Thoughts at the End of February Melissa Hamilton

Melissa Hamilton Thoughts at the End of February

A piece of crumbled paper thrown from the passenger side of an oncoming car has more value than me.

On the drive home, silence stretches itself out like a lazy cat on a warm radiator. You are the clinking coins in my pocket; the tea I bring up to my lips; the eyes that face forward even at red lights. Eventually, I speak of escape – my voice, timid and low, crawling over Kerouac lyrics set to country melodies. You are listening, as always: Eyes averted, yet mind open. I babble indiscreetly, foolishly rambling through thoughts of a locale where fatigue is cured. This place does not exist though. You cannot forget the things you once loved. There is enough sorrow in me to fill all these winter potholes.

As the chipped away asphalt rises to meet my mouth, sweetness settles in, for just a moment, in the form of a great oak tree and then leaves. Soon, is the click of the seatbelt undone – your hands fidgeting with bags (have I trapped you in here?). I reach out to touch your fingers, only to find lukewarm memories, untouched and unfulfilled.

But you, you are the parts I want to remember. A body retreating, a black pea coat with toggles a pair of casual grey slacks. You: simple and complex. Wind full of ashes, powder cinders of desire, soot in my mouth. You: A tree of Christmas lights that flames all year long. Small parts die, yet the rest, beautiful and daunting, remain.

The Message M.J. Iuppa

Morning beach, empty and still–hard-packed sand full of bird tracks tracing an unconscious stream of details before sunlight, before water ripples a shiver of waves over its perfect script. Few see the message etched by so many barbed feet–patterns of flight soaring high and low on an ancient map that melts in the sudden sweep of water’s reach, taking whatever needs to be found with it.

Steve Wheat Translating Silence

When you spend your life bowing, you find solace in the dirt. In time Cherry Blossoms become clouds. The way the petals fall, like rivulets, coloring in the concrete, is more beautiful than the unbroken balls of pink and white that grow for two weeks, along the street. A man named Kobi has spent his life sweeping debris from a gas station tarmac. His art lies in removing color from the canvas. When his brush can not dislodge a petal, he bends down, and picks it up with his hands. He has been sweeping the love from his life for forty years, smiling at passersby, with his cigarette stained teeth. When the area of his watch, is lulled back into black slumber by the bristles, he sits on a stool and waits for a passing truck, or a meandering breeze. Satisfied at the lowest levels, he’s become a voyeur, his mind an attic, where memories of youth hide themselves in blankets of dust. He learns about music, from the open windows of cars at his red light, he learns fashion from the catwalk of concrete, paved near the high school. He drinks life from a leaking cup, which he refills while waiting for the rain.

Joseph Patrick Pascale Forbidden Welcome

The sky was the blue of an ancient painting as Johannes stood at the cliff’s edge, observing the wall that surrounded the city below. He wore a long maroon coat that blew in the mountainous wind and grasped a turtle-shell lyre. His shaggy hair swirled about an angular face lined with experience, but he surveyed his former home with the questioning eyes of a child. “They hadn’t called it Kallipolis back when I lived there,” he muttered to the aether. On the city wall, etched in stone he was listed among the banished: Poets Johannes scoffed.

*** The decree of the Consulate stated that the new age of humanity would be only be possible by entwining the species with technology. A massive robot was to be built. The engineers were working tirelessly to build it to the Consuls’ specifications. They were rarely able to leave the massive workshop of steaming copper pipes, tangles of wired circuitry, and welded abominations. Under other circumstances, the engineers might have considered the Consuls slavedrivers, but not now. The engineers believed in the world they were creating. *** A young philosopher suffered and wept. She was cursed to discover the conclusion to her metaphysical investigations too early. Johannes had pleaded with her to escape the city before it was too late. “The Consulate will not distinguish between a poet and a philosopher. You’ll be locked up with my kin just the same!” However, trapped by her great dread, the philosopher had barely listened to Johannes, refusing to move from beneath a sycamore tree. *** Regina sat on the floor of a basement cell, chewing on the feather end of a quill. Among her were the other poets who - due to reasons ranging from stubbornness to ignorance - remained in the city, waiting and wondering what would happen. Some of them sat contented to write, but others were suspicious that their captors would leave them with pen and paper, wondering if it was a trap to build evidence against them. Regina kept her faith that the Consulate would live up to the words carved on the wall: “good” and “just.” *** The young philosopher stood up from beneath the sycamore tree. “This can’t be!” she exclaimed. “Great thinkers spend their entire lives attempting to work these things out and only manage to achieve the most threadbare hints of conclusions. I must have done something wrong. I will start again from scratch and this time I will double my efforts.” *** “Are these plans right?” one engineer asked another. “The incinerator is to be built in its head?” But of course the plans were correct. He was foolish to question them. *** So it was that the philosopher’s observations, interviews and sessions of deep thought were doubled, but in a few years’ time, she found, much to her dismay, that she had reached the same conclusion that she had originally. For months afterward, scarcely anything but wine touched her tongue as she attempted to turn off her brain, but it would not stay quiet: she knew. *** Johannes strummed a few chords on his lyre while he recited the stanza that had come to him earlier. He sang it a second time, changing a few words. His eyes didn’t move from the city walls. “If I used a poem to break out, I can use a poem to sneak in.”

*** Regina thought the guard would hit her, such was his anger that she’d not written a word. They demanded the prisoners pour their souls onto paper. It was difficult for her to imagine the vast world outside from the damp, cold floor of the cell, but she forced herself to dip the pen in ink.

*** Screaming and cursing, the philosopher smashed her wine glass on the ground and stormed out of the tavern. Out in the light of the sun, she vowed to redouble her redoubled efforts. As soon as she set out on this quest again, the depression left her. She smiled as she scribbled copious notes; laughed as her investigations grew more intricate. The philosopher was convinced that she would discover her original mistake.

*** Life wasn’t so bad - for a slave. Regina spent her days writing poetry, turning her anguish into words that read like lovely music. It would have been the perfect life had Johannes been with her. Yet, what would she have written about if Johannes had been at her side?

*** “The robot is malfunctioning and one of you is to blame!” the guard shouted. He ripped Regina’s poem out of her hands, but he moved on to the next prisoner after reading it. “You!” he shouted at a frail man. “This is drivel! A cliché rhyme scheme! Write better or there will be consequences!”

*** The linked chains of logical thoughts showed the philosopher that her original conclusion was the only rational truth. She read her notes over and over again, but finally she dropped the papers to the ground and had to accept it.

The philosopher cried and became drunk. In her carelessness, it was only a matter of time until officers found her notes. When they came for her, she didn’t bother to resist as they hauled her off to the poets’ prison. *** The head engineer had followed the decree that the robot function from literary brainslush. Each night, the officers would harvest food for the robot, and each morning, the head engineer’s most important job was to make sure that the robot was fed.

*** At midnight, a darkened alley on the outskirts of the city abruptly flooded with light, obliterating the shadows.

The Nomarch smiled at Johannes’ shocked expression as the officers placed him in shackles. “Our city needs such a talented poet as yourself. One with eyes that see the infinite.” “But poets are forbidden!” Johannes spat. “Forbidden to be citizens, yes. But our robot needs a soul.”

NAME: Michael Hayden Gray AUTOPSY NO: 07-0223

SEX: Male DATE OF AUTOPSY: August 18, 2012

RACE: White TIME OF AUTOPSY: 10:36 a.m.

AGE: 21 DOB: 11/04/1991

PROSECTORS: Carla H Brown, M.D.

Associate Medical Examiner

and

Joshua D. Pepper, M.D.

Chief Medical Examiner

FINAL PATHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSES:

I. DRAINED OF ALL BLOOD AND NO HEART AT THE CENTRE OF CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM II.DEPRESSION FOLLOWING RECENT BREAKDOWN OF LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP

Michael Hayden Gray was a 21`-year-old white male who died of failure [by complete lack of] cardiovascular system. No blood remained in the body and no conclusion can be drawn as to how it came to be absent. The manner of death is determined to be: UNDETERMINED

OFFICIALS PRESENT AT AUTOPSY:

Joshua D. Pepper, M.D.,LL.B.,M.Sc., Chief Medical Examiner; Carla H Brown, M.D., Associate Medical Examiner; Stanley Bukowski, M.D., Assistant Medical Examiner; Harold Schuler, Phd., Chief Toxicologist; Andrew J. China, M.D., Deputy Chief Medical Examiner; Joseph Melberg, Forensic Photographer; Jeremy DeLaMonde, Forensic Photographer; Irene Bay, Forensic Technician; David Gaffney, Morgue Supervisor; Spencer P Holden, M.D., Associate Medical Examiner; Detective Pete Burnham of the Hertston Police Office, Crime Scene Unit; Chief Reynolds of the Hertston Police Department and Deputy Jake Michaels of the Hertston Police Department.

The body is clad in a light blue t-shirt, which is intact, dry and clean. Denim Jean trousers, lightly soiled. A large silver band is on the left hand index finger as well as a smaller but otherwise identical band on the left hand little finger. Small silver ring through a piercing on the top of the left ear.

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:

The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished white male appearing the offered age of 21 years. The body measures 71 inches and weighs 147 pounds. The unembalmed body is well preserved and in uncharacteristically good condition. Rigor mortis is fully developed in the major muscle groups. Liver mortis is fixed and purple posteriourly except over pressure points. However, during initial examination in the emergency room, there was no rigor and lividity was at a minimum and unfixed. The skin is intact and shows no evidence of trauma and it would appear there has been no struggle or damage to the body externally which is particularly remarkable considering the state internally. The scalp hair is blonde and measures up to 5 inches in length in the frontal area as well as in the back and on top of the head. The irises are blue and the pupils are equal, each measuring 0.5 centimeter in diameter. The corneae are clear and the sclerae and conjunctivae are free of petechiae. The nasal bones are intact by palpation. The nares are patent and contain no foreign matter. The natural teeth are in good condition bar some slight yellowing from possible prescription of ventilyn for childhood asthma. The frenula are intact. The oral mucosa and tongue are free of injuries. The external ears have no injuries. There is a piercings through the top of the left ear and a 3-millimeter raised nodule where the cartilage has been broken. There are no earlobe creases. The neck is symmetrical and shows no masses or injuries. The trachea is in the midline. The shoulders are symmetrical and are free of scars. The chest is symmetrical and shows no evidence of injury. There is a tattoo of a female’s name [CENSORED] on the left hand side of the chest. The flat abdomen has no injuries. There is a flat, round scar on the lower aspect of the right hand hip approximately ½ inch in diameter. The genitalia are those of a normally developed adult male. There is no evidence of injury. The anus is unremarkable. The upper extremities are symmetrical and have no injuries. The fingernails are short, recently clipped, and clean. There is a tattoo of a barbed wire pattern on the upper left arm encircling the bicep. Another of a tribal pattern on the surface of the left forearm. A tattoo of a nautical compass is on the inside of the right arm, just above the wrist. The lower extremities are symmetrical. The toenails are short and clean. There is no edema of the legs or ankles. There is no abnormal motion of the neck, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists, the fingers, the hips and ankles. There is no bony crepitus or cutaneous crepitus present.

EVIDENCE OF INJURY:

There would appear to be no evidence of injury to the body externally.

EVIDENCE OF RECENT MEDICAL TREATMENT:

There would appear to be no medical intervention with the body.

OTHER IDENTIFYING FEATURES:

There are multiple scars and tattoos on the body.

A ½ inch flat scar is on the upper left hand side of the head just above the eyebrow. There is a flat, round scar on the lower aspect of the right hand hip approximately ½ inch in diameter. There is a cluster of multiple, parallel, linear, well-healed scars on the inside of the left forearm covered by a tattoo.

There is a females name of [CENSORED] on the left hand side of the chest. A nautical compass on the inside of the right forearm just above the wrist. A tribal pattern on the inside of the left forearm. A barbed wire pattern that encircles the left arm at the point of the middle of the bicep.

INTERNAL EXAMINATION:

The body was opened with the usual Y incision. The breast tissues, when incised, revealed no damage or stress.

BODY CAVITIES:

The muscles of the chest and abdominal wall are normal in colour and consistency. The lungs are neither hyper inflated nor atelectatic when the pleural cavities are opened. The ribs, sternum and spine exhibit no fractures. No comment can be made on mediastinum or the pericardial sac as they appear to be entirely absent. The diaphragm has no abnormality. The subcutaneous abdominal fat measures 3 centimetres in thickness at the umbilicus. The abdominal cavity is lined with glistening serosa and has no collections of free fluid. The organs are normally situated bar the heart which seems completely absent whatsoever.

The soft tissues and the strap muscles of the neck exhibit no abnormalities. The hyoid bone and the cartilages of the larynx and thyroid are intact and show no evidence of injury. The larynx and trachea are lined by smooth pink-tan mucosa, are patent and contain no foreign matter. The epiglottis and vocal cords are unremarkable. The carotid arteries and jugular veins are unremarkable.

CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM:

The heart is completely absent which is especially remarkable considering there are no obvious signs of tampering or damage to an otherwise perfectly healthy body. Parts of some of the major arteries and veins remain but are severed rather roughly in parts as though the organ itself had been ‘ripped’ or ‘torn’ out from the chest cavity with some force, however the cavity itself was in sublime condition so such a conclusion could not be drawn. Further investigation will be made.

RESPIRATORY SYSTEM:

The lungs weigh 550 grams and 500 grams, right and left, respectively. There is a small amount of subpleural anthracotic pigment within all the lobes. The pleural surfaces are free of exudates; right-sided pleural adhesions have been described above. The trachea and bronchi have smooth tan epithelium. The cut surfaces of the lungs are red-pink and have mild edema. The lung parenchyma is of the usual consistency and shows no evidence of neoplasm, consolidation, thromboemboli, fibrosis or calcification.

HEPATOBILIARY SYSTEM:

The liver weighs 2550 grams. The liver edge is somewhat blunted. The capsule is intact. The cut surfaces are red-brown and of normal consistency. There are no focal lesions. The gallbladder contains 15 milliliters of dark green bile. There are no stones. The mucosa is unremarkable. The large bile ducts are patent and non-dilated.

HEMOLYMPHATIC SYSTEM:

The thymus is not identified. The spleen weighs 310 grams. The capsule is shiny, smooth and intact. The cut surfaces are firm and moderately congested. The lymphoid tissue in the spleen is within a normal range. The lymph nodes throughout the body are not enlarged.

The tongue shows is unremarkable. The oesophagus is empty and the mucosa is unremarkable. The stomach contains an estimated 30 milliliters of thick sanguinous fluid. The gastric mucosa shows no evidence or ulceration.There is no major alteration to internal and external inspection and palpation except for a yellowish/white shiny discoloration of the mucosa. The vermiform appendix is identified. The pancreas is tan, lobulated and shows no neoplasia, calcification or hemorrhage. There are no intraluminal masses or pseudomenbrane.

UROGENITAL SYSTEM:

The kidneys are of similar size and shape and weigh 160 grams and 190 grams, right and left, respectively. The capsules are intact and strip with ease. The cortical surfaces are purplish, congested and mildly granular. The cut surfaces reveal a well-defined corticomedullary junction. There are no structural abnormalities of the medullae, calyces or pelves. The urinary bladder has approximately 0.5 milliliters of cloudy yellow urine. The mucosa is unremarkable. The genatalia is unremarkable and contains no foreign matter.

ENDOCRINE SYSTEM:

The adrenal glands have a normal configuration with the golden yellow cortices well demarcated from the underlying medullae and there is no evidence of hemorrhage. The thyroid gland is mildly fibrotic and has focally pale gray parenchyma on sectioning. The pituitary gland is within normal limits.

MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEM:

Postmortem radiographs of the body show no acute, healed or healing fractures of the head, the neck, the appendicular skeleton or the axial skeleton. The muscles are normally formed.

CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM:

The scalp has no hemorrhage or contusions. The calvarium is intact. There is no epidural, subdural or subarachnoid hemorrhage. The brain has a normal convolutional pattern and weighs 1300 grams. The meninges are clear. A separate neuropathology report is attached.

SPECIAL PROCEDURES:

No special procedures have been undertaken yet but due to the circumstances of the missing heart all options are being considered. It has been confirmed the name [CENSORED] that is tattooed on the chest is that of the deceased’s former partner whom he had separated from only recently before his death. She is also complaining of heart problems and has been taken into A & E for overnight observation.

We ran inside to touch Superman’s curl to see if it felt oily, but it felt smooth and dry, like a cardboard cutout should. Next to Superman stood Clark Kent. I wondered, out loud, why anyone would want a huge cut-out of Superman not as Superman. My stepbrother jumped into a diatribe about the importance of Clark Kent’s character. My stepdad announced that we had twenty minutes. Cardboard Superman, and cardboard man, guarded their cardboard boxes of thousands of comic books sheathed in plastic. My stepbrother began his hunt with the nearest box. I scanned the room for glitter, neon blue (my favorite color in the late 80s), or any section that didn’t resemble my stepbrother’s boring bedroom. I considered my other options in the strip mall, but a nail salon and title office held even less interest for a fourth grade girl.

Wide-eyed and practically drooling, my stepbrother flipped through comic after comic. Trailing behind him, I fingered through the boxes he left in his wake. Moments before, he meticulously smooshed McDonald’s french fries, one by one, and shoved them into his mouth. As he pulled comic books up out of the boxes, he left a greasy finger print on the plastic. It became clear that Superman wasn’t the oily one in the comic book store.

I pulled out every comic with a female character on the cover. They looked like female versions of their male counterparts, but with huge bulbous breasts, smaller utility belts, and slightly slimmer thighs. Their voluminous hair flowed upward at the roots, as if they were underwater. The outfits and hair styles varied, but the breasts were all the same. I didn’t necessarily want to read a comic book about big breasted women; that’s just how they came.

The dollar bin stood in the back of the store, next to a coffee maker that smelled like smoke. I imagined a fire leaping from the card table to the cardboard boxes of comics. Cardboard Superman and cardboard man would not be able to stop a fire. I flicked the off switch, like I’d been trained to do at home when I came across the empty coffee pot. My stepdad, who also smelled of coffee and smoke, announced that we had two more minutes to find something.

Flipping through the dollar bin, I found a comic that looked like Archie, but with all girls. They still had massive breasts, but they wore cool clothes, like leopard print mini skirts and studded leather jackets. One even had short, pink hair. Excited, I quickly turned the pages. I saw a classroom scene . . . a party . . . two people kissing in a closet. This was my comic! I ran to the counter.

A dark, goat-teed guy in a black tee-shirt rang up a Batman comic and handed it back to my stepbrother. He picked up my comic, looked at it and stopped. I waited for him to tell me that I’d made an excellent and really cool choice. I put my hands in my back pockets and shifted one hip out to get into my cool stance. I waited. He didn’t look at me. He looked at my stepdad. “Sir, is this for her? This is an adult comic.” “That’s okay.” I piped in, not yet knowing that adult is a euphemism for sex. He still didn’t look at me. “It’s uh . . . X-rated,” he said. I glanced at the comic in his hand and noticed the hard, protruding nipples on all three of the female characters. How could I have missed that? My stepdad looked at me and threw out a very wise, “Whoops!” The goat-teed guy quickly held up a real Archie comic. He finally looked at me and asked, “Is this what you were looking for?” “Yes,” I said as fast as I could. During the car ride home, I sat in the backseat and leaned the side of my head on the window. I looked over at my stepbrother’s new comic book. Batman and Catwoman posed on the cover, and Catwoman wore a skin-tight, stitched leather catsuit. I opened my new comic. It seemed to be about sandwiches and shaggy dogs. Somehow, the two girls in the comic still had the same big breasts.

My stepdad looked at us through the rear view mirror and asked, “Did you kids get what you wanted?” My stepbrother screamed “YEEES!” and waved his comic above his head. I mumbled “yes,” but it was a lie. I still wanted my first pick-- the one that took me the whole twenty minutes to find. I wanted to read about girls with pink hair and leather jackets who went to school and had boyfriends. After finding out it was about sex, I wanted to read it even more.

Natalie Sypolt Nearly Stolen

Down by the river, out onto the floating dock. You can’t see it moving, but know it is because of the loose feeling in your stomach, your legs. Mother in blue Bermuda shorts and a red tank, white canvas sneakers, white sun visor. Daddy wearing jeans and a button up, half stars/half stripes. He has found a straw hat. You are wearing a patriotic sundress and little white sandals. Your hair is in two side ponytails, tied up with curled ribbons. Today, you ate a grilled hotdog and had some jello salad. Now, you are at the river where a little carnival has been set up. Nothing special. A lemonade stand. The ice cream truck. A make shift stage where the high school band plays songs in a slow, sometimes squeaky way. This Land is Your Land. My Country ‘Tis of Thee. You know the words to some and started to sing until Mother shushed you. So you hum as your feet dangle from the dock, nearly skimming the water, but not quite. It is that time between dusk and dark, where the colors of the sunset are nearly gone, but thick dark hasn’t yet taken over. You can still see your parents, the water, but like through a shadow. When it is full dark, the fireworks will start.

There is a baby and he is your brother. He is wearing a sailor’s suit and he is fussing, noisy, his face red and pinched. Yesterday, your father smacked you across the leg because you flicked the baby on the hand. Not too hard. Just a flick when you thought no one was looking. You do not like this baby and are happy that he and your mother stayed up on the grassy bank when you and your father came out onto the dock to look at the ducks.

“Rachel,” he says. You are still mad about the swat, but don’t let on because you don’t want to push your luck. “Yes, Daddy,” you say, sweet as sugar. “Do you know why we celebrate the Fourth of July?” You are five this summer and haven’t yet started school, but you have some foggy idea of freedom. This idea mostly involves being allowed to stay up past nine, being able to watch what you want on television, and not having to ever listen to that baby’s ear-piercing cry again.

“America,” your daddy is saying, “used to belong to another country—Great Britain—and they weren’t very nice.” As he tells you the story—a long one that you stop listening to around the time he finished describing a tea party—the night grows darker and darker. The crowd is getting bigger, people pushing together. For safety, police are closing the dock and ask you all to make your ways back to the grass. Mother would have taken your hand, but Daddy just pushes you ahead, expecting you to stay right with him.

You do stay with him as you leave the dock, as you climb the metal steps back up to dry land. Here the way narrows and there is some shuffling. You’re not with him anymore, and people are shoving, and the deputy is saying, “Now please.” So you go ahead. “Wait at the top,” you hear Daddy say, and he’s not worried. You are a good girl, after all.

The band is playing The Star Spangled Banner and people are standing. You throw your hand over your heart and look for a flag, but there is none. People are crowding around you, trying to find a good place to stand. The fireworks are about to begin. People are singing along and so you do too, loud so you can hear your own voice above those around you. You don’t know most of the words, but it doesn’t matter. No one cares. Everyone is close together and singing and no one feels like a stranger.

When someone grabs your arm, you think it’s Daddy, but when you look around, you see a woman’s face looking down at you. She’s older than your mother and her hair is a blond color, darker on the top, and frizzy. She smiles, but her nails dig into your arm. You try to pull away, but she holds tight and begins to steer you through the crowed. “Hush,” she’s saying, quiet like only you could hear. “Hush now, Joannie. We’re going home.” “I’m Rachel,” you say, but don’t know if the woman hears. She’s pushing you through the crowd and no one looks down at you. Just more bodies passing through. You think to scream, but can’t make a sound come.

The lights are all cut and you hear the boom as the first firework explodes into the sky. You can’t see because the woman is still guiding you away from the river, but you try to look back. You can only see the colored lights reflected in the upturned faces. More fireworks go up, BOOM!, and you can feel it through the ground, up into your body.

There is screaming that might be your father, but the fireworks and the noise from the crowd muffle everything, so you can’t be sure if someone is coming after you. Ahead, you see where the crowd breaks and there is an open space before the parking lots. You’d come a long way, then, and you could somehow feel the old you getting further and further away, left on the wobbly deck. The invisible thread connecting you to your mother, father, that baby, gets stretched tighter and tighter, is about to snap.

Then, you are falling and the woman is falling, hard, on top of you. Above, there is scuffling. As you fell, a sound escaped from the woman—an “Uh” like the air being knocked out of her. Your face is into the ground, tasting and smelling wet dirt that had been trampled under all those feet heading to the river. With the face of dirt and the woman’s heavy weight on top of you, you can’t breathe. Panic. You begin to struggle.

“Shhh, shhh,” the woman says, close to your ear. “Shhh,” and you realize that she’s trying to push you harder into the ground. Finally, you feel her weight lessen as someone is peeling her away, and someone else grabs your hands, drags you up from the mud. It is Daddy and he’s holding you up off the ground, shaking you. You start to cry.

After that, things become confusing. You see the woman pulled away, still reaching for you. She is wearing a red tank top with tiny straps that have fallen from her shoulders, showing her bare chest. She is skinny, tired looking, sad. You almost reach for her. No one has ever wanted you so much.

You tell the story again and again—being separated, grabbed. No one asks you why you didn’t try harder to get away. Mother hugs you and hugs you. Daddy stares at you and slowly shakes his head, then rubs his hands on his face.

Kidnapped. Nearly stolen. Sometimes you think about that woman and how she chose you. You. Not some other girl. Not your baby brother. No one had ever wanted you so much. You grow up, hoping to find someone who will. Someone who will chose you, run with you, give up everything—freedom—for you. No one talks about that Fourth of July and when you ask Mother, years later as you’re putting your own baby into his stroller to take down to the fireworks at the river, she says, “Oh, Rachel. You’re always so dramatic.”

“What do you mean? I was kidnapped,” you say, maybe the first time you’ve ever said those exact words to her. “Kidnapped!” Mother laughs and kisses your baby on the head. He is wearing a sailor suit and tiny red canvas sneakers. “That poor woman wouldn’t have gotten out of the parking lot. She was out of her head.”

That poor woman? You’d always assumed that your parents hated the woman for what she’d done, but had they actually felt sorry for her, all these years? “What do you mean?” you ask again. “Didn’t you know? She’d lost her daughter just a couple weeks before. A car accident, I think. It’s been so long ago now. Anyway, she thought you were her daughter. She was crazy from the grief. Why are you bringing this up? I haven’t thought about that for years.”

“That changed my life,” you say, feeling defeated, blind, confused. Mother makes an exasperated “Oh, please,” sound. “I’m surprised you even remember it,” she says. “You were only six.” “I was five,” you say. She’s fussing with the baby, not listening to you anymore. She is done. “We’ll take the baby to see the fireworks. Why don’t you stay here and rest?” she says. You think of someone stealing him, some desperate woman who looks something like you and something like that skinny, frail thing from years ago. Someone who needs him, pushing him fast through the crowd.

Duncan B. Barlow Like a Mother, Like a Father

His hand had become shaky like his father’s and his mind frail like his mother’s. He often times found himself bedridden with migraines, his forehead damp, hands rattling beneath the sheets. Even if he could hold a knife between his fingers, he’d be unable to harness his pain for creative inspiration. He’d carve, but never the way he’d done it before. Never with precision. No, he’d sit erect, shaking just as he was now, destroying everything he attempted. Sitting upright made his head spin, the room grow unbearably loud, its walls creaking, its floorboards expanding and contracting. He thought of his mother, locked away in her bedroom on those hot summer days. He at the door begging to go to the pool. She, too weak to reply, crying at the slightest racket or tree branch that happened to scrape against the house. When he was old enough, she made him hack the trees away. Reduce them to ugly stumps that punctuated the side-yard like creek rocks. But not quite. Not so lovely. Creek rocks shone beneath the current like precious stones, but the tree stumps looked only like scars, like something terrible had happened to the world.

A bee found its way into the screen. It beat against the window trying desperately to free itself from that space. Evan visualized the wings. He heard every flap of those translucent appendages. Their sound ran atop his mind like an old phonograph needle. Deep and tearing. He pulled a damp cloth to his head. Renegade drops fell onto the sheet as his hand trembled. They stung at him and he knew the soft flesh of his underbelly would find them again when he shifted.

When he was fifteen, he came down with influenza. The symptoms came upon him suddenly. He was walking home and a drop of water fell from an air-conditioner, striking him on the bridge of his nose. His body, filled with fever, jerked against the cold, sending him to the ground in a strange fit. By the time he made it home, he was slick with perspiration, his shirt damp with vomit. To spend the fever, his father stripped him of his clothes and rubbed his flesh with isopropyl alcohol.

The migraines never came with fever, yet there was something soothing about placing a damp cloth over his forehead and eyes. A small bead of sweat ran down from his armpit and tickled his back. Evan shifted against the mattress to relieve the itch. Somewhere in the distance a car backfired. The pop smashed inside his skull. Evan gathered his pillows around his head as if this would stop the tremor of sound from reverberating inside him. He felt the muscles in his hands quiver and he released his grip.

He was twenty when his father told him that his shaking hands were hereditary. He stared at the old man for a moment. Tracing the hard crease that ran along his cheek. I’m a woodworker, Evan remarked. Yes, his father replied. You’ve thought to tell me this now? His father smiled and answered, I didn’t want to discourage you from a hobby that brought you so much joy. The reply cut sideways. Hacking away at a stubborn knot inside his heart. Evan stared at his hands that day and for many days after, wondering when they’d begin to shake. But he forgot about it, until one day, while accenting the delicate curve of a cherub’s eye, his hand shook and gave the angel a strange summit above its pupil. He should’ve destroyed the piece, but sold it anyway. Sometimes the cherub appeared in his dreams. It taunted him. Always when he needed it least. When he needed confidence.

Eventually his hands grew tired and he released the pillow. A high frequency whine haunted him. He imagined John Cage sitting in a sound proof room in Harvard listening to his nervous system. But Evan’s system didn’t inspire him; it tormented him. Rang along his spine, between his ears, the center of his teeth. It made him vomit when the migraine was at its peak. He dreamt of digging inside himself and pulling the tangled sensory cables from his spine. Holding them high in the air as they dripped gore upon the ground. It surprised him, when he imagined this, that he was always shirtless and wearing a feathered headdress.

It was his health that prevented him from labor of any variety. With his woodworking shop closed, he bounced between part-time jobs, all of which praised his work ethic, until he fell ill again. At first, they were lenient, saying such things happen, but as the seasons changed and the migraines became more frequent, his employers grew impatient and released him. Since there was no proper diagnosis for his illness, outside aid was limited and as a result, Evan moved from home to home. He learned not to unpack, so he lay among a sea of boxes, tools, and prescription bottles, sweating and twisting in his sheets.

He thought of his first job as a ditch digger. The long summer hours with the sun crushing the crown of his skull. The very memory of it hurt, sent a painful rattle along the length of him. Suddenly, the familiar weightlessness overtook him, his mouth tingled with saliva, and he found himself once again, against the John, body a knot with vomiting.

Still, through it all, the years of riding the bed for weeks on end, he managed to find love. Maria, an early admirer of his woodwork, an aspiring student at an arts college in Oregon, had pursed him with relentless devotion. When he gave up carving, she encouraged him to move on. When he awoke speaking of angry cherubs, she soothed him back to sleep. Yet, even she found it difficult to bear the weight of his illness. At first she would tiptoe around the home, trying not to make a sound. She tried to eat soft foods as even the slight crunch of potato crisps caused Evan to moan. By the second year, she no longer tried. It was as she’d completely forgotten about it. He’d lie in bed, stripped to his shorts, and she’d bang pots while cleaning, hold long phone calls in the living room, sing in the shower.

In his well hours, he didn’t blame her. But in the grip of the thing, he grew to hate her. Pray that the hand of God would crush her throat mid song. Yet, even with his personality changes, they stuck together. Fighting and apologizing until she’d finally grew weary and threatened to leave.

Somewhere in the building, a tenant took a shower. The water flowing through the pipes cut into him as if scroll blades tearing through his veins, which revealed themselves in purple serpentine ropes as they throbbed on his temples. He sat up, palms pressed against his skull, and waited for the room to quit spinning. He stepped to his toolbox and knelt beside it. His knees claggy against the wood floor. Evan pulled his old roughout from the tray. It was the first knife he’d ever bought. The small blade was cool against his forehead. He palmed it and crawled back into bed, where he sat curled against a pillow, the knife like a cooling stone in his hands.

Maria came home and shuffled around the living room. She called his name a couple times. Four syllables ricocheted in his head, two sharp, two dull, both tearing a path through the tender matter of his brain. Evan moaned; at least he thought he moaned, but was never too sure as even forming a complete thought was painful. When his father left his mother, she sat against the frame of their marriage bed, resting her brow against the cool brass. She had a bottle of vodka tucked between her knees, the condensation from the freezer still frosting the glass. She didn’t speak a word, just closed her eyes and mouthed, please. Evan, who had been rifling through his father’s suit pockets for change, watched his mother cry from the closet, a wand of summer light barely making it through the suits to highlight his eye. He mouthed please to himself as Maria banged things in the other room.

She called for him a third time, and when he couldn’t muster the strength to reply, she said they needed to talk and that she’d return. The thick wooden door crashed against the frame and she was gone. The clap of it a palm shell blossoming in the darkness behind his eyelids. As they grew dim, he felt as if his eyes were bleeding. Although he knew better, he checked them only to find tears. He looked at the moisture on his fingertips. Thought of his father crying alone in his apartment. After he left. After his mother’s accident. Seeing him cry was strange. Fifteen years and that was the first time Evan had seen it. At the time it had seemed as if his father was speaking a secret language. A tongue that he used only in private. Evan wanted to walk inside and hug his father, but that seemed even stranger than watching him cry. He didn’t cry at the funeral and Evan did his best to do the same. It was, after all, what men in his family did. Not cry. The tears vanished from the pads of his fingers. And suddenly, it was as if it had never occurred.

Evan rolled to his right, the roughout pricking him slightly between the ribs. Maria would be home soon. They’d talk. She’d leave. He didn’t have to guess. It was in her voice and he knew that once she’d made up her mind, there was no going back. She’d decided she’d have him, and despite his best intentions, she wouldn’t stop. For months he dreamt of her, afraid of what he might bring upon her. She surprised him with lunch when he was working in his studio. Dinner when he’d fallen asleep, drunk on his porch. When he finally tendered his resignation at the school, she appeared at his door, doused with rain, saying he had no choice then but to be with her. And so he was.

Evan would return to microwave dinners, whisky for breakfast, a slice of pizza for lunch. He’d moan away his days beneath the burden of his head and drink away his nights until he was sick enough that he’d pass out. It was the life he’d had before they met, only more. More of everything. He knew himself well enough to expect this. He sat up in bed, again, the world spinning around him. The floor vanishing beneath. He was bad with goodbyes.

How long had it been since he’d visited his mother’s grave? Twenty years, perhaps more? He’d never looked down as they lowered her into the dirt. Could not bring himself to peer into the coffin during the visitation. His father encouraged him to say goodbye to her. He knew it’d do no good. Her ears were beyond reception. Filled with the shadows of death. He could, however, see the peach Clover Whimsey they’d fastened atop her head, the diamond lace hanging over her forehead. He always found it strange that she’d be buried in a hat. Some nights, when he wasn’t visited by the cherubs, he was visited by his mother, always in a peach hat. He now remembered it more than her face.

Evan tugged at the shades. The sunlight came upon him like a mouth, chewing his head into pieces. His hands shook wildly. He steadied the roughout as best he could. Pressed it against his wrist. The skin beside the tendon puckered. At first he felt nothing, then a faint prick. He pulled it away and opened his eyes. They watered and he closed them again. How long had he been in bed this time? Two weeks, three? It was impossible to tell anymore. With Maria staying at her mother’s now, he had no way to decipher for one day’s end and another’s beginning. Perhaps the world had ended and he was the only one left. No, he thought, Maria was just here.

Pressing the blade against his wrist again, he thought of his father. Hollowed out by age. Dying with a machine hooked to him. The beeping too loud for Evan to take. Did his father know that Evan wasn’t there when he passed? What did it matter anyway? Evan wouldn’t have said goodbye, even if he could. A small dot of blood surfaced beneath the blade. Evan pulled the silver away and smeared the crimson circle down toward his elbow until there was no trace of it. Moments later another began to surface.

He pulled the blade to his mouth and tasted it, but could not tell if the metallic flavor was steel or blood. In any event, the sharp bite of it made his stomach turn. Tempted to lie back down, Evan rested an elbow against the rickety mattress. A spring dug hard into his flesh so he righted himself and pressed his forehead against the glass, which was surprisingly cool. What was left? An unfinished room filled with boxes of a life he no longer lived. A mattress he’d lugged with him for twenty years. A framed photograph of crow resting atop a mailbox. With Maria gone, the room was just that, a room. Evan leaned back and pressed the blade once more into his flesh. He felt it pierce and then tear as he began to push it away from his palm. Behind him he heard Maria’s voice. She’d managed to come home without a sound, or maybe she had made a sound but he was too lost in his thoughts to have heard. She called his name. Evan didn’t turn to face her. He pushed again. He was carving and something about it felt right. Maria put her hand on his shoulder. Evan closed his eyes. There was a strange silence in the room and then Maria began to cry.

Donna Girouard Vincie

The late day sun beat down on my head as I played in the side yard with Pepper, my new Fox Terrier puppy. Or maybe I colored in one of my many coloring books, curled up on the cool cement of the back stoop. Perhaps my mother had carried out my spring horse for me to ride. My play options seemed endless the summer I turned five.

I remember how still the summer air could be, and other than the constant droning of the bees in the privets, silent, so that when a noise occurred it echoed off the houses. I could hear the footsteps along the sidewalk even before he came into view from around the corner of my house, but I waited to make sure.

As soon as he appeared, wearing the matching dark green shirt and pants from his shift at the Rubber Shop, I left the dog, the coloring book, the spring horse and ran to him. He smiled as I approached.

“Hi, Donna.” “Hi, Vincie.” I slipped my tiny hand into his worn, calloused hand, clean but slightly stained from trimming the excess off the black rubber heels on the assembly line at the factory. As I talked about whatever came into my head, we leisurely walked up the sidewalk, past the driveway and the back yard, to the far edge of the privets. When older, I walked with Vincie all the way up the street to the Fat Tree, but at five years old, not yet in school, my boundary was at the end of our yard. When I was younger than five, I could walk with him only to the far edge of the driveway, where the privets began, but I don’t remember that, just as I don’t remember the day I first met Vincie.

Vincie Kizzle grew up in a middle-class two-parent household, the youngest of five children. When he was old enough, he got a job as a cutter for H. H. Browne, a shoe manufacturer located within walking distance of his home, and became a valued employee: dependable, quiet, and skilled at his job. After his siblings moved out and his parents died, Vincie remained in the family home on Willow Street. A respected and well-liked member of the community, young Vincie slicked back his curly hair and donned a dark suit and tie to attend the seven o’clock Mass at St. Joseph’s Church every Sunday morning. Often he could be seen tending his fruit trees or doing yard work on a typical Saturday afternoon. He lived simply, by choice rather than economic necessity, owning no car, telephone or fancy clothes. Despite being pleasant and good-natured, Vincie rarely socialized and never dated.

When H. H. Browne moved its factory to Worcester, a city forty five miles away, Vincie did not follow as many other employees did. Comfortable and satisfied with his simple, predictable life, he instead appeared at Quaboug Rubber Company, a rubber sole and heel manufacturer and the only other major industry in town and applied for a job. His reputation in the small town of North Brookfield as a conscientious employee got him hired on the spot to trim heels.

Each day after his shift, no matter what the weather, Vincie left the Rubber Shop, walked east up School Street, turned north at the railroad depot onto Forest Street, then headed east onto Willow toward his tiny yellow clapboard Cape with the sagging front porch. The walk was a short one that led him past three of North Brookfield’s public drinking establishments.

About half way up Forest Street, The Knights of Columbus Hall sprawled across its double lot, a haven for the drinker who liked to play cards – except on Sunday nights when it converted to a Bingo Hall and an occasional Saturday when, for a fee, it served as a reception hall. On the other side of the street, only a few yards north next to an overgrown empty lot, squatted The American Legion Hall, a favorite with the older crowd and out-of-towners as the closest thing North had to a pool hall. Its former storefront window may have been boarded up, but its door was always open, literally in the summertime, being its only source of ventilation. One block before the end of Forest Street, wedged between two tenements and nestled farther back from the road, hid Hart’s Café, the almost exclusively male local hangout whose clientele consisted primarily of married, middle-aged factory workers and married retired factory workers.

Harte’s had been around since the days when Bob Kelley drove Mr. Bush’s taxi-team of horses from the depot, up Forest Street and all the way out of town to deliver tourists and vacationers to the Barre Hotel. Of the three drinking establishments, Hart’s was the favorite stopping off place for the Rubber Shop crowd immediately after the first shift, probably because it was the only one that served food. Vincie, who was passing right by anyway, soon fell into the habit of shooting the breeze over a few beers with the guys each weekday afternoon.

According to my mother, I was not quite four – too young to be playing outside unsupervised – when Vincie first caught my attention as he passed by our house on his way home from work and Harte’s. My mother always spoke: “Hi, Vincie” – nothing more. He would then answer in his gentle voice, “Hi, Polly” and continue on his way. Evidently, after solemnly observing this interaction a few times, I began to imitate my mother’s greeting, separately though, so that I would receive my own response. Ordinarily, I could be counted on to hide behind her when she spoke to strangers, and even to some of the neighbors. However, one day, after Vincie appeared and greetings were exchanged, I surprised my mother by suddenly turning to her and asking for permission to walk with Vincie on the sidewalk to the edge of the privet hedge that bordered the backyard. Permission granted, I trotted to catch up with Vincie and slipped my hand into his. He smiled indulgently at my non-stop prattle as the two of us walked to the far end of the backyard, my amazed mother watching from the porch.

I have no idea what it was about Vincie that drew me to him because I don’t remember a time before our almost daily walks. I do know that once he and I connected, only the stormiest weather kept me inside before supper on weekdays. As the sun began its descent and the mouth-watering aroma of stews and roasts pervaded the air of Little Canada, I would resume my post at the edge of the side yard closest to the street so that, by peeking around my house, I could spot Vincie almost from the moment he emerged from Hart’s. I then waited, silent though practically dancing with impatience, pig tails bobbing, until he crossed the intersection and stepped onto the curb, whereupon I took his hand, and we proceeded along the sidewalk while I yakked about whatever events had transpired in my life since our last meeting. Occasionally I waited to no avail; supper would be ready and my mother calling before Vincie had passed.

One Friday afternoon, supper was late, and as I watched from my post, Vincie suddenly appeared from Harte’s, not with his familiar relaxed gait, but with a jerky, irregular shuffle, his head lowered. For every few steps forward, he faltered, swayed unsteadily, staggered backwards a step or two, then lurched forward again. As he neared the spot where I stood watching, Vincie, without once raising his eyes, crossed over to the other side of the street to continue his precarious trek homeward. Disappointed and confused, I remember glancing over my shoulder at my mother who had just emerged from the house, then turning back. No greetings were exchanged, no questions asked, no explanations offered. Once Vincie passed out of sight, I followed my mother into the house.

Vincie’s strange behavior continued to bother me over the weekend. I knew what having too much to drink looked like because just recently I had witnessed an evening when my parents had been talked into “a couple of high balls” at the Balchunas’ house across the street and had returned home slightly drunk and very sick, my father in the downstairs bathroom, my mother in the one upstairs. I also knew what Harte’s was and why people went there. What I couldn’t understand was why Vincie had crossed to the other side of the street and not spoken or even looked at me. My mother’s explanation, when I finally asked, was that Vincie probably felt too sick and perhaps a little embarrassed for me to see him that way. She said he had acted like a gentleman and that my feelings should not be hurt. Monday afternoon I returned to my post.

As the weeks went by, I grew accustomed to gauging Vincie’s gait as soon as he came into sight in order to determine whether or not he would feel up to my company on any particular day. If he staggered, his eyes on the road, I knew that he would cross the street before he reached me and that our visit would be postponed until tomorrow or the next day. If he walked normally, his head up, I would be ready to greet him and accompany him up the street. As a child, I accepted our new non-verbal arrangement matter-of-factly and non-judgmentally. I never mentioned his “bad” days, and neither did he.

When Christmas approached that year, I took stock of the growing number of presents under the silver tree set up in our living room. In addition to the multicolor ribboned and bowed packages for family members and close friends, a separate pile of small identically wrapped “token gifts” waited to be distributed to acquaintances and providers of specific services to the household such as the mailman, paperboy, babysitter and parish priest. Dismayed at not finding anything there for Vincie, I complained to my mother that he should get a gift too. A box of men’s white handkerchiefs (socks and gloves would alternate with hankies over the years to follow) was hastily purchased, wrapped and tagged for me to present to Vincie during one of our walks, much to the consternation of my father who wondered aloud on more than one social occasion why, among all of the people in North Brookfield, his daughter had chosen the “town drunk” to befriend.

Vincie was an alcoholic. Of course, no one called him that; in those days, people who habitually staggered down small town streets in a half stupor, wearing slept-in clothes and reeking of booze, were simply referred to as “drunks.” “Alcoholics” were the proper, well-to-do ladies or gentlemen who nipped a bit too often at the imported wine or brandy in their drawing rooms or at “the club.” If there were any of those living in The Brookfields during the 1960s, they belonged to an exclusive minority. Miriam K-, wife of multimillionaire financier and future convicted tax evader Edward K-, was rumored to be one. The reclusive Mrs. K- languished inside their walled-off 500 acre country estate on the Brookfield Road, or at their beach house in Hyannis, rarely visible to the locals and their scrutiny, yet her reputation (as reported by live-in servants) somehow set the standard for a whole class of people. Alcoholics did not carry their vice home barely concealed in brown paper; it was delivered. They did not pass out in public places, vomit on street corners, or prompt concerned calls to the local police to be bodily removed. Alcoholics lived complicated, troubled lives and periodically required “retreats” to fancy private spas to relax and recuperate from the stresses caused by their charity appearances, philandering spouses or demanding social calendars; whereas drunks, burned out from factory or other blue-collar jobs like those in the Rubber Shop, dried out in jail cells or alone in their rented rooms or rundown homes. Alcoholics did not frequent local bars like Harte’s because they did not associate with their inferiors. Drunks had no inferiors.

When I reached school age and earned the privileges that went with it, I played outside without supervision, and my boundary extended all the way to the Fat Tree that marked the north end of Forest Street where it intersected with Willow, though crossing the road by myself remained forbidden. I no longer waited for Vincie at the edge of the side yard; instead I kept an eye peeled for his passing as I played on the swing or in the back yard. On those days when he staggered by on the opposite side of the road, I continued with whatever it was I happened to be doing, watching his unsteady progress while trying hard to look as if I wasn’t. When he stayed on my side of the street, I would run over to join him, leaving toys and even friends behind without a moment’s hesitation. Occasionally, one of my deserted playmates would question me upon my return, puzzled as to why I seemed so eager just to accompany this odd man to the end of the street. “It’s Vincie,” I responded with a shrug, as if that in itself were sufficient reason.

Vincie showed genuine interest in everything I said and listened like no other adult I knew, remembering the names of all my friends, pets and teachers and faithfully keeping track of all the self-important details of a child’s life that so obviously bore most adults. He said little beyond the friendly questions that would start me off and running at the mouth, like “Have you taught Pepper any new tricks?” or “Which dolls did you play with today?” He never revealed any personal information, and I was too focused on bringing him up to date on my life during our limited time together to ask any probing questions. I realized, years later, that our conversations were woefully one-sided, though he never seemed to mind, and that, despite our friendship, I didn’t know him nearly as well as he knew me.

One Christmas when I was perhaps eight, as I was examining the displayed presents under the silver tree and reading their tags by the light of our color wheel, I discovered a tag that read “ To: Donna From: Vincie.” Well aware of my fondness for dolls, he had impulsively decided to add to my collection. Because of his lack of transportation, Vincie had discreetly approached my father with a ten dollar bill and instructions regarding the kind of gift to be purchased for me. The doll my father subsequently chose was called “Little Miss No Name.” Barefoot and clothed in patched burlap, her long, limp blond hair hanging raggedly around her pathetic face, she came with a plastic “tear” attached to the inside corner of one of her enormous brown eyes. The gimmick (explained on the side of the box) was that the doll “cried” because she was homeless and unloved. Supposedly, as soon as she felt happy and secure, the tear would drop off. I refuse to speculate on the point my father was trying to make by selecting this particular doll, or even if there was a point; I wasn’t even aware of the subterfuge until years later. All I knew when I opened the gift was that Vincie had wanted to please me. Even though the weeks stretched into months and still the tear stubbornly refused to yield to my “accidental” poking and nudging until, in sheer frustration, I pried it off with a butter knife, I treasured the doll and still have it.

After I finished elementary school and started junior high, my interests and obligations broadened, and I found myself out in the yard less often. Those activities that brought me there usually involved a lawn mower or grass clippers, so I no longer automatically dropped everything to join Vincie for a stroll to the Fat Tree, although I still greeted him when it was feasible. When I did accompany him, he never referred to my lapses, just as I’d never referred to his; our mutual acceptance remained unconditional.

As I matured and become less self-absorbed, I realized that Vincie’s bouts of drinking were becoming more frequent and more debilitating. He had begun stumbling past my house at odd hours of the day, during the evening, and on weekends. There were rumors that he missed work for days at a time. While on a binge, he wouldn’t shave, and his clothes looked slept in. Often, it was said, he’d be so intoxicated that he would trip himself, then lie helpless until someone came to assist him. On more than one occasion, that someone was my father who would half carry-half drag Vincie into our car and drive him home. Fortunately for me, I never saw it.

Occasionally, as I roamed past Vincie’s house with my best friend, Andrea, who lived at the top of Willow Street, I would gaze at the peeling paint, the broken windows, and the weedy overgrown yard. I had never entered his home nor he mine. Clearly, Vincie was a man in decline but, right or wrong, our friendship went only as far as the fat tree, and I didn’t know how to change it now. One of Vincie’s falls during a binge resulted in a broken nose. The swelling and blackened eyes that lasted for weeks sickened and horrified me so that I could no longer watch when he staggered up the road. I felt shame for him and averted my eyes. Neither he nor I ever referred to the incident during our brief exchanges afterward, but it was the talk of the town for weeks. A subtle shift in attitude toward Vincie Kizzle was taking place among his former friends and neighbors. He had truly become, as I’d once heard my father say, “the town drunk.”

Actually, Vincie was not the only man to stagger drunk through the streets of North Brookfield, but he was, by far, the favorite target. The other one, Bobby Polansky, was amiable enough when sober, but a few too many transformed him into a bitter, argumentative sort to be avoided. “Poky” holed up inside the American Legion Hall for hours on end, despairing over the suspicious car accident that had taken his teenage son, the pneumonia that had more recently claimed his wife, and the factory accident that had left a gnarled stump where his right hand used to be. Simply put, Poky was no fun. He was also not “safe” to pick on because of his temper and because he still had family at home who cared about his welfare.

In contrast, the mild tempered, well mannered Vincie lived alone in his shack, maintaining only limited contact with a local elderly sister and rarely seeing his other siblings who lived a few miles away. Also, by showing his obvious dependency on alcohol, Vincie had unwittingly committed the one unpardonable sin that, over the years, had gradually turned North Brookfield against him: weakness. He had allowed the liquor to control him, to reduce him to something less than a man. Because he would not (or could not) hide his problem drinking, he no longer lived up to the town’s expectations of him. He ceased to be a person deserving of respect and affection, instead becoming a thing of scorn and ridicule, the town joke that provoked barely stifled laughter as it lurched by and an easy if not willing target for any abuse directed its way.

One Sunday, my brother showed up all snickers over an incident that had occurred earlier that day in Hart’s involving “Wimpy.” Before Jay could even begin to relate his tale, I needed clarification as to who this person was. “Oh, you know….Vincie,” Jay explained. This in itself was news. I’d had no idea that Vincie had lately acquired a nickname. Anyway, apparently Vincie had been back and forth to Hart’s several times over the course of the morning (his appearance at the 7:00 Mass was a rarity by this time), so liquored up he could barely stand, when he realized he’d run out of money. Although Mr. Hart, the bar’s owner, steadfastly refused to extend him credit for additional drinks, Vincie stubbornly persisted in his appeal, attracting the attention of the other customers, most of whom had just stopped by for a beer or two while their wives were preparing dinner. Having gotten nowhere with Hart, Vincie finally turned to them, his friends, for the money to satisfy his desperate craving and was met with jeers and laughter. A couple of guys who had stopped by after an early morning fishing trip had an inspiration: would Vincie eat worms in exchange for a beer? I listened, appalled, as Jay described how the dead and dying worms were lined up on the table and bets laid down as to how many Vincie could be goaded to eat until he either vomited or passed out from the beer. Jay had arrived at Hart’s after the show, while Vincie was “sleeping it off” in the bar’s storeroom, but had been treated to an animated account of “Wimpy’s” performance.

Over the days that followed, the story spread through the town. What disgusted me most was not that a few half-drunk morons had exploited Vincie’s addiction for their amusement but that no one but me seemed the least bit upset by it. Not once did I hear the word “alcoholic” or catch a note of sympathy in the retelling. The attitude expressed was that he had brought it on himself. He had become, finally, after years of blatant public drunkeness, fair game. The implication repulsed but did not surprise me. What were a few worms? Just harmless fun, after all. I can only imagine what hell public life must have been for Vincie after that. I’m familiar enough with North Brookfield to know its people never forget.

I rarely saw Vincie to speak to during my high school years and when I did, it was only in passing. By then, he staggered around town almost constantly. One gray winter afternoon during a deep freeze, it occurred to me that several days had elapsed since I’d seen him pass our house. As in my childhood days, I stood watch, but from inside where it was warm and dry. As the heavy sky darkened, and Vincie still did not appear, my brother agreed to check Hart’s to see how recently he had been there. A beer later, Jay returned with no news. Meanwhile, my father had come home from work. At my insistence, the two agreed to put their uneaten dinners aside and venture back out into the sub-zero weather to head for the dilapidated once-yellow Cape the inside of which no one but Vincie had probably seen for years.

Dinner was late that night. Dad phoned from the home of one of Vincie’s neighbors. When he and Jay reached the shack, Jay wrenching his foot as one of the rickety porch steps gave way under his weight, they found the sagging front door not only unlocked but ajar. The house was in darkness, and yelling for Vincie brought no response. Dad got a flashlight from the car, and the men went in. The light’s beam reflected off a thick sheet of ice that stretched over the bare wooden floor from the front door, through the living room, to the kitchen. Rats skittered out of its glare. The furniture consisted mostly of crates and boxes. Vincie lay curled up in a corner, barely conscious, “dead soldiers” littering the floor around him. Now Jay was trying to get hot coffee down Vincie’s throat as Dad called for an ambulance and updated my mother and me.

The hospital diagnosis was pneumonia and severe malnutrition. Apparently, Vincie’s gas and electricity had been shut off due to non-payment, and the water pipes had burst. A brother was contacted and the house restored to its former barely livable condition during Vincie’s absence.

Vincie returned home but, from what I heard, never fully recovered. Having received no treatment for alcoholism, he fell into old habits almost immediately. Before long, his brother received another call from the hospital. This time, Vincie did not come out alive. I heard nothing regarding calling hours, and the funeral was a private affair that was over before many people were even aware

of his death. Away at college, I was informed after the fact…long distance.

The next time I came home, I retraced the route I had walked with Vincie so many years before, continued up Willow Street, and stopped in front of the Cape that listed slightly to one side as it sat neglected in its weedy lot. A porch step, the one my brother had nearly fallen through, was missing. Holes gaped through the intricate lattice work, and roof shingles, disturbed by the harsh New England winds, were scattered around the barely visible walkway. Someone had nailed boards across all the windows and posted a “No Trespassing” sign by the front door. I knew the house would probably come down.

I can’t help thinking that North Brookfield failed Vincie Kizzle because, even though it didn’t cause his drinking problem, it certainly used and encouraged it for its own amusement. Perhaps if Vincie had followed H.H Browne to Worcester, he would have lived a different, more fulfilled life. Perhaps not. I know only that Forest Street seems a little emptier now that he’s gone.