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.

Yesterday Morning

In my perfect sleep I am humming, my whole body floating in a mist of gray clouds, maybe a little pink back lighting. Morgan Freeman comes walking through the fog and asks, "What's that you're humming?" and I say something profound like, "The song of life," or "The tune of my soul at rest," or "The Beach Boys." He smiles and nods along, his gray afro swishing like maracas in time with the tune of my soul.

Below me there are waves, and I know when I kick on my surfboard my silhouette looks like a seal to the hungry sharks below. But in this state, in these clouds, above those waves, a shark could bite off my whole leg and I might just be satisfied to bleed out.

Somewhere along the line, the wet corpse of that girl they found in the ravine by my elementary school comes into view. The teachers made us stay inside the day they pulled her up, but my mom let me watch it on the news later. She had blond hair. I tell her, "I don't want to see you again right now." She kisses me on the forehead and leaves, and the scent of the salt water is stronger.

All five senses are in tune here: sight, sound, smell, soul and sameness.

The sense of sight; I see nothing but what comes through the fog. Like beetles crawling out of cotton candy.

The sense of sound; humming in time with the ocean beating endlessly on the shore, driving particles of sunken ships up under my toenails.

The sense of smell; it is clean, open air. It is what the gulls are squawking about.

The sense of soul; I am.

The sense of sameness; we are.