Fantasy, Part 3

Dear reader…

Stacy questions her sanity after stepping through the mysterious door and encountering an over-sized talking mountain lion.  What does this loquacious leopard desire?  Will Stacy fall prey to this prolix predator?  Read on to find out!

Relive the adventure with parts 1 and 2

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“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” Stacy said.  She tried to think, tried to move, tried to do anything.

It was at this moment that something truly strange happened, a small moment from a largely forgotten elementary school education came rushing back to Stacy.  A man, wearing a khaki vest covered in colorful patches stood before the class.  “If you ever see a mountain lion, kids, whatever you do, don’t run, OK?” he had said.  “All you should do is try to look real big and stand your ground.  If you run, that cougar is going to think you’re a nice tasty deer and come after you.  So, try to look real big and real mean, and make lots of noise, OK?”

Stacy grabbed the corners of her jacket, lifting them high above her head.  She began to make a loud hooting grunt sound.  She began taking tiny steps toward the door, hoping to put the now staring cougar on the other side before it decided she was edible.

Orion watched Stacy shimmy behind the door.  He had never seen this before.  Usually they just ran, or fainted, or went back through the door and locked it.

Stacy, now completely hidden, put her arms down.  It couldn’t be real.  She had lost her mind.  She was too stressed from work, too overwhelmed by the nostalgia accompanying her parents move.  Maybe she had been bitten by some sort of psychedelic fly.  Those existed, sure.  Talking mountain lions did not.  Yes.  She was hallucinating.  But was there really a large cat on the other side of this door?  One she imagined to introduce himself as Orion the mountain lion?

“You aren’t real!” she screamed with her back against the door, her eyes shut tight.

“Oh, really?” Orion said, returning to his grooming.

“Yes,” she said, “You’re a hallucination.  A figment of my imagination.  You don’t exist!”

“And how do you know you aren’t a figment of my imagination,” Orion replied.

“Because,” she paused, “I’m real.  Women are real.  Talking mountain lions aren’t.”

Without making a sound Orion stood and walked around the door.  Standing he was comparable in size to a small horse.  He put his head around the door frame to look at Stacy.

“Are you sure I’m not real?” he asked.

Stacy jumped again, this time forgetting all education and scurrying around to the other side of the door.  When she found the rest of the big cat here, his back hips at shoulder level, the wild and powerful smell of his fur filled her with hopelessness.  There would be no escape.  She could only curl herself into a tight ball and pray that he choked trying to swallow her.

The audience of Treefolk, having collected on their bets, continued to watch Stacy.

Orion slid completely around the door and lay down before Stacy.  He knew the Treefolk were watching, had heard them chattering before she had come through the door.  Their silence now meant he had their full attention, which meant it wouldn’t be long before The King heard of her arrival.  Treefolk were gossips.  As soon as they collected on their bets word would spread from tree to tree, soon falling into the ears of Corvus, the King’s spy.  If the girl was to have a chance, he would need to get her out of the clearing.

Stacy, her body curled tight, her eyelids shut, had begun to talk to herself.  “Eaten by an existential cougar.” She repeated again and again in a low whisper.

“Eaten?” Orion said.  “My dear, I am a vegan.”

Stacy froze.  “What?” she said.

“I’m a vegan,” Orion said.

Stacy uncurled enough to look at the cat.  His golden eyes were soft, his ears up and relaxed.  As she looked at his paws, the size of tennis rackets she realized that if he wanted to eat her, she could do nothing about it.  She sat up, leaning into the door frame.

“Orion, the vegan talking mountain lion?”  she asked.

“None other,” he said.

And with a slow nod of her head, Stacy closed her eyes and fainted.

to be continued, dear reader.

Fantasy, Part 2

dear reader, please enjoy the continuation of this experiment in fantasy, as continued from the now revised “Fantasy, Part 1”

_____

As Stacy approached the strange door in the clearing, she couldn’t hear the small riotous whispers coming from the trees.  All she heard was the rustling of the tall grass. She didn’t hear the brief gasps of shock once they had realized that a human had not only entered the clearing, but could see the door.  She didn’t hear the small wagers or the small tinkling of small coins passing between small hands.  She didn’t hear the small grumblings of disapproval or the small shouts of encouragement.  Stacy could hear only the grass in the breeze.

She expected to find some sense to it as she got closer, something to make this strange sight more imaginable.  She searched for signs of an abandoned foundation, a concrete slab where a house used to sit, but there was none.  She searched the door frame for signs of weathered age, chipped paint or rusted hinges, but found none.  The door looked completely new.  The word ‘perfect’ floated through her mind, along with so many others that it was lost almost immediately.  ‘It must be art,’ she thought, for that is what she was taught to think of things inexplicable.  But her search for a plaque designating the artist’s name, or the year of its making, or its title, was in vain.

By now, they were all watching Stacy.  A hush had fallen over them, a restless silence.  A child’s voice spoke out, “Did she open it?”

“Not yet.  Not yet.” a voice responded.

Stacy had made a full circle around the door.  She stood before it, her curiosity growing into anger.  The door seemed to mock her with its silence, with its mystery.  She put her hands against her waist, waiting for something, waiting for the door to reveal its meaning, waiting for some part of this to make sense.  There was nothing left to do but open it.

Stacy reached forward, her arm growing large in the reflection of the polished golden knob.  She moved slowly, carefully, as though it might lash out against her like a coiled snake.  It was warm, not hot as she would have expected it to be having been under the bright summer sun all morning.  She turned the knob, and stepped forward into the slow, silent swing of the door.

She stepped through the doorway and into the clearing.  Nothing had changed.  She was still in waist high grass, still in a clearing surrounded by overgrown oak brush.  She was still under the clear blue sky.

“Oh God, Stacy,” she said laughing.  “What did you expect, Narnia?”

“Narnia is such a silly story.” a deep voice replied.

Stacy jumped at the sound of the reply.  It had come from behind her, from the grass.

“Who are you?” Stacy cried out.  “Show yourself!”

“There’s no need to yell.  I’m right here,” the voice replied.

Stacy looked down into the yellow grass and all at once she saw him.  There, laying as casual as a cat on a porch, was the largest mountain lion she had ever seen.  Its thick tail flopping from side to side as it licked its front paw.  Its head bobbing just below the height of the grass surrounding it.

“My name is Orion,” the cat purred. “And who” he paused for a lick,”are you?”

to be continued, dear reader.

Fantasy, Part 1

Stacy had followed the slow moving creek bed up into the trees.  It was the first time she had been to the park since leaving home for good so many years ago.  Her parents didn’t even live on the hill above the park anymore.  She had come back to help them move.  But as she drove down the hill something called to her from the park, from the creek, from the past.

Stacy had spent many days by the small creek as a child, picking out the finest of bright wet stones, imagining them to be precious gems.  She was always a little more than disappointed to find that the rarest and most beautiful had become nothing but dull gray rocks once she got them home.  Despite this she would pick her favorites and keep them with her, rubbing her fingers along their cool spines.  Occasionally, when she was alone and without anything to do, she would take them out to examine them, to see if the warm oils from her fingers had given them back their luster.  Sometimes they had, sometimes they hadn’t, and this became a sort of diving rod.  Was the world beautiful today, or was it hiding its beauty away?

She had found her stones again when her parents had moved.  They were in a small blue tin that once held butter cookies, hidden away with so many other small scraps of paper and baubles.  Among all the stuff in that tin, the stones brought the most back to her.  More than her old toys which were boxed and put into storage for her future children’s play.  More than the photographs of old Halloween’s with her baby brother.  These three small stones, cerulean blue, india green, and cornelian red, carried the song of her childhood.  There was nothing to do but to put them deep into her pocket.  It was where they belonged, not in this small forgotten tin.

The creek bed no longer held jewels, just stones.  Blacks and greys and sometimes off whites.  She wondered if they had all been taken by kids just like her, over the years.

As she went deeper into the narrow valley.  The plants grew in thicker, making the place feel wild and overgrown, not at all what it was.  The path, obscured as it was by the growth, seemed to lead even deeper between the hills.  ‘I’ve never come this far,’ she thought as she looked back over her shoulder.  The manicured lawn surrounding the playground was out of sight now but she could still hear the comforting hiss of the sprinkler heads as they watered the large meadow.

“I can’t be too far in, if I can still hear that.” she said to herself, allowing the sureness of her voice to give her courage.

She pushed further in.  Past the reaching fern leaves which made her worry, only briefly, about deer ticks.  Past the fallen tree now covered in moss and a thick mushroom colony that jutted out in small half circles, like hundreds of tiny saw blades stuck into the log’s side.  She could only hear the babble of the creek now, hidden as it was behind the thick clusters of blackberry bushes.

Her father used to come home with bags full of fresh blackberries.  A few scratches on his forearms and not a little purple juice staining his lips.  They would wash the berries together, but despite asking her father where he had found such sweet ones he would never tell.  “A fine berrier never reveals his favorite bushes!”  he would say.  It was just one of those things adults said that didn’t make any sense to her .  She took it as it was, allowing the meaninglessness of the words to pass, focusing instead on his grin, both assertive and mischievous.  Looking at the bushes now, bare of berries, she wondered why he had never taken her along for the picking.

Her wondering was startled away by a cracking in the brush beyond the next wall of green.  There were rumors, years ago, of mountain lions prowling these thin valleys.   There were also rumors of trolls and goblins.  It was doubtful there could still be animals that large in a wilderness so cramped.  It was more likely to be a rabbit or a raccoon, she thought, running away from her own clumsy tromping .  She thought to turn back.  No one knew she was out here, and she remembered the stories of joggers on trails not unlike this one being attacked and killed.

She pushed the thought away as simple paranoia.  She wanted to know what was at the end of this path, wanted to know where the creek came from.  It had been years since anything in this small hill town had surprised her, years since she had gone anywhere she hadn’t been a thousand times before.

As she pushed through the narrow space between the blackberry bushes and the low thick hedges on the hill it was there.  Standing full upright in the middle of a surprisingly open clearing, alone in the waist high yellow grass was a door.  It was bright yellow with a white trim and a shiny golden knob.  A door.  No larger and no smaller than the door to her own small apartment.  But bright, and new, and completely out of place.

…..to be continued, dear reader

Wednesday in the Park

Isabella both loved and hated the child.  Cooper was small and inquisitive.  Always anxious to jump out of the stroller as soon as they got to the park, as soon as he could see grass, and dogs, and other kids running through the knotted plastic playground.  He would tug upon the straps and wiggle his body like a caught fish.  It was hard to be comfortable now that he had figured out how to wriggle his way out of those straps.

 
What would The Andersons think if the straps left marks on his shoulders as he wriggled out?  It would be the end of her nannying and housekeeping career and she would be left with no choices, no options.  She would have to return to Guatemala then, return to the man who beat her and churned through her purse for cash.  Antonio would kill her if she ever had to go back, not through violence, but through alienation.  His silence the last thirty years was enough to remind her that he had all he wanted, her family’s property.  The small store and apartment complex her parents paid for with years of sweat.  First buying the store and then each room above.  Antonio could keep them.  She had her life, she had her son, and she had the memories.

 
Cooper was struggling again, had already gotten one shoulder out and they were still in the crosswalk.  She hurried her pace and shouted at him in the singsong voice she had learned to mask her anxiety and anger.  “Cooper, siéntate!” 

 

He obeyed, more from the sound of her voice than the words.  She had only started speaking to him in Spanish last week after Marcy Anderson had read that there was a statistical relationship favoring the bilingual being top of their class. She just had to have the best for her little Cooper, her little angel, her little muffin.  I guess I should be flattered, Isabella thought to herself, but she only felt demeaned.

 
First, it was the cameras.  The sudden appearance of a teddy bear on the hearth.  It was almost as if Marcy wanted her to find it, leaving her a request to dust the living room on the refrigerator white-board.  She remembered lifting up the small black bear and feeling it tug back.  The wire had been stapled in a small loop before disappearing into the hole no larger than a nail.  She couldn’t say she wouldn’t have done the same with her son, Marco, if she could.  She often wondered what he had been doing all those years when she would return home to find he had already eaten dinner, usually something from a box, and left again.  Forgetting to leave a note.  At least she would have been able to see him more if she had wired the kitchen with cameras.

 

That was when Marco really began to grow fast.  Going from that little boy always running to the door of the babysitter’s apartment when her heard her shoes in the hallway.  How many day cares had she put him in those first few years?  How many nights had she had to comb the lice out of his hair after he got it from one of the other kids?  How many nights could she hear the sadness in his long pause before answering, ¿Cómo estuvo tu día, mijo?  He became a man too quickly, learned the hard lessons too early, but it was still better than Guatemala.

 

Cooper was climbing out of the stroller now.  He knew better than to run up the sloped cobblestone path leading into the park without first getting Isabella’s permission.  He used to try that when he was two, but Isabella had convinced him that all the “big boys” knew they had to make sure they asked first.  He ran up to her side and gave her a big hug, “Isabella, can I play?  ¡Te quiero!”  He was a charmer, laying his small hands on hers as they rested on the stroller, kicking his toothy smile into the sunlight and letting his wild bangs fly.

 

“What’s the magic word?” putting her hands on her hips in mock seriousness.

 

“Pleeeeeeeease!” he grinned.

 

“Stay where I can see you,” she said, first in Spanish then in English after he cocked his head like a confused puppy and scrunched up his right cheek.  She watched the understanding slip into his brilliant little brain, and as he ran ahead to the colorful plastic jungle gym she thought of the laundry incident.

 

She couldn’t believe Marcy would do it.  Things seemed to be getting so much better before it happened.  The Andersons have given her a beautiful bonus for her part in getting Cooper into the best preschool in town.  Isabella found out there was going to be a sudden vacancy when Tandi had come sobbing after her family, The Dawes, told her they were moving to San Francisco.  Tandi had been watching the Dawes eldest daughter for five years when Mrs. Dawes got pregnant.  Tandi had loved that little girl.  The Dawes had always been so kind to Tandi, even offering to pay for her flight home to Jamaica for her Holiday bonus.  She wondered if Mrs. Dawes ever tried to pull this laundry shit.

 

The first time she found Marcy’s jogging shirts inside of Cooper’s hamper she thought it must have been some mistake.  She had made a clear agreement in her contract with The Andersons that she would only do Cooper’s laundry, not the whole family’s.  Yet there they were, spandex shirts still moist with sweat.  Disgusting!  “If you wanted something extra, just ask!” she thought to say, but didn’t.

 

Isabella knew exactly what to do the next time she found the jogging clothes in Cooper’s pile.  She took his hamper to the middle of the living room, right in front of that bastard teddy bear, and started sorting each piece.  “MINE! MINE! NOT MINE!”  She sorted the pile straight through, each “not mine” said with by a punching downward swipe.

 

At least she had never had the laundry problem again.

 

“ISABELLA!  MIRROR ME!  MIRROR ME!”  Cooper called, his face wedged between yellow playground bars.

 
“¡Mírame! You mean, ¡Mírame!” she called back.

 

 

She had been a teacher in Guatemala, on her way to becoming a principal before the Plan de Sánchez massacre scared her into leaving Antonio with Marco for the United States and never looking back.  She had grown up with the Civil War, but that was too much.  Antonio was never reason enough to leave.  But after the massacre, her dreams wouldn’t let her stay.  She was always running from the gunfire, turning around to look for a son she couldn’t see, running back and seeing the street filled with dead Marcos.

 

She shook the thought out.  It was no good to dwell on what had been.  She was here now, enjoying maybe one of the last bright and warm days the year would bring.  Being on this bench, in this sun, under these trees, listening to the laughter of children, was enough.

Enough of That

He didn’t so much wake up as wash up on the shore of hard reality, underwear around his ankles, face-down on top of the covers.  A sudden push into the hungover room, a sweeping forward, and a subtle gasping.  He turned his head to see where he was, finding the familiar face of a his wife.

He sighed as he rolled over and tugged his boxers back up to his waist.  Laying there he tried to count the number of drinks he had had the night before.

It had started with the beer at the tail end of some happy hour.  He and his best friends had wandered the streets awhile, enjoying the cool fall air and shopping the menus at almost every trendy little cafe, usually driven away by the trendy little prices.  They all had a similarly inviting ambiance, a quaint charm created by electric replica gas lamps and wood: dark wood, honey wood, cherry wood, everywhere.  The rooms glowed as warmly as he imagined an old tavern might glow, and it made him smile to see the happy people inside pouring chilled tap water from slender necked glass bottles.
They finally settled on a place that had what each desired: french fries, green salads, hamburgers (traditional and vegan), and an ongoing happy hour special.  The place was small and tidy, with a strange underground quality created by small windows and sunken floors.  Upon entering he found something familiar with the empty stage by the bar, and quickly realized he had been here before.

“Hey, we’ve been here before.  For that work thing.” he said to his friends while continuing past the sign which leaned slightly at shoulder level announcing he intention of the hostess to seat them.

“Right?” he said, turning slightly to see if they were, in fact, behind him.

Before they could answer a hostess appeared and led them to one of the empty tables on the patio, under a tree.  The candlelight flickered on the wooden slats of the table as the last light left the sky behind the low buildings across the street.

The waiter had told us we could only have happy hour drinks if we ordered at the bar, and was unusually cold after that.

I had three beers there actually, he remembered as he lay in bed.  The bartender had offered him something with a strange name from the tap, giving him the manager’s special.  A three dollar beer was a deal in this neighborhood, and he couldn’t help but have another and wonder how old the keg was.  He planned on cutting a little loose tonight, undoing his collar and letting life have a little fun with him.

He rolled over in bed, hoping to find a more comfortable position, but realized it was probably the growing need to use the bathroom that had roused him from his sleep.  As he rose slowly, feeling the heaviness of his head, he again examined his half-memories.

They had walked to meet his wife and her friends then at one of their favorite places, a bar on a busy corner.  It had bright red doors speckled with small clear windows, like an English telephone booth swollen many times and filled with Friday night sports fans.  Five large video screens hung above the shelves of bottles of every shape and size, organized with esoteric logic.  The screens tilted in all directions to give some view to everyone around the bar.  Sometimes the mood would strike him to take off his glasses as he enjoyed a drink allowing the highly defined images to smudge into dancing abstractions of color.

“Oh goodness, what did I have there?” he thought, rolling out three fingers on his left hand and ruffling his hair with the other.

There was the vodka tonic he ordered for himself and his friends.  Then there was the whiskey on the rocks, meant to slow him down and keep the insobriety rolling gently onward into the night.  A while later one of the girls saw the “Mulligan’s Special”; a can of cheap beer and a shot of honey whiskey for the price of a beer alone.  Feeling in particularly adventurous and amiable spirit, he joined her in the experience.

‘What is that, six or seven?” he wondered scratching his head and wincing with the head-splitting price of all too many bargains.

He rinsed his hands in the cold water and glanced up at his reflection in the small mirror on the medicine cabinet.  Despite his better judgement, he leaned in for a closer look.  His hair was an oily muddle.  There were dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were puffed under the shadow of his beard.

“Ugh, you madman!” He teased himself as he put his cold hands on his cheeks and pulled down, making a bulldog face.  He remembered younger days playing this game with a friend, making this silly bulldog face and issuing desperate appeals for a bone.  They would laugh for hours playing this silly game.  ‘But that was a long time ago,’ he thought, as he let his weary face spring back into shape.

As he shuffled back to bed a pile of neglected cereal bowls in the sink caught his attention.  He picked one up and turned on the tap, making sure it ran as silently as possible so he wouldn’t wake up his wife.

‘A few cups of coffee and a bagel would be real nice,’ he thought, lightly lifting  a spoon from a bowl of murky milk water and scrubbing it with the bubbly sponge.  As he cleaned each bowl he placed them on the drying rack and somewhere a calm and lovingly quiet voice inside said, “I think that’s about enough of that.”

The night life, or the brunch life?

Jefferson Avenue

A cat slides through the iron bars like smoke, silent and even.  Another night hunt, another mouse to strangle and drag, limp-kneed, through the vineyard.

Whores whisper in the alley.  Dealers stand on the corner.  Grape vines grow.  All on Jefferson Avenue.

Eric watches it all.  The women lead men down the alley.  Thieves follow on the tips of their shadows, ready to strip the pockets of stripped down men.

In the sunlight, it’s easier, he thinks.  In the sunlight, you can hear the boys running, shoes scraping off the hot concrete and into the vineyard for a handful of stolen grapes. Lulu, tending to the boys bee stings, her gentle voice calming them, her hands turning their small black arms, her lips kissing them with grape juice.

The neighborhood wasn’t perfect.  It was affordable.  It was a place he and Lulu could raise the boys and make ends meet.  It was a house he could improve, in time, with the scraps from the construction projects he worked.  The house next door had been abandoned.  The boards in front were sound, but the ones in back pried off by cold fingers looking for shelter.  He did his best to ignore the things that happened in that building.

The night is quiet, caught in an icy chill.  He smells the burning before he sees it.  His brow furrows, he leans his weight on the black painted iron spikes on his small fence.  It’s next door.

The dull orange glow flickers through the cracks in the boards put over the third floor window, the window into a room only a brick length away from his sleeping boys.  The panic rises in his back, a tightening between his shoulder blades.

He turns back into the house quickly.  He takes the steps two at a time. Lulu sits reading a book in the lamplight on their bed.  Her eyes dart up at the sound of his entry, the book drops slowly to the blanket.

“What’s going on?” she asks quietly.

“They’ve started a fire.” He says through heavy breaths.  “They’re going to burn us out.  Get the boys downstairs.”

He digs into the closet, hands frantic, pushing through laundry as Lulu silently moves into the darkened hallway.   A comforting solidity meets his hand through the black canvas of his duffel bag.  Beads of sweat form on his head.

He hears the boys move downstairs, scuffling, half-awake feet in the darkness.  He looks at the phone.  It’s too late.

He enters the main room, dripping sweat.  Lulu and the boys sit in the dark.  The youngest are huddled around Lulu with wide, fearful eyes. A faint cry escapes a small mouth.  Lulu whispers a hush.

“What are you doing with that bat?”

She stares at him. He looks at her briefly before grabbing a rag from the shelf.  He wipes the sweat from his arms and face.

“Where are my work boots?”

She points to the spot he has left his work boots for the last three years.  He grabs them quickly, staring at the floor, hand never leaving the bat.  He forces his feet in and carefully laces them up.  Another cry breaks from the boys, louder this time.

“Hush now, everything’s all right.” Lulu whispers into the shiver.

“Everything is going to be all right.” he says.  He looks at his family, each little head a blessing, each little eye watching him.  He wipes sweat from his forehead, sits up taller on the bench near the stair.  He stands, clutching the bat.

“I have to.  You know.”

“I know.”  She looks through the window, one hand resting lightly on a chest, the other around an arm, each so small.

He wants to tell her he’ll be careful.  He wants to tell her that he loves her.  He wants to tell her to remember that these people are not willing to have an arm broken in a fight with a man with a bat.  He knows he won’t say any of those things.

He puts the bat on his shoulder and crosses the room to the front door.  He pauses for a moment after opening it to take one look back.  The orange streetlight comes in and rests on his wife.  Her eyes are filled with tears, but her face is strong.  She watches him go.

Eric rips himself from the door, steps out past the iron gate, and turns to face the abandoned building.  Firelight still skulks in the window.  The whores and drug dealers are still on the corner.  Soon, he will board it up tight, but first he must get the squatters out.

The alley is uneven soil.  Thick weeds pulse through discarded bottles and paper wrappers.  He follows the path traced by the midnight traffic.  As he gets to the back door he sees it has been pried off completely, the plywood sprawled half across the cement steps.  His breath catches the light as he stops to face the door.  It is a black hole, a pit from which all nightmares enter the world and swallow his boys’ dreams.  They wait for him now, in the darkness.

He lifts the bat.  Four scratched steps rise into the house as he climbs.  What little light enters reveals the source of the overwhelming stench. Black plastic bags filled with graveyard white styrofoam boxes reeking of rotting food.  Empty bottles lay broken and crushed, filtering the smell of urine coming from weight weary mattresses.  His steps crackle with broken glass and empty needles.  He cusses through clenched teeth and pulls up his shirt to cover his nose. His eyes water.

As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he thinks of himself now, a dark silhouette in the doorway, an open target.  He moves further in, fearing a drug-addict’s flight may knock him down the steps.  He knows where the stairs should be and moves toward them, trying not to make too much sound as he wades through the garbage littering the forgotten hallway.

The sweat begins again as he climbs. Each step is too loud, too noisy in the dead space.  He thinks of the bat in his hands.  He thinks of teaching his oldest how to hold it, how to swing.  Each step seems to pound louder.  He keeps his eyes trained on the flight above, waiting for something to spring from the darkness.

At the top, he wipes his forehead with his sleeve.  The doorway is bright with the flame.  He can hear them now, slurred and bitter laughter.  He tenses his arms, tightens his shoulders and lifts the bat.  He puts his left foot forward and takes a small step toward the light.

Three men mumble around a small metal bucket, holding their hands out to the flicking tongues of flame rising between the narrow beams of wood.  One sprawls on an old mattress, one kneels, and one sits with knees up and feet flat on the floor.

As he enters, eyes dart up. They see his blackness, his mass, the muscles under sweating forearms, the bat gripped tightly, raised, and threatening.  The two nearest dart like across like birds, and in a second they are up and running, looking to escape from the man made of harm and malice.  He steps aside, allowing them a clear path to the door.  The stairs creak and shudder with their weight as the third rises and begins to pace.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man yells through blackened teeth and tangled beard.  Rage fills his jerking yellowed eyes.

Eric glances at the wall between the stranger and his home.

“A father.” The words come before he thinks.  “You need to go.”  Eric steps forward cautiously, bracing himself for a tackle, his shoulders flexed; he readjusts his grip on the bat.

“Fuck you!”  The man pauses, steps back.  “I can be here if I want.”

“This place is not for you.  You need to go.”  Eric steps toward him, struggling to keep his voice hard, he tightens his grip on the bat and raises it higher.  He thinks of Lulu and the boys.  He thinks of boys running through the vineyard.

The man glares at Eric, his knees twitching, his hands clenching and unclenching.

He kicks over the flaming bucket, sending red-hot wood and plaster at Eric’s feet.

As he reaches the door he turns and spits, “Father.”

Eric watches him.  The sound of the stranger fades. He crushes the coals under his feet.  They sputter and sizzle out against the floor.  Smoke rises and slides over his sweating brow.  He lowers the bat.

 

 

 

The Memorial

Laundry.  Purse.  Book.  Phone.  Keys.  Bag of quarters; collected in the last few months from her daily purchase of flavored water and trail mix from the corner store.  She preferred the store with the big open windows and shiny aluminum door frame.  She liked the way it felt to step up into it.  She liked knowing just where everything was.  She’d step in, glide past the Yemeni counter man, take a right at the cookie shelves, open the second freezer door, debate the merits of yellow or pink or purple, grab the plastic bottle, turn, grab the same bag of “Happy Trails” trail mix, the kind with the little chocolate chips mixed in, pay, leave.  It was as close to church as she got, at least since moving to the City.

“Hey, Mimi,” she called, slinging the bag down to its usual spot at the foot of machine number nine.

“Hey, darling.  How you been?” Mimi said, looking up briefly from her folding.

“Can’t complain.  Can’t complain, schools started up again,” she said, putting the bag, opening first, into the porthole and wrestling out the pile of dirty clothes.

“That’s nice,” Mimi said, returning to her folding.

Laundry day was best during the week.  Tuesday, if she remembered.  She could usually count on getting her favorite machines, washer and drier number nine, on Tuesday.  They never stole quarters, never made strange metallic banging noises, and never made the zippers so hot they burned.  Mimi showed her the best ones on her first Tuesday there.  She wondered if she could convince Mimi to teach her how to fold the way she did, always managing to get everything to fit into one squishy rectangle.

Over the din of the thrumming machines she could hear the TV blasting something other than the usual soap opera programming.  Whatever it was, Mimi had turned up the volume, so that the usual mumble was now distinct and audible even on the other side of the laundromat.  As she slipped the quarters into the slot, watching the tiny red numbers shrink, she heard an adult and a child taking turns reading names.

“Carol Barbis”  – “$3.25”
“Chris Berbiglia” –  “$3.00”
“Kristine Allstead Brand” –  “$2.75”
“Cathy Monroe Brillings” –  $2.50”
“Ross Clinton” –  “$2.25”
“Nicole Arnett Hempsten Clay” –  “$2.00”
“Jeremy Daniel Coleridge” –  “$1.75”
“Jim W. Connelly” –  “$1.50”
“Phillip Corrigan” –  “$1.25”
“Tory Cussone” –  “$1.00”
“Tiffany Karey Cunningham” –  “$0.75”
“Benjamin Patrick Denkel” –  “$0.50”
“Dorothy DeMasiado”  –  “$0.25”
“Donovan A. DiFranco”  –  “_rUn”

Number nine began to spin.  She raised the flap, unscrewed the bottle of detergent, eyed an about right amount of soap into the pre-wash stream and a little bit more in the “wash-cycle” slot, pulled out her book, and sat down.  With classes just starting, laundry day was a good chance to do some reading.  She put her leg up onto her knee, opened the book to her bookmark, slid it out and into a later page, and began reading.

‘LADY MACBETH:
Yet here’s a spot.

DOCTOR:
Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to
satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.’

“Ignacio Domingo”

‘LADY MACBETH:
Out, damned spot! out, I say!– One; two; why, then ’tis
time to do’t ;–Hell is murky!–Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier,
and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call
our power to account?–Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?’

“Gary P. Dunlap.”

‘DOCTOR:
Do you mark that?

LADY MACBETH:
The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?–What,
will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no
more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.’

“Herbert Enriquez.”
‘DOCTOR:
Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.

GENTLEWOMAN:
She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that:
heaven knows what she has known.’

“Victoria A. Everston. Peter Paul Fitzpatrick.”

‘LADY MACBETH:
Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes
of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”’

“Jonathan Fenkel.  There isn’t a moment a day when I don’t think about you.”  A woman’s voice cried out, “We all love you and miss you and can’t wait to see you again.  Rest in peace.”

“Jose Luis Fernando.”  The child said, “I never got to know you. But, from the stories I hear I know you were a good man.  There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t miss you.”

‘What is going on today?’ she thought, reprimanding herself for her lack of focus.  ‘What is Mimi watching?’

A new pair of somber voices read now.  The list seemed infinite, countless names, names without end.

She decided she would do her best to ignore it as she usually ignored the sound of the television when one of the local old TV men was hanging around watching some daytime talk show.  As she began to read again, she realized what she was hearing.  The memorial service; broadcast on local, probably even national television to honor the memory of the thousands of innocents lost eleven years ago on this very day.  How could she have forgotten?

She closed the book, allowing her finger to hold her page and stood up to see the screen.

“We miss you very much, brother.  Especially Grandma and Grandpa.  We think about you everyday.” a middle aged man said through gathering tears.

“I miss you.  Go Rangers.” said a young boy, obviously too young to have been alive during the event.  Nervous, speaking words that seemed appropriate to be amplified.

She stood with arms crossed, book in hand by her side, mouth slightly open, brow furrowed.  She looked around.  No one else seemed to be watching.  Below the screen an older black man was pulling his clothes out of the drier and stuffing them into his bag.  She suddenly became aware of the look on her face.  Which emotion should she show?

The least offensive would be ‘shared remorse.’  She could feel sympathy for the grief of loved ones lost.  Her uncle had died not long ago.  She could think about him and give a convincingly somber face.  A face filled with the remorse and loss.  She could share in the sadness of these strangers.  But there was more in her.

Next to the sympathy were the less “correct” feelings.  Could these strangers read them on her face?

There were the detached feelings of futility in speaking to the dead as though they had living ears to hear.  No amount of amplification, even as much as it took to overcome the droning machines in this room would be enough to reach the lost.

The remorse at hearing such similar sentiments repeated again and again, each person struggling to express their personal pain and coming up with the same tired clichés.

‘God,’ she thought sullenly, ‘Its finally happened. My friends are right, I’ve become a complete cynic.  I can’t even give these people one day of pure sympathy without picking it to pieces.’

‘No, they can’t talk to the dead, but expressing themselves is an important part of healthy grieving.  And who knows, maybe a shared message, repeated in the minds of countless listeners, can reach the dead.  You are as ignorant of the afterlife as they are.  Isn’t it better to try?’

‘And everyone isn’t a poet.  Don’t be so judgmental.  You’ve said “I love you,” with an infinite number of meanings.  Cut them some slack.’

But the worst thoughts were still brewing, the ones grounded in more truth, less easy to dismiss as unfairness.

She thought of the way images like this could be used to fuel the fires of hate and fear, rather than heal the wounds of loss or examine the causes of violence.  She remembered an image of a smiling madman, lauded as an “Anti-Soviet warrior.”  An image allowed to be forgotten by people who needed to manufacture the consent to hunt him and dance at his funeral.

She found herself wondering, if this list of over 3,000 feels so long, how long would it take to read the list of the estimated 132,000 civilians killed overseas by our retaliation?  Is there even a list of names?  How much blood had been spilled, was being spilled, while her laundry tumbled clean?  Lady Macbeth’s red spot swirled, taking the shape of red stripes on white linen.

She walked away from the screen, putting on a sympathetic mask.  As the storm of thoughts raged in her head she thought about the futility of trying to talk about these thoughts and feelings.  She imagined her best friends citing her negativity.  She imagined what her father would say, something about “never forgetting” or “justice.”  She was failing at her attempt to maintain positivity, which made her feel a little more negative.

As she sat down and pretended to read, one of the regular old TV men, Willy, strolled in with greetings.  As Willy meandered to the spot where she had been standing he took one look up at the screen before declaring, “They’re still playing this shit!”

She glanced at Willy and smiled slightly.

“You know how much gold they throwin’ down them wells?”  Willy shouted to the man emptying his drier.  “I tell you one thing, aint none of it gonna bring ‘em back.  None of it.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it.  They knew it was gonna happen, and they let it happen anyways, just like back in Pearl Harbor.  They knew it, and they sat on it,” the man at the drier replied, rolling the small metal cart with his laundry towards another drier.

“Now, I don’t know about none of that.” Willy replied, “But I do know they’ve got gold being thrown down those fountains every day.  You think they could do something better with all that money.”

“Personally,” the other man said, “I think it was the same people who shot Kennedy.”

As the two men carried on, she rolled one of the empty metal carts to washing machine number nine.  As she pulled out the clothes, heavy with water, she thought, “Maybe I can talk about it after all.”

With love for the living, who honor the lost.