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TAMARA BELKO - POEMS

1/20/2021

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Tamara Belko is a writer, poet, middle school teacher and author of the forthcoming young adult verse novel, Perchance to Dream. She resides in Rocky River, Ohio with her husband and three children. When Tamara isn’t absorbed in reading or writing, she can be found listening to music with her family, enjoying a walk or learning Thai Chi. 

ALL IT TOOK

An artery 
A tear
blood pooled 
my heart shuddered

Breath stolen, body paused, 
I couldn’t comprehend
why
the sweet snuffles of my newborn 
eradicated by sirens

Sweating postpartum hormones, 
shedding pieces of myself
in a cardiac ward 
I was the
youngest

Breasts swollen, 
desperate to hold 
my baby 

An aberration
I had become a case study, the
1 -4 %  club 
between 30 and 50 
I didn’t want to 
join

At home a new reality, 
taste bile 
of tacit fear
kiss my babies
goodnight, 
pray tomorrow
I will see Earth’s star 
in the East 
after closing my eyes 
to it setting in the West

It will be years of mornings-after 
before my obsessive worry, 
insomnia filled nights 
recede 
to the silent corners of my mind, 
where I hush
the whisper warnings
unclench 
fists of anxiety, 
one 
finger
at a time 
until I am 
immersed in the moment ...
of life’s milestones, 
Until I release 
control of the uncontrollable
breathe in life, 
drink in the elixir 
of laughter
finally
barefoot and unbound

 ​

MY LOST RELIGION

I turn from vapid religion & embrace spirituality
         discover connection within humanity’s
         touch, seek meaning in life & love
          walk with,
          among neighbors
          who all bleed red
I turn from doctrine & archaic cannon
         millennials of distortion derived from parables
         & frail men with dysfunctional connections to now
No man will rule over my body! No man will rule over my daughters!
           I turn from oppressive, archetypal figures
           & black days mired in hypocrisy
They will not have my devotion
            I will not subscribe to hatred and judgement
             I denounce that history!
This day I will turn towards peace and purpose,
          light and hope, open my heart to the Earth’s symphony
          I will spread compassion, love and acceptance &
          realize oneness with the universe

​

SIMPLE CONVERSATIONS

        she’s a self professed enigma,
         smirks at her own eclectic musical palate,
         straddling between Billie Eilish and Twenty-One Pilots,
                 she can entertain that conversation with middle school aplomb
         she sinks her teeth into the “ring of fire” on Friday,
          morphs into an old soul on Sunday crooning Sinatra “her way”
                              Today she wears a tie and fedora.
A simple conversation
        Strictly speaking, country is not her thing … 
             the guy, 
                   the dog,
                   the truck, 
                   whiskey-- nope,
                    but 
                    there IS the Man in Black ...
        And musing about rap doesn’t ignite the spark either
                    Too fast,
                     Too much rhyme,
                       Why so angry?
A simple conversation,
                                  ruminating about music.


​

SPACE

​Breathe
 just breathe
 in this space
 growing between
 spaces of silence
 connections squandered
 reborn in the restfulness
 cherish moments of family
 frantic lives no longer remember
 how to live still, how to breath in this world
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AUGUST ULRICH - COLD FEETOR HOW I PLUNGED INTO A TSUNAMI AND BODYSURFED TO THE JERSEY SHORE

1/20/2021

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August has done fine art, worked/collaborated on screenplays with notable filmmakers from Italy, France, Russia, and Japan. He was a line cook at Michelin 3 stars and freelanced as cameraman for CNN, ABC, NBC while living in Rome. As a sys admin, August controlled the flow of info for an internet startup until it was vaporized on the 11 September 2001. Currently, he is working on his third novel and collaborating on an historical TV series about the age of discovery.

​Cold Feet
or
How I Plunged into a Tsunami and Bodysurfed to the Jersey Shore
(Cold Feet #1)

Picture
​ 
The three Hs. Don’t know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout? Too fuckin’ bad. Just go steppin’ on the molasses asphalt of the narrow, two lane State 27 that jettys abruptly to an end just beyond the cliff’s edge.
Ocean, soil, grass, smoking engine oil, and marijuana molecules composing the fugitive atmosphere have roosted themselves on my nasal cavity and the hairs snaking from my nostrils down my upper lip.
At the edge, fissures open and close in the asphalt as weight is added and subtracted from its surface.
Ain’t wise to weigh down the edge with the balls of my feet. It don’t stop me. Worst could happen, if the asphalt edge melts under my balls, is my swan song onto the jags the ocean waterboards endlessly. How far down? Don’t know, don’t care. It’s death so, like, what the fuck, you figure out how high the cliff, how far the drop in your own stinkin’ ‘maginations. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go, yeah, like it’d be long enough – in your dreams.
Looked down and across at the horizonless expanse. Gulls doin’ their thing, hovercrafts Hoovering under the bobbing and weaving surface.
The noise factor? Whaddya expect to hear where complacent solid and combative liquid harmonize under cadaverous gas.
Fuckin’ righteous swells corrugating the surface. Weather report got it right. Red Flags up on all public beaches – well not really up, the flags hang limp in the still of the three Hs.
Georgica crowd, gone. Air traffic control have their air lanes full of the prima donas jousting for position just high enough in the three H gas to blow out their slaves’, and every other poor schmuck’s, drums too poor to heli from and to The City. Those stinkin air lanes, more congested than the westbound L.I.E. on a Sunday night.
Gonna be rad surf for a few days. Swells big enough – more like huge – the likes of which ain’t never seen on the south shore nor the entire east coast. Climate Change! Bring it on! I’m ready. My longboard waxed and ready to ride, Sally, ride. The tide table memorized. Ditch is the place to start the day, then head west or east with the break, depending, and a quick break at Lunch for a lobster roll and a bowl of Manhattan. Manhattan! None of this New England mom’s milk in everything crap.
What I didn’t know, hadn’t heard, was that a mother of all mothers of all swells was jammin’ ‘cross the Atlantic in 64 beat time.
What I did see were the thousands of Hoovering gulls launch up and missile inland, no doubt knocking down a few helis in their paths. Where solid meets liquid, there was no longer any liquid. Solid, it appeared, had ousted liquid and sent it into retreat. Horseshoe crabs were scurrying around piles of junk tossed over the cliff. The jags were dripping dry, their waterboarding on hold, if not for eternity, then at least long enough to drip dry. It was not to be.
What the fuck! Did the texture of the horizonless expanse change? Did a quadruple take and blinked a flock of times. Yeah, there was a texture like fake flagstone siding where the shimmering three H gas should be. Craned up and found the horizon line. Easy to spot. The demarcation were caps of white foam that were rising, pushing the three H gas into an ever-shrinking space.
What a motherfucker of a swell! The weather service said the biggest ever! No shit! It was high! And don’t ask me how fucking high. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go. Get real. Not that any tape measure I could lay my hands on would be long enough to measure the wave’s height. And it stretched, like, forever in both directions.
Wait a sec. This wave ain’t part of the Cat 5 due to slam the east end in sixteen hours. This is a 64 beat bar timing it out of the northeast heading southwest, not out of the south heading northeast.
So, like any fucker addicted to ocean waves and surfing them, I stared at the oncoming swell, appreciatively, appraising its potential as a ride. Fuckin’ perfection and breakin’ left. B’fore I realized it, the swell was seconds away from washing me, my 60s junk heap Corvair, don’t ask, and longboard off the asphalt and the cliff. Didn’t even have time to get my board off my junk heap Corvair, so I braced myself. Had to bodysurf it. Problem was I couldn’t get a fucking start ‘cause I was standing in molasses asphalt.
Slam! My body seized as the frigid Atlantic caressed me with the touch of a sledgehammer that buried me deep in the swell. That familiar rush of directionless, suffocating, rough, tumbling zero g felt oh sooooo good. Back home. Back in the womb.
The swell was movin’ faster than something or other. I gave a lazy kick to reach the face and pop out for a breath. Wish I had my wetsuit on. Fuckin’ glad didn’t go into cardiac arrest. Fuckin’ freezing. Extended my left arm, angled my body semi-parallel to the swell and was off, screaming along the face way faster than my junk heap Corvair went downhill when floored. If I couldn’t longboard it, bodysurf it was the next best thing. Actually, it was the only thing. Still, was pissed I couldn’t longboard it after all the prep I put into the board for the Cat 5, scrapin’ off the built-up wax and ‘pplying fresh. Had the time to kill, so shot-gunned a few Millers and splifs while I prepped.
What a view. Had to be as high as Everest. Ahead and below me, among houses and motels packed tightly together, were tons of people stampeding like the herds of buffalo before we, Caucs, slaughtered them for good eats – caught a glimpse of the Memory as I screamed past it. Jagger came to mind. Rolling Stones. Shit, nothin’ like rollin’ at all, not compared to this wave or any ocean wave. Guess the Memory was a memory along with Montauk, now. Beach front’d be cheap during or after the cleanup since not one of the people were in position, or had the wits to surf this one out, and were Davy Jonesing faster’n 64 time.
The power of this wave. True Force of Nature. Realized had to be a tsunami, DUH! Realized I was in this for the long haul and was most likely my final act before chumming in Davy’s. Had no complaints. Eh, maybe one. Wasn’t on my board. Couldn’t drop down the face and cutback. All I could do was ride mid-face like a juttin’ figurehead. Fact is, was stuck in one position. Couldn’t do a thing. Maybe change my angle a degree or so. That’s the problem with bodysurfing: it’s optionless. All you can do is scream along the face in one direction, arm extended for control and limited steering. Yeah, it’s exhilarating if you ain’t got a board, boogie board or canvas raft, but it sure ain’t exciting and it ain’t real creative. More like them big tech self drive cars that’re all the hype. Shit! Self-drive cars? Where’s the excitement in that. Fuckin’ boring shit.
The thrill is gone. Pretty quick, too. Can feel my feet, sorta, through the numbness that’s slithering up my legs and lower torso. Chuckled, dryly, that my angry inch was an angry millimeter, at best, or had disappeared completely along with my withered sack ‘o hazels. My wetsuit – if only. Had a stinkin’ Bible of if-onlys – was probly nearby in the trunk of my junk heap Corvair. Great fantasy surfed my mind: Me on my board that was on the Corvair that was juttin’ out the face surfin’ the tsunami – instant fame. Reality TV show, talk shows, ticker tape down Broadway – nah, scratch that if only. Decided it was feasible and flailed my right arm to see if I could locate my junk heap Corvair. No good. The flailing tossed me from my line through the face and back inside. Couldn’t say “under” ‘cause I didn’t go down, just slowed enough for the wave to speed around me. But it didn’t leave me behind and roll on. It kept me as one of its trophies.
Wasn’t gonna let this opportunity go to waste. Opened my eyes and scanned the murk for my junk heap Corvair. Fucking pointless, couldn’t see more’n an inch or two. Slammed my lids shut. Fucking fucked up, fucking terrifying. Lots of solid shit tossin’ and tumblin’ within my vision range. Was a real Wizard-of-Oz-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink – if only – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again – but there’d be no crash landing in Munchkinland from this tsunami. No return to Kansas. No Witches. No Great and Powerful Oz. Probly more’n a shitload of Totos washing-machining around in the wave. Was amazed none of the solids had finished me off. Sighed with relief. I remained unscathed. Fuck no! Live through this and suffocate by drowning, no way. Better to be crushed or crowned unconscious by some large solid object – fast and painless – least my junk heap Corvair could do for all the TLC I gave it. What the fuck did I do to remain alive through all this? Fucking surf! This was making that ninth circle of hell I read about in those Spark Notes seem like, to use some Brit word I picked up off one of ‘em, bloody heaven. Was way past that circle. Was in my own private slow-death horror fest.
Was running out of oxygen; needed some quick. Frog kicked a breaststroke and broke through the face. Oxygen. Maybe not such a good thing, ‘cause I was so concentrated on getting it in my lungs, I forgot to extend my left arm and angle semi-parallel to the face. Down the face I tumbled, bouncing off it, randomly, proving chaos theory in my own chaotic style. Eyes wide open, saw I was dropping fast but I still had a long, long way to go before I hit solid that was the swell’s floor. No, ain’t got no idea how far down I had to drop to solid. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go. Like, I could freeze time to measure. Like the tape measure would be long enough. In your fuckin’ dreams.
Time. Yeah. Maybe. Ain’t it ‘bout time I see my life pass b’fore me and I see that fuckin’ white light at the end of the stinkin’ tunnel? Well, fuck me! No way I’d be that fuckin’ lucky.
Instead, always got sloppy seconds.
Everything went into hyper slow mo ‘cause I had gone into hyper speed and managed to bend Time for my purpose. No! Don’t ask me how the fuck I slowed down Einstein relative-like. I ain’t got a clue ‘n’ I don’t care. Alls I know is that I had plenty of time to think and maneuver myself back into my surfing line.
Don’t know how I did that, either. Think I wiggled and extended both my arms, disrupting my washing-machining. Guess my arm caught in the face and jerked me sideways, allowing me to get my angle back, so I was on my line and figureheading along the face.
Now what? How long can I keep this up? Couldn’t feel my feet at all. Checked my position in the face. I freaked. Had tumbled down. Was low enough to crash through anything higher than – high enough to be higher than my fifty foot tape measure I didn’t have on me. Looked up. Figured I was two thirds down the face maybe more. Hard to tell. Needed to  cutback up close enough to the crest maybe even up and over. My stinkin’ longboard – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again.
Wondered if by using my extended arm, it would take me back up the face. Never bodysurfed a swell this big. Only surfed ‘em. What the fuck, ain’t never been on a stinkin’ wave this big before. Guess what I meant to say, was I never bodysurfed a wave long enough or high enough cause what’s the point of bodysurfing anything b’sides shorebreak if you got a board ‘n’ I always had a board. Well, truth be told, not always. First time I went out past shorebreak to surf, not swim, I had me one of them canvas rafts that flew in front of the face that you had to grip for dear life or it’d scoot out from under you. Once you got the hang of it you could kneel on it. Yeah, yuh could steer it kinda sorta by lifting the front of the raft and angling it ‘cause it didn’t have a fin. Sometimes it worked and you could raft across the face for a bit until it closed out or you’d just roll over; the raft would bounce high in the air and you’d bounce against the rocky bottom at Ditch or the sandy bottom at most other spots all disoriented, hoping the wave would take you to shore alive and conscious so you could chase your raft and get back out. Not much different than a board, really, least before some dude came up with the idea of installin’ a bungee leash tethered to a board you slip around yer ankle so when you wiped, you wouldn’t have to go retrievin’ yer board miles down the stinkin’ beach. Instead, the board would crash with the wave and drag you with it so when you finally re-oriented yourself you could pull the board to you, slide back on and paddle back to the yer spot.
‘Course, there was always the danger you’d wipe out, the board’d pop up into the gas, ricochet back down and crown yuh but good. Anyway, never bodysurfed a wave other than shorebreak. Figured extending my arm worked to keep me stable. I weren’t no stinkin’ physics expert. Guess it had to do with physics if that was the right word. Had no clue ‘cause I never made it past eighth grade, dropped out second week, and failed the GED – don’t know how many stinkin’ times. If they had school on boards then I might’uh been interested, but they didn’t, and saw no importance in goin’ to school when surf’s up, which was all the time ‘cludin’ winter thanks to some schmuck who was dumb enough to leave his sporty nazimobile unlocked with a pretty-as-you-please, brand new drysuit stretched out on the back seat. Would’uh taken his board but it sucked for surfin’ the east end. The idiot was an obvious beginner or maybe a diver. Never bothered to find out. Didn’t plan to stick around long enough to get caught. Of course, the drysuit fit me perfectly even if it didn’t. Like, waddya ‘spect, I’m rememberin’ all this shit now ‘cause it’s goin’ through my mind, my mind, while I try to get myself outta this mess.
Huh. Maybe this is all part of that life-flashin’-before-your-eyes yer supposed to have before you wipe out permanently thing. What I wouldn’t give for some shrooms right now and maybe a couple tabs of acid chased down with a few splifs and Millers. Eh. Lesson learned. Never leave yer stash in a junk heap Corvair ‘cause a wave might come along, take it one way and take you another. If only – shit! Again? So many fuckin’ if onlys! If only I had the time to mull through them all and change ‘em to, like, been there done that. Ain’t gonna happen. So, maybe if I angle my arm up toward the crest, it’d cut me back up the face and I wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout hittin’ some building or truck or roof or umbrella or drowning person. So, what the fuck. What’d I got to lose, anyway. Decided to decide to aim my extended arm up ‘cause Time, Time, it ain’t on my side, no it ain’t. Time to give it that ol’ GED try. Weighed the consequences of it not working more to delay my deciding than to weigh my odds of success. Worst could happen is that I tumble down or the wave passes around me, again, and I can’t frog kick myself back through the face.
Like, time to face the Unknown Future than the certain, Now, so I aim my arm up and stupidly catch it in the face, which whips me round so my upper torso crashes through the face and my legs and lower torso figurehead out the face. No good. I swallow a ton of Atlantic and flail my legs which catch on the face and cartwheel my head and arms back out. Before I can cartwheel around, again, I somehow stabilize myself, guess it’s instinct from spendin’ my 22 years ridin’ waves and I’m cutting along the face, coughin’ and sputterin’ ‘lantic from my lungs. Gotta try, again, slow and deliberate this time. I tilt my arm a smidge and sure enough, I inch up the face. It fucking works. I tilt my arm up higher, and up I cut. Wonder if I could do cutbacks. Nah. That’d be risking it. Have to wait till I get where I wannna get, up and over or up near the crest, then I’ll see if I wanna go for broke and surf this mother of all mothers of tsunamis.
Took a while, but got up near the crest and could’uh shot over it and find some jetsam to climb on while I wait for the water to recede or some Georgica beach crowd’s heli to copter over me. Nah, they wouldn’t pick me up. Wouldn’t wanna spoil their leather seats with salt water and some poor Bonacker schmuck who ain’t in their social circle. Maybe a news chopper. Of course, on my cutback up the face, I realized that when a wave breaks onshore, it recedes and that undertow can be a bitch. So when this mother of all mothers of a tsunami finally breaks, the undertow’d be tons of times more powerful than a ten-foot swell, and if I was hangin’ on some jetsam waitin’ for solid to surface, or some search and rescue heli to winch me gasward, chances are I’d be too far out to even see it or it to see me ‘cause of the undertow draggin’ me way out into the Atlantic. And let’s not forget about sharks farther out unless the ocean had churned up enough bottom silt to clog them sharks’ gills. Take a while for the silt to settle and the ocean to clear enough for the sharks let alone the other fish to breath so maybe I’d be okay bobbin’ on some jetsam long enough to be rescued. Nah, I figured, better to bodysurf the tsunami. I mean, like, this was a once in a lifetime chance and I bet I’m the one and only person on the entire planet who ever surfed a tsunami, while there’d been and will be tons of folks floatin’ on the high seas hopin’ for a heli or boat to come along and rescue them. This was Guiness Book of World Records ‘n’ stuff. Like, every talk show on the planet would be competin’ for me, and the cash rollin’ in was better than griftin’ and breakin’ ‘n’ enterin’ cause it was legal stealin’. Probly a Hollywood movie in it, too. MEGA BUCKS!
I quaked violently like a dyin’ flounder thrashin’ around the deck of some obese amateur fisherman’s rented Boston Whaler. The cold. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore and I was fuckin’ freezin’. Hoped it wasn’t hypothermia, knew the signs and these were they. Needed to hold out, needed to warm myself. Had no clue how. I mean, like, in the middle of the Atlantic? In not on.
So, what a fuckin’ realization. Didn’t matter if I could or couldn’t feel nothin’ from my waist down. Chances are wasn’t plannin’ to do much of anything b’fore I wipe out for good. Had no plans to see the world ‘cept maybe surf spots, but that cost the big bucks and transportin’ my boards, pain in the fuckin’ ass without my junk heap Corvair. Wasn’t good enough to get a sponsorship. Never would be. Nah, just liked surfin’ for surfin’ and ‘specially on the south shore from Jones sometime the Rockaways to Ditch and the point. Anyway, hated competition and hated watchin’ competition, any competition ‘less the babes were hotter’n whatever you can imagine, and even then, I’d get bored really quick. Always preferred the doin’ rather than the watchin’ others doin’ the doin’. Watched others grift, con, pickpocket, break bones. Listened to ‘em reminisce ‘bout ‘the old days’ and how fucking amazing their teachers were. Seems they all had teachers. Teachers – waste of time. Yeah, spent some time in lock up for blowin’ a couple of cons – nope, not what I mean – when I was a juvi and followed the advice of a ‘pro’. Realized in my second go round ‘pros’, real pros, don’t know shit and don’t know to teach shit. The con, hustle, grift, pickpocket, hit, whatever their specialty just comes natural to ‘em.
Well, if this is it, best I could hope for is some news chopper catchin’ me on tape. Bet it’d go viral and bet I’d become a legend for the books, just like Davy Jones. Legend of the Tsunami Surfer. Nah, maybe not. Rather have the scratch than the legend. What good is bein’ a legend if you ain’t gettin’ any benefits outta it. Better to be a legend like Genghis, Napoleon and Adolph. Least ways they got the benefits b’fore they was offed.
Whoa, mama! Ain’t possible this rollin’ tsunami is gettin’ higher and pickin up speed? Just missed clippin’ a seagull that looked like it was on a kamikaze mission at full throttle.
Finally settled in for the ride, figured I’d look around. Help distract me from my fuckin’ freezing, chatterin’ self. Nothin’ to see, only ocean all around. Seems like the swell’s shrinkin’ but it’s still rocketin’ on, holdin’ its own. Must be over deep ocean.
The three Hs must’uh taken a powder. I’m getting hit by a cool wind. Could be it’s keepin’ the swell formed. Least ways enough for the face to remain high enough for me to maintain my line. Can’t lose it now. Wonder where the fuck I’m gonna wind up? I’m tellin’ yuh, where was this stinkin’ wind when I could’uh used it? When I wasn’t fuckin’ around with hypothermia and shakin’ my breakfast, harder than Bond’s martini, yeah, martini. He got that wrong. That’s with Gin, ain’t no Vodka in a stinkin’ Martini. Look it up if you don’t believe me. And these stinkin’ idiot sophisticates and cityiots come preenin’ into the bar all sunburnt bronze and ev’rything asking for Vodka martinis like it ain’t got it’s own name only can’t remember it now – too fucking cold. What’s the matter with its stinkin’ right name. Guess it’s fuckin’ too lowbrow for these masters of their own self-glorifyin’ to call it anything other than a martini.                   
Wonder if they’ll find that asshole’s fucking corpse in the trunk of my fuckin’ junk heap Corvair? Doubt it. ‘lantic’ll see to that, I hope. If only – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again. Well, it’s kinda apt, ain’t it? If only that fuckin’ rich kid hadn’t caught me liberatin’ his drysuit for my betterment. I mean, like, the kid had no clue. Just to look at him. His fuckin’ bronze tan and his fuckin’ gleamin’ grill that was 10,000kw blinding even on that overcast day. Not to mention, stinkin’ perfect.
Yeah, some stinkin’ rich kid who spent his entire time in the gym pickin’ up boys, probly. All big and well put together and stinkin’ rich. The dude just happened to park his nazimobile on the wrong beach on the wrong day and wander back at the wrong time. Really didn’t wanna get caught. Really didn’t wanna resort to my survival instincts, been on a streak lately and needed to cool it, I got too many ‘explained’ and unexplained corpses fillin’ the Star instead of social shit like parties and such. Even made it into the Times. Maybe went nationwide, don’t know. Don’t care to find out. Wasn’t lookin’ forward to adding another. No worries, it wasn’t a problem any longer. All them stinkin’ corpses pilin’ up under the water – thousands, maybe millions – unless by some quirk, my stinkin’ junk heap of a Corvair’s trunk don’t open and they find the rich kid – should’uh just let me take his drysuit and go buy another; but no, the asshole thought I was a stinkin’ pushover and comes at me with his fists. His fists! What a fuckin’ idiot!
Me, I always got a stinkin’ wrench on me. Great weapon, wrench, and always get away with havin’ it, even on pat downs – the one good thing about a junk heap Corvair that’s, like, older than my dead mother would’uh been if she were still alive – got what she deserved, the fuckin’ alky – is that it’d always need to have this and that adjusted to keep it runnin’ so always gotta carry a wrench.
First thing, I go for was Rich Kid’s grill, turned them 10,000kw whites into a sea of strawberries with their seeds shinin’ pretty as you please. He crumpled, surprised and woe-is-me-ing ‘cause, I’m guessin’, though it was obvious, he was expecting some fantasy of a fistfight, wrestlin’ mano a mano kinda thing he was sure he could win. Sure wasn’t ‘spectin’ some dude who’d pull out a wrench. Sure he thought this shit never happened on the east end in the summer when ev’ryone had to be stinkin’ rich and frolickin’ in the ocean mists and the worst crime was gettin’ busted for drugs or drinkin’. Anyway, he was burbling and sputterin’ strawberries for mercy, holdin’ one hand up, palm out, and the other wrapped around his former grill all sticky and gooey with strawberry crush, as if he was tryin’ to save his already shattered grill.
It was a good laugh. Turned his entire head into a strawberry stew then threw him into the junk heap Corvair’s trunk and lit outta there and, well, didn’t have time to get rid of him till today. Surfs been too good to pass up. Was gonna do it today, and you know the rest. Here I am bodysurfin’ the mother of all mothers of all tsunamis and freezin’ my stinkin’ ass off.
 The tsunami’s risin’, again, and leavin’ me too low. Gotta cut up to keep near the crest. Gotta concentrate on the face so I don’t wind up back in the soup. Angle my arm up a tad and sure enough, I shoot up to the crest, which is gettin’ higher and higher by the second. Once I know I’ve got a good line, I scope out ahead of me. Way down below and approachin’ rapidly is shoreline. All that sand pin-cushioned with the full color spectrum of umbrellas and fast moving freckles, like, right outta some disaster movie, tearing inland away from their umbrellas. This don’t look like anywhere along the south shore. A boardwalk, maybe Coney but don’t see no Cyclone.
Fuckin’ Jersey! Gotta be, fucking Jersey. What the fuck! I hate Jersey. Surf sucks, people suck, can’t drive worth a shit. Garden State, yeah right! Fuckin’ should be called Swamp State the way it stinks all the time. Now more than ever the way this tsunami is freight trainin’ toward the shore. Sure will be the swamp state in a couple of minutes.
Fuckin’ wow. Gotta cut ba – Holy fucking shit! I’m headin right for . . .
. . . THE END
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MICHAEL COYLE - KIT COPPERFIELD’S CAPER WITH KIDS

1/20/2021

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Michael Coyle published two historical mysteries, Tales of the Black Lion, and The Sons of the Fathers. He began writing when he retired from a 45 year career in business. He has since taken creative writing courses and attended the Colgate Writers Conference on four occasions. He lives with his wife in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York. His thire book “Dawn of a New Day” is due for publication this spring.
 

​Kit Copperfield’s Caper with Kids

My job was to mingle with the crowd. If I saw something I checked it out, made sure it wasn’t like it looked. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it was nothing. You know, someone with a coat over his arm, a cane that might not be a cane, or a guy clutching something in his pocket.
This time it was the exception. I was standing right next to him because he was wearing a long coat, too much for the current temperature. The coat flopped open, and the weapon came out, an assault rifle. He started to raise it. I slammed the barrel downward. I spun him around. I jammed my knee unto his crotch. He dropped his hands. He dropped the gun. He dropped to the ground. By the time he hit the floor, two of my associates were there. They cuffed and dragged him off the floor by his collar. One of our guys had the weapon.
****
I retired from the New York State Police, but within the first few weeks I became restless.  My daughter, Dixie, was in law school. I had a good pension, but I knew I could use a few extra bucks. An occasional job in the area of security or investigations would suit me fine. It would help with my financial obligations, and keep me from going nuts.
The agency, Brown and Grey, was well respected and well connected. Their reputation for getting good results and for confidentiality brought in the best clients. They offered me a chance to work for them on an as needed basis.  Of course, because I was only five feet-four, 115 pounds, and a woman, not every job was an opportunity for me. On the other hand, the boys, Brown and Grey, knew of my record on the New York State Troopers (The NYS police were divided into groups called Troops, so they were called Troopers). I had received some accolades for my work as a detective, so Brown and Grey would call me in, not only when they needed someone who didn’t look like a cop, but also when they had a problem that wasn’t exactly black and white, or brown and gray.
Oh, I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Kit Copperfield. I say that I’m descended from David Copperfield, you know, the Dickens kid, and you would be surprised how many people believe me. As a matter of fact, other than my deceased husband, and my daughter, I don’t know of any other person who was born with the name.
My husband’s father, Homer, came from somewhere in the Deep South, who knows how long ago. Homer the second, my husband, joined the NYSP, charmed me, married me, fathered a lovely little girl, named her Dixie, and got shot dead by a bank robber. Since then, it was me and Dixie and the Troopers. They all loved me, and I loved them all.
The recent capture of the assassin was so successful that Brown and Grey gave me a bonus, in green. Based on this, I thought it was about time for me, and Dixie, to do a little shopping in the Big Apple. I phoned her at Albany Law School, and told her that I’d pick her up after classes on, Friday. It was all set, then I got a call from Suzi at Brown and Grey. “Kit can you hold for Mr. Brown?”
“I’m here, Suzi”
“Mr. Brown, I have Ms. Copperfield on line two.”
“Kit, we have something that is right up your alley.”
“What is it, Bob?”
Maybe I forgot to tell you that Brown and Grey are Bob and Ray, yes, just like the old comedy team. Come to think of it they kind of sound like those guys did when they did the commercial for Piels beer..
“Kit, we have a missing girl on our hands.”
“Isn’t that better handled by the cops? They have the systems to deal with this sort of thing.”
“This is different. Very prominent family, and the girl wasn’t kidnapped. She ran away with a guy.”
“Is she eighteen? You know that there is nothing we can do if she is.”
“I’m told that she pretends she is, and she acts like it, but she is only seventeen. The other complication is that the boy is also from a very well-known family, in politics.  Everyone wants to keep this private. We need you to go to New York and meet with both families on Saturday morning. Can you do it?”
It sounded like an all-expenses paid shopping trip for Dixie and me. “I’ll be there. My daughter and I were planning to be in New York this weekend anyway. There is no problem if she comes along is there?”
“Not at all. We’ll cover all the expenses.”
“I’ll call you on Saturday evening with an update. You won’t mind if we call you from a good steak house, will you.”
****
I drove from my house in the Finger Lakes to Albany, arriving about three in the afternoon. Dixie was waiting at her apartment with her luggage.  That girl doesn’t travel light. “We’re only staying for two nights, you know.”
“Mom, one case is empty. I’ll fill it up for the ride home.”
On Friday night we stayed in New Jersey. I phoned the client to setup a meeting for the next day. On Saturday morning we took a train into Manhattan.  We booked a room at a boutique hotel about three blocks from Times Square. Dixie hit Fifth Avenue, and I took the subway downtown to Wall Street. I was to meet with the clients in an office provided by a big law firm.
The parents of both of the runaways were present, arguing about who caused the situation.
“Your son should have been trained to behave better.”
“Your little sweetie vamped him. I don’t know what part of her body she used.”
“Now just a minute, you can’t talk about my daughter like that.”
I jumped in. “Folks, folks, if we don’t settle down, and start being polite to each other, we won’t get anywhere. These kids are just like kids everywhere, full of hormones. So, in this case, we should try to focus on why these kids took such a drastic step as running away.”
It didn’t take long to get the answer. The fathers were not only political rivals, they were also business competitors.
As things settled down I suggested we establish some rules of conduct for our meeting. First there was a possibility that a crime had already been committed. The boy, Hayden, may have committed statuary rape, whether he thought the girl was eighteen or not. Since there was also a possibility that illegal drugs were involved, I got both sets of parents to agree that the focus of my work would be the safe return of each of the kids, and that no criminal charges would be brought by anyone.
The second rule was that even though the fathers were at swords points about everything, they should all tell me all they know about the situation, and that everything they told me should be true. I agreed to keep to myself anything I was told. The last thing I wanted was for one father to use the situation to obtain an advantage over the other. All was agreed and so I said, “Let’s get started. The boy’s name is Hayden, what is the girl’s name”
“My daughter’s name is Heather.”
“Ok, now whose office is this?”
Heather’s father said, “It is not either of ours. We have borrowed it from a mutual friend, a lawyer.”
“Swell, let’s start with Hayden’s family, mothers first. Mama you just sit over here. The rest of you clear out until I call you.”
Hayden’s father protested. “Shouldn’t you interview my wife and I together?”
“I don’t think so. You may each have a different perspective. The more different perspectives I have, the better chance I have of locating your children. And, while you are waiting, I suggest you pull out your phones and check on any credit cards or bank accounts your kids can use. I assume that in every case you also have access to these cards or accounts.” Interviewing all four parents and looking at financial transactions showed me that there was more than just a Romeo and Juliette story here.
It turned out that:
(1) Mrs. Smith (we are using Smith and Jones here for obvious reasons) and Mrs. Jones were roommates and Sorority Sisters in College. They had become close friends. The competition between their husbands was a problem in both marriages.
(2) Each of the kids had a joint bank account with their mother, and each had withdrawn a thousand dollars on the day they disappeared. With two grand in cash, they could get quite far away before they had to start using their credit cards. So far there had been no credit card transactions by either of them.
(3) These were smart kids, maybe too smart for kids
(4) Each kid had a passport, but they usually didn’t carry them on their person. The parents felt the passports were safe at home, but they would check. I thought it was dumb they hadn’t already checked.
(5)The fathers had known each other since childhood, and had been in competition with each other since they were old enough to be Boy Scouts. Not that they actually were Boy Scouts. Boy scouts went to camp. These guys went to the country club.
(6) Both kids had cars, but that was the first things the parents checked. Both cars were in their garages. The kids must have been using public transportation or had rented a car. The first ting Monday morning Brown and Grey operatives would check all the possibilities.
The whole set up seemed crazy to me. It looks like the mothers were supportive of their children’s relationship. On the other hand the fathers had forbidden the kids from seeing each other. The fathers were fierce competitors in business and in the political arena, but they had a Wall St, lawyer who was a mutual friend, and who lent them the office for this meeting. I needed to talk to this big shot lawyer friend. I wondered if he was a Democrat like Heather’s father, or a Republican like Hayden’s father.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch the name of the person who lent you this office.”
“He is the lawyer, Victor Johnson.” (Once again a false name for the same reason.)
Saturday night I called Bob Brown. I explained the difficult family relationships. I told him, “If I had to live in that situation, I’d run away too.” We talked for some time and put together the elements of a plan. I spent Sunday contacting the operatives we needed to canvass those facilities that might provide us with a lead. Nobody travels without leaving some trail. We needed to find out where that trail started, or, if we got lucky, where that trail will end.
My other thought was that these were kids, and kids talk to their friends. I sent several our more subtle folks out to find and pump their friends.
On Monday morning I called Victor Johnson’s office. I was told that he was working at home and, when I indicated that it was urgent that I speak with him today, they gave me his home number. I phoned and a woman answered.  “Do you have an appointment, Ms. Copperfield?”
“I do not, but I was hoping Mr. Johnson would see me. It is about the disappearance of Hayden Smith and Heather Jones. I am a private detective hired by the parents to locate the youths. I believe that Mr. Johnson would be able to help me since he knows both families.”
“One moment, please.”
It was only a moment. “Ms. Copperfield, this is Victor Johnson.  I will be pleased to meet with you. Come as soon as you can.”
He gave me the address, and I called a cab,
When I reached the house I was greeted by a middle aged, robust man in a corduroy jacket. “Ms. Copperfield, come right in. I don’t know how I can help you, but you have as much of my time as you need.” He showed me to a room that was a home office, study, and library all in one, but it wasn’t a law library. The shelves contained great literature, history, biography, and philosophy. Johnson saw my amazement at his collection and smiled at me. “The law library is in my office downtown. I haven’t had my nose in a law book for years. By the way, this is my son Franklin. He is just out of school and is joining my firm. We are home today so that I can get Franklin up to date on some of our clients without being constantly interrupted. But I do not consider you an interruption, by any means.”
I said hello to Franklin and he said. “How-do-you-do Ms. Copperfield. I believe that I know your daughter, Dixie. I just finished at Albany Law, and we were in some of the same classes. She is a lovely woman.” 
Franklyn was a type, all best money could buy, all the best clubs, and a place in daddy’s New York firm. I thought that he was handsome, sophisticated and self-confident, but not as smart as daddy.
“So nice of you to say so, Franklin. I don’t recall Dixie mentioning your name, but we really don’t see much of each other. I live in Canandaigua, in the Finger Lakes, and she has her own place in Albany. She loves Albany Law. “
“Albany Law is a fine school, and Albany is a nice town, 
I smiled and mad a little joke, “Well. if you plan to settle there I’ll mention it to Dixie.
Daddy spoke up, “We’re grooming Franklyn for the New York office. ”
I said, “Say Franklyn, were you a pal of either Hayden Smith or Heather Jones?”
“The two of them are a bit younger than I am, but I knew Hayden from the Club. He is a very good golfer. I also spoke with Heather on occasion around the pool. She made quite a sensation there, if I may say so. Fellows of all ages were attracted to her.”
I said, “You wouldn’t have any idea where they would go to, shall we say, be together?”
Lawyer Johnson said, “Good grief, you don’t think they have eloped? There are damned few places that a seventeen year-old can get married.”
I said, “I know, and we have those spots covered. Our agency does a lot of tracking down young lovers. It’s SOP for us in these situations. That being said, I don’t think they intend to tie the knot at this time. I think the plan is to teach their parents a lesson in being parents.
So the bottom line is that you don’t have any idea where they might have gone?”
“Not at all.”
“Well than, perhaps you can give me the names of some folks at the Country Club who might know more.” Franklyn gave me a few names. I thanked him and daddy, and told them that I might be back, and took my leave.
As soon as I could get to a secure phone I dispatched one of our guys, who looked like he belonged to the posh set, off to the club too snoop. Then I had an idea. I called Brown. “Young Hayden is apparently interested in golf. There’s a tournament in Hilton Head this week.  Is there someone near there that could show some photos around, and see if the kids just took off for a golf vacation?”
Tuesday all the reports that came in were negative. The bet was that the kids had borrowed a friend’s car. We kept the pressure, soft sell in nature, on the friends.  On Wednesday, our golf guy (I think he paid Brown for the job), got out his PGA cap, his pink golf shirt, his checked Bermuda shorts , and headed for the tournament. Early Thursday morning he phoned me. “Kit, they are here.” Thursday, before noon, I dumped my bag with the bellhop at the hotel in Hilton Head. There was a message from Brown waiting for me, one word “Bonus.”
I met with our operative, Burt Woods, (no relation to Tiger) at the bar. When a meeting is detective to detective, we always meet in a bar. Burt started his report. “You’re not going to believe this but they each have their own room in this hotel. They are not sleeping together.”
“Are they in the hotel now?”
“I don’t think so. I saw them go out to Harbor Town this morning. The golf will end around six, and they’ll probably stay till the last ball is sunk. They are real enthusiasts. Our best bet will be to catch them at the last green.”
Burt was apparently somewhat an enthusiast himself. He thought sitting on the eighteenth green all of the afternoon would be fun. But there didn’t seem to be a better solution, so we went to watch golf.
 On the way, Burt asked, “Don’t you think we should notify the parents?”
“I would like to talk to the kids first. The fact that they have separate rooms supports my idea they are trying to send a message to their crazy parents.” So we waited in the hot sun.
Six fifteen rolled around and the last golfer headed for the bar. I would have liked to do the same, but there was no sign of our young couple. I asked Burt, “What do you think happened?”
“I have no idea. I was sure this would work. Maybe one of them got sick or something and went back to the hotel early.”
I said “Let’s go.”
****
Back at the hotel, my room was ready, so I checked in. During the PGA tournament it’s almost impossible to get a room without a reservation made months ahead. Brown and Grey don’t seem to have to worry about that, just like there were tickets to the tournament waiting for Burt at the desk when he checked in the day before. The questions in my mind were (a) how did the kids get here if they didn’t rent a car and (b) how did they get a room and tickets. My bet was that someone set this whole thing up, but (c)why?
As I turned from the front desk, Burt took my bag and handed to the bellhop. “Put this in Ms. Copperfield’s room please, Jack. Kit come this way I want you to meet someone.” It was a big guy dressed in a suit with a bulge under his arm. “Kit this is Bill Reed, the house detective.” I knew that Brown and Grey were very kind to the staff of certain hotels. Bill would get a generous check in the mail with the request that he share with other important members of the staff. The head waiter, bartender, and Jack the bellhop would get their share.
I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you Bill.”
Burt said, “Tell Kit what you told me.”
“Ye know, Burt asked me to keep an eye out for your kids, but ye know I haven’t seen them since the left this morning. I checked their rooms and their stuff is still there so I guess they’ll be back, but I been watching them for a few days. They’re usually down at the pool by this time.”
 I said, “Well okay, let’s wait for a while. Maybe they stopped for something to eat.”
Bill said, “I don’t think so. They got a dinner reservation for seven. It’s almost that now.”
 “Bill did you see what they were driving.”
“I did. It was a Buick convertible wit Jersey plates. Here’s the number.”
“Burt, get out to the golf course and see if the car is still there. Remember, this is still a confidential investigation, so be careful about asking questions. Bill, thanks for your help. Please keep everything quiet, and you know we’ll appreciate it.”
I went upstairs and dialed the office. The night team was on duty. I asked them to check the Jersey plate number as soon as possible, realizing that it would be morning before any info was available. Then I went to the bar. I ordered a CC manhattan on the rocks. I don’t know how people drink martinis. Gin gives me a huge headache. The bartender placed the amber liquid in front of me. “Ms. Copperfield, I have a phone call for you.”
I took the phone. “Kit, why don’t you have a cell phone?”
“I don’t need one, Burt. You can always reach me at the bar. What’s up?”
“The car is still here. It looks like a rental. We’ll have to see who rented it.”
I told Burt to come back to the hotel and meet me in the bar.  I finished my drink and the bartender brought me another one without my asking. “Ms. Copperfield, I have another phone call for you. “Kit, why the hell don’t you get a cell phone? “
“I had one Bob, but I lost it the first week. I can’t afford to spend that kind of cash for a phone every week.”
“Come back to New York. The parents got ransom calls today.”
****
A new type of case, a new set of procedures, a new group of operatives. I was sure that, back in New York, Bob and Ray were working to put together a new way to deal with the kidnaping. I wasn’t sure that I would still be on the case. When I got to the office on Friday morning there was quite a gathering of what they call “the kidnap squad”. These folks were trained to negotiate for the release of the captives. They work under the theory that if the kidnapers are successful without some difficulty, they will be back for more. They have found that this absolutely true in cases they have handled in Central and South America. Most of those cases are assigned by insurance companies that sell Kidnap insurance to business people who travel or live in those areas.
As I entered the room, Bob stopped the conversation and introduced me to the group. “Kit has been working this case as a missing person up to now. We suspected that the victims had eloped or something like that. Kit let us have your thoughts. I know that you’re not usually involved with this type of case, but somehow this doesn’t sound like a typical kidnaping.”
I had been thinking this over during my flight. “It’s odd as hell, Bob. These kids have been missing for a week. We found them on Wednesday. They were happy and free on Thursday morning. I was setting up a situation where I could casually meet them on Thursday afternoon to see wat was going on, but they disappeared sometime late morning or early afternoon that day. I have to admit it, right under my nose.”
Bob said, “Well what do you folks think” Various opinions were expressed. With the final idea being that:
 (1) Someone saw an opportunity develop and took advantage of it by grabbing the kids  
(2) Someone who knew the victims lured them to the golf tournament for an opportunity to grab them.
(3) The kids themselves made the ransom calls.
I weighed in for number two. “These appear to be good kids with nutty parents. I think someone they know set up a vacation for them. They knew their fathers wouldn’t let it happen so they each grabbed some cash of their own and headed to Hilton Head. They had separate rooms. They spent their days at the golf course and around the pool. It was the most plutonic elopement of all times. But I don’t think they could have set this up for themselves. They had a car but they didn’t rent a car. By the way, the car had phony plates on it. Some body wanted them to have a car that couldn’t be traced back to anyone. Someone probably made the hotel registration. If we can trace these things we’ll find a kidnaper.”  
Bob said, “Okay, let’s check these things out. Kit, get the troops moving.”
****
I called Bart, who I suspected was still enjoying the golf. He has a cell phone so it wasn’t hard to reach him in the first tee. He agreed to check on the hotel reservation. I suggested that he also get a list of any other hotel guests from the New York City area. Sometimes you can catch a big fish with a net. Then I got hold of the guy in charge of contacting the car rental companies. “Please have your folks go back and see if any of them have a car missing or if someone rented a car to be picked up by Hayden Smith. By one o’clock I had an answer from both sources. The hotel reservation was made over the phone by a Robert K. Kent with a credit card. A car picked up by Hayden Smith, to be returned on Monday next, was rented by Robert K. Kent, with the same credit card. The card was issued by my bank. I ran down to my branch and talked to the branch manager. “Let me see what I can find out Kit. He was back at his desk in a few minutes. “The card was issued in response to a mail promotion. Mr. Kent is a longtime, large depositor. It appears he just returned a promotion card.” I looked up the address and phone number in the phone book. 
On the phone Kent told me that he didn’t request a credit card from that bank. He did get a bill of sorts from that bank, but he didn’t owe anything so he tossed it. He planned to ask about it the next time he was in the office. I drove by Mr. Kent’s house in Manhasset. His mail box was on a pole at the end of a long driveway, not visible from the house. I was beginning to get the picture. It was a picture of a very clever person.
I returned to the office to drop off the company car and call for a hotel for a room. There was a message from Bart Woods.  I called back and he answered immediately. Maybe I should give a smart phone another try. “Kit, I knew it was too early for even you to be at the bar, and I needed to let you know I wasn’t spending all my time watching golf . I checked around at some of the other hotels down here, and there was a Robert K. Kent at a place about a mile away from where the kids were. He checked out on Tuesday. The bellhop said he was tall, well spoken, expensively dressed, about twenty-five, beard and mustache, and a big tipper.” A ray of hope. What next?
****
Next I thought, a cocktail. Then Suzi buzzed me on the conference room phone.” Kit, you have another call, a Victor Johnson.”
I grabbed the phone. “Mr. Johnson, what can I do for you today?”
“Ms. Copperfield, I’ve heard about the latest developments in the disappearance. As close friend and consultant to the family, I would like to be brought up to date.”
“What exactly is the latest development you have heard about?”
“Why, the kidnaping, of course.”
“I see. Well, Mr. Johnson, if you don’t mind me asking, just what is your relationship to the family?”
“Not at all, my wife is a second cousin to Loren Smith, and I’m Godfather to Heather Jones. By this time you must have noticed some discord between the fathers. I’m sort of a mediator to try and keep the marriages together.”    
“Okay, the kids were last seen on Thursday morning. They never returned to their hotel for their things, and haven’t been seen since. Brown and Grey have assembled their kidnap team and are working on a strategy right now. One of the things I would like to do is talk to some of the kid’s friends. I would like to start with Franklin.”
“That would be a great idea. Franklin is a very close friend to Hayden and Heather.” This was news. I thought Franklin told me he didn’t know either of them well. “Unfortunately he is out of town at the present. He’s a big golf guy and is down on Hilton Head until Monday. I do have his number. You could give him a call.”
Daddy gave me Frankie’s number, but I didn’t want to call him just now. Just so you won’t think I’m a total Luddite, the first thing I did was find a computer and look up the website for the Johnson Law Firm. Franklin wasn’t listed among the firm’s attorneys, yet. Then I called Dixie. “What’s up Mom?”   
“Honey, does Albany law have a year book or something like that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’d like to get a photo of a recent grad, Franklin Johnson.”
“I know where to get that. Give me a half hour, and I’ll send you one by email to your office.”
“Thanks dear.”
 Suzi was still in charge of the place. I told her what to expect. “How many copies do you need?”
“If I could get ten in a nice folder, that would be great. And send a copy to Bart”
“The ten copies will be a breeze. The folder may be more difficult.” But Suzi worked her magic and, after I called Bart Woods and filled him in, I was out the door.
****
The next morning saw me on my way back to Hilton Head. Bart picked me up at the airport. “I showed the photo Suzi sent me to the folks at the hotel where Kent is staying. He’s still registered there. They say it looks like him except for the beard and stash. On the other hand, at the kid’s hotel he was seen at the pool and eating with the kids, no whiskers.”
“Let’s stop at Kent’s hotel and see if we can spot him.”
He was there at the bar. It looked like he was waiting to meet someone.  Bob Brown had got me the phone number that was used to verify Kent’s credit card. We leased the bellboy’s phone for $20 and called the number. The bearded Franklin Johnson answered. Bart said “You are lucky you have just one the Indian sweepstakes.” Franklin hung up.  And then we got lucky. Someone, who looked like he might have been involved in the Indian sweepstakes climbed on the stool next to Franklin. They started talking, and Burt and I mad plans to follow the guy when he left.
I borrowed a car and a cell phone from the hotel, courtesy of Bill Reed, and Burt and I set off and on piggy back. We tailed the guy to a small bungalow just off the Island. He parked the car, and we waited. As dusk began to fall we figured we should assail the house , but we needed more than just the two of us. Suzi failed in this event. There just weren’t any B&G folks available on such short notice. Then we called on Bill Reed. At about eight he and two other huskies showed up. Time to move in, but we didn’t have a warrant, so we improvised.
I went to the front door and knocked. I asked if Hayden and Heather were home. The guy grabbed me, and hauled me in the house. I yelled, “Help.”  My scream was heard on the street. We had a reason to move in. Burt came to the front door and started banging. Bill and his pals were picking the lock on the back door. The front door opened and Burt was issued in at gun point. As he closed the door, I turned and pushed the guy with the gun. The other guy grabbed me and the two huskies came up behind the bad guys and smacked them on the head. The hoods went to their knees and then down face first. By the time they came to they were tied tight.
“What now?” Burt asked.
“You guys just wait here. Remember that Brown and Grey are paying you by the hour, so just relax and keep a sharp eye on these guys and the road. We don’t want to be surprised if there are any other accomplices. I’m going to get Franklin, and bring him here.”
Franklin was the one who was surprised when he saw me. It was easy to convince him to accompany me. When we got back the kids were having pizza and Pepsi, Franklin started accusing the two gangsters of forcing him to participate in the Kidnap plan. It seemed he owed them some substantial money from a gambling situation. Of course the thugs said it was Franklin’s idea. I phoned Brown and suggested that he get the parents down for a meeting the next day. More pizza and Pepsi was ordered.
****
Brown brought donuts coffee, orange juice and four confused parents early the next morning. Their first question was why the kids did what they did. Hunter said, “Well, Franklin said he had won this fabulous trip to the tournament, and he couldn’t use it. We knew you wouldn’t let us go so we just went. Maybe we were trying to show you that you couldn’t control us. We didn’t know we were going to be kidnaped.”
Brown took charge. “I think that the reason we are here is we have to decide what to do now. Three people could be charged with kidnaping. One of them is Franklin. If we charge these two monkeys we have to charge Franklin as well. Do we want to do that?”
Mr. Smith said, “What you are saying is that we may want to let these two go to keep Franklin out of jail.”
Brown said, “Exactly! Think it over. It’s your call.”
The four parents decided to take another cup of coffee and go outside to discuss the situation.  Shortly they were back. Smith was he spokesman. “As long as these two agree to disappear from the face of the earth as far as we are concerned, we are prepared to consider the whole matter a misunderstanding.” 
I thought that maybe the families might be getting closer together.
 
 
.
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LOIS GREENE STONE - UNSUCCESSFUL

1/19/2021

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​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.  The Smithsonian selected her photo to represent all teens from a specific decade.

​unsuccessful

​‘Popular website, with excellent video how-to’s, can be yours minus those annoying ads; sign up for your free three-months trial!’  The ads are intrusive, and the web-place knows that.  Is it because of missed revenue that there’s a fee to users who just want content?  I accepted the no-ads examination, but decided, after a few sessions, the upcoming fee just wouldn’t be worth the little time I actually went to that site.  Cancelling was so difficult that I had to call my savvy grandson 400 miles away to ‘take over my computer’ and figure out how to unsubscribe.  Well, he probably was glad those 365 days of 2020 were over as he possibly cringed whenever he saw a text from me, and automatically pulled out my personal passwords to fix a glitch or my mind-confusion from something on my tablet or smartphone.  2021! Bold, fresh, showing twelve months of little daily-boxes waiting to be filled on the paper calendar that hangs from a cork bulletin board in my kitchen. 
 
Okay. 2020, you are gone. A new year, and anticipation that staying-in-place might be exchanged for going maskless, being with family in person, actually doing my own grocery shopping, had me wanting to subscribe to 2021 with its thirty-day free trial.  I checked ‘yes’ on January 1st.  Oh, it is a 31-day month.  Well, as these first thirty days of calendar pages are being tossed in the trash, it seems not too much is quickly going back to the former-normal, so I sent an email saying I’d like to cancel my subscription to 2021.  I think the look of 2022 has a nicer presentation, and I’m certainly not going to void 2021 but just not be a paying subscriber.
 
Trying to annul 2021 turns out to be worse than the website that offered much but made it hard to cease being a participant.  My inbox reply said:
 
“Dear Sir or Madam:  While I received your request to cancel your subscription to 2021, due to high volume we are experiencing long waits and we cannot begin to even process your request until December.  We know this is inconvenient, but so many wanted the free trial that our computers just couldn’t handle the overload. And, of course, we are short-staffed, due to the pandemic, although our operators do work out of their own homes.  I realize you think a press of a computer key could initiate the process, but we outsource and the overseas operator is still learning how to do this in English, the language you requested;  our employed operators in other parts of the world are undergoing training in reversing the subscription orders, which is very confusing to them.  They’ve been trained to Process and not Reverse.
 
Bear with us for all these upcoming months; it’s possible you even might find that you actually begin to enjoy 2021 and be pleased that you are already a subscriber.  Of course you realize that, after your thirty-day free trial, you will be automatically billed while your subscription is active;  I assume you read the fine print offered in six different languages.  Thank you for being a customer and allowing us to take our monthly fee from your bank account, which you provided in case you enjoyed your free trial.  Once, in December, or so, when we’ve reduced our high volume waits, we will notify you that your subscription and payment has ended.”
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B.I.V. - UNDER ARCTIC ICE (THIS IS HOW YOU DROWN)

1/19/2021

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B.I.V. was born and raised in California City, CA and resides in Queens, NY. When not writing, they are landscaping, specializing in dangerous plants. They enjoy predicting the future and the art of staring contests. They are currently working on a short story collection The Other Lives I've Kept, a novel about Lenore, OR, and an epic poem. 

Under Arctic Ice (This is How you Drown)
​

​          “How the fuck did we end up here?”
          “We are on vacation. Adventure right? Cause we go where the fuck we want?”
          I love her reasoning - ‘Why the fuck not.’ Not even a question. Just another dissident comment on top of the viewing platform overlooking the Arctic playground, where the only color comes from the three different flags on the five different ships in our view. The UK’s X and + slowly down the strait within a few feet of the cracked jagged frozen teeth riven by the earliest icebreakers, China’s rectangular red covering about half of the metallic steel already anchored in the “bay” which is in actuality a lake, and the Maple Leaf flying from the back of the last three small ice runners, returning in circles before they dart back east into the number glaciation - the paralyzed Hyperborean.        
           “No, they are on vacation.”         
           “Do you really want to be on a ship like those people? On a big ole American ship red white and blue dripping down the sides? Because, you know, you can work for like, a bank or something. Maybe take some oil tycoons and tax evaders here on a bizness trip.”
           “The US doesn’t have routes up here.”
        “You can bring some underage girls too in fine fur coats. Really anything you could fucking want.”  
           “Oh please fucking stop.”
           “Skull-fuck polar bear carcasses.”
           Her sarcasm allows me to retreat inward, settling in the pockets of my skull where nothing ever happens. She’s a Pragmatic Idealist. Alternatively I am self-conscious and nervous about my diffident choices. I settle on; she believes. I sometimes think I fell in love with her because I wanted to be her.
           I pluck her earrings a few times with my index finger, and she turns closer to me with a scrunched up frozen raw face. I was worried about frostbite, but Airea insists your blood is enough keep you warm - just don’t let it stop.
           That’s why I think I will die first. I would choose to not have frostbite, and counter it by putting on a coat or hat, or realistically just going inside. Airea will just believe she won’t get frostbite, and would be naked in a snow pile avalanche attack and be as warm as if she was in a bathtub. Maybe it was an advanced form of meditation, but I was almost sure that she was not human, which makes the love so much stronger.
 
           “Holy Hell! Look at the puffins!”
           Airea follows my outreached hand to the puffins popping up in the middle of the lake. I’ve never seen one in real life, but I know what they look like, but I do not know their habitat, or really anything about them.
           “Wow, they are way bigger than I thought!”
           Airea looks back towards my dumb excited face and I wish that her piercings in her ears, nose, and mouth shined more spectacularly than her eyes. No matter what was said, they always had a shimmer of empathetic sadness, or just some decent understanding, that was surrendering. Through the irony and derision, I always understood that at a fundamental human level, she was ‘saintly.’ And I hate reducing my lexicon to the word ‘saintly,’ but nothing comes close to describing her accurately. I once told her she was ‘saintly,’ and she took a knife to my throat. This is while she and I were still just dating. She told me, ‘Never call me saintly again. The path of God is saintly, the path of god is genuine, heartfelt, and authentic.’ I still haven’t found a better way to say it yet.
           “Those are not puffins.”
           I watch some more breach the surface directly next to the boat and see their breath rise along the starboard side of our vessel.
           “What'd ya mean? Those are puffins.”
           “My god dude, they are huge. Puffins are like, bird-sized.”
           “Well do you really know? Have you seen one?”
           One solo puffin emerges from the water and immediately takes a wing and unzips itself from the head. I watch the limp puffin skin skim along the water behind definitely a human swimming toward the English ship.
           “You could not have predicted that.”
           “What? Oh! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that puffins are like duck-sized and don’t live in Canada!”
           Yea I sometimes - well I was going to say she makes me look like an idiot but really, it's basic information I should have known. I am an idiot. But that is not to say that I am not smart. I just have no foreboding actions. I can figure out puzzles and riddles and I fucking hate myself for this reason. Airea is not only a Pragmatic Idealist as I said before, but also an Informant if she wanted to work for the FBI, a Rejecter if she was entrapment, and a Sociopath that can understand anything, and yet still willingly observes the chaos and “entropy” because she is an expert at erasing. I call her The Eraser and she smiles and we fuck afterward, and then I call her The Destroya.
 
           “HEY! OI! OI!”  
           She knows how to raise her voice, and everyone knows to answer to it.
           “Yes! Hello!”
           “Where did ya get those puffin suits eh? How do you get one of those, those puffin suits?”
Jeez she is so insulting as she is curious.
“They just gave them to us, just for fun.”
Motherfucking bloke just swam away.
“What do you think he meant just for fun?”
“I think that means hunny that they wittingly adorn those suits as some sort of amusement. It’s a choice that they make to look like that as their reinforced impressive totally human decision.”
“Those costumes are to make me want to mate with them?”
“All clothes are. All of life is one mating dance in infinite parts.”
“Are you telling me we should not be wearing clothes right now? So as not to be playing into the mating dance of life?”
“Baby you don’t need the progression and rebellion against logic to get me naked.”
           “Jeez you’re romantic.”
           “Hey you two! We are anchoring here! Go grab your shit!”
 
           Industrial cruises became trendy a few years back and were now considered straight up fashionable. Due to the inherently dangerous routes, and its rarity, the exorbitant costs never dropped substantially, and thus allowed only the rich, who have seen enough of the Already World to tour these polar waters. Except for us.
          Kinda. Airea and I hitched a ride on an old half oil tanker half cargo ship out of Anchorage, then slept and fucked most of our way through the Bering Strait and then we sorta woke up somewhere on top of Canada. This is the last thing I could remember, of course, if it happened. I realized, while scanning the unvarying Open Ocean and mechanical glaciers in repeat, that if I think it, I can remember it too. Like the breaching whale, and the pod of dolphins that glittered in the purple sundog.
           Back in the day anyone could board a commercial ship – if you cooked and cleaned. Now you need to be in a union. Something about being unsafe and the corporation overlords wanting people to be unhappy. Airea and I unionized years back. You are still supposed to be part of the Oil Tankers Union or Cargo Haulers, but they make exceptions for other people who support the cause, if they trust ‘em. I actually met Airea at our local Communist meeting in Burlington, and then we encountered each other again at a meeting in Tucson. Unless she was a fucking nark, and I already made the list, there was a beautiful reason for it. On our first “date” (we went to the carnival and got stoned; she hoped I would join her monkey wrench some dam) we both decided to quit our jobs (I had been working at a Make-Your-Own t-shirt shop; she was working as a dishwasher,) and work at the factory in the heart of the city our other comrades had said was always hiring. We coveted the humanity, we needed the surroundings, and they wanted us there – so we signed up for the Industrial Players Union, paying the first dues with the money we would have spent on smokes. Quit smoking that day too.
 
           We crunch the ice as we climb down the frozen ladder. Airea jumps from ten feet up and lands. I wait until I’m my height up and jump. The ice with a fine dusting of loose snow catches my feet, like falling with magnets. It welcomes me into its landscape as an itinerant monument, but I worry it does this to maybe imprison me and kill me.
           Airea pulls her hair into a ponytail, except for a small amount she never ties up, and has colored purple and blue using paint, sometimes lead free.
           “You two have my sympathy,” An Able seaman yells from above, “You sure you wanna be dropped off here?”
           “Yes. Definitely.”
           “Best of luck.”
           “Yea fuck off.”
  
           I had already asked Airea if we wanted to get dropped off here, or rather, why the fuck we were getting off here. I had thought we would travel back to Anchorage, or maybe further south to Victoria or Seattle. I had grown in attachment to Anchorage, and really only agreed to the trip with the stipulation we would in fact return. I might have even called it my Favorite City. I had never felt so alone and responsible for my own isolation in my life. The extraterrestrial charm of going to the store, or even getting into the bed was maddeningly mesmerizing, because nothing is comparable. Taking off a hat and brushing out the cold flecks of honesty that melt into the carpet will always be a cinema, of some overwhelming heartache until the next icing. It reminded me of Burlington, but VT still just felt a little too close, too well known. Going to Alaska is as close to disappearing as you can without completely exhausting yourself into the oblivion.
           I even saw a moose behind our house. In Tucson I sat on our deck and watched rodents run from their reptilian assailants.
Airea though needed to keep moving. Anchorage was never home, neither was Burlington nor Tucson and especially not Hoboken. Whatever she wanted though...I assumed I would be happy with it. Airea sometimes seems independent, in a good word, or selfish, in a bad. But during the five years together, my assurance that I was to be protected and tended to steadied into fact. The contradictory cooperative psychopath - my love.
“Where to now?”
“I told you, we’re on vacation right? Let’s go check out the lake.”
I stare across the constant ripple of the water. It’s autumn now, but it feels more like spring. The air is tonic, and the sun screams in the sky, but it is not blinding. The ice absorbs the light deep below the surface - there is no reflection.
“Come along now dear.”
We walk side by side around the lake for maybe a mile, not saying a word. I occasionally look up and watch her old green rucksack bump up and down, left to right, loose on her shoulders, and watch her hair sway the opposite way as if she is one wavelength unto herself. The Laws of Physics.
“Hey, The Laws of Physics would be a cool band name.”
She laughs a titter, but it is sincere.
“I hope it isn’t science themed.”
“Maybe anti-science themed.”
“Decon-Post-Anti-Futural-Hardcore? I love it. Learn the guitar.”
“Maybe I’ll play the organ.”
“Actually, I think some apocalyptic instrument made out of rocks, melted metal, and rubber that produces the sound of radiation might be more suitable.”
“Sung in a new guttural language.”
“Purely for art’s sake. Since you won’t be playing to many people.”
“Sometimes I think we are anarchists…”
We stop and look at each other. Airea frowns at me and I try to keep a straight face. Within three seconds we are laughing ourselves into curls and then wrestling into the ice. I get a face full of some still fresh snow and sit up squinting the sting away from my tender red face that Airea kisses until it returns to a healthy pulse.
“I think we are close. I saw some puffins go this way.”
So they ARE puffins.
“I know what you are thinking...the humans in puffin costumes. I should have been more clear.”
We continue on and I ignore the ice melting in my boots until I realize the melted pool in my sole is startlingly warm.
“I think this is the spot.”
How she determined one singular spot existed is inexplicable and straight strange. This entire landscape looks identical. The only difference is some land is ice and some land is not ice and is water.
I follow her finger down to the water’s blurred surface. I bend my knees and put my face right next to the water. I breathe on the icy strands in the lake and they begin to disappear, allowing for a clear view of a small trail, leading down towards the bottom of the lake. Maybe ten feet further I can make out the faint alternating glow of light, emanating from the sides of the underwater gully.
“What the fuck is that?” I turn around, almost concerned, but concerned enough to spin too quickly and let the weight of my bag bring me to my back.
“I think it’s the tour.”
Without hesitation, Airea takes two steps forward and places her boots into the water. She brings me a giant smile. Her teeth reflect the sunlight. Her whole face does. She has been given go and down she goes, with poise, descending underneath the water.
For the next five minutes I think she is dead. The first two minutes is spent still lying on the ice, waiting for her to resurface. The next minute, I actually start to believe she is dead, and I wait for her morbid bubbles to reach the air and pop. The next minute, I contemplate how I can dive down into arctic waters and rescue her. My non-existent swimming capabilities frighten me though, and I start to panic. The water will always scare me. The last minute that I thought she was dead was spent stripping off my clothes. I read somewhere if you have to go under, you don't want your clothes dragging you down, and you are going to want something warm. I’m down only to my underwear and way-too-thin socks when Airea’s head sticks up.
“Are you coming in?”
Stunned to silence, with my hands still on my socks, my voice box crackles with static.
“Eraauuuh...What?”
“Why did you take off all your clothes? I mean, I’m not complaining at all but…”
“I thought you fucking drowned! I was going to save you! How...what?”
“Put your clothes on. We’ll be down here for a bit.”
“Are you not hypothermic?!”
Airea looks confused, and angles her neck to stare at the water.
“Uh, no. The water’s just like any other water. Wet is its distinguishable feature. But only when you get out ya know? Now come along. Put those clothes on.”
It takes me a few seconds before I start to move and gather my frost stricken clothes.
“Backpack too?”
Airea nods her head, and then dips back under.  
When I first began swimming lessons my mother forced me into during a particularly hot summer in Omaha, I was too frightened to breathe through the snorkel while I was in the water. I would stand on the edge of the pool, and take ten huge breaths in and out, and on the eleventh, hold in a maximum lung-capacity’s worth of oxygen.
I repeat the process. The eleventh breath brings me into a jump and I fall through the water. My feet immediately slide on the ice underneath, and I glide down through the gully until Airea stops my easy slide and picks me up. She looks like an ice goddess within the reflective nimbic spaceship of alternating and blending greens, purples, and blues.
“Pretty cool right?”
“It’s stunning.” I mumble not letting in any of the water into my mouth.  
“You can talk sweetheart.”
“It’s-” The water fills the spaces between teeth. Some is swallowed in the anti-gravity.
I feel myself drowning. The laughing eyes of Airea force mine closed as I kick frantically up towards the surface. My damn bag and clothes weigh me down, and only permit me a few feet towards safety with a spastic leap. The worst part is that I was sure Airea would never lead me to harm, and here I am drowning in front of her, while she manages to stay serene, and self-possessed.
I find traction on the icy hill and accomplish a few steps before I feel my hood pulled back by Airea.
“What are you doing!” Bubbles spray toward to her face.
She brings her hand under my nose.
“Look.”
There are bubbles escaping from my nose, and being pulled back in. I am still breathing. Like the anxiety of my youth, when I couldn’t breathe for an hour sometimes, and then realized a moment later that I am not dead, I understood the stressor to be only the disbelief that everything is fine.
The displaced air had shattered the light in incredible 360 and I lose all sight of what is around me. Then Airea grabs my hands, and my hyperventilating slows to an even pace.
“You wanna keep going?”
I am starting to understand that I have no substantial opinion or consequential selection today. Obviously, if I said I want to go back, I could, but since I am already totally thoroughly past my initial expectations, my opinions now seem, at least to me, obsolete. How am I supposed to really analyze my desires and wants when what I at least “enjoy,” was thought to be impossible?
Airea turns around and keeps my hand tightly in hers, leading us down through the expansive crevice. She brushes her fingertips on the crystals as if they were an instrument that produced an orotund, resonant symphonic melt, rather than a dampened echoless thump. I don’t touch them, though I marvel at their complexity. Every single one on my right side for the next ten minutes gets at least half a second of attention, until my neck starts to hurt, so I look up. The lights either bounce back from the surface of the water, or they actually seem to block the sunlight. If I were able to move with slightly less difficulty, I would believe I was still on land. A few small spheres of brown, held together, float above me as Airea grasps her index and middle finger in her right palm.
          “Whoa. Are you alright?”
           “Oh yes.” She turns to show me. “Just a small cut.”
As she squeezes, another drop of blood leaks out her finger, cut off by a lack of supply, and then floats perfectly round up toward the surface like gasoline. She reaches up to grab it between her fingers and holds up the tiny orb. Up this close, you can tell it is red. She inverts her hand and squeezes its center so it can continue to float up like a ring around her finger.
“Pretty eh? Blood Rings! All organic materials, no carbon footprint. no animal testing…if you don’t count me as an animal.”
“I don’t.”
She gently rolls it off her index finger and throws it towards the surface.
“Well you should,” she says, poking me in the chest as if she could disparage me truly.
           I turned to look behind me if there was anything besides phosphorescent glow, but there wasn’t. As bright as it was, the radiance behaved more like a shadow or aurora, than actual illumination. The cool haze literally lit our path though as we descended deeper into the arctic sea. To both sides of us, there were now two incredibly high walls. Either our descent quickened, or the creviced sides were growing out of the icy earth with immense force.
           Soon there was nowhere else for the glow to escape - the walls curled inward to form a cave. While there were fewer crystals emitting the flush light, the tunnel completely confined the rosy, the verdant, and the ideal sea, though the area was no more or less bright.
           The cave changed its trajectory toward the left as we continued on. I wondered if at any moment a reverse-flashflood would sweep us deeper into the cave. A bubble might break, a current might slip, and suck us down deeper into the arctic. A faint but sonorous bass of a mumble crawled up from further down the cave. Airea stopped and jutted her neck out to see. I worried the same thoughts troubled her.
           There were times down in the American Southwest when we heard about some hiker or hikers caught in some ravine. There were rarely survivors. The ones who did never hiked again. One man, a Tucson native straight up moved to New York City the next day after being released from the hospital. A few years ago I heard from an old friend who said ten people ‘wrapped themselves in a watery death.’ Two families at the same time. Two fucking lineages removed in approximately 46 seconds. Some people don’t know, including my friend, that the water doesn’t kill you. The rocks kill you.
           A slight push of pressured current forces our step backwards. Since we had been in the cave, the water seemed transfixed as air on a windless day, and only now did we realize it was before, overtly motionless. The rumble erupted again, louder this time but no clearer.
           “Should we get out of here?”
           “Hold on.” Airea said. “Just wait a minute.”
           Her curiosity is going to get us killed.
           But before I could desert back up the hill and out of the cave, the rumble distinctly became muffled voices. A group of puffins waddled into our view from around the bend in the cave. Seven of these people came up in a straight line and all waved at us simultaneously.
           “Where are your suits?” They all wondered.
           “Too cheap to pay for them?”
           I wave back at them and Airea kind of tries to smile.
        “You two can turn around we think. There’s not too much more down there,” The lead puffin said.  
           “Absolutely nothing interesting down there,” the puffin in the back called up.
           “How far down does it go?”
           “Oh we just went down another 200 meters or so. I mean, how many underwater arctic crystals can one see in a day before they all start to look the same?”
           “Well what do you wanna do Airea? Just turn back?”
           Airea looks back at me and scoffs.
           “We can see uninteresting for ourselves.”
           “Well alright,” says the second puffin. “Mind if we squeeze by ya then?”
           Airea and I squeeze our bodies flush against the wall, fitting our heads and limbs in between the crystals to allow those fat puffin suits enough room to waddle. The lead puffin drags its wing across Airea’s face accidently and she rigs up her face. The second puffin shuffles through, but as it steps past me, it trips on my foot and adjusts too far to the left, puncturing a hole underneath the wing. The pressurized suit releases its reserve of air, hurtling the second puffin directly into the leader. The lead puffin screams as it is shoved directly into the crystals. Both suits now are spraying wildly not only air, but also blood. The rest of the crew abandons the Single File Rule to help and discover the “advice” really is a command. I close my eyes and flash through dire stupidity and try to find comfort in Airea’s stoic utterances.
           “Ooh. Oof. Urg.”
           They sound nothing like the gurgled screams of the puffins. Airea clutches my arm and hauls me further down the cave. After the screams’ ringing vanishes, I open up my eyes to see seven dead real people in sagging lifeless suits, and a wall of blood, blocking out the light from the crystals they were impaled upon. The blood hung there like a peaceful undulating mobile, slowly dispersing and creeping through the tunnel. I could not speak from the terror, only shudder. Nothing I had ever seen remotely could compare to this. Another whole bloodline gone. I can see Grandfather Grandmother Father Mother Son Daughter and I think an Aunt. I have the sudden urge to contact my Uncle. Luckily, Airea is undisturbable, and is unnerved only at the sight of twins.
           “Well it looks like we are going this way,” she says.
           Fucking kidding me?
She starts walking further into the cave, and I have no choice but to follow her. I wait for a few seconds first, to see if a hand reaches out for help through the blood, but it does not. It is always the rocks. Well crystals specifically this time I guess. I think for a second they might be idiots, testing the Grim, the Grave, and the Wretched itself, and then remember that I do not know really anything without doubt, and probably would have suffocated myself if Airea didn’t tell me I couldn’t. That’s the not the first time Airea doubted my own mortality.
Can you drown if you don’t breathe in the water and it’s only a pure lack of oxygen? Would that just be suffocation? Not that it mattered. A coroner would say it was the wounds, nothing oxygen-less even mentioned. The coroner would say it’s always the rocks. We’ll tell someone when we get back to the surface.
           I rush after Airea who had gotten farther down the trail than I thought. No possibility to get lost here though, on one path. I catch up with her and hold her hand. She still leads, dangling her hand behind her legs. The cave now has contorted itself into tighter and tighter turns and I begin to get dizzy, not from the spinning, but from the complete lack of due north, something I can, without a doubt, always locate.
           I notice the cave ceiling pulling upward, and the floor downward, like a large trumpet. Airea and I step out through the flare to what could only be described as a unbounded courtyard of underwater evergreen trees, illuminated by the soft glow of blue and yellow fog containing tiny bright white spots like stars. Upon looking up, we can see the caves’ spiral, corkscrewing towards the top until out of sight.
           “Nothing else to see here. Bullshit puffin fuckers.”
           “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”
           “They must hate trees.”
           There is no trail here - the path fans out to encompass the whole forest floor.
           “So do you think we are, like, at the bottom of the ocean?”
           “Hmm,” Ariea thinks, “I think we must be. I can’t tell how long we have been walking, but I bet so.”
           “Well which way? Straight ahead?”
           “Sure. Sounds good. I don’t think it really matters. I bet it all goes to the same place.”
           “Then why don’t we find out if that’s true or not?”
           “Yea?”
           “A zigzag?” I say, tracing the path with my finger.
           “I’m proud of you kid.”
           The evergreen forest floor did seem to occupy an infinite space in all directions. But in all of its beauty it did appear to be sameness, much like the crystals. Individually beautiful, but when viewed together, a mass-produced image made for humbling the hollow humanity. The fog’s flow even seemed to be on a timer, or a set wavelength. But at this point, I was getting very tired, and my feet were starting to hurt, so my judgments might be a bit harsh and unfounded, as Airea still maintained an incredible wonder for the forested oceanic floor.
           “I am a little confused how we are going to get out of here though love.”
           “I told you already; it will all lead to the same place.”
           “This isn’t a ride. This is still natural as strange as it is.”
           Airea did not stop walking; instead she took a sharp left turn behind a tree.
           “This way!”
           “I thought they were all the right way!”
           Airea was correct either way. The trees began to disperse slowly, and the fog became brighter and thicker. She quickened her pace until soon she was at almost a jog. The fog obscured everything from view, and had lost its colors to develop a mantling grey sliced with beams of refractive white light. Airea was now long out of sight and I began to shout.
           “Hey! Airea! HEY! Where are you?!”
           Just when I almost began to panic, the fog broke. The trees fell into order. The light narrowed. The fog suppressed into a wispy smoke, hours after a fire, hovering just over the ground. The trees rose in straight lines of view, equidistant to one another. And in the middle of my view, a huge morning sun directly down the center of the road we were now on.
           “DUDE? You see this?”
           “Where are we Airea?”
           She didn’t have an answer for me.
           “There’s no way we like, transported or something,” I say.
           “No no I think we are still underwater. Look.”
           A small particle floated by - too slow and stable for pure air.
           “Feel.”
           My body vaguely swayed, and I felt lighter than I would on the surface. I exhaled to see. Bubbles rushed out of my mouth and ascended skyward.
           “Told you.”
           “How can this be? I mean Airea. There are fucking houses here.”
           The small one-story bungalows perfectly placed and compulsively colored in pastel pinks and blues flanked the sides of the road as far as the horizon line. Each one built exactly the same, and each one comforting in its surreal and strange behavior.
           “We’ve been before right?” I ask.
           “I can’t really place it, but yes, it certainly feels that way.”
           “It reminds of Hoboken. Out in the burbs where we had the funeral.”
           “Hm. It does appear to be similar…to that place.”
           Something so familiar came from that suburban block in the early hours of the day. As we walked down the underwater road, I needed to tell Airea something she would hate. I never believed in God. I much preferred Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy because I wanted to believe in something very few people did anymore. And not many people thought the way I did, so it felt like a rebellion, without the blood, the pictures, and the oath. I don’t believe in God because I could never imagine someone with that power, that oversight. Moreover, I could never accept anything would want to do this on purpose. I am not an atheist though, because I judge my ruling based on insight, and ignorance is no way to fund your beliefs. Nor am I agnostic as the beliefs I do have are well regarded, passionate, and poised - I could never consider myself a Religion of Shrugs. The rest have at least one deity, so how could I truly choose one or another. No, I am somewhere underneath them all, and far enough removed that they all can occupy the same erroneous space called Wrongness in my head.
           Regardless, I say:
           “Hey. I mean. This must be what heaven feels like. For like the first few minutes. Or what it looks like. If it existed. Like, what it would feel or look or be like if it was true and real and we were dead. I am so convinced we are nowhere near Earth right now even though we are so far…into it.
           She stops walking and swivels on her heel – looks me right in the eye. And then punches me right in the arm.
           “If heaven existed. No dude, this is all just camouflage.”
          We stood motionless for a moment, wondering which door to knock on first.
 
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TERRY SANVILLE - A BRIDGE BETWEEN TREES

1/18/2021

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Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 400 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

​A Bridge Between Trees

​Whatever Rich had been before, he’d never be again. We all dreaded that. But it took years to figure out as we struggled with the aftermath.
The summer between eighth and ninth grades, Rich, Pete and I decided to build a tree house…actually Rich did most of the deciding. Our families lived on Santa Barbara’s Calle Poniente where it dead-ended into rolling hills covered with wild oats and spotted with California Live Oaks. Two massive trees stood close together along a ridgeline, silhouetted against the sky.
“That’s where we’ll build her,” Rich said and pointed.
“Ah, come on,” Pete whined, “we’ll hafta haul everything uphill. We’ll be pullin’ stickers outta our socks forever.”
“He’s right,” I chimed in.
Rich countered, “We’ll be able to see anybody coming. We’ll see everything.”
“And they’ll see us.”
“I want them to,” Rich said. “This is our place and nobody can take it.”
Pete choked back a laugh. “That’s funny. Ya sound like you’re actin’ in some western.”
Rich grinned and drawled, “That’s right, I’m the Marshal in these here parts.”
We all watched Gunsmoke on TV every chance we got, lusting after Miss Kitty and making fun of poor Chester. We also knew that Rich was the Marshal and we his deputies. We’d known each other since first grade at Harding School and had tried projects before. The tree house would prove the toughest.
In the late 1950’s, Calle Poniente had three mini-fiefdoms: the bottom near Valerio Street belonged to a bunch of little kids; the middle section to John the paper boy, the Mexicans, and pretty Becky; and the upper end to us Three Amigos. We were older than the others by a year or two, a vast difference when you’re young. 
Rich motioned us into his garage. “Look at this.” He rolled open a big sheet of paper across a workbench.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“Come on, Chet, your Pop’s a draftsman. You’ve seen blueprints.”
“You do this?” Pete asked, eyes wide.
“Yeah. Look, here’re the tree trunks, like you’re lookin’ down from above…the first level and the second…and the high deck in the other tree.” Rich showed us the details laid out in clear lines.
“What’s this?” I pointed.
Rich puffed himself up. “That’s the bridge between the trees.”
“Cool. But how’re we gonna get the stuff to build this thing? I’ve got nothin’.”
“Me neither,” Pete said.
“There’s plenty of scrap lumber at that house project on Marquad.”
“Jeez, a frickin’ block away.” Of the three of us, hulking Pete proved the most adverse to physical exertion.
Rich ignored him. “We’ll pick ’em clean…take only used stuff… they won’t care.”
“Yeah, but what’ll we take?” I asked.
“I know what we need.”
Suddenly, our lazy summer of riding bikes down State Street and watching girls bake in the sun on East Beach had been usurped by the tree house challenge, albeit an exciting one.
It took a week just to drag all the materials to our construction site. The most difficult hauls were concrete-stained sheets of plywood. We stored everything under the oaks and covered it with a tarp borrowed from my Dad’s woodpile. We did a lot of borrowing. We scrounged for nails and screws and used all of our fathers’ hand tools. By the second week we’d worn a path up the hill, the annoying stickers no longer a problem.
The tree house took shape slowly. We got fancy: cut up an old red carpet and lined each room; found some rolled asphalt roofing and covered our castle; nailed wire over the window openings to keep the squirrels, raccoons and birds out; and built a trapdoor in the first level floor and locked it with a padlock and hasp unscrewed from Pete’s father’s toolshed. 
But the bridge between the trees proved the most difficult. We didn’t have long pieces of lumber that could span the twenty-foot distance.
“We’ll build it out of two or three planks,” Rich said as we stared at his sketch.
“I don’ know,” Pete said, shaking his head. “I ain’t gonna trust that thing.”
“What if we build it, ya know, in pieces,” I said, “a bunch of boxes nailed together?”
“You mean like some sort of box beam?” Rich asked.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
It took us a week to bang it together and a full afternoon to lift it with ropes into place. It rested on notches we’d cut into the oaks, maybe ten foot up. The bark proved tough to chop with a hatchet. It looked like gray alligator hide. And a blood-red layer of wood beneath the bark made me regret all the nails we’d driven into those trees.
Less than a foot wide, the bridge rose at a slight angle from one tree to the other. To help keep our balance, we strung waist-high guide ropes on either side ­– ropes purloined from Mr. Spezack’s boat gathering dust in his backyard.
When done, my Dad made me give him a tour of the place, including a stroll across the creaking bridge, and a climb to the high deck in the second tree, our very own crow’s nest.
“You boys did a good job nailing this thing together,” Pop said. “You be careful up here. When the wind blows this place will really shake.”
“Yeah, it’ll be cool. Don’t worry.”
All through August we moved our prized possessions, the things we hid from our parents, into the tree house: dog-eared copies of Playboy and Modern Man; two packs of Cool cigarettes and a Zippo lighter; a dusty bottle of gin from Pete’s father’s liquor cabinet; and a pistol with a box of cartridges that Rich found tucked away with his Dad’s Korean War stuff.
To get into the tree house Pete and I climbed a ladder, unlocked the trap door and pushed inside the first level room. But Rich usually beat us in by climbing one of the tree’s long branches that almost touched the ground. He’d move from limb to limb like a spider monkey, as if he’d been born in the treetops.
We used the enclosed rooms as our smoking/drinking lounges and reading library. But the high deck in the second tree became our favorite spot. From there we could look west into the setting sun and watch soundless waves break along Hendry’s Beach and the Hope Ranch Coast. We’d shoot the bull about our dreams of the future: high school, the after-school jobs we’d get, the kind of cars we’d buy, the girls we’d date and which ones might “put out,” a term we used with great confidence but with little understanding.
Through all of this Rich would get more and more restless, would break out in laughter, jump up and swing from branch to branch, dancing across the bridge and back as if powered by jet fuel. We’d give him a little sip of gin to calm him down. It didn’t help much.
Rich’s imagination just wouldn’t turn off. He talked about having parties in the tree house and inviting kids from school, about rigging the place with electricity so we could watch TV and stay overnight, about putting a telescope on the high deck to gaze at the stars and do things with girls. Pete and I listened to his wild ideas and let his passion carry us along, trying to believe that anything could be done if we just had the guts to try.
We’d saved the last of that God-awful gin for the final week of summer. Pete and Rich would start ninth grade at La Cumbre Junior High while my parents sent me to the four-year Catholic High School in downtown Santa Barbara. We swore that we’d all do stuff together, stay close and let Rich dream up new adventures.
We sat on the upper deck, legs dangling over its side, and sipped Beefeater from chipped coffee mugs. 
“Hey, I know these guys–” Rich began.
“Ah Jeez, here we go,” Pete said, snickering.
“Shut up, lard ass. Let ’em finish.”
“I know these guys that made their own surf boards. They said they’d show me how.”
“Sounds cool,” I said. “But nobody I know surfs.”
“Yeah, that’s why it be cool if we did.”
Pete shook his head. “Come on, guys. Ya know I sink better than swim.”
We stayed quiet for a few minutes. Rich countered with a new plan. “Yeah, well what about us getting after-school jobs and pooling our money. Buy a car and fix it up.”
“I can dig that,” Pete said. “My Dad can show us how.”
Rich started to fidget as his excitement grew. “Yeah…we could keep it in our garage and–”
“–work on it on week ends. We’ve got two years ’til we get our licenses.”
“Paint it competition orange,” Pete said, “dago the hell out of it, with baby moon hubcaps and blue lights in the wheel wells.”
Rich grinned. “And tuck-and-roll inside. My sister’s boyfriend had it done in Tijuana, cheap.”
Pete and I stared into the sunset. I dreamed about cruising State Street with some bodacious girls in our cool car. Rich couldn’t contain himself. He climbed into the treetop and swung from limb to limb. He scooted along a branch that extended toward the opposite tree, and with a shout, dropped to the bridge below. He landed like a gymnast dismounting the high bar to stick the landing. 
With a splintering crack, the bridge split in two and Rich fell. He tumbled end over end, arms flailing, and landed with a sickening thud on his back. Pete and I screamed and bolted to our feet. With the bridge gone, there was no easy way to get out of the tree. We shinnied down the trunk, scraping the hell out of our bare arms, and ran to Rich’s side.
He lay on top of a huge oak limb that we’d cut off, his eyes rolled back in his head, drool dripping from the side of his open mouth.
“Is…is he dead?” Pete whispered.
“No…see, he’s breathing.”
Rich moaned. His eyes seemed to focus on us for a few seconds before closing. But he kept breathing.
“What’ll we do?” Pete asked.
“I’ll stay here…go tell his folks…get an ambulance…he’s…he’s hurt bad.”
Pete tore off down the trail and disappeared into the waning light. I put my hand lightly on Rich’s chest, felt it rise and fall. The lower part of his body lay bent at an angle. He didn’t move. It seemed like forever before the sound of adult voices engulfed us. Pete gasped for breath and looked ready to faint.
“You didn’t move him did you?” Rich’s father asked.
“No..no sir. He hasn’t moved since he fell.”
“Okay…okay. Why don’t you stand back against the tree with Peter. The medics will need room to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rich’s mother knelt by his side, tears dripping from her eyes. She leaned forward to touch her son, crying hysterically. But her husband stopped her and they hugged each other, shaking. 
I moved into the shadows, feeling scared and somehow guilty that our horseplay had caused this tragedy, as if Pete and I should have kept Rich from doing that stupid stunt. We were his deputies and we let our Marshal get hurt. Pete stood next to me, trembling, his mouth clamped shut. 
In the distance, the sound of sirens approached. Every dog in the neighborhood howled. A new Cadillac ambulance arrived with red lights flashing. A patrol car pulled up beside it. The medics hustled a gurney up the trail, struggling in the sandy soil. With help from the cops they carefully lifted Rich onto the wheeled stretcher, strapped him down and headed off. Our friend, our leader didn’t make a sound the whole time.
By then, the entire west end of Calle Poniente stood in the street, staring. Pete’s and my parents huddled at the edge of the field. They came with the police and us boys to Pete’s house. It was after ten o’clock before the cops finished asking questions. Our accounts of the accident jibed, although Pete and I failed to mention the gin.
At home, Mom hugged me. I slipped into my dark bedroom, stripped off my clothes and slid between cold sheets, shivering. The image of Rich tumbling through the air flashed over and over behind my closed eyes. The sky turned gray before sleep and dreams took me away.
 
###
 
I slumped on the couch, munched Fritos, and stared blankly at the flickering TV. Mom stood over me, hands on hips.
“He’s been home for a week, ya know. You should go see your friend.”
“Yeah, yeah, I will.”
“Do it now. I won’t have you lazin’ around here all Saturday.”
“Cripes. Okay, I’ll go.”
Rich had came home the week after Thanksgiving. Pete and I had visited him twice in the hospital. The first time, the drugs slowed him down so much he could hardly speak. The second time, he put on a brave face until the post-surgery pain got too much and the nurses hustled us from his room.
I slammed the front door of our house as I left, mad at Mom for forcing my hand, but knowing she was right, which pissed me off even more. I crossed Calle Poniente and headed toward Rich’s house.
“Hey Chet, wait up,” Pete called, grinning. “Have you been over to see him?”
“No, have you?”
“Nah. Figured we’d do it together.”
“Yeah. Ya know…I’ve been feeling guilty about what happened.”
“Why?”
“If we hadn’t got Rich all excited, he wouldn’t have been messin’ around.”
“Yeah.” Pete went quiet for a moment. “But he got that way all the time. Wasn’t our fault.”
“I guess.”
I tapped on Rich’s front door and Mrs. Kirkmeyer answered.
“Come in, come in. Richard is in the rumpus room watching TV. Go on back. He’ll be glad to see you.”
Her smile seemed pasted on, didn’t fit with the dark circles under her eyes and the crow’s feet. We passed through their house. Mr. Kirkmeyer looked up from his magazine and nodded but said nothing. I wondered if he too blamed us for the accident, for building that unsafe bridge between the trees.
Rich sat in a wheelchair before a color TV, the actors’ faces looking Martian green. A set of small barbells occupied an end table on his right, kept company with pill bottles, a pitcher of water and a glass, Kleenex, and a tiny bell. He looked at us and grinned.
“Hey guys, come on in.” He picked up a small box with buttons and pointed it at the TV. With a click, the damn thing shut off.
“Jeez, Rich, that thing’s great,” Pete said.
“Yeah, I can change channels, make it louder or softer, turn it on and off and not have to get up…not that I can.”
Pete and I collapsed into chairs on either side of him. His mother came in and laid a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table. “Thought you boys could use a snack.”
“Thanks Mrs. Kirkmeyer,” Pete and I said in unison.
“So…so how you feelin’,” I asked.
The smile faded from Rich’s face. He looked pale, with purple patches underneath his eyes. Yellow and green bruises decorated his bare arms. “Ah, ya know. Still gettin’ used to the chair and stuff. That’s why I have the weights, to build up my muscles.”
“Does it hurt?” Pete blurted.
“Can’t feel nothin’ below my waist. That’s why I have the bag.” Rich pointed to a plastic sack half full of urine hooked to the side of his chair. “And yeah, I wear diapers.”
“Ah jeez, man,” I muttered. 
“When I get stronger, I’ll be able to change myself but I need more muscle ta do that.” He tapped a bicep.  
“What’re the pills for?” Pete asked.
“The pain from where they operated gets bad at night…can’t sleep. And it sometimes burns when I pee. Take more pills for that.”
I felt relieved when Pete changed the subject. “I missed ya at school,” he said.
“You’re probably flunkin’ with me not there to give ya the answers.”
“Are…are ya comin’ back?”
“The doctors say maybe by Easter. Mom’s been getting all the books, homework and tests from my teachers…so I shouldn’t fall too far behind. Besides, schoolwork keeps…keeps me from thinkin’ about…”
The silence grew between us. But ole Rich could still draw us out. “How ’bout you, Chet? You lettin’ the priests push you around at Catholic High?”
We talked about teachers, girls in our classes, my new after-school job as a box boy at the A&P, making a whopping $1.25 an hour. None of us mentioned the accident and we wouldn’t talk about it until years later. But Rich started right back in with his overactive imagination.
One rainy day sometime after New Year, the three of us sat on Rich’s front porch and stared at the tree house on the ridgeline. Other kids from down the street had taken it over even though the bridge lay in pieces where we’d left it. I’d retrieved Rich’s father’s pistol and put it back in the locker where it came from, Mr. Kirkmeyer none the wiser.
“Remember when we talked about poolin’ our money and fixing up a car?” Rich asked.
I nodded. “Do…do ya think you can drive?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I can ride with you guys…if we buy the right thing.”
Pete and I exchanged glances. “What do ya mean?” Pete asked.
“Look, I’ll need something that I can wheel my chair into, tie it down, and be able to see out.”
We stared at Rich blankly. “You got some ideas?” I asked, feeling that I’d invited a blizzard of words. I’d missed that.
“Yeah, check this out.” Rich opened a newspaper he’d been holding on his lap and pointed to an ad. “This would work great.”
Pete and I leaned forward to get a closer look, then broke into laughter. “You wanna…wanna buy a milk truck?” I asked.
We laughed so hard that Pete began to choke and I had to pound him on the back to get him to stop.
Rich looked indignant. “Yeah, a milk truck. It’s big enough to hold the three of us…and can haul a lot of weight.” He stared at Pete and dug him in the ribs.
“But a milk truck?” Pete said, still chuckling.
“Think about it. The Live Oak Dairy over on Milpas is always sellin’ their old trucks.  We could buy one cheap and fix it up. They’re practically givin’ ’em away.”
“But…but a milk truck? What girl is gonna wanna ride in a milk truck?” I asked.
“We can paint it competition orange like Pete wants, with pinstriping. Cut holes in the sides and put in more windows so I can look out, get big fat tires with chrome rims, put glass packs on the thing, maybe even drop in a bigger engine. We’ll be the only one in town. And we can stick a sofa in the back if ya want.”
We left that day shaking our heads and giggling. But as promised, Pete and I talked with our parents. At first they laughed as much as we did. Then they talked with Rich’s parents. Less than two years later and after countless hours working with our fathers, our Orange Uttermobile sat in Rich’s driveway, ready to roll. We’d added a boss AM/FM radio, red dice around the rear-view mirror, and yes, blue lights in the wheel wells.
I got my license first. The look on the DMV guy’s face was priceless when I showed up for my driving test in the orange bomb. Our fathers had already put plenty of miles on the thing. They acted as juvenile as we did.
The truck included extra seats and a special tie-down spot where Rich would watch the world go by, chat up the girls we took to ball games, dances, and on make-out sessions off Camino Cielo. Rich never ran out of ideas for having fun while being careful to steer around trouble. But he also learned to trust our judgment, to lay back and enjoy life without trying to control it.
In two years the three of us split up: Pete to Fresno State to study Physical Education, Rich to Cal Tech on an Engineering scholarship, and me to UCSB studying Psychology, then to South Vietnam to practice survival.
But we never lost touch, celebrated each of our weddings. Rich expanded his parents’ house and moved in with them, with his wife and their two adopted Vietnamese children. The west end of Calle Poniente once again had another generation of little kids, the start of a new mini-fiefdom.
Rich died at 54 from renal failure and a bad ticker. We scattered his ashes under the oaks and the long-abandoned remains of the tree house. In my barn-like garage sits the Orange Uttermobile. It awaits its second life under the hopefully vivid imagination of the little boy asleep in my second wife’s womb. I start it up now and again to keep the Three Amigos alive.
 
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JOHN ROSS ARCHER - THE FUNERAL

1/18/2021

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John Ross Archer is a retired colonel from the US Army where he served for 23 years. He holds a master's degree in psychology, and, he is an active Rotarian and Gideon. He was the founder and owner of a strategic planning firm, and a vice president of a technical college.
His hobbies included skydiving, SCUBA diving and motorcycling. Archer and his wife live in Thomasville, Georgia, in the middle of plantation country.

​The Funeral

​“Dick, what the hell are we doing? “We’re both exhausted, we’ve driven seven hours to get to Atlanta, and we are no longer spring chickens; I am 85 years old, and you are ten years my senior. Only two old fools would make this trip at our ages to attend a brother’s funeral. Are you even sure of the time and place of the funeral?
 “Now settle down; yeah, I’m positive, Chester, the time for the graveside service is four o’clock, it’s only three o’clock now, and I figure we’re only ten or twelve miles away from the cemetery. At least the surroundings look fairly familiar.” Why don ‘t you stop bitching and enjoy the scenery. You know, Chester, that’s all you've done on this is trip, Bitch, Bitch, Bitch.”
“Fairly familiar? Dick, have you ever been to the cemetery? Tell me the truth; don’t BS me, Dick. I’ve known you for too long to put up with your false claims—like telling me you had a driver's license when you knew damn well your license expired six years ago.
“No, I have not visited this cemetery in the past six years, but I’m sure I can get us there. The cemetery is near where I used to live. Stop your worrying, Chester, I’ll get us there on time, now quit complaining, you’re worse than my wife.”
“Okay, I’ll quit complaining, but it’s been over thirty years since you were in Atlanta, Dick, not six. I only want to know if your memory of this area is still correct.” Ignoring my remark, Dick moved on to his next thought.
 “You know, Chester, there’s no family left but me, and I‘m not acquainted with my brother’s friends anymore. I doubt I will recognize anyone at the funeral. We might even be the only ones in attendance, Chester,” said Dick, with a frightened look on his face.”
“Now there’s an awful possibility. that must be an uncomfortable thought for you, Dick.”
“Just up ahead, you see the cemetery on the left?  Do you see it? Put your glasses on Chester; you're just trying to look younger.”
“ We’ve made the cemetery on time, by golly, I told you not to worry, Chester, you see, your concern was for nothing—as usual.”
We drove into the cemetery’s main entrance and looked for the site of the graveside service.
“There, on the hilltop, I see a line of cars and a gathering of people. “That has to be the place,” said Dick.
“Dick, sixty miles per hour, is too fast to be driving on these small, narrow cemetery lanes.”
“I don’t want us to be late,” said Dick.
We skid to a halt and park where a man wearing a funeral home armband directed us. We walk to the small crowd gathered around a flag-covered coffin where yet another man wearing an armband approaches us.
“Are you gentlemen related to the deceased?”
“Yes, he was my brother,” replied Dick.
“Then please take a seat; you will be the only ones on the front row. We were not sure any family of the deceased would be in attendance.”
“Dam! Exclaimed Dick; there’re more people here than I imagined. He must have had more friends than I realized, Chester.”
Dick’s loud spoken remark caught everyone’s attention and prompted scornful stares. Dick was not the least bit concerned with those people, their stares, or what they might think of him. I supposed Dick’s attitude prevails among 95-year-olds. Mine would probably be the same as his.
A white-collared pastor stepped up to the microphone, said a prayer, made generic remarks relevant to the deceased and invited anyone to step forward who wished to say a few last words about the deceased. I stayed seated while Dick, teary-eyed, went to casket-side to pay his last respects to his brother.
Dick leaned over the casket then--with a horrifying look on his face--jumped back, and shouted: “Holy crap, that poor man is not my brother!”
Dick hurried by me, taking me by the arm and pulling me out of my chair.
“Dam, Chester, we got here on time, but this is the wrong dang cemetery.”
“Yep, right time, wrong place, Dick.”
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KEITH MOUL - POEMS

1/18/2021

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Picture
Keith Moul writes poems and takes photos, doing both for more than 50 years. He concentrates on empirical moments in time, recognizing that the world will be somewhat different at the same place that today inspires him. His work appears around the world.

​Garment with Many Folds
 
            “Smithsonian to remove photos of Japanese
            destruction from atomic bomb exhibit”
            a news report
 

​With infallible pace of his patrician voice, FDR stalled
history: Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,”
to embed in American minds how reprisal engages a gear
to mobilize 133 million constituents’ incandescent wrath
toward a dark, inferior people’s bigoted aggression; toward
suffering at lives inevitably lost; toward God, audience of one,
to aver to heaven that we arise to reassert our virtuous might,
that we must not betray ourselves to inaction and treachery.
 
Apt words for war’s element of surprise.  (U.S.A.F.M.:
“Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner
for which he is unprepared….  Deception can aid probability
of achieving surprise.”)  With twitching feather
the pert goose disdains the gander.
 
Mr. President, you embark another grieving generation,
re-imbued with new cause, following a persistent myth
of invulnerability, a path through ignorant enemies plain:
 
brief consensus at our independence; our entitlements;
our assumptions of racial distinction, authorizing phobia
for blacks, freedom doled to whites; reconstruction debacle;
our early and essential education in realpolitik to implicate
alliance by casus foederis; our superior right, our destiny.
 
A person may, perhaps ought, to revere the sun.  A human,
eyes tight in reverence, Mr. President, generals glory mad,
shrieks banzai as prelude to immolation, earns restoration
to that life, not to melt by our scientific prerogative for a
just indemnity, atonement to our egalitarian God listening
to factory churning, easeful with armaments leased allaying
isolation in favor of manufacture for use and constantly
ching-chinging cash transfers, and advancing munitions
technology since His flaming sword in Eden.  Mr. Truman,
unaccustomed to literary heterodoxy,  invoiced Japan
”many fold” air mail delivery.  Arizona’s oil still bubbles
its exquisite kaleidoscope beneath Battleship Row.
 
You may infer our victory, Mr. President, not by defeat of
Nazi science, but allied valor, hardly our lurid scream of “tit”
out the maw of Enola Gay on Hiroshima and indecorous “tat”
from fat boy's pranks on Nagasaki: humanity mocks redemption.

Martin Luther King
                Birth: January 15, 3rd Monday in January:
                Murdered in racial war; celebrated in peace.
 

​As his life demanded of him that he speak
enlightened truth, the Reverend Dr. King
knew God precluded fear and to authorize
equal justice at the Edmund Pettis Bridge,
at both ends; duty as firm as tension cables
caressing the through span arch of steel.
 
The man marched with God amid his seekers,
amid bloodied billy clubs of bigotry, Jim Crow
staking out the garden spot of Selma, Alabama
real estate, ever known as a priori white.
 
Real history cites sure facts of the March 7, 1965
march to Montgomery.  Dr. King joined his cause
to history, captured on grainy film, blurry stills
in black and white, beginning peacefully to cross
a docile Selma river to an a posteriori destiny.
 
Like me, Dr. King knelt to a cosmos; contended
solo in his enfolding skin; bore humanity’s doubts
among rabid ideologies, ancient plagues to pock us.
Yet humble, courteous dignity overfilled him
that I cannot duplicate in erection of my pantheon.

​With My Lips Apart

​Some irredeemable nights force a watch for death.
Our aboriginal hearts pump relentlessly, tired by
bloodflow to steel an arm or spout from our wound.
 
Vanquished dreams charge through us to wake; to change
in medias res; to wash in warm rain of moody January.
 
Please discard our immersion in quarrel as anomaly .
 
Each promptly adjusts bedclothes and sheets, caresses
sentient skins not sophisticated with love’s politics.
 
We argued meaning of a momentary pause, by me,
during a ticklish summary of partisan screed; nerves
leaked, doubt squealed in like an overdue train.
 
I couldn't make you see.  I wouldn't accept why.
Frankly, I lifted my eyes toward atheist heaven
in search of facts to compel a seal with paradise.
 
You suggest travel.  “Sure, but travel near and light!”
 
I'll take my politics and shouts and hide my cynicism
with my unmatched socks if we can plan a mood walk
of accord, kick the fallen cottonwood leaves, forge
a path through clamoring rose hips splashing in air.
 
“You’ll like low garden places, in leaf mold, beneath
dripping thorns, behind stalks, private.”  “Can politics
reconcile the drear of winter’s rain?” you ask.  I ponder
wordless if pills reliably treat such unsanctioned questions.
 
Yet too warm for January, rain steams away one mood,
floods another, all still, breathless.  Coexistence sneaks
between us, finally palpable.  Eagerness builds.  My lips
part; I hand you spongy compost fragments: sweet truths
redolent of edenic gardens to find our prehistoric selves.
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SANDI LEIBOWITZ - POEMS

1/17/2021

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Picture
Sandi Leibowitz, author of THE BONE-COLLECTOR, EURYDICE SINGS, and GHOST-LIGHT, a quarantine journal in verse, lives in New York City with two ghost-dogs and the occasional dragon. Her speculative fiction and poetry has garnered second- and third-place Dwarf Stars, as well as nominations for the Elgin, Rhysling, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net awards. Her work appears in Spillwords, Sheila-Na-Gig, Trouvaille Review, Red Eft Review, Alien Buddha Press, Verse-Virtual, Newtown Literary, Frost Meadow Review, Corvid Queen, Uncanny, Liminality, and other magazines and anthologies.

Books
After Jen Mawson’s Photograph of the Same Name
​

​A window into emptiness.
Floorboards rotten as an ogre’s teeth.
Could any haunted house be more deserted
than this derelict Victorian,
waves of dead leaves
washed onto its porch?
Like corpses from a shipwreck,
limbs akimbo, clothes immodestly askew,
a heap of books
gives testimony that someone lived here once
who’s here no more.
For who would leave their own books
so untreasured?
They may be textbooks or volumes of verse,
scriptures or engineering manuals,
who can tell?
No librarian’s hand arranges them.
No survivor stacked them neatly in a tower.
Evidence of heartache, or violence,
or leastways carelessness--
and negligence can be the cruelest thing of all--
speak in the unthumbed pages
whose marginalia goes unread,
insights no one sees, inscriptions
—For Carla, On h r sixt enth bi th ay--
worn away by wind and mildew
and indifference.
 

Thistles
May 27, 2020
​

​Because construction’s stalled,
the scaffolding stays up around my building,
the protective netting preventing
the lawn from being mowed or weeded.
So now we have a meadow.
 
Considering how many residents complain
about the garden committee’s new additions,
botanical largesse of English-style perennials
instead of symmetrical borders of impatiens,
I might be the meadow’s only fan.
 
How they must abhor the long grasses
in gradients of amber, brown, and green,
their varying, untidy lengths
like the hair of a gathering of hippies,
tassels nodding with the weight of seeds
ready to sow more unmannerly progeny,
taking the place of cropped, unanimous turf.
 
Shepherd’s purse or some other pink
weed or wildflower
takes central stage amidst a froth of clover
white as cappuccino foam,
lascivious come-on to the bees.
 
Up front, where any visitor can’t miss it,
a solitary three-foot thistle grows and glowers.
When it was shorter,
I tried to tug it out with my bare hands,
learning that even their stems
come armed to the teeth.
Now it bristles like a Doberman gone rogue,
daring, “What you gonna do about it?”
One of its flowers bursts into purple
like an ad for Scottish tourism.
 
I root for it,
prickles and all.
New York disdains a sissy.
You need audacity
to ride out rough times like these.

 

Breath
June 2, 2020 
​

​It’s almost visible
now that we obsess,
red molecules of disease and death
suspended in the air,
lingering on bags and doorknobs.
 
Your own breath sounds exaggerated
through your mask, wettened by each exhalation.
You strain to breathe through cotton.
 
Do you have trouble breathing?
doctors ask, PSAs warn.
That’s the symptom to worry about.
 
I can’t breathe,
you’d think, as the disease
destroyed your lungs
 
I can’t breathe,
you’d panic before they induced the coma
so you could endure the ventilator,
the machine breathing for you
 
I can’t breathe
George Floyd’s exhales those words
with his last breath
 
he’s killed
knee to his neck,
as if it were a crime to breathe
while being black
 
The righteous protest while
MAGA agents loot, deface, and burn
Police attack with tear gas,
mow them down with cars
Their rubber bullets destroy eyes,
rip holes in skulls
 
I can’t breathe
 
the President deploys armed forces
against our citizens
National Guards stand at attention
like imperial stormtroopers on the Lincoln Memorial
 
I can’t breathe
 
helicopters swoop low over D.C. crowds
like hawks preying
 
instead of praying, Trump evicts
peaceful protestors from a church
to pose for the press like Hitler with a Bible  
 
a little girl can’t breathe
crying as her father pours milk down her face
to lessen the sting of pepper spray
 
America’s diseased,
and coronavirus isn’t the worst of it.
Hate’s gone viral.
Brutality’s gone viral.
Greed’s gone viral.
Selfishness has gone viral.
Corruption has gone viral.
But now so has outrage.
 
These fires can’t be dampened
by suffocating them.
There has been suffocation enough
 
Do you have trouble breathing?
 
 

 

How Jane Writes
​

​At night, poems buoy up in her mind
like downed trees in the river after storm
and she annoy hims, reaching for
her nest-side cache of bamboo pens
and tablets of banana leaf.
Tarzan grunts and rolls away,
shielding the nearest ear
with a protective hand.
 
She searches for a word
that doesn’t rhyme exactly but sounds,
and means but doesn’t quite say,
that doesn’t stutter, stomp, but almosts.
Sometimes she must hunt them,
stealthy as Tarzan himself.
Sometimes the prey eludes her.
She curses. A chimp
(no one they know) hoots a reminder
that she’s disturbed the jungle peace.
 
As she squeezes the purple-black berries
to fill the pen with ink,
the color reminds her of his eyes.
She smiles, tattoos him
with silly graffiti, the ticklish pen
waking him thoroughly
and his lust, so they make love
before, glistening with sweat
in the fire’s light, he turns away again,
and there’s the word waiting for her,
or its long-lost cousin, so
she writes the poem at last
and a new one after it.

 

​Defects

​All of my angels are made of flesh,
too heavy to risk flight. Instead
they pour clouds of aloe
on their rounded shoulders,
pining for skin of cream
 
Angels should be lean as sky,
not greedy for fat, wet plums
they suck from purpled hands;
they should not let the wind sift
their feathers with a lover’s fingers
or allow lute-strings’ silken
sound to stroke their eager ears.
 
My angels fail to notice
the thin-ankled girls of slender sin,
my anemic devils, who cough
and rattle loose their bones,
their scarlet watered down to fog,
too frail to raise a rumpus.
 
 
 
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ANIL KUMAR - DISRUPTION OF SUN

1/17/2021

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Anil Kumar as a librarian in govt college GURDASPUR punjab INDIA. Who read and enjoy my poems when I visit on library they asked me to told my love poetry.  His email address is following as Anilsandhu29@gmail.com. 

​Disruption of sun

As just dawn break with black Clouds,
          What begun to floating in arena of sky,
Alone black shade scatter on earth,
           No as drizzling as well as drops falling,
All birds and love & beloved relish,
           But a one side lover drowned into his love,
Whereas, other couples rejoice such pleasance,
           However, exhausted lover adhesive beloved memory,
But, No his beloved beside him,
            Anyhow, he seemed her beside him,
Day being passed under shade of black clouds,
            As turn of evening to come with sun rays,
Justly disrupted into his beloved memory,
            All series of memory broken with intense ray,
Thus, No took rejoice whole day by one side lover,
            No considerate on his one side love by nature.
Not long let allow him enjoy by sun.
 

 
 
 
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