Siren Song

A

I know your voice well enough, your silhouette. Which is why I worried your wife was who the ambulance had come for last night. Back and forth you stomped in the tiny, cluttered yard as the headlights accumulated.

     “…it hurts all over,” you rumbled, and I wondered what she could be dying of.

     I imagined her, praying for the sound of sirens in her hopeless pink night-shirt, so very afraid, as they loaded her on the stretcher, apologizing for the house, her hair; reaching for her babies, who watched with odd knowing, from a kitchen, or a den maybe.

     Then there was only your yellowed porch light and the consuming silence of a night on the verge of spring. I stood there a while in my own darkness, with your fears, crying. I had never wanted you there. Not just you, anyone... that trailer. But I would never ask that you leave like that—afraid.

     In the morning, I was relieved to hear that it was you and not her, that you had thought you were having a heart attack, but had been down to the store for cigarettes already, so you must be all right.

     Later, I felt the sting of old resentments when they told me that your ‘heart attack’ was nothing but the DT’s, that you had depleted your prescription of morphine tabs by crushing and snorting them—that was why you had 'hurt all over'—and that you had squandered thousands in disability money and pawned off appliances kind hearts had gifted you.

     “I’ve been hooked and I've squandered and pawned,” I said, trying to make some sense of it.

     “You ain’t like them, though,” they told me. “They’ll never amount to nothin’.”

     That may be. But I’ll have to pray and wait for the sound of sirens just the same.

Sarge

A

They had called the old man Sarge. He retired from the Military and then from Ford glass, James told me. ‘Then he went plumb crazy.’ He parked his truck in the washed out drive of what used to be Sarge's house.

     The house didn’t make you doubt Sarge had gone off his rocker. It looked like a play thing, with the holler rising up, high, all around it; some child’s concoction  of remnants, piecemealed onto dry stacked stones there in the creek’s bend.

     James and I crossed the shallow water.

     Inside, the house was squat and icy and smelled of the sweet hay, strewn thick on the floor. The roof was sound, so the bedroom had been bricked up with bales, as was most of the space between it and the modest kitchen, which had become a catch-all for fencing supplies. There was no sign of power or plumbing.

     Holes had been knocked into the walls and ceiling. Sarge's boy had been hunting for the old man’s double pensions. Clearly, Sarge wasn't a big spender. The money had to be somewhere. James had punched his share of holes, too.

     ‘I didn’t find a damn thing,’ James said. ‘That old coot probably buried it out in the yard. He was crazy like that.’

     He might have been. I never met Sarge. James said the old man came up missing one morning though. He went missing for nearly two weeks. Then one day his boy came by the house and found a new, Ford pickup parked out in the yard.

     Turns out, Sarge bought himself a bicycle at a yard sale. He rode the son-of-a-bitch clean to Indianapolis, where he was form originally. There was a Ford dealer up there he’d always done business with. Sarge paid cash for the truck, threw his bicycle in the bed and drove back home.

     Maybe that is crazy. But there's a lot to be said for an old man who can jump on a yard sale bicycle and make it to Indianapolis from Tennessee, then back, in two weeks.

     Anyway, if there is any pension money, Sarge won’t be telling anyone where it's hid.

     ‘He’s down in one of those homes in Gallatin, damn near a vegetable,’ James said as we drove back in the slow rain that had begun to fall. ‘Got that spinal meningitis. Kindly drawin’ up on himself. I guess he’ll keep on, too, till he’s dead.’

     James said that Sarge had had two boys. Twins. The one who knocked holes in his house, and another, who drew up on himself, too, till he was dead.

     ‘His boy says the old man’s gettin’ just dues for never payin’ his son no mind,’ James said. ‘He kindly disowned the kid when he took sick. Then the old bastard didn’t even come see his own blood put in the ground. That's somethin' else, ain't it, doin' your own boy like that.’

     I watched the fence row, choked with saw briar and cedar, pass by us; cattle, huddled in mud and mist, the hills, the valleys.

    
     ‘I reckon it’s gonna snow,’ James said.

     The treetops were dark veins in the low clouds.

     I’ve never been to Indianapolis.

'Diagnosed Terminal'

A
“You’ve been diagnosed terminal...”

   “Whoa! Wait! Did you hear that shit?” Crowe said, turning up the radio. He was listening to NPR again.

   “What shit?” Sophie asked.

   “That fucking seven second pause!”

   “Quit shouting. And quit cussing.”

   “Sorry. It’s just bullshit,” Crowe said. His left hand was on the wheel, his right gesturing at the radio. “This chick is loosing her life, and Ashbrook throws in a fucking pause. Like her terminality just isn’t heavy enough for his show.”

   ‘This chick’ was a blues singer, of all things: Jessie Stephens, a white girl out of Missouri. Jessie Stephens was talented, not mind blowing, not average, just good. She'd put out four CD’s, all on her own tab, before they found the tumor in her liver. They gave her six months with treatment, three without. 

   “Is terminality even a word?” Sophie asked.

   “I don’t know. But you got to admit it’s sickening. I mean, the pause is so fucking obvious…”

   “At least the F word Crowe. Please.”

   Crowe didn’t acknowledge Sophie’s request. He was on a roll.

   Tom asked Jessie how she was coping.

   “What Ashbrook?" Crowe shouted at the radio. "You got to cruise hospices for your human interest stories now? Diagnosed terminal? Which one of you clowns coined that one? Because that’s some arrogant shit there. I’m tellin’ ya. We've all been diagnosed terminal, dumbass. You immortal now, too, Tom? You pompous prick.”

   Crowe flipped the radio the bird.

   “Why do you even listen to the radio, Crowe?” Sophie asked.

   Sophie didn’t know what it was that had turned Crowe so militant. Lately, he could find something wrong with everything, and it always pissed him off. He used to be all about opening eyes to empathy and honesty. He was quite, peaceful. Now it was like he’d got religion or something: Onward Christian soldiers. It was always 'them' and 'us'. Though Sophie wasn't exactly sure who 'us' was. There was Crowe and there was her, and that didn't seem like an 'us' to Sophie. She wondered how long it would be before Crowe ran out of histrionic pauses to bitch about, and turned to her for fuel. She was suddenly glad they had kept it friends.

   “I don’t know Sophie,” Crowe said, looking out the side window at Salem’s old-town. “I mean, most of the time I think Ashbrook is one of the best. He is. But the pause... that’s just so fucking Grub Street, you know … cheap. I bet right now he’s praying to the gods of journalism that this chick starts bawling her eyes out.”

   “Jessie. Her name is Jessie, Crowe.”

   Jessie Stephens did start crying. When she composed herself, she apologized. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jessie said. ‘It’s just hard sometimes, you know. I still have things I want to do.’

   “God damn!” Crowe said. “I bet Ashbrook just came.”

   Sophie shook her head. She wanted a cigarette. Not that she smoked or anything. It just seemed like the time and place to light one up and stare out of the window apathetically with thin white wisps curling around the rear-view. She looked over at Crowe, at his long face, his beard. She was really tired of the whole beard thing—Crowe’s, everybody’s. The world needed a good, close shave.

   The music was coming up. Jessie Stephens was a wrap.

   That’s crazy, Sophie thought. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t imagine herself dying. She knew she would, she just couldn’t imagine it. She wondered if Jessie Stephens could imagine dying now, with that big red X right there on the calendar. A cigarette.

   “Hey. Pull over here, please Crowe, just for a second.”

   “What? Why?”

   “Just pull over. I want a cigarette.”

   “Gross.”

   Sophie looked at the radio, looked at Crowe. “Yeah.” She got out of the car.

   “I’ll wait here,” Crowe said as she shut the door.

   Sophie didn’t have any money, no cash, no cards. She hadn’t carried any in a month now. It was an experiment. Not in manipulation. She called it intuitive generosity.

   Elements of Style was a used book store, whose sandwich board claimed they served hot coffee and poetry on weekends now. Sophie pulled the door open. Crowe drew the car up close to the curb and twirled his finger, to say he'd be circling the block. For a moment, looking at him, his beard and sock hat, Sophie couldn’t recall Crowe’s name. She smiled and stepped into Elements.

   There was a guy behind the counter who appeared to be Sophie’s age: twenty-six, twenty-seven. Arms crossed. No beard. No look. Attractive, but not pushing anything that Sophie could see. Not even a hint of agenda. The store was empty otherwise.

   Sophie approached the counter. She opened her mouth to speak.

   Smiling, the guy held up his forefinger to stop her. He moved the finger to his lips, studied Sophie a minute, then bent beneath the counter. Sophie could hear him rummaging.

   He came up with a folded, near-empty pack of Marlboro 100’s.

   Sophie cocked her head and raised her eyebrows, both amused and impressed.

   “Three left,” the guy said. “They’ve been here since I bought the shop, five years ago, so their freshness date might have expired.”

   “Thanks,” Sophie said, “but I don’t really smoke.”

   “I though not. You strike me as more of an ice cream kind of gal.”

   Sophie smiled.

   The guy popped the register and removed a twenty. He was coming around the counter and asked, “Join me?”

   He pointed at the front window. Across the street there was a parlor: Mike’s Hand-Made Ice Cream & Soda Fountain. Sophie saw Crowe drive by, adjusting the radio.

   It was an experiment, she thought, an experiment.

   “Sure.”

'First Rake'

A

There are three rakes in the tool shed: Grandfather’s, mine and a new rake for Aaron, my little brother. Aaron is five. It’s his first year raking leaves at Grandfather’s.

     The rakes are hung up on the wall in the back of the shed with the shovels and posthole digger. Aaron’s is a metal rake that Grandfather bought at Murphy’s Hardware, shiny and green. I take it down for him. It has two springs beneath the fan. “For extra snap,” I tell Aaron. “You’ll see.” It’s hard to explain raking. You learn quicker by doing it.

     This is my third year raking at Gramps. I started when I was Aaron’s age. My rake was my father’s when he was a boy. It’s bamboo, like Gramps. The fingers are anyway, long strips of it, bent at the end. Gramps says the handle is Rock Maple though. He has a hollow piece of bamboo with new fingers in it, to replace any that break. But I’ve never seen one break. Bamboo is strong.

     My rake feels lighter than Aaron’s, I notice, when I take it down from the wall; even though its fan is wider. Gramp’s rake is even bigger than mine. It’ll really clear some leaves.

     Out in the yard, Aaron is already experimenting. He’s choking his rake, holding it too close to the fan and digging a hole in the yard of leaves. His new metal rake is noisy. That’s going to take some getting used to.

     “What ya doin’ little man?” Grandfather said, coming out of the house carrying his jacket.

      “Rakin!” Aaron replies.

     “I can see that,” Grandfather said, shrugging his jacket on.

     I hand Gramps his rake.

     “Thank you son,” he says. “What do you say we show this little brother of yours how it’s done?”

     Grandfather has seven Sugar Maples, two Water Maples three Cherries and a Tulip Poplar in his yard. If that's not enough leaves, there's the Oak and Hickory leaves too, that are bigger than a man’s hand and red as blood, blown onto the yard from the stand of timber across the road.

     There's a light breeze coming down from the north. “We’ll rake with the wind," Grandfather says, "let it do some of the work for us.”

     The three of us wade through the brittle leaves up to the north end of the yard.

    
     Grandfather showed Aaron how to use his noisy, clacking metal rake—where to keep his hands. We rake in a line, the bamboo fingers of my rake scratching the earth in whispers, fssst, fssst, fssst. Aaron’s hands always work back down to the head of his rake. “He looks like he’s hoeing a garden,” Grandfather says, and we laugh. I looked that way once too.

     We rake the leaves into enormous piles. Some we’ll burn, some we’ll put on a big tarp, later and drag out to the chicken pen.

     The sun is low in the sky all day this time of year. Our shadows are long, stretching across the yard like it's late in the afternoon.“You tell the time by the temperature in fall. Not by the sun like you do in summer,” Grandfather said. “When you feel a chill coming on, it’s near time to pick up and get ready for supper.”

     It was near enough time to pick up that Grandfather said Aaron and I could play in the leaves until supper, as soon as we put our tools away.

     I showed Aaron how to hang his rake back. Then we picked the biggest pile of leaves and I showed him how to fall backward into it, then how to dive into it. We stuffed our jackets full of leaves to make muscles and tunneled through the pile like moles. We wrestled and bumped our heads. Aaron almost cried. I wouldn’t have blamed him. It hurt awful. Then we lay on our backs in the big pile and watched the only cloud in the sky, our warm breath, white puffs. I could feel the chill setting in, on my cheeks, my nose.

     “It’s almost supper time,” I told Aaron.

     “I know,” he said, “I know.”

Calisthenics

A
So I got a new book: The 3 A.M. Epiphany. It's basically a bunch of writing exercises, and I'm going to do them all and post them like a good boy. If you read them, I'll hug you. If you critique'... double it. Mind you this is just sit down and get from beginning to end writing, no nit-picking, editing or major re-writes along the way. If you're feeling froggy and want to do the exercises along with... Come on!

Anyway...

Exercise One: Write a first person story using the first person pronouns only two times, 600 words or less.      

I forget that there are still stretches of dirt road this long around here. It doesn’t seem possible any more. Elias’ place is an easy two miles off of the asphalt though. He’s Mennonite, real primitive: beards and buggies, no electricity or indoor plumbing, seven kids. Mennonites pretty much own Allen County, Kentucky right over the Tennessee line—my back yard.

     Elias runs the saw mill up there. Does a fair amount of business too, between the Community and outsiders. Long Creek runs through his property. Elias has got it dammed and a twenty acre lake backed up above his mill—the power supply. He’s got the sluice, the wheel, the whole nine yard, like you stepped back in time a hundred years. It’s worth the drive just to watch him operate: all those crazy levers, the belts howling and blade screaming—just an insane amount of power from something that flows through your fingers.

     There are usually some kids out in the lake, fishing or cruising around in the little hand powered paddle boat. It’s always quiet, but not this quiet. There’s no one around back either. The mill wheel is clicking just enough to keep it from getting water logged on bottom.

     It’s ten degrees cooler down in the mill. Elias has been cutting Cedar; the damp air is heady with it.

     “Anybody home? Elias? Joshua?”

     Joshua is his oldest, quiet—well quieter; they’re all pretty quiet around strangers—good kid, strong as an ox.

     Nobody’s around.

     The house sits back away from the mill, hidden but for a bit of gray roof and brick chimney. It’s a walk, but nothing like the drive in.

     There are clothes on the line: two blue-grey dresses, white bonnets and a small pair of black trousers. No dog. A half-dozen plump, gold Orpingtons are scratching up near the porch. The buggy is in the barn. There’s only one Belgium in the lot though, so maybe they’re out with the wagon, doing some light work that doesn’t need both of the big horses.

     Around back of the barn there’s about three acres of slow rise before the property climbs its way into a squat hill. The hill has long since been cleared of timber and replanted with fruit trees and grape vines. Elias’ wife makes jams and jellies to sell. The vines are black and bare, soon to be cut back for winter.

     Top of the hill is an enormous white oak, its branches low and long—a property marker most likely—and it looks like most of the community is gathered under it.

     A funeral? Where are all the buggies?

     The wagon and Belgium is up on the hill too, backed under one of the Oak's thick branches. Three men are standing in the back of it, Joshua and Elias, but the other man’s face is harder to make out, like he’s wearing a bonnet, but why? Joshua and Elias seem to be holding the man—helping him down out of the tree.

It’s strange what the mind doesn’t want to accept—what it ignores—when it thinks it can’t possibly be seeing what it is seeing. Things like rope and two mile stretches of dirt road that take you back in time. It's their damn business. Whatever was going on. I don't want any part of it, and pull out on to the asphalt and head toward the State line... home.  

"Another Cancer, Another Love Story"

A

They were in love. The kind of love that only grows from having roots that share the same soil... that are intertwined from birth. As near one as two could ever be. 

It was evening when he noticed the pink ribbon she wore.

“When did you…?”

“This morning,” she said. She was calm. Her voice as stilling as it had ever been. As if there was nothing to worry about.

“Why didn’t you…?”

She reached out to him.

“They weren’t certain. I knew you would worry… so I… I’m sorry. I wanted them to be certain first.”

“But I…”

“I know… I know you would have. And thank you, thank you.” She reached for his face. “I love you so very much. But there’s just nothing you can do. Not this time.”

“Nothing? They’re certain?”

“Nothing.”

He looked away… down, and she glanced there too, at the earth, solid and alive, under and around their feet. Then back up, at this tower that had been so bent by this silly, silly burden… her burden. She wanted to draw him to her, inside of her, where he could feel that she was not afraid, where he would understand that soon she would be more a part of him than ever.

“How long?” he asked.

“Tomorrow. The next day. Maybe.”

She felt the cool of his tears, like rain, and she knew that it was foolish, but she wished for one more gentle shower that they could dance in… before.

They woke to the sound of men and machines.

“Over there,” a voice said, “I’ve got her marked.”

“This one?” another voice asked.

“Yep. We’ll have to put a cable around her, pull her away from the house.”

“Get that cable over here!” someone shouted.

A chainsaw barked to life.

The morning was crisp and he wanted to draw her nearer, to feel more of her warmth, her life.

“I’m not going to let this happen to you,” he said.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she replied. “Don’t you see? I’ll be inside of you soon.”

“But… I’ll never see you again.”

“See me? Don’t be a silly boy. You will be me… and I will be you. Isn’t that better?”

“Yes… I suppose… but still…”

“Hush,” she said.

They listened to the careless men, tramping through the leaves and branches.

The chainsaw revved.

“No!” he shouted. His voice was so strong and loud that the ground shook and everything and everyone for miles around heard it and felt it. Everyone and everything but the men. Men are deaf. 

They cut into her base and pulled her with the cables and drew her away from the house that she had cooled with her shade for years and years.

“It’s all right,” she told her love as the blades cut deeper. Her voice was a soft breeze. “It’s all right. Let it be…”

And she began to fall.

He wouldn’t listen… couldn’t listen. He reached as far as a tree could possibly reach and caught her in his topmost branches.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t. Let me fall.”

“I can’t.”

The men, who had scattered, began to gather back around his base.

“Well I never,” one of the men said.

“Let me go,” she begged her love.

“I can’t… I can’t,” he said.

“They’ll…”

Below, the men were looking up, rubbing chins and scratching heads, as men often will.

“What do you want to do?” one of the men asked.

“Drop it,” another man replied.

The chainsaw barked back to life.

And he did not... could not... let her go. 

... a word of explanation... if needed... trees to be felled are often marked with pink paint or ribbon.

Trick, or Treat...

A

It has become a bit of a tradition around Halloween, for me to re-work this story and post it at whatever venue I happen to be pimping my wares in exchange for criticism. So, with no further ado, let me present...

"The Ballad of Lucy Harper and Timmy Golightly"

Lucy Harper was drunk that night. Drivin’ her Mamma’s big black Lincoln. Hell, Lucy Harper was drunk every night. Drunk and with that Golightly boy, Timmy.

Timmy must have been pretty tore up himself. I guess he passed out in the passenger seat of the Lincoln. They were up there at Sugar Grove, around the corner from my place. Lucy got pretty ill about havin’ to drive home. She told the law her foot gets real heavy when she gets hot like that.

Boy, and her mamma’s Lincoln could flat out do it to. Once you got it rollin' anyway. They say it had the biggest engine Detroit ever put in a Lincoln. I couldn’t say. Never saw it. Timmy did though. Up close. In fact I heard a chunk of that big block was what removed his head.

Lucy t-boned that guard rail the County put up over there at Fairview Baptist, to keep folks out of their cemetery. The Lincoln’s speedometer stuck at 103 miles an hour, Law said. Not a skid mark one. That ol’ guard rail did a right smart job of keepin’ Lucy’s mamma’s Lincoln out of the Fairview cemetery, but Timmy... he made it in just fine.

Timothy Randolph Golightly, was what the paper called him. Said he left the car with the windshield draped over his shoulders like a god damn poncho. Cleared the hood, the guardrail and three plot markers. A total of 117 feet. I reckon that’s some kind of record somewhere. But that ain’t the half of it. That son of a buck landed right next to a hole, fresh dug for a great aunt of his. To top that, Timmy hadn’t even been invited to the funeral.

They say a human head is still thinking for nine seconds after it leaves the body. Can you believe that shit? Longer if it ain’t bleedin’. And Timmy’s didn’t bleed a lick. Whatever chunk of that Lincoln’s motor that took his head off was hot as hell. I guess it cauterized everything. Not a drop of blood anywhere.

They don’t know if his head was still thinkin’, but his body was sure enough busy for all of nine seconds. I saw the place where it hit. The grass was smashed down good. Landed smack on his back...hard.

I'll tell you what. I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't seen it my ownself. There were hand prints... knee prints too... right there in the dirt where that sumbitch rolled over and got himself up. Then four boot prints... Red Wings, same as was on Timmy's feet... walked right over to the edge of that hole. Old Timmy was after that head of his... chased it right on down into his aunt’s grave, slicker ‘n owl shit.

Lucy, she didn’t last long after that. Wasn’t much left for her to do, I guess.

Cloud

a

Like the ghost of some dirigible reliving its tediously slow demise, the Cloud descended into the hayfield, back of my house. Dishtowel in hand, I watched through the window there above the sink, as its stern clipped the treetops along the field’s edge, strewing blackbirds like mute fragments and leaving tatters of its foggish fabric in the branches, dim banners in the morning breeze.

     The snag swung it round and the Cloud settled with a heave in the autumn field, the entire operation, hauntingly silent and without a speck of dust.

     In slippers, I went to investigate. Dog went with.

     Dog was oblivious to the catastrophe and the slumberous hulk that lay in the hayfield, until about midway, where he perked and pointed and let loose a cautionary report. He turned to me for suggestions. I had none, and told him as much, but gave him permission to go ahead and inspect.

     Dog stalked out to the Cloud, sniffed at it, circled its perimeter, with his nose willy-nilly, then traipsed off into the woods on the trail of a more appealing scent.

     The Cloud was as big as any whale I suppose—though admittedly, I’ve never had a whale in my hayfield—and roughly the same shape. I stood back, where I could take in tip and tale with only the slightest turn of my head. It was gray as elephant hide, dense—not even the faintest outline of the woods behind it—and roiling with storm. I wondered at the odds of it being stuffed with lightning and regretted having sent Dog ahead.

     It seemed so very contained, not as I imagined clouds to be. I thought it would have spilled out, all over the hayfield by now. I looked to the end that had clipped the trees. Thin wisps of gray were seeping from beneath the Cloud. There must be a hole, I thought, and it was laying on the damage.

     And if there was a hole...

     Closer, I could see the atmosphere surrounding the cloud’s opaque center: ten or twelve inches of a misty, translucence that kept the ashen whorls contained. It was like looking at the guts of a featherless hatchling through its thin belly-skin. Still fretting a shock, I reached out tentatively.

     There are so many things you expect a cloud to be: moist, ethereal—cool, if not cold— especially one falling from an autumn sky. My first touch was quick: fingertips. I was relieved when there wasn’t even the startle of static electricity. I felt resistance, a membrane of sorts. I put the flat of my hand to it. It was warm. Not the balmy warm of weather, but the warmth left beneath a deep bed of blankets, the distinct warmth of life.

     I pressed. Gently. The skin was delicate, had give, more so than ours. With little effort, I was sure I could push my hand through it. The Cloud began to expand. I took a step back. Then another, before it stopped and began to recede. Then it rose again. It was breathing. 

     Assuming the cloud’s head, if it had a head, was at the end that entered my hayfield, I walked in that direction. Other than its being slightly more bulbous, the Cloud’s front was identical to its rear. There were no eyes, no mouth, no nose. I knew though, that that was where a face belonged—the same way, I suppose, that I know where the face belongs on a tree, or the moon. And when I touched it—its face—I knew, ineffably, that the Cloud was dying.

     “Its Earthed itself,” I heard a tiny voice behind me say.

     I turned and found a large squirrel propped on a twig-sized cane.

     Instinctively, I scanned the field for Dog.

     “Not to worry,” the squirrel said. His voice was male, dry and methodical. “He’s in the woods. Besides, we have an agreement.”

     At a glance, the squirrel could have easily been mistaken for a Gray. There weren’t but three red hairs left on his body; the rest were silver. The shape of his ears though, his size (despite the hunch), and the distinct curl of his tail, defined a Red, a very old Red, whom I’d never met.

     “Don’t you mean, beached?” I asked, looking back at the Cloud.

     “Do you see a beach anywhere?” the squirrel replied.

     “True.”

     The old squirrel came and stood beside me. Leaning on his cane, he reached to touch the Cloud.

     “They come to Earth to continue,” he said, stroking the Cloud. “Die, as you call it. It’s rare though—these days—that they ever make it. I’ve seen only two others in my life. Something almost always gets to them first.”

     The Old Squirrel looked up at the sky. I followed his gaze to the long white stripe being painted across the blue by a passing airliner.

     “Lightning too, hail, even birds.”

     I put my hand back to the Cloud. It seemed cooler now, and its color had noticeably faded along with its warmth.

     “Its storm is passing,” the Old Squirrel said. “The change comes quickly.”

     “Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

     “Do?”

     “To save it. Throw water on it or something.”

     “You’re an odd bunch,” the Old Squirrel said, shaking his head. “Be rid of your machines, if you’re that inspired.” He pointed his cane at my truck. “This,” he said, pointing the tip of his cane back at the Cloud, “is beautiful… is what is meant by death. And you want to throw water on it. Watch!”

     The Cloud’s skin was icy now, brittle. Its innards had bleached entirely white.

     “Step back,” the Old Squirrel said.

     The skin gave. The frosted storm hung in the air a moment. A few errant, snowy flecks came loose of the bulk, floated away and dissipated. Then the whole of it collapsed to the ground. The dry white powder came in a rush, like a wave to my feet. I wanted so badly to touch it, but it disappeared before I could even stoop down. There was nothing. No trace. Not even dew on the grass.

     We stood there in silence, the Old Squirrel and I. When I blinked, the Cloud’s image was still inside me: red first, then in blue. Then even that was gone.

     “Rare indeed,” the Old Squirrel said.

     Then again, we stood in silence.

     “I’m Steven, by the way,” I finally said.

     “Skip,” the Old Squirrel replied. And this didn’t surprise me in the least.

I was thinking...

Pete had a clean shot. He set the Mauser’s crosshairs less than a hand’s width behind the buck’s shoulder. Top of the heart—double bonus.

     There’s a wad of veins there that’ll drop a deer’s blood pressure to zero in seconds if you clip them just right. Four steps, top side, and the deer will be on the ground. No chasing. The double bonus: most of the blood drains down into the chest cavity—not out into the muscle tissue where it sours the meat.

     The buck was the first five-pointer Pete had seen in years—the first buck of any kind he’d seen this close to the house. There was always good clover in the west field, down along the woods, even with snow on the ground. Does feed there year round, but the bucks are just too skittish.

     Pete felt a light breeze at his back. The buck was downwind. If it was going to get done, he needed to do it now. His scent would carry to the pasture in seconds. One-one thousand, two-one thousand... Pete knew damn well he was stalling. Three-one thousand, four… The buck raised its head and froze, its black eyes staring straight at the 308. That was quick. He still had a good shot.

    
     “Shit.”

     Pete thumbed the Mauser’s safety on. He lifted the rifle off of the fence post and watched the buck bolt. It leaped over a skirt of brush and disappeared into the woods, headed south.

     Since he had the stints put in,  Pete could hardly pull the trigger on a damn five gallon bucket, let alone something with a pulse. His little brush with death had put a serious damper on his wanting to dish it out. Maybe it was the second chance he got. Maybe subconsciously, he felt the need to return the favor—he didn’t know. But to make matters worse—more confusing—all that bullshit his tree-hugging, atheist neighbor had been talking for the past twenty years was starting to make some sense.

     “It’s no different than your argument against abortion Pete,” Steve had said.

     Pete being the long-time Orthodox Catholic that he was—Latin mass, birth control is for sissies, the whole nine yards—Steve couldn't resist throwing abortion into any mix. Not that Steve was Pro-Choice. He was just anti-religion and well aware of Pete's pressure points.

    “You don’t know what part an animal might play in the grand scheme Pete—whose future you might erase by taking its life. Same as with your little fetus friends. What’s to say that frog you shot down at your pond, 'just for the hell of it', won’t trigger a chain of events that terminates the life of the greatest Catholic leader ever—Pope Nearlygod IV. It’s like the Butterfly Effect in those time travel movies. "

     “That’s ridiculous. I can’t see how a damn frog…”

     “It’s possible Pete.”

     “Sure. But…”

     “Why take the chance? What’s that Ronald Reagan shit you’re always throwing out? ‘Error on the side of life’.”

     “Something like that.”

    That’s where Pete had left it. And for years, it was just a bunch of blather floating around in his head, with the rest of Steve’s blather. Until now. Now that Steve was dead, and he’d had a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel himself. Why does shit finally make sense on your way out?

     Pete didn’t want to admit it, but it wasn’t just a five-point buck he’d seen in the Mauser’s scope—a freezer full of venison. He'd seen the chain, the links, stretched out long past his days on this planet.

     Pete shouldered the Mauser and turned toward the house. That sorry son of a bitch was still getting the best of him, two months in the ground. He smiled. Butterfly Effect’s ass. Maybe Michael’s on the way with my grandbabies and my tree-hugger daughter-in-law. And maybe I don’t want to be up to my elbows in deer guts when they get here, and have to listen to more of your shit you crazy old atheist.

Pete let himself in the back door.

**********

The buck cut through the woods, veering south-east toward water, Defeated Creek, just below Highway 174.

     Michael adjusted the Escalade’s rearview so he could see the twin’s faces when he told them they were almost to Grandpa’s. The girls lit up and squealed.

     “Honey, Tammy’s got some peanut-butter or something on her face,” Michael told his wife.

     Carlene, the tree-hugging daughter-in-law, fished a tub of ‘green’ wet-wipes from her bag. She had unbuckled and turned to clean her daughter’s face, so she never saw the deer step out onto the highway, gingerly, as if the asphalt under its hooves was ice.

      It might very well have been ice—it tends to stick around the bridges—because for all the compensating the Escalade’s ABS did, the SUV still slid off of the road, missed the guardrail, and plummeted the twenty feet down into Defeated Creek.

     Michael instinctively reached for his wife as the truck dropped—to protect her—the girls. He was good about that kind of thing, though he'd argue that they made it easy. There was nothing on Earth more beautiful. And  though he loved his dad, he would rather his last thought—before the Escalade rolled, belly-up and landed on its top, which crumpled, mercifully snapping his neck before crushing his skull—would have been about them, and not his father. But who ever gets to plan their last thoughts?

     A five-pointer—Dad would have loved to have seen that buck.

52 Near Clearwater

Jesus returned in a Chevy C10. Not exactly what we’d been expecting, but a pretty sweet truck. A ’69 model, single owner, twenty-two thousand original miles. Garage kept and on blocks since ‘71. Talk about a damn miracle.

     He’d blown a radiator hose out on 52, near Clearwater. Dry rot. Parker Stillman stopped and gave him a ride into town. Dropped him off over at Andy’s, my ex brother-in-law’s shop.

     Andy had the hose in stock. He figured he could fix it out on the road. But just in case, he drove it and Jesus back out to the C10 in his wrecker. That’s where I met up with them.

     I knew it was Andy’s wrecker from half a mile away. Andy painted the damn cab neon green—you couldn’t miss it in the dark. I pulled in behind.

     The Chevy’s hood was up and Andy was standing on the bumper trying to get the bottom end of the hose loose. Jesus was handing him wrenches.

     Andy was on a roll. I could hear him the moment I opened my door.

     “I told him—sure as shit—there ain’t no way in hell you’re gonna eat that whole damn thing,” Andy said. “Nine-sixteenths.”

     Jesus handed him a wrench.

     Andy’s only got one story to tell. He won’t clean it up either. Not for your Mama. Not for Jesus. Andy is what Andy is. I can only stand so much of it, but you got to respect a man who can be himself in the face of God.

     We went down to Cabo with Less Hargreaves, after graduation. That'd be about thirteen years now. Less was a big ol’ boy: three hundred pounds if he was an ounce. He got pretty tore up and entered himself into an eating contest.

     “I mean, this burrito was the size of a Jack Russell Terrier,” Andy says. “Damn if he didn’t eat it though. In a minute and a half too. ‘Bout made me puke just watchin’ him. But you can bet your white ass they give him that three hundred dollars.”

     “Hey,” I said to Jesus.

     Jesus smiled.

     Andy looks up. “Hey Brother-in-Law! I was just tellin’ Jesus here about our trip to Cabo. Jesus this is my brother-in-law Pete…Pete, Jesus.”

     I said ‘Hey’, again.

     Jesus smiled.