'Sorry Annie'

At times the lush green, the waterfalls, the black volcanic soil would find its way into his mind. Someone would say, ‘We just got back from Hawaii,’ as if they had driven into town for groceries, and he would think it possible again, almost necessary, that he go to visit the Islands.
    But then his mind would slowly populate the lush green, the volcanic cliffs from whose fractured edges water spouted crystalline, rainbows hung in the mist of its decent. Pale and newly burned Midwesterners, his parents, the sound of their honest fascination somehow cutting through the roar of the water’s leap, persistent as the dim clatter of some newly loosened item in an otherwise silent car ride.
     He would envision in terror the flight, calculate costs, feel the fine crush of coral in everything that he ate, every towel with which he dried, smell that sick-sweet smell of ocean, sun block and bug spray, and always the eyes of locals in passing, filled with distrust, unwant.
     It was nice, he’d admit that, those first few moments when he imagined dipping backpack laden into the density of some semi-rain forest, snakeless, Mount Kila something or other in the offset, poking its dormant head up out of leaves as large as car hoods. A hop skip and a jump, his father said once, of the trip over. Close your eyes and you’ll be there in no time. His father had gone to Pearl Harbor, showed him pictures of the Arizona in her ocean grave. He’d forgotten about that. God, the ghosts. The place had to be swarming with them. Swarming. 

On Grass

He woke up obsessed with grass. Perhaps not an obsession, but rather a thought bobbing in the distance, that he would see and then not see when it sank behind the roll of his morning routine. He saw it again when he sat down to the quiet of his Journal. Grass, he wrote. And the word had seemed oddly green on the page. He saw himself a boy, low in the thick of a lawn grown high between weekend cuttings, parting the blades and searching for beetles and the continued march of ants having left the sidewalk. The shoots are pale where they enter the earth, moist and littered with an odd fuzz of something like bits of string. It makes him think of ferns, the floor of a forest, and he imagines the ants he has yet to find, how they see the grass, like the towering redwood trees he has seen in magazines, beside which even automobiles appear themselves like ants. And beneath the stars, he sees the redwood trees like ants and wonders what beyond that is larger still. He scratches at the earth. His nails fill with the black of it. Would grass grow there, he wonders, and green fire bursts from his fingertips. He lays on his back, closes his eyes. He itches. The sun is better than any blanket he can remember, and he has known many wonderful blankets. The grass grows taller in the space between his arms and body, between the V of his legs, alongside his ears. Taller and taller until he is lost like a coin in its height, a penknife. At his back, roots grow, pale and searching for purchase. He is dirt, pierced by blades of grass, like a man dropped onto a bed of nails. And then, it is Saturday. He hears the whir of the mower. Sees his father’s long strides and in the air, smells all that is summer and what is best of a boy. 

The Breathing of Wood

It was as if a master stonemason had packed the wood into the shed, each pie-shaped split seated into a near perfectly corresponding V, chinked with tinder wherever the slightest gap remained. The old man doubted he could wedge the blade of his penknife into the neatly ricked seams. 

     “She’s got to breathe a little, son,” he said to the boy of the pile, though in the still of his thinking he felt the well of pride, knowing that it was his own blood’s doing, a generation leaped, that had given the boy this keen eye. “Be ten years drying, racked up that pretty.” 

Bedside Manner

When the day came that he was lying in bed, wasting away toward death, what Albert Carlson, the famed writer of short stories, did not want to see was that the Caregiver assigned to aid in his crossing over to the other side lacked three of the four standard limbs given to most humans at birth.

     A teaser on the radio for an upcoming program had informed Albert that just such a man was in existence. A man who not only lacked three limbs, but had been somehow inspired by his amputations to pursue a career in hospice care. From the teaser Albert had also gathered that it had been an accident that left the man—whose name was entirely too Asiatic for Albert to remember—lacking all but the single appendage. Which appendage the teaser had not specified.

     Albert had immediately imagined the Asian man, bedside, in an array of different configurations. One arm, no legs. One leg, no arms. With hooks for hands. At eye level, wheelchair bound. 

      

     He assumed also that the man’s heart was in a good place. It would have to be. Possibly his accident had brought him near enough to death that he felt now qualified to comfort others at that door, had the credentials to give them a glimpse of what lay in wait on the other side. 

     Good for him, Albert thought, but found it a bit presumptive of the Asian triple amputee. He hoped that they would at least consult him before bringing such a man into his dying room. Not the Asian part. Albert had no issues with that. The missing limbs. There should be a waiver of some sort. Notification. 

     Of course, he might change his opinion between now and then, but at the moment it struck him that such a man would only complicate the matter of letting go. He will have finally come to terms with all of the question he would have to leave unanswered, the stories he would have to leave unwritten and in would hop this Asian man on his one leg and stir the pot anew. 

     He’d need someone entirely banal.    

     No. That wouldn’t even work, would it? He was already imagining the story there, the questions piling up. He’d have to die alone. 

     Albert Carlson placed his favorite pen and the last of his writing paper into the fire and went into his bedroom to die. 

     Perhaps it would be just as well, Albert thought, the one legged Asian man. 

Billboard on Briley

If Therese Winnington did not have witch in her blood, then she was most certainly one of those sanguivorous, imperishable types, renowned for the assortment of stupefying tricks they tend to pull in a skirmish from the sleeves of their usually velveteen jackets. Her smile said, quite simply, ‘Try me.’ 

A Rough Truth. (Journal Post)

The Aunt was on dope. All three of the women were. Had been all of their lives. In fact, of that particular generation and the generation to follow—eleven family members total—all but one did not have an addiction to an illegal substance. 

     The Aunt was not the first of them to die. The one clean family member, a girl named Jess, her father, the Aunt’s brother, had succumbed to dope three years ago. 

     It was Jess who had been with the Aunt when she passed. The other two women, the Aunt’s sister and her daughter, the Aunt’s niece, were too high to even know that the Aunt had been taken. But they found out. 

     When they did, for some reason—one would assume grief—the niece gathered a length of rope, went to the old maple in front of the women’s trailer and hung herself, not but twenty feet off the road. 

     Paul Rubert found the body. He and his wife and five year old daughter had been coming home from Wal-Mart, groceries piled into the back seat with their little girl, trying to keep things cool in the conditioned air, keep the ice cream from getting too soft. 

     It took a few seconds for it to register to Paul what he was seeing. Had he not talked with the niece earlier that morning and remembered what she had been wearing, the shorts and that glittering T, he would have figured it to be some sort of gag, kids goofing around, a dummy, clothes stuffed with shopping bags. 

     Had the nieces’ face not been nearly black, and shit and piss clearly running down her bared legs, Paul would have stopped then and there. But as it was, he directed his wife and daughter’s sight to the other side of the road, to what might have been deer along the fence row, and drove the remaining half mile to his own house. 

     Parked, Paul said that he had to pee quick. As his wife began to unload their daughter and the groceries, he went around the back of their house, dialed 911, and as he spoke to the responder, peed as he said he had to. 

     Paul came back to the car, gathered the remaining groceries and went inside. 

     It was twenty minutes before they heard the sirens. ‘That sounds close’, his wife had commented. But being accustomed to ambulances coming to the trailer every time the women ran out of dope and came down far enough into the real world to feel the pain of it, she said nothing more and went on preparing dinner. 

     ‘Ready for ice cream?’ Paul’s wife asked after they’d eaten. His daughter had let loose an exuberant ‘Yes!’ Paul had smiled. He took a big bowl, despite dairy giving him the shits. The things you do for family. 

                      

Security

To a thief, the chain would only be a minor inconvenience, easily stepped over or around, hung between its two wooden poles, alone in the great wide open. Nonetheless, he liked having it stretched across the drive. Especially in the day. Though he could easily be seen from the road, working in the yard or in his shop, it was as if drawing the chain closed a great door behind him, walled the whole of his property even, narrowing the thirty-two acres down to that quiet attic space he so liked to write in. He was home, but not, hidden, and could immerse himself in his work without fear of having even to wave at passersby, looking up only to ponder, or glance fondly at that bit of silver thread, spun between those two spindly poles, securing all that he held most dear. 

    

On Becoming a Lap Cat

Unaccustomed to being loved directly, Baker looked up at the boy suspiciously. Being a cat in a dog-loving house, he was used to getting his affection second-hand, a stray elbow perhaps, brushing his flank as the dog’s belly was being vigorously scratched. Baker had never been lifted into the boy’s lap before, let alone petted, with both hands no less, and narrowed his eyes to better see what trick was about to be played upon him. He was prepared to leap in an instant.

          

          But nothing happened. Only more petting. And now his ears were being rubbed, just the way he had always dreamed. How could it be? All of this affection and with the dog nowhere to be found? It was truly beyond a neglected cat’s comprehension. But it was happening. And when the boy dug his fingers deeper into his winter fur, Baker couldn’t help but let his guard down just a little and arch his back ever so slightly in contentment. He found himself purring. Purring, and  helplessly kneading the boy’s lap, making the bread for which he had been so rightly named.    

           

On Driving by Something Mysterious

The walker walked with the confidence of a man who knows much and has little to show for it. He wore a heavy black leather jacket, shoulder length hair and a thick beard. Thinness showed in the seat of his jeans and from his left back pocket there hung a red bandanna.

     

     At first glance, Steven figured the walker was probably some mechanic, or machinist, or welder, who, in better or even warmer times, drove a motorcycle to work. The bandanna made sense.

     But as he passed, Steven began to think the bandanna seemed a little too clean, too intentional, flaunted almost. That perhaps it might be part of some secret language: a code meant to notify other bikers that the walker had fallen on to hard times and was in need of a lift.

     He briefly considered turning back; asking. But then again, the bandanna could signify the walker’s status in some murderous gang, or that he was a prostitute of some sort, open for business. God, there was so little he knew and so much he feared to ask.  

       

After Sitting for a While Sunday Morning

At times, when the words wouldn’t come, he would search images of the great authors, as if, in those dark mannerisms and confident smiles he might find some common thread, a shared squint or folding of the hands, that, with practice, he could master and thus join their ranks.

           

Midway

He did not feel old. Sore and stiff, yes, but not old. The stiffness, he knew, would work its way out as soon as he got moving. It wasn’t his age. He’d seen younger men complain about how they ached after doing half the work he had done that week. It was the natural reaction of any body at any age to such labor.

     He didn’t doubt he needed a day or two of rest, time to let his joints and muscles recuperate. But at present, a good night’s sleep was all he could offer, and that was scarce. He worried though, that if his life went on like this—and it seemed it would—that he would be crippled as an old man, confined to a chair or bed.

     But then, too, he thought, it could be just the thing to carry him beyond a hundred years.

     A hundred years. Imagine.

     He did not feel old at all.

 

 



Vying

          It didn’t matter to the dog that its feet were sopping wet, the cat either. What mattered was the smallness of his lap, a place the dog was far too big to be arranged, though he would try and try again, if only to remind the cat who the lap belonged to.

This Morning



     In his sleep, the long fever broke. When he woke and went to the back door to let the dog out, he was startled by the change, by the cool air that greeted him. After so many weeks of bearing it, you expect the oppressive heat, the perspiration, the air laden with water, thick and hardly breathable. You begin to think that this is how things have always been and will always be. You adapt.

     The sky was perfectly clear, the sun just rising. The dog held its nose high, sniffing, as if in an unfamiliar place. He breathed in deeply too, the new, crisp air; shivered. Through his veins it felt as though some warm and electric liquid pumped. His body sang with possibilities. Thank you, he said, as if he had carried the month-long heat in his own body, as if the morning was a gift, a second chance at life.

On Being Startled

    

     At times, his size would surprise him when he looked in the mirror. Fat hadn’t crept in around his middle. Nor had he put on any awkward mass lifting weights. It was just that, at times, he expected a boy of ten or eleven to be staring back at him, and the man he found instead startled him some. He would squint at this man, cautiously, as if through a keyhole, admire his lean muscles; flex them, as if he had just been transformed—as if he were still a boy, assessing his future.         

     They were close enough now he could hear the falling. For weeks, it had only been the faint hum of the saws that let him know they were there; the passing by of trucks, loaded down with logs. They had started at the back and moved forward, working their way out of the old woods.

     Why he could not separate his heart from the sound of those trees hitting the ground, he didn’t know exactly. He’d fell his fair share. But each he had mourned, and every stick was utilized. This… This was slaughter—carcasses stacked like whale, like buffalo. No one would kneel before these giants and apologize, send their spirits off with song.

     Perhaps that was the pain he felt. Not the loss of the trees, but the lack of respect in taking them, the carelessness, the separation. How could they live with themselves, these men, doing what they do? They couldn’t possibly have hearts. He hated that he was unable to stop them, that he was helpless against their greed. Perhaps it wasn’t pain at all he felt, but fear. Fear, that in the nearing end, he would be little more than a tree.                                       

On Tall Grass and Bad Luck

It all seemed so perfectly timed. Finally, a weekend had come with no work or chance of rain, and five minutes into cutting grass, which was nearly to his knees now after two weeks of neglect, his mower began to sputter.

          It was hard not to wonder as he limped the mower back to his shop, if some being beyond his being was tampering with his tools, with the weather, in an attempt to teach him that none of it—the lawn he strived so hard to cultivate—really mattered. It was hard, too, not to wonder if there was no being beyond his being, that his bad luck had not been conspired at all, but merely parts on a mower finally giving in to wear, rain that had overstayed its welcome. Either way, none of it truly mattered. Unless, he thought, it was properly told.

Good Sense

As their investments mounted, the owner’s interest in restoring the old house quickly declined. “We love what you’ve done to the place so far,” they told him, when the house was dried in, its new roof gleaming in the afternoon sun. “We just think…”

     They were kind enough about it, phrased it in such a way that he could almost agree: Spending so much on a place that can’t be lived in or really use for anything at all, didn’t make good sense. It didn’t, either. Acts of love rarely do.

     This is how the past is lost, he thought, loading his tools, discouraged, as much because the owners didn’t care as he couldn’t afford to care. He had a money pit of his own. “I’m sorry,” he told the old house before he left, pressing his hand to its cool brick, listening again to the songs of slaves forged into the clay, the echoes of war, the cries of birth and death.

     How much they were alike, he thought, two faulty old structures, fascinating in all they had survived, unsound and unable to make their own repairs. Fascinating, but not worth the act of charity that might save them from ruin. Good sense. They would never make good sense.

    

Out of the Blue Clear Sky

Yesterday evening I was bringing wood up to the house, mulling over my bills, my lack of finances to cover them, and how I could use a little side work to pad my checking account, when Mike Lloyd stops out in the road and asks if I have a ratchet strap.

          Behind his Explorer, Mike has a small trailer in tow, on top of which is the twenty-foot flagpole (keep in mind, I live in a secluded, rural area and you can do stupid things like this), that he has been saying he was going to steal for several weeks now. 

         
          No, Mike did not steal the flagpole. Miracle of miracles, it was given to him out of the blue. Problem was, all he had in the truck  at the time was two decrepit bunge cords to hold it down with. Apparently, he had been creeping from house to house in search of somebody home to lend him a couple of decent tie-downs.

         
          ‘Yes, I have a ratchet strap,’ I tell him, ‘pull back to the shop.’

          Well, no sooner does Mike get in the drive, but some truck I don’t recognize pulls in behind him. I’m on the passenger side of the vehicles, trying to keep senile Doggers from getting run over in the commotion. The truck stops, and I poke my head in the window to see who it is; what they want.

          It’s some guy from over at Jackie’s, I know, but don’t know.

          ‘Jackie tells me you build cabinets,’ he says.

          ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.’

          ‘Well I need a few.’

          Perfect.

                                                                                                                  

                                                                               Now if only Cupid was as efficient as the Job Fairy.

R

I send your letters to where we spoke last. Not that you are there... or reply. But I've tried sending them to my heart. It's just not the same. I know that's hopeless going in.  

Soft Tom

A

He’s gentle,
the big orange Tom.
Pads tenderly for permission,
then pleads,
with sleepy green eyes,
to be lapped; caressed.
He doesn’t seem to have it in him,
the inherent midnight brawl,
that boxed his ear,
dotted his eye.
Maybe his heart is the culprit—
why he brings so many scars home with the sunrise.