maddie

She was only five when her grandmother took her to the lady with the big, funny looking cards. She remembers little about the visit, except for the lady – she was very pretty in an oddly elegant, black way – and the smell. It – the lady’s home – smelled like candles, colorful candles, if colors had smells, and, at that age, the little girl thought they did. She never did ask her grandmother why they visited the woman, nor why her grandmother looked so sad when they left. When she tried, as she got older, her grandmother would tell her that she was imaging things, that they’d never visited the woman. But the image was too sharp to be something she just dreamed. Finally, one day, when she was 14 and telling her grandmother about the boy she “loved,” her grandmother took her in her arms and held her tight. “Love isn’t everything it’s made out to be,” her grandmother said in a soft whisper. The girl’s name was Madeline and she was unfathomably beautiful.

christmas Eve

She pulls her coat tight, warding off the brittle, gusty wind. It’s almost midnight, Christmas Eve. She has no one waiting at home, so she’s in no hurry. As the wind dies, the snow begins to fall gently. When it picks up, again, the eddies reswirl. She thinks: Maybe I should just get in my car and drive. Just go, anywhere, somewhere. Stop and sleep. Wake and eat breakfast. See what Christmas feels like, there, somewhere. It’s not always been so, like this. Her ex has the kids, tonight; they’d decided to take turns with the holidays and he’d won the coin toss. So, this is new. She passes a bar – “Gracie’s” – then stops, turns and heads back, stops, peeks in, pulls open the door and enters. It’s warm, dark, but it feels safe. “Come in, hon,” the older man behind the bar says. She does. “Whatever you want, it’s on the house.” She smiles and says, “I want to be six, again.” The barkeep chuckles, nicely. She smiles, says “Merry Christmas,” and turns back into the evening. From somewhere far away she hears carolers singing – “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” As she walks, now, she sings along.

stand up and B counted

And the announcer says: “All 90,000
stand as one,” which is a lie, of course,
because not all 90,000 stand, nor is the
number
exactly 90,000, nor, even if all did, could they do it
“as
one,” without some practice, and this is the same announcer
who
castigates athletes
for not telling the truth,
or
lying, whichever comes first (for there
is a difference, you know). It is
an unnecessary silliness, this throwaway line,
meant, somehow, to dramatize something
that needs
no
additional drama.
The curious question, though, is this: does this
bother anyone else, that this lame brain so
easily insults our collective intelligence by trying to make
us believe that 90,000 people,
who have trouble getting out of each other’s way in
the concourse, much less the
post-game parking mess, could possibly “stand
as one?”
Or
is
it
just me? (I'm not
sure you need
to answer
that.)

the meaning of life

What does this all mean, he asks himself, then
answers, himself, too: It means
nothing. There is
no
meaning. It is
an exercise in futility
to find meaning, for we
are
here for no great purpose,
other than to
survive and help others
do the same. That is the function
of propagation – to keep
the mystery continual. For if
someone solved it – and many
talk about what it is, as though
they cracked the code – or if we ran out of people, it would
all
be
over. Which begs the question, then: Just
how hard are we
trying to figure
it
all
out, in between love affairs and kids
and visits to the dentist and dinner
at
Chick-fil-a, for example. When is there
time
to really think about ... it? And, so,
life
goes
on. Think about it –
or
don’t. It doesn’t make
any
difference.
Really.

lettuce prey

The confusing thing is this idea
of
God. OK, so there is
a
God; someone – something – had
to put
all this together. It is not possible
that two boulders crashed into
one
another and -- poof! –
all this intricacy happened. At least
that’s what
he
believes. But what beyond
that? What does
God expect of him? Of them?
Of anyone? And what about
the End Result, though he’s
not so sure he believes in anything
other than
re-mineralizing
some plot of grass, somewhere. So – but – if
we pray to Him, to whom
are we praying? It seems
a legitimate question.
To him?
To an idea?
Or is it just a moment
of concentration, a moment
of pause, an engineered time
to breathe deeply and re-think,
again, and come away somehow
re-buoyed?
Buoyed, again?

realization

He went to kiss her and she said, “I don’t like to kiss, so much,” and all he could think of was how he’d heard that prostitutes didn’t like to kiss, either, because it was too intimate. Fucking for money was one thing; kissing was quite another. But this was his wife. This was their wedding night. They’d kissed, before, sure, but he’d always noticed her holding back, not so much getting into it. They’d had sex, too, before they were wed. It was sometimes semi-passionate, sometimes even more perfunctory. All this flickered through his mind as she said, “Let’s just have sex,” and so, he did, they did, but he would remember the moment as a moment when he finally began to understand who she really was, because he thought the prostitutes were right, and he wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?” He would spend parts of the next 28 years trying to fix whatever was holding her back. He didn’t know until it was over that there was no fixing it, that, her.

tommie

His name is Tom and he’s a Vietnam vet, never married, never moved from his folks’ house. They’re both long dead – his parents – but he keeps the place, though just about as you’d imagine. It isn’t a pretty sight. He doesn’t date, has little of a social life, outside of family gatherings, where he’s given wide berth because of his laundry habits, which are often lacking. He’s a smart guy; he saves his money. In fact, he owns three “properties.” It’s not easy to find him, though not too difficult, either, if that makes any sense. He sees a lot of movies. Not the junkie ones. Those with some substance, real or alleged. And indies. He loves indies. They make him feel like someone, indie as he is, himself, or considers himself. He brings his own popcorn and soda, and all the ticket clerks on the east side know him by name. He gave up hoping to meet someone years ago, much less someone who liked movies as much as he did. So, he always sees them alone. He pretends he’s in them, leaves the theater feeling better about himself. He doesn’t have a dog. He needs a dog. If he had one, he’d name it Shane. Or Rooster Cogburn. Even if it was a girl.

unbridled sex

“Poughkeepsie Betty” met “Altoona Ray”
at Winkie’s at 15th and Stahl.
They laughed and they drank and they danced
and they laughed ‘til 15 bells far past last call.

“Let’s go to a hotel, let’s get us a room,”
said Betty, a gleam in her eye.
Ray flashed her a smile and gave her a wink
and hastened to 16th and Rye.

They got them a room, they did what’s to do,
They woke to the morning’s low hum,
And Poughkeepsie Betty and Altoona Ray
went back home from whence they had come.

They ne’er met, again, twas just that one time.
But neither would ever regret,
the kissing, the giggles, the unbridled sex,
at 70, who would’ve guessed?

LAX

He sits in the LA airport
and studies couples and wonders:
how did we
ever look? Bored? Disconected?
Ever
in love? Did I, he wonders,
look to be looking? Did men look
at her and think
she could
be had? and how? Did she look
have-able at someone? He thinks: “I
never knew to look,” and “Just where are
all these
people going? And to see what?
Or
whom?” Jingle Bells plays
and he thinks: “How odd to hear
‘one-horse open sleigh,’ here,
in LA.”

what's in a name

Burger King calls them
“French toast” sticks,
but they’re really just fried
bread, and
who thought
up
that? And: did he (or she) win
a prize or bonus – not to mention the
genius who came
up with the
truncated “tater tots.” and
while
we’re on the subject, walks
past a woman
with the “guess” logo slapped across her butt.
that’s just
a no-brainer:
fat
ass.

banjo

He puts three logs into the wood-burning stove and pulls a chair closer to the warmth. His dog’s name is Banjo and it sidles closer, too, to the heat. It is Sunday night and he – they – are waiting for bedtime. It has come to this – waiting to go to sleep. Tomorrow, he will head into town, looking for work. It has been like this for the past seven Mondays. No one is hiring. No one needs an honest laborer. Already, he’s cut back on Banjo’s portions. Already he’s cut back on electricity and logs. Already he’s cut back on his own amenities, much as they were. The wind blows, whistles, outside, and he hopes he can wait out the downturn. He never expected to be like this, but it is what it is, he has come to say. He pulls on a second sweater and crosses himself, thanking God for global warming. It could be much, much worse. Banjo sneezes, then yawns. At least he is not alone.

i do

“I am afraid,” she says, “that you will forget about me.” He smiles, because her vulnerability makes her so much more endearing. “I might,” he says, teasingly. “I might forget about you, someday.” She shakes her head and says, “I don’t want that, ever, no matter what happens, no matter where we are.” He kisses her on the forehead and she pushes into his shoulder and feels her eyes fill with tears. “You tease about this, but it is important to me.” He says, “What should be important to you, now, to us, now, is now.” She pushes closer, into his neck and kisses him softly. “Tell me you love me,” she says, and he says, “I do, now.”

christmas

The two children stare, wide-eyed at the Christmas tree in the Wal-Mart display and, finally, one asks, “Can we have a tree, this year, papa?” and the man with them says, curtly, without looking over, “No, we ain’t havin’ a tree this year.” He doesn’t choose to be mean, but he doesn’t know how to tell them that he can’t afford a tree, again, this year. He could tell them, he supposes, but they wouldn’t understand, so he does what he does and hides his own disappointment behind a shrug of disgust – “Just dries out and goes to waste.” The children don’t understand any of this, of course, especially because they’re looking at fake trees. And they’re kids, after all. So, they will wake Christmas morning to a day mostly like the rest of the days – cereal, milk, morning TV – and when they ask about Christmas and presents and snow and all the other things they’ve seen on TV, their father will sip from a cup of black coffee and not say anything. He’ll go to work at six and they’ll watch “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” and begin wishing for next year, just like they did the year before.

Barney

They got it all wrong, he thought, in the books and the movies and the recruiting pitches, especially. It was nothing about bravery. Bravery was a myth. It was about surviving – what you did, how you managed it, why you succeeded, if you did. The rest was all bullshit. Valor. Honor. Dignity. They were all just bigshot words that disguised the red-hot, paralyzing, blinding fear. What he needed to do, now, was find a way to survive – him and the others, as many as he could take with him. It was too early, now, though. Night had just begun to fall, the day’s heat just starting to dissipate. In an hour or two the evening’s breezes would come up, maybe cool, but probably not. Then, he would see how good he was at surviving. Until then it wasn’t survival, it was only marking time. A dog barked in the distance and he remembered his, back home -- Barney, a mutt. Barney was a good dog.

when it's time

In his last few hours, he has grown young, again. He sees things the way they used to be, the way they once were. There’s too much to recall, but, now, here, there’s Ray and Hank, old army buddies, in fatigues, bare-chested, smiling, sharing a smoke. Ray was a comic; Hank was a pistol. Ray was shot down over Ploesti. Hank, too. He’s missed them for a long, long time. There’s Mindy, now, too, his first love, his very first. She’s a picture of life, of beauty. Her smile is incandescent. Always was. He wanted to marry her, but never asked. She got tired of waiting, moved to Dallas, became a successful doctor. Never married. Over there is Biff, his favorite dog. A mutt, Heinz 57 variety. He pulled Biff in off the street one bitterly cold, gusty Christmas night, all fur and bones. Biff spent the next 13 years with him, ‘til he fell asleep one night at his feet and never woke. He sees his children, too, now, all four of them. This is the way he’d wanted it to be when it was time – seeing them all, like this, together, by him. Mary, the youngest girl, says, “We love you, dad. You were a good father.” He nods, imperceptibly, and closes his eyes, relaxes his entire body, smiles. It is time. No need to hold on any longer. It is time.

buffalo bob

They call him Buffalo Bob. He sells used cars at the Martinez Auto Mart, specializing in middle-aged women, divorcees’, specifically. He can see them coming from a mile or two – poofed-up hair, high heels, décolletage gaudily on display, ready to make an “ex” pay, somehow, some way. He steers them away from the “utility rides” and toward the Mini-Coopers or something even sexier. He’s had his way with one or two or three, but that’s not his motivation. He gets enough sex from his wife, Mayela. What he thrives on is his customers’ vulnerability. It’s better than the sex, or has been, to this point, getting them all where it hurts. He knows he should see a therapist, because he suspects he’s a closet misogynist. But there’ll be time for that. Right now, comes Ellie Marie Jaurez and she’s got her boobs on display and an agenda to die for -- and he’s got the antidote and the answer. God, what a beautiful day, what a day to be alive, what a day to be a salesman. Buffalo Bob, at your service.

she feels

She feels connected when he is beside her. Not always to him, specifically, but just somehow connected. Sometimes she thinks is it his warmth; sometimes, she thinks, it is his breathing. Sometimes, she thinks, she just imagines it, because she wants to feel it so. Those times, she weeps, softly, doesn’t let him see, doesn’t let him know. An aunt told her, once, (her favorite aunt) that love hurts and she thinks she is beginning to understand, at these moments, the latter, specifically. She is young, still, and wonders if it will always be this way, that she will want it so badly and that no one will ever be able to make the ache disappear. Because she is young, she hopes, and hope is a good thing, she knows. So, she dries her eyes and moves closer to him. He sleeps. She does not, but will, eventually, of course.

thanksgiving dinner

Little Man told him that there would be a pretty good meal at the old St. Albert’s Church on Middlestrand, so he headed that way, figuring he would stop by, in a block or two, and get Silent Joe, take him along. Silent Joe, whose real name was Rick, lived in the back of an abandoned garage a few blocks north, on Churchill. Churchill used to be a handsome, tree-lined arcadia; now, it was a ghost of its past, or worse. Nothing much remained – a garage, here, a duplex, there; old, rusting cars; an abandoned corner store across from a deserted diner across from a boarded-up barber shop. The stop sign at the end of the street was pock-marked and twisted and marked with graffiti, and, almost perfectly, indecipherably so. He hopes Silent Joe isn’t dead. He always worries about that. Silent Joe dead would put a damper on Thanksgiving dinner.

close-ure

They’re closing down her church. Officially, it’s a consolidation. They’re combining parishes with St. Henry’s. It sounds simple, but it’s not, at least not to her. She’s been attending 7 a.m. Mass at St. Dorothy’s for 63 years, this June. She was married there, her kids were baptized there, Dante was buried from there. She even stayed when the colored started moving in. It is her place – hers. She knows God is everywhere. She knows he works in mysterious ways. But this? This won’t be simple. A different confessional. Different kneelers. (St. Henry's are too hard.) Different everything. She wonders if this is a test of her faith. If it is, she doesn’t like it, not one bit. She won’t stop saying her rosary, but she might stop praying for the bishop. She never did like him much, anyway.

he wrote

He wrote: I would like, once more, to soar at 25,000 feet. I would like to look at her – her -- and feel that squishy, lovely feeling in my stomach, again. I would like to hear a song for the very first time, again, and know that it was a song that would never leave me. I would like to taste the sweet sweat of my two-year-olds when I kiss them and hear their glorious giggles as I toss them about. I would like to kiss my first kiss for the first time, again, and feel the power of a phrase well constructed and know that I did that, that I could do that. I would like to remember what it was like to wait up for Santa Claus, not already knowing it was Uncle Ray. I would like to hockey stop without falling, for the first time, and settle into her arms after love and feel the closeness and her heat and listen to her heartbeat. I would like to walk into the woods on a Christmas Eve and see the snow falling through the trees and wonder if heaven was like this, just a bit. I would like to do just about everything over, again, and pay more attention, to memorize the moments, to hold them and honor them. Oh, that I could, he wrote.

dead and gone

He decries the death of dignity,
or
at
least its dearth. The word has
lost its honor, he believes,
which is ironic
because
he thinks honor
also
has gone missing. He learned
both words, early, when he was
a
kid, he thinks, or at least a young
man. Today’s children, its students,
its hope for the future
cannot define either, nor
give examples, thereof, but is it
their failure or ours,
he wonders, knowing full well, of course,
that it
is
everyone’s loss.

finally

She teaches a course in religion at the local Catholic high school. She is good at her job. She understands the material; the kids get it. They get her. After school, tonight, though it’s not the first time, she will meet a man she knows only through the Internet at a small, dusty motel outside town and spend the evening, there. She does this with some regularity, with different men she knows the same, because it is faceless and dangerous and she finds the two somehow symbiotic, and though she leaves feeling guilty, for she is baptized and was raised Catholic, she also feels leaving strangely alive. Tonight when she leaves, in the darkest, quietest part of the night, she will feel a shadow approach, as she reaches to unlock the car door. She is unafraid, and strangely so. In fact, though no one else would understand -- and how could they? -- she is somehow ready.

what he heard

He misses the music most. There was a life to it, a sense of hope. “Dancin’ in the Streets.” “Good Golly Miss Molly.” “Get Ready.” “Wake Me, Shake Me.” Sometimes silly, always joyous. Lord knows it mostly didn’t come from a place of hope, though it rang like one. And maybe that was what made it feel so good, so vital. That, and how it got to him, across that AM signal from Detroit. It was as though he’d tapped into something, directly into something. From a real place. His parents didn’t get it. How could they? They’d already given up, they’d already resigned. Wasn’t that the way with the adults? Get there and stay there and wait for judgment day, when, finally, things would get better. But that wasn’t for him. He wanted to ride the feelings; he wanted to ride that lifeline. He still does, today, so many years later, but now wonders if it isn’t just time to get somewhere and wait. He desperately needs a song.

kia

He hadn’t seen his son in almost two years, and, now, he was hearing from the army that Billy had been killed in action, in Afghanistan. It still hadn’t registered, completely. He knew it, intellectually; it had been explained to him by more than one army official. The day. The time. The incident. The bomb. Remains had been identified; they were on the way home. It all added up. But he still struggled with the “what if,” that last bit of hope, that last vestige of right. Maybe someone had made a mistake. After all, it would be wrong for Billy to go before they could talk, again. It would be wrong for Billy to die before they had one last moment to sit together. It would be almost evil for Billy to die before he had a chance to hug and kiss him. He puts his hands on his head, now, and tells himself to be smart, to accept, to let it all in and allow it time before he thinks, says, acts. It is not easily accepted nor done, this resignation. He thinks it might kill him. And he doesn’t care, much, if it does.

acceptance

She looks at herself in the mirror. Studies herself. Every Saturday morning she takes stock, always when she first arises, before gravity gets the better of things. She will be 50 in two days. She wrinkles her nose at the thought, at her image, but only half-heartedly. She still likes what she sees. Her shoulders still have carriage. Her breasts sag only a bit and, somehow, lustily. Her hips still command space rather than flood it. Thighs, ok. Legs – check. She wouldn’t change a thing, now, and how nice that feels, to accept oneself. It wasn’t always so.

changeling

There is a moment,
he thinks, in everyone’s
life, that changes
everything,
forever. Why
he
believes this, he is
not sure, for he has no proof,
really, about this, just
a
feeling.
It might be a word, a smile, a deed,
a fact from a book,
a picture
someone else took that somehow
captured
an imagination, something considered, by
the faulty human mechanism
that considers such things so
trivial or indiscriminate that
memory loses it, and
without conscience.
But “it,” whatever “it” was,
changed a life.
changed
lives.
and continues to do so. So:
what
was
yours?

surf's up

he walks along the beach and
realizes this: for all the
times he walks the
route, he never,
yet, has put his
feet
into the water. In fact,
he
avoids the surf, sometimes, even athletically,
when
it crawls toward him. Given any other year
or time, he might
not
give such avoidance a second thought, but today
he
wonders:
what and why. Just another
thing
to
contemplate. Or
is
it?

re en act ment

He sits at the edge of the encampment, at a table, near the tent and his bedroll, which is yet unrolled, but slid to the rear of the tent, hiding the TV, which he’ll connect, later, to a 200-foot electrical cord, so he can watch “Saturday Night Live,” for two reasons: one, tonight’s show is not a re-run and, two, because it’s hosted by Taylor Swift, a current, country heartthrob. The field before him has been lit with 8,000 candles, representing the approximate 8,000 who fell during a pivotal battle in the war with Mexico. It is a lovely, peaceful, powerful sight, blessed by a cool night and gentle breeze. By weekday and late evenings he works the evening shift at the IHOP nearest the mall, in the kitchen. He is good at omelets. And they are good, because he adds a dash of pancake batter to the eggs. Tonight, though, he is a mercenary, one who deserted the U.S. forces and joined the Mexicans, at the promise of land and money, and will end up hanged for doing so. Dressed appropriately, he tells his story to the visitors, youths, mostly, armed with video cameras. He spins a good tale. He does a good deed. He has given life to history. Tomorrow, though, it’s back to the griddle and senior citizen 2-for-1 specials, which is better than the gallows, though not nearly so dramatic. His name is Fermin. He is 46.

she left, before morning

She left before morning, just as she’d planned,
telling no one, giving no one a hint.
They all slept unworried, her boys and the girl
and her husband whose nickname was Clint.

She did leave a note, handwritten, in print,
Told them all that she needed to go,
That they wouldn’t find her so they needn’t try
If they loved her, they’d just leave it so.

She drove 16 hours and six hours more
‘til she pulled to the side just to sleep.
In the wisp of a moment before nodding off
She asked Him her soul there to keep.

She woke hours later to early dawn’s dew.
The shudder it came like a shot
She’d made a mistake, a horrible one
Don’t think, just keep going, she thought.

They found her in Houston some 16 days more
In the back of her car on the road,
No number no address no ID or cards
No message no goodbye no note.

“Dear mom,” Maize had written when first she had left,
“please come home, we won’t make you cry.”
But fixing was over, any saving was through
And no one would know, ever, why.

the buck stops ... here

He sighted. Aimed, carefully. Fired. The buck dropped to its front forelegs, pitched further forward, nosed into the mud, toppled. It happened in slow motion. It always did. And perhaps that was part of the attraction -- watching the life bleed away. The animal was still breathing, struggling to, when he arrived at its side. Its eyes were glassed over, growing cloudy. He moved away, at an angle, so the dying eye couldn’t find him. He didn’t like being spotted, even by dying animals, and he’d made a career outside the hunting range by being invisible. He sat on a thick root to the left of the carcass, pushed back on the bill of his cap and lit a cigarette. It was still barely dawn. Only half the sky was lit, and, then, only a deep purple. He was almost admiring it when the first shot hit him, toppling him forward, not unlike the buck, severing his spinal cord. He felt strangely separate from his body, almost benumbed, but he still could hear, and the wheezing of the buck now blended almost synchronously with his own final gasps and the muted squish of approaching footsteps.

not a plan ... yet

She is startled by the thought crossing her mind -- what if she just left and never returned? – and is struck both by guilt and exhilaration. Is it possible? Could she do that? She once read a book about a mother who went for a walk along the beach and never returned. She just kept walking. The phone rings, now, and she ignores it. She sits; she must. The kids would be fine, maybe even better. Sam was a good father, a much better parent than she. To be free, again – or, more to the point, for once. She feels her pulse race. Her heart beats against her chest – hard. It is possible. She would need just to start walking, and not look back. Looking back would be fatal. She stood. Not today, though. Not tomorrow, either. But maybe someday.

he said

He said all the time, “in a manner of speaking,” and it drove her crazy. It was an affectation, one that seemed somehow endearing when he was in his 20s and trying to make his way through the forest of tall trees in the overcrowded investment industry. Now it just sounded, to her, anyway, like so much bullshit. He’d become successful and she’d loved the climb, but now she was wondering, more and more, why and what for. Sometimes she felt as though she were acting like a spoiled child. Other times she felt as though she were beginning finally to grasp some shred of life’s meaning. In either case, he didn’t figure into her future, she knew that, now. He was stern and boring and not as nearly as smart as she once thought, which caused her to wonder if she’d gotten smarter or if she’d just wised up. Her girlfriends told her she had a pretty good deal going, that she’d be crazy to do anything stupid. So, for the time being, she was staying put, anesthetizing herself with anti-depressants and avoiding sex as much as possible, which wasn’t nearly as difficult as she’d thought, nor as lonely.

graveyard shift

She gathers her clothes, quickly, pulls herself into the bathroom, dresses with haste. She will not kiss him goodbye, she knows. She never does. She believes, odd as it may seem, childish as it sounds, that she has only a finite number of kisses to give, or she has made herself believe that, because to her the kissing is the most intimate of actions and she doesn’t share them with many, if any. He will not wake for another hour. It is always this way. The meet, enjoin, she lies awake till it’s almost light, then leaves, while he sleeps. On the way home she will wonder why she keeps doing this, like this, not with him, but doing it, period. She comes up with answers, but never likes any of them, because none of them are truly honest and, despite even this, she considers herself an honest person. Her cell phone rings. It is her daughter. She wonders why her mother is late coming home, again, from the graveyard shift. She’d awoken and mom wasn’t there and dad just told her to go back to sleep. “I love you,” she tells the girl. “I’ll be home, soon.” And she is, mostly.

the moon

He looks out the window
of the
car and marvels
at the moon. He calls to
it and
waves at it, with a smile. He doesn’t
know, yet, that a cow jumped over it
(though he will soon); or that man
walked on it; or that someday
“a moon” will
take on
an altogether different meaning. Now,
he just
marvels at the fact
that it is there and it is luminous
and that it brightens
where there
is mostly
darkness. He seems satisfied with
that, and well he should be.
He is two, he
is in a car at night for the first
time and he
has found a friend
that follows him along the road.
Would we all
be
so
lucky.

the bodyguard

Marco is a bodyguard in charge of Jose Matisse Ruiz’s four children. He is paid well. He drives them to school, across the border. He waits for them, outside the school gates, drinking coffee and chewing gum and smoking three cigarettes, which is all he allows himself for the afternoon. At night, he goes home to his wife, Maria, and their two children, Dionicio and Griselda. She is a school teacher in the States and is very beautiful and makes a point, every day, of admonishing her students not to use such indefinite adjectives as “very.” Tonight, when Marco arrives home, he will be met, in his own living room, by two members of the Castro drug cartel. They will tell him exactly where and at what time he will turn over to them Aldo, the oldest of the Ruiz children, whom they will hold for a $1 million ransom. They also tell him what will happen if he doesn’t comply: his wife will be disfigured. “You will not ever be able to look at her, again,” the smallest and darkest of the henchmen says. His name is Jack. Marco does not sleep that night. Indeed, he may never be able to sleep, again.

the family

His mother’s family seemed normal to him, when he was a child. Or perhaps it was all he knew. Both of his uncles drank, good-naturedly, it seemed, and his grandfather, while quintessentially German in the worst ways, had redeeming qualities that, at one time, seemed almost honorable. Later, he’d learn that his one uncle was a philanderer as well as a drunk, and almost unabashedly so, and that his other uncle hit his wife, who one day ended up dead at the bottom of the stairs. The older he grew, the more he suspected that his grandfather sexually abused his mother. He knows families keep secrets, some of the most deep and of the darkest kind. And none of the secrets he supposes, here, have ever been mentioned aloud, or even hinted at, at any family gathering, even though all the suspects are long dead and gone and whiskey and wine often flow freely. He lives far away, now, but still, he wonders, every now and then, about them and the clan, as it is, and when he does he always remembers, first, that the uncle who hit his aunt always played Santa Claus at Christmas, and in the most jolly of fashions. Odd, that, he thinks. Or maybe not.

in the mind of ...

The paintings depict acts of sex that might cause most to blush, but she smiles, and at him, as he follows a few people behind her, in line. She does not know him nor he her, but they connect with an unspoken appreciation of the forbidden. They will not meet, nor connect. She is too careful for that; he is too wary of the social ramifications. After all, he is married. But, tonight, before each falls asleep, he and she will remember the moment as the best sex they ever had.

ledger main

She feels as if she is standing on the ledge of a building, six stories up, afraid to look up, certainly afraid to look down. The most perplexing thing: she has no idea how she got there, or why she’s out there. It is her mind, again, she tells herself. It is playing tricks on her, again. She wants to blank out, to erase everything, but she can’t. The harder she tries, the worse it gets -- the narrower the ledge becomes, the more gusty the winds, the more shrill the cry of the vultures circling above, which are all in her head, too, for she is standing, in the rain, waiting for the train, nowhere near anything so towering as a six-story building. I can survive this, she tells herself, refusing to move her eyes up or down or side to side, but focusing only straight ahead. Then, she decides to close her eyes, tight, and let herself fall, why, she has no idea, just to do it, to get it all over with, and when she opens her eyes, again, she sees herself on the sidewalk, far below, spread-eagle, unmoving, and for some odd reason, she feels a sudden sense of calm.

his father's business

It is his father’s business and he knows it only from the shadows and the late night whispers that sometimes seep into his bedroom. He is not allowed to ask questions or even wonder. He crosses the border, everyday, and attends the best high school in the area. He will be educated, his father said. He will be able to communicate well and maybe even be able to write better than well, so someone, he in particular, someday, can tell the tale of what passes as commerce on the modern-day Mexico border with the U. S. His school friends may know more of what his father does then he and that sometimes makes him a bit uneasy. But when they jibe, he just smiles, diffidently, shrugs, makes a lame joke, purposefully lame, so that he looks as dumb as he truly is about the truth. He had a girlfriend, once, but her parents forbade her to see him after they did a little looking about, gathering most of their information in the parking lot after Sunday Mass. So, he’s mostly lonely. But it is all right, for now. Someday, though, things will be different. Much, much different.

tell me

She wears a summer dress, white, sleeveless, in sandals, and a sweater, open, dancing, alone, on the cobblestone veranda of the mostly empty restaurant that sits on the quiet shore of a small Maine village. It is an October evening, a Saturday night, not cold, cool, and she looks at him with her azure eyes and her lovely smile, gliding unabashedly to a wonderfully steamy Dylan tune that includes the lyrics “Ever gone broke in a big way? Ever done the opposite of what the experts say?” It's the first time she's heard the song, but she matches its intent and spirit as though she wrote it with him. He knows the song, and the words, and he watches, carefully, intently, smiling, too, for she is dancing not only for him, but to him. It is almost eleven and he thinks he’s never seen anything so beautiful. And he is right.

marry me

Marry me, she said to him and he
did, without
thinking much about it, odd as that
may sound for
something so delicate, yet life-changing, because
he figured, wrongly so, it turned out,
that he could
make
just about anything work, because, well,
couldn’t he? And if not just him, couldn’t they? And she’d talked
a good game, like he, so what was
the risk? She would later say she was
“desperate” to get married, not so’s she’d told it
to him, of course, but would even that have made
a difference? He thinks not.
He figured to be her rescuer. It was, he thinks, now,
his destiny, no matter how ill-fated.
She turned out
to be
his destroyer, if she
could’ve been, lately, lastly.
Holy matrimony, it wasn’t.
Wholly foolish?
Perhaps. But who knew that, then,
or at least was willing to
say
it?

writers block

How does this “writing process” work,
he wonders, as he waits for the
word
or the thought
or the memory
or the face, word, sound, idea that
will
set him to creating something
that sounds real or at least
plausible.
He tries to remember how it sounded
or felt back when he was writing
without really knowing what he was doing,
and thinking
that he knew what he was
doing. Then, he stopped
and didn’t start up soon enough, again,
and his muse got wind of it
and left for greener pastures
or imaginations. Now, he is left
to his own doings and devices, as they might
be, and writes, hoping to catch
a kernel of truth and
turn it into
something that looks
like nothing he’d seen.
Most of the time from the
darkness, where nothing
much
is
visible.
Most
of the time.

mostly

There are times he wants
to run
away
from it all. He wants them – some
of them, not all – to finally wonder:
where is he? is he ok? what is his life
like?
He wants some of them – not all –
to consider
things, for a moment, from his
view, from his world, from the way
he saw that things were. And he wants
them
to miss him, just a bit. He knows
it is selfish and maybe silly and
perhaps even
a
bit
narcissistic – ouch -- but, so what? He allows
himself that, for a moment, for a
second, for, ok, maybe an entire
day.
Because tomorrow, he will be, again,
like his father was and as he strives
to be: steady, steadfast,
and maybe mostly imperturbable.
Mostly.
Mostly.
Mostly.