*Snapshots to Bliss* by Adam Mackie

SNAPSHOTS TO BLISS

Cover art done by Chris Dixon 2011 All photographs taken or rights obtained by MD Shoatzycoatl & Adam Mackie

Manufactured in the United States of America Second Edition

â&#x20AC;&#x153;A good snapshot stops a moment in time from running away.â&#x20AC;? -Eudora Welty

PREFACE In the spirit of finding bliss all around us in the world, at the top of skyscrapers to the rim of burning oil barrels, Snapshots to Bliss strives to take the reader on a ride through both the world we share and the depths within the human soul. Snapshots are all around us â&#x20AC;&#x201C; they are in the nowhere and are now here. They are around every corner, in our grasp and just out of our reach. Snapshots to Bliss aims to capture a candid portrait of faith and spirituality in both the realms of the physical and metaphysical. The writing attempts to expose a Divine, transcendent reality in the nearest of the near, in the farthest of the far, in the everywhere of the day-to-day. The formal life of the book was modeled after the traditional language device used in the writing of poetic crowns where the last line of one sonnet repeats in the first line of the next. John Donne's well known La Corona announces in the second sonnet of the crown that "Salvation to all that will is nigh; That All, which always is all everywhere." The crisis Donne presents of having to sin not, yet bear sin, and die not, but die, also emerges in the poem. Each snapshot presents a crisis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a crisis of life, a crisis of death, a crisis of faith, and a crisis of identity related to the whole of all parts. While reading these words, if you stop now and just listen you may hear this crisis. The crisis lives in a single flash of light, a single echo, a single moment in time, a single snapshot... Reading the first snapshot through to the last will present the reader with the consistent reoccurring rhythm of the repeated line. However, the various snapshots need not be read first to last. Like a collection of old Polaroids in a shoebox, the stories contained within Snapshots to Bliss can simply be picked out at random. They reflect the reality that snapshots of life, faith, and spirituality are all around us. You may find what we found. Snapshots are everywhere.

INTRODUCTION Snapshots are everywhere. Walking, talking, breathing life into the world around us. From hair dressers and trash truck drivers to the guy that stands on the side of the highway trying to hitchhike, the lady who always has to buy a matching purse for every outfit, people that meet at Starbucks every Saturday afternoon for Kindle club, alligator wrestlers, schoolteachers, and anybody else that shares this wonderful Earth with us every day. Everybody has a story to tell – and in a world where everything seems to have a price on it – everybody is always giving out a snapshot of themselves for free. Sometimes we like a snapshot. Sometimes we hate a snapshot. Sometimes people never find a snapshot that suits them and whatever their needs may be. Sometimes we fall in love with a snapshot and we study it, we obsess over it, and eventually…we marry it. There are billions of snapshots constantly walking, talking, and breathing life into the world in which we live. Snapshots to Bliss started innocently enough when we started meeting regularly for coffee during the summer of 2010. The two of us found a common bond in the fact that we both enjoyed reading the likes of theory, religion, and philosophy. As a part of this, we discussed many different authors and their works from Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, and Michel Foucault to Thomas Hobbes, Socrates, and Carl Jung (amongst many others of course). At the time, we had just read Joseph Campbell’s book Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation (2004). Our coffee meetings quickly began to revolve around some of the ideas inside Pathways to Bliss. Chief amongst them was the question of how one was to find true happiness in their life – a question that many people grapple with for the duration of their lives without finding a satisfying answer. Campbell spoke of becoming transparent to the transcendent. Or in other words, one’s ability to center themselves and connect themselves with whatever higher power they find in life. The transcendent is that higher power, and we must make ourselves transparent to that – we must let the transcendent 12

flow through us and not just to us. We have to let it in and try to comprehend it. Even if this task ultimately proves to be impossible, it will lead us down a path to happiness – it will lead us down a path to bliss. Campbell goes on to talk about only needing three things to become transparent to the transcendent…being, consciousness, and bliss. Within these ideas, he defines ‘bliss’ as ‘that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself.’ (xxiii) He goes on to provide an excellent metaphor by saying: ‘You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there’s a way or path, it is someone else’s path; each human being is a unique phenomenon. The idea is to find your own pathway to bliss.’ (xxvi) The idea here of course is that too many people in the civilized world fear trudging through the underbrush of the unknown forest (so-to-speak). They find a path that has already been made and if they ever veer off of it, they do so during the sunlight whilst they can still see. But as soon as night falls, they are quick to go back to what they know – what others have already done for them or told them. This was evident as we sat with coffees in hand and listened to the conversations of others – as we viewed the snapshots coming and going with each passing hour. One after another, they came to complain and create drama. To tell stories of why their lives were so stressful – to tell stories as a means to decompress. My inner Joseph Campbell wanted to reach out, shake them, and say: ‘Start your own path then! Tear into the forest and just run…run and never look back! Find your bliss and become transparent!’ But that’s not the way the world works…even if it does lead to true happiness. There aren’t very many trailblazers unfortunately, just a throng of fearful copycats. As spiritual people, our dialogue surrounding Campbell’s ideas of transcendence naturally shifted to the realm of religion. We asked each other: How much of religion is following what you’re told and staying on the path that someone puts before you, and how much of it is true self-discovery? Such conversations begged at the musings that there be some sort of mystical middle-ground, but how can we be sure this isn’t just veering from the path during the sunlight? It’s a complex debate 13

to be had for sure, but we both arrived at the conclusion that regardless if you are a trailblazer or a fearful copycat in religion, the larger concept of spirituality, faith, and belief should ultimately serve the purpose of becoming transparent to the transcendent as Campbell suggests. Perhaps being spiritual and becoming transparent – feeling the transcendent flow through you instead of to you – is when you know you are trudging through the forest on your own… Such questions, conversations, and observations of others is where Snapshots to Bliss began. The common thread – we figure – that connects every person on this wonderful Earth is: ‘what creates true happiness, and how do I get it?’ Becoming transparent to the transcendent seemed to be a viable starting point, and spirituality and how diverse groups of people and individuals practice it seemed to be the connector. It was at this point we decided to write a book of short stories (or snapshots if you will), each representing a different aspect of spirituality and this connection to transparency, transcendence, and ultimately bliss. The idea that each story should begin with the last line of the previous story (or snapshot if you will) was also adopted to show that no matter who you are, what you do, or how you believe, every person on this planet in some way, shape, or form is trying to find their own way to experience transcendence and bliss. Formally we wanted to signify the repetition that occurs in taking snapshots, so we used this literary device of repetition often used in writing a crown of sonnets. Thus our project was born. It is our hope that through reading all of these snapshots – many inspired by real people and true events – your mind will be opened to the concept of spirituality and its power in connecting the individual to the transcendence needed to experience true happiness. It is our hope that this book helps inspire you to begin blazing your own trail – your own pathway to bliss.

1 Anger burned in my soul. The room was silent except for the occasional beeping sound of the heart monitor next to Amy’s bed. Beautiful bouquets of flowers crowded the only table, Hallmark cards littered about the room. Outside of the hospital window, a single streetlight switched itself from green to yellow to red and back to green again despite the absence of traffic in the middle of the night. Across the street, there was a church – its façade hoisting a cross carrying Christ the size of a semi-truck. That’s where we met twelve years ago at the ripe age of twenty-four and twenty- five respectively. I never went to church before I met her, but I’ve never been able to stop going ever since. It was a warm spring morning when a friend of mine – God she was annoying – that I had made in college wouldn’t leave me alone. She wanted to hang out with me – actually, she wanted much much more – and because the six or seven phone calls a day were getting quite bothersome, I finally caved. She picked me up one Sunday morning and had grand plans for the day – and for us apparently – but they would never go beyond that morning’s service at her church. After we found a place in a pew, I remember listening to the sermons and singing, wondering why I chose to waste my Sunday like this. Surely I could have put up with the six or seven phone calls a day over one Sunday service, right? Once it was finished, my annoying friend encouraged me to go pray at the altar. At first I was hesitant, but after seeing so many proceed to kneel before the symbol of God, I felt a bit of inspiration…a bit of lift in my soul that carried me before Christ. I put my hands together and prayed to God for love – for an angel to fill the void in my heart which had been broken before. I’m not sure how long I was up there praying, but the warm touch of a hand upon my shoulder brought me back. I had tears streaming down my face and there were only a couple of 16

people left at the altar. I looked to see who had stirred me from my moment with God, and that’s when I met Amy. I remember looking into her eyes for the very first time and knowing that she was the woman I was supposed to marry. She was Fate and I couldn’t deny the feeling of just knowing inside. I couldn’t explain it, I just knew. It scared me to be quite honest, because those kind of things aren’t real, right? Love at first sight…predetermined destiny – perhaps God’s purpose playing itself out… The streetlight changed from yellow to red, reminding me of the anger that burned in my chest – the anger that clouded my heart and tortured my soul. We were out hiking on a lovely Saturday not long ago when she started to experience the abdominal pain. Over the next couple of weeks she lost a lot of weight and we decided it would be best to go see a doctor. There was no way that I could have ever been ready for what they found. Stage four pancreatic cancer. They hospitalized her immediately and her condition hasn’t improved ever since. She fights it – and I spend every waking moment with her in prayer – but I know how badly she suffers. I feel it. It’s another one of those things that you just know, but there’s nothing you can do. Predetermined destiny, right? God my chest was on fire. Amy and I got married a year and a half after we met at the annoying friend’s church. We honeymooned in New Zealand together, we bought a house together, we skydived together, we ran in the rain together, we stared at stars together, we cried together, we loved together, we prayed together, we lived life together, and…we suffered together. She was my angel – the angel that God sent to fix my broken soul – the angel that God sent to give me the love that I needed to be happy in life. And now He needed to take it away… As the silence between beeps got longer and longer, I found the courage to put my shaky hands together. The doctors said that she could lose her fight with cancer at any moment, so I’ve spent the last four days by her side, not knowing when she might go, but now there was a feeling. Like the first time I looked into her eyes and knew that I was going to marry her, I now felt her suffering soul getting ready to pass. I can’t explain it and I 17

can’t stop it…I can only know it. Dear God. I said out loud. It’s really hard for me to pray right now because I’m so upset and I’m scared…I’m scared of losing my baby girl – my Angel. But I know that she suffers and I know that there is a better place waiting for her. I could no longer hold my tears, each one falling from my face into a lonely void. God I pray that you help guide her soul to Heaven and I pray…I pray- that you end her suffering and let her spirit be free…fly baby girl…fly. I opened my eyes and she was gone. The heart monitor no longer had life. The pain welled up in my chest quickly, burning and burning with the anger of not knowing why God had to take her away. My soul was on fire, ready to scream and explode. Ready to shatter into a million pieces and let fiery flares stream down my face. Could it get any hotter?

2 Could it get any hotter? “Nadia,” my mother screamed from the kitchen. I rolled over from my cot where I was lying on my stomach. I put my slippers on and beads of sweat rolled down my forehead. It was hard to breathe it was so hot. It was time to make bread for the evening meal and my mother always left the kneading to me. I usually kneaded until my little hands cramped. Unlike my three sisters, I abhorred times of celebration – it just meant more work for me. I feel like the men have all the fun…my brothers come and eat, smoke hookah, laugh out loud, and I’m stuck cleaning up after them. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. I stopped going to school at thirteen to learn the mastery of bread-making and keeping a clean house. My brothers get to go on and travel the world, read literature, learn science, and have lives outside of these thick walls. In a few short weeks, I’ll be married. It’s pre-destined. Ever since my dad died, my mom has been praying for a husband to come and marry me. I’m seventeen now. This all seems too fast. Is this really Allah’s plan? For me to marry, fly away to another nest, and not see my family ever again? Sigh. Will I like him? Will he like me? Will he be mean? So many questions… I started kneading bread and let my mind just wonder. It was so hot! I wondered what it would be like to watch the ocean waves, to see the sun set over the bluish green sea – to just float away. I could hear my brothers rumbling in the living room…laughing and carrying on. I wondered what it would be like to go to school in America. What would I study? I wish I could be a teacher. I would teach all the girls and boys…I would teach them about geography and math. I would teach them 19

things I don’t even know. I prayed that I could be a teacher one day, a teacher in a place far away from here. I have been so faithful my whole life. I pray that Allah could help me to become a teacher of something. Why can’t I be free like my brothers – free as a bird? What if my future husband wants to have children right away? I will have to go live with his family and prepare bread for everyone. At least that is one thing I can do very well. Will I get along with all of them – with his mother, with his sisters? It seems so funny to be living this life, with my family in this house and then the next day I could be living with another family in another house. My older sister moved away last summer. Every once in a while she calls and I can tell she has a longing to see us. I could feel my hands starting to cramp and had almost kneaded the last of the flour. When all the preparations for the evening meal were finished I returned to my room to read from the Qur’an. I always could find peace there no matter what I might be feeling. I opened it up to the last verse and read: Allah is the Protector of those who have faith: from the depths of darkness He will lead them forth into light. As I sat on my old dusty cot, I felt like the walls were caving in.

3 As I sat on my old dusty cot, I felt like the walls were caving in. The Bad Religion posters around me giving the sensation that I was in my own tomb, and perhaps I was. During lunch today, Heather told me that she accidentally got too high with Eddie last night and they ended up doing something. I know she felt guilty when she saw the way it made me feel, and she tried to say that it wasn’t a big deal because they used a condom, but it just made me want to scream. As if daggers pierced every wall in our relationship and swirled ruby red black blood oozed down their now brittle insides. After school, I stayed with Mr. Mohenny for a while. I know he was trying to do his grading, but I had to tell someone – someone that I trust. I told him what happened and he stopped for a moment to look at me from behind his storied spectacles. He told me to have faith in the world outside of what I knew. He told me that in the long-run, Heather would be an afterthought, an insignificant memory in the grand scheme of my life and the great things that I would go on to accomplish. But what if there wasn’t a long-run? What if this was the long-run, you know? My personal hero – Greg Graffin – once said: ‘faith in your partner, your fellow man, your friends, is very important, because without it there’s no mutual component to your relationship, and relationships are important.’ He also said that ‘faith plays an important role, but faith in people you don’t know, faith in religious or political leaders or even people on stages, people who are popular in the public eye, you shouldn’t have faith in those people.’ I thought I knew Heather, and I had faith in her. Hell, I had faith in the future that we were building together. She was my rock, my everything, my getaway when the walls were caving in, but now…now she was the one crushing me like a rock, she was the destroyer, the one making my walls crumble around me. She took my world and hit it with her mighty 21

sledgehammer of truth. Maybe I never really did know her, you know? Maybe I bought into the façade – the mask that she put on when she was on stage…so-to-speak. And behind the curtains she was somebody else, waiting…waiting with her ruby red black- blooded daggers of despair. I told Mr. Mohenny that I didn’t know how to cope with it. I didn’t know what to do. He asked me if I wanted to see a counselor and I said ‘no’. I could only imagine what a counselor would think in the back of their mind about a guy like me: ‘not so Goth anymore, huh? Little punk-ass behind his black eyeliner and scary trench coat…’ Eventually, Mr. Mohenny’s wife called and asked him to go pick up their son from little league practice, so I had to leave, but as we walked through the parking lot, he told me to go home and pray. To give God my faith and pray for the strength and courage that I would need to get me over this bump in the road. His words rang through my mind as I stared at the crossed-out cross on one of my Bad Religion posters. This wasn’t a bump in the road. This was my world…this was my world and maybe I had already put my faith in the wrong place. I hope Heather would be happy…I really did love her and maybe this would be her wake-up call. I took the razor blade from my nightstand and put it to my wrist. Its cold edge made me think only one thing…I could be making a huge mistake.

4 I could be making a huge mistake. Call it God. Call it the Good Samaritan within. But, as I saw him sitting there I knew I needed to do something. Besides, I was early. Sarah wasn’t going to be here for at least another twenty minutes. The next thing I knew, I was having an out of body experience where I saw myself getting out of the car, locking the door, and walking toward the nearly deserted depot. I knew the last train left more than an hour ago, but he might not know that. As I approached him, he popped up from the bench he was lying on. “Hey, man, the trains are done running for the day…” My voice echoed down the empty tracks. The man adjusted his bulky parka-looking coat, looked both ways, and then dead at me. “So be it,” he said, stood up, and approached. “I am Javier.” I’d never heard the ‘h’ in Javier said with such an authentic Mexican dialect. “Abbott.” I gave him my name and extended my hand. We shook. “Mind if I call you Abe?” he laughed. “I’ll ride with you.” “What?” I was just trying to be nice and tell him that the trains were finished for the night. I hadn’t thought of giving him a ride… “Can you give me a ride, Abe?” I hesitated as fear consumed me. Who is this guy? He could be anyone – a Mexican axe murderer, Lucifer’s Himmler. 23

He looked a lot like Che Guevara. “Here’s the deal,” I told him, “My girl is coming to get me and I’ll have to ask her…where are you headed anyway?” “North.” Javier said. “And you?” “We’re headed north too…” I replied. His eyes looked straight into mine. They found every chasm of my soul, every nook, every cranny – eyes of salt…eyes of light. The silence on his lips resonated a tension that made every word seem like a life-changing prophecy. I looked at my watch to break the awkwardness. “It’ll be a few more minutes.” Javier said as I looked at him with the feeling that his gaze never left me. “So what’s your story, Javier?” I asked to make some polite conversation. Little did I know he’d go into some long sermon about how he went to seminary to become a servant of the Lord – a messenger as he put it. The lights of Sarah’s Subaru cut through the dark parking lot at the train station. Sarah was freaked out by Javier, but agreed to give him a ride. He told us he was a bona fide prophet and even said we would get married. We laughed it off like he was crazy; little did we know that it could happen someday. The way he told us he was the Lord’s messenger neither sounded like bullshit or craziness. It sounded matter-of-factly as if someone was telling you they were a schoolteacher or a doctor or an IT manager or something. After we dropped Javier off at a church in Sacramento, Sarah and I drove without saying much. “Whatcha thinkn’ ‘bout Abbey?” I heard her voice and the words, but paid them little attention. I just stared out of the window and thought about this Mexican prophet of the Lord Javier. What if he really was a prophet? Was he put in our path to push us into taking the next step into marriage? 24

Sarah must have realized I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much in the mood for a conversation. She turned the knob on the FM station. I recognized some of the tunes and would usually tell her to stop on something like flying purple people eater or witchdoctor. Not today, though, I just closed my eyes. One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters came down from the sky, landing in the trees and singing Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang.

5 One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters came down from the sky, landing in the trees and singing Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang. My Dad flipped the pages of his Neverending Story, continuing to tell me about the perils of Alice and the brillig, slithy, mimsy, mome rath outgrabe of the Jabberwocky. Snicker-snackering and vorpal blade madness left my mind spinning with thoughts of where my action figures really went when they died. But that was a long time ago. Grace and I decided to put Dad in a senior center on the southeast side of town. It was expensive, but we were promised that he would be taken care of by an outstanding staff. They had game clubs, swimming pools, personal masseuses, five-star buffets, and just about anything else an older person could possibly need to feel like they were in hog heaven – except for Bud Light of course which Dad loved for some reason. It was the easiest transition that my sister and I could think of to the pearly white gates where St. Peter sat. My cell phone rang – the theme of E.T. signaling that it was Grace. “Hello?” I answered. “Hey, can you make it over to take care of Dad tonight?” Grace asked – a touch of panic in her voice. “We just had a code one as we were headed back…I’ll be awhile.” “I’m already on it sis.” I told her with a smile at the corner of my mouth. “You’re a lifesaver.” She said with relief. “Thank you so much. I’m really sorry, I’ll give you a call as soon as I’m done.” “No worries Grace.” “Thanks. Love you.” 26

“Love you too.” The other end of the phone went dead, the Jabberwocky’s head galumphing with her into the unknown reaches of outer space…or outer life – however you wanted to look at it. Grace worked as an Emergency Medical Technician and oftentimes found the horrors of our planet coming and going from the clutches of her gentle, angelic grasp. Coming and going, like visitors from another planet, oftentimes not seen but allegedly experienced. A line by President Whitmore in Independence Day – which I had seemingly seen twenty or so times back when I was a little boy – replayed itself in my head: ‘I saw…its thoughts.’ Bill Pullman’s character would say amazed, yet stunned. ‘I saw what they’re planning to do. They’re like locusts. They’re moving from planet to planet…their whole civilization. After they’ve consumed every natural resource, they move on…and we’re next. Nuke’em. Let’s nuke the bastards.’ Kind of a silly line to remember, but it made me laugh. After Mom lost her battle with cancer, I remember asking Dad if he thought he would see her again in heaven. “Sure.” He said with certainty. “Someday God will come to take me too.” I remember thinking it was like an alien abduction – something that just happens…allegedly. Something everybody else never seems to see that doesn’t have any proof, yet hardly anybody seems to deny the possibility that it could happen to them. The End of the World started playing from the iPod I had hooked into my sound system. Although the words weren’t in there, Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang seemed like it should be. Memories of witchdoctors, frumious bandersnatching Jabberwockys, and one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters floated in the memories of my everexpansive personal solar system. My Dad was its sun and I knew it would burn out sooner than later. I just wondered if E.T. – or 27

Godâ&#x20AC;ŚI guess â&#x20AC;&#x201C; would come to abduct me and take me away to somewhere safe when it happened. But for now, I turned my pickup truck into the Liquor 51 parking lot and drifted towards a parking spot. I watched the red, white, and blue neon Bud Light sign get closer and the buzz get louder.

6 I watched the red, white and blue neon Bud Light sign get closer and the buzz get louder. My reflection grew in the window of the poorly lit Mexican cantina in the center of the town’s village. I made my way for the door. The freshly lit tea lights illuminated the few tables filling the room. The bar was mostly empty. The bartender and a smug middle-aged man spoke over the newscast on the television which reported earthquakes and violent sea storms, killing tens of thousands of people living in Southeast Asia. I heard the men exchanging objectifying comments regarding the staff of waitresses at a nearby restaurant. The restaurant opened several months ago next to a distributor of adult videos, toys, accessories and the ever-popular laughing gas sold to underage teenagers. “Enough about tsunamis.” said the gray-haired, middle-aged man to the bartender – he sipped with little class on his tumbler-sized glass. The bartender looked up at the screen confidently and without remorse. “What’s it up to now, 100,000?” The bartender asked. “Yeah, something like that. How can God let things like that happen?” The old man responded. “God? Don’t you think America should lend a hand?” A twenty-something year old man wearing a drunken swagger and a camouflage rain jacket blurted out from one end of the bar. “Why should we help them?” The bartender puffed up and asked. “I come from a family of Irishmen. My grandfather and my father worked for the opportunity they have and have given to me and there was no one to help us!” 29

“Why are you getting so defensive?” The man in the rain coat inquired. I stationed myself at the end of the bar. I sat on a stool far enough away to not be pulled into their conversation, but close enough to still hear them. “You come into my bar and question whether or not we should give aid to those people.” the bartender had anger in his voice. “Your bar? It seemed to me that you just worked here. Apparently, your America is much different than mine.” the drunken man said without a slur. “Yeah, well I guess it is,” snapped the bartender. “I don’t feel we are obligated to do a thing.” “There you go again with that we. People are dying, aren’t we all in this together?” “Hell no…my father made opportunity for himself and I’m living it. I can’t help if there are countries less fortunate than us.” “Well, God bless America, buddy! How much do I owe you?” The young drunk asked. “Eight for the last two.” the bartender replied. The man slapped his money down on the bar, got up from his stool and swaggered off with a puff. “May God help you…” he yelled on his way out the door. “What’re we having bub?” The bartender addressed me from under his golf cap. I stared at the army of glass liquor bottles, glistening and reflecting in the mirrors. I decided to play it safe with a whiskey 30

I knew well. I looked at the bartender and ordered my beverage: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Today, Jameson is my best friend.â&#x20AC;?

7 Today, Jameson is my best friend. Swirling at the bottom of a glass, its caramel-colored golden goodness reflecting the kitchen lights in the background behind my sad bulbous and poorly kept head. My eyes looked sunken into the sockets of my skull through the turning and tumbling joys of Jameson’s wide thirsty grin. This is the life, right? The life that so many envy, yet so many find a barren landscape full of suffering, turmoil, and tarantulas…maybe scorpions – they seem more dangerous. Regardless, at least Jameson’s there to cheer you up… In my other hand, I have a picture of Mom and I from back in the day. High school graduation, 2007. Dad was taking the photo – I remember him telling me to stand up straight and smile. Kaukauna High School…we were the Galloping Ghosts. The dreaded orange and black. The Mad Caspers as one of my teachers used to say. Heh. Ghosts, huh? I rubbed my thumb over Mom’s distant bright smile. I remember the weekend when Mom and Dad asked me if I wanted to go out to Iceland with them. The fall semester had just begun at Wisconsin and my fraternity was throwing this “back-to-school” party so I turned my folks down. Greg promised me there would be lots of wild chicks showing up, the kind of chicks you see on Girls Gone Wild, but even if they weren’t of that caliber, my good friend Jameson always made them look a lot better. I remember getting the phone call the next morning – I was really hung over and my mind was spinning…spinning… like a merry-go-round. At first I wasn’t even sure that it was real, but after a morning and afternoon filled with more sleep – and some help from Jameson – I came to the realization that they would never be coming back. Galloping Ghosts, right? Heh. Within the first 24 hours after my old man’s plane went down, the lawyers, business people, and oil tycoon colleagues that worked with pops made my phone look like an out-of-season Christmas tree. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I ended up inheriting more money than God 32

could give out of the deal, so it turned out alright…I guess. Pretty sweet gig, right? Lose your parents, instant millionaire. Responsibility out the window. No siblings. Retire at the age of 23 and roll off the interest for the rest of your life…what more could a person ask for? Tarantulas and scorpions? Heh. I looked up from the picture of Mom and me, my eyes falling on the bookcases of movies that I had collected over the years. You see, when I was a kid, I was always paranoid that the friends I had were only friends because Mom and Dad were rich and they could come over and eat Digiorno instead of generic brand. So I watched a lot of movies instead…I was that kid. Some of the all-time best: Aliens, Jurassic Park, and King Kong. Okay, so maybe they aren’t some of the best, but they are the first movies that come to mind. And not the old King Kong, I’m talking about the one with Jack Black because some people think I look like Jack Black and I’m down with that. Those were some good movies…heroes…little people fighting against the Alien Queen, the T-Rex, and a big gorilla? I mean, come on…who doesn’t feel that way in the world? Seriously. Step up. Above the movie bookcases, Mom and Dad’s ashes rested in a box, a picture of Jesus above them. I don’t do much, but that’s one thing I think about every day. Why does this have to be so hard? Why does God make His people suffer if Jesus already suffered for us? I don’t know. That’s probably a terrible way to think about it, but I feel like Jesus every day in that movie, The Passion of the Christ. Like no matter how many tarantulas and scorpions sting me and no matter how much blood I lose – which he loses like seventeen thousand gallons of blood in that movie – I somehow manage to still stumble through the barren wastelands, hoping I don’t get picked off by some tusken raiders or angry Indians. Or if I do, God better send me Clint Eastwood to say: ‘Listen here, pilgrim.’ Wait…that’s not his line. Oh well, nothing’s perfect, right? Heh. Jameson calls my name, breaking my stare with The Passion of the Christ, or at least with the picture of Christ above my Galloping Ghost parents. I look back at the swirling caramelcolored golden goodness. My friend. Staring at the mirror 33

image of the sunken eyes of a man, I am drunk again.

8 Staring at the mirror image of the sunken eyes of a man, I am drunk again. Standing all alone, barefoot in front of the bathroom sink, I am filled with excess and pride. As I lift my left foot, cracking my toes, a small square bathroom tile stuck to the bottom of my cold foot falls and returns to the bathroom floor. I am in the middle of a routine delusion of grandeur, where I am supporting myself with both hands on the sink counter, slightly swaying. I am God again. I think I am an artist and I am doing what artists do. I think I am having groundbreaking ideas I can hardly keep track of before forgetting. I've had countless drunken epiphanies, but I always come to and never can remember them. If I could be a god I definitely think I would be Bacchus or Dionysus. I think my gut is a little too big though to be a Greek or Roman god. I feel I am fulfilling my destiny as a singer/songwriter and am enjoying the life of the party. Since music greats like Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix died due to their alcoholism by age twenty-seven, I only have three years left to live up to my full potential as a musical revolutionary. Somehow I make my way to the bedroom and pass out. Waking brutally dehydrated and with bloodshot eyes, I realize I missed a time window to accomplish a daily goal. My career and current position as a newspaper reporter isn't looking good these days. Already on the burner for screwing up a story in every imaginable way, everything I file these days for the editors to read is examined with mind-numbing scrutiny. I published a story about a month ago featuring two women on the day of the 2005 presidential election. I misspelled one of the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s last names. The women were volunteering in a misidentified state to help make sure every vote counted and not cause a repeat of the 2000 recount. 35

I was told as an intern â&#x20AC;&#x201C; while working for another news organization â&#x20AC;&#x201C; one of the perks of working as a journalist was getting to make your own hours. This was true to some extent and waking up hung over was temporarily manageable. Hunter S. Thompson was like a god to me in J-school. Although I missed my chance to do an interview I was meaning to do that morning, I still had a chance to make something fly off the cuff. I figured I'd just show up to the tree farm and hopefully catch someone cutting down a Christmas tree. I figure I'll just quote them saying how wonderful it is. I wanted to talk to one of the owners of the farm, but he was only around earlier that morning. I missed it. Oh well, not that important of a story anyway. So I string something together and write some story about the history of the Christmas tree. The copy editors like it other than the fact that I identify Martin Luther as a protestant monk. Despite his 95 theses, I guess he still was a catholic all along. When I get home from the office that evening, I crack a bottle of Yuengling. I know the measly three hiding at the back of the twelve isn't going to be enough. I take a half bottle swig, grab the remote, and plop down on my kidney bean ottoman. I stare at the chandelier for a moment and point the remote. Electric blue rolls over me. Spongebob SquarePants laughs.

9 Spongebob SquarePants laughs. With a slight delay, so does my three-year old son, Miguel. He was born on September 11, 2011 at the Yuma Regional Medical Center in Yuma, Arizona. I would never tell him this, but he was an accident…a “New Year’s baby” as I’ve heard. I met his father at a friend’s house as we got ready to celebrate what was supposed to be a great new year. I remember my friend, Vanessa asking me what Dick Clark was saying because she didn’t speak English very well, but I told her that even my degree in International Letters and Cultures from Arizona State University wasn’t enough to help me understand Dick Clark – she didn’t get the joke. Oh God, what was I doing there that night? We opened some champagne and let it run. Before long, I was dizzy and there was laughing. Lots of laughing, but not Spongebob SquarePants laughing. I felt like I was on a merry-go-round because I was staring at a ceiling fan from the ground. Next thing I know, I wake up in my birthday suit with Miguel’s eventual father in the sheets next to me. That was one of the scariest mornings of my life. Knowing that something had happened, and I don’t mean the sex. There was a feeling inside of me, something strange – something wrong…something that knew that I was pregnant. Vanessa was all in to God and Jesus and the Bible and stuff, so there were decorations on the walls and all that. I had never prayed a day in my life before then, but I was scared so bad that I put my hands together and pleaded to God that if He existed, He take the baby away and forgive me for my mistake. I couldn’t let something like this happen...I was supposed to start my graduate degree in the fall and there was no way I could do that as a single mother. But it felt weird. It felt empty, like I was praying to nothing, or just talking out loud. I jumped in the shower and tried to wash the filthy feeling 37

off of me, but no matter what I did, it wouldn’t go away. Miguel’s eventual father tried to be supportive…for a time. He told me not to worry, that I wasn’t pregnant and that he had used a condom. But somehow I knew, I just knew. I tried to tell him this and he told me that even if I was pregnant, it would be okay because he was willing to start a family with me and be there for me always. Several weeks later, the morning sickness really hit and I had to know. I was in denial and I prayed every day that God would take this away and I pleaded with Him that I had learned my lesson. So I got one of those pee tests from the pharmacy and it confirmed my fear. God didn’t exist and neither did trust or loyalty or any of that other idealistic stuff that you read about in books and see in the movies. I was pregnant and I was going to have a baby. Upon hearing the news, Miguel’s father became distraught and told me that he’d do whatever it took to make it work. He said that he wanted to go down to the courthouse and get married and when I told him to go get the papers and some Sprite at the store, he never returned. He took the truck and ran back to Mexico no doubt. I never started my graduate program, and I never prayed to God again. Instead, I had a baby named Miguel – whom I let my mother name with great irony considering what it means, but nevertheless, the life I thought I had was gone and destroyed. There were many days I thought about leaving the baby on someone else’s doorstep or “accidentally” leaving him in the middle of the Arizona desert, but deep down I knew this would only get me into more trouble. Spongebob’s stupid laugh brought me back to reality, three years and some odd days later…Miguel was a really happy child and I would never tell him the truth behind how he came to the world and the way I felt. It wasn’t important anymore. He was laughing and it made me smile. I’ve found laughter to be the best medicine for just about everything, especially religion. 38

10 I’ve found laughter to be the best medicine for just about everything, especially religion. I’m spiritual, but not religious. What does that even mean? People say that all the time. It’s like saying, ‘I’m better than you.’ Like saying, ‘I tried the religious thing, found it wasn’t for me, but I still can’t let go of a realm beyond this one.’ I can’t help but ask myself: “What if there is nothing to let go of?” Whenever people identify themselves by their religion or as spiritual, I laugh. Did God really create us to be solely identified by a sign or some metonym? Wars are fought and people are killed over little words ascribed to a person’s identity. Over a word that means something to one and something else to another. The Word – in the beginning – there was the Word. The Word was with the Void…the Word was with the nothing. I believe in nothing though I am not a nihilist. It might sound contradictory, I know, but I believe nothing is something. I believe nothing is indeed real. No thing is real. It’s all an illusion. I’m not a solipsist either. Illusions exist beyond the self and God exists beyond illusions. God is nothing. God is no thing. When I say I believe in nothing and when I say I believe in God, I mean it. I believe in the Nothingness from where all life emerges and whence all life goes. The Void, the Nothingness, and the naught: Can you hear it? I can. I also believe in evil, but evil as an illusion: A rendering of “life” in the looking glass. We look out through our eyes into the world and the world reflects back into our eyes. Our eyes are alive and the world is an illusion. Many myths account for man and woman coming to know evil over a deception involving eternal life. As every present moment passes, we are still trying to cope with our understanding of being eternal creatures when in reality…eternity knows nothing. Let me explain…as the sky stretches out above my 40

head, it is not blue. The clouds above me are not white. Local color artists know this. They have come to know nothing. Magritte knew nothing and what is not. Scientists – in their endless pursuit of truth – often arrive at nothing. The finest science teaches that all colors, the blue expanse or the precipitating, exploding marshmallows in the sky, are in fact every color but the illusion our eye sees. In fact, the sky is everything but blue. The sky is nothing. As I lay here on the not green grass, not hearing a nearby dog bark, it is quiet. Strangely quiet – it is too quiet. It is all too quiet. The cemetery is just past the park and it’s OK for a cemetery to be quiet, but a park should be bustling with runners, parents, and teenage smokers. It’s not like there’s a big rally happening, protesting the fact that our country is sending children off to go play cowboys and Indians with AK47s. We don’t do that anymore. It’s not completely pitch black. You might say people are not at the park because they are home in their beds. Because it is the middle of the night and only scary things happen at the park in the middle of the night. You might say people steer clear. You might say a lot of things. You might say nothing. There’s so much talk of what’s the right thing to do, but I could just lie here on my back forever in a day. I could just lie here and do nothing and let nothing happen, but I already know what the world would say. It would say: “Get up son…you owe it to your country – there’s war out there. We can’t afford to sit around and do nothing. There’s war…”

11 There’s war. White and black buzzards, AK47’s, and skinny mindless – skinny skinny boys. Chugga-chugga-chuggachug. The tracers flew over my head – like angels of Death and rainbows of fury singing: ‘Jesus, Jesuuuus, please guide my heart good. You are the Savior that gave us a home – gave us a home…’ And then it ends. I wake up, the box fan buzzing in the window – the cool earthy aroma of a soggy spring morning refreshing my soul. Over and over again, like a record of The Mills Brothers’ soothing and enchanted Daddy’s Little Girl being played in an old-fashioned barber shop. Another dream…I’m reading about Senator Joseph McCarthy and how maybe I’m a communist and there’s an African-American child – she has a baby doll face and she’s licking a rainbow swirled lollipop the size of her head – standing at the window staring at me. ‘They say God loves him a sweet little nigger, but that baby girl better be careful…’ ole barber Joe would say as he gave a neck shave. And just as the lyric: ‘You’re sugar, you’re spice, you’re everything nice’ finishes, the poor baby face girl would get clocked by a large rock in the side of her head, the blood from her broken baby doll head splattering all over the barber shop window. And then I would wake up…the box fan buzzing in the window. I don’t know what it is, but I have these phases – these kind of uncontrollable times in my life where I have the same dream every night for a period of a week or two…maybe even three. And they always happen right before I wake up. So I’ll lay there and listen to the box fan hum in my window and wonder what they mean. I told my pastor about them once and all he could say was that it was the devil’s demons trying to get in – trying to put bad thoughts and images in my head – but I don’t know if I believe that. I mean, I’m really not all that important in the grand picture of things, so why would the devil waste his time and energy to put bad dreams in my mind?

Although, I did have this one dream that kept spinning me to consciousness for about a week last fall and it had all kinds of strange things in it. I was raking the leaves in my front yard and Ms. Gordon’s grandkids were throwing a football across the street. Well, this nice warm breeze kicks up some of the fiery orange and brown leaves and they spin in the air – floating all beautiful as if maybe there wasn’t gravity anymore – and my eye follows them to look up at the trees. And up on the branches and between all the golden leaves that refuse to give in, there are these shadows with wicked edges and terrible smiles. Almost like Halloween had let some of its splendid seasonals escape early. The grandkids football bounces into my yard and hits me in the leg. I reach down to pick it up as they come trouncing into my front yard with these great big smiles on their faces and there’s Ms. Gordon in the background, standing on her front porch with a shotgun. The kids retrieve their football from me and we all turn to watch Grandma Gordon blow her brains out and the shadows fly away like regular graveyard crows. But then I always wake up with the ringing of the gunshot and I listen to the box fan buzzing in my bedroom window… I’ve thought about seeing a psychiatrist about it because I can never really figure out what my dreams mean and what my pastor told me doesn’t seem to help out. Although – now that I think of it – there’s this really sweet Native American girl that sells tamales to my church and one day after I bought a dozen, she told me that the spirits spoke to her and they asked her to give me a dreamcatcher which was supposed to catch all of the bad dreams and only let the good ones through…but I never hung it up. It was a nice gesture of her, but I don’t want God to think that I believe in something else besides Him. But oh well. The box fan blew the real world into my room and I thought about which dream I should tell a psychiatrist about first – assuming I go to see one! Hmmmm…oh I know! This one happened just a few months ago during the winter. I had a reoccurring dream of waking with eyes blinking shortly after a guillotine severs my head…

12 I had a reoccurring dream of waking with eyes blinking shortly after a guillotine severs my head. Just after the guillotine drops, my head falls to the ground rolling to face skyward. My skyward face remembers seeing my body and hearing my name called out. Dark flashes of the executioner and my eyes meet the eyes of another. They call my name again. And that’s it. I don’t know how many times I’ve had that exact same dream. Maybe I was a soldier in the French Revolution in a past life put to death for treason. That makes me feel dashing, daring. I see myself with a thin mustache and an Orlando Bloom Pirates of the Caribbean beard. I don’t know why I think about those kinds of things. The decapitated soldier probably never would have guessed he would be reincarnated as a person with cerebral palsy. Karma says as karma does I suppose. I love who I am. It’s the bug-eyed, ‘I’m so cosmopolitan’ ones that have a problem with it. John Wayne gets to limp and everyone thinks that he’s tough or brave or some kind of big hero. I think people like me are bigger heroes than he, but that’s just me. You might say I’m bias, but I got a lot riding on this one. It’s who I am! I pull the Stephen Hawking card out a lot. He busted a brizeef hizzy bee-yach! True Grit ain’t got no shit on it. You know, I limp to the counter to get an ice cream cone or a cupcake or something like that and have so many parents pulling their kids back, tucking them in close not to touch me. I usually just laugh it off and say I don’t bite – forcing an uncomfortable laugh from the parents who continue to hold their kids. Sometimes I’ll intentionally hang around to talk to them just to see how long they can take it. I even went through a cowboy phase at one point, where I wore a big ass Texas-sized cowboy hat, a western snap shirt, and slick alligator leather boots. I thought going Wayne on ‘em might make me fit in better or something, but no. No I did not. I just 45

kept getting the same ol' crippling stares. I just don’t get why people get so uncomfortable around me. I see people who live in places where they are cared for out in public and I watch the reaction of the so-called normal people. Society is a vicious place, even when people aren’t really doing anything intentionally mean. Even when they are just sipping their latte, which might as well be the soul of someone who needed that $4.00 just to keep their stomach from eating itself or to go to the doctor. Soul sippers – as I call them – are cruel and unusual sometimes, especially their piercing, beady, little eyes. I see the way they look at people like me. It’s like when a person on an elevator moves their bag from one side to the other after a person of a different race steps in. Whenever a person’s body tenses, kind of like what you might imagine a freshly decapitated body to do. When I walk by I just smile. I even had the nerve once to ask someone who was clearly uncomfortable with my presence if they were jealous. They didn’t know what to say. I’ve lived vicariously through many venues: Reading, people watching, playing video games, watching movies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Whoever came up with repeating et cetera three times in a row? Or yadda yadda yadda? Or blah blah blah? I think most likely he or she was a despicable person and probably deserved to have their head chopped off. I’m mean too! Damn it, why do I think these kinds of thoughts? The good news for today is this: I won a free lottery ticket from the one I scratched yesterday. The church had a potluck in the park where I got some free food. You very rarely hear fasting talked about at my church. You do, once in awhile, but mostly it’s the opposite. People come together to eat food, which is good. I don’t mind it one darn little bit. My cerebral palsy, though, has been more a blessing than a curse. I've really had the opportunity to discover who 46

I am and who the real people in my life are. I'll never forget that one guy from church who really went out of his way to be nice to me. Sometimes really good things can come from the catastrophic.

13 “Sometimes really good things can come from the catastrophic.” I argued. “I mean, what would have happened if we never dropped an atomic bomb on Japan? Would the war have ended?” “Yes the war would have ended.” Steve rolled his eyes with a laugh. “I dunno.” Rachel held her giant cup of coffee to her chest and sipped at it like a mouse. “It would have ended…” Steve seemed confident. “Or would school security be as good if we didn’t have Columbine?” I continued. “School security still sucks.” Steve played the pessimist. “It’s better.” Julia chimed in, her beautifully smooth face gaining a Tuscan-like glow from the coffeehouse lighting. God I loved her. “If nine-eleven didn’t happen, this country wouldn’t have gone crazy with all this new airport security.” “That’s just a joke.” Steve postured. “A big conspiracy to allow the government to take more control.” “Do you think the Bible would have ever existed if Christ wasn’t crucified by the Romans?” I asked. “Maybe not the Bible, but some other crackpot collection of stories and tales for people to worship.” Steve replied. “Look man, don’t get me wrong, I feel terrible for the people who have had to suffer because of tragedy.” I said as Steve stood up and took Rachel’s hand. “My heart goes out to 48

them, but isn’t it human nature to always – ultimately – search for the plus side of things? Isn’t it human nature to believe in finding the positive?” “If nothing else, dude, I’m glad you do.” Steve stretched one of his arms above his head. “Rachel and I better split though if we’re gonna make the ten-thirty showing.” “Alright, alright…” I smiled. “It’s always good to catch up with you guys.” “Same to you, pal.” Steve said. “See ya Julia.” “Bye!” Julia stood and gave Rachel a hug. After Steve and Rachel left, Julia went to get another coffee. I stared out the window of the coffee shop and watched traffic zip by and people pass without ever knowing that I was looking at them. I wasn’t a stranger to the horrific, as a matter of fact, I was fascinated by it. When I tried to end my life so many years ago, it was because I wanted to know what the terrible felt like. But other people think this way too, right? I mean, when a train is passing by in front of you, who doesn’t ever wonder what it would be like to just jump under it, you know? “Do you think God intends for terrible things to happen in the world?” Julia asked as she sat back down and captured my attention. My Lord she was beautiful, and I wanted so badly to be with her – to treat her like a goddess and forget everything else. “I think God knows terrible things will inevitably happen, I don’t know if He intends for them to happen…” “I mean…when Jeff accidentally stepped into traffic, do you think God knew that was going to happen?” “I don’t know.” I said. There was a long bit of silence, both of us thinking and staring out of the coffee shop window and watching life pass us by. “But you’re right, sometimes good things can come out of stuff like that.” Julia tried to smile. “I mean, we’re friends 49

because of it, right?â&#x20AC;? "Yeah... we are." The thought of being just friends bugged me because I cared about her so much. "But could it have been different though?'' I asked.

14 “But could it have been different though?” I asked. “You mean with us?” Hazel asked back. She had a way of causing time to stop with her gaze – a way of making you forget what you were about to say. If her eyes were blue I’d say they were like the sea and I could drown in them. But that might sound kind of cliché and her eyes aren’t even blue. Is calling a phrase cliché, cliché? After all, a spade is a spade. “I know it could have been different with us Hazy. I could have been Romeo and you could have been Juliet, but instead we’re like Lear and the Fool!” “You callin’ me a fool?” Hazel snapped with playful irritation. “No, I’m calling you crazy, baby, crazy.” I said and smiled. “Nothing will come of nothing speak again.” she said volleying back my smile. “No, what I’m saying is could the world have been different? Could Adam and Eve have chosen not to eat from the Tree, could Job have given God the bird, could Christ have gotten down off the cross?” “Sure…why not?” Hazel responded after some pause. She sipped her steaming tea, sitting with her heels on the edge of her chair. She looked like a butterfly sitting there. God I’d like to…“Every coin has another side, doesn’t it?” Hazel continued confidently. “I’ve just been thinking a lot about curses, you know…how God cursed us and the ground we walk on.”

“I think He cursed us ‘cause He loves,” said Hazel. “Didn’t Faulkner say that moral conscience is the curse we received from the gods in exchange for the right to dream? I’ll take my dreams, with all the failures, any day over being like a Stepford wife. Eve would have been the first Stepford wife if she hadn’t taken the fruit into her own hands. You know?” “So, you think everything is pre-determined then? You think God created Satan to betray him up in Heaven and then to betray us down below?” I said leaning forward, staring Hazel down. “I think it’s a story that’s still being written, that’s been told to my mother and your mother and countless little ol’ ladies before them.” Hazel replied. She parted from my stare, gazing out over the Hudson. I loved when she had me over to her spot on the river. The fireflies would dance at night. I started thinking back to when we first met. We tried dating at first. I even tried kissing her at one point. She laughed at me when I did. She didn’t stop me, but she didn’t kiss me back. She just laughed. I asked her why she was laughing and she said it was because I looked like a fish when I went in for the kiss. I was hurt, I’ll admit, but I tried to shrug it off. She told me not to get mopy and changed the subject. When time is not being stopped by Hazel’s beautiful eyes, it flies. She would laugh at me if she knew what I was thinking right now – if she knew my inner thoughts. Hazel was my best friend. I told her everything, pretty much everything. She got me. She made it virtually impossible for me to date anybody else because I always wanted the person I was seeing to be Hazel or at least be something like her. I think God might be a little like this too. Once we experience the infinitude of His love, it’s hard to settle for anything else. I used to love drinking my whole life away. Nowadays, I just want to sit on Hazel’s back porch and watch the sun come up. I’m glad we ended up as friends, actually. I think we would have tried to be 52

something we’re not otherwise. There’s something honest in the Platonic. “What are you thinking about my dear? You left me for a moment…” I heard Hazel’s voice. She was one of the few people who allowed me to mentally check out, come back, and act as if nothing had happened. I have seizures sometimes – although none lately. Hazel had seen a handful of them. I never felt judged or like there was something wrong with me. She would always just help me up and give me a cup of water. She always sat with me as I came back to the land of the living. “Just thinking…” I said. I thought about the aura I always felt right before having a seizure – I didn’t know why I was thinking about seizures. I think my seizures were the result of falling on an anchor as a kid and having to get seven stitches in the back of my head. I really can't be for sure. I looked at Hazel, staring out over the river again. Fireflies floated over the sea of twilight-colored grass in my friend’s backyard.

15 Fireflies floated over the sea of twilight-colored grass in my friend’s backyard. It was a balmy 82 degrees even though the northeastern soothing Tennessee sun had set over the deserts to the west long ago. Thomas and I sat on his sunporch protected from the swarms of menacing mosquitoes by a thin screen netting that not even the world could see. “…and then I kid you not,” Thomas explained, his glass of Jack Daniels was much emptier than mine, “I’m standing just out front and this guy with a mullet on a four-wheeler in just his underwear holding a beer is draggin’ ass down the street screaming like a goddamn banshee!” “No way…” I entertain him as I wait for the ice to water down my Jack. “Yeah! And as soon as he gets down near the Walgreens, he turns around and comes tearing back the way he came. Does this over and over again…” We both share a good laugh. Thomas and I attended the same graduate program out west close to ten years ago. We studied education and spent our student loan dollars on cheap beer, darts, air hockey, and stale submarine sandwiches while making fun of grassroot hippies and bad sports commentary. “Do you ever wish you never moved out here?” I ask. “I dunno…” Thomas reflected with a sobering look. “…sometimes – maybe. But it is what it is I suppose. Even if I’m the only one who doesn’t go to church on Sundays and nobody ever thinks to drop by during the holidays, it got me out of debt and they do make good whiskey.” “Yeah I never figured you’d have ended up in Bible-Belt U.S.A. though!” “Me neither!” Thomas agreed. “I’m surrounded by a bunch of Jesus-loving, cross-humping hillbillies!” 54

“That four-wheel up and down the streets with their beer in their underwear!” I say with a fake laugh, feeling bad for jumping on. “They can’t sing their goddamn ABCs, but by God they can shoot coons and recite Psalms all day!” I continue to laugh even though a part of me disagreed with Thomas – a part of me resented the way he saw the world and how he made fun of God’s children. He had moved out here to work as a high school teacher because the government offered to forgive his student loans, but I wondered how much his students – over the years – actually learned amidst swirling disrespect and storm clouds of religious ignorance…from both sides. “Do you ever think about going someplace else?” “Nah…” Thomas poured himself some more Jack. “There’s something about these people. They may be the dumbest sons of whores that I’ve ever met, but there’s something about them that I just can’t get away from. Besides, education is our mother and our father, right? If I can’t teach them, then who the hell can I teach?” “Yeah…amen to that I suppose.” I said. “Education is our mother and our father…”

16 “Education is our mother and our father,” I said. “I have the chance here for education. I want to be a teacher, like you. Maybe I could go back and teach my people one day. I would like that, yeah man, I would like that.” “I think you would be a great teacher David.” Jon said. “I got to get into school, man.” “I know. We’ll see what we can do, okay? Don’t worry.” Jon assured me. I hung up the phone and looked out the window into the courtyard of my complex. “I’m going to jail today! I’m going to jail!” I could hear my barefoot neighbor screaming from the edge of the parking lot. “When I find her, I’m going to jail. Oh hell no…I’m going to jail.” she carried on as she threw up her arms and shook her braless torso in disgust at her children. I turned away, went to the kitchen counter, and counted the change in the dish. There were some quarters – as a matter of fact, just enough for a Mountain Dew. I put on my plastic slippers that were splitting at the soles, left my place, and slid my hand down the railing as I shuffled to the soda machine. I heard my neighbor screaming again and I could smell drugs coming out from the window I passed. I slid a quarter into the soda machine and realized I was no better off here than I was at the camp in Kenya. I’m still sleeping elbow to elbow with my brothers, but there I did not feel so out of place. Here I’m black – I’m black as night and I am surrounded by so many white people. I can’t get a job. I can’t go to the store without people staring at me. When I fill out a job application or go into an interview, I have such little chance. 56

If I could just get back into school maybe I could return to Sudan…maybe I could be a teacher. I pray to God every day. I know God will save us. I hope Jon can help. Jon, Jon’s family, my brothers, and all those good people in New York are my family now. They’ve really done a lot to help us. Jon’s wife brought a mattress to us and helped me get a green card. I couldn’t have got a green card without her. She came down and talked to the people at the Immigration and Naturalization Services. They wouldn’t listen to me or they couldn’t understand me. She was able to talk to them and get me the documentation I needed to keep working. I hated that job at the hospital though. I eventually quit because they always wanted me to do more than what the other employees were doing. They knew I needed the work, so I did what they said. After some time, I couldn’t do it anymore and quit. I opened the cold Mountain Dew and walked back to my apartment. I sat on our one and only chair and stared at the black and white chess pieces on the nightstand. I removed my slippers and rested my feet on the mattress sprawled out on the living room floor in front of me. I felt helpless, but I felt hope as I reflected on last Sunday’s sermon. I was looking forward to the prayer meeting my brothers and I were going to later on. I sat there for close to an hour. The phone rang. I answered and it was Jon. He sounded upset. “David, I’m hitting brick wall after brick wall as I look for scholarships and grants. I’m trying to get you some money to apply to school. I’m running wild, at the mercy of the Gnat King and the Lord’s wildebeest herd!”

17 I’m running wild, at the mercy of the Gnat King and the Lord’s wildebeest herd! Through the weeds I sprint, cattails whipping my face and threatening to throw me into the depths of Kraken’s ominous canal. The sky is spinning, spinning, spinning – the fluffy white clouds showing Alexander the Great’s ancient exotic escapades bouncing in my vision…I couldn’t let the world in. I needed to plead with the Gnat King – I needed his protection from schoolteachers, stop signs, and Hades’ callous call. Earlier in the day, we ventured our way across the lumbering golden hills and found loot in the form of a Kohls and a Best Buy. Dad quested for a feast and insisted upon the daunting Big Mac supersize value meal where the golden arches pull people in – their shimmering, shining curves mesmerizing the masses and keeping them coming. But I know better, the Gnat King told me so! He told me to run from the yellow-clad clown, take his food, eat it as quick as you can and run! Run – run to where he can’t find you. Hide yourself in the plastic ball pits and candyland slides. From there, the one whom they say is my sister – although she’s probably from Neptune – exasperated her emotions and sent her eyes rolling. Her claims made it seem as though her objective was imperative to the quest at hand, but quite to the contrary, she merely wished to visit the local pub Starbucks to meet her boring, blatantly brain-lacking ninth grade friends. Mom, Dad, and I sat there as her captives for nearly twenty minutes! You know how long twenty minutes can seem when you realize the wildebeest herd is running, running, running without you? And who is she – Ms. Neptune Know-itall – and her ninth grade Sissy Spacestick friends? That’s what they want – at least that’s what I’ve been told – they want you to believe that they are better than you because they have a bigger number. Nine is a lame number. Baseball games end after nine innings and the only good thing about that are the orange slice slumber parties which wait to reward you. 59

After conquering Neptune’s annoying satellites, Dad insisted that we return to our cottage – staking his claim pertaining to the necessity of watching the Kings and Cavaliers play in another part of the kingdom. We caravanned over a major bypass and there it was – clear as day – the world and all of its horrors. How I longed for the Gnat King – my saving grace – when the world looked upon me. There was an accident where the body of a man on his motorcycle was left stiff and leaking the dark red fluids of Hades himself. His body was mangled and torn, but still attached to his loyal Harley Davidson steed. We got home and I knew that I had homework – I knew that my teachers would scold me again and again for not finishing their work, but I needed to run. The Lord’s wildebeest herd was moving without me and I needed to find the Gnat King. I took off straight from the car, my Dad calling after me that the night’s noble feast would be at six – a much better number than nine let me say – and to stay away from the monsters and creatures that lurked in the dangerous parts of the land. But I knew that I would be okay. I believed in the Gnat King and he believed in me. As long as I kept coming back and worshipping his wisdom, wit, and hard-to-see smiling, serendipitous, super powerful self, he would protect me from the threats of the world outside. I ran past stop signs and into the weeds – filled with cattails and Kraken’s ominous call. The Gnat King’s fortress – a great oak tree with wild, towering branches was just where I had always come to find it – the wildebeest herd now stopped in the meadows just beyond its wide gaze. I needed to tell the Gnat King of what I saw so he could rid it from my soul - so he could keep me believing in the kingdom I had. I collected some stones and an old deer skull, bringing them back to the base of the Gnat King’s lair. I arranged the stones carefully with the deer skull on top. Afterwards I drew a picture in the mud with a stick that had been discarded by 60

ancestors of old. I closed my eyes and scribed my words out loud, for the world to hear, and for the world to fear: ‘Great Gnat King,’ I began, ‘the world grows darker and darker every passing day. I fight and fight – I really do – but please Great Gnat King, please, please…take whatever residue is left on my armor and cast it away. Protect your bold warrior and believe in me for I believe you. Tell my teachers, my Mom and my Dad, and the alien they call my sister that I have important work to do. To leave me be and let me work for you – to let me work for the only one who keeps the darkness away.’ I open my eyes. I see the stone altar, the deer skull, and the picture of a man who died on his motorcycle.

18 I see the stone altar, the deer skull, and the picture of a man who died on his motorcycle. They say he crashed into a car near the river and died last week. A woman with silver braids approaches me and smiles. She accepts my tobacco offering and listens while the bonfire burns with intensity. Sheets and blankets are spread out on the ground and a tarp is laid over the skeleton of a tent. A sacred line is drawn, stretching from the dome-shaped tent to the fire and eventually, to the altar. To cross the sacred line would break the sacred circle. Prayer ties hang on the altar and in the surrounding trees. I can feel the eyes penetrate outwardly and I get the sensation that I’m being watched. The ceremony begins. A circle forms around the fire and altar. No one crosses over the sacred line. The fire seems to make faces and spit as the fire-keeper pokes and prods at the eight burning rocks within. The woman with silver braids speaks to us as a Grandmother would speak to her children, her words, however, were directed toward the stones in the fire. A drum, movement, a procession, and the circle moves into the lodge. Inside the dark tent bodies overlap. The whiteness in others’ eyes send out flashes of life. Hot stones are carried in through the opening with antlers. The flap closes and the heat encompasses the space. I see the glowing embers in the darkness – it’s the only way to really know if my eyes are opened or closed. Steam erupts after water is poured on the stones. Water touches my lips and a ladle exchanges hands. A whisper in my ear says: “Lie close to the ground if the heat becomes too much.” I can feel every weakness in my back as sweat drips down my spine. My foot falls asleep and there is discomfort. I hear the sound of thunder, the sound of rain, and a drum from above. The door to the tent opens and there is a voice: 62

“Grandmother, I must leave the lodge. My son is out there!” “He is with the deer…I see them,” Grandmother says to us. “He will be all right, but go to him if you must.” The door again seals and the heat becomes hotter than before. The people chant and I do not know the words. I try to get as close to the ground as I can, but there are too many people. I feel the sweat of the person next to me run over my skin and I wonder when it will be over. Slowly, my mind dissolves. The people give me an opportunity to speak and I do. I speak of a journey – of facing my past, of dealing with amends. I sense peace and wonder if my prayers were ever heard. Some time later – after four rounds of ever-increasing temperature – the tent flap opens. One by one I see bodies file out. I see the rain has stopped and I wonder if it was ever even real. As I step outside, wet grass squishes between my toes. I see a rainbow in the East and listen to someone tell their friend that the end of the rainbow has landed over the house of the man who died on his motorcycle. I look again at the man’s picture on the altar and wonder if he is really dead. From there, my gaze falls back on the deer skull and I think of how Grandmother said she saw a deer outside the tent with the little boy. I look at the boy and then at his mother. Smiles reflect smiles. “It takes a little while to come back from the Spirit World.” Grandmother stands next to me. I look at the woman – my neighbor – who invited us to join her in a lodge ceremony during one of our many late-night kitchen table conversations. I am unsure of what to think and what to feel. I realize I am both at one and double – in harmony and in dissonance. Where am I? What time is it? I say the Lord’s Prayer. 63

“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven...” I utter softly. “Forgive my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me…as I forgive those who trespass against me…” I must forgive the ones who have harmed me. Then might I be healed?

19 ‘I must forgive the ones who have harmed me. Then might I be healed?’ I thought as Simon displayed mercy upon a 17-year old true southern blonde hopeful. She jumped up and down, her smile radiating hope – her smile playing to the musical tune of joy. I muted the commercials and looked to the hard, sterile table next to my bed. There were no flowers and there were no cards. Just a few pictures, all of them showing me and all of them taken during better times. You see, I used to do this thing – I used to open my mouth real wide whenever a camera was pointed at me. I had to be unique, I had to be memorable…shit, I won’t try to refute it…it was my way of trying to be better than everybody else. It was my way of trying to stand out. I could never give an honest picture, and maybe that’s why everybody hated me. American Idol came back on, but I didn’t bother resurrecting the volume. My southern blonde sweetheart was still smiling backstage and receiving hugs from her peers. Her name was Jessica Kelley and she grew up in a trailer park, delivering milk for the local dairy. She was real skinny, and in all of the pictures the program provided, she was wearing a straw hat, a pair of overalls, and a sports bra. Her dream was to sing, and she said she was content with weekly karaoke sessions in a rundown cowboy bar – one of those places with animal skulls on the walls and dried up cactus pots in every corner. God, what did I do to be so despised? Nobody would come to see me, and nobody would call. I was the President of Beautrix Beauty Products, the goddamn President! I’m a nice guy…really. How was I supposed to know my product was killing people – that my product was the destroyer of dreams? They just wanted my money – my goddamn money. 65

It was her boyfriend who encouraged her to audition. He was probably a nice guy, but nice guys always got screwed in the end. Southern blonde Jessica would probably forget him just as everybody forgot me. No flowers and no cards – what a bunch of assholes. But I needed to calm down. I needed to forgive everybody who had done me some harm – who were still doing me harm by not coming to see me and taking pictures of my big stupid mouth wide open. Christ, I don’t want to die. Especially not like this, not all alone. ‘Please God,’ I thought, ‘Just don’t let me die. I’ll do better, I promise. I can make this right…’ My doctor walked in, holding a clipboard and pulling a stool to my bedside. He hesitated as he flipped through the papers in front of his face. “Mr. Kelley,” he said, his eyes finally moving up to meet mine, “I don’t know how else to say this, but your cancer is spreading and there’s not much we can do.” “That’s…that’s not what I wanted to hear…” I said, panic beginning to set in. “Goddamn it! I want to get better! I want you to fix me Doc! Fix me goddamn it!” “I’m sorry sir.” Was all that he could say before standing and leaving the room. The credits were now rolling and southern blonde Jessica – my sweet southern blonde Jessica was smiling. She was crying, filled with happiness and joy. A tear of my own, a tear of sadness rolled down my face as I watched her image fade away one last time. ‘Please God,’ I repeated, ‘Don’t let me die…’

20 “Please God,” I repeated. “Don’t let me die. I’m not ready to swallow the pill of Death!” I saw the face – silver and fragmented. The cheeks protruding from the darkness. The eyes, so lifelike, stare at me with a strange kindness. They look at me in a forgiving way. “Om…” the sound of the washers and dryers drone – the sound filling the empty space of darkness. “Is that stuff yours, man?” I hear a voice ask. I open my eyes and realize one dryer in the crowded Lost Sock Laundromat has stopped spinning. Where did all these people come from? What was I doing here? “Yeah,” I say. “Give me a minute.” I pull out a basket’s worth of clothes from the dryer in front of me – whites and darks combined – and stuff them into an army issued duffle bag. I look at the man’s face, impatiently standing there with a load of wet clothes. His eyes weren’t unlike the ones I had just seen. “Thanks…” says the man – the washers and dryers swirling around us. I take my duffle bag and find a seat. So many faces in the laundry mat sequester behind newspapers and cell phones, behind laptops and wicker baskets. Every face seems occupied with something…except hers. Except her with the smile that’s not even meaning to smile. How can people smile like that, smile without even knowing it? What was she looking at? Then I realized she was watching a man play mariachi outside the window. All I could see was his back, his black hair and a trench coat. She was looking at his face. She turned to me from across the laundry mat as she 68

became aware of my stare. Her face, her eyes…and her kindness. Her smile lifts with an air of intention, steaming hotly amongst the wash. She hops up, flips her hair and tosses change into the mariachi’s guitar case on the way out the door. Before I realize it, she’s gone. Sitting with a world around me, a duffle bag in front of me, I smile. I again become aware of the Om – I become aware of a stare. I look at a face that quickly gazes down to their child – their son. He’s blonde. The blister on my heel burns and I search through my bag for a pair of socks. A white one, a striped one, it doesn’t matter. I pull a black and purple argyle one from my bag, remove my shoe, and cover my foot before standing and walking towards the door. The mariachi seems to be in rhythm with the washers and dryers at the Lost Sock. He doesn’t miss a beat. I dig in my jeans for some change, but only feel my leather wallet – which I know is empty. I push the door before pulling it. The mariachi – dressed all in black – has gray patches in his beard. The Spanish melody sounds familiar, his concave cheeks moving with his lips. His eyes are closed until he suddenly opens them. His stare pierces me to my core. I walk to the roadside and sit at a bus stop. “Con...convi...conviction.” I stutter reading a single word from a crinkled carbon copy. Proceedings happen so fast. I remember standing there in that God forsaken suit dying from the summer heat. “...guilty as charged…” were the only words I could recall the judge saying – his moving lips bleed into the blur to a cacophony of sound. Clack. The gavel drops. The judge's face – his silver hair and his cold sober eyes rain down on me like hail on concrete. 69

“Someone is here for you,” a guard’s voice, disembodied, echoes across the bars. I awake with my head between my knees starring at the cracked floor. I stand and walk towards the barred door. The clank of the lock echoes back to the exit. A city bus collides with the jailhouse doors of a daydream. I take the steps to find a seat oblivious to where the bus will go. The bus driver looks at me. His face – a face I’ve seen before – remains motionless like the silver face in the darkness. It’s a kind face, like the man at the laundry mat, starring like the mariachi. The judge’s face turns into the guard’s face in my memory. “Seventy-five cents…” the bus driver says. “I’ve got nothing,” I say plainly. “Will you please let me ride?”

21 “I’ve got nothing,” I say plainly. “Will you please let me ride?” At first, I could see the bus driver’s first inclination coincide with protocol and routine, but just before opening his mouth, his soul noticed the torment on my face. I grew up near the bus stop I now stood in front of. My brothers and I played in the tall weeds behind it – we rode our bikes in the street under the lemonade stand heat. How many buses went by without us ever noticing? How many souls were carried through our games and our worlds without as much as a look from our innocent child eyes? “No worries friend, the ride’s on me.” The bus driver’s eyes were deeply set in his skull, a patch of age-old freckles just beneath them. The bus stop was built over an irrigation ditch bridge. I remembered as children, we would climb into the muddy waters and wade through the unknown, seeing if we could navigate a path back to our house through the murky layers of jagged rock and buried trash. The water went up to our shoulders and occasionally we’d slip and fall under, desperate to find the surface again without swallowing any of the ditch’s sewagesmelling substance. One day, however, after months of traveling up and down the irrigation canal, my brother stepped on a broken bottle hidden within the ominous oozing sediment. He needed several stitches and an agonizing tetanus shot. That was the end of our countless endeavors into that sphere of the unknown. But now the world was filled with many more grays and browns. The weeds were dead and the irrigation canal was dried up, leaving a crust of rotten garbage in its wake. I climbed aboard the bus and sat near the back, not knowing what to do as the vehicle’s doors closed with a hiss and began to carry me into a different aspect of the unknown. 71

I had just graduated from college and landed a safe job. She still had a year left, but we had already begun to talk about building a family and buying a house. We always smiled and we were very happy. Together for six long and wonderful years and getting married in the summer…the sweet lemonade stand summer. There was another woman on the bus, an older woman with a big plaid purse and a fuzzy wool overcoat. She wore a wedding band – a shimmering beautiful wedding band and carried a cane. The bus droned on and by the way the bus driver’s eyes continued to flicker at me in his rearview mirror, I knew I was in his thoughts. We passed through many intersections and lights. We passed by parks and stores and neighborhoods and memories – lots of memories. So many childhood memories filled with better times. Filled with smiles and joy. Filled with innocence and unknown passion. “Excuse me.” The older woman beckoned to the bus driver. “My stop is the next.” The bus driver nodded and within moments, he pulled the mindless chariot up to the next bench, the vehicle’s momentum slowing to a stop. The woman stood up, trusting her cane with all of her strength. She exited the bus and made her way towards a large church. “You sure you don’t need to get off here as well?” the bus driver asked. The giant cross on the building’s great façade seemed to be beckoning me in. But I wasn’t a church person, I never had been. Although, when I first met her, she took me to church quite a few times. The practice didn’t stick – and perhaps it never would – but I do remember feeling safe there. Feeling comforted and held by a hand that I couldn’t see. A single tear rolled over my face as the first memory of us praying together came to my mind. She only had a year left 72

and we were going to get married in the summer – if only she’d have lived to see the summer. If only she hadn’t gotten into that terrible accident. Why does God let things like this happen? Why does God let good people die?

22 “Why does God let good people die?” I ask. “Why do you think?” Dr. Reynolds asks rhetorically, his voice perfectly expressionless and monotone. “I don’t know!” My irritation shows. He stares at me, this sobering man. Staring from behind a figging of gray, a matching goatee ending in a point, spectacles, and piercing blue eyes that can part the Red Sea. What a stare! “Can I ask you something?” Dr. Reynolds coughs. I sense him leaning in closer to the couch. His cigarette breath seems to touch my nostrils as he starts to speak. “You consider yourself a Christian,” he said. “A Catholic at that...tell me what your priest would say.” “My priest?” I’m confused. “He’d say close your eyes and put this in your mouth while we pray little boy.” I answer sarcastically. “What have I told you about sarcasm?” Dr. Reynolds asks me. “You only tear your own flesh when you speak bitterly.” This guy certainly has a way with words. “Okay, fine.” I tell him. “My priest…my priest would say something to the effect that God is omniscient, all-knowing, and everything happens for a reason by His perfect will.” “Continue…” Reynolds breathes. “He’d then say in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and send me flying with the motions of an air traffic control man.” 74

“Let me ask you this,” Reynolds interjects. “It may sound familiar, but where is your faith?” “Jesus…” I submitted. “I have faith in Jesus.” “Do you know him or do you have faith in knowing him?” Reynolds leans back and reaches for his cigarette tin. “I know him…or at least I think I do.” I say hesitantly. “Well…” the doctor smiles in a coy manner. “Would you need faith if Jesus was bound, gagged, and duct-taped to a chair in your closet? Couldn’t you just open up your closet at any time and ask him for advice? Ask him for a way out of the bind?” I imagined duct-taping Dr. Reynolds in a closet. “If you’re thinking of duct-taping me in a closet, remember that you always already have.” he says, catching me off guard. “That’s all the time we have for this week,” his voice exhales a plume of smoke. “Just remember we see through a dark glass until we’re face to face.” We exchange parting pleasantries and I make my way out of the building and onto the street where my confessions run sideways through my mind: Forgive me father for I have sinned, forgive me father, forgive me father, forgive me father for I have sinned. Why the hell am I calling this guy my father? Am I being blasphemous to even ask for the things I said to Dr. Reynolds? Am I like the old heretics who were burned at the stake for speaking against the Church? I’m not as smart as many of them were. God does let good people die, even his own Son. He let Jesus die! That night at church, I sought refuge with my priest. We sat in confession and even though I felt all alone, I knew he was there because I could hear his voice – darkly. I didn’t particularly like the guy. Every time he stood before the church I looked across at the altar boys. I couldn’t help it. The media ruined it for 75

me. Christ, leaders in the Catholic church ruined it for me! Did I just take the Lord’s name in vain or did I mean it in all its Holiness? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. All I have – or what I’ve been told I have – is what I believe in. And I believe in grace, I believe in Him, in Jesus, and I believe He loves me not as I should be. He loves me as I am. I’ll never be as I should be. How can love be so violent? Another thought sliced through my mental thicket. I can even see the word “love” in violence. I can even see “nice love.” Nice little love. Nice little violent love that makes me suffer so much. To suffer is to love. We suffer for the ones we love and for the ones who love us. Jesus supposedly suffered even for those who didn’t love him. Maybe to love is just to suffer all the time. Suffering blissfully. Oh, it hurts so good! Is loving the world like some kind of cosmic orgasm where I am bound in leather, pinched by the nipples, and spanked with a pear-shaped paddle?

23 ‘Is loving the world like some kind of cosmic orgasm where I am bound in leather, pinched by the nipples, and spanked with a pear-shaped paddle? I mean, seriously…what do I have to do to find happiness in this world? Who really is “happy” and what makes them that way?’ I stop typing for a moment and look up from my computer screen to the wall in front of my desk. There’s a corkboard rattled with thumbtacks – each one of them pinning up its own purpose, its own reason for being. The first objects I notice are two pictures of my daughter, one of them taken with my camera, and one of them taken for school. They are clumped together and they show her infectious smile. Her beautifully young, innocent, and unknowing smile. She should never know what an accident she was. What she did to my world and what dreams she surely crushed. The cursor blinked, my journal was waiting. ‘Who doesn’t feel trapped these days? Truly. I mean, what is freedom? I don’t know freedom, perhaps I never have. Perhaps I’ve only ever known the role that I was supposed to play in life, and I’ve dumped my entire being into fulfilling that role without a second thought, or better put…without acting on a second thought.’ Hanging next to my daughter’s pictures was my lanyard, carrying the badge that I needed to get into my eightto-five every day. Next to that was a pink auto repair receipt. A new alternator and fuel pump that cost me $439.67. ‘Am I broken? I mean, what drives me? What drives anybody to do what they do? Surely the paychecks and fake smiles in our fake communities aren’t worth the frustration, the suffering…in the end, what does all of that mean?’ 77

Next to the auto repair receipt was a calendar and a Kansas City Chiefs team schedule for the upcoming football season. The calendar was custom-made by a family member – one of those family members that does that sort of thing every year to try and keep everyone connected. Every month featuring pictures from the past displaying the aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, cousins, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers doing something, anything – like a birthday celebration – that made them smile. ‘We look forward to things in life and let time pass us by. We don’t think about what we’re doing in the moment, we just do it…whether it makes us happy or not. And then we regret. We look back and wonder what could have been. What if Nikki wasn’t born? What if I studied what I wanted to in college? What if I never met Brad? What if I wasn’t forty-six now? What if…it wasn’t too late?’ Pinned up next to the calendar was a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon and a cross necklace that my sister used to wear. She fought to the very last day, and no matter how much pain she was in, no matter how tight life bound her in leather, and no matter if she no longer had nipples to pinch, she still smiled. She still experienced the world’s cosmic orgasm that brought happiness to her life. ‘Sometimes…’ I wrote, thinking about what my sister’s silver cross necklace meant, ‘I’m just not sure I know if I am happy or not.’

24 ‘Sometimes...’ I wrote, thinking about what my sister’s silver cross necklace meant, ‘I’m just not sure I know if I am happy or not.’ AOXOMOXOA_747 SAYS: WHY THE LONG NOSE? WHY THE CRUCIFIXION IN YO FACE? WHY SO GLUM SUGAR PLUM? A series of instant messages fill a box in the corner of my computer screen. Aoxomoxoa_747 is an online friend I met in a chat room some months back. I remember indulging in one of my many canned witticisms, saying to Aoxomoxoa, “racecar” is a palindrome. He immediately took a liking to me and we’ve been e-friends ever since. I had to admit, I dug the Dead album where Aoxo lifted his name. At least I knew he had some taste in music, though he once tried to convince me that Jerry Garcia was more of a visionary than John Lennon. I wasn’t having any of that. I am the Walrus? I remember asking, is there any question? RUBBER_SOUL_80 SAYS: HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN! BANG, BANG, SHOOT SHOOT

AOXOMOXOA_747 SAYS: GORGEOUS HARMONIES THOSE BACKUP VOCALS OF HARRISON GIVE THE SUICIDAL SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR! RUBBER_SOUL_80 SAYS: GOTTA RUN AOXOMOXOA_747 SAYS: PEACE Outside, near the four-way stop, there is a path that goes through the woods. I remember the role-playing games we played as children, where an older kid served as the Game Master and would dictate our adventure. I got so scared one night while playing a gnome after the sun began to set. Everything in the game seemed so real. I follow the beaten path, which leads to an opening – which leads to a beach, which overlooks an inlet. I always flashback to high school when reaching the beach. Bonfires. Blaze. Beer cans. A couple of wood crates and gasoline jugs create a wicked hell fire. Nowadays, I just return to these woods and sit on the beach alone. I’ll sometimes draw a cross in the sand and sit until I see the symbol get washed away with the tide. Sometimes I think about happiness and I can’t help but think about happenstance. I see the suburban mansions surrounding the beach and surrounding the woods, and wonder if the owners really “worked hard,” – as they say – for their possessions.

Perhaps they just had a lucky roll on a pair of percentile dice or the cards just fell how they fell. Perhaps that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. I never understood the cookie adage. Who gets to eat the cookie if it's all crumbles? The rats? Perhaps. Perhaps they’re not even happy. Perhaps there’s a man sitting in a Mercedes on the other side of a three-car garage ready to turn the key and suffocate under a blanket of carbon monoxide. I imagine his wife pulling into their driveway and opening the garage door at the push of a button. He then plays it off like he just got home and they have a chuckle for their impeccable timing. Both Mr. Carbon Monoxide and his wife know that she just returned from an extramarital love affair at the nearby Holiday Inn with a sleazy District Attorney. You’ve seen the lawyer I’m talking about. He works in almost every town. Liken him to Agent Smith. Anyway, the Monoxides will always plead the fifth about their Suicide Salsas and Lecherous La Bambas until death, divorce, or whichever comes first. Everywhere there are lots of piggies living piggy lives. “Thanks George…” I mutter to myself. I still haven’t been able to imagine a world without possessions, by John, can you? The tide is out, but I don’t bother drawing a cross in the sand today. Aoxo was right about my face. I can feel the scowl at the top of my nose and at the center of my brow. “What am I so pissed about?” I say aloud as I sit on my favorite log. I have this funny fear that I will come to the beach and my log will be gone. “She’s been dead for years!” I continue to talk to myself. The sound of a train or a railroad crossing sign can still bring back our last day together with visceral lucidity. I just wanted to show her how cool it was to flatten a penny. I never, in a hundred years, would imagine her going back to the tracks with that new boyfriend of hers. 81

I've held onto the two coins we let the train run over that day. I never told anyone that I was the one who first brought her to the tracks. They made a big thing at school about playing near the train tracks after the deaths. I keep the flattened pennies in a piggy bank, beneath a dartboard in my room, to remind me of our puppy love; after all, Happiness is a Warm Puppy.

25 Happiness is a Warm Puppy. That’s what my Grandmother used to say just before ole Gingersnap brought new life to the world with her annual litter of pleasure-seeking pups. She’s long gone since then – Gingersnap…and Grandma I suppose – but I still remember sitting around my Grandmother’s kitchen table saying grace before a great big turkey dinner. While everybody else was saying thanks for the food and the early summer’s bountiful returns from the fields, I was praying for a puppy. A nice peaceful, smiling, slobbering, stumbling, whining, warm puppy. Like always, Gingersnap delivered and there she was. My prayer – my gift from God – squirming in my hands with her eyes still closed. The rest of the litter was sold for seed, but not my baby. Not my angel. I was eighteen years old at the time – still rough around the edges and cut deep by my misfortunes in love, but Henry – yes Henry my baby doll puppy – would help me heal and see the world in a different light. Her beautiful winter-white coat grew in and her eyes shifted from a cloudy gray to a brilliant heavenly blue. She was the most playful pup I’d ever seen in her first few years. Henry would run and run – like a ghost in the middle of the night or a streak of white light on an otherwise perpetually rainy life, er, day I suppose. Whenever things got tough, whenever I would pray, I would remember Henry and she would bring a smile to my face and a warm feeling to my heart. We played and we cuddled. We loved and we wept. I remember moving into my own place when I turned twenty-two. It wasn’t far from where I grew up – I could still see the cornfields on the homestead – but it felt far away. I kept thinking about the love that I’d lost those years before. I kept losing myself to the realm of despair as I sat in my worn lawn chair on my rickety porch. My mind would wander to really bad places, but my angel – my baby doll puppy would bark 83

until she brought me back. Until she made me listen to the wonderful world around me. The crickets, the stream, the breeze cutting through the corn stalks. Henry was so full of life and she always reminded me what there was to still live for. I’m now thirty-three and still living on my own. The harvest will be good this year, but I am under a heavier storm than I’ve ever been before. All of the memories with Henry – all of the pick-up truck rides, hunting adventures, and quiet nights with her by my side – were now dampened. She was in pain and it was my first night without her sleeping by my side in fifteen happy warm puppy years. I left her with the vet overnight. They told me that she had bone cancer and she didn’t have long to live. I stared at my ceiling, the silence settling in. I prayed to God and told Him that I didn’t know what to do. I prayed for Henry to come back to me, to wag her tail again and show me that the world still had love in it. I asked God for a miracle and prayed for Him to not leave me alone. They say an animal doesn’t have a spirit – at least not like a person does, but I really wonder if that’s true. The next day, I went to the animal hospital and looked at my poor baby doll puppy suffering. She could no longer stand and her brilliant heavenly blue eyes had gone back to a cloudy gray. I know it sounds strange, but although her body was weak and deathly ill, I could feel her spirit in the room stronger than ever. She was happy to see me, her heart bounding with joy, but she was ready for me to let her go. She needed me to let her go – her spirit pleaded for me to be the one that helped her to the next life, to hold her hand, er, paw, in her journey back to God. Where we lived, they had to bring a specialist in from the city to euthanize humanely because most people around these parts just preferred to do it themselves with a couple of shotgun shells. But I couldn’t do that to Henry – I couldn’t do that to my angel. The woman who walked into the room asked if I wanted to leave and I said no. I laid my head next to Henry’s and told her that I loved her while the woman gave the shot. Within a few minutes, I listened to her heart stop beating and tears welled in 84

my eyes. I started to cry and began to ask God why we were meant to feel this way sometimes. What are we to gain? Just then, the woman who took my baby doll puppy’s life came to console me. She put her arm around me and let me cry into her shoulder. There was silence, but when I finally got the courage to open my eyes, I was filled with a strange – fleeting feeling of hope. The woman’s eyes were a brilliant heavenly blue and her nametag said ‘Henry’.

26 The woman’s eyes were a brilliant heavenly blue and her nametag said ‘Henry.’ Whether she descended from a king, a writer, or a revolutionary didn’t matter a lick. I just wanted some steak and eggs or maybe some biscuits and gravy. “More coffee?” The waitress looked down at me and asked. I stared at her nametag that said ‘Henry’. It was pinned to her perfectly starched, mint-green shirt. “Henry?” The name formed a question on my tongue as I spoke. “My dad wanted a boy,” she quickly remarked deadpan. “Do you want more coffee or are you ready to order?” “I’ll have more coffee, thank you.” I said. “And I would like some oatmeal.” “Raisins and brown sugar?” She asked. “Yes, please.” I responded. I stared at the waitress’ teeth as she spoke and then at the soles of her shoes as she walked away. They were black, her soles, and really thick. They used to always talk so much about how black soles couldn’t be worn in P.E. because they might scuff up the floor. I always noticed the ones who didn’t listen and wore black-sole shoes anyway. Some lady, sitting with her daughter at an adjacent booth, kept rubbernecking me. As if I was a terror and menace to this fine 24-hour establishment. As if I was going to stand up any minute, pull a revolver out of my coat, rob the place, and murder her in front of her daughter's little eyes. That was a great scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction when Tim Roth and 86

Amanda Plummer call each other “Pumpkin” and “Honey Bunny.” What was this lady doing out with her daughter this late anyway? What's up with the way people judge other people? The window of the diner felt cold against my cheek. My brown eyes glowed in the dark. I just stared at them in the cold window. Two cops walked into the diner, they gave me a good stare – a look over, an up-and-down – and continued to their own seat. Rubberneck breathed a sigh of relief while I just sat there smiling at her little one. “One oatmeal,” the waitress surprised me. “Can I get you anything else?” “No, that’s it. Thank you.” I mumbled. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.” she said as she walked away in her thick rubber sole shoes. I wondered what it was like to be murdered… Now, where the hell do thoughts like that come from? I stared at my oatmeal, poured in some brown sugar and raisins, and splashed some cream over top. I thought of myself as one of those cops, leaving this diner and arriving at a bloody crime scene. I thought of myself as the killer, smoking a Marlboro cigarette, driving away in my sparkly, electric-blue convertible Mustang. I thought of myself as the mother of an adolescent boy – a boy caught up on the wrong side of the tracks. I looked as the mother looked into the eyes of the killer from the audience of the courtroom. The killer admitted his guilt and asked God, the court, and the mother for forgiveness. 87

In her thoughts, the mother damned the killer to hell. Years later, in prison, the killer might find God and be set free. The mother of the victim, a well-respected Christian pillar in her community, might live out her years resentful and bitter. She may never come to peace with her son’s murder. I’ve heard it said that a lot of people are going to be surprised at who God lets into Heaven. I see the mother standing in line, wearing her best Sunday dress, holding a handbag or something. I see her son’s killer walking right past her to the front of the line, shaking Saint Peter’s hand or even giving him a bump, and disappearing into white light.

27 I see her son’s killer walking right past her to the front of the line, shaking Saint Peter’s hand or even giving him a bump, and disappearing into white light. But how could that be? How could God let such a man who has done such terrible things into His sinless sanctuary? The vision faded away and the man received his dire life sentence without a chance of parole. He had brutally murdered her son – the evidence was all over – but he claimed to have not remembered a thing. He had rigged his jeep to pump methamphetamine through its heating system while he drove and by destiny or by chance, he decided upon her poor son. But was that part of His plan? Not the man who had murdered her son, but was it a part of God’s intricate design for all of mankind? Was it her poor son’s destiny to be murdered by that man? Had her son fulfilled His purpose and was no longer needed? This was only one hearing of three for the day and it was almost certain that I would be out of the courthouse by noon. Kind of a slow Thursday, but I guess I could ride my bicycle to the grocery store today instead of tomorrow – I was low on Captain Crunch after all and the doctors told me that I needed to eat more carrots because my eyes were going dim. Her son’s killer stood in his handcuffs and his hellblazing orange jumpsuit, yet he was destined for heaven – for a better place despite the horrific thing he had done and the well of pain and suffering he had left in another family’s lives. Two police officers began to escort her son’s killer out of the courtroom and all I could think of was the idea that they should be riding elephants – great big elephants with goldcovered battle tusks and…wait, do you think they ride elephants in heaven? Great big white – or light blue! – elephants that made thunder when they walked about? I bet that’s where thunder comes from. 89

Her son’s killer walked past where I was sitting, mumbling something over and over as he passed: ‘…for You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You…’ God doesn’t listen to people like him…right? Why would He? Wait…but her son’s killer was shaking Saint Peter’s hand – I saw it. He shook his hand and rode his great big light blue elephant – well, maybe he wasn’t riding the elephant, wasn’t that the police officers? No matter, I saw him shaking Saint Peter’s hand and getting into heaven. Can you believe that God lets people like that into His Kingdom? It made me wonder if God was going to let me into His Kingdom. I mean, I’d never done anything bad in my life…I don’t think anyway – at least not like murder! Oh boy, I really needed my Captain Crunch…or was it carrots? What did the doctor say? No matter, they both have a lot of Vitamin A in them, right? The walls in the courtroom seemed like they were closing, or maybe my eyes were just getting bigger. Either way it scared me and convinced me to leave. I went to the bike rack and undid my lock. I needed to make sure that I saved enough money from the grocery store to meet my dealer.

28 I needed to make sure that I saved enough money from the grocery store to meet my dealer. I was hungry and needed something to eat after work. The buzz of the fluorescent light bulbs around me hummed an onomatopoeic hum. I remember learning about onomatopoeia in freshman English. If only I could describe the sound of the teacher’s voice and how pretentious he sounded when saying the word. I couldn’t wait to get done with my shift so I could get down to Comic Book Kingdom and meet comic dealer Lenny. He had the “The Death of Superman” in mint condition, brand new, and sealed in the original bag. The only flaw, which was more of a novelty than a flaw, was that it had a tiny, squishy, superman sticker in the bottom left, front corner. I’ll never forget how old man Lenny leaned in real close the first day I saw “The Death of Superman” at the comic store. He told me a story about how he gave the comic to his son. When he saw me looking at it through the glass counter he said: “Steve, I bought that comic for my son before he grew too big for Superman. Now he’s more interested in Dow Jones than he is in Superman.” “This was his?” I asked. “That was his. I gave it to him when he turned 12. I remember that year, 1993, like it was yesterday. In some ways it was the beginning of the end of our relationship. I gave him two copies: a copy to read and a copy to keep as a collector’s item. You’re looking at the collector’s item.” “Well how do you have it now in perfect condition, Lenny, if you gave it to him?” “Steve,” the comic book dealer said as he looked at me over his glasses and adjusted his suspenders, “you may learn something one day if you ever have children.” 91

“What’s that?” I asked as I feigned glances back through the comic book case. “Heartbreak. You may learn something about heartbreak.” “Heartbreak? Your son broke your heart?” “He broke my heart Steve.” he said taking a stack of comics and moving them from one seemingly unorganized pile to another. “How?” “He sold the comic Steve. He sold all his comics to his best friend Geoffrey just to hurt me and to show me that he didn’t care about stupid comics anymore. He was interested in parties, girls, making money…you know, important things.” Lenny made quotations with his fingers. “He’s made money all right, ‘nough to buy this whole store and every comic in it…” Lenny said. “So how did you get the comic back if he sold it to his friend?” I asked. Geoffrey knew how much the comics meant to me and brought them by one day. He said that he didn’t feel right keeping all the comics – especially “The Death of Superman.” “Geoffrey and I formed a bond that day, Steve, a bond between a father and a son,” Lenny said. “Even though Geoffrey was not my son, I still love him like my own. I insisted that he keep both copies of the Superman comic, but he said he wanted me to have the collector's item. He agreed to take the opened copy. My son stopped hanging out with Geoff after that,” Lenny continued. “I think he resented how Geoffrey gave me the comics back and would spend so much time hanging out at the shop. Once and awhile he would grace us with his presence at the ol' Kingdom, usually to ask my permission to go away for a weekend getaway.” 92

I parked right outside of Comic Kingdom. I could see Lenny through the window, sitting there with his suspenders, looking down through his glasses at some old issue of Archie. He said no matter how many times he read Archie it made him laugh. So he just keeps reading it. I noticed the amount of rust around the wheel wells of my forest green van, shook my head, and turned. As I walked towards the Kingdom, I pulled my roll of cash out of my pocket and realized how dead I felt inside lately…I had a little more than $40. My job is a dead end and so is this town. I thought. Buying this comic will complete the series in my collection at least. I felt a little spark in my life as I went to buy the comic – a blissful feeling – similar to when I used to feel like God answered my prayers. I walked through the front door of the shop looking down at my navy blue Converses. Lenny stood up and smiled. “Steve, I don’t even know why I let you have these gems.” he said.

29 “Steve, I don’t even know why I let you have these gems,” he said – the man’s gold-framed aviator sunglasses glinting in the tropical sunshine. “I mean, let’s shoot straight here for a sec, pal. You getcha boy in Queens to start deliverin’ if you want anymore stone.” “I know, I know.” Steve threw his hands up, his napkin falling to the ground without a stain. “Things are tight right now, you know that. Gordon’s been tr-.” “Fuck Gordon.” The man leaned forward, his large cross necklace being concealed under the edge of the table cloth. “This is the third straight time he’s done me like this. You wanna see what’s tight? A six-by two six feet under is tight, ya hear?” Steve seemed uneasy, adjusting himself in his seat. “I know Humberto, I know…for God’s sake, the man is-.” “For God’s sake?” Humberto interrupted. “What the fuck do you know about God, Steve?” The café was mostly empty, one group of tourists – a man, his wife, and his two children – quickly grabbed their things and left. “I mean, what – the – fuck – do you know – about God?” Steve’s eyes looked away nervous for a moment. “Well, I…I-uh…come on now, compadre, let’s not-.” “Let’s not what, payaso?” both men’s half-eaten sandwiches had flies crawling on them. “Fuck around? I have God right here!” Humberto grabbed his large cross necklace from under the edge of the table and held it up, the sunshine now glinting off of its corners. “You tell your boy in Queens that I ain’t fucking around no more. This ain’t Deal or No Deal. Quiero mi dinero, amigo, or I’ll bring God to his fucking doorstep.” “Humberto…” Steve hesitated. “Gordon never got your 94

gems.” “What the fuck do you mean he never got my gems?” “I cut them to somebody else.” Steve had a hold of his .22 cal in his coat pocket. “You see, amigo, Gordon wasn’t good for it anymore. He wanted a way out – some bullshit about doing what was best for his family. Changed his name, went to church, moved upstate. But you know what Humberto? He found his sixby two six feet under.” “Well good for Gordon.” Humberto seemed disarmed. “So where’s my fuckin’ money then if you’ve been cuttin’ with someone else?” “Do you have the gems with you or not?” “Fuck you, Steve. I want my God damn money.” “I want your God damn gems Humberto.” Steve pulled the .22 cal from his coat pocket and pointed it at his business partner ready to fire. “Or else you’d better pray to God that He’ll protect you.” Humberto stared down the barrel that would deliver his fate. “I’ve looked into God’s eyes you cucaracha, and I’m not afraid. Tire el gatillo si usted se atreve.” The waitress came onto the patio and stopped when she saw the two men. “Pull the God damn trigger!”

30 “Pull the God damn trigger!” I think to myself, staring at my reflection in the mirror with my shirt off and my hand moving an electric toothbrush over my gums. I can hear the sound of a harmonica through the wall. I can also hear the woman who lived upstairs dragging a chair across the hardwood floor. I think she is getting breakfast ready for her husband. Thump, thump, thump. I can hear her tramping across the floor. They are both overweight. I've never seen them before, but if a picture says a thousand words these footsteps paint the picture of 10,000 elephants. It's as if I can smell the two fried eggs, bacon, and toast she sets down next to his chipped coffee mug and newspaper every morning before he leaves to drive garbage trucks. I dread my own job. The carrel desk and God-forsaken phone might as well be a lock and barrel. Nothing like firing off another eight hours of lies. Every time I hear someone say, “OK,” or, “all right,” or “how much,” or “let’s do it,” my heart both sinks and jumps. I feel with every sale a little piece of me gets lost. “It’ll make your sewer as clean as a whistle.” I’ll say into the phone and for some reason this cliché always seals the deal. Suckers for clichés are born every minute in life, but act all offended when they see them appear. If only they knew that it was just sawdust – perfectly ground sawdust. Sawdust they can produce free of charge, but why would I tell them that? I tell them about our one of a kind state-of-the-art sewer cleaner. I promise them they’ll never have backup again. An empty promise – as empty as life can be. It takes balls to blow your brains out and wouldn’t it suck to fuck it up? I always imagined the poor saps who have failed in 96

virtually every aspect of their life go to kill themselves, and they fail at that too. The nurses come in and out of their hospital room breathing disdainful airs of disgust. If the suicide flunky has family, then the family members feel like they failed in some way too. Hopefully, it doesn't inspire any bright ideas. It’s kind of a beautiful cycle – really. How self-centeredness just feeds on itself. They'll say it was God's will for them to be alive if they are ever reborn – that nothing they can do in life can thwart their savior's perfect will. We've been cited as the Sewer Savior. Sawdust I say. “Look, don’t buy it if you don’t want to. You can go try sawdust or something.” I also like to say that one. Reverse psychology mixed with a truth embedded bluff tends to render a strong liqueur for the ones that think they are savvy, but really aren’t. The defensive ones are my favorite. I just get defensive back and get all appalled at their rudeness. Send 'em packing on guilt trips. That's a fine sale right there, the ones I guilted into it. I was made for a job of lying. But it’s hell – my job, my life, my apartment…my lie. Maybe I’d be better off making an honest living in an orange vest going to the place where all the shit goes once it makes its way through the sewers. Thank you Sewer Savior. You make dreams come true. I might appreciate the smell of roses differently or the smell of a woman’s perfume if my nose were to be filled with other people’s waste all day. You got to hand it to the wife of that stinky fat bastard upstairs…putting up with his raunchy ass, dirty laundry. Now that aroma has the stench of love.

31 ‘Now that aroma has the stench of love.’ I stared at the handcrafted wood sign with Chef Diomedes’ words painted on hanging above the hostess stand and cash register. It was Sunday – our busiest day of the week once the people of Paradise finished their morning session at church. Most of them were old and they withered with each and every passing day, but they were kind. Their hearts were open but their wallets were unfortunately light. Little to the knowledge of our faithful Sunday rush, this would be the last day that the restaurant would be open. I hadn’t been able to make my loan payments for the past six months and the bank was now shutting us down. I had already turned in applications to everywhere in town for my next job, and my friends told me that I was lucky to have an interview at Walgreens next week considering how the economy looked. To the left of Chef Diomedes’ stench of love, there was a picture of myself and my culinary school colleague, Brad. We were so young and fresh out of the weeds, not really sure of what to expect from the world. Perhaps we were naïve, perhaps we were ignorant, but at least we had a vision – we had a dream to bring our God-given talent to the most beautiful place in the country. Paradise, California. Sixty or so miles north of Sacramento, Brad and I decided to take a road-trip across the United States right after we had earned our certificates. Our goal was to find the perfect place to start a restaurant together. Brad’s family was loaded and supported whatever he did, so I went along with it and there was never a doubt in my mind that it would work. We came across Paradise and never looked back. Up in the mountains and nestled in a spot where it never snowed, the smell of the pine trees and the aroma of love enchanted us. Brad was no longer with us. Twelve years of lovely 99

food and good people was all that God gave him in Paradise, California. We weren’t lovers like you might be thinking, just best friends that never found their soul-mates. Perhaps our soulmates were in the food that we made and the food that we served. We both cooked with such passion and care – we both cooked with God’s love and we believed people could taste it. To the right of Chef Diomedes’ stench of love, there was a cross with Jesus’ body hanging on its arms. I prayed every night and wished that there was some sort of way – some sort of miracle – that could keep the restaurant open and make the bank go away, but so far there was silence and heartless letters in the mail. We never made a whole lot of money, but Brad’s parents always covered the difference and fueled our dream. But ever since Brad’s cancer took him away, the well had gone dry because we weren’t soul-mates – we were just best friends who loved our food. We were best friends that knew how to give the people a taste of God. “Another beautiful morning.” Nancy said as she flipped over the ‘closed’ sign to tell the world we were ‘open’. She was our hostess, bless her heart. She was moving in with her boyfriend down in Chico to finish up college in two weeks and I truly wished her the best. “Yeah…” I said as I stared at the cross. “Another beautiful day in Paradise...” Church would be done in less than an hour and the day would pass just as it always did. I needed to forget the things that really didn’t matter. The bank, my interview at Walgreens tomorrow, and the fact that the restaurant was closing down. I needed to get these things out of my mind. I needed to focus on using the gift that God gave me to serve His old, withering, but kind people of Paradise, California.

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32 I needed to focus on using the gift that God gave me to serve His old, withering, but kind people in Paradise. I just didn’t understand why Kendra wanted us to keep building onto the nursing home. This was our third project this year and it wasn’t even April. At the rate we were going we would have gone to Home Depot 70 x 7 times. “Seventy times seven.” I said. “Seventy times seven? That’s 490 Harry!” Vic said. “Excellent work Einstein! I can see those years learning multiplication tables in grade school paid off. I think you should quit working for Kendra and start building spaceships for NASA.” I joked. “Shall I worship Zarathustra/just the way we use ta? Be a Zarathustra Booster…Give me that old time religion. It’s good enough for me…” Vic sang to himself. His gaze was away from me and out into the open space along the foothills. He had this way about him that whenever I gave slight he could deflect it by acting like nothing even happened. He had this weird Jedi mind trick way of ignoring people. We pulled into the Home Depot parking lot and walked towards the God awful orange sign. “Get a lumber truck brainiac.” I said to try and keep a rapport alive. Home Depot was the worst when entered in silence. “You got the list?” He asked as he pushed and strolled on the back of the flat cart. 102

“Yeah I got it. We’re pretty much just getting a shit-ton of lumber today.” I told him. Home Depot always has a delightful cross section of middle class suburbanized Americans. I mean you gotta love the diehard gardeners getting mulch and fertilizer way before they can start their gardens. I think people just like to feel prepared – like knowing they’re going to die and go to Heaven. I started thinking about evangelicals. There are so many of them. There are the Protestant’s that come up and ask if you know whether or not you’re going to Heaven when you die. There are the Mormons with sweaty armpits in their Sunday best who talk more about Joseph Smith than Jesus and there are little Krishna women who look like Janis Joplin. It just makes my day when they greet me with The Great Mantra. “Dolly Daydream!” Vic yelled. “Get your ostrich head out of your ass and get over here! We both know how fast this place can spiral into an all day nightmare.” The lumber got loaded just like it always did. I liked working with Vic because he was no bullshit. He probably thought I was bullshit at times, but I knew he liked me. We would have conversations on just about everything from girls to God. Vic had this nonchalant way of talking about both like he was asking you to pass the ketchup. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or making things up. I didn’t care either way. He could spin yarn like it was nobody’s business. I loved the way he talked to those cute little clerks in their orange aprons. “Eight hundred and eighty eight dollars and forty cents…” the clerk said. She wasn’t cute – had to be forty plus. I handed her my Master Card and she looked at the front, quickly flipping it over to the back. “High five?” She asked in an annoyed tone as she read the signature line. 103

“Yeah…” I said as I put my hand up. “ID.” Her tone got terse. I handed her my driver’s license and she looked at the photo that I always thought was a spitting image of my father.

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33 I handed her my driver’s license and she looked at the photo that I always thought was a spitting image of my father. Or at least the spitting image of my father when he was a young man like me. “Ya coulda smiled ya know?” the girl behind the cash register said as she snapped her gum between words. “Here ya go hon.” She handed my driver’s license back. I never really knew my father, just vague memories in our apartment growing up. I would walk home from school with my brother, we would watch The Pink Panther and Jetsons, my Dad would get home and we would all go to McDonalds for dinner. If my Dad was in a really good mood, we would go get fruit pies from the gas station next to our place. The girl also handed me my debit card and my receipt before I left with the new pair of sunglasses that I bought. I was back in my old stomping grounds, visiting my brother and deciding to drive by the old apartment building due to a case of nostalgia. After leaving the gas station where so many fruit pies were once sold, I climbed into my car and drove across the street. A Hispanic man wearing a wife-beater sat on the steps in front of the building with a cigarette tucked above one of his ears – he stared at me for a while as I sat in my car. The place seemed a lot more run down after all of these years, but perhaps it wasn’t all that great to begin with. I still remember the night that all of it happened. My brother and I had made it well past The Pink Panther and Jetsons and our Dad wasn’t home yet. Our stomachs were grumbling in the absence of our Happy Meal routine so we had decided to go across the hall and knock on the neighbor’s door. Rusty the cockroach man lived there and he was rather odd, but a friendly kind of odd so he took us in and fed us peanut butter sandwiches. 105

My brother dozed to sleep while I worried about Dad. A low-riding car blasting rap pulled up next to mine. An African-American man wearing a white doo-rag bobbed his head to his music. He had a pair of fuzzy dice and a flashy silver cross hanging from his rearview mirror. The Hispanic man stood up and approached with a smile. At first I was a bit intimidated, but both men seemed to mind their own business. I remember Rusty having a large wooden cross hanging above a bookcase that contained his favorite stories. The wall acted as one bookend and his deceased wife’s ashes in a vase were the other. I may have only been eight or nine…maybe ten if I was lucky, but I remember wondering if God was watching after my Dad that night. As the sun rose the next morning, there were knocks on our apartment door across the hall. I opened Rusty’s door and saw two police officers standing with their backs toward me. I found out that morning that my father had been electrocuted the night before at his job and would never be coming home. I threw my hat so hard against Rusty’s bookcase, it knocked the bookend down – the important one – and shattered it into a million pieces. From that day forward, I’ve never let myself believe in God. My father was a good man, and if God existed, He wouldn’t take good men – especially good fathers – away from two boys who couldn’t take care of themselves. The Hispanic man and his African-American friend pulled out their cigarettes as they bounced to their music. As they flicked their lighter to life, one of the power lines hanging over our heads exploded, the sound like a gunshot. The frayed cable fell to the ground just in front of my car, traces of electricity on its end, and a strange grey-blue smoke rising slowly through the air. “Shit man! Did you see that?” The African-American friend yelled at me with a laugh. “That’s some crazy-ass shit nigga!”

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34 “That’s some crazy-ass shit nigg--” “Get back to work you two!” The boss' voice interrupted. Hunky this and hunky that, along with other contemptuous rebuttals, spun like a broken gramophone down at the ol’ meat packing plant. Chicago was cold this time of year. The kind of cold that makes you so numb you could take a large hammer to your hand and not even feel it – as a matter of fact, it might shatter. Just a hundred pieces of hand to pick up, that’s all. It also must of hurt to have a nine inch nail hammered down through your palm, wrist, or however the Romans liked to do it. I remember grazing the tip of my left pinky one day on the chopping line and it hurt like hell. A handful of ¾ foot spikes driven through my flesh, piercing skin, splitting lumber doesn’t sound like my idea of a holy picnic. “For Christ’s sake Randy, get to work!” The boss’ voice washed over my thoughts and could be heard again screaming on the other side of the plant. We had to get all this blast cattle ready for shipment to the freezing works by week’s end. Sometimes I thought about sneaking down to the tracks and hopping on a train back East. Once East, I could slither onto a ship and be halfway to New Zealand soaking in the sunshine. With my luck though I’d hop one of the "Two Voyagers" that, …bore away Upon a shining sea, – Though never yet, in any 108

port, Their coming mentioned be. She sure had a way with words. She was just a stranger passing through, all in white – her words still haunting me. I walked outside just to feel the cold and stare at the smokestacks. There was something fascinating about those rising luminous clouds of darkness. I figured I should get back to work before boss started yelling at me again. I flicked my minismokestack and headed back in. I grabbed my apron and settled back behind the chopping block, chopping cattle. I hadn't spent a full shift chopping all winter. Chop! Chop! Chop chop! All the blood invigorating me. I never understood why the sight of blood made some people faint. Whenever I went to church with my folks the preacher talked a lot about blood. I guess when you’re in a business where you’re washing blood off yourself on a regular basis, blood takes on a whole new meaning. And he said this is my blood, shed for you… Chop! I couldn’t help but think of those words on occasion as I laid my blade into a calf. Chop! I always began to hear a rhythm from the chop of my butcher blade. Chop! There has to be a rhythm in the afterlife. Chop! Sound probably takes on whole new qualities in the spiritual realm. Chop chop! Preachers use all kinds of colorful language to describe the languishing screams of the damned souls in the lake of fire, but those souls aren’t going to sound anything like we think they sound. Their voice boxes and throats are going to be long decomposed in verdant grass lawns somewhere. They may hold onto their breath, but how that breath gets projected from a spirit is beyond me. It’s beyond you too – if you think about it. 109

That’s why when people think they hear ghosts I’m a little skeptical. I’m not saying ghosts don’t make sounds, but I’m guessing “boo” isn’t one of ‘em. Whenever angels did appear to people in the good old book, didn’t they have to spend five minutes trying to tell them not to be afraid? Chop! Their voices probably sound nothing like the pitches we’re used to hearing. Chop! “Always looking like you just got up from a knock out…” big burley Marley mumbled as he walked by. Chop chop! Suddenly, I think about how horrid this place smells.

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35 Suddenly, I think about how horrid this place smells. How could somebody live and work in such a disturbing, disease- ridden, and depressing place? My God, I was only here to identify a body for some low-life, welfare-leaching trailer trash woman in the burbs. The smell was getting to me something terrible so I pulled out a cigarette and flicked my lighter to life. The kid was bangin’ for the wrong crowd I guess. Some sort of dustup in an elementary school playground – just like little kids that never grew up. It was a small thing – or should have been at least – but it ended up making headlines because all the shooting went down on a damn school ground. I mean, Jesus, you’d think these knuckleheads would have a shred of decency somewhere in them, you know? “Sir?” a mousy man’s voice came from behind. “You can’t smoke in here, I’m sorry.” “Oh…” I said as I turned to look at him under the brim of my Dick Tracy-style hat. “I didn’t even know I lit up. My apologies…” I dropped the barely used cigarette to the hard concrete floor and grinded the life out of it with the front of my shoe. I guess I should get to work. Some of the drawers were already open for other reasons – maybe the same reasons, who knows? Drug dealers, hookers, and bangers. It must have been a treat when the poor sap who sifts through this death gets a plain ole’ murder victim. Either way, I figure most of these souls were the scourge of society and it actually helped us as a whole when they found themselves dead. Edward Rey Martinez-Williams III. That’s my boy. I pulled his drawer out and gave a quick look over his corpse. He was only hours old, but his muscular body no longer seemed to hold the same tone that it did before. One witness said there was some head trauma, something about dumbass Eddie getting 111

knocked out before he was shot – going peaceful – that sort of thing, but I didn’t notice any damage to his head. Another witness – maybe witness wasn’t the right word. The banger that shot Mr. Martinez-Williams said he was still conscious before he got shot. You see, the banger that killed Edward turned himself in after the killing – told police that it was God that brought him to confession. Edward had a Hispanic-style cross tattooed over the front of his body, the bottom of the cross starting at the navel, the top of the cross coming to the tip of his chin. I guess – according to the confession given by his killer – Mr. Martinez-Williams put himself on his knees and spread his arms out, telling his enemies that God would protect him – that God worked miracles for even the wicked. Banger points the gun at him, tells him to pray, and ‘blam-o!’…I’m looking at his dumbass body just hours later. Sure as shit, there’s a bullet hole at the intersection of his tattooed Hispanic-style cross and the killer’s confession checks out. Edward’s mama was hoping it wasn’t her boy, that he was somewhere on the run raisin’ Hell instead of daisies, but sad to say…that just ain’t the truth. Sounds like Edward was like most all these other scourge-feedin’ thugs. They all think they’re better than everybody else. That they got God or some shit on their side so they can go have a fuckin’ firefight in a god damn elementary school playground. Dumbasses. I don’t care what it was that brought Edward’s killer to turn himself in, and to be honest, I don’t really give a damn what happened at that playground. My job was to identify a body and get the hell out of this dungeon of death. God damn I needed a cigarette. I pushed Edward’s drawer back in and covered my nostrils with the collar of my trench coat. A part of me felt safer knowing there was one less bad guy roaming the streets at night

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36 A part of me felt safer knowing there was one less bad guy roaming the streets at night. A part of me didn’t. I turned off the evening news and slid on my slippers. Walking from the recliner, I stared out my window into a sea of skyscrapers and high rises. Is it the city that never sleeps or the city that has never awakened? I thought. To be sure it’s a self-conscious city, unconscious to a greater reality… “I am to be compassionate to all sentient beings.” I said aloud. These words, I knew to be just words. They even sounded like a slogan when spoken by my teachers; a sort of rhetoric designed to avoid superfluous conversations. However, I saw the Truth of affirming my own compassion and affirming the human dimension of even the most despicable life forms. An answer came to me one morning when I realized an answer to a question I didn’t ask. When I told my teacher, she simply smiled and sent me back to contemplate mu. If a plane were to crash through this woman-sized window of my loft or if a weapon of mass destruction were to pierce the heart of Manhattan, I would gladly leave disseminating my energy into eternity. I have always grappled with nearly every word Wittgenstein wrote – words that were seldom read outside of philosophy courses. Though the line about death being the only event of life that humans don’t live through has always carried with me. Even the phrase “afterlife” seems like a misnomer. The word “afterlife” constructs precedence for death; it creates a meaning that may not exist. Humans anthropomorphize everything: God, Death, other animals, computers, you name it. What if we called life “afterdeath?” That is, what if we 114

had to experience death before we could experience life? What if we had to die to everything we value in life to ever experience the Truth or even a truth. Death simply may be a truth, which certainly is not life, but a truth that one must experience on the road to enlightenment…what is enlightenment, anyways? Ask Kant. Ask Foucault. Ask mu if you can. Every enlightened soul that I can think of died. I say there is nothing death can do and I surely agree that it’s finished. I turned from the window and walked toward my zazen cushion. I removed my slippers and sat. Sitting meditation was at first uncomfortable for me. Thoughts were unmanageable. I actually found pleasure in the surreal dream sequences that functioned as another manifestation of distraction. Lately, I have let such thoughts go. I see thoughts like clouds on a blue sky. They pass before my eyes. I can choose to follow them and play out the dream sequence or I can simply let them pass. If I let them pass, I remain open to experiencing the Truth within my breath. I have not yet let go of counting my breath. I cannot see myself currently maintaining focus otherwise. So, I continue to inhale odd numbers and exhale evens. I thought of the man I saw on the news and what he did to that freshman girl. She was just a few years younger and looked so much like me. What would I do if I were in her situation? Could I so “gladly leave disseminating my energy into eternity” if I were treated so horribly? I felt my breath on my nostrils. I inhaled. I exhaled. Someone else had entered the room, but I did not let it break my meditation. I continued to sit. I felt my four fingers touching the glaze of nail polish on my other four fingers and felt the tips of my thumbs touching.

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37 I felt my four fingers touching the glaze of nail polish on my other four fingers and felt the tips of my thumbs touching. The palms of my hands were soft and warm as they gave home to a mug full of hot chocolate and Irish cream. I sat in my cozy black papasan chair, staring past the four-foot tall Christmas tree and through the front window of my house into the frozen white winter wonderland of Choteau, Montana. It was Christmas Eve and the Nat King Cole playlist on my ipod had exhausted itself quite some time ago. Now there was just the crackling and popping of the fire in my fireplace and the quiet beauty of perfect snowflakes falling on perfect snowdrifts outside. I was alone on this Christmas and a part of me felt abandoned and sad, but not sorry for myself because this is how I wanted it. Nancy and Josh had invited me over for a holiday dinner and games with their kids, but I kindly declined because I knew where it would lead: “Jane, you really ought to find yourself a nice guy, settle down, and start a family.” Nancy would undoubtedly say. “God knows there’s one out there for you…” her husband would undoubtedly follow. I didn’t want to deal with that tonight, although the thought did make me think back to a man I had met ten or fifteen years ago in Colorado. He was a sweet man, he really was – how we laughed and hugged and had so many memories – but I was scared away. As a matter of fact, we met three days before Christmas when I went snowshoeing through the magnificent Colorado backcountry. There was a guide and a small group of people. I remember meeting him next to a Christmas tree with brilliant white lights, gold bulb ornaments, and a finely handcrafted angel on top in the hotel lobby. He asked me if I had some change for a phone call because he had left his wallet up in his room. But 117

that wasn’t important. I remember the first time I looked into his eyes, there was a spark. Something I can’t really put into words if I was to ever confess it. Something greater, something that knew – that drew me closer to him. Something I ran from because he had two children from a previous marriage… My focus returned to the calm, quiet Christmas Eve I was having in my lonely, self-satisfied, self-loathing living room. Nancy and Josh’s kids had hung the ornaments for my tree the day after Thanksgiving. When I was a kid, it was one of the days that we looked forward to the most. It meant that Christmas was coming – that Christmas was almost here! But as you grow older, the more jaded you get, the more tired you are, the more regret you are filled with. By the time you really get a chance to sit down and realize it’s Christmas, you also realize it’s probably too late to set up a tree or enjoy the things that you used to when the years were much younger. At least Nancy and Josh’s kids could enjoy it. Remembering them just such a short time ago putting up my tree and decorating my house did bring a smile to my face and warmed my heart. I wonder what ever happened to that nice Colorado man from so long ago. I know he felt the same spark as me, we talked about it and we were in love, but I was too scared to let his kids be a part of us. I asked him to leave his children with his ex-wife and run away with me to Montana, to start a new life with someone he truly loved, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, and it was a terrible thing for me to suggest. I hated it when Nancy and Josh badgered me about finding a nice guy, but I knew their intentions were good. They worry about me being alone and being unhappy, but what they don’t know is that I might have already passed that chance up somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountains of a snow-covered Colorado countryside. Since then, I’ve always prayed to God for forgiveness. At first, they were prayers that God would bring him to me and let him leave his children behind, but I now know that that was naïve of me. Those kids deserved the wonderful father they had, and I deserved every bit of regret and enlightenment that God would 118

give me over all of these years. Other people may feel sorry for me, but they shouldn’t. I may be alone on Christmas Eve, but it was my choice. The way I lived my life was the path that I chose and everybody makes mistakes. I’m different now – old, but different. I’ve learned to take pleasure in the path of what I believe, in the things that the Lord has given me. Like hot chocolate, Irish cream, and a bounty of warm memories in a perfectly frozen Montana snowstorm.

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38 Like hot chocolate, Irish cream, and a bounty of warm memories in a perfectly frozen Montana snowstorm. There she was. Madison's face lying peacefully there, sleeping soundly, snug in her crib. That sweet little girl was slowly losing her father. I was never at home these days and spent many nights in my car. I stood at the pump, staring blankly as the numbers increased. I wanted a diet soda and could use some smokes or something, but the convenience store was closed in the middle of the afternoon. Odd. A biker came out of the liquor store next door and threw his arms in the air when he saw the lights off and no clerk to be found. He looked in the window with both hands over his eyes before slapping his palms down on the glass. He turned and headed back toward the L-store. “I won’t be much longer boy,” he yelled to his beige and white boxer in the back of his Ford pickup before disappearing into the liquor store. I was actually kind of admiring his pickup. It was definitely a vintage model and even with the wear and tear, it emitted a certain charm. I could see the pale green beauty parked in front of an expanse of farmland with only waving wheat fields and a big white exploding cloud behind it. I could see myself in front of the truck, leaning against it with arms crossed. A few moments later a seafoam-colored El Camino pulled up next to the pickup. The door of the El Camino opened and out popped another biker type, wearing a black full-length leather trench coat over what looked like a red Santa Claus outfit. When he got out of the car he pulled at the waist of his red velvet jumpsuit and flipped his silky gray out from under his collar. Leather fringe strings dangled from his underarms. His red 120

Ugg-looking boots completed the getup to a T. I’d really seen it this time. He walked to the dark door of the convenience store and gave the face of a smoker in need of a cigarette. He rubbed his gray goatee, stared straight into my soul and looked the way of the liquor store. He walked back over to his El Camino and pulled out a red Santa hat. He adjusted the hat so that it was cocked perfectly on his head and followed the other man through the door. These guys were connected for sure, but they had nothing for me today. They’d just give me a machismo mixed with whiskey and I could pass on all that. I needed something that would do more than just make me puffed up and numb. All I wanted was a little sleep. I hopped in my car and started driving again. The sun was bright and I began closing one eye and alternating with the other – as if I was changing camera lenses. I reached for my well-filled prescription and, in a flash, popped several Ambiens… …I heard a tapping… I thought it was my cane hitting the cobblestone streets of the Bowery, but as I came to I realized it was a police officer at my window. “Excuse me, sir! Excuse me. Wake up!” The officer’s stern voice penetrated past the splitting pain in my forehead. I pressed my left hand hard on my left eye and stared back through the window. I didn’t know where the hell I was or what was happening. “Yes officer?” I asked. “Please step out of the vehicle.” the imperative was 121

clear and I was entirely too out of it to refuse. I opened the car door and stumbled to the concrete. “Have you been drinking?” he asked. “No sir.” “Have you taken any drugs?” “I don’t know, officer.” I responded. “You don’t know?” The officer asked in a suspicious tone. I think there was a conversation and I remember him asking me to turn around. I complied as he placed handcuffs around my wrists. I felt a forsakenness that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I felt at peace with the world even though I knew I was going to jail. Even though I knew my best company would be the book of Isaiah and an occasional applesauce, I felt at peace. I needed help. I knew that…for my sake, for Madison’s sake, for her mother’s sake – for God's sake. Instead of continuing to feel forsaken I just said, “OK.” I saw an image of Madison bouncing and laughing on her mother's knee. I haven't been there for her during these priceless early months of her life so God help me. Sitting in the back of the police car I closed my eyes and pressed my head against the window. I thought about praying, but I could feel consciousness slipping away. The noise in my head kept going for as long as I was awake. For the love: What a man gotta do for a moment’s peace and quiet?

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39 “For the love!” Jobless Joe shouted as flashlight beams scoured the abandoned bank. “What a man gotta do for a moment’s peace and quiet?” I sat up from under the layers of newspaper that kept me warm, one of the flashlights stopping on my face. “There’s got to be a place for these people…” a man’s voice showed sympathy. “Jail can’t be that bad for a night.” his partner laughed. “At least it’s warm there...” “Catch you by the rails.” Joe told me as he grabbed his pack and ran for one of the exits. The other squatters who weren’t too drunk or high also grabbed what they could and fled before the police could get in. “Grace…” Drifter Darren said my name, “Don’t just lie there, you gotta get while you can!” It was true – unfortunately. Jail really wasn’t that bad…it was warm and they gave you a decent meal or two, but what they would do to you before you got downtown, who knows? They could get away with anything because nobody believes the homeless. They all think we’re a bunch of unintelligible moochers that buy drugs and booze with any money we get… I rolled to my knees, the newspaper blanket falling from my back like leaves in the face of a dark wind. I collected my torn backpack and stared at the cross I had been lying on – my words were mostly erased as I had shifted sometime during the night. One of the fallen newspaper headlines read: ‘Unemployment at an all-time high’. My old boss at SOS Job Solutions would probably be baffled if he saw me now. Last they heard, I was in the hospital for my surgery and subsequent recovery, but then I fell off the grid as the medical bills came in and I was unable 124

to pay. It didn’t matter if I went back to work or not, Uncle Sam would take my paycheck every two weeks without even giving me a choice. Soon bills piled on bills, utilities were shut off, eviction notices were given, and new friends like Jobless Joe and Drifter Darren were made. As the police fumbled at the front entrance of the bank, I stood and shook off the feeling of very little sleep. With my torn backpack in hand, I went behind the old teller counter, through an empty employee hallway, and out a back alley exit. When everything was happening, my old friends would tell me that surely my family could take me in for a time, but I didn’t have any siblings, my mother was in an elderly home, and my father had died of alcoholism many years prior. Excuses, excuses…they would say. Tell me how I victimize myself, but you know what I say? I ask them: why don’t you try being me for a day? Tell me how you feel and where to begin. Like a caged bird with clipped wings where the government holds a nice $236,000 key. I ducked through a torn chain-link fence and walked the outskirts of a mostly empty grocery store parking lot. Judging from the dark horizon, I probably had several more hours before the sun would rise and offer me a new day of holding cardboard signs and foraging through fast food dumpsters to see what I could find. I entered the 24-hour grocery store and weaved through the produce section – how nice it would be to have a fresh-cut pineapple right now. The thought of taking it passed through my mind, but I had no means of cutting it up. Instead, I found the public restrooms and decided to make one of them my home for the next few hours. I set my torn backpack on the hard concrete floor and dug for my pack of dwindling white chalk. Someday I would travel somewhere tropical and enjoy a truly fresh pineapple for myself. I would sit on the beach and just listen to the ocean come in and go out. I could die like that…in paradise with a pineapple. Perhaps I should hitchhike. Find a way to the tropics 125

and find the peace that I prayed for. Taking one of the dirty white chunks of chalk, I proceeded to draw a white cross on the unknowing grocery store floor. In the middle of the cross, I wrote: 'Keep believing in faith, have faith in belief'. Hopefully nobody would think to go to the bathroom in the next few hoursâ&#x20AC;Ś

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40 Hopefully nobody would think to go to the bathroom in the next few hours… I wanted to cover a little ground first. I looked at my six-year-old daughter snuggled into the shoulder of her older brother through the rearview mirror. Even though I couldn’t see the traffic behind me, I always tilted the mirror so I could see their faces. There have been times in my life where it has felt as if I was sitting in the backseat next to the Son of God. The Father was at the wheel and the Holy Ghost sat shotgun. Ah, the peace of looking up and seeing those compassionate, loving eyes. Today, however, was not like that. I was at the wheel, with the future of my children in my hands, and there was no Father, Son, or Holy Ghost – or at least I didn’t feel like they were there. As I glanced back again at my sleeping daughter, the shamrock on my teenage son’s “Kiss Me I’m Irish” T-shirt caught my eye. I often hear people talking about finding the Lord, finding God, or finding faith. I’m always tempted to ask them: ‘Was He, She, or It ever lost?’ I believe we are drawn into living a spiritual life, that it is in fact an act of a will other than our own. I also would like to ask those who feel distanced from their Creator this question: ‘Who moved?’ Whenever I go to social functions – such as a graduation party or a wedding – I’m always asked how I know the guest of honor. I’ve considered showing up to Sunday mass and asking each member how they know God. I’m afraid though that I wouldn’t get a very good reception. “I figure once we hit Mississippi we can stay with Dad in Jacksonville for a spell,” I say through a headset. “It ain’t worth takin’ any chances and I ain’t waitin’ for a city street to be chugged full before I get to gettin’.” 127

There was silence – just the sound of rain hitting the outside of the car. “It doesn’t take Noah to see that some feathers gonna get ruffled by this here storm,” I continued. “Plus we haven’t all been together with the ol’ man in a coon’s age. I’ll give you a call when we get there, okay?” I hung up and I tossed the headset into the cup holder. “Don’t you think you might be over-reacting Dad?” my son asked from the backseat. “Just consider it a family visit…can you remember the last time you saw gramps?” “OK, Dad, but I know you.” Our eyes met in the rearview mirror for a moment. He turned his head toward the window, leaned back, and closed his eyes. “I love you, son.” “I love you too, Dad,” he replied. I continued to drive northbound and was flooded with memories of my son as a baby. He was so small then and now he’s nearly a man. I felt my eyes welling up and noticed my daughter staring at me through the rearview mirror.

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41 I felt my eyes welling up and noticed my daughter staring at me through the rearview mirror. She was beautiful and full of potential. She could have gone to a bigger university – maybe she should have gone to a bigger university – but she chose to go to a smaller local school to stay around her friends and family. Education…that’s what she was studying – to be a teacher – to share her warm spirit with generations to come. Patches of sunflowers passed by on the highway, stirring memories of old. I still had a picture that she painted for me when she was in the fourth grade. We had been having some trouble at home back then. Her father had left me and I was mired in student loan debt. We moved into a duplex that had previous flood damage. The carpets were rotting – the floorboards were molding. There were times when I couldn’t pay the bills so our utilities were shut off. I remembered it getting so bad that I thought about giving it all up – ending the misery that I suffered every day. The pastor at my church gave me a handcrafted sign that said: ‘Life is fragile, handle with care.’ It wasn’t much at the time to console my feelings of hopelessness, but somehow – somewhere deep inside – I knew that it held much greater meaning. The painting my daughter gave me so long ago showed a terrible rainstorm with lightning streaking across the top of the page. She painted it with dark blues and blacks – even the swaying, swirling normally green grass was shown in shades of gray, the rain hammering down like black needles from the sky. But in the center of the painting, there was one single-standing sunflower, its pedals a brilliant bright yellow, its leaves full of green life. I remember the day she brought it home from school and gave it to me. She said: ‘Mom, I made this for you…I know things are hard for us right now, but they will get better. They will always get better.’ Since the murder, I was told that God sends His angels to do His work, but that sometimes the world is just not ready 129

and they are taken away. Again, not much help to soothe my wavering spirit, but enough to satisfy the senseless ‘whys’ that haunt me every day that I live, in every place that I travel, and in every step that I take. I put angel wings on her gravestone and hung the pastor’s handcrafted sign above the entrance to my front door. Nothing would bring her back, nothing would fill the void of what countless number of kids would miss out on her loving spirit as they moved through grade school themselves, but if nothing else, she still traveled with me. Some call me crazy, others it gives hope, but she still follows me and she always keeps a smile on her face. When I’m ready to just give up and cry, I can feel her arms wrap around me – like right now from the back seat of my car – and give me the comfort that I need. She makes the sunflowers show up when you need them the most.

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42 She makes the sunflowers show up when you need them the most: There she was like a sunflower there she was There she was in a summer shower there she was There she was in the moon’s romance there she was There she was like a second chance there she was The lyrics to an old tune Dandy and I used to sing together came to me. I sang them to myself and hummed while I waited in the lobby. And then, there she was walking down the extra-wide staircase that led to our old apartment. “Oh my God, Daisy, what did you do to your hair!” Dandelion said as I stood up – she came and gave me a giant hug. “I cut it.” I said, holding back the vulnerability and masked resentment that could seep into my tone at any moment. Dandy and I used to be partners in crime like a Bonnie and Clare, or more like a modern day Porgy and Bess really. I tried to save her from the shallows of a life overflowing with cosmopolitans by showing her the charm of living free-spirited. We were a couple of drifters, with perfect hippie names to tow, but then things changed. Then she found God or, better yet, some arrogant mo-fos who think they got Jesus Christ in their back pocket. “This is my friend Jesus.” I can hear them saying. “I really would love for you to meet him. Maybe you could come by the house on Sunday morning?” They’re the ones that have all the answers, right? Every little problem in life can be solved with some abstract saying 131

like: “Remember Jesus loves you.” Well, who the hell is Jesus anyway? And what does “love” really mean? Someone may say they love you and then their actions might show you something entirely different, right? Given more concrete evidence of what another person means by an abstraction, such as “freedom” or “love,” can change a communal agreement of those terms in a heartbeat. After all, colonization and converting indigenous people to Christianity was done out of love, wasn't it? We loved their beautiful countryside and having them work for us. And besides, dear ole’ Mother Theresa – God bless her soul – didn’t even have all the answers herself. One of the most faithful women to have ever lived felt alone and isolated from God at times. So where do these guys get off? I will never forget that night. The stars seemed to be aligned, Dandy and I were two peas in a pod, about to be blown away by a Jesus meteor. I should have known to be wary of anyone named Jacob. He was a pretty cunning character in the Bible, wasn’t he? Anyway, Jacob was all Dandy ever talked about after that dinner party. After that night, she changed. And I changed. In some senses, it truly was our Last Supper. She started going to church with Jacob and before I knew it, she wasn’t even gay anymore. Oh she was happy all right, but she wasn’t gay. She even replaced the rainbow sticker on her car with one of those goofy fish. I had had enough. She left me without leaving me. She called me one Sunday afternoon and said that we couldn’t be what we were anymore. She didn’t feel that it was right, that it was natural – that it was what God wanted. I tried to explain to her that B.J., that is Before Jacob, she thought it was right, natural, and good. Good, after all, is just God with an extra “o.” I was pissed. I said this is just what Jacob wants. Don’t you dare come telling me what God does or doesn’t want. So I didn’t talk to her for almost a year. She kept trying 132

to call, inviting me to come “hang out.” I knew what “hanging out” meant though. It meant some self-absorbed guy, playing rhythm guitar, and trying to sing like Billie Joe from Green Day or something. They’d be better off sticking to the hymns and singing like my grandparents than trying to be all hip and shit. It really was quite nauseating. So we hugged. I still loved her smile, no matter how Christian it had become. God damn, I love that smile and the way her eyes could flutter. “How’s Jacob?” I asked with just a pinch of bitterness. “He’s alright…” she said, “I’m not still with him, though. We’re friends, but…” I felt a 10,000 pound weight lift from my shoulders and didn’t even bother to ask her: ‘But what?’ “There’s a song I think you’d like,” I said, changing the subject. “It has this wonderful gospel feel to it.” “Yeah?” “Yeah…” We walked outside the apartment building and passed the same street person that was always there. I love that darling old Brit. I dropped all the change in my pocket into his cup. “God bless you, lass, thank you, cross my palm with silver, you’ve got a lucky face,” he slurred.

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43 “God bless you, lass, thank you, cross my palm with silver, you’ve got a lucky face,” he slurred, “may God always look fond upon you…” My friends laughed as we continued to walk down the unswept sidewalk – the autumn’s dropping of leaves everywhere. “I can’t believe you gave that bum your money!” Travis said through his wide grin. “You know how long you dug for that change in our couch cushions?” Kevin started roaring. “I can’t believe you did that let alone just give it away!” “It’s just a Big Gulp…” I tried to rationalize why I wouldn’t be able to buy anything at the 7 Eleven we were going to. “Cassie…” Marcus put his arm around my shoulder. “You found most of that change in Monty’s shit. You know what Monty smells like?” We had left him back at their fraternity house to make sure our party wouldn’t be unattended if a swarm of mobs showed up. “His ass-cheese smells worse than dead people. Worse than fuckin’ trash juice boiling inside Magnus’ vagina.” Magnus was a kind – albeit very overweight – little old lady who worked at the gaming shop where we all went to buy Dungeons and Dragons figurines sometimes. Nobody really knew why, but she radiated a pungent smell. “That…” Marcus continued, “that is what you just dug through for a dollar seventy- five for some game fuel gulp-madness and now?” Marcus made an exploding gesture with his hands. “All gone. You gave it to Bernie the Bum.” Travis, Kevin, Jacob, Bruce, and Avery all laughed. They affectionately named him Bernie from the ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ movies, where one of the main characters is a corpse named Bernie and the movie played out like a gag where nobody 135

else knew he was dead. “Cassie just gave Bernie a bunch of Monty’s asscheese!” Avery could hardly contain himself as he high-fived Bruce. “You know what?” I stopped walking and let Marcus’ arm slide off my shoulder. “I’m gonna go back.” “Aw come on Cas.” Marcus’ goofy smile spread under his lab-rat glasses. “We’re just kiddin’ around. Come on, I’ll buy you a Big Gulp.” “No, it’s okay. Really…” I assured them although it wasn’t. “I’m just gonna go back and help Monty out.” “Collect more of his ass-cheese!” Kevin kept the peanut gallery laughing. Marcus showed conflict, a part of him torn between his friends and me. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Yeah…” I said as I turned to walk back the way we had come. “I’m sure. I’ll see you back at the place.” Marcus didn’t say anything, but Travis called after me: “Hey Cas! On a serious note, make sure if Monty found that level four, two perk enchantment, he doesn’t take it for himself! My healer could use it!” I didn’t dignify Travis’ request with a response. Instead, I let the fraternity boys continue to 7 Eleven and I walked with my head down, my tennis shoes crunching the fallen leaves under their soles. As I approached the spot where Bernie normally was, I saw that he was gone. Almost as if he had never been there in the first place. Almost as if the one person who finally paid attention to him had freed his soul and let him find his peace. I stopped and sat where Bernie normally did. Would I ever be noticed? I mean, my mom and dad knew that I was a 136

tomboy and I enjoyed hanging out with Marcus and the rest of his clown brigade since I met him so many years before at a Magic card tournament, but someday this would have to stop. This wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t healthy for me, and it took giving money to a homeless man to finally acknowledge it. Bernie had hoped out loud that God would look fondly upon me. If He existed, I wished that He wouldâ&#x20AC;Ś

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44 “If He existed, I wished that He would…” “Hold it right there young man! You stop spouting off your philosophies and help me cut these beans!” my mother said in Sunday afternoon frustration. “Whatever…” I said. “Believe what you will and I’ll do the same. I was planning on meeting T, so I might as well go now. Be back later.” I walked out of the kitchen, down the stairs to the entryway, and out the front door. “Be back for dinner!” I heard my mom's voice call after me. The buffoonery surrounding the religious is unbearable, I thought to myself. People worshipping dead and gone moralists for what? They trumpet about His omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and we are maggots compared to His greatness to quote the great Lautréamont. According to him though, I wouldn't need to give attribution, right? Meanwhile these same crusaders get fat and watch others starve. I’ve sat through my fair share of church services where I’m holding a program printed in color ink, staring at tens of thousands of dollars in stereo equipment, and some pastor precedes to guilt trip the congregation into giving the church their hard earned money. It’s not for him, he says, it’s for God! Sure they cover their bases – like any good sophist would – working charity x, y, and z into their budget. They also love to tell us how we must pray for the so-and-sos going into the darkness to carry the torch of light. I guess I would need a prayer too if I were an alien evangelist coming to tell a religious elite that they are missing the point. I kicked the dust on the road outside my parents’ house and wondered when the city would get around to paving their 138

street. I imagined my mom there in the kitchen cutting beans mad at me or disappointed or something for challenging her business as usual conception of the Almighty. First of all: If He existed, I wish that He would turn on and off like those large portraits of Jesus with a light bulb behind them. Whenever I wanted the illuminated blue-eyed gaze to be on all the good deeds I was doing, I would conveniently click the portrait on. When I wanted to have my actions go unseen – so to speak – I would keep it off. That sure would be nice, wouldn’t it? But I don’t think ol’ Elohim exists like that. I don’t think my mom necessarily thinks Jesus can be flipped on and off at the turn of a switch like that either, but I’m just saying. Perhaps the Elohim created in the image of Man does. You know the one: The one Nietzsche said we killed way back when. I got to 88th Ave. – where my parents’ dirt road met pavement – and headed for the creek. I often wondered if infinity times infinity equaled infinity or somehow strangely arrived at a definite number. Sundays had a way of transforming into a theological war with my mom and usually ended in a rendezvous with T at the creek. T and I could initiate a meeting in five words or less if a call was not interrupted by a parental figure. “Meet me at the creek.” one of us would rattle – any other language on the phone was superfluous in my opinion. T was sitting on a sewer that was erected about five feet from the ground. It was ‘The Perch’. The creek between our houses had become a purgatory – to use religious terms – that was awaiting the construction of a new subdivision. It was our meeting place for as long as I could remember or at least as long as I was allowed to roam freely from the Garden, if you will… It was the first place we could go to be completely out of the view of our parents. My thoughts returned to my list of ponderings. If God existed I wish He would work for me. Yeah…work for me. 139

Unfortunately, I think it’s the other way around though. He’s the Employer and pays with His grace however he sees fit. Whether I work a full day or an hour, He’s known for paying the same amount. Right? Grace has been known to wile. T was smoking and I asked him for one. He pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds and tossed it at me. “Whappen?” T asked through a plume of smoke. “Nothing…” I replied. “Did you go to church?” I threw the pack back after taking one. “Yeah…” We went to different churches and I always thought T’s church was weirder than mine because they sometimes talked in tongues. They were on the whole Pentecostal trip, having the Holy Spirit come over you and what not? All churches are weird though, right? “You?” T asked. “You know it.” I said. “My mom and I got into it again…” “You always do.” T laughed raspy, without mirth. “Whatever…” I said wanting to change the subject. “What do you want to do today?” “I dunno.” T said in his usual nonchalant sort of way. He took a final drag of his cigarette and flicked it away. We started walking away from the creek, over the dirt mound we used as a bike jump, and into T’s neighborhood. “Have you been to the fort lately?” I asked. 140

“Not in a hot minute.” T said. “Let’s check it out, maybe we can start a fire.” I suggested. “Yeah…alright.” T replied. We walked to our left, toward the fort, stepping over the half burned logs in the fire pit.

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45 We walked to our left, toward the fort, stepping over the half-burned logs in the fire pit. Jaden was chapped, Norman was headed to the brig, and I carried a cross-necklace in the palm of my hand. “Fuck this!” Jaden threw his M249 in the sand and flung his helmet the other direction. It all had happened so quickly. I was driving, Norman was stationed on the turret, and Jaden was riding shotgun. We were one of four humvees protecting a convoy of fuel supply tankers executing their normal delivery route between FOB Duke and Al Taqqadum. The convoy stopped as orders came in. Apparently, there were some hostiles holding up the works just ahead. We floored it through the rocks and sand, taking point and sliding to a halt alongside two of the other humvees. There was a house – a shanty really – about two hundred yards from the road. We had seen it dozens of times before while making fuel drops, but it was always abandoned. This time, however, there were people out front, an old man holding his hand in the air like a fist, two children – both boys – and a veiled woman who sat in the shade of the hut. Surrounding the family were three fraillooking goats and a dusty mule which carried blankets and packs. “Bunch a sand coons, that’s all!” Hopper shouted from the turret of our neighboring humvee. “Jawas.” Jaden tried to be funny before Crix came through on the radio. “Do you have the hostiles in sight?” our commander asked. “Copy that Crix.” Jaden responded. “They’re just some locals. Probably traveling through like we are.” “One male adult, two children, a woman, and some 142

livestock, sir.” Fred’s voice – he was working communications in another humvee – fizzled over the radio. “The adult male is waving his fist in the air and shouting something.” “Can you hear what he’s saying?” Crix asked. “That’s a negative, sir.” Fred replied. We listened to the purring of the humvee’s engine for a solid thirty seconds. “It looks like he’s holding something.” Norman told Jaden and I from his turret position. “Not sure what it is though…” “Give them the signal.” Crix ordered. Norman, Hopper, and Milo – who was working the turret of our other neighboring humvee – waved a hand over their head and waited for a response. The signal was supposed to be known by all Iraqis to acknowledge our presence and to clear out in the opposite direction. “Copy that command.” Fred’s voice again fizzled over the radio. “Negative signal back. Adult male’s behavior is unchanged.” Crix gave us the order to give the signal again but nothing changed. The two boys now jumped up and down in the air with smiles on their faces. “Light’em up.” Crix finally said. “Sir?” Jaden questioned. “Light’em up. These damn hodgies ought to know by now that they shouldn’t fuck with us.” “But sir, they’re-…” Jaden tried to argue. “That’s an order soldier!” Crix warned. Jaden turned to look at Norman in the turret. “Crix says mow’em down.” “What?” Norman was taken back a little. “But the rules of engagement…” The other two humvees that sat next to us at the front of the convoy opened fire, Hopper and Milo not daring to 143

disobey their orders. “Fuck no!” Norman refused to fire. “They’re just goddamn kids and fucking livestock!” The family tried to run as the turrets fired, but within moments, the scene was motionless. Only one of the crippled goats cried out for mercy amongst the dead. Fred climbed out of his humvee with his M249 at the ready. “We’d better clean up this mess.” Jaden said as he slammed the radio receiver against the dash and climbed out. I followed Jaden, my rifle slung harmlessly over my shoulder. Fred’s driver, Campos, assisted him as we approached the abandoned shanty. Jaden knelt down next to the slain boys and mumbled something. Fred and Campos followed protocol and entered the house carefully. Instead of going in, I dropped to my knees in the sand next to the father and saw that he was holding a cross-necklace. “All clear!” Fred said as he eased up on his rifle. “No explosives. It’s safe…” “Well that’s just fuckin’ great…isn’t it?” Jaden stood and marched back to the convoy. I closed the man’s fleeting eyes for him and said a quick prayer. Before leaving the scene, I took the crossnecklace from his hand and decided that it would never leave my side.

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46 Before leaving the scene, I took the cross-necklace from his hand and decided that it would never leave my side. What was a dead Tibetan Monk doing with a crucifix on his person? The case was only getting stranger and all this killer’s hocus-pocus was starting to really piss me off. I’ve dealt with a lot of serials in my day and I don’t mean Cheerios, Wheaties, or Frosted Flakes. The Hannibal wannabes, the Manson coo-coo birds, the whole nine yards, you name it…I’ve seen it. Please forgive me…I hate sports metaphors. No – I really hate sport metaphors. I pretty much want to tell anyone who uses them to go long. I wish I could go long right now. I wish I could just disappear…maybe to the white sands of southeast Florida to a small Cuban restaurant. I’d order a toppling Cuban sandwich and a crying glass of sangria from a waitress that makes me want to say: “Ay, caramba!” Oh how refreshing a sangria would be. Who would bludgeon a holy man to death with a sacred text? A sick fuck, that’s who! I pull my small metal flask out of my coat and take a slow pull of Black Velvet. I stare at the monk and the bloody copy of The Book of the Dead saturated in his own blood, mangled next to his feet. The monk lie motionless next to a broken picture of his master that looks like it was thrown to the floor. You should have seen what this guy did with the Bible! He made that priest swallow nearly the whole book of Revelations, turning that priest into a Smurf. He’s some kind of copycat of the movie Seven. If I were the religious type, I’d say this was some Archangel of the Lord of Darkness. Honestly, I just think it’s a 145

defeated artist with some bone to pick. Hitler was the same way. If only that psychopath would have stuck to painting. I want to just give this killer a canvas and a brush and say: “Please, just paint. All art is good art – really!” I could always hear the footsteps of forensics on the stairs before they arrived at the crime scene. Those goons were louder than a herd of elephants, louder than an offensive line if you’re so inclined. Some sterile, tightwad, hotshot will be plowing through the door any minute barking at me to clear the room and telling me what is evidence. I place the crucifix in my front pocket. Its evidence all right, but something inside me tells me that the killer didn’t place it. I really think it belonged to the monk. This one isn’t one of those killers who does the little clue dance and says in not so many words: “I just killed a monk boys, now it’s going to be another priest.” The guy has already killed a rabbi, a priest, strangely a CEO of a major corporation, and now a Tibetan teacher. What kind of statement was he trying to make with that CEO anyway? Capitalists are Pharisees of the Green God Mammon? I don’t get it, but I want this guy. I want this guy bad. Right now he’s probably eating a hamburger and French fries at some diner, drinking black coffee, and reading a newspaper. He’ll go to the same dive for breakfast and read about himself over orange juice and biscuits. Where do these guys get off?

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47 Where do these guys get off? They show up every fuckin’ fall on campus and bullshit their hate up on the world. I mean bullshit their hate like tools and fools – hatin’ on Jesus and God’s Good Word. Fuck those fools and their atheist hate. Just because they can’t fuckin’ stand a Brotha walkin’ about – a Brotha giving out – a Brotha feelin’ the love from the One above. God will bring them out of the darkness and the shadow of death. God will dash and smash their motherfuckin’ chains if they let Him – if they let go of their bullshit and hate – let go of their sick and twisted fate. I mean, they stand up on top of those rocks preaching their bile and ruining days. Fuck that hate, and fuck those fools. Fuck their words, and fuck their rules. They sit and shout and what about? That miracles don’t happen and God is a fraud? Fuck that hate – fuck that hate to heaven’s gate. Let them live and fester in shade – let them shun light in the world they’ve made. Let them do it because they know no better. They stand up on top of their motherfuckin’ rocks with their bullshit and hate – with their bullshit and hate. Healing hands and shifting sands – tell me to my face that God’s grace has no trace. Tell my fuckin’ father who tried to kill himself – who fuckin’ flat-lined for good as we stood – stood by his side and tried our best. I swore to the Brothas above, I swore to all that is holy and all that is good that I’d be God’s motherfuckin’ lad if only He’d save my Dad. And like the fuckin’ movies – like a goddamn lightning rod – the miracle of life was given back by God. Pops came to with tears and fears, crying like a baby for he’d seen the light and it made him right. So fuck that atheist hate! Miracles happen every fuckin’ day – so hey hey! Let’s go pray and put your fuckin’ hands together. Praise the fuckin’ Lord and the fuckin’ greatness He has! I should get up on my own fuckin’ rock and give the world some love! Love love like a fuckin’ dove. Rip rap 147

fuckin’ – motherfuckin’ – rip rap clip clap. Seriously, fuck that fuckin’ – motherfuckin'- atheist bullshit hate! Spread God's Word like a beautiful bird.

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48 “Spread God’s Word like a beautiful bird. Go tell it on the mountain – go tell it on the hills.” Nathan said. “Fer real? Like a beautiful bird? Come on Nate…” I moaned. “Roger that Jack, uh oh get back, I’m on the mic, saying dem other emcees wack.” “Okay Rip, enuf! Save it for the hood rats at the mall.” I flipped up my hood, grabbed my backpack from the ground, and started for the food court. “Yo, cousin, wait up!” Nathan yelled. “Really, Nate? Really? Cousin? What happened? Did you like YouTube a bunch of nineties rap videos over the weekend and now you’re Daddy Snow reincarnate? Please…not today, of all days…” “I feel bad for you, son…I got 99 problems, but a…” “Stop!” I screamed. Nathan never had a girlfriend in his life. In elementary school he started liking a girl, but then he got too caught up in other things like Bell Biv DeVoe and Another Bad Creation. Older kids made fun of him for trying to wear silk MC Hammer pants and dress shirts with every button buttoned. I remember the day all of us were playing kickball and she ran over to him and put a sticker on his shirt that said: “You’re sweet!” Nate turned the color of a beet and everyone laughed. She became obsessed with him and started following 149

him everywhere he went. In a moment of frustration when she was walking behind Nate and me, Nate yelled, “I don’t like you!” He yelled it at the top of his lungs. She never talked to him again after that, so whatever. Wonder what she does now. I’ve never seen her at school. I could totally see that girl growing up to be a soccer mom. “Where are we headed, B?” Nathan asked. “I’m going to go see if she’ll talk to me.” I said, not bothering to acknowledge the fact that he called me ‘B’. We rolled up to Bruno Burger in the food court and I could see her standing there, laughing with some carrot top, cheese head. My mind was envisaging an infinite array of possibilities. We would graduate, both head off to different colleges, and try a long distance relationship for a couple months. She would go to some party, meet Mr. Right, and have to explain to me that things are different now. She’d say it’s time to move on with our lives and start seeing other people. You’ve seen the movie a hundred times. Seriously: How many times are they going to make the same teen movie? She looked so damn hot though in that little burger joint uniform, despite the ridiculous hat. Everything felt as if it were moving in slow motion. Now I sounded like one of those wet noodles in all of those stupid ass movies. Next thing you know some love song from the eighties will start playing. “Boom, ch…Boom, boom, ch…Boom, ch…Boom, boom, ch…” Meanwhile, Nate the Human Speaker Box tapped his foot and shook his tail feather like an idiot. “Stop it, Nate, I’m serious…” 150

“This is serious. We could make you delirious…‘cause too much of us is dangerous, so dangerous…” “Hey, Nate!” she yelled and waved from across the food court – she didn’t even look at me. “An infinity of flavors at Bruno, son! I’m getting a burger…Boom, ch…Boom, boom, ch…” Nate walked toward Bruno’s doing that shaking thing with his shoulders again – I often asked him if he was dropped on his head as a child. I decided I would go over and at least try to explain again. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise before. It wasn’t my fault. I can’t help it if some underclass floozy decides to kiss a passed out corpse at a party. I looked down again at her text on my cell phone from yesterday: “u asshole.” When I called she went on about how she thought I was different and every time I tried to say something she’d cut me off. Finally, she hung up on me and didn’t answer any of my calls for the rest of the day. I eventually had to just let it go – God knows the truth.

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49 I eventually had to just let it go; God knows the truth. I wanted so badly to stay and help her take care of the baby, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it to her, and I couldn’t do it to the kid. It makes me feel sick, but I had to leave. She probably hates me for it and she probably thinks I’m a selfish coward, but I pray every day that God will let her forgive me and let her see the truth. It was back at a New Years’ party in Yuma, Arizona. The world as we kept it was getting ready to turn 2011 years old and I was only in town to meet my friend Pedro before I headed back to Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua. He had gotten out somehow and I was responsible for tracking him down and collecting a debt. They chose me because they knew we were close before he fled. If Pedro didn’t have the money, I was supposed to deal with him a different way and if that happened, I would hope that God could forgive me. Pedro wasn’t where he was supposed to be, so I tracked down a mutual friend in Yuma. Her name was Vanessa and she invited me to her New Years’ party. We watched the Americans wheel out Dick Clark like they seemed to do every year and busted out some damn fine champagne. Vanessa had another friend who was just smokin’ gorgeous and fresh out of finishing her degree over in Tempe. I figured ‘what the hell?...why not?’ Yeah she was an easy target, she couldn’t hold her alcohol very well, but regardless of what she thinks, I did use a condom. Next morning I wake up and she’s freaking out. Flippin’ about how she’s pregnant and telling me to tell God to take it away, like I have some sort of cell phone to heaven or something. So I tell her to calm down and we’ll figure it out. That was one of the hardest days of my life. I mean, what if she was pregnant? I couldn’t get stuck here…the cartel would track me down too and it might get messy. I thought about telling her what I really did for a living, but I lied instead. God I lied and it 152

broke my heart. I really think I loved that girl and I really hope I didn’t screw her life up. She was planning on going to get some higher degree or something at a university and really make a good life for herself. So I lied and I laid low for several weeks and took the best damn care of her that I could. I meant it when I said that I wanted to take care of her always, but deep down I knew that I couldn’t. I knew that I had sinned and that I had made a big mistake. Oh I hope God can forgive me and I hope that God watches after her for me. So then she starts feeling all sick and everything and figures out that that damn condom didn’t do its job. About the same time, I got word from another friend of Vanessa’s that Pedro was back in town. She was afraid that I was going to leave – I could sense it – so I prayed real hard for a week or two to figure out what was best, and the Man upstairs told me it would be hard, but I had to leave for her safety, and for the kid’s safety. So I told God that I was going to sin again, that I had to lie to her to get away – for their sake, you know? And to forgive me for that. So I told her that I wanted to marry her and just do it down at the courthouse. I knew she was feelin’ all sick and everything, so she wouldn’t go. It broke my heart because I think there was a big part of her that trusted me and so she told me to go and get the papers… I remember rubbing her belly and giving it a kiss one last time before I left. I felt so bad that I was doing this, but I needed to protect them. I walked out the door and stood there for what felt like an eternity, wondering if I was doing the right thing, and then this damn dove scared me and flew from the roof towards the sky and that’s all it took. I climbed into the truck, loaded my pistol which would deliver a gift to Pedro, and planned my voyage back to Ciudad Juarez. I just prayed and prayed that God would give my child and her a good life.

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50 I just prayed and prayed that God would give my child and her a good life. Similar prayers were perhaps prayed by a crucified martyr, a heretic burned at the stake, or a warlock drawn and quartered. It just so happened to be my prayer today as I was leaving the courthouse. The day Sheila asked for a divorce seemed like yesterday. Had it already been six years? It seemed like a normal day…I came home from work late and Shay had already put Taylor down for the night. Dinner was sitting cold on the dining room table. The house was dark and despite everything in it, it felt empty. We had been married 12 years, had lost a child together, and were trying it again. Everything changed though after Taylor was born. Sheila became a different person – I became a different person. We were no longer the people we married. I wonder if God changed after sending His son to save the world? You hear it so often said that God never changes: He always is, was, and will be. What if change is part of the constant? Christ did in fact leave this place changed with wounds. The wounds were the only proof that could sway Thomas of Resurrection. So we take our wounds with us. That’s what that tells me – that’s what I’m thinking. I made my way to my Mercedes parked outside of the courthouse. As I loosened my tie, I undid my top button, and deactivated the alarm. In all my years of practicing law, I never encountered such a difficult case. Here was a mom who just left her baby alone to starve – that’s how the paper put it anyway. Sometimes I felt that way after the divorce. Sheila insisted that she keep Taylor during the week and I got to have her on the weekends. I agreed because I’m a busy man and as a 155

defense attorney, I’ve learned never to fight a losing battle. In the end, I’ve only been able to see Taylor for one day a week and on special occasions. It worked out better for both Sheila and I that way. I always sent more money to Shay and Tay than childcare required, but I felt I starved my child by not giving her more of her father’s love. The woman I am defending literally did not feed her child and ultimately left the child alone to die. How she can afford my services is curious, but I’m pretty sure she has the help of relatives. The case is complicated and involves misunderstandings on several fronts and negligent babysitters. I believe the woman and I don’t think she’s the monster the Tribune is making her out to be. I saw last week’s paper at a coffee shop with blue horns emerging from her head. I think we all have horns and we all have a halo somewhere in reach. Some of us have the halo rung around a horn and the bright light of the halo works to mask the horns. The horns are always there though… Professionally, I believe wholeheartedly that people are innocent until proven guilty. Spiritually, I believe we are guilty until proven innocent. The wounds of Christ are the proof for me just like they were with Thomas. Christ is the halo that will shine over my life, allowing me to be one with my Heavenly Father. I have to be cautious of how I conduct myself as a Christian in my profession. Nevertheless, my religious leanings inevitably influence my decisions. A lot of other guys in the firm ran from this case like they were scientists running from the Spanish Inquisition. I welcomed it because I believe her, whether she is lying to me or not, and because even people charged with heinous crimes need to be shown compassion.

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51 I welcomed it because I believe her, whether she is lying to me or not, and because even people charged with heinous crimes need to be shown compassion. My mama always told me to find the truth of life in the Lord’s Word, and the Lord’s Word says: ‘Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.’ We walked down the narrow, lifeless corridor, her hands cuffed in front of her orange standard jumpsuit. The buzzing, stale lights flickering above us for a moment almost like we were filming a scene in a horror movie. But she wasn’t any Jack Torrance or Hannibal Lecter like the news made her out to seem. She actually did have a heart under the hardened, yet broken exterior that the world wanted her to have. At the end of the hallway, the other detention officer that walked with us unlocked the last room this poor woman would ever have the chance to see. There was a resting chair in the middle of the room accompanied by a machine that would read her pulse. We sat her down and buckled her arms and legs so there would be no struggle. When she looked at me, I expected a plea of some sort within her eyes – hoping that I would perform some kind of heroic act to extend the life that she gave as forfeit – but instead there was peace inside her once messy eyes and a gentle smile that thanked me and told me that she didn’t blame me for what was about to happen. About six months ago, she was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder. The first was her two-year old son which she drowned in her bathtub and then let the body rest in her bed for several days. While this was going on, the second and third happened where she worked. She was a kindergarten teacher and it happened to a brother and a sister. She took the brother into a storage closet and suffocated him with her lunch bag and I guess the sister walked in while it was happening. She grabbed the sister and stabbed her several times in the throat 158

with a pair of scissors. It sounds terrible – I know – so you can see why the media didn’t have a hard time making her look like some sort of monster. She didn’t fight the charges, and even though she claimed to have had these visions that influenced her, she said she did it knowingly. Her lawyer couldn’t even hide behind an insanity plea because of it. So she came here and on the insistence of the family who lost two of their children, they put her on the list. Every day for the past five or so months that I’ve worked, I’ve sat down with her and we read the Bible together. At first she didn’t trust me and I think she thought I was patronizing her, but she warmed up to me when she realized that I was trying to do the Lord’s work with her. She told me about the two boys – her son and the other one. How she had these visions from a Higher Power that showed them becoming friends and doing the Devil’s work. She said that she was commanded by the Lord to carry out those crimes and it was really hard for her – she didn’t want to do it. But she was just broken…she’s no monster. No matter what she did to those boys, she could not forgive herself for murdering that poor sister. That was a sin and she asked the Lord to forgive her. Now, I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking: she’s a psycho and she’s dark and twisted. God would never ask someone to do something so horrible and for her to say that He did? She’s sick…you know? And like I said, maybe she’s lying to me, because most psychopaths lie, but I dunno. I believe her because the Lord instructs: ‘Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy’…and that is our Lord God.’ The administer asks the poor woman if there are any last thoughts that she would have remembered… “Execute true justice…” she says while looking at me content, “show mercy and compassion. Let none of you plan 159

evil in his heart against his brother.” The administer inserts the first of three deadly needles into her arm and I reach to hold her hand. ‘May God forgive you for your sins, my friend.’ I pray silently while never breaking eye contact. ‘May He show you compassion and free your soul of the burden in which you carry…’ Seven minutes and twenty-three seconds later, the heart monitor shows that her pulse is gone and she has passed on to the next life.

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52 Seven minutes and twenty-three seconds later, the heart monitor shows that her pulse is gone and she has passed on to the next life. Every breath was approximately a second. Even though I wasn’t supposed to count them, I sometimes attached a number to my breaths in meditation. I never recall reaching a thousand. Usually a thought interrupts – a thought of a heart monitor, a thought of her beat-less pulse. Sometimes not though. Sometimes I successfully return to oneness (oneness of breath). I can recall only once where I released my breath completely – where I experienced what seemed like pure sensation. That was the last time. I could hear the woman next to me in the Manhattan meditation studio breathing. I had walked in after she had started meditating. I’ve recently started doing my meditations in public, with other people because I feel so alone at home. I know I must let go of my attachment to grief, but I still can’t. Ever since I lost Celeste, I’ve felt so alone. Her face flooded into my consciousness and I couldn’t let the thought pass like the heart monitor I remember from 60-breaths ago. I could hear Celeste speaking as if her ghost was inside me, possessing me – inviting my spirit to tango. “Oh, dear, my dear, dear, dear…” her last words repeated over and over, “My darling dear…” ‘My darling dear…’ Those were her last words – the last words her breath would carry. What makes the last so final? The Last Samurai, The Last Supper, The Last Waltz – there’s something lasting about the last you might say. Everyone remembers the last time they made love to their soul mate. There’s also something deceptive about the last because no one really knows if an experience is really 161

the last or not. People tend to hope for another time to come, another new experience to manifest. Rarely do people know if a kiss will be their last kiss. They think they’ll kiss again and again before kissing death. Have you ever noticed how breath rhymes with death, but in death there’s no breath. The “d” sure carries some damn… Wait…live each day like it’s your last! Sounds like a bumper sticker from the last millennium. I can tell my focus isn’t really lasting in this meditation today. I open my eyes and look at the new photo of my murdered teacher. How could someone kill such a man who exuded so much compassion, so much – faith – it wasn’t as if he was sleeping with his students and an angry spouse found out or something. At least there’d be some rhyme for reason, not like ‘breath’ and ‘death.’ Stupid psycho serial killer with some major resentment toward his parochial childhood days had to take away one of the gentlest souls the world had been blessed to know. I’ve heard that life happens to everyone, but there are a few people who come along that happen to life. My teacher happened to life. I knew I had to catch a train to Union Square and make it to the Barnes and Noble in time to meet a friend. The woman who was meditating when I arrived was still meditating. It kills me how some people can be so Zen-like about meditation. She was beautiful – not like Celeste – but beautiful. The light touched the lines on her face in a way I remembered the light touching the lines on Celeste. I could trace Celeste’s face for endless hours and her words were like silk, like satin, like the lamb’s ear we once used as a Band-Aid. I heard Celeste’s voice possessing me again. I really wanted to believe her ghost would come back and haunt me, but I actually realized in meditation recently the self-centered nature of such a thought. Still, I heard her voice speaking as real as 162

passerines singing in Riverdale Park. I can hear her speaking. My darling dearâ&#x20AC;Ś

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53 My darling dear… The past few months have been really hard for me. We’ve had our ups and downs, and it always seems like we find a way to pull through whatever comes our way, but I’m not so sure we’ll make it this time… I love you, and I always will, but I think I’m finally through being in denial. As you know, I’ve been going to church a lot more lately and I know you don’t like to hear this, but I’ve been putting you in my prayers. I’ve been praying to God that He will help you and give you the guidance that you need to seek some help. It makes me really sad to say goodbye to a life that I’ve been dedicated to for the past twelve years, but there’s a point I suppose where I need to realize that this isn’t healthy for me and I need to take care of myself… I know this will all come as a surprise to you – or at least most of it will…but ever since I’ve rededicated my life to God, I’ve felt a wholeness to my being that I haven’t had in a long time. I feel centered and I feel confident, yet scared…scared of a future without you, but confident that God will provide for me as long as I give Him my trust. In my prayers, I pray that God will still keep us close and that He will do His work in your heart so that someday we might be able to revisit what we once had, but I don’t blame you if you are filled with anger towards me over this. I know that ever since you did your study abroad, we just had a sudden, unexplainable break in our spiritual views, and it’s caused tension in the relationship ever since. I know you don’t ever want to talk about it – and I don’t know what happened while you were gone that took you away from God – but it’s affected us in a very negative way. Almost like night and day…when you left, we were fine and you still prayed with me every night and thanked our Lord Jesus for the gift of life, and then when 164

you got back, you no longer believed. I’ve tried and tried to give you whatever respect that you need – that we need to make this relationship work, but as you know, I feel there have been too many times where you have not reciprocated that respect and its hurt me deeply. It’s really put me in a bad place – an unhealthy place, and I need to get out of that negative cycle. Perhaps someday you will be open to letting God touch your heart once again and maybe our paths will come together and we can pick up where we left off, but for now, I need to put God before anything else and be dedicated to doing His work every day the best that I can. In my most recent prayers, I prayed that God would show me the path that He wants me to take, and I know you are going to be upset and I know you are not going to understand why I am doing this, but I can only hope that God helps you to understand why we must go our separate ways right now. I pray that you can find it in your heart to forgive me someday. I pray that we still have memories together no matter what happens, and I pray that we can be truly happy again together in the future. I will miss you dearly. I love you forever and always, with all of my heart… Benjamin PS…Thank you for all of the wonderful time we spent together. I will try my hardest to remember the best of everything.

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54 I will try my hardest to remember the best of everything. He...she...she has a big heart – as big as the state of Florida and long like Florida too. I just can't do it anymore though. I can't keep lying to everybody. I can't keep living this double life. I love Shelby, I do, but what would my parents think? What would that nice pastor think? He was kind of cute too, but I don’t have an ice cube's chance in hell with a heartland farm boy like him. Maybe I do…no… Not only am I a bi-sexual by night – leaning more towards the homo than the hetero mind you – I have fallen crown over ankles for a Glam rock, cocktail waitress. I know what Shelbs would say. She'd say I always worry about what other people think. She’d say Miami is a place to explore boundaries and be liberated, not a place to fall into fixed categories. Shelbs is so damn liberated. I never met anyone like her and she loves God too. I asked her once what she thought about what the Bible says regarding homosexuals. Her reply was rhetorical: ‘What does it say about worshipping other gods, stealing, or adultery? It’s not one of the Ten Commandments, sweet heart, so there are worse things for a pretty girl like me to be doing…besides, God is love.’ She once went on a rant about how a lot of these homophobic, gay bashing politicking hypocrites are warmongering killers who may be against abortion, but support sending 18-year-old babies to have their heads blown off. Many have extramarital affairs with younger women, use cigars in ways God only knows, and have no problem sleeping at night with the blood of innocent Middle Eastern civilians on their hands. They essentially steal oil from other countries and then give a look of disgust when they see people like us fueling the fire of love on the street. Shelby always made a point to kiss me and hike her leg 166

up around my hip whenever a conservative in a monkey suit and power tie passed. Or she’d flirt with them like a prostitute to make them pick up their pace and scuttle away. A lot of the people that would judge Shelby and I worship many other gods than the Christian one they proclaim. Didn’t Jesus even say that many people are going to claim His name, but in the end He won’t even be able to recognize them? He won’t even know them. Homosexual or not, I have a relationship with my Savior. He loves me just the way I am. I always wished there was a Gospel account of Jesus and someone like me: there was one with a prostitute; one with a leper; one with a tax collector; one with almost every other kind of fringe dweller. There wasn’t one with a gay though – at least not that I know of. I know He would have loved us no matter what. That’s just who He was, who He is. So when Christians say that homosexuals are going to burn in hell, I wonder if they even know what they are really saying. I remember one of my friends asking me once how I can be both a Christian and gay. I told him that the God I believe in loves people beyond their sexual orientation. He loves them for their heart – He desires their heart. God is more interested in his children surrendering to Him than some backwards oppressive ideology. What if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. settled for what the status quo of the South in the 1960s told him about what it meant to be White and what it meant to be Black? I refuse to believe some WASPy version of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. On second thought: I don’t care what my parents think or what the pastor with puppy dog brown eyes thinks. I’m staying with Shelby! I’m keeping my girl, keeping my Eden. God bless punk rock baby! I am a child of the revolution!

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55 I am a child of the Revolution! The KKLL’s – The King of Kings and Lord of Lords. God said there would be fire, there would be quakes, there would be scarcity, there would be conflict, and there would be death. The world used to be such a different place – before The Fall. We used to have sports cars, superstars, and slip’n slide splash flash parties. We had decadence – handbags for every outfit and Donkey Kong in every home. We had convenience – fast food burgers, internet cafes, and Starbucks on just about every single meaningless street corner. We had greed, lust, and addiction, but no compassion – no Heart. Somewhere over the thousands of years since our great Savior once walked the Holy Land, many traded their souls for golden bowls of Sin. I wrapped my shimmering white shawl around my shoulders, the crest of the lion on my chest, the eagle on my left shoulder, and the bull on my right. After The Fall, the true nature of God’s lost children came to the surface. The Earth was covered with chaos as the blind let their rage loose on the streets. Cities were burned down, theft became rampant, and blood seemed to fill the gutters of every once civilized place. Most electronics were destroyed or became useless, weapons and ammunition replaced currency, and clean water was difficult to find. “Are you ready Brother Marx?” my friend’s voice echoed around me. I was given the responsibility of being one of the flagbearers for The King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We were making our way from Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, to Calvary of Albuquerque in New Mexico. Our journey began under the leadership of Pastor Gabriel in Norfolk, Virginia three years ago after the White House was burned to the ground and the Senate disbanded. 169

“Yes Brother Carle...” I said as I took my standard to hand. Pastor Gabriel wanted to start a Revolution of a different kind. He was in contact with several others from around the world who also gave their allegiance to The King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Their mission was to gather as many people as they could who wanted to repent and seek the Lord’s forgiveness before The Rapture. Word got out fast and our numbers grew quickly, but hardship traveled everywhere we went. Many of our followers have been killed and harassed as mercenaries and rogue militias along the way have robbed, raped, and pillaged what we have. Food is scarce and water even more so. One of the great problems that many among the founders of The King of Kings and Lord of Lords have discussed is whether or not people have joined the movement not out of faith or desire for the Lord’s blessing in the face of rapture, but instead for the limited rations of supplies that we have. Frustration has mounted as the hatred and greed of the world around us has diminished our morale, but Pastor Gabriel always reminds us during morning service that ‘our charity is an extension of God’s will’…that ‘those who take from the Lord freely and without faith will have to submit to their sins when the day of judgment comes.’ And that day is coming, oh it is coming indeed.

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56 “And ‘dat day is comin’, oh it's comin’ indeed.” My uncle Walt said as he looked over his glasses and adjusted his mesh trucker hat. “Keep oil in the lamps.” I said sarcastically. “Remain watchful. No one knows when the Prince of Darkness will pay a visit.” “If he’s payin’ you a visit, then at least he’s not lurkin’ ‘round my house botherin’ me.” Uncle Walt said with a laugh. “That Devil ain’t all knowin’ like God. People always sayin’ how the enemy lives in their lives. I just think it’s better them than me.” “Okay, Uncle Walt, whatever you say.” I replied. “I’m just sayin’ boy, the devil’s in the details.” “What is your conception of the Devil Uncle Walt? Everyone always talks about their conception of God, but not so much of what they think the Devil is.” “Read Genesis! Read Job. Damn, read Revelations son! I get the sense that he’s prolly one righteous ass dude who's disgusted with all God’s unconditional love for us lowlife maggots. Hollywood wanna dress up Bill Cosby, Al Pacino or some other dumbass superstar in a black suit. They've even given’em a sleazy moustache and a cigarette. I see the ol’ boy all dressed in white, blonde like Charlie Heston or Pauly Newman. Pair’em up with that one Stones song ya like so good.” “Uncle Walt…” I tried to interject. “He’s an angel afta all, isn't he? His tragic flaw was wantin’ to be equal to God. So ya bet he prolly think his shit don’t stink.” 171

“I guess you got a point…” I said. “I know this too, son: If ya don’t give him ya soul, he can make ya wish ya had – make him beg ya to take it. Some people don’t get how bad Job really had it. Nothin’ like being the one caught in the middle of a pissin’ contest between good and evil. When it comes right down to it, I think the Devil is just mad he can’t have it the way God does. Many of us share that in common with him, don't we?” “Maybe…” “Ya know, I wonder what he was like when he lived up there in Heaven…” Uncle Walt continued. “I wonder if he just sulked around up there with his future minions bitchin’ and moanin’ ‘bout how God has love for everybody. He may of even gotten wind of God’s big art project and got his little panties in a bunch ‘cause he didn’t think of such a grand ol’ scheme himself. Poor devil. That’s prolly when he started dreamin’ up a scheme of his own, but God knew all along. How could He not? That’s what makes our Devil such a remarkable creature. He knew he lost, but his pride is such that it don’t matta. Don't matta a bit. He’s just a regular Ahab trying ta strangle that white whale. It don’t matta a bit that he's lost. He’s like a little boy sad because he didn’t get what he want fo' Christmas. Ol’ Lucy wants control, that's it. But, Lucy just ain’t got it like that, now does he? Only God do. I hope he don't hear me and come out to get me. It’s a tragic case nephew. He’s runnin’ around still botherin’ people with a resentment the size of the Milky Way, but hey…at least it ain’t me."

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57 “He’s running around bothering people with resentment the size of the Milky Way, but hey…at least it isn’t me.” My brother reiterated the line as he handed my cutlass back to me for another take. “That’s your character’s mindset. Like Jack Sparrow! Think like Jack Sparrow from those crappy Disney movies!” Really? My brother wanted me to channel my inner Pirates of the Caribbean for the church’s holiday play? I could just see it in the script now: ‘When you marooned me on that God-forsaken spit of land, you forgot one very important thing, mate…I’m Captain Jack Sparrow!’ Followed by: churchgoers scratch their heads and wonder where the belligerent English accent came from… “Places!” my brother shouts. Oh right! I hurry to the other end of the stage and stand behind the makeshift melon cart. The townsfolk take their places as well. “Action!” my brother calls – the sound guy in the back of the church playing some dramatic music, fading it as the villain comes onto the stage ready to harass the actors portraying the lower class. As the scene’s dialogue played itself out behind me, I adjusted my belt. Did Jack Sparrow wear a belt in those movies? Surely he did…although surely he wouldn’t be caught dead in a church holiday play. It did make me wonder though…would Jack Sparrow ever be caught praying to God for anything? Nay, scratch that...I’m sure he would pray for rum or cheap love or gold or anything else that had to do with his own survival and materialistic needs. The real question was: would Jack Sparrow ever be caught praying to God for anybody else besides himself? No…I couldn’t see it. He’d probably look at you with his head turned sideways a bit and proclaim: ‘Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out 174

for, because-.’ “Brandon!” my brother shouted, snapping me out of my own inner Pirates of the Caribbean moment. “What are you doing?” The rest of the cast was staring at me…I had obviously missed my cue. “Sorry…” I said, trying to get Jack Sparrow’s filthy face out of my mind. “Places…” my brother shook his head. The townsfolk readjusted so the scene was right. “…aaaaand action!” Once again, dialogue played itself out behind me. The villain was going to come onto the stage and make a mess of the townsfolk and the way they lived. Afterwards, I was to become the townsfolk’s appointed hero as their suffering and sadness brings revelation within my character. Speaking of heroes and villains…now that I think of it, I don’t really know which one Jack Sparrow is supposed to be. I mean, if he existed in our world today, he’d probably be one of those guys you see slumped over the counter at a sports bar…I guess that’s not really a hero. But what exactly makes a real-life hero? I mean, we can act like them all we want…I can try to follow the teachings of Jesus as best as I can, but does that make me a hero? Do we even have heroes in the worl-… “Brandon!” I heard my brother shout…oh no, I must’ve missed my cue again. “Are you even paying attention?” The cast was looking at me, hoping that I would just remember my cue so that we could all go home for the day and put on our real superhero capes. “You think this wise, boy? Crossing blades with a pirate?” I said in front of everybody – they stared at me goose-goggled. “Let’s do it one more time…” My brother looked at me with tempered eyes. "Places..."

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he said with an undertone of irritation. I needed Jack Sparrow to get out of my head.

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58 I needed Jack Sparrow to get out of my head. Everywhere I turned there was Johnny Depp: as the Mad Hatter; as Edward Scissor hands; as some wannabe indie rocker in London. Honestly, I've kind of moved on from the whole Batman Tim Burton and Robin Johnny Depp thing. I snatched up the copy of Vanity Fair sitting there bearing pretty boy Johnny’s face while I waited for the hair stylist to call my name. I read about the Quaids and how they were scared of being targets of a “star-whacker.” Wouldn’t that be something if there were killers out there aiming for the stars? My own wit never ceased to amaze me. Killers aiming for the stars… The chanting from Jesus Christ Superstar – Crucify him! Crucify him! – barraged between my ears all of a sudden. I started thinking about how some people want to blame the Jews for killing Jesus and are all anti-Semitic about it. What’s up with that? We didn’t kill Jesus. The Romans didn’t kill him either – no matter how dirty or clean Pilates hands were. Judas didn’t even kill him, despite the betrayal. God killed him – simple and plain. God allowed his one and only Son to be killed. That’s how I’d see it if I were a Christian. As a follower of Christ – a disciple if you will – I have a tough time with the notion of being a Jew and a Christian. After all, my Lord and Rabbi was a Jew. I’m trying to live a life that imitates His life, so I spend a lot of time reading the Torah and the many commentaries of the ancient rabbinical teachers. It always amuses me when people want to get real literal with what the Bible says in an English translation. Don’t get me wrong…I believe it’s the inspired Word of God as much as the next knee to the carpet believer. However, don’t 177

start parsing Anglo-Saxon sentences with me. I beg of thee… For me it all comes down to one word, a word that’s not even really translatable into the English language. It all comes down to ‫ חסד‬or chesed or “loving-kindness”. That’s the closest our good, mutant, Latin tongue can render. For me, chesed explains everything. It explains why the God of the Old Testament got so angry and obliterated whole towns like Sodom and Gomorrah. He loved us so much he wasn’t going to let us keep playing ourselves. My Abba can only take watching me screw up so long. He’s not the type to give me all the rope I need to hang myself. He doesn’t want me to hang. He wants me to use the rope to make a swing. He wants me to swing from the rope and jump in and out of the lake of life. That’s what I believe. So I get a little upset when the stinging White AngloSaxon Protestant dares to call me a completed Jew. As if I needed their Latinized gibber jabber to tell me what I can read in Isaiah’s plain Hebrew. I know the Lion. I know the Lamb. It so happens that we believe in the same Lamb, but not because a slave-stained New Testament says so. And it just so happens that Jews who don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah are praying to the same Abba as I pray to, are they not? I know Christ came as a bridge for me to be right with Abba. He came, He died, and He rose again so I could live. Live in this moment free from the bondage of any man-made law – religious or otherwise. He teaches me how to live by grace and how to express chesed into the world. Though I find myself still getting angry at these selfrighteous people from all bents that try to sell me their take on who Jesus was and who He still is. Only reason Peter got it right was because the Holy Spirit told him what to say. I remember these guys at a restaurant asking me if I had Jesus and I told them quite matter-of-factly that I did not. I told them that I really think He has me. 178

People who say they know Jesus and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any doubts about their faith scare me. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure-fire certain that Jesus is somewhere right now rolling over at the right hand of the Almighty wondering how on earth these so-called Christians fell so far off the beam. Most of the time I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get too upset over these things, but sitting here in this chichi styling salon that my girlfriend recommended, holding this God-forsaken issue of Vanity Fair, I could feel anger physically welling up inside me. I quietly said a prayer and asked for peace.

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59 I quietly said a prayer and asked for peace. As if mortars and grenades flew through my mind. From all different walks of life – from Walmart door greeters to business executives and CEOs. From charity work with welfare patients to thousand-dollar sessions with the VP of a famous chain restaurant. Some days, it was just too much. I just needed a second to get some peace of mind. I needed a second to get away from the cannon balls, ninja stars, and cruise missiles that laid waste to the world we live in. That’s what I always tell patients…that everybody is always out to arm themselves against the world, and the figurative weapons you carry – the real power you have – is in your heart and your mind. It’s in the agency that you take in your own life. Some people have baseball bats and bare fists, while others have submachine guns, lightsabers, and laser beams. Some people have clumsy steel shields while others gain force fields. It just depends on how you choose to live your life. You wanna be a banger with felonies chained to your ankles, or the next President of the United States? You want to carry a crowbar, or do you want to wield a magic wand made of phoenix tail feathers? Do you want a smoke bomb, or an atomic bomb? A lot of people make excuses…but I’m poor…I’m not white…I can’t get out of a gang…I can’t get a job…I can’t this, or I can’t that. Even the CEO’s and VP’s…I can’t handle the stress…I can’t bang the secretary because I have a wife…I can’t go golfing on Tuesday because I have a meeting…I thought I would be happy with all this money… My office phone rang and my hand habitually obeyed: “Yes?” “Dr. Parsons, your three o’clock is here.” The receptionist informed me. I looked at the clock and saw that it was threeten. “Alright, thanks Suzy. I’ll be down in a minute.”

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“I’ll let them know.” The receptionist hung up as I continued to hold the phone receiver in my hand. My last appointment was at five, but I probably wouldn’t get out of here until six or seven depending on how much my clients had been shot or stabbed or beaten out in the world today. I looked at the cross hanging above my office door. A lot of times, my clients ask me how to cope with their stresses – how to deal with the Terminator when they’re crippled in a wheelchair. They ask me how I do it every day. And while my therapy is based strongly in the principles of spirituality, I’m not a priest and I don’t ever want to act like one of those guys that walks around door-to-door trying to convert the unwilling. I simply ask my clients if they’ve ever been to church, or if they even believe in God. The conversation usually starts there and is followed by some ‘whys’ or ‘why-nots’. I never tell them that they should go to church or that they should believe in God, I just tell them that is what works for me. A lot of people go to church – I think – to put their weapons down for an hour or two…to just leave them at the door and feel safe for a bit. You don’t have to be on guard, you don’t have to worry about what is being said at work, or whether or not the roof on your house is going to be fixed. You don’t have to worry about if you’ll be able to pay your rent or not in a week, or if your child is doing drugs or not. You get a chance to leave all of that at the door and just breathe. Breathe for yourself, which is what so many people don’t know how to do these days. They’re always focused on – whether they know it or not – how to lay waste to the world in their own way, with whatever weapons they’ve got, or wished they had. To me, there is no greater weapon than God, because God lets you be you if that’s what you want. Too many people think they are the weapon they carry, and that’s just not true. It’s sad. They don’t know how to be any different. The phone receiver started barking angry beeps in my ear, reminding me to hang up. The clock said three-twenty. The peace of mind was nice, but it was time for me to pick up my weapons and fight the world once again... 181

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60 The peace of mind was nice, but it was time for me to pick up my weapons and fight the world once again or just surrender. I’ve heard it said by many that surrender is simply joining the winning side. No matter how strong a cup of pain may seem, no matter how badly I want it to pass over me, I’ve never found retaliation of any kind to be the way. A smile dulls ten thousand swords. A random act of kindness suffocates the cruelest of the cruel with a mushrooming wall of heat and sound. Love is stronger than a bomb, friend. Love is stronger than a tank. So I guess I’m going to just stick to my guns and continue to end this twisted relationship with myself. I’m going to drop all my weapons of mass defensiveness and walk out on the old me with hands outstretched to the sky. The grips of guilt, the shackles of shame, the arrest of addiction, and all my sexually immoral, haughty halters will fetter me no more. I’ll behead the reign of resentment, dishonesty, selfishness, and fear sitting on their throne. I’ve tried fighting fire with fire. I’ve played musical chairs with sin for as long as I’ve breathed. I’ve pulled myself up by my bootstraps – only to rip the bootstraps from my feet. I’ve suited up and showed up with a fully loaded tommy gun ready to dance with the devil in the sun. I’ve fended off the devils of this world my whole life – only to find that that was what they wanted. I believed the lie that I must fight. Why is the lie so charming? Only spirit can conquer spirit. Spiritual warfare cannot be won fighting with earthly weapons. But I had to show this world who I was and who they were up against. My will to mastery once had razor sharp horns and my halo once burned bright like a morning star. You might hear that the spiritual battles are fought between a person and a Person, between a person and 183

Nature, between a person and Good, between a person and Evil, and between a person and their Self. I think the battle between a person and their Self takes the most lives. Some people find a niche for themselves, find likeminded family and friends, and find a way to not get tangled in their relationships with others. Of course, this is not always the case. You hear the stories of the men and women who challenge nature by summiting a 14,000-foot peak, you also hear the stories of the people who don’t come back from those trips. You read of men like Jacob wrestling with God and you extend metaphors of how many times in your life you wrestled with doubt and tenets of your faith. You hear people blame the accuser or the enemy for every little thing like bringing the dizzy denizens of drugs and alcohol into their family’s home. What I hear less of, though, are those who proclaim a daily death to themselves, who die unto themselves for the sake of love and love alone. The ones who go willingly and let the world do what the world will do with all her whips and mockery. They slowly suffocate in the reality of love itself. Love is a tricky little word though. We see it in flashes, in a quick glance, or a flicker in an eye, in fleeting glimpses of sunshine. We define it. And then it baffles us again with new definition. Love is a paradox and it has the power to explode a human heart, rip it into ribbons, and sew it back again. Love is patient, love is kind, love does not boast – you know the verse. We all do. You hear it at weddings. I felt the tear fall from my eye when my little girl said, “I do.” Tears are tears. I watched my beloved become woven to another man on that Saturday in early September. He became my best friend in this post 9-11 world. Anger used to burn up inside me in the years after I lost my daughter in the towers, but that angry person is dead today and today I only burn for love. I’ve learned to die to myself for love. I am furious for love. I even get angry for love.

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I got so angry one day at my coworkers who were badwrapping perfectly good-hearted and devote Muslims by calling them terrorists. Anger burned in my soul.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS: MD Shoatzycoatl was born in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1983. He earned his Bachelors and Masters Degrees in English from Colorado State University in 2006 and 2010 respectively. He is a teacher, writer, and independent filmmaker and has published another novel titled World Train: Beginning (2010). Adam Mackie was born in Anchorage, Alaska in 1980. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in journalism and public communication and philosophy in 2004 from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Mackie received a Master of Arts in English (with a concentration in education) in 2011 from Colorado State University. He is a poet, teacher, writer, and researcher. In 2011, Mackie published a print-based and digital textbook titled A New Literacies Dictionary: Primer for the Twenty-first Century Learner (http://wac.colostate.edu/books/mackie/). Mackie lives in Colorado with his wife and their son.

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