Author's Note: Sometime in August, 2009, I signed up at Rob McEvily's 6S Social Network at http://sixsentences.ning.com Over the next few months, I wrote quite a few six sentence pieces-some humorous, some serious, some are like mini-essays where I rant briefly on some topic or other, but mostly the pieces are fiction. Gathered here are 52 of those pieces. I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them. Michael D. Brown, Dec. 2009 http://mdjb.wordpress.com
-1Natural Selection When I was taking my first post-graduate writing courses, the well-respected teacher, Hayes Jacobs, reprimanded us for being lazy in using weak little nondescript nouns in our settings; learn the names of trees and plants, and insects, and all the other details of nature with which you populate your settings, he instructed, and for heaven’s sake, don’t continue to write, there was a tree outside my window. Conversely, he advised us against including the over-used monkey puzzle, which seems to grow in every other British garden, as the mimosa does all over the American South, to which it is not indigenous. Where I live now ancient ceibas, thick-rooted, huge, with bat-filled canopies, stand venerably against the sky, and roads have been named for the towering examples around which they have been paved. The ceiba, or giant kapok, was sacred to the Maya, who believed the souls of the dead could climb its branches into heaven, and not only did it help those who passed upward; the lengthy trunks were sometimes carved into canoes which could seat more than forty people, and much later, during the Second World War, the fluff surrounding the trees was collected and used for life jackets. Several months ago, the majestic monument which had stood guard in the center of la Avenida Ceiba, the entrance/exit to the rear of the Plaza Crystal mall, was brutally decimated, hacked down to only its lower trunk and sinuous roots; no doubt an efficiency move by the civic planning committee for whom tradition and the path to heaven only block sight lines. Driving by the sad remains, I thought about Mr. Jacobs and his admonition, which had expanded my education, and I felt pretty sure, he, too, would have been dismayed.
-2If Truth Be Told When Adam landed, or when his ship fell rather, in my backyard on that hot August night six years ago, silencing the earthly sounds of crickets’ legs and owls’ hoots, my first reaction almost was to run screaming in terror, but something, perhaps a glimpse of the future rooted me to the spot where I stood, looking through these same linen curtains. The beam on top of his ship flickered, then sputtered out, and the yard was in blackness once again. The crickets and owls made known their appreciation at the return of the dark, and I felt as if something, at long last, was ending. I like to think it was fate, or my reward for bearing up for so many years under solitary, trying circumstances that brought me a mate from another galaxy. When the townspeople see us together they always smile, and privately to me, some of the ladies, the same ones who never had time for me in the past, have remarked that I positively glow now that I am married to such a handsome, likable man, who’s so thoughtful, strong, and capable. I sometimes wonder if he’s won their admiration through genuine affability or the use of his telepathic powers because that is something he can do, though I’m sure he’s never had to think of using them with me.
-3All Things Being Equal “No, no, no,” Victor said, “You only know half the story, and you're jumping on your favorite target. Since when did voicing a strong, well-articulated opinion become a crime?” “Nobody likes a constant diet of piss and vinegar, even if it does contain the truth,” Mary replied, as if to close the discussion, but Vic wanted clarification. “Are you saying you'd rather be entertained by pornography, or half-baked philosphizing under the guise of art rather than admit someone's a fraud because the truth must be sugar-coated?” “No, I'm just saying, 'You win more flies with honey...'” “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, “The point here, Mare, is the two halves are not equal.”
-4In Days of Olde The tarnished knight climbed down off his high horse and stepped in a mud puddle. It was obvious, to several observers that the knight enjoyed the way the mud squished between his exposed toes, but like subjects of the emperor parading in invisible clothes, the majority remained silently flabbergasted. The chain-clad knight believing himself unanswerable for his indiscretion took their silence for fawning, and as fawning can be mistaken for encouragement, quicker than one could say, “Odds bodkins,� he sat in the mud and began to smear it on his armor. Do you know how hard it is too clean mud out of chain mail when it rusts? And he had only slain one very small dragon, after all, which was hardly enough to build and maintain a reputation. It wasn't long before the king gave him his walking papers.
-5Vermilion Passage The saloon door creaks in a slight breeze, which is not the mariah, but the humid remnant of the sirocco that also causes dust to settle in clotted drifts against the edges of what remains of the buildings. The saloon has survived intact, as is to be expected, along with most of the church. There are two or three houses that could be occupied if there were that many people needing a place to live. So far you seem to be the only person who has come out of the holocaust, but you know that can't be the way of things in this wide red world. Not a soul has greeted you nor run from you nor even spat at you on your trek through six deserted towns, and you would welcome a confrontation of any kind. It has been two months since you last heard another person's voice, and then she died, coughing blood, and leaving you to wander and search and absorb the redness into your pores.
-6Docking on the Swarthy Shores of Pulchritude: For What It's Worth Her beauteousness exhumed an ancient Pandora's Box of unreclaimed hope in the purple prose to follow. Were He to spew all the righteous rioting within His soul of souls, disregard the enigmatic coupling of a cursed intercourse, and cleave to her in damnable intercuspation, there might not remain a recognizable modicum of the former avatar He had used to secure His previously, however much coveted, inapt participation in the grandeur of her wake. She was, after all, His acolyte, had never quite subsumed His powers, and He could, if He might therefore prosper in so doing, retake His rightful, justified position as Almighty Barker of Commands, which would soon have her once again groveling in His expectorations for a locus in the queuing for His beneficence. But she would never acquiesce窶馬ot now; that much was a certainty. And how would he benefit if he pursued an unceremonious retreat into pandering? Thus, it appeared to all, if any partook of redeeming qualification, the Master was the slave, and the wily slave walked in beauty like the nocturnal distribution of the quotidian ocurence (sic).
-7Unentitled At the foot of the stone stairwell, where from this angle one can only view the swaying tips of two cypresses and the gray cloudless sky beyond, I dream of climbing to forever. Who would miss me now that I have no money left and cannot go home—I’ve lived so long away? Is my legacy such that on some Tuesday without obligations my brother or sister will experience some fleeting thought of childhood, and recall the silent stranger who accompanied them through it? Or will they find some memory closer to their hearts to fill that space. The domineering yet constantly smiling mother will step forward; the wandering yet affable father behind her. Surely there won’t be room enough in that tiny moment for the somber, unprepared brother, who never thought it necessary to say goodbye; repeatedly, determinedly forgot to say goodbye.
-8In Babylon Not knowing what to do with myself, I walked through crowded city streets, with red lights everywhere telling me to stop what I was doing and go home. Later, with a bowl of popcorn that tasted like chalk, I sat in front of the tube, and flipped the remote. Nothing on the box caught my interest, but the dialogues reminded me of things we'd said; like the times you asked me why I felt the need to smoke before we went out with friends and I pretended not to hear you--asking instead if you'd seen my black shoes, or knew where my jeans were—convincing myself that hurt is the essence of being in love. When the boyfriend in a sitcom played stupid, it was me I was seeing. As I sat there thinking back, you know, on what happened, I realized I´d been thick-headed, blind to my own self-centeredness and to your needs because I couldn't find the words to tell you and you probably wouldn't have believed me then if I had. Still, I went to bed earlier than usual, pretending I was the one who’d been hurt.
-9Overnight Hilary thought she might search for a key to the bothersome black overnight bag in the pockets of the many things Kate had hung in the heirloom wardrobe, but didn’t like to consider the embarrassment she would suffer if she were discovered snooping by her niece, who was a guest after all and entitled to her privacy. It might be better to rejoin her sister and Kate downstairs where perhaps she could elicit clarification through conversation. There probably was a simple explanation that just wasn’t coming to her at the moment. As Hilary entered the kitchen she was taken back by the sight of Elizabeth and their niece, sitting, speaking in hushed tones; both wearing different outfits from those they had been wearing earlier. They went silent as she approached, but only Kate turned to gaze at her with something like a look of sympathy or pity in her eyes. Elizabeth, in not raising her head, was offering the only unsolicited explication that would be forthcoming, and Hilary suddenly felt as if she had become a guest in a stranger’s house.
- 10 Currently in Circulation Whenever I open my e-mail and see something from “RC,” I have a momentary thrill, knowing my second career is still viable. Hey, I’m not going to apologize and admit to plagiarism; this stuff is being sent to me to use as I see fit, and I’ve been having great success with it. That piece about the circus is one I would never have come up with sans outside help because I hate the circus, and clowns, and their melancholy lives, but everybody seemed to like the story. And the one about the thief with thirteen fingers snagging materials from a massage parlor; well, I have no idea where that came from. In the beginning, the first few times I read “RC”s scripts and concluded I was free to put them out as my own, I felt as if I’d just had good sex because the concept was that seductive; though maybe a it’s a little less so these days, as the thrill fades, and I just edit a line or two and go ahead and blog them. The one thing that does prey on my mind is, I wonder if I will still feel the same about the work when I realize it’s unnecessary to be sending scripts to myself before posting them, and I think I may be reaching that point.
- 11 Whole Numbers One o’clock in the morning, and I’m still getting my grades together, having yet to post the exams on the electronic platform to keep the students busy in my absence. Two of us, my buddy Álvaro and I, typing and sorting, researching and getting together material that will comply with the syllabus; material that we’d already gathered fully once. Three awful days I’ve spent duplicating efforts that tired me out the first time. Four days ago we were robbed. Five minutes I was in the copy center laughing and chewing on a torta, and the guy was joking with his mate and making some double-sided sets, while someone was outside, around the corner, breaking into my buddy’s car to lift out our mochilas, with mine containing all the documents of my life. Six A.M., and the light’s not even up yet, and I have to grab a taxi to the airport to catch a flight to Mexico City, visit the American embassy and start the process of getting my replacement passport to make myself whole again.
- 12 Reversal of Fortune It was founded on a whim, according to Helen Brandt who had tired of not knowing and was looking for answers. She was Bill Theramin’s receptionist/secretary then and he believed so strongly in her rendition of wondrous events he agreed to help her type scripts and get them published, turning her words into a curriculum for living. Graying at the temples and soft-spoken to the point of condescension, Bill could make anyone with whom he conversed feel as if they were looking up at him from a couch. As their cult following grew, Helen dressed in somber colors--perhaps a calculated ploy, cut her hair in a severe Ayn Rand style, and soon it seemed she was employing him. Both are in the merely relative position of being dead now, and more than likely spreading The Word in other dimensions. For Helen’s heirs, who eventually professed she had been channeling the voice of Jesus, and that Doctor Bill had had a lucky break in hiring the future transcendentalist, the dividends keep them believing in Miracles.
- 13 Every One in His Time Jay Robinson, a twelve-year-old prodigy, and my next door neighbor here in Scranton, died last week of the brain cancer, Mrs. Robinson had known about for a year, and Jay, himself, was told about nine months ago. Always displaying a smile in the face of his adversity, he had endeared himself to most of the neighbors. For a time, I despised his precocity and his facility in grappling with emotional concerns which for the most part affect people with greater maturity; that is, until I realized he had achieved his own sense of maturity in the knowledge that his grappling space would be so brief. He kept a blog on which he made daily entries, and the tone of his writing developed incrementally from one akin to that of John Lennon to that of Martin Heidegger. I should offer a link to his blog, but I think his mother is in the process of taking it down so she can get it published in book form; she needs the money so desperately, and hasn’t been able to find a job since the layoffs. And, then, I’ve been mining Jay’s work these last weeks for insight into my own, and don't want to crowd the bandwidth.
- 14 The Choreography of Elevators Have you ever noticed how when you’re standing on an elevator and more people get on everyone stands in what seems to be their designated space? I’m not making this up. It’s true, and you can’t violate the tenets without suffering the consequences. Once, while ascending in the building where the DMV is located, a striking woman emanating just the right hint of a most intoxicating fragrance was positioned correctly, and I overstepped my mark to inhale more deeply her essence, and though I’d seen her press 14, she exited on 9. I knew I’d had an effect on her decision to do so, and it was with disappointment that I stepped off on 12 to argue against paying a parking fine I felt I didn’t rightly deserve. Some overweight, unattractive clerk, with a strabismus, who didn’t smell of anything but overwork, drove the point home when she wouldn’t waive my fine, and told me, “Sorry, sir, but there are rules in every situation, and you ignored the rules.”
- 15 300 Jimmy Mahoney, having begun the evening feeling old and overweight, has been on a high for the last thirty-seven minutes as he’s well on the way to bowling his perfect game; strike after strike builds his confidence as he thinks he could single-handedly bring the Spartans to the head of their Thursday night league. And then the worst thing happens -- Alice’s girlfriend Peggy brings over a handsome well-built, younger-looking-than middle-aged man whom she introduces as her cousin Roy, an architect who’s been living in San Francisco for the last twenty years. He’s come back home for a visit, and though Jimmy knows Peggy’s maiden name, and never made a connection before, he’d recognize that face anywhere. Roy still has those looks, and a flood of the most intimate, and intimidating memories of youthful indiscretion washes over Jimmy, threatening to befuddle him, spoil his eleventh frame capper, and remind him of how he’s gone to seed, because there’s no denying Roy’s still got it. In despair, Jimmy sends his ball down the alley, ready for the worst, but when ten pins are cleanly smashed into oblivion, he smiles and thinks for a moment, just for a moment, maybe he’s still got some of it, too.
- 16 Croaking Turning the key in the door, when he said, “And now for something completely different,” in his best Monty Pythonesque manner, he expected her reaction to be jubilation upon seeing the little gift-wrapped ring box on the hall table near where she would hang her mackintosh. The rain had taken away some of the torpor threatening to settle over the village. However, catching some movement across the flagstones out of the corner of her eye, she shivered uncharacteristically, and then exclaimed, “Omigod, you’ve got frogs!” “Don’t tell me that,” he said, “I had a horrible experience with a frog when I was a child.” “Oh, do tell,” she begged, “but first, what were you saying?” “I forget,” he said, no longer excited, as if the drifting dark clouds had suddenly decided not to move on, but to spoil their previous beneficence by pouring forth another shower, “anyway, it doesn’t matter,” and he felt the first constriction in his chest.
- 17 Alphabet Soup In the tidy little kitchen of Nana’s Coney Island bungalow, where I learned to tell time from the clock that was a white cat with big moving eyes and a swishing tail, and one of the few places I could see my dad, I sat eating alphabet soup, while my mom, in the other room, was talking to Nana and consoling my cranky little brother, Ray-ray, who had never liked wet food. My dad put his can of Rheingold on the table, though not on a placemat, I’d noticed, and sat in the chair Ray-ray had left, and Dad asked me, “Can you spell your name with the letters?” as he spooned some of my brother’s soup into my almost empty bowl. When I panicked, calling out, “Mom, Dad wants me to eat the other soup,” he suddenly turned livid and hollered at me, “What am I raising, a rat, a goddam little rat?” Then when Mom told him his hollering had caused the baby to cry, he snapped at her, “I’m talking to my son – my son – not that one.” When later, at home, in our own apartment, my mom, sorting some plastic containers and still fuming, said, “That illiterate bastard is not raising you at all; I’m the one who dresses you and feeds you and sends you to school,” I didn’t feel any better because I knew my dad was still angry with me, even if he wouldn’t mention it in the summer when I went to stay with Nana. Years later, however, when Uncle Ray, his brother, came to tell us of his passing; how he’d been found three days after dying in an abandoned house near Surf Avenue, I remember taking it very calmly, and more recently, how I cried like a baby when my mom died in her own apartment, surrounded by all the things she’d hoarded over the years.
- 18 Packing for Five Years in Space I would like to bring a recording to remember the nights when I went out to the disco with my girlfriend, her wedding ring to remember the day we got married, and the pressed white carnation to remember the last time I saw her unmoving face. A book to remember the long hours I, myself, passed unmoving on my couch, and a crayon to remember when my daughter drew me sleeping on that couch. I’d like to bring my wife’s perfume to remember her smell on those lonely nights, and a dish made according to one of her recipes, although she was a terrible cook. Of course, I must pack a flask of something stimulating to remember how I kept from being bored. In my head I carry the sound of footfalls on the uncarpeted stairs, the sound of my daughter going for water when she couldn’t sleep, and I was too out of it to tell her a story. And I’d like my daughter to return one photograph of us as a group; to take it with me and remind me of the fleeting time when we were a family.
- 19 Inertia As he pulled out his black notebook, the cell phone rang, but Devon couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to see who was calling, so he just stared at the phone in its case until the song stopped, and then he picked up his favorite pen to write down the day’s events. The cell phone’s accusatory song continued playing in his head, while behind the familiar lyrics was added something like, “knew you were waiting, and then you ignored me,” and his writing was stilted by guilt. He lit another cigarette and thought about Edith Hope in the Hotel du Lac, mindfully closing one brocaded folder containing her letter to her “dearest David,” and opening another to begin her latest manuscript, Beneath the Visiting Moon; he’d always wanted a folder like that one, which seemed so conducive to writing. He was facing a dreary September and thought he should be talking to someone about it, thus when he pulled the phone out of its case, he noticed the blinking receiver icon. Missed call. Whose fault was that?
- 20 Sloth Supposed to write a piece expressing sloth, and know the feeling all too well, but there’s been such a torpor lying heavily on me lately that I can’t bring myself to type most days. Not as if I don’t care; no, no, apathy was my twenties, when school was finishing me. Then, hibernating through my thirties, taking on the persona of a slacker, working part-time, if at all, at the lowest levels of drudgery, where some saw my dormancy as morbidity, I saw it as just not being able to work up an interest in anything. Come to think of it, I must have gone through half my life dozing behind large cardboard boxes. Well, now I attempt to write about things, but feeling so lazy once again that it takes just about all the effort I can muster to get down one good idea a week. Yawning, sorry, anyway, I said I’d do this piece, but I don’t think I have enough energy to finish
- 21 Not Yet I woke up late today; seemed like I had slept until one p.m. or thereabout. Went downstairs and had two cups of coffee and smoked three cigarettes before I could even get started on any real business. Wrote down bits of a dream I remembered, but it wouldn't expand beyond an anecdote, and I could not decide which point of view to use, so I scrapped it. The phone rang and I answered it; although I said, “Hello,� four times, nobody replied, so I hung up, and when it rang again, I ignored it. Couldn't figure out why there was a twilight-like illumination seeping through the curtained windows, but decided to go up and take a fiveminute shower, then get started with my day, or what was left of it. Found my body still lying in bed, and the clock just going on for six, so I crawled back inside my skin, and lay there, awake, waiting for the alarm to ring at seven.
- 22 Smell The smell of a cherry-tobacco cigar called to mind Uncle Jimmy because when he lit one it meant he had won a lot of money at the racetrack and would soon pull out a huge roll of bills with a rubber band around it, and tell Grandma, who was his sister, to send out for dinner because she didn't have to cook that night and could take it easy. I do not remember the smell of anything special that Grandma made because she never cooked anything complicated like my mom, who could make great fresh tomato sauce with garlic and onions, as well as boiled tenderloin and cabbage, and our apartment in Brooklyn was always filled with the aroma of something cooking or baking, before Mom got very sick. One day after Grandma died, I spent nearly two hours in a florist's shop choosing a memorial bouquet because I was overcome with unplaceable memories of something by the heady fragrance of all the various flowers, until I recalled that the place smelled like Mom's hospital room, minus the antiseptic edge. My dad came to his mother's funeral a little drunk, and I thought it was fortunate I had chosen an arrangement consisting mostly of carnations, red, pink, and white, because his breath smelled bad when he came up to me to say hello. The funeral parlor was three blocks away from where an Italian-American street fair was in session, and as the limos were held up behind slowmoving traffic, the odors of sausage and peppers, and deep-fried zeppoli with powdered sugar filtered in through the air ducts. At the cemetery, our driver, smoking a cigar, waited a respectable distance from the mourners, and though I detected a hint of cherry-tobacco and was reminded of long-gone Uncle Jimmy, mostly I recalled the scent of Grandma's talcum, when she bent over to kiss me goodnight, reminding me that my napkin-covered glass of milk and some cookies would be waiting on top of the bureau for me in the morning.
- 23 Over All, She Surveys Regan’s greater mission is propping up, as she sees it, the faltering ego of her ex-footballer now math teacher husband, while Terry sporadically gives thought to looking for the girl he used to know inside the crooked-toothed, cellulite-ridden, middle-aged cheerleader she has become. He still has good muscle tone. She still has shining red hair. His relief from the tightening noose of their current situation came in the form of a shapely, auburn-tressed student who had trouble with integral calculus, but was seeking an A to impress her father, whom she claimed looked an awful lot like Terry, but was in failing health. Regan, who stopped pursuing her artistic ambitions after three critically unsuccessful shows, and a lawsuit over one critic’s abusive article in the Benton Review, then attempted to head up every neighborhood committee by intimidating the gentry with prolixity in overdrive and an ostensibly ingratiating smile to all and sundry on her real estate tours, has already achieved great satisfaction in steering townspeople toward her retro vision. The men of Benton claim to admire Terry for his commitment to teaching, but do not respect him; the women show respect for Regan's drive (and her occasional articles in the Review), though whether their feelings comprise dread or accommodation, they would never be caught off-guard enough to admit.
- 24 Company Marvin told us Jack and myself were invited down to Philly to spend New Year's Eve at his friend Roger's place. “Roger's an alcoholic,” he explained, “but he's good people; he's having several friends stay over so we can all watch the Mummers' Parade together.” The night was a series of disasters as two leather numbers who had also come down from New York got the guest bedroom, and they had come in their car, not the Toonerville Trolley, as we had, and as they seemed to be the guests of honor, for having straightened up the messy house before we arrived, they were allowed to run four hours of old Judy Garland shows, in place of the Alec Guinness movie we had voted for. A sad young transsexual named Jo stopped by for a while, and when Roger became blisteringly drunk, he embarrassed Jo by revealing that she had only gone through half the necessary operations, though she currently looked good enough to march with the Mummers, but Jo was vindicated when Roger fell over his coffee table while remarking of a person on the tube, “Is that a negress, I spy?” It turned out that Roger was not such good people for all his offhand hospitality, but was excused for having recently broken up with his partner of twelve years, and soon after a disappointing midnight toot, we all slept unsoundly in various corners of the wretched place. Jo, back the next evening, still in feathers, asked, “Did you see me on television?” as we were getting ready to leave, and the drunk again Roger said, “Yeah, yeah, was wonderin' my sweet, how'd you like to stay here tonight, and keep me company?”
- 25 The Eleventh Hour Corinne has returned to Chiapas to marry Raul because it is too difficult for him to otherwise take up residence with her in Adelaide. The wedding is being held in a rental yard that looks like a disused open-air parking garage, with kids running around a mud patch and playing with a Frisbee. Raul's mother and Licenciada MartinĂŠz, the justice, appear distressed, as does Corinne's closest friend Angie, and only mixed rum drinks or non-brand vodka are being offered; not even a decent wine, but Raul is doing his best to socialize with everyone as they wait for Corinne to arrive. Tonight is going to be the last time any of them see her for a long time, maybe forever. As the marimba band begins playing Perfidia for a second time, the large black metal door swings back, and all eyes turn toward a hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked Corinne, whose wedding dress seems to have grown two sizes since Angie went for a fitting with her three weeks ago. Obviously, Corinne has been anticipating this moment longer than anyone in attendance.
- 26 The Incredible Shrinking Everything As the air grew thicker with an acrid smoke, Jon began to feel shrinkage. Why is this happening to me, he wondered, and even though he saw dwarfed neighbors daily, he pondered his own little hands. He could not see the bigger picture. When he could no longer keep the baby shoes he had picked up from Hemingway on his shrinking feet, he walked barefoot through the towering rushes in the field behind his gigantic house. One day, he could not find his way home, and thought, “Oh, hell, I can't use any of that big stuff anymore, anyway.� He slept that night, and for several nights after that, in a field rodent's deserted burrow until he decided to move to an ant colony, which had likewise been abandoned.
- 27 Audience of One Lightning flashes and thunder cracks the sky, and as the two occur closer and closer together, I turn off my laptop as a precaution. I resort to reading, my first love, because I have been positioned in the middle of a good book for the last two months. It's not a big book, but I never seem to find enough time to read these days, except during the rainy season. Anyway, I only get through half a chapter before the lights go out, which happens frequently in these parts, and I sit smoking a cigarette in the dark and try to appreciate nature's Gotterdamerung without the benefit of visuals, save for the momentary stark illumination followed by acquiescent cymbals crashing. It's not much fun being put on hold by unmitigated circumstances. Nature can be so tiresome sometimes and damned inconvenient when I have e-mail to respond to, although the FX are impressive.
- 28 Intellectual Property As writers, we are looking to be recognized for our originality or new ways of remarking upon old things. The key word here is “new,” as in fresh, never been done before —which, by and large, is quite impossible. The world and storytelling are too long in existence, and as the old saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” We can only hope to catch the eyes and ears of others, ideally the newest generation of readers and listeners, with situations and resolutions they may have forgotten, or better, have not yet been introduced to. We should be careful, therefore, those among us charged with shaping and informing young minds, which is undeniably everybody, in what we put forth and our demeanor in doing so. If we plagiarize the clichéd, what is our legacy?
- 29 Field Work My chiapaneco friends are always playing me because I tell them they never show me anything authentically Mexican, so one night after six of us had gone through two bottles of Appleton, Fredy drove to a big field on the outskirts of town and the others told me to get out of the car and wait there for about a half hour and I would encounter something really authentic. They were going to go look for another bottle, so I had to help with the incorporation, but they would come back for me, and they promised I would have some story to tell. I knew what they were getting at--I was supposed to be frightened by a chupacabras, but I knew the goat sucker was only supposed to haunt the fields up north; it wasn't really a thing down in Chiapas. Of course, after about fifteen minutes alone in the field of tall weeds, I began hearing eerie noises, but when I told my friends to stop joking around because I was starting to feel cold, I discovered none of them was around, and it was only the night wind swaying the weeds. Three of them, including Fredy, came back in his car to get me about two and a half hours later, when I was sober and shivering, the sun was rising, and there was only an empty tequila bottle on the back seat next to sleeping Carlos. I did have an authentic story to relate, though I couldn't say it was Mexican or otherwise, but I figured I would save it for another time.
- 30 In the Stark White Waiting Room Sitting right where they left me after changing into this hospital thingie, johnnie, whatever, waiting to take part in some experiment, no one’s told me what it’s about yet; only takes a few minutes, they said, but I’ve been waiting, what, three or four hours? No clock here, but I’m getting hungry—probably near dinner time already...must’ve dozed off, recalling past events—things I forgot I knew…waiting and waiting. I should push that red button to call someone —let ‘em know I’m starting to feel a little anxious; don’t know where any of those doors lead, but hesitate to show my exasperation—might be disqualified. Told me the experiment required someone with great patience; good money in it if all goes well, but four and a half hours is a long frigging time to wait just to get started. Nah, hell with this; can’t take this sitting around anymore; find another way to make some money—maybe give blood or something; got to call someone and get out of here— I’m pressing the button! One of the doors opens, an attendant comes in, looking at a stopwatch, and says, “hmmm, seventy-seven minutes—not so long as some, but longer than most,” then adds, “come with me, sir, and we’ll get you your check.”
- 31 Paternity The spirit of the old man haunted him in every endeavor undertaken; not so much like Jacob Marley窶馬o, more like Charlie Marlow. The pale visage of his father did not warn against taking life too seriously, rather it advised, in paraphrase, at least the way he recalled having it read to him, cutting into the heart of darkness to expose its still beating, bloody core. Though in truth the old seaman could not have faithfully rendered Dickens nor Conrad, as the only thing he could read or write with veracity was his selfstyled signature consistent with letters from no alphabet extant. He could pick out only two songs on the Seaport Tavern's sad little jukebox, one of which, Kay Starr's rendition of Wheel of Fortune, he played to death, and then his salty comrades had it played once a day for week after his own. No, the often-absent sailor was nobody to give advice, but Kit had come to rely on his ghostly visits more than he had previously allowed. And when his father did not show on this day of all days, Kit drove to the church, hoping Marie's condition was not embarrassingly obvious, and feeling no other emotion outside of discomforting uncertainty.
- 32 Once a Writer... A friend wrote me email today, and her words broke my heart, for I have no way to help her, and I hate seeing her at the nexus of such a terrible situation; elderly parents, mother already in advanced stages of Altzheimers, father given to issuing sunny euphemisms, husband recently put out of work, children growing alienated, while she tries to express herself through her first love—writing fiction. She says she finds it difficult to write anything at this time. Directly descended from Pilgrim settlers, she mined a rich tradition from which she could express herself poetically, thence to storytelling in prose. These days she feels her circumstances are overwhelming and have produced a writer's block. However, although I appreciate the desperateness of what she must be feeling, I do believe she will conquer these adversities. She related all her troubles to me in six carefully worded sentences.
- 33 Those Were the Days When we were in the ninth grade we had an English teacher named Miss Averbach, and do you remember how she told us in March that she had heard a new rock group called The Doors that she predicted would have a number one hit on the radio by the semester's end, and damn if we were not all listening to Light My Fire during the last week of classes? I think she was from Pennsylvania, and her favorite expression seemed to be “Quat everyone.” We were always making noises, some ruder than others; then we learned her first name, and when she told everyone to be quat, a couple of kids would brazenly respond, “Yes, Sheila, okay Sheila.” Once, when you and I had smoked a couple of Js in Fort Greene Park before attending her class, she for some reason, had us coloring on oaktag, and I on the verge of hallucinating, was smearing black crayon all over the damned thing while mistakenly thinking I could white out my mistakes later on, and you were laughing at how I was trying to act so nonchalant because of course you always could remain calm and collected on the surface, so none of the adults knew of our extra-curricular activities. After she had left the school during the next semester we heard it was because she had finally married her childhood sweetheart and given up teaching to become a housewife, though some said it was because she had had a nervous breakdown right in the frigging classroom, in front of her students. Do you remember how upset you were in July of 1971 when we heard that Jim Morrison had died in a Paris bathtub, but made me laugh in spite of that by saying, “Please, let's have a moment of quat for the dear departed?”
- 34 Devil's Challenge – Highway to Hell The coyote was only a kid, nineteen years old and inexperienced, and when the group ran out of water on the Devil’s Highway, he left twenty-six people behind and headed up north. Mostly workers from coffee plantations, they were seeking some measure of security for families waiting behind with nothing. Just over half of the group died trudging north after their lost guide under the scorching sun. When the authorities located remains, some of them, inured to the sight of desiccated border crossers, took it far too lightly. They had families at home in air-conditioned houses. One said to his puking deputy, “You know, you can’t attempt to deal with the Devil, Sam, and expect to come out on top.”
- 35 Down to the Bone Sandy worried over the dominoes all morning; setting them on end close together in snaking queues, and when all 91 were in sequential order, she would tap the double-zero lead and experience a brief moment of satisfaction as each tipped the following over until the double-twelve fell, and all the black wooden soldiers, white eyes still open, lay dead on the table top. Then, she would smoke another cigarette, drink some more coffee, and continue shivering in her woolen robe, while internally debating the merits of calling her father and telling him that she was now alone but was thinking of keeping the apartment in the city without Jason. She set up and killed the same army maybe forty times without once picking up her cell phone. On her next, and what she had decided would be her last assault, she placed the phone in the center of the table and stood the dominoes in a spiral around it promising that when the last tile fell upon it, she would ring her father with the news she knew he, living alone, would hate hearing, but before she had a chance to set the last few in place, the phone began to vibrate, and then rang with an incoming call. She had placed it face down, and so could not see who it was, but in her heart she knew. If it were Jason or her father, perhaps some resolution might be at hand, but she could not bring herself to answer the summons and speak yet again to the source of all her troubles.
- 36 Framework His decrepit heart left him yearning for her scent, her smile, and her youth, now gone absolutely. Freedom tore the past into shreds, each jot reflecting, to be sure, a passage now ineluctably sweetened by distance. In memory, he got as far as the '80s before he recalled she had written regularly to the head honcho and frequently gave the honcho head. He had admired her daily from across three rows of cubicles before he learned of her objectives and how they colored everything she did. One day, she changed her hairstyle and told him to stop staring at her because it gave her the creeps. That was six months before they married, and two years before they were divorced.
- 37 Serendipity Sometimes Jonah, a masochist, couldn't feel any pain no matter how hard he pinched himself. Marie told him she couldn't help him, but it wouldn't hurt to see a doctor. The G.P.'s treatment was painless and duty-free; clearly a disappointment. Jonah was the last patient of the day, and so, spent some time talking to the doctor as he locked the clinic door. “You be careful, now,� Doctor Ellis said just before he got into his Volvo with the IAM-SURG license plates, and drove westward. One block away, Jonah slipped and fell on the icy street, and heard something crack in his leg, whereupon he had mixed feelings; on the one hand, cursing Marie under his breath, and on the other, reveling in the return of pain.
- 38 Discharged with Notice If asked to explain why he had cheated on her in San Francisco, he could have said it was because the temperature had grown so cold at home. He could have said the moment was right for his first and only extra-marital fling, and the drinks had been strong, and he had had a few too many, and Margaux looked beautiful wearing a gray business suit and very little makeup. He could have said any number of things if asked. However, she didn't know that he had briefly been unfaithful, and she had carefully planned an escape long before he had erred in that way. She was sitting there when he arrived home, and she handed him a letter of goodbye in an envelope, a goddamned letter and notice of divorce proceedings, when she could just as easily have voiced her feelings instead of silently walking out. The idea of her carefully written letter preyed on his mind all through the drive to his mother's to pick up the kids.
- 39 Making Do (His Version) Every morning the crows outside in the courtyard scream and squawk at dawn and their racket serves as my alarm clock. I usually find a half bottle of warm Coke that will do for coffee with one or two long butts from the overflowing ashtray as my first smoke of the day. I grab a handful of paper cocktail napkins before making my way to the bathroom, and follow up that process with a shower using a lump of soap cobbled together from the bits remaining in the dish. I am down to shaving only every other day, and without lather, leaving my face feeling alive in its rawness. Awake and aware, though I would rather be dreaming of some part of my past, which in retrospect, contained a regrettable substantiality, it is time to settle down for the last of my morning rituals before leaving for school and the students who stand in for my two kids who live now with Grandma. I pull her last letter, the one she left before heading off toward her unforeseeable accident, from the envelope, which has long since lost its violet scent, and her unfortunate choice of epithets serves as news from the outside.
- 40 Dramatize Me Sometimes I like sitting at the McDonald's outside the mall, daydreaming away an hour or so. With a container of their terrible coffee in front of me, and my notebook; waiting for some lost soul to come in, whose story I can tell. Can't say much about the young people working behind the counter; with their clear skin, bright smiles, and quick to serve willingness in matching uniforms, they don't seem to have any drama in their lives. Neither does the mother with two tykes who have already taken the heads off their McToys, nor the older gentleman tut-tutting over the local newspaper while ever so slowly consuming a salad topped with chicken strips, nor even the teenagers making out in a corner booth, while a single ice cream melts into glop in front of them. Some days everything appears copacetic with everybody, and it's not as if I have a writer's block, I mean, my pen is ready and willing to embellish any poor soul's miserable existence into a substantial fiction; it just seems at times nobody around me is suffering sufficiently. Then, I see my watch reads 8:06, and I wonder if it is safe to go home yet.
- 41 Anjali Anjali lives down that road where the better homes are, near the end of the cul-de-sac, in the pink and yellow house with no pool where there is space for one. She and Phillipe have recently celebrated their twenty-third anniversary, and she credits him with lifting her out of the sorry life she might have had had she returned to India when her father's job as an attachĂŠ in the U.S. was done, and she begged him to let her finish her high school in Washington, and where she later met and married Phillipe, an older, sophisticated visiting French professor. She speaks English, Spanish, and French, but claims her Hindi is rusty as she only gets to practice it when she goes to Mumbai to visit her sisters, all fat, unhappily married, and speaking only the language of their childhood. None of them have daughters attending Swiss finishing school, although two of Anjali's nephews are doctors; none of the sisters have traveled widely, nor can they afford to come visit her in Mexico. She and Phillipe fit in well with Tuxtlan society, as they know many of the parents of their daughter's former classmates, but Anjali says they hardly see anybody anymore on the weekends, now that Tarika no longer attends the Tec. "These days it's just Phillipe and I here by ourselves," she says, "and he sits around reading his books while I putter in the garden behind the house;" the house at the end of the road.
- 42 Home Home is a haven, unless it is filled with arguments and dissatisfaction. It is where you go to get away from the unfeeling world, except that sometimes you bring that unfeelingness in with you from the outside, and mistrust rebounds off the walls in silent and icy glaring. Home is where your heart is, when your heart is not galloping alongside Cheryl with the great legs, who works in Accounting. Home is where you hide what you don’t want to share with the rest of the world, or even if you leave those things out in plain sight, you don’t expect anyone else to take them from you, to at least respect your property lines. It isn’t home if you own nothing in it. Home is where you can go to be yourself, except when you can’t.
- 43 Among the Reeds Carol Reed was sixteen, pretty and patient with us for a long time as I, a nine-year old, dogged her every move, and pestered her to tell us stories about how our neighborhood was when she was little, before her father had died. One day, I heard her sister Sylvia, known as Bunny, say to her, “Why do you wanna hang around with these kids?” It didn’t bother me at first, but I came to despise Bunny shortly afterwards, when first she would pass by with young sailors on leave from their ships docked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and then Carol began following suit and no longer wanted to play school with us younger ones, and be our teacher. There came a day, I think it was Bunny’s eighteenth birthday, when their mother Barbara was coming in from her night job cleaning offices in Manhattan, and she stopped to speak to the three ladies who had husbands, and who sat on our stoop from early morning until late afternoon when their men came home. “Oh, these kids,” I heard her saying, as I was leaving for my real school, “They grow up so fast.” As everything was about me in those days, I thought she was remarking my development, and it was not until Carol went away for a long time, then, brought her baby cousin home to live with them that I realized how insignificant I had become to all the Reeds.
- 44 Slowing to a Stop Claude felt as if time were not slipping, but galloping, away as for every step he attempted it took longer and longer to raise and lower his feet. It was like moving through shallow quicksand at first, but as the days went by, the slowness moved upwards through his legs, flaring out to his fingers and then up his arms to his shoulders, until finally it seemed almost impossible just to turn his head or nod. The oddest thing was how at first the slowness stayed in his movement as all his other functions seemed to race in comparison. Whatever he said rang in his ears long after the words left his lips, but as these various other functions also depended on moving parts they too began to slow. Soon, it was only his mind speeding along in its thoughts, making him want to cry although it took forever to produce a single tear. By the time he realized what he should have done, it was too late to do so, and he felt weightless as they lowered him into the ground in his darkness, but sad, extremely sad, as he contemplated the lonely eternity stretching before him.
- 45 Stars As teenagers, we used to sit on her roof and pin our future plans to the stars in the Brooklyn sky. Her parents were much older than my mother, and both suffered from various illnesses I didn’t know were hereditary, whereas my mother was in perfect health. Laura's younger brother, who was a change of life baby, was a little slow, and our plans included taking care of him later on, if something were to happen to her mom and dad. Due to disobliging fate, we attended his funeral together; then, as her family dwindled, we were at her mother’s, then her father’s, and on each of those nights the sky seemed so full of stars—too many plans to fulfill in a lifetime. When Laura died, I attended her funeral alone, and on that rainy night there was a haze and the sky seemed starless. Later, my mother, making tea, noticed the rain had stopped and the stars had come out, and she told me to come have a look, but I didn’t want to be reminded of all those plans I had neither desire nor courage to carry out alone.
- 46 Whose Bounty We Are About to Receive The way some tell it, He was lonely, if you believe that, and so He made some friends and gave them a world to inhabit, but when they wouldn't keep doing things His way, He sent fire and brimstone, and floods. Don't forget about the floods, as water plays a large part in the proceedings. Then, He instilled enough knowledge in some of us to know that we know hardly anything about anything, and let us see there were other worlds, so we could be haunted by the idea that perhaps we are not the favored race after all. To drive the point home, He let it be discovered there was hardly any water anywhere else out there. No water--no life (as we know it), no obeisance--no punishment; make of it what you will.
- 47 Trick or Treat The symptoms began some weeks after Valentine’s Day, and then there was the fact that her period had not occurred as expected. Kyra suffered cravings and morning sickness throughout the summer despite the doctor’s assurances to Jim that she was undergoing a phantom pregnancy and there was no evidence of a fetus. Jim adored his wife and hadn’t the heart to disillusion her, and so, went shopping for baby clothes and redecorated the spare room because one day those things would be needed, and besides, their lovemaking was remarkable, notwithstanding Kyra’s visibly swollen, unfruitful abdomen, with Jim hoping every time to make the situation real. What seemed unbearable, however, came at the end of October on the night when Kyra hemorrhaged under a false labor and had to be sedated and kept in bed because she was too weak to be taken to the hospital. It was Halloween, and as children went from house to house throughout the neighborhood celebrating, Jim consumed a bottle of Old Grand-Dad alone in his living room, dreaded the eeriness of an unnecessary post-partum depression, and wouldn’t answer the doorbell no matter how many times it was rung; not even when a little ghost looked in the window and called out, “Hey, c’mon, mister, don’t you like kids?”
- 48 Better the Devil She could go one of two ways; speed it up or slow it down, and as she had begun to feel sluggish and regretful under the tranquilizers, she decided to go for speed. Regan exercised, walked, ran, swam, dieted and toned, had dental work done, cut her hair, chaired, and debated, and by the end of the summer she was buff, and moving through her life at sixty miles per hour. Looking and feeling better, she was able to cut out the tranqs entirely and was down to one amphetamine a day in the early morning, so she could sleep six hours at night, though she frequently enjoyed fewer. Now, there was no time left for Terry, what with all the committees and other responsibilities Regan had taken on, but accommodating him had ceased to be her concern since that day in April, when he had slipped and called her motor-mouth in front of his director, Lewis Moore. When Regan thought of all she had sacrificed for Terry, it made her stomach churn, although that was much less of a problem now in her svelte condition than it had previously been. The thing that sent her exploring the road less traveled was that twinkle of understanding the director had silently expressed over Terry’s gaffe, and the way Lew stroked her pudgy fingers when they both reached for the salt.
- 49 A Little Problem Hawkins stood by the sedan and smoked his cigarette, thinking how foolish he looked to the Inspector, how he never seemed to get it, though they had been working together for almost six months. His problem was he saw resemblances everywhere, in the faces of victims, witnesses, in events described, in alleged perpetrators, even in those convicted of crimes. One young man who was killed on the motorway looked just like his cousin Freddy; a woman with information about a burglary looked like his Aunt Matilda; some knacker accused of shoplifting was the spitting image of a bully from his school days up at Barlow. It was hard to do his job when he associated attributes of those he knew with those involved in a current situation whether they were on the positive or negative side of things; it was distracting. Now this Jane Compton lying there in her white pleated summer dress reminded him of his last fiancĂŠe, Sylvia, who used to amuse him with her Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grating routine with her skirt blowing up. He could not help what he had started to feel, and the Inspector had noticed.
- 50 A True Tale After his young bride Julia died, Betancourt slowly went mad. Of course, the rate at which he devolved was relative as there was no one around to take an accurate measure except the neighborhood kids who plagued him with their antics every afternoon trying to get a rise out of him. There came a period, however, when the pots of steaming hot water tossed out of his window became fewer and fewer before stopping altogether, and he ceased bursting out of his doorway, yelling and brandishing a wooden table leg. The kids continued playing in his courtyard for a while, and their parents no longer concerned themselves with reprimands to leave the poor old man alone in his grief—until someone complained that a smell like rotting pork was evident out to the street beyond the perimeter of the Betancourt property. Well, the old man had died alone in his big old house, and what was left of him was discovered several weeks later lying in dirty pajamas amid the junk and debris of what he had accumulated over the years. The mansion stood deserted for years but was eventually razed to make way for condos, and those reprobate kids, now grown into responsible adults who moved into them with children of their own, told the new generation that it was the ghost of old man Betancourt that haunted the property, but the grandparents knew better, and if cajoled into the right mood by the little ones, they would relate the true tale of the beautiful and mysterious Julia.
- 51 Seven: Forty-seven (Daylight Savings Time) Let the caws of birds among the trees become a chorus of words to please, “woo woo-woo hoo-woo who?” they question. If you wanted more, you had only to ask, unless you found it an unpleasant task, but who knew; who knew it was just a suggestion? When it seemed there was not a moment to rest, in looking for better, you missed the best, but you rue; you do, you know you do—you took too much for chance. That yellow morning light would never work at night, when leaves that shine must hide behind the gloom. I am waiting for birds, and listening for words. It’s absurd, what I’ve heard in the silence of my room, as words should sing and dance.
- 52 Don’t Open ‘til Christmas In the bakery Señor Wemple is making the cookies for the children’s posada because the Christmas season is when he comes alive. The incessant caroling, however, has him a little on edge; it’s not that he doesn’t like Christmas carols, but there are only five of them and they play continuously while the people are away. The florist, Madame Treyne, has made her most beautiful arrangements and is now sitting back to admire them, and this year a family will stand in front of her window apparently about to enter her shop, but they never will. All year long she works so hard in the box hoping that when they let her out they will appreciate her toiling, but nobody seems to have a care; only she must look her best to please them. Madame Sparger lives on Crescent Way, alone except for her little dog Caesar, and a rabbit named Luther, and she is unaware that Caesar and Luther, able to communicate with each other, have planned a surprise for her this Christmas. How could a dog and a rabbit execute a plan one might ask, but one must wait, like Madame Sparger, until Christmas morning to find out.