A Utilitarian LifeThomas
My parents said I should probably find work and move out of the basement. I got a job with the utility company and it was easy enough. Turn off the water, disconnect everything and connect the new meter. A monkey could do it. A monkey would get bored doing it. I’d never been any where near the top of my class, but even I got bored. Elizabeth I really dislike anyone coming into my place. It wasn’t a matter of hiding anything. It wasn’t as though I were a criminal or doing anything morally wrong. I just prefer my life to remain private, except what I choose to share. I delayed the utility company for almost a year with cancellations and missed appointments before they threatened to shut off my water. Thomas I saw just about everything in people’s basements. Unused exercise equipment, abandoned art projects, little work spaces for people who liked to tinker: wanna-be writers, programmers, wood-workers. Funny thing was, the basements almost never matched the rest of the house. Basements were the hiding places for their secret lives and upstairs, on display, was their other life, the one they let people see. Sometimes part of the basement was a living space, but everyone still had a secret part, usually near the vital workings of the house, like the furnace and the electric panel and the water meter. Just like people keep their secrets close to their own vital workings, I guess. Anyway, I didn’t try to see the secrets. I just couldn’t help it. Elizabeth I like my place to be in order and my life to be predictable. I know that messy and disorganized people like to think of themselves as creative and spontaneous, but the truth is that they are almost without exception only messy and disorganized. My life runs like a well-oiled machine, a lifestyle almost effortless to maintain. I have rotating menus, a schedule for cleaning and maintenance and I ensure everything I purchase means something leaves my house so that there is never clutter. I enjoy company when we’ve made plans and I can adjust accordingly, but no one I know would just drop by. Thomas I was early. Some people really like to just get the appointment out of the way, so if I get there early, I knock on their door and ask. Though there was a car in the driveway, no one came to the door. I didn’t mind, though. I always have a book in the van in case I have a few minutes between appointments. I never liked to read when I was in school: Shakespeare and all the Great Authors. They were okay, I guess, but I liked a story where things happened and that made sense. Elizabeth What was he doing here so early? Though I was only sitting reading, I thought my time should be respected, so I ignored the knock at the door and stayed on the sofa, reading. He could wait in his van until the appointed time. Thomas As I put the paper booties over my work boots, I noticed the book on her coffee table. The house was like a model home or something, nothing out of place to show someone lived here. Except for the book. Though hers was a hard cover and in perfect condition with a tidy bookmark peeking out from the top, and mine was a tattered library paperback splayed open on the seat of the van, we were reading the same book. Jaws, by Peter Benchley. I was about to tell her, but then I saw her follow my gaze, then glare back at me, lips pressed together tight, I decided not to. Elizabeth I saw him look at my book. What business is it of his what I read? I don’t owe any explanations to the water meter guy. Thomas It was the first basement I’d been in that matched the rest of the house. There was nothing. Once I changed the meter in a house that had been sold and the new owners hadn’t moved in. Even that house had a few almost empty cans of paint left for the new owners for touch ups. An old curtain rod. A single rusty Phillips screwdriver. Signs of life. But this lady’s house had none. It was sterile. I set my toolbox down and squatted next to the meter. Though I couldn’t see her, I sensed Elizabeth’s presence behind me. She wasn’t leaving. “I’m reading Jaws, too,” I said, to fill the uncomfortable silence. Most people left me alone to do my job. Even if it meant I was alone with their secrets. Elizabeth I didn’t answer. I thought he’d understand that meant I wanted him to stopped chattering and finish the job, but apparently that was lost on him because he kept talking. He said, “It reminds me of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.” I was surprised. I would not have thought he was a reader. In spite of my desire for him to finish posthaste and leave, I asked, “How is like The Old Man and the Sea?” Thomas didn’t look up, but asked, “Have you read it? The way it became something personal, between Quint and shark, like the shark was a person. That’s how it was between the man and the marlin too. Just the two of ‘em, locked in battle.” I’d hoped to shame him into silence, but it appeared that not only had he read it, he understood it. I suppose this is what comes of allowing too many English degrees. I didn’t answer, but only frowned at his back, but he didn’t look up from his work, so the effect was lost on him and he just kept talking. Thomas I got the feeling I’d insulted her but wasn’t sure how. Into the uncomfortable silence, I said, “I’ve only got two chapters of Jaws to go, but don’t worry, I won’t give anything away,” Thomas finally turned to her, smiling. “I’ve seen the movie,” she said in a voice like battery acid on his ears, “As has everyone.” Elizabeth I regretted how sharp my words sounded but couldn’t think of a way to soften them and I didn’t want to talk anyway. Why did people have to be so intrusive? I felt worse when he looked away, cleared his throat, and picked up a wrench because it was what I wanted him to do. Just finish and leave. Thomas I didn’t want to leave things like that. Her angry for no reason. I said, “They’re both about, you know, people trying to best nature, but then being conflicted about getting to know nature personally.” Just as I said that, a centipede scurried from the crack between the wall, which wasn’t unusual because of the vibrations of the power tools. But I hated those things so much. I yelped and jumped back, banged my head on the shelf and fell, sprawled on the floor. As I looked up, Elizabeth squashed the creature under her fuzzy pink slipper, the movement controlled, deliberate and fearless. I heard the crunch as she twisted her foot. She smiled, then, for the first time. With a little shrug, made an invisible mark with her finger on the wall as though she were keeping score. She said, “One point for me in the battle against nature. Sorry I didn’t take the time to get to know it first.” I never would’ve guessed she could be funny. I laughed, hoping she wouldn’t clobber me too. Elizabeth I was startled by his laugh. It was loud, unselfconscious and sincere and seemed magnified in the small space. Before I could stop myself, I asked, “Would you like a cup of tea?” Thomas Even as I smiled and nodded, I wondered, why? I hate tea. Elizabeth All I wanted was for him to finish and leave. Why had I invited him to stay for a cup of tea? Thomas When she finally left me alone in the basement, I turned the water on again and sat back on my heels. I looked all around. It was completely bare, aside from the crumpled centipede, and it suddenly occurred to me that Elizabeth’s secret was here in the basement after all. I packed up my tools and tidied. I was never a confident guy, but in this one thing, I was sure. Elizabeth’s secret was a sterile life. Despite her prickly nature, she was lonely. I’d have a cup of tea.
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The Favoured Child |
JoAnn DiFranco is a retired Long Island high school English teacher. Published author of two biographies for Dillon Press, Mister Rogers- Good Neighbor to America’s Children and Walt Disney- When Dreams come True. Many articles published in on-line magazine, Better After Fifty and in Long Island’s major newspaper, Newsday. |
Monsters in a Bag
Still, I rationalized; they were comic books, right?
Carrying my treasure, I walked back towards our blanket, spread just feet from the tiny lapping waves of Long Island Sound. My mother, younger brother and sister, grandmother, two aunts, and several cousins were already packing up to return to the house.
“What do you have there?” my mother asked.
“Just some comic books I found.”
Stashing them in my beach bag, I joined the family parade in the trek across Bayville Avenue and down Fifth Street to my uncle’s summer bungalow, our escape from Manhattan’s heat in that summer of 1953.
In the bedroom, I pushed the comics far under the double bed I shared with my siblings.
That evening, while our mothers and grandmother prepared supper, we children walked barefoot down the dirt road of Fifth Street, stopping to pet dogs and say hi to kids sitting on the front steps of other summer cottages. We were our own little gang, nine of us, the oldest, thirteen; the youngest, a year- old baby, we hauled along in an old stroller.
For me, a couple of months shy of ten, and my brother and sister, who had known life only in a tight three room city apartment, that July and August of sunburned skin, swallowed sea water, Monopoly games on the kitchen table, fireflies in jars, rides on bicycle handlebars, and walks “to town” - the few stores in the center of the tiny village - that summer offered our very first taste of freedom: an hour or two a day beyond the protective watch of our mother.
But when I found those comic books, all was nearly spoiled.
While the other children searched for bits of kindling for our evening fire on the crab grass front lawn, I sat behind the bedroom door with my new comic books.
In seconds, I was terrified and sickened, but simultaneously too curious to stop reading. Rather than the talking animals or the super heroes of the comic books I loved, I was introduced to a host of monsters, living and dead, involved in sadistic acts of torture, mutilation, and execution. In one story, a sculptor renowned for his skill in capturing the perfection of the female body, murdered young women and then used their bodies as casts for his artistic masterpieces. In another, a dagger-wielding skeleton, with pieces of flesh hanging from its bones, stalked nighttime city streets in search of victims.
That night I woke screaming.
My mother rushed me into the kitchen before I awakened any of the other children.
I could not stop trembling or crying. Even as my mother held me, assuring me that I was safe and had only had a bad dream, I could not shake the vision of my father, who, during the week, was alone in our city apartment, being stabbed to death in his bed by a night visitor from the grave.
Of course, I refused to tell my mother any details of my dream.
A few months earlier, when she had found me copying pictures of nude men and women from a “how to draw the human figure” book, my mother confiscated the book. When my father insisted she give it back to me, she duct-taping the offending pages in a sleeve she made from a brown paper bag. Unable now to turn to any page past those on perspective, I spent hours drawing railroad tracks and country roads receding into the distance.
My mother did not see the danger in her determination to keep me safe and innocent by shielding me from the world she viewed as threatening and intimidating. Although my father did not advocate deliberately exposing me, or my siblings, to the grotesque or sinister, he had enough trust in us to expect that when we stumbled upon them anyway, we’d not react with irrational fear. And what safer place, he thought, to learn the realities of life than in a book? Before I could even read, I understood the power and control a book afforded me. I could choose to turn the page, close the book, or go to my father to further explore a discovery or concern.
Seeing the “censored” art book, my father, without a word to either my mother or me, took a pair of scissors to the paper bag and released the tied off pages before returning the volume to its place on his bookshelves.
My mother disapproved of my father’s allowing me full access to his own books, a privilege I enjoyed flaunting. I deliberately picked up book she would think inappropriate, knowing my father would overrule her objections. Recently, after hearing my father discussing the book with a college professor who lived in our building, I read the first couple of pages of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Understanding nothing, I put the book back on my father’s dresser.
After that, accepting my limitations, I stuck mostly to my favorites: old copies of National Geographic, Hilaire Belloc’s The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, and The Kingdom of Nature, a worn volume which contained hundreds of illustrations of animals in the wild. A picture I studied often, torn between fear and wonder, was of a man caught in the tentacles of a giant jellyfish. Nearby, in a small boat, several other men, powerless to help the victim, watched in horror as he met his painful fate.
In the case of my newfound comics, I dared not let my mother think that her concern over my reading choices had been vindicated.
Once I stopped crying, she gave me an aspirin and sent me back to bed. As soon as I closed my eyes, though, the images in the comic book again began their relentless battle with my reason.
Although reason won, the victory did little to relieve my suffering.
When I screamed the next time, my mother took me into the living room and there the two of us sat until morning. When, on the following night, I refused to go to bed at all, my exhausted and irritated mother picked me up, plopped me into the bed, and ordered me to stay there.
Minutes later I was sobbing and vomiting.
The next two nights were just as bad.
Finally it was Friday, and my dad arrived in the late afternoon. He had gifts for us, new sand shovels; and the usual comic books, Archie for me, Superman for my brother, and Little Lulu for my sister.
Before I could scurry off to read, however, Dad grabbed my hand, and without a word, led me down to the empty beach, stopping just as we reached the water’s edge.
Bending down to pick up a handful of stones, he asked, “So what’s this your mother tells me about nightmares?”
I was angry that my mother had told him. I was his “big girl” – not a baby.
“I am okay now,” I assured him, “I just missed you so much.”
He threw a stone into the water. “Want to tell me about your dream?”
“Just scary stuff. A monster.”
“Was it chasing you?”
“No, it was hurting you.”
“Me?”
Dropping the stones in his hand, he turned around and picked me up. With my thin legs circling his waist and my arms around his neck, I collapsed in tears against his chest. The more I sobbed, the tighter he pulled me to him.
I blurted out the whole experience.
He did not scold me for reading the horror comics nor for being afraid. He did not demand that I give them to him. He did not tell me what I already knew, that the books were fantasy, make-believe, even silly, and that neither he, nor anyone else, would ever be stabbed to death by a skeleton. He did not promise me that he would never die, nor suggest that I was too young to fear the death of my parents or myself.
He just held me, giving me what I needed most, his presence.
What I did not tell my father was that I felt responsible for his death in my nightmares. The monster got him only because I had abandoned him, left him alone in that apartment. Of course, that was ridiculous! But, I missed him so much the days he was not with us; I could not bear the thought of losing him forever.
When my father did die, seventeen years later, I felt responsible again. A young mother then, I had left my children home with my husband to join my mother keeping vigil over my ill father. Sometime after midnight, we fell asleep, she on the floor next to the bed, and I in my father’s armchair.
An hour later, I was awakened by my mother’s screams.
Again, I had failed to be there to protect my father.
Real death had taken him when I still needed him to help me through moments when reason and emotion collided. And to guide me whenever my maternal instincts, intense like my mother’s, suggested that I protect my children by securing life’s monsters in a paper bag. With my father’s death, I understood that for the psychological health of my young sons, myself, and even my mother, my own growing up had to occur right then.
For several weeks after my father’s death, the summer nightmare of my childhood haunted me once more.
Back at the beach house in the summer of ‘53, I sat alongside my father, throwing small dry twigs into the evening fire.
Only Dad could let a marshmallow catch fire and then blow out the flame at just the right moment, leaving a perfectly toasted treat. I wanted to sit there all night, eat a thousand marshmallows, and never, ever, sleep or dream again. When my mother announced that it was bedtime, my father insisted that I was old enough to stay up a little longer than my sister and brother.
An hour or so later, when he carried me inside and lowered me into my bed, he reminded me that he was nearby and safe, and that I was safe too.
The adults and the older cousins continued to sit around the fire. Through the open window, I could hear them talking, occasionally hushing each other when they feared their noise might waken one of us sleeping children.
Once, I got up and glanced outside. I saw the red tip of my grandfather’s cigarette. He and most of the others sat in dark shadows, but I could clearly see my father’s smiling, handsome face, illuminated by the last flickers of the fire. Now that he was close to me where he belonged, my world was back in order. I did not have to be a grown-up yet; he would let me fall back into childhood when I needed to.
Later, I felt my father standing over me and knew he was hoping my sleep was peaceful. But, I wasn’t asleep, not quite ready yet to test my mettle in the dream world. As my father crept out of the room, my eyes sprung open, thankful for the tiny nightlight that allowed me to see my cousins in their cribs, my sister alongside me, and my brother sprawled across the foot of our bed.
The aroma of fresh coffee, the clatter of dishes, and the scraping of chairs, suggested the commencement of adult discussion in the kitchen. As soon as I realized that I was the topic of conversation, I sat up. My father summarized the story that had frightened me and caused my nightmares. My mother and aunts became defensive, insisting that if they had known what I had found on the beach, they would have taken the books away from me.
“She figured that,” my father said. “That’s why she hid them.”
None of the adults agreed with my father that I had done nothing wrong, and I don’t think I did either, at least, not that night.
The day I took those comic books from the trash can, I opened the door to darkness, a door that no one had the power to ever close again. My father had not taken the books from me, and, I am sure, he expected that I would will myself to look at them again. In a bungalow kitchen, he defended my right to discover, even in a stack of ghoulish horror comics, evil and death, as well as man’s ultimate helplessness in facing either or both.
For the rest of that summer, I slept better on the weekends when my father was with us. On other days I still had nightmares, some in which the skeleton slasher pursued my father; others in which the skeleton chased me.
But, without fail, morning always came, calling me out to spend the day in the light. I discovered that buying the Railroads in Monopoly was often a better strategy than building hotels on low end properties; when the tide was low, I pulled clams out of the gray-green muck along the shore line; I helped my boy cousins paint a fence and I watered my grandmother’s marigolds; I learned how to swim, how to make pancakes, how to bait a hook; and, I read my first Classic Comic, Cyrano de Bergerac, a gift from my father.
The summer was saved.
The monster did not kill my father, and I had seventeen more years before I’d have to be the grown-up in the family.
THE DOGS OF BANGKOK
Birth
In the city, in the great, sprawling landscape of structured chaos, there were those who woke to the prayer songs with every rising sun. To say they woke to it each morning would be inaccurate as they did not live by a time which can be quantified. They did not live by days or months or years. They lived by the boil of daylight and the dangers of the night. They lived by instinct, thirst, violence, honour, and family.
They were the dogs of Bangkok.
Everything they had, every scrap of food and land, they had fought for, and had to fight for still, day after day, on the baking black tarmac of the soi, where every victory was a pyrrhic one.
Many dogs roamed the city, but in the outskirt district of Lak Si, this sunrise signalled great significance for one pack.
A new generation was imminent. Tawan, the sweet-eyed brown bitch, was pregnant. The time to fulfil her pack duty was close. The pack leader, Yai, had been anticipating the birth with feverous determination. Anxious to ensure the safety of those he would father, his plan had been laid out. Each dog in its place.
Yai was not being overprotective. The Den, their verdant oasis, was a coveted home. The trees provided shelter from the sun and was fiercely sought after by the rival packs, who made their homes in the surrounding wastelands.
They would give anything to snatch away Yai’s prized terrain. They wanted more than just the shelter. The Den also provided proximity to a tall creature, a slower, gentler one than the others. Each sunrise, it filled its bucket and gave to Yai and his pack that most precious of all things on the soi: water. The rainy season came and went but the dirty heat, the panting and the dry tongues, they were ever present. The rival packs were reduced to lapping from toxic roadside puddles, until The Den was seized, until the war was over.
Each pack made their own claim to the constant war. The West was led by the three-legged veteran known as Chaisai. His pack were guileful and street-smart, but the crippled weakness of their leader leaked through to his pack. They were no match for Yai, the all black alpha male, and his family.
The East was led by the commanding matriarch, Busaba. Her pack were strong but were blocked by the strip of hard land on which the tall creatures got in their loud boxes and moved at ferocious speeds, making it perilous to cross. The pack had made it across a few times, at nightfall, when the death machines had mostly gone away, but had each time been defeated. If Busaba was to take down Yai and extend her queendom; she would have to learn to be patient.
Then there was the North, who worried Yai the most. Two of his last generation had been butchered by the North. Sud was their leader, named for his strips as well as his predatory instinct. The North had something the others did not; a darkness, a ruthlessness, a savage will. The North were the most desperate and that gave them their biggest power.
The biggest danger to all the packs who fought this ongoing crusade, was not each other. It was the tall creatures.
The tall creatures kicked them, and hit them with those loud moving boxes, snatched them and kept them imprisoned or cut them up and ate them. Another two from Yai’s previous generation were taken by the tall creatures. The family never saw them again. The tall creatures did everything in boxes. They left trails of waste behind them and were capable of both magic and unspeakable cruelty. They were only to be avoided, not understood. The tall creatures were the true rulers, yet the soi dogs fought and killed each other for the bones of what was left.
With enemies all around, sitting on priceless territory, Yai and his pack were in permanent danger. They were vulnerable. They were lowering in numbers and tiring with each defence of their worth. Yai was vividly aware of what the new generation meant. It meant risk. An attack, from one of their adversaries, at a fragile time like this, would be fatal. But it also meant reward. If they were able to survive and see the new generation to adulthood, they would have their strength back. The grim reality, however, was that the chances of this were thin. Of the last generation, only two survived. Jaokhao, the white dwarf, was now second in command. His sister, Sarinee, the brown and white adolescent, was nearing maturity and would soon be asked to fight alongside her family. She knew she would not hesitate when the moment came.
When the time for the birth came, Tawan stayed in the cover of The Den. She was watched by Sarinee, who comforted her through the pains of labour. They were well prepared. Yai, as always, had made sure of that. He guarded them, patrolling the perimeter of The Den, his nose on high alert, always within sight of Tawan, who breathed and whimpered and endured. His commands were clear. Three sharp barks. That was all the warning he needed. If anything made it past the others, they would then have to make it through Yai, a feat which no dog on this soi had yet achieved. Sud came close, once, and he had been waiting for his second chance ever since.
The east entrance was the largest and was guarded by Jaokhao. His short, rabbit-like stature gave invading dogs the impression he was an easy target, something he had proven them wrong on, over and over. He did not have the size and strength possessed by the other dogs on the soi, but he had something they lacked, which was cunning. His ability to learn, and to rationalise, was why he had not just survived so long but had thrived. He could not outmuscle his enemies, but he could outsmart them.
From his vantage point, he watched a lone stray wandering past. Around one eye was a brown patch of fur.
Jaokhao, who unlike other dogs, liked to keep his mouth closed, remained quiet and calm. He watched the wanderer humbly trot past. She gave him a pleading look, to which Jaokhao gave nothing but a cold stare. She turned her head and plodded on.
The north entrance was guarded by Mooping, the white female with the stunted tail. She had mothered Yai’s last generation and knew the severe importance of ushering in the new one. She knew what Tawan was going through. She needed to be there for her. Even if she was getting sick. Yai had noticed her growing frailty but had kept it quiet, for now. He knew her pride would get in the way of any inquisition. For now, she would put her head down and fight for the pack until there was nothing left. That was enough.
Dum, the all black youth, was thrilled at being given the responsibility of guarding the southern entrance, the last entrance not protected by the wall. It was unlike Yai to enlist a juvenile to such an important role, but the war had left him no such luxury as choice. Dum was inexperienced but desperate for a chance to prove himself, to earn the respect of his beloved father and leader. He paced his area, bouncing, hopping on the spot, fraught with excitement, waiting for anything to come by so he could grab it and rip it apart. He almost wished for an intruder to show themselves, some foolish warrior, whose neck he could clamps his jaws around and shred.
He could hear the faint cries of Tawan, as she brought new life into their world.
Then he heard something else. Something which made him stop dead, which made his heart speed up and his eyes dilate.
Three sharp barks. The warning cry from Mooping.
Dum’s senses went into overdrive. Bright silver shot from the tip of his tail to the tips of his ears. But he was tormented; to abandon his post, invite the attackers in, or to run to the aid of his teammate? This was his first test. He was already failing. He was a soldier, he did not want to think, he wanted to see something and kill it. He did not want to make decisions. Although he had seen death before, he was too young to have gotten intimate with it, and he was, above all, frightened.
In his panic, he let out a pained howl. The call could invite predators, as Yai had warned, but Dum’s head was a whirlwind of electricity and the plan was not making sense to him anymore. His heart was close to bursting. He had to do something. If Mooping was being eaten alive by barbarians, he had to save her. He had to move.
He cannonballed his way towards the sounds of his ally, so frenzied that he did not even see the tall creature heading into his unguarded entrance.
He saw nothing, only a tunnel. He smelled nothing, only blood.
He reached the northern entrance of The Den. There was nothing there. Something was wrong. Dum’s head was a jungle as he tried to figure out his actions, his responsibilities, his loyalties. Before, he wanted blood, he wanted the taste of it on his lolling wet tongue, he wanted the red to smear his incisors and mix with his saliva, but now, he wanted nothing more than to run away. He was, after all, nothing but a puppy.
Without a single sound, Mooping emerged from the bushes, carrying the limp, dead body of a reckless attacker in her jaws. Yai had seen off the threat and disposed of it. He had needed no help. Mooping dropped the lifeless corpse and gave Dum a vitriolic growl. He had deserted his duty. Endangered his whole family. Dum whimpered and let a yellow trickle out onto the ground. Mooping launched herself at him, sharp end first. He yelped and scampered away with an inwardly tucked tail.
Mooping hid the body in the bushes, filled with disappointment at youth’s foolhardiness.
When Dum returned to his own area, he did not find safety. He found a tall creature. He had had near misses with these monsters before. Had heard mythical tales of their cruelty. He froze. The tall creature was looking the other away and had not seen him. It was relaxed, leaking from his body, with a fiery stick in its mouth. Dum kept still, knowing that if he refrained from moving, the tall creature could never notice him. The tall creature threw away his fiery stick and turned around. It spotted Dum, paralyzed. There was a momentary standoff, as Dum prepared to throw himself at the creature and fight until one of them fell. Then the tall creature suddenly lunged at Dum, who let out a puny grunt and jumped back. The tall creature then pulled away and made a strange sound, with its mouth turned upward. Then he walked away. Dum’s respiratory system kickstarted back into life. He was safe. He was alive. He forewent his pack duty, and Mooping knew it. She would surely pass this on to Yai, and he would be reprimanded. But he was alive, and, as the distant, fresh cries of new-borns rang through the air, he knew his little brothers and sisters were too.
The family gathered. They shared a warm moment, circled around their delicate new generation. Their eyes were still closed. Tawan delivered eight pups, and although two did not make it, there was no doubt now that the family were bigger, richer, and, most importantly stronger than before. This was a rare moment for the pack, a moment of joy. For now, they had won. They could rest, though they knew that every victory on the soi shows its cost eventually.
Dum was racked with guilt, and uncharacteristically quiet during the celebration. He waited for punishment from Yai, but it never came. Dum presumed that Mooping had spared him from retribution, but the truth was that Yai was punishing Dum in a far more profound way; he was letting him live with his guilt.
That night they kept a watchful eye over their new generation and slept in shifts. Now the real hard work would begin, but for them it was worth it. They fought for moments like this and for now, they were the kings
They were the dogs of Bangkok.
Innocence
During those headache hot afternoons, when the sun reached its zenith in the great sky, the dogs of war took a respite from their battlefield. They closed their eyes. The unspoken ceasefire resumed. The languid flow of life came to a crawl. The great machine of the city cooled its overheated engines, slowed and shut itself down.
Even many of the tall creatures lay down in the heat. The intensity of the boil hour sapped the energy of most, although there was, amongst the many sleeping creatures of the jungle, one beast who was wide awake. Sud.
When others felt the swelter, they sought shelter and rest. When Sud felt it, he saw opportunity. There was no other moment he could safely guarantee that his enemies would be far away in their dreams. No better time for him to get up and get his claws dirty.
He took his perch on a dry mound, in the waste land behind the wall of The Den. Just out of sniffing distance of Yai and his family. Silently, he watched his soldiers claw and hack and tear away at the dirt beneath their burning paws. They were coming. Bit by bit, they were scratching and burrowing their way to Yai, who, even despite his growing paranoia, was oblivious.
Sud was aware of the time it would take to reach The Den from underground. He was prepared to allow his loyal workers to suffer. He hoped they would understand; it was for the greater good. Finally taking back the land that had been snatched away from his ancestors. Sud’s bloodline had been waiting too long for revenge. Now, it was just the other side of the tunnel.
Soon the boil hour would be over. The tall creatures would rise from their slumber too, and life would go on as before. The great machine would churn and splutter its way onward and somehow function despite itself. The loud fast boxes would roar on, on the roads and in the skies, the fumes would pump, the wheels would burn and the feet would stomp, all over the suffocated floor, the filthy, polluted mass organism would rage on, with all those trapped inside it.
And the dogs of war would wake.
The North Pack would cover their hole, cover their tracks, and return to their own territory. Yai would wake and immediately check on the safety of his young ones. He would see them nestled beside their mother. He would be comfortable, unaware that his enemies were coming. Coming for him and his family. Through the dirt, under the wall, and right into his home.
The sizzle of the concrete was always a shock to the paws after the boil hour. Dum was still new to this and flinched as he stepped out of The Den. His sister, Sarinee, walked alongside him. She had been given the chance to prove herself as a senior. Her senses were sharp. Her duties were finding food for the now bigger and hungrier family, as well protecting her brother, out there on the soi, in the wild. He had only been out of The Den once previously, to the end of the lane. That time he had Yai by his side. Now, even with Sarinee beside him, he had never felt more alone.
They left the security of The Den. Dum’s nose took in intoxicating new smells. His head darted in every direction, his instinct chasing his curiosity. Sarinee restrained him and tried to keep him focussed. This was no time for discovery. There were tiny beating hearts counting on them. Sarinee would rather be banished from the pack than return with nothing. Her dominant trait was her pride; she had inherited it from her father.
Jaokhao knew Yai’s pride all too well, the pain in his side through the recent, leaner times. His decisions were indisputable, even when they caused more blood than peace. Contradicting Yai’s word and making him look weak in front of his pack would only bring dark consequences. The white dwarf tried to make what little difference he could. It was he who had championed Sarinee to lead the food expedition. There were mouths to be fed. They needed bodies on the ground. Over time, he reasoned through Yai’s staunch reluctance. Risk was essential. The war was an extraordinary time. To give Sarinee the chance to prove herself as a capable senior was to deepen their strength. Yai held onto his stubborn ways for as long as he could, but the starved cries of his infants told him his right-hand dog was right. His children were hungry, for more than milk. Sarinee would get her chance to feed them.
For all Jaokhao’s intelligence, he failed to see that the was bigger than him. Bigger than all of them. The war would outlive them all, as it had done their ancestors.
Since Yai’s bloodline had seized The Den, in a bloody battle with Sud’s, the war had plodded on.
Yai grew up in the Den, and the fight to protect it. War was his home.
He was born a giant, and while the fighting went on, he waited for his chance to take the throne. They all knew there was no stopping Yai if he wanted the kingdom for himself. He could snap their necks for amusement if he so wished. But when Yai’s father passed, another unquestionable law of the soi came into play; the law of seniority. Yai was not the eldest. His brother JakJak was, and Yai was forced to stand by and watch as he was coronated. The celebration was tense. The family hailed their new king but held something back. Yai could smell it coming from them. Fresh and alluring. It was fear.
When the day broke following the ceremony, JakJak did not rise like his family.
They knew immediately.
The king was dead.
In a world whose very existence orbited around conflict, there was, surprisingly no outrage. The family kept their peace. The Den now belonged to Yai and none of them were foolish enough to challenge him. He could make anyone disappear.
The kingdom of The Den went on, as did the war. The machine kept turning.
By the time the sun was lowering itself, the children had reached the barrier. The death zone in which the tall creatures got in their furious loud boxes and hurtled themselves through space.
Dum kept within a fur’s distance of his sister. She shoved him away but he stuck to her like a parasite. There were terrifying, wonderful new sights and smells all around him. He jumped as he saw some alien creature, something with four legs like himself but smaller, leaner, cockier. Dum had never seen anything like it before but he felt a strong inclination to chase it and murder it. Only his fear held him back.
They knew not to try and cross the zone, as to do so would be to die. They followed a beaten pathway alongside it, until they reached a row of large hard boxes, in which the tall creatures got together and ate. The waste they scattered was a goldmine for the soi dogs.
What the children did not know, as they prowled their way towards the rich source of food, was that they were being followed.
While Dum was too preoccupied with the plethora of immediate dangers around him to detect the hint of a predator lurking some way back, Sarinee was much too fixated on her fear of returning to The Den with nothing to sustain her fragile young brothers and sisters.
Between them, they hadn’t the faintest clue that only a small distance behind them was Chaisai, the cripple, along with two of his soldiers. The enemy pack of the West had silkily skulked their way through the debris, just out of a nose’s distance, wearing wolfish grins.
When the children reached the motherload, their hunters made themselves invisible among the detritus. Chaisai’s soldiers were predictably eager for blood. A rare chance to do profound damage to Yai and his family had fallen into their laps. His children were alone, in the wild, overexposed and under-protected, and the king was nowhere to be seen.
But Chaisai had been on the soi for too long, and had witnessed too many of its brutalities. He lost his leg in a collision with a tall creature and its killing machine. He was left for dead, gasping for air on the roasting roadside, but he rose to his feet, the ones he had left, and he walked onward, wearing his scars as proof of his resilience.
It appeared all too easy. Yai had sent two innocents out into the harsh wilderness; it was almost like he was asking for them to be hunted and killed. Chaisai sniffed the air around him. He wondered if it was a trap, if Yai was waiting for them, unseen amongst the mountains of tall creature waste.
Chaisai licked his lips and restrained his impatient underlings. Now was the time to wait. They watched Dum gnawing away at a bone, gorging himself on as much as he could before he would have to share. They watched Sarinee scrape and gather every morsel she could in her mouth, and implore her brother to stop wasting time and do the same.
They watched everything. And they waited.
When the children had foraged all they could hold, they turned around. Now was the hard part; getting the food home. The wily old cripple waited for the perfect moment, concealed in the rubble. The lost children were almost within reach, and now they had mouths full of food. It was so effortless it was almost cruel. Sadistic.
The children headed in the direction of their instincts. Home. They got so far when Sarinee stopped dead. Her nose twitched. There was something in the air. Her brother stopped too, though he was unaware of what danger had frozen his sister. All he was aware of was that his pulse had tripled, and he yearned for his home.
Chaisai appeared first. Before Sarinee could react, he had snatched the food from her mouth and was hopping away. He may have been old and crippled, but when the smell of meat filled his nose, he could still move.
The first soldier then came at Sarinee from the rear. Far larger than her, he had little struggle in knocking her down and towering over her. His oozy wet drool dropped from his hanging lip.
The sick mouth of the soldier looked ready to strike down, when Dum exploded. With a newfound strength born of fury, he launched himself between the jaws of the enemy and his sister. The violence inside him had been awoken. His inner soldier was blossoming.
Even with all his heart, Dum was much too inexperienced. The second soldier got to him in an instant, locked his jaws around the neck, and tossed him aside.
The huge soldier then opened wide and bit deep into Sarinee’s neck, forcing from within her a scream so harrowing it was heard by the tall creatures in their big hard boxes, and would be heard by Dum in his sleep forever.
While Dum was still dazed, the second soldier took the food from his mouth. Victorious, they both ran to their leader, the crippled old veteran, who had sat back and watched. They congratulated each other, and then ran away. They did not turn to look back to see their victims as they walked away. This was a big moment for Chaisai. Yai could have The Den, they had his honour.
The most unquestionable law of them all on the soi was that for every victory there was a price. As Chaisai and his soldiers strutted home with their tails perked, they were hit by the roaring metal of a beast in feeding mode, the smoky, burning steel of the tall creature and his pet killer. The large soldier was killed instantly. The second was badly injured, its leg broken. Its end would soon come, and it would be welcomed.
Chaisai walked away with all three of his legs remaining. He was hurt but his wounds were minor. The tall creature stepped out of its death machine screamed. Chaisai gathered what he could of the food scattered on the floor, and hobbled back to his home, where the remarkable life of the crippled old veteran would go on.
The sun sank back into the earth, and the children appeared in The Den. There was no need to communicate, it was clear a terrible thing had happened. Mooping ran to the side of Sarinee and licked her wounds. Jaokhao comforted the traumatised Dum. He had lost more than the food today. He had seen the true, ceaselessly black nature of life on the soi. He had lost his innocence.
Mooping darted for the exit. She was going to do what the inexperienced youths couldn’t. She was going to feed the family. She summoned what strength she could, but her insidious illness had made her slower. Yai exerted no effort in halting her before she made it out of The Den. There was no way he would let the family depend on a sick, incapacitated dog. It was reckless. He sent Jaokhao instead, whom he could trust out there on the soi. Jaokhao did not hesitate, for he knew he was, in many ways, responsible for the scars Sarinee now bore.
Yai’s kingdom was as much a blessing as a curse. He was at the top, all lone. Every day was a battle. His enemies lurked around every corner, and even in his domain, there were those he could not trust. Those he felt would betray him. The king could trust only himself.
When he detected the scent of a tall creature approaching The Den, he rose to his feet and growled. The creature slowly emerged from the tall grass, stepping right into The Den. Yai recognised it. It was the slow, kind one who brought them their lifeblood. It had never dared to step so close before. Yai snarled and showed his menacing teeth.
The tall creature remained perfectly still, looking Yai straight in the eye. Yai crouched down and readied himself to strike. The family crowded round Tawan and the pups to protect them. Then it became clear. This time, the slow tall creature had brought no water. It had brought food. Vast amounts of food.
It carried the food in two large sacks, which it dropped on the floor, spilling the contents around their paws. Then it remained perfectly still. Its presence had a calmness to it that told Yai, who was slowly softening his growls, that there was no reason to be afraid. The dogs were too ravenous to wait. They snatched the food from the floor and ate. Yai kept his eye on the creature, before gradually turning his head to the unexpected banquet
The tall creature looked to the pups. Its eyes lit up. Deftly, the creature tiptoed its way over to their nest. Tawan glared at the tall creature. Her instinct told her to attack, but a quietness inside her took over. There was no war with this tall creature. She held her breath and watched as the tall creature crouched down and gently lifted one of the pups into the air. The tall creature’s face transformed into a picture of light and music. It held the pup in the air, making strange noises at it. Tawan remained static, her eyes locked on her infant.
Then, she slowly got up and joined the others in the feast.
The family would live on. As long as they had each other, and The Den, along with all of its hidden gifts. Sarinee’s scars would remind her of her survival. Her brother’s lost innocence would only strengthen him. There would be darker, crueller things waiting for them, but, together, the family would live on.
Thirst
The dense atmosphere dissipated, the concrete arteries of the city unclogged, and the oppressive air cooled. Order took a rest, and mischief came to life.
The white dwarf’s tongue lazily hung as he explored the suburb usually populated by the tall creatures. Now, it was empty. Civilization had tucked itself in and left the landscape for the wild ones to roam. Anything was possible. Jaokhao would take his time before returning to The Den and its relentless pressures. His guilt still lay heavily on his back. He had led Sarinee and Dum to the wolves. They were hurt, because of him. The family was starving, and for Jaokhao and all the dogs of Bangkok; life was family.
He was not the only one looking for scraps. With the tall creatures gone, the lost dogs of the soi emerged from their holes. The exiled and stray. The dogs with no war to fight in, no Den to protect. For now, Jaokhao was one of them. Just another lost dog, prowling the night.
For a moment, he was free, free of Yai, of The Den, of the war. He was nothing, and being nothing meant having nothing, nothing to lose. Life on the soi was far more comfortable with nothing to lose.
A lone wanderer passed him by. He took in her scent. Familiar, though he could not place it. She turned down a blackened pathway. Jaokhao was compelled to follow. There was a discernible weakness in dogs with no pack to stand with. She would put up little fight, and had the manner of a dog who knew the secrets of the soi. If there were scraps of food, she knew where to find them.
He kept a few yards behind, his defences flared. He was suspect of the shadows and their tendency to unveil predators. Then, the lone wanderer stopped. She turned to face Jaokhao, as if she had been aware of his presence all along. Around one eye was a brown patch of fur, and, like her scent, this seemed to trigger some vague memory in Jaokhao, but he was unable to pin it down.
A face off in the darkness. The brown eyed wanderer’s stance was not one of combat. She was shy. Her weakness showed in her eyes. No dog was meant to face the grittiness of the soi alone. Without a family, no dog lasts long. Jaokhao felt an unusual warmth for this lone wanderer and a foolishness in himself.
She meekly bowed her head and inched towards him, when his thoughts returned to the yawning mouths of the pups he was supposed to be scavenging for. This lone wanderer was of no kinship to him. In his overindulgence, he had forgotten his family.
She turned around again, as if to leave, but she did not walk away. She was offering him something. Something which both confused and stimulated him in equal measure. Somewhere in the haze of his primal urges, a switch flicked. The lone wanderer with the brown eye patch was offering herself. He knew what to do without knowing how.
He took one step forward and that was as far as he got. Before he knew it, he was lifted from his feet by some unknown, all-dominant force.
He tried to swing his head around, to meet the eye of his invisible assailant, but he was swiftly thrown into the back of one of the vulgar, spewing machines. And then he knew. The tall creatures. They had got him.
The box was nothing but cold and dark. Jaokhao’s usually sharp senses were fuzzy, he could not make out anything in the opaque sheet of blackness all around him. Then a rumble started beneath his paws. They were moving.
As he tried to regain his balance and composure, he was swayed and knocked over with the momentum of this heartless grumbling machine. None of it made sense, but there was one thing he understood; if he could not figure it out soon, he was going to die.
The foul machine ploughed onwards, spluttering out its volumes of choked ash. The thickness of the gloom began to evaporate. Jaokhao could start to make out vague shapes around him. Disturbing shapes. Levitating shapes. Hanging canvasses, all around him.
The smell came before the sight. The smell of food. He was surrounded by food. The floating entities around him were skinned and strung up dogs. The corpses of the lost strays.
The thunderous box straightened its path. The white dwarf was able to stand. He did not know much time he had but he knew he had to act fast if he wanted to see his family again. He stopped thinking.
There was no place in this cold dark box from his to conceal himself, except one. His size, always his crutch, could now be his saviour. He looked upwards, jammed his claws into the flesh, and scaled the stiff, rotten body of a fallen stray. A few times, the fast box swerved again, as if to taunt Jaokhao, almost sending him clambering back to the floor, but he held on. It was all he knew how to do.
He cut open the corpse and buried his head in the putrid hole. No thoughts. No consciousness. He simply held on. His only remaining drive was his most base, his most immovable. Survival.
The vile machine gradually quietened its hissing and was replaced by horrifying silence. They came to a stop. Wedged in between the vital organs of a cadaver, Jaokhao waited. The tall creature would return, and he would have a tiny moment in which to escape. One mistake would mean The End.
The doors opened. Twilight poured through. Jaokhao held his breath inside the rotting slab of meat, the same matter, the same life as him. The presence of the tall creature filtered through to his hiding place in the body of the dead. He held on.
The tall creature sniffed and scratched its head. Jaokhao listened to the rise and fall of its breathing. His own lungs were full of the stench of rigor mortis. He couldn’t hold on much longer. If he was to see The Den again, he was to take the leap back into the world of the living.
In one rapid movement, the white dwarf flung himself from within the hide, and was out the door before the tall creature could blink. He landed on his feet and darted away, blindly, breathlessly. He ran towards the light. The cool glow of the street. It was all he could make out in the blur.
The tall creature screamed and ran for its other pet killer, its handheld assassin. It fired off some deafening roars. But the white dwarf was too small, too agile. This was his night. He had come face to face with the tall creature, the death merchant, had wriggled in and out of its clutch, had outthought the great thinker, and lived.
He reached the street, from where he could still hear the cries and bangs of the defeated butcher. He did not look back. He was far away from home. But he was safe now. He could rely on his internal compass and his rock hard will. He was going to make it home. He was going to feed his family. It may take all night, but Jaokhao was going home.
The dawn was just crackling through the layer of urban smog as the slow kind tall creature brought the usual bucket of water to The Den. The family were asleep, resting and well fed. Just as the tall creature put down the water and turned back home, Jaokhao returned. Exhausted and emaciated but proud, he stumbled his way into The Den, where he fell to the floor. The others rushed around him. They had begun to fear they may never see him again.
Of the family members, only one appeared unmoved by Jaokhao’s frightening tale of abduction and hanging corpses. His leader. It was a terrible thing for Yai, to be burdened with such fear and mistrust of his own right-hand dog. Now, he needed the cool, measured presence of Jaokhao more than ever. Mooping was coughing blood, struggling to stand. She could not carry her weight, in the family, in the war, rendering her just another mouth to be fed, as helpless as the puppies. He listened to Jaokhao’s story with his head bowed, knowing all too well that soon he would have to make a decision. An ugly one.
When Jaokhao finished his story, he helped himself to the heap of food brought by their kind friend. His mission to find food had been a waste, and had nearly killed him, but he was too tired to feel a grudge. After scoffing down as much as he could, he curled up in the grass, and slept.
The morning passed by, no different than any other. What the pack did not know, was that they had an audience. To Jaokhao’s return, to their habits, to everything.
The lone wanderer with the brown eye patch lay beneath the belly of a tall creature’s machine. Stationed outside The Den, empty and silent. Her comfortable vantage point had offered her a plain view of everything; even the slow tall creature and his morning ritual of giving The Den their drops to drink. From her spot in the shade she had learned something new. A weakness in the great kingdom. It had a dependency, one which was slow, weak, could easily be taken down. It lived only a few feet away, where it spent most of its time sleeping on one of those string nests they made between trees. The wanderer had seen everything.
The boil hour approached. Life retreated. When it was clear, the wanderer slid from under the sleeping machine. She had accomplished what she had been sent here to do. It was time for her to go home, for she was no wanderer at all. Her home, on the other side of the barrier, was waiting for her. Her family and their black and white queen. Busaba.
She reached the barrier. The death zone. She was lucky. The loud boxes were static. Gridlocked. They made primal, aggressive noises at each other. It was safe to cross the infamously treacherous territory with ease. Something made her feel as if her and her pack’s fortune was changing. Soon the war could be theirs.
The vacant wastelands on the east side of the district still bore vestiges of the tall creature’s abandoned structures. A land forgotten. Busaba and her soldiers delighted in the return of their brown eyed spy. There was no time wasted before sharing the news. Yai’s flaw had been found. The Garden of Eden was about to go through a drought. It was simple. Take down the frail old tall creature, and inevitably, The Den would soon fall.
The boil hour passed. Yai and his family rose, Mooping stayed on the ground. It was almost time. She tried to stand but shook and crumbled. There was not much left for her to give. It was almost time.
Jaokhao pleaded with Yai. Mooping was one of their own. It was their duty, as members of this great pack, to protect her. To be sent out onto the soi alone was a death sentence for any dog, no matter how strong or sick. This was family. What was all the fighting for, if they were to toss their brethren aside when they became inconvenient?
The leader saw it another way. They could either watch Mooping die in front of them or leave her to do it in peace. Death was coming for her. They could not stop it. Acceptance was the first step. Jaokhao was pained, disillusioned. He wondered if his leader would so coldly dispose of him if his worth devalued. But the white dwarf had learned something, in the belly of the dead. There was always a way. No matter what walls were closing, there was always a way.
It came to him just as Yai was tired of listening. His narrow vision only saw one solution, to take Mooping to the street where she could close her eyes forever, on her own terms. But Jaokhao had an idea. Their kind old friend. The slow tall creature, the one who fed and cared for them. They could trust it, and its species’ unique ability to make miracles. The tall creatures could fix Mooping. She had a chance. It may be hopeful, but it was a chance.
Yai was silent, intrinsically doubtful. The tall creatures were their enemies, and the last time he had given in to Jaokhao’s rationale, his children had almost been killed.
But he had already said it. She was dead either way. In The Den, on the street, or in the hands of the tall creatures. If she had a chance, it was all they could do as her family to let her take it.
The sun finished another circle. Once more, the noise of the jungle faded, the animals went back to their hiding places.
The anonymous playground came back to life. And this night carried a true, living sense of menace. Led by the brown eyed spy, the East pack were coming.
Back in quiet of The Den, Yai was displeased to see Jaokhao leaving, again, and at this pivotal moment, with no explanation. The great leader was rapidly losing faith in his brother. His constant questioning. His private agendas. But there was important work to be done. Jaokhao suspected he had been watched and played, for some time. That brown eye patch. He could not get out of his head. It had led him to the butcher. He felt sure it was no coincidence.
The white dwarf returned to the freedom of the night. He had missed it. His fractious relationship with Yai was on his mind, like always, but for now it would have to wait. He knew what he was looking for. The brown eyed stranger was nowhere to be seen, but he had expected as much. There was another prey waiting for him. He saw it before long. That white box. The one he had been imprisoned in. Trundling along, harbouring its massacred.
If the brown eyed stranger had taught him anything, it was that on the soi, knowledge was power. He locked his senses onto his target, the butcher and his machine. He kept a safe distance away, stuck to the shadows. The white dwarf followed his kidnapper, out of the suburbs, all the way to its home. The journey seemed longer before, when he was on the verge of becoming a slab of meat. Out of sight, he watched the butcher exit its machine and enter its home. He held his breath. Knowledge was power, and he had just armed himself with a secret weapon. He knew the route to the butcher’s den. The upper hand had changed.
When life was fully submerged under the blanket of night, the barrier was safe to cross. Busaba, the black and white queen, guided her warriors across. Her plan had worked. Her brown eyed spy had given her exactly what she needed. Things were changing. The war could be theirs, theirs to mark down in history and regale however they please. The East pack crossed the barrier and made their way through the hushed streets.
Jaokhao returned from his hunt to a surprise. His master had had a change of heart.
Mooping was showing signs of fight. There was, somewhere inside her decaying body, some will left to live. This was family. This was war. This was sticking together, through anything. Yai had seen his compassionless ways for what they were. He would wish for his family to protect him if ever fell sick or injured. The white dwarf and his master reached an agreement. At daybreak, when the tall creature showed with the water, they would take Mooping to it. Mooping would fight on. The Den would see glory again. Yai and Jaokhao were glad to finally see eye to eye. They needed each other. And Mooping needed them.
The slow tall creature slept. Warm drool dangled from its lip. It was peaceful, far away in the world of slumber, empty glass bottles littered around it. The black and white queen was close. She and her furtive warriors tiptoed their way past The Den. This was a soundless arrival, unlike their previous assaults which had been unsubtle and fierce. Things were changing.
Yai was too preoccupied with his domestic troubles, and with the idea of a threat, to notice the real and living danger sneaking past his home in the middle of the night. The East pack made it past The Den and were closing in. Mooping was holding on.
Snap. The slow tall creature woke just in time to see that brown eye patch, inches away, attached to a wide-open mouth showing teeth and tongue and spit. Snap. Before its eyes were even fully open, it was surrounded by carnivores. It almost let out a scream, but it was too stunned to make a sound. A hive of pain engulfed it. Ripped from its nest, from its dreams, dragged to the floor and mauled. It cowered into a ball. The East pack showed no mercy. They landed their blows, engraved their marks, planted their scars. The black and white queen stepped back and took her leisure. She kept one eye behind her, in case the muffled cries of her victim alerted Yai. The Den was silent.
When she was satisfied with the suffering, Busaba called for its end. Her warriors left the tall creature to bleed out and rot on its own doorstep. Together they flocked, and took a relaxed stroll past The Den. They were mocking Yai. The trees and bushes which sheltered this Garden of Eden, from the sun, also sheltered it from the plain-to-see hazards right in front. The East pack sauntered past with their heads cocked and howled all the way home.
On the other side of those trees and bushes, Mooping held on for the morning. She could see the end of the tunnel. It was right in front of her. So warm and welcoming. Resist it. Not much longer now. Almost there. Yai was close. He always would be. He wouldn’t let go. Just a little longer. So close. Sunrise would bring miracles. Yai had promised her. She wasn’t going to let him down. Not yet.
Daybreak. The watering hole was dry. The family waited. They waited for their kind old friend. Dum was the only who was still clinging onto the pitiful hope that Mooping could be brought back to the life. If anyone could do it, it was their kind old friend. But the seniors knew it was over. Mooping had closed her eyes. She had not even made it to sunrise. Yai was at least spared the pain of making his decision. At least they would no longer have to watch her suffer. Now, Mooping could rest. Her war was over.
The Garden of Eden had lost its water supply. The tall creature had given, and the tall creature had taken away. Had shown its kindness and its negligence. Become just another faceless enemy, and they had enough of those. Yai’s paradise was lost, and soon he would have tougher decisions to make. The thirst had begun.
Freedom
The soldier was a new recruit, one of the strays Sud had rounded up for the oncoming slaughter. His vision was almost a finished piece. He had lost some soldiers through the excavation. This was unavoidable. The squadron was prepared for collateral damage. They were well versed in their leader’s rhetoric. It was easy for him to replenish the numbers, and then some. The statistics were of no consequence, and they were close. They could see light at the end of the tunnel. This was no metaphor.
The rookie soldier sniffed the skull, unsure of it. Impatient growls from behind him urged him onwards. The rookie took a breath, then shoved it aside and put his head down, his paws to work. The rest followed. In their masses. Sud was at the back. He would be the last to reveal himself to Yai. The striped beast had been patient. He was close to building his legacy.
Dim cracks of sun were filtering through from above the rookie’s head. He was ordered to cease the dig and stand still. Word was to be passed onto Sud. The kinetic operation would commence on his decision. The end was in sight. Paradise was nearly theirs.
A sandpaper dry tongue in a glistening stream signalled that for now, the thirst was over. The seniors drank first, then the infants. The fresh running water surged through their veins.
The Garden of Eden had lost its water supply; the drought had created a migration, a long, treacherous one.
The seniors carried the pups in their mouths as they crossed through busy streets, through dusty stretches of land.
Jaokhao hoped now the water was gone, The Den would lose its value. The war objective had been neutralised. The killing could come to an end. It was taking its toll. The king was cracking. His right-hand dog had seen it in his eyes, when he suggested an alternative, closer water source. In the North. Yai was so locked up in his head he was convinced it was a trap. It was clear to Yai that his best friend would inevitably betray him. It was a comfort to finally hear it.
Not wanting to be invited his own assassination, Yai rejected the idea on the spot. A cold, despondent Jaokhao walked away. He saw something in his leader he had never seen before.
Yai was frightened.
The family took a big, long drink. Dum and Sarinee splashed around in the cool, vital water. The pups, who were now almost able to walk, lapped up the fresh running stream, bathed and basked in it, while their sweet-eyed mother watched them. They would see another sunrise, but back here they would come, again, and again, until their great leader found a way to make it rain. Trust in the king was deep and immovable, from most. Yai would not let his family go thirsty for long. He would find a way.
Dum still believed their kind old friend would come back, and it would bring Mooping too. But this was what the tall creatures did. They killed and ate and used up and burnt through everything, never looking back at their trails of waste. But now, as he played with his sister in the cleansing water, he had forgotten all that. The hard times were over for now. Even with Mooping gone, they could make it through the drought if the family stuck together.
Yai watched over his family, with one eye held on the crafty, white dwarf. Yai could never tell where his mind was. He could not trust his best friend anymore. There was a place inside him in which he knew there was only one way for this to end. Jaokhao would be silenced. Yai had killed family members before. But this one would hurt the most.
The white dwarf had daydream plans of his own. He was sick of the war. The Den was more trouble to protect than its worth. He missed the freedom, the chill, the strangeness of the night. To be a lone wolf, fending for and counting only on himself, was the life Jaokhao had tasted, and now yearned for.
The boil hour was close. Yai gathered his family. Important to conserve their energy. Reserves were needed for the gruelling times ahead. The seniors lifted the pups with their mouths. The family made the voyage home. The thirst would come again. All they could do was put one paw in front of the other and hold on. Yai would save them soon.
The hush of the boil hour brought chaos to its knees.
Thick clouds hung, yet no rain fell. They slept fast, nestled together under the biggest tree, the pups squashed in between the gaps.
At first the rumble was faint, like heavy machinery in the distance. Then it was something immediate, something earthly, visceral, threatening. The ground was moving. Jaokhao was the first to wake. Through bleary eyes, he looked around, and neither saw nor smelled any trace of a predator. The picture was calm. But through the tips of his paws, a sensation. Then the quake More bad things were going to happen.
Then the quiet explosion.
Swarms of beasts shot from the ground, one after another, like a volcanic eruption. Yai awoke with a mighty roar. The earth had caved and exposed an army. The family were dazed and hopelessly outnumbered. The pups wailed, yet they had no cognition of the Armageddon that had arrived.
Then Yai saw the stripes. His body went cold. Sud had found him. He had holed himself up in his castle and his enemies had got to him through the very earth itself. Their eyes locked. Everything stopped moving, for the briefest second. And then the killing started.
Dum made a run for it. He did not get far. He was dragged back by a gang of soldiers and
that was when this war they all lived in ceased to be a war, and became a slaughter. They tossed Dum around like a lifeless rag before breaking his neck. Jaokhao rushed to the aid of his brother but did not even get close. He was shoved aside by a bulldozing bulldog heading straight for the pups. His head collided with a tree. His vision closed in and darkened. He drifted away.
Tawan threw herself over the pups to protect them but had no chance against the charging brute. Sweet-eyed mother was done for. This was not a battle. This was sport. The strangled cry she let out just before her lights switched off alerted Yai. His head shot just in time to see his beloved’s head touch the ground. He tried to wrestle free of the savages all around him, but there were too many of them. Sud was behind them, waiting, saving himself. When the great black beast was tired, Sud would finish him off. History would be corrected.
Yai heard the cries of his cowering children. A monster inside him stirred. He tapped into a deeper, meaner well of strength. He pounced on one soldier’s neck and snapped another’s with his teeth. He headbutted a third out of the way and made a dash for his children. Charging his way through the battle scene, he felt something snapping at his ankles. Then his whole mass toppled, and hit the floor. The king was down. Sud mounted his prey. Looked into the eyes of his enemy, then opened wide. Yai closed his eyes. His time had come. He waited for the searing pain of a canine but it never came. He opened his eyes and saw not his nemesis, but his daughter, the graceful lady, Sarinee. Then she was gone again. Sud dragged her from the picture by the neck. His glazed red eyes shone as he clamped down, hard, and twisted the point. Sarinee tried to scream but couldn’t. Her body went limp. The striped beast released her, and she fell to the floor like a stuffed doll.
Yai could not find the imploding rage inside anymore. He felt in his soul the fold and collapse of a great structure. He was tired. He was hurt. He was afraid.
Sud pounced. He was so close to his dream, much too close to let it slip away now. He was going to see it home. His entourage formed around him. Yai was hounded, encircled, in a coliseum of murder. All his family were dead, and he was next.
The Garden of Eden was burning.
The savages pinned Yai to the floor, while their leader licked his lips. The crucifixion would not be quick. Sud would take his time in exacting his bloodline’s revenge. The act would be a ceremony, a symbolic killing, to mark the end of an era. The king would be executed on his own throne, and a new dawn would rise.
Then the white dwarf came to.
He lifted his head, which still throbbed, and saw the scene of a massacre. His was family was gone, and Yai was about to join them. He heard the sneers and growls of the savages. Heard the stifled moans of his leader. Slowly, he got up. One way, he saw death. The other way, he saw the exit, clear and open. Freedom was staring him in the face.
Then his eyes met with his leader’s. Cowered on the floor, held down. This was finally it. The moment Yai had waited for. Jaokhao saw the defeat in his master’s eyes. He turned his head away. Yai was right all along. His brother would betray him. Jaokhao turned to the exit. There was nothing left for him to save. It was over. He stumbled out of The Den, and that was it. No way back for him now. He’d sold himself to the night. Deserted his home and took to that most dreaded and magical of places; the lone wilderness of the soi.
Yai was finished. His bear strength was tapped. Sud stood over his prey, panting and drooling. He had his dream. The dogs of war sang.
Yai closed his eyes, and Sarinee rose. She saw the horrific spectacle. The North had taken everything, except her soul. She howled a long, vengeful note. The executioners stopped and turned to look. Sarinee howled again, then turned and scrambled her way out of The Den. In the split-second Sud was distracted, Yai found one final spring of strength left inside. His kingdom was in ruins, but his life was not over yet. He wrenched himself from the prison of dogs and made for the exit. Sud roared in agony and ordered his soldiers to give chase. With his last ounce of will, Yai steamrolled his way towards escape, shoving the savages aside. He had given his life to The Den, but it was finally over. His nightmares had shown themselves to him. The revolution had come. The North had taken back their land. The Garden of Eden was in the right place again. The Garden of Eden had its rightful citizens back.
They found her on the side of the road. They were informed of an emergency case in Lak Si. They got in their machine and went searching. Then they found her. She was waiting for The End. It was close enough. She’d been viciously beaten and was badly dehydrated. If she wasn’t so weak, she may have fought them off. She was tough to have survived this long.
They picked her up and put her in the back of the machine, and drove her to their centre. They gave her stitches, medicine, food and water. They put her in a cage and mostly left her alone, but occasionally, one of them got in with her, stayed a safe distance away, and just sat there, passive and quiet. Over time she got better. Her wounds healed. She grew to feel comfortable around them and even to feel joy upon seeing them and the food they brought. She stayed there for a long time, before someone else came along, and took her to a new place. They gave her a bowl and a bed and a new name, a new life. The graceful lady was a survivor. She lived a long, peaceful life.
Sud’s masterpiece had been robbed of its final stroke. His failure to finish off his enemy would eat away at him. If only he were not so boastful and theatrical, if only he had snatched at his chance when he had it within his reach. He could not rest until Yai was found, captured and brought to him dead or nearly dead.
There was something else missing from The Den. The water. Whatever secret trick Yai had to make it appear, he had taken with him. There was no other way. The new king assembled a company and sent them on a search and secure mission. Cover every inch of ground. The whole district. Three of the family had escaped. One of them was a dwarf, one of them a badly injured female. Sud was not as concerned with these two. If they were found and killed on the way, that would be a bonus. There was one primary target. Sud was used to waiting. He could wait a little longer to have Yai’s head, resting at his feet when he curled up in his new kingdom.
The soi was a harsh place to be for a fallen warlord. Everywhere he looked, Yai saw strangers and enemies. He was all alone. His open wounds still stung. The heat echoed off the land and created ripples in the air, intensifying the sickly sewage stink of the tall creatures and their toxic expulsions.
Yai stumbled onward, panting heavily under his mangled black coat. A whizzing torpedo shot by and nearly took off his head. He jumped to the roadside and was kicked away by some leathery-skinned troll. He scuttled away again with a yelp. A king without his kingdom was no longer a king but a peasant. Without The Den, he had nothing. He had neither eaten nor drunk in too long.
Jaokhao. Sarinee. They had made it out of The Den. They had to be alive. He would find them, or he would die first.
The company returned from the hunt. The soldiers bowed their heads. They had sniffed every square inch. Not one trace of any of them. They had to be dead, rounded up and hauled to the mass graves. The Den was theirs now. The great tunnel project was a success. The grand vision had been realized. The humbled Yai was of no threat now. Time to relax and enjoy the start of a long, prosperous reign.
Sud dismissed their sycophantic sentiments. This was not about safety. This was about honour. This was about perfection. The search would continue indefinitely, until one of his fools brought him his trophy.
The sound of the bowl hitting the floor woke him each sunrise. It was always followed by the sound of another bowl. And both sounds were always hushed, as if made in secret.
He heard the signal and was up and on his feet in seconds. He poked his head out from the bush. He saw the kind stranger and his offering. One bowl of water, another of food. He hopped out. His tail involuntarily wagged as the kind stranger patted him on the head. He ate and he drank.
The white dwarf had found a place to hole up and wait it out. Squeezed inside a bush, tucked away in the corner of a garden, behind one of the tall creature’s dens. He thought no one would find him here, until one of them did. One less threatening than the others. An infant. A small creature. It kept Jaokhao’s presence a secret from its family, as it knew they would expel him. The first time it brought food for Jaokhao, he kept at a safe distance, and growled until it moved away. Over time, he grew to feel no threat in its company at all.
The freedom of the night would soon be his, but there was one thing he had left to do. The white dwarf was not finished yet.
From atop his throne, Sud entertained the beginnings of new dreams. The North pack were no longer just that. Their territory had expanded. His army, ruthless unlike any seen before, could conquer even more. They had taken back The Den and made it look like child’s play. The other packs would be light work in comparison. If he chose, on a whim, he could have the whole district. His very own empire.
As night fell, the company returned from another search. Still nothing. Enough time had passed, they assured. The soi would eat them alive if it hadn’t already.
And then the long silhouette of a figure appeared in The Den. The soldiers leapt to attention and gathered around their leader.
The sinister shadow proved to belong to a dwarf. The escapee runt. He had returned to the scene of his family’s massacre. His legs did not shake and his gaze did not budge. He was composed as he locked eyes with Sud, the great dictator who had toppled his whole world. He kept them there and waited for silence.
The soldiers frothed at the mouth, waiting for the green light to smother and kill this puny invader. Sud held still. This white dwarf, so boldly strolling into the kingdom, aroused his curiosity if nothing else. He was of no threat, unless his family were hiding in the darkness. On his order, a group of soldiers investigated the surrounding area and came up with nothing. The dwarf was here, of his own will, alone. He must be sick of living. Sud ordered his soldiers to ease. They would hear the dwarf out.
Jaokhao’s proposition was brief. He could give Sud the one thing he wanted most. He could take him to Yai. All he asked for in return was freedom. Freedom from the war. Total amnesty. Yai was no leader to him anymore. He had banished one disease-stricken family member and plotted to kill another. He was a scoundrel and a coward. All Jaokhao wanted was freedom, the freedom of the soi at night.
Sud had his obvious doubts but could not shake the fantasy from his head. To finally have Yai, served up to him. His obsession, finally satisfied. It could be a trap but it could be the missing piece. He did not want to appear rash in front of his pack, so held silent while he contemplated. Jaokhao took the quiet to mean rejection, so turned and walked away. Sud saw his dream slipping away forever, his last chance to have his trophy. He halted the dwarf. It was done. They had a deal. The king’s head in exchange for freedom. The plan would be executed immediately.
Sud brought his finest soldiers along with him for the journey, leaving the others to protect the kingdom. Jaokhao led the way through the dusty trails of the district. On the way he explained that the fallen king was now a disgrace. A simple house dog, who had been taken in and numbed into a slobbering, docile oaf. He would put up little fight. Sud delighted in the news and ordered the group to pick up the pace. He was edging towards his dream.
They crossed through the district, to the rural area at the outer edges. Sud grew ever impatient. Jaokhao reassured him they were close.
Then Sud saw it. The den Yai had concealed himself, like a war criminal escaping reparation. The striped beast drooled. The tall creatures could not protect him anymore. His moment of judgement had arrived.
And then Jaokhao was gone. As they reached the entrance, he spun and twisted and scampered away. With the agility and grace of a dance, he dashed away into the darkness. Sud let out a guttural, vengeful howl. His own decadence had got him.
A light appeared. The whole pack turned their heads. They could not make out anything at first, but then a shape appeared. The shape of a tall creature, and its handheld assassin. In their frenzied attempt to escape, the pack created a mass brawl, smashing into and knocking over each other.
The butcher was quick and efficient. There was little struggle. The North Pack was wiped out in a flash. At sunrise, the butcher would dump them into its machine along with the other slabs of meat.
The white dwarf listened out for the bangs as he scurried through the dark. Though only faint, to him they made the sound of music. The souls of the family could rest now.
The frail old tall creature ached as it carried its usual bucket of water. It set the bucket down, and winced. It was not yet fully healed but had missed its routine of filling the bucket and setting it down. It did not know how long it had left, but it knew it would bring its bucket of water to its friends until they day it no longer could.
It turned back to its home. It would not know that it was leaving water for no one, as The Den was empty. Jaokhao had chosen the freedom of the night over the eternal war.
Paradise was more trouble to protect than its worth.
Points of Anxiety
how was your aunts
Carter: dude
we NEED to start doing something with our lives
Karl: yeah
I napped all fucking day
it sucked
Carter: as soon as she saw me she started talking about her high school and college years
I think I was smiling too much and it confused her and made her think when you’re in your twenties you’re happy all the time
but how happy could I have looked in my emotionless fucking outfit
grey tshirt
dark grey hoodie
dark jeans
Karl: overall, between my twenties and my teens, I’d say my twenties definitely have a higher happiness quotient
if I graphed it you would see that there’s a positive correlation between drug-use, socializing, and happiness
my teens have a way higher academic success
but that’s been steadily on the decline since my freshman year of high school tbh
Carter: but yeah man
I pretty much just spent all day listening to her reminisce and tell me all her theories about life
she talked about good and bad memories
it was pretty bipolar man
like she’d be talking about something nostalgic from her childhood and get all teary eyed
but then like five minutes later she’d be grinding her teeth in anger talking about this asshole guy acting like a cunt
it sounds kind of fucked to say but it was
>entertaining
Karl: no dude she sounds cool
tfw no interesting bipolar relatives to amuse me with personal anecdotes
I feel like my family is incapable of engaging with their past retroactively like that
which I mean I don’t know how useful that really is
I think we applaud it because it’s something we do regularly so we think that anyone who thinks that way is in our league
but yeah
I’m the most schizo person in my family so I guess I’m the talkative winey aunt of my family
>h-haha
only instead of talking about how fulfilling my formative years were
Carter: when she was our age she was definitely like a loose, artsy girl
Karl: I talk about how I wasted the most constructive years of my life
Carter: the type of girl that would wear overalls, smoke cigs, and listen to Courtney Barnett
Karl: dude
your aunt sounds like my ideal gf
Carter: and then would go to concerts seem disinterested the whole time
she made me feel like such a pleb
Karl: >Courtney Barnett
I USED TO HATE MYSELF
BUT
NOW
I
THINK
Carter: because I kind of thought people had to fall into certain cliques and I put myself in the “smart kid with no social life” bracket
which I was okay with
Karl: I’M
ALRIGHT
dude I used to listen to that song
Carter: because I literally remember justifying it to myself
>this will be worth it because I’m going to get into a really good college
Karl: and when she said that I used to think ME TOO
but now it’s more like
Carter: but it turns out the actually smart kids were maxing out on grades while maintaining a healthy social life
Karl: >I used to think I’m alright but now I hate myself
which is way less melodic tbh
yeah man
why did I think being totally void of personality was a good social move
Carter: yeah that’s more accurate than the actual lyric
lmao
dude my aunt called me “demure” which is just a polite way of saying “bland as fuck”
Karl: our aversion to people whose entire personality was built entirely on trends conditioned us to avoid people who were outgoing
Carter: “you leave no impression on anyone”
Karl: and that resulted in us becoming socially incompetent losers
like I’m physically six foot but socially I’m 5’2 because I act today the same way I did in 7th grade
for us, interacting with people is just a hurdle we have to jump so we can get back to our rooms, sit at our desks, and jerk off
Carter: why is it that whenever we’re in a public forum
we huddle in the corner and pretend we’re invisible
but if it’s a just like four or five people
Karl: dude when we get intimidated, we just shut-off
it’s a huge mental block
Carter: we’re super talkative
like it doesn’t matter who they are they could be strangers and you and me would still dominate the conversation
Karl: yeah but that’s bad dude
we’re way to punchy and spastic, we need to chill out
Carter: yeah
and we talk about ourselves way too much
Karl: it’s impossible for us to be civil and just have just a normal conversation with people
dude I KNOW
and dude I talk to everyone with the same dismissive, casual tone
it’s awful
I’m never gonna get a JOB
Carter: yeah having that jaded tone while talking to people gives off that “I don’t give a fuck” persona but we’re not actually like that
Karl: and the problem is I got so much positive reinforcement for treating other people like they’re not special at all
dude all the time
my friend will introduce me to a girl
and then he’ll walk away and it’ll just be me and her talking and she’ll say
>“I love how you talk to me the same way you talk to your friends”
and dude people like it because they think we’re not ashamed of being ourselves, that no matter the circumstances we’re not gonna change who we are and if you don’t like it I don’t care
but that’s not it at all
eventually you realize “oh it’s not that he’s unapologetically himself all the time, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to express affection or any other emotions organically”
and the novelty wears off
Carter: jesus lmao
I hate how accurate that is
dude in high school your voice was so deep and the only other kids that sounded like that were the kids the smoked weed
Karl: yeah I know everyone thought I smoked weed
Carter: and you were like laid back and into music
Karl: dude this is how retarded I was I didn’t even realize that everyone around me was baked all the time
like dude it wasn’t until like my fucking senior year that Rayan invited me to go smoke with them before band practice
and they told me that they’ve been doing this like every week for four years
and I didn’t even smoke with them then
because I was an anxious and neurotic melvin four eyes
Carter: even if I could go back in time and talk to my high school self and be like
>“dude listen, when you get older you’re really going to regret that your whole high school experience was nothing about worrying about grades and jerking off”
Karl: dude honestly
our biggest mistake was not smoking weed in high school
Carter: he wouldn’t even take it seriously he would just be like “yeah I know lmao”
there was no saving me
Karl: like I don’t wanna say that smoking weed makes you cool
but honestly
it does
Carter: if I ever write an autobiography I’m gonna skip the first eighteen years of my life
Karl: the only thing I’m proud of from high school is my yearbook quote
it was literally “I’m ready”
attributed to Spongebob
Carter: nothing notable happened during then and the person I was then has nothing to do with the person I am now
lel
god
I wish I had done something funny like that
my yearbook quote was a fucking John Green quote
I thought I was smart so I thought my yearbook quote had to be something like serious and meaningful
Karl: tbh I’ve kind of just always thought I sucked
Carter: which honestly just makes it way cringier because I used a John Green quote
as if John Green was some venerated sage whose writings are dense with wisdom
no he writes shitty YA lit
Karl: we’re just contrarians man
the last thing you or me wants to do is be reduced to simple pleasures like reading on the train or sipping hot coffee at our desk
we just don’t ever want to enjoy wagie life too much because that feels so much like giving in to everything
Carter: 99% of my life could probably be edited out and then the story of my life would just be a six minute video essay on youtube about getting tomed and listening to music
that gets demonetized because it mentions kratom
Karl: and it means fully admitting to ourselves that our dreams of being any type of artist will never actually happen
we’d rather get tomed and cycle through King Gizz’s entire oeuvre than go to some normie bar with our coworkers and spend thirty dollars on two vodka sodas
Carter: dude Tao Lin published his first book of poetry when he was 24
I need to at least stay on pace with Tao Lin
Karl: our ideal lives would be us just mooching off our rich friends
where they support us financially
and all we do is fiddle around all day
toming and smoking and trying to be creative
Mac Demarco was 24 when he released salad days
Carter: if I cant even do that
Karl: which means he did all od that OTHER shit BEFORE that
Carter: kms
yeah that would be perfect
because their autism makes them really proficient at building robots but it also makes them socially inept
so maybe they’d be so starving for human interaction they wouldn’t even mind paying for everything for us
dude
listen to a clear distinction between my aunt’s power level and mine
Karl: dude it’s so fucked how we feel a kinship with actual creative types just because we’re into unpopular shit and australian prog rock
Carter: she started talking about Richard Yates
and when she says Richard Yates she thinks about the acclaimed American author of Revolutionary Road
but when I hear Richard Yates the first thing I think of is a Tao Lin novel
yeah I know
Karl: tfw
Tao Lin is for people like us who wear the same hoodie every day
Carter: I like to pretend that within the heavily distracted mind of a kratom addicted esthete is an embryo of genius
but in reality I’m just a substandard fuck-up
Karl: yeah man
fuck you
lel
our whole lives have just revolved around grades and classes and not getting in trouble
we never actually explored our interests until NOW and we’re like 23 and it’s honestly too late for us to even start
we’re
OLD
Carter: dude it actually makes me feel bad when my mom or someone tells me I’m smart or capable or something
like my aunt said a bunch of stuff like that today
>“you have a good head on your shoulders”
like I’m sensible and have good judgment
but it’s like
in college man
I made so many bad decisions and got in so much trouble for just doing dumb shit without thinking
when she said that I couldn’t help but like roll my eyes
because she really has no idea what she’s talking about
she’s just projecting because she really wants to believe that I’m gifted and prudent
but it’s like
>lmao
>no
Karl: my family doesn’t really dump compliments on me like that
but I know they think I’m the one who should be the most successful because I got a high SAT score and got a scholarship to high school
but they’re just setting themselves up for disappointment
like I lost that scholarship lmao
and a high SAT grade doesn’t translate into anything in real life
all it is is for bragging if you do well
Carter: but that’s the kind of thing any sensible person would like to hear
but I do NOT
it makes me feel BAD
Karl: god dude
every cool or proud memory I have is punctuated by anxiety or shame that even going through all the highlights of my life just makes me wish I was a different person
Carter: that pathetic feel man
I can’t wait to just get home and get tomed
I’m going to read the sound and the fury because my aunt was talking about it and I said I read it but all I did was cram the sparknotes before class so I feel guilty
Karl: based Faulkner
Carter: because she definitely read the whole thing probably more than once the way she was talking about it
like she definitely hasn’t touched it in years but she could like refer to specific lines on specific pages as if she just finished it the other day
and it’s like
I cant even remember the name of the guy from catch 22
Karl: cmon man
Yossarian
lel
Carter: but dude
Karl: >me being smug about that even though catch 22 is one of the few books I’ve finished in the last seven years
Carter: trying to think back on a book from high school
which was only like 5 or 6 years ago
all of those books I barely even feel like I read in the first place because I was not giving them the attention they deserved
Karl: I actually really have a problem of not finishing all the books I start man
like
Carter: so it all just kind’ve blends together
Karl: I STILL havent finished blood meridian
Carter: it’d be impossible for me to sit down right now and write an essay on any one book
but man I bet you my aunt could write a lengthy, beautiful essay on a book she read 20 years ago and it would be so detailed and accurate you’d think she WROTE the book
Karl: I could maybe write something on Paradise Lost
actually no I definitely couldn’t
Carter: dude at this point blood meridian is a lost cause
Karl: thinking about sitting down and having to construct an essay like that gives me a headache immediately
I’m so glad I’m never going to have to write any papers like that ever again
Carter: finishing it now just to finish it is pointless and does the book no justice
you should honestly start it over if you actually want to read it
Karl: writing philosophy papers in college was actually pretty fun
>because I knew I was GOOD AT IT
yeah I know
I definitely won’t though
I probably won’t even finish it tbh
I’ll probably just sit here
Carter: I at least want to make a dent in the sound and the fury tonight
Karl: get TOMED
and listen to
salad days demos
Carter: because it probably wont ever come up in conversation again but I at least want to get to the point she assumed I was at when I said that I had read it
Karl: dude
Faulkner is to Hemingway the way King Gizz is to Tame Impala
where there’s a rivalry just because people always compare them
Hemingway and Tame Impala are both entry level
and Faulkner and King Gizz are complex and prolific
Carter: Faulkner is an absolute mad man
like this first part is from the perspective of a retarded guy and obviously Faulkner knew it’d be confusing for people to read and a lot of people would probably drop the book before they even got to the second part
which is the Quentin Compson part
dude my aunt said something like
>a guy like you probably relates a lot to Quentin Compson
but Quentin Compson is a 22 year old suicidal virgin
so what did she mean by this
Karl: LEL
Faulkner was a manlet so you know he understands socially inept neets like us
Carter: there’s no better feeling than unsheathing your bag of tome after a long day of wanting to kill yourself
oh and dude guess where my aunt used to hang out
Karl: where
Carter: the thirsty memer
Karl: wtf
did you tell her that that is our shitty meet up point that we go to way too often
Carter: or she’s at least has been there a few times
the way she described it made it sound like she went there a lot
Karl: and that one time I got laid by playing darts badly with a girl
Carter: she was talking about meeting this douchebag she hates there once
I think she was sitting right across from the picture of Bill Murray that’s behind the bar
no dude I didn’t say anything
for some reason I feel awkward acknowledging that I go to bars and drink in front of my family
Karl: >douchebag she hates
do you think they pumped
Carter: lel
I don’t know
maybe
she talked a lot about that guy and how he was just a huge dick in general
Karl: >Bill Murray
dude did you tell her about that theory with like
Carter: but it was weird she kept saying how he’s probably old and alone now and she felt bad for him
Karl: Pynchon and Bill Murray
that’s probably gonna be me tbh
if I don’t kill myself and actually end up growing old
Carter: oh that’s just from an old thread on lit
where this guy who just keeps posting pictures of bill murray presents these theories about Shakespeare’s identity, Finnegans Wake, CoL49 and then he has all these insane anecdotes about playing pool with Pynchon at a gas station or something
and he’s really tongue and cheek about his identity that he’s just bill murray
the running assumption is that it was Pynchon making all those posts
and it’s really weird that there’s this unexplained picture of Bill Murray prominently displayed behind the bar at a cheap Irish bar on the lower east side
so I think Pynchon designed this whole thing because he’s looking for his protege
he made those posts and then put that picture of Bill Murray there and now is waiting for the right person to put all the pieces together
it’s actually perfect because in Bleeding Edge Pynchon makes fucking Kojima jokes
I bet browsing was literally how he conducted research for that book
those posts were from 2010
he was definitely writing BE then
Karl: dude it would be so sick if we brought it up to the bartender and then were escorted to an underground hidden chamber where Pynchon and a talking bandana possessed by the ghost of David Foster Wallace were hanging out, smoking weed and listening to dopesmoker
and they congratulate us and invite us to sit down with them
and we introduce ourselves and then I pull a bag out of my backpack and say
>”Have you guys ever heard of kratom?”
Carter: god
>you will never casually discuss music and literature with Pynchon over a couple of joints
why haven’t I killed myself yet
dude actually at one point my aunt started talking about Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Karl: >Hesse
based german literature
Carter: we have to read that book man
Karl: god I’m such a pleb
why haven’t I read Goethe
Carter: it’s about this depressed guy that knows one day he’s going to kill himself
Karl: I waste all my time playing fucking video games and then when I finally decide to sit down and read I pick shitty American lit when I should be reading something patrician
Carter: but because he knows that that’s going to happen it makes him want to make the most of his life
Karl: like RILKE
or Lessing
Carter: doesnt that sound exactly like us
like we think about killing ourselves all the time
and we’re pissed off that we havent done anything worthwhile
Karl: we do talk about killing ourselves a lot
that’s definitely not good
Carter: and that’s making us want to do something creative, get something out there with our name on it as soon as possible
my aunt said that if you don’t take risks you’re letting your life live itself for you
our whole lives all we’ve been doing is avoiding risks
because we’re too afraid to make a decision and bind ourselves to something we might not like
Karl: yeah man
and it only takes a few minutes of job searching to realize
>“wow there’s no job out there that I actually want to do”
everything good about being a neet is undone by us still living with our parents
I wish we just had some shitty apartment in queens
if we were just on our own man
so much of our pent up frustration would just melt away
Carter: it’d honestly be such a relief to actually live like that
that’s the way two dudes in their twenties who don’t have anything figured our about their lives SHOULD live
Karl: dude we’re delusional
we think if we lived on our own that would unlock something and all of a sudden we would spend all our free time pursuing creative interests
but dude
that wouldn’t happen
we’d just be really stressed out about money because we don’t have any stable income
like I have all this free time right now
and all I do is blast king gizz
jerk off
and message you
about wanting to die
Carter: and then self-medicate with tome
so that we can withdraw and feel indifferent to our lives that are not going anywhere we want
Karl: man we are so SPOILED
Carter: the second we think about doing something cool like devoting ourselves to being artists, we feel the need to correct ourselves
and get “““““realistic”””””
because we know that getting a regular job is really the smartest thing to do because it’s secure and guarantees us at least a semi-comfortable life
but I know if I don’t even try to be a writer the “what if’s” are gonna haunt me for the rest of my life
so even though there are a ton of options for what I could do with my life
I can’t permit myself to consider anything unorthodox as an actual possibility for me
so it feels like there’s no way to avoid my life being miserable
Karl: before I was just sitting here listening to Firth of Fifth in the dark
and like at the three minute mark when it became that mysterious, contemplative melody I was imagining myself standing on like the edge of the Williamsburg bridge
like on the outer trellis with the crisscrossing I-beams ready to just plunge into the water and never resurface
I’m there staring down at the water
and behind me there are a bunch of cop cars with like the red and blue lights flashing
and there is like somebody with a megaphone calling out to me trying to reel me back in
and there’s a helicopter with a spotlight pointed at me
and for a second I actually think “I can’t actually kill myself what am I thinking” and I start to walk back and the people are relieved
but then when the four minute mark hits, and the song changes and starts ramping up to a climax
I stop walking and think “wait, why am I letting other people decide what I do with my life”
and I start backing up
and the guy with the megaphone is saying something
and then I turn around and sprint towards the edge of the bridge
and right when the music explodes into a happy celebration that’s when I leap off the side and go cascading through the air to my death
Carter: there was this part she said where Steppenwolf
who I was picturing as being like a demon or something until I looked it up
he was getting ready to hang out with people and he was dreading every second of it
all he wanted to do was stay home
that reminded me so much of Courtney Barnett lyric
>SHOULD’VE STAYED IN BED TODAY
>I MUCH PREFER THE MUNDANE
Karl: neither one of those things are actually helping us progress towards where we want to be in life
I’m literally just sitting here looking up guitar tabs for king gizz song
it sounds like I’m being productive but dude it’s seriously like
becoming a musical artist has almost nothing to with actually being good
there are so many people who play guitar way better than me and they get less than zero recognition for it
it’s literally all chance, that hopefully your hat will get picked up from the ring
but I don’t even know how to get my hat into the ring in the first place
Carter: yeah man that’s exactly how I feel
my aunt read me like parts of books and all of them were so incredible I was thinking that there’s no way I could ever write something deeply provocative or that powerful
and there are definitely a ton of people who write all the time, who can express their ideas so freely on the page and have interesting techniques to cluster and present information in engaging and intriguing ways
it makes me think what chance do I have of really standing out
Karl: it’s not even like we don’t have drive or ambition
we really aren’t lazy
but it just feels like even when we finally are ready to change our lives in a big way, it ends up involving months and months of waiting for anything to happen and it hardly feels worth it
90% of doing something is actually just sitting around doing nothing
even on days when I’m really productive and got a lot of stuff done, it doesn’t feel satisfying at all
it just feels like I wasted the day
Carter: even my aunt man, she was talking about how she had had literary aspirations and she had written some stuff here and there but never finished them or fleshed them out into anything significant
she’s read infinitely more books than I have and she must spend every minute of every day thinking about those books and just writing in general
I bet the things she wrote were insanely good
but that’s just how it is man
Karl: tfw
those people are the real artists
who like don’t even want glory
who just make music for the direct joy and happiness it brings to their own life
Carter: yeah
our idea of artistic creation is perverted because it hinges on financial stability and recognition
like if I write a book but it doesn’t get published in my head it won’t really feel like I wrote a book
and dude I have like a bunch of stories that I just haven’t finished for some reason
which is so bad
like it’s never going to be perfect, but I just need to declare it done so I can move on
Karl: yeah
it’s better to release a shitty album and then start on the next one thinking
>“This one is going to be way better”
than to abandon it when you find you’re still unsatisfied with it
or to just keep working on it and working on it for an indeterminate amount of time, expecting that there will be one day where you’re entirely satisfied with it and don’t want to change or add anything
because that’s never going to happen
just like
listening to something over and over again
or staring at something for a long enough time
it just gets stale
you’re never going to be able to look at it with fresh eyes and have the experience of taking it all in for the first time that you want other people to have
but it’s hard because you don’t want to purposely put something on your record that you know isn’t that good
everyone wants to be like that genius artist where everything they produce is gold plated
diamond studded
and especially if its your first record you want it to be really memorable
memorable for all the right reasons
or something that people go back and discover after your third record gets some acclaim
but wanting everything accredited to you to be perfect puts so much pressure on yourself
we gotta curb our egos man
it’s the only way we’re going to make it
like the first book you write is not going to be as good as V.
the first album I write is not going to be as good as Nonagon Infinity
but that’s OKAY
Carter: dude my aunt said she never ended up writing anything
because she didn’t want to put her name on something that later on she’d think was be embarrassed of and thought was like mediocre
she didn’t want to just write something regular because she knew that if she just put in the time she could turn it into something really poetic and interesting
but it’s like
dude nothing’s gonna hold up as much as you think it will
even Pynchon in Slow Learner is embarrassed by the stories he wrote in college
but that’s just part of it
making anything
you have to
idk
dude
it’s weird how like if you make something you like you’re actually kind of fucked
because then you just don’t want to ruin it
and then anything you add just detracts from it so you
so then you can’t do anything
my aunt wanted to write like intellectual stuff
which I think just means putting a lot of pointless allusions to things people don’t know about
so you can feel very smart and chuckle when people read it and don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about
Karl: that’s retarded
but fashionable
because people won’t admit they don’t understand it
and your aunt wants to be in the position where she can be like
>“Oh well explain it to me if you understand it then”
and then they’ll squirm and she’ll feel ingratiated
that’s why music is better than books man
everyone knows “““““intellectual””””” music is garbage
but people take intellectual books really seriously
Carter: dude no
like the sound and the fury
people think it’s scholarly because it has a lot of Shakespeare and bible references
but that’s wrong
it’s scholarly because of the way Quentin Compson’s thoughts are delivered
it demands that the reader do extra work to figure out the new form the text is taking on, how it relates to the initial form of the text, and why this distinction is necessary
and all of that, understanding the book, is a mental exercise
that has a lot more to offer than thom yorke moaning for 6 hours
and then playing one note for eight measures from every instrument in alphabetical order
Karl: >thom yorke
who is the radiohead of literature
Tao Lin?
Carter: lel
well if Faulkner is the King Gizz of literature
then
dude no Tao Lin is definitely like Animal Collective
Karl: >dude
>PSYCHEDELICS
>lmao
Carter: yeah basically
but dude we gotta just start putting stuff out there
we’re not always gonna have the urge to create like we do now
and we’re taking it for granted and wasting it
we need to take full advantage of our
YOUTHFUL
Karl: yeah
Carter: AMBITION
Karl: honestly we should just make a shitty album as fast as we can
and you should write a cringey YA fiction book
and then we just release them
that way our reputations as artists are completely soiled before we even have a chance to develop them
and then society as a whole will have given up on us and we will have absolutely no pressure on us to be geniuses or really make a difference
and we’ll be able to make stuff we like freely and easily without thinking we’re going to be letting ourselves down
and then ironically enough we’ll start producing stuff that’s actually good
Carter: lel that’s not really how we think man
we’d release those shitty things
and then we’d be so embarrassed that people would read it and bring it up to us
and then we’d feel even MORE pressure from OURSELVES to create something good people completely overlook the first thing
and we’d stagnate completely
Karl: dude if we spent half as much time actually working on stuff as we do talking about working on stuff
we would have written like three albums by now
Carter: lel that’s like from the german DFW interview where all those reaction faces are from
where he’s like
>I spend about 6 or 7 hours thinking about writing for every hour that I spend actually writing
Karl: >DFW
tfw you will never go to the AVN Awards, write Infinite Jest, and then kill yourself
Carter: now that’s a feel
Karl: we could live in queens or brooklyn south of prospect park
like parkside avenue
or even we could try all the way uptown on the upper east side
like on 1st ave far from the train
Carter: I want to get out of this city man
I have only been to like a handful of states
and I’ve never even been outside the fucking country
Karl: same
well, I’ve seen a lot of states
but the only time I left the country was to go to Canada
which was shitty and doesn’t even really count because we didn’t go on a plane
Carter: my aunt quoted this guy who said travelling was the only way to learn
so I guess by his standards I’m functionally retarded
because I’ve never been anywhere
she was saying how she still wanted to see new places
even though she was like
>it’s too late
but I doubt she really wanted to do like poor, scavenger type travelling
like backpacking
where its really a lot more about the journey and surviving and not so much a vacation
I mean it’s a vacation but like it’s not supposed to be relaxing
Karl: yeah man and if we were gonna travel that’s the way we would do it
Carter: it sounded like she just wanted sit on the beach and be pampered
Karl: we’d stay at cheap hostels
eat cheap food
Carter: she mentioned going on the trans-siberian railroad
Karl: like the premade wraps at the grocery store and stuff
dude we’ve got to go to eastern europe
Carter: but I don’t think she realizes that that means you literally live on a train for multiple days
Karl: and just do a tour through the Balkans
Carter: and she would not be able to handle that
even that’s too rugged for her
Karl: and then head to Germany
dude Germany would be perfect
they have the Goethe monument for you
and the WIENERSCHNITZEL for ME
YES
Carter: god man I would love to see Berlin
man isn’t it so depressing
Karl: yeah
what are you talking about
Carter: that for us, a trip like that would be the adventure of a lifetime
a week or like ten days seeing the bottom half of Europe
getting lost in the streets
meeting locals and other travellers from even more distant parts of the world
we would talk about that trip for the rest of our lives
there are people our age who aren’t just talking about it
they’re actually DOING it
RIGHT NOW
why isn’t that US
Karl: because our middleclass upbringing has taught us that leaving your comfort zone is irresponsible
and we like the security of knowing we could do something if we felt like it more than the experience of going out and doing it
we don’t want to give up the ability to maybe do anything for actually doing something
Carter: dude when my aunt pointed out a small, intimate detail from a book or something
just from the way she talked about it you could tell it that it really affected her
that it changed the way she thought of herself and viewed the world
she had so many revelations whose lifelong effects she can still ruminate on fifty years later
fifty years from now I’m not going to be thinking about how listening to mac demarco while tomed at my desk fundamentally altered my worldview
Karl: yeah man
we are just losers who frantically stir a green opioid surrogate native to southeast asia into either coffee or tea, or grapefruit juice because the citric acid potentiates the stimulation of our mu-opioid receptors
hopefully fifty years from now I’ll have been dead for 46 years
Carter: trying to make the same songs we’ve listening to hundreds of times feel new again by listening to them in a different order
Karl: tfw our playlists are just mac and king gizz echo chambers
actually dude we’ve been pretty good lately at finding new stuff
Carter: I cant even imagine how I’m gonna look back at my 22 year old self when I’m that old
it’ll just be like
>“I spent most of my time trying to figure out exactly why I felt so shitty when the reason I probably felt so shitty was because I spent most of my time trying to figure out why”
Karl: lel
“to some unstable, deeply pessimistic kid with an addictive personality who spent all his time reiterating that lsd saved his life and diagnosing himself repeatedly with various psychological disorders”
Carter: actually knowing me
when I’m that age I’ll probably remember that I spent a lot of time in my twenties wondering how me in my sixties would remember my twenties and I’ll probably be puzzled as to why that was such a big deal to me
I’ll probably remember this exact conversation honestly
I really don’t anticipate age distorting how I understand myself
Karl: dude when I’m your aunt’s age I hope I’ve forgotten the way I act now
imagining the old man I’m gonna become one day watching me interacting with my family at the holidays makes me want to kill myself
going into a room alone and anxiously pacing in it like an absolute schizo
then going out to show my face because I know if I’m gone for too long it’ll be weird
my uncle saying hi to me and then me immediately dropping eye contact and scratching my fucking arms
and I blame my dry skin even though it’s my timid personality more than anything
dude even around my family I’m such a fucking beta
my uncle asking me what I’ve been up to is enough to make me curl up like a pill bug
I know they’re just asking because it’s polite
they don’t actually care
that’s just kind of what you do when you see your family
but it’s such a waste because nothing really changes from year to year
no one’s ever going to have any real exciting updates because every person’s life is stagnant as fuck including my own
the most exciting thing I could report from now on is that I have a job and all they’re gonna say to that is
>“Oh yeah? Doing what?”
and I’m gonna say
>I sit in an uncomfortable chair for seven hours a day glancing at the clock every five or so minutes
and they’re gonna say
>“Wow! Do you like it?”
and I’m gonna say
>d-didn’t you just hear what I said?
Carter: lel
I mean that’s better than the arrogant thing people our age do
where they’ve had a job for 3 months but they talk with this phony air of professionalism like they actually have a vested interest in the company
Karl: yeah man but you realize those are the people who are going to run the stock market and become CEOs
Carter: >“Officially, service clients and telecommunications operators, but on a daily basis mostly what I’m doing is conducting and compiling research from various insider journals directed at industries like ours”
Karl: yeah
that’s literally what you have to be like
Carter: it’s like alright dude, you fucking sit on excel all day like the rest of us
Karl: that’s why you and me are going to be lucky to make 70k
because we’re too stubborn to play that game
so those guys are gonna trample all over us
because it’s literally all about image
Carter: I guess a lot of guys our age really do idolize the image of the white collar executive and are just really desperate to become that as soon as possible
but it’s like nobody thinks a 23 year old is a cutthroat shark
nobody’s impressed
people just think you’re obnoxious
Karl: dude why the fuck
do we idolize
trashy, slacker musicians from the commonwealth
and
suicidal and reclusive authors from the tri-state area
our image of success is totally warped because of that
Carter: god dude
we are such fucking frauds
my aunt had an interesting, adventurous life that just made her more cosmopolitan by nature
and it feels like we should be that way since we got an expensive education
like we’ve been engineered to be high brow
or not even high brow
just well-informed and intelligent enough to take an interest in like world affairs and contemporary art
but we don’t pay any attention to any of that stuff
all we really care about is pushing headphones deep into our ears and pumping music directly into our heads
Karl: dude it’s whatever
being ordinary is sick
instead of taking vacations to like Europe or something
we’ll just take more tome and go on a mental vacation at our desks
where our thoughts become a movie montage
and the soundtrack is king gizz
it’s a million times cheaper and equally as relaxing
Carter: you’ve got to be joking man
it’s not about relaxing
it’s about finally maturing
actually becoming independent by putting ourselves in a situation where we have to be
my aunt talked about feeling trapped in New York at our age
Karl: dude no wonder you’re anxious all the time
Carter: she felt constricted and like she couldn’t accomplish anything she wanted to by being here
Karl: you’ve gotten into the habit of using theoretical scenarios to willingly overwhelm yourself
Carter: which dude that’s how WE feel
and then she said when she finally went to Europe she felt like life opened up and for the first time she felt like she could do whatever she wanted
Karl: it honestly doesn’t make any sense that we feel so restricted by nyc
literally the only reason why we feel like that is because we still live with our parents
like dude I bet you if we got a shitty apartment on the lower east side tomorrow
we would start to love new york
we don’t need to fly to some far away country to find ourselves
we just need to MOVE OUT
Carter: that’s definitely part of it
but man
idk
I feel like still being in this city
dude there’s not a corner of this city where we haven’t had some weird story or bad memory that occurs to us the second we’re somewhere familiar
Karl: yeah
that’s true
Carter: and it’s inescapable man
like I don’t think I will ever be able to walk by the Angelika without thinking of going on a date once there in high school
I’ll never be able to walk around the upper east side without thinking about how we used to go into central park up there and drink beers on the rocks near the baseball fields
our embarrassing lives are splattered all over every inch of manhattan
we need to get out just so we aren’t constantly reminded of the thousands of missed chances, wasted nights, and retarded decisions we’ve made
like dude there are so many stops on so many trains that we used to go to all the time
and when I get off on them now I can’t help but remember the thousands of juvenile incidents that started with me getting off at those stops
and I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away
I work at the Public Library in Regina, Sk. I am heavily involved in cat rescue these days lol.
STEALING BEAUTY
When Minerva looked up from the cup of coffee she was nursing from her front step on that clear, august afternoon and saw a car pull over and an overweight woman spill out and begin wildly plucking flowers from a front yard across the street, she watched dumbfounded. The woman grabbed handfuls of begonias hurriedly, decisively then scrambled back into her car and sped off. Minerva sipped her coffee and wondered. What was that? Trespassing? Vandalism? Stealing beauty? It struck her as mildly comical at the least.
Minerva went back inside to get a refill, lightly chuckling. Though she had promised herself for quite some time to cut down on her caffeine intake, she knew now just wasn’t the time. She was enjoying her coffee and the idiosyncrasies of both the day and the neighborhood too much right then. It was the long weekend in august. What holiday was that again? Some Queen, or was it a civic holiday? She couldn’t quite remember. But she was enjoying it just the same, right down to the light, licks of wind on her bare, back legs.
As she poured from the coffee pot that had a lip that made a bit of coffee spill each time, Minerva wiped it with her hand as there was nothing else available and said to Aunt Esme, “I just saw a flower theft. Someone pulled up and got out and picked wildly and took off.”
Aunt Esme shook her head. Clucked. Then returned to her project now which was reorganizing the cans in the pantry per their food group, cans of vegetables in the top shelf, cans of pasta in the middle shelf, cans of fish and meat and beans in the third shelf and cans of fruit and miscellaneous in the bottom shelf. “God help anyone who mixes this up again.” Esme croaked.
Esme always had a project going it seemed to Minerva. Polishing. Ironing. Weeding. With that old-school sense of dutiful obligation, she ferreted out what needed to be set right, re-cast again in beauteous delight.
Just when Minerva was about to ask Aunt Esme if she wanted a cup of coffee, Courtney came bounding down the stairs.
“I’m eight years old now so I can go to the pool without an adult,” Courtney announced, her voice a mixture of pride and wonder. She was wearing a neon orange bathing suit.
“Don’t know if you should be going alone in this neighborhood,” Aunt Esme chided
“We’re all going together. Molly and me and Maddy. They’re both eleven.” Courtney said, the tone of triumph still in her voice.
Emerging from the pantry like a cranky mole popping out of a hole, Aunt Esme said, “I suppose then.”
Courtney caroled, “Yeah!”
“But be back for the barbecue at supper time,” Aunt Esme reminded her
“Momma’s gonna come?” Courntey squealed, asked
Esme and Minerva nodded to the hopeful child whose eyes shone like she was seeing a vision. Then Courtney shot out of the house with her beach towel wrapped around her neck, the material loosely dangling on each side of her.
“Poor kid,” Minerva remarked
Esme looked up and nodded. The furrows on her face seemed to deepen, though she said nothing.
Doesn’t surprise me though, Minerva thought, wryly. That Jenny can get away with anything, always has and likely always will. Jenny was her younger neice. But in the extended Appleton clan, she was the unofficial star when it came to glamour, beauty, talent, everything. Minerva was known to be bookish while Great Aunt Esme was considered difficult, if not downright delusional at times. The verdict was still out on Courtney, however. Some called her bratty and stubborn while others thought she was a Jenny-in-the making. Still, their thrown together household was always under scrutiny it seemed.
The House of Appleton Or la Maison de Appleton. Why does everything always sound better in French? Minerva mused. But not for long.
The phone rang. Like a nerve shattering assault from the other side, it seemed to cling in the air. Some days were door bell days but this was a phone day as it hadn’t stopped ringing all morning long and now into the afternoon too.
“Hello?” Minerva queried
“It’s me Andrew. Hey, do you mind if I bring Weston Dobbe to the barbecue? He’s down for the long weekend and we’re kind of hanging out a bit,” Andrew asked
Minerva paused. Weston Dobbe O-M-G! Now there was a blast from the past. Yet what surprised her even more than this person re-emerging was that Andrew had shown the courtesy to ask permission to bring someone to the family barbecue that evening. Since when has Andrew shown that kind of consideration? But Minerva knew that she and Aunt Esme had been drilling it into heads, his included, for long enough for it to finally take root.
“Uhh sure. Of course, Weston can come,” Minerva sputtered
“Great! Hey did Terry ever say if he was coming or not?” Andrew queried
“Oh God, who knows,” Minerva said
Andrew laughed sickly.
“And what about Mel and Jenny and all of them?” he asked
“As far as I know. They say they are coming. All of them really,” Minerva replied
“Okay, then. That’s good. We’ll see you later…Bye,” Andrew said.
“Bye.” Minerva said. But as she laid down the receiver on the land line, the one Aunt Esme refused to cancel, despite numerous cell phones in the house hold, her mind had already taken flight, into a strange nether land of past longing and casual regret. Weston Dobbe.
Minerva saw him in her mind’s eye. Tall and slender and blonde, he went to school with her older brother Andrew but had always seemed set apart from the collection of hard drinking, hockey players Andrew chummed with. Weston did well in school and played several instruments. Quite often, he was the reference point when their mother wanted Andrew to behave or perform. Why can’t you be more like that Weston Dobbe, now he’s a real good kid?
Though Weston wasn’t movie star dreamy like the posters adorning her bedroom wall growing up, he had a soft spoken manner that appealed to her nevertheless. Yet she was careful to cherish this secret in private. For the one time she did tell a friend of her crush she was promptly informed that Weston was a geek and that she was utterly lacking in her taste in men.
Wonder what Weston’s like now? It piqued her curiosity to consider him in his middle age form. Would he be the same old Weston that sometimes had the scraggly blonde hairs on his upper lip, that seemingly lived in his garage as he practiced saxophone and guitar and whatever else?
She then recalled a childhood nugget about Weston. One particularly blustery Regina day, Minerva was peering out her family’s picture window and she saw the Dobbe’s station wagon pull up. The door flew open wildly as it does on the windy prairie and out piled Weston and his Mother, Dolores Dobbe. They began the near impossible task of trying to plaster posters on street poles. They managed to get one poster placed. Yet in a cartoon-like blur the wind whipped the pile of papers out of her hand and away.
The next day Minerva gripped the same pole tightly as the juggernaut wind had still not died down. She was waiting for the school bus. It was all she could do to hang on. Like that old TV show, The Flying Nun, so she felt. She saw the poster Weston and his mother had put up the day before. It was a Missing poster about their black poodle Tobey who had disappeared. Ten dollar reward.
Wonder if they ever found him?
Having finally emerged from the pantry and shut the door, Aunt Esme poured herself a coffee.
“Andrew’s bringing a friend to the barbecue tonight,” Minerva said
“Who, a girl?” Aunt Esme said
“No. An old friend, Weston Dobbe.” Minerva said
“That’s fine,” Aunt Esme said, sounding somewhat disinterested and retiring to the living room to watch TV.
Returning to her front step perch, Minerva was aglow. She sipped her coffee but hardly noticed the taste. Lately, she had been cherishing a fantasy of imagining a whole different life for herself, an exploratory re-examining of all that has been and could be. She considered different paths she could have taken in her life. And now with this addition of Weston to the mix, her mind was ablaze.
What if I would have followed him to a big university down east? But then she remembered that he was hardly aware that she was alive back then. For he was older and followed an older crowd than she did. It was in their youth when three and a half years apart seemed like some near impassible gulf. Yes that’s how it was back then, she knew. Still, she wondered what if rather then playing it safe financially and attending college in town, she had struck out East or somewhere else? Just how would things have been different? Would she be sitting on this creaky old front step right now, witnessing flower thefts and cranky outbursts from her old aunt? Who knows?
She recalled all those years of staying on in the family home, in her old bedroom even, while she studied nights at the college and bar tended part-time during the day. For what? Her Honours degree in English only had her tutoring part-time at a nearby learning academy, where frustrated and reluctant kids came evenings to brush up on their studies. Beyond that, she volunteered at a local cat café. Her life was dismal, if not laughable. What would Weston think? What would she even say to him?
She squirmed on that hard, creaky, old front step. Even though she had some misgivings about her situation, she couldn’t help but dwell on this sudden strange turn of events, this enchanted evening. The world seemed to whirr and blur before her, like a kaleidoscope slowly turning into place. She could feel her system racing. But then she reminded herself that he was likely married or with someone at the very least. Of course, he’d be taken. Just as the old adage had it, the good ones are always gone. Still, it delighted her to toy with her imagination, feel the teasing delight of fantasy just like that cool summer breeze that would gust up and tickle her skin. It was a treat to feel this way. It didn’t happen all that often. She would enjoy it, savour it, much the same as the cup of coffee she held in her hand.
God knows, I’m usually just trying to deal with my baggage. Not just my past, as I found myself doing right now. But with all the guilt and grievances, expectations and negativity, that go with living this life too. Seeing a vast array of shiny, light, pink luggage in her mind’s eye, she thought, I’ve got more baggage to deal with then an uptown Bell Boy. Ah well, at least I know that I’m a girly girl through and through.
Then Aunt Esme burst through the front door. “You’re wanted on the phone,”
Minerva frowned. How many more times is that thing gonna ring today? She carried her empty cup in with her and set it down in the sink then hurried to the land line.
“Hello,” Minerva said
“Hiya Sis,” Terry slurred
Aww shit, Minerva thought. Terry was another older brother and also a telephone drunk that called at impossible hours and times.
“How are ya? So are ya coming to the barbecue?” Minerva ventured
There was a slight pause.
“What barbecue?” Terry said
“The big family summer barbecue tonight, that’s what,” Minerva said
“Nobody told me about it,” Terry whined
“We’ve been talking about it. All of us, for at least the last month,” Minerva insisted
“Nobody told me,” Terry insisted, his tone darkening
“I told you about it a while ago, mentioned it a couple of times in fact,” Minerva assured him.
“Un uhh, no one told me. I was never informed. But I guess that’s how it goes, right?” he said
Terry was adamant. Minerva felt like saying to him, you were likely too drunk to remember, that’s all. But she held her tongue. For she knew it had become an almost family pantomime, the dramatic posturing, especially his slurred insistence, of I wasn’t informed or No one told me. It was almost always Terry, though, sometimes it could be Mel or Jenny too.
“Listen Terry, I mentioned this to you a couple of times. So if you want to come, then come,” Minerva said. She could feel her impatience rising like the heat. But she tried best to hide it in her voice as she didn’t wish to inflame things.
Terry broke into hoarse laughter. “You expect me to drive thirty miles on that kind of notice?”
Aunt Esme threw Minerva a knowing glance. Minerva rolled her eyes. How long is this Kabuki dance going to go on for?
“Lish-shun how do you people expect me to drive when you know my left hand is fucked anyhow?” he slurred
“Terry, phone Andrew okay? Maybe you and him can figure something out,” Miranda said, flatly
“Hmmph,” Terry grunted
“Okay, bye.” Miranda said. She quietly hung up.
“Is he drunk?” Aunt Esme asked, laughed dryly
Miranda nodded.
Picking some lint off her shorts, she wondered if such family rituals, the summer barbecue, the big Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter meals and get together’s were even really worth it anymore given that their Dad had passed on and that their Mom was now in a care home. She wondered. Hmmm. But then there was still the young ones, the little ones like Courtney who needed such bonding experiences and family time. Yeah that’s right, Courtney needs all the backing she can get, that’s for certain, especially when it comes to this clan.
Well so far it’s only been the damn phone that’s been wearing on me today. She then recalled recent times, full days even, when the whole of creation felt like it was conspiring against her. It included being stymied by autocorrect, then locks that refused to open, latches that wouldn’t give, pins and passwords forgotten, hitting every red light and traffic that didn’t move. The list went on and on. For it was then she felt like life was picking her up like an untidy cat and rubbing her nose in the pee. What could be next even? Really?
She sighed. Then she recalled. The barbecue!
Turning to Aunt Esme, Minerva asked, “How are we doing for tonight? Is there anything you’d like me to do?”
Esme shook her said. “Nope. Salads are made. Watermelon cut up. We’re good to go.”
Minerva smiled. That’s one thing, she thought, gratefully, Aunt Esme likes to take care of things. Thank god. And to think that they predicted doom when I moved into her basement, Minerva mused, Mel and some of the others saying, she’ll end up managing you the very same as a kid, as Courtney. But it never happened. Their prognostications fell flat. The three of them somehow shared that small house without crossing boundaries or enlivening tempers. It was some sort of miracle maybe. But then perhaps God had extended his grace from babies and drunks to even the Appleton clan, who knows?
Feeling a sudden drop in energy which Minerva assumed was likely from both the heat and the excitement of the day, she retired to her room. She laid down on her bed. As there was no air conditioning in that little war time house, she had the fan blaring. I’ll never fall asleep with that racket, she thought. Then she recalled reading in a magazine that the average person spends about six years of their life dreaming. It seemed like a happy gift to her, like a free descent into the magical unknown. So much better, almost a steal, compared to the 10 years the average person stands waiting in line. Ugh.
She closed her eyes. She revelled in the cool licks from the fan. Recalling the flower theft from earlier on, the scene popped in her mind and held. And eventually she felt a faraway lightness overtake her, steal her stealthily away.
Waking up, Minerva felt the curious wonder of someone who hadn’t expected to fall asleep at all. Was I asleep? For how long? But as she climbed off her bed and headed to the kitchen, she knew instantly that she had slept for some time. The light coming in through the kitchen windows was waning. Everyone was gone. The place was empty.
But then Courtney burst through the door.
“It’s about time you get up, sleepy head!” Courtney called
Minerva smiled.
With the door flung wide open, Miranda heard the voices and laughter from outside, the mouth-watering aroma of barbecue that instantly awakened hunger pangs in her. Holy shit, she thought, it’s already time for our gathering!
She followed Courtney half bewildered to the backyard, still surprised that she had slept the afternoon away. Miranda looked about her. Everyone was there. Her Mom and Aunt Esme sitting in lawn chairs and chatting breezily together. Courtney clinging to Jenny, her Mom, as could be expected. Jenny dressed like a nightclub vamp, diva. Andrew and his wife Maureen and their teen age boys, Colter, Cash and Conner who were manning the barbecue right then. Even Terry and his latest girlfriend, Lana or Lara or something like that were mingling. Then she saw him. Holding a cooler and engrossed in a deep conversation with her sister Melanie, Weston Dobbe.
Minerva felt her breath catch. Weston had aged well. His hair was a dark champagne colour and he was tanned and had an almost preternatural youthfulness about him. He was dressed very country club and had an almost Kennedyesque bearing to him.
“Honey! Minnie!” her Mom called to Minerva.
Minerva smiled and joined her Mom and Aunt Esme. Her elderly Mother was wearing a wide brimmed sun hat and shorts, her pale bare legs like plump, white sausages. She took her daughter’s hand.
“Minnie, so good to see you. Andrew brought me here.” her Mother said.
“Glad to see you too. A summer barbecue wouldn’t be the same without you,” Minerva said, bending down to give her Mother a hug.
Conversing with her Mother and Aunt for a while, yet Minerva couldn’t help but let her gaze wander back to Weston and her sister, Mel.
Then Courtney came bounding over and exclaimed, “Momma’s gonna take me swimming tomorrow.” Then she scampered back to Jenny and climbed back onto her lap.
Gee, that’s big of her, Minerva thought, ruefully.
Jenny was Mel’s daughter. Jenny was following a dream of being a night club singer and lived life mainly on the road to pursue it. However, Melanie had refused to become sole caretaker of her granddaughter, Courtney, claiming singing was a foolish waste and that she wished to live her near retirement years in peace, not with a young child that wasn’t her responsibility. That’s when Aunt Esme intervened to scoop up little Courtney and move her into her own home. But Minerva always wondered for the child who seemed to her to be twice or thrice misplaced.
“Who would like a burger!” Cash suddenly exclaimed. His voice had the awkward, squeaky tone of an adolescent.
“We got regular burgers and plant based ones. Just let us know which you’d like.” Conner added
The three teenage boys were acting as hosts, flipping burgers, stacking plates. Colter, the oldest of the trio, acted almost as supervisor of the two younger ones, standing close by and giving cues on cooking.
Aunt Esme stood up and said, “There’s more stuff in the kitchen. Salads and the like. Everyone help yourself.”
Immediately, the guests lined up for their food.
Minerva said to her Mother, “I’ll fill you up a plate Mom and bring it to you.”
“Thank you dear,” her Mother said
Minerva walked over and got in the back of the line. Andrew and Maureen were directly ahead of her but turned around to smile and say hi. It was a fast moving line of course and soon they filed into the kitchen for the rest of the meal that was laid out buffet style on the kitchen table. Potato salad. Tossed salad. Watermelon. A plate of pickles and olives and cut up cheese. A fresh pot of coffee was brewing, though most guests had opted for a can of beer.
There was a light, festive atmosphere.
Mel and Weston were on the other side of the kitchen table filling their respective plates, still engrossed in a conversation that try her best Minerva was wont to decipher. Sounds like investment portfolios or something, Minerva decided.
But then Minerva and Weston made eye contact. He paused and looked at her curiously. Then he speared a pickle and dropped it on his plate. He and Melanie, still conversing, left the kitchen.
Wondering at that empty look, Minerva gulped hard. Does he even remember me? She felt somewhat taken aback.
Minerva left right behind them. She took the plate of food to her mother then went back to get herself one.
Once outside again, she sat on the only available lawn chair which was by Terry and his girlfriend.
“Heya Sis!” Terry slurred. He was blaring drunk and this new girlfriend looked deeply unimpressed. What’s her name again? Minerva racked her brain. Is it Lara or Lana or Laura or what?
“Hi guys,” Minerva said to the both of them.
“Did you see how fucked up my hand is?” Terry said, suddenly and drunkenly thrusting a purplish and swollen palm into her face, nearly causing Minerva to spill her plate.
“My hand is really fucked. And Workers Comp tried to fuck me too. But I wouldn’t let ‘em!” he declared, then broke into his familiar, hoarse, drunken laughter.
Terry then launched into a long account of how he was injured at work, an industrial miscue. Yet as he spoke he peppered the air with curses and sprayed spittle into her face. Why do I have to be seated next to the only drunk here?
Minerva squirmed in her seat. Looking about, she didn’t see any other empty lawn chairs. So she just grunted occasionally in response and ate hurriedly. Fuck! He’s spraying into my food!
Courtney, by now, was clinging onto Jenny’s one leg Koala bear-like, refusing to let go. Can’t Jenny see how bad her kid misses her? But then Minerva self-corrected, maybe I should just mind my own business. Just maybe? Who knows?
Mercifully enough, Andrew wandered over to them and he and Terry began to converse. Thank God, Minerva thought. Terry is the poster boy for the obnoxious drunk.
Minerva was enjoying being outside, however. It was one of those rare, calm prairie evenings sans a wind. The light breeze from earlier on had seemingly disappeared.
Everyone was winding up their meal by now, with only the teenage boys going back for second helpings. The guests were mingling, moving about, chatting. Except for Weston and Mel. They were sitting on the bench on the opposite side of the small backyard, tucked in a corner, still locked into their non-stop conversation.
Minerva studied them hard. Wonder what they’re talking about? She caught little drifts of conversation here and there, remarks about Mel’s lengthy and ever growing bucket list which was unmistakable given her high, fluttery voice that sometimes seemed almost falsetto-like.
“Hey Terry, you remember Weston Dobbe, right?” Andrew asked
Terry nodded.
“Come say hi.” Andrew said, leading Terry and his girlfriend over to Weston.
Miranda followed behind them.
“Weston, you remember my brother Terry, right? And this is his girlfriend Lara.” Andrew said, by way of introduction.
Weston shot upright. “Sure, sure. Good to see you again Terry,”
“Pleased to meet you Lara,” Weston said.
Terry and Weston shook hands. Then Terry held up his damaged left hand and once again launched into a long winded account of how he injured it recently at work.
Minerva, meanwhile, listened impatiently as Terry droned on, drunkenly slurring his words and once again peppering the air with curses and spittle, groans and grievances. Wish he would shut up, Minerva thought.
Finally, though, Terry came to the end of his tale and announced, “Gonna snag me another beer har har har.” He disappeared inside the house.
Minerva quickly stepped forward and thrust her hand out to Weston. They shook hands.
“And you’re…” Weston faltered
“Minerva. Andrew’s sister,” she said
A look of recognition swept over Weston’s face. “That’s right. Andrew has another sister besides Mel here.”
Weston looked at her and nodded politely. But it was obvious to her that he barely recalled her, just a jumbled blur from the neighborhood past. That’s all. Minerva felt a light tingle of embarrassment and hoped dearly that it didn’t register in a blush.
“Uhh…So how are you these days Weston?” Minerva asked
“Good, good. And you?” he returned
His manner was impeccable as ever, polite, even somewhat refined.
Thrusting his arm around his old school mate, Andrew bragged, “Our boy is a music professor. Teaches cello at the conservatory. Even played on two different occasions for royalty, once for the Queen and once for Prince Charles.”
“Did ya play Purple Haze!” Terry joked, having re-emerged with beer in hand.
Everyone laughed. Especially Weston. There was a round of back slaps, high fives.
Weston was like a returning, conquering hero. Everyone congregated about him, smiling.
The fading sun highlighted the darkened blonde in his hair.
Sipping her beer, Minerva stood and listened as they recounted old times, high school hi-jinks and sports mishaps mainly. Wanting desperately to join in the conversation, Minerva impulsively added, “Hey remember that time you and your Mom put up posters over your missing dog?”
Weston looked at her blankly. Then a darkness slowly registered on his face. Immediately, Minerva regretted the statement she had blurted out.
He paused. Then he said, “That was poor Tobey, I believe…Some nut killed him it turned out. Mom even had to go down to the police station and fill out a report about it.”
There was an awkward pause. Minerva started to say, “I’m so sorry about-“
But Weston interjected with, “No worries. It’s all so long ago.”
“Weston, want another beer?” Andrew offered
“Sure. Then Mel and I are going to go check out that Escape Room.” Weston said
Mel smiled at them as Andrew handed Weston a can of Coors light.
Minerva felt a bolt of surprise. What the heck?
Shaking his head, Andrew observed, “I’m not surprised that those Escape Rooms are flourishing in such chaotic times. It makes sense y’know.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. But Minerva suddenly felt downcast and decided to escape on her own. She went over and rejoined her mom and Aunt Esme who were talking about the best ways to deal with cut worms in the summer. Minerva plunked down on an empty lawn chair beside them.
But she only half listened to their old lady talk about the weather, pesky insects and the outrageous prices now being charged everywhere. From time to time, Minerva stole glances over at Weston and all the others. The happy, celebrated reunion continued, with flashing movie star smiles and furtive glances between Weston and Melanie.
Minerva felt deflated. She tried her best to stay in the spirit of things. Yet as she watched apart from the others, as she saw Weston pairing with Mel, it reminded her of Jacob favouring Rachel over Leah. Like the biggest woman at a clothing swap, so she felt. She suddenly felt very awkward and her life seemed small. Don’t be like that, she chided herself. Yet she knew that she was powerless not to feel that way. Things had always been that way, at school, in the family and the neighborhood. Minerva had always clung to the fringes and edges of their social milieu, solidly in the D group while Mel flitted almost unawares on the A side. Life in the slow lane. Hmm. Time to revise my expectations for the evening, she decided, as it’s not quite turning out how I thought. But then what did I expect, really? Just what?
Still, if things had somehow been different with Weston, she knew. If Weston sported a defeated air, prattled on about a failed relationship and if Mel had not been there to snatch up the spoils, Minerva believed both her present mood and the evening would have been considerably different. At least, that’s the story I keep telling myself, she thought, glumly.
“Catch me Momma!” Courtney called to Jenny who with beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and a pained expression on her face, reluctantly engaged the child. Jenny wore a black summer dress, a sleeve tattoo with silver bangles and espadrilles made of a rope like material, fetching and dramatic as ever.
Minerva watched as mother and child raced and chased throughout the backyard. Still smarting and in a solidly passive-aggressive mood, Minerva balked at the scene. Typical kid, chooses the glamorous one who abandoned her for the ones who are raising her, namely Esme and I. Courtney will do anything for absentee Mom or even disinterested grandma, Mel, and yet we have to bribe her to get her to eat her peas or wash her ears. Hmmph. But then Minerva caught herself once again. Courtney is just a little kid ecstatic to be with her Momma. That’s all. How can you be so petty as to begrudge a little girl anyhow? That’s not right and you know it!
Minerva threw Aunt Esme a sideways glance. She saw the two matriarchs continue to chat freely and occasionally beam at little Courtney when she ran past them. They aren’t being as small minded as I, Minerva knew and the realization made her blush inwardly. Well, in the spirit of lowered expectations, I think I may just pack it in for the night.
Chugging her can of beer, Minerva then crushed it in her hand and set it on top of a garden gnome and walked into the house. She went to the fridge and spied the last four beer cans in their plastic harness. She snagged them. Fuck y’all, I claim them! She disappeared into her bedroom and shut the door behind her.
Listening to her favourite radio station, downtempo.electronic on Stingray, Minerva quickly stripped, sipped beer and considered all. Perhaps this is all for the best anyhow. I am bare foot. My belly is hanging out. I can be my real self and not pretend to be nice or even to care. She grinned.
Besides, there is no correct life anyhow, she deduced. Life is just as it is, that’s all. There is no real, true or authentic life. It is just the one given to you and that you happen to be in and living at this moment. Anything else you have begun to believe is fiction and fantasy, not fact.
Minerva smiled. She closed her eyes and chugged again as she had enough beer in which to do so. Then she recalled the flower theft scene of earlier that day. In her mind’s eye, she saw the plump derriere in the air and the woman’s wild plucking motions. She laughed. Stealing beauty, yes it surely was just that and the lady was certainly guilty as charged. Busted! But then she decided that we are probably all somewhat guilty of the same offence. Her. Me. All of us. By harbouring this little Weston fantasy, revisiting a long ago, far away, delicious past, I was stealing a little bit of beauty as much as the next one. For certain, she knew.
“Where in the hell is the beer?” Terry whooped. “Can’t a guy with a fucked hand get a beer around here!”
Minerva sat up in bed and listened, amused.
“Shhh!” Aunt Esme scolded. “Shhh! Do you want all the neighbors to hear!”
All fell silent momentarily. Then the buzz of chatter and laughter was rebooted, scattered over the sheltering, august evening sky. It held like a force field.
Lori McIntyre has been carrying beloved stacks of books for decades. It began in her youth and continues even today. Encouragement from a high school English teacher propelled Lori into writing stories for others to read. She has been writing ever since, but is often drawn back to the short story format. Lori is a retired school teacher and college instructor who lives in Simcoe County. |
THE WATCHER
“Hello,” she says warmly.
I live alone and so this predictable contact with a real person is something that I seek each day. I’m very old now, the bloom of my youth having faded long ago. My chestnut hair has changed to a dirty and matted gray with only a tinge of light brown left, as if it’s struggling to reclaim those bygone days. My vision and hearing is failing me, too. In fact, my eyes look shrouded as if a veil has descended over them. I can discern what is directly in front of me, but my peripheral vision has disintegrated. It’s the same with my hearing. Voices are quieter now and I strain to decipher words and sounds that were once detected with absolute clarity. Even the whisper of the wind is gone, reducing the outside world to a muted entity.
I watch as uninspired teenagers idle away their time as they walk past my house. They stop to point and laugh at my home; a home that has also suffered the effects of old age and time. There is no one here to fix the curled shingles on the roof. Those that remain hang on tenaciously to the bit of cracked tar that threatens to release them without notice. The exposed wood on the roof also looks soft and wet to me.
I take comfort in the little white fence that embraces my property. Yes, I know the paint is peeling. It also wobbles when leaned upon initiating the release of veteran slats that fall to the ground like tired soldiers. However, this little white fence offers me a sense of protection from those who stare, from those who fling hurtful words my way, and from those boisterous and brazen teenagers who taunt me. I am alone, lonely, and afraid.
The first cold day has arrived as I hear Audrey’s brisk steps approach. An icy frost has misted the air and covers the sidewalk, like a delicate piece of white lace. Audrey is wearing a navy trench coat over her thin violet uniform. She has on a pair of purple woollen gloves. I feel a penetrating chill seeping through the walls of my house. I fear this frigid air is going to worsen the rattle in my chest.
I am chained by old age and frailty to a shell of a house that offers me little warmth, comfort, and protection. I take a cautious and trembling step just outside my door. I can see my breath and my gaunt body begins to shake. My stomach rumbles and I suspect no one is coming to bring me something to eat today. Audrey continues to notice me, but lately she slows down and briefly hesitates on the other side of the rickety white fence.
“You okay?” she shouts to me with an anxious look on her face, as she hurriedly checks the time with her purple-gloved hand.
My gaze is cemented to Audrey’s. I strain forward, unable to speak, but hopeful that she will interpret the signs of hunger, abandonment, and loneliness in my soft brown eyes. Audrey bites her lip and then scurries to the neglected gate that remains tentatively fastened by a rusty nail. She puts her hand on the top of the decaying portal and then withdraws it. She looks at her watch again, and then bolts in the other direction, casting a concerned look my way. I take a dejected step slowly backwards, just inside the frame of the door. I peer out as I hear the raucous sound of voices approaching.
“There he is, fellas!” shouts the spikey-haired kid, who visits daily to whack a stick along the battered slats of my flimsy fence. “Throw it, now. Throw it before he gets back in!”
I try to step backwards. I am weak though and unable to move quickly. Before I have a chance to take cover a rotten tomato explodes against my chest. I stumble and my fragile legs give out beneath me. I’ve grown so tired of these attacks, as both my house and I are pummeled with rotten food everyday now. Streaks of decomposing vegetables stain my thin exterior walls.
“Great shot!” shouts the spikey-haired kid. “See you tomorrow, loser!”
Laughter erupts from the pack of teenagers as I struggle to my feet. Putrid tomato slides down my hollow chest and onto my bony legs. Maybe they won’t come back tomorrow, I think hopefully.
I awake from a fitful sleep this morning to find a layer of frost covering me like a blanket. The rotten tomato is still on my body and a penetrating hunger gnaws at me. I feel weak and nauseated. The shakes have settled in, too. I hear the scrape of shovels on icy driveways as the bite of cold pricks the inside of my nostrils. A bright whiteness of snow filters through the slits of my eyes that are now crusted over in the corners.
The familiar crunch of footsteps approaches on the sidewalk. I recognize the step and detect the pale violet form on the other side of the wooden pickets. I hear the gate creak open. It’s a sound I have not heard in a very long time. I feel the purple-gloved hand gently smooth the matted hair on the top of my head.
“Hey, are you alright? You don’t look so well,” says Audrey in a voice that sounds far away, despite her nearness.
I sense the weight of her coat upon me; I feel the warmth of her draped body over me; and I notice her tender kisses on the top of my head. The last whispered words I hear her say are, “I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know. Please hold on.”
Audrey remains slumped over the crusted and lifeless body, as the sound of scuffing footsteps approach. Anguished tears stream down her face.
“What happened to him?” scoffs the spikey-haired kid, as he hovers over Audrey.
“He’s . . . dead,” she sobs. “He suffered and died alone. I walked by him every day. I watched him. He watched me. I didn’t know that he was abandoned. I should have done something to help, but now it’s too late.”
“What’s the big deal, lady?” snickers the spikey-haired kid, as he kicks the side of the house. “It’s just a dog! There’s plenty of those everywhere. One less isn’t going to change a thing.”
Audrey begins to shake uncontrollably. She buries her head into the sparse fur and skeletal frame of the Golden Retriever. A layer of frost lines the inside of the doghouse and a heavy chain remains clipped to his collar.
The spikey-haired kid saunters back through the crumbling gate. He stops at the opening and looks directly across the street. A wide smirk grows on his face, as Audrey remains over the dog, kissing the top of his head and gently whispering the words,
“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
Audrey’s broken-hearted sobs and shaky gulps echo through the crystal cold air and reverberate into the stillness. People walking nearby abruptly stop and turned towards the direction of the devastated cries.
Across the street a pair of eyes stare sadly and quietly at the crumpled figured draped over the lifeless body of the Golden Retriever. The elderly woman stands silently at her window. She clutches at a beige threadbare sweater that has slipped from her narrow shoulders. She wears a pair of grey track pants beneath a soiled and stained pink nightdress. Faded red slippers, a size too big, and with balding patches of flattened fluff, swallow her feet.
The aged hand trembles as it reaches forward to touch the window. She uses her cracked and thickened fingernails to scratch away the film of frost that lines the interior of the glass. As the scraped and icy shavings fall to the floor, she peers through streaks of freshly thrown rotten vegetables.
She is shivering, hungry, and very alone.
The Whirlpool
My two sisters never cried on this journey, but they stole peeks at me as we drew closer to our destination, anticipating the trauma that was about to unfold.
“Not again!” shouted my father. “What the hell is wrong with you, Lori? Stop your bawling!”
This paternal reprimand heightened my anxiety. I knew I was supposed to be more mature. I was after all, the middle daughter and not the youngest, however I was unable to control the swirling funnel of fear that enveloped me. I was the vortex and there was nothing I could do to escape. I cast a glance at my mother hoping for an inkling of support, but she looked straight ahead, denying the emotional destruction in the back seat. I was alone and I knew it.
We approached the granite walls of the Canadian Shield. Their rigid presence on either side of the highway corralled us into a claustrophobic alley. I saw the familiar heart shape with the names, Deb & Jim, inscribed on the stony canvas. I pictured the two of them painting their names and laughing, as we sped past their cherished landmark. How could they be so happy in a place that only offered rock, decaying trees, and a dark river?
I hurriedly wiped my eyes as my father pulled into my grandfather’s driveway. I peered out the window feigning interest in a rusted lawnmower, hoping it would distract me from my inevitable fate. The car came to an abrupt stop though and my sisters scrambled out. I yanked on my bangs drawing them closer to red and thickened eyelids. Of all the places in the world why did my grandfather have to live here? This place was one of the reasons I feared visiting him. It was dark and dangerous.
“Remember, girls,” said my father as he pointed at the river, “those whirlpools will suck you right down to the bottom. The current is strong here, so keep away from the bank.”
I stared at the raging river that threatened to swallow little children whole. Did everyone and everything in this isolated place have to be so angry? I quickened my pace, walking behind my mother, while my eyes remained transfixed on the enraged Black River. This liquid canal defied the entry of light. Once I even watched a thick, charcoal coloured snake skim across the surface. My grandfather’s words echoed relentlessly in my head:
“Little Danny Cullen never had a chance. That boy fell into the river and was sucked down, deep and far. His body didn’t resurface for two days, way down by Coopers Falls. He’d been warned, you know.”
I shivered but within seconds the spinning whirlpools and slithering snakes quickly faded. We had arrived on the threshold of the tomb. My spine stiffened and I drew in my last breath of fresh air, as I faced my grandfather’s summer home. Summer sparked images of sunshine and warmth; home kindled a sense of comfort and belonging. None of those existed in a place that could only be described as some sort of crypt.
As I tilted my head upwards and scanned the exterior walls, I realized that this dwelling looked like my grandfather. The reddish-brown paint on the exterior walls was cracked and peeling, as it clung to wooden slats that were rotting and soft. A contagious rusty fungus, that threatened to suffocate the entire house, grew on crumbling roof shingles. Even the spongy wooden steps bounced underfoot.
The door creaked as my father pushed it opened. He entered first and the rest of us followed like captive prisoners. My sisters trudged along next, then my mother, and finally me. I didn’t want to be at the beginning of the line, but being last meant I had to be fanatically vigilant.
“You’re going to walk right up my back!” scolded my mother.
I continued along in careful proximity wishing I could hold her hand, or at the very least, just touch some part of her for reassurance. All of us remained wide-eyed and mute, knowing we were inching closer towards him.
The entrance to the crypt was dark despite it being midday. It revealed a large living room with a multitude of strange and frightening artifacts. I’d never seen such items before, but they always held my attention and were never moved or changed. A large replica of a beer bottle stood in a corner as I passed. It was dark brown and shoulder height. A reckless assortment of menacing fish on plaques also inhabited the walls. Some had sharp teeth, one was missing an eye, and another had whiskers.
Black and white photographs were plastered everywhere. I peered at men holding beer bottles and smoking cigarettes. They posed together like old friends, deliriously happy and alive, as dead fish hung on clips in their hands. I fixed my gaze on the last photograph, compulsively seeking out the one that unsettled me most. I stared at the tall and only man, the one who was both my grandfather and yet a young man. He was smiling, even friendly looking. That should have offered me comfort, but it didn’t. A crude rack made from sticks and strung with wire was in the foreground. I winced at the sight of dozens of dead frogs, the largest I had ever seen, hanging upside down like sheets on a clothesline. The warm smile my grandfather offered seemed sickening now. I wondered how he could be so happy with such a slaughter? Worst yet, what was he going to do with all those lifeless and pale amphibians?
As we trudged towards our final destination the curtain-less windows stared at the irritated river. If I had been offered a boat at that moment, I would have bolted aboard and risked losing my life in that swirling tributary. Escaping what awaited me would be worth the risk. I wondered if those frogs were the lucky ones after all? The familiar rattling cough of the crypt keeper sounded and I slammed into my mother once more. She pushed me back wordlessly, but with a harsh frown.
We entered another room now, the one that preceded the kitchen, where my grandfather was encased. I had never been in a room that looked like night in the middle of day. There was no window, but through the blackness I could make out the shape of a bed that was lumpy and never made. I always felt unnerved walking through my grandfather’s bedroom in order to get to the kitchen. The murkiness of the space screamed at us to hurry along.
I braced myself as we approached our final destination. I closed my eyes tightly, like a fawn, believing that if I couldn’t see the threat it didn’t exist. My nasal passages, however, refused to permit such a delusion because they were in a full out Code Red, as we cut through a toxic layer of cigarette chemicals that hung in the air. A bare light bulb hung loosely from the ceiling. It illuminated a defiled yellow strip covered with the corpses of flies. A tiny window that would allow for the escape of a small child was located at the back of the kitchen. It disturbed me though, because it stared directly at a wall of rock, heightening my sense of being trapped in the tomb. Through the toxic haze I spotted the glowing ember of a cigarette, the one that remained permanently affixed to the long and bony fingers that I feared. Brownish, yellow stains were forever present on his right hand.
Like a group of tourists who repeatedly visited the same museum, we halted in front of the familiar human artifact. I stood stiffly behind my mother in an attempt to conceal my presence. Without moving my feet I tilted my head to catch glimpses of the skeletal figure before us. His clothes hung loosely on a bony frame and I could clearly see his collarbone. Suspenders were clipped to his waistband and he wore the same sleeveless undershirt, stained with reminders of previous meals. He sat beside a kitchen table with rusted metallic legs and an orange melamine top. An over-filled ashtray offered companionship to a chipped and stained coffee cup.
“Come and say hello to your grandfather, girls,” said the raspy voice, accompanied by a deep wet cough.
My sisters stepped forward like soldiers drilled to march in perfect unison. I envied their togetherness and position at that moment. They were getting the dreaded greeting over with first, and splitting the intensity of the contact. I watched as my youngest sister shut her eyes and covered her nose in anticipation of a face plant with the repugnant soiled shirt.
My mother reached behind and drew me near for the first time now. I felt my small hand inside hers and the warmth of the security it offered. I gulped down the reassurance like a mad dog offered water in the hot day sun. I knew my turn was near, so I squeezed my mother’s hand harder hoping that our bond would not be severed.
“Now someone is missing,” sputtered the raspy voice between fits of hacking. “Where’s Lori?”
My mother pried my fingers from her hand and pushed me forward. I halted, traumatized by the abrupt detachment, but continued cautiously as my father’s warning eyes bore into me. My sisters parted quickly and everyone watched as I approached the one I feared most, the tomb dweller, my grandfather. His liver spotted arms were outstretched and I inched quietly closer. I held my breath while locked in his embrace.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” I said to myself. “Think of that lawnmower … think of anything.”
The embrace ended and I raced back to stand with my sisters, relieved that the worst was over. I felt the tenderness of my sister’s hand as she reached out to clasp mine. The sharp clog in my throat softened then, but a headache percolated in my temples. I knew that within a short time the visit would conclude. We would leave behind the tomb and its dweller. We would leave behind the angry river, the granite cliffs, and the decaying trees. We would leave them all behind, at least that is, until the next time.
A Black, A Catholic, A Jew, A Hedonist, A Protestant & An Atheist
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22
What I can’t get out of my head is the image of Jimmy Gilmore in the dark, flickering-low-wattage-bare-bulb basement of his Utica home, dangling from the end of a rope, not a rope, a kind of silk sash. It is called a fascia, it seems, and it was probably black and is usually worn by Catholics around the midsection, above the waist. These details you don’t want to investigate, but you do anyway. Because you think, maybe wrongly, that details are the key to unlocking the mystery – of somebody you thought you knew but didn’t at all. Am I the only one thinking this? I did not know he was raised a Catholic, that his parents were rich – compared to us, at least – that he despised his parents [but not really] and what they stood for but outed it in a muted, respectful manner. What did we know: He righteously refused to ever be influenced by this upbringing, wearing hand-me-down clothes and the cheapest sneakers, didn’t even own a winter coat, a comb, failed to shave and didn’t even own a stereo or get his hair cut at the chic Hair-Em in Langdon Plaza in Elmira.
Jimmy was fearless and wanted everyone to know this or at least that there was nothing to fear but what fear does to our souls. Or something like that. It could very well have been that he just wanted to take the piss out of us on our long talk-walks, our scruffy-denim version of Aristotle’s Peripatetics as we slowly drifted across the dark fields between the high school and the village swimming pool in the languourous summer evenings after dinner.
Along the way he’d leap up on the hand railing on the bridge that crossed the highway and without even focusing, he’d walk across, balanced wackadoodle-daredevil-style on the railing – embarrassment if he fell our way and certain death if he fell onto the highway. And any consolation for being right would be trumped by the fact we’d be panicking, puking, and swearing to the highest heaven ever imagined.
Fact: He never fell, which was his Aristotelian teasing out the “why” of this ridiculous thing called fear, convincing and impressive and yet, in the end, his accumulation of facts still led to one universal truth – by the next bridge crossing we were just as shared scitless, schizofrantic, yelling, pleading with him on bended knees to PLEASE come down, be normal, reasonable and spare us the horror of the impending splatter.
His signature moment: he’d feign losing his balance, arms flailing, legs wobbling, a mocking-quavering WOEHOE, as he for a moment held our collective breaths in his midst, teasing out the terror, taking mental snapshots of our fear-contorted faces for posterity.
No doubt: We shit bricks then, continued to shit bricks for years, got better at disguising our quivering brick shitting and in college acquired articulate rationalization, justified paranoia, vainglorious suspicion that would place us at the center of the universe’s intrigues as if we had by merely dreaming in dark fields in the middle of nowhere changed the course of human events.
However, the weird thing is: You know somebody eight, 10 years, when you suddenly realize you don’t know anything about someone except a list of movies, bands and books he has mentioned and some outrageous acts, that he despised school but got mostly “A”s, scorned organized sports, never practiced and was still a top athlete. And we, the six of us, were best friends – whatever that means – and so, how does it happen that it does not happen, this knowing much of anything about each other?
One minute me – I’m Bertrand Planarien – and Jimmy and Stuart and Marcus and Jasper and Peter are plotting a big adventure, the next we are heading east on 17 – we’re 17 heading down Route 17! – clear as the clear sky yesterday, topping the speed limit, like there’s no tomorrow, no calendar, no agenda, no plans, no future. Probably won’t be, if news out of Vietnam was even half right – “Napalm Accident Kills Vietnamese Civilians.” Our goal: Last Tango in Paris was playing in only one theatre within a 300-mile radius of home – in Binghamton.
What are we doing telling our parents about napalm and “friendly fire” anyway? What business do we have knowing what “friendly fire” even is? And insisting it means more than what it means? It’s a metaphor, mom.
We were standing on the brink of being drafted into a military we despised, to fight a war we didn’t believe in. Guidance counselors all acted very concerned, did damage control, pushing the patriotism-plus-reasonable angle to persuade us to join – put in 20 years means a pension for the rest of your life.
Most guys our age didn’t begin researching until they received the letter ordering them to report for induction. Others thought it was smart to sign up right after high school as part of the “Buddy System.” The tag line: “Who better to watch your back than your buddy?”
We prepped a year early, watched the draft lottery on TV, August 1971 – silently gazing, glued to the set as U.S. Selective Service members wandered around a dour stage. On a no-nonsense fold-out table, a giant glass jar held 365 blue plastic capsules containing dated slips of paper rolled up inside. Some big Republican, grey guy strolled out, introduced the event. He reached into the jar, hand rustling the capsules, and pulled out the first capsule. We studied the process and, yes, after the fifth number we got the drift, it had sunk in – we were screwed; at least some of us would be.
Peter – from a large Jewish family, in a house where books lay splayed open, spine up, everywhere – turned down the sound and cranked up “Fortunate Son” on a cheap hi-fi unit so we could all sing along while the lottery mimed along its ceremonial path of misery, and we sang louder and LOUDER than any military choir ever: “It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one ...”
Me and Stuart, the Protestant who listened to songs of torment, had “permanently borrowed” a map of New York State from the school library – laughter. We laid it out and – follow his forefinger – plotted our escape route to Canada: hitchhike to the Canadian border, get off the main road, find dirt roads, two ruts, fields, woods, cross the border through the trees on foot with a knapsack of apples, matches, cans of soup, Swiss Army Knife. In between somebody’d yell some anxious obscenity at the screen and we sang: “it’s one, two, three, / What’re we fighting for? / Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, / Next stop is Vietnam.”
We stared at the map, thinking that if we stared long enough, each of us would find his own escape route. Stuart declared that first we’d borrow his parents’ Chevy Nova, do a test run.
“Whose up for it?”
“Take me with you, man,” Marcus said, his afro, you couldn’t help but notice, had the awesome breadth and volume of a universe according to Sly Stone.
“We’ll say we’re going to Watkins Glen, goin’ campin’, the final hurrah before college, go skinny-dipping up top of the Glen. Too treacherous for the Glen’s fat pigs to trek out there and bust us. Next day we head to Ithaca, Utica ...”
And we – me and Stuart – did just that, singing along to the radio out of Ithaca: “Some folks inherit star spangled eyes, / Ooh, they send you down to war ... It ain’t me ...”
We drove to just south of the Canadian border to check out Mooers, NY, population 400: it was the smallest, most inconsequential, obscure and unlikely border town ever put on this earth for the likes of us.
We parked the Nova at the Mooers Gas Mart, shopped there, found a few worthwhile useful survival basics: apples and potato chips. We hiked out Bush Road, crossed a creek with no name and up Blackman Corners Road a ways before we tumbled down the bank to the creek and followed that clandestine trickle for about three miles until, consulting the map, matching the creek’s twist and turns, we figured we must have been in Canada – no fences, no checkpoint, no flags, no fanfare. Perfect.
See you next year, same place, same time – a week before we were to be chauffeured to college by our teary-eyed parents in station wagons, a chair tied to the roof, lots of advice, turtleneck, records, paperbacks, and shopping bags full of school supplies as a gift from them. Instead, we’d leave notes behind saying we were going to be OK, mentioned Montreal, and as difficult as it was, signed our notes “love”.
“We’re gonna hitch up there and then head to Montreal.”
“Why Montreal?”
“Friendlier toward draft dodgers.” We’d seen some foreign films, a couple by Godard, and were sure the French and people of Montreal were friendlier and more anti-war than, say, people in Toronto. We’d seek sanctuary with Roxanne who lived and worked in a hippie store there, and volunteered for a draft-dodger counselling organization, the modern equivalent of the underground railroad, run by “Quaker radicals,” who helped draft dodgers get settled.
“I’m going skiing,” Jasper declared, with a casual flip of his long blond curls, “off the grid, no forwarding address, AWOL.” Jasper, the “Hedonist,” the guy with the car, his yellow Beetle – it was HIS – had this knack of yanking everybody into a good time, could crash a party and by the end, the hosts are thanking him for crashing their party. He could make becoming a ski instructor seem like a revolutionary act, a blow against seriousness.
“Where?”
“Colorado. There’s a movement.”
“Ski to be free?”
“Your funny Marcus.”
“I can survive on ski lessons, drink Coor’s by the campfire.” Jasper: football-track star, ski-guy, Downhill Racer, from a neighborhood of large homes, expansive, manicured lawns that need upkeep by short men from south of some border. He knew he was one of those “it” people, nominated for prom king and stuff. But, at least he had the good sense to laugh it off. He probably also knew that a closet full of trophies couldn’t be melted down to a single nickel.
“Sounds good.” Marcus, however, thought he might enlist instead, betting that with his brains he could land himself a noncombatant job, shuffle papers. “And then I’ll rob the government till with the GI Bill, go to the college of my choice and get my thrill.”
“... Meet a coed named Jill.” Peter thought he’d either go to Sweden or manage a 2-S college deferment. After all, his father was anti-war AND a guidance counselor.
“... Whose on the birth control pill,” my final word. “A- in poetry. Trophy on the window sill.”
Jimmy, being ever the buffoon to highlight the absurdity of life, stood up, aimed his imaginary M-16 and declared: “I wanna kill me as many gooks as it takes to become a general. They say 500’ll do.”
His outrageous proclamations were accompanied by his shambling manner, a nonchalant, aw-shucks-ing of his anti-establishmentarianism whenever he saw fit, which seemed to be a consequence of his avid reading and rereading of Huckleberry Finn.
“I’m gonna let myself be drafted and then do the insane thing, stick a Hershey bar up my ass crack and then during the mental status interview wipe my butt and eat it in front of shrinks as advised by the Yippies to get a 4F, unfit to serve in the Armed Forces.”
“You could just be a homosexual deviant. That usually sets them off.” Actually he had already decided to become a Conscientious Objector.
And me, the atheist alien with a Green Card? I was going for draft dodger. The idea of killing any person – even Hitler or Nixon or Westmoreland – was a bridge too far toward inhumanity or wherever. OK, I was a naive alien with no roots, no hometown, no grandparents, no family tree, who thought poetry could save the world. So shoot me.
“You got the choice to save thousands by killing Hitler and you’d refuse to kill him?” Jimmy wanted to start one of his long philosophical debates.
“I’d shoot him in the leg, put him down, capture him and then force him to watch documentaries of all the suffering he caused every day for the rest of his days.” I sort of knew it would never come to this.
“Maybe pillory him and Himmler and Goebbels and let Jews and others throw pig shit and rotten fruit and maybe even some stones. I’m into it – even as a pacifist.” Peter had mulled over the options.
“I’d let Jews come by to spit in his face and tell him their stories of woe.”
Yes, my status as draft dodger would embarrass and confuse my parents; I’d get called coward, alien traitor, be snubbed, denied jobs [that I didn’t want anyway] but ultimately I’d find some things that would give my conscience a rest: read Vonnegut, Twain, Heller, Orwell, Marx, Whitman, Abbie Hoffman, Leroi Jones and Angela Davis, listen to spiritual jazz to not feel totally alien.
Other options we’d heard about: Do prison time for refusing to serve and hope for early parole, get a teaching degree deferment, claim fake medical problems like poor eyesight or flat feet, shoot yourself in the foot, fake mental illness by using psychotropic drugs, fake a stutter, wear women’s lingerie and make-up, get convicted of a felony, become a CO based on religious or ethical beliefs and accept alternative service – work for VISTA, build public housing in Philadelphia.
“I’d work in a mental hospital or join the National Guard,” Jasper felt best when he acted like he had it figured out. “But I prefer ski instructor – maybe to disadvantaged kids in Denver.”
“And then what? Be ordered to shoot students on campus – ‘four dead in O-Hi-O’?” Peter.
“Yep, go weekend warrior, maybe get to shoot dirty hippie students at a demo. Keep America safe from its young,” Jasper. You had to laugh. No. You did.
We were all pretty smart, although not as smart as we thought we were. It was pretty clear: society wanted us to believe that it was perfectly normal and polite and patriotic and manly to fight in a war that could not be made sense of.
That was last year, now is a year later and the next draft will be televised and we will watch it as a group one last time before we are dispersed to our individual fates, darting into whatever abyss, uncharted territory, ripped apart, as we get chauffeured, each to our chosen campus. This was the big drawing and we were eerily fixed, gnawing fingernails; Marcus couldn’t even be in the same room as the TV.
The call up cut-off was 95, I think. My number, birthdate July 16 was 74; there it was pinned to a bulletin board grid so, definitely going – if they had their way. I saw myself following the mental map I had memorized to the Canadian border. Peter drew 56, Stuart 93, Marcus 222, Jasper 289, Jimmy 351. Our gazes gave it all away – none of us were who we were an hour earlier. Less blood in the face, a little less alive. The beers purchased as solace went unopened.
“No fucking way will I ever, EVER buy a Norelco Triple-Header! No to Norelco!” Marcus’s reaction to the Norelco commercial during the broadcast was loud and clear.
I tried following up with Stuart. No answer. The prick. Revealing his chickenality. Anyway, we soon got off the hook because the draft numbers were never used after December 7.
Where were we?: The 4-cylinder engine is straining, screaming in an octave somewhere between a Hendrix guitar solo and the collective cry of anguish of an entire generation. Jasper, his face, pressed up toward the windshield, driving with his chin balanced on the steering wheel. We, with five faces out the window, warm wind whipping our glorious long hair – every inch another blow against the empire – screaming back, imitating the whine of an engine too long in second gear to the tune that describes the terror and joy of impending graduation. And for those few seconds, those few hours that day, we were free birds floating on the breeze of now, being none other than ourselves, unburdened from the history of a people consumed by suffering and responsibility. And freedom felt good coursing through our veins, forever free to pursue our own trajectories of increasing self-doubt.
We raced eastward like there was no tomorrow, no speed limit – 65! 70! 75! – thrust into the next beyond, overcoming gravity and any burdensome G-forces. Maybe there wasn’t much to look forward to except us giddily waving obscene gestures at the cars we passed and suddenly ... a discernible silent distance between thoughts in Jasper’s Beetle, as if each thought or utterance was buffered by contemplation, like thought clouds serving as safety airbags between head and hard reality.
But then the resistance burst out in earnest. We we were no longer ourselves and that suited us just fine:
“War, huh, yeah / What is it good for? / Absolutely nothing, “ Marcus sang it 10 times but it didn’t matter because he could sing like a mofo.
“ War don’t make boys men, it makes men dead.” Jimmy swore he came up with that himself.
“Fuck War, I’d Rather Be Skiing,” guess who.
“Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity!” Everybody liked that one and so I followed with one of my own: “Sex Porn better than War Torn.”
“WAR IS OVER IF YOU WANT IT!” Stuart was trying to get the hang of it.
“Fuck the man. Fuck school. Fuck the FUCKERS!” Nobody and I mean NObody had ever seen Peter lose his cool like this.
And then we aburptly and collectively shifted gears, into 5th or 6th or something, entering a magical realm of lubricated harmony – you feel invincible, like the superhero you imagined you were at 11 but now with a James Bond coven of babes. Living in the moment is a cliché, but if you embrace it with unselfconscious earnestness you can surf perfectly on the wave just under the curl, something you will never ever be able to replicate again. We looked out the Beetle windows and everything looked suddenly totally essential, colorful, meaningful, impossibly important, full of portent, literary allusion and synchronicity – on fast forward.
Jasper likes to make the engine scream and beg before shifting it into third and, if she’s real nice, into fourth. He plays it like a lead guitarist plays his Gibson. We don’t for a minute think it is insane to be screaming in unison along to the scream of a 4-cylinder engine pushed to its limit. Because that is why there are limits. To push.
We can all name guitarists other than Hendrix that capture this sound. If I start the list we will soon all be chiming in. These guitarists play that sound at us and we are understood, represented, on a map. When their guitars explode in balls of flame, we know we are immortalized. I won’t name any of them here. Because this is not about music appreciation.
We are whooping it up, high as Droogies, because we are on an adventure, you know, thrills to get us out of ourselves. The more distance between thrills in our upstate dead zone, they say, the faster you got to go to get to the next thrill. You don’t reach it in time you pass out and away. It’s not sci-fi, it’s the only thing we got except stories about life in New York City – that girls in Greenwich Village are so cool, they proposition you and offer you thrill drugs [LSD] that will throw you permanently out of yourself. Like being thrown out of your own house – forever.
We sing: “I’m a boy and I’m a man” in unison, screaming forehead to forehead: “I’m eighteen / And I don’t know what I want.” Going hoarse in the knowledge that even as loud as the top of your voice will never make it clear to them – or yourself – why we are here doing what we are doing.
Jimmy will laugh that laugh – a chuckle like someone jingling a pocket of loose change – like he knows, like the laugh is a secret password into a secret society of people who wear a fez, like he’s been to the basement and found the books of Kafka and Nietzsche, like he’s lived nihilism, can define existentialism, is always saying things like: You didn’t know that?!”
Jimmy and Peter were masters of all isms and were sure that most isms were bad. Stuart believed in certain isms: transcendentalism, Buddhism, altruism, holier-than-thou-ism. I believed in animal magnetism, the magic of a beautiful face to distract and change fate forever and ever.
We park downtown and the STRAND Theatre marquee is worth a picture: LAST TANGO IN PARIS STARRING MARLON BRANDO 1:15 4:25 7:30. The Strand had been in the news: cops had shut it during the premier of Deep Throat some months back. It had only reopened a month ago and was now playing another controversial film. We support people who go out on a limb for the naked arts by attending the early show.
We were lucky; the ticket seller in the booth was a young girl and Jasper and Marcus were good at schmoozing, flirting, flattering her about her great feathery fake eyelashes, as she chewed pink gum, unsure of what to make of us.
“Don’t worry boys, I’m not gonna turn away mature foreign movie lovers like yous from seeing a film just because yous ‘forgot’ your IDs.” She handed us our tickets, smirked with that O-yea-I’m-wise look, adding: “Keep it in your pants, guys.”
We broke out into six urine-warm grins and flipped her our best solidarity fists. She didn’t care and was already back to reading a magazine as we walked off with our tickets in hand like we were pilgrimaging to the Holy Land, lightweight Bible under armpit.
As a nerd, trying to be super cool requires a basic debriefing, learning to go totally disaffected, drained of all traces of enthusiasm, glee or wide-eyed, saliva-producing horniness and acquiring that dapper Buddhist-meets-James-Bond inclination that consists of a veil of composure-under-duress-who-gives-a-shit cool – we studied Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Jean-Paul Belmondo movies in that regard. But the learning curve is steep and the stakes are high.
We’re here for the early show and there are maybe two dozen other stragglers, already slouched way down so all you see is their cowlicks. There are maybe two women in the whole theatre. Debriefing: don’t do the math – about 8.5%. They were probably liberal arts professors at SUNY. You know the kind: make crow’s feet sexy and with casual scarfs of bright strips of fabric knotted on top of the head and looping behind the ears, long enough to drape back over the shoulder, which expresses verve and just the right amount of disdain for the rest of society.
We are sitting next to each other and like when you visit the urinals, the unspoken rule is during a dirty movie [even if it is art] you do not look but straight ahead – especially during the butter scene [we’d heard about]. I tried my best to, from the corner of my eyes, observe the rest of them with their eyes pegged to the screen, with nary a comment, a few swallowed guffaws of Jimmy’s – especially during the bathtub scene.
We emerged from the theatre wondering about the film. Hands in pockets, a quiet that you can hear; the gears are turning and none of us want to admit we had a boner.
The moviegoers, us included, seemed almost shell-shocked or hoodwinked or annoyed that we were confused; the lobby smelled almost like fear.
“10 boners.” Jasper. “But don’t ask me to explain it.”
“10 piles of crap.” This was the breadth of our ratings. Stuart thought that the horniness quotient, or any romantic beauty, was “spoiled” by death and suffering and cynicism.
“Maybe, in a way, we’re being shown there will be no pat happy endings for the rest of our lives.” While Peter could write reviews, term papers on subjects like this, I ended up tracing Maria Schneider’s near-perfect breasts with a #2 pencil and tracing paper.
Jimmy thought that Brando’s insistence on a return to a time before we had names refreshing – Buddhistic almost. The pursuit of anonymous, aggressive sex, we gathered, was a way to obliterate the past, although, I was mesmerized into admiring cluelessness, you know, where the brain goes goopy, and form trumps substance, beauty trumps meaning.
“It’s driven by Brando’s grief over losing his wife to suicide.” Peter was searching for motive because you never know if we’ll some day be confronted by something similar: “In talking to his dead wife we see a man caught between existentialism and absurdism.”
I was only half following. Vivid images of her face, hair, breasts, belly filled my brain to overflowing.
“It must be the most powerful erotic movie ever made,” I dared to say.
“Well, how many have you seen. 101 Dalmatians is not porn.”
“It lacked tenderness, intimacy, human kindness.” Stuart hated that the movie refused to conform to what he thought sex was – love embodied. He wanted the movie to lift him out of himself and offer hope, the hope against all hope. He also condemned me for having fantasies aroused by the film, calling it a sign of weakness of someone who has never had a “real girl friend”.
At times, you wanted to just slap Stuart up. That is how pained he was by the mere existence of pain, of slights, inequities, things that did not make sense. Marcus and Peter knew what it was: a self-serious lack of any appreciation for humor. Blame it on Calvinism, on his parents who were uptight – not awful – just reserved, so that evocations of passion were relegated to stiff handshakes, unless a half-smile between spoons of lukewarm soup was supposed to light a fire. You know the kind of smile used as churchly propaganda, like an open door, like “Welcome, aren’t we Protestants welcoming?!”
Let me tell you what Stuart hated the most: becoming his parents. And, as if there was some magnetic genetic pull in his case, he became over time increasingly puritanical, judgemental. “You’re either judgemental or mental,” Peter used to say in response to some intolerant Stuart blurt.
But, since I’m writing this, I’m convinced that we all sensed somehow that Last Tango was profound and that, despite feigning coolness – or revulsion – it overwhelmed us in a way that only great art can.
“Stuart, you’re so frickin’ transparent. You hate it because you weren’t in it. You so wanted so bad to be in that movie.” In the cartoon version, I would beat him in, sneak in through the first panel to replace Brando before shooting starts.
I was immediately smitten by Maria Schneider. Period. Not because I was grateful to her that she was so naked. No, not out of some horny perversion. No. More because she embodied a kind of being hovering between innnocence and experience that I imagined I could communicate with. Six months later, on campus, I bought the Playboy issue featuring her. I remember what a big deal it was: I invented excuses, scenarios, studied the cover, would say I liked reading the “Jazz and Pop Poll,” or I’d been assigned to read the John Clellon Holmes piece on Kerouac for poetry class. But the vendor, with the wrinkled face and a cigarette butt emerging from it could not care less because morality was just a stumbling block to sales and sales equals survival.
I clipped the photo of her squatting naked, nude in wet sand near the sea. Folded it so that it appeared face out in my wallet, looking like a real photo that maybe she had sent me, which – I never told anybody ever – served as a template for the ideal woman, body, hair, elegant innocence, voice – that French accent. [Her actual tragic life would not concern me for another 30 years, when I learned how she came unraveled and I was not there to hug her or whisper dulcet encouragement into her ear.]
And a year-and-a-half later – placing the photo of Schneider next to the few photos I have of Laura from back then – I realized without ever consciously using that template to hunt for a body-face double I was, indeed, dating a Midwestern version of Maria Schneider. How weird is that? Enough to have kept it quiet for all these years.
We are now singing so loud that you might think we are leaping across that great distance between who we hope to be and what we fear we will become.
“‘The Brain – is wider than the Sky.’” Stuart could get cryptic for a multitude of reasons. I’m unfamiliar with these lyrics. And only later learn he’d memorized an entire Emily Dickinson poem he thought appropriate to blurt out here. “The Brain is deeper than the sea ...”
“And you and me are free to be you and me ...” Peter had a pointy sense of humor that jabbed at Stuart until it shut him up in a pout.
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Did Jimmy know where my mind was stuck.
“By chokin’ the chicken?” Marcus.
Jimmy always seemed to have everything figured out: society was a sham, had to be worked, negotiated... How socks were bad for your feet; how shoes were bad for your feet. How he was going to go a year without wearing shoes – even in winter. Which was annoying because lots of places like malls, pizzerias, and movie theatres had those signs: NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE NO SHIT.
Marcus had a solution for Shoeless Jimmy. Marcus was a bit of an artist with an eye for rendering. He’d paint a pair of shoes on his bare feet. Nobody would notice. And nobody did. That is the magic of Trompe-l’oeil, of course. Or if people did, they sensed we were too scary-weird to bring it up.
Thirty-some years later I get a call out of the blue. I don’t even recognize his voice. It is Stuart, by now a school teacher, speaking like one in complete sentences, becoming the very thing he despised back then. When a high school friend calls you out of the blue after not so much as a word for so long, you know it is not good news like he won the lottery and wants to share it with us.
“I have to be the bearer of bad news,” when it’s bad news, friends suddenly go formal, using stiff sentences to hide behind. “Jimmy passed away last Tuesday after a period of declining health.” Everything he said that tried to deny it had been suicide pointed exactly to that very conclusion. I think we’ve all been in a conversation like this: the more some fact is denied, the more it becomes irrefutable, undeniable evidence of certitude.
I guess that is why I knew right away it was suicide. I knew from experience, having already experienced the death by suicide of an inordinate number of friends and acquaintances: death by jumping [“falling’”] from a low bridge into a shallow canal; death by automobile [“accident”]; death by “accidental” overdose; death by unhealthy, nihilistic lifestyle [“wasn’t taking the best care of her health” – in other words, wanted to die].
Jimmy had withdrawn from the very life he seemed to always own the better part of, as if life was incapable of putting one over on him, as if life was his for the taking – and ultimately, ironically, had taken him. There was a silence on both ends, the kind where you imagine you are hearing ghosts whispering through your landline.
“Well, ain’t that something, it takes a death to bring us together.” Remembering someone you hadn’t really thought about for many years sucks. Why is that? Because you immediately feel guilty that you haven’t thought about them for all this time until it is too late and he cannot really use any of your sudden fond memories ever again.
“I feel bad. I blame myself. I saw him a year ago and didn’t notice anything. Nothing. He’s now forever in my thoughts.” Stuart.
“I’m sure he’s super pleased about that. It’s like a million dollars in the pocket of a dead man about to be deep sixed.” Me.
“I ignored him when he was crying out – without crying out – typical Jimmy. He seemed fine, calm, focused on his stocks, had come to denounce almost everything as godless.
“No more Huck Finn humanism? He used to take the piss out of everything crooked and hypocritical. Ranting against every ism – saying we were all ‘ismed’?”
“Yea. The laugh was still there but it wasn’t funny what he was laughing at.”
There, in my mind, Jimmy is lying on a cold slab with slight bruising of the neck [lighter bruising when a noose is made of a soft material like a silk scarf or fascia] in a morgue, in a somber Utica struggling to overcome its depressing image by “growing its civic pride.”
As the metalcore band In This Moment sings in “Utica is a Depressing Parking Lot”:
“This beautiful tragedy crashing into me / No foreseeable happy horizon I can see, / Suck it all up with your Dyson, you and me. / Uticans are a depressing lot, hope is bankrupt but its all we got / Beautiful melodies wash away the lies and rot...”
To show respect for the feelings of the family and the Catholic Church, The Chronicle-News obit was respectfully deferential, reworking the hanging-from-a-pipe details into an official cause of death: “declining health.” Maybe it wasn’t even Jimmy Gee, the ex-person now referred to as James Francis Felix Ives Sebastian Gilmore.
What I knew: born a Catholic, disavowed his faith as a teen. What I didn’t know: rejoined the Church, became an oblate after he quit practicing law.
“I just miss him. Have for a while. I miss his questioning of everything – even those who question everything – a contrarian of the first order. But where does it end?” Stuart was in a dour mood, the kind that wafts into nostalgia, that kind of what-if nostalgia that seeks to punish us with regret.
“There is no end because inside each lie is a smaller deceit and inside that is subatomic evasion and inside that is ...” Me in a moment of philosophical clarity that startled me.
“Yea, yea, remember him up on that railing balanced on one leg over the highway?”
“Super smart, but somehow he managed to hoodwink himself, come unraveled, ending up the very thing he despised – a Catholic.”
“He became super devout, but still, it was Jimmy. You know what I mean?”
“Yea, from an open window with the light shining in, to a door deadbolted shut. I think he ended up Catholic the same way guys end up in a pub – loneliness. No wife, no partner, no cat, no dog ...”
“No way.”
“Grit thinks he was gay and Catholic – and tormented by it.”
“NO WAY WAS HE GAY.”
“Did we ever hear him talk about a girlfriend, kissing a woman, sex? He just wasn’t the lovey-dovey kind – ask Grit. Maybe he was secretly gay – and just lost his way.”
“HE WAS NOT GAY! And it wasn’t suicide! That’s all sensationalist crap.”
“Oh really? So, hanging from a heat pipe in your basement is an accident? Come on. Granted, it could’ve been self-asphyxiation, like some auto-erotic thing.”
“He was a good friend, smart, compassionate, but burdened by his inability to overcome his self-perceived shortcomings.” Peter hadn’t said anything until now. “Remember how he used to come over and talk until we all fell asleep. I’d wake up and he’d be gone.”
“He was our own Jimmy Reb, our own Dean Moriarity – invinsible – or so we thought,” Stuart was rhapsodizing as we are prone to do when the object is no longer there to hear our compliments.
“A dichotomy in many ways – extremely generous to those around him, extremely hard on himself. He used to defend the weaker among us, those who were alwyays getting picked on by others and he’d take the wrath to shield them – truly fearless in the face of danger. But, maybe ironically, he couldn’t accept his own frailties, and get help from others and that made it difficult for him.” We should listen to Peter.
“Maybe the god thing wasn’t as spirit-enriching as he thought. Maybe this is where he exposed his frailties to god. Maybe he discovered that god wasn’t listening.”
“Like I said, he became very orthodox, really judgemental. His daily routine was OCD but he made it into some religious ritual. Like god even cares that you put your toothbrush in the exact same spot every night. And then his health failed.” Stuart.
“What does that even mean?” Peter had no patience for polite clichés. “Maybe he was gay but probably not. I’m positive though that he was scarred by his parents, like all his brothers and sisters. His oldest bro left for Rome and never returned. His sister joined a cult in Idaho and later said their father had sexually abused her. His younger brother fell for the bottle. Jimmy left home before the end of high school and never returned for more than a cordial visit. The father was a bit of a thinker and drinker and drink fueled his violent temper. His mom has been in AA since our high school years.
“He warned me I was going to hell for dropping acid 30 years ago. As if I didn’t already pay the price – am still paying the price! I still only have one foot on the ground.” Stuart.
“Maybe he put all his faith in one basket and that basket had a hole in it.”
The ride home from Binghamton that day: think of a ride from a cemetery after you’ve buried your entire family, with Jasper eerily crusing under the speed limit. Solemn reflections in the side window.
As we turned off route 17 to head up South Main, Marcus made us all swear on a stack of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics, Vonnegut paperbacks, Playboys or whatever, that we would remain friends forever. Like a really long time.
That was the last time the six of us saw each other together in one place.
The big shock: if you ever see any of your old gang again, you remember thinking they had it all figured out back then and you were clueless. They seemed to be able to explain things like they were wrapping Christmas presents, had clever comebacks, hurled brickbats, were late for school, refused to wear socks and, magically, never seemed to experience any repercussions for their anti-establishment behavior, floated along on interpretations of the philosophy they read aloud and there you were, all dazzled and humbled.
But then Peter contacted me about John’s death and he said something startling: “I’ve always had a distracted approach to life. I can survive in the world but I missed lots of ops to develop skills, relationships, and talents – I know they’re hiding in here somewhere!”
“You sure snowed me all those years.”
“You and me. I’m amazed I’m even left standing. I never had any concept of how life should be. So much iindecision and stupid-ass decisions. But, call it accident or divine intervention or guiding hand – yeah, sure – here I still am like a paramecium blindly tasting and feeling its way through life.”
I didn’t – maybe you didn’t either – realize until it was too late that they may have been each thinking exactly the same as me, thus creating an odd equilibrium of universal doubt, a détente of mutual uncertainty. But maybe this very “too lateness” now provides an opportunity to reflect – or regret. In any case, the fact that we actually live in a permanent rewind-play-rewind mode and that understanding after the fact – “too late” – makes of all understanding a hollow victory.
That’s not much of an ending, but it’s all I’ve got. Unless I tell you what I learned of what became of us:
• Jimmy Gilmore’s story we pretty much know. He died when we all thought he would live, if not forever, at least longer than any of us.
• Marcus Cleare, after some heartbreak – his girlfriend was murdered in a freak robbery gone bad [which he never discussed, not wanting to play into ghetto blackman clichés] – and after college [MBA], became a stock clerk, and, while playing handball with a neighbor, was offered a position as a property tax appraiser. Unsatisfied, he went on a tear, doing 100 down Church with a hand gun and a Baggie powdered with cocaine residue, arrested, charged and he eventually had to leave the field, move in with relatives in Detroit with the ambition of pursuing something with music. Managed two tribute bands: the Not The Kinky Rolling Beach Beatles [50-70s hits] and Myron Fadin’ [80s-90s hits], booked New Year’s parties, bar mitzvahs, and weddings. Became despondent, ended up a salesman for mother’s little helpers, Desoxyn, methamphetamine in the rich suburbs of Detroit. Got hooked, straightened out, saved his marriage, became a drug counselor, a Little League manager, and a professed normal guy – with half a liver.
• Jasper Blakely freely admits squandering his talent, but has no regrets, since squandering prevents “the man” from exploiting it. He taught rich kids how to ski, was accused of some improprieties [which he describes as jealousy revenge], married a forgiving – and pretty! – Christian woman and became – even he sees the humor – a Coor’s delivery truck driver. “I never drink the piss and stick to Left Hand Craft Beer, where I help around the place – don’t tell my employer. Fuck Coor’s! Our lab is our only kid and that’s cool.” They lived off the grid in a cabin they built themselves from a kit. He is now bald, he warned, in case any of us were planning to go to the 45th year reunion.
• Peter Kaban went to Rutgers, screwed around, lived on a Kibbutz for a year, got an MBA in Global Financial Data Management at Georgetown. “We were good at big ideas,” he said, “and getting off on them, but we never learned the hammer and nail part.” He took an “ethically questionable” job in Flow Equity Derivative Strategies at a Financial Services giant [hint: beneficiary of a 2008 bail-out]. Drifted into tax shelter management for shell companies. Abandoned the industry. With a wife and three kids, he took a position at 30% of his previous salary at a Greenpeace-like NGO. Moonlighted as a stand-up comic, playing Mortie Soul, a Mort Sahl tribute act. He and his wife purchased an abandoned sailboat that they fixed up themselves. Took a year sabbatical to sail the Carribean where they discovered an uncharted island and got the right to name it. He can show us pictures of Yossarian Island, off the coast of Antigua, named after his literary hero from the anti-war novel Catch-22.
• Stuart Lacy was committed to Syracuse Psychiatric after dropping 500 micrograms of LSD to prove to his girfriend that he too wanted to pursue the far reaches of ecstasy. It left him in a near-psychotic state for months – actually years, maybe forever. He eventually emerged, became a teetotaler, even against aspirin. Received a Masters from Ithaca College in the Poetics of Persuasion, wrote poetry – “the acid of literature” as his mentor, a Black Mountain Poet called it – to stop war, fund AIDS research, save affordable housing, block the theft of green space. Became an associate editor at the Library Journal, married his college sweetheart, a former orchestra triangle player, who once said: “The triangle is by no means a simple instrument to play.” Had two kids, but his reading poetry aloud at all hours, his unrelenting teetotaling evangelism, and recurring flashbacks led to the breakup of their marriage. He went on to work as a freelance taxman, switched to taxidermy – “the art of the dead appearing alive” – which he cannot explain, and he eventually settled down to become a high school English teacher.
• I, Bertrand Planarien, attended the University of Wisconsin where I told people I had a cross-country scholarship and others that I had a poetry scholarship. Before school even began I had to sign for a registered letter at the local Post Office. It was my draft card, which I tore up into tiny pieces on the Post Office steps, dispersing the snippets between three garbage cans for security’s sake. And there I stood on the steps, feeling free, and yet, paranoid that a U.S. Government agent would somehow recognize me. I got a degree but never used my diploma, worked in factories in Flint, Michigan, cabdriver, foot messenger, office supply manager, proofreader, art management, failed journalist, failed everything – except dreamer. The dreams, too, have become less frequent, less vivid, less Hollywood. Moved to France, worked in forest management, as a house painter, bill poster, and handyman in Paris and wrote words against pretty much everything and, at some point, I began to count the words I’d written, gauge their power, how much of a fraction of a penny each word was worth – luckily, I stopped myself at around 13 million words ...
Neala Ames is the pen name of a retired teacher who spent forty years in the classroom. A life-long amateur writer, she began composing poems at age five. Since retirement Ms. Ames has devoted time each day to creating short stories. After her true-life paranormal story was printed on Halloween 2018 by her local newspaper, she decided to try submitting to online magazines. In 2019 she had a story taken by Wild Violet Magazine, one taken by Ariel Chart, and one taken for an anthology by Soteira Press. Her latest story, “Justice in the Morning”, was accepted by Scarlet Leaf. Ms. Ames lives with her husband and three dogs in the beautiful central highlands of Arizona. |
Justice in the Morning
Along the two-lane highway that bordered Kielburg a small figure trudged slowly, bowed under a hiker’s backpack. Rivulets of sweat ran down the side of his face and dripped off his hooked nose. None of the cars that passed him slowed, their drivers studiously avoiding making eye contact with him.
Everything about him whispered defeat.
All but his eyes. If one of the passing motorists had troubled to look, he would have seen two large, very blue eyes set deeply beneath the thick white brows. There was nothing defeated about his eyes. They scanned the roadway ahead with eagerness. His unknown objective was near, he could feel it. Shifting the heavy pack, the stranger lengthened his stride.
Three flagpoles came into view. All three flags hung limply in the heated air. To a fanciful observer they would appear dead. But there weren’t any fanciful observers in Kielburg. The inhabitants did not allow such silliness in their lives. Only the lone traveler saw the lifelessness and understood. This town was his objective.
A car pulled up behind him and the driver honked impatiently. He watched the SUV slip past. A small child’s face pressed against the back-window glass. The child gave a hesitant wave. Then the car was gone, rolling down the incline to the east.
The mid-morning sun grew hotter. The transient began to walk toward the center of Kielburg. Ten minutes later the traveler stood on the deserted main street. A post office graced one corner. A bank graced another. The remaining corners supported bars. Even with their doors closed against the heat he could hear voices. He decided to take a chance and pulled open the heavy glass door of the bar nearest him.
Smoke swirled in the cold air. A dozen men, some dressed in overalls, stared at the unknown traveler. Behind the bar, a man of middle height and protruding belly rolled toward him on small feet. “Come on in and have a beer,” he invited, rubbing his puffy hands together.
“I have no money,” the traveler confessed. His eyes scanned the faces.
The bartender’s welcome faded. “Then get out,” he snarled.
“I’m thirsty. Could I fill my canteen with some water?” the traveler asked, unintimidated.
The bartender waved a hand toward the bar. He reached for the canvas-covered canteen and shot a stream of water into the receptacle. “There. Now get out.”
“C’mon, Denny, let the old guy cool off at least,” a young man objected from the end of the bar.
“This air-conditioner don’t run on nothing! I gotta pay the electric bill. You’re all contributing to that. He ain’t,” came the blunt reply.
The young man released a small chuckle. “It’s not like he’s using it up either! Let him stay a minute or two. Here, stranger, sit down and cool off.” A sturdy stool was pushed toward the stranger’s thin legs. With a nod of gratitude, the elderly traveler sat, pulled his battered cloth hat from his sweaty head and held his damp shirt away from his bony body.
“Where are you bound?” the young man questioned.
“Here, I think,” the stranger replied.
“Here? Kielburg? You got relatives here?” The young man’s eyes drifted over the stranger’s tattered clothing, the shaggy hair. “You don’t look like a relative of anybody I know.”
“I didn’t say I had relatives here. I probably don’t,” came the odd reply.
All the men at the bar were unashamedly listening. Now one of them, elderly, white hair carefully combed, leaned forward. “Then what other reason do you have for being here?”
The blatant unfriendliness saddened the traveler. “I come to bring justice,” he said quietly.
“Justice! Are you a lawyer? You sure don’t look like a lawyer!” snorted another patron, skinny and only half sober.
“I’m not a lawyer. I said I bring justice, not law.”
The men looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. The strange and unexpected answer was beyond them sober. Mixed with the alcohol in their system it simply sounded like nonsense. But they would quickly sober up when the explanation became clear later that day.
An uncomfortable silence filled the previously noisy space. Soon every eye was staring at the slight figure perched on the bar stool. Feeling their dislike and suspicion, the traveler pulled his pack from the sticky floor and settled it over his shoulders. He was stopped at the door by a question. “Who are you?” the bartender asked, breaking the silence.
“I’ve already told you. But I suspect you’re wanting a name. Right?” the stranger responded.
“Right!” the bartender challenged. “We don’t like strangers coming to town. Everybody here knows everybody else and we like it that way. You don’t belong.”
No one understood the smile that lifted the traveler’s lips. He didn’t explain it either. He simply answered the blunt question. “What makes you think I want to belong? But I do want you to remember me. So, I’ll give you my name. It’s Learned Hand, or William Howard Taft, or Oliver Wendell Holmes, or even John Marshall. Choose whichever one you like, it matters not to me.”
With a final silent salutation, the stranger pushed open the heavy door and slid into the heat. The silence that reigned inside the bar was absolute. Finally, Bob Konrad glanced at Willis on his right and put words to every man’s uneasy thoughts. “I knew being on the highway would turn out to be a mixed blessing eventually.”
Hearty laughter echoed from the smoke-imbued walls. But behind the laughter was uncertainty, inadmissible uncertainty. No single man inside Stubby’s Bar wanted to admit the churning stomach or pounding heart the transient’s words had left behind.
Matt Buckley is 37 and deeply uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person. He loves Flannery O'Connor, hates Ernest Cline, and aims to write more stories than anyone in history but is gradually coming to terms with the possibility that that isn't going to happen. So far he's written nine. Email: itaintprettyattheboatshow@gmail.com |
Human Face
This mental patient was coming for dinner. Not full crazy, not psychotic or anything. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He was the brother of one of the producers on the show my wife was working on, and had just come out of hospital. I wasn’t crazy about it. I didn’t like people in the house at the best of times. The place always seemed messier than I could see how three people could make it, and Kylie becomes a nightmare in the lead-up to any kind of visit. She gets all uptight about being judged. Why’d you become an actor, then? I always rib her. But she can never see what one thing has to do with another.
But I kept mostly quiet because she was excited, and because this was the first serious job she’d had since the soap opera folded. That was two years ago. In the meantime, it was all bit parts on sitcoms and a couple of commercials and one small role in a movie she got cut from anyway. It would’ve been nice of them to tell us before she got all dressed up for the premiere. She was so embarrassed. And I was the one who had to wear it all the way home. Anyway, she looked nice.
So it was a good thing, her having this job. Even if it was, in her words, a pile of shit. Another quirky genius detective with mental problems. This time it was OCD. There are a million of them, and she knows it. But still, it was work. And the money wouldn’t hurt.
She was playing his sister because, the way she told it to me, she was only a year younger than the guy playing the lead, and so she was ten years too old to play his girlfriend. Anyway, she asked the producers if they could hook her up with someone who has OCD in real life so she could ‘get into his head’. She’s such an actor sometimes.
We were in the front room waiting like idiots for the bell to ring. I hadn’t see Kylie this excited for a long time. Not longer than I could remember, exactly; but longer, probably, than it should ever be since a man’s seen his wife so happy.
All week she talked about this guy and she hadn’t even met him. She does that – build things up and up until she can’t help but get disappointed. She’d been reading about OCD, too. All week she told me every time she found an interesting story or had a question about what he’d be like. Stuff like “How do you think he goes in the bathroom?” or “Do you think he’s really good at maths?” I didn’t know what to say, so I usually just said yes.
All week she was obsessed like that. She asked me questions about Sherlock Holmes and made me watch Rain Man. I told her it had nothing to do with OCD. She didn’t seem to care. And she cleaned like a maniac. All week, I couldn’t get out of a seat without her dusting the spot where my ass was.
On the night we were expecting him, Tate was on the floor playing with one of his rockets. We heard the knock. It was just the usual, knock knock knock. I was disappointed. I guess I was expecting it to be something quirky.
Kylie jumped out of her seat. Then she stopped, and looked at me. “Get it, would you?” She wouldn’t say it, but I knew she thought it wouldn’t look right for her to be answering her own door. I hate when she gets like that.
I opened the door. I looked him over before I invited him in. He was kind of tall, but not that much. He had short, dark hair. He was wearing a polo shirt and a pair of new-looking jeans. That’s about it. He didn’t look much different to any other guy you might meet.
“Kim?” I asked. He put his hand out for a shake. It took me a second to take him up on it. I introduced myself and invited him in.
Kylie called out from over my shoulder. “Oh Kim, it’s so good to see you. Here, come in, come in.” She swanned past me and gave him a hug. As soon as she did, though, she seized up like she’d done something wrong. She pulled back. Then she kissed his cheek without coming within three inches of his skin, and turned around to me. “This is my husband”, she said.
“How you doing?” he said. His voice was deep and kind of thick and wet-sounding, kind of nerdy. But he spoke easy enough. I watched his eyes. At first he just looked me in the face. But a second later I saw him looking around the room like he might be uneasy about something.
“Good, good”, Kylie answered for me. “Please, come through to the parlour.” She hadn’t called it a parlour in six years of living here. I closed the door and walked behind them.
She showed Kim to a seat. It was my seat, but I kept my mouth shut. She was already on edge. I sat on the long couch.
“So, Kim…” She was acting casual, but I knew that she was consulting her mental notes. “Did you find the place alright?”
He answered easy enough. I was watching for tics, like you see these guys do on TV. But nothing. Just said he’d gotten lost once, but that it could’ve probably been avoided if he’d just given up and bought one of those navigation things for his car, but that he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. I wondered if maybe it had something to do with the OCD.
He complimented her on the house, and she acted like it was always the way it was now. Then she offered him a choice of every kind of tea ever made. Most of what she offered I’m pretty sure we didn’t have. He said he was fine with whatever. She went off to the kitchen looking disappointed. And then I was left alone with him.
I didn’t know what to ask him. I asked how he knew Kylie, even though I knew. And when he said his sister worked with her, I acted surprised and asked what his sister did, even though I knew that too. He said she was a producer. I asked what a producer did.
“Fuck with artists to make money”, he said. I don’t know why, but hearing him say ‘fuck’ struck me. It was like it might be if I ever heard my mother say it. I don’t know why. If you’d asked me if I thought people with mental problems swore, I probably would’ve said yes. All I know is I wasn’t ready for it.
I didn’t want it to show, though. “So they’re professional assholes”, I said.
He laughed. “Yeah.” He looked around the room. The way he looked at things was still a little weird. It was like he would be focusing on one thing when he thought he heard a voice from somewhere else, so his eyes darted off in that direction, then rested there for a second before he heard the voice from somewhere else and off he went again. It was a bit weird. But then I might have been looking too hard. I guess everyone does some weird thing or another if you’re looking for it hard enough.
I felt like it was time for me to say something again. “So…” I started. “You don’t mind us…” I didn’t know how I was going to finish. But it got to that point where I’d been looking for a word too long to just keep looking without saying something. “I mean… I mean, this must be kind of strange, you don’t do this-”
He jumped in. Thank Christ. “Clara explained it to me. My sister. She told me Kylie wanted to put a human face to the OCD.” The way he said it – ‘ the OCD’ – There was something in it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The best I could come up with was that he said it like he was talking about an old friend. That wasn’t quite it, but it was the best I could do.
I was just starting to ask him if he was okay with it, some stranger picking his brain like that, when Kylie came in with the drinks. She handed Kim his drink first, then put hers down beside where she was sitting. I could see she’d made herself a tea, too. Some actor trick, I guessed. She never drank tea.
At least she didn’t try anything funny on me. She handed me my scotch, neat. But not without giving me a look like I shouldn’t have been drinking.
“The dinner should be just a few more minutes. So, Kim…” Again, pretending. There was no need for that pause. She knew exactly what she was going to say next. She’d spent the whole time in the kitchen rehearsing it. “Clara tells me you used to want to be a detective”, she said. And then sat back, waiting. She may as well have had a pen and a notepad in her hand.
Kim smiled. “Once, a long time ago, yeah. But – Well, I envy you. You’re living your dream.” He smiled. It was an easy smile, natural.
Kylie ate it up. I sometimes think that’s part of being an actor – they lie so much that they assume everybody else must be telling the truth. Either that, or they get so wrapped up in analysing their own actions that they can’t tell when someone’s full of shit right under their nose. “I don’t know about that”, she said, and swatted the compliment away with her hand.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked. Kylie shot me a nasty look.
“Um…” he said.
“Kim’s on a sabbatical”, Kylie jumped in. The look she gave me, Christ. Then she looked at him to check he hadn’t seen it.
But then he said, “I’m about halfway into a year off. I’m actually writing a book”, and I was in
the clear again.
“About the – ” I don’t know if he knew what Kylie was going to say, or saw her face drop when she realised what she was saying. But if he did, he was nice and pretended not to. “About what?” she tried to recover.
“Well, it’s hard to explain. It’s… I don’t want to sound all arty, but – It’s not really ‘about’ anything, if you know what I mean? Its… There are three main characters, two painters and an art dealer, and there’s this painting that goes missing but that’s not really what it’s about. It’s –” And he went on like that for about another minute. Here Kylie was probably thinking she might be able to read what he’d written so far, that it’d be useful, help her understand what it’s like to have OCD or something. Instead, he was writing a book about a stolen painting. I could feel her disappointment. I was even kind of disappointed myself.
“You’ll have to let us read it when you’re finished”, she said.
“Definitely”, he said. He believed she meant it. People get that way when they’re talking about the things that they love, I’ve noticed.
“So, do you have any hobbies? Besides writing?” Kylie asked.
He was still smiling from talking about the book. “I haven’t had much time for anything much besides writing”, he said. “But I love music. I used to play guitar a bit.”
“So did he”, Kylie said. “He used to write me songs. But now – Well. Don’t get married, is all I’ll say, Kim.”
They both laughed. He got back to answering. “I like movies a lot, and – reading, obviously. They say that good writers are good readers. But I’m not even doing so much of that these days. And… That’s about it.” He shrugged, and smiled again.
“That sounds good. At least you’re keeping busy”, Kylie said. She stood up. “Excuse me, I just have to go and plate up dinner.” And she left.
It was just me and him again. I wasn’t feeling as awkward as I thought I would around him, though. Maybe I’d let myself get sucked into Kylie’s hysteria, but I was really expecting him to be kind of nuts. And then, when he wasn’t, I caught myself feeling a little disappointed.
“So, you got a girl?” I asked.
He breathed out, long and slow. “No sir, I do not”, he said. He had the sound of someone who’d just gotten out of a relationship that was as tough to be in as out of.
I laughed. “Long story, huh?” Maybe this would be something, I thought. Some ammo for Kylie, something to help her with her performances. About how OCD folk get on with women. I guessed that, for as normal as he was seeming, that whole side of life was probably a minefield. I mean, even when sex is clean, it’s dirty.
“Yeah, a bit”, he said. “She turned out to be religious. Like, really religious. I – ” He looked worried. “Are – Are you guys religious?”
He had nothing to worry about there. “No”, I told him.
He relaxed again. “Shit, I thought I might’ve put my foot in it.” And he was about to go on when Kylie called out that dinner was ready.
I helped her serve up the food. Kim said it looked nice, and we all sat down. I asked him if he wanted to say grace. For a second he looked worried. Then I smiled and he relaxed.
He asked us how we met, and Kylie told him how. She didn’t lie, exactly, but the way she told it made it sound a lot more glamourous than the way it was. He was real curious. All through dinner he asked questions, about our work, about the house, the neighbourhood, if we had any pets, all sorts of things. The conversation flowed pretty easy. There weren’t many uncomfortable lulls, anyway. And where there were, they probably had more to do with Kylie and me than with him. We were starting to get desperate.
Her especially. At one point, she even tried to set him off. She offered him a piece of pumpkin – there was a plate of sliced pumpkin on the table and he hadn’t taken any, so she offered him one. He took one, probably just to be polite. She waited until just the second when he’d put the first piece in his mouth, then said, “Would you believe there was dirt all over those pumpkins when I picked them up?”
She sat back and watched for a reaction. I was torn between watching her watching him and watching him myself. Either way, I was disappointed. He either didn’t hear or he didn’t care. He just kept chewing his mouthful of pumpkin.
When he started to reach for another one she got more desperate. “There was a cockroach on one of them”, she said. She was trying to sound nonchalant, but she was staring at him, plain as day. Finally he looked up.
“Jesus”, he said. I could see her face. Finally, she was thinking. Something.
“Did you say something to the – the person at the market?” And he shovelled another forkful of pumpkin into his mouth.
She was too disappointed or shocked or something to answer. After a second I jumped in.
“She never mentions stuff like that. She’s too polite for her own good.” I tried to make eye contact, but he had his eyes closed.
She came to. “Yeah, well… I don’t like to – I don’t want to cause a scene”, she said. She sounded a little short of breath. She looked at me as if to ask what she should do. But I didn’t know how to look back at her. So I didn’t.
He finished chewing his pumpkin. He looked at Kylie and asked, “So what made you want to go into acting?”
For the rest of the meal we were his interview subjects and not the other way around. While we answered his questions, I knew Kylie was wracking her brain like me only worse, trying to think of something else she could do to push him over the edge. I tried to think of something else OCD people couldn’t handle besides dirt, but that was all I could come up with. I could tell from looking at her it was all she had too. They liked things neat and orderly –
Orderly. I tried something new.
The salt and pepper shakers were standing neatly in the middle of the table. I reached over and lay the salt shaker on its side. Real nonchalant. I was talking while I did it – answering some question he’d asked about which foreign countries I’d visited – and when I was done I sat back and waited to see how he’d react. I saw it crawling over his skin. He looked in the general direction of the shaker. Then he looked away. He asked another question. He laughed at something I said that wasn’t really funny. He picked at the dregs of pumpkin on his plate. And then Kylie breathed out loudly and stood the salt shaker on its base again.
She brought out dessert. He told a story about how his sister used to get out of helping their dad haul mulch on weekend mornings by telling him that she worried the exercise might make her tampon fall out. The old man couldn’t bear to hear her mention the word ‘tampon’, so Kim was left to do twice the work. Kylie looked kind of uncomfortable, though I wasn’t sure if it was the story, or how it kind of put the final nail in any hope she had of him being some kind of a squeamish headcase. She went out and brought him another tea, me another scotch, and herself her first wine of the night.
We asked him about his parents, and eventually the conversation drifted to the TV show. Kim said that his sister had told him how terrible it was, but that it was good for her career. Kylie agreed. I poured myself another drink. Then something happened.
Kylie was halfway through saying something about how there were no good parts for women her age or something when he dropped his fork onto his plate. He looked afraid. More than afraid. That real gut-level fear, it was - the primal, wordless kind, that gets left behind at a certain point as you grow up and only comes back when there’s a gun pointed at you or a doctor says ‘cancer’. Senseless, animal fear. Gut fear. He had it, I could tell.
For a second it was like that, like you see on TV. A frozen moment, his face in close-up and everything real, real still. And then the sound comes in and it all explodes.
The sound of the fork hitting the plate ringing over the clink of Kim’s drink tipping over, and the tea gushing over the tablecloth while Tate screamed and Kylie yelled “Fuck” and kicked her chair against the wall behind her and was somehow already there holding Tate against her chest. The sound of Kim’s shoes scuffing against the wall and the dog barking, Tate gulping mouthfuls of air like he was drowning and the toy rocket stuck in a loop, blaring the same phrrrrrrweowweowweow over and over again while he screamed and screamed louder and louder, Kylie holding him the whole time and hushing him silently. There was another sound coming from the wall where Kim stood too. It took a while for me to figure out it was words, and a while longer before I realised it was all the same two words over and over. He was saying I’msorryI’msorry I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’m” and Tate kept screaming and Kylie was cooing and I kept watching.
Kim was pressed hard up against the wall. He had one hand over his mouth and was breathing hard. And he was blinking a lot. Not fast, like a fluttery kind of blinking - real deliberate, heavy blinks, like he was trying to crush a small, sleeping bug between his eyelids. They looked like they hurt, those blinks. I knew what they were for. He was trying to wish himself somewhere else.
At the other end of the table Kylie was holding Tate and raking her hands through his hair. She ran her eyes over his face, inspecting the damage. There was a tiny trickle of blood running over his bottom lip but that was it. From the screaming you would’ve thought it was a lot worse. And the baby was staring at Kim with his eyes so wide I wondered for a second if they might honest to God fall out of his head. And Kim was trying to catch Kylie’s eyes, only she didn’t know it because she was looking a few inches lower, where his hand was held over his mouth. It was shaking, and the back of it was smeared with blood.
She didn’t know Kim was looking at her because she was looking at Tate who didn’t know she was looking at him because he was looking at Kim who didn’t know Tate was looking at him because he was looking at Kylie. I stood outside the blind triangle of their eyelines, just watching it all. I didn’t even think to wonder how long I’d been standing there.
Eventually I came around. I moved over to Kylie and tried to take Tate. She batted me away and pulled him closer to her. She shot Kim a look and stormed off through the kitchen door.
I looked at Kim. He was down on the floor with his arms around his knees. He was crying like a lost child.
I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t as angry as I thought I should have been, though, and I didn’t know why. But I was pretty sure I didn’t want to pull at that thread.
It was hard not to feel sorry for him. Obviously he felt bad. And anyway, I figured I had to help someone. I tried to help the kid first, but she had it covered. So it wasn’t like I didn’t try.
I sat down next to him. Only about a minute earlier all I could think about was how disappointingly normal he was. And now he was crying into his knees in a stranger’s dining room, shuddering and moaning and with drool all over his pants. He wasn’t that much younger than me. I never saw anything so hard to watch in my life.
I sat there waiting for him to stop crying so that I could jump in with something. After a while I got sick of waiting. I cleared my throat.
“What happened there?” It was all I could think to say.
After a couple of seconds I started wondering if he’d heard me. If he hadn’t, I don’t think I would have asked again. I started hoping he hadn’t. The room was nearly silent except for the buzz of the insects outside. On hot nights like tonight they collected in the pines outside our house. I guess it felt quieter, too, because all the noise from a little while ago was gone.
The crying slowed down. It turned into one of those moans that sound almost like laughing, and then turned into nothing. He lifted his head. The skin around his eyes was raw pink. He was smiling the way people do when they’ve been crying and they want you to know they know how stupid they look.
“I don’t know”, he said.
“Really?”
He laughed again. “No.” He laughed again. “I know”, he said.
I waited again. I was getting kind of tired of him making me do all the work.
Eventually I asked, “What was it?”
He looked toward the kitchen. “The boy”, I said.
He looked like he probably thought he was nodding.
“Did he do something wrong? What happened?”
He looked me square in the face. It was only when he did that that I started to think maybe he hadn’t looked me in the eye all night up to that point. His eyes were the bluest I’d ever seen. They looked like the eyes in those old black-and-white photos where the colours are painted on. They never look quite right, those pictures; the colours are always too bold, too bright. Eyes don’t come in the colours you see in those photos. But his did.
“This is what you got me here for”, he said.
He was looking straight ahead now. He looked like an actor right when they’re about to launch into a monologue. I’d seen Kylie pull this move. It always feels so pretentious, so studied. But then I remembered that he wasn’t an actor. And that, if this reminded me of acting, it was probably because when Kylie was acting she was just imitating real things people did, and this was one of them. Sometimes I think being around an actor so much has ruined me in some ways.
“You wanted to see crazy, right?” His voice was sardonic as all hell. Well…” He opened his hands, as if to say ‘here it is’. I didn’t say anything.
“This is the stuff you don’t see on TV.” And he laughed emptily. “Everybody thinks it’s all handwashing and locking the door eight times and alphabetising your record collection, and…” He left the thought, started a new one. “When I used to tell people I had it – I don’t anymore, but I used to be pretty open about it, if anyone asked, or sometimes even if they didn’t – and, uh…” He traced the cord back to what he was saying. “When I used to tell people I had it, they all asked the same fucking thing. ‘Is your house really neat?’
“Or – oh, even worse – ” He was off and running now. He rocked back and forth a little. “The ones who, I’d tell them and they’d say, ‘I think I have a bit of OCD too’. Because they like to always wash the knives before the forks, or some bullshit like that. Like that’s what I have. I have to wash the fucking forks before the knives. That’s why I tried to kill myself for the first time when I was fourteen. I washed the… fuckin’ cutlery in the wrong order. Or, or, the ones who say, ‘I’m a bit OCD like that.” Like, because they like the colour of the pegs to match the clothes they’re hanging. ‘I’m a bit OCD like that.’ You couldn’t say ‘I’m a bit AIDS like that.’ ‘I like wearing bandannas – I’m a bit ovarian cancer like that.’ You know?” He looked for something in my face. I hoped it was there. But I doubt it was.
He kept going. “You know my least favourite word in the world?” I was glad he didn’t pause. I didn’t want to guess. “‘Quirky’. I – ugh, Jesus Christ. Fucking ‘quirky’. You know what ‘quirky ‘is? Quirky is – quirky is wearing odd coloured socks. That’s quirky. Humming to yourself out in public. That’s quirky.”
It seemed like all he wanted me to do for him was to listen. Which I was happy about. That’s all I was sure I knew how to do.
“You know what’s not quirky? Not being able to be in the same room with your own baby brother. That’s not quirky. That’s just fucking…” He stopped for a minute. “Hard.”
I don’t think I’ve had what you’d call an easy life. Some things have happened. But then I guess I’ve also never met anyone who would say they’ve had it easy, either. But some of them must have, or else we’ve all had hard lives. And we can’t all have had it worse than most. That wouldn’t be possible. So I have to at least consider the possibility that maybe I’m one of the ones who’s had it better than most.
Anyway, the way he looked just then, and the way he said that one word - ‘hard’ - made me think he knew something about hard times that I couldn’t imagine. It didn’t make me feel jealous or weak. It just made me feel glad.
He hadn’t said anything for a while now. I knew it was my turn to talk. I didn’t know what to say.
“But… I still don’t get -”
He looked up at the ceiling. He took a long, slow breath. I waited until I was sure nothing was coming.
“What happened?”
His eyes didn’t move. I saw where they were fixed. On the ceiling – maybe the one place in the house Kylie hadn’t cleaned before Kim came to visit – there was a tiny black smudge I’d never noticed before. It looked like a tiny shadow puppet, that dog head shape kids make. Only smeared and maybe missing a finger. When he spoke again his voice was tiny.
“I can’t say.”
I didn’t want to touch him just in case. But I tried to make my voice sound like a hand on his shoulder. “Yes you can, Kim.”
He grimaced and said “No”. He met my eyes. “I can’t.” He was serious.
I’d come that far, though. And more to the point, I had nowhere else to be. I sure as hell wasn’t in any rush to hear whatever Kylie had to say to me.
“Come on, man”, I said. “I don’t know how bad you think it is, but it isn’t that bad.”
“I was afraid of raping your son.”
The first thing would have been to hit him. When someone says they thought about raping your kid, that’s where your mind goes. He was lucky, though. It had been about ten years since the last time I’d hit anyone. Also, I’d had a couple of drinks by now. I’m not one of those guys who gets angry when he drinks. It usually makes me more relaxed until I get so relaxed I fall asleep. Still, I had to do something. He’d said about the worst thing a person can say.
I turned toward him and got halfway up, so that I was on one knee. He must have thought I was going to hit him. He put his hands up and started talking fast.
“I didn’t – I wasn’t actually, I would never – God, never, I wouldn’t ever do that. I’m not –“
I just listened. I wasn’t going to hit him, but I wasn’t in a rush to let him know that. I noticed my hands. They weren’t even fists.
“I just, you don’t – You don’t understand. Not that you should, I know, shit, I just said I – ” He was looking at the floor, like he was talking to a face there.
“I know how it must have sounded. I didn’t mean it like that. I – I want you to know - It… It’s weird. I mean – That’s the whole problem.” I was interested in where this was going. More interested than angry, and a little guilty for that reason. I sat back down on the floor.
“Like – on the one hand, I can say what I know you want me to say, which is what I should say. I – I didn’t actually think about raping – “ He paused after the word, and in the empty space I felt like I could tell what he was thinking. That he’d paused because of how terrible the word is, but by pausing, he’d just left it hanging there, and he needed to say something or it would be all either of us could think about. “– rapingyourson because obviously that’s horrible, that’s evil and I’m not evil and I would never want to do something so horrible. And it’s not like I want to anyway, I mean – I mean, I like women, not that – well – ”
“Let me cut in for a second”, I said. “You – you don’t want to – do that. Yeah?”
He shook his head almost clean off.
“Right. Okay. That’s a relief.”
We didn’t speak for a few seconds. Then he said:
“But – ”
Which isn’t what you want to hear. I must have looked like I was going to hit him again.
“No – I mean, no, I, it’s true, I don’t, I don’t – I just – “ He slumped back against the wall and sighed. “You wouldn’t get it.”
I didn’t get it. And to be honest, it didn’t bother me all that much that I didn’t. The way I see it, other people’s heads and the way they work has never been my problem or my business. And so I was really tempted to leave it at that.
But I remembered Kylie, and Tate, in that order, and I decided I had to stay interested. I pushed on.
“You’re dead right there”, I said. “I don’t get it. I have no… fucking clue what’s going on.” He looked like he was counting the patterns on the carpet. “But Kim”, I said. He looked up. “I want to.” It didn’t sound like me. But he didn’t really know what I sounded like.
I sat down again, next to him. He leaned against the wall. And then it all kind of opened. About the OCD, about how it makes him worry he is things that he knows he isn’t, or at least knows he should know he isn’t. About how it makes him think that he might do or want to do things he mostly knows he doesn’t want to do. About how it’s able to hit him where it hurts most because it lives in his head and knows what he doesn’t want to hear.
He told me that it was something different for everyone who had it. He told me stories about other people he’d met in the hospital and what it was like for them. Mostly it was either sexual or medical: one guy was worried he wanted to fuck his mother, another one thought he had cancer in any part of his body he touched, things like that. Except he didn’t really think that, the cancer guy - the OCD thought that, or it tried to make him think that, even though he didn’t want to. Sometimes it was germs, like you see on TV. But he told me that wasn’t as common as people think.
Sometimes it was something else altogether. He told me about one woman, a stay at home mother who booked herself into the hospital because the OCD told her that she didn’t love her daughter who’d died a year before. She kept trying to convince herself that she did, but it was never enough. Eventually she killed herself.
There were obsessions, he said – the things you worry about – and compulsions. The compulsions were the things you do to get the obsessions off your mind. It didn’t really matter what the compulsions were, he said. They could be anything. That’s why some people stepped on cracks, or didn’t, or only stepped on every second crack. It wasn’t like they didn’t know how stupid it was, either. But they had to do something. The compulsions, the way he told it, let you stop obsessing. Their whole power came from how much you believed in them. They were like spells, I thought. He didn’t tell me what his were. But I think the blinking might have had something to do with it.
It was starting to feel like I could ask him anything. I asked him when it all started. He said it was a dream he had when he thirteen. I could tell he didn’t want to go into it any more than that. So I left it.
He changed the subject. The compulsions changed over time, he said. Over the years they got more and more complex, so that when he looked back on the old ones now they looked quaint by comparison. It turns out he did have a thing about washing his hands, once, when he was first starting out. He used to wash them thirty, forty times a day because he thought his hands were covered in semen. By the end of every day his knuckles would be gristly with dried blood. He laughed at the memory the way people laugh at their old school photos.
When he was thirteen his mother sent him to his uncle’s farm for the summer to sort him out. They were on tank water and he wasn’t allowed to use the tap more than three times a day. For the first week he cried and screamed and tried to scratch off his skin. By the end of the third week, he could spend a day outside helping his uncle feed chickens and repair fences and be so hungry by dinner his aunt would have to remind him to wash his hands before he ate. He came home thinking he was cured.
Then one day in Geography he started tracing the lines of mortar between the bricks in the walls, moving across and up in some game he couldn’t quite figure out the point of but couldn’t stop playing. He drew lines in his mind, connecting the corners of the walls, trying to find the exact centre. He counted the syllables in his sentences and wouldn’t stop talking until he could end his thought on an even number. Eventually he realised that it was the same monster, just wearing a different face.
The first time he tried to kill himself he was fourteen, like he said. He was left alone with his niece, his older brother’s daughter, for an afternoon. He didn’t want them to leave him alone with her, but no one listened to his excuses and he couldn’t exactly tell them what was really worrying him so he said okay. But when everyone was gone she had jumped into his lap and it was too much. When his brother and parents got home Kim was in the shower with a belly full of his mother’s menopause tablets, and the four year old was locked in the pantry.
The second time was after a school excursion to a childcare centre. He’d slashed his wrists sideways like he’d seen people do in movies. But when he saw blood he got scared and ran into his mother’s bedroom and she drove him to the hospital. For some reason the orderly told him it only worked if he cut vertically. So the third time he did. It still didn’t work, but this time because his sister found him after he passed out but before he lost too much blood to be brought back around. The fourth time had something to do with a girl whose name he couldn’t remember.
I looked at the clock. It was nearly eleven. He must have seen me looking. “I’ve been carrying on long enough. I should let you get back to – your family. Tell Kylie I’m…” He looked for the words.
“It’s okay”, I said. “I’ll smooth it over.”
I stood up. Everything felt different. It was like we’d both come back from some faraway place, and now the normal world looked strange and full of people who didn’t understand. It was like coming out of a dark cinema into the midday sun.
I was working towards saying goodbye when I heard Kylie’s voice from the stairs. “What’s he still doing here?”
Next to me I could feel Kim shrinking. I hated her just then. I told her I was just about to walk him out.
“How courteous of you”, she said. She turned to go back up the stairs. And then, timed to the second: “Oh, and if you get a minute – your son’s been screaming about his injured face for half an hour. Do you think maybe you could get around to popping in?” She went back to climbing the stairs. I could see from the back of her head that she was smiling.
I turned back to Kim. “She didn’t mean that”, I tried.
He smiled, sort of. “Yes she did”, he said. He didn’t say it with any meanness, or self-pity. Just as if it was how it was. Which it was.
I opened the front door and we both walked out. The night was yellow-black and humming with the sound of long-haul truckers on the freeway a few blocks over. I walked him to his car.
I was trying to think of something to say. Something that said sorry and thanks and that I understand but not really, and that I hoped he got better, but without sounding like I thought he really would. He thought of something to say before I did.
“I hope Kylie got something she could use.” I laughed. He
laughed too. He was, for everything else, a pretty funny guy.
“I’m sure she did”, I said.
The laughter slowed down and we both eased back into our normal faces. He looked me in the face again. Outside, under the streetlight, his eyes were somehow even brighter.
“She’s right, though.” He had something on his mind and I had nothing to say, so I was happy to just listen.
“I’m not the kind of guy you want to have over for dinner. That was the whole reason she had me here, right? I mean, normally when you invite someone to your house it doesn’t qualify as ‘research’, right?” I guess I made some kind of face, though I don’t know which. “It’s okay”, he said. “I knew it going in. If I had a problem with it, I wouldn’t have come.”
If there were any poetry in nature, a shadow would have crossed his face just then. But instead it was just the pixelated yellow light of the street lamp, steady and false. “I’m not… normal”, he said, and even the way he breathed was enough for me to know there were realms of pain some people are born into and I was not. He made me feel grateful I wasn’t him. But that wasn’t the kind of thing people want to hear you say.
“Ah, what’s normal?” I said.
He didn’t miss a beat. “Not being afraid of raping children when someone invites you to their house for dinner.”
Neither of us were quite ready - or at least sure if the other one was quite ready - to laugh at that one. “Yeah”, I said. And then, a few seconds later, “Yeah.”
He looked straight into the closest street lamp. “People shouldn’t have to know. They think that knowing will help. But it doesn’t help. It isn’t like carrying a bunch of heavy bags, where they can take a few off you and then you have less to carry. It’s like - lying under a truck. If someone else comes and lies down next to me, it’s not like I’m going to be any less crushed. So they might as well not bother.”
I stepped closer so that I could see him front on. His eyes were closed and his face was smeared with yellow light.
“So… What are we meant to do then?” I asked. “Just stand there and watch it and - do nothing?”
He opened his eyes. “No”, he said, and something beeped. He opened the door of his car. “Just… don’t watch.” And he got in and started the car and drove away. Just like that.
I locked the front door and went up to Tate’s room. There was a red mark under his mouth, but he was fine. It couldn’t have been that bad. He’d gone to sleep, anyway. Kylie was curled up behind him in his bed, still wearing her clothes. I knew tomorrow morning was going to be rough.
I went back downstairs. I poured myself a scotch and sat in my chair. I didn’t bother turning the lights on. I thought about watching TV. But I was in a mood I didn’t recognise and I kind of wanted to just sit with it. I clicked the thing on the side of the chair and it jerked me backwards like an astronaut waiting for take-off.
The ceiling took on the moonlight that bled in over the tops of the curtain rods and spread it across its surface like an upside down ocean. It glowed – not enough to be annoying, but enough to make me feel like I was seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing, things that thought they could hide from me in the dark. Along the top of a framed photo of Kylie holding Tate the day he was born there was a shiny layer of dust, invisible in the daylight. A bug rested on the empty guitar holder screwed into the wall.
I leaned back so that the ceiling took up my entire view. It was like white blindness; just one endless, infinite white with no middle, no size, no scale. It was like when you look up on a starless night and have no way of knowing how enormous what you’re looking at might be. Only tonight it was all stars and no sky.
I drifted around like that for a while, lost in the white. The longer I looked at it, the bigger it got, the smaller I felt. I forgot it was my ceiling I was looking at. I just knew the white was rushing outward, expanding faster than I could handle, and the more white there was the less there must have been of me. The air felt thin, like at the top of a mountain. I could feel my pulse in my wrists.
And then I saw it. The tiny black smear, the shadow puppet Kim had been watching while he talked. In the ceiling moonglow it could have been an upside-down umbrella, or maybe a letter from a foreign alphabet. At first the shape looked vague, blurry. But when I looked closer at the edges it was possible to find the exact point where the shape stopped and the white began. I traced the outline of the shape until I forgot where I started and started again from where I was. I found the places where it was lightest and where it was darkest. Beyond the edges, the white was still rushing outward, doubling and redoubling into empty space. I clung to the shadow puppet like a raft in an endless, endless ocean.
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ABIGAIL GEORGE
ADAM POCZATEK
ALAN BERGER
ALEX SEIFERT
AMOS DYER
ANDREW MILLER
BARRON JONES
BARRY VITCOV
BART PLANTENGA
BRANDON GARCIA
CHRISTIAN DOYLE
CHRISTOPHER WOODS
CJ GRANT
DARIUS JONES
DC DIAMONDOPOLOUS
D.C. EDEN
DONALD ROHR
DR. DAVID MOKOTOFF
EMILY SULLIVAN
FIONA JONES
JANE SNYDER
J.B. STONE/JARED BENJAMIN
JERRY GUARINO
JESSICA LUKASIK
JIM BARTLETT
J.M. SCOTT
JOANN DIFRANCO
JOHN MARA
JONATHAN FERRINI
JOSH DALLOS
JOSHUA MAURER
JOSHUA O'BRIEN
KATHY STEBLEN
KORI FRAZIER MORGAN
K SHESHU BABU
KUSHAL PODDAR
LOIS GREENE STONE
LORI MCINTYRE
LUKE KIERNAN
MADELINE ENDLEIN
MARIEL NORRIS
MARK KEANE
MATT BUCKLEY
MICHAEL BURKE
M. MUNZIE
NEALA AMES
NICOLE
NT FRANKLIN
P.S. NOLF
RICHARD COLLINS
RON HAGGIN
RUSS BICKERSTAFF
SAVANNAH DILLASHAW
SHAUNA CHECKLEY
SHERRELL HARMON
SILVIA HINES
SPENCER JONES
STELLA SAMUEL
SUBODHANA WIJEYERATNE
TAMARA CLOUGH
THERESA THERRIEN
TIM FRANK