Rest In Peace, Jeremy Crandall This is the strangest piece this (or likely any other major newspaper) has ever published. It breaks all the journalistic rules in that none of the information contained herein can be verified. I know - I’ve tried. All of the sources mentioned here seem to not exist. Therefore, this may be a work of fiction. As the editor of this publication I am firmly committed to maintaining the journalistic integrity of the work. However, if any of this is true, my life is in danger for simply knowing it. By putting it before the public, and shedding the light of day upon it, hopefully I have ensured that there will be enough scrutiny should anything happen to me to make my murder inconvenient for those attempting to stop this leak of information. Therefore, please consider this at worst, a personal indulgence by a man fearful for his own safety and that of his family. If the knowledge presented here is true it may be far more important than that.
This morning I received a large box by special delivery. The box contained a letter (included at the end of this introduction), a lengthy article (presented after the letter), and a number of documents that appear to be official. I say, “appear” because again, I have been able to find any verification of the existence of any of these documents. The contact information for the writer is a non-existent telephone number. I attempted to reach him by going to the physical address given, but the apartment is empty and available for rent. The building has a new manager who has no information on the previous tenant. The newspaper that this person claims to have worked for has no record of his employment. When I ran a background check on the name provided, it showed him as never having existed. As I say, every avenue of being able to verify this information has shown to be a dead end. So, now that I have given you the background, I will present the information for you, the reader to judge the validity or fiction of this work. The following is the cover letter that accompanied the information: “To whom it may concern: I am submitting these facts to a number of publications in the hopes that one will publish it in the event of my demise. I have stumbled onto a conspiracy of worldwide significance and scope. As I have been researching this story all of my contacts have simply “disappeared”. People whom I spoke to in person and via telephone over the last few days now simply seem to not exist. No one knows of them. Their homes are empty, and any public records of them are gone. They have been “erased”. I believe that the same fate will soon befall me, and I am doing my best to get this story out before that happens. I have included here a synopsis of all my research in the form of a story that you can run in your publication. I have also included copies of every significant document I have obtained in this research. Please consider the possibilities in your decision of whether or not to publish this story. Thank you for your assistance, and accept my apologies for bringing you into this mess. I would not have involved any others in my fate if I did not believe that the significance for mankind was worth the risk. I understand as a fellow journalist that this may be a difficult story to run with for a myriad of reasons, but it is imperative that you read it and consider the possible consequences of inaction. Sincerely Jeremy Crandall Staff Writer Los Angeles Tribune” The following is the article presented in its entirety. It all started innocently enough. I had been assigned to write a story on the effects of greenhouse gases on the environment. As this was ground that had been covered in a large number of stories over the past years, I chalked it up to a “slow news” day and got on with the work. I have to say I had no visions of a Pulitzer Prize on this one. Why I was able to find information that others hadn’t, I don’t know. Admittedly, I did have some fairly well connected sources, and that fact may have been part of it. I say that in the past tense as none of these people, some of whom I have known for years, seem now to exist. Perhaps this story in different forms had been found in the past, but never seen print. I have no way to prove or disprove that one. The sad truth is that in trying to come up with a new angle on a tragedy that I had attributed to shortsighted progress, I found something far more tactical and sinister. What I uncovered amounts to a global conspiracy that dates back over sixty years. It involves the governments of many major nations. Multiple large corporations are also tied into it. It represents a decision made in a time of global crisis that has produced a newer and more formidable threat to the human race than even the horrific original enemy. Our planet is under siege by a foreign power who is running a virtual puppet army of our own to gain its own ends while it hides in the shadows biding its time. My first stop on beginning the article was at AtmosResearch, Inc.. I had a friend who had been with that company for quite a few years. He was at a high enough level to have access to any of their data. The company has been tracking various chemical levels in the atmosphere for many years (longer than John had been there) as an independent monitoring organization. Their clients included numerous energy and bio-chemical industries and governmental agencies. It seemed a good first stop to get scientific numbers. Finding the facts regarding the changes seemed to be a solid way to begin such an article. So, I made arrangements to meet with John at the company’s main office. John Sterling was a bio-chemist. He had worked his way through school the hard way, work-study. He had always had an aptitude for mathematics and physical sciences and in high school he found that he had a natural gift for chemistry. The other talent he had was in translating that information into terms that even someone like myself who had flunked out of bio-chem could grasp. That made him a great source of information for me. Our shared love of the Lakers had been the glue that made us friends. We had been getting together to shoot hoops and talk basketball over beers for a long time. Our official meetings were a lot less frequent, but usually very helpful for me. This particular meeting was to be the most informative of all. I arrived at the office at noon, and since John had worked his way from staff chemist to chief of sciences and all the way up to VP of Research, he pretty much set his own schedule. We went for lunch at the Chinese place around the corner before we decided to set to it. Over lunch, after the obligatory discussions about Kobe Bryant and Karl Malone, the topic turned to our agenda for the day. I started out, “What I’m looking for, John are numbers, year by year, of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, and how that has changed from what we are releasing into the atmosphere. Do you think we can find that in your database? I’m guessing you can help me with translating that into something that even I can understand, right?” “Sure, we can do that, but you know, there might be even more. There’s a storeroom in the back office. See, we have data in our computers for the last ten years, but there is hard copy that didn’t transfer over to the new system that goes back much further. I cleared my schedule for the afternoon, so if you want, you and I can dig through boxes. I might be able to give you hard data going back a lot further than most other reporters have been able to find.” This sounded like it might be a fresh angle to the story. Well, at least a more in-depth view. Now, this felt like a story that might actually have some meat to it. I was intrigued and very excited to get to work. So, I picked up the check – even if it hadn’t been my turn to buy, the fact that John was helping me with this one had earned him lunch, and we walked back to the office. He told his secretary to hold his calls for the day, and we set out on our investigation. His instructions to me were very clear. Go through any box I wanted, but make sure to keep all the files in order, and give him anything that I thought might be relevant, marking the spot where it need to be put back. We worked like this for an hour and a half or so, setting aside a good-sized stack (some that I found, and some from the boxes he opened). He was going to provide copies and an explanation for me. Then I opened a box from the back. All the other cartons we had found were labeled with the dates of the data and the date it was filed away. This one was obviously older than those were because it had no dating on it at all. Then I noticed the really odd thing. Instead of the familiar AtmosResearch, Inc. letterhead, this one bore the name “Air Level Monitoring Agency”. I asked John if the company had had a different moniker at one time, and he looked puzzled. “Not that I know of…”, was his reply as he reached out his hand to take the paper from me. Giving it to him I noticed two other things, the date on the document and the title. It was called, “Atmospheric Transformation Projections” and it was dated June 5, 1954. That date made this by far the oldest paper we had found. At first John looked somewhat amused at the logo on the letterhead, then as his eyes scanned the paper I noticed a change in his expression. I knew that look by heart. It was the same one he showed every time a ref made a call that he thought didn’t make sense. It was obvious that something didn’t seem right to him. “This can’t be right,” he started, at first to himself, until he saw my questioning gaze. “No, see, this date, 1954, no one even knew about the effects of these chemicals in the atmosphere then, so why would they be monitoring it? I’ve never seen data like this from that far back. And this is weird, too. These are projections. See, look…” he said, thumbing at a section of the chart, “this shows projected amounts of chemicals like methane in the air with target and actual, leading up to the date of the report. Then, it shows projections going all the way to 2075. I don’t understand why anyone would have created something like this, let alone how they knew to measure these things back then.” We started digging further through that box. Many of the papers in there were personnel files, business statistics, supply inventories and requisitions, but we also found more of these reports. There was one from every month of that year. And we found as we dug back through the papers that there were similar reports for every month going back all the way to 1946. One other odd thing we noticed was that all of the reports had been sent to a governmental agency – one of which neither of us had ever heard. The agency was ‘Transmigration Relations Project Administration”. Its address would have put it right on Capital Hill in Washington, DC. This really surprised both of us. We gathered all of these papers and the others we had found. John made copies of them for me, and I told him that I would hold off on having him explain this stuff until I had checked out a few things. I asked him to give my love to his wife Lori and their kids, and made my way back to my office. That would be the last time I would ever see my friend. By the time I got back to my office it was nearly 4:00, that would have made it 7:00 on the East Coast. I knew that no one I wanted to talk with would be there. So, I decided to call it a night. I made a few notes and headed home. As I was getting up to leave, I glanced at the stack of papers from AtmosResearch on my desk, and something told me that I shouldn’t leave them in the office. So, I put them back into my brief case and went home. I slept pretty well that night. I was more enthusiastic about the fact that the story might be becoming that Pulitzer Prize, but not coming anywhere close to grasping what we had stumbled upon. Once I had done that, I wouldn’t have a good night’s sleep would be out of the question. The next morning I was on the phone to several people I knew in D.C.. I had them looking for information on this “Transmigration Relations Project Administration”. I also checked in at the department of public records here in LA looking for company records on Air Level Monitoring Agency. That part was fairly easy. The company had been formed in 1945, right after the end of World War II. It had been based in the industrial part of the city, but had offices all over the globe. The board of directors included several former military leaders from all of the countries that had been the allied forces in the war. They had been active until 1974 when they ceased operations, and all of their assets were acquired by AtmosResearch. I decided to try to get in touch with some of the people who had been on the board. I was curious as to how they had the foresight to monitor this activity. The government information was a bit more difficult to come across. Several of my people came up empty handed and the two that found anything wound up with info that was sketchy at best. The first was Rhonda Gibbs. I had known Rhonda for quite a while. She was married to a friend of mine from high school, Tony Gibbs. Rhonda works as a high-level office administrator in the House of Representatives. She returned my call on my cell around 11:30 that morning. She seemed a bit bewildered by what she had found, or rather what she hadn’t. “Jeremy, I don’t know what you’ve gotten onto here, but something doesn’t seem right. See, this agency is a weird one. They came into being during World War II. It looks like they had extensive ties to the Defense Department, but yet they don’t show up on any official government agency listing. They had a huge infusion of resources in 1942, via executive order under World War II Defense spending. They aren’t listed under the executive branch, though. In fact, they aren’t listed at all. There were additional expenditures sent to the group each year for the remainder of the war. Then no funding or references show up again until the time of the Korean War. Again, each year, they received large amounts of money, this time funneled through the funds allotted for that war effort. Then, at the end of that conflict the group just seems to disappear. At least I can’t find any record of it anymore.” I thanked her for her help, and we made some small talk and ended the call. The next lead on that end came from Bill Grainger, an aide to one of the Congressman. It seems he found much of the same information that Rhonda had, but he was able to track things down after that point. He told me, “During Vietnam the group became the Defense Provisions Agency, but still didn’t show up on any official governmental listings. Every year since then a portion of the defense budget has gone to funding the group. It’s just strange. This is an agency that exists, but yet they don’t seem to fall under the scrutiny of any of the other branches of the government. It’s like they are independent of the government, yet get their funding through it. There is no official source of the funding, but rather a line item that shows up on every Defense Department spending bill. I don’t know what to tell you beyond that, but I’m going to do some more research. You have my interest piqued.” He did give me a name of one of the former directors, and I added him to my contact list. While I had had less luck finding official information on the governmental ties than the corporate ones, I struck a dead end trying to get in touch with board members of Air Level Monitoring Agency. It seemed that every one of them had passed away years ago. I hit the jackpot, though, with the lead that Grainger had provided me. It seems that James Tilman, the man who had been one of the directors of the group was still alive, and as luck would have it, living right here in LA. Granted, when I found out his location I thought that he might not be a lot of help, but I had to check it out. So, I made my way to The Everett Center For Mental Health to see what I could find out. I met with one of his Doctors and he warned me not to expect too much from the meeting. “Old Jimmy is a sad case. He was a very bright man, well-respected in the community. He was a veteran of World War II and served in the government. Then in the 1960’s he had an event. Now, all he ever talks about are his delusional stories of alien invaders. No one listens to him. Even his family stopped visiting in the 1970’s. It’s a shame. He’s a nice man, but I think you are his first visitor in at least ten years.” Dr. Tander led me to a private room where an elderly man sat alone in a chair. My first impressions were greatly different than what the Dr. had lead me to believe. It was obvious that Mr. Tilman was heavily medicated, but yet his eyes still seemed to shine brightly. There was no question that this was a man in his twilight years, and his health was letting him down. Still, he didn’t look to me like anyone who was delusional. I introduced myself, and he seemed to understand me well, although his responses were a bit slow, probably due to the sedation. He seemed excited to have someone who was interested in his story as apparently no one even gave him the chance to speak anymore. His story and the events that followed would change my entire world vision and my sense of well being. Frankly, after what I had seen in those papers, his story didn’t seem like the ramblings of a madman, but rather the confessions of someone who couldn’t live with his involvement in something that no one else would ever believe. After I told him why I was there, there was no stopping him. It was like a dam that had been holding years' worth of information suddenly burst out. “It all started right after Pearl Harbor. We found out that Hitler had a lot of new technology and our best analysis showed that there was no way that we could ever win the war. The Nazi’s would have the nuke and missiles to hit the US, and then it would be all over. Those of us left were going to be speaking German and goose-stepping just like the rest of those bastards. Then the opportunity came. Apparently someone visited the president. Not a person like you or me, you know, but some kind of being from another planet. He offered to provide us with help against the Nazi’s. Some intelligence here, breaking a code there, some tweaks on our technology. They helped us increase our production methods. They sabotaged a lot of Nazi projects. Without them we would have lost the war. You have to understand, we were protecting our country – our freedom. We were desperate to stop them, and would have done just about anything to accomplish that.” He paused for a moment, then gestured widely around the room, as if to point out the people outside his private dwekking area. “They all think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I’m the only one who knows the truth. Well, at least the only one who’s talking. You gotta understand, I just couldn’t live with it anymore. I mean, we did what we did to keep those bastards from taking over the world, but damn it, we’re giving that world away. We didn’t think about the price we’d have to pay. We meant well, we really did. We just didn’t think about what we’d have to do to repay them.” He seemed to be looking to me for something – understanding, forgiveness, some intangible thing that his eyes seemed to be reaching out toward me to receive. I could offer him understanding, but it was obvious the forgiveness would have to come from within himself, and I doubted he had the capacity to grant that one gift. As he continued on with the story, I really got the feeling of a broken man. This was a man who had fought for his country, and now found himself unable to save his world. “See, after the war was over, they started to call the shots. They had made the President set the agency up under their control, a separate section of the government. They had even started influencing leaders of companies, and then they made deals with other governments – well at least other people within those governments. They have deals with the Japanese, the Brits, the Russians, the Chinese, they even started working with the Germans after the war. See, they had a goal – one that we didn’t know. Their world is dying. They have to find a new place to live. So, they started working with various people to make changes to our Earth. They need to make it so they can live here. They plan to move here in the year 2075. Now, mind you, we’ll still be able to breathe the air and to live – they said it was all a part of our adaptability as a race. They want us here. They are going to use us as slave labor. We’ll build their cities, work in their factories, do all that they need done, while they rule over us. “Now, see, the way they get people on board now – ever since the war, is by telling ‘em what they’re doing – only the ones they need, mind you. They tell ‘em, look we’re here, this is what we’re doing and there isn’t anything you can do you about that. If you help us, though, do what we say, you can have a place of power. See, they know that humans will respond better to their own kind telling ‘em what to do than some alien race – and they are alien. I saw a couple of ‘em once. Kind of like a cross between a giant bug and some kind of squid – ugly things. See, they’re pumping our air full of chemicals. Well, actually we're doing it. They’re just telling us what to do - change the atmosphere, the temperature, the whole damn environment. They don’t do it all out in the open, though because they don’t want a full-scale rebellion on their hands. No, they do it by giving us technology that will cause the changes. They tell us how to build factories and cars that will pump the air full of the stuff they need to change the planet. Some of our scientists call this ‘terraforming’ when it applies to other planets. I don’t know what the name is when it’s all about altering the Earth. “So many things I’ve seen in the news while I’ve been locked up in here is stuff that gets called accidents, but I know what’s going on. It’s all part of their plan. That Chernobyl thing in Russia, that was them. A way to release radiation that they need into the air. Oil tanker spills – them again. All of it, just the way that they are changing Earth from our home to theirs. I don’t know if we can stop ‘em, but I know that I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. The thought of my childrens’ children serving those monsters wasn’t something I could handle. So, I decided to take the truth to the public. I took all the files from my office. Then I was going to go to the press. The only thing was, word got out. They coulda just gotten rid of me, but I had already talked to enough people that it would have been too obvious. So, they decided that no one was going to believe me anyway. They got me committed here – ‘crazy’ they said. The thing is, even the doctors here think I am, but I’m not. You don’t think I’m crazy do you?” Again, he reached out to me with his words for some kind of affirmation. I shook my head and told him that I believed him. I wasn’t quite sure if I did, really, but here was an old man who needed some encouragement. Besides, as insane as it seemed, his story did provide answers to a lot of questions that my research had posed. “You know, when they brought me here they took all the files from my house. But, I fooled ‘em. They may be smart, but us people are smart, too. I made copies of it all, locked ‘em up in an old trunk. When my family was still visiting I got them to bring it here. They got the originals, but I still have all the copies.” He must have seen the look in my eyes when he said that. Here was proof if he was telling the truth. He pointed to the corner where a lamp set over top of a doily. “Under that light, there’s the trunk.” Then he looked to me with another question, “Can I trust you to get the word out?” I nodded as I couldn’t take my eyes off of the trunk. Of course I would – this would be the story of a lifetime if it were true. I got the trunk out, and thanked him. After assuring him that I would see that the information became public, I left. I had resolved to take everything to John’s house and see what he made of it. I loaded the trunk into my car, alongside my briefcase that was still there, and drove off my friend’s home. When I got there I expected to see his Mercedes in the driveway, but it wasn’t. That’s not all that unusual, though, as he frequently stays late at the office. Lori’s car, however, was generally there in the early evening, but on that night it wasn’t. It’s strange the things you notice subconsciously. I thought about how I had never seen their house when one of the kids’ bikes weren’t lying on the lawn. Then I noticed that the fern that normally hung above the front porch was gone. I started to feel a sick sinking sensation in my stomach as I saw the windows were bare – no curtains. I rushed into the driveway and leaped from my car. I banged on the door, but the only response was the hollow sound of an empty home. I looked into all the windows, and not a bit of furniture was in the place. Everything was wiped clean. I got back into my car, bewildered and overwhelmed with a feeling that was a cross between sadness and doom. I pulled out my cell and dialed John’s number. The line was disconnected. It came up as an unassigned number. Frantic I dialed directory assistance for a listing for him, and was told that there was none. I called his office. “May I please speak with John Sterling?” “I’m sorry sir, there is no one by that name with the company.” I noticed that this was not the usual receptionist, Kathy. “What are you talking about? He’s a vice president.” “No sir, I don’t have a listing for anyone by that name in the company, and certainly not at the executive level.” “Well, let me speak to Kathy, then.” “Who, sir?” “The other receptionist. The one who’s always there.” I’m sure the frantic desperation was apparent in my voice. “I’m sorry sir, but there is no receptionist here by that name.” “Well, let me talk to Jane, Jane Kline. She’s John’s secretary.” “Sir, there is no one by that name. Are you sure you have the right number? This is AtmosResearch, Inc., Central LA Division.” With resignation in my voice I told her that I had the wrong number and hung up the phone. I didn’t have the wrong number, but there was no sense in continuing the conversation. My mind was racing as I started towards my house. I tried to call Rhonda on her cell. It came up a dead line, also. So, I tried her husband and got the same result. Then it hit me, I couldn’t go home. They’d be coming for me, too. I turned the car around and made my way to the seedier part of town. I checked into a hotel, paying cash – I didn’t want to be tracked by my credit card. When that thought hit, I cancelled the reservation, giving the guy a ten-dollar tip to forget I had been there. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and threw it into the trash. They could probably track me by that. I went to my car and unloaded the brief case and trunk and got a cab – damned GPS in the car. Checking into a different grungy hotel I unloaded my stuff. With a feeling of fear I opened the trunk. I really hoped that there would be nothing but some crazy man’s books in that thing. I wanted to believe that there was a logical explanation for all this - well, at least one that didn’t lead to where that story did. Unfortunately, the trunk contained exactly what he said it did. There were documents dating all the way back to 1942, Everything was documented. There was no way I could ever track this stuff (they’d find me for sure), but it sure looked like this was for real. I closed the trunk and collapsed onto the dirty bed for a time, depressed and exhausted. Eventually I regained my composure and came up with a plan. I probably didn’t have long because they would find me, but if I made copies and sent them to every paper that I could get them to, then maybe one would print it. I don’t know that there is any way we can stop this, but at least if the word gets out, maybe we can try. So, that is the whole story. Our entire world, our entire race is at risk. I hope someone puts enough credence in this account to let it see print. If not, who knows if anyone will ever find out before they come. We don’t have that long. Editor’s Note: The documents accompanying the article seem to be exactly what he said they were. I have put the box of papers into a planter in the lobby of the building where this paper is published. I have also made copies and placed them in office buildings all over the city. If anyone reads this and wants to help get the word out, or just wants to see what is involved, just look for the boxes. They are labeled, “Rest In Peace, Jeremy Crandall”. If I suddenly disappear, my name is Thomas Whitfield and I have been the executive publisher of this newspaper for 12 years. There have to be enough copies of it out there to prove that. I don’t think they can get to all of them.
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Isaac Dickinson is a writer based in Winter Park, Florida. He is attending Full Sail University for his Bachelor’s in Fine Arts for Creative Writing and has dozens of original stories to his name. The Lockpick “Look, Ollie, it’s not so much about the money as it is the adrenaline rush. I mean, I don’t make a living off of robbing these idiots, not nearly enough to live in this city anyway.” Geoff pushed off the car. “I mean we make plenty with our delivery business.”
“Well, I guess you’re right,” Oliver said. “Wait, you said we were breaking into these people’s houses to save up so we can get the business off the ground. It’s just a hobby to you?” “Well, yeah the money’s a bonus,” Geoff said. “But, in that light, a bigger score would be better for us, yeah? I mean we’ve already pretty much mastered BNE already.” “Well, okay.” Oliver said. “And how much harder could a museum be? You just get in, grab the painting, and get out.” “Exactly,” Geoff said as he got in the driver’s seat. “Let’s do this.” “Right,” Oliver said, getting in the passenger seat as they drove off. “So, what do we need to get?” “What do you mean?” “Well, in the movies-” “Ollie, I’m gonna stop you right there. You’re really basing this off of a movie?” “Look, I’m just saying, they have all this high-tech equipment they use to break in and they seem to make it out just fine so long as no one betrays each other.” “Yeah, that’s because they’re movies, Ollie. You think that all those crazy gadgets really exist?” “What, they don’t?” “Well, I’m sure they do, but those things are kinda pricy, and we’re on a budget. And all that budget covers is some celebration burgers. Now, go ahead and pick out a mask,” Geoff said, pointing to a duffle bag in the back seat. After Oliver chose a mask, the two made their way to the art museum. The building was rather large: two stories tall, with shiny, black walls on the second floor, illuminated by the yellow spotlights aimed up at an angle. On the first floor, the front wall was made up of a series of glass doors, while the sides were covered by somewhat dull, off-white walls. Two security guards were lazily patrolling the courtyard in front of the building, which had a large fountain in it’s center. Oliver and Geoff got out of the car and put their masks on. “Same deal as the houses, Ollie. Don’t get caught, pick the lock, grab the goods, get out.” “Um…about that, what are we looking for, exactly?” “I don’t know, whatever’s pretty, I guess.” “Okay…and what about the guards and the cameras?” “I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m kinda coming up with this on the spot.” “What?” “Look, just don’t let them see you, okay. And if they do, you’ve got legs and you’ve got a mouth, so run and scream,” Geoff said as he crept toward the courtyard. “Oh, okay,” Oliver said, following Geoff. The two managed to sneak past the guards and made their way to the door, not that the guards were much of a problem, as they were chatting. “Ah…shit,” Geoff said when he reached the door. “What? What’s wrong?” Oliver asked. “I don’t think a lockpick’s gonna work on this.” Geoff gestured to the keypad on the door. “Uh-oh” “Uh…come on, let’s go check for a back door.” On the back wall, they found a simple door with a lock they were used to. “Now that’s more like it,” Geoff said as he pulled out his lockpick set and began working on the door. After a sharp click, he said, “We’re in. You know what, Ollie? It’s your time to shine,” as he pushed open the door. “Wait, what? A-are you sure? I don’t even know what we’re looking for.” “Me neither, just get whatever looks good.” “Well, if you’re sure,” Oliver said as he walked in. Geoff stood up, leaning against the wall, before hearing a loud thud. “That was fast.” “Bad, bad, bad!” Oliver said, running out of the door with a guard following. “Time to go, buddy,” Geoff said, taking off with Oliver. Oliver and Geoff sprinted through the courtyard, past the two guards, as they flinched at the unexpected visitors. The two managed to make their way to Geoff’s car, get in, and speed off. “Well that was fun!” Geoff said. “Fun?” Oliver said. “They almost had us! We didn’t even get anything!” “Remember, Ollie, it’s all about the rush,” Geoff said, matching the speed of the other drivers after getting a few blocks away. “No need to be so uptight all the time.” “Well, I guess that was pretty exciting,” Oliver said with a sigh. “Exactly,” Geoff said, patting Oliver on the shoulder. “Now how about those burgers?” The two drove off into the night, Geoff still playing with the lockpick set in his hand.
THE CLASS REUNION I knew the acoustics there; the sound always blossomed. I could feel it curling around everything, like vapor, floating over the parquet floors and upward, past the great mirrors like some disembodied spirit. Then it would expand in the cavernous ceiling, colliding with the gold brocade and chandeliers. The emotion was invisible, too. Where did it come from, this Polish melancholia and French charm? It was not something you could see but only feel; high strung, but always dignified, like a nervous breakdown that refused to happen, “a cannon buried in flowers.” Chopin, always, Chopin. I could feel the audience as the massive chords built up. They rode the wave of sound, until, suddenly, exhaustion then silence as the great Fantaisie in F minor dissolved into a simple chorale. My teacher used to say, “After he sins, he goes to church.” Slow moving chords in quiet consonance, releasing all turmoil before the deluge. The last dramatic return of the theme required my body mass to press the keys to the bottom of the key bed. The Steinway concert grand roared like a full orchestra, its majestic sound engulfing the Royal Palace there in the old part of Warsaw. Finally, diminution came. A rivulet of notes crept quietly up the keyboard, becoming gradually extinguished in a perfumed spray. Silence. Then two final masculine, powerful chords and the stormy journey was over.
The American Ambassador was the first on his feet, followed by everyone else. It was a standing ovation like most, without the spontaneity and electricity of a real one; more like “follow the leader” in piecemeal. But that was indistinguishable in the pictures published in the papers the next day. There was the usual receiving line outside of the dressing room. This was the easiest part of giving a concert. The discipline was over; I could say anything now and it would be accepted. Poles were standing, their passion constrained behind an exterior of civility and proportion, like Chopin’s music. They had, after all, given birth to him just outside the city. A pianist talked about my interpretation. “Very unusual. You take the lyrical theme in the last impromptu in the same tempo as the beginning. But I think it works.” That kind of detailed comment by a peer is appreciated at concerts. But polite indifference is like a cold rain. Then came the music lovers that cultured contingency that depend on beauty to sustain them. An elegant, older man said, “You made me feel every joy and every sorrow I’ve ever felt.” Another said, “I thought only a Pole could play Chopin like that.” And yet another: “Thank you for taking me away from myself.” The spell was broken by an American woman with a large feather hat. “However can you memorize all those notes?” she said. “They go by so quickly!” I replied that you can train a cat to jump through a hoop. Her brow furled, she cocked her head to one side and surveyed the entire trunk of my body, from my feet back up to the head, until our eyes met. It was obvious what she was thinking: that I in no way resembled a cat. The Minister of Culture followed, presenting me with a bouquet of roses. I gave it away later that evening, since I couldn’t take it on the plane the next day. I was going home. The tour was over – Iceland, Germany, Russia and now Poland. Even though the flight to Washington, DC, was direct and jet lag is always easier going back, there was still no energy left after the trip. I poked around the house aimlessly for days, unpacking and coming down gently. No rush. I would have the rest of the summer off. When I got around to the pile of mail, I almost overlooked a small postcard that fell out between two large envelopes. It caught my eye with the insignia, motto and colors of my high school alma mater; the same configurations that made up the “letter” jackets worn by varsity players in football, basketball and golf: a big “C” for Charmsburg High School set in white against a reddish maroon backdrop. It brought back memories of Middle America in the 1950s’ and 60s’, of ice cream sundaes, hot rods with noisy mufflers, and a graduating class of 125 souls. I turned the card over and read an invitation to the forty- fifth reunion. Beneath that was a picture of the head of the planning committee, Beda Furholtzer. I reread the card. Was it really that long ago? Then I looked at the picture and realized that Beda could not have reached her present state of corpulence in anything less than that amount of time. I had gone back to one other reunion already a quarter of a century ago, and had gotten reacquainted with her. It was equivalent to being ensconced in another culture. One starts taking on the trappings of the environment, like being in England and developing a broad “a” and soft “o” in pronunciation. I remember thinking, in the parlance of Charmsburg, that Beda Furholtzer was a “stuff faced lard ass.” I refrained from saying so lest my circle of acquaintances grow even more limited than it had after my recent divorce. They had a nice enough house built on the crown of a windswept hill in an adjacent village to the little hamlet of Charmsburg (pop. 10,000). I had grown up deep in the bosom of the Midwest. Beda still lived there with her third husband, Sam, she being his fourth wife. Their combined seven mistakes had made them preternaturally disposed toward getting along with each other. “I’ve lost three fortunes to women,” said Sam, who was fourteen years her senior. “I’m not about to lose a fourth.” But it was Beda who filled the house. Talking quickly with considerable authority, she moved from room to room like some great refrigerator, giving orders for the day while replaying past grievances in the theater of her mind. You never wanted to make Beda mad, as she was already well practiced in orneriness and was willing to expand her empire. Unfortunately, her therapist was not good. He had relegated her to self-help slogans which she would interject gratuitously into any serious conversation: “whatever makes you comfortable, baby...whatever gets you through the night.” This self-validation was played out in the soundless, flannel cocoon of Charmsburg’s environs, an area not unlike others in the middle of America. People were trying to find wholeness in the chaos of life: standing, falling, loving, hating, muddling through, and in the end just trying to die well. But if Balzac was right and everyone’s life is a novel, then Beda’s was a thriller. The chapters on her raging battles with inner demons made it apparent that the demons were winning. I asked Sam how he handled it. “I don’t hear anything, I don’t see anything and I don’t say anything.” He looked at me slyly, as if to be congratulated. The call from Beda came in the morning. I was still tired from the concert tour and was slowly gathering myself, unprepared for the fast paced words and the girlish abrasiveness at the other end of the line. It broke through the early April dew like the whir of a motor boat. “Hello, Mr. John Barnes.” The formality was jocular. Beda and I had known each other since early grade school. “We hope that you can come to our class reunion in August. Everyone would like to see you, and it would be great if you’d play the piano for us. We’re going to do it at the Swiss Hall, not the country club. I’m not going to do the country club anymore. If you want to go out there and play with your old high school golf team, that’s fine, but if you’d rather bowl, the shoes will cost you three dollars to rent. You really should come back, because, after this one it’s all wheel chairs and oxygen.” Her laughter was at a lower pitch than her conversational tone. It was throaty, the bar room laugh of a divorcee at the American Legion fish fry. Suddenly, images of my home town came with jolting intensity: the courthouse in the old town square, the civil war canon that, for some reason, pointed toward the medical clinic, and the clank and clatter of bowling pins. “Let me think about it, Beda.” “Hey, baby, I’m not going to push. I don’t want to move you out of your comfort zone! The committee did want me to ask you to be Master of Ceremonies, though.” Suddenly that was different. It gave some focus, some reason for going. Besides, I had always wanted to do a “shtick,” a stand up routine, and wondered if I could. I had a taste of it when I was in charge of entertainment for my college fraternity, and earlier with the lead in the high school class play. It was one thing to play concerts and try to move people emotionally with great music, but quite another to make them laugh. The last reunion had been raucous; everyone was lit and laughs were cheap, so maybe it would be easy. And the golf appealed to me, too. I had practically grown up at the country club and knew its every blade of grass. Golf was the only thing to do in Charmsburg, unless you were into adultery, booze, or some lonely effort toward enlightenment. “I’ll need a bass drum.” “Why?” she shot back,” I thought you were a pianist.” “No piano this time. I want to do one liners and I’ll need somebody to hit the drum right after the punch line. It’s a little corny, but they used to do it in vaudeville. It makes people laugh.” “We don’t do drums back here, baby. No drums. If you broke it, we’d have to pay for it, and we can’t afford that.” “Beda, I’m not asking for the New York Philharmonic, just….” I paused, knowing that I made a mistake. I had engaged her, confronted her. “If you can’t live with our restrictions then maybe this isn’t a good idea,” she said. “You’d better think about it. I was just relaying what the committee had asked me to.” The committee? I was imagining a bunch of eunuchs with tape over their mouths. We both hung up the phone gently, without saying good bye, but in my mind I had already said goodbye to the reunion. It was about a week later that the pre-paid hotel confirmation came, and a week after that, another call. “Jack, this is Duncan Standish.” “Duncan, how long has it been, forty years?” “About that. I got a call from Beda Furholtzer and I actually remembered her from high school. I told my new bride that my mind must still be intact.” Duncan had lost his teenage whine, which always reminded me of a cow bawling. Now, the voice was corporately tight with a tinge of Midwestern flatness. “I told her that the only reason I’d come back to this reunion was to see you, and for us to play golf again. After all, you and I are half of the Charmsburg varsity golf team. I also hear that they’ve asked you to be MC. Are you coming?” “I guess so.” “Good, then I’ll buy plane tickets….and may I ask you to get a tee time at the country club on the day before the reunion? And would you indulge my bride by allowing her to play with us? She’s heard so much about you” “Yes to both.” “Excellent. Make it around 10 AM. By the way, what are you doing now? Is it this type thing, the after dinner speaker circuit?” “No, I’m an artist, a musician.” ”Wonderful. I’m retired, too, and have been for a while. But we’ll catch up. Bye for now.” I began to learn some new repertoire and enjoyed the leisure of doing it at home; a new concert program for a new season. But I was also thinking about the reunion, which meant making peace with not being able to have my drum. I started to look forward to it, and settled on a format: it would be a “roast,” starting with affection and blending into irony. I began collecting jokes, calling friends and having things faxed to me. The phone rang again. “Jackie….Jackie…it’s Bob Wertenweiller.” His voice was unnaturally sing song. “Old times again, huh? Too bad Tommy’s dead, or all four of us could charge the field again. But now it’ll have to be just you, Duncan and me.” Bob was the shortest one on the golf team and had to live with the nickname, “runt.” Perhaps there was a cause and effect between that and his obsession to hit the ball harder and farther than anyone else. But it was the water that I remember, the splash in the sun on that brilliant day and then the water calming with only air bubbles on the surface and no other sign of life. Bob had hit a pitch shot into the lake and, instead of hitting another ball, he dove in after that one. Now, forty-five years later, he was telling me about the details of a golf event that he was organizing on the Friday before the reunion. But there was something odd in his enunciation, a sort of lisping and emitting of little air whistles. This was common in people who were missing multiple teeth. “Bob, I’ve already agreed to play with Duncan and his wife at an earlier time.” “I’ll straighten this out with Duncan,” he said, obviously piqued. The line abruptly disconnected.” The phone message later that evening was brief. “Duncan said that he had no previous conversation with you about golf, and that he’s going to join my event.” The words were slurred. It was a short step from instability to alcohol; a sad decline from the high school lover who smoked a pipe at seventeen and took his dates to the library where he read them poetry. I worked on my routine, organizing the jokes into a meandering sort of orderliness, and decided to give awards, as well. After printing it out on the computer, I found that I already had it memorized. Dinner parties were a good place to try out some of the lines, and also on the phone. Friends gave me encouragement: one, who had organized entertainment at the White House as a social secretary decades ago, said, “dahling, the jokes are adorable. Just make sure they’re all drunk;” a syndicated columnist said, “just make sure the mike is set up near the exit in case you have to make a fast getaway.” But it was the third exhortation that struck resonance. “Make sure that the guy who’s the foil for the divorce jokes has actually been divorced. If you joke about his first wife and she’s sitting next to Him...well!!!” I had decided on Larry Squattling. We had known each other since the second grade, and I had seen him at that previous reunion. Larry was smallish with a bushy mustache, personally expansive and a lush. I figured he had probably been divorced, but had to make sure. That would mean a call to Beda. “I need Larry’s phone number.” “Why?” she said. “Because I want to talk to him.” “About what?” Silence. “Look, Beda, I want to clear some jokes with him so people don’t get hurt. Why don’t you just give me his number.” “Because these are plain, simple people and privacy is important! But I approve of the reason so I’ll give you the number. Nobody gets hurt here. We don’t do hurt. Everybody’s gotta be comfortable, everybody’s got their own zone……” I got through the conversation by imagining a public crucifixion of her therapist for malpractice. I said nothing as she gave me the phone number, but afterward noticed that my nails had scraped some varnish off the edge of the desk. Days went by and I lost the number, but remembered the town and called directory assistance. “Larry Squattling in Muskat, Wisconsin.” “Is that as in muskrat?” asked the operator. “Yes, but without the ‘r’.” “Wow!” she said. I called several times with no answer, until late one night he picked up. “Jack, I hope you’re gonna be as funny as you were back ...oh, hell… whenever it was. You told me a joke once and I still remember it.” The words were slurred and he began laughing at that joke. It started with a wheeze and a rattle in the lungs, moving up like Vesuvius, through phlegm in the larynx, until a “haw, haw,” exploded into the chamber of the phone receiver. I figured he was a two pack a day man. “What are you doing now, Larry?” “I sell fried cheese curds.” “Is there much of a market for that in Muskat?” “Only with customers who have a clean cardiovascular system...at least at the beginning. Tell me, are you still tickling the ivories?” “Yeah.” ”You know, a lot of people in the class never heard you play.” “There wasn’t any place to show off.” “I never saw you play golf, either, but I remember when most of the varsity was kicked off the team for drinking underage. You escaped on that one, but I think you took a nip when they weren’t looking.” “Only at football games. I hated football. Don Friedberg would bring a flask and it helped pass the time. Then his father found out and padlocked the liquor cabinet in their recreation room. But Don found a way to unscrew the back of the cabinet.” I was starting to get into to the swing of it. “Cool!” “Larry, have you ever been divorced?” Pause and silence. “Hell, I’m on number four! Wait a minute, does it count if she don’t live with you; is that still a wife? The one I’m married to now won’t live with me cause of my drinking. But I’ve lived with other women that I wasn’t married to, so I guess it evens out. It’s complicated.” “I just want to do some jokes about your first wife. They’re all fictional, of course. I didn’t even know her, but I don’t want to hurt anybody.” “Jack, I’ve known you since the second grade so you can say whatever you want. In fact, Lulu lives in Charmsburg, so maybe I’ll call her. She might like to come and hear what you’ve got to say.” “Who’s Lulu?’ “My first wife.” The conversation played in my mind for a day afterward. It was not only because I had never met anyone named Lulu. I hadn’t thought about that flask at the football game for decades. It seemed so stupid now. I remembered that we all had false ID cards to get us into the bars in Madison. But that was a long way from the evening piano lessons at Mrs. Berkeley’s when afterward she would read to us late into the night from Marcus Aurelius. Time drifted into other centuries. Then there was Lee Lamboley’s house down the street. It seemed like a mansion with big white pillars that overlooked the little pond where we used to ice skate in the winter and fish bullheads in the summer. Lee was not only one of the few people in town who read novels, but he was actually writing one, and his hobby was classical music. He had a 1950’s state of the art, German made Fisher High Fidelity player which dominated his elegant living room. As a kid, I didn’t always understand the music spinning off of those vinyl records, but when I heard the Tuba Mirum from Berlioz’s Requiem, I realized that there were people before me who had felt the same things I did and were able to translate that into sound. I got on the plane at Reagan National in Washington, DC. It was a Midwest Express flight directly to Madison, Wisconsin, where I had a rental car waiting. It would be a short drive to Charmsburg from there. The seats were soft leather, and wide, an upgrade from the usual. I was able to settle in and let my mind relax. Maybe this would be fun, maybe my routine would be well received. It wouldn’t be like the ovation I got for the all Chopin program at the Royal Palace in Warsaw, Poland a few months back, but it would go toward the same reality: uplifting people from their mundane existence, giving them pleasure. Why then, did I feel some trepidation? It would be the first time I had been back in years, and never without my parents being there. I was the only child, so I had moved them near me after dad could no longer remember how to get home from the downtown square. Without their physical presence, there would be a void. But it was always more his town than mine. Chambersburg didn’t understand art or practitioners of it, or even culture. Hard physical work transcended dreams. I looked around at people on the plane. Men had large extremities, farmer hands and baggy stay-press slacks; it was the heartland. I recognized it, but was I part of it, was it somewhere in me, an elemental essence so deep that I couldn’t even touch it? It took only a couple of hours before the descent started. I looked out the window at the green hillsides and corn, the highways winding through valleys, and lakes. I knew it all. Suddenly, I felt no pressure. Was I home? I decided to stop and see Charlie on my way from the airport. He was now living on the outskirts of Madison, having sold his bungalow in Charmsburg in order to move in with caregivers. Charlie was a friend of my parents, part of that depression - war generation which had helped to build the town. He had been a salesman for Standard Oil and a fixture at the country club scene including after hours. He was the gin man, twice stirred, a “cool” guy in the lexicon of the 1950’s, initially gaining pioneering prominence for having the first gas-driven golf cart at the club. Amidst that status he traveled with a tweed hat, pipe, relaxed manner and a smooth golf swing. If he could have carried a tune, it would have been a warble like Bing Crosby. “How are your folks, Jack? I haven’t heard anything since you moved them out east six years ago?” His denture slipped down, but he maneuvered it back into place with a clack. He was gaunt now and had a cane, but still carried himself with a prepossessing awareness. “They’re OK, Charlie.” “Listen I got something you might be able to use for the class reunion.” He handed me a faded, loose leaf filler pad of jokes, written out by hand. “I’ve collected these over the years and used some myself.” As I turned the yellowed pages, I could imagine those Kiwanis and Rotary meetings from the 1940’s and 50’s, martini luncheons and respectable guffaws. Most of the jokes were about booze and divorce; nothing kinky or pathological, just simple bogey men that a simpler age could relate to. A boney finger pointed to one paragraph. “You might be able to use this one about the white rabbit.” Then he smiled. “They might not get it though. I don’t think most of your classmates have ever left the area.” Suddenly, he pointed the same finger at me for emphasis. “But you be sure and get them laughing right at the beginning. You hear me!” I looked at Charlie and felt like a boy again, peering over the heads of older people as I tried to get glimpses of him as Master of Ceremonies at the Minstrel show, the interlocutor, querying his colleagues on the stage of the high school auditorium. “Tell me, Rastus, did you go to bed early last night?” Local storeowners, car dealers and insurance salesmen sat on either side of him wearing blackface and spats. One would say something ridiculous and roll his eyes while the others would slap their knees. The civil rights movement put an end to it, but the Chamber of Commerce kept it going for a while by changing everyone to white face. The audience didn’t think it was as funny. “Say, Jack, have you heard from any of your old high school golf pals?” “I got a call from Duncan Standish. He said the only reason he’s coming back is to see me and play golf together again.” “Bullsquash! He’s coming back to beat you.” “No way, Charlie! I already explained to Duncan that my game isn’t in shape for any kind of match. We agreed that we’ll just be out for a stroll down memory lane.” Charlie turned to his Hispanic caregiver. “Jack used to beat everybody at the club, and do it all the time. He played first man on the high school team when he was fourteen, and later won all the county championships. It used to drive people nuts that a piano player could beat them at golf. There was a lot of envy toward Jack and poor Eddie Goecks was the worst. He owned a filling station in town and had a weird, home made golf swing, but he could get the ball in the hole. Even so, he couldn’t beat Jack, and the piano player thing just raised the ante. Eddie thought a piano player should be home knitting.” Charlie turned toward me. “Eddie passed away a few years ago.” Then he looked out the window. “Maybe God’s teaching him how to play the piano about now.” The thirty minute drive to Charmsburg was still familiar to me. I took country roads and old junction PB, which had been a shortcut for fifty years. The big light and dark spots on the side of the hill outside the little town of Paoli were still there; from a distance, the white rock, burnt grass and dirt gave the impression of a spotted Holstein cow. My father always dreamed of building a house on that hillside. Meanwhile, the curves in the road were still there, too. I thought of Tom Siedschlag. His folks gave him a convertible when he was sixteen and we all thought he was an expert, so I asked him to teach me how to drive. We came out to old junction PB for a trial run, and he told me, “whenever you come to a sharp curve, always go into the other guy’s lane and increase your speed…that will bank the car.” This, of course, is what race car drivers do, except that they have don’t have anyone coming at them in the other lane. I gave silent thanks for not taking Tom’s advice, and wondered if he was still alive. The water tower soon came into view and the Methodist church steeple. There was a new bypass which caused a rash of signs as you came into town. I drove past the welcome sign which listed the population; it was about the same. Then I merged into the town square with the old courthouse, and immediately thought of the Spring Prom of 1962. I double dated with Billy Klemm because he had wheels. We drove around the square the wrong way at 3 AM, giddy with delight at breaking the rules, smug in our dinner jackets and crew cuts. We knew then what tomorrow would bring, that our parents would protect us and that God was in heaven. Every night was a sound sleep. Our dates sat next to us, fresh faced with strapless gowns and pale corsages, outwardly maintaining decorum but barely able to suppress delight at the ungodly thing we were doing at this ungodly hour. It was an image in the mist of memory that dissolved when you tried to grab it. Billy Klemm was dead now. I looked at the courthouse and mused about the ancient irony that brick and mortar remain but people pass away. Who was it that said: “Time stands still while we pass by”? As I rounded the square, I passed the confectionary shop where juveniles were standing out front smoking. Around the corner was the barber shop with a barber pole, needing only a cigar store Indian to qualify for the cover of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post. Needing a haircut, I parked the car and walked up the steps and into the masculine smell of lather and cologne. “A light trim,” I said. “Hello, Jack,” was the response. I looked at the barber and searched for a name. “Catholic School,” he said, seeming to sense my predicament. “Of course, Roger.” The name came out of the recess of my memory and I was relieved. He put the sheet over me and started reminiscing about junior high school at St. Mary’s. “Remember Sister Mary Karate,” he said. “You mean Sister Thomas Aquinas,” I said smiling. “Right! You know she slugged Bill Stoker once, right in front of the class.” I saw Bill in my minds eye, a tall, gangly prepubescent with a duck-tail haircut, trying to emulate Elvis Presley. “Yeah,” he continued. “Bill must have smarted off to her, so she brings him up in front of the class, hauls off and cracks him on the side of the face. Then he says, ‘Sister, Jesus said to turn the other cheek.’ So she hauls off and slugs him on the other side.” “Guess a lot of the class left the church,” I said. “Yeah, but as time goes by we’ve drifted back. The whole thing is bigger than a few screwed up people.” It was the first comment I heard after my return, and a generous one. I decided to hold it tight. I walked down the street to the Corner Café for lunch. As I went up the four crooked steps I thought of the times I had been here with my parents for early breakfast before beginning a family vacation. Farmers in overhauls were seated on stools at the counter and the fry cook wore a white apron. A sign listed the day’s specials: “Roast beef sandwich on white bread with mashed potatoes and gravy, and lemon pie with graham cracker crust.” A voice called out,” Jack!” I turned toward three men seated in a wooden booth. “You probably don’t remember me,” He had a walrus mustache and a John Deere tractor cap. “Richard Zeitler’s the name.” He gestured toward an empty seat in the booth and introduced the other two, who were also classmates. One had a shaved head and body tattoos, the other wore slacks and a sweater. I finally recognized the last man. “Frank,” I said, “you’ve still got that nice smile.” His face clouded and he looked down at his coffee, as if I were making a pass. “I carried a spear,” Richard said suddenly. “I beg your pardon.” “In the class play. That’s why I came back, Jack. You were so damn funny back then. When I saw you were going be MC I thought…well, I gotta go!” They started speaking about the deceased; sixteen in a class of one hundred and twenty five.” “I heard that Lance Bacher died. What happened?” “I know!” Richard volunteered., “He was supposed to have a kidney transplant but he didn’t make it.” I told them how Lance had called me once in Los Angeles about thirty years ago. “It was at 3 AM in the morning,” I said. “He woke me up to tell me he was gay, and I hung up on him. I always regretted that.” All three seemed embarrassed and started to stir their coffee. The waitress brought the bill and they left amidst polite admonitions about seeing me at the reunion. Then I started stirring my coffee thinking that this might be a long week after all. But there was still golf. I started out for my motel which was on the outskirts of town but got lost on the new bypass. I finally found it behind a bowling alley just off the highway and pulled up under the big portico. I looked around for familiar faces but there were none. The place was new, unlike the two other generic motels that had served the town for years. They were brick pill boxes with rooms that smelled of air freshners, and the anemic bar of soap by the wash basin that always felt like sand on your skin. But this motel was spacious. My cousin from the farm would have said it was “just like downtown,” with a king sized bed, cable television, and a large bathroom with a whirlpool. After an early dinner that night, I watched a movie in the room and turned in early. I wanted to be rested for my game with Duncan Standish. The next morning dawned heavily with a soggy humidity and mist over the cornfields. It was like so many other summer days that I remembered, sloshing through the golf course in the early morning dew. School age kids could play all day Monday, Tuesday until noon, Friday until 3 and Saturday morning. The earlier you got out there, the longer the day was, and the more holes you could play. But there was no practicing allowed, no range balls to hit; that was reserved for stockholders. I felt like a spurned lover. When I turned twenty-one, old Joe Weinraub, the president of the club, bought me my first legal drink in the locker room bar. Flushed with chemical inducement I challenged him: why could we never play on men’s day, or in the club championship: “why all this discrimination against youth?” He downed his scotch in one gulp. “Because we didn’t want all you pissants in our way. We went through the depression and won the war.” He pointed out the window. “So this belongs to us!” He bought me another drink. It was like a rite of passage. I had been brought into a manly realm, old enough now to be initiated into the full consciousness of being a prick. I ate breakfast and put my golf shoes and clubs in the trunk. The drive to the country club was something I had done ten thousand times. I decided to go by the high school and down 8th avenue past the newspaper editor’s old house. The big fir tree was still there that I chased the neighbor girl around fifty years ago, knowing what I wanted but not knowing how to get it. I rounded over to 21st street and made a left at the sign: “Charmsburg Country Club.” The pro welcomed me. He’d been there 29 years, but to me he was still the new guy, unlike the late Jimmie Casey, the little Scotsman, who had been there since the 1920’s and taught me the game. Jimmie gave me that long, slow hickory shaft swing and would remain as indelible in my memory as my lowest score. He held classes for kids early on Tuesday mornings after he hoisted the flag on the big pole. Sometimes that was an effort because he usually had a hangover. But he was a stickler for etiquette and taught us a respect for the game. Like a stern, dour parent, he presided over the real estate, refusing to tolerate disorder. If we had a tantrum, threw our clubs or played too slowly, he’d take away our bag for a week. No one knew if Jimmie’s “shakes” were from the booze or a pathological disorder. It didn’t bother his game from tee to green but short, delicate putts were another matter. If you freely gave Jimmie any putt within a six foot radius, he could still shoot in the seventies, even when he was in his seventies. We all thought that it was a rare privilege to play with him as so few were given that honor. I later learned that those were the few that gave him all the short putts. The pro greeted me in the golf shop. “Good thing you’re starting play now, Jack. Bob Wertenweiller’s group went off earlier and it was like General Patton’s third army. There were carts everywhere and some of those people couldn’t even get the ball air borne. It was like croquet. They hit it in the parking lot, the subdivision and even the ball washer.” He handed me a bag of practice balls so I went to the range just down the hill. Half way through the bag I finally hit a particularly good three wood and heard applause. I turned around. It was Duncan Standish. A shock of white hair and a slightly thicker body had not changed him that much in forty years. We embraced, like two explorers after a long journey, meeting once again on the continental divide of life. He introduced me to his wife, who was as cheerful as her flower print golf skirt. Marilyn was a decade younger, and had the quality of seeming interested in whatever I said. As we walked to the first tee, I obliged her by expressing every thought I had ever had. Sensing my delight, Duncan said, “I was never really happy until I met her. We lived together for ten years, then finally got married last year.” He read my thoughts about his first wife whom I dimly remembered and patted me on the shoulder. “Never get divorced in California,” he said. “You’ll lose your shirt.” No one hit a very good shot off the first tee, although Duncan’s was the best. His swing was the same, in two pieces with a little hitch at the top. I studied him as he walked down the fairway with that purposeful gait as though he were going into a board meeting. But there was something different, a poignancy that I had never seen before. It betrayed an attitude that life might deal him a deadly blow at any moment, and that he could handle one more, but only barely. Duncan beat me easily during the eighteen holes, but was gentleman enough not to keep score. He confessed that, having been retired for some time, he played several times a week at his country club outside of Seattle. I remembered, in particular, one of his shots, a three wood of about 230 yards on the long par 4, fourth hole. It drilled its way toward the green, unerring and straight, like a clothes line, settling about ten feet from the pin. He and his wife had the slightly bourgeois habit of kissing whenever they hit a good shot. No matter which one was out of the cart, or however far away, a good shot would elicit chirps and coos and a running leap back into the cart to smooch. I made a little joke about it, but he didn’t respond. His wife said that he had trouble hearing. On approaching the eleventh tee I heard some crowd noises. We got to high ground where we had a view of the pond below. People were walking back and forth along the edge of the water shouting. “He hasn’t come up yet….Fish him out…He went in over here!!!” Suddenly Bob Wertenweiller surfaced with a woosh. His hair was matted down and, spitting water, he held up a handful of golf balls. “Look what I found! I don’t have to buy any now.” Then he went under again. Duncan shook his head. “Glad we didn’t play with them.” By the end of the round, I felt that my game was starting to come back and suggested that we play an extra nine holes. By then, everyone was more relaxed and seemed to play better. I settled into a swing rhythm that started to feel like old times, and on the par 3 sixth hole hit a four iron to within 2 feet of the hole for a birdie. I covered the pin again on the eighth, although I missed the short putt. By the final hole, I was quite sure that Duncan and I were about even up. I stroked the last putt delicately and watched it crawl thirty feet downhill over a slight undulation. Duncan moved toward the ball while it was still rolling. It hesitated on the lip of the cup and then dropped in while he stood over it. He reached down and rolled it back to me. “I knew you were going to make it,” he said. “You usually do. It’s too much pressure playing with you.” He walked toward his cart and drove toward the clubhouse. I went to the parking lot to put my clubs in the trunk, and then started back for a drink. As I walked into the bar, I saw Duncan already sitting on a stool. He was looking down at his drink shaking his head. “I knew you were going to make that putt,” he murmured. “Nothing’s changed. It’s just too much pressure.” Then he and his wife left for the hotel. I stayed for a while, perusing the place. I was alone at the bar. They had redecorated it, but the tables were the same, thickset and round. My father used to play cards there every Thursday, and the next night was the beer battered fish fry. Mother made us dress up for that and it was like going to a Hollywood premiere. The elite of Charmsburg congregated, and everybody knew everybody. The principle influence on behavior was the movie culture. Whenever Bob Smitz, the richest man in Charmsburg, put the moves on some of the wives at the bar, the dialogue was right out of “Mogambo” with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. There was a parade of short haircuts, suits with narrow lapels, chiffon cocktail dresses and ‘Gibson’ martinis with the sour onion. I watched it all at sixteen, sitting at a table with my parents thinking: this is the closest I’ll ever get to the ‘big time.’ And people knew me, too. I had won the Junior Club Championship and that was something they could relate to and comment on as they passed our table. They didn’t know about the Bach Three Part Inventions, or my discovery of the Grieg Lyric Pieces. That was too personal for me to share, like having invisible friends. But, finally, with cosmic irony, those friends had taken shape while all the others were gone. Sitting at the bar I could only hear their voices, like ghosts hovering around me singing a strange dirge to the clink of ice cubes. Suddenly, the door swung open and, as if on cue, Dr. Guthrie Tittle came in with customary flair. Too outrageous to belong to the choir of angels, he had been left behind in flesh and bone. A British émigré who was my grandmother’s doctor, he was always Charmsburg’s greatest tourist attraction. Bald with an eagle’s beak for a nose, he had a perfect English public school accent. I remembered long ago when he came here with his wife and young family from England. He was the new cardiologist at the clinic, and thereafter an alcoholic. He was more stooped now, with a beet red face, “Jacko! What a lovely surprise. It has been a while” “How are you Guthrie? How’s your health?” “Well, as the Duke of Wellington said about the Battle of Waterloo, ‘it’s the damndest near run thing you ever saw.’ But nothing lasts forever, Jacko.” “Do you still want to be buried on the seventeenth tee?” “I’ve rather gone off that now. I’m thinking cremation and then a scattering on the ninth tee. That way, when one reaches down to pick up their tee and they come across a silver bicuspid in a pile of ash, mankind will be enriched.” He bought me a drink and lit a cigarette. “How’s your love life, Jacko? Divorce can be lonely?” I rattled my ice cubes and some recent memories of divorce recovery. I decided to trump his capacity to shock. “Well, there was this woman in Florida…. a pretty good cellist. She’d been married four times and the aggregate total of her marriages was four years. Her mother was a minister who lived a few blocks away and had been married six times, but five of them died. Then there was the bi-polar herpetic who was an executive at the World Bank in Washington; a real beauty. She went to Afghanistan on danger pay and that country’s been sliding into chaos ever since. Then…..” He cut me off. “Jacko, why don’t you stop all this crap and just get a boyfriend?” I stared at him with incredulity. I couldn’t top that. “That’s what I’ve done,” he said with a weird air of confidence. I stammered. “Guthrie, you must be seventy-five years old. I’ve known you my whole life, and your wife and kids. You ..you were even my grandmother’s doctor. When did this start?” “Well, it’s not sudden like a car accident. It requires some incubation.” “But you told me years ago that you had a mistress, and swore me to secrecy.” ”Yes, but it wasn’t enough. One needs supplemental income.” He looked out the big picture window overlooking the practice putting green and made a sweeping gesture. “Jacko, it has taken me to the last stages of my life to discover that it is simply delightful to be whacked off by a man in the bushes.” I drove to the hotel very slowly, not just because of the four or five drinks I had consumed. I was unclear. Things seemed in inverse proportion to what I had remembered. The golf course seemed less difficult, more like any other generic course that you might play on your way to somewhere else. Then there was my grandmother’s doctor. What a stunner: as if discovering that your brother was your sister and your aunt was really your mother. I began to wonder about my comedy routine for the next night. Would the shtick work? Would people understand or be able to relate to my humor as they once had during the class play? But that was back in another century. Now, everything was backwards, Things had changed so much that maybe I should just play it safe, give some homilies and say goodnight. “Like hell you will.” Duncan Standish’s voice crackled over the phone the next morning. “Marilyn and I didn’t fly all the way back from the west coast just to hear you give a prayer! Make people laugh. Stick with your routine.” After the pep talk, we discussed appropriate dress. A suit would be too much, maybe a sport coat and shirt without a tie. He asked if I would like to accompany them on a tour of the high school. I politely declined, but we agreed to go to the reunion together that evening. I settled back, propped up in bed, and went over my notes trying to relax. Room service helped and so did a movie on television. Finally it came time to dress for the evening. I allowed myself a lot of time because I recognized that feeling, the state of mind. Everything was tightening, like being in an iron suit. I had walked on stage around the world: at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Great Philarmonic Hall in St. Petersburg, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Sala Cecilia Meireles in Rio de Janeiro. It was always the same. There was never to be found an arrogant artist standing backstage waiting to face an audience: the breathless silence at that moment of truth, the loud drum beat in your breast, the worries about memory slips and acceptance all contribute to residual meekness. Finally, the lights dim and there is no turning back. You accept your fate with as much dignity as possible and move into the glare of humanity. The applause begins and the piano stands like an oasis in the middle of a battlefield. It takes forever to get there, and then the bow. But it is not until the first homophonous strains of the opening piece, that you realize that you can do it again. The miracle has returned and, with it, your confidence. The harmonies begin to strike respondent chords behind the silent eyes of hundreds or thousands of people. There is a strange, palpable wave of energy drifting over the footlights. People are feeling what you are. I went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. What the hell is the matter with you? This is Charmsburg! What are you so nervous about? You’re not a comedian, anyway. Just have fun. In one hundred years, nobody will remember. Duncan’s rental car was spacious and more than was needed. Nowhere was too far from anything in Charmsburg, and shortly after I shut the door and put the seat belt on, I was taking it off. We had arrived at The Swiss Hall, a two story imitation of a Swiss Chalet with a restaurant on top, a bowling alley on the main floor, and the Rathskellar and dance hall underneath. We descended the stairs and followed the crowd noises through double doors into a cavernous room that smelled like a beer. I could tell that the acoustics were bad. It would take an oom-pah-pah band with blown out cheeks and beads of perspiration to push the sound through that dead air. I walked toward what appeared to be the bar. A man wearing a jacket that had patched on it all of the insignias of the cantons of Switzerland was pouring beer into heavy liter mugs. “Do you take credit cards,” I asked. “Nope! But I’ll keep track of what you drink and when it’s over, we’ll find a machine somewhere.” I asked for a glass of white wine to steady my nerves. That was not an experience I would otherwise permit myself when giving a performance. But, if getting half smashed would help my presentation tonight that would prove that being a comedian was obviously a lower art form. I looked around the room for someone I knew. People’s faces were all different but there was a sameness in the bodies that supported them underneath. The raging battle for maintenance had given way to self-indulgence; a certain resignation or surrender to various shapes of enormity. A man came over with a walrus mustache, a protruding belly and thick suspenders. “How are you, Jack?” He slapped me on the back so hard I rammed into the bar. “You know, you’ve done what I always wanted to do. You’ve traveled around the world. That was my dream. Then I discovered sex and never left the county.” He spread out his fleshy hand and held it in front of my face. “Five...” he said. “Five kids!” It could only be Tom Kurtzstein. “Are you still driving a truck, Tom?” “No, I’ve slowed down. But I still make more money on unemployment insurance than my old lady does bagging groceries.” Little Kay Blitzen came over. Her father had owned the hardware store on the east end of the square. Her parents had a Christmas party for our class each of the four high school years which included sledding down the snowy road in front of their cul de sac, and then platters of freshly baked sugar cookies afterward. I used to play carols on their grand piano in front of a roaring fire and people would sing along, shaking off the snow. “Oh, Jack, we bought one of your CD recordings and it’s so beautiful!” “Thanks, Kay.” “But how do you remember all those notes? They go by so fast.” “Well, you can train a…..I mean, I’ve been doing it all my life, I guess” She introduced her husband who was a minister and explained that they lived in a little town up north. “Where did you get my recording?” I asked They looked at each other quizzically. “I remember” the minister brightened. “It was at the Goodwill Industries.” “I wonder if the Red Cross is selling it, too.” I smiled, but they didn’t get it. That was a bad omen. I reached for my drink and suddenly felt that my space at the bar was overcast, like an eclipse of the sun. I turned and saw Beda Furholtzer standing like a fortress, staring at me impassively. “I see you made it,” she said. “How’s the hotel?” I nodded positively. “How long are you staying?” She looked suspicious, like I was going to rip somebody off. “I’m checking out tomorrow.” Her face slackened. “Don’t worry, I know that my voucher expires. But I’m sticking around a few extra days and checking into the Mountain Chalet on my own nickel. I’ve always wanted to stay there.” She kept staring at me. Her fatty face had smoothed out any wrinkles. I motioned toward the stage. “Beda, how is the speaker system at the lectern because the acoustics are…..” “It’s the best we can do,” she said testily. “This is a small community and we have a small budget.” She had one hand behind her back, like she might be holding a grenade. “You’ll introduce me, I hope.” “Why?” she shot back. “Nobody else is being introduced. We don’t do special treatment here. We’re all the same!” I bought some drinks for Duncan and his wife and carried them across the room to their table at the base of the lectern. “We saved a place for you,” said Marilyn. “Good. I hope it’s a friendly one.” I was glad to sit down. I gently slid their drinks across the table. Duncan picked his up and was about to propose a toast when Beda Furholtzer waddled up to the lectern and turned on the speaker system with a big electrical pop. We looked up, startled. I glanced at the small unit on the floor that the mike was plugged into. It resembled a portable “boom” box. She cleared her throat.” Ladies and gentleman… Jack Barnes.” Everybody at the table looked at each other. I stood up and my chair shot backward. I hurried to the podium to almost no applause. Beda was still standing there, holding the swinging stick mike. She shoved it in my face and then moved it around. “You want it like this, or like that?” “I’ll take care of it Beda.” It was an inauspicious beginning. Any drama or magnetic sense of the occasion was already lost. I looked out to take a quick measure of the audience. There was a grayness and heaviness about the hundred or so; many had their heads down. My heart started to sink. What if my whole audience were clinically depressed? But I plunged ahead. “Ladies and gentlemen of the class of…….” “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU,” someone shouted. I tried again. “My fellow classmates!” Now I was shouting. “What an awesome occasion...that we should be gathered here under the same roof after all these decades. That we should have survived all the history we’ve lived through. Our hearts were beating when Franklin Roosevelt was still alive at the very end of World War II. Within months after our graduation, there was the Cuban missile crisis, which we now see in flickering black and white images in documentaries, then the revolution of the 1960’s, the civil rights movement, more wars, and now a new century. As I look out at your faces, I am struck by the amount of life that has been lived in this room, the choices made that have affected your lives and others.” There is rapt attention. “And as I look out, I am also overwhelmed by the fact that I don’t recognize anybody.” Laughter. “The years have been kind to you but the problem is the weeks and months in between?” Silence. “But I’m glad to see such a big turnout. It’s not that there are that many people here, it’s just that those who are here…are unusually large.” More silence. A few people exchange glances. “Was it really only yesterday that we walked across that stage and Judge Beerbaum gave everyone a diploma and then took it back from a few?” A choked snicker. “There are people in this room who went to kindergarten with each other. I remember North School when Mrs. Langstan issued a punishment to little Harry Burwanger. He wanted to go to the bathroom and she said, “No!” Today she’d wind up in San Quentin, but in those days behavior was a big deal. But little Harry had an ingenious solution: he simply peed on the carpet. And today, fifty five years later, he’s still doing the same thing but for different reasons.” Groans. Harry Burwanger gets up and leaves. “And over there I see Larry Squattling. I’ve known him since the second grade. And I even remember his first girl friend whom he actually married. It was a big wedding, too...a military wedding. Well, there were guns there, anyway.” Silence. “His bride was only fifteen, but Larry said that was 105 in dog years.” Silence. . “And she was no rocket scientist, either. She once stared at a can of orange juice for twenty minutes because it said, ‘concentrate.’ ” Larry Squattling’s fourth wife laughs. “She even tried to study for her own blood test.” Nothing. “And she had a drinking problem. She saw a sign that said, “Drink Canada Dry,”...so she went there.” Someone cleared their throat. I wondered if the mike was still on. “Larry met his mother-in-law for the first time at the wedding. He said, ‘turn around when I’m talking to you!’ She said, ‘I am.’ She was so ugly that whenever she walked into a bank they turned the cameras off.” Chuckles from a couple of men on the right side of the room. “But the marriage didn’t work out. Larry said that you can always tell when a relationship goes south when the woman starts kissing the dog and tells you to go out and pee.” Larry Squattling’s first wife, Lulu, laughs. “So Larry had to learn how to date again. He walked up to a woman in a bar and said, ‘Where have you been all my life?’ She looked at him and said: ‘For the first half, I wasn’t even born.’ He tried to change the subject. He looked at her T-shirt. TGIF? I guess that means: ‘Thank god it’s Friday.’ She said, ‘No, it means, ‘This Goes in Front’.’” There is a thud as Larry Squattling passes out at his table. “I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the committee for putting this on tonight. By the way, you know what a camel is? That’s a horse that’s put together by a committee.” I was dying. A voice inside said ‘find a get-away car.’ “Now, folks we’re going to give awards for significant accomplishments by people in the class. The first award goes to Bob Timberstein for inventing the best bumper sticker. It reads like this: I AM THE PROUD PARENT OF A SON WHO MADE YOUR HONOR ROLL STUDENT PREGNANT.” Tom Kurtzstein, the truck driver, lets out a belly laugh, then looks around and suddenly stops. “The pithiest comment ever made by anyone in our class goes to Rodney Smeltzer. Even though this comment has been attributed to Confucius over the years, I know that it was Rodney who first said it because I was standing there….was at a basketball game, I think. It goes like this: Woman who send husband to dog house, soon find him in cat house.” Crowd murmurs. “An award for the kindest person in the class goes to Alan Kuphoffer, who once read an article about how you can support a child in India on three dollars a month, so…..he sent his kids there.” “An award for the most creative diet goes to Connie Winter. As we get older, it’s harder to loose,,,right? Well, Connie came up with this gem: only steamed vegetables and red wine. And in the space of two and one half weeks, Connie lost ten pounds… and her driver’s license.” Connie laughs, God bless her! “The Miss Lincoln Award of the class of 1962 goes to Beda Furholtzer. The Lincoln Award was so named, because every guy in the balcony wanted to take a shot at her.” Beda stands up in the middle of the aisle looking like a sofa with two legs. She starts shouting with one fist clenched and the other on her hip. But the acoustics are so bad I can’t hear what she’s saying. I ignore her and go on. It was like a death march. “The second best bumper sticker goes to the civics teacher at the high school, our own Ralph Bladensburg. His bumper sticker reads: DEMOCRATS ARE SEXY! WHO EVER HEARD OF A GOOD PIECE OF ELEPHANT.” Laughter for the first time. They like “ass” jokes, but I haven’t got any more. “Horst Creepentrog….a lot of courage, that guy. Instead of retiring, he started a business up north….and he gets an award for the best advertisement. Horst put a sign up outside his new restaurant that read: “COME ON IN BEFORE WE BOTH STARVE.” “And what about our own, Butch Larson. A lot of people didn’t know Butch is a romantic. He gets and award for the best entry in a Hallmark valentine card. It reads like this: “Sometimes, someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes you forever. We call those people cops.” “And we can’t forget Gwendolyn Siedschlag, one of our favorites. So sweet! Gwendolyn gets an award for having the most patience and persistence of anybody in the class. She actually stuck with her therapist even after he told her that whenever he was late, she should just start without him.” It was so quiet. Someone picked up their drink and you could hear the ice cubes clink. “Folks, this last award “… One person applauded. “…. this last award is important because it goes to the heart of an age old moral and philosophical premise which is: one should not pass judgment on people, or perhaps, even events, because they may not be what they seem... We must learn to believe in what is unseen as well as that which is apparent. Tom Kurzstein goes to the heart of this complicated theorem with his very special bumper sticker. It reads like this: JUST BECAUSE MY EYES ARE RED DOESN’T MEAN I’M DRUNK. I MIGHT BE A WHITE RABBIT. “ People seem confused and I sensed some anger on the left side of the room. Things were getting desperate so I had to ‘push the envelope.’ I felt this urge to strangle them for a laugh…anything!! So I got off script. It just bubbled up. So what if it was a lie. “Listen, folks the committee is putting together a commemorative booklet about this reunion. Some of you have sent pictures in and many of them will be included… By the way, I see Ralph Bunting sitting out there…. Ralph, we can’t use that picture of you in Tijuana…. If you would have lost some weight and the donkey looked better….maybe.” Ralph Bunting gets up and leaves. “Anyway, the booklet will be something you can show your children and grandchildren, and an opportunity for them to learn more about you. Better than anecdotes or stories passed down through word of mouth, this will actually be in print. So I’d like to do a little survey which will be included in the booklet. If the questions apply, just raise your right hand. Ok, here we go with the first question…. How many here have herpes?” At one table, five people suddenly got lockjaw, staring with their mouths open. But I was on a roll. “Hey, anybody bi-sexual? Wow, there’s a hand that went up…..nope, it went back down again? I don’t know whether to count that or not. Anyway, I think we have enough data. Let’s move on.” Somebody said, “That’s for sure!” It was time to get off. I didn’t have a close, and it didn’t matter anyway, so I lamely thanked everyone and went back to my table. On the way I saw that the five people from that other table still had their mouths open.. I passed another and someone said, “ Gwendolyn Siedschlag never had a therapist!” The smattering of applause didn’t start until I had already sat down. Then it stopped almost immediately. I stared straight ahead, stunned. My mind and body were on high alert, in a primordial sort of fight or flight instinct. Seventeen minutes of sheer hell that I had never experienced. “I bombed,” I said to no one in particular. Marilyn Standish looked at me. “You didn’t bomb. They did.” I could see why Duncan married her, but it still didn’t help. Then she brought me a plate of fried pork from the buffet table. It tasted like flour held together with glue. The coup de grâce was the sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, which had the texture of brick mortar. It all went right to my ankles. I wanted another drink but the bar was too far away. I was miserable. Lydia Buholtzer went up to the microphone to give a prayer. As she came to the most sublime part which talked about forgiveness, she looked in my direction with a snarl. Then Beda Furholtzer came carrying a bunch of letters that had been sent by classmates who couldn’t be there. “I want you to hear these,” she said, shouting into the mike. It sounded like an order to a platoon. ‘This is from Bob and Kathy Booberlutz who are out in Windburn, Iowa.” Dear classmates: Bob and I were just sitting around killing time at the kitchen dinette because our Zenith is on the blink. I said, ‘Hey, Bob, let’s write Beda!’, and he said ‘yeah!’ We want to tell you that we are SO SORRY we can’t be there with you, but Bob had a very delicate operation and he’s still recovering. I won’t tell you what they put in him, but it’s going to improve our marriage SO MUCH!” Light laughter. People were charmed. I looked at Duncan. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” I woke up the next morning as dispirited as I was the night before. I stared at the ceiling wondering why I had come back. I thought about how much the plane ticket had cost, and the amount of energy I’d put into this. Depressing, too, were the few more days that I still had left in Charmsburg. My only motivation was to check out of this hotel and move into the Mountain Chalet. That was far enough outside of town to help close the door, put me in a new environment and gobble up time before my scheduled departure. Once there, I could pretend I was in Europe with the hotel’s little gasthaus bar and continental menu. A nice glass of German Riesling in front of the big fireplace might salve my disappointment, my concussion from the night before. I bounded out of bed, packed and checked out. On my way out of town, I stopped by my home parish for Sunday Mass. I had made my first communion there at Saint Monica’s and went to parochial school. They had redecorated the altar but the ancient little confessional booths were still there. I thought about all the conflicts and burgeoning sexuality that had been played out in those silent, abandoned boxes, the groans of adolescent confidences that were whispered through the screens. I looked around at the congregation but recognized no one. Then, the priest came out with his servers. He was a heavy set, bald man who went through the ancient liturgy. But after the reading of the word, he proceeded to the base of the sanctuary and gave an extraordinary sermon. I wondered who he was. After mass, he walked up the aisle in procession past the congregation. As he passed me sitting on the end of the aisle, he paused and turned.. “Welcome home, Jack. You’re always welcome here….never forget that! And if you ever need a place to stay, you’ve got one.” I was stunned. It was a grace descended, like a white light that pierced the blackness of an ocean at midnight. How did he know who I was? There must be archangels after all. I drove several miles outside of town to the Mountain Chalet, checked in and took my bags to the room. Then I went back downstairs with a laundry bag and asked the woman at the desk if they had a washer/dryer. She said it was right there behind the registration desk. I had never done my laundry in a hotel lobby but I was ready to proceed just as she handed me a phone message from Bob Wertenweiller. I put the laundry in the wash and called him on my cell phone during the wash cycle. “How did you know I was at this hotel, Bob?” “Hard to keep a secret in this little town. Say, how was the reunion, anyway? I wasn’t able to go because I caught a chill during the golf game.” “It was miserable,” I replied. “The food was lousy, the venue was lousy, the speaker system was lousy and Beda Furholtzer couldn’t organize a two car funeral.” “A couple of people are sayin’ that you stiffed the bartender.” “What!” I said angrily. Then I realized that I never did settle with that guy in the Swiss jacket. “Look, I didn’t stiff anybody. They weren’t set up for credit cards so I was supposed to settle up at the end of the evening, but I forgot. I just wanted to get out of there.” “Well, they apparently passed a hat to cover it.” “How much was it?” “Ten dollars.” I was fuming when I took the clothes out of the dryer. After dropping them off in my room I went for dinner. There was another Swiss hotel that was supposed to have good kitchen and just around the corner so I started by foot. As I crossed the parking lot, two police officers intercepted me. “Could we see some identification/” “What’s this about?” “The receptionist said you were talking loudly on the phone in the lobby and she was afraid you might be violent….might even have a weapon or something.” “That’s ridiculous!” “Well, anyway way, we don’t know you.” He handed back my driver’s license. “So you’ll have to get out of town. There are no more rooms here. Maybe in the next town. We’ll help you pack.” I knew that Beda lived up the hill and these were probably the only two police officers in town. Wasn’t hard to put it together. What a lovely, tight knit community. I went back to my room in a daze. Should I call a lawyer? It was already evening so I packed as quickly as I could and drove back to Charmsville. I couldn’t believe what was happening and registered at the first motel that came into view just wanting to get the whole evening and trip over with. The room was on the dingy side, like a monk’s cell; a bed, a night stand and a forlorn swearing off of all comforts. But it would shelter me for the night. I laid in bed the next morning trying to process everything. This was the town where I grew up, that my father helped to build. At least now I was hunkered down out of sight and I would be gone within an hour. Nothing more could possibly happen. Soon it would become just a bad a memory. I got on the phone and changed my plane reservation so that I could leave that afternoon. Momentum was staring to build; it was like the great escape. I dressed, packed my night bag and hurried to the office to check out. The clerk was wearing a Swiss vest which didn’t fit. “Here’s your bill.” I glanced at it. “Your flier says the room is $45 with tax, but this bill is for $55. What’s the extra ten for.” “That’s what you stiffed the class reunion for.” I stared open mouthed. He just shrugged his shoulders. “It’s all over town.” I started to stammer. “Oh I know what you want to say…that it was covered when they passed the hat. But we thought there should be some interest charged.” A man and woman came out from an office in back of the desk and stood impassively, glaring at me with folded arms. As soon as the plane landed, I drove over to see my parents in a nearby assisted living facility. I had moved them out east from Charmsville already seven years before and felt a tinge of guilt because they acted like they were in exile, never having returned to their home of fifty years. I also needed to see some friendly, loving faces. I knew, too, they wanted to know how everything went…how was the town, did I see any of their friends who might still be around, and how was I received? I decided to tell them the truth. My father listened quietly having by now difficulty in processing information. My mother on the other hand, closed the book on my “guilt” issue. When I finished she said quite simply, “I do not wish to be buried in that town.” Dad cleared his throat. “Well…“I’d like to hear it.” “Hear what?” said my mother. “His routine. Let him do it here. The entertainment they have downstairs is crap. This has to be better.” Mom thought for a second and her face brightened. “What a wonderful idea.” She looked at me for approval. “I’ll call Vivian Van Wie, the director and set it up. You’ll have another chance at this, Jack.” I had to think. Did I want to go through it again? But maybe she was right, the wells of regeneration run deep. It would be better to go out on a positive note with one more chance to redeem myself. I nodded. “But when you talk to her, ask her for a list of names of residents who usually go to these things. I don’t need to know or meet them, just the names.” “Why?” my father asked. “Because I’m going to give out awards.” It was the next week I drove over there; it was only about twenty minutes from my house. When I walked in, people smiled including the staff. I even saw a sort of makeshift poster on the wall behind the reception desk. I don’t know where they got that picture of me. We went up the elevator to the dining room which had been converted into an open area with a standing mike. “People will start coming in any moment now,” said the director. She ran the place with a strict code of behavior that my father didn’t like. A broad shouldered, mannish sort of woman, the two of them had tangled on several occasions. “I’ll just introduce you briefly, and then it’s all yours.” I was pleased that so far it seemed more accommodating than Charmsburg. How ironic that people who had mostly lost their independence seemed nicer and more cheerful than those who still had enough ambulatory energy to sidle up to the bar. I seated myself on the sidelines and watched people come in. Many were in wheel chairs, and some with walkers. Soon a crowd of about sixty people filled the partitioned area. I had a good feeling. They couldn’t leave even if they wanted to. All of them were hostages to their infirmities. Then I admonished myself. Vivian gave a decent introduction. I don’t know where she got some of the information but it was mainly correct. Then it was my turn. I walked to the mike accompanied by a small, gentle smattering of applause. I saw in the audience a number of very elderly white haired women sitting in the back with soft, almost beatific smiles on their faces. “Thank you Ms.Van Wie, and thank you ladies and gentlemen for that very warm round of applause. I will remember that for….well, at least until I get to the parking lot. Frankly it sounded like you were clapping with one hand.” There was silence and the smiles from the snow haired women disappeared. Then I realized that one of them was an amputee…no right arm. Socrates had famously said, “Know thyself.” He should have said, “Know thine audience.” “Folks, some of you have probably asked yourselves, how did I wind up here in an assisted living facility? Well, it’s called aging. Nothing you can do about that….except for one thing: gray hair. The French came up with a cure for gray hair. It’s called the guillotine.” Silence, as from a white sepulcher….not even a buzz from the florescent lights above. “I myself am getting older. I can feel it. Even though it’s the first time I’ve ever been this age. I find that food has now taken the place of sex in my life. In fact I’ve had a mirror put over the kitchen table.” I waited for what seemed an eternity. Only a couple of ‘h..r.r umphs’ from one old timer that had dandruff and his zipper open. “…And priorities change. Have you noticed that you’re no longer worried about your career and getting a leg up on the world? My main concern now is how to tell my dog that he’s adopted.” People were stone faced. I had to get more personal. “You know my folks live here, too. Yeah, Jack and Purnice Barnes.” A number of people nodded their heads. “Now you probably know my dad is a character. But, I have to say, things have been said about him that just aren’t true. For example, and I want to make this clear…. he does NOT hate black people. I was at his place last week and he had a couple of black people for dinner… and they were delicious.” A frail black man with a red toupee sitting in a wheel chair against the wall, started to cry. It morphed into loud sobs. Vivian raced over and whispered something to him. His chest was heaving as she wheeled him out of the room. I stood wondering what to do. I had to lighten the mood but I felt I was on a battlefield with the Red Cross. “I’ll just take a flier here folks, and guess that many of you have reached a point where you review your life from time to time. I know that any man who has reached my age, and I hope to do that soon, has already started. And in so doing, you realize that Sigmund Freud was right decades, even a century ago. Through his research he came to the conclusion that men had sex on an average of 30,000 times during a lifetime… and about 28 times if there was a partner.” This time at least the men laughed, but I didn’t have any more sex jokes. That boat had already left the dock for most of my listeners. “Folks, let’s move to some awards I want to give. You’re all unique and you deserve some recognition.” I took a list of names out of my pocket. “Fred Corrigan…..Fred are you here.” A hand went up. “Fred gets an award for being the most in tune with American history. Fred once said to Eli Whitney, ‘I’m tired of cotton…let’s try the gin.” There was a rustle of feet. I wondered if they were going to form a posse. A male voice said in a stage whisper, “Who in the hell is Eli Whitney?” I looked again at the piece of paper. “Madge Lowry? Is she here?” “Yes,” said a voice. “Madge, you get an award for ‘getting away with murder’…..Now wouldn’t we all like to do that from time to time?” Interest picked up a little. People were waiting. “A lot of you may not know that Madge was married three times and the first two died. The first husband died from eating poison mushrooms… the second one from a fractured skull. He wouldn’t eat the mushrooms.” Madge let out a high pitched soprano yelp. “Oh. My god, that’s just awful. It’s not true! It’s NOT true.” A woman walked over to hold her hand. But an obese man on a folding chair in front of her said, “I kinda liked that one.” I was dying. I had to push the envelope. I went for that piece of paper again. “Elke…. Elke Rheingold are you here?” “I’m not sure,” said a voice. “Elke gets an award for being the best teacher in the facility. She gave a seminar to employees here on how to handle difficult situations. As a demonstration she took the next call that came in and put it on speaker. This way the employees could see the proper rhythm and diplomacy necessary. The voice on the receiver said, “How’s my grandfather?” Elke said, “He’s like a fish out of water.” “Oh,” the man said. “You mean he’s having trouble adjusting.” “No,” she said. “He’s dead.” Several people winced. It was time to shut it down and head for the big close. One more look at the piece of paper and the last chance to ‘bring the down the house.’ “Gwendolyn Culpper? Is there a Gwendolyn…….? “Yes, I’m here.” “Gwendolyn, you get an award for ‘hutzpah.’ You managed to light this place up with interest and something to talk about. Gwendolyn recently went ‘streaking’ throughout the whole facility. One guy said, ‘What was that?’, and the other said, ‘I don’t know but it needs some ironing.” The groans from the women were so intense that I thought they might come toward me. I looked at Gwendolyn. Her eyes were wide open as was her mouth. She grasped her throat. “I can’t breathe.” There was a gurgling sound and her breathing became more obstreperous. “Call for help,” someone yelled. Vivian ran over and pressed a button on the wall that went directly to the paramedics. Some of the staff hurriedly brought an oxygen tank and put a mask on her. The paramedics arrived almost immediately, wrapped Gwendolyn in some blankets and carried her out on a gurney. All I could do was stand there in front of the mike and watch….like a helpless supplicant praying for it to end. But it just did. I looked at the audience, they looked back at me then turned or wheeled around to leave. It was over before it really started. I sat down heavily into a chair feeling, as a college fraternity brother used to put it, “lower than a whale turd.” I was running up a string of abject failures…wanting to make people laugh but instead they either cried, ran me out of town or called the paramedics. Vivian walked over. “Well, this has to be the most riveting evening we’ve ever had. A couple of people said they wanted your folks out of here because they don’t want any living memory of it. But I thought that was unreasonable though so I overruled it. However, I can’t say we’ll have you back any time soon. And, in the greatly distant future, if we ever did have you back, it would only be to play our rickety little piano.” She turned and started to leave but had an afterthought. She turned again with a suspicious look on her face. “You don’t do jokes in your piano act…do you?” My mother had already disappeared but my father came over. He stood next to me silently peering out at the room, his head moving across the expanse of it like a ‘black jack dealer’ surveying the evening house. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, son, you’d better keep you day job. Oh, wait…most of those concerts are at night, aren’t they? But some of em’ are far away and you have to travel…right? So at least that’ll keep you safe and out of town.” A Grand Bargain My “red eye” from Sioux Falls landed after midnight at JFK airport. I arrived at the CUNY dormitory to check into my new dorm only to find the manager retired for the night. I was beat, used my suit case for a pillow, and slept in the hall until morning. I had an 8:00 am appointment for my internship at the United Nations where I would put my international relations degree to good work while completing my Master’s. I awoke early, finding the dorm manager hadn’t arrived, and hurriedly prepared for my internship. I raced to the bathroom, opened my suitcase, found my sport coat, tie, dress shirt, slacks, shaved, combed my hair, and hailed a cab racing down east 34th street, then north, up 1st Street, to the iconic, UN headquarters. I presented myself to the UN security personnel who escorted me to the cafeteria kitchen where I was met by Chef Geraldo, a rotund man with a Salvador Dali moustache. I could tell he was a veteran chef at the UN by his name embraided in gold on his Chef’s uniform. “You’re just in time to begin preparations for lunch kid”. He threw me an apron, and ordered me to core and chop eight sweet apples, slice in half, four cups of red, seedless grapes, thinly slice four cups of celery, and thoroughly wash and dry a head of lettuce. As I was completing my tasks within the busy kitchen, I wondered about the posh internship within the National Security Council I expected. I was a hardworking kid growing up on a farm, and learned to put my head down and do what I was told. Chef Geraldo approached me angrily, grabbing the knife from me, “Lest you want to lose your fingers in the salad, you chop like this!” I was amazed at how quickly he was able to chop, and his “tutorial” sped up my work. The morning quickly turned to early afternoon when I heard the red phone on the wall ring. Chef Geraldo ran to pick up the call, “Yes, Sir. I’m short handed today due to the flu bug. No, my VIP waiter is out sick. Yes, Sir, I will have a suitable replacement ready. We’ll await your arrival.” Chef Geraldo grabbed me by the arm and ushered me into the locker room. He unlocked a closet, and removed a uniform. “Put this on, and let me see how you look!” “Where’s the bathroom for me to change, Chef?” “Right here and now. No time to waste!” I stripped down to my boxers, white T, black socks, and began to slip into a neatly pressed pair of black slacks with a gold stripe up each leg, a white tuxedo shirt, clip on black, bow tie, shiny, black, patent leather shoes, and a white, tuxedo jacket with gold epaulets. I placed a white hat with gold braids resembling an Admiral’s hat on my head. “Let me see you, kid. Stand in front of the mirror!” I looked like a crew member from the “Love Boat” TV series. “Ah perfecto! Place these white gloves on. I noticed your right-handed. Serve with your right hand, and keep your left arm tucked behind your back when serving, and always use the phrase, “Yes, Madame”. Two brawly men dressed in business suits entered the kitchen, “United States Secret Service. You must be the replacement waiter. Show us your identification.” I handed them my South Dakota driver’s license. They placed the information from my license into a smart phone which, I presume, quickly checked me for any criminal background. “Chef, we’re good to go. The ladies are waiting for lunch. Is the cart ready with the salads?” “Yes, gentlemen. I prepared a service for four, including our finest gold leaf china, silverware, glassware, condiments, and the salad plates have been chilled.” The Secret Service covered the cart with a starched, white table cloth, and began to wheel the cart toward a service elevator located within the kitchen, barking, “You’re not a trained waiter, but the ladies are in a hurry between meetings, and will likely not notice. Don’t speak unless spoken to!” We arrived at the top floor of the UN. It was plush, and I could tell it was reserved for top ranking UN officials and dignitaries. The Secret Service stopped just outside two, heavy walnut doors, which appeared to be a private meeting room. “We’ll open the doors, wheel in the cart, present you as their waiter, leave, and you’ll take it from there. Before we begin, sign this non-disclosure statement. It has “teeth” kid, and says you’re not to repeat anything you hear or see in the meeting. After you serve the lunch, gently close the doors, and stand just outside. If they need you, you’ll hear a bell ring. We’ll be standing nearby”. I signed the “NDA”, the agents opened the doors revealing four professionally dressed women seated around an oak table with a white table cloth. I immediately recognized the President of the United States, President Julia Farnsworth. I was scarred stiff when the Secret Service rolled in the cart, and excused themselves, “Enjoy you lunch ladies. Your waiter, Adam, will be attending to your needs” The heavy walnut doors closed behind them, and I attempted not to tremble. My intimidation was quelled by the welcoming voice of President Farnsworth, “Hello, Adam. May I present Madame Secretary General of the United Nations, Changling Liu, Director General Mindi Agarwal of the World Health Organization, and Angelique Mendoza, President of the World Bank.” Remembering to keep my left hand tucked behind my back, and serve only with my right hand, I began to place the salads, first to President Farnsworth, then the Secretary General, followed by Madame Agarwal, then Madame Mendoza. I also completed the bread and butter service, finishing with requests for iced tea, coffee, and making certain the crystal water glasses were filled. I excused myself, and exited. The Secret Service guys were grinning. One of them tossed me a handkerchief, saying, “Wipe your forehead, Adam. You’re doing fine.” I stood just outside awaiting the ring of a bell, and could hear the conversation inside the room. It was a surreal moment for me. Just hours before, I was sleeping in the hallway of a dormitory, and now, I had just served lunch to the most powerful women in the world. “I adore Waldorf Salad!” “So, do I, President Farnsworth. We have a similar version in China made with raisins.” “I wish we had such a wonderful chef at the World Bank!” “It’s ironic our chef at the “WHO” prepares highly caloric, rich entrees. We should be leading by example”. The women were jovial, and I could tell they were enjoying their lunch. I heard a phone ring inside the dining room. “Excuse me, ladies, I told “The First Husband” he could reach me here in an emergency. Yes, George, I understand how important the Presidential cufflinks are to you, but you’ll just have to retrace your tracks to find them. I’m in a lunch meeting and can’t help you. Ask the White House valet to assist you!” President Farnsworth slammed the phone down. “I’m President of the United States and have a fifty-year-old son as a husband!” I heard laughter. “I prefer to leave my husband at home in China. All he wants to do in New York is shop, and I don’t have time to pick his clothes out for him!” “I’m so damn tired of my husband leaving the toilet seat up, I’m thinking about placing it around his neck to train him to put it down after urinating. I suppose the Director General of the WHO shouldn’t talk of such things, but he makes me so upset with his thoughtlessness.” “I feel your pain, ladies. I divorced shortly after assuming the Presidency of the World Bank. I raised three successful sons but couldn’t live with a fourth son doubling as a husband!” “I had an interesting dream last night.” “Please tell us about it Changling.” “I dreamed the UN met and devised a “A Grand Bargain”, President Farnsworth. I dreamed the women of the world united, making a “a grand bargain” with the men of the world to hand over all authority, cede all corporate, government, and other supervisory responsibility to the women of the world.” “You’re saying women would rule the world?” “Yes, Angelique.” “Surely, the men would resist unless there was an incentive?” “Precisely, Mindi. We’d pay men to get out of our way! In return for ceding control, the men of the world would receive a monthly stipend, calculated on a sliding scale according to their professional station in life, providing them the opportunity to live a life of leisure, but with the mandate they stay in private life, or assume employment as low level administrators, laborers, and serve in the armed forces with the understanding they would never ascend above their female supervisors.” “What a fascinating dream, Changling. The World Bank is capable of preparing a study of the economic feasibility of your “grand bargain”. But what about those women desiring families and a husband? With all play, and no responsibilities, there may be no incentive for men to marry and procreate.” “That’s a great question, Angelique. If the supply of eligible husbands was to dwindle, I believe an added stipend could be offered to attract men to marry, become fathers, assume responsibility for taking care of the children, and the home, while their wives are working.” Man, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was it just “girl talk” or a plan to upend the male-female role models accepted since the dawn of time? A chime was heard denoting the meeting of the UN assembly was resuming, and I could hear the women begin to leave the table, gather their effects, and head for the door. I immediately opened both doors, and resumed my “post”. As each woman left the dining room, they politely nodded their pleasure with my service, and lastly, President Farnsworth exited, and stood before me. “Thank you for the wonderful lunch service, Adam. You performed admirably given the last-minute circumstances. Here is a card with the contact information for my Chief of Staff. I’ll inform him you’ll be inquiring about an internship at the White House.” “Thank you, President Farnsworth.” One of the Secret Service agents escorted the ladies to the private elevator, but the second Agent approached me, asking, “You’re white as a ghost! What the hell did you hear inside?” “I’m under a strict Non-Disclosure Agreement, Sir.” He smiled and ran to join his partner. I began to bus the table, and it occurred to me, the twelve hours I spent in New York, passed like a minute, a “New York Minute”. I reflected on what the days, months, and years might bring, knowing that anything was possible. I whispered the lyrics to the Don Henley song my father enjoyed, In a New York minute
Everything can change In a New York minute You can get out of the way In a New York minute Everything can change In a New York minute
BANZO(Dedicated to Luz) # YIARA "Let me go! I need to wander…I want to watch the sunrise, watch the waters of the rivers run, hear the birds sing. I want to be born! I want to live!” Yiara Valdilene Gonçalves Barbosa softly sang Cartola's "Preciso Me Encontrar" as she stood over the saucepan wafting the savory effusion of the vatapá de peixe to her face. Steam wrapped around her thick braids as she hovered above the seething fish and groundnut stew, gently stirring in breadcrumbs soaked in coconut milk. As the curdled dendê oil and diced onions heated up in the adjacent sauté pan, the young woman dug her hands into the acarajé batter of dried chilies and pureed black-eyed peas, then removed and shaped each handful into a small cake. Yiara submerged each acarajé into the sizzling red oil and watched as they rolled and disappeared beneath like boulders consumed in the molten belly of a volcano. Her eyes quivered as she lustfully inhaled the pungent fusion of the cooking ingredients. The aroma inundated her mind with vivid snapshots of a life she would never have again. Resigned to her fate, Yiara exhaled deeply and returned to cooking. She carefully removed the last acarajé from the oil, slit open and impressed its inside, and spooned in the vatapá and chopped tomatoes. She kissed the droplets of sauce peppering her wrist, moving upwards towards the acarajé cupped in her right hand. Her stomach growled. Realizing her hunger, perhaps more so for her native Brazil than for the food, she obeyed its call with a tender bite into the spicy fritter. A forgotten sense of familiarity and comfort traveled through her body as she slowly savored the marriage of piquant flavors in her mouth. How long had it been, she pondered. Several years had passed since Yiara had impulsively boarded her one-way flight to Texas, eager to escape the ennui and unsophistication of northern Brazil. She had wanted new experiences and to achieve the American Dream, as had her employer, Henrique Reznik, the son of Czech immigrants from Paraná. A decade before their introduction, Henrique Reznik had discovered the similarities between the barbecue traditions of southern Brazil, where he was raised, and the Hill Country of Central Texas; both having been heavily influenced by Czech meat markets and the gaucho lifestyle in Brazil’s drylands. The idea of uniting the two “straight from the stick” churrasco-styles had ensnared his mind, leading Henrique to invest his entire savings into establishing the award-winning Brazilian steakhouse, “Capataz Churrascaria”. At the time of Yiara's arrival to Austin, the steakhouse had been nominated as one of Texas Monthly's “Top BBQ Joints”, not only for its succulent rotisserie grilled meats and unique side dishes, but for Henrique’s signature Moqueca Capixaba, a seafood stew from his native Paraná, prepared and served in traditional Goiabeira panelas. Moqueca had been one of Yiara's favorite meals growing up in the coastal city of Belém do Pará; however, she struggled to appreciate the flattened taste of Henrique’s Moqueca, which omitted the tropical flavors of coconut milk, malagueta peppers, and dendê oil her late grandmother had traditionally used in her cooking. Yiara had departed Brazil with the inerrant assumption that, if she ever desired, the culinary delights of northern Brazil would be within reach at the steakhouse where she would work part-time, or in the kitchen of the Reznik's home where she would assist the family as a housekeeper and cook. To her surprise and dismay, most of the traditional dish variations at Capataz had been bleached of their African and Amerindian influences; and for a woman whose life had been imbued with a strong connection to her faith and culture through food, this absence affected Yiara more deeply than she could have imagined. During her first few years in Austin, Yiara had experienced an unsatiated craving for those familiar tastes and scents of home absent from her life. Her visceral hunger, at times, would leave her suspended in a functional state of deep, indistinct nostalgia. On cooler days, for instance, the expatriate would want for nothing more than a steaming cuia of spicy tacacá from the small stand on Largo de São Sebastião. She would fixate so much on the nearly indiscernible tingling taste of the soup – the tang of the briny shrimp, yellow peppers, and manioc broth, married with the numbing sensation of the tart jambú leaves – that she would unintentionally forfeit meals the entire day. On days of sweltering heat, she would replay memories of rushing from her childhood home to catch the seller of guaraná milkshakes as he passed down the street on a bicycle cart. In her nostalgia, she could taste the richness of the thick berry juice and its generous coating of crushed cashews and chocolate syrup as if she were drinking it presently. As more time in Austin passed, this superficial hunger had been supplanted by a deep and enervating hunger that began to slowly eat away at both her body and spirit. Yiara had not only discovered that her comforts of home were out of reach, but also that she may never return home, for Henrique and his wife - Yiara's childhood best friend - had entrapped her in a perpetual cycle of poverty and slavery, preventing her from realizing her own American Dream. Until this moment, as Yiara reflected on her life’s transition in the kitchen of her captors, she had never felt the tenuousness of her deliberate uprooting-turned-enslavement so profoundly. The vatapá-filled acarajé on her tongue – that sacred and unchanging food enshrined in her people’s culture and faith – had become her awakening. # The second bite of the acarajé propelled Yiara to the boxy kitchen of her childhood home in Belém. The pungent smell of shrimp and dendê impregnated the air, as if traversing space and time from the Reznik’s kitchen to where her heart longed to return. Yiara watched curiously from the kitchen threshold as her grandmother, whom she had affectionately called Mameto, pressed hard-boiled eggs and prawns into the crust of a bean stew. Mameto lifted the ceramic pot from the linoleum countertop and lowered it for an adolescent Yiara to view. "Sapinha, this is Omolocum. O-mo-lu-cum.” Mameto repeated, emphasizing the syllabic breaks. "It's makuriá, our sacred food offering for Mãe Dandalunda Kisimbi. You must always serve Omolocum in a round stoneware bowl like this. Together, this all represents fertility and birth, so that someday She will bless you with bundles of love, wealth, and even your own sapinha.” Mameto smiled gaily before kissing her granddaughter’s forehead. "Why do we make food for the Inkises?" the little girl asked. "The makuriá is full of vital energies for the Inkises and it can nurture and strengthen the link between ourselves and them. Preparing the makuriá is a way of showing gratitude for the Inkises' love and support." Yiara had arrived on the day Mameto had first begun to discipline her in the art of cooking the makuriá for Dandalunda Kisimbi and the remaining pantheon of Inkises, African divinities of nature. It had also been the moment that set-in-motion Yiara’s ascent to the role of Mameto Mulambi “mother who cooks” – the priestess responsible for scrupulously preparing the makuriá before presenting it at the gongá and to the congregants of the terreiro where they worshipped. This role had been informally fulfilled by the women in their family long before the age of slavery. Yiara, still invisible in the kitchen, continued to watch the endearing pair before suddenly being transported to another memory. A seven-year-old Yiara stood beside Mameto at the gongá as her grandmother began to introduce the statuettes of the Entidades, the emissaries of the Inkises. “The Entidades are enlightened spirits with the ability to communicate with us directly on behalf of the Inkises." Mameto pointed to a cluster of statuettes of dark-skinned natives in tribal clothing. "These are the caboclos, who give you willpower and strength to finish great tasks. These are the wise pretos velhos, old black slaves who bring you resolve when you’re stressed or burdened with a troubled situation. These are the children to cheer you up when you’re feeling lonely or sad. The gauchos and sailors to protect you as you work and travel. And here are the Guardians of the Seven Crossroads, Entidades of Pai Mutalambô. The Guardians guide us to the right paths in life when we lose ourselves." "Like the guardian angels Lelê told me about?" "Pois é, Sapinha. The Entidades are the equivalent of what Christians would call guardian angels. Though the Guardians of the Seven Crossroads include the bohemian spirits Exu and Pambujila." Mameto pointed to statuettes of a suave man in a white suit and a seductively dressed woman in red. "They can both be tricksters, but they can also protect good people from bad things and bad people." “Like the bad men who sent Mamãe and Papaí to Zambi?” her granddaughter inquired. “Yes, Sapinha. They are complicated Entidades. You’ll understand better when you’re older. Just remember there are people all around you, even friends and neighbors, who can become possessed by bad spirits that will drive them to commit misdeeds, bad actions." # Yiara continued to eat the acarajé, traveling deeper into her memories of Belém and her childhood, each bite recharging her spirit. A bit of vatapá dripped onto her chest in between the guias underneath her blouse. The strands of sacred beads had hung around her neck as if woven into her skin for sixteen years. Yiara, like all new initiates of the terreiro, had received her guias after a series of rites: a baptism of fresh water and crushed kola seed; a ritual head shaving; a conveyance of mukí, or life force energy, to her head through a blood offering; and finally, her three-year ritual of obligation to the terreiro. Yiara brushed her fingers against the guias before being propelled in time once more to the afternoon of her initiation. A preteen Yiara spun in front of the long mirror in her grandmother’s room, eager to show off her outfit at the ceremony. She wore a white dress embroidered with lace, a copper-colored cloth wrapped snugly around her torso, and her dark locks twisted into a crown underneath a matching headwrap. She stopped spinning and giggled at the grin-engendering stretch of Mameto’s face as her grandmother finished tying her own headwrap tightly over her ears. Mameto rose from the bed revealing a dress more extravagant than the usual accoutrements she wore for toques. Her long, multicolored brajas and guias dos búzios swayed around her neck against a lustrous silver lace blouse accentuating an exquisite, white vestment beneath. With the completion of her rites, Yiara had ascended to access deeper levels of spiritual knowledge and to receive the crystal green and blue guias linking her to the divine energies of her guardian Inkises, Mutalambô, "Lord of Forests and the Hunt” and Dandalunda Kisimbi, “Mother of Fresh Waters and Fertility". The terreiro itself had been named after Telekompensu, the progeny of Mutalambô and Dandalunda Kisimbi. In the terreiro, it was believed that Mutalambô and Dandalunda Kisimbi were the ruling guardian Inkises of the self-emancipated caboclo and negro slaves. Together, the divinities had protected the enslaved as they fled the horrors of captivity on the plantations and cattle ranches of Grão-Pará to refuge deep into the northern highlands and wild, verdant interior of the floresta. As a child, Yiara had enjoyed listening to Mameto and the other terreiro elders recite the secrets and histories of the Inkises and their ancestors. The stories were a doorway into her ancestral memories, a spiritual connection to the sovereign tribal nations of Amazonia and the great kingdoms of the Kongo, including those replicated in the kilombos of northern Brazil. It was an empowering reminder to Yiara that she had descended from great men and women and an even greater universal force. # MAMETO Mameto, known to the Macumba comunidade as Mãe Luzia Gonçalves Barbosa, was the high priestess of O Centro de Doce Telekompensu, a terreiro established in the first-floor space of her narrow two-story home on Passagem São Sebastião in Belém. As a high priestess of the terreiro, Mameto maintained nobility as a highly-respected spiritual healer and herbalist, with a knowledge of medicinal plants and emetics purported to be exponentially greater than all the traditional and evangelical healers – pajés, curandeiros, babalorixas, and kimbandistas – in Belém. It was even believed by the comunidade that Mameto’s mukí had grown so great from her fervent communications with the Entidades that it was powerful enough to reverse the evil eye, repel malicious spirits, and heal those afflicted with negative energies. This was knowledge that had been passed on for generations in her family and from within the forest-dwelling mocambo community in which she had been raised. Mameto, a fourth-generation survivor of a mocambo near Erepecuru, which had once been part of a larger, stratified kilombo, had inherited the histories and traditions of her people stretching back to her great-great grandmother Mãe Benedita Gonçalves. It was a two-hundred-year legacy Mameto had left behind physically, but not spiritually, when she moved to Belém after the lives of her son Yamando and his wife Jasy had been tragically extinguished. The couple, who had been outspoken activists in the Traditional Populations land rights movement, were murdered during a collective campout at the construction site of a massive extractive infrastructure project. A small consortium of irate miners and land speculators had hired thugs to eliminate any obstacles to the survey of the territory. Their only child, a beautiful cafuza girl with curly black hair, bright eyes like stormy quartz, and skin like a Brazil nut had only been nine weeks old, unbaptized and unnamed. A grief-stricken Mameto brought her granddaughter to a nearby igarapé enclosed behind a thicket. She dripped honey onto the child’s head (Dandalunda Kisimbi's favorite taste) and then bathed her in the Mother’s rippling waters. Finally, she asked the supreme creator Zambi for blessing and protection. “As everything has been born out of water, let this child bathe in its divine energies. As water is older than earth and cannot be destroyed, let not this child’s spirit be destroyed. Môkoiu no Zambi. God bless you.” She christened the child Yiara, the Tupí name for "mother of sweet waters", just as she had named her son “precursor of the waters”. Yiara was given a name that spoke of the child's history and her future. Although Yiara had moved to Belém with Mameto as a toddler, both women were still immensely proud of their cafuzo heritage and their people’s unyielding faith in the power of the Inkises. It was a pride that had touched them deeply, not through religious pontifications, but through the collective mukí of the irmandade. Mameto passed on the vivid stories of her grandmother to all those who came after her; and Yiara lived courageously and with conviction like her parents as if her spirit were still in the floresta. In Belém, Yiara had frequently lost herself in mystic spaces praying to the Inkises and ancestral spirits. “The spirit resides in the heart,” Mameto would remind her. “As long as the heart continues to beat, life exists and the divine energies of the Inkises exist, intertwining and flowing through your body.” Even in youth, Yiara would be transported through the festive toques of the terreiro: the deep devotional fervor of the irmandade as they recited the ritual incantations and chants; the rhythmic clapping and singing of ancestral songs to the engoma, tumbadeiras, and atabaque “Kongo” drums; the offering of the makuriá and pouring of libations at the decadent gongá illuminated by melting candles; the intense quivering, undulating and agonized gasping of the initiates in the midst of spiritual possession like mounted wild horses; the misty spray of strong sugarcane liquor and the pungent smell of sweat, tobacco, sandalwood, blood, and roasting meats permeating the humid, musty air of the abassá, the ceremonial space. It was no different than the traditional calundus of Mãe Benedita’s time. This was the same connection the irmandade of O Centro de Doce Telekompensu felt when they stepped inside the terreiro. O Centro invited all to reclaim their ancestry. Inside the terreiro, the magick transported them from contemporary Brazil to the Amazonia and Kongo of yesteryear, wherein, the irmandade could return to their noble condition of powerful, respected warriors and healer-diviners. # ZENZA On plantations across the Portuguese colony, there lay the senzalas – homesteads of the slaves, stations of perdition where dissonant moans of despair and death mingled with those of reverence and childbirth. Zenza Eliana Gonçalves was born into this world on the beaten earth floor of a mud-walled and thatch roof senzala. Her mother, Benedita (her Bantu name lost through time) had been a beautiful tucuma-skinned priestess and slave from Angola, green and unacculturated to Brazil. Benedita vigorously prayed in her native Kimbundu as she pushed Zenza from her womb into the arms of the midwife. Benedita baptized the child in a small tub of fresh water, then anointed her head with herbal oils and the blood of a freshly-killed dove. The two women remarked on the beautiful serenity of Zenza's golden-brown face as she lay in her mother's arms, unaware of the misery and misfortune around them. It was almost certain to them that the child would be marked as a daughter of Dandalunda Kisimbi and would have the essence and protection of the maternal Inkise throughout her life. Benedita thus named her daughter after the river that had traversed her village in Angola. Many years before Zenza’s birth, a restless force had begun to spread and insinuate itself into the spirits of many of the slaves, forcing upon them a nostalgic madness and quebranto -- a brokenness of the spirit -- that could only be extinguished by death. This quebranto left the slaves in a condition as if their bodies had been deeply perforated by an invasive dark magick, beckoning the most malevolent energies to infect their spirits. Through her unwavering faith in the Inkises, Benedita had survived the long voyage across Kalunga, “the great grave of the sea”, the boundary between the world of the living and dead. For some of her fellow captive Africans though, they had thrown themselves overboard to be blanketed in the oceanic embrace of Queen Kaitumbá, who ruled over Kalunga. The fatal option of the slaves followed them from ship to plantation, facilitated by the fanatical belief that death would release their spirits to the homeland from which they had been so violently expelled. Most of the enslaved negros had imagined no possibility of returning to Mother Africa in that life, nor of freedom; and many crioulo slaves born into captivity had been deprived of ever knowing the continent like the boçal slaves, like Benedita. And as the white men furthered their crusade against the slaves and their old traditions in the name of profit and their disenfranchising religion, the collective mukí of the people on the plantation continued to wane. Without a connection to the Inkises and ancestral spirits, many of the slaves forgot themselves and their inherited nobility as embattled warriors, proud sovereigns, respected medicine men, and stealthy hunters. Unable to receive or pass on the healing energies from the Inkises, they became spiritually-hijacked, zombies under the control of not only the sinhos and their even more malicious overseers, but of the mortal melancholy spreading across the plantations. Benedita, among other boçal slaves from the Kongo, had believed that at birth sentient beings called mulunji inhabited empty bodies in the womb. With dark magick, it was possible that the mulunji could be prematurely driven from their bodies to a purgatory beyond the wardenship of Kaviungo "Lord of Diseases and Souls on Earth". There, the unfortunate souls would remain trapped until the body’s final breath of life. Benedita and the other healer-diviners suspected that the white clergymen visiting the sinhos had cast this curse to tame the slaves, not understanding its devastating power. They called the curse Banzo. Swelling numbers of slaves took to these feverish narratives and eventually ended their lives, seeking immediate liberation from their suffering. Some through conventional methods of drowning, hanging, or slowly starving themselves; and others, in the most macabre ways — taking cutlasses and cane leaves to their wrists and necks, feeding themselves through millstones and the turning gears of the calumbá, leaping into boiling cane juice, swallowing handfuls of earth, and ingesting the hallucinogenic and lethal herbal potions of the beguiling witch doctors on the plantations and in nearby port towns. To the banzado -- those afflicted with Banzo -- the means was irrelevant so long as their broken and humbled spirits were carried from their earthly purgatory by the primordial mother Zumbarandá and guided by Matamba "Commander of the Dead" at the crossroads to the afterlife. As the mukí of the enslaved peoples diminished on the plantations, so too did the magick of Old Africa. Soon, Banzo seemed unbreakable by even the most powerful magick of the caboclo and negro healer-diviners. Benedita, who had been fortunate enough to be spared from "sickle and hoe" work in the cane fields with the other boçal slaves, had been alternatively responsible for maintaining the containers in the sugarcane mill. For this reason, she had been more shielded from the penumbra of Banzo that easily tagged onto field slaves, shadowing their light of existence. Before Zenza could even walk, Benedita had attracted the lustful eye of the plantation owner, Sinho Gonçalves, who became smitten after passing by the negrinha. Within the month, the Sinho had ordered Benedita and her newborn to be transferred from the senzalas of the field slaves to those nearer to the Casa Grande. Zenza and her mother were uprooted and callously separated from her father Isaias, who continued to work the fields until becoming banzado not long after his family's forced departure. # YIARA Yiara's face glowed with the memories of Mameto and O Centro de Doce Telekompensu, until she remembered her slippery slope to a life without family or friends, far from her motherland. She tongued around her mouth for the last bits of acarajé trying to delay the oncoming effects of withdrawal, which would inevitably send her plummeting back to her miserable reality. The echo of a woman's overweening voice began to pound at her subconscious. Words of malice, belittlement, and provocation beat at her. “Vai á merda piranha", Yiara silently cursed as she indulged herself with a final bite of the acarajé and rechanneled the memory of her grandmother. Mameto anxiously descended and ascended the stairs from the ground level space housing the abassá and kitchen downstairs to several rooms in their modest upstairs apartment. She juggled several tasks: preparing an early supper of braised chicken with rice, reorganizing household items, shifting tilted wall decorations, browsing the groomed linen closet for kitchen towels, carrying glasses of fresh water and lit candles to the gongá in the center of the abassá, and before finally resting her feet, blessing a plate of xim-xim de galinha for Dandalunda Kisimbi. Nearly desensitized to her grandmother's ritualistic behavior, seventeen-year-old Yiara sat outside on the balcony engrossed in a novel she had borrowed from the school library. Maria Bethania's “Yáyá Massemba” played in the background from her grandmother’s radio: “What a deep night in the bowels of a slave ship. What a long voyage listening to the music of the waves, the beats of a bird's heart in the depths of captivity. It is the semba of the slave world beating samba in my chest.” Mameto stared at her granddaughter from the dining room table and rhythmically skirted across the off-white tile flooring inwardly singing along. She placed her hand on the side of the wooden shutter doors for balance chipping off a chunk of pale cerulean paint. Yiara pulled her nose from the book sensing the nimbus of her grandmother's presence. "Yes, Mameto?” she asked respectfully, though slightly irritated by the disturbance. “Have you saluted Mãe Dandalunda Kisimbi yet? It's her day." Yiara sighed and shook her head. She placed her book open on the cushioned wicker chair and followed the smell of the burning Hana-Noka incense downstairs to the abassá. She laid herself out upon the bamboo mat in front of the gongá at Dandalunda Kisimbi’s ornate crown and her earthenware terrina. The peacock feather-engraved terrina fashioned a dove on its lid and sat upon a yellow lace skirt encircled by yellow roses and white lilies, two small mirrors dressed in light blue ribbons, and a golden fan. With her arms at her side, Yiara touched her head to the floor and pendulated her body to both sides in a display of obeisance. “Mãe Dandalunda Kisimbi ê, Mother of Sweet Waters, thank you for your continuous protection and blessings over our home, the terreiro and irmandade, Mameto, and myself.” She inhaled the sweet aroma of the roses as she lifted herself from the mat. The sweetness lingered in Yiara's memory until she exhaled, resurfacing in reality. Yiara’s eyes opened to a marble kitchen counter coated in vegetable skins, breadcrumbs, and soiled cooking utensils. "Saudades", she sulked. She licked the sauce from her fingers and reached for the metal ladle seated in the pot. She stared pensively at the scant amount of sauce left in the deep skillet and the remaining acarajé sitting naked in the platter. Yiara cut into the final acarajé, hollowed the inside with her thumb, and filled it meagerly with the remaining vatapá. "Just one more,” she declared timidly, aware that this momentary leisure time could appear as idleness to the Rezniks. A violent slap disrupted her bite. Yiara quickly wiped the smeared sauce from the side of her mouth and brushed it against her apron. Her cheeks burned aggressively, but she withheld from assuaging her face. Averting her eyes in the process, she slowly turned to face her assailant – Henrique's wife, Lucileide “Leide” Marie de Moraes. “Yaya, what the hell do you think you're doing?” Yiara apologized, forsaking the litany of curses she would have lined up years before. "Stealing food from us now?" The petite woman forcefully slapped the unsullied acarajé from her hand to the brownstone parlor floor. The fritter glistened in the bars of sunlight that danced across the freshly polished floor. Yiara stared peripherally at the oily mess as the woman continued to berate her. She felt embers of anger for the woman's accusations, the waste of money and time invested in preparing the meal, and for the wasted magick in the acarajé that had briefly sent her home. Her anger subsided though as she became fraught over whether she should wait out the woman's diatribe or clean the floor before it spoiled the polish job. "Yaya! Are you listening to me?" the woman demanded, inflating her diminutive frame to intimidate her. Yiara wished she were in the position to respond appropriately: "Puxa! Shut your lips venomous serpent! How dare you call me by that name!" But she bit her tongue instead. At one point in the women's lives, the two had been inseparable. Yiara had called the bellicose woman standing before her “Lelê”, like a coconut pound cake, with the deepest feelings of love and friendship, and that woman had called her "Yaya". But now, with the deepest feelings of disdain and betrayal, Yiara had absolutely no intention or desire to ever reiterate such a term of endearment. It had been just a few years before that the two women had walked together across the black and white mosaic tiles of Largo de São Sebastião in Manaus eating steaming cuias de tacacá and happily recounting their childhood together and adult years apart. It had appeared to have been a serendipitous reunion, but that encounter would lead directly to Yiara’s entrapment. For what reason and for what length of time is uncertain, but both Leide and Henrique had been deeply touched by some malefic magick or circumstance which had irrevocably poisoned their hearts and spilled over into the lives of those who unfortunately crossed roads with them. Had this not been the same plight that had befallen her ancestors – victims of negro and white men alike, corrupted by greed, fear, and hate? Had a less naive version of herself requested translated immigration and working papers, or read deeper into Capataz’s foreboding restaurant logo, Yiara would have never ended up an indentured servant. Her first impression of Capataz had been its unnerving cartoon mascot on the logo – a bolas-carrying bandit dressed in long pleated trousers, leather boots, and a wide flat hat. The gaúcho grinned minaciously as if he had just bludgeoned the head of a feisty bull after bringing it to its knees with the bolas. It drudged up painful feelings of her parents’ deaths. Unfortunately, Yiara had been too captivated by the idea of reconnecting with Leide and escaping Brazil to heed the omen. It had been Henrique, who after their initial meeting with Yiara in Manaus, had coaxed naive and weak-minded Leide, like the serpent of Eden, into beguiling her unwitting childhood friend into signing the illegitimate set of working papers and turning over her identification, for "safe keeping". Leide had initially been loath to the duplicitous scheme, but her experiences in life had changed her for the worst. Though Leide had felt underlying guilt for her part in Yiara's plight, those feelings were eviscerated upon discovery of Henrique's late-night visits to Yiara. This jealousy only fed into Leide’s corrupted moral and mistreatment of her former friend. This all led Yiara to rename the portentous pair “The Harlot" and "The Trickster” interchangeably, as if they were the perverse embodiments of the mischievous Entidades Exu and Pambujila. # Leide continued to harangue the woman in the middle of the kitchen until her rebuke was disrupted by the heavy footsteps of Henrique's children descending the carpeted staircase. Two portly teenage boys rushed past the women to the front door. “Leide, let's go! We're late!” the smaller boy demanded. The boys were both stocky like their father and baby-faced like their late mother. Ricardo, a freshman in middle school, permanently wore a grimace on his face as if he were contemplating something unpleasant. His younger brother Ebrahim, whom they called Coco, was the more jovial of the two. It was obvious that Leide had neither conceived nor given birth to them, or any child for that matter. She lacked the universal maternal instinct as well as the voluptuous childbearing physique to have done either. She was a bird-thin woman with enough vanity to vie against a dressing room of glitter-painted Carnaval dancers. As a woman of humble beginnings in Belém, she lived for the material luxuries Henrique provided her: fine clothes, jewelry, aged wines and champagnes, dethorned roses, and spa visits. “Woman!” Coco shouted from the back seat of Leide's expensive birthday present. The harlot's beauty and youth could not win over all the males of the Reznik household. Leide pursed her lips and flared her nose. Thick blue veins – unusually evident for a woman her color – began to throb and protrude from her naked forehead. She massaged her temple in unnerving silence. Yiara swore smoking fire would accompany Leide's eventual exhalation, but instead, the beetroot red in her cashew-colored complexion softened. “Don't do this again,” the woman demanded in a heavy Portuguese accent, returning to her native tongue thereafter in another sporadic burst of ire. “Puxa! You still haven't learned. What if Henrique was standing here, not me?” Her voice shrilled slightly. A thought passed quickly through Yiara's mind if Leide still felt a morsel of compassion for her, or at least penitence. A serpentine grin took shape on Leide's face preceding the venom that spit from her mouth. “Remember what happened last time?” As long as Yiara's hands wore those second degree burn scars, she would remember. Each morning and evening Yiara rubbed a proteinous mixture of andiroba oil and animal tallow on her right hand to aid the mending process. It had been three weeks. “We're helping you. We brought you to America, gave you a job, and took you into our home from out of squalor with that Indio boat man,” Leide proclaimed contemptuously about Yiara's ex-partner. “And yet you thank us by neglecting your chores to stuff your face and daydream. Folgada! So lazy.” She spoke in English once more, clearly trying to embarrass the English illiterate woman. “Don't bite the hand that feeds you.” Yiara grasped the gist of her statement, having learned enough words over time from an atypical process of cultural assimilation: insults, overheard conversations, television shows, and the labels and pictures on grocery products. She nodded apologetically and quickly set the remaining fritters in a Tupperware container. “Bring me the quindão.” The harlot adjusted the oversized sunglasses pulling back her Keratin-straightened almond hair smelling sweetly of coconut oil. She casually yanked at the patterned sundress barely covering her thighs before receiving the creamy coconut pannacotta Yiara had removed from the fridge. “And open a window. That oil stinks.” Yiara began to clean the kitchen after Leide had pulled out of the driveway in her gleaming convertible with its notable logo emblazoned on the front. As she rubbed softly at the oily residue on the kitchen floor, she began to snicker maniacally. It was the first time she had laughed in weeks. On all fours, Yiara felt like a dog sniffing around for food that had rolled off of someone's plate. In fact, she had eaten the breaded part of the tossed fritter before cleaning the mess on the floor. She had even frozen in her place anticipating the next nostalgic adventure, but the bite accomplished nothing beyond satiating her appetite. Laughing harder, Yiara found it ironic that the Reznik family treated her so much like a dog. The boys were so fond of calling her deplorable cognomens, like “mutt”, “cachorra”, and “cadela cafuza", that she very often wanted to bite a healthy chunk of flesh from each of their fat appendages and rear ends. "It would make a delicious iscas com elas or feijoada," she jested to herself. "Reznik,” she pronounced as if the name ended with an -ie-, “could not taste much different from beef liver or pork hide. I would chew merrily on the bony body of Leide for dessert. She's the real cadela." Any meal other than the leftovers from the delicious meals Yiara cooked for the Rezniks, which sometimes there never were, would have tasted better than the usual frozen dinner meals and snacks she spent her meager wages on. Sadly, even those meals could end up in the children's stomachs. # ZENZA Despite the meek objections of his wife, Sinho Gonçalves assigned Benedita as a cook in the kitchen; and within a year, the negrinha had become a wet nurse to the Sinho's newborn twins and to her own son by him, whom she named after her people, Ndembu. The Sinho's wife spent those first years threatened by his affections for Benedita and eager to torment the slave with her power and privilege as a white woman; however, as Sinho Gonçalves became distracted by other affairs, she slowly grew to appreciate Benedita for the excellent meals and enriching tales she shared with the household. Benedita would spend her remaining years on the plantation in the Casa Grande, entertaining the children of the house with the Amazonian folklore of the caboclos and Bantu tales of her people. She told of Zambi’s creation of the omniverse; of Kimbungo, the great beast that ate little children like the Amazonian Besta-Fera; of the shipwrecked sailor who married Kaitumbá; of Kariampemba, the horned beast who devours the souls of men; of a war between light and dark wizards; and of Mamba Muntu and Mboiaçu, snake-like water nymphs who capture fishermen by their shadows and drown them. Each day, Zenza and Ndembu would jubilantly enact these stories of Old Africa with the Sinho’s children and the servants’ children who were still young enough to enjoy certain liberties while in captivity — for children born of slaves were still slaves and not exempt from labor. In the afternoons, Benedita would prepare sweet and savory snacks for the wife, children, and servants: quindim, sweetened porridges, pamonha, tapioca couscous with açai, cheese bread, and fruit-filled pastels. Though, on the Christian holy days, when the slaves were allowed to recuperate from the work’s week and attend church, Benedita cooked for a greater purpose. As the Mameto Mulambi among the slaves, she prepared the makuriá for the Inkises and would lay it on the gongá in the slave church, which they guised as a shrine to the Christian gods and saints. The slaves’ religious practices and calundus had been banned years before for what the sinhos and visiting clergy described as ceremonies of profane dancing, animal sacrifices, idolatrous altars, cacophonous drumming, and dogmatic devil songs and spells. Thus, both the enslaved negros and caboclos, who refused to relinquish the heritage they still possessed, had syncretized their old traditions with Christianity to practice in the open. As Zenza grew into womanhood, she began to ration her time with the other children and instead help her mother gather ingredients and prepare meals in the kitchen, whilst secretly learning how to cook the makuriá. She also became a maidservant and close companion to the Sinho's daughter, as well as the target of the lascivious pursuits and predatory whims of visiting gentry come to see him; men who would whisper foul words in her ears and unabashedly grope her curves. Zenza, though, unlike her negro and caboclo sisters, could safely retaliate by treating the men with indifference and seeking safety at the side of her wardress or her love interest, the Sinho’s caboclo foreman, Kauan. To her mother’s liking, his Tupí name bared an uncanny likeness to Kwanza, the riverine province in which she had lived before being stolen away. Zenza, like her mother, was well aware of her lack of privilege as a dark-skinned woman, and yet had no yearning to “whiten” herself or integrate herself into Portuguese society through the camaraderie of the Sinho’s daughter or through concubinage to white men (who commonly took negro mistresses). She relished her relative freedom but knew it could not compare to the freedom and nobility Ndembu could be granted through manumission as the son of Sinho Gonçalves. To the utter shock of Zenza and heartbreak of Benedita though, after some regrettable mischief while playing with the Sinho’s youngest son, twelve-year-old Ndembu was sent to the senzalas of the “sickle & hoe” slaves to live and work in the sugar mill away from his family. Benedita had pleaded for forgiveness to the Sinho to no avail, as the boy's mischief had resulted in the emotional stress of a houseguest. Under such duress, Benedita had been left with no other option than to smother her feelings in licentiousness with the Sinho, hoping that he would dissipate her fears and protect their children from all harm. She feared they would never see Ndembu again; she feared he would become acculturated to slavery and the white man's supremacy; she feared he would die brutally at the angry whims of an overseer, having been brought up in the luxurious dissipation of life in the Case Grande; but moreover, she feared that Ndembu would face a fate like Zenza's father Isaias: Banzo. # YIARA Yiara's leisure time was rare, as infrequent as any kindness exchanged by the Rezniks; for activities outside her household and restaurant responsibilities were another setback in settling her debt. Her days were long, averaging fifteen hours, and rife with hardship – between cooking, cleaning, restaurant work, and the debilitating nostalgia clawing within herself. Her nights were longer. Nights at the Reznik household were a tale of misery for Yiara. In the beginning, the setting of the sun was a blessing, her only respite from a perpetual state of unease; until the night Nostalgia and Melancholy surreptitiously followed behind into her bed and spooned her into an uncomfortable state of insomnia. It was a warm embrace compared to that of a less pleasant nightly tenant: Henrique. Henrique had become dissatisfied with his subjectively harmless sexual harassment of the negrinha and expected more from his charge. He had laid claim to her body as he had with her freedom, as had Sinho to Benedita. With the body of an American football lineman,\ and with sovereignty over her employment, lodging, and a passport she had not seen since she arrived at the airport, Yiara was in no position to rebuff his advances. In those late-night hours, she feigned sleep to dissuade the unwanted, wandering appendages of her employer who developed the habit of creeping into her lockless room. It rarely worked. She was silenced into submission as he forced himself upon her as he pleased, just meters from where Leide lay awake in her half-empty bed, completely aware of her husband’s brazen infidelity. The conjugal visits increased as Henrique began experiencing trouble with the expansion of “Capataz” into Mexico City and a precarious partnership deal with a cattle rancher in California. “Never do business with your friends,” she overheard him say to Ricardo. No one knew this better than Yiara. Yiara knew though that Henrique’s visits were merely the tip of the iceberg, and lurking beneath the surface was Henrique's display of a crystal-framed photo of his late wife Priscilla on the desk of his study rather than of Leide. This was the price Leide had ostensibly paid marrying a wealthy widower, twenty years her junior. The couple had united at a crossroads of love, sex, pain, and death. For Henrique, love and anguish for his dying wife Priscilla, the mother of his two children. Lust for his demanding and enchanting mistress. Love for his culinary vision. Pain for the deaths of his wife and his mother, the woman who bequeathed her love of cooking to him. For Leide, love for a callous and reticent man with admirable, unwavering passion (though not necessarily for her). Desire for his growing wealth. Pain from within herself, from her feelings of powerlessness even in the bed of a powerful man. The more Leide perceived his emotional and physical absence, the more antagonistic and fervid her nature became towards both Henrique and Yiara. The unwholesome couple's baleful admonitions became more impassioned and frequent each day; and at the pinnacle of her frustrations, Leide took her aggressions out on Yiara like a jealous yet powerless plantation wife on a slave. Yiara could sense Leide’s vulnerable state when left in private though – eyes always watery and emotive like a sacred animal at the mercy of a hunter. Her marriage vows had been desecrated, her dignity insulted, and her pride wounded. Leide pitied herself as a martyr for the marriage (for divorce from her would not be an option), and yet, she felt no empathy or compassion for the unfortunate victim of her husband’s perfidy – a woman with whom she had shared her fondest memories. Her poisoned heart felt nothing for the condition of shame, abuse, and misery in which she had placed Yiara; and like Henrique, Leide had begun to exercise a sadistic and vindictive power over Yiara. # Zenza Nearly a decade had passed. Fearing slave rebellion and loss of labor through the scourge of Banzo, the plantation owners in the region, against the wishes of the local priests, resolved to pacify the slaves who had yet to become banzado. Zenza’s husband, Kauan, who served as the intermediary between Sinho Gonçalves and the slaves, had furtively gained insight into the vulnerabilities of the plantation and convinced the Sinho to permit the slaves to carry out their calundus on the evening of Christian Mass to promote community approbation. Thus, Kauan, driven to protect Zenza and their unborn child, used the opportunity to organize an escape for their family, including Ndembu. Little had the plantation owners known that the rejuvenation and reclamation of this “unholy” ceremony had once again evoked the divine energies and become the instruments of the slaves' transformation and resistance to Banzo and their penitent oppressors. The calundus sustained their hope and traditions, and provided a way to communicate with themselves, the ancestral spirits, and the Inkises. And thus, the people survived: through the vital energies emanating from the chorales and drumming. The music fed their mukí and implanted in them a sensation of freedom — freedom from the pain in their mutilated, crippled, and beaten bodies, and from Banzo. They soon discovered that their enslavement was not in shackles, iron masks, or pillories, but in their minds and spirits. As the calundus continued, more caboclos and negros rose from the ashes of slavery like the mythical firebird. They returned to their noble conditions and broke free from their shackles. The magick slowly returned to the senzalas, and soon, they began slipping from out of their captors’ control, fleeing the plantations to freedom. Ndembu and Zenza, who had been distanced from each other for so many years, would reunite during an evening calundu. Amongst the distracting drumming and dancing of one of the calundus, Kauan and the siblings fled to an abandoned indigenous settlement in the floresta. # Over time, the trio and other fugitive slaves built fortified settlements in the fecundity of the floresta called mocambos. The Inkises Mutalambô and Mutakalambô, who had dominion over the hunt and the deepest entreaties of the forests – to where the sun's rays could not touch the earth – bequeathed the knowledge of the floresta to the fugitives through the shamans of indigenous tribes; and with the thickening of the floresta, they made the fugitive slaves invisible to the predatory capitães do mato and wild dogs hunting them from the plantations. Dandalunda Kisimbi, whom they called Mãe Cachoeira “Mother of the Waterfall”, helped the fugitive slaves and natives safely navigate a treacherous labyrinth of waterways to the crown of a waterfall where they hid in its heavy mist; all the while, luring the pursuant capitães do mato with deceivingly calm waters to implacable rapids, which would ultimately drag their shanties over her precipitous waterfalls. With the protection of the Inkises, the fugitive slaves escaped cohorts of soldiers, overseers, and vicious dogs, who all too soon disappeared in the green inferno, falling prey to white waters, ravenous beasts, and eventually, the warrior forces of the kilombos. The trio, among others, became adept in magical herbalism, navigation, and the machete-wielding martial arts of capoeira and tudundun. And through the magick of healer-diviners, they transformed into powerful calhambolas divined with preternatural powers, with the ability to glide effortlessly across the tree canopies and cloak themselves with invisibility during robberies of trade posts and passing caravans. The calhambolas manifested these stratified mocambos into great kilombos, hidden cafuzo kingdoms protected by wooden palisades, pitfalls, and caltrop-lined pathways. Both became subjects of wonder and terror for white men. # PART II YIARA That evening, after the family had eaten and Yiara had cleaned, she retired outside to “her” stone bench underneath the Rezniks' magnificent Crapemyrtle tree. It was the centerpiece of their property — a forty-foot-tall shady respite on the broiling summer days that rivaled hot season in Pará and a dreamscape to escape to a hundred meters from her daily nightmare. A brilliant display of the tree's clustered pink and lavender flowers grew umbrella-like over half the yard, illuminated by a half dozen white and pink landscape lights. Yiara shuffled along the freshly manicured lawn towards the tree, staring upward at the darkening sky and contrasting brightness of the moon and stars. The air felt refreshingly crisp after having stood over a heated oven and stove for several hours in the soupy summer heat. She shivered a bit. The hair on her arms rose and her skin prickled like a chicken. She sat down, rubbing down her arms to generate warmth.
Yiara felt safest here. If she closed her eyes and listened to the songs of nature, it almost felt at times that she was no longer in Austin, but transported back to nights in Iranduba with her "Indío boy", the time between when the town had begun to sleep and Nature had begun to awaken. As Yiara sat on her bench enjoying the complacency of the evening, Leide approached her from behind. “Yaya.” Yiara stood up immediately, too surprised to be perturbed. “Henrique has a potential partner coming to stay with us Thursday night,” she said in Portuguese. I want you to prepare churrasco, given the occasion. Take this for the meat, vegetables, and whatever else is needed.” Yiara accepted the money. “As usual, bring me the receipt and change afterward.” “I'll need to take a bus to the feira to get the ingredients. I can prepare and marinade the meats tomorrow evening and get everything else done on Thursday, if I'm excused from shift at Capataz.” Yiara typically cooked her churrasco meats with a mixture of rock salt, cachaça rum, and milk. She searched Leide's eyes for approval. Leide acknowledged Yiara's servility and her own authority, then nodded. "I'll let Henrique know. Don't fuck this up Yaya. This dinner is a big deal for us." The dinner would be a grossly lucrative meal for the Rezniks if Henrique succeeded in brokering a deal with Manoel dos Arcos, a Paraguayan-born cattle rancher-cum-entrepreneur with ranches in South Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas. The partnership would expand the Capataz chain into two new states and boost profits for the business overall. She walked back towards the house. “Hey,” Leide exclaimed as she paused mid-walk, “Do you know how to make that tangy juice your grandmother used to make for churrascos? I've been craving it lately for some strange reason. Even though I haven't had it in years." “Aruá?” Yaya answered, thinking of the slightly alcoholic drink Mameto would brew from pineapple peels, crushed ginger, brown sugar, spices, and orange juice. Mameto would also serve the aruá with the makuriá at toques in the terreiros. “Yes, yes. That's it." Leide smugly waved her pointer finger in the air as if she had remembered the name. "I want a pitcher of that at the dinner. Make it strong." "Ok, but that takes about four days to make." "Well you have two," she negated as she walked away back to the house. Yiara sat back down on the bench and thought about her yesteryears with Leide in Belém, before she and her family had moved to Curitiba. Beyond her first year in Austin, there had been very few instances when Leide referenced her childhood with Yiara. It seemed to be a period in her life she was ashamed of. As girls, they would invite themselves over to their neighbors' churrascos, not only for a coveted link of spicy sausage or a juicy cut of steak, but for the impromptu lundum and carimbó performances by the local musicians. The instant the men began to play the curimbo drums and wooden flutes, Yiara and Leide would be the first to dance onto the planked stage area attempting to emulate the hops and sensual spins they had seen women perform. Yiara recalled how sexy they thought they had looked as they held out their unspectacular dresses to make them flow in the air as they sang. Yiara tried to remember the words to their favorite carimbó song: "The carimbó did not die, it’s back again. The carimbó never dies, who sings the carimbó is I. I’m a poisonous snake, a hard nut to crack. I'm a venomous snake, careful, I'll bite you!’” "I'm a venomous snake, careful…," she repeated more pensively. # As Yiara ambled on that summer day to the farmer’s market to gather the ingredients for the Reznik’s churrasco, she passed by a pushcart on the sidewalk and its owner, an aging kitandeira who appeared as if she had been selling her scarce samplings of seasonal fruits and vegetables uninterrupted for generations. Unfortunately, the kitandeira’s homely pushcart lacked the appeal or wholesome selection to divert Yiara or choice-conflicted customers from passing on to the local feira, the city's popular farmers' market a mere few blocks away. As Yiara passed by, she merely nodded at the old black woman sitting on a high stool, smoking a wooden cachimbo full of fragrant tobacco. The trails of white smoke followed Yiara like a shadow. As she continued towards the farmers' market, the old woman coolly pulled the cachimbo from her lips and asked Yiara if she had eaten enough that day. For a moment she heard Mameto in the woman. “You look like you've had a sour day. Have a sweet, won't you?” Even without words, Yiara thought that even without words, her fretting and profound exhaustion were vivid to strangers. She bit the inside of her lip as she contemplated the kitandeira’s offer, but the woman’s voice was jocular and inviting. "Come filha," she continued in Portuguese. “My name is Dona Edna Macumbira.” A curious Yiara meandered back in her direction. Before she could ask how this unfamiliar woman had known her mother tongue, the woman caressed her own neck, gesturing the waist-length guias Yiara wore. Yiara felt her body defrost and smiled warmly. “Saravá! Môkoiu!” This woman must be in the comunidade, she reasoned. “Môkoiu no Zambi,” God bless you, the kitandeira responded. Despite the paltry sum Yiara was certain Dona Edna earned from her goods, the kitandeira impressed upon Yiara that she felt maternally obliged to endow the inadequately fed woman with a sweet apple or peach. Yiara immediately felt comfortable with the kitandeira and decided to delay her trip to the feira. As the two women conversed, Yiara soon discovered that the old woman did indeed remind her of Mameto. She had a similarly reassuring maternal wisdom and palliative energy as her grandmother. Dona Edna's eyes were large and tragicomic, and her deep brown skin wrinkled and weathered by the sun. She wore a red head scarf, sunflower-colored shawl, and faded teal dress that hugged her robust figure. The kitandeira’s produce stand reminded Yiara uncannily of the kitanda that had been located across the street from her home in Pedreira, "Manna: Frutería dos Santos". Her first love, Marcio dos Santos, had sold fresh produce at Manna from his family's sítio two hours outside of Belém in the countryside. The kitanda had fashioned a fading green awning and iron-gated cemented patio, which it shared with the neighboring late-night boteco and luncheonette. Even in memory, she salivated over the sweet-smelling assortment of tropical fruit ambrosia she would never find in Texas. Dona Edna's stand was no comparison to that of Manna though, but it gave Yiara the positive feelings of nostalgia that could help her get through another week of her imprisonment. The kitandeira had open ears, and thus, Yiara progressively enumerated the afflictions and losses she had suffered since the death of her grandmother and her departure from Brazil. “Well it started with the death of my grandmother about seven years ago...” # Yiara had just matriculated at the university to study gastronomy when her grandmother had become terminally ill. She returned to Pedreira for a semester to care for her grandmother, who died several months later. Due to her grandmother's privileged position as an elder and high priestess in the comunidade however, the funeral rites lasted for a year. Consequently, Yiara fell behind in her studies and moved back to Belém to search for work, which was scarce and uninspiring — cosmetologists, boutique managers, secretarial and teaching assistant positions. After having experienced only a taste of what was supposed to be the next chapter of her life, she struggled to liberate herself from the asphyxiating experience of living again in, what she described as, a perpetual state of backwardness and poverty. Thus, a restless Yiara wandered aimlessly from city to city in Amazonia until she arrived in Manaus. The city was a magnet for people from across Amazonia in search of a better, more cosmopolitan life than they could find in the drylands and floresta; though many found similar levels of destitution and marginalization. It seemed to Yiara that her fate was sealed. One day, while shopping at the Feira De Artesanato, she met Cacildo Marin, an Amazonas River boat guide for a small sustainable tourism company. He was a stately caboclo from a riverine community with diaphanous sea-green eyes, and a bulbous nose and sharp ears like his Tupí predecessors. Cacildo was in port for the week waiting for the arrival of a group of university students. Their destination: an indigent mocambo on the Rio Trombetas fighting displacement and encroachment upon their ancestral lands by two massive infrastructure projects. Yiara was intrigued by not only the charm of the caboclo, but particularly for the uncanny similarity of his work to the activism of her late parents. Within months, she had moved in with Cacildo across the bridge in nearby Iranduba and continued to work steadily as an attendant at the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. Years later, Yiara still dreamed of Iranduba often, despite its lackluster appeal. Iranduba was an undeveloped jungle town on the river with a papaya grove on its outskirts, a bush-pilot airport, a handful of lackadaisical stores and tourist lodges, a dock for loading produce onto narrow speedboats to be delivered to riverine villages, and some botecos that blared technobrega and forró music loud enough to knock the sleeping doves, antbirds, and purple martins from the trees. Their apartment was not very spacious or attractive, but it was a place they could call home together. "It was a crazy love; but I knew in my heart that his magnetism to the sea would always be greater than for me. He was definitely a child of Kaitumbá, Iêmanjá”, she avowed. “So when Leide offered me a job at Capataz, I couldn't say no. I thought that that was a step towards becoming something. A few years in the U.S.A. learning the art of cooking and restaurant management, then I could return to Brazil to start fresh.” Yiara pondered her slippery slope to indentured servitude and stared somberly at Dona Edna. “But she had a tongue of honey." Yiara became mortified by the tears she felt streaming down her face. “I was naïve, a fool.” “No, Yiara,” Dona Edna interjected, “Calma, filha. You were hopeful. This is good. Only fools give up hope." Once Yiara had become attuned to the Rezniks’ deception, she had declared the date of her return home. She had vowed to overcome her oppressive state as her ancestors had, pay her way out of debt, and become more than just a waitress at a steakhouse. She had been replete with hope, but each day of her imprisonment passed without plan or progress towards a return; and almost unconsciously, she would set another departure date, which again, never came. Thus, the naively optimistic immigrant, youthful but waning in ebullience and spirit, continued on, denying the truth of her reality, slowly losing herself and her spiritual connection to the Inkises and Entidades in the indulgence of memories and false hopes. # A boot-wearing Manoel dos Arcos arrived early the following evening, ignorant of the grueling work that Yiara had put into preparing the meal which adorned the dining room table: arroz de carreteiro with farofa, grilled sirloin steak and chicken hearts, pico de gallo, tainha na telha, fried plantains, red rice and beans, grilled vegetables, and mingau de tapioca for dessert. It was enough for a half-dozen people. To Yiara’s dismay, there had been a multitude of things to do in half a day that she had been too rushed to even think outside of kitchen work, let alone travel memory lane as she often did when she cooked certain Brazilian dishes. She was particularly punctilious when guests visited the Rezniks. In her first year working for the harlot and the trickster, she had burned a pot roast while multitasking and had to quickly cook a baked lasagna dish as a substitute while the guests waited in the living room. As punishment, Henrique whipped her hands repeatedly with a metal spatula after the guests had left. Even with sprained and swollen fingers, Yiara continued cooking and completing household chores for the week. She had had no other choice. This evening though had gone exceptionally well. The men indulged themselves in conversation, barbecued meat, and cognac like gauchos of the drylands after a long day of marking their territory and tending to their livestock under the intense heat of the sun. Meanwhile, wearing her best trophy wife façade, an increasingly intoxicated Leide sat at the table drinking from the pitcher of rum-infused aruá and laughing at Manoel’s stories of his early days of livestock rearing. Yiara remained invisible most of the evening, which was preferred, except for a few innocuous propositions made by Manoel. Apart from that, the Paraguayan man sitting at the table had an avuncular essence about him. He was charming and spoke kindly to Yiara and chided Leide when she reprimanded her for silly mistakes, or no mistakes at all. The power play among the people in the Reznik's dining room had shifted and Yiara favored the conversion. Yiara stepped outside and exhaled deeply, relieved that she would not be beaten for some mishap that night. # Later that night, Yiara hosted a quite inebriated Manoel upstairs to her room. Henrique and Leide followed behind, flirtatiously bantering and teasing each other, as Yiara presumed they had done more frequently in the honeymoon stage of their relationship. Yiara opened the door to the sparsely furnished bedroom. She had already moved her belongings to the pantry downstairs, where she slept when a guest visited. The advantage to this arrangement was a peaceful night’s rest away from Henrique. The cream-colored room was furnished with a double bed, night table, dresser, standing lamp, and cushioned sofa chair by the window. A colorful painting of Serra do Mar in Paraná hung above the sofa chair. As she waited for unspoken consent from Henrique to descend the stairs to her sleeping place, Manoel whispered to him. Henrique hesitated, clearly in thought, then looked about her with a proprietary grin. “Insomnia. How horrid! Of course, Yiara can keep you company through the night.” Yiara felt her chest tighten and body stiffen. Manoel may have been attractive three decades before, but she inwardly recoiled at the thought of his sun-spotted pasty skin, thinning hair, moist lips, and protruding beer belly “keeping her company”. Her dislike for him curdled like expired milk; but understanding what she had to do to keep her employers satisfied, she contorted her face into a blank mask, willing her eyes not to fill with tears. She sluggishly walked into the room. Manoel eagerly staggered in behind her and closed the door. Manoel had the sadistic calm of a predator that had cornered its prey. As the sexagenarian approached her, Yiara resolved to remove herself completely from the moment, her life, herself. Even with her faculties and the link to the divine, healing energies intact, Yiara felt as if her body were not hers but the property of Henrique, her sinho. She could not control the situation and could not escape. She painfully surrendered. Yiara gingerly crept from the room at twilight as the Paraguayan lay sprawled and unconscious on the bed as if she were still between himself and the pillow. # Until the diameter of the sun had fully risen above the colossal Crapemyrtle tree, she spent the early morning in the downstairs bathroom vigorously scrubbing clean at her body and nether regions as if coated in the nauseating smell of his flesh and fluids. She could still hear a replaying of the old man’s faint grunting as he used her. She sang aloud to distract herself from the traumatic memory. She dug in her mind for songs that could bring her home to Belém, to moments with Mameto, who in this hour, would have been able to assuage her pain and brew a contraceptive tincture from roots and herbs. Yiara felt, in this moment, the anxiety and disgust that usurped her relative peace of mind each morning after Henrique's nightly visits. It had been months since she had last prayed; nonetheless, Yiara placed an expresso saucer with honey before her and prayed weakly to her ancestors and guardian Inkise to spare her from more heartache and misfortune. She felt that a child borne through the violation of her body and soul would be an unwanted lifelong burden and a staggering reminder of the hell in which she had been held captive. Moreover, she feared that Henrique would have resorted to any means necessary to erase evidence of a child conceived by him (or a friend). “Mãe Dandalunda Kisimbi ê, Mother of Fertility and Motherhood, please, take me back to your realm and bathe me in your waters. Cleanse my body of its foulness. Mãe Benedita, Mãe Zenza, Mameto, Mamãe, and the other matriarchs of my line, give me light, give me strength to get through this,” she implored. "In my dreams, please show me the way to…I cannot carry another burden." As she prayed, Yiara recalled her first and last meeting with Dandalanda Kisimbi. After several of Henrique’s nightly visits in the beginning, Yiara had been left barely walking through each day in a terrifying fog of uncertainty. With the continued absence of her menses, it was clear to her another soul was growing within her and there would be serious implications for this. On the night of this realization, in the dream state of her fragmented sleep, Dandalunda Kisimbi appeared to Yiara to bless the seed growing within her womb. The beautiful divinity floated beside her daughter’s bed, swathed in a halo of moonlight and adorned in a gossamer fabric of gold interwoven with shells and ornaments. Yiara pleaded to her divine mother for compassion until the goddess took Yiara’s hand in hers. She carried her to the forested shore of an ethereal lake dimly illuminated by a waxing crescent moon and curious aquatic bioluminescence. “Bathe in my enchanted waters and you shall be cleansed,” she directed in a spellbinding voice, though her lips did not move. Yiara sauntered into Dandalanda Kisimbi's refreshing cool waters and immediately felt purged of the agitation and stress within herself. The next morning, Yiara had woken to find a reassuring crimson stain on her bed sheets. That was then; but on this morning, Yiara felt more disconnected from her guardian Inkise than she ever had before. # That afternoon, Henrique and his guest causally left the house, neither acknowledging Yiara’s presence, save a distasteful smirk from Manoel as he left his coffee mug on the counter for her. A giddy Leide approached Yiara at the sink. “Cheers to us! He signed the contract. Good job Yaya.” Leide made no effort to contain her elation. Her insensitivity burned at Yiara's thoughts displacing the disturbing thoughts from the night before. She was certain that Leide knew what had transpired the night before between Manoel and herself. Yiara felt an overwhelming sense of humiliation and anger, and a vile sensation percolating deep within herself. Her head started spinning as the familiar lurch she had felt in the doorway to the bedroom the night before re-emerged. She felt suffocated and nauseous. Every thought, flow, beat, and pump in her body felt as if they had frozen. Her mind flooded with numbness, followed by a drought of spirit and self. That hopeless despair, Banzo, gripped at the splintered woman with its beastly teeth and gnawed at her raw soul. The harlot and trickster had finally robbed Yiara of her last warm-blooded emotions, and her fight to neutralize the angst she had been feeling for years withered. She ached to forget the event, to move on with her life. She hated herself for the weakness of her actions and how much she had lowered her standards of happiness in pursuit of happiness. Had all of this been worth it, Yiara thought as she thinly sliced a bouquet of cabbage. Is this worth the American Dream? As she looked up from the kitchen counter, she caught the reflection in the window of a sallow-faced woman. Her empty eyes swallowed her like two black holes. She had become a hollowed-out shell of herself, devoid of all that made her human. She had become banzado. # Yiara listlessly walked to Dona Edna’s fruit stand the next day seeking anything to alleviate the discomfort within herself — solace, guidance, subtle approval from the wise woman to end her suffering. Dona Edna immediately saw the desperation in her face and inquired. “Dona, I don’t feel here. My body feels emptied; and I feel gone, lost somewhere else.” Yiara hunched over on the sidewalk. “The darkness is all around me and within me. And I can’t escape.” “Banzo.” Dona Edna took a drag from her cachimbo. Her ash-colored puffs lingered in the stiff June air. “This is dark magick that took many from us.” She guided the despondent woman to a stoop. “Listen to me, filha. I, too, have been the victim of greed and iniquity. It is a darkness that sweeps over a man's soul like locusts in the desert night. I have known disgrace like a mulatta maid in the Casa Grande praising Zambi that her dark-skinned mother became mistress to the sinho. I have known the wrath and jealousy of a sinha who gouges out the eyes of her husband's negra mistress or knocks her teeth out with a hammer. I have known imprisonment and invisibility on plantations and in the senzalas, and fear and uncertainty crossing rapids and fleeing capitães do mato through the trackless floresta. But despite all of this, I, never abandoned hope, for I have also known peace in amocambamento, in refuge.” "Amocambamento?” Yiara finally responded, perplexed by Dona Edna's sermon. She was especially bewildered by her use of antiquated Portuguese, which sounded similar to the songs and incantations the irmandade recited in Centro de Doce Telekompensu. “In the mocambos”, Dona Edna clarified. Still bewildered, Yiara reasoned that the old woman had been a victim of forced labor, tricked and enslaved by gatos into clearing forested areas for big farmers. Subsequently, she inundated her with questions. Dona Edna shook her head unfavorably and ignored Yiara. “My child, your fear becomes you. You want to go home? Then go my child, as your ancestors could not. You were not forced from your home as they were, and you are not tethered by shackles on your body as they were.” Yiara nodded her head listlessly in shame as Dona Edna continued to smoke from her cachimbo. Yiara stroked her guias and recollected the many stories Mameto and the elders had told her of the calhambolas and their strength. She stared absently at the kitandeira’s repetitive movements, her uniform outfit, the tease of her hidden guias, the old-fashioned wood-carved pipe sitting on her lips. It seemed so familiar. “The calhambolas didn’t liberate themselves on hope alone. They had to fight for it. you lost your warrior spirit? You have convinced yourself that what you have is better than nothing; but that thinking has brought you nothing but aggravation, abuse, and a deep sadness. Free yourself from this quebranto of spirit.” Dona Edna returned the cachimbo to her lips for another drag. “Never forget where you came from. You are a reflection of your ancestors. Their spirit, your spirit resides in the heart.” Yiara stood up slowly, tears cascading down her face. “As long as the heart continues to beat, life exists and the divine energies of the Inkises exist.” She realized the true identity of Dona Edna. The old kitandeira she had been talking to for weeks was a Preta Velha, the sagacious female spirit of an old slave. Yiara gasped and fell to her knees, taking the hand of Dona Edna in hers. “What is your name?” She grinned widely. “They called me Edna da Cachoeira. I am a child of the Waterfalls.” “Mãe Dandalunda Kisimbi ê!” Yiara spoke fervently to the Entidade of her guardian Inkise. She had arrived to Dona Edna ready to give her life to Banzo, only to depart with a renewal of faith and recharging of her mukí. “Kukula mu kiri kia Zambi, filha!” Grow in the truth of God, the Preta Velha bid farewell in the language of their Bantu ancestors. # Yiara reflected on her encounter with the mystical Preta Velha over the following week. She understood her two options: fight for her freedom and existence as her parents had done, or take flight for the same, escape her captors as her great ancestors had. She soon returned to town to seek more guidance from the Preta Velha. To her relief, Dona Edna was still sitting behind her homely stand smoking a cigarette. “Môkoiú Mameto Edna! What happened to your cachimbo?” “Excuse me, miss?" she replied. “Mameto, why are you speaking English?” Both she and the old black woman stared quizzically at each other. “I'm sorry ma'am. I have no idea what you're saying. Do you want something? You need help?” She slid off the stool and hobbled from behind the stand. She wore Dona Edna’s same sunflower-colored shawl fashioned with a teal blouse and loose denim jeans. Yiara understood that she had been abandoned. The spirit of Preta Velha had manifested herself through the body of this woman and suddenly retreated when Yiara needed her most. Yiara collected herself and apologized to the concerned vendor. Without further guidance from the Preta Velha, Yiara found herself naturally drawn to the kitchen to resolve her dilemma. As if moved and directed by the spirit of Mameto, she began preparing a favorite dish of Mutalambô. "Ma-sam-bala," she heard her grandmother enunciate in her ear. Yiara separated the cooking corn into two small pots. She would prepare the makuriá for Mutalambô as an offering and use the extra corn to cook sweet cornbread. Once the corn had cooked and been seasoned with coriander and basil, Yiara mixed a cup of grated onion, peanut powder, and molasses into the pot until it blended into a porridge. For lack of fresh coconut, she decoratively garnished the Masambala with dried coconut flakes. Yiara walked to the back of the Crapemyrtle tree and laid out her scarce offerings on a white cotton cloth — a cigar, a shot of Pignata cachaça she had taken from Henrique’s alcohol cabinet, and a bowl of the Masambala. She lowered herself to the ground and called upon the Guardians of the Seven Crossroads, Entidades of Mutalambô, to give her guidance and reorient her towards the correct path. “May the earth bear witness that in this place I, Yiara Valdilene Barbosa, salute the powers of Pãe Mutalambô and his Entidades Pambujila, Exu, and Caboclo of the Seven Crossroads. With these offerings, I forge a link in the present time with my ancestors from the past so that you, who know everything about my past, may chart my future and my path. Entidades of choice, change, and chance, I entreat you to knock down the barriers, fill the holes, drive away Banzo, my enemies, and any and all instability, envy, sickness, and fear that blocks the road towards love, harmony, and success!” Yiara woke the next morning with a renewal of hope. She opened her eyes to her plight and saw for the first time her choice, which seemed laughably clear. She looked out the window of the guest room at the rising sun and caught sight of a pair of blue jays flying from the blooming Crapemyrtle tree. She joyfully sang "Preciso Me Encontrar": "I want to watch the sunrise, watch the waters of the rivers run, hear the birds sing. I want to be born! I want to live!” She, too, would fly like the calhambolas across the tree canopies. The next week, Yiara packed the clothes and items she had brought with her years earlier and left the Rezniks' house. She felt no need to confront her captors, who would have been deaf to her entreaties. She understood that even her ancestors had not tried to appeal to their oppressors for liberation or humanity. No one cursed her or blocked the threshold of the doorway as she left, as they were all at a neighbor's Independence Day party, to which she had not been invited. She, like Zenza and Ndembu, had liberated herself from the malefic Banzo that had broken and claimed so many of her kin. It, too, was her Independence Day. As Yiara walked away from the place she could never call home, her spirit soared skywards in an ecstasy of flight. She would leave behind the darkness that had enveloped her life for years and seek the light of a new day. She had no idea where she was going; but whether in Texas, Brazil, or elsewhere, she would find herself again and live for both her past and her future. “Mukí!” she cried to the heavens as Zambi, the Inkises, and her ancestors looked down upon her with pride. The Revenant Saga Part 1: The Revenant Emerges
I hear the car pull up to the driveway. Dad’s home. Ebony leaps off my bed where he’s been watching me play with my Eevee Pokemon figure and rushes to the door barking and wagging his tail furiously. I hurry to the living room and hide around the corner of the entranceway, peeking at the front door. As soon as I hear the keys jiggling in the lock, I crouch down and get ready. Dad enters. “EEEE VEEE!” I shout as I whip around the corner and thrust Eevee in my fist toward Dad. Dad puts his arm up to his face. “Arrgh! The rays! They’re too powerful! Ebony help!” he cries out. My Dad is so dramatic. Ebony barks and stand up on his hind legs, tail still wagging. My Dad gets closer to me. Then he puts down his arm, grabs me, and turns me upside down. Pirate-like, he says, “Shoot them star rays at me, eh?” I squeal and get tickled for my trouble. Mom walks into the living room, arms crossed, shaking her head and smiling. “You too are ridiculous,” she says. **** My parents, John and Stephanie, have lived on this street since I was born nine years ago. We were the first black family to move into a house in this neighborhood. My Dad says that it was the best they could afford on his and my Mom’s combined salary and it had the better school district. Where we live, Myersville, North Carolina, is a tiny town, maybe 5000 residents at most, but it’s got a black side, a white side (where we live), and the proverbial train tracks in between. I have never been able to get my black friends in school to come by my house (their parents always say, “No, too dangerous.”) but my Dad or Mom drives me to their houses. I have a couple of white friends at school but they’re only “school pals”; they don’t visit me and I know better than to ask about coming to their homes. I got Ebony for my 8th birthday, and he’s a rascal. I like to run away with his leather chew toy. He chases after me, and when I jump on the living room couch, he licks my face so I can’t see, steals his toy back and dashes off, with me running right behind him to steal it again. Most nights at home are pretty laid back. My Dad helps Mom with dinner; they are excellent cooks. We watch the news and a movie. Usually I act out “Pokemon theater” with them or read a book, and I take Ebony for his evening walk before I go to bed. One night after school, I wouldn’t talk. The whole day I was in a funk. My parents would try to joke with me or get me to talk about Pokemon, but I wasn’t taking the bait. I barely ate dinner, and poor Ebony only received the most distracted pets from me. Once I was in bed, Dad sat down with me. “So what did they call you,” he said. My eyes widened and I sat up. “How do you know someone called me something?” “I acted the same way when a kid in school called me the N-word and drew it all over my locker.” I sat back and crossed my arms. I looked down and started absently picking at the bedsheets. “They added the B-word to mine,” I said. “My math teacher Mr. Finley heard them. In fact, they repeated it, enunciated it clearly, like you tell me to do sometimes. Mr. Finley looked shocked for a second, cleared his throat, and went right back to teaching like nothing happened.” “Now I bet you just want to punch those girls in the face,” Dad suggested. “Yeah, but I really want to scream at Mr. Finley,” I said, tears welling. “He was wrong. He’s the adult. He should have done something” My Dad leans in, gives me a hug, and kisses my forehead. “You’re right, honey, “ he said. “I’m sorry you have to deal with this. Welcome to the awful world we live in.” I nodded. “I love you, Dad.” “Love you too, honey.” **** I’m fourteen, it’s 2017, and I’m still living in Hicksville, aka Myersville. I hate this place. If I hear another “Bless your heart” I’m going to slap someone. In school, the only highlights are when I piss off my English and Social Studies teachers. My Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Harrison, had the most wonderful lobster red face and bug-eyed response to my turning in my paper entitled “White Entitlement and Racial Inequity in Myersville.” Made my whole day. In English lit, we only read the work of dead white dudes, so in my literary analysis papers I like to contrast their work with black and brown authors, with quotes, just to spice things up. I never get As in these classes, but it’s worth it. Home is my sanctuary. I can decompress with Ebony, who has grown into a furry, rambunctious behemoth. In my room I dance to hip-hop, Prince, and ‘90s alternative rock, but if I’m feeling low, I just sway to the blues. My parents are involved in a lot of social justice initiatives these days, probably due to my encouragement. Get out the vote drives, police shooting protests, anti-racist rallies. I go with them every time; I also make the posters. Today we’re going to protest against the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. I’m proud of my parents; I raised them right. **** I can still see that car careening through the crowd, hitting that poor girl. We’re driving home and I’m just curled up in the backseat crying. Fucking racist bastards! When we arrive, I’m unloading the posters. My parents get out of the car, and we all embrace each other silently. I see Mr. Fisher, our neighbor across the street. He is a pale white man, middle-aged, lanky and scruffy. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and sitting in a rocking chair on his porch, staring hard at the End Racism and No More Hate posters tangling from my hands. His house has a Confederate flag hanging from the edge of the roof, like a lot of people on this side of town, but that’s not what bothers me. As soon as he makes eye contact with me, he smiles and snaps his right arm out in a Nazi salute. I give him the one-finger salute. “Let’s get inside,” I whisper. I hustle my parents in the house. Dad looks concerned, but when he turns his head to look at Mr. Fisher, he is dragging us both inside. Mr. Fisher is now standing rigidly with his arm still outstretched. After we get inside, I lock the door. Double bolt it. “Should we call the police?” I suggest. “They won’t do anything, honey. First amendment,” my Dad explains with a frown. We try to have a normal evening after that, but it isn’t working. We avoid TV news that day, so we try to watch game shows to lighten the mood. No joy. At least Ebony gets a lot of attention, which he is very happy about. Eventually we go to bed, but I insist on sleeping in my parents’ bed, which I haven’t done for years. Ebony takes a spot at the end of the bed and we’re all cozy. **** There are two loud cracks. I hear feet running up the stairs. I shake my parents. “Mom! Dad!” The door bursts open and there is a shot gun pointed at me. All I can see are the two dark holes leveled at my face. Ebony is snarling. “Alright, get up! Time for all you niggers to get up!” My mom grabs my hand and slides me out of the bed and against the wall. Our hands are up. Dad is on the other side of the bed, his eyes are saucers, his hands are raised too. “What do you want? Money?” my Dad asks. I can now register that it’s Mr. Fisher from across the street. Ebony is about to lunge at him. Mr. Fisher smirks at the dog. “You’d better grab your dog before I have to hurt him.” I slowly walk toward Ebony, still staring at the shotgun. I pull Ebony towards me, but he’s still snarling. “OK now, walk downstairs,” he commands. With raised hands, we walk downstairs. I see that the doorknob and sliding bolt have been blown off the front door, which hangs open. “Keep going,” he orders. “Down to the basement.” My mom starts crying. Before we reach the basement door, Dad drops low, spins, and launches himself at Mr. Fisher, who falls on his butt. Dad tries to wrestle the shotgun away. My mom and I are screaming. Ebony wriggles out of my grasp and starts biting Mr. Fisher’s arm. The shotgun goes off and we can’t hear. Mr. Fisher headbutts my Dad and he falls back. Then he swings his arm with Ebony on it against the wall and knocks him off. Ebony howls and scrambles back to me. I cradle him in my arms. Pointing his shotgun at us, Mr. Fisher gets up. He is actually smiling. “I likes ‘em feisty!” he declares. Then he points the shotgun at my Dad and fires point blank at his chest. I hear someone wailing. My face is covered in blood. My Dad’s blood. I’m holding him tight, too tight to let the life out. If I can just hug him tight enough. I can’t see because of the blood, the tears. My mom is on her knees next to me. I can’t see her face, but I hear her anguished cries. “Alright. Time to go the basement,” Mr. Fisher commands. I glare at him. I wish that all the forces in the universe would come down and rip him to shreds! I want his heart to explode, his tongue ripped out of his Nazi-loving mouth. But, of course, nothing happens. I’m just a teenager. Facing a monster. We march downstairs in silence. The basement only has a floor rug, a pool table, a small couch, and cardboard storage boxes labeled for the holidays. There is no window. “Sit on the couch.” We sit, hugging each other and Ebony, who is softly whining. “I’m going now,” Mr. Fisher says. He backs away toward the stairs, pointing his shotgun at us. He grabs the fire extinguisher under the stairs. After he climbs the stairs, we see him pull out a flask from his back pocket and pour it down the stairs. “One more thing.” There is a click. A whoosh. Fire engulfs the stairs as the basement door slams and bolts. Mom and I rush for the stairs but the heat is too much. The carpet and boxes start to catch on fire. We run to the corner away from the smoke and flames, the only part with no rug. We scream for help, but we know it’s stupid. The smoke builds, creating an ominous black cloud on the ceiling. It’s so hard to breath. The heat is starting to singe the hair on my arms. My mom holds me and Ebony tight to her chest. “I love you,” she says with barely any breath. “I love you too,” I reply. There is a roar as the fire blasts toward us and we scream. **** It is 2 am. The Myersville firefighters comb through the wreckage of the house. Neighbors are standing around whispering, many talking pictures on their cell phones. Mr. Fisher is sitting on his porch, finishing a beer, and grinning. He gets up to get another beer, walks into the kitchen, and freezes. A grey swirling figure is hovering above the kitchen floor. It raises writhing skeletal arms, shudders, howls, and rushes towards him, through him. There is a crash as the beer slips from Mr. Fisher’s grasp and he collapses to the floor. The spectre is gone, but Mr. Fisher’s teeth are chattering. He is chilled to the bone and his breath is visible as white mist. For the rest of his life, Mr. Fisher will never be warm again. **** Not burning Cold, just cold No anchor No point Spinning out Snapping back Rage Screaming Shatter Shards screaming Flying apart Then engulfed by grayness Gathering Pieces of me Calm Pulsating fragments Coalesce Floating Darkness Pressure Smothering me What’s that? No eyes, but I see. Weird stuff. Christmas trees made of crystals? Fuzzy lights? No air, but I hear. Deadspeech. The Christmas trees are singing. Like a lullaby. Go away! I’m curled up in a ball. Not going to move. Why do I feel? Wasn’t killing my family enough? Let me go! I want out! The pressure. I know what it is. The agony of murdered souls. Innocents. Crushing me. I’m part of it too. I notice a few victims like me. Trying to shake themselves apart. To disintegrate. To get rid of the agony Of existence. My rage makes me start to vibrate, sending waves of sharp red spikes in all directions. Two of the wispy glows move toward me. Dad? Mom? Do you feel it? The pressure. … …don’t do that. Don’t say my name. DON’T SAY MY FUCKING NAME! I’m not your little girl anymore! She’s gone, she’s not coming back! Go wherever you want to! They take my life like that and want me to be grateful? I just want to feel NOTHING! The spirits of my parents drift away. I feel their sadness. I don’t give a shit. *** Something gray is heading toward me. It looks like a man. “Welcome to the In-Between,” the Gray Man declares. I stay rolled up in a ball. He sighs. “You can do that. Just lie there. But something here will bother you.” “Like you,” I snarl. “No. I only want to talk. These things will devour your soul.” “I don’t care.” “You know you’re dead?” he inquires. That does it. I stand up and scowl at him. “I was burned up! Of course I’m dead! Do you think I’m stupid?” One of those annoying crystalline Christmas trees starts singing more loudly in my direction, and I am pissed! Still facing me, the Gray Man snaps his arm out in a stop gesture in the tree’s direction. Abruptly, the singing ends. “Look at yourself,” he offers. I look down and see that I wearing my Fight the Power T-shirt and jeans. My hands are brown, unburned. Unlike the Gray Man, I have feet; I’m wearing sneakers. I touch my face and feel it. The Gray Man has no face, just an empty space darker than this void he calls the In-Between. He wears a trench coat, suit coat, dress shirt, pants, and gloves, all gray. “I guess this is just an illusion,” I mutter. “It’s called glamour. You can think of it as your avatar.” I ask softly, “OK, so when do I get to stop.” “Stop what?” “Being. Existing. Taking up space.” “Why would you want to do that?” “What? Do you think I’m going to go someplace nice and be thankful my parents and my dog got killed by some racist monster?” The Gray Man sighs. “You really want Oblivion? You could be with your parents.” “They can go to Heaven or whatever bullshit place it’s called! I’m not doing it!” The Gray Man tilts his black hole-like head and crosses his arms. “I have another idea,” he says. I want him to just go away. But curiosity is still a part of dead me. “What idea?” “You could work for me,” he offers. “Kids don’t work,” I state. “Living kids don’t. And they only don’t in some countries, by the way. But you stopped being a child as soon as your soul was torn from your body by a murderous act.” I know he’s telling the truth. I feel like a woman, not a child. My thoughts seem aged, like I was carrying this older spirit in me the whole time. “So what’s the job?” “You become a revenant. You will be summoned by a blood sacrifice. Then you will appear in the mortal world in physical form and devour the soul of the target, always a ruthless and powerful murderer. One who thinks themselves untouchable.” My anger swells like a raging storm. Destroying these bastards sounds fantastic. “And after I’ve killed this target, what do I get?” “What do you want?” “To be nothing. Oblivion. That’s my price.” “But there is so much more…” “Take it or leave it, Gray Man.” He pauses. Then he points a gloved hand at me. I gasp. My spirit shivers like ice water has been poured down my back. “I will teach you how to be a revenant,” he proclaims. “After that, you will cease to exist until summoned. Agreed?” “Agreed.” **** I’m dreaming. I’m nine, running with Ebony’s leather toy and he is chasing me. I leap on the couch and Ebony licks my face until I let go of his toy, and then he runs off with it and I chase him, laughing. The dream fades, and I am here. Back in the mortal world. A floating wraith over the body of my client, who is enclosed by a circle of salt. The blood from her wrists has pooled within the salt. I take its life energy as payment and solidify my body costume, lowering to the floor. As the Gray Man taught me, I read the enchanted script on her exposed torso. Details of my target, a mass murderer. I lock onto his aura so exquisitely reproduced by the script, like a fragment of a nightmare trapped in ink. I look around. I’m on the first floor of a house standing in what appears to be a personal library, a wood-paneled room with a chair, writing desk, and ornate lamp fancy enough to be on Antiques Roadshow. My client had money. It didn’t protect them. I walk to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I am a twentyish white male, with wavy blonde hair and a moustache. I am wearing a white polo shirt and navy-blue pants. I look like my client’s murdered son. I draw air into my body costume through my fake nose. In. And out. Have to practice to appear alive. The repercussions of people generally accepting that the dead can return is unpalatable to the Gray Man. I don’t care personally, but I don’t want to be stuck in the In-Between or worse by messing up this job. Looking like a murder victim seems like the same dead-come-back-to-life deal to me, but I suppose as long as I don’t socialize and just get the job done, no problem. I’ll be gone and less than a memory. I sense an aura approaching the front door. Tremendous fear. Urgency. Love. My client’s wife. She opens the door and rushes to the library. I fade and stand by the books. She gives a strangled cry and drops to her knees before the salt circle. “You didn’t have to,” she whispers. “There had to be another way.” She reaches out to gently touch my client’s face. Without turning to face me, she says, “You don’t have to hide. I can see you.” I solidify. “Will you do it?” I nod. “Make him suffer first, please.” I nod again. Then I walk out of the house, leaving the grief in my wake. **** The target is thousands of miles away on a Pacific Island. A tropical paradise. It doesn’t matter. His aura is a beacon to me. He could have been on Mars. It would take a few years, but I’d get there. My vaporous form glides across the ocean. I just let my tracking sense pull me in the right direction. I notice the auras of birds and fish rushing past me. A killer whale, breaching the water, sends a thought to me. Good hunting! Well, that was unexpected. As I solidify and land on the deserted western beach of the island at dawn, an ancient woman dressed in a multicolored robe and shells, her face painted with unknown symbols, suddenly appears. Her aura gives off the distinct impression of “island protector.” I bow. The Gray Man has taught me mystical etiquette. In deadspeech, speaking without air, I intone, “Ancient one, blessings be upon you.” “Cut the crap,” she replies. Her deadspeech is a mixture of the gurgling of the drowned and the rumbling of active volcanoes. Her eyes narrow. “Did one of my people send for you?” “No. I was contracted by a client in the United States.” “Good,” she huffs. “I don’t like revenants doing my job here.” “Oh, you’re in the revenge business too?” She chuckles. “Yeah, for over four thousand years.” Then she leans forward and whispers, “I’m well preserved,” and cackles. She looks me over and nods. “Well, go to it then. And don’t make a mess.” I bow again. “Yes, ancient one.” When I look up, she is already gone. **** The target is in a ranch house. There are beautiful chestnut brown horses inside fenced-in fields on either side of a truck-wide, mile-long driveway that ends at the only major road on the island. I let my body costume feel the ocean breeze, taste the salty spray in the air, as I walk slowly up the driveway. Now that I have permission, I could turn into my vaporous form and land right at the target’s front door. But that would get this over too fast. Four men with rifles see me approaching. They raise their weapons. One calls out, “Stop or we’ll shoot! Turn around and go back where you came from. This is private property.” Go back where you came from? Well, I’m trying to do that, guy, if you just let me do my job. I keep walking towards them and they start shooting. Quite the marksmen. I’d say top marks if the bullets didn’t just pass through me. Once I reach the porch, the hilarity begins. The bullets didn’t work, so why not try fists and knives? I shake my head as they flail about, turn to mist, and glide under the door. The target is in the kitchen. He sees me become corporeal and blanches. He runs for the living room. I dissolve and reappear in front of him. He screams and I grab him by the throat. He tries to pull off my hands, to no avail. His men are on top of me now, straining, trying to pull me off. The Gray Man told me a story during my training about the immovable object. When my quarry is literally in my grasp, that’s me. “Please,” the target begs. “I can pay you!” “You know what they say,” I reply, raspy words vibrating in my empty husk. “Money can’t buy happiness.” I move my hands just enough to clamp them down on his head, and my claws pop out. They are four-inch black knives that cut through his skull like butter. His eyes roll back, and his soul tries to fly out. I grab it with one claw. At this point, his men give up and are running for the door. I stretch my costume jaws wide enough to swallow a cantaloupe. I can hear the deadspeech of the target’s wriggling soul, oddly begging for divine intervention. Seems hypocritical. I swallow him whole. **** Men jump into cars and flee from the ranch. No one comes until three days later when a veterinarian stops by to check on the horses. Seeing no sign of people, he enters the house to find the target’s corpse. There are five holes drilled on either side of his head. Part 2: The Revenant and the Contractor I always come back to the same memory. I'm running through my house, my puppy Ebony barking and chasing after me. I'm holding his half-chewed leather toy. I can't stop laughing. Eventually I jump onto the living room couch, and Ebony is leaping at me. He starts licking my face until I can't see. I drop the toy, he scampers off with it, and the chase continues. The dream fades away. Awareness flares and I am reborn. Into the mortal world. The circle of salt is poorly done. I see gaps everywhere. The dead woman, my client, lies naked on her back, cooling inside the circle, the blood from her wrists seeping into the carpet. Her payment for my services. I stare at the binding tattoos drawn all over her torso and read her post-mortem instructions. I could have just fled the circle due to its poor mystical construction and returned to oblivion. But what's the fun in that? As moments pass, my wispy structure begins to solidify. Gravity reasserts itself. That allows me to crouch down over my client and to do the hard thing. To breathe. Just a little. I gather a faint scent in my nose–mirage. The scent is a heady mixture of despair, a mother's love, and rage. Yes, I will definitely take this case. There is sound now. Drip. Drip. A faucet. Like the one I got water from. For Ebony's bowl. OK, stop it. Keep focused. You're on the job. I look down at my hands. Small and light brown. I must be 8 or 9. The me-dress drapes over my now-legs, shiny and silky looking. Reminds me of when I was a little girl. Briefly, I allow my skin costume to feel. For a moment I smile and relish the caress of silk. Then frowning, I turn it off. Party tricks. Mortal meanderings. The skin-inscribed case notes on my client’s body are detailed. Her daughter, whose appearance I mimic, was raped and strangled. The authorities could not arrest the monster who committed the crime. DNA samples were collected, then lost. Eyewitnesses to her daughters’ abduction (there were five) were found dead or had disappeared. My client's tattoos aren't words. They are a story in pictures that move on my client's chest and stomach like a film, if you know how to coax them. I've had practice. The face of the man, the target, appears above her navel. I see his aura, like black jagged spikes in a halo of poisonous green, and I shudder, flickering in and out of the here-now. The electric bulbs in the room pulse with each existential oscillation. Once I settle down, I am locked onto the target. There is a knock at the front door. “Jill? Are you in there? I see your car out front. Jill, it’s been two days since I last heard from you. Please open the door.” Soft purple aura on the other side of the door. Female adult. A healer. A listener. A friend to my client. Seeing Jill dead on the floor would be bad. Seeing me would be worse. I call on the tools my client gave me as I walk up to the door. And I use physics. Pull air into my hollow, body costume and then slowly expel and vibrate it. Very difficult. I choose sounding ill. “Pam…” I say hoarsely. “I'm OK. Just have a bad cold. Ah-choo! Just need to rest, OK? I don’t want you to catch this.” “Alright. Call me if you need anything, OK?” “OK. Love you.” “Love you too.” After a few minutes, Pam’s aura is so weak that she must have left the apartment building. Fully corporeal, brown-skinned with corn-rolled black hair like Jill's daughter in life, I grasp the doorknob and exit, gently closing the door behind me. I glance around the second-floor landing and stairs. No one inside the other apartments are approaching their doors to the hallway. So, I descend the stairs in me-shoes and realize I'm not breathing. Pausing on the stairs, eyes closed, I practice a slow rhythm. In. And out. Continuing to walk down the stairs, I keep up the rhythm. Breathing and walking at the same time. Only way to not look dead. Before I exit the building, I sense the living beings on the street. Just a few people walking on this side close to the door. One dog. Of course. I wait until the dog walker is barely a whisper of an aura, then I come out. It's late afternoon. All the way down the street, the black Labrador whips around in my direction, barking wildly and straining on his master's leash. The man, very confused, gets the dog under control. I look down at the sidewalk and scurry away. Just a dead black girl in a pink party dress. Nothing to see here. The target is close. I let my feet direct me without focusing. This part is easy. Gives me the time to play tourist. I pass an old, abandoned elementary school, then I stop. Slowly, I turn to face the school and look at a third-floor window. The ghost of a little boy waves at me. I smile and wave back. Then I move on. I encounter a local gift shop, Genevieve's Gifts. Looking in the storefront window I see handmade dolls from around the world. I long to enter but I don't have a mission-valid reason. Lollygagging in the mortal world can be addictive. And these dolls remind me too much of living. When it was good. As I admire the craftsmanship, one of the African dolls winks at me. Then it slowly curls its right plastic hand and beckons me to approach. Well, that's a reason to enter the store! A tinny bell chimes as I open the door. The proprietress looks up from arranging glass ornaments on a table. “Good afternoon! My, what a pretty dress!” Inhale. Expel slowly. Modulate to little girl pitch. “Thank you.” “My name is Genevieve,” she says offering her hand. “What's yours?” I shake her hand, her warmth encasing a dry papery emptiness. Pause. A name. Not the dead girl. “Tabitha" Genevieve smiles. “Pleased to meet you, Tabitha. Are your parents with you?” “No, we live in the apartment building on the corner. Um, my parents said I could check out this store.” “That's great! Please look around.” She returns to her arranging, and I walk directly to the doll display. I pick up the African doll gently and place its face near my ear. It whispers in my mind, reminiscent of deadspeech. Huntress, I know of spirits like you. Only greater evil is your prey. Your quarry came here. He bought a doll. He stinks of magic. He tried to hold me, but I burned his hand. After he dropped me, he glared at me and bowed. Strange, horrible man. I wish I could have done more. Not just a pedophile. Not just a child murderer. A sorcerer. He could stop me. This is bad. I've never had to bring in an outside contractor before. “You like that doll?” Startled, my body costume blurs. I can't believe I let Genevieve sneak up on me. Hugging the doll, I turn to her, make eye contact. Smile. No teeth. Too hard to fake. “She's beautiful!” I see the brief confusion in Genevieve’s eyes, replaced by accepting the here and now. Thankfully. With the doll still cradled next to my ear, I turn back toward the other dolls to let Genevieve walk away, rubbing her temple. My maker can help you, the doll continues. Why would your maker do that? I inquire via thought. She would want you to succeed. She made me to protect a child in the future. My maker loves children. She has ten, only four from her loins. I mull it over. What's your maker's name? Theresa LeBeau. I get an immediate image. Dark skinned, 60ish, short grey curls, blue-green aura streaked with lightning. Powerful. Can you contact her? I ask. Yes. She hears my thoughts. She says to come to her house, 125th Street and Madison Avenue. OK. I'll come right now. Thank you. What is your name? I have none until my girl names me. It is our people's way. What's your name? I pause. I don’t breathe. Then I take up air and whisper, “I don’t have a name. Not anymore.” I return the doll to her spot in the display and smooth her dress. As I leave the store, I thank Genevieve, who looks up at me quickly with a fake smile and then looks away at the table. So much for accepting the here and now. Mrs. LeBeau isn't a target, but her connection to her doll is so strong that her aura is like a beacon that cuts through buildings. I just walk toward it. Once the sun disappears and the only light comes from streetlamps and houses, I dissolve my substance and fly as a wraith toward Mrs. LeBeau's home. If seen, I would appear to be windblown mist. I coalesce into my girl-costume just in front of the house. The barriers on this house would shred me back to oblivion. I wait. Theresa LeBeau comes out of her house and walks up to her fence. The edge of the ghost-eating barrier. “So, you need my help,” Mrs. LeBeau states flatly. “I've never helped a revenant before. Why should I start now?” I look around, scanning for movements of auras in my direction. Or other entities. I don't like talking out in the open like this. “Your doll said you'd want to help.” “What does a doll know? A doll just wants to be loved.” I frown. “Excuse me for wasting your time.” “Now hold on! Just tell me why you want my help.” I'm exasperated. “I can't do this on my own! He's too powerful.” She nods. “You speak the truth.” Mrs. LeBeau tilts her head and stares at me curiously. Then her eyes soften. “Burdens are for the living, child.” My eyes harden. “Will you help me or not?” She steps back and sweeps her hand toward the front door, which slowly opens. The barrier falls. I nod my head at her and walk into her home. Porcelain dolls, plastic dolls, glass figurines, wooden totems, liquid-filled vials, and necklaces cover the three-tiered cabinet in the foyer. In the living room, there is no TV, computer, of stereo. Just five ornately carved wooden tables covered with the same kinds of crafts. And an overstuffed green couch against the wall below the shade-drawn windows. “How do you find anything?” I ask. Mrs. LeBeau chuckles and sits on the couch. She looks at me and pats the seat next to her. I sit down, solidifying. An orange tabby pads into this room. I frown. Cats, like dogs, don't like me. This one looks up at me. Then it leaps into my costume lap and settles in. I freeze. What is going on? I barely form the words. “Why…why isn't your cat scared of me?” I tentatively pet the cat. It starts to purr. “Rachel isn't afraid of much. And you aren't a threat here. So. There you are.” I look at Mrs. LeBeau suspiciously, knowing I'm only getting half of the story, but I let it go. “I have a necklace. A talisman,” she explains, and one appears in her hand. “It will let you get past his defenses, but it won't stop him from tearing you from this world if he gets to you first.” She places the talisman on my neck. A brief glimpse. An explosion launching daggers of searing light. I wince. I consider her advice. “Then I'll have to catch him off guard and kill him quickly.” Mrs. LeBeau rubs her chin. “Slim chance. A man like him, he’s paranoid. Better to let him see you coming. He'll think he has the upper hand. You won't be an apparent threat to his defenses. As a revenant, you shouldn’t have to be sneaky. If he catches you being sneaky, all of his defenses will be in play.” “So, I don't let him catch me.” She raises her eyebrows. “I’ve got a better idea.” **** Later that same night, I walk up to the target. He is a middle-aged man, trim, pale skin, Armani suit, radiating arrogance. Invulnerability. He has opened the trunk of a car. There is a little girl tied up in the trunk. Unconscious. Mocha skin. Pink dress. He has a type. My claws come out. The target spins on his heel and stares at me. Instead of fear, I sense boredom. He yawns and gestures for me to hurry up. I strike for his throat with my claws. His arcane shield collapses and his eyes widen in shock as the blood sprays from his throat. Amazingly, a small gesture from him simultaneously seals his carotid artery and shoves me back. With a flick of the wrist, he casts an exploding sphere of jagged, black lightning spikes toward me as I dissipate and reform across the street, running for the alley. “Bitch! You can't get away from me!” he howls. Then a moment later, he shouts “Goddamn it!” He has just discovered that the girl is gone. Thank you, Mrs. LeBeau. As I wait at the end of the alley, I hear the roar of the target’s car, then the headlights as it swerves into the alley. I see air crystallize behind the car. No exit for me. His eyes fix on my talisman. He smirks and nods. Then he whips his head around and snarls a word that reverberates outside the car, warping the air in ripples. Anchored by the brick walls of the alley, a translucent web of steel-like strength materializes behind his car just as a truck smashes into it. For a brief moment, invisible runes on front of the truck erupt in brilliant purple flames, the web shatters, and the truck rams into the target’s car. His car is launched into the brick wall at the end of the alley and through my body costume. The windshield shatters and the air bag explodes into his face. Before he can get his bearings, I discorporate swiftly and rematerialize in the front passenger seat. My claws come out and I grab the sides of his head, my claws piercing his skull like knives through soft cheese, destroying his brain. Swiftly, his spirit sheds his body and hovers, and for an instant he sees the little black girl in a pink dress. Then he sees the real me beneath the body costume. Understandably, he tries to flee. I snatch him out of the air with my claws. I stretch my jaws until they are as wide as my head. The target cannot scream, but I hear the deadspeech nonononononono as I swallow him whole. Mrs. LeBeau leans out of the driver side window in the truck. “All set?” she shouts. My job is done. Time for oblivion. Again. Well, it was my choice. I look at Mrs. LeBeau’s kind, fierce eyes. Working with her was excellent. I wish this could last. But nothing lasts. I give her a departing thumbs up. “Thank you.” Mrs. LeBeau stares at the empty space where a little girl once stood and sees the necklace on the ground. She leaves her truck and wipes tears from her eyes as she picks up the necklace and places it around her neck. As she walks out of the alley and turns down the street, she chants and gestures behind her. There is an explosion in the alley. Fire, smoke, and flying bits of metal and glass erupt behind her. As Mrs. LeBeau approaches the steps of a house halfway down the street, a mocha-skinned girl in a pink dress appears out of thin air lying unconscious on the porch. Mrs. LeBeau picks the girl up in her arms and carries her the thirty blocks home. When she arrives home, completely exhausted, her cat Rachel is awake and waiting for her inside. After Mrs. LeBeau gently deposits the girl on the couch and covers her with a blanket. Rachel jumps onto the couch, snuggles next to the girl, and purrs. “The doll will be happy now, Rachel.” Mrs. LeBeau says softly. “I have found the girl she is to protect.” Rachel makes a questioning mew. “The revenant is gone, Rachel. Gone from all the worlds.” Rachel makes a strange chit-chit noise, like when she finds a mouse or a beetle. Mrs. LeBeau is startled. “But that’s not possible. She is nowhere to be found. You cannot know she will return.” Rachel’s eyelids wink slowly at Mrs. LeBeau’s confused expression as she purrs even louder. Part 3: The Client Remains Having just arrived in the mortal realm, I am barely a presence as I hover over the body of my client. I am a harsh whisper, a forgotten cruelty, a fragment of a nightmare. I see the corpse of a male child, jet black straight hair, maybe 10 or 11 years old, bare torso, lying on his back in the circle of salt and am puzzled. And anguished that my client is not an adult. I didn't think I could feel that. Anger, sure. Hate, you betcha. But anguish? Surprising. I must be in a motel room. There’s just a bed, nightstand, TV, and bathroom, with the morning sun peeking through the closed blinds of the single window. The blood from the child's wrists is soaked into the carpet. The payment has been made. With a life freely given, the contract is ironclad. But the script written, no, burned (cigarette?) on the boy's stomach is only the invocation, what called me here. I don’t sense further mystical script anywhere on the body. There is no apparent target. None of this makes sense. I absorb the blood debt and begin to solidify. My body costume feels odd. I look at my hands. They are those of a nine-year old black girl. I hear the barking of a dog. Ebony? my mind calls to the void. More barking. Ebony! My puppy is here? My body costume begins to shake, to unravel. I have to get it together. Ebony is not here! She died when I was fourteen. Just like me. Just like my parents. Trapped in a fire. Murdered. When my body costume stops blurring, I let gravity take over and sink lightly onto the carpet. I walk over to the bathroom and look in the mirror. Just what I thought. It's me when I was nine, soft brown face, dressed in a Pokémon T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, with hair in tight short braids. That's why I could hear Ebony barking. Echoes from the kinder aspects of my past. Back when I was innocent. Of all the stupid body costumes to take on for a client! What the hell is going on? Condensing behind me is an entity. My claws come out and I whip around. I snarl a warning in deadspeech, in the vibrations of the realms of the undead. No air needed. Message clearly sent. The entity is a ghost. Its aura matches my client's like a fingerprint. So, my client is now a ghost. I am not comfortable with that. I growl in deadspeech. What are you still doing in the mortal world? The boy ghost nearly disintegrates from fear. OK, time for me to play nice. I didn't mean to frighten you, I say gently. Please stay. The boy ghost partially solidifies into a wispy, transparent form. You came, he says. I shrug. The summoning was complete, so I appeared. It's my job. You left the target off your body script, which means that I can return to oblivion. And you...should move on to … wherever. Or not. I have the target, he explains. I just wanted to tell you myself. I roll my fake eyes. I'm the revenant, I explain. I’m the one who kills the target. All you needed to do was write it down. I want to go with you, he begs. I inhale some air just so I can sigh. You can't leave this apartment. You're bound to it because you’re a ghost. He cries out, I can bind myself to you. Then I can… I roar and grab his barely condensed form, sending my anger through him. If I weren’t holding him, he would fly apart. Are you a fool! If you are bound to me, when this is over, you will be nothing! There is no afterlife for me! I only come when summoned and otherwise I don’t exist! Do you understand? The boy wails. I let him go, retract my claws, and settle down. Who is the target? A pulsating red aura, streaked with a writhing black wraith worms, appears in front of my client. I hear the howl of dozens of souls ripped from their lives by this man. Mostly children. I stare at it and establish my link. Target acquired. Who taught you the summoning? Why did you… But it’s too late. He has already dissolved into the In-Between, so I can't see him. My questions about my client will have to keep. I need to figure out why I look like myself. It’s unprofessional. I check for auras outside the door. With the coast clear, I exit and begin the hunt. The place where my client summoned me is a dump, nothing but a seedy two-story motel. I guess a child paying for a room didn’t even seem odd here. I am outside on the second-floor landing approaching the stairs when I see two beefy men in black suits rushing up the staircase with guns drawn. They ignore me, stop in front of the door to my client’s room, and one behemoth kicks in the door. Now I’m curious. I shed my body costume and become a wraith, hard to see except as mist in the bright sun, and glide to the doorway. If I slipped into the In-Between, I would be truly invisible, but that place lets you rest and contemplate things. Not my cup of tea. The men are laughing as they re-holster their guns. They start to converse in Spanish; living languages all make sense to me. “The boss will be pleased.” “Yeah, we don’t have to worry about him squealing.” “I wonder why he offed himself like this?” “Who the fuck knows? His mother was a witch. They’re all crazy.” “We should get rid of the body.” They pull the bedsheet off and wrap the body in it, then wrap it in the blanket. “These cheap sheets and blankets are highly flammable,” says the slightly shorter hulk. He pulls out a metal flask from inside his jacket and pours the contents all over the blanket. I can’t smell it with no body costume, but by the amber color I would guess whiskey. The other flicks open a lighter. I should leave now, get back on the trail of the target. But they’re going to burn his body and that makes me furious. I condense in front of the men suddenly, inches away. They jump back and pull their guns. “Who the fuck are you?” the taller one shouts. I smile and reply, “Nobody” in Spanish. They start shooting. What a waste of bullets. My claws come out and I slash at the arms bearing their guns. They howl, drop their weapons, and collapse to the ground in a near faint, each grasping his bleeding, torn arm with his other hand. I was told that the pain from my claws is excruciating, like feeling glass shards being pushed under your skin while the outside of your skin is being boiled in acid. I think about killing them, but then I would disappear for good. That was made clear at the outset of my taking this revenant gig. Only kill targets. So I just roar at them, showing my true face, threatening them with claws raised. Screaming, they scramble backwards and rush out of the motel room, leaving their guns behind. I smile and take in a whiff. Oh, they’re going to have to get their suit pants cleaned. **** Back on the trail of the target. A young black woman is approaching me on the sidewalk pushing a stroller. She is smiling at me. “You go, girl!” she says. What was that for? Then I notice that I’ve been skipping. What the hell? Next, I’ll be asking the neighborhood kids if they want to play. Subdued, not skipping, I continue down the street. Scaring those thugs probably just made me a little happy… I stop. I take in a breath and expel “Happy?” I vigorously shake my head, but as it’s empty (really, not a joke), it doesn’t have the intended effect of clearing my thoughts. This job is briefly going on pause. Ducking into an alleyway, I wait until I sense no entities of any kind, then I do the one thing I don’t want to do. In the shadows of the alleyway, I enter the In-Between. In this soul-constricting darkness, there are various entities hanging around. Some are lit up like crystalline Christmas trees singing gloriously. Another entity is invisible, but when it passes too close, its whispered deadspeech makes me struggle to exist and I feel like raw meat gnashed between giant teeth. There is a drifting, roiling dragon made of lightning flying over a bunch of wispy human spirits mostly here then gone, except my client that I pick out of the crowd. And finally, whatever that means in this place of no-time, my recruiter appears. Same as always. Seemingly a six-foot human man with a penchant for gray, as in gray trench coat, suit, dress shirt, tie, pants, gloves, and Fedora, but darkness where there should be a face, and no feet. Appropriately, I call him the Gray Man, which he doesn’t mind. As he appears to walk towards me, I say, “Still couldn’t find gray loafers to match, Gray Man?” “Not in my size,” the Gray Man responds warmly. “What are you doing in the In-Between? You despise this place.” “Yes, I do, but I have some questions and you said that I could ask you about things.” He chuckles and clasps his gloved hands demurely in front. “About some things,” he admonishes. “First, why do I look like this? I’m supposed to look like a murder victim.” “You are a murder victim.” “Not one my client cares about.” The Gray Man steeples his fingers in front of his nonexistent face and taps them against…nothing, I guess. “So I take it your client is a child,” he surmises. “Yeah, so?” “Empathy can affect your body costume’s appearance.” I groan. Groaning in deadspeech in the In-Between has a pronounced effect on some entities. One of the Christmas tree-like beings notices me and sings in my direction. Very uplifting. Soul stirring even. I need to get the hell out of here. “OK, I get it. Can I change it?” I ask “Anytime you want. It’s a costume. Your client doesn’t really tell you how to look. That’s mostly how you interpreted their instructions.” You can’t have a body costume in the In-Between. We are all just wearing massless glamour for show, like an avatar. But still, I now appear as a I did when I was a pre-murdered fourteen-year old. A black teenage girl in corn rolls wearing a white T-shirt with an upraised black fist. I keep the jeans. “Anything else?” the Gray Man asks. I pause. Then I ask softly, “How long has it been since my last job?” “Twelve Earth years.” Wow! How time flies when you’re dead and gone. “Is…is Theresa LeBeau still alive?” “Ah. Your sorceress outside contractor. Yes, she is.” “Last question. Can I visit her?” “Only if your paths cross again on a job.” My client, the boy ghost, hovers towards us. “Until we meet again,” the Gray Man says as he slowly disappears. My client is more substantial in the In-Between, but his spectral form is still unsteady. I ask gently, “So, are you going to tell me why you did it?” “It was the only way I knew to stop the man who killed all those kids,” he explains. “The traffickers stole me off the street in Nicaragua at a market. I was shopping for my abuela. She was the one who taught me magic. I learned all the summoning spells I could, but I only ever tried this one because I knew that they were coming for me. I was dead anyway. At least I could make it count.” “They took you to America and sold you?” “Yes, with a bunch of other kids. We cleaned houses for rich people, but they also used us for sex. One of the rich men, the target, had twenty of us in one house, boys and girls. He killed them when they got too old. I tried to keep him off me with a shocking spell, but he drugged me with food one night. I never felt such pain and he wouldn’t stop. I had been corroding the iron bars in the windows a little each night with a ruin spell, so I took my chance, busted through the window, and ran. I got to the motel, bought cigarettes, got a room. You know the rest.” “When you died…you know you might not have stayed.” “My abuela taught me how to the tether the spirit to the body. I traveled with her to the In-Between twice when I was alive.” “Not bad, kid. What’s your name?” “Estefan.” “You’re pretty savvy, Estefan. But it’s time for me to finish this for you.” “OK. So, uh, what’s your name?” I smile and shake my head. “I’m just the revenant.” And then I walk out of the In-Between and continue after the target. **** Standing at the gated entrance, I can see that the target’s house is a mansion. It is surrounded by eight-foot high hedges, but the fencing is climbable. Probably electrified since Estefan’s escape. There is a spraying fountain creating a cone of mist in a circular stone driveway in front of seven-foot tall, steel double doors. Two guards similar to the ones I scared off stand to either side of the steel doors. No other guards are evident. I discorporate and my wispy form swirls past the fountain first, camouflaging my tenuous nature behind the jet-generated mists. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I had to deal with a sorcerer target that could have taken me out if it weren’t for Theresa LeBeau. Once the guards briefly look toward the gate, I keep low and rush between them and under the steel doors. On the other side I see two more guards sitting in chairs playing cards at a table. I keep going, tracking the aura of the target up the stairs. There is a young girl crying behind the target’s door. I try to flow under the door and am instantly repelled. I solidify in front of the door and am impressed. There are wards all over the door and the walls on either side of the door. I guess my client being a grandson of a witch made the target superstitious. So the door and the walls are no-go. Probably the window too. But was the target really thorough? I channel my vaporous form through the miniscule crack under a windowsill on the second-floor landing and fly to the attic window directly over the target’s room. As expected, this old windowsill is a sieve and I easily flow into the dusty attic. I solidify and crouch to the floor where I can hear the muffled screams of the girl and the target’s grunting. I take a claw, jam it into the wooden floor, and pull it out, leaving a small hole. Nope, he didn’t ward the ceiling. I rush through the hole like a billowing cloud and condense in mid-air over the naked target, who is pinning the screaming little girl to the bed. As I land on him, I slam my claws into his back. He screams and rolls off the bed and I jump to the floor. The little girl runs for the door and I hear shouting downstairs. The target is curled up on the carpet, howling from the pain of my attack, so I crouch down and drill my clawed hands through his skull. His spirit flies out, I grab it, and stretching my body costume jaws as wide as my head, I swallow his spirit whole. But I don’t disappear. I finished the job. I should be gone. The goons barrel in and start shooting. As I stand there, I think that I’ve got a little more to do. I slash my claws across the men in this room, flow as vapor between them, coalesce downstairs and attack the other guards who have guns blasting. I show my true face with abandon and start laughing. Blood and gore fly everywhere. After a minute, several guards run out of the mansion and head for the gate. I fly ahead of them and stay wraith-like in front of the gate. Before they scatter, I do something unusual for me. I flow into each of their brains and stare at their souls. They promptly faint. After I re-establish my body costume, I tie up all of the guards with zip-ties they are already equipped with. The ones upstairs are still in agony, so I zip-tie them, collect their guns and the ones outside and hide them in the enormous hedges. I go over to a control panel by the front door and open the gate. Slowly, children begin to peek out of rooms. I know they’re scared of me. I use one of the guards’ cell phones and call 911. The operator picks up. “911. Do you want fire, ambulance, or police?” Modulate the air. Sound like a mature woman. “I need ambulance and police. The address is 1000 Mission Park Terrace. There are children here. I think they’ve been trafficked, raped. Men are tied up, injured, one is dead upstairs. Their guns are in the hedges near the gate, which I’ve left open. You’ll need Child Protective Services too. And a Spanish translator.” “Ma’am, that’s 1000 Mission Park Terrace? James Devereaux’s mansion?” “Yes.” “OK. Police and ambulance are on their way. We’ll get these children help, ma’am. You just stay on the line.” **** After a minute, a little girl picks up the cell phone lying on the floor. She is shaking, because she watched the black girl just disappear. She speaks into the phone. “Policía?” **** In the In-Between, Estefan holds the hand of his abuela and they wink out in a flash of light. **** Later, the police haul away the men at the mansion and hand the children over to Child Protective Services. CSI takes photos of the body. There are lots of news vans. A black SUV with tinted windows and US government plates pulls up. A pale, rugged young man with a blond buzz cut and a black suit steps out of the driver’s side of the SUV and flashes his badge at the uniformed officers at the edge of the crime scene tape. “Special Agent Monroe, FBI.” He walks up the stairs to where he can hear the detective talking to the crime scene techs. He looks carefully at the symbols on the door and walls, then pokes his head in, flashing his badge again. “Excuse me, detective. I’m Special Agent Monroe, FBI. Just hear to take a quick peek. Not trying to step on toes.” The detective’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Sure. Just don’t fuck up my crime scene.” Special Agent Monroe looks up at the ceiling. There is a tiny whole in it where dust is drifting down from the attic. He smiles. “Rookie mistake,” he says softly to himself. Then he returns to his SUV and drives away. **** The In-Between. I know it because I can feel the constant pressure; the agony of thousands of murdered souls has weight. And of course, there are the weird transient entities. But I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t even exist. The Gray Man appears in front of me. “Why am I in the In-Between?” I ask. I hate how disoriented I feel. The Gray Man says, “You seem to want to renegotiate the terms of your job.” “What do you mean?” “You stayed after the assignment. That was your choice.” “I...it didn’t seem finished.” The Gray Man nods. “You are a most intriguing revenant.” I sense mystical forces coalescing around me. I’m in an office. Desk, desk chair, lamps. Well-lit. A chair in front of the desk. No window, but a door. The feeling in here is less oppressive. I open the door and walk back into the soul compressing outside. The Gray Man is hovering, his hands clasped behind his back. “Do you like it?” he asks. “This office? What’s it for?” “It’s yours. If you want it.” “Why would I need an office?” “To help those who don’t need ancient mystical knowledge to summon you. After all, you seem to want to provide greater services than just contract killing for the magical elite.” I frown. I did help those kids. I…cared. The Gray Man leans toward me and whispers from his non-existent face, “Oblivion abhors self-realization.” “What about the blood debt?” I ask. “A choice this time. One who sacrifices all, or nine adult volunteers who bring themselves to death’s door, bleeding into that perfect circle of salt.” “How will the nine know if they’ve completed the ritual? Some may not make it.” “That’s the risk they take. It’s called a sacrifice, after all. The blood will glow magnificently before you appear. I like a bit of showmanship. Although only the caretakers of the nine will notice the glow due to the nine falling unconscious from blood loss. A pity really.” “No special rituals?” “Not for the nine. But they have to seek you out in the In-Between first and get your promise to help in exchange for the blood debt.” “Huh. Summoning for the people, Gray Man? How will anyone know about this?” “In dreams. For those with the need. I enjoy the Dreamscape as much as you despise the In-Between.” I stare at the door of the office. I place my right hand, no claws this time, on the door, and close my eyes. As I remove my hand, I smile. There is a plaque: Revenant Services The Gray Man says gently, “Aren’t you missing something?” I hesitate. Tentatively, I reach out with my forefinger to write the final word in script above the title. It’s just glamour; no ink needed, but it’s still hard for me to do. After all, I’m just the revenant. Here to do a job, then gone. But I guess that’s changed. My spirit is quaking so badly I’m sure that damn Christmas-tree thing wants to sing to me. There. It’s done. Julia Revenant Services THE END
ECHO BEACH I.
Resting at the southernmost point of Montego Bay, Jamaica stood Echo Beach Hotel. I was eleven years old and sitting on the beach in the shade of a large umbrella with Juliet. “Gollywogs,” cried Juliet. “What’s that?” I asked. “They’re all over. The people who work here. Can’t you see?” I was from New York. Juliet, also eleven, was from England. Her mother made Juliet wear a thick mask of Coppertone, a white beach robe and a white floppy hat. She looked like a funny ghost. “Darling,” Juliet’s mother cried in her screechy English accent from her beach chair. Even from this distance, I could smell her coconut suntan oil. “Please leave those poor crabs alone.” Julie’s favorite activity was gathering hermit crabs from the sea and pulling their twitching bodies out of their shells. I thought this was terrible, but still watched with fascination. At night I had nightmares of Juliet drowning in a sea of pale mutilated shells. This was the first time Juliet’s family had come to Jamaica, but my fourth. My parents spent their honeymoon there and Echo Beach was their “special” place, always spoken in revered tones. “Gollywogs,” Juliet said again. “I have dolls at home.” I had no idea what Juliet was talking about and wanted to leave. My parents kept pushing me to play with her since they spent most of the time at The Cypress bar and slept till noon. To get away from Juliet, I told her I wanted to go swimming. Juliet didn’t know how to swim and sulked back to the hotel. I walked away to the far side of the beach. The sand burned. The sunlight looked orange but everything looked orange in Jamaica. As I waded through the water, I was mesmerized by the shells and swirling grains of sand, the water lapping at my ankles, until I looked up and I realized I was lost. This part of the beach was empty. Several amber-colored beer bottles littered the sand and a torn pink umbrella was positioned upside down. The sand felt grittier. l knew I wasn’t too far from the hotel because I could still hear the calypso music the band played every noon. Someone was singing my favorite song: “Good morning Mr. Walker I’ve come to see your daughter. Sweet Rosemary… Tells me she’s going to marry me.” A tall man was walking on the beach. He wore a white t-shirt and sunglasses and his hands were thrust in the pockets of his khaki pants. I didn’t recognize him at first but the man was Trevor, the chief bartender at The Cypress Bar at the hotel. My parents spent hours there. I was constantly sulking because disliked being stuck on a stool with a Coke. But Trevor always had kind words for me. He had been born in London but moved to Jamaica when he was my age. Trevor would tell me he never could get rid of his British accent and all the children at school would laugh at him, calling him “Limey.” His accent was different than Juliet’s and her mother’s, more precise yet warmer. “My dear Claire,” Trevor said. “Whatever are you doing here?” “Hello Trevor,” I answered. “Well, this is a coincidence. I was hoping to see you. I’ve just found something for you. And just for you and no one else.” Trevor took his hand out of his pocket and revealed the most beautiful shells I had ever seen. They were so tiny and white that they reminded me of pearls. He brought his closed fist to my hand and deposited the shells in my palm. “They’re beautiful,” I told him. I wanted to keep them forever. But I was scared I would lose them. “Will you keep them for me?” I asked Trevor. “But this is a present for you.” “Please?” Trevor sensed my distress because he opened his hand and I gently pored the shells into his open palm. “Why aren’t you on the beach?” he asked. “But this is the beach,” I answered. “No dear. Hotel guests are not supposed to be here. Did you not read the sign?” I vaguely remembered seeing bright red letters but had not paid any attention. At the end of the beach was a gate of twisted barbed wire. Beyond that gate I could make out a road with several figures walking slowly in the sun. “Julie’s horrible!” I suddenly exclaimed. “And why’s that?” “She likes to kill crabs. Trevor, what are Gollywogs?” “Did Juliet say that word?” “Yes. That’s what she called the people who work here.” I realized too late that Trevor would be connected too with that name. Trevor whistled and his eyes narrowed. “My, isn’t she a very English little girl.” “But what does that mean?“ I asked. Trevor paused for a moment and then shook his head. He told me to turn around and return to the hotel beach. He had to report to the dining room, change into his uniform and set up that afternoon’s tea. I asked Trevor if I could help but he answered that my mother and father wouldn’t like that at all so I hid in the shadows of a palm tree, watching him walk swiftly across the sand. He even moved differently than the other Jamaicans, his back held straight, his stride determined. Trevor’s fingers were always snapping to an invisible beat I imagined was to the tune of my song: “Good Morning Mr. Walker.” I did not know where to go or what to do. I didn’t want to see my parents; they were always cranky after they woke up from their afternoon nap and would stay in bed drinking rum and ice until it was time for cocktail hour. The sunburn on my forehead was hurting. I decided to play with the umbrella I had seen earlier and started dragging it to the edge of the beach near the sidewalk. The umbrella was heavy and I was hot but I was determined to bring that umbrella to the gate. With tremendous effort I picked it up and laid it straight against the barbed wire. Now that gate did not look so ugly anymore. I stood there, admiring my work, when I became aware of another viewer. A little black boy stood only a few inches away from me, wearing only white underpants. His limbs were covered in a thin layer of sand that looked like sugar and almost his whole fist was jammed in his mouth. The little boy walked up to what I thought of as my umbrella and began pulling at it. Incensed that he was taking it, I grabbed the umbrella and hauled it back up again. “Be careful!” I told the boy in a loud voice. “You don’t want to hurt yourself.” He stood still for a moment, then seized the umbrella and started tugging at it again. A possessive fury overcame me. How dare this boy take my umbrella? I was surprised by how easy it was to lift him. With a strength that surprised me, I swung him over my left side and watched, stunned, as he fell noiselessly into the sand. I was terrified that he was hurt—that he would start howling, that I would get into trouble. But the boy remained motionless and then began babbling in a quiet even voice. He did not sound upset, though at some points he would raise his voice as if I had said something wrong. I had no idea what to do. Before I knew it, he was running. As I watched him take off, I saw in my mind how my day would unfold, boring hours ahead of watching Juliet torture those poor crabs, her mother yelling at her, me feeling listless and trapped. I didn’t want another empty day like that so I decided to follow him. Beyond the gate, the road was filled with dust and empty beer bottles. A donkey stood munching dry grass. The boy ran very fast and I could not keep up with him. A skinny goat trotted along, staring at me with yellow eyes. There were no cars on the road, and to the left was a large heap of broken bicycles without tires. The boy seemed to be heading toward a cluster of huts painted red and white. There were no windows. The porches were covered with dirty plates, chicken bones and empty cans. The boy stopped suddenly and put his fist in his mouth again. A very old woman with white hair came out on the porch and stared at me with bloodshot eyes. For a few moments she did not speak, but only clucked her tongue. “You turn around,” she finally said. “You turn around and go back. Understand? ” I couldn’t move. The woman repeated this and then several people came out of their huts. There were three men; all bare-chested, wearing rainbow-striped knitted caps that did not completely hide their glossy coils of hair. The woman slapped the boy so hard across the face that my hand flew up to my mouth in horror. The boy looked stunned and then burst into tears. Another old lady watched me as she strung blue beads with a large needle. She opened a little cloth bag at her side and a whole strand of bright blue beads spilled out across the porch and onto the road. The blue beads were so big that I thought they looked like eyeballs, staring at me accusingly. I stumbled back to the beach, my thoughts a blur, not wanting to think about that poor boy. I imagined those beads watching me all the way back to my hotel rom. II. Four years later I told Trevor about this incident. He was making a large pitcher of Pina Coladas for that evening’s cocktail party and listened to me intently. I still couldn’t shake the image of that day. I felt I had transgressed in some way, but I couldn’t say how. The boy had invited me to run after him, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to follow. Everyone thought this was for my safety, yet he was the one who ended up hurt. Not only by the woman who slapped him, but also by me, for I had picked him up and tossed him—though I didn’t share this part with Trevor. “It was wrong of you to follow that little boy back to his home,” Trevor told me. “What would you have told your parents? They would have said something to the manager, who would have found out whose little boy he was, and then make trouble with the police.” I sulked in my seat. I was fifteen and believed everyone was against me. “Here, Claire. You can have just one sip but don’t tell anyone.” Trevor sometimes allowed me to sample his concoctions without the liquor added. Even though I knew there wasn’t alcohol in these cocktails I still felt dizzy as if I drank three Coconut Crèmes in a row. “I live there too,” Trevor said softly. For a moment, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I realized that his home must also be located amongst those huts. Somehow, I had believed that Trevor lived in the hotel – maybe even in a room similar to my own. He seemed so intimately connected with Echo Beach “It’s a beautiful day, Claire,” Trevor told me. “Go outside and swim. This is no place to spend your vacation.” “My parents are driving me crazy,” I moaned. “I wish I had stayed home.” “You’re just angry. Everyone is angry at your age.” Trevor leaned over and smelled like the limes he had been slicing. “Shall we have a cup of tea?” I felt a warm rush of feeling through me. Our teatime together was my secret, my special place at Echo Beach. I followed Trevor into the back kitchen. There was always a teakettle on the burner. He was very strict about making tea – the water had to be ice cold before it boiled, and the tea bags needed to steep at least five minutes. I loved the smell of hot water and soapy suds, the soothing ritual of making British tea. “England ruined me,” he once told me. “Here, I’m not Jamaican. There, I was never British.” I knew Trevor felt deeply betrayed by the country that refused to accept him. His family was invited to England after the war as guest workers but forced to leave after their shop was burned down. “Please sing Jerusalem to me again,” I asked Trevor then. This was, according to Trevor, England’s official anthem, a song he proudly told me he had once sang when the Queen’s cousin came to visit his school. “Not today, love,” Trevor said. He lit a cigarette and I watched a silver wreath of smoke float up to the ceiling and disappear. He passed me a tray of Edinburgh shortbread biscuits and we both nibbled in comforting silence. Our shared solace seemed as golden as the sun, which shone through the window and illuminated the crystal glasses in the serving trays. Someone outside called out his name. “Do you have to leave?” I asked him. “I wish I could spend more time but work is work,” Trevor said, standing up and grabbing a dishrag for the bar. Outside Juliet was perched on a bar stool, water dripping from her wet hair. “Hullo Claire. Hullo there, Trevor. Claire, why aren’t you on the beach? It’s brilliant outside.” Guests were not supposed to wear bathing suits inside the hotel but Juliet went everywhere in her green string bikini. Her mother had died and her father’s new wife was only twenty-five. The two shared clothes and cosmetics. Over the past couple of years, Juliet and I had written letters, at first one or two a year, but then picking up pace. Our letters couldn’t get to each other across the ocean fast enough. I had forgotten I had disliked her once. She was now funny and charming. We traded secrets. Whenever we saw each again at Echo Beach, we were able to resume our friendship as if we had never left the hotel. “Claire refuses to leave me,” Trevor told her with a wink. “Who can blame her?” Juliet asked with a grin. She was always flirting with Trevor and the rest of the hotel staff. I thought back to when Juliet had compared crabs to Golliwogs. Last year, I had looked them up, seen the racist images of black rag dolls in England, comic and minstrel. I thought about how Juliet had seen the bulging eyes in the faces of the crabs, thought about how she had mutilated their bodies. “Come on, Claire,” Juliet whined. “Sit with me on the beach.” I was furious with Juliet’s intrusion but I knew I couldn’t spend all day with Trevor in the bar. We said good-bye to him and walked out into the glaring sunlight. “There’s a party,” Juliet told me. “At The Lucky Irene. Let’s go.” There was always a party on the boat called The Lucky Irene. It was a yacht that never seemed to sail anywhere. The owner was the widow of the hotel’s original owner. She had her own special table in the middle of the dining rom, which she shared with a series of Jamaican men. The man who was now with Irene was tall and elegant and always wore white suits with a slender shimmering gold watch. Irene was a woman in her sixties with jowls like a bulldog and eyebrows haphazardly painted on. Her loud laugh was metallic and cold and could be heard from her yacht at night. Juliet told me to meet her in thirty minutes in the lobby and to look sharp. I only had a black dress with spaghetti straps made of some nylon material that made my skin itch. Juliet wore a glittery gold dress and gold sandals with tottering high heels. Her eye shadow sparkled, and the perfume she wore smelled like her late mother’s cocoa butter oil. The deck of The Lucky Irene had been transformed into a ballroom. Chandeliers of candles seem to hang from the night sky. A steel band played calypso. Pretty Jamaican women served rum in carved-out pineapples. Juliet and I hid in a corner and watched the shadows of the guests glide across the water. Irene wore a ruby red dress with a long shimmering scarf that trailed behind her back. Her Jamaican was stunning in his white suit and carried a bottle of champagne. No one spoke to him except Irene who kept whispering in his ear. One torchlight seemed to attach itself to his gold watch and it made my eyes hurt when I looked. The drummer of the calypso band began pounding on his drums. They brought a limbo stick out on the deck and torched with a high flame. “Show time,” Irene cried out. “My friends, may I introduce you to The Wonderful Wanda.” Wanda was a Jamaican girl, only a few years older than me. The plastic fruit precariously perched on her head seemed always on the verge of sliding off. Her Hawaiian grass skirt was too big for her and had to be held together at the waist with a large safety pin. She looked awkward and uncomfortable—too young for her clothes, too earnest. When she thought no one was looking, she even gnawed at a fingernail. What was she doing here? But still everyone applauded as Wanda smiled nervously and bobbed her head. The torchlight reflected in her eyes, making them glow. The girl placed her hands on her hips and leaned all the way back until her head touched the floor. Then, to the rhythm of the conga, she shimmied beneath the fiery stick and slowly stood up with raised palms. The act was repeated over and over again each time with an increasingly louder drumbeat. A troupe of men singing “Yellowbird” joined her. Several drunken guests tried to dance beneath the limbo stick themselves, and a fat man became stuck and the crowd roared with laughter. “Yellowbird,” Irene sang, her voice screeching above the musicians. Her Jamaican suddenly left her side and strode out onto the dance floor. He lifted the limbo stick so the fat man could stand up and walked over to Wanda. Gently taking her by the arm, he said “enough.” His voice was calm yet seem as loud as the Congo drums. He swept his hand in a small circle, indicating the yacht, the musicians, and the torches. “I am leaving,” he told Irene. “I do not want to do this anymore.” Irene stared at him with an open mouth as he took off his white jacket and draped it over Wanda’s trembling shoulders. “Go home,” he calmly said to her. “You’ll still get your money.” The calypso players stopped singing and stared sheepishly at each other, unsure what to do next. There were whisperings among the guests. It was very quiet on the deck of The Lucky Irene as the people moved silently toward the bar. At first I wanted to tell Trevor about the party, then decided not to let him know I had been there. I also felt upset about the man in the white suit’s rebellion. I knew he had been right, but hotel guests paid a lot of money to get the Jamaica they wanted. Echo Beach seemed suddenly different to me. It was like finding a beautiful shell on the beach and turning it over, discovering it covered with maggots. But I wasn’t one of the white tourists in that boat who had watched her? Why hadn’t I said or done anything? I felt dirty and even nauseated. The girl had looked so scared. I tried to talk to Juliet about it but instead she wanted me to meet these two brothers from Boston who would take us to a reggae concert in town. One of the boys offered me a joint and I eagerly inhaled it. I wanted to forget the scene I saw on The Lucky Irene. I wanted my version of Echo Beach to return. That day was so hot and humid that it was difficult to breathe and the smoke from the ganja smelled like burnt sugar. The singer was dressed in green and everyone in the audience held green stalks in their hands and swayed in rhythm to the music. We hitched a ride back to the hotel in an open truck filled with cats. The cats climbed all over my body and when it suddenly rained they nestled against our bodies for protection. The rain felt soft and warm against my face. In that moment, I didn’t have to think about the man in the white suit. I didn’t have to think about the boy from all those years ago getting slapped across the face. There was just the music, the rain, that moment, the simplicity of Jamaica being uncomplicated Jamaica. At sixteen, this was all I wanted. III. Susie’s House was modeled after Rick’s Café in Negril, supposedly the best place in all of Jamaica to watch a sunset. I was twenty-four, and on this holiday my parents had invited my fiancé, James to join us. I had met James at a bar after a group of us decided to have a drink after work. He was a lawyer who had gone to Harvard, he knew how to play tennis with my father, and could keep up with my parents drinking. “Plenty of women would scratch out your eyes for that one,” my mother told me once after her third martini. “You’d be a fool to lose him.” James had not wanted to visit Jamaica. He was not a tourist but an explorer. His usual trips were to exotic places like Sri Lanka or The Maldives and sometimes he sold his photographs to magazines. But I wanted him to see Echo Beach. It was part of my history, and he needed to understand that. James and I sat on the veranda overlooking the ocean. The couple next to us from Cleveland was betting on the exact moment the sun would sink away from sight. James said 6:01 and the woman promised us a bottle of champagne if we were right. James laughed and shook her hand. He was right. The sun now was a pink sliver vanishing into a blood-red sea. The show was greeted with appreciative murmurs. A waiter brought over a bottle of champagne. We shared the bottle with the other tourists there – honeymooners, an elderly couple celebrating their fortieth anniversary. The champagne was too warm and sweet but we didn’t care. The bubbles went right to my head and I was floating. James loved Jamaica in a way a tourist loves Jamaica: climbing Dun River Falls, bamboo rafting on the Martha Brae River, and visiting rum distilleries, where the samples were plentiful and James would always fall asleep as soon as we returned to the hotel. These expeditions exhausted me. I much preferred staying at the hotel, walking on the beach or visiting Trevor. “I’m bored here,” James said. “Why won’t you beyond the hotel gates?” “I like being here at Echo Beach.” I answered. Could he understand that this was not just a hotel but also a refuge for me when I was a child and an adolescent? James he pointed to the bathroom, which could have been cleaner and shook his head. “This is not Shangri-La, Claire,” he told me, and then he threw me down the bed and proceeded to take off all my clothes. Being here in Jamaica had made him more hot-blooded and the sex was dynamic. But after it was over I felt hollow. Would his remain when we returned to Boston? One morning James went parasailing with two other young men he had met at one of the rum distilleries. I declined to join him, and decided to visit Trevor at The Cypress Bar. He was busy serving beer to three college kids who all wore Toronto Maple Leaf sweatshirts. This was something I noticed Canadians did to make sure they weren’t mistaken for Americans. The men were all laughing too loudly and were drunk even thought it was only eleven in the morning. I could tell that their laughter bothered Trevor by the way he stood stiffly and instead of joining the conversation only nodded his head. Trevor had aged well over the years. His hair was just beginning to glisten with thin silver threads. He still stood proudly at six foot two and the mirror behind him at the bar reflected his image so that he looked even two inches taller I stood at the end of the bar, near the sliced limes and oranges, and waited for him. When he saw me, he didn’t smile as I expected. “Claire, why are you here?” “What do you mean?” I asked. The day was not going as I planned. I had hoped that Trevor would invite me to the kitchen for a cup of tea and speak again of his childhood in England. “I saw James earlier this morning. He said he was off to parasailing. I assumed you would join him.” I shook my head more vigorously than I realized. “No, I wanted to stay here. We have so much to catch up with Trevor.” “Oh, Claire, your not a little girl anymore. You need to be with the man you will marry.” One of the Canadians shouted something. “Excuse me,” he said, and he walked away without glancing back. Tears stung my eyes. Why was I so foolish? I should be with James. I spent the rest of the afternoon in town buying useless souvenirs. When James returned, he was sunburnt and drunk. He and his friends had visited yet another local distillery. He went to asleep as I carefully made up my face for dinner. I thought about Trevor telling me I should be with my fiancé. He may have been right. James loved Jamaica but I sense that he was jealous of Trevor and our easy relationship. “He’s just a bartender,” James had said to me after the first time I introduced him to Trevor. “You talk to him like he’s the owner of the hotel.” Our custom before dinner was that we would have a drink at The Cypress Bar. That afternoon, with James out cold, I wasn’t so sure he would join me. But he woke up, took a cold shower, and seemed to have sobered up. Luckily the group of Canadians was gone when we arrived at the bar. Trevor had a large smile on his face. “How was the parasailing?” he asked James. “How did you know?” “Claire told me.” James stared at me in a way that made me feel cold. Trevor must have noticed because he added, “I told her that she should have joined you. More adventurous than staying here at the hotel.” “That’s exactly right. See, Claire. Trevor knows what he’s talking about. How about two Bacardi’s.” I could still smell the scent of rum on James’s breath. “Do you really think we should?” I asked. “This is our holiday,” James said. “Enjoy. Right, Trevor?” “Righto!” Trevor let out a low whistle and brought out two glasses and a bottle of Bacardi rum. “I propose a toast,” Trevor announced. A long and wonderful life to the two of you.” Trevor poured until our glasses nearly overflowed and James drank the rum with one swift gulp. Two guests entered the bar. A woman wearing a silver turban asked Trevor to light her cigarette. A man in a straw hat was scolding his wife for paying too much money at the market. The smell of pina coladas was too sweet and sickening. James rattled the ice cubes in his glass and the sound reminded me of those blue beads spilling across that woman’s porch so many years ago. “Hey Trevor,” James called out. Trevor was busy carefully carrying a tray of cocktails. “Trevor,” he said louder, and then whistled. “James, stop it,” I told him in a lowered voice. “Stop what? You’re the one who need to stop, Claire. You haven’t relaxed once since we got here.” Trevor walked slowly to us, his eyes narrowed “Yes, what can I do for you?” he asked, slinging a tea towel across his shoulder. James leaned in over the bar. His nose was sunburnt and his eyes were glazed the way they got when he drank too much. “How about joining us for dinner tonight?” Trevor seemed to take a breath and slowly exhaled “I appreciate your offer but that would be impossible” “And why’s that?” James demanded. “You have your dinner in the hotel’s dining room. The waiters are the only hotel staff allowed in the dining room.” “But Trevor, you’ll be our guest. I will talk to the host. I’m sure he’ll agree. If he doesn’t a twenty-dollar bill will surely help.” Trevor just shrugged, turned around and began to wipe the bar with the towel. I knew Trevor was right. The hotel staff was intensely competitive. Many envied his popularity with the guests. Yet it did seem silly that he was not allowed to join us for one night. “We’ll see you at seven,” James said as he hopped off the stool. He quickly walked out of the bar, past the pool and headed toward the beach. Trevor returned to me and gave me a glass of water. “Drink this, Claire. You don’t want to be dehydrated in this heat.” I drank the cold water, started to speak and then stopped. I felt embarrassed and angry and desperately wanted to hide in the warmth of the kitchen and listen to Trevor’s sentimental school songs. His eyes looked away from my face. “You better find your fiancée,” he told me. I found James at the end of the beach, wading in the shallowest part of the sea. His shoes and socks were neatly folded a few feet away, though he had neglected to roll up his pants. His hair looked wet and fell in damp strands across his eyes. A glass bottom boat ride on a nearby dock made a sad creaking noise as it rolled upon the waves. I took off my sandals and tiptoed into the warm water. “I love you, Claire,” James said quietly as he touched my cheek. I knew I should kiss him but instead I moved my face away. I was angry with myself and didn’t completely understand why. That night at the restaurant we sat at a table beneath a full moon and shimmering stars. The air was humid and the mosquitoes were particularly vicious. I wrapped a shawl about my shoulders but could still feel them burrowing beneath the cloth. Our waiter stood behind my chair, tapping his pen against his thigh. It was late and we had not yet ordered. “He won’t come,” I told James yet again as he glanced at his watch. “Oh yes he will.” James wore a white suit, reminding me of the Jamaican man so many years ago on the deck of The Lucky Irene. Irene had died but her yacht remained still moored on the dock, a vandalized ghost boat. The windows were shattered and the deck covered with broken glass. Why was it still here? It was said that during a full moon Irene’s ghost could be seen dancing to the strains of unearthly music, her long shimmering scarf blowing in the wind. Our waiter sighed loudly as the dining room clock struck ten. “There he is,” James said in a loud voice. Trevor stood at the end of the dining room. He was still wearing his bartender’s uniform. He hesitated at the threshold. “I’ll talk to him,” I told James. “No, Claire. Stay where you are.” I watched James approach Trevor and the men conversed with their heads bowed together. Then James clamped his hand on Trevor’s shoulder and brought him over to the table. Trevor stood by his empty place, his hands clasped behind his back. “Hello Claire,” Trevor began. “I was just telling James…” “Sit down, Trevor,” James told him. “As I said before, I appreciate the offer but this will only cause trouble. The waiters don’t like this.” “And why’s that?” James asked impatiently. “I belong in the bar. They belong in the dining room. Some would think I am here to steal their tips.” Trevor’s forehead was wet with sweat, and his white shirt clung damply to his skin. The guests at the other tables were staring at us. “I’m sorry. Thank you for the invite. Now you must excuse me.” Trevor walked swiftly out of the dining room. I saw several waiters murmuring. “Waiter,” James called out. “We’re ready to order.” “You’re despicable,” I said, standing up. “Torturing Trevor like that.” “Sit down Claire and finish your drink,” James snapped at me. “People are staring at you.” We ordered our dinner and finished the meal in silence. The next day I joined James at Dun River Falls but slipped on a rock and twisted my ankle. The bruise turned purple and swelled to the size of a golf ball. I spent my two days alone in the hotel room as James took sailing lessons and played tennis. The lights in my room were always turned off and the shades drawn. Though I could already hear myself tell the story later when we got home, saying with a small laugh what a shame it was that I had sprained my ankle, the truth was that I wanted that time alone in the room. I reread my favorite Agatha Christie novels and spent time in the bath. In the distance, I could hear the calypso music that still played my favorite song: “Good Morning Mr. Walker.” I realized I loved Echo Beach more than James. One night in bed, James tossed and turned, unable to sleep. I sensed his restlessness. Finally, he clicked on the bedside lamp and turned to me. His face looked grey and crumpled in the darkness. “I’m going home tomorrow, Claire. I don’t know why, but there’s something I can’t touch within you that is here on this island and here in this hotel. It’s getting between us. I can feel it. Please tell me you’ll join me.” I knew in that moment that I was supposed to talk with him, beg him to stay, at least pretend to cry—but I couldn’t. James left that morning in the middle of a ferocious thunderstorm that made the island shake as if it were only a leaf in a tree. The walls of my bungalow shuddered as water trickled in a steady stream from a leak in my ceiling. Yet the next morning there was a rainbow so glorious that it brought tears to my eyes. I walked to the beach and buried my legs beneath the cool sand, vowing I could always return to Echo Beach. James was right. There was something here he couldn’t touch. IV. The sun was relentless that holiday and dried the grass so that it snapped like twigs. I was now thirty, single, and living in a small apartment in Queens, New York. Jamaica still looked orange to me, even though I never took off my green tinted glasses. My hotel window overlooked the sea and the bellboy had told me that sharks had been spotted in nearby waves. At night I thought I could see them; their fins flashing silver in the pearl moonlight. The hotel was no longer called Echo Beach, but I refused to recognize its new name. Only the lobby had been remodeled as a pavilion with screens instead of windows. The screens were supposed to keep out the insects but they still made their way through holes: mosquitoes, wasps and the occasional butterfly. Trevor was surprised to see me. I was relieved he was still there. I had feared he would have moved on, a fear that went through me each time I returned to Echo Beach. Six yeas had passed since I had last seen him. I stood behind the door for a full minute before I had the courage to walk inside. The bar still smelled of sweet pineapples and coconut juice. A neon sign hung over the counter and the television set was tuned to CNN news. The bluish light from the television made the faces of the people at the bar look cruel. A skinny teenager wearing a t-shirt with the face of Bob Marley refilled the peanut dishes. Trevor was talking to a group of men wearing skimpy bathing suits and gold chains around their necks. Trevor turned to refill a glass when he saw me. He seemed had not aged at all except for a slight stoop to his shoulders. I watched his eyes squint slowly and then he grinned. “Hello Trevor,” I said. “Hello dear Claire.” I was so relieved he had recognized me. He walked over and clasped my hand in his own. “Dear me, I never thought I’d see you again, love.” “How are you, Trevor?” “As well as can be. And your mother and father?” “They both passed away.” Trevor lowered his eyes and was silent. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder. “I am so very sorry,” he told me. “May God be with them.” Someone called out Trevor’s name and he told me he would be right back. I sat on a hard stool and ate damp peanuts from a glass bowl. The boy in the Bob Marley t-shirt stared at me. Strong gusts suddenly blew in from the sea and knocked over several empty glasses. “Jimmy,” Trevor shouted to the boy. “Close that window!” Trevor returned to me, his head turned to the side as if looking for someone. “Where is James?” “I haven’t seen him in years, “ I told him. At that moment, a red butterfly fluttered in. It blew in suddenly and landed on top of a beer glass. “It’s lost,” said Trevor, cupping the butterfly in his hand. “We don’t have this kind of butterfly here in Jamaica. It must be somewhere across the sea, far away.” The boy was having difficulty with the shutters. Trevor shook his head and went over to help him. “Jimmy,” he told him. “Why don’t you go and serve that lovely lady a drink.” “Yes sir. The boy’s accent sounded like poor imitation of Trevor’s own. He even snapped his fingers the way Trevor used to long ago. “What will you have Miss?” “A Manhattan.” The boy began mixing my drink, whistling shrilly through his teeth. Trevor came over at several points, showing him the correct way to make the cocktail. “How much do I owe you?” I asked Trevor. “This is on the house. Always has been, my dear.” I finished the drink quickly and asked for another. Trevor looked at the empty glass and lifted his gaze to my face. “It looks as if you had a few before you even came in, Claire.” “Please, Trevor. I’m not fifteen anymore.” “Why don’t I bring you a nice cup of tea? You always liked the way I made tea.” I laughed. He was right. I did have a few drinks on the airplane, and seeing the new sign on the hotel had been upsetting, and made me want more alcohol. “Tea? In this weather? Oh Trevor, you’ll never leave England, will you?” “Then I’ll just make tea for myself,” he said lightly as he quickly turned and walked toward the kitchen. I wanted to apologize but it was too late. Of course I wanted the tea and also the chance to be alone with Trevor. I wish I could take my words back. The bar was getting crowded. I shivered even though it wasn’t cool and placed my sweater over my shoulders. Behind me, something bumped and I quickly turned around. “Would the missis care for another drink?” Jimmy stood so close to me that I could smell the tobacco under his breath. “Another Manhattan,” I said, hearing myself stumble over the words. “Very good,” he murmured. I felt the need for a cigarette and reached behind my chair for my bag. My Marlboro pack was gone. So seemed to be my wallet. I swore under my breath. There wasn’t much money in the wallet and my passport was stored safely in another bag. But the photographs of my parents were important to me and there were credit cards and a driver’s license in it that would be difficult to replace. I was certain I’d had it when I walked into the bar. I turned my bag upside down and began sorting through the contents: tissues, lipsticks, coins, and a luggage receipt. “Is anything wrong Miss?” I heard a voice say. I looked up and saw a tall security guard staring at me. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to find my wallet.” “Were you just talking to that boy over there?” The guard pointed over to Jimmy who was standing by the entrance, helping to sort through luggage. “Yes,” I began. “But he-“ “You!” the security guard shouted. Jimmy walked over, his hands in his pockets. “Who are you?” the guard asked him. “My name is Jimmy Hughes,” the boy said. “I started just last week. I help Trevor in The Cypress Bar.” Jimmy looked nervous. Sweat dotted his forehead. “He’s teaching me how to bartend.” “I need to search you.” “Please,” I told the security guard. “I’m sure I’ll find it.” “We need to search this man” ““I’ll—I’ll talk to Trevor I said falteringly. “Wait for him. He’ll sort it out.” But the guard had already taken the boy by the arm and disappeared down a hall. I returned to the lobby and stood next to a large potted palm. My heart was racing. What had just happened? If I hadn’t had so many drinks, I could have handled the situation better. A small calypso band had been set up and several couples were dancing around the steel drums. The tune was bright and fast and it wasn’t until the refrain that I recognized it. But it didn’t sound the same as I remembered. The words seemed different and the beat too fast. Yet the song moved something so deep inside me that I had to lean against the wall to catch my breath. For a brief moment I forgot about the wallet. Nothing mattered except I that was here at Echo Beach. After a few minutes, I saw Trevor walking toward me. His eyes were lowered to the ground, and only when he stood in front of me did he lift his gaze. “Listen, Trevor,” I said, slightly swaying the music. “Listen to what they’re playing.” “What are you talking about Claire?” he said angrily. I had never heard him raise his voice before and I flinched. His shoulders were shaking. “Do you realize what you have done? You’ve made a terrible accusation that has ruined the boy.” I stood there in shock. “But I didn’t say anything. The guard…” “You’re a white woman saying that her wallet is missing. You should have found me and told me. I know that boy’s parents. They are good people.” “I will find that guard, “ I told Trevor, standing up. “I’ll tell him Jimmy is innocent.” “Whether it’s true or not, they have fired him. He will not find work at any of the hotels here.” “Oh Trevor, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep my words steady. “Maybe I did leave the wallet somewhere. I just want to be here. At Echo Beach. With you. That’s all that matters.” “With me?” he asked, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You know nothing about me!” I had never heard him raise his voice before. The whites of his eyes were gleaming. “Have you ever asked about my family? My wife? Have you ever met a Jamaican who wasn’t here to serve you? To serve all of you? What do you know about this country? The people here? How long are you even here in Jamaica? One week every few years? My God, Claire, you are trying to find something that is not real. The hotel is not even called Echo Beach anymore.” “I know,” I turned around because I didn’t want him to see my tears “Go home, “ he said calmly. “There is nothing for you here. Go home, Claire.” Watching Trevor leave, I noticed that his back was very stiff and straight. The noise from the steel band made my head ache and I walked out of the lobby toward the beach. The sun stunned my eyes. I wiped my wet face with my sleeve. I reached into my purse for my sunglasses and froze. My hands had touched my wallet. It was hiding beneath my boarding pass. I felt its smooth leather. I looked out at the ocean and felt the blood in my face. I would find the hotel manager and demand that Jimmy not lose his job. But would they listen to me? I was just a tourist – a silly ignorant visitor to a place that could never be my sanctuary. I remember that little boy I had followed on the beach who had been slapped. That was my fault. Trevor had told me that the boy’s family could be in trouble with the police. I had done it again with Jimmy. There was no place for me here Echo Beach had always been an illusion. I would leave tomorrow. In the haze I thought I saw that ghost vessel, The Lucky Irene, still tethered to the dock, restored to its previous glory. Torches of light shone on the deck and I could hear peals of laughter and the clinking of glasses. And then I saw him. The man in the white suit. Irene’s “friend.” He had not aged at all. His suit fit him perfectly and he still wore a slender gold watch. That watch glittered in the light as he slowly waved to me. His mouth moved but the ocean was too noisy and I couldn’t hear if he said hello or goodbye. Chris Palazzolo is a novelist, poet, essayist, editor, part time publisher, and occasional community radio broadcaster. Originally from Perth, he currently resides in the East Kimberley. THE CRY OF THE EAGLE To the Lord Mayor of our fair city of Perth; The Right Honorable Mr Basil Zempilas; may the greater part of our shared moiety fall to thee; that so unworthy a subject as I may at least be vouchsafed to bask in thy grace by this, my humble song. CP
Like an empyrean he stadium filled with the roaring of the hosts – He bombed it long, he bombed it far… And split the middle posts! These lines from our glorious national anthem, composed by our very own President Warner, still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up; I wouldn’t hesitate to sing this song anywhere. But I’m singing it now because I want to see how prisoner T48G-537 reacts. Sometimes just the response of a prisoner to the anthem is enough to reveal them as a Fremantle traitor, in which case getting a statement from them would be no longer necessary. And with piercing eye Beheld the land that vast below him lay, He made the cry across the sky ‘Westralia seize the day!’ As I finish singing, the prisoner shows no reaction, he just stares at me from his bed. We get a lot of guys like this. In the Department they are known as silver terrorists; middle-aged men corrupted by too much of their lives lived in the decadent old federation. I’m the friendly end of the investigation however, so at this stage I must suspend judgement. If the statement he gives me is not satisfactory the auditors have more direct methods of inducement. Let’s hope, for his sake, he cooperates. “Well, this is very nice,” I say, indicating the ensuite with toilet and shower, the desk and chair near the door. “You’re very lucky to have a room as nice as this.” “It’s great,” the prisoner says in a tone flat enough so I don’t detect sarcasm. “As you can imagine,” I continue, placing a recorder and tablet on the desk. “With so many citizens to process accommodation is a premium. Some prisoners only get a bucket and rag.” “Am I going to get any clean clothes?” the prisoner says in the same neutral tone. “I’ve been in these since you chucked me in here.” “In good time.” I enter the prisoner code into the department portal. As his details load I switch on the recorder. “My name is Ty. I’m from the Department of Reconciliation and I’ll be your case officer during your stay. We’ll start today by getting a statement from you. Do you understand what that means?” “I think I can guess.” “You need to answer clearly ok. Now, do you understand? Yes or no?” “Yes I understand.” “Cool. You are Brian Sweet, 49 years of age, citizen number BN117-248F?” “That’s who I am.” I do a quick retinal scan and it comes up positive. Good; retinal and verbal corroboration mean a cooperative prisoner. “All good. Ok let’s get on with it shall we?” “I’m at your service.” “Good. Right, now, how well do you know Lachie MacDonald?” The prisoner is clearly startled by the question. His head does a little involuntary jerk and his eyes go wide. But then he quickly composes himself. He gives a knowing titter and rolls his eyes. “Not very well. Why?” “So you admit you know him?” He hesitates before answering. “I did some work for him, that’s all.” “But there’s more, isn’t there?” “I went to uni with him. But I didn’t really know him ok. He was an acquaintance.” “Mhm.” “Apart from that I know him as everyone else knows him; as a public figure, a well-known journalist.” “Are you aware that Lachie MacDonald was executed yesterday at 4.30pm?” That gets a more satisfying reaction. The prisoner’s head twitches again and his face goes pale. But then suddenly he laughs. “The revolution eats its own,” he mutters. “I’d be very careful what you say Brian. Lachie MacDonald was tried and executed for acts offensive to the moral rectitude of Westralia.” The prisoner laughs again. “Now that’s poetic!” His disrespectful attitude is getting on my nerves. It’s clear he knows more than what he’s letting on. “You do realise this is all being recorded don’t you Brian? You’re attitude during this interview will be taken into account at your trial.” “Look, this is ridiculous! I don’t know what you want with me. I haven’t seen this guy for two years.” “We have reliable witness accounts which state that you and he were close associates in the early days of secession. Now I want you to tell me exactly what you know; when you came into contact with him and what was the nature of the work you did together?” The prisoner flops back on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. He shakes his head, and expels a long sigh. “We were never close associates. I was never part of his clique. He contacted me. I don’t know why. He made a big deal about us going to uni together, but he was never my friend at uni. I did some work for him. He paid me for it. That was it. I think I only had three meetings with him. But it never happened. You know. It never happened.” He bounces up on the bed, a movement sharp enough to make my hand move to the alarm-key on my belt; I stop before pressing it. “Don’t you understand?” the prisoner snarls. “It never happened!” Suddenly he starts laughing again, a manic laughter, like some madman in an old movie. “I got so used to the ruse, I even convinced myself it never happened! I really thought when you arrested me it was for blasphemy, or playing a banned song or something like that. I’ve been lying here for weeks wondering if it was the colour of my shirts. Oh my god, oh my god, it’s really happening. This is it; Fame, Fame at last. And Death! Fame and Death come to my door singing my song!” He whips his gaze back onto me. “So, you want to know everything about my dealings with Lachie MacDonald?” “That’s right.” “Everything?” “Yes. For your own sake you need to tell me everything you know.” He chortles at that. “You seem like a patriotic fellow Ty. You might not like what you’re going to hear about your glorious president Warner.” I suck in my breath at the tone of treasonous sarcasm. The guy is condemning himself before my eyes. For a handful of seconds I am of two minds about how to proceed. I seem to have stumbled on a real hard nut. Should I terminate the interview and refer him to the auditors, or should I continue and thus potentially expose myself to the poisonous lies of a Fremantle traitor? I hope to be an auditor one day; this could get me into trouble. But it could also be a big break for me, the thing that gets me noticed. So I continue. “Yes,” I say, though my voice comes out as a whisper. I hurrumph my throat clear. “I want to know everything that you know.” “You know I’m a writer don’t you? You know you can’t trust me? Us creative types, all we do is lie around thinking. We lie around thinking of ways we can mock and bamboozle the good, simple-hearted folk of Westralia. You tell me Ty, how can anything of value come from creatures so unworthy? The nation expects its patriotic poems, its soaring songs, the rousing rhetoric of its rulers. But these things just happen don’t they? They just spontaneously appear in moments of patriotic fervour straight from the pure hearts of our simple hard-working folk; a tender song of spring issued from the yearning bosom of a barefoot Westralian maiden, a joyous bucolic spontaneously formed and uttered by a farmer at harvest time, our glorious anthem, The Cry of the Eagle, penned in a moment of victorious rapture by our nation’s greatest son.” “What is the point of all this Brian?” “I’m telling you about my dealings with Lachie MacDonald. If you’ll let me continue you’ll see what the point is. I’m a writer right? Not a very good writer. In fact I’m not much more than a dilettante really. Every so often I’ll sit down to try and write something because I’ve been lying around for too many months playing x-box and wanking to pornhub, but nothing of value ever comes. One morning, about 2 years ago, I’d set myself up in the local library in the hope of concentrating on my writing without the distraction of family and electronic devices.” “This would be the Kununurra library?” “Yes. I was in Kununurra because I’d had a job up there. But I’d lost that job like everyone else when the economy crashed after secession. Anyway, being in the library made no difference either. I just stared at the blank page or drifted over to the computers to scroll the papers. After about an hour of this I began to notice an old man outside on the footpath making signals at me. He was a tall, bony Aboriginal man, dressed like a stockman from the old days; trousers and boots, long sleeved shirt, sleeves buttoned at the wrists, and a big wide-brimmed Akubra hat. Of course at first I thought he wasn’t signalling to me at all. In fact I doubted he could even see me; he was outside in the bright Kimberley sunshine, and I was in the soft interior light of the library; he wouldn’t have been able to see anything but indistinguishable shadows through the windows. Nevertheless every time I looked up there he still was, doing the come-hither gesture with his index finger, as if he knew I was looking at him. So I thought, what the hell, might as well go and find out what he wants. I walked out of the library into the broiling mid-morning sunshine and made my way to the footpath at the front. ‘Hello,’ I said to the man as I approached him. ‘Do you want to talk to me?’ I remember the top half of his face shadowed under the brim of the hat, but when I was within a metre of him he lifted up his head and I saw his eyes; they were white with cataracts. He took a couple of steps up to me and with his long knobbly finger gently fingered around the top button of my shirt. “You, gonna be big fella,” he said. Then he tapped his own chest. “Gonna be blackfella, like me; no one can see yer.” The prisoner pauses and studies me, as if waiting for a response. “You can ask me,” he says. “Go on; what does this have to do with Lachie? Go on.” “What does this have to do with Lachie?” “Ah, good question. What indeed. I don’t know. Well I do actually, but that only became apparent later. But for now what relates to Lachie is that it was that very evening when I got the call from him.” Things were tough for me and my family at that time – the prisoner continues – as they were for everyone. We had no income. After the Australians pulled the plug on all their services, cleaned out all their offices, there was no welfare, nothing. When the phone rang that evening it was just another unwelcome noise in an already distressed house. I was holding off from turning on the air-conditioners to try and save money, so everything was stifling hot. The two older kids from my first marriage were in their bedroom squabbling over the Playstation, while my young second wife stood over the stove, holding our grizzling child on her hip with one arm and with the other stirring the cabbage soup in a big steaming pot. “Who the fuck is ringing now!” she screeched. I thought about not answering. I remember thinking it was probably just my mum who was the only person who rang me on the landline. I answered it anyway, probably just to stop the ringing. “Could I speak to Brian Sweet please?” It was a male voice, Australian, educated, slightly lofty rounded vowels. I was immediately embarrassed at the sound of frazzle around me. I told everyone to be quiet and said “Speaking.” “I don’t know if you remember me mate; my name is Lachie MacDonald, we went to university together.” Memory is an amazing thing Ty. I was listening to a voice I hadn’t heard for nearly thirty years. Furthermore, when we had known each other barely five sentences had passed between us. And yet as soon as he said his name I instantly remembered him; his lofty sardonic manner, his blue eyes and sharp straight nose that contrasted oddly with his broad face, the panama hats and bow ties that he wore as a kind mocking contrast to the cool black me and my colleagues used to wear. He’d been in a couple of courses with me, that was it; Modern Literary Theory, and Structure, Thought and Reality I think they were, and he’d hung around a sceptical distance from the scenes I was involved in. In subsequent years I’d been aware, more generally, of his career in the media, and it was because he’d been an acquaintance that I followed the progress of his public life over the decades with half an eye; his beginnings as a muck-raking journalist in a Mandurah paper, his long stint as On the Terrace raconteur in the old West Australian newspaper, and finally, after The West was closed, his appointment as Editor in Chief of The Westralia Cooee. At the time I got the call The Cooee editorial was the number 1 scourge of the Labor government. You’re probably not aware that it was a Labor government that declared Western Australia independent of the Commonwealth of Australia, and pronounced the nation of Westralia. It did this, against all its principles, because it was trying to shore up support from a powerful separatist movement that had continued to grow after the coronavirus lockdowns in the 20s. Plus it was trying to endear itself to The Cooee which was the only paper in the state and was fanatically pro-secession. But it was futile; if anything The Cooee editorials only became more stridently anti-government. At one point the premier took out a restraining order on Lachie when he called on readers to put a bullet in the premier’s head. The government lurched from disaster to disaster. The worst thing it did was allow the Australians to strip all commonwealth offices; computers, furniture, everything, loaded onto trucks and taken away, and the government didn’t lift a finger to stop them. After that the multinationals upped and left. I was in The Kimberley by that stage, away from all the heat in Perth, but we certainly got the wash-up. Anyway, that was the state of play at the time of the call. So I said “Yes yes, I remember you.” I was rattled by this sudden intrusion of my obscure past into my noisy stifling present. I didn’t know what to say next, so I waited out a strained pause. When he spoke next his serene tone betrayed not a hint of concern at any social discomfort. “Mate, I was hoping we might catch up in the next couple of days, have a bit of a reminisce about the past. Maybe talk a bit about the present too. And the future.” “Where?” “The Weld Club on St Georges Tce.” “I’m sorry Lachie I can’t, I’m up in The Kimberley.” “Don’t you worry about that; we’ll fly you down here quick smart.” “Ok. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m a little short of cash at the moment.” “Mate, devoid your mind of vexations; everything is taken care of. You just be at the Kununurra airport on Saturday 9am for the Perth flight. We’ll have a driver pick you up at Perth airport at 2pm.” “Can I ask what this is all about?” “Some very interesting things are happening at the moment mate, and you may want to be involved. It’s entirely up to you of course. But if you decide to come along you will be handsomely paid. You just make sure you’re on that flight.” And that was it. That was my first exchange with Lachie MacDonald in thirty years, and it lasted barely thirty seconds. Ty, you just can’t imagine what effect that exchange had on me. I was a complete nobody right, a nothing, a failed writer and a failed husband and father. I’d even failed as a Repco sales manager. I’m not one to blame others for my failings; I’m fully aware of my penchant for talking myself into failure, which made many of my failings inevitable. But I am a perfect example of my own generation’s set-up for failure. My only big dream in life was to be a writer. When I was young I was full of the big ideas, big ambitions about writing. But no publisher or literary agent would give me a look in because I was young; I was unproven, inexperienced. When I was older however, more experienced and having developed my own hard-won style, I couldn’t get a look in because I was not young. There’d been a generational change in priorities see; publishers and agents now only wanted ‘fresh young voices,’ usually with some kind of ‘marginalised racial or sexual identity.’ Can you see what happened Ty? I’d fallen into a generational crevasse, and by the time I’d moved to The Kimberley I was nothing more than a sad middle-aged wannabe. So to get this call from someone who seemed to me to be the very picture of success was quite a headrush. Of course a part of me was suspicious about the absurd fortuitousness of this turn of events. I mean what did I really know beyond ‘get on that plane and all your dreams will come true.’ Nothing. How was I to know that it wasn’t some kind of slave scam? There was plenty of that kind of thing going on at the time. That’s all been airbrushed from official histories because a number of prominent persons in our glorious nation profited from it. But that’s a separate story. Unemployed losers like me were easy pickings for these scams: offered a good job and free transit, presented with a bill on arrival which of course they couldn’t pay, so forced to work off their debts on farms or market gardens. That’s how the government kept the shops stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables. How was I to know Lachie wasn’t mixed up in something like that? But here’s the thing; I never really had any doubts. And do you know why? Because all along I remembered the old stockman outside the library. I remembered his eyes, and I remembered what he said to me, that I was going to be big. I conveniently forgot the other part of what he said to me, which turned out to be just as true. Nonetheless I took his words as a sign. That’s why, two days later, I was on that plane. I arrived in Perth that afternoon and was met by a driver who drove me into the city. It had been a few years since I was last here and things had definitely changed. The first thing I noticed was that there were thousands of cars abandoned on the sides of the freeway. Trucks too, including semi-trailers. When I say abandoned I don’t mean left higgledy piggledy on the middle of the road; they were mostly neatly parked along the stopping lanes. There was something touching about this; the persistence of civic courtesies in the teeth of economic collapse. You could tell the vehicles had been dumped because most were covered with dust and leaves, many had been cannibalised, their bonnets open, wheels removed and things like that, and many had yellow stickers. Some were even bedecked with garlands, crosses, posies and other wreaths of a funerary and valedictory nature; faded plastic petals scattered in piles around flat tyres or bare wheel shafts. The cars that were still on the road were in pretty poor shape with blue smoke blowing out of their exhausts and indicator and brake lights not working. Quite a few had no windscreens; I could see their drivers peering over steering wheels through motorbike goggles. Despite this myriad of traffic breaches I didn’t see a single cop. When we got into the CBD I found out why; there was a football match on that evening and the streets were packed with thousands of West Coast and Fremantle Dockers supporters making their way up St Georges Terrace towards the Matagarup bridge. I asked the driver how all these people had made it into the CBD and he told me that public transport was free in order to train them in from all over the city. The fixture was the same every week; Fremantle and West Coast Eagles, because of course Australian teams weren’t coming anymore. The whole thing had the look of a well-established ritual. The streets had been blocked to car traffic so that this massive procession could progress unimpeded; on one side of the Terrace West Coast supporters in their blue and yellow woad, scarves and banners, and on the other side Fremantle in purple. It all looked good natured enough; big smiles, cheery air-punches, kids on dads’ shoulders and so forth. But I wondered how many of those people had abandoned their cars on the freeways, wept as they closed the doors for the last time and walked away. Unemployment, poverty may have been the order of the day, but none of them were going to miss their weekly derby. I also noticed that a lot of them were carrying sticks, or long thin canes which they tapped on the road as they walked or tucked under their armpits like officer’s batons. I wondered what purpose those sticks served, and who allowed them to be distributed. Back in the good old days they were exactly the kinds of things authorities would’ve frowned upon. There were plenty of police lined up along the street, but as none of them seemed to be moving to confiscate the sticks I figured there was nothing to worry about. When I realised I was being taken straight to the meeting I had a bit of a panic attack. To tell you the truth I don’t know what I expected. I suppose I hoped that I’d get the opportunity to freshen up and have a bite to eat on my own because I was quite hungry after the flight and more than a little disoriented. I was cold too. Kununurra when I’d flown out that morning had been 38 degrees; Perth was 26 when I landed and by the time we parked in the underground car park of The Weld building, the temperature was 22 and dropping rapidly. I was embarrassingly underdressed, and this became very apparent when I was ushered into the plush blue velvet saloon of the club. Most of the members, seated in blue leather upholstered booths and on chesterfields, drinking spirits and talking the talk of the powerful and connected were casually dressed; but the difference between Kununurra casual and Weld Club casual couldn’t have been more stark. I’d been given a smoking jacket from the cloak room but this just made my second hand cargo shorts and $15 pair of croc sandals that much more ridiculous. It was in this state of considerable discomfort that I arrived in the presence of Lachlan MacDonald. He hauled himself out of his chair with some difficulty and shook my hand vigorously, patting my shoulder like the long lost friend I never was. “Mate, such a long time. Look at you, you’ve gotten old!” You know how some people never change Ty? Their appearance, their style, is set in youth and stays the same into old age. Lachie was one of those people; he was exactly the same as I remembered him, only older, jowlier, blotchier. He still wore a panama hat believe it or not, a white jacket with a red carnation tucked into the breast pocket, knee-length shorts and a handsome pair of tan loafers. “And y-you got old too, as well,” I stammered, discomfited by his chumminess. He clutched his paunch. “We can send probes to the other end of the galaxy, but we can’t stop the march of time can we.” He indicated his companion on the chesterfield. “This is Darcy, my partner in crime.” Darcy was a woman of similar age, though much better preserved than either of us, despite carrying quite a bit of weight herself; the skin of her face was fresh, her dark eyes, when not idly studying her mobile phone, restlessly sought out the key points of amusement or advantage in the room and her easy smiling lips had a very kissable upper curve to them. She’d kicked off her shoes and was reclining in a way that showed her lovely bare feet and slim ankles to their fullest advantage, attracting the gaze of whoever was nearby. “Darcy, this is Brian.” “Hellooo,” Darcy drawled, running her eyes across me just long enough to confirm I wasn’t someone who could amuse or advance her in any way, before returning to her phone scrolling. “Brian’s that fellow I was telling you about.” “Mhm. Which fellow?” “You know, the one we flew in from Woop Woop. He and I went to uni together.” “Oh no he’s not one of thooose is he.” “Nah, of course he isn’t. He’s been living out in the bush, boot scootin’ and roo shootin’ haven’t you Brian. Sit down mate.” We sat. He ordered me a beer and some olives and bread. “Yeah, so, uni; what do you remember about uni Brian? Do you think about it much?” I shrugged and blushed, intuiting that I was expected to not say anything positive about my experiences. “It was a long time ago,” I hedged lamely. “I remember you; lean and hungry looking devil you were. And your little group, all in black, puffing away on fags, talking about class struggle and false consciousness.” “Yes, we all took ourselves very seriously.” “I’ll say you did! Do you remember that shit they made us read in Lit Theory? Structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction. Oh my god! I wish I could forget that. The worst was that French Jew; what was his name? Derriere or something like that?” “Derrida.” Lachie laughed. “Derriere,” he continued, putting on a French accent. “Hor hor hor hor, my name is Jacques Derriere; zis is ze latest sing I shit from my derriere! The worst was that paper, Limited Inc I think it was called. Fifty fucking pages of it! What a load of fucking gobbledegook! If there was ever an argument for the gas chamber mate that was it.” “Lachie!” Darcy hissed. She jabbed him with her elbow and signalled behind. Lachie and I both looked over to see a bald-headed gent seated in an adjacent booth. “Oops!” Lachie sniggered. “Mr Cohen. Oh well. He couldn’t care less what I say anyway. Perfectly nice fellow by the way. But no feeling for the interests of his people at all. Sell his grandmother for a handful of shekels.” “Lachie!” “Wot?” “You’ll get yourself kicked out.” “Oh rubbish! Don’t get me wrong Brian, I love Jews. I love Israel, especially the way it keeps on expanding. Did you know Brian that hook noses were once not allowed in these hallowed chambers? Now they let anyone in; kikes, gooks, curry munchers, boongs.” “Poofters,” Darcy muttered. “Whores,” Lachie retorted. “They really lowered the tone when they allowed ladies in here though. Mind you, it must be said, if you ever see a lady in here she’s usually a high end escort.” “I think your friend is waiting for you to get on with it, dickhead.” “Steady on. He’s waiting on his refreshments aren’t you Brian? Here they are.” The beer and olives arrived, much to my relief, and after that Lachie started talking turkey. “Have you ever heard of the William Street Soviet?” I shook my head. “The William Street Soviet calls itself the William Street Collective. It’s the latest atrocity by the communist scum whose anal leakages stain our government benches. It is a cabal of former Fremantle councillors, unionists and left-wing agitators who have declared the City of Fremantle an independent republic. Even as we sit here eating these delightful olives their new flag – a rainbow flag! – is fluttering over their town hall. The government has allowed this coup to happen because their idea is that Fremantle will be the crucible of a complete socialist takeover of our nation. Now some of us here, including some very wealthy patrons whom you needn’t know the names of, are keen to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.” I must’ve shown alarm at his ominous tone because he hurriedly clarified, placing his hand on my knee to reassure me. “What I mean is that the opposition now has the full financial support of the business community and we’re all set up for a proper campaign for next year’s election to boot this disastrous government out. Ok mate? Nothing to worry about. I saw your expression and let me assure you everything is above board and democratic ok? Good. Right. Now, to you; what we got you here for. What I want from you is a poem.” “A poem.” “That’s it; a poem. Not bloody TS Eliot or anything like that; something popular, something ballady, something Banjo Pattersony, ok? It must rhyme, it must be patriotic, it must be about sport, specifically The West Coast Eagles defeating a Victorian team, ok? And then I want you to tie it in with a whole lot of stirring bullshit about the sunburnt plains of Westralia, ok? You’re the poet, you come up with something. How does that sound?” “Sure. No problem.” I cleared my throat and blushed; the next question I always found difficult to ask. “And how much will you pay me?” “Well, if we’re happy with what you give us; $10 000.” “$10 000!” “Happy with that?” “I-I can’t believe it! $10 000 for a poem! And that’s all?” “No. Of course not. You agree to waive all copyright. That includes all claims of authorship. You’re a ghost writer, ok?” My head was still spinning at this incredible offer, so of course I agreed. “Good. Like I said, our campaign is flush with funds, so we can afford to be generous with our helpers. We have a wonderful new leader who is going to take the fight right up to the government (you’ll get to meet him shortly) and generally the stars are aligned and the wind is in our favour.” “So this poem is going to be part of the opposition’s campaign to win popular support?” “Correct.” I was feeling a little giddy and silly, and while I didn’t want to jeopardise my chance of earning this money, I couldn’t help sensing the ridiculousness of it all. “And what about Dockers supporters?” I laughed. “Don’t you have to bring them along too?” My mirth was not shared. Lachie and Darcy exchanged a quick glance. Darcy tutted and shook her head as if to say ‘told you this guy wouldn’t be reliable.’ Lachie sat back, crossed his arms and fixed a steady gaze on me. “Don’t you worry about Dockers supporters Brian,” he said quietly. “We’ll deal with them in good time.” The beaming smile that followed was as disturbing as the cold appraising stare it replaced. “Ah!” he suddenly exclaimed. “As if on cue; enter our next glorious leader.” The shadow from some massive object fell across our little party. I flinched fearing the roof was falling in as the powerful smell of locker-room sweat suddenly assailed my nostrils. I looked up to see an enormous West Coast Eagle, covered with blood and dirt, towering over us. He was easily two metres tall with bulging sweat-sheened shoulders and arms, a strangely straight torso, non-tapering waist and thighs, and huge almost obscene tree-trunk legs. This giant body was somehow banded into the tight little pair of blue footy hot-pants and the blue and yellow spandex jersey. The head, as square as a Lego block, was small, small eyes, bright with the mania of victory, and a leering crooked mouth. I didn’t follow football or any sport for that matter so I didn’t know which player this was, but the effect he had on Lachie and Darcy was remarkable. Darcy pulled her feet up onto the chesterfield, reclined like Goya’s La Maja and preened, pouted and eye-fluttered, while Lachie wobbled and babbled like some clown. “How’s it goin’ yer old poofter!” the Eagle boomed as Lachie lurched from his chair holding his hand out to shake “How’d the match go?” he said. “Oh mate, we fucken massacred them eh! Body parts splattered all over the oval! Er no don’t touch me mate, give me fucken AIDS!” He and Lachie chuck-chucked loudly to show it was all in good fun. I glanced around, alarmed at this noisy yobbish behaviour in such an august setting; but no one seemed to be bothered by it. “How’re you goin’ Darcy?” the Eagle leered, standing over her so that his bulging crotch was close to her face. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she purred. “Hey, hey,” he said, jabbing his elbow at Lachie. “Who’s this poofter? This your latest bum buddy is it?” “This is Brian, an old friend of mine from my uni days.” “Uni! He is a poofter! Ah don’t worry about me mate, I’m just pullin’ your dick!” The sight of his enormous hand held out for me to shake filled me with terror. I watched my own puny little hand approach his with the sluggish implacability of a nightmare. Feeling the vast mat of cruel muscle close over my hand with a sickening crunch induced an out of body experience. At the same time as my hand was being crushed his other hand pounded so hard on my shoulder I almost cartwheeled over the booth. “Wayne Warner mate,” he said. “Wayne Warner!” I exclaim. I can’t help it. “Are you telling me you’ve met our glorious president?” “Yeah,” the prisoner says, as if it’s no big deal. “You want me to tell you everything don’t you?” “No one I know has ever gazed upon the face of our president.” “Well I have,” he chortles. “So now you do know someone. Shall I continue?” Anyway, we sat down. When Warner’s big body hit the chesterfield my side puffed up so violently I was nearly thrown into the air. He then spread his horrifying legs so wide I was squashed into the armrest. “I never went to uni,” he said. “Never wanted to. Me dad wanted me to. When I finished at Hobbes College, he said to me, ‘son,’ he said, ‘you’re gonna go to uni.’ I said ‘but I don’t wanna go to uni dad, there’s nothin’ but poofters and commos at uni. I wanna get a real job dad. I wanna get a job on the mines. I wanna come home every night after a hard day’s yakka black as a boong.’ Lucky for me the CEO at […] Iron Group was an old boy from Hobbes so he got me in no worries. Sat on the board for a year before selection for West Coast. And what about you Brian, what do you do for a crust?” Lachie answered for me. “Brian’s the fellow we’ve flown in to write that poem for you.” “Eh? What’s that? What fellow?” “Well, you know, that thing we spoke about; having a poem ghost written for you. You remember don’t you?” “Nup.” “We spoke about it just the other day; Brian ghost writes a poem and you claim to have written it yourself.” “Poem? I don’t know about poems mate, poofters write poems.” “Well, it’ll be a proper poem you know, a rhyming poem, you know, like ‘the cat sat on the mat.’” “He’s gonna write the cat sat on the mat?” “No no, that’s just an example. He will write an original poem but it will be like ‘the cat sat on the mat.’ It will be a patriotic poem about our nation. It will be about you kicking a goal on the final siren.” “Yeah? That sounds alright. Well gentlemen, I’ll leave you to it. Hey Darcy, comin’ to the dunnies?” “Oh Wayne,” Darcy breathed. “You’re so earthy!” Placing the tips of her fingers daintily in Warner’s giant hand, Darcy stood, chimed “’Bye!” to Lachie and me, and without putting on her shoes departed with Warner to the Ladies. Lachie must’ve seen me raise my eyebrows and do the pressed lip ‘not-my-place-to-comment’ non-smile, because he said, “It’s not what you think Brian. She’s not my wife.” “Oh” “She’s my sister.” Before we finished for the evening Lachie took me out onto the balcony. The scene I beheld on the street below was one of total bedlam; Fremantle and West Coast supporters in pitched battles all the way up the Terrace. Most electric lights had been cut off so the entire panoply was illuminated by the infernal glow of fires from Molotov cocktails. The sticks I’d seen the supporters carrying earlier were now being used on each other, wild melees of whacking sticks and flailing arms. As I watched, startling little dramas unfolded before my eyes; I saw a young girl Eagle seated on the ground, weeping, cradling the bloodied body of her mortally wounded Fremantle lover just as two female Eagles set upon her, chopping off her hair with scissors; I saw two thuggish Dockers slowly stalking a lame Eagle, dragging their sticks sadistically along the bitumen so that he could hear the rattle of the weapons he was about to be thrashed by; here and there groups of men, women, even some children, gathered together, quickly conferred, and then charged groups of their opponents nearby, hurling themselves into battle with the heedlessness of medieval soldiers. The stage upon which these dramas played was littered with the broken bodies of the injured groaning among rubbish, petrol and shattered glass. I glanced up at Lachie as he leaned on the balustrade. The unguarded expression of glee on his face, illuminated by the orange flames, was truly chilling. “I love watching bogans beat the shit out of each other,” he said. I knocked off the poem in my four star hotel room that night. It took me one hour. I called it ‘The Cry of the Eagle.’ “Does that shock you Ty?” the prisoner says. “Shock me? Why should it shock me?” “I just said that I am the author of ‘The Cry of the Eagle.’ “I’m not shocked Brian. I just feel sorry for you.” The prisoner laughs. “Whatever.” “I know all about traitors like you; you’re deluded, you commit your crimes because you’ve lied to yourself for so long you believe you’re more important than you really are.” “Sure, totally agree. But I’ll continue now? I’m a condemned man, I know that. This is my last request; that I be allowed to finish my story. ‘The Cry of the Eagle.’ Yes, I wrote it. And yes I am Jesus Christ, and I am Mohammad, and Siddhartha Buddha in a smoking jacket. But let me tell you Ty, ‘The Cry of the Eagle’ flowed out of my pen so easily; a triumphal paean to the captain of the West Coast Eagles, who marks on the 50 metre line right on the last siren of a Grand Final. As the roar of the crowd fills his ears he boots the bomb of the century straight through the middle posts and vanquishes the perfidious Vic. But then an even more extraordinary thing happens. All of a sudden his body is covered in blue and yellow feathers, his arms spread out to enormous lengths, and his face elongates to form a stern looking hooked beak. Flapping his mighty wings the Eagle soars across the vast sunburnt plains of Westralia and with mighty voice squawks “Westralia, seize the day!”” When I sent it off to Lachie I knew it was no longer ‘my poem’ so if it became a hit or something ridiculous like that I could never claim royalties from it. But in my mind the 10 grand more than compensated for something I had no real feeling for. Lachie was to get back to me in a couple of days to tell me if the poem was suitable. Until then there was nothing for me to do except hang around in my hotel room and watch old movies and shows on tv. The service was an intranet without any news. Furthermore my hotel was in East Perth, my room overlooking a quiet bend of the river so I had no idea what was happening outside. In fact I never left the room the entire 48 hours I was there; my meals were delivered to me (really nice they were too, silver service, bottle of wine and so forth) but even though I was given no explicit instructions I got the very strong feeling I was expected to stay put. Nonetheless I was aware that things were going on. I heard sporadic gunfire in the night, and I noticed a helicopter making regular flyovers of the river sweeping the banks and foreshore with a powerful searchlight. Probably the most striking thing I recall was a sound I heard outside my room. It sounded like a scuffle at the door of one of the nearby rooms. A pair of footsteps suddenly run past my door, followed by two or three pairs in pursuit; not the kind of disturbance you’d normally hear in a four star hotel at midnight. I also found out (though how, I couldn’t say) that the government passed the law that banned homosexuality. I think there were two reasons for doing this; one was a vain attempt to regain popular support, and the other was to try and snare the government’s arch enemy, the editor of The Cooee, whose private peccadilloes were widely rumoured, by a tricksy adoption of one of his movement’s policies. Ironic isn’t it? Of the two surviving legacies of that government, secession and the banning of homosexuality; the first one made Lachie, and the second one undid him. A revenge from beyond the grave. My next meeting with Lachie was to be the last. He was alone this time, sunning himself on a deckchair on The Weld Club balcony. He wore the panama hat, sunglasses and was drinking iced tea. The turkey skin of his throat, beneath the open collar of a lemon coloured polo shirt, was red from the morning sun. “Loovveed the poem mate!” he drawled when he saw me. “A perfect piece of pap for the plebs. You have quite the knack.” I laughed with relief; I’d had no idea how my poem was going to be received. “Check it out mate.” He signalled for me to look over the balustrade. The Terrace had been only partly cleared of wreckage from the weekend’s riots, most of it swept and bulldozed up onto the footpaths. In the middle of the Terrace, on either side of the traffic island, two companies of soldiers marched slowly towards the parliament at the top of the hill. Each company consisted of four columns approximately fifty men in length; a total regiment of 400 men. The sun glinted proudly on their shiny helmets, polished guns and neatly pressed uniforms while the loud stomps of their short-step marching boots echoed emphatically off the facades of the surrounding office blocks. Two small cannons were wheeled along in the immediate rear. Very few civilians were about; the handful I saw weaved and flitted furtively between the piles of rubbish, or huddled in the shadows of the lobbies like frightened cats. “Sorry mate,” Lachie said. “We couldn’t tell you what our plans were, not until you’d written the poem for us, you might have refused to do it. I mean I don’t think you would’ve, but why take the chance? So, what do you think? That’s the Westralian army. There’s another platoon up at the parliament. We’re sending in the lot because the minister for primary industry and her staff have managed to get their hands on rifles and are sniping from her office.” As the columns passed, two ancient looking half-tracks, belching black diesel smoke out of their exhausts, rumbled and squeaked along in the rear. “Yes, that’s right; World War 2 vintage German half-tracks. Nice touch don’t you think. You know where we got them? The museum at the old Pearce Airbase. They still work. That’s German engineering for you!” He ordered me a drink and we sat down. I signed the waiver and he handed me a bulging yellow envelope. “Here’s your payment. Make sure you find a good mattress to stuff it in. There won’t be any banking services for the next week or so.” As I checked the contents of the envelope (two thick wads of Australian $100 notes) Lachie took a call. When he finished he said to me “I’ve got myself a new gig; recruitment for […] Iron Group; iron-ore shares have gone through the roof. My own shares have increased 56 cents just in the last 10 minutes. I’m a rich man Brian. One thing about sharemarkets, they love dictatorships. Cheers.” And that was it; that was the last I saw or heard from Lachie. After that my contractually obscure life began. I became one of those frightened shadows, dogging for the police and loitering at the TABs, flitting furtively between lobbies and arcades, my collar pulled up and hat pulled down around my ears. The 10 grand didn’t last long; in fact it vanished as quickly as the charm of my second wife’s youth. The success of ‘The Cry of the Eagle’ was as much of a torture to me as any of the interrogative methods employed by your auditors. It was everywhere, on every website I opened, every tv show I watched, every bus stop I sat in or wall I passed, there were my words. I hate to admit it Ty but the thing that tormented me the most about it was not the way it glorified the tyranny over our lives, but that I wasn’t getting a cent in royalties for its use. I had to perform an act of complete mental dissociation from it just to stay sane. I don’t know what Lachie did from then on. The Cooee became a mouthpiece of the regime. Its editorials championed every one of Wayne Warner’s whims including the summary execution of the Fremantle Dockers and the razing to a building the city of Fremantle. I found out from some source a year or so later that Warner married Darcy, Lachie’s sister. I would never have guessed this because I never heard her name in public; the First Lady has only ever been referred to as Mrs Wayne Warner. So that’s it. I don’t know what more I can tell you Ty. CASE OFFICE TY STOKES’ FINAL STATEMENT – “Brian, Brian, Brian, you are a truly sad man. You believe in nothing and yet you expect me to believe all your lies. But at the same time you seem to believe in everything you have told me, so you do actually believe in something. But what you believe is everything that is the opposite of the truthful and the good. I allowed to you speak for as long you did so there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind the tower of delusion you live in. I don’t know if it was the right thing or not. All I know is that I did it out of a sense of pity for you; for on the strength of this testimony I know that your sufferings will be short. But to live as you do without faith, without respect, without patriotism, must itself be a torment. A creature that lives in such a state must be one in constant yearning of the end. So I can say therefore, quite confidently, that I also did it out of love. “I should hate you Brian, for the spiteful and treasonous way you have spoken about our supreme leader. But how can I hate a pitiful fool whose mind dwells in permanent darkness? Let me tell you Brian, Wayne Warner is the way and the light. Your portrayal of him as an ignorant yobbo couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only is he the greatest footballer since the beginning of time and the lord and master of all our destinies, but since appointing himself unanimously as Chief Science Officer of Westralia, he has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human fossil record is directly traceable back to Adam and Eve, that the frequency of electromagnetic radiation through the atmospheric pressure finally demonstrates that the earth is at the centre of the universe, and that the blood of Christian children has certain properties that synthesises with the unique molecular structure of Fremantle supporters’ hair making it clump thus forming dreadlocks. In the face of these mighty contributions to the great store of human knowledge, what pathetic achievements can you claim Brian? “I shall recommend that you be executed without a trial. It’s for your own good, as much as it is for the health and harmony of the nation. (Stand and salute) Onya Warny.” George Boreas has a professional background in technology and economics, and currently works in education. He grew up in Canada as a first-generation immigrant from the Balkans, then became an expat in East Asia. His secret hobby involves writing short stories and novels, as well as essays on the mimetic theory of René Girard. His open hobby involves training for and fighting in amateur boxing events. His first completed novel, The Woke Iliad, is now available as an e-book on all major online retailers. Sparagmos in The Suburbs |
Jaimie Eaker is a contemporary romance novelist that likes to dabble in other genres. She is currently attending Full Sail University, working towards a BFA in Creative Writing and has interned for Waldorf Publishing. In her free time, Jaimie enjoys reading, playing Harvest Moon, and getting way too invested in game shows on TV. |
New Beginnings
Amanda and I walked up Chance’s driveway. The driveway was full and there were cars parked along the street. Chance was known for his parties and everyone wanted to be here. The last high school party any of us would ever attend. For me this was a huge moment. My first and last high school party rolled into one. I needed a pep talk before I lost my nerve.
“We’re going to go in there, you’re going to find Adam and you’re finally going to hold an actual conversation with him.” She said.
I nodded along. Right! Good plan. I could totally do that. We reached the small front porch. I was wrong, I couldn’t do this! I turned, ready to bolt off the porch and back home. Amanda captured my sweaty hand in hers. She didn’t bother to knock. She threw the door open and marched inside, dragging me in behind her. The loud bass immediately assaulted my ears. How was anyone supposed to have a conversation over this.
I leaned closer to her. “Amanda, you can’t just walk into someone’s house like that” I said.
Amanda chuckled. “Relax a little Kimberly. It’s a party, no one knocks at a party. Besides, it’s just Chance’s place.”
Amanda has been to more parties than me so I guess she would know best. I scanned the living room, but there’s no sign of Adam in here. Maybe he was in the kitchen or out back. We went room to room and came up empty each time. I stuck by Amanda’s side while she mingled with her friends, shouting over the music just to be heard. Why would anyone actually enjoy something like this? If I didn’t want to see Adam, I would have left a long time ago. We’ve been here for over an hour and there was still no sign of him.
I left Amanda talking with Chance and locked myself inside the bathroom. I needed a break from all the loud music and the people. I leaned against the cool, marble counter and faced the mirror. Amanda curled my long, brown hair in little ringlets. The gold and browns shade of eyeshadow and the shimmery lip-gloss she made me put on still looked perfect. The black skinny jeans and red off the shoulder top fit me perfectly. I pointed to myself in the mirror.
“You look fantastic and you’re amazing! Adam is dying to talk to you!”
My head dropped forward and rolled my eyes at my lame attempt to psych myself up. Who was I kidding? Adam probably doesn’t know I exist.
I slipped out of the bathroom and into the dimly lit living room. I spotted Adam instantly and butterflies took flight in my stomach. He was leaning against the wall, the glow from his cell phone lit up his perfect features. He was finally here! I took a step toward him but froze a second later. The butterflies died as Cynthia slid up next to him and captured his attention. A frustrated sigh escaped my lips when he pocketed his phone and turned towards her. I tried to make myself comfortable leaning against the hard wall opposite them.
My teeth clenched and I crossed my arms as Cynthia’s tinkling laugh reached my ears. That had to be my imagination. There was no way I would be able to actually hear that over the music. I tried not to glare at her flirting with Adam, running her hand over his arm, but it was so hard not to. What did she have that I don’t? We’re about the same height and we both have a slender figure, but that’s where the similarities end. Her long black hair falls in sleek waves, her smoky makeup and red lips perfectly done, and she’s not afraid to show a little skin in her short, black skirt and yellow crop top. Of course, Adam would want to talk to her instead of me.
“You’re over thinking again aren’t you?” Amanda said to me.
I didn’t bother turning towards my best friend. My eyes stayed glued to the horrific scene in front of me. I leaned closer to her so no one would overhear our conversation. “Of course, I am. Look at him. Tall, perfect sandy blonde hair and green eyes. And those muscles! He is so out of my league.”
“First of all, you’re freaking amazing and he would be stupid not to see that. Second, just go talk to him already!”
“I can’t just go over there.” I said.
“Yes, you can. Just go up to him and say hi. Besides, if you don’t do it now, you’re going to miss your chance. I heard from Chance that he’s leaving for school in the morning.”
My head snapped towards her. “What? There are still two weeks left of summer.”
Amanda tossed her honey blonde curls over her shoulder and shrugged. “That’s what I said too, but Chance said Adam is living off campus with his cousin or something so he’s going out there early to get settled”
Well crap! It really was now or never. I heard we’re going to different schools. After tonight I probably won’t see him again. Would he even care? Maybe he would rather spend his last night here with someone like Cynthia instead of someone like me. I looked back at him and my eyes narrow. Geeze, does Cynthia not know what personal space is? She was practically glued to his side.
“What about Cynthia?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“She’s all over him and he seems to be enjoying it.” I said.
I could hear the bitterness seeping out of my voice. I sounded like a winey kid, complaining about someone else playing with her favorite toy.
Amanda scoffed and instead of answering me she strode straight over there. What the hell was she up to? I watched as she tapped Cynthia on the shoulder. Cynthia turned on Amanda with a glare. She didn’t seem too pleased to be interrupted. Good.
I couldn’t hear what she was saying from my spot by the wall, but Cynthia’s chocolate brown eyes got wide and she rushed away from Adam and out of the front door. Adam didn’t seem phased by her sudden departure. He already pulled his phone back out. Amanda turned back to me. She winked and mouthed “go talk to him” before disappearing into the kitchen.
I took a deep breath. I could do this! It’s now or never. I took two steps closer to him and stopped. I turned back around. I can’t just go over there! What do I even say to him? I needed to calm down. This was my last chance. I squared my shoulders and marched over to Adam before I could chicken out again.
“Hey Adam.” I said.
Adam looked up from his phone and smiled at me. “Hey Kimberly.”
“Hi” I said.
Seriously? I could feel the blush rushing up from my neck to my cheeks. I already said hi. What is wrong with me?
Adam’s smile got bigger and he leaned in a little closer. “It’s kind of loud in here. You want to go outside and talk?”
I nodded and followed him out of the sliding glass door to the backyard. We walked across the lush, green grass to a picnic table away from the few people that were out here. Adam hopped onto the top of the table, his feet resting on the bench. I climbed up next to him, the wood rough against my palms.
“You’ll have to thank Amanda for me.” He said.
“Why’s that?”
Adam chuckled. “This might sound bad, but I was trying to find a way to get away from Cynthia when Amanda came over to tell her that her car was getting towed.”
I bit my lip to hold back my smile. So, Adam didn’t want her attention.
“Really? I thought all the guys wanted Cynthia?” I asked.
“Not this guy. She’s not really my type.”
“What is your type?” I asked.
The words left my mouth before I could stop them. I could feel the blush creeping back up, but maybe it was too dark for Adam to notice. At least that’s what I was going to tell myself.
“I don’t know. I guess I like a girl that’s smart and sweet with brown hair and hazel eyes.” He said.
Holly crap! Was he talking about me? He looked right at me when he said it. The same cute smile in place that he had been wearing since I said hi to him. There was no way this was happening. Things like this only happened in movies.
Adam didn’t elaborate any further on his type and I never asked him to. We sat there talking about everything. I learned that we had a lot in common. We both loved to listen to country and rock. We liked horror and comedy movies. We both preferred racing games. It was a little surreal sitting there talking to him. I had wanted this for so long and it finally happened sitting in Chance’s backyard with bright stars shining down and faded music in the background.
Adam leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees. “Can I ask you something?”
I copied his position and nodded at him.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean we’ve gone to the same school for the last four years. Why wait until now to really talk to me?”
How was I supposed to explain that to him when I didn’t quite know myself? I could blame it on running in different cliques, being too shy and too scared to approach him, or being so sure that he would never feel the same way about me. Maybe it was a little bit of all that. I decided to stick with a simple answer.
“I guess I was scared to, and you never really seemed interested, but when Amanda told me you’re leaving tomorrow I knew I would regret it if I didn’t.”
“Why would you have regretted it?” He asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Honestly, because I really like you and I figured that I wouldn’t see you again after tonight.”
“I’m glad you decided to talk to me because I like you too.”
Adam slipped his arm over my shoulders and tucked me into his side.
“Just in case you didn’t know, UofA is only a couple hours away from GCU” He said.
I leaned further into his side. He had a point. It was only a couple hours away.
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