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The Writing Disorder is a quarterly literary journal. We publish exceptional new works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art. We also feature interviews with writers and artists, as well as reviews.

Robin Wyatt Dunn poet

The Glowing Adventure

by Robin Wyatt Dunn

 

no hegemonic reserve
no final marker
no one and everyone
spent on the full valley
rhyming incessantly
pulled by the panther into the night
into our night

my night your night the night we fought:

but no matter
the light comes by the day
and the end, being closer,
grows sweeter,
your face more angry,
the light glowing:

 

 

Live at Five

 

Alive,
the rest of the end of the world,
the best of the least known chests,
skippered lightly under your blouses
& My mouse houses a world
under my bed

Tell me,
Was it you

who whispered ghosts
into my unrest
and blessed
all of my past

without my realizing it?

 

 

strange horizons*

 

we tilt with the rhythm of the hymn
locked boards seizing
thrusting
our ship like an animalcule in rain water
spinning underneath the sun.

 

 

BIO

Robin Wyatt DunnRobin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles. He’s online at robindunn.com

 

*Previously published in 1947 journal.

 

 

 

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF

by Dawn-Michelle Baude

 

The following reader survey should be carefully completed with a #2 pencil.

 

Are you a happy person? ___ Curious? ___ Interested in the lives of others? ___ Nosy (you never know what you’re going to find out)? ___ Bored (you knew it all, anyway)? ___ Have you ever wished someone would die? ___ Live again? ___ Do you have an estranged, indifferent, or intimate relationship with nature? ___ How often do you consciously observe the sky? Several times per day ___ Several times per week ___ I never look up ___ Please rate the validity of this statement: “The planets influence our behavior”: Very Valid ___ Middle-of-the-road Valid ___ Somewhat Valid ___ I follow Karl Popper ___ What is your favorite body part? ___ Least favorite body part? ___ Have you ever considered plastic surgery? ___ Reason? ___ Date of last procedure: ___ Do you talk to yourself? ___ In front of others? ___ Favorite public setting ___ Have you ever seen a UFO? ___ Number of orifices probed: ___ Have you ever had an OBE (Out of Body Experience)? ___ An NDE (Near-Death Experience)? ___ Length of the corridor of light: 5 feet? ___ 720 feet? ___ The distance between LA and Las Vegas? ___ What method of STD protection do you use: Medical? ___ Magical? ___ When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? ___ Did you do it? ___ Is there still time? ___ Can you touch your toes without bending your knees? ___ Does it hurt? ___ Have you ever dialed a phone number randomly? ___ Who answered? Guru ___ Weird Person ___ Friend ___ How important is truth in your life? Very important ___ Somewhat important ___ Not applicable ___ Do you listen to other’s people’s advice? ___ Do you often give advice? ___ Is your advice taken? ___ When is the last time you pulled the bed away from the wall and vacuumed? (Month/Day/Year) ___ If you need to find an important document, is it readily obtained? ___ How do you prefer your technology? Wearable ___ Pocketable ___ Disguised ___ Implanted ___ When you buy something, is sustainability important? ___ Price? ___ Reliability? ___ Convenience? ___ Brand? ___ Looks? ___ Hormones? ___ Do you judge people by their appearance? Within 3 minutes ___ Less than minute ___ Before I see them ___ Do you consider yourself stylish? ___ Marginal? ___ If called upon to voice your opinion in front of others, would you clear your throat? ___ Pause before speaking? ___ Blurt right out? ___ Who do you most want to overhear talking? ___ Do you have enemies? ___ Recent? ___ Old? ___ Ancient? ___ Antediluvian? ___ Do you play Ping-Pong? ___ Badminton? ___ Sniper Team? ___ Have you ever bought a product because you saw it advertised on TV? ___ Were you disappointed? ___ On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the accuracy of your news feed, with 1 as accurate and 10 as biased: ___ What news section do you read first? International ___ Pornographic ___ If you had to go one direction and one direction only, would you choose north, south, east, or west? ___ What is your favorite word? ___ Least favorite word? ___ List your favorite books and authors: ___ Not applicable ___ Do you have, or have you ever had, a lover with an interest in Feng Shui? ___ What was the first thing you smelled when you got up this morning? ___ Finish this statement: The world is getting: Way worse ___ Much better ___ It depends on my meds ___ Do you pick your nose in your car? ___ Are you virgo intacta? ___ Have you always been? ___ How often do you evaluate your appearance in a mirror: Several times per day ___ Several times per hour ___ What specifically are you looking for? ___ Have you ever lost consciousness in public? ___ What is the last thing you remember before you went blank? ___ Have you ever been Rolfed? ___ Cupped? ___ Visited a psychic? ___ Thickness of ectoplasm: < 1 inch ___ < 2 inches ___ Gooey ___ If you could be anyone other than yourself, who would it be? ___ The whole person, or just particular parts? ___ On which side of your scalp do you part your hair? ___ My hair does not have a sidedness preference ___ Are you easily flattered? ___ Average number of compliments received: ___ /day. Please rate your understanding of events outside your personal sphere: Excellent ___ Good ___ Fair ___ Poor ___ Not applicable ___ Do you like attracting attention? ___ Are you sensual? ___ Erotic? ___ How often do you think about sex? Now ___ Daily ___ Weekly ___ Monthly ___ Yearly ___ Never ___ Date of your last orgasm: ___ Are you most often shy? ___ Arrogant? ___ Resigned? ___ Predictable? ___ Repressed? ___ Liberated? ___ Joyful? ___ Anxious? ___ Combative? ___ Calm? ___ I am mutating constantly and refuse to be pigeonholed ___ Have you ever been assaulted by an archetype? ___ Please describe: ___ Is the past less important than the future? ___ More important? ___ I do not believe in linear time ___ How often do you search for your keys: Daily? ___ Monthly? ___ What keys? ___ What do you regret most about your life? ___ Is your guilt hereditary? ___ Acquired? ___ Viral? ___ Describe the best experience you’ve ever had in a stadium ___ In a park ___ In a bathtub ___. Have you ever been caught in an awkward moment? Please describe: ___ How many hours do you sleep per night? ___ Open-mouthed? ___ Close-mouthed? ___ Is your auditory, visual, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, magnetoceptive, or “Sale’s On” sense more acute? ___ If you were given an apple, orange, walnut, or boiled cabbage to choose from, which would you select? ___ Would you eat it or contemplate it? ___ Please complete this statement: ___ is the reincarnation of ___ Would you say that your speaking voice is an asset? ___ How do you feel about long silences in a conversation? Relaxed, because my interlocutor is considering my comments ___ Paranoid, because my interlocutor is plotting against me ___ Are you encumbered by consumerism? ___ Number of storage units leased ___ Have you ever used dental floss in a public setting? ___ Rate your grooming skill: Above average? ___ Average? ___ Why bother? ___ How many times do you wear the same underwear between washings? ___ Have you ever considered buying the soap powder ERA? ___ What is your favorite charity? ___ Tragedy? ___ Have you ever pondered the nature of meaning? ___ Have you ever been forced to wear a corsage against your will? ___ An electrode? ___ Do you eat the fatty portion of your steak? ___ Do you swallow it or spit it out after the chew? ___ Have you ever drunk milk out of a cardboard container? ___ A plastic container? ___ A breast? ___ What vitamins and minerals would you consider taking on an empty stomach? ___ Please rate your interest in nutrition: Fanatic ___ Moderate ___ It depends on how hungry I am ___ Have you ever walked into a department store and wanted to buy more than you could afford? ___ Did you get an exchange slip? ___ How often do you exceed the speed limit? ___ Park illegally? ___ I am on parole and never break any laws ___ Have you ever ordered something in a restaurant that wasn’t on the menu? ___ Was it really good? ___ When is the last time you went to a drive-in theatre? (Day/month/year) ___ Was it for sex? ___ For the movie? ___ Because you love your car? ___ Is the statement “nothing is permitted to retain its form” by Pythagoras? ___ Attributed to Pythagoras? ___ Falsely attributed to Pythagoras? ___ Consider the situation in which two people hail the same cab simultaneously. Are they fatally attracted? ___ Fatally repelled? ___ Indifferent? ___ Do you feel at home in a cowboy hat? ___ Do you massage your chakras? ___ Do you massage the chakras of others? ___ Do you know where your water comes from? ___ Who do you love? ___ Who have you crossed off your list for good? ___ Who deserves a second chance? ___ Have you ever been afraid alone on a street after dark? ___ Has breaking news ever made you weep? ___ Which artistic lineage would you claim? Objective ___ Subjective ___ Have you ever seen the big picture in any discipline? ___ Please describe: ___ If you had to earn your degree all over, you would study: ___ Please list the drawbacks to this reader profile: 1)___ ; 2)___ ; 3)___ ; 4)___ When did you first encounter beauty? ___ Do you consider yourself: Analytic? ___ Synthetic? ___ What do heliotrope, cerulean, and cochineal have in common? ___ What do you prefer: Complexity? ___ Simplification? ___ Can you rephrase the question? ___ Are you pronouncing this in your head as you read? ___ Who is speaking? ___ Have we met? ___ Consider this sentence: “In a didactic text, the tendency is toward infrastructure.” What is meant by the word “infrastructure”? ___ Where is Herschel’s Garden? ___ The Ampullae of Lorenzini? ___ In 500 words or less, recount the best story you’ve ever heard: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Thank you for your participation.

 

 

BIO

Dawn BaudeDawn-Michelle Baude is an international author, educator and Senior Fulbright Scholar. The author of seven volumes of poetry (Finally: A Calendar, Mindmade 2009), two volumes of translations (Vision of the Return by Amin Khan, Post-Apollo 2012), three art catalogues, three communications books, and one children’s book, Baude has written for Condé Nast and Newsweek International, as well as various literary and art sites. Formerly of the American University of Paris, she has lived and taught widely in Europe and the Middle East. She is the art critic at the Las Vegas Weekly.

Forthcoming Poetry: Interim magazine, http://www.interimmag.org

Literary Criticism, “Making Strange” in Please Add to This List: Teaching Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets & Experiments”: (Tender Buttons, 2014) http://www.tenderbuttonspress.com/products/buttons-al-undone

Literary Translation: Vision of the Return by Amin Khan (Post Apollo Press, 2012): http://www.postapollopress.com/vision-of-the-return/

Contributing Writer (art writing), Las Vegas Weekly: http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/sitesearch/?q=baude

Photo by Shane O’Neal

 

 

Charlie Brice poet

Variations on a Buddha Shove

by Charles Brice

 

One day while walking through the wilderness a man stumbled upon a vicious tiger. He ran but soon came to the edge of a high cliff. Below was another tiger. Desperate to save himself, he jumped, grabbed a vine, and dangled over the fatal precipice. As he hung there, two mice, one black and one white, appeared from a hole in the cliff and began gnawing on the vine. Suddenly, he noticed a wild strawberry bush. He plucked a strawberry and popped it in his mouth. It was incredibly delicious! (traditional Zen story)

 

I. Sight

The man skids to the cliff’s ledge
After him   a tiger

He looks down
Another tiger on the canyon floor

He must jump
He jumps

Grasps a vine on the way down
Dangles on cliff’s edge

Two mice appear
One white
One black
Gnaw on the vine

Gnaw on the vine with truculence

The man spies a strawberry bush barely within reach
He grabs a strawberry
Eats it

Luscious!

II. Touch

Tiger-breath bakes his calves
Thighs simmer
Toes cramp against the ledge

Are his shoes too small?

Wind whips his body
Vine furrows bloody his palm
Thick and sticky

Rotator cuff tears   like a tooth yanked with plyers

Legs flail like a noosed man
He feels a tiger-breath chrysalis form around his body

Mice torture and twist
Like night
Like day

Pained strain for the strawberry

Tongue scrapes rough strawberry ridges
Teeth squeeze
Tingle tease

Sweet juice soulburst!

III. Sound

Paws pound the ground like bass drums
Bouncing tympani
Mothers of thunder

His wheezes asthma the forest floor

Below

Toothy pre-crunch requiem
Ravenous roar

Wind buzz
Wind whirl

Hand-skin rips like a butcher’s slice
Rotator cuff pops like a firecracker in a beer can

Lips slurp sweet strawberry nectar
Tongue-suck jails the juice

His smile sounds like a smile!

IV. Smell

Olfactory offal terror reek
Predation musk
Perfume of prey

Acrid attar of lion-breath
Smell of blood

Dust

Dirt

Torn flesh and vine stink

Strawberry scent

Aroma of here
Aroma of now!

V. Taste

Acid
Vomit
Salt
Spitless tongue

Strawberry sugarburst

Sweet saliva syrup
A little tart   but in a good way

Palate of calm!

VI. Transcendence

His world lies in a hospital bed
Her face sweaty marble

She’s not going to make it

Every vein pulses
A tsunami of dread

He’s breathless

Death after him
Death waiting for him
For us all

He leaps

Grabs

Sobs

Days into nights into days into nights into days

Thick tongue mouth sear
Dangling between panic and despair

Forty years married he
Bends towards her face
The edge of peace

He kisses her lips

Luscious!


 

Ten Paintings by Matisse

 

1. The Open Window

iron bars

2. Blue Nude

aren’t they all

3. The Conversation

strictly one-sided

4. The Painter and His Model

were one and the same

always

5. Woman with a Hat

spits at Carole Maso

steals her cahier

6. Bathers with a Turtle

those motherfuckers

he was just a turtle

out for a swim

7. Beasts of the Sea

ask Churchill

8. The Music Lesson

slap my fingers again

bitch

9. Male Nude

age 27

they found water

in his lungs

10. Luxury, Calm, and Desire

set out the juice glass

watch the bees drown

we have time

 


 

Ten Jazz Standards

 

1. I Mean You

Don’t look around
I’m talkin’ to you

2. How Insensitive

On line all day
Hoping to get offended

3. Alone Together

You thought we were friends
We weren’t

4. A Child Is Born

Every time you open your mouth

5. Come Rain Or Come Shine

You are so predictable
Liver flukes are more interesting

6. Autumn Leaves

Why won’t you

7. Take The A Train

It’s for a-holes

8. Day Dream

Any dream
Is better than listening to you

9. In A Sentimental Mood

You hated sentimentality
Something no one will ever feel for you

10. How Deep Is The Ocean

Why don’t you jump in and find out?

 

 

Tarzan In Winter, 1955

 

1.

Our living room in Cheyenne,
fifteen by ten, so large for my
five-year-old body. Two planters
at the far end of the room
filled with ivy and bougainvillea
a jungle where Tarzan protected
Jane and Boy from marauding natives,
lions, tigers, and English missionaries
who threatened with civilization
and school. In my planters
poison darts bounced off Tarzan’s chest
like tiny sticks, the natives falling to their knees
as he beat his breast in triumph.
In my jungle Tarzan tamed lions and
tigers, rode them like a rodeo cowboy;
chased missionaries who ran so fast
their safari hats flew off their heads.
Tarzan, Jane, and Boy used them for soup
bowls on cold nights in the Jungle.

2.

The drums were loud that winter. Tarzan
held up his hand when Jane asked
what they said. It was important
to get it all. The drums said the white man
had made new suns that spread poison
clouds swarming over the land. Did the drums
tell Tarzan about my white count gone crazy,
about Sandy Risha who died of leukemia
when she was twelve; all those kids who fell like ions
out of mushroom clouds? Did he fear for Boy?

3.

Tarzan watched my father wrap me
in a blanket – my ankles swollen again,
my throat sore again. They said I had Romantic
Fever. My dad’s hangover arms held me
to his scratchy face, his hands too unsteady
to shave. “It’ll be alright, Charlesy,” he said,
and carried me through the snow, to the car,
to the hospital, where nurses took my blood
every morning for six months, shoved a thermometer
up my behind every day, made me drink canned OJ,
and wouldn’t let me walk. In my five-year-old mind,
Tarzan waited for me with Jane and Boy
in my planters. He still repelled poison darts
and scared missionaries half to death.
I’d ride a lion through that hospital
one day, needles bouncing off my arms;
thermometers shooting out my butt. I’d scare
those nurses so badly their hats would fall off.
I’d tell Tarzan all about it.

 

 

BIO

Charlie BriceCharles W. Brice is a psychoanalyst and a freelance writer in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Icon, Xanadu, The Quotable, The Paterson Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Spitball, Barbaric Yawp, The Potomac, Shadow Road Quarterly, Wild Violet Magazine, Z-Composition, Arsonzine, Bear River Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, and The Front Weekly. Honors: “Goodbye,” third place, 2012 Literary Life Bookstore Poetry Contest (Robert Fanning, judge); “What She Held – 1966,” Editor’s Choice, 2013 Allen Ginsburg Poetry Contest; “Michigan Icebreaker,” semifinalist, 2013 Bailey-Beads Poetry Contest, University of Pittsburgh. Charles was recently named an International Merit Award winner of the Atlanta Review’s 2015 International Poetry Competition.

 

 

 

 

Joseph De Quattro Writer

Rubric for Getting Up in the Morning

by Joseph De Quattro

 

for Jen Schneider

 

1. PAYPHONES

 

In the end Colliver hadn’t put up much of a fight about seeing Dr. Gover, but when the nurse offered him a cup of water he declined it with naked hostility, swallowed the pill dry, then made a mocking face when transformation didn’t happen immediately.

“Still me,” Colliver said.

Dr. Gover stifled a small laugh. “It’s powerful,” he said, “but of course it’ll take some time to appear in your system.” Gover had been Vera’s idea shortly after everything had come out. As psychiatrists went he was in demand, but someone at her agency who knew him had called in a favor.

“Will it say hello when it appears,” Colliver asked snidely.

Dr. Gover looked at him. “Oh, you better believe it,” he said, playing along. “Like Beethoven on Eddie Van Halen.”

On the way out the female receptionist caught Colliver’s eye and smiled at him. He didn’t smile back, only stepped hurriedly into the glare of the afternoon trying to ignore her teeth, her cleavage, the fact that the sun was shining with the sort of seaside brightness that created haloed mottled discs beneath the eyelids. At Fifty-Second Street he found a working payphone, snatched up the receiver and dialed rapidly.

“Hello,” a woman on the line said a moment later.

“It’s ten six,” Colliver said. It was late March, past the formal start of spring but still cold, and now his breath in short, desirous rhythms came in ghostly white bursts. “I changed my mind.”

The woman, who was unable to contain a small sigh of impatience, said, “so you want to now, then?”

“Yes,” Colliver said. “Very soon. Same thing.”

“Yes, yes,” the woman said, “always the same with you. I know.”

Despite saying “soon” he didn’t in fact want to go over right away. Or, at least, he wanted to fight the urge, see if Dr. Gover was wrong, if the Xinaprien would in fact be some miraculous quick fix. Shut it all down inside him and make him head home.

For several minutes he milled about the mid-day crush along Third Avenue before turning down Fiftieth Street where he accessed the foyer of a nondescript brick walk-up, pressed a button and was buzzed in. On the stairs, and again despite what Gover had told him (or was it to spite him)?, Colliver noted that he felt exactly the same as he always did in such moments: as if he were drowning though not unpleasantly in his own blood, or, more accurately, adrenaline. Supremely alive and not the least bit hungry. Never hungry.

“Fresh,” he heard the woman saying. As usual the door to her apartment, 3C, was ajar and, pushing in after two quick taps, he found her shaking out a blanket, bed sheets.

“You see?” she said jovially in greeting but without really taking much notice of him. “Fresh.” She was small, French, older than Colliver, with pale well-scrubbed skin and a fading beauty.

“Always keep fresh,” she said again.

Colliver didn’t say anything, only undressed where he stood, put money on the bureau, then fell to the mattress and closed his eyes. As it went, he found himself thinking about payphones. About how they were a necessary tool, as if merely by lifting a receiver he gained instant access to this subterranean continent where until recently, shameful as it was to admit, he’d felt most at home, most himself, most alive. He had never once used his cell phone, not for browsing ads or making calls simply because, as he saw it, the sorted out, digital, modern world had no place here. He wondered how many payphones were left in the city, in America itself, and how much money he’d spent utilizing them since this started back before there was such a thing as a cell phone. All those quarters fished from his pocket then let slip from his fingers into the silver, vertical smiling mouth, while a tawdry colored back page advertisement sat balanced on the metal shelf before him. Stacked, how high would that tower of quarters have reached?

“Fresh,” the French woman was saying brightly. It was over now and once more she was shaking out the sheets while Colliver dressed silently. She didn’t accompany him to the door. He’d seen her enough times that she knew this was unnecessary.

Outside, before heading home, he spent a few moments contemplating the bright sun and that peculiar oxygenated heartbreaking clarity he always experienced immediately afterward.

 

2. BLINDNESS

 

That night Vera’s clothes, her hair and skin, reeked of Ethiopian food. She worked in Early Childhood Intervention and was in and out of houses all day. Mostly in Brooklyn.

“The twins again,” she said distantly while leaning against the counter and eating from a bag of dried apricots.

Colliver took one of the folding chairs leaning against the wall, opened it and sat down at the table. When he did so, it was as if he’d only just then appeared before Vera’s eyes, at which point she remembered the appointment with Dr. Gover.

“Was he nice?”

“A real comedian.”

“You should be happy that he made time to see you.”

“Ecstatic,” Colliver said. “I’m an ecstatic guinea pig.”

Vera made a face. “You know it’s not experimental.”

“Trying to give up a way of life is pretty experimental if you ask me.”

“Sex on an installment plan,” which was how Vera, as a way perhaps to ameliorate for herself the unseemly activity, had come to refer to it, “isn’t a way of life. It’s a problem. Laziness.”

“Laziness?”

“Supreme laziness. Easy way out.” Her voice was void of contempt but she was right. It had been the thing he’d turned to always when life got tough or tedious. “So where is it?”

Colliver put the orange prescription bottle on the table.

“And what exactly does it do again?”

“Makes you blind.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But basically that is what it does,” Colliver said. “Everything small, small, small, until nothing. Blind.” He was most concerned about losing the sun, so much so that in discussing his triggers with Dr. Gover he hadn’t mentioned it. He also hadn’t mentioned teeth, cleavage, or payphones.

“It won’t do anything of the sort,” Vera the caretaker, the fixer, driven by human cause, said sympathetically. Colliver looked at her. They were not now nor ever had been lovers. They’d become friends more than fifteen years earlier in college in Maine, lost each other a year later for another five, then reconnected platonically in New York. That spring when they’d first met Colliver was finishing his undergraduate degree while Vera, who would take another six years or so to finish hers, had dropped out and was working in food service on campus.

“We met during one of my existential crises,” Vera, with no self-consciousness, often told people who invariably came around to wondering about their situation. That was Vera. If she couldn’t express herself, no matter how private, then she’d rather be dead. “I was involved with an Israeli boy whom I loved but was very distant. It didn’t help my mental state. Everything around me shrunk but then one day passing through the food line there was Martin, very clear and close, catching cheese in his mouth like a dog. I’d thrown the cheese. He’d urged me to do so. Right from behind the counter where I worked. It was like nothing I’d ever done before. I flung the cheese like a Frisbee, a big piece of Swiss he caught with his mouth. There was something beautiful about him that needed—finishing, I guess is the best way to put it. That was the feeling. Like we had unfinished business even though we’d just met. But not sexual or romantic. I felt I needed to take care of him.”

Reunited in New York, they decided to room together in a small one bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side not far from Riverside Park, both of them surprised after several months by the serenity of the arrangement and the absence of hidden agendas. Vera’s job weighed heavily on her and so as the years passed it became easier to come home on a Friday night after a week of eight hour days administering tests to toddlers and spend the weekend with Colliver, whose own romantic ventures had become more and more limited, albeit clandestinely, to the pay as you go plan, something which would eventually put a strain on his finances, not to mention his soul.

“It doesn’t make you blind,” Vera said softly, “it changes how you—“

“What,” Colliver said. “How I what?”

“Observe. Take things in. Respond to your environment.”

“That’s just a sophisticated way of saying makes you blind.”

Vera ignored this but eyed him carefully. “You came right home? From the appointment?”

“Sure,” Colliver said. “Right home.” He didn’t tell her about the French woman.

 

3. ROOMS

 

Rooms were always the same, but somehow different too. Hotel rooms were dark, some too dark, lights down to aid deception. TV on. In the bathrooms of these hotels, which Colliver always made a point of investigating first, he invariably found used hotel issued soap. Little bars the color of taffy or white like chalk. Perhaps because the act that brought him to such rooms was so polar opposite, the sight of these soaps often made him think of his childhood, of the trips he’d taken with his parents and two sisters to places like Orlando or San Francisco. The soap in those hotel rooms was wrapped in waxy white paper upon which, in fancy script, the name of the hotel was printed. Here in these bathroom hotels throughout the city the soap was normally unwrapped, out loose on a wet vanity, and almost always grimy. Dirty bubbles on the surface as if just used. Traces of the previous man’s hands, no doubt.

Apartments were dark, too, but these often had hand soap in the bathroom sitting near the faucet. The pump kind, frequently diluted with water.

 

4. ADJUNCTIVITIS

 

Although Colliver and Vera more or less split their bills down the middle, excuses for his continued financial decline were generally believable and given a pass. As an adjunct professor he sometimes went a month, even three during summer, with no pay. Often when he saw the word adjunct on his contract, or on the door to the windowless office where all the adjuncts were housed tightly like a group of monosyllabic, pink-eyed ogres with empty desk drawers, the entire notion of adjuncting struck him as a condition, an infection of some sort, rather than a job. A cycle, a vicious one that offered satisfaction sometimes for a moment or two in the classroom, but always left him wanting: money, health insurance, a feeling of indispensability.

Because of this and due to their rather steep rent, Colliver and Vera lived without certain conveniences, namely comfortable furniture, allowed in part, and an unspoken part, because they weren’t actually lovers. If they’d been lovers the squalor would surely have been unacceptable and lead to depression, stony silence, or explosive fighting. Vera slept on a futon on the floor, Colliver on a ratty couch; they had no real stuffed furniture, only a couple of folding chairs, a table they’d picked up on the street along with a pair of bookshelves, and an eighty dollar splurge black lacquer café table from Target with padded benches that went together improperly so that they wobbled.

Before he’d revealed everything to Vera (finding himself one afternoon utterly exhausted by and unable to keep up with the shifting financial landscape of his lying), agreed to see Dr. Gover and go on Xinaprien, Colliver had never thought of the absence of something so basic like furniture as his fault. But the truth of the matter was that the money he’d spent in his many sexual liaisons the last few years could have easily gone toward furnishing the apartment. And handsomely so, too. Now he understood in a small but certainly horrible way how this unstoppable, driving force had literally impacted his daily life. His and Vera’s. Hour by hour. Minute by minute.

 

5. XINAPRIEN

 

The Xinaprien said hello formally one Saturday afternoon in mid-April shortly before the end of the spring semester. Side effects included bouts of conscience, self-reflection, apathy. It was big, Colliver noticed, on apathy. Additionally, it came with a rustling sound as of leaves. Vera was taking a shower when Colliver first noticed the sound. He thought it was the water. The sun was bright. He listened, looking out the window at the sun, then heard the squeak of the faucet. Silence. Then a moment or two later the rustling sound as of leaves returned, remained. This was how the Xinaprien appeared, announced itself, said hello. There was no Beethoven, no Eddie Van Halen. Only this sound which seemed to have no end.

 

6. ORGANICS

 

One night shortly after Colliver had come clean Vera decided to try and find out where it all began.

“What about your father?”

“I don’t think my dad did this type of thing.”

“No,” Vera said. “What about him as a root?”

“He’s dead,” Colliver said. “I’m sure by now he is a root.”

“Your mother, then. She smothered you, right?”

Colliver didn’t really know how or why it began. He had admitted both to Vera and to Dr. Gover that women’s feet had long been a factor. Sometimes he thought that if he’d lived in another American era when flesh was less a public focal point, the early 20th century for example, the deviant impulse might never have begun to grow. Now feet were big business: in commercials, magazine covers and ads, book jackets, the internet, the street. Feet became a gateway, a suggestive lead-in to something else. Not all, but some. And while this was nothing he liked admitting, made him feel strange in the extreme, he was told that the admission was in fact a necessary part of his recovery.

“Maybe I should take a break from teaching then,” Colliver suggested to Dr. Gover during a quick follow-up visit shortly after the Xinaprien had made its formal appearance. “I see feet everywhere.”

“Absolutely not,” Dr. Gover said. “It’ll be a good part of the process to fail.”

“Good to fail?”

“Allow the Xinaprien to work organically. What occurs in your system at the point of engagement is no different really than if you were shooting heroin. The physiological effects can be the same. In time the Xinaprien will be a little like manually switching off a bunch of lights, unnecessary lights, until those lights cease coming on altogether.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing, though,” Colliver said, “turning off lights?”

“I said unnecessary lights. You’re still operating under the impression that because you’re not ingesting a foreign substance, the feeling—the high—you get from this behavior isn’t physically detrimental to your system. You have to try to begin to see beyond the ethical or moral. The physiological concerns are real, too.”

“And the rustling sound?”

“Is it constant?”

“Almost always,” Colliver said.

“We can alter the dosage if you pre—“

“No,” Colliver said abruptly, concerned about losing the sun. “Leave it.” He felt he could live with the rustling sound so long as the sun didn’t go on him, which, to date, it hadn’t.

So he’d left the office that day thinking that feet, once part of the impulse, were now, under the Xinaprien, part of the control. Dr. Gover wanted him to see—no, that was wrong. He wanted him to look, but not see, allow the blindness to embrace him. Of course, these were not the doctor’s words. At least not specifically.

 

7. THE LAST ONE

 

Colliver often liked to think of the last one just as much he lived in a state of anticipation over the next one. The last one was known, etched in memory, the dark rooms, the images of himself and the other, the lamps, the bathrooms, the soaps, the smells. There were many smells: Chinese food, incense, desperation, semen, perfume, cigarettes. The next one was a fire of anticipation, a potential moment to coagulate hope, like what he imagined, if it could be recorded, what a fetus must experience moments before birth, or someone about to enter into death. Horrible but unable to deny a rising wave of unearthly release. This is how he’d described it. How he’d heard himself describing it to Dr. Gover and, since coming clean, to Vera.

 

8. COLLIVER’S FATHER

 

Very small, very far.

 

9. COLLIVER’S MOTHER

 

With fangs.

 

10. SANDALS

 

By the end of April he was doing what he could to avoid his usual triggers, accomplished to some degree by staying home a good deal, although this proved difficult with spring in full bloom at the window and pulling at him like two hands around his mid-section. Pulling and pulling.

“Make it through one day,” Vera had told him the morning of his last class of the semester, “then the next. You know how it is. Focus on now, not later, or then.”

But in class that final Friday it took all his strength not to take the sight of painted toes on display in wedges, flip flops, gladiator sandals, dress sandals, etc., and run ravingly mad to the nearest payphone, the one which held countless layers of Colliver’s fingerprints, and dial any of the numbers he knew by heart. In fact, though it was evident that the Xinaprien was becoming righteously established in his system, his desire of late had felt that much more acute.

Between classes he left the campus building where he taught Ethics of Writing and ran to the payphone on the corner of Sixty-Eighth and Lexington.

“Ten six,” Colliver said in a flat monotone, though he noticed for the first time that at these code words, the numbers of his birth date, he began to choke.

“Who it is?” the woman said. She was Latina. There were, it seemed, many Latinas.

“Ten six. Are you available? How’s one o’clock?”

“No one o’clock,” the woman said. “I do two. Okay?”

“No,” Colliver said. “One.” His next class was over at 12:50 and the thought of killing an hour, feeling as he did right then—sick, choking, but like someone had gutted him with a knife and his insides were pouring out (normally he felt they were filling up), drowning everything around him, filling the change receptacle at the bottom of the payphone, swamping the parked cars, bashing out the store front windows and the plastic domes covering the streetlights, knocking women’s shoes right off their feet as they passed by—all of this absolutely terrified him. It seemed he was losing or had lost the cold, calculated language necessary to navigate these channels properly, and thus the window that he could crawl through toward this feeling then back out like it hadn’t happened was beginning to close. Normally what was key was walling it all together, the feeling, the calling, the anticipation, the act, the slipping through the window then back out, as if to suffocate the down time of his life with it. That’s how it had to be. How it worked, what made it important. How he felt truly alive. Without that, without it he…

“One o’clock,” Colliver said again. He didn’t recognize his voice. In these moments everything around him in this public space usually went mute, but now it all simultaneously came into rapid, clearer cymbal crashing focus: the sound of heels and tires on pavement, the blaring of horns and chewing of food, the hairstyles and the color of the clothes, the scent of perfume or cologne, the way a briefcase was swung.

“Hello,” Colliver said loudly, choking. But the woman had hung up.

 

11. LANDSLIDE

 

He didn’t raise the concern with either Dr. Gover or Vera, but little by little Colliver arrived at the conclusion that a primary component of the Xinaprien had to be a kind of torturous element whereby it didn’t stop one from participating in whatever illicit behavior they or their loved ones were trying to get them to give up (the appetite raged on in him which is why he kept quiet) but made the act utterly void of any feeling altogether. It used to be why he got up in the morning, but now, unable to stop, it felt like self-imposed torture. Like a place in between one’s conscience, a cold objective place where the subject was forced to watch itself go on through the muck without registering a feeling or sensation one way or the other.

 

12. GOING ON

 

Colliver went on.

 

13. THE GIRL FROM CALIFORNIA

 

He saw the girl from California a total of five times, deep into summer, before the incident at the Marriott Hotel. Actually, he only really saw her twice: blowjob the first time which Colliver felt was conducted far too theatrically; second time it was a handjob which he insisted on when she took out a condom. Both times he failed to achieve orgasm. In thinking about it much later, he realized that he had never once checked the bathroom. Did not look for soap. Fallout, he assumed, from the Xinaprien.

The girl from California with the 415 area code was terribly pretty, had a reasonable rate ($100 for a short stay), dark, shiny hair, and dead black eyes that betrayed everything when she smiled with her perfect white teeth. She was tan. During the first two times Colliver had seen her, when he’d more or less gone through with it—sex was extra and he didn’t have enough for that—she didn’t take off her yoga pants but did let him see her breasts. She chatted casually throughout. The TV was always on and normally he could ignore it, but now he couldn’t help watching for a minute or two. Judge Judy. Another time it was Maury.

After this Colliver made two more appointments with her, each one ending in his not being able to commit either way: he had the money out, but couldn’t put it down, wouldn’t put it down. At the same time he gave no indication that he wanted to leave. Perhaps, he thought, this really was the Xinaprien’s torturous process. He felt he was outside, above himself, watching, unable to go forward or back. He had the feeling, the driving force, but he couldn’t put the money down on the bureau, undress and then fall, fall, fall to the mattress.

The third time this happened the girl from California was clearly annoyed, but she said she understood and let him leave without hassle. The fourth time, though, she found it hard to control herself.

“You have to pay me or you can’t leave,” she said. “Half at least.” Dark, small, strong, without waiting for a response she gnashed her teeth dramatically and kept her body flung up against the door so that Colliver had to physically move her out of the way in order to make his escape.

The fifth time he made an appointment with her was when the incident occurred. Colliver, increasingly sunk in a murky state by the Xinaprien, had thought little of the fact that over the phone the girl from California had agreed so pleasantly to see him, for she had made it quite clear the last time, the fourth, that he shouldn’t even think about dialing her number again.

But he had, and now he was on his back, on the bed, fully dressed, relaxed for the most part but saying he wanted to cancel, saying it as if to no one in particular. The girl from California came and stood over him, then with her lithe body climbed upon him like he were some kind of apparatus, one knee on his mid-section, a forearm across his chest, and repeated the word like she’d never heard it before.

“Cancel,” she said with her white teeth and dark mouth. “Cancel?”

Colliver, sensing a vibrato that scared him, lifted his head and looked around suddenly as if he’d fallen asleep. For a few moments they struggled gruntingly, wordlessly, in a rubbery maneuvering of palm-clasped outstretched arms. Colliver could not see the girl from California’s teeth now. They were hidden behind her pressed, whitened lips. He was surprised at her strength, or perhaps his weakness, but soon he managed to get up, moving her abruptly off him and onto the mattress so that she bounced, shiny black hair fanning out over her face. Colliver, dazed a bit by the exertion, got his bearings and turned for the door at which point the girl from California screamed “now!” at the top of her lungs and another girl, just as small and dark and beautiful, in a fuchsia mini-dress and white heels, bounded out of the bathroom (which once again Colliver hadn’t checked first as he normally did) and leapt onto his back.

“Cancel?!” she screamed. Apparently she too was taken with the word. Colliver spun wildly around the room with this girl on his back. Her rage was savage, and now she violently scratched and pulled at his neck with her long fingernails like she was intent on getting down to bone and cartilage, until in one quick motion he turned and flung her to the bed.

The two girls from California (at some point amidst the chaos Colliver had decided that the second one was from California as well) gathered themselves and looked as if they were going to join forces and rush him. But they didn’t. In fact for a time no one moved. The three of them only stood and stared at one another in their heavy breathing silence, in the embarrassing ashes of this particularly horrible human moment, until Colliver, clutching his bleeding neck, backed out of the room and eventually exited the hotel.

 

14. A RUSTLING SOUND AS OF LEAVES

 

Almost constantly.

 

15. FLUNG ABOUT THE CRAVING FOR A FELLOW

 

Some time after the incident with the girl from California, two, maybe three weeks, Colliver went to a payphone and dialed her number by heart, the one with the 415 area code. He listened to an automated voice indicating that the number was not in service, hung up, then slipped the quarter back into the silver mouth of the payphone and dialed again. Once more he heard the same recording. Since the quarter kept coming back he kept using it, slipping it in, punching the numbers, knowing he was dialing right, always getting the same recording and yet trying again.

Eventually he must have gone home, left the payphone on Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Fourth, but it felt to Colliver as though he’d remained there for many days, inserting the same quarter, dialing the number, hearing the recording. The dialing, the action of his fingers, was like digging. Deeper and deeper digging into something that simply wasn’t there.

 

16. TASTE

 

It was some time in early September when he lost the ability to taste. Desire was more like it, for it wasn’t so much a literal loss as it was a steady revulsion at the thought of tasting, all people tasting, so that something switched off in his mind and it became difficult to eat. He dropped weight. The steady decline of his triggers, feet, cleavage, teeth, payphones, and the great sun, continued daily, becoming smaller and smaller. The urge, however, the desire, remained the same.

 

17. TELEVISION

 

Never off.

 

18. DAYS

 

“It’s like having my eyes propped open with toothpicks. What was that from? A cartoon? A Clockwork Orange?” It didn’t matter. This is how it felt to Colliver now, always feeling the urge, rushing to a payphone, choking through an arrangement, sometimes getting himself into a room, everything dim, dim, dim, but not out. Never out. Not fully blind. He’d been wrong. Seeing himself work through the motions for days (forty-six, ninety-six), but never once going through with it.

“Cancel?” he heard on more than one occasion. “What do you mean, cancel?”

Door after door smashing his backside on the way out. Apartment doors were bad, but hotel room doors were downright dangerous. Once, he returned home to find a split and bleeding welt on the back of his head. The anger, the screaming, the scratching, all there for him to hear, see, feel, watch. Without end. “I’m no longer alive,” he often thought. “If so, I’d be able to stop.” He thought this as he watched himself going through the motions, unable to stop. Everything else, all other considerations, escaped him.

 

19. AN AUTUMN, AN EVENING

 

Colliver could tell from the colors of the trees, the depth of the sky at mid-afternoon, that it was autumn but how many summers, falls, winters or springs had come and gone in order to arrive at this point he didn’t know. It felt like several cycles of seasons had come and gone. There was with him now the feeling that something was not fully arriving in his life, and a constant sense that it was evening, despite the sun shining clearly in the bluest sky. A feeling that it was late. Vera was there, but often for long periods she wasn’t there, too.

“I was silly to think I could finish you,” he heard her say once.

“Finish me,” Colliver said. “You mean kill me?”

“No,” Vera the caretaker, the fixer, said. “Complete something. Should I go?”

“For a time or for good?”

“I’ve made it too convenient, probably. There wasn’t enough at stake.”

She was right, Colliver thought, for there had to be a structure for a life, a pattern, rules, something by which one could eventually find their way into an upright, standing position. It had never been beautiful, he saw that fully now. In fact he saw that it was the very opposite of beauty. Still, it used to be why he got up in the morning, shameful as that was to admit. Even if he hadn’t planned on a call on any given particular day, even if he didn’t make a call for weeks, it had once been the thing that got him up in the morning, stood him up, put energy into him to get from one point to the next. Go on upright, aware of life’s grand possibilities.

Steadily though, on into whatever autumn it happened to be, these feelings had left him, been bled away, choked. A putting out, a switching off of lights. Unnecessary lights. So he was told.

 

 

 

BIO

Joseph De QuattroJoseph De Quattro has new fiction forthcoming this summer in Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and has had short stories published in The Carolina Quarterly, Turnrow, Carve, Zahir, The Washington Review, and Oyster Boy Review.  His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he is currently working on a new novel.

 

 

 

Ron Yates author

Kintsugi

by L.D. Zane

 

“You really shouldn’t go back into the house.” Dori, always the reassuring voice of reason, was concerned.

“And why not? I still have some things in the house which are mine, and I have the right to collect them.”

“This isn’t about rights. It’s about being smart and not giving them ammunition to use against you. And because your attorney advised against it. With you no longer on the deed, he said they could consider it trespassing. Knowing your brother, he’s just crazy enough to press charges.” There was no anger in her voice. It was more like trepidation, bordering on fear.

“He only advised against it. He didn’t say I shouldn’t or couldn’t do it.”

“It’s the same thing and you know it.”

“Maybe so, but how will they know when they’re in Florida?”

“There’s no maybe about it. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past him to have the neighbors watch the house and report to him. You know, Ian, you’re sounding like a child throwing a tantrum. I don’t know why you hired and paid for an attorney if you’re not going to follow his advice.”

 

I was one of a triad of owners of the house in which I grew up—the other two being my older brother and his mother. Even though she is our biological mother, I long ago stopped referring to her as my mother. I just refer to her by her name—Gertrude. My brother doesn’t feel the same way.

She caused the divide when I was born, about three years after my father returned from the battlefields of Europe. Gertrude had raised my brother, Henry, alone for the better part of two years—a year while my father was still in Europe, and another while he was recovering at an Army hospital in Kentucky from a third wound he suffered—this one at the German border, while serving with Patton’s Third Army. She insisted that since she bore the burden of raising Henry for the first two years of his life, and my father really had no bond with my brother after his return, that I would be his responsibility. “This one is yours,” Gertrude said to my father, matter-of-factly. Like two once-friends kids returning baseball cards.

I’ve never been sure why she felt that way. It didn’t seem natural. None of my friends’ parents ever did that—at least as far as I knew. Maybe she was just tired, didn’t really want me, or was angry at my father for leaving her, regardless of the circumstances. Nonetheless, it was a responsibility my father gladly and wholeheartedly accepted. I was his son, and my brother was hers. There was never any sense of kinship between me and my brother and his mother. It was like two separate and distinct families living in the same house.

My father would take me everywhere. He would only take Henry if he asked to come along, which wasn’t often, or when we went somewhere as a family—like on vacation, or to an Army reunion, or to visit my father’s family in Chicago.

When my father drove a delivery truck for a restaurant food service company, he would take me to make a weekend emergency delivery. The truck had a manual transmission with a huge shift lever on the floor, and he would let me shift it into gear. At eight years of age, that lever seemed as big as me. He would say, “Ready…go!” and I would push or pull the lever to the proper gear as he depressed the clutch. I had to use both hands and all of my strength. Even if I would grind the gear into place, he would always tell me I did a great job, and tousle my tangled crop of red hair.

He, too, had red, wavy hair—like many of his siblings and family members—and a fair complexion which accented his blue eyes. At six-two, and now in his early thirties with the same physique as when he left the Army, he was a strikingly handsome man with movie star looks, who always drew the gaze of ladies—even if he was with my mother, or they with another man—and even from a few envious men.

The man had a quiet intellect. With only a high school education, he could still finish The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in about an hour without the aid of a dictionary or thesaurus. Although he was a congenial guy who could make you his friend in an instant with his easy smile and soft-spoken manner, my father was a man of few words and fewer nuances who always kept his own counsel. When he spoke, there was no ambiguity. You listened.

One event still stands out. He took me by train to Philadelphia at a time when there was still passenger train service from our small town. He didn’t ask my brother to come along. Other than my trips to Chicago—which were cloistered visits to see my uncles, aunts and cousins—it was my first trip to a big city with my father as a personal guide. He stopped a policeman to ask directions to a museum. The officer had a blasé demeanor and didn’t look approachable—until my father addressed him. Each instantly recognized the other was in the war and began to chat.

“Ninety-Fifth Infantry Division. The Iron Men of Metz. Patton’s Third,” my father proudly stated.

“The Big Red One,” the officer responded with equal pride standing almost at attention.

“We fought and slept in the same mud and dirt,” my father said somberly.

“You bet we did, and we lived to tell about it. What can I do for you, soldier?”

“My son and I need directions. Can you help?”

The officer listened, then took out his note pad and wrote down the directions to the museum, and even suggested a few other sites of interest. My father introduced me to the officer, who shook my hand. After a few more minutes talking, they shook hands and slapped each other’s shoulders as they said good-bye, as if they were long-time friends. I suppose in a way, they were. I swear if the officer would have been allowed to do so, he would have used his police car as a taxi for us! My father was that good, but it wasn’t a front. He was genuine; the real deal. The best natural salesperson I have ever met.

My fondest memories, however, were of when I helped my father cook. He didn’t get the opportunity all that often with his work schedule, but how he enjoyed it when he did. The TV shows of the day portrayed a mother who stayed at home and prepared meals, and a family who sat for dinner in the dining room at a set time every day. This most definitely was not our home.

Gertrude owned a woman’s dress shop, and my father—before he finally landed a job with the post office and had a predictable schedule—rarely sat for meals with the rest of his family. He usually ate alone late at night, most times after his family was already in bed which, in retrospect, still saddens me. Perhaps that’s why I still would rather not eat than eat alone. But when he was able to do so, mostly on the weekends, he did the cooking. My brother and I were thankful, as Gertrude really had no desire, nor talent, for cooking. To this day, I do not eat at any place that advertises meals: Like Mother used to make.

One of my father’s favorite pieces of cooking equipment was a big blue, glazed ceramic mixing bowl. I don’t know where he bought it, but I always assumed it was secondhand—probably a throwaway from one of his restaurant customers—being it already showed wear with numerous chips around the edges which exposed the white ceramic. Not good enough for a diner or restaurant, but more than good enough for our eating establishment.

He would always invite me to help him mix the ingredients du jour. We would both get our hands into the bowl—my small hands squeezing around his large hands—and enjoy feeling the texture of the mix. We didn’t talk much. We didn’t have to. Our smiles said it all.

 

“So … let me understand this—you want to sneak back into a house which you couldn’t wait to leave, and even went so far as to have your name removed from the deed, all at the risk of being charged with trespassing to retrieve an old mixing bowl. Did I get it right, Ian?”

Her tone started out sarcastically, morphed into incredulity, and ended with her being totally pissed off. I was relieved she was on the other end of the phone.

“It’s not just some old mixing bowl. It was my father’s, and now it sits in the dark, behind a cupboard door, over a stove, in an empty house.” I was passionate in my defense and could hear my voice rise. But it wasn’t anger I was feeling. All I could think about was how my father came home late at night, and ate his dinner alone at the kitchen table by the dim solitary light that was built into the range hood, while the rest of us were comfortably asleep. Not once did I get out of bed to join him, or ask how his day went. Now I felt ashamed for being so selfish. All he ever wanted to do was make a little boy—his son—smile, and asked for nothing in return. Now that bowl was alone, and this was my opportunity to redeem myself; to make sure it never again sat in the dark alone. “I won’t let it happen again, Dori.”

“Let what happen again?” her tone becoming decidedly softer.

“Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. I’m going to get it.”

“Okay, Ian. But think about this. What if your brother makes an unannounced visit to the house and is standing there when you walk in? Do you have any idea what will happen next? Do you even care?”

I remained silent, and she filled the void.

“All hell will break loose, Ian. He’s crazy enough to have you arrested.” Her voice was starting to crack with tears.

“I’m not afraid of Hell, Dori. I’ve been there enough times in my life and made it through without the Devil even knowing I was there,” trying to make light of the situation. “Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time I was arrested.”

Her voice rose in anger: “You were a teenager then—a juvenile, goddamnit. Can’t you see the difference? Now you’re an adult where you can’t hide behind your age. You’ll have a real adult record.”

“You’re making more of this than it is, sweetheart. Nothing like that will remotely happen. I’ll be in and out before anyone knows I was even there.”

There was a very long pause. “Dori … are you still there?”

“Fine, Ian. Do what the fuck you want,” she said between full sobs. “You always do,” and hung up.

 

It was true what she said. All of it. Around the age of ten my maternal, bookie grandfather started to mentor me. He had no beef with the way my father was raising me, other than he thought I was growing up too soft. They both got along because he respected my father for his service in the war. My grandfather had fought with the British in WWI after emigrating from Czarist Russia and he, like my father, was a man of few words who always kept his own counsel. He thought of my father as more of a son, than Gertrude as a daughter, and made that known to both at every opportunity.

My grandfather taught me how to fight: how to survive on the streets by using my wits and my fists. At ten he also taught me and my best friend, Mikey, how to run numbers without getting caught. By the age of sixteen, Mikey and I were his collection agency. But it was my fighting and truancy which brought me into direct contact with the police on almost a daily basis.

My father didn’t like what I was doing; he had bigger plans and dreams for me, and tried to reason with me and my grandfather. I would just retort by saying I would be okay, that nothing bad would happen to me. My grandfather—who stood an inch taller than my father—would smile, put his hand on my father’s shoulder, and respond to him in his fading Russian accent, “Larry … I love the boy, your son, and I would never let anything bad happen to him. He’s a good boy. He just needs to learn the ways of the world. You and your brothers did growing up on the streets of Chicago, and you turned out to be a good man. So will he.”

Except I didn’t, and my father reacted. There were several incidents, at different intersections in our lives, and all had a profound and defining effect on the relationship between us. The first was when I was about fifteen. My father was now working for the post office and was able to sit with his family for dinner. Dinner, when made by my father, was one of the few times I would join him and Gertrude. This time, Henry was home from college for the weekend and we sat and ate as a family: my mother and Henry on one side of the table, and my father and I on the other. I sat to my father’s right.

That night I wasn’t particularly hungry. I was in a hurry, as I needed to attend to my errands, as my grandfather euphemistically referred to his illegal dealings. I finished only about half of my meal, then stood up. My father, without even looking at me, said in his firm but quiet way, “Sit down and finish your dinner, Ian. You’re not excused.”

“I’m not hungry, Dad, and I have some things to do. Thanks for the dinner.”

“I said sit down. I won’t tell you again.”

I sat back down, and then my mother chimed in with her two cents. “There are children in China who are starving, and they would love a meal like this.”

I was, and probably still am but to a lesser degree, a consummate smart-ass. I said, “Then send my meal to them.”

The back of my father’s right hand caught me squarely across my nose and sent me flying backward off my chair onto the floor. I had been hit in the face many times in fights, but I was always prepared. No hit to the face, before or after my father’s, ever caught me more by surprise, or caused such shock. He never struck Henry or me—ever. That task was always left to my mother, who prosecuted that endeavor with great skill and sadistic satisfaction. Henry sat there transfixed, utterly speechless at what had just happened. I have never asked him, but I have no doubt he felt some smug pleasure that his father’s golden boy had just been knocked on his ass—by his patron saint, no less.

My father turned slightly and raised himself from his seat, reached out his hand to me—which I took—and pulled me up from the floor. He handed me a napkin to wipe the blood from my nose. He then grabbed the chair and stood it upright. I was still reeling from the hit as my mother rushed over and ushered me to the sink. There, she soaked the napkin in cold water and directed me to hold it over my nose with my held tilted backward. I saw her shoot a sharp stare toward my father, but he wasn’t looking. He kept his head down and continued eating as if nothing had happened. It was then that the tug of war over to whom I held allegiance began.

My mother calmly said, “Ian, go to your room and lie down until the bleeding stops. You can finish your dinner later.”

“He’ll finish his dinner now, Gertrude,” my father said without looking up. “There’s only one dinnertime, and this is it. Ian, sit down and finish your dinner.”

There was a pause, a very long pause, to see which master I would serve. They were two people calling the same dog, waiting to see which one the dog would run to. I sat down.

My father looked at me and, with an even, low tone, spoke: “Don’t you ever speak to your mother in that manner again. Ever.”

He continued eating. I didn’t respond, because no response was necessary. Both Gertrude and I had our answers. She and father may not have had the most loving of relationships, but there was still a strong sense of generational honor—and Gertrude was still his wife.

My father and I never spoke of that incident until almost twenty years later—a year before he passed away—when I came to visit. I was sitting next to him on the couch, both of us watching a ball game. His hair had faded to auburn with streaks of gray, but his mustache remained fiery red. He was still a handsome guy. As much as I enjoyed being with him, I wasn’t smiling this time. He had a sixth sense that I wanted to say something. My father picked up the remote, pointed it at the TV to turn it off, and lit up another Lucky Strike.

“What’s on your mind, Ian?”

I thought about playing stupid and just saying “Nothing.” But I knew he wouldn’t believe it. Besides, the man deserved the truth, especially after all the hell I put him through when I was younger. “Do you remember when you hit me at the dinner table?”

He took a drag on his cigarette. “Yes, I remember. What about it?”

“Well … I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for the way I behaved and spoke to Mom, that’s all.” I was hoping for an apology in return—something that would show me how he felt about striking me.

Instead he put down his cigarette, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “It took you long enough, but that apology is owed to your mother, not me.” With that said, he turned away, picked up his cigarette, and clicked the TV back on. I should already have known how he felt, because of a discussion I overheard about fifteen years earlier. I just wasn’t as smart or insightful as I thought, and didn’t connect the dots.

The summer after I turned eighteen I was arrested for stealing a car. It wasn’t the first car I stole, nor was it the first time I disappointed my father, but it was the first as an adult rather than a juvenile. The judge gave me a choice of either four years in the military—at the height of the Vietnam war no less—or four years in the county prison. If I served honorably, my record would be expunged. If I went to prison, I would have a record forever. What a choice—either possibly dying in Vietnam, or living with a record. Both my father and grandfather—for whom I decided to no longer work, after an irate customer, during one of our collections, caught me in the head with a bat causing a two-inch gash which required a dozen or so stitches—convinced me the military was the better of two evils. I joined the Navy.

Before I acted on that decision, I came home earlier than usual for one of my father’s weekend dinners. I was always hungry. Running numbers, fighting and collecting bad debts from deadbeat customers will do that. My parents were in the kitchen and didn’t hear me come in. I could barely make out the conversation as they were talking softly, but something told me it was one which I didn’t want to walk into. I stayed in the dining room, but still in earshot for the last part of the exchange.

“When are you going to get rid of the blue mixing bowl, Larry? It’s so chipped, and it’s not like we can’t afford a better one. And speaking of damaged goods,” my mother sanctimoniously stated, “I can’t wait for Ian to leave. Perhaps then we’ll have some peace knowing that the next knock on the door won’t be the police.”

I peeked around the corner and saw my father turn toward my mother to address her question. “You’re right, Gertrude. This bowl is a piece of shit. But even damaged goods still have value and purpose.” His response was a culmination of all the death and misery he had seen and experienced in his life. Silence from my mother. My father had made his point, but I didn’t make the connection.

He reinforced those feelings later when he was the only one to write or visit me, while I was recuperating for four months in a Hawaiian hospital from wounds I suffered in ’Nam. My river boat was the sole target of an ambush while on a classified mission with two other boats. I was the only survivor. Not one call, letter, or visit from Gertrude or Henry; just my father. And yet, I still didn’t get it. God was I dense.

It wasn’t until some five years after his death that I told my mother, in one of our rare civil conversations, that I had apologized to my father. I then, finally and formally, apologized to her for my comment. She thanked me, but what she said next was yet another bat to my head. “I never saw your father cry, but he cried that night in bed. Your father never forgave himself for hitting you, Ian. As you know, your father was a man of few words, much to my chagrin. But I cannot tell you how many times, right up until his death, for no apparent reason at all, he would blurt out: ‘I should never have lost my temper and hit him, Gertrude. He didn’t deserve to be treated that way.’ Through all of the disappointments and heartaches, he always loved you, Ian. Always.” This time…this time, I finally got it. But I didn’t feel relieved or vindicated. I felt repentant.

Given the nature of my relationship with my mother, I have often wondered if she told me to assuage my torment, or to add salt to that open wound. I would like to think it was the former, but believe it was the latter.

 

A few days after that last stormy conversation with Dori—in spite of her protests, in spite of my attorney’s advice—I stopped at the old house. It was night, and there was a single light on in the living room. I walked straight to the kitchen, also illuminated, but only by the light under the range hood. I stopped for a moment, fully expecting to see my father eating his dinner. That should never have happened, I thought.

Over the stove, behind the cupboard door, sat the blue bowl. I needed something in which to carry it—something inconspicuous. I spotted a large brown bag—the kind the grocery stores still offer as a choice between paper or plastic—and promptly put the bowl into it. Then I threw in a couple of other items and quickly left, hoping none of the spying neighbors had ratted me out to my brother or the police. Driving to my new apartment I felt relief and satisfaction—like someone who just rescued a hostage without being spotted or apprehended.

I parked the car and opened the passenger door to retrieve my backpack and the brown bag lying on the front seat. After slinging the backpack over my left shoulder, I grabbed the bag with my right hand. That blue bowl, that old blue bowl with the weight of all of its memories, was too much for the bag. Before I could place it on the ground so I could shut the door there was a tear, a clumsy attempt to grab the bag, and then a sickening crack as it hit the sidewalk. I wasn’t sure if the sound came from my heart or the bowl. I stood there for a few moments in somber shock, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Then I cradled the bag, now full of my shattered plans, in my arms, and raced up the stairs to my second floor apartment, as if it were a dying patient I was attempting to get into the emergency room before it expired.

Five pieces. All clean breaks. I spread out a dish towel and carefully placed the pieces onto it. I stared at it, willing it to heal itself. What have I done?

I walked to the den, sat down in my lounger, lit a cigarette. It was about the time I usually called Dori, but we hadn’t spoken, or even texted each other, since that last tearful call two days earlier. Do I tell her what really happened, or just put on a happy face and say nothing? I decided I had to tell her the truth. She would find out sooner rather than later. Besides, Dori had become my confidante, and I didn’t want the relationship to be encumbered by lies or omissions of the truth. I had to walk into that minefield.

“Hi, Ian. Funny you should call.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I was about to call you. I wanted to apologize for the way I went off on you the last call.”

“No apology necessary, sweetheart. Everything you said was true. I’m sorry I was such a rock head. But thanks just the same.”

“How was your day?”

“Work was fine, but I need to tell you what happened after work.” Stepping into the unknown, I recounted all of it. “I never should have put the bowl on the bottom. That was stupid.”

I hoped to garner some sympathy. Instead, there was dead silence on Dori’s end. I was now in the center of that field of explosives, and saw no clear path by which to extricate myself safely. When Dori finally spoke, the whole field started to explode around me. She made no attempt to hide her anger.

“No, Ian … stupid was you entering the house. The bowl didn’t break because of your stupidity. It broke because of your arrogance.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means just what I said, you arrogant, selfish, son of a bitch. All you thought of was yourself. You really didn’t give a shit about the bowl, or you would have taken better care to make sure it was protected. And you certainly didn’t consider my feelings. You just wanted to stick your finger in your brother’s and mother’s collective eye to say, ‘See? I can enter the house when I damn well feel like it and take what I want.’”

“That’s not.…”

“Shut the hell up, Ian. I’m not through.”

I felt like I was back in ’Nam, in the middle of a horrific firefight with no ammunition. That minefield was tearing me apart. Why on earth did I ever enter it?

“I’ll give you credit, Ian. You’ve been in some tough spots in your life and always managed to come through on the plus side. But that didn’t make you stronger, or more humble, confident, or thankful. It made you cynical and arrogant. What is it you always said? ‘I’ve done so much, with so little, for so long, that I now believe I can do the impossible with absolutely nothing, forever.’ I used to think that was cute and clever, and, in some way, I admired you for your strength of character and tenacity. Now I see it for what it really is, for what you really are—a spoiled, arrogant child who can’t stand to have things not go his way. I know you had to repeat that mantra to keep you going, but you’ve said that bullshit line for so long, you actually started to believe it! And that’s what really scares the shit out of me.”

The tears started to come through the phone again. “I thought I was starting to really know you. But I now realize that’s not possible, because you don’t even know yourself. Knowing you is like attempting to put your arms around fog. Get a grip, Ian. And when you can admit what you’ve really become, then maybe, just maybe, you and I can have a relationship that’s built on something more stable than delusions of grandeur. I gotta go.” She hung up.

Dori was right…again. I still wasn’t connecting the dots. Had the bowl meant that much to me, I not only would have taken greater care when I transported it, I would have taken it when I moved. But the bowl did have meaning to me; it connected me to my father—the one parent who loved me unconditionally. I did the right thing, but for the wrong reason. It wasn’t the first time.

I volunteered—yes volunteered—for combat duty in Vietnam, even though I had already graduated from Submarine School and was attending the Navy’s advanced communication courses. And not for some patriotic reason, but because Mikey—my best friend and accomplice in my youthful, nefarious enterprises—who enlisted as a Marine, was killed halfway through his Vietnam tour. I wanted to avenge his death. After I recovered from my wounds, I served five more years on submarines. Again, not because I wanted to serve my country or because I had a great love of working in the depths of the sea, but because I was doing something most people didn’t have the balls to do, and it also gave me the time I needed to hide from the world and recover emotionally from ’Nam.

The right things, for the wrong reasons. The story of my life. Dori knew what I had done, but she didn’t know why I had done them. She was on the cusp of understanding it all, and that scared the hell out of me.

 

Several days after that last call from Dori, I confided to a friend at work all that had gone down. Within earshot was a young girl working part-time while she attended graduate school. Though she had been there about a week, I had never made the attempt to introduce myself—a hangover habit from my days in the Navy, especially Vietnam.

While on a smoke break a couple of days later, she came over and introduced herself to me, and asked if we could talk. I was expecting her to ask me about work and how she could do her job better. Instead, she hesitated for a moment and then sheepishly said, “I overheard your conversation with Alex.”

I stared at her and remained silent, not knowing where this conversation was going. She continued: “I studied in Japan during my junior year in college, and became fascinated by the people, their history and culture. My graduate work is an extension of that experience.”

“That’s interesting, Bailey, and I wish you well in your studies. But what does any of that have to do with me?”

Bailey responded timidly, hearing the less-than-enthusiastic tone of my voice: “I believe I have a solution for your bowl.”

“How’s that?”

“Have you ever heard of kintsugi?”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.”

“Terrific. Let me know where I can get my hands on some of those materials. For me, it’s going to be super glue.”

“But people use glue to hide the damage.”

“Precisely. Who wants to see the cracks?”

Bailey explained, “The philosophy behind kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object—something to celebrate, rather than something to disguise. An art form, if you like. The life of an object is extended by transforming it, rather than allowing its service to end just because it’s become damaged goods.”

Damaged goods. That caught my full attention. Perhaps my father was using kintsugi intuitively: attempting to extend my life by transforming me into someone of value and purpose—not by disguising my flaws, but by having me recognize them, and understand that they, too, are a part of my history.

“Thanks for the advice, Bailey. I’ll give it serious consideration. Really.”

“You’re welcome. The bowl apparently means a great deal to you, and it deserves a better place than stuck away in a cupboard to be forgotten. I may be going out on a limb, Ian, but my guess is the bowl isn’t the only thing you want to repair.”

I could feel a small smile form on my face. “You’re a smart, intuitive young lady and wise beyond your years.” I paused briefly, then said, “We should be getting back in before they start to miss us.”

As we reached the door to our office, I stopped and turned to Bailey. “I apologize for not introducing myself earlier. Just an old, outdated, and stupid habit. I’m delighted we had the chance to chat.”

 

Several months after I moved into my apartment, I was finally unpacked and had my new place furnished and decorated. It was time to open the doors to my friends for an inaugural dinner. The apartment was ideal. I occupied the second and third floors of a completely renovated and refurbished, three-story, Victorian mansion located in what they now call The Historic District of the city. It had all the room and amenities I ever wanted. More so, it was the first place I could really call home since my divorce years earlier.

The apartment wasn’t the only thing that went through transformation. Bailey’s comment continued to gnaw at me like a river slowly, relentlessly, carving out a canyon. I still believed in my mantra, and came to the conclusion there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t transform myself. My life, my relationship with my friends and my children—and especially with Dori—depended upon it, now. I didn’t have the luxury of several thousand years. My relationship with Henry and Gertrude? Well, that would have to wait for another epiphany.

After about an hour of socializing, I ushered everyone into the dining room, which I had kept hidden behind closed doors until that moment. The spacious room with its ornate, but tasteful, woodwork was the crown jewel of the apartment. Its high ceiling was adorned by a Victorian-style chandelier in the center. Under it sat a period-appropriate cherry dining room set I found at an estate sale, which rested regally on a lush, pale oriental rug with a simple, graceful, multi-color design. The centerpiece of the room was a stately fireplace bound in exquisitely carved mahogany, capped with two mantels which framed a mirror.

As the guests were about to be seated, Suzanne—the better half of a couple I had known since before my divorce—looked at the mantel above the mirror and said with childlike wonderment, “This blue bowel, Ian. It’s so unique and beautiful. Simply elegant. I have never seen a piece of pottery decorated in such fashion. Where on earth did you find it?”

I glanced over at Dori, who gave me her crooked smile, and nodded her head, as if to say: Go ahead, Ian. Tell the story. You’ve earned it.

I put my drink down, and pushed my hands into the pockets of my pants—a tell of mine since I was a kid, when I was about to share some secret. I glanced down reflectively, then raised my head and smiled at Suzanne. “Have you ever heard of kintsugi?”

 

 

BIO

L.D. ZaneI served seven years in the Navy, which included a combat tour in Vietnam on river boats, and five years aboard nuclear-powered, Fast Attack submarines. At 65, my life is quieter now: anything would be quieter than my military venture. I am a member of the Pagoda Writers Group, and find that I’ve been devoting more and more time to my writing. I write under the pen name L.D. Zane.

Stories published: Red Fez, Solomon’s Shadow, February 2015; Indiana Voice Journal, One Out of Three, March 2015; Red Fez, River of Revenge, April 2015, Remarkable Doorways Online Literary Magazine, The Box, May 2015, and The Writing Disorder, Kintsugi, June 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SYNCRETISM

by Ron Yates

 

 

Uncle Bart was my mother’s only brother. Growing up, I’d seen him maybe once a year at family get-togethers, and I had noticed that he seemed to be aging faster than my other seldom-seen relatives, who remained sleek and fat between reunions. I had the opportunity during the last holiday season to spend some time with him while he was up from Florida visiting my mother, ostensibly on business although I never knew the specifics. I was getting ready for my final semester at the university and trying to think about the future. By this time Bart had become wizened and unkempt, full of irony, anger, and malicious humor, like Nick Nolte in his role as Father in Hulk.

My dad had died from a heart attack the year before and my sister had married and moved away to Birmingham, so Bart’s presence in the house was not as inconvenient as it might have been. He was there for a week. I kept an apartment near campus, but during the break, I was in and out a lot, enjoying time spent relaxing in my childhood home and helping Mom get through the holidays.

 

Having this other male presence in the house was strange at first, sleeping in my sister’s old room, shuffling through the kitchen in the mornings in pajamas and slippers, watching TV in the den with us, and taking his meals at the kitchen table. I soon realized that I hardly knew my uncle Bart and was surprised to find a sense of humor and gentlemanly demeanor underneath his gruff sarcasm. After a few days, Mom and I both were enjoying having him around.

The three of us talked about politics, the economy, and the Middle East, but he didn’t talk about himself much. Mom and I knew, although it was never stated, that he had no one to spend Christmas with. He had divorced four wives without producing any children, and the divorces weren’t amicable. The most recent had occurred just this year, contributing significantly to his overall contemptuousness.

“Melba was a goal-oriented person,” he commented one morning as we were finishing up breakfast. “That’s what attracted me to her initially. Problem was, her goal shifted from accruing personal wealth to my ruination. Damn near succeeded too.” He took a drag off his Doral light, leaned in over his coffee mug, tapped his cigarette fingers to his gray temple. “I’m not as gullible as she thought, though. I had some holdings in Tampa and PC that she didn’t know about. I landed on my feet, as I’ve managed to do over the years. But, enough of that. Tell me about your plans for the future, what you hope to do with an English degree.”

Of course, I wanted to be a writer, like most everyone who majors in English. I hated telling people that, though, especially adult men who’d made lots of money. I didn’t like their patronizing looks of mild amusement or their admonishments of, “Well, yes, but you’ll need a back-up plan,” so I usually said that I planned to teach or get into advertising or public relations. Bart’s reaction, though, was not what I expected. In a sincere voice he added before I could answer, “Naturally, you’ll want to write.”

From the counter where she was rinsing plates and putting them in the dishwasher, Mom said, “Yes, but he needs a back-up plan. I’ve been telling him he should get his teaching certificate. He could get on at a high school close by and maybe even coach baseball. I don’t know if you remember, Bart, but that boy used to love baseball.”

He looked across the table at me and winked. Yes, he remembered, and I did too, the warm Thanksgiving afternoon we’d spent in my maw-maw’s backyard playing catch while my great-uncles, aunts, and cousins sat around eating desserts and watching TV. He had sensed my boredom and initiated the conversation, which led to an intense session of glove-smacking burnout. “I hear you’re a pretty good pitcher,” he had said from a front porch rocker. You’ll have to show me what you got someday. I used to pitch myself, might could teach you a few of my old tricks.”

I was twelve and shy, but my boredom and his seemingly genuine interest prompted an adventurous reply: “I’ve got a couple of gloves and a ball in the car.”

He hopped up out of the rocker, and we ignored the grown-ups for the rest of the afternoon as he devoted his considerable energies to throwing and catching with me. Then it was time to go, and when I saw him again I was a teenager and everything was different. Things were really different now, in the kitchen with Mom, Bart looking too decrepit to even play catch anymore. He took another drag on his cigarette then suffered a minor coughing spell. “I’m gonna quit these damn things one of these days,” he said as the spasm subsided.

He got up and shuffled to the counter to pour more coffee. “Of course, Ann,” he said to Mom, “he’ll need a steady income, insurance, retirement, and so forth, but if he’s got that writer thing in him, he’ll need to get it out somehow. I think he should throw some energy into it now while he’s young. Who knows, it just might lead to something. With talent, good material, and a little luck, a person can still make it writing and publishing.” He sat back at the table and looked at me. “I’d like to see some of your work. I was an English major too, you know.”

I didn’t know and, mildly surprised, told him so. “Oh yes,” he said, shaking another Doral from the pack. “I read all the classics, got especially interested in the American greats, from the Naturalists through the Modernists: Crane, London, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, and of course Hemingway. He was my hero. I wanted to follow in his footsteps.”

“So what did you do with yours? English degree, I mean.”

“Oh, I never finished. I only needed a couple of quarters—we were on a quarter system back then—when I decided to take a break. Went down to Florida, got involved in some business ventures, and one thing led to another. Never made it back to school. Kept reading, though, and thinking about it—for a long time.” His voice trailed off into despairing reflection.

I said, “Well, it’s never too late. I’ve had classes with lots of people your age. They’re called ‘non-traditional’ students—”

“Believe me, kid. It is too late for me. It’s your turn now, to shine, to make your mark in the world. We’ll talk about it more later, after I read some of your stuff.”

My part-time employer, Java Chop, a coffee house and deli near campus, had called me in to work that day, so I decided to swing by the apartment when I got off to print out a copy of my latest story. The working title was “Eb and Flo, a Love Story about Nothing.” It was an account of two androgynous characters who lead nondescript lonely lives, caring for their pets and following set routines until their chance meeting in a coffee shop. They each begin to organize their lives differently, to facilitate more “chance” meetings. They are slowly drawn into each other’s world, and through their coffee-shop dialogue, the reader follows them on their journey to completeness. I was pretty proud of it and eager to show it to someone. Although I had doubts about Uncle Bart’s critical skills and ability to appreciate what I was trying to accomplish, I hoped he would like it.

When I handed him the manuscript after supper he appeared confused for a moment. As the recollection of our morning’s conversation dawned, he said, “Oh, yes. Well now, this really looks like something. I can’t wait to read it.” He set the pages on the end table as he settled into an evening in front of the TV with Mom, watching their favorite investigative crime dramas. The next morning I noticed that the manuscript had been moved, but Bart made no mention of it during breakfast. It was the first weekday after the New Year holiday, and Mom had errands to run, gift returns mainly and an appointment for a pedicure. She seemed eager to get out of the house; instead of our usual bacon and eggs with grits, biscuits, and a full array of jellies, syrups and jams, we had Eggo waffles and microwaveable sausage patties. As we ate and chatted about the weather and how bad the traffic was likely to be, I sensed Bart’s eyes on me. I felt sure he had read the story and was examining me for structural flaws, signs of weakness that he was preparing to reveal.

I began to dread the moment of Mom’s leaving, of being left alone with him, and I tried to think of an excuse to leave with her. As she was putting on her coat and checking her purse to be sure she had the receipts, Bart looked at me. “So, it seems we have some time on our hands, alone, like old bachelors. An opportunity to . . . discuss things.” He raised an eyebrow diabolically, like an evil professor, then grinned. “I enjoyed the story. I’m impressed with your talent.”

Mom said, going out the door, “Bye fellows. You two try to behave while I’m gone. I’ll be back late this afternoon.”

When I answered, “Bye, Mom,” a small spasm of apprehension passed out of my body. He had said he liked the story, that I had talent. I surprised myself with how much this mattered, and I worked—at that moment and at times throughout the morning—to not let my need for his approval show.

He pressed the door closed behind Mom. “C’mon, let me pour you another cup of coffee before we get started.” As he shuffled across the floor in his slippers and baggy pajamas, I noticed his grizzled whiskers, his gossamer hair charged with static and standing off his head, but I also saw a light in his blue eyes I hadn’t seen before, a disconcerting impishness. “Let’s sit in the den,” he said, “where we’ll be comfortable.”

He disappeared for a second as I tried to relax in my usual chair. When he returned he was holding the “Eb and Flo” manuscript. He tossed it onto the coffee table and sat across from me on the sofa. “You’ve got some pretty good chops. On a sentence by sentence level this is right up there. It’s musical, lyrical, metaphorical, and all that. Your transitions transition and you’re able to do what all writers struggle with: move people in and out of rooms. But . . . the story is still lacking. In spite of your good writing, it’s a flop.”

I exhaled heated air from my burst bubble. “Well, thanks, I guess. For being honest—”

“But don’t despair. I’ve got what you and all writers need, material. I’m giving you a gift today, the gift of narrative thrust. Conflict, action, suspense, tension, drama—that’s what it’s all about.” He eased back into the cushions, reached for his cigarettes and lighter. “You might want to take notes.”

* * *

Back in the seventies Uncle Bart had been a student at the same college I attended. Aaron-Maslow had a wild reputation then, the number one party school in the state. He had begun as a serious student, a lover of literature with writing skills he hoped to develop. He attended on a full-ride scholarship—baseball and academics; he was full of promise and optimism in spite of the toxic political climate of that era and the increasing scope of domestic and international disasters. But after three years of college life—the stress of playing ball, staying in shape, and keeping up his grades in a cornucopia of sex, drugs, and rock and roll—he found himself on academic probation, no longer on the baseball team, and broke.

He was tall and good-looking with thick blonde hair to his collar and a mustache. He had managed to stay away from the heavy drinking, pot, and other drugs throughout his freshman year, but with lots of pretty girls and a party somewhere every night, the temptation became too much for a young man who had previously led a sheltered life. His hair grew, his manner of dress changed, and he formed new friendships with people who weren’t so hung up about grades and sports.

Bart had seen Davis around campus and had even had classes with him but didn’t get to know him until one night in May when he found himself at a party where the lithe and swarthy hippie was the center of attention. Upwards of 100 people—an assortment of freaks including students, faculty, and dropouts—had gathered at an old farm house a few miles outside of town. People were drinking and laughing on the porch, in the yard, and in clusters throughout the rambling structure. The main hive of activity, though, seemed to be back in the kitchen. Groups kept moving in and out of there in huddled discussion over loud strains of Led Zeppelin. Bart guessed the reason for the activity, and his theory was confirmed after he edged his way into the room to get another beer out of an ice-filled tub. Davis was leaning over the high Formica-covered counter, his straight black hair pulled back in a pony tail. He was flanked by a seriously interested group that seemed a bit younger than the rest, probably freshmen, two girls and a chubby guy with pink cheeks. Davis was holding forth, laughing, cutting his eyes from one to another, and showing them something on the counter. He was providing reassurance; then Bart saw them make the exchange: money passed into Davis’s hands, then swiftly into his jeans. The chubby guy said, “Thanks, man.” Davis responded by wrapping his arms around all three. “You guys are beautiful,” he said. “Enjoy, and let me know when you need more.”

Bart, hanging around the beer tub, became interested in watching this guy work. They exchanged glances once or twice as Davis displayed his charm through a steady stream of customers in groups and pairs, some excited and some apprehensive. There were lots of girls at the party and most of them at some point made their way to either Davis and his place at the counter or the beer tub. Bart, maintaining his vantage point, soon found himself in conversation with a hippie girl, breathtaking in her beauty.

She had reached into the tub, pulled up a dripping longneck, then tossed her head to settle her shag haircut back into place. In response to Bart’s stare, she smiled, flashing her big hazel eyes at his. “Hi. You keeping watch over the beer?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess. This is an interesting place to stand. All the cool people end up in this room at some point. Here. Let me open that for you.”

He reached toward her bottle with an opener. She met him halfway and held the bottle firmly while he popped the top. Moving closer brought a slight misalignment in his mind. Her appearance suggested an herbal, organic smell, but her fragrance was more like expensive Parisienne parfum.

“Thanks,” she said with another slight head toss. He noticed the silver hoop earrings shaking against her fair skin. Thickly layered strands of hair the color of polished white ash swooped over her ears then followed her slender neck down between her shoulders. She smiled and let her eyes linger on his face for a moment. “So, when you say ‘cool people’ are you including that long-haired dude over there at the counter?”

“Sure, why not? I mean, he’s been the most popular guy at the party ever since I’ve been here.”

“Hmm . . . that’s interesting. Any idea what his secret is?”

“Not sure, but I’d guess he has something other people want.”

“Hmmph!” She knitted her brows in mock seriousness. “You don’t suppose he’s selling drugs over there do you?”

“Well, since his jeans pockets are stuffed with cash, that seems a definite possibility.”

She sidled a step closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What do you think he’s selling?”

“No idea. Something twisted up in tiny little plastic bags.”

Someone in the other room put on a new album and they became aware of the beginnings of a much gentler tune, quiet acoustic guitar and lilting vocals, then the chorus: “Skating away-ay, skating away-ay, on the thin ice of a new day-ay-yay . . .”

“Far-out!” she said, “Tull.” She sucked in her lower lip, half-closed her eyes, and moved her head to the flowing rhythm. “Ian Anderson’s a genius,” opening her eyes to his. “What do you think?”

“Great, I love Tull!” As soon as he had spoken he felt that he had let too much excitement show over their having such a small thing in common.

She nodded and smiled, glanced back to Davis, who was relaxing between customers at the counter. “I think I’ll mozy over and see what this guy’s up to.” She turned and he watched her walk away in her cut-off jeans and clog sandals.

A couple of guys he knew came into the kitchen with bags of ice and another case of beer to replenish the tub. Bart exchanged pleasantries and helped with the task. When he stood up and looked over at Davis and the girl, he saw that she was leaning into him, his arm around the small of her back, lifting her short denim jacket and exposing a pair of dimples just above the top of her hip-hugger shorts. With a hand against his chest she pushed herself away and turned, smiling, to look at Bart. With one arm around Davis’s waist, she motioned with the other for Bart to come over. Making the few steps across the room, Bart noticed that Davis was also smiling at him, as if they were complicit in some scheme that was just beginning to hatch.

The girl said, “You were right. This character has been up to no good. I interrogated him and he confessed.”

“Guilty as charged, your honor,” Davis said. “Question is, what are you gonna do to me.”

She grinned. “Help you spend the money, of course.” She nodded toward Bart. “He had you pegged all along. He’s an undercover investigator, you know.”

“Undercover . . . that explains it, why I’ve seen him hanging around the student center in the afternoons, and carrying books in and out of the library.” He smiled warmly, looked at Bart with eyes the color of dark chocolate. “Now that you’ve nailed me, I guess you should know my name.” He reached out his hand. “I’m Davis.”

Bart took the hand in the accepted thumb-locking hippie grasp. “Bart. Pleased to meet you.”

He looked at the girl. “I don’t know your name.”

She tilted her head causing one hoop earring to dangle, the other to lie against her neck. “Mary. Simple and easy to remember.”

They drank and chatted in the crowded kitchen, mainly about the assorted characters who continued to come and go. Mary was animated, doing most of the talking. Several times when partygoers approached Davis with furtive glances and veiled questions, he shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and held up empty hands. Mary asked, “Are you all sold out?”

“Almost,” he answered, with an implication in his eyes.

She said, “Uh-huh,” then turned to Bart. “So, what did you say you were majoring in?”

“I didn’t. Haven’t had a chance yet.”

“Let me guess. I’d say you’re of a practical turn of mind. And you have a sadness in your eyes for all that’s been lost. And your body—” she eyed him up and down—“suggests physical robustness. I think you’re someone who climbs around on mountainsides and in valleys digging up rocks, looking for fossils. You, my new friend Bart, are a geology major.”

Bart chuckled. “That’s a very interesting guess. Your insightfulness is staggering. But, unfortunately, you’re not even close.”

“She does that all the time,” Davis said. “She guessed somebody right last year at a party and hasn’t been able to stop since. She is a great judge of human nature. Now, if she could only match the natures up with the right humans . . .”

She laughed and pressed against Davis. “I figured you out pretty quick, though, didn’t I? I guess that’s what really matters.”

“Well, you’re right about me being what matters most, but I’m not as transparent as you think. There are some nooks and crannies in my psyche that you haven’t peered into yet.”

“There he goes, talking about his psyche. Davis is a psychology major, as you might have guessed.”

Bart said, “I would have never known. I’d have placed him in the business department. He seems to have mastered the laws of supply and demand.”

As they laughed, drank, and smoked their cigarettes, Bart noticed the mood of the party changing. Movement and noise subsided, replaced by a subdued camaraderie. Pink Floyd oozed from the speakers. Mellow. Joints were circulating everywhere in the smoky house, and people seemed content in their various groupings, engaged in deep conversation. “Our work here is done,” Davis said. “Why don’t we split, get out under the stars and enjoy the great outdoors.” He looked at Bart. “Come on, Man. I’ve got some things to show you.”

 

It was indeed a beautiful night, even when viewed from the inside of Davis’s old pickup. The three of them rode together through scenic rural areas Bart had never seen before. The truck, a Dodge from the 1950’s, was battered and noisy but seemed eager for the changing terrain, the washed-out curvy blacktops and steep hills. They turned onto a dirt road that after a few miles became barely passable. Picking their way over harsh bumps and ruts, they approached a wooden bridge that spanned an energetic rocky creek. Davis eased the truck over the planks, water gurgling beneath them, then pulled over and killed the engine and lights. The trees on either side were black and looming under the full moon. The road was mottled black with shadows, lumpy with rocks and potholes.

They had just finished smoking a very potent joint, and Bart was suddenly struck with a wave of paranoia. What the hell were they doing? Who were these people? Were they going to kill him and leave his body out here? Perform some weird ritual? These thoughts flurried through his guts, producing body tremors he could scarcely conceal. They sat quietly in the truck for a few moments before Davis began rummaging around under the seat. Finally he said, “Here it is,” bringing up something in his hand.

Mary said, “Cool. I’m glad you brought that. Lemme have it.” She snatched the roll of toilet paper from him and nudged Bart with her knee and elbow. “Open the door, dude. I gotta pee.”

He exhaled, almost laughed, and pressed down on the Vise-Grip pliers that served as a door handle. Davis opened his door and got out also. Mary stepped gingerly over the ditch and disappeared into some bushes. Davis came around to Bart’s side and handed him a beer. The air was filled with the sound of running water, crickets, frogs, owls, and other night creatures. They each lit a cigarette and listened for a moment. Davis said, “Snake creek. Cool, huh?”

“Far-out . . . literally.”

Davis slapped Bart on the shoulder. “I’m glad you like my back yard.”

From Davis’s smile Bart couldn’t tell if he was serious or not; then he heard Mary approaching. She handed Davis the toilet paper.

He said, “Why don’t you roll us another joint while I fix up a little something else for us.”

Mary said, “Sure,” and got back inside the truck.

Davis turned his back to Bart and, bending over the Dodge fender, began to make preparations. When Bart stepped in closer, he could see three individual sheets of toilet paper placed side by side. Davis removed his large black wallet, attached to his belt with a chain, and dug deep into one of the compartments. “When I saw how sales were going back there, I decided to stash a little for personal use, enough to divide up three ways, a good number—Biblical, you know.” He placed the small twist-tied package, made from the cut-off corner of a sandwich bag, on the fender. It was mashed flat from being in his wallet.

“What is that, anyway,” Bart asked. “I don’t mess with hard drugs.”

Davis grinned in the moonlight, his teeth flashing white. “It’s not heroin, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s the love drug, MDA, kind of a combination of acid and speed. It’s great, really mellow. Makes everything all better.”

“But I’m short of funds tonight—”

“Don’t worry about it. This one’s on me. It’s not that expensive anyway.”

“But we don’t really know each other . . . why did you pick me—”

Again the flash of white. “I trust Mary’s instincts. She’s a great judge of human nature, remember?”

Davis’s hands were busy. “Here,” he said. “Hold this lighter up so I can see.” He used the blade of his pocketknife to measure equal portions of the white powder into the center of each toilet paper sheet. He wet his fingers and made three little balls, wrapping the tissue around the drug. The passenger door hinges creaked as Mary climbed out with a freshly rolled joint.

Davis said, “Cool, baby. Go ahead and light that thing up. We’re gonna find God tonight.” He handed Bart and Mary each a little drug ball and kept one for himself. Holding it up just prior to popping it into his mouth, he said, “Shall we?”

Bart glanced at Mary. She winked, swallowed down her drug with a big gulp of beer. He did the same.

 

He had never seen anything as beautiful as fire, Bart thought later, except for Mary’s face as she laughed and talked inside Davis’s teepee. His was one of five spread out along the grassy banks beside the creek, a little community not far from the bridge where he had stopped the truck. As they had topped the last rise in the old Dodge, bringing the teepees into view, Bart had expressed his surprise: “What the—”

“My front yard,” Davis had said.

“You mean you live here?”

“Yep. Great views, cool neighbors, and really cheap rent.”

Davis and Mary explained, as they parked the Dodge at the edge of the meadow, that Dr. Ostrakan of the psychology department owned the land and had agreed to the teepee settlement as kind of an experiment, a “simple living” collective. The professor didn’t care what they did as long as they didn’t erect permanent structures and took care of their garbage.

“It’s amazing,” Bart said. “That you can live this way. I’d have never thought—”

“It does have its downside. It was great last summer when we built everything, but over the winter things got kinda rough. Some nights we stayed in town at Mary’s place.”

Bart registered surprise. Mary answered, “Yeah, my parents don’t know about any of this. They still pay for my apartment and expenses, thinking I’m the model college girl. If they knew I flunked out this term, they’d shit bricks. I won’t be able to keep it a secret forever, though.”

“Let’s don’t worry about that stuff,” Davis said. “Tonight . . . ,” he made an expansive gesture, “the sky, the creek, us. This is what matters now.”

As the drug dissolved and found its way into his bloodstream and brain, Bart felt a dawning realization that Davis was right, that this—the here and now—was what mattered most. With childlike excitement he helped Davis build the fire, bringing in sticks of wood from the stack outside. Then he watched Davis’s expert hands as he prepared the kindling and laid the sticks just so in the rock-lined pit.

As the fire crackled and popped, the smoke, heavy and slow at first, began to find its way out the top. Mary’s face with the firelight reflected in her eyes, the music of her voice, and Davis’s reassuring smile had combined to produce a feeling of contentment unlike anything Bart had ever known. Now, with the fire burning clean, flames dancing over a bed of glowing embers, the contentment was still there, radiating out to blend with the heat of the fire and the warm souls of his new friends he had met only a few hours before. Amazing. Love, that’s what it was. Bart was experiencing true love—he was sure—for the first time in his life.

The fire melted all reserve between them and for a long time, they shared stories from their lives, their childhoods, hopes, and fears. Mary was the first member of her family to attend college. She had a little brother with Down Syndrome and other developmental problems. Mary had stuttered and been shy as a child but had miraculously blossomed through the loving encouragement of her fifth-grade teacher. Davis was a surviving identical twin. The brother had died in a car wreck when they were toddlers, cracking his head on the metal dashboard. Davis, standing next to his mother in the front seat, had been saved by her partially restraining arm, thrown out just before impact, an arm that had not been strong enough to hold both boys back from death. Davis himself had been cut and broken; he pulled up his tee shirt to show a star-shaped pattern of white scars on his chest and ribcage.

Bart felt that he didn’t have much to share from his sheltered life. He had stayed clean, made good grades, played ball, went to church a lot. Never suffered anything, really, other than the scrapes and bruises of a childhood that seemed too normal. But he wanted to share; he wanted to give them something of himself, so he told about his dream of becoming a writer, how he felt that he was born to do something important, to leave part of himself behind after he was gone. He sometimes imagined books he had authored on library shelves waiting to be discovered by new readers generations from now, and he sometimes dreamed books, but so far he had not been able to capture them upon waking, only bits and pieces he had used to construct stories. He had written several stories he was proud of. He told Mary and Davis they could read them some time, that he would be honored.

They listened. Mary leaned forward, smiling, big eyes looking over the impish flames at Bart. “So now I’ve got it. Your physical robustness is for living and experiencing all life has to offer, to get it into books; the sadness in your eyes is for the human condition and your need to make sense of it. You, my friend, must be an English major!”

They laughed. Davis said, “My God, Mary, you’re clairvoyant! Our very souls laid bare beneath your gaze!”

As the chuckles subsided Mary said, “That’s really cool. English is my minor, majoring in art. Did I say that yet? Was, I mean. Was majoring in art before I flunked out. Anyway, I love to read, and I write poems sometimes. I’m surprised I never saw you in the humanities building.”

“Probably because my classes are always early in the morning. We have to get our classes over so we can spend the afternoons practicing.”

“Practicing?”

“Yeah, I’m on the baseball team. Was, I mean.”

“Wow, a real jock! But I guess that must be tough. All the responsibility, people counting on you.”

Bart didn’t know what to say.

Davis said, “So, dude, that is cool. I read a lot myself. Who are your favorite authors?”

That got the words flowing again. Bart told about Hemingway and his quest for one true sentence; about Flannery O’Conner and her Jesus-twisted characters; Tom Robbins, his far-flung metaphors and social insight. Each time he mentioned a book or author Davis and Mary nodded their enthusiastic agreement and exclaimed, “Cool!” or “Far-out!” They were readers too, loved Vonnegut and Brautigan as much as he did. The discovery of their common interests was a wave that carried comfort like soft caramel throughout his body, and the night passed, slowly and wonderfully, inside the teepee.

The floor, constructed from planks salvaged from warehouse pallets, was strewn with old quilts, sleeping bags, and pillows; there was a chair, a mirror, and several shelves, one of which held a softly glowing kerosene lamp, another a wash basin. Plenty of fresh, gurgling water running just outside; warmth inside. Cold beer in the cooler, fine Columbian weed in Mary’s batik bag—what else could anyone need?

The sky, visible through the smoke hole, slowly changed from deep purple to gray, and the stars faded. The sedative effect of the beer was beginning to hold sway over the diminishing effects of the MDA, and, after eating roasted wieners and a big pan of popcorn popped on the fire, the three were nearly talked out. Davis turned out the lamp, then began to snuggle with Mary in what seemed to be their usual sleeping area. Bart reclined a couple of feet away, resting his head on a rolled-up blanket.

The fire had burned down to mostly coals now, three charred sticks producing a flickering medley of blue and orange. Bart closed his eyes, but inside his skull there was still much activity. The drug and the night’s revelations allowed only a measure of relaxation; sleep remained outside, a foreigner patiently awaiting entry. He listened to the soft popping and hissing of the dying fire, and from Davis and Mary’s blankets he heard murmurs and whispers that blended with the gurgling of the creek just beyond the canvas wall. From out there he heard frogs croaking as the night slipped away, along with owls, whippoorwills, barking foxes, and an occasional splash in the creek, but these animal sounds were slowly displaced by the sounds of Davis and Mary cooing and caressing under their blankets.

The murmurs became moans of pleasure, then pants and grunts as the couple made love beside him. He was outside their zone of passion, yet he felt a part of it. His pulse was synchronized with their rhythm, and he imagined the sensations of their mounting pleasure. He did not feel shame, embarrassment, or the need to turn away, but rather contentment, lying there with his eyes closed, wrapped in the warmth of the fire, blankets, and love.

As the tempo beside him increased, so did the volume and pitch of Mary’s panting. Their movement became strained, a struggle for release, and Mary yelped with pleasure. Bart felt something stir beside him, then pressure against his arm. Mary’s fingers were pressing, making circles on his wrist. Then her hand found his and squeezed tightly as she stepped over the edge into a free-fall of pleasure. As the grunting and panting subsided, the sounds outside became audible again. Bart drifted off to sleep, holding Mary’s warm, relaxed hand.

Before a week had passed the three of them were on their way to Florida. Davis suggested the move in a way that seemed natural, considering their current academic standing and future prospects. They loaded their most necessary and cherished possessions—amp, turntable, speakers, albums, Native American artifacts, a few pieces of handmade pottery, baseball gloves, camping gear, jeans, tees, and several boxes of Mary’s clothes—under a makeshift camper on the back of the old Dodge and headed south to Panama City. The general idea was to be bums, to sleep on the beach until they could find jobs and a cheap place. They’d be getting there between spring break and the summer vacation rush, the ideal time to seek out opportunities. Davis was persuasive, Mary seemed excited, and Bart was unable to resist.

* * *

Time passed and my Uncle Bart ended up staying in Florida, until the last month of his life, living out his days with sea gulls, the sound of the surf, and beach music in the background. He spent the years getting married and divorced and pursuing a variety of business ventures including night clubs, car lots, and liquor stores from the western end of the panhandle down to Tampa. He did drugs, drank, and smoke until a few weeks after he critiqued my story in Mom’s den, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, already in the advanced stages. This would be the first spring break in many years that he would not spend on the Gulf.

After an obligatory round of chemo did nothing but make his hair fall out and leave him sicker, Mom contacted the hospice agency. A bed was set up—in my old room this time as it allowed easier access—and Bart was moved in as the dogwoods reached full bloom. He didn’t put up much of a struggle, letting the nurses, Mom, and the morphine have their way. During those last days he seemed to enjoy, more than anything, my company. At first I sought reasons to stay away from the house, a place that was taking on the smell of death in spite of Mom’s opening the windows to the spring breezes, and to immerse myself in work during my last schedule of classes before graduation; but after a week or so of trying to avoid the inevitable, I gave in, clearing my calendar of obligations for several afternoons.

Mom left us alone as much as possible, and we talked about literature and writing, the mysteries of life, and the amorphous webbing that binds us together with everything else in the universe. He laughed and was in good cheer most of the time, but he occasionally drifted off into staring, silent reflection. He was sharing deeply from the well of his collected musings, but he seemed to be struggling to go deeper.

When we had gone down to his beach-front bungalow at the end of the Perdido Key strip, just east of Gulf Shores, to bring him back to Georgia, we left most of his possessions for later and shut up the little house. But he had insisted on bringing a few personal items. There was a thick cardboard storage box, the kind made for holding files and records. It was battered and taped at the corners and the lid was sealed with layers of clear tape. As Mom was packing his slippers, toiletries, and necessary items, he elbowed me and pointed to the box sitting on the floor at the foot of his unmade bed. “That’s coming too. Me and that box have got to leave here together. Go ahead and put it in the trunk.”

I lifted the heavy box as he asked, without thinking much about its contents, and it rode with us back to Georgia. Bart’s final weeks slipped by, and I didn’t think of the box again until the afternoon when he told me to drag it out of the closet and open it up. I pulled out my knife and started to cut through the tape.

“Everything you’ll need is in there,” he said, breathing deeply from the oxygen tube at his nostrils as I pulled off the lid. “The stuff of life.”

The box was filled with notebooks.

“I took notes, kept journals,” Bart said weakly from his bed. “I always planned to sift through it, sort it out into stories and maybe a novel, but . . . I ran out of time. That’s all that’s left of me now. Not much to show for a life, is it?”

I groped for words. “You were a businessman. You provided goods and services. You helped other people to be happy and live their lives. That counts.”

“Goods and services. I guess that’s what it boils down to after all.”

I ran my hand along the spiral backs and cardboard covers, pulling one out into the light. The notebook was labeled in black magic marker on the cover. Neat block letters spelled out the word, “Environment.” The next one in the stack was labeled, “Lust.” I pulled out several more notebooks, each cover printed with a one-word title. Before I stopped and put the lid back on I saw these words: Crime, Jealousy, Punishment, Resistance, Revenge, Deceit, Murder . . . . There were lots of notebooks in there, but that was enough for now. “Wow,” I said, “interesting titles.”

Bart’s eyelids sagged over irises that had grown dull. “Yes. At least I had that. An interesting life. I was never bored, until now. This dying business is starting to get old.” He drifted off into a deep sleep from which he never fully awoke. A few days later he was gone.

After the sparsely attended funeral I carried the box to my apartment and parked it within reach of my futon. When I pulled off the lid, my hand went straight to the last title I had seen: Murder. I had to know if Uncle Bart had been a bad man. I suspected that he had, but, oddly—and I struggled with admitting this to myself—I didn’t love him any less for it. The notebook paper was yellowing around the edges, each page filled with Bart’s legible yet sloppy cursive. I read the first page carefully, skimmed ahead, then went back and read slowly. The notebook was indeed a first-person account of a murder that had been committed in the winter of 1976.

The victim was a sick old reprobate, proprietor of Ray Ballard’s Beachside Motel. He had provided Davis, Mary, and Bart a place to stay in exchange for their help in operating the establishment. The old man had other business interests and a trophy wife in her forties whose needs were not being met and with whom Bart found favor. Davis managed to charm his way into the old man’s confidence: Ballard, after an evening of drunken camaraderie with Davis, showed him a special stash in the maintenance shed that nobody, not even the wife, knew about. The scheme, according to the narrative, was Davis’s idea, but its enactment required Bart’s participation. He kept the wife occupied while Davis got the old man drunk then smothered him in his sleep. The wife was satisfied, upon discovering her husband dead the next morning, that he had died from natural causes. He had been in poor health for some time, and now she could collect the insurance. After waiting a respectable few days after the funeral, the young trio left the widow to her fortune, themselves making off with considerable loot, including boxes of war relics: Confederate belt buckles, bullets, canteens; gas masks from WWI; German Iron Cross and Swastika medals; a Samurai sword; Japanese Nambu and German Luger pistols; and various helmets, patches, uniforms, emblems, and flags. They also got away with a gallon jar filled with silver dollars. No investigation was ever launched.

What Davis, Mary, and Bart did afterward is another story, or maybe several. I’ll have to spend some time sorting it out. I’ll have the opportunity to do that now since Bart’s will named Mom and me as his only beneficiaries. He left her enough to allow for a comfortable early retirement, and she plans to move to Birmingham to be near my sister and the grandbaby that will be here in time for the holidays. Bart left me the beach house and $100,000. I look forward to moving down there after graduation and getting some writing done.

 

 

BIO

Ron YatesRon Yates received his MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, where he worked with many fine writers and teachers and completed a novel entitled BEN STEMPTON’S BOY, set in the rural south of the early 1970’s. Yates has recently completed a short fiction collection, MAKE IT RIGHT AND OTHER STORIES, a work driven by two key components of his aesthetic: a desire to create crisp, character-driven prose and to evoke place in a way that furnishes and textures the fictional dream.

Yates’s work has appeared in The Oddville Press, Still: The Journal, Bartleby Snopes, Clapboard House, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Rose & Thorn Journal, and Prime Number Magazine.

He lives in a remote area of east Alabama on the shores of a large hydroelectric impoundment and has taught high school literature, creative writing, and journalism for many years.

When not writing, Yates enjoys hiking, taking pictures, tinkering around with old cars and motorcycles, and playing on the lake.

 

 

 

 

Emily Strauss

Going on Vacation

by Emily Strauss

 

Not even a camera this time—
it broke the first day, no paints
or charcoals, anyway I can’t
draw, only a plain notebook
will I carry, the words
clarified enough to tell a truth.

Collecting photos is too heavy,
better these pages of memories,
dreams— ephemeral stuff
but sufficient to record visions
of terraced hills in mirror ponds
each blade of grass etched

under a gray sky like a Chinese scroll
with light patches of color
signifying whole mountains, a hint
of river in the foreground—
I try the same effect
with quick strokes of a pen.

 

 

The Sky Leaps to Light

 

The sky leaps to light
in fifteen minutes
at the Tropic of Capricorn

dawn slumbers but little as
housewives wake to tea,
fried noodles, tai chi

their face-washing towels
immersed and rubbed
gamely over puffy eyes.

Suddenly they discover
the day rising fast, the sky
already white, no idle ruby

build-up, no lingering
anticipation, it is there
in a moment, flaming

disk engulfing the narrow
streets through fog creeping
past the fishermen at sea.

Street lamps wink out like
hooded snakes, uniformed
children begin their parade

another morning devours
its young.

 

 

BIO

Emily StraussEmily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 250 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. The natural world is generally her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her and personal histories. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

 

 

 

 

 

Tim Boiteau

Fugue

by Tim Boiteau

 

1

 

Dawn at O’Hare, foggy autumn morning, waiting for my connection. Spent the night on a bench with my jacket pillowing my head, tie pulled loose, tossing the platinum wedding ring into the air, trying to catch it on the tip of my finger.

Eventually it caught.

Coffee and bagel for breakfast. Pull out my tablet and stare at the photo of us in Thailand, the sea and sky contending blue. Make it my new wallpaper. A superficial gesture.

The woman on the bench beside me eyes the picture for some time before finally saying, “She is so adorable,” and then looking at me: “Looks just like you.” The woman is dark-haired, thin, but with all the wrong facial features, as if there had been some glitch in replicating my wife.

“Thank you.” The noncommittal response ends the conversation.

We look out over the tarmac at the fragile jet, its nose poking out of the rolling mist, written in the stars to deliver us to our destination.

She holds in her hand a tablet as well but after having pulled it out had merely paused forgetfully, her finger hovering over the surface. There is a picture there on display for me to see, obscured by the desktop icons: her, a man with a cleft chin, two sons, neither with cleft chins, all precariously set on the edge of the Grand Canyon, a gust of wind threatening to disperse them like spores over an impregnable land.

I look back up at the jet vanishing into the mist, appearing safer now with its frailty cloaked.

 

2

 

Four thousand feet, en route to Detroit Metropolitan, by coincidence she is still beside me, her tablet out, awaiting my response.

“Good-looking kids.” I offer, thinking I should add something to that delayed reciprocity. But maybe it’s enough. She’s smiling anyway.

“How many is this for you?” I say, turning, engaging her.

She purses her lips, sighs, her tongue feeling around the teeth. “The big 2-0.”

I nod. “A seasoned pro.”

“Weird during this in between time, a little nerve-wracking, invigorating, then . . . you adjust.”

“Sure . . . then comes 21.”

“What about you?”

I pause. “Lost count.”

At times I feel like I exist at the junction of hundreds of conflicting memory lines, a disconcerting feeling, an inappropriate topic for light, get-to-know-you conversation.

Probably she feels the same way.

“Come on. Don’t be shy,” she says, her hand flirting with the fabric of my jacket.

“Let’s just say I’m getting up there.”

“That’s either charming or pathetic. Not sure which.”

The flight attendant comes by.

“She’ll have a screwdriver, I’ll do a greyhound, both light on the juice.”

“That’s a bit presumptuous of you.”

“What? I’m buying you a drink. If you’d like it can be the toast to the end of our brief relationship. You do like screwdrivers, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Thought so.”

The flight attendant hands us our drinks.

“I gotta ask you something—”

“Let me guess: did we ever . . . ?”

“You look so damn familiar,” I say, snapping my fingers.

“To be honest, I don’t know. I thought the same thing about you.”

“If I really focus, close my eyes, I can see your face, I can see our daughter, Jenny, seven, wearing a white dress for her first communion, her knees are scabbed, you pull up these—uh—these little white stockings to cover the scabs, put these small, white shoes on her feet, she kisses you on the cheek . . .”

I open my eyes and find her smiling, shaking her head. “I’ve never had a daughter.”

I look into her Eye. “Maybe you just haven’t closed your eyes long enough. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

 

3

 

McNamara Tunnel, Detroit Metropolitan, leaning against the moving walkway rail, massaging my eyes against the rainbow light art.

Twenty feet ahead of me is the woman, hand resting on the handle of her carryon, not turning back to acknowledge me. What did I say exactly? The memory of our conversation had already faded into uncertainty. Whatever may have happened, she has ignored me ever since I woke at landing. No matter: she’s already fading out of focus, the words that passed between us cooled air.

A relaxing pulse throbs out of the tunnel walls. Shut my eyes and envision my family. How long has it been?

A scrambling force knocks me over onto the tread, shocking me out of the trance.

My eyes flash open, stare into one large blood-red Eye, prodding me with urgency. After having satisfied itself with me, it removes a distance, and I can see the whole head of the man, disheveled, scraggly bald, the other eye static, diminished and gray with the sagging atrophy of neglect.

“Where’s my family?” he mumbles as I push him off and then, as an afterthought, help him up. “Have you seen them? Flew all night here to see them.”

“Christ, buddy. Don’t know if I can help you there. What do they look like?”

He stares at me for a moment and then says, clawing at my jacket to reach my full height, “I’ll remember when I see them.”

Then he veers away, knocking into the woman first, and then, it seems, by turns into everyone else in the tunnel, as if whatever kind of attack had done that to his Eye had rendered him blind as well.

When she has recovered, the woman turns toward me, and then—something in the way she looks at me in her moment of recovery: a buried memory—I know it for sure.

 

4

 

Four feet, the desolate city rolls past: crumbling graffitied walls, urban prairies, abandoned skyscrapers, boarded up groceries, iridescent black clouds of grackle swirling above, splintered roads rendered lunar by neglect and merciless winters, wind pounding against the car.

“Headed home, man?” the cabbie asks.

“Yeah.”

As I look out at the remains of the city, I superimpose images of my family over them. Tech doc advice: first few weeks, cycle through as many images of them as possible, play and replay recordings of their voices, vacation videos, every chance you get, until the word vacation is a beach in Thailand, home an abandoned city you’ve never cared for, wife a long-haired woman you’ve never touched.

“You use an Eye?” I ask after some time.

“No, don’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“Good man.”

“Tell that to my wife,” he laughs.

 

5

 

Late Sunday morning, my car, a Ford Taurus, gleaming red in the early light, my lawn neatly trimmed, surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence, my house, an immense three-story sprawl, well-maintained, several Japanese maples spaced around it, their leaves reddening with the weather.

Next door, a black-fried mutant spider of where the neighbors used to live, wind gusting through the remains into our yard—cold—the grainy odor of carbon.

Across the street, the windows smashed, the place looted, maybe thirty dead dogs strewn across the overgrown lawn, the corpses in various states of decay, but the weeds alive with other things—oily rats, skittish bugs, unapologetic birds—feeding on the reeking piles.

I walk up the brick path to my home and present my Eye to the peephole.

The door opens.

“Welcome home,” the house intones.

I lay my suitcase at my feet and wait for a minute in the foyer, listening for the sounds of family. My daughter does not scramble to greet me. My wife does not bear a bottle of cold beer to me. The place looks as I remembered: clean, polished wood; minimally decorated; bathed in sunlight. The layout, however, is off: doors in doorless walls, halls for rooms. How is it that these sorts of things slip by? Smells different as well, but then odor is such a difficult thing to pin down and maintain, a more ancient system than sound and vision, like some druidic cult shrouded in myth and rumor inaccurately catalogued in history texts.

Experiencing this house and comparing, reconciling it with the memory house is one of those moments surreal in the junction, but then, as the woman from the plane had said, “you adjust.”

“Where’s my family?”

“In the living room,” the house replies.

“What a homecoming,” I mutter under my breath, turning vaguely towards where I remember the living room to be.

The hallways in this house interminable, after passing under several staircases and making a number of wrong turns, I eventually find the living room and spot the back of their heads, separated by a great distance on the long couch, Daphne with crow black hair, Chloe blonde.

“Hi guys.”

“Hi,” they say out of turn, their heads still directed towards the far wall.

I shrug my shoulders, dropping my luggage. “What’s up?”

“Homework.”

“Catching up on news.”

“All right.” I pause, expecting something more. “Well, I guess if you need me I’ll be in the study doing some work.”

“Okay.”

 

6

 

I roam around the house for an hour or so, finding several kitchens, guest rooms, libraries, before I finally find the study just as I remember it: a long wooden desk by the window; a bird’s-eye view of the course at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club hanging on the wall behind the leather couch; an eye-brain schematic on the other; a giant torch cactus planted in the corner; a few odds and ends strewn about the desk.

I sit down and for several hours code and analyze Eye data, replaying memories from the trip and categorizing them according to valence, arousal, and a number of cognitive dimensions. The episode with the woman I rate as highly arousing but neither positive nor negative, highly thought-provoking as well, but with only a small number of memory associations. The incident with the man I spend several minutes pondering over, and in the end mark it neutral, sensing I could deliberate over it for the rest of my life without ever coming to a firm conclusion. With the image of the man now paused in my field of view, I can zoom in in great detail until the near-transparent circuitry of the Eye lens is apparent, yet there is nothing telling in the appearance of the network, and certainly no analyst would be able to decipher problems so superficially. The man’s problem must be originating from some source higher up in the system. I send a short message to the Eye troubleshooting department.

Next I examine the scene of my homecoming. Upon entering the living room and spotting the back of their heads, the pupil responded by dilating several fractions of a millimeter, triggering a series of autonomic interactions eventually leading to a nearly undetectable increase in heart rate and skin conductance, and following this an over-compensatory constriction of the pupil and subsequent slowing of the heart rate to below baseline, the entire physiological event recalled as being the subjective experience of familial intimacy.

Nevertheless, I rate the scene as unpleasant, though certainly rich in memory associations.

“Honey?” a voice calls out from behind me.

“Yes?” I respond, staring into the computer monitor, at the reflection of my wife’s silhouette, my breath catching: a reaction that will have to be analyzed later.

Daphne, my wife, a flood of bittersweet images and sounds.

“Just wanted to let you know Chloe and I are doing a girls’ night out tonight.”

I spin around in the chair and regard her. “Girls’ night out?”

Tall and delicate, her eyes bright gray, just as I remember her, she leans into the doorway. My first reaction is to stand, walk forward, and slide a hand around her waist. Instead, I remain seated, staring at her.

“She’s going through something right now. I think we need some one-on-one time.”

“Fine. I guess I can rummage up something around here.”

 

7

 

After an evening of wine and cheese and reading in the cool air of the back porch, I finally call it a night and wander around the house until I find the bedroom with my wife in it. She is wearing a white silk robe I bought for her years ago while on a business trip in Japan. Everything else from that trip has now faded from memory—business contacts, hotels, food, temples, prostitutes—but I remember clearly the robe and the market where I purchased it, a touristy, lantern-lit street sunken into the crevasse between obelisk skyscrapers. I remember the pink cherry blossoms stitched into the back. She is simultaneously reading—a kind of unnatural green sparkling in the Eye—and watching me as I unpack.

“How was dinner?” I ask her.

“Excellent. Italian.”

“Chloe likes Italian,” I mumble to myself.

“I’m worried about her.”

“Hold on,” I say, entering the bathroom and turning on the shower. Thirty minutes later I re-emerge clean, fresh-shaved, naked, and climb into bed.

Daphne is asleep, her back turned to me. I pull up close and wrap my arms around her, feeling beneath the silk her soft body against mine, her scent exciting, long hair stimulating my skin and nose.

“Can we not?” she murmurs.

“Honey . . . I just got home. I missed you.”

“I need some time to adjust,” she says, her voice more limpid.

“What?”

“I have a very sensitive nose. You just don’t smell right. I’m sorry, but not yet. I know me, it’s not going to happen. For me this kind of thing takes time.”

“I used the soap you like,” I say into her neck.

She turns toward me, her face a crescent moon of streetlight and shadow. “You know what I mean.”

I pull away from her and let the cool air cleanse me. In one final attempt my hand reaches out to touch the back of her neck, but she recoils from the touch.

My eyes, dry and red, crave to be shut.

Eye clicking with overuse, my mind fades fast with sudden jetlag blackout.

 

8

 

When I wake I update my Eye, lying still for several minutes in complete blackness, which begins to fill with those nebulous submemories and primordial hallucinations, images and sounds by turns disturbing, peaceful and cathartic, some flies flitting in and out barely discerned, others lumbering behemoths unfathomable in scale.

When I come to I find the bed empty.

Two in the afternoon.

“Christ.”

I brush my teeth, standing naked in front of the window, watching the wind tear across the crumbling, verdant flyovers looping in and out of the city. Somewhere in the distance there are fires: the horizon underlined in brown.

Downstairs I find a kitchen and make some eggs and coffee.

Daphne appears wearing a sports bra and pants.

“Busy day?” she says.

“Where were you?”

“The gym. Must have lost track of time,” she says grabbing a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.

“Listen, I feel kind of bad about last night. It was really, uh, insensitive of me.”

“You were fine.”

“Well, even so—”

“Forget it.”

“Have you?”

“Buried deep in the dark,” she says.

“Great. I was thinking we should, I don’t know, do something together.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go out somewhere, maybe see a movie or something.”

“What’s the point?”

“What do you mean, ‘What’s the point?’”

She leans back against the counter, guzzles the water, and shrugs her shoulders. When I don’t respond, she decides to help me out.

“With us, at the beginning, it’s like this,” she says, struggling to find the right words, “and then just when I feel our time is the most ripe, there’s no fruit, there’s nothing.” She shakes her head and takes a sip. Finally she says, “I’m making dinner tonight. Any preferences?”

“Well, I’m allergic to shellfish, so maybe steer clear of that, huh?”

“No shellfish. Good to know.”

 

9

 

Chicken and sesame noodles for dinner. My two girls stare at their plates as they eat, only occasionally glancing in my direction.

“So, Chloe, how’s school?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Last week a new girl joined our class.”

“Oh yeah. Where’s she from?”

“From here. Sort of. It’s complicated. I don’t really want to talk about her.”

“Suit yourself,” I say, rolling my eyes, and turning towards Daphne. “Great dinner, honey.”

She licks her lips. “What do you think, Chloe?”

“I decided today I’m going to be a vegetarian.”

“I’ll use tofu next time,” she smiles, looking at her.

“Okay, guys, what’s going on? Fill me in here.”

“Chloe, do you want to tell your father something?”

Chloe looks up from her plate and turns towards me. “Dad, are you going to leave us?”

“What?” I pause mid-chew. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want you or Mom to leave anymore.”

I turn to Daphne. “Did you two already discuss this?”

Daphne nods slowly, her eyes still on Chloe. “We had a little talk at dinner last night, just us girls.” She reaches out and squeezes Chloe’s hand.

“Come on, guys. Lighten up a bit. Honey, have you been doing your updates?”

“I never forget to update. Mom, I’m not hungry anymore. Can I be excused?”

“Sure. Go finish your homework.”

After she leaves, her footsteps faded up the stairs, I say, “What the hell’s going on?”

“She’s tired. Her mind is scattered. I don’t think she knows what she wants, and how could she?” She prods a piece of chicken with her chopsticks, then sips her wine. “Haven’t you noticed that after a while, not everything takes? Little pieces slip through. First a lamp disappears, then a rug, then one day there’s a new door in the hall, opening up into some wing you’ve never stepped into. People are trickier in some ways, but in the end it’s just like finding new doors in your house.” She looks up at me. “Sometimes I feel . . . like a jellyfish, like a jellyfish with impossibly long tentacles, dropping down so far into the abyss you can’t be sure whether or not they have any relation with each other down there in the past, only that you know they connect in the present up above because you can feel them tugging on the bell, but maybe they’re joined in a web if you travel down far enough into the dark, meeting at the vanishing point, or maybe they taper off into nothing without ever connecting.”

Junctions, I think, realizing what she is requesting is help, but all I can do is chuckle, “Honey, a little weird—”

“You don’t sense it? Almost like we are living with multiple memory realities where we aren’t whom we say we are, and our family aren’t whom they pretend to be. But then at the same time, we must be, we can’t be anything else than what we say. Otherwise, what else is there? What else can I be? I can’t be connected to so many inconsistent memories, so I have to pretend the others don’t exist. Can you imagine what it’s like for her? What are we doing to her?”

“She’s updating. It’ll be fine—”

“She’s too young,” she protests. “Her mind is growing too fast, maybe faster than she can update. What would that mean? Waking up and having outpaced the update? How would that feel? We need to do what’s right for her, for all of us.”

 

10

 

Later that evening I am sitting on the back porch in the cool autumn air, drinking a beer and reading a paperback thriller from one of the libraries: a vintage amusement. As I read, snippets of what Daphne said suddenly burst out of the darkness like fireworks, and, though I flinch at first, they fade just as fast, ignored by my undeterred mind.

“Dad? Can I talk to you?”

I look over my shoulder and find Chloe standing in the doorway, wearing a sweater and jeans. Small for her age, her skin a little too pale, faint bags under her eyes. I’ve never seen her so clearly before as I do now in the dim light.

“Hmm? What’s up, honey?”

She approaches, sits down on the wicker chair beside me, and gazes out at the backyard.

“Dad, I want to go on a Fugue.”

I choke on my beer and put it down on the side table.

“What?”

“A Fugue. I want to do it.”

“Where did you hear about that?”

“You know the new girl at school I mentioned?”

“How could I forget?”

“She told me. She remembers all of us from before. She says she was a cheerleader here last year. She won second place in the science fair with a tsunami model. I remember Sam did a tsunami model last year, and she got second place for it.”

“Was Sam a cheerleader too?”

She nods.

“Did she tell you what it means to go?” I proceed cautiously.

She nods. “She says it’s exciting. Everything’s new, but at the same time you remember everything, except it’s not like really remembering. It’s like remembering anew or like a memory from so long ago it feels new. And then when the new becomes old, you move again. That’s what I want.”

“Honey—”

“She says she was finally reunited with her parents.”

“She sounds a bit melodramatic.”

“What does that mean?”

“Overly dramatic.”

“Oh. She’s popular, even though no one believes what she says. Boys like her.”

“Well, they like her because—”

“She’s new.”

“Honey, forget what she told you about Fugues. Just at dinner you were saying you don’t want us to leave anymore, and now you want to do a Fugue? This is something for grown-ups. One day, maybe after college, you might decide to try it out, and that’ll be fine. If at that time you want to give it a try, I promise you I’ll pay for it.”

“Except it won’t be you, will it?”

“What?”

“It won’t be you when I’m in college.”

“Well, who else would it be?” I laugh, hearing and denying the falter in my voice.

She shakes her head, confused. “Someone else, but someone like you. I don’t know.”

“Hey, don’t talk about your Dad that way,” I say, running my hands through her long blond hair. “You know he loves you. He’ll always be here for you.”

“I’m not happy here with you and Mom,” she cries, burying her head in her hands.

I sigh and take a sip of the beer.

 

11

 

In the morning I update.

Afterwards I discover Daphne’s spot on the bed empty, still warm. I go down to the kitchen and have eggs and coffee, sitting in the breakfast nook with the paper, looking out over the front yard. More dead dogs across the street today. Even from inside you can start to smell the rot in the air when the wind blows right.

As I clean the dishes, I notice a post-it from Daphne on the counter: “Took Chloe to get a makeover. Don’t wait up.” Why she would write a note and not just send one is beyond me.

I proceed to the study and spend several hours working, when my Eye becomes irritated and I feel I must nap before it projects hallucinated memories or other unwanted oddities into my mind.

I dream my Eye has swollen to the size of an apple, pushing its way oblong out of the socket. I am afraid to touch it for fear of making the obtrusion a reality. Inside, interfacing with my brain like some parasite feeding off its host, is an infected network, wherein live my wives and kids, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all altered by degrees from several prototypes, the real ones perhaps, the originals, sources so ancient, so far removed in time from the present, they seem more like the Eves, Cains and Abels of human genetic memory, and somewhere deeper still in the untested extremes of consciousness they fuse together into something both incoherent and unpleasant in its unattainability .

The Eye balloons outward even more, and I clench the bed sheets in pain, calling out for Daphne, but she does not respond, pulling away from me and receding to the door where she and Chloe whisper together, their faces growing into blank swaths of flesh. Then long hair sprouts out of the blankness, their chests flatten, their arms and hands, legs and feet invert, till their fronts are their backs, and that is all I can see of them.

Finally, when the Eye pops in a hot rain of blood and aqueous humor, and the fibrous peels of sclera lash against my face, I scream out once again, except it is no longer Daphne’s name I am calling out for, but some ancient word from a dead language.

 

12

 

It is dusk when I wake.

Time for an update. For the first moment in years, I stare at the light blinking in my periphery without immediately reacting, wondering what would happen if I waited and then just continued to wait.

After a time a lanky, dark silhouette appears in the doorway of my office. My peripheral vision recognizes it as Daphne, but as I turn and as the voice calls out, that perception is shattered.

“Dad, Mom said dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” the boy says in a voice cracking with adolescence.

I update.

 

 

BIO

Tim BoiteauTim W. Boiteau has published stories in a number of journals, including Every Day Fiction, Write Room, Kasma Magazine, and LampLight. He was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s 2013 Fiction Open contest. He is currently finishing a PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of South Carolina.

 

 

 

Sarah Sarah writer

My Month in Marijuana Sales

by Sarah Sarai

 

This story begins with Camp Fire Girl Mints and ends with a puff of smoke from a tightly rolled joint. But first a word from my mother. The only movie she ever barred me from seeing was Butterfield 8. Like that was even necessary. Pollyanna with Haley Mills was released the same year, for chrissakes, and I was really young although I might have liked Psycho, also released that year, me loving suspense. Anyway, to defy my mom, my next-up sister T- dragged me to a theater on Ventura Blvd. to watch Elizabeth Taylor slink around in a black slip and drink whiskey with Laurence Harvey. Much later I fell in love with Taylor and Harvey but in the movie theater, I was bored. Bo-red.

Time passed, I became a high school senior. T-, five years old than I am, became a hippie. Our mother worked as a bookkeeper for her Christian Science church. Pop did what pops do – plied his trade and stopped off at bars. One afternoon, T-, who no longer lived at home, walked in through the back door with a key of dope. Weed. Marijuana.

Like hay, a key, or kilo, of weed is comprised of leaves, sticks, and seeds. Hay, tightly packed and bucked into the barn as a bale is identifiable in black-and-white and Technicolor. Hay sings, hay dances, hay strums. In Oklahoma, Curly courts Laurey, the ladies curtsey a ballet, curtains blow in a window flung open to a musical agrarian fantasy with no small amount of hay.

So T-, who was living in Topanga, needed money for an “illegal abortion.” I remember her saying that exact phrase. She knew of a doctor in Orange County and announced I was helping. I would love to describe myself as being pro-choice, as I am now, but really, I grappled with what to feel, said nothing, and just set up the card table. Wielding a long kitchen knife, T- began to break up the key. The thrust of the blade on the bale was fierce and satisfying – she let me at it, too. My sister measured one-ounce parcels of dope, dope is what we called it, into baggies and instructed me sell to my classmates. She had her hopes.

Let me back up. Remember Camp Fire Girl mints, those glistening dark chocolate sticks lined up like Madeline’s schoolmates in a rectangular box, beckoning with their sharp mintyocity and dark chocolateness? As a young Camp Fire Girl, say ten or eleven, I could not sell more than five boxes. I can’t explain why except that I was in that near-paralytic state which has chased me throughout this life and probably will into the next. My mom had to buy out my inventory. Seriously. If there was a Camp Fire Girl bead in salespersonship I did not earn it. Wo-he-lo, nonetheless. Wo-he-lo means peace. That’s Camp Fire Girl speak.

Flipping in time, again, to 1967 and the mandate that I sell, I was flummoxed. Eager as my sweet mother was, or maybe resigned, to shield me from life’s lessons, I did not think she would now buy up baggies of marijuana – what? – and share with the ladies in her church – no cigs, no booze, no caffeine (except for the buzz from chocolate mints). Christian Scientists were not our target market.

Although I was not friendless at school, I was not in any in-group and certainly was not the cool outsider girl who can deal pot under the bleachers. Somehow or other I sold three baggies – three ounces. One was bought by another outsider girl and two by male classmates whose appearance at my house had my parents so excited for me, they ordered pizza. One of the dope-buying classmates is now nationally respected in his field so I’ll leave it at that.

To return to my point, in Southern California in 1967 I moved three judiciously packed baggies of good dope. The Doors, Procol Harum, Sly & the Family Stone, Cream, Wilson Pickett, Jimi Hendrix, Chambers Brothers, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield – all celebratory of the grooviness – were part of the musical score that year, and I could move only three baggies. (For the record, Aretha Franklin was queen that year.) My sister unloaded the rest and was able to do what she needed to do. When I left for college she gave me a baggie and as a precautionary warned me not to let anyone know I had it. In the middle of my first semester, I opened my dorm room door. Everyone was smoking. Let the fun begin.

I am convinced I would be a better and happier person today if I had sold more dope, or more Camp Fire Girl mints. If I had the personality that enabled me to sell. I would be more convincing, more outgoing, self-assured, able to close deals for raises or new jobs. Win over people, make new friends, be rich, be happy, be American. But I am not that person. But I’m here to tell my tale. And T-, who warned against the dangers of weed once she stopped smoking and dropping, is still here, too.

 

 

BIO

Sarah SaraiSarah Sarai’s short stories are in Gravel, Devil’s Lake, Storyglossia, Homestead Review, Fairy Tale Review, Weber Studies, Tampa Review, South Dakota Review, and other journals; her story, “The Young Orator,” was published as a chapbook and e-book by Winged City Chaps, Her poetry collection, The Future Is Happy, was published by BlazeVOX; her poems are in journals including Ascent, Boston Review, Pool Poetry, Thrush, Yew, and Threepenny Review. Links to her book reviews, poems, and stories are on her blog, My 3,000 Loving Arms. Sarah is a contributing editor for The Writing Disorder and a fiction reader at Ping Pong Literary Journal published by the Henry Miller Library. She attended grammar school and junior and senior high in the San Fernando Valley. She now lives in New York.

 

 

 

Audrey Iredale

What They Don’t Tell You About Cancer

by Audrey Iredale

 

What they don’t tell you about cancer is that some healthcare establishments may not have your best interests at heart. The solutions with the most opportunity for success in your personal situation may not be the most profitable for the medical community.

Many questions arise after discovery of a life-threatening illness. If you were diagnosed with cancer today, what would be your reaction? Who would you tell first? Would you keep it from your loved ones in an effort to shield them? If you believed your days were numbered, how would you decide to spend them?

Would you panic or approach the issue with a scientific focus and begin educating yourself about the options? Would you blindly trust doctors to select treatment for you, or would you research different methods and their statistics of success and make your own decisions? Would you look for support from your closest friends and ask for advice, or keep it quietly to yourself? You may think you know how you would react, but a life threatening diagnosis can scare you into doing things you would never contemplate otherwise. What they don’t tell you about cancer is that knowing the answers to these questions before receiving a diagnosis is critical.

I have experienced this emotional journey from the perspective of being a close relative of the patient. I have watched several people from my family succumb to cancer after conventional treatments failed to save them. Poisoning the body with toxic substances, in an attempt to eradicate cancer cells, does not appear to have a good long term success rate.

My father suffered a horrible death after receiving chemotherapy and radiation, when I was in my early twenties. I watched him disintegrate from a healthy rock of a man into a frail thin bald apparition of his former self, isolating himself and withdrawing from everything and everyone he loved. I listened to him take his last ragged breath, as I sat with him for hours that turned into days, in the V.A. hospital room on the 5th floor.

Due to the severe emotional trauma induced by the carnage I had witnessed in close proximity, I decided then and there that I would not submit to extremely invasive and damaging medical procedures if a future cancer was discovered in my body. Throughout subsequent years, I kept a constant vigil of cancer prevention measures and it remained one of my darkest fears.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2014, I was only three years older than my father’s age, when his monster was discovered. It is a gut-wrenching feeling, when you hear the words. The finality of it crashes down like a boulder. I sat in the hallway outside the imaging suite, still in my hospital gown and cried, feeling more alone than I ever had in my life.

The truth of your own mortality is overwhelming. What they don’t tell you about cancer is how many extreme states of emotion you will experience, in a very short time span, and how many times you will change your mind about how to handle the situation.

I found myself faced with many difficult decisions about treatment. Medical advice sounded frighteningly familiar and ultimately unsuccessful. Traditional cancer treatments have evolved into a one-size-fits-all scenario created by a for-profit pharmaceutical industry.

“Cancer happens to other people,” you lament, “this wasn’t supposed to happen to me.” This wasn’t part of the script in the epic adventure of your life. All plans must change, all dreams are forfeited. Your world will never be the same again.

The primary concerns, flooding your mind, will be of your children and who will look after them and champion them after you are gone. Even if they are grown up, with children of their own, they were not supposed to be obliged to continue without your guidance and assistance, at least not at this early stage of the game. The sadness is suffocating.

You firmly instruct your spouse, (through your hiccups and tears) of his vital responsibility to watch over them and support them in your absence. Then you begin to cry uncontrollably, when you think of him, your best friend, who will be left buried in so much debt after you are gone that recovery will be near impossible, and you feel ridiculously helpless.   You have already seen what happens to people as they endure mainstream cancer treatment procedures. You fear that soon, you will no longer be capable of doing physically demanding work. You wonder if, in the near future, you will be able to maintain employment at all.

Suddenly the realization hits that all future financial projects and expenditures must be of the sort he can pay for and maintain by himself. You begin to initiate estate planning procedures. You explain that now, he must be organized and begin doing more things for himself.

“Yes dear,” he chirps, rolling his eyes. He drops his shirt and socks on the floor beside the chair and leaving his dirty dishes on the table, shuffles off to watch Family Guy on Netflix.

You show him where your journal files are kept, in the computer. You tell him that your oldest daughter is to take possession of your data archives and millions of digital photos.

Then you begin to look at your single friends and imagine planning for your own replacement. Laughing, you tell him, he will be “given to Cindy, or Debbie, or Kathy,” whomever you have deemed worthy to step into your shoes and complement his life.

“But don’t I get to try her out first?” he laughs, with a playful jab.

“Not ‘till I am gone,” you frown, wondering if it is such a good idea after all.

There is a critical need to shed light on some of the events that transpire in the lives of real people who are living with cancer. Many of my own questions went unanswered due to the lack of explicit information available to the general public. I demanded graphic details from medical providers, regarding what would or could happen, in every imaginable scenario. I insisted on being provided with a photograph of the monster upon removal. A full color, life sized print of the primary tumor was produced and contributed by the surgeon.

However, some of the treatment details were not explained, such as how it really feels when lymph nodes have been removed and your arm fills up with painful fluid, all the way to your wrist, or to lose underarm sensation due to intercostobrachial nerve damage, making it difficult or even dangerous to shave.

Drawing on the statistics I have seen in my own personal life, I made the extremely difficult decision to reject recommended cancer therapies. It became my primary focus to survive despite the overwhelming odds. I decided if my time on this earth was greatly reduced, I did not want to spend it in my bed, or crawling to the toilet bowl to puke. Cleaning up great chunks of my hair from the shower floor, did not sound attractive. I did not want the elation of six months of remission, followed by the heartbreak of an aggressive onslaught of secondary cancer, brought on by the very radiation used to destroy the remnants of the primary tumor. As a singer and photographer, I could not afford cataracts and vocal cord damage to plague my final hours no matter how brief they may prove to be.

Already possessing halfway decent research skills, and an impressive arsenal of mental data, regarding nutrition, gained by years of chasing recovery from an emotional eating disorder, I was armed with the necessary tools. Medical personnel spewing frightening statistics from a tunnel-vision perspective, failed to persuade me to submit to their latest forms of torture and permanent mutilation. The surgeon righteously insisted that she must administer some tough-love regarding her recommendation of endocrine therapy and post-surgical radiation. Ultimately, against medical advice, I refused all of the above in favor of less-invasive holistic medicine.

Futile negotiations commenced with the insurance company to allow coverage for guidance from a naturopathic physician, but I stood my ground and paid out of pocket for the support and validation that told me I was indeed on the right path. Google and I burned the midnight oil for many hours, scouring experimental alternative-healing and specifically targeted nutrition solutions.

I reflected upon the despised biology course from the past college semester, for knowledge of cell function, mutations and relationships between protein and enzymes. Because cancer cells are a mutation, they do not have the capability of adapting to using fat for fuel. Therefore they can be forced to commit programmed cell-death, by replacing all or most carbohydrates with high quality fats and moderate proteins.

What they don’t tell you about cancer is that it doesn’t just happen to one person, it happens to whole families. Your significant other, or persons close to you, may disagree with your treatment choices.

“You should not rule out western medicine,” advises a good friend, and senior histologist of 30 years.

“I’ll support whatever choice you make,” promises your husband, but when he hears your decision, the fear in his eyes is unmistakable.

“So you’re just going to DIE!” your daughter shrieks, “Is that it? Then WHAT are the rest of us supposed to do? YOU are the mastermind! YOU are supposed to live ’till you are eighty-something, like HER!” pointing to her grandmother.

“Well, considering that no one listens to me most of the time anyway, I think you will all be fine,” you accuse.

“Well, you’re going to need chemotherapy and radiation and your hair will fall out, but maybe it won’t be so bad,” warns your Aunt, matter of factly.

We’ll see about that.

Self pity and reclusive tendencies beckon. Some days after work, it is unclear if you are capable of climbing the stairs to your bedroom. You are unable sleep for more than a few hours before awakening with emotional dread or some new physical symptom, whether imagined or legitimate. The mood swings are vicious and agonizing.

“I can’t do this anymore!” you whimper to your girlfriend, in full melt-down mode after work one afternoon, “Nobody cares if I am dying! And you better not tell anyone at work I am sick, because I could lose my job, if they think I will be a flake and not show up!”

“I care,” she corrects, “you are just hungry and too afraid to eat.”

“You’re right, I want to eat an entire extra cheese pizza, WITH crust, but I can’t,” you admit, “so I am going to bed.”

She stands by you, no matter how rude you have been to her.

“If we can have solar panels installed at no cost to us, we should do it for the green impact,” admonishes the husband.

“What do I care about the planet? I’m dying and nobody cares about helping me! I cannot deal with any more stress. I will not tolerate construction crews crawling all over this house!” you snap.

“I hear ya,” he agrees.

“I don’t even want to go to work anymore,” you blurt, “what’s the point anyway?”

“Then don’t go,” he soothes, shrugging.

You get a little bit of rest and things look different in the morning. You continue working, but the accelerated fatigue at the end of the day is frightening.

“Let’s buy new furniture!” you squeal, abruptly opening the garage door to startle your husband into dropping a wrench. “We could max out the rest of the credit cards, because you will have to file bankruptcy anyway, after I’m dead!”

“Ok, whatever you want dear,” he grins.

Five minutes later you are more interested in figuring out how to pay the latest stack of hospital bills and deciding whose feet are small enough to fit into your outrageously extravagant shoe collection, in case the monster ultimately returns in triumph.

What they don’t tell you about cancer is that the rest of your life continues, regardless of your physical illness or your mental state, and you must find a way to compartmentalize the emotions and move forward. No matter how healthy you feel right now, or how encouraging your latest test results, evil could be stalking you around the next corner. You will never be free from the shadow.

Every twinge of pain, every headache, every symptom of any kind strikes a note of terror in anticipation of the monster’s return. The horror of your own mortality is a powerful incentive for change. Efficiency of familiar crutches and comfort mechanisms fade in the face of your predicament. The fact that it is “five o’ clock somewhere” loses its delicious meaning. You can no longer have a Margarita at the end of a stressful day because your body will metabolize the alcohol as sugar and may feed stray cancer cells. You are obliged to eat cold meals at work because using the microwave would compromise the nutritional value of the food, by changing the shape of the proteins.

Removing as many carbohydrates from your diet, as is possible in a first world setting, eliminates the majority of food cravings. Eventually you begin to lose interest in meals, because most seem to contain one luxury or another that you can no longer afford. You find yourself unable to consume enough calories to support your daily activities. Eating for survival rather than entertainment dominates reality.

Supplements of raw plant-based protein shakes and concentrated whole-food capsules replace many meals and snacks. Your habits have undergone a drastic makeover. Blood work reveals astounding results. Your cholesterol is down 30 points and tests show no evidence of disease. You may be healthier than you have been in your entire life, as long as you can stay one step ahead of the monster’s encore.

The distractions of time-consuming guilt-induced activities disperse as survival takes priority.   The weight melts off you by the hour and when you can find energy, you jubilantly dig into the cavernous depths of your closet, finding long lost treasures of clothing you haven’t been able to wear in decades. People remark how good you look.

At what cost?

The relief is exhilarating; the renewed hope intoxicating. You decide to document your journey in a blog, utilizing that abandoned domain you bought last year. The posts will contain all the graphic details you had been denied about this most terrifying disease. You will provide others with answers to some of the questions about physical symptoms, making difficult decisions, dealing with family and friends and all the emotional issues that happen along the way.

If you survive five years or more, the alternative treatments you have selected will be immortalized for those who choose to follow. If you do not live to tell the tale, at least you will have illuminated critical aspects for those behind you on the path.

What they don’t tell you about cancer is that nothing has really changed. We are all dying from the day we are born and none of us know how long we may dance on this planet. Everyone must seize the opportunity to live in the present and not waste a minute feeling sorry for ourselves. Maybe this year could be the best yet?

 

NOTE: Inspiration for this article is credited to Philip Gerard for his essay, “What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes.” (from Moore, Dinty W. The Truth of the Matter. NY: Pearson Longman, 2007. pp 151-156.

 

Works Cited

Campbell, N. Simon, E. Reece, J. Dickey, J. Campbell Biology Concepts & Connections, Seventh Edition. Boston MA: Pearson Education, 2007.

Mercola, Joseph. Mercola.com Take Control of your Health. 16 June 2013. 06 11 2014 <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/16/ketogenic-diet-benefits.aspx>.

Moore, Dinty. The Truth of the Matter. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.

 

 

BIO

Audrey IredaleAudrey Iredale lives in the beautiful Sonoran Desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband and three precious rescued kitties. They have three daughters and two grandchildren. She studied Language Arts at community colleges in California and Arizona and graduated Phi Theta Kappa with a 4.0 GPA. She has been writing and singing since childhood and works in technology manufacturing.

http://audreyiredale.weebly.com/

 

Jon Riccio poet

Streaming

by Jon Riccio                                                                                                     

The revenue a chat room derives from a duodenum
and a stapled pouch,

a stomach’s subculture of gain, cleanse, loss
                                                in the bypass
gifted to me when I turned nineteen.

The buffets it wrested,
            the domain I registered,
all those ethers clamored around a meme,

            the social word-shit one types
“like my lap band”      “tweet my gout”
            streaming on alt-dot haunts.

My searchability full-blown, I’m a phoenix
gone gastric with more boyfriends than you
have optic nerves       and that’s Ohio alone.

Mother, I’ve macerated my tract,
the live feed of a chafing dish
less invasive than bariatric.

Father, meet Evan from Ashtabula.
He crowd-funded my flab,

one download from betrothed.


 

Prompt

 

The writer wearing a mercurochrome corset
gives you a picture of half-eaten pie,
you inure a blood phobia,
the transitive inferred.

She sends the angel
with candy-wrapper wings.
The Rapture is a dinner bill, you
are its Andes mint. You jostle a trinity:

the abortion building
next to the Weight Watchers
near the Flapjack Shack,

rev the Z in Nazareth, smite its arcade.

 

 

Separate Recyclables

 

I am the nightmare of every environmentalist
turned conversion therapist
hoping to biodegrade
the gay away.

Woe to the zealot
who’s chained himself
to my landfill, its damnables
poking out of a cardboard pond,
diorama forsaken because I ran out of tape.

Each morning,
tribunals and a tin glade.

My handrail, on eulogy,
saying, “absence of rings kept me
beautiful, self-realization drained him alone.”

 

 

BIO

Jon RiccioJon Riccio studied viola performance at Oberlin College and the Cleveland Institute of Music. A recent Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Paper Nautilus, Qwerty,Redivider, CutBank Online, Waxwing and Switchback, among others. An MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, he resides in Tucson.

 

Michael Davis writer

Cruel Stars

by Michael Davis

 

I saw my cousin, Teresa, in a shiny blue one-piece, sitting at the bar at Swan’s in downtown Fresno, highlights in her hair and a gold ring on every finger. It was the day of my grandmother’s funeral and Teresa hadn’t attended. Men were buying her drinks and hovering, men she seemed to know and not know, men she might have known and forgotten. She was a prostitute. We never spoke.

Saturday night and the old place was packed. I moved through the crowd and sat in one of the circular leather booths, which meant I was there to eat instead of trying to get stupid right off the bat. The waiter walked up and gave me an ancient, laminated menu. I ordered a salad and a bottle of the house wine they made in the back, even though it had formaldehyde in it and you could taste it. Then Rick Fuller saw me and came over to the table.

“Hey Mikey, how you doin’ man? How was the funeral?”

I shook his hand and nodded. “It was very nice.”

He was half Italian on his mother’s side and basically a good guy. Rick had a tight closed-mouth smile. He always noticed too much about you and added it up. When you ran into him again, you could see it in his eyes. He’d thought about you and figured another part of you out. I didn’t want to tell him I’d just left the wake and feared that before the night was over I might break a bottle on the bar or push somebody down some stairs or drive out to the vineyards and wreck my car in the dark.

 

The waiter brought the bottle and two glasses. Rick slid into the booth, leaned across the table, and said in a low voice, “Hey how’s the law stuff? Not so good if you’re drinking that, huh?”

I shrugged. “I’m a paralegal, Rick. My business is filing and making sure the checks get cashed. That’s it.”

He winked and clapped me on the shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, just admit you’re a lawyer, Mikey. Be proud. It’s a great achievement.”

“Like finishing this wine.”

Rick laughed but he also did the x-ray thing with his eyes, trying to look through my chest to see what was wrapped around my heart. He must have found what he was looking for because he got out of the booth with a hard smile. “That’s my wife waiting by the door. You know Francine, right?”

I nodded. I told him to have a good night and to give Francine my love.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

He went over and put his arm around her waist. She looked back and waved. I waved, too, but she didn’t see because Rick pulled her out the front door. Francine Norton had been my high school girlfriend. Nineteen years later and Rick still hadn’t fully come to terms with that fact. Sometimes I talked to Francine on nights she went to Swan’s by herself and got dead drunk at the end of the bar. She never mentioned Rick.

But that’s how it went. People raised right know not to ask about family problems. At least, Rick knew enough not to ask about mine. After my grandmother’s service at the church, there’d been a shouting match in the parking lot before my family got in their cars to do the procession to the cemetery. It had concerned my grandmother’s fortune. There were different wills. Someone was lying. Accusations. Old grudges. Fingers pointed. They say you’re not supposed to talk about money right after church, but that’s all my family ever talked about.

The waiter brought a wilted salad that was covered in thin oil with a cherry tomato on the side. I poured a glass and said a prayer for Grandma. I couldn’t pray during the service. All I could do was cry like a man.

Why had I come to Swan’s again, especially that night? I could have gone anywhere. I ate slowly, wondering, trying not to look at anyone. I went to the stinking graffiti’d men’s room and splashed water on my face. And after I went back to the table, I stared daggers at my cousin in spite of myself, imagining going up and knocking her off her stool. Ghosts want revenge for what you did to them in life. Grandma believed that. So why wouldn’t Grandma be here, whispering over my shoulder, reminding me that the worst thing you could do besides cursing the birth of a child was refusing to pay respects to the dead?

I thought of the tire iron in my trunk. And although I wasn’t especially violent by nature, violence was part of Swan’s and part of Fresno and part of me. Tonight I could feel it. At one point, Fresno held the distinction of being the murder capital of the country. Swan’s was where the famous Sicilian gangster, Giacomo Portofino killed 27 people in a shootout with the FBI in 1963. People were still impressed by that. Swan’s kept a big happy picture of him drinking a glass of wine framed behind the bar.

Teresa’s laugh rose up over every other sound. She slipped off her bar stool, but the waiter was passing by at that moment and caught her. Everybody laughed and she blew him a kiss. She’d become a person who could laugh like a little bell on the day her grandmother went into the ground. It was a high fake laugh and the guy sitting at the bar next to her laughed too. Then he lit her cigarette. His name was Bruno Frazetti and I knew him from the old days when Teresa and me and a few other cousins of mine lived with Grandma over on Abby Street. That was when everybody was broke—before they laid the freeway in Madera and Grandma sold her empty acres to the Indians so they could put up a casino.

Bruno drove a BMW and thought he was a player. But everything he had was because his father built a box factory in Lemoore and worked himself dead for his family. Bruno had been after Teresa since dirt was dirty. Whenever I laid eyes on him, I thought he was pathetic. But I never truly disliked him until I sat in the booth that night at Swan’s, just close enough to listen, and watch them carry on like fools.

Tonight, he wore a long-sleeved red shirt with the cuffs buttoned, a gold Rolex, and designer jeans that barely fit his fat ass. The only thing bigger than Bruno’s clothes budget was his cocaine budget. But that had never been my business.

They didn’t notice me because they were sitting facing the bar. Teresa had a halo of cigarette smoke over her head. And even in the gloom of that stinking place, I could see the glittery material of her blue dress was the same color as her lipstick. I looked around and recognized a few more faces. It was a large circular building and had probably been something special back in the 1950s when it opened. There was a bar on one side, booths around the circumference of the floor, and a big dance area in the middle where people stood with their drinks and didn’t dance. Instead, they moved around, from one booth to another, into the crowd, back to the bar.

There were regulars and college kids from Fresno State who thought it was a cool dive. And then there were the drug dealers, who never used to be there a generation before. And every other girl was working. Still, it might have had character if it hadn’t smelled like old rot and rancid crotch and a hundred stale beers. The smell stayed with you even after you showered. I hated Swan’s, but I always wound up there.

“Isn’t he funny? He’s funny!” My cousin slapped Bruno on the back and the tall geeky-looking blond guy hovering around behind her tried to cut in said yeah he’s funny. Bruno was laughing the hardest, which meant he’d probably told a joke. His jokes were vulgar and not very complicated. After a few hours in his presence, you felt like your IQ was getting the same way.

“Hey, but that’s the truth. That’s real,” Bruno said.

“Seriously,” said the blond guy, who seemed familiar to me; though, I was sure we’d never met. “It’s just an urban legend. A myth.”

“Myth? Get the fuck out, man. No myth.” Bruno tipped back his beer and glared while he did it. He was fat, yes, but he was fast. He could snake his fist up under the blond guy’s chin before he knew what hit him. I’d never get near Bruno in a fight. I’d stand back and maybe hit him with a chair like Sam Trevino did once when we were ten and he caught Bruno stealing pomelos out the back of his mom’s yard. Sam picked up a patio chair and swung before Bruno saw him coming because Sam knew. But the blonde guy didn’t know his ass from a turnip.

Teresa turned around on her stool, winked at blondie, then patted his arm. “Yeah, why don’t you buy me another drink? That would be mythical.” Everybody laughed, even the blonde guy; though his eyes darted between Bruno and Teresa before he called over to the bartender, whose name was David. I knew him, too.

Fresno had 480,000 people but, in many ways, it was still a small town. In certain places, everybody knew everybody. And at Swan’s, on any given night, minus some of the newer drug dealers, some of the hookers, and the fraternity knuckleheads, you could probably find no more than three or four degrees of separation between anybody there. When we were kids, there was nothing to do but go to the movies or have a ditch party out in the vineyards. And then, when we got a little older, there was Swan’s. But I didn’t have one happy memory connected to it. I drank there maybe four or five nights a month and regretted it as much as anyone else.

I was sipping a second glass of wine that tasted like it had enough formaldehyde in it to preserve my internal organs in the pyramids, when Pia Burke and her drug dealer boyfriend, Vincent, sat down across from me.

“Hey, Mikey,” she said. “You mind if we share your booth?”

Pia had kinky hair teased into ringlets around her pretty heart-shaped face. I’d always thought she was a nice girl, but she had lousy taste in men. For example, Vincent. I’d seen him in Swan’s for about a year. He was in his early twenties, which meant he was probably ten or more years younger than Pia, who was around my age. She’d been dating one of Bruno’s friends before she met Vincent. Now she seemed stoned all the time. And Vincent was clearly an idiot.

“Sup esse.” He nodded to me when he sat down, then tilted his head back and squinted his eyes. He dressed like a Cholo with his hair slicked back, flannel shirt buttoned at the top, and greasy black jeans. But Vincent was a white guy. His first name wasn’t really Vincent. His last name was “Holland” or “Boland” or something like that.

“How’s work?” Vincent asked.

“Work’s work.”

He nodded, still squinting. “How’s life, though?

“It’s taking forever.”

“Huh. No shit.”

Sometimes I saw people at Swan’s I’d known in high school. Now that we were all in our thirties, I didn’t see them as often. I worked about an hour north in a town called Oakhurst for a divorce lawyer who had a drug problem and was cheating on her husband. People I knew saw me in Swan’s and asked how my law practice was because they didn’t know what a paralegal actually did. I’d always say business was business. They’d ask how life was. I’d say it’s taking forever. And I’d tell myself that one day I’d meet a nice girl and move out of the detached maid’s quarters behind Grandma’s house in the Tower District. But then I’d look around Swan’s and see the same old faces with the same old lusts doing the same old bullshit.

Pia had a beer, which she turned in place on the table with both hands as if she were tuning into a special frequency that only Budweiser could receive. “Hey Mikey, isn’t that your cousin, Teresa, over there?” She raised her eyebrows, then glanced at Vincent.

I looked over at Teresa for a long moment like I was trying to determine if it was really her. “Could be,” I said. “Looks a lot like her.”

Vincent nodded: the sage Cholo grandfather. Pia looked at me for a moment, then grinned. Her eyes were bloodshot. She had a smoker’s cough. “Ah, you see that, Vin. Mikey’s cooler than a cucumber. He sees Teresa up there with them dirty boys and he’s like, no problem, I’m cool. See that?”

“Dunno,” Vincent said. “Looks fucked up to me.”

I nodded. “Very fucked up, Vincent.”

Pia shook her head in the slow, dreamy way of those who’ve smoked one bowl more than usual. “I know you. I know your game. See, Vin, I know what he’s about. He’s waiting for all them to get drunk as fuck. Then he’s going to grab his cousin before they can do those nasty things to her. Am I right?”

“How’d you know?”

Pia grinned at her beer and turned it. “Because I know. See what I’m saying, Vin? Mikey’s cool.”

Vincent nodded. “Cool.” And then: “Hey, esse, you smoke?”

“I’m trying to quit.”

“No. Do you smoke?”

I shook my head. “The most I do these days is drink this shitty wine.”

“You got that right,” Pia said. “That wine tastes like hospital ass.”

“Sure does,” I poured myself a third glass.

They both got up. “We love you, Mikey. Don’t we, Vin?”

Vincent squinted at me. “He’s alright.”

They made their way to the bar. People had shifted around, blocking my view of Teresa. Suddenly, it seemed as if everything had been partially muted, like I was in a glass bubble while the world flowed around it. I tried to determine whether I was really going to say something to my cousin. This was getting set to be the worst day of my life, a day so bad it didn’t seem real.

The crowd was migrating around the bar more feverishly than usual. It might have been the full moon or the fact that payday had just happened. But the drinkers seemed agitated. A prostitute named Linda was in the booth next to mine, rubbing up against three college guys in sweatshirts and baseball caps. They looked like inbred triplets—agriculture science majors at State with just enough genetic diversity to let them know which lever to pull on the tractor. Linda was smiling and chewing on a strand of her blue-black hair while she listened to one of them explain something fascinating. She was cheerful because she knew she was going to rob them blind.

Things had shifted in my cousin’s situation. Now blondie was sitting on the barstool and she was in his lap, her arm around his shoulders. She held a Cosmo in that hand and leaned in close by his lips every time she took a drink. Bruno stood off to the side, ranting into his cellphone over the noise of the crowd. He wasn’t happy, but really, who was?

When they’d lowered Grandma’s coffin into the grave is when things started to seem unreal. I’d begun to feel like I wasn’t really there. I never knew my dad and my mother had died from cancer when I was six. I had no memory of her funeral. But I knew Grandma’s service would be etched into my mind for the rest of my life. And now I was at Swan’s as if nothing had happened. And Teresa was here, caging drinks off potential johns and working them up to a lather where they wanted a piece so bad they wouldn’t mind paying for it.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t notice Bruno, Teresa, and blondie until they were standing at the table, looking down at me.

“Well, well,” Bruno said. “He lives.”

“Pia said you were over here. But I thought she must be full of bullshit if my own cousin was here and he didn’t come up to say hi.”

“Hi Teresa. Bruno.” I nodded to the blond guy, who nodded back.

“This is Mikey. Mikey meet Darren.”

Then I realized why Darren had seemed oddly familiar to me when I’d first saw him. “You’re the weather report guy. On YouTube.”

Darren turned pink up to his hairline. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. The guy on YouTube who always says, ‘This is what they said the weather would be. This is what it is’ with that bike horn. And you’re up on some roof in San Francisco and you show the sky and make jokes.”

He looked down at me and pressed his lips together. “You got the wrong guy, bud.”

“For real?” Bruno said. “Here, Mikey, find it.” He sneered at Darren and handed me his phone. The little browser was already loading YouTube.

“Lemme sit,” Teresa said. “I need to talk with my cousin. Family shit. Guys, go get us some drinks.”

Bruno and Darren both scowled at her. Then they went to opposite ends of the bar and eyed each other over the crowd.

“He really is the guy,” I said.

Teresa sighed and put her face in her hands. “Why are you here?”

“I come here, too.”

“I haven’t seen you around in like four weeks.”

“I haven’t seen you around at all.” I felt ready to burst. I felt like I might come across the table and grab her by the hair if she asked me where I’d been one more time. I wanted to tell her about Grandma and slap her face. I thought I should. I thought it might be the right thing to do. But seeing her in Swan’s hustling morons, after what happened today, I felt like I had a stone in my throat. I just looked at her. And she looked at me. And I knew she didn’t even know Grandma had died.

A few more people recognized me and came over to say their condolences. Teresa glared at them all.

“Who died?” she asked.

I just looked at her.

Part of me wanted to tell her that I’d made the right arrangements, that everything had gone the way Grandma would have wanted it. But another part of me felt that Teresa didn’t deserve to know. I saw to it that Grandma had a full Italian Catholic funeral with the auto procession and the roses on the casket and the Latin mass. It was very expensive. I paid for the whole thing. And the fucking priest was a real prick about the service, especially considering all the donations Grandma had made after she got rich. Probably thirty or forty people showed up for the service. When my grandfather died about seven years ago, maybe twelve people were there including me and Grandma. She got him a cheap aluminum casket and a wreath came from the Knights of Columbus. Then again, he was my grandmother’s second husband and wasn’t Italian. So he’d never really been accepted as a member of the family, even by Grandma. I had hoped my family would have acted better with each other just for one day. But I always forget who they really are inside.

Teresa was no different. She’d been putting away drinks like a machine. It was so awful, it was almost funny. I’d never heard of someone hooking on the day of their grandmother’s funeral. Teresa turned twenty-five in a couple of weeks. She was supposed to be in Florida still going to college. But now she’d turn twenty-five in Fresno, knowing she’d hooked instead and missed the funeral of the woman who’d mostly raised her.

“This is freaking me out,” she said. “Who dropped dead?”

“Who do you think dropped dead?”

“Shit, I dunno, Mikey. That’s why I’m asking. It was Uncle Jeff’s wife, wasn’t it? That fucking Lena. Anorexic bitch. Probably forgot to eat for a month.”

The truth was right in front of her. But Teresa would have believed that aliens had come down and abducted half the family before facing the fact that Grandma was gone.

When she was nineteen, Teresa moved to Miami to live with her stepfather who worked in a bank. Her mother, my aunt Cecilia, had moved out of grandma’s house and was getting high every day at that point and didn’t care. So Teresa just left without telling anybody. I didn’t see her for years. But then she was back. Just like that. All grown up. And her being in town was supposed to be a big secret. She didn’t tell anybody, not even me. I had to run into her down at the Fulton Mall one day outside a pawn shop.

“Mikey,” she’d said, “not a fucking word to my mom that I’m back.”

“I haven’t seen her. I’m taking care of Grandma now.”

“Yeah? Good.” She gave me her card. It said she was a massage therapist.

I asked her where she worked and all she said was “Outcall only.”

Back then, I was naïve enough to think she must be doing alright and to wonder what her grim look meant. When I mentioned it to Grandma, she just shook her head and said, “That little putanalia won’t get a dime out of me.” That’s when I knew Teresa must have gone down the wrong road and that her frown had probably meant something along those lines. Grandma was never wrong about things like that. What would Grandma say about this situation, I wondered.

“Mikey,” Teresa said, “Whatever. Let’s not talk about dead bitches. Since you’re here I need a favor.”

We both glanced over at Bruno, who was saying something to the bartender. I typed “crazy weather guy San Francisco” into YouTube. A black dot at the top of the browser blinked along with SEARCHING. I couldn’t see Darren because of all the people getting in the way.

Teresa waved her hand in front of my face and craned her neck like I should have been paying attention. “Hello?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Teresa. You want me to do you a favor.”

She shrugged and nodded. “Fucking-A. This is important. It’s money.”

“So, what, you want me to start giving massages?”

She slammed her fist on the table and the heavily tattooed couple now making out in the next booth paused and stared.

“Listen.” Teresa looked over at Bruno again. She lowered her voice. “Darren wants to buy some shit and Bruno’s gonna sell it to him.”

“Drugs? Drug shit? You want me to help you with drug shit, Teresa? Since when is Bruno a drug dealer?”

“Keep your voice down,” she said. “I need the money, Mikey. I can’t even begin to tell you how bad.”

“I don’t know who you are anymore. You’re not my cousin.”

“Look, just fuckin’ shut up, okay? Back me up. That’s all I need you to do. Just this once. For fuck’s sake.”

Bruno came back with a grin and a tray of glasses. “It’s two-for-one vodka tonics.” He set the tray on the table. Then he slid into the booth and looked from my cousin to me. “I interrupt something?”

“Bruno, honey, how long have you known me? You know I don’t drink vodka.”

“Well fuck, Teresa, you told me to go buy drinks. It’s two for fucking one.”

I put the phone on the table in front of Bruno. “It’s him alright.”

When he looked at the phone, he immediately forgot he was irritated and his grin returned. He held it close to his nose. “Well I’ll be damned. He’s a faggot.”

“He’s not a faggot,” Teresa said, drinking a whole vodka tonic and putting the empty glass back on the tray. She wrinkled up her nose. “Oh, I hate that shit.”

“Yep. Faggot,” Bruno said. “Hey Mikey, look at this.” Bruno held the phone close to my face so I could hear the audio. Darren was on the roof of a building in downtown San Francisco. He was wearing an oversized brown sport coat and his hair was dyed green. He was talking in a Kermit the Frog voice about how the weather man was an idiot. He had a bicycle horn that he used as punctuation: “Partly cloudy with a 60% chance of rain? Jim, Jim, Jim. Why do you lie to us, Jim? Look at this blue sky!” Then he honked the horn. When the wind picked up he said, “Whoa!” and honked the horn twice over his head.

“What’s up?” said Darren as he came over to the table. On the video, he looked like a bad cable access comedian. Here Darren was tall and thin in a nice polo shirt and jeans. But it was him. He looked pale and wary now, his mouth was set in a hard frown like he’d been in the bathroom thinking things over. He’d also taken advantage of the two-for-one vodka tonics and had bought a tray. Between us, we now had eleven mixed drinks.

“Nothing.” Teresa took the phone away from Bruno and clicked it off.

“Oh shit, guys, sorry. If I’d have known you’d already bought all that, you know.” Because the booth was shaped like a big horseshoe, there was just enough room for Darren to edge in. Bruno didn’t want to scoot over, but Teresa glared at him and so he shook his head and moved a foot in my direction. Then he turned his head towards me and mouthed, faggot.

I should have stopped with the wine, but I started drinking vodka tonics. A person should never do this. It will make you sick and bring you bad luck. And for me it was even more terrible than that because whenever I drank hard liquor in any quantity, I eventually blacked out.

I’d wake up the next day without my keys or my wallet, wads of receipts in my pockets, and weird things strewn around my living room, things I’d taken out of people’s front yards. I once found a racing bike balanced upside down on my kitchen table. Another time, three potted ferns sitting in my bathtub, all watered. I was afraid that if I kept drinking like that, one day I’d wake up covered in somebody’s blood. But I felt terrible already. The drinks tasted terrible, too.

“Well, I got these ones for me and Mikey. Teresa don’t drink vodka. So that means those are for you,” Bruno said.

Darren nodded and looked away. In jail, he’d be the one who got sold for a pack of smokes. The way he peeked at Bruno, I could see he was afraid of the fat bastard, ready to jump up, keeping the corner of his eye on him at all times. I could see a lot of things—like maybe Darren had wanted to get some outcall from my cousin and maybe she’d talked him into some drug shit in the process. Or maybe Bruno thought that by being Mr. Drug Dealer with the Big Balls he was finally going to get her in bed for nothing and at least be able to close that chapter of his stupid unfulfilled past.

What I couldn’t see was the right thing to do for Grandma in this situation. I’d taken care of her for so long but now, at the most critical moment—when she wasn’t here to give me advice or even pat my arm, like she did toward the end, to thank me for feeding her some soup—I was failing her miserably. Grandma wouldn’t be sitting at Swan’s with these idiots. She’d call Teresa a putanalia and go on home and that would be the end of it.

We are the custodians of our loved ones. We carry their memories like precious cargo in our hearts, the priest had said. It might have been the only good thing he’d said in his whole funeral sermon. It stayed with me, though I didn’t think those lines were worth the seven grand I’d paid the diocese the week before. They should have had a fucking string section for that much. Woodwinds. Kids with incense burners on long chains and old guys holding up statues of the Blessed Virgin. Instead, everyone drove their cars in the procession to Lady of Victory. The priest was just a kid. His last name was McLeary. He had red hair and freckles and he looked about twenty-eight.

“We shouldn’t get too fucked up,” Teresa said. “There’s that thing.”

Bruno took a sip. “Yeah, that thing.” He looked at me. “You know about that thing, Mikey?”

I nodded.

“About that. I don’t know if—“

“Shut up, weathervane. Drink your shit.”

Darren shut up and drank. Teresa looked between them, her brow furrowed. She nudged me with her foot under the table. “I want Mikey to come along.”

“Oh yeah?” Bruno put his arm around me. He smelled like old sweat and too much Polo. “You want to come along, Mikey Mike?”

“It’s good,” she said, “’cause he’s a lawyer.”

Bruno nodded, took his arm back, and lit a cigarette. “That’s good. That’s what we need. Right, weathervane?” He blew smoke in Darren’s face. “I forgot that about you, Mikey. How’s business?”

“Business is business,” I said.

“Goddamn. That’s just what a lawyer would say.”

So we drank. I stopped at three, when my vision started clouding. Bruno and my cousin polished off the first tray and saw to it that Darren drank all the drinks off the second. He vomited once beside the booth. Nobody noticed but me. When we went out to the parking lot, it took Bruno a long time to find his 750i. He fell a couple times. Darren sat on the ground and put his head between his knees.

By the time Bruno’s headlights went on at the back of the lot that Swan’s shared with five other businesses, I had Yellow Cab on the line. But Teresa was getting her second wind. She grabbed my phone out of my hands and put it in her pocket.

“No you don’t,” she said. “You’re always backing out on me, Mikey. Not tonight. I need you on this.”

“I won’t be any good to you messed up.”

“Bruno likes you. Just make sure he doesn’t do something stupid and everybody gets paid.”

“But I don’t get paid. And I think there’s something important I need you to know, Teresa.”

“You owe me,” she said.

My mouth was dry. I had an upset stomach and the ground was tilting to the left. “No, really. I’m gonna call a Yellow Cab and then I’m gonna tell you something I need to tell you.”

“I don’t think so. And don’t act drunk. Somebody needs to be sober besides me.”

Bruno pulled the car over and we got in—me in the front, Teresa holding Darren up in the back. Then we swerved onto Belmont Avenue.

“Don’t drive fast,” I said.

Bruno punched down on the horn and held his fist there for two blocks. Then he yawned as if nothing had happened. “It’s my fuckin’ car, Mikey.”

Nobody said anything after that. We drove down Belmont, made a left on Blackstone and a left on Clinton. In the process, we passed the old place on Abby. I turned around in my seat to say something about it, but my cousin was busy making out with Darren, who may or may not have known what he was doing. I turned back around. Bruno hadn’t noticed. He had his head resting against the glass of the driver’s side window.

When we made a right on Maroa, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to ask: “Where exactly is the drug shit located?”

I imagined low-riders, deserted parking structures, crack houses with tatted-up Cholos sitting on porches. But we were now in one of the nicer areas of Fresno—Fig Garden. The streets were heavily treed and there were big old houses there from the thirties and forties that people still took care of. During the day, you saw golden retrievers and kids on bikes.

“My mom’s house.” Bruno burped.

And that’s exactly where we went. I hadn’t been there in twenty years, but the same pair of enormous plaster lions were still on either side of the red brick walk. The wide lawn that sloped up to the front door was precisely detailed just as it had always been. And the columns in the Colonial façade were pure white, clean like cleash, as Grandma used to say. She’d never liked any of Bruno’s family except his dad. And even then, she’d only approved of him because he’d worked himself to death at fifty-three—something she thought was an admirable thing all men should try to do. I might have been the only male on the planet that my grandmother had ever truly liked. Then again, she hadn’t liked most women, either.

Bruno parked at the curb and we filed silently up the front walk—four vodka-laced ghosts looking for dope at midnight in Fresno, California. He lurched left and right while he tried to fish his house key out of his pants. I came next. Then Teresa and Darren, who was holding onto her arm with both hands. There were lights set in the lawn every few feet and, as we passed through them, I had a sense that something awful was about to happen, something shameful.

I wasn’t a superstitious person. If you’d asked me, I would have said I supported science and antibiotics and things like that. But I still believed in god. And between the four of us, I felt we might have each committed sins of Old Testament magnitude in our short lives. My cousin alone surely rated her own plague of locusts.

I felt tired and worried and not right in the head. So I said a prayer to Grandma’s spirit: Dear Grandma, help me out like you always did when you were alive. I know I’ve failed you and Teresa is a putanalia, but we know not what we do. So please help if you can. I don’t want to get arrested tonight or die caught up in some drug shit. Amen.

The house had a security alarm. Bruno forgot the code and had to put in ten different combinations before he got it right, cussing and bitching the whole time. My cousin and Darren were standing on the bottom steps of the porch, hugging each other and making out like kids in the back of a high school dance. Darren seemed about to collapse at any moment. I couldn’t see what was motivating my cousin to keep on with him. Was he some kind of long-term project? Some kind of secret billionaire?

Sometimes, I wondered how it all worked. My cousin met them all at Swan’s and went from man to man, took referrals. She once said she had regulars who paid her bills and took her out to dinner. She said they were all clean and nice and the worst thing you could say about them was that they were all married to ugly hateful bitches.

Teresa told me these things on the night she called me in tears from the Greyhound Bus station in Baltimore. She wouldn’t say how she got way out there, but she asked could I please wire her some money for a ride back to California? I bought her a flight instead. First class. And I wired her some money for new clothes so she wouldn’t look run down when she got on the plane. I thought it might have been a new beginning for her. But she just said thanks Mikey and told me that one of her regulars would get her at the airport. And all I could think of was Grandma’s old Italian slang. Putanalia. Putanalia momps. Big prostitute.

After Bruno got the alarm turned off, he had to undo the five door locks and wait in the doorway for his mother’s Chihuahua, Little, to come up and sniff his hand. Then we were in and Bruno shut the door softly behind us. He told Teresa to sit on the marble bench by the door and she guided Darren to it. Then Bruno grabbed my arm. “Let’s go quiet,” he whispered.

We crept up the grand staircase to the second floor balustrade, past the big chandelier that hung halfway from the ceiling, gleaming and flickering in the dark like a crystal explosion. Bruno led me down a hallway carpeted with a Persian runner and six-foot high Chinese vases that sprouted afros of dried brown reeds. The house was nice, but it smelled like dust, mildew, cleanser, like a bad scene getting worse. If you’d overflowed the toilets and smoked a few cartons of cigarettes, the place would have smelled just like Swan’s at bar time.

When I’d last been to the house, I hadn’t seen the extent of the whole place. I’d only stood in the entryway for a few minutes waiting for Bruno to come down. He’d been a lot thinner back then when we were kids and spent extra time on his appearance. While I waited, his mom had given me a glass of lemonade and a cookie. She listened to a lot of opera. I remember it piped through the house on a sound system, like the whole house was singing La Traviata.

“Where are we going?” I whispered, but Bruno just shushed me and motioned for me to follow. We turned down another hallway identical to the previous one, stopping at the end. The door had a gold knob and it squeaked when Bruno opened it. He held his finger to his lips. Inside, his mom was in bed, hooked up to a respirator. When she inhaled, the rubber bellows on the machine compressed with a soft hiss. There were other machines—a full row on either side of the bed. Everything had tiny winking lights and digital displays. Cables crisscrossed the floor like vines. I was afraid to move in case I accidentally ripped out some cord and Bruno’s mother, Josephina, died in screaming convulsions.

Bruno also stepped very carefully. I got the impression he’d done this before. He picked his way around the medical machinery towards the cart of medications against the far wall. He’d spent his whole life tiptoeing around this enormous house. And he was still doing it. Only now, at age thirty-two, instead of stealing money out of his mother’s purse he was taking her dope. Bruno got a large Tupperware container from below the medication cart and pulled up the lid on one end. Inside were what looked like several hundred blister trays of pills. He grinned at me and put a few handfuls in his pockets.

His mother didn’t stir. All she did was breathe through her machine. I wondered if she went far from her bed these days or if she ever left the house. How could she exist hooked up to all that shit? Would Bruno invite me to her funeral along with Teresa? Would I go? Would my worthless cousin wear a modest black dress and a veil, put a bouquet of lilies on Josephina Frazetti’s coffin, and say the Ave Marias and the Acts of Contrition like she should have done today with her own family?

On our way out, Bruno barked his shin on a TV table by the door that had his mother’s cosmetics on it arranged like a museum display. It rattled and a couple of lipsticks fell over. He gasped. His eyes got big and he looked over his shoulder at his mother, whose breathing hiss in the machine had sped up. He pushed me into the hallway ahead of him. Then we paused and listened.

There was a storm of coughing and the sound of her hacking up phlegm. “Bruno? Bruno, it’s dark. Is that you? Bruno?” Josephina Frazetti’s voice was thin and hoarse, nothing like the way I remembered her—a tall Italian lady with big hair, always laughing with a Pall Mall between her fingers and something wonderful simmering in the kitchen. Now her voice had the grave in it. It was like the old folks used to say, La morte e la sorte stanno dietro la porta. Death and fate are always waiting behind the door. And behind that door: a ghost from the past with only machines and pill boxes for company. No wonder she was dying. Bruno put one hand against the door to steady himself and covered his face with the other.

There were many moments in my life of which I had not been very proud. But I thought that stealing hydrocodone from a sick old lady who used to give me lemonade and cookies when I was ten years old might have qualified me as a bastard among bastards. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, I put my hand on Bruno’s shoulder.

“Hey, man, you sure about this? Why is she sick, anyway? Was it the smoking?”

He straightened his shirt, retucking it under his belly and mopped his face with his hand one more time. Then he looked at me for a moment and his mouth twisted into a sneer. “What are you, Madam Butterfly?”

“Where do you get this shit, Bruno? That’s a musical.”

“See, Mikey, only you would know that. She ain’t gonna miss it.” Bruno pulled out a blister tray and handed it to me. “They bring it by the box load. If she took all the shit they bring her, she’d be up there with Jimi Hendrix and the angels.”

I looked back at the chandelier and thought of spiders that die in their webs. I’d seen that once when I was a kid. A hairy garden spider built a big web in the top corner of my bedroom window. Then one day it must have gotten sick because it slumped. A few hours later, it was hanging inverted by a single strand, its legs open like fingers from an upturned palm. It stayed there, perfectly still, for days.

“I remember her from when we were kids. It just doesn’t feel right, you know? ”

“That’s cause you’re a herd animal, Mikey. You baa with the sheep. You gotta think outside the box.” Bruno took a cigarette out and held it to his lips. But then he remembered where he was and put it behind his ear.

“You don’t need the money,” I said.

“Nothing’s ever about money.” We went outside and he began locking all five deadbolts quietly behind us. “It’s about power. Doing whatever the fuck you want to do. But that’s fine, Mikey. Not everyone can be an alpha.”

We found Teresa and Darren down on the street, leaning against Bruno’s car. They were holding hands and they both looked relatively sober. When Darren saw us, he gritted his teeth like he’d swallowed a live eel and it was trying to find its way out.

“Here you go, Meteor Man.” Bruno took the blister trays out of his pockets and handed them to Darren. Then he squinted like Vincent the fake Cholo and crossed his arms. I wondered if Vincent and Bruno watched the same movies.

“So pay up.”

Darren nodded and fished a wad of bills out of his pocket. He wobbled a little, but Teresa held him steady.

“No,” Bruno said. “Give it to her.”

Like a robot, Darren obeyed.

“That’s $500,” Teresa said. “Don’t you want any?”

Bruno frowned, took the cigarette from behind his ear and lit up. “Come on Teresa. You know you need it.”

She hugged him. He hugged her back with one arm, holding his cigarette out to the side. Bruno’s expression glazed and he seemed for a moment like that smirking moonfaced kid who’d get in a fight with you one day and come by the next to show you his pet frog.

“Thank you,” Teresa said.

He cleared his throat and puffed on his cigarette. “Don’t mention it. You could have asked in the first place and I’d have given you the money.”

When my cousin hugged him a second time, he added, “But this makes sense, right? Haley’s Comet over here needs his drugs.”

“Look,” Darren said, holding his hands up. “I’ve been taking a lot of shit from you all night.”

“Grew a pair, huh?”

Teresa stepped between them. “Get in the car, Darren.”

“Yeah, Star Chart, get in the fuckin’ car. Or don’t. I don’t give a shit.”

After a moment of staring, Darren went along.

“See that, Mikey? I could tell him, go fuck that lamp post and he’d probably do it.”

I nodded, thinking about what I’d seen pass between Bruno and my cousin, wondering what I felt. He hugged me with one arm and Teresa with the other.

“Back to Swan’s!” he said.

“Back to Swan’s!” Teresa clenched her fist in the air, her other hand clutching the tiny inner pocket in the side of her dress where she’d slipped the money.

There was an hour left until bar time, but the same crowd was still there, the funk of body odor and cheap cologne, the lot packed with cars. Darren wobbled to his Jetta as soon as we got out. He wanted Teresa to come with him, but she said she had some things to take care of and she’d call him tomorrow.

“Good riddance, pissant,” Bruno called at his back. I guess Darren had had a difficult night—difficult enough that he no longer felt up to fisticuffs. He went over to the Jetta, got in, and swerved out of the lot without making eye contact. I didn’t think we’d see more of Darren the YouTube weather man. He didn’t live in town and he was already blackballed. Bruno would keep calling him names until complete strangers started asking him if he was that kid named Star Chart. And no woman would want to be seen with a guy named Star Chart unless he was paying her. And even then.

We got a table and more drinks until Teresa found one of her regulars and said she was leaving with him. I felt a sense of panic when she said it, thinking that the last chance to tell her about Grandma was passing by. But I didn’t know what was going on inside me, what new thing had coiled up where my anger had been. I felt a tear roll down my cheek, but my cousin didn’t see it and I wiped it away. She was busy tying her hair back, telling me I could call her next week and we could talk about whatever was so damn important.

I said okay, that I would, knowing I wouldn’t. Then it was just me and Bruno, who proceeded to drink as much as humanly possible in the remaining forty minutes before bar time. At one point, he forgot that Teresa had left and he walked all around Swan’s yelling her name. He even stumbled into the ladies’ room and sent a few angry girls in CSU Fresno sweatshirts running out, complaining to David the bartender that Bruno was kicking the stalls in calling for some chick. He sat across the booth from me and wept. He told me he loved me. He said he was going to buy a big house in Alaska where we could all live together like a family and get drunk whenever we wanted. He asked me if I thought Darren hated him.

“You know,” I said, “I can’t tell anymore.”

Bruno nodded. “Who can?”

At bar time, Swan’s kicked everyone out—a ragtag group of freaks like extras in a late-night movie about zombies from Mars. Their cars lurched out of the lot in all directions. Bruno went to sleep in his BMW.

I wandered the black streets of downtown Fresno, unsure of where I was or where I had to go, my only memory of what I did for the rest of that night being the moment I looked up at the sky. It was late enough that I could see the tiny pale stars winking like the lights in Josephina Frazetti’s bedroom. And like Mrs. Frazetti, I might have called out to those lights in a feeble sick voice, hoping someone would answer.

 

 

BIO

Michael DavisMichael Davis’ short fiction has appeared in Descant, The San Joaquin Review, The Jabberwock Review, The Black Mountain Review, Eclipse, Cottonwood, The Mid-American Review, Full Circle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Georgia Review, Storyglossia, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Willow Springs, The Normal School, Arcana, The Superstition Review, The New Ohio Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, The Atticus Review, Isthmus, the Earlyworks Press Short Story Anthology, Redline, and Small Print Magazine. His collection of stories, Gravity, was published by Carnegie Mellon UP in 2009. He has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from Western Michigan University. He lives in Bangkok where he is a lecturer in English at Stamford International University.

 

 

 

 

The Graphic Artistry of Allen Forrest

 

Bay Area Figurative Revisited James Weeks Two Musicians

Bay Area Figurative Revisited James Weeks Two Musicians

 

bay_area_figurative_revisited_joan_brown_1

Bar Area Figurative Revisited – Joan Brown 1

 

bay_area_figurative_revisited_joan_brown_3

Bay Area Figurative Revisited – Joan Brown 3

 

german expressionism revisited alexej jawlensky

German Expressionism Revisited Alexej Jawlensky

 

german_expressionism_revisited_otto_dix

German Expressionism Revisited Otto Dix

 

german_expressionism_revisited_otto_mueller

German Expressionism Revisited Otto Mueller

 

Cuba Cars 2

Cuba Cars 2

 

cuba_cars_5

Cuba Cars 5

 

jacob_lawrence_revisited_blind_beggars

Jacob Lawrence Revisited – Blind Beggars

 

jacob_lawrence_revisited_study_for_munich_games

Jacob_Lawrence Revisited – Study for Munich Games

 

city_life_model

City Life Model

 

city_life_woman_and_man

City Life – Woman and Man

 

gastown_railroad_yard_vancouver

Gastown Railroad Yard – Vancouver, BC

 

Artist Statement

Painting is a cross between a crap shoot, finding your way out of the woods, and performing a magic
act. Each time I begin to paint I feel like I am walking a tightrope—sometimes scary, sometimes
exciting, sometimes very quiet, and always, always surprising; leading me where I never expected to
go. Doing art makes me lose all sense of time and place and go inside one long moment of creating.
Whenever I feel a painting in my gut, I know this is why I paint. The colors are the message, I feel
them before my mind has a chance to get involved. Color is the most agile and dynamic medium to
create joy. And if you can find joy in your art, then you’ve found something worth holding on to.

 

BIO

allen forrestBorn in Canada and bred in the U.S., Allen Forrest has worked in many mediums: computer graphics, theater, digital music, film, video, drawing and painting. Allen studied acting in the Columbia Pictures Talent Program in Los Angeles and digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and Digital Video Production.) He currently works in the Vancouver, Canada, as a graphic artist and painter. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University’s Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation’s permanent art collection. Forrest’s expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.

Art website:
http://allen-forrest.fineartamerica.com/
Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/artgrafiken
Portfolio: published works:
http://www.art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/

 

David Haight writer

Everyone’s a Fool for Somebody

by David Haight

 

Sean approached Lemon’s house with a sense of unease. Maybe he forgot. Went out. Perhaps he had fallen. Aunt Barbra told him on the sly (although he wasn’t sure if it was a general secret or one to be kept only from him) that he had fallen in the shower and now wore an emergency response system around his neck. Sean didn’t want to believe that. His father wasn’t that old and it ran counter to his stubborn personality. He peered to the right and felt sick at the abandoned driveway.

As a teenager, he and Alex, his favorite cousin growing up would sneak into the house and spend the weekend getting drunk, watching game shows while Lemon was at his cabin preparing to but never fishing watching baseball games getting drunk. Sometime around two or three in the morning they would order pizza. At the approach of the always rusted out delivery car, its signaling headlights, and the ding-dong of the doorbell Sean would race to the entryway, inevitably slipping on the top step and bounce down the remaining stairs in a hail of expletives to the amusement of the delivery guy. On one occasion when it failed to arrive Sean called the next morning to be sternly corrected that the driver had attempted to deliver their pizza, had repeatedly called, pounded on the door, and finally peered through the large bay window to find Sean and Alex passed out on the living room floor. Sean repeated the gesture but through the long thin window that ran the length of the front door. It was dark inside. Its five shag covered stairs and black railing that guided you to the living room and kitchen were in deep afternoon shadow. Maybe he didn’t want to see him. He turned the knob: it was locked. He considered the garage door when Lemon appeared in the window leering out suspiciously, fear in his face. He cautiously opened the door.

“I didn’t recognize you.”

“I just grew this beard, mainly to piss Lisa off but I’m kind of taking to it.”

“Me too,” Lemon said pointing to the unkempt grey beard poking angrily out from his face. “But I don’t have anyone to piss off. I just got lazy.”

He refused to leave the safety of the doorframe as if he still didn’t believe his own eyes, as if Sean were a stranger of solicitor and not his son. Sean instinctively took a step back.

“Can you go get my trash bin?” he asked pointing towards the street.

There was a single black wood stump rotting at the end of the driveway. There used to be three on either side, in a triangular design, each connected by a large, thick decorative chain painted gold. When he would sleepover as a kid he would attempt to tightrope his way across them only to have Lemon bellow from the upstairs bedroom window to get off.

“Make sure it’s empty. Is it empty?” Lemon hollered squinting at Sean and the large green canister.

“Yes,” he hollered back.

“Are you sure? Completely empty? Because I didn’t see you lift the cover and look inside.”

He wheeled it back.

“Put it right here,” he said still holding the screen door open, indicating the brick between the front door and the garage. Sean did as requested and lifted up the lid allowing Lemon to confirm that the canister was indeed empty.

“I’m afraid I’ll slip on the ice,” he said, tugging at the garbage can uselessly with his left hand balancing on his legs which were as thin and stiff as uncooked spaghetti.

When Sean was a kid Lemon would visit him and his mother, set a paper bag on the kitchen counter, say a quick abracadabra, pull out a bottle of vodka and two-liter of Pepsi from the bag and fix exactly one drink. Once he had finished it, he would hold out the glass to Sean, “Get me a drink, huh Champ?” Returning with the replenished glass Lemon would proclaim, “Such a good boy,” with that big endearingly smug smile. There was always a request of some sorts: shovel my driveway, mow my lawn, fetch me my sunglasses, skip over to the dairy section and snatch a carton of milk, run me to the liquor store, requests that followed Sean into his adulthood. Sean hadn’t seen Lemon in five years but outside of the request just made there was no smile, no confirmation that he was a good boy, nothing. This grizzled person didn’t appear to be the same man.

“I got it,” Sean said, urging him back into the house.

Once inside (and to the surprise of Sean) Lemon closed and locked the door. In all the years he had lived there Lemon left the door unlocked and open even when he slept. No matter how many times he pointed this out to Lemon he refused to bolt the doors or even upgrade the flimsy locks that could be breached by a heavy sneeze. It was a boring contest of wills they had engaged in since he was a little boy. Eight years prior Sean stayed briefly with Lemon when his marriage hit a rough patch. There were many nights he awoke to the sounds of sirens and police officers commanding faceless men to the ground while he crouched at the large bay window peering senselessly into the shifting darkness. Had he not been so exhausted from arguing with his wife he never would have gotten a good night’s sleep. Once he slipped out the French doors in the back and tiptoed to the front hoping to witness a crime but instead ended back in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal back up against the refrigerator. When he awoke the next morning, still against the refrigerator, the front door was miraculously unlocked and open. Lemon registered the consternation on Sean’s face.

“One night I was lying in bed and a white van pulled into my driveway. The next thing I know some guy is creeping up my stairs. Once he saw me he ran out the door. He must have thought I wasn’t home,” he said double checking the deadbolt before leading them up the stairs.

“Unbelievable,” Sean muttered to himself, noting the heavy deadbolt with disbelief.

Lemon turned around at the top of the stairs and despite having to steady him with the wall a fire flashed in his eyes so intense Sean blanched. It recalled that summer day when he was fourteen. Lemon had lost his job and despite the fact that Sean was coming for his regularly scheduled weekend visit had begun drinking that morning and was drunk when his son arrived. Sean knew it the moment he laid eyes on him. His body moved like an over-oiled machine and his eyes were hollowed out. “Hey buddy, come on up, come on up,” he said greeting him in the kitchen doorway. Sean punched him as hard as he could. His fist catching him square in the chest. Lemon’s fist cocked itself tight into his armpit. Sean ran. He ran through the living room, out the French doors, through several back yards and walked the streets until he was certain Lemon had passed out and he sneaked up to the spare bedroom. It was astonishing that the broken down body of this broken down man had any heat left to rage.

“I told you for years to fix the locks. The neighborhood is dangerous. Hell, when I stayed here there were seven different times the cops were busting someone trying to break into someone’s house.”

“I guess I can see why,” he said, the old reds, as he used to call it, dying down quickly like a cheetah after a hard fast sprint unable to run any longer. “I never park in the driveway.”

“And the only light you ever have on is your bedroom light. The place looks abandoned.”

For the first time got a good look at his father. Besides the uncared for beard, his eyes were red, the lids heavy with, exhaustion or maybe a medical condition he was unaware of, there a large rash on the side of his neck and it appeared as though he hadn’t showered in months. He was certain if he gave him a good shake dead skin and dandruff would engulf the room like a snow globe. Then there was the walk, he shuffled like an old man. He wasn’t sure what had happened to him over the last five years but he seemed to have aged fifteen years since the last time he had seen him.

They reached the landing. There was a card table dropped in the middle of the living room buried in papers, faded and curling pictures and a cribbage board several of the colored pegs chewed down to half their size. Next to the whale of a television set were stacks of half-opened boxes of varying sizes bought (presumably) off of late night infomercials having migrated home to die.

“I need a cleaning lady, do you know one?” he asked with a chuckle, shuffling into the kitchen grabbing his wallet and keys from the kitchen table, where they were greeted with more junk, a foot of papers, a dead rose, two sets of dice, a rotting orange peel, a dissected clock, and a plate with a half-eaten unrecognizable meal.

Sean surveyed the room ignoring the reference to his mother and her house cleaning business which she gave up years earlier. The linoleum was cracked and peeling, there was a water stain threatening to annex the entire ceiling, dishes peered out of the kitchen sink, the faucet dripped and on the counter stood a row of six or seven glasses filled halfway with tobacco-brown water an avocado pierced at right angles by toothpicks split down the middle, tan reptilian tails curling up in dismay into the bottom of the glasses.

“Have you ever thought about moving?” he asked.

“What for?” he asked dismissing him with a wave of the hand. “I just had the roof fixed.”

“I didn’t notice anything,” he said looking up.

“I just did the backside,” he said. “The leak was on the backside.”

“They’ll do that?”

“They didn’t want to but I insisted,” he said and started digging through the pile of junk on the kitchen table. “I knew it would drive you crazy.” He handed him a wrinkled receipt.

“That’s truly the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Why would you do that? If you ever want to sell this place you’re going to have to redo the whole thing.”

“You mean you’ll have to do it after I die.”

After a long indecipherable silence he said, “That’s not what I meant.”

For a moment everything threatened to go south.

“For doing nothing I sure have a lot of bills. I sat down the other day and sent out seven. Seven. Can you believe that?”

“That’s a lot,” he said surrendering. “Let’s go.”

They made their way cumbersomely back down the stairs towards the garage. Sean peered down the second set of steps into the basement. Although it was pitch black he could still make out darkness upon darkness like memories stacked upon one another and knew all of his grandmother’s things were still down there, unorganized, uncared for, like a great ship sunk at the bottom of the ocean. In the garage Sean found that Lemon’s once majestic Jaguar had decomposed and (as he would soon discover) barely operated past its rudimentary functions. There was an eyeliner of rust above each wheel, the bumper clung helplessly to the body of the car, gave an unhealthy roar when started, shaking terribly as if it had Parkinson’s and took all of Lemon’s powers of concentration to keep on the road. Why Sean was surprised is hard to figure but he was. It was the one luxury item Lemon consistently indulged in throughout his adult life. Sean was a junior in college on his way to finals, his car stalled (on an overpass no less) when he got the call from Lemon. “My third baby died, you up to get number four?” Looking up the street at the traffic beginning to back up, his nodded his head, “Can you pick me up?” He sprinted the three miles to school and he and Lemon cruised to the dealership, passing Sean’s stalled car on the overpass (which Lemon didn’t recognize). For a man who had been a proud Cadillac owner his entire adult life he was swayed rather easily to purchase the shiny tan Jaguar. They pulled into an American Legion.

“We’re not going to Mr. Mix’s?”

“The place turned,” he said shoving the car door open with immense effort. He stood seeming to reflect for a moment, perhaps about the intimations of time or the lifelong struggles he had had with his boy or alcohol but in the end it seemed he just needed to catch his breath.

“What do you mean?” Sean asked over the top of the car.

“Can’t we just go in?” he barked.

They took a seat at the small bar. The place was nearly empty. There was a thin old man on the far side of the bar reading the newspaper and at one of the tables a couple in their forties was eating eggs and bacon, sipping on bloody Mary’s chatting quietly. Country music was playing softly at a low hum and several televisions were playing the same baseball game which the bartender and the couple were keeping tabs on. The bartender recognized Lemon immediately and drew a beer at which Lemon nodded affectionately.

“All right, let’s hear it.”

“I don’t drink vodka anymore,” he said definitively, saying nothing else so the force of his statement could be felt. As was always the case this message wasn’t for Sean but his mother. Somehow, through the combination of memory, time and wish-fulfillment Lemon had decided it was his drinking that had ended their relationship. In reality the reasons were many and complex but it safely absolved him of most of its responsibility. In the years (and decades) since they had parted she had wisely (through Sean of course) reaffirmed this belief as a way of hedging her bets. It was the one thing she knew he couldn’t quit.

“Good for you,” he said eyeing his father. Even if he was telling the truth, which Sean had no reason to doubt she would never be a part of his life? He wasn’t sure if he should find it pathetic or strangely enduring his father’s faith in true love.

“It was tearing my stomach up,” he added, unsure if stopping for health reasons or stopping exclusively for her was the right play. He searched his sons face and eyes but he gave nothing away. “I didn’t want to stop, mind you,” Lemon started, taking a pull from his beer.

Sean smirked, “You’re losing credibility.”

“My point still counts,” he said. Sensing his son didn’t believe him he continued on. “You know my giving up vodka is a sincere attempt to mend fences not just another promise I can’t keep?”

“I know dad,” he said.

“It’s not easy.”

“You don’t really need to do that.”

“Like hell I don’t. That’s all I ever heard was how I drank too much, how I embarrassed her. She always brings up that dinner at your place like it’s the end all-be-all of the world.”

“You sat on the floor in the middle of her dinner party and refused to get up.”

“Eh. You guys never could joke around,” he said irritated by the memory.

“And what exactly was the joke? It doesn’t matter. What you’re trying to do is noble but unnecessary.” Nothing Sean was saying was coming across the way he intended. There was a look of confusion and helplessness in Lemon’s eyes as if he had invested all of his life’s savings in a stock that was worthless, that he was being evicted, that his entire family had died in some horrible fashion. People are more transparent than we like to admit. They don’t lie. Not really. They just aren’t capable. People present themselves for who they are, with every word, gesture, even with what they don’t say and yet we repeatedly, stubbornly refuse to recognize them, as his mother had refused to recognize Lemon for thirty-odd years. “What I mean is you are who you are and that’s fine.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Aren’t you going to have a drink?” he snarled, attempting unsuccessfully to stare his son down.

“Yes, dad.”

“So, order already.”

There was a second more protracted silence.

Sean shifted on his stool and leaned close to his father. “I can’t start my car if I have anything to drink.”

As adults, drinking had become an essential part of their relationship, which Sean didn’t mind. He enjoyed drinking with Lemon. They had little in common and alcohol made it easier for them to pretend they weren’t two individuals who had no business being in the same room together much less go through the motions of a father-son relationship. It allowed them to talk, or at least argue and Sean and Lemon loved to argue: about religion, politics, race, women, music, movies. You could name any topic and be certain they would have opposing viewpoints. It was the fuel that drove most of their interactions, away or more accurately around the resentments they hadn’t the courage to speak about and was now dominated by the great unspoken subject: lost time.

“Ah, you too? Get him a Coke,” he said signaling the bartender, unfazed. Lemon, for all his faults was not a judgmental man or thrown by the lapses of other people’s judgments. As a brash young man Sean had dismissed this as simple self-absorption but as he had gotten older and grown to dislike socializing he appreciated what a rare gift this was. “I got picked up after leaving Mr. Mix’s a few years back. It was only a matter of time. It’s astonishing I’ve only had one. But I was pissed,” he said with a snort.

“That couldn’t have been pretty.”

“No more or less than usual when that much booze is involved,” Lemon said a smile easing across his face.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing that didn’t need to be said. I’m in the back of the squad car, trying to get my bearings, and let me just add that I found it unnecessary to have the handcuffs so damn tight. They hurt and I made sure to tell the prick. But nothing. He just kept driving. I asked where we were going, still nothing.”

“You didn’t know you were going to jail?”

“Finally I leaned forward, my face against the grate and told the son of a bitch that he should spend his time arresting real criminals and I spit at him.”

“I’m sure that went over well,” he said popping an ice cube into his mouth.

“Cops do not have a sense of humor,” he said with authority. “Well, you probably know that.”

“No, they don’t,” Sean said readjusting himself on the stool. “I went a little apeshit when I got tagged.”

“You? Mr. Congeniality?”

“Oh, I was sour. And you’re totally right by the way-” he said. Lemon pointed to himself playfully. “I hate to admit this especially to you but I was saying every vile thing that popped into my head.”

“Yeah you were,” Lemon said egging him on as if they were both sitting, hands tight behind their backs in the back of that squad car in the middle of the night.

“I hope you get cancer. I hope your wife gets raped, hope your kids get molested. You name it. Monstrous behavior really. But I wanted a reaction for Christ sake. This bastard didn’t even blink. He couldn’t even bother to make eye contact in the rearview mirror.”

Lemon chuckled.

“Back at the station before I had spiraled into a pit of shame, they were about to retest me when I noticed that the officer’s uniform was buttoned incorrectly,” he said running his finger up and down the center of his shirt. “You cops are all fucking stupid. You go through the academy and are in charge of protecting the public and you still don’t even know how to button your own god damn shirt. I feel safe. He tests me. I fail, again. He leaves the room and I sit there for however long but when he comes back in his shirt was buttoned correctly.”

“Bam!” Lemon exclaimed.

“I let him know that I got to him. Oh, he pretended like it was nothing. But it felt like a victory.”

“It was a victory, “Lemon said, and pushed the empty glass towards the bartender and ordered another. “They’re not priests, with a calling, although don’t get me started on those perverts. They’re just schoolyard bullies. They love the power of that badge; pushing people around, telling them what to do. Think about it, think about every cop you’ve ever known, they’ve all been assholes, the guys that never got laid in high school. Those bastards don’t give a rat’s ass about right and wrong. He didn’t care that you were drunk or breaking the law.”

“They’re keeping the roads safe. Either one of us could have killed someone.”

“You can’t possibly be that naïve?”

“How am I being naïve drunk drivers kill thousands of people?”

“Sure, drunk drivers do kill people, and that pisses people off so you use that as leverage to pass strict-ass laws which generates millions of dollars. As a result the government can toss out all kinds of statistics about how they are protecting the public and use all that cash for whatever they want. Once the public’s anger is satisfied they never ask where the money goes and I guarantee they bring in more than they need. If it saves lives that’s icing on the cake, the shit they put in public service announcements to make bored housewives, religious types, and liberals like you feel better about the privilege you determined to feel shitty about.”

Sean dragged a bowl of pretzels his direction and tossed a couple in his mouth. “You’ve put way too much thought into this. I have to worry about shit that actually happens, shit a little closer to home, my home,” he said refusing to take the bait. “You want to talk about money? My kid’s braces had to wait a year because of that DUI. We couldn’t take a vacation. You want to see a woman learn to hate? Change her lifestyle or deny her child every little thing, because that’s what Sam suddenly became, her kid, like I was a benefactor and not the kid’s father.” After a moment he added, “I didn’t even think his teeth looked that bad.”

Lemon shrugged. “Once a woman gets something in her head it’s nearly impossible to change it no matter how ridiculous the proposition.”

“Braces aren’t ridiculous,” Sean protested. Then resigned, “But I get the gist of what you’re saying.”

“I don’t miss that,” he said, with a knowing shake of the head that Sean was immediately annoyed by.

“What?”

“Oh, being accountable to someone else’s whims.”

“When was the last time that was an issue?” he asked too harshly.

“I guess you don’t remember getting up at the crack ass of dawn to go fishing, getting the gear in the boat, finding our spot only to have grandma start ringing that infernal cowbell from the end of the dock, around nine o’clock just as the fish would start hitting? You could hear that thing all the way over in the bay. It didn’t matter that we told her the night before not to make us breakfast, that we didn’t know how long we’re going to be out? She had made up her mind and nothing was going to stop her from making that breakfast.”

“You were so pissed,” he started with enthusiasm. “We’d begrudgingly pack up our gear and head back to shore.”

“And there she’d be standing at the end of the dock as happy as a pig in shit.”

“She never had any idea why you would get so mad. She really thought she was just being helpful, doing her part.”

“That’s what she wanted you to think, that’s for sure.”

“Come on,” Sean said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “She didn’t fish or drink. She wanted to be a part of something.”

“You always saw the sweet old lady she wanted you to see. She knew what she was doing, bursting into tears the moment I lost my cool: I made you two this beautiful breakfast, you never appreciate me, the whole nine yards, all so I appeared monstrous to you and mom.”

Sean thought for a moment. “She marched into the kitchen and came out with a plate of bacon.”

“The proof of her selflessness,” Lemon said wryly. “The tears already gone if they were ever there to begin with.”

“Which you unceremoniously smacked out of her hand. You ran up the deck,” he said starting to chuckle, the distance of years turning their drama into nonsensical farce, “through the cabin, out the back door and up the driveway screaming, ‘You’re driving me nuts! Literally driving me nuts!’”

“Even from beyond the grave she has the power to make me look like the giant asshole. That was part of her twisted genius. Ah, that’s giving her too much credit,” he said taking a swig of beer.

“I think it’s much simpler than all that.” Lemon raised a curious eyebrow. “Don’t you think she was pissed that Pop left everything to you?” he asked choosing his words carefully.

“He didn’t do it for me for Christ sake. I’m sure it killed him to do it. It was to protect us in case anything happened to her. Not that she ever saw it that way. She wanted things her way and if she was denied she forced your hand until it went her way. There was no reason why breakfast couldn’t wait until ten or eleven. Or why the cabin needed to be in her name. Not at her age. Christ if something happened to her we’d lose the cabin.” Lemon sat with that crooked smile. Sean looked into his lap. “That was the last of the bacon, too.” He signaled the bartender who brought him another beer.

“It’s weird after all that give and take now she’s just gone.”

“No doubt giving God a run for his money,” Lemon said downing half his beer. “The first thing I thought when Shady Glenn called and told me she had passed was who is going to sing Amazing Grace for her at her grave?”

“As everyone is walking away,” Sean said with a shy chuckle.

“Isn’t that strange? Everyone hated when she did that.”

“No one ever knew what to do. People were half-way to their fucking cars and here this strange woman starts singing in that high off-key falsetto.”

“And you couldn’t blow her off. I mean that song and the occasion. To leave would be insulting.”

“But everyone turned around and trudged back to the grave.”

“See what did I just say? She forced your hand every damn time?” Lemon said. “I think she envisioned everyone joining her-“

“but no one wanted to and no one did.”

“Aunt Beth was always forced to put her arm around her and lead her away as she went on with her crying without tears routine.” He stared at his knees. “How many times did that idiot do that?” Lemon said warmly. “I know she did it at Aunt Shirley’s and Beth’s, maybe Michael’s which as I recall you were late for.”

“I was. I was at Sloane’s house and couldn’t break away.”

“Bullshit. Your mother was holding you hostage. Don’t play innocent with me. I know her ways. She was finding excuses for you to stay at her house so you’d miss the funeral. Fixing a faucet or some nonsense right? You don’t need to answer.”

There was a momentary silence and breaking of the momentum of their conversation.

“I thought pulling out Amazing Grace at her funeral but I couldn’t muster up the courage and no one would have thought it was funny.”

“You should have done it.”

They were silent. It’s too bad that Lemon wasn’t at her bedside when she died. He would have been disgusted but satisfied when her last words were, “I had a happy family life,” even when all evidence pointed to the contrary.

“We went to that bar in Garfield after her funeral, remember, that tiny one at the edge of town, and that group of college kids came in to get supplies for their ice fishing expedition?” Sean asked.

“How many of them were there? Four? Four,” he said with conviction. “How could I forget? They each ordered a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey. They were shit canned when they came in the god damned place.”

“The one guy pissed his pants while they were waiting. Just stood their ordering while a steady stream of piss flowed down his leg like it was the most normal thing in the world.”

“And they still served him, all of them,” Lemon said dryly. “A lesson for you,” he shot to the bartender.

“I can’t imagine how they got their shit onto the ice,” Sean said with amazement. “Or how they must have felt the next day.”

“Like a nuclear bomb had been dropped on them, that’s how.”

“I liked doing that with you,” Sean began cautiously. “Fishing. I know I wasn’t the most athletic child something I know disappointed you.”

“Ancient history,” Lemon said feeling his son trying to pry open the lid to the past.

“Fishing fit my personality, you know? It was slow and meditative. The blue sky and water and the green of the trees. I thought the rush of a northern hitting my line was like making contact with a baseball. And you were a great coach, no seriously, you told me when to open up the reel, when to give the fish line to run, when start reeling it slowly back and once at the side of the boat lifting it gently so as not to slip the hook from its lip as you got the net beneath it.”

“I remember I lost that lure I brought you from Hawaii,” Lemon said. Sean sighed. “That really pissed me off. I made a big stink about not letting you tie it on yourself. I thought I tied it on so well and then phew off it goes one hundred miles off into the sunset. You sat there will that frozen smile on your face trying not to be disappointed.”

“But I was,” he said letting out a huge laugh that Lemon joined him in.

“You know what I hated the most about the DUI?”

“The money,” Sean said pointedly, continuing to laugh.

“Paying the money was one thing but the loss of my license really hurt.”

Sean let out a cackle. Lemon’s face puckered in confusion.

“You drive a three mile radius from your house.”

Lemon reflected. “I’m not gonna walk! I had Jeff tell the state I worked for him so I could drive. That way I could get groceries and run errands. Stop by here,” he said with a nod lifting his glass.

“That was quite a risk,” Sean said feeling legitimately concerned. He nearly added, “you could have called me,” but knew that at the time he would have greeted Lemon with scorn using his son as a patsy for his inability to help him. What kind of example are you modeling to your grandson? He would have asked knowing full well Sam never needed to know. And what grown man needed having his grandson’s well-being thrown in his face at one of his lowest moments? Anyway you have Jeff, he would have added ruefully.

Jeff was a middle-aged mailman Lemon had met at Mr. Mix’s several years back. As best as Sean could ascertain, Jeff (like Lemon) had alienated most of his family and all of his friends; had no hobbies outside of drinking and had decided that was the last train he would ever take; they soon became inseparable. He had always been suspicious of Jeff’s motives (for no actual reason than the domination of his father’s time something he never acquired the skill) but the resentment he felt towards Lemon trumped it and road blocked any desire he had to investigate his suspicions further. Sitting with his father now he realized it was loneliness, not family or love or loyalty that was the strongest glue between people.

“I’m just playing.”

“Liar,” Sean threw back.

“No, it was those classes they make you attend. Did you have to do that? Yeah, it’s pretty much required now days. Christ. Those sob stories nearly killed me. Kids clean and sober killed by a drunk driver. Still,” he went on with very sober eyes, “it takes a lot of money from hard working people like you and me. It still is a legal product, isn’t it Jimmy?” he asked the bartender.

“Sure is Lemon,” he called back over his shoulder.

“That’s what really pisses me off. This is a capitalist society. So Jimmy here, in order to make his business successful should in theory serve me as much as he can, right? And yet, and yet, I am penalized for doing just that. I get it, I get it, I could injure someone.”

“You could always call a cab.”

“I’m just, what did you say, sour. I’m sour about it. They really do fuck you over,” he barked. “Assholes and bullies. Although I’m surprised you got behind the wheel seeing as you always bust my ass about it.”

“I wasn’t drinking and driving just to do it,” he snapped back. Calming down he continued, admitting, “I was angry. I had my own shit going on.”

“Like?” Lemon said picking up the fresh beer that had been set in front of him.

“A few weeks before I went to track for the first and to date only time,” he said with finality. “I drive by it all the time on the way to work without even noticing it and then one day I felt a thrill. It looked like the Coliseum but fresh and new, banners hanging across it, flags growing from the top. I should have left the minute I walked in because the spell is immediately broken. It’s drafty and dirty, the floor is covered in half-smoked cigarette butts, spilled beer and the place is crawling with desperately unhappy men cursing their fate and scowling at anyone who has the luck to win a few dollars.”

“And who go to the bar afterwards?” Lemon asked.

Sean nodded. “But I had a plan. I wasn’t like these guys. I wouldn’t play it down to zero. I wouldn’t chase the loss. Once I won I would leave, I would come home the victor. And all of our problems, financial and otherwise would disappear into thin air,” he said wiggling his fingers. “Because we all know how money solves every problem.” He threw him a sarcastic frown.

“No?”

“No,” he echoed. “I lost. I lost fast and I kept on losing. I felt like those assholes I’m behind every day at the gas station buying lottery tickets, holding up the line. You don’t know how many times I’ve shouldered up to one, ‘Why don’t you give me that cash, it’s the same difference?’ or I’ll ask them ‘You ever win?’ They always say yes. ‘As much as you’ve spent?’ At that point they usually tell me to mind my own business or to fuck off.”

“Rightly so.”

“I was no different. Six hours later I was pulling into the 1200 Club and my adventure came to a sudden, dull end. I sat there until closing and finally went home, slunk up to the spare bedroom locked the door where I stayed for three days. I missed work, the whole thing. Lisa didn’t have any clue what was going on but when she finally figured it out.”

“And they always do,” Lemon said

“Any sympathy for my missing work, the depression soared out the window.”

“If you need any money.”

“What?” he asked horrified. “No, no. That’s not why I’m here. Let’s get things straight Lemon, I’ve never asked you for anything much less money and I’m not about to start now.”

“Calm down cowboy,” Lemon said calmly, a thin smile perched on his face. “I know. I didn’t think that was why you were here. All you ever have to do, all you’ve ever had to do is ask. Just know that going forward.” Lemon chuckled then held up his hands for forgiveness at his son’s flash of anger.

“All right.”

“How did you get a DUI if you were locked in your spare bedroom for three days?”

“When Lisa finally discovered how much money I lost she jimmied her way into the bedroom, it must have been six or seven in the morning and just unloaded on me. Told me I was jeopardizing our family and Sam’s future, not my future of course, throwing in resentments that had built up for years which I’ll spare you. Needless to say she was so pissed she kicked me out and by kick me out I mean she chased me down the street. I didn’t have shoes on. I didn’t have car keys. I was lucky I had my wallet. I went straight to the bar and got as drunk as I have ever been.”

“I’m still not following. How did you get a DUI if you weren’t driving? How did you get into the bar?”

Sean shook his head. “I go to leave and I don’t know what time it was but it was getting dark. Now I’m sick of feeling guilty and I’m pissed. I’m the bread winner, it’s my money to do with whatever I see fit. There’s no way in hell, I tell myself, that I’m walking home and I sure as shit ain’t calling Lisa. So I walk a few blocks to the library and steal a bike and that’s how I get picked up.”

“And the shoes?”

“I got the shoes from a shoe store in a strip mall on the way. Of course they wouldn’t let me in – no shoes, no service. I had to give money to this little black kid to pick me out shoes which of course were a size too small. The story of my life lately.”

Lemon chuckled to himself. “You’re nothing if not original. Always have been.”

The bartender dropped off another Coke. Sean was feeling bloated by all the soda and would have loved to share a drink with his old man. He tried to calculate how much a taxi would cost from the bar to Lemon’s and back home again but the thought of trying to explain it all to his wife and then the annoyance she would have shown at having to give him a ride to his car the next day exhausted him before he could even come up with a number so he dropped it.

“I thought of you when Obama was elected,” Sean said with a smile, expecting a fight. Lemon had always been casually racist. All through his teen years whenever Sean started dating a new girl Lemon’s favorite joke was to say, in front of as many people as possible was, “No, seriously, she’s really attractive for a colored girl.”

“Dad,” Sean would cry.

“You can bring her over anytime.” Sean would always wait for it. “Just make sure it’s dark out.”

“I voted for him the second time,” Lemon said.

Sean leaned back in his chair. “You’re fucking with me, right?” He turned to the bartender. “He’s fucking with me right? You guys planned this.”

The bartender shook his head.

“You’re the only person I told. You can’t tell anybody.”

“Why did you vote for him?” Sean asked.

“Well that Romney was horrible. Obama said a few things, I can’t remember now that I really liked. He seems like he cares about people. I don’t know. He seems like a president. On everything else,” he said holding up a fake ballot, “I voted Republican.”

There was so little about this man Sean recognized.

“How’s your boy?” he now asked.

“Sam’s doing well,” he said.

He nodded. Then he nodded to the bartender to bring him another beer.

“You’d love him. He’s not like me at all,” he said expecting a laugh. “He’s a natural athlete. He’s a little on the smaller side but demanded he be allowed to play football. I was a nervous wreck that first night-”

“How’s mom?” Lemon asked.

Sean sighed. Not only because of the flippant way in which he dismissed his only grandchild but because he knew he had a hand in it. He had resented Lemon for so long, kept him at arm’s length for most of his (and Sam’s) life, what other result did he expect? He gave him next to nothing but demanded extraordinary measures from him. And when those extraordinary measures weren’t forthcoming (how could they be?) it only compounded his anger and disappointment. It wasn’t fair and was designed to fail. He also felt his father had no use for him other than a means to his mother. It was the only question that mattered, that ever mattered to Lemon. It had just been a question of when.

“She’s fine.”

“Is she married?”

Sean laughed involuntarily. “No. She’s not interested in that at all. (Because of you he thought unfairly.) She’s busy with her dog park friends.”

Lemon made a face. “Who?”

He was sure Lemon didn’t even know what a dog park was. “They are friends she made walking her dog. They go out for wine, go to museums. She’s busier than I am.” His father’s face was blank. “It’s a designated area just for people to bring their dogs. They can let them off their leashes-”

“Because if she was I would be pissed off. I’ve been asking her to marry me for 35 years.” He downed the rest of his beer. “Think of that.”

That was typical of Lemon to simplify something that was utterly complex. Sean let it go. It seemed that Lemon and his mother calcified their relationship in opposite ways: Lemon had romanticized it, she had demonized it. Watching him sitting on the bar stool stooped over, hair on the verge of falling out he hadn’t the heart to contradict him. Even a few years ago he would have railed at him, pointing out that it was his son, sitting with him, reaching out for a connection while she had moved on definitively, but he couldn’t. She was the only happy memory he had left in him.

“Take it easy.”

“I’m just saying. She’s the best woman in the world.”

“I know she is.”

“You tell her that,” he said unable to make eye contact with his only son.

“I will.”

That sense of hopelessness that he had always carried around with him in regards to Lemon was starting to resurface.

“What time is it?” Lemon asked, animated.

“Two-fifteen, why?”

“Jeff is going to come over later and help me figure out how to use this cordless phone I bought.”

“Cordless phone? I didn’t even know they sold those anymore.”

“If you can stay you could talk to him.”

“Why would I need to talk to Jeff?”

Lemon shrugged. “He’s my best friend. I told him that,” he said and added without any self-pity, “He’s my only friend.”

“I know,” he motioned for the check. The bartender didn’t notice. He motioned again. He handed him a credit card.

“I gave him the cabin.”

Sean was hoping the topic of the cabin’s ownership wouldn’t come up. He could handle being put in the middle of his parents, by both of them. They had been doing that his entire life. He was equipped for that, he was an expert. But when it came to the cabin he was lost. Lemon had acquired the cabin in 1966 before he was born. He had spent his summers up there water skiing and fishing. As he got older he had always assumed he would inherit it or once he made his way in the world, became successful, somewhere in the back recesses of his heart waited for that call from Lemon to go in on it with him. One day the cabin would pass from father to son and from him to his own son, Sam. His mother told him he was crazy, that Lemon would never do that. First, she would say, you were raised by me. Second, you have my last name, not his. And third, he will keep that cabin from you despite me. He never believed it. Now it turned out his mother was right all along. He hated her too.

Behind the bar a thin older woman was tying her apron around her substantial waist.

“Sally, come over here,” Lemon said, motioning to her.

“Hey Lemon who’s this handsome young thing?” she asked in that overly flirty way that never seems out of place in a bar in the middle of the day.

“This is my son Sean.”

He shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I’ve heard nothing about you. Does he buy you drinks at the end of your shift? Tell you how my mother left him? Screwed him over? Does he tell you the kind of father he was? The lack of financial and emotional support he gave? No, I’m sure not. That’s not what guys like Lemon do. They put a great face on their lives and the choices they’ve made all while sitting alone, in a shitty bar in the middle of the afternoon. For a brief moment he felt like calling Lemon out. But he knew better. For every lie or half-truth he had indulged in, with this waitress, his drinking buddies, Jeff, himself, his mother had done the exact same. It took him most of his life to figure that out. The moral high ground, if it existed was just another part of the mythology we all create in order to survive. In the end everyone is consistently the hero of their own story.

“Hope to see you again,” she said and sauntered away. Lemon watched the heavy swaying of her hips.

“You called me at eight. Jeff calls at ten.”

“What?”

“When you called me, I thought something was wrong. That mom had died. I had already started putting my pants on. Jeff always calls at ten.”

It was last Sunday when Sean called, breaking their five year silence. He hadn’t planned on calling that morning, although the desire to see his father had been burgeoning every year. He couldn’t get through a day without his mind circling back to his father. He told no one, at least not anymore. If the subject was broached his mother withered in choleric silence or set herself ablaze if she had consumed too much wine. His wife was no better. Having been raised by two reasonably blithe parents she couldn’t comprehend the immense vacuum left by Lemon and got tired of hearing about it. Sure, he had a Bible’s worth of complaints: he was financially negligible, selfish, self-absorbed and casually cruel. But he was also witty, charming, loyal, and didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought about him. His wife was the inadvertent reason he called. They had woken up, hung over and in the shadow of a late night argument neither remembered. Her brother called cancelling dinner plans she had been looking forward to all week. When Sean balked she bellowed, “What about your father?” and stormed outside for some air. Fuck this, he said to the empty room, opened his phone and dialed his father’s number. He was barely aware of what he was doing when he heard the familiar sound of his father’s voice.

They paid and drove back to his dilapidated house. He walked Lemon in and was grateful Lemon had forgotten about Jeff. Sean slowly removed the cordless phone out of the box like something of great and inestimable value and plugged it in demonstrating how it worked and explaining that it would have to charge overnight before it could be used.

“And I can walk anywhere around the house?” he asked only-half joking.

Sean told him he could and probably out into the yard. He hung it up.

“That light means it’s charging.”

“Aw, that’s great. I’m becoming pretty modern,” he said with a chuckle.

“We should have lunch again?” Sean managed to say.

“My schedule is open,” Lemon said.

They hugged.

Lemon felt small in his arms. He wanted to assure him that they were friends. He hated the idea of his father with one friend. Now you have two, he wished to say, but didn’t. Not because it was sentimental or because of any residual disappointments but because as much as his bulging, angry heart wanted it to be, it just wasn’t true. Like so many things in Sean’s life, friendship with Lemon would have to be earned. He would have to cut loose the past and all the sour feelings that came from not having the father son relationship he wanted. It might require more strength than he had. Feeling his father’s thin, frail body in his arms it would be slow and might never happen. Maybe they didn’t have it in them. But he had to try.

Lemon watched from the window as Sean got into his car and rolled down the driveway. They each gave a single wave, then Lemon made his way to his bedroom and Sean home.

 

Sean was stunned and furious with himself when a couple of days later, over coffee with his mother when she told him with disgusted glee, that Lemon had been calling again.

“He leaves long idiotic messages,” she spat.

“About what?”

“Who can tell? I can’t understand half of what he’s muttering on about. Remember this, remember that. There’s still time. Something about a cantaloupe he has in his refrigerator for me. Nonsense. Utter nonsense.”

Once when he was a little boy he had to go to the airport with Lemon and they were running late, they needed to run to make it to the gate on time. So they ran, through the airport, Lemon with his tan raincoat towering above his son, the essence of confidence and cool. “We’re just like O.J. Simpson in those car commercials.” Sean nodded, the coolest kid in the world. It didn’t matter that he had no idea who O.J. Simpson was.

“Just ignore him.”

“I can’t believe I ever loved that man. He wore that green sweater to every family function for years. I would buy him sweaters, expensive sweaters for Christmas, birthdays. He never got the hint. It smelled. It was embarrassing. Remember when I threw away that sliver of broken mirror when I cleaned his house? I thought he was going to murder me. You don’t throw away people’s prized possessions. Prized possessions. That man makes no sense.”

“He thought you were dead.”

“What?”

“The day I called him. He thought you were dead and was panicked.”

Anna was silenced, in a sick, demented way. The color drained from her face. She stood up and left her immaculately, if moderately decorated kitchen.

Jeff had the cabin. Lemon was calling his mother. And like always Sean was neither thought about nor included but left out in the cold, a worthless fool when it came to Lemon.

 

 

 

BIO

David HaightDavid Haight was born in Minneapolis and educated at Hamline University where he received a degree in English and later an MFA in Writing where he was distinguished by the Quay W. Grigg award for Excellence in Literary Study. He published the novel Overdrive in 2006, Me and Mrs. Jones in 2012 and his newest book, Lemon, a collection of short stories, will be published in August.  He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Lynn.

Paul Garson author

The Twice Fought War: Ethiopia 1935-1945

by Paul Garson

All photos and documents from author’s collection

 

Ethiopia Map 1935

In the early 1930s Italian Colonial aspirations included much of The Horn of Africa including Libya, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

 

Once upon a time there was a country, sometimes known (in Europe) as Abyssinia, other times as Ethiopia. Or, if you were Italian and drawing maps of the continent of Africa for future conquests … Etiopia. In addition Ethiopia was a predominantly ancient Christian country tracing that history back to the first century A.D. In 330 A.D. Christianity was declared the state religion and eventually the only region of Africa to survive as such following the expansion of Islam in the area. Some even claimed it was the secret hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant.

 

mounted warrior 1898

1890 Illustration – Mounted Ethiopian Warrior
The image appeared on an Italian pharmaceutical company’s advertising card printed in the 1930s. Although he still carries a shield, the soldier also shoulders a modern military rifle rather than the vintage flintlocks relied upon by the majority of his countrymen.

In 1906, the same year that Einstein set forth his Theory of Relatively that changed the face of science and the Great San Francisco earthquake changed the face that city, Ethiopia was granted its internationally recognized independence with Great Britain, France and Italy among those signing the historic document.  But within five years Italy would invade nearby Libya and begin carving out chunks of northern Africa for its colonies.  As the European powers began devouring African resources, Ethiopia still managed to survive intact, and furthermore, in 1923 was recognized by the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) as a full-fledged member of that international community.

 

ethiopia Sellasie coin 1937

1937 – Coinage and Carnage
Along with the image of Emperor Selassie, his name appears in the abugida script form of Amharic, the country’s national language, and the second most-spoken Semitic language worldwide after Arabic.

* * *

While it went through a period of various potentates as rulers, a new leader appeared that would put Ethiopia firmly back on the world map. The face of Emperor Haile Selassie appeared on the November 3rd, 1930 cover of TIME Magazine. His titles included “King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah and Elect of God.” The text of the story stated, “Certainly the new Emperor is the greatest Abyssinian ruler of modern times.” That bit of hyperbole proved prophetic. TIME again placed him on its cover on January 6, 1936 selecting him as “Man of the Year for 1935” for his courageous efforts defending his country from the invasions launched by Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

 

ethiopia 225th departs for Ethiopia 1935

Banner of War
Standing by their battle flag, officers of the 225th Infantry Regiment of the 14th Italian Expeditionary Force prepare to depart for East Africa in 1935.

* * *

The Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935, lasting 17 months, would presage the European war that would erupt in 1939, and as such could be seen as one of the sparks that ignited that conflagration.

Since Mussolini dreamed of recreating the glory of the Roman Empire, he needed colonies to expand fascist Italy along with his own ego, thus Ethiopia became his target. The rest of Europe shrugged their shoulders for the most part. The attitude is summed up by the following quote from discussions at the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 3, 1935, the eve of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.  “One can see now how thoughtless it was of the League of Nations to admit Ethiopia, a country which does not deserve other nations risking a war to protect it.”

As the war ground on, the modern Italian forces found themselves generally victorious, but on December 22, 1935, after Ethiopian troops managed to repulse an Italian attack, General Rodolfo Graziani launched airborne gas warfare including bombings on January 10 that killed thousands of Ethiopians trying to escape Italian advances, more gas attacks following in March. An estimated 300-500 tons of mustard gas were deployed, personally authorized by Mussolini along with the use of flamethrowers.

 

son and father warriors 1935 Harar

October 1935 – Mobilization in Harar, Ethiopia
Responding to Emperor Haile Selassie’s call for the defense of their country, an Ethiopian warrior and his young son prepar to leave for war, the boy acting as his father’s “squire” and carrying his rifle and gear. Like most of the soldiers facing the Italians, both go barefoot into battle.

* * *

On May 5, Italian General Badoglio and his troops triumphantly entered the capital of Addis Ababa. Eventually some 150,000 Italians would occupy Ethiopia, but the occupiers found themselves tasked with controlling over 1,000,000 sq. kilometers of some of the harshest topography in the world and home to some of the most tenacious and courageous peoples, many of whom joined in a protracted guerilla war.

Initially official international response was minimal. The only country to protest the Italian aggression and occupation was Mexico. A year later, five other countries…China, New Zealand, the Republic of Spain (fighting its own civil war against Fascism), the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were the only nations not to recognize Italy’ right of control over Ethiopia. However by 1940 only Stalin’s Russia recognized Selassie as the rightful leader, since at the time and prior to the isolationist leaning U.S. entry into WWII, America was considering acknowledging Ethiopia as part of the Italian empire.

 

ethiopia officer telegraph 1935

Ethiopian Royal Guard Soldier
Still bearing the original tag affixed to an album photo in 1935,  an officer of the Telegraph Corp is shown in his dress uniform complete with lion fur fringed epaulets and cap. Unfortunately the country’s communication system was such that the military had in most part to rely on runners and there was but one field telephone in service.

* * *

On June 30, 1936, after Italian forces occupied Addis Ababa forcing him into exile, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie made a personal and electrifying appeal to the League of Nations which had convened in Geneva, Switzerland. His speech, warning of the threat of Fascism, was heckled by the Italian representatives, but brought him into the world spotlight as a champion of his people and an inspirational call to defend the weak against the violently strong. His statements included the following prophetic warning:

“If a strong government finds it can destroy a weak people, then the hour has struck for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment. It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.”

His words went unheeded, the League taking no action. On February 19-21, 1937 Addis Ababa was the scene of a bloody massacre of some 10,000 civilians including half the younger, educated population, shot, beheaded, and bayonetted by Italian troops with the pretext being an attempted and failed assassination attempt against Marshal Rodolfo Graziani the Viceroy and Governor General of Italian East Africa. It was one of the largest mass murders prior to the start of WWII.

 

ethiopia hanging

Souvenir Photo
An Italian soldier snapped this image of blindfolded Ethiopians as well as his pith helmet wearing comrades during one of countless public executions.

* * *

The Italians also operated notorious prisons, including Nokra located on an island on the Red Sea where prisoners suffered a mortality rate of 58%. The general Fascist attitude toward their colonial subjects was summed up by Gen. Badoglio when he stated, “the whole population of Cyrenaica should perish.”

In another instance, the Italian commander Graziani, employing Somali and Libyan mercenaries along with his Italian troops, successfully launched the decisive battle against the Ethiopian resistance on the Southern Front in mid-April 1936. His summary report of the victory indicated some 650 Italian casualties while the numbers exceeded several thousand Ethiopians. He commented, “Few prisoners as is the custom of Libyan troops.” While under Italian command who voiced no disapproval, the Libyans implemented their own “total war.”

Conquering Italian Troops 1937

axis Mussolini oct 1943

1937 Photo -Conquering Italian troops in High Spirits

Eventually an estimated 500,000 Ethiopians died as the result of Italy’s invasion and occupation, a genocidal policy that history relegated to its dusty back pages.

Italy would continue to control Ethiopia while the world lurched toward WWII. Then on June 10, 1940 Mussolini decided to enter the World War on Hitler’s side in order to share in the spoils. His forces attacked France via the western Alps, but suffered from poor leadership and freezing temperatures, obsolete weapons, without even adequate cooking pots or winter clothing. In the ensuing border area battles, the French sustained 40 killed, 84 wounded, 150 missing. The Italians lost 631 killed, 2,361 wounded and 600 missing not to mention some 2000 cases of frostbite. Later in Greece, Italian forces were driven back again, in this case losing some 14,000 dead and 25,000 missing. Hitler was called upon  to rescue his Italian allies by sending in his own troops and as a result did not meet his original schedule for attacking the Soviet Union, losing precious time, and perhaps the war in Russia and the War itself.

 

ethiopia Selassie man Oerlikon 1935

Attack on Dessie – Emperor Selassie Fights Back
The photo shows the Emperor at the controls of a Swedish made Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun. While the scene appears posed, it recreates an actual event. After learning that Selassie would be inside the vacated Italian consulate building, the Italians dropped bombs on the city, causing moderate damage and creating panic in the civilian population who had never experience aerial bombardment. The Emperor went unscathed while the bombing of civilians brought international attention.

* * *

In late January 1941, British and its Commonwealth troops (Indian, Nigerian, Ghanaian, South African, East African), launched attacks from bases in Sudan and Kenya against Italian-occupied Eritrea and Somaliland. By mid-February, 1941, Italian troops in Eritrea had sought sanctuary in the rugged mountains, for the most leaving their outposts in the hands of the Allies. By late March, German and Italian forces were evacuating by ship from Eritrea as British forces continued their successful operations against them. In one of the large engagements fought at the Battle of Keren involving tanks and infantry, the British recorded 536 killed, 3229 wounded while Italian casualties totalled some 6500.

On April 1, the Eritrean capital city of Asmara surrendered as an open city, the Allies collecting 5,000 Italian prisoners, the remaining forces making an effort to escape back into Ethiopia. By April 4th, Italian troops had fled the capital of Addis Ababa under threat of imminent capture by British forces who shortly took the city without opposition. On May 5, Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie made an historic return to the capital, marking to the day that he had been forced to flee Italian forces five years previously.

By May 16, Amba Alagi, the last major Italian stronghold in Ethiopia, lacking drinking water and counting nearly 290,000 casualties, began surrender negotiations. On May 17, 1941, Duke Aosta, the Viceroy of Italian East Africa, surrendered to the British followed on November 27 by the surrender of General Nasi, thus effectively ending Italian control of the area although some Italian guerrilla resistance continued until Italy surrendered in 1943, thus officially ending the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. It was Gen. Badoglio, the conqueror of the Ethiopians, who replaced Mussolini as Prime Minister after the dictator’s fall from power. Badoglio then surrendered Italy to the Allies.

Italian forces in East Africa would be captured en mass by Allied forces and during fighting on the Eastern Front alongside their German allies 87, 795 Italian personnel were killed or MIA, another 35,000 wounded. Over the ensuing decades, Italy was only able to repatriate the remains of 10,542 of its soldiers from the Russian Front, and of those only 2,799 were identified.

 

victory celebration

Selassie portrait

Victory Celebration
A rare private snapshot shows Emperor Haile Selassie standing on the main street of Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, the day of his return to the liberated capital. The roadway is lined with smiling troops while two young riflemen aim for the cameraman. Today, May 5 is still celebrated as “Ethiopian Patriots’ Victory Day.”

temporary comrades

Temporary Comrades-in-Arms
The body language of an Italian Alpini trooper and a German Army corporal standing at their guard post could be interpreted as reflecting the differences between their individual and national personalities.

* * *

After the overthrow of Mussolini and as a result of the Armistice of Cassibile on September 8, 1943, Italy was split between the pro-fascist forces allied with Nazi Germany and anti-Fascist forces with Allied allegiances. The Germans exacted brutal reprisals against the Italians they saw as traitors, executing thousands and sending thousands more into slave labor.
Italy paid the price in blood, nearly a quarter million of its military killed and another 150,000 civilians perishing, a significant percentage caused by its former German ally.

1948: Aftermath
War crimes charges against Fascist Italy, while assaulting pre-WWII Ethiopia and during the war in Greece and Yugoslavia, were never officially recognized or prosecuted as the both the post-war Italian government and the Allies preferred to ignore them—in fact, actively denying and covering them up since they were now more concerned with the threat of the Communist Party in Italy. However, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, late Italian ruler of Ethiopia, was sentenced in 1948 to 19 years in prison for his collaboration with the Nazi Party. Although he only served four months. (He later became active in a neo-fascist party, dying of natural causes in 1955 at age 72. Public money funded a monument to him in 2012.)

 

 

BIO

Paul Garson SelfiePaul Garson lives and writes in Los Angeles, his articles regularly appearing in a variety of national and international periodicals. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and USC Media Program, he has taught university composition and writing courses and served as staff Editor at several motorsport consumer magazines as well as penned two produced screenplays. Many of his features include his own photography, while his current book publications relate to his “photo-archeological” efforts relating to the history of WWII in Europe, through rare original photos collected from more than 20 countries. Links to the books can be found on Amazon.com. More info at www.paulgarsonproductions.com or via paulgarson@aol.com

 

 

The Art of Fashion

by Natalia Jheté

 

ABC's of Fashion

ABC’s of Fashion

 

Popovy art

Popovy art

 

ANTWERP The Next Chapter Dries van Noten

ANTWERP The Next Chapter Dries van Noten

 

Hats off Thom Browne

Hats off Thom Browne

 

Nude

Nude

 

 

King Cat

King Cat

 

Hats 0ff Yoshi

Hats 0ff Yoshi

 

 
Natalia JheteMiami native, Manhattan resident, Natalia Jheté is steadily making her mark while pursuing both illustration and fashion design. Natalia attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco for women’s wear design and soon after moved to New York City. After several design internships Natalia realized that she could use her background as an illustrator to open doorways into the industry, and she hasn’t stopped yet. Currently, Natalia is working as a freelance fashion illustrator, contributing to magazines and editorials, as well as designing for the promising new brand Jheté.

 

You can see more of Natalia’s work here:

Rockoff Lizut

April Fool

by Sandra Rokoff-Lizut

 

Why did I believe
our milkman
was leading a cow
down our city street that spring morning

First, weird things
happen. (After all,
it was 1971 in Santa Fe).

Second, we had our milk
delivered then, by a local dairy—
glass-bottled, cream-topped, unpasteurized.

Third, my ex-husband
was absolutely convincing.
I never doubted a thing he told me.

 

 

 

On Pollywog Pond

 

The young girl’s ankles
bend to greet each other.

Red nose drips
colt-legs wobble
mittened hands pose
to hold ice at bay.

Lips and cheeks chap
toes loose ability to twinkle.

But her mind glides,
spins, jumps,
stops so fast
silver blades spit shavings.

 

 

 

As Oregon winter begins

 

autumn weeps
its last leaves
on dark dank
afternoons

bare limbs
bravely
bare
their vulnerability

grey sheets
unravel
in an
unfailing
cacophony
of rain drops

 

 

BIO

Sandra Rokoff-LizutSandra Rokoff-Lizut, retired educator and children’s book author (published by Macmillan, Holt Reinhart & Winston, and Hallmark Inc.), is currently both a printmaker and poet. She is a member of Oregon Poetry Association and first place award winner in their Spring 2014 contest, Mary’s Peak Poets, Poetic License, Gertrude’s, and a weekly writing salon. Rokoff-Lizut volunteers by teaching poetry to middle-schoolers at the Boys and Girls Club in Corvallis. She also studied poetry through OSU as well as at Sitka and Centrum. Previous publications include Illya’s Honey, The Bicycle Review, Wilderness House Review, The Penwood Review, Wild Goose Poetry Review and Verseweavers.

 

 

 

 

The Art of Linda Tillman

Celebrating Midcentury Modern

 

1957 Dodge Convertible

1957 Dodge Convertible

 

Corgi on White Eames Chair

 

Three Cats Neimeyer

Three Cats Neimeyer

 

Car Wash

Car Wash

 

Great Dane's Room

Great Dane’s Room

 

Newlywed's Suburbia

Newlywed’s Suburbia

 

Airlines

Airlines

 

Two Cats Z Chairs

Two Cats Z Chairs

 

Guitar Mandolin

Guitar Mandolin

 

Golden Retriver Pulling Float

Golden Retriever Pulling Float

 

Dogs Watching TV

Dogs Watching TV

 

 

BIO

linda tillmanA graduate of Syracuse University School of Art and New York University, I have been a textile, apparel and home products designer for three decades, working in the New York and Los Angeles garment and design districts. I began painting canvases in 2004 and have experimented with various styles. I started with a series of large expressionist botanicals and have since moved on to more illustrative studies of mid century modern themes. As a long time collector of Eames Era furnishings, I find the subjects fun and inspiring. I like to add my own twist to the sometimes stark Eames elements by posing pets in the settings. I am also intrigued by the futuristic space age themes from the period, and like to add mystery and humor to my works.

I currently live and work in my suburban home in Greensboro, North Carolina. I have two Flat-Coated Retrievers and two mixed breed cats who make my home a warm and happy place. When I am not designing or painting, I am usually out working in my gardens.

 

To see more work, go to:
FaceBook Page: Artist Linda Tillman
Etsy Store: LTillmanArt
Ebay Store: ALT Gallery
Website: http://www.artistlindatillman.com

See more of Linda’s work, Here.

Cliff May House

Designer of the Dream:
Cliff May and the California Ranch House

by Mary A. van Balgooy

 Cliff May

In 1934, Architectural Digest published another edition presenting beautiful black-and-white photographs of elegant houses and imposing buildings by prominent southern California architects. This particular issue included works by Gordon B. Kaufmann, designer of buildings such as the Athenaeum at the California Institute of Technology (1930), Denison Library at Scripps College (1930), and the Times Mirror Building in Los Angeles (1931-1935); George Washington Smith, renowned for his Spanish colonial revival style homes in and around Santa Barbara, Bel Air and Pasadena; and Wallace Neff, noted for his Spanish colonial revival houses in Bel Air and the Pasadena area.1 In addition to these well-known architects, the magazine also featured a house designed by Cliff May, who had no architectural training and little building experience. Moreover, the home included in this publication was only the second house May had designed and built. But it would mark the beginning of a long and prolific architectural career for May. When he died in 1989 at the age of eighty-one, he had designed numerous commercial buildings, over one thousand custom homes, and several tract house plans resulting in more than eighteen thousand tract houses.2 But out of all of his work, this southern California native is best known and remembered for developing the suburban dream home of the 1940s and 1950s—the California ranch house.

Cliff May Sunset office

Cliff May’s family background and childhood greatly influenced his work. Born to Beatrice Magee and Charles Clifford May in 1908 in San Diego, May was a sixth-generation Californian through his mother, a descendent of the distinguished Estudillo and de Pedrorena families of San Diego. Both families not only had served in a number of important military, political, economic, and social positions under Spanish, Mexican, and American rule, but also had owned several large ranchos in present-day San Diego and Riverside counties. In addition, they had owned land in Old Town San Diego and it is here that they had built their main residences: Casa de Estudillo and Casa de Pedrorena. Built after 1845, Casa de Pedrorena was one of the first frame houses in Old Town. Casa de Estudillo, on the other hand, was constructed almost twenty years earlier as a one-story, U-shaped adobe house that was common in southern California throughout most of the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century both families’ vast ranchos had disappeared and only their town houses had survived.3 Furthermore, the Estudillo House was restored as a museum in 1910 and publicized as “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” becoming part of the growing movement to preserve the romance of California’s rancho days.4 Thus, as the young May grew up in San Diego he could easily visit the former houses of his California ancestors.

May became familiar with two other nineteenth-century ranch houses during his youth, too. His aunt, Jane Magee, operated a lima bean farm on Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores in Oceanside. Once belonging to Pío Pico and his brother, Andrés, the rancho included two houses by the time the Magee family leased the property in the 1880s: the Rancho Santa Margarita and Las Flores Adobe. Rancho Santa Margarita, built in succession over time in the nineteenth century, is a traditional U-shaped adobe house while the Las Flores Adobe, built after 1865, is in the Monterey style. It was on this farm that May spent many summers with his aunt living in the Las Flores Adobe and next to the Rancho Santa Margarita.5 As seen in May’s writings and designs, these two ranch houses in addition to the Estudillo House would profoundly shape his ideas on the ranch house of the twentieth century.

Cliff May sign

Even though May excelled in music as a pianist and saxophonist, he followed his father’s wishes and in 1929 enrolled at San Diego State College as a business major. However, he left college after two years primarily because of the economic realities of the Great Depression and “to be on his own.”6 To support himself, May began to design and build furniture, a trade he learned as a young man from his parents’ neighbors, the Styris family, who were professional furniture makers.7

May designed his furniture in the latest style of the 1920s: Monterey. Monterey was originally created by Frank Mason and his son George for the Los Angeles-based, home-furnishing company, Barker Brothers. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, early forms of Monterey (1929-1932) are similar to Mission-style furniture except that Monterey is finished with paint, hand-painted flowers, California tile, wrought-iron strapping, and rope decoration.8

To sell his work as well as obtain commissions, May placed his furniture in a new house for sale. When the house sold in part because of the furniture, May installed his furniture into another new house on the market and to his delight that house quickly sold, too. After experiencing such admiration for his furniture, May decided to design and build a house himself and worked out an agreement with real estate developer and his future father-in-law, Roy C. Lichty.9 Lichty, who owned several lots in San Diego that he could not readily sell because of the Great Depression, agreed to put up land and money for May to build a house. In return, May would provide the labor and if the house sold, they would split the profits in half.10 May drew up the plans and with the help of a master carpenter built his first house in 1932 in Talmadge Park, San Diego.11 Filled with May’s handcrafted Monterey furniture, the house sold for $9,500 to Colonel Arthur J. O’Leary.12

Cliff May house

May built his second house in 1933 with financial backing from a local grading contractor, O. U. Miracle.13 The house sold for $9,500 to Captain William Lindstrom.14 A year later, Architectural Digest featured the Lindstrom’s house in its 1934 issue. For a young man in his twenties, May was beginning to enjoy phenomenal success as a builder of houses. In fact, soon after the Lindstrom house appeared in Architectural Digest, other magazines featured May’s houses including American Home, California Arts & Architecture, and Sunset.15

By 1937 May had constructed over fifty houses and several non-residential buildings in the San Diego area.16 His early houses were very much based on the nineteenth-century ranch houses he had come to know in his childhood. Generally, May designed his houses as asymmetrical, one-story dwellings with a low-pitched roof and wide overhanging eaves. One room deep, it was crucial that the house take an L- or U-shaped configuration to form a patio or courtyard in the back so that the rooms of the ranch house faced or opened into these areas. Like the California adobes of the nineteenth century, May’s houses did not include an interior hallway. Instead an exterior corredor or covered veranda served as the primary hallway of the house. May also designed his houses so that they presented a blank façade to the street, however, he modernized his ranch houses with the use of large picture windows for the rooms facing the back.

May built his houses in two styles. His “Mexican Haciendas” were in the Spanish colonial revival style and featured red tile roofs, coarsely plastered walls, and deeply inset windows and doors with rough-hewn wooden lintels and shutters. By deliberately creating a crude, handcrafted appearance on the exterior of his haciendas, May’s houses are very similar in look and feel to nineteenth-century California adobes such as the Estudillo House in San Diego. In contrast, his “Early California Rancherias” resembled the vernacular architecture of the West in the nineteenth century with their wood-shingle roofs and board-and-batten walls.17 Clearly, both styles worked well for May and he continued to elaborate on them after he moved to Los Angeles during this period.

Cliff May ranch plans

When May moved to Los Angeles on the advice and help of John A. Smith, a former client, his career flourished.18 Smith not only provided May with financial backing from his firm, the First National Finance Corporation of Los Angeles, but also introduced him to Alphonzo Bell, real estate developer of Bel Air during the teens and twenties. With Bell’s advice and Smith’s money, May bought land in West Los Angeles and began his first major tract development.19 Called Riviera Ranch, the tract consisted of twenty-four homes on 2/3 to 1-acre parcels of land starting at $15,000. May advertised his development as “Exclusive Early California Ranches in a Planned Community on the last of the Great California Ranchos, San Vicente y Santa Monica.”20 Each house, he claimed, recreated “the romantic charm of early-day California Ranch life” but with all of the modern conveniences.21 One-story and shaped in a splayed U, the Riviera Ranch houses consisted of three or more bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and sunroom. They also had several outdoor patio areas and a garage. The style of the houses reflected May’s work in San Diego. Buyers could chose between a “hacienda” and “rancheria.” But more importantly, May specifically added other elements to this tract development to create “a rancho atmosphere.” Each home included stables, a tack room and paddock for horses; a hand-split redwood rail fence surrounding the lot; and a “ranch” gate which opened to a driveway, horse stables, and paths leading to various horse trails May formed through the development. In addition, May built a home here for his family that was featured in several magazines including Architectural Digest, Architectural Forum, House Beautiful, House and Garden, Sunset, and in both of Sunset’s Western ranch house books.22 Moreover, he used his house as model for designing over fifty custom homes.23

Although May continued to design houses for middle-to-upper-class clients, he also began to design for another profitable and large segment of the building market—the average American family. After examining the residential construction market in 1939, Architectural Forum selected one of May’s recently built houses as a “satisfactory low cost house.”24 The house, under 1,000 square feet, consisted of a living room, kitchen, dining room, two bedrooms and a bath at a cost of $3,550—a price according to Architectural Forum that met “the $35-a-month budget of the average U. S. citizen in the average U. S. community.”25 Unfortunately most American families would have to wait to enjoy such a home for World War II curtailed the construction of houses. May like other architects at the time, therefore, turned his attention to designing housing for defense workers.26

Once the war ended, housing had reached a critical situation. Residential construction had fallen far behind due to depression and war.27 Millions of families needed homes and it was in this atmosphere that the ranch house grew extremely popular and Cliff May enjoyed incredible success. Although many magazines would publicize May’s ranch designs, two major magazines particularly promoted him so that he became recognized as the leading designer of ranch houses in the 1940s and 1950s in the United States.28

Cliff May ranch home

Sunset magazine was May’s first major promoter. After World War II, Sunset was the top selling magazine in and of the West. Each month Sunset presented topics for its male and female readers on travel, food, houses, and gardens.29 Beginning in 1944 Sunset devoted several major articles on the ranch house and Cliff May.30 In 1946, Sunset magazine published Sunset Western Ranch Houses in collaboration with May. The book consisted of forty-three ranch house plans designed by various architects and builders, however, Cliff May’s work dominated with at least seventeen designs.31 Sunset Western Ranch Houses found instant success: 50,000 copies sold and it went through four printings.32

Throughout the late 1940s and into the 1950s Sunset continued to promote May’s ranch houses in magazine articles and by hiring him in 1951 to design their new corporate headquarters in Menlo Park. When completed, Sunset offered daily tours of its new 30,000 square-foot “suburban Western home” to the public and actively publicized it in their magazine.33 Clearly, May was one of the magazine’s favorite builders because in 1958 when Sunset produced one more book on Western ranch houses, it featured only Cliff May’s designs.34

Sunset magazine may have launched the ranch style and May’s designs in the West, however, it was House Beautiful that gave May’s ranch houses national attention. A Hearst magazine dedicated to home design and decoration, House Beautiful first did a full-length feature on Cliff May in 1946. Titled “Meet a Family That Really Knows How to Live,” the 26-page article focused on how May and his family lived in their Riviera Ranch home.35 But it was in 1948 that House Beautiful advanced May’s career when it built one of his ranch designs in Los Angeles. Called the “Pace-Setter House,” House Beautiful not only devoted a full issue to the house but also let the public tour the home they decorated, furnished, and landscaped.36 The house, like Sunset Western Ranch Houses, was an instant success with the public. After the article was published, May received twenty commissions to build this design all over the United States.37

Cliff May traditional ranch

With all of the attention May received after the war, it is important to ask why the ranch house appealed so much to the postwar generation. Certainly, magazines played a major role with their admiring articles on the ranch house.38 Movie stars like Olivia de Havilland and Gregory Peck, who lived in ranch homes, also added to its attraction.39 But more importantly, the ranch house with its rambling, open plan and walls of windows became associated with “the California way of life” of living casually, comfortably, and out-of-doors. After living in cramped accommodations, often with relatives, the ranch house seemed to fulfill the postwar buyer dream of enjoying wide, open spaces indoors and out all year round without the formalities associated with other house styles. And one did not need to live in California to enjoy ranch house living. As long as a family lived in a ranch house built with the latest technological advances in heating and cooling, they could enjoy ranch house living anywhere in the United States.40

And May designed what the public wanted. By the 1940s, he had largely abandoned the formal Spanish colonial revival style. Instead, he expanded on the vernacular architecture of the nineteenth-century West on the exterior of his houses with International Modern ideas for the interior. Hence, during this period, May’s houses are typically one-story dwellings with low-pitched, wood-shingle roofs and board-and-batten walls. On the interior, his houses are designed with free-flowing open plans, walls of windows (the larger size as well as quantity), and indoor spaces connected to the outdoors by the use of the same paving materials inside and out, extension of indoors planters to the outdoors, and arrangement of sliding glass doors leading into the backyard garden.41

In 1952, May’s ranch houses became available on a much wider basis for the middle-class American family. May, along with his associate architect Chris Choate, designed a suburban tract house. A subdivision using the plan was then built in Cupertino.42 Because of the success of this project, May and Choate formed the Ranch House Supply Corporation in 1953 to sell their designs in California to licensed builders. Success struck again. Before the year was out, May and Choate had sold their plans to nearly thirty builders throughout California. Thus, May and Choate expanded their company in 1954 to include the West and southern areas of the United States.43

Cliff May advertisement

May’s success as a suburban tract designer continued with the “Magic-Money House.” In 1953, the W & J Sloane Furniture Company constructed, furnished, and landscaped this ranch design on the roof of their six-story Beverly Hills store building.44 Advertised as a house for “young people with young incomes,” the Sloane company estimated that 35,000 people had visited this two-bedroom model house only four months after its opening. As a result, W & J Sloane built another Magic-Money House for their store in San Francisco. But this was not the only promotion that May received for the house. As W & J Sloane promoted the design, several subdivisions of Magic-Money Houses were built throughout California. By 1954 over one thousand Magic-Money Houses had been built. Moreover, the house received additional recognition when it was selected for exhibition at the Ninth Annual Los Angeles Home Show in June 1954.45

As the Magic-Money House grew in popularity so did Cliff May and the ranch house. In 1955, more than eight out of ten tract houses built in the United States were in the ranch style and Cliff May was the leading designer.46 Not only could May point to the number of ranch houses and non-residential buildings he designed and built but also the professional appointments he served and awards received. From 1940-1950 May was president of the Los Angeles division of the Building Contractors Association and from 1946-1952 a staff consultant to House Beautiful magazine. In 1947, 1952, and 1953 May won design awards from the National Association of Home Builders. Later he received an Award of Merit for Residential Design and Construction from House and Home in 1956 and the “Hallmark House” award from House and Garden in 1958.47 But, by far, May’s greatest success occurred when Sunset magazine produced a second Western ranch house book that featured his work exclusively—an accomplishment few architects have achieved.

Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May presents a broad sampling of May’s postwar work as well as the evolution of his Modernist ideas towards housing. The most important and creative of these are the ranch houses he designed for his family. In 1949 May remodeled his Riviera Ranch House in West Los Angeles expanding on the indoor-outdoor living concept by replacing fixed windows with sliding glass doors and enlarging the patio area in the backyard.48 However, May went even further with “bringing the outdoors in” as well as the idea of open planning when he built an “Experimental House” for his family in the early 1950s.

Cliff May house

A bold design, May created this house as a one-story, rectangular plan with a 288-square-foot open skylight down the center of the roof, glass walls, and only three interior walls for two bathrooms and a kitchen. Consisting of approximately 1,800 square feet of living space, May’s family of five formed different rooms through the use of movable partitions. The family lived in the house for two years while May learned how his open plan and sizeable skylight worked for the family.49 From their experiences May designed and built “Mandalay,” his last home for his family.

Mandalay integrated the design of the Experimental House with May’s latest thinking on the ranch style and Modernist ideas. Built in Sullivan Canyon in West Los Angeles in 1956, May designed Mandalay as a one-story dwelling with wings projecting at right angles from a central spine.50 He covered the low-pitched roofs with pebbles from a California creek bed and in two sections he cut skylights extending from one end of the roof to the other. He also extensively utilized glass walls, sliding glass windows, and indoor/outdoor planters—all design elements used in the Experimental House. More importantly, May added a new concept to the idea of bringing the outdoors in. Not only did he use the same paving materials inside and out but also the same ceiling and wall materials. Wooden roof beams and rafters as well as board-and-batten and white-plastered walls flowed from the outdoors in. Moreover, May included radiant heating in the patio terraces and outdoor lighting; ideas that he used in his other homes to make the outdoors feel as part of the indoors at night.

In arranging the rooms of the house May combined open planning with private spaces for the family. A large house, consisting of 6,300 square feet, May designed the entry, kitchen, and living, dining, and family rooms as one open area with no intervening doors. However, in creating spaces for the bedrooms, dressing rooms, and bathrooms, May did not make use of partitions as he had in the Experimental House. Instead, he built interior walls and doors to provide privacy for these rooms.

Cliff May ad

What is most interesting about Mandalay was May’s ideas about the ranch style. Although May designed the house as an asymmetrical, one-story dwelling, the plan was complex, forming courtyards on both sides of the house rather than having the main courtyard in the center. The roof was low-pitched with wide overhanging eaves but covered with rock rather than wood shingles. May included board-and-batten as well as white-plastered walls but felt that he needed to give the house “a sophisticated touch of the [Spanish] past.” To achieve such a worldly look, he added Spanish, Mexican, and French architectural crafts and decorative elements: a sixteenth-century Gothic grille, historic doors, lighting fixtures, and wrought-iron door handles, and antiquated books.51 Indeed, May’s California ranch house of the 1950s resembled a Contemporary Modern house rather than a nineteenth-century California adobe that he once strove to emulate in the 1930s.

Throughout the rest of his life, Cliff May would continue to design award-winning houses and non-residential buildings, including the famous Robert Mondavi Winery building that has appeared on Mondavi wine bottle labels since the 1960s.52 Yet, May was more than a designer of ranch houses and commercial buildings. He was an innovator, too. During his career he developed new flooring, heating, cooling, lighting, and wall systems. He also experimented with modular and prefabricated construction after World War II.53 And he continued to design and build furniture.54 But because May did not become a licensed architect until 1988, a year before he died, he never received recognition for his designs nor innovations by the profession’s association, the American Institute of Architects.55 In addition, although scholars recognized May’s contribution for developing the California ranch house, the style itself was generally considered a vernacular rather than an exceptional or significant architectural style, and thus, not truly worthy of a lengthy study. However, this is beginning to change.

The California ranch house has reached its fiftieth anniversary, prompting a growing fascination in this “new” historic architectural style and Cliff May. Indeed, local historical groups have begun to arrange lectures about May and organize tours to view his works. Hennessey & Ingalls, a company that specializes in republishing “classic” architectural books, lately reprinted Sunset Western Ranch Houses and Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May making them available again to the general public. Moreover, two of May’s houses—the Lindstrom House and Experimental House—were recently listed as historic landmarks.56 Most of all, historians are now seriously researching the ranch style and interpreting it as the significant architectural style of the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, they are recognizing Cliff May for not only defining the California ranch house but also as the major designer of the American dream home of the 1940s and 1950s—a style that is still built extensively today.

 

This article was originally published in the Southern California Quarterly 86, no. 2 (2004). No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

 

BIO

Mary van Balgooy

Mary A. van Balgooy is an award-winning museum professional who has worked in a variety of institutions, including archives, botanic gardens, historic houses, historical societies, museums, preservation organizations, universities, and governmental agencies at city, county, and federal levels with major responsibilities for administration, collections, education and interpretation, fundraising, preservation, and public relations.

Mary is vice president of Engaging Places, LLC, and the first executive director of the Society of Woman Geographers (SWG), an international membership association based in Washington, D.C.

More on Cliff May

 

 

Notes:
1 Architectural Digest IX [1934]. For more information on these architects and their designs see David Gebhard and Robert Winter, Architecture in Los Angeles: A Compleat Guide (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), 18, 122, 232, 339, 375, 415.
2 May’s career spanned almost sixty years. Sam Hall Kaplan, “Cliff May: Designer of Dream Houses,” Los Angeles Times, 29 October 1989, sec. K; Brendan Gill, “Remembering Cliff May,” Architectural Digest 48 (May 1991): 30.
3 David Bricker, “Cliff May” in Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California, ed. Robert Winter (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 283; R. W. Brackett, A History of the Ranchos of San Diego County, California (San Diego: Union Title Insurance and Trust Company, 1939), 22-25, 64-66; “Casa de Estudillo,” 1999-2001 <http://www.sandiegohistory.org/links/oldtown.htm#estudillo> (30 December 2001); Sally B. Woodbridge, California Architecture: Historic American Buildings Survey (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988), 202-203.
4 Sally Bullard Thornton, “Hazel Wood Waterman” in Winter, ed., Toward a Simpler Way of Life, 221-223.
5 Kathie Graler, “Spanish Missions and Adobe” in Settler Communities in the West, July 1994, <https://www.denix.osd.mil/denix/Public/ES-Programs/Conservation/Legacy/Settler/sett6.html> (22 Jan. 2002); Cliff May, interview by Marlene L. Laskey, 1984, Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, viii.
6 Bricker, “Cliff May,” 284. In his oral history, May stated he took all upper division business courses when he first enrolled. After completing those courses he did not want to take the basic requirement classes for his degree because he was impatient to get out into the world. May interview by Laskey, viii, 79.
7 Ibid., 81.
8 Roger Renick, “Monterey Furniture: California Spanish Revival, 1929-1943,” West Coast Peddler 31 (March 1999): 51-57; Robert L. Smith, et al., Monterey: California Rancho Furniture, Pottery and Art (exhibit catalogue) (Santa Monica: Santa Monica Heritage Museum, 1989).
9 May married Jean Lichty in 1932 at the San Diego Mission. Lecture presented by Jody Greenwald, Mount St. Mary’s College, California, 23 September 2000.
10 May interview by Laskey, 81-83. The history of who May worked with to install his furniture in model homes as well as construct his first house is unclear. In his oral history May states that he placed his furniture in the house of a friend O. U. Miracle, who was a realtor. It was Miracle who then introduced him to his future father-in-law, R. C. Lichty. However, David Bricker writes that May placed his furniture in one of Lichty’s model homes and that May worked in partnership with Miracle, who was Lichty’s grading contactor to design and build the O’Leary house. Bricker, “Cliff May,” 285.
11 At this time, one could practice architecture if one notified the client in writing that one was not an architect. In his oral history May commented that he drew up simple floor plans that would not pass inspection today. In addition, his friend and “mentor,” William F. Hale, taught him how to construct this house. The building of the house started in 1931. May interview by Laskey, 85, 90-91, 93.
12 Ibid., 83; David Bricker, “Built for Sale: Cliff May and the Low Cost California Ranch House” (Master’s Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1983), 111, n. 28.
13 “Cliff May, Miracle Company” advertisement in Architectural Digest IX [1934]: 84.
14 Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 111, n. 28.
15 “Haciendas & Rancherias By Cliff May, Honors by the World” advertisement in Architectural Digest IX [1937]: 160.
16 May’s non-residential works included a women’s club building and two motels. May interview by Laskey, viii; Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 111, n. 28; 115, n. 35.
17 Many people today associate board-and-batten siding with the frontier West. However, board-and-batten became popular during the picturesque movement with the Gothic revival style (1840-1875) and spread to the West as Americans settled on the frontier. William H. Pierson, Jr., Technology and the Picturesque, the Corporate and the Early Gothic Styles, vol. 2 of American Buildings and Their Architects (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 304, 454.
18 John A. Smith was an oil industrialist and banker. He hired May to build a home for him in La Habra after visiting one of May’s completed projects in Presidio Hills, San Diego. Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 112, n. 29.
19 May also built houses in other areas (one in Bel Air and one in Mandeville Canyon) when he first arrived in Los Angeles. Ibid., 12, 112, n. 29; Gill, “Remembering Cliff May,” 30.
20 The development was located on Sunset Boulevard across from the Riviera Country Club Polo Fields. “Open for Inspection, Urban Model Ranch” advertisement in the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 20 October 1940, sec. 5.
21 Ibid.; Cynthia Castle, “The Times Home Hunter,” Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 17 November 1940, sec. 5.
22 This was not May’s first house in Los Angeles. When May moved to Los Angeles, he constructed a house in Mandeville Canyon. Soon after the completion of the Riviera Ranch house, May sold his house and moved to the tract development. “Residence of Mr. and Mrs.
Cliff May, Mandeville Canyon,” Architectural Digest X [1935]: 52-53. Magazines that featured May’s Riviera Ranch house: “Modern Ranch House of Mr. and Mrs. Cliff May, Riviera Ranch, West Los Angeles 24,” Architectural Digest XI [1935]: 4-9; “House in West Los Angeles, California,” Architectural Forum (December 1944): 134-135; Helen Weigel Brown, “Meet a Family That Really Knows How to Live,” House Beautiful (April 1946): 74-99; “Streamlining the Ranch House,” House and Garden (November 1941): 20-21; “What’s the Future of the Ranch House?,” Sunset (June 1944): 10-13; and “More About the Ranch House,” Sunset (June 1944): 38-40. Sunset’s two books are: The Editorial Staff of Sunset Magazine in collaboration with Cliff May, Sunset Western Ranch Houses (1946; reprint, Santa Monica, CA: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1999) and The Editorial Staff of Sunset Magazine and Books under the Direction of Paul C. Johnson, editor of Sunset Books, Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May (1958; reprint, Santa Monica, CA: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1997).
23 Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May, 25. May would remodel Riviera Ranch in 1949.
24 “50 Low Cost Houses,” Architectural Forum 70 (April 1939): 263.
25 “50 Low Cost Houses—House in San Diego, California, Cliff May, Designer,” Architectural Forum 70 (April 1939): 276; “The Low Cost House,” Architectural Forum 70 (April 1939): 261.
26 May’s commissions included temporary barracks in Glendale, a one bedroom duplex development project for Ontario, and single-family defense houses in Wilmington. Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 14-15.
27 Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 232.
28 Other magazines that featured May include Good Housekeeping, Architectural Record, Pic, Better Homes and Gardens, House and Home, Life, and American Home.
29 Cissie Dore Hill, “Sunset: A Century of Western Living, 1898-1998,” California History 78 (Summer 1999): 95-96; Tomas Jaehn, “Four Eras: Changes of Ownership,” Sunset Magazine: A Century of Western Living, 1898-1998: Historical Portraits and A Chronological Bibliography of Selected Topics (Stanford: Stanford Libraries, 1998), 90, 100.
30 “What is the Western Ranch House,” Sunset (February 1944): 12-13; “Is Ranch House the Name for It?,” Sunset (May 1944): 10-13; “What’s the Future of the Ranch House?,” Sunset (June 1944): 10-13; “More About the Ranch House,” Sunset (June 1944): 38-40; “The Changeable, Flexible Ranch House,” Sunset (July 1944): 10-13.
31 The second architect to have the most designs published was Worley Wong with four. Sunset Western Ranch Houses, 30-160.
32 “The Ranch House, Early California to Today,” Sunset (August 1988): 144.
33 “Sunset Magazine Has a New Home in the Country,” Sunset (August 1951): 29; “On the Next Pages . . . We Invite You on a Walk Through Sunset’s New Home,” Sunset (August 1952): 47-54.
34 The second book on ranch houses was titled Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May.
35 Brown, “Meet a Family,” 74-99.
36 “A House to Set the Pace,” House Beautiful (February 1948): 61-71; “The Advantages of Turning Your Back on the World,” House Beautiful (February 1948): 88-89; “A Four-Way Kitchen,” House Beautiful (February 1948): 106-107; “Advanced,” House Beautiful (February 1948): 110-111. The Pace-Setter House was then sold. It still stands today in Los Angeles and is a private residence.
37 Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May, 66.
38 From 1945 to 1947 magazines referred to California domestic architecture four times more than any other state. Thomas Hine, “The Search for the Postwar House” in Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses, ed. Elizabeth A. T. Smith (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1989), 172.
39 Ibid.; Anne Edwards, “Gregory Peck: To Kill a Mockingbird’s Oscar Winner in Pacific Palisades,” Architectural Digest 53 (April 1996): 166-171, 296.
40 Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 210-211; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981), 242, 253.
41 Lesley Jackson, ed., ‘Contemporary’: Architecture and Interiors of the 1950s (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1994), 19, 23-25.
42 Sunset magazine featured the house for their cover article. “More Living Space,” Sunset (November 1952): 44-47.
43 Chris Choate started working for May after World War II. He became May’s associate architect in 1949 and their business relationship lasted until the mid-1950s. Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 14, 82, 85.
44 “Look What’s on Sloane’s Roof!” advertisement in the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 21 June 1953, sec. 5. The store was located at 9560 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills.
45 Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 87-88, 91.
46 Ibid., 81. The design and look of the ranch house in other parts of the country did vary according to climate and tastes.
47 May interview by Laskey, ix.
48 Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May, 24-39.
49 Ibid., 126-131.
50 In Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May, Sunset states that the house was built in 1956. However, other sources including photographs by Julius Shulman indicate that Mandalay was completed by 1953. Ibid., 142; Lecture by Jody Greenwald, 23 September 2000.
51 Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May, 142-159. May lived in Mandalay until his death in the 1980s. During the time that he lived there, he remodeled the house thirteen times. In 1994 the house was demolished. Lecture by Jody Greenwald, 23 September 2000; Annette Andreozzi, “Cliff May’s Definitive Ranch House Demolished,” Los Angeles Conservancy News 17 (May/June 1995): 4.
52 David Colen, “View from Wappo Hill,” Architectural Digest 46 (May 1989): 276-282.
53 May interview by Laskey, xi.
54 Laura Tanner, “Outdoor Furniture That Can Stay Out,” House Beautiful (May 1950): 160-166.
55 Kaplan, “Cliff May,” sec. K. When May moved to Los Angeles he built a house in Bel Air that received a lot of publicity. Apparently some local members of the A. I. A. did not like all the attention May was attracting nor the liberal use of the title “architect” attached to his name since he was not licensed as one. Thus, they threatened May with a lawsuit. Fortunately, May’s friend John Smith stepped in and had his attorneys clear any grievance against him. However, May would not be allowed to use the title “architect,” only designer or builder. Bricker, “Built for Sale,” 12, 113, n. 30; Gill, “Remembering Cliff May,” 30.
56 The Lindstrom House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 13 February 2001 and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Commission designated May’s Experimental House as a Historic-Cultural Monument in May 2002.

 

Walter Thompson

The Roofer

by Walter B. Thompson

 

My daughter’s ex-whatever, the father of her boy, had gone by the nickname Coal Oil back in his teen years. Don’t ask me what it means. I would hear about his exploits when I brought my ham into town for the farmer’s fair on Saturdays. This was when I wasn’t a crazy hag to all them, before I fucked up my right eye and started causing a fright. “Did you hear about Coal Oil, wrecking his Pontiac with Mary Bender in the front seat?” said the men selling their watermelons and their soybeans and their little wooden sculptures of nothing. Coal Oil was always doing something wild and catastrophic with a girl. But the next week, he and his Pontiac would have made off without a scratch, and a new belle would have taken the previous one’s place. His real name was Marvin Fortenberry, but to me, he would always be the Stain.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I came in with the dogs late one summer evening in 1977, and found Marvin Coal Oil Fortenberry, Stain on me and my life, lying across our little futon in the living room of the farmhouse, his eyes shut and his shirt open, a full ten years after he’d left Canterbury and Jenny and our little Hal. I stood there for a few minutes to let my shock subside. I was not, had never been, a woman easily surprised by men and their little magic acts. But even I could admit that his sudden reappearance was an event beyond normal comprehension, a sort of shitty miracle. I’d named him the Stain on account of his tendency to ruin beautiful things, but until then I hadn’t realized how his obstinacy, his refusal to disappear, was what made the name truly fit.

He looked old and tired, which was good. His hair was still long and blond, but greasy too, and he’d ditched his styled goatee for a patchy beard. Across his protruding gut—another new and welcome feature—stretched a fat, pink scar. His new chubbiness in the middle made his legs look spindly and weak, two little straws in black jeans. I still had my shotgun under my right arm. I always brought it with me when I took the dogs out on the property in case I encountered a turkey. Marvin was breathing like a pig, loud and hard. I raised the barrel up and poked it into his fat pincushion belly. He woke up right away with a small shout.

“Stain,” I said.

“Mama Dear,” he said back.

“Don’t call me that,” I said.

“I know now I must be back home, since you’ve got a gun on me.” His voice, once trumpeting and fluid, had sharpened into a scrattle.

“Don’t you think for one second I won’t kill you,” I said.

“Wouldn’t be of any use, Mama Dear, seeing as I’m already lined up to die,” he said, and smiled. The face that had looked so worn and unfamiliar suddenly became itself. Marvin Fortenberry’s smile was like crackling fucking lightning. You could hear it as well as see it, and even I had appreciated that smile in spite of the man who wore it.

I still had the tip of the shotgun barrel pushing into his stomach when Jenny and Hal walked in from the kitchen. “Mama,” my daughter said softly.

“When did he get here, honey, and why’s he on the couch?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the Stain.

“You may be surprised, my dear,” he said, still smiling, “that I don’t have much in the way of strength. I need to nap just about every hour these days.”

“I didn’t ask you,” I said.

“He came into town this morning,” said Jenny. “We ran into each other at the drugstore, and…”

“Jenny invited me to come here,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said. I turned my head around to look at my daughter. She was scared, just like before. The same resignation on her face.

“Granny,” said Hal, who stood next to his mother like a little soldier. “This man has got some stomach cancer.” His blonde hair hung off his forehead in feathery streams. I looked back at Marvin and couldn’t escape the damn resemblance.

“Hal and I had ice cream,” the Stain said, grinning at my grandson.

 *  *  *

Later, the wind came thundering in from the north. I stood out beyond the front porch and smoked five cigarettes in a row and waited for Jenny. It was June, but so far the summer had felt unnaturally dry. The northerly wind meant a summer shower, since they always traveled by way of Kentucky. I watched Poncho, one of the pit bulls, as he dug around the shadows of a gingko tree near the fishpond. Poncho was an ornery bastard, and a storm would upset him. I knew I had to force him into the basement soon. Every little chore, all the things that kept me sane and walking upright with each long day, seemed broken and useless now that the Stain had come back to my daughter. He’ll be dead soon, I reminded myself with each new cigarette.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” was the first thing Jenny said.

“Oh, sweet Jesus. You don’t have to apologize.”

“He was just…there. Picking up a prescription. He looked the same. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I thought he looked like shit,” I said. “Did you put him on the sofa in my room like I asked?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Good. Keep him where I can see him.”

I could feel Jenny looking at me. I offered the pack of cigarettes to her. She pulled one out with a shaky pinch of her fingers.

“You do not, under any circumstances, let him act like a father to that boy.”

She didn’t say anything back. Just stared, like me, at Poncho, who kept circling the same hole he’d been working on for forty minutes. I knew she wouldn’t obey me. It was too much to ask. Hal spent most of his days in the summer wandering the woods near the quarry, at the back edge of my property. He looked for turtles and frogs. I had tried to take him out on turkey hunts, but he hated getting up early and got sick of lifting a gun. Even I, with my crazy bedraggled hair and my ruined eye and my loud, ugly boots, was nothing compared to the monsters he’d invented to keep him company.

“I’m worried for the garden,” Jenny said.

“What’s he going to do to your garden?” I asked.

“Not him. The storm.”

“If you want,” I said, “I can get a few boards and try to set up a gully to divert the flood.”

“I shouldn’t have built it at the bottom of the hill like that,” she said. Her vegetables had been thriving despite the drought, and I liked to tell her it was because she had been happy.

“Sooner or later, the whole damn house is going to be washed away,” I said.

I stubbed out my cigarette in the dry grass and walked towards Poncho, clapping my hands and whistling. He tensed up and looked at me, then barked. “Leave it alone, Poncho,” I said. “It’s just the coming storm fucking with your head.”

  *  *  *

That night I got no kind of sleep. The storm was worse than I would have thought: great metallic bangs and cracks, the wind screaming, Poncho howling from deep under the house. Plus, I had to keep my good eye on Stain, lying in my sofa chair and breathing in that weird little pig way. At a little after two, when the lighting was exploding in a constant blue throb beyond the window shade, I heard him call out in pain. At first it didn’t sound like words, then I realized he was asking for me.

“Mama Dear! Mama Dear!”

I threw the quilt off me and sat on the edge of my bed. His face was moving back and forth, and his eyes couldn’t quite find me. “What’s gotten into you now?” I said.

Finally his fit stopped and he looked at me. “I need a bowl or a bucket,” he said.

“Aw, go on and fuck off,” I said, lying back down.

“Or you’d rather I just puked on myself?” he said.

When I came back from the kitchen and threw the bucket on his lap, I saw that a dark puddle had collected on the white sheet not three inches from where I had been sleeping. My first wild thought was that I had peed myself out of worry, but there was no smell, and I was not such an old lady yet. In between Marvin’s chokes and sputters, I heard a pattering. Then I looked at the ceiling and saw the leak.

I didn’t know Jenny was in the room until she spoke. “That ain’t the only place,” she said. “There’s a bigger one in me and Hal’s room.” She was looking at Stain, who had his face buried in the black plastic bucket.

I walked with Jenny through the hallway that spanned the house, back to front. My grandfather, who’d built the place with his bare hands, had believed that a person shouldn’t have to walk around something when a straight path can be made right through it. Now, his home was beginning to break down. Over the last several years, I had begun to notice the first signs of a house entering its old age: at times when no one else was listening, I heard cracks and sighs in the wood behind the walls. “Did he tell you how long he’s got left?” I asked Jenny. “What kind of medicine he takes? Who his doctor is, for chrissakes?”

“Mama,” she said, and turned around. She had a fury in her face; I could see her wide brown eyes when the lightning flashed. “He’s staying here because it’s the only safe place for him.”

When my daughter got like that, I knew better than anyone, provocation would only set her towards hurting herself. She walked back into her bedroom and I noticed another puddle on the floor of the hallway.

“Mama Dear.” The Stain was standing behind me, holding his bucket up like he was posing for a picture with a newly caught fish. “You ever install a bathroom in this joint, or are you still old fashioned?”

“The outhouse can be found in the same place it’s always been,” I said. “I won’t help you walk, and bring that bucket back so we can use it for the ceiling.”

He nodded. Watching him walk away, I noticed how he had lost his proud country swagger. His belly pulled him towards the earth; his back was hunched. Marvin Coal Oil Fortenberry had traveled back and forth across the country, broken how many hearts and laws, and all he’d become was an old man. When he reached the hill, a few meters into the backyard, I saw him slip and fall on his ass in the mud. I opened the screen door and walked out to him. The wind and rain struck me like a hot, sweaty breath. “Don’t trouble yourself, Mama Dear,” he called. He tried to sit up in the mud and fell down right away without a sound. I pulled the bucket away from his hands and tossed it into the blackness behind me. He’ll be dead soon, I told myself as I lifted him out of the muck. He’ll be dead soon.

  *  *  *

What did Marvin Fortenberry do, you might ask, aside from making my girl believe in things that couldn’t be true, knocking her up and fleeing the state? He stole cars. He broke them down and sold the parts to men who lived in trailers near the Cumberland River. I’d been down to see these men before, once to buy a bitch from a litter of pit bulls and again to threaten a man who’d been stealing hams from my smokehouse. Now I heard the place had become a little hippie refugee camp, with a bunch of lost kids setting up tents and peace flags and skinny-dipping until they shriveled. Still, the rednecks wouldn’t have been forced out. I wondered how they all got along.

The day after the storm, I parked my truck at the bottom of the road that skirted the Canterbury bend of the Cumberland and found out how things worked. The men still had their trailers and the little dirt paths that snuck between the bushes to hide all the stolen vehicles. The hippies were too stoned to know where they were or that they were living in proximity to dangerous people. A young man approached me wearing a little cardboard Indian headdress, shirtless and covered in red river mud. “I knew it!” he kept shouting, following me at a pace of a few meters. I tried to ignore him, but he kept it up too long, so I picked up a stick and threw it at his head.

He cowered and it hit his neck. “Ain’t you got somewhere you can be besides here?” I asked him.

“Mr. Yawkey wants me to watch the path to his trailer in case I see someone…someone tall…a tall man. I’m supposed to yell and scream bloody murder if I see a tall man coming down the path with an intent to do harm.” His accent was strange, probably Midwestern.

“So why are you screaming bloody murder, if I ain’t a tall man?” I said.

“I thought you were the lady who sold dope.”

I shook my head and kept going. Yawkey was the person I was here to see. I could imagine how he’d gotten the hippies to do his bidding—offered them drugs, most likely, or a place to hide in case they had dodged the draft and the government was still after them. He and the Stain had done business back in the day, but something had gone wrong between them, and now they hated each other. Among other reasons, I was there to see if the Stain’s old enemies knew he was back in Canterbury.

Through a crappy plastic window, I saw Yawkey asleep on the shag carpet before I even knocked on his trailer door. He was a fiddle-thin old man with long legs and thick ugly glasses. When he saw who had come calling, he sat up and frowned.

“So you heard too,” he said when I walked inside. The trailer smelled awful, like unwashed clothes and bad coffee and weed. “Coal Oil. That bastard.” So, word had spread.

“I heard, yeah. Did you see him in town?” I asked.

“From what I could tell, he even talked to Jenny at the pharmacy. How’s that sit with you, Mama Dear?”

“It sits awful is how it sits.”

“So, let’s hear it.” Yawkey stretched his arms towards his toes.   He was into yoga and other weird stuff. “Your theories, your hypotheses. Why did Coal Oil Fortenberry come back?”

“Actually, I ain’t got none of that. Don’t want to think about that Stain a second more.”

“I’m sure the government’s on him too. I heard his number had come up for ‘Nam five years back, but can you imagine that asshole—”

“I came to ask,” I said, “if you could point me to some morphine. I’ve got a friend at the old folk’s home outside town. She’s an ex-junkie, so they won’t let her ease her pain.”

Yawkey’s eyes grew small under his glasses. He knew me pretty well, enough to tell when things didn’t fit. Since I had fucked up my eye, it had been harder to tell lies. I guessed that I squinted, and when I did that the scar tissue struck my tear ducts and I started to look upset. Or maybe people simply regarded me as more untrustworthy now, in general.

“That all, Mama Dear?”

“When the fuck,” I said, stepping towards Yawkey as threateningly as I could, “are you idiots going to stop calling me that?”

He smiled, showing me teeth that had grown maroon from abuse of chewing tobacco and God knows what else. “That all, ma’am? I mean, morphine should be a fucking snap. Just a quick jog down to the pharmacy, a few cents in the register.”

“You know I’m good for the money, Yawkey.”

“Aw, hell. With these damn kids around, maybe I can find some right quick,” he said.

“It has to be real stuff. Used in hospitals and all,” I said.

Yawkey sighed again to show he understood and he was sick of looking at me.

The hippie kid was still there when I came out of the trailer. “You sure you’re not here with any dope?” he asked me. I shook my head at him and the strange world that had swallowed him up.

  *  *  *

The Stain spent the next two days sleeping and barfing. The rain came back on the second night and opened the holes in the roof even wider. I refused to let Jenny spend any time tending to Stain. Instead I emptied his bucket and walked him to the outhouse every hour. He couldn’t make it seven yards without slipping in the wet grass.

I took a couple trips into town to see exactly how much people were talking about him. I sat in the back of The Bend, an old dive joint near the train station, and listened to the men’s conversations around the pool tables. There wasn’t much about Stain. A few old stories of his youth: the time he’d thrown a bottle at the retarded mailman. The time he’d slashed his own uncle’s tires. The time he’d knocked up Jenny. But most of the talk was tame. The consensus seemed to be that Marvin Fortenberry had stopped into town briefly then moved on. Canterbury had grown quiet in the Stain’s absence, and nobody wanted to believe that the noise had returned.

In a previous life, as a girl with two good eyes and decent looks and hair that wasn’t rumpled and dirty at all times, I’d cruised around Canterbury every now and again. It was cleaner then: easy, hand-painted shop fronts and men in little suits. Lots of small ugly features crackling under the surface, though, and these things were what had excited me. It had been years since I’d come into The Bend for a drink. It was where I had met my husband, Jenny’s father, but since he’d turned out to be such an unholy bastard, I’d stopped coming back. Now all of the men at the pool tables stared at my eye, of course. But some of them were brave enough to ask me how I was doing.

“Can’t complain, except my roof’s leaking,” I said.

I almost wanted to tell them about the Stain right then and there. “Can’t complain, except the sonafabitch who broke my daughter’s heart is holed up in my house, and if any of you fellas want to come around and tear him to pieces, seeing as he probably did each of you some wrong back in the day, be my guest.” But I held off, thinking of Hal. At his age, if he found out that his father was such a bastard, it would be worse than not knowing his father at all. That was my mission: spare Hal anything worse than a stranger dying of a bad disease.

I wondered what had become of the Stain’s seductive side until I found him sitting next to Jenny on the picnic table outside the back door. He was telling her a story, pushing his hair, greasy and unkempt as it was, across his forehead. The same old play, acting the nervous teenager. When she laughed, I felt sick and left to go tend to my pigs.

I kept them in a pen about fifty yards away from the house. The smokehouse nearby had been on the farm since my grandfather’s time, but no one had used it for anything but storage until I came to run things. It was a sad building, not twenty square feet wide, painted a yellow-white that turned to grey once the sun got low. I had torn down the walls to install a cinder block foundation seven years earlier, but had kept the same 1890’s wood. Lately, I had been noticing the padlock on the smokehouse door had been scraped and tampered with. Today, I saw that the door was wide open.

I heard Hal’s voice before I stepped inside. He was singing. “Lizard little lizard…where did you run? Lizard little lizard…I’ve got a gun.” I paused in the doorway and waited until he noticed I was there and stopped.

“Sorry, Granny,” he said. The sliver of light from the outside shone on half of his face. He crouched underneath two large hams, the only two in the smokehouse. They hung from the same hooks that my grandfather had used, years and years earlier, to hang deer and bear meat in the backyard. The air was unbearable inside, thick with haze and reeking of dead pig. I hadn’t lit the fire pit in weeks since the drought had done so much drying on its own. Besides, I was running out of hams.

“What have I told you about coming in here without me, Hal?” I said. “What have I told you about messing with that lock?”

“I saw a newt. It ran in here and I thought I’d catch it,” he said.

From outside, I heard someone whistling. The sound was deep and crisp, and didn’t seem to belong here with my grandson crouching on the dirty floor. I turned to look outside and saw an old, slim man in a black fedora and a denim jacket leaning over the railing of the pigpen. He was reaching his hand out to one of the sows, trying to attract her with his whistling.

“Granny,” Hal said. “Mr. Fortenberry bought something for me.”

“What’s that?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the man in the hat. He stared down at the pigs, but I could tell that he knew I was looking at him.

“A pair of roller skates. Ordered out of a catalog,” Hal said.

Obviously, the Stain had been talking to Hal while I had been in town. He’d found out that Hal and Jenny liked to watch the roller derbies on Friday nights. An image popped into my mind: the three of them watching television together, Stain with his arm around my daughter, drinking a beer, the satisfied husband.

“How long were you in there?” I asked Hal. He walked up next to me and I placed my arm across his shoulder almost without thinking about it. I could feel the sweat through his shirt.

“Not too long,” he said quietly. Hal had seen the man as well, and was nervous. I told him to run back to the house, and he did so, keeping his head to the ground to avoid looking at the stranger. The man, for his part, didn’t look up until I called out.

He was lean in the face as well as the body, older than me, probably, but clearly in command of himself. He smiled gently, and it made little pockets under his eyes. I walked towards him, tracing my hand along the top of the pigpen fence as I went. By the time I was a few feet away, he had already wished me a good afternoon.

“What’re you here about?” I asked.

“I met Yawkey last night at the Roamer Hotel, and I’ve got that thing you asked him for.” He tipped his hat at me when he was finished speaking. I tried not to laugh at him, but it was impossible to resist. He only smiled back when I did.

“The Roamer Hotel. That’s high living for a drug dealer. You must be doing well for yourself.”

He laughed at me like I’d told a joke, and leaned into the fence with his back arched like he was doing a callisthenic.

“I’ve only been here for a spell,” he said. “You know, odd jobs.” He removed something from an outside pocket of his jean jacket. Yawkey had wrapped the morphine in several paper grocery bags. I felt the heft and shape of a bottle as the man put it in my hands.

I told him thanks, and he did it again: the slow, simple tip of his cap. “To use it safely,” he said without a change of expression, “there’s a little dipper that’s in the bottle cap. Just a couple of drops every six hours.”

“What if I don’t want to use it safely?” I asked.

He dropped his gaze to the ground. “You trying to kill yourself?”

“It’s not for me,” I said.

“Right. Yawkey told me. A friend, right?”

He might have been making a joke, trying to keep the weird conversation going. He might have been harmless. But if I knew Yawkey, I knew that he’d heard about the Stain’s stomach cancer and had put two and two together. “What do you know about morphine?” I asked. “You supposed to be some kind of doctor?”

“No, ma’am. I’m a roofer,” he said.

“What’s Yawkey got you delivering drugs for?”

“Roofing work has been hard in this town. Living at the hotel is a drain on my pocket. Like I said, odd jobs.” He held up his hands and shrugged. “Yawkey has me making a few deliveries, and I heard up in town that your roof was leaking. I took it upon myself to kill two birds with one stone. If that’s all right with you, of course.” Again, he tipped his hat. I would have been irritated, but he seemed genuine, or at least stupid. And it had been a while since a man had shown me such forceful manners.

“You want to fix my roof?” I said. “Hell, I can do that myself.”

“But you haven’t,” he said.

“I’ve been busy.”

“That’s why you should hire me,” he said. “In town, they call you a hell-raiser. Now why take time away from raising hell to fix some stupid old roof?”

I laughed, and he laughed back, looking right in my eyes, like it had been me that had made the joke.

“Fine, fix my roof. I’ll give you a hundred dollars. As long as you can do it in a couple days.”

He smiled and nodded at my offer, then stared at me for too damn long. I looked down at the sow. She was pressing her snout against my leg, in the space between the hem of my skirt and the top of my boot. I suddenly felt odd that I was wearing a skirt in front of this man. Normally I’d have been in pants, but Jenny had been trying to put me in skirts lately, and I had to admit that sometimes it felt good in the heat.

“You smoke hams in there?” he asked.

“And turkeys, or whatever else I can shoot and eat.”

“Been years since I saw an old smokehouse like that.” His accent wasn’t Tennessee. It was more deeply Southern, muddy and squishy. “Your son go hunting with you?”

“He’s my grandson. No, he just likes going in there cause it’s creepy. Like a haunted house.”

The roofer nodded, then looked at his feet. I wondered why he was still trying to make conversation.

“You need ladders? Anything?” I asked him.

“I got a truck, and a Mexican boy to help me. They’re waiting up front.”

“Well,” I said, “you best get started on it, then.”

He smiled and started to walk away, and I immediately saw that he had a pronounced limp. Something was seriously wrong with his left leg.

“Hey,” I called. “What’s the matter with that leg?”

He laughed, this time turning his head up at the sky. “Oh, nothing, except it doesn’t exist,” he said, and pulled up his left pant leg to reveal a long shaft of wood. It ended with a brown boot, which made me notice that his other boot was black. The roofer bent down, knocked on the peg leg with his knuckles, and laughed again.

“Doesn’t that present a bit of problem for a roofer?” I asked. “Getting up and down a ladder?”

“Well, if you don’t believe it, just come and watch,” he said.

I followed him back around to the front of the house. As he passed one of the windows on my bedroom’s side, I saw him take a glance into the dark room. We reached the front, where a Mexican boy who couldn’t be older than fifteen was sitting on the hood of a blue Chevy pickup. There were ladders, paint cans and shingles stashed in the bed. In broken Spanish, the roofer instructed the boy to unload the truck and lean the ladder up next to the front porch. Poncho, who had been watching from under a bush, charged at the boy when he set the ladder up. The boy half-screamed and swung a paint can at Poncho, but didn’t hit. I clapped my hands. “Poncho, shut the fuck up,” I said. The boy cursed under his breath and ascended the ladder with his arms full of equipment, and Poncho wandered away.

“Sorry. The boy scares easily, I guess,” the roofer said.

“What do you need him for?”

“Just watch.” The roofer limped up to the edge of the ladder and called out, “Hey! Garcia!” The boy leaned over the edge of the roof and tossed down a heavy rope. Without any pretext, the roofer started climbing, using just his arms and ignoring the ladder. He was stronger than I might have thought given how skinny he was. The Mexican boy was strong too: he held the rope with a bored expression on his face until the roofer had hefted himself to the top.

“You do that every time, huh?” I asked from the front yard.

“No ma’am. Sometimes the wind just carries me up, like the breath of God.”

A thought jumped into my mind. It told me: this man is as much a roofer as you’re a nun. But the way the roofer laughed at his own joke made me brush the thought away. He was an old cripple—harmless, or at least a man that I could handle if any shit went down.

I headed back inside. Stain lay on the futon in the living room now. He was angry, refusing to speak. I had broken up the conversation at the picnic table. Above us, the roofer and his boy hammered quickly, and in the kitchen, Jenny was making a racket with the pots and pans. Hal was off somewhere, looking for newts or playing with the dogs.

“Stick out your tongue,” I said. I let two drops fall before closing up the bottle and shuffling it back into the paper bags. His head fell back slowly. I saw his eyes close with deep satisfaction.

After a few minutes of him lying still and me sitting close on the edge of the futon, my butt up against his belly, he spoke. “I ain’t here to make trouble now. Just here to die. That doesn’t mean she can’t talk to me if she wants to.”

I wondered what he had seen in his ten years of exile. Maybe he had been to Vietnam and back. Maybe he’d been running the whole time. “You’re in my house,” I said. “You’ll die the way I want you to.”

He shook his head slowly and fluttered his eyes at me.

“Don’t know what you’re trying to do,” I said, and stood up. “Ordering my grandson those roller skates. The boy lives on a farm, Stain. Where’s he supposed to go skating?”

He smiled. The morphine was working—I saw the muscles in his face relax and settle like water. I stood for a while and listened: Stain’s heavy breaths, the hammering and shouting from above, Jenny running the tap. The room turned dark as a cloud passed. I walked to the bedroom and settled on the sofa chair. Quaker, another pit bull, sat on the throw rug and whined at me a few times before resting her head between her front paws.

I fell asleep to the soft thuds coming from the roof. I could tell when the roofer was walking around—there would be a soft pat then a loud thud as his heavy wooden leg took a step. Jenny woke me hours later and said dinner was ready and the roofer had left for the day. I realized I had been thinking about him in my sleep—not dreaming exactly, but drifting upwards to the sound of his footfalls.

  *  *  *

That night I found Jenny curled up on the futon with her arms around the Stain. I hadn’t slept; instead I had been pacing in the backyard and smoking like a teenager. Seeing Jenny lying with a man—this man, worst of all—filled me up with sadness. I just hadn’t been expecting it, and I’d thought my mind was in a place where I could expect anything. The shotgun was in one of the closets in my room. I carried it into the living room and watched the Stain’s face in the moonlight. I imagined lifting the barrel, pointing it to his nose, and pulling the trigger. I imagined how Jenny would scream when I blew off his face. There would be blood on the futon, and Hal running in from his bedroom. It would be a nightmare. “He never loved you, baby girl,” I said in the silence. They kept holding each other close and breathing deeply. I walked outside.

I followed a path in the backyard that eventually led to the woods and the quarry. I didn’t go that far. Instead I stopped at a magnolia tree whose roots pushed up the ground in knuckly welts. The night was hot and calm, and the moon was near full, making the trees and grass in the woods glow almost blue.

I shouted. At first, I screamed to high heaven like the crazy old woman that I was. Just nasty guttural noises from my throat. Then it turned into a word: “Fuckers!” I was only a few feet away from the magnolia. I lifted the shotgun and fired it into the trunk. Bark sprayed everywhere. I felt it on my face, on the scar around my eye. “Fuckers!” I screamed, again and again. It didn’t do much good.

  *  *  *

The next morning, the sun rose hot and angry, as if the end of the drought had offended it in some way. I gave Stain morphine and left him there to struggle with his breathing. Jenny was quiet. She must have sensed that I had seen her on the couch with him. She knew I was leaving for somewhere, but didn’t ask any questions and volunteered to take Hal and the dogs for a walk.

There were many more hippies in the woods this time. I recognized the boy from the other day as he chased a bare-breasted blonde girl down the bed of a creek that tumbled towards the river. As I headed to Yawkey’s, more kids stumbled through the bushes to get a look at me. All of them were so young and so tan. They stared at me like cats ready to pounce. “I’m not your weed lady,” I yelled at them. They kept their distance but stared and stared and stared. I was happy to reach Yawkey’s cinder block steps and rap on his door.

“It’s open,” he called.

The smell was worse on account of the heat. Yawkey sat oddly upright on his couch with his eyes closed. A naked hippie girl was curled up on the shag carpet with her back to me. She stiffened when I opened the door but didn’t raise her head.

“That you, Mama dear?” Yawkey shouted.

“I’m right here,” I said.

He opened his eyes and took off his horrible glasses. I knew he couldn’t see me any better, but he smiled. “I was about to make a margarita,” he said. “Boy if things ain’t getting crazy around here in the heat.”

He rose and walked into his kitchen area, where an unidentifiable brown mess lay strewn all over the counter among a pile of dishes. Yawkey picked up a tequila bottle and took a swig.

“The man you sent to me,” I said. “How’d you find him?”

Yawkey laughed. “You mean Long John Silver? Ain’t it crazy the types that turn up in this town sometimes?”

“Just tell me.”

“You remember Mary Bender? She’s the one who gives these kids their dope. She’d met him through selling drugs at the hotel. Or he fixed her deck, or something. Anyways, he came to me. Heard you’d asked me for morphine, and volunteered to deliver it.” As he walked to a powder blue icebox in the corner of the tiny kitchen, opened it, and pulled out a tray of ice for his margarita.

“So you don’t know why he’s here, in town?” I asked.

Yawkey looked at me and made a show of blinking his eyes innocently, like a maiden from a fairy tale. “You suspicious of him?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I’m asking, Mama Dear, is if you have something to hide.” Yawkey smiled in his sickly way. I felt like kicking him in the kneecap, but I just stood still, like a statue of a moron. He began loading his ice and tequila into a blender. It appeared that these would be the only ingredients in the margarita. “It’s so strange to me,” he continued. “You went through years and years swearing revenge on that dumb Stain that broke Jenny’s heart, and now, all of a sudden—”

“He’s dying,” I said. I blurted it out. “He’s already dead. Just let me make sure it happens how I want it to.”

Yawkey held up his hands in mock innocence. “That sounds like a plan to me,” he said. “You just let me know when he’s finally kicked it, and I’ll put on my grave-dancing shoes.”

The blender started and the girl in the other room shouted something out. Yawkey smiled again.

Without really thinking, I picked up a china bowl from the counter and threw it across the kitchen. It shattered against the wall and left a milky splash. The girl shouted again but still refused to move.

Yawkey yawned. “You come here to fuck with me? I gave you all you wanted.”

“The man with the wooden leg,” I said. “Is he trying to kill Coal Oil?”

“I told you, I don’t know. You should realize by now that as much as we don’t get along, I always tell it to you like it is. From one angry soul to another.” He paused and made a toasting motion towards me with the blender pitcher full of tequila slush, then took a long drink. “And if you really suspect him, why are you here wasting time talking to me?”

“I’m just trying to understand,” I said. The hippie girl groaned when I spoke. Yawkey looked over at her with a grimace. “You best get going, Mama Dear,” he said. “This ain’t a scene meant for your kind eye.”

He glanced at my scar and smiled. I threw open the door. Something was bearing down on me—the heat, the bugs, Yawkey and the hippies, something. I ran, half-sprinted, up the hill to my truck and let sweat mix with the dust on my face and in my hair. I felt surrounded, but there was nothing but the road and the woods.

When I got back Jenny and Hal were still out with the dogs and the roofer and the Mexican boy were striding around on top of the house. As I walked in the front door, the roofer tipped his fedora at me with the sun behind him. I turned my head down. Stain was still asleep, but a strange toxic smell like gasoline and dirt had filled the living room.

“Hey!” I shouted.

He opened his eyes and stared like he had never seen me before. “Where’s Jenny?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I said. “Did the roofers come in and see you?”

He shook his head and shrugged at the same time. I waited there for the rest of the day. At a little after three I heard Jenny and Hal come in the back door. I was irritated to be surrounded by so many people, even if two of them were my daughter and her son. Looking out the front window, I noticed that the Mexican boy had loaded the ladders back into the truck. The roofer stood there, smoking a cigarette and waiting for me.

“So?” I said when I came outside.

“Patched up,” he said. “All the spots you told me about.”

I wanted him gone as soon as possible. “You did good work. Let me get the money from inside.”

With a fast but uncertain flick, he reached and grabbed my arm. He smiled and let his grip loosen as he spoke. “As for payment, ma’am, you needn’t worry now. Why don’t you come and meet me for drinks tonight, and we can settle it then.”

I knew he had motives. I had sensed it all along. If I had been the me from a week before, I would have slapped him or kicked his knee. Ever since seeing Jenny and the Stain on the couch, however, I had lost all my abilities to see inside of people. I told him that a drink would be fine. He let go of my arm and smiled again. That bovine smile. “I just feel it would be easier on all of us,” he said.

  *  *  *

The roofer told me to meet him at the Blue Tavern, right at the bottom floor of The Roamer Hotel. I hadn’t been there in twenty years, and it had turned from a dance hall with light wooden floors into a soggy dive, full of dartboards and mirrors and crooked unpainted tables. I didn’t recognize anyone inside—two black men sat hunched in conversation at one end of the long bar, and the bartender was a pale boy who couldn’t have been more than twenty. He took my order, a bourbon, and darted his eyes around like he had done something wrong.

One of the black fellows stood up and walked to the jukebox. I watched him spread his arms across the glass case and puzzle over the songs for an eternity. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I started.

I was surprised that I hadn’t heard the stomping of his wooden leg on his way in. The roofer wore a light brown suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place if the bar were still a dance hall. I couldn’t decide if his whole fashion, the fedora and this suit and the little red handkerchief poking out of his front pocket, made him look older or younger in its unsuitableness. What was clear was that the man looked comfortable.

“I hope this isn’t strange for you, ma’am,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t mind. Just my daughter and the boy back home. I need to leave them be every now and again.”

“If you want, you can just leave me the money and head home. But I can buy you a drink. You look very nice.”

I had forgotten how I looked. Nothing special: just an old blouse and a pair of jeans, and a few brushes of my hair.

“I’ve got my bourbon right now, thank you, but I’ll let you know if I need more.”

The boy behind the bar poured the roofer a vodka drink. He didn’t seem to want to look at either of us, and turned his back as soon as the roofer had paid him. I decided that I wanted to keep quiet but stay right where I was.

After a long silence, the roofer started talking, answering questions I hadn’t asked him. “Mobile, originally, is where I’m from. My daddy worked on a shipyard, but he was afraid of the water and so was my mother. We moved around, everyone looking for work.”

I nodded with each thing he said. I felt like a stupid dog following a ball, up and down. “Then, there was the war, the first one, and Daddy got killed,” he said. “My mother couldn’t take the grief so I worked to keep her calm and happy. It was hard, for sure.”

For some reason, this part of his story made him smile. He went on: “You wouldn’t believe it, but we moved up to Chicago. I was employed by a company that built some railroad engines, but just as soon as we got up there, I got laid off and started drinking.” He paused and tilted his head. “Then she died, and I really started drinking.”

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“I went all around, the streets and such. I was full of anger, so it was good the army found me. I would’ve done worse than drink and wander. Your grandson’s lucky he’s got two women looking after him. So there was the army for a while. The second war, I was in the Pacific. Did some killing. You don’t need to hear too much of that.”

“I don’t shy from such things,” I said. “Is that where you lost your leg?”

He smiled and chuckled. “I guess I mean I’d rather not talk about it. But as you know, as I know you know, it wasn’t the war that brought me here. It was that man you’ve got in your house.”

The barlights sharpened around the roofer’s face as I nodded again. “I thought you had motives,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “For being deceptive with silence. It’s how I’ve been for a while. And now that I’m here, and I’ve found the bastard, I don’t know what I want to do.”

“I just want to keep my daughter safe. And my grandson,” I said. The whole conversation felt light. We’d known each other for years, it seemed.

“Oh yes ma’am, yes ma’am,” he said. “I think…maybe what I really needed to do was just talk to you and leave. I’m full of ugliness, you see, and it makes me sick for you to see it.”

“What did he do? Coal Oil? What did he do to you?”

The roofer took a long and careful sip before going on. “He left me, and he didn’t need to. Left me in a place…well, I just needed years to get back to where I wanted to be.”

I told the roofer that Marvin had come to my house to die. He nodded and smiled, and I felt that he was dancing around me as I talked. “Like I told you,” he said. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

We sat in silence for a while. The man at the end of the bar stood up a few more times to play a song, and during one number the roofer bobbed his head up and down. I didn’t recognize the singer, but it was a woman, and the music was quick and jazzy. Then the music stopped, and the two black men left. No sound came from the street—Canterbury was a dead town—and the young bartender seemed to have vanished.

The roofer slapped his hands suddenly on the bar and made me jump in my seat. “How about this,” he said, as if he had reached a firm and perfect decision. “I just leave in the morning.”

“That’s what I want you to do,” I said.

The roofer stood up from his stool and tipped his hat at me again. Without a word, he turned from me and headed towards the door. As I followed him, I heard the bartender stepping out of his hiding place, wherever it had been.

The roofer walked out onto the sidewalk and turned to the door that led to the upper floors of the Roamer Hotel. I kept following him. He didn’t look back, but let his hand linger for a moment so that I could catch the door behind him. He strode up three flights of stairs, slowly lifting his crippled leg again and again, and, at one moment, he looked down at me from a landing and smiled. On the fourth floor he opened a door and walked into his room. When I caught up, I saw that he had not closed the door completely. I knocked.

He was in front of the door in less than a second. “Please come in,” he said.

The room was dark and uncomfortable. The only light that the roofer had turned on was a small lamp on the bedside bureau. He kept smiling and not speaking, and sat on the side of the bed. The fedora was off, and I saw that he had a full head of close-cropped white hair.

I walked into the center of the room and turned away from him to a mirror that hung on the wall. Even in the semi-darkness, the pink scar across my eye was the brightest thing on my face: it shone, it throbbed, it looked back at me. Jenny had always said it looked like an arrowhead to her. The point poked out just above my eyebrow, and the edges were slightly serrated above and below the lids. The eyeball underneath, cloudy and white with disuse, always seemed to want to move of its own accord when I saw it in a mirror. But it was dead.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

In my mind, I could hear the words: my husband liked drinking. He drank himself into such a frenzy one night that he shot a mule and attacked me with a knife. Now he’s locked up. It was simple story. I’d learned to live with it, that much was for sure. Still, I was up here, in this roofer’s hotel room, and I didn’t quite understand why. He’d triggered something inside me with all his stories of shipyards and wars. He probably thought he was seducing me. But I didn’t feel anything romantic—just a desire to see a part of a man’s private life: an open suitcase, a hairbrush, clothes laid out for the next day. It was something I hadn’t thought I’d ever want to feel again.

“Are you going to tell me?” The roofer was still sitting on the bed, but he wasn’t smiling anymore. I wanted to tell him, so badly. If I told him, though, the words would leave my mouth and never come back, and I felt that I would never again be able to choose when I could be silent.

“What about your leg?” I asked him. “Was it Coal Oil?”

He didn’t answer. He was behind me now, holding something in his hands. I was angry with myself for acting like such a selfish fool. I needed to get back to the house, to Jenny, to Hal.

The roofer had the cloth on my face before I could think anything more. Something smelled rich and toxic. I screamed out, “You sonofabitch!” but the cloth and his hand muffled my voice. My legs slipped away from me, and I was on the floor, and the roofer was stepping over me, and the world was going dark. Pieces of everything were tilting out of place.

  *  *  *

When I woke up, my head felt wrong. It could have dropped off in the night, or just gotten crooked and turned around. A soft blanket lay on top of me—this wasn’t right, I never slept under anything except my quilt. I opened my eyes.

The roofer was gone. It looked like he had never been in the hotel room at all. He had even folded and tucked the other side of the bed. I still had my boots on, which made it much easier to run from the room and jump three steps at a time out of the hotel, then run across the street without looking at anything but my truck, parked a block away on the square. The sun had not fully risen, but it was already hotter than the day before.

There was his roofer’s truck, all full of ladders and everything, parked in front of the farmhouse like it had never left. I hurried inside. Coal Oil was gone: all that was left was a sweat mark on the futon where his head had rested overnight. I listened at Jenny’s door and heard her breathing and Hal’s, one heavy and the other quick and soft. My shotgun stood waiting for me near the backdoor. Three of the dogs—Poncho, Quaker and a terrier mutt I had never thought to give a name—were already up. They watched me with eagerness as I gathered the gun, and I opened the door for them to follow me into the backyard.

Two wet streaks ran through the grass and up the hill past the outhouse. We followed them silently until they reached the woods and the path that led north and out of my property. It made sense—the roofer would be taking him to the quarry about a mile away, where he could dump the body. I didn’t know how long ago the roofer had taken Stain from the house, or if he’d had to drag him all the way, or if his leg had slowed him down. I told myself that I still had time.

The path twisted through the woods, where the air was even heavier and more sweltering. The dogs followed silently. Poncho and Quaker followed my steps, and the terrier darted ahead now and then, keen to the fact that we were headed somewhere with purpose, not just out for a walk on the property. After ten minutes I felt sweat dripping from my hair and down my cheeks. All fright had left me now, but I felt old and tired.

The woods vanished away when we reached the top of a ridge. I saw the roofer instantly: he was sitting on a log near the great brown gulf of the quarry that opened up in front of us. Marvin Fortenberry lay nearby, curled up like a baby but still breathing, I could tell even from a distance. The roofer saw me and jumped, then pulled a pistol from his pocket and limped over to the Stain. I lifted my shotgun into the air and fired off a shell. The roofer stopped, hesitated, then raised his gun. But I’d had enough time to get down the slope in a running stumble and reload another shell.

When I got close enough to see his face, I knew he wasn’t going to do it. He was terrified. He glanced at me, then out into the quarry. The sun had risen and now hovered at eye level, and we both squinted.

“If I don’t kill him,” the roofer said.

“Shut your mouth,” I said. “You dumb bastard.”

“You don’t know what he did,” he said, his voice reaching an almost tearful whine.

“I know enough of what he did, to a whole lot of people. What does it matter? He’ll be dead soon, and so will you.”

Nearby sat a duffel bag, and Poncho had occupied himself by sniffing and pawing at it. The roofer raised his arms and walked over. The gun still hung loosely in his hand.

“Don’t shoot my fucking dog neither. I’d rather kill you over him than the Stain.”

The roofer dropped the pistol next to the bag. Poncho looked at him without interest and strode away. The roofer crouched down and unzipped the bag, then produced his fedora from inside. He didn’t seem to want to look at me, and I was pleased by it. “You’ve got to take care of your people, I guess,” he said. “That’s an important thing.”

“If you walk that way,” I said, and pointed with the barrel of my shotgun to the west. “Around the quarry after about a mile, you’ll find a little road. Follow it to the highway.”

“Thank you,” he said, like I’d just told him directions to exactly where he wanted to go. Watching his black fedora bob on top of his head as he shuffled away, I didn’t linger on certain questions, like whether he’d intentionally made himself look polite and old-fashioned. Like Yawkey and Stain, the roofer was just a man beyond my world. The kind of idiot who left himself and the people around him in pieces—losing women and money and legs, but still coming back for more. I was glad to see him leave. When I got home, I would inspect the patches on the roof myself.

I lifted Stain from the gravel and put his arm around my neck. He had puked on the front of his shirt and couldn’t speak. He’ll be dead soon, I told myself. His feet dragged in the grass along the path and the impatient dogs bounded around us in elliptical patterns. It was a slow slog.

When we got back, the sun was fully up. I let Stain fall out of my arms and lean against the outhouse. “Mama Dear,” he gasped. “Can you believe that shit back there?”

“With you I can believe most anything,” I said. “Call me that again and I’ll break your damn morphine bottle. I don’t have to make this easy on you, Stain.”

While he hung there catching his breath against the outhouse wall, I looked down on my part of the world. Jenny was bent double in her vegetable garden near the house, weeding, I assumed, since there was no room for anything new to be planted. She wore my mother’s wide green gardening hat. She saw us and waved. She had no idea what had happened. The flooding from the thunderstorm hadn’t hit the garden too hard. I’d attributed it to Stain venturing out to the outhouse so much that he’d left trenches and craters where his fat body hit the ground, and the water had collected in little bogs. I laughed. The bastard had been good for something.

Hal came running from nowhere holding a cardboard package. “They came, Mr. Fortenberry!” he was shouting. My sweet little boy. Soon, he’d roller skate himself the hell away from me. There was nothing I could do.

 

 

BIO

Walter B ThompsonWalter B. Thompson is a native of Nashville, Tennessee. His work has previously appeared in The Bicycle Review, Carolina Quarterly and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, where he is currently the Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

 

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