ABSTRACT

FENCEPOST VOICES

by Evan Steuber

A collection of short stories and short-shorts following desperate characters who, despite their desire to do the right thing, find themselves succumbing to addictions, bad behavior, and bad luck in an often unforgiving world. FENCEPOST VOICES

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English

by

Evan J. Steuber

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2011

Advisor: ______Eric Goodman

Reader: ______Jody Bates

Reader: ______Susan Morgan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Two Daughters...... 1 Coming Down ...... 7 Dorothy Nods ...... 8 Boombox Break ...... 14 Faces (In Four Parts) ...... 15 Curve ...... 32 Hannah‟s Revenge ...... 33 Borders ...... 45 These Hands ...... 47 How To Move...... 54 Oakie ...... 56 Tell Me About It...... 64 Winter Lights ...... 66 When The Music‟s Over...... 78

ii

Two Daughters

1. “Were you drinking, Dad?” He looked up at her, but couldn‟t hold her eyes. She was thinking bad of him and he knew it. She was thinking all the worst. He deserved it, he took it in. He was drinking, alright. Damn right he was drinking. Think he‟d be shaking like this if he hadn‟t been? He kept picking at the frayed threads on the knees of his jeans, fat fingers that can‟t help but dial three numbers at a time, picking and picking. “Yeah.” She was quiet for awhile, all balled up inside herself, and he watched her, knowing she was trying to think of how to say something to him without breaking his heart. She was always afraid that she‟d break his heart. He had called her at work, left a message that he needed her, and she‟d come right after. She was still wearing a dirty apron and when she moved he could hear the change sloshing around inside, hear those nickels and dimes singing songs as she shuffled back and forth. She was making him more anxious than he already was and he couldn‟t stop moving, rocking back and forth in the faded orange recliner, staring at her and staring past her at the blank screen of his TV. It wasn‟t just the accident that was keeping him moving, keeping those fat fingers picking. She‟d been giving him her pills, for nerves, but she‟d cut him off the other day. She needed them, she said. He needed them too. He needed them deep down in his gut to fill up and explode that anxiety that was pouring in his head. Or whiskey, that sweet burn he‟d been denying himself since the accident— he was afraid someone would come to his house and test him. He was in no shape to pee in a cup. She stopped, coming up out of her head for a second, eyeing him. “Where‟s the truck?” “I parked it back behind the shed.” He put his hands up to his face, cupped his nose, and breathed in, smelling the smoke deep in his skin, smelling the sweat of alcohol that was forming beads on his face. “You sure it was a deer?” She paused, and looked at him knowing something deep down in her eyes that he didn‟t know. She was looking into him, right through him, like he used to

1 look at her when she‟d come in from playing with mud all over her. Were you in the creek, he‟d ask, and stare right through her, and she‟d smile playfully. But there was no smile here, nothing to admit to. It was a frown he felt pulling down on his cheeks, like he‟d just taken two Percocets and his skin was falling, drooping down below his chin. “Yeah, I‟m sure.” Some stupid animal wandering out into the road and getting caught in his headlights. It was big, and it made that truck thump and his head snap forward and then back again. Him pulling around a corner on Route 4, coming down the hill fast, windows open and Willie Nelson blaring on the radio. People hit deer down there all the time, came around those turns where the maples bend in on the road, branches jutting out above and shading over the stars and the moon. They have signs too. Big yellow ones with prancing silhouettes. Everybody knows there‟s deer down there. “I saw something on the news,” she said, and then she let herself settle down, falling back into the dusty old sofa to his left. When she sat down her apron bulged up and he could see the outline of a cigarette pack emerge behind the black cloth. “How about a cigarette?” “Dad, I thought you quit?” “I‟m just a little stressed. You stopped giving me those pills. It wouldn‟t hurt to have one.” He could‟ve got one out on his own. He could have leaned over, pulled open the door on the end-table and yanked out a whole carton. But, it wouldn‟t do any good for her to see that. She already knew so much about him, was ashamed of him for so much. He had to give her something to be proud of, even if it was pretend. She reached into her apron and threw the pack over to him. “Lighter?” The cigarette burned his throat deep and he liked it, pulling it all in, hoping he‟d choke on it. He ashed on the floor. “Don‟t you even have an ashtray?” “Doesn‟t make a difference to me.” “You hear what I said before? I said I saw something on the news.”

2

He looked straight into her eyes, past the guilt or grief or whatever was taking hold of her and all he could see was her young and running around, out playing by the shed in worn-down overalls, pushing around a big orange toy truck that one of the wheels had broken off of. “I don‟t watch the news. It spoils my appetite.” She looked at him cautiously, weighing her words, putting them on scales like she always did, always walking on broken glass around him, always afraid she‟d break his heart. “When‟d you say you hit it?” “It was last night, around ten.” After leaving the bar. Thank God he was drinking by himself. Nobody to notice him stumbling into the parking lot. Almost fell down pulling himself into the seat. Hands shaking on the steering wheel. “You sure?” “Sure it was a deer, sure it was around ten, sure I was drinking.” He felt irritated and needed her to tell him it was alright, tell him he didn‟t have to hide that damn truck out behind the shed, one headlight caught and broken and the grill filled with blood. “God dammit Dad!” And she started crying all at once like her face was full of tears and water and ready to burst, like she‟d been waiting years to cry. “Did you even get out of the fucking truck?” She shook her hands at him. He tried to reach out to her but he went too fast and shaky and his cigarette brushed against her, burning her forearm. “I‟m sorry. I‟m so sorry.” He got up and ran to the kitchen sink, running water over the cigarette and throwing it in after. He wet a towel and came back to her. “Put this on it.” “I‟m fine,” she said. “I‟m fine. But you really fucked up this time. You really fucked up.” “I just hit a deer, something somebody does once a day around here. So what? So I had a couple drinks? I wasn‟t drunk. I was paying attention. It just came out of nowhere. It just jumped out in front of me and got stuck in the headlights.” And he sat back down in the orange recliner and put his fingers back to picking at the threads that splayed out from the worn knees where‟d he kneel down to reach his tools, or to pray before he went to bed. And he waited,

3 looking expectantly at her, waiting for her to tell him it was alright, that it wasn‟t really all that bad. “Somebody died,” she said, but with her sobbing and her nose clogged up it sounded more like sommodimied. Sommodimied, somebody died. He was sweating. Dear God, it was hot in there, humid and hard to breathe, but he pulled it in, all that air and heat and frustration and sweat. “You need to turn yourself in,” she said. His own daughter asking him to turn himself in? And for what, for hitting some stupid animal that don‟t know when to stop and when to run? And he was getting angry, seeing those big doe eyes in his mind, watery and black, staring at him, those stupid eyes. Big soft graceful animal prancing in the road, taking its time. And then his mind was pulling away and putting something else there, replacing those eyes with his daughters‟. Soft blue, caught up in the glare, stuck in a broken headlight.

2. She followed him out back behind the shed, him mumbling and complaining under his breath that it was just a deer and she shouldn‟t be so worried. She was done crying then, all of her washed out onto the dirty carpet of his house, and she wasn‟t numb but she was tingly, feeling like little needles all over. She could see the blue bed of the truck sticking out from behind the shed as they approached. Mud was splashed up on the sides and she was ready to call him a murderer or a slob. He stopped as they reached the corner of the shed, rocking back and forth for a second before continuing, limply raising his hand and waving her on. This was the end or beginning of something and she knew it from the way he mumbled and moved. She had hoped that there would be a last time, maybe after the first DUI, and maybe after the second, and then maybe after his liver failed or his lungs collapsed. But now she could see, in his wave, in the slow progression to the shed, maybe after his heart gives out. Her hand felt at the mud on the side of the truck as they made their way to the front end. It wasn‟t dry yet. Before he was a murderer was he driving through muddy fields? She scratched at it with her fingernails, peeling it off in long curling lines, goosebumps prickling up on her skin as she did. Her hand was dangling at her side and picking at the mud when he suddenly stopped and barred her from seeing the front end of the truck, not enough room to maneuver between him and

4 the shed. This shed that was worn down and rotting with one broken window that you had to be careful not to catch your sleeve on when you passed so close. This shed that used to hold all of her toys, that still held a few of them: a worn out toy truck, a wiffleball bat and some balls, and the only doll she ever owned—she hated that doll when she first got it. “You remember when I used to play out here almost every day?” she asked. When she was little and he was teaching her to do, to walk, to talk, to carry a baseball bat with hands wrapped tight and ready. Teaching by his eyes that it was okay to play in mud and jump and fall down. “Yeah.” He nodded and when he did she saw just how old he was, how different from when she was young and a tomboy and running around worshipping him and everything he taught her. His face was pale and cracked with wrinkles from smoking and drinking and taking pills. Little and big sun spots brownish and spreading on his forehead. His ears and nose overly large and awkward stuck on that shriveled-up face. His back bent and leaning in on a pot-belly that he held with two swollen hands. “I knew you liked it,” she said, “when I played outside. I knew Mom didn‟t like it and that you did.” He looked up at the sky and she wasn‟t sure he had heard her. “It was always one thing or another. You shooting at birds with a BB gun, jumping rocks in the creek, or pushing that broken piece of crap toy truck around the yard for hours on end. You were easy to entertain.” He smiled. This man, who taught her to fall down. “Well,” he said, “I guess you better take a look.” Before she could reach him she saw that he was seeing the truck too, seeing something there that he had hidden from himself when he came in the night before and collapsed drunk on the couch. He stumbled back from the front of the truck and she came around and saw what he was seeing. “I can‟t do it,” he said. He would make her do this, convince her that he‟s fallen down and that she must see that. Even though he can see as clear as she can that this is not the skin of a deer, that this hair was plucked from a daughter and caught in his headlights. The girl must have split in two to shed so much blood that would stain that deep red on the truck grill, the smell of iron strong in the air around them mixed in with metal and mud. It was caught there in the headlight and their eyes were both stuck on it and the way it held on and

5 moved so slightly with the breeze: a golden wave of hair still attached to the skin that was ripped from the girl‟s scalp. “I can‟t do it,” he said. And she watched his eyes tear away from that thing that looked like it was still alive, bubbles of blood underneath skin still breathing and gently swaying with the breeze and just waiting to be set free from the broken spiked plastic of a headlight. And she could no longer hold what was in her stomach and turned and vomited, some of it splashing up on the shed beside them. “I can‟t do it,” he said. When she was little she could run and play and be free and get dirty and do what she wanted but he cannot see that that is the way of a child. He would have her protect him even though he must know that that is something she cannot do. He would put it on her and have her take his place in hell. She left him there swaying and saying what he could not do. He would fall down again and she would abandon him all muddy and full of mischief. She left him and ran to her car where her hands shook on the wheel and she tasted the vomit on her tongue. She spit out the open window, but the taste remained.

6

Coming Down

They yell our names from the top of the hill, loud drunk screams. Soon, they‟ll scramble down to find us— we‟ve stolen their turn on the trash can lids, sliding giddy together into a heap, now with wings connected through constant movement of spread arms; gloved hands entwined feeling for flesh that is just beneath the surface. Two martinis snuck up on me and filled my chest with a kind aching for unknown love. I transfer my feelings to her as we look at each other, over our puffy bodies and sleek surfaces. My wife, her husband, and our friends all wait and can‟t see we don‟t plan to return. When they come down, half-running, half-falling, we will not rise or make excuses. I‟m sure of this. Instead, we‟ll purposefully push into each other‟s arms and make it look worse than it is. We are in love because cold nights and alcohol make you fall in love, fall like you can‟t in daylight when pixels are too clear and plentiful and images are ugly and illuminated. Our hands, grasping at each other, have no sense of guilt. It is the view of melting snowflakes on her red cheeks and the way she feels my pulse in her open palm. Tonight, we‟ll ruin our lives, watch them crumble together, and then walk away on separate paths, leaving stumbling footprints which others will follow to some tree trunk where we rest with eyes closed, not feeling the cold on our skin, but in our lungs. We hear them coming down, asking if we‟re all right, if we fell asleep. Are we playing a trick on them? We pull close together, press our faces into each other and feel the tickle of eyelashes. We do not kiss, but breathe in deeply the scent of the cold. They come traipsing down with wide-eyes and stupid grins. Ears pressed to the cold ground our eyes meet and she asks me if there is a restroom nearby.

7

Dorothy Nods

Dorothy stopped going upstairs two months ago. Besides being steep and without a handrail the stairs are old, wooden, and squeaky. They remind her of herself, though instead of the pressure of weight on stairs she feels the pressure of old age and is afraid she might break. Since her bedroom is upstairs she sleeps on the couch, her Yorkie Rufus huffing and puffing loudly at her feet. During the day she moves to the kitchen, sitting at the small dinette set looking through catalogs. “Oh my, we could use that, Rufus.” She pats him softly and fills out the form to order the vegetable dicer which will likely remain unopened when it comes. Her mother watches over her from the fireplace mantle, set inside a ceramic urn that could hold coffee grounds, sugar, flour— that perhaps did at some point, but now holds ashes. When her mother died twenty years ago at the age of one hundred and four Dorothy rummaged through the piles of knick-knacks and garbage, keepsakes and catalogs, and found this ceramic jar, this potential urn. Other jars, that slope in size down the mantle from her mother‟s, hold the ashes of a long line of Yorkies, one of them the grandfather of Rufus, another the father. She is glad that she could put the jars to use, fill them up. Sometimes she feels like the house and the ashes of the urns are breathing. Slow, rattling breaths that mimic her own. Dorothy has always lived in the house, knows now that she will never leave. So she keeps saving, filling it up. Her basement is a heap of old canned goods, stacks of papers, musty-smelling trunks, and other items that she does not use but cannot bear to part with. She places bills and other mail (all “Urgent!” “Important!”) in the same boxes in which she deposits the recent stream of notes from her niece, Susan, whose handwriting she easily recognizes— “Please Read” written in delicate and precise cursive on postage-less envelopes. She makes them all wait in cardboard boxes that she stacks on top of each other in the dining room entrance, forming a wall she can no longer see past or maneuver around. She does not answer the phone, though she calls her few relatives back if they leave a message. This is not because she is afraid of the bill collectors though she does find them annoying. And if it is such a problem that she isn‟t paying, then why do they keep sending her credit card applications?

8

Rufus follows her everywhere, shaking with energy and the need to run, weighed down by the excess of Dorothy‟s meals. “Well, I can‟t eat that much, but I‟m sure you‟ll help me,” she says, scooping some extra butter on top of her heap of mashed potatoes. He will sit next to her on the couch, his tongue flicking over the plate during and after the meal, searching out every last bit of food. Rufus is especially fond of the gristle and fat that Dorothy struggles to remove from meats‟ edges. And so, he has become overweight after years of eating all he wants, and his teeth are decaying and falling out. To make it easier on herself and Rufus she lays down newspaper on the kitchen tile and the living room carpet so that he can relieve himself. After he does she covers the mess with more newspaper— in some places the newspaper is a foot thick. Rufus has started losing his hair in large clumps and she worries for him. She sings to Rufus sometimes; she thinks it helps. Her voice is nasal and hard to understand now, but she once had a beautiful voice, and she would sing songs to house guests. After The Wizard of Oz came out everyone thought the coincidence was wonderful and began requesting she sing those songs, Dorothy’s songs. She learned them all by heart and sang them perfectly, her mother accompanying her on the piano, everyone fawning over her afterward, saying that she really must be that Dorothy, returned from the land of Oz. She sings the songs over and over for Rufus, and he sits in her lap, his toothless mouth wide-open and panting, his hair thin like hers, though with patches completely missing. Her relatives will not visit her at the house; the smell of urine and decay is too strong. Instead, they invite her out to dinners, and she will occasionally leave to go to a Thanksgiving or Christmas get-together. But she always falls asleep in a large plush chair hidden in the corner of a room, and she feels useless and old. Her bedroom holds a large collection of pastel-colored pants— multiple pairs of blue, green, and yellow. Sometimes she asks one of her nieces to bring some down for her, but most of the time she just stays in her heavy light-green robe because she knows they hate to come in the house.

9

Her sister did, on occasion, enter the home they had grown up together in, though Dorothy could sense the disgust her sister felt, even if she didn‟t say a word. Her sister would smoke quietly, tapping her ashes into a small ornamental bird bath that still looked new. “I see you sold most of mother‟s china,” she once said, “paying some bills?” False accusations, Dorothy had thought. After all, it was Dorothy who took care of her mother when she was dying, when she was deaf and blind, hands outstretched and feeling through the house. And it was Dorothy who brought in money from the beginning, as soon as her father walked out the door. It was not her sister who did these things— the one who left the house at seventeen and never looked back, who married and left her mother behind. Everything in the house was Dorothy‟s, had been left to her— the will said so. “Shall I get it out for you?” she wanted to ask. Dorothy was the one who stayed around, and if she had to pay a bill or two every once in awhile it was none of her sister‟s business. And so, when her sister died three years ago she did not attend the funeral— she stayed home, looking through catalogs. After the death she had no more immediate family. She depends on her sister‟s children occasionally to help her, though she does not like bothering them. Sometimes, they force her out of the house with their persistent invitations, take her to their own homes for dinner, and she tries to listen to the muttered conversations around her. Her eyesight is failing but she squints with determination through thick lenses; her ears perk up to listen though she has a hard time adjusting her hearing aid, keeping it from squealing. At dinners she hears things no one has said— “She smells, Mom.” “More gravy?” “Is Rufus dead yet?” “Pass the rolls.” “I can‟t cut my meat.” She is often confused by the appearance of her relatives around a dinner table; she knows faces, names, but she drifts and sees her father, or her mother, or her sister, gathered around the table with them. Memories break with force on her mind and it is getting worse, the strength with which these memories come and the frequency of their visits. She will suddenly slip away, see the night her father left. From her room she heard her parents arguing quietly. Standing at the top of the stairs she listened to the last words she would ever hear from her father. “I‟m going to Chicago.” And then her mother‟s quick response, “I‟m not coming with you.”

10

And then, he was gone. Too deep in childhood to remember she would often ask her mother what her father was like. The response clarifying and confusing, “He was a funny man.” Yes, she would think, his last joke still hangs in the air. From then on Dorothy helped out, making clothes with her mother to sell, finding ways to make money but always staying close to her mother‟s side, while her sister found other places to be. On the weekends Dorothy would sneak into the silent picture show, and listen contentedly to her mother playing the accompanying piano music off in a dark corner. She often asked herself if the slouched smoking figures in the theatre knew where the music was coming from, if they realized. But she has no one to help now, and no need to make money when they give it away on plastic. She is collecting for a rainy day, holding on to the things she can while she can. Who knows, she might need them someday. -- A bill collector gets hold of her niece Susan. Susan visits the house and stays on the front porch while she speaks. “Didn‟t you get my notes?” Susan asks. Dorothy knows who Susan is, but this does not keep Dorothy from sometimes seeing her sister in Susan. Their eyes are the same. Their noses are small buttons. Their ears are pinched to the sides of their heads. “No, dear,” Dorothy says. “I‟ve been leaving them for months. At this point I‟m not even sure selling the house would cover all of the debt,” Susan says. Dorothy nods. “I‟m concerned for you,” she says. And then she smiles her sister‟s condescending smile. Susan leaves after delivering the news and Dorothy knows what this means. Soon, they will come and take her to an assisted-living home. But don‟t they know that she will not leave Rufus behind? And the home does not accept dogs— cats, maybe, but never dogs. -- When they arrive— Susan and the other nieces, and their children, and some of their children‟s children— they wave at her as if she has materialized out of the couch, all of them seemingly surprised to see her, the blending pastel colors perhaps confusing them. Do they know she lives

11 here? Didn‟t they know they‟d be forced to work around an old senseless woman who cuddles with a completely hairless, toothless dog? A dog that they shy away from, which makes them uneasy through his constant shaking, whether it be from cold, fright, or excitement. They stumble through the house picking at things and covering their noses when they think she can‟t see them. She shuffles outside to see that two oversized dumpsters have followed them and are being lowered into her front yard. “You can stay at the house, but we need to get it ready to sell.” Susan is standing next to Dorothy with a hand resting gently on her back. Dorothy looks in the screen door, sees Rufus shuddering naked on the floor inside. “Tell them to be careful that Rufus doesn‟t get out,” she tells her. The two of them go out to lunch. Dorothy does not recognize the place— it used to be an independent diner, and now it is a chain of some sort, but maybe that is wrong, maybe it is a different diner she is thinking of. Dorothy eats her grilled-cheese slowly, dipping the sandwich in tomato soup, and Susan smiles at her from across the booth, sipping at coffee, but ordering no food. When they come back both of the dumpsters are filled. “Is that all of it?” Dorothy asks. “Yes,” Susan says “and we took Rufus to the vet.” There is a rise, a slight gust of wind that fills up Dorothy‟s lungs, but as quickly as it comes she allows the anger and confusion to settle. She nods, feeling the weight of years, the weight of memories making the slow rise and descent of her head difficult. It is all there is to do. Nod. She shuffles up to the front door, her back bending more than usual, and she sees her reflection for a moment in the glass panes that surround the front door. She is stooped, close to breaking. Inside the living room flecks of dust swirl around in the air like swarms of gnats. Strips of carpet are still attached to nails that jut out of the hardwood floor where urine-soaked carpet has been torn free. All that remains in the living area is her mother‟s urn, and the urns of the Yorkies that have been set next to it in descending order of years. She glances into the dining room. The removal of boxes upon boxes of bills have made visible the baby grand piano that her mother once played— too heavy to move. For a moment she can see her mother at the piano, in

12 one of her home-made summer dresses, her hands gliding over the keys, wind blowing in from open windows as the house fills with music. Guests hunched over the piano, leaning against the walls, slouching at ease on the clean sofa, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Timid at first she feels her voice shaking as she joins in. But soon the piano is all she can hear and confidence makes her voice full and clear as it rises with the notes, gently, softly, she is taken away.

13

Boombox Break

It falls faster than I supposed, black caught in wet air for a moment and everything pressing in— on my angst and desire to express something in a new way. Instead, a failure and display of my own inadequacy. This falling boombox does not represent the pressure of what I feel— does not imitate art or what is happening in the background. Does not splinter as I supposed: parts unraveling, spraying black against black on pavement, a sound of fury followed by the skid and scraping of tiny dislodged pieces of plastic. Instead, it meets the street with a weak sound, no more or less broken than before I chucked it out the window. Only the water speaks— the wet surface broken. My wife comes up behind me with tearful eyes and a smirk on her face. “Is that all?” Boombox and wife beg me to throw myself down: produce a deafening noise, learn the sound I make, see if I‟ll remain unbroken.

14

Faces (In Four Parts)

1. angry face They give my little Susie Q a C on her spelling test. A goddamn C. So you know what I do? Let me tell you. I draw a smiley-face next to the C to cheer her up: a wobbly circle, two graphite eyes, and a slanting smile. It needs company so I change the C into another smiley-face, but they look blank and stupid so I give one of them long hair and the other a goatee, and now it looks like me and Susie are smiling as we look over a spelling test well done. “There, that‟s better,” I say. “You‟re just supposed to sign it, Dad. Now Ms. Cross will think I was cheating and write me up.” We‟re hunched over the test at the kitchen table and Susie stares up at me, her eyes beginning to water, and a frown on her face. “What? Are you kidding me? She‟s going to write you up because your father can produce beautiful art?” “She hates art. We only draw like ten minutes a day and then she says we have to get back to real work. I hate her.” “What a Philistine.” “That‟s what I tried to tell you,” she mutters between sobs. I write “Philistine” in the margins of the test a few times in pencil, then I erase them, and then I write “SOULLESS” in all caps, and then I erase it and write “I love my teacher” wherever you can see the shadow of the words. Where do they get off making second-graders feel like crap? And who needs to know how to spell these days? That‟s what the goddamn computer is for. You think I sit here checking my spelling all the time? Hell no. I use a computer like every other sensible person in the world. I sign the bottom of the test and write a little note next to my signature: “I request that Susie be allowed to use a computer for her spelling tests and that art be given more weight in the classroom.” Then I draw another smiley-face just to let Ms. Frigid Bitch know that I might be joking or at the very least that I‟m not trying to butt-in on her business or whatever. But these types, these goddamn second-grade teachers won‟t listen unless you act like they have the

15 hardest job in the world and like they weren‟t the people with the worst grades in college. Oh! I see! You‟re majoring in Primary Education! Guess you‟ll coast by with C‟s in all your classes until you get into the education building where they‟ll give you all A‟s because there‟s a teacher shortage. Teachers don‟t have a clue, not one goddamn clue. And do you think they know her? Do you think they know one thing about my little Susie Q? No, they say she‟s idle, spacey, out of her element. They tell me to make her concentrate, to get her in the game by monitoring her homework. I do monitor her homework. And you know what I do then? I get on the goddamn computer, open up a fucking word document, and I check the spelling. “You see,” I‟ll say, pointing at the words on the screen, “this is why spelling tests are useless.” And yes, it‟s true, it‟s possible, that my “crude” ways might be the reason that they give Susie a hard time. But, you know, it‟s not like I tell her to repeat me, and it‟s so goddamn funny when she does that I hardly have the heart to tell her. Let me tell you. She comes home one day with a note from the aforementioned dried-up old bitch Ms. Cross that reads: Mr. Blanche, Today, while reviewing Geography, I asked Susie while pointing at England to identify the name of the country and she responded by saying “That‟s where my ****-Mom is from.” The word here removed refers to the female genitalia. Please take better care that your daughter does not carry this language into our school. It is a bad influence on our children. With Concern, Miss Cross I couldn‟t contain myself when I read that. Honestly, I damn near shit my pants. I mean, I know my daughter shouldn‟t be saying that stuff, that it‟s not appropriate or whatever, but her mother is a cunt— it‟s the only word I would describe her as, or maybe crazy. But “crazy” might be unfair since her mother tried not to be, since that‟s something she didn‟t want. But really, who else leaves their daughter behind? Huh? I mean, who‟s ever even heard of that? I hadn‟t. In fact, just from all the shit I heard growing up about men running off I damn near expected myself to disappear, to look down one day and see my hands on a steering wheel, only to find that I‟m driving through Kansas or something, disappearing into a field of dried up sunflowers, passing under a blazing sun on some

16 endless canvas, just going to go, driving because I was supposed to. Or maybe I was just picturing my Dad, picking up and moving on, off to start another family in Cal-eee-forn-ya. Round number two. Getting it right the second time around. Off to the West Coast! And maybe I thought about it, being young and not ready to settle down, but goddammit I knew better. You love a kid, that‟s what you do. But I guess we disagreed on that, on what kids need. And even if she didn‟t want to be crazy and she was, abandoning your kid is always a step too far. And O‟ Susannah here, what we called my sweet little Susie Q when she was young, was left by her cunt-mom before she was even one year old. Her mom‟s not really British though, I should clarify that. She‟s not from there— that‟s just where she went. I like to blame it on the British though, usurpers of freedom and liberty and such. I like the metaphor, I guess, so that‟s what I tell Susie, so that she knows that her cunt- mom was foreign and weird and unrelatable and didn‟t know how to love, because people over in Britain are cold and soulless. “It‟s not your fault, Susie Q,” I‟ll tell her, “it‟s just those damn Brits.” Her Grandma, the cunt from which sprung the cunt, really gets on me though, says I should stop talking so bad about her. I say that I will and even try sometimes, but I want Susie to know she belongs to me, and that we belong together. “It wasn‟t an accident,” I‟ll tell Grandma Cunt, “your daughter didn‟t trip and fall into England.” Though she did make it seem like an accident, like she‟d come upon some previously camouflaged clue lying in her path, some goddamn trap door disguised as a rock— inside, an underground bunker full of reasons why she didn‟t love me, couldn‟t love me, and not to mention gas masks and rubber suits that indicated that dealing with O‟ Susannah was toxic, hazardous. So sweet little Susie Q is handled with care, like she goddamn-well should be. But not by these teachers, the ones I‟ll never be able to convince. So I tell her: “Don‟t you worry Susie Q. You‟re perfect. You‟re beautiful. Don‟t you worry about mean Ms. Cross. You just do your best.”

2. frowny face She never went to England and had no idea how Max arrived at the idea. And then, of course, she had to tell her mother the same, because it wouldn‟t do at all for her mother to think she‟d

17 lied to Max, despite how she spoke of him in the past. Still, Susannah, for whom her daughter was named, did not move to England but instead had been skipping from job to job in a similar small-town Ohio suburb, about a half-hour‟s drive away. Currently, she worked at the local Wal-Mart selling electronics— a job she acquired two months ago when she got fired from CVS for stealing gummy bears on multiple occasions. Besides trouble keeping a job, she owed three months back-rent on the small studio apartment that she sub-let from a friend of a friend of a former co-worker— the money that could have been diverted to rent was instead spent on bottles of medium-grade white wine that she spent far too much time crying over nightly. And who would want to know about that? She was protecting them by saying she was in England. And it was Max‟s fault anyway, for what people thought— he had certainly misunderstood her. But Max had been a problem from the beginning. She always felt something was wrong, and she knew she couldn‟t say that either. No one would understand how she felt about Max and the baby. Too fast— meeting a man and becoming burdened with his child. When the baby came she didn‟t like it, with red placenta spread all over it, smeared and distorting, and she was eager to move on, to get rid of it. For a year she tried though, she really did, really gave that little baby in the cradle all wrapped up in white such a good chance, and she tried with Max even if he was a mistake from the start, even if she had never felt connected to him. But after that year of trying, when Max got a job that paid enough and she knew he would be able to take care of the girl on his own she left saying something like “I‟d like to see other places besides the inside of this apartment.” It is possible, she supposed, that she mentioned England among the places she‟d like to see, but as it was she had only seen the inside of multiple run-down apartments and the slick clean aisles of various drug and department stores, along with the occasional grease-lined fast- food tiles, and the curiously dirty floors of gas stations— she watched her feet as she walked. And when she was really drunk she watched the off-white paint peeling from her apartment walls to reveal a sickly green She could see the slow progression— it was like watching the evolution of an animal. And so, sometimes, she cried a lot, thinking maybe she had made a mistake in disconnecting from her daughter— who, granted, was not a “real” person when she left, but a demanding ball of flesh— and if maybe her mother might like to know that no, she wasn‟t

18 dialing a cell phone in Liverpool, England, but was calling her daughter‟s house phone which began with an Ohio area code. But, England it had become, and so she spoke extensively about the bad weather, telling her mother that really it was so gloomy over there that no one should come visit her— it just wouldn‟t be worth the trip. What about Buckingham Palace? Had she seen that? Were the guards really so stiff in movement, so well trained? No, she hadn‟t been to London, but she heard from friends that yes it was just like that, and that yes the palace was beautiful, and that yes, sometimes the Queen herself would ride down the main avenues waving to her loyal subjects. If questioned too much she‟d head to her computer and remark on various googled aspects of Liverpool. “Really, there are some wonderful museums here,” she‟d say, or “Yes, I did visit The Beatles Story at Albert Dock the other day. But, you wouldn‟t like it, Mom. It‟s nothing you don‟t already know. You can learn it all from a book, anyway. Not worth the trip.” Susannah spoke so much on the horrors and boredom of England to her mother that she began hating it herself, feeling that perhaps she was stuck in Liverpool and not customer service and retail. When she left Max she had planned on becoming someone else, to disassociate herself from the past, to become someone who didn‟t have this sticky indefinable disorder they called Borderline or Mania or Bi-polar, depending of course on the psychologist that was speaking, that was trying so hard to identify her. Without a consensus she had picked Borderline, determined to find the right side of that line. The name seemed apt enough to her, as she had always felt like she was on a line, like she was between something and something else, and that the line was very clearly nothing. Since leaving she had made no real friends and so continued to spend most of her time crying over white wine. This habit, this sobbing, carried over to her work where she would sometimes slip off into seemingly unseen corners to open chilled wines that she took from the humming refrigerator shelves. Not unseen enough. “Didn‟t you know we have cameras all over the place? Especially in the electronics section? We‟ve seen you sneaking off. We‟ve seen you hiding. I had Adam follow you. He followed you all the way back to the wine section. Stealing and drinking on the job? It‟s usually just one at a time. You‟re a real entrepreneur.” Fired from Wal-Mart, CVS, Kroger, BP, the local McDonald‟s, and other customer service jobs (all of them for stealing, and sometimes drinking) it was getting harder and harder to

19 pretend that she was making sense, that the lies were in any way good for her, that she‟d in any way created a meaningful new self. It seemed that her path may lay backwards— a remaking perhaps rather than a making of something new? But this thought was confusing. It had taken her years to come to the conclusion of Borderline, and it seemed that a decision like this deserved a similar amount of time— still, she knew her employment options were running out, as was the charity of the friend of the friend of a former co-worker. And what was there to remake anyway? What of significance had she left behind? Of course, there was the girl, the daughter, and it was not as if she hadn‟t been keeping up with her a little bit— she had received many insulting but sometimes informative letters forwarded from a stranger in Liverpool. Apparently, the address she had given to her mother, which had later been given to Max, was a real one. Feeling lazy when she‟d created it she had merely looked up a street name and then invented a number. Her mother mentioned once that Max had received a letter from a Ms. Pratch admonishing him for his foul language and asking if he would please stop writing letters, as no Susannah Jones lived at that residence. Of course, this had made her mother curious and concerned, but Susannah had assured her that she did actually live at that address and that Ms. Pratch was just collecting the mail, and that she had told everyone in Liverpool to call her Sue and that she rarely mentioned her last name or her full first name, and for that matter the woman was just picking up her mail for a time, and then lived there sometimes out of loneliness, whereas she usually was just a maid, because mother I met her on a street corner and she just looked so helpless that I invited her in, and really it‟s just her way of protecting me. Nothing to worry about. After this incident Susannah had written to Ms. Pratch herself saying that she had escaped a relationship that had been both verbally and physically abusive and that she had given him a false address because she was scared for her safety, and that in fact, should her mother be in contact, she had told her the false address as well, for, Ms. Pratch, don‟t you see, that my mother was in league with him and never believed a word I said against him. However, seeing as she didn‟t want to inconvenience the poor old woman, if she would just be so kind as to forward the letters she would pay her for the postage for which she had enclosed a hundred dollar check. And Susannah had since then received batches of letters along with kind greetings from dear Ms. Pratch.

20

The letters from Max were, mostly, insults and raving, but she gathered a little from them. Where “Susie,” as he now called her, was going to school. That she got good grades. That she made friends. His point being, whenever he had given up information on the girl, that O‟ Susannah was the perfect opposite of her run-away mother. Susannah gathered enough details from the letters to be able to recognize the girl— wears hair in pigtails mostly, a gorgeous blond with dark blue eyes, Susie Q stitched in a nice pink wavy font on her backpack, tall for her age, curious, curious, curious. It appeared that the girl had become a person. This, for some reason, astonished Susannah. That a little whining ball of flesh could turn into someone with a personality, likes and dislikes, friends. She never really put that much thought into babies even when she had one. It had never seemed real to her. It wanted food, time, money. It wanted and wanted and wanted and never gave back. And who was Susannah? She was not a mother; she was a caretaker who sometimes breastfed instead of using formula, who sometimes sang to the baby in the cradle, who sometimes said she was proud of O‟ Susannah‟s formation and learning of such things as how to grasp at a tiny plastic spoon. But she had never felt anything because the baby felt nothing for her. It was all words, deception— she tried to build the self they wanted her to be but she couldn‟t, and so she‟d left. But was it possible that things had changed? Was it possible for her to connect to this girl, who was now a person, not a baby? A week away from Wal-Mart with no human interaction and no prospects of a new job or any money coming in she was forced to decide. And for once she stopped the words from coming long enough to say, yes, this is something I might want. The drive to the school from her current residence wasn‟t long, about thirty minutes with traffic and twenty without. Strolling the grounds of the school before it let out Susannah tried to decide what spot would provide the best view and the most coverage as it was not in her plan to be seen by Max. She took a tour of the school with a Vice-principal named Bill or Bob, saying that very soon her own little girl would be joining her here and she just wanted to see the school and make sure that there were plenty of opportunities for creative children, because my dear sweet daughter is very creative, and she can‟t thrive in the restricted environment of most public schools. Do they value art? God knows they do. “All the classes spend a good ten minutes a

21 day just drawing and the upper grades have an art class and we have contests and they display the winning art. Well, just look right here Miss, look at this lovely Unicorn that received first place.” The only real purpose of the tour was to find the location of the second-grade classroom, to spy a look inside, to see how young a second-grader looked because she wasn‟t sure she would know. Seeing their small figures, smaller than she‟d thought, and the nearest exit— the one she must plant herself outside of— she discontinued the tour, saying this would work just fine and if he wouldn‟t mind she might visit the grounds a bit more as she had a niece attending here already and she might like to get a better look later, but no, really, there was no reason to see more now. She had seen quite enough to make up her mind and it was now just a question of becoming familiar with the place and the faces so that she could feel comfortable when her darling daughter started. Waving goodbye to Bill or Bob, and mumbling “Bobill,” she made her way out the exit and spotted a massive oak. Perfect for leaning against, perhaps reading a book, perhaps waiting for a child, and both with a partial view and some necessary cover. She didn‟t spot her daughter for the first couple days that she waited, hidden behind the oak tree, but when she did it was, of course, the stitching that gave her away, the remarkably girly font and color of her name raised from the skin of a Hello Kitty backpack. She found that some details Max had provided weren‟t true. The girl, her daughter, did not appear to have many friends, and appeared in fact to be a loner, someone content to wander off by herself. Susannah had hoped this was one of the ways they would differ, but it turned out that she and her daughter shared this. She often wanted to yell “Look at me!” but she chastised herself for the thought and remained silent. She wanted so much to approach her, to touch her, as she was just as beautiful and curious and mysterious and wonderful as Max had described her. It was true, and she was confirmed in her thought that O‟ Susannah had become a person of her own. But Susannah would bide her time, would wait and learn about the person, about her daughter, from afar. Susannah would see what they had in common so that she could make good conversation. “I love Hello Kitty!” she would say, “What a wonderful backpack for such a wonderful little girl.”

22

She took notes of likes and dislikes she could discern, of any detail about the girl that struck her. She picked up and collected discarded homework and teacher‟s notes. She even bought a pink plastic watch that matched the one she saw on her daughter‟s wrist each day. It occurred to her, as she composed the pieces of her child from spying and recently used garbage cans that she might be having a crisis of some sort, that this was probably something crazy people did. But, she reminded herself, that she had spent the last seven years pretending to live in England while she in fact was working at various stores and developing an alcohol problem. That seemed crazier than what she was doing and made her feel better about it. She was, after all, just getting to know her daughter.

3. curious face “Curiosity killed the cat,” Ms. Cross said. Would it kill her too? Because she was very curious. She was like a kitten, and she liked kittens, but she didn‟t want to die like one. And why was Ms. Cross talking about cats? And weren‟t they supposed to be curious? Shouldn‟t they want to know things? She screwed up her features and spoke up: “I thought we were supposed to be curious.” “It‟s just a saying, Susie. The point is, dear, that we shouldn‟t be too curious, that we shouldn‟t let our imagination and curiosity get away from us.” Ms. Cross stared at her afterwards. Susie knew Ms. Cross was waiting for a response, was expecting her to say something, since Susie liked speaking up, liked questioning, and usually didn‟t take things at face value, at least not from Ms. Cross‟ face, though maybe from her dad‟s. But that was different, because she knew when her dad‟s face was saying things that he really meant. Things that he meant but still, things that he didn‟t want to mean, like when he called her mom a cunt. Susie didn‟t know what cunt meant but she was certain that her mother was a cunt because her dad had that look on his face when he said it, when he would squint and breathe out loudly, letting the truth come. “But how do we learn then?” Susie asked. “We learn by coming to school and by listening to our teacher.” And then Ms. Cross smiled like it was a joke but Susie knew it wasn‟t a joke. Ms. Cross thought she knew

23 everything they needed to know, but there was plenty she didn‟t want them to know, plenty of things her dad told her that she was sure were true. True things that shouldn‟t be true. The class was asked to work on their French but Susie didn‟t like the new French lessons and she told Ms. Cross just that. “But I don‟t like French, and we all speak English.” “Some of us better than others,” Ms. Cross said. And then Ms. Cross picked up a wrinkled piece of paper and brought it over to Susie‟s desk. Ms. Cross bent down and acted like she was going to whisper, but what she said was still loud enough for everyone to hear: “I think we could use some practice with our spelling. Why don‟t you write down the words that you misspelled fifty times each, while the rest of us practice our French.” Ms. Cross laid the crumpled spelling test covered with her dad‟s writing down in front of Susie and smiled. She was a real witch, that Ms. Cross. A bitch, her dad had said, when he thought Susie couldn‟t hear him. She wanted to repeat him. She knew from the sound in his voice that it was true, but she was going to save that one, save it for the best moment. She wasn‟t real mad now, so it didn‟t seem right to waste it. But soon, very soon, and she‟d say it loud enough so that everyone could hear and laugh at that bitch Ms. Cross. At least writing down the words let her mind wander. She thought about how her dad was going to pick her up that day— every other Friday he got off early just so he could pick her up and then they‟d go to a movie that he‟d let her pick out and then she‟d ask for McDonald‟s and he‟d say that they shouldn‟t get it but then he‟d smile and get it anyway. He was a good dad. And then she thought about that strange woman she‟d been seeing after class. She liked her. She had pretty wrinkles, really small ones, perfect creases that slid down the sides of her eyes. She wanted to reach up and touch them, to run her finger down the line and see what it meant. And the woman smiled a lot. She was always smiling up at her. The other day Susie had waved at her and the woman had gotten scared and run away. Maybe she wouldn‟t be there today? She hoped she was. She wanted to see her. She liked the looks of her. And they even had matching watches. Pink, her favorite color. The bell rang. “And we‟re done for the day. Au revoir, mes étudiants.” Susie handed in the words she‟d written, already forgetting how to spell most of them, and ran out of the class with the strap of her book bag dangling from her hand. Her dad was

24 always right outside the door on the days he‟d pick her up, smiling and waiting for her, and she wanted to get to him fast. It was dark outside with clouds and it was raining and she got wet and felt cold as she pushed through the crowd around the entrance. And then her dad wasn‟t smiling, and for a second she thought it was the rain, but it was something else. He was standing wet in front of her, his graying hair and goatee dripping, and he wasn‟t looking at her, he wasn‟t ready for her. He was staring at the woman Susie‟d seen, and Susie could tell that her dad knew something about her, something that was true that he wished wasn‟t.

4. teacher face Ms. Cross has no patience, even though she knows patience is a virtue, and even though her mother has been telling her for years and continues to from the nursing home where Ms. Cross recently put her when she couldn‟t take care of her any longer. “What,” she asks herself, “is so wonderful about patience?” Looking around the dirty classroom she sees that the students have once again neglected to properly organize the crayons by size and color. “Is it too much to ask?” she says, as she puts the maroon with the fuchsia and the sky- blue with the navy. “For that matter, is it too much to ask that they don‟t draw in the margins of their homework or doodle conspicuously when I‟m trying to tell them something important?” But she knows she won‟t get a reply from the student-less room, or from anyone. Everyone else has the patience to let her clean up their messes. Everyone else has the patience to wait a lifetime, to let the world dictate the rules for them. “Or, how about this,” she says, “is it too much to ask that an old woman in a nursing home might be grateful for what God‟s given her and the daughter she has instead of the one she wants?” She may not have patience, but she has plenty to teach. She could teach her mother some respect, and of course, she could teach these second-graders if they cared in the least. “For goodness sake, they‟re only second-graders, who doesn‟t have plenty of things to teach them?” Of course, she can answer her own question. For instance, a certain Mr. Blanche seems to have relatively little to teach young children other than foul words. When the Susie girl said the c-word in her classroom she almost fainted. To think that Mr. Blanche calls the girl‟s mother that. It‟s one thing not to speak of her, or

25 perhaps to speak of her harshly considering the mother‟s absence, but she‟s still blood-relation, and that should mean something. And it‟s not doing anybody any good for Susie to be thinking of her mother and that awful word at the same time. Of course, that isn‟t Mr. Blanche‟s only problem. He‟s probably on drugs from the way he talks. She‟s never heard a man so full of himself and the devil all at once. It is a site to see, that‟s for certain. She feels sorry for Susie and is trying to give her some structure, which is exactly what the girl needs considering all the time Susie spends talking out of turn and drawing inane pictures of smiling stick figures under sunny skies. And to think, Mr. Blanche had the nerve to ask her to give the students more time for art. As far as Ms. Cross can tell Susie is devoting almost the entire class to it and is probably going to end up some indolent thing that sits in a chair all day talking about art and doodling. Well, what can you do? That‟s what she gets for leaving the south for the idiotic suburbs of Ohio where they have religion but not the manors to go with it. Of course, no one at the school knows she‟s southern. They‟d all look at her like she was in a space suit if she muttered a word of it. They think southern people are hicks and trash. “Well,” Ms. Cross says as she throws a tissue smeared with green snot away, “they ought to look at themselves.” Because they certainly can‟t tell she‟s southern. She‟s spent a lot of time working the accent out of her voice and learning how to speak “proper English” which, she notes, is just another way of saying “Midwestern.” It makes her sick to think of it, but what can a person do? Everybody has some sort of expectation of her and she‟s tired of filling in all the blanks for people. At least she has her students, her kids. At least she can leave some impression upon the world. Try to tell her mother that though, and you just get a stupid ugly look from her. If there was one thing the old woman demanded patience for above all, it was for Ms. Cross to await “the right man.” And her mother didn‟t think anything of the kids Ms. Cross taught. “Those ain‟t your kids,” the old woman had said, “Your womb is as barren as it‟s ever been.” That was two months before Ms. Cross negotiated for the old woman to be moved to the nursing home. Of course, that‟s not why Ms. Cross had her moved, but it ended up being a nice consolation all the same. As much as she visited the old woman though it hardly made a difference. Just the last time Ms. Cross went to the nursing home the old woman rolled out in her wheelchair with her pajamas still on and her gray hair frizzed and had once again told Ms.

26

Cross, who at the age of forty-five has no problem facing the reality of the situation, that “the right man” would come along if she merely had patience. And, having no patience, Ms. Cross had curtly told her mother that she was happy with her life the way it was, even if she ended up (and she put much stress on the word) a spinster. The old woman responded by flinging her hands up madly, covering her ears, and screaming nonsense from her wheelchair. Who, Ms. Cross thought, doesn‟t have patience now? And who has time for it? Certainly not her mother, and definitely not Ms. Cross. If you want something you have to take it. She wanted to be a teacher so she studied hard and got a scholarship, and when she found out jobs were limited in her hometown area she‟d moved to where they weren‟t. And no, she doesn‟t have the patience to teach the children in her care because their time together is relatively limited. Of course, try to tell the parents who insist on the perfection of their children that perhaps they are doing one thing wrong, and they‟ll turn on you like a mother bear. She is only trying to help, but you cannot explain anything to parents. They know things and you are the stupid presumptuous person who is attempting to tell them “how to raise their kids.” And, yes, perhaps patience would help her sleep easier at night. Maybe this is one area where patience might pay off, but patience implies that she is waiting for something, and if she is honest with herself she realizes no one really cares who their second-grade teacher is or was. Still, this doesn‟t mean she can‟t make a difference if she puts her mind to it. And she‟ll continue to give girls like Susie the attention and structure they need to succeed. These thoughts come fast to Ms. Cross as she finishes cleaning up the classroom and putting everything in its proper place. Once finished she makes her way to the school entrance to watch the girls and boys meet their parents and buses safely. Outside, it is raining. Ms. Cross is careful to stay under the archway of the entrance that provides relatively complete shelter. From here she watches as the children run away in disorganized and messy retreat, their bodies spreading out over the grass, trying to push through the rain and avoid the puddles that splash up muddy on their clothes. The rain and slow-moving buses have pushed the cars back to back leaving some parents sitting quietly in their vehicles away from the rain while others run towards their children with umbrellas stuck up above their heads.

27

Ms. Cross finds the eyes of mothers she has spoken to in conference, of the few fathers that pick up their children. Some nod her way, smile politely, or wave, but she knows regardless that none of them will truly allow her to help their children. “A shame,” she mutters, “I really have something to offer.” Only within the last few months she had convinced to school to allow her to bring French lessons into the classroom. They kept crying that they couldn‟t pay her more, but she didn‟t expect more money, she just didn‟t see why she shouldn‟t offer up all that she knows. It‟s important to Ms. Cross that she exhibit her strengths. Ms. Cross notices now a few people are straggling in front of her, outside of the dry entranceway. There is the little Susie girl staring up at a woman Ms. Cross does not recognize, and the father, Mr. Blanche. None of them have an umbrella. The woman stands still as a statue on the front steps of the school, arms outstretched, palms up to the rain. Ms. Cross thinks she looks like a bad theatre-actor. She looks staged. Of course, it does not help that the woman looks particularly odd besides; a very pale face against the storm, the drab loose-fitting clothes that look like a burlap sack draped over her for a race, and the strange addition of a pink watch (certainly made specifically for children) that is clasped on her left wrist. The father, Mr. Blanche, scowls at the woman as his hands grip tightly on Susie‟s shoulders. Mr. Blanche causing trouble of some sort, no doubt. Nothing good comes of people like him. Ms. Cross feels the need to investigate, but just before she makes up her mind to step forward she hears Mr. Blanche speak. “I am abso-fucking-lutely shocked” he says, staring intensely at the woman. “Goddamn. This is really something. The prodigal mother returns.” He laughs, making his face ugly and red, and sort of massages Susie‟s shoulders, though the girl looks to be in slight pain from the pressure. The odd woman glances at Susie and lets her arms drop down to her sides. “I never went to England,” the woman says. “I‟ve been here all along. Isn‟t that wonderful? And I‟ve remade myself. I went back to square one and started all over again. And just for you, Susie. I‟m so happy to meet you.” “I don‟t know if you went to England, but you definitely weren‟t here,” Mr. Blanche cuts in, not allowing his daughter to respond. “And there‟s enough shit to deal with without you.” Mr. Blanche pauses, his hands still working at the girl‟s shoulders. “Why don‟t you try England

28 out if you haven‟t already? I‟ll buy you a ticket, I‟ll send it to you express wherever the fuck you have been.” He laughs again, but it fades out quickly. Ms. Cross knows she is the only one in hearing distance of this odd display. Everyone else has moved, though she can see many parents and children watching silently and expectantly from their cars. And so, it is, once again, Ms. Cross‟ job to attempt to bring order and to exercise what she proudly calls non-patience, though she is annoyed to have to step into the rain. “I‟m sorry, Mr. Blanche, but could you please move this along? I know most of the children have gone, but I don‟t like that language here, and I would prefer we not play out this little drama on the front steps of the school.” Mr. Blanche jumps back, apparently just noticing Ms. Cross‟ presence. “Mind your own business,” Mr. Blanche says. “Well, you see, this is my business, as it is occurring on school property.” Ignoring his glare Ms. Cross turns to the woman across from him. “And may I ask what business you have here, ma‟am?” “This is my daughter,” the woman says, pointing at Susie. “Susie‟s mother. Well, it‟s nice to meet you, but I‟ll have to kindly ask you to do this elsewhere.” Ms. Cross smiles politely. Ms. Cross looks out at the cars that are waiting in a line behind the buses and sees that the crowd that stares from their cars is waiting for something from this scene, a flash of violence perhaps, something they can gossip about and that makes them feel better about themselves as parents. Any of them that know Mr. Blanche probably know the kind of character he is. It would be nice if one of the mothers or fathers would offer a bit of assistance, but she guesses that the rain keeps them away. “I‟ve got no problem with that,” Mr. Blanche says. He pulls at the girl a little too hard. “Be careful, Mr. Blanche,” Ms. Cross cautions, but he ignores her, starting to turn away. The little girl is crying now, though the rain makes the sound of sobbing the only indicator of it. And now, Ms. Cross feels words building up in her mind to spit at these three. She feels like she could teach them all a lesson or two, but who‟d listen? The woman lifts an arm waving the bright pink watch in the dark air of the afternoon storm. She brushes Mr. Blanche‟s arm in a weak attempt to stop him. He ignores it and tries to pull the Susie girl along.

29

“I‟m new! And I can love you now!” The woman says the words with great enthusiasm and spreads her arms wide, as if expecting a hug from the Susie girl. Ms. Cross frowns at the woman and feels some of the rainwater enter her down-turned lips. “Do you want me to hit you?” Mr. Blanche says. “An inappropriate question. Let us assume for everyone‟s sake here that the answer is obvious.” Ms. Cross straightens her back and tries to appear taller. Mr. Blanche turns to her to tell her to shut up and then turns back to the woman. “You ever think? You ever wonder what the fuck it‟s been like? You‟ve been gone for years. It‟s a goddamn miracle that someone as crazy as you is even still alive, but that doesn‟t mean that you should have brought your worthless self down here. Let me ask you something. You ever wonder if maybe you aren‟t wanted, aren‟t needed anymore?” His hands are shaking on the girl‟s shoulders. “But I told you. I never left,” the woman says. Mr. Blanche considers, lets his face grow red, and then reaches out and slaps the woman. “My Lord!” Ms. Cross yells. “Now, really, Mr. Blanche, I must ask you to leave and stop this at once. I‟ll be reporting you regardless, but I‟d prefer your immediate dismissal.” She reaches out to grab at Susie, to pull her away, but Mr. Blanche shoves her without even turning in her direction. She feels useless and resigns herself to step slightly back into the dry entranceway, though the rain has already soaked her clothes through. She watches as Mr. Blanche seems to realize he has hit a woman in public and pushed another. He breathes deeply, and as he tries to regain his composure the woman bends down in front of Susie and looks so sad and (Ms. Cross must admit) lovely peering into her face. The girl stares up at the woman with tears in her eyes and then reaches up a hand. Ms. Cross thinks that perhaps Susie is going to caress the woman‟s face and so she is all the more surprised when the girl slaps the woman‟s left cheek in perfect imitation of her father. Ms. Cross steps back out from her dry sanctuary and reaches out to the girl. “Susie, don‟t treat your mother that way.” Mr. Blanche turns steely eyes on her, and Ms. Cross retreats before he can push her away again. “I said, mind your own business.” Susie walks to Ms. Cross in the entryway and stares up at her. “It‟s okay,” Susie says, “I don‟t know this woman.” And then she turns back to her father who is waiting.

30

The odd woman turns to leave, her face looking confused and pulled in on itself, and in a few moments she has wandered off into the gloomy afternoon. Mr. Blanche and Susie make their way to a car and Ms. Cross follows the stare of Susie as she gazes out from the inside of the passenger-side window. The traffic is very suddenly released as the last of the buses moves out of the way. As Mr. Blanche and Susie pull up to the stoplight that marks the border of the school she watches the young girl as she rolls down the window. The father is trying to grab something from her hands, but it appears that Susie succeeds as a pink watch is tossed to the wet pavement behind them. The pink dot lies alone in the dark road that is soon abandoned. “Patience,” she says out loud, “for what? Yes, let‟s all have patience until the world ends, until it turns over on its own head. Let‟s just sit back and have patience.” Ms. Cross thinks of her mother in the nursing home and feels bad for putting her there. Still, she couldn‟t really take care of her properly. Ms. Cross has given about all she can to her mother. What should she have done? Been patient until the old woman fell down the stairs and broke her neck? No, she will not be patient, but instead call child protective services in the morning. She will not allow anyone to push her around, and it‟ll show Mr. Blanche that having a daughter with a crazy mother is better than not having one at all. Ms. Cross shakes her body and squeezes at her clothes. “What a day,” she says exasperated, and she looks around, but there‟s no one there to hear her.

31

Curve

I do not have one. I stand on tile floors and feel the cold, each inch of my foot flat on the ground. Even though I‟m told lines that diverge are beautiful and full, I remain flat, my arms straight bony sticks with thin pointed hairs. I watch her in bed: she turns, contorts, stretches and feels. She balls up on one side or forms an S that slips skillfully from top right corner to bottom left. The cat kneads at her feet and then conforms to the shape of bended leg, nestled in her curve. I take my oatmeal with toast. She takes hers with an English Muffin propped on the side of her bowl— it waits to be covered with syrup and spread over with the serrated edge of a knife. Honey is poured from arched hands. Bananas sliced at an incline. Chopped almonds tossed in with a flip of wrist. I wish she‟d express her shape in language so I don‟t have to. I wish she‟d bring out her rimmed hat, trailing scarf, the dripping fruit she bites into that slips down onto wavy blouses as she walks. But I‟m the problem. My body is always falling into a line. In a chair my back becomes straight, legs out in front of me, toes pointed rigid and unwavering to the sides. I wish she‟d push me: off the balcony as I pose in the morning, standing upright, coffee steaming predicable lines, cigarette poking from my mouth. Push me over, run up on me unpredictable and fast. Knock me over so I can break and curve.

32

Hannah’s Revenge

Hannah and I walk home together from high school. Our street is an old one with a massive maple tree in almost every yard— limbs litter the sidewalks and street as well as the small front yards that are dominated by the bulging roots that surround the ancient trees. It does not matter the season of year— a day or two after cleaning up the limbs are back again. A permanent form of natural litter. On these walks Hannah tells me stories about when we grew up because I can‟t remember anything before my sixth birthday. “Do you remember playing kissing games?” she asks, her eyes playful and deadly, darting up and down my body. “Nope.” “Every Sunday after church you would come up to me and ask me if I wanted to kiss. You‟d beg me, and plead with me. „Please, please Hannah, no one will ever know.‟ It was really pretty pathetic.” Hannah smiles at me, a sweet smile, as if she has just complimented me. “Yeah,” she says, grasping some silent agreement that I am unaware of, “you were pathetic.” “Well, don‟t stop there. I‟d hate not to hear how tragically in love with you I was.” Through default, I smile back at her. “It could be kind of sweet from time to time, but if you did something like that now I could never look at you again without thinking you didn‟t have balls.” She raises a hand to her full blond hair, pushes strands out of her eyes. “I was five years old, Hannah.” My voice is whiny and I sound like I don‟t have balls. “I know. I‟m the one telling the story.” And she is always telling the story. She is a master story-teller. She knows how to add twists, how to push in a like, how to create emphasis. I tell myself that it‟s the stories I‟m in love with, that I really hate Hannah. I think about how I wouldn‟t mind dying and then I hate myself for the thought. I tell Hannah I want to kill myself, but before I get to a reason she cuts me off. “If that‟s really what you want then you should do it. Everybody has a right to try to be what they want to be. It‟s like not fair, the societal pressures. Some of us just don‟t belong.”

33

Maybe she knows and she is tired of me, telling me I should kill myself because of her secret knowledge that I‟m in love with her, hate myself for it, and as a result, contemplate suicide. Is she capable of such thought? On the walk we pass by other girls, girls who suit me, or at least that‟s what Hannah says— “Jesus, that girl is sooooo fat; it‟s disgusting. What I was gonna‟ say— sorry, I couldn‟t hold that back— was that she would be a great fit for you.” She smiles. “She‟s really nice; she lets me copy her homework in Biology sometimes and she‟s always complimenting me. Though, when you are like that size, how can you not compliment everyone? I don‟t know, I guess I‟m digressing” she makes finger quotes around digressing, “as you would say.” Hannah wasn‟t always like this. When we were little, after my sixth birthday that is, I remember her as kind. I remember her patting my head when I cried because my mother yelled at me for getting a little dirt on the new carpet. I remember her wiping away my tears. She was sweet in a movie-way, always there at the right time to comfort me, and somehow she turned into a bitch. And I can‟t shake it, the memories and how much they mean to me. Hannah, on the other hand, does not seem to remember emotion. Occasionally, she‟ll show me what I tell myself is her real face, young and innocent. She really has quite a look about her, a shy smile, and penetrating light-blue eyes. She shows me this innocence when she says goodbye as we reach her house on the walk home, with a light wave of her hand, a small flip of the wrist as she makes her way to her front door, and leaves me stupefied standing on the sidewalk. -- Hannah tells me other stories on other days, but her favorite has to be the story about my sixth birthday and the concussion I received. She was apparently with me at the time when the maple limb snapped and landed on the back of my head. The result was a sort of blanket covering my memories before then. It wasn‟t amnesia; at the time I still knew everyone, their names and relation to me, but I couldn‟t and can‟t remember specifics so that I am only left with Hannah and my mother as possible sources to inform my first six years. This is how she tells it: “Okay, so like you were chasing me around, trying to grab my butt, and you should know you were the first to successfully do so, though after that I‟ve always given my permission…”

34

Always towards the beginning of the telling she will laugh a lot, very unnatural forced laughter that I assume is meant to make me feel like shit, or at least that is what it accomplishes. “…we had been playing all day, some game you invented, a sort of perversion of tag, where like we had to grab each other‟s butts instead of just tagging, and I never wanted to play the game, but you always did, and since our families hung out so much I just played along…” This point in the story changes a little each time, but in general she will either smile at me and simply say: “…well, and then you ran into a tree and the limb fell on your head.” Or, she‟ll gaze up, to the side, or at her feet, and say some version of this: “… your mom was inside still making the cake, cheesecake— your favorite at the time. She‟d put cherries and whip cream on top when she was done, but, obviously, she didn‟t finish the cake that day. When it happened she was yelling something at your dad, something about „mistakes‟, or that‟s the only word that I heard. She was probably just being her usual bitchy self. “She usually watched us when we played. She‟d kind of stand guard at the glass door on your deck and make sure we hadn‟t run off out of the yard. She was a very imposing figure.” When Hannah says words that she thinks are large or overly intelligent she‟ll overstress them, and shake them out of her mouth. She does that with “imposing”— she lowers her voice, pulls her neck back, and shakes her head with something like disgust. “We would make fun of her, call her „the General‟, salute her when she turned her back. She was always out to get us…” Sometimes I will interject here, say something in defense of my mother to which Hannah will promptly respond by shouting “Your mom‟s a bitch!” and then discontinue the story. But, most of the time, I listen all the way through. Hannah has taught me some sort of patience. “…anyway, I think that because she was arguing with your dad she wasn‟t paying attention to us. Your parents argued a lot though. I guess that‟s why they divorced. Anyway, it was a really cold day even though it was early fall—” “I know when my birthday is.” “But it was colder than usual, fucking freezing, and windy as hell. And we were both dressed up really warm, happy to get our winter stuff out so early. You had your big puffy blue coat on, you looked ridiculous, and I had my cute little pink parka. You also had a hat on and it

35 kept covering your eyes when you were running, and you‟d push it back up with your gloved hands. Anyway, it was cold and everything smelled good and fresh with like that comforting sting that the cold gives you when you breathe in. It wasn‟t a bad day to be outside really, even though it was so cold. “I remember a lot of the branches on the maple had already fallen down and they were all over the yard. Earlier in the day you had been hitting me with one of the small ones, snapping it against my leg, and I remember it hurt like really bad, that sort of stinging that you only feel when you‟re cold. I had been crying a lot, not because of you hitting me, but because of something else. You didn‟t believe me about something.” “About what?” “I don‟t remember. I was six. Anyway, I just remember that I had been crying, a lot, and that you hitting me with the stick didn‟t make things any better, but I was happy that your mom wasn‟t watching us, so I let you play your butt-tag game. “I found the perfect hiding place though, inside your mother‟s bushes, on the side of the yard, and you were looking for me forever. There was still a little green on the bushes— but barely any, and you like still couldn‟t find me. I sat in this big empty area in the middle that I‟d carved out over time by breaking a stick or two each time I‟d get in, so that you couldn‟t see it from the outside. I played a lot with a ladybug that I found— I squished the ladybug when I got bored and cold, and then I ran around the back of the house to find you. When you saw me coming you ran straight for me, but I think your hat was covering one of your eyes because you ran right into the tree. It was hilarious. Anyway, then you started to roll over or something and the branch fell down on the back of your head. I stood over you awhile, just looking at you—” “Jesus, you just stood there. How long?” “I don‟t know, like a few minutes. I didn‟t know what was wrong with you, and I guess I was just curious or something. I remember there was a little bit of red that I could see coming out from under your ha—” “Blood, they call it blood.” “I know what it‟s called, idiot, that‟s just what I was thinking at the time, red. Anyway, eventually your mom ran outside screaming, saying that I shouldn‟t have let you get hurt, that that is what she gets for letting you play with me and not watching us. Your mom carried you in and then your dad drove us all to the hospital, and my parents picked me up from there.”

36

In some versions of the story my mom called her a “little bitch,” and other times my mom said nothing at all, but just stared at her with eyes that told little Hannah that she was “worthless.” Hannah‟s feelings toward my mother seem exaggerated, but to be fair my mother doesn‟t like Hannah, and seems as if she never has. Granted, what she says most bothers her about Hannah is that she‟s a liar. I don‟t know if I would call Hannah a liar because I know there is, regardless, something underneath the untruths and something of the things that she doesn‟t say in the words she does. -- The day after Hannah tells me that I should kill myself she relates one of many stories that shows her apparent desire to give her body to anyone and everyone except me. I hate to say this, but she is a slut. I don‟t really even believe in the word. I just don‟t know what else to call it when someone gives blowjobs to several different people in the bathroom during school. I am repulsed and enticed by this, wanting her in a different way when I hear these stories, from her and from others. “Hey John, you know Bobby Winfield, right?” She is asking me as we wait in line for food. I am thinking of chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes, how I will make sandwiches with my roll, and with Hannah‟s roll— she hates bread, or carbohydrates. I‟m not sure which. “Yeah, he‟s a real prick. He shoots spitwads in French class, one hit me on the neck the other day. Disgusting and juvenile idiot.” I know this is not what she‟s asking me, and that she does not care, that she only wants to know if I know him, but I always supply more information than I am asked for, if I‟m asked. “Funny that you should say prick.” She licks her lips, and lets her teeth barely skim across the lower lip afterwards. She giggles a little, and actually blushes— I am trying to decide if she is indeed embarrassed or flushed with some sort of sexual rise, but I do not ask; I assume the worst, as has become my habit with her. When I receive my meal I can only stare at the array of food that on any other day would be delicious and the highlight of the long school hours, but today only reminds me of Hannah‟s sexual exploits. Something about mashed potatoes. Something about two chicken nuggets.

37

Hannah and I make our way to our usual table, just the two of us in a corner of a large cafeteria. We avoid the large crowds, the typical gatherings. This is one of the oddities of Hannah that increases my curiosity. If asked, many girls would say they are friends with Hannah, but she does not want them or need them. She knows that they will be there if she calls. She is stunningly beautiful and no one denies it and she wields insults like a samurai sword, like a video game version of herself. I poke my food with a fork. Hannah kisses her roll and throws it on the floor. She stares at the roll and then stares at me. She wants to see how far I will go for her, if I will eat the roll. I pick up the roll and walk it over to the long line of garbage cans at the other end of the cafeteria. She glares at me through the rest of lunch, but she still sits with me. She might be thinking that she‟s pushed me too far this time, but I doubt that, and I‟m not sure that she would care if she had. -- On the way home from school Hannah kisses me. We are walking and she is telling me about Bobby Winfield underneath the bleachers and I am ignoring her. Then, she kisses me. She grabs me by the back of my head and pulls me in with such force that I am cut off from elongating “Oww!!” with the touch of her lips and the sudden realization that I am living one of my dreams or nightmares. It lasts for a few seconds, until the same girl who Hannah had said was good for me the day before yells “Go get „em!” from across the street. Hannah releases me from the kiss and frowns. As I stare at her, my cheeks flushed, and my pants becoming uncomfortably tight, she runs away. I realize as I watch her running off that our story might encompass more than Hannah‟s beauty and the way she lets it fall on the ones around her, that maybe I have a chance. -- Hannah plays on the soccer team and is a cheerleader, and I do nothing but sit at home and play computer games. Hannah engages in sports because she likes to show off her body; I can‟t blame her, but she can be pretty blatant about it. Once, after the American women‟s soccer game where the player took off her shirt, Hannah, in parody, took off her pants after she scored a goal, and she was wearing a thong. She was suspended, but she has a male coach so it was only for a couple weeks. I, on the other hand,

38 only take off my pants in front of the computer when I am watching compromising material— and I am quite certain that it would not excite anyone to see me in that position. Hannah could be a real socialite if she wanted to, but she doesn‟t seem to like excessive attention from the same person— I guess I‟m an exception there. She is popular with the boys, which I assume has to do with the stories I hear, and the girls often go on and on about how beautiful she is. They‟ll talk to her if she talks first, but in general they avoid her. They seem to sense something dangerous in her, and Hannah seems to like that they do. Hannah has built an odd army of distanced followers. When I try to hurt her because she has hurt me, when I say something like “your valley girl accent fits your bitchiness” she shrugs it off and tells me to go home and jack off to World of Warcraft. She is sure of something, though what it is I don‟t know. I am reminded of this and other things as I think of Hannah and our kiss— I can see all our differences clearly. I can see a thin black line with me on one side and Hannah on the other, and the kiss that brings us together in turmoil. And yet, we‟ve been together for years. On opposite sides of some unseen line, but together. I go to meet her at her house in the morning, restless and ready to walk to school with her, to try my chances at another kiss. Standing out front of her well-groomed ranch-style home I start to think of Bobby Winfield and Hannah under the bleachers and I vomit a little in my mouth, but the thought goes away. Now, things are different. The kiss always turns things on their head. The kiss is what changes a comedy to a tragedy or vice versa. It‟s a kiss that spins things. I wait for about fifteen minutes— school will start in ten minutes, and it‟s a ten minute walk. I leave and when I get to school she isn‟t there. I consider the reasons for the kiss. Most likely she did it out of cruelty, but does it make a difference? Maybe she is really giving me a gift by giving me her attention; maybe I am really worth her time. I am comforted by a small revelation— I don‟t want to kill myself, I just think that I should want to. If my love for Hannah is idiotic then that is what it is, and nothing more. I think of other stories she has told, other reasons to love her, to hold on to that kiss as something real

39 and meaningful. More than anything, I know there is something in the stories that makes me love her. There is one other story that Hannah tells often, her second-favorite I suppose. It is centered in the church that we attended together, where we first met, I am told, in Sunday School. Church had just let out, and our pastor wanted to speak to Hannah about something she had said, something about God not being her father. This is how she tells it: “Okay, so, first of all, that pastor was a total dick. He had a lot of skin. I don‟t know why I put it that way— he wasn‟t fat, but maybe he used to be. It just seemed like he had too much skin so that it hung off his cheeks and neck, and made big bags under his eyes. And, he just looked smooth with his bald head and all that skin— there was no texture to him. I guess you probably remember him a little since your family went there for a few more years, but you don‟t remember enough, I can tell you that much. “Anyway, we were outside on the swings and you were blowing me kisses.” She stops here sometimes, and looks up before she says, “I don‟t think I was blowing kisses back, but whatever. Anyway, you‟re blowing me kisses and Pastor Tom calls my name. He had a really creepy deep-throated voice, and he always sounded like he was about to start singing some old gospel song. „Hannah‟, he says, „there‟s something we need to talk about, dear.‟ My parents were standing next to him, and I remember he patted my dad on the back and winked at him. Some sort of reassurance that he could handle me, I guess, like he even fucking knew me. “Anyway, I remember feeling really nervous because I knew that God was supposed to be my father, but what do they expect from a five-year-old? My father is not God. His name is Nick, and he‟s a real estate broker. And…” Sometimes she will become remarkably quiet at this point as rage builds up in her features, and tries to escape through long meditated inhales and exhales of breath. But, if she continues, it is something like this: “…well, you tried to follow me inside, and he said „no, I just want to talk to Hannah‟ which is not what happened, more like „yell at,‟ or, I don‟t know. Anyway, I went inside, and we walked back that long hallway with all the doors, the Sunday School room, the Adult Bible Study room, the Prayer room, and then last on the left, Pastor Tom‟s office.

40

“I remember it was like really hot inside because they closed the air conditioning vents in the smaller rooms to save money, and the blinds on the window were open, and the sun was shining really bright on the room. So, we get in there, and he closes the door, and he closes the blinds, and he points at a chair. I don‟t know if you remember, but it was a really big comfy maroon chair, but it was like too big, too comfortable. I didn‟t get in the chair at first so he picked me up and put me in the chair, and I remember his hands were all clammy and gross and he smelled like sweat…” She always pauses here, maybe tongues the inside of her cheek and maybe closes her eyes before she continues. “…and then he yelled at me and told me that God was my heavenly father, that there was a difference between Nick and God, and that God was more important. He told me that God punished his children when they disobeyed or lost faith. He told me that God was watching me. He told me that God knew what I did, and that I better…” And it ends somewhere in here, her words trailing off. If she returns to the story she tells me that she found me afterwards and told me all about what happened, and that she told her parents about what happened, and that eventually everyone knew what happened, but only her parents believed. She tells me that my mother didn‟t believe her which makes sense considering my mother‟s conviction that Hannah is a liar. But Hannah also says that I stopped believing her. “Well, shit Hannah, I‟m sorry, but I can‟t even remember it.” I‟ll say, but she‟ll tell me I should, that that‟s one thing I should remember. -- I try to follow Hannah. I try to remember what I should, but can‟t. After missing school the day before Hannah arrives late to our shared English class and everything in me holds me to my chair, keeps me from jumping on her and wrapping my arms around her. Our teacher is talking about Romeo and Juliet and I feel flattered by the suggested comparison. I have inadvertently fallen into a story about a tragic teen romance. That‟s okay, something is better than nothing. After school, Hannah comes up to me. “We need to talk, like now.” Her voice is urgent, like she had taken the day off to consider what she might say, and how exactly to say it. I am hopeful for a moment. “Okay, we can talk on the way home.”

41

“You‟re not going to like what I have to say, but I‟m ready to tell you.” On the way back Hannah tells me a story. This is how she tells it: “You know the beginning already, that part only changes a little bit. I know that I don‟t tell it the same every time, but that‟s because it‟s like not the same story. Okay, so we were playing like I said before, your stupid butt-tag game, or whatever. Your mom was watching like she always was, but then your dad said something that made her mad and they started arguing. Obviously, this was before their divorce…” “Yeah, I figured that was implied. I remember when they divorced.” “Well, sometimes I forget what you remember because it feels like you don‟t remember anything. At least, you don‟t remember anything important. Like, just stupid things. Anyway, so the day that you got your concussion. I know I‟ve told it before, and I know you love hearing it for some reason, but this is what really happened. I was mad at you. I was really mad at you, and your stupid bitch mother because she turned you against me. “You believed her because you were a stupid kid who believed anything anyone told him. At church you would always talk about God, and say that since he was watching us that maybe „we better not kiss‟ but that‟s because you were stupid and didn‟t know yet that God was made- up. So, you‟d spend all that time trying to get me to kiss you with some kissing game and then you‟d say that God would see us and be mad. “At school I remember you always did whatever your teacher told you. You‟d make pictures if she told you, and you‟d do all your alphabet exercises because you thought you‟d get in trouble, but you didn‟t know what that was. I‟m still not sure you know what real trouble is. “Anyway, so I was mad at you because you didn‟t believe me.” “About what?” “About Pastor Tom, and what he did to me. I‟ve told you that before, but you don‟t listen, or remember anything important. You don‟t know what things mean.” “But all Pastor Tom did was yell at you.” “You are fucking oblivious. Do you think the story ends where I end it? Do you think I have that kind of control? Do you think the story actually changes just because I stop telling it? Are you that stupid?” “I don‟t understand.” This is all I know.

42

“That‟s like obvious. I‟m trying to help you understand. I‟m trying to tell you enough. Do you want me to tell you or not?” “Tell me.” “Okay, so we were playing the butt-tag game because it was your birthday, and that‟s what you wanted to do, and your mom wasn‟t watching, or whatever, God wasn‟t watching. I think maybe you confused the two when you were little. You could be really stupid. And I kept asking you why you didn‟t believe me, and you‟d say that it was because your mom was right, but that didn‟t mean we couldn‟t still be friends, but I didn‟t want to be your friend if you believed that. I didn‟t want you if you didn‟t believe me. “And it was making me really mad, and you said that I should go home, that you didn‟t want to play with me anymore and it made me cry. “I went and hid in the bushes on the side of the yard. I stared at the little ladybug. I picked it up and let it walk on me, taking off my parka to watch it crawl on my skin, and I remember thinking it was weird that I couldn‟t feel it, that without my eyes I would never know it was there. It kept trying to fly away, but I didn‟t let it, and eventually I crushed when it tried to leave me. I was so mad at you.” I look away from Hannah. I stare up at a plane that is passing over. Some birds are circling in the sky; they dwarf the plane in size. “Maybe you should be mad at me, I don‟t know, but when I left the bushes I found the biggest branch that I could hold. I snuck up on you and hit you, and when you fell down I hit you again, and then I stared at the red that came out from under your hat in little streams, at the little design it made on your forehead. “You didn‟t believe me John, and I told you the truth.” “You hit me twice. You hit me when I was on the ground?.” “You deserved it. And what would you even do with the truth if you knew it? You didn‟t believe me.” “But I believe you now.” “How can you believe me when you don‟t even know what happened? How do you know that what I told is the truth? Why would I tell someone the truth who doesn‟t believe it?” I don‟t answer. I make new memories, better ones.

43

But, ultimately, I am lost when she tells me what happened. I thought I was telling a love story.

44

Borders

If I had known the prostitute was a lesbian I would never have engaged her services, resulting in this still-beating heart placed on the fence that marks the border of my property. It sits, pulsating, blood running down the sides of the fence, ruining the staining I recently completed. It looks to be weeping over its misuse and misapplication on a man. But now I see the prostitute is just leaving my house, clearly with heart intact, and that in fact this still-beating heart belongs to my wife and the wife of my neighbor, and his neighbor‟s wife, and so on. It belongs to Jules— they all have the same name— who makes us, the men, think of tiny boxes filled with diamonds and other hearty stones that have been locked up and hidden away somewhere. We think of Jules and reminisce on our time with her. It is possible we could have predicted this, seeing it in Jules‟ sad eyes as we released her to Sheppardsville and the care of the fine physicians there. But we were scared of her. What else could we do? And even if I admit the possibility of predicting such a circumstance, who could really predict that a still-beating heart would be placed on the border of my property? Who could really predict that upon Jules‟ release she would find us unfaithful and prove the devastation we have wrecked upon her by ripping her heart from her chest and placing it on the triangle-spike of a fence? Maybe, the prediction, the possibility of it, was made possible when the tornadoes came and ripped the shingles from our roofs, the siding from our well-groomed houses? Maybe this was the time when I could have predicted it, and when, granted, I at least predicted the need for a lesbian prostitute in the neighborhood. But this is all guesswork, and this all happened before the men in the neighborhood started disappearing. I don‟t even know where we‟re headed, and I‟m the smartest among us. There is a long line of school buses taking us beyond the borders of our town, and we sit on the splitting green seats with downcast eyes. When I look over at my friend J— and ask him if he knows where we are going he shakes his head slowly in discontent. He only knows that our departure is necessary. He only knows we are seeking silence. We sense the danger of the place we are heading, but it is a danger hidden beneath words and actions. It is a danger that never really comes to the surface, but hangs low and present all around us.

45

We come to the pumpkin patch with this knowledge. Amid inflated genetically-altered pumpkins one cannot really hope to find quiet though, so our eyes play around the place, seek out others. For awhile we are drawn to watching a very old man attempt to move one of the larger pumpkins. It lifts an inch or two off the ground, and then falls down again. Over and over he fails. I watch him until I become bored and then I look around me. I see the white picket fence that surrounds the patch. I see the ivy that crawls up the fence, and I know we will simply employ the lesbian prostitute once again, and that we‟ll allow Jules to keep ripping her heart from her chest and placing it on the fence-borders. And then I find J—‟s eyes meeting the pathetic old man‟s eyes and we all feel sorry for him.

46

These Hands

Walking down the lamp-lit street he studies the cobblestones beneath him for signs. He can feel the labor of his hands all around him. But the buildings and streets are complete now and renters have moved in, so he is searching. The street is full of drunks. Tottering in alleyway entrances are skimpily dressed college girls with blank faces being led by meaty looking young men with fire in their eyes. Everything around him tells him that he is old. Lighted signs jut out into the air promising more drinks, greasy food, dancing— they flash at regular intervals, or purr in one steady note. The orbs of the lamps cast rings of illumination in and out of which the drunks stumble. Some chant school anthems, words muttered and forgotten with the next rise of a paper-bagged bottle that hangs limply from a couple fingers. Others cast long glances at one or another of their peers, taking advantage of the dark strange summer night to drink their fill of the bodies that normally must be viewed with propriety and a proper, pre-determined, yet unknown amount of time— gawking is legalized for the night, and everyone stares and guffaws and slaps asses and hands, and gives hugs to members of the same sex or opposite sex, to whoever they had wanted to hug in sober daylight but had never had the courage or ability to do so. He feels it too, the strong desire to seize someone and hold them close. Baseball hats are worn sideways, backwards, and frontwards. Rings pierce through ears, exposed belly buttons, and every once in awhile if he looks closely he can see, worn by the self- proclaimed risqué sexually-liberated females, a small silver, purple, or light-blue stud poking out of a nose— an afterthought of sexuality. Hanging in the air is the smell of fried food— chicken, potatoes, shrimp, onions— all battered and sunk into the screaming vats of grease that decorate the crowded kitchens of the pubs and restaurants. Everything is alive, pulsing. He absorbs, wanting to see and feel everything. He observes, looking for signs that he knows are out there, that must be gleaming from his labor, feeling the brick trowel still in his hands, the mortar spreading in front of him, the weight of bricks layered one on top of the other. The feel of skill transformed into beauty. He studies his feet and the veins that pop out prominently around the plastic bindings of his flip-flops. Flip-flop, he says aloud, muttering indistinguishable words afterward, mocking the sound of foreign languages with which he has no familiarity except from subtitled movies

47 that he sometimes watches on HBO On-Demand. He studies his hands, strong and secure hands, full of promise of years more of physical labor. These hands made for work both arduous and delicate, crafting beautiful sculptures from rough barbaric materials that might cut the skin, but not this skin, not these hands. He sees a sign posted on the wall outside of a bar. “Help Wanted: Seeking Highly- Motivated Individual With At Least One Year of Experience Bartending.” A good sign though he has no bartending experience to speak of. He fumbles with the door handle, his strong hand somehow slipping from the silver knob. High and drunk, he focuses his energies on the door handle. Positive-thinking. He imagines himself opening the door and doing what he believes to be swaggering. He will swagger, move with purpose and style, up to a wooden counter behind which stands a man that looks much like him, and he will say with purpose and style, I would like a job. Then he will reach out his hand, his strongest asset, loan it to the similar-looking, middle-aged, strong but sensitive man who pours drinks with such purpose, such style, that one cannot deny that this is man in his most natural state. And then, it is he behind the bar, making layered shots without concentration, knowing just how to tip the shot glass, how to lay the liquor, then liqueur, then yet another liqueur, until what rests before him is a perfect blend of clear and brownish liquids which regulars pour down their throats with speed and supernatural thirst, demanding always that he make their drinks, that his strong, sturdy hands be the ones doing all the layering. He sees it, knows it. Positive-thinking. This time he grasps the handle strongly and throws open the door to a small room clouded with smoke and straining with the voices of college students who don‟t quite understand how to do this yet, how to perform in public, how to behave in a bar, how to order drinks and appear knowledgeable. In his mind‟s eye, standing behind this shabby scuffed wooden bar, even the cheapest of beers is given with reluctance to the hand that doesn‟t understand it. He stops for a moment just inside the door and breathes deeply, pulling smoke into his lungs with a great fervor. It does not choke him, though he is turned off by the slight smell of dried beer and vomit that lends a particularly nauseating effect to the smell of cigarettes. One must become familiar with one‟s workplace. He planned on swaggering, but he sees his movements now as more of a saddling, a cowboy-ish lean that completes the movement when he reaches the bar. At the opposite end of the counter an overweight man with a pony tail is accepting a five dollar bill in exchange for a rocks glass filled with ice and dark liquid. He leans in, cowboy

48 stance extenuated, placing his elbow down on the counter with two fingers dangling in the air, signaling the fat man to come to him. The fat man sees him and holds up a finger to signal, yes I see you, and I‟ll be there in a minute. He maintains the pose as if the fat man had not responded at all, and when the bartender comes huffing and puffing down to his end of the bar it takes him a moment to signal his limbs that they should resume a more casual repose. What can I getcha, the fat man asks. He looks at the bartender firmly to display strength and reliability, and the fat man responds by stepping back slightly and arching his head upwards as if to say, what the fuck is wrong with you. But he is not daunted and says what he came to say. I would like a job, he says, leaning in, trying to fill the space that the fat man has recently vacated. We‟re a little busy, bud, the fat man responds. Why don‟t you come back during the day? Manager should get here around three. You want somethin‟ to drink? He has drank enough tonight and so declines, shaking his hand in front of his face, signaling, no thanks, get lost. The fat man walks away looking sour. Outside the streets continue to swell with drunks who now take on a more menacing look as the night moves past one am. They are lurking, skulking creatures, searching for sin and sedation. A twenty-something with a puffed out chest walks by him and laughs. It‟s a nasal laugh that sticks in his ears and plays loops on his nerves. He looks at his hands to regain his composure and then studies the ground below him. Signs can be found anywhere, he knows this. Posted on walls, or falling from the sky in brightly colored pamphlets. He steps on a bright orange one advertising a dance party for 18+. He steps on it purposefully, rubbing it into the new cobblestone beneath him, rubbing it into this repurposed square that has been set up amid darkened apartment buildings where rent is now increasing. An up and coming neighborhood that has dance parties and a slew of independent bars. He built this. He sees another pamphlet, yellow but dirtied with the black print of a shoe. He picks it up and reads it aloud. “Want to make 20+ $$$$$ an hour? Ever considered sales? Call 1-800— and ask for Patsy to receive further information.” Sales? He could do that. Construct with his mouth instead of his hands. Build up lies in ears where they‟ll ring like the nasal laugh of some oversexed steroid-pumping college athlete. Instill confidence in your product. Sell yourself, sell your product. Positive-thinking. He holds the pamphlet close to his chest, and covets the call he will make in the morning. Patsy is a kindly looking elderly woman with reading glasses that sit

49 on the tip of her nose. She wears her hair up in 50‟s fashion. She talks slowly. She is grateful that he has called. They are looking for someone like him. Yes, that‟s right, just like him. Well, that sort of experience is valued here. If we didn‟t value physical labor what would we have to sell. We‟re not selling Bibles after all, we‟re not Gideons. We distribute goods. Reliable goods built by strong sturdy hands like yours. His right pocket is vibrating and for a moment he thinks that a bee is buzzing by his ear, unable to connect the sound to the vibration. Pulling out his cell phone he reads his wife‟s name “Sally” in the center of the bright white light on the cover. He opens the phone grudgingly. Yeah, he says. Where the hell are you? The sound of her voice is electronic and stings his ears. At the new downtown square, he says. What the hell are you doing down there? Looking for signs, he says. I’ve got a sign for ya’. You can’t see it, but I’m putting it up just for you. Signs for jobs, he clarifies. You looking for a job at one in the morning? Wearing flip-flops, shorts and a tee-shirt… the electronic voice trails off for a moment. Looking like a fucking homeless person, no doubt. Acting like a fucking homeless person, sitting at a bar at one am asking for a job. That’s where you are, isn’t it? Sitting at a fucking bar? No, they said to come back tomorrow. You got thrown out of a bar? Are you fucking crazy? Are you out of your mind? I‟m on some drugs— the words come out before he can stop them, on the tip of his tongue and then gone, released into the tension of a relationship that he can no longer understand or control. Jesus Christ. I‟ll be home soon, he says, I‟m just going to look for awhile longer. Jesus Christ. There is a clicking sound and the shrill electronic voice is gone. He looks up after putting the phone back in his pocket and notices a pretty blond girl staring at him. She is only a few yards in front of him and her head is cocked to the side like a curious puppy, eyeing him up and down, taking him in. Hey, she says. Hey, he says back. She looks like she‟s about the same age as his daughter. Twenty-one or twenty-two. Probably just finishing college, getting a degree in something useless like Communications. Communicate, you either can or can‟t. It is not taught. She does not look like his daughter who has rather unfortunate features, a sallow underfed face. This one is perky and bright, with large breasts that sit up straight. She is wearing a yellow top, tight jeans, and black stilettos. He feels guilty for comparing her to his daughter and then he feels guilty for thinking about her, about how she looks, about how he wants her.

50

You look different, she says. You dress funny for an old guy, though the mustache certainly fits. He feels at his mustache, picks out a whisker, and stares at the gray. I guess, he says. What are you doing out here, she asks. Looking for signs, he says, and suddenly he feels a wave of hopelessness wash over him like all the good signs have been seen and attended to, like there‟s nothing left for him. Signs, she says, feeling out the word and liking the way it sounds on her tongue. Signs, she repeats. You wanna‟ drink man? She holds out a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. He is curious about this, about all the drinks he has seen being toted around. There are no cops. Perhaps they have been called away to something important. Some illegal immigrants selling drugs on a dark street corner. He mumbles nonsense words with a Spanish accent. You‟re weird, she says. She pushes the bottle into his hands. He lifts it and takes a long drink. Vodka. It stings as it goes down and for a second he feels he might throw it back up. He steps away from the girl, afraid to puke on her. Haunting images. A young girl covered in old man throw up running down the street telling her friends to stay away from that guy. Stay away and call the cops. Haul that weird old man in. Tell him where he can stick his flip-flops. When he feels the vodka settle in his stomach he looks up at her and smiles. He notices now that she is very drunk. She is wobbling from side to side. He points to a nearby bench and helps her over to it. They sit down close to each other and he feels a rush of fear and excitement. So what are you doing out here, he asks. She doesn‟t answer. Instead she lays her head down in his lap. He feels for a second that he might get an erection, but apparently his body is too drunk and high for this, and he is happy and flaccid. Still, he is afraid she‟ll fall asleep and a younger crowd will call him a rapist and say that he slipped her a mickey, if people still say mickey. He‟s not a rapist but he feels like one, like someone has shoved him into the shoes of a rapist, like there was a line-up and he was picked out. That‟s the one. The one in the flip-flops. The one who looks homeless. With the gray mustache. He looks down at the girls‟ blond hair and then he lifts his hands and looks at them. He feels slightly better. The girl sits up suddenly and stares at him strangely. You remind me of my father, she says. Me too, he says, not sure what he‟s saying. She stands up and walks away and he watches her go. After hobbling across the street a group calls out to her. She wanders over to them and he watches her mouth moving. A few of the group members look over at him suspiciously and he stares down at his hands. He wants one of them

51 to come over here and start a fight. He will show them what he is made of. Strong stuff pouring from the rotating mouth of a concrete mixer. Hands firm, stronger than the cobblestone that lines these new streets. He sees his fist like a hammer. He will lay it down with so much rage, into the stomach, face, of some know-it-all college student, into the darkened skin of some job- stealing immigrant. You took my job, he mumbles. But that‟s not right. The job is complete. There is nothing left to do. Fucking flip-flops, she says. It‟s Sally; she‟s sitting next to him on the bench. She is a projection from an old film reel, black and white and shaky at the edges. He knows she‟s not really there. Fucking shorts. Fucking tee-shirt. Fucking druggy good-for-nothing husband. The voice is still electronic as if floating from the cell phone speaker in his pocket. He wishes he wasn‟t high. He wants to know what drugs he took. He wants to shake that fucking hippy and ask him what‟s in these pills that you gave me. He wants to shake him and he wants to shake Sally and he wants to shake that fat fucking bartender and that pretty blond, and he wants to ask them if they know about any good signs, if they could point him in the right direction. -- He is lying in the middle of the street, his right hand feeling out in front of him, stroking the stones. Small rocks and dirt grit against his cheeks. His head is empty and aching and dry all the way down to his throat. He‟s been licking at the stones where someone poured some liquor. He disgusts himself. Rum, he thinks. Sweet. Something you find in the hands of college students when they get a break. Something you find in a drink on a beach somewhere. Something with a funny name that you‟re embarrassed to pronounce to the waitress. Instead of saying Bikini Bottom you say this one, and stick out a stubby finger, finding it on the drink menu. Another paper bag bounces by a few feet above him and he calls out for it. A girl with too much makeup on leans down until her cleavage rests in his limited eyesight. I think you‟ve had enough, she says, and stands up and walks away. He claws at the ground angrily and somehow finds his feet, but his fingernails are burning. I‟ll tell you when I‟ve had enough, he screams. But the girl has gone. He is screaming at no one, or everyone. He mumbles Spanish curse words, made up ones that make his tongue curl around in his mouth. The lamps glow on though there is not much to illuminate now. Only a few people remain. Some older, waiting for the college kids to go home before they emerged, ashamed that they still crave the night. A car honks and he turns to two glaring headlights, the ones that are

52 overly bright and white and cast a halo of dreamlike blue. He is still standing in the road, but forces his legs up and down in long gangly motions until he arrives on the sidewalk. He finds his hands and the burning fingernails that were just clawing at the street. Oh, what he could do with these hands, with that paper bag that limped away, with a job. Oh, what he will do, where he‟ll put those hands, laying stones, building towers. There is so much to do and he is a mason, a sculptor, a builder, a miracle worker. The pretty blond is staring at him again. She is across the street, on the same bench they were on before. She is alone. Her group must have left her, found somewhere better to go, found a place where the tables are dirty and smeared with maple syrup, where you consume greasy food, coffee, and cigarettes while listening to the rough and shaky voice of Johnny Cash. He sees himself walking towards her. Did he take her hand in his? Did he force her hand into his own? He does not know, but they are sitting, and he is holding her cool damp hand in both of his, her head on his shoulder. She is panting like a dog, like she‟s running away, but she is still beside him. I want to take you home with me, he says. She does not move. He thinks she‟s sleeping. I want you to be my pet, he says. I want us to live together and you can teach my daughter how to be pretty and how to dress to fit her figure. Just like they say on tv. Just like they show us how to dress and walk and talk and work. Just how they show us to use our hands. Just show us to use our hands, where to put them, how to mold ugly materials into pieces that shine like civilization. You talk too much, she says. She sits up and looks at him, her expression changed, her eyes pathetic and big and blue and scared. I‟m sorry I drank so much Daddy, she says. She curls into a ball next to him and he looks down at his hands, at the creases and calluses, scars and indentations. This is where the concrete block smashed down and flattened two of his fingers. This is where the lumber caught in a long jagged splinter when he tried to catch it before it crashed down on a friend. This is where your head lay when you were born, when I cradled you against me and named you. It‟s alright, he says, you did the best you could. You worked so hard. You deserve a break. He puts his hands to work, stroking through the long hair that spreads in shimmering golden waterfalls down through the spaces in his fingers and between the wooden boards of the bench. He wants to remember this in the morning, but sees his forgetfulness, sees a drunken old man awakening on a bench with no knowledge of how he arrived.

53

How To Move

You know your focus should be on the sexy ladies with black low-cut sleek shining dresses and fuck-me pumps (is that what they‟re called?) in the back. In this foggy night club air their hands raised high to keep the beat: Clap! Clap! Clap! Ecstasy. High on life. But instead your eyes move to your own feet, to the clumsy shifting of seemingly disconnected limbs.

But isn‟t that why you‟re here, to pick up ladies and feel rhythm enter your body and soul? Concentrate and feed your soul, that part of you that takes on layers, or that genre commonly associated with sensual beat and baritone voices. You know that rules must be set, that you are here under the pretense of following rules, and that if you follow those rules you‟ll be free and you‟ll find among the sexy ladies a partner that suits you. Speak sweet nothings to yourself. You need the encouragement, you need to follow your dance shoes, all shiny and ready.

This is all you‟ve got, the ability to lose yourself in movement. This isn‟t a wedding, so if you‟re not going to dance then go the fuck home and nurse your alcoholism there, because they‟ve got no room for gawkers.

On the dance floor it‟s all about how sexy you are (do you feel sexy?), how aroused you feel when you rub against a stranger. And you do feel aroused as asses and crotches comingle and leave all sense behind. Move your body and move against the resistance in your head, that awful nagging voice of the father. The authority figure who still towers over you and causes you to break into sobbing fits, whose voice pounds in your head, saying stop dancing like a fag.

Just watch those sexy ladies on the dance floor. They‟ll tell you what to do. Catholic girls full of guilt and desire to let loose. Or maybe girls from the wrong side of town. Girls who want to use you for your money and relatively upstanding status. Go at „em, tell them tales of fortune.

Use the same trick, once, twice, maybe four times. If you run out of moves then think of a household machine and how it works. Imitate the process: shake, buzz, pull, penetrate. I told you, it‟s all about sex and how sexy you are— it‟s all about clothes instead of condoms.

54

Ooh la la! You‟ve got the attention of that group of cheap perfumes: the smell is wafting towards you. Intoxicating. Nauseating. “Do you want to get out of here?” “Can we find some place to be alone?” But now you‟ve done it. You‟ve broken the rules and the spell of stupidity that the dance floor casts in concert with the high-energy drinks you mix with vodka. Let‟s not break the rhythm. Let‟s not spoil a good time.

Keep it up. Just like good sex— you‟ve got to practice, you must not wear down. If they want to keep going, then you have to too. Choices are not for the dance floor. This is not the place to have a crisis of conscience. Just look at that girl, makeup running from the sweat that drips down her face— longing, yearning. Just look at yourself in these strange all-encompassing mirrors, a boy with mouth half-open and expectant, waiting for you to tell him he can sit down, waiting for said girl to grab him and hold him close, waiting for, and yet dreading, the end of this song.

55

Oakie

There were a lot of rumors about where he came from. My parents told me that Oakie was in the military, that he‟d been shot and some sort of mental deficiency followed. He was a little slow so that had to work its way into the rumor somehow. The military rumor was hard to believe though. Wouldn‟t he be at a VET facility? Receiving some sort of disability money? I was disappointed, even at seven or eight, that my parents actually believed this. My friends and I preferred the other prevalent rumor, that Oakie came from great wealth. We lived in a small town— our only fast food restaurant was a McDonald‟s, and everyone went to the same three schools— Belleville elementary, middle, and high school— so the prospect of a disenfranchised person of wealth living among us was exciting. Maybe if we were nice to him he‟d include us in his will? Maybe he‟d build that new gymnasium everyone was hoping for? We formed the house of his birth. It was something large but untamed— a sprawling wooden structure set up on a mountain, surrounded by a forest and yet dwarfing the trees. It resembled the houses we saw on the way to Florida for vacation that sat high up above the mountains that had been cut through to form interstate valleys. Judging presences above the road that we‟d point to and say, I wonder who lives there, except now we knew. It was decided that if he had come from money then it was a secluded wealth, secret. His parents were lumber-barons, if that was an acceptable type of baron, or manufacturers who never visited their factories. They were distant from whatever produced their wealth. They sat in their mountain hideaway having only to think of how to show off their money, and manors, and well- bred children. Manors we were familiar with. We were told to hold open doors by our fathers, sit up straight, not talk with our mouths full. My own father had perfected the art of reproach, looking at me with hard eyes, smirking beneath his full beard, poking me hard in the side. Appearances were all, and we knew that this was Oakie‟s failure, his inability to fit in. Obviously, his birth had brought desperation, rage, and sadness to the parents. The wealthy barons had produced a mentally handicapped child. And so, they cast him away. We could agree on that. Someone as diligent in his work as Oakie and yet so desolate, must have been thrown away.

56

But who received the child Oakie? Here, the rumors got confusing. He was either given to his brother, the local orphanage, the turkey farmer, or the pet store. Whichever place was given responsibility for him quickly shunted it— he was sent to collect cans. I remember him being around from the very beginning. He would sometimes sit in the back at the small Methodist church we attended. We‟d see him going through the garbage cans at the high school baseball games. We saw him walking up and down the major highways, a couple large black garbage bags dragging behind as he stooped to pick up our trash. This was before anyone in my town ever considered recycling. His clothes were as we would have imagined. Dirty potato sacks is the most accurate thing I could say. Very loose dirty garments, a floppy hat that partly shaded his face. He would squint and offer a toothless smile through the dirt that spotted his face. Because of the lack of teeth he was hard to understand, but I got used to it. It was like listening to my grandfather who‟d suffered a stroke— I learned the language, how to hear underneath the slur, and soon forgot it was there, becoming surprised when a friend would say in an embarrassed tone that he couldn‟t understand a word. Despite my mother‟s belief in Oakie‟s mysterious military past— something that might indicate a tendency towards violence— she would offer Oakie rides. Especially once he started attending church services. If someone was seeking God then she felt it her responsibility to facilitate it. Most likely, my father would have prevented this— he didn‟t go to church with us, the short explanation that my mother gave me being that he went to Vietnam and didn‟t believe in God because of it— but I don‟t remember my mother ever telling him about the rides. After what happened later she was probably ashamed she‟d concealed it. My earliest memory of Oakie was his smell. He‟d ride in the back of our minivan next to me and one or another of my brothers, and we‟d suffer through it. It was hard to describe. Something rancid. Rotted fish maybe, or a wet sneaker. My mother tried to engage him in conversation and I tried to focus on it so I didn‟t think about the smell. “Where you headed, Oakie?” my mother‟d ask. “Oh, you can drop me off at the gas station. Just making my rounds,” he‟d say, and laugh.

57

Different businesses would collect cans for him. Oakie stayed busy and people tried to help him out. The town believed in capitalism and the merits of hard work, but everyone could see that someone like Oakie would always be on the outside of things. In the winters, Oakie disappeared. For some reason this wasn‟t odd to anyone. My friends and I tried to fill in the blanks where the adults seemed ignorant and unwilling. We surmised that he returned to whichever entity had first taken him up. He slept with the dogs at the pet store, or on the ground before the caged turkeys. He slept in his brother‟s basement or returned to the orphanage and in exchange for shelter helped out with custodial duties. Oakie would fend for himself when he could and take charity when he couldn‟t. Whoever had first cast him off, family or government or animal peddler, gave him enough to survive and that was all. -- Soon after my eighth birthday I became obsessed with having money. It was the first birthday on which I received a significant amount. A great aunt had died and without immediate family her limited wealth was distributed to all living relatives. My cut was fifty dollars— this, along with the sixty dollars that I usually received (ten from my grandma, fifty from my parents) gave me a lot to manage. I put fifty dollars in the bank, starting a savings account, and used the rest to buy a food- chemist toy, where your creations were edible. Turns out, they were disgusting, and the disappointment I felt about my investment pushed me to think of new ways to raise money. Why did Oakie collect cans, I asked my parents. When I heard that the local recycling company would give money for them I quickly followed his lead. Money meant freedom, and I wanted that. I‟d chastise my parents and brothers if they threw a perfectly good Sunkist can in the garbage. What‟s wrong with you, I‟d say, they give you money for these. My father had misgivings about it at first. He didn‟t like the idea of his son being seen collecting garbage. “Doesn‟t look right,” he‟d say, pulling at his graying beard. But he came around eventually after my mother reminded him of the value of hard work. She thought it would be good for me. Once it was settled that my behavior was acceptable I learned to take my cues from Oakie. I‟d walk up and down our street on summer days searching through weeds, looking for a

58 glitter, a bright color in the brush. Where I had before seen ugly litter I now saw money that for some reason or another everyone else was throwing out their car windows, tossing in the trash. At my brothers‟ baseball games Oakie and I teamed up. We‟d tip the large green cans over, one of us holding it while the other dug in. People in the bleacher stands would smile down at us. My father would reach out his rough hands to nudge other parents, whispering something, and then they‟d laugh together. His whole body would heave up and down with the laugh, his long beard rustling up and down his chest. My mother gave me an old pair of yellow rubber dish gloves to use. I‟d pull gum off a can. I‟d dump out dip-spit and rinse it out. I‟d try to reform the crushed ones. No can was unredeemable. I even kept half-cans if I found them, though I think that was more out of a curiosity of the story that might be behind it— how exactly was this can cut perfectly in half? I noticed that Oakie wore no gloves and felt bad. I gave him a green pair of dish gloves that I bought with change I found in the couch cushions. My parents weren‟t worried about me hanging out with him, even if my father had reservations concerning how others might see it. Oakie was harmless, and kind. It‟s true that my father laid out some rules, the distance I could travel with Oakie, how far out of his sight I might go— there were boundaries I would break later out of curiosity. And it‟s true that mean rumors surfaced about Oakie, but that was after he was gone. I never believed them, especially, obviously, the ones that I was mixed into. Sometimes Oakie would share his cans with me as we scrounged together. Pepsi products mostly— he was a Coke man and he sometimes let this preference travel to the cans. “Pepsi‟s too sweet,” he‟d slur, and throw a couple over to me. Then he‟d give me a wink and smile. He started to call me his partner, and I was proud of the designation. To me, partner meant business, meant that we, together, would produce larger profits— this desirable thing I was always hearing about. We were equally invested in the company endeavor. Cans Inc., I told my parents. My mother encouraged me in it, said she was proud of my initiative. And my father gave me what amounted to a condoning leer. Regardless, I was captivated by the idea of it. Initiative, I thought, the beginnings of America. I now shared in that tradition. Once I filled a big black garbage bag I‟d push it up against the wall of our two-car garage— I was careful to rinse everything since my parents made me throw away the first bag

59 because of the smell. In this way my accomplishment took a very visible and physical form. I could go out and stare at the product of my labor. As the summer came to a close I worried about the business, about the absence of one of the partners. Would operations fully fall on me? Could I handle it? Or, would the company be dissolved, sold off? Could Oakie be reached in his winter hideaway? -- The last baseball game of the season was coming up and I planned to approach Oakie with my concerns. I was also excited to possibly learn of where he went for the winter— it would be considered another rumor by my friends, but I‟d know it was real. When our family pulled up in the mini-van Oakie was already hard at work, making a pre-emptive strike on the trash cans before too much discarded food was thrown on top. It was important to go at the cans at intervals— we‟d get in trouble if we accidently dumped anything on the ground, so shallow searches were best. “Go get „em, garbage boy,” my father said, and I hopped out, ignoring his smile. Oakie gave me his toothless grin and a wave. I was proud to see he was wearing the green dish gloves I‟d bought him— sanitation was a major concern of Cans Inc. We worked diligently through the first few innings, hitting up the three major trash cans a few different times. As Oakie searched underneath the bleachers I walked up to parents with canned drinks. “Excuse me, are you almost done with that?” I was polite, but my father called me up to him when he saw me doing this. “You‟re going a little far there, buddy,” he said, “stick to the trash cans.” And then he nudged me hard in the side. I did what he told me. Of course, there is only so much trash produced at an afternoon high school baseball game, so we‟d wander off a bit sometimes. The area held not only the high school, but also the middle school and my elementary school. Besides this, there were outlying supply buildings. All the buildings were made out of the same sanded down tan bricks— besides size, it was hard to tell them apart. I wasn‟t supposed to walk further than the main high school building that the baseball field was across from. Oakie and I had reached the point of return, and I set my garbage bag down and sighed. Oakie looked down at me.

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“What‟s wrong, partner?” “Well, I‟ve been thinking about the business,” I said, and made a half-smile like I‟d seen people on tv make when they had something important on their mind. “I‟m worried.” “About what?” “Well, I feel like we‟re not prepared. What‟ll we do during the winter? You‟ll be gone and our profits will suffer.” “You might be right about that,” he said, appearing to truly think it over by raising his eyes upward. “Maybe if I knew where you went we could plan?” I was using my cuteness, my innocent questions. I didn‟t tell Oakie that I wasn‟t supposed to go past this point. “Oh, I see.” He took my hands in his, gloves of green and yellow interlocked. “I could tell you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Happens it‟s not far from here.” He let go of my hands and we dragged our garbage bags to the back of a building that was about a hundred yards further down the street. Here, we discovered a large pile of garbage bags, a mountain of aluminum gold. “Wow,” I said. We stepped around them to the back door of the building and Oakie produced a key from somewhere among his baggy clothes. “It‟s a secret,” he said, opening the door. We left our bags out back and went inside. It appeared to be a janitor‟s closet turned home. Mop bucket next to canned goods. Unmarked bottles of blue, red, and yellow cleaner set next to random trinkets— baseball cards, some McDonald‟s Happy Meal toys, a broken Casio watch. On the floor were dirty blankets and a dirty pillow. There was a door into the rest of the building at the end of the room. “I just sleep here, but in the winter I have to stay in more than I like.” It was the ultimate clubhouse and hideaway. The perfect place for secret meetings and sleepovers. I was already making plans to have a closet of my own. “Now, the way I see it, we can keep on our business transactions though there‟s less to be gotten in the winter,” he said. “Less people drink soda?” “No, it‟s just harder to find. But we should have enough profit to last us.” He winked at me; we were in this together.

61

We couldn‟t have been in there for more than ten minutes at the most. Oakie showed me some of his more prized possessions. The only one I remember was an old black and white photo that he said he found in the trash. In the picture was a straight-faced man and woman standing in front of a barn holding a newborn baby. Oakie held it to his chest before he replaced it on a shelf. When we did emerge from the closet we were faced with my very red-faced father. His lips were straight and hidden beneath the beard and he seemed to be breathing hard to keep from screaming. He had a rage in his eyes and in his tightened hands that I had only seen once before, when I‟d told my mother to shut up. A balding high school teacher with large round glasses stood in the background— I later learned he had led my father there. The game had ended and my father panicked when he couldn‟t find me. Oakie lifted a hand to wave and was about to speak, but before he could say a word my father hit him. Oakie fell back into his closet and my father dragged me away. “What about the cans?” I asked, already tearing up a little, confused. “What about the cans?” -- Whichever janitor was loaning the place was fired. Malicious rumors were spread. Cans Inc. was dissolved. When we got home from the game my father took his anger out on my can collection, dragging all the bags I‟d gathered to the curb, cursing. My mother tried to calm him but he pushed her away, so she spent her time comforting me, holding me close as I cried and telling me I hadn‟t done anything wrong. Later, I was questioned and told my father that nothing had happened, that Oakie was just showing me his place so I knew how to contact him for business reasons. My father seemed to believe me, but by then it was too late for Oakie. And even though men like my father may have believed that Oakie had not touched me they started to believe in the capability, that maybe there was something vile in Oakie, something repressed that might come out and attack their children, defile their little boys and girls. It was a small town and there was no longer any room for someone like Oakie. How would it look if they let him stay?

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There was speculation, of course, as to where Oakie ended up. Though it was the late 80‟s there was talk of a hanging led by my father; it was also said that Oakie hung himself because of what he‟d done to me. There were other ways in which Oakie died: in a bus crash, ran over by a drunk who didn‟t see him picking cans from the side of the road. And others, wanting a more realistic scenario, said he most likely froze in a ditch somewhere during the winter months. Some said that he went back to his parents and begged them to take him in, asked them for a portion of their secret wealth, that he became a sort of mountain-man in the forest; or, they chained him up in their basement, throwing down bones occasionally for him to gum. Still others thought that Oakie had simply found another hovel, another closet on the school grounds to hide in. If you stayed after school you were told to beware the closets, to watch out for Old Oakie. Maybe he was the very odd janitor with glasses and long hair, they said. Maybe that‟s a wig and that‟s him there mopping up that vomit. There were rumors and suspicions. Oakie was now a monster, a horror story, a molester— in short, something incomprehensible. I pictured him with the family in the photograph. Oakie, living out his days working on a farm, making friends with the animals, perhaps even caring for the elderly couple who had held him so long ago in front of this sturdy barn. And I always denied what people said about Oakie and me. At first, I didn‟t even know what the parents were afraid of, what it was they thought Oakie had done. And then I thought maybe he‟d done something that I didn‟t know was wrong yet— there were so many things that were wrong. Two years later when a neighbor got me alone in his basement I found out. Afterwards, I cried and cried not just because of what was done to me but because I saw what others thought Oakie had done, what they thought him capable of, what I had caused them to think because I‟d wandered too far. As my father always said, “Appearances are all.” But that‟s another story, one that has wound its way through me and the town in a very different way, though it is sometimes worked into the lore of Oakie, the town-pervert, and the child he ruined.

63

Tell Me About It

He is shaking, his fingers pressed perfectly together, moving them back and forth like his hands are a submarine, or like he isn‟t sure what dancing is. Disjointed and unhinged. This man has no sense of rhythm, but he moves with the rest of us— it‟s a field party and bright bonfire light shines on his port-bound hands— where‟s the land? This man‟s trying to reach land.

We only make fun of him when he‟s in earshot; we tell ourselves this is somehow kinder. I‟d say it to his face, I‟d call into question his movements, like a mentally handicapped robot— Land Ho! Where‟s the rhythm? Is it on the land that these hands push towards? Perhaps, if he slows down. One. Hand. At. A. Time. This is how they say to dance, follow the lead of the fool in front of you, never mind that you‟re imitating the movements of a five-year-old spaz.

Keep on, find that land. Cross the fire, old man, into the darkened field where young co-eds can be found necking. Turn that boombox up. Still with the boomboxes? They still have those? Will the music cover his infirmities? Will his movements fit when his eardrums burst?

Snap, crackle, pop; rice krispies and fire. His era has ended and he invited himself. And even we know that we are too old for this— old man, young man, what‟s the difference? This is a field party and we‟ve graduated from various institutions of education; no one belongs here, so we can‟t really kick him out and we couldn‟t really tell him not to come. But still, he‟s depressing as hell to watch. Will we turn into this, still trying to find the rhythm of our youth in our fifties? Does he know something we don‟t?

Because it‟s all booze and bumbling around the fire. Throw your cans and butts in, kids. Fill „er up. And, we ask ourselves, who doesn‟t feel the relief of adulthood with a good six beers down and a hot fire pressing your body into an intense sweat? It causes chants and dancing; we are medicine men; he, failed leader, dying past, impotent future. It‟s all downhill from here kids. We see ourselves in this old man and we hate him, and his submarine hands, and his quest for unreachable land.

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Nice dancing, someone says. He blushes and picks at his beard. What a spectacle we‟ve made of him without his knowing. We have danced around the fire and positioned ourselves behind him. Whisper, Land Ho! Whisper, Nice dancing! Whisper, where‟s the land?

Someone sneaks up close behind, mimics pushing him in the fire. We laugh and the man asks, what, what is it? Is it the song? Is there something in the words that I don‟t understand? Tell me about it.

65

Winter Lights

They are ready to burn the house down. It will be quite a display, lighting up the night air, a sun shining and melting the mounds of snow that have been pulled together by the chill wind. They have done this every year for twelve years. The truck they ride in smells like smoke and leather and mixes with a slight tinge of gasoline wafting from the two full containers in the bed. Jake is driving them fast and jerky. He is nervous behind the wheel. The others, Brian and Tommy and Chase, cannot keep track of the roads. Most don‟t have signs— the gravelly paths are hidden until a few feet distant where they materialize between corn stalks snow-frosted and trampled. Brian studies his blinking green Casio from the crowded back seat: it is December 24th, 2010, One AM. The watch is made out of cheap plastic. It was manufactured in Taiwan. He feels cold steel down the front of his pants. He has an air pistol and it makes him feel like a gangster. Tommy is usually a chatter box, that‟s what his mother calls him. He sits in the back seat next to Brian. His brain is going vroom, vroom, vroom. He‟s thinking about cars. He says, “Is this a new truck?” Jake says, “Yes.” Except Jake, they have all left their wives and children at home to go out and burn a house down— Jake does not have a wife and does not know if he has any children. Chase is Tommy‟s twin, but they don‟t look like twins anymore. When they were little Jake and Brian could hardly tell them apart but now Chase has gained a considerable amount of weight— he weighs over three hundred pounds and is technically morbidly obese. So he sits in the front seat, and Brian is feeling very squeezed on the truck‟s backseat (it‟s more like a bench) behind him. They don‟t remember why they started burning down abandoned houses once a year; they only know it was Jake‟s idea. For the first four years they were high and drunk before heading out, having consumed any drug they could find, but though their shaky and distorted memories recalled the first year differently they all maintained that it was Jake that suggested it. It was Jake, who, rising out of a drug-induced catnap sprang to life and shouted “Let‟s burn a

66 house down!” Or it was Jake who had gone quietly around the room whispering into each of their ears the plan in some way that snuck down into their collective unconsciousness, secretly convincing them of the soundness of it, the need for it. Why do they do this? Sing, chant, march along. As they approach the battle they sing this song: -- Brian: Where the fuck is he taking us? Better keep track. You better keep track. Remember where you’re going, jackass. Can’t go back. You can’t go back. Glad I brought the air pistol. Looks damn real. It looks so real. Can hardly believe it’s legal. Jake’ll like it. I know he will. Sound Off! Chase: We could have taken my van. Sound Off! Tommy: I need a cigarette. March to the beat of your own drum! Jake: Go, go, go. Gotta’ get those niggers. Give me the shit. Give me the shit. -- “Where‟d you say this place was?” Brian asks. He is feeling fidgety, unable to stop glancing down at the stupid Casio watch one of his kids gave him. He didn‟t know they still made Casios. Maybe they ordered it special. “In the country,” Jake says, and then he turns up the radio volume very high— it is at 25 out of 30; it blinks green like Brian‟s Casio. “We‟re already in the country,” Tommy chimes in. “No shit, Sherlock.” Tommy is anxious; he wants a cigarette. “Does anyone have a cigarette?” “Yeah. I‟ve got one.” Brian lights one for himself and then lights another, passing it to Tommy. “Why don‟t you have your own?” Jake asks, turning down the radio to listen for the answer. “My wife doesn‟t want me to smoke anymore.”

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“You‟re such a pussy.” Jake turns the volume up. Tommy would chime in and make a smartass comment, but no one would hear (30 out of 30 volume) and he is anxious and feeling sorry that he quit smoking for his wife and sorrier that he told Jake who called him a pussy. Jake showed up late. They are supposed to meet at midnight every year behind the childhood home of the twins. They don‟t know who lives there now, but they still meet, still trod behind the house and lean against the warping vinyl. Jake showed up half an hour late, called them all faggots, and slapped them on their backs asking if they were ready to go. He was wearing all leather. Brian would say that Jake looked like a douche bag, but Brian doesn‟t really think that; he thinks Jake looks a little like James Dean, or maybe not because James Dean just wore a leather jacket (the pants are maybe too much), but he is intimidating and cool and doesn‟t look like the drug-abuser that they know he is. And they do wonder sometimes how long will he look slick and ready, how long it will be until his skin sags and deteriorates. They don‟t see Jake except for this one time a year. They can‟t afford to be friends with him now; he is too dangerous. They are afraid that he will grope their wives and say racist epithets that their forever imitating and mocking children will repeat in public places. Chase learned this the hard way. Jake had come over on a Saturday for an afternoon of baseball and beer. A week later Chase took his two children putt-putting, and his four-year-old son, sweating intensely, looked up at him and announced he “was sweating like a nigger on election day.” Chase can‟t remember leaving his kids alone with Jake, but he is sure he must have. He doesn‟t know anyone else that talks like that who spends time with his kids, except his grandmother, but she died two years ago. They agree now, they will only see him this one time a year. They don‟t really know who Jake is anymore; they are scared he might have turned into his father. His father was an alcoholic who could never hold down a job. Jake says he was a war hero. They know the story: -- There are four of them in a ditch in a jungle in Vietnam. It’s dark and quiet; so quiet you could hear a pin drop if they were inside and there was a floor and someone had a pin to drop. Jake’s dad is very cool and calm; he is ready for anything.

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Someone lights a cigarette and it is bright and will give their position away. Jake’s dad knows this. Oh, fuck; it was a nigger that lit the cigarette. Jake’s dad should have known. They hear shots close by. Charlie is coming down on them. The gooks are coming down on them. Jake’s dad is courageous and jumps out of the ditch firing and yelling “You’ll pay for this, you fucking gooks!” Jake’s dad killed ten gooks that night and saved the men, even the nigger. -- This is how Jake explains that his dad is not racist, just sensible. Jake‟s dad always blamed losing his job on the “niggers” even after he saved that “goddamned nigger‟s life.” Jake‟s dad died when they were all still in middle school. Jake remembers his dad different than everyone else. Brian tried to tell Jake once that his dad was an alcoholic and that was why he couldn‟t keep a job. Jake broke his nose. When they were little Jake protected them. He would have died for them. He has always been tall and sleek and though he doesn‟t seem to have much muscle, he is hard in the hand and in the eyes. Chase was quiet, still is; he wasn‟t fat then, though; that‟s not why other kids picked on him. Tommy had a mouth but it wasn‟t enough to keep people away from his brother when he wasn‟t there. Scene: -- (Chase is walking home from school alone. He is rounding the corner of his street. Everything is clear and pretty and shiny. It is a nice day. Bully One enters wearing torn up jeans and a Misfits shirt. He has a bad case of acne that makes him look like a villain— he is a greasy, pimply villain.) Bully One: Hey Chase! (He grunts or snorts. Makes animal sound. He is no better than an animal.) (Chase mumbles and clutches his books tightly to his chest. He looks apprehensive and is sniffling and pulling his body close together out of fear.) Bully One: Wait a second! (He says it snarkily with his stupid acne face all scrunched up and villainous. He jogs towards Chase, sluggish but fast enough to catch Chase; he grabs him by the arm and spins Chase towards him. Enter Bully Two and Bully Three from behind bushes or house or available prop.)

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Bully Two and Three: Get him! (Bully Two and Three run after Chase. Chase drops his books and shows the face of a hunted animal. Bully Two and Three catch him and pull him to the ground each holding one side of his twitchy body. Bully One settles across Chase’s body with one knee on each side and starts punching him. Punching noises.) Chase: Stop, please, stop. (Sounds pathetic and pitiable. He is being devoured by wild animals.) (Enter Jake from behind different available prop. No one notices him; they are too busy bullying or being bullied. Jake wears all leather and looks like a young James Dean— a fifth- grade James Dean. He looks skinny and dangerous. Jake takes his time walking up to them. He stops and watches for a minute.) Jake: You wanna‟ fight someone, why don‟t you fight someone who can fight back? (Bully One, Two, and Three do not believe him despite his overwhelming self-confidence. He is obviously the hero of the story, but they don’t understand so they grit their teeth and squint their eyes at him making animal noises.) (Stage lights out. Punching noises and animal grunts of displeasure.) (Stage lights on. Everyone is bloody and moaning on the street. They roll back and forth moaning and moaning. Jake stands up clutching his stomach or face, or something in apparent pain. He reaches his hand out to Chase. Chase takes his hand.) Chase: Thanks. -- This is the way that Jake tells the story and they believe him. Jake is their protector, or he was. They want to protect him now. They will let him drive them to a house that they will burn down; they think that Jake needs the winter lights. They remember everything together, except for Jake— maybe he has formed his own memory, maybe he sees things differently, knows things. When they see their childhood in their minds‟ eyes they are standing together in a clump with Jake in front. It is the same poster that hangs above the beds at all of their childhood homes: -- Jake stands in front, his eyes blue and still. His face, expressionless and empty. The rest stand pell mell, disorganized and loose around him, their bodies slack and tired. Through a trick of perspective Jake appears as a giant, inching closer, preparing to jump out of the poster

70 or to eclipse the rest with his presence. The background is black except for the name that is written above them all: “Winter Lights” flaming and brilliant. -- Jake turns off the truck headlights. After a minute of slow and careful driving he stops. “Where is it?” Jake points up the road. They are parked between two snow-covered fields on a dirt road. There is a cluster of trees up ahead that the road goes through. “Through those trees.” “Did you bring Dad‟s Playboys?” Chase asks, looking in the back at his brother. “Sorry to say, but that tradition ends this year,” Tommy says, “it‟s too depressing. Doesn‟t even remotely arouse me anymore. I thought about bringing a laptop to watch hardcore porn, but I don‟t think I could get internet out here— then again, I don‟t know. Point is, Playboys are for prepubescents and Mormons. I‟m done with them.” Brian thinks the real reason is some of the pages were stuck together when they brought them last year, and that Tommy feels bad that his dad is jerking off to the Playboys. “Well, the fire will have to be entertainment enough,” Jake says, staring up the road preoccupied. “Chase and Tommy, get the gas out of the bed.” Jake gets out so that Tommy can get out and Chase kind of falls out of the front slipping a bit and falling back into the truck. Jake sighs and Tommy and Chase head around the back. “You know what we‟re doing?” Jake asks Brian. Brian looks at his Casio: it is December 24th, 2010, One-Thirty-Two AM. “Yeah, I know what we‟re doing.” Brian isn‟t sure what Jake means. He pulls out his air pistol to compensate, turning it back and forth in his hand. Jake laughs and takes it out of his hand; he tucks the air pistol down the front of his leather pants. “Give it back.” “I‟m glad you brought it. We might need it. I forgot mine. All I‟ve got is a butterfly knife.” Jake smiles. “This house still has most of its windows.” Brian doesn‟t like the smile and is pretty sure that rocks are more fun to use on windows. Also, a butterfly knife feels very impractical for the task at hand.

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“Fine,” Brian says. He doesn‟t want to argue. “Alright, fags. You ready to go?” Jake is looking at Tommy and Chase as he says this. He thinks they look ridiculous holding the gas containers at the side of the truck. They look like Abbott and Costello playing incompetent gas station attendants. Tommy is thinking about when they were younger. He looks at Chase and feels sad that his brother is so fat. He wishes that he had been able to protect Chase when they were younger, but he couldn‟t. He got beat up once too with his mouth still working at words that he thought might intimidate the bullies. Brian felt sorry for both twins and played Dungeons and Dragons with them on the weekends. Jake brought drugs and invented rules as they went along— they let him because they were scared of him and because they‟d only gotten into Dungeons and Dragons because they were bored one day at the mall and Tommy and Chase had a lot of birthday money. None of them play Dungeons and Dragons now. They have jobs and wives and children. They don‟t know what Jake does. All they know is the rules, and the rules dictate that they act as a unit, that they stick together and follow Jake‟s lead. They want to save him. They start walking up to the house. “Why don‟t we drive the rest of the way?” Tommy asks. “Because Chase needs exercise,” Jake says. Brian and Tommy laugh and Chase shakes his head begrudgingly. Chase thinks that Jake is maybe saying it out of some sort of love, but he isn‟t sure about this theory. When they get to the trees they can see the house. It‟s two stories. A big white farm house. There‟s a light shining from a second-floor window. Chase stops walking and stares up at the house. The rest of them keep walking. Jake notices that Chase isn‟t walking with them. “Come on,” Jake says, waving him forward with his right hand. “I‟m not going,” Chase says. “Come on,” Jake says, acting like he didn‟t hear Chase. “Why‟s there a light on?” “I left it on the other day when I came to check out the place. I had to find a house to burn.” “Why would they leave the electricity on if the house is abandoned?” “How the fuck should I know?”

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Chase sighs and starts walking. Chase knows this is not the first time that the electricity company has forgotten; on their second year the newspaper said the fire was started by electric. But it wasn‟t an electrical fire; it was a gasoline fire. The snow is deep and it makes them tired to keep lifting their feet out of it. Chase is panting. Jake stops them underneath a tree about twenty yards from the entrance. “I want this to be perfect. It needs to be perfect. I think this might be our last year. You all are too old for this.” Jake has said it was his “last year” before; they don‟t know if they should believe him or not. “Whatever you want to do is fine.” “Alright, here‟s the plan: -- They are all to be silent, spy-like; they are playing a spy game. It’s 2d and simple. All you have to do is push the control stick in one direction. Chase isn’t really fat; he is packing dynamite and guns and all sorts of wonderful spy- gadgets that will come in handy. The enemy will misjudge him and think he is fat and slow, but he is a master spy disguised as a fat man. For this reason Chase is to remain silent and waiting here. He is to prepare their escape should they need to. The cops are crooked, keep an eye out for the cops. If the cops come there will be fast racing sounds and Chase will see a star on the screen; he’ll know how much trouble they’re in based on how many stars they accumulate. Their plan is to get no stars; they are trying to be stealthy. If they need to they will crawl on all fours. Brian and Tommy will follow Jake around the back. Jake will tell them what to do; Jake has his double O’s— he has killed his quota, he is experienced and knows what to expect. Jake is the team leader and he gives good commands— he knows this level like the back of his hand. It won’t be hard to beat if they use all of their stealth skills and stay quiet. Brian is a good follower— he keeps in step, he knows when to keep his mouth shut. He’s the second-in-command. If anything unexpected happens he’ll type the self destruct code into his spy watch. No one would ever think that spies would turn a Casio into a weapon. Tommy talks too much sometimes. Also, sometimes he provides comic relief (he does not respect authority as much as he should). For this reason he’ll stay outside the back door and let Jake and Brian know should something come from their blind side or if any secret agents try to

73 escape out the back door. Even though he talks too much and seems to flout authority he’s really very loyal and will be there to save them if they need him. -- “Sounds a little paranoid for an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere,” Tommy says, grinning. He wants them to laugh at his ability to point out the obvious. “Shut up. Look, we‟re going to have fun. We‟re burning down houses. We might as well make a game of it. Just do what I said.” They do what he says. Chase slumps down on the ground, leaning against the tree. “Don‟t fall asleep,” Jake says, and then he leads Tommy and Brian around the back. They get to the back door; it is set inside a nice screened-in porch. “Place doesn‟t look abandoned to me,” Tommy says. “Shut up,” Jake says, and then he thinks about them being spies and how they are the dumbest spies in the world because they believe everything that he tells them. “Just wait on the porch,” Jake says to Tommy. Jake brings out what looks like a lock-picking set. “Is that a lock-picking kit?” Tommy asks. Jake picks the back door and opens it slowly. Brian follows him inside with the two containers of gasoline. Jake closes the door slowly and puts a finger to his lips to signal quiet. The light from the upstairs room is very faintly draining into the kitchen Brian and Jake are standing in. On the table there‟s a lot of cocaine, but Brian‟s eyes haven‟t adjusted yet so he can‟t see it— Jake sees the outline of the cocaine and grabs Brian‟s arm and leads him away from it before his eyes can adjust. “Where you want to start?” Brian whispers. “The living room. The couch,” Jake whispers back, his hand still leading Brian. When they get to the living room Brian sets the gas cans down and lights two cigarettes, giving one to Jake. Brian is very polite with cigarettes and doesn‟t care if people think he‟s gay for lighting other guys‟ cigarettes. “Last year, huh?” Brian whispers. He is still following Jake‟s rules. “Might have to be.”

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“I‟d be lying if I said I wasn‟t a little relieved.” He presses a button on his Casio: it is December 24th, 2010, Two-Fifteen AM. One of his kids gave him the watch. “Time to move on.” “Fucking right.” Jake lights a match and tosses it on the faded-orange couch. It goes out. He throws his cigarette on. Brian dumps gasoline on the end of the couch that isn‟t lit yet and then starts a line leading back into the kitchen. He makes a game of it. He pours the gasoline in a perfect line; it does not splash; he is close to the floor and pouring slowly and perfectly. In his head he hears a song in perfect time that leads him. Jake takes lead vocals, and Brian keeps the time. -- Fucking right, Casio, Green Green, Line. Fucking right, Casio, Green Green, Line. Outside Tommy and Chase go: I need a cigarette, panting and panting. I need a cigarette, panting and panting. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep. They all sing together, a melody of mischief. They perform and follow the rules. They are one unit moving in perfect time. -- Brian sees the flame trailing behind him and drops the gasoline container, backing away just in time to see it flare up. The flame singes his eyebrows. “Damn!” Brian yells, unable to keep quiet. He hears movement upstairs; someone is yelling in an accent he doesn‟t recognize. It‟s getting hot inside. Jake runs into the kitchen where Brian led the flame. Brian sees the cocaine but doesn‟t say anything. Jake starts grabbing at the cocaine and stuffing it into a bag that he found somewhere. Give me the shit. Give me the shit. Brian looks at his Casio— the flames are bright enough that he doesn‟t have to push the button that lights it up: it is December 24th, 2010, Two-Eighteen AM. He types in the self-destruct code. Someone is coming down the stairs yelling curse words that Brian doesn‟t know; he just has a feeling that they are curse words. Brian sees the man; he‟s a very tall black man with white teeth— they glow like his Casio watch. The man has a gun. Brian backs up and tries to hide himself in the backdoor entrance.

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Jake stops putting cocaine in the bag he found and pulls out the air pistol that he took from Brian— he points it at the man; the man points his gun at Jake. “What the fuck you doing, Jake?” the man asks. He has a strong accent; Brian thinks he must be from Africa. “You screwed me. You took my fucking money and gave me cut up shit.” “Nobody screwed nobody. You screwed yourself,” the man says. Brian thinks the man must know Jake pretty well. Jake feels pretty anxious, but he makes himself calm. It was a nigger who held the gun. He should have known. You wanna’ fight someone, why don’t you fight someone who can fight back? Jake squeezes the trigger. A pellet hits the man in the face. “What the fuck?” the man asks. He fires his gun at Jake. It‟s a real gun and Jake falls down. Brian does not try to save him. This is not the way it goes. Brian thinks, Abort! Abort! Brian runs outside and Tommy grabs at him. Secret agents following! Secret agents following! We’ve been discovered! Cover blown! Abort! Abort! They run together out of the screen porch. They run around to find Chase. Chase is standing under the tree waiting for them. Five out of five stars! The cops are on us! They are all running together. They hear an explosion from the house: the other gas container that Brian left in the living room. The house is yellow-white light that melts the snow. Chase tries to keep up with them. Tommy and Brian get to the truck a full minute before Chase. They can all hear fast racing sounds in their heads. Brian starts the truck and they start driving, but they don‟t know where they‟re going. Where the fuck is he taking us? Glad I brought the air pistol. Jake’ll like it… he liked it…he likes it… Where the fuck is he taking us? Panting and panting: Fucking right, Casio, Green Green, Line. “What the fuck happened?” Tommy asks. Chase asks too, with his eyebrows. “The house wasn‟t abandoned.” “What happened to Jake?” “I left him.” “Good.” “He‟s just like James Dean,” Brian says.

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Brian thinks that Jake is from another time, and Tommy thinks that too, and so does Chase, and they all say goooooood and hear fast racing sounds and see five stars flashing and keep expecting Jake from behind an available prop. And they are so glad that they know how to follow the rules, and that Jake can remain in front, his eyes blue and still, now part of the winter lights. His death is melting the snow and they all say goooooood and wonder what will rise from the snowy ashes.

77

When The Music’s Over

Amelia in all black slowly moving toward me, hips pushing back and forth, a pendulum of sex swinging. Her head and back are slightly bent forward so that her cleavage is showing and she is looking up at me. She laughs, loud and raucous, and as the laughter rises to a pitch her eyes meet mine. “We shouldn‟t be alone right now,” she says, laughing more. “We‟re too drunk.” My face is turning red and I‟m laughing now too, but— what does that mean?

Amelia moves out of the corner that we had worked ourselves into, discreet figures in the background of this apartment dance. But this is the kind of place where everyone is in the background— they know me, but mainly they want me to know them, each person pursuing the spotlight. We came by ourselves and we‟ll go home that way. But still I can feel that rhythm and deep bass pulsing through my body.

Jump, jump, jump. I hop and skip out to the crowd— twenty-somethings all, pushing for a good time with too much alcohol. And wasn‟t this supposed to be a professional event? Don‟t we all “work” together? And where‟s my wife? Has anyone seen my wife?

Who invited me here? Who drove me here, and why can‟t we be alone? What does that mean? Looking down the long line of women dancing, moving, watching the curves of bodies as they make waves, moving with the pulse of the music. Whatever music they want to play, and today, tonight, right now, you can hear TLC, Boyz II Men, and Tom Petty with his Heartbreakers. Who‟s in charge of this, and where did my wife go? Because I can only concentrate on three, Amelia, my wife and me. And Amelia, where did she go? And what the fuck did she mean by that?

People I don‟t like keep talking to me about the sexist undertones of popular tv shows that I‟ve never seen. “I really don‟t know what you‟re talking about,” I say. But they don‟t hear me, all wrapped up tight and ready to explode with their informed nonsense. In the background Amelia is showing people up with her dance moves, and the feel of heavy rhythm in her body. She

78 avoids these conversations of political implication with sly downward glances and the lift of twisting arms. We cannot touch her. “Damn!” I say in admiration, talking too loud.

And can you feel that? It‟s not just alcohol. We‟ve got everything. We‟ve got weed, pills, and cocaine, and I‟m high as fuck. But where‟d Amelia go? Is she afraid of me, of being alone with me? Afraid of herself? Or was it a joke? Was it just some kind of fucking joke?

And why is everyone so concerned with movement? If we stop, breathe, look into the glazed drunk eyes, will we suddenly be trapped? Find ourselves suddenly. Present. Is it because when you enter the here we are phase you fuck up, feel useless like melting putty, something sticky pressed down and taking on the shape and contours of something else. Look at that vomit sprayed bloody on the bathroom floor. Take a piece of advice and don‟t light that cigarette— it‟ll burn. We‟re all such good pretenders. It‟s all just part of the good times that keep on a rolling.

My wife is next to me, her hand on my head; she‟s patting my head. Am I sitting down, lying down? Why is she treating me like a kid? I‟m laughing. Oh, I see, I‟m laughing, and she‟s patting my head like a child who‟s had too much drink, and dear God I‟ve had too much of something. And suddenly I see Amelia from the corner of my eye, moving with the music from the other side of the room. “Help!” I yell, and everybody laughs. “Help!” I yell again, and again they laugh, but then they look away.

My eyes on Amelia. They can see my eyes and my wife leans down over me and fills my vision. “I think you need to be alone now,” my wife says, pressing her hand down hard, pushing, covering my mouth and nose.

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