Faraway Volume 2, Issue 2

Faraway

V O L

I S S

2 Presents...

Gazing into the Abyss A n d y M i l l s 2

The House Across the Street Dan Moreau M

o

v

e

Diane Magallon & Jeff Crouch b D a v i d y Kowalczyk

4 poems

Dandelion / Back Up Against the Wall Val Murah

2As High As An Elephant’s Eye

DANDELIONS Katie Rutherford

T.R. Healy El Camino (a villanelle) W i l l i a m W a l s h

O u t l a n d e r s / Trash Art Ellen P e r r y

Away From the Crowd Suvi Mahonen & Luke Waldrip

What is Life? Vic F o r t e z z a -

intermission

-

Adopt a Wife / C u n n i l i n g u s Michael Woodcock

Clouds Like Mountains. Karen Greenbaum-Maya. Awaken. Janet Thorning.

d r e a m /u n d e r w a t e r

f i r e Jim F u e s s

Amelie and the W h a l e

c

TAmelie h o uandg hthet Umbrella f o r FC o ho d r Ji i sm t L iy oa n sn P

i

n

h

b

e

c

k

7 Wo n drou s Hil l s Michael Pitassi

Idolatry Sips of V a n i l l a C o l i n J a m e s

An Interruption of Some Fine Lyricism Joseph Goosey

La C o m m e d i a D i a b o l i c a Spoils to the Victor

Josh Mitchell.

Artistic Temperament

Jared Hernandez.

T h e C a m p a i g n P r o m i s e Joseph Grant Home Security Ron Savage

Fence Gay Degani lamp-snow-tree Steve Cartwright

Gazing into the Abyss

Andy Mills IT WAS ODD.

All he could see was the dark abyss of a tunnel, yawning wider than should be possible, threatening to engulf him in its gaping maw. He looked closer into those depths, mesmerized by the utter lack of light, a dark so absolute that he knew he was looking at perfection. The type of perfection seen only when one was about to die.

Fear began to grow, twisting his stomach into an ugly knot. Not a fear of death, for he had accepted his mortality long ago. This was a different fear, a fear built from confusion and uncertainty. He feared that his mind had broken, that insanity was running rampant through a consciousness he could no longer control.

He could not pull his eyes away from that perfect darkness, straining to pierce its depths. He felt the darkness pulling him in, its maw growing out, wobbly and undulating, the circle of the tunnel losing its strict form, turning malleable, bending and twisting and stretching. Greater and greater it grew, the depths in its center expanding as well, a black hole drawing in everything around, until he could see nothing but utter black.

Slowly, from the depths of that maddening perfection, he perceived something.

It started as a slight shift in darkness, a grey among the black. As he watched, the grey lightened more and more, growing almost imperceptibility. Stronger and brighter it grew, but slowly, a snail crawling, and he could not look away. His world was dark, and the small speck of white called to him. Was this the light at the end of the tunnel, that end of existence fable to which he never gave any credence? Fascinated, he gazed on in a rapture of impending insanity as the white grew stronger.

Pain began to claw at his eyes, but he could not look away as the white became www.farawayjournal.com

angry, streaks of red seeping out of razor-like wounds, explosions of orange consuming both, only for itself to once again be swallowed by the pure, bitter white. It was an image of chaos and violence juxtaposed with a leisurely and peaceful pace. And he could not look away. The raging colors anchored his eyes while stabbing at his mind. The pain grew to agony, but he could not close his eyes, for his mind, so engrossed in the vision he saw, would not let him.

The colors continued to grow, expanding, fighting against the surrounding darkness. The two opposites battled as he looked on, enthralled. It was almost a ballet between the colors and the dark, a violent dance of surges and retreats, feints in one direction, attacks in another, only to be driven back by the overwhelming black. Slowly but surely, the colors gained purchase, grasping ground and expanding their chaotic existence. Incessantly on it grew, the colors continuing their internal struggle as well as the external, its brightness an opposition to the darkness. And pain assaulted his eyes voraciously, tearing into his mind and attacking his soul. Ultimately, for a brief moment that seemed to last an eternity, the darkness gave way, and the raging colors consumed him utterly.

Suddenly, abruptly, the raging colors evaporated, disappearing back into the resurgent dark, only to be replaced by a roaring sound, a scream of rage and anger, primal to its core. The man, blind again, choked back a sob as his head pounded in pain, the roar enveloping him, wrapping his body in an embrace of sound and a blanket of pain. His mind raced in a maddened panic, unable to comprehend both the abrupt loss of light and the sudden onslaught of sound. Through it all, time continued to drag, to crawl, and he spent an eon drowning in fear and pain.

Finally, all of the uncertainty, fear, pain, and confusion that tore through his body and assaulted his senses coalesced into a single object of despair that carried with it the weight of his entire existence. The roar in the darkness called to the object, propelling it to ricochet around in his stricken mind, destroying what little remained of his sanity. The last vestiges of understanding and life wisped away with a whimper that was lost into the perfect dark of the roaring abyss.

In the solitary confines of a cold house, empty and alone, a man slumped backward in his chair, a gaping wound where his eye used to be. An old, tattered picture of a family, faces forever frozen in time, was clenched tightly to his sunken chest.

His other hand fell, and an ancient revolver hit the floor, smoke wafting from its dark, indifferent barrel.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Jeff Hendrickson

www.farawayjournal.com

h The House Across the Street

By Dan Moreau

F

or the longest time no one lived there. Then they moved in. They cut the grass, replaced the windows, gave the house a fresh coat of paint. They cleaned out the broken glass and pruned the bushes. They swept up the sidewalk and bagged their grass clippings. They put up new curtains. They emptied the rain gutters. They planted new flowers. They took in their trash bin after collections. They sorted their recycling. They watered their lawn after dark. They rode bicycles to the supermarket pulling their kids in tow. They wore helmets. They had a mulch heap in the backyard. They grew their own vegetables. They wore handmade costumes at Halloween and handed out granola bars and apples to trick-or-treaters. They read. They had only one car. They kept up the house and the yard. They rode their bikes to work, school and the library. They didn’t eat meat. They didn’t watch TV. They bought organic. They kept to themselves. They didn’t throw loud parties. They danced. All four of them, dancing up a storm in the living room, shaking their heads and swinging their arms. They exercised. They ate tofu, arugula and whole grain bread. They drank soy and green tea. They wore organic cotton and synthetic materials. They went camping. They donated to the local public radio station. They subscribed to Mother Jones. They meditated. They practiced yoga. They attended a non-denominational inter-faith worship center. They air-dried their clothes.

They played charades and board games. They took long walks. They rarely ate out. They wore SPF 40 protection outside in the sun. They listened to This American Life. They went to museums. Their children attended public school because they believed in public education. They voted. They believed our sitting president was a war criminal and a liar. They fought. They made up. They loved sushi. They drank from glass mason jars.

They made us feel bad. They donated blood. They ran 5Ks for charity. They brought their own bags to the supermarket. They wore expensive fleeces in the winter. They gave micro-loans to third world entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. They skied.

They kayaked. They vacationed in national parks. They drove a Hybrid. They started a Mamas for Obama club. They donated to the Tsunami Relief Fund. They didn’t eat candy. They believed AIDS in Africa was one of the most pressing issues of our time.

They believed in public funding for the arts. They believed Dick Cheney ate small children. They believed that 9/11—albeit tragic—was payback for years of misguided foreign policy. They believed George W. Bush could benefit from some therapy. They believed in fair play, participation and good sportsmanship. They saw An Inconvenient Truth. Twice. With their children.

Now they’re outside. The sun’s shining, the kids are playing in the driveway, Mom’s watering the flowers, Dad’s cutting the lawn with a push mower, and they seem oh so happy.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

www.farawayjournal.com

digital photo modified by digital drawing.

Move. Diana Magallon and Jeff Crouch.

4

Poems by David Kowalczyk

Life Before Latte

Listening to My Parents Talk in Polish

It’s time I

In elementary school, I would often imagine translations of the conversations my parents would hold in Polish, a tongue they shared with each other, yet refused to teach their children.

got down to work.

This is what I would hear them say:

Maybe.

Like Portentous Shadows

Of a stern and ancient November afternoon, life retreats from us slowly yet incessantly.

As it inches away, how precious become the bus driver’s warm welcoming nod, the sincere smile of a bank teller asking: “How have you been?”

How magnified by a thousand become these small gestures of kindness, recognized now for what they have always been: priceless, irreplaceable treasures.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“Learn to be a stranger in your own home.”

“What would I give to become invisible each morning.”

“Our natural state is to be lost.”

Life Is A Funny Old Dog

After prayers for white French tulips at my doorstep arrives a bouquet of wilted dandelions.

Va l

Murah

They wouldn’t accept me The ward was full They wouldn’t even take a slight overdose of mescaline over the dozens of cases of sun poisoning When those around you consider you a “sunjob” it means every inch of your skin has this green foliage-like tinge to it I’d known a few It happened if you sat yourself still right beneath it and injected the rays

Two Dandelions. Katie Rutherford

DANDELION

Most of the sunjobs were loners like myself They were attracted to it due to its main draw Self-gratification and reproduction (Why be lonely if you don’t have to?)

All you need is a little water and maybe a nest of hornets to suck up some of the pollen that forms around the eyes The worst case I’d seen was this man already reconnected to the earth His fingers and toes had burrowed into the dirt

www.farawayjournal.com

I’d heard even worse stories where the users’ heads would explode and seeds would spew out right up there into the sky I still wonder all the time what the offspring might look like and I hope all the time that I don’t ever get that lonely

BACK UP AGAINST THE WALL Va l

Murah

How can you dare, You psychopomp You think you know death?

It bores you now But did you ever know The loss of oxygen The division of blood and water?

How can you say After all of this time That life is but a glimpse Of what comes here in death?

All of these ghosts And all of these lies Screaming in my head Screaming from behind Look outside the box Quit your nightjob Become a humble fisherman Because who pays you off When the gods need motivation Do they suffer the same fate?!

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Extraordinary. Katie Rutherford

and he no longer needed a supply of water as he fed off the soil

Or do they sell magic Till the magick wears off?

How can you tell me After all this lifetime That all I have done Cannot amount to much With the lack of a figure Looming over my shoulder And no greater goal But happiness?

Not ego, nor vengeance Just happiness Here’s this man of death But who nurtures birth?

Is there more than the mother Could this be mother earth?

Retailer of Fine Books NEW USED RARE

BULLY SELECTION!

...HARD TO FIND TITLES...

We Buy, Sell & Trade (books, prints, comics)

Kyle Hernandez, Proprietor 128 Yale Avenue, Upstairs Claremont, CA (909) 624-0757

www.secondstoryclaremont.com

“The last best hope for independent bookstores!” www.farawayjournal.com

AS HIGH AS AN ELEPHANT'S EYE TR HEALY ilby, seated between two men half his age, stared out the rain-spattered winW dow as the squad car rattled down the middle of the street. He looked at the other cars, at the shops and lounges and stores, at all the people on the sidewalk.

Briefly he glanced at the cuffs on his wrists then looked back out the window, still not believing he was really riding in the back of a squad car. His whole body felt numb, as if the cuffs had entirely cut off his circulation.

*

As if it happened just this morning, not seven and a half months ago, Wilby could still hear the jury foreman announce the verdict: “Guilty.” His husky voice was so firm it filled the courtroom, probably could be heard in every room in the old courthouse.

“Don’t worry, Doyle,” one of his lawyers assured him. “We’ll file an appeal and get a new trial.”

He did not answer, knowing in his heart that the jury made the correct decision.

For nearly a decade he was the chief operating officer of Merkle Enterprises and guided the electronics company through much growth and several profitable years. However, faced with a substantial revenue shortfall in the closing days of his last fiscal year with the company, he panicked and devised a scheme to conceal the shortfall from the board of directors. Cleverly, he believed, he shipped millions of dollars of goods to four distributors and listed the shipments as sales in the annual revenue announcement when, in truth, the distributors were under no obligation to pay for any of the merchandise until his sales people found actual customers for them. They were really nothing more than warehouses, and when customers were not found and the distributors returned the products, he was unable to conceal his ruse. Subsequently, he was charged with securities fraud, reporting false financial information, and lying to accountants and was convicted on all counts and sentenced to serve two and a half years in a federal prison.

“I can’t believe you did this,” his wife sobbed after the verdict was announced.

“I can’t, either.”

“You’re someone who knows right from wrong.”

“I guess I didn’t want to admit I could fail,” he said, referring to the unexpected decline in sales.

“That would’ve been better than this. Almost anything would have, Doyle.”

“I know.”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

*

Near the east end of the river, bouncing across some railroad tracks, the squad car approached a schoolhouse that had been gutted by fire. In a corner of the scabby playground was a soaked sawdust pit that was as pale as the rain. A smile crept out of the corners of his mouth as Wilby looked at it, reminded of all the afternoons he had spent jumping in just such a pit.

He was a high jumper in high school. Tall and spindly, he was awkward in other sports, often picked last on the playground when teams were chosen for baseball and basketball teams, but it turned out he had a real knack for jumping. One afternoon Cully, the track coach, noticed him fooling around in the high jump pit, scissoring over the metal bar as if it were a fence post, and invited him to try out for the squad. He did and, to his surprise, made it. Right away, Cully taught him how to tumble backward over the bar and before long he was scaling heights he had not thought were possible. The higher he jumped, the more recognition he received, even from girls who before had scarcely noticed him at school.

“Run into the sky,” Cully exhorted him and the other jumpers, “as high as an elephant’s eye.”

At meets jumpers were only allowed two minutes in which to jump so he didn’t dare waste a moment and always followed the same routine. Squarely facing the bar, he stood on his mark almost in a trance, straining to picture himself soaring over it.

Then, some forty seconds before his time expired, he started his approach. Quickly picking up speed, he charged almost directly at it then, abruptly, swung to the right, planted his outside foot parallel to the bar, pushed off, and rose into the air as if on a magic carpet.

Jumping was probably the only time he ever had excelled at something---twice winning first place honors in his league and once getting runner-up at the state meet. It was an accomplishment he achieved on his own, without the help of any other person, including his coach. It was what made him someone in high school, and the discipline and dedication that it required he tried to replicate later in his business career.

*

“Uh-oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know but there’s a lot of smoke up ahead.”

“It’s probably somebody burning leaves. It’s that time of the year.”

The squad car turned at the next corner and immediately was engulfed in black smoke from a convenience store burning in the center of the block.

“You think we should stop and see if there’s anything we can do?”

“We can’t. We’re transporting a fugitive.”

www.farawayjournal.com

*

“Remember, you have to be at the courthouse at nine o’clock sharp,” Wilby’s chief lawyer called to remind him the night before he was to begin serving his prison sentence.

He did not reply, knowing full well what was to happen tomorrow.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you there, Doyle?”

“No, my wife’s going to take me.”

“It’d be no problem.”

“No, that’s all right.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Right.”

Again, he had lied to his lawyer. He had not asked his wife to drive him to the courthouse, aware how difficult it would be for her to see him taken away in handcuffs, but had told her he would prefer to go alone. She disagreed but he was adamant so she watched him leave that morning from the front porch, the wrinkles in her face appearing almost as deep as her mother’s.

Until that morning, he had every intention of reporting to serve his sentence but on his way to the courthouse he had second thoughts and drove past the exit that he should have taken and past the next one as well. He just kept driving, without any idea really where he was going. All he knew was he could not go to prison. It was inconceivable. He was someone others had looked up to and admired ever since he started winning medals and ribbons in the high jump. Desperately he tried to convince himself that his conviction had not really happened, not to him anyway, perhaps to someone he had read about in the paper that morning, so he had nothing to worry about and continued to drive.

Some twenty minutes later, he found himself at the airport and pulled into the long term lot and found a space and parked. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten, and soon he knew they would be looking for him, if not already. He sank his forehead against the top rim of the steering wheel. For an instant, he considered buying a plane ticket to Mexico and starting a new life there, maybe somewhere along the coast, or perhaps leave his car here as if he had flown away somewhere then hitch a ride out of town. Really he didn’t know what he wanted to do, just wished he could somehow run into the sky and leave all his troubles behind him.

*

He sat in the parking lot all night, watching planes take off and land when he didn’t nod off for a few minutes. Still as confused as ever, he knew he could not stay there for another day and early the next morning called his lawyer.

“My God, Doyle, where have you been?”

“Just driving around.”

“There’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

He did not reply but watched a huge passenger plane soar into the sky, wishing he were on it.

“You can’t drive around forever. You know that, don’t you?”

He did, all too well, and hung up the phone. Reluctantly he decided to turn himself in before he was caught, realizing he could not shirk his responsibility any longer.

*

The squad car screeched to a halt in the circular driveway in front of the towering courthouse and, at once, the marshal on his left sprang out and grabbed his arm as he slid across the shredded seat. In another second, the other marshal came around and grabbed his other arm and together they rushed him up the long flight of stairs as if afraid he might bolt out of their grasp and become a fugitive again. They moved quickly, almost furiously, reminding him of those afternoons he hopped the stairs at the football stadium, sometimes for two hours, so that he would have enough spring in his legs he would be able to jump higher than anyone else. Those were the moments he cherished more than any others, the ones where he was someone. Sometimes he concentrated so hard before he jumped he was sure he could see an image of himself coming out of himself and desperately he looked for that image again.

www.farawayjournal.com

East Coast Germs Got You Down?

Go

West Young

Men!

Dry Heat, Hot Chicks, Citrus Fruit!

- Paid for by the Mt. Baldy Tourism Board -

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

EL CAMINO

(a villanelle)

William Walsh This is a barroom fight.

The band starts playing faster.

Gimme Three Steps and Flirtin’ with Disaster.

New pickup is angle-parked, Taking up two spaces in the parking lot.

This is a barroom fight.

Don’t show a look of puzzlement in a place where big men drink.

The bouncer laughs just like the guy from the Chevy showroom.

Gimme Three Steps and Flirtin’ with Disaster.

You’re in a battle of wits versus an unarmed man.

And the bump-draft is a NASCAR fuel-saving technique.

This is a barroom fight.

It’s just like the Wild West, And you’re wearing a brocade vest.

Gimme Three Steps and Flirtin’ with Disaster.

Are you a car or truck?

Did I hear you right?

This is a barroom fight.

Gimme Three Steps and Flirtin’ with Disaster.

Outlanders. Ellen Perry

Away from the crowd Suv i Mahonen & Lu k e Waldrip he lake in the hollow of the housing estate was being stolen from Ben and T Megan. The grassy slopes of the surrounding land were shrinking under the steady growth of new streets, display homes and the car park for the nearby school.

Winding around the edge of the lake was a flat gravel track that was popular with families: mums and dads walking side by side, their children running ahead of them, shrieking in their games.

Ben and Megan sat on a moss-hemmed rock near the water’s edge, away from the crowd. It was Sunday and the walk around the lake was their regular obligation to exercise.

‘Should we get take-out tonight?’ Ben said. He had slipped off his shoes and was doodling in the water with his toes.

‘What do you feel like?’ Megan said.

‘Let’s have Indian.’

‘We had Indian last time,’ Megan said, shifting in the dip in the rock.

Ben squinted at her. ‘What about hot chips?’

‘Yes. Burger and chips.’

Two golden retrievers dragging a woman behind them passed by their rock.

The woman took the dogs to a nearby stretch of grass and bent to let the dogs off their leads. Ben and Megan turned to look at them as they sprinted away. Their tongues lolled in the wind as they played like they were puppies.

‘They love being able to run free,’ Megan said.

‘Free for a while,’ Ben said. ‘But in the end they’re not happy on their own.

They want human company.’

Megan looked at one of the dogs. It was squatting.

‘They need more than just company,’ she said.

She watched the woman shake out a plastic bag. The woman picked up the dog poo. And grimaced.

‘I miss him,’ Megan said, shielding her eyes from the sun.

They watched the woman gather her dogs, re-leash them, then walk off with them again.

‘It was hard at the end.’

‘Very hard. The poor dog. He couldn’t even stand up on his own. He was in so much pain. Life is really shit.’

‘It’s not that bad.’

‘No, it’s worse,’ Megan said.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

‘Why do you have to go to extremes?’

‘I’m not. I’m just upset. It was horrible to watch him die. What do you expect?’

‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘I hated having to put him down. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t walk. I would have been happy to keep looking after him.’

‘I know you would have.’

Megan looked across at the housing estate. From this distance the tiled roofs merged together as one.

‘They’re so crowded in there,’ she said. ‘They don’t really have any backyards.

Why do they build such big houses on such small blocks of land?’

‘The growing population needs somewhere to live,’ Ben said.

‘The overpopulation, you mean.’

He looked at her.

‘We’ve got to get onto it soon, Megan,’ he said. ‘It’s not something we can put off forever.’

She watched fragments of sun glancing off the wind-stirred surface of the lake.

‘Work is going well and the mortgage is under control,’ he said. ‘If everyone else can manage, there’s no reason why we can’t, too.’

‘It’s easy for you to say.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It would affect me more.’

‘I know it would affect you more. But don’t you think it’s something we’d enjoy?’

Megan looked at the lake’s edge. Undulating ridges of dried mud above the waterline indicated a time before the drought when it still used to rain.

‘I saw an ad in the local paper for Weimaraner puppies for sale,’ she said.

‘It’s tempting. But we can get another dog at any time.’

‘Why should we wait? You’re the one who wants to rush things.’

‘Rush?’ Ben said. ‘At our age I hardly think you could call it rushing.’

‘We could wait a bit longer.’

‘The longer we wait the riskier it gets.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you that our lives would be permanently changed?’

‘I know you’re worried. But it doesn’t mean the end of our lives. We would just be moving on to the next phase.’

‘Is that the only reason you want to do it? Because it’s the next phase?’

He paused.

‘I think if we don’t do it, we’ll regret it when we’re older.’

‘What about my career? I would have to give it up.’

‘I never said it would be easy. But at some point we’re going to have to decide what to prioritise.’

Megan turned her back on him and slid off the rock and started walking away.

Ahead, in the picnic ground, a group of adults stood around a table, unpacking food from their eskies and bags. Close by, their children played a game of tag. One of them, a little boy with red hair, hit the ground and started to cry as Ben came up behind her. www.farawayjournal.com

‘Is that what you really want?’ she asked. ‘For me to give up what I want so that you can move on to what you think is the next phase?’

‘You know it’s not like that.’

‘Yes, it is. You control everything.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You’re trying to.’

‘When did you change your mind?’

‘What do you mean? We never said it was a given.’

‘I thought we did.’

‘No, we didn’t. We never sat down and had a serious discussion about it.’

‘We are now, aren’t we?’

‘Very funny.’

‘Slow down, would you?’ he said. ‘We don’t have to walk this fast.’

‘I’m trying to get some exercise.’

‘You’re trying to avoid the topic.’

‘I’m not. I just resent how you assume things.’

‘I don’t. I just thought we ——’

‘There you go again,’ Megan said. ‘Assuming things.’

Ben walked beside her in silence until they came to a water bubbler at the edge of the playground where they stopped to have a drink. As Megan straightened she looked at Ben looking at the children playing.

‘Do you really want to go through life wondering what it could have been like?’ he said.

‘We would have each other. Wouldn’t that be enough?’

‘That’s not the point. You know it would be enough. But don’t you feel that something’s missing?’

‘I like our life the way it is.’

‘Do you? You’re the one who said that life is really shit.’

‘I meant life in general. Not ours.’

Ben turned away from her. He looked back at the playground where a boy and girl were riding on the seesaw. Their sawdust-covered knees gripped the sides of the plank and they laughed as they dropped from the peak of their rise.

‘If you can’t make up your mind,’ he said, ‘time will make the decision for us.’

Megan started walking away from the playground with Ben following behind. They continued along the narrow path that ascended a small hillock on the way to the car park. Turning off the path, they crossed the bald expanse of asphalt towards their waiting car. They each went to their allocated sides and opened the doors and climbed inside.

Ben turned the key, reversed and drove slowly out through the lake’s front gates. Turning right, they sped along the two-laned highway, leaving sluggish Sunday afternoon drivers in their wake. They changed direction at the roundabout and headed up the steep, shady, forest-lined road.

Through the flickering gaps between the trees, the suburbs receded. A flock of Canada Geese flew west overhead. They passed an art gallery, a nursery, and the bloated carcass of a squirrel lying in the ditch by the side of the road.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

‘I’m sorry we fought,’ Ben said.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ Megan said. ‘We can do it your way. Whatever you want.’

Advertisement

S.S. Hogan

Au s t r a l i a

New & delightful TransPacific Steam Cruise Scenic Destinations -Bunbury -Busselton -Tasman Sea -Geelong -Wagga Wagga -Wollongong -Streaky Bay -Humpty Doo -Peppimenarti

54 g’days 53 g’nights Departs: Pier 13, L.A. River California

Exmouth

Shipping

Company

Orginal photo, Luke Waldrip

You’re almost there, Mate!

www.farawayjournal.com

Jeff Hendrickson

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

What is Life?

Victor Fortezza

H

e heard her crying out behind the curtain that had been drawn around the bed.

Each cry was more strained than the last. She complained about the burning, called the nurses “putane” and threatened to rip out the device they’d inserted into her.

He sat there, torn, flesh crawling, wondering, should he intercede, if the nurses would be insulted, if they would think him a mama’s boy.

Again she cried out. His eyes glazed as he fought back tears. He could not bear to see anyone in pain - and this was his mother. He slipped behind the curtain. Each nurse was restraining one of her arms, imploring, trying to soothe her. She’d have none of it, asking what devils had sent them to her. He took her hands. She stopped resisting.

Surprised, the nurses quickly completed their chores and left, apparently relieved. Vito wondered how they stood it day after day. And this case was minor compared to many they no doubt faced here in Emergency.

Her legs were drawn up, the soles of her feet flat on the mattress. A tube was snaking from her crotch and into a sack affixed to the side of the bed. Again she threatened to free herself from it.

“No,” he said firmly, fighting a sense of futility, wondering if they were all merely torturing her, if it wouldn’t have been wiser to have left her home to die with dignity.

He’d been against bringing her here. His father had died in the hospital, alone, many years ago. He did not want that to happen to his mother, although, given her mental state, the place would seem no more foreign to her than the house had become. She was always asking to be taken home, to the small Sicilian town she’d left 45 years ago. He was sure that it too would now be unrecognizable to her.

He continued to hold her hands. She seemed to be calming. One nurse, tiny, lighthaired, who had a charming, slight overlap of one front tooth over another, reapproached.

She resembled his sister, only 30 years younger.

“It’s probably a urinary infection,” she said. “See how cloudy the urine is? That’s usually what that means. We’re getting a room ready for her.”

“Thanks.” So it wasn’t a virus, as he’d surmised. How had she contracted such an affliction? www.farawayjournal.com

The nurse seemed tense, uncomfortable. Was she self-conscious about the pain she’d inflicted, perhaps assuming he resented her? He knew she’d been trying to help.

He suspected she was unaccustomed to seeing an apparently young man care for an elderly woman so unabashedly. If only she knew how rubbery his legs were right now.

Was she afraid he would make a pass at her? He wouldn’t, noting the wedding band.

She pulled the curtain open and left.

His mother asked about Francesca, one of her sisters, who lived in Sicily. Her voice was breathy, as if her throat were parched. She was the only one of nine siblings to have ventured abroad. She now confused her daughter, who was 65, with her youngest sister, whom she hadn’t seen in 45 years.

“She’s working,” he said in Italian. He’d ceased trying to set her straight. He now went in whichever direction her mind wandered, offering lies he hoped would placate her, keep her in good spirits.

She asked where.

“The bakery in Sheepshead Bay.” “Poor thing. She kills herself.”

“Come to think of it, she’s probably home by now.”

“She’ll worry when she doesn’t find me.”

“I called and told her you were here.”

“And what is this place?”

He paused, scouring his mind. “A hotel.”

She chuckled. “Nice-a,” she said in broken English.

A foreign born doctor appeared. Vito had difficulty deciphering the thick middleeastern accent and asked the man several times to repeat himself.

“Who was that?” said his mother.

“The doctor.”

“Peruccio?”

“No. He’ll see you tomorrow.”

Peruccio had suggested bringing her to Emergency, where, should all tests prove negative, she would be discharged immediately. If admitted to a room, she would have to stay at least one night. Fortunately Emergency wasn’t busy this evening. She wasn’t occupying space someone might have needed desperately. Nearby, out of sight, a woman was calling out drunkenly, cursing.

“Wonder what she’s on?” said an attendant, passing.

“See the hole in her head?” said another.

To his relief, his mother was oblivious to the pathetic ranting. Again she threatened to rip away the urinary device, as she experienced more burning. He urged her to think of the sea in her hometown.

“Is this Saint George?”

“No, Brookaleen.” He laughed to himself at the immigrant-like pronunciation.

A gray-haired man, limping slightly on a cane, approached. “Did the doctor come yet?” he said through a thick accent.

“Two so far,” said Vito. “Interns, I guess.” He looked at his mother. “Recognize this guy?”

She shook her head. He was astounded. He would never have dreamed she would forget this man she’d hated, with whom she’d had so much conflict. He supposed it was Vol. 2, Iss. 2

best that she’d forgotten her antipathy. His own had subsided markedly. If he hadn’t known better, he would have bet she was feigning simply to levy an insult. She was no longer capable of such cleverness, however.

“It’s Enzo, your daughter’s husband.”

“Yeah? And where is Angelina?”

“Home,” said Enzo abruptly. “I called her just now.”

“Thank God.” “Where’s Mayte?” said Vito to his brother in law.

“In the waiting room watching TV.” “Why don’t you send her home and go yourself. There’s no reason for you to stay.”

“Would you believe she doesn’t want to go home? I offered to pay for the cab, but she doesn’t want to go. She wants to sleep at the house.”

“Did you tell her we’d approve the time sheet any way she wanted?”

“Yes, and she still doesn’t want to go. I think she’s afraid.”

“There’re a lotta guns in her neighborhood. Maybe she doesn’t feel safe after dark.

What a shame.”

Enzo smirked. “The other day she told me she moved from her building because everybody was on Welfare.”

Vito noted the irony - Mayte felt safer in Bensonhurst, despite its reputation of mistreatment of blacks, than she did in her own neighborhood. Life never ceased to amaze. What had a pundit said recently - that the best thing that ever happened to the current generation of African-Americans was that their ancestors had been enslaved and brought to America. Many would be living in squalor. In some nations Christians would be the slaves of Muslims.

“She’s staying, then?” said Enzo. “She’s better off. This way they find what’s wrong and fix it, otherwise.... She’ll be here at least a week, I bet you. They’ll milk Medicare for whatever they can.”

Vito fought the weariness and anger his thoughts aroused. He would be coming to the hospital every day until her stay was finished, one way or another. And he hated the fact that the government, or rather, the taxpayers, or rather, future generations in this era of behemoth government, was picking up the tab for what was really his responsibility.

“Okay, then,” said Enzo. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I have to come for a checkup myself.” He’d had bypass recently. Confronted with his mortality, he’d quit smoking, to the astonishment of all. “Goodnight, Ma.” “You’re going?” she said weakly. “God bless you.”

She seemed serene now. He hoped she’d forgotten the tube. He was reluctant to leave her side, however.

Suddenly she chuckled. He gazed at her inquisitively. She flushed, embarrassed, smiling.

“Scurregio,” she explained.

He tittered. “I don’t smell anything.” He was surprised she was able to joke. Was he making too much of her ailment? Perhaps it wasn’t perilous at all. Yet what wasn’t perilous to an 87-year-old? He recalled the last time he’d seen his father joke, teasing his youngest granddaughter. For a moment he’d thought there might be hope. It was soon extinguished. The elder Peruccio, now deceased himself, had been his father’s primary www.farawayjournal.com

physician. Vito still harbored resentment toward that bungler. At least his son seemed to know what he was doing.

Another doctor, a small woman, approached and asked the same questions the others had. Vito fought to maintain patience.

His legs were weary. He decided to chance taking a seat. He plopped into a chair opposite the foot of the bed and closed his eyes, hoping a catnap would revive him, hasten the passage of time. Five hours had passed. How much longer would it be before the room was ready?

He was unable to doze. He looked at his mother and waved. She raised a hand weakly. He noted her wrinkles, age spots, sagging earlobes. Was this his future? Lately, when frustration had him mumbling aloud to himself, he feared that he would end up like his mother, that sound diet and exercise would not save him from senility and incapacitating arthritis. He’d already begun annual physicals.

She’d been ill two weeks, lacking appetite, barely speaking, losing weight, sleeping most of the day. He suspected there were more wrong with her than an infection. He wondered if he wished that were the case, although he certainly did not want her to suffer. For all intents and purposes, her life had ceased eight years ago. It seemed futile to go on living. Fortunately, she no longer suffered day long bouts of dementia, a term the first doctor had used, which, curiously, Vito had refuted. It’d sounded too strong.

However, it’d been accurate. Such occurrences were now rare, to the relief of everyone.

Still, her life did not seem worth living.

To his annoyance, a fourth intern asked him the same questions. Now the entire group that had toured the area had each visited individually. It seemed odd that not one, besides the instructor, was American-born. Was this a way of cutting into the enormous cost of the welfare state? Or was America indeed dumbing down, producing less physicians?

“Do you recognize me?” he said to his mother when the doctor had gone.

“The light of my life.”

He tittered, embarrassed. He was glad no one was within earshot of what to him was over-praise. “And what’s my name?”

She shrugged, as if the answer were a given. “Vitoots.”

“And what’s yours?”

“Rosina.”

“Rosina what?”

“Rosina Rossi.”

“And where do you live?”

To his surprise, she rattled off the address with ease.

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Angelina.”

“And your grandchildren’s?”

She stared blankly a moment, then made a face and shook her head. She didn’t want to play any more. Vito wondered if it were futile to try to preserve what little remained of her memory.

He smiled as he realized he’d used the Sicilian “Me canoosh?” for “Do you recognize me?” Was the bastardization of Arabic influence? He couldn’t wait to tell friends, parVol. 2, Iss. 2

ticularly a couple whom he’d come to greet with “babaganoosh” after having tasted the Middle Eastern delicacy at a party of theirs.

His attention was snared by the squeak of wheels. Attendants were guiding a gurney that had a long, black, zippered body bag atop it. He tensed, fearful his mother would notice. She did not. He told himself it wasn’t an omen or foreshadowing, just as the rumor at work that the pope had died hadn’t been one. Eyes glazed, he’d been certain that what in the end turned out to be a repugnant practical joke had meant his mother was dead. “I bit my tongue,” he’d told a co-worker who asked what was wrong. He wondered what story attended the poor soul in the body bag.

She was assigned to a room on the sixth floor.

“Miss Rossi,” said a young woman cheerfully. “Hi, I’m Maria, your nurse.”

“Do you speak Spanish, Miss?” said Vito, certain she did, hoping she wouldn’t be offended. “It works sometimes with one of her attendants.”

“Me llamo Maria.”

His mother nodded and patted Maria’s hand. “’allo.”

“There you go,” said Vito, smiling.

“Don’t worry, sir, your grandmother’s gonna be fine.”

“She’s my mom, and please don’t call me ‘sir.’”

To his dismay, Maria was 50 pounds overweight. Why would so attractive a woman let herself go thusly? Her face was thin and had the salutary glow of young Hispanics. Her hair was rich, dark and long, pulled back into a ponytail. She reminded Vito of someone she really didn’t look anything like. He repressed the longing the thought raised within him.

There were three other patients in the room. Directly across from his mother, Mrs. Tomlinson was sitting up in bed, a tube feeding oxygen into her nose. She seemed dazed.

Her legs had been amputated above the knee, long ago, he assumed.

“Ninety-seven years old,” said Mrs. Pearl from the bed beside his mother’s.

“God bless her,” said Vito, fighting sadness, anger. What did it all mean if this was what it came to in the end? Although he realized the woman may have had a wonderful life and that he himself had many years left and the intelligence to make them happy and productive, he was unable to shake a sense of doom and gloom. He was electing misery - and there was never an excuse for that, at least not for someone as healthy and fortunate as he. True, he did not have a wife and children, but everything else in his life was promising. Reason failed him, however. Would he be clinging so futilely to life in dotage, or would he have the courage to go to the hemlock? He feared that by the time he realized his mind was going he would be too far gone to have the wherewithal to act.

The fourth bed was occupied by what seemed a little girl, face down, sound asleep.

“You’re tired,” his mother said. “Go to your room and get some sleep.”

“In a few minutes.” He hoped she would doze off so that he would be able to sneak away, feel less guilty about leaving her. He worried that she might disturb the others with a sudden attack of dementia.

Maria returned. “I’m gonna take a little blood and hook you up to an IV, mommy.”

Vito experienced a jolt. He loved the way “mommy” flowed so naturally from Hispanic women. He heard it constantly at work.

“She’s a little dehydrated,” said Maria. www.farawayjournal.com

“She might try to pull out the IV later, so don’t hesitate to put the restraints on her.”

Despite the soundness of the suggestion, his knees buckled at the thought that he’d given license for his mother to be shackled.

“She won’t need them with me - right, mommy?”

She seemed born to be a nurse. He kept looking at her, wanting her to be thinner.

He despaired, certain he would never find the right woman. Perhaps this proved he didn’t deserve it. Maria was too young, anyway, probably not even out of her 20’s. And even if he found the right woman, what were the chances that their happiness would last?

His mother gazed about as if noting the surroundings for the first time. “What a beautiful room. Did you fix it up like this?”

He chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Nice-a.”

Maria left with the sample. Another foreign born doctor appeared. Vito suffered through the familiar interview.

He was dozing when his mother said: “Why don’t you go home?” He sprang to his feet. Since she’d suggested it, she wouldn’t carry on about his leaving her and, hopefully, wouldn’t carry on later. He realized he was rationalizing. She was liable to go off any time. There was no predicting it.

“My wife and kids are waiting for me.”

“Your wife’s expecting?” Her eyes widened, brightness visiting the dull brown corneas. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We just found out.”

“You don’t know how happy you’ve made me.”

How had she arrived at such a conclusion? he wondered. He surmised she’d heard “spetta,” which meant “expecting” as well as “waiting,” at least as far as he’d come to know.

Maria returned. She searched for a vein into which to insert the IV needle, which was difficult in one so aged. His mother winced at each jab. Vito, holding her hand, cringed. The fourth try was successful.

“There we go,” said Maria. “Esta bien, mommy?”

“Yeah,” said his mother weakly in English. “Tan que.”

Maria chuckled.

“Okay, Ma,” said Vito. “I’m going. I’m leaving you with this nurse with the face of an angel.”

She smiled.

“Awww,” said Maria softly, the Brooklyn girl slipping out of her. She’d had no trouble understanding that bit of Italian.

He kissed his mother’s forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Angelina’s coming in the afternoon.”

He hurried away, haunted by the look in his father’s eyes the night he died, wondering if he’d seen his mother alive for the last time. His reference to Maria as an angel suddenly seemed ominous, misguided, although his mother revered religious imagery.

He hoped Maria hadn’t interpreted it as a pass. He would not abide such a weight problem or be so gauche as to suggest she reduce for his sake. He’d seen what obesity had Vol. 2, Iss. 2

done to his mother the past 15 years.

Outside, several nurses were seated on a ledge, smoking. He was amazed. One would think, given what they saw each shift - the consequences of unclean living - that they would be prudent. Of course, they were only human. Still, he did not understand it, which made him feel inhuman. He had no desire to smoke, drink or use drugs, unlike some of his friends. Were these nurses able to rationalize because of their proximity to physicians who would save them? He suspected it was attributable more to that certain something in people, perhaps ego, that told one: “It won’t happen to me.”

Vito visited each evening, making sure his mother ate. He became familiar with the other patients. Mrs. Tomlinson left within days. He was unable to bring himself to ask if she’d died. At least she’d been loved, visited by a wealth of family who called her “Granny.”

The patient he’d assumed was a little girl was actually a woman, severely retarded.

She’d had a virus and pushed away anyone who neared her. The women the city had assigned to her as guardians merely sat beside the bed, should they be needed. Their presence seemed superfluous, certainly not cost effective, as the nurses were there.

Vito fought back tears as the patient took to slamming the heel of her palm against her mouth and had to be restrained. All her front teeth were missing. Was the rage directed at her condition, at unfairness, at life? If so, it was understandable, as there wasn’t much anyone could do for her. Fortunately his mother noticed only when the woman wept, a heartrending, pitiable cry. To his relief, her stay was brief.

Mrs. Pearl, who suffered from severe swelling of the lower legs which necessitated the use of a walker, offered him gifilte fish, assuring him it was delicious. He declined, apologizing, experiencing the creeps, as he had whenever he’d spotted a jar on a shelf in Katz’s Grocery.

“It’s not my culture,” he said.

“I like the way you said that,” she told him.

He switched on the electric candles she’d brought to commemorate the high holy days. It was especially distressing for her to be hospitalized at this time.

Mrs. DeMarco was in and out in days. Suffering post-menopausal depression, she’d taken medication that affected her adversely. “You were out of it, Ma,” a teenage daughter told her. “Was I?” she returned. “I don’t remember.” She bawled and babbled incoherently the first night. When Vito entered she was laying with legs spread wide, an odd, almost seductive look on her face. He cringed, so removed from desirability was the sight.

Mrs. Dunn, an asthmatic who needed oxygen daily, followed her. Her stay was long.

She gave him daily reports on his mother. “She has such a nice voice.”

The others concurred.

“She always liked to sing,” said Vito,” “religious songs mostly. When she’s singin’ we’re all safe. We know she’s okay.”

“She’s always callin’ out names.”

“Her sisters in Italy.”

“My mother spoke Italian, but I can’t figure out what dialect you use.”

“Me?” He smiled. “Brooklyn Sicilian. It may be closer to pig latin, the way I speak it.”

She laughed. “You take such good care of her.” www.farawayjournal.com

He shrugged, embarrassed, wondering if she thought him gay. Why would it be so hard to care for someone? All it required was common sense. “I know what she likes. She has such a sweet tooth. If she won’t eat what they give her, I know she’ll have a creamsicle or some pound cake. It’s better than nothin’.”

She made a face. “The food here is so bland, to say the least.”

One night her son brought her grilled cheese sandwiches and fries. Vito was unsure if he approved. On the one hand, it seemed lethal to someone who’d had open heart surgery; on the other, what was life without an occasional treat? And he was guilty himself, having filled an order for Yoo Hoo for her.

When Mrs. Pearl left the bed was filled by an elderly Salvadoran woman who had a frightening cough. Her family was large and devoted to her. Vito resisted the urge to speak Spanish to them, certain he would make a fool of himself. Joking around at work was one thing....

For a while his mother showed signs of recovery only to relapse. Each time he boarded the elevator he tried to prepare himself for the worst. Some days he was certain she was dead. He did not understand, given her age, why the thought of her demise had him walking on egg shells. How would he ever handle the serious illness of a wife or child?

She began to show progress, however. He broke his silence to co-workers. He’d tried to forget it during the day, hoping the frequent levity would be diverting, and it worked to a large degree.

The infection wasn’t entirely clear when she was released. Antibiotics were prescribed. He was surprised at the extent of her recovery. He’d expected her to slip markedly. The decline was hardly noticeable, however. He’d been wrong about not wanting her hospitalized. Again he was shown that that sense of futility had to be fought. Why was this so difficult to learn? After all, he dismissed the futility of hoping he would ever be published each time he sat at his desk. He battled the futility of being 30 to 40 strokes worse than professionals each time he played golf, battled the futility of hoping he would ever get through an entire song on the guitar without muting any notes. He was the only one he saw at the supermarket who re-used plastic bags. The cashiers eyed him as if he were strange, as if they suspected he were trying to sneak items past them.

He didn’t know if recycling were useless, but he believed it worth a try. Why was it he rarely felt victorious? Even Enzo had proved futility could be defeated, managing to stop smoking after 50 years of two packs a day.

Two nights before his mother’s release, he attended a wake in the very room in which his father had been laid out 20 years ago. It was in honor of a woman who’d brought 16 children into the world. 79, alone, she too suffered dementia and had come to rely on home care. He commiserated with the brothers, who were going through what he had eight years ago. He’d seen it eating at them and winced when they confessed they wished God would take her. He’d felt similarly and did so occasionally still, minus the faith that God would intercede. However, now that dementia was rare in his mother, the burden was not nearly as great. When he found himself wishing she would pass on, he realized it was pure selfishness on his part, a desire to be relieved of his own suffering. His inability to prevent such thoughts deepened his despair. Was man at heart still a beast?

At work the morning after the wake, it dawned on him that he’d violated the Vol. 2, Iss. 2

alternate side parking regulation, having lost track of the days. He had no recourse but to plead “Guilty,� as if he’d committed a crime. The fine was meaningless. After all, it was invisible funds, his paycheck going directly into his account, a personal check written to cover the amount. Nonetheless, he seethed. Such instances accounted for a large part of the sadness that characterized life, along with its utter mystery. Everyone was prey, be it to major or petty crime, to indignity or incivility. And there were two ways to respond to react in kind or to rise above it, and neither was particularly satisfying.

Strolling along Sheepshead Bay one day, gazing into the water, he noticed a Blue Claw crab puttering at the surface, circling haphazardly. The futility of it forced laughter to his throat. Here was this creature, perhaps in search of prey itself, eagerly sought by men and women with nets. What was the purpose of its existence - to serve as food to others? to keep the ocean from becoming overcrowded with the organisms upon which it fed? It seemed pointless. And it struck him - life was essentially meaningless. And although this did not mean it could not be fun or worthwhile or fascinating, it told him that sadness would prevail, as futility was not something that could be embraced. Yet why, if life were meaningless, did he try his best to be civil and honest? Was it merely force of habit or a quirk of personality or genes, or did he, deep down, have faith? Or did he simply believe it imperative that people act as if life were meaningful? Otherwise joy would never be appreciated and, consequently, life would be intolerable, and chaos would reign.

Whitelite. Katie Rutherford www.farawayjournal.com

Hello Neig Vol. 2, Iss. 2

hbor

www.farawayjournal.com

Michael Woodcock Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Michael Woodcock (detail)

www.farawayjournal.com

Clouds Like Mountains. Karen Greenbaum-Maya

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Awaken. Janet Thorning

www.farawayjournal.com

Dream. Jim Fuess

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Underwater Fire. Jim Fuess

www.farawayjournal.com

THOUGHT FOR FOOD Jim Lyons here are thousands of books, all with different spines, and I want to touch and absorb every one of them. Savour their flavours. Float their boats.

Kindle their flames, you get the idea. As long I can see more of the worlds that exist beyond the frontiers of wild, ancient space, somewhere in that sunny altitude of human artistic consciousness. Here is a single mother’s dream of olive groves in Tuscany, there the bottomless ocean for mer-moles burrowing endlessly in search of worms as dead whales sink past them each time the Oxford-born author gets writer’s block. Not a single book on Mao or the Cultural Revolution dares flush any colour but red for fear of denunciation, while some fantasy sagas stretch across entire shelves, half a writer’s lifetime spent developing the destinies of farm boys and conjurors and plotting epic revelations at Mount Ishtak and Elbrador. I could read them all, but I only want one book. Read more than one book at a time and I’ll start forgetting whether it was Duke Featherstone who married the fisherman, or if the vampire shot the warlock’s lover while the fox ate the oyster, or if the plague that took the president was somehow related to the pygmy’s massage at Babylon.

No, I must choose one book and one book only. It shall be something unique, inspiring. The kind of book I’d like to write if only someone hadn’t beaten me to it.

Oh, which one? There are so many. Maybe this one? No...

I browse the fictions, the classics, the quirky know-it-alls with lavish front covers and bold-lettered surnames. I am sure books never looked this good before.

One day we’ll master the art of cover design to a point where the illustrations move, and each title jumps off the spine and competes with others for cliental acknowledgement. The Fokker-shaped Es in All Quiet on the Western Front will fire bullets across the aisle at the camera-like eyes of the 8 in 1984, whose 1 and 9 and 4 like Thought Police will pursue the ardent, armoured Don Quixote as he rides his horse along the tops of book shelves. The boys from The Lord of the Flies will vie for fair shares of a shelf-like island looked over by Moby Dick, who will heartily swallow the entire range of characters in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Paul McKenna books will hypnotise the twelve-volume hardbacks, distorting their information: dictionaries would spell spoon as snoop and carp as crap; thesauruses would declare goldfish as a suitable synonym for shock, as in the sentence, Vulgarity littered Sir Godfrey’s speech with such shameless excess that Madame Truff felt utterly goldfished!

Should things ever come to this, I will look upon my world with a laugh, a cry and then a thought of, ‘wait, didn’t I envisage this once when I was browsing the fiction section in that bookstore?’ When society has made even its books ruthlessly fight one other for self-gain, one must surely step back and say: ‘Madness!’ (though one should already have said this many, many times before). Without hesitation, I will decree – since by this time I plan to be master of all books – that every one of them be titleless, and given equal opportunity for customer exhibition. Every book

T

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

will become the same, and yet each and every one of them will leave you, the reader, completely goldfished upon reading.

So! – I awake, and well, with such an absent drift into reverie just passed, I confirm an alluring sense of stardom is lacking in these here stories. So I wander upstairs to the realm of non-fiction, where knowledge is customised, categorised – maybe even crystallised – so it becomes somewhat less exotic than its brewed form downstairs. There are the meals so rich and yet so unfamiliar, but up here are the ingredients with which I can make my own.

In the self-help section I am tempted to buy HOW TO RAISE YOUR SELFESTEEM, though I feel so insecure with my wretched self that I am embarrassed to bring such a book to the counter, big scary capital letters and all.

Philosophy. I am not at all of a deep mind, except in the sense that my mind is forever submerged in the fathomless gloom of a conformist discernment of reality.

Perhaps a book on philosophy will give me the answers I need. I flick through a book on ethics and realise the implications of telling your girlfriend to wear red if you’re going to a bull fight. I bet Mao would have approved, but then he was never a poster boy for ethics. Reading various paragraphs, I cannot help but feel the book itself will not answer the dilemmas I have every day in relations to what is right and wrong, but morally I wonder if it is wrong of me to make such an assumption without giving it the time it probably deserves. Sometimes there are no answers in life, so I put it back on the shelf all the same. I afford a cursory glance to other books, skim-reading pages of metaphysics, problems of time, musings on miracles and materials, but that is all, for I am bored with every offering.

Next section, cookery. Smoothies with strawberries floating in them. Why didn’t I think of that? The cooking makes me hungry, all the wonderful foods.

I could really enjoy learning about the Battle of the Crimea or the nature of physics in the universe. I could read the Bible of the Koran or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Just need to settle on something, just need to pick one.

A lady soon approaches. ‘Excuse me, young man, we’re closing soon.’

I look at my watch. By jove, it’s nearly half past five already? ‘Thank you,’ I say to her. Damn it, I have to pick something…anything. But there are so many.

I can’t let this be a wasted trip! I skim-read the shelves, desperate for something to grab my attention. Books of Hopes, Books of Facts, Books of Signs, Books of Songs, Books of Life, Books of Sorrow, Books of...

I lean around the staircase to peak at downstairs, and see the security doors half-closed. The shop assistants goodbye the last few customers. ‘Carol, can you check upstairs to see if there’s anyone left?’ asks a supervisor. I look at the tills.

They’re closed. There’s no more time. I sneak back up the stairs. I run over to the art section, which is concealed from the rest of the floor in a two metre-deep depression. I hear the shop assistant’s heels clicking louder against the stairs as she slowly reaches the top. I slide into a gap between the end book cabinet and the wall, where discontinued titles and damaged books are left. This gap continues around the edge of the entire floor, a narrow strip running behind every book shelf.

I can see the light of the room and the lady as she inspects the floor. ‘All empty,’ she cries, and leaves. I wait a while, listening to the staff chat as they finish up downwww.farawayjournal.com

stairs. Eventually the lights dim somewhat, and the doors shut. All I can hear are cars and a few distant voices in the night. I haven’t had water in so long an ache besets my head, but I’m determined not to leave until I find a book I like, a book that’s just for me, a book that will resonate with my soul so intensely I will become a different person. All the pages here, they must contain at least something that could change my life for the better.

I settle down behind the shelf. I can’t read the spines from here, and I’m worried there might be motion sensors at the floor, so I grab a book at random and make myself comfortable. I figure the only way to find what I’m looking for is to read, and since the lights are still just bright enough for me to do so, I stay here, hidden. The book is 20th Century Art: An Overview, a bulky hardcover comprised half of text, half of pictures. I spend all night reading about Jackson Pollock dripping oils across the floor, Damien Hirst cutting cows into pieces, and Yves Klein asking nude models to clothe each other in paint. When morning comes I finish, and start on Renaissance. I’m so absorbed by the stories surrounding the revolutionary changes that ensued during this period that I barely even notice the sound of the doors opening downstairs, the staff returning for another shift, and customers growing in number as they browse nearby. I keep on reading throughout the morning. By mid-afternoon the shop is bustling, and I begin to worry that my position is compromised. It would not take much for someone to peak around the edge of the shelf and see me lying here, bleary-eyed. Careful not to make any noise, I drag my body deeper into the gap, following the angles of the wall until I am hiding behind a different section. It means I have to leave art for a while, but I can always return at night when it’s safer. I start reading a political commentary on the role of women in Modern Latin America.

The days go quickly, such is my level of utter absorption in these books. My thirst and hunger subside, since the knowledge I gain from reading provides all the nutrition I need. I remember once reading about a man found in India who claimed not only that he was over a hundred years old, but that he hadn’t eaten in over fifty. He had survived purely through divine energy acquired through contact with the powers that be. As you know, Buddha himself is depicted as fat not because of over-indulgence but because of an abundance of wisdom and an understanding of the world. This reminds me how my father used to have such a big appetite and all by himself would eat meals big enough for two, and people would say, ‘caw, blimey! That’s a big dinner, n’t it?’ and he always replied with, ‘Well, I’m a growing lad!’ even though he was well into his forties. He claimed that one continues to grow in adulthood, that you need food not only to strengthen your body but to help the mind grow bigger too, and that one would have a healthier mind if one ate big meals. He was terribly fat though. In any case, I realise now that the principal works both ways. I can stay here for as long as I like, obtaining knowledge as a means of survival. Now it is not one book that matters to me, but all of them. I read every word, even the blurbs, the forewords, the publishing information.

By the end of the first year here I have read approximately three hundred books. I find that the store does not have motion sensors, so at night I sneak up and down the stairs between the fiction and non-fiction departments. Only upstairs Vol. 2, Iss. 2

are the shelves sufficient for hiding behind, but I carry hoards of fiction up there as a stock for whenever I tire of the real world. From time to time, members of staff come to the back of the shelves to store flops and returns, at which point I climb up the shelves and lie on top, just out of site of both them and the customers. There are many close calls, but no one finds me, and I still keep my beard.

Do I miss my previous life? Well, I have everything I could ever need right here in this bookstore. I exercise with Mensa puzzles and illustrated football rules (it is true that one can strengthen one’s muscles merely by imagining one is undergoing a heavy workout). I journey around the world with travel books (I can smell the salty air in Marseille, I can imagine the conversations I have with Mongol herdsmen; it is not so hard). I chuckle (quietly) at limericks and comic strips. I read language aid books, perfecting my grasp of French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese and even Dutch. This way, I can finally begin reading Thomas Mann’s books in the original German, or Sartre’s texts in French.

More years pass, and though I am isolated from the world outside the store, I find plenty of books highlighting recent major events. I drag my eyes through jungles of text in American pathways to the loss of Saigon. Beneath the glare of Khmer Rouge troops I march from Phnom Penh into an abyss of countryside fire.

Rhodesian commandoes on the Mozambique border share bullets with brethren in pursuit of a white reign in Africa.

Decades more go by; many of the books I read have been replaced by new ones. As I had imagined, the texture of the covers is even glossier than it used to be. As with the visual quality of movies and television shows, one always imagines it could get no crisper, and yet somehow it does. The books even begin to compete with one another, though not in the manner I had foreseen. They do in fact talk, like little people, sometimes about the humans who made them, but mostly about themselves. I tell them, ‘you just wait, you’ll get your turn. I’m going to read you all before I make my choice.’ From what I can see, they do not talk to the other customers. What it is that makes me so different, I will never know.

After thirty-five years, seven months, and five days, I have read over twelve thousand books, and my body is obese with knowledge. I barely fit behind here anymore. I squeeze back and forth like an earthworm, a bookworm, munching my way through knowledge. I read words as if they are songs in my ear, whispers from the minds and memories of other people. I do, in this way, still see myself as in constant communication with the rest of the human race.

One day, something different happens. My routine has remained fairly consistent during my stay here, but today there are no customers like there would normally be on a weekday, and the staff are taking all the books off the opposite cabinets and putting them into boxes. Removal teams carry the boxes and the shelves out on their shoulders. Could it be...No, I must be imagining it. Oh, turbulent travesty, oh, witch-sticks of woe! They’re shutting it down. How dare they?

I haven’t found the book I want yet, for heaven’s sake.

As they clear more and more shelves I shuffle around the edge of the wall so that they won’t find me, but finally there is but one cabinet with which to conceal myself. A young man begins to empty it from the top down, and I crouch awkwww.farawayjournal.com

wardly as he does so. Finally, I decide my time in this scholarly sanctuary is up at last. Standing, I push the cabinet over, nearly crushing the man. All the members of staff turn round.

‘This is a shambles, a shame, a crying shame!’ I cry. They stand motionless before me, jaws agape. ‘How you could have the audacity to begin closing while one of your most faithful customers – thirty-five years have I browsed here, no less – still attempts to facilitate a purchase of benefit to both you and himself, is beyond me.

A true merchant would never be so discourteous to his clients. That you should close so soon is, to my mind at least, a disgrace to the notion of customer service, an act so scandalous as to become a blistering eyesore upon your future credentials.

I’m sure you and your pretty company will be thankful to know I shan’t be shopping at any of your other branches ever again! HMPF!’ Immediately I run across the floor, jump down the staircase four steps at a time, pass the tills and push open the fire exit doors, flying out onto the streets.

The light blinds me, but I sprint as fast as my large legs will carry me. They ache, so long has it been since they scampered at such a pace. My vision returns slowly. I remember these roads, these dirty roads. There are different shops here now, different colours, different hues, but the roads are the same. Those buses, those tall, red buses; I remember the 174 route. I run until my breath caves in, and then I stop to rest at a bench near a war memorial.

I sleep for an hour, and then I return to my old home. It is surprising how instinctively I find my way there, following that same roads I used when I was younger. Some things your brain refuses to set free. But as should be expected, someone else is living at my home now, an old lady and her dog. I shall cause her no problems. I leave and stumble away from the town centre. I try to find the country roads that once lead to the sea, but there is no end to the busy A-roads and industrial estates, so instead I wander aimlessly around town, wondering what to do. I already miss words, wonderful words, so I find new things to read. Road signs, billboards, adverts on the sides of buses. Discarded newspapers are a welcome change to the prose I am used to reading, but somehow they do not give me the same satisfaction as when I was resting in those hidden walls with the sound of oblivious footsteps nearby. I walk on, scratching my ears and rubbing my eyes.

Over the next few days I kick tins and play scrabble with letters I tear from newspapers. I press cryptic messages onto park benches in the hope that some unhappy soul may discover them and draw hope from their meaning. But soon enough the wind picks them up and scatters them across the road like confetti.

I spend many months living on the streets. I do not pity myself so much as to beg, but I admit my hefty weight does not take long to diminish, and eventually I am mere skin on sticks, the length of my beard now serving to accentuate my wiry frame. With little food, and little reading, I am finding it hard to gather the strength to get up each morning. Some days I just sit and watch the pigeons hooting from the tops of old bridges. I wonder if I should buy some food. I still have five pound-coins in my wallet from that day long ago when I first began browsing the bookstore. Ah, the bookstore! Now, I cannot help remembering those splendid days! Curious, I decide to see what has become of that once-wonderful place.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Maybe they were only refurbishing the building. By now, the store may already have returned, with brand new books and another chance for me to peruse its wares! I hobble down the main street and find myself licking my lips merely with the thought of reading entire novels again. My eyes are wide open.

When I reach the building, I find it now occupied not by a bookstore, but by a mini-supermarket. I admit, despite my anger at the book company, I was truly hopeful my beloved literary lair had resumed its seat at this lively district of town.

Still, at least this replacement sells food. I just hope my cash is still legal tender.

I enter the brightly-lit store, where glistening magazines and a hundred varieties of cigarette packets hang beneath a kiosk sign. The smell of cold sandwiches and energy drinks wafts over from the refridgerators. Mmm. Real food. I wander down the aisles, past multi-coloured crisp packets, “healthy-option” microwave meals, meat wrapped in plastic, seasonings in tubes...over there is a hot chicken counter. Why, I could buy a half-chicken or some barbecue legs with the money I have. They do smell so good. But then I see hobnobs and jaffa cakes in the biscuit aisle, doughnuts near the bakery, packets of stir-fry vegetables in the freezers. There are pots of marmite and chocolate spread, and dry spaghetti near the tins of baby carrots. Thousands of baked beans and tomatoes and olives and...my god, there is so much. I see a clock just by the store’s entrance. Four o’clock already?

I continue browsing, reading the labels on foreign cheeses, wondering which yoghurts would taste the nicest. Cereal box mascots grin as I walk past them, some bathing in bowls of corn, others in basins trickling with treacle-coated rice. Bags of raisins sit near the sugar. Oh my, with all this, I could make my own cereal! But then the Scotch eggs look so wholesome I’d probably be contented for weeks with merely two of them. No, I should find something sweeter to give my tongue a buzz after all these years without feeding. Or perhaps I need to perk up with some coffee. Or is alcohol what I need? I stop, feet squeaking on the shiny floor, and sigh.

I gather my surroundings, these endless aisles of nutrition, and ask myself, how will I possibly choose something to eat before five-thirty?

No matter, I keep searching, searching, searching. There must be some kind of food here that would be just perfect for me, some kind of food that would change my life. Meatballs. No, they’re not my thing. I could just take a few loafs of bread, but I do fancy something with more zest. What about these...?

www.farawayjournal.com

Amelie and the Umbrella

Christian A. Pinchbeck

It was a rainy Wednesday morning When Amelie awoke from snoring Pulled on her shoes and walked out the door Wishing for an umbrella as rain started to pour Wetter and wetter Amelie became Soaked from head to foot in rain Then suddenly there was a man with a grin Selling umbrellas for next to nothing!

A sparkle in the handle And a multicoloured hood She picked up the umbrella And paid for the goods Over the bridge Amelie did stare When all of a sudden came a gush of fresh air!

Lifting Amelie off the ground By the hood of the umbrella she’d just found Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Higher and higher she did fly Until she was nothing but a pin-prick in the sky Over rivers, mountains and oceans she flew The wind getting weaker the more it blew Soon Amelie was only meters from land Her feet were about to touch down on the sand “Where am I?” she thought, looking around “This is certainly not my home,” she frowned Amelie tied up her umbrella and started walking Under the pier she heard someone talking She turned around and there was the old man!

“Could you please tell me where I am,” she began “A place where the sun is always shining,” he replied “A place that we folk call ‘St. Ives’!”

Well now Amelie was in a mess How was she to get home she stressed “Just open your Umbrella,” the old man suggested And lifting up her umbrella, Amelie tested

Soon enough she was away and soaring Back home where the rain was still pouring

www.farawayjournal.com

Amelie and the Whale

Christian A. Pinchbeck

The sky was blue and the clouds were white As Amelie awoke to the morning light Stretching her hands and scratching her hair She pulled on a dress that was sat on the chair Click on the kettle and spring up the toast Today Amelie was off to the coast!

“I mustn’t forget my watch,” she thought The one in the market, yesterday she bought She hopped on her bicycle and began to ride Through towns and villages, towards the seaside Amelie passed a giant lake to her right So she stopped to take in the magnificent sight Whilst leaning over the water, she saw perfection But then off slipped her watch into her reflection “Oh no, my watch!” she sighed with regret “Now it’s going to be soaking wet!”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Looking around, there was no one to be seen Except for a boy, no older than nineteen Holding a rod higher than him Made of willow, long and thin Casting out to the water, deep The line was tense, strong and steep “Excuse me, pardon me My name is Amelie I saw you fishing from across the lake And wondered what you are using for bait?”

Reaching down inside his coat He pulled out what was attached to the float With a look of confusion and a flick of her hair Amelie could do nothing but stare!

There in his hand was a marshmallow, pink Rubbing her eyes she continued to blink “A marshmallow,” he said, “if used as bait Will catch a chocolate fish, as long as you wait!”

Then all of a sudden there was tug Pulling the boy to the ground with a thud Scrambling to his feet he pulled And pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled Until…

Out from the ripples emerged a beast A humongous, magnificent chocolaty feast!

It was Whale for sure, Amelie saw But a different Whale what she had seen before “I don’t believe my eyes,” she said “Quick,” mouthed the boy, grabbing the thread

www.farawayjournal.com

And the pair did not notice the Whale melting away Soon enough, there was nothing left Just a large, melted, chocolate mess!

From under the puddle, Amelie saw something shine A golden watch caught onto the line! “Hurrah!� she celebrated, rubbing it clean Although the water had left it a little sea-green

With her watch on her arm and a smile on her face She climbed on her bike and went home with grace

Artwork: Christian Pinchbeck & Lotte Beatrix Crawford

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Jeff Hendrickson

www.farawayjournal.com

7 Wondrous Hills Michael Pitassi

Your hills. Your Hills!

Your seven wondrous hills — Having the look of twenty-five centuries; Twenty-five centuries for the eyes to see.

Many more figures in temples of shade Than words in a lifetime a human could say.

Colonnades, balustrades, domes in the sun, Holy ground, fountains, ancient stadiums.

An emperor’s snarl impressed in the stone Has transfixed this soul in the center of Rome!

And walking on marble walked on by Seneca, And by Virgil and Juvenal and Horace, Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Has bestirred my thoughts to ancient periods — Like shouts from the theatres of the Roman Chorus!

Recline here a while — beneath the splash of a naiad, Or betwixt the pillars of a shrine thrice raided.

The Hills salute, take leave, give life; Surround the City of our Eternal Rite.

And leaving leaves tears only pomposity could conjure, From a place sacred and profane — Rome, your grandeur, Your splendor, your temporal glory, your martial quarrels, Your divine eminence, your sanctity, your imperial laurels.

And your hills. Your Hills!

Your seven wondrous hills.

Original photos, Michael Pitassi

www.farawayjournal.com

IDOLATRY SIPS OF VANILLA Colin James Slightly before nightfall in a large Kleenex box extemporaneously out of sight lie aunt Velma’s slippers, dogged by some local disparates then left by the side of the road.

Can’t say as I recognized any subversive herbalists in the bushes, of late.

THE LATEST IN PHONOGRAPHIC SOUND!

New Reco

rdings

Compact Discettes

Needles & Pins Sonny Nigro, Proprietor 226 S. Main Street Pomona Retailers of Fine Music for Over 20 Years (909) 469-4779

“I Can’t Believe How CRISP and CLEAR it Sounds!”

-Dr. Waldo Burningham Vol. 2, Iss. 2

AN INTERRUPTION OF SOME FINE LYRICISM Joseph Goosey It is 97 degrees and a misplaced Sunday.

The professors, they believe in me and their correspondence is a sort of helium encouragement but what they don’t know is that I have never done my own laundry and I once plagiarized a 16 pages analysis of Dante.

A woman strolls up.

She’s sporting a brown bathing suit and starving, seething legs.

She asks, did anyone find my shoe?

I answer in the negative.

That same woman asked me that same question just 5 minutes ago about 20 yards south but she doesn’t recognize me beard or my insides.

I hate her and I suspect this is reciprocated.

www.farawayjournal.com

L a C o m me d i a D i a b o l i c a Da nie l Sa w yer

T

he dagger flashed in the dark and Gregorio saw red as it plunged into the fat on his side and tore open his kidney, and the notebook he had been scribbling in tumbled end over end and just before it hit the water he clearly saw the lines of the poem he had been writing, about how the stars were spread like diamonds on a velvet pillow on a jeweler’s counter of the gods, and then it splashed and sunk.

The knife swept upward till it caught in his bottom rib as blood and gore poured out of the gash, wetting the deck with his steaming insides. Before he could even cry out, his assailants lifted him and pitched him over the side of the ship. He fell into the freezing blackness, his blood pouring out invisibly into the deep. Gregorio coughed, spitting out the salty brine and then sucking it in again, paddling hopelessly to keep himself afloat as his vision faded to black, the water with its reflected moonlight and the pitchy sky blurring into one dark mass. He bobbed on the surface for a time quietly, the ship disappearing into the night, then went into convulsions from the cold and passed out, drowning to death unmourned in the middle of the Mediterranean.

When Gregorio awoke, it was still dark all around, but there was a dull red Vol. 2, Iss. 2

glow in the distance, shrouded in fog. He sat up on his elbows, slow, disoriented.

The ground around him was muddy and soaked in blood. His reached for the wound in his side but found nothing out of the ordinary and moaned with relief, hoping it had all been a dream. He stood, slipping a little in the mud. Behind him was a wall of solid, craggy rocks which rose up and out of sight, disappearing into darkness, but the acoustics alerted him instinctively to the fact that he was in a cave.

The other walls drew closer together, narrowing into a path only wide enough for a man to fit through. In utter confusion, he walked toward it, the mud squelching around his boots.

The path led to a stairway carved out of the rocks. A steady stream of filthy water trickled down the steps.

Gregorio descended, careful not to slip, but with an increasing sense of foreboding building into near panic. He was prescient enough to wonder if this in fact was not a dream, that he was actually still floating in the water, on the edge of death, imagining himself in a cave, and for the next millennia such thoughts would occasionally occur to him and bring some little solace to his tortured mind.

At the bottom of the stairs the caved widened and a great Romanesque gate loomed before him, filling the chamber. All the while, the red glow grew in intenDimba sity as he drew closer to its source, and so, too, did faint sounds that did little to put him at ease. He could barely make out, at the edge of his perception, the sounds of voices calling out in pain.

Carved deeply into the top of the gate which he now passed under were wicked, indecipherable symbols. As he slowly crossed the threshold, one foot planted in front of the other, Gregorio found himself on the brink of hysterical tears, but he pressed on, his curiosity and disbelief overriding his fear.

As he crossed the gate, all became clear. He stood on a great plain that stretched away to the banks of a river, the shore crowded with people. But every piece of this tableau was grotesque. The plain was littered with bodies contorted abnormally in pain, and it was completely bare of any vegetation, but was instead just a wide field of mud. The river oozed by with sickening slowness, looking like congealing blood or the runoff that choked the streets after it rained, filled with shit and half-eaten food and all manner of foul things, and there were patches of the river that were in flames, as if the surface were covered in oil. And the people on the bank were no picnickers or outdoorsmen. They were the most wretched people Gregorio had www.farawayjournal.com

ever laid eyes on, and he had lived through an outbreak of plague in a besieged city.

Their clothes, the few of them that weren’t naked, were ragged and disintegrating; their hair was matted down and knotted, their bodies caked in mud. They were emaciated, many were little more than skeletons, and they stood or sat there on the shore, some with their heads between their knees crying, but most calling out pitifully for something on the other side. It looked to him as if some decisive battle had taken place on that plain, some great war between two armies in which both armies had been utterly destroyed; here a knot of bodies laid on top of each other, all fallen on some piece of hotly contested ground, there bodies lined the riverbank, cut down as they tried to escape, and over there a line of prisoners marched, naked and dripping blood, all better off dead.

Gregorio stood there, his mouth gaping, when another line of marching people rounded a bend in the river and plodded toward him. Gregorio approached these people and met them halfway between the gate and the river, taking care to steps over bodies. He saw with a start as he side-stepped across one man’s torso that his eyes were blinking and he was still alive. Gregorio jumped away, and jogged over to the marchers. Their faces hung low, in shame or exhaustion he could not tell, and they did not bother to look at him.

“Where is this?” he asked in Italian. The first several marchers passed him by at their slow, pained pace, all without looking. Now Gregorio could not restrain himself, the fearful tears came and he cried out again, “Where are we?” He cried out again and again, putting his face right before the procession of mourners and finally someone well back in the line glanced up at him.

“You don’t know?” this man said. He was naked, but so covered in blood and mud that no patch of skin could be seen. A beard hung to the middle of his stomach, and swayed when he spoke.

“I can only guess that I’m in a nightmare,” Gregorio sobbed.

“You might as well be, my friend. Welcome to Hell,” the man said.

“Hell?!” He glanced around again and knew that he must be dreaming or drugged. “It can’t be.”

“What can I tell you?” the man shrugged. “Do you remember dying?”

“Well, I remember being stabbed,” Gregorio said, walking alongside as the man continued in line. “But I think that was a dream. Or this is a dream. I don’t know.”

“If you dreamed up this punishment for me, then you deserve to be in Hell,” the man said with a smirk.

“What punishment? What are you doing?”

“Walking,” the man said. “We are the Lukewarm, those who didn’t take a firm stance in life, who didn’t repulse sin but didn’t give in to it either. We are doomed eternally to march around the outskirts of Hell, pursued by stinging insects.” When he saw that Gregorio was looking for the insects, he assured him, “Don’t worry.

They’ll be along any moment.”

“But why would I be in Hell?” Gregorio asked helplessly.

“That I can’t tell you, but I hope it was worth it. You should ask Charon.”

“Charon? Who is that?”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“Go down to the river and you’ll find out.”

From further back in the line cries of “Oh, God!” and “Here they come!” arose, followed by hideous squeals of pain, and all as one the line broke into a run.

Gregorio soon saw the cause, as millions of huge hornets and wasps swarmed over the line of men and women, biting and stinging them. The man he was talking to disappeared into the mass of frantic sinners as they took off across the plain, leaving him alone again, staring down at the river.

He started down toward it and pushed through the crowd on the bank. At first he was afraid to touch anyone, but their faces were completely lifeless, and their bodies moved pliantly as he nudged them aside. He came to the bank, where the mud dropped off into the sludge of the river.

“Where’s Charon?” he asked the people around him, but got no response.

Looking along the river, he saw a commotion further along. He pushed his way back through the crowd and ran along to where a knot of men had formed and were jostling each other and shouting. He fought his way down to the water’s edge and saw there a small skiff packed with wretched people, steered by a tall, bulky, distorted-looking man with a long beard and crazy shocks of hair. The people were calling out “Charon!” pleadingly. In the commotion Gregorio was shoved, lost his balance on the bank, and staggered a few steps into the water, up to his thighs.

There was a collective gasp and the men backed away from the shore.

The skiff instantly turned toward him, the boatman’s face twisted with rage.

“Out of the water! Now!” he bellowed. Gregorio was paralyzed with fear as the www.farawayjournal.com

boat pulled alongside. Without another word, Charon, the boatman, drew his long steering pole out of the water and used its dripping, gnarled end to bash Gregorio in the face and send him flying back up onto the bank, unconscious.

He woke up again, surrounded by dirty legs. The blood on his face had hardened into a long scab. The people in the crowd weren’t looking at him, didn’t move when he tried to get up, so he crawled between the legs and got up further up the bank. He waited at the back of the crowd, utterly unsure what to do, but as hours progressed, the boat and its angry pilot crossed the river many times, ferrying away a dozen people at a time. As time passed and people were taken away, Gregorio moved closer to the shore, like someone waiting in a queue. The whole while he gazed around dumbly at the mass of disgusting people surrounding him, and glanced occasionally back at the plain, where new people were constantly appearing.

Finally, he came to the shore again, and was at the very front when Charon arrived.

He was too confused, tired, nauseous, to fear the boatman, but Charon didn’t seem to recognize him.

As the skiff touched the bank, Charon pointed to several people around him, who, uttering a sigh of relief, stepped onto the skiff. As it filled up, Gregorio gazed up at Charon and asked, “What about me?”

“You? Not you.” His voice was gruff, deep. His eyes passed over the crowd, looking for another passenger.

“Why not me?” Gregorio said, setting foot on the skiff.

Charon placed a pointed finger on his chest and shoved him backward roughly.

“Your body isn’t buried. You have to wait a hundred years.”

“A hundred years?” Gregorio cried. Charon pushed off without another word and polled across the river.

Gregorio found himself on the ground, hours later, chanting, “This is a dream.

This is a dream.” He didn’t know how long he’d been dreaming, but hoped, willed, that he’d wake up soon. Hours passed as he walked back through the gate, up the stairs, into the cave where he started, scanning the walls for exits, to see if he could climb up somewhere, looking for any way out. He walked all across the plain, along the whole shore of the river until he came back to where he started and realized that he was in some great circular chamber. He lay down and slept. He dreamt that he found a way out and woke up excitedly, but then realized, as his mind cleared, that if he were already dreaming, he probably couldn’t have another dream inside the dream, which meant that he was awake, which meant that all this was real, as baffling as it all seemed. He sat for a long time, his arms wrapped around his knees, until he saw the Lukewarm approaching.

He got up and scanned the faces and finally recognized the man he’d been talking to earlier.

“Oh, it’s you,” the man said. “What happened?”

“I couldn’t find any way out.”

“Of course not. There is no way out. At least not from here. I mean, what did Charon tell you?”

“He said I have to wait a hundred years.”

“Too bad. But it could be worse.”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“What am I waiting for?” Gregorio asked, as it occurred to him that he had no idea what awaited him.

“You’re waiting to cross the river.”

“And then?”

“And then you go to whatever circle fits your sin. What was your sin?”

“I don’t know,” Gregorio shrugged.

“Come on,” the man said goadingly. “What, did you kill somebody? Steal something? Cuckold someone?”

“All three,” Gregorio admitted.

The man whistled, impressed. “You’re looking at Dis, my friend.”

“What’s Dis?” “The City of the Dead, way down in there. The deeper you go, the worse it gets.”

“But is there a way out?” Gregorio pressed.

“Yeah,” the man said, thinking. “Yeah, there is. But I wouldn’t worry about it for now, if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, first you’ve got those hundred years to worry about. And then you’ve got to serve your time in Hell. Look at it this way: at least you’ve got a lot of spare time on your hands.”

Gregorio felt crushed.

“Shit,” the man said, looking back to where the swarm of hornets and wasps were approaching. “I’ve got to run. See you later!”

The days moved by at a glacial pace, the only transition marking the hours being the regular crossings of Charon, and the occasional appearance of the Lukewarm. At intervals Gregorio would meet with his friend, whose name turned out to be Giovanni. He had served as a retainer of a Crusader knight and had died in the First Crusade to capture Jerusalem, in 1099.

“What about the indulgence?” Gregorio asked. “I thought the pope absolved Crusaders of their sins.”

“I guess not,” Giovanni shrugged. “Or at least not in my case.”

When Giovanni ran off, pursued by wasps, Gregorio went down to the shore or walked around aimlessly in the mud. There was an area just across the river, set off to the side, that shone with sun-colored light and where grass grew. Gregorio, wary of approaching himself, asked his friend, and was told that that’s where righteous pagans lived, those who lived before Christ but had nevertheless lived virtuous lives: the poets, philosophers, soldiers and kings of Greece and ancient Rome, the enlightened men and women of Asia. He pointed out Homer, Virgil, Socrates and Plato.

“And what’s past that?”

“The second circle. It’s full of people who sinned in lust. They’re blown about constantly by a terrible storm.”

“And beyond that?”

“The third circle, filled with gluttons wallowing in filth. They’re guarded by Cerberus.”

“What’s that?” www.farawayjournal.com

“A three-headed dog.”

Gregorio shook his one head. He gathered over the days and months that there were nine circles with punishments that grew increasingly more vile and violent. There were places where people were submerged in shit or blood, places where they were crucified to the ground, or torn apart by beasts, or turned into bushes.

The more he heard, the more terrified he became. But as time passed, he was never harmed himself, and after exploring every inch of terrain, began to grow bored.

One day Gregorio went down to the river at a time that must have been night, for activity had died down, and the crowd on the shore had sunk to the ground and lay fitfully sleeping. He came over a rise that looked down on the sludge, and to his sudden surprise saw Charon sitting on the shore, his skiff nearby. The shaggyheaded monster pulled a loaf of bread out of a leather pouch and began eating.

Gregorio crept up a few feet and watched from afar.

Suddenly Charon stopped mid-chew and turned around slowly, his eyes fixing on Gregorio’s.

“What do you want?” he growled.

“Nothing,” Gregorio said, holding up his hands in innocence.

“Then go away.” The beast went back to eating, but Gregorio stayed where he was. “Go away, I said,” Charon repeated after a while.

“Where should I go?”

“I don’t care.” Gregorio stayed on the slope above him, feeling defiant and defeated, not wanting to be hurt, but not wanting to wander back off into his own boredom either. “If you’re gonna stay here you might as well come up here. You’re making me nervous standing there behind me.”

Gregorio came down to the water, standing a few yards off to the side. Charon gestured, and he sat down.

“What am I supposed to do for a hundred years?” Gregorio said after a time.

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“How long have I been here so far?”

Charon sighed and rested the loaf of bread on his knees. “Four months, fourteen days.”

“That’s it?” Gregorio cried.

“Kid, you got a hundred years. I’ve got to do this for all eternity. Now do you mind?” He ripped off a mouthful of bread.

“Yeah, but a hundred years! I was only thirty when I died!”

“That’s how it goes. Tell it to the judge.”

“Aren’t you the judge?”

“Me? No, no. I just do all the heavy lifting. The fat cats make all the decisions and sit in their mansions and never lift a finger.”

“I know how that is,” Gregorio said, nodding.

“You don’t have a clue, kid,” Charon laughed.

“Well, I didn’t exactly work in Hell,” Gregorio admitted. “But I had a boss and I worked hard. And look at what I got for it.”

“It could be worse,” Charon said.

“How?” he asked.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“They could have buried you. Then I’d have no choice but to take you right across the river to your eternal damnation.”

“The suspense is killing me,” Gregorio moaned.

“You’re already dead.”

“Right. But why should I have to wait for a hundred years?”

“God works in mysterious ways.” Gregorio looked around and got all the confirmation he needed. “I’ve got a lot of ideas on how He could improve this place, make things more efficient. But does anyone ever listen to me? No.” “A hundred years,” Gregorio groaned again after a while.

“Better make the most of your time.”

“What could I do?”

“Don’t ask me. You’re the recently departed.” Gregorio looked at him, not comprehending. “Were you happy with your life?” Charon said quickly. “Did you do everything you wanted before you died?”

“Of course not.”

“Didn’t think so. So what did you want to be?”

“I was a soldier. A mercenary, actually.”

“I asked what you wanted to be. You wanted to be a mercenary?”

“No.” “What then?”

“Honestly? I wanted to be a poet,” Gregorio admitted sadly.

“What stopped you?”

“I didn’t have any . . . ,” Gregorio said quietly, suddenly realizing.

“Time,” Charon said for him. “Everyone always says they didn’t have enough time. Well, you’ve got ninety-nine years, seven months and sixteen days now.”

“But I don’t have any paper,” Gregorio whined.

“God, you people!” Charon said, exasperated. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s no wonder so many people go to Hell and so few go to Heaven—you’re full of excuses!” Gregorio looked down sadly. “I’ll get you some paper if it’ll get you off my back.” Charon stood, brushed the bread crumbs out of his beard, and climbed back onto the skiff.

“Wait,” Gregorio called after him. “I don’t know how to write!”

“Jesus Christ,” Charon said, putting his hand over his face. “I guess you’d better start learning.”

He set out right away to do that, a sudden sense of purpose reinvigorating him. He met his friend Giovanni and asked if he knew any writers, and he did. He pointed out a deceased poet, and Gregorio went to this man who looked up at him morosely, his long face full of tears. But after some convincing and reminding the man that he had nothing but time, the poet, Boniface, agreed to tutor him. The man was a genius who could recite Homer and Virgil and the Bible at will. Under his intense tutelage, Gregorio learned the finer points of writing and was brought up to speed with all the major poetic movements in history. Charon made good his promise, and provided pen and paper. It was from Boniface that Gregorio first encountered Charon in Virgil’s poem. Gregorio would meet Charon at the riverbank every once in a while and they would talk over lunch. He would also meet with www.farawayjournal.com www.farawayjournal.com

Giovanni, who told him everything he knew about Hell.

At the end of a decade, Gregorio had composed a handful of short poems which Boniface claimed to be impressed with.

“These are really good!” he said.

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely. The rhyme scheme is absorbing, the emotion palpable. Do you want my honest opinion?”

“Of course,” Gregorio said.

“I think you’re wasting your time on these short works.”

“What do you mean?”

“Any schoolboy from Florence or Venice could compose a few clean verses and make a name for himself. But I’ve been thinking that we have an amazing opportunity to create something great, something unrivalled in the annals of literature. We have more time than any poet has ever had to hone his craft and to write. And we have source material that few writers could ever dream of.”

“What?”

“Look around you, my friend! We are in Hell, the realm of Satan himself! We are part of the struggle between God and the Devil. Look. That man over there was a poet.” He pointed first to one man, then another. “He was a pope. He was the first Crusader into Jerusalem. He was a friend of Muhammad. He stabbed Julius Caesar. Here we have a multitude of people who have been involved in every major incident in history, all at our fingertips, in Hell, of all places!”

“A poem about Hell?” Gregorio said.

“An epic poem! A masterpiece. The greatest thing ever written. And we have all the time in the world.”

“Yes. Yes, this could work,” Gregorio said, growing excited. “It starts back up there,” he said, thrusting his thumb over his shoulder. “Up in the cave. The poet walks down between the rocks, underneath the gate and onto this plain. He talks with the sinners, sees the virtuous pagans. He crosses with Charon and goes through circle after circle, witnessing the terrors of Hell.”

“Yes, yes!” Boniface cried. “Look.” He flipped through some pages and came to a set of tercets Gregorio had recently written. “I love this rhyme scheme. Aba, bcb, cdc. It’s so complex, and yet so simple. Here you’ve got six verses. Imagine extending that indefinitely, an endless stream of rhyming triplets.”

“Triplets . . . ,” Gregorio muttered, contemplating. “Three. Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

“Interesting,” Boniface said.

“We do thirty—no, thirty-three—chapters of rhyming triplets.”

“Why stop there? Why not ninety-nine chapters?”

“Ninety-nine chapters, split into three books of thirty-three chapters each, each chapter composed of tercets. Think about this,” Gregorio said, holding up his finger, pacing back and forth now. “Book one is about Hell. Hell has nine circles, a multiple of three. The poet descends through Hell, each of the nine circles, and comes to the bottom.”

“What’s at the bottom?” Boniface said.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Charon. We’ll have to do a lot of research.

But my friend Giovanni tells me that the bottom of Hell opens to the bottom of Purgatory. Where Hell descends, Purgatory ascends, and there are nine terraces, a multiple of three.”

“And then?”

“And then Heaven. Heaven has nine spheres, which culminate in the sphere of God.” “Excellent!” Boniface cried.

“Come, let’s go talk to Charon.” They went along and found Charon about to take a skiff across. “Charon, we need to talk,” Gregorio said, and without asking he climbed on the skiff and Boniface followed.

Charon looked at them, his eyebrows furrowed, and then pushed off into the river. “So talk.”

They began questioning him intensely. What happened in the first circle?

Who was there? What happened in the second, and so on, until they came to the center of Hell, where Charon told them that Satan was encased in ice. “And he has three faces, and each mouth gnaws on a sinner,” Charon said, which made Gregorio and Boniface grin at each other, for here they had another repetition of their theme of threes. All the while, the other riders on the skiff were so terrified they shit themselves, hearing of the punishments that awaited them. But Gregorio and his poet master became more and more excited, as the poem began to develop in their heads.

“And what does that carving say above the gate?” Gregorio asked.

“Oh, that? ‘I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way to a forsaken people, I am the way into eternal sorrow, blah, blah, blah.’ There’s more to it, but it basically says, ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’”

Gregorio practically squealed with glee. “That’s perfect.” He repeated the line liltingly in his native Italian: “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”

“Perfect,” Boniface whispered.

They hopped off back into the mud and began writing. At the end of each session, while Boniface rested, exhausted by the exertion of all his artistic powers, Gregorio took the sheets to the plain and met Giovanni, who happily read them.

He quickly learned, though, that Giovanni had no artistic sensibilities and wanted only to read about blood and violence, and made constant suggestions to that effect.

They wrote a few cantoes and then tore them up and started over again, not satisfied that the lines were perfect enough. Early on they wrote a scene with Charon in it, and Gregorio took the finished verses to meet the boatman for lunch.

“Oh, come on!” Charon cried. “This isn’t like me at all. ‘Eyes that burned like coal,’” he hissed. He turned to Gregorio and spread his eyelids with two fingers.

“Do these look like burning coals to you?”

“You’ve got to imagine it from our perspective,” Gregorio said, trying to calm him down. “Look, you’re the boatman ferrying people into Hell. You’ve got to be evil.”

“I am evil,” he said, huffing.

“I know.” www.farawayjournal.com www.farawayjournal.com

“All right. You know, I’ve helped you out a lot.”

“Hey, do you want me to write up your sensitive side? Do you want people to know you’ve got a soft spot for me, Gregorio?”

“Ah, shut up,” he said dismissively. “You can forget about my help, then.”

“No, come on. Come on, this is good stuff. This is the stuff of nightmares.”

“Fine. What do I care? No one will read it anyways.”

“What are you talking about?” Gregorio said.

“Who’s going to read it? Them?” Charon pointed to the crowd of sinners writhing and screaming on the banks of the river.

Gregorio sat back dumbly. He was silent for a long time and Charon ate beside him. Finally, he said softly, “Creating the art is its own reward.”

“Sure,” Charon said. “Only if I spent a hundred years writing something, I’d want someone to read it.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Sure. Let me know when you do,” he chided. “No one leaves Hell. That manuscript is going to stay right here, and it’s going to be wasted on these fools.”

He got up and left, and Gregorio was stuck mulling it over.

“Never mind that now,” Boniface said when Gregorio told him later. “The creation of the artwork is an end to itself.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Then don’t look so upset.” They went back to writing, and more years passed.

They refined their work and recited it aloud, and they questioned Charon and interviewed sinners, and gleaned details that made it into the poem. They rewrote endlessly, added characters and rearranged things. They added an unnamed guide for the poet early on, someone expert on Hell who led the poet through the circles.

Themes of salvation and love were worked in expertly, and it became of tale of the poet finding his way back to the true path.

“And we walked out once more beneath the Stars,” Gregorio uttered softly, the final line of the poem. When they finished the first draft of the section about Hell, Gregorio took the manuscript to Charon.

“What do you want?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“I’m gonna get a bad reputation helping you out all the time. What is it?”

“Can you take this across the river to the virtuous pagans?”

“What for?”

“We want the poets to read it and give us notes.”

Charon took the manuscript and flipped through the pages.

“Are you finished?”

“That’s only the first part. There are three parts, each of thirty-three cantoes, representing the Holy—” “Yeah, yeah,” Charon cut him off. “The virtuous pagans? Fine. You’d better hurry up with those other parts, though.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve still got seventy-five years,” Gregorio said incredulously.

“Yeah, you do. But your buddy Boniface is down to six months.” He grinned Vol. 2, Iss. 2

maliciously.

Gregorio’s mouth dropped and he rocked tenuously, and finally sat down roughly in the mud. The sludge drifted by, and one of the sinners on the skiff cried out. Charon jabbed him, and looked back to Gregorio. He suddenly felt a pang of pity, deep in his chest, looking at the poet suddenly sunken in grief. “Hey, Gregorio,” he said softly. “I’ll bring it to them, okay?”

“Okay,” Gregorio said without looking up. “Thanks.”

“Sure. I’ll see you later.”

After a while, Gregorio got off and wandered away. He came to Boniface much later. His poet tutor was hard at work writing. “Where have you been?” he asked without looking up from the paper. “Read this.”

Gregorio took the paper without reading it. He stared down at his mentor.

Boniface glanced up after a while, saw the tears welling in Gregorio’s eyes. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Six months. You have six months. Charon told me. You knew your time was running out and you didn’t even tell me.”

Boniface stood and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Come, my friend, there’s no time for this. We are in the middle of creating something great. We need to finish.”

“We can’t finish in six months,” Gregorio sobbed.

“Then you’ll have to finish it without me.”

“I can’t!”

“Of course you can. You’re a greater poet than I ever was, and you have decades to develop and finish. When my time comes, it comes, and there’s nothing we can do about it. So put it out of your mind. Now, let’s get to work.”

Gregorio wiped away his tears. “Okay.” And they plowed through Purgatory.

The next day Charon sought him out on the shore and told him that he had given the manuscript to the pagans.

In the next six months, they wrote and wrote, and could hardly be interrupted to rest or even speak. They finished Purgatory, taking care to end it with the word “Stars” and create another triple motif, and went right into the book on Paradise.

One day a sinner plodded over to them, limp and destitute, and muttered, “Charon wants you.”

They both got up, rolling up the pages in a portfolio that Charon had got them, and went down to the river. From a distance they could see that the boatman was waving the Hell manuscript at them. They ran down excitedly.

“What did they say?” Gregorio called out.

“See for yourself,” Charon said happily and tossed the manuscript to them.

Gregorio caught it and flipped through, but there were no writing or notes, except in the little space on the very last page.

“What is this, Latin?” Gregorio said.

“Let me see,” Boniface said and took it from him. He read the single sentence, and a smile spread from ear to ear.

“What does it say?” Gregorio said, growing excited. www.farawayjournal.com

“‘This is the greatest work of literature I have ever read,’ signed ‘Publius Vergilius Maro.’”

“Publius Vergilius Maro?” He thought, and suddenly it occurred to him.

“Virgil? Virgil wrote that?” He roared with happiness, thrusting his hands up in the air. “Then we’ve done it. We’re onto something. Thanks, Charon. Come on, let’s get back to work.”

“Boniface,” Charon said quietly.

Boniface’s smile disappeared, and when Gregorio realized what was happening, he howled in anger and rushed Charon, beating on his chest. Charon simply held out his hand, keeping Gregorio at a distance. The boatman himself was sad, his face hanging long. “Come, it’s time.”

“No, you bastard! You can’t!” Gregorio yelled.

“I don’t have a choice, and neither do you,” Charon said, still holding him back.

“Come, my friend. There’s no point in this.” He put himself between Gregorio and Charon and forced the portfolio into his friend’s hands, and then the manuscript with Virgil’s signature. “You’re almost done. And now our greatness has been affirmed, by one of the greatest poets ever. Finish what we started.”

Gregorio was sobbing now. He looked to Charon. “Where is he going, Charon?

What circle?”

“Judecca. The fourth round of the ninth circle,” Charon said, looking away.

Gregorio broke down, collapsing into the mud, for they had learned in their research that that was the bottommost ring of Hell, reserved for those who had betrayed their lords or benefactors. Sinners there were completely encapsulated in ice, unable even to breathe.

“Boniface, you fool, why?” Gregorio cried.

“Because men are weak, my friend, and I am a man,” Boniface said. He held up his hand in a gesture of farewell, and stepped onto the skiff. Gregorio could see tears streaming down the poet’s face.

“Wait,” he called, running to the skiff, but Boniface turned away, and Charon sped his craft across the river, cutting short this moment of sorrow.

Gregorio retreated across the plain and walled himself up in loneliness. He refused to set eyes on Charon, to even approach the river. Many years passed, in this state of lone desperation. Gregorio let his time slip away, and he was reduced to the state of the sinners on the shore, those wretched creatures he had seen when he first entered Hell, those utterly defeated and deranged beasts which had ceased to be men. He had once found it incomprehensible, how they could give up and diminish, and then finally wish to enter Hell, so tormented were they by their hundred years of time. But so it happened, and Gregorio crossed the plain and waited on the riverbank, the portfolio strapped to his back, though he had long ago forgotten its contents.

He saw Charon on his boat, roaring with laughter as he cudgeled sinners onto the boat and howled at those crying on the shore. Charon searched among the crowd for the last person he needed to fill the skiff. His eyes passed over Gregorio, who blinked dumbly, and at first didn’t recognize him under the layer or mud and tears and behind his long beard and the shit and waste that clotted his hair into Vol. 2, Iss. 2

filthy tendrils.

“Poet?” Charon said, forgetting the ring of wraiths around him. “Gregorio, is that you?”

Gregorio looked at him, his eyes clearing up for a moment and then glazing over. He stepped toward the skiff. Charon extended his club and held his skeletal form lightly at bay. “Have you finished?”

“Finished?” Gregorio repeated, the word catching in his parched throat.

“The poem, the ninety-nine chapters of threes.”

“No,” Gregorio said oddly, for at first he didn’t know what Charon was talking about.

“Then now is not your time.” Charon shoved him back and then grabbed another sinner at random, completing his load of passengers. He pushed off.

“No,” Gregorio wailed pitifully. “It is my time!”

“I’ll see you when you’re done,” Charon called from midstream.

Gregorio found himself in the great vestibule with the gate inscribed with satanic writing. He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping, or how many years had passed since he left the riverbank. As he blinked his tired eyes, he saw a bright light approaching. He rubbed at them and sat up as the light grew brighter and almost blinding after the lifetime of darkness to which he had been subjected.

Suddenly there was a figure before him, encloaked and taking big, proud strides.

Gregorio followed him with his eyes as the figure passed, his feet not touching the ground, the cloak not dragging in the mud.

He suspected at first that he was in the presence of God, but without knowing how, he recognized the man whose face was shrouded and shadowed somehow under that cloak, although his entire form was radiant.

“Virgil?” he whispered.

The man stopped and turned to him.

“Are you Virgil?”

The cloaked head nodded. “Who are you?” a deep, rich voice asked.

“Gregorio.” The face looked at him, although Gregorio couldn’t see the eyes, which were shaded by the cloak’s hood. Gregorio quickly turned to the portfolio and dug out his manuscript. He flipped to the last page while the poet waited, and then showed him the note he had written many years ago.

The poet smiled, looking down at the manuscript’s weathered pages. “Oh, yes.

Gregorio. Have you finished the poem?”

Gregorio shook his head.

“You should get back to work,” Virgil said. “It was quite good. Superb even.”

Gregorio nodded. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“A task has been set before me,” he said smiling. “But I will be back soon. I would like to read what you have.”

“Absolutely,” Gregorio said.

The poet smiled and nodded. He proceeded through the chamber, up the dripping steps, and vanished.

Gregorio turned and the first thing his eyes alit on were the carvings above the gate, which said, basically, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” www.farawayjournal.com

“No,” he said to himself, and dragged himself to his feet. He came out onto the plain, saw again the Lukewarm and their swarms, the sinners on the beach, the flaming waters, and the inferno across the river of sludge. His old bones creaked as he cleared himself a space and unfolded the portfolio and unfurled the pages of the unfinished manuscript. He turned to the last page, read the last tercet that he had written, almost a century ago, on the day that some wretched soul had come up from Charon who beckoned, on the day when Boniface was taken to Hell, read that last tercet to remember the rhyme where he had left off, and began again to write. He wrote constantly, line after rhyming line, as all around him sinners wailed in agony, as the Lukewarm passed with their swarms, and as new souls, fresh from death, came out onto the plain to view their horrid fate. He wrote till his hand ached, till his head throbbed with the effort, and until his heart pounded with excitement as he neared the last line, and wrote with a flourish, his entire body radiating with the act of creation, the last rhyming phrase, “by the love that moves the Sun and the other Stars.” He punctuated the sentence and enclosed the manuscript in the portfolio, not bothering to reread or edit a single word, for he knew that what he had spent many lifetimes creating after his own life was over was perfect to the utmost degree.

As he stood to go, the radiating shadow of Virgil fell over him, the master poet accompanied by a small and sad-looking man. They walked across the plain, the little man staying close to Virgil’s side. Gregorio fell in line behind them as they came to the river. Charon on his craft looked from face to face among the three of them, and the little man with Virgil fainted under the stare. Charon looked at the poet quizzically, and then to Gregorio.

“Well?”

“Finished.”

“Then come on.”

Gregorio took a step, but his foot hovered above the craft timidly. He found that there was a lump of fear searing the inside of his chest, an emotion had he not felt for decades. His knees shivered, about to buckle. Charon extended his furry, gnarled hand. “Come on.” Gregorio took his hand and went onto the boat, followed by Virgil who carried his charge dangling from his arms.

“Who is that?” Gregorio asked Virgil, thrusting his chin at the swooning man.

“This is Dante Alighieri of Florence, a man who has lost his way.”

“Oh,” Gregorio said.

“He is a poet.”

“Oh.” “His powers, though, are far inferior to yours. Did you finish your tale?”

“I did, just now.” He clung to the portfolio, his precious work which seemed to pulsate in his hands. He impulsively held out the leather satchel and laid it on the man’s chest. He took Dante’s dangling hand and lifted it, setting it atop the portfolio. “Here. Give this to him when he awakes.” Virgil nodded.

“What is it called?” the Mantuan asked.

“I’ve called it The Diabolical Comedy,” Gregorio answered. Virgil thought for a moment. “The Diabolical Comedy,” he said. Gregorio nodded. “I will make sure Vol. 2, Iss. 2

that he knows,� Virgil said, tilting his head toward the swooning Florentine.

The boat crossed the river, the muscles in Charon’s back rippling as he drove his craft onward. They reached the other side, and Charon the boatman quickly wiped away a tear as he helped Gregorio down from the boat, followed by Virgil and Dante the poet. He entered Hell, where the sinners of the ages wailed and the roaring of the fires lit up the dark like the light of dying Stars.

www.farawayjournal.com

Spoils to the Victor Josh Mitchell My potentials gone & sold to the lowest bidder with the highest ambition.

I figured that it might as well be put to good use Too many bad words, terrible sentences, and awful paragraphs I’ve abandoned metaphors and similes for sleeping pills that deny me dreams; to pursue a language I can’t understand Policies, rules, and regulations Small print and even smaller wages What a wonderful world we wallow through I keep hoping for nothing because there’s nothing worth hoping for Hands off, hands down, and hand jobs Not to mention handshakes and hand offs I’ve never been more qualified than I am now and if not put to use my experience will expire Barely born yet already a beggar I’ve walked in the shoes of men too small For me to ever tell the difference between good and evil So I now straddle fences instead

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Artistic Temperament Jared Hernandez “So, what’s it about?”

“Hard to say. I guess if you’re going to put a gun to my head it’s about two lost souls searching for a place to be in this harsh reality we call life.”

“That’s a fancy answer. More for the critics. What’ll you tell the public?”

“It’s an action packed tale of two kids shredding through the world kicking asses along the way.”

“Great. That’s great stuff. What’s it really about?”

“It’s about my unhealthy obsession with ground beef.”

She laughed loudly. I’m starting to pick up some vibes from this reporter. I can’t remember her name. Jenny? Ginny? Something like that. Her low cut top is driving my crazy. These young journalist types are all the same. All afraid they don’t have what it takes to make it, so they overcompensate by letting their tits hang out for the world to see. I’ve seen it a hundred times, and I’ll see it a thousand more.

Not that I’m complaining though. She is gorgeous. She reminds me of a girl I knew in college. Brown hair, blue-green eyes, and incredibly soft looking lips. I think she can tell I’m flirting with her. I haven’t taken off my sunglasses the entire time we’ve been sitting here. I can’t tell if the sun is out anymore. This third glass of wine is starting to burn my stomach a bit. I should’ve taken her up on that offer to buy lunch. I didn’t want to seem like a freeloader. She keeps crossing and uncrossing her legs. I don’t know if she’s trying to drive me crazy, but she is.

“When are you going into production?”

“The end of the month. We’re just waiting on the final round of financing to come through. That’s mainly why I’m here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, people don’t usually let you make movies for free.”

“I heard you were here to support Stanley’s movie.”

“That, too. Of course. I’m going to give Stan whatever help I can. If the shoe was on the other foot, he’d probably do the same for me.”

“Have you seen his movie yet?”

“Um…not the final cut.”

“Are you two still close?”

“It’s getting a little late,” I say, staring at the place where my watch should be.

“Did I touch a nerve of something?”

“No, I just have somewhere to be.”

I pull my cell phone out. I pretend I have a message and spend a minute holding the phone up to my ear. She is politely going over her notes while I do this. I notice she has this weird sort of rash-like thing on her neck that is starting to look disgusting. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before.

www.farawayjournal.com

“I’ve get to get going,” I say as I click my phone shut.

“Okay. Do you think I could ask just one more question?”

“I’m extremely late as it is. Contact my agent, maybe he can set something up for the end of the week.”

I stand up, hoping she will get the point. She stares up at me, this bitchy look on her face. She mumbles something about hoping to see me soon. I can tell she’s trying to work up the courage to ask me out. I tell her again to talk to my agent.

She nods and forces a smile. She gets up to shake my hand. Her hand is clammy.

What is wrong with this girl? I can’t believe that I was thinking of taking her back to my hotel room ten minutes ago. She thanks me very graciously for the interview.

I try to smile. I turn my back on her. I walk out of the restaurant as fast as I can.

When I’m outside I see her gathering up all her stuff. I smell the hand that I just used to shake hers. It smells like some sort of disease. This bitch isn’t good enough for me. I can’t wait to see the bullshit she writes about me. I try to remember her name. I don’t even remember the name of the magazine she works for. I should have just pretended I didn’t see her hand.

The hotel lobby is filled with industry types. They are all standing around trying to look cool. I spot this actor who had a small part in my first movie. He has since become a big star when the sex tape featuring him with a young heiress was conveniently leaked right before the opening of his new movie. All I can remember about him is how he could never remember his lines. I’m moving quickly, which isn’t easy considering how many people are in my way. I hope that actor doesn’t spot me. I’m not in the mood to pretend I give a shit what he’s been up to.

I eye the elevator, which is full. I decide to take the stairs instead. No movie star would ever be seen taking the stairs.

My room is dark. Ellie is still sleeping. She should be up by now, so I’m not trying to be quiet or anything. She starts to stir when I open my beer. I look to see if there’s anything to eat. There is a bag of free healthy looking snacks that looks like some sort of animal shit. She sits up and looks at me.

“Is there any real food left?” I ask her.

“We had real food?”

“I guess that’s a no.” I slam the refrigerator door closed.

“You didn’t eat at your interview?”

“That wasn’t an interview. It was more of an inquisition.”

“What happened?”

“Just some stupid questions. Wasting of my time. I swear that is the real job of the press. To stop hard working people from doing what they are supposed to do.

They need to all get a life.” I chug the rest of my beer, which is a big mistake. I need some food in me.

“Can’t you call down and get some room service or something?”

“We’ve got to be at the dinner in an hour. Are you sure you want to eat now?”

“I guess I can wait.” I lie on the bed next to her. I try to put my arm around her. She says she’s too hot. I stare up at the ceiling, trying to get my head to stop spinning. She is lying in the fetal position.

“Did Tony call?”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“I don’t think so. I didn’t check to see if we have messages.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Are you still not finished?”

“I haven’t even started yet.”

“You said you were going to write it on the plane.”

“I was distracted on the plane.”

“What was her name?”

“Who?” “Your distraction. What was her name?”

“It wasn’t that.” I change into my super serious, authentic mode. “I told you that’s all behind me. There was this actor on the plane who was talking my ear off all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. That’s what happened.”

She got out of bed. She put on one of those great free bathrobes that you get in these fancy hotels. She opened the sliding door and stood out on the balcony. “It’s beautiful down here.” I haven’t ever been here before so I agree with her. I haven’t had much of a chance to look at the surroundings though. I’ve had my sunglasses on the entire time.

“I had this terrible dream last night,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Can I tell you about it or are you too busy?”

She shuts the door and sits on the edge of the bed. She gestures for me to proceed in her own smart ass way.

“Thanks for your attention. I was going into this professional looking building.

A bank maybe. There was this big group of security guards around the door. They were all wearing bulletproof vests. They all had these huge machine guns. The main guy kind of looked like Woody Harrelson. I don’t know why I was there, probably to see you. I told the guys that I wanted to come in and they let me. The Woody guy walked with me though. Step by step. He led me to this room with all these other people in it, like a holding tank almost. They were all wearing nice suits. They all looked nervous. I remember thinking that I wasn’t safe in here. These people were way too nervous for me to be safe. Woody left me there. I don’t know why he would bother walking me to this room when he was just planning on leaving me there. Anyway, I’m in there for a few minutes, then out of the corner of my eye I see this guy come storming out of a room on the other side of the building. He’s wearing a ski mask, but there are holes for his eyes and mouth. He has a machine gun.

He starts shooting into the room. I hit the floor right away. I can see all the people around me getting shot. There’s blood all over the place. I’m down on the floor but I still don’t feel safe so I start sliding on my back across the room. I wind up in this pile of bodies. My side really stings when I get over there. The guy has been shooting all this time; I think I’m probably hit by now. I decide I’m just going to be still.

Play dead. Maybe he’ll leave me alone. I can hear footsteps coming over to us now.

That was it. When I woke up my side hurt.”

“Where did the security guards go?”

“What?”

“All the security guards that were there when you went in? Where did they go?” www.farawayjournal.com

“I don’t know.”

“They weren’t doing their job then.”

I lift my head up to look at her. She is serious. She tells me that we should start getting ready for the dinner now. I nod. I wait until I hear the shower running to start digging through her purse. I can’t find those little blue pills. I put my head back on the pillow. There is a new kind of pain coursing through my skull now. It’s much worse than before.

We get to the party late. Ellie took forever to get ready as usual. They sent over this local driver guy to take us there. He was stoned out of his mind. He couldn’t stop looking at Ellie in the rearview. “Signora es belisima,” he kept telling me. At first I would smile and nod at him. After a while I couldn’t bring myself to fake the smile anymore.

Edwards interior, night. Karen Greenbaum-Maya

The flashbulbs polluting the sky

tell me that we’re almost there. I still have my sunglasses on. I just can’t bring myself to go in there with the whites of my eyes exposed. I feel like I’ll be found out if I do. Ellie pulls out her compact. She’s got to make sure that she’s exactly perfect. These pictures that are taken tonight will be in newspapers all around the world tomorrow. Maybe I should throw a drink in her face? That would take all the make-up right off. It would make her eyes all red. She would have to find some other sucker to be her meal ticket then. Some other Hollywood asshole to further her career. We’re a dime a dozen after all.

I don’t throw a drink in Ellie’s face after all. There would be no point I decide.

We get out and do our little routine down the avenue of photographers. Ellie is Vol. 2, Iss. 2

much better at this than I am. She will be great at being famous one day. I still haven’t taken to it. They scream my name. Ellie tells me which camera to look at.

I’m just sort of in a daze of white light. I start to think about what kind of food they’ll have for us tonight. Ellie won’t eat hers, she’s on a diet this year. We get in the place after a while. The orange glow of the interior lights is a welcome change from the flashes of lightning outside. These young model types take our coats and lead us to our table. I’m supposed to be sitting with Mr. Yarlsburg, the studio head.

He’s not at our table though. I’m forced to sit mostly with various cameramen and sound guys that I’ve been meeting with over the last month. They smile broadly, their plain wives on their arms. This is the highlight of their lives. I almost throw up when I realize that.

They serve this pasta kind of thing on a huge plate with all these little designs on it. It looks more like a piece of modern art than dinner. There is so much room on the plate. Why can’t they just give us a little plate? I devour the food and start on Ellie’s. She’s too busy smiling to notice that her food is gone. I eat most of bread that was for the table. I can handle a drink now, I think. I go over to the bar. I make my way to the front and order vodka and coke, no ice. There are some really young kids hanging around the bar talking about movies.

“I don’t think there is really anything essential about American cinema now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s the way it’s always been. You know it, you just don’t want to admit it.”

“What about the Golden Age of Hollywood? Jimmy Cagney? Humphrey Bogart? I suppose those guys are a bunch of hacks?”

“Give me Jean Gabin over Cagney any day.”

“What about all the great American movies in the 70’s? That was an exciting time to be in the business.”

“Every single idea that came out of Hollywood in the 70’s had already been explored in Europe by Truffaut and Goddard in the 50’s. I’m thinking of trying to remake Jules & Jim, I think it would play well set in the inner city. We could get Jay-Z to do the soundtrack.”

I get my drink and walk away. These two guys are full of life. They’re straight out of film school. Nothing will compromise their art. Wait until they get a glimpse of the real world.

The table is in an uproar when I return. It seems I had just missed Mr. Yarlsburg.

I ask Cameron the cameraman if he was looking for me. He says he didn’t ask. I down my drink. I think I should try to make my escape now. Enough people have seen me to know that I was actually here. Ellie will find a ride with someone, she always does. I flag down one of the models and ask her if she can bring my coat.

She gives me a flirty look. I tell her she looks like a young Ingrid Bergman. She doesn’t know who that is. I tell her I think I may have a part for her in my next movie. She smiles. I tell her she should stop by sometime soon. We can discuss her career in detail. She goes off to get my coat. I stand in a corner trying my best to look inconspicuous. I’m not trying to look for Yarlsburg, I’m sure he is looking for me. I try not to stay in one corner for too long. Immobility is how they get you. I turn a corner and find a beautiful fountain. It looks like something out of an old www.farawayjournal.com

movie. There is a couple sitting on the edge. She is a young actress, I can’t remember her name. She was in that robot movie that was a big hit. She casually slips out of her dress and into the fountain as he watches with masturbatory glee. She is totally naked, without any shame. I can see the flashbulbs clicking already. She acts embarrassed when she sees the first photographer. It still takes her a few minutes to cover herself up. Tomorrow she will be the most downloaded thing on the Internet.

I want to put my arm around the young man she was with. He won’t understand that publicity comes first around here. Besides he must have some idea of what’s going on. She must have a new movie premiering here.

The fountain room has got to be the nicest room in the place. There is an old abandoned bar at the far end of the room. I take a seat on the stool. There’s not a bartender, but there are a few bottles behind the bar. They look dusty, but I don’t think that good liquor goes bad. Usually it just gets better. I pour myself a tall vodka. I sip it gently. I look at the fountain and think of the young woman who was there just a few minutes ago. I wonder if she would like a part in my next movie.

“Fancy running into you here,” I hear a voice say. I turn around to see who is talking to me. It’s Stan. He’s wearing his little fancy tuxedo that I’m pretty sure I gave him. He’s got a great tan.

“Stan the man. Long time no see.” We shake hands. He’s got this little smile on his face. The kind of smile that used to piss me off when we were working together.

“You look good,” I tell him.

“Thanks. So do you. The Italian air has a positive affect on you.”

“I’ve never been here before. I’m not sure how much I like it.”

“You’ve just got to give it a chance. I’m thinking of buying a home here. Depending on how well the next movie goes.”

“Yeah. The next movie.”

“I just wrapped the final cut the other day. I’ll have to send you a copy. I would love to get your input.”

“Sure. Just send it to my agent. He’ll make sure I get it.”

“He’s my agent too.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you’re in the big time now.”

“Listen, I don’t want to have this conversation right now.”

“Should we have it outside?”

“I don’t know what you think I’ve done to you. I really don’t. I saw a chance to make something of myself and I took it. There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t have done the same.”

“We had a deal. There isn’t a real man alive who wouldn’t honor a deal he made.”

“I just came over to say hello and to wish you well. I didn’t anticipate walking into the O.K. Corral.”

“I’ll tell you something, Stan. I don’t need your help. I never needed your help.

I would have done just as well on my own. You’re just a sycophantic little puppy dog dick who saw some tails he could grab onto. That’s all you fucking are and all you’ll ever fucking be.” I take a swallow of my drink, wanting to make sure that those last words have a chance to sink in. Stan keeps his same smile through my whole tirade.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“How’s the new script going?”

I try to take another sip, but it’s empty. Ellie’s been talking. “Just fine. Just great.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Oh, by the way, I had lunch with Yarlsburg earlier. He is looking forward to seeing something. Enjoy the party.”

He pats me on the back as he’s leaving the room. I watch him as he’s leaving.

He has a spring in his step. I don’t think I could watch his next movie. I’m sure he just stole all of my ideas. I watch the fountain pour water rhythmically out. I take my barstool and throw it as hard as I can at the waterspout. It breaks off. Water is shooting all over the room now. I finish my drink and leave the room. I wouldn’t want to get all wet.

The hotel room is cold. There is nothing on the hundred channels that this hotel provides. Anything that might be worth watching is in Italian. I don’t understand Italian. I hear the card slide into the lock and Ellie comes in. She looks tired.

Maybe she just looks drunk. I haven’t gotten used to all of her looks yet.

“You left me there.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry? That’s it. That’s all you’ve got to say to me.”

“Is there something else you’d like to hear?”

She slams the door shut. She locks herself in the bathroom. I think I can hear her crying in there. I think about going over to the door and seeing if she’s okay. I don’t get off the bed though. After a few minutes she comes out in this huge sweatshirt. She sits down beside me.

“I take it you didn’t have a good time?” she asks.

“I had a great time. Best party I’ve ever been to.”

“Yarlsburg was looking for you.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

“He said he’s coming by tomorrow to see the finished script.”

“He’s gonna be pretty pissed.”

“Don’t you care? You’re going to lose that whole advance he gave you.”

“He’s gonna be even more pissed when he finds out it’s all gone.”

“I don’t know why I stay with you.”

“I don’t know why either.”

“I should just leave.”

“You should.”

I flip channels trying to find something to take my mind off this bullshit. I come across this zombie movie. It came out a few years ago. I can’t remember what it’s called.

“I never understood why these zombies wear pants. They’re zombies. They don’t have a need for pants. Sometimes they don’t wear shirts, but they always have pants. Even if they just have rags it always covers the naughty pants parts. You think someone would make a realistic zombie movie one time.”

“How can there be a real zombie movie? Zombies are fake,” she says.

“Believe me, they’re real.”

www.farawayjournal.com

The Campaign Promise By Joseph Grant

MAlthough his upper lip was eclipsed by a thick, black moustache, Manuel Ortiz dabbed anuel Ortiz blotted at the sweat that beaded on his forehead and over his upper lip.

anyway, knowing appearances were everything up on the platform where he sat on a creaking metal chair.

It was a good crowd today, he thought to himself. Not like yesterday when Villarosa’s people had infiltrated the common good nature of the townspeople and spread their vicious truths. Ortiz was used to the low-down mudslinging, dog-eat-dog world that was politics and he was used to an opponent using half-truths and lies to paint a negative picture, but never had he known his opponent to stoop so low and to be so malevolent as to tarnish his good political name with the truth.

Ortiz patted at his forehead again and looked out over the crowd. These were decent, hard-working people, most of who came out to see the man who paid for their day off from work from the factory and the fields in a celebration of la feria. Ortiz quickly counted the heads as the portly mayor, dressed in the same ill-fitting suit in which he was wed and the very same in which he would one day be buried, cajoled the crowd with his latest tale of political woe under the current Governor of the State of Mexico. Ortiz counted somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty people before the crowd parted to let a group of burly men through to the front. Ortiz took scant notice of the men and went back to his thoughts of what a deal he had made on this crowd. In this small pueblo, he calculated there were about eighty-five percent present for which he had paid. He was pleased with his return.

Most politicians up on the podium would be organizing their thoughts before speaking to a crowd. Ortiz had no reason to think about what he was going to say, not rehearse his speech or make any change to it. The speech was the same he had given in every desert pueblo only with the name of the town becoming the variable. Otherwise, his speech was as well worn as his battered Oxfords. These were his campaign dark horse, the ones everyone noticed, as he sat along the dais, one leg crossed lengthwise over the knee, affording all who would look; to see the holes in his shoes. People identified with it, Ortiz told his campaign workers. The fact that his shoes, expensive ones at that, had holes in them, showed everyone that he was a man of the people; a man with the common touch. Few people knew or suspected that these were a prop, along with his handkerchief, his glad-handing of the crowd afterwards and most importantly, much of the speech itself. Few knew that the speech was a work of fabrication, not unlike the pair of Manolo Blahniks that awaited him in the airconditioned car.

Politicians like Ortiz created better fiction than most writers and most writers with their overblown egos and penchants for playing God, made better politicians.

He was not necessarily a great politician, by far, he was not. He possessed the allimportant capacity for weaving an intricate and wonderful tapestry of deceptive truths. He promulgated visions of a world that seemed just out of reach to the common man but attainable if only he had their help.

His campaigns were wildly successful, confusing pundits and political foes alike. He always delivered the tangent to his constituents and influential supporters. To all others, he continued ‘their crusade’, allowing the masses who saw in him ‘a beacon of hope in a hopeless

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

night’ as he referred to himself on a number of occasions; to view him as someone reaching for the stars growing ever and ever closer as he grabbed at nothing.

Politics is a fool’s game, played to the most gullible by a bigger fool than they. It is only the bigger fool that wins high office; promising the moon to poor peasants and farmers who got burned by the previous day’s sun.

The people of this pueblo had not seen such a moon or a land of milk and honey that were routinely promised in such speeches. The workers and fruit pickers that worked this land never saw the moon in the light of day when they baked tasking menially and the only moisture to hit the hard baked land at their feet was the sweat that dripped from their brow.

In Ortiz, they saw something that they had not seen in a long time; hope.

“Give us rain,” an old farmer yelled in the middle of Ortiz’s oratory, interrupting him.

Ortiz becoming flustered, lost his place and began to recite the very same words he had spoken twenty minutes before. Some, who had been listening, openly laughed at his awkward sputtering moment.

“Give us rain!” the man repeated. Ortiz now stopped in mid-repetition and smiled.

“Sir, what is it that you want from me?” Ortiz offered his open hands to the crowd, beseeching the elderly man. “I am but a humble politician.”

“Rain,” the man said simply and rubbed his brown, stubbled chin. His day-old growth was snowy white. “Why don’t you give us rain? You’re promising everything else up there.”

He taunted the elegant tool of the right-wing. “We haven’t had rain for two months and our crops are near death. It is only with regular trips to the Conchos River that we can have enough water to drink. Our crops are of no use to us if we cannot sustain enough to eat,” the man said. “Give us rain and we’ll give you your office.”

A man grabbed Ortiz’s ear on the platform and Ortiz shook his head and waved the man off. As Ortiz touched at the dog-eared speech he always carried in his coat pocket, he felt the familiar perforated edges of La Moda Communicacion folded next to the speech.

Luckily, the way the daily was creased, he espied the weather culled from the national weather service in Mexico City, a thousand miles away.

“I am a humble politician, not God Almighty,” he prefaced his next offer of fiction.

“But I can tell you that rain will come,” Ortiz said as he wiped at the sweat that beaded on his forehead.

“When?” the old man bellowed.

“Tonight,” Ortiz told them. His forecast was met with ripples of laughter throughout the crowd. Crowds reminded him of an untamed beast or that of an orphaned child that always needed placating.

“If you’re right, Senator Ortiz, you will win the Governor’s seat,” the old man called out.

“But if you’re wrong, you’ll be hung from the highest tree by morning,” to which the sadistic crowd showed its appreciation. This alarmed Ortiz. It wasn’t the threat of death that alarmed him but the immediate idea that he could lose his hold over the crowd so quickly, especially for which one he had paid so handsomely. The crowd was less orphaned than beastly, he thought and he wrapped his speech up quickly.

The thought was still with him as he sat in the cool, dark backroom of the bar across the street from his hotel. As he sat and joked with his campaign manager and one advance man out of the two he traveled with, the other having gone ahead to the next town, three silhouettes appeared in the doorway.

One figure bent over the bar and spoke to the bartender, Alejandro. Once he righted himself, the three figures continued on towards the backroom. Ortiz noticed this but went on joking.

His campaign manager noted the look of assignation on the senator’s face. He turned and was greeted with the sight of three menacing figures dressed in black suits. One reached

www.farawayjournal.com

inside his jacket. The campaign manager hit the floor. Ortiz saw this but kept his cool.

“Amigo.” One man spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“Si.” Ortiz nodded again, keeping his wits about him. “Hablo Ingles, por favor.” Ortiz said in case anyone was listening. The man nodded.

“You’ll forgive if my English is no good,” the man said, pulling out a piece of paper.

Ortiz nodded and waved his hand. “I am representative of Mayor Villarosa. He asked me to meet you.”

“Go on,” Ortiz said pensively, holding his cards close to the vest.

“The Mayor has business offer for you,” the man said reading from the paper.

“This business proposition…” Ortiz asked slowly. “How much will it cost me?” He glared.

“Your rival, Rivera, is running strong here in this pueblo,” he read in a shaky voice. “The Mayor, he does not like Rivera. Rivera is a crook. He will only pay a small percentage for votes in pueblo. The Mayor wants you to win and can guarantee you the vote.”

“Thank you, Señor,” Ortiz said. “No thank you.”

“You have an eye for the ladies, no?”

The brow on Ortiz’s forehead furrowed and then relaxed. “Some say they have an eye for me.”

“The Mayor has left you a regalo in your hotel room to relax your mind, no?” The man smiled. “A man cannot think on a serious mind.”

Ortiz wondered what the present could be. Given what he knew of the man, it could be money, a girl or a pistol to his head. He looked at the two men behind the first man, similarly sullen and then back at him. “How much will it cost me?”

“One hundred thousand pesos.”

“Forget it, amigo.” Ortiz shook his head and sat back in his chair, determined. “Tell the Mayor that Senator Ortiz is an honest man.”

The man began to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” Ortiz demanded.

“Los siento, Señor.” He smiled. “Your words struck me funny, todo estan. After all, you are the man who promised rain,” he said and leaned in close. “Both you and I know the foolishness of such a promise.”

“Mijo…” Ortiz sat up in his chair and looked straight at the man. He took a sip of his beer and said: “I am a man of my word and if I say it will rain…it will rain.”

“Amigo.” The man returned the look as his face became animated behind his sunglasses.

“Even you must admit that you cannot make it rain. Only the Almighty can do that and the last time I heard, the Almighty did not buy his clothes in Mexicali,” he said, disparaging the senator’s suit.

“Senator, permit me,” a second man said, stepping out from behind the first. Ortiz nodded as the man came forth. “You have promised the people of this pueblo rain. Even you must admit that you cannot make one drop of rain fall from the heavens, let alone enough for these farmers’ crops. When they awake tomorrow and see the sun baking the earth dry as it has done since the last harvest, the people, Señor, the voters, they will be very angry. The Mayor has told us three that if you would agree to his generous offer, he can assure you that you will not be hung from the highest limb of the highest tree.”

Ortiz shuddered at the thought. “All right, tell the Mayor I will think about it. Let me sleep on it, amigo.” It was the best decision Ortiz could offer.

The man smiled and held out his hand. “You are very wise to consider Señor Villarosa’s generous offer,” he said and took back his hand when Ortiz didn’t shake it.

“Generous offer.” Ortiz shook his head and waved them off as they began to walk through the alcove to the bar.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

The third man stopped and turned and walked back to the table, while the others waited at the bar. “There’s one more thing, Señor.”

“What is that?”

“Mayor Villarosa is a generous man. We take care of our people. There will be an incentive to accept the mayor’s offer. You will see.”

Ortiz nodded as the man again walked through the alcove. “What are your thoughts, Miguel, Juan?”

“The deal is lousy. I’d stay away from it,” Manuel, his advance man advised.

“I don’t know. This will cost us many pesos, but it might be a good investment in the end. We could get that kind of money up with only a few minor problems, but I think we can do it.”

“I’ve heard Villarosa has ties to La ‘M’,” his advance man said, speaking of the Mexican mafia, his voice lowering near the end of the statement. “It might be good to avoid it altogether.”

Ortiz sat with his head in his hand, his index finger touching the bristles of his moustache. “What you’ve said is true, but we have forgotten that if it does not rain tomorrow, I will lose this town and therefore, the vote, nomination and election, I’m afraid.”

“I say we wait,” Miguel spoke up. “The deal is lousy.” He shook his head and ran his hand across the table and pounded it with his fist. “I say we wait. Another day won’t kill us.”

He shrugged.

Ortiz glared at him. “If it is true that he is connected, it just may kill us. But I agree, I will do what I told them. I will sleep on it and take my chances in the morning.”

“I will see how much money we can get by then,” Juan said, still contemplating the raw deal. The two men looked at him. “Just in case it does not rain.”

“There’s one thing that puzzles me, Manuel.”

“What is that, my good friend, Miguel?” Ortiz asked.

“Why did you divert from the speech?” he asked, almost pained. “You’ve always had the same speech for as long as I’ve worked for you.”

“The words were there, so in essence, it was the same speech.”

“I agree. It was eloquent and the part involving the rain was moving. But you changed it,” Miguel interrupted. “You always said that speech brought you luck.”

“It has brought me luck,” Ortiz said confidently.

“Then why change it?” Miguel said. “It may have been bad luck to change it.”

“Nonsense.” Ortiz waved his hand over the conversation. “Such talk is pointless,” he said and stood. “Now, let us return to the room. I’m tired.”

“What will you do about the Mayor’s shakedown?” Miguel asked pointedly as the three men exited the bar and stepped down onto the cobblestone street.

Ortiz shrugged and walked over to a man who had set up a small taco stand beside the bodega of their hotel across the street. Ortiz peered down at the flesh-colored stones and their octagonal design. These masonry stones were common throughout the region and he saw them in every pueblo they visited.

He studied the man and watched him flip the carne asada and carnitas on a makeshift grill. Errant flies buzzed in and around the bowls of cut-up green cilantro and lettuce, along with the white onions and salsa. He noticed the man looking at him.

“Can you make it rain, Señor?” the man in the blue guayabera shirt asked intently.

Ortiz looked hard at the man. He was a Mayan. He studied the man’s hard crag of a sun-baked face and the sweat that beaded as if to cool the man’s fiery face. The man was pleasant and despite a few missing teeth, the man seemed happy in his work.

Ortiz had not been exposed to this level of poverty until he traveled beyond his father’s house during his first campaign. Until then, poverty was what read about in the papers.

www.farawayjournal.com

“If I, Senator Manuel Ortiz, said it was going to rain…” he said, puffing his chest out and raising his index finger. “Then it will rain.”

“God bless you, Señor Ortiz.” The man smiled and handed him a couple of freshly made tacos.

“No, Señor.” Ortiz begged off, knowing the man needed the money.

“Please, I implore you.” He offered.

Ortiz thanked the man and walked across the street to see what gift the mayor had left in his room. Ortiz looked back as he walked and noticed his aide rush back to give the old man some pesos so as not to show impropriety.

Sure enough, back in the room there was an incentive for Ortiz to take the Mayor’s offer. It came in the form of a luscious, young woman waiting on one of the beds. Ortiz nodded at his two aides and the two men left the room immediately in search of their own incentives in the hotel bar. Ortiz thought to himself about how generous of a man the Mayor was, but he still could not bring himself to buy his way into this or any future election. He prided himself on how he hadn’t bought an election in years. He would at least give the Mayor the respect he had earned and accept this token of their new friendship. He wouldn’t, however, become a pawn of the Mayor or he said, to himself, as he removed his shirt.

After many hours of sweaty lovemaking, Ortiz stirred from his dreams. He looked at the girl. She was sleeping soundly, he noted. Why wouldn’t she be, he asked himself, he had shown her an intense night. His eyes ran across the shadows on the wall.

As he lay there in the darkness, a strange sound filled his ears. It sounded as if a giant hissing snake slithered slowly past the window. He jumped from where he lay and darted to the window. He opened the wooden shutters. It was raining. But more than that, it was pouring! Ortiz let out a victorious laugh, waking the girl who gave him a dirty look and pulled the covers over her head.

Ortiz celebrated by telling the girl to gather her clothing and get the hell out. The election was now certainly his, even the Mayor could not control the weather or the outcome of the election, he sang to himself. Plus, if they were going to hang him for no rain, they may vote the Mayor out of office and himself in, he joked to himself.

He breathed in the cool, wet air that cascaded as a mist into the room. One hundred thousand pesos, he roared. One thousand pesos my ass! He laughed.

The Mayor, it turned out, was the one who had the last laugh. It was true that Ortiz won the election, but the amount of rain nearly ruined the crops that were left. He won the election because the people feared him and thought he could control the weather. The story somehow leaked out of the Mayor’s office of Ortiz’s dalliance with the girl and the ensuing scandal of the underage girl who declared that Ortiz was the father of the baby she now carried in her womb nearly cost him that victory. In hindsight, Ortiz may well have been wise to accept the Mayor’s initial offer. The price to fix the election had indeed been a con, one that the Mayor freely admitted in a closed door meeting with Ortiz. Villarosa informed Ortiz he had planned to take him for one hundred and fifty thousand pesos, but charge his opponent two hundred thousand pesos. The trouble was that his opponent couldn’t come up with the cash. Enter the young girl who was the niece of the man who ran the taco stand outside the bar. There was only the concept of the man being handsomely paid for by signaling Villarosa’s people on whether or not Ortiz had taken the bait. The initial plan was to have Ortiz get caught red-faced and red-handed with an underage girl who would be untouched and he would therefore have to pay for what was only an implication.

The trouble was that when Ortiz’s advance men, Miguel and Juan went to the hotel bar, they discovered it was closed and the bar across the street and remembered the friendly taco vendor and invited him for a few drinks.

It was only an added extra that the girl had gotten pregnant by Ortiz and once the girl

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

igolo in th G t eW s Be Jared Hernandez

d orl

“Spec i alties” Performed

772 S. North St.

An

d th

t! c a f at ’ s a

!

L A D I E S

Th e

began to show and make noise in the local papers did the offer from the Mayor triple in price. He could take care of the problem, he assured Ortiz. As Ortiz sweated in his office, both men knew that he was looking at the twilight of his once sunny political career. Ortiz could only hope the Mayor had enough pull to keep him out of jail. He knew that the Mayor finally had him where he wanted him. It would be tough to keep Ortiz from getting vilified in the national press, but the Mayor had enough pull with the local papers and had many political allies who would kill the story. The Mayor had as many enemies, but fortunately, like Ortiz, these were enemies he also controlled.

The Mayor had plans for Ortiz and with Ortiz leading in the polls; it was only a matter of time, luck and money to be spent. The Mayor would do well with an ally in the Governor’s seat, he smiled to himself and besides, he had Ortiz in his pocket.

In that small, cramped office, Ortiz could only wonder to himself why he had suffered such a lapse in judgment as to sleep with the girl. He wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t stupid. He was full of hubris. The papers were too, he thought to himself. It was a mystery to him where they got the information. Each day they were bursting with even more wilder stories than the day before, telling of how the senator had been drunk and violated the poor, defenseless girl when no such thing happened. In sating the public’s thirst for the up-to-the-minute pabulum, this deepening scandal would reveal in tomorrow morning’s papers that the girl was also a prostitute.

As Ortiz sat a disconsolate pawn in the Mayor’s office, the Mayor paraded smugly about and lectured him. Unbeknownst to Ortiz, the Mayor himself fed the latest story to the reporters he had on the payroll, twenty minutes before Ortiz arrived. As the Mayor railed on, Ortiz wondered how he had gone to bed with a nubile, young woman and awoke with the oldest trick in the book, orchestrated by a man more corrupt than himself. Politics, he said sighing to himself, did indeed make strange bedfellows.

G E N T S

www.farawayjournal.com

HOME SECURITY A Short Story By Ron Savage

H

e knows there is a driver inside the mail truck and not because he has seen the driver but because he knows trucks don’t drive themselves. Lorenzo can also imagine the mail truck having its own resolve, its own agenda. Forget the work he puts into his lawn. Forget the work of his neighbors and their lawns. The mail truck doesn’t care if you work hard or don’t work at all. The mail truck doesn’t care if you are a good neighbor or a bad neighbor. Everybody gets the same cruelty, the same indifference. That’s what Lorenzo thinks. The mail truck goes too fast and too close to the curving edge of the cul-de-sac. Thick black tires expel dirt and grass like a race horse at the last turn. Most postal workers drive their own trucks, and this truck is a boxy, dark brown bully. A big hungry thing, Lorenzo thinks. This mail truck does what it wants to do.

“I lost my wonderful bracelet you gave me,” Nettie says. The fingers on her right hand are quivering. Her fingers are thin with cherry red polish. She is sitting beside Lorenzo on their front porch. Nettie has a fashion magazine propped against her knees. It’s opened to an article about wrinkle free getaway dresses. Toss and wear for a busy you. She keeps reading the same paragraph. Her concentration isn’t working today. “I never once took that bracelet off,” Nettie says. “That’s thirtyfour years, almost thirty-five,” she says.

“Don’t upset yourself,” Lorenzo says. He is reading the manual from a home security kit he ordered on the internet. Lorenzo and Nettie like sitting on their porch and reading together. Two months ago Lorenzo had his fifty-fifth birthday but he looks ten years younger. His hair is brown and curled and he has a narrow face and a flat belly. He likes showing his flat belly to Nettie. “Tell me how you’re feeling,” Lorenzo says.

“My insides are jumpy,” Nettie says. “Everything burns, my legs, my arms. I can’t get used to that.”

Lorenzo and Nettie are instructors at a private high school in Norfolk. Lorenzo teaches biology and Nettie teaches English. Then Nettie quit her job on Tuesday a week ago. She had not been feeling good for awhile.

The porch has a low white railing and gray wood planks. A breeze scented by pines and cedars flap the pages of her magazine. The trees bring shadows to the front porch and break up the sunlight. A small rust colored rug is draped over the railing. Nettie’s thumb and forefinger pinch the corners of the pages to stop them from rattling. The red polish on her thumbnail has a chipped spot.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“We should take a trip this October,” Lorenzo says. They will be married thirty-five years in October. He cannot grasp thirty-five years. He is amazed how quickly the years go.

Lorenzo is watching Nettie’s face and rubbing the back of her neck. Lorenzo says, “We could go to Paris. Would you like that? The colors are beautiful in October. And the French aren’t too bad, really. We could plan a trip.”

Lorenzo has loved Nettie since they were kids and lived across the street from each other on Fayton Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia. At the end of Fayton Avenue was a swamp with cattails and a stream and trees that had gray moss hanging from wet black branches. They had their first kiss on the roof of a tiny abandoned house in the swamp. Lorenzo was nine then and Nettie was seven. She wore a fuzzy pink sweater that didn’t cover her belly. Her eyes were very green and very wide and she watched everything Lorenzo did as if she might miss a clue. Her blond hair had been thick when she was a girl and clipped straight and cut just above her eyebrows.

Allergies tortured her, the season didn’t matter. Watery snot would crystallize on her upper lip like pale scabs. They had a good first kiss, though, and he loved her right away.

Afternoon sunlight is on the page of Lorenzo’s home security manual and he has to shift in his chair to bring back the shade. One of the system’s sensors is giving him a problem. He can’t figure out why the alarm won’t trigger when he taps the screen window.

“Don’t worry about the bracelet,” Lorenzo says and props his bare feet on the low porch railing. He is sitting next to Nettie in a white wicker chair with a maroon cushion. “I’ll buy you a bracelet in Paris,” he says.

“This one was hand made in Mexico,” Nettie says. The bracelet is silver and has her name engraved on it. Nettie and Lorenzo went to Puerto Vallarta for their honeymoon. The fingers of Nettie’s right hand are quivering again. “It has a special jade clip,” Nettie says. The tone in her voice lets Lorenzo know the bracelet’s cannot be replaced.

“Paris has terrific bracelets,” Lorenzo says.

Last week Lorenzo had driven Nettie to the doctor for tests. This morning the doctor asked Nettie and Lorenzo to come see him in Richmond. Lorenzo doesn’t trust doctors and doesn’t like going to doctors but he went today so Nettie wouldn’t be alone. Doctor Heckman is a short young man with blond hair who wears tailored suits and silk bow ties and smells of limes. The doctor has a neurology practice downtown and teaches at Tidewater Medical College. This morning he told Nettie and Lorenzo that Nettie had Multiple Sclerosis. The man didn’t look old enough to tie his shoes, Lorenzo had thought. How can he sit there in his tailored suit and his bow tie and tell people things like that? Doctor Heckman was tapping the tip of his pen against a beige desk blotter on his desk and not looking at Nettie and Lorenzo. He called Nettie’s MS the primary progressive type. He said mostly older people get the primary progressive type. That type has no periods of remission.

On bright days the sun will glitter the windows of the mail truck and on cloudy days the windows are dark and reflect the neighborhood lawns. The driver can’t be seen. Once or twice Lorenzo tried to see the driver by wedging binoculars www.farawayjournal.com

between the slats of the Venetian blinds in his living room. He only saw the reflections of sunlight and the neighborhood.

A week ago Lorenzo embedded spikes along the edge of his property to protect his lawn. The spikes are plastic, a vivid yellow. This should send a message, Lorenzo thought. But the mail truck doesn’t know boundaries. Its thick black tires grazed and bent one of the spikes. The mail truck won’t respect the hours and the effort Lorenzo has put into his lawn. The seed and the fertilizer, the weekly mowing, the watering, a lawn can be more trouble than a pet. The mail truck ignores everything but what it is there to do.

Fence. Gay Degani (mixed media on canvas, acrylic, wire, and metal)

Fantasies have come to Lorenzo. He imagines metal shards outlining the divide between the gravel and tar road and his lawn. Lorenzo wants to crouch behind the cedars and the pines that cluster at the front of his property near Nettie’s azaleas.

From there he could track the thick black tires with his shotgun.

A breeze goes through the pines and the cedars, cool in the warm afternoon.

Shadows crisscross the front porch. Pine needles are scattered over the gray planks, and the needles roll with the breeze.

Nettie has stopped reading the article on wrinkle free getaway clothes. She is looking at her thin fingers with the cherry red nail polish. The fingers twitch more than quiver. “I hate the way my body just does what it wants,” she says. “It never asks my permission anymore. And I’m always tired. It’s funny how we take our bodies for granted. Don’t you think its funny?”

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“You look fine to me,” Lorenzo says. He stops reading his manual and leans over to her and kisses her cheek. She smells of baby powder and shampoo. “I don’t see anything different,” Lorenzo says. “You look cute as ever, hon.”

“You don’t want to see,” Nettie says and pats the pockets of her jeans for cigarettes then remembers she quit last month. She drops the fashion magazine next to her on the wicker two seater and says, “We want everybody to stay the same.

People think like that. We get nervous when things change.” Nettie has on a white T-shirt and her jeans are thready at the knees. Her skin is transparent enough to show blue veins on her thin arms and the tops of her hands. “I don’t think I can travel,” Nettie says and slips her foot from her leather sandal. She has a small narrow foot, a child’s foot. The toenails are painted cherry red like her fingernails.

Nettie tucks her bare foot under her on the small wicker sofa. “I’d be too afraid to travel,” she says. “Paris is big and people do nothing but walk.”

“You walk fine,” Lorenzo says. The home security manual is on his lap now and his arms are folded to his chest. He looks at Nettie then looks beyond the front porch toward the concrete driveway. The cedars and the pines are patches with sunlight and the sunlight is long and thin on the concrete and mixes with shadows. “We go hiking all the time,” Lorenzo says. “Or used to hike. Remember how we used to go hiking in the Blue Ridge?”

“We were kids,” she tells him.

“That’s not my point,” Lorenzo says. “My point is, you were always a good hiker. You like a good walk. You know how to put one foot in front of the other.

That’s my point.”

“I was in my twenties,” she says.

“You know what you know,” he says and looks at the driveway and not at her.

A new breeze trembles the sunlight and the shadows on the concrete.

News about Nettie’s MS followed less than a month after their daughter Martha had quit Virginia Commonwealth University and left home to marry a VCU graduate student. You save and save for a child’s future and what happens? Lorenzo thinks. All children want to do when they grow up is mate. Martha and her new husband then moved to Costa Rica to do something with the Hawksbill sea turtle.

Lorenzo still isn’t sure what people do with sea turtles. Possibly repair them or help them lay eggs or do something the sea turtles can do for themselves. Nettie used the remainder of Martha’s college money to start law school but her memory became so bad she had to quit.

“I wish I knew what happened to my wonderful bracelet,” Nettie says. Her fingertips touch her bare wrist.

This is a boxy, dark brown bully who announces itself. Lorenzo can hear the stop and start of the mail truck no matter where he is in his house. Its fumes saturate the air. Its exhaust enfolds the cedars and the pines like foggy insecticide.

Gears scrape into second then into third as the mail truck emerges from the trees and the curve in the road. It is forever riding the edge of the cul-de-sac. Many days the sides of the truck and its thick black tires are layered in dry mud.

A metal gray and black U.S. Mail sign is attached to the rear of the truck with duct tape. Mud also dries on the sign and does things like blot out the ‘U’ in U.S. www.farawayjournal.com

or the ‘ail’ in Mail.

Yesterday Lorenzo hid behind the cedars and the pines at the front of the house near his wife’s white and pink azaleas. Her beautiful azaleas. Her babies, if you were to ask Nettie, the azaleas she trims and nurtures year round. He waited close to an hour before he heard the stop and start of the mail truck. The fumes were strong, the exhaust drifted between the cedars and the pines. Its windshield wipers had cleared half circles of mud from the windshield and the sun glared off the clean parts of the glass and turned the half circles into radioactive eyes. The mail truck was again going too fast and pressing too near the rim where the gravel and tar street met Lorenzo’s lawn. Thick black tires mowed deep into the lawn and churned dirt and grass. Black tires snapped each of the five yellow plastic spikes that divided the lawn from the street. Each spike had a separate and distinct crack. Pieces of yellow plastic mixed with the dirt and grass expelled by the tires.

Lorenzo has seen the mail truck dig into other lawns. He has talked to angry neighbors. It’s nothing personal, Lorenzo thinks. This is what he imagines the mail truck would say. Look what I did to the family across the street, it says. Look what I did to your neighbors next door. That doesn’t matter, Lorenzo thinks. You are doing it to me and that’s personal. Lorenzo is on his knees trying to fit what is left of a shattered yellow spike back into the ground.

Her blond hair has become thinner and whiter. Nettie likes her hair fixed in a ponytail with a rubber band beneath a bright red ribbon. She likes the feel of a breeze fluttering loose strands across her forehead or cheek. Lorenzo knows this about his wife. He knows the little things, the minutiae.

A late afternoon sun outlines the cedars and the pines with yellow light. Shadows go the length of the front porch, the gray planks, the low railing that has the small rust colored rug draped over it. Pine needles are on the planks and behind the wicker furniture where the house meets the porch.

“You must always love me,” Nettie says. “You must.” Nettie’s cupped palm strokes the back of Lorenzo’s curled brown hair.

“I do that best,” he says.

Lorenzo’s new security system has sensors for motion and breaking glass. The alarm will be heard in their home and at the Norfolk Police Department. There are four color cameras positioned to show the front and back and sides of the house.

A twenty inch flat screen monitor is in his study next to the computer. Lorenzo thinks this should give Nettie the surveillance she will need when he is away from the house.

“I think I’ll go and buy our tickets tomorrow,” Lorenzo says. “We’ll stay riverside in the Latin Quarter. If you’re going to Paris, the Latin Quarter is the best.

The Sorbonne, the cafes and the Jazz clubs. I know just the hotel, too. You’ll get up in the morning and walk out onto the terrace and see the Left Bank and Notre Dame. Won’t that be amazing, Nettie? Won’t that be wonderful?”

“More than wonderful,” Nettie says.

Lorenzo gets up from his chair next to his wife and sits beside her on the white wicker two seater. Nettie rests herself against his chest. She holds his slim long hand between her smaller hands.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

“Tell me everything,” she says.

“We always loved our travels,” Lorenzo says.

He tells her about the Boulevard St-Michel and the Rue St-Jacques. He describes the narrow cobbled street with their tiny shops and bistros, the theatres and the cinemas. Nettie has pressed herself to his chest. She smells of baby powder and shampoo. Her skin is warm from the summer day. Lorenzo leans his head down to kiss her hair. Then he is quiet and closes his eyes and feels the last of the sun on his face.

Nettie whispers to Lorenzo and pats his hand. “I think I’ll start supper,” she says. “I’m famished. All I do is eat and wait to eat,” she says. “Aren’t you famished, hon? Maybe I’ll make us a tuna salad, something light.” Lorenzo feels her lift away. A breeze fills the space where she left her damp imprint on his arms and chest. The air is chilly on his skin. Lorenzo opens his eyes halfway. He wants to let her know how much he loves her. Nettie is walking to the front door when her thin legs wobble and fold.

Five new plastic spikes mark the jutting edge of his lawn. Lorenzo is sitting cross legged on the grass behind one of the cedar trees. He has his single barrel shotgun in his lap. Pink and white blossoms from Nettie’s azaleas are scattered like snow on the ground near him. Every few minutes Lorenzo looks at his watch. It’s one-thirty-nine now. The mail truck will usually come between one-thirty and two. Shade from the pines and cedars cut the sunlight and hide Lorenzo. He has a good view of the street and a better than good view of the five yellow plastic spikes.

Nettie’s fall had fractured her left ankle. Lorenzo was no more than three feet from her in the wicker two seater when her legs gave way. I should’ve been quicker, he thinks. I should’ve watched her better. She was walking one minute and sprawled out the next. He drove her to the emergency room at Norfolk General.

The doctor let Lorenzo and Nettie see the x-ray of Nettie’s ankle. He pointed with his gold pen to the two hairline fractures. Nettie wanted to know if her ankle would be healed by October. “My husband’s taking me to Paris for our anniversary,” she told the doctor.

The mail truck is heard and smelled before it is seen. The fumes and the stop and start of its engine warns the neighborhood. I am here, it says. Are you ready?

Is everything seeded and mowed? it says. Exhaust covers the cedars and pines like gauzy white fog. Lorenzo raises the shotgun and fits the polished wood stock to his shoulder. He does a practice aim in the direction of the yellow plastic spikes.

Maybe he will shoot a tire. Maybe he will knick a muddy fender. Something that speaks to the mail truck’s indifference, Lorenzo thinks.

Sunlight winks across the silver barrel of the shotgun. Another light winks back beneath the azaleas. Lorenzo lowers the shotgun. He begins clearing the white and pink blossoms from under the azalea bush with a sweep of his hand.

Nettie’s bracelet lays on the grass like a curled silver worm. He is caught by it and it pulls the breath from him. He is caught by it the way a pirate is caught by treasure.

The stop and start of the mail truck is louder. Gasoline fumes are strong and sweet and bring a cramped feeling to his stomach. Exhaust lingers just above him in long transparent layers. Lorenzo is trying to fasten the two ends of the bracelet together www.farawayjournal.com

but the jade clip won’t work. His fingers shake and he doesn’t know why. Tell me everything, she had said to him. Lorenzo had told her about the Boulevard StMichel and the Rue St-Jacques. He described the narrow cobbled street with their tiny shops and their bistros, the theatres and the cinemas. The jade clip just won’t snap shut, he thinks. Lorenzo cannot stop the shaking in his fingers and he cannot hook the bracelet together. He wedges the shotgun under his arm then tries again to hook the bracelet together. The mail truck has emerged from the trees and the curve in the road. Now this boxy, dark brown bully begins its too fast and too close race along the curving edge of the cul-de-sac.

Molly & Holly

. .

Con-joined Twins Separated at Birth Re-united in SIN!

The Shocking new tale:

Only in

California F a ra w a y

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

&

Sons

Pub lis hin g

Available at Finer Retailers

New Contributors Steve Cartwright has done art for several magazines, newspapers, websites, commercial and governmental clients, books, and scribbling - but mostly drooling - on tavern napkins. I also create art pro bono for several animal rescue groups. I was awarded the 2004 James Award for my cover art for Champagne Shivers. I recently illustrated the Cimarron Review and Stories for Children covers.

Take a gander ( or a goose ) at Steve’s online gallery: www.angelfire.com/sc2/cartoonsbycartwright.

Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Grand prairie, Texas. Google him.

Gay Degani has been lucky enough to find time to paint. She also writes short stories and makes jewelry. You might fancy a double-click to www. gaydegani.com and http://wordsinplace.blogspot. com

Vic Fortezza was born in Brooklyn in 1950 to Sicilian immigrants. He has had 35 short stories published worldwide. He contributes articles to buzzle.com. He has self-published a novel, Close to the Edge. Too dumb to have ever married, he lives alone. Visit Vic on the interweb at: http://vicfortezza.homestead.com

www.farawayjournal.com

Jim Fuess works with liquid acrylic paint on canvas. Most of his work is abstract, but there are recognizable forms and faces in a number of the paintings. He is striving for grace and fluidity, movement and balance. He likes color and believes that beauty can be an artistic goal. There is whimsy, fear, energy, movement, fun and dread in his paintings. A lot of his work is anthropomorphic. The shapes seem familiar. The faces are real. The gestures and movements recognizable.

More of his work, both in color and black and white, may be seen at www.jimfuessart.com.

Joseph Goosey just ate a salad for breakfast. Everything he owns is in the corner of this room and he will hopefully have a chapbook out from Poptritus Press in the fall.

Joseph Grant is originally from New York City and now lives in Los Angeles. His short stories have been published in 90 literary reviews and e-zines, such as Byline, New Authors Journal, Nite-Writer’s International Literary Arts Journal, Howling Moon Press, Hack Writers, New Online Review, Literary Tonic, six sentences, NexGenPulp, three UK literary reviews, Bottom of the World and Cupboard Gloom and most recent in Darkest Before Dawn and a story in the upcoming anthology of horror, Northern Haunts, and upcoming stories in Grim Graffiti, Heroin Love Songs and Bottom of the World #2.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya TR Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and his stories have appeared in such journals as the Boston Literary Review, Blink, The Foliate Oak, and Superstition Review.

Colin James lives in Massachusetts but used to live in Chester, England. He has had poems recently in Trespass, Words Myth and Sage Trail. He works in Energy Conservation and is writing a novel.

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

David Kowalczyk lives and writes in Batavia, New York. He has taught English in South Korea and Mexico, as well as at Genesee Community College. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various venues, including The Buffalo News, St. Anne’s Review, and California Quarterly.

Jim Lyons is twenty-two years old and currently works as a postman in Essex, England. He has been writing stories since the age of four and hopes to make a career of it in the future. He also enjoys making music, cycling and travelling. Visit Jim on a series of tubes at http://www.youtube. com/user/journeymanjim and http://journeymanjim.deviantart.com.

Diana Magallón is an experimental artist: http://cipollinaaaaa.blogspot.com

Suvi Mahonen and Luke Waldrip are a husband and wife team. They live in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, Australia. Suvi is studying for her MA (Writing and Literature) at Deakin University. Her fiction has been published in various literary journals internationally including Verandah, Bottom of the World and Mississippi Crow (upcoming), and she has worked as a journalist both in Australia and Canada. Luke is an OBGYN resident at the William Angliss Hospital in Melbourne and enjoys travel and photography.

Andy Mills grew up on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, and is more at home walking through the woods then walking through a mall. Having relocated to the concrete wastelands of Southern California with the desire to earn his English degree and teaching credentials, he has come to the realization that he holds a deep dislike for the manufactured nature of urban sprawls. With the www.farawayjournal.com

birth of his daughter, he and his wife are currently planning their escape back to locales where one can find a tree that was not planted according to city ordinance.

Dan Moreau’s work has appeared in Farfelu magazine, Word Riot, Segue and Clapboard House.

Christian A. Pinchbeck is a 19 year old Graphic Communication student at Chelsea University, England. When he is not studying, he is putting pen to paper: Dreaming up magical worlds of fairy tale inspired adventures. He began illustrating his ‘Amelie’ stories himself, but recently has started collaborating with Lotte Beatrix Crawford, a close friend and a first year Illustration student at Brighton University. He takes inspiration from folk music, Roald Dahl and his love of vintage and unusual collectibles.

Ron Savage worked as a psychologist at Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia before retiring to write full time. He has published over seventy stories around the world. Some of his recent and forthcoming publications include Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, G.W. Review, Film Comment, and Southern Humanities Review.

Janet Thorning’s poetry and short stories have been published in numerous magazines both online and in print. This is her first published image.

William Walsh’s stories and derived texts have appeared in Caketrain, New York Tyrant, Juked, Lit, Press, Rosebud, Fringe, Exquisite Corpse, Pequin, Quarterly Wes, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other journals. His first novel, Without Wax, was published this year by Casperian Books, and a collection of derived texts called Questionstruck is scheduled for publication early in 2009 from Keyhole Press. Here: http://questionstruck.blogspot. com and here: http://murphybed.blogspot.com

Vol. 2, Iss. 2

For all those other mugs, hop, skip & jump to: http://www.farawayjournal.com/contributors This issue: Cover: Jeff Hendrickson Layout: Scott Sawyer Most photos tin-typed by: Daniel Sawyer Publisher: Dimba Special thanks to David A. Kentner for his generous $ donation $.

Ellen Perry

Faraway: A Journal of Art & Literature Volume 2, Issue 2 October 2008 www.farawayjournal.com

Published in

THE INLAND EMPIRE!

the end

V O L

I S S

2

2

Blue ribbon fakers f l a p j a c k i n v a l i d

beef headed C a t P u s h e r s Tak e a s q u i n t b a l d - h e a d e d b u t t e r

Cigareticide

mouth p i e

Devils dinner hour donkeys breakfast

Lemoncholy H a l f - r a t s W o rm ea t e r

Coffee-sisters afternoonified Commonsensible

Go Aheaditiveness

tea and toast struggle Elderly jam coloured grave

Red hot m i r a c l e Taste the sun

Yellow journalism

Slosh the old gooseberry Snuff a Blokes candle efficient effrontery strike me pink passing English bloomeration

a l l - r o u n d

m u d d l e cy c lop hob i s t

Dizzy Age Sky-pilot Guffoon e s t a b l i s h a f u n k V fearful f r i g h t s k

jumboism

o l u n e e

n

d

fa rc i d r a m a

t

r

e

i

e l

r l

Muck

Shanghai G e n t l e m e n H u l l a b a l o o

Prudes on the prowl ultra crepidation

Freakeries

Damfoolishness

toast your blooming eyebrows nine mile nuts

f i s h

b a g g e r c o r n -c r a c k e r s

Chain Lightning z o u n d s

Winter Approaches...

lamp-snow-tree. Steve Cartwright.

A beacon shines, faraway