The Orphanage

If one were to leave Stuttersville on foot, walking in a Northwesterly direction past the hills of white pine stumps, across the fields of prairie grass and rusted hay balers, one would see an odd sight just there, hulking on the skyline before a backdrop of oaks; the Orpheus....no, no. That’s not right; the Orphanage. This orphanage was a sprawling, isolated estate of a once great lumber baron, but now a neglected and seemingly abandoned homestead.

The orphanage had long been stripped of its accreditations, and yet children still lived there. Eager couples no longer knocked on the front door — tentative, embarrassed, hopeful and doubtful all at the same time — to adopt a child and become a family. Only one caretaker remained, Miss Crustacienne. She was more of a figurehead to provide the semblance of adult supervision; the children were, in fact, self-governed. Between Miss Crustacienne and the more resourceful of the children, the place continued to run much as it had when it was a state-sanctioned institution. But sanctioned, it was no more. The state had withdrawn its license some time ago due to rumors of nefarious goings-on that were never substantiated; plus, the nation as a whole was undergoing a transition toward fostering children in private homes rather than in state funded facilities. The state was able to find foster homes for most of the children, while the remaining few stayed behind in Miss Crustacienne’s care.

At the time, everyone believed that the remaining children would eventually be adopted and then the orphanage would close its doors forever, but in actuality, these stragglers remained at the orphanage in perpetuity, or until such a time that they moved to the town proper if they so wished, typically taking up residence in one of the abandoned homes in town, which were plentiful in this era of Stuttersville.

Aside from these attritions, the number of children in the home did not dwindle as expected. Unwilling parents still dropped off their children so that they could become childless once again. Parents still died in farm accidents, burning homes, and car crashes, and sometimes no fosters could be found. Finally, there were those kids that, for one reason or another, never lasted long in foster care and were dispatched unceremoniously on the front steps by their wards.

While the orphanage of Stuttersville was no longer meant to be an orphanage at all, it nonetheless provided much needed refuge to those children cast rudderless on an ocean, vulnerable to unsavory elements of town, in need of nurturing, of schooling, of a tenuous sense of safety. And it was this environment that bred the Stuttersville Three: the Butcher, the Starlet and the Genius.

Postscript

Drawing on walls, Miss Crustacienne asks? Why yes, we let all of our children express themselves with crayons on the walls: sometimes finger paints or mud (or even stencils for those born without an ounce of creativity); whatever their urges demand. Does this teach them improper behavior, will they become graffiti artists? Any kind of art would be an improvement in this town. Who am I to tell a child that they need to stifle their creative instincts, that they need to stunt their expression to fit our expectations? Children are pure souls, before this world has a chance to tamper with their spirits; it is we as adults who are here to serve their needs, to feed and clothe them so that they can enjoy life unhampered by the necessities that bind us. We need to learn from them. We need to emulate them, not them us.

When I say children are pure souls, unadulterated, do not get the false impression that I mean they are angelic, good and loving. A pure soul is a tempest of extremes, of great cruelty and mischief, of joy and hugs, of pinching and kicking and spitting, of wonder, both questioning and knowing at the same time. A pure soul is angelic, good, and loving, until a cloud covers their brow and the little monsters come out to play.

Bixby Had to Go

 

Bixby had to go. I couldn’t tolerate his presence any more.  An annoying boy to begin with, he was growing into a self-indulged, conceited, deeply flawed young man.  As his father, I supposed I owed him some desultory level of love, perhaps even unconditional, but this is not a world without conditions.  I never understood this allusion to a basic, natural instinct to love our offspring.  I watched the nature channel enough to know that lions, prairie dogs and honey bees weed out the weakest, or even the strongest, of their brood.  Jettisoned from the arc.  If not outright killed by the parent, they are neglected and, in so doing, offered up to our not-so-friendly neighbors in the food chain.  It wasn’t my fault that nature’s mutation created a species with no other predators to take us out, besides ourselves.  I was his father; I was his only predator.  

Problem was, Bixby held in a safe deposit box the will that bequeathed him the family estate, bestowed upon him not by his father but by his father before him, by good ol’ granddad.  Maybe my father was trying to take me out of the lineup.  Perhaps this was his final fuck-you in face of these past ten or so years, when I finally gained the upper hand during his infirmity.  Or had gained the upper hand, until now.  It irks me that my destiny can be thwarted by a  simple piece of paper, the weakest element in nature, subject to conflagration by the smallest spark, able to be rendered in half by the hands of a child, even crumpled up and popped in my mouth like a truffle, chewed up, swallowed, digested, and shitted out into the bowl of my toilet.  

But I didn’t have the will. Bixby had it.  Bixby had to go.

Bixby came over at 6:15.  He was supposed to be over at 5:30, but whatever.  His mother fawned over him in the foyer, took has coat and shoved all others aside in my closet to hang it on the good hanger, then flittered off to the kitchen.  By this time I was retired to my office with a gin martini, straight up, two olives.  It was fall and I could smell the dry rot of autumn.  The leaves in my yard were not my leaves, as I cut down my trees years ago.  These came from Mrs. Sutterby next door.  She’s too old and too broke to get her leaves raked up; just lets them rot where they lie from season to season.  I might have arrived at a charitable idea of raking them for her, but Bixby came in and interrupted.

“Hi Dad, how’re you doing?”

“Great son, great!  Been sitting hear listening to the birds, smelling the leaves.  Can you believe how quickly Summer passed this year?”

What?  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, there’s the inside you and the outside you, and never the twain shall meet.  Appearances are everything, and if performed artfully, give you the upper hand until the right moment, and oh how satisfying it can be when you pull the trigger.  But today, this mockery of a Sunday roast with family, was merely a positioning of pawns.

Poet in the Corpse Garden

photo by Floris van Breugel.

Tropical birds screech from behind a dense tree canopy while I sit alone on the veranda in a wicker love seat. A ceiling fan stirs the humid, fragrant air. Squirrels scavenge in the thicket, sorting leaves, patting down nuts with a dusting of dirt. I sip brandy and work on the day’s poem while my love withers away in a brass bed upstairs. The hospice nurse sits on a dining room chair beside the bed, leg crossed over knee and a murder mystery novel pried open in a single hand. Her leg bounces, like the heartbeat in the bed beside her, irregular and fading. Don’t stop.

Her parents are coming tomorrow to talk me out of custody of our little girl. I think I will give her up. Not because she reminds me of her mother, which she doesn’t, but because I want to increase my pain to match my wife’s. I want to go through what she’s going through, so that she is not alone. Or is it so that I am not alone? Of the two of us, I was always the coward. Like now, like my poems, like this fear of the tropical birds and squirrels scuttling in the brush.

Branches form bridges in the blue sky, and snifters full of brandy hang from the trees in the hidden grove. I scatter her ashes in air, gentle dance of dust through rays of sunlight. Death is all around; I count corpses down in the copse, along with all of my broken art strewn about. Sculptures with broken limbs. Portraits rendered and torn. Her dust has not even settled over the thicket before sprites emerge from the green curtain, supple limbs and untouched faces of all the pretty girls I knew before. May I come inside, I ask? Just a moment, you say? Yes, a moment is all it takes, and a moment is all we have left.

The Grand Tour: Conclusion

photo by iloveupstate.

The Aunt is a sister of The Uncle, not a wife. She was an amateur artist whose life and art was augmented by schizophrenia. Her art consisted entirely of crayon stylings on mail envelopes and postcards. She was middle-aged and…I can’t remember her face. Odd. Can’t remember her body or her eyes, though I held both that night. When tea was served she gracefully slipped under the table, where we joined her for a cup and a biscuit under the table cloth, while she told us about her date with a clown earlier in the day. I gathered that the clown was not metaphorical but quite real, having just returned from a child’s birthday party and still in costume. They had a picnic in a park. She spoke English as best she could, for my benefit; “There we were, laying on our plates…”

“You were lying on your plates,” asked The Uncle, “and what fine gentleman was eating you?”

She either did not catch his meaning ignored him, “…and then he asked me if I wanted to taste his Bobo? What’s his Bobo?” she asked, turning to me.

I looked to Odlef for rescue, but he only shrugged and drained his cup of tea. We crawled out from the table and moved on to wine, something from Hungary called Bulls Blood. Before opening the next bottle, The Uncle took the empty bottle by the stem and tossed it through an open window, where it cartwheeled twenty feet down and kerplunked into the mote. “Back in the day of our forebears, they always threw their empties into the mote. As a preservationist, it is my duty to uphold their customs in the highest regard. Do as they did, I say.” He laugh was more of a giggle, a bead of wine clinging to his curled mustache.

The Aunt brought our dinner, a half dozen smoked eel in butcher wrap. The Uncle smoked at the table. Odlef was a blond blur at the edge of my vision, laughing and alternating from Dutch to English, though it didn’t matter because I could understand neither. Talk led to my writing aspirations, the state of literature today, the need for a new commune of writers like the Lost Generation. Who would be our Gertrude? Was Odlef our Fitz drinking away his talent? I was none of the above, but they saw in me what they wished. When I talked about Morrison and wanting to be a visionary, and about Artaud and Rimbaud and how writing could be inspired by the unsettled mind, I forgot to whom I was talking. The Aunt cautioned me about romanticizing mental disorder. Was it worth the price, in the end? As if in explanation, she escorted me from the dinner table to the makeshift studio The Uncle had set aside for her in one of his many rooms. She opened the door to a simple room; four walls, a table, a chair, but plastered across the walls and ceiling were hundreds of envelopes, each consumed by brightly colored flames, curling at the edges, wrinkled, pressed flat again. On the floor they gathered like so many fallen leaves. Each burned and yet did not expire; they were only crayon flames, I realized, and the crayons that ignited them were scattered across the table, some snapped in half like broken fingers or rubbed down to the nubs. I looked more closely at the envelopes and found that not all were only made of colors following the folds of the envelope, but some also held stick-drawings of bicycles and trains and boats and planes, suns and flowers and sons and daughters.

It wasn’t good. I didn’t get it. I felt deflated. I wanted her to be brilliant, but she didn’t care to be, knew she was not, aspired to be nothing but who she was. At twenty I didn’t appreciate that. At forty I wonder if you grow up or grow in. At sixty I hope to understand if the evidence of that growth, the product of all my exploration, like her colored envelopes, is meant more for myself or others. Shit, who cares.

We went back upstairs and drank and smoked, stacked dishes and tried to fish empty bottles from the mote. I fell asleep on the sofa with the aunt. Awoke in a tangle of limbs and clothes in ray of blinding sun.

It was a morning of hangovers and shame, putrid cigarettes and cotton mouth, bad smells lingering in the rooms from the night before. While The Uncle brewed a pot of strong black coffee, I drew away from the group and slipped out the door to the castle grounds still wet with dew. I walked down winding cobbled paths, through a maze of wood neatly stacked in cords, through the shade of the trees spared from emperor’s ax, and by the time I made it through the maze to the mausoleum, I had in my mind the beginnings of what would be my first novel.

Odlef and I stuffed our backpacks to catch the last train home. The Aunt presented me with her latest envelope creation, which she must have colored over her morning coffee. Was it something in the image she drew in childlike crayon, or was it in the recognition of her chosen medium — an envelope? Whichever caused these chemicals to collide, I had received her message carried over a great distance, not only the very real ocean that would soon divide me from my grand tour of Europe, but also a message that bridged the space between her art and the irrational world in which she had learned to live, and with which I was only now coming to terms.

The Grand Tour pt 9: The Castle

photo by Jean-Michel Priaux.

It has been a long time since I was here last. The Grand Tour; so true, but more of a grand tour through the passing year and a half rather than through the memories of all that happened during the backpacking trip of my 20’s. Where have I been? Falling in love, getting married, settling in, and taking a shine to martinis and a movie rather than sweating out words. But even my new bride cannot completely unseat the mistress of my life — writing. She has caused as much trouble over the years, as any mistress would. Competing for attention, luring me away when inspiration heats my blood, filling me with jealous rage when she holds back the words. All of that aside, I’m back; but first, let’s finish the story of the Grand Tour of our poet maudit. Try to keep up with me now, I don’t want to linger too long over the last miles of the trip, the wrecked parapets, the supple village girls selling weaver’s wares, or the food that has gone cold in the underground bistro buried deep in the tunnels of Budapest. There are new stories to tell, so let us be done with it.

What better way to end a European trip than to stay in the servants quarters of a Netherlands’ castle? Odlef’s Uncle served as a preservationist and historian for Huis Houthakker. We called it the castle, though in truth it is a manor house built in the 1500’s, then renovated in the 1800’s with English gardens ringed by a mote, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, cobbled paths winding through the ruins of arbor and sculptured Goths draped in lichen. A Dutch princess sold the property to an exiled emperor to take as his homestead, or more accurately, his decorative cage with guards of his former country stationed at the gate. The once great man could not sit idle for long, took up an ax and started chopping down tree after tree, splitting the logs, stacking coords of wood in the shape of a maze. He was soon known as The Woodchopper of D_. This went on for a few years until one morning, in mid swing, a bolt of lightning struck him dead and ended his exile, and incidentally, pointed the easy way out from the maze. The emperor’s faithful expats buried him on the castle grounds in a small mausoleum, built upon the very plots he cleared of trees. Rest now, rest.

We walked up the graveled drive, filthy jeans and muddied shoes, backpack slung over one shoulder, finding The Uncle sitting outside the castle gift shop, sipping a cappuccino and leafing through a stack of trade journals. He wore a pale blue linen suit with yellow bow tie, bright green socks and white leather shoes. A cane was propped against the other chair, though later I would observe no perceivable limp. He was mango shaped bordering on a pear. Smiles and handshakes, genuine excitement to hear of our travels and adventures, though his disappointment was palpable at our lack of sexual escapades to share with him: wink wink, no taste of the buttered French croissants, eh? No Italian puttanesca? You’re not holding out on me, eh? No Uncle, afraid not, though there was that Gypsy girl down by the Danube. Immediately, our mango soured - filthy things, filthy - and we moved on to our evening plans: wash up and welcome The Aunt over for dinner.

It will take me more time to linger over the memory of that dinner, and how best to capture the schizo Aunt and her tea party under the table. The mundane was put to bed that night like unwelcome children, while Netherland sprites were set loose to play. If I was an artist, what wonderful art I could put together of that night’s icons: the mote, the stone castle, postal envelopes brightly colored with crayon, smoked eels curling in and out through the windows and portcullis, and empty bottles of wine cart wheeling out of windows and kerplunking into the mote. Yes, it will take some care to capture The Aunt and her dinner, a gentle hand to catch the canary without breaking a wing.

Ghost of the Bayou

photo by quizz....

Dive down into the abyss. The swamp. The bog. Light plays beneath the mire, even in the deep hours of night. The illumination is Sally, the ghost of the bayou, killed and dumped here by a man hiding his crimes in the remotest of locations. Only, her spirit turns his grim playground into something wonderful, a place of beauty. Bayou Sally is not a spirit of anguish but one of celebration, a soul turned joyous for this conversion by a murderer to her true spirit, set free in this part of the land so teaming with life. She sings. She dances in the eddies of water, lounges upon the backs of alligators, wears snakes around her neck. Wild orchids are tiaras in her hair.

The killer returns to deposit another body. This next spirit is more of what one might expect - forlorn and tortured, wailing throughout the night at the brutal interruption to her life. Bayou Sally looks upon her with distaste, anger at the disruption to her home, and drives her out. If the killer insists upon bringing her more visitors, then she must persuade him to find suitable victims to fill out her court; to entertain her, love her, dress her in palm fronds and place irises in her hair.

She sings into his ear, and fevered visions crowd his mind. Over the next several months, he brings her two youths to play with her the games of her childhood, then an elderly aunt to knit her shawls of ivy and vine, then two ladies in waiting to serve her, and a young man to fawn over her. There's one place left at her table, she decides, and she needs a soul to match hers: strong and virile, cruel with passion and devoted to her happiness, and it is with this last persuasion that Bayou Sally turns from princess to queen, arm looped in the arm of her husband, as the killer takes his last victim.

Soft or Hard G

I actually wrote this a couple of years ago, but it fits with my recent Tea theme:

She was brewing a pot of green tea with mango behind the counter when Eric walked into the tea shop. Eric of the Earl Grey White Tip, Eric of the soft brown eyes and books tucked under his arm like "Madam Bovary" or "Pride and Prejudice" or "Interview with the Vampire." Eric of the occasional female friend that none of the girls behind the counter could figure out if he was married to, dating, or divorcing, but the woman had not been with him for the past few months.

She hurried to get the green tea brewed for the other customer so she could move on to Eric. She felt a stirring in her body as she prepared the tea with a honed awareness of Eric standing next in line, a stirring not unlike the warm water in the pot, the swirl of green tea leaves and yellow flakes of mango, the sensuous smells carried on the curls of steam. As she watched the slow unfurling of the leaves in the hot water, she remembered that this motion was called the “agony of the leaves.”

Finally, she finished with her customer and he stepped up to the counter. She did her best to sound composed, "Good morning, would you like the usual Earl Grey with White Tip?"

Eric scanned the board for today’s specials. "How about Rose Congou. Or is it pronounced Conjou? Is the G soft or hard?"

Why was the pronunciation of the soft or hard G the most erotic experience she had had in weeks? She felt her cheeks burning as she considered various responses: "You can have it either soft or hard, depending on your mood," or "The G is hard, like orgasm." But instead she replied, "It depends, I hear it pronounced both ways. I think the owner says "Congou" with a hard G.”

"I'll have a pot of that, and a ginger cookie, or should I say GinGer?" Eric said, smiling. She laughed a little too loudly and tipped over the canister of tea, dried rose petals and dark leaves spilling across the counter. As she wiped them off with the palm of her hand, she thought about knocking everything off of the counter in one passionate motion, hopping up and pulling him atop her, “Take me here, take me now!” But instead, she only managed a chipper, “Anything else for you today?”

“No thanks,” he replied, and she punched his frequent drinker’s card. One more and he’d get a freebie.

Molly on the Far Shore

photo by *amber e*.

A young woman wore a summer dress and danced in the sun on the far side of the river. Her name was Molly, a redheaded Irish girl with green, green eyes like pale green tea. Her large family of redheaded siblings and redheaded parents and aunts and uncles picnicked on a nearby knoll. On the other side of the river, a young boy stood on a sandbar and watched her dance. Even from across the water, he could see the green of her eyes and her red, red hair. He concentrated on ways to get across; surely he could beat the currents, he thought. Maybe with enough longing, he could overlook the fact that he never learned to swim. Maybe he could hold open his coat like sails and catch a strong wind gusting down the valley. He watched her twirl and felt his spirit grow light enough to lift him up, but his feet remained anchored to the shore. He scrambled twenty yards up the shoreline to a small boat pulled onto the sand, tied to a willow tree. He fumbled with the rope, but he couldn’t figure out the secrets of the knot.

A young boy sat in a wooden boat tied to a tree. Molly danced on the far shore.

Giving Dad a Shave

photo by cristal78023.

William was sitting on his mother’s lap, leaning back into the crook of her shoulder while the family watched television, only his father wasn’t looking at the screen. He was scowling at William. “Boy, you’re eleven now. You shouldn’t still be sitting in your Momma’s lap.”

“Leave the boy alone,” she said. “You’re still my baby, aren’t you?” she teased, hugging him close, but William started to squirm away as he watched his father. He had always been intimidated by the cigar smoking, gruff man, but now he studied him closer. He felt that inevitable tug as a boy starts to cross the threshold of boy to man, the trepidation of leaving the protective wing of his mom, and yet drawn to those masculine instincts just starting to form. He noted the way his father chewed on the cigar at the corner of his mouth, the casual tilt of the whiskey glass in his hand. That night he heard his mother and father arguing in their room. William tucked his head under the pillow, buried himself beneath the sheets and tried to become invisible.

Each night his father came home from work, his mother needed to give William a push to go hug him. His whiskers scratched the boy’s cheek. When he slipped off his shoes, his black stocking feet stank. William had the job of putting his shoes in the closet, and hanging his father’s hat on a peg. He ran his fingers over the felt brim, smoothed the brown feather tucked into the sweat stained band.

He turned twelve that summer, the last summer vacation before he would have to start working, and he spent his days secretly trailing after his father from twenty yards back, to and from the plant, in the evenings when he’d stumble out of the bars, on the weekends when he would run his errands. He adopted the way his father would lean against a wall or a tree with one leg cross over the other and propped on a toe. He carried change in his pockets and jingled the coins when he’d walk down the sidewalk. He learned to spit into the sand without getting any on his chin. He substituted a toothpick for the cigar and sucked on it all day, shifting it from one side to the other using only his mouth.

Now when his dad came home from work, there were no more hugs, but his dad grinned proudly, ruffled the boy’s hair, slapped him on the shoulder and told him to go get him a glass of whiskey, “two fingers high, no ice. And no sipping,” he chided, shaking a finger at his son. When the boy returned with the glass, he said, “Okay, you can have a little sip,” as though relenting, but William hadn’t asked. He took a small taste anyway, just enough to wet his lips. It burned.

That weekend, he tailed his father as he went on another of his errands, this time to the barber shop for a cut and shave. William’s mom still cut his hair, but something about the barber shop drew him. He had only been there once a few years ago, but remembered the checkered tile floor, the smell of pipes and cigars, and a baseball game playing on the radio. His dad never wanted him to come along, for some reason, so he followed him in secret and waited from behind a tree across the street. After twenty minutes, his dad came out with a clean shave, trimmed hair, and his arm slung around the barber’s sister. They disappeared up the stairs leading to a small apartment above the shop. The blinds dropped shut. Half an hour later, his father came slinking out of the building and around the coiled barber pole and swaggered toward home.

Back at the dinner table, he watched this man accept food from his mom without a hint of guilt or regret, watched him tell her the pork was overcooked and the peas too cold. The next time he announced that he was going for a cut and a shave, William followed. Once again, his father came out of the shop with the barber’s sister and disappeared upstairs to the apartment. William balled up all of the fury a boy of twelve can muster, ran into the barber shop, grabbed the straight razor off the sink, and stomped up the stairs with a man’s bearing instead of a boy’s. He slashed his father forty times and left the barber’s sister untouched but soaked in the blood of his father. “That’s for momma. It’s you that was never good enough.” He dropped the razor, walked out of the apartment, and disappeared into the streets.

A Night in Birmingham

photo by Trondelarius.

He was driving all night from North Dakota to someplace south, maybe the gulf. He wasn’t sure exactly where, but the main thing was to feel the thrum of the road passing beneath the wheels, an unraveling ribbon of tar with no end, no beginning. It was midnight by the time he crossed into Alabama, but he didn’t want to stop. He was in a zone, tired brilliant and half mesmerized by the highway. Trees loomed out of the dark into the headlights. He struck a deer just past Birmingham, and his clothes were splattered with blood because he had stopped the car, walked back, and dragged the carcass to the ditch.

Got to wash up at a motel or something, but none of them would take in a man at 2:00 am covered in blood. From a travel guide in his glove box, he started calling B&Bs. An old lady named Ms. Sandy answered on the third phone number, at a place called the Fox Trot. Said all of her rooms were open, and that she’d be happy to take in a boarder. She gave him directions, a ways off the highway, but he was desperate.

When he pulled up to her home, she was standing on the porch wrapped in a shawl. He grabbed his duffel bag from the trunk and asked why an old lady was answering her phone at 2:30 in the morning. Couldn’t sleep, she said. Seemed like the older she got, the less sleep she needed. Hardly knew what to do with all of that time on her hands, especially at night with nobody staying with her to talk to.

He started to explain the blood, but she waved it off. Doesn’t matter, come on in.

He remembered, later that night after having showered and had a cup of tea in her kitchen, what it was like staying at his grandmother’s. That feeling of being taken care of, being safe, and the odd way that time hung suspended in her kitchen in those purgatorial hours between night and morning. They talked of the kinds of things that, later on, he couldn’t remember. All he would be able to recall was that feeling of kindness, acceptance, of being made to feel completely at home. That’s how it felt being in Ms. Sandy’s presence, even more so than any particular thing she said or did.

Who was she? Maybe it was just her name, but he imagined her to be the Sandman’s widow, grown old now and abandoned, left to lord over this home in the Alabama woods, wiling away the insomniac nights with guests that needed a place to rest.

I wish I knew what they talked about, or what he was running from in North Dakota, or what he was running towards, but it seems that Ms. Sandy doesn’t gossip about her boarders. Your sins are safe with her.

Have You Seen My Tree?

photo by dick_pountain.

The tree was gone when I got up in the morning. For one hundred years it had stood to the left of my front step, and on the morning of July 28th I stuck my head out the door to pick up the paper from the front step and saw that the tree was gone. No jagged broken stump, no charred remains. The grass was smooth, as though a tree had never grown there. I drove around town, looking for it. I hung signs:

Have You Seen My Tree??
60 ft. black walnut
5 ft. trunk cir.
Last seen on the evening of the 27th
on the 3100 block of Manor Dr.
Call 612.366.1477 with information
$500 REWARD!

I got a few leads, but most were dead ends. Many were pranks. Some people called with real concern and compassion in their voices. Long after the signs came down and the calls stopped coming in, neighbors would mention to me that they might have seen it, on their last vacation out west, or the other day when they took their kids to a wildlife preserve in Washington County. It looked happy out there in the woods, they said. Maybe it was for the best.

I have picnics now and then on my lawn, right over the spot where it should be. Maybe I’ll plant something new over the spot next spring. It’s a shame. It really balanced the front yard.

Solace of a Bad Man

They drove up the North shore for a weekend away at a small cabin. Back in the Twin Cities, her new boyfriend was the perfect gentleman she new him to be, but with each passing mile his civility towards her gradually peeled away, like the trappings of the city slipping away as they drove further north. The trees grew taller, the woods deeper as his temper flared over petty things, like where they would go for Thanksgiving, and who would pay for the gas, and how fast he was driving.

On they drove, up past Duluth, the roads growing narrower as they passed hulking ships rusting in dry dock. The winds picked up near Two Harbors, fueled by drought, gusts coming from every which direction, and he struggled to keep the car on the road.

Civilization dropped away by the time they reached Grand Marais. The interstate trickled down to a county road, then to a gravel road, then to a dirt path with weeds growing down the center, winding among the birch trees, until they finally coasted to a stop in the deep woods of the Gunflint Trail and their cabin for the weekend.

It took them much of the day to get there. The sun was already setting. Inside the cabin, his gentler side came out again; he prepared a quick spaghetti dinner, and they talked about friends and family. She couldn’t explain, even to herself, what made her shut down his advances that night. She felt that things were not as they appeared.

Her nightmares didn’t help matters: she dreamed of wolves circling the cabin, staying just out of sight behind the trees. The next day it was her turn to become unhinged, picking fights over whatever was convenient. She got into an argument with him about hunting: he was for it, she against. He claimed it was natural and necessary for thinning out the herd, but she said only Native Americans should have the right to hunt. He claimed Native American’s weren’t good sportsmen when it came to hunting, using lights for spear fishing to attract the fish, or setting fires in the woods to scare wild game toward their hunters waiting in ambush.

She started to hate him. Maybe hate is too strong of a word: he dropped in her esteem. She lost respect for his ideas. He must have picked up on her change of heart, because he looked like a trapped animal, eyes darting around the room, mouth tense like a snarl.

She wanted to get out of there. She grabbed her things and marched out to the car, waiting for him to come drive her home. He didn’t. She crossed over to the driver’s seat. No keys. Stupid idea anyway, she couldn’t just abandon him out here. She decided that a walk through the woods might help cool her off. She happened upon a deer trail and followed it around the pond, down a ravine and beyond the surrounding poplars and birch into the deep woods of evergreens.

Windfalls crossed the trail, forcing her off the path. She lost her way among dead trees felled during the severe storms of last summer. She lost all sense of direction and began to panic. She smelled something in the air; soot, cinders, smoke?

The tree canopy rose too high to get a good view of the sky, but among the undergrowth and the tree trunks drifted a haze, like morning mist, only dirtier. The heat sucked all moisture out of the air. Within seconds the wind came rushing in with a smell that burned in her lungs. Fire.

Fir trees on fire. Great plume of sparks. In the strong winds, flames leapt from tree to tree. She ran beneath the arches of burning limbs, bolting through the woods alongside panicked deer and rabbits. Birds dropped from the sky like meteors. She fell out of the burning bramble to an open clearing where, beside the pond, sat the cabin: the one thing not burning in this world on fire. Inside, standing at the window, she saw him. Waiting for her. She stumbled inside, into his arms, and smelled the gasoline, the sulfur, the stench of a bad man who just got what he wanted.

Little Bird

photo by mollycakes.

Sunday morning in the family room. I love my wife and kids dearly, but all I can think to myself right now is “Leave me alone.” I announce that I am going to my den now to write, and I slip away to that corner of the house where the windows are small, where potted palms sit on the floor in what little pools of light gather in this corner of the house. At first, I avoid the typewriter perched on the desk. I still use a typewriter. I am a walking cliché. I smoke a pipe, leaf through nineteenth century novels, scratch notes on scraps of paper, and eventually sneak up on my type writer and settle slowly into the wooden desk chair, careful not to spook it. I stare at the keys for a moment, afraid it is going to burst into a flapping of wings and escape out a window. That’s it. My typewriter on the desk is like a bird trapped in a room, panicked, breast thumping, trying to find a way out. My fingers must be gentle with it. Once it least expects it, I clamp my hands around it so that it can’t get away. I stop typing to scribble this metaphor on another piece of scratch paper for later.

There’s a quiet knock at the door. Must be my son. “Come in.”

“Dad, will you play Chutes and Ladders with me?”

“Not now, Sam. Your Dad’s working. Didn’t Mommy tell you not to bother me when I’m up here?”

“Yes,” he says in that little mouse voice that usually allows him to get his way.

“Why don’t you go play with Elizabeth?”

“She’s over at Jacqueline’s house jumping on the trampoline.”

I pull him up into my lap. He’s still in his pajamas. What time is it, I wonder? Why hasn’t Susan gotten him dressed yet? She’s probably down at the computer, chatting with her sister or with her friends from work. Jesus, she sees them all day during the week; why can’t she give it a break on the weekends to get her children dressed? “Why don’t you go get your big boy clothes on and we’ll play in a little bit. I’ve got to do some stuff yet, and then I’ll come out. Don’t knock though. I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

“Okay,” and he slides off my knee, leaves the room and gently closes the door behind him. I smile at this gesture of his, so careful around me, but then I see how like an invalid I have become, tucked away in a closed room, not to be disturbed. How long have they been tiptoeing around me?

I try to get back to my story, but the characters have wandered off, the backdrops faded, and in the world of my imagination I am losing the light. Damn it. But if it hadn’t been Sam, it would have been something else. A loud truck out in the street. A blue jay flashing by the window. I was able to finish three sentences, though, before the little bird died in my hands. I guess I clutched I clutched it too tightly.

It began with a letter. Ever since I received the envelope addressed to me in a hand faintly familiar, I could never return to the old life I knew. I have since burned that first letter, but it went something like this…

Dialog: Raising Daughters

photo by ifdefelseif.

“When did you come home last night?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly. Around midnight, maybe?” she replied.

“Who were you out with?”

“James. We went to the Orpheum and saw a show, and afterward drove down to Willow Grove and parked by the pond.”

“I didn’t want that much detail, but thanks for stopping there.”

“You asked.”

“I asked who you went out with, not where you went, or where you parked, or what you talked about, or anything else, for that matter.”

“We didn’t do much talking.”

“See, there. Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to know.”

“You intimated.”

“I did nothing more than provide an example of what I don’t want to hear.”

“Whatever.”

“Intimated. That’s a good word. When did you learn to use words like that?”

“From James.”

“He sounds like a pretty smart boy.”

“He’s thirty-seven.”

Beware the Fireflies

photo by louistib.

He didn’t know anything about writing anymore. He hardly even read. So why did he sit down every morning at the laptop and pretend like he was going to write? Foolishly optimistic. Maybe he could just stream-of-consciousness write:

No matter what, whoever you may be and wherever you go, you will find little monsters hidden in the brush. Green emerald glossy eyes with sparks shooting from them when they see you stumble into the grove. The smoking embers of last night’s bonfire still curl skyward, unstirred by wind or bird’s wing or buzz of insects. He falls to the weeds near the ashes, lies on his back, looks skyward and watches the slow stream of smoke dissipate into the dirty blue, and remembers.

We piled up pillows at the bottom of the staircase and jumped. That wondrous sensation of falling from the sky and landing gracefully in a mound of silk pillows imported from the Orient. The darkness that fell when you closed your eyes, and the warmth when you reached out blindly with your hand and took hold of your friend’s arm to pull you up, there in the pillows with you, her eyes also closed and the sound of her playful giggling in your years, and you fall back into greater darkness as the memory fades.

There. A pinprick of light in the black velvet curtain. Help him. Pull him out of it with a yank on the arm, maybe even something whispered in his ear. He won’t look, won’t open his eyes, won’t betray with blush in his cheeks, but you will feel it against his chest, the rapid drumming of his heart in its cage. Shit, cliché’s come out after dark like fireflies, so pretty, so tempting to chase out across the fields.

Dumbfounded

This blow to the head has left me dumb. I can’t think too long or two hard. I suffer from lengthening periods of blank space. I stare into the room and just “am”. Monks meditate to achieve this level of just “being” in the moment. Lowered brainwave activity. Lessened sense of self and a pure perception of the world, observing objects not as tools, but just things as they are. How can a normal person, without a brain injury, look at a sofa and see it as anything other than something to sit on? How can you look at a pillow and not know that it is soft?

I don’t remember the accident. They tell me I was in a jeep that rolled, and it landed on my head. They say I was in a coma for two months, and on the third I came out f it speaking in French. I had three years of it in high school but I got D’s in it every term. Guess the brain soaks it all up like a sponge, and sometimes it takes a hard squeeze to ring it out.

The Extortionist

She wants money. Lots of it. She has confidence that with her green eyes and porcelain skin, she can lure a man to give it to her. She starts off small; dates with executives, doctors, lawn firm partners to fancy restaurants. Then a ludicrous number of flower deliveries to home and work. She takes it up a notch, starting with the mind games. How does one take a normally stable man, who has shown enough responsibility to have built a fortune, and turn him into a irrational man, one who exercises poor judgment for once in his life and grows sick with longing for her, terrified with thoughts of losing her? She plays them so well.

The relationships graduate to expensive gifts: diamond earrings, all-expense paid trips to Vegas and Vancouver, Caribbean cruises, lodges in the Rockies. Once they pay for her high-rise apartments not too far from their executive offices, she knows they are ready. And she severs them. She tears these powerful men apart, leaves them weeping in their Humvees or their chauffer-driven Lexus’s. Now it is merely a matter of presenting a sound business proposal: the sincerity and feasibility of her talking to competitors, wives, boards of directors. It’s a matter of supply and demand, Darwinian economics, event-horizons.