Regret by Hironaka
Warg Witch by Hironaka
Lenore by Hironaka
Chimama by Hironaka
Manos by Hironaka
Fetish by Hironaka
Little Things That Fall by Hironaka
That Other Universe by Hironaka
Sullen by Hironaka
Harumi Hironaka is a Japanese/Peruvian self-taught painter and illustrator, living in São Paulo, Brasil.
two hours before
sunset in the stale air
the hammock sways more than
me. the sand floats
around me in muted consideration
as i walk into
shade. Kitty follows, tail
brushing my ankle, and i can’t decide
to scratch her
back or return
to the hammock for another
nap.
some certain person
came up to me on the streets
when i was just smoking
the cigarette still between my charred lips
burn-
ing burnt by
faded kisses
some certain person said
do you have money
and i did
just run dry of myself
not much to give
so i listened to her story
and this certain person
was more intimate
with me
than the love i share-
d with some certain someone’s
mouth
i am from the faraway nights of
sleeplessness
the evernear days of your
screams that perch on
my sunken heart
and the vision of your knowing
eyes slashed across my brain
i have held you, your
weight, and added some that you cannot
burden
you give me nothing
less than what i’ve given
(i hope to have given a
lot) dearest,
i am from the womb of a
mother i call mother
but for you i know i am
not
adam l. is currently a freshman at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. he is drawn to the limitation of words, and how even in this limitedness, meaning and emotion can be conveyed effectively. he believes that all poetry is confessional, for all poetry came from within us; and the best ones are vulnerable and raw. at times when words seem utterly insufficient, he turns to physical movement in dance and theatre. if interested in interacting or collaborating, he can be reached at theartistadam@gmail.com.
My wife was feeling carsick anyway. We were coming out of the mountains, heading southeast on a two-lane, state highway between Yellowstone and Laramie. The Tetons were behind us, and we were sad about that.
I hadn’t talked to my daughter in four months. She sounded scared, her breathing clipped and hard. Gulps and puffs of oxygen punctuated spurts of angry words.
I heard only bits and pieces before I could pull over. Bad reception. Something about a landlord and roommates, an “asshole” and money. There were problems with money.
Outside, the sun was high and the air thin. I too struggled to breath. I walked around the front of the car. When I reached the passenger side, I felt that weird sensation of being strung between the old and the new, the latter walking away from me, her arms spread out, resting on the shoulders of her eight-year-old twins.
My daughter and I lost reception. I re-dialed and waited for her to answer. While listening to the ringing, I watched my wife and the kids walk down a gravel road. They stopped at the bottom of a short hill, where the road bottlenecked and bisected a retention pond. The kids picked up rocks and tossed them into the water. My wife turned then, looked up the hill and smiled.
“Hello?”
“You there,” I said.
“Dad?”
I walked to the road. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” said my daughter. “I can hear you now.”
“I couldn’t understand much earlier. You kept cutting out.”
“I’m so stupid,” she said.
“You’re not stupid. What happened?”
“I guess I can’t get out of this lease. I signed it back in… October, I think. Stupid.”
We hadn’t talked about leases and contracts. There was a lot of stuff we hadn’t talked about. We hadn’t even lived together for the past four years.
“What’s the problem?” I said.
“Five people were living here, but only three of us signed the lease. Now three people have moved out, and I…”
My daughter sucked oxygen into her mouth. Her voice trembled. She was trying not to cry.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Logan says I owe eight hundred dollars! He’s a dick! I don’t have that kind of money.”
My heart sped up. This was the kind of thing I ran into with her mother. Her problem was now my problem.
“I have a little money,” I said.
“I just want out of here! Damn it! Why am I so stupid?”
“Stop saying that. This is just a youthful mistake. I made a thousand of them when I was your age.”
She was calming down. “I’m sorry for calling you,” she said.
“Don’t be,” I said.
At the bottleneck, they were skipping rocks. I’d been teaching them. It was a quaint scene down there, a little slice of Americana. My wife said something to her son, who turned around and said a few words back to her. She laughed. She was beautiful in the Western sun, the way a person glows when they’re back home. As if she could be any prettier. The boy picked up another rock and flung it. It didn’t skip. I needed to work with him some more.
“The university probably has an office,” I said to my daughter. “Some kind of legal clinic or services to protect students from unscrupulous landlords.”
“He’s a dick too,” she said. “He never fixes anything. The heater was broken all winter. It was fucking cold. This is Minneapolis.”
I hadn’t heard her drop the F bomb before. It annoyed me, the way it would coming from anyone’s mouth. But who was I to judge. I said it thirty times a day.
“I could send something,” I said. “Maybe a couple hundred.”
I was waiting for her to accept. I wanted her to say that her mother had offered too, that we could cobble together eight hundred. But she didn’t say anything, not even thanks.
“Do you really owe that much?” I asked.
“No!” she said. “I owe three hundred, but because my name’s on the lease, I guess I’m responsible.”
“How much does … what’d you say his name was?”
“Logan,” she huffed, extending the first syllable.
“How much does he owe?”
She didn’t answer. I could hear sniffling.
“Do you know?” I said.
She coughed and inhaled deeply. “No, I don’t know anything.”
“Well how have you handled it in the past? Did each of you pay a fifth or whatever to the landlord?”
She coughed again. It sounded chronic and pulmonary. Was she sick, I wondered, spending some of the rent on cigarettes? Then I heard what sounded like crinkling wrapping paper. There was a loud knock, then a scratching and muffled sound.
“What?” she said.
“Who have you written checks to?”
“I pay him…”
More background noise. Then everything muffled out. I could feel her slipping away. Someone had entered the room.
Just like her mother; come to me with a problem and then recede when I try to help or offer a solution.
“I gotta go, dad.”
“But…
“I gotta go.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just call me back when…”
She hung up.
Did this happen to the parent of every adolescent? This child, this little human who drove me crazy talking ten-thousand miles an hour in the back seat when she was five, was now … a woman? It was painful to admit: I had no idea who she was. Did I make her?
I walked back to the car. The twins were standing on a large rock, a barrier between the road and one of the ponds. They were singing and dancing silly. Shielding her eyes from the sun, their mother was watching them. She was laughing.
“Okay,” I yelled. “We’re done.”
The kids jumped down off the rock and jostled with each other, bickering, no doubt arguing about who had shoved the other first. Watching them, I felt a hard knot forming behind my sternum. As they came up the hill, looking normal and well adjusted, I forgot who I was, or rather which version of myself was standing there on the side of the road, forever caught between two worlds.
Fifteen miles down the road, the kids settled in with a game of hangman, my wife asked me if my daughter was okay.
“I guess,” I said.
There was a tinge of melodrama in my voice. I knew what that was about. I needed her to feel sorry for me. Here was a little plea for attention, rising up from the subconscious.
But her question wasn’t about me. It had nothing to do with anything except my daughter and her welfare. Was she okay? Did I know this?
My wife didn’t play games or waste time on words that had nothing to do with what she was thinking about. No hidden agenda or passive-aggressive manipulation. Knowing this forced me to answer her question again, this time without emotion, without all the guilt I carried around about the divorce.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s okay.”
“What’s going on?”
“Some kind of problem with a lease. Lots of drama.”
“Does she need money?” asked my wife. “We’ve been talking about sending her some.”
“I know,” I said. “I offered.”
“And…?”
“I thought that’s what she wanted. Now I’m confused. She didn’t seem … I don’t know … interested. Maybe it was because I didn’t offer the full amount. But I don’t think that was it. I think she would have responded the same way regardless of how much I offered.”
“Maybe she was just trying to work it out in her head,” said my wife. “Or…” She paused here, leaning forward and smiling. “Maybe she just needed someone to listen to her.”
“I did that, I think … I don’t know, maybe I had too many solutions.”
My wife smiled again and placed her hand on my leg. “I’m sure you did fine, babe.”
We were trying to make it to Fort Collins, but it was getting late and the kids were hungry. So we stopped in Cheyenne. My vegetarian wife consulted Urban Spoon and found a diner, the kind of meat-and-potatoes place she knew her son would love.
“But first,” she said, “we need to find a Walgreen’s.”
“What for?”
She didn’t answer. She just leaned forward and looked at me like I should know what she was talking about.
We drove around a long time trying to find the Walgreen’s. It wasn’t our fault. The GPS directions stunk. We passed an Air Force base, a poorly lit mall and a decent-sized rail yard, all of which destroyed the city’s grid system critical to a visitor’s successful navigation.
Restless and punchy, the twins wrestled in the backseat. My wife, usually eminently patient, sighed several times and then finally snapped.
“That’s enough!” she said. “I’ve asked you several times. It’s not safe for the driver when you do that.”
They quieted down.
Finally, I spotted the sign up ahead and pulled into the Walgreens parking lot. By this time, my wife was humming oddly and swaying back and forth in her seat. When I slowed to a stop in front of the sliding doors, she bolted out of the car, her absence followed by a synchronized, harmonic sigh from the back seat.
I parked the car and I dialed my daughter. The phone rang several times. No answer.
While waiting for his mother, my stepson asked me a question I’d heard him ask her before. “Cy,” he said, “what’s your worst fear?” When he asked his mother this question, her reply was the same every time—“That I wouldn’t have had you guys.”—to which he would complain: “That’s what you always say. What’s your worse fear other than that?”
My stepson and I had a good relationship—all the normal ups and downs—but I felt honored that he’d finally asked me. I took as a sign of love.
“That’s some heavy stuff,” I said.
“Yes it is,” he said.
I thought about it. I saw my daughter, sitting in the back seat, talking incessantly, driving me nuts. Her beautiful face, those big blue eyes and fat, rosy cheeks.
“I guess I’d have to say … It’s sort of like the flip side of what your mom says. That’d I’d lose my … That I’d lose one of you. Or your mom.”
I expected him to argue the merits of my fear, as he had with his mother. Because really, the whole exercise was nothing more than a way for him to talk about his own worst fear – flesh-eating, mind-controlling zombies. But he didn’t argue.
“Yeah,” he said. “That would suck.”
Finding the restaurant was no problem. We drove downtown, near the capitol. Our waitress brought us coffee and water and silverware wrapped in paper napkins. She was a scrawny, rough-looking woman with a scratchy, country drawl and leathery, Western skin. I imagined her helping out on a ranch as a little girl, younger than the twins. She called my wife and me “hon,” and she took care of us like a doting nurse. Which was golden, because we were strung out when we got there.
After we ordered, the twins ran off to the bathroom to wash their hands. My wife took a deep breath and exhaled. She was relieved, happy to be off the road, but I could tell something was wrong. She seemed distracted.
“Everything okay?” I said.
She perked up and smiled. “Yeah. Just these kids. But they’ve been so good overall.”
“They really have,” I said.
She smiled and lifted the pearl-colored ceramic cup and took a drink of coffee. She was forty-three, I forty-seven. She treated my son like he was her own, but she hadn’t even met my daughter.
Setting the cup back on the table, her brow furled, and her face in general changed from placid to worried. “Did you hear back from Steph?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I tried her again while you were in Walgreens.”
She curled her upper lip. “No answer?”
I shook my head.
Then the twins returned with the energy of an Oklahoma tornado.
Caffeinated, stomachs full, we headed south on Interstate 25, the Front Range looming to the west like the outstretched wings of an enormous bird. The kids had calmed down, and in this replenished, satiated condition, we actually enjoyed the drive to Fort Collins. My daughter still had not called back.
The twins were nothing but pleasant – chatty and laughing and playfully teasing each other and their mother, whose mood had improved immensely. She was laughing too and playing along with them, but I swear—during a lull in the backseat-frontseat banter—I heard a rapid inhale-gasp and then a hushed sniffle-snort. Did her lip quiver? I leaned forward to check on her, but it was dark inside the car and just loud enough to prevent me from knowing with any certainty that this had actually happened. I felt awkward too, leaning forward like that and looking her way, as if I were invading her privacy.
And then it was over, if it even happened at all. She was right back to playing with the kids.
She booked one room at The Armstrong, an historic hotel on the main street in downtown Fort Collins. We rolled in much later than expected but at a decent time, around 9:15. After we hauled all the suitcases and backpacks up to the room, my wife asked me if I’d take the kids for a walk. “Or,” she said. “I think they have a exercise room.” All code, of course, for “I need a minute,” which was fine with me, because on the way in I spotted a creamery at an intersection a couple blocks to the north.
I got two scoops of vanilla with caramel and chunks of Heath mixed in. The kids ordered disgusting concoctions of bubblegum ice cream covered with sprinkles, Gummy Bears, frozen M&Ms and iced animal crackers. We sat outside, where the mile-high air had turned cool enough for a light jacket.
“Listen to me,” I said. “When you’re in college and living far away in a different town, don’t forget to call your mom.”
“I’m going to live in a big city,” said my stepdaughter. “With skyscrapers.”
“Great,” I said. “We’ll come visit you. But until we do, or in between visits, call us.”
“I will,” she said.
“No you won’t,” I said.
“I will!” she said. “I promise.”
The sugar made me dream. Walking down a short alley, I heard wood cracking and snapping. When I reached the street, I looked to my right and I saw an entire house, a once-proud, two-story, wood-frame structure from the early 1900s, leaning over like a slow-moving train was pushing on it from the other side. Then it toppled and crumbled into heap of splintered wood and broken glass.
I woke up on my side. There was a light on in the room. I was at the edge of our bed, and I was facing the kids’ bed. My stepson was snoring.
I rolled over. My wife wasn’t there. I couldn’t see clearly because I didn’t have my glasses on, but I could tell she was sitting in a chair on the other of the bed, between the window and the lamp that provided the only light in the room. I located my glasses on the bedside table and put them on.
“You okay?” she said.
“I was just going to ask you the same question.”
She was holding a mug with both hands, like we were in a cabin in the dead of winter. “I’m fine,” she said. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“I was? What’d I say?”
“I couldn’t tell,” she said. “Nothing coherent. Just whimpering and gibberish.”
“Oh yeah?”
“But you didn’t seem afraid. It was more like you were protesting, pleading maybe.”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” I said. “There was a house falling down. I guess it had something to do with that.”
My wife laughed. “Oh,” she said. “Ominous.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m teasing you.”
I looked over at her and squinted. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the light. “What are you doing?” I said.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
My vision improved, I looked right at her. She smiled at me.
“I have something that might scare you,” she said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Are you awake?”
“I think so. We’re not buried under a demolished house, are we?”
“Not yet.”
“Ah, hell, babe,” I said. “Come on, what is it?”
She drank from the mug and then cleared her throat. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
I detected the slightest hint of sadness in her voice. Maybe it was fear. But that was foreign to me, because I rarely saw her in that state. It just wasn’t who she was or how she lived.
Before I could say anything, I saw my daughter again, chattering away in the back seat, singing, asking a thousand questions, pointing out the obvious along the side the road. “That’s a fence. There’s a house. Look at the barn.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“I’m forty-three years old,” she said.
“Uh huh. And you’re fit as a fucking fiddle.”
A burst of laughter and then tears. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“What about? You mean, ‘You’re welcome.’”
Now laughter through tears.
There she was again. This time my daughter was stepping up onto a wide platform. She was wearing that ridiculous hat, walking across the stage, reaching out to accept her diploma.
As if my wife was seeing it too or knew I was. “Man,” she said. “you’ll be sixty-five when she graduates from high school.”
“I already thought about that,” I said.
“I know you did.”
“But I bet I won’t be the oldest parent there.”
She laughed again.
Then I knew what it was all about, this whole business with my daughter. I could see it clearly.
“It’s the bridge,” I said.
“The bridge?” said my wife.
“Nothing,” I said. “Come on, baby. Come to bed.”
She stood up and turned out the light.
Matt McGowan has a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in journalism, both from the University of Missouri. He was a newspaper reporter, and for many years now he has worked as a science and research writer at the University of Arkansas. His stories have appeared in Valley Voices: A Literary Review, Deep South Magazine, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Open Road Review and others. He lives with his wife and children in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
I am away from the clouds
and will not be checking the wind
but if it moves me
I will return to the sky.
I am off the planet
ascertaining the space between stars
but if they become too bright
I will put away my measure.
I have left my memory behind
preferring the now and instantly lost
but if you knew me then
I will, to please you, pretend.
I have lost consciousness
and now spend my time in black
but I may know you
so please leave a message.
My nose breathes in viruses
and my ears accept deceit.
My skin invites irritants in
and reddens at its effrontery.
Muscle pulls away from bone
offended at its ivory rigidity.
My bladder refuses liquids,
even water
and my bowels growl
unhappy with the menu I provide.
My lungs, once puffed up
with their importance, are deflated
and the liver says
what the hell, you need a drink.
My nerves keep everything else
awake all night with their loud jangling
and blood gets into everything
insinuating.
My eyeballs cloud over
as the sky’s become too bright
and my heart simply
flubs it.
Oh brain, why are you
leading this charge?
Clocks are irrelevant
to the pieces of time dropped
on islands.
Our arrangements do require
a time to meet
and agreement.
Appointments are only late
if expected to start on time
and no-one expects
even rain to fall as forecast.
It’s no excuse but things
do happen when they do.
Events react to minutes
the way waves do, with momentum
and a crash or a drawing back.
Something happening when it should
removes surprise
which might delight
and the wounding
of expectations missed
can leave bruises.
But go with it, on its time
which will be on time
as islands allow escape
from the selfishness of schedule
while the sea’s surrounding
perimeter fence guards
with its barbed foam of waves.
When time is neither fast nor slow
it warns against attempting departure.
Michael Penny was born in Australia, but moved to Canada as a teenager. He now lives on Bowen Island and works as a consultant on regulating professions. He has published five books of poetry, most recently, Outside, Inside from McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Tarek lay sleeping next to his mama on the concrete sidewalk, with his head resting on a frayed backpack, in front of an ancient stone warehouse in the Turkish port city of Izmir. He and his mama arrived late that night with his uncle, aunt and two cousins. Tarek mumbles in his sleep kicking his feet. He rolls over and his foot lands on his cousin’s lower back.
“Tarek. Tarek. It’s OK. It’s a bad dream. You’re safe now,” his mama says stroking his short black hair.
“Ummi,” Tarek says taking hold of his mama’s hand with his trembling right hand, “It was the bombs again. I ran, but could not get away.”
Tarek is eight years old with a ruddy, dirty face. He is naturally thin, though not under nourished. He’s wearing a white shirt, black shorts and sandals. The bottom of his legs and his feet are covered with sand from the dusty ride across the Taurus Mountains the day before. His back and bottom are still sore from the bumpy truck ride that began three days ago in Gaziantep. His scarred, left arm hangs limp by his side.
It seems like forever since Tarek loaded up his backpack and left his home in Aleppo, Syria. The backpack holds everything Tarek owns and cherishes. There are two striped shirts, two pair of shorts and two pair of underwear. A picture of his papa in his soldier uniform. A pad of paper, two pencils and two apples. A prayer rug that belonged to his papa.
The sun rises over the tall glistening buildings of Izmir reflecting orange and yellow light off the windows offering the first glimpse of a new day. Tarek stands up and takes a deep breath and is overcome with the oily smell of fish and the sweet smell of fruit coming from crates and baskets lining the docks. He feels salt hitting his face, just like sand blowing off the desert. Tarek sees a crowd of people wrapped in red, yellow and blue blankets on the sidewalk huddled together in small groups. Some are stretching as they wake to the new day. Mamas are picking up their children.
He gets his first look at the docks. The water is lined with boats, both small and large, some with sails, some clean and shiny and others dirty with rust, slime and peeling paint. Men dressed in grey coats and hats scurry up and down the docks carrying boxes, nest and poles. In the distance he sees two very large white boats; bigger than any boat he had ever seen.
“Ummi. What are those big boats?” Tarek asks pointing out to sea.
His mama follows Tarek’s finger and spots the large boats. “They are called cruise ships. They bring visitors to Turkey from other countries like Greece and Italy.”
“Are we going on one of those boats to Greece?”
“No Tarek. Our boat will be much smaller.” his mama answers. Seeing the sadness on Tarek’s face she adds, “Our boat trip will be more of an adventure than going on a bigger boat.”
Tarek hears his uncle approach through the crowd and tell his mama, “Stay here with the others. I will check on the boat.”
“Are you sure we still want to do this. I heard the stories about France and Germany. Anas, I am scared. Maybe we should stay in Turkey.”
“There is nothing more for us here than in Syria. It will be safer in Greece.”
His mama hands Uncle Anas a package and his uncle disappears back into the waking crowd. Tarek and his mama move closer to the building and huddle with the other Syrians waiting for boats. Tarek chooses a spot where he can still see the docks and the sea. He watches the boats sail out to sea and disappear into the horizon. He sees a soldier in a green uniform carrying a gun walking down the street. He falls back into the crowd and grabs his mama’s abayah.
“It’s OK, Tarek. The soldier is not a bad soldier. He is a good soldier. He is here to help and protect us. This is a safe place.” mama said.
The soldier walks by without stopping or even looking their way.
About four hours later, Tarek’s uncle returns and says, “The boat leaves in two days and will pick us up on a beach about ten kilometers north of the city. We need to find a comfortable place to rest and get food.”
For Tarek two days is forever. He pulls his paper pad and pencil from his backpack and flips pages until he reaches a blank page. He writes about his trip on the truck from Gaziantep, the stories the adults told about Syria, before the war. He writes about the exciting city they are in, the tall buildings, the colorful awnings and doors. He writes about the boats and fish. Once or twice, maybe more, Tarek asks his mama how to spell a word. His mama tells him how proud she is that he practices his writing even when there is no school. Tarek smiles and writes about the good soldiers. Finished, he places the paper pad and pencils in the plastic bag his uncle gave him and put it into his backpack.
The day of the boat trip arrives and Tarek can’t wait to see their boat and start the adventure mama promised. Before leaving his mama changed from her abayah into black jeans, a grey print shirt and a black scarf. Tarek’s uncle leads the group on the ten kilometer hike to reach the boat that will take the group of forty-five Syrians to Greece. They walk two by two. Tarek holds his mama’s hand as they walk along the sidewalks that turn to dirt paths as they leave the city and approach the countryside. Other than scattered green bushes and a few small trees, there is only rock. The path turns toward the sea and comes to an end at a bluff. Below, white caps can be seen over the rough water and waves crash against the grey and black rocks that line the beach. Above, grey clouds can be seen in the distance.
Tarek’s uncle directs people to a path made of small and large rocks that lead down to the sea. Tarek cannot walk on the path. He crawls, climbs and is sometimes lifted over and around the rocks. It is hard work and it takes Tarek an hour to reach the beach. He climbs over the last rock that stands between him and the beach. Tarek stares out at the sea that seems to go on forever. Waves splash against the rocks and spray salt water on his face which he quickly spits out on the ground.
“Ummi, can I put my feet in the water?” Tarek asks.
“OK. Go with your cousins and stay close,”
Tarek takes off his sandals and walks into the water letting the waves flow through him. He runs and splashes his cousins. He turns to let the waves hit his back and sees his mama watching him. She has a big smile on her face. His uncle stands on a large rock looking out into the sea.
“The boat is coming,” his uncle shouts.
Tarek runs to his mama as the rest of the group gathers together on the beach. The roar of the engine of the black pontoon boat could be heard above the crashing waves. The boat rises and falls with each wave. Each wave brings it closer to the shore. As the boat gets closer, Tarek can see the captain. He is wearing a yellow coat and an orange life jacket. His long dark hair is blowing in the wind. The boat rides a wave onto the sandy beach and slides to a stop. The captain steps off the boat.
“We need to move quickly. The water is a little rough today. Life jackets are in the boat. Everyone needs to put one on,” the captain said.
“The boat is very small.” Tarek said.
“Yes it is,” his mama said, “get in and we’ll put our life jackets on.”
Tarek is the last to get on the boat. With everyone on board Tarek’s uncle asks for quiet.
“Fee Amaan Allah,” his uncle prays.
“In the protection of Allah,” everyone repeats.
Tarek’s uncle and two other men push the boat off the beach. The engine sputters once then starts to roar. The captain turns the boat toward the open sea. Everyone sits very close. Tarek could not even move his right arm. Tarek sits between his mama and his cousin on the side of the boat. His mama wraps her arms around Tarek to protect him from the constant splashing. Tarek’s wet shirt is sticking to his skin. The life jacket rubs on his neck. His backpack is soaked and seems to gain weight with every wave. He shivers from the cold.
As the boat moves further from shore the waves rise higher. Tarek bounces as each wave passes under the boat and the straps on his backpack dig into his shoulders. Another wave and he bounces even higher and his mama’s arms falls away. Another wave splashes over the boat and pushes Tarek over the edge of the boat with his backpack over the open sea. His mama reaches to grab Tarek, but it is too late, he falls into the water.
Tarek hears his mama’s scream over the roar of the engine and the waves. The engine stops. Tarek’s head is bobbing over the surface of the water and he is waving his right arm in the air. The sea water is burning his eyes and mouth. He yells. He kicks his legs frantically to stay above water and move back to the boat. He sees two men jump off the boat into the sea and swim toward him. He sees the captain throw a life preserver attached to a rope at the two men. One of the men grabs it and swims toward Tarek. Tarek is lying face up in the water when the first man reaches him. His eyes are closed. The second man swims up with the life preserver. Each holds Tarek with one arm with the other on the life preserver. The working together the men in the boat pull the rope.
Tarek is lifted up onto the boat and placed in his crying mama’s arms. Tarek coughs once, then again and again, spitting salt water from his mouth onto those around him. He is shaking uncontrollably. A women hands Tarek’s mama a blanket that she wraps around him. Tarek and his mama sit down in the center of the boat. Tarek’s uncle and several other men surround them. Everyone links arms and they sit as low as possible in the boat. The engine starts and the captain continues their voyage to Lesbos.
Four hours after the frightful rescue the rocky beaches of Lesbos are in sight. The captain turns the boat and heads for a beach nestled between two rock cliffs. As they near the beach several men jump off the boat, grab the ropes and pull the boat ashore. Once off the boat the captain tells the group Camp Moria is a short walk along a path between the cliffs. He returns to his boat and leaves the island.
On shore the group says a prayer to Allah for granting them passage to Lesbos and for saving the life of Tarek. Tarek’s uncle, carrying Tarek in his arms, leads the group along the path to Camp Moria. After walking half an hour the group is stopped by two men in green uniforms with guns.
“We come seeking asylum,” Tarek’s uncle said, “We have a boy that needs a doctor. Please, we ask for your help.”
Tarek’s mama, crying says, “I beg you. Help my son.”
The soldiers look at Tarek, his uncle and his mother. Waving their hands up and down the soldier’s motion the group to sit down. One of the soldiers talks into a radio while the other moves his eyes from person to person. Three other soldiers in blue uniforms join them along with a man and a woman dressed in white. The woman has on a white hat with a red cross on it; the man carries a bag. She looks at the ground listening to one of the soldiers. Two soldiers walk among the group looking at each person. The woman steps forward and begins speaking in Arabic.
“Where is the boy that needs a doctor?” she asks.
Tarek’s uncle stands holding Tarek and his backpack tightly in his arms. The woman motions them to come forward. The man carrying the bag comes up to Tarek and says something he cannot understand.
“He is a doctor,” the woman translates.
The doctor examines Tarek. He says something to a soldier and the women that Tarek cannot understand.
“The doctor says the boy has a mild case of hypothermia. He needs dry clothes, a warm blanket and a warm drink. A soldier will bring them soon,” the woman said.
Tarek sees more soldiers coming toward them. One is carrying a red blanket and cup. He hands them to Tarek’s uncle. One soldier stops to talk with the woman.
“Ladies and gentleman,” she says, “I realize you have journeyed a long way to get here. I don’t know what you heard about France and Germany, but things are bad in Europe right now. There is much fear among the people. You will not be allowed to stay. A few hours ago the European Union voted unanimously to close the borders until they can evaluate the situation. I am very sorry, but you cannot stay in Greece. There are boats in the bay ready to take you back to Turkey.”
“No,” Tarek’s uncle shouts, “We have come far. We have risked everything. We are families trying to escape the war. We are not terrorists. We come seeking asylum.”
“I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do. The order comes directly from the Greek President. You cannot stay,” the woman repeated.
“Ummi,” Tarek says, “What does she mean?”
“The bad Syrian soldiers attacked Europe and they won’t let us stay. The people in Europe are afraid of us.”
Tarek sees others standing and shaking their fists and pleading, “We can’t go back”, “Please let us stay,” and “Don’t blame us.”
Tarek looks at his mama. She is wiping tears from her eyes with her scarf. His mama walks up to the woman.
“If a Greek man murders a Turkish man, does that make all Greeks murderers?”
The soldiers move closer and remove the guns from their shoulders with the barrels pointing in the air. The voices fall silent.
“It’s not fair. We hate the bad soldiers too!” Tarek yells at the woman, “They killed my papa. They hurt me. We hate them too. I will show you.”
Tarek unzips the backpack his uncle is holding and reaches in. A soldier runs to Tarek and his uncle and pulls the bag away, but not before Tarek takes out the paper pad.
“Read. Read,” Tarek says handing the pad to the soldier, “We hate the bad soldiers.”
The soldier shakes his head, looks at the pad and shows it to Tarek. The pages are wet and the words smeared.
The soldiers push the group down the path to the bay.
“We hate the bad soldiers too,” Tarek cries.
Larry Fronk grew up in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, and now resides on the east side of Cincinnati, Ohio. Larry recently retired after a 36 year career of public service working in local government in the areas of urban planning, community development and local government management. Upon entering Act II of his life Larry decided to pursue his passion for writing and enrolled in a creative writing class at the University of Cincinnati, Clermont College. This is Larry’s first published work.
I pledge allegiance to my hillbilly past
cheap fan motor buzz
black dirt harshness
inbred bullies and bigotry.
Winter baseboard rumbles heat
in thin walls of fear
walls that work as refuge
enshrine weakness with
corporal punishment in tombs of shame.
Echoes down a backwards hall
require humility and magic prayer
as earth boils and fumes in science.
Reason is a devil’s turd
as we eat the flesh of white Jesus
and drink his blood.
Crackers and grape juice with guilt
and submissive independence
whirlpool around inherited drains
one slang language misunderstood
bucked up with guns
and ambivalent Bibles for all.
Amen.
I’m flying over a popcorn sea
finally out of turbulence…
Southern sanctioned abuse.
I’m flying, released
over the veins of earth.
My roots have claws
anger and fear
language of permafrost
tests curved to the negative
surprise pits of darkness
in a house of correction
where nothing is right
nothing is realized
but the changing rules of God
from Bibles living
in tombs of protection.
We held hands around the table
at Applebee’s and prayed before eating.
Fox Network was there and low self-esteem.
“The white cops were right, “one said.
“More people need beating.
We need more guns.
Too many getting rich off welfare
too lazy to work.”
“Christians have no rights,” another claimed.
“What about the Christians?”
I kept quiet. Dogs were howling for meat.
Jesus turned his head away.
Bibles slept in their cars.
Belinda Subraman has been writing poetry since the 6th grade and publishing since college. She had a ten year run editing and publishing Gypsy Literary Magazine. Six of those ten years were from Germany where she was a Bohemian outcast among officer wives. She edited books by Vergin’ Press, among them: Henry Miller and My Big Sur Days by Judson Crews. While in Germany she also published the Sanctuary Tape Series which was a mastered compilation of audio poetry and original music from around the world. If you interview her about her publishing days you will discover that she threw out a whole Charles Bukowski manuscript because he told her to just trash what she didn’t like. THEN she found out he was Famous. She might have kept the manuscript but still would not have published it. (It wasn’t his best work). Bukowski, Burroughs and a few other literary figures did make it into some of the first Gypsy issues, however.
Over the years Ms. Subraman’s work has appeared in print journals, anthologies and online journals including: Best Texas Writing, The Louisiana Review, The Arkansas Review, A New Geography of Poets, Puerto del Sol, Borderlands, Rio Grande Review, Social Justice, Gargoyle, Between the Cracks, Out of Line, Mondo Barbie, Big Bridge, and Lips Unsealed. In the past year her work has appeared in: Poets and Artists, Red Fez, Unlikely Stories, Tribe Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, and Chiron Review.
You might have been there on the night of Friday, September 10, 1993 when the new The X-Files TV show broke cover, appearing for the first time on the Fox Television Network. I say “there” in the sense that you were sitting in front of your television and probably like millions of other viewers never getting up even to pee during the nine seasons of over 200 episodes. Maybe the operative word was “spellbound.” And just maybe, just maybe I had something to do with your mesmerization and the subsequent babbling of the mantra “I Want to Believe.” Why? Y? Because I was the guy that got contacted initially to make a presentation about the current UFO scene to the show’s creator, Chris Carter at Twentieth Century Fox Studios in Century City, some months before the X-Files even debuted.
Why was I the Go-to-Guy for the Out-of-this-World info? Now I am not aware personally of a deep nasal implant of an alien probe, nor have fleeting memories of floating up through my ceiling. But I have met many who have. So maybe it had something to do with a feature article that I had written for the now lost OMNI magazine, a quality publication serving up of science and science fiction first published in 1978, then having the plug pulled in 1995. My article concerned the UFO Abductee phenomena and centered around my meetings with an abductee counseling group. It also happened that for a while I was a field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network aka MUFON, the worldwide organization collecting UFO data since 1969. I had also been privy to various private meetings with the leading investigators, the likes of the late Budd Hopkins and Jonathan Mack of Harvard. And, yes, I had personally seen some pretty strange stuff in my time, well, okay, X-Files-ish, stuff. So someone must have read the article and clued Chris Carter in on me, plus it also helped that I was living in the neighborhood and could easily levitate on over in my creaky 1984 devolving Volvo.
So I drive myself over to the Twentieth Century Fox studios, and successfully pass the heightened credentials check at the security checkpoint, which amounts to my name on a clipboard. Either my car or I elicit a grimace from the guard, no doubt an actor waiting for his big break. I eventually find a parking space, and remember this is all pre-retinal scan, pre-GPS, and start meandering through the multi-cloned production offices until I locate one marked with “X-Files” on a small sign. I’m quickly ushered into a room that has a certain claustrophobic feel to it, no doubt heightened by the odd, very low ceiling. Not quite a bunker ambiance, but close. Chris Carter is there to greet me, as are seven or eight other young-looking guys and gals of his “crew.” My first impression was their “focus.” It was, well, intense. Under such scrutiny did I feel like a fish or maybe a merman in a fish bowl? Well, kinda. Was I was sweating under my fingernails as I held the notes I had prepared for my presentation? Well, perhaps a little seepage. I had been asked to focus on the subject of the paranormal aka “high strangeness” goings on, monsters, UFOs, etc. Because at that time I didn’t exactly know where the X-Files was going, I had put together a smorgasbord of weirdness in my presentation from my own files and experiences.
As I began going through a litany of wacked out worldwide events, I did feel a certain deficiency in the oxygen supply in the rather close quarters. A lot of people in a little room can accelerate the carbon dioxide levels. A side effect is wooziness, even memory loss. And the X-Filers all seemed to keep leaning closer and closer as I spoke. Forget the fishbowl, I was more like the bug under the microscope. Was it a mind probe? Or were they just somewhat hard of hearing after listening to all the weird electronic X-Files soundtrack music? Who knew? But in any case I don’t remember any of them uttering a single word as I rambled on for about 45 minutes. What did I tell them? It’s a bit of a blur now. I seem to best remember what transpired during my dreams after eating cheese late at night. Especially Mozzarella. Hmmmm. Let me close my eyes for a moment and dream cheesy thoughts. Ummmm.
Okay, that’s better. Well, now I’m pretty sure I cited the case of The Eskimo Village. The report concerned an Inuit Village nestled at water’s edge that had been found devoid of any of its many inhabitants. Racks of fish still drying in the air. Pots boiling over fires. The only traces were hundreds of footprints leading out of the village and then suddenly stopping en mass, not another step taken, as if the entire village disappeared into the frigid Arctic air. No trace was ever found of any of the villagers. And looking up from my notes, I saw the X-Filers still staring fixedly at me … shall I say, icily. I didn’t see anyone taking notes. Maybe they had good memories or thought my story was uh, fishy … or Eskimo pie in the sky… or? Wait, I don’t do puns, I was now certain the oxygen level was definitely dropping, the CO2 rising. Oddly, the X-Filers seemed to thrive on the new atmosphere, nostrils flaring, eyes bulging. I looked away, back to my notes.
What else did I mention? The Farmer in the Field story. It went something like this. One day this farmer, way out in the middle of nowhere, maybe Kansas or Iowa, walks out into his field and doesn’t come home for dinner of meatloaf and squash. His wife spends days looking for him in the fields, the meatloaf long grown cold. Then one day she hears him calling her name as if he’s nearby. Which he isn’t, because she can’t see anyone, not even a scarecrow in sight. But she returns to the spot for several more days, his voice there, but growing weaker, fainter … until one day it’s gone altogether. Then I go into the story about the guy back in the 1960s that shoots something tall and hairy and keeps it stuffed in a freezer at his cabin in the woods, photos of it showing up in a magazine, and people writing in about maybe it was manslaughter, and then zip, gone, all mention disappearing. I follow my presentation with the mass sightings of UFOs over Washington, D.C. in 1952, then the records concerning Alexander the Great and the Persians about to do battle when three huge “flaming shields” that drop out of the sky and scare the bejeesuz out of the war elephants which promptly turn tail and stomp their own troops. I seem to remember reeling off a litany of lunar anomalies and probably a mention of the Belgian UFO wave, plus a dozen more “vignettes” of things “not of this Earth.” There were dates and names and details to all these stories as I related them, but still not a pad and pencil in sight from the X-Files crew. What in Hell’s Bells name were they waiting for?
Finally I get to the end of my discourse, and there’s a long, what you might call pregnant silence. Then I think it was Chris Carter himself who finally says something. “Do you think there is a government cover-up about UFOs?” Now it’s my turn to be dumbfounded. I stutter a bit, then finally say, “Well, yes, of course.” Those were the last words out of my mouth. Then it was wham, bang, thank you ma’am, can you find your way to your car?”
I never hear another peep, much less a high-pitched humming sound, back from The X-Files production team. But I do watch once the show debuts. I think there was one episode about an Eskimo village. Yes? No?
Now, years later, and after this now public “confession” about my own “lost” X-files episode, I feel I have the right to make some comments about the newly resurrected X-Files show in 2016. For starters, Mulder is just bit more Muldery around the edges, while Scully, really trimmed down, is looking good some 14 years after the airing of the last of the originals. I can’t say that much for the “revised” story line, this whole schamoogle about UFOs being a secret U.S. government conspiracy. But then I gotta remember all the giant triangles floating blimplike and silently over hill and dale and the fact that U.S. aircraft technology has already advanced 20+ years beyond what we see, including the present day and virtually old hat stealth aircraft. State-of-the-art stealth is now probably totally invisible. Anything’s possible, right? Even Trump as President. So UFO’s from secret U.S. bases, no problem.
Then again I remind myself that the history of strange flying objects wobbles back literally thousands of years and that human knowledge has always been constrained by a combination of ignorance and ego compounded by panic stricken blind fear. So I say, nah! to the U.S. government owning UFOs. I remember that people got roasted at the stake for stating the earth was not the center of the solar system, and that until about 1920 scientists declared there was only one galaxy and we owned that. Now how many have they tallied … 10,000,000,000 … that’s ten billion galaxies of over 100 billion stars each. Do the math. And factoring into Drake’s famous equation about planets with advanced civilizations and your head starts buzzing. Wait a minute … what is that buzzing … do you hear it? Do you?!
Paul 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 Paul Garson Files
I was talking to two of them. True ones. I was there to interview them about a couple of dead people. One of the dead was their own.
The couple was not just Southern. They were not your average run-of-the-mill rednecks either. They were hillbillies. The real deal. Think The Beverly Hillbillies without the good fortunes of a Jed Clampett, or Deliverence minus the forcible sodomy administered by toothless moonshiners.
There was nothing idealistic about their lifestyle. They were not nestled by the mountains around them. That is a romantic kind of thinking. The people living deep in Appalachia are, in actuality, asphyxiated by the hills. The flow of modern technology is cut off from the inhabitants of Dewey Hollow, as is the flow of income and wealth. A proper education cannot find its way into the hollow either.
Even the sun has difficulty delivering its vitamin D to the malnourished citizenry. Potter’s Ridge to the east and Dewey Ridge to the west permit the sun about five hours a day to do its work. That is not nearly enough time, as could be attested to in the ghostly pale skin of the Sanders family.
Walter and Janice sat on the worn brown or beige sofa. Walter was wearing brown corduroy pants and an I ♥ New York t-shirt. I assumed he was not the original owner of the shirt, or pants for that matter. Walter’s thin frame was comically upright, his hands resting on his knees. He had a thick and pouty lower lip. It hung below the much thinner upper one. I could not keep myself from watching it bounce up and down as he spoke. Hard work had aged his face beyond his forty years. The expression on his wife’s face under her dingy red hair was one of a vivaciousness not normally found on grieving mothers. Only the dark rings circling her eyes revealed her pain. She sat, legs crossed, the top leg rocking back and forth, staring into a mug she had cupped in both hands. I imagined the contents of the mug had something to do with her demeanor.
I was there about the suicides. Their daughter’s was the second in the area in a week. I sat in a fold-up metal chair across from them. I took a sip of black coffee as I awaited an answer to a question I had asked. I had learned in journalism school to wait for an answer to every question, no matter how long the awkward silence after asking. Let the interviewee break the silence, and only with a sufficient answer to the question.
Despite my training, the quiet was killing me. I had asked where it happened and how their daughter’s body was found. Though I knew the answers, I needed to get them talking about the tough stuff. We had talked a bit about the other case. Walter told me the mute young man had a note gripped in his cold hand. I had already heard about it from a couple of other people I had interviewed. The words were barely legible. It said, in trembling red ink, I took the wrong one out the first time. It was as if he had to explain why both of his eyes were missing. A big Oh shucks.
I was about to cave in and ask another question, any question, maybe one about the gawky owl clock hanging on the wall behind them, when Walter finally said, “I can take you, I reckon. Upstairs, I mean. Where it happened.” Janice looked at him, mouth open. I too was surprised. She rose from the sofa and marched out of the room. I could hear her slam her mug down on what I guessed was the kitchen counter.
I looked at Walter and leaned forward. “That would be helpful if you don’t mind.”
I followed Walter up the stairs. He had the gait of a much heavier man, shifting slowly from side to side. Walter asked me how a newspaper in a big city heard about the suicides. The big city was Middlesborough, Kentucky. It had a population of approximately 10,000 souls.
I did not want to tell him that his personal tragedy had become a social media sensation, due, in large part, to its being so odd in nature. I merely shrugged my shoulders instead and told him my editor handed me the story the day before and told me to head up that way. I could hear Janice downstairs beginning to shuffle dishes in the kitchen.
He paused just in front of the bedroom door, hand on the knob. He lowered his head. “She was only twenty, you know? Nora. My one and only child.” He looked up at me. “Mister, are you a praying man?”
“I am.” I lied, and smiled doing it. “And call me Don.”
“Mister,” he began, locking his blue eyes into mine. “Ask the good Lord to watch over the soul of my daughter. I know a lot of folks don’t believe in praying for the de… the departed. But I don’t reckon there can be no harm in it. You?”
“No. I pray for the dearly departed every day.” Another lie.
“Have you lost some of your kin?”
“Quite a few, I’m afraid.” Well, I lost a dog once.
“Tell me about it.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. I lowered my head, shuffled my feet on the wood floor, and told him all about it. A moth circled the single bulb overhead in the hallway as I told him about the make-believe auto accident. The dreamed-up coma. The imaginary dead mother. The funeral. The burial in the pouring rain.
He hugged me. I could smell the Brylcreem in his hair.
He turned, took a deep breath, and opened the door. The room smelled of lemon-scented cleaning chemicals. The make-shift twin bed, composed of a worn mattress on a stack of wooden crates, was un-made and bare. The blood stained blue mattress was sunken in the center from its former owner’s body weight. “That there was her bed. Where Janice found her.”
There were no posters or pictures on the wall. There was a single wooden cross on the wall above the bed. It was the only decoration in the room. There was a particle board dresser and an end table. A large fish bowl sat on the dresser. A single blue fish was barely visible in the dirty water.
I asked Walter about the absence of pictures and décor. He explained to me how the family church frowned upon that sort of thing. In the Sanders home, whatever was preached from the pulpit of the Dewey Church of the Lord and Savior was law. According to the Pentecostal church’s pastor, pictures and “what-nots” were forbidden images. Idols. I wondered about the clock downstairs, and had the ridiculous image in my head of the family falling on their knees and worshipping the yellow and green owl as it declared the top of every hour with its mighty and deistic hoo-hoo. I passed on asking about it.
“Mr. Sanders, was your daughter already… gone when Mrs. Sanders found her?”
“Uh-huh. She was already in the arms of Jesus.”
“That’s a nice thought.”
“It’s a fact.”
I smiled and asked where the hand was found.
“Huh?”
“Forgive me, but I heard that she threw her hand after she removed it.”
“Oh.” He pointed to the fish bowl. “Landed in that.”
I looked at the murky water, wondering if the betta fish was traumatized in any way.
“It must have been a horrible sight for the Mrs.”
“Yep. She’s been acting odd too. Not herself. To be expected, I suppose.”
“Yeah. I suppose.” In perfect timing, a series of loud clangs rose from the kitchen downstairs.
“Your daughter just lied there afterward? She just, you know, bled to… sleep?”
“Way it looked.” Walter’s head was down. He inhaled a deep breath and blew out air, his lower lip rippling. After a pause, he said, “I’m really worried about Janice. Will you pray with me?”
I was a little startled. “Pray? Right now?”
“Is it a bad time for you, Mister?” He kept his eyes on mine and took a knee in the center of the floor.
“Um. No. I guess. Should I, uh, get down there with you? And, please, call me Don.”
“Unless you feel worthy to stand before the Lord.” His look assured me I was not.
I got down on both knees about six feet away from Walter. I closed my eyes and waited for him to begin. There was a long period of silence. I slowly opened my eyes. He was looking at me. He mumbled, “Go ahead.”
“Me?”
“Won’t you lead us in prayer?”
My heart was racing. Prayer had, in my adult years, become as foreign to me as I imagined classic literature or a quadratic formula was to him. I fancied myself a man of science. My Sunday school years were ancient history. My Holy Trinity was composed of Science, Engineering, and Math. And, as any practicing engineer, scientist, or mathematician would attest, the three of them are One.
Nevertheless, I nodded to him and closed my eyes. I began, “God, it is I and Mr. Sanders. I am Donald Peters. You know that, of course.” I cleared my throat. My hands were clenched into tight fists. “I would like to begin this prayer by giving you thanks, and, uh, praises.”
I heard Walter clear his throat. I opened my eyes.
“What are you doing,” he asked.
“I’m praying.”
He shook his head. “That’s not praying, and that is not how you should speak to the Lord.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That ‘You’ stuff. It’s not right.”
Walter sighed, closed his eyes, and said, “Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.” I closed my eyes again. He began, “Father, THOU hast made the heavens and the earth, and THY power and love know no end. We come to THEE today in prayer.” There was a long pause. I opened one eye and peeked at Walter who was looking at me. The gaze said, That is how it is done. He closed his eyes and began again. “We ask thee, Lord, to give special care to my wife and sister in Christ today. Janice is suffering, and we know that no one knows suffering like thou Son Jesus, and…”
As he prayed, I remembered seeing the bumper sticker on an old Ford F-150 parked in the front yard as I pulled in the gravel driveway. If it ain’t King James, it ain’t bible.
“Thou art the Great Physician and there is no need for the wicked medicine of men if we trust in thee. Janice is a kind soul, Lord. Thou knowest this better than anybody. We ask, O, Heavenly Father, that…”
I pictured his daughter lying there on the bed cutting her hand off with a rusty old saw blade. I saw her throw it across the room.
“That old serpent, the devil, cannot have her, Lord. He cannot keep her down and…”
She just lay there, lay there and died. Bled until she could never bleed again.
“Lift her up, King Jesus. Mount her on wings of eagles.”
He meant “Mount her up.” I meant to find out what really happened there. Who would, or rather, could commit suicide in such a manner? The other case was just as puzzling. Why remove one’s eyes or a hand? Why not slit a wrist or hang from a rope in a quicker, more painless and socially acceptable way of offing one’s self?
“And now, O Lord, I will speak to you in the tongues of angels.”
I watched Walter adjust his body, placing his other knee on the floor. He raised his hands to the sky and lifted up his head. With his eyes remaining closed, he began chanting and mumbling words, or non-words that I would not know how to spell or even pronounce. I’m no angel after all.
After a while, his arms started waving back and forth. They began trembling. His upper body would fall down, back to the floor, and then up again in a slow rhythm. Down and up.
I wondered how long he could go on like this. I was hoping it would be long enough.
I slowly got to my feet, keeping an eye on Walter. I walked softly toward the bed and looked over the mattress. Seeing nothing of interest, I lifted one side of it up from the crates. I saw nothing underneath and felt nothing as I slid my hand under the part I could not lift up. I set it back down and looked back over my shoulder at Walter. He was still in a rapturous state. He continued the up and down movement. The waving. The chanting. The slobbering. His whole body was shaking a little. The only mumblings escaping his mouth that resembled real words were something like “Mama Mia”, “Shenandoah”, and “Oscar de la Fuente”.
I scanned the two walls the bed was against. Nothing. I bent down and examined the crates as best as I could. I had no idea what I was looking for, and didn’t find it. I thought of pulling the bed away from the walls to examine the unexposed sides of the crates, but expected there was no way I could do it without disturbing Walter’s conversation with the heavenly host.
It went on and on behind me, growing in volume.
I softly made my way to the dresser. The fish was interested in me for all of about two seconds before turning away and swimming to the opposite end of the bowl. I could picture it swimming between the fingers of Nora Sanders, her hand an aquamarine obstacle course. I could not find the nerve to open the drawers of the walnut-colored dresser. I would not have felt right about it anyway. I started to walk away when I saw it on the side of the dresser. Etched in and colored in red were the initials DM. Underneath was a heart.
Derrick Mapleton’s was the other body. The young man was found dead in his church on an altar, eyeballs missing. A bloody pocket knife was found folded in one of his overall pockets. A bloody spoon was in the other. He wore nothing under the overalls. The note was in his fist.
I had suspected all along that both cases were something more sinister than suicide. The carving in the dresser raised my suspicions. Did it prove a romantic relationship between the two, which is something a few of the residents of Dewey Hollow had suggested? The Sanders girl and the Mapleton boy had been really close since they were toddlers. The two were flirty with one another since their preteen years. They had often gone on walks alone in the woods in the months leading up to their deaths.
I jumped as Walter yelled out, “Woo Glory!” I turned around and saw him lying there, his back on the floor and his legs folded under themselves. His feet were tucked under his buttocks and his arms stretched out from his sides. More clanking came from the kitchen downstairs. It sounded purposeful to me. “Yes, Lord,” Walter yelled before resuming his unintelligible chants, this time softer than before. It sounded like he was wrapping it up.
I took a picture of the carving on the dresser with my cell phone. I walked back to my former place in the room and got back down on one knee. As he was saying his goodbyes to the angels above, I wondered if it was one of the victims’ parents that killed the two. Was an intimate relationship outside of marriage forbidden in Dewey Hollow? Was the punishment death? Did the pastor of the Dewey Church of the Lord and Savior execute justice? Or was there a jealous young man or woman out there, the third member of a lovers’ triangle?
Walter fell silent. I watched him raise his body back up on his knees, grunting as he did so. He took a deep breath and sighed. He looked at me and shot me a knowing look that said, THAT was some good stuff. He reached around into his back pocket and pulled out a comb. He gave his thinning, greasy hair two strokes from the comb, one on each half of his head. His free hand followed the comb, pressing his hair down against his scalp. He looked at me with a proud look on his face and said, “I got myself the gift of tongues.” He wiped the comb on his pants leg and put it back where he got it.
“It would appear you do, Mr. Sanders.” I smiled at him.
He stood up gingerly and placed the palms of his hands against the small of his back, leaning back and grunting. “I reckon we better head back down. I don’t like leaving her alone for too long.”
“I understand. May I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Your daughter and the other guy. Mapleton. Did they have a relationship? More than just friends, I mean.”
He tilted his head. “Are you askin’ me if they were messin’ around?”
“Well, no, not necessarily messing around. Just if they were more than friends.”
Walter took a step toward me. “My daughter was pure. We bible believin’ people around here.”
I held up my hands. “I am sure she was pure, Mr. Sanders. That’s not what I’m getting at. All I mean is…”
“It is time for you to go, Don.”
“OK.” I did not want conflict. I nodded and turned toward the door. He stepped in front of me and opened it. I walked out into the hall and headed toward the steps. Mrs. Sanders was at the base of the stairs wiping her hands on a hand towel. “Walter,” she said, “Can you bring down the dishes from our room? I’ll show our guest out.”
“Yep,” I heard him say behind me. I turned to tell him goodbye, but he was already heading away toward their room. I made my way down the steps. Janice was still wiping her hands vigorously and was studying me. She tilted her head. “Mister, do you think my Nora kilt herself?”
The question surprised me. I averted my eyes and began, “I, uh…”
“Well, she didn’t. That Derrick boy didn’t either.”
I took a step closer to her. I took a peek up the stairs to make sure Walter was not within hearing distance. “Were Norma and Derrick a couple?”
She leaned forward. I could see the faint freckles on her face for the first time. I could smell the bourbon on her breath.
She simply said, “Duh.” Shaking her head like she was disappointed in me, she pointed in Walter’s general direction. “And that fool up there knows it too. He is just protecting her reputation, is all.”
“Well, then, I have to ask. Do you think there was foul play involved?”
“Foul play? You mean murder?”
“Yes, ma’am. Murder.”
She peered deeper into my eyes. She knocked on my forehead lightly with a fist. “You are a confused soul. Ain’t you?” She slung the dish towel across her shoulder. “Follow me.”
We walked into the kitchen. The back door I had come in earlier was standing open. A table was in the center of the kitchen. On it was a small, pocket-sized bible. She picked it up and handed it to me. There was a thin strip of paper marking a page.
“It wasn’t murder. It wasn’t suicide. And it wasn’t an accident,” she said. I wondered what was left. “Have a nice trip back home, Mister,” she continued. “That book has the truth you are looking for.”
I nodded goodbye to her, feeling a little frustrated and confused. I turned and walked out the door and to my truck. I watched her pull the door closed. I got in and leaned back in the driver’s seat. Frustrated, I sighed. I started to reach into my pocket for the ignition key and realized the bible was still in my hand. It was green and the perfect size for a breast pocket. Printed on the cover was The New Testament of Jesus Christ. Under the title it read, Words of Christ in Red. I had no doubt those words would also be in 17th century English.
I turned to the page marked by the slip of paper. It was The Gospel of Mark. Sections of the ninth chapter were highlighted. Seven verses were not only highlighted, but underlined in pencil. I put on a pair of reading classes I had in the console and began reading at the forty-third verse. The words were in red. Christ said, “And if thy hand offend thee, cut if off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.”
My heart rate picked up. I began feeling nauseas. I swallowed and read on.
After Christ talked about an offending foot, he stated in the forty-seventh verse, “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”
I took off my glasses and dropped them onto the passenger seat. I closed the bible and set it down beside the glasses. I was feeling a rush of emotions.
I thought of a young Nora Sanders wanting to touch Derrick Mapleton. I thought of her hand on his shoulder. His back. His thigh. His crotch. That hand making her sin, leading her to hell, keeping her from eternal life.
I thought of Derrick looking at the young, tight curves of Nora’s body, wanting her, lusting in his heart. His eye causing him to sin. Which eye?
I took the wrong one out the first time.
I started the pickup and headed down the dirt path that led from the Sanders’ place. I turned down the highway that wound through the hollow. I felt sorry for the forbidden couple. I pictured them lying in separate places and times, bleeding to death. They expected to live up until the very end; believed to the very point they lived no more.
It wasn’t murder. It wasn’t suicide. It wasn’t an accident.
It was something else.
Billy R. Sauls writes fiction and lives with his wife, Deborah, in Knoxville, TN where he attended the University of Tennessee. He has two sons, a step-daughter, and another on the way.
Giada Cattaneo is an Italian Illustrator with a strong Italian accent. She’s based in Miami Beach, Florida. She studied Art History at the University of Bologna, Italy, and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 2014, with a thesis on Florida-based sculptor, Duane Hanson. She recently showcased her watercolor paintings at Jude Papaloko’s “Jakmel Gallery” at Wynwood Art District in Miami. She’s also collaborated with Italian Editors and Artists Associations: Enrico Folci Editore (Roma), SensoInverso Edizioni (RAvenna), UAO Edizioni (l’Aquila), Eventualmente Edizioni (Palermo), Freaks Edizioni (Faenza), Cacofonico Editore (Faenza), Fermenti Editrice (Roma), Progetto Flaneri Edizioni (Roma), Zacem Cultural Association (Savona), L’URLO Magazine (Ancona), il Cacofonico Magazine (Faenza).
Her paintings have been shown at Jakmel Art Gallery, Wynwood Art District, Miami. Her illustrations have been published in Fourteen Hills Magazine, Black Scat Review, Puerto Del Sol, and Meat for Tea Magazine.
Giada’s Website: www.honeyjade.com
Vibrations on the windowsill jarred my eyes open, liberating me from a dream. I reached for my phone and read the text from my dad.
“Did momma tell you the lousy news? Bout me?” he said.
“Nope,” I said.
“I went to the doctor yesterday.”
“Okay?”
“Doc told me I have heart problems, which I knew the heart wasn’t right, and a failing liver.”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I waited for a follow-up text, knowing he wouldn’t just let me go away from this. Only two minutes later, it came.
“The doc at the V.A. told me, ‘how do you want to die? A failing liver or heart?’” he said. He attached an angry-faced emoji to the end of the text. Another message came soon after this one.
“My blood isn’t getting filtered as it should, which causes lots of serious problems…he said it’s got toxins, inclusive of animal serum.”
“Wtf does that mean?” I said.
“Doc says maybe I was working with animals, or contracted something from animals.”
“Did you suggest the cat?”
“No. But cat has hooked me a dozen times. The doc asked what all the punctures were on my arms.”
I tossed my phone back onto the windowsill and pulled the sheets up over my shoulders. I laid there calculating the meaning of the items spread around the room. There were the television and PlayStation that I never turned on, the dwindling shelves of food, and posters I rarely glanced at pasted all over the walls. My eyes stuck to a couple of apples that I had collected, sitting on my desk. One was green, the other red, but both were brightly pigmented. Somehow, I felt inferior to all of these objects. Each one wanted to do its job and I wouldn’t let it. The apples would rot in a short while, and their vanity, which I assumed they must have had, would be replaced with insecurity when their crisp colors turned pallid, and their taut flesh wilted. I would watch them change, until one day the fruit flies came, and I had to throw them out. Even then, I would be unmoved.
Rolling over, I gazed up at the ceiling and recounted every detail of the film that screened in my head before I woke up.
I found myself in my church, listening to voices close by. I crept my way toward the open double-doors to the sanctuary, and poked my head in just enough so I could see the four armed bodies sitting on the front pew, with a fifth pacing back and forth in front of them, a man shouting peremptory gibberish. This one came to an abrupt halt in both commanding and pacing. He snapped his attention to the doors, and I knew he saw me.
“Get him,” he said. For the first time, he formed actual words. The four bodies immediately sprung to their feet, drawing their pistols from shoulder holsters as they ran towards me. I booked it up the stairs, racing with adrenaline to the next floor. They shot at my hand as I gripped the newel post, missing by an inch when I turned to continue up the next flight. I ran faster. Assuming I knew my own church better than them, I sprinted through mazes of hallways, stairwells, and Sunday school rooms.
I thought I’d lost them when I made a round trip back to the sanctuary, landing with tip-toes at the back room divided by curtains. I slipped behind them and sat down in a corner to catch my breath, careful not to make a thud as my ass hit the floor. Footsteps came before I could react to change my hiding place. The curtains were ripped open, then spread all the way apart when one of the bodies spotted me. He raised a pistol, retightened his fingers around the grip, and I half rolled over and wrapped my arm around my eyes.
Just before the shot was fired, I heard a galumphing movement, and a metal rattling—but I wasn’t hurt. I removed my arm from my eyes with reticence, and saw my dad standing with his back to me. His back had an unfortunate hole in the left side. The steel cane in his right hand fell to the floor with an echoing bang and rattle as his grip loosened, and he fell. I noticed my brother, Jace, standing in the doorway across the room, staring at the back of the body that just shot our father.
Then everything was black. The scene continued a moment later, but I played a different part. I stood there in the curtained-off room, staring at myself sitting on my ass, helpless in the corner. I saw my dad lying dead on the floor, facing me. I held the gun.
Back in bed, my fingers were curled in the sheets, securing them, when I realized I was trying to make myself cry. It wouldn’t come, so I gave up and let my thoughts take over again.
The dread I felt when I knew that guy was going to kill me was tremendous, and thank God my dad stepped in front of the bullet for me. I wouldn’t have done the same thing for him. There’s a theory that when you die in your dreams, you die in real life. I never really knew if it was true or not, but it’s better safe, than dying as a martyr in your sleep, right?
Feeling compelled to think about my dad now, I started collating memories. For as long as I could remember, my dad walked with a cane, which I guess was a result of his back injury from when he built houses for a living. He took heavy steps to the kitchen each morning, every other beat on the floor accompanied by the distinct metal rattle of adjustable steel. On the counter he prepared his breakfast: a paper plate cluttered with pills of assorted colors that looked like a children’s ball pit. Then he poured a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. He always ate his cereal standing in front of the living room window, staring out. Every fall, when the first licks of frost could be seen on the grass, he said, “Ya know, I might not be around too much longer. I might not even make it to next Christmas.” He stood there staring, talking between chews. “And you better learn to help your mother around here when I’m gone.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
“I’m serious, Hal. I’m not as healthy as I used to be.”
“Yep. Neither is the dog.”
My dad sighed and turned away, walking back to the bedroom where he spent most of the day napping.
This dialogue was tradition, and only one of many scenarios that has made my dad a king of uncomfortable situations. Telling me he’s dying via text was a brand new one. I was disturbed by it for a moment, before I realized the undeniable terror of receiving that news in person. Surely I would say something offensive I didn’t mean. Either that, or I’d say nothing, roll my eyes, and go to my room.
The thing was, I just couldn’t stop thinking about my dog. Twelve years ago we bought him, and named him Indiana. I picked him out myself, and grew up with him. I played with him, taught him tricks, and took long, cozy naps with him. But now he was on his way out, marking his last days with sluggishness, arthritis, and difficult breathing. I loved Indy, but I was grateful to be apart from him for long periods while I was at school. My prayers wished for his release when I wasn’t around.
Then I got a kitten last summer. It was from a litter my brother’s cat had, so I got it for free. For months I begged my mom to let me get one, so I was ecstatic when she said I could have it. I called him Dr. Venkman. His immediate purpose was to serve as a companion for stress. Spending so much time with him, I was attached, and gradually paid less and less attention to Indiana.
I prayed about my dad after he texted me that morning. If they weren’t answered, I was going to be stuck with a situation I might not know how to accommodate. My chest felt indecisive about whether or not it should be constricted and stealing my energy. In the past, Jace had always gotten along with my dad, talking about cars, sports, and women. My brother was older, so he got to experience and know my father before he started to go bad. Sometimes they reminisced about those good times, like when they played baseball in the backyard, and my dad cheering Jace on at games. He taught him how to change the oil on a car, what to do if the air conditioner conks out, and how to replace the brakes. Jace was always my dad’s “buddy,” as he would call him right in front of me.
Our bond was different than theirs, even when we were screaming at each other. I addressed him when I needed help fixing something, and we shared a groove for the occasional classic rock song, but that was about it. I only knew my dad as a sick, frustrated old man who wouldn’t stop barking at me. Disabled as he was, he never did any of those dad things with me. I could care less about cars, and I didn’t know the first thing about sports. All I got were his condescending Vietnam parables. When he would come out from his bedroom just to catch me occupying myself by studying and reading, it evoked a rage in him. He would call me lazy, compare me to my brother, and tell me I don’t know what’s hard, that he was at war when he was my age.
Dads say these things, though, so I thought I still loved him—but I also thought it might be that love where you say it and want to believe it, but daydream about his burden being finally eliminated. I wished so hard that it was as simple as getting another cat.
Winter came, and I had submerged myself into my final papers, all the while blasting Christmas music and pissing off my roommates and neighbors. My mind was on one track, which was wrapping up the semester and heading home for the holidays to see Dr. Venkman and Indiana, drink some festive beer, and spend some quality time with Giada and Bobby Flay. My mom helped me load my junk into the van and we had a tranquil drive home, listening to Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas on repeat and discussing how school went.
After pulling into our driveway, my heart started to knock against my chest, and I tried to keep my cool, holding my lips shut tight so my veritable glee wasn’t as obvious. From the open hatch, I grabbed what I could and carried it inside, tracking in snow that melted on the kitchen tiles like a pat of butter in a frying pan. I set everything down in the living room, where my dad met me on the green shag rug.
“Hello, son,” he said. An unashamed smile showed his coffee-stained, rotting teeth when he wrapped his arms around me. Those smug expressions always made me wonder how he wasn’t disgusted with himself for being in Vietnam, and raising me to feel bad for not going through a similar struggle. I hugged him back with two quick, one-handed pats on the back, then tried to rip myself away, and run back to the van for my suitcases. When I found myself captured, claustrophobia set in and I panicked. Then he fell to the floor, pulling me along before releasing me and clutching his left arm. I backed up and watched him writhing on the carpet, making a figure impression in the shag.
My mom eventually saw him and called an ambulance. At the hospital, she, Jace, and I were sitting around my dad’s bed, waiting. I looked at him for a long time, thinking about the dog. I felt inferior to him and his heart monitor declaring the current eminence of his life. If I had the means to save the war hero, I know I wouldn’t move an inch out of my uncomfortable hospital chair; I would wait for the fruit flies to come.
When the digital wave pulled tight and the final tone lingered in my ears, I expected to feel an overwhelming rush in my stomach, like bat wings flapping and turning over against my entrails. I almost thought I’d cry for once, at least a tear or two. Instead, I felt indifferent. It was the same feeling as when I get a paper back in class, and read the “85%” written on the front: not happy, but not remarkably angry, either.
As the nurse stopped the ringing, those texts from only a month earlier echoed in recollection:
“Did momma tell you the lousy news? Bout me?”
“The doc at the V.A. told me, ‘how do you want to die? A failing liver or heart?’”
I felt no defined sense of finality then, and I didn’t feel it now, either. That’s when it hit me that my dad had been dead for years. At least, the image had been created a long time ago. I thought of an ice tray being filled with water, each mold flooding one at a time. Every memory of my dad was a hint that filled a mold. The first one was when elementary school classmates mistook him for my grandpa. Eventually the tray filled up with doctor reports, insatiable anger, and longer, more frequent naps that pulled him out of sight. Today, the water turned to ice.
As we each stood beside the bed watching his inert body, I broke the silence and said, “I expected it sooner.”
Bryce A. Johle is from Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He is a senior at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania currently completing his bachelor’s degree in Professional Writing. His work has appeared in Shoofly Literary Magazine, of which he is now a managing editor.
Bartibus Primshaw walked to the butcher’s each Friday morning at ten o’clock. The silver chimes tittered when he entered. He’d smile at the butcher’s daughter, who helped her father around the shop as a way of paying for her studies at the seminary, wait his turn in line, and once at the front would order three pounds of flank steak — a week’s lunch and dinner. He’d nod to the butcher upon taking his meat, then leave a tip in the polka-dotted jar on the counter marked “for school, for God.”
Bartibus’s philosophy — one he’d found to work well for him, so well that never had a reason arisen to question its verity — was this: A smile is as good as a payday; a wink, as a sunrise — so they say. Always keep moving; you’re nothing if not doing.
No one had taught him to think this way — not with the explicit aim of doing so, at least. His parents had been kind, but they guarded flaws of their own. Rather, he’d acquired the disposition by observing the Now.
All was defined and definable in this Now. Bartibus never spoke its name — not from fear, but to preserve an economy of words so as not to muddle its perfection. All of life was thus labeled, and all humanity and societal interaction were in turn stamped by the Moment in exactly the form in which it appeared. This manifested itself in Bartibus, and he maintained himself within the idea via a strict code of objective honesty. But there’s more to the story of Mister Primshaw than our inane attempts to explain his guarded silence can capture.
It was on one such Friday that Bartibus entered the butcher’s shop to find it empty. The lights were off. He called first the daughter’s name, then the butcher’s. No one answered. He found a note scotch-taped to the glass refrigerator left of the cash register.
“Gone to church,” it read. “If you must take, leave money here. RIP Tom.”
It was normal for the butcher to leave the shop unattended — he was a trusting man, especially when it came to his fellow townsfolk. But who was Tom? Tom Richards, the middle-aged barkeep at the Finn Stern Brewery? Perhaps. Other than that, he could think of no one who went by the name. Deciding the anonymous man to be a close acquaintance of the butcher’s, Bartibus thought to go up to the church to comfort a grieving friend.
A brisk October wind whistled through the dogwoods and oaks lining Main Street. It was the sort of day, Bartibus thought, which hinted at impending winter while clinging fast to the sinews of a bygone summer of heat and requited eternity. The wind chilled him as he ascended Colton Hill, but any discomfort which would have otherwise befallen him was countered in equal measure by the sultry rays of a midmorning sun.
He hummed as he climbed, as was habit — nothing in particular, and everything in particular. Of the hazy half-truths which commingled in his mind and spurted from his mouth as a singular line of notes, he knew nothing — but that it was he who conjured them and spread them through the air about him was incontrovertible. Today the tune whirled from him in a quick staccato, as if impatient to fold itself into a finished product.
Soon the old, wooden church loomed, its white paint chipping, its roof half-devoid of tiles. Those remaining were tinged a sickly moss-green. The door creaked softly as he entered. The butcher and his daughter stood among a group of ten huddled around a short, mahogany casket.
The butcher, who was leaning on his hands at the casket’s foot, looked up when he heard Bartibus’ footsteps. Bartibus smiled and nodded to him.
“Hey there, Bart,” the butcher muttered, turning back to the coffin and wiping his eyes with the cuff of his beige wool sport coat. Bartibus joined the knot of mourners, sliding in next to the butcher and putting an arm around his shoulder. He peered into the coffin. A black-haired boy no older than seven or eight lay supine. His skin shone a pallid gray. His eyes were open, and his blank stare bore a hard hole in the patchwork roof. The butcher shuddered and shook off Bartibus’ hand.
“Don’t need comforting,” he mumbled through repressed sniffs. “Please.”
“Who was he?” asked Bartibus.
“My nephew. He was in town visiting with his mother. My sister. We were going to pick pumpkins this afternoon.” His voice was airy, a departure from his trademark growl. He paused to wipe a streak of clear snot from his upper lip before continuing. “Tuesday night, he slipped on some loose hay in the goat paddock. The animals got startled, and….” He trembled harder. Bartibus resisted the urge to hug him. “I saw it happen,” the butcher said. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I saw it happen.” He buried his face in one sausage-fingered hand and shuffled two steps to his right to hug his daughter, who wept silently.
“But he’s in God’s hands, now, brother,” said a stout, bearded man standing at the boy’s midriff. “In Him, purpose is bestowed upon both the living and the dead. He’s in a better place.” The butcher raised his head and nodded in assent.
Bartibus observed the other men and women gathered around the boy. A beefy woman stood at the coffin’s head. A scrawny man with black hair the same shade as the boy’s reached his arm as far as he could around her broad shoulders. Bartibus turned to the body. He ran his eyes over its length, from shoes to head. The child looked peaceful, he thought, in his Sunday finery, his face jaded by neither fear nor excitement, neither contempt nor Earthly love.
Bartibus found himself shaking with a kinetic, frenetic energy, as if he were a bolt of lightning which had been struck by a second, equally powerful bolt.
“But doesn’t death open new doors, doors we cannot even dream of for their majesty?!” Bartibus exclaimed, turning towards the butcher. “You said you can’t believe he’s gone — but where has he gone to? Do you not entertain thoughts of him now in the same way you would if he were alive?”
The butcher frowned at him. Bartibus, breathing as if he had just run in the town’s annual Turkey Trot, continued, his voice rising and trembling.
“The most you can know of anyone is the idea you form of them in your head. Are those ideas not still etched on the tablets of your minds? All of you?”
“But he’ll never walk among us again,” cried the broad-shouldered woman. “My son … he was my son! And now there will be no new memories, no fresh carvings on his totem for us to celebrate.”
“And this is a bad thing?” Bartibus asked. “Annul your marriage of convenience to bodily biases! Break your minds from the habit of acknowledging the familiar dogma as unimpeachable! Then you shall come to see universal Truth. Then you shall recognize eternity.”
All ten of the mourners glared at him in haughty curiosity. Then the butcher huffed, “So you’re saying it’s better he’s dead? At seven years old? Here I thought you were a man, Bartibus. An honest man. You’re no better than, than….” He allowed the thought to peter out, instead clenching his fists and biting his tongue.
“Honest I am,” replied Bartibus. “All I’m saying is, what is a body but uncertainty incarnate? That the boy was spared of ups and downs and left the world behind him before it could engrave upon him the broken half-ideas of pain and the twisted norm of feigned empathy is beautiful. Do you not agree?”
“Feigned?” sobbed the butcher’s daughter. “So we don’t care for our blood, now?”
Bartibus signed. “You miss my point. In willing yourself to befriend sorrow, you have clouded your balance.”
She glared at him. He returned her gaze with a steady, unblinking tenacity, smiling softly before again rolling into speech.
“Look,” he continued, “look how peaceful he is, how unaffected. How ideal. Death, my friends, is the ultimate beauty, far more than music or laughter or sensuality or supposed kinship. In its depth it is paramount, incontrovertible, true.”
Bartibus felt ten sets of bloodshot eyes training as rifle scopes to his forehead.
“You’d best leave,” said the butcher, who had stopped sniffling and now massaged his snot-streaked knuckles. Bartibus almost laughed at the contrast of their sorrowful disposition and his unwavering knowledge of life and the irreducibility the ox-yoke holding it and death in tandem.
“Can you not see?!” he cried. “Do you not know? Death is neither good nor bad, it simply is, and because of this it is All Good!”
“You’re talking circles,” said the butcher, turning towards him and rolling up his sleeves. “Circles and circles and bullshit. I said leave, you hear?” The broad woman sobbed harder.
“Just go,” she choked. “Let him leave, please. He wouldn’t want us to fight over him. Not here. Not like this.”
One final glance at the boy’s body forced the passion of realization from Bartibus’ chest. He skipped from the church, laughing in naive bliss.
He flung the doors open. They creaked on their rusted hinges. The breeze met his face before the sun’s warmth hit him. For a moment, the grin on his face wavered. Then, balance was restored. With a click of his heels against the rotting wood, he hopped down the steps, taking two at a time, and bounced onto the yellow grass of the churchyard.
What would be best now, he thought, would be a walk. A walk, followed by a fine steak. The butcher’s was unlocked. He’d take the usual, and make sure to leave a 20 in his daughter’s tip jar. For a person her age, there was no substitute for education.
Patrick Burr studied philosophy at Vanderbilt University and University College London. This is his first published piece of fiction.
woke up naked and blind
and wanted to call you
but didn’t
felt the warmth of
someone next to me
the need for executions
for the deaths of innocent
mothers and children
something to pass the time
until my vision returned
You and I, cowards like Picasso, like
fists on doors in the empty hours
of the night, soldiers acting on orders,
boots through sleeping skulls, and when
victory is declared the words all sound like
screams. The men who speak them have
the heads of birds, with smiles all
blood and gore.
You ask for flight, you receive paper
airplanes. You receive the gift of loss, the
secrecy of houses, the killer running across
the back yard but his lover left behind.
Don’t call it a war.
Don’t ask about the children.
They were raised to believe in Jesus,
and then they were abandoned. Were left at
the edges of highways, at the borders of
anonymous states and unnamed countries,
and when strangers approached, they fled
into the wilderness.
When the helicopters came in low,
the forests exploded in flames.
It was the belief that all truth could be
measured by money. It was the hands of
priests turned into grasping claws, and the
paintings were all slashed and the
curtains ripped down, and what was left at
the end of the day was a nation of
broken windows
The knowledge that we were all
descended from whores.
That Christ was only spoiled meat
left out by an indifferent hand.
That everything is sacred.
said this is my gift to you and
gave me a book of blank pages, gave me
a coward’s smile
which mirrored my own
it was the war,
the one just before you were born,
and we stumbled through piles of corpses
with stretchers and whiskey
with pistols, because certain questions
can only ever have one answer
because the pages were blank and
we needed blood
and the girl said she was waiting for
her father
said he’d be there soon, but of course he
was dead, and then so was she
we couldn’t take any chances,
you see
we’d been given gifts
beautiful new poisons which were
no good without victims
bombs,
which the scientists warned us were
only theories,
but god they worked so well
and we were given clean white walls,
and so we burned the shadows of women,
of children, of sleeping babies
into them, and we called it a victory
we asked the doctor to keep the
prisoners alive until they’d
answered all of our questions
we improved upon the crucifixion
took turns raping the girl before
we killed her, and she never
made a sound
was just another statistic by the time we
got to her younger sister, and in
the papers we were being called heroes
in the villages, we were having
the men dig their own shallow graves
and it was just a precaution,
you see
we were just protecting the future
we were making sure the
truths would survive
we had this book,
and we were writing them down
all of my poems in
the past tense
all of my reasons
any number of excuses
four days of rain & the
truck wouldn’t start and
there was nothing i could say
to make my son stop
crying
there was nothing i could
do but hold him
both of us very quiet
there in the dark
mother says it was easy,
was like falling in love, says
they beat the girl together,
then just beat her to death
says they left her in the shed
for two months,
then dumped her in the bay
says it just happened,
like a poem or a war
was just the inevitability of
small bones breaking
beneath the weight of joy
john sweet, b. 1968, still numbered among the living. a believer in writing as catharsis. an optimistic pessimist. opposed to all organized religion and political parties. avoids zealots and social media whenever possible. latest collections include THE CENTURY OF DREAMING MONSTERS (2014 Lummox Press) and A NATION OF ASSHOLES W/ GUNS (2015 Scars Publications).
Alina Zamanova is a fashion illustrator and print/textile designer. She studied at University of the Arts London. Currently looking for permanent print design roles. Require sponsorship for working. Originally from Ukraine. She is also available for freelance opportunities both as a fashion illustrator and print designer.
To view more art by Alina:
https://www.instagram.com/alina_zamanova/
https://www.facebook.com/zamanova
Experience:
– Print Design for YANA CHERVINSKA SS16 collection; Art direction (make up, hair) for the show during Ukrainian Fashion Week (10.2015)
– Fashion Illustrations for SHOWstudio covering SS16 LFW collections. (09.2015)
– Fashion Illustrations Couture AW15 collections for HUNGER magazine. (07.2015)
– Fashion Illustrations for LITKOVSKAYA fashion brand; sketches for Vogue Italy Talents application (05.2015)
– Fashion Illustration job for VERA MEAT , NYC (06.2015)
– Print Design for ILLUSTRATED PEOPLE AW15 + SS16 + AW16
– Print Design for ELENA REVA AW15/16
– Studio intern at Jean Pierre Braganza (09. 2014)
– Print Textile Intern at ALEXANDER MCQUEEN (10.2013- 06.2014)
– Print Design for VALERY KOVALSKA SS14
Published:
– Sky Ferreira. Instagram (online)
– Marie Claire. Hungary (online)
– Hunger Magazine. Interview in Issue 8.
– Pigeons & Peacocks. Interview online
– Idol magazine (online)
– Vogue Italy, V Talents (online)
– ArtefactLifestyle magazine (online)
– Twenty6 magazine (online)
– DASH magazine (printed issue+Illustrator of the Week online)
– Showstudio blog (online)
– SpookMagazine (online)
Exhibitions:
2015 – External show at London college of Fashion, Shoreditch, London, UK
2014 – Art/Georgia/Paris
2013 – Illustrating Dreams, Fashionstyleology , Dash Magazine partners, at Gallery Different, Central London, UK
2013 – Exhibition at CAFE1001 Brick Lane, LovArts, Chaos Control, London, UK
2012 – Brick Lane Gallery, Art in Mind, London, UK
Silas Willard Schoolhouse was erected in 1912, during the apex of what is known as the Prairie School Movement in architecture. Now on the brink of 114 years, the school board of District 205 has determined to tear it down and build a new structure on the same site. This decision was made even after they had been presented the information numerous times that it would cost $11million less to renovate. The new building is designed to last “20 to 30 years.” Silas was built to last up to two centuries.
The essay is obviously the opposite of that awful object, ‘the article’…
—William Gass
Over the years I formed this dream about my writing. Not a hard goal, like wanting to have a book published by age thirty-five. Instead my dream was immaterial: I wanted simply to know the feeling of being approached by a stranger, to say, “I’m sorry, but I just wanted to take the chance to tell you, I love your work.” After I published “The Opposite of Suicide” in the December 2014 issue of The Writing Disorder, that dream finally came true, many times.
I spent three mostly sleepless months researching, writing, and editing the essay I am most proud of. Then I spent over a year trying to get it published. When it finally hit the Web, nothing much happened at first. Then, about a month later, some parties discovered the essay, and used it to have me fired from my job as a substitute teacher. After I was terminated from my position, the essay went micro-viral, which means it was passed around a lot, among a very specific set of people—namely people from Central Illinois; people who lived near or had originally come from my hometown of Galesburg, Illinois.
I had mixed emotions about this, as I was glad my work was finally being read, but I did not believe I deserved to be terminated for it. As it happened, my dream did finally come true. People, most of them students at Galesburg High School, approached me in public.
Only what they said to me was: “I loved your article.”
Let’s get some things straight. The school district that fired me was not the same one I wrote about in the first essay. The school district that fired me was a rural community outside of my hometown. I had taken a position as a long-term substitute teacher practically over night after a teacher gave her resignation. It is still unclear to me why she left, but I know some controversy surrounded it, and that her resignation was asked for by the school board.
Before I move on there are still more things to clear up. In the first essay I kept the name of my hometown a secret. All of the identities of persons not related to me were given new names. With the exception of the underage students, I did not have to do this. I did it to maintain people’s anonymity. It was my piece of writing, my work, my opinions, and I didn’t want to muddle things for anyone else. I went to great lengths to conceal the name of my hometown and the school district for the aforementioned reasons, but most importantly to the points I was trying to make in the original piece: I wanted the message to come across that this could be anywhere in Small—or Medium—town, USA.
A major point I would like to make is that practically none of the first essay was about Lombard Middle School. That is the school I lived closest to when I was substitute teaching. I worked there probably 90% of the time I was subbing. No one who works at Lombard should feel like anything in the first essay was directed at them. I adore everyone I worked with at that school, both in the classrooms and the office. Truly, I felt at home there and believe that is the best school in all of the district.
More things to address: After I was terminated from the rural school district, I did call the personnel coordinator for my hometown school district and asked if I could have my old job back. She inquired the head of human resources. Within a few hours she reinstated my registration as a substitute teacher for Community Unit School District 205. The coordinator scheduled me for a date three weeks off. The first thought that popped into my head was, I have three weeks to find a new job . . .
A few days later I called her again and quit, even without having a new job.
Last item to address: In case there are any students of District 205 who are still confused: No, I did not commit suicide. I am very much alive, well, and living in New York City.
Let’s begin.
This is a letter I wrote to the editor of the Galesburg Register Mail in early 2014:
Over the weekend a group of concerned citizens met to discuss alternatives to tearing down Silas Willard. When the question was asked, why the School Board would want the community to invest in a new building designed to only last 20-30 years, I cracked a joke, “They’re probably looking ahead to the future because in 20-30 years hardly anyone will live here anymore.” The room erupted in laughter, which quickly hushed into awkward silence. On our current path that could very well be the city’s future.
I moved back to Galesburg in the fall of 2012 after a twelve year absence. It has been my pleasure to serve this community as a substitute teacher for District 205 over the past year. As we near the summer, I am faced with the decision of whether to stay here. I have friends all over the world begging me to come live in their cities. New York, Chicago, Portland, these places all entice me. But I’m constantly giving Galesburg the benefit of the doubt; the chance for her to redeem herself to me.
One young couple I befriended in grad school relocated to Bloomington, Indiana. Now, parts of that city are as redneck as you can get. But others are quite simply stunning. Take a drive around that city and you will see historic buildings and schoolhouses, all preserved and modernized. Not just around the university, but the whole city has this vibe like things are actually happening there. That community has committed itself to maintaining a standard of beauty that cultivates a pleasant, inviting environment.
It is my belief and the belief of many people in this community that Silas Willard and buildings like it create that kind of pleasant environment within Galesburg.
At this meeting I attended over the weekend, two young couples living in the Silas Willard neighborhood said that school building was a major attraction to settling their families in Galesburg. Both young couples expressed that if the building were to be torn down, they would begin plans to relocate.
What I’m getting at is destroying landmarks like Silas Willard gives outsiders the wrong impression. If anything, it shows that we don’t care enough about our history to try to preserve it. There are less and less things that make Galesburg unique. Why would anyone from outside want to move here when it continually tries to make itself look like everyplace else? For that matter, why should anyone stay?
Think of this way: building outward and upward; building anew instead of reusing what’s already in place; corporate chains coming in, buying land cheaply instead of having to pay rent in preexisting structures, building their cookie-cutter stores instead of opening shop in unique, unused storefronts. After time, the cities who let this happen become littered with mini-malls (ironic play on “minimal,” ever notice that?). It isn’t long before these retail spaces, cheaper because of their lower overhead, take prevalence over the older buildings. Stores move out of the older buildings, leaving them uncared for so they end up becoming condemned.
Mini-malls and cookier-cutter franchise buildings look cheap because they are. They look sad and lacking in character because, well. And that is precisely the type of building going in as the new Silas Willard.
From a US Department of Agriculture Pamphlet:
. . . total rural population has declined slightly for several years, as slowing natural population growth fails to offset net migration away from rural areas; this is the first time rural population declined since data became available in 1950 that could detect such a trend. At the same time, long-term trends continue to concentrate the most highly educated members of the working-age population in urban areas where the personal economic returns to higher education are greater.
This paragraph is extremely important. What it basically says is rural population in the US is decreasing, and that those who come from rural communities, then earn higher educations are choosing not to return to their hometowns. Keep this in mind throughout this essay.
15% of the US lives in rural or “non-metro” areas. That means people who call rural America “The Real America” are way, way mistaken. And since the Great Recession people have been migrating away from rural areas. Galesburg, with a population of 32,195 is just big enough to be considered a city.
However, despite the lower earnings available in rural areas, some individuals and families do migrate from urban to rural areas at all levels of educational attainment, as quality-of-life factors, lower housing costs, personal ties, or other specific opportunities motivate them to move or move back to rural America.
After I returned to Galesburg, I made several friends who grew up in inner-city Chicago or St. Louis, who actually chose to move to Galesburg because of reasons listed above. They saw greater opportunity for themselves in a small city than in the big city. So, there is interest for people from the metropolises to move to communities like Galesburg. Why not take advantage of that?
According to this study, education has a lot to do with the success of an area. It’s a no-brainer that we should be investing heavily in improving education. But currently there are cuts on education which puts us at an impasse.
The largest factory in town, Admiral (which became Maytag in the 90s), left in 2003. Let me just say there are many ways to court a company to set up in a town, but it can’t all be based on smooth-talking. The people who built those companies and run them got where they are by being shrewd. And when they do their research and find something as simple as the school district continually making poor choices with its money, it’s an easy conclusion that they are going to have trouble drawing talented workers to live there, so they decide not to take the gamble.
It’s a vicious cycle we’re on: Nobody wants to move there because nobody who lives there even wants to be there. I read essays and articles all the time by other writers whose hometowns are going through the same thing. And yet these small towns keep making the same mistakes over and over. Something trite should go here, some Horatio Alger shit about making America great again, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t right, either. I’m sorry, but ‘Murica just isn’t working.
The fact that we even have such an idiotic term as ‘Murica is indicative of a split in the American identity. We fight over this. How can we be unified on anything if we can’t even agree on what we are anymore?
| Factors of Migration | Push Factors | Pull Factors |
| ECONOMIC | Emigration away from area with few job opportunities | Immigration to areas where jobs are more available; areas with more valuable natural resources, or new industries |
| CULTURAL | Forced migration has occurred for these main reasons: slavery, political instability, and fear of persecution. | People are attracted to democratic countries that encourage individual choice in education, career, and place of residence. After Communists gained control of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, many people in that region were pulled toward the democracies in Western Europe and North America. |
This is adapted from a chart on the Lewis Historical Society website. [http://lewishistoricalsociety.com/wiki2011/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=28] It breaks down the main factors influencing what is known and the “push-and-pull factors” of migration.
If the trend of push-and-pull migration away from rural areas is not a primarily economic anomaly, then the problem these numbers aren’t telling us is why people choose to move away from Rural America. This is not an inconsequential number—We are talking tens of millions of people fleeing their hometowns because of ignorance, bigotry, and hypocrisy. If we were to record all of these untold stories, just imagine what kind of impact it could have—to finally hold a true mirror up to the real ‘Murica and show it how ugly it really is.
This phenomenon isn’t unique to Galesburg. It happens in places like Quincy, Pekin, Elmhurst. The list goes on of these fuck-up towns. They become self-homogenizing. Then they run themselves into the ground because of their lack of diversity.
When I was working on a piece about Carl Sandburg, I wanted to explore this idea a little more closely. I wanted some facts and figures, nothing too overwhelming, but a good sampling. I called the record keeper at Galesburg High School, informing that person I was an alumnus working on a paper for grad school. I asked if I could just have the list of the student rankings from the class of ’99, thinking surely this person could pull that info up quickly. She said she would do it, but I think once she got the sense of what I wanted the information for, she never sent it to me.
Now, Dad would have been all “Freedom of Information Act” on her and submitted a formal request. But I let it go. Besides, all getting that data would have done is confirm for me my suspicion: The top performers in my class did not return to Galesburg after getting college and post-graduate degrees.
In short, every year towns like Galesburg are losing all of their intelligent people. This says many things, and this information could be hit from several different angles to extrapolate all the different factors for why people choose not to go back. But I think it’s safe to conclude that this is indicative of a place that does not value intelligence.
Notice the repeating forms of rectangular geometry, perfectly parallel, and perpendicular lines. Buildings like Silas Willard that were part of the Prairie School Movement were visual odes to the landscape; designed to look as if they were part of the prairie landscape themselves. Unique, it can be truly said there is nothing quite like them in the rest of the world, and there are precious few left.
That letter to the editor of The Register Mail was never sent in. My father advised me not to. After he read it, he expressed his concern that sending that letter might endanger my job at District 205. The way he put it, “If the board members or any other high-ups read this and take it the wrong way, they could make your life very difficult—I wouldn’t put anything past these people.”
Well, I got nothing to lose anymore.
When the school board members strolled in for the special meeting over Silas Willard Schoolhouse, I was immediately struck by the grotesque image of fluorescent light bouncing off a row of pasty white skulls. Many of the board members and high-ups of the school district are facsimiles of the same archetype: pudgy bald white men way past their primes. I don’t have much of a place to speak, my grandfather was also a bald white man on the school board well past his prime. But that was also fifty fucking years ago.
Since the mid-1990s my father, Douglas Mustain, has been saving my childhood elementary school from being torn down. It repeatedly comes before the school board as if it is “a decision that has to be faced.” No, the building is perfectly sound, and would remain to be so for at least another forty years.
In 2006 he, my mother, and several other members of the community went to the school board with a well-researched argument he wrote titled PRESERVING SILAS WILLARD. The board limits public comments to three minutes at the podium. So, my father began reading from the document. When his three minutes were up, my mother, Sharon Mustain, stood up at the podium, stated her name, profession, address, then began reading where my father had left off. When my mother’s time was up, another member of Operation Save Silas stood up, gave her name, profession, address, then read from where my mother had left off. Members of the group followed in this fashion until the entire 8-page document was read aloud before the school board’s reluctant ears.
Whenever I read over that document, I love that my dad kept hitting the point that if the district chose to renovate the schoolhouse instead of build anew, they would have money left over in case they wanted to make some cool additions, really pimp the place out. That year Operation Save Silas was able to postpone the demolition of the building, yet again.
But, the school board was not finished with Silas yet. In the fall of 2013, they voted to destroy and replace the building. My father was outraged because they made the vote brashly and with no opportunity for the public to voice their say in the matter. An earlier iteration of the board had determined the vote would go to referendum. But, when a new superintendent of finance and interim superintendent of schools came in, they changed it to a board decision, taking the public’s voice in the matter out of the equation.
So, in the spring of 2014, we and many disgruntled community members got together every Saturday to brainstorm ideas for how to bring the school board around to our way of seeing things. We got the board to agree to hear us in a special meeting set for April 7, 2014.
It had been a busy week. My father and other members of Operation Save Silas met with each board member individually, suggesting what could be done with the $11 million the district would save by simply renovating. The more they appealed to their senses of reason, Dad began to feel a few of the board members had turned their minds.
All we needed was someone to make a motion for a vote. A majority vote would save Silas once and for all.
When the public comments time was over, every single board member made a statement about the schoolhouse. One remarked that previous iterations of the school board, going all the way back to the 90s, were “faced with the decision” regarding whether to tear Silas down because of its numerous life safety issues and poor conditions (which was actually all due to deferred maintenance). As he saw it, “this can had been kicked down the road several times,” and now it was this board who would finally bury the hatchet in this ongoing problem that is Silas Willard Schoolhouse.
Others from the board lamented that they had already voted on this matter the previous fall. By holding this special meeting, they were in fact doing us a favor, and going against protocol. So, a couple board members stated that overturning their decision would “damage the board’s credibility.”
That seemed to be the angle the board decided was best to play—that to save face, they could not possibly go back on a decision they had already made. Those of us pleading with them were simply too late. We should have been there in October, even though the board slipped that earlier vote by us.
The board president spoke and actually commended us community members for our hard work and time invested in contacting the board members. This inspired rousing applause from my fellow Operation Save Silas members. I could not bear to put my hands together for this man. We’d met a few times while I had been subbing, although he never bothered introducing himself to me. I guess by his expensive-looking overcoat I was supposed to just assume he was somebody important. He has a goatee, I have a beard. There’s definitely a divide between the kinds of people who wear goatees and those of us who wear beards—I know a tool when I see one.
He played aloof when he asked the district attorney whether there needed to be a vote. They both put on this spectacle of befuddlement; the district attorney shuffled some papers as if he was at that moment looking up the bylaws. He said, “This has never happened before,” then explained to the room that since the decision had already been voted on the past fall, there would have to be a motion by a member of the board before they could vote on the matter again.
The board president raised his eyebrows like he was so surprised and concerned that to go back on their vote would be such a major undertaking, going against all that important procedure stuff that they held so dearly. But, as if it was a favor to us hard-working constituents, he said he supposed he could put it to the board to ask if any of them would like to make the motion to have a revote on Silas Willard. Eyes darted from board member to board member. They sat back in their seats, pushed themselves as far away from their microphones as possible. Their faces directed downward to the table.
Meeting adjourned.
We got fucking played.
From the newspaper in 2006 when the community successfully saved Silas Willard from the school board’s wrecking ball. Gotta say, it’s pretty badass to see one’s parents in a human chain.
I didn’t actually hate growing up in Galesburg. I hated growing out of it. I hated that there was a gradual awakening that took place by my teen ages, that the person I was on the inside was at conflict with the person I was on the outside, which was the perception people had of me and the way I was expected to be. It’s hard to prove that, of course—what people’s expectations are of you, but there is unspoken mojo that goes on between people. It’s indirect. People say homophobic, racist, and otherwise bigoted things. Even though they may be directed at a third or more often fourth never-present party, it is a warning to everyone in immediate presence.
The underlying power of that message is that by striking out on your own and voicing your dissension with the popular opinion of those you are among, you run the risk of losing everything you have ever known. You will no longer belong. You will become isolated. And there’s great power in threatening someone with isolation.
This is a stupid fucking way of going about life.
I don’t hate Galesburg, but I don’t love it, either. I both love and hate it. There are places I love going there. There’s not a lot, but it has its charm. I hate most of it. But I do enjoy that the people who live there and I have common background. There are stories we can share, things we can all laugh about. I just hate how people seem to have cut themselves off; the way the rest of the world is advancing, but they aren’t.
So what do you do when you move back to your hometown that you feel ambivalent towards? As I found out in the first couple months after arriving, work was clearly not an option. There just weren’t any jobs in the area. My move to Galesburg was meant to be a short layover to get reacquainted with family and old friends. My dad needed some help at his law firm scanning about thirty-five years’ worth of paper files into PDFs. Problem was, he couldn’t afford to pay me very much. So, I started subbing to make some extra money. Then that turned into a full-time job.
It was a delight to get to spend more time with my family. With the exception of my younger sister, my parents have an empty house these days. I had just spent four years in North Carolina attending school and figuring out what kind of writer I wanted to be, albeit a mostly unsuccessful one. When I moved back I was certainly jaded from my experience in grad school and had developed a cantankerous attitude toward anyone who didn’t agree with my worldview. I arrogantly snapped at people with little or no provocation—I was not a pleasant person to be around.
Subbing helped me mellow out. As I was having success at it, I would recount my experiences to my mother and father at dinner, and I could see Dad reach for Mom’s hand under the table and squeeze her with excitement that I was getting on so well at being an educator.
See, my family has a long history with education. My father’s father, Reginald Mustain, was on the school board for fourteen years, many of which he served as president. My sisters Kristi and Kari both have degrees in Education and have had numerous teaching and coaching jobs since college. My younger brother Kirk has a provisional teaching certificate so he can teach full-time graphic design and computer science to middle and high school classes, and he has taught at the college level. On my mother’s side, her older brother Stephen Tegarden had a thirty-five-year career serving as principal and superintendent of schools all over the country.
One might say educating is in our blood. Even members of the family who do not teach are very invested in volunteering for the schools and sitting on boards.
So, when my father was squeezing my mother’s hand at dinner all those nights, it had to have been with the hope that I had finally found my calling. Teaching, after all, was something I could do and still continue to write in my free time—as a hobby.
Little did he know I was working on something. Little did he know how enraged I was becoming at the state of public education; that I felt compelled to write about it. I was running home all those nights after dinner to research all I could about the Columbine Massacre and put down my own tormented experiences.
Marble floors and this unique locker nook between two large classrooms is just one of the many sights we all saw as kids that we probably took for granted, but looking back, provided us the most original schooling experience in the district.
My favorite passages from “The Opposite of Suicide”:
We spend more time telling kids to stay away from drugs, alcohol, and smoking than we do teaching them how to identify the lower half of the periodic table of elements.
I realized I was gay by the age of twelve, but I tried to push it out of my thoughts. I felt guilty about it. Thought I could overcome it. I thought I was going to go to hell. Getting over that self-hatred is a process that takes several years. There is no doubt in my mind that has a long-term effect on a person’s psyche.
That last line is a notion I got from none other than N*Sync member Lance Bass. Bass came out publicly in 2006 after spending about a decade singing, dancing, and acting before the whole world. To keep something a secret not just from friends and family, but the entire world would be a hell of an undertaking. What’s especially messed up about it is we all knew Lance was gay from the beginning. So, why did he have to keep it a secret in the first place? Regardless, he did, and I heard him say once on his radio show that he is certain that being in the closet fucks up a person’s brain. So, I decided to drop that little chestnut in my essay.
Sidenote: I have never met a closet-case who wasn’t deeply emotionally disturbed. My out gay brothers and sisters will back me on this.
I recently watched The Way He Looks, a Portuguese film about two teen boys, one of whom is blind. The movie mostly follows the blind one, and the tension of the story is trying to discover if the new boy in town is gay. The movie had a happy ending, which gave me a weird feeling. I felt a little letdown that the new boy turned out to return the main characters’ affection. What a copout!
I’m accustomed to gay movies ending in the following ways: He’s willing to “experiment” a little, but he won’t take the plunge of acknowledging his love in public. Or they die in a suicide pact. Or they turn into terrible drunks and never achieve happiness. That’s how gay movies are supposed to end. Because that would have reflected my experience as a gay young adult.
As I was having this reaction, I stopped myself, and thought, What the fuck is wrong with me? Why was I bitter about these two boys finding love with one another? It’s because the environment I grew up in programmed me to expect the worst.
Where I live and work now, where I get my coffee, and the trains I ride with several million people every day, I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore when I am looking at the profiles of other dudes on my iPhone. Funny how I felt more oppressed in a small city of 30,000 people, most of whom I knew very well, than I do in a city of 8 million strangers.
My voice has gotten lighter since I moved. Now, I wouldn’t say higher. My voice naturally has a deep register. But there’s just a little bit more of a softness to it. I’ve written about this phenomenon before. In particular, at the Pizza Hut I worked at in Iowa City, a fair amount of my coworkers were lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgendered. I noticed that all of the gay males who worked there, we all had this reflex to drop our voices an octave whenever we answered the phones. We had all learned this survival mechanism to, in uncertain company, put up these shields: change our mannerisms, how we talked, what we said, how we dressed. In linguistics this is known as “code-switching,” and everyone does it to some extent. But for many gay men, we are acutely aware of what about ourselves sets off homophobic reactions from other people.
So, when I worked at Pizza Hut I noticed that even over the phone, talking to faceless strangers, we were not willing to chance a homophobic interaction. I wonder who it was my coworkers pictured on the other side of the line. Their dads? One of their dads’s bigoted friends? Their preachers? What was going to happen? Someone calls their parents and says, “I called Pizza Hut the other night and Benji answered. You might want to have a talk with that boy.”
Who surprised me the most was Alonzo. He moved out of his parents’ house when he was 15, and ever since had lived primarily with other gay people who took him in. His life was full of the gay community; what the gay community has classically been for orphans like him. Alonzo was the most outrageously gay person I knew, and yet even he lowered his voice like the rest of us chumps whenever he answered the phone. That’s how deep it runs.
If you just take a behavior like that as a microcosm, then consider how many other things there are stacked up on top of that, how many ways people like me have to go about our daily lives because we are terrified, then you start to get a picture of how hard it truly is to be gay, and that it’s mostly because of how other people react to the way we naturally are.
Many people think there was a homophobic motivation behind my firing and that my illegal drug use from 16 years ago was scapegoating. I agree. Many people think I should sue. I disagree. Because I actually think the whole ordeal is fucking hilarious.
But honestly, I have to stop and think about this: While I was substitute teaching, pretty much every gay person I talked to about my job, asked: “How does being a teacher work out with being gay?” Which is pretty fucked up.
We’re engrained as a culture now to think that certain people are not eligible to be teachers. That’s how pervasive the fascism in public education is. And to boot, my gay brethren are keenly aware of where we are and are not wanted. For years I have noticed how many of my gay friends work in the fields of nursing and special education, especially in less populated parts of the country. Because trying to have a career doing anything else would be too hard a battle to forge, so many of us have settled for jobs within these industries that the ruling majority has deemed it acceptable for us to work in.
But I’ve noticed since moving to New York City I just don’t have that fear anymore. Living here I don’t have to watch what I say, how I sound, or how I look. I no longer have that closet surrounding me.
Life is so much better when you simply let people be themselves.
A major characteristic of the Prairie School architecture was creating open spaces within the structures. Things like this marble staircase and tall windows were just as iconic as the outside facade of the buildings.
My father worked on four referendums to save extracurricular sports and activities from being canceled by the school district. We won two of them. After he won the final referendum, he and his collaborators established the Galesburg Public Schools Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the sole purpose of raising funds for District 205 to acquire things it needed, but were not within its budget. Their first and most major achievement was building an auxiliary gym and pool for Galesburg High School.
That took six years of my parents, brothers, sisters, myself, and somewhere between fifty and one hundred committed citizens to see through to fruition.
After we turned the keys over to the district, everything was peachy, right?
My father answers, “Well, no . . .”
Right away there was a humidity problem. The facility had a built-in state-of-the-art dehumidifying system, but the maintenance worker the district hired didn’t know how to run it. Several of the people who had overseen the construction urged the district to pay for a maintenance person to be trained how to run the dehumidifying system and be kept on staff.
A few years after the gym and pool were built, the district had to make cutbacks again. One of those cutbacks was they let go the one employee who knew how to run the dehumidifying system. They didn’t hire anyone to replace him, nor did they pay to have someone else trained. Now there’s rust on the beams and mold throughout the building. It’s going to cost at least $900,000 to fix the damage, which is three-quarters what the community raised to build it. The facility is only twenty years old.
“I know if they hired people who knew how to operate the system, they wouldn’t have a problem,” my father says, adding, “That’s just the way they do things.”
At some point after the gym and pool were finished, my father fell out of high opinion with the school board. I’ve heard it said a number of times this was because of jealousy—the powers that be felt insulted that my father’s organization could do things the district was incapable of doing itself. In regards to all the work, their reaction was “Thanks, but no thanks.” And, in retrospect, their naming the pool after him was a backhanded compliment. Dad can’t swim a front crawl to save his life. None of his children have ever participated in swimming as a sport. I, however, decided that because I would be the first person in my family to go through GHS after it was built, I signed up for swimming classes and swam in Douglas D. Mustain Pool nearly every day of the three-and-a-half-years I attended high school.
So, when it comes to ideological arguments about why the district should preserve Silas Willard, the board has no interest in hearing my father out. In fact, they may be adamant to tear it down because it’s him who’s fighting against it. To add insult to injury, the gym he raised $1.2 million to build for them is being sent down the same path of neglectful management as the Silas Willard Schoolhouse.
My dad can get a building built but does not have the power to save one from being torn down.
Originally built in 1912, Silas Willard Schoolhouse was added onto nearly thirty years later, giving it new life. This was commissioned by the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, headed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression; perhaps the single most socialist thing an American President as ever undertaken, but, hey, people needed work! Some might say we need something similar to be done for our crumbling infrastructure and public buildings these days.
I’ve always found it deeply ironic that Carl Sandburg grew up in Galesburg. Not only was he one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century, he was equally known for his activism. Before he even became famous as a poet, he toured the country lecturing on Walt Whitman and socialism, tying the two together because he found Whitman’s writings to be inline with the tenets of socialism.
The Galesburg Sandburg grew up in was not much different than the one I grew up in. It was a deeply conservative community, even a hundred years ago. His father, August, was a blacksmith for the CB&Q Railroad. Illiterate, August was a staunch Republican. Carl knew from a very young age that he himself was a leftist. He and his father fought over the fact that August continually voted against his best wishes—August worked very long hours for very little pay. Carl could never get through to him that if you were working class and voted Republican, you were voting for the very same people who were exploiting you.
By today’s standards, while the people who vote Republican are not illiterate—but certainly there are still those among us who have never learned to read or write—but many people are brought up in our schools as non-literary. People who were not taught how to read properly, people who are poor at recognizing nuance, to grasp subtlety and lyricism. People who read everything at face-value and cannot recognize when they are being fucked with.
We should actually be quite alarmed by how many people referred to “The Opposite of Suicide” as an article. That in itself shows there are so many people these days who are literate only in the most rudimentary sense. I mean, even the man who fired me referred to it as an article, and he was superintendent of an affluent school district.
This is a short biography of Carl Sandburg in a textbook. One of the main things textbooks keep hitting in 6–12 literature is an author’s word choice. In the field of Rhetoric, the way an author phrases things is how she conveys her ideas, but it can also be the way she covers-up or omits certain ideas, certain facts that she and the people holding the purse strings don’t want the reader to know, that are better left unsaid.
Now, given that this bio is so, so short, I would not expect the writer to go too in depth, but let’s take a look at it:
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) was a Pulitzer
Prize-winning American poet, historian, and
novelist. Born in Galesburg, Illinois, to
Swedish immigrant parents, Sandburg
decided at age six that he would be a writer.
Although, he had to quit school after eighth
grade to go to work to help support his
family, Sandburg continued to write. As he
pursued writing, Sandburg worked in a variety
of trades from factory worker to
newspaperman. He also became a well-known
musician and political activist. The
variety of Sandburg’s experiences informed
his writing, and Sandburg eventually gained
recognition as an iconic American writer.
This is all true. Sandburg did drop out of school when he was only thirteen. But this short bio, given to young, susceptible minds, makes it sound like he did it because his family was poor and he had to support them. That is only part of why. The main reason was most people didn’t go to high school back then. Back then young people had the legal right to choose not to attend high school. It cost more money to go to high school.
I wouldn’t expect a 50-word biography to go into this, nor would I expect the person who wrote it to know this information, unless they had done extensive research on Sandburg, but the family did pay for his older sister to attend high school. She passed her schoolbooks down to him and he used them to teach himself. That was a way for the family to cut corners: they sent the older one to high school, but Carl was equally educated, maybe even more so because he was learning at his own pace, within his own parameters. This may even speak to why he became so knowledgeable, so talented, and such a radical leftist. Because he was self-taught, there was no one pulling strings on young Sandburg. He did have mentors in the community, but he sought them out on his own.
The line “political activist” sidesteps the fact that he was an activist for socialism. Of course the bio is not going to mention that because textbooks intentionally avoid any language that could be construed as having polemic. Although if you read enough textbooks, you’ll see that they are intrinsically conservative. Actually, whenever the content from a selection is obviously left-wing, like the Civil Rights Movement, or Immigration, they tiptoe their way through these topics. I think it can safely be said most novelists, poets, and playwrights throughout history have leaned to the left—at least the good ones. But a textbook won’t call out a writer’s political beliefs, even if they are embedded in just about every single word he ever laid on a page, because the textbook is a product, and at the end of the day, that product has to be marketable to school districts who are known for being conservative.
The distillation of rhetoric is how misinformation spreads and breeds non-literary minds—Like students seeing a black and white photo of me on Facebook next to the word “Suicide” and assuming the worst, without having the inclination to read on.
Carl Sandburg left Galesburg at the age of nineteen. He knew it was time to leave when he became suicidal. Yes, young, mythic Carl Sandburg contemplated throwing himself in front of a train—which also happens to be how an absurd number of people die in Galesburg. Mostly because it’s a very effective way to do it, and as Sandburg thought himself, people might mistake it for an accident.
Sandburg instead reminded himself there was a great big world out there, so he decided to go see it. He left. And never came back, really. He saw Chicago. He rode the rails all over the country. He became enamored with getting to know strangers, wherever he could find them. This intensified his belief in socialism and the common good of the American People—not the ‘Murican People.
He ended up in Wisconsin, where at the time the Socialist Democratic Party was making major breakthroughs. Socialists from around the country were migrating there. The world was paying attention to the very groovy stuff that was going on in Wisconsin. Carl wanted to be part of it. And so he became a big part of it.
Galesburg’s favorite son, Carl Sandburg, who produced some of the most widely-read poetry of the twentieth century, who won the Pulitzer Prize three times, who left the world with everlasting gifts of his testaments to the common good of the masses and the evils of the rich, once upon a time wanted to commit suicide—Then he changed his mind and went and did the opposite.
Silas Willard Schoolhouse is set for demolition next summer. It would appear many of the people who would have fought for its standing have moved away.
#savesilas
Kyle Mustain received his BA from the University of Iowa, and MFA from University of North Carolina Wilmington. His work has appeared in St. Sebastian Review, Medium, and the Writing Disorder. He balls every day.
Alan Hess is a rare talent, he is both a writer and an architect. He has written several important books on architecture, including Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture, The Ranch House, The Architecture of John Lautner, Frank Lloyd Wright: Mid-Century Modern, and many others. Alan lives and breaths architecture and design. His mission, if you were to call it that, is to bring architecture—California architecture in particular—and all that it implies (education, preservation, appreciation), to the people. His work is both challenging and rewarding, which is to understand, educate and preserve the magnificent buildings that give life to our great cities, particularly here in Southern California—a place Alan calls home. Alan is a very busy man, always working on at least one major book or project. But he still made time for this interview, which we greatly appreciate.
Let’s talk about some of the projects you’re working on now.
Right now I’m working on a book about California Modern Architecture, from 1900-1975. Most of the books I’ve worked on until now have been leading up to this idea. I’ve been writing now for thirty years. The first book was, Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture. I’ve mostly dealt with architectural issues in the west and the 20th century, suburbia and vernacular building types and their interaction with the high art architecture. And a lot needs to be said to pull together the entire story. I have a co-author, Pierluigi Serraino, so we’re working on it together.
What’s the status of the book now?
It will be published in spring 2017, so right now we’re trying to finalize the text. Hopefully in the next few months it will all come together. It’s a huge project, a little bit crazy.
It covers all of California?
Yes. It’s not an encyclopedia. It will give a framework for understanding the whole picture. It won’t include everybody and everything, but it will definitely bring in architects and types of building and trends that have not been given their due credit or attention. But it will include what is absolutely essential for understanding what California architecture in the 20th century was all about.
That sounds fantastic. I look forward to reading it. How do you go about constructing a book like this, with a subject so large.
We try to get away from a more traditional chronological architectural history, and away from the monograph of the individual architects, and show instead the inter-relationships between cultural trends, economic trends, demographic trends, as well as the inspirations and ideas of individual architects and their clients as well. The clients have a lot to do with architecture. Pierluigi and I are each writing half in individual chapters, based on what we’re interested in. So now we’re working on pulling it all together and making it cohesive. It’s still an unwieldy mass at this point. But it has a lot of interesting ideas and information.
When putting together a book of this size, how do you go about getting the images, permissions, and materials that go along with it?
That’s a very important part of this book. Pierluigi is an expert on architectural photo archives. Many of the sources have been unknown or have been neglected for decades. This book is not going to have the usual, expected photographs. It’s mostly going to be fresh, interesting images that have not been seen for decades—if at all. This will give everyone an idea of how wide-spread, and wide-ranging creative California architecture was in the 20th century. I’m very excited about these photographs. Frankly, though I’m a writer, I know most people buy my books for the photographs. So the publisher is helping to attain a lot of the rights. But we’re coming up with the images ourselves, from these new sources—which is one thing that will make this book exciting.
The Googie book has a lot of photographs you took yourself.
Yes, I consider myself an amateur photographer. I mostly take photographs to gather information. And some of the images turn out to be really interesting. I would like at some point to do a photography exhibit at a gallery with some of my older images. I started taking photographs in the 1970s when I was in architecture school. So a lot of the photos I took are of buildings that don’t exist anymore. So they have some value.
You studied architecture at UCLA. Where does the writing come from? How did you become a writer?
I’ve always been interested in writing, and I wrote for my high school and college newspapers. But I wasn’t all that good at it, and I didn’t really have something that interested me. But when I got into architecture school, I discovered after a while that I was really interested in writing about architecture, and the ideas of architecture. So I started to get the idea of writing seriously about the subject. There were a couple of books, this is in the late ‘70s, one by Steven Izenour, White Tower, and there was a book by Daniel Vieyra called Fill’er Up. These were small books, but on subjects that had never been written about before. White Tower is about the diner chain, and the other is about gas stations. That sort of vernacular architecture had never been given much serious attention at the time. But I was just fascinated by it. And the other book at the time was Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour and Denise Scott Brown. But all of these books helped me understand Los Angeles, where I was living and studying architecture. So the architecture made sense suddenly. And that gave me the idea to use words and writing to analyze architecture, just as engineering equations and scale models are other ways. So writing was another way for me to understand architecture and what you’re designing. And I started looking around for an interesting subject that nobody else had written about.
Googie is a classic book for anyone who’s interested in unique and unusual Los Angeles architecture. Now that many of the buildings have been torn down, it’s also historically significant and important.
That’s the thing. It becomes a historical or archival document. Another purpose, as I moved along and became more interested in historical preservation, one of the purposes of my books was to help historic preservationists. So they could go before a city council or planning commission and say look, this must be important, there’s a book written about it. That actually impresses a lot of people. And that was another purpose in writing these books.
You also did a follow-up book on Googie.
Yes, the publisher came back to me almost twenty years later, and asked if I‘d like to do an updated version. It was a fantastic opportunity, because my first book wasn’t exactly my best. So it gave me a chance to improve my writing, but also there was so much more research and so much more I knew, I was able to extend the book. It’s at least twice as long as the original.
Growing up, did you do any writing? Were your parents writers? What kind of work did they do?
My mother was at home and raised us kids. And my father was an executive at Ford Motor Company. So I was around cars a lot, which I definitely had an interest in,
which also turn up in my books. We would get a new car every year. My brother and I would argue about what color and what kind, or if it had powers windows, which were really big at the time. We lived in California, but we also lived in Detroit for a period of time. We were right in the heart of car culture. My dad was transferred around to different places as I was growing up. So my personal experience of those places – San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago – these major car culture cities in which I lived, definitely influenced my writing and understanding of these subjects. The cars I loved most were the 1956 Lincoln Continental, and the 1939 Continental. It was one of the most beautiful cars, and was designed by Edsel Ford, Henry Ford’s son. In the last several years, he has become a very important figure to me because he was at the heart of American industry and its economy, as well as American styling and industrial design and aesthetics, as the president of Ford Motor Company. As a sort of relief from working for his father—who was just awful to work for—Edsel would go over to the styling studio and work with the designers. And he actually designed some of the classic cars of the mid century – the Model A, the Lincoln Zephyr, which was one of the first streamlined automobiles, and the Continental. He died young, which is why he’s not as well known or appreciated.
So you started writing in high school?
Yes, but it wasn’t until I was in architecture school that I really had a subject that interested me seriously.
You’re quite unique in that you’re an architect and a writer – you’re sort of a hybrid – which is great. You’re someone who’s an authority on the subject they write about. What drew you to architecture, or made you want to become an architect? Was it a building or architect you admired?
I’ve always been interested in architecture, not originally as a profession, but as a personal interest of mine. My grandmother always admired Frank Lloyd Wright, and I saw a number of his buildings. I lived in Chicago in high school, and there are a number of his buildings there, as well as Louis Sullivan’s—which are just extraordinary.
And I went to a college that was designed by Bernard Maybeck, the great Bay Area California architect—which was great. There was a history professor there, Charles Hosmer, who was very well known in the preservation field. Everyone has a professor who really inspired them, and he inspired me. It wasn’t until I had to choose between going to law school and architecture school, that I really made the decision.
Frank Lloyd Wright was the first architect to inspire you.
Yes. He was a brilliant designer. Just to be inside one of his buildings or houses, we can understand how space and materials and ornament can be orchestrated to make life better. Extraordinary designs. He was a genius. Wright’s whole persona and his family motto was “Truth against the World,” the idea of the artist as the heroic individual, who mastered the problems of the world. And as a young, naïve, idealistic teenage boy, that appealed to me as well. But I got over that, thanks goodness. Frank Lloyd Wright inspired Ayn Rand’s book, The Fountainhead, which I read at the time. I got over that, too.
But it was an important moment for me at the time. I realized that I would never be Frank Lloyd Wright. But I realized that I could be myself. I could follow my own interests in architecture, and be able to contribute something of value. That kept me going. And when I began to write about architecture, I realized I was covering subjects that no one else was writing about. I saw the value in them and was able to express the importance of a diner or a motel or a car dealership. These were structures that almost nobody else had an interest in as far as architecture, but I did.
You’ve also written several books on Frank Lloyd Wright.
I saw some photographs by Alan Weintraub. He had a real interest and talent in photographing organic architecture, like Wright’s and John Lautner’s, as well as many others. Organic architecture is very difficult to capture in photography because it’s not designed from one point perspective, it’s something else. So Alan and I got together and started thinking about books we could do together. Later he got a contract to photograph all of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings. So that’s where the series of books on Frank Lloyd Wright developed. I came up with a theme for each of the books. One is on his houses, one is on the Prairie School years, the mid century modern houses, the public buildings, etc.
For me it was exciting to come up with something fresh and interesting to say about those structures, and the ideas they had. I enjoyed writing them.
Name some writers who influenced your work.
Writers who are also architects or designers, like Esther McCoy, definitely a great writer; David Gebhard, a great historian and author; J.B. Jackson, cultural geographer; and John Beach—not as well known, but a friend of all of those people and a teacher at UCLA School of Architecture where I went. These are all authors who have some background in design, and are able to understand architecture and explain it in a way that art historians writing about architecture missed. They capture something about architecture.
As far as fiction writers, Jorge Amado. I spent time in Brazil, and his fiction about life there really captured the spirit, culture and people of Brazil. I also enjoy reading the fiction and non-fiction of Tom Wolfe.
When you start working on a new book, how do you begin – where do you start?
I’ve usually been thinking about it for a while, and I’ll start with some ideas and thoughts in my head. And then I’ll begin to pull together all the ideas I have. I’ll go and visit the buildings or places and see what strikes me. I’ll start talking to experts in the field, or the architects themselves, and in many cases I’ve been able to talk to the original architects. And that can be really fascinating. So it’s just a matter of finding an interesting subject, with something of value there, and trying to make it interesting. For me, writing is a process of discovery. I do not know what I’m going to write when I start. I sort of think as I write and figure out the direction of the project. That’s the fun of it—what makes it interesting. I just dive into the subject anywhere I can, and slowly the whole picture begins to reveal itself. I figure out what are the major points, the major landmarks, etc.
For my first book, I was interested in Googie architecture, but I didn’t know it was Googie architecture, until I started writing and learning more about the subject. I had seen these diners and restaurants before but had never really connected them. I started doing some research on the Bob’s Big Boy on Riverside in Toluca Lake. I called up Bob’s headquarters in Glendale and asked if they knew who the architect of the building was. They said it was Armét and Davis. So I called up Eldon Davis —their firm was on Wilshire Blvd. — and asked if they designed the Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake. He said no, and I thought that was the end of it. But then he said, but we did design Ship’s La Cienega and Norm’s and Pann’s, and he began to give this list of all the coffee shops they designed. And I suddenly realized I had stumbled upon one of the most important designers in the field. It was at that point during the research that it all came together and I realized there was a subject worth writing about. That’s really great when that happens.
How did Googie get published? Did you approach a publisher, or did someone approach you?
I did write up a proposal. Barbara Goldstein was the editor of Arts and Architecture at the time, and I told her about my project. So she asked me to write an article about Googie architecture, so that was published. And since I had a published article that gave me a little credibility. So I sent the article along with my proposal to at least a dozen publishers, who had published books on similar types of architecture. I got two responses as I remember, Chronicle Books was one of them. And there was an editor, Bill LeBlond, who saw something in it, so that’s how I got my first contract.
When you’re putting a book together, you obviously work at a computer.
My first couple of books I typed. I sat on the floor and edited the pages by cutting them with scissors and taping them together. And then my mother, God bless her, typed it up clean, and I then re-edited it with scissors and tape, and she retyped it. So I went through several drafts that way. That was like in 1984. I think in 1986 or 1987 I got my first computer, which simplified the process by a lot.
I work on a Mac now. I have an iMac, but I really do most of my writing on an iPad. So basically I can go anywhere and write. I used an app called Pages.
I’m going to name a few important architects, mostly known for their work in California, and maybe you can say a few words about each one, what they did, etc.
Let’s start with John Lautner, who you also wrote a book about.
John Lautner was one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century. He worked with Frank Lloyd Wright, of course, but what I admired about him, and he told me this, was while he was a student and apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright, he didn’t design that much. He said he was just absorbing and watching. It was only after he left Wright, and moved to Los Angeles and opened his own office, that he then began to really develop his own crucial way of designing. So many people who worked with Wright were so overwhelmed by the brilliance of Wright, that they pretty much just copied Frank Lloyd Wright. But that wasn’t good enough for Lautner. He had to digest it and make those ideas his own, and carried them on further than Wright. That’s one of the things that makes him so, so important. Taking some of those seminal ideas of Wright’s, bringing them to Los Angeles and applying them not only to houses, but also buildings of everyday life, like the original Googie’s coffee shop, and other drive-ins he did, and car dealerships. He saw virtually any kind of architecture as a legitimate architectural challenge to him, and to re-think everything from the fundamentals. I did an articles about him Fine Homebuilding magazine. And there was one house, I think the Mauer house in Los Angeles. And I asked him, where do you start on a design like that? And he said, “The hell if I know. I sweat a lot.” So the idea that someone who was as creative as Lautner, sweated over where to start on a new design, just impressed me to no end. So he took every project seriously in that way to dig down to find something original about it and to translate it into a design.
Sheats Goldstein residence, 1963 – John Lautner, architect
Richard Neutra.
Another great Los Angeles architect. I think he is misunderstood. He is usually praised and famous for being an Austrian, and for designing International Style buildings here in Los Angeles. And that’s partly true. But I think what is important about Neutra is not what he learned from studying architecture in Vienna before World War I, but how he responded to the environment of Los Angeles after he arrived here. He was fascinated by our construction methods, our indoor-outdoor lifestyle, our vernacular architecture of drive-ins, billboards and gas stations, and the influence of the car on architecture. He was a good enough architect to be influenced by all the new things going on around him here.
A. Quincy Jones.
Another fascinating architect, because of his variety. It was a perfect time in Los Angles, when the city was booming and there were all these different types of buildings. He worked on schools, housing, offices, car dealerships restaurants, you name it. And he was able to design a lot of different things, but in a very individual way. He was in many way Mr. Establishment, dean of the school of architecture at USC, and he had a lot of influence on many other architects – very well respected. Lautner was more a maverick, more on the edge, often misunderstood and criticized for his designs because they were so unusual. And Quincy jones was in the center of the profession. He and Lautner were friends, they appreciated each other’s work. And I think Lautner influenced Quincy Jones early in his career – in some of the early Quincy Jones houses in particular, there’s some very strong Lautnerian ideas about them.
Rudolph Schindler.
Schindler is one of my favorite architects. He was a lot like Lautner, but he started twenty or thirty years earlier. So he had a very different sort of career. He was known as a gregarious and fun loving individual, and that comes across in the buildings he designed—very creative.The first time I saw his own house on Kings Road on an architecture tour, and his wife, Pauline Schindler, was still living there, and I met her. I saw the house before it was restored. It’s concrete slab walls tilted up. Some of the interior walls were painted, pink as I recall. And it wasn’t that strongly constructed, so it had been altered over the years. But nonetheless, even through that, I could see that it was sort of the beginning of California Architecture, indoor/outdoor life, the way the outdoors carries into the interior space itself. Just brilliant on Schindler’s part, to be able to put together something like that. And like Neutra, Schindler was trained in Austria before WWI. But he allowed himself to really engage with Los Angeles—and the culture, and the materials, once he got here. I wrote an essay for the L.A. Review of Books, and the title was Schindler Goes Hollywood. And the idea was that Schindler and the other very good architects of California, didn’t just come here and start to do what they had been doing elsewhere. They interacted, and understood, and lived the culture that was here, and that changed their architecture. And schindler is probably one of the very best examples.
Gregory Ain.
Ain is another very good California architect. He worked with both Schindler and Neutra. He was a real socialist. A lot of architects that studied with him told me that he really believed, that the purpose of architecture was to improve the life of the average person. And so he tried in a couple of places to do some cooperative socialist housing. He never quite succeeded at it but the designs themselves are very, very nice.
Joseph Eichler.
Eichler was not an architect, he was a builder. He hired architects like Quincy Jones, Anshen & Allen, Claude Oakland and others to do his architecture, so he chose the very best. This is not to discredit Eichler, but he was often times credited with bringing modern design to mass produced housing—tract housing. There were a number of other really good architects and builders who were interested in modern mass produced architecture, like William Krisel and Dan Palmer– they were also doing modern tracts, and in some ways even more dramatically modern. There were quite a number of examples of modern architecture available for the average person in tract housing.
Palmer and Krisel.
In some ways their work was sort of my discovery during a book I wrote with Andrew Danish, Palm Springs Weekend, on midcentury architecture design. I never heard of Palmer and Krisel until I did the research for that book. They did a number of tract homes in Palm Springs. And fortunately, Bill Krisel is still around, so I was able to get to know him and interview him and see his archives first hand. And learn what it was like. He knew everybody and he did really interesting work himself. Their work deserves a lot more credit because they really did modern architecture. They were really devoted to bringing good modern design to the average person. And that was supposed to be one of the fundamental ideas of modernism, at the very beginning, from the Bauhaus, they were trying to make it for the average person. And Palmer and Krisel were one of the few architecture firms to achieve that. Gregory Ain was a great architect but he was never really able to build on a mass basis, and have that sort of impact. So I admire that, it cements their place in modern architecture in California. They were partners from the 1950s to the early 1960s, then they split and went their separate ways. I was able to interview Dan Palmer as well for a book I did on ranch houses before he passed away. There is a new book coming out in February 2016 about Krisel’s work in Palm Springs, in which I wrote one chapter.
House designed by William Krisel
Cliff May.
Cliff May was a designer, a building designer. He had more impact on architects than most architects knew. And the reason why is fascinating. He did carpentry, he built furniture, he was a musician with a band, and he had an entertainer’s promotional attitude about his work. He understood people. And he was one of the people who understood the power of the image of the ranch house— the California ranch house. They were the adobe haciendas of the nineteenth century, and these wood shacks out in the country. And he realized there was an inherent glamor and certainly an architectural character to them—living indoors and outdoors and simplicity. And he was able to capture that in his custom designed, and mass-produced homes as well.
Edward Fickett.
Edward Fickett, is another name that had been long lost in terms of the general public. Certainly other architects knew him. And I was able to write about him in my book about the ranch house, so he could begin to be appreciated for what he really accomplished.
And in fact I grew up in one of his houses in Pasadena, a ranch house tract home. My parent’s bought the house in Hastings Ranch, brand new. And years and years later I had learned that He had designed Hastings Ranch. It’s more of a traditional ranch house, not modern, but nonetheless. He’s definitely one of the major architects of Southern California. His was known for his tract housing, which was quite extensive, and for many other types of buildings. That was one of the reasons I got into writing about architecture in the first place, was to let people know about these neglected talents. They need to be a part of our understanding of Los Angeles.
We need really good books written about these architects, like Edward Fickett and Gregory Ain. In recent years there has been a few good books written about Cliff May. There are a number of architects who deserve really good books. And I try to encourage other people to write them.
William Pereira.
I live in Irvine, which is a master planned community designed by William Pereira fifty years ago. It opened in 1965. Pereira was one of the major corporate offices in Los Angeles. He was usually critically neglected and dismissed, and initially, I didn’t think much of his work, until I started to do some research on him. And I began to realize that my entire concept of him was wrong. As I began to look into his buildings when I moved to Irvine, it really spurred more of my interest in his work. He is one of the major Southern California architects who shaped the region. He designed several key buildings that defined the way people lived, worked and played. He designed CBS Television City, a television studio at a time when television was brand new. So he designed this facility that is still in use today, with all the changes in the media. He also designed Marineland, a new type of playground out by the ocean for the citizens of Southern California, this urban metropolis, a place to take the kids, and learn. He designed LAX as well (along with Welton Becket and Paul Williams), he designed this jet port, before the jet airplane was even in use. And then he planned Irvine and the new university there. Suburbia was growing, but it was being criticized. Tract housing was often a hodge-podge, very randomly planned, and not coordinated. And Pereira, as a planner, said we can do better than this. It was sort of miraculous that the new city project of Irvine and UC Irvine came together. It’s a really interesting story. He took the ideas of suburbia and organized its elements in a way that made sense. There was a diversity of housing types. You were part of nature when you lived here with generous greenbelts. You had schools, libraries, shopping, swimming pools — everything you need in life, and you could walk to these places, so you didn’t have to be dependent on the car. This was the early 1960s when he designed all this. It was just extraordinary. In his career he really conceived and developed many of the ideas that made up Southern California. And he did it with style. Another building he designed was LACMA, which is the cultural capitol of Southern California, at a time when Los Angeles was the most modern city in the world. And there’s talk now that they want to tear this down, this cultural icon.
CBS Television City, 1952, designed by William Pereira
Paul Williams.
The socio and cultural history that his career represents is fascinating. An African American in Hollywood, and what he had to go through to become one of the most successful architects in California, throughout the mid century. It’s a great story, and he was a really good architect. He’s often called the architect to the stars. He built a lot of really big and beautiful, mostly traditionally styled homes. But he did a lot more than that. He did office buildings, he did housing tracts, he also did housing tracts for the African American community, here in Los Angeles, and in Las Vegas. After he stopped doing traditional styles, he adopted modernism, and modern methods, and was just as masterful. He is equally important as a role model and an architect. His influence on other architects is really important. There are a lot of people who got into the business because of Paul Williams.
Let’s talk about how you work. How much time do you spend writing each day? How much time do you spend on the internet, doing research? What is a regular work-day like for you?
Well, I spend too much time on the internet. I don’t know if email is really a blessing or not. But I usually start by checking my emails in the morning. I check Facebook. There’s a lot of good information on FB if you look in the right places. There are a lot of good sources for books and information going on now, also historical subjects. I do my creative writing in the afternoon, which includes writing and editing on various projects.
What do you know about William Mellenthin?
Not a whole lot, that he was a builder, very successful, building the traditional ranch style homes. When searching for specific information like this, a lot of it can be found on SurveyLA.
But we continually lose archives and historic information on figure like Mellenthin. Many important architects and builders could be lost to history. Like Wayne McAllister, one of my favorite architects. He designed the Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake, and the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. But all of his drive-in restaurants, which were built in the 1930s, which were everywhere, are all gone. There isn’t one remaining. So the information and the buildings are so fragile.
Out of curiosity, who designed the Casa de Cadillac car dealership in Sherman Oaks?
Casa de Cadillac was designed by Phillip Conklin with Randall Duell in 1949, it was a collaboration. It was originally called Don Lee Cadillac.
What kind of advice do you have for writers today? How to get their work out there and be published.
It’s a lot different from when I first started. Publishing on the internet serves the purpose of getting the information out there the way books once did. I would encourage people to write about architecture. There’s so much we don’t know, and much that we need to document. I was really pleased to learn that some people who’ve written books, were inspired by my work. There’s a book coming out next year on Trousdale Estates that Steven Price is writing. That’s a great subject and deserves to have a book about it, but I just don’t have time to write everything. But thank goodness someone else is doing it. And other people are doing books on Paul Laszlo and Tommy Tomson, for example, fascinating little-known architects. There are plenty of other subjects that people could be writing about, to document—getting it down—for the rest of us to understand.
I didn’t intend to be a writer. I was interested in architecture. And that’s why I write. I don’t write to be a writer, but to further the cause of good design.
What other projects/books would you like to work on?
I have a long list of projects I’d like to do. A couple of really interesting architects. The most intriguing subject that I would like to write about is the 1970s and ‘80s of California architecture, that hasn’t really been covered. It was touched upon in the Getty show, Pacific Standard Time, which was a few years ago now. The people are still around and the story has not really been told. And trying to figure out what actually happened in that period, and do it objectively, is a really interesting challenge. Some of these people are around and are telling their own histories, but not necessarily the entire story. So I would love to cover the entire story in context.
Alan recommends these essential books on Los Angeles architecture:
• Five California Architects, by Esther McCoy
• Exterior Decoration, by John Chase
• Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham
• Los Angeles: The City Observed by Charles Moore, Peter Becker, Regula Campbell
• Holy Land, by D. J. Waldie
• Google: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture, by Alan Hess
For more information about Alan Hess.
Thelma was trying to brush the sand out of her big hair before her husband Larry came home for the Last Supper she’d planned, when her fifteen-year-old daughter Eunice began shouting. Now since Neecy did a lot of shouting (about her teachers, her frenemies, the Internet being down, her mother’s absent-mindedness) Thelma went on yanking the brush, grimacing at herself in the mirror and realizing she’d yet again applied sunscreen inconsistently and was now wearing a white mask where her sunglasses had been during their family day at the beach. Not that the whole family had gone to the beach; Larry, his typical fun-sucker self, had gone to work instead.
Eunice barged through the bathroom door.
“What is it, Eunice? You scared me to death!” Thelma turned, and with her eyes wide, looked something like the Hamburglar.
Eunice was momentarily shocked before erupting in laughter. It seemed to Thelma that lately Neecy either mocked her or yelled about her motherly incompetence. With her thickly-lashed, large, bedazzled-green eyes and disconcerting stare, Neecy was in high-demand as a plus-sized model. “You forgot …,” she said, pointing and smirking.
Thanks to Neecy, she knew every last one of her beauty flaws. And what she should do about them—immediately! Thelma liked her big hair. It had snagged Larry back in the 90s. Change, to Thelma, felt like panties riding up her crack. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was using the bathroom.”
Scooter, Thelma’s oldest child and the guest of honor at the Last Supper (or the Judas if you wanted to look at it that way and Thelma did look at it that way), popped his head in the door. “Anybody seen Lucky?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” said Eunice, “when you frightened me with your new sunburn. Look, Scooter, look at Mom’s face. She did it again.”
“My name is Lawrence,” said Scooter.
Eunice rolled her eyes.
“Can’t you find Lucky?” Thelma asked. Lucky was Larry’s dog: a Chihuahua he’d adopted at a last chance pre-execution guilt trip in front of the Petco as he was going into Michael’s for more scrapbooking supplies. “He’s lucky I happened by,” is what Larry told everyone when they met the dog. “He’s lucky I’m the kind of guy that looks past the scabs. He’s lucky I have a tender spot for the abandoned. He’s lucky …,” and at this point Thelma would chime in and tell Larry to can it. There was nothing Larry liked more than talking about himself in the guise of talking about something else.
“No, and come to think of it, I can’t remember him being in the van on the ride home,” said Scooter. “It was quiet instead.”
“Or getting him out of the van,” said Neecy, “when we got home.”
Thelma shook her head, trying to remember. It had been a wonderful day; the hot sun had made her so sleepy. She’d not slept well the night before, thinking about Scooter’s betrayal. “Come to think of it,” she said, “I can’t even remember him being on the blanket when we packed up and left.”
Eunice shook her head, her large eyes growing larger, a terrible realization spreading across her pale pink cheeks.
“Can you?” Thelma asked Scooter.
“No, Mom, I can’t. I think we left him at the beach,” he said, matter-of-factly, all grown up.
“What? No way!” Thelma burst through her children and began yelling for the dog. “He’s got to be here somewhere.” She frantically raced around, looking under beds, inside closets, down in the basement, calling and whistling for Lucky. Scooter searched the fenced back yard and Larry’s tool shed, and Neecy searched the van.
Larry and Thelma’s café au lait colored ranch house had been erected on a grubby spot of land in a rue-burban development, as Thelma called it. Rural as in twenty minutes to the nearest grocery store and suburban as in a bona fide subdivision built upon formerly-farmed acres. It was as if the lower middle-class development had been plunked down into the middle of a stubbled cornfield from the sky.
Thelma and the kids re-grouped on the front concrete porch. “Oh my God,” said Thelma. “I left your father’s dog at the beach.”
“Yep,” said Scooter. “I think you forgot him.”
“Me? It’s my fault? I’m the old person. Where were you guys when this was happening? Your brains are fresh and young and not filled with cryptic memories. Why couldn’t you have remembered Lucky?”
“Uh, maybe because tomorrow I go to boot camp and maybe, I, uh, have something more important on my mind,” said Scooter. “Like the United States Army!”
Thelma gave Lawrence her don’t-you-dare glare, and he averted his eyes. But before she could say anything, Neecy started.
“Yeah, and like, Alexa isn’t talking to Junie because Junie broke up with Nicole to date some stupid boy from another school and so, Nicole is like, completely crushed. She loves Junie. I had to stay up all night on the phone to keep Nicole from cutting,” said Neecy. “I’m tired!”
“Okay, okay. Let’s think about this,” said Thelma and she raised her left hand against the onslaught. “Not Nicole. I mean, not Nicole right now. Cutting is a terrible thing. Don’t you ever cut yourself, Eunice. You know you can talk to me about anything, anything at all. Right? Did you tell Nicole to talk to a trusted adult?”
“Yes, Mom.”
Thelma nodded. “Good. Okay. Lucky! Let’s think about Lucky and oh my God, what am I going to do? What time is it?” Thelma waited for Scooter to check his cell. It was 5:30 p.m. and Larry was due home in fifteen minutes. Thelma collapsed on the porch. “Your father is going to freak out if anything happens to that damn dog.”
* * *
Thelma had wanted to do something special for Scooter’s last day as a civilian. He was due at the bus station at six the following morning. Someone needed to do something to mark the momentous occasion as Larry acted like it was just a regular work day. But it wasn’t: Scooter was soon to become a brain-washed drone of the over-reaching war machine at the hands of the United States Military.
Scooter was already incessantly nagging Thelma to call him Lawrence, rather than the nickname he’d gotten at the age of seven, when he spent an entire summer riding around the neighborhood on his silver scooter with three other boys on their scooters. A natural born leader, Lawrence was quickly in command of the gang and the moniker stuck.
Thelma corralled Scooter, Eunice, and Lucky into her purple mini-van and they headed to the Metamora State Recreation Area, where Thelma had always taken the children to experience the “beach.” 80-acre Lake Minnewanna had a decent strip of sand and was, otherwise, largely wooded. The kids could walk away from the swimmers and cast a line into one of the coves, maybe catch and release a bluegill, a pumpkinseed, or a largemouth bass.
Thelma sat on an old quilt under a tree, near a picnic table but a distance from the beach. Lucky was a barker and a sorry mess, with bulging bloodshot eyes and a skin disorder that resulted in the shedding of large patches of oozing pink skin. He smelled like the bottom of the refrigerator crisper drawer filled with vegetables but never emptied. The dog was on more pills than Thelma’s Nana. And on a special diet. And he had to wear a sun-blocking outfit whenever he went outside. Plus sit beneath a beachside umbrella. When she complained to Larry about how much work his dog was, he said, “What do you want me to do about it? I have to work!”
Thelma’s secret theory was that Larry didn’t love Lucky as much as he said he did. The kudos he raked in for taking care of such a sick pet fed his emaciated ego. The middle child of a family of eight, Larry had been either ignored or berated and was spending his entire adulthood making up for it.
After she hooked Lucky to the tie-out and arranged his umbrella, she put on her bucket hat and slathered her exposed skin with sunscreen, and watched her boy fish for what could be the last time. What if ISIS kidnapped him and one of those God-awful videos was produced? She’d never survive it. If Thelma had her way, her son would be off to art school or poet’s school or even, training to be a lineman for DTE Energy, like Larry.
Now, Thelma realized she’d had to pull herself together every time one of the kids came over to the cooler for a drink. Even Lucky had been unusually quiet after scarfing down the hotdog Scooter tossed him. But he’s never quiet. Had she fallen asleep after lunch? Maybe Lucky had slipped out of his collar and wandered away. He loved to rub his body in wild animal waste. He could be sitting there at the edge of the woods right now, wondering where they were, smelling like a used diaper in the bottom crisper drawer.
“Tell your father I had to run to the store,” Thelma said to the kids.
“Aren’t you going back to the beach to look for Lucky?” said Eunice.
“Yes, of course I am! But please don’t tell your dad. I’m sure Lucky’s sitting right there, waiting for us to come back and get him.”
“Oh, I hope so,” said Eunice. “Poor Lucky! We just left him.”
Thelma took a deep breath.
“This is just great,” said Scooter. “My last day here and Mom forgets the dog. Just great.”
“It’s going to be okay, Scooter—”
“Lawrence!”
“Yes, Lawrence, everything’s going to be fine. I’ll just run up there and get Lucky and dinner will be a little late. Go play the Xbox. I’ll be right back. And promise me something.”
“Don’t tell Dad!” they said in unison.
* * *
After Thelma dropped Scooter off at the bus station and said her goodbyes without embarrassing him in front of the other new recruits (she even remembered to call him Lawrence), she sat in her van and cried, using up three travel packs of Kleenex. She’d rolled out of bed at three in the morning unable to pretend to sleep, worried sick about Scooter and Lucky and ISIS and global warming and the new Enbridge natural gas pipeline they were running through her township and Nicole cutting herself. She desperately wanted to take a handful of melatonin capsules but knew she’d eventually crash and be unable to drive to the bus station.
She’d turned on the desktop PC and started placing Missing Dog ads at every site she could find until she heard Scooter come down the stairs. Then she made him his last good breakfast for a very long time. His favorite: french toast with a dash of nutmeg and real maple syrup, thick-sliced bacon from the local farmer, and hash browns. Everything organic and whole and pure. Scooter had joined the Army in secret, only telling her after, and all she’d managed to say was, “I hope you like eating powdered fake food that comes out of poop brown bags.”
Larry, on the other hand, had sucked in his gut and puffed out his chest and said, “I’m proud of you, son. I considered the military when I was your age and just never had the balls to do it. Your Grandpa fought in Korea …”
“He was a cook on a Navy ship,” Thelma said. “He never even saw Korea.”
Larry sideways eyeballed her. “As I was saying …,” he said in his weird radio-announcer voice that he reserved for special occasions. He held in his paunch, so Thelma knew he’d wrap it up in a tag line before he ran out of breath. “Serving your, I mean, our,” (and here he glared at Thelma as if she didn’t know a damn thing about patriotism) “country is the finest sacrifice anyone can make. Thank you, Lawrence.”
Now she just sat there in the parking lot watching the bus get further and further away and seriously considered crawling into the far back seat and taking a three-year nap.
But, she couldn’t. Lucky was missing and she’d lied to Larry about it—the kids reluctant accomplices. She’d had every intention after returning from the beach to tell him the truth, but he’d gotten the Last Supper under way (much to her surprise), putting the steaks on the grill, and was doing his best to help her create a memory. The kids went along with it, doing their best to fake-it through, while Larry hoped Lucky could come home from the animal hospital tomorrow.
Later that night, after Scooter had gone to a good-bye party with his friends and Neecy had disappeared to play Xbox, Thelma took a deep breath and approached Larry. He was sitting at the dining table, his scrapbook supplies spread all around his thick, hairy arms as they rested on the table top. Colored stock paper, scissors that cut squiggles and zigzags, inked stamps of Chihuahuas, the Stars and Stripes, a boy fishing, and stickers that said things like: scooter, sundaes, son. Larry had his head down and tears dripped onto his scrapbook. There were shudders in his shoulders.
“He’ll be all right, Larry” Thelma said, and she held him from behind. “He’s a smart boy, a strong boy.”
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t go to the beach with you today. I just … couldn’t do it.” He let out a deep sigh. “I never saw this one coming. You know? You spend so much time keeping them safe, mending boo-boos, teaching them how to be good and decent and then they go and want to be something and somebody you never imagined. A soldier, Thelma!” He shook his head. “He never even had a BB gun.”
Thelma rubbed Larry’s neck; his neck was sore after years of working as an electrical lineman. He didn’t have to be up on the poles so much anymore, he was mainly a recruiter now, convincing young people to learn the trade, but his neck stayed sore. Larry grabbed a napkin from the basket on the table and started to carefully wipe the scrapbook page he’d been working on. Larry had taken up scrapbooking on the advice of his union rep for its meditative qualities. Working with electricity had its inherent dangers.
“I like the font you used to write Lawrence,” she said.
Her husband brushed over the word he’d created with letter stickers along the top of the page with the tips of his fingers. “Yeah? I thought it fit him. Has some edge to it. He’s tough, like you, Thelma.”
“Like me?” she said. She didn’t really think of herself this way: on the inside she felt more like a fruit smoothie, everything a whipped mess.
“You’re the one that birthed him at home, and Eunice too! I almost passed out, couldn’t even cut the umbilical cord. Remember? The midwife had to sit me down on the bed.”
What she remembered was seeing Lawrence for the first time, his curly fair hair all wet and plastered against his scalp, his mewing mouth searching for her as she held him close. How his presence made the world a place she wanted to be in rather than a place she always wanted to escape. Having a baby had grounded Thelma.
He’d learned to nurse right away, unlike Neecy, and had taken his first steps at eight months. He’d spoken in complete paragraphs at eighteen months. She thought about all the ankle rubs she’d given him after he’d sprained an ankle skateboarding. How he always got right back up after wiping out; how he never gave up on learning a new trick, no matter how difficult or painful the learning process.
“He is tough,” she said. And she was grateful to Larry for making her realize this in a new way. “Okay, I’ve got to get to bed, Larry. Early day tomorrow. Give me a kiss.”
Thelma knew that if she didn’t find Lucky, she’d let down her family. She was the one that always made everything better. They were counting on her.
* * *
The afternoon of the first day of Scooter-No-More, Thelma plastered Metamora State Recreation Area with flyers of Lucky in his special sun-blocking outfit, with a construction grade stapler. Missing Diseased Chihuahua, the flyer read. Needs his medicine and cannot be exposed to sun. Obsessive barker. Stinks. Last seen in sky blue jammies with matching studded collar. Sometimes answers to Lucky, mostly ignores and does whatever he wants. Please help!
Every six feet, she stapled a flyer to whatever she could: trees, buildings, poles, edges of picnic tables. She hopped in her van and drove over the wooden bridge and then stapled the hell out of the campground that sat on the opposite side of Lake Minnewanna.
And then something dawned on her; she hadn’t even found Lucky’s leash when she’d returned (expecting him to be waiting, tail wagging) had she? Where was his diaper bag, as she called it, with all of his medicines, skin wipes, and allergen-free treats? She thought she remembered packing his umbrella, but it all seemed like a hazy dream with Scooter’s face enlarged and encompassing the center of her field of vision—a shitty grin on his face like one of those cartoons from when she was a kid. She wanted to smack that face and ask him what the hell? The Army! Jesus!
She drove back over to the scene of the disappearance and scoured the picnic area then she searched the nearby brush, garbage cans, even the barbecue grills, like Lucky on the scent of groundhog piss. No collar or leash. No diaper bag. Maybe the bag was at home and Lucky had gotten the leash untied from the tie-out. But where was the tie-out? Had Scooter pulled it out of the ground and set it somewhere at home? She couldn’t even ask him! She had to just wait for him to contact her. It felt like the United States Army had sliced off her right ventricle! Those bastards, seducing her son into being another rusty cog in the military-industrial complex Thelma hated. Why, your son scored so high on the aptitude test, Sergeant Cooper told her, in his boots in Thelma’s kitchen, he could be a Ranger.
“If you’re telling me that to make me feel any better,” she’d said, “forget it. There should be a law against you people talking to our children without our consent.”
“Lawrence is eighteen, Mrs. Spears. He’s an adult and can make his own decisions.”
“Yeah, that’s what happened. He made this decision entirely on his own without you pressuring him. Sure, Sergeant Cooper, and there were WMD’s in Iraq.”
Thelma had to stop obsessing about her son. She had to let the Universe take care of him. She hopped in her van and drove home. What was she going to tell Larry?
***
It had not gone well with Larry. He’d thrown his big hairy arms up in the air like an exasperated Sasquatch. He couldn’t believe she couldn’t keep her eye on his poor little suffering dog—who never asked to be brought into this world and abandoned inside a deserted meth lab. The poison still oozing out of his little body. He didn’t believe her that she’d done all she could under the extreme circumstances with which she’d been faced, what with Scooter turning his back on all she’d taught him to get his Rambo on. She hadn’t meant to, but she threw a dagger when she reminded her husband of his inability to accompany them to the beach that day.
“So, you’re saying it’s all my fault?”
“Yes,” Thelma said. “I think that it’s fair if I say that. You can’t always faint away from the gnarlies of life, Larry. Being married means we’re on the same team, but if one of the team is always going solo on the obstacle course, then, then, it’s like not being married at all.”
She instantly regretted her words yet felt much better. Why did she always have to be the tough one? If anything happened to Thelma, who would take care of everyone? Larry? Ha. He couldn’t take care of himself. He was like a big baby.
No, what Larry really did was always turn the spotlight back to him. When Thelma was first pregnant with Lawrence and so nauseated she lost weight, Larry somehow hurt his back and couldn’t walk for a month. While Thelma was giving birth to Eunice, Larry suddenly got sick and left to buy cold medicine. When Thelma needed progressive lenses, Larry needed two pairs of stronger progressive lenses, one for inside and one for outside. Whenever Thelma scheduled a dental cleaning appointment, Larry claimed he needed an aching tooth pulled.
Now poor Larry was on the phone about his missing dog, basking in the glow of his family’s attention while she once again perused through “Found Dog” ads, called the local vet clinics, and posted flyers in grocery stores. Larry took mental health days, laid on the couch “worried sick” about Lucky, while Thelma manned the Lucky Rescue Mission Team. It didn’t matter that she’d lost her son, what mattered was Larry’s beloved Chihuahua was gone.
She hadn’t found the tie-out or the diaper bag and no one called about the flyer.
***
Oh my God! There were so many missing pets. Thelma couldn’t stand searching through the Craigslist ads. There were even ads about the dead pets people saw on the sides of roads. She got calls from people who were just trying to help, who thought maybe they’d seen Lucky here or there, or had seen a found ad that sounded like it might be Lucky and Thelma started taking down their names and numbers and then she started doing it too—trying to help people find their pets. Heck, she had to read both the lost and the found ads anyway and sometimes they seemed to match up. Missing beagle in Clarkston, found beagle in Ortonville. She’d call and they’d talk and she’d ask them to let her know and they’d call her back and sometimes just to talk and soon, Thelma found herself forgetting about Lucky. She began avoiding Larry out of fear he’d be able to see it on her face.
***
The Complex allowed Scooter to call when he arrived at Fort Benning. He called Thelma’s cell, not Larry’s, and she wanted to point this out when Larry jumped up off the couch after she said, “Scooter!” Instead, she put her cell on speaker phone.
“Hi, Mom,” her son said.
“Hi, honey.”
“Lawrence, Dad’s here too.”
Thelma rolled her eyes at her husband wasting precious phone seconds.
“Oh. Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, son. Didn’t expect me home, did you?”
“Mom, I’ve arrived safely at Fort Benning.”
“That’s good. I wish I could say the same for Lucky,” said Larry.
Thelma poked and shushed him.
“Mom!”
“Yes, Scooter, I’m listening,” she said, glaring at Larry.
“Please do not send any food or bulky items. I will contact you in 7 to 10 days to give you my mailing address.”
Larry grabbed the cell. “I took a few days off to look for Lucky. We can’t find him anywhere. He’s out there somewhere, but where, only God knows. Poor dog.”
Thelma yanked her cell out of his hands and stepped away. “Go on, Lawrence.”
“Thank you for your support, Mom. Good-bye for now. I love you guys.”
Larry and Thelma both said, “I love you too,” their voices competing.
“Mom?”
Thelma knew Scooter was deviating from the script and a lump rose in her throat. “Yes?”
“Don’t forget to write me.”
Thelma rushed the words, “I won’t.” She was certain they’d made her boy hang up before he heard her.
Would her non-conformist son be able to obey all those rules and procedures? The Army was going to try and break her boy’s indomitable spirit, maybe in physically cruel ways. “What the hell was that about, Larry? Jesus! He was calling me! His mother! You’re not even supposed to be here. All you can think about is that stinking dog! You couldn’t even shut up about it. It’s no wonder Scooter ran off!” Then she stormed away, slamming the door to her craft room.
***
During the summer, Thelma sold her handmade, sometimes holiday-themed, wreaths at outdoor arts and crafts fairs. When the children were little, they’d gone with her as Larry worked countless hours, especially after damaging storms. This arrangement allowed her to earn enough income to stay home with the children but have something to do during the alone hours of the school year. She gathered the wreath material in the nearby woods, her hands callused from bending and shaping the vinca, grape, and wisteria vines. Some of her most treasured memories were of taking the children to gather decorative elements, such as cattails, pheasant feathers, pine cones, abandoned bird nests, and if they were lucky, never-hatched lifeless, colored bird eggs.
But this summer, instead of crafting wreaths, Thelma used her workspace to write Scooter every day. He’d sent her a postcard with his mailing address and a couple of words about a possible phone call a few weeks later. She knew he’d have to “be good” to get his cell phone back and then she started imagining him wearing an orange jumpsuit. She’d have to shake her head and put him in his fatigues instead. Either way, he was a prisoner of his own accord. She’d give half her leg to have one more day with her boy in his Ninja Turtles slippers, his fat little belly sticking out over his drooping jammy pants, asking her for peanut butter crackers. At the age of four his hair had been the color of lightning.
Her heart just wasn’t in crafting anymore. She turned her hands palms up, palms down, startled at how used they appeared. Her knuckles bulged and the calluses had fossilized. Maybe she should do something different. What with Eunice going to college in three years. Plus, Larry was eligible for early retirement. It was time for Thelma to get out of the house.
Dearest Lawrence,
I’m thinking of going to college. When I was your age, the aptitude test said that I was good with numbers. I’ve been ignoring them since.
How is the Complex treating you?
Enclosed is a picture of your favorite Ninja Turtle Raphael and the angels painting by Raphael that makes me think of you when you were snuggly. I’m thinking of renting a small child, aged four, for about a week to get some snuggling.
Did the aptitude test tell you to be a soldier?
Love Always,
Mom
That night Thelma signed up for summer classes at the local community college: Beginning Russian 1 and Introduction to Homeland Security.
***
Thelma was studying her Russian when she got an alert that an email came in to LuckyRescueMissionTeam@gmail.com. Lucky had been missing for a month, but it had only really weighed on Thelma this past week after Scooter scolded her for not looking harder in his first phone call home. “It’s like you don’t care, Mom,” he’d said.
She’d wanted to tell him that maybe she didn’t. She’d wanted to tell him that for the first week of Scooter-No-More she checked to see if it was him when someone came home, her steps light and quick. And when it wasn’t him and she had to remember that it wasn’t going to be him because he’d joined the Army of all goddamn things, it was like a bucket of cold water over her head. Neecy started calling out when she walked in the door, “Mom, it’s me Neecy.” Then Thelma could be privately disappointed, her heart contracting enough that she sat down a moment or two before she went and said hello to her daughter.
She wanted to tell her boy that the house was different now that he was gone. There was a big empty space that followed her around like a haunting, and even when Neecy was there, all she could think about was that Scooter was not. Her job as Scooter’s mother was pretty much finished. And soon, Eunice would be gone too.
Besides, Lucky had made it apparent at every possible opportunity that he felt nothing but disdain for Thelma. Even though it was Thelma who wiped his oozing patches day in and day out and it was Thelma who took him fun places like the beach. Without the dog, Thelma’s day opened in unexpected ways. She could hang out at the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library reading the letters of Civil War soldiers or walk across Woodward Avenue to the Detroit Institute of Arts and stare at the Rivera murals. It didn’t matter that it was 10 a.m. and time for Lucky’s pills. Or noon and time for Lucky’s raw foods lunch. Or 2 p.m. and time for Lucky’s wipes again.
Thelma began truly enjoying her Post-Scooter Period. It was as if she’d embarked upon a third life. First she was a child then she was a mother and now she was … she didn’t know. Thelma would look in the mirror and ask, “And who might you be?”
But every day, Neecy asked if there was any news on the little creature and every day she shed a tear or two that there wasn’t and when Scooter had scolded her, well, Thelma realized she was being hard-hearted. It was her kids really that had gotten to her because Larry’s “depression” over the whole thing had only chafed like polyester pants. Especially after he yelled that she’d always hated Lucky and had probably lost him “accidentally on purpose.” It just wasn’t fair that the mother was the crux of the emotional well-being of the entire family. Sometimes Thelma felt as if she’d been buried alive. But, she renewed her efforts to get the word out and she upped the reward for the safe return of Lucky.
The email came from RedChief@gmail.com:
—How bad you want your dog back?
Thelma answered right away.
—What’s up with the Red Chief? I hope you’re not being disrespectful to Native Americans. I don’t watch the Tigers play Cleveland because I cannot stand Cleveland’s offensive mascot.
She only had to wait a few minutes. Red Chief was sitting at his computer somewhere.
—Like I said, lady, you want your dog back or not?
—How did you know I was a lady? This isn’t my personal email.
Thelma didn’t hear from RedChief@gmail.com again. Then she received an email from PrettyinPunk@gmail.com.
—We have your disgusting dog. Put 1,000$ in a paper sack and text me when you are in your van.
—I have my own grocery totes. I don’t do paper or plastic. This isn’t the twentieth century anymore.
Sometimes Pretty in Punk answered the emails right away and sometimes Thelma had to study her Russian while waiting.
—Fine. Use a grocery tote.
—The reward is 100$ not 1,000$. And I need proof Lucky is still alive.
—1,000$ or no dog. I have student loans to pay.
—What did you get your degree in? You sound unemployed. I just started college for the first time in my life. Did I tell you my son joined the Army? I don’t want a degree in anything that doesn’t immediately translate into a job.
—Steer clear of any major that starts with Medieval then. Sorry about your son.
—Thank you! I’m sorry also, but nobody seems to get that. It’s always, “You should be so proud” blah blah blah. But, I wanted so much more for him. Plus I miss him. It’s like driving into the rising sun of early spring without sunglasses.
—My mother died when I was twelve.
—OMG! I’m so sorry.
And then Thelma didn’t get another email.
She tossed and turned that night, afraid she’d wake Larry. Then he’d want to know what was wrong and she’d have to tell him Lucky was dognapped (though she wanted to tell him since he blamed her) and then he’d be calling the Oakland County Sheriff. She wanted to keep the police out of it. Anytime anyone can keep the police out of it they ought to, she thought, especially since you could get shot just for being a certain color. You didn’t have to have a weapon or be a serial killer or have committed a violent crime; no, you just had to come into contact with a police officer and maybe, like, run away from them. Thelma rolled out of bed and quietly made her way to her craft room.
Dear Lawrence,
Lucky was dognapped. It wasn’t my fault, after all. I am in the midst of intense negotiations to secure his release for the least possible amount of money. I’ve always been frugal, as you know.
I wish I could call you.
In my Department of Homeland Security class the instructor wants us to believe that the continuing erosion of our civil liberties is the reason our country has not experienced another attack like the one on 9-11.
Our ancestors who fought in the American Revolution are going to rise up from their graves and haunt us in perpetuity if we continue to avoid facing the fact that our leaders failed us that day and it had nothing to do with enjoying too many civil liberties. The whole thing still stinks to high heaven, like Lucky.
Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist, Lawrence. But still, a B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 and all its fuel burned and guess what? The building is still standing.
How’s the Complex?
Love Always,
Mom
The next day, Thelma sent an email to PrettyinPunk@gmail.com.
—Here’s my cell number in case you want to talk.
Not long after, Thelma got a hang up call from an unidentified caller. She raced to her computer.
—Did you just try to call? It’s okay if you did.
Again, sometimes the emails were answered quickly and sometimes she had to study her Russian.
—Don’t you want your dog back? You never ask about him.
—He’s not my dog, really. He’s my husband Larry’s.
—The downstairs tenants called the landlord because he barks all the time.
—Oh no! What are you going to do? You might have to move!
—WTF!
—I have to go. Bye.
Thelma got off the Internet. Even though it was only one in the afternoon, she poured herself a glass of Chardonnay. Everything in her life felt different now. Instead of feeling shackled, she felt like she was slipping out of dried-up old skin, slowly but surely, and soon the old Thelma would be a discarded pile in the corner of the living room. A relic of the past: The Thelma who came in last while everyone else got what they needed, while everyone else became who they needed to be while she cleaned and cooked and care-taked and existed in a domestic fog. She hadn’t felt this alive in twenty years.
The next evening PrettyinPunk@gmail com wrote her:
—100$ would work for me.
—100$ ?????????
—For the dog.
—That is a lot of money for a sick Chihuahua. He hasn’t been on his meds for weeks!
—You said the reward was 100$!
—Gotta go! I have to see what my husband and daughter are fighting about. Bye. (:
When Thelma walked into the kitchen, her husband and daughter stopped fighting, turned toward her, and asked practically simultaneously, “Any news on Lucky?” Not: How are you, Thelma/Mom? How are your classes going? How was your day? No. She was the last planet in their solar systems—Pluto the used-to-be-a-planet but is no longer a planet. Always the distant rock.
“No,” said Thelma and they both pulled their heads back like shocked chickens.
“Bite our heads off ‘bout it!” said Eunice.
***
Dear Lawrence,
Negotiations are not going well with the orphaned dognapper. I will continue trying, but am not hopeful in securing a positive outcome. I’m holding off on telling your father and Neecy until I know for sure one way or the other. Talk to you soon! Tell the Complex I said Hello.
Love you,
Mom
***
“Hello?” Thelma answered her cell.
“Hi. This is Amber. I … uh … is this Lucky’s mom?”
“Yes, it is. What can I do for you? I took the Craigslist ad down.”
“I know. I … uh … I’m the one that’s been emailing you. About Lucky.”
“Oh,” said Thelma, her heart sinking. “How are you today?”
“I think Lucky should go home.” In the background, Thelma could hear the dog yipping and yapping and Amber trying to get him to shush up. “It’s okay about the money. I don’t need the money that bad.”
“But he must be such a mess!”
“I can prove to you that he’s all better. Incoming.” Amber ended the call.
Twenty minutes later, Thelma got a video of Lucky growling and baring his fangs then biting a multi-ringed hand with bandaged delicate fingers and pink-painted fingernails that held onto his studded collar so that he’d be in the video. There was soft crying for three seconds. Amber turned the camera on herself. Thelma was very surprised to see her and watched as Amber wiped her face with a Kleenex. Amber’s short dark hair was parted on the side and the bleached-blond long bangs lay flat against her forehead, just over her left eye. She had a nose ring and wide cheeks and a small mouth dabbed with cherry red lipstick. Her eyes were red as if she’d not only just been crying but had been crying earlier, before the call.
“He looks good, doesn’t he?” Amber said to the camera before she turned it on Lucky again for a few seconds.
Lucky’s skin had a few patches but not like before and the patches that were there seemed dry, as if they were healing. Plus his fur had grown out. He’d always been so furless before.
Thelma and Amber texted.
—How did that happen?
—I don’t know. It just started clearing up.
—Do you feed him something special?
—Just regular dog food.
—Like holistic, grain-free, buffalo meat only?
—No, like dog chow. Comes in a huge bag for 5 bucks. I told you already I’m broke.
—Did you use the wipes?
—What wipes?
—The ones in his diaper bag.
—Not really. Too much of a hassle. He likes popcorn. But he won’t watch Netflix with me.
—Dogs can’t have popcorn! Or grapes. Or chocolate.
—Well, he likes it. Popcorn, that is. I know about the grapes and chocolate. He likes lying in the sun, too.
—In his special sun-blocking suit? Under his umbrella?
—Oh, I thought that was a dress-up outfit. No, just in the sun like a real dog. I didn’t take the umbrella, just the dog and the bag. I’m sorry I said he was disgusting before. He’s not really.
And then the texts from Amber stopped.
***
“Lucky was dognapped! I can’t frickin’ believe it. Who would want him? Ha!” Was the first thing Scooter said in the long-awaited-for second call. The three at home were sitting around the breakfast table hunched over the cell phone, their shoulders touching and jostling to be closest.
“What?” Larry looked at Thelma.
As did Neecy.
“That’s what Mom said in her letter. Right, Mom?”
“You weren’t supposed to tell your father just yet, Scooter. I’m still in negotiations,” she said.
“Negotiations? With a dognapper? What do they want? Why didn’t you tell me? We should call the police!” said Larry.
“Oh my God, Larry. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Lucky’s fine.”
“How do you know?” her family asked.
“Amber sent me a video.”
“You have a video and didn’t tell us?” Neecy said.
A pang pinged in Thelma’s heart from the look on her daughter’s face.
“Who’s Amber?” she asked.
Thelma sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys. But, he looks good. His skin is all better. He has fur again. Amber’s taking care of him, exceptionally well I might add.”
“It’s because you’re studying Russian isn’t it?” asked Larry. “You’re studying Russian and Homeland Security whatever and you’re changing. You used to be happy at home, Thelma, and now look at you. I don’t even know what you do all day anymore.” Larry stood up so fast his gut bumped the table causing a minor earthquake then he went charging out the front door. After a few seconds, his truck door slammed and the engine revved.
“I have to go, Mom,” said Lawrence. “You better get Lucky back.”
“Yeah, Mom. Lucky’s our dog. I don’t know how you can just go and give him to some chic named Amber,” said Neecy.
“He was dognapped, I didn’t give him away! And I didn’t lose him either. And he’s not even sick anymore. Amber healed him.”
“Gotta go,” said Scooter.
“Love you, Lawrence.”
“Love you too. Don’t forget to write me.” As if Thelma could forget.
“I can’t believe you did this,” Neecy said then stood up, her bedazzled eyes glimmering in tears. “You better get him back, Mom. Or, I’ll … I’ll never—”
“What?”
“Speak to you ever again.” She stormed off.
The way Neecy said that, Thelma knew her daughter meant what she said. They were ganging up on her! She was nothing but a maid. There to serve their every command. “Screw that,” Thelma said aloud, and she too, stood up and stormed out.
***
Why did Thelma have to get Lucky back just to make her family happy? Lucky was mean to Thelma, just like he was mean to Amber. Thelma had little thin strips of scars all over her fingers and it wasn’t because she made wreaths, as Larry always exclaimed when she’d shown him. What about what Thelma wanted? What about what made Thelma happy? Not taking care of that stinkin’ dog, that’s what made her happy!
Dearest Scooter,
I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Isn’t that funny? Because I’ve been grown up for thirty years. I did very much like being your mother. Remember when we used to visit the bats at Cranbrook? Did you know a mother bat will do just about whatever it takes to return to her pup if, for instance, someone has sealed the entrance to the colony? She will work and work her way back into wherever the colony is to be reunited with her pup. Someday, you will understand this and why I’m so angry at the Complex.
Love you,
Mom
That night, Thelma had a dream in which she was a little brown bat and her two pups were in the attic of her Nana’s old farmhouse and the bat busters had sealed off the hole where she flew in and out to hunt mosquitoes. She kept smashing her funny bat nose against the house trying to find a new way in until she collapsed from exhaustion and fell. Her Nana found her on the porch, picked her up by a wing, and while Thelma dangled there, told her to stop foolin’ around with the Russians.
***
“Larry, you can’t refuse to speak to me for the rest of our lives. Especially, since you can never remember where you put anything,” Thelma said, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
He snorted and turned his face away, standing over his bacon sizzling in the pan with a fork in his hand. “Don’t you need to study Russian or something? Next thing, you’ll be moving to Moscow.”
“I’m not moving to Moscow.” She was emptying the dishwasher. “But I’m going to change my life, Larry, whether you like it or not.”
“Because you don’t like the life you have now? Huh? Is that it?”
“Because it needs to change. Scooter’s gone. Eunice is leaving soon. I’m sick of making wreaths. I want to be able to say that I have a college education. Is that so bad? Huh? Is it?” And she mocked the baby face he put on when he asked stupid questions.
“What’s bad, Thelma, is lying to me about Lucky. I would never have done that to you.”
Larry was right about that. But she was still irritated, so she rolled her eyes, drank down the last of her coffee, slammed the mug on the counter, grabbed her backpack and left for class.
***
Thelma always found herself crying in the van. She never wanted to cry in front of the children and Nana had taught her proper stoicism. She cried so often in the van that she was good at it and didn’t have to pull over. She hadn’t remembered to re-stock the travel packs of Kleenex, so she wiped her nose with antiseptic towelettes from out of the glovebox. They smelled of 1974.
In 1974, her mother had called her in from after-supper dodgeball with the kids on her block to watch Richard Nixon resign on the color television. Her mother explained how the President had wanted to become president again so badly, he’d resorted to theft and deception. The spring before, Thelma and her family had toured the White House. Thelma looked everywhere for President Nixon: down every hall, in every doorway, around every corner. What she wanted most of all was to meet President Nixon. She wrote him a letter and asked him why he hadn’t been home that day. He wrote her back, much to her parent’s surprise, and was very sorry to have missed Thelma. Thelma loved President Nixon. She was deeply troubled that he’d decided to be so bad.
She thought about how Watergate had changed her perception of those in power and how it affected her to this day. She didn’t trust a single one of them. And even though she loved President Obama, she didn’t really trust him, either. She didn’t trust the bankers, the lawyers, the cops. But it was different for her children.
Lawrence was four years old when the planes crashed into the buildings. Thelma was getting him ready to go to Montessori preschool and she had the television on, for some reason that she regretted later. Eunice was in her highchair, trying to pick up Cheerios. She never let the children watch the news. Not that the news was on, but the Today show was. Nana had always watched the Today Show in the morning. Lawrence and Thelma watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center and the buildings collapse. Thelma cried out and rushed to call Larry on the phone. They stayed home that day and the next day from preschool. Thelma was very distracted and distraught and Lawrence had done his best to comfort her. He whispered “Sssshhh,” and smoothed away the tears on her cheek with his small soft hand. But for months if planes went overhead while Lawrence was outside playing, he’d run inside and hide under the dining table.
And Thelma the pacifist had been very angry. She supported the troops. She wished she could help protect America. She put a flag on her car and a flag picture on her front door and she made a lot of red, white and blue wreaths. And when they had conversations about 9-11 when Lawrence was older and that maybe the official version wasn’t the whole truth, that didn’t matter to him. What mattered was making sure it never happened again.
Of course, Lawrence joined the Army.
And what had Thelma done to act upon her convictions? Nothing. She complained about Larry making her take care of Lucky, she complained about the US House of Representatives keeping her country in a grid-lock, she complained about the military-industrial complex swallowing up her son, she complained about the erosion of civil liberties but she did nothing about it. Lawrence was living his life based upon his convictions, his beliefs, what was important to him. She was so proud of her son at that moment that it traveled throughout her and a shitty grin spread upon her face.
***
Thelma sat in her Department of Homeland Security class, jiggling her left knee and bouncing her pencil tip against her fold-over mini-desktop. It was like she needed to get up and go. Go and do this and go and do that, start making things happen.
The old professor was trying to justify racial profiling. She nudged the young woman next to her and pointed at the instructor and whispered, “You say something. You’re the future.” The young woman shirked away.
Thelma knew a different America, one her children’s generation had a right to know also. It seemed sometimes as if America had gone to New Zealand to be an ex-pat—her red, white and blue ribbons trailing behind her through the mud. She wanted to yell at her, “Wait. Wait for us!”
Thelma stood up, trembling, and made her way down the auditorium stairs. She stopped at the door, turned, and faced the old professor. He’d stopped speaking and stared at her. He looked used-up and worn out, like a filthy rug. She felt sorry for him. He willingly gave up all that made America great for a false peace of mind, he bent over for the establishment, he forgot that America was destined to always move forward.
Her mother had called her in from hide-n-seek to watch the astronauts land on the moon and Thelma felt that brilliant. Ready to face the unknown. Ready to take one small step.
She walked out of class and went home.
***
“Larry,” Thelma called his cell, “we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Me.”
“You’re leaving me, aren’t you?”
“This isn’t about you. You can’t make everything about you.”
“What is it about then?”
“My life has been about either taking care of you or taking care of the kids or taking care of your dog. It needs to be about me now and what I want to do.”
Larry didn’t answer.
“Hello, hello, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Thelma, I can hear you.”
“Good that settles it then.”
“I guess.”
“Yes, Larry, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
“I have to get back to work,” he said.
“I’m not stopping you.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“What?”
“If you want Lucky back you have to get him yourself.”
“Okay.” He sounded a bit like a child.
“See you later,” she said.
“Not moving to Moscow?”
“No, Larry, but I am going to get a bachelor’s degree.”
***
To PrettyinPunk@gmail.com:
Hi Amber- Did I tell you Larry rescued Lucky from a last chance event? Last chance means they’re gassed if not adopted that day. Lucky was left inside a rental house turned into a meth lab and no one found him for a couple of weeks. Toxic fumes had killed the meth heads. Lucky chewed through a plastic water bottle and drank the leaking dribbles. I think that’s where he learned to roll around in rotting carcasses and fecal matter. No one wanted Lucky because he stank. Except for Larry. I gave Larry your cell number. He’ll be calling you soon. Take care, Thelma.
***
Dear Lawrence,
I have good news! Lucky’s home and he’s all better. He doesn’t even smell anymore. I understand why you joined the Army now. We are all a product of the times we grew up in. I want you to know that I support you, that it’s important to be the person you need to be to live in this world and make sense of it, in your own way. I put an Army Mom sticker on the van. I wear my Army Mom sweatshirt to class. I know that you are going to be a good soldier and I’m proud of you.
Love you always,
Mom
Jennifer Porter grew up in the Motor City as a GM Brat and rock ‘n’ roll enthusiast. Her work has appeared in over a dozen fabulous literary journals. She tortures fine writers with ruthless editing over at The Tishman Review while hiding in her imaginary conservatory.
bir-
ch, pose
held, whi-
te her-
on
for mi’kmaw elder albert marshall
rum-
our, sto-
nes mur-
mur, un-
der the
ton-
gue
traffic –
deer, gra-
zing ozone
a point of rhyme anyway,
to split the screen –
apple & cinnamon,
break of day, two
million people
in prison
i
quantum –
koans in the
lab
ii
nucleus –
‘the whole small-
er than the parts’
iii
atoms –
para-
dice
iv
snatch –
pandora’s
box
v
electrons –
conducting
the dead?
vi
man –
soft
pawn
vii
drawing –
light set
in stone
viii
second eden –
‘the familiar
hissing’
ix
physics –
current
king
x
left –
the child’s waves
on the shore
i
india, pakistan, par-
titioning the stars. (earth
under fire.) dante: ‘time?
love cooling…’ the poetic
scenter of attention. light’s
aphorism. ‘citizens’; school-
ed assemblies. ‘vast interior’:
depression forming in the
gulf… ‘maturity’ – i do
not see, once we’re
compressed, how
we can ever
…
ii
dwarves: what humans mean
by themselves. (for mine is the
pressure & the density, saith
the law…) our distant relations
to the equations of state. haiku –
knowledge economy. global
eyes: everyone slowly/becom-
ing white. apollo’s final mis-
sion; ‘one day, men on
stars!’
iii
the man-
dala smash-
ers. (hiroshima:
‘explicit degene-
racy.’) neutral –
harmless enou-
gh?
iv
built-in incan-
descence. (atom:
wherein the world?)
suicidal vengeance;
dwarves manically com-
pressing the planet… (
sex – special relativ-
ity.) travelling light
in the realm of
time
Sean Howard is the author of Local Calls (Cape Breton University Press, 2009) and Incitements (Gaspereau Press, 2011). His poetry has been widely published in Canada and elsewhere, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the US, and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2011 & 2014). Sean is adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University, researching nuclear disarmament and the political history of 20th Century physics. His ‘Shadowgraphs Project’ has been supported by a creative writing grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
When Jenny first approached me in the coffee shop, she was attracted to me primarily due to the eye patch strapped across my left eye that had been issued in the wake of a car accident. The accident left me scarred and averse to highways, pitched blood across my shirt and scratched an abrasion on my left cornea. It hurt like hell; the doctors couldn’t have prescribed enough painkillers. But the accident—which, by the way, killed the man that hit us and totaled my friend’s car—also left me emboldened, standing out like a beacon in a sea of nondescript, middle class, middle-income white boys, of which I am usually just another faceless member.
And so at Holly’s Coffee House that day—I think it was around noon, I think it was a Monday—Jenny stopped and sat at my table and asked, apropos of nothing, “So are you a punk now?” I’d seen her around before. She’d never seen me with the eye patch. Through the shearing pain in my left eye, the only response I could muster was, “Yes.” And that one word, one syllable, one second reply was how we became friends. Good friends. The kind of spontaneous friendship that threatened to eclipse all else in the shadow of its urgency. Even before it got physical we couldn’t get enough of each other—smoking weed in the other’s bedroom, going to all-ages matinee shows, and giving overly-dramatic readings of young adult novels at the local library to the chagrin of anxious librarians. We spent so much time sipping McFlurries and talking about who knows what at the McDonalds with the broken arches that soon it was hard to remember I had ever even known anybody else.
But of course I knew other people. Guys from around town. Girls from Denver. Before Jenny, I had been trying to get by with around ten friends, a tape recorder, a fake set of flowers and around a hundred or so in savings to get me through the trials and tribulations of laser-tag sessions, rewritten Blink-182 anthems, U-Haul trucks, movie nights, garden gnomes, weeklong strings of all night overnights, three ex-girlfriends, two unreturned security deposits and a book with kaleidoscope binding that took way too long to answer the question of what is good in life.
Looking back, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised when it happened. It was after the going away party for Jenny’s ambitious, intelligent, going-somewhere younger sister. A fight almost broke out next to Shelter D with some punk kids talking shit and dropping N-bombs, but Jenny just laughed because she has always had the foresight to know when something would make for a good story. She didn’t cry during the party. She cried afterwards when it was just us and the bed sheets. Because her mom was dead and her sister was leaving, and so it was only going to be her and her sad dad for a while, but she had me, and we felt positive, and so she decided it should happen. And I always knew it would happen, but it was in the same way that I have always known that I will die one day. It was just that it had already happened (repeatedly, excessively, riotously) to so many people in my life that I had started to worry that by the time it did, I’d be too old to get it up. And so when she led me up the stairs to her bedroom, sat me on her bed, told me she’d never be happy, Christ, and started crying when I presented her with a wrapped copy of this god-awful YA book we’d been making fun of –the plot of which concerned a love triangle between a werewolf and a vampire and a horribly disfigured Chernobyl survivor—I was just as surprised as anyone that she took me.
By now, by the way, I feel as though I know everyone (or at least everyone who will matter), but still I try not to cap the friends list on Facebook at X number of people, because I know that each of them can hardly wait to tell me about how they are going off to get married and have babies and live out the passive-aggressive American dream of growing resentful of each other and never forgetting that one shitty thing the other one said during a Jets game twenty years ago, or shaking the lingering feeling that they should just say, “Fuck it,” and run away to Europe where they might still be miserable but at least the people have class.
Of course, we Americans have culture: I got this burning recollection of a cardboard cutout of Homer Simpson carried around by two kids on the last day of classes. The kids had cherry bombs too, and matches and fireworks, real sketch, doused in kerosene. I dunno, I dunno. They’re emotional fireworks? Poorly disguised euphemisms for ejaculation? We’ll get it on. We’ll take it off. I’ll get her off—off to turn her towards a urinal while her chest opens up and a bag of confetti comes shooting out, clearly on something, fucked up like her father at that incredibly sketchy birthday party they threw for her recently deceased mother where he and Jenny and her sister all put on party hats and cried watching home movies, and tried to pretend what a fun day they would be having if only she were still alive.
But yeah, yes—American culture. Second semester sophomore year, I went camping, joined a band, got really into The Pixies and made a list of all the things that Salinger never said about Cloverfield. I wish I had known Jenny then so that we could have talked about all the things that people never said about all the things we ever loved, and we could have held hands together, the Human Centipede being very disappointed that we were not discovering our sexualities through creatively phrased GOOGLE image searches with the safe-search functionality turned off and our underpants wrapped around our ankles.
I pop pop-culture like Claritin in the springtime and Vicodin after a car wreck. Video killed the radio star, and the Kardashians killed the hipster, AV Club, cooler-than-thou commentariat, who decreed in a post on the internet that in a post-modern, post-consumerism, post-apocalyptic cultural landscape we might as well all go marry gold diggers—old-timey pan handler types who trudge knee-deep in the Colorado River and boast a similar materialist ethos to the sexy cliches who die first in horror movies. There are Nazis at the center of the Earth, according to that SYFY channel original special that starred an improvisational actress from the Groundlings who I might have fallen in love with and jerked it to endlessly had it not been for Jenny. Her wallet was found by the kind cashier at the movie theater, and I am returning the interabang that accompanied the epiphany that I was in love with her in order to express my deepest surprise that anybody would ever let me get so close to them.
For so long it’s just been about this new thing and that new thing, but lately it’s become obvious that the largest congregation of all the coolest shit was only ever there to make me think I’m not so lonely. I am surrounded on all sides by the pulsating beat of punk-rock music, the enthusiastic blasts of Edgar Wright direction, and a hyped-up feeling that I know all the cool books to claim I’ve read, each of them written by beatnik, weirdos who enjoyed anal fingering. But through the sound of that silence that surrounds me, as I got so close to Jenny that night, I was not thinking about the screech of bagpipes and accordions at old fashioned funerals—even though, as my legs extended in a fit of ecstasy, I knocked over the framed photograph of her mother that she keeps on her bedside table—but rather about that moment just beforehand when she put her hand on my cheek and intertwined her limbs with my ventricles, enough caffeine coursing through my veins to make me really believe all of that grand romantic love shit that I watched in high concept romantic comedies that I said I only screened to be ironic. Her body was against mine and her skin was cold, I was hard, she was crying, and this shit was formative, because in that moment she seemed intimate and I felt infinite because there are perks to reading all these shitty young adult books.
Chris Vanjonack is an English teacher living in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he helps run Slamogadro, a monthly poetry slam that is fast approaching its second anniversary. His fiction has appeared previously in New Haven Review and Buffalo Almanack.
“Let’s talk about the accident. Wasn’t that what brought you here in the first place?”
“No, it’s the litter.” I sigh while glancing around the office at all of the framed degrees hanging behind Dr. Howard.
But, maybe it had been the stretched-out cat, on the side of the road, covered in that snow. Trigger. It wasn’t the obvious kind of litter: white, crumpled fast food bags; forty-ounce mostly empty bottles of “Hurricane;” a busted chair.
We’ve been discussing a time, many years ago, when my dad and I were driving back home from my grandparent’s house. An afternoon lunch on their deck, overlooking the hillside and downtown Glendale, had been tension-filled, and I remembered being pissed that my sister had gotten out of coming along. After my dad downed three scotch-on-the-rocks at an alarming rate, I insisted on driving us back home. Behind the wheel of his Mercedes, I navigated the tight freeway pass by Dodgers Stadium.
My dad was leaning back in the leather passenger seat. When he let out an exasperated sigh, I knew he was about to impart some wisdom. Apparently, he was concerned about the guy I was dating and, although I hadn’t asked for his advice, he was going to launch into one of his speeches anyway.
“You can’t marry a poet. He won’t be able to take care of you.” My dad knew a lot about marriage; after all, he was on his third. And, since I was heading off to graduate school in Idaho, the last thing on my mind was finding a man to take care of me. I saw a dead cat on the side of the freeway, and as a means of changing the subject, I quoted one of our long standing jokes: “It’s only sleeping.”
“Well, how did this make you feel?”
I want to answer Dr. Howard’s question, but instead I close my eyes. All I can see are dead animals. My mind skips to a camping trip I took about ten years back. I was riding in the car with some friends on our way to Preston, Idaho. I counted fourteen dead deer on a fifteen mile stretch of highway. I also saw a bumper sticker that read: “Smoke a Pack a Day” with a picture of four wolves caught in a crosshair. At the time, I had no idea what it meant. Neither of these things seemed to bother anyone else but me. Dr. Howard wants to talk about the accident, but I am unable to put anything into words. He sends me home with a prescription for something that will help me sleep.
That night, instead of sleeping, I obsess over some album cover I may have once owned: a bubble gum-pink nightmare of the 1980s fading into a hazy Los Angeles sunset. Looping in the background, I keep hearing that girl’s mocking voice saying to one of my co-workers, “She’s certified loony bin crazy.” I think she is talking about me, but I can’t be sure. That same day, I heard a story about my friend’s dad who got cancer. His cancer was removed, and I all I can say is “what did they do with it?” My friend asks, “What?” And I answer, “The cancer.”
It’s not safe to drink the water. It’s not safe to breathe the air.
*****
On my way home from work, I count seventeen incidences of litter: a broken beer bottle, a dirty diaper, a discarded car seat (which I actually scanned, half-way hoping that a baby might still be latched inside), a discarded sweatshirt, etc. I don’t want to count like this, so I stop by the grocery store and purchase a little red spiral-bound notebook. I will use this to catalogue the litter. Dr. Howard will see this as progress. After all, he’s always trying to get me to write things down.
I finally sleep for a few hours, but when I awake the next morning, I can’t stop thinking of a story someone once told me about the yearly rabbit hunts which were held in the rural Idaho town where he was raised. He described how as a young boy, five or so, he’d been given a baseball bat and was told to walk through the fields as the rabbits were being flushed out. He was supposed to whack as many of these as he could over the head. I guess each person kept track of how many rabbits they’d whacked. Most kills=big prize.
This story haunts me the next day and makes it nearly impossible for me to concentrate on work. All I have to do is answer a phone and then transfer the call to the right attorney. However, images of crushed in rabbit skulls appear before my eyes each time one of the red lights blinks. The voices on the phone make no sense to me. I keep sending the wrong call to the wrong attorney. Eventually, they send me home for the day.
Home is no better. I keep searching for my copy of Watership Down. I am convinced that I have it somewhere, so I tear through boxes in the closet. After about four hours of searching, it dawns on me that I’ve never even read it. My mother took me to see the movie when I was about seven years old. I cried so hard and so loudly that she had to remove me from the theatre before the movie ended. I remember her embarrassment and feel ashamed. I get online and order a copy. I will finally find out what happened to those rabbits that were driven out of their homes by greedy farmers who want to plow the land.
By the time I go see Dr. Howard the following Tuesday, the little red notebook is almost full. I am proud of my record keeping.
“So, last week, we were discussing your father and the accident.”
Hadn’t we been talking about the sunsets in Los Angeles and the unsafe air and drinking water? In what strikes me as a mocking tone, he says: “You were last telling me about a car ride on the freeways in Los Angeles. You’d been leaving your grandparent’s house. Your father was not a huge fan of you marrying a poet. I think this is worth further exploration.”
I hand Dr. Howard the red notebook. “What’s this?” He asks, leafing through it. His forehead wrinkles as he makes a note in my chart.
“I was sure you’d like this.” I never cry in therapy. I do, however, grab the throw pillow on the couch next to me and dig my nails into it. I imagine that it’s Dr. Howard’s face I am digging into. My fingertips get closer and closer to his eyes. I can almost see myself gouging out his eyeballs. He sees me grabbing the pillow and feels good about therapeutic tactics. He learned this somewhere in college, at some point in a clinical, grab the pillow and tear at it, scream into it if you must.
“I am not sure how this notebook is going to help you.” He switches tactics, “I mean, how do you see this as being helpful?”
When I don’t respond, he tries again, “Why don’t we talk about what brought you here in the first place? The accident?
“It’s the litter.” I respond again, but this time when I close my eyes I can see the twisted metal and smell the burning rubber and spilled gasoline. I see myself driving my Dad and sister home from somewhere near downtown. I’d taken my eyes off the road for just a minute when I saw the spilt box of discarded kittens. I needed to know if they had survived being thrown from a vehicle at high speeds. That’s all it took.
*****
In my possession are a collection of pictures in which I stand on the fringe of the group. These are my families. Sometimes when I try to make sense of my family dynamics to people they joke, “Maybe we should draw a family tree.” However, trees require roots. Some trees, such as the Giant Sequoias in California, have such a shallow root system that they are often vulnerable to all kinds of destruction: wind, severe weather, fires. Sometimes, huge tunnels are built into these trees big enough to fit a moving car. The ones that still remain are over two hundred feet tall and have survived thousands of years of storms, fires, and humans. I want to be like that.
*****
Today, Dr. Howard wants to talk about my sister. Apparently he’s found something in his notes that interests him. Instead, I tell him about an insignificant dream I had the night before. The funny thing is, I don’t dream about my sister. I close my eyes and try to recall a single dream with her. My mind is blank.
As soon as I get home from my appointment with Dr. Howard, I give into my impulse to grab my notebook and start cataloguing the stuff in my closet: a cardboard box of wrapping paper and gift bags, a wooden crate wine box that now contains the pictures from some wedding, a hacky-sack like bag that holds crystals and gem rocks, a book cover from Curious George, a large number of paper clips and thumb tacks, and the love verses from the unmarriable poet. I also come across the wrinkled newspaper article about the accident: “Local Man and Daughter Killed in Tragic Wreck.” For a second, I consider cataloguing these items separately into “useful” and “non-useful,” but I am unsure where to place the article.
As I am climbing into bed, I find what appears to be a curled up spider ready for spooning. I think about calling someone, but there’s no one to call. I gather up enough courage to poke at it with an unraveled metal coat hanger. It moves. I run from the room and end up sleeping on the dining room table because I figure it is the least insect friendly of all my furniture. When I awake the next morning, I realize that I’ve slept through the whole night, and I feel great. For the first time, since the accident, my back isn’t hurting me and I feel safer sleeping above it all. I head straight towards my bedroom determined to confront the creature. In the unreal light of early morning, I discover that the enigma is only a piece of rolled up string-a castoff from an Old Navy T-shirt. The “spider” was then catalogued as “useful.”
*****
Dr. Howard sips on a cup of coffee and twirls his pencil between his thumb and pointer finger. He seems to be waiting for me to say something, but I just stare at him. Finally, he can’t stand the silence, “Did you and your sister get along well?”
“I hated her.” I say as my head presses against the scratchy wool of the pillows that Dr. Howard’s wife probably made for him. I used to imagine her pulling on nude colored, run-resistant pantyhose in the mornings before she headed down to the kitchen to make him three fried eggs, a piece of half-burnt sourdough toast with marmalade and a cup of black coffee. I was later surprised to discover that she is also a doctor who works in the pediatrics unit at the hospital. I was mad at myself for my sexist vision of Dr. Howard’s better half.
Hate is a pretty strong word.
Before Dr. Howard can launch into any more questions about my dad or my sister, I tell him about my new sleeping arrangements, “I’ve been sleeping on the kitchen table for the past week.” Now this, this interests him.
He leans forward so far that his rear end is nearly slipping off his leather chair. “What? What’s this?” As if he hasn’t really heard me. “Wasn’t it uncomfortable?”
“It’s the best sleep I’ve had in months. I am thinking about sleeping there from now on.”
“Does this have something to do with the accident?”
Laughter escapes through my nose with a snorting sound, “No, it was because of the spider that wasn’t really a spider.”
He is perplexed now. “Spider?”
*****
Over the weekend, I set to work on the move, but it takes a lot of effort to turn the dining area into a bedroom. I am ill prepared for the difference in the elements of place that I encounter. In the dining room, I have an antique hutch that I acquired through some divorce. It was previously filled with my grandmother’s china, knick-knacks, and crystal stem wear. This all had to be moved up to the bedroom and placed in the dresser drawers.
Side note: the hutch works really well as a wardrobe. I use the drawers (reserved for silver which I don’t have) for socks, underwear, bras, etc. In the large bottom area, (reserved for crystal dishes, soup tureens, platters, etc. which I also don’t have) I place my neatly folded shirts, jeans, skirts and sweaters. I have to get a little more creative with the two upper cabinets that used to hold the glasses and knick-knacks. In this area, I place my shoes.
Then, all of the stuff from the dining room has to be moved to the bedroom. This is where the real challenge began. Although, the hutch could easily serve a dual function for dishes and clothes, the dresser was not as cooperative in its design for the china and glasses. In one drawer, I place six of my grandmother’s china cups. I use another drawer for the six plates, and in the last one, I put the remaining five bowls (one broke in the move). I end up having to place all of the crystal stemware on top of the dresser. If we ever have an earthquake, I’ll be screwed. But, this isn’t California.
In the middle of my move, I get a phone call from an old friend, and I let it go to voicemail. She leaves a message asking me to meet her at a bar near my neighborhood. Her voice sounds so artificial, and that is one of my new rules: avoid anything artificial. I’d spent a few hours the other night throwing away everything in the kitchen that had any artificial ingredients, but I had to Google so many of the ingredients because I didn’t know which ones were real or not, so eventually I ended up throwing away everything that came in a package or a box. It’s a little harder to throw away people, but I’d been forced to do it before.
At my last session with Dr. Howard he had given me a challenge to get out of the house more and possibly reconnect with people I used to know, so I figure this is my best chance. But, it has been so long since I’ve done anything social that I’m not even sure what to do. When I turn on the light in the bathroom, and stare into the mirror, I can literally see right through my image into the medicine cabinet. I see all of the products lined up in there, but no matter how hard I try I can’t see my face. This starts to concern me, and I consider calling Dr. Howard. He’ll probably answer, but he will be filled with resentment at being forced to come to my rescue on a weekend.
So instead I dig up an old photo album from college to remind myself of what I looked like when I’d been normal. If I hold the image in my mind for long enough, and meditate with enough intention, maybe my face will morph back into this image. But these photos were taken before the accident, so my meditation technique can not break the barrier.
I am late to the bar after all, so I have to make my way through a maze of smoke and drunk people. The music is loud and someone is horribly singing a karaoke version of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” There’s still time to turn around and get the hell out before anyone notices me.
Diane and her date are sitting at a corner table off to the right of the stage. They see me just as I am about to turn around and walk out. With the jangling of a thousand arm bracelets, she waves me over.
“Hey you!” she exclaims too loudly over the sounds of “…show them what’s funky; show them what’s right. It doesn’t matter who spoke up right. Just beat it!”
She pats the seat between her and some guy I’ve never met before. He is kind of my type which is definitely not her type, at least not that I remember. He has dark, wavy hair which hangs just over his ears, dark eyes (I can’t tell what color), and he is wearing a beat up Joy Division T-shirt. Justin.
“Grab a drink, or get a pitcher to share!” Diane shouts at me.
Getting to the bar is like walking the gauntlet. I have to push past half-drunk girls standing in the aisle yelling over each other, and then maneuver around a fat guy who is sitting in a barstool two sizes too small for him. “Excuse me,” I half shout although no one seems to hear me. I imagine myself as thin as a sheet of tin foil and then feel as if I have been crumpled into a ball. The guy behind the bar is shirtless and both his nipples are pierced. He won’t even look my way as he mumbles, “What do you want?”
I want to be home. I want to be home arranging my collections. “Two pitchers of Killian’s and three glasses, please.” The “please” sounds superfluous after his rude greeting and his complete inability to make eye contact. As he slams down the two pitchers, beer froths over the sides, and he says “Eighteen bucks.” I handed him a twenty.
The walk back to the table is easier because most of the people who had been blocking the aisle are now on the dance floor, shaking it to some Lady Gaga song. Justin and Diane are engaged in a kiss as I approach the table. I have to stand there for several seconds before they realize there is another human being in the room.
“Oh, sorry,” Diane apologizes, “we get so carried away sometimes. But don’t worry, Justin’s buddy Nate should be here any minute.” Great a double date with Nate. It isn’t even funny.
Justin is in the middle of filling up our beer glasses when I feel his leg brush against mine. It has been way too long. Maybe this guy Nate will be cute and half-way intelligent. But, then I remember my place. There’s no way I can take anyone back there. How can I possibly explain all of the bedroom stuff occupying the dining room area?
I don’t have to worry after all. Nate is sporting a “Smoke a Pack a Day” T-shirt. He is loud and obnoxious, too. He does, however, buy the next few rounds of beers and shots. I get drunk pretty quickly because I am not really in partying shape, and before I know it I am on the dance floor sandwiched between Justin and Nate. Nate keeps grabbing at me and trying to kiss me. I’ve been out of this game so long that I’ve forgotten the rules. Am I supposed to just let him grope me?
I have no clue where Diane had gone off to, and a vague feeling of concern quickly passes through me. Apparently, there’s nothing to worry about. I look over towards our table in time to see her taking body shots off some girl. At least, I am pretty sure it is a girl. We are all swept up in the lights and the bass, grinding against one another, and then the next thing I know we are back up at the bar. The bartender seems much friendlier now, and he has a shirt on. Maybe it’s a different guy. I can’t tell. Nate orders copper camels-a shot I’ve had a few times before. I am not really fond of it. He keeps calling it a bitch shot. I’m not sure who the bitch is supposed to be. I catch a blurry glance at the digital clock above the cash register, and it looks as if it reads 1:32. This sets off a panic in my mind. There is no way I can drive home, and it is getting pretty late to call a cab.
I manage to slur out the words, “I gotta go….”
“What’s your rush,” answers Nate, grabbing my arm, “the bar doesn’t close for another twenty minutes. Justin will give you a ride home. He’s hasn’t had that much to drink.” I am not too convinced, but I also lack the energy to fight it. I head towards the table to see about Diane. She’s out on the dance floor again and appears to be in no hurry to go home.
“Diane!” I call out. “Let’s go!” The room starts to spin, and I see Justin heading towards me with a blaster. Drink up…
I awake to my head bumping against a cold window in the backseat of someone’s car. The floor is littered with trash of all sorts: crushed beer cans, empty Rockstar cans, and food wrappers from any number of fast food places. I’m sitting on something hard. I reach under my butt and feel a wrench of some sort. Through a drunken blur, I see Diane next to me, messing around on her phone. “Ha, ha! That’s a great picture of you.” Please, not Facebook!
Nate is driving the car. I guess he’s the most sober of all of us. Or the most drunk. “Where are we going?” I ask cautiously. Something has happened between the time we left the bar and the time I woke up amongst the garbage. I just can’t remember what. I’d been dreaming of the dirty cement waterways that connect the Los Angeles River to the ocean. Someone had painted colorful cartoon pictures of cats on the giant metal drain covers. Filthy water flowed through their wrenched-open mouth holes.
“We’re hunting coyotes! Don’t you remember? It was your idea.” Nate boomed from the front seat. I try to protest because it really doesn’t sound like an idea that I would come up with, but something tells me to keep my mouth shut. If only I’d stayed home where I would be safe from all of this consumption and rejection.
Diane quickly comes to my defense with a challenge to Nate, “Ahhh…no one said anything about shooting coyotes. You guys were bragging about guns, and she suggested we go out and shoot at cans.” I don’t remember any of this.
I pull my phone out of my purse, but it’s dead. “What time is it?” I ask Diane.
“3:17.”
The darkness outside of my window is impossible to penetrate. Nate takes a sharp left and suddenly we are traveling at high speeds down a very bumpy, dirt road. “Those little fuckers always hang around my uncle’s farm. We’ll find some out here.”
Justin cries out, “Slow down, dude! You’re going to get us all killed.”
“Don’t be such a puss!”
The car swerves into another left turn and then Nate slams on the brakes. We nearly run into a barbed wire fence, and I see clouds of dust through the high beams. Nate kills the engine and gets out of the car. I hear him open the trunk and begin rummaging for something. I am guessing the trunk is filled with more garbage. I think about getting out of the vehicle and running, but I have no clue where we were.
“Son of a bitch!” Nate yells out as he slams the trunk shut.
Diane opens up her door and slurs, “Wassa matter, Nate?”
“Just about busted my goddamn knuckle on a tire iron is all.”
By now, we are all out of the car. Justin leans against the front end and Diane is trying to mount the hood of the car like she’s eighteen, but she’s not, and I’m not either. We’re too far past the point of hiking up skirts. I can see a dark bruise on Diane’s left thigh. “C’mon, guys. Let’s go.” I protest. “Some of us need to get some sleep.” No one is listening. Justin and Diane are back to making out again, and I work to steady myself against the car. Then, I hear a coyote howl.
Nate is barely able to control his enthusiasm, “I told you those bastards were out here. They’re all over this farm land. When I was a kid my uncle used to take me out here in the summer to shoot the little shits. In a good night, we might get five or six of them.”
I am feeling a little sick to my stomach. I try to run an inventory in my head of all the drinks and shots I’ve had, but I lose count. I wish that I’d written them down in my notebook. Nate walks out across the field; Diane and Justin follow. The moon is almost full, so once my eyes adjust to the darkness I can just barely make out their shapes. What choice do I have but to follow? I’m about 50 yards behind them when I hear the sound of a gun and then a yelp. “Hey, I got one!” Nate calls out excitedly.
Diane and Justin run over to see the damage. I can’t bring myself not to look. The little brownish colored coyote looks more like someone’s pet dog than a wild animal. The tongue hangs out of the mouth and is covered in blood and gravel. It’s still alive. “You gotta kill it…” whispers Justin, “You just can’t let it suffer.”
“Oh, look who all of a sudden works for PETA. Diane’s made you soft, huh?”
“Yeah,” Diane chimes in, “It’s not right. You can’t just let it lay there in pain.”
“If you assholes are so hooked on this thing dying, you shoot it.”
Diane leans in closer to Justin and loops her arm through his. None of them are making any moves towards putting this creature out of its misery. It’s only sleeping.
“How ‘bout you, sweetie? After all, this was your idea to begin with.” Nate is looking right at me and offering me the gun. He is practically forcing it into my right hand.
The handle is warm, and I feel my whole palm close tightly around it. Suddenly, I am ten years old again, at a family reunion in Montana. We’d spent a week there at a one of those dude ranches that was popular in the early 80s. At first, I’d been resistant, but after a few days, I was shooting guns with the rest of my cousins. We started out shooting beer cans, but then someone got the bright idea to shoot feral cats. I never really took pleasure in that game, but my sister sure had seemed to enjoy it. By the end of the week she’d tallied up how many cats she’d shot: eight. She was proud.
In this moment, the gun feels right in my hand. My body is electrified. Blurred images of trash, bloodied road kill, filthy water, smog stained skies, and twisted metal fill my mind. I turn the gun towards Nate and aim at his chest.
“Coyotes don’t litter,” my words echo through the blast of the gun.
Tera Joy Cole is the author of the short story,
“Where Things Are Made” which was published by in Blunderbuss Magazine (April 2015). Additionally, her article “Occupy,” which chronicled her visit to Zuccotti Park, New York City, during the Occupy Wall Street Movement, appeared in the magazine The Bannock Alternative (December 2011). She holds an M.A. degree in English and teaches composition and literature at Idaho State University.
I’m no narcissist, and I’m sorry if I sound like one. Awhile back I was put upon to join an academic conversation about Galileo with several distinguished Galileo scholars, but knew nothing about Galileo, so I fell back on what I knew—me. For that I apologize. I was trying to arrange a semester-long teaching gig at Florence University of the Arts, and I’d been working at my American university in Massachusetts to develop a faculty exchange at FUA because I wanted desperately to live abroad with my family for a semester, and nothing sounded so good as teaching writing, lecturing, and collaborating in Florence. When FUA announced they were holding a Galileo conference, I was encouraged to participate, and commenced a crash course in Galileo.
Learning about Galileo came at a cost, of course. My other projects suffered for lack of attention and my short conference trip to Florence cost a bit more than I got from my university to attend. My quest to teach in Florence, too, was ultimately gnawed down from a semester abroad to just a few weeks. I look forward to the short-term course, but it won’t be quite like living in Florence for three or four months with my family. How the plan changed, from a semester abroad into a few weeks, is a dull and aggravating story despite its bureaucratic twists and turns, occasional misdirection, and a whittling away of dreams. The good news is I did make it to Florence on academic terms. Whittled dreams notwithstanding, I went to Florence for four days and talked and listened to days of conversation about Galileo.
Bad form. Allow me to apologize both for starting off with complaints, and for talking about myself. I’m just getting the clumsy stuff out of the way first.
I submitted to the conference in Florence on the suggestion from a helpful vice president at my university who understood Westfield’s mission at FUA. He’d been to the conference before and recommended it highly. “The theme is Galileo,” he said, “you can write something about Galileo. It’s a great conference.” Just like that, as if Galileo expertise were mine for the asking.
“Maybe next year,” I said, having no knowledge of Galileo and no idea how I could fit him and his universe into my expertise. And there was another matter of how I could pay for international travel on top of my academic travel commitments in the states. To be honest, when he suggested it to me, I did not think I needed Galileo in order to get to Florence. I was wrong.
I covet my torments.
Mr. Galilei, if you want money and leisure, go to Florence.
[T]he rays of Your [Highness’] incredible clemency and kindness . . . Night and day [I reflected] on almost nothing else than how I, most desirous of your glory (since I am not only by desire but also by origin and nature under your dominion), might show how very grateful I am toward you.
By November, Livia was pregnant and his new brother-in-law, Taddeo Galletti, exigent. Galileo asked Michelangelo to oblige himself legally to pay his share. For himself, he wrote, he was tightly pinched. Michelangelo could not contribute and Galileo had to borrow another 600 scudi and obtain an advance on his salary to meet his running expenses and the obligations he had assumed to assist his siblings.
The young scientist’s work was held in great esteem by the professionals who assisted him in heading the mathematics department at the university of Pisa and then of Padua. Later Galileo would become famous as a great scientist, a broadly educated man, a good conversationalist, and a skillful debater. In addition he received fame as a writer and a musician. He brilliantly played string instruments and the clavichord. He also succeeded in drawing, painting, and writing sonnets.
For a mid-tier 21st century professor like me, scrambling to make a difference on my own modest scale, it is humbling, cripplingly so, to read about someone like Galileo, larger than life in every discipline he undertook. More apologizing seems in order.
When the VP at my school told me to write something about Galileo I struggled—my job is mostly about teaching, but I still make time to sustain a modest research career. I write about post-evolution, embodied technology, medical humanities—areas without abundant overlaps in astronomy, physics, or renaissance science. To make matters worse, I couldn’t really set aside the prose form I’d been working in for a few years—prose collage experiments, part fiction, part creative non-fiction. I apologize, then, for the jumps and non-sequiturs careening from my words to those of Galileo, his biographers, and his critics. My VP who recommended I do something about Galileo for the conference did not specifically recommend the collage style. To be honest he was probably unaware of my specialty, but alas, I had to do something I knew if I were to have any credibility at all. There are end notes for the non-memoir collage material, for credibility’s sake. And yet, for the reader disinterested in juxtaposition and cross referencing it may just seem like a disjointed jumble of language.
Did I mention that I went to Florence to deliver this paper? I apologized then too.
Although Galileo’s “Capitolo contro il portar la toga” has its zing from his annoyance over the rule of the robe and the stock association of academic dress with pedantry, it was a piece with his duller sonnets in that it was an exercise to master a literary form.
The ways of invention are varied, very
To seize on the good there’s but one that has worked
Look about for an evident contrary.
That means search out evil, it’s easily found
You’ve then Summum bonum [the greatest good], no trouble at all
Bad and good are as like as pence in a pound.
Your friends were baffled when you bowed to the Prince of Florence: science gained a wider audience. You always laughed at heroics. “People who suffer bore me,” you said. “Misfortunes are due mainly to miscalculations.” And: “If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked line.”
Anyone will then understand with the certainty of the senses that the Moon is by no mean endowed with a smooth and polished surface, but is rough and uneven and, just as the face of the Earth itself, crowded everywhere with vast prominences, deep chasms, and convolutions.
With monuments destroyed and temples burned
Proclaims my greatness in fierce examples.
When I try and relate to Galileo as a man, as a person, I come up feeling like a flea staring down an elephant. I am so awed by his accomplishments that I feel under qualified to have even stood in the same city where he once wrote couplets and hashed out the architecture of heaven, of purgatory, and of hell. His crispy middle finger stands, centuries dead under glass in Florence, pointing towards heaven, towards mountains on the moon, but I feel like he’s pointing at me, shaming me for having gone to Florence only to talk about myself.
Galileo would surely have no patience with my star struck self deprecation. Though he understood flattery intimately, a man of his wit and serious purpose would eventually move the conversation to something more interesting than my fawning. When Galileo was faced with a giant that had come before him did he cower or apologize? No. He openly ridiculed Aristotle, whose vision of the earth-centered universe was the law of the land handed down from God.
We have it on Viciani’s authority that Galileo dropped different weights of the same material from Pisa’s Leaning Tower to show, “to the dismay of the philosophers,” that, contrary to Aristotle, they fell at the same speed. And he did it not once, or secretly, but “with repeated trials . . . in the presence of other teachers and philosophers, and the whole assembly of students.”
One of Berni’s [Galileo’s influence for his burlesque writing] favorite techniques was to treat a common subject in an elevated manner, “in praising [as Galileo characterized the method] the meanest things, urinals, plague, debt, Aristotle, etc.”
Circular motion has the property of casting off, scattering, and driving away from its center the parts of the moving body, whenever the motion is not sufficiently slow or the parts not too solidly attached together.
He never takes his adversary by abrupt frontal attack, but after a courteous greeting stands back to await the first blow. Going on the defense, he entices his opponent to advance. Suddenly he strikes where least expected, and profiting from the surprise, presses in, pushes back, knocks out his adversary, and withdraws without taking any further notice of the combat.
You greater ones, if it shall please the Good Lord and Your Serene Highness that he, according to his desire, will pass the rest of his life in Your service. For which he bows down humbly, and from His Divine Majesty he prays for the utmost of all happiness for You.
Let me attempt to drag Galileo down to my level for a minute. I have no sisters or daughters in nunneries, but I do have four sons, each born legally under wedlock and inheritors of my name. I’m twice married as compared to Galileo’s none. I’m probably a better Dad, too. There’s no evidence of Galileo having coached Vincenzo’s soccer team, or volunteering at the kids’ school. I’m probably better at committee work too, I’m guessing. No, while I’ve muscled through program building and mentoring young writers, Galileo was off with the lynxes, having intellectual seminar discussions and discovering, on his own, laws of gravity and earthly motion.
I have to reach for his period of house arrest, his blind years, in order to feel good about myself: happily married, fond of family life, and well employed in the comfortable middle of American academe. But like Galileo I have my own challenges, like scrapping for funds to help my projects along, pinching time from every corner to keep up with grading, meetings, orthodontia bills, and soccer practices. It takes a lot of work to be a husband and a father, a brother, especially in the middle-class where family connections are tight and frequent. Is the main difference between Galileo and me one of class? Was a hearty and healthy family life a casualty of his high-end career and unfettered thinking? I don’t think so. I can’t believe Galileo was meant to do anything differently than he did.
Galileo did not shirk the financial, only the emotional, responsibility of maintaining his children.
He began to suffer severe rheumatic attacks at the age of forty in 1604/5. He shivered in the summer of 1608 with a persistent fever. He was bed-ridden during most of the winter of 1610/11 with severe miscellaneous pains, sleeplessness, discharges of blood, and depression (melancholy).
I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, aged 70 years, tried personally by this court, and kneeling before You, the most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors-General throughout the Christian Republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Most Holy Gospels, and laying on them my own hands; I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God’s help I will in future believe all which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church doth hold, preach, and teach.
MONK: Hey! Hey! We’re slipping off! Help!
SECOND SCHOLAR: Look! There’s Venus! Hold me, lads. Whee!
SECOND MONK: Don’t, don’t hurl us off onto the moon. There are nasty sharp mountain peaks on the moon, brethren!
VARIOUSLY: Hold tight! Hold tight! Don’t look down! Hold tight! It’ll make you giddy!
Knights-errant travel light. Galileo divested himself of his daughters as soon as they became nubile. In 1613 he placed them in a nunnery of the Poor Clares in Arcetri just outside Florence, where they would spend the rest of their lives.
A small flame moves in us as from the glow of a dim torch.
Alas, the catch all comparison between Galileo and me has produced only this—that his contributions to our understanding of the universe and physics were astounding then and relevant still. My writing and teaching, under the American first-amendment protections of freedom of speech, are respectable contributions to society. Mine is not a shameful career, but neither is it close to greatness, or to impact beyond my generation. Is mediocrity in my professional accomplishments the cost of relative domestic beatitude and reliable good health? Even Galileo’s abjuration, rejecting his beliefs and discoveries to save his own life, even this conflicted act elevates his grandeur, and provides Galileo his heroic hamartia. My comparison is a fool’s errand because Galileo lived as a tragic hero and thrives in our shared consciousness as a hero still. If I am to be hero of any story it will be a comedy, I hope, with a happy ending and feasting, preferably in Florence, with a statue of Galileo overseeing the festivities. I don’t want the burdens of greatness, and as it turns out, I’m not worthy of them anyway. Galileo lived as he had to, juggling family matters and underground manuscripts in service to knowledge that would resonate through the ages.
Galileo’s behavior was not irrational but carefully calculated. He responded not as a philosopher, world builder, or frustrated prophet, but as a “competent courtier.”
His hair hung down; his skin, in its tiniest folds, is covered with marks of the mal français; his skull is affected, delirium fills his mind; his optic nerves are destroyed because he has scrutinized minutes and seconds around Jupiter with too much curiosity and presumption; his vision, hearing, taste and touch are shot; his hands have the nodules of the gout because he has stolen physical and mathematical treasure; his heart palpitates.
Strozzi and Ricasoli were leading lights of a serious literary club, the Accademia degli Alterati composed, etymologically, of altered, twisted, false, angry, and befuddled poets. There is good reason to believe that Galileo was a member.
Before he contracted this advanced form of melancholy around 1610, Galileo exhibited only the mild melancholic symptoms of uncertainty, protectiveness, circumspection, ironic humor, and scholarly arrogance.
[Galileo’s] poem tells something about his pursuits and attainments at the age of 25. Many sacred cows came to slaughter by his sharp wit: university officials, ecclesiastics, academics, philosophers, idiots. And many youthful preoccupations leave their marks: sex, wine, clothes, money.
Galileo’s exercise in the Bernesue manner did not raise his standing at the university.
But a broken spirit drieth the bones.
As a good gambler Galileo occasionally bluffed by raising the stakes on a losing hand—a technique he later identified with the propensity of his philosophical opponents to add reckless worthless arguments to bad ones. This criticism applied better to him. His later claims about experimental results and theoretical insights contained a quantity of bluff.
I’m almost done apologizing. Florence, for me, will forever be imbued with the mystique and grandeur of Galileo’s larger-than-life discoveries and struggles, with his martyrdom to science, with his architectural interpretations of Dante’s Comedia, and with the incredible wake and undertow he leaves in the city. But it is up to me to discover what Florence means now, to a middling American academic, and that too is a worthy cause. Let me avoid the pigeons and keep company with lynxes. Let me practice a literary form or two while I keep my family intact, out of nunneries, and out of debt. I abjure nothing, and without shame take no small pleasure in simply having cameoed as a professor in the same city where Galileo once learned, taught, and discovered the difficult truth that the earth is not the center of the universe.
The truth of the matter is that Florence didn’t come easily to Galileo either. He had to leave Florence to do much of his life’s work, and returned to Florence under house arrest for his last years. I once dreamed of living in Florence for four months, teaching and editing and writing for my keep while my family lived with me, and we partook of Florentine culture as temporary residents. The lived experience will be something less epic, for now. In spring I’ll go to Florence for a few weeks to teach a handful of my university’s students to write about Florence—that’s the plan my university has set up and it sounds inviting to me. Not epic, but my life isn’t really about the epic, if I’m being honest. When I’m in Florence I simply want to meet a few people and get to know Florence University of the Arts. I want to eat great food and see the skyline. I hope to avoid house arrest and public abjuration of any of my beliefs and accomplishments.
But however self-satisfied or humbled I may feel about going to Florence, representing my university and sharing my writing, I will always be haunted, just a little, by the idea of Galileo’s finger, pointing at me, reminding me that Florence is for accomplishing great things and enduring extraordinary personal suffering. Forgive me, then, this one last misstep should you sense that I am enjoying myself, savoring small accomplishments, and forgetting to reach for the epic.
A man such as I can only obtain a moderately dignified situation by coming crawling on his belly.
To whose Highness, besides the reverent service and humble obedience which every faithful vassal owes him, I feel myself drawn with a devotion which I may call by the name of love (for God Himself asks us no more than love), so that, setting aside my own interests, I would without hesitation change my fortune, to do his Highness a pleasure.
And if I know any heretic, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor and Ordinary of the place in which I may be. I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which God forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons and other Decrees general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated.
I wrote at the time when theologians were thinking of prohibiting Copernicus’s book and the doctrine enounced therein, which I then held to be true, until it pleased those gentlemen to prohibit the work and to declare the opinion to be false and contrary to Scripture. Now, knowing as I do that it behooves us to obey the decisions of the authorities and to believe them, since they are guided by a higher insight than any to which my humble mind can of itself attain, I consider this treatise which I send you to be merely a poetical conceit, or a dream . . . this fancy of mine . . . this chimera.
Alas! revered Sir, your devoted friend and servant, Galileo, has been for a month totally and incurably blind. This heaven, this earth, this universe, which I have enlarged a hundred, nay, a thousand fold beyond the limits previously accepted, are now shriveled up for me into that narrow compass occupied by my own person.
Oh, prime cause of my sweet misery!
To gaze upon those eyes was my destiny.
Collage Notes:
“I covert my torments.” Galilei, Galileo. Excerpted from a long poem translated in Heilbron, J.L. Galileo. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print. 85.
“Mr. Galilei . . . Florence.” Line spoken coolly by the Venetian CURATO to GALILEO in Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo. Trans. Charles Laughton. Ed. Eric Bentley. New York: Grove P., 1966. Print. 53.
“The rays . . . toward you.” Galilei, Galileo. Excerpts from a letter to Cosimo de Medici telling of the naming of the Venetian moons. Translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. (157)
“By November . . . his siblings.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 89.
“The young scientist’s . . . writing sonnets.” Scientists Vol. 2: Famous People. . . Incredible Lives. Text by Shevela Olga. Encyclopedia Channel/Film Ideas, 2008. DVD.
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“Although Galileo’s “Capitolo contro il portar la toga” . . . master a literary form.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 60-61.
“The ways of invention are varied, very / . . . / Bad and good are as like as pence in a pound.” Galilei, Galileo. Translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 61.
“Your friends . . . the crooked line.” Lines spoken by ANDREA to GALILEO in Brecht. Ibid. 122.
“Anyone will then understand . . . convolutions.” Galilei, Galileo. Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger. Trans. Albert Van Helden. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989. Print. 36.
“With monuments destroyed and temples burned / Proclaims my greatness in fierce examples.” Galilei, Galileo. Translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 86.
—
“We have it on Viciani’s authority . . . the whole assembly of students.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 59.
“One of Berni’s . . . urinals, plague, debt, Aristotle, etc.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 60-61.
“Circular motion . . . not too solidly attached together.” Galilei, Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems—Ptolemaic & Copernican. Trans. Stillman Drake. 2nd Ed. Berkeley: U of California P., 1967. 132.
“He never takes his adversary . . . notice of the combat.” Belloni, Luigi, quoted and translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 22.
“You greater ones . . . happiness for You.” Galilie, Galileo, in a letter to the doge, chief magistrate of Venice, quoted in Van Helden, Albert. “Introduction, Conclusion, and Notes.” Sidereus Nuncius. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989. Print. 8.
—
“Galileo did not shirk . . . his children.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 164.
“He began to suffer . . . melancholy.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 162.
“I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence . . . hold, preach, and teach.” Galilei, Galileo. “Galileo’s Abjuration.” The Private Life of Galileo. London: Macmillon & Co., 1870. Print. 396.
“MONK: Hey! Hey! We’re slipping off! Help! . . . It’ll make you giddy!” Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo. Ibid. 72.
“Knights-errant travel light . . . the rest of their lives.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 192.
“A small flame moves in us as from the glow of a dim torch.” Galilei, Galileo. Translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 86.
—
“Galileo’s behavior . . . competent courtier.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 240.
“His hair hung down . . . his heart palpitates.” Horky, Martin, describing Galileo. Translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 161-162.
“Strozzi and Ricasoli . . . Galileo was a member.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 11.
“Before he contracted this advanced form . . . scholarly arrogance.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 26-27.
“[Galileo’s] poem . . . sex, wine, clothes, money.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 60.
“Galileo’s exercise in the Bernesue manner did not raise his standing at the university.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 62.
“But a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Dialog by GALILEO in Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo. Ibid. 78.
“As a good gambler Galileo . . . contained a quantity of bluff.” Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 24.
—
“A man such as I . . . crawling on his belly.” Dialog by GALILEO in Brecht, Bertolt. The Life of Galileo. Trans. Desmond L. Vesey. London: Methuen & Co., 1960. 44-45.
“To whose Highness . . . to do his Highness a pleasure.” Galilei, Galileo in a letter to a Florentine Gentleman, Sig. Vesp. In spring 1609, to arrange for his return to Florence from Padua. The Private Life of Galileo. London: Macmillon & Co., 1870. Print. 49.
“And if I know any heretic . . . imposed and promulgated.” Galilei, Galileo. “Galileo’s Abjuration.” The Private Life of Galileo. Ibid. 397.
“I wrote at the time . . . this chimera.” Galilei, Galileo from a 1618 letter to Austrian archduke Leopold in response to a request for a sample of his work. Excerpted from Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter. New York: Walker & Co., 1999. Print. 82-83.
“Alas! revered Sir . . . occupied by my own person.” Galilei, Galileo from a 1638 letter to his friend in Paris, Elia Diodati. MacLachlan, James. Galileo Galilei: First Physicist. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. 97.
“Oh, prime cause of my sweet misery! / To gaze upon those eyes was my destiny.” Galilei, Galileo. Translated in Heilbron, J.L. Ibid. 86.
Michael Filas is Professor of English at Westfield State University in Massachusetts, where he teaches fiction writing and American Literature. He earned an MFA in fiction writing from San Diego State University, and a PhD in American literature from University of Washington in Seattle. His writing has appeared recently in Eleven Eleven, Specs, Fiction International, The Information Society, and Passages North. A native of Los Angeles, Michael now lives in Northampton with his family.
a flock of spandex cyclists take the unexpecting road like fighter jets
a blunt contrast to the rickety wheeled meth head
twitching towards them
cars oink by
quaking over that too thin white line
quivering to devour them all
because this road
has clearly
been on a bender
cars can barely hang on
as it jokes and chokes the hillside
with corn stalking the banks
wishing it was a river or the seaside in summer
just at the right time of day
when the sun and the moon shine down together like a cross-eyed girl
hibernation today
stuck in the warm fluffed bed
wreathed by domesticats and dogs snoring
made a sandwich of myself
I will live off the stored fat
until there is nothing but crumbs
the purrrrr of the skin and bone feline
king of the mountain
syncopates with the rumble of cars
patting down the street
rat a tat tapping my windows
unopened books and a revolver on the nightstand
not enough blanket to cover my cold feet
I thought I heard you in the kitchen
running water dirty feet
saw the tip of a head above the door behind me
reflection of someone riding a bike in the hall mirror
must be the ghost you insisted we had
dog toys rolling uphill
the cat staring down the corner
but where are you now
maybe you just could see the future
so who is haunting who…
running each other over every day
sandwiched like a mack truck
maybe we made it
but no
no death comes early for the poor man
with a wink and a nudge
and vultures don’t give a shit
we pass yawns back and forth
almost as intimate as french kisses on the porch swing
catching whiffs of nostalgia
of him
needling into that summer dress
and I was such a good girl
sit lay roll over
play dead
it’ll be over soon
so lily livered
swallowing poppies like candy
staining the grass with her perennial gardens
glads winking at her nose
changing her diaphanous mind
quicker than a soiled diaper
a little too late for the wrist cut roses
trickling warm and salty over her cuticles
telling her to replant before someone else does
Marcella Benton lives in Lakeland, Florida
, with her husband and pets. She and her husband own and operate a screen printing and embroidery company, Whatever Tees.
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