My flash fiction goes public

http://themolotovcocktail.com/past-issues/vol-1-issue-17/dueeast/

Monterey, CA. October 2010

War is not the answer. It is a response to having the answer already.

Begin with the idea that there exists an afterlife. The first questions most of us ask are, "What is it like?" and, "How do I get there?"

The presumption of knowing the answer to the latter has caused a tremendous amount of pain, suffering and death in this world. The presumption of knowing the answer to the former has made that tolerable.

How Do You Like the Birds?

Nobody in Pine River knew much about Mrs. Mangham. In fact nobody but Dr. Taylor, the town physician, knew that she was dying. It was cancer. Cancer that by the time it was discovered, had spread so profusely there was nothing Dr. Taylor could say but, "How can we make you more comfortable?"

Of course, they all noticed when Mrs. Mangham's hat shop on Second Street closed.

"It was an odd place," Mrs. Taylor said to her husband one morning over a breakfast of whole-grain toast and hot tea. "And no one really wears hats much anymore, do they? At least not the silly things she was selling there."

Dr. Taylor bit into his toast and nodded. Doctor-patient confidentiality, which he held in the highest regard, restricted him from saying anything else.

Three years earlier, Dr. Taylor had visited Mrs. Mangham's hat shop. He stopped in to pay his condolences for the death of Mr. Mangham, who had been his patient and had passed just a week prior. Mr. Mangham had died quietly in his sleep. Dr. Taylor was called to the Mangham residence at 4 o'clock that morning. Mrs. Mangham was smoking a cigarette and eating a red popsicle on the front porch swing. She looked childish swinging there in plaid pajamas with her grey hair falling down over her face. "The bedroom," she said, slurping the popsicle, "is on the left past the kitchen."

When Dr. Taylor came back outside to confirm the death, Mrs. Mangham was gone. The cigarette butt lay cold on the porch swing, stained with red syrup.

Her strange disappearance had prompted Dr. Taylor to visit the hat shop the next week. A small wind chime jingled over the front door as he entered. Mrs. Mangham, her hair pulled into a tight, serious bun, sat at the back of the store on a wooden stool with her eyes closed. The hats were indeed quite silly. And there were hundreds of them packed into the tiny shop.

The hats hung from floor to ceiling on tall brass hat racks. There was a rack of men's fedoras in brilliant colors: orange, teal, flamingo pink. On the far wall was a towering rack of top hats sorted by size--the ones nearest the ceiling nearly three feet tall. There were three racks of bonnets, ornamented with strange objects. One had a dozen strings of dice hanging from it. Another had taxidermied parrots pinned to it with terrifyingly large safety pins. There were hats upon hats, but nothing he could imagine anyone in Pine River wearing except on Halloween, or to announce a sudden change in sexuality or mental stability.

"Hello doctor," Mrs. Mangham said quietly, her eyes still shut.

"Mrs. Mangham," he stuttered, momentarily forgetting why he had come, "I've never been here before. Interesting place."

"Would you like to try something on?"

"Oh. No, thank you. I really just came by to offer my condolen--"

Mrs. Mangham, eyes still closed, held a finger to her lips to silence him. "Why don't you try the bonnet there? The one you were just looking at."

"I really don't wear bonnets, Mrs. Mangham. I really just came to say--"

"Try it on, my dear doctor. The one there at the bottom, with the sweet birdies. I think you will find you like what you see."

Dr. Taylor plucked the bonnet off the rack, surprised by the weight of the six stuffed red parrots. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching through the shop window, and tied the bonnet to his head.

"Gaah!" Dr. Taylor bellowed as a sudden explosion of noise filled his ears. He instinctively tried to cover them, and was nipped by the sharp beak of one of the birds. "Caaw!" it screeched. The six birds had come alive and flapped fervently to escape the bondage of the large pins that held them to the bonnet. The sound of their beating wings thundered in his ears.

"My dear doctor," Mrs. Mangham's voice came softly, sweetly, but with such clarity it was as though she were inside his head.

"My dear doctor," she said again and Dr. Taylor looked to where she had been sitting. In her place was a young woman, the most beautiful woman Dr. Taylor had ever seen, standing up on the wooden stool, entirely naked.

"What do you see?" she asked him. He said nothing and so she asked, "How do you like the birds?"

At this, Dr. Taylor suddenly felt weightless. The racks of hats all around him began shrinking into the floor. The young woman on the stool sunk downward. The floor moved away from his feet and Dr. Taylor realized he was floating. The birds flew upwards, carrying him by the bonnet toward the high ceiling of the hat shop.

"What is happening?" he called to the woman, his shoes hovering above her head.

"My dear doctor," Mrs. Mangham's voice sounded crystal clear inside his skull, "this is your fantasy. What do you wish to happen?"

"I want to be let down."

At that, the birds ceased flapping and fell stiff against the sides of his head. The floor rushed back up to his dangling body, and he collapsed at the base of the stool.

"Doctor Taylor," Mrs. Mangham, fully dressed, helped him to his feet and removed the bonnet. "You mustn't reveal what you have seen here." Dr. Taylor, who of course held doctor-patient confidentiality in the highest regard, nodded.

"Also, doctor, I would like to set an appointment with you. I'm afraid I've felt an odd lump in my left breast."

Three years later, on the day Mrs. Mangham died, someone reported a flock of bright red birds in the town park--a breed no one recognized. They were seen once and never again, and no one thought much of it except Dr. Taylor who had, for one absurd moment and for the rest of his life, learned how it felt to fly.

I'd Run With the Wolves

They say that youth is wasted

On me and on all of us.

I'm far too vain to notice.

I'm far too young to care.

I'd run with the wolves. If you'd let me

I'd run with the antelope too,

Just to feel the hot breath

Of my own self in pursuit.

I'd stand on the edge of a building

A knife stuck in my chest,

A crowd of humans behind me--

The way to Heaven at last!

Angels play their instruments gladly

In the sun that browns their skin.

Then they play their instruments sadly,

In memory of all their sin.

The road to hell is paved

With diamonds and gold and fur.

You walk it, your feet grow warmer.

I walk on it straight to her.

In the fading light of the bedroom,

A hand caresses my neck.

The touch feels so familiar, until

I awake in the dark and the sweat.

A wolf joins the pack as a killer,

Which is why I choose to stray.

I'd rather the blood in my mouth be my own,

I'd rather feel the heat than the shade.

Under The Knife

The obstacle is the knife. And the surgical mask. And the latex gloves. And the scrubs.

It's the nurses' anxious eyes, the patient's pale skin, and the rhythmic blips of the heart monitor.

It's the medical journals, the notes from the conference in Tokyo last fall, the lessons forgotten from medical school. It's the remembering and the forgetting, and the worry that I might forget or not remember again.

It's the acknowledging. It's appreciating the phrase, "It wasn't your fault." It's understanding, "It could have been any of us."

It's keeping my breathing even, steadying my hands.

It's scrubbing down, snapping on, stepping into, reviewing, peering over. It's reviewing again, assessing, re-evaluating, assessing, re-evaluating, assessing, re-evaluating.

It's angling the light. It's taking the knife and making the first incision along the same line as the last one--who's not yet cold in the morgue under my feet.

The Sun Through The Clouds

Mitch stood in the sand and let the waves wash over his black leather dress shoes.

"These are the highest quality Italian leather," the saleswoman told him, "They'll never crease from day-to-day office wear."

"What if I wear them in the ocean?" Mitch asked.

"Why would you do a silly thing like that? Now, size 10 fit all right?"

The salt water licked at the polished black leather, it swirled and eddied around his heels. It snuck over the cuffs and soaked his black nylon socks. He wiggled his toes and felt the wet insoles squish.

It was cloudy, but the heat of the sun pushed through the thin grey veil. This was Santa Monica after all, the sun was relentless.

Mitch took off his glasses, the thick-framed ones with the designer's name printed in silver along the temples, and dropped them onto the wet sand at his feet. He unbottoned his shirt and dropped it too, delicately on to the sand. His belly ballooned within his white undershirt, stretching the cotton tight under his yellowed armpits.

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and gave up the bills to the breeze; $1's, $5's, $20's, $100's. With a flick of his wrist he sent his Driver's License spinning like a frisbee out into the surf. It floated there for a moment, visible only as a small blur to Mitch, and then it was lost under the next breaking wave.

The waves beat on and on. His trousers were soaked to the knee. He pulled a small scissors from his pocket and cut off large chunks of grey hair that he had grown to shoulder length and heretofore kept healthy with fish oils and Vitamin E. The strands of hair, long wispy pieces of his DNA, he too set free on the wind.

He felt the urge to drive the scissors into his thighs, the backs of his hands, his ribcage, his eyeballs, his ears, the roof of his mouth. But, no. They would allow him on the ferry soaked, shirtless and bald maybe, but not likely bloody and blind.

"Yes," he said, "size 10 fits fine."

I've Made My Mind

I re-read the letter I had written to myself before the surgery. It was a summary of my life: family history, names of close friends, former professions, ex-lovers, current lovers, likes, dislikes, allergies, addresses, phone numbers, computer passwords. But at the end I had written a strange sentence: At least now, everything will be for certain.

I thought it a strange thing to write to myself, and I told the doctor to include that thought into my new Thought-Bank. "At least now, everything will be for certain" is a strange thing to write to one's future self. He included everything from the letter, of course. But, per protocol, did not record anything of the first five hours after I woke up from the surgery.

Therefore, my memory now begins with reading the last line of a letter I had written to myself the day before. While reading the letter I was eating a sesame-seed bagel with strawberry cream cheese, sitting in the cafeteria of a hospital that smelled unquestionably sanitary. The woman to my right had grey hair that shot off her head at alarming angles.

My second memory is of the doctors teaching me how to use a toilet.

This is, I supposed, what any second beginning is like. A doctor explained to me the concepts "apartment building" and "supermarket." They sounded terrifying, and I asked if we could return to colors, or possibly adjectives.

"It's your mind," she said, "we can put into it whatever you like. Now, do you recall 'repulsive' ?"

All The Violence of All The World

I walked into the Arizona desert as the sun was setting. The cliffs to my right were stained blood red in the waning light. The cacti were smaller than I thought they might be. I left the car engine running back there on the side of the road, a Neil Young tape hopping from Side B to Side A and back again. Three empty bottles of Jack under the passenger seat. Empty, the passenger seat, for the last 1,000 miles.

I heard a rattlesnake, or the wind in the brush, and it reminded me of the story my grandmother told me of the highest mountain in Africa that disappeared into the clouds. Only one man ever climbed all the way to the top, and he was so stunned by what he saw that he never came down.

"What did he see?" I asked.

"All the bloodshed across all the world," my grandmother said. "He saw beyond the seas to the other side of the world where women killed their babies, and men killed the women for killing the babies. He saw where the white man came from and how he used the guns he brought to Africa to kill his own brothers and sisters. He saw hatred to the west and to the east, and he feared the end of humanity."

"What shall we do?" I asked.

"There is nothing we can do," she said.

"Surely," I begged, "there is something!"

"Be good to those around you," she said, "take care of them, and when the violence of the world closes in around you, they will take care of you too." She kissed my cheek.

A bee landed on my cheek in the Arizona desert that night as the first stars came out. It did not sting me, but I felt the violence of the world closing in and I vomited on a dry sage bush.

Love and Hate

In the house I grew up in, we had magnetic poetry on the fridge. Nobody ever really spelled out anything profound, but once when I was about eight, my mom spelled, "Do not trust anyone." It stayed on the fridge untouched for years while other poems came and went. School papers, wedding invitations, summer vacation pictures, coupons, newspaper clippings that mentioned my father, church bulletins, obituaries, recipes, while-you-were-out notes, to-do lists, to-buy lists, to-sell-at-the-next-yard-sale lists, parking tickets, court summons, business cards, inspirational magnets, dentist appointment reminders, labels of favorite bottles of wine, niece's artwork--all danced on and off the face of the fridge in the eternal waltz of time hurtling onward, except for my mother's poem.

"Do not trust anyone." The phrase stuck in my head when I went to college, and I remember when the girl I was dating explained birth control to me and how we really didn't need to use condoms, I said, "I just really don't want to have a baby right now." What I was thinking was, Do not trust anyone.

I had a job as a waiter for after that, and there was an old man who came to the restaurant every Wednesday and always complained about the food. He ordered the same steak each week and complained to me how bad it was. I told the chef once and he admitted that the man had been coming for years, every Wednesday. He complained so much that the chef now pissed on the guy's steak each week when he cooked it. "The kitchen stinks for a while afterward," the chef said, "but that old fuck gets what he deserves. And then he's right at least, the food should taste like shit." It was the most disgusting thing I ever witnessed.

So now when I order at restaurants, or get in the back of a cab, or let a stranger use my camera to take a group photo, or sip out of the same bottle of Jack Daniel's as someone I just met, or dance with a girl at a club, or unsheathe a new razor head, or read what SPF 30 really means, or listen to the President make promises, or let my dog sniff another dog, or turn the paper to the continuing story on Page A12, or cross the street before the little white man appears, or play catch with my nephew, or try on a shirt in the fitting room of the store, or worse a swimsuit, or worse a hat--I think of my mother's unbroken poem, "Do not trust anyone." And I shudder.

Runnin'

The night I left without telling anybody, the dumb dog tried to follow me out the front door.

"Shh!" I said and pushed his face back though the screen door. He whimpered and licked my hand. "Gro-oss!" I wiped the slobber on my lucky red pants.

"I'll bring you somethin' nice," I told him to make him feel better, but I knew I wasn't never comin' back here. No sir.

It was cold and by the time I reached Jeremiah's farm I was darn sorry I only had one pair of socks.

"Silly girl," my mother would have said. "Stupid bitch," my father would have said.

No lights were on at Jeremiah's farm. Even though me and Jeremiah played ball toss together at school, I was afraid of that big white farmhouse. And Jeremiah's big white daddy.

Over the next hill the woods got thick on the south side of the road and I knew that somewhere through them trees was the train tracks and on the tracks was the trains and the trains went to New Orleans and to New York City and to California.

Jeremiah told me his daddy been everywhere and in New Orleans they got crawfish they call "prawns" big as your arm. In New York City everybody shouts all day and night, and they have a rule that you can never turn out the lights at night, and all the cars are painted yellow. And in California it's so sunny and hot all the time that everybody walks around butt-naked, and even still they have to go in the ocean to cool off 'cause I guess they don't got no shade or iceboxes or nothin'. That sounded scary to me, but Jeremiah thought it was fantastic.

I jumped onto a moving boxcar that night, no idea where I was goin'. I prayed for New Orleans and baby, I been doing nothin' but runnin' and prayin' ever since.

Raise It Up

At the last toast at the end of the world my father will be at the head of the table, raising his glass to humanity. "To you," he might say. Or, "To us." Or, "To God."

While buildings are crumbling and the land is sinking into the sea and the trees are on fire, I'll have my eyes on my father. "Let us be thankful for what we have been given," he will say.

It will be at this point that I'll sniff my drink to see if the bartender went easy on the gin, like my mother said I should. It will be strong. "Thank God," my father will say, his timing impeccable, "for the lives we have had."

I will try to pull the lime out to suck on it, because that doesn't count as drinking before the toast is over. My finger chasing the green slice around the ice cubes in my glass will remind me of the Titanic and how that must have felt like the end of the world to those poor bastards. "Our time is short," my father will continue. "Without hope for a future, let us find peace in our end."

At this point the roof will be swept off the house and the dry grass in the front lawn will catch fire. Like I said, impeccable timing. "Let us find comfort that humankind has lasted as long as we have without destroying ourselves." The ice in my glass will be melting at this point, and my sister will suddenly disintegrate into ash in the chair next to me.

I will steal her drink and pour it into my own. No need to be wasteful here at the end of time.

Finally, my father will raise his glass high above his head. "To life everlasting in the great world to come," he will shout over the hurricane-force wind that will blow fire through the house and swirl up into the darkened sky.

I will raise my glass and take the double-drink down in one big swallow. I will shut my eyes, and feel the flames on my cheeks and the fire of the gin in my throat.

What We Do Know

What we don't know is how Cynthia Cartwright, queen of the red clay court, lost at the French Open last year.

We know she had a lover who lived above a pie shop in Paris, and his apartment smelled of baking even in the middle of night when Cynthia visited.

We do know she never tried to learn to speak French, but stuck to rudimentary phrases like, "Baguette" or "Croissant."

We know she liked to carbo-load and that she was allergic to green grapes. She never drank white wine.

We know she told white lies and black ones, and made many promises she didn't keep.

We know her lucky green racquet with gold trim went strangely missing the night before the semi-final match.

We know she growled like a lion when she was losing, and she yipped like a puppy when she won.

We know she was the best in the world for five years running and nobody--not even Rena LaPena who wore her country's colors, red and magenta, at all times--could beat Cynthia.

Some people say she got sick from the musty, sweaty odor of Paris. But no, she knew the scent of her lover's briefs. Some think she ate a green grape before the match, or was tricked into it. Maybe a black cat crossed her path, or the grounds crew forgot to water the red clay and she forgot to notice. Or it was that she lost the green and gold racquet. Maybe the screams of so many years of accumulated fans was too much, finally.

I think she simply never, ever wanted to leave Paris in the summertime when the sky is blue and the flowers are blooming sweet.

As Fast As You Can

I'm taking Natalie for a walk by the ocean today while her mother and father wait for the test results at the hospital. It's a twenty-minute drive, but my cell phone get service out here and we can get back there quickly when we need to.

"How fast should I run?" Natalie asks, kicking off her sandals and digging her small toes into the sand.

"As fast as you can, girl!"

I'm showing her the "Quick Shot" setting on my digital camera, which lets me take as many pictures as I want, one right after another, as long as I hold down the shutter release button. "Like boom, boom, boom," I explained to Natalie.

She's fifty feet down the beach, pointing her finger at a gull saying, "Boom, boom, boom." She loves having her photo taken. A diva in the making.

"I'll say go!" I call to her and put my eye to the viewfinder--an old habit from the pre-digital age. I zoom in on her face. She's biting down on her bottom lip, showing the whole wide gap between her front teeth, and leaning forward like a marathon runner at the starting line. Her eyes are focused intensely on me and I wish she could stay looking at me like this forever.

But soon we will return to the hospital. I will fold my arms around her and the doctor will open his clipboard and clear his throat, and Natalie's eyes will focus intensely on him.

I Paid For It

"You see this one, right above my eye?" she pointed at a little jagged scar above right her eyebrow, which I could tell she now plucked because little hairs like whiskers were growing in around it.

"Looks like a bad one," I said.

"This asshole from like Tennessee said he wasn't going to pay because the beer tasted like shit or something."

"Wow," I said and turned up the car radio two clicks.

"So, when he tries to walk out, I jumped across the bar and hopped on his back like a spider monkey or something."

"A spider monkey?"

She laughed at her own words. "Yea. He totally hit me in the face, and I was like bleeding on him. I guess he was pretty drunk." She scratched her armpit and she was wearing a sundress so I could see she hadn't shaved her pits in a while. "And we found out later he like didn't have a place to sleep so he camped out in front of the police station and totally got arrested in the middle of the night."

"Asshole," I said.

"I know, right?" She lit a cigarette with her new lighter shaped like a naked woman. "Did I show you my sweet new slippers Jorge bought me?"

"Who's Jorge?"

"Just this guy. Check them out, they're totally blue." She reached into her dirty backpack in the back seat.

"Is this our turn?" I made a left that I knew was not the way to our apartment.

"I think so. Aren't they rad?"

The slippers were blue. They had little skeletons playing guitar stitched over the toes, which I was sure was a Chilean thing she would be happy to tell me all about if just asked. If I just totally asked.

"You can't live with me anymore," I said.

"What are you talking about?" she doused her cigarette in my water bottle. "Don't worry," she ruffled my hair, "Jorge got you some slippers too."

Some Faith

Preacher say Jacob's faith is raw. Oh Lordy, it is a faith you cannot shake. A thunderclap clamors and Jacob shouts, "Bless the Almighty!" and he tells his to wife turn off Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Jacob ain't so sure he is. But them thunderclaps is somethin' to behold, ain't they?

And you ever hear them boys at the Sunday service? Praise be to the Lordy. Them boys can sing. You ever hear them?

At Christmas time they get more musicians, you know, and they get some bells that they bang on and they make the most beautiful carols.

"Silver Bells" Jacob loves. It ain't about Jesus. It's just about the season--letting snowflakes fall on your nose; and the bitter cold; and eating goose; and forgetting that Christmas is hard work; and knowing that things are good for now and always. Thanks to Jesus for the baby Jesus. You can hear the angels in them bells.

Bindi

Eating dinner at my parent's house is like going to the dentist's office. I have to sit in the chair for an hour while somebody sticks uncomfortable things in my mouth, try not to say out loud how much this is pissing me off and I spit in the sink when it's over.

Last Tuesday was the first dinner I had with my parents in their new vegetarian phase of their slow waltz toward death.

"Are you still dating that snake charmer?" My mother kissed me dryly on the cheek.

"She's not a snake charmer. Hi Dad."

"Taste this rice, David. This is the crap your mother's making these days."

"But she does have that disgusting red pimple between her eyes"

"Not a pimple."

"There's no flavor!"

"Well I don't know what you call it."

"It's call--"

"Taste it."

"Get that out of my mouth."

"I don't see how you can not just stare at it."

"I think it's quite beautiful."

"Well stay away from the tofu."

"Beautiful?"

"She thinks tofu is the same as chicken."

"Drop it, mother."

"But it's not. Chicken's aren't made of soy beans."

"I just don't see it."

"What else is on the menu? I brought wine."

"God. Not the same as last week, David."

"I mean it's a stain on a face that needs as much help as it can get."

"No, this is a Cab."

"What's the alcohol content?"

"You don't buy wine for the alcohol content."

"What? Eleven percent? Hope you brought two bottles."

"Let's move to the kitchen."

"It's like a pimple she just keeps picking."

"I brought three."

Make Room For Something

We were always careful not to speak about death around my grandmother. She was indeed tiptoeing nearer and nearer to her own grave, and none too gracefully at that. I always pictured the moment she would finally die--alone in her bed in the middle of the afternoon with the light on and the curtains drawn. Choking on a cracker. Her glasses propped neatly on the tip of her thin nose. It will be strange now, not knowing what she will look like at last.

I suppose it's a surprise for everyone--the moment of one's own death. But it was even more of a shock when mine never came.

The wave that got me raised its mighty foam fist, kicked out my surfboard from underneath me, grabbed me by the throat and slammed my body into the churning depths. My arm smashed against a boulder, snapping the two thin bones of my forearm. My left foot snared a jagged edge of the same rock or similar, and the three smallest toes came clean off.

I gulped for air and drew in two lungs full of sand-flecked salt water. My throat tightened and I vomited, which stung my nose.

My vision went black for a moment, my back spasmed and then it was over. My chest relaxed. My mouth hung lazily open, filled from lip to lung with seawater. My sight came back, entirely clear and sharp, and in the tortured sunlight that filtered through I could see the green sea stained red all around me. Then, I simply drifted downward.

I felt the pressure in my ears mount as the water grew darker and cooler. But they soon popped inwards and I felt warm liquid moving across my cerebral cortex, like a brain surgeon had cut off my lid on the operating table and was giving all those pink ridges and valleys a pleasant sponge bath. A shark swam past, upward toward the swirling redness in the rising tide. Another followed. Then an octopus, and a school of silver fish with bulbous red eyes. I looked down at my white feet and seven toes stretching into the eternal blackness below, and I was glad I was going feet first. I smelled the vomit in my nose for a moment and I thought of my poor grandmother and how she will die someday soon in her bed with her glasses propped neatly on her nose.

Where I Come From

The world can go completely white. No sun, not even a pinpoint is visible through the cloud cover. The snow floats to the ground haphazardly, the flakes can be as big as the palm of your hand. Whole trees disappear under the blankets of white; whole houses lost in mounds of dusty, powdery snow. You would only know the freeway by the tops of the street lights, radiating orange triangles on top of the great white plains. If we put snowshoes on and set off from our rooftops, we would be taller than the street lights, taller than the oaks.

The world can go completely white. But it is more likely we are headed toward one that goes completely black. We will soon run out of fuel to power our lights. We will soon run out of love to soothe our anger.

No sun, not even a pinpoint is visible through the cloud cover. Yet somehow there are shadows. On the sidewalks and on the sides of buildings, shadows haunt the figures they mimic. So we know that even when we cannot see the light, it must be there by the contrasting existence of the darkness.

The snow floats to the ground haphazardly, the flakes can be as big as the palm of your hand. They land on the grass, the brown shoots like spears taller than me jutting out of the frozen earth. I push them heavily aside and trudge onward to the safety of a fallen tree. The snow is gentle, and it makes food scarce.

Whole trees disappear under the blankets of white; whole houses lost in mounds of dusty, powdery snow. Soon cabin fever sets in. Folks go stir-crazy. I knew the storm was coming so I left the kitchen knives out on the front lawn, now buried under the white angel dust.

You would only know the freeway by the tops of the street lights, radiating orange triangles on top of the great white plains. This place can be so desolate. Even from the airplane window where I can see for miles, there is no sign of movement down there, no sign of life. If this is a city, where are the people?

If we put snowshoes on and set off from our rooftops, we would be taller than the street lights, taller than the oaks. We would be champions of the world. Kings and queens ruling kingdoms and queendoms of snow and ice. Icicles our mighty swords, toboggans our valiant steeds.

You're Working On It

"At the Army hospital they would have called me a, uh, weenie for doing this." I smile at my mom. We both know I'm keeping my language in check around her.

"Well, no one thinks you're a weenie or whatever for using the banister here."

I am three steps up the stairway in our house, both hands on the sleek wooden banister. My mother is enjoying being a mother again, bringing me breakfast in bed, ticking off the exercises as I go through the daily routine in our backyard. This is the final box to be checked off the list. When I make it up the stairs without the banister, the muscle tissue in my left calf will have regenerated and grown strong enough that I can re-enlist. My mom wants to keep me on the banister as long as possible.

"You can't rush a miracle," she says and pinches my unshaven cheek.

Once a week I have to strip down in front of her so she can measure the circumference of my upper-thigh, mid-thigh, upper-calf, mid-calf, lower-calf, ankle. She ticks them off and scribbles numbers on the form for Dr. Cole. Then she massages the calf, which hurts like hell, and tells me the same story about the time my father fell off the tractor and she thought she lost him for good.

"There's no tractors in Iraq, mom," I say. Which is not entirely true.

"But there are mines."

"Really?" I roll my eyes.

I hate this. I miss the sun baking the back of my neck while I lay still like a sunning lizard behind a brick wall that used to be a school. I miss watery chicken at night and sour orange juice in the morning. I miss sneezing red dust into the elbow of my khaki shirt. I miss maps and my gun.

I do the exercises, pretending to be patient, so I can get it all back.

A Dream

I had a friend who kept a Dream Journal and I told her:

"Dreams are nothing but blood and dew on the grass. Everything makes sense in the dark, but in the sunlight we are all monsters."

She said dreams are "a manifestation of our subconscious." And I told her:

"If what I believe is reality only occurs when I am asleep, why should I ever wake up?"

She said, "No, dreams help interpret life." And I told her:

"Life is a series of chemical and biological coincidences. If I were a fish, I would not trust my subconscious because it would tell me to grab the worm on the hook. But since I am a man, and in my dreams my subconscious tells me I want to have sex with my high school algebra teacher in my dead grandmother's bed--you say there is meaning behind it that defeats the phallic fantasies?"

She said, "You are such a skeptic." And I told her:

"I simply accept that man is no greater than what he is. Man dreams as dog dreams as fish dreams. A dream is a dream is a dream."

Course

"Peter, come back," Dr. Shew says. I know it's Dr. Shew because his is the voice that always calls me back. He taught me that method. It was daytime then, of course, and he taught me, "You need to find a peaceful center to find your way back to, Peter." And I chose him.

"Come back now, Peter." I turn the ship's great wooden wheel and I hear the rudder groan under the hull. For a second I am a fish, a marlin--maybe a whole school of marlins--swimming along with the ship and suddenly the rudder jerks right and we jet out of the way of the swirling current it generates. Our sleek, silver bodies drink in the moonlight and carry it, echoing like sonar down into the depths of the sea.

"Find your center, Peter." I straighten the rudder now that I am on a due-easterly course. I know east by the stars, of course. If you were here you would see it clearly too: the woman who lays naked across the sky. The contours of her body are simply specks of light, simply burning infernos of deadly gases billions of nautical miles away. Her hair drapes down to the horizon, a never-ending meteor shower. The tip of her nose is due north, her left heel due south. The third star from her left nipple is west and I am, of course, running straight away from there.

I ride this ship almost every night and when I wake sometimes I taste the sea salt on my fingers. I keep them in my mouth all day to remind me that come nightfall, I can have my whiskey and my stockings and the stars will come out and my ship will be there and this time, of course, I will remember to follow Dr. Shew's voice back to my peaceful center. And I will breathe the sea air.

I Am Tired of It

I waited tables at this crappy Italian place under the freeway, over by Division and God-knows-what --you know where I mean--for like eight years. I stuck around while three managers came and went.

Danny, the first guy, had this short spiky hair that he kept running a comb through, even when he would talk to customers. He would bend over the table and pull this comb out of his front pocket and say, "Is everything to your satisfaction, ma'am?" I guess enough of his little hairs fell into people's fettucini that he got axed.

Then there was Barbara, who musta been 70 at least, who would grab the Mexican chefs' butts all the time and tell them where she'd like hot oil rubbed on her. She stayed for maybe 5 years, redecorated the whole place in light pink and baby blue and hung a picture of her son in Army camouflage in the break room.

Finally there Rick who was the Assistant Manager first, but stepped in when Barbara went to the hospital. First thing he did was take down that creepy picture, then he got the owners to get more seafood on the menu. I always thought Rick was pretty good at being a boss and he gave me a lot of hours. But then one day I was early for my dinner shift and the chefs were swamped so they asked me to grab some broccoli or something out of the walk-in cooler. When I opened the door, I found Rick with his cock in the tub of mayonnaise. He had headphones on and he didn't notice me at first. I thought this was weird for two reasons. First, the mayo was cold so what the hell, it couldn't feel good. And second, I worked there eight years and never once was there a dish on the menu with mayo in it.

On The Wall

Hands on the wall,

Where I can see them.

He never felt like

Caged or something.

More like a magician

Whose trick was found out,

Whose slight of hand

Too simple too slow.

He felt the hard hand

Pressing on his spine.

The boney arches true.

His lower back,

His malnourished,

His lack-of-muscle,

His lack-of-thug

Exposed or something.

Junior laughed, after all

It was funny, like the movies

Or something he'd seen.

A hundred times he's seen this.

"Hands on the wall!"

Such a shallow, practiced

Voice like a thunderclap though

No one sees the lightning.

He might get taken in.

Pockets might get turned out.

Girls turned on, watching.

Fuck 'em when he gets back.

Don't you think, honey,

I won't see you no more.

"Where I can see them!"

Blood, I know the drill.

King of One-Liners

We called Teddy the King of One-Liners. It wasn't because he was funny or anything. It was because when he went off his fist found the straightest line to your face and one punch was all it took. We heard someone talking about one-liners on the radio outside Stubby's one time and somebody said, "Hey Teddy, that's you man. A one liner!" We laughed but Teddy got pissed and went off on some poor guy at the bar that night, and the poor guy ended up in the hospital with his cheekbone poking inward. Teddy was a crazy dude, man.

But Teddy and me were always tight, and I always had his back no matter who he was going off on. So the night Teddy told me he was gonna cool it, I took him serious, right. He said, "I don't want to be no King of One-Liners no more." "Cool, Teddy," I said.

So of course that night we all cruising down 24th or 25th and we see this kid who looks like Stubby's little brother getting the shit knocked out of him by these two thugs who nobody had ever seen before. We all go running over there but Teddy says, "I'm gonna hang back, man." At first I think he's crazy but then I remember what he said so I say, "Cool, Teddy man."

I start throwing punches on these thugs and one of 'em breaks away from us and pulls a vodka bottle out of his jacket and smashes it on the side of the building. Man that glass smashed everywhere. I even found some in my hair the next day.

A big piece landed way back over by Teddy and we all froze, even those two thugs nobody had seen before. I expected Teddy to go off after that, but he bent down all slow and uncomfortable like all big dudes do when they bend over, and he picked up the piece of glass off the sidewalk. It was as long as your thumb man. He held it right by his face for a second and looked at us and then ate it. I'm not fucking around, because at first I thought he was doing a trick or something, but he put that shit in his mouth and we heard it crunch his teeth and he swallowed real hard and had this look on his face like it really hurt.

"Oh shit, Teddy," I said. But he just spit some blood on the ground at us and walked away. Teddy was a crazy dude, man.

Alone

Everyone here says I will love my brother once I get to meet him.

"He's a great kid!"

"So smart for his age!"

"He is so funny. Seriously."

It's strange to hear people talk this way about him when all my life it was, "Don't mention Timothy around your mother" or "Be thankful you didn't end up like Timothy" or "Let's all say a prayer for Timothy." You see, my brother died when he was four. He was hit by a school bus or fell out of tree or tried to jump down the stairs or got lost and was found floating face down in the river south of town or was standing behind a horse and got kicked or swallowed too much toothpaste and was poisoned or had a brain tumor or leukemia or a snake bite or a dog bite or an enlarged heart or a heart too small. I'll ask him once I get through this line.

It's not unlike when I was drafted and I had to take off all my clothes and get measured. They stuck a wooden stick down my throat there and a thermometer up my butt. Here they just strip off all the bullshit of your life, categorize your existence on Earth not by what you did, but what you did to others. And man, these white-robed freaks can remember it all.

The first line is for Violent Offenses. "It was the fucking Army" is no excuse. The second line is for Hurtful Lies, Shameful Untruths and Fabricated Tales About Oneself That Benefited Only Oneself. I spent maybe a week there. The third line is for Self-Harm, Cruelty to Nature and Other Such Nonsense. And the last line is for Petty Misconduct, Poor Sportsmanship, Mean Thoughts and Et-cetera.

I am in the last line, wondering how long it takes a four year old to get through all this. My toes and fingers are cold, and when I think about it, I'm very surprised I have toes and fingers up here. I wonder what Timothy looks like, and if he'll love me back.

In The Mail

Last month I visited an old boyhood friend at his cabin an hour outside Denver. We had been Boy Scouts together, and the wilderness suited him better than me. He didn't have a phone, and I was following directions he had scribbled at the bottom of his last letter. The next step read, "left on dirt road / kind of trail just past tall pine. approx 3mi. if arrive at New Mexico gone too far. turn around."

I brought along a postcard I had written to my mom from Scout camp years ago when he and I were tentmates. It lay in the sun on the passenger seat next to six-pack I was sure he wouldn't drink. The front was a photo of a black bear cub climbing a tree, at the bottom in bold yellow letters was printed, "Camp Is Bear-y Fun!" On the back, I had written in neat print that looks remarkably like my handwriting today:

Hi Mom!

Camp is bear-y great! I am earning my astronomy

merit badge so we get to stay up late and learn about

the stars.

The lake is cold at night and you can't fish because

it's dark and they said once a kid got a hook caught

in his eye. Can you send me more socks?

Miss you. Love you.

John Alexander

My friend remembered the story of the boy who got the hook in his eye. We laughed about it and scared a bird off of his deck railing. It was a crow, I think.

My dad always said, "One scotch after work really hits the spot. I just can't remember if it's the seventh or the eighth one!"

I try to tell this joke to the brunette ordering a round of shots for her girlfriends. It comes out something like, "My dad drinks scotch at work. Are you a natural brown head?" The bartender suggests it might be time for me to head home. I leave a twenty dollar tip.

There is an enormous mural on the side of the parking garage near my apartment. The first part I stumble past is a pianist--eight feet tall in a tuxedo, seated at a cherry-red baby grand. A microphone dropped down from heaven above hangs by his mouth. His eyes are shut and his hands are gigantic, stretching fifteen keys. I know this because I've counted before, and he's playing a D chord with his pinky reaching up for the high 7th. It would make the sound a little sadder, but more full.

On top of the cherry-red baby grand is painted a miniature city scape, which I think is the little stretch of skyscrapers just west of Grant Park, down by the lake. If you look closely, the artist even painted in the blue awning of the sandwich place where Emily and I went the day she adopted her cat. We ordered separately because I was in the bathroom, but when our food came up we realized we had ordered the exact same thing, down to the number of pickles tucked between the folds of turkey and a little mustard. I kissed her right there.

I'll try to tell this to her side of the bed when I get home.

Seven Days

As surely as there were seven days of creation, there were also seven days of decimation. On the first day God created light, but He also left the darkness.

He created sky and sea and land, but really that's all just the thin shell of a ball of molten lava hurtling through infinite space in an endless elliptical orbit.

He created the animals, but gave them brains the size of peanuts and made them delicious.

Eventually, He made people, but gave us brains too big. We have figured too much out. We have figured out incredibly efficient ways of killing one another. We have figured out the exact mileage to the moon and the sun. We have figured out the perfect ratio of peanut butter to jelly in between two slices of Wonderbread.

He made us self-important on this tiny planet; and He's been waiting around for us to figure out how miniscule and purposeless we are. The great narrative of humankind is slowly realizing we are not as great as we think. In the meantime, we keep building bombs and telescopes and genetically-altered animals. Onward, humans, to the final day.

B is for...

Sam raced his little brother Michael home from the high school on their bicycles. It was October of Michael's freshman year. Sam was a Senior, captain of the lacrosse team, and wanted to go to UCLA next year.

"Check it!" Sam called over his shoulder and leaned back on his bike, lifting the front wheel off the ground.

"Wheeeeeelie!" Michael yelled, his voice cracking, and zipped ahead of his older brother. "How about this?"

Michael took both hands off the handlebars and held them straight in the air like he was on a roller coaster. He rocked gently side to side so the bike swerved in S's.

"Righteous!" Sam shouted up the road.

"What?" Michael looked back at Sam. He didn't see the moving van turn the corner.

At nearly full speed, Michael hit the driver-side door of the cab of the large truck. Sam jammed on his brakes so hard he half-leapt, half-fell off his bike and broke into a full sprint. Neither boy wore a helmet.

Michael was laying motionless on the pavement, one of his arms twisted awkwardly behind his back. The driver opened the door and said, "Oh Jesus."

"Michael!" Sam shook his shoulders. Shit, is he even breathing? Sam put his ear to his brother's mouth. "Michael!"

CPR...CPR it was somewhere in Sam's brain. Quick, see if the victim is conscious. No. Then...it's the ABC's of CPR. A is for arteries, is he bleeding? No, A is for...articulation, call his name! No, A is for...airway? Well he's not breathing. Dammit, Michael.

Maybe B is for breathing? B is for blood? B is for body bag? B is for brother. B is for baby brother. B is for baseball, biology class, Bonnie Winters with the big boobs. Big boobs Bonnie. B is for mom and dad and dinner getting cold on the table and learning to drive and asking a girl to the Homecoming Dance and thinking about living away from home for the first time and wondering if people in LA are cool and B is for...Dammit, Michael breathe.