My feet stick to the earth.  At least I freed the four-footed creatures before the sky crashes down.”  I make a little bow.  “Thank you very much, Frigg” I say slowly closing the door.
There are lots of talkers in this building – that’s mostly what everyone does.  Seeing how quiet I am in comparison, the talkers take liberties.  They bend my ear about their lovers, their philosophies, their disillusionments.  And I listen because that’s what I do.                   
Through paper-thin walls, I hear my neighbor Nin arriving home this evening.  She settles into her apartment, shedding clothes and the day.  I picture her unbuttoning while staring blankly at the dirty window in her living room, but there’s nothing for her to see outside, only the abstract adventure of the city.  Nin is talking to herself, the sense of her sentences breaking down as they pass through the sifting wall between our apartments: “…blood in the streets… …living in boxes… …her tongue… …old-fashioned corkscrew… …everything Freud…”  The fractured meanings are a medicine I greedily digest, numbing my loneliness.  
A bone colored moon rises into the window and I become a ghost haunting these rooms.  The apartment becomes a purgatory – a place to wait.  I sit in it, lay in it, waiting.  I don’t know what I’m waiting for but I sense my life grinding to a halt, boiling down to “what next?”  
I pad about in substantial cotton socks fingering random items throughout the apartment.  I pick up and prop up on the pillow of my bed a black and white image of me when I was eleven.  I’m posing too seriously for the camera, a broad Arizona sky overhead and beavertail cactus and bulrushes as backdrop.  Diffidence clouds my countenance, my future already explicit in my olden face.  In time I fall asleep staring into my own eyes – sleeping through all the dreams I never made come true.
Limbs akimbo, I emerge from sleep the following morning with arms and legs entwined in sheets.  Untangling is an architectural problem I’m solving – eventually I become my own.  The growing light in the room dissolves the last of the shadows and though I’m still groggy, I recognize the sound of whirring wings.  My eyes focus and I’m dumbstruck to see a hummingbird flitting above my bed.  A rush of adrenalin crackles through me and my heart begins to motor fast.  Leaning back, I lock my hands behind my head and consider the little green angel, dark tongue flicking.  Perhaps this unexpected invitation to wonder is the Universe’s way of healing the emotional abyss in me.  
I become aware of stamping and scraping sounds in the hallway outside my apartment.  So, I tip on toes to the bedroom window, open it wider so the hummingbird can fly free, and then slip through the crease between the door and jam of my room.  With no sense of how I appear, I open the front door and there on the red carpeted landing is Nin attempting to trap an albino ferret.  And kittens: mewling everywhere.    The apartment manager, Auden, and his wife Larissa are plucking puppies off the stairs and putting them in a pillowcase.  Auden is yelling at Larissa, commanding her to hurry up, that there are parakeets in the lobby, to never mind the gerbils – “We’ll never catch them anyway.”
“What’s going on” I ask.  “Someone saw Frigg opening the cages in the pet store last night.  He must have been high” answers Auden.  “No,” I say smiling, “it’s just that he can only use the left side of his brain.”  Auden’s face takes on an expression of energetic patience, but he doesn’t say anything.  
I join the frenzy, scooping up kittens and dancing around rodents so as not to step on them.  I feel explosive as a bottle rocket, alive with laughter.  I stop for a moment and my heart wells in me and amidst the tumult I’m certain I hear the universe humming – I suppose Frigg was right after all.

These Four Blank Pages
January 4, 2010

by D. Gavin Guddi
Flashes In The Dark, Microhorror, Mirror Magazine, 69FOP, Dark Tales, and Flash Me Magazine. He is preparing a variety of stories for an anthology entitled: The Remains.


I have come to visit you in these four blank pages, because this is where you live.

I am a boy of five years - you my mother. Under the bowl of the sky we walk hand in hand through a field of lilies, along the bank of a sun-drenched creek that, for an entire summer, seems ours and ours alone.

The carnival grows hazy in the distance. The smell of cotton candy lingers still, as if the orange Day Lilies produce the aroma of buttered popcorn and caramelized apples themselves. The stuffed blue giraffe bouncing at my side, my trophy for a day is destined to languish on a shelf, eventually forgotten.

My mind goes to our book. I will draw the events of today on its blank pages, the makeshift book that you and I created. Its cardboard cover reads, "Our Summer In Heaven", and is written with your graceful hand. Six holes are punched along its length, each bound with a stretch of orange yarn, and will contain for us the entirety of our summer together.

"Honey," you say to me. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I say astronaut and as the game goes, I ask you as well. We swing our hands in a wider arc and you respond as you always do, "Your mommy."

You hear it first, the faint chirping above the rush of the creek. We stop for a moment. "Do you hear that, honey?" You motion to a path leading down the embankment. "Careful now." Like tightrope walkers we amble down the path to the pebbled shore below.

Wedged in the mud and root filled bank we find a nest of hatched robins. With blackened skin covered eyes, their yellow beaks bleat a constant cadence, like a needle stuck on a scratched vinyl record.
The mother bird lays on the ground, wings splayed, her neck cocked at an odd angle. It does not occur to my young mind the extent of her demise.
With a handful of leaves you take the mother bird down the shore. When you return you are silent for a time. I ask you what is wrong.

"Oh, honey," you say with a smile that fails to fulfill its purpose, "I'm just prone to melancholy."

"Where did the momma bird go?"

"She went away."

"But where does she live?" I plead.

"We'll have to tend to them all summer," you say, never answering my question.

I kneel down next to you and begin digging for worms between the pebbles. The ones we find we cut into pieces with a stick (you assure me they have no feelings), these smaller portions ideal for feeding the hatchlings.

Later that night, as I draw in our book, you see me crying.

You approach me and sweep me up in your arms. "Honey, what's wrong?"

"What if you go away like the momma bird? Where will you live?"

You smile. "I live here." You motion to my latest creation, a crayon drawing of you and I that afternoon. Two stick figures hand in hand, a blue knot of color displays the crude outline of a giraffe - at least to me. You turn the page. "And this one...." A drawing of an orange dotted lily field, a vague circle signifying a Ferris Wheel in the distance.

"'Lived' here, you mean," I protest. "That's already happened. Where will you 'live'?"

You smile again. "Honey, you are a smart one." You thumb through the empty pages in the back. "It looks like we have alot to do this summer." And as I look into your eyes, I see that look of 'melancholy' again.

And so it went. For the rest of those summer days you would awaken me with such excitement (sometimes I would stay in bed just for the occasion). "Come on, honey. We have to feed the hatchlings!" We would spend our days at the creek, digging for worms to the cadence of baby robins on its pebbled shore.

By summer's end the makeshift book is almost complete, and contains therein a drawing of  brown robins rising to a yellow sunburst in the blue bowl of the sky.

In the following years time gets the better of us. I grow up and move away. We speak less, growing as distant as the space between. For as I grow into a man and set out to conquer the world, melancholy it seems, sets out to conquer you.

When I received word of your passing I came back home to settle your affairs. There wasn't much. Your possessions were meager, a clutter of boxes that contained a clutter of things. But contained in one, among possessions that no longer had purpose was an unassuming tattered makeshift book, six holes punched along its length, each bound with a stretch of orange yarn entitled, 'Our Summer In Heaven.'

Opening its cover, that summer flooded back to me. The drawings portrayed the slow march of my artistic evolution with images of the carnival, of the lily field, and of smudged brown robins taking flight.

When I turned to the last page, what I remembered to be the last, I came upon them and counted slowly, four blank pages. A card fell from between them. The card, penned by an aged hand, remarked the simple statement, 'Where I Live.'

Yesterday these pages were filled with how you saved me from certain death, when I sprained my ankle on the creek's embankment, and the day before that of the night we lay on its cool pebbled shore, watching the stars.

And so on the morrow, and the next, I will visit you in these four blank pages, because this is where you live.

See Through
January 11, 2010
Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State with an eagle and three pesky beavers.  His short fiction appears in over twenty lit journals or can be found at lenkuntz.blogspot.com

By Len Kuntz

            I loved the boy across the street whose blinds were always pulled, the boy with the rare affliction who could not come out during the day because the sun would set his skin on fire.
            Sight unseen, I made him into a perfect mate who would protect me from the scorn of school bullies, who would make me blush and giggle, question and reconsider.  I deconstructed the mystery that enamored others and it was in fact because I did not know him, had never even glimpsed him once, that the boy became who I molded him to be: an untarnished tin, an edgeless embrace, the perfect pudding kiss.
            From a distance of scorched lawns and chalk-marked pavement I loved him savage and strong, like a lioness.  I wrote him my young girl sentiments in sonnets.  I penned frail words dressed up as tuxedoed escorts, lifeguard observant, sometimes sharing secrets that left me as naked as an orchid.
            One brave day I selected a length of rhubarb toile and tied a bow across those pages and opened the door to deliver them to the boy’s mailbox.
    The sun was a festering yawn, a white egg blister that I believed capable of making me hallucinate.
            “Mother?” I called.  “Why is there a moving van at the neighbors?”
            She pulled me inside.
            “But why?” I asked.
            “Poor thing,” she said.  “That poor family has been through so much.”

             Years later I thought I had dreamed it all--the boy with the one-in-a-billion disease, his sudden disappearance from my life, the ropy strength of love I’d felt.
            But I found a marker.
    And on the way back from the trip that was meant to save us, you asked, “What’re we stopping for?”
            I mumbled my answer, and in keeping with our inevitability, you didn’t try to decipher.
            You thought it was just the grave of some Midwestern relative of mine.
    “Want to come with?” I asked, but you said to go ahead and so I did, taking long slow stiff strides.
    The sky showed mercy and the clouds wore hoods that day, in homage to the incompatible boy who battled the sun. 
    When I knelt down, however, my eyes stung and I saw the egg shell flecks of broken off-sunlight.  Then I saw through the granite and the etchings and the weed grass and worms, the cool stones slumbering in musty darkness beneath the earth, and I saw not my soul mate but a version of my very own soul, buried and entrapped.
    Back inside the car, you were listening to baseball.  You must have seen, but if you had you didn’t say.  We drove through clouds and sun.  We drove so far.


American Savior
January 18, 2010
By: Claudia Grazioso
Claudia Grazioso is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. She has worked for several movie studios, and has written television pilots for ABC, Fox and HBO. She was a theatre critic for several years, and helped start InsideOut Writers, a writing workshop for kids being tried as adults in Los Angeles County jails. She is embarrassingly addicted to reality television. Her story, "American Savior," is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination.

    One thing was clear: the allergy sufferers were organizing.  This had not been immediately apparent in the weeks leading up to the heavily promoted Final Round, but when, on the May 2nd (“Height Of Hay Fever” one fan blog would announce) episode of American Savior, fifty-three year old Soledad-With-A-Thirteen-Year-History-Of-Nasal-Polyps had busted through in the final vote to edge out Margaret-From-Kansas-With-Stage-Two Metastic-Breast-Cancer for the grand prize of ten years of free health care and prescription drug benefits, it had become undeniably clear to associate producer Winsome “Winnie” Leeds and others who trend-traced those kinds of things week after week that the allergy sufferers had had it with the cancer patients.
    “Astounding,” Don Gregor said. “Abominable, actually.  I mean, this is a disaster.”
     Winnie stared at the arugula on her plate, glistening under tiny droplets of white balsamic dressing.  She hated letting Don down.  He hated the unexpected.  He always had, even before American Savior, “his show” though it had been her idea; even when he was producing freelance segments for late night slots on Biography.  The man who invented Slime.  The youngest hang glider.  Winnie had come to hate the unexpected too. She would wonder, later that night, when disappointing Don had started to bother her so much.  It wasn’t as if she owed him anything other than effort.  She would stare at the large candles in her tiled fireplace, her knees pulled up to her chest and tucked snug under an afghan that her great-aunt Elsie had sent her in college, and wonder how this man, this Don Gregor, with his hairy knuckles and vaguely carotene –tinged face had become so important to her.  And something about the innocence of Aunt Elsie’s afghan, and the sheen of Don Gregor even when she conjured him in her mind, would seem so woefully incompatible that Winnie would feel tears press against the back of her eyes.  What was she doing? How on earth had she let Don Gregor in her life?  And why had she slept with him that first time, almost a year go?  It had been a heady, celebratory day.  The numbers had come in from the third episode of American Savior.  It had been a strong showing.  Strong enough to bring interested “feeler” phone calls to the network from advertisers.  Strong enough for the network vice president to send a gift basket and the studio to put a 20 foot American Savior mural on the side of a soundstage that faced Don’s Burbank office.  He’d touched the back of her neck.
    “Win, Jesus, we did it.”
     And his touch tingled with possibility.  He was next.


    “Win, talk to me.”  His voice was gentle and imploring.  His scallops on a bed of frisée were untouched, his fork still cozy on its plump napkin.  He moved his hand closer to hers until his fingertips skimmed her wrist. “Win,” he said again, “how could this have happened?”
    His question sounded so deeply personal.  She didn’t know.  She didn’t know. Certainly allergy sufferers out-numbered cancer patients.  But would they band together to sentence a woman to death?
    It was impossible to know, she later realized, when she had invested herself so completely in delivering results, careful, steadying predictions to Don Gregor Productions.  His flagship show, his first hit in five years, American Savior, had been the top show in America and then England and Australia, airing twice a week with one extra full night on the network devoted to Behind The Scenes With The Contestants (“Tributes to Heroes,” Don made them call it), for eighteen months, with an unheard of 75% of American households tuning in to both shows, downloading episodes for “inspiration” as they went through their own “trials”.
    “No drop off.  No drop off! Do you fucking believe this?” Don had shouted, standing in his office, waving his fist in the air as though he were swatting at swarming bees, no grace, just raw enthusiasm.  The material of his jacket flapped like a sail in fierce and unpredictable wind.  He had yanked Winnie into him, clutched her sides and said, “You’re magic,” through gritted teeth, as though he were going to bite her.
     And it was true.  The first year, the entire course of the show had been magic.  It somehow eclipsed the network and cable line ups, despite the regular “discussion” about the “American Savior phenomenon” on the smattering of PBS stations still bothering to broadcast (“Bad lighting, old hosts” Don would say repeatedly about them) which of course were just endless condemnations of the show, “Where sick people fight for survival.”
    “It’s empowering,” Don had said in interviews. “It allows them to take their illness into their own hands and turn it into a condition.  A condition for living.” He had also pointed out that every American Savior contestant, win, lose or draw, got something when the American public voted them off the show. “We don’t just wheel them out into the alley to die.  We’re not monsters.  We’re issue-raisers.”
    There had been calls, early on, for government intervention, and lawsuits brought and then dropped by the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American’s With Disabilities.  There had been demonstrations by Americans For Ethical Standards In Broadcasting, Americans With Ethics and Ethical Americans, and a web campaign launched by Americans For An Ethical Alternative.
    “Steady on,” Don had said, pressing Winnie’s hand as they had watched the CNN coverage of the demonstration happening stories below his office in Burbank, “Steady on.” And then, with his fingers kneading her shoulder he had offered, “You’re a genius.  You don’t know this Winnie, I’ve never told you before, but I think of you as the American Savior.”
     To Save Margaret text 62-B-CANC
    To Save Soledad, text 76-NASAL


    The weeks had passed with cancer patients and the terminally ill inevitably prevailing.  Winnie scanned the network polls, the demographic breakdowns weekly.  People were worried about cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.  They were also worried, but somewhat less so, about E.coli, the flu and sepsis.  She reported numbers to Dan and to the writers and other producers so each week, when the terminally ill patient prevailed, they would have an immediate link ready to the eleven o’clock local news of each network affiliate about how treatment provided by American Savior was truly changing and saving lives.  She wrote the behind the scenes profiles for their host, an improbably doughy man named Alby Franz (Winnie had suggested, even weakly pushed, for someone healthy, strong and vigorous to host the show, but Don had insisted on “the chubby guy.” And he had been right. “He’s fat and white, like a ghost.  Or an angel.  But human.”  Americans loved Alby) to narrate.  And at least a few times a month, Winnie would take pains to find someone with a less popular disease so they could “raise awareness” about it in a special profile.  She found people with rare afflictions: Morgellons, steatopygia, various palsies.  Dan would tell the press “We are a vehicle for change in America.”
    It was a spin that Don took seriously. He became obsessed with “afflicted” people, a term Alby used that stuck.  He trolled the internet looking for new and rare “conditions” before assigning that task to Winnie.
    “Let’s not be afraid to get ugly,” he’d said. But of course, like all producers, like all artists, he wanted beauty.  And so Winnie had sat for hours in editing, meticulously cutting soaring spittle, violent seizures and rolling eyeballs.  Nobody wanted to see that.  “Ratings rat poison,” Don called it, trying not to laugh as he viewed the outtakes over her shoulder, then asked her to play them again. “Amazing.  Look at the guy. Look at his tongue. Look at him go!” She had polished the dialogue edit on the Morgellon’s sufferer so on air he actually said something other than “It’s just fucking itchy, you know? It’s itchy.  It’s like shit is crawling on me.  Okay?”
    Don had frowned. “He sounds like a heroine addict.  That’s not going to work for us, Win.”
    She had quietly passed her 30th birthday clicking through music to lay over an Alzheimer’s patient’s contestant profile. Finally, close to midnight and halfway through her second lonely bottle of wine from the gift basket Don had given her before leaving to spend the evening with his wife, after nixing “Just The Way You Are” and “Memories” in favor of Pachibel’s Canon, she dissolved into tears under the desk while the music played on a seemingly endless loop and images of a life still lived but irrevocably lost bled into each other on a computer monitor.  It’s all just water.  
    Below, sirens screamed past on West Olive Avenue.  How had she arrived here, at a dark editing bay in Burbank, looping music over human misery?  How had she forgotten to get married, and instead had slipped into an affair with a man who was not real, could not possibly be real?  How had she forgotten to feed her pets until her neighbor finally coldly took them over, to write a novel, learn to surf, visit New Zealand, go home? How had she given herself to Don Gregor Worldwide?


    The controversy had died down.  Because of the staggering numbers of cancer patients being helped, the American Cancer Society had endorsed the show and given Don a plaque.  He had hired a publicist to put his name in the hat for a Nobel prize and the drug companies, “major, minor and Mexican” as Don liked to joke in the press, had all signed on to provide “generous prizes to the runners up.”
    “It’s win-win,” Don told Larry King. “Sick people get help. The rest of America doesn’t have to pay.”
    “And you get rich,” Larry had interjected.
    Don had leaned forward and flashed his tremendous smile that Winnie had grown to hate herself for loving. “Win-win-win.”


    “I rely on you,” Don said now. “I rely on you.  You need to know things.  In advance.  We can’t have this, Win. We can’t.” He shook his head. “Win, you’re hurting me here.  Deeply.  I’m lost.”
    Winnie’s chest tightened. “I don’t know, Don.  I mean, it is allergy season.  Maybe that has something to do with it.  A lot of people have day to day suffering that is just so much more immediate…”
    Don shook his head and held up a hand. “Speculation, Winnie.  I expect more from you Winnie.  I need more.”
    “But it could effect things.  Crazier things have happened.  There are records of presidential elections tilting because of a rainstorm in swing states, so it’s not…” She shook her head and looked at her plate again.  She was quickly growing to hate arugula.
    “Allergy season,” Don said. “Allergy season.  Jesus, Winnie, American Savior is a show about compassion. That’s what people like to feel about themselves.  ‘I’m kind.’   That’s the identity that we want.  At least at this point in time.  We don’t want to be ass-kickers anymore.  We want to be saints.  Don’t you understand that, Winnie? Don’t you? Well then let me lay it out a bit more clearly: Compassionate people don’t let breast cancer patients with two kids die so someone else can have nasal relief.”  His hand slapped the table.  A fine mist of his spittle dappled her water glass.  Winnie found it odd that suddenly she didn’t want to drink out of it anymore.  After all, Don was a very wet kisser. She had certainly had more than a fine mist of his saliva in her mouth before. “I mean, what the fuck?”
    And later, lying on the floor of his office, he would mull over the variables.  He would first blame the Latino viewers for choosing “a Soledad” over a cancer patient.  “Couldn’t we have found a chunky white woman with bad hair with nasal polyps?” And then he would settle on the duration of Soledad’s suffering, becoming circumspect as he always did.  “Thirteen years.  That’s a long time to have a stuffy nose.  Shit.”
    He would shake his head.  She would hear his hair crunching and scratching against the carpet. “I hate to say it, Winnie, because you’re a dream.  But you should have seen it coming.  You have really disappointed me.”
    Lying next to him, Winnie would think only that for a man so rich, so consumed with his new success, he had an ugly ceiling and an ugly floor.  She would find herself surprised that he hadn’t already had Michelangelo knock-off frescoes painted on the ceiling.  The next morning she would suggest it, and it would buy her a few hours of good will as he mulled the idea.  And much later in life, it would strike her as very odd that those two things, his ugly cottage cheese ceiling and his industrial, factory smelling carpeting, caused the first moments of true disdain she ever felt for Don Gregor.



    “I don’t know.  I don’t know,” he said, finally lifting his fork only to listlessly spin it on the tablecloth. “I’m going to have cancer up my ass over this, Winnie.  We’ve got to address this.”  He gently ran the tines of the fork over her wrist. He was right.  She already had three text messages from last year’s grand prizewinner, now in remission from colon cancer.  She wondered if she should have known.  Allergy medication advertising was up on the web, television and radio.  Maybe more people were miserable than she had anticipated.  Maybe the days of Extremely High pollen counts had taken their toll.  Maybe they were just simply tired of having their misery ignored.
    She looked at Don.  His eyes were wet with emotion.  He cared about Stage Two Metastic Breast Cancer.  He cared about Margaret.  It sickened him, Winnie knew, to send her home with a year’s supply of Cialis.
    “We were never really serious about each other, were we Don?” she heard herself ask.


    Down south, in Laguna Niguel, a fifteen-year-old is suspended from school for a month for pouring broken glass on the moist asphalt of his culinary science teacher’s new circular driveway.  He has proclaimed his innocence, fruitlessly.  He has laughed over his guilt, hollowly.  He, Randal McElveny, or as he has campaigned heavily to be called in school, Cage, does not discern a difference in his days since being banished from school, except that now he plods through city-provided beach sand that has been expertly denuded of rocks.  He walks, too, occasionally on eroded bluffs and powdery construction sites, overly irrigated golf courses, and expensively planned zen gardens.  He walks on lush white carpeting and freshly laid bamboo flooring.  He walks on faux oak and Italian marble with radiant heat.  He walks on tri-colored slate and Moroccan tile in his father’s new outdoor shower.  He does not walk on linoleum.  That will have to wait until he’s allowed back at school, which, he cannot wait to inform his father and stepmother, Hair, will not be for many more months.  That afternoon, that sunny, brilliant, windless afternoon, Cage had driven to Laguna Niguel High (a Porsche, yellow, his second) and sliced a vicious line across the assistant principal’s car (Mazda, cherry red, her fourth) with the switchblade his father had bought him in Mexico (Juarez, “business”).
    “In full view of the security cameras,” his father would say, and then repeat it only louder and through gritted teeth, with the flourish of profanity. “In full view of the fucking security cameras.”
    And finally, “In full fucking view of the fucking security cameras!”
    Behind him, Hair would shake her head. “What does this do to do Kauai, Herb?” she would ask, and follow his pattern to “What does this fucking do to fucking Kauai?”
    Cage would stare at her, her abundant blonde hair pulled up into a ridiculous Vesuvian ponytail, her full-injected lip cushions protruding awkwardly from a sun-mottled face.  She would actually be so cliché as to drum her nails next to her Cost Co size box of Luna Women Empowerment bars that she chewed manically throughout the day.  She would eventually pick one up, eat half of it in one bite, and then fling the rest against their fully stocked and dusty spice rack.
    “Herb!”
    “Nice going, Champ,” his father would say while Hair hunched over the kitchen sink and dry-heaved out her first sob.
    “It’s Cage.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Rhymes with rage.”
    His father would explode. “Goddammit, I said sorry!” Then he would snatch his erupting temper out of the air. “Rhymes with rage. That’s okay.  What are you now? A rapper?”
    Cage would stop at the doorway to the kitchen, newly arched at the cost of several thousand dollars that Cage estimated might otherwise have paid for a year of college, or a third of his next car, or a few more rounds of electroshock therapy for his mother.  The setting sun would fill the kitchen like water in a tank.  Gold and warm, making the unused focaccia pans and pasta makers and mixing bowls glow like pirate’s treasure.  His father would have a hand on Hair’s back.  He would be stooped over her, like a bear sniffing for life, talking to her softly and urgently.  Despite her embarrassing hair and her gorging on chocolate health bars and her misshapen face, his father loved her.
    “Should I skip dinner?” Cage would ask.
    “Probably a good idea Champ,” his father would say.
    And Cage would almost laugh, not derisively, as he shambled out of the kitchen, out of the glow and away from the inexplicable love his father felt for that woman.  No matter what, he would always be Champ to his father, and at that moment, that was who he longed to be.  Champ the two-year-old tee-ball player, Champ the seven-year-old soccer halfback, Champ with the Tiger-Woods-golf-swing at twelve.  He would long for an instant, to be that son, to belong in that glow, to hug his father and Hair by the kitchen sink as though they meant something to him.


    Hours before golden hour in his family’s newly remodeled kitchen, before the angry fit about Kauai, a trip he didn’t even know they had planned, Cage lingers on a sandy bluff, years of erosion and desiccated soil blowing in the wind, forming a thin haze that settles on the ocean and makes the waves’ spray glisten for an extra second in the air.  Behind him, almost muted by the crash of the waves, is the growl and beep of a backhoe, patiently performing the impossible task of tearing into the soft sand.  In half an hour, maybe more, he will drive up to the school to slice the assistant principal’s Mazda with his switchblade, but now he waits for Macelle Ryan to shake sand out of her thong underwear and smear her lips with jasmine scented sunscreen. Recently he’s heard a rumor at school that she’s mildly retarded.
    “That sunscreen is stupid,” he’s told her in the past.
    “It’s good for my lips.  They can burn too, you know.”
    “Nobody wants to kiss flowers.  They taste nasty.  They should make Big Mac chap-stick.”
    “That’s gross.  No one would buy it.”
    “Well you should.  Okay? You just should.  That flower shit is nasty.”
    “Okay, Randall.”
    “Shut the fuck up.  Bitch.”
    “God, “ she’d said, more exasperated than hurt or pitying. “You’re so damaged.”
    Now she sits up, rubbing the last of the same sunscreen into the ridge on her upper lip, and then daintily steps her ringed-toes and rose-tattooed ankles into her thong.  Cage, long since zipped up, holds the condom on the wind, watching it flatten and flex like a lawn ornament, before letting the wind carry it six feet past Macelle into the salt grass.
    “Gross,” says Macelle, eyeing where it landed. “There are like fifty condoms over there.”
    “Most of them are probably mine.”
    “Maybe we should bring a blanket out here or something next time.”
    “I told you, they’re mine.  Ours.  Who the fuck else would have sex in front of a whole construction crew?”
    “Dickhead.  You said they couldn’t see.”
    “I lied I guess.”
    She bites her lip and looks at the underwear, taut between her thighs.  She pulls her hands into the sleeves of her unbuttoned shirt and knocks her knees together.  It is the rag doll pose.  Cage has seen it before, mostly on her because she is the girl he has had the most sex with so far.  But now she isn’t pouting, which makes him nervous.  Now she is simply staring at the edge of the bluff, flexing her dusty toes.  She’s finally realized, he knows, that no guy has sex with a girl he considers a girlfriend in front of construction workers.
    “You try way too hard to be mean to me,” she says, finally.
    “I know,” he offers. “I’m sorry.”
    But it won’t matter.  She will not accept his offer to shield her from view while she stands to pull her pants up.   She will knock away the jacket he attempts to dangle in front of her bare ass as she struggles and jumps foolishly to yank her jeans on.  She will not acknowledge, will never see, the beginnings of empathy on his face, the possible remorse, as she walks and stumbles over the uneven landscape, past the leering and shouting and pelvic-thrustings of a crew of backhoe operators and ditch diggers and cement mixers.
    And truly, Cage would realize, standing in line 23 minutes later for a double macchiato, there wasn’t any remorse, not really.  Maybe a bit of empathy in that he understood she felt like shit now, and he had felt like shit once or twice before.  He knew she was crying by the jerking leap of her shoulders as she walked away, but it wasn’t like that wasn’t what he intended.  It had become clear to him because of her endless text messages, her IMs, her attempts to iChat that Macelle Ryan, cheerleading squad reject, volleyball team benchwarmer, JV football towel girl, largely considered an easy target if not exactly an easy gives-it-up-with-no-work lay  -- (though Cage had still been surprised by how little work it actually did take.  A hello.  A slightly lurid comment about her halter top that made her laugh, a further comment about her toes – toenails painted pink, the big one etched with a daisy, and a halfway heartfelt “That sucks” followed by a respectful three seconds of silence when she brought up her brother’s death in a “DUI accident”) -- that Macelle had hopes about him.  Cage was not an attractive boy – hollow-chested, several pimples ripening along his nose and forehead, fuzz furtively collecting under his chin like mold, shaggy unkempt hair, that never made it long enough for a ponytail and instead thickened like a main or an afro, and a jagged, hate filled thin white scar currently cresting his nose, courtesy of Hair’s cat.  “A rescue,” she was sure to tell everyone.
    He was grateful to Macelle at first, giddy over the ease of it: a simple glance in school, a cursory “What’s up?” or “You busy later?” A texted “Horny?” which would bring an insufferable stream of happy faces back, stacking into his LED like chickens in a warehouse.  Sitting in Mr. Kulakow’s Current Affairs Workshop, while smiley face after smiley face shuffled across his blackberry, Cage recognized that Macelle wasn’t just retarded, she was falling in love with him.
    That was not okay.  Cage was fine carelessly screwing Macelle, fine with her hurried hand jobs and hair-flipping blow jobs, her chatter about her dead brother and the Christian Summer Camp she went to where they held an exorcism for Harry Potter, fine with her overly lusty requests that he ejaculate down her shirt and her bizarre stripper parodies accompanied by hysterical nervous bursts of her own laughter as she wriggled out of her jeans on the bluff day after day, but he could not stomach her – or anyone, but mainly her – thinking he was in love.  That was a cruelty to which he would not let himself sink. Especially now that there was a chance that Macelle was half-retarded.  Then he would be no better than a jock, and as a boy with aspirations towards some kind of genius, that was not an option.  That was soul death.
    He watches Macelle vanish over the bluff and seconds later, as her Ford Focus, (special ordered pink.  She paid the insurance and was oddly proud about that.) pulls out onto the new blacktop, recently poured to accommodate this soon-to-be neighborhood, Cage makes a pledge to himself: no more fucking even possible retards.  No more messing around with anyone who was deficient in any way.  Eventually, he reasoned, he would be more attractive and have better options.  It was worth waiting for.  And he could always beat off into one of Hair’s stolen bras that he kept tucked under his mattress, that the cleaning lady must have found repeatedly, cold and stiffened, when she changed his sheets, but always took pains to put them back.  He had to do something to keep balanced.
    Days earlier, his first on suspension after a Disciplinary Committee meeting at which his father, annoyed at being pulled out of a marketing meeting to listen to “half-wit” public high school teachers discuss “Randall’s issues”, first pledged to send Cage to therapy, then mournfully reminded the room of motionless faces about his “biological” mother’s breakdown, then angrily erupted with, “Okay, fine! He poured glass on asphalt! Did anyone die? Did anyone get a boo boo? Then what the hell am I doing here? Let’s go, Champ,” which, Cage was certain led to a prolonged discussion in the DC room involving the phrase “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” as though they had just discovered something key about his personality. It was exasperating.  His father was impatient, had a dinner reservation to make, was an idiot, lost in the sea of senseless adult trivia: misdirected sauna jets and pension funds and knee replacements.  Cage was complex.  His mind was unpolluted by minutiae. Plus, he didn’t do drugs.
    His sentence was ten days of suspension.  He was instructed to check the school’s website for any assignments he might miss.  He was admonished to stay current with his reading, to attempt the next three sets in his geometry textbook.  His teachers would not be patient with make-up work.  He had attacked one of their own.
    On his first day of suspension, he had wandered down from his room at eleven in the morning, his boxer briefs so sharply wedged into his crack he worried he might be having homo-dreams, which he couldn’t remember.  Hair was on her elliptical exercise machine, her meaty legs moving in improbable parabolas as she watched TiVo-ed episodes of American Savior on their plasma screen t.v. A man with a half-shaved head and a grisly purple scar riddled with staples and burrowing from his crown to his forehead – Alan-With-Brain-Cancer – stood next to a sad-faced woman, vigorously shaking her left leg and pacing: Lois-From-Calabasas-,-Restless-Leg-Syndrome-Sufferer.  The set was black, except for the warmed yellow light that displayed the two contestants, who stood grim-faced like convicts at the gallows.  Seconds later, the stage was filled with light.  Alan’s arms shot up in victory, while his obese wife swayed up onto the stage to hug him.  The host encircled Lois with his arm, promising her help, relief from her affliction that would be provided by Pfizer, the generous sponsor of this weeks’ edition of American Savior.
    Hair wiped tears from her eyes with a single practiced finger.  “He remortgaged his house to pay for his operation.  They didn’t get it all.  His wife supports them on e-Bay.”
    Cage unraveled his wedgie as Lois buried her face in a Hired Hugger’s shirt.
    Hair held up her Blackberry.  It was encrusted with crystals that spewed rainbows across the wall above the bar like blood spray from a gunshot. “I voted for him.  Twice. I’ve never done that before.”
    Cage said, “That’s nice.”
    Hair slowed her rotating legs until she looked like a paraplegic being exercised and stared across the room at Cage. “You think?” Her eyes lingered on him with apprehension.  If it weren’t for her insanely inflated lips that made her seem like she was ready to devour the contents of any deli case she could get her hands on, she might have almost looked, to Cage, for the first time, human.
    “You know,” she said. “My sister is a survivor.  And so is my uncle.”


    He could argue that it was all coincidence, but that didn’t really suit what Cage had come to consider his style and refer to as his philosophy.  He had read T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in his AP English class – the one AP he was allowed to take – and so he no longer believed in coincidence.  He believed in the inevitability of betrayal.  He believed in heartbreak as somehow fostering art, he believed in self-deprecation though he had not yet figured out how to work it to efficiently feed his ego or bolster his position in the Laguna Niguel High School pecking order.  So mostly, at present, he believed in doom, which his father Herb had told him was “a safe bet.”
    “One hundred percent of people die one hundred percent of the time.  There.  Doom.”
    Still, his time spent with Hair, watching TiVoed episodes of “Savior” as Hair and most T.V. announcers now called it, did seem inescapably born of coincidence.  He woke up at eleven, and would shamble downstairs foraging for food and coffee, reluctantly meeting another day in Southern California’s Gold Coast.  She would be in her jogging suit, having just returned from a “hike” with her friends, to Starbucks’ and back.  She would have just mounted her elliptical machine, or would be stalled, leaning on it as though it were a cow fence.  The machine would bleat furtively a few times, hectoring her back to her abandoned workout and occasionally she would comply, but mostly she would just push “END”.  “GREAT WORKOUT!” would dutifully flash on the LED.  Cage thought that she felt gratified, but as the days passed, he considered that instead she might feel ashamed and sheepish, especially since she would frequently shriek his father into silence about how hard she worked to stay in shape and was he planning to kick her to the curb before her 45th birthday?
    His head still thick with teenage fog, Cage would join her in the living room, not fully intending to.  Eyes never leaving the screen, never straying from the faces of the afflicted, she would join him on the couch.
    “Can you believe it?” Hair would say, tears sometimes brimming in her eyes.  “Those poor, poor people.”
    By the fourth morning of his suspension --“punishing the parents” as Herb had taken to calling it after he had consulted with a lawyer about whether or not there was a suit to be brought against Laguna Niguel School Unified District for “callously screwing” with his son’s education and future -- Cage paused mid-chew on his toaster waffle, enriched with Omega-3s and soggy with syrup, to realize he was shoulder to shoulder with Hair, on the new couch, a taupe sectional, staring at Beatrice With Type 2 Diabetes Whose Legs Were So Swollen They Leaked Fluid Through “Compromised Skin”, a fact met with gasps and some scattered grimaces in the studio audience.
    “She fucked up,” Cage would offer, moments later in the post-round wrap up during which Hair normally oozed sympathy.  “She never should have said ‘fluid’.  Or leaked.”
    “Poor people.  Poor, poor people.”
    “Or ‘compromised skin’.” He bobbled waffle on his bottom lip.  Syrup speckled his chin. “That’s fucking nasty.”
    Beatrice stood in dimmed lights four feet away from skeletal, turbaned Charmaine, Stage Two Non-Primary-Smoking Related Epithelial Lung Cancer.  Her husband, president of a regional cigar club, wept in the front row.  “She’s my everything, my world.  Since I first met her,” he told Alby, while behind him audience members dabbed their eyes and next to Cage on the new sectional in Laguna Niguel, Hair shook her head slowly, her overstuffed chest heaving under her jog bra.
    “Marriage,” she said softly.
    “If she gets better,” Charmaine’s Guilty Husband said, his voice shaking but growing louder, “I’m done.  I’m done.  I’m giving up cigars. All of it. ”
    The audience started to applaud.
    “Done.  No more cigars.  No more smoking!”
    The audience roared.  The audience was on its feet.  Charmaine beamed with the glow and clarity of the unjustly persecuted but recently redeemed.  “I love you,” she mouthed, while fat Beatrice sealed her lips tightly and stared at her leaking feet.


    “Jesus, it’s brilliant,” Don Gregor said, dabbing his eyes though there were no discernible tears.  “Lose the one shot of Diabetes.  And let’s cut quickly off of the shot of both of them.  Diabetes and her feet, it’s depressing.  This is American Savior, not American Condemns To Misery. Now let’s look at the close ups of Cancer saying ‘I forgive you.’”
    “ ‘I love you’,” Winnie corrected him.
    “Even better.”
    “I told her to say it.  I think she would have naturally gone with forgive, but I thought love would work better.”  She was staring at 32 images of Charmaine.  “Forgive seemed…”, her eyes fell once onto an image of wheezing, bloated Beatrice, accompanied only by her neighbor Phyllis, who “did her driving for her now.”
    “…heavy.”
    “Heavy.  Way too heavy.  With cancer, we need to keep it light. We need balance. Good work.  You’re a genius.” Don squeezed her shoulder, his fingertips, intense and probing.  He had a way of squeezing her shoulder that made her feel completely held.
    Later, over late night sushi in a strip mall a half a mile from where they had ushered Cancer to victory, Don would feed her a slice of Ponzu soaked tuna belly and Winnie would try desperately not to make smacking noises while she chewed, which recently had led Don to ponder whether or not she might have some kind of “palate disorder”.  Winnie did not want him to associate her with the Afflicted. Men do not consider afflicted people to be viable alternatives to their wives, especially if they have awkward, unglamorous afflictions, like palate disorders.  Winnie was worried.  Don’s success with American Savior, her brainchild, had fostered his fascination with all kinds of problems.  Now his wife Claire’s anxiety, which had exasperated Don before American Savior, intrigued him. Even, possibly, aroused him.  
    At first Winnie had believed Don was attracted to her lack of ailments, her Midwestern sturdiness, her former high school athlete optimistic resolve.  She was not like Claire.  She did not think she heard noises outside her kitchen window and she did not stare helplessly and suspiciously at the empty darkness.  She did not need alarm systems or doors with chimes. She did not pick at her skin.  Fucking Don, at first nightly and then weekly in his office or the editing bay, under the steady, bizarrely pleasant gazes of the terminally ill illuminated on multiple monitors, she had thought scornfully about his foolish and feeble wife.  Claire who was afraid to go to sleep unless Don was home.  Claire who insisted the cleaning lady do each load of laundry twice, Claire who woke Don nightly saying something was wrong, something just felt wrong.  And while Winnie had bristled at the thought that she might have had any kind of ailment that might associate her in Don’s mind with the Afflicted, if it had to be something now, she would much rather have “anxiety” than a “palate disorder.” Don had first suggested it as “something she might want to look into” after the Restless Leg Syndrome taping when Winnie was not chewing anything at all, merely standing in Don’s office having just assured his assistant to assure his wife that he had not gotten her earlier calls.  Don, seemingly, did not hear this exchange and was lost in thought as he stared at West Olive Blvd.  When his assistant clicked the door shut, he’d turned to Winnie with what she first thought was warmth and later, in bed alone at night had recast as sickening bemusement, in his eye.  “Win, you know those sounds you make?”


    Winnie would swallow the raw tuna belly, she hopes soundlessly, and wait for Don’s reaction. He would touch her wrist once and she would know instantly that he was no longer thinking about her possible “palate disorder”.  In fact, there was no trace of ever having said it tucked into the folds of his brain.  Winnie stared at his forehead, dewy and gleaming, and wondered about his ability to forget.  Had he always been so talented?
    To Save Beatrice, text 77-DIABE
    To Save Charmaine, text 99-L-CANC
    “You’re a good girl, Win.  You are.”
    Winnie would smile, hoping to mask the panic in her stomach.  He was breaking up with her.  Not now, maybe, but soon.
    “And look, just so you know, there’s nothing you did or didn’t do to the woman with diabetes. I know you think about these things. So I wanted to say it.”
    Heat pressed on Winnie’s cheeks.  She had not thought about the woman with diabetes since they had left editing.  She had worried about the appearance of her ass in her gray skirt, which was occasionally unflattering.  She had worried about makeup creases on her eyelids.  She had worried about making eating noises.
    Don would shake his head.  “She never, ever should have said ‘leaked’.” He would clip a slab of eel between his chopsticks.


    It is after the defeat of the woman with diabetes that everything changed.  It is while she is being handed the prepackage American Savior booby prize with a T-shirt, a six month supply of Vitamin C and glucosamine, a yoga mat, a meditation video and box of power bars and a coupon for a year’s supply of Xanax that Hair pressed a finger tip into a drop of maple syrup on Cage’s chin and an instant and unwelcome chill jets down his spine to his nut sack, propelling him to supreme posture.  At first, he felt nausea, then, looking at her as she pressed her finger into a second droplet, terror.  This is my father’s wife.  This is my fucking father’s fucking wife.
    He was frozen.  She smiled, not luridly and shifted her eyes back to the screen where a disco ball was rotating above the woman with lung cancer while she hugged her husband.  “Celebration” started to play and the two awkwardly swayed while the stage flooded with front row audience members, past winners and their families.  They – the Cigar Lover and his ailing wife – had joined the ranks of the saved.
    Hair’s chest heaved.  “My God.  You know, my sister is a survivor.” Her eyes never left the screen while next to her Cage mashed his waffle plate onto his inflating penis in agony and disgust and thrill.  This is my fucking father’s fucking wife.  And later that day, he took Macelle Ryan – slow learning if not totally retarded, mostly friendless Macelle – to the bluff side construction site to humiliate and whore her in front of the cement mixing crew for the first time.  He thought with hatred about the assistant principal’s car.
    To save Beatrice, text 77-DIABE
    To Save Charmaine, text 99-L-CANC
    As he got up to leave, texting Macelle, hunched over to hide his erection that pressure from his breakfast plate could not thwart, that was so strong it gave him a stomachache, he hated himself for saying “leaked” in front of Hair.  He didn’t know why, but he suspected that he had been the catalyst for her awkward pass, for revealing the absurdity of his father’s marriage.  It was a moment from which he sensed he would never recover.
    Hair threw her head back and looked at Cage upside down.  Whatever substance was holding her face in place slid gruesomely, puffing her lower eyelids until they were almost shut.
    “Cage,” she said, her eyes vampiric slits, her mouth obscene, fleshy and cavernous.  He knew she was aware of how she looked at every moment, as evidenced by the collection of mirrors now hanging in the house.  He could only imagine, with revulsion and despair, that somehow this look excited his father. “From now on let’s do something, okay? Let’s get involved.”


    “Shut up and stop complaining.  Fucking hell,” he said an hour later, leading Macelle across the rugged footing, the rocks and loose sand of the construction site.  “And take off your shirt.  I’m busy.”
    That night when he got home, too late for dinner that his father had picked up from Happy Thai, having instead secretly trailed a sniffling, shaking Macelle around a Barnes and Noble while she perused books in the Communication section, under the sub-heading Words That Heal, Hair was where he had left her that morning.  Her sweat suit was now a contemplative mocha color, like tanned, creamy skin instead of the morning’s sprightly tangerine.  His face flushed when he saw the back of her head.
    “I saved you some Mee Krob and then I ate it,” his father said, not turning from the sink.  “Hon, do you want to hot tub?”
    “Turn it on.  I’ll be there in a second,” and then, in a voice that Cage knew was meant to address him, Hair said, “Come here.”
    His father walked out of the room.  Cage half-crept to the living room and stood behind the couch.  Hair nodded at the plasma screen.
    “It’s the guy with Alzheimer’s, who lost.  He was really popular, though.”
    On the screen, a man slightly older than Cage’s father fished a wide, crystalline stream, while his wife talked about the drugs he’d been provided with “by the concern of the American people”, the care packages that arrived from the drug company and the producers of American Savior on the holidays.
    “He still loves peanut brittle,” she laughs. “He hasn’t forgotten that.  No, he sure hasn’t.”
    “It was close.  Real close.  But the guy with skin cancer pulled it out.” Hair shook her head and pointed skyward, eyes staring at the ceiling in silent thanks to whatever God she believed in. “It was real close.” She reached a hand back and somehow, without looking, found Cage’s wrist.  “Cancer is so, so scary.”  His arm jerked at her touch, but she held on for an insistent second, long enough to say “We have to get involved” before letting go.  Long enough for Cage to feel the rush of blood to his crotch.
    “I mean, my cousin’s a survivor. It’s so in my family.”


    It wasn’t morality or anything lame like that.  It wasn’t loyalty to his father, although that wouldn’t have been as lame.  Herb still called him Champ.  Herb still believed.  Herb tried. And it wasn’t vanity, because fucking his stepmother would have been the coolest thing he could have done among the children of divorce in Laguna Niguel.  It was the simple fact of her.  She was Hair.  And he hated her even more.  He hated the sickening cold rush he got when he heard her shower stop.  He hated the crotch pulse that convulsed his spine when she would say “Survivor.”  She was not a survivor, though she considered herself one.  She was nothing.
    She was Hair.
    He hated himself for her presence, for being stupid enough to get suspended, for the inevitable cruelty he would show to Macelle Ryan.  He hated himself when he remembered his mother’s delighted cackle the last time he saw her, right before her last suicide attempt, and told her he called his new stepmother “Hair.”
    “Oh that’s good.  That’s very good.  That’s so much better than ‘Tits’.”
    And he hated those survivors.  He hated them because Hair loved them so much, drew so much hope from their suffering.  He hated their weakened stature, their mild and beatific endurance, their quietly desperate eyes.  He hated their bony fingers and their obnoxiously bright turbans that always drew a gasp from Hair.
    “Those poor, poor people.”  -- the way she might discuss a dog from Chihuahua Rescue. They filled Hair’s heart, they made her feel human.  And she was not.  She was not.  He would make sure that she knew that.  She was not human. She had no effect.  She was hair and carbon, fat and silicone, flesh and phthalate.  She was Yellow Number 40 and paraben.  She was not beautiful.  She could not have him, and despite wrenching erections, he did not want her.  And that, he knew, not added suspension time for keying the assistant principal’s car, not a ruined vacation nor a desire to flaunt her perma-tan somewhere far away from her stepson, would bring her to sob as though she were vomiting, hands clawing the sides of her new sink.
    “What does that fucking do to fucking Kauai?”
    “Yeah, okay. Definitely. Let’s get involved.”
    Hair turned and looked at him.  “Okay, then we have to watch at night. So we can vote.”
    “Okay.”
    “It doesn’t mess up your social life, right?”
    He snorted.  She squeezed his hand, her own palm moist and doughy, slathered in a luxury cream made with sea plants.  “It’s a date.” She touched his hair, straining to tuck it behind his ear. “It’s good for us to do things like this.”
    She said something to herself about karma as he walked from the room, and the next night, she brings a cylinder of his favorite chips to the sectional as his father searches the internet for scuba rentals in Hawaii and types incensed e-mails to the school board about how Laguna Niguel Unified School District “failed” his son and “compromised” Cage’s future.
    The Afflicted are on the screen and Cage knows immediately, though she is turban-less, that Margaret is the one with cancer.  She smiles at the host from the beginning, careful not to show her teeth, biding her time until her win.  She uses the word “blessed.” She cracks a good-natured joke in a studied, sweet voice about wigs and finally getting to be a red head.  The host tells her she’s got spirit.  She is an inspiration, of course.  Next to him, on the sectional, Hair tsks and rolls her jeweled Blackberry in her palm.  Cage eyes her poised, nervous fingers as the camera tilts and the image of a short Latina woman with oversized glasses fills the plasma screen.
    “And Soledad.  Tell us about yourself Soledad.”
    “I can’t breathe.”
    “That’s a problem, isn’t it?”
    “It’s polyps.  In my nose.”
    Hair snorts.
    “Wow.  And how long have you had this problem?”
    “Eleven years.  Since I was diagnosed.”
    “That’s a tough way to live, isn’t it? Alright, let’s go home with Margaret and Soledad.”
    On the screen, Margaret rips open a mini van and two children jump out followed by a three-legged dog.  She explains that she found Percy by a railroad crossing.  Flea-bitten.  “A rescue,” she and Hair say simultaneously.
    On the screen Soledad sits by a window and watches her husband cut the grass. “I can’t breathe,” she explains. “I haven’t felt air in my nose for almost ten years.  My throat hurts.” The large outline of her glasses reflects back at her.
    Hair shakes her head.
    To Save Margaret, text 62 B-CANC
    Hair is texting, two handed, pausing, looking for her send option.
    To Save Soledad, text 76-NASAL
    Cage flips his phone open.  He dials with a thumb that has been exercised to dramatic reach.  Hair glances at him.
    “Sweetie?”
    He lets her see.  He tilts his LED towards her so she can see and see and see.  He is voting for Soledad.  Her face flushes with humiliation, with anger and indignation, with tears.  She has cancer, Cage.  How could you vote against cancer?  She angrily flexes her fingers that earlier squeezed his wrist, brushed his thigh. You monster.
    My cousin is a survivor.
    My sister is a survivor.
    My uncle.
    My family. It’s in my family.

    Cage stands, his heart filled with satisfaction as he smiles into Hair’s blank face.  He texts in fury.  He texts in lust.  He texts in despair and in glee.  He will save Soledad.  He will doom Cancer.  He will do it.  He is king.  And she is nothing.  She, as always, is nothing.

    He walks to the refrigerator.  He texts.  He drinks from the carton.  He texts.  He dribbles down his chin and splotches his Puma.  He texts.  He will die before he sees another cancer patient live.  Behind him, Hair flounders on the sectional, hating him, hating her slow fingers, hating her age, now unmasked.  She cannot keep up.  She can affect nothing.  He carries his phone with him to bed, texting as he toes his copy of The Sound And The Fury, texting as he brushes his teeth with his electric, pulsating toothbrush, as he checks his e-mails, surfs S&M sites he found bookmarked on his father’s computer, goes to the web page of the “institute” where his mother is currently in restraints.  It is pretty, on the site.  There are bushes in bloom along the path to the entrance that he recognizes as the untended, desiccated lumps he sees on his rare visits.  He texts as he reclines back on his pillow, masturbating as he thinks about Macelle pulling up her jeans over her sand speckled ass.  He will call her tomorrow.  He will say he was an asshole.
    He texts in his sleep.


    It is a time of calamity.
    First Nasal Polyps.  That is still something Don can only bring himself to call “Inconceivable.” The Day When The Inconceivable Happened.  And it has only gotten worse.
    Days after Soledad had left the show with a promise of relief from suffering, after Margaret had stared mute and horrified into the stage lights before she was cast into darkness and a disco ball rotated around Soledad’s head, after Margaret’s family members had been heard shouting “What the fuck?” as they left the soundstage and Margaret had gone on the View to explain her surprise and wish Soledad well, to talk about how her battle with cancer would continue, but yes, there was new a tumor, likely inoperable and did any of them, any of those women understand what a word like “inoperable” does to a person?
    After Don had contacted Margaret’s family and offered to cover her healthcare costs “if she would just quit the jaw-flapping” as he fumed to Winnie, after American morale spiraled lower than it had been when the war in Iraq was acknowledged to be a failure for the first time, after Anderson Cooper had run a CNN special “Who Are We, Really?” and had made liberal use of the footage of Soledad’s “shocking” win, after Soledad responded to the media outrage over her win with a simple statement “I know it’s only my nose, but it matters to me,” at a press conference in front of her small, untidy house, after Winnie had visited a dentist to have her palate examined and was fitted with a mouth guard to prevent her from grinding her teeth at night, which apparently she’d been doing for a while as evidenced by the “wear” on her bicuspids, Don’s publicist called.  He had no movement on the Nobel nomination, but Don was on Senator Hubert’s short list for a Congressional Medal of Honor.
    “What kind of bullshit is that? A Congressional Medal of Honor.”  Don was crestfallen.  “Insult to injury, I guess,” he’d said, rubbing his thumb along the handle of his coffee mug.  The success of Savior had taught him to shoot for the stars.
    “Congressional Medal of Honor,” he said again.  “What the fuck, Win? What the fuck is going on?”
    And Winnie knew what he saw, looking at her now, searching the air around her head for answers.  The sheen of success was gone from both of them.  He saw it right there.  He had forgotten about it, but it is back with awesome and breathtaking clarity: his previously dull life.  The days when he produced segments on tadpoles for Animal Planet.  The days when he did not love his wife, the days before he had found Winnie attractive and she was so willing to sleep with him.  Winnie felt it now too.  She was a thirty-year-old with worn bicuspids.  Her face was dim.  It held no answers and only a shadow of desire for something, if not specifically for Don anymore, stirred inside of her.


    It is a time of calamity.  Each morning, Winnie feels like she is waking up in Wisconsin again, the day after a winter storm, sunlight and snow half-blinding and no electricity.  The world is still. Don sits at his desk, steepling his fingers.  He talks about the American Cancer Society with a thick, irredeemable hatred that goes beyond his words: “Sore losers, Win.  God damn sore losers.”
    They are pulling their official endorsement, though they will not urge viewers to boycott the show.  They no longer feel that American Savior can adequately and consistently address the needs of the people they are bound to serve.  They wish American Savior and Don Gregor Worldwide Productions well and hope that American Savior will continue to feature cancer survivors as contestants, because everyone living with cancer is a survivor.  This infuriates Don.
    “They are ungrateful,” he says. “They should lighten up, Win.  That’s what they should do.” He misses the sanctifying glow of their endorsement.
    Ratings had plummeted in only one week.  A “Save Margaret” campaign had been launched by the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  Rite Aid pharmacy was giving away pink ribbons with the slogan “I Am Margaret” printed on them with cosmetics purchases of five dollars or more.  Don’s wife threatened to wear one.  He did not react.
    For three days, Winnie had sat in his office, watching him watch the Burbank hillsides – yellow and desiccated but still somehow magical.  “Remember Mash?” Don had said once and nodded towards the hills: “Voila, Korea. Remember Gunsmoke? Texas.”  Each day she had felt him slip from her, slip from the person she’d fantasized he was back to himself.  It was not an altogether horrible way to end a relationship, but it was still sad.  Success was transformative – she had felt it in herself and in Don, in the energy and anticipation with which they had only recently occupied space.  Sitting silently with Don as he checked his e-mails from nervous advertisers, searched for the latest reaction to “Soledad’s stunning victory” and found news reports of network presidents expressing shock at what American Savior had really been about, Don had become just a man and not one, Winnie knew with some regret at her own exposed shallowness, she could love.  She thought about grocery lists.  She hadn’t been to the supermarket in over a year.  She thought about haircuts and touch football, and an assortment of people who she used to have brunch with before she had become “an integral part” of Don Gregor Worldwide.  Before she’d said something about “a show that helps sick people”.  Before she’d allowed herself to think about marriage and success and envy.  Before Don had ever snapped his fingers and said, “Win – American Savior.”
    She supposed she could return to her old job with Don. She could research amphibians and the mating habits of lemurs for segments on Animal Planet, but she suspected Don didn’t want that either.  She knew they were close to saying goodbye for good.


    “Shit,” Don says.  His voice is tired now, no longer infused with wild and helpless hatred.  “Shit.”
    The Cigar Husband has released a Youtube clip saying he’s sick of apologizing. “Nobody – not anybody – nobody has ever proven cigars have anything to do with lung cancer.”
    “He’s an asshole, I guess,” Don says. “But he might be right.  Win, did you ever check those facts?  Did anybody? About cigars?”
    “No,” Winnie says. “I mean, we didn’t know.”
    “We brought a lung cancer patient and her smoker husband onto the show.  We knew.  Shit.  I guess it doesn’t matter now.  But we knew.”
    The Cigar Husband is looking for investors to buy a tobacco farm.  His wife, currently in remission, endorses this.  She is proud to appear with him in his video clip.  She attributes her cancer to poor air quality.

    “You got sloppy, I guess, Win.  I don’t blame you. We all did.  But in the beginning you knew them.  You studied them.  You knew their illnesses. They never would have fucked you.”
    Winnie stands.  It is almost four o’clock.  She’s been leaving a little earlier each day as it becomes clear that the “temporary network suspension of production of American Savior” will soon become permanent.  Her blackberry is packed with e-mails from the afflicted who are waiting to be on the show.  They want to know what they are supposed to do now.  They tell her “Miss Leeds, American Savior is our only hope.” They report on their COBRA insurance running out.  They call her a bitch for “putting them on hold as though they were nothing”, stalling them while their diseases progress like ancient armies frenzied with ignorance and destiny across once healthy lives.  They plead with her to produce one more show with them on it.  “I can stand losing.  I can’t stand nothing.”


    “You coming back Win?”
    “Probably not today.”
    “Okay,” Don says.
    And she is gone.  She walks along a largely unwalked street in the daylight.  She feels infamy on her face that is slowly warmed away by the sun as she passes a building she has never seen before, an anonymous medical plaza quietly offering its services to a bland and fortunate clientele.  Years from now, Don may be divorced, he may be newly remarried, he may finally have his first child.  They might run into each other on this street, a block away from their old offices, now a small consultancy firm, in front of this medical plaza.  She may be going in for her first mammogram – a baseline, her doctor will call it – and seeing Don and considering the mystery of her own flesh about to be unveiled will make her think for the first time in years – years that include several long and unpassionate relationships, a mid-level position at a commercial production company and repeated vows to leave Southern California – about the “Afflicted.”  She and Don will exchange pleasantries.  He will tell her his son is named Grayson or Dexter or Con.  He will squeeze her arm and wish her well as he steps by her.  He will forget the encounter in a month, remembering only the unease, the way people forget the specifics of small, insignificant social embarrassments.  She will walk into the cool lobby of the medical plaza and moments later will be sitting on a tastefully decorated couch filling out a questionnaire about her breasts’ history.  She has had no children, she has never breast-fed, and so it is strange for her to think of her breasts as anything other than a sexual asset or defect.
    Twelve minutes later she will lay her right breast on a cold metal plate and listen to the high, warning whir of the mammography machine as it compresses her flesh, startling the air from her lungs.  On a computer screen over her shoulder she will see a faint and lovely web of tissue and membrane, a haunting silence.  She will blink and think she sees a bright blotch that is not there when she opens her eyes again.  Her heels will bolt into the floor. She will feel a flash of terror, a driving wave that amplifies in her head: it cannot be.
    “Okay,” the technician will say. “Let’s do the left one.”  The machine will slowly release her breast from its clamp as panic rises in her chest.  The technician will step forward to reposition her.
    “No,” she will say. “No.  Look again.  There is something there.”

Mariner's Trance
January 25, 2010
From 1996 to 2007, Jackson wrote for Cox Newspapers in northeastern North Carolina. His poetry was published in literary magazines in the late 1980s/early 1990s. After the dozen years of journalism, he has resumed fiction writing.
by: Sean Jackson

The dog, Spirit, came up from the cove looking like he’d been walking through tar. His eyes were mirthful still, though lidding toward one of his late-afternoon naps. Nestor didn’t like the looks of it. Now he’d have to hose the dog off, or face the contempt of Sandra.
“Ha, dog,” Nestor sighed as Spirit trotted up the soft rise that separated the house from the dark sheet of water. “You get me in all kinds of trouble.”
A friend had warned Nestor against getting a shared dog. A couple should each have a dog of their own, the friend had advised, so they don’t quibble who does what and, more importantly, who doesn’t do what.
It was the not doing that got Nestor on his wife’s dark side. They hadn’t had a dog in years, since the kids had been little, and ever since they’d got this shaggy Burmese Mountain male they’d quarreled more than they ever had. Sometimes bitterly, dish towels flying, reprimands bordering on insult. Nestor poured some whisky into his cup, opting against adding Diet Pepsi to it, and brought the Friends of the Chowanoke River tumbler to his lips.
Spirit, breathing like a winded sprinter, turned his slitted burnt sienna eyes at Nestor. He ain’t got no idea what he’s done to me, the semi-retired newspaper editor thought. The new owners of the paper were forcing him out by degrees, and he knew it. They’d offered a severance retirement the summer before and he’d turned it down. Just before this past spring had turned to a new summer they’d told him he was semi-retired.
“What the hell does that mean?” Nestor had asked the slim, aloof publisher they’d brought down from Vermont to helm the staff at the county’s lone weekly.
“Nestor, it means you come in on Mondays and write your column, visit around with the staff, and we don’t see you the rest of the week,” the fella, name of Heath, had grinned, toeing the carpet between them to push off on his merry way. Nestor’d put his hand, gently, on the new boss’s chest.
“Why don’t you just fire me, Heath,” Nestor’d said, eyes watering behind his round-rimmed glasses due to a sudden heart-gripping anger.
“We can’t do that,” Heath’d answered bouncing his fingers on Nestor’s shoulder before walking off, already in the middle of a call on his ever-present cell.
Nestor thought Spirit’s eyes had more life and candor than young, back-stabbing Heath’s. Down inside, he knew it was time. That he had come to a crossroads. Fish or cut bait, Nestor, is what famously reliable Chuck down at the tackle shop said.
He sank down into his canvas chair and looked across the river, where it straightened between the cypress trees cupped like hands on either side of the view. Only an even hundred yards across. Not much more than a creek when it got further down.
“Let’s get the boat!” Nestor called, knowing Spirit would bounce from even the deepest sleep to rattle around inside the wood motorboat with his master. I’ll refer to myself as his master, thank you very much, Nestor had argued with Sandra. She not yet too old to drape one of her silk scarves around her head had lowered the bridge of her nose and cast her navy-blue eyes at her tipsy husband. Let’s not allow anyone else hear you say that, she scowled, or they’ll think you’re embracing the Coombs’ plantation days.
Seated on a center plank, Nestor Coombs heaved the boat from the pier and started the motor, inhaling the mixed fumes of gasoline and churning black water. He brought a freshly filled flask of bourbon to his lips and gazed at the receding yawn of the house, a white A-frame with windows, so many windows, splashed across the back. A sadness cooled his shoulders as he thought of Sandra coming home soon, not so much wondering or even caring where he’d gone, as just pleased to see him not around.
…..
Nestor had met Celia Chappell two years ago. Newly widowed, she’d moved in across the river and down a half a mile, in a condo perched on the edge of a new golfing/retirement community. They’d been introduced by mutual drinking and golfing friends. They’d meet casually, coincidentally at the driving range or the clubhouse bar off and on for a year before she touched his hand one Sunday afternoon. She’d pressed to him, warm and fragrant, and asked if didn’t autumn put him in a romantic mood.
“I’m at that age,” he tried to joke, “where I’ve just gotten over feelings of young romance and haven’t quite arrived at the sentimental variety.”
He’d just turned 52. Celia was not quite 50.
“Well,” she’d cooed, glancing around the bar as if to whisper him a great secret, “I’m smack dab in the middle of my best romancing.”
She’d brushed his sun-cracked lips with her painted fingers and sashayed off, leaving that to weigh on his mind. He’d been sulking for an hour after getting home and Sandra had been upstairs in her watercolor-painting loft with a hoity toity pal, choosing works for an upcoming exhibit at the county art gallery. She’d crossed the unlit den in a rush, startled to see him sitting there in the dark, wiggling an empty wine bottle between a ring of fingers.
“Nestor! Is that all you can do anymore,” she gasped affectedly, lowering the end of her bony nose and pointing it fiercely toward his guilty lap. “It’s no wonder they’re pushing you out the door at the paper.”
She was in the bloom of her career selling drapes and sconces at her gal-pal’s boutique downtown. Sandra had been talking for months about buying in to the operation, A Hint of Wine and Roses. When they bickered about it, he reveled in telling her they should rename it A Hint of Snobs and Snobbery.
She’d ignored his go-to-hell look and he’d wandered off and pulled out the phone book, thumbing through dry pages until he found the entry for Celia P. Chappell. He’d been more breathless than she when they’d arranged their first rendezvous. He’d been feeling since March or April that he might be falling in love with her. Love? Chuck down at the tackle shop told Nestor, who’d pitched the scenario as a what-if-this-happened-to-you-like-it-did-old-Robert-Mitchum-in-that-movie-long-ago, to fish or cut bait.
“The worst kinda regret a man can have,” Chuck’d said, leaning out of a cooler he’d been filling with cut-rate beer, “is to stay in a marriage that’s gone and turned sour. If my pops was still alive, Nestor, you could ask him all about it. Before pops passed, God rest his soul, he opened his heart to me about him and my mother. Said they’d lived all their lives together, not being in love one single day since they’d been teenagers.”
Nestor saw a film of sorrow pass briefly across Chuck’s cracked, tanned face. Just like a memory would do. Nestor realized he didn’t want to have this memory.
“How ‘bout leave one of those six-packs out for me to take home,” Nestor’d said, rubbing the toe of his boating shoes against the kickboard to Chuck’s skimpy bar counter. “I’m all out at the house.”
Shortly after the Fourth of July he’d been on the phone with Celia, full of sighs and nagging regrets, when she’d said she wouldn’t mind spending the rest of her life with him. Said she knew it would have to be his choice, that she wasn’t even asking him to make that decision. She just wanted to put it out there. In case.
“This way I won’t ever regret not telling you,” she said in a voice as faraway as a scrim of clouds on a wide horizon. He heard her voice catch as she entered an abrupt, billowy pause. He knew she was waiting, pensive, both hands cradling her wall-phone.
“Me, too,” he whispered, knowing he really meant he’d enjoy spending the rest of his life with someone other than Sandra, be it her or any other giver of intimacy. But Celia was right there, puffing near-frantic breaths into his ear, her heart pounding her chest, her bright eyes flickering between wild errant looks around her kitchen and tightly shut rims.
“But I don’t know if I can,” he whispered, his ears humming now.
“OK,” Celia’d said. That was two months ago. Summer had passed over the weekend and the air was filling each night with a more persistent chill. He tooled his boat along the edge of a channel that entered the tiny fabricated village where Celia lived. There were lights on in her condo. He figured she was in there making dinner, or unwrapping something she’d walked over and gotten from the clubhouse.
“It’s getting late, Spirit,” Nestor said through wind-dried lips which he promptly wetted with a slosh of bourbon. “I’m gonna turn us back.”
…..
They’d lived in the mountains when their kids had been growing up. Mason, the son and the oldest, and Andrea, a bright extroverted little redhead, cavorted in the craggy hills around their modest house. They’d had a peanut-shaped heated pool and Nestor’d put up a makeshift cabana, where he and Sandra shared whispering moments together in winter after the kids had gone to bed, drinking steaming toddies. Pressed closely together.
He was a young government and cops reporter for Asheville’s daily paper. Sandra taught art to mouth-breathing Catholic children, the kids’ constant respiratory problems caused, he said, by smelling their parents’ money.
They stayed in the North Carolina mountains while Mason and Andrea grew up. He would sometimes take a job as an editor for one of his company’s errant weeklies, dragging the family along, pushing the children into new schools, Sandra scrambling into dank public-school art programs or shooing parochial students away from leaky radiator heaters, but always working right along with Nestor.
“We’re doing this the right way,” Nestor asked one summer in Morganton, “aren’t we, Sandra?”
They were mid-30s by then, getting tired, with Mason in high school and Andrea right behind, both high-performing students. Sandra was experimenting with an at-the-chin perm, with gold highlights and some darker streaks.
“I should hope so,” she’d sighed, the distance between them just taking root, “because it’s way too late to start over and do it again.”
When Mason had said he was going to art school in Swannanoa, Sandra had stunned them all by bristling. She’d pulled her husband aside into the kitchen, where a rib eye beef roast was sizzling in a bed of button mushrooms, and seared her sea-blue eyes at him. The corners of her red mouth scratched at hard-to-find words, just for a second, and then she gripped his arm and launched her concern.
“Warren Wilson College is for homosexuals,” she said, hissing the esses, a vein in her throat pulsing. “If Mason decides he’s gay, that’s one thing. But to take it out in public, into academia, is another.”
Nestor just stared at her. It had been obvious for years that Mason was gay. None of them had ever talked about it, but Nestor just figured it was one of those things you didn’t have to talk about. If somebody wanted to talk about it, fine. If nobody wanted to talk about it, that was fine too. Everything had been fine up till now.
“Sandra, I can’t believe …”
She stopped him, raising a slotted spoon greased from turning the mushrooms around the roast. She took a stance like he’d seen boxers take before championship fights, when the announcer is standing between them calling out their names to a rabid crowd.
“I won’t have it, Nestor,” she snarled, her eyes seeming to purple for a second. “I’ll leave it up to you to put this to rest. To-night!”
He’d realized lately that this was the moment he’d begun to pull away from her, when their lives seemed to climb into separate cars and push out in opposite directions, neither one looking back in the rear-view. They’d been off in these directions for a decade. They were weary of each other now. They’d accepted the distance, but it still pained them when they had to get up close, be put in intimate situations like holiday dinners or social gatherings where couples walked around and held hands like it was a happy-days-are-here-again prom.
Mason hadn’t spoken to them much over the years. He’d ended up going to Wake Forest and in a career that had completely appalled his mother. Mason ran an agency in Manhattan that handled the bookings for professional drag queens.
“He’s wasted his life,” Sandra spat whenever she’d had a couple drinks, “and his law degree.”
Nestor wouldn’t engage with her about Mason. They’d talk for hours about Andrea, who taught high school theatre in Durham and had married and produced a pair of sons. They’d go on and on about how happy Andrea and her family were. Sandra delighted herself with turning her grandsons’ pictures into poster-sized watercolors. They were all over the walls.
Nestor was looking at one when Sandra came in from her arts council meeting. She was in her third year as president. She tossed her leather-bound notebook case on the chair next to him, followed his hollow gaze to the painting of a boy’s wind-tossed head, smiling, cocked slightly up in awe at what was supposed to be a flock of seabirds. At that moment Nestor was imagining it was more likely a wake of brooding vultures.
“Spirit looks absolutely awful,” she said, rolling up the sleeves of a button-up smock. “Has he been in the cove again?”
Nestor watched her gather the cuffs above one elbow, then the other. He didn’t like it that her favorite color now was gray. He found it fitting, but still a bother. He pulled the last can from the six-pack he’d gotten from Chuck’s and popped it open. She blew out her cheeks and rolled her eyes.
The last time he’d called Mason, around Easter maybe, he’d found it not at all strange that the son hadn’t asked about his mother. They’d talked for a good 20 minutes and Sandra hadn’t come up once. Not that they were avoiding her on purpose.
He’d mentioned Celia, whom he referred to as a golf buddy. He had lots of golf buddies. He’d told Mason that this buddy was his favorite. That they’d started playing together all the time and were considering entering a summer seniors tournament, mixed-play. They never did. He was wishing now that they had. They’d have gotten their picture taken together, win or lose, and it would be hanging on the bulletin board in the clubhouse, behind the glass cover. They might even have their arms slung around each other, sunburned a little, a little drunk, grinning like the best of friends.
“I’ve got another woman,” Nestor heard himself say, sounding like listening to his own voice play back on the cheap mini-tapes he used for interviews. “I’ve found somebody, Sandra.”
She was in the middle of pulling barrettes from her hair. She kept it short and pinned to her head in warm weather. She had a look on her face like he’d seen only once or twice, the most memorable being when her sister had told her, at their father’s wedding, that he’d had a mistress for most of his life.
“What did you say?” she asked like her breath was hard to come by.
He told her again. He didn’t tell her everything, just what he thought she needed to know. Sandra sat down, carefully, pushing the notebook to the floor. They were two feet apart. Both were looking at the floorboards as if inspecting them for hard-to-see words they’d written there, to use in difficult moments. Even if they had written emergency stock phrases, they’d be of no use to either of them now.
The phone rang but neither of them moved, probably didn’t hear it. The only sound in the room was their breathing, and a large clock ticking on the wall behind them. It had gone from dusk to night since she’d entered the room. They were fading into their chairs like a pair of trees that sit in front of the woods, blurring together in a falling darkness, forming a horizon of shadow.
Celia raised her head, staring forward, as if she were in a car driving down an empty highway, knowing there was no one else to look out for, but alert just the same. She sniffed, but no tears came. Then she rubbed her palms up and down her cheeks.
“I thought so,” she whispered. “I thought you’d do this someday, Nestor.”
He didn’t answer because he felt too sorry for her. Just out of the blue he felt a cold remorse for this woman. He lifted the can to his mouth and drained it, wondering if he could call Chuck and get him to open the shop long enough for him to dart over and grab another six-pack. It didn’t seem like too much to ask, not under the circumstances.
Chuck was always open and honest about other people’s troubles. He always gave cheery opinions on the darkest of topics. Like the rough spots in life. Take that for example, Nestor was thinking. Chuck had said just the week before, when some young fella had come in and was talking about how he’d lost his job that day and was now going out to do some fishing and drinking, but mostly drinking.
Chuck had told him to prepare for the roughest first. That when you take a boat out to fish, the first waves you hit are the hardest of the day. They’ll rattle you to your marrow, Chuck’d said. Make your bones chime like they’re knocking round in a hurricane wind. After that, it’s smoother sailing, is what Chuck had said. And he had it right on the money. Once you get over that initial crack of the swells, you get used to the roughness of the trip.
Nestor felt himself swallowed within that kind of voyage, one through which he’d be a pilot in a mariner’s trance. Stunned and inert, guided by shadows, adrift under an immense sky. What he’d be like when he reached the other side, he just didn’t know.


Let Me Define Love Like I Know It
February 4, 2010

Jill Okpalugo-Nwajiaku is a twenty-six year old female Nigerian that writes whenever she can. She studied Pharmacy in University of Nigeria, Nsukka and currently lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband. She is extremely interested in any African creative writing that specially bothers on female gender issues and has been published in online literary magazines like Snap! All Things Girls, Identity Theory, Poetry and Writing, Word Catalyst, St. Something and Glint. Presently, she is working on attaining an MFA in creative writing and her first novel.

by: Jill Okpalugo-Nwajiaku

  Something tells me I would reach an odd decision today for I am dangerously close to falling out of love with my fiancé Uchenna. We met on a sunny Tuesday in April. He was hurrying out of the bank in a new black suit his ATM card sagging down his pocket. I was rushing out of the bank too in a bright jean gown because I wanted to browse a computer. We bumped into each other and enjoyed the freemasonry until we began to picture life from reverse angles.
  I stroll to Uchenna’s apartment painted cobalt blue since I live four houses down the street from him. There is green mosquito netting on the windows and a “Dab” sticker on the door. I tap on the door. Uchenna opens. I can’t help but gaze at his eyes of light brown as I arrange the disheveled dining table and pour myself coffee. Humming, I set the wall clock back ten minutes and nag about the sky that lacks June’s blueness. He sags his bottom down more on the leather sofa in laughter as I amble through the dimly lit passageway into his bedroom. I pour unfolded clothes on his bed and study the mar on the looking glass beside the wardrobe. It hadn’t been there on Tuesday for I had sprayed the cleaner on it and wiped off the dirt myself. I walk back to the sofa and watch the sun break out of the sky like glass heated over fire. And somewhat in good spirits, I free the draperies and open the small door leading into the patio.
  “Adaobi let’s aim to have a child in November. Of all the months recorded for the birth of great men, it is on the lead,” he says dropping a soft-cover book and kicking aside my red high heel shoes. Through the grey haze of litter smoke, I see russet shingles weathered by the sun. Something has changed in him. Or is it his shaved hair and chin that plays magic on me?
  “What is wrong with February, July or August?” I challenge because he didn’t rub the cocoa butter cream I gave him on his skin which seems white. Uchenna watches me unbuttoned my jeans and fly my shirt out. And as he turns down the TV, I try not to catch his eyes.
  “The greatness of those born then often ends in perdition. Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte were born in July. Mandela was born in August.”
  His logic clears sleep from my eyes. I pace about wondering how we had become so profoundly different. He stands too; a perilously handsome man with skin of caramelized sugar.
  “I saw the movie Titanic for the first time on August 12, 1998. I was in my freshman year at the university then and my roommate Chika had returned from London with killer clothes and designer handbags,” I begin my natural and open response catching his interest. But I didn’t add that I had disliked Chika’s polished nails and weave hair styles even after she gave me some chocolates and perfumes. I remember seeing her gracefully remove her necklace and hang it on the polished wooden desk beside the tarnished oil painting. I remember because it was a saffron colored mango cut out of prized stones.
  I had pulled out Coke from the humming fridge as the sun raced down a curtain of trees and handed her one. We wept as the film shot; as the story opened into interesting plots. We wondered why the character called Rose hadn’t left in the small boat as planned and what would have been if she did so.
  “After seeing that movie, we defined love like we know it,” I slowly say. “She called love a complex feeling that traps one in futile relationships and I termed it a simple feeling that sets one free. But having seen Titanic didn’t validate our definitions for we had been too young to set apart myths and truths. If we were much older, we would know the characters are fictitious. They might have even divorced hours later had they eloped as planned. The point is one’s philosophies on things change with time and shouldn’t be held too strongly.”
  Uchenna picks the remote controls and turns down the TV. As the sun taps at the window, I contrast his silhouette with mine until my face softens like wet bread.
  ‘No matter what you think, can’t you accept my philosophy even if it is for you to prove me wrong?’ he asks his brown eyes burning my black ones.
  “No,” I refuse opening the door; prepared to tear up all our precious memories for freedom of speech. “I am not the vase on your table that isn’t properly centered.”

The Sin Eater
February 12, 2010

By: Dominic Preziosi
Dominic Preziosi is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, NY. His short stories and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Avery, Front Porch, Prick of the Spindle, Storyglossia, Thieves Jargon, The Writer Magazine, and the Word Riot anthology "What's Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey." He is on the faculty of Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York.
It was Merrick; there was no doubt of that. She recognized him from the shape and tilt of his head, never mind the way he listed in his wheelchair, like a scuttled tug on an ebbing tide. He had been a big man, and
was a big man still, even in what one might call this diminished state. He didn’t recognize her, not if the vacancy of his watery blue eyes was any indication.
           “You don’t remember me, Father? It’s Ellen. Andrew Egan’s wife.”
           He gazed at her, the ghost of a smile on his lips. His teeth were yellowed, but he appeared to have held on to all of them. There’d been a long period of smoking, and his struggles to kick the habit had been very public, played for jokes from the pulpit. He eventually managed to do it, something that several families of the parish had celebrated by throwing him a surprise party at the rectory.
           “I do, dear, I do. Ellen.” He lifted his hand and traced the sign of the cross in the air, to bless her. She knew that he didn’t.
           “Are you ready to go in to mass?”
           He shifted his body, a resigned shrug that she took to be affirmative. It had seemed to require a lot of effort.
           “All right then.” She grasped the handles of the chair—still unfamiliar in her hands; it was just her third day volunteering—and spun him slowly, turning him in the direction of the bright corridor connecting the common room to the chapel. A nun appeared from nowhere, her black bat wings brushing Ellen as she flitted
past. It startled her, and then she was gone without so much as a “good morning.”

The celebrant was young, half her age at most, with clear, disk-shaped lenses set in wireless frames. The glasses gave him the appearance of an owl, but he didn’t strike Ellen as wise; rather, his childlike piety showed through seriousness that he wore like a coat sneaked from his father’s closet.
           There’d been a different celebrant for each of the daily masses so far, and she understood it to be the routine, this rotation of priests from surrounding parishes. The chapel was a small, grotto-like space, with a low, stippled ceiling and painted statues hiding in the shadowy recesses. But the padded chairs were a pleasant, and comfortable, surprise. She’d parked Merrick at the end of the short row she sat in; now, he seemed to be dozing. A handful of other retired clerics were scattered around her, some of whom she’d begun to recognize. They’d all entered under their own power, although a few were aided by canes. Merrick was the only one in a wheelchair.
           It was nothing she’d expected, coming into the common room that morning and seeing him there. She hadn’t thought of him in years. Well, that wasn’t true exactly, but she had long since lost any word of his whereabouts. Really, she never had a clue as to where he went after being replaced; no one did. And now here he was at the residence, in retirement, to be spiritually and physically attended to by the sisters of the abbey—and any lay volunteers they could find—until he was called home.
           Ellen leaned over to fasten the top button of his black cardigan. His eyes flew open, which startled her, and after a moment in which she felt trapped in his gaze, he lids lowered themselves slowly. If he were to say later that he’d seen into her soul, she would have no reason to doubt him.

There was a convenience to her life now that she almost felt guilty for having. Her sons had not wanted her to sell the house when Andrew died, but she did, and they had made her feel like an outcast. She told them there was no way she could remain there, looking out over the wintry hills. It had been hard enough all of
those years, even when the place was alive with their presence. Miles from nowhere, in a place too large to be alone in. The isolation: Couldn’t they understand? They said they could, but she knew from their voices they didn’t.
           She came back to that part of New Jersey she’d grown up in, to one of the numerous towns strung along the rail lines, where she took a one-bedroom apartment in a brick building close to the supermarket and the church. Ellen had never liked driving, and now she didn’t have to do any; everything she wanted was within walking distance—even the abbey, a solid amassing of sandstone and mullioned glass set behind tall trees on a meandering side-street. There was activity on the sidewalks: children, couples, seniors like herself. Every other Tuesday night, the library hosted a poetry reading; on Saturdays, in the summer, there was a band concert in the park. She took a watercolor class.
           She didn’t have illusions about the source of the material comforts she had enjoyed, or that had allowed her to start what she sometimes thought of as her new life. The money hadn’t come without compromises along the way, without nagging moral constraints consciously sidestepped.
           “That’s the business,” Andrew had explained one night, as they sat on the deck behind their home and watched the boys—yes, they were still boys then; that’s how long ago it had been—do back-flip after back-flip into the swimming pool. Something had been happening at work, something that could cause trouble if it were made public, and he was confiding in her about his involvement. “No sense in being a saint,
since no one else is. No sense in standing on ethics, whatever that means. You only hurt yourself. And your family.”
           Nine o’clock on a Friday night, and he was still in his suit and tie. He might have been on his third drink. She’d picked at his uneaten meal, not wanting it to go to waste. The boys looked like angels to her, flying through the steaming glow of the swimming pool’s submerged light. “You’re a good provider,” she eventually told him, wanting to absolve him, to receive the burden of his despair.
           But when she took his hand, he pulled it away. A smile creased his face, an ugly grin she would come to recognize in the months ahead. “Listen to you,” he said. “Do you know how you sound? Like easy prey. Another lamb to the slaughter.”

Leaving the chapel, Ellen introduced herself to the young priest.
           “Will we be seeing more of you?” He had a voice like an Irish tenor’s. The bright light in the corridor glinted off the disks that covered his eyes.
           “As long as my services are wanted,” she answered.
           “I have no doubt of that.” And now, as Merrick had blessed her earlier, the young priest did the same to Merrick.
           She pushed him in his chair down the corridor, away from the shadows of the chapel. The narrow  rubber tires gripped the hard waxed tiles. High above, cloistered on the top floor, were the drinkers and the addicts and the psychologically impaired. One level down from them were the gravely ill, those whose time was short, tied to machines and fed through tubes. She would never be permitted to see any of these on the upper stories; her status relegated her to working with the general population, as it had been described to her—the merely aged, or the aging, who for the most part retained their faculties and who lived at ground level, taking their meals with others, attending mass, conversing in the common areas.
           Priests didn’t just disappear, not without a reason, so there hadn’t been any doubt when Merrick was suddenly replaced. No one had said it, but they didn’t have to. And her boys, thank God—at least he’d done nothing to them. But they’d been friends with two of the three who had been… touched. The third was a suicide; no one ever linked it to anything, at least not publicly—that he had taken his life some years after the fact, that he had always had problems of one kind or another anyway, freed them from having to make that connection.
           Outside she discovered a small, patio-like space covered in shade, and she positioned his chair near a low marble bench she could sit on. She was close enough to reach out her hand. Merrick’s fingers were thick and calloused, which she hadn’t expected. He blinked, but she couldn’t say if it was in response to her touch. His large head turned, as slow as a statue’s. She readied herself, in case he wanted to speak.
           Was she a fool, for taking it on herself? And who would take his sin off her, when her time came?


At The Beach
March 23, 2010

By Chuck Augello

Chuck Augello lives in northwest New Jersey with his wife, dog, three cats, and several unnamed birds that frequent the back yard.  His work has appeared in Word Riot, Pindeldyboz, Pure Francis, The Litterbox, The Santa Fe Literary Review, and other websites and journals, including an upcoming story in the Dark Comedy Review.  He spends his days in a cubicle, slowly plotting his escape.  He can be reached at beatleduck23@yahoo.com.

      It could have been anything.
     Maybe she’d been tired from too much sun or maybe that second Corona after lunch had left her in a haze.  Or maybe it was the music, an old Lemonheads song cranked on her ipod while she bopped around the room enjoying a brief refuge from the kids.  If she hadn’t been singing along with that catchy chorus, she might have heard Kevin knock.  She might have grabbed her robe before he came through the door and saw her without her swimsuit on, before he saw her—why mince words?—bare ass naked.
     “Hey, did you—“ Kevin said, and stopped, because this he hadn’t expected.
     “Hey—“ Amy said, her wet two-piece hanging on a chair halfway across the room, her cover-up crumpled in a pile by the closet door.
     She didn’t move.  An hour ago he had seen her in a bikini.  Wasn’t this the same minus a few feet of fabric?  Forget feet—it was only inches.
     But weren’t those inches the ones that really mattered?
     Kevin didn’t move either.  Amy stood perpendicular to the bed, her right hip turned toward the door.  He saw a tiny patch of light wisps between her legs and the tattoo at the crest of her bikini line.  It was a pink hibiscus emblazoned at the center of a sixteen point compass rose.  He’d known about the tattoo but had never seen it, not even when she’d tucked her fingers in the waistband of her bikini to shake out the sand.  There must be a story, he thought, but she had never spoken about its meaning, if it had one.  Each point on the compass was tinted gold.
     Amy’s husband Jeff was still on the beach, soaking in the sun like a lizard on a rock.  Kevin’s girlfriend Kate had taken the kids—Amy’s two children and Kate’s daughter from her short-lived marriage—for ice cream on the boardwalk, leaving Kevin and Amy alone in a beach house a block from the ocean.
     “I didn’t mean—“ Kevin muttered.
     “Yeah, I—“ Amy said.
     Neither looked away.

                                                ----------------------

     When he was nine his cousin Vince dragged him to a nude beach a mile from his grandparents’ house in Delaware .  He still remembered all that leathery flesh, the drooping, shriveled cocks hanging like pickles, the broad, mottled bottoms of tanned retirees, the flabby fifty year old who ran toward them chasing a Frisbee in nothing but flip-flops and giant hoop earrings, her jiggling breasts resembling a pair of Nerf footballs on the verge of being fumbled.
     “Check it out,” Vince laughed.  Only nine, Kevin stared into the sand.

                                                ----------------------

     How long had it been since a man had seen her naked?
     At least ten years, she thought.  Amy was thirty-three; she’d been with her husband for over a decade.  While technically Jeff still saw her naked, Amy doubted that he really cared anymore.  His gaze had switched from possessive to bored, their sex life as perfunctory as the scratching of an itch.  She saw how his eyes wandered in public, the subtle shift of his pupils every time a college girl passed them on the beach. 
     They had followed the typical young couple script: engagement, marriage, a move to a bigger house, two kids and an SUV.  But now that script seemed tired, a dud narrative with a dead second act and a third act promising more of the same.  Their youngest, Sam, was almost two, and Amy felt she’d worked hard to get her figure back.  She did Pilates and sweated on the treadmill four times a week, but Jeff ignored the twenty pounds she had lost since the baby; he only saw the five she had kept.
     Yet sometimes she looked in the mirror and thought, I look damn good, considering. 

                                                ----------------------

     During high school she had once posed topless for a boyfriend.
     They were in the basement playing foosball when Todd grabbed her father’s Polaroid and started shooting.  As the camera pushed out its dull, grainy portraits, Todd kept daring her further: one button, then another, and another. Losing the blouse was easy, yet she’d had no intention of removing her bra.  But Todd had a great smile and thick, wavy hair, and when you’re sixteen those things matter.  Maybe they always do.  When the camera had one shot left, she reached back and unhooked the clasp.  She flung the bra onto the foosball table and twisted her hips, pushing her chest out like the models she’d seen in her brother’s Playboy.
     “I love you,” Todd said, the first time she’d heard those words from a man besides her father.  But what he’d really meant was “I love them.”
     Two weeks later she found Todd kissing another girl, his hands burrowed inside her field hockey jersey while they made out behind the bleachers.

                                                -----------------------

     For Kevin, seeing Amy naked felt like stepping through a wormhole into an alternate universe.  In that universe he saw her naked all the time; it was part of the day-to-day intimacies of their coupling, like sharing a sink in the morning while they brushed their teeth.  In this counter-life the kids out for ice cream would be his own; four-year-old Sara would have Kevin’s dark curly hair instead of Jeff’s blond waves, and little Sam would be a mix of his and Amy’s best features.
     Since he played by the rules he never used the word love when he thought of Amy.  The rules held that they were just friends.  For the past seven years they’d worked together at a high school in Princeton; their classrooms faced each other across the hall, and each winter they team-taught a semester on Shakespeare.  By now they’d developed their own vocabulary of sarcastic glances and obscure one-liners, a reliable strategy for surviving long-winded staff meetings.  Through the years he’d been cast as the good-natured, dependable confidante, a sympathetic ear when she was down, frustrated, or pissed off at her husband.  He played the part well.
     He played all his parts well.  He knew that his girlfriend adored him.  He had been with Kate for almost a year; he was a thoughtful, generous partner, patient and understanding about her temperamental five year old.  It was a logical pairing of two compatible personalities; it made sense that he and Kate should be together, the same way that investing in a 401(k) made sense.
     Yet he wanted to be so drunk with passion that he would risk the world for a chance to touch his beloved.  He realized how silly that was, how clichéd, yet he still wanted it, and now, seeing Amy naked, only a few feet away, he wondered if life was giving him that chance.

                                                ----------------------

     He remembered a game of strip poker and the hand of three Kings that promised to separate Carolyn Hammler from her Pearl Jam T-shirt.  It was the summer between his junior and senior year, a summer spent pushing a lawn mower across the meticulous grounds of a Roman Catholic Church.  He had finally lost that stubborn layer of baby fat and had grown into his adult body; he was tan, muscular, as lean as a celery stalk.  He had known Carolyn since they were both five, and had been crushing on her since at least the sixth grade; her mother was the head teller at the bank where he cashed his paycheck.  Most nights he and Carolyn hung out in her Rec room listening to music while they watched television on mute.  Carolyn had a boyfriend, or said she did, yet the game of strip poker had been her idea.  Her parents were at the movies and there was nothing good on television, so after a few lazy hands of gin rummy, she asked if he was up for something different.
     Kevin won the first three hands, costing her two socks and the scrunchy in her hair, but Carolyn answered with a pair of Aces over his pair of Jacks, and the next three hands went the same way.  Soon he was down to his boxers but Carolyn wasn’t much better; she sat across from him in her T-shirt and underpants, her bra already tossed into the pot.  Carolyn dealt the next hand, and when Kevin laid down his three Kings, he expected to finally see the breasts he’d been waiting for all summer.
     But Carolyn didn’t strip.  She put down her cards one by one: Five of Hearts, Seven of Spades, Eight of Clubs, Nine of Clubs, and finally, the Six of Diamonds.  “Yes,” Kevin said, but when she rearranged the cards he saw that it was a Straight, and suddenly his three Kings were as useless as three bumbling Stooges.
     He had never been naked in front of a girl before.  He had always hoped that when it happened the girl would be naked too, and that it would be dark, in a bedroom with a sheet to provide cover.  He never expected to drop his pants while the girl watched from the couch sipping a can of diet Mountain Dew.  His face grew hot as he grabbed the waistband and pulled down his shorts in one brazen movement.  His penis twitched; he prayed Carolyn wouldn’t laugh.
     “Well, well,” she said, and what the hell did that mean?  He was fully hard now and pretty sure that Carolyn was smiling.  Was this his chance?  Would she touch him?  Would they finally do it?
     Yet suddenly Carolyn was off the couch and scrambling for her jeans, and when Kevin turned, he saw her parents standing in the doorway, her father holding a bucket of Kentucky Friend Chicken, her mother with a bottle of cheap red wine perfect for smashing across a naked teenager’s skull.
     Kevin grabbed his crotch and covered his penis, but Mrs. Hammler, who cashed his paycheck for him every Friday afternoon, had obviously seen him—seen all of him.  Carolyn tossed him his boxer shorts, but it was a lousy toss.  To retrieve them he had to walk toward her mother, his stubbornly stiff cock jutting out like an X-rated weathervane.
      Carolyn stuttered a vapid excuse, something like “it was Kevin’s idea,” and as he grabbed his boxers and threw on his clothes he knew that tomorrow he’d had to find a new bank.

                                                ----------------------

     “I probably should—“ Amy said.
     “Yeah,” Kevin said.  “Me, too.”
     But they didn’t.  She wondered how it might feel to sleep with Kevin.  She had always admired his long, muscular hands and the musicality of his voice.  In their Shakespeare class they would read aloud for their students, Amy as Juliet, Kevin as Romeo, and it never failed that some wiseass would whisper, “Mr. H. wants to hit that!”
     The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp, her eye in heaven would through the airy region stream that birds would sing and think it were not night.
     When Kevin recited those lines she almost believed that she really was the beautiful young Ms. Capulet instead of a tired English teacher and mother of two.
     Whenever she met one of Kevin’s girlfriends she felt protective and critical; she’d enumerate their faults and decide they weren’t good enough.  She never considered it jealousy.  But as she stood in front of Kevin she began to doubt almost everything.  Maybe she had heard him knock and had ignored it on the chance that something might happen.  They were close in so many ways.   Why did sex have to be the exception?  Why couldn’t you sleep with a friend just for the fun of it?  Well, you could, of course, but didn’t it always turn ugly?
    That was the last thing she needed, yet it didn’t seem fair.
     Just once, she thought.  Just once she wished her desires could seize the day.

                                                ----------------------

     The summer after her college graduation, Amy and her roommate Lydia drove to California in a borrowed Mustang convertible.  Lydia ’s brother had joined the Marines, leaving the car behind during his stay in boot camp.  For fifty bucks he gave them the keys and wished them luck; the Mustang was fourteen years old and living on borrowed time.  Amy’s parents, worried about a breakdown on some dark and hostile road, offered her a thousand bucks to stay home, but she had craved the experience, the whole Jack Kerouac hit-the-road spirit mashed up with some Road Rules and Thelma and Louise.
     “Be careful and be safe,” her father told her as she loaded her duffel bag into the Mustang’s cavernous trunk.  They pretended he was talking about the car, but flat tires and busted radiator hoses paled when set against three thousand miles of libido.  “When you hit those open roads it’s easy to go faster than you should,” he warned.  “That’s when bad things happen.”
     The thought intrigued her.  She wasn’t a virgin, not at twenty-two, but the possibility that her desire might flip her like a high-speed blowout seemed appealing yet ludicrous.  It was fun to imagine hooking up with some sloe-eyed farm boy with broad, corn-husking shoulders and a wheat-stacking ass, but reality usually offered less.  The farm boy would smell of beer and diesel and grope her like he’d won her at the 4-H Fair.  The slick West Coast dude with the Oakley shades and a screenplay in his trunk told every girl that she looked like Audrey Hepburn, even the blondes.  Amy wanted no part of it.
     When Lydia went off with a guitar player in a bar in St. Paul , Amy went back to the motel and read One Hundred Years of Solitude.  When Lydia abandoned her in Sturgis to spend the weekend with a married biker named Memphis , Amy sulked her way to Mt. Rushmore and re-read Jude the Obscure.
     “Six thousand miles, from New Jersey to California and back, and not a single speeding ticket!” her father beamed.  “That’s my girl.”
     “You missed some great times,” Lydia said whenever they talked about the trip.  “That guy in St. Paul was amazing.”
     “Maybe next time,” Amy told her, but already she suspected that “next time” was more about what you had missed than what might happen in the future.

                                                ----------------------    

      A simple moment had captured his heart all those years ago.  Amy was sharpening pencils at the back of her classroom when Kevin walked over to introduce himself as the new sophomore English teacher.  It was the week before school started and she was dressed for the dust of an empty classroom: frayed jeans, a baggy white T-shirt, her black hair unwashed and tied in a checkered bandana.  When he offered his hand, she turned away and sneezed.
     “Fucking allergies!” she said, and wiped her palm on her jeans.
     He was smitten.
     Within the first few minutes she mentioned her fiancé, aborting any hope before it could start, yet from day one he’d always thought “if only.”  Through the years he trained himself to look away.  If she reached across the lunch table he’d stare at his plate to avoid a glimpse of her cleavage.  The tautness of her skirt, the slight wiggle when she walked down the hall, the sleek line of her legs stretched out on the sand; he felt their enticement but denied himself a glance.  Yet now he saw all of her, and she was as beautiful as he’d imagined.  The compass rose drew him.  He would caress each point, bring his lips to the hibiscus and taste her skin.  It felt like the one truthful moment of his life, every missed opportunity and smothered desire redeemed by the simple act of touching this woman he had loved for years.

                                                ----------------------

      She didn’t know which surprised her more: that her platonic friend was about to seduce her or that she was ecstatic it was finally going to happen.  The thought was like a key to a door left shut for years.  Once opened, other doors followed, leading to the final door, where she hid the unwelcome fact that her marriage was a farce.  If for practical reasons---the kids, the house, those damn credit card bills---she was destined to remain within that farce, she still needed to acknowledge that she wanted something more.  She thought about all of those stories she had read in graduate school in which the heroine’s sublimated desires took shape as a bird soaring over the ocean or the wind screaming through a field of wheat.  The hell with that, Amy thought.  There was no lack of symbolism in her life.  Even a dim-witted freshman could parse the subtext of her husband’s wandering eye and obligatory lovemaking.  What she needed was the clumsy passion of a man on fire.  How many seconds had passed since Kevin had opened the door and seen her naked?  Fifteen?  Twenty?  Yet those seconds seemed capable of absorbing her life and squeezing out something new.  An hour ago they’d been on the beach watching the waves lap against the sand, talking about co-workers and books and whether or not Sam would wake the whole house again with another two a.m. fit.  The idea of an affair, of sex, had been nowhere in her mind, but now it was all consuming, the inevitable reward for her failure to lock the bedroom door.  They were going to do it.

                                                -----------------------     

     His first time: in a fifth floor dorm room at Boston University .  Jill was a sophomore.  So was he, but at a different college.  They’d been friends since the night they rode the Ferris Wheel together at the local fireman’s fair.  A mechanical failure had kept their carriage suspended at the top for almost ten minutes, and as they stared down at their sprawling town, suddenly no larger than a plastic village from his old, forgotten train set, she told him about her mother’s cancer.  They were both thirteen.
     It was Thanksgiving weekend and the dorm was almost empty; everyone but a few international students had cleared out for the holiday.  Estranged from her father and his new wife, Jill invited Kevin to join her in not giving thanks, an anti-holiday, and though he’d been looking forward to seeing his two-month old niece, he drove the six hours to Boston without a second thought.
     After their meal—turkey sandwiches from the corner deli and cranberry sauce straight from the can—they crashed on the futon and watched the original King Kong on a thirteen-inch black and white portable.
     What he remembered most was how clueless he felt.  He had never used a condom before.  It was so small and slippery, and as he uncoiled it over his erection it kept snapping off and sliding into his hand.  Why hadn’t he practiced? he thought.  It’s not like you could stop in the middle and read the instructions on the inside of the box.
     “Let me,” Jill said.  She’d done this before, he realized, and felt both grateful and jealous.  He had always hoped they’d wind up together.  Through high school and college he had talked her through numerous break-ups and broken hearts.  “Why can’t I find someone who isn’t a total asshole?” she’d ask.  He was always too cautious to tell her that she had.
     She guided him inside her and he came almost instantly.  It was dark but he could see the deflation in her face as she closed her eyes and exhaled.  Embarrassed, he tried to make amends with his tongue, kissing her neck and breasts as he worked his mouth toward the sweet spot between her legs, but Jill was clearly done with him.  She patted him on the back and said, “That was nice;” she rolled to her side and curled like a child, her back against his face.  Kevin pressed against her and grew hard again in minutes, but she didn’t respond when he stroked her hair and kissed her shoulders.  Beneath a warm blue blanket, wrapped in her scent, he imagined a lifetime beside her.  Yet they never slept together again, and when Jill moved to Florida a month after graduation, they gradually lost touch and disappeared from each other’s life.  It happens.  Sometimes he still thought about her, still missed her.  That happens, too.

                                                ----------------------

     Her first time: in the backseat of an ’84 Impala.  Eric was nineteen, the assistant manager at the Arby’s where she worked.  He was long and lean, like a surfboard with blue eyes and shaggy blond hair.  She told herself that she loved him and decorated her notebooks with his name, her long, swirling signature circled in hearts, but she knew it was really just pretend.  She was seventeen and eager to push her virginity into her past, curiosity being a stronger motivator than desire.
     After work they’d hang out in Eric’s car and share a joint in the parking lot, his Impala wedged behind the dumpster for maximum privacy.  They’d listen to Nirvana and watch the lightning bugs buzzing the streetlights at the back of the lot.  Eric worshipped Kurt Cobain and would grow misty-eyed reciting his lyrics.  “A mosquito, my libido,” he told her.  “That is so fucking brilliant.  He describes my life in eight syllables.”
     He kissed her and jammed his hand inside her uniform blouse.  He smelled like onion rings and roast beef, his skin thick and salty, as if coated with spray from the deep fryer.
     Before that night their encounters had always ended with Amy guiding Eric’s clumsy fingers away from her zipper.  Sometimes she would jerk him off; other times just watch while he did it himself.  But on that night she let his fingers stay.  Yes, I’m going to do this, she thought.
     “Let’s crawl in back,” she told him as Kurt Cobain started singing about lithium.  The Impala’s backseat was enormous; she stretched out with her shoulders propped against the door.  Amy pulled off her pants and braced herself, expecting the worst, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she expected.  Eric’s body pumped and shuddered, and Amy’s hands dug into his back as she imagined they should.  She screamed his name and tossed her head back and forth and did everything she’d read about in Cosmo.  When it was over, she didn’t know if she’d had an orgasm or not.
      While Eric pondered the smoke rings from his cigarette, Amy pulled up her pants and counted the lightning bugs swarming over the streetlight.  There were thirty, not that it mattered.

                                                -----------------------

     Her tattoo, the sixteen point compass rose cradling the pink hibiscus; weeks later he would still be doodling its image in the margins of his lesson plans and on the backs of student essays.  At night he would go online and search for a likeness.  There were hundreds of them but an exact match proved elusive.  He spent hours in tattoo parlors talking with the different artists. Once he thought he saw Amy’s photo on an artist’s display board, a Polaroid close-up of a compass rose, but a tiny mole hovered over the hibiscus, ruining its perfection.  In his memory there were no moles.
     On the first day of school they met in Amy’s classroom and planned their Shakespeare unit for the end of September.  Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; they had the material down cold, the only question being would there be enough books for that year’s packed sophomore class.  Amy’s allergies were in full swing again.  Kevin pulled tissues from the box and handed them to her as she dabbed at her nose.  A colleague from the English Department dropped by to chat and teased them for their seeming domesticity.  “Tissues, a cup of tea: what’s next: a bathrobe and slippers?  Go have your affair and get it over with!”
     They laughed, and changed the topic, Amy blurting out a question about the new Vice-Principal.  Sometimes they wondered if people were suspicious.  When he’d returned from the beach that afternoon, Amy’s husband Jeff had seemed more attuned than usual, staying with her in the kitchen while she broiled the salmon for dinner, his eyes following her as she walked upstairs to check on the kids.  In bed that night Kate expressed concern about Kevin’s commitment to her, the first time she’d ever mentioned her own lingering doubts.
     Was it obvious?  But how could it be?  Even they weren’t sure what had really happened.

                                                -----------------------    

     Amy turned toward him.  Her arms were dotted with goose bumps; her thighs spotted pink where the sunscreen had failed.  Her tattoo, the sixteen-point compass rose with the pink hibiscus, seemed to float in the V between her legs.
     How many seconds had passed?  Kevin stepped toward her, ready.  He imagined her falling back onto the bed, her legs opening and squeezing around him.  She imaged the weight of his body as he entered the tender folds of her sex.
     Their eyes met.
     And then, nothing.
     Later he’d tell himself that he’d heard a banging at the front door and had assumed they’d been caught---that Jeff or Kate had returned just as he’d been ready to kiss her.  Amy, too, thought that they’d been stopped; she could have sworn she’d heard her children’s feet scrambling up the stairs as she and Kevin had been ready to embrace.  It could have been anything, really: the wind rattling against the storm shutters, a crying gull, an ice cream truck, the scrape of the neighbor’s trailer bottoming out against the driveway.  It could have been anything.
     “We should—“ Kevin said.
     “I know—“ said Amy.
      They had worked together so long they could sense each other’s thoughts.  I love you.  I know.  I love you, too.  I’m sorry.  No, it’s okay.  It would have changed things. It’s okay.  You’re beautiful.  So are you.  I’m sorry.  No, I wanted you to.  I love you.  Yes, me, too.
     She expected him to leave, to turn away and close the door.  Kevin expected this, too, but when he saw her clothes lying on the bed, he reached for them.  A light blue T-shirt with LBI printed across the chest, white cotton panties and bra, and a pink sarong she had purchased on the boardwalk the night before.
     Kevin picked up the bra and held it out to her; Amy stepped toward him, and slipped her arms through the straps as Kevin set the lace cups against her breasts.  She reached back to fasten it, but Kevin touched her shoulders and turned her, his hands warm against her skin as he hooked the bra’s tiny clasp.  He dropped to his knees and held her panties; she stepped into them, one leg, then the next, her breath still as he lifted them over her calves, her knees, her thighs, her hips, the white cotton brushing her vagina as she shimmied her butt into place, her tattoo now covered in white.  Kevin held the blue T-shirt and Amy raised her arms; he guided her into the sleeves and neck and gently pulled the shirt of her head, her dark hair, still damp, shaking loose across her shoulders.
     Finally, the sarong; he brought it to her waist, and like dancers they spun in a tight circle, the fabric wrapping around her as they twirled, his hands covering hers as she tied the sash, still twirling, still locked in his embrace.
                                                -----------------------
     That night the two couples built a fire on the beach.  It was Kate’s idea, but soon after the flames began to jump and hiss, her daughter called from the house complaining of a stomachache and a monster in the closet.  “Be back in a minute,” she said, but they all knew she’d wind up sleeping in the girl’s bedroom, that stomachaches and monsters could only be vanquished by a parent’s steady vigil.  Jeff was next.  “This is boring,” he said.  “I’ll be on Facebook for a while.”  He handed Amy an empty Corona and returned to the house; they saw the glow of his laptop in the large bay window of the upstairs bedroom.
     The fire crackled.  Clouds covered the moon; it was dark, a star-less night, the August air thick and humid.  Amy nodded toward the ocean and he followed her to the shoreline.  The smooth wet sand cooled their feet; the water pooled around their ankles as the tide crested and ebbed.
     Slowly, silently, they removed their clothes and waded into the ocean.
     In the distance the red buoy lights blinked, and they swam toward them, their strokes long and graceful, their bodies lifting through the waves.
     “It’s getting deep,” Amy said.  She rolled onto her back and began to float, her toes wiggling as they poked through the surface.  Kevin pivoted and swam back to her.  With a deep breath he dove underwater, felt the world disappear, then swam back up and took Amy’s hand.  Side by side they floated on the waves; at most they had swam fifty yards yet the shoreline had vanished, the electric glow of the beach house the only marker they could spot.
     “I just don’t know,” Amy told him.
     Kevin nodded and let go of her hand.  Again he dove below, made the world disappear; he swam beneath her and embraced her from behind.  His face breached the water as she rested her head on his shoulder, her back flush against his chest; her hips nestled in his lap, their legs intertwined.
    “I just don’t know,” Amy whispered.
     They closed their eyes and floated in the warm, dark sea.  


Red Barn People
March 31, 2010

By: Hunter Liguore
Hunter Liguore holds a BA in History and is finishing her MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in diverse publications, including, "Katie Ireland," forthcoming in Lacuna Historical Fiction Journal, and "The Lair of King Crow," which was serialized in February at Yesteryear Fiction. His story, "Red Barn People," is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination.

     Mephias died this morning.
     I knew something was amiss when I heard the screen door snap shut like a gunshot against Roland’s house next door, followed by the thundering footsteps of Jennagirl stomping the loose boards on the side porch of my mother’s house. She was dressed in a pair of wrinkled grey trousers, held up with one suspender that caused them to sag, giving the resemblance of two, thin elephant legs tromping towards me. Her breasts were unloosed beneath one of Roland’s undershirts, and her sunburned feet were bare, and wet from the dewy grass.
     “Come quickly, Lil.” Her boyish face so resembled her older brother’s that it startled me to an upright position, causing me to drop a full cup of unused coffee grounds onto the unswept floor.
     “Roland’s in a bad sort of way.” Jennagirl wasn’t one for emotion. Her cheeks were flushed and she kept wringing her hands like an old oil rag. Her blue, keen eyes looked past the spilt coffee grounds, to an uncertain place on the floor, and welled with tears. She swallowed hard, and forced out the words, as her deep voice cracked. “Mephias is gone. He’s gone, Lil. Roland can’t take much more of this losing business. I think this is the last straw so to speak.”
     I picked up the grounds. Jennagirl broke from her place and knelt to help me. She touched my hand. “Say you’ll come. He hasn’t moved none since sunup, and you know I’m no good at this sort.”
     We stood. I placed the cup of Maxwell coffee, now three quarters full, on the counter, and pressed a tender, sisterly hand to her shoulder. “I’ll come straightaway.”
     Jennagirl gave a single nod, the same way policemen do when you apologize and say you won’t break the law again. She dashed off as quickly as she came, leaving me in a dreary silence. The clock on the wall kept beat, as if urging me to hurry. The calendar on the wall glared back at me. Another day had come and gone. May 2nd wasn’t even crossed off and May 3rd sprang in like a leaky summer-hose. I crossed yesterday off with the red pencil, the tip dull and flayed, and recalled an article I read yesterday in the Eaton Brook Times, written by a fellow who supposedly slept the entire first five months of 1938 away. He remarked that this year was the shortest one yet for him, and I believed him, noticing too that the months were sweeping by, as if I, somehow, was asleep right along with him.
     My hand lifted and pulled out one of the forty-eight hairpins from my dry, brown hair. The curl came unfurled in my hand, like a morning glory opening in the dawn. What would Roland think if I came still in hairpins, an unwashed face without a lick of rouge, and wearing my ragged housedress? Would he notice?
     Out of the kitchen window over the sink, I held a clear view to Roland’s house, a rustic mishmash of rooms on two floors. I say Roland’s, but it was always his Uncle Martin’s house to me, even though he and Aunt Clara met their demise in an automobile accident last winter. Ice had been the devil’s hand that December eve. The automobile sustained minor damage when it was forced into a gully, but the particulars, how Uncle Martin and Aunt Clara perished, as the other car collided with theirs, were spared from the readers of the Eaton Brook Times. It had hardly been spoken of since. Another spoiled event was Jennagirl’s words for it. The car with its broken headlight, sitting in the drive, was the only careless reminder and even that had been cleaned over, and nearly forgotten, by everyone but me.
     With a basket of day-old corn bread and a jar of milk, I traversed the well-worn path between our houses, the same path I took at least two times a day, rain or sun, cold or hot, since I was fifteen and hired on by Uncle Martin to keep house for Aunt Clara when she was first with child. She had lost that one and all the subsequent faceless babes, now interred in the red soil behind the old red barn. Uncle Martin, who had come to be like a father to me, kept me on to help with Aunt Clara’s declining health all these years. The job paid well, and now at thirty, with pale palms brought on by the use of harsh cleansers, and cracked nails from scrubbing floors and porcelain, it has become a way of life. Even in their absence the rhythm of my work continues, as I take care of the house like they never perished.
     The darkness beyond the screened-door transported me to a long lost Sunday ten years ago when I had first met Roland. He was fifteen and I twenty. I could recall hearing the terrible, exasperated weeping coming from inside, and believed Aunt Clara had lost another child. I learned she’d lost her only sister instead, Roland’s mother. Never having a sibling, I tried to know her pain and grief. I attempted to compare it to the cast-iron-weight I felt when I lost both my father and grandfather to the Great War. But Aunt Clara said nothing could replace a sister. I assumed my own mother would’ve agreed, having lost her sister to the fever before I was born, if she could talk to me from inside the ghostly place her mind now dwells.
     The day Roland and Jennagirl came to live at Uncle Martin’s had started out as a typical summer day, one with the smell of ripe peaches in the air from the trees lining the farm. At the time, I had kept my hair curled and stylish, and I wore pretty dresses to do housework. Crossing the lawn between our houses was an occasion for me. Especially, since I have always been bound to care for mother, and rarely left the premises.
     Ten years ago, when I stepped inside the house in the early morning, I found a handsome boy with a natural swath of curls piled on top of his head like a haystack, but trimmed short at the collar, sitting beside the empty fireplace. His blue eyes, like the summer sky that broke through the white, ocean-freight clouds, looked up at me for the first time through glass tears. He was holding Mephias, just a toddling pup then; his black and white coat still silky from his city living. Sitting beside Roland was a boyish girl of thirteen. Her arms were sunburned, as if she had been living on Uncle Martin’s farm her entire life. Her hair was short, tangled and pushed back from her dirt and tear stained face. She held nothing in her arms—not a childhood doll, or dog like Roland, or even the hand of her aunt or uncle—no, Jennagirl, as she had been introduced to me that day, needed no one in her grief. And she would grow up in front of my eyes never needing anyone. Maybe when she stood at the base of her parents’ gravestones, through the storm, three days prior, a bitter specter appeared to her, telling her, now that Death had exacted its toll, she’d never have another soul to depend on.
     By the time Uncle Martin had finished explaining the horrid circumstance by which both Roland and Jennagirl had come to live permanently with he and Aunt Clara, the standup clock in the corner rung eleven. And while they had come to live there with a deep sense of joylessness, a newfound color and lightness had awoken in mine. Those early days return to me as my happiest memories - the silent exchanges with Roland when I would hand him his pressed laundry, or the subtle way Jennagirl would invite me over for cards in the evening to pass the lonesome hours away. Each day I would perform my chores, cater to their meals, their necessities, perfecting each motion I made, every act with delight. But time and despair have a way of swallowing up the light, and so as the years rolled by, like the scenes from a window on a fast moving train, we’d grown complacent to each other’s rhythms, the newness having run out ages ago.

     The screen door swung shut behind me, as I entered their kitchen, old and faded like the dress I was wearing. The smell of musty cherry tobacco was still present in the air, locked away in the halls and rooms, despite the fact Uncle Martin’s pipe laid dormant nearly six months. My nose caught the distinct scent of cigarette smoke, and after I placed my basket on the cluttered table, I followed its trail to the front door, where Jennagirl lingered, smoking a hand rolled ciggie, always superstitious she might burn the house down to come inside.
     “He’s upstairs.”
     “Does he know I’m here?”
     She shook her head. “Go on up. He’s decent.”
     “He’s got a farm to tend to, and chickens to feed.”
     “I fed the chickens.”
     I hesitated, glancing up at the worn, wooden stairs. “Jennagirl, cornbread’s in the kitchen with fresh milk. Eat up and then go get yourself cleaned up. You’ll be needing to go to town for a shovel before work. The good one’s broke, been broke for a week, and we’ll need a new one to dig a hole up on the hill.”
     She gave a short nod.
     “Use the money Roland left for groceries. It’s in your mother’s jar on the stovetop, next to the butter dish.” I touched the back of my hair, as I always do before seeing Roland. It’s my last chance to make sure my hair is in place, and that I’m at my best before seeing him. This time it filled me with a fraught spirit, as my hands smoothed over snarled hairpins, rather than sweet curls.
     I ascended the stairs. It was as if I floated to the top, rounded the corner, and travelled the long hall to Roland’s room, the same room he occupied since he first arrived. The room was L shaped, and ended with a small fireplace, which had been long boarded up to keep out the drafts. A single bed, slumped like sad shoulders, rested beside a window overlooking a magnificent willow. A tattered, woven rug, filled the floor with a splash of brown and white color, where Roland sat hunched over in his white undershirt and grey trousers.
     Mephias’s stiff body was flopped on the floor in front of Roland. The tongue, now grey, protruded from the side of his jaw, through yellow jagged teeth. The once flitting tail, now as still as a teacup handle. I took a sheet from the unmade bed and walked around Roland, and placed it over Mephias.
     “No, Lillian, not yet.” He raised his hand over Mephias in an effort to prevent the sheet from drifting over the dog’s body. “Don’t cover him. I’m not done with him.”
     “I’d say you’re done. Jennagirl says you been sitting since sunup.”
     Roland swatted the sheet away, exposing that one black eye, creamed over with a white film, as thin as fly wings. “He was my dog,” he said, agitated. “I’ll say when it’s time.”
     I sat on the bed. A rolling wind sauntered in through the window, the kind that usually leads one to a summertime nap. The crinkle of the leaves and grass, mixed with the cacophony of birds and crickets, grasshoppers too, and an occasional distant automobile whizzing by, all lent to a feeling of comfort for me. Life was going on outside the window. For Roland, the hands on his Uncle’s standing clock were still. Shut down since December.
     Leaning over Roland’s shoulder, noticing his shaking hands, I realized that it wasn’t only Mephias laying on that floor, but his whole family. All of them. Lined up in a row. Mother and Father were faceless to me, but I imagined them with whimsical smiles and evangelic eyes that told the truth at all times, whether they were up to it or not. I saw cold stiff arms reaching out for Roland to take hold of, as if they had fallen through ice, and were pleading to be pulled free. Beside them, hands united in love, laid Uncle Martin in his everyday wool sweater, smoking his pipe, and Aunt Clara beside him, in her daffodil yellow dress, even though it would’ve been too cold when she died for such a thing. Aunt Clara clutched a wicker basket with all her faceless babies, happy now to be reunited. The four bodies, like four hanging garden tools, with their hallowed eyes and tender smiles, were tied up like a bundle of schoolbooks, each one connected by an effervescent string to the next. Looking down on that floor, I knew Roland had never let go the first time, and certainly not the second, and something told me he never would.
     A dripping pipe in the hall bathroom brought my thoughts back to the present. I could tell by the pitch it made that the metal pail was full, and the water dripped onto the floor. I left Roland without notice and emptied the pail in the sink. Outside the screeching of the car brakes on gravel told me Jennagirl was back. I met her on the porch where she gave me the new shovel. She hustled back to the car, always with the top down, before I could stop her. As she pulled out, I raised my hand and she pulled up alongside me.
     “Will you be back after work?” I leaned on the doorframe. “We’ll wait to bury him, if you’ll be back.”
     She squinted to block the sun from her eyes. “Sure.” I knew sure meant no to Jennagirl, and gave her a look that said so. “I’ll try, but no promises.”
     I messed up the front of her hair with my fingers.
     She swatted my hand away. “Awe, now why’d you go and do a thing like that?”
     “Try, for you brother’s sake.”
      “It was only a dumb dog.” Her voice was insensitive, but hammered out her own truth. The dog was nothing in comparison to the family she’d lost. She pulled the car away, kicking gravel and dust into the air. I waved when Jennagirl honked, as she took the turn out of the long, dusty drive.
     I set to work on my routine chores, and made light of the fact Roland needed more time with Mephias. I washed and waxed the kitchen floor, and prepared a soup with leftover meat and corn. I baked two loaves of potato bread, and when it was hot from the oven, I cut a hunk, poured a glass of milk, and carried it upstairs to Roland.
     Roland hadn’t moved. He was still hunched over, hands in his lap, staring pathetically at the dead dog. He looked lost and distant, even when I placed the warm bread beside him. I took up my efforts again to cover Mephias and trapped two small flies underneath the sheet. The bed creaked when I sat. I reached out to touch Roland’s shoulder, but wavered an inch away. The heat emanated from his body. I closed my eyes and tucked my hand in the fold of my dress.
     “Roland,” I said, clearing my voice. “Remember the time when you was younger you took in a baby bird? Was a chickadee if I recall? It had flown into the downstairs window, and even though it’s beak was broken you tried to feed it. It lived a few days and then it passed on. It died, Roland, and when it did, we buried it up on the hill. You remember?”
     Roland was silent.
     “We’re gonna do the same, you and I. We’re gonna bury Mephias next to that faded red barn, next to all your cousins. You just have to tell me when you’re ready.”
     He leaned his head back, resting it on my thigh. I hesitated to touch his curls, and took a deep, balloon sized breath. “Jennagirl said she’d try to come back before we lay him down.”
     He shook his head. “I heard her.” He glanced up at me. “A damn dumb dog is all Mephias was to her. She doesn’t care he’s dead.”
     I stifled my apprehension and stroked his thick hair, brushing his curls with my fingertips, delicately, as if it was the most natural thing—me brushing his handsome hair, with his head nearly in my lap. We were alone plenty of times, but never like this. “No sir,” I said. “She loved Mephias. Not as much as you, but enough. She’ll be back.”
     Roland started to cry. It was a silent cry, one with dry tears. He turned his body right around, kneeling, and wrapped his arms around my waist. His head pressed against my belly. And I let him. I let him cry without reproof, until he had run clean, until he was still.

     As the morning waned into afternoon, I left Roland resting, and returned home to check on Mother. Her room was the shadiest and therefore the coolest and most comfortable in the house. After I gave her a lukewarm bath, I brought her a bowl of soup and bread. I fed her like she was a child. I spoke to her as if she could understand me. I told her about Mephias, about the day outside, the new shovel, the letter from the tax collector saying we owed another five dollars because they received our check late. Afterwards, I combed her brittle hair and tied it up in a blue ribbon, her favorite color. Back when my father was living, she often wore blue on special occasions. She lost her father first, her last thread to the old family. Then my daddy came home in a box sixteen and a half days later. Mother was never the same. First she stopped talking, then eating, then seeing. Eventually, she ate again, but her sight never returned. She wasn’t blind. No, she just couldn’t see the outside world anymore. That’s how come she stopped speaking, said the reverend, because she can’t see us no more in this world to carry on a conversation.
     I sat down to read Mother the newspaper and pulled out my overdue hairpins. I dropped off to sleep somewhere on page three. It was Jennagirl tearing in with that loud tootin-Annie of an automobile that woke me. I assumed she kept her promise and returned home for Roland, but she left before I got there. The house, when I arrived, smelled of Old Spice. Jennagirl started using the men’s version over the women’s, since it arrived new in town a month ago. It certainly meant she would be spending the night prowling, rather than helping her brother dig a hole.
     Upstairs, Roland was making the bed. Mephias was still covered. I took this as an unspoken sign Roland came to terms with the loss. I told him in a soft, pale voice that I’d wait for him downstairs. I went away softly, and lingered by the standing clock in the downstairs room. I stared at its silent, ornate faceplate, catching my disheveled reflection in the glass. I tried to fix my frizzy curls, snarled and unkempt.
     Roland carried Mephias in his arms, still in the covered sheet, as if he was still living—head on the left shoulder, body tilted, hand on the belly to both support and scratch.
     We walked against the sun’s rays, which drifted serenely over the tall, green and yellow leafed trees beyond the hill. The red barn with its stern and bulky form had been built during the time of the Civil War, and sometimes housed important Union council meetings. Uncle Martin had told stories about the famous faces that frequented those meetings: Waldo Emerson, Frederick Olmstead, Charles Sprague, and Samuel Colt.
     Rocks, now smoothed from age and weather, marked the places of all Aunt Clara’s efforts to bring life into the world. Above this row, was another line of smaller stones, one brick, and a clump of sticks, which represented the grave of several deceased frogs, all given the unique name of Frog-Frog, all owned and irresponsibly met their demise by Jennagirl’s hand.
     I carried the shovel to the spot Roland chose for Mephias’s burial. Roland inadvertently started a new row; something I inferred to mean he believed he would eventually dig more graves before his time was up. The steel Ames shovel, made local since before the turn of the century, cracked the earth with an unnatural sound. I sat on the long grasses, now bent over, drooping. A brown rabbit dashed into the grove, and the birds silenced their call in the immediate vicinity.
     Inside the hole, like a pirate’s treasure, was an egg-shaped rock. It took all of Roland’s effort to pull it free. His hands were covered with moist soil, which turned to clay at the deepest stratum. His white shirt was sprayed with bits of mud and dirt, as was his face. When the hole was sufficiently deep to his liking, he sat beside it, and glanced inside, like it was a seeing-pool wherein he could divine his future in a single glance.
     After a time, I slid my arms around Mephias, and carefully laid him into the hole, sheet and all. We sat for a little longer and when I saw he wasn’t going to cover it, I took the shovel.
     “No, not yet,” was all he said.
     I left Roland on the hill. I returned to Mother as the sky turned a soft peach and one simple bird sang in the catalpa tree outside Mother’s window. I waited and watched to see what he would do. I kept busy with sweeping the porch, and when I was done, while Roland still sat on the hill, I found another chore. Soon, I lit a kerosene lamp, took my supper, cleaned my face, the dishes, and Mother’s stained blouse. Darkness draped a cloak over the hill to the barn preventing me from seeing Roland any longer. But I didn’t have to wait long. A light went on in his bedroom, a single light in the entire house.
     The area between our houses was quiet and still. I sat on my mother’s porch, and kept my hands busy for a time pulling out the stitching on an old doily, the same one I’d been working on for a year now. Soon, Jennagirl rolled the car into the drive, so no one would hear her coming in, an act she perfected when Aunt Clara was still living; she’d often wait up for her, much as I was doing myself.
     Bits of laughter melded with titillating conversation, and rose like smoke from the lighted depths of the automobile, where Jennagirl stood with one leg out of the car, one knee in. Leaning over from the passenger side, toward her, was a sassy gal, with permanent waves and boisterous bosoms that came to life every time she laughed. The sassy gal wore a lavender dress, with sewn on stars that glistened in the light shed from Roland’s window. This was Jennagirl’s newest Juliet, and by her familiar face, I knew she had made the trip home on more than one occasion.
     A bottle of whiskey was passed between them. The bottle swished as it was carelessly tipped and corked, passed and swallowed. Jennagirl was dressed in a cream-colored suit with double buttons. Her hair had a sharp part on the side, and her chestnut hair smoothed over the sides without one hair astray. The length met the top of her shoulder and curled under ever so slightly. When she dropped her head back with laughter, she had the debonair silhouette of a great motion-picture actress, like Garbo or Stanwyck. She took off the jacket, slinging it, like the men do, over her shoulder. With her other hand she unbuttoned her shirt collar, then held out her hand for Juliet. She was careful to close the heavy door with an innocent muffle. Before setting off, she lit a smoke and laced her arm around the waist of the girl, and led her to the barn for a night of lovemaking.
     I kept a silent vigil for Roland, waiting, hoping the light would dim to tell me he had finally put the day to rest, but I dosed off to sleep, despite the gnawing of little gnats and mosquitoes. Next I knew, Jennagirl was pulling into the drive again, the one headlight dimmed. She was alone now, and heard me stir as I broke my uncomfortable position.
     Her shoes scuffed the porch step, as she leaned on the rail. Her eyes glistened from heavy drink, and her gait was out of kilter, causing her to drape her arm over the post to keep from falling.
     “Why do you do this to yourself?” Her deep voice was matter of fact. “Sitting here wasting yourself on that excuse of a man.”
     “And what do you know about it?”
     “I’m more man then he’ll ever be.” Her words were tender, but drunk, spoken with a singsong melody that slurred into a single line. “I certainly wouldn’t leave you out here like this.”
     “Like what?”
     “Pathetically alone.”
     “Oh,” I brazened a smile. “You’d sweep me off my feet with a bottle and a few hours of your time, is that it?”
     “What’s that supposed to mean?” She slumped down and sat on the second step. Her mouth choked open for air; her head rested back on the post. “Huh?”
     “I don’t see you settling down with any one girl.”
     Jennagirl fumbled to light a ciggy, so I went to her and lit it for her. I continued, “You’re aloof and dangerous and one day you’re going to get your heart hurt.”
     “No, see,” she passed the smoke to me, which I took and sucked hard. “That’ll never happen, ‘cause I keep switching them around.”
     “No one of them ever gets too close,” I said. “No one ever spends the night.”
     “That’s right.”
     “Why deny yourself the love?”
     She swatted her hand at me.
     “What’s her name?” I asked. “Can you tell me that much?”
     “Whose name?”
     “The girl.” I pointed to the car, as if she was still there.
     Jennagirl tilted her head back and laughed. “What’s the difference what her name is? Jenna, Martha, Lena. Tom, Dick, Harry. They’re all the same to me.”
     “I don’t understand you.” Shaking my head, I took a fresh cigarette from her case and lit it, perturbed.
     “What’s there to understand, Lil? I love many and no one. It’s simple.”
     “It’s sad.”
     “Sad? Don’t confuse me with your sorry lot.” She pointed her finger at me. “I have my castle and my queen, whenever and with whomever I chose, which is more than I can say for you. Tell me, Lil, what are you waiting for?”
     I said nothing. I sucked the ciggy until it burned the edges of my fingers, and put it out.
     “Lil, are you gonna tell me what’s holding you here? Do false dreams of my brother marching over here to make you an honest woman keep you up at night?”
     I didn’t have an answer for her. Her face, illuminated with the strange light, looked so similar to Roland’s that my thoughts went stiff, and yet anger welled inside of me, not toward Jennagirl, nor Roland, but anger at myself. What had I done? Why had I waited here so long for love?
     Before I could offer a refutal, a thundering crash of some kind erupted from inside Roland’s room. We scurried across the middle path into the house.
     I called for Roland, following Jennagirl up the stairs. She took them two at a time, and was first to his room. Upon seeing Roland, she began to curse. I pushed her aside to see him, unprepared for the immensity and weight of what my eyes would absorb in a single stroke. Red, vicious blood splattered in a reckless pattern on the floor and walls, flecked with shards of glass.
     “Roland, what did you do?” He didn’t have to answer. My eyes didn’t need a detective’s examination of the details. He had intended to draw blood, lots of it. His arms were filled with varying sized gashes. My hands had grabbed the nearest article of cloth, a white shirt, and tore it, as if the strength had always been in me. I wrapped his arms, lifted him to his feet, and guided him to the bathroom sink.
     Jennagirl spun out of control with a furious fit. She cursed every foul word, some I’d never heard before. “Where’d you hide it? Huh, brother?” Her voice grew louder. “Let’s call out your little secret, Roland.”
     As I stood in the bathroom running cool water over his open wounds, comforting his bouts of anguish, I listened to Jennagirl opening his bureau drawers, dropping things to the floor, rummaging through the contents. “Here it is,” she yelled. She stomped out of the room, waving a black pistol. I didn’t have instinct to act, let alone move. Jennagirl crowded around me waving the gun at Roland, until she settled on a spot, and pointed the barrel directly at his head. “This is what you want, isn’t it? What you been keeping this for, hiding it, so you can do yourself in? This way you can spare yourself from another spoiled event. You selfish bastard! You’d leave me your mess to clean up and expect me to bury your worthless body.”
     Roland shook his head and made a terrible groan as if it would make everything go away.
     “No, Jennagirl, put it away,” I pleaded, trying to push her back. But she didn’t budge. I grabbed the nearest thing, the half-filled pail of water from under the sink, and tossed it in her face.
     Jennagirl shook off the wet like a dog, and jumped back with even more vigor and ferociousness. “Maybe I got another plan.” She turned the gun to her head. “Is this it, brother?”
     “No, no, no!” Roland’s voice screeched with hysteria. I stood my ground between them.
     “You’re dying to know the answer to the big question, brother.”
     “Stop this, Jennagirl!” She diverted my attempts to take the gun from her hand.
     “All these years we’ve been coming and going since ma and dad died, and all these months since Uncle Martin and Aunt Clara died, and all these hours since this morning when Mephias died,” she threw up her arms, “and every second of every day you’re wondering who’s next. I’ve seen the way you look at me, wondering, is this the day that’ll claim my Jennagirl? Or will it be my turn? Who’ll be first? Will she bury me or will I end up burying her? Or maybe,” her voice shot to a higher octave, “maybe we’ll be fortunate and go together?” She swung her arm in front of her, as if clearing a cluttered table. “I’ll end it right now, Roland. I’ll end the miserable wait for you.” She put the gun steadily to her head.
     I charged her and thrust the pistol away from her temple, and pushed her back to the wall. Her body shifted and the gun went off, sputtering. Sparks scattered with the jolt. A zigzag line of blood sprouted from her forehead, terrifying me. Her eyes opened wide. She dabbed her fingertips through the line of red, smudging it.
      “Jennagirl, say something.” My voice was tiny and tearful. I saw a shift of fear occur in her eyes, as she pushed me off her, and ran away. “Jennagirl. Jennagirl.” I followed her, waiting at the top of the stairs, listening as the screen door smacked the side of the house and the automobile’s engine revved up, breaking the quietude. I returned to Roland, whose whole body heaved with a silent cry.
     When his wounds were cleaned, and the minute glass shards all removed, and the largest gash sewn, I wrapped his forearms and hands carefully with gauze. I laid him in bed, drawing up the clean sheet, and dimmed the light. I scooped up the pistol in a towel. I rolled and tucked it close to me, as I had done in a similar fashion, hours earlier, with Mephias’s cold body. I hid it in the pantry, behind the farina and Maxwell Coffee.
     I tried to keep busy. The pathway between our houses was forty-two steps, nearly as many hairpins it took to curl my hair. From Mother’s room on the west end, to the sofa room with the standing clock equaled nineteen steps. Sixty-eight from my porch to the entrance of Roland’s room. From kitchen to kitchen was forty-nine. From the end of the driveway to my porch one-hundred-thirty. From my porch to Roland’s kitchen, to the end of the drive, one-hundred-seventy-nine. An entire circle around Roland’s house consisted of thirty-seven steps. From one end of the sofa room to the next, six steps. From the standing clock to Jennagirl’s room, across the hall from Roland’s, twenty-four steps. And finally, two-hundred fifty-eight steps from Roland’s room to the grave of Mephias, still open and uncovered.
     Two cars moved up the drive. The dark shapes came to a halt outside Roland’s house. The first car belonged to the captain of police, Robert Marshal. I stepped out of the kitchen and held the screen door as it closed. A second officer had driven Jennagirl’s car home. Captain Marshal pulled a tough-acting Jennagirl, with a small bandage on her forehead, from the passenger side of his car.
     “Evening, officer.”
     “Evening, ma’am.”
     “What happened?”
     “She picked a fight with someone twice her size.” He released Jennagirl’s arm, as she struggled to pull free.
     “He tried to ticket me with disturbing the peace.” Jennagirl pointed and stood behind me, as if in someway I might shield her from his imminent penalty, if there was one.
     He stepped closer to me with confided whispers, removing his hat in a polite manner. “Family’s fallen on hard times. So I’ve heard.”
     We watched Jennagirl stumble into the kitchen, her mouth still ticking, mumbling nonsense.
     “Time’s are always tough,” I admitted. “And she’s harmless. Wouldn’t hurt nobody.”
     “You didn’t see the fight.” He smiled, slightly chuckling. He teetered on his toes. “Some neighbors said they heard gunfire not too long ago, and then with this, I thought I should check it out for myself.”
     “Everything’s fine here, officer.” I dug my hands into the folds of my dress. “Everything’s just fine. Her brother, Roland—you know Roland, don’t you? He’s upstairs sleeping like a babe. I’ll make sure she does the same.”
     “Good enough for me.”
     “No ticket?” I said, feeling silly to have reminded him.
     “I have your word she won’t leave the house until she’s slept it off?”
     I nodded.
     He fixed his hat and gave a quick nod with it. “Good enough for me.” He started to leave, then pivoted back, lingering. “Your name’s Lillian Ward?”
     “Yes, sir.” My voice was monotone.
     “I thought I recognized you. We knew each other as kids. Down by the swimming hole. You remember?” His smile was genuine, as he took me all in, hair, eyes, a blood-stained dress, an aged face.
     “I reckon so.”
     “You still live up here with your folks?”
     “Father passed long time now. Mother’s taken ill. Looking after her doesn’t give me much time to get out.”
     Captain Marshal nodded, taking a complete look from house to house. “Well,” he sighed, stifling a slight yawn. “If you ever get to town, look me up. Maybe I could buy you a cup of coffee.”
     “That sounds nice.” I nodded. “Thank you, officer.”
     “Robert.”
     “Thank you, Robert.”
     “And you say all’s well here?” His eyes dropped to the bloodstains on my dress again.
     “Rabbit stew tonight,” I said, with a counterfeit smile, pointing to my dress. “All’s well here. We’re sorry for dragging you out here. It won’t happen again.”
     He nodded and slipped back into his car, which moved down the drive like a slinking caterpillar.
     I thought all the fight had been walked out of me, but when I stood face to face with Jennagirl in the sofa room the entire day flooded me. But it wasn’t just the day; it was the entire life I lived compressed in the lucid sphere between my house and theirs. The first time my eyes affixed themselves on Roland’s beautiful form, to the moment I swelled with heat every time he brushed up against me, usually in err or by accident, and all the times I went out of my way to reenact the same instance, brought on the paroxysm of love and feeling. It was the only intangible that indicated I was still alive, and yet to Roland, we were all dead already, all lying on that floor with button-sewn-eyes, a shovel-full of dirt in waiting, and an epistle of excuses why he’d been neglectful to us in life.
     I started to pace in a circle, from the standing clock to the sofa and back. “Tell me what to do, Jennagirl.” My voice was pleading. Now it was my hands being wrung out over and over to squeeze out the anxiety. “You’re both alike. You can tell me then what I should do.”
     “We are nothing alike.” She opened a new bottle of brandy from the chestnut cabinet and drank from it. “We’re definitely not alike.”
     “Yes, you are. You’re both afraid to love for real. For real, dammit! It’s a game to you, in a different way than it is for Roland. I can’t make you see. But with Roland, there might be time to fix him.” I bit my finger, stalling for time. “You were right. I can’t wait any longer. I’ve been frozen here with the both of you for so long that I can hardly make my way to another place. I don’t even know if I can conceive of some other place.” My arms swung high with disbelief. “Tell me now, Jennagirl. Tell me what to do to win your brother’s love. Show me how to take charge, how to bring him to my fold with ease, like I’ve seen you do a hundred times before. In all my years I’ve never seen you have a shaking hand, or a look of resistance when you sowed your desire, or even a careless glance of apprehension. Look, look at me!” I held out my trembling hands, shaking something fierce, as if I was thawing from a lifelong winter, the chill of release crippling me, and unless I was given warmth immediately, I would’ve certainly died.
     Her hand slipped into mine, strong and hard, like a steering wheel from a car, pulling me toward her, squeezing my hands, to warm them. She led me to the sofa, and sat close to me. I could smell her faded cologne, her warm, brandy breath. She held my shoulders tightly, as if at any moment she might shake me, and tell me to wake up. Wake up, Lillian. You’ve been asleep all this time. Her hand slipped off my shoulder, and comforted the side of my face. Her hand was callused like a man’s from hard labor, yet tender like a woman’s. Her face, so like Roland’s, like the brother he might’ve had. I wonder in that instant, if she had been his brother, would it have been these arms to hold me contented at night?
     My words were short and muffled. “Show me what to do.”
     Her big, blue eyes looked sadly into mine, and she humphed a sigh and kissed me. It was stiff and impassioned, unlike the kisses I had seen her wield outside my window. “Take a deep breath,” she whispered. “Then let it out, slowly.”
     My head grew light and dizzy. She kissed me again. This time her lips went deeper, allowing me the taste of her smoky tongue. A warm sensation traveled from the point of contact through the back of my head, down my innards, and out my feet. I turned hot all over, slightly from the affection, slightly from embarrassment. Subtly, and naturally, her hand went through the top of my dress, where she gripped my breast. She was trying to give me everything I longed to partake with Roland—but it wasn’t Roland, and even if Jennagirl was his brother, it wouldn’t have satisfied me.
     Neither of us noticed the looming shadow overhead, like a hovering vulture with outstretched wings, ready to land on top of us. I broke away, and glanced up at Roland. His face was violent and in a marvelous instant he grabbed Jennagirl from her seat and pinned her figure up against the wall.
     “Roland.” I stepped back as they brawled to the floor. Jennagirl pushed him away, and gained ground, giving me the chance to come between them.
     “How dare you.” He snorted, breathing heavily. He raised a finger at her. “How dare you touch her!”
     “Roland, it’s not her fault,” I said, willfully, turning to him. “This is between you and me.” I pushed his hand away.
     “You want her to take you up to the barn. Is that it?” He brushed me away. “Now I see. It’s been going on right under me. I’ve been a fool, a big fool.”
     “No, Roland. You’re wrong.” I shook my head, feeling defeated.
     “You damn fool!” He tried to charge Jennagirl again, but I stopped him, his shirt was sweaty to the touch. My body rippled with that strange heated wave only he could bring to me.
     Roland grabbed me briskly by the shoulders and shook me. “Is that the kind of woman you are?” He grabbed my face and kissed me hard. “Is this what you want? Is this how you want to be treated?” His eyes were wild and his hair unkempt. He pressed his lips against mine abrasively, and then wrapped his arms around me, forcing me to him. And even though he frightened me, I didn’t pull away.
     “Leave her,” insisted Jennagirl.
     I felt her hand on my shoulder, attempting to pull me free of Roland’s hold. The three of us struggled against each other, the pull and the push, until finally, Roland’s grip gave way, causing me to lose balance and fall into the end table. The force of the wood frame against my head brought on a flash of blinding bright light, along with a terrible throb. With eyes closed, I felt the cool carpet beneath me. The last thing I heard was the jingling of the car keys, as Roland stole them away from Jennagirl.
 
     Morning light cascaded into the unfamiliar space, as I awoke to find myself in Jenngirl’s bed. I lifted my head long enough to see down the hall, into Roland’s room; the bed was left untouched. The frumpy pillow beneath me was scented with Jennagirl’s cologne. A strand of her golden hair lay at the edge; it was as fine as a spider’s thread.
     Jennagirl was leaning over me, wiping my forehead with a damp rag. Her touch was hurried, but gentle, inexperienced. She cupped her moist hand under my chin, and held my gaze. “You took a hard fall, Lil.” She held the cool rag on my bruise. “Your mother’s fed and changed. I saw to it. Coffee’s on, if you’re up to it.”
     “And Roland?”
     Jennagirl was quiet. She busied herself around the bed, fixing the sheets, picking up the odds and ends, as if it were my room she was cleaning, rather than hers. I tried to sit up, my head still painful.
     “Roland’s going to be all right.” She sat on the bed, legs apart, resting elbows on her thighs. “Was just a small accident, Lil, nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Car’s wrecked, but Roland, he’ll be fine. Nothing doing. He’ll be home sure enough. Doctor said he’d bring him ‘round.”
     I took hold of her arm to help pull myself up. I felt her soft hand slip onto mine. It was steady; if she was worried she didn’t show it. Her surety settled me. Jennagirl helped me back to the pillow. She leaned over and kissed my forehead, much the same way a mother would a sick child. Her tenderness caused me to question the kiss we shared the previous night. Had it changed something between us, some tangle of love and caring? If hers was the only love, would it be enough for me?
     I drifted in and out of sleep. Each time I’d awake, the shadows in the hallway had stretched closer and closer to me, like long arms reaching out, both inviting and haunting at the same time. A fresh breeze, along with a loud noise awoke me for sure. From the bed, I listened to Jennagirl and Roland bickering about the correct way for a person with a broken leg to get around. Jennagirl argued for crutches, while Roland said it was easier to hop along. They didn’t need me to intervene, and so I remained reclusive and quiet, until Jennagirl checked in on me, this time with a bowl of soup and a hunk of stale bread.
     After the meal, she helped me to the sink to wash my face. She coaxed me into going downstairs. Roland was in the kitchen, his leg done up in a plaster cast. Our eyes met for a brief moment, then we both looked away. There was a moment of awkwardness, until Roland announced that he wanted to put Mephias to rest once and for all.
     It was Jennagirl, and not me, that helped Roland traverse the hill toward the barn. The shovel was where he had left it, the hole caved in slightly. I sat with my arms wrapped around my legs in the grass above them, observing. I didn’t have it in me to instruct, to encourage Roland, or to offer any sympathy. It wasn’t needed either, since Jennagirl was right there to dig the rest of the hole.
     When Jennagirl was finished, she helped Roland push the dog’s stiff body into the grave, and then covered it, making sure to pat the lose dirt with her foot, and adding more soil, until it was firm. There was nothing more to do.
     We were silent. Each of us looking elsewhere. The afternoon sun waned, as a gentle, cool breeze canvassed the void. My eyes had settled on the horizon, and more precisely to all the red barns dotting the patchwork farmland. One by one I started to count them. To the left of the church steeple I counted sixteen, and on the right, another ten. Each barn, I imagined, was as old as the one beside me on the hill.
     My eyes fell upon Roland. What had we become to one another? We weren’t brother and sister, nor lovers, and yet we existed as more than friends. Had I become a red barn to him, something sturdy, weatherproof, a place to store things when you need them? Something hard and forgotten? Something dependable and predictable that would stand the test of time?
     Brother and sister had descended down the hill before I noticed they had gone. Jennagirl had fulfilled her duty. She had buried Mephias, and made sure Roland was safe at home, but now, her old self was returning. It was time for her to run away, to disappear for a little while into town. I imagined for a moment how different and sure she must appear to those she encountered, her proud mannerism and boyish confidence that won the heart of a lady, if only for the night. She had no car to escape with, but it didn’t keep her. After she led Roland to the steps, she started off down the drive on foot.
     The real Roland had returned. I knew this because of the way he sat on the steps, drooped over, wearily, waiting like a little boy for his mother to return. As if in some small way, Roland was still the same boy all those years ago, before his mother and father died, still lingering, hoping for their return.
     The wind picked up, kicking dried grass and leaves, a paper bag and some cornhusks around the yard. I could’ve remained on the hill for an eternity, or maybe disappeared down the driveway like Jennagirl. But Mother would need to be fed soon, as would Roland. There would be dishes to clean and clothes to wash and eggs to gather. The pull inside me ached in only one direction.
     At the bottom of the hill, I stepped on the porch and faced Roland. I placed my hand on his shoulder, and beckoned him to stand. His hand patted mine, and remained, so I believed, a little longer than usual.
     We were all where we were supposed to be, minus Mephias, who would’ve been at Roland’s feet. I turned and waited for Jennagirl to turn and wave, as she always would when she got out to the road. My hand hung in the air, and then dropped to my side, when she didn’t look back. Maybe we weren’t the same. Maybe without us even knowing we had turned off the road, heading toward a new place, a new destination.
     As I lifted Roland up, and started for the door, I heard someone calling my name. It was Jennagirl, nearly out of sight, her hand high, swinging. I stopped, tears brimming round my eyes, melting the icy globe that somehow had formed around my life. Maybe it was so, maybe somehow I was free of it. Free of it. Finally free.


Marigolds
May 10, 2010

By Nick Clark

Nick Clark grew up in eastern Oregon and has completed a novel based in that region during the early sixties. He is currently at work on a second novel set along the central California coast where he now resides. This is his first publication. 

     The honey-colored walls and cabinets of western knotty pine glowed warmly in the mid-morning sunlight through the paned glass window.  “I’ve always liked your kitchen, Dorothy,” I said, pulling a chair at the table.  She half turned and smiled faintly and pulled down cups and saucers from her good china.  She poured coffee.  The dishes rattled softly as she brought them to the table.  Pulling a chair next to mine, she sat and stirred cream and sugar into her cup and laid the spoon aside on the saucer.  The wall clock gave a resounding tock and bumped to the next minute.
     “When they arrived that morning the ambulance drivers broke down his bedroom door, it was the only way,” she said, going on with the conversation she’d started in her parlor.  “I didn’t know he was bolting it, Ellen.”
     The funeral was two months ago, in January.  Dorothy’s husband had been thirty years older than her and in poor health for all of the ten years we’d been neighbors.
     “Would you like me to have my husband look at it?  I’m sure Jack could repair it for you,” I offered.
     She shifted in her chair.  “It’s very kind of you, Ellen, but I’d rather not bother with it, for now anyway.”   
     I glanced at the window.  The chintz curtains primly tied at the waist looked like brightly colored hourglasses.  The sunlight gave way to an unseen, passing cloud and returned.  “I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been.”
     “It was terrible.  We found him lying on the floor, his body, I mean.”  Her voice wavered.  I slid my chair closer to hers and patted her on the shoulder.  She turned to me, tears in her eyes.  “He had been putting on his pajamas.”  A trembling smile twitched the corners of her mouth.  Her gaze was abstracted, like she was seeing what she was remembering.  “He had a smile on his face that I will never forget.  All of his anger and hatred was gone.  It was like an angel’d carried him off in the night, peaceful-like.”
     After the last of her out of town relatives had returned to their own lives, Dorothy closed up her house and went to her cottage on the Oregon coast.  From the street corner I watched her drive off that dreary February morning one week after the funeral.  How exhausted she had looked--I worried about her having an accident.  She returned three days ago.  This was our first visit.
     “There wasn’t a day, hardly an hour, that I didn’t think about you while you were gone, Dorothy.”  I sipped from the tiny, delicate cup.  The coffee was very strong and black.  “Did you have much rain?”
     “Yes, everyday.  The rain, the sound of rain was like a friend, a companion.  I would put on my slicker and rubber boots and walk along the deserted beach.  Even days when there was a gale and the rain came in slantwise.  Sometimes I felt quite like I’d lost my mind, but I had to get out.  To walk.  Does that make sense?”  She turned to me, her eyebrows arched slightly and her lips parted.
     “Of course it does,” I affirmed, searching her moist pale blue eyes, large behind her bifocals.  Her features sagged wearily.  I noticed her crows feet had deepened.
     “Since coming home I haven’t been sleeping.”
     “That’s understandable.  You’re worn out from the long drive--three hundred miles.”
     “I slept soundly at the cottage from the very first night.”  She rubbed her temples with both hands, eyes closed.
     “Well--”  Whatever else I meant to say slipped from my mind.  Perhaps there’d been nothing.  I folded my hands together in my lap.
     “I’ve felt as though Clarence is trying to reach me ever since I got home.”  Her eyes wandered to a wooden bowl of artificial fruit--bananas, apples, and grapes--on the counter directly in front of her eight feet away.  “I wake up in the middle of the night, Ellen, and find myself going up the stairs to his bedroom.  I sit in his old rocking chair and rock.  The floor squeaks.”  She turned and looked at me, her lips pursed momentarily, and said, “I used to hear it squeaking in the ceiling as I sat in the parlor and read the evening paper.  It was reassuring to know he was right above me, safe and, and right there above me.  He loved that old rocker.”
     We sat in silence for several long moments.  I noticed her cup was empty, though I couldn’t recall her having once raised it to her lips.  Grains of sugar traced a faint trail from sugar bowl to the edge of her saucer, each grain standing out against the table’s polished wood surface.  With a swallow I finished my coffee and slid back my chair slightly.  “Shall we take that stroll in your garden now?”
     Her face brightened.  Dorothy was an avid gardener, though it was becoming more difficult for her, I knew, to stoop down and get her fingers into the soil.
     From the back porch we entered her small greenhouse.  The air was close and smelled of humus laden with the sickly sweet odor of bone meal.  On a workbench sat several uncovered wooden boxes filled with bulbs ready to go into the ground.  Beside the bench was her standing cold frame box in which she started her annual flowers from seeds.  I lifted the steamy glass lid.  There were seedlings about two inches tall in the potting soil.
     “What have you here?” I asked.  “Marigolds?”
     “Cosmos.  I scattered last summer’s seeds there.  That was about when Clarence began having his mini-strokes.  TIAs the doctor called them.  He became suspicious and angry all the time after that.  The doctor warned me to watch for such changes.  Of course you know all of this.”  She sighed heavily and her glance fell to the graveled floor.  In that moment she seemed far beyond the six or seven years she had on me--as though she had grown old all at once.  My heart ached for her.
     “I planted marigold seeds in egg cartons this year, Dorothy.  I’ve turned my kitchen window sills into cold frames,” I said with a small laugh.  “It’s the first time I’ve started flowers from seeds.  It’s true,” I added as she looked up at me.  “I talk to them, tell them how pretty they’re looking.”  She smiled and nodded her head.  “They’re a little taller than these, not much.  Yes, I see these are different.  Cosmos, I must remember that.”  I lowered the rather heavy glass lid with both hands.  “At first when the nights were still freezing I would move them to the kitchen table.  The boys got a kick out of them over breakfast as you can imagine.”
     “The dear sweethearts.  What did they say?”  Her head inclined toward me in an attitude of listening.  Dorothy loved children.  For some reason she and her husband had had none of their own.  She was, as far as I knew, on good terms with his children from his first marriage and his grandchildren.
     “Oh, things like, ‘What funny looking eggs, Mom.  Are they hardboiled?  Let’s crack some and see.’”  Dorothy’s smile broadened and her eyes glistened.
     “They’re at a wonderful age right now.”  Her right hand toyed with her left sleeve cuff.  She was heavyset and favored caftans and loungers.  The denim one she was wearing with floral embroidery on the yoke hung loosely.  I wondered if she was eating properly.
     “They noticed when they broke ground before I did,” I said, moving a step away from the cold frame box toward the fresh air coming in at the door.  “We were sitting down to breakfast and Scott, I think it was, shouted, ‘Mom!  Your eggs are hatching!’  To see their excitement as they jumped to their feet and counted how many had ‘hatched’--I tell you, Dorothy, it about made me weep for joy.”
     She laughed, the first time that morning.  “That’s a wonderful story, Ellen.  I hope Scott will be able to take on my yard again this summer.  I don’t know what I would have done without his help last year.”  The greenhouse creaked as the panes of glass warmed and shifted with the morning sun.
     “I’m sure he’d like that.  By the way, I love that embroidery.  Is that your work?”
     She looked down, her double chin flattening outward against her neck.  Her fingers traced the polychrome threads.  “Yes, it’s what occupied my time at the cottage when I wasn’t walking.  I’m glad you like it.”    
     She turned toward the door and stepped out.  I followed her, shutting the narrow glass door behind me.  Taking hold of my arm she led me to her side yard, which faced my house across the street.
     “I’ve hardly been out here since last fall,” she said, pausing to take a deep breath of fresh air.  She exhaled slowly.  “I wonder what winter’s spared us.”
     I was about to comment on how harsh it turned after she left for the coast.  The heavy snow and ice began to feel endless; each year the winters became more unbearable to me.  But having noticed how her head sank to her chest I caught myself:  this one had not spared her husband.  And, after all, winter was over.
     “Oh, the usual for eastern Oregon,” I said, looking at a section of fence enclosing her yard.  The fence was of unpainted cedar pickets weathered to a silvery gray--the color of ice, I thought.   
     We walked in silence for a few moments along the brick path that encircled a small lawn.  The blades were a matted dull yellow and dormant.  Her shrubs and flowerbeds were laid out between the fence, the path and the house.  We paused before a tall, barren viburnum.  Summers, I admired its cascade of snowball blossoms from my kitchen window.  She leaned into it looking for new spring buds, her shadow merging into the bush’s bleak silhouette where it fell upon the house’s lavender painted siding. 
     “Yes, it is beginning to bud, Ellen.”  The grating sound of an electric saw suddenly disturbed the quiet.  The noise came from my house.
     “Jack must be at his carpentering,” she said.
     “Yes.”  I had not realized the noise carried so far.  “The upstairs windows must be open.”  I felt the need to offer some explanation though hardly necessary.  “He’s taking time off this week from the office.  It’s spring break you know, so the boys are out of school, and he’s got them all doing something.”
     “It’s looking very nice.  Your husband’s completely remodeled that old house of yours.  It’s remarkable.”  Her gaze rested on the upstairs.  The saw was again cutting.  “I enjoyed watching your sons paint the new siding last summer.”
     I smiled and looked away.  I thought of all the years that it was nothing but an eyesore, a blot upon the neighborhood.  Years when rubble filled the yard; years when the old siding was stripped and the walls exposed for the whole town to gape at; years when part of the roof was black plastic stretched over rough framing.  With an inward shiver I thought of my depression three winters ago; a mental and physical collapse that left me bedridden months on end in a bedroom partitioned with black plastic.  Dorothy had been there for me all through it.  My health was slow to recover.  I was beginning to accept that I would never regain all that was lost.
     “Yes,” I sighed.  “The outside is finally done.”  It was as though I had not known or realized it until that moment.  I looked at my home as though I were seeing it for the first time--out of the rubble stood a lovely, gabled two story house.  In the empty garden bed opposite Dorothy’s parlor window, where she often sat, I suddenly pictured a golden orange mat of marigolds.  “Now I can really begin to plant my gardens, Dorothy,” I said with sudden animation.  “I’ve been waiting so long for things not to get trampled--for the exterior work to be done.”  Tears brimmed my eyes.  I blinked rapidly several times.  “This summer I will have color, Dorothy, lots and lots of color.”  Some inner tension gave way, and I felt the morning air expand into my lungs.  “It feels spring-like today.  Don’t you think?”
     “It is pleasant.”  Her glance swept her yard.  “But I haven’t seen my first robin yet.  I always like to wait for their return before I start my spring garden in earnest.”  She pulled a strand of graying brown hair off her brow.
     “I thought I saw one the other day, but it was flying so I couldn’t be sure,” I interjected hopefully.
     It was half-past ten.  We drank a second cup of coffee, and then I stood to leave.  Dorothy walked me to her front door.
     “Your visit’s done me a world of good, Ellen.”  She stifled a yawn, fingers touching her lips.  “I might just lie down for a bit.”
     “You should.  A little extra rest, be good for you, Dorothy.  Call me if you need anything.”  I stepped off her spacious, covered porch, heard her door click shut behind me, and crossed the street to my home.
     It was too nice of a day to spend indoors and I grabbed my leather gloves from under the kitchen sink and went outside.  I thought I might just turn the soil of my new marigold bed.
     I found the spade and bow rake in the garage buried under the tarps from last summer’s painting and worked up a good sweat.  The sun was bright although there were streaks of thin white clouds very high up.  It was warm, a beautiful warm day.  I couldn’t believe it was not spring.  I dismissed Dorothy’s saying about waiting for the first robin and brought out my egg cartons, my hatched seedlings, and for the next hour and a half I planted them.  I planted all of them in mass, six to eight inches apart.  My knees creaked as I got to my feet.  I stretched and pulled off my gloves.  A gentle gust of wind ruffled my hair.

     Upstairs, where the bedrooms are, has never been heated.  Jack talked about getting the ductwork, or whatever it was, routed through the walls and into the bedrooms.  He’d been talking about it for years.  Upon going to bed that night I felt the chill in the air.  Earlier I had noticed it when I went out to bring in the local paper.  The sun was hardly down but the temperature had dropped immediately.  I turned to the weather page--nightly lows mid-forties.  “It’s not going to frost so just put that worry out of your mind,” I told myself.
     It was three in the morning when I awoke and looked at the illuminated dial on the windup clock on my nightstand.  Jack snored soundly beside me.  I closed my eyes, the room was like a block of ice.
     Sliding out of bed I stood for a few moments in my flannel nightgown until Jack’s snoring settled back into its regular rhythm.  My teeth chattered.  The hall smelled faintly of fresh sawdust.  Barefooted I stood at the window at the head of the stairway.  The glass was frosty around the edges.  Outside there was a thin flurry of snowflakes.  With my forehead pressed to the coldly burning glass, I looked down at my flowerbed, at my seedlings, dead and dying under a thin white blanket.  My breath fogged the glass.
     Burying my face in my hands, I shivered in silence and cursed this climate my husband had brought me to, this house, him, cursed him as I had cursed in the depths of my illness.  At last I pulled my hands away, let them fall to my sides.  The snow flurry ceased.  Across the street, a light went on in Dorothy’s upstairs.  The partially drawn shades in her husband’s bedroom glowed warm buttery yellow, as though to mock the night.  Dressed in her nightgown, she picked up a shawl draped over the back of the wooden rocker and wrapped it around her and sat, rocking.
     From my sons’ rooms there came a sleepy cry . . . With a shudder I turned from the window.
     Cold, but no longer shivering, I crept back into bed.  My husband shifted and rolled toward me without waking.  I snuggled into him.  Nested in his warmth, I closed my eyes.  The house creaked like an old person’s bones.  In the morning I would make things right.
 

 

From A Distance Beyond

June 28, 2010

By: J.S. Burns
 J.S. Burns grew up in a rural area of southern Ohio, and now lives in Covington, Kentucky. Having recently begun writing fiction and poetry, this is his first published short story.  He is currently hard at work on a number of other pieces.  To earn a paycheck, he gives advice.

On a cold January morning in 2001, something happened that caused me to question my faith in God, caused me to disbelieve everything and anything upon which my world was balanced, and I believe that God has punished my lapse in faith by putting me in this place.

January 9 did not begin differently than most mornings that winter.  I woke at 5:30 AM to the low volume of my clock radio.  I lied in bed listening to the gurgling sound of coffee percolating downstairs in the pre-programmed maker, the hiss of winter air against the bedroom’s storm window, a not-so-subtle reminder of the moodiness of Mother Nature’s raw ire.  My mouth was dry, and a dull ache throbbed in sequence with the swift rhythm of my heart from too much bourbon the night before.  I thought about the day’s work ahead of me.  The pastures had been covered with snow and ice for more than a week, and the fifty or so Angus were running low on feed.  I hoped the Kubota tractor could draw the hay wagon through the snow and over to the south hay barn.  I would need to load a hundred or so square bales, and then try to pull the load back to the cattle barn.  I sat up in bed, letting my legs dangle over the edge, feeling my body silently groan from dehydration with each pulsation in my temples. I showered and dressed in thermal underwear, jeans, work boots, and a flannel shirt.  I grabbed my gloves and my Carhartt insulated coat, and headed downstairs to the kitchen, the glands in my neck beginning to churn at the thought of hydration.

Before getting into my ten-minute routine of coffee and cereal, I stopped outside my son’s bedroom and gently nudged the door.  As had become typical, he was not there.  Matthew was seventeen and, against my fervent wishes, had dropped out of high school to work on my farm.  When he had learned within weeks that the work was laborious – that it began early and ended late and yielded a paltry paycheck – he had seemed dejected, and somehow, I think, had seen fit to direct his anger at me, in spite of my earlier pleas that he finish school and set his sights on a local post-secondary vocational program. But with his friends occupied with finishing high school, he chose to spend most days and nights over at his girlfriend’s mobile home.  I was not certain how he was getting by, but I suppose he had very few expenses.  I had paid off his rust-eaten and dented car, using most of the earnings from the previous year’s tobacco crop, and he had seemed genuinely grateful when I handed him that check in the amount of $3,255.  At the time, I saw him seldom, but every Monday I would leave $20 on his chest of drawers, tucked under a framed picture of him as a child dressed in a baseball uniform, and every week the money would disappear without a word.

I finished my cereal and coffee and filled a thermal travel mug with an additional helping of the bitter brew.  Stepping onto the front porch of the farm house, my eyes watered from the stinging wind, the kind of wind that cuts cleanly through denim and cottons and even the best of synthetic blends.  Genevieve, my black Labrador, sat curled on the porch, atop a scattering of loose straw, frozen masses framing her droopy eyes.   Even in her old age and with what seemed like diminished hearing, she always chose the solitude of the front porch over the warmth of the noisy cattle barn, making me question Matthew’s recent decisions, a fleeting rumination that I pushed aside.   The sun was still somewhere over the Atlantic, but when I looked hard enough, there were faint traces of it pushing its way westward, and I stood there on my front porch taking in the dimness, watching my breath condense to vapor.

The Kubota’s diesel engine was slow to turn over but eventually awoke from the cold, misfiring and sputtering until the white exhaust smoke subsided and the idle became normal. I aligned the back of the tractor with the tongue of the wagon and secured the connection with the safety pin and chain.  With the thermal travel mug warming the insides of my legs, I guided the wagon out of the barn and began the one-mile trek across the meadow that had been furrowed with years of ruts.  I made it less than a hundred yards through the drifts when I accepted the fact that the field was not passable even with an empty wagon, much less with one holding 10,000 pounds of sustenance that would in short order be processed by the cattle into a few hundred pounds of compost.  So I decided to take the roads.  A quarter mile down my lane, then a right on Washburn Road for a mile, then another right on Shitepoke Lane for just less than a mile, and the hay barn would be on my right.  All were gravel roads that the county could not plow, but I knew from a trip to town that a beaten path had been cut by neighboring trucks.

The tractor’s tires chewed through the snow and crunched against the gravel, joining the pinging of the diesel engine and the rattling of the wagon to create a cozy euphony.  I made it easily across Washburn and turned right onto Shitepoke when something caught in my peripheral vision, off to my right.  I throttled down on the tractor and tried to let my eyes focus in the near darkness of the early morning. I directed my gaze a few hundred yards away to my right, down a dirt access road that led to the soybean field, trying to let the person or object register.  The access road was a sentimental place for me.  When I was teenager growing up on my parents’ farm, I used to park at the end of that road with the woman who I would eventually marry.  Even after we wed, at least during the early years of our short tenure, we would spend an occasional night there, gazing at the stars from the hood of my Dodge Dart.  Over the years, the place had become an occasional destination for drunken teenagers or those looking to dump a truckload of garbage in the cover of night.

I pulled the tractor to a stop and lit a Camel.  The familiar blend of Turkish and American filled my lungs.  There was something there in the distance but I could not make it out.  One moment it looked like a group of people, the next a car, and the next a heap of garbage.  I alternated between the possibilities until I talked myself into the latter, thinking that it was probably an old refrigerator or water heater that some asshole had dumped.  I put the tractor in gear to leave.  But as I pulled away, curiosity took over, and I remembered the Maglite in the storage compartment.  I again pulled the tractor to an idle and hopped off and removed the flashlight from under the seat, surprised to learn that the batteries still held a good charge.  But the flashlight was useless from two hundred yards away, the beam disappearing well short of my target.

I left the tractor idling and walked to the beginning of the access road. Crouching on one knee, I studied what looked like tire marks, two grooves approximately six feet apart running as far as the Maglite could reach.  It was impossible to ascertain tread patterns in the indentations, the blustering winds having neatly covered the past like a high tide, but there was no mistaking the trail left behind.  I flicked the cigarette into the snow and stood.  I checked both the charge and the reception on my cellular telephone, and made the decision to follow the path.

The walk to the end of the access road was about two hundred yards.  About six hundred feet. About four minutes at a deliberately slow pace through the snow.   I kept one hand on the flashlight, the beam centered on the tire marks before me, the other hand rooted in the pocket of my coat.  A hundred yards in to the access road, the beam of the flashlight finally landed, bouncing from tail lights in a muted glow of crimson.  As I continued to walk, the idle of the tractor was gradually fading into the background as if it were being slowly driven away.  At seventy-five yards from the end of the access road, I knew that it was a car.  At fifty yards, I could see that it was white.  At fifteen yards, I saw that it was a Ford Mustang with Highland County license plates.

I shined the light upon the car’s rear window, unable to see through the thick overlay of ice that held the beam like a pane of stained glass.  I moved to the driver’s side, keeping the glow of the Maglite aimed at the opaque, ice-covered windows, and continued walking until I stopped next to the front bumper.  The tire tracks went no further than the car’s front tires.  I removed my left hand from the pocket of my coat, took off my glove, and rested my palm against the hood of the car, feeling for the engine’s warmth.  It was as cold as a dead man.  Circling around, I tried the passenger door and then the driver’s door and both were locked.  I tapped the butt of the Maglite against the window of the driver’s door, three sharp raps, and paused to listen.  Nothing.  I backed away a few paces and took a seat on a tree stump.  Lighting another camel, I studied the car. A good six inches of snow covered the bottom of its tires, triangular formations of slush and ice clinging to its underside like widowed stalactites, giving the car an eerie appearance as if it were being sucked into the earth.  A chill inexplicably began at the base of my spine and inched its way upward, lingering on the back of my neck, and it had little to do with the frigid temperature.  I sat there motionless for a while.  Looking at the car and thinking.  And then I dialed Sheriff Charlie Katterman’s home number on my cellular telephone.

The sun had just risen when the sheriff’s cruiser followed by a tow truck made the turn from Washburn onto Shitepoke.  I was seated on the tractor, waiting at the beginning of the access road.  Charlie’s cruiser rolled by slowly as he lowered his window and made a halting motion with his index finger, telling the tow truck driver and me to stay put while he examined the car. He then continued down the access road, the Ford Crown Vic laboring as its rear-end fishtailed from side to side, its tires desperately grasping for traction in the snow and ice.  When he reached the end of the access road, a few feet directly behind the Mustang, he sat there in his car, presumably running the Mustang’s plates.  Several minutes later, he exited the cruiser and momentarily fixed his gaze toward the beginning of the access road, toward me, and then walked to the Crown Vic’s trunk and removed what appeared to be a Slim Jim.

            From the entrance to the access road, I stood watching the sheriff walk a circle around the Mustang, his image shimmering and blurring as the heat of the Crown Vic radiated into the dense air, distorting the speed of light.  I watched him give up trying to scrape hardened ice from the driver’s window. I watched him work the Slim Jim into the driver’s door – and then into the passenger’s door – without success.  I watched him contemplate what to do next.  I watched him talk into his portable radio.  I watched him finally remove his night stick from his belt and forcefully drive it against the driver’s window, again and again, until I heard the sound of glass shattering and saw the night stick break through.  I watched the sheriff look into the car a split second before I watched his head violently turn away.  I watched him reel backwards and fall to his knees, visibly trying to hold back nausea.  I watched the sheriff – hunched over in the snow – growing nearer as I sprinted down the access road.

Twenty yards before I reached him, he looked up and staggered to his feet, running directly toward me.  Meeting me head on, his hands clasped my coat on both shoulders, and he held me there.

“Charlie, tell me what’s wrong, tell me what’s in there,” I uttered breathlessly as he maintained the grip on my coat.

“Jerry, I need you to turn around, and I need you to go wait up there,” he said to me, his face just inches from mine.  His breath smelled of vomit, and his eyes were set upon mine with a look of desperation and excruciation and fear, the kind of look that hurts you physically in your bones, the kind of look that knows no rational response, a look largely bred out of modern man.

“Tell me what it is,” I insisted, trying to catch my breath. He kept his hands clutched tightly to my coat, with both that look and a palpable aura of graveness boring into me, silently yet undeniably telling me that I might not want the answer, that I might not be prepared for the answer, that the answer might reach into the deepest alcoves of my soul with undiscerning ruination.  “This is my farm,” I finally yelled, “and that car is parked here, god damn it!”

“Please, Jerry.  Please just go wait up there. I’m begging you,” he said, his hoarse voice barely a whisper.  We stood there staring at each other, and I stood there in bewilderment, our faces close together, his hands grasping my coat, each of my hands holding one of his wrists.  I finally nodded reluctantly, and let go of his wrists.  He released my coat.

And then I ran hard. So hard. 

Charlie might have trailed me, might have desperately cautioned, but all I have is a tunnel memory of the moment I looked inside, the moment it all changed, the moment when a profound plea began to well deep within but died on the inside with everything else before reaching my lips, an internal implosion of spirit to dust, a stark delineation dividing the before and after of my existence.

I have since tried to drive that moment underground, but each day – year – it has expanded exponentially all around me, growing in flashes wherever I am, like the universe.  The look, the smell, the feel, the everything – all of it hypnotizing my senses and taking form and becoming an unbearable amalgamation, a perverse spark of the divine, a twisted keepsake, my unspoken mantra that screams from within.

And now, just before drifting off for good, I say them aloud yet again, once more with waning patience as my body trembles, hoping but not really believing that the words are meant for me:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest…
- Matthew 11:28.   


Bramilton's Fury
July 9, 2010
Bradley Bazzle’s writing appears in Opium, Cold Mountain Review, Indiana Review, and Critical Insights: Benjamin Franklin.  Before moving to Bloomington, Indiana, to concentrate on fiction, Bradley wrote and performed sketch comedy with Trophy Dad in New York City.  Their videos remain on Youtube.  Feel free to e-mail bradleybazzle @ yahoo.com with questions or concerns.
By Bradley Bazzle

     Sing, Goddess!  Sing the triumph of John Phillip Bramilton—another day in his oeuvre, another role in life’s play, another offering to the ravenous gods of vocal and physical performance, not to mention the lesser gods of Method, mask work, yoga, Stanislavski system, Meisner technique, and Bramilton’s own well-honed rules (the demigod of which, some would argue, is Bramilton himself)!  Sing, Goddess, whose supple fingers guide all but the finest actors in their craft (the finest, of course, having risen like Bramilton to the Goddess’s delicate heights, now sip tea with her and recount the time Burbage played Macbeth at the Globe or the secret to a Persian accent or how to gray one’s hair without the flour clumping)!

     I, John Phillip Bramilton, once the world’s finest actor and now its finest acting coach, awoke in a Washington, DC hotel room to the clamorous ringing of a cellular phone.  It had been assigned to me by my handler, Jonah Salkowitz, a conniving flatterer.  I should have thrown the infernal device against the wall, spared myself the horrors to come, but instead I answered it:  “Yes, hello?”
     “Phil, it’s Jonah, how are you?  We need you down at the set.”
     “I refuse.”
     “Come on, Phil, you’re the acting consultant, we’re not paying you to sleep ’til one o’clock.  Ted’s locked himself in his trailer, you gotta talk to him.”
      “Of course he locked himself in his trailer; the script is rubbish!”
      “Phil—”
      “One day I’ll gather all the so-called writers and load them onto a slave-vessel bound for Myanmar, where rumor has it they still practice white slavery, which is slavery of a sexual nature fueled by drug addiction.”
      “Yeah?  Then you’d write all the movies yourself?”
      “Aha!  Caught in a lie!  If you had read the scripts I left with your assistant, as she so obsequiously insisted to me that you did, you would know that I have written several stirring opuses, all composed, as they should be, in service of the actor and his art:  The Big Slumber, The Postman Always Rings Three Times, and my recent comic turn Panda Pandemonium in which two hard-drinking rascals steal a—”
      “Look, if you won’t talk to him we have no choice but to fly Reginald down.”
      My mouth boiled with curses at the thought of that clownish charlatan, a mimic of the lowest order who wouldn’t know the Method if it jammed a finger in his asshole.  I thought of his silly limp as Gloucester opposite my Lear in Toronto and spat on the floor.  Of course, he had been the director’s first choice for acting consultant before wiser heads prevailed.  The director, Cornelius Predock, was the real source of the problem.  No doubt he had bullied poor Ted into an artless state, just as the cruel sun of the American West drains the life from the desert.
      I hung up the phone in rage and set about my daily ablutions:  tooth-brushing; hair-combing; shaving followed by organic balm with vegetable glycerin; facial exercises; Tuesday’s vitamins and two stalks of uncooked broccoli; a light rinsing of the wrists and neck; ten minutes of staring; five Peter Piper’s; two Unique New York’s; and all manner of creams and gelatins that I won’t bother to enumerate but culminated, as always, with a ceremonious clasping of my eagle necklace around my creamy, aquiline neck.  I watched in the mirror as the proud golden eagle came to rest atop a tasteful patch of gray hair between my still shapely pectoral muscles.
      The phone rang again.  I answered it with a stream of curses.
      “Phil,” said Jonah, “is that you?”
      “Yes.  I’ll come.  Meantime keep that filthy Predock’s hands off of young Ted.”
      “Don’t worry.  Predock locked himself in his trailer too.”
      I hung up before that imbecile could start yammering about how I needed to read the script.  I had read it, of course, though I wouldn’t acknowledge it.  Does a man acknowledge sleeping with a prostitute?
I loaded the malodorous pages into my calfskin briefcase (noting to disinfect it later) and set out the door.

     Washington, DC is among our nation’s most beautiful metropolises, and the day greeted me with promenades, flowers, pristine storefronts, great cube-shaped office buildings, fluted marble colonnades, statues of fierce men on horseback, and all manner of coloreds but not so many Jews.
Near the Portrait Gallery I stopped at a luncheonette advertising waffles and gravy, hoping they would deign to serve me breakfast sundries more to my taste.  A matronly negress approached me (with a wink?).
      “Can I help you?” she asked.
      “Surely,” I said, “with a half grapefruit, one slice of lightly toasted wheat bread, and several florets of broccoli.”
      “Uh huh.  You want a waffle with that?”
      “Well, why in heavens not?” I said with a laugh.  The nearby patrons caught my mirth and giggled into their beverages.
     By three o’clock I was strolling uphill on a wide promenade full of women in skirt-suits and homosexuals.  Rainbow flags dangled from storefronts, and I couldn’t help but admire the spirit of those jaunty men, remembering little Montgomery Clift refusing to box in From Here to Eternity (“A man don’t go his own way, he’s nothin.”  The look on Burt Lancaster’s face!  He had just been acted out of his unflattering pants!)
     It was as I crested the top of a hill that I first noticed the dark spot in the sky—a filthy, hair-clogged drain in a bathtub full of swirling clouds.  Naively, I did not take it as an evil portent of the day’s business and journeyed onward.
      Crossing the Taft Bridge I could see the white trailers and tents far below in the park where men and women in calculatedly casual dress scurried and squabbled, no doubt over pointless details of costume and lighting.  I chose instead to regard the majestic trees that climbed the sides of the great basin of Rock Creek Park, and a few horses—what noble beasts—moored to posts behind a metal shed.
     As I strolled down the sidewalk next to the off-ramp from Rock Creek Parkway to the rest of the city, Jonah approached me but was cut off by Doris Sunstein, that venomous soon-to-be spinster.
      “It’s almost four!” she barked.  “Why didn’t you take a cab?”
      Jonah crept up next to her.  “Phil, good to see you.”
      “And we gave you those MetroCards,” she continued pointlessly.
      “Yes, yes,” I said, “maybe next you’ll give me food cards, hmm?  Or sex cards.”
      “What’s he talking about?” she asked Jonah.
      “Modernity,” he said, and with that Doris stomped away to abuse the caterers.  Jonah was wearing fashionable cowboy boots for which he was far too old, though he possessed in his puffy frame nearly enough panache to carry them off.  “Will you talk to him?” he asked me.
     “I’m here, aren’t I?”
     “I think he’s having a hard time with the character.”
     “Good, because if it’s a hard time with the unnamable charlatan who’s directing this film then I won’t be of any use.  In fact, I might drive Ted to suicide with my myriad tales of how much worse it can get in the hands of that criminal, like the time he pulled a gun on me after I gave those hopelessly confused tree people a line reading on-set in Belize.  I was forced to brain him with a coconut, but how I had the energy after eating garbage fried in lard for six weeks I still can’t imagine.  I kept the natives from killing him and hanging his skin from a tree, but did he thank me?”
     “He was unconscious.”
     “Firstly, I have a few questions about the so-called script.”  I retrieved the artless document from my briefcase and flipped through it.  “The aliens, of what sort are they?”
      “I don’t know.  Alien aliens.  Just make Ted act afraid—and then heroic in that part at the end.”
      “Are they tall aliens with lengthy proboscises?  Green aliens with slitty Chinaman eyes?  Giant cockroach aliens with bulletproof chitinous casings?  Titanian slime molds that read minds?”
      “I don’t know, Phil.”
      “Haven’t you shot any of their scenes yet?”
      “They don’t show up until the end, you know, like in Close Encounters and Signs.” He rubbed his fingers together to give a putrid indication of how much money this had saved him.  “Hey, you!” he called to a young woman in tapered jeans.
      “Yes?” she said, scampering towards us.
      “What do the aliens look like?”
      She looked at us as if we had asked her to stand between us in a dirty sex act.
      Jonah persisted:  “You’re the costume girl, right?”
      “Yes,” she said, “but Mr. Predock told me to keep the aliens a secret so everyone would be scared when—”
      I pitched my script into the air, and Jonah and the girl covered their heads as it came down not like snow, as I had intended, but like chunks of brimstone.
      I strode past them into a crowd of extras gathered around a food-services table pressing miniature burritos into their faces.  They pretended not to notice me until I elbowed one portly loafer in the ribs.  “Hey,” he whined in a fit of better acting than would ever emerge from his talentless mouth on any set or stage.  I wove through mock-ups of suburban houses on my way to the trailers, skirting along filthy Rock Creek and the adjacent forest that had been cleaned by the city for our use but still bore last night’s unavoidable hobo beds.  Cars honked.  I waved my arms in exasperation.  Couldn’t that shylock Jonah have paid the city to close this death-race of a highway for a single day of shooting?
      The trailers were in sight up ahead in the next clearing when I noticed something moving in the trees.  I ignored it, knowing from my Baedeker’s that our nation’s capital was full of lunatics and buggerers—particularly its parks, where unsuspecting interns of every shape and size were crammed into shallow graves.
      My considerable speed increased, but the movement in my periphery followed.  Something hissed, I think, and I broke into a run.  The hissing persisted.  It was a rattling hiss, like a combination between a snake and a fax machine, but with nuances that suggested language in addition to violent threat.  It was a hiss I would never forget (and I made a note to practice duplicating it in order to add it to my actor’s toolkit).
At the edge of the trailers I looked back and saw, reflecting the lowering sun, what I took to be a pair of eyes—black and soulless as the eyes of a shark, though they might have belonged to a member of any of the dark-skinned races so prevalent in the modern American city.
      Checking for perspiration and wishing I hadn’t worn a black turtleneck, I knocked on Ted’s door.
      “Go away,” he said.
      “Open up this instant,” I commanded.  And he did, with the appropriate alacrity of a student welcoming his master.
      Big and handsome and round-faced as he was, he looked wretched, as if he had been crying and injecting drugs for the bulk of the day.  He wore nothing but a robe and a baseball mitt, in which he held a dirty tennis ball.
      He averted his eyes and said, “Gosh, Dr. Bramilton, I just don’t know about this script and—”
      “We’re in trouble,” I said.  “There’s a creature in the woods.”
     “What?”
     “Let them shoot your godforsaken scene so we can get out of this place.”
     “It’s a big scene.  There’ll be lots of takes.”
     “Tell me, Ted, how many takes were there when Sir John Gielgud played Cassius at the Royal National Theater?”
     “Gosh, Dr. Bramilton, I don’t know.”
     “One.  It was a play, Ted.  But when Kinski was floating down the Amazon on a raft full of monkeys in Aguirre, do you think that took more than one take?”
     “Um, no…?”
     “No indeed.  The monkeys were evacuating the raft with too much speed to afford more than one—or at most two—takes.”
     He squinted, confused.
     “My point is that the excellence of your acting dictates your terms.  Act well enough and you’ll be on a plane tonight, I tell you.  Tonight!”
     “But we still have all the scenes in front of the National Mint.”
     “Oh.  You haven’t shot those yet?”
     He shook his head.  “And I don’t know how to act it.”
     “Remember your training!”
     “Yes, sir.”
     I hated to snap at the young man but I was tired of his whining.  He had no need:  despite his torpid, childlike brain he had a certain animal bravado on screen for which many finer actors would have sold their mothers to Asian businessmen to be used horribly and discarded on the beaches of Thailand.
     “Ted,” I said, “what is Bramilton’s Seventy-Third Rule of Acting?”
      Ted straightened his sloping shoulders and addressed me from his diaphragm:  “The power to Act is the power to be any man at any time with any skill, no matter how archaic.”
      “Very good,” I said, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time in Stratford when, as the blacksmith in Tis Pity She’s a Whore, I hammered out an actual sword sharp enough to slice the little finger off of a production assistant.
     The trailer rattled.
     “What was that!?” I cried.
     “What was what?” Ted asked, fingering the remnants of a burrito.
     The trailer darkened, and I pressed my face against a dirty window.  The sky had turned a sickly sepia.  The window was cold.
     I recoiled from the window and pressed my back against the wall of the trailer.  “What sort of hell has been unleashed on this Earth?” I wondered aloud.
     “Hey,” Ted mumbled through a mouthful of burrito, “that’s from the movie.”
    I assumed neutral position (remember: legs shoulder-length apart, arms at the sides, head down, eyes closed) and braced myself with a few deep breaths, as if the acts of bravado that would ensue were but the next performance in my illustrious catalog.
     Before Ted could offer another inane utterance I gripped the trailer door, swung myself outside, and looked straight into the darkening sky, whereupon all of my fears and uncertainty gathered onto the head of a pin, which was the approximate size of the hovering, brightly lit object at the center of the swirling brown clouds.
     I screamed and went back into the trailer.
     “Put your clothes on, you imbecile!” I yelled at Ted.  “We’re shooting this goddamned scene!  Where’s Predock?  Where’s Jonah?”
     “I can’t find my costume,” he whined from the closet.
     “You’re an actor!  Wear cardboard!  Need I remind you of England’s rustic theater tradition?”
     There was a knock at the door.  I looked through the peephole.  Jonah.
     “Get inside,” I whispered, grabbing him by his collar.
     “Take is easy,” he said.
     “Didn’t you see it?”
     “See what?”
     “The alien craft!”
     “What?”
     “The sky?  The darkness?  The swirling clouds?”
     He nodded.  “Riiiight,” he said loudly, as if for Ted’s benefit.  “Flying saucers.”  He winked at me and whispered, “Thanks for this, Phil.”
     I attempted to punch him in his bulbous stomach but he caught my fist in his meaty palm.  “Okay Phil, jeez.  There’s a flying saucer.  I almost forgot you were from Oklahoma.”
     “Arkansas, thank you, not that it has any bearing on my having seen an alien craft.  I’ll remind you that despite my birthplace I spent my youth in fine boarding schools, and at the Royal Academy learned to speak the King’s English better than Sir Laurence Olivier himself (or so he insisted over tea one sunny Thursday) and certainly better than you and your New York City day-school pals.  Thankfully in Arkansas we have the predilection for a slight vowel shift towards the ‘i’ sound, as in ‘it’ and ‘inn,’ which is the diamond of good speech according to Edith Skinner, whom you no doubt have studied.”
     Jonah sighed.
     “Found it!” cried Ted from his closet.
     “Then let’s go,” I said and marched through the door—only to scream and scurry back inside again.
     “Aliens land?” Jonah asked.
     “Worse.  Him.  I thought you said he was in his trailer.”
     “He’s the director, Phil.  We need him to shoot the scene.”
     “Any mongoloid can instruct those camera jockeys to point their precious instruments at Ted.”  I glanced at Ted, who was wearing the gray suit and red tie of the congressman he was playing, a pair of wire glasses perched on his broad athlete’s nose.  He pulled down on the suit, which was bunching in his armpits.  He looked awkward and desperate.
     “Here,” I said, and I unclasped my necklace.  With appropriate solemnity my hands journeyed from the back of my neck to the back of Ted’s, where I clasped it again.  The eagle rested proudly atop the scarlet bed of his necktie, and the lines of Ted’s face disappeared as he regarded it over his jutting chin.  For a moment he was a child again.  And I was jaunty St. Nicholas, but without the frivolous clothing and grotesque layer of fat.
     “There,” I said, patting my trustworthy eagle.  “It was given me by a lady after a particularly stirring performance of Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, in which I, as the Marshall Hieronimo, having gone quite mad at the conclusion of the murderous play-within-a-play, actually bit out a piece of my own tongue and spat it upon the stage.  The blood that flowed was brighter crimson than the dyed Karo Syrup common in those days, but this went unnoticed by all but a lovely young typist seated in the front row with her parents, who afterwards commented—very astutely, I think—that mine was an art not of man but of nature, and that watching me act was like watching a buzzard rip the innards from a prone carcass.  I must have stared at her strangely until she revised ‘buzzard’ with ‘eagle,’ at which point I thanked her, understanding the compliment.  Before she left for art school in Prague she presented me with a stuffed token of the very remark that had begun our lengthy romantic entanglement:  the eagle, which daily challenges me to climb to heights of performance where only the most powerful artists dare to soar; which daily reminds me that in my core, revealed only on stage—and even then quite tremblingly—is a majestic and bloodthirsty animal; which daily chides me to—”
Jonah interrupted our actorly reverie by opening the door and pushing me through it.
     A few yards from the trailer the scoundrel Predock, flanked by a crowd of mindless sycophants, was nodding at a second-rate supporting actor named Jim Weatherby who had made his name by being fat.
     I almost felt sorry for Weatherby as he earnestly voiced his concerns to that cowardly shithouse fly:  “I was thinking about maybe a mustache or a limp or a…”
     “A mustache?” jeered that pompous enfant terrible with his mouth twisted up like a succubus.
     “He needs a mustache, you fool!” I cried, leaping from the trailer into the space between them.  “A broad and noble one that extends down past the line of his cheek and onto his neck like the wings of a swan.”
     Weatherby frowned.  “I had something smaller in mind.”
     “You heard the man,” said Predock.  “Makeup!”
     A middle-aged woman scampered out from the crowd behind Predock and began patting Weatherby’s confused face.
    “Glad you could join us, Phil,” said Predock.  “I was worried we’d have to call Reginald.  How’s the hotel?  You look thin.”
    The crowd behind him twittered in brainless confirmation.
    Of all the nerve!  He knew damn well I had been the same weight since I first stepped onto the stage as the star-struck Dane some forty years before, but all I could muster in response was “Hmm, I hope not” and a nervous laugh.
    He smiled, closed mouthed, which wrinkled up his eyes like those of a pig.
    “You have pig’s eyes!” I screeched.
    “What?”
    I fairly trotted to get back to the lights and cameras, avoiding looking at the forest and not bothering myself that those dullards were hanging back, unaware of the severity of our situation.
     “What, is he late for a pedicure?” Predock asked Jonah, loud enough for me to hear.
     It was only when I stumbled on a loose chunk of asphalt that I saw again the forest of horrors.  From the darkness between silver trunks, shiny black eyes stared out at me, glistening with mucus and darting back and forth.  The creatures that bore them were camouflaged, but I could tell from the height of the eyes that they were giants.
     “Run!” I cried to those fools behind me.  “Run, damn you!”
     Only Ted made an effort to accelerate.
     In the clearing I found the cameraman holding a little TV and cheering through mouthfuls of burrito at a group of meaty barbarians running around a field in tight pants.  I snatched the TV out of his hands and gave it to an extra.
     “What gives?” he said.
     “Set up the finale.  We’re shooting.”
     “Who are you?”
     I slapped his face.
     “You!” I called to the skinny man sitting on a crate with the boom-pole in his lap.  “Though you’re obviously high on drugs, please ready the shot.”
     He shrugged, stood and pitched the boom over his shoulder.
     “Give me that!” I yelled at the properties manager carrying Ted’s gun, and he handed it to me with a total lack of ceremony.
     The lights came on with a terrible crack, and the clearing and nearby patch of forest were suddenly bright and colorful as a dream.  The blades of grass and leaves on the trees were as shiny as if they had been coated in varnish.  Some of the leaves rustled, and I braced myself for unknown atrocities.
     “Bramilton!” yelled Doris Sunstein, bursting through a group of extras and waving a clipboard.
     I turned to her with a Lugosi-caliber stare but found her face transformed by colored light into that of a wretched harlequin.  I heard the deafening whiz of a terrible machine and felt my clothing and hair being sucked heavenward.  I turned around to see its source.
     It looked like a giant silver fishing lure and bobbed in and out of the trees.  Shadowy figures scampered underneath it, and though the lights were too bright to make out their black eyes I knew them to be the hissing lurkers.
     I glanced around me to see if the others were taking appropriate cover, but they were inexplicably standing still and staring at me.  “Get down!  Get back!” I yelled.  “Gather the women and children!  This is my fight!”
     They glanced at each other, and some leafed through their scripts.
     Damn them then.  I strode into the lighted grass and smoothed the hair back from my high and noble forehead.  My hands were shaking, so I balled them into fists.
     “Show yourselves,” I said, nearly whispering.
     The scurrying creatures froze beneath their strange silver craft.
     “I don’t know what you have in store for us,” I said, “but this is America.”
     A single gray head poked out from the trees and craned sideways, as if struggling to understand me.  Its black eyes were expressionless, and where a mouth should have been was an odd patch of wavy tendrils.  I struggled not to vomit onto my shoes in regarding this monstrosity.
     “This is America,” I repeated, “and God and parents and baseball and sandwiches.  It’s a proud country, that’s for sure, but not one that takes kindly to strangers.”
     The gray head retracted into the forest, from which several short hisses issued.  Then three of them emerged, thin and fragile and disgusting as newborn rabbits.
     I gagged, wiped my palms on my shirtfront, and continued:  “Ever since you folks landed everyone’s been asking me what my constituency thinks, what thousands of people from back home have to say about this whole thing.  Well, you know what I tell them?”  I cleared my throat and glared at the tallest of the three.     “That’s right.  I’m talking to you, slim.  Do you know what I tell those people that ask me that question?”
     The creature vibrated slightly, which I took as a no.
     “I tell them that when a man is staring down the barrel of a gun his constituency is his wife and children and God, and he’ll be goddamned if some aliens are going to harvest their organs.”  My hand steadied, as if on cue, and I reached behind my back and pulled the gun out from my waistband.  I took aim.
     The aliens turned to each other and hissed a few times, and then with repulsive speed were sucked into their craft like noodles into the mouth of a child.  There was a soft whizzing noise, and the colored lights shrank in the night sky as the silver craft blasted away.
     “And don’t come back,” I murmured.  I spun the gun on my finger and tried to thrust it into my pocket, but it didn’t fit and fell to the ground with a clunk.  I followed it, on my hands and knees sucking for air, trembling.
     A single clap issued from behind me, followed by several and then a crescendo of applause and whistles and hooting.
     “Well, Ted,” said Predock above the din, “think you can do that?”
     “I sure will try, Mr. Predock.”
  
     As Predock shot take after take of Ted hollering and waving a gun around, I gorged myself on miniature burritos at the food-services table.  Jonah and I had made plans to get dangerously drunk, but the others avoided me.  Only the costume girl lingered nearby.
I was on my fourth burrito when she crept closer.
     “You really are the greatest,” she whispered to me over her Styrofoam cup.
I winked at her.  “Someone had to make those blood-sucking aliens return to their home planet and not harvest our organs to feed their hopeless addiction to the fluids of our endocrine systems.”
She nodded coltishly and continued to stare.
Because of her messy hair and attire I hadn’t noticed her supple body, but now I did and quickly took stock of it.
     She blushed, perhaps not accustomed to such gentlemanly trespasses.
     “I like your jeans,” I said.

 

 

Even The Dead

September 8, 2010

Jenn Blair is from Yakima, WA. She has published in Kestrel, Copper Nickel, The Santa Fe Review, and Cerise Press. Her chapbook of poetry "All Things are Ordered" is out from Finishing Line Press.

To tell you how things came to be the way they are now, I have to go back the night I had a dream my ex was standing at the foot of my bed, asking “Evelyn?” in that voice. The voice full of buckets of syrup. Voice so low and tender I knew he was going to ask me for a favor. Turns out he wanted the fifty bucks I had saved at the bottom of my jewelry box under my grandmother’s silver hat pin and pearl bracelet and the little bag my mother gave me of my own baby teeth. Just when I was telling him no, not on your life, I woke with a start.  I lay there and looked up at the dark ceiling and said, So. Even the dead are after me now.
At that time, I also thought the living were out to get me—my son in particular. When I was pregnant, I swole up and just got bigger and bigger the hottest summer on record. I sat there with a cup of ice cubes, just the cubes, put one to my forehead and silently begged to die (Just say the word July. I still get shivers).  It was so hot you couldn’t look out across the front yard without everything turning wobbly. He was a sweet baby, but he seemed to rot like a bad apple, almost right from the get go, when the angels was still grabbing hands and feet to put on the stalk of his body. Thomas. I named him Thomas.  After the disciple who doubted it was Jesus, but at least got it right at the end, and shouted, “My Lord My God.” My own Thomas makes me say, “My Lord my God” often enough, that’s for sure. He also nods and roll his eyes and say “I know,” especially when he don’t have a clue.
Thomas runs with the wrong crowd, is what I would have told you.  But as Mrs. Kinney said of her son Burt:  “Time to face it. That boy don’t run with the wrong crowd. He is the wrong crowd.”
I was so broke up about Thomas when he was about twenty, I went straight to pastor Edwin. I said watching that boy is like watching his father all over again, and I’m not sure I can suffer the same show twice.  Especially with no Junior Mints. Pastor Edwin said, the weight of him can’t be on you, we got to put that weight on Jesus.  We prayed right then and there, and I felt something lifted off me, a little heaviness. But by the end of that week, when Thomas’s big ole body was draped over my couch, messing up the orange afghan I had arranged so nicely, well, I felt the stone roll right on back. Jesus fed the five thousand, but he got off easy, because the disciples went out with the baskets and when they returned, there was some left over.  With Thomas’ big mouth and stomach, we didn’t have nothing left over. Ever. Looking at him I knew that there was a reason Jesus didn’t never have a house. House guests. Ones who call themselves kin and never leave. Well, I guess Jesus did take help from ladies. But his whole life was ministry.
Couldn’t rightly call what was sitting on my furniture, dropping crumbs, ministry.
Mrs. Kinney, the one with the bad egg son Burt, she and I would sit together in church. At least her son had the good sense to breed and brawl three counties and two hundred and forty miles away from here.  But she knew how it felt, to hope for the best, but know the worst, to wonder if there was something she could have done, or not, if there was a defect in her faith or in the cells she passed on. Outward, we called it sin.  Inwardly, we wondered just what trouble those three simple letters were gonna cause us next. Mrs. Kinney’s husband Terrence, he keeps refrigerators running, and he works a lot of Saturdays doing yard work on the side. He don’t come to church because he say the Lord knows how much it means to him to have that one day to sleep in.
“Terrence says,” Mrs. Kinney told me once, “not to worry, that God speaks to Him in dreams. And Terrence thinks maybe God will also speak to Burt in a dream one day. But Burt never sleeps. And can you tell me,” she added, “how Terrence dreaming of being back on his grandfather’s farm making strawberry ice cream brought him one step closer to the Lord?”
When she said that, I decided not to share how real the dream was, where my ex was asking for money. Her Terrence does feel bad for Burt, as he himself was out of control when he was younger. But still, he was the one who stood in the doorframe and said to Burt, don’t you come back til you grown up out of a worm and can treat your mother with some respect. So Terrence did stand up for Mrs. Kinney, at least once. My ex never did that before he died.
Since I didn’t have no one to remind Thomas of all I done for him, I kept waiting for him to figure it out himself. And waited. Plenty of people build themselves from nothing, I figured. And I gave him more than that. I gave him food. A good home. At the time I asked myself, why ain’t he building on this foundation? Instead he grabbed some cases of liquor, hired a band, turned that foundation into a stage, and stomped all over it.  The Bible says that youths should be quivers of arrows in your hand—and even those pastel plaques with handprints in the dollar store say, “Children are a gift of God.” But sometimes, I felt like I would if somebody said they were gonna quote me their favorite verse, then straightened up, cleared their throat, and said, “Jesus wept.” A little cheated.

The first time Thomas got kicked out of high school for a few days for spray painting the fence at the back lot of the baseball field and the shed that held all the bats and helmets, I heard myself beseeching, “Unclasp me from my wrists and let me go.” That was one year after his father died of a heart attack. It came on him my ex very sudden, at work. He had just finished changing the battery in some older man’s Dodge, and then he got pale and said he needed to sit down. Someone went to get him a soda because they thought he was just hot and overworked, but when they got back he was on the ground. The ambulance got there a few minutes later, but it was too late. He died about one year after we divorced and Thomas was already mad at me for that, like his father cheating on me was my fault. I wasn’t the one who held hands with a person I wasn’t married to in the mall at Buford, in front of everyone walking past, including Gertrude Shenk at my church who was the one who reported it to me. When he died, Thomas seemed to blame me for that too, though he never said it out loud. Like living in that small apartment over near the Conoco all by himself (when the company wasn’t there) killed his father.
Sometimes I felt like I was my own Egypt, and for me, the sweet Promised land would just be floating away. But every morning I woke up to the trickle of that brown Nile, try to see for anything past those pyramids that block out the sky. I think Thomas was about six, the first time he got in trouble at school. I asked him if he had anything else to confess when I was tucking him in.
“No,” He said.
“That’s good,” I replied. Then he frowned, and grinned, at the same time, and added, “I guess I’ve done wrong. But I’ve done it so many times, I forget what the big deal is.” I wanted to ask him more about this, but I just shut the door soft, because see, I already knew exactly what he meant. I think that was the same year Thomas hit a angel girl on the rear with his shepherd staff at the church Christmas pageant. I was sitting there, trying hard not to die. Thomas’ daddy was still with me then, and instead of being angry at Thomas, he laughed right out loud before he could even help it.
Thomas’s daddy, he was a charmer. I met him two years out of high school when I was working at the dry cleaning place. He delivered lunch sometimes to the owners. Space between his bottom teeth should have been a sign. Eyes that dark should have been a sign. Way he laughed so easy should have been a sign (My jokes ain’t that good). That space between his teeth, though, its got magic. Makes you think he walks on water and that if you take his hand, you will also know how it feels, to be so graceful you’re like morning light stepping out over a stair, gliding around like there was smooth velvet cake permanently lodged under each foot. Thomas’ daddy, when he was leaving, said he loved me, but that it was hard for him to stay with just one woman. Breaking my heart, making it out to be a science lesson.
I told him after all the things he did that made me feel so bad, I wasn’t one woman, just a chunk or a corner of one. Didn’t help. Some men, you want to hold onto them, but they’s a river, already headed further on, even while they’s holding you, whispering warm honey in your ear. Other men, ones you don’t want, they like a skin you can’t shake, a burn mark on the stove you scrub and scrub but don’t get rid of. A year after Thomas’s daddy died Silas Tull who I’ve known since we were five years old came right away, stood on my porch, said he’d always had feelings for me.
“But I kept em buried…until now” he said, tall and awkward as ever. Forehead still looking like an oil slick.
“If you just dug em up,” I said, “that’s good. They’ll be easy to put right back.” (I wasn’t trying to crush him, I was just still crushed myself. Even then, I was a widow, just not the kind where my man died. I died).
“But I would take Thomas too,” Silas called out, as I was closing the door.
“NO thanks,” I said. I locked the door and leaned my forehead against the back of it. Wasn’t more than a few nights after that, was the first time I found myself wondering if he’d make the offer again. All these years gone by, and do you know that the thought of Silas Tull and me still makes me want to heave up my stomach contents. But maybe I should have done it for Thomas. Maybe it would have helped him to have a man around. But I just didn’t think I could pay the price of those lips come up against mine, hoping to find something I just didn’t have to give and couldn’t fake.
Silas isn’t that bad. Not his fault he makes my skin break out into cold droplets. Christian or no, the plain ugly fact is this: sometimes you love people for how hard they try, and sometimes you just hate em.

I had a hard time during the next few years. I wanted to know why my grandmother and my mother chose the right man and I didn’t. I felt mean towards my dead ex-husband, and mean towards Thomas resting on all my furniture and eating all my pork chops and potato chips, asking why didn’t I get the sour cream ones again this time. I tried not to think what pastor Edwin calls “defeated thoughts” and fill myself with just good things. I even started listening to the Bible dinner hour on the radio, but the commercials kept jarring me. Just when I was starting to get a fair grasp on sanctification, some lady would come on and start chirping about the quality of the grade A chicken breasts and rib sections on sale down at Robinson’s. One minute the devil wanted to take the rapture away from me, and the next, brother Al at the auto shop on Second Street wanted all my money too. Christ passed away on the cross, which Brother Somebody was just so enthused about, because apparently he himself was also dying. To sell me a good pair of steel toe boots. I soon gave up trying to sort out the big from the small or the money changers from the temple in my mind; it was too hard, what with all that fuzz and static. One afternoon, I thought of Mrs. Broad at church, how she talked about going to that conference in Charlotte, and praising the Lord; she said she had driven all that way so she could eat the meat and throw away the bone. But I hadn’t thrown the bones out, and I was still gnawing. And being gnawed on. Now, instead of the dead being after me, it was like I was hunting them. But still getting nothin.
“God, you got any other ideas besides forgive?” I asked one night later that week, “though that’s a good one,” I added. Sometimes God or the Holy Spirit or whatever you want to call it seems so near that I couldn’t dart that presence if I tried. Other times, I feel like I’m sitting there on the telephone hearing some robot nestled down in a tin can say, “Please keep waiting on the line; your call is important to us” and that’s all I get. Sometimes Jesus doesn’t break out of my heart for so long time I get scared he’s passed out and dead in there. But I kept praying.
I finally got so low, I thought about going to pastor Edwin again. Sitting in the purple chair next to the tree that always needs dusting, reaching for the box of tissue and staring at his seminary degree from somewhere in Kentucky, letting the curly script letters comfort me, hold sway. I called to make an appointment. A few nights before I had my meeting with him, I was sitting there reading my Bible, and I came across the story about Hannah crying for a son. She was crying cause she wanted one. Lord, I thought, wait till you will get you one. Then the real crying will begin. The priest man Eli took one look at her there on the floor and said you better toss out that wine. He thought she was smashed, right there in God’s own living room, falling all over herself and carrying on. Guess he’d never seen what longing looks like before (Don’t know what his problem was. His own sons were trouble. Sleeping with women who worked there at the tent and gobbling up the offerings. He was like the biggest minister of the day! So I’m guessing ain’t nobody safe from having their kids skid out of control). Pastor Edwin prayed with me and we prayed that Thomas would finish high school without sassing his teachers too much and he did, but just barely. His grades weren’t good enough for college, and he said he didn’t want to go. And that’s when all the jobs began. Thomas didn’t seem interested in more than just hanging out with his friends on the weekend and going to the movies, like he was still in high school. He had a job for an alarm system company but he kept falling asleep during the night shift. He had a job washing and walking dogs at a pet hotel, but he let a Terrier get off the leash and it escaped. They found the dog a few days later in a nearby neighborhood, but Thomas was already fired.
For a while last spring, he worked construction crew. He was excited at first. Said, “I’m helping build a road going out of here. A nice wide road going out.”
“Now that’s a good service,” I said. I thought he might finish making it. Even take it somewhere, eventually. But he didn’t finish the job. When he came home right at lunch one day, my heart sank.
“Don’t you say anything,” he said, setting down his jacket, “it was a misunderstanding.”
It always came down to that they didn’t respect him, that they weren’t fair, that the boss played favorites.  I tried to use that old life ain’t fair and sometimes you grit your teeth and get your paycheck, the Bible said you’d eat off the sweat of your brow, don’t you remember speech, but it all fell to the ground, like the seed that had the poor fortune to land on the rocky soil.
“Yeah, my brow was sweating all right,” he said after his next failed job, “Because of that stupid captain’s hat they made me wear with the gold cord.”
I thought about it.
“But Charlie’s is a seafood restaurant.”
Thomas was not convinced.
“We’re so far away from the ocean, that hat is a lie. As dumb as those port hole windows they think we need to wash every week when business is slow.”
“But weren’t the people nice?”
“One guy. But he quit. And Jerry the manager treated us like idiots.”
Why does Thomas complain to me about not getting respect, I would sometimes wonder. I’m an old widow woman.  It’s like complaining to a blind bum the windows of your mansion ain’t letting in enough light.
Finally, about two years and six failed jobs later, my brother Doug got him a job at a trucking place. Thomas didn’t drive the trucks, but he helped load and unload them.
This job seemed better. Thomas complained less about it, and the work tired him out, in a good way, so that he came home earlier and went to bed earlier. He also seemed like he didn’t mind going. Soon enough I found out why. About three months into the job, Thomas came by with a girl. I guess since he lived with me, we can’t rightly say he dropped in, but he did find enough money to take a girl out to dinner, and he wanted to show her off.  That’s what I thought then. I was sitting inside listening to the radio, working on fixing a ripped green pillowcase, and here come this girl into my kitchen with scarlet lips and a yellow dress cut so low there was really no reason to be wearing anything at all, and she had plenty of reason (two of them exactly) to be wearing something let me tell you. So, she come in first and I just stare at her. Til she put out a hand and says, “Mrs. Aberley.” I looked at those nails, so red, and made myself take the hand.
“Hello” I said.
“My name is Gina.”
“You got a last name?”
“Oh. Yes. Gina Royal.”
To me it sounded like some kind of whiskey brand you have to pay too much for that looks like the color of molasses stuck in a glass, something that comes out of Kentucky.
“Well, Miss Royal,” I said, looking at her, to see if there was a Mrs. hidden under that Miss, gonna flinch, “It’s nice to meet you.”
“There’s both my girls” Thomas said, coming in. That tie on him, striped and new. I hadn’t ever seen it.
“Momma, this is Gina. We met at work.”
“What work is that?” I asked, cause I couldn’t think of anything he’d been doing lately. I hoped it was day work, not night work.
“Last week, when I was helping Jim move those pallets from the one truck to the other one.”
“Oh,” I said. “You a trucker?” This Gina Royal giggled. It was not a laugh. It was a giggle.
“I couldn’t drive something so big as that and keep to half the road,” she said, “No, I just answer the phones in the office.”
“She’s the office manager there at the trucking place,” said Thomas.
“Does that pay well?” I asked, thinking if she could afford em, where were her clothes.
“It could be better, but the people are nice.”
“She plans real soon to get back to cosmetology classes at the community college. She started but then she dropped out for awhile,” Thomas added.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I needed to be off for awhile because of some family issues. But things are better now and I plan to go back and finish. I could do your nails sometime if you want. Pretty soon I’ll be able to do highlights too…”
“Well I clean people’s houses and scrub toilets so my nails would just get messed up,” I said, irritated.  “So Thomas, what you stopping here for? You want me to come out dancing with you two?”
“No, no. Just wanted you to meet Gina. She brought it up actually, didn’t you, babe?” Thomas asked. She smiled at him, then at me. I think she had some fake eyelashes on. Either that or spiders just jumped up at her eyes to attack her. They were way too long.
“Yes, I did. I said I haven’t even met your momma. Just wanted to say hello. See where Thomas come from.”
Thomas went in the other room, to maybe check his breath was minty, or whatever, and we just stood there, Gina fiddling with her purse strap, until the silence got even quieter.
“Well where Thomas come from, besides God’s perfect and pleasing will, I still don’t know,” I finally said, “but it was nice of you to stop in and say hello.”
I know that sounds mean. But the loud colors on her face, the bracelet after bracelet on her arm, the skin gushing out of everywhere, I just wasn’t able to match up what I was hearing with what I was seeing. But I know I do have a tendency to judge quick. Maybe she was just a sheep, somehow woke up on the wrong side of the bed, stumbled into the wolves’ clothing.
“How long you lived here?” Gina said, moving so she was standing against the stove. I was still there at the table.
“About twenty years.”
“A long time then”
“Yes. And I guess I’ll stay that many more, God willing. I wouldn’t want to move all this stuff again.”
“That sounds close to what my grandma says.” She suddenly turned and looked at a pair of salt and pepper shakers I have by the stove: shaped like palm trees, one careening left and one careening right, like they was trying to stand up in big winds.
“Oh, where did you get those?” I looked to see if she was just humoring me, but her eyes were all lit up.
“A lady I worked for a few years back. She had a big house to clean, I remember that. And a dog that didn’t stay off the furniture. She went to Hawaii a few years back and brought presents to almost everyone.”
“I’d love to go there someday. Just sit on the sand and do so much nothing my brain almost falls out.”
“I guess that would be nice. If that’s your idea of a good time,” I said. I looked back down at the rip in the pillowcase, half stitched up now. I didn’t know what else to say.
“We never really went on vacation,” Gina said after a minute, “I have five brothers and two sisters. Growing up, we couldn’t afford much more than to go somewhere a long time. Just for the day. We went to some caverns once. Although I guess caverns is just a nice way to say hole in the ground.”
She touched the pepper palm tree, almost, but drew back her hand, then turned to face me: “Did you go places growing up?”
“To the beach for a few days. Once. Thomas always wanted to go see that tall tower in Chicago. He saw it on TV. But that was the only place. I just couldn’t take him there. His daddy promised to, but that was just before he left us and then died.”
I felt surprised how I admitted that without even thinking about it. Like I had known her a while. Gina smiled, but it faded before it came onto her face all the way. Neither of us said anything more. I was thinking back to the day when I heard. How I fell to my knees in the kitchen. How I got so surprised. Before then I hadn’t known. How a body can lose something it already lost, and the second time might be harder still.
A few lifetimes or minutes later, Thomas came back in. As they were leaving, I told Gina it was a pleasure to meet her and come again and all that. I watched them get into the car and shook my head. She didn’t seem as bad as she looked. But I still went to bed early, not having a good feeling. About three o clock that night (or I guess morning), I got a phone call. I scrubbed open eyes that didn’t want to open.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Who is this?”
“Gina.”
“Who?”
“We met earlier tonight.”
So Gina and I talked again. She was all upset, and said Thomas was down at the station, that there was a fight at the bar where they were.
“What’d he do?” I asked.
“He yelled a lot,” the voice on the other line said hesitantly.
“That all?”
“And…he broke a chair…”
“Just wrecked some furniture?”
“No, he broke it…over somebody’s head.” There was silence.
“Are you there with him?”
“No. I came on home.”
I was down at that station in about half an hour. Shouldn’t drive at night, got a cataract thing coming into one eye I haven’t taken care of yet, but what you gonna do. When I got there, Thomas was sitting on a bench in a holding cell and Gina was nowhere to be found. She had to go, Thomas said, because she lived with her older sister and his husband and they would be worried. I looked at his shirt, scuffed up with dark marks and maybe a brown beer stain on the left arm. He didn’t seem too hurt.
“Why did you get in a fight?”
Thomas rolled up his sleeves like he wanted to punch something again.
“Somebody insulted Gina. Said something no one should say about a lady.”
“Yeah, but is she a lady?”
“Watch it.”
“Well, she may be one…but she doesn’t dress like one.”
“That’s a nice thing to say.  Styles have changed since you were young.”
“I’m not talking about stripes versus polka dots, I’m talking about respectable versus harlot of Babylon.”
“A girl can look her best.”
“You call that her best? That kind of feather will only set off all the males within a hundred miles, making them crazy confused, and horny and ready to fight.”
“Don’t be such a snob. Dad always said you judged people too fast.”
I flinched, tapped my foot, and blew my breath out and up to the ceiling. Thomas’s face actually looked worried.
“Look, I didn’t mean...”
I couldn’t look at him, so I walked out. I stood out in the hall by a poster saying to report suspicious activity. There was a watch dog in a coat with droopy eyes holding up a magnifying glass over the roof of a house like he was trying to make it catch fire. When I calmed down enough, I went back in. Thomas looked relieved.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Well,” I told him, “I shouldn’t have said what I did. At least not the way I did.”
Thomas nodded, cracked the knuckles in his hand against his neck, then looked at me and winced. I waited.
“You okay?” I finally asked.
“Just want to let you know now, that I need to well…tell you something.”
“What.”
“I did something.”
“What?”
“Took some of your jewelry.”
“You what?”
“Your pearl bracelet.”
I tried to think.
“You stole it out of my jewelry box?”
“No I just took it…for a while.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“When you came to the house to pay your respects?”
“Yes.”
“And where is it now?”
“Pawn shop.”
I sighed. Thinking, Lord, at this age. When I should be holding drooling grandbabies and peacefully going senile.
“Why?” I asked. Thomas just shrugged.
“Dinner cost more than I thought. We got, what do you call them, starter ups, and then the waiter suggested a wine.  I didn’t want to ask the price in front of Gina. Should have. I just needed a little more money for the rest of the night.”
“So you stealing from your mother is easier than admitting to a stranger you’re not a king?” He didn’t answer. So like a fool I just kept asking more questions.
“How did you get rid of the bracelet without Gina noticing?”
“Just told her to wait in the car, I needed to drop a business letter off quick, to a friend.”
I looked at him.
“She seriously bought that?”
“She didn’t know nothing about it. I just told her we should stop by the house and say hello.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She really wanted to come see you. I was going to get the bracelet back from Sal next week. He’s a friend of mine. It isn’t business. It’s a favor. He’s just holding onto it til I get my next check and can come back.”
“That was your grandmother’s bracelet. Your grandpa gave it to her one year to the day they met,” I told him.
“I know.”
“Do you? She wore it at her wedding, and all her baby’s baptisms. You didn’t steal from me, you stole from you, and from all of us, acting like our past is for sale like that.”
“Didn’t think of it that way.”
“No, you didn’t think at all,” I said. I stared down at a nick on the floor shaped like a bottle with only half a neck, trying to figure out what to do next.
“But can you help me get out of here tonight?” Thomas tugged at the jail shirt they’d put him in.
“I don’t see why I should. You turn on the light here and the electricity’s not billed to me, except as a general tax payer.”
Thomas glanced up, startled. He slammed his hand down on the bench, then moved it up to grab his ear.
“I’m your own flesh and blood.”
“I always wanted to lose a few pounds,” I said. I got my purse and walked out.  Then got in the car, locked the doors, and sat there a minute. My grandmother’s bracelet. Then my mother’s, then mine. Five strands of bead with red and clear see through crystals. Only faux diamonds and pearls. But a beautiful clasp and a cabochon garnet right in the center, staring at you like an eye that sees all and makes all beautiful even as it forgives all your sins…I rarely wear it. Just holidays, or a special missionary luncheon, if I’m on the committee and up at the front table.
I cried.  Then drove home.

I heard Thomas got out of jail right away by calling one of his friends, I don’t know who. He stayed somewhere else a few days, then came to our front door, bracelet in tow.
“Here’s your history,” he said. I just looked at him, and put the bracelet back in my jewelry box, right next to the ugly zebra earrings my sister sent me after her son hauled her to the San Diego Zoo for the afternoon. They went to Sea World too. Shaila, the one who always told me growing up not to go out of the house without doing my hair, had to tell me that she had, of all things, seen Shamu poop. When I exclaimed, she didn’t skip a beat, just said, “I know that’s gross. But you should have seen how much came out!”
I thanked Thomas but I didn’t let him in the house, and he didn’t ask to be let in. He left right away. That was okay with me right then.  I wanted to be alone. I went back inside, clutching my bracelet. After I put it down, I touched some of the bead strands like they were still warm like you would touch someone’s arm, touch their elbow. Then I felt silly. That bracelet couldn’t haul my hide out of a burning house, though maybe what it stands for could.
After that, I knew what had to be done.  A day later, Thomas called to say he had a job unloading trucks again. When he came over the evening after that, I had his favorite meat loaf and mashed potatoes and the thick slices of bread with butter and strawberry jam. And then, as we were finishing, I said you got a week to get out your stuff of here. Time for you to fly.
“I’m not a bird,” he said, reaching for the mashed potato bowl.
“You just mean that right now, you’re staring out a windshield of eggshell.”
I patted his hand. Then got up and went out to get the pie. Peach. His favorite. Thomas kept staying at his friend’s house, but he would come over most days. Soon, I put some of his shirts and a few plates and a plastic baggie of old extra silverware in boxes out on the porch. Eventually, he made plans to move in above that pawn shop and stay with his friend Sal til he could figure something else out.
Day he left the house, I gave him a present. The whole New Testament on tape, read by Mr. James Earl Jones. Thomas always loved the Star Wars growing up, and I figure if it was Darth Vader saying Herod got struck down and eaten by worms and died, that might make more of a dent.
That’s been three months now. I haven’t heard much one way or the other. Thomas did call a week ago, and we talked a few minutes. For a few days he found a job about an hour away, a temporary shop they were opening up where you can buy all those little knives and scissors and such that people have to give up at the airport before you can get on the plane (sure hope they disinfect the personals). He also said he met someone at the trucking place who might have a steady job for him for a few months at a moving company here in town. I hope so. And I hope what I did was the right thing. I can’t know for sure. Sometimes I think you won’t know for sure, if you’re losing your soul or gaining it, til the last whistle blows.
Me I took the fifty bucks I have been saving, just putting by a little each month. I didn’t spend it on the ladies of joy retreat coming up at the church or any extra workbooks about the fruits of the spirit. I’ve got enough of that stuff I’ve already bought and never read. Instead, I signed my toes and feet up for a manicure and pedicure, and some facial treatment, the whole works. Let me tell you, it was wonderful, to just sit  and be pampered. I have got Thomas’ Gina to thank for that. He never mentioned her again, and I suppose she didn’t want another date, but when I was sitting there doing nothing and being fussed over, someone nearby turned on a hair dryer and I felt a warm breeze in the air, almost like a tropical one. I hope that one day she gets to feel the real thing on her face.


Nobody Knows When The Truth Goes By
November 3, 2010

Richard Hix is a trial lawyer who graduated from the University of Oklahoma and Duke Law School. He lives in Tulsa. He writes compulsively, has never previously submitted fiction to be published, and says his creative ideas come from everything that has ever happened to him, as well as many things which haven't.

By Richard Hix

Elizabeth Ashton knew her husband was nearly perfect. True, he was older than she, sixty four, and his body was soft and large, overstuffed, like the chair in their study where he sat while writing his opinions. But he loved her and kept her safe, and she had come to believe those were the important things. Judge Robert Ashton was revered for his subtle and considerate mind, his depth and range of learning, his humane decency. Their friends in the law said he was an old-fashioned Judge, broadly literate, unlike the ideologues and crimped technicians who had come to control the federal courts. She admired her husband, and after the tumult of her youth had finally settled into the long arc of their life together.

Elizabeth admitted to her closest friends that she and Robert had slept in separate rooms for several years. This had begun as an attempt to ease her chronic insomnia but, when that failed, there was too little reason to do otherwise. So they awoke apart without speaking of it, and met early most mornings for a quiet breakfast before Robert left for court. At fifty-five, Elizabeth told herself that the darkness was for comfort and sleep, and that anyway they were bound together by their mutual love of the objects in their lives, their common views concerning culture and politics, and their adult children, both of whom were lawyers working downtown at Wall Street firms. When her women friends praised Robert’s fidelity and genuine attentiveness Elizabeth could only agree and count herself fortunate to have so nearly perfect a husband.

On a damp Sunday morning in September, Elizabeth watched through the window of their apartment as her husband crossed the street in front of the Metropolitan Museum to hail a cab to his chambers at Foley Square. It would be another long day of work for him. As Robert slipped into traffic and away, Elizabeth felt the weight of time. She stood at the window watching the street. She had lately noticed herself sinking into reveries, wandering within them, losing time as she drifted through the past.

When the phone jarred her to the surface Elizabeth gave a start. She rushed past the armoire that stood next to their phone table, but hesitated a moment as her eye caught a crusty smudge, probably, she thought, a fugitive from some sweet thing left by her granddaughter the prior Sunday. At this disorder Elizabeth’s lovely eyes, still dappled by a faint, youthful light, narrowed in annoyance. She would have to tell Alicia, their Peruvian housekeeper, to please, please be more careful.

As she raised the receiver, Elizabeth braced herself to hear her sister Joan’s voice, which she dreaded because Joan had been planning to corner her cocaine addled, younger husband for a family “intervention.” Elizabeth had made clear that she wanted no part of it, but expected Joan, in her brittle weakness, to once again try to involve her. Elizabeth was considering what she might say to rescue an afternoon’s peace when a voice with a strong Puerto Rican accent said something she had thought she would never again hear.

“Vincent Green.”

It was a moment before Elizabeth came back into focus. Was there no question, or had the shock of those words erased it?

“What?”

The woman was insistent. “Do you know a man named Vincent Green?”
    
“No one of that name lives here.”

The voice took on a cross examiner’s tone. “I’m asking, do you know someone named Vincent Green?”

Elizabeth paused, deciding not to lie outright. Then her voice was weak, admissive. “That isn’t his name. It’s Tom Graham.” Saying those words aloud after her long silence sent a shiver of despair through her.

“What do you mean? Mrs. Ashton, are you saying that this Vincent Green’s real name is Tom Graham?”

“Yes. His name is Tom Graham.” Anxious to put an end to the conversation, Elizabeth gave into a lie. “I haven’t seen Tom Graham in over thirty years.” But there had been that time on the street, was it two years?

“This is the New York City Morgue. Whatever his name is, he’s here.”

“The Morgue? What is he doing there?”

The caller considered this a stupid question. “He’s dead.”

Elizabeth sank into a chair. For a moment she took the phone from her ear and looked at it uncomprehendingly, as some alien thing. “Tom Graham is dead?” She said it as though this was an effort to trick her into believing the impossible.

“Whoever he is, he’s dead Mrs. Ashton. We found your name and address in his things at the shelter. Isn’t nothin’ to do but call you. We can’t locate no one willing to pay the services we got in him. No family, no one.”

Elizabeth couldn’t catch the next groove. “Tom is dead?”

“I gotta call you Mrs. Ashton. We found some of his papers. They said he had a daughter named May Green. We called her, she authorized all these services, then when it came time to pay she said she wanted no part of him. We cremated him. That’s the cheapest way. I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Sorry to call you on a Sunday, but we got services in this one, a lot of services in this one. Somebody’s gotta pay these services.”

“How did Tom die?”

“He lived on the street, slept at a shelter. Murdered up in Harlem. Stabbed in the heart with a broken bottle. We get a lot of them street people killing each other.”

Elizabeth had cleared a little. A fraction of the old rage returned. “You are misinformed. Tom Graham never had a heart.” Without another word Elizabeth hung up, then sat staring into her snow white carpet.



Elizabeth left Pittsburg and entered the great world in the fall of 1967, when she became a freshman at the University of Michigan. She had come to Ann Arbor from a privileged childhood; her father was a respected surgeon who had made a small fortune atop the large one he had inherited from his grandfather, who had founded one of the first steel mills in Pennsylvania. Elizabeth’s life had been orderly. She had gone to the best schools, lived in the best suburb, had even been a debutante with a “coming out.” She had lived, broadly speaking, as did young women of her class in that time and place. Though when she entered college she was no virgin, and claimed an amorphous liberalism characteristic of the private schools she had attended, her boyfriends had all been white, and most of her carnal history had occurred in the backseats of late model American luxury cars, the steel for which had been rolled at mills like the one her family still owned.

From the time she was twelve, and increasingly with each stage of her physical development, Elizabeth gained greater appreciation of the power produced by her looks. Certainly she was pretty; she had one of those simple but elegant faces – clean lines, almost boyish; blond hair always in the most stylish cut; intelligent, though cool and distant light blue eyes. But very early she understood that it was her body that produced her force and made boys and men a little stupid. This was not due to anything, taken alone, that was particularly notable, but arose from her slim proportion and athletic grace. By the time she was sixteen Elizabeth knew, without having to think about it, that certain ways of standing, or leaning, or walking induced within most men a flash of needy pain, and from most girls and women a sense of envy. Elizabeth gave the impression of a young woman who was one of fate’s favorites. What others wanted, she had.

In coming to Ann Arbor Elizabeth was following her older sister, Joan, who had graduated high school ahead of her in 1962. As Joan passed through the brightness of skating parties, coke dates, and dances at their parents’ country club, her gears meshed smoothly with the life into which she had been born. Joan was acclaimed the greater beauty of the family; she was Homecoming Queen at the Ohio State game in November, 1964. (The frozen image of her waving to the crowd in a tiara and red Buick convertible sat on the mantle piece of their parents den until their father shoved their mother into it in another drunken match in 1986, and lay somewhere, its glass cracked from that fall, in a moldering cardboard box in Elizabeth’s attic.). So it surprised no one when Joan married, at twenty-three, one of the most successful young gynecologists in Cleveland. But after three children in four years she discovered him in bed with the male half of a couple who lived two houses down the cul-de-sac. To the hysterical Joan, their mother counseled sober restraint; after all, he was a wonderful provider and good with the children.

But for Elizabeth there was, from the beginning, a sharp tension between her and the air she breathed, something that put her always at an acute angle to her parent’s world. Though she viewed the prevailing racial and religious orthodoxies with an inchoate unease, and felt a jolt of guilt at the life she had once encountered when she and her friends followed their school’s basketball team to a game in a slum on the other side of town, none of this could account for the bitter turmoil churning within her. No, that was an outcome of her chronic boredom—boredom at being the most popular girl in school; boredom at the rabbit’s warren of shops and food courts in the neighborhood mall; boredom at being groped by the insipid and blank fingers of the sons of her father’s friends during slow dances at the prom, while sunny songs of broken teen hearts played in the background; boredom that turned to dread at the prospect of a small, tidy life leading to a small, tidy death. On the withering August nights of the last few weeks before she left for college, Elizabeth lay in her childhood’s canopied bed, leaking into the void she felt at the center of herself, yearning for something that she could not name.



That September of her freshman year Elizabeth was alive with the intoxication of her new freedom. She had begun to feel some intimation that the lives of people her age were shifting, that something she believed was new and original was happening. She could not have described this change except that it was the opposite of, and against, everything that bored her. In this heightened state, she visited a class in which her new friend Mary Ellen Keyes was enrolled. It was still early enough in the semester to transfer into the survey course called The Philosophy of Ethics, taught by Professor Gryzbowski. As she walked up a flight of stone steps to the entrance of the building in which the class was to be held, Elizabeth paused to turn for one more drink of the late afternoon light that fell across her. When she turned and entered the classroom she looked, for the first time in her life, upon Tom Graham, whole before her. All her remaining years she would recall this moment, and what had struck her first. There was something buried and coiled in him. He wore an old, black woven cotton shirt rolled up above his elbows and tucked into faded, grass-stained jeans. His yellow hair hung just above his collar; his eyes were yellow-gray above arching cheek bones. His skin was sunburned over a dark tan. She thought Tom indecently handsome. The only empty chairs in the room were on either side of him. When Elizabeth sat down she noticed he smelled of sweat, gasoline and fresh cut grass. He seemed to look through her, to not notice her existence.

Professor Gryzbowski had taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Budapest until escaping Hungary just before the last, decisive wave of Soviet tanks attacked in October, 1956. His students at Michigan called him “Old Gryz.” He was Catholic and conservative with the unique inflection and intensity of Eastern European exiles. Within a few years his rigid content and authoritarian style were to disqualify him from a teaching position at any prestigious American university. But outside class he was always affable and well liked personally. That day he was lecturing about the redemptive miracle of Christ’s suffering.

“This is Christian teaching: Mankind’s existence is given meaning by Christ’s death on the cross. His terrible suffering created an ethical space in which we can choose between good and evil. By redeeming our sins, He gave us a fresh start, an opportunity to determine to act according to God’s law, or descend back into the sin from which we come.
Tom Graham spoke from the back in a matter of fact voice. “I came from up-state.”

“What?”

“Not sin.”

The Professor required silence during his lectures. He frowned at his seating chart, unable to find Tom.

“You are not here to learn are you, Mister ...”

“Graham. I am.”

“You may believe that, because you paid tuition, I, and everyone here, have to listen to your drivel. You are mistaken, Mr. Graham.”

“I haven’t paid any tuition. If he was here to suffer, he didn’t suffer enough, not nearly enough.”

The Professor prided himself on never showing shock or surprise; to do so would be to concede something. But at this he took a long pause. “Mr. Graham, whatever do you mean? Do you have the slightest idea what you mean?”

“I mean that we are always confronted with the suffering of Jesus, but it was, in comparison with the suffering of humanity, absolutely inconsequential.”

“You’re speaking of the suffering of God Himself. This was an agony that man had no right to ask God to endure, but which He suffered for our redemption.” There was something in the Professor’s voice that sought to up the ante, to close this out before he lost control.

“God put us in this position in the first place. We are thrown into a world where He has chosen to make us subject to every sort of endless heartbreak, and the knowledge that we, and everyone we love, will suffer and die. Our so-called sins come from the nature he has given us. If we are violent, if we want to kill or fuck everything that walks, he made us this way. But we are supposed to feel grateful for this life, ashamed of ourselves, and guilty over his momentary suffering? If it occurred at all, that suffering lasted, what, an afternoon? That is pathetically small against this life we lead. I’m sorry, I know you think I mean offense. I don’t. I’m not saying this to insult you, but until God suffers one percent as much as man, it is He who is guilty, not us.”

The Professor was measured, “You are not wanted here, Mr. Graham.”

“I know”, said Tom without rancor. Then he was on his feet and gone, trailing the smell of himself.



As Elizabeth and Mary Ellen walked into the evening they felt a whisper of summers’ end. Since the class had ended the friends had spoken of nothing but “that annoying Graham’s ridiculous diatribe.” As they were laughing about him, Tom ran up behind them, startling Elizabeth a little. Later she often wondered what her life would have been had Tom spoken to her friend instead.

“I saw you back there,” Tom said.

“Everyone saw you, quite a performance. You must be very proud.”

“Was I wrong?”

“Yes, you were wrong, and you didn’t have to offend him, and everyone else. You’re not very smart, are you? Where did you go to high school? Prison?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Yes, and even if I didn’t, you’d have no chance.”

“Let me guess, one of those empty little frat noodles who shit their pants if daddy’s check is a day late.”

“Go back under your rock, back to your slime. You’re not my type.”

Tom spoke with amused certainty, “Oh yes I am.”

Elizabeth stopped, turned, and faced him, her half smile gone.

“What do you want with someone like me?”

“If I told you that, I’d lose my charm”

“You’re crazy. Go to hell.”

“Are you ready for me?”

“Are you deaf?”

“Don’t fool yourself, you’re ready for me. You know what I’m here for.”

He smiled, ran backwards a few steps pointing at her with both hands, then turned gracefully, disappearing into the banded moonlight. Elizabeth and Mary Ellen walked in silence a few moments.

“I want him if you don’t”, said her friend.

“Hands off”, said Elizabeth.



Elizabeth soon learned that Tom Graham usually smelled more or less as he had that first day. He lived alone in a room he rented monthly at the falling down Matador Motel several miles from campus, owned a mower he used to cut grass at ten dollars a lawn, and drove an ancient Studebaker with no carpet or backseat. That smell, and the three gaping exit wound scars on his back he once said they were “47’s” were the physical memories of him she would always carry from that first, endless night on his sheet-less bed. From the beginning she couldn’t get enough of him, and that never changed. She swallowed him whole – his raw beauty, his arrogant hunger for her, his dreaming, loveless eyes. There was something pointless about him that drew her. He took the world before him as it was; at every hour he was complete in himself. He believed that things always go wrong. This was something that would cause her anguish much later, as she lay without rest beside other men.

As they gazed at the stained ceiling of his room, he told her he would always sleep with other women. She said it was presumptuous for him to believe she cared, but soon enough she did. He said that if they were together it would last only until one of them wanted something else. She said that she wasn’t planning on anything beyond that night, and that anyway she had to meet her boyfriend for lunch. That was a date she never kept.

A month later, just after moving in with him, Elizabeth woke early one morning and lay still watching Tom sleeping beside her. It hit her. “Oh my God”, she said aloud, raising her hand to her mouth. She felt as if she were falling from a high place. She was eighteen, on her own for the first time and in love with a complete stranger. She had dropped out of college and begun working as a waitress at a truck stop. Her parents had no idea where she was. She had twenty-three dollars in her purse. She was ecstatic with the wonder of it. Tom awoke, they were together, and afterward he pulled her softly to his chest. “Who the hell are you?” she thought.

When she asked Tom questions about his past, sometimes he smiled and said nothing, sometimes he answered with a question – “Who do you want me to be?” – sometimes he gave her scattered flakes of information. These, so far as she ever learned, were true but incongruent; she would try to fit them together to form an outline of a young life, only to receive another fragment that destroyed it, and be left to begin again.

She came to believe he had been twenty three or four when they met, though in bright daylight he could look ten years older. An expired Michigan hunting license she found one day in a box of his junk bore the name Thomas Edward Graham and a photo that was of a boy of about sixteen. But even that was a problem. The photo resembled Tom, and could have been him, but the likeness was just far enough off to have been, perhaps, a brother. Much later, because the license had been issued in Saginaw, and Tom had once said that scars on one of his knees were from a high school football injury, she scoured ragged year books and newspapers, but found no trace of him. She wondered if she had his age wrong all along.

During a night of marijuana and Southern Comfort in 1968 she pressed hard for information about women in his past. He told her, perhaps jokingly to shut her up, that he had been in love with a girl named Susan, had lost her to a close friend, and had never gotten over her. The story stung Elizabeth so deeply that she asked nothing more, and never raised it again.

One day in Ann Arbor she picked up the phone to a voice claiming to be “Eddie Graham’s” father. When Elizabeth told him that no “Eddie” lived there, and that Tom Graham was at work, he mumbled, “Whatever he says,.” He claimed he had been a carpenter, and admitted to having been an alcoholic. “But I ain’t had a drink in months.” He said he’d raised Eddie without his mother, that Eddie had loved him when he was a child, “...but won’t have shit to do with me no more. Hell, I was a good Father. He don’t forgive nothin’. You better watch yousef.” Elizabeth realized in the middle of the conversation that the man was drunk. He said his son had run away at fifteen, lied about his age, and joined the Marines.

“Will you tell him to send me some money?”
When Elizabeth didn’t respond the phone went dead. The voice left no number, and she never heard it again. That evening, when she excitedly told Tom about the call, he said that Eddie had been his cousin, and that he was killed near Con Thien in 1965. “That old drunk lost his mind fifteen years ago. He walks around thinking Eddie’s alive. He doesn’t even know what year it is.”

Then there was the puzzling matter of Tom’s books. Boxes of them, opened and unopened, soiled paperbacks, most without covers, hundreds of them, strewn about in every room, stuck in the pockets of his jeans, thrown where the backseat of the Studebaker should have been, wedged between the cushions of their Salvation Army sofa with two legs missing, resting on blocks of wood he’d picked up at a car wash. The Tempest, Moby Dick, The Stranger, Proust, Joyce, Luther, Balzac, The Adventures of Augie Marsh, Camus, a calculus text book, another on ornithology, human biology, Henry Adams, Freud, authors no one she knew had ever heard of, books in Spanish, and on and on. When he wasn’t flipping Elizabeth about on his old Sealy, or mowing lawns, or getting high, and sometimes when he was high, Tom read indiscriminately. Once she asked him if he could speak a foreign language. He said no, yet she had seen him the prior day reading a novel in French. When she asked him about his education, he would only say that it had been, like his life, disorganized. When she asked, after seeing him read the Bible, whether he was religious, he said that he hoped it could be said of him that if he had never found God, he had never blamed him, either. Elizabeth looked surprised.

“You blamed God the first time I met you.”

“Only the stories they tell of him.”

How, she wondered, was she to make what at least appeared to her as many years of education and reading fit within so young a life that had included at least some time at war? But she was unsure whether she was too impressed by those books and what seemed to be his command over them. She felt inadequate to cope with his mysteries.



Tom had never enrolled, so when they left the University six weeks after meeting he had only to throw a laundry bag full of jeans, boxes of paperbacks, and a few old shirts into his car. He was moved out and on the road in fifteen minutes. As effortless as moving was for him, it was less trouble still for Elizabeth to forfeit everything in her life but him, to leave without the slightest concept of where to. Years later when she returned to resume her education, she dreaded seeing the failing grades from that aborted semester. She hadn’t even bothered to drop her classes. But somehow she was spared; somehow the records never appeared, and she had a new start. She could hear Tom’s voice in her head, “The luck of the wealthy.”

The night they went clear they drove until dawn. No one knew where they were, or where they were going. They cranked down the windows of the Studebaker and let a cloud burst outside La Porte, Indiana blow in and drench them. Their clothes didn’t dry until Elizabeth threw them in the back, and they drove naked singing in the darkness and kissing as if to suck the spirits from one another, and Tom not caring to watch the climbing road or smell the hot, wild earth turned up by hail that fell like pistol shots. He flattened the Studebaker’s accelerator against the bare steel floor board. On a two lane blacktop in Northern Illinois dead in the night they saw that an old silo had caught fire like a candle far in the distance, the flames fluting in the wind. The reflection of the white divider lines climbed through Elizabeth’s pale eyes. Her life had broken open to her. She laid her face into the wet cradle of his neck as they rolled on through the blackness. It was that night that Tom told her that the truth of this world is beyond knowing, that it cannot be reckoned by us or any creature in it. He said what order we see is in our minds alone, and that we are nothing more than a part of some blind thing that can never know itself. He said that what is real in a life is revealed to the one who must live it only once or perhaps twice. He said nobody knows when the truth goes by.



Tom had friends in Chicago, and when he and Elizabeth rented a small house on the South Side they started coming around. Most were graduate students at the University of Chicago or Northwestern. They were radicals – SDS and black militants – who said they’d met Tom at one or another march or party over the prior couple of years. They said they knew nothing much of him. He’d never actually joined any organization or made any commitment other than what they had learned in the hot house familiarity created by a few days, here and there, of drugs and politics.

The only person Elizabeth ever met from deeper in Tom’s past was a huge young black man named Reggie. One Spring Saturday morning Reggie just walked up and knocked on their front door. Elizabeth never learned how he had found them – they were not in the phone book, worked at minimum wage jobs that paid in cash, and, by that time, Elizabeth hadn’t spoken to her parents or anyone else from her past in months.

“You Tom’s girl?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Reggie.” He said that as though it were all anyone would ever need to know about him.

“What do you want with Tom?”

“Nigga owes me money.”

Elizabeth braced herself. Reggie looked angry. What had he said? Maybe he’s at the wrong door. She was about to tell him that Tom was at work when he came out of the bedroom behind her in nothing but a pair of beat-up jeans.

“Well, I never thought I’d see this again. Reggie Washington still breathing.”

Reggie walked past her, holding out his long, thick arms like stovepipes. He and Tom fell into a full embrace. Reggie lifted Tom up a little from the floor.

“I thought you was dead, too.”

Reggie was with them for four days. Tom rounded up their Chicago crowd – mostly their political friends, but also some random hippies and guys from the car wash where he worked. The hashish brick that Reggie had brought down from Detroit ran out at dawn of the second day. By the third night everyone Tom and Elizabeth knew, all of their friends and car loads of complete strangers, filled their house, backyard, front yard, and the street around both corners. The stereo blasted until dawn. Elizabeth had never been so happy.

The last night of that rolling party Reggie had sex with the white girlfriend of Bobby Whitmore, one of the students who was helping to organize demonstrations for the Democratic National Convention coming in the summer. Bobby had looked for his girlfriend, an Italian co-ed from Northwestern, through most of the house and in the crowd on the lawns, but had finally given up and was sitting in the living room. Reggie walked out of the bedroom, leaving the door behind him open, where Bobby’s otherwise naked girlfriend could be seen slipping back into her panties. Bobby’s face went blank when he saw her.

Reggie said to Bobby, “I dig your girlfriend, man.”

Bobby looked at Reggie, then again through the open bedroom door. His girlfriend stared back without apology. Like a man who had been trapped into a duel he knew would kill him, Bobby mechanically stood up and hurled his small fist at Reggie. The punch was as hard as he could deliver; he even leaped into it a bit, his feet leaving the ground a fraction. Reggie’s heavy head never moved. It was as if he’d been struck by something without material substance. The room gasped, fearing Reggie’s response, but he just laughed at Bobby good naturedly, patted his back, got a beer from an ice filled washtub, went back into the bedroom, and closed the door.

The next day Elizabeth rose especially late, and couldn’t find Tom or Reggie until she saw them sitting on the front porch in old chairs with the stuffing pouring out. They were leaning forward, heads nearly touching, speaking quietly. She hesitated, then stopped near the open door better to listen. She heard Reggie’s voice cracking.

“There’s one thing I can’t forget about man. I can’t forget one motherfuckin’ thing about it. I can’t close my eyes for seeing it.”

After a long time, Reggie said, “I come here to ask, Tom, can we ever forget them things down there?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

So as to hear no more, Elizabeth walked out and joined them.

She sat with Reggie over coffee after Tom had gone to work, and asked him for anything he had learned about Tom.

“I don’t know nothin’ about him from before we was down there, honey. Nobody did...Tom don’t talk. Even there you never knew who he was. Just what he did. He was the best killer of any one of us, that’s for sure. He was brave. I don’t know, just reckless brave. Didn’t care nothing about livin’. But I can tell you this honey, people like you and me, we’re always gonna love Tom. But that son of a bitch, he don’t love nobody.”



Tom never spoke of his time in the war. Their friends worked up their courage for what they knew was coming that summer with long rants about revolution and the dialectics of history. Tom just said there were too many poor boys killing each other for too little reason. He told her that when the time came they had to avoid violence because it would only fuel the hatred of the cops, and that they would always win because they had the guns. But he said that they would eventually attack no matter, that it would be bloody, and that on no account was she to let herself to be separated from him or be trapped.

Then it was time. In the beginning, before Tom went down, Elizabeth throbbed with the beauty of it. For that moment in her long life, as they marched up Michigan Avenue, fearless, shouting and singing, so many of them that Elizabeth could not see the edge of their thousands, all of her broken parts – her shame, the dread of meaning nothing at her core – it all dissolved and she felt whole. It was conscious to Elizabeth that this was it, the best it had ever been with her, or ever would be.

She saw heavy metal canisters tumbling into the crowd, billowing white towers. Through the gas came vaporous beings on foot in formation, shield to shield interlocking, swinging black lacquered clubs. She heard the horse only seconds before it struck her, knocking her to her hands and knees. She hadn’t seen that riders were coming into them from behind, wielding their truncheons like polo mallets. The horses’ eyes were pure organs of fear; they reared and slobbered and shit into the crowd, voiding their bladders, their riders’ high boots splattered with blood. One appeared through the fog, teeth bared, lurched at Elizabeth, closely missing her face, then vanished the way it had come. There were thousands pressed together and in panic, trampling those who had gone down. Only on the fringes could one move enough even to attempt to side-step the blows. Those inside like Elizabeth were packed so tightly they could not raise their arms to defend their naked heads. They were falling all around her as weak as stalks cut down. The riders warmed to it, sweaty and thorough. These working class men, most no older than the marchers, beat and beat again out of sheer rage, breaking bones, opening wounds until the cement, still hot from the day’s sun, was slathered in gore.  They beat until their arms ached to turn back these dirty, brash defaulters. The country was theirs; it was made out of them and no one was going to take it away.

When the cops reached Tom, they hit him in the face above the eye. The sound of it was like a hatchet on rotten wood. He crumpled to his knees, grabbing Elizabeth’s hand as he went down. He held it until she was carried away from him by a screaming wave as it was driven back. Later, she had no idea how long, she and others, perhaps fifty in all, were torn from the rest by blasts from high-powered hoses. They were forced into a vacant lot fenced on three sides. Visored figures on foot followed and attacked in formation, beating down those in front, nearly killing a boy who ran forward to fight back. A broad gutted one who had put tape over his badge number grabbed Elizabeth by her hair and, forcing her to a crouch, jerked her toward a police van while another followed, beating her legs until her femur cracked. They were about to go to work on her head when Tom, his big heart pumping blood from his head ripped open, broke through to her. He was swinging a nightstick he had somehow wrestled free. He pulled her loose from them as he bashed without effect against their amour until he was beaten down again, and again beaten senseless, and then beaten further at length. One of them must have kicked him in the side, for he made a pneumatic sound after he lay unconscious.

As they covered Tom in still more blows, Elizabeth slipped away in the chaos through a breach in their perimeter and made her way home, her cracked leg screaming. She took the Studebaker from the driveway and went from one hospital to another until she found Tom lying, unconscious and unattended, without money or identification, on an emergency room gurney. She begged him into the hospital with a story that he was the son of a Congressman who was on his way from Washington, and that Elizabeth was his sister. She figured that once he was admitted they couldn’t release him until he was more or less healed.



It was during the second week of Tom’s long hospitalization that Elizabeth began hard drugs. They were everywhere, a part of daily life for the new friends she had made. She felt empty and lost without Tom. She skipped the normal early stages and began shooting speed almost from the start. In less than a week she was thoroughly addicted. By Tom’s release Elizabeth weighed less than a hundred pounds, her eyes were burned out hollows, and her beauty had vanished.

Tom always said that it was stupid to do or believe anything that could get the best of you. He kept his distance, lived inside his limits, and stayed clear of all drugs but alcohol – which he drank but hardly showed it – and marijuana, which he said wasn’t worth much except for sex, food, and listening to music, and that if you could do all three at once, was a pretty good thing. Before he went to the hospital he kept Elizabeth away from anything he believed she couldn’t handle.

When she stopped coming to the hospital Tom began to worry. When he finally got out and saw what she had done to herself he told her to pack. He said she could never clean up in Chicago, that she needed to be away from the people and places that reminded her of her first rush. So on Christmas day 1968 in a snow storm, with Elizabeth shivering and cramping from withdrawals under a thin blanket on the back floorboard of a worn out Volkswagen Van with no shock absorbers for which Tom had traded his Studebaker, they left Chicago headed west. When Elizabeth begged him to let her have just a little more of her drug to get her through the first day, he told her that if she wanted it badly enough he would take her back and leave her, but please to come with him, be quiet, and pull herself together. Elizabeth rolled over and pushed her face hard against the rusty wheel well. She let the pain of its rubbing against her forehead until she bled ease her misery. Four days and two five dollar motel rooms later they pulled into San Francisco, where Tom told her he had once lived.

He found a rent house on Ross Street. It was a large ramshackle from the turn of the century where thirty or so hippies were living. They took a single room with a toilet; the shower – one for the entire house – was a walk downstairs. Tom found a job washing dishes; as always he was paid in cash. He spent the evenings trying to help Elizabeth recover. She began to put on weight, and her complexion lost the yellowish cast that marked the speed freaks who haunted the streets at night, but she longed constantly for the needle. She sat for hours by the window, staring at the man on the corner who carried a tray of socks for sale dangling from a strap looped around the back of his neck. Under the socks was the cure for her torment. The day it got so bad that she found herself dressed and going out the door with money she had stolen from Tom’s wallet, she went back to bed and tried to think of good times when she was growing up.

Once she reached a month of being clean, Elizabeth began to feel the drug’s hold loosening a little. She started to permit herself short trips to the grocery and a nearby coffee shop while Tom was at work. When her confidence grew strong the drug had her. She thought, “I can handle this, once more can’t matter.” Her eyes watered with joy the blistery day she climbed the stairs to their room with a vial and needle in the pocket of the long coat her parents had given her for her high school graduation trip through Scandinavia. Tom came home a few hours later, and though she did everything she could to hide it, he took one look at her happy face and knew it all. Later, after they had parted, Elizabeth realized that was the only time she had seen a shadow of defeat pass through his eyes. He sat upon their bed, looking down, with nothing to say.          

One Saturday night weeks later Tom phoned Elizabeth at home where she was getting high. She hadn’t seen him since the prior Thursday, and was desperate, near hysterics. He said that he and Emily, a girl Elizabeth had befriended when Emily was selling flowers on the street, had gone up to Wisconsin for a few days. He said that he would be back “in the middle of the week”, as if it meant nothing. Before Elizabeth could think she had said “ok”, and hung up. A moment later she was in anguish, and barely slept for the next several days, until he walked in their door one night, kissed her, went straight to their bed, and fell asleep. She lay beside him, her heart hammering into their sagging mattress as she sobbed as softly as possible so as not to disturb him.

The months that followed were the darkest of Elizabeth’s life. Her arms, the insides of her thighs, and the backs of her knees became large, solid purple welts covered with scabs and oozing pus. Her eye sockets were sunken and as dark as ink. She wouldn’t eat, and often fainted. Her body raced in a heat that was quickly consuming it; her skin dried to the color of old newspaper; her weight fell below eighty pounds. Tom sold his blood for money for antibiotics to control the bouts of blood poisoning that threatened to kill her. He tried to hold her above her abyss. She once became so delusional that she believed snakes were crawling under her skin, and ran outside in daylight in her underwear to find her father, who she was convinced was looking for her in San Francisco. Finally, Tom quit his job in order to confine her during the days, but she would leave whenever he went out for even a few minutes to bring in food and medicine. In rare moments of lucidity, Elizabeth would plan to return home to Pittsburgh. Tom urged her to let him take her back, but she never got further than calling, hearing her mother’s voice, and hanging up. She was terrified that her parents would take away her drugs.

Still, she incessantly dwelled upon her life before Tom, convinced that it had been wonderful, that Tom had seduced her to abandon everything she loved – the stability of her life, her parent’s home and values, even her boyfriend in Ann Arbor. But her longing for her old life was weaker than her need for the needle. Only on those nights Tom succeeded in keeping her home, the nights he held her close and comforted her until dawn, could she remember something of why she had abandoned everything to be with him.

It was during one of her wanderings that she met Eyes. Elizabeth was already so deep into the pockets of her supplier, a man named Ronnie, that he had threatened to kill her. She had turned to Tom several times for money, which he borrowed—he refused to steal—in order to save her life. When Ronnie threatened to find and kill Tom if he did not get the $300 she owed him, she agreed to have sex with him and his friends. They took her from a party she had been at for several days to a crash pad Ronnie kept on Broad Street. There they made Elizabeth, and another girl who was also into them for drug money, have sex with each other for their amusement. Then they took Elizabeth into a bedroom and eight of them took their turns, sometimes three at a time, while the others watched, hooted, drank, and did downers. When they told her after two days that they were letting her go, Elizabeth begged them to kill her instead. As he pushed Elizabeth out of his car, Ronnie told her that their “session” was only enough to buy her a week, and that she still owed the $300.

Later that day, Elizabeth was panhandling change at a bus stop in Chinatown when Eyes saw her out the window of his new black Lincoln. He pulled up, told her to get in, took her to a diner where he made her eat a few bites, and got her story out of her. When she told Eyes she was with Tom Graham, he just laughed and said “Bad Tom.” Then he rounded up some of his boys and went to see Ronnie whom they found selling in the Upper Height. Eyes got out and walked up to Ronnie, smiling. He said nothing but “Give it to me.” When Ronnie saw Elizabeth in the car he began to cringe. He dug into his pockets and produced sticky wads of small denominations that Eyes shoved into the pockets of his slacks. He then laid one of his huge arms on the back of Ronnie’s neck, bent him into a L, grabbed the cuff of his pants and ran him head first into the side of the Lincoln.

“Tell me she don’t owe you nothin’.”

Ronnie was stunned from the blow and could barely speak, “She don’t owe me nothin’.”

“Tell me you owe her $300.”

“I owe her $300.”

“Who you gonna give it to?”

“Her.”

“Wrong answer.”

Eyes backed Ronnie up a few feet, and again ran his head into the Lincoln’s fender. Ronnie fell into the sharp top edge of the chrome bumper, cutting his head to the bone. He laid limp and bleeding on the curb.

“You gonna give it to me for getting blood on my ride. If you ever look at her again, I’ll kill you. She works for me now. Do you understand?”

Ronnie didn’t respond because he was out cold. Nonetheless, Eyes stomped on him several times, breaking some ribs. He then rode Elizabeth around town, collecting from dealers, making gratuitous death threats, and telling his boys who to hospitalize over the coming weekend.



By the time Elizabeth returned to their apartment Tom was in a cold rage. He had traced her as far as the party from which she had been abducted and was preparing to arm himself to go after her. He wrung the truth of what had happened from her. When Elizabeth told him of her encounter with Eyes, he sat down, whistled, and stared at his hands.

“Are you fucking crazy? Don’t you know that Eyes is the worst killer in this city?”

“Tom, I had no choice, he just put me in his car and started driving.”

“Elizabeth, you don’t get it. He doesn’t do anything for free.”

“I didn’t do anything to him. He won’t hurt me.”

Tom’s voice was calm and flat. He measured and separated his words as though he were speaking to a child. “Eyes doesn’t need a reason to kill someone. His business is fear. He prefers to have no reason. The less the reason, the greater the fear.”

“He’s a dealer?”

“No, he’s a killer who takes money from dealers, a percentage. He never touches the stuff, but if a dealer refuses to pay up, Eyes and his boys take him somewhere, torture him for a couple of days so his corpse hardly looks human, and drown him in a bathtub. After the body is dumped where the other dealers can see it, Eyes raises the percentage and no one complains. But his best intimidation is to kill people almost at random, people who haven’t even really crossed him.”

“No one stands up to him?”

“Some have tried. The dealers’ suppliers are killers themselves, but Eyes’ gang is the most ruthless and best armed. They’re relentless. Anyone who crosses them, they’ll hunt them down no matter what. When they find you, they kill everyone – your family, your friends, the dog that lives down your street. Eyes gets what he wants because people fear him. They’re afraid because he’s stone crazy and nobody ever escapes”.

Elizabeth bent over, her haggard face parallel to the floor. She cried for the first time in months.

“We can’t get away?”

“We have to try. He picked you up for a reason. He has plans for you. We’ve got to get away before he pulls you into whatever he’s got in mind. We have to hope he’ll just use someone else for whatever it is, and not follow us. He didn’t get your name or where you come from, right?”

“He took my Driver’s License.”

“Then he knows where your family lives.”

“He would go all the way to Pittsburgh?”

“Don’t you hear what I’m saying? He’d send someone there, or wherever you went, to kill you, take Polaroids of what was left, and then he’d hand them out on the streets back here to let everyone know what happens to someone who tries to run out on him. He’s done it before.”

Elizabeth was silent.

“Alright”, said Tom. “We have to have gas money. I’ll go around and borrow some in the morning. Get our stuff packed. We’ll be out of here by noon.”

“Tom, Eyes remembers you. How does he know you?”

“Don’t ask me questions, Elizabeth. No more questions.”

The next morning, as Tom was leaving, Elizabeth stopped him. Her voice was full of shame. “Get me some. I’m out. I can’t stand this without any. Just enough for the trip.”

“You’re done with that. If you can’t stay clean, you’re dead anyway. Hell, you’re mostly dead already.”

Once Tom had gone, Elizabeth went out to get drugs. “It’s only a few blocks”, she thought. She never saw Eyes’ Lincoln waiting down the block. He pulled up and told her to get in. She slid in the back without a word.



Tom returned by eleven. Elizabeth was sitting at their table. He hardly noticed her until he saw that nothing was packed. Then he studied her.

“He was here?”

“He took me from the street. I was going to see my man. Tom, just leave me. Like you said, I’m dead already.”

“What does he want?”

“He’s told the police I was with him out of town when something happened. I have to go to them and say the same thing. He’s going to pick me up here.”

“What happened?”

“He told me I didn’t need to know. I think some people got hurt.”

“When do you have to go?”

“Tomorrow, Tom, leave, just leave. After I’ve told the police what he wants, I’ll get a bus and meet you.”

“You’ll know too much. You’ll know you and he lied to the police. He might keep you alive for a while so you can keep lying, but when he’s done with you, you’ll be finished.

“So, let him. You’re not involved. No one even knows where you’re from, even who you are, not even me. Wait until tonight and run.”

“I’m not running out on you. I’m never going to just cut you loose like that.”

She sighed with relief, rocking her head back. The thought of being alone terrified her.

“What are you going to do?” He said nothing for a long time. Was that a smile on his lips?

“What I’m good at. It’s you or him. It’s going to be him.”

“What do you mean? Is he going to get killed?”

“No, I’m going to kill him.”

“I thought you said he was the worst killer?”

“Second.”

“Tom, that’s something I can’t bear.”

“Then don’t.”

Elizabeth curled up on their bed, a storm in her blood. Tom lay behind and held her. They were together, then lay naked in the damp cold beneath a thin sheet through the long day and evening. They hardly spoke.



Tom said the front of their building would be watched, so they went down the back fire escape into a heavy rain and out to a vacant lot where he had parked the van. They knew they had been lucky to make it even that far. She started to beg him to stop on the way so she could get fixed, but Tom’s face was set. She knew he wouldn’t listen, so she just sat shivering. Finally she spoke. “Now what?”  

“Now we learn the truth.”

Elizabeth’s voice was frustrated, impatient. “God, Tom, can you not speak in riddles, just this once? The truth about what?”

“We’re going to learn about us. What it all meant.”

The rain drops were like balls of light exploding on the pavement. Elizabeth turned her face to the glass so he couldn’t see her.

“We’re going to be together”, she said.

They pulled up a side street near a corner under a large awning and parked in the dark. Tom pointed to a second story walk-up a half block away.

“That’s his place.”

Tom brought from the pocket of his jacket a heavy pistol wrapped in a rag. She could smell the sweet, metallic oil he had used to clean it. He told her to hold the gun while he took several rounds from his other pocket. Her arm sank from the finality of its weight. She tried to think of the happy day in Chicago when she had bought Tom the jacket, but could not leave the present.

“What are you going to do?”

“You know what I’m going to do.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m going to kill him, and if anyone tries to stop me, I’m going to kill them, too.”

Tom pressed himself back against the seat. He lowered his head for a moment, then looked at Elizabeth. “I’ll go up there and take care of it. When I’m finished I’ll come down front
of his building. If you want, come down there and pick me up. If you do, we will be together, like you said.”

Elizabeth said nothing and watched the rain pour down the windshield in sheets.

Tom said, “There’s about fifty dollars in the glove box for you. I have a little money on me, so don’t worry about me.”

When Elizabeth didn’t turn, or speak, Tom took her hand. “Always remember this. You were everything to me. It was always you and me. I love you Elizabeth, and always will”.
This was the first and last time he ever said that to her. Throughout the rest of her life Elizabeth tried in vain to remember even one lie Tom had told her.

He put the pistol into a satchel with his clothes, opened the door, and walked out into the light from a street lamp and down the block. The darkness of the doorway into Eyes’ building swallowed him. Elizabeth waited. Then she saw three pops of light like flash bulbs behind the blinds. Seconds later, one more. She smelled the wet seats of the van and the gun oil on her hands. She gripped the hard grooves of the steering wheel and thought about what he had said to her. Then she saw Tom step into the light at front of the building. He stood still in the downpour waiting for her, looking into the darkness where he knew she sat. She imagined she could see that same smile on his lips, though she knew he was too far away for her to see that through the rain. She did not move.

It was as Tom thought it would be. He raised the collar of his jacket, walked the other way, rounded the corner, and vanished.



Elizabeth made it to a small town East of Denver before her money ran out. By that time she could no longer smell the gun oil on her hands. She spent her last change on a collect call to her father, abandoned the Van where it sat, and waited on a bench at a bus stop until the police arrived. A day later she was in an exclusive rehab where families like her’s sent their wayward. When she was released she went to the library and searched through the San Francisco papers for the days after the killings. There it was – three dead at the apartment of the drug gangster Clarence Witherspoon. The dead were reported to be part of the same “criminal organization;” each had been killed by a single shot to the head from range from the same pistol. The police believed these killings were more in a series of drug murders in a turf fight that had erupted the prior summer. They vowed to “stop the violence” and “solve these brutal slayings.” Several more stories about that night appeared over the next few weeks, each shorter than the last, each reporting the course of the investigation as it dissolved into the intrigues of the city’s drug underworld. Suspects came and went. By early spring there was only silence. The incident never gained even a footnote in the narratives of those times.

Elizabeth was back at Michigan for the fall semester of 1969. She was twenty years old. Her academic performance was exceptional from the outset. After she was sent by her family to a small hospital in upstate New York to abort Tom’s child, she dated a long series of young men. She quickly broke off from anyone who showed the slightest emotional attachment because it made her claustrophobic and she classed it as a sign of weakness. She always wore long sleeves to cover her track marks, and when her lovers noticed these imperfections in her restored beauty Elizabeth said they were caused by adolescent diabetes shots, which she thankfully no longer needed. Her self-control was relentless.
She refused to speak about the time she had spent away.

After college – from which she graduated with perfect grades in less than three years – Elizabeth went to Columbia for a Masters’ Degree in Comparative Literature, and then on to the Sorbonne for her Doctorate. After a decade of parsing every comma in Madame Bovary, she became the foremost American specialist in Flaubert, and in due course subjected him to the totalizing grid of Feminist Criticism. In Paris she was married briefly to a young banker with whom she grew quickly bored and divorced. She divorced a colleague she met at her first teaching job at Rutgers for no particular reason she could put her finger on. Everywhere she had affairs and was continually whispered about despite the alleged open-mindedness of those times. Though no one she knew met the prevailing ideal of not caring what anyone thought, Elizabeth really didn’t. It was that quality, as well as her fashionable recklessness, her undoubted brilliance, and her beauty that transported her briskly from high academic posts to others still higher. Even a brief flirtation with Republican politics during the early Reagan years (she said she saw in him “at least some rare element of conviction”) could not slow her pace upward. Her original fiction was written splendidly and reviewed thoughtfully. She once wrote a short story with Tom as a secondary character, but could not bear it, and burned it in an ash can in the back of her home in the suburbs while her second husband was away golfing.

For over thirty years the most constant stabilizer of Elizabeth’s emotional balance was her ardent hatred of Tom Graham. Year after year she secretly fingered the old wounds of his betrayals and unfaithfulness, his coldness, and, most obsessively, his distant unattainability. Her sea of tears for him came out of that fury and the heat of it boiled them away. Elizabeth never spoke Tom’s name except quietly to herself through anguished nights lying alone on a sofa, or an extra bed, while a boyfriend or some husband slept in another room where he could not hear her. She believed that Tom Graham had been the defining catastrophe of her existence, but lived with it in complete silence.

Elizabeth’s marriage to Robert Ashton, her third, began in 1981, and was quickly followed by the births of her two children. She regarded Robert, even at the outset, as a consolation. They were, in her mind, compatible. She both embraced him as a palliative to her mental and emotional chaos, and rebelled against him as a secret disappointment.
As the years passed Elizabeth tried to find Tom by each new means that became available. She told herself that she simply wanted to tell him all that he had cost her. She wanted to find him so he would have to hear her true voice – something she believed his domination of her had prevented  By the turn of the century she was Googling every name she had ever known him to use into the great binary void. She found no trace. Research of government records and military files were no better. There were too many matches and so none at all. Attempts to track Tom through Reggie Washington ran aground when she found Reggie’s parents in Detroit in 1973, only to learn that he had killed himself not six months after she met him. She had come to love Reggie in four days’ time, so this news hurt her deeply. And Tom Graham, so far as she could learn, had disappeared from the earth.

All the same, Elizabeth knew in her depths that Tom was out there somewhere. Now and then – she never knew why at certain times but not others – she answered the phone expecting Tom’s voice to be the next thing she heard, and if there was a hang-up she would stew for days. When personal letters came without enough on the envelope to identify their sender, Elizabeth’s breath would quicken. She knew she would not be hard to find if only he wanted to. As the hours, years, and decades piled upon one upon another like coffins, as her body grew soft, her hair white, and as her face was lined by the troubles of a long, intense existence, there was always Tom’s final judgment upon her – his endless silence, his indifference. Whenever the phone didn’t ring, it was him.

But as she passed fifty and began, as people of that age do, to sense the eventual end of her life as a tangible thing, Elizabeth’s suffering and turmoil eased. Her body burned less; her fury was spent. She took comfort in her home, her children, then grandchildren, and, after she retired, her part time writing and teaching. She thought of Tom and those times less frequently. There were whole weeks he never troubled her. Once almost a month passed, and when he finally came back to mind her memories of him had cooled and seemed misplaced in her life. She could think of Tom Graham almost with calm.



On November 22, 2002, as she was driving her granddaughter to a cultural exhibit on 135th Street, Elizabeth stopped at a light and looked down the block for an address. There he was, or someone with Tom’s face, now vastly aged. It was the figure of just another derelict on the street. The man was a good thirty yards away, in profile, crossing against traffic, shuffling a little as do the elderly, stooped at the shoulders, his yellow hair short and almost gray, his face emaciated, his gaze downward. Then he was behind a building and gone. The man had been before her for perhaps only ten seconds, but she believed it was Tom, believed it as much as she had ever believed anything. Elizabeth immediately dropped off her granddaughter and hurried home. She went to her bed and lay in a frenzy. “What have I done to deserve such a thing?” she thought, “Now that I’m old, with nothing for him, with nothing to say, with even my hate for him rotted away. What can I do with him now?”

In the months that followed Elizabeth started out to look for Tom a dozen times. Once she even briefly drove about the Harlem neighborhood in which she believed she had seen him for those seconds. But her nerve always failed her; she could not face looking into his eyes to seek a reckoning. So she vowed to never find him, to never know anything beyond that image on the street. Finally, Elizabeth temporized – she hired an investigator one of her friends had used to catch her husband in a hotel room with his physical trainer, gave him a description of the man she had seen, and asked him to learn what he could. The report came quickly, as few whites frequented the homeless shelter less than a block from her sighting. A man fitting the description she had given had been easily found. The report was that called himself Vincent Green. He had been in that area for about two years. He worked in the shelter serving food and cleaning up in return for a small room in which to sleep. He had a few acquaintances among the regulars, but generally stayed to himself and read piles of paperbacks he got from a nearby thrift store. He was unusual in that he never drank or huffed the carburetor cleaner favored by many of the others. He nursed the residents when they beat each other senseless or wandered into traffic in an addled haze. He showed no signs of leaving, and none of staying. He never spoke of the past.

“These bums blow in and out, most of them are either running from something, or else their brains are too fried to half remember who they used to be,” said the detective. When he learned that Elizabeth had last seen the man decades before, he laughed.

“Mrs. Ashton, you saw a man who looked like someone you hadn’t seen in over thirty years, for only several seconds, a half block away? I was on the Force forty years before I retired. Eyewitness is the lowest kind of evidence. I can tell you the man you saw could have been anyone.”

He looked at her with understanding brought on by her intensity.

“I’ve thought I’ve seen my first wife, dead some twenty years now, a hundred times. No offense, but when we get along in years our eyes can lie to us, tell us what we want them to. Only way you’ll ever know is to go down there yourself, look the man in the face, and ask him who he is. If you don’t mind my asking, who was he, anyway?”

Elizabeth’s heart dropped. “I don’t know.” As time passed, she taught herself to question whether she had seen anything at all. Then one dark Sunday the phone rang.



Throughout the afternoon of the call from the morgue Elizabeth was so agitated that sitting down was a torment. She paced from room to room, repeating the reasons she owed nothing to the past. There was no reason to retrieve the remains of a man she hadn’t known for decades, a criminal who had not even reached out to her though he carried her number in his wallet. He hadn’t cared enough for her even to tell her whether he was alive or dead. His last act was to die in such a vulgar manner as to summon her into the rain to deal with an abrasive bureaucrat in some dreary morgue. He had controlled and manipulated her their entire time together. She had spent a lifetime trying to recover from him, and wasn’t about to let her hard earned progress be made false because he lacked the good sense to die in bed. What the hell was he doing in that place, with derelicts, anyway? Had growing old not taught him anything about caring for himself? No, she would not even consider bringing what was left of Tom Graham into her home with her husband, even for long enough to find a way of disposing of him. That sadness, that pain, that...man, would not be permitted to invade the life she had struggled to build upon the mess he had left behind. She decided, fully and firmly, to leave his ashes to their fate at the hands of the City of New York, and thus to finally release herself from the long shadow he had cast
across her.



That evening as Elizabeth rode in a taxi to the morgue triumphant voices on the radio hailed shock and awe falling upon another desert city. By the time she arrived it had begun to sprinkle again in the twilight. She was unnerved for a moment by the Latin motto hanging in the lobby: “Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights in helping the living.” She passed rows of defeated flesh laid on cold slabs, still as unborn children. She found that Tom’s ashes and bone, some pieces as large as the end of her thumb, had been placed in a cheap plastic urn made to look like marble. It was too small, so the cover would not quite shut. As she held it, a bit of his dust leaked upon her sleeve. Elizabeth asked for a larger urn, but the owner of the voice from the phone call that morning told her there were none left.

She asked to see the autopsy. The body had been identified as Vincent Green from a ten-year-old Indiana driver’s license found in his wallet. His hair had been grayish blonde. He had suffered, they thought, from a variety of illnesses, but had died from a broken bottle shoved into his heart. He had three old high-caliber exit wounds on his back, and a knee that bore the scars of an ancient surgery. His skull had once been very badly fractured. When she read this last, Elizabeth bit her lip so as not to weep in that public place.

She was told she could take Tom’s things, which were in a cheap, old suitcase they had found in his room at the shelter. Elizabeth asked that it be brought to a spot where no one could see her look within it. On top was the leather jacket she had bought him, now greasy and limp and torn at the shoulder. There was a pair of wire rim glasses he had picked up somewhere as his eyes failed him. There was a broken watch, a few work shirts and trousers, and a dirty, worn, leather wallet, so old that the cracked picture flaps were of a kind of plastic not used for that purpose since their youth. The driver’s license was inside. On it was a photo of an older Tom, the only one she had ever seen. There was a Teamster’s Membership card, last renewed in 1991, in the name of Tom Green. Tucked in an inside pocket of the wallet there were three photographs. The first was of a lovely, slim brunette with a hairdo from the early sixties. She wore a long sleeved blouse and jeans rolled up in cuffs and sat upon the gleaming hood of a 1958 Ford. On the back, in ink so faded it was hardly legible, was written “Tom, my love forever, Susan.” The second was of a girl about twelve years old. She had Tom’s eyes. It seemed from her hair and clothes to have been taken in the Eighties.

When Elizabeth held the last photograph, her young face looked back upon her. She was nineteen, sitting on the sofa in their house in Chicago during that long party more than thirty years gone. She had her arms around Reggie’s big neck and a hand in his hair. Her whole body seemed to be smiling. It had been the happiest night of her life. On the back in Tom’s hand were the penciled words, “Elizabeth and Reggie, 1968.”

Elizabeth paid the bill, carried the suitcase and the urn out the front of the morgue, and stood in the dark. Rain was washing down First Avenue in a dirty river. The cab she had called never arrived, and all that passed had fares. When she couldn’t bear to stand in that spot any longer, Elizabeth walked several blocks, drenched and without a coat, to a subway stop. Her legs, now limp and soft, burned from the effort.

She sat in the back of a nearly empty car. Across the aisle was a very old woman in a red cloth coat. Elizabeth saw that the woman had bright smears of rouge on each cheek and that the sallow skin of her face sagged beneath her jaws. The woman could not steady her trembling hands. Elizabeth placed the suitcase on the seat next to her, but held the urn. The fastening of the lid had come loose a little during the walk. Tom, the dust he had only borrowed, leaked upon her lap and into the dust on the floor of the car where passengers walked. She looked out the window. It was covered by years of the city’s grime so that she could only see through a small space in the center. The lights of the tunnel were yellowed and dimmed to her eyes.

She studied her grief, but not for his death. Elizabeth shook hearing his laughter. She could smell him. She could feel his skin. She remembered his hands and quickened to them. Elizabeth gripped the urn tightly. She was a woman on a subway with her life in her lap.


Heautontimoroumenos
November 11, 2010

By Robert Wexelblatt

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies.  He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play; his recent novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction.

    When I came in from my run at about ten-thirty Dushka was hunched under the dining-room table wearing a black bra and pink panties.  She didn’t take the trouble to come out and look at me but at least she mumbled “Uh-um?”  This might possibly have meant “Good run?” I’d have preferred her to scrutinize my complexion, maybe worry that it was too purple, worry about my blood pressure.  “Uh-um?” could just possibly signify indifference.     
    When I had slipped out of the bedroom an hour earlier sleeping Dushka’s breath rose musical and sweet, her face somber as a warden’s.  Dushka is an earnest sleeper. 
    In my shorts and soaking T-shirt, I stood by the table in the teak and chromium dining room of my ostentatiously capacious condo.  I’ve got the whole fifth floor and the elevator opens up right onto my living room. 
    I asked Dushka what she was doing down there.    
    “Writing a letter,” she said.
    “Under the table?”
    Her answer was slow in coming, which was ominous .  “On that part of the floor over which looms the table.  Yes.”  Dushka isn’t one for rhetorical questions, but then who is?
    I made for the bathroom, yanking my T-shirt over my head as I went.
    Maybe Dushka thought she should force herself to pay attention to me because she yelled after me, “You ought to try it.”
    “Try what?” 
    Her voice came from leagues away.  “Children love caves and forts.  Wombs.  Restrictions can be inspirational.  It’s well known.”
    I didn’t stop.  I called back to her.  “I’m taking a shower.  Want one?”
    “With you?  Sex maniac.”
    My suggestion had nothing to do with sex and she knew it.  I was hinting that Dushka maybe could use a shower.  I know how to get a rise out of her if I really need to.  I’ve learned a few things about women, at least about Dushka.  The slightest question about her personal hygiene will do the trick, though it’s a risky tactic.
    “ I showered when I got up.  You’re not inferring—”    
    “The word’s implying, and I wasn’t.”
    Now that we were shouting back and forth she didn’t seem so far away, which was the whole point. 
    As I turned the water on she was still protesting.  “You don’t grasp the nature of depression.  I’ve done my—”
    I got right under the spray, let it pound my scalp. When you’ve worked up a virtuous sweat hot water smells good.  While soaping up I fretted again about this putative depression.  Dr. Fein, the psychiatrist I sent her to, despite the potentially terrific financial incentive for saying yes, said no.  No, not clinically depressed, said Fein; no again, medication was not indicated.  He didn’t hold with all these happy pills, he said, then leaned back in his enormous black leather chair, a man as bloated with wisdom as a tick with blood.  He considered my face and offered his conclusion with admirable concision.  “Dushka’s only intermittently sad.”  That was the whole of his diagnosis to me, the bill-payer, intermittently sad.  I nodded at Fein, a man-to-man nod.  I believed him simply because he had called her Dushka and not your friend or the young lady.  I thanked him and even felt grateful for the phrase.  Intermittently sad hits the nail on the head, I guess.  Having filled me in, Fein summoned Dushka from his waiting room.  The young lady took it calmly.  She agreed that sadness was what she felt and that her melancholy came and went.  She posed no questions, apparently accepting the justice of Fein’s verdict.  “Isn’t it the same for you?” she asked me in bed that night.  “Or are you different from other people, immune to the human condition?  I’ve heard money can do that.”
    “Me?  Oh, I’m completely average.  Size medium everything.  You’re the odd one.  And you shouldn’t overestimate what money does.  People always do.”
    I turned over and regretted referring to Dushka as both odd and commonplace, as “people.”  She lay beside me, perfectly quiet, though in her head she might have been playing Paganini.

    I got out of the shower.  I could tell Dushka was still scribbling away, crouched under the table, intent as a diamond cutter.
    I donned a robe and, rubbing my hair with a towel, padded back into the dining room.  “Who’s the letter to?”
    “Minister of the Interior.”
    “Thug of the month?”
    “It’s not easy but I thought I’d write him a poem.  Poetry profits from enclosed spaces.  Some of it, anyway.  Sonnets, for instance.  Haiku.”
    “And limericks.”
    I had an impulse to tease.  This goes way back with me, long before Dushka. Teasing is the tactic my shyness adopts to cope with feminine creatures—also small children and immature men. 
    “Now, Dushka, if it’s so difficult to write the Interior Minister a poem why don’t you just copy the letter Amnesty supplies?  Isn’t that what everybody else does?   I mean you take it down to the corner, ask them to copy it, you sign it, do an envelope—”
    She teased back in her elegant fashion.  “Your notion of humor would stagger anybody not inured to it,” she said.  Then she went on in earnest.  “Think of how easy it must be to ignore a couple thousand Xeroxed letters that all say the same thing, especially if you’re a sadistic bastard in a big office who doesn’t even open his own mail.  Repetition turns meaning to mush.  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.  See?” 
    “Love love love love,” I said, no longer teasing and loped into the bedroom to get dressed.  I felt hurt but didn’t care to show it, though I’m not above luxuriating in a display of bruised sensitivities.  In fact, I have a talent for complaining.  The secret is that whenever I pretend to be more hurt than I am I instantly become as hurt as I pretend to be.
    I began to dress.  “Anyone call?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “Anybody call?”
    “What?  For you?”
    “For anybody.”
    “Well, nobody called me.  It was just me and the Interior Minister.  Hey, maybe I should call him.  A long-distance telephone call—that would be impressive, wouldn’t it?  That would get his attention.  And if I could manage to sound the least bit sexy maybe I could get this poor history teacher out of the dungeon they’re torturing him in.”
    I came back into the dining room.  “So you don’t think your poem’s so hot?”
    “Maybe the Interior Minister doesn’t care for poetry.  Maybe he won’t get it.  It could make him angry.  Interference in internal affairs.”
    As she was still under the table I couldn’t see Dushka’s face, only her small feet, a tender bit of ankle.  I once told her that she had unusually good looking feet and for months she went unshod inside the apartment.  In the winter her feet turned blue and I had to amend my compliment.  I told her I didn’t actually find her feet attractive; I said it was more a matter of their not being repellent, which is what most female feet are, for me at least.  Thereupon Dushka kept me up half the night analyzing my attitude toward feminine pedal appendages. “How many women have asked you to rub their feet?  Do women’s feet smell bad to you?  When you see women at the beach do you avoid looking at their feet?  At about what age do you think a girl’s feet become bad looking?  Do large feet on women especially offend you?  You remember Baudelaire:  Tes pieds sont aussi fins que tes mains.  Pushkin had a thing for women’s feet too.  Does this make you think less well of their poetry?”  The more probing Dushka’s rata-tat-tat questioning the less coherent my replies.  It can be stupefying.  I never refuse to respond but my answers become vaguer, more nebulous.  In the end, I just turn submissive, saying anything, agreeing to everything.  At three a.m. I told her that I had lied, that both her feet were perfectly precious to me, that Pushkin had nothing on me in that department. I even took one of them in hand and gave the sole a little rub . . . anything to get the light out.  “What a bear you are.  I knew it all along,” Dushka purred.
    “As it happens my poem’s terrific.  All my poems are, at first; it’s only later on that they turn bad.  Like my mother’s casseroles.  Would you like to listen to it?  I’m already on the third draft.”
    “Fire away,” I said and pulling on a pair of chinos. 

    The first time I saw Dushka she was still a child prodigy, playing the chilly Sibelius Violin Concerto.  At the time I hadn’t much interest in music and none at all in Sibelius, whose name sounded like a Roman Emperor’s.  Concerts not only bored but disgusted me.  I am a child of the electronic age and the sight of rather ordinary-looking people sawing, puffing, and pounding away embarrassed me as if the ultra-refined lady at my side had told a vulgar joke.  Because I was single this wife of a business associate, a ferociously cultured woman, hectored me into becoming a patron of the Orchestra.  She accomplished this with the verve with which other women of her age and inclinations expend on matchmaking:  a single man in possession of a good fortune and all that.  Of the nouveau riche I was in those days le plus nouveau and this gentle lady, whose family had been rich for two whole generations, whose grandfather’s pushcart had long ago found its place among the family legends, eagerly enfolded me with her muscular wing and shoved me into Society.  Society seemed to me a Cartesian grid whose x and y coordinates were quantity of assets and the number of years they had aged.  Her advice to me arrived in the form of irresistible fiats.  I saw her not as a member of an intimidating elite, but as a woman of a certain age to whom obedience was owed simply because she expected it.  In no time I found myself on several boards and my name began breaking out on brass plaques like pimples on an adolescent.  Her intent was to make of me a notorious philanthropist.  Philanthropy appeared to consist chiefly in my presenting large checks to her favorite institutions.
    The night I first clapped eyes on Dushka she was already a veteran, though only just fifteen.  She wore a bow in her hair like those favored by schoolgirls in old Soviet newsreels.  Because puberty had not visibly descended on her, Dushka looked about eleven, a doll in a party dress.  Because of this childishness the serious look she threw the conductor to indicate that she was ready for action struck me as incongruous and comical, completely at odds with everything I believed about the levity of prepubescent girls.  This was, by the way, the same look that spreads over Dushka’s countenance in sleep, thus a truth of her nature.  Dushka’s seriousness runs silent and deep.  I was twenty-three at the time and, despite what could justly be called a dearth of experience with girls either pubescent or pre, I figured I knew what they were like.  I could understand this child being terrified—overdressed people, imperious maestro, envious gaggle of grown-up violinists hoping the brat would screw up—but surely no one so young could be that grave.  Even her name wasn’t serious enough.  Dushka sounds like an Eastern European endearment; Papa fixes his gaze on the apple of his eye, opens wide his peasant’s arms, and croons “Ah, come to me, you little dushka.”  That intent grimace did not change as she played a theme I’d never heard before but which instantly filled me with unfocused nostalgia.  It wasn’t Sibelius’ lyricism but Dushka’s look that bowled me over.  I couldn’t get over her face:  all that discipline and precocious intelligence mastering feelings too adult to be proper to such a little girl.

    As Dushka recited her poem from under the table she knocked her feet together, one arch nestling briefly into the other, beating out an irregular rhythm, as she modulated her voice from earnest and angry to wistful and lofty.  Two Dushkas.  Monkey/nightingale.  Crusader/poet.  Prodigy/woman.  Both of them serious.
    “Your Excellency:  I would like to draw to your attention the case of Milovan Mastarovic, a thirty-six year old teacher of history . . . should Your Excellency meet a zaftig woman in a civet scented pied à terre would your boots impress her carpet as they do the pliant shag of history? . . . He was sentenced by the district court of Doboj to three years two months for (pardon my liberty in quoting) maliciously and untruthfully portraying socio-political conditions in your country . . . may you always, Excellency, portray each subject, your outstanding self say, truthfully and may your unmalicious socio-political renditions gratify the most orthodox tomcats of downtown Doboj . . . Excellency:  may I beg you to cast your all-seeing eye upon Article Nineteen of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which in a giddy access of perhaps post-War enthusiasm your nation, Excellency, signed and the which I don’t doubt you blithely ignore as you bound down brown Doboj boulevards ogling cheeks, your thick face turned toward irreproachable socio-political conditions while an approving breeze blows backwards all untaught for three whole years, two whole months.”
    I knelt down by the table, sighed, and kissed her ankle.

    I decided to take Dushka out for dinner.  as she dressed I watched the news, which, notwithstanding the well fed joie de vivre of the anchorman, was anything but good.  She came out of the bedroom sporting a long maroon dress I hadn’t seen before.  Over it lay the familiar, much loved fringed black lace shawl left her by her great aunt Bronja.  She spun around expertly, perhaps in emulation of her friend Germaine, genius of the catwalk.
    “How do I look?”
    “Like a Victorian lampshade.”
    Dushka broke into the wickedest woman in Chelsea accent that she had also picked up from Germaine.  “I say!  Victorian lampshade—exactly what I was after, old chap!”
    It was a pleasantly warm evening and we strolled over to Simonelli’s.  On the way Dushka asked me for ten dollars to give to a disreputable, bulky man leaning in a doorway.  She assumed he was homeless and hungry though possibly he was just loitering and overweight.  He had the look of a carjacker waiting for a ride.  Anyway, he took the money without saying thanks.  At me he scowled, at Dushka he leered. 
    Dushka wanted to justify herself.  “Really poor people have to wear all their clothes.  I’m sure he had two jackets on.  It’s far too warm for two jackets.”
    “That’s true,” I agreed, because it was.  It was even too warm for a shawl.
    “It meant more to him than to us, ten dollars.”
    “It’s all right, Dushka.”
    In the restaurant she became placid.  When she turned her head she did so slowly as if for a fashion shoot, showing every facet to the camera.  I thought of the picture on her first CD.  She was holding but not playing the violin, holding it by its neck.  They had dressed and cinched her, so that her shape was congruent with that of the instrument.  Her hair was arranged to fall Veronica Lake style over one side of her face.  Nearest thing to kiddie porn. 
    “You’d better watch out,” she said when I ordered something alfredo.  “In spite of all you’re running you’re getting fat.”
    I replied with a devil-may-care smile.  “I eat what I like.”
    “Well I can eat anything,” she said, flipping her black hair with a starlet’s nonchalance and looking around the restaurant.
    “And yet you eat hardly anything.”
    Dushka straightened her back, raised her finger, and directed a sententious little speech at me.  “What I choose not to eat is another matter entirely.  Food isn’t love and it isn’t money either.  Food’s like music, like anything we take into ourselves to nourish our beings.  I’m selective.  It’s a matter of taste.”
    I had heard this analogy between music and food several times.  “Do I love you because you repeat yourself, Dushka, or is it the other way around?”
    “You say you love me.  In fact, you say it all the time.  Why is that?”
    “Because it bears repeating.  Do you think repetition’s dangerous?”
    She tilted her head.  “Better an ox in a box than a hound in the pound.”
    “What’s that?  Another Romanian proverb?”
    Again she raised a minatory finger.  “New wine before old swill.”
    “Dushka?”
    “Yes?”
    “Do you miss it terribly?”  To me the question sounded poignant, though perhaps not to her.  It’s true that repetition can be full of peril.
    “What?”
    I hesitated among two or three ways of putting it, this perennial question I could never stop myself from asking.  “You know.”
    She treated me to a fairly serious look, not nearly so daunting as when she was sleeping or playing Sibelius.
    “Sometimes I wonder if my career misses me.  I imagine it wandering through the world—Leipzig, Amsterdam, Rio, London, Tokyo—hovering outside the Gevanthaus, sniffing the flowers in Covent Garden like a forlorn Dickens child looking jealously at the ample flesh of the cellists and the big shoulders of the percussionists, loitering by stage doors, wondering where, oh where on earth can little Dushka have gotten to . . .”
    A set speech, delivered like a celebrity doing a magazine interview.  But as my question had a subtext I persisted in my perversity.  “No, really,” I whispered.
    “What?”
    “Do you miss it?”
    She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her little fists, patient with her impatience.  “How many times do I have to tell you?  I’m through with all that.  Done.  Burnt out.  Kaput.  Bobby Fischered.  I’m glad I hung ‘em up while I was still at the top, or at least in sight of it . . . Anyway, did I tell you about what Germaine’s doing?”
    This subject she always changes.  “What’s she up to now?”
    “Writing a detective novel!  Isn’t it wonderful?”
    “Wasn’t Germaine taking sculpting lessons or something?”
    “Oh, that was three months ago, and anyway it was aquarelle.”
    “La dona e mobile.”
    “Well, she’s a model, isn’t she?  She’s admired for her looks.”
    “Does that explain anything?”
    “Most everything, I should think.  The eyes are appraising and the pressure’s colossal.”
    “Worse than being a child prodigy?  Well, Germaine’s pretty enough, I suppose.”
    Dushka laughed.  “She gets $2500 an hour.  That’s a pretty penny!”
    “I do like her, you know.”
    “I know you try to, and you get credit for it.  Most men don’t really like Germaine.  She scares them to death.”
    “Is that so?  Well, yes, I can see how she might be intimidating.”  Of course Germaine scared the bejeezus out of me too.
    “And yet she never—almost never—tries to do it.  Of course it would be superhuman not to exercise the sort of power she has over men once in a while.  Just for fun.”
    “She’s flighty but she’s interesting.”  I spoke like a wine connoisseur.
    It was because they were both so interesting that Germaine and Dushka met.  They were on a woman’s TV talk show, a panel of successful young women.  Dushka told me the main topic turned out to be eating disorders.
    “Of course she’s interesting.  What could be more interesting than a supermodel with an I.Q. of 160?  I mean, she’s both beautiful and significant, like la vie de Socrate.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Old stuff.  The interesting is a border category, two things at once:  in history a transitional period, in drama a rounded character.  In Germaine’s case it’s those cheekbones and that brain.”
    “So,” I said with a show of interest, “why a detective novel?”
    “Apparently she read two of them on the red eye and thought she could do better.”
    “Did it ever occur to you what wonderful things Germaine might have achieved if only those famous cheekbones had been lower?”
    Dushka began to cry.
    “Don’t cry.”
    “I can’t help it.  That poor history teacher.  And poor Germaine too.  Poor everybody.”
    I glanced around.  “People are going to think I’ve just told you to get an abortion or something.”
    She looked up and very distinctly declared, “You want me to get an abortion?”
    “Look, I’m going to the men’s room, Dushka.  Stay put.  If the waiter shows up just order some decaf for me, okay?”
    “I want to go to the ladies.”
    “We can’t both go.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s an unwritten rule, like the law of the sea.  Diners are forbidden to abandon their tables before the meal’s over.  Somebody always has to stay on the bridge.”
    Like a merry wave on a gravelly shingle, laughter broke over her tears.  “Our table’s a ship?  Very well.  If necessary I’ll go down with it.”
    How I loved her.  No wonder I thought it bore repeating.

    Like quite a few wealthy men, I became rich by accident; I mean, it happened while I was doing something else.  In my case, prosperity was an unforeseen consequence of alienated tinkering.  In my nerdy early years I channeled teenage anomie into an obsession with the technology of the solitary, of those whose existence has always seemed to them virtual anyway.  I fiddled with computers and one splendid week I put this device together.  It worked just as I thought it would.  It turned out that my little device made a lot of things possible that weren’t before, many of which hadn’t even occurred to me; yet these were just the sort of things people wanted to be possible the moment they found out they were possible, and things once feasible become indispensable.  As I tinkered did I know how my device would be used?  Was I even imagining a future that included it?  Well, I suppose so, but in a sense so limited it scarcely counts.  I was a kid of nineteen, but a kid not above being on the make.  I found a good lawyer and we got an iron-clad patent and I held on to both until I was rich as Croesus, which, once the licensing agreements were signed, took all of about a year and a half.  As they say, what a country.
    When you hit the jackpot in your early twenties you’re supposed to give a ton of cash to your Mom and Dad.  Basketball players do it.  Actors do it.  Dushka did it for a decade.  You buy them houses and yachts and riding mowers.  But my parents refused to take a cent from me which I regretted because, as my father surmised, I would have enjoyed gaining that stupid sort of power over him.  They returned the Lexus I bought for them and sent back the cruise tickets.  On the latter occasion, my mother wrote me a note explaining that she and Dad wanted for nothing, that of course they loved me dearly and desired to go on doing so (an unveiled threat!) and they weren’t untouched by my generosity.  But the money, she let me know, was mine, not theirs, and they’d prefer to keep it that way.  My dough, my responsibility, my fate.  I set up a scholarship at Columbia in their name, but my father demurred and the fund wound up being dubbed for the device instead. Wise people, my parents, but not, in my opinion, big worriers about their little boy.  They only began worrying about me after I got rich, as if I had suddenly become notable the way somebody tied to railroad tracks can be. For a while they fretted about my marrying the wrong woman.  Then, after some invisible transition, they worried that I might not wed at all.  Mother told me flat out she regarded bachelorhood as even worse than a catastrophic marriage.  For most of a year I amused myself by letting them wonder if their son might be homosexual, but in the end I relented.  I answered without compelling them to ask the question, an act of charity, not intimacy.  The truth was that they knew next to nothing about my emotional life—let alone my sexual one—because at first they didn’t inquire and later I made it a point to tell them nothing.  Don’t ask, don’t tell was my house rule.  And if silence failed, I simply lied.
    They had never heard of Dushka.

    Apart from the serious face, Dushka’s sleeping habits are unpredictable.  For example, she sleeps at irregular hours.  When the Intermittent Sadness strikes her she can spend an entire day in bed, yet I’ve known her to stay awake for forty-eight hours.  Dr. Fein must at least have mouthed the word “bipolar” to himself when he heard these facts. Sleep is a point of abrasion between us, only a small protuberance but one where we rub up against each other two or three times a week.
    I dread seeing Dushka reach for her violin case in the vicinity of midnight, especially when she hasn’t played for a few weeks.  “My fingers,” she’ll say over her shoulder, panicked, “they’re getting soft.”  Once, in sleepy foolishness, I suggested she might toughen her digits without actually bowing.
    Dushka likes to begin with Bach but she can wind up anywhere—Bartok, Kreisler, Gershwin, Hendrix (her own arrangement).  I had the apartment soundproofed to mollify the neighbors but this doesn’t help me.  So, when Dushka plays I read, filling in the canyons left by my unsatisfactory education, a process I began before Dushka moved in. 
    I was impressed by a clever review a Berkeley English professor had written for the Times.  I phoned him and asked him for a reading list.  The next day I sent him a check and my fax number.  Within the week I received a maliciously long alphabetized catalogue.  I started with Aeschylus and a year later was only up to Baudelaire.  That was when I met Dushka.  In fact, the first night I spent with Dushka I read her Baudelaire, in my high-school French, and this is where her foot remark came from.  It was quite a night:  I’d read some Baudelaire, then she’d play, back and forth till dawn.  Our first night and not only didn’t we sleep together, we didn’t even go to bed.  It was a foretaste of many wee hours to come.

    Dushka cries easily and when she does it’s my duty to comfort her, also my inclination.  But there was one night, early on, when Dushka made me cry.  And then she was obliged to console me. 
    Having undertaken my musical education she sent me out to buy a recording of Die Winterreise.  I sat at her feet while she translated the lyrics and explained how the music fitted into them.  She spoke beautifully that night, but then about music Dushka never speaks other than beautifully. 
    “Most Schubert songs aren’t built on contrasts, like Mozart’s or Beethoven’s, but on a kind of etching of the same line deeper and deeper.  It’s what makes him a Romantic.  Now, in this next song, which is called Die Post, there’s a contrast of themes but this doesn’t generate any heat. There’s no proper resolution either.  He just tamps down the vitality until there’s only an Abschied. That means farewell.  A goodbye to life itself I sometimes think.  Now pay attention.”
    Abschied.  Dushka can make even German sound like love, whereas usually it sounds to me like murder.  Her voice was balm to me, water on my parched senses.  Maybe I didn’t understand the music but I understood Dushka.
    Of the final song, Der Leiermann, she said, “Listen to how this repetition can break your heart.”
    I was happy.  It wasn’t the heartbreaking Die Leiermann that made me cry. I wept when Dushka told me how Schubert died, how young he was.  Love turned into death just like that. Tod und das Mädchen.  I lay my head in her lap and she stroked my hair, like a mother. 
    Is it possible Dushka has stayed with me because I cried over Franz Schubert?

    Many hate, more fear, but in the end we all submit to dentists, lie beneath them belly up, like subordinate wolves. 
    The dentist of my childhood was Dr. Eberhard Gilroy, a huge figure of dread and authority.  Though he ought to have retired years ago he still practices and I still go to him.  I believe everything he says, for Dr. Gilroy retails no opinions one could call casual.  When I was a boy he liked to talk digital computers with me; he encouraged me to work with them, promised it would pay off.  A deep well of obiter dicta is Dr. G.  “In local elections always vote for the party out of office.”  “Never tell a man he’s gotten a good haircut or a woman that she’s gotten a bad one.”  It’s a wise man who can tell what’s rotten from what’s sound.  Though his warnings about my mouth can be harrowing, I also find them reassuring.  His threat that if I’m not careful I’ll outlive my teeth implies that I’m going to live a long time.  Anyway, opening wide for the dentist of your boyhood keeps you feeling young.
    Dushka needed a good deal of dental work.  Apparently a lot gets neglected in the rearing of child prodigies.  I took her to Dr. Gilroy but she didn’t care for the way he tsk-tsked over her.  Still less did she like the catalogue of excavations and reconstructions he proposed to perform.
    “He makes me sound like a public works project,” she groused on the way home, “a big one.  Horrible to lie there helpless while he pokes around and clucks his tongue like a nasty old hen.  Do you ever watch his eyes?  They’re bitter.  He’s looking so eagerly for a sign of decay.  He’s spent his life that way.  Can’t you see what it’s done to him?  No, I won’t go back.  I don’t like your Dr. Gilroy.”
    “Oh, come now. I’ve known him all my life.  He’s a nice man.”
    “No,” she insisted, shaking her head.  “You shouldn’t have taken me to him.  He said I needed all these fillings and crowns.  He hinted at bridges.  When he finally took his fingers out of my mouth and let me speak I asked him how many fillings he had.”
    “You did?  What did he say?”  I was interested.
    “He didn’t really answer.  ‘Oh, we dentists have a certain image to keep up,’ is what he said.  Image?  Sadists with perfect teeth of their own, bicuspids that put their poor patients’ to shame?  No, I’m not going back to your Dr. Gilroy.  He makes me think of Samson—the jawbone of an ass. It may be misplaced vanity, but I don’t care for the idea that if I die in a plane crash the police would go to that man to figure out who I was.”  Finally, she put her finger in her mouth and mumbled plaintively, “He wants to drill me here, and here, and here, and way back here!”
    So I found another dentist for Dushka, a young Taiwanese woman.  She and Dr. Wu have become fast friends, despite the fact that Dr. Wu also shot her full of x-rays and drilled her there, and there, and there.
    One afternoon I returned from my checkup with Dr. Gilroy, feeling displeased with both the dentist and myself because he said an old filling needed replacing.  I found Dushka and Germaine in the living room.  Dushka was on the floor, one spandexed leg more or less over her head, while Germaine sat in serene perfection on the wing chair, Gloriana on her throne.  Her long legs were crossed, her linen skirt was saucy, her blouse purple silk.
    Dushka’s voice was naturally a little strained.  “Germaine stopped by; she’s showing me some new yoga.”
    “Bonjour, Germaine.”  I couldn’t help adding, “Showing?”
    “I’ve been describing the exercises.  Dushka’s very good, don’t you think?  So flexible.”  She said this nearly as if I might not have reason to know.  If, in these, her salad days, Germaine was so waspish, what might she be like at forty?  Her photogenic head inclined toward me but her smile was not benevolent.
    “So, you’ve been to the dentist.  Full marks?”  Germaine’s English was learned from the English and her speech was full of phrases like “full marks,”  “it’s early days yet.”  I once heard her refer to a man’s spouse as “the trouble and strife.”
    Dushka chipped in too, as she bent her torso alarmingly to one side.  “Gilroy building any bridges? planning a coronation?”  But then I could see she felt badly for me.  It was as though she had taken Germaine’s side.  And what if Gilroy really had caused me pain?  Dushka’s empathy kicked in.  It didn’t comfort me; she empathizes with everybody.  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
    “No.  I’m fine.” 
    She got to her feet and turned to Germaine.  “Remember?  I told you about Dr. Gilroy.  A brute, nothing at all like Deborah.”
    It appeared that Germaine had also become a patient of the sympathetic Dr. Wu.  Three graces, norns, fates.  I could see them drinking tea together and the picture was oddly disturbing.
    “Deborah’s so gentle, so sweet,” Germaine declared complacently.
    I went to the kitchen to get a soda.  If the filling was bad, let it get worse.  I needed to drive the dental taste from my mouth.  The disintegrating filling had deprived me of that invulnerable feeling you get when you leave the dentist’s office with a clean bill of toothy health.  The women went on chatting:  Dushka’s voice full of enthusiasm, Germaine’s delicately accented and attractive, though somewhat brittle and chilly, like shaved ice.
    Germaine is certainly sharp, but I’ve often wondered about her brand of intelligence; that is, about how it works.  My hypothesis is that she thinks primarily in images, in the way that mathematicians do in numbers, so swiftly that the images can pass for rational arguments.  Where decay is concerned Germaine’s insights are as penetrating as a dentist’s drill.  Can the mind be twisted by the body’s beauty?  Could what Dushka called her power over men have made Germaine scornful?  I remembered the detective story.
    “How’s the thriller coming?” I called in to Germaine.
    “That’s what we’ve been talking about,” Dushka shouted back.  “Come join us.  Germaine’s hit on this wonderful plot.”
    I set my soda on the coffee table.  “Murder in a sealed room?”
    Germaine laughed.  “Nothing so melodramatic.  In fact, my idea is to write a story that is entirely simple and banal on one level, but on another—that is, morally—rather complicated.”
    I lay down on the couch and put my feet up proprietarily. “I see,” I said. “Realism.”

    It’s a common error to believe that people feel the same way toward one another all the time.  Like the atom, the heart is governed by a principle of uncertainty.  For example, when I say I love Dushka, as I so often do, I’m not stating an absolute but a sort of probability.  If you choose any random moment—and I believe even the most phlegmatic of us leads a mercurial emotional life—the odds are that what I would be feeling for Dushka would be love.  On such odds we generalize.  What else can we do?  Purity is our ideal, but it exceeds our reach.  Of course I would prefer my love to be absolute.  Indeed, it is—at times.  But honesty demands I admit there are also moments, brief ones, when I do not love Dushka but hate her.  It’s no good claiming that hate is so mixed up with love that there’s no difference, as if what mattered was only the spigot and not what’s coming out of it.  There are even occasions when I consider Dushka irrelevant to my life.  This way I can pretend she’s powerless to make me either happy or miserable. When she’s in her oubliette of sadness, when she can’t be reached and won’t reach me, I feel rejected.  So I try to defend myself.  But there’s no relief in forced indifference; worse, there’s a kind of deathliness about it.  I go right back to loving her.  Love’s like music and music’s like food.  Even ascetics get hungry.
    I admit it:  Dushka is my chief interest in life.  What do I provide for her?  Money, the condo, conversation, contributions to Amnesty International, attentiveness, solace, a dentist.  But these are all goods.  I fear I may be only one of those ports of which any is welcome in a storm.  Dushka adopted something of this attitude when she came to live with me; there was no promise of permanence.  She won’t let me speak about marriage.  She laughs and makes up proverbs:  “It’s a fool who buys frayed rope.”  Dushka, who spent the second decade of her life hopping from one continent to another, incarnating the spirit of music, universally applauded, petted, toasted, acclaimed, whose life was a whirligig of concerts, recitals, hotel rooms, reception halls, tutors and conductors, has come to me for a kind of quiet, a rest.  For how long?  Haven, it occurs to me, means harbor, and a harbor is only a temporary home.  All my questions about her career really mean “Are you going to leave me?”  And maybe her continual answer—”My career is over”—merely signifies, “No, I’ll stay with you . . . for the time being.  Better you should think that.  Better I should.”  It’s possible that my moments of not loving Dushka are at bottom practice for the day I discover her berth is empty.  Any port in a storm means that, once the storm clears, one port’s as superfluous as another.

    “The story is quite simple,” said Germaine.  “My hero’s name is Bolt.  He is a private detective so his work is chiefly about adultery and divorce.  He is fortyish, divorced, childless, a solitary fond of the novels of Joseph Conrad and Scotch whiskey—single malt when he can afford it, anything else when he can’t.  Though he hardly has delicate scruples he is at base a decent man.  Decency is what attracts him to Conrad.”
    “His or Conrad’s?” I asked.  I had read some Conrad, because his name begins with C.
    “Well, both.”
    “Does this Bolt like his work?”
    “Not particularly, still it appeals to him.  When he was seven his mother discovered his father was bonking her own hairdresser.  A double loss for her.  This event affected Bolt’s view of married life.  His own effort in that direction came a cropper in less than two years.”
    “Isn’t that a little pat?”
    “Of course, darling.  It’s fiction.  Popular fiction, I hope.”
    “Go on.”
    “One day Bolt gets a letter on plain stationery with a goodish sized check.  The letter is signed by Edward Dulac, but not the check.  It is a bank check, made out to Bolt.  Dulac explains that he suspects his wife and wants Bolt to spy on her.  If his suspicions are borne out he will expect a written report, photographs if called for, all to be sent to him care of a firm of accountants, whereupon an identical check will be forthcoming.  He gave his wife’s name, Georgina, and their home address.  Lastly, he forbade Bolt to contact him directly and on no account to telephone either his home or office.”
    “Seems relatively straightforward so far.”
    “Not at all.”
    “Why?”
    Dushka grinned at my naiveté.
    “Customarily,” Germaine said patiently, “spouses come to see Bolt personally.  They telephone and make appointments.  They don’t write letters.  Suspicious husbands and wives are reluctant to write down their suspicions.  Also the check is rather odd.  Why not a personal check?”
    “Maybe his wife goes over the monthly statements.”
    “Possibly.  But then there’s the stationery.  Why write out his office address instead of using letterhead?”
    “Well, it’s a personal matter.  I can see how an accountant might feel funny about using office letterhead.”
    “Yes, but why no request for Bolt to confirm that he’s taken the case?  In fact, why the warning not to contact him?  Actually, it’s all rather dodgy.”
    “All right.  So Bolt’s suspicious.”
    “Suspicious and perspicacious one.  But the money’s good so he goes to work.  Everything’s easy enough, clockwork.  He watches Dulac come and go from work, watches their boy come and go from school, stakes out Georgina for a fortnight, and discovers that she meets a man three times a week.  They always have lunch at the same restaurant then go to an hotel for exactly two hours.  He photographs them at both locations.  By three-thirty she’s back, a half an hour before her son arrives home from school.”
    “The child must be crucial for Bolt,” said Dushka.
    “Right,” said Germaine.
    “Poignantly reminding Bolt of his own ruined childhood?  Well, it is banal,” I muttered.

    I watched Germaine talking, Dushka listening.  They were both lovely women—but in such different ways!  One of the first physical revelations I had about Dushka was that her body, which appeared so compact in public, could in private stretch into a whole landscape.  Germaine, on the other hand, lacked any elasticity.  It was as though she were made of some indestructible form of porcelain.  When Dushka first introduced me to Germaine I wondered if this perfect, self-contained creature could ever have fallen in love. Vulnerability on her part seemed unthinkable. 
    If Germaine appears immune to being hurt by life, Dushka’s nerves lie just beneath her skin and sometimes outside of it.  When she plays, for instance, they turn into four strings. Germaine’s coolness emanates from a convincing carapace as if the woman were penetrated by a mask.  However, I did once see Germaine distrait.  At least I think I did.  The moment was mysterious and unforgettable.  It turned out to be a dangerous moment, sexy too.  Germaine and I have been edgy around each other ever since, though not, I think, for the same reason.
    It was a February day; a cold rain was falling.  I bumped into her on the street.  She looked harried and at first I thought she was simply wet and in a hurry.  She kept touching her face and at first I thought she must be anxious about her makeup. I stopped her.  “Germaine,” I said, “how are you?” and for a moment I could swear her eyes welled up.  I’m sure it wasn’t the rain.  She said “Fine,” but with a tremor in her voice.  Suddenly she touched me, a thing she had never done before and hasn’t since.  I always thought Germaine disdained human contact.  She’s not one to reach out, as Dushka does when she’s not being intermittently sad.  Perhaps Germaine believes that her touch is inflammatory, Midas-like.  Anyway, she put her hand on my forearm.  There was only the slightest pressure before she pushed off.  It wasn’t a squeeze, more like a bather letting go of the side of pool.  “Sorry.  I’ve got to rush,” she said, and did.  That touch was electrifying, especially the tiny rounded pressure.  For a second or two my head swam.  It didn’t occur to me I had done something unforgivable. 
    I rushed home to Dushka and begged her to play something for me.

    Germaine was pontificating.  “Detective stories are as much about innocence as guilt—more, actually, since in general there are at least half a dozen suspects and only one culprit.  In fiction the detective’s task is to restore order to the nursery, tidy up, sort things out.  Bolt’s job, however, is just the contrary.  It’s rare that he turns up innocence, rarer still that he leaves the scene in anything but turmoil and recrimination.”
    “This is a problem for Bolt?”
    Germaine shrugged.  “He likes Conrad, he identifies with Marlow, a man who cares about the proper stowing of ballast.”
    “So what happens?”
    Evidently Germaine had now finished as much of the story as she had told Dushka who eagerly asked, “Have you decided whether Bolt’s going to send his report to Dulac?”
    Germaine leaned her head against the high back of the chair’s wing and narrowed her blue eyes.
    “Bolt’s in perplexity.  He puts his report together, addresses the envelope, but he doesn’t send it. He begins to think.  He deduces.  Bolt has a good head on him but he seldom needs to use it.  Now he does.”
    Dushka was resting her chin on her knees and looked pensively and touchingly young.  “The heart never relents, does it?” she whispered.  It didn’t sound like one of her proverbs.  It upset me; I couldn’t say why.  After all, did I want the heart to relent?
    Germaine continued.  “Bolt turns over a notion he had entertained briefly at the outset, that his client might not be Edward Dulac.  Now he considers more carefully.  If the client isn’t the husband, then who is he?”
    Germaine paused, a piece of ironic dramatizing, started to put her hand on Dushka’s head, then drew it back.  “What do you think, Dushka?”
    “Several possibilities.  It could be somebody who’s envious of the Dulac marriage and wants to break it up, maybe a jealous woman who wants Dulac for herself?”  Her voice rose at the end of the sentence.  I knew that quirk of Dushka’s; it meant she was feeling insecure.
    Germaine dismissed this.  “I’m surprised at you, Dushka, thinking of a malicious woman.  Well, as it happens Bolt also considers that possibility.  He has enough misogyny to think the ploy is underhanded enough to be a woman’s.”
    It was I who spoke up for womankind.  “Why not a malicious man?  Some enemy of Dulac’s?”
    “Don’t you think such a man would simply confront Dulac with his information—or send him an anonymous letter?  No, this was a person who wanted Dulac confronted with incontrovertible proofs, someone seeking both certainty and shock value.”
    “But maybe it was Dulac,” I said rather foolishly.
    “Come now.  That would hardly do for my story.  Remember all those clues at the beginning?  Didn’t I say it would be banal yet morally complex?”  Germaine placed her palms on her Platonic thighs.  “Earlier you made a joke. Murder in a sealed room.”
    “So?”
    “It’s the archetypal situation of the novel of detection.  It isn’t the murder that matters but the sealed room.  The detective story is a closed form.  Good ones have red herrings but no loose ends. “
    “I see!” cried Dushka.
    I admitted I didn’t.
    “But how does Bolt figure it out, Germaine?  He can’t say it’s because he’s a detective in a story with certain conventions.”
    “It would make a change,” Germaine laughed.  “But no, you’re right, of course.  Bolt has to deduce the answer on the basis of the evidence.  You yourself hit on the critical clue when you said the child was crucial.”
    “Love can be so ruthless,” Dushka murmured.
    “Yes,” said Germaine frigidly, as if love were some phenomenon she had studied in a laboratory experiment.
    The women were way beyond me.  “I don’t get it,” I repeated grumpily.  “Who was the client, then?”
    “Think it through,” said condescending Professor Supermodel.  “The room has to be sealed and the child is the clue.”  She didn’t wait for me to think.  “Bolt, who of course has identified the lover, rings him up, insists on a meeting, says it’s important.  The lover refuses until Bolt suggests they lunch in the restaurant that is his rendezvous with Georgina Dulac.  They meet the following day.  Bolt orders a big meal and a shot of Laphroaig beforehand.  The lover’s nervous.  Bolt produces an envelope, takes out the snapshots and his report.  The lover glances at the pictures.  ‘You want money?’ he says.  ‘But I already have your money,’ says Bolt, ‘though not the second payment, which I’m forgoing.  You can pick up the tab for lunch, though.’  The lover looks so desperate that Bolt hesitates to tell him he intends to send his report to Georgina Dulac with a letter of explanation.”
    “A sympathetic bloke, your Bolt,” said Dushka.
    “Well, yes.  But he’s not sure where his sympathies lie,” corrected Germaine.  “He can’t admire the lover’s act but he respects the depth of his motive.  He’s not sure whether he ought to side with Dulac or even Georgina.”
    “And the lover?” I asked.
    Germaine delivered a non-sequitur that struck me as vicious.  “I’ve made him a musician.”
    Dushka gave a start.
    “So,” I said with the stupid feeling you get when catching on a minute too late, “the lover hired Bolt to spy on himself, to expose the affair.  Is that it?”
    “Of course.  What Bolt deduced was that the man loves Georgina and wants to marry her.  Why won’t she leave the dull accountant?  She can’t love him or she wouldn’t be in that hotel three afternoons a week; besides, she adores music, and met her lover at a recital.  So is it the financial security or is she afraid of losing her son?  Bolt would despise her if it were for the first reason, but, given his own childhood, he respects the second.  Yet he also feels something for Dulac, not only because he looks like the only innocent party in the triangle, but also because of his own wife’s infidelity.  On the other hand, Bolt can’t help wondering if Dulac may be unworthy of his sympathy.  He may have driven Georgina into the musician’s arms.  Seated in the restaurant Bolt goes over all this in his mind.  In fact, I plan to devote a quarter of the novel to Bolt’s ethical analysis.  To tell the truth, it’s what most interests me.  I’m going to call it Plane Geometry.”
    I no longer believed Germaine was incapable of the pain of love, but it was clear to me that, even if she succeeded in finishing it, her Euclidean novel would never be published.

    Dushka has not been the same since that afternoon with Germaine.  Love is ruthless. The heart is relentless.  The lover is a musician.  He met his beloved after a recital.
     I met Dushka at a reception after one of her recitals.  I knew we would be introduced because I was the sole sponsor of the entire series.  To tell the truth, I set the thing up in order to meet Dushka.  Love is indeed relentless.
    This was no longer the serious little girl who had played Sibelius.  Before me stood a woman, young and nubile, but also on the point of utter collapse, as highly strung as her violin.  The recital had gone badly.  Dushka dropped notes, twice lost her place, and even I could tell that she was playing without conviction.
    I talked her into letting me take her out for a bite.  We went to La Mousse, where I had already made a reservation.  I was witty, light-hearted; I made her laugh.  Later on, at my place, I outdid myself, thanks to Baudelaire.  I found verses for us:

        Nous aurons des lits pleins d’odeurs légères,
        Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux,
        Et d’étranges fleurs sur des étagères,
        Ecloses pour nous sous des cieux plus beaux.

There was even one for Germaine, in advance so to speak:

        Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
        Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour . . .

Dushka had her violin and wanted me to hear how well she could play, since I had heard her at her worst.  After midnight she told it all, opened up her heart.  How her parents said she was their ticket out of wretched Bucharest, how they had driven and exploited her, the rootlessness of the last ten years, her weariness, the overwhelming urge she felt to stop performing. 
    “I’m one of those prodigies who outlive their talent!”  She burst into tears.  We talked and talked.  The suffering she had seen in her travels haunted her, she said.  Life had lost its savor; the world was too cruel.  Feeling lordly, I ordained a sabbatical for her.  Her face lit up.  My money smoothed the way.  I sent a bundle of it to her parents and another to her manager.  She became for me the extravagantly loved giantess Baudelaire imagined :

        J’eusse aimé vivre auprès d’une jeune géante,
        Comme aux pieds d’une reine un chat voluptueux.

    Ever since that afternoon with the wicked Germaine, who will never pardon me for having seen her weep, Dushka has been practicing, four, five hours a day, as if she had been starving for the sound of her violin.  My heart ached to see how her fingertips bled at first, but now they are as hard as molars.  As for her playing, it is mature, profound, infused with her limitless compassion.  All this playing makes me sad, and not intermittently.  Dushka, though, is bright; she is always happy now.  It seems to me that her happiness is curled up in her like a snake ready to strike me.  She hasn’t told me but I’m sure she’s already phoned her manager.  Dr. Wu has inserted the final crown.  Perhaps the history teacher has been released.  Even Schubert’s death cannot help me.  Already I can feel the emptiness, the Abschied.  Every morning I wake up feeling betrayed as Dulac, forlorn as Georgina’s lover, forsaken as her child.  The heart is relentless.  Love may turn ruthless.  Closed forms are disconsolate.
 

 

 

Earth 

March 31, 2011

By: Rachel Cochran
Rachel Cochran is an undergraduate student of creative writing at the University of Evansville. Her work has previously been awarded the Virginia Grabill Award for short fiction and she has another piece soon to appear in the Mandala Journal.

After three months without rain, the clouds finally moved in over a scorched Coudersport.  Emmet Jurgen was left to do most of the work in preparation on his own, since Mister Fisher had left for Scranton days before, to visit his youngest daughter in the hospital there. The only help Emmet had all day was Joey, in the afternoon, when the school bus came by. It paused a moment, paint-chipped stop sign flagging out over the empty, dust-coated street. Joey clambered out, backpack swinging around his shoulder, and waved for the bus to go on; it did, kicking up three months’ worth of parched earth into the air as it rolled away. Joey coughed some dust from his mouth and trotted out towards the faded blue building, over which a sign dangled that read: Fisher’s Local Dirt.”
Emmet looked up at Joey, and then instantly back down. “Some tarp out back,” he said. “I need you to spread it all out, check for holes.”
“Yes, sir.” Joey stepped around the table which stood in for a counter, and lay down his school things. He left through the back door, which swung open after him. Emmet did not bother to close it.
Even indoors, the heat was oppressive. Emmet could feel sweat slipping down his back, and slicking up the palms of his hands as he grappled with the pen, scribbling out notes on order reports. There was plenty of work to be done, and Joey had never prepared for rain before. He finished the report he was on and threw down the pen, wiping his palms on his dusty work coveralls.
Outside, Joey was struggling to spread out the tarp, which the wind kept picking up at the edges. As he tugged at one corner, the breeze would catch the other, causing it to billow out, flapping away from him with a chorus of crinkles, punctuated now and then by sharp snapping noises. Emmet rushed over and grabbed the end out of Joey’s hands, spreading the tarp expertly out into the air and laying it down on the dirt. Joey reached forward to help, but then pulled back, hands fluttering ineffectually to his sides. Emmet looked over and saw this, then sighed.
“I got this. Why don’t you go inside and watch the desk? I’ll finish up getting ready.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
Never mind that, just get inside.”
Emmet thought that he heard Joey mutter another “Yes, sir,” as he did so. Emmet felt dust in his eyes, and let his head hang forward for a moment. He could see his hands, pressing the tarp out flat against the ground. They had the appearance of a much older man’s hands.
He made his way over the tarp, inspecting its construction thoroughly, looking for any patch that may let the rain through. There were no holes, but a few weak spots. They would have to double up the tarps over each bin, he decided, as he picked up the one he had inspected and walked it out across to the bins.
There were twelve bins, all lined up next to the road, so that passers-by could see the product they were looking to purchase, like any other store might line up displays in a bright front window. It was risky, Mister Fisher always said, to leave the dirt out like that—after all, any person could come along and take it through the night—but it was a risk he was willing to take.  If any of their products had ever been stolen, Emmet had never noticed it, and the only real setback to keeping the bins out against the road was the added necessity of protecting them against the elements. The torrid summer had left the rest of the town dry and gasping, but dry was the way Fisher’s liked it the best.
The bins were lined up by type. One—the largest one—contained chalky dirt, for landscaping purposes. Next to it, there was another, filled with gravel. Emmet had not had to bother with these bins all the summer long, since both were best when dry. The others—mostly peats and loams and clays—he had spent all the summer adding to as directed, stirring up to the best of his ability, loading up and driving out to farms in the area as was necessary. Many of these had to be shaded from the sun during the height of the summer days, and the tarps had been of good use then. But they were used much more casually when keeping out light than they would have to be now, keeping out water, which had the frustrating ability to seek out chinks and holes and slip through to the heart of things.
It was difficult to cast the tarp out over the bins on his own, but Emmet had done the task before, and seemed to be able to succeed at it each subsequent time by reminding himself of this.  He worked with the wind, allowing it to help him cast, as though a fisherman casting his line, or a sailor using the breeze to direct his sails. It settled wrong the first time, half folded-over, and he shook it up again, and the wind filled it, and it settled slowly back down, spread even. Emmet hooked it down at the corners with a coil of thin rope, securing around the edges with easy-release knots that would hold still against the weather.
By the time Emmet was done with this, his shirt under his coveralls was soaked through in patches with his own sweat. He wiped his forehead on his arm, which only served somehow to make both of them wetter. He turned back to seize up more tarp, to find Joey standing behind him, holding the telephone.
“Mister Huppert says he needs his order now, before it rains.”
“What?” The sun, peeking through two slate clouds, was in Emmet’s eyes. He squeezed his lids closer together, trying to filter out the light.
“Mister Huppert’s order; the one that’s half-loaded up from yesterday.”
“He’s not due for it until tomorrow.”
“He says he wants it unloaded at his place so it can settle during the rain.”
Emmet scowled, and spit out pieces of grit which had settled in his teeth during his work. “Dammit,” he said, and looked around. The clouds hung above, thick and gray and taunting. “Worst possible day.”
“You want to talk to him?” Joey held up the telephone. Emmet shook his head with a kind of sharpness that caused the boy to pull the phone back against his chest.
“Nah, just tell him that his order’ll be there soon as we can fill it up and drive it over.”
Joey nodded and relayed this to Huppert, on the other end of the line. Emmet dug for his keys in his pocket. They emerged with a muted jingle. Joey wrapped up the conversation with Huppert, then terminated the call.
“Do we close up?” he asked, turning towards Emmet.
“We can’t.” Emmet clutched his keys in his palm. “I’ll drive it out and unload.”
“On your own?”
“Does it look like we have another choice?”
Joey shrugged. “We could tell Huppert we can’t today.”
Emmet scoffed. “There aren’t enough people around here for us to be letting down one of our most consistent customers. He’s only twenty miles out. You cover the rest of these bins, all right? If someone comes up to the building, you tell ‘em wait until you’re done.”
“Yes, sir. Still want me to check the tarps for tears?”
Emmet had already started walking out toward the truck. “Just double up on all of ‘em,” he tossed back over his shoulder.
The pewter-colored clouds had obscured the sun from vision by the time Emmet pulled the truck around and got loading again. It was cooler, but more humid, than before. He took his shovel up into his hand and stood with one foot firmly in the bed of the truck, one perched at the edge of the loam bin, reaching his shovel deeper and deeper in and loading it out into the truck.  Huppert’s soil was a fine, dark loam, with a deep, rich sort of scent like warmed mud. Only feet away, Joey struggled at his own duties, the tarp continually catching wind and flapping out of his grasp, tying clumsy knots in order to secure it down. A half an hour passed in silence, each consumed by his own task, until Emmet had loaded up the truck as much as he could.
“I’m off,” he called out to Joey, and without waiting for an answer, hoisted himself into the truck cab. The engine gave a hard turn, a splutter, and then caught, purring away in a sickly sort of manner.
The breeze slipped into the cab through the windows and chilled Emmet’s sweat against him. The rain would bring with it an even greater reprieve from the searing August heat; he knew that much of Coudersport and the surrounding area would be grateful for it. Although one rain did not always signify the breaking of a drought, there were more dark clouds queued up in the sky over the county than Emmet could remember having seen there before, each one promising to unload a great burden onto the yellowed land.
By the time Emmet drove up, Wallace Huppert was standing out in front of his barn, waiting.  Rather than greet Emmet, he pointed to where the truck should pull in. Emmet followed this direction as best he could and then switched off the key in the ignition. The engine’s unsteady purr sputtered out to silence.
“I want it all out here.” Huppert spread his hands to indicate where he wanted the dirt unloaded. This was filler soil, which was made particularly moist and rich to help supplement areas which weren’t growing so well. It was what kept Fisher’s in business through the dry months, or in any mid-season—too many farms had too many patches where they had not given enough water often enough, and sun had burned all the usefulness out of the soil they had.
Emmet nodded and lifted himself up into the bed of the truck. He located the shovel, which had been covered by shifting soil during the drive, and gripped it tightly. One eye on the threatening sky, Emmet began to shovel the load out onto the ground.
“Took you a while getting here,” Huppert said. “You guys busy today?”
The earth was less compacted here in the back of the truck than it had been before.  The shoveling should be easier. Still, the muscles in Emmet’s arms burned, and he realized then that he had pushed himself too far in loading the rest of it up in such a rush. If he could just make it through this day, he told himself, this day would be the hardest day.
“A little busy.”
“Not so much in one place. Spread it out a bit.”
“Got plenty left.”
Huppert did not join in to help, only stood by and watched, and directed. Emmet began his task with precision, letting the dirt fall exactly where Huppert would indicate. But the sky grew dark and the clouds began to slowly roil around one another, and Emmet’s arms moved faster and faster, pitching the soil out in high arcs, letting it land where it would. Eventually, Huppert stopped trying to direct, and only watched as Emmet finished, near-frenzied, face overcome with an appearance of single-minded determination.
When Emmet had finished, he clambered down out of the truck. His arms struggled to keep from shaking, his breath coming in and out in closely-controlled exchanges of air. Huppert looked out over Emmet’s work.
“Doesn’t look like there was the full three yards in there.”
Emmet scowled. “The truck holds three yards. The truck was full.”
“Wasn’t quite full.” Huppert shrugged. “No need to get upset. I’m just saying next time get me my full three yards, alright?” Before Emmet could respond, Huppert reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet. He unfolded it and shelled through its contents, then pulled out a check, which had been folded several times over. He flipped it out towards Emmet between his index and middle fingers, and Emmet stepped over to him and accepted it, tucking it into the front pocket of his coveralls.
“And you tell Fisher, next time he come out with my order, too, so I can talk with him about how much is enough.”
“Yes, sir,” Emmet said.  He had already turned around, and was walking away. Huppert stood just where he was, before his house, all the way in the rearview mirror as Emmet coaxed the groaning truck down the road. By the time Huppert was out of sight, Emmet’s attention had turned once more, anxiously, to the sky.
The highway was nearly empty from Huppert’s place, up near the borough of Ulysses, all the way back to Fisher’s.  The road rolled below smoothly, soothingly, the tires only now and then catching on something which caused the truck to jostle. Construction crews had swept through the area in the early summer, repaving and flattening out the main roads. They had settled in with the intention of taking their time, relishing the task, enjoying extra paydays on the tax payers’ dimes; but the heat and the sun had been too much, and only promised to grow more unbearable. So the workers had thrown their backs into it, had finished up their work come mid-July, and moved on to work on less exposed projects.
Emmet’s fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly, as though it otherwise might fling away from him. Though the road on which he drove was a major highway, it soon became ridged on both sides with very close, tall trees—catalpas and silver maples, lindens and walnuts and hickories. The wall of foliage had lost its green luster due to the summer’s dryness, and now remained in a suspended sort of brown coloration, which gave the familiar route homeward the sense of being an entirely new pathway. The thick of trees eventually faded, and Emmet could see for at least a mile in the distance a large, similarly faded tree of heaven which marked the turn off the highway. Emmet neared it, slowed, and turned the wheel. Fisher’s was only a mile further on.
When he did return to Fisher’s store, it was to find a car pulled up in the spot where the truck should be. Emmet pulled the truck around in front of the parked car, which was small and cherry red. He turned off the engine, which gave a grateful sort of dying sputter, and left the truck and his shovel where they were.
Joey was on his own by the bins, still struggling to cover the last few. He stopped working once he saw Emmet approaching, and began to walk toward him; he spoke, but the wind had picked up and grown too loud, and he had to trot a few steps closer and start speaking again.
“They just got here a couple minutes ago. They don’t seem like they really want help or anything—I’m not sure what they’re doing here—”
“Are they in the store?”

Joey nodded. “I told them to wait, like you said.”
“You know who it is?”
“Not for sure. I think one’s a Wyland kid, though. Certainly acts like he’s got money.” Douglas Wyland owned the most successful farm machinery company in Northern Pennsylvania. Emmet turned to look at the little cherry car again, marveling that even the dust seemed hesitant to settle on it. “You want to take over here, I can see what they want?”
“No,” Emmet said. “You’re almost done here. Just remember, cover them all twice, double check the knots. Any real obvious holes and you get the extra tarp. You know where that is?”
“Yeah.”
“Great.  I’ll come out and help once I’ve taken care of these guys.”
The sky had gone momentarily calm as Emmet walked away from Joey, the clouds having ceased their building whorl. The air was so motionless in that moment that Emmet seemed the only movable part between earth and sky, the red of his shirt the only discernible color in a gray, muted landscape.
He recognized Donnie Wyland the instant he stepped back into the small blue building and let the back door flap shut again behind him. Donnie had only changed here and there, and by degrees. His cheekbones had become more prominent, his eyes more proud, and his body seemed to stretch to a much more impressive height.
The other man looked about Donnie’s age, and had on a new shirt with a pressed collar.  He turned from where he had been, facing Donnie, when he heard Emmet come in, and smiled a sort of leering smile.
“Hey,” he said. “You the guy in charge here?”
Donnie and Emmet looked at one another. Emmet wiped his hands, which were covered in grit, on his coveralls. After a spark of recognition, Donnie looked down at his feet, his own hands shoved into his pockets.
“Yes,” Emmet said, looking to Donnie’s friend. The man smirked, and waved a business card which he must have gotten off of Fisher’s desk.
“Maybe you can answer a question for me, then, Mister Fisher.”
“This isn’t Fisher, Jim,” Donnie said.  He looked up at Emmet again. “This is Emmet Jurgen. He and I went to high school together.”
“No way,” Jim smiled. He seemed to size Emmet up in one look, from his head to his shoes and back again, and then laughed a little to himself. Emmet stepped forward. “You two can’t be the same age.”
“Can I help you?”
“I was just curious,” said Jim. “See, Donnie was showing me around where he grew up, and we nearly passed this place by, which would have been a real shame, because I’ve never seen one of these before.” Donnie had turned away and was inspecting one of Fisher’s framed certificates on the wall.
“One of what, sir?” Emmet tasted some dirt on his tongue, which must have entered his mouth while he was shoveling.
“A place that actually sells dirt,” Jim said. He seemed almost gleeful, his lips curled in a wicked grin. Behind him, Emmet could see the fabric of Donnie Wyland’s shirt tauten and relax between his shoulder blades, as though he had made some kind of reflexive shrug of a gesture.  His hands were still firmly ground into his pockets, arms braced. Emmet looked from Jim to Donnie and back. “What do you, sell soil and stuff?  For farms?”
“Some of that. We keep enough here for filler stuff, for specific patches. They can order out through us during planting, from mass soil producers.” Donnie moved along the wall, from the one certificate now to a framed photo of Mister Fisher with Donnie’s own father, Doug Wyland. The two were shaking hands in front of Fisher’s store. “What we got here’s for landscaping, mainly.”
“And how long have you been in the dirt trade, Mister Jurgen?” Jim pronounced Emmet’s last name with a hard J sound, as if that was the only way he knew to say it. Emmet looked between Jim and Donnie once more. Donnie turned around. “Don? How long has Emmet here been in the business?”
“I don’t know,” Donnie said. He did not look into Emmet’s eyes. “Since we were sixteen or so, I guess.”
“How come you never worked here?”
“What?”
Jim had turned toward Donnie now, who was still looking at the photograph of Mister Fisher and his father. “I asked how come you never worked here. You said your dad invested in this place, right? I bet you know a lot about dirt, too, don’t you?”
“Emmet could see Donnie look over at him, a brief glance in the corner of his eye. “Not as much.”
“Not as much as what?” Jim also peered at Emmet, then back at Donnie once more. “As Emmet?” Emmet picked up a pen, gripped it, and then set it back down.
“Not as much as I’d need to know to work here.”
“I’m sure it’s all fascinating,” Jim said. “Think you can show us the place, Emmet?”
The dusty taste in Emmet’s mouth refused to leave him. He longed to spit it out. Jim wore canvas-top shoes, which matched his pressed shirt in color.
“Emmet?  D’you hear me?”
“We keep the soils in bins. Right out this way.”
Emmet led the way. Outside, it already smelled like rain. The air was thick and warm and heavy, and Joey was still struggling to cover what looked like the very last bin.
“You keep just a bunch of dirt back in those?” Jim asked.
“Not just dirt,” Emmet said. “There’s soils in some; different kinds of soils. Some good for different kinds of crops and gardens. We had to cover them up, on account of the rain.” As though Emmet’s word had beckoned it forth, he felt the first rain drop, hitting him in the temple and sliding slowly down the side of his face. It was fat and warm as the summer air. He walked faster, approaching the bins, to see if Joey needed help in covering up. There was a second drop, as he was walking, and then a third.
“Jim,” Donnie said. “It’s raining.”
Emmet looked quickly over his shoulder.  Donnie held his hand to his forehead, keeping the water from his eyes.  Jim was still smiling that single smile of his.
“In just a minute. I have to find out more about this fascinating dirt.”
“Sir,” Joey said. “I just got ‘em covered.”
“Go to the building.” Emmet looked over Joey’s work. The knot work was clearly rushed and sloppy. Joey stood by.
“What kind of dirt’s in here?” Jim said, bending down, craning his neck around, trying to see under the tarp.
“Sir, I didn’t get time to double all of them up,” Joey said.
“Go wait in the building, Joey,” Emmet said. “It’s raining.” The raindrops were picking up in frequency, and Emmet’s hair was starting to get wet.
“Yes, sir,” Joey said, and turned and ran towards the building. Emmet reached to retie one of the knots, pulling Joey’s sloppy knot through, holding the each ends of the rope firmly in his hands. The wind was picking up again, as though reminded by the rain that it was supposed to be blowing. The clouds again began to swirl.
“Come on, Jim,” said Donnie.
“These tarps’ll really hold against the storm?” Jim said, and he crouched a little, still trying to look in the bin at the dirt, with the harmless, cruel mischievousness of a child tapping at the glass to agitate the startled animal on the other side. He grabbed the corner of the tarp and tugged at the knot, pulling it through. The tarp came open, caught up by a sudden howl of wind, and blew over and away from the bin.
Emmet stood up straight, eyes gone wide. His own corner flapped away from him, too, and the wind peeled back the entire tarp from the bin, leaving all the soil exposed. It was one of the rich, dark loams, and it received the pouring rain, drinking it in eagerly. Jim and Donnie stood by, stock-still where they were.
It took a moment for Emmet to gather himself, and he walked with a deliberate pace through the falling water and around the side of the bin, and took hold of the tarp once more. It was hard work, to wrestle it back over, with the wind continually catching it, and the water already soaking through Emmet’s clothes and into his skin, and drenching the dark soil. After a few long minutes, Emmet secured the knots once again, fumbling the ends of rope a little in his soaked fingers. When he was done, Emmet stood back. The destructive power of the water was unparalleled; it had done far more damage than months of dryness had, than years of dryness ever could. Puddles of wet black mud gushed through the bottom of the bin and onto the red earth below, pooling like oil. Soil lost. Time lost. Emmet’s hands shook.
He had not noticed Donnie leave, but both men and their cherry red car were gone as Emmet turned back towards the store. This, he entered, and water ran down him onto the floor below. His forearms and elbows were covered in the ruined black loam; pieces of it clung to his coveralls, dappled him all over, and he was anointed in it.
Joey looked up.  “What happened, sir?”
“Go home,” Emmet said. Joey was silent. Emmet picked up the phone and thrust it at Joey across the counter, and his voice raised and he said again, “Go home.” Joey’s fingers shook as he dialed his mother’s number. Emmet sat at Fisher’s desk and felt the way the water trickled down him again and again, drip after drip, into Fisher’s seat as he endured one half of Joey’s conversation. The boy hung up the phone when he had finished, and then approached Emmet, his hesitance audible in his footsteps.
“She’s on her way,” he said. Emmet did not respond. “I’ll wait out under the overhang.”  The rain drummed against the roof. It echoed in the building, and in Emmet’s mind. Joey left, the door shutting heavily behind him. Minutes later, his mother’s truck drove up, and then drove Joey away. The rain fell and fell.
It was some time later—it may have been hours—that the door opened again. Emmet was dry by then, although still covered in dirt. He turned to the door, and saw Donnie Wyland standing in the frame, folding up an umbrella. The rain continued to fall behind him.
“Hey,” he said. Emmet made no reply. He tapped his umbrella against the ground. Droplets slipped out of it, like tiny veins emptying onto the floor. Donnie breathed, and Emmet could hear it all the way across the room.
“I’m sorry,” Donnie said. Emmet only lifted his head and let it drop, not quite a nod. “Jim goes to my school. He grew up in the city. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live in a place like this.”
Emmet looked at Donnie, then rose to his feet. Donnie seemed to shrink a little as he did so, or maybe he had always been that small. At least, he was not quite so tall as he had seemed before.
“You don’t, either,” Emmet said. His voice was lower, and sounded like he was talking over sandpaper. He walked to the counter. “You don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.” Donnie spoke softly. He tilted his umbrella against the wall, so that it stood there on its own, and then crossed to the counter, slipping his hand into his pocket. He pulled it out with a little piece of paper between his fingers. “For the damages.” He pressed it onto the counter. Emmet looked at it.
“I don’t want it.”
“It’s a check.”
“I know what it is. I don’t want it.”
“But the soil was damaged, wasn’t it? I don’t want Mister Fisher blaming you—”
“He’ll think what he wants to think,” said Emmet. “I won’t take your money.”
Donnie looked at Emmet across the counter. There was only a foot or so between them, but it felt miles more than that. Donnie put the paper back into his pocket, and nodded his head forward. He turned and left, picking his umbrella up as he went. From inside, Emmet could hear the little cherry red car purr as she started up, and then hum all the way down the road, away from him again. But behind that, even louder, he could still hear the rain, and the sudden crash of thunder far away.
Emmet locked up and turned out all the lights. He left the building, walking out over the earth—the parched yellow grass and cracked russet dirt which struggled to drink in everything which the sky dropped upon it. The rain felt perfect on him, now, cool and pure. It slipped into the wrinkles of his skin, the cracks in the calluses of his hands, through the earthen coating all over his body, and began to trickle away the dirt which had settled into all of these spaces. He clutched his keys in his pocket, but did not so much as pause by his truck. Instead, he walked off, heedless of the rain, under the crackling sky and into the sweeping wind, towards home.
 

 

Tatabani

April 11, 2011

By: Robert Wexelblatt
Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies.  He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play; his recent novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction. This is his second work of fiction to appear in Splash of Red.

1. Last Saturday Afternoon at the Circus



          

     What Jeremy discovered I recollected. He permitted me to hold his hand tightly, a physical reassurance that signified different things to each of us. We walked slowly, taking in the freaks and grotesques, the games and barkers, the painted scrims of preposterously exotic landscapes, heading for the Big Top. I trembled before it and Jeremy, feeling this, beamed up at me. He must have thought I shared his little boy’s excitement even though I was big and capable of protecting him from all the perils of the place, caged and uncaged, ravenous big cats, the shouldering crowd, the sudden clowns whose demi-humanity delights and haunts. I thoroughly understood what Jeremy was feeling; it was my own emotions that perplexed me, intellect overcome by a sensorium wild with remembrance.

          
     It had been three decades since I had come near a circus and I would have avoided this one. But my longing for a small place in the world of ordinary happiness and misery had led me to a divorced woman whose son begged to be taken there. He yearned to see the archetypes, Miles Gloriosus in the form of a mustachioed and booted ringmaster, Europa as a nymph borne on a stallion’s broad back, pachyderms like heavy dreams from an African subconscious, and, not least, those Perseids on the flying trapeze. I went not just because Jeremy is a terrific little boy but because his mother, who could have no notion of what it might cost me, promised with wise but unknowing eyes that this would be another step down the path we had both resolved to walk. She placed her hand on mine with such tenderness that, were I the most paralytic acrophobic, I’d have shut my eyes and clambered up Mont Blanc.

          
     The smells came first, like a boxer’s inside jabs, ammoniac whiff of animal piss and reek of wet sawdust, odors of popcorn and damp canvas, attar of cotton candy and spilled cola, the milky scent of children delighted and terrified. So there I was, trapped by my own need. I didn’t want to see it all again, but I was overwhelmed by familiarity, the melancholy of barber shops and dentists’ offices. At any age we can be thrown back to our first cavity or haircut, remember violations to which those we trusted insisted we submit. Even when it is unpleasant the familiar is accompanied by a sort of bittersweet nostalgia for an earlier self, all the life that has expired behind us. There’s a grim pleasure in the illusion of recapturing what was never captured but ran thoughtlessly between our soiled childish fingers.

          
     In a light that was at once natural and theatrical we took our seats beneath the tent, placed our bums on the benches where neck-craning rubes would hold their breaths and gape into the hot, ethereal heaven of the magic space, marveling at the perfect bodies of the aerialists whose equipment now hung plumb and lifeless.
     Would they dare the triple somersault? Would they use a net?

2. All Names Are Stories



          

     Our name begins with a once-upon-a-time and, just like a fairy tale, with a poor orphan, a boy no older than Jeremy. It could be that over the generations the family’s founding legend was sculpted from the first by its hero-poet, but what does that matter? Poetry beats history, especially when there are no documents or witnesses to proclaim Helen’s plainness or that Alexander was conceived in the usual fashion.

          
     There he found himself, the story tells, an orphan sleeping in the open, stealing food, dirty, suspect. The apathy of the whole nineteenth century, heavy with inbred Hapsburg indifference, weighed on him whose life could slip away in one cold night, because of a broken leg or one too many missed meals. In the very muck he slept. This was not merely one of the ringing sentences of the story but its opening medias res. In the very muck he slept not only got things going from the bottom up but explained the family coat-of-arms devised later by the orphan himself, commissioned from a draftsman in Linz. In his glory he would not forget the muck which, just because he had slept in it, he couldn’t despise and didn’t want to forget—only to transcend. Thus he made up the family motto in so-so Latin: De Stercus Supra Turba. Those words appear on a scarlet shield from which, at reverse angles, extend two of those little tables between and above which, with outstretched arms and ramrod legs, flies a mesomorph in jet and azure. And the orphan, whose real name and origin are still buried in some Hungarian forest, resolved to surmount the rotting leaves in which he left them and to do it on a trapeze.

          
     Chancing on a third-rate traveling show he talked his way in, beginning by doing the mucking out, this being what he was obviously fittest for, but soon, with wit, charm, and talents, getting adopted by fat ladies and knife-throwers. Yet it was the mediocre trapezist and his little daughter who drew him until he offered himself to be made by the two of them, apprentice and lover. How cleverly he must have counted out the gaps he could fill, walking by their wagon certain that his feet were not intended for the mud.

          
     Years later he took his new name from the town of Tatabanya where his luck had changed, sticking on that “i” to make it sound Italian which would be beneficial for trade. And so, above the brave shield and pompous Latin, he had the Linzer engraver inscribe in full Gothic script the dynastic name of Tatabani.          
     The orphan’s ambition engendered three generations of Tatabanis, each outstripping the last, rising higher in the craft and in the world, each more adept at showmanship and art, more daring in their costumes and stunts. There were always enough to make up a troupe. The nerveless, phobic, disaffected, and earthbound, the spastic, obese, and the rebellious could easily be replaced by the new generation, for the Tatabani were a prolific lot who always married within the profession.

          
     The motto inspired a tradition, a vocation, a way of being above the world, so to speak. The Tatabanis were to be clean, airy creatures with perfectly proportioned, perfectly disciplined bodies. We were to become so famous that our peerlessness could be taken for granted. We would be well paid, would insist on our due, but the money would always be secondary to the profession. And so it was for four decades, on two continents. A good story with a soundtrack full of trills, flourishes, hushes, crescendos, a saga outside history, supra turba.

3. Grounded



          

     After I was born, my oldest sister, Cecilia, took my mother’s place in the act. The physical toll of bearing four children—I was occasionally reminded that I had given her particular trouble—forced a retirement to which Mother was never reconciled. My earliest memory is of her rolling my pram into the tent when no one was around. She would sneak up for a few solitary swings, hanging upside down by her knees, all the while crooning to me old songs like, “I’d Like To Get You On A Slow Boat To China,” “Auprès de Ma Blonde,” or “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime.”  
     
      
     Cecilia developed early; she was quite good and a knockout in tights. All her slouching against poles and walls, the adolescent clumsiness of her extravagantly bored gait, vanished as soon as she got up there. My brother Arno, the oldest of us, was a solid catcher, but he had no talent for anything else; even as a catcher he lacked style. Arno couldn’t spin; even switching bars was too much for him. On the ground he was a block, squared-off and immovable, but even in the air he moved as stiffly as a derrick. Though his inflexibility was disappointing, in a catcher it was reassuring. It was in my sister Leda, however, that the genes of the Tatabanis and all their strategic intermarriages precipitated a sublime and precocious mastery. Leda was more than a natural; she was a Wunderkind utterly at ease sixty feet above the ground. By the age of nine she had learned everything Father could teach her and, given his pre-eminence, this was just about all there was.  
     
      
     “It never takes the child more than two tries,” I overheard him whisper wonderingly to Mother. It frightened me that he should be in awe of Leda, for he was so big, our authority on everything, and my sister was so petite. “Her timing!” he exclaimed, “and the somersaults—my God, I’ve never seen any so tight.”
     It would have been surprising had he treated Leda as anything less than a fledgling phoenix. The rest of us might have resented it more than we did were Leda not sweet-tempered and, within limits, humble. Cecilia could become jealous and sulk, it’s true. A couple of times I heard her refer to Leda acerbically as, “Dad’s perfect little sunbeam”; nevertheless, Cecilia too loved to pet Leda. As for Arno, he kidded with her, throwing his muscular arm around her when he told her jokes, as if to protect her from his bad taste. I liked seeing the two of them together, Arno the immovable hunk of muscle, Leda little and lithe. In general, everyone joined in the adoration of Leda except for me but only because I was still too young. I merely loved her because she was my sister, no more and no less.

          
     By the time she was eleven Leda was the star of the act, the darling of the crowd as well as the Tatabanis. As anyone could have predicted, success began to go to her head, though it did not make her vain. Without losing any of her douceur, Leda began to plead with Father to let her do new tricks. Even I could sense her frustration, the feeling that she was capable of more than what was asked of her. She demanded more twists, to catch a free bar with her legs rather than her hands. My sister yearned to exceed all limits.

          
     All trapezists have odd ways of moving on the ground; most tend to walk on the balls of their feet with legs apart, as if in a perpetual state of aspiration. Leda bounced like a thrush. In my eyes she was a creature of the air, as much bird as girl, as though for her gravity were optional. When she held me, which she did fairly often, she’d whisper about the joy of the little tables and the bliss of weightless flight that lay between them. “Look up there,” she’d say, pointing, and I would stare at the sky, the ceiling, the bellying canvas. Leda made me eager to begin my own training.

          
     How do we know our limits except in the attempt to exceed them? How do we know the unattainable from the as-yet-unattained? The quadruple somersault, unheard-of salto mortale, was Leda’s goal, the form of her vainglory, the quad without a net. She made no secret of it. In fact, she pulled it off in a training session at summer quarters, did it without even telling Father and Arno what she intended. One, two, three—four! Of course Arno failed to catch her; the timing was different from the double he’d been expecting. Leda fell, or wafted, down into the net with a triumphant squeal. “Did you see!” she yelled up at them, already bouncing, then executed a celebratory double flip.

          
     No one was happy about it; but Leda knew everybody’s weak points, Father’s pride, Mother’s nostalgia, Arno’s indifference, Cecilia’s resentment. She worked them one by one with the doggedness of her gifts. She meant to do it, the netless quad, and do it before cameras, in front of invited dignitaries, supra turba. It would be a Tatabani apotheosis, the culmination of the orphan’s dream, consummation of our dynasty’s destiny, pure apogee. She knew how to get her way. She planted rumors sure to reach the ears of the circus management. Cecilia moped, Arno began staying out at night, Mother and Father talked things over and over in the voices of feckless diplomats. As for Leda herself, she had only the one string on which to harp, and did it continuously. I sensed that the weather of the family had changed; a child is sensitive to such things. The summer air grew thicker and anxiety diffused through our yellow bungalow.

          
     What was the turning point? I think it was when Father, over Sunday dinner, attempted to lay down the law to Leda and sounded instead as if he were pleading with her. “The quad, very well. But you have to use the net.”

          
     That was the summer I began the first stage of my training. In the August mornings, on a low trapeze with a black net stretched tightly over the parched earth, I learned the elements that expand, tangle and combine to constitute the trapezists’ craft. Arno and my sisters stood about and watched Father show me how to swing, hang by my legs, pull myself up. I advanced fairly quickly and in two weeks could leave one bar for another. Everyone applauded and Mother sat on a special chair, smiling wistfully up at me. I was as proud as young Theseus when he shifted the boulder. I didn’t realize that the little audience and its clapping were as much a part of my training as swinging and grabbing. I only knew that I had proved myself a true Tatabani and that, even if I was not yet above the crowd, I was at least de stercus puerilis.

          
     As I finished up one morning session, Leda surprised me by giving me a kiss and entreating Mother to let me watch her in the afternoon at the gymnasium we used for serious practice.

          
     “But his nap,” Mother objected.

          
     “Oh,” pouted Leda. “Today’s special. Anyway, he’s too old for naps.”

          
     “Please,” I begged, agreeing that I was indeed far too old for napping, though I liked falling asleep all alone in the shaded room I shared with Arno to the soothing hum of the fan. 

          
     “Let him,” Arno chimed in bluffly.

          
     Cecilia alone turned away. Nothing to do with her. She herself would not be there.

          
     Father gave in and so I got to see Leda fly and tumble, whirling high, caught by Arno’s powerful hands in the spectacular moment when all the forces held her still in the air. I cheered and cheered.

          
     Unlike tightrope-walking or lyric poetry, the trapezist’s art is a social one, ensemble playing. All the best troupes are families because the bond among aerialists must go deeper than mere collegiality, must be, so to speak, cellular. Curiously, a troupe need not be affectionate with one another, need not even like one another; what is required isn’t affection but trustworthiness and absolute predictability. Individual professionalism is necessary but not sufficient. In this art, individual virtuosity is rare and always dangerous. This, I realized much later, must have been what made everyone so ill-at-ease around my sister, tainting pride and marring gladness. 

          
     The art of the trapeze is not a thoughtful one. Thinking must be restricted to when to shove off, let go, tuck, extend, twist, release. Motions in the air must be practiced to the point where they are reflexive, never reflective. Like damp palms and idiosyncrasy, deliberation is an aerialist’s enemy. Leda’s determination, the way she had of thinking things through, her manipulations, ambition, her curiously unhealthy devotion to the family itself—which was almost a wish to bring it to an end, to be the last of the line—all this must have been sensed in one degree or another by my elders. Cecilia came closest to speaking, I think, with a deeper slouch and turn of mouth, yet even she was restrained by the professional superstition forbidding any hint of foreboding. Who could resist Leda, our genius, the Tatabani prodigy? Genius may think profoundly but it has little choice of what to think, nor much power over its fate. Genius never gets to drift; it has to drive. In the end Leda had her way.

          
     The next month the circus gathered itself together like a metropolis scattered among a score of caravans and progressed north to the great cities, the waiting crowds. Word of what the Tatabanis were to attempt, non plus ultra supra turba, preceded us, thanks to the thoroughgoing work of the circus’s publicists. Still, Father would not be persuaded to give up the net.

          
    Though a child’s memory is about as reliable as a used Fiat, I still recall how the ringmaster hushed the crowd and said little, knowing there was no need to hype what was about to happen. Mother had been invited, or ordered, to share the owner’s special booth so I sat in an entrance ramp next to the Strongman Urgu. The bench trembled beneath me; Urgu was anxious. But I had seen Leda do the trick plenty of times and in my childish way tried to comfort him. The Tatabanis rose to the heights, did the customary tricks, then stood still on the platforms and waited. The drums rolled to a crescendo, then suddenly ceased; there was a collective intake of breath—a tribute to the unprecedented. Leda, so small, so high, was everybody’s daughter or sister at that moment, our terrestrial representative, a sylphic astronaut about to plant her little foot on a new planet. Arno and my father started to swing. Father grabbed Leda by the legs and off they went in the hush.  One, two, three…four!

          
     The crowd, drowning out the drums and trumpets, exploded with relief and joy. Arno deposited Leda on the little table and she raised her arm, turning her wrist in the universal trapezist’s gesture of self-declaration, the proud and graceful salute. 

          
     We celebrated at supper; it was a triumph to everyone but Leda.

          
     “Something was missing,” she said peevishly, pouting.

          
     There was silence; it was as silent as when the drums had stopped.

          
     “No!” thundered Father, but there was a tightness, a kind of desperation, in his voice.

          
     For years I was unable to fathom how they could have given in to her, why Father had capitulated. What I felt about it was complicated; there was horror and resentment, but likewise awe. Also, it terrified me to think that protectors could fail to protect.

     With events that alter the fate of dynasties, there are just two alternatives. One can speak of them perpetually, reliving them, analyzing, anatomizing and dwelling upon them, stuck in the muck of the past, or the subject can be set beyond the pale of discussion as if not talking about it conferred the dignity of going on like a noble Stoic. Provinces demolished by earthquakes, countries crushed by wars, people crippled by accidents are all in this condition. Some persevere; others do not. The Tatbanis chose silence; this had everything to do with going on, even without direction, nothing to do with forgetfulness or denial. Each constructed his or her own private memorial but our calendars were alike, marked by the same catastrophic before-and-after.

          
     Why did Leda fall? I watched it with my own eyes and I can’t say. Were her knees not tucked tightly enough, did Arno miss his catch, Father release her an instant too soon or too late? The possibilities are limited, unless one considers the question spiritually, in which case there is no end to them. Father and Arno may have spoken about what happened at some time, two veterans in a bar picking the nits of their defeat, reckoning the physics; but I doubt it. Cecilia and Mother never reproached the men and perhaps didn’t blame them. I don’t know. I only wanted to be comforted. I was in the muck.

4. Half Life



        
          

    The memorial service drew hundreds to the local cathedral; it was poetic but hard to bear. Somebody spoke of Icarus and Phaeton. We buried her in the town we lived in out of season; there was only the family, us Tatabanis, and this felt even worse than the memorial service. I remember the high weeds in the cemetery, desiccated by the relentless sun, hideous palm trees and the whir of traffic beyond a brick wall. Cecilia, who suffers from allergies, couldn’t stop sneezing. Arno stood by the little grave like a cube of granite, more untouchable than a gravestone. Once she got started Mother wept flamboyantly. She squeezed me so tightly I squirmed with pain and survivor guilt. Father stooped and placed his two hands on the white coffin, then Arno did the same, as if to catch what he hadn’t caught when it counted.

          
     After that we moved to a northern suburb because a sympathetic friend of the circus owner offered Father a job working for his railroad. When I heard about the job I was excited. I pictured my father driving a great diesel engine that pulled cars piled with coal and iron, or still better, hitching up to the circus train where my old friends would be thrilled to see me, would pull me onto their laps and hang me upside down and say, “Look at that! The boy’s a real Tatabani.” I imagined myself riding up front with my father, both of us in striped caps. He would let me pull the cord to make the whistle wail as we chugged by Mother, Arno, and Cecilia, who would wave to us. I see now how much of this fantasy was owing to my desperate need to hold things together. Cecilia and Arno had no similar illusions or thrilling prospects. My sister’s moping deepened to morose silences punctuated by unpleasant, dismissive noises. For his part, my brother’s stolidity turned into restlessness. It was a hard time for us all, so much changing at once and everybody always thinking of the cause. I knew enough not to ask to go on with my training, but I too felt cut off, deprived of something that was my due. I really was a Tatabani. Like Leda, I too had studied the family crest.

          
     Father’s turned out to be a desk job, keeping tabs on maintenance schedules, track repairs, that sort of thing. It wasn’t about moving at all but keeping things the same so that other people could move. Our new house was larger than the old yellow bungalow, far more spacious than the hotel rooms and railroad cars in which we had previously resided, but we were ill-at-ease. Mother exclaimed over the size of the kitchen as if it frightened her. We had been more comfortable in the railroad cars and hotel rooms as they are the Tatabanis’ natural habitat. Now we all had our own bedrooms, with doors. This, at least, pleased Cecilia who was becoming ever more secretive. Arno was often away from home and he never told me jokes as he had to Leda. Once, I thought I knew what everyone was thinking but now their doors were shut against me. I was lonesome in my room with its little bed and the chest of drawers that smelled of raw wood. At night I often thought of Leda in the ground beneath the tares and ugly palms.

          
     Father went to work every morning and never complained, but anyone could see how much he hated it. The great discipline that had once been a joy to him, like a rib cage cradling a joyous heart, was gone and left only iron doggedness. His eyes looked different. Arno and Cecilia were enrolled in the local high school, Arno as a senior, Cecilia as a sophomore. I was placed in the second grade at the Buell Elementary School, though I was moved to the third after a few weeks. Our irregular educations on the road, conducted by Mother, the clever wife of the lion-tamer, and two pensive clowns who had been through college, turned out to have been comparatively advanced, though so eccentric that I felt set apart all the more from the other children. Mother stayed home and fussed about the house which gave the sadness that had begun even before Leda’s fall plenty of time to hollow her out. Still, she gave in reluctantly to Father’s suggestion that she take a part-time job at the supermarket.

          
     Routine soon settled over us like a net, holding us down, though each in his or her way yearned to rise.  We were Tatabanis in exile, refugees from mastery. The ordinariness of it was stifling and terrible, all earth and no air, only half a life.

5. Out Of Uniform



          

     It would be startling were a zoologist to declare the wombat a better creature than the sea urchin or the guacharo. Judgments like that are out of date and anti-scientific. That is, it is part of their arrogance that scientists make no judgments of value. So it is anything but a scientific evaluation of evolution’s crackling inventiveness to say that ostriches, emus, kiwis, and the extinct dodo seem to me pathetic, ludicrous beasts. The flightless bird—one might just as well speak of the swimless fish or the smooth-skinned porcupine. Yes, of course, they adapted to fill a niche, just like the barnacle and the giraffe. But I insist on the difference, for in their adjustment, this misconceived attempt to fit in, they surrendered something essential to their nature and what sort of adaptation is that? Thus too, the Tatabanis.

          
     In theory, if any of us should have taken to the new life, it ought to have been yours truly. I was the youngest; I had undergone only the rudiments of training; I had never risen supra turba except in my childish imaginings. Who was I not to adapt? Cecilia was another candidate. She seemed on the verge of assuming the part of a standard-issue teenage bombshell, bored by being exceptional, indifferent to her forlorn vocation. A room of her own and a train of high-school boys might have struck her as paradise found. Even Mother, banned from her cherished heights, was a candidate for happy conformity. She had a home to make, all these people to take care of, the prospect of a garden, maybe even a women’s club. I won’t mention Father. No one could reasonably expect him, the bearer of the family name, tender, so to speak, of the Tatabani flame, teacher of us all, to be content with a backyard and a station wagon, with rakes and barbecues, with the drudgery of his pointless successes. No, of us all it was Arno who, not having caught the tumbling Leda, with that shrieking moment to forget, planted his big feet firmly on the new ground, though in the first month it didn’t seem likely.

          
     Arno’s one year of high school was dramatic, jammed with incident leading to anagnorisis and peripeteia. I suppose a big, strong, quiet new boy is bound to be challenged in a hothouse full of young bucks. There were fights, each of which Arno won a bit too thoroughly. During the first week of October he was suspended. Cecilia had to bring home his assignments for him; she did so resenting him and the school both. But then things changed with Arno. He bought new clothes that matched the ones on the boys he’d bloodied; the football coach got wind of him, then the gymnastics coach too. Arno joined both teams. His status shot up as did his grades; for Arno, though not blindingly brilliant, was a plugger. He joined the Drama Club and ran for Class Treasurer. To Cecilia’s disgust, more girls were telephoning him than boys were her. He got a well-paying job at the football coach’s brother’s hardware store and scored well on his College Boards. By January offers of athletic scholarships began to gush through the mailbox and coaches telephoned almost as often as girls. With Arno at defensive end the team shut out three quarters of its opponents that year, Arno’s annus mirabilis. The gymnastics team won the state championship.

          
     I could see that Cecilia was inconsolable, though she never openly grieved or whined. It was much worse than that. Gorgeous as she was, she used her pink tongue to lash the boys who approached her, fell afoul of the female cliques, joined nothing, hung out with no one. Her asperity grew so sharp that I thought twice before venturing to ask her for the ketchup.

          
     “What’s the matter with Cecilia?” I asked Mother.

          
     “Your sister just can’t forgive anybody for anything.”

          
     Cecilia took to books and music but about her schoolwork she was indifferent, content with B’s and C’s though she was the smartest of us all. She favored Romantic composers and Russian novelists. She went for heft, wallowing in their exaltation and still more in their abasement.

          
     In her junior year she became pregnant and we found out the father was her English teacher when they ran away together down south, south towards Leda’s little grave under the weeds and the palms.

          
     That was when Mother’s madness finally reared up like a scared stallion. It had been there all along, like a brewing fever, a smoldering fire. One day I came home from school and found her swinging from the chandelier in the dining room, her feet in the air, and she looked at me, upside down, and said, “Arno, catch me!”

6. Renounced Heaven, Unclaimed Earth



           

     Surprising what particulars of experience, smells and textures and sounds, can endure for decades, as if now and then one of those electrical switches or chemical leaps or neural connections should be made of something non-degradable. You have to wonder what such persistence means because that’s how people are made, but I think the meanings are more or less beside the point; or they come later, like biblical commentaries. 

          
     I have one such memory from my ninth year when I was allowed to walk to school on my own. It was a solitary walk; for a variety of reasons I had trouble keeping friends.  I tended to use them up.

          
     It was a late September day with weather to which my organism was perfectly adapted, deep blue sky, brisk dry air, enough of a breeze to waft around the aromas of good things. I felt like a prisoner marching confidently from his holding cell into the courtroom. Freedom and splendid weather are closely connected; we call muggy air oppressive, and so it is. That pellucid morning saturated by fragrant earth and fallen leaves is still vivid to me. It was then I became fascinated by the trash collectors.

         
     This was in the time before local governments acquired those Zamboni-like street sweeping machines. That day the local DPW men had been ordered to clear the gutters. There they were pushing their brooms down the streets under that glorious September sun. I can’t remember that I stopped to watch them but I recall their soft voices, warm with intimacy, nothing like the harsh racket of circus crowds and third-graders at play. And I remember that I longed to join them, to be a member of their troupe.

          
     Recollecting that instant now, I can indulge in exegesis. It is nearly an allegory. If swinging from the trapeze is spiritual elevation, then sweeping the street is downright reality. The one is airy and clean, the other material and dirty. The trapeze exalts and purifies; the broom soils and debases. That would be the orthodox dualism, at least.

          
     Imagine a secret brotherhood of trash men, a guild akin to the old masons’ except that these men are even freer because their work is despised yet essential. Women would seek them out not to be degraded but, on the contrary, to feel superior. Their elders would all be sages, toughened by the hardness of frozen lids in winter and the reek of summer’s slosh, knowing the secrets of those who never notice them, familiar with everything wantonly tossed away, from cheap necklaces to discarded infants. This sort of wisdom attracts me even now just because it is antithetical, of the muck. But still more it is the idea of the trash men’s fraternity that pleases me because it is a kind trapezists lack. Why? Simply because there are not enough trapeze artists, because they work in families and are so exclusive. The heights where they fly are solitary, tragically vertical and never comically horizontal, ancestral yet as good as solitary. With my universal guild of trash men it would be just the other way around.

          
     Anyway, for a moment I yearned more than anything to be able to stay outside and push leaves down gutters listening to the sound of warm, companionable voices, voices up from the south of yellow bungalows. But I knew I didn’t belong, that I had to go to school and was doomed to a lonesome indoor life, a life neither here nor there, between sky and muck. And so it has been for me, through school, college, and a career not much different from my father’s, a life of walls and ceilings haunted by a renounced heaven and an unclaimed earth, lacking the pathos of the big top and the fellowship of the muck.

7. What Is Precarious



          

     When I took up with his mother I steeled myself against Jeremy, expecting resentment, even hostility. This was, you could say, a disincentive for the whole enterprise. Even though Jeremy’s father wasn’t dead and I wasn’t his uncle, such is the persuasiveness of clichés. I imagine every man in my position behaves a little like Claudius and assumes that Jeremys must cast themselves in the role of the Danish prince. If we intend to woo the mother we have to woo the son as well, but this presupposes that the mother has already been successfully wooed when part of what is meant by success with the mother is success with the son. I am a past master at making up troubles; that is to say, I’ve always found excellent reasons for being alone. But Jeremy was in fact accepting from the first, voluble too. Five minutes after we were introduced in his mother’s small, clean living room he had me on the couch telling me every single thing he’d done that day, from breakfast on. It didn’t seem to be a test, though perhaps that’s just what it was. But he was so charming I didn’t need to feign interest. The boy also had no hesitation in talking about his remarried father and this seemed to please his mother. For her, she confessed later, it was a relief.

          
     “It’s like sharing a weight,” she said, “his having you to talk to.”

          
     Even she saw me as a replacement. This took getting used to, but I worked at it. To give a heart is to take one. A place in life is not given gratis and too much solitude can disqualify you from social life, no matter how you may long to join the paired-off world. I had learned how readily unhappy people overestimate the happiness of others, which is a kind of bitter optimism. I knew how sadness can undermine the objectivity of adults yet sharpen that of children like Jeremy. Still, with my Tatabani tastes, implanted once and for all by that founding orphan, I believed the best approach to unhappiness is that of the fairy tale where misery is the price of joy, where only the unhappy truly deserve to be happy and rise, supra turba, to the blissful heights. The paramount question was, could I get the hang of it?

          
     “How do all those clowns get into that tiny car?” Jeremy wanted to know.

          
     It’s sheer pedantry always to be telling children the truth. “They shrink,” I said. “Clowns can get very small if they really want to.”

          
     He believed me and also he didn’t.

          
     We saw amazing Malaysian acrobats and a bareback rider named Mademoiselle Étoile, light as a soufflé. The lion and tiger act impressed Jeremy and, though it displeased me to see such power humbled, at least they roared and bared their teeth. The costumes hadn’t changed much, I noticed; they were perhaps more revealing but the old conventions still ruled. People may say they go to the circus to see new things but what they want is only variations on the old ones.

          
     I couldn’t relax and Jeremy sensed my anxiety.

          
     “What’s up with you?” he asked suddenly, as if he were an old habitué on the next barstool.         
     “Nothing,” I said, finishing off the role-reversal. “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

          
     He nodded and his face lit up. I was glad he didn’t want to fix the pronoun but let it float.

          
     I wondered if Jeremy was so agreeable because he coveted me for himself or for his mother. There was a touch of the matchmaker about him but that may just be one of the obligations of his position in life. If you’re not going to say no you might as well say yes.

          
     As always, the show ended with the trapeze artists. They came into the ring to a march that sent me back. I recognized the muscular, awkward gaits; and, despite the sight of the black net being stretched ten feet above the dirt, I broke into a sweat.

          
     They climbed up to the paltry platforms, two men, two women. To be in suspense is to hover, to hang. The higher they ascended, the quieter the crowd grew. The expectation swelled, tense as the wires that kept the silver poles straight by tugging them in different directions.  

          
     Down there, right in the middle of the crowd, nervous as any rube, I conceded what Jeremy already knew. The most precarious thing in the world is stability.

   

 

The First Taste

July 22, 2011

Amanda Muir has previously published both fiction and non-fiction in the Gila River Review. She lives in the desert and, when not writing, enjoys spicy Thai food, riding her bike and taking gratuitious advantage of free admission nights at the local art museum.

     Besotted. The feel of the word on her tongue conveyed her situation better than any Romantic sonnet. Considering their relationship, Abby could pinpoint the exact moment she became ensnared. Months ago, he had her at “Fever 103,” when Ross tilted his head and smiled at Sylvia Plath’s “pure, acetylene virgin.” It progressed from there in a ritual of shared poetry, trading Forough Farrokhzad for Ai, Galway Kinnell for Kabir.

     “What’s Persian for sin?”
     “Gonah.”

     In class, he would meet her eyes only briefly, as she read excerpts of The Great Gatsby, one finger twirling the chain around her neck. Once or twice they nearly collided in the hall, but never touched. He would come to her only at the close of the day, when she was certain to be alone, his tone ironic and his cheeks flushed.

     That December it failed to snow. Yet the temperature continued to descend and roads became slick with ice, tree limbs creaking under the weight of it. Even the holly berries outside her door became trapped in frozen cocoons. The cat spent days curled close to the radiator atop socks and a lone knit mitten. If it weren’t for Ross, Abby would have remained indoors indefinitely – a seasonal hermit surviving on coffee, Ritz crackers and the same Isabelle Allende novels again and again. Of course, there was her husband so she couldn’t properly be classified a hermit, not quite.

     Greg was impervious to extremes of temperature. Abby’s husband swaddled himself in thick sweaters, chugging beef stew by the gallons. He baptized the driveway with layers of salt and rose 30 minutes early to defrost his Civic. He kept to a daily routine, skimming the Inquirer before work and returning home to his acoustic guitar and Red Wings games on TV. Tuesday nights were reserved for poker with friends and Fridays were microbrews and fried fish.

     Their evenings together a pace of habit, Abby would leave him sunk into the sofa and pad gently up the stairs to the spare room. Locking the door behind her, she would burrow into a womb of quilts, curving her body around the laptop and email Ross. Their messages spanned the breadth of human experience, but returned always to literature.

     “The words we know, the words available to us – descriptors like extraordinary and miraculous – can’t even begin to describe the mysterious. Which is what it all is, really. Life, loss, people, connection, God… all of it.”

     “I am attaching three poems by Rumi and two by Hafez.”

     When he didn’t respond she would draw feverishly on any surface available, exhausting her supply of pastels and resorting to magic marker. Neon roses bloomed on the walls and raspberry birds alighted on the bookcase. Days passed unaccounted for, Abby darting from one room to the next, picking at her nails and the calluses on her feet. Greg complained of her nightly teeth-grinding, so she trained herself to awaken and lap circles around the house before collapsing at dawn. In the morning he thanked her for a good night’s rest, kissing her forehead and reminding her to check the furnace.

     Enduring the silence of her email inbox, Abby read and reread Ross’s messages. The urge to nudge him back into communication bubbled hot and as she sat before the blank screen her stomach muscles clenched with resistance. What did he mean when he ended his messages with “truly,” or “honestly,” or “take care?” What could he be telling her when he opened himself, sharing his thoughts on relationships and God? She imagined him slouched over his computer, or laughing at a joke, or laying on his bed, his limbs akimbo. Abby felt his cheek cool against her own, sensed the beat of his heart as their bodies pressed together, her legs around his waist. Indulging, she imagined his fantasies of her, saw the temptation of her own body as irresistible. She had hardly been able to concentrate in class so intense were the images that came to her. Now, alone with her husband and cat, such thoughts were stifling. Her body wooden, the effort to move, to breathe, to eat, was monumental.

     It went on for weeks. A bounty of messages and then nothing. Abby cycled through all methods of distraction, waiting for his words to resume. Hauling flour and sugar from the cupboard, she abandoned the hunger for pastry at the first reading of the recipe. Greg complained of having to clean up after her. Retreating to the bath, she sank into steaming water, polishing her limbs with oil. Greg remarked that his bathroom had morphed into a sauna. She opened her laptop every hour on the hour and Greg commented on her obsession with email. And then suddenly a missive of 5,000 words, a heap of introspection, would appear on her screen. Ross the sinner and she his confessor, his thoughts dissections of addiction, ex-girlfriends and unrealized potential.

     “That complete absorption, that connection between two people is dangerous. It’s like thermonuclear fusion. Extremely luminous, but incinerating.”

     Abby pictured a supernova as the tones of Greg’s guitar lifted from the room below. She repaid Ross in careful admissions of her own, her life re-worked as a recommended reading list: Horton Hears a Who, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, One Hundred Years of Solitude and a decade condensed as her confessional poet period. He rewarded her candor with his own.

     “Women impress me. I am awed by their innate power and resilience. Sometimes, I experience moments of terror that I’m not living life fully, being who I could be, worthy of that other half of the species. Ha ha.”

     “Have you read any Adrienne Rich? I will lend you Diving Into the Wreck.”

     They agreed to meet for coffee at the shop down the street. That morning, Abby lingered before the bedroom mirror. She pirouetted and moved into a grand-plie, smiling at the resiliency of muscle memory. She smoothed her hair into a ponytail and glided perfumed hands up the length of her legs, cupping her breasts. Rejecting wool skirts and turtlenecks, pragmatic khaki pants and sweaters, she settled on blue jeans and a buttery silk blouse. She puckered her lips, dotting balm into the lines and shaded her cheeks with rouge. Stealing from the house, forgetting gloves or a scarf, Abby arrived trembling. It was not their first meeting and she knew he would be late. She placed an order and slid into a booth.

      “Hello there.” Ross seemed taller in person than she remembered and more substantial. Sitting across from her, his knee grazing hers, he slid a book in her direction.

     “Tim O’Brien. The Things They Carried.”

     She bowed her head and pulled a thin volume from her bag. Reaching across, she placed it near his palm.

     “The God of Small Things. Arundhati Roy.”

     They spoke for hours of books, faith and the nature of the universe. Abby stretched her body cat-like as his hands twitched and his eyes met hers. Later she would think of this moment hearing different words cascade from his mouth, heat flooding her body.

     “How long has it been?” Ross was suddenly alert, his eyes focused beyond the window, towards the interstate.

     “Gosh, I don’t know.” Abby glanced at her watch, a gift from Greg she never liked. “4 hours?”

     Ross smiled, “That’s pretty good.”

     Abby nodded, her fingers tracing rotations around a napkin advertisement for First Taste coffee, the words “From first to last, the taste that keeps you going” printed in bold lime.

     “I have to go. I’m supposed to catch a movie with some friends.”

     She nodded again, sipping the dregs of her latte. “I’m going to stay for a while and read.”

     Abby watched him depart, his shoulders pulling at the seams of his t-shirt, his hands folded into the pockets of his jeans.

     Returning home, she headed for the spare room intent on emailing Ross a final comment on their conversation. But she was halted, her hand on the banister and her foot poised above the first step. Greg had begun to notice his wife’s absence.

     “What do you do in that room? Why don’t you watch some TV with me?”

     She turned toward him. “Art. Reading.” It wasn’t untrue. She thought of Ross then, squeezing her legs together and exhaling slowly.

     “Come over here.” Greg patted the cushion next to his, turning to smile at his wife.
 
     Abby crossed the room in a bound and straddled his lap. Their hips locked together and she was suddenly sorry she hadn’t shaved her legs. As she crushed her chest against his, she held her breath and closed her eyes.
     “We should’ve tried for a baby,” she murmured, surprising herself.
     Greg stroked his wife’s back. “C’mon now,” his voice was steady, cheerful. “We have a great life.”
     Abby sighed, squeezing Greg’s arms, “I know.” She settled next to him, resting her head on his shoulder, remaining through 2 hours of hockey and then the news. Suddenly lightheaded, she moved into the kitchen pulling ingredients from shelves and setting water to boil.
     “What are you making?” Greg called from the living room.
     “I don’t know.” Abby bit her lip, taking inventory of the refrigerator.
     “For me, too?” He sounded hopeful.
     “Of course.”
     It was macaroni and cheese, a blend of whole wheat noodles and sharp Wisconsin cheddar. She picked at the meal, the pasta catching in her throat. She was finished after only three bites. Abby watched her husband chew, bits of cheese clinging to his teeth. His thin lips curled back from the fork as he slid the prongs into his mouth, his throat working furiously.
     Abby excused herself, muttering about feeling ill. In bed, her mind electric with the memory of that afternoon, she prayed for unconsciousness. But with sleep arrived dreams and she found herself bobbing in a netherworld, Ross a figment swimming in and out of view. Their faces pressed together, her lips on his, her hands on his chest and then drifting lower. She awoke to Greg’s heavy breathing, a pool of saliva on his pillow.
    Abby rubbed her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Her mind blank, she tried to match her breathing to her husband’s, the rise and fall of their chests a synchronized harmony. But she missed one beat, and then another, and then it was over and she was rising from bed and feeling her way in the darkness to the kitchen. Sighing, she surveyed the room. The residue of boiled water marred the stovetop and the dinner dishes had been left stacked in the sink. She leaned forward on the counter, its edge cutting crosswise into her belly, and pulled the knife block to her chest. The wood was worn, stained from decades left near boiling sauces and soups. A wedding gift? An anniversary present? She couldn’t remember.
     She ran her fingers along each handle, hesitating over one and then another. Frowning, she settled on a thin, serrated blade, drawing it from the holder. Raising the hem of her nightgown, she stretched her left leg, and perched her heel on the counter. As she’d aged, the risk of scarring had increased, and she took care to select a spot generally hidden from view. Abby rubbed the flesh of her thigh, kneading the skin until it bloomed pink in the half-light. She paused then, flexing her fingers open and closed against the knife handle. She pictured Ross smiling, the curve of his hands, his arm touching hers. She saw the green swirl of his eyes, his pink lips open, and his shaggy blond hair. Abby sawed the first line into her skin. Bubbles of blood beaded on the blade, but the pain would come later. Her mind clear, a waffle pattern emerged with each cut. As her hand moved mechanically, having an affair struck her as a very good idea. The serrations pressed deep, so much more friction than a smoother blade. Ross must make the first move. She would have to succumb, she couldn’t seduce.
     In the morning, her leg aflame and her hand cramping, she emailed Ross suggesting a meeting. His response was almost instantaneous, a sign she interpreted as promising. In anticipation, she colored her nails and invested in a cashmere cardigan. She bathed her hands in lotion and nibbled on raw vegetables for three days straight. Abby arrived for their meeting weakened and pale.
      Ross grinned when he saw her. Abby returned his gaze and gently touched his arm. They fell into their familiar groove of conversation, though this day he seemed distracted. His eyes rarely rested on her face, darting from his Americano to the cars streaming past the window. He had come with no offering, no volume of treasured prose, his hands empty.
      Abby’s fingers brushed his as she reached for her mug and she caught the scent of her own perfume. He was saying something about The God of Small Things, something about his parents, something about the holidays. Her mind on his face, on his eyes and hands, the potential of his body, she couldn’t keep up.
     She cleared her throat, “You seem distracted today.” She needed him to slow down, to meet her focus.
     “I’m sorry,” Ross looked at her squarely. “I have a date tonight. I’m a little nervous.”
     “Oh,” her voice rising. “Anyone I know?”
     “Yeah, Hailey Kasen.”
     Abby nodded. “She’s a lovely girl.”
     Ross leaned forward. She could see the shadow of his beard, his pupils black spear points. “I want you to know,” he began slowly, “I really appreciate your help over winter break. You know, with my English lit homework and everything. You’re a great teacher, Mrs. O’Brien…” His voice trailed away. She knew she had lost him.

As he made his exit, she didn’t hear him murmur goodbye or see him slip through the door. Her throat tight, she swallowed hard and drummed her nails against the table, thinking of her students. The girls with their flip-flops, gum-snapping judgments and bathroom meltdowns. The boys like badly-trained dogs and her, alone at her desk, confronting their derision. Her jaw clenched, she shredded the receipt for her coffee into strips. It would be different this time. No more private tutoring sessions or projects for extra credit. No more accepting late work or banned books week celebrations. No more group assignments or relief from homework on the weekends. She folded her arms across her body. Still, how long could Hailey Kasen really last? Surely not through graduation. He couldn’t possibly trust her more than he did Abby. She couldn’t imagine him sharing his thoughts with Hailey the way he’d been so willing, so eager, to do with her. Exhaling loudly, Abby licked her lips. No, she still had time. She crossed her right leg over her left and bore down, pressing into the knife wounds. Eyes watering, she gasped as pain gripped her body. After all, time was the only thing she’d really ever had. Time and more time, waiting for her life to begin.

 

 

Into The Mouth of the Humbler Worm

July 31, 2011

By Graham Tugwell

Graham Tugwell is a PhD student with the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches Popular and Modernist Fiction. The recipient of the College Green Literary Prize 2010, he has been published by Write From Wrong, Jersey Devil Press, Red Ochre Lit, The Quotable, Sein und Werden and Thoughtsmith. He has work forthcoming in Kerouac’s Dog Magazine, Anemone Sidecar, Plain Spoke, Pyrta, THIS Literary Magazine, Battered Suitcase, Anobium, Lost Souls, Rotten Leaves, Red Lightbulbs, L’Allure Des Mots and FuseLit. His website is grahamtugwell.com.

And I’m there again, and the dirt between my fingers and the circle of white, disappearing into dark...
I remember.
And I’m there.
I’m there—

     “If I take you to see this, you mustn’t tell anyone. Do you promise?”
     “What are you going to show me?” I kick with my feet and the swing takes me higher and leaning back I tip the world and made her stand there upside down.
     “Promise first. You’re not to tell anyone. I mean it.”
     “If you want,” I say. In blurs the gravel swoops past my head and arcs away to meet her shoes and stockinged legs and for a moment I hang to see her hands upon her hips and frowning face block out the sun.
     “Say it,” she says, and I swing away and I know she has a temper so I say: “I promise.”
     And like the crack of a pistol comes her response “Don’t believe you.”
     Skidding, my feet gouge wounds in clay, and bring me to a jolting stop and over my shoulder I repeat: “I promise. I won’t tell anyone.”
     "You’d better not,” she says and ghosts away across the grass.
     Jumping free, I leave the chains to jangle. Thunder is under the black fringe slashed across her brow and eyebrows sweep in chevron wings and she is half a head more in height than me. Carla Mayes stares as if to say Don’t you dare make me regret this.
     And I have been on the receiving end of her pointed words and pinches.
     And she knows I won’t tell anyone.
     I wouldn’t dare.
     She leads me and I follow her.

     A tyre, a wheelie-bin, a crumbling mouth of masonry— all footholds, as by stages we scale the wall, and straddling that summit of brick, I say: “Your mother will kill you if you dirty your dress.”
     She whips a scornful look at me then lithely lowers herself onto the waste ground behind the funeral home.
     I look down and it’s a bit of a height.
     I swallow.
     I let myself fall and dropping I stumble and her expression says she expects nothing more or less from me.
     “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she says, “And I came to my window”—she points—one of those grey unpainted houses with their backs to us is hers— “And I saw something...”
     Her finger drifts from house to bush and rests there as she looks at me.
     “What did you see?”
     “Too dark to tell, exactly. But it was big... and slow... and I stood there, watching and...”
     She stares at me through the slant of her fringe.
     “Yes?” I breathe.
     “I never saw it leave.” She walks across the stony ground, through nettle patches, through the brittle fronds of grass
     “Carla,” I say, hurrying to catch her, “What’re you going to show me?”
     She puts her finger to her lips and slowly bends between the bushes—her knees are two handfuls of flesh brought out from under her skirts.
     “What is it?”
     Between low brakes of littered hedge she grins, and it is horror— sets me thinking of that kettle and the tail of the dog...
     “What is it?”
     “Lift it up,” she says. “Have a look...”
     A finger crooked is calling me and so I bend to take a branch and push that musty length aside—
     “Careful,” she whispers, “Don’t fall—”
     Don’t fall? Why—
     And pushing through, the ground gives way and lunging into dark I see a gap yawning in the earth, falling away from me, perfectly round— perfectly black— I could be lost in it, the width of the hole the length of myself—
     On hands and knees I scrabble back, scuttling dust against my belly.
     “You were going to—” I gasp
     “Oh shut up,” she says, “I would have caught you.”
     She turns away, half-smiling, and looks into the darkness.
     “I would have caught you.”
     Slowly and wary I settle myself, resting full length, like a cat curl-limbed, watching the spot where the mouse disappeared.
     For a long time—long enough for the sun to dither into overcast—we stare into the void.
     “What made it?” I ask.
     And it seems to take such strength and will for her to tear herself away and look from it to me. She smiles her most unpleasant smile.
     “Haven’t you heard of the Humbler Worm?”
     “That doesn’t exist,” I say.
     She nods her head.
     But I insist: “That’s just a story for children.”
     Tooth by tooth her smile goes away. “Where do bodies go when they’re put in the ground? They just lie there, do they?”
     I shrug.
     High and stretched in worm-lengths are her words—“They go down! Down! Into the mouth of the Humbler Worm!” and she gnashes her teeth an inch from my cheek and laughs to see the expression frozen on my face.
     (Think of the kettle, the tail, the sound of it mad with panic.)
     She sits back on her haunches, curls the hair behind her ear. “What will we put in it?”
     She looks down.
     “I want to see how deep it goes...”
     My voice is pathetic: “I don’t think we should.”
     “No? Don’t you want to see something new? And be the first to see it?”
     Her eyes are green and silver glass. “If it’s just a story for kids, what are you scared of?
     I say nothing.
     “What are you scared of?” she repeats.
     I points at a rusty can half-hidden by nettles.
     “We could try that.”
     She grins.

     On stomachs side by side we lie and peer into the hole. The movements of air are soft on our faces.
     “Listen for the splash,” she says. “Or the thump when it hits the bottom.”
     She lets the can drop.
     I listen.
     I listen for a long time.
     “What if there’s—”
     “Shhh,” she snaps, “You’ll miss it.”
     Biting my lip, I finish the sentence in my head: What if there’s no bottom?
     No sound travels up; neither splash nor rattle.
     I look at her.
     “Do you think the hole goes all the way through?”
     “Don’t be stupid,” she says, but the soft voice tells me she isn’t convinced.
     And I hear finger-tips of rain upon my back, and feel them soaking in. “Starting to rain,” I say, “We can come back another time.”
     She shakes her head. “No.”
     “What are you going to do?”
     She wags her finger under my nose. “You mean: What are we going to do.” Her silver-green eyes are swallowing things, and I think how little I like the sound of her words.  “Tonight, we’re going to wait for the Worm to resurface.”
     She grins.
     Her fingers find their way onto my arm.
     “And we’re going to capture it.”

     The rain worsens as we scrabble back over the wall. At the top and with one leg on either side she leans towards me, fringe slick against her brow.
     “This is how we’re going to do this—I’ll tell my parents I’m at one of my friend’s—”
     Unwisely, I say “What friend?”
     She scowls, repeating— “I’ll tell them I’m at my friend’s and you, you tell your mother— what will you tell her?”
     I shrug. “Don’t suppose I’ll tell her anything. She won’t know I’m gone.”
     She nods. “Get things we’ll need. Blankets. Torches. Food. Meet you here. Two hours.”
     I grimace my agreement. She catches my sleeve.
     “Remember your promise. Tell no-one.”
     She drops.
     I follow.
     We part.

     When I return she is waiting.
     “Any problems?”
     “She didn’t even wake up,” I say.
     I unpack my rucksack.
     She takes the blankets from me. “Good,” she says, “We can use these.”
     “Will they be enough? Isn’t it going to be freezing cold tonight?” I ask.
     Kneeling under the tarpaulin she laid out the sleeping bags.
     “Wuss,” she says, and she grins.

     Past midnight, and I lay there, half-asleep.
     “Carla?”
     “Yes?”
     “What are you going to do with it? If we catch it?”
     She is a shape in black against the streetlight amber.
     Silently, she thinks it over.
     “We parade it around the town,” she whispers.
     “We get our names in the paper.”
     “And when it dies, we sell it.”
     A car is a rumble and a rush in the street.
     And another passes to paint its lights.
     And the silence then, pressing on me
     “Carla?”
     “Yeah?”
     Could I say—
     Dare I—
     How could she hear me over thumping of my chest—
     “Carla... do you... would you like to... would you like to be my... eh...”
     Her silhouette shifts, noiselessly.
     “Because I think you’re... I...”
     “We wouldn’t have to tell anyone...”
     And she speaks, in a voice softer than I’d ever heard her use before.
      “Go to sleep,” she says.
     “I’ll wake you if there is anything.”
     So commanded, I flee, I escape into sleep.
     Coward.

     Nothing came up in the night.
     She’d been awake when I fell asleep; she was still awake when I awoke.
     “Carla?”—the word was sluggish in my sticking mouth— “Did it...?”
     She shook her head.
     Softly her hands were working. I couldn’t see—
     “What are you doing?” I ask.
     She holds up a thick coil of rope. “If it won’t come up to us...”
     Her teeth slant in a sunlit smile.

     She loops the rope around a stack of brick, and tying it, pulls with all her might to ensure it held.
     Sitting cross-legged under the tarpaulin I watch her. “How long is it?” I ask.
     She gives the length a sharp yank.
     “I’m not sure.” She yanks again, grunting. “Two hundred feet? Two fifty? I dunno. There’s four lengths of washing line and whatever else I could find in the garage.”
     Her eyes sparkle but my mouth just hangs in slackness.
     “Don’t worry,” she says, “It’s strong,” and she plucks the tensed length to hum. “It’ll hold us both.”
     She bustles past me.
     “We shouldn’t,” I say in a small voice.
     “Flashlights,” she says, ignoring me. “Did you bring flashlights?” Kneeling, she goes through my rucksack. “Crisps...coke... ah, none of this is any use!” She pushes it away, glowering at me. “You want us to fight the Humbler Worm with snacks and fizzy drinks?”
     “I don’t want to fight—”
     Getting to her feet, she mumbles. “A knife. Is that too much to ask for?”
     “You’re not listening to me, Carla—”
     The mass of washing line is flung over the edge and it tumbles soundlessly into the dark, unravelling, and on the lip of the void, her heels over nothing, the rope taut in her hand, she smiles.
     “Off we go,” she whispers, her free hand held towards me.
     I sit upon my sleeping bag and it is damp and cold and I cannot look her.
     “Come with me,” she says. “Come down with me.”
     She moves her fingers.
     “We’ll look after each other.”
     I feel sick.
     “Come,” her voice sharpening. “It’s the last time. I won’t ask you again.”
     And in the grey and haze of dawn she stares at me and eyes are green and silver glass and cruel.
     “Why do you have to be a coward?” she says. “Why do you always have to be a coward?”
     She drops.
     A sound escapes me and I scrabble to the edge, to the lip— and I’m frozen, I’m frozen there—
Her face looking from the dark and me, petrified on the lip of the hole, working the soil and the rubbish with my hands, again, again, again—
     “Coward.”
     I can’t follow.
     I can’t follow.
     But I find my voice at last: “Hey... wait. Wait!”
     Her last words: “You promised. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll come back.”
     She slides away.
     I can’t see her.
    And I scream into the void.
    She’s gone, gone somewhere I can’t follow.
    And dirt between my fingers on the edge of nothing—
    I can’t see her.
    I scream into the mouth of the Humbler Worm.

 

 

Widening Gyre

October 23, 2011

Rebekah Love has her MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University.  She lives and writes in Houston, Texas.  She teaches at Lonestar College-Cyfair in Houston, Texas.  Her work has appeared in Red River Review, Sombrilla, The Luminous Page, Poetry Motel, Illya's Honey, Rockhurst Review, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review and City Works.

            It’s late summer.  The brown grass ruffles in the wind, like a field of downy feathers.  I’m breaking up clods of dirt, out in the garden.  Eli and Hannah are fighting.  They do that a lot.  Play at being married.  Sometimes it feels like it’s just the two of them.  I wonder why I’m here.
            “It’s a joke,” Eli says.
            “It’s not funny.”  Hannah picks up her shovel.  She swings at Eli.  He ducks in under it, catches her by the waist and throws her over his shoulder.
            “I’m not one of your old goats.”  Hannah’s face is red.
            “Stop acting like one.”
            Hannah grabs the waist of Eli’s pants.  He spins her in circles, but she holds on tight and yanks hard.     
            “You’re going in the trough,” says Eli.  Instead, he falls to the ground.  Hannah lands on top and he pulls her to him.  He holds her there for a moment, his big hands on her narrow back.  She always lets him off too easy.
            “Time for lunch,” she says and jumps to her feet.
            “In a minute,” I say.  I hang back by the water trough.  Imagine Hannah rising from it.  The cold water dripping from the ends of her brown hair.  It runs down her neck and onto her chest.
            Before we were born, our parents left the city.  The world was a scary place.  They bought land together, in the flat middle of nowhere.  Lived like one big family, not knowing where one ended and the other began.  The nearest town was a hundred miles away.  It was a hard life, I guess, but the only one we knew.  We learned to plant with the seasons, raise animals for food.  Everything was used, nothing wasted.  We kept to ourselves and depended on each other.
            Last year, we moved away.  Me, Eli, and Hannah.  We wanted to live on our own.  The place we found had just one building, an old barn.  We pretty much lived inside it the first winter, except for tending to the animals.  Eli did most of the chores.  He fed the animals—the cow, mule, and goats—and bedded their stalls.  I hauled buckets of feed to the chickens, gathered the eggs that hadn’t yet split from the cold.  Evenings, we spent up in the barn’s loft with nothing but the light of a kerosene lamp.  We read aloud to each other, played checkers, invented word games.  We slept on a big pallet, with Hannah between us.  She’d say, “Roll over,” and we’d turn like sausages in a frying pan.
            We built a small house this summer.  Two-stories with a loft at either end.  A door at the side of the house lets into a dirt basement.  We store produce there.  Eli’s hired himself out again for fall harvest and planting.  Hannah and I get ready for the coming winter.  She cans the last of our summer vegetables.  I stack wood by the front door.  Already, we’re lighting the lamp earlier at the end of each day.  After dinner, we drink coffee around the kitchen table.  Hannah says it reminds her of home.
            “Whatta you think our parents are doing?” she asks one evening.   
            “Waiting for the world to end,” Eli says.
            “Don’t make fun,” she says.
            “You know I’m right.”
            “Those are sincerely held beliefs.”
            “Doesn’t make them any less ridiculous.”
            I listen to Eli and Hannah as they talk about what it was like for us growing up.  One impending doomsday after another, a year’s worth of rations and fuel.  Our parents made sure we were well prepared for whatever the latest disaster might be: atomic bombs, biological warfare, meteors.
            “Who’d want to survive that?”  Eli asks.
            “People need to think they matter,” I say.  Sometimes I wonder if our parents are still alive.  Maybe they've gone already.  Into the darkness that follows after disaster.
            In dreams that night, my skull explodes.  My lower jaw—bare-boned and with teeth still attached—falls to the ground.  As if I’d decomposed already.  I have visions.  About the past, present, future.  Once, a soldier from the Spanish American War visited me.  From the look of him he’d been dead a long time.  If he’d had a shred of vocal chord left, I’m sure he would have given me an earful.
            After breakfast, I step out on the front porch.  Eli is waiting for me.
            “Come on,” he says, “we’re going to town.”  He walks to the flatbed truck, hops in the driver’s seat.
            I’d rather stay behind, but I climb in on the passenger side.
            Eli fires the ignition.  “We’re buying a rifle,” he says and he heads for the highway.
            “What about Hannah?”
            “We need meat.  And protection.”
            “You know how she feels about guns.”
             Inside the outfitters, Eli goes straight to the counter.  “I need something to hunt with,” he says to the man behind it.
            “What’re you shootin’?” the man asks.
            “Anything on the hoof.  Last winter, we lived mostly on garden truck.”
            The man pulls a rifle from the case behind him, sets it butt down on the glass.  “Winchester,” he says.  “Gas operated, semi-automatic.  Spring load magazine holds five rounds.”
            The man hands the gun to Eli, who puts it to his shoulder and aims at the wall.  He yanks the trigger and the firing pin falls in a dead click.
            “Bring down a deer,” the man says.  
            Eli hands the gun back.  He pulls a good chunk of our year’s spending money out of his pocket and hands that over too.  The man zips the rifle into a soft case.  He pushes it and a few boxes of ammunition across the counter at us.
            Out at the truck, Eli slides his purchases behind the seat.  He throws a blanket over them.
            “Is that it?” I ask.
            “Don’t tell Hannah.”
            “She won’t notice?”
            “I’ll hide it in the barn, take it out when she’s not around.”
            “Which is…”
            “When you go to town, see a movie or something.  Just get her out of the house.”
            I imagine sitting in a dark balcony with Hannah, nothing but an armrest between us.
            When Eli leaves for work the next day, I ask Hannah if she wants to see a movie.
            “The three of us?” she asks.
            “Eli wants to get work done.”
            “That he can’t do with us around?”
            “We could get popcorn, and a coke.”
            “What, are we children now?”
            “He says we've been working too hard, we need to have a little fun.”
            Hannah twists a strand of hair around one finger.  “We could do with another sack of flour,” she says.  “And cornmeal.  We’re running low.”
            I drive Hannah to town on Saturday.  She says she likes seeing a movie better than she thought.
            Back home, I can tell Eli's been fooling with the gun.  He acts guilty, offering to do chores around the house.  I wonder how he’ll explain a dead deer to Hannah.  I imagine him pulling up with one in the bed of the truck—a trickle of blood on its white chest—and the look on Hannah’s face when she sees it.
            My father fought in the Second World War.  When I was a child, he used to tell me stories about it.  How the military put together a special unit to fight in the Pacific.  They made these soldiers tougher than anybody, threw animal blood and guts on them, had them eat things nobody in their right mind would.  Green meat, and stuff crawling with maggots.  The things these guys did—lop a man’s head off with piano wire or slide a knife into the soft space at the back of the neck—it wasn’t just about courage.
            Eli can play the big man with his gun, if that’s what he wants.  I’ll be the one with Hannah.
            Next week I take her to the county fair.  We drive out to the reservoir and sit next to the water.  Hannah says, “We should swim here next summer.”  Which means maybe she’s thinking about a future, with the two of us.  But it’s like that already.  Eli comes home after dark and goes to bed early.  I help Hannah with the dishes.  We sit up late and talk.  We did that when we were kids.  
            It surprises me how easily Eli fools Hannah.  He brings home packets of raw deer meat.  Says whoever he’s working for gave it to him.  When he and I are alone, he tells me he’s bagged several already, trades off part of the carcass for processing.  Sometimes he barters the whole thing for supplies or more bullets.
            I don’t really care what Eli does, as long as he stays away.  I like doing things for Hannah.  I put in a pitcher pump for her out at the well.  She bathes there in the evenings, in the light that hangs at the edge of the sky.  I can tell which part of her she’s washing by the way she moves.
            Eli comes home one day and finds me looking out the back window.          “What’re you doing?” he asks.  He looks past me to Hannah.
            “Waiting for sunrise,” I say.
            Eli looks at me funny, says, “Come out to the truck, help me carry stuff in.”
            A few nights later, Hannah and I are alone, playing poker in her loft.  “Hey,” she says.  “Something going on I should know about?”         
            I shrug my shoulders and toss two cards on her pallet.
             “We hardly see Eli anymore,” she says.
            “He’s making money.” I hate to give him credit for anything.
            “That’ll change soon enough.”  She sits against the wall with her feet stretched out.  I look at her high arches, her toes shaped like tiny spoons.  She draws more cards from the deck and hands them to me.  “Winter’s almost here,” she says. 
            Things will be worse with Eli around.
            “We’ll be snowed in,” she says.
            I picture Hannah and Eli in close quarters again.  He’ll brush up against her at the kitchen sink, lean his body into hers.
            I throw my cards down and get to my feet.  “Gotta go,” I say.
            I scoot downstairs, slide into a pair of boots and out the door.  I can’t keep my hands off Hannah if I stay.  Maybe she wants them on her.  I don’t know.
            The ground is dry and cracked, like it’s never seen rain.  The wind bawls at me across the open fields.  The rifle is hidden somewhere inside the barn.  I turn over grain sacks in the corner, climb the ladder to the loft, roll bales of hay away from the walls.  There’s the gun, zipped in its leather case.  I pick it up and feel the weight of it.
            I remember the soldiers my father told stories about.  At the end of the war, the military had a problem.  Trained killers with no enemy left to fight.  So the army sent these guys to the front, thought they wouldn’t make it back.  But I know some of them did.  One came to me in a dream.  He was in some state of mind, too.  Said the hangers in his closet had to be one inch apart, and the gear he stowed on his shelves—shoe-shine box, gun cleaning kit, clothes brush— kept in strict order, everything facing the right way.  Or he might have to kill someone.  This guy, he missed slicing off noses, mounting heads on pikes.
            I open the leather case and finger the smooth barrel of the rifle.  Reminds me of the bunker we had back at the family compound, where our parents kept a small arsenal.  Sometimes, Hannah and I snuck away and played alone down there.  She let me touch her in places that surprised me with their softness. 
            “Can God see us?” I’d ask.
            “Not down here,” Hannah would say.
            I could see the outline of her body in the grainy light from the bunker door, her breath mingling with mine.
            More often than not, the three of us played together.  Eli always insisted on being the husband, and Hannah was his wife.  I pretended to be a neighbor, or their kid.
            I can smell Eli’s gun, the metallic oiliness of it.  The soldier from my dream said it felt good to off people, especially when they needed it.  Like his wife, who nagged him to death over things he couldn’t change.  He thought about gutting her, but he didn’t.  I believe him.  If he had, she’d be coming to me in the middle of the night, wanting her pound of justice.  Asking me to cut his balls off or run him down with the truck.
             I hear the growl of it out front and hide the gun back where I found it.  Maybe I don’t need to kill anyone.  I’m not like that.  I read this article in a magazine once, at the library.  Some people share mates when there aren’t enough to go around.
            I lie in my loft that night, listen to the sounds Hannah makes when she sleeps.  Her skin moving against the rough covers.  I should go to her.  She’d like that.
            Next day, Eli disappears again, somewhere he doesn’t tell us.  Probably with his gun.  Hannah and I work in the garden.  We dig up the last of the autumn vegetables.  I watch Hannah lean her small body into the shovel.  Her legs are freckled from the sun.  Her hair is roughed by the autumn wind.  I want to touch her, tell her how I feel.
            But Hannah’s not in the garden.  She’s out in the pasture on a bed of wild flowers.  Their stalks hairy up to the petals.  They’re gathered thick beneath her, like a cluster of bruises, with middles of hot whiteness.  Like her skin beneath my hands.  On her ankles, the backs of her legs.  The goats wander loose around us, nuzzling the ground.  But Hannah is screaming.
            I’m on the ground now, too.  A falcon wheeling in the sky and Eli standing over me.  Hannah’s shovel is in his hands.  He drops it, scoops me up like a baby, and carries me to the truck.  He throws me into the flat bed of it.  The wooden slats hard against the parts of me that rest heavy.  We’re moving away.  The sky is dark, like it’s winter already.  A blur of snow fills the widening space.  Between me, Hannah, and home.

Bright Indirect Sunlight

January 1, 2012

By: Anne Marie DeVito

Anne Marie DeVito holds her BA in Journalism from Fordham University and is currently pursuing her MFA from New York University in Fiction Writing.  Her work is forthcoming in The Zodiac Review in April 2012.  Previously, she has been published in "Bumble Jacket Miscellany"  Spring 2011 Issue, CosmoGIRL! Magazine, and has read her work on NYU Radio.   She is currently working on a short fiction collection.

     What I hated about the day it ended was not that it was the day it ended, but that it was such a damn beautiful day.  That winter had been bleak and brutal with a relentless onslaught of snowstorms.  For weeks, the city was covered in a whirl of powdered sugar.  The whiteness dissolved quickly into puddles of sludge that clogged the streets.   The salt trucks were buried, the sidewalks were buried, we were all buried, and no one believed it would ever stop.  But it did.  After the snow came the rain.  Cold sheets so thick that everyone became wet mummies walking blindly into each other on the streets.  Then finally, there was that beautiful day.  It wasn’t terribly warm, but it was clear and bright.  Rays of sun shot through the sparse clouds and the breeze carried the faint hint of lilacs.   The sky was a dull blue, damaged, but still a damn beautiful blue.
          
     We fought that morning.  At the kitchen table at breakfast, Benjamin was drinking coffee with too much sugar and I was digging into a grapefruit with a spoon.  He wore one of his dirty gray t-shirts with all the stains.  Red streaks of paint and white finger prints of bleach and holes because the cheap cotton tore easily.  The t-shirt was tight from his steady weight gain.  It stretched taunt across his chest and the sleeves cut into his arms.  I would bring that up when I was angry.  Just something small I could hurt him with, like pricking a finger on a thorn, no blood but it still stings.
          
     I was eating the grapefruit on a paper towel on our white oak table.  The same table that we found broken on the streets, dragged seven blocks back to our apartment and repainted.  Each time I scooped out a spoonful, the juice ran down the sides and soaked through the paper.  The table became sticky and smeared with the broken fallen seeds, but I didn’t care.  Benjamin bent his head over the Times, pretending to read.   I knew it was pretend because he never flipped a page.  He would rather skim the headlines of war and crime and blizzards than speak to me.  He had nothing to say.  We both had nothing to say.
            
     “When’d you buy this grapefruit?” I asked, pointing at it with my spoon.
          
     “I don’t know.  Last week.  The last time I went to the store.”
          
     “I think it’s gone bad.”
          
     “Grapefruit doesn’t go bad.”
          
     “It does.  All fruit does.  Taste it, it’s sour.”
          
     I handed him the half that wasn’t hollowed out, the half that was still intact.  It was divided into such perfect triangles that it could make an atheist believe in something.  Benjamin reached for the red sugar bowl.  He tilted it and sprinkled sugar over the triangles.  
          
     “Too much sugar is very unhealthy, you know,” I said.  Tiny crystals spilled onto the table and the way the light hit them, they sparkled.  “Almost as bad as saturated fat.”
          
     Benjamin ignored me and shuffled in his grandpa slippers across our tiny kitchen.   He had to wiggle his way through the table and the chairs, past the black lacquered cabinets to the sink.   There was a pile of dishes, some clean, some not.  He found a bowl and shook off the excess water.   When he sat back down, he plucked the spoon from my hand and smiled, “What can I say?  I like sweet things.”
          
     “Yes.  It shows,” I let out a cruel laugh.  When I wanted to, I could sound like a wicked queen.
          
     He dug the spoon into the flesh of the fruit.  With the first bite, his face twisted at its bitterness, but he would never give me the satisfaction of spitting it out.
          
     “Tastes fine to me.  Delicious.”
          
     I took the bowl from his hands and tossed the half into the garbage beneath the sink.  Above the sink, the kitchen window showed the long stretch of Second Avenue.
          
     It was a quiet Saturday.  There was a relaxed sensibility on the weekends for those in the city.  The world caught its breath, the maddening rush of the work week calmed.  Everyone slept later and walked slower.  It was two days of freedom that could only be ruined by poor weather.  That day, the sun had coaxed everyone outside.  Older women in their pearls walked to brunch.  Packs of teenage boys tossed a basketball between them heading to the park for an early game.  There were too many strollers and kids on their fathers’ shoulders to count.
          
     “I’m tired of this,” I said, tying my thin cotton robe tighter around myself.  “I don’t want to do it anymore.”
          
     “What?” he asked.
          
     “I can’t do this anymore.  I’m black and blue from the tests, it hurts when I take a shower.  I always want to cry.  Walking down the street and I want to cry.  I’m exhausted.”
          
     “Doctor Levine told us that might happen.  She said you’d feel emotional, but it should stop eventually.”
          
     “But it hasn’t.  It only gets worse.”  I turned to face him.  “I don’t want to try anymore.”
          
     His eyes moistened.  In the early morning light, they looked like ocean waves.  But that was the only sign of vitality on his face.  His stubble cast a crescent moon over his face and his skin had lost its golden warmth and turned the ashy color of bone.  
          
     “Remember what she said?” he said with an urgency rising in his voice.  He tugged at the hair on his head so it stuck up in peaks.  “It probably won’t happen again.  After three times, the chances are slim to none.  Slim to none.”
          
     “You don’t understand,” I said.  “I’m done trying.  I’m done.”
          
     My mind flipped over the past year.  An album of photographs tinged in sepia.  There were the nights when the snow piled up and he didn’t come home, didn’t call, or I woke to find him crumpled on the sofa with his face crushed into the pillow.  There were the silent dinners, the only sounds coming from the scrape of a fork and knife on ceramic plates.  When we were caught in a room together, we could conjure up a fifteen minute conversation about the weather.  I couldn’t remember what it felt like to kiss him or the smell of his aftershave or the last time he made me smile.  I couldn’t remember the last time I smiled.
          
     Benjamin came over and reached out to hold me.  I was small enough that his arms could wrap all the way around.  I stayed for a second too long and then twisted out of his arms and left the room.



     The third time it happened was six months ago.  The sharp pangs sliced into my stomach and woke me at midnight.  The sheets felt damp and I yelled for Ben over and over.  He came quickly but stood frozen at the doorway as if in the presence of a wild animal.  I tore the sheets off the mattress frantically.   My eyes adjusted to the thick darkness and I could see the pale sateen sheets stained with a dark puddle.    
          
     “What’s wrong?” he asked, tugging at his hair.
          
     “It happened again.”
          
     “Are you sure?”
          
     “Look,” I pointed at the heap of sheets, like a miniature blue volcano.  
          
     “It might not be.  You could be fine.”
          
     “No,” I said.
          
     I walked to my dresser shakily.  Beside it was the large window, floor to ceiling, it was taller than me.  We used to keep the blinds open all day and all night with the energy of the city streaming through the window.  We never cared if the neighbors saw us at night.   We were young, unbridled, willing to sacrifice sleep to discover each other in the dark.  Then something changed, who knows when.  We started to shut the blinds at night, blocking out the flashing streetlights and taxi headlights.  Then we shut the blinds during the day so there was no light in our bedroom.  The room shriveled up.  It was too dark to notice the dust settling into the corners of the room that we never swept.  Something changed, who knows what.
          
     I pulled out a black pair of his sweatpants from the dresser, washed so many times they had softened to lamb’s wool.  I steadied myself against the wall and put one leg in and then the other.   I saw spots of red and leaned against the wall to breathe.  
          
     “Here,” Benjamin said.  “Let me help.”  He sat me on the bed, pulled off my nightgown and found a clean shirt and socks.  
          
     “I’m sorry,” I said.
          
     “Don’t.”
          
     “No, I am.  I’m sorry.”
          
     “It’s not your fault.  You know it’s not.”
          
     “Isn’t it?”
          
     “No,” he said.  He reached out and cupped my face with both hands.  Regardless of the weather, the time of day, or where we were, his hands were always warm.  “Don’t apologize.”
          
     That night, the streets outside were silent and cold.  We took a cab to Lenox Hill and I rested my head on his shoulder with one hand on my swollen belly.  Even in my loose, flowing tops, I could never hide it.  I could never step outside without strangers smiling at me, starting light conversation with their faces glowing at the prospect of new life.  It happened at the dry cleaners, on the 6 train, in the grocery store.
          
     “So, when are you due?” a silver haired lady once asked.  She stood behind me in line, skimming through the pages of a soap opera digest.              
           
     “Three months,” I told her.
          
     She looked in my cart, taking note of the items: chicken salad, four grapefruit, and a tub of Chunky Monkey.  I was struck with odd cravings each time.  The last time only grapefruit juice would calm the nausea.  It couldn’t be the kind in the carton, it had to be freshly squeezed.  Before Benjamin went to work in the morning, he would twist two or three halves over the juicer and leave a pitcher in the fridge for me.  
    
     “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.
          
     “It’s a girl.”
          
     “Have you named her yet?”
          
     I looked down as the cashier handed me the receipt to sign.  We had named the last two: Lillian and Violet.  We had turned the alcove in our bedroom into a nursery.  There was only room for a white crib with red rods and a spinning mobile with dangling stars.  I wanted to paint the three walls, but not the traditional pink or blue.  We left the walls white and splashed them with bright colors like a messy No. 5.  The day we painted it, I wore overalls and we splattered red and blue and yellow on the walls, giggling like five-year-olds finger painting.  Afterwards, we collapsed into bed, both smelling like paint but not caring.
          
     “Not yet,” I told the lady in the store.  I placed a hand where I thought my daughter’s head was resting.  “We’re waiting until we see her and then we’ll choose.”
          
     She smiled and I knew she was a grandmother.  The kind that spoiled her grandchildren, taking them for two scoops of mint chocolate chip before dinner and saying it would be their secret.
          
     On my way home, I cradled the bag of groceries and took slow, cautious steps.  I didn’t dare cross the street when the red hand was blinking.  I let a neighbor help carry the bag upstairs.  The whole time I repeated a girl’s name in my mind.  I was waiting to say it out loud when the nurse placed her in my arms.
          
     I thought of this on the way to the hospital.  The images played in my mind like a film where you know it will not end well, but keep watching because of a sad curiosity to see how bad it will get.  At the hospital, the doors of the emergency room opened and blew cold, sterile air at us.  Benjamin scurried to find an abandoned wheelchair even though I didn’t need one anymore.  He made me sit and pushed me to a spot in the corner while he filled out the paperwork.  It didn’t take long as he had answered the questions before.  He knew to check all the boxes that applied.  
          
     Alone in my chair, my shoulders shook as I cried.  So many tears that I imagined a pool of water forming in my lap and spilling onto the floor like a waterfall.  But of course that was impossible.  All I did was dampen my shirt and draw the concerned glances of the strangers around me.
          
     Once we returned home, I laid down on the floor of our little nursery.  In the morning, there was a pillow beneath my head and a fleece blanket over me.  The blanket was white with a galaxy of stars, red and blue and yellow.



     We met six years ago in my flower shop.  The shop was on the corner of 86th and Lexington with a red awning and white letters that said “Le Printemps.”  It was my mother’s shop.   Sitting on the high counter, I would watch her cut stems and mist leaves with water and flutter around the room.  Sometimes, she would let me plant the seedlings.  I would poke tiny holes in pots of soil with my finger, drop in the seeds, and wait for the green buds to peek through.  After she died, I took it over.  I couldn’t bear the thought of someone tearing down the awning and turning it into another liquor store or bagel shop or Baby Gap.
          
     My favorite part of each morning was walking inside to the bursting scent of flowers.  Such a stark contrast to the stale smells of the city.  Regardless of the month, inside the shop was eternal spring, the pots of blooming lilacs and tulips and daisies.  The refrigerated glass case at the front displayed bright sprays and buckets of single stems for anyone who wanted to create their own bouquet.  I ordered all the supplies from a craft store on the corner.  The cards were handmade from recycled paper pressed together with cotton and flecks of yarn.   They were expensive but I didn’t want anything fake in the shop, only natural, beautiful things.   
          
     The day he walked in, I was wrapping white roses, rolling them into a cone of pale pink paper with a card that said Congratulations.  I didn’t notice him.  After we were married, he told me I looked like a princess in a fairy tale.  I found the line sweet then, but years later, the thought made me cringe.   
          
     “Dammit,” I yelled when I pricked my finger on a rose stem.   I let out a string of words and heard laughter from the front.  This boy walked over, hands in his pockets, hair tousled like he had just woken up from a nightmare.
          
     “You alright over there?” he asked.
          
     “I’m fine,” I said.  “Sorry about that.”
          
     “Why are you sorry?”
          
     I stuck my finger in my mouth to stop the bleeding and tasted saltiness.  “For yelling like that.”
          
     “Don’t apologize.  It’s amusing,” he said.  He had a playful grin, like a boy who pulled the girls’ pigtails in elementary school.  “Rather unexpected from a girl like you.”
          
     “A girl like me?  What does that mean?”
          
     He took a step closer until he was right there in front of me.   “I don’t know.  You seem too sweet.  Innocent.”
          
     My surprise overcame my inclination to be embarrassed and I was silent.  I can’t remember what I looked like that day.  Most days, I let my hair fall down my back in messy blonde curls.  I wore white often, dresses and skirts, because the entire shop was bathed in colors.
          
     I studied him closely.  He was more like a boy than a man.  His sweatshirt said Duke and his jeans were faded with ripped patches and the only remarkable thing about him was his eyes.  They were blue enough to cut glass.
          
     “Maybe,” I said.  “Maybe not.”
          
     “Care to elaborate?”
          
     “Care to tell me what you’re looking for?”
          
     He laughed.  “I’m looking to buy flowers.”
          
     “For a special occasion?”
          
     “A birthday.”
          
     “For someone special?”
          
     “Maybe.”  He shrugged his shoulders.  “Maybe not.  Do you have any favorites?”
          
     I walked to the left corner of the room and brought back a square pot with a long crooked branch and tiny white, heart shaped blossoms.  
          
     “What’s that?” he asked.
          
     “It’s an orchid,” I said.  “A jewel orchid.”
          
     “Doesn’t look like much.”  He cocked his head in curiosity.  “Maybe I’ll just get a dozen red roses.  Don’t girls love red roses?”
          
     “Rather unoriginal.  And roses only last a few days.  An orchid can last up to four months.”
          
     “I’d have to water it, right?  I don’t want anything too complicated.”
          
     “Actually, they’re simple to care for,” I said.  I took a card from the table that said For Someone Special and began writing.  “Just water them once a week.  Put an ice cube into the base to keep the soil moist.  Keep them somewhere cool and dry.  And don’t put them in the sun.”
          
     “Why?”
          
     “The petals are too sensitive.  The sun will burn them.  Orchids need bright, indirect sunlight.  It’s a delicate balance.”
          
     “Why are they your favorite?”
          
     I stopped writing.  “I’ve never been asked that before.”  I reached out to touch a petal, light and so thin that a sharp pinch would tear it.  “They’re pretty.  But very fragile.  You can’t be careless and forget about them, you have to take care of them.  And if you wait long enough, they can bloom again.”
          
     “How long do you have to wait?”
          
     “About a year,” I said.
          
     “That’s a long time.”
          
     “It’s worth it.”
          
     “Well,” he grinned.  “You’ve just convinced me.  How much do I owe you?”
          
     After I rang him up, I wrapped the orchid in clear plastic and pinned the card to it.  I handed it to him but he didn’t leave.
          
     “Do you work here every day?” 
          
     “Yes,” I said.  “It’s my shop.”
          
     “Maybe I’ll come back.  My mother’s birthday is coming up.”
          
     I smiled.  “You’ll have to tell me if your girlfriend likes her orchid.  And give her the instructions so she’ll know what to do.”
          
     When he walked out the door, the bell on the door rang loudly.  It kept ringing even after he crossed the street.

          

     Just four months after we lost the second one, I became pregnant again.  We made an appointment with a specialist in recurrent pregnancy loss.  The acronym was RPL, but we never said it out loud.  Doctor Levine was in her late forties, never married, and had eight nieces and nephews that she spoke of constantly.  There were framed photos of them tacked on the wall beside her Ph. D from Cornell.  She had wiry gray hair, wore long black dresses, and smelled of herbal cigarettes.
          
     We arrived late for our appointment and Benjamin was angry with me.  I changed clothes three or four times.  My body constantly fluctuated between hot and cold and who knows what temperature the office would be.  Finally, he kicked one of the sweaters that I had dropped on the floor of our bedroom and yelled at me that it didn’t matter. 
          
     In the doctor’s office, we were nervous and Benjamin kept shifting in his chair.  After our polite hellos, she reviewed my medical history out loud, licking her finger as she flipped each page in the file.  She listed dates and symptoms and hospital visits.  I said nothing, but Benjamin confirmed all the details stoically.  Finally, she looked only at me and asked how far along I was. 
          
     “Twelve weeks,” I said, without touching my belly.  
          
     “We had an appointment with our obstetrician last week,” Benjamin chimed in.  “The ultrasound looks fine and the weight is normal.”
          
     On her desk was one of those pendulums with tiny metallic balls suspended from wires that swing back and forth, back and forth.  It was not therapeutic as much as hypnotizing and I began to count the clicks of it, numbing myself to the conversation.  Finally, Doctor Levine reached out to stop the ball and gave her diagnosis.
          
     “You should be aware that each time it happened, the chance of reoccurrence is significantly reduced,” she said. “Some women who have had difficulty, have gone on to have two or three healthy children.”
          
     Benjamin grasped my hand but his palm was sweaty and I pulled away.
          
     “Are you currently working?” she asked.
          
     “Not anymore,” I said.  “I owned a shop, but I sold it last year.”
          
     “Good.  It’s best that expecting mothers reduce stress as much as possible.  I also advise an adjustment to your daily routine, refrain from any physical activity and don’t overexert yourself.”
          
     I nodded.
          
     “I’ll recommend some literature that can clarify precautions to take and some indicating symptoms.  Also, let’s schedule some more visits in the upcoming weeks to conduct a few tests.”   
     Doctor Levine listed all the procedures I would need: blood tests and chromosome sampling and hormone injections.  When we stood to leave, she reached for my hand, her eyes magnified in her thick glasses.
          
     “One of the most important things to remember – you mustn’t give up.  There’s still hope.”

     We read all of the books.  Sitting in the bookstore café with cups of tea and honey, we would read certain passages aloud to each other.  After a few hours, Benjamin grew restless and would leave me there alone.  I stayed until the manager of the store politely informed me that they were closing and offered me his arm to escort me out.
          
     The books were filled with every piece of advice, every possible complication, everything that we shouldn’t do.  I chopped off my blonde curls and stopped getting highlights.  My roots grew in dark and ugly.  I gave up the glass of Cabernet I used to enjoy in quiet evenings when the snow fell.  We stopped going out for dinner, fearful of cigarette smoke or poorly cooked food.  There were invitations from friends for weekends in South Hampton to which we declined.  I couldn’t handle the jerky three hour car ride, the heat, sharp pebbles of sand blown into my eyes.  I began taking maternity yoga classes that made my ankles swell and did little to absorb my nervous energy.  
          
     Benjamin never said anything, but I knew he thought it was a little extreme.  But I was convinced.  I had hope.  I believed.  I could make things grow.  
          
     Towards the end, we stopped sleeping together.  In our bed, I placed two pillows on either side of me to prevent rolling over onto my stomach.  Ben slept on the lumpy sofa.



     After it happened the first time, I stayed overnight in the hospital for the D&C and was sent home the next day with antibiotics to prevent infection.  I stayed in bed for seven days and seven nights.  Benjamin took off three days of work.  He only left the apartment once, to go to the shop and hang the Closed sign in the window.  
          
     I kept the blinds open so the sun filled our bedroom.  We watched black and white movies in bed, ate cold noodles out of cartons with our fingers, and played games of Scrabble.  When we slept, he kept a hand on my belly, an unconscious habit that he had developed during the night.  
          
     That first day he went back to work, he showered and crawled back into bed with me.  Before he left, he kissed me on the forehead and told me to answer the door if someone came.
          
     The apartment buzzer rang a few hours later.  I dragged myself out of bed.  In the bathroom mirror, my eyes were a dull blue, damaged.  I splashed cold water on my face and went to the door.  There was a man in a red shirt with Florist etched in white letters.  He held a flower wrapped in clear plastic. I could see the long branch sticking out and the thin white blossom at the end.  There was no card.
          
     Every hour, for the rest of the day, there was a delivery.  Some of them were white or purple, others were the palest pink like a little girl’s ballet tutu.  They filled the kitchen and the dining room.  I put them in the corners, far from the windows but close enough that the sunlight could reach them.  It is a delicate balance.  And even under ideal conditions, there is no certainty that orchids will bloom again.


Still Lives
May 7, 2012

By Jane Ades
Jane Ades is a psychoanalyst with a practice in Port Washington, NY and Manhattan. She holds a Master’s in Social Work from Columbia University. Imagining stories is as intriguing as learning life’s truths.  This is Jane’s first published story.

     The house was divided into sections. The upstairs loft was all ours, while our parents’ bedrooms were downstairs. The kitchen and screened-in porch were always our mothers’ domains, and no one much bothered with the living room during the summer. 

     “Where are the people?” Sarah asked.

     “The smart ones, Caleb and Nick, are under the bed. The parents and the other adults are still having their drinks. You can’t see them from this angle,” I said.

     “The boys?” Sarah asked.

     “No. The parents. They’re just, living, you know, eating, reading, talking as if there’s time. It’s careless.” I was already being pulled in more than I had wanted, but Sarah had a way of asking and pausing that made it hard for me to ignore her. She sat there and twisted her hair and looked at the drawing pad on my lap. 

     “I see them. Nick and Caleb, I mean. It’s almost over. They’re just about ready to come out.”

     I was drawing on the steps outside of the Metropolitan Museum. I was at the museum because I needed to breathe fresh air, instead of the stale stuff that permeated my apartment building during meal times. I’d been living alone for seven years, mostly. I’d had boyfriends, but none who’d made me give up my solitude. I learned early on that some connections, no matter how sturdy, can still be severed and this worried me about the men who claimed they’d always love me. 

     My apartment was in an old building with beautiful wood moldings and a tin lobby ceiling: but sound echoed through the hallways--a laugh or a toilet flush--as did smells of chicken soup or spaghetti and meatballs. I had a preference for neither food nor bathroom habits, and so left for the tepidness of anonymity on the museum’s steps. 

     The Museum takes up about one entire city block. The steps are wide, solidly formed blocks of beige concrete and they stretch out into the street like a chaise lounge. On sunny days, or surprisingly warm winter ones, people spread out on the steps. The concrete has been polished by time, and now looks like long benches of marble that’s been softened and curved in spots from people’s bottoms. I haven’t quite seen anyone making love, but on those cold days, with coats and scarves, bags and blankets, it’s not a reach to see some humping under it all. And illegal substances flow as readily as tourist guidebooks. 

      As I was completing a sketch for a large, rambling house, a deep shadow, like the wing of an eagle, spread across my drawing pad. It grew from the corner and hovered in the center. I was suddenly unsure which were the edges I had drawn and which came from the shadow’s. I squinted first and then shaded my eyes. The shadow didn’t stir. I shifted my position to view the drawing from a different angle and then saw a woman outlined from the sun standing above me. It must have been the way she lifted her arms to stroke down her blowing hair that caused the darkness to intercept my drawing. When I turned to look at her, she reminded me, in an odd, solitary way, of a still life. I went back to my drawing pad, content to have the whole day ahead of me.

     Sarah came up to me later, while I was sitting there drawing. She hovered behind me, and at first I didn’t notice, since the steps are always crowded and I’d grown used to being bumped and jostled. Sometimes those movements caused my hand to jerk and I accidentally drew a line where I never intended one to be; but I usually liked the suddenness of it and so kept it in the drawing. But unlike other people, Sarah’s presence didn’t go away. She shifted and leaned in and as she did, I could feel the air behind me warm. I waited to feel cool air return, but instead felt more and more cramped, like an arthritic hand that can’t help but turn in on itself. I looked back and was prepared to glare at her for usurping my space: but when I saw her eyes, I stopped.

     I hadn’t seen eyes that pale since I was young. The blue was almost washed out and if you looked quickly, you’d think her eyes were entirely white. Her eyelashes were sparse and fair, giving her a fairy-like appearance. And her skin was so pale, as if she rarely ventured outdoors. She was crouched down, arms tightly wrapped around her knees, head propped right on top. Her black jeans cradled her from thigh to ankle, contrasting dramatically with her fair complexion. She began speaking to me as if we had known one another. 

     My heart thudded as I packed up my pencils and notebooks. If she were a wraith, I’d rather not be present when her mood shifted. I’d brought my large canvas sack that held all my art supplies, just in case I needed watercolors, or small dabs of paint to highlight the grays that are the essence of my drawings. If I could have thrown myself in it, I would have, but short of that, I retrieved the jetsam which I’d surrounded myself with, my fingerless gloves, charcoals and an empty coffee cup, crammed them quickly into the large bag, and left. 

     I stood quickly, momentarily losing my footing from a sharp head rush that I should have anticipated, but Sarah did it for me, instead. She was suddenly right there, at my elbow, propping me up. Her touch was weightless, but I shrugged her off as if I was batting a fly, and I headed down the steps. She kept pace just behind me.

     “Can I see your drawings?” she asked.

     “You saw that I just put them away,” I said. I hoped I sounded irritable, but a gust of wind blew my words away, and brought tears to my eyes. 

     “I remember something about the house you’re drawing,” she said. I turned, looked at her, and finally, I recognized her. “I’m Sarah,” she said, as if I had known. And then, as if the conversation had never been interrupted, she said, “Where are the people?” I felt compelled to answer, as if my response could explain what had happened years ago.

     At first I attributed my encounter with Sarah as something so bizarre that, like the old saw in which New York City harbors all kinds of odd individuals, most of whom should be quietly ignored, I was tempted to shake her off. Her face, however, remained stuck in my mind, the way a bicycle wheel ticked around and around when a rock or twig got lodged in its spokes. I was surprised at how the memory she brought with her affected me.  I thought that day belonged to other people, not me. But once I recognized her she didn’t scare me as much as suffocate me. I suddenly missed Caleb and wanted to see him. I didn’t think he’d be happy to see me because of my absence at a time when I knew he needed me. But he wouldn’t throw me out, either. We’d been children together until our childhood ended that summer evening.

     I hadn’t seen him since our parents sold our summer house ten years ago. It had been awkward between us without the house, as if that was the sole link for our connection. But like old lovers, after the house was gone, we were tentative with one another until our relationship dissolved from lack of use. As Sarah looked at my drawing, I felt transported back in time and it was our families’ house again. I needed to know if Caleb and I could finally take a look at it together, but I knew mentioning Sarah might be too much.  

     The last I knew, Caleb owned a high-end crafts store selling everything from Murano glass to Mexican shawls, to Ethiopian coffee. I hoped that it was still there as much as I worried it wouldn’t be, but as I rounded the corner of Eldridge Street, I was relieved to see the giant Buddha that had ruled the center of the window for years. I felt the thud of my heartbeat, just knowing I was moments from seeing Caleb again. 

     I partly hoped I’d miss him if he had closed early, or perhaps he’d be away on a buying trip, but when I wrenched open the door, he was there, after all, sitting in the back on an old threadbare sofa, with Nick. They might have been arguing or Nick’s face might have just settled into a scowl. Either scenario was disappointing. The old metal door was shoved unevenly inside its frame, and I wedged my way in, so my entrance couldn’t possibly be a surprise. The hinges screamed and my bag caught, stripping it from my arm, exploding its content on the already cluttered floor. Caleb looked my way, without saying a word, but I saw his eyes widened and the muscles in his jaw tensing.

     I stood in front of my cousins who were now composed like the Maginot Line. “Hi,” I said. Nick and Caleb looked at each other before they raised their eyes to mine.

     “Hi? Just hi? Jesus, Liz, what are you doing here?” Caleb said, after waiting a few seconds too long. 

     His voice was strained and came out almost like a cough. He no longer wore the trademark sunglasses he’d worn in his youth and I noticed that he squinted a lot. His shirt swelled a bit at his belly, and he had fine lines growing on the outside of his eyes, but otherwise he looked the same as he did fifteen years ago.

     “It’s been a while,” I said and gave a half-hearted smile.

      “That’s an understatement,” he said. 

     His lips curved up at the ends, but it wasn’t a smile. He turned to face Nick who was sitting by the cash register. Nick’s face registered neither recognition nor interest. He looked like he was as stolid as the ceramic bowls and tableware lining the shelves. I got up to admire a mug, just to have something to do, but as I stood there looking, I remembered Caleb’s eye for beauty. It had been that way since he was a boy. The glaze of the mug glowed with a burnt orange iridescence and the indentations along the body were perfectly suited for a hand. It had no handle. I felt Caleb study me as I made my way back to my seat. I sat down on a tree trunk side table with about 20 rings inside. 

     “Is there something you want?” he asked. His voice no longer had the animosity it first had. 

     “This wasn’t the entrance I intended,” I said. 

     My hair fell into my mouth as I bent over to pick up the pad and pencils that had begun to root around the floor. I used the time rounding up my drawings from the floor to slow my breathing, but I flushed as I rose. 

      “So, how’d you get this table?” I asked, my voice rising and falling like a teenager’s.

      He smiled at my nervousness and it made me recall the understanding we used to share between us. “Chopped it myself,” he said. “I went into a forest, found the most beautiful tree and cut it down.” He was joking, but a line of worry coursed through his eyes. “No, you know I get it from dealers, reclaimed wood, blah, blah,” his voice softer now, though still on guard. “And you? Still drawing, I see.” 

      “You haven’t said why you’re here yet,” Nick said, impatiently.

      Nick and Caleb were twins, though fraternal. Nick wasn’t my favorite cousin, but he came with Caleb. When we were kids, Nick occasionally stuttered and we named him “Nickwit.” I felt bad for him, but his lack of imagination had always been irritating. He took our playtime so literally that he made the games boring.

      I ignored Nick, put my drawing pad back together, and showed them the house I’d been drawing when I’d seen Sarah this morning. It was pretty sketchy with black lines like scaffolding but the rooms were all there. I wanted it to have the perspective of someone looking through the window. That slightly eerie feeling combined with the potential for mischief. Sarah had ruined that for me though. Her presence rendered the mischief as danger.

      Caleb had always had an eye for “art.” I’d heard from my mother that he’d studied at The Arts League. That made sense to me and I was glad he hadn’t given it up. I remembered when we were young how extraordinarily focused he was when he painted, how he could sit for hours in the same position. He liked to think of himself as one of those old-fashioned artists and he’d wear long-sleeved, white shirts and sunglasses, explaining that his skin and eyes were sensitive to light. I laughed like a hyena at his artist costume, mostly to get his attention. Those were the times when he was lost to me and I existed on his periphery. I should have persevered in reuniting us then, as if I could have known what we’d lose by being apart, but I didn’t because I was resentful that he could be content without me.

     “You’re drawing our house,” said Caleb, like an accusation. He pointed to the bedroom upstairs. When I didn’t answer, he said, “What house has only one bedroom upstairs but two downstairs?” That room was our fort or space station, an intermediary before real life caught up to us, and our parents never came up.

     My stomach lurched. “Actually, I wasn’t,” I said. “I was drawing a house, but then I saw Sarah, or really, she saw me and the more she looked at it, the more it became our house.” I hadn’t put this together until I said it.

     “Sarah?” Caleb asked.

      “The girl, the daughter. I saw her that last time at the party in our summerhouse.” I hesitated. Then I said, “I ran into her just now at the Met.”

     “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Caleb said. 

      The house I had intended to draw was the one from Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. I’d had the painting over my bed since I was a child and it moved with me during my adult years. I was an only child and the image of the girl, forlorn and helpless, seemingly miles from the house at the back of the canvas, always brought with it a shiver of fear; she could have been me, alone and so far from home. Back at our summerhouse where the trees that welcomed us and the small, out-of-the-way places scared us at night, we three, Caleb, Nick and I were never alone. We were just three wild children. We had no thoughts other than avoiding our parents’ vigilance, and managing the free time that was as constant as a soft wind. But that innocence disappeared in one day. Until I saw Sarah again, I reveled in the loneliness inside Christina’s house, as if it could exist only there.

     But somehow, after I saw Sarah’s silhouette near the top of the steps, her long hair, like a newly hatched butterfly fluttering in the breeze, the house I was drawing changed. My comfort with being alone disappeared, and I longed for connection. Like the precariousness we all felt that last summer, she looked like the wind could topple her at any moment. Her coat was open and her hands simply trailed down her sides as she gazed uptown. She brought the wind with her and my drawings, like unruly children with a new babysitter, flitted around me as I grabbed hold of the edges. She’d asked about the people in the house, and then it was no longer just the Wyeth painting from my room: it was my room, and the rest of my house. 

     I was older than Caleb and Nick by three years, which as children, was akin to ten. I took pride in my age, as if it were an accomplishment. Nick used to complain about the inequity of my leadership, but it suited me, and Caleb didn’t care. Anyway, I was never the boss, just the engine. 

     Caleb followed me to our favorite trees and he climbed faster and farther than either Nick or me. But then when I’d had enough, I’d clamber down and head back to the house, eager to take my place beside our mothers. The boys soon followed, first Caleb, then Nick, not because they had anything to do, but just because when it wasn’t the three of us, nothing was ever quite as fun. We pledged our allegiance to each other in a low tree, once before the end of our last summer. We tied our shoelaces together, linked pinkies and jumped, landing in a heap of arms and legs, scrambling up, embarrassed by the closeness.

     There were drinks lined up on the long console - vodka and gin, sweet lemonade and soda.  I’d pour a Coke for myself and for the boys. Ice sweated on the outside of the glass, cooling my hands and I plastered it onto my forehead. We sat on the front porch and listened to the gossip. 

     Our parents traced time in the way of traditional families, where the mothers stayed the weeks with the children and the fathers traveled to Boston to work and came home on the weekend trains, tired and pale. Our mothers had drinks waiting for the men and a week’s worth of errands waiting for themselves. The conversations they had on the porch when the day was done were fairly repetitive, and I usually didn’t eavesdrop for long. I knew our parents would eventually end up fighting, our fathers accusing our mothers of enjoying themselves at their expense and so on. We knew that our mothers’ time was spent as leisurely as the hour hand of the clock, but it was up to the fathers to figure out exactly what their wives did with their languorous days. That was the substance of the weekend, the discovery of our mother’s derelict duties: not enough food for the weekend, laundry still in need of folding, dishes that sat a day too long so that our fathers saw food encrusted on our dinner plates.

     It was during the summer when I turned fourteen that Mr. Pappel’s name became as familiar as the sight of my father’s car coming down the driveway. Jared Pappel was the principal of the local high school. He sailed during the summer, racing to Block Island and Newport, RI. Once he raced all the way to Florida. He smiled easily at us, even though we were only a summer family. One brisk, rainy morning, not so unusual in the summer, Caleb and I were on the porch playing a mad game of spit. My hands were flying in a blur of motion to get the most cards down before Caleb slammed his hand over mine. The porch was around the bend from the kitchen. Our mothers’ conversations were the background noise that city life is to me now, constant but with crescendos and a few lapses. That day was different because their long murmurs seemed conscious of our whereabouts. I was wary in the moments of silence. Then after one particularly still silence, I heard my mother shushing my aunt. I put my cards down slowly, implicitly knowing that Caleb and I would be bound together by our mothers’ secrecy.

     “Really, Carol, maybe it’s your guilty conscience coming out,” my mother said. “It was dark. You don’t really know if it was him.” In the same matter-of-fact way, I heard my mother offer my aunt the box of tissues. I could always count on my mother for having just the right thing around. 

     “Leave my conscience alone. I know his smile,” my aunt snuffled under the tissues. “You know how white his teeth shine? They were unmistakable.”

     “What did you see? That a man you shouldn’t be involved with in the first place is with another woman?” My mother had a way of speaking that made you want to answer. 

     At first, it seemed as if she didn’t care, but then her voice slowed and went down an octave and you felt bound to it. It made for difficulties when I was a few years older, but for now, it felt reassuring to hear her take charge of my aunt’s sadness and accusations. I nudged Caleb with my foot because at that moment, I wanted him to know that I was different from him in a way I never had been before. It was his mother and not mine who had betrayed everyone. I sensed right then that things between our families would change and selfishly, I wanted him to realize that it was his mother’s fault. My mother was innocent and I believed we would remain unblemished, as if sorrow had boundaries. I believed we’d be spared. Caleb didn’t respond to my warning, but stared at the cards laid on the porch floor.

     Carol, Caleb’s mom, continued, “I was in the back parking lot. I had to slide through the cars because the spots are so tight. You know that.” My aunt paused and I imagined my mother nodding as she continued. “I managed to open my door and was squeezing myself in when I heard a car door slam nearby. I looked up and thought I saw Jared behind the bakery. He loved their rolls. I started towards him, to surprise him, but he was with Dana, the young girl from the bakery. You know, the one who always hangs back? She twists her hair around her finger, which I think is unhygienic. He was covering Dana’s mouth with his hand and he shoved her against the building. I heard a thud or a grunt. Maybe she hit her head against the side and he threw himself against her. I screamed a little.”

     “A little? Carol, what happened?”

     “I don’t know, but he must have lost his grip and she was able to run off. I think he heard me because he looked in my direction, and that’s when I saw Jared smile. It was unmistakable.” My aunt sounded like she’d run out of breath. 

     The game of spit had long ended and I sat slumped on the floor. Caleb didn’t even look at me as he left, his head bowed by the weight of his mother’s affair. At that moment I wished I’d shown more kindness to him earlier. I knew he prided himself on being the man of the family when the fathers were away, but now he learned how truly unimportant his father was to his mother.

     I didn’t hear much more gossip the rest of the summer. After a while I quit eavesdropping on the porch. Caleb wouldn’t play spit with me and our mothers’ conversations grew boring and guarded. Instead, I spent afternoons walking past the bakery two or three times to see if Dana was still there. She never took a day off, it seemed.

     On one of the last days in the fall, when the weather cooled and it was no longer brisk, but icy, the story of Jared Pappel resurfaced. We had a fall open house, welcoming people as we were leaving. It made no sense, but our mothers enjoyed this last bit of festivity. Still, that year, it felt forced. Mr. Pappel was there, along with his wife and kids. His daughter, Sarah, looked about six. She was extremely fair for a child who had spent the summer at a beach house and her eyes were pale blue, almost white. I didn’t want to be the child-minder, so I headed up to my room. Just before the landing, I heard my aunt speak in a sharp whisper. I crouched on the steps to listen. She was recounting the story about Dana. A man responded. His voice was coarse. He said “slut” and “whore” and I didn’t know who he meant. My aunt rushed down the stairs, never noticing me, but as Mr. Pappel followed, I saw him turn his head towards me. I looked away quickly, but at that moment, I saw Mr. Pappel’s daughter. Though like me, she had crouched low at the turn of the stairs to listen to the adults, I saw her eyes take on a look of faraway stillness. Her pale face had the same dream-like coolness that I saw years later, that morning at the Met.

     The summers weren’t as much fun after that. Our mothers were quieter and our fathers’ appearances seemed mundane. Our families no longer got together with the people who lived in town. We felt unwelcome in the stores we frequented. I wanted to shield Caleb, to apologize for my selfish vulnerability, and I grew cautious with him, wary about intruders. But he just got annoyed. I felt bruised, and though I’d always loved going to our summerhouse, I didn’t mind when our families decided to sell it.  I never knew what became of Mr. Pappel or his family, and similarly, our families faded from each other’s views. I didn’t see Caleb or Nick after that.

     Caleb was studying my drawing as if he intended to critique it. “It’s been quiet without you,” he said at last. 

     “I know,” I said. 

     I realized now that, after that summer, I’d created a life without momentum. I thought it was an asset to an artist, but being with Caleb now made me long for the days of my childhood when daylight was enough of a reason to celebrate and connections were as simple as tying shoelaces. I sat with the drawing of the house on my lap and looked around Caleb’s store. It was filled with stuff that presupposes life’s excesses. Boiled wool bags rested along with cashmere gloves and silk scarves against a low, antique foosball table. I made my way around the store touching the rough fibers of lashed together baskets filled with colorful, children’s stacking blocks. 

      “How’s your mother?” I asked, the way strangers do. 

     “Getting older and slower since my dad died,” he said, telling the truth in a way strangers never do. It jarred me. 

     I’d heard about my uncle’s death and had sent a sympathy card. “I’m sorry,” I said. 

     Nick swung his foot over his ankle and leaned back, stretching his arms behind his head. “Yeah, we know,” he said with a shrug.

     His sharpness stung me in a way it never could have when we were kids. 

     “Well,” I said, “I thought we could just...talk.”

     “It would have been better if you’d showed up years ago,” Nick said.

      “What did you have in mind when you came in?” Caleb asked.

     “I don’t know,” I said. “But after Sarah left and I packed up my bag, you were the only person on my mind.”

     “I’d love to help you out, but you’re a little long in coming. I’ve moved on and so has Nick. You never tried to come over.” He continued, “It’s just a small thing, but it would have made a difference to me.” He paused and thought a minute more. “I needed you and you weren’t there.” He breathed a loud sigh as if saying this had totally exhausted him.

     I could feel his child’s foot nudging me away. I put my mug down on Caleb’s desk, careful not to knock over a bundle of papers on which his laptop was balanced. “You’ve done a wonderful job here,” I said softly. “It looks like everything belongs. There are no empty spaces.” I could feel Caleb’s eyes on my back as I said goodbye and walked out the front door. The small cowbell rattled dully as the door swayed shut.

     I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed west. It was almost dusk by the time I got to my apartment and I had nothing in the refrigerator. I could have forgone dinner altogether and resigned myself to a bowl of cold cereal, but that reminded me too much of the times Caleb, Nick and I made ourselves dinner, when we’d make oatmeal covered with heaping spoons of brown sugar. I felt my mouth water at the slimy sugariness of our concoction. 

     I didn’t bother with a jacket and went back out to the 24-hour store at the corner. I picked out instant oatmeal, with brown sugar. As I waited to pay, I felt a warm breath on my cheek. I turned and saw Sarah behind me in line. She smiled.

     “Here you are,” she said. Her light coat fluttered at the opening of the shop door, the way it had on the museum steps. Her greeting sounded like we had inadvertently been separated from one another. I tightened my lips in recognition, the best reply I could come up with. 

     “Have you been drawing any more today?” she asked.

     “Not since I packed up my stuff this morning at the Museum,” I said. “I visited my cousin Caleb.” Again I was surprised that I had volunteered this.

     “How is he?”

     “Angry, more Nick, though.”

     “It’s odd how life can change so quickly, isn’t it?” Sarah said. 

     I didn’t say anything.

     “You think you’re headed in one direction, only to find that it’s diagonal or circular. You’re the artist. You have a better vocabulary for metaphor than I,” she said.

     “Well,” I said, “It was quite a coincidence to meet here.” My voice trailed off, giving a sense of finality, I hoped.

     Sarah finished paying for her food and followed me outside. “I’d love to see more of your work, if you’re free now. I have a bit of time,” she said.

     Like every interaction I’d had with Sarah, I instinctively complied. We walked to a small café and sat outside. I hoped that the dusk might give my drawings more perspective than I’d been able to create. I spread my pages that were softly backlit from the candle at the edge of our table, and showed her the one I’d been working on before today. It, too, was my summer house, surprisingly, the one I’d drawn today, but just the rear view, from the back yard. The porch was lit from the inside and dusk settled outdoors. I hadn’t recognized the coincidence until just now. 

     Sarah placed her index finger on the back porch and left it there for a moment. “It’s warm there,” she said.

     “Yeah, family and all.” I said. 

     “Actually, I meant the paper is warm. Here, feel it.” She took my hand and placed my palm where she had just pointed. 

     “You’re right, I said.” I looked for a candle that might explain the unusual temperature.

     As if reading my thoughts, she said, “It’s not warm from a candle. It’s hot from the inside of the house.” 

     I went along with the conversation because she’d picked up on something I’d thought about but hadn’t named till I’d seen Caleb and Nick. My notion of family used to be unalterable, boring even, as tradition spilled over into a predictable monotony, the years when I was a kid. But since the summer when Jared Pappel made his appearance inside our house, the structure began to slowly fray, like a flag that’s been waved so long, it’s worn out its usefulness, until there was little left except for the strands of  knowledge that it was once whole. 

     “I remember when we met,” Sarah continued. “It was the fall open house at your family’s home. We were all there.”

     “It’ll never be the same,” I said, and the drawing flickered from the center with a deep orange glow. Sarah and I sat there watching until the edges of the drawing furled and browned and all that was left were ashes.

 

 

The First Trial of Manhood

December 1, 2012

Samuel Sattin is a graduate of the Mills College MFA in creative writing. His work has appeared in Salon Magazine, The Good Men Project, io9, Kotaku, The Cobalt Review, J Weekly, Cent Magazine, Out of the Gutter Online, Ink Well, and Generations. He is The Minister of Propaganda/Contributing Editor at The Weeklings, and his debut novel, LEAGUE OF SOMEBODIES, is being released by Dark Coast Press in April, 2013. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and a beagle.

     As a dying man, Lenard Sikophsky would often look back upon the night when he was a child, and his father, Fearghas Murdoch Sikophsky—the first generation of Scottish/Jewish/Polish (with a lower case ‘p’) émigrés pilgrimming into America by briny way of the Massachusetts coast—stuffed a sponge soaked with chloroform between his lips, wrapped a sash around his eyes, and got ready to introduce him to a concept he called manhood by way of a speeding train. 
     “Look up at me, boy,” Lenard remembered his father saying, after permission to lift the blindfold was given.  It was late December in 1967, around dinnertime, when the twelve-year-old found himself crouching on the train tracks below the bridge at West Fourth Street, just outside Dorchester.
     “Look up at me.”
     His father stood, beard forked, above Lenard on the bridge platform’s center.  Below him, in stone relief, a porpoise-like creature begirded the bodies of four grinning cherubs holding swords.  He walked over them in blasphemous bursts, slapping against the stone with his old-world brogues, while his mohair suit, slithering with pinstripes, struggled to keep up the pace.  His beard and muttonchops twinkled with silver.  The purple dollop of his boyhood yarmulke bit into his head as if it were a small, angry animal, and he had a look in his eyes, something bacchanal, conveying to his son the simple, sinister phrase:
     It is time.
     “I thought I couldn’t look up,” said twelve-year-old Lenard, the words whimpering from his massive mouth.  The enormous size of that mouth, and head that held it, earned him nicknames from children around his home of Milton, Massachusetts, like queer globe and pregnant face.  “No matter what.  Like you said back at home.”
     “I never said that,” growled Fearghas.
     “But I heard you.“
     “The words I say are not really words,” he continued, scratching the fabric over his ass with vigor.       “Remember that I, unlike you, am a daredevil of language.  A regular Evel Knievel on the subject of tongues.  You want to see through my syllables, earn the ability to understand the space in between them—soar over them on your own goddamn motorbike!  But you can’t just wake up into greatness, see?  The history of such happenings is impossible.”
     Lenard, with a twitch at his left eye, nodded.
     “It’s like asking a horse why it’s a horse,” Fearghas carried on.  “Urging me to recount what I previously said.  Don’t resign yourself to a life of constant puzzlement, son.  There are far better routes to embark upon.  Like tonight, for example.”  He grinned.  “Tonight is both the beginning and end of your once-stupid life.  It is tonight that I will tell you: prepare to run, wee fucker.”  He bared his teeth.  “It is tonight that I will tell you: prepare to fight.”
     Earlier Fearghas had forced Lenard to wear the blindfold while giving what he called an explanation for this mayhem.  It began with the child’s Bar Mitzvah lessons one-month prior at the tucked-away synagogue of Rodef Shalom.  Rodef was a granite building, shaped like a nipple, that attendants believed unknown to the goyim.  The presiding Rabbi was more than a century old, and when he spoke it was rumored that paint flaked from the doors of the Ark.   The congregation was comprised of no more than fifty old-worlders—crestfallen Europeans and scholars from Algeria—and their chipper, American-born children, who had the tendency to sneak out of services to smoke pot.   
     It was at this tiny synagogue that Lenard began squeaking out his communally task mastered Haphtarah.   It was also there that his father prepared his unusual destiny.  Under the eyes of theologians with copper-rimmed spectacles, Lenard chiseled away at his people’s text without a single inkling of his fate.  He never remembered the names of the ones who watched over him, but remembered the way they smiled, like the vowel-less letters themselves.  How sometimes, even if he’d thought he’d pronounced them well, they’d pinch him on the shoulder and scold, “Nu, do it again.  These things you say ‘ist mistake!” or “These America-boys—brain is rotten.  Intellect for penny candy and Superman.”
     At the time, Lenard supposed they griped for his perfection, as well as for the perfection of every child of American soil, because his country would never resemble the land where they were born.  How could he have anticipated anything else?  He saw how they constantly kvetched of how nothing was as good here as it was at home.  The citizens themselves, they’d say, were spoiled, and the neighborhoods, crowded; the American Dream, they’d say, was far too implausible, almost in the way of a myth.  They never mentioned anything about the dark and scaly windmill of Lenard’s future, and so never gave him reason to worry.  Actually, the more they belayed him with their daily grumbles, the more the boy began to forget about his studies and feel sorry for them.  It was easy to see that Rodef Shalom of Milton, Massachusetts, was not something they were used to.  It was most certainly not Har Zion of Itchki, Poland (a wondrous shtetl of winding brooks, silver flowers, and traditional ideas) where Fearghas, many years ago, had been lined up for greatness by his father, Apollonius Sikophsky.  On the fateful day of his own Bar Mitzvah, the feral youth had been ushered from the pews wearing a Tallis reigned with Yemenite gold.  Approaching what was rumored to be the most important ceremony of a Jewish boy’s life, rather than being mesmerized by The Twilight Zone or Hogan’s Heroes, in the manner of his son, he learned of a sacred tome passed down through his family for generations.  A book considered more sacred to the male Sikophskies than their very own people’s Torah.  In Lenard’s twelfth year, while he studied away, thinking nothing of his life was any more extraordinary than it was for any child his age, he was secretly being prepared to assume a position of a most dangerous persuasion.  For it was in his father’s fathers’ book that his life would take its stake.  He wouldn’t learn about the book until after tonight, until after he was stolen from his room and thrown in the back of his family’s Cutlass and told to stay quiet until otherwise notified.
     The Manful Exercises of Aesop Mac’Cool, it was called.  Or, as it was deemed to those familiar: The Manaton.
     “The rule tonight is you don’t look up, unless I tell you to look up,” Fearghas said now, glowering down at his son.  “So, if I tell you to look up, then…”
     “I look up,” Lenard completed tentatively. 
     From behind Fearghas’s back came a cane, black as an oil stick, and he used it to murder the ground.
     “Ready?” the Scotsman growled, bearing a canine.
     “Yessir,” lied Lenard.
     “Then look up.”
     “No, sir.”     
     “Why?  What are you waiting for?”
      “I’m scared, sir.”
      “Why are you scared?”
      “I’ve never seen you like this before.”
      Lenard watched his father smile.  He wondered how he could do so, considering where they were.  With the Scotsman looming on the bridge above him, there seemed to be no escape.  Two concrete walls grown over with ivy rose above Lenard on his left and right side, and behind him, just like in front, tracks carried on with no end.  Adolescent graffiti was scrawled amongst the vines, curse-words and drawings of body parts whose meaning he could not fathom, but about which, even under the circumstances, he still wanted to learn.  Every few seconds he thought he felt something nipping at his shoes, but tried not to think about it.  There was already enough to be frightened of as far as he was concerned. 
     “Come on, son,” his father said, sweetly and softly, as had been typical before tonight.  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.  Just meet me eye to eye, as men are meant to do.”
     Lenard chanced a gaze at his father.  Slow and careful.  His eyes were still sticky from the blindfold.
     “Bad decision,” Fearghas muttered, and from his fist a small kettle potato flew straight at Lenard’s head.
     “Idiot!” he yelled.  “Never look in me eyes when you’re on the tracks of life.”              
     He might have gotten out all his words before the potato beaned Lenard on the left
temple.
     “Ow,” he yelped–though it hadn’t hurt that much at all, only left him confused at being assaulted with what usually became dinner.
     “Ow,” Fearghas sniggered, hands up in mock-alarm.  “Halt your yapping.  There’ll be plenty of pain to deal with later in life, you hear?  Plenty of ouches.  You haven’t seen nothing yet.  No you haven’t, Bar Mitzvah boy.  Here’s an idea for you—these tracks,” his hand scoured over the entire expanse of railway. “Think of them like life, from beginning to end.  And you never let your guard down on life’s tracks.  Do you?”  He dipped his ear forward for a response.  After hearing nothing from his son, who was still a bit stunned, he answered himself with, “No.  Not for a second.”
     Lenard, just as clinically passive as he was terrified, said, “Sorry, I won’t do it again, dad.”  He’d never seen his father full of such animus before, and witnessing it felt surreal and, strangely, exciting.
     “Damned right you won’t,” said Fearghas in response.  “And don’t ever say you're sorry.  And don’t call me dad, either.  Tonight, you will refer to me as Fearghas.  Fearghas, hear?”
     “Okay. Fearghas.”
     “I’m trying to protect you.”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “I don’t want They to stand a chance.”
     “Who’s They?” asked Lenard.
     “What?” asked Fearghas.
     “What?” asked Lenard.
     “I love you, boy.” Fearghas made himself stand proudly.  All the wild hair below his yarmulke yawned in a mane down his cheeks.  “Oh,” he mused, “I do.  And it’s for love and only love that I’ve brought you here tonight.  Whatever happens, and though you might be angry, know you’ll thank me for it all one day.  When you pass it on to your own wee ones, and to their own wee ones after that.  And to their own wee ones, the weeest, weeest of ones.  And the weeest of the weeest of wee ones they end up having.”
     Fearghas had crouched closer to the ground with each and every enunciated “wee,” and their eventual superlatives, which were spoken in a loud voice as he sat into a squat.
     “You catch?” he asked, leaving Lenard to guess as to whether or not his father knew the appropriate way to use Scottish adjectives (or if anybody did, for that manner).
     “Love,” said Lenard.  He said just that one word.  Stated it.  It got caught in his mouth for a second, but then simply fell out.  He thought of how he would never have been able, in his wildest imagination, to throw any of his “weeest ones” onto the railway tracks outside of Dorchester, or any Chester for that matter, or to launch potatoes at them, all out of the desire to see them, well…what was it they were doing?
     “Love,” said Lenard again, as if it were a conclusion.  Some argument he’d stopped with a gunshot. “Yes.  I do understand that.”
     “I’m glad you do,” said Fearghas.  “For it is my biological responsibility as your father to drag you, screaming, into the hungry sea of enlightenment.  Now, wee fucker.”  He wiped his hands, placed them on his cane, and wiggled his Hungarian-styled moustache.  “Let’s try this again.  Look up at me.”
     “Nu-uh,” said Lenard, as he tightened his fists.  “Not this time.  I learned my lesson.”
     Another potato whizzed out and struck him on the head.
     “Always expect the unexpected when walking the tracks of life,” laughed Fearghas.  He shouldered up a green burlap sack filled with golden, red, and white spuds—one he wore sprightly in the manner of a purse.  “Here, the approaching train isn’t your only enemy.  No.” His eyes scooped the air.  “Here, there are many other villains of whom you should keep constantly aware.”
     “Like flying potatoes?” asked Lenard, rubbing his head.  He was impressed at his own first attempt at sarcasm, but couldn’t ignore the meekness it accompanied.
     “Yes, like potatoes.”  Fearghas paused.  He postured one of his fingers against his chin in demonstration of how easy it was for a male Sikophsky to actively, if not visually, become stupider.   “Or, as I like to put it, in more adult terms: distractions.  Distractions, with a capital ‘D.’   Like They, for example, that’s a distraction.  Or women… oh yes.”  He paused.  “And what sorcery ebbs from their vulvas.” 
     “What’s a vulva?” asked Lenard, for some reason visualizing a whale-like creature in his mind.
     “Quiet, sparrow droppings,” yelled Fearghas, raising his cane.
     “Sorry.”
     “Prepare yourself!”
     A bell tolled in the distance and Lenard stayed silent, touching at his product-hardened hair.  He looked so out of place upon the tracks.  He’d become well known around town for the naivety he demonstrated towards American fashion as it warp-sped through time.  For him, the word “clueless” would have been an insult to the entire body of human decorum.  As a way to bond with his father and the obsession the man had with Rudolph Valentino, Lenard sloped back his hair back with globs of pomade, making him easily spotted from land, air, or sea like a dollop of mobile tar.  His clothes were too big.  His shoes were too small, and he moved in the manner of a hiccup.
     “Prepare yourself,” Fearghas screamed again.  “You’re world is already at its end!”
     Lenard felt the ground rumble.  He heard the windbag of his father’s voice inflate into the fog.  Though he couldn’t see it, he knew the train was somewhere in the distance.  He didn’t want to face it yet, but knew eventually he would have to.  The redbrick walls were high and narrow.  Yards before him a stream of smoke hissed out a manhole below a grate.
     “Wee fucker,” commanded Fearghas, glowering down from the bridge.  “Listen to me good.  This is only the beginning of your many endeavors to come.  Only the start.  So now, on this night two months before your Bar Mitzvah, you must be strong, fast, and outrun the train.  Tonight’s overarching theme: life always gives you a way out.  Understand?  Cause if you don’t,” he said, as if he hadn’t realized the following fact himself, tongue against his cheek, “You’ll get your gut box ripped out.”   
     Lenard took a deep breath.  He thought squeamishly about his only (difficult to imagine) “gut box,” and turned around.  Even as he wondered if this entire scheme had been concocted in spite of something he’d done wrong during his studies, if he was being punished for singing off pitch, or not being enthusiastic enough about his Torah portion.  He would do this for his father, just this once.
      “Prepare yourself!” Fearghas yelled again.  He brought Lenard into the present by drumming his cane against the ground.  “Prepare yourself for the test of a lifetime.  There’s no turning back now.  The train approaches.”
     “I don’t see any train, sir,” said Lenard, watching the lightless tracks carry on into the distance.
     “But you feel it?” Fearghas smiled.
     It was true, Lenard did feel it.  He’d felt it since he set foot on the rail.
     Fearghas licked his lips and looked down the ends of the tracks where, finally, a tiny light appeared.  “Fear is what makes us unlock the impossible,” he said, as it extended its range.  “Can’t you see?  You, boy, are going to live an extraordinary life.  And you must not allow fear to suppress your future.  Look into the distance.  Prepare to fight.  Make those eeny weeny testes of yours beat for survival in the face of your zeitgeist–or, what I like to call…your Kraken!”
     Kraken.  Just saying that name, slurring it from thick, sloppy lips, set a dark bedtime story into motion.
     “Dad,” Lenard pleaded, looking over his shoulder.  “I’m scared.”
     “Scared?” said Fearghas, crossing his arms and laughing.  “Consider yourself lucky you’re scared.  There’d be no civilization without fear.”
     “No civilization without fear?”
     “No fear without the breath of life.”
     “No fear without the breath of life?”
     “The crap in our pants is what guides us.”
     “The crap in our pants is what guides—”
     “Shut it, boy, and watch for the train.”
     Fearghas had chosen 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne’s epic of underwater adventure, to read to the boy every night, over and over, in order to secretly spark, as his own father had failed to spark in him, a potential for heroism and greatness.  Though cruel, whatever Fearghas did to Lenard he believed was done in the name of an ancestral duty the boy couldn’t possibly have known about.  The fact that fear was necessary to encourage strength was a terrifying prospect, but something Fearghas believed this special, chosen child would have to learn.  He often embellished on the novel itself, making the beast’s tentacles blacker, slimier, more resilient to defeat.  After years of inundation, the Kraken was set so deep into Lenard’s psyche that he would never escape his fear of it, no matter how old or wise he became, for the two of them, human and beast, had formed an inky, cellular relationship.  When he was a child, the mighty squid, in one foul swoop, conquered the proscenium of his dreams.  Lenard was defeated before he was strong enough to fight, and so defeated for the rest of his life.  Such thrashings nurtured violent existences in heroes introduced to their nightmares early.  Noble, maybe, but nonetheless violent.  Something Fearghas acknowledged with glee.
     “Look to the yonder,” the Scotsman screamed, arms wiggling like the Kraken’s tentacles themselves.  “It approaches.”
     Lenard did look yonder now, not that yonder, for the train was closer than yonder, and gaining quickly. A storm was coming with it. Clouds swelled in the sky.  A bit of thunder boomed in the distance.
     “Run,” screamed Fearghas.  His eyes were spotted and round like quail eggs as he stomped one brogue against the ground.  The brass buckle that overlay the heel went click, click, click, and lightning dissevered the clouds. “Run, you wee, daffy fucker.  Run for your stupid wee, daffy fucking life!”
     Lenard froze.  He looked at the train as it phantommed forward in a rage of light.  It was mesmerizing.  It looked alive.  The wheels barked.  The front grill, shoveling downwards, seemed capable of unearthing steel.  Lenard wiped the sweat from his eyes and noticed his father above him.
     He laughed as if he was crying. “Fly from the cold ‘fuck you’ of fear!”
     Skreeeee, came the voice of the train, and Lenard began to run from it as fast as he could.  He ran somewhere straight ahead where there seemed to be nowhere. Away from whatever this crazy test of jungle manhood had become.  His feet knocked up pebbles as he thumped across the rails.  He noticed a small gap in the wall beside an empty oil drum.
     “There you go, son,” screamed Fearghas, his voice barely etching over the roar of the train.  “Now you get it.  You run or you die.  You escape or you die!  Can you hear the Almighty, now?  Can you hear him when he speaks?”
     Fearghas was throwing his tiny potatoes.  They rained down in bizarre, tuberosum melee.  One struck Lenard on the shoulder, but he didn’t care.  When the next one came, he swerved from it.  Skreeeeeshhhhhhhtp, he heard, and, with a leap that took his shoe, slung himself inside the gap in the wall, barely big enough for his body.  His shoulders smacked the concrete and his eyes saw color.  Half his body fell to the rails.  The hell he’d endured in getting to this point, gone.  The hours he’d sat blind and hungry, listening to words about destiny, duty, a mysterious entity called They; whatever happened to have micturated from his father’s mouth, evaporated.
     “Do you accept?” Fearghas had asked him, before removing the blindfold and guiding his shoulders atop the tracks.  “Or,” he smiled, “do you sip at the teat of mediocrity, like the rest of this abominable planet?”
     Now, as Lenard’s face was scrunched half-conscious against the concrete, pressing out his left cheek for air, he wished he’d changed his answer.
     The wind blew at his back.
     Just the sound of it was cold.
     He thought he heard something like, “All right, son,” though distant.  “All right, son, time to go home.  But don’t think you’ve won half this war.”
     Lenard was astonished at the clarity of his father’s voice and, for a moment, forgot where he was.  He couldn’t hear the train anymore.  Maybe a patter of rain. 
     Then, Fearghas finally screamed.  “Come!  Boy!  Home!  Now!”  Which Lenard heard pristinely.  “It’s time for dinner.”
     As he found his footing he emerged onto the tracks.  The train, which he now realized was only the front locomotive, remained still.  He walked towards it with fingers outstretched, waiting, with increasing self-doubt, for the point when he’d fall through the light from a trick mirror and fumble to his face.  But no, it was real.  Real and grim as an occupied coffin. 
     “You’ve done a good job.”  Fearghas wiped his brow and fastened on two leather gloves far up his wrists.  “Not a great job.  But a good job.  It’s time to go home.”
     “What are you talking about?” yelled Lenard, exasperated.  He looked around at the night, his father, as if they’d become trick mirrors too.  “What? What job did I do?
     “Don’t raise your voice, boy.  You sound a fool.”
     From within the train’s cabin window suddenly protruded the body of a shocked-looking man in what seemed like his fifties, no, his eighties (his hundreds?), wearing once-white pajamas turned orange.  In the crook above his left cheek, he had a bulging eye that was obviously made of glass, and as he took off his hat, a wheel of fluffy hair wiped out towards the sky.
     “Thank you, Argyll,” said Fearghas, waving one hand without turning to address the man.  He adjusted the collar of his mohair jacket and began marching towards a set of spiral stairs.
     “No problem at all, Fergie.”  Argyll saluted Lenard’s father with his glass eye cocked out.  Nearly all of his teeth had turned brown.  “I’ll see you down at the Men’s Club.”
     “I still don’t see what the hell’s going on,” said Lenard.  His arms were limp at his sides.  His face was limp, too, dripping with sweat as he questioned whether he knew his father at all.  This man who stole trains, or had others do so for him.  This man who used to make pancakes on the weekends, or sing the Highland Fairy Lullaby to help his son fall asleep.
     “Don’t you dare use that language with me,” yelled Fearghas now, spinning on his heels.  “Or I’ll scour your mouth with painting oil.”
     “Sorry,” squeaked Lenard.  He hadn’t even known he’d cursed.  The shock of facing death, or the shock of not facing death but thinking he had, scrambled his mind.  Something he wondered if his father had noticed.  “I just can’t believe… the train.  It was never going to hit me?”
     “Well, of course it wasn’t going to hit you,” said Fearghas, seeming in genuine shock as he tapped down the stairs.  “Do you think I’m a Gud damned sociopath?” 
     Lenard shook his head at his father’s u substitute, making God sound more like goot when naming their people’s chosen deity.  His legs shook as well, though he didn’t stop to realize it.  He thought, for a quick moment he probably wouldn’t remember years from now, that maybe, as the Scotsman had claimed, he truly wasn’t a sociopath.  That maybe, upon sparing Lenard actual pain, he’d been trying to teach him a lesson.  Something to hope for on this dreary Boston night that came, of all places, from the unscrubbed depths of Fearghas Murdoch Sikopshky’s sphinx-like heart.  
     Though at the moment, such sentiments seemed laughable.
     “Now, pick up those potatoes and bring them back for dinner, or your mother will have my hide.  And Argyll,” Fearghas commanded his cohort as he set foot on the tracks.  “Make sure and return that train to the museum before midnight!  Hear?”
     “Yep, Fergie.”  The chalk-haired man made an effortful little bow.  He jittered with something in his pockets.  As he got up for a moment to search the train’s cab, Lenard noticed that he wasn’t wearing pants.  “Sure do.”    
     Lenard received a needed cooling as the rain continued to fall.  His eyes centered on the dying train before him, the itinerant-looking man inside its iron cabin who smiled and waved one hand.  His father was pushing ahead of the scene towards a door he hadn’t noticed in the tunnel.
     As Lenard watched the storm puddle below his feet, an impulse to cry fell upon him. Lenard Sikophsky didn’t cry, though.  No.  He didn’t.  Because brave boys didn’t cry.  Weak boys cried.  Weak boys were injured.  But brave boys, they just kept on running, and fighting, and Lenard was a brave boy.  Or at least he thought he was - something, in retrospect, that probably kept him sane, especially after his father revealed that he’d been sneaking what could be considered poison into his food to alter his mortal constitution.  
     A hand fell over Lenard’s shoulder . It was the very same hand that, moments ago, had been throwing potatoes; but this time, it squeezed him tenderly.
     “Come on, my little hero,” Fearghas said.  They heard the warning bell announcing another train.  The Scotsman’s voice had suddenly changed, laced with a sweetness Lenard was used to. “You’ve done well for today.  Very well.”
     Lenard looked up at him, less afraid now, and nodded, pretending he’d expected those words.  He held the potatoes tight in his half-soaked shirt.  A smile shadowed through Fearghas’s silver beard and the great hawkish eyes looked down.
     “Why don’t you give me a couple of those potatoes, now,” he said, picking them from Lenard’s shirt and stuffing them back in the sack.  The small boy’s stomach filled with a love so lurid, so damn sharp, he thought it would cut through his kidneys. 
     “Your mother.”  Fearghas smiled with all his rotting teeth.  “She’s making a mighty fine stew.”

 

 

The Train to Lucy

February 2, 2013

Ben Bellizzi's work has appeared in the publications Monday Night, The Dream of Things, and Canyon Voices, among others, and was included in the "2010 Notable Reading" section of the 2011 Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. He is a graduate of the California College of the Arts MFA program and lives in Northern California.

            Since the announcement said they’d be stopping for twenty minutes, the soldier fitted his bandaged arm into its sling and collected his hat. It was his father’s hat, a checkered number with a sloped, full brim. He’d snatched it from the pile of effects at the final moment, thinking it might take the place of a photograph, or a handshake, and he’d kept it with him throughout his training and deployment. He preferred it to the cap that went with his uniform; it kept the rain off.
    A cold drizzle splashed against the cement and it seemed appropriate, romantic even, to stand out to the side of the awning and have a cigarette. Though he didn’t normally smoke, and had no cigarettes, something about holding fire in his hand, kissing it and watching the embers respond in a flourish of red, caught hold of his imagination. He pictured a passenger from the train looking out upon him; smoke rising from beneath his father’s hat, his injured arm pinned against his chest, rain gradually darkening his khaki pants. A muted clarinet would croon off-screen while the burning cigarette provided the sole color in the neutral landscape. Perhaps this observing passenger would create a story around him the way bored couples are said to do while dining in public. It feels good to imagine yourself as the protagonist, as someone who sparks the interest of another. It’s necessary sometimes, even if you spark nothing at all.
            On the platform, he spotted a young, somewhat haggard man smoking by himself. The man had a scarred cheek that looked like the result of skin dragging across pavement, and when he spat he revealed a canine tooth crammed up at an odd angle into his gums. The soldier tugged his hat low over his eyes and approached the man.
“Could I bum a lucy off you?” he asked.
            “A what?”
            “A lucy,” the soldier repeated, “You know, a single smoke.”
            “I’ve never heard it called that,” the man said and fished out his pack. He gave the soldier a cigarette, but instead of handing him the lighter, he snapped it himself and held the flame out beneath the awning. The soldier had to stoop down to it with the cigarette between his lips, and because he didn’t inhale properly the first time, he was forced to repeat the procedure. He may or may not have thanked him.
    The soldier grew more relaxed as he smoked. He watched the tip of the cigarette glow bright when he inhaled, then withdraw into ash as he held it away. Red, grey, red, grey. Lucy was there, and then she wasn’t. She was there, waiting for the train with her long red curls stark against the dark raincoats and umbrellas of the platform, and then she wasn’t, the homogony of the crowd no more recognizable than at any other stop. He inhaled once more— red, grey, depending on his touch.
    Back on the train, the soldier laid his hat on the table. Now that he thought of it, he believed it had actually belonged to his grandfather. His father had worn the same veteran’s cap for decades, was in fact still wearing it in his hospital gurney when, as the doctor put it, he expired. The hat on the table surfaced when the insurance people went through the father’s storage unit and set aside items without value. It looked like something that would’ve been worn during the forties in the wake of a different war. That war had a definitive end against a definitive enemy, and the homecoming that servicemen like his grandfather had received was a national, if not worldwide, event. He’d seen footage of the parades, the sky thick with confetti as dramatic in black and white as it must have been in color, but rather than this sweeping celebration, the soldier on the train longed for a quiet, intimate welcome. His return would involve hitching a ride in someone’s pickup, getting out at the end of a long driveway, and waving as the truck honked twice and disappeared. He would walk up to the house and ring the bell. An almost completely faded photograph would flutter out of his pocket and onto the ground as the real thing came to the door. She would drop whatever was in her hands and nuzzle her head into the nook of his chest just below the shoulder, and the force of her embrace would tell him that he’d finally made it home. Only with this sort of greeting could he start to put the war behind him. New memories would replace the ones he didn’t care to preserve. He‘d have new home, and perhaps a new hat.
    As the train began to move, he watched the station recede like a rock beneath the tide. Buildings became sparse and soon the train entered the countryside. The landscape remained unfamiliar. The soldier’s arm began to ache, a sort of itch he couldn’t get to, and he wondered whether or not it had been worth it. The injury sent him away but didn’t bring any resolution. There was the inquiry of the incident, now an investigation, to be conducted. There was the bank’s lingering claim concerning his father’s debts. There were the emails to Lucy, the delayed messages that came back, and the last one he sent, yesterday, the one thus far without a response in which he notified her of his official leave and his arrival the following day. Even the injury itself didn’t register properly. The attending doctor had muttered, “Missed the elbow completely. Lucky, very lucky…” and during his travels no one had asked him about it. They all seemed to know.
    The train raced along. Stout one-story houses occasionally came and went, their porches rotted and decrepit and looking out onto nothing but train tracks and tree trunks. The soldier imagined the wretched lives of the inhabitants. A woman would come home and walk onto the slanted porch, sit down on a bench just inside the door, and with great effort reach down to unlace her shoes. Dinner rotated in the microwave. Bills sat unopened in the fruit bowl. These were the same houses that some of the platoon guys had grown up in. Some didn’t want to go back. Some men thought that with the lack of jobs and the slow economy and the Wall Street mess, they were better off in the army. “Safer,” one lieutenant said, “We’re actually safer over here.”
    The soldier, however, had already decided to go home. He had in his possession a single hand-written letter. It arrived early in his deployment, on thick lilac paper, the loopy cursive smudged throughout on account of the inherent flaw of the southpaw author. The letter rambled on about musicians in the street, kickball in the park, a new pair of shoes, banana bread, fur versus leather, and the gentleman in the coffee shop who was once again waxing his mustache. She had signed it come home safe. It was a lovely beginning to a story, if he could make it so. Eventually, he spoke with Rodgers, someone who he could never imagine returning to a civilian lifestyle and perhaps the only one in their outfit who might agree to shoot him.
    “I thought she broke it off,” Rodgers had said.
    “Only because I’m not there.”
    “I don’t know. I’m a good shot, but I still might kill you.”
    “I have to try,” the soldier said, and again he showed him the letter.
    “It’s gonna hurt,” Rodgers said.
    Two weeks later, taking cover behind the same rubble during a night raid, Rodgers obliged him.

    The soldier grew nervous as the train slowed for the next station. His stop was only one further. At a platform much like this one, he would scan the crowd for a splash of red, for the lower lip nipped between her teeth and her eyebrows cinched together as she too searched the different exits, aware that he didn’t have a phone and this was their one chance. If the crowd at that platform was colorless, if it provided a landscape lacking distinction and familiarity and any vestige of what could be considered home, he would nonetheless have to enter it. The train went no further.
    He stared out the window and felt dizzy. He wanted to step out, to pause, to have a cigarette. Instead, many more people got on the train at this stop than had gotten off. His compartment filled up quickly as the walls seemed to contract. He inched closer to the window, pulled his bag against his side, and set his hat before him. Soon, a pleasant-looking couple filed into the seats on the other side of the table. They were dressed nicely, not extravagantly but nicely, like grownups. They settled into their seats without speaking. Moving with a certain fluidity, they assisted each other with their coats and stowed their bags as if train travel were their profession. The soldier pictured them discussing their trip while they waited at the station, laying out their itinerary the night before, scurrying around their bedroom while arranging items in the two open suitcases on the bed. One of them would carry the toiletries, the other the camera and the snacks, and when the man later lamented forgetting his reading glasses, the woman told him not to worry, she had packed them in her bag. Their familiarity turned the soldier’s eyes glossy. Comfort like that, with another, it could make everything okay.
    He continued to watch them. The woman read from a small, well-worn book, the cover of which bore neither picture nor words. The man had a newspaper. Every now and then one glanced up at the other, checking the situation as a driver might while cycling through the side and rearview mirrors. The volume of the compartment had risen considerably, but these two, in their silence, didn’t seem to notice. The soldier thought them marvelous. Here were the people from those houses with the rotten porches. They perhaps lived within a drab canvas, but they’d somehow found color in their lives and exercised a measure of control over it.
    The soldier removed the letter from his pack, unfolded it methodically with his left hand, and set it beside his hat. The lilac paper was frayed white along the creases and would soon require attention should it remain intact. It was over a year old. He looked through it, the words reading themselves at this point, and he again compared it to her emails of the last month. The bones of those emails were words like “reflection” and “distance” and “companionship,” and together they created a tone unlike any that could be attached to Lucy. The swooping curves of her pen against the tactile paper were far more authentic. He could hear the twang of the banjo in the subway station, he could smell the sugary mist wafting through what she referred to as the “Sweet Shoppe,” and he could feel, between his fingers, the sort of story that lay ahead. He had one splendid chance and he had to try.
    Soon the single-story houses were gone. Storefronts and office buildings whizzed by, lines of cars stagnated in rush hour traffic, and through the evening dusk, the bridge’s red lights arched over the river and into the city. The train seemed to be moving faster than before, so fast that it could’ve been out of control. In a slight panic, the soldier reached down and put on his hat.
    The intercom announced the next stop as the end of the line. The soldier placed the letter back in his bag and turned to his reflection in the window. He inspected his teeth, tugged at his collar, and took several deep breaths before he noticed the woman across the table looking at him. She crossed her arms over her closed book and tilted her head to the side. The man regarded him as well.
    “You look fine,” she said, “She’ll be happy to see you.”
    The woman leaned back and took the man’s hand in hers. It was the first time the soldier had seen them touch.
    “Fiancé?” the woman asked. With her free hand, she made a writing motion in the air between them, her pinky extended as if holding the stem of a wine glass.
    “There’s a chance,” he replied.
    “Oh, how romantic,” the woman said, “Will she be at the station?”
    The soldier began to cough. He tucked his mouth into his shoulder, but the movement pricked his injured arm and he gasped in pain. The alarmed couple leaned forward. After composing himself, the soldier answered,
    “She might be there. I’m not sure.”
    The woman frowned.
    “I’ve been away,” he explained, “I don’t have a phone.”
    “Oh, you can use ours!” The couple separated and the man removed a phone from the inside pocket of his sports coat. He held it across the table, nodding in encouragement.
    The train crossed onto the bridge, and as the soldier entered each number, he felt the dreadful sensation of a hesitant rollercoaster passenger ascending the ride’s initial gradient. Below, the city lights shimmered off the water. He pressed ‘send’ and waited. Nothing happened. Several seconds went by, and finally, an automated voice informed him, “You’ve reached the voicemail of eight zero two…”
    The soldier slid the phone across the table. “Straight to voicemail.”
    “Well,” the woman said, “That’s a good sign. She’s probably on the subway.”
    He managed to smile. “Probably.”
    The rumble of the train deadened as it returned to solid ground. It glided through the middle of the street, the traffic gated off on either side, and eventually the wheels screeched as it began to slow. Passengers started rustling about and heading to each end of the compartment, but the soldier remained seated with his hat low over his eyes.
    The train pulled into the station. The soldier’s window looked out onto a vacant set of tracks. After nearly a minute, the passengers began walking through the exits on the train’s platform side. The soldier trembled slightly at the chill from the open doors, and once the aisle was clear, he stood up and motioned the couple to go ahead of him.
    “Certainly not,” the man said with his arm outstretched, “This is your moment.”
    The soldier muttered a ‘thank you’ and picked up his bag to join the line. He shuffled forward, and when only one person remained between him and the door, the evening air hit his face like a wet cloth. His teeth began to chatter. The person before him descended the steps, and when he didn’t move, the woman nudged him from behind and whispered,
    “Go on, go find her.”
    He flexed his legs against a falling sensation and stepped out into the night. The crowd was dense under the drizzle while the floodlights atop each stone pillar cast a haze over the shadowy figures below. Lucy would be just in front of one of those pillars, stretched on her tiptoes and looking back and forth between the train’s exits while her red hair dazzled in the spotlight of an otherwise darkened stage. Standing on the highest stair, the soldier dropped his bag and took off his hat to get a better look. Raindrops sprinkled into his scalp and trickled around his ears, and he knew that once he spotted her, everyone at the station would seep into the backdrop. It would all be worth it.
    He looked to the right and to the left. He squinted through the rain, craned his neck and leaned out to search directly beside the train, but he wasn’t able to focus on anything. Every figure was a blur, each face an indistinguishable darkened spot. He shivered. His seizing body caused the pain in his arm to sear, and after holding his breath, he fought for any semblance of control. He groped at his breast pocket. It was empty. He didn’t have any cigarettes. He didn’t even smoke.