Flinch and Other Violent Reactions

Adam Cogbill Independent Study Prof. Hartman Spring '07 Contents

How to Save a Stray ...... 1

Flicker ...... 15

Whisper ...... 26

Flinch ...... 43 Cogbill 1

How to Save a Stray

What happened was, while they were driving, they hit a dog. They didn't see the dog or they did but miscalculated its rate of movement or it was already motionless in the road, but no matter what, they hit the dog. Later, they thought of the dog as construction paper, something fragile and easily tom. But at the time, they looked at each other and decided it was better to get out and see.

It was an old mutt. Gray lined its whiskers and tail. The rest of it was blaclc with a white stripe down (he back. They couldn't tell where they'd hit it, but its right rear leg was still. It kept trying to stand. They lit cigarettes and smoked animatedly to occupy their hands and mouths and they talked about how ugly it was, the ugliest mutt they'd ever seen, but the truth was it made them all nervous. Its teeth were like crooked stalactites protruding past blaclc jowls. It had a bent muzzle and its eyes were different sizes. Its dusty coat was missing chunks of fur and its nails were too long. It smelled like rotten meat and the skin they could see looked mottled and wet.

They decided that they couldn't leave the dog in the road. But where would they take it? They considered various options. They could bury it behind one of their houses.

There was the town dump, or the abandoned factory just a few miles down the road. The dog renunded them of a rotted, well-used sofa in a basement somewhere.

Eventually, they decided on their woods. It wasn't really theirs, but they thought of it that way. They thought of playing football between and around trees, and they thought of swinging from branches that should have broken under their weight but didn't.

They thought of the barbecue pit they'd built from gathered stone, and they thought of the Cogbill 3 and later, when they tried to talk about it, they thought that perhaps that was the reason for everything going the way it did.

What they did was think about the times their fathers had found birds fallen from nests and rabbits with broken legs. They stood close to each other and did not look at the dog, and again they lit cigarettes, and they told stories about the times they'd come here and had a little to drink and talked about the girls they loved so much and the things they hoped to do together. And then they began to look around them for anything that might be heavy enough to put a dog to sleep. This was what they called it, sleeping the dog.

As they searched, they imagined the dog as a patch of air that had turned brown and black. Even though they had carried it, felt its fur and weight on their hands; they had trouble thinking of it as a real thing because they believed that real things should not be fragile. And if the mutt, which lay alone and barely breathing behind them in the snow could hang by such thin threads to life, than it was possible that they themselves could struggle tlrough seconds and minutiae, and they themselves could be so fragile and alone.

What they did was drag a fallen tree back to the dog. While they were gone, it crawled a few feet from its original spot. The impression its soggy fur left in the snow made them think of scars. The mutt began to pant and its tongue rolled over its lips and laid dripping in the snow.

They lifted the log together and positioned themselves over the dog. Around them, the snow covering the trees shimmered angrily. The dog's exposed ear moved slightly as cold breezes brushed it. Everything was delicate and cold and then one of them counted backwards from tlree to one and they dropped it. Cogbill 5

The dog was a dying hurricane. It was a pale candle melting in the snow. They bent again to move the log.

When they dropped it the second time, the yelp sounded like a scream. They heard a rib crack as the log bounced, landed on the dog's head, and fell gently off like a rolling pin. The dog's eyes bulged from its skull, emerging from dark sockets like explosions. One leg spasmed back and forth uncontrollably. The dog's breathing was sand running through a sieve. Its mouth fell open, frozen in the still snow beneath it.

Blood leaked from its skull. But they could hear it wheezing.

Still alive. It was not fragile at all, it was only broken. And that was worse, to know that death was not the result of being broken. They looked at their bodies and touched their skin and held their eyes shut tight, but it seemed that any part of them could at any time be pierced and shredded and torn away and nothing could be done about it.

They wished more than anything that they could stop time. If they could have stopped time, they could have spent their lives understanding what was happening, why the dog was still alive when it should have been calm, tranquil in spring snow. If they could have paused time, they could have traveled the world, watching promises being made, promises being broken. Watched stones crack and chronically ill patients give in.

When it made sense, they figured they might be able to hear God speak, the first in thousands of years or maybe ever, perhaps no one had ever really heard God speak, nobody could actually hear the voice that pounded mountains into dirt, but they would, and then they'd come back here, to this place, and they'd know what to do.

For a while, none of them could breathe normally. They watched the dog and the shadow of life left and waited. They swayed with the branches in the light wind and they Cogbill 7 things than they were doing. There were so many worse places they could be, so many worse times. They thought about cannibalism and mass murder and rape, horrible diseases, paralysis, the plague, the Inquisition and all the stories they'd read as small children where the dog died in the end anyway, Big Red and Old Yeller. So nothing they did was the worst they could do. Everything melted away eventually. The dog would melt, they would go to sleep that night and forget about it.

On the way back, they passed the bat back and forth and explained the scuff marks decorating its barrel. This one for a triple. This one for batting practice. This one a suicide squeeze. There would be new scuffs. Their old footprints were trampled by the new and when they looked back, their tracks were intermeshed and the brilliant white snow had given way to dirt and dead leaves. They could hear the dog crying before they could see it. They took deep breaths and imagined it as an empty mesh sack, a pile of leaves.

The dog didn't look at them as they came back to the clearing. They stood above and then came the moment when their hands could not all grip the baseball bat due to laws of physics and what they suddenly considered flaws in the design of baseball bat grips and the bat would eventually find its way into one set of hands. They said they would stand and watch, no one would move. The dog was a blanket, a dirty rug. It was a puddle of rainwater. It was smoke. Then they began to swing.

They kept their eyes on the dog because they all wanted to see the same thing.

Each wanted to see everything the others saw.

What they saw was difficult to define because after the first two downward swings, they closed their eyes. They saw metal and black silver fur and a river running Cogbill 9 they wanted to be more thorough. They wanted the cleanest car they'd ever driven. They wanted a car that looked new, looked bright and fresh, a diamond-skinned car. So they brought the soap and hot water and sponges, brought Windex, brought polish and rags.

They brought Armor All, a hand vacuum. They started. With a hose, they carefully sprayed the car. They drowned the doors and the hood, the trunk, the panels behind the backseat. The covered the hubcaps, the tires, the bumpers. The license plates. The top.

They put the down the hose and soaped their sponges. They rubbed gently, in circular patterns. They washed molecules and put their faces close to the surface. They gently blew away loose particles of dirt and they re-soaked their sponges and counted strokes. In slow, even patterns, they washed away the dirt and grime, intent on transforming the car's body into its original, pure blue finish. They orbited, washing in columns. They scrubbed the car like a newborn. Then they rinsed, spraying even inside the holes in the hubcaps, the exhaust, the door handles, under the windshield wipers. Then they polished.

They used touch-up paint for scratches, eyes close to the surface to fill the most microscopic white flaws they could find. They clenched muscles to hold hands steady while running tiny brushes over the smallest details. The car, clean, was like water in sunlight. The sun set as they continued to polish and paint. Soon it was dark and they could see nothing. Frustrated, they covered the car with a large tarp and went to bed.

They drove their clean car through summer rain, even though the weather report claimed sun and clear sky. They did this every year, but this year in particular seemed important. To be driving in a clean car to clean place was important. As they drove, they pressed their faces to the windows wrote themselves in the steamed glass. The car jerked and skidded suddenly when the driver saw a deer, battered and bloody, dead in the road. Cogbill 11

They carefully went over each inch of the deck's railing to see if the key might have been hidden somewhere obvious and yet out of sight. They crawled under the deck and came out muddy and unrecognizable. Then they tried snagging the deadbolt with school IDS, sticks, car keys. They pushed the door, pulled it. They boosted themselves onto the roof and considered crawling down the chimney, which was much too narrow. They looked for storm doors and found none. There was no way into the house.

They sat down around the table on the porch and looked at the rain. There was no wind and the water fell straight down. In their heads, from nowhere in particular they began to rhyme words. They did not think about them, only placed them together in ways that made perfect sense. But one of them said it, and then no one could speak.

"Hit the speed bump see the furry lump see the red pop right out the head."

They imagined that they'd woken up on driftwood in the middle of the Atlantic.

They woke up flying and couldn't land. They woke as fish.

The rain drowned the out the normal background noises that silence usually consisted of, the barking dogs, chattering birds, cars driving past, the crying of a small child. Instead, there was the sound of the rain striking everywhere. This was not one sound, but millions of sounds, tiny flares firing over and over, bouncing off rooftops and blades of grass, gravel and metal and rubber and soil, and water washed over stained surfaces until the stains themselves seemed to become a part of their surface or were rinsed away conlpletely, rainwater carrying bits of the sky with it so that earth and sky began to meld into a formless, shape shifting steam, and they sat in the middle of everything and watched the world breathe as they exhaled, their breath hanging for seconds in the air before disappearing into the history of the atmosphere along with the Cogbill 13 it now okay fine, honestly when you hit the dog and we got out and we looked at, it all I could think of and God I know this is awful, but honestly all I could think of was it'd be really funny to name a dog Speedbump.

They told stories about high school and the most embarrassing things that had ever happened to them, and maybe it was okay to speak to each other again even if laughing wasn't what they felt like doing. What they felt like doing was being known,

When it was too dark to see each other, they rose and disappeared into the darkness of the lawn and here I'll be honest and say that I sat and watched them until the light was completely gone and I could only catch glimpses of their bodies sliding past in the grass and I know what you think because it's what they think too, that it wasn't a big deal and I should find a way past it because they did and that wasn't so bad, but I didn't know a way and so I watched.

The rain fell and tried in vain to cleanse them as they tore paths through thick grass, covered themselves in mud. They slammed into each other, picked up and lost speed, fell and stood. The sounds of rushing air and bodies was everywhere and the air turned opaque in the rain, rain they tunneled through, rain that fell between their fingertips and toes. They imagined the ground, which they could hardly see, a maze of mud paths and collapsed grass.

I tried to imagine them as something else. As a haystack, as a pile of leaves rustled by wind, as trees sprouting through soil, but none of these were right because they were so terrifyingly real and everything that happened had happened to physical masses that had somehow evolved into more than simple matter, everything was condensed and thrown together in intricate patterns. So I kept seeing the paths they left, the trails blazed Cogbill 15

Flicker

Ricl~eremembers pieces of his father:

Father buys jigsaw puzzle. Cuts pieces in fourths. Proudly presents to son. Son cries in frustration. Father glues jigsaw puzzle to kitchen table.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner.)

Father repeats epic dreams at breakfast table. Black holes, giraffe riding. Richie remembers this about his father. Thinks of father upsetting smoke detectors. Walnut and pecan pancakes. Pink: apron. Whistling. Pancakes stick to walls when done.

Father brings home dog. Name is Spaz. Spaz hunts houseflies, herds furniture, howls at fire engines. Guards Richie's bedroom door. Guards windows. Barks at pedestrians. Barks at car pulling into driveway. Knock on front door, father answers.

Woman accuses father of stealing Spaz. Spaz is not Spaz, Spaz is Scoof. Spaz becomes

Scoof, suddenly, violently. Richie examines father. Father's face is thin, white. Father watches Spaz become Scoof and enter car and disappear.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe.)

Father, lawn. Mowing crop circles. Mowing target. For sky, he says. For airplanes. For bird target practice.

Father dances with mother on roof. At night. Moon is spotlight, he says. Mother wants to stop. One more, says father. Richie hears feet on roof. Hears heels. Hears father humming. Deep, resonant. Too large for small father.

Father's side of room littered with collections. With rock pyramids. Origami.

Clothes. Prisms, painting, pieces of paper cut from books, magazines. No empty space, everything covered in refracted light and shadow and clutter. Cogbill 17

Months pass. Lights flicker, fade. Pipes burst. Starlight fades forever from sight.

New starlight is seen for first time.

Kate gives Richie a cactus. Apartment needs life, she says.

Richie's apartment:

Dull, brown color. No refracted light. Rarely lit. Walls bare. No pictures, fridge magnetless.

A cactus.

In sink: one plate, one fork, one glass. Kate did dishes a day ago. Drainer full. Pot, strainer, measuring cup, forks, plates, glasses, all clean. Brighter than anything in the kitchen. Stark white or clear. Don't belong here.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0s.)

Bed. Unmade, but no covers pulled back. Only ruffled. Blankets thin and yellow.

Dark at night, bright in morning. Sometime between, explode. Explode from dark to bright. Richie never sees any in-between colors.

Couch found on curb. In center of apartment. Cushions ruffled, spilling over edge.

They wrestle, try to push other off. One falls. Other grabs, holds. Clenches. Pulls back.

Pulls toward self.

Walls. Used to be white, now yellowed. Wallpaper full of old, expanding stars.

The occasional nail. Wall interrupted by window. Wall interrupted by ceiling. By floor.

Flat old stars expanding, violent interruption, empty space. Where are the stars? Cogbill 19 explodes in, out. No time limit, no desired distance, just push. Push faster, inevitable slowing, push faster. Rising sun, 110 matter how far or fast, day comes full. And movement slows.

Remembers father running, and after, rolling in rich grass. Running in circles around the lawn. Legs turn over, arms punch forward. Refusing to stop when asked.

Mother, hands on hips, asking. No answer, refuses to stop. For hours, runs around lawn, small circles.

Richie's father knew all this, too. Knew about time, about seconds that extend.

About wanting to stop only to have seconds continue. Jogging shoes, father jogging, father still jogging in certain seconds, seconds renamed as memories, renamed as incomplete, as imperfect.

The dinner:

Her face is flushed, bright in smoke and heat. She has made a miniature map of city with salt on table. Tic-tac-toe napkins cover their laps.

During dinner, Richie thinks this: that his father knew, or knows. Thinks about a space.

In this space, Richie watches his father jog in circles around the lawn. Looks away. Only a few moments. Looks back, father is gone. World continues to turn, clocks tick, grass grows fractions of fractions of a centimeter. Father is gone.

After:

Richie walks outside, through father's flower garden. No flowers. Sometimes, father buys roses from florists. Puts in ground. Roses die, father removes them. Repeat at random. Cogbill 21

Richie is amazed by the freedom. Scared, but amazed. By what could happen. By all that is not supposed to happen, but could happen. To not return. To not pay rent, leave the city, leave the state, the country. Did his father feel this way? Like rebellion? Like jumping from the space-time continuum?

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0supon which they draw eyes and facial hair and squiggle-mouths that remind Richie of his father's repeated failed attempts at beards that grew thin and wispy like torn silk that his father would tear at weeks later in frustration.)

Kate, alone, waiting. By now, worried. By now, considering checking men's bathroom. Richie knows. At first, she'll be timid. Look in long, sweeping looks. Then, lingering loolcs at little spaces, specific structural pieces, suspicious shadows, under tablecloths and behind the bar. She'll want to ask someone. Anyone, everyone. The people leaving, people waiting. Waiters, managers. Teachers, doctors, children, grandchildren. Explain. Explain this. Explain sudden stops, give explanation, reveal, uncover please please, but meals continue, conversation is had, jokes told, laughter, cigarette smoke drifts, orders are taken, given, prepared, brought.

Richie thinks, if he looks, long enough, he could know what happened. If his father disappeared, was taken, ran away. He searches in time, not location.

Follows father's surprisingly straight steps. Should not be this way. Should be erratic, terrified. Should be uneven, unsure, awkward. Should act like Earth's rotation is slowing, balance should be impossible. Cogbill 23

His father jogging in circles around the lawn is only his father, jogging in circles, around the lawn.

But flowers are colors and innocence and representations. Signs. Way to describe without speaking. Reasons, explanations.

Old woman, long gray hair, behind counter. Points, Richie shakes head. Points again, shakes head. Again. Shrugs. Points.

Wonders if Kate has gone home. If she tried calling. She must be thinking how strange it is, the absence. Must be thinking of how much more space is not occupied by people. Thinking how strange the kitchen table looks, lop-sided now, too many on one side. How quiet houses are. Entire cities seem quiet. How much longer the cake remains, covered and unfnushed. If phone rings, does Kate jump? If there's a knock? Delivery men disappointing, telemarketers heartbreakers.

Richie does not know where else to go:

Has imagined this happening. Knows how she will react. Anger-painted face and tightened fingers. Look at anything but him. Look at wall, at floor, at nails, at stain on his shirt, but not at him.

Will be like falling asleep after months of insomnia. Like fish falling over surprise waterfall. Maybe, possibly, like all the stars in the universe visible at once. Every piece of sky obscured by fiery light.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding 011 entrees and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0supon which they draw eyes and facial hair and squiggle-mouths that remind Riclue of his father's repeated failed attempts Cogbill 25 pushing orchid into street. Pot would shatter, soil spread across road, stalk trampled by feet, tires.

But, he imagines, morning, when sun rises, petals flare, seeds scatter, appear in gardens, hillsides across state.

Reaches for Kate's hand. Cogbill 27 house. The mortar does not make an explosion so much as a loud rushing sound that make lum tlunk of satin pillows in wind storms. The sirens start before it lands.

They are not close, but not far either. The rushing turns red and orange, liquid roses against ash sky. He sprints across the field to the woods, not because he thinks he'll be caught but because if he runs, he might fool himself into getting scared. The faster he runs, the more likely it is that policemen are out of their cars and sprinting across the cracked frozen concrete and into the endless white that end with their footsteps and then he is over the short fence in a single vault, lucky not to catch his coat, and into the woods and gone.

He wishes the trees would come alive and reach for him. Their branches are pikes, eyes appear like yellow ghosts from their trunks, roots emerging from soil to wrap his ankles and drag him through snow and undergrowth into dark dens of drunken blackness where nothing seems exactly real, and then he'd be forced to live with the memory for the rest of his life, attempting to survive in a world where no one could possibly understand what he'd seen because he was the only one who'd seen it, he couldn't explain it to anyone because no one would believe him. No wonder the insane were insane - they lived in worlds no one else could. They were fine really, but they were all alone on uninhabited planets.

He breaks from the trees onto a cul-de-sac. The sun, for a moment, comes free of its cloud wardens and runs headlong across the sky, a moment of freedom, and then it is gone again, into white breath and cold air. He walks along the street pulling at car doors.

No alarms go off, no cars are unlocked. He expects this, but just the same, his pulse jumps for a moment each time he pulls a handle. He thinks about how often there is Cogbill 29

But why not isn't really the question. It is, would he be able to live with himself in the morning if he doesn't? He opens the Suburu's door and climbs inside. He wants to leave his mark quickly and get out, jam a dime into the keyhole, steal all the floor mats pee on the passenger seat, break off all the radio knobs, anytlung simple and quick that he could flunk about later. Outside the snow is fish food and it relaxes him because it will happen regardless of what he does in the next moment, or the next year, or last year, and it doesn't care what he is doing, it would gently cover that also. Also, he envies snow's

ability to change everyone's daily schedule.

But the car. He needs something, anything. Something has to change and they must notice and they have to wonder what they've done or who's done it and why when how could it happen. He grabs the visor and pulls down hard but the keys fall into his lap.

They land soundless as snow.

He stares. There are six keys on a nondescript metal circle and a keyclmin that

reads, I'm not self-centered, I'm just important. He turns it over as though expecting to

find an answer or explanation on the back, but there is nothing. At home, his brother is

probably snaking a hand under the shirt of a girl who isn't sure she wants to be where she

is, but maybe it's better than being alone, so she lets him. His mother's face is glowing a

gentle red, the color of the ornamental balls on the tree. She smiles too much and laughs

too easily. She pours more B&B into a small glass that she believes looks sophisticated.

Perhaps it is sophisticated. Zig wonders why people notice certain things and not others.

The dogs are wrestling on the living room floor, showing off for anyone who will watch.

Snow falls like shadows from sunless sky and shovels push it away temporarily but it Cogbill 31 be no tangible explanation or reason. The craters would already be partially covered in snow and there would be nobody there and suddenly the idea of driving past the police officers seemed like a good idea. And now that it seemed like such a good idea, he couldn't avoid doing it. Or how would he look at himself in the mirror later?

There are three cars at the school and he wants to roll his eyes. Fireworks are a big deal in this town. Just like running stop signs, or jay walking. The red and blue lights circulate through the passenger window. The officers' breath emerges in smoke signals, three of them in the parking lot, hands shoved in the pockets of their coats. One is laughing. They are just as bored as he, and who can blame them, really. The shortest cop, whose round face is as red as his hair, speaks with great animation, as though words are products of his entire body. His round stomach jostles and jounces as he jumps from foot to foot. It looks like he is describing a monster, a city-sized dinosaur devouring sky rises and penthouses and taxicabs and pedestrians, but what he is actually doing is telling a drinking story he has just remembered, his college days where his roommate set off fireworks in the hall and the entire building flooded. He remembers it with tremendous laughter that journeys from the bottom of his stomach to his throat and out, rumbling like earthquakes and he doesn't really care about who set off these particular fireworks, because at the end of the day he will go home and kiss his kids and hope to God that his wife doesn't leave him for her young personal trainer because the truth is he loves her.

The cars rolls gently by the police officers and Zig idles past them. They don't look twice because it's snowing, everyone is being overly cautious. Zig doesn't stare, but he glances at them every few seconds. He wonders what a police chase would be like.

Helicopters and Action News, t1Urty cops chasing him. And jail, that would be something Cogbill 33 falls at the same pace, and only the sidewalks and street gradually disappearing in white paper are witness.

What is left to do but go home, Zig wonders, but he doesn't want to because home makes hiin feel like an afterthought, like as long as he stays out of his mother's hair and doesn't bug his brother, feet don't belong on the furniture and don't eat that, his father making business calls even on holidays, or else his father says Ijust want to watch the game for Chrissakes. How can it be so clichi? If it happens in so many books and movies, how can it possibly happen in real life? Once people realize it's been done before, don't they want to try something else? He wonders if his mother ever has the urge to make brownie batter and stick her head in the mixing bowl and eat herself sick. Maybe his father would like to spray the driveway with water and let it freeze. They would have to park on the street, but they'd have a personal ice rink right in front of the house. His

brother wants a dog, but what would their parents do if he didn't ask, just brought a

puppy home? Or better yet, a litter of puppies? What he wants most is for somebody near

him to go crazy, rampage violently or l~umorouslyor disturbingly through the

neighborhood with no explanation, breaking into homes and kidnapping children and

smashing glass everywhere. Or he wants the air to split open in black and green gas, a

portal to another dimension that lets loose zombies and demons and the undead into the

real world. Or maybe the portal opens and Zig is sucked into a medieval fantasyland

where he must learn to use magical powers to survive an evil witch-queen bent on his

demise.

Zig pushes at a stop sign on the comer of School and Memphis Boulevard for a

while. He is not sure what he will do with a stop sign if he can unearth one, but he's Cogbill 35

He ambles down the street, kicking over trashcans left out too long and throwing rocks close to windows without actually trying to hit one. He doesn't through them hard, and they are not large, so when he does hit a window the rock only bounces off, and he is surprised to find himself both frightened and disappointed simultaneously. The snow is still falling, the air is breathing change into thick atmosphere and the trees are motionless as metal, branches in rigor mortis poses along the frozen cement sidewalk. He can see his tracks behind him slowly fading as new snow fills them, covers them like secrets, like changes in season. He turns down Carolina Avenue knowing that he is moving further and farther from home, but he thinks this is good. Everything he has ever read or seen has told him that the only way to experience anything worth experiencing is to run far away, far enough away that he cannot be saved, and hopefully he'll be lucky enough to be unlucky, learn something the hard way which is, after all, the only respectable way.

There is a truck in front of a large white house, a long brown truck with the word

Monty's Pest Control on the side. There are pictures of a mice and rats and ants running from a poker game as a giant hand with Monty tattooed on its palm slams an enormous ace onto the table. Poker chips and beer bottles and cards fly everywhere. On top of the van is a large plastic cockroach, a grotesque brown and black statue with dripping jaws, long antennae and a chipped-paint shell. Zig looks the house over for a moment, but its windows and doors are closed. Monty is perhaps inside, crawling through dark spaces in search of droppings or other signs of particular inhabitants that, according to the human laws of the universe, do not belong in houses. Zig presses his face against the driver's window. It is unlocked, but the prospect of stealing another car is not as exciting as ithad been earlier, possibly because nothing had happened. Although it is not wrong or illegal, Cogbill 37 and regurgitate a life worth living? It is not something that he could have done, but an opportunity temporarily missed, a chance that still waits, and he needs to tear the cocluoach from its holdings and take it away, he must challenge the invisible forces that hold his world together in order to discover their true meaning, and here is an opportunity he may never have again. He is righteous and massive and solid. He opens the driver's side door again and goes through the dashboard. He crawls in back and rifles through work orders and boxes and sprays and finally finds a toolbox under a large blue tarp. He climbs to the roof again, screwdriver in hand and begins to work at the screws that hold the coclcroacl~in place. His hands are shaking and he concentrates on his breathing. In every crime movie he has ever seen, good criminals are calm, so he must be calm. He tosses the first screw over his shoulder. He listens for the creak of the door opening, and the air is so silent that he believes he will be able to hear even the sharp shuffle of blinds opening if one of the household decides to look out. Another screw comes undone, and then another, and he is unscrewing more than screws, he is screwing bindings, shackles, chains, he is unscrewing a symbol and he is destroying and defacing another symbol and then the screws are out and he yanks at the cockroach, but it appears that it is still held on partially by an old coat of glue. There are always more borders to cross, always more walls to knock down, it seems. Nothing is ever far enough, he should stow away aboard cruise liners and lose himself in another country. This is what it will take to become a worthwhile human being.

He jams the screwdriver through the truck's thin roof. He is able to cut away at the glue in this way, but the sound of the screwdriver penetrating the metal echoes throughout the quiet neighborhood. The white snow falls over the white house. The Cogbill 39 walks like a zombie: stiff and steady, destination in mind but in no hurry, as though his arrival is inevitable regardless of time or space. The cockroach is still under his arm.

The child is a boy. He is making shapes in the snow with his rubber boots and talking to himself. It is strange, to Zig, that he cannot remember being that young, even though it wasn't long ago. He cannot remember how the world looked from eyes he once possessed. Everything has been replaced. The snowfall is heavy now and the wind has even picked up, creating a haunting atmosphere signaling that something is about to happen. The weather seems to know everything in stories. It seems desperate to warn someone. Look, the wind cries, something awful is about to happen. Something horrifying and inhuman. The wind's voice is too high pitched and whiney to understand.

It is always crying. And the snow covers everything, falls harder and harder, as though the act of covering certain actions could prevent their effect on the world. Because it

seems to the snow that there are brittle breaking points scattered throughout the world,

and it is rare that these breaking points go unbroken for long, just as now, Zig approaches

a breaking point with Ills cockroach which is sneering and drooling and this is where we

stand and scream at the boy, run, run, can't you hear the wind? but the downfall of snow

is that children often love snow and do not know to run from it.

Zig reaches the edge of the parking lot and the boy is trying to make snowballs,

but the snow is too powdery and falls like dust through his fingers. And the entire parking

lot is fall of dusty, sandy snow that is a canvas for feet and saliva and urine, a canvas that

sprays and twists and turns and it seems to Zig that everything is a canvas and does it

really matter if one or two specs on the canvas disappear suddenly and violently and who

could possibly care other than on principle, really in the greater scheme of things the Cogbill 41 lower. Zig is cold, suddenly, as though temperature change is sudden. He zips his coat and turns to go home.

It is close to dinnertime. It would be so easy to miss. To come home just a few minutes late, and he has missed dinnertime. Even dinnertime seems a mystery, why there is a time for it at all, and really it is probably just convenience, but when he thinks about it, Zig can imagine dinnertime in large stone letters, set atop a mountain by God and

guarded by thousands of angels. His mother always yells at him for missing dinner. As though, by missing dinner, he is creating in himself a tainted piece of genetic code that he will pass to his children and consequentially to his grand and great grand children, and

soon the whole world will be full of people missing dinner, and then where would we be?

But that will not happen. He'll be home in time for dinner, and probably nobody

will know that he moved a car or set off fireworks or stole a cockroach from the top of an

exterminator's car. It'll be as though nothing has happened. If not for a small boy's

laughter echoing around the inside of a hollow plastic cockroach, the entire day would be

bust. He could knock on his brother's door and ask him if he wants to watch television or

something, play monopoly, anything, but his brother will laugh at him, or he will be

making out with his girlfriend. He could ask his mother to teach him bridge, so that the

next time lus grandparents visit, they could all play, because normally Zig sits on a

folding chair and leans over his mother's shoulder to watch, but there is a circle of

players and he is not one of those. But she will be cleaning, or working, or reading, or

falling asleep on the sofa watching late night movies and waiting for his father to finish

whatever it is his father does. Cogbill 43

Flinch

Because - The first word in the sentence she reads to David. The reason for this story.

An explanation. The one David is occasionally afraid of because what if someone asks,

"because?'Would he be able to answer, and what can he say that will be worth

"because?" Nicole reads to him from abook she picked up from a garage sale.

Love - The second word in the sentence: Because love is like a magical adhesive that binds all the people of the world with beautfuI, colored light! And isn't that just so beautiful she says, so true, isn't that what we have?

Is -He is hers and she is his and long after she has fallen asleep he sometimes thinks that this is enough for anyone ever.

Like - Once, he asked her, before you are in love, can you be in like? When she asked what he meant, he responded that it was a joke, he is only kidding. But what did you mean by that, she asks?

A - How can we have an "A+" relationship, Nicole asks. What can we do? Let's discuss.

Magical = He took her to a magic show for the six-month anniversary she inskted&~y have. Cogbill 45

The - The way David would propose to her would be alone, on a desert, or a beach in wintertime, any place where there was no one else for her to look at but him.

World - David believes that if Nicole ever participates in a beauty contest, she would actually say, without flinching, that she wishes for world peace.

With -When I am not with you, she begins. He knows she is trying. She can't quite say it with complete truth, but she tries her best. When I am not with you, I am not as happy.

Beautiful - He has never admitted that he likes her hair best at the moment she wakes, groggy and disoriented, strands disobeying gravity.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Colored - They don't fight often, which he appreciates. When she is angry, her blush

extends nearly to the bottom of her neck.

Light - She loves the beach, but he sunburns easily. Fifteen minutes is enough to cause

him days of pain and peeling. Cogbill 47 heard brilliant blinding burning and he is not impressed. He doesn't know how anyone can be impressed with brilliant blinding burning magical. Once, they went cliff jumping.

She refused to jump. I'll watch, she said. He hadn't said it out loud, but she was supposed to know. He wanted her with him. He wanted to hold her hand and lose his breath in the air that rushed at brilliant blinding burning speeds over his face, friction while falling, outer arms flailing but inner arms linked and calm. Squeeze. Why wouldn't she squeeze, and how could they be okay if she was afraid to jump with him and fall fall fall but happy the entire time? And how could they be okay if she was afraid to jump with him and fall fall fall? And how could they be okay if she was afraid to jump with him. And how could they be okay?

Binds -A flinch is also the act of withdrawing, pulling. Flinching while reading can

cause you to miss a word or read one out of place. Flinching while driving or while performing surgery can often cause things to fall apart. Flinching while kissing or when

another person removes her clothes can make things fall apart as well. Sometimes

flinching while speaking, if seen, can cause the falling apart of various bound pairs or

objects that before gave the impression of being singular.

Adhesive - Or, with some rearranging, He is a sieve. David is occasionally a sieve.

Sometimes Nicole speaks in waterfalls, every word she can thdcof she speaks as fast as

possible. Do you understand what I'm saying she says, but she is verging on tears

because she knowsit-is difficult to-explain why-her father -occasionally lectures David for

an hour and a half on how one should treat women, and Nicole tells anecdotes from her Cogbill 49 cocoon he would examine the area of her skin. He would pull her tight. If her skin could stretch this far then it would be capable of receiving impressions and so everywhere her

skin would be molded, reliefs of shoulders and fingertips and kneecaps and the musculature of David's anus, profiles and toes and elbows. When she unfolded, her skin

would be valleyed and sand trapped, veins and arteries rerouted, muscle and bone

origamied inside her body. She could look down at the grooves and she would think of them as surrenders, but to David, this is how she would know she was in love.

The - the opposite of all. Everything in the will be specific. David does not like when

Nicole takes off her right sock because she has a long scar along the side of her foot from

a lawnmower and his body tenses when he sees it. But he does not tell her this. Instead,

he asks, what's wrong with me. She says nothing, she thinks he is perfect, but he knows

this is a lie. What's wrong with me. One of my nouns must be wrong. The right arm, the

left index finger. The stomach. The knee. What's wrong with me, heasks.You don't like

my hair or I don't clip my toenails enough or you think I'm too pale. David knows he is

pale, and he is aware from her favorite celebrities that she likes men with darker skin than

he has, but no, she says, I love everything about you. Sometimes he looks at himself in

the mirror and he points. The forehead is slightly slanted outward, and maybe she would

like a more vertical forehead. The cheeks are always red, even when he hasn't been

moving much, and maybe she would like cheeks that weren't red. There are only two thes

in the sentence she reads, and there should be hundreds, no, millions more. There should

~ begonethe for each hmnanheing-ever.b.orn. Allhuman beingishodd receive a &, ~ Cogbill 51 everyone? Because David lives in a world where people slurp soggy cereal and pick their noses, ears, even less-inviting areas, tear off fingernails and pick scabs and spit globs of gelatinous mucus and curse and drink too much eat too much, is it okay to love anyone at all?

World - The more David thinks about it, the more Because love is like a magical adhesive that binds all the people of the world with beautiful, colored light! begins to

sound like the blind teaching geometry. Like this sentiment should not be applied to unwilling masses or even unwilling individuals standing near people, or a person, he

loves, in monuments and national parks and circuses and fairs and in theatres and

stadiums and restaurants and bars, in houses on couches and chairs and in beds and under

sheets with hands in pockets and on breasts and mouths on necks and shoulders and

slipping inside each other, and at this point how can it apply to any of these people, many

of whom, a month later, will never see each other again, and on the surface the only way

to tell who loves who is to stop time entirely and slapjin on the world at large.

With - The space between. David with Nicole. It is a shadowed space and difficult to

outline. Its contours extend in uncatalogued ways, unexpected, unbordered. Daviwd it

hNicole, DavidwithNicole. Which is where they place language. They say, I love you,

and the space is bridged. They say with, and the space seems lit. While Nicole reads,

David is painfully aware of the space and how dark it is, night sky with no moon or stars,

no streetlamps-or flashlights, the kind ofdark whae pupils,expand like hungry swamps.

What kind of with is their with, because if it isn't made of beautiful, colored light! is it Cogbill 53 simply because she hasn't been looking. Maybe she'll notice the birthmark on his backside or she won't like the way the skin covering his legs looks. She is reaching and he is holding back and even at the time he knew it was entirely his fault.

Colored -When she is bored, she colors in coloring books. He doesn't say it, but this bothers him. The coloring books have pictures of zoo animals and their mouths are curled into smiles that end in hearts and she believes they are cute. They calm her. He looks at the panda with hearts on its cheeks and wonders how it calms anyone. She colors it pink and he thinks this is ridiculous, how can she possibly choose pink, isn't that the most ordinary, clicl16 color for a panda with hearts at the end of its smile anyone could possibly think of. When he thinks of pandas, he thinks of six inch, yellowed claws and teeth tearing skin like Eucalyptus. He wonders, if he were a picture in a coloring book, would she pick pink for him? Would the hearts on his cheeks upset her? Would she be okay if she had to color a face that wasn't entirely smiling, and would it calm her to color a picture of him at all?

, --Now, with light the beautiful colored and then we pause but do not end.

Because - Because the sentence has come to a close and she looks at him for reassurance. Because^b.eginswith he, andhefeelSas though for themto, be hemustnot mix up words, he must not flinch. This is the present and because is filled with present Cogbill 55 of her body. The truth is, if he were grilled about her favorite bird or her shoe size or her top five favorite boy's baby names, he'd have nothing.

, - A flinch ill a sentence, a hesitation.

Binds - She will answer, because they are bound, and while you are bound you are

inseparable. Occasionally, David wonders what she would do if he pretended he'd never met her. Told her stop calling, he had no recollection of who she was. He had no memory

of her. No, it wasn't a joke, who was she and why was she calling him and knocking on

his door and inviting him over for dinner that she cooked herself, and no he didn't like

her Spanish Rice, he'd never even had Spanish Rice, let alone her Spanish Rice. Did she

really see it that way? A magic glue? As she reads, Nicole places her hand on his as if to

confirm their adhesion. Look, she says, bound, linked. He wants to tell her, show him the

chains, the ropes, the Velcro. Show him the parts that lock into place permanently.

Because love is like a magical adhesive that binds all the people of the world together

with beautiful, colored light!, she reads. David wants to tell her his skin does not feel

covered in any kind of glue or beautiful light, it feels like the skin it always has been, and

can she see how imperfect it is? Can she see him? No, he has never seen her before in his

life. He doesn't know her name or if she has a sister, no he does not remember any of

these memories, getting lost while hiking or the candle light picnic she surprised him

with or the stupid singing wall-mounted deer's head her mother bought him for

Christmas. It must have slipped from his slippery skin and falLei~Shrougl~the s&s dths

earth and burned away. Everybody slid from one another. Intense moments of heat and Cogbill 57 he cannot picture if her elbow is closer to her body or far away. In fact sometimes he cannot picture her elbow at all, and if she knew this, would they be at all?

, - A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Adhesive - She got angry when he duct-taped closed the hole in lus jeans. She didn't like the way it looked. Ugly. His idea was ugly. She said they should buy him a new pair of jeans. But he didn't like her choices -they were too tight or too bleached or cost more than he wanted to spend. He followed her throughout clothing stores for several hours

and she became more and more frustrated and then he put his hands on her waist.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

A -A boy, a girl. A thing. A couple, a pair, a unit. A cohesion, a feeling, a connection. A

match, a friendship, a relief, a body, a person, a heat, a company, a need, a desire, a want,

a collision, a force. A hand, a hand. A frustration. A promise. A fire, a plan, a rule, a rule

a rule a rule a rule a rule. A finish.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

All - It is the tenth word in the sentence which is ironic because all does not refer to

specifics. AlLis allencompassing and.always,JikeNicole willidways loveDavid, she-

says, her love will continue into infinity, her love is all. She is made of love for him. So Cogbill 59 larger space. They are a tremendous mansion. They are the expanding galaxy. David watches the dogs and begins to categorize everything he can about Nicole to fill her humongous house. So, she is wearing red fingernail paint and jeans and white sneakers and her hair is in a ponytail but not the most carefully created ponytail and assorted black strands hang like thick spider webs. While she reads her brow is furrowed, eyebrows almost perfectly symmetrical. He will try to remember all of these things tomorrow. And he will add more things after that, and soon he will have an entire city dedicated to her and he will fill a house with all of their space. He watches a Chocolate Lab chase after an

Australian Shepherd it has never seen. In five minutes they are rolling over each other, as happy as David has ever imagined being.

, - A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

The - The extra snooze.

The last cookie.

The apathy about turn signals.

The way she sang incorrect lyrics.

The songs to which she sang incorrect lyrics.

The violent shedding of blankets in the middle of the night.

The distaste for cats.

The winter depression.

The fact that he dislikes al! &se ~&ZS.

The fact that it does not bother her that he dislikes all these things. Cogbill 61 think I don't belong with you? She was not disturbed. Of course you belong with me. Of

course you're right for me. Of course we're together. He wanted to ask how could she be

so sure? What force allowed her to interpret their relationship this way?

, - A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

The - The is a word spelled in reverse alphabetical order whii :h seems useless at first, but the point is that there is a pattern at all. Sometimes when Nicole asks why David won't try Cajun food or why he won't play his old violin for her, there is no reason behind his

refusal. I won't he says, and Nicole asks why, and David says, because I won't, and there

is no pattern here. She can't relate it to anything she knows about him and she can't find

a good reason, even a silly or pointless one. That doesn't make sense, she tells him. I

know, he answers, and this doesn't tell her anything. Tlus is why she asks him again to

play the violin, play one concerto, one waltz. She wishes he would make an excuse. One

excuse. Even an obviously shaky excuse.

World -- Of all the sentences in the world that describe love, David is not sure why she is

reading this one: a quote from a garage-sale book. Apparently a romance, judging by the

woman on the cover with a dress hanging to her by threads as a half-naked man pulls at

her. Of all the sentences in the world she could have chosen to read, why, he wonders,

did she think this one made any kind of sense. There must have been love as compared to

wry animalin the world.Love is like a duck becauseit cannot drown. Lov_eis like an

eagle because it flies. Love is like a rat because it survives. There must have been Cogbill 63 if she began to drink heavily if she took up smoking if she took up other drugs if she let her fingernails grow even half an inch longer than they were if she developed an obsessive compulsive disorder with respect to orientation of rugs in rooms, if he learned she was allergic to light, had a phobia of water, if there was a boyfriend in her past she hadn't told lum about, if she'd ever been abused, if one of her parents had abused her, if she'd ever abused someone, if she watched certain reality television programs, if she sat differently on the couch than she does now, if she continues to read tlus sentence, will he still consider her beautiful.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Like -Not good enough. Like is not as good as love. When people ask him what she is like, sometimes he doesn't have an answer. Or his answer is about what she likes, she likes to cook and she likes to watch nature shows about birds, but she doesn't like nature shows about insects because she doesn't like insects, and she likes playing catch and she likes baseball and is it okay that he loves baseball, can they coexist when he loves but she only likes because doesn't this destroy the continuum of whatever atmosphere they have created by breathing so many times. Sometimes he counts his breath. If he breathes once every two seconds than he breathes thirty times a minute, eighteen hundred times per hour, forty-three thousand two hundred times per day, three hundred two thousand, four hundred times per week, one million two hundred nine thousand, six hundred times per ino~~th,fourtee11 inillion five hundred fifteen thousand two hunbsd the5 per yegr, gad also she breathes, so that is twenty-nine million, thirty thousand four hundred breaths in Cogbill 65

That -Will he look back and remember, 011 that time, remember that time, when she read that sentence, and I eventually laughed, and that was that. Or will he look back and remember that girl, remember that girl, when I was with that girl.

Cogbill 64 one year. How much of their breath had fused, reacted chemically? Did each breath have to find its perfect counterpart? In what sort of atmosphere where they living? They were breathing each other all the time.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Light -- The funny thing about light is that we consider it a solid entity when in fact it is trillions of particles chaotically assaulting each other at incomprehensive speeds. Imagine if the earth were this way. Imagine that human beings woke in New York and stepped to

Singapore and accidentally collided over the Pacific and trampolined off New Zealand and rolled over Antartica and every human being crashed into every other human being several times a second. Everywhere the Chinese were giving headaches to the French and the Samoans accidentally catch feet in their eyes from Nicaraguans and everywhere there are voices that cannot move as fast as people, so voices are left behind and people catch pieces of conversations that happen after the conversees have crossed the world and soon the incredibly rapid movements of people over the surface of the planet begin to create a friction that heats the oceans to boiling and the rocks to liquid magma and David, sitting on the sofa and listening to Nicole, does not say that such a light would shred the world.

Because a moment after she finishes reading, he will shake off all of these feelings and they will make dinner together and everything will seem imperfect but okay, and this is how David will know that things are the way they should be, or at least, are. Cogbill 62 thousands of descriptions but Nicole reads this one, and reads it again, and her eyes cannot be wet but they are. She could be right. Maybe it would be better if she was.

Because maybe his arm shouldn't have fallen asleep when he put it around her at the movies. Maybe they should have lived next to each other as children, climbed each other's windows and spent nights together. Maybe they should have committed crimes together, gotten lost in the mountains together, they should have stood atop buildings and screamed their love into echoing intersections, they should have eloped, they should have already grown old, they should have done so many things and been so many people and maybe this was the only way to actually love. Maybe his eyes should have grown wet with hers as they read about this adhesive, this magical or mystical or whatever it was brilliant burning blinding binding stuff, and maybe everything in the room is electric with potential kinetic energy, maybe the glass coffee table shatters because of love.

, -- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Beautiful - If she was missing an arm. Both arms. If she were a paraplegic. If her face were different, if she had pimples like foothills covering her cheeks, if she had pimples stacked on top of pimples like stars. If her eyes were spaced abnormally far apart. If her. breasts were too large or too small? If her breath was always bad or if she lost an eye? If he learned she was adopted? If she became manically depressed? If she became pregnant? If she had chronic diarrhea? Body odor? If she stopped shaving her legs, her armpits, if she-hadto shave her face, if she-had to shave her feet, neck?Jf she cut her hair short, if she shaved her head, if she became bisexual if she began to tan at tanning salons Cogbill 60

The inability to determine why, without her, and despite these things, he would miss her.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

With -To be with should not include being alone, so the worst thing David can imagine is to be with someone and lonely, even for only a few seconds, and the way Nicole reads the sentence repeatedly and runs her hands over the book as though it were some sort of lover, the way she appears to be tearing up for Chrissakes, he feels alone. He is going to have to say something. She is going to want an acknowledgement, an agreement, a full- fledged vindication. And how does he explain his objections? Will she be with him if he disagrees, will her father ask if everything with them is fine, is it possible to be with her and not love her the same way, can two people claim to be with each oilier if eventually they do not agree on how to be in love, with what sorts of arguments should he argue with her, who is really wit11 who, can she be with him but he not with her, he with her but her not with him, why is the word it found in with when with requires two human being with one another.

, - A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Of - Of should be spelled ov. It is unbelievable that ofisn't spelled ov. It makes no sense, considering our contemporary pronunciation, foranftabe ey_en~ern~tely.iiiyo.l~_edin tile world of. Do you ever feel as though we make no sense, he asked her once. Do you ever Cogbill 58 every act is a selfless act of her love. She must sleep because of love, David thinks. And eat. And all her breathing, that is because of love. And when she pisses and shits, that's because of love, and when she vomits, that's love, and when she overeats, this is because of her all for David. Okay, he is being unfair. But so far, in all ihat has been said, there is a void. She is this, and he occasionally thinks about that, but where they are is a void. It's black and endless and inside there is space made of different materials, rushing electricities and mountains rising from nothing, matter converted and unconverted and stars stuffed in straightjackets but burning their way out, and all covers all this because it is a great deal easier than explaining about the electricity and the stars and a few other things. There are no specifics in all because it does not account for how anyone loves anyone else, it only assumes everyone loves. David and Nicole are in love, and love is all, and that's all that matters, and this is why, Nicole says, they will continue for always.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

People -Nicole lives near a dog park and David likes to sit at the picnic table and watch the owners watching their dogs watching everything. Nicole comes with him but brings a book. She doesn't care for dogs. He asks her what type of dog she'd like to have if they ever own a dog and she says she doesn't want one. Too messy, noisy, stupid. They drool.

He has tried to explain that he believes they can learn from dogs. They can learn something about warmth or the occupation of small spaces, the journeys that can be made while standing still in small spaces andstaring straight ahead, tow many revolutions can be made, orbits, the journeys of thousands of light particles. But Nicole wants a much Cogbill 56 friction and then it was gone and all the oaths vows and promises made in the heat fall like leaves.

, - A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Magical - We are all mixed up now, out of order, and magical is the way Nicole would have this work, unexplained and unseen forces that could someday be discovered by miracles in science, or even better, they are beyond the reach of science, beyond futuristic fictional science, beyond human grasp, and this is why it is a miracle that she can feel such love. She would like to develop, if they spend enough time together, a form of ESP.

She would like a promise of infmite happiness fulfilled by love. This feels weighty to

David. Somewhere, he should have had some say in the construction of the mechanisms.

And so he wonders about other things he does not have a say in - why did she pick the movie they planned to watch that night? Why did she choose leftovers for dinner?

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Is - She is a good cook and she knows exactly how much of each spice to apply. Her

Spanish Rice is always delicious and she is a lover of garlic and she is not okay with day- old dishes in the sink and she is happy to let him watch her cook but she is not happy to

let him help and maybe that is not okay. But a lot of things aren't is. Is is specific. He cannot say what the precise angle of her wrist is while she stirs the rice, and he cannot picture if the downward thrust of her hand is at an obtuse or acute angle to her elbow and Cogbill 54 tense conjugations like use and see and cease, and these are also commands, as in because Isaid so, and the problem David faces is description.

, -- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Colored -Red is the only color in the word colored. Not all languages have a word for red. Not that speakers cannot see red, they simply don't have a reason to communicate it.

They communicate with black and white, and everything is in degrees of black and white, or they have no colors within their language. But even in our own language, reddish orange is not actually reddish orange. We describe it in terms of red and orange when perhaps it is another color entirely for which we haven't thought of a word. And if all the gaps between colors have one word to describe them, if every minute change in reddish purple and reddish brown and reddish yellow could be described by one word, we could use this word in sentences that would frustrate our significant others. This is how David thinks of the word love.

,-- A flinch in a sentence, a hesitation.

Love - We have been everywhere except the precise truth. That is, David wonders how

can she possibly think of love this way. She gets mad at him when he is unsure which

shirt she wore the previous day. He should know everything she's ever worn. He should know exactly the way her body is positioned while she sleeps andlie should know the paths of the almost invisible hairs lining her arms, his fingers should know all the planes Cogbill 52 the right kind of with, is it a kind of with he wants to have at all, will she still be happy if he mentions the shadow space.

Light - When they sleep, she presses as close as she can. He does not tell her this makes sleep difficult. This is not her fault, He wants to wake up with her leg sprawled over his torso and her arm wrapped comfortably around his chest, but he must fall asleep first. She is not heavy; this is not the problem. When she sleeps, she is quiet. For long periods of time, he cannot tell if she is breathing. He maintains self-control as long as possible before panicking. He holds a hand in front of her face to make sure there is breath. There is no light in the room and she lets him keep the fan on, even in winter, for the white noise. He tries his best to be still, afiaid a too-sudden shift of hip or hand might wake her.

She presses herself against him in the dark and occasionally, groggy, she asks him what's wrong, why he can't sleep. I'm trying, he says. I love you. She closes her eyes. He can't

see her face.

The - The first kiss, which sliould have been in a gondola in Rome in the rain, was in a mall parking lot after a dinner of quesadillas and mashed potatoes

Beautiful - Once, she'd tried to get him to skinny dip. It was a lake near her parents'

house - she'd done it as a teenager and couldn't believe he never had. There's no one

here but me, she said. He refused. What if, he says, and can't say the rest. I think you're

beautiful, shetries..He~shakes.hishead. I do, she_says.again, It's not &out that, hesays,~

but maybe it is. Maybe when he undresses she'll see something she's never seen before Cogbill 50

Of - All the photographs she takes she puts in plastic pages that go into three-ring binders. She takes pictures of everything. Of dinners they make together, of walks they take, of the trip to the zoo, of 11im sleeping. Of his new shoes she helped pick out, of him teaching her to play the Pink Panther theme song on piano, of the way his face looks when she forgets where to start every time. Of board games they occasionally play when bored, of presents he's given her and therefore of a stuffed gorilla, a sweater, an antique coffee grinder. One photograph of him fishing with his shirt off she has framed and he does not understand this. His chest looks small and his stomach, while not fat, has a slight pudge she could not have missed. How can she look at this picture? His shoulders are sunburned and the rest of him pale and bright with sweat and how can she look at tllls without flinching at the flaws.

People - He notices sometimes that they might be falling apart, getting things wrong. He doesn't say it because how do you tell another person this? To say, sometimes I see signs of a coming end, tills must reflect on the speaker. Did you know, he could say, that sometimes you chew in a very wet way and it can be distracting? It's only with cereal, soggy cereal. I can't be near you while you're eating cereal with milk. Is this an indication that they cannot be together? Do relationships end because people cannot watch other people eat? Or could she make sacrifices, only eat cereal that stayed crunchy in milk, eat before he wakes, learn a new way to choose? Should she have to do these things? When she reads the sentence, where does soggy-cereal-eating fit into beautiful, colored light! andwhere is the-par-thatsays ilia okay to lovs someone despite her cereal eating habits? In a world where everyone eats cereal perfectly does everyone love Cogbill 48 childhood about her father's strict disciplinary practices, charts and graphs, dishes may not sit in sink longer than three minutes, no music in the house, her father the adhesive, her father the mortar that held the bricks of her family in place and how when her mother died her father was a column of support even while his own grief was still fresh and

David listens to all this and understand what she means, I love my father, and he thinks it strange that here, when it is most real and obvious, she can't simply say it.

That - That David never looked at another girl. That the girl he didn't look at didn't accidentally touch him once while she stocked shelves at work. That her hands felt like that. That her hands were like reaching through water. That her hands were wind. That her hands even upon microscopic inspection have no bumps cracks crevices craters canyons or otherwise obstructive surfaces. That Nicole's hands were ever that soft. That he could ever live with a girl whose hands weren't as soft as the wind. That he could love someone whose hands he disliked. That he should at least believe Nicole's hands were that soft. That he could hold those hands knowing there were softer hands somewhere else. That he could imagine futures with softer hands. That he could imagine softer hands doing things he'd never felt. That softer hands meant something he didn't understand.

That now, while Nicole reread die sentence, he wasn't thinking about softer hands. That the book was being held in softer hands. That anything about hands should be imperfect.

That anything should be imperfect.

All - He sometimes wants her all over l~n,not hanging ftom his Ems or kissing him for

far too long in public, but literally he wishes she could stretch and cover his body. In this Cogbill 46

Because - Contains the word "cause." David flinches and the cause of this is Nicole's second reading of the sentence, more slowly, more dramatically.

Love - When David was a boy, he listened to his parents fight. I-te believed "I love you"

was some type of apology.

Is - The idea of love, David thinks, is not the same as real love, and the idea of love, if it

must be beautiful, colored light! can be broken into photons and other particles.

Like - Like is not as good as love. Sometimes, when he is upset with her, he says, I like

you.

A - They will be a perfect cohesion. Nicole is sure. David often wonders whether, given

enough time, they can achieve tills. A relationship nirvana, he thinks. If they are together

enough or if they understand each other enough or if they love enough they can become

singular, they can gain definite articles, they can take on a common name, merge, two

clouds, two bonding chemicals.

Magical -Nicole likes this word best. It is magical she says. Nobody could ever

understand. Magical and mystical, she says. A brilliant blinding bwniug light from an

unknown source, so necessary to life, she says. David thinks he's heard this before. He's Cogbill 44

Adhesive - Occasionally, while huddled together on her couch, he wonders if it would be possible to sit even closer, to disappear into each other's bodies, even though their legs and hands and arms are entangled like jungle vines.

That - That isn't us, Nicole says. They are watching a couple in line at the movies fight animatedly about who paid for who more often. We would never do that.

Binds - David wonders if, as a joke, he asked her if she'd ever wanted to be tied up, would she laugh.

All - Sometimes I wish we could be together all the time, Nicole says,

The - The way David would break up with her, conditions permitting, would be in a restaurant or other public place, where he knows she wouldn't make a scene.

People -Nicole claims that the lives of all people are meaningless without love. Tlus

thought depresses David, but he does not say so.

Of - Of all the gin joints, David says. Nicole laughs because his Bogart is terrible. When

she is angry or when he does not feel like talking, he says this. Of all the gin joints in the

world. ~~~ ~~~ -~ ~~ . ~--~ Cogbill 42

There must be several billion stories in which lives are connected to other lives through blood and tears and love, and because there are only so many every-day actions, and only a few more actions that we can relate to, many of these stories must use the same actions to show that how lives connect and impact each other. Zig thinks about actions all the time, and what does one do with a life, what did other people do when they weren't doing what he was doing, but more importantly, if he came home late for dinner, would that be an action that impacted something. But the thing is, he has come home late for dinner many times, and his mother yells, but then she forgets about it, because after all, it isn't that big a deal. He thinks that ultimately, most things fail to become big deals.

What will happen is, Zig will come home and sit at the kitchen table with his mother and brother and father, if he's home, and they will eat, and they will tell stories about their day, or they will talk about an article they read in the paper, or something they saw on television or that somebody said. And Zig will listen and imagine that he is one of those articles, or the infomercial for the amazing new kitchen appliance that peels onions while baking a cake. Zig will imagine he is anythulg or anyone standing on top of a house, and everything he says, even when he whispers, is the most important thing

anyone anywhere has ever heard. Cogbill 40 disappearing spec wouldn't even be remembered. Zig imagines the snow suddenly rising rapidly into a twisting mass of white rage, lashing and howling and ripping at the small boy caught in the center, cracking bending breaking, boy becomes blood and bone and burnt skin, boy becomes matter coloring a canvas, red and yellow paint splattering a microscopic piece of the earth in a slightly less microscopic town in a tiny country in a miniature continent, and that is only if the solar system itself is not microscopic, so what

Zig wants to know is even if the boy is as unstoppable as snow, why does it really matter, why coclcroaches and why sunlight, why is everything not simply a large blue box, because wouldn't that be easier?

The boy stares at Zig, whose hands are clenched and face dry and steady. The boy does not look scared, and Zig thinks that he could, if he wanted, grab the boy and take him somewhere. He could beat him into the ground. He pictures the boy falling backward, blood arching from his face into the snow. Snow is always being painted by bodily fluids. It is always a receptacle, a record of what has happened. Tills is the price for being pure: all violence can be seen and recorded on its surface.

Zig offers the boy the plastic cockroach. "For you, he says. You want it?".

"Yeah!" the boy exclaims. It is rare to actually hear someone exclaim, but

Zig is sure that the boy has exclaimed. There is no other word for his unexplained ecstatic

face and the first thing he does is put the cockroach over his head and growl.

"That's not the sound a cockroach makes,"Zig says.

"Yes huh."

- Zig shrugs and then laughs Aecause.howcan.henot,~withthe_b_oy r-Unnmg.. ~~ .~

aimlessly through the parking lot, cockroach helmet wobbling awkwardly. The sun sinks Cogbill 38 cockroach is hollow and light. One more jab, and he rips the cockroach free of the truck and falls away, out of breath. There is nothing left to do but run, which he does. The truck, which should be forlorn and cold, door hanging open, seat wet with snow and footprints, says nothing. The cockroach bounces under his arm.

It is not until he has turned several comers that he slows down. What should he do with a giant plastic hollow cockroach? He feels as though he probably should have thought of this earlier, but it did not seem important at the time. It is a trophy, but one that

should be kept lidden. He is a fair distance from his house now, and the police could still be around the school, which he must pass to get home, but carrying the cockroach in

daylight, even in snowfall, seems a poor idea. Besides, it is bulky and awkward.

It is getting later, the sun beginning to drop past the horizon, shadows stretching

and melding over the ground. The snow is falling faster now, and there is a good inch or

two covering most of the streets. Zig hasn't seen a snow plow yet, which he finds strange,

because there are always snowplows and evidence of snowplows or at least a salt truck.

Vehicles of rebellion. Soldiers in a revolution against the sky's downward wrath, which

is not really wrath but a gently sigh. Snow falls in soft sighs. Everything is covered.

Mailboxes and grass, people and dogs and signs. Plastic cockroacl~esatop an

exterminator's truck. Real cockroaches that venture outside. Houses and cars and

telephone wires, branches and manholes, the street, sidewalks, fences and small children

running with uncontrollable vigor.

It is one of these small, red-faced children that Zig sees spastically loping into the

barrenparking lot of the shopping center ahead.~The.cluldappearsto be alone, and

perhaps a boy, although a bulky green coat obscures much of what Zig can make out. Zig Cogbill 36 he feels as though he is leaning on an invisible wall. If he pushes harder the wall may give way, and everything he's heard suggests the other side will contain nothing but searing heat and mud and thin, unbreathable atmosphere. He puts his hands on top of the trunk and leans his body weight against its frame.

The truck doesn't give at all, not that he expects it too. But when the tops of his fingers touch the plastic cockroach on the roof, it shifts slightly. Zig looks at it, the eyes a fiendish yellow, the mouth drawn into a smug smirk as though the cockroach enjoys nothing more than sneaking into and ruining human homes. Zig grasps it with both hands and it wobbles.

He opens the truck door and stands on the driver's seat. He sees that several of the screws have rusted or missing. He wraps his arm around the roach and pulls. He can feel it move, but he can't detach it. He leans back, pushing with his feet on the edge of the door, but he is not pulling so much as hanging now, head tilted back so the world appears upside down and cars and houses are upside down and if there was anyone walking, he or she would be upside down too, all the houses in the world flip over and are inhabited by large coclcroaches who step on dirty disgusting people who live in the walls and eat leftovers that didn't quite make the trashcan, but snow still falls down, the way it always has, the way it will, and all the rules in the world will not change this.

He jumps off the seat and lets go of the roach, closes the door and begins to walk away, but already it sets in, the disappointment in himself, his inability to question the rules, and how will he ever go anywhere without breaking a few rules and learning the

invisible mechanics that guide the hands of the great human beings who have lived

before? How will he absorb the smoke and sunlight and sand strewn across the ground Cogbill 34 always thought it might be interesting to have one. Stops signs, to Zig, seem to exist outside of the physical plane. It is only paint and metal, but it holds power beyond that of normal painted metal. Which is fine, of course, but the reason Zig wants one is because he wants to see the void created in its absence. A missing stop sign is a void, even though there are plenty of spaces without stop signs that Zig does not think of as voids. Although he knows that in reality nothing will happen except that people familiar with the neighborhood will drive by and wonder, wasn't there a stop sign on that corner, Zig imagines a great tear in the air. Inside the tear is blurred color, a liquefied rainbow. The tear exerts gravity over the street corner and the surrounding houses, the school and the

football field. Color is pulled in, liquefied and it begins to rain and there is lightning, and

even the rain is sucked into the rainbow tear which doesn't grow larger but instead begins to glow with terrible force, and eventually like rocks sliding into place color landslides

into the tear where the stop sign once was and the center cannot support the influx of

color and collapses and the tear explodes back into the world at tremendous force,

returning color to the proper places, but son~ehoweverything is a bit off, and the entire

world is out of focus and the flawed and faded and forced into an inexplicably wrong

pattern. Probably nothing at all would happen, but Zig pictures a tear instead.

Zig gives up on die stop sign. It shakes, but it is cemented into the ground, and the

sign itself is bolted in place with screws and nuts. It is disappointing that the reason he

gives up is that he isn't strong enough and not because someone has told him to, and he

looks around for something else to do, something he shouldn't be doing because it might

disrupt the fabric ofthe known universe,, and whohows, mayhe-if he.disrupts-the

universe enough, he'll find himself somewhere new. Cogbill 32 to tell his kids about. But jail also scares him. What can prisoners do, locked away like that? He has never once wondered about a prisoner's desires, dreams, fantasies. They may as well not exist. He begins to think how, if the owner of the Suburu sees that his car is missing and phones it in, then the report about a missing blue Suburu might come over the police radios, and maybe they'd look up and hey, a blue Suburu, what were the plates again?

So he speeds up slightly and turns down Mulvin. He pretends the cops' radios gurgle and the report comes in, and they realize they've just seen this stolen car. He speeds up and the breaks squeel as he turns again, down Simon Drive, and he pictures the cop cars showering snow over cement as they fly out of the parking lot, sirens blazing, describing him to their partners and radioing dispatch and the stories they would tell their friends about the kid in the stolen car. He breaths faster and swerves the car into a driveway, opens the door and rolls out. He has almost back to the street away when he realizes that it is not the perfect crime, it is not worth it without the final gesture, so he

sprints back to the car and takes the keys from the ignition, returns them to the visor and

closes the door. He is gone through a backyard and comes out further down School, and he can picture the cops fishtailing around comers looking for the car complete with

driver, and he walks with his hands in his pockets and stares at the ground, Zig Johanson,

smooth criminal.

But he can see the cops, still at the school parking lot. The fat red-headed guy still

talking. They haven't moved, which is a disappointment, but also a relief, because it

means nobody has reported the car. He's stolen a car and parked it in some-one eke's

driveway, and nobody noticed. The snow has neither strengthened or weakened, only Cogbill 30 always comes back as long as the world exists, and this was why snow was important, because nobody made it important -- it just is.

And it is important that he start this car. He will never forgive himself if he does not drive the car. Not everyone has this opportunity. How could he live with himself

otherwise? He inserted the Suburu's key and lucked off the emergency break and put the

car in drive. He pulled away slowly, tires forcing the snow into tiny compacts in street

crevices. Everything was soft. Sound was soft and snow and tires and seatbelts that

clicked softly into their receivers and the surrounding sounds that accompanied his

pulling away from the curb. If the car were snow, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. It

wouldn't even have turned on. But the car wasn't snow, it belonged to somebody

somewhere who wasn't selfish but was important, and it pulled away from the curb like a

friend he hadn't seen in a while.

He lets it idle down Manor for a while. Where do you go with a stolen car? You

go the speed limit aid you don't get hit other cars, but where did you take it? He decided,

ultimately, you left it face down in a ditch and walked away unscathed, or even better,

you returned it unnoticed to its original space, thereby breaking all the laws of the

universe (which didn't particularly care, as it turned out). Manor was gray and silent.

Nobody noticed him or the car, and even when he turned onto School Lane and passed an

elderly man shoveling his driveway, nothing happened. Everyone knew the rules, but

they had to actually see them broken before they cared about them. He was driving a

stolen car down School Lane, and wasn't that exciting? Then he realizes that in a moment

he will pass the high school, and there .are probably cops investigating,the fireworks,

which, to them, must have seemed like snow. They would find evidence, but there would Cogbill 28 nobody to see what you're doing, and even more often, there is nobody who particularly cares what you are doing. It would be so easy to break rules. He could smash windows, he could rob the couple at the end of the block, he could take a dump in the street if he wanted. There is nobody here.

At the end of the cul-de-sac he turns onto Manor Ave. It is beginning to snow

again and he feels as though that foretells something. It is a sign. In books and movies, when it begins to snow or rain heavily, you know something is going to happen. What

does rain or snow mean? It is harder to see; there is matter falling from the sky. It is

certainly chaotic. But in reality, is it just a device used so many times that meaning has unintentionally accumulated? If it snows or rains in a book or movie and nothing happens, is it a waste of space? Why even bother to mention that it is snowing or raining

if it has no actual effect on the story?

The next handle he pulls is unlocked. Because it is snowing, maybe. He closes the

door quickly and looks around. If anyone has seen him he is busted, screwed, there is no

reason for what he is doing but nobody will believe that and while maybe he hasn't

broken any major rules he is definitely opening up somebody else's car which had to be

wrong only he doesn't know why just that it feels sort of wrong to be opening up

somebody's car door even if it didn't fit any description of any crime of which he'd ever

heard -but nobody had seen him. Nobody is even outside. They are inside drinking and

laughing and avoiding difficult family subjects like the cousin who has just had an

abortion but nobody wants to talk about it. His mother's sofa cover stained caramel from

Winter stout dripped by his Uncle during fits of o~erzedouslaughter which roll like

thunder from his throat and fill the room like a holiday fireplace. Cogbill 26

Whisper

He sets explosions into thin wind and the sky lights up like summer, but it is winter here, and cold. The mortars fall into the snow like wounded ducks and for a

moment he wonders if the grass could possibly catch fire, and how much trouble would

he get in if he burned away the high school soccer field. They were off for Christmas

break, although no one called it that anymore. He could have been inside watching the

football games his father claimed everyone loved so much or walking in on his brother

and girlfriend - everyone in the house had to know what they were doing alone in the

basement - but there were so many possibilities in the snow, it seemed.

Perhaps too many. Zig finds himself waiting always for something to happen. He

should find a corpse. He should break his leg falling over a rock and barely survive the

days without food or water or shelter until he is found. He should accidentally kill some

one. Anything that he will live with for the rest of his life. He considers hitchhiking, or

buying a train ticket to an unknown town or city and watching the news in some hotel

lobby, police questioning his parents about their son's disappearance. There would be

newspaper articles and search parties, trained dogs and flashlights. He notices the way

undisturbed snow looks. As if nothing has ever touched this part of the earth. No

impression of weight, nothing to be carried, no burdens or baggage.

He lights another fuse. It's his brother's lighter; he has stolen it. His brother

shouldn't be smoking anyway. His brother smokes for the color of powdered rock that

lingers around his face like a shroud, and his brother smokes to say, "I hate the holidays"

with smoky tendrils slowly dampening tl~eair around him. Smoking is an accenL I&

mother must know his brother smokes, how can she not? You can smell it across the Cogbill 24 at beards that grew thin and wispy lilce torn silk that he would tear at weeks later in frustration, place in Ziplock bags, and give to Ricl~eas a gift, claiming he has collected spider-webs for his son.)

Kate opens the door, he is holding the orclud.

She points out he doesn't have the money to buy her an orchid. He knows.

Television is on. Picture darkens, colors turning gray and fading fast. Riclue wishes he could reach, grab, hold. Brilliant oranges, blues, greens, reds, violets, could haul them back. Could use them to paint pictures of their lives. Could use them to create light show revealing secrets of universe.

Now that he is here, he isn't sure what to say. Wants to tell her about father, doesn't know where to begin. Or where to end. Or how to say the parts in the middle.

This happens all over. Not with fathers, but with everything. Pipes burst, streetlights hum noisily and shutter to dark, car engine sputters, shuts down. Bird collides with closed window. Dog does not look before crossing road. Mouse trap snaps, man sees deer, does

not swerve. Teenager stands too close to mortar, smoker coughs red, levy gives, man

strikes match in gas-filled family apartment, young girl sees blood on inner thigh, stars

glare, glint, wink, disappear. Some of it unnoticed, some explained. Room is livid with

words and this is another time to leave because next moment could be caustic, could

napalm itself into the never forgotten, echo in memory lilce fiework finales beginning

after he'd fallen into deep sleep. But he does not move.

Kate takes orchid, puts it on windowsill. Shifts pot. Day dims and orchid dims

with it, sunlight slides from burning wlute petals. Richie imagi~scuAng widow, Cogbill 22

His father had moved across the street. Whistled while walking. Wore sandals, worn pants. Hair needed a cut. Remembered the time son cracked head 011 garage door.

Remembered inventing lullabies on way to hospital. Only partially for son. Hush kid hush, mush horse mush, we all sleep sound, sleep like the lush.

Jumped fence, crossed parking lot. Jumped over yellow lines. Did not touch dividers. Counted loose stones, had habit of counting the uncountable. Counted freckles on foreign faces, counted windows on passing airplanes, counted letters in the words son spoke and later told son how many letters were used, how impressive it was.

Abandoned car - his father had discovered this abandoned car. Felt ripped paint,

spider-webbed windshield. Felt pity. Not an old car, no reason it was abandoned. Spoke to car, tried to explain. Car refused to acknowledge. Spoke slowly, placed hand comfortingly on hood. Car said nothing. Frowns. Car does not speak same language.

Does not speak language of reason.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees

and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins

which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0supon which they draw eyes and

facial hair and squiggle-mouths that remind Richie of his father's repeated failed attempts

at beards that grew thin and wispy like torn silk that he would tear at weeks later in

frustration, place it in Ziplock bags, and give it to Riclue as a gift.)

Richie sees an open flower shop:

Kate hatesflo~oe;Â¥s

Not entirely true. Hates all they stand fo&-thatihey stand fo~so much. Cannot be

only flowers, must be love and friendship and explosive beauty that cannot last. Cogbill 20

Remembers loolung in neighbor's bushes. Trashcans at curb. Remembers behind the house, by creek, behind trees. Remembers walking up street, turning comers.

Remembers knocking on doors. Remembers returning home to police car in driveway.

Remembers checking closets, checking under beds, in chimney. Remembers loolung in boxes in attic, in storm cellar. Remembers the way it felt, like realizing the ground was a lightning bolt that has flashed and is now gone.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0s upon which they draw eyes and facial hail and squiggle-mouths that remind Richie of his father's repeated failed attempts at beards that grew thin and wispy like torn silk.)

At dinner, Richie thinks there cannot be a better time. Pieces fall into place like jigsaw puzzles glued to lutchen tables. Everything the way it should be, interstellar objects aligning. Excuses himself, bathroom. Leaves.

His father felt this way. Unconnected, unplugged. Gone, between streets or trees or cars. Into air, or time.

What he did:

Out the door, down the street. Down an alley, lined with dark bricks. Hid behind cardboard box, looked out. Sprinted across street. Sprinted down sidewalk. His father did this, he thought. Ran. Saw moments passing, as always, broke time open, ran.

Chases stray dog across street. Dog barks, Richie turns. Hides in shadows.

Pretends pa'ssii~~headlightsare searchlights, Hides behind dupsters. Imagines father hiding in bushes, hiding behind neighbors' cars. Sneak. Climb. Crawl. Cogbill 18

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0supon which they draw eyes and facial hair and squiggle-mouths.)

Umprompted, Richie flees Kate. Boy leaves girl, happens daily. Unexplained chemical reaction. Fire event. Explosion. Earthquake. Earthquakes come each second, world comes around again.

Dogs everywhere outside. Entire apartment sounds like dogs. Floorboards soaked with barking. Sounds like symphony. Richie lies awake, listens to dogs. Barks are sudden piercing notes. Create crescendos. Each bark is amark. Immediately after one mark is another mark, except for a less than microscopic white space between marks. Marks are continuing, new notes, new tonal colors, but white space remains behind. Unspoken white space, but notes continue. New musical phrases, new voices, new dogs. Entire piece is nothing but notes. White spaces pound on glass doors, pound. Other notes sing beautiful tones.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins which eventually brim with delicate Xs and lopsided 0supon which they draw eyes and facial hair and squiggle-mouths that remind Richie of his father's repeated failed attempts at beards.)

Pair of jogging shoes. Worn, old. Gift from Richie's mother. Soles are thin.

Rubber hangs. Each morning, laces are tied, Run. Sweat oils jobts and skin. Muscles warm, catch fire. Head down, gulp and drain air. Lean. Lungs are assembly lines, air Cogbill 16

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees.)

Kate:

Kate and Richie invent card games. Draw cards, assign meanings. Eight of diamonds, Kate receives kiss. Nine of diamonds, Riclue gives kiss. Not fair, he says. Kate knows. Wishes she could kiss herself too, life not fair. Smiles. Richie says, let's play bombs. How? Throws cards in air. Kate laughs.

Race up and down art museum steps. Kate wins. Yells, Yo Adrian. Voice cracks.

Richie laughs. Kate punches. Later, kisses.

(Richie flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees and agreeing to share dessert.)

Sit on park benches and watch cars. Make up stories about passing drivers. Alien from Mars. No, fell in love with own cousin. Or, stalking celebrity, possibly Christopher

Walken. Could be Riclue's long lost uncle.

Talk about nothing on purpose. Invent nonsense sentences. Dryers dig orange apple peel out of cement. Genius John jinxes joggers. Toaster puffs marshmallow smoke.

Kate sleeps without pillows. Sleeps with head hanging over side. Breaths quietly when sleeping. Very quietly. Richie wakes, listens. Puts hand on back. Checks for breath.

Feels warmth on palm. Feels back rise. Relaxes. Sleeps.

(Riclue flees Kate during dinner at favorite Italian cafe after deciding on entrees

and agreeing to share dessert followed by games of tic-tac-toe drawn on paper napkins.)

Mother calls. Asks about Kate. Richie shrugs. Mother can't see over phone.

Ricllie says l~e'snotscared. Why wouldl~ebe?modm aks. Almost slxugs again- Cogbill 14 through mud and grass, remnants of their speed and power and zeal, paths that overlapped and cut, created shortcuts ornamented with handprints, hair, skin cells. Later, when they had fallen asleep in the car, I will admit that I tried sliding through the mud alone. I cut my knees on the grass and ripped roots with my toes. I wasn't making paths but searching and grasping at something that didn't exist, so I got up and walked in their trails, let the mud they created surround my feet, and I imagined them hoping as they slid that the others would see their trails when the morning came, trials they prayed would be crossed, guarded, loved. Cogbill 12 breath of millions of other people, all breathing smoke into silent places, and most of all trying to understand the actual silence stitched in between the raindrops, and how did they fill the silence, where were the words, and then they came.

Words came rushing from their mouths like avalanches and they started with I can't believe it and then came we couldn't have left it there and then came I tried to tell my dad about it. I didn't say anything to my parents what about your hand? I said I cut myself with a bread knife. I didn't know anything could hang on like that, me either yeah it really wouldn't give in, sometimes I think about how I couldn't have done that, me either remember that time we almost got into that fight with those guys? yeah my legs were shaking then. I don't know I just couldn't stop thinking about it, me either I couldn't sleep some nights I kept hearing that sound. the sound was the worst part yeah it was I've never heard a noise that sounded anything like that. it was pretty bad I was really struggling I probably wouldn't have finished the whole thing if you guys weren't there. me either at least it's finished I can't imagine leaving it half dead like that worse than half dead it was so much worse than half dead if we hadn't finished it I don't even want to think about how long it would have lived in pain and that would have been our fault.

sometimes, and I'm not making an excuse, but there really is nothing you can do what could we have done if I knew how to fix it I would but all there is now is that we fucked

up and what more can we say it's not like we can just forget it because its right there in

front of us and maybe it always will be or maybe it'll be gone in a few years but right

now its right in front of us and I'll be honest I'm glad I can talk about it now. You know

what's awful? What'slhat no never mind itYs.reallyhad no what is it just say it no I

shouldn't have said anything just forget it no come on you can say it now you have to say Cogbill 10

They watched the deer fade as they traveled away, but it remained in their minds. The road passed under them in a blurred spectrum of light to dark gray, and the deer was gone, their clean car miles past, but they thought about it anyway.

It was only once they had passed the restaurants and gas stations that lay on the outskirts of the town did they realize they'd forgotten a key. They remembered that there might have been a spare key somewhere on the premises, but weren't sure where. The road was muddy and it made them uneasy to think of the dirt beginning to coat the bottom of their freshly washed car.

They pulled into the gravel drive that wound around to the front of a cabin. There was a wide lake past the cabin and its surface looked pocked as raindrops created craters that instantly refilled and rippled outward. They wished people were like that: smooth surfaces whose craters refilled evenly. Displaced matter replaced.

It was a cabin they knew because they had spent summers here before. But

everything seemeddifferent and off and wrong. They tried the door, which was bolted

shut. It was beginning to get colder. Outside the porch, the rain dripped from wooden

beams, rolled down leaves and filled the lake. They told each other to look for the key.

Inside the cabin was a fireplace and wood, blankets and pictures and light.

They began to look for the key. Under the green welcome mat, under the legs of

the porch table. On windowsills, under flowerpots and in the nlailbox. They soaked

themselves in the rain looking in back for possible hiding places. They crawled under the

deck. They applied pressure to the windows. They put their fingers into the gutter's

runoff spouts but found only grime and soaked leaves~.They exmbd thundersides of

the porch chairs. They looked under their shoes to see if they'd accidentally stepped on it. Cogbill 8 south, gaping crevices opening to become pools. They saw the snow fade and the trees sway softly while their muscles stiffened, could feel the jolts through their shoulders and down their backs, and it felt like all the sounds, the harsh, sudden whimpers that they could predict to the millisecond because they coincided with the impact of the bat, which became simply an extension of their arms, and they wished the others could step back so that they could stop or at least tell each other that everything was over, because until then they would just swing harder and harder and faster, hoping that somehow the violence would simply become okay after it was all done. And when they stopped, finally, and the throbbing adrenaline began to fade, they stood like strays in the fading daylight with the dead dog.

What they did was walk to the car and go home.

They stayed awake at night and thought, it was only a stray, only a mutt. Or they replayed the events in their head and thought about all the movies they'd seen in which worse things happened. The thought about how fathers could beat children and babies starved to death and people were born chronically ill or suffered intense heartbreak and there was always a reason for these things, must be, or else there was no movement and everything must stop and wait for a movement, but time had not stopped so there was a reason somewhere hiding under all the words, those endless words that they said to themselves and it was there and they would find it.

They were washing theirear as they did every ye3before they left for the trip.

Normally they sprayed it with water, ran sponges over the panels, rinsed, but this year, Cogbill 6 brushed snow from each other's jackets and they wrapped torn tee shirts around a bloody palm. They set their jaws, and their heads were empty of thoughts.

They knew they should have left long before. They should even have left at that moment. But they imagined that if they left, the dog would occupy their minds like a mountain range being born. They waited because maybe at the end there was light.

Maybe at the end of the dog was fresh air and relief and rocks washing into sand after weeks of being beaten in ocean waves. The dog, still as stars, was a desert. It was consuming. The snow around it seemed to change colors. The noises it made were random, long violent moans and short, labored exhalations. The boys breathed with it, holding their breath when the dog vocalized and taking long, careful breaths when it was silent.

Finally, they turned back the way they'd come. In the car was a baseball bat.

As they walked, they considered never turning around. They lit cigarettes and tried to teach themselves to blow smoke rings. The smoke came out in chunky puffs that melded together and they forgot themselves and laughed as they failed together.

The bat was aluminum. They had used it for City League baseball. The rubber handle was worn and frayed at the edges. The sweet spot was outlined by a blue dotted line. They had marked the handle with permanent marker for each hit they'd gotten. For a moment, they pictured each other hammering the dog's skull flat and marking the hilt with a black marker, the others cheering as though watching the winning run cross the plate in the bottom of the ninth. They imagined the dog did not feel pain. They told each other there was no scientific proof that dogs actually felt pa& the way humans did, and what was maybe more important, worse things happened everyday. People did worse Cogbill 4

They dropped it unevenly and the log fell on the dog's head at a slight angle. The sound was the strangest part, a soft u~hunzplike a rock hitting a pillow, followed by a cracking sound as the log bounced off the dog's skull.

They could only stare at first, because how could they move after that, the entire world consisted not of seconds accumulating but of seconds falling away until it happened, and then the dog began to cry, long sounds that the animal was unable to sustain, a painful vibrato. Its legs jerked and it began to drag itself desperately through the snow, and it could not stand or roll over so it flopped on its side. Blood drooled from its head, turning the snow the color of roses.

They panicked. There was yelling. They rushed to grab the log and the mutt at the same time and they spoke lines of incomprehensible words and the dog reached back with surprising speed and snapped at them, catching a chunk of palm and slicing an arm.

They yelped and jerked and kicked at the dog, and they hit it with their fists. The dog's growl split into shards, high-pitched yelps and moans that slit the cold air and hung in the trees. The dog writhed in ihe snow, limbs jerking at strange angles. A choking sound occasionally escaped its throat. They grabbed each other and pulled themselves away and the log split their clearing in half and the dog lay with jowls pulled back over black gums, eyes narrow black lines and twitching.

They looked at their hands, which were skin and blood and smoke. Their hands were rocks leaking water down surfaces into a gentle undisturbed pool. Everything was smooth.

Tl~eyargued.Their voices were angry and ~afiaidad whi-mperilg md hogse.~ ~ Cogbill 2 three clearings in which they'd camped at various times. They knew every inch of the woods. It was as familiar as their backyards. The woods had a different sort of gravity than the rest of the planet, and inside they could float and fly and fall harmlessly.

They picked up 1he dog, which was remarkably calm, or it didn't have the strength to fight back. It felt light in their arms, as though its bones were 11ollow. They passed it gently back and forth so they could all understand what it felt like to carry such an animal. They put their hands under its head to provide support and they scratched behind the ears, but it did not respond. As they drove, they held the dog so that it could see from the windows the winter-covered town they'd lived in for so long.

The woods were cold. The sky could have splintered, ripped open. They imagined that underneath the sky's skin would be a black pulp, full of subtly yellow stars, dust and planets. Their tracks were heavier than usual because of the dog's weight. When they looked back, their footprints appeared crushed into the Earth through tremendous force.

They could see fissures in trees where the bark had split in the cold and they reflected that they'd never noticed this before. The dog's breath was visible only in the thin steam that crawled from its open mouth.

They placed the dog in one of the clearings they knew. They hadn't chosen it for any special reason, it was simply the place they went most often. They found themselves surprised that the dog had arrived here as well, as though it had appeared on its own.

They stared at the dog and kicked snow at it to see if it would react. It wheezed and blinked as the spray fell across its eyes. They brushed off the matted fur with shaking red

hands. They thought the dog hoked like wadded cotton balls, a pile of lint. It was a soggy~ ~~ - bath mat, a pillow left out in the rain. It was a patch of dead grass. But it was alive, too,