Oxford Magazine: Unsated, Unslaked, Issue 37: Spring 2016

Unsated, Unslaked

Spring 2016

OxMag Issue 37

Dear Readers, Spring reminds us of patterns and eternal cycles, of particular motive forces and metamorphoses. “Spring is the time of plans and projects,” Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, recalling for us in English (does it work in Russian, too?) the mechanistic as well as seasonal valences of “spring,” both connoting a potential energy. Once again we proliferate tasks. We plan. We tinker. Here in our own backyard of a past, Anne Bradstreet wrote of spring as the just reward for the winter-ravaged pious: “if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

We’re afraid Bradstreet’s puritanism bores us (“my mother told me as a boy/‘Ever to confess you’re bored/means you have no/Inner Resources’”). Here we are and it’s spring and we are hungrier than before. We are not the pious collecting our patient reward, but barbarians energized around a wild pagan fire. What a profligate expense of energy!

OxMag too is cyclical and this is the end of one cycle and the start of a new one—like Yeats’ gyres, widening, unwinding. As we do each year, we hand the reins to more capable people flush with stores of energy. It seems proper to introduce them.

Carly Plank will take the helm as the new Editor-in-Chief. Carly is a second year master’s student in creative writing. Her creative nonfiction has been published in 34th Parallel and her fiction has been published in 3288 Review. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in biology from Aquinas College, located in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Justin Chandler steps up as fiction editor. Justin is pursuing an MA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. He is currently working on a novel. In addition to his work with OxMag, he serves as editor on The Ryder Magazine's yearly fiction issue.

He prefers fiction about pugs.

Isaac Pickell will MC poetry. He too is a second year Master’s student in creative writing at Miami.

Katy Shay takes the reins as CNF editor. Katy is a graduate assistant at Miami University. She loves creative nonfiction, comics, zines, music, nature, justice, witchcraft, feelings, and goth looks from the late nineties.

And lastly, we thank Joe Squance, our managing editor; the Miami University English Department and all the faculty who have helped us this year; our events coordinator, Michelle Christensen; our genre editors Andrew Marlowe Bergman, Josh Jones, and Ian Schoultz, and all of our readers. Lastly, but most importantly, our submitters, without whom we’d have nothing at all to read and no magazine.

Keep writing, Evan Fackler and Jess Marshall

Masthead Managing Editor Joe Squance Editors-in-Chief Evan Fackler Jess Marshall Prose Editor Andrew Marlowe Bergman Poetry Editor Ian Schoultz Creative Nonfiction Editor Joshua B. Jones Events Coordinator Michelle Christensen Staff Readers Tammy Atha Justin Chandler Chris Cox Courtney Kalmbach Sammani Perrera Isaac Pickell Carly Plank Katy Shay Tatiana Silvas Darren Thompson Kaylee Via

Table of Contents Cover Art: Summer Furnace by Louis Staeble Michelle Morouse A Brief History of Cuisine ............................................................................. 5 Daniel M. Jaffe Pobrecita ..................................................................................................... 6 Mohammad Ali Mirzaei Shoes of Old Woman .................................................................................. 17 Andrew Bertaina River Walk ................................................................................................. 18 Michael McInnis Letters to Travel Agencies........................................................................... 20 Allen Forrest Self-Portrait ............................................................................................... 21 M. Guendelsberger Thirty Years in One Place ........................................................................... 22 Louis Staeble Sun Filter .................................................................................................. 37 Lindsey Walker Bubamara ................................................................................................. 38 Marc Berman Teeth ......................................................................................................... 39 Mohammad Ali Mirzaei Can’t See You ............................................................................................ 41 Mohammad Ali Mirzaei Silence ....................................................................................................... 42 Roy Bentley Fans Listening to a Boxing Match Over the Radio, June 22, 1938 .............. 43 Alex M. Frankel Just Icy Filament Caking Into a Wrinkled Palm .......................................... 44 Louis Staeble One Out of Three ....................................................................................... 55

Wendy J. Fox Motorcycles Use Extreme Caution .............................................................. 56 Mohammad Ali Mirzaei Butterflies of Oldman ................................................................................. 66 S. Bennett Ailes de Pigeon ........................................................................................... 67 Allen Forrest Bird Watcher ............................................................................................. 68 Lee L. Krecklow Vacant Lot ................................................................................................. 69 Mohammad Ali Mirzaei Touch of Self-Knowledge ............................................................................ 83 Jeffrey N. Johnson Things Boys Bury ...................................................................................... 84 Contributor Bios…………………………………………………………………………….85

Michelle Morouse Michelle Morouse

A Brief History of Cuisine From bare need to alchemy we grew–gathering, chopping, beating, folding, grinding, searing, smoking–lauding those who went before–eyes and and tongues rejoicing at the umami and the ethereal, the turgid and the wilted, the charred and the simmered, the acid and the sweet, and all the precious risen things. But let us pause to praise the gnawing beast within–for we would but fossils be had our rude forbearers not devoured all that crawled, swam or flew.

5

Daniel M. Jaffe Daniel M. Jaffe

Pobrecita In the semi-darkness, Sandy reaches out her left hand, mumbles, “Jonah.” Her hand hits a winter-cold wall—a wall? in their bed? She pulls her left hand back beneath the blue comforter. “Jonah?” she whispers, reaching her other hand to the right and feeling…empty space. Jonah?

Sandy shivers, stares through the morning gloom at the white ceiling.

On the wall beside her narrow bed she sees a painting. Of something. Always there? She lifts head from pillow, cranes her neck and looks across the room: a white dresser. But their dresser’s brown. Isn’t it? On the dresser sits a stuffed teddy bear. “I want you.” As she sits up and reaches, the comforter falls to her waist—cold cold. “I want you.” She kicks the comforter to the foot of the bed, twists to the side, dangles her feet off the bed, drops them. They land on a squishy blue pad on the floor. Cold! Cold! She retracts her feet, twists, lies back down—soft pillow, ah—curls up on her side, shoves feet beneath the bunched-up blue comforter at the foot of the bed, but doesn’t pull it up. She shivers. “Jonah,” she whimpers, “cold cold cold.”

“Why, Miss Sandy—you’ve kicked off the covers again.”

Sandy shifts her eyes toward the voice, to the woman opening Sandy’s door and stepping inside her room. One of the not-Jonah’s. The nicest one.

Sandy mumbles, “Hello, darling.” Hallie? Early for Hallie.

Near the foot of Sandy’s bed, maybe-Hallie opens the window curtains.

The room fills with light. “Good morning, mamita, let’s take a look and see how you’re doing. Goodness, your nightgown’s all bunched up and you took off your undies again, too. Here, sweetie, let me feel—” Cold hands. “No, don’t. Go ‘way.” Sandy swats at the cold hands.

“You’re wet again, Miss Sandy. You must be real cold.”

“Cold, Hallie.”

6

Daniel M. Jaffe “I’m not Hallie—I’m Alicia, remember? We’re gonna sit up and then walk together to the bathroom.”

“Okay, darling.”

“Can you sit up for me?”

“No.” “Sure you can. I’ll help. First I’ll swing your legs—“ “Ow! You’re hurting me!”

“I’m sorry, Miss Sandy.”

“Ow, my back. What are you doing?”

“I’m moving your legs to the side, that’s all.”

“Cold.”

“Here, let me pull down your nightie. Nice warm flannel. Pink, your favorite color after blue. See how pretty?”

“Pretty.”

“Sit up and we’ll go to the bathroom. Then I’ll put a warm sweater on you. Won’t that be nice?”

“Warm.”

“Yes, come on, now.” Alicia takes Sandy by the hands. “Upsy-daisy.” She pulls her to sitting. “There you go.”

“Ow!” “I know, mamita. Backs are always sore in the AM. That’s just the way it goes with backs. We’ve got to stretch them. Like taffy. You like taffy?”

“Atlantic City.”

“That’s good, Miss Sandy! Salt water taffy from the Shore, that’s right.”

“Boardwalk.”

Alicia stands back, sets hands on hips and grins broadly. “You go, girl.

You go.”

Going to the Boardwalk, thinks Sandy. Egg salad sandwiches. Blanket.

Sand. Jonah drives.

“I love how you’re sitting up. Such a good girl.”

7

Daniel M. Jaffe Good girl. “Really?”

“Now let me put those fuzzy black slippers on your feet. Nice fuzzy moccasins your boy, Donny, bought for you.”

Donny? Sandy looks around the room. Donny? “Ah, warm.”

“Warm and toasty. Podiatrist’s coming in today. You could slice cheese with those toenails of yours, Miss Sandy.”

“Mmm, grilled cheese.”

“Now I’m gonna stand in front of you. And you’re gonna give me your hands… That a girl. Good girl.”

Good girl.

“Now I’m gonna step back and pull your hands and you’re gonna stand for me. One…two…three—“ “No.” “Come on, you can do it.”

“I can’t.”

“You did it yesterday, and the day before.”

“I did?”

“Sure you did. You said, ‘Hallie,’ you said, ‘I’ll do it for you.’ You said, ‘Hallie’ but you know I’m Alicia.”

“I did?”

“Of course you did. Easy-peasy. One-two-three… That a girl.”

“Oooh, oooh, my back.”

“I know, Miss Sandy. Stretch that taffy.”

“Atlantic City.”

“The Boardwalk, that’s right. Stand up straight as you can.”

“Oooh, oooh, my back.”

“Any straighter?... No?... Okay, honey, you’re doing fine. Now walk with me to the bathroom.”

“I can’t.”

8

Daniel M. Jaffe “Sure you can. You’re gonna spend all day lazy-daisy in that wheelchair.

You have to walk a little. Stretch those leg muscles and your Atlantic City taffy back. Get oxygen to your muscles.”

“Oxygehgeh.”

“That’s right. Oxygehgeh. There you go. We can do this, just the two of us, right? Don’t need any help. Here we go, one more step and we’re in the bathroom. Now we’re gonna inchworm close to the toilet—inch inch—then you’re gonna turn roundsy-woundsy… That’s it. You’re doing great. You’re standing right in front of the toilet. Feel it against the back of your legs?”

“Cold.”

“Here—let me put your right hand on one of the toilet’s handle bars—got it?”

“Yes.” “I’m gonna bunch up your pretty pink nightie so you can sit.”

Alicia crouches and slowly—hoping Miss Sandy won’t fuss—bunches the skirt of Sandy’s nightgown up above her waist.

One beat—no reaction. Two beats—Miss Sandy slaps Alicia’s shoulders.

“Stop that! What are you doing?!”

There it is, just as Alicia expected. At least Miss Sandy was compliant until now. Alicia stands, still holding the bunched nightgown skirt above Sandy’s naked waist.

Miss Sandy struggles to shove the nightgown down. Yank yank. She’s strong, so Alicia holds on tight.

“How dare you!”

“Come on, Miss Sandy, please sit down.”

“I won’t! Who do you think you are?!”

“I’m Alicia, your favorite. You can call me Hallie if you like.”

“Jonah!” Miss Sandy calls over Hallie’s shoulder toward the bathroom doorway. “Jonah, help! This woman is… Jonah!”

9

Daniel M. Jaffe “Mr. Jonah’s not here now, Miss Sandy.” Pobrecita, poor thing, still calling for her husband after three years. As if time stood still. Or ticks backward. Or jumps around in the past—anything but stay in the present.

“Mr. Jonah sent me to help you.”

Sandy stops yanking at the nightgown. “He did?”

“He knows I take good care of you. He sent me because he loves you.”

“My Jonah.” Sandy sees Jonah’s face smiling his love.

Alicia wishes she’d met Mr. Jonah, but he passed away long before she started working here half a year ago. In the shadow box photos outside Miss Sandy’s bedroom door, he looks not only handsome, but kind. Emily says he visited every day, and always sat holding Miss Sandy’s hand. “You’re gonna let me help you the way Mr. Jonah said, right Miss Sandy?”

“Yes, darling.”

“Okay then, sit down now. Mr. Jonah said so.”

Sandy sits.

“That a girl. Good girl.”

“Good girl,” Sandy says with a grin.

“Now give a good pee for me and Mr. Jonah, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Take your time, mamita. I’ll just turn on the faucet here to help you with the idea, and we’ll let the water get nice and warm so I can wet this pretty pink washcloth. Remember—Mr. Jonah says.”

Jonah says. Pee. Jonah says. Ahhh.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Ahhh. Sandy closes her eyes. Jonah sent Hallie. Every Wednesday.

Hallie— Warm cloth on her thighs, moving between her legs to— Sandy’s eyes flash open, she claws at the hand with the washcloth. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“Just trying to wash you, Miss Sandy, like Mr. Jonah wants.”

“Get away from there!”

10

Daniel M. Jaffe “It’s okay, Miss Sandy.” Every day. The Mr. Jonah mention works better some days than others. “It’s okay, Miss Sandy. We’re just two ladies helping each other out.”

“Get your hands off me!” Sandy’s voice turns shrill: “Grandma! Grandma, help!”

Alicia knows that everyone in the entire Memory Care wing can hear although everyone’s used to Miss Sandy’s bathroom screams. Poor Miss Sandy.

Pobrecita. “Miss Sandy, please stop your screaming.”

Sandy clamps her lips shut with a defiant glare.

“Sandy, Sandy,” Alicia hears Emily from behind. Just what Alicia hoped to avoid. She can handle Miss Sandy on her own. Few ladies like an audience.

“Sandy, I can hear you all the way down the hall,” says Emily, stepping into the bathroom, shaking her head, her blond ponytail flapping.

“Grandma?” Sandy asks, tears down her cheeks.

Emily steps around Alicia, takes Sandy’s hand.

Alicia has asked Emily to let her care for Miss Sandy alone, but Emily always says, “I can’t have Sandy screaming and upsetting other residents. We know it takes two for toileting. Her son pays extra for that.”

As if, thinks Alicia, that’s the point. Some mornings Miss Sandy relaxes with Alicia alone. If only Emily would stop barging in.

Emily strokes Sandy’s stringy gray hair. “Alicia’s just washing you, honey, that’s all.”

Alicia lets out a breath. “I told Miss Sandy,” says Alicia, “that Mr. Jonah asked me to wash her.”

“Hear that, Sandy? Alicia’s just doing what Jonah instructed. Okay?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“I’m not Grandma, but I’m honored that you think of me that way.”

Not Grandma. Not-Grandma holds out her hands.

“Sandy, will you hold my hands?”

“Okay, darling.” Sandy reaches out.

11

Daniel M. Jaffe “Why Sandy, what pretty hands you have!”

“Really?” Sandy grins.

“Of course you do.” Emily grasps Sandy’s hands, turns to Alicia and snaps, “Be quick.”

As if Alicia needs Emily to tell her that. As if Alicia isn’t always quick when she dabs Miss Sandy’s front after a pee. She reaches the washcloth down between Miss Sandy’s legs, gives a gentle dab.

“Nooo!”

“Now, now, Sandy, Alicia’s just cleaning you, that’s all. Fine ladies are always clean, right?”

“Yes,” Sandy whimpers.

“All done. Calm down.”

“I love you,” Sandy says to Emily.

Alicia holds the washcloth under warm running water. Alicia does all the work, and Emily gets all the love.

“We love you, too,” says Emily. “Give me a hug?”

Sandy leans forward, hugs, and Emily lifts her to standing.

“Oooh, my back.” Sandy’s nightgown falls back into place.

“I know, Sandy.”

“Uh-oh,” says Alicia, glancing at the toilet. “She pooped, too.”

“Oh, Lord. That means—“ “You keep holding her,” says Alicia, glad to be giving instruction, “and I’ll be quick.”

“Remember her hemmorhoids.”

As if, after six months, Alicia needs reminding. Alicia darts a glance at Emily.

Expressionless, Emily holds Alicia’s gaze for a moment, then, “Sandy, I’m really sad today, so I need another big hug from you.”

“Of course, darling.”

12

Daniel M. Jaffe Sandy hugs Emily, who wraps her arms around tightly and locks her wrists. Gently as she can, Alicia lifts the nightgown and swipes the washcloth down Sandy’s butt.

Sandy’s eyes widen. She struggles and screams, “Are you crazy?!”

A fold of the washcloth, then one more quick swipe.

“Stop! You’re killing me!”

“Come on, Sandy, calm down.”

“Get away from me!”

“Miss Sandy,” says Alicia from behind, “I’m almost done, but you’re a little messy. Just a couple more quick wipes.”

“I’ll murder you! Grandma! Grandma, help!”

Sandy wriggles so hard, she nearly topples Emily backward. “Sandy, you stop that this instant! Alicia is just washing you, nothing else.”

Alicia’s glad Miss Sandy’s giving Emily a hard time. Although she knows Miss Sandy needs just one more swipe of the washcloth, she wipes twice.

“How dare you, you pig! You pig!”

Alicia takes a step back. Miss Sandy’s never spoken to Alicia this harshly before. Shouldn’t have done that last wipe just to spite Emily. At Miss Sandy’s expense.

“Don’t look so crestfallen,” says Emily. “You know some days are harder than others.”

A word of comfort from Emily? Has Alicia been misjudging her? “You’re right. Thank you.” Alicia sets the washcloth in the sink, rubs Sandy’s upper back and tugs the nightgown into place. “Miss Sandy, I’m here to help. Try to remember that, okay?”

“Okay, Hallie.”

“There she goes with that Hallie business again,” says Emily, unlocking her wrists and holding Sandy just tightly enough to maintain balance.

“It’s alright. She loved Hallie,” says Alicia.

“You know who this Hallie person was? You never said.”

13

Daniel M. Jaffe “Didn’t I? Her son told me last time he was here: Hallie was Miss Sandy’s maid. Back in the ‘60’s, she used to clean the house once a week. They became close friends. Says a lot about Miss Sandy, becoming friends with a black maid back then.”

“Curious that her son explained this to you, but not me.”

Suppressing a grin, Alicia shrugs and says humbly, “Must be because I’m the one Miss Sandy confuses with Hallie.”

“Because of your dark Puerto Rican complexion, no doubt.”

Sucia. “Or because my caring personality reminds her of her old friend.”

“Whatever,” says Emily with a dismissive shake of the head. “Donny called me yesterday—” “Called you?”

“I was in the office when he called, and I answered the phone.”

“Oh, he called the office.”

“Donny called to say he’s coming next week for his three-monthly.”

“Donny?” asks Sandy.

“Yes,” replies Emily.

“My Donny?”

“Yes, dear. He’s coming all the way from California just to see you.”

“Oh, too much. Oh!” She starts to cry.

Emily hands Sandy off to Alicia, who sways her as if gently dancing while Sandy whimpers. Alicia holds her tight, watches over her shoulder as Emily prepares for the next step. Which Alicia could have done on her own if Emily hadn’t interrupted. Although it would have taken a little longer.

Unlocking the bathroom closet, Emily grabs a pair of diaper-undies, opens them, crouches to Sandy’s feet, gently lifts one fuzzy-slippered foot, then the other, lifts the diaper-undies to Sandy’s ankles. Emily looks up, says, “Ready.”

“Sandy,” asks Alicia, giving Miss Sandy a hug. “Do you love me?”

“Of course, I love you.”

14

Daniel M. Jaffe Miss Sandy declares love to everyone, but still—it feels good to hear.

During this exchange, Emily has lifted the diaper-undies up Sandy’s legs and quickly into place before Sandy seemed even to notice.

“All done,” says Emily, standing. “Sweater’s next.”

“Miss Sandy,” says Alicia, you’ve got your panties on now, but a good girl can’t be walking around naked all day in just her panties, can she?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Sandy says, scrunching her eyes and looking Alicia in the face like she’s crazy.

Alicia laughs. “Oh, Miss Sandy, you’re wonderful.”

“I love you, Hallie.”

“Alicia’s going to unbutton the back of your nightgown and then slip off your sleeve,” says Emily, explaining what Alicia was about to explain. “Then I’ll slip on half your red cardigan.”

First one arm, then the other. The nightgown slips to the floor. “Miss Sandy,” says Alicia, nimbly buttoning up the front, “you look beautiful in that red sweater.”

“Really?”

“Of course you do,” says Emily. “And now Alicia’s going to slip on your slacks—you already have your panties on, so she can’t see anything.”

“Okay, darling.”

At least Emily’s letting her do this much. Alicia slips one foot out of the fuzzy black slippers and into a black pant leg, then the other. Feet back into slippers. Then Alicia pulls the slacks up. No fussiness. “Miss Sandy, that was easy-peasy!”

“You must be tired from all this standing, Sandy.” Emily brings into the bathroom the wheelchair from behind the bedroom door. “I’m going to help you.”

Sandy reaches for the wheelchair, doesn’t so much sit as fall into it.

“Ahh.” She shuts her eyes.

“Where’s her brush?” asks Emily.

15

Daniel M. Jaffe “I’ve got it,” says Alicia, stepping behind Sandy and brushing her hair.

“Mmm,” mumbles Sandy, her eyes still closed, “so nice.”

“You like that, Miss Sandy?”

“Mmmhmmm.”

Alicia brushes and braids Sandy’s stringy gray hair, then ties it with a pink scrunchy while Emily sets Sandy’s feet onto the wheelchair’s peddles.

Alicia gets a wet wipe. As she dabs at Miss Sandy’s wide face, Miss Sandy— eyes still closed—swats as if at flies.

Emily takes the teddy bear off the dresser, sets it in Sandy’s lap. Sandy clutches it tight. “I’ll take her to the living room now,” says Emily, “while you strip the bed of the wet linens.”

Alicia likes being the one to wheel Miss Sandy and see her morning grin when looking at the photos of flowers on the living room walls. But making Miss Sandy’s bed is as important a task as any other, so she shouldn’t feel annoyed. Foolish to dwell on this—it’s already 6:30 and she’s got 14 more residents to wash and dress before breakfast.

As Emily starts wheeling Sandy out, Sandy grabs the doorjamb and calls, “Hallie?”

“Yes?” Alicia, walks over to her.

Sandy motions for Alicia to bend down. Alicia does so and Sandy plants a wet kiss on her cheek with a loud “Mwah!”

Alicia draws in a quick breath of joy.

“How sweet,” says Emily flatly, wheeling Sandy into the hallway.

Alicia marches over to the bed, determined to make it as clean and neat as ever.

16

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Shoes of Old Woman

17

Andrew Bertaina Andrew Bertaina

River Walk We were walking by the river on a cloudless night, half-drunk from an evening out. You took your shoes off as we strolled on the cobblestones, damp from rain. The night was cool, and eddies of wind stirred wet leaves, flapping half-hearted hellos. We’d left the bar so you could be home in time to say goodnight to the person you loved.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

You shivered and folded your arms beneath your chest.

“Wait,” I said, taking your arm. I rarely took action in our time together.

That whole summer on beaches, on trails, in bars, I had been like a small raft tugged along in your wake. I was waiting for you to turn into the light that night, waiting for to say that you’d left him, or loved me, waiting for a moment that would shift our relationship. This was long before I knew that most of life is taken up by waiting, wanting, wishing away the quiet hours of any old day without hope of change.

"Come here," I said, and pulled you close.

Years later, a friend of mine told me that you moved to Indiana. I was living with a girl in Brooklyn with whom I was very much in love. My friend and his wife had your Christmas photo up on the refrigerator—two kids, a husband, and a retriever, tongue lolling. That afternoon my friend and I walked through the icy streets of New York, in a terrific hurry because it was so goddamn cold. The trees had icicles hung from them, like lights on the world’s saddest Christmas trees. On the way, we talked of our jobs, office dynamics, and the people we’d once known. I thought of you, quickly, intently, while the snow flurried and scattered, muffling the sounds of the street.

18

Andrew Bertaina But we burn for a moment, and I remember pulling you underneath my arm that evening and the slight parting of your lips—the small smile of surprise that swam across your face like light on water.

"Are you warm now?" I asked.

And you smiled, still surprised, and said “yes,” briefly relaxing beneath my arm, the warmth of your body soft against my ribs, the water in the river dark, and the silver light of the moon tangled in your hair like fish in a net, like stars in the net of the sky.

19

Michael McInnis Michael McInnis

Letters to Travel Agencies 1 The brochure did not mention panhandling poltergeists. However, we enjoyed the alien abduction.

2 A man sat in the corner of our room throughout our stay. He never moved day or night and when he spoke it was in a language that consisted solely of computer-like beeps and burps.

3 The pathways to the beach, paved with crushed porcelain doll parts, exceeded our expectations.

4 While knowledgeable, our tour guide’s insistence that he was just a patsy proved unnerving to the older members of our group.

5 It came as a surprise to us that not only did we need a visa to visit the People’s Republic of X, customs agents required us to recite the Periodic Tables.

20

Allen Forrest

Allen Forrest

Self-Portrait 21

M. Guendelsberger M. Guendelsberger

Thirty Years in One Place You’d think that with a significant layoff looming, as the rumors suggested, there wouldn’t be much cause for celebration but it is Jim Frederick’s thirtieth anniversary with the company and they want to do something. Thirty years in one place is a long time, they say, and so a lot of people turn up in the break room Tuesday morning to share their congratulations. A lot of big-wigs come down from the executive floor and the rest of us stand around unsure how to talk in their presence. The people who have been around longer probably have questions they want to ask, but it isn’t about us or them. This is about Jim, but even he looks awkward and out of place, but he has always kind of kept to himself and doesn’t really talk to those of us who have been with the company under five years. We don’t interact on a daily basis; there is no need to say hello. But here we are in the break room, clutching our paper cups of lemonade or punch, amused that Peg Westhill has positioned herself near the cookie platter and has already slipped three in the front of pocket of her denim jumper. Other members of the editorial staff, the production team, designers, and even some folks from marketing tore themselves away from their tasks to come down, shake hands with Jim, and listen to some other people say a few words. “Doesn’t seem possible, does it?”

Ben Higgins whispers this to Tina Mellas, both of whom sit in my row. Most people know they are probably sleeping together and plan their business travel so they overlap in the same cities. Tina looks back at him and Ben says, “Doesn’t seem possible that he’s been here thirty years, does it?” It’s this question, I think, that gets most of us wondering because Jim Frederick, on his thirty year anniversary, doesn’t look much older than forty-five.

The speeches go on and Jim stands up there by the snack tables and the poster-boards which display photos of him throughout his tenure. He looks at the floor and shuffles his feet as people talk about his work ethic, all those times he really went above and beyond, how he talked the talk and walked the 22

M. Guendelsberger walk. He’s always been a guy you can count on, they say. He is a guy who’s going to get it done, they say. “And a lot sooner than you’d expect,” someone in the back says and we all want to roll our eyes but we clap instead because it’s like they say: thirty years in one place just doesn’t happen anymore. He’s a guy, they say, we’re proud to have on our team and we clap again and someone hands Jim a plaque and people like Tina and Ben start to sneak away. I go with them because we’re young and new at this and afraid for our jobs. We feel the need to look busy even though the work has started to dry up. Our row consists of six cubicles: There’s Tina and Ben, Raj (who went to college in India and has always been overly excited about this job), Kelly, who is newest and just out of school, and Brandon, who has been here longer than the rest of us.

Brandon is roughly the same age as us, but we see him as wiser because he’s indifferent and has learned how to get away with more. “Did you guys see those posters?” Brandon asks, when we all gather outside hiss cube. Raj asks him what he means. “Guy hasn’t aged a bit in thirty years,” and Tina and Ben nod.

“I said the same thing,” Ben replies, “right when we were in there.” Tina nods to confirm this.

“Kind of strange, don’t you think?” Brandon looks at the rest of us before going back to his computer.

Gradually we drift back to our own desks. We each face the same problem: the layoff is coming and everyone knows it. We scour our inboxes for something to attach ourselves, but there isn’t much. An email from a production vendor but it’s an invoice and not something that takes any amount of time. Raj emails a link to a video he found and it’s funny. Laughter comes from Kelly’s cube. From Ben’s. I watch it twice but that only takes five minutes.

The sounds from the break room carry out to us and the party goes on for at least another hour, which is much longer than the parties we have when there’s a promotion or it’s someone’s birthday. We haven’t had either in a while. We hear the voices and the laughing and we secretly wonder if we’ll ever celebrate thirty years somewhere.

23

M. Guendelsberger The party breaks up sometime before lunch. We go about our day and eventually so do the others: they leave the break room and take their plastic cups and slices of cake back to their desks and the fact that Jim Frederick has celebrated this milestone is practically forgotten as soon as the cake is eaten.

The office goes back to its normal sounds: low cubicle voices, ringing telephones, fingers on keyboards, footsteps on the carpet. It’s almost three when Brandon rounds us up. “Come on,” he says and offers nothing else. We follow him to the break room and the remains of the cake are still there, stabbed at and picked over. The big posters, the ones with photos of Jim, are still present and Brandon guides us to them. “Look,” he says. “Tell me I’m wrong,” but we don’t say anything. Ben leans in (he’s much taller than Kelly and Tina) and examines the posters. “I told you,” Brandon says. “Look at this one from the day he started. And look at this one from the sales meeting a couple months ago. He doesn’t look any different.” We keep looking.

“How do you explain it?” Ben asks and we all turn to Brandon. He shrugs. He has led us here to look but has no answer. Instead a possible solution comes from Raj, standing at the back of our group. Usually he is quiet and uncertain, but he says, “Maybe it’s something else.” We stare at him.

“Maybe,” he says, “he has found a fountain of youth. Maybe he’s immortal.” Raj stares at us and then grins and we laugh because it’s an obvious joke. We go back to our cubicles but Raj’s joke is still on our minds when we drive home that night.

In the morning, the cake has been cleared away. The posters are gone.

Kelly and Tina talk outside their cubes. Brandon, Ben, and Raj have not yet arrived. “I walked by his office,” Kelly says.

“And?” Tina asks.

“He’s not in yet.”

Tina frowns, disappointed that there is nothing more, nothing further to digest. She stares at Kelly because there has to be more, but there isn’t and their conversation turns to meetings and schedules. It’s boring talk, standard talk, and not at all interesting. We want to find out more or we at least want 24

M. Guendelsberger Brandon to show up so he can tell us what to do. We don’t want to fall back into normalcy. When Brandon does arrive forty minutes later, he has no new information. Raj has planted this seed and even though we know it can’t be true there’s really no harm in double-checking. “I was only joking,” Raj insists when we press him for more details. “That sort of thing isn’t possible.” We look at him and wonder why he’s holding out on us.

We’re in the break room for lunch that afternoon when Jim Fredrick comes in. We can’t talk about it or point at him but we all tense. Conversation stops. We nudge elbows, kick feet, and nod toward the refrigerator where Jim is looking at the vast, multi-colored lunch bags. We pretend to eat but really we watch, not knowing what we expect to see. Jim pulls his lunch bag—a grey vinyl sack that the company passed out in a quarterly meeting a few years ago.

There are at least six other lunch bags in that refrigerator that look the same.

Even Kelly has one, open in front of her. Jim sets his on the counter, unzips it, looks inside, and closes it again. He replaces the ones he has removed and closes the door. Nobody but us seems interested in him but we are being nonchalant about it and he doesn’t notice. Jim goes out of the room without saying anything.

Brandon leans in to us. “Maybe it’s something he eats.”

We look at Raj. “Is that possible?” Kelly asks.

“It’s not possible at all. It’s coincidence. You’re not thinking.”

“How do you explain it?” Ben puts down a slice of reheated pizza. “How does a man work for a company thirty years and look exactly the same as he did the day he started? How is that possible?”

“I don’t have the answer you want,” Raj says. He looks to us and we stare him down. “I was only joking.”

Brandon comes to us at 3:30 that afternoon. It’s been another slow day.

He has reserved one of the conference rooms at the far end of our floor and we meet there. Raj comes in last, looking around at each one of us. He takes a seat at the far end of the table, away from the rest of us, and says nothing.

25

M. Guendelsberger “We’re going to come up with a plan,” Ben says and looks at Brandon.

“Right?”

“Yes,” Brandon says. “If it’s something in his lunch bag, something he eats, we’ve got to figure that out. And if it’s not that, then we need to look in his office. And if it’s not there, we’ll explore some other options.”

“What are we looking for?” Kelly asks. “How will we know what to find?”

“I think we’ll know. It’s got to be something different, something just out of place. And I would guess it’s something he has to do every day.”

“Like a pill or something?” Kelly offers.

“Yeah!” Tina says. “That’s exactly what it could be.”

Raj shakes his head. “No. Stop. You’re not thinking about this.” We ignore him. He started this and now he wants to take it back.

The first thing, we decide, is to figure out Jim’s schedule. We know he comes in around 8:45 because that’s also about the time Brandon arrives and he tells us they’ve shared the elevator multiple times in the past. What about business trips? Are there any coming up soon? Tina knows someone who works in the administrative group and can easily find out his travel schedule.

Kelly, whose lunch bag is similar to Jim’s, agrees to look through his. “I’ll just ‘confuse’ it with mine,” she says, quoting the word with her fingers.

“Remember,” Tina says, “anything that looks out of the ordinary.” We look at Raj, who looks trapped down at his end of the table. Does he want to check out Jim’s office? “No,” Raj says, standing up. “Please. Think about this.” Before Raj leaves the room, Ben agrees to take a look. He lives nearby, can easily come in on a Saturday and take a look. We break, our tasks now assigned.

We work through the remainder of the day but no one can focus. There is no news about the layoff but we barely notice. Tina starts an email thread between the five of us, making her the first to exclude Raj. No one says anything about this. We can hear him at his desk, typing away at something.

Sometimes his phone rings and we wonder who he talks to in such low, almost whispered tones. Is he keeping something from us, Ben writes. What does he know? Brandon suggests that he is ratting us out to Human Resources and 26

M. Guendelsberger that we should keep an eye on him. How can he not be curious about this?

Why does he want to be left out, to not know?

The next morning, Thursday, Tina tells us that she knows of no work trips on the horizon for Jim. Her friend, the administrative assistant, is clueless (“About this and everything else,” Tina says, rolling her eyes). “She tells me that Jim isn’t going anywhere for a few more months and even then it’s just some trip to a vendor.” We are disappointed.

Brandon stakes out the break room when he gets in. He sips water and pretends to look at the sports section of someone’s discarded newspaper. He makes small talk with the assistants, most of them girls, cute, young, and dressed smartly because they know it will help their careers. Brandon flirts and they do too and before long he’s holding court over four of them and that’s when Jim comes in, places his lunch bag in the refrigerator, gets a mug of hot water, and leaves again. Brandon wants to stay, to keep talking to these girls, but he breaks off, mentioning (he tells us later) some meeting he overlooked.

He returns to our row and when Brandon tells her about the lunch bag, Kelly gets up. We like Kelly and we know she’ll succeed. It’s a good plan. In the break room, she finds the bag easy enough: it’s at the front of the refrigerator and she brings it back to our row. Ben keeps watch because he’s tall. He looks down at the desk, then over the cubicle walls, then down to the desk again. It’s as if he’s nodding in slow motion. Raj, still judging, watches us for a moment before putting on his big headphones and going back to his monitor. Somebody should say something but we don’t bother. We hate him. He is abandoning this idea for work? We don’t need him. We set the lunch bag on Brandon’s desk and Kelly slowly unzips it and there is almost something erotic in her slow, careful pull. We hold our breath as she takes out each item and places it on the desk.

An apple. A can of V8 juice. It’s a big can—the twelve ounce variety. Low sodium. There’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread. Carrot slices in a blue plastic container. A baggie of pretzel nuggets. . . . and that is it.

We exhale and Kelly puts the items back in the bag before closing it. “You know,” Tina says, “if it is something he has to eat, why would he keep it in a 27

M. Guendelsberger lunch bag where someone could find it? There a bunch of those same bags floating around the building. It would be easy to get it confused and then someone would know. It’s more likely that he keeps it in his office.”

We look at Ben. “Maybe in his briefcase?” he says. He is not looking at us. His eyes scan the tops of the cubicle walls. So far, it has been a quiet morning.

“We have to get in there,” Kelly says but Ben doesn’t look at us. It’s his turn now and he knows what is expected of him. Kelly takes the lunch bag back to kitchen and five minutes later, we’re all back to work and bored. There has to be something, Ben says in a new email thread, which again does not include Raj. We agree, but there is no life in the conversation.

The big news comes that afternoon and Tina can hardly breath. “I just asked him,” she gushes when we meet in Brandon’s cubicle. “I don’t know how or why but it just came out.” She ran into him in the hallway just after lunch, she tells us, and almost seized up. But then he smiled at her, said hello, and addressed her by name. “So I stopped and asked him how it felt to have thirty years in one company and how I thought it was quite an achievement and he thanked me and said it felt good and that’s when it just came out.” What, we ask her, what just came out? “I said, get this, I said, ‘But how do you look so young? You don’t look old enough to be here thirty years. What’s your secret?’

And then he kind of smiles and looks at me funny and just says there’s no secret, it’s just luck.”

“Bullshit,” Brandon says.

“It’s true,” Tina says. “That’s what he told me. He had this look on his face, kind of smug, so I swear he has to know something.” She waits for a moment. “Guess what I did next?”

“What?” Ben says.

“I winked at him.”

“You winked?”

28

M. Guendelsberger “Yes. I wanted to let him know that if he wanted to take me into his confidence, he could. He just kind of stood there looking at me for a second with this little half smile on his face and then we said goodbye and that was it.”

We talk at once. No one can decide what this means or if it was a good idea. Raj turns and watches us. We stop talking when Brandon holds up a hand. “Maybe it’s okay,” he says. “Maybe he’ll say something to Tina. But it’s more likely that he won’t, so we can’t give up our search because if he isn’t going to tell Tina or if he thinks she’s on to him, he’s going to be very careful.

And that won’t help our case at all.” Brandon looks at Ben. “Can you get in here this weekend? Take a look around the office?”

“You bet,” Ben says. “I can do it.”

We take lunch together that afternoon. For the first time, Raj doesn’t join us. He takes his food back to his desk and eats alone. Nobody says anything about this except Brandon, who says, “He better not turn us in.” When Jim enters the break room, Kelly nudges Tina, who kicks Ben, who nods to Brandon, and so on. Jim looks at us and we look at him, then Tina, then Jim again. She smiles and nods. Jim also smiles. He goes to the refrigerator and takes out his lunch bag. On his way out, he pauses at our table and opens his mouth to say something to Tina, but looks at the rest of us, and smiles instead.

He nods once as if to confirm something and leaves.

“He has to know,” Kelly says. “He has to.”

“He was going to confront us,” Brandon says and points at Tina. “But he thinks maybe you haven’t told us anything yet. That’s good. That’s good for us.”

We finish our lunches and wait for him to come back but he does not and eventually we get up and go back to our desks. We are anxious and can’t focus. Ben drums his fingers on his desk and pumps his left leg up and down to some frantic beat coming through his headphones. There is no news from the company on the layoff situation either. It’s getting later in the week; it has to happen soon. Kelly gets up every so often and walks the floor. At ten past four she comes back and tells us Jim has gone but it’s too risky to look in his 29

M. Guendelsberger office. People are still at work in the offices around his. We have to reason to be in his office looking for anything. We go home that night frustrated and Friday morning there’s a note on Jim’s office that he is working from home. “Can we?”

Be asks when we all arrive. “He’s out and it’s still early.” Brandon thinks it’s still too risky; there are just too many people around. We spend the rest of the day sulking over our work.

The weekend is too long. I find out later that everyone had trouble sleeping. Nobody asks Raj. He has been spending less and less time in his cubicle but we don’t know where he goes. Ben is the last to arrive Monday morning and we suspect he does this on purpose because he knows we’re waiting for him. He grins his way down the aisle to Brandon’s cube. “Well?” we ask him.

“I found this Saturday morning.” Ben produces a small white bottle. “It was in the trash can, but it was empty.”

“What is it?” Tina asks and Ben hands it over to her. She looks over the label and we all see it at once. Chewable Vitamin C with artificial orange flavoring and coloring. We look at Ben. “It’s empty,” he repeats and pops his eyebrows at us. His grin has gotten bigger. “Well? That’s probably it, right?”

“But,” Kelly replies, looking at all of us, “it’s empty.”

“So? Why would he have chewable Vitamin C tablets at work? Why not just eat those at home? Don’t you see? He dumped out the tablets and put his pills in there. Open the lid. Take a sniff.” The bottle is passed around. It smells like plastic. “See what I mean?” Ben continues. “Do you smell anything at all?”

We are forced to admit we do not.

“Where’s the citrus smell?” Ben asks. “It’s Vitamin C. That bottle should smell like oranges.”

“But maybe he washed it,” Tina offers.

“Why?” Brandon says, and he is nodding. He rubs his chin. “If he’s just going to throw it out, why bother cleaning it?” Tina does not disagree. She looks at Raj’s cubicle, which is still empty. To Ben, Brandon says, “This was all you found?”

30

M. Guendelsberger “Yes. That’s it.”

“And you think this could be the thing?”

“Sure. What else could it be? It all adds up, doesn’t it?”

Brandon thinks about this for a moment. “I don’t know,” he says. “If he’s on to us, maybe he planted this to throw us off. But then again, maybe not.”

At lunch, Brandon has a more solid opinion. “It’s not enough. There has to be something more than the bottle. Something we’re not seeing.”

“What?” Kelly asks.

“I don’t know. If he’d only left a pill in there.”

“If he planted it,” Ben says, “then he knew we’d look in his office. So where wouldn’t we look? Where is it safe for him?”

“His house,” Brandon says and we look at him.

Jim enters a moment later. He gets his lunch and leaves. “He thinks he’s won,” Brandon says.

That afternoon, Brandon invites us to one of the conference rooms.

“We’ve got to find out where he lives.” We look at him. To Tina, he says, “Can we get his address from that assistant friend of yours?”

“No, I doubt it. She isn’t going to cough up that kind of information.

She’d definitely know we were on to something and would probably tell him.”

“That leaves one other option,” Brandon says. “We’ve got to follow him home.”

Surely someone wants to counter this because there’s no way we’re going to take it to this level. But no one says anything. Brandon scratches out a quick plan on a white board and we set it into action the next morning. We don’t question him. We erase the evidence on the board before we leave.

Tuesday morning, Ben plants himself in the break room and Tina and Kelly position themselves by the bank of elevators. Brandon and I go to the door that leads to the stairwell. “We need to know how he’s getting in and out of the building. And then we can figure out where he leaves. Once we know that, we can follow him down to the parking garage and see which car he drives. Then we just need to know when he leaves. It’s simple.”

31

M. Guendelsberger As it turns out, Jim Fredrick uses the elevator and not the stairs. The doors open and Kelly and Tina pretend to talk, chatting about production schedules or a design delay. Tina turns to Jim and says hello. When he is gone, she texts Brandon and we get Ben and we meet in our row again. Raj is not around. Now, what time does he leave? We’ve determined that he arrives at 8:30, so (as Brandon explains) it seems likely that he would leave around 4:30 or 5:00. At 4:15 Ben starts taking strolls around the floor. Each lap takes about two minutes. When he comes back to our row at 4:39, he tells us he came around the corner by Jim’s office just in time to see the man shut off his light and head to the elevators. Ben followed him but did not get in with him.

Brandon thinks this was a good decision. “We just want times,” he says. “We just want to know when he’s coming and leaving.”

It’s Kelly’s turn on Wednesday. At 4:30 she gets out her keys and peeks into the aisle. To get to the elevators, it is most likely that Jim will pass our row. At 4:38 (which Ben notes in a small notebook he keeps in his back pocket), Jim passes and Kelly is up, grabbing her jacket, and following him down to the vestibule to the elevators. They make small talk in the car down to the lobby. She follows him out into the parking garage, says goodbye, and gets in her car. Kelly waits. She tells us all about this Thursday morning. Jim drives a red Honda Accord, she says, and hands over the license number which Ben records in his notebook. “Tonight,” Brandon smiles, “we’ll figure out the rest of it.”

At 4:35 on Thursday, Brandon is already waiting down in his own car in the garage. During lunch, when many of the staff left to eat, he went and moved his own vehicle so it was in the row just across from Jim’s Accord. He has a perfect view and when Jim leaves at 4:40, Brandon pulls out after him.

He follows him onto the highway. On Friday morning, Brandon shares his findings with us in one of the conference rooms. He has Jim’s address, written on the back of a take-out pizza menu. “It’s not far from here. Maybe ten minutes down the highway.” Jim lives in a sizable house (Brandon shows us some grainy photos on his phone) in an old neighborhood with tall trees, 32

M. Guendelsberger sidewalks, and lamp posts. People walk their dogs at night. How long did he stay there, we ask Brandon. “Long enough. He’s got a wife. A couple of kids.”

“Do they look older than him?” Tina asks.

Brandon thinks about this for a moment. “I don’t know. I was watching them from across the street in my car.” The children, both girls, looked to be in their mid to late teens. The family eats together in the dining room but Brandon isn’t sure what they had. Something out of a big pot. Bread. His wife opened a bottle of red wine and everybody had some, even the girls. “Could that be it?” Kelly asks and Brandon shows us his notes, which are written on another take out menu. It says Wine? and is circled once and underlined three times. Next to this, he has written: What are they celebrating? Why are the girls drinking wine? What about dessert? “Ice cream,” Brandon tells us, “but not until later. The girls cleared away the dishes and he and his wife sat talking, finishing their wine. They laughed a lot and everyone seemed happy.”

“How much did they drink?” Ben asks.

“One bottle.”

“They finished it?”

“Yes. Jim and his wife drank most of it.”

“How much did the girls have?” Kelly asks.

“One glass each.”

“Probably a good idea,” Tina says and we look at her. “It’s got to be a smaller dose. Otherwise they’d be kids forever. That’s not practical. Think of all the stuff you’d miss.” For a moment, we do.

“But after the ice cream,” Kelly says. “Then what?”

“Nothing.” Brandon shrugs. “The lights went out in the dining room and I guess they went and watched television for a while. The curtains had been pulled shut in the living room so I couldn’t see anything else. So I went home.”

We press him with more questions. Was there anything, other than the girls drinking wine, out of the ordinary? Did they put any special toppings on the ice cream? How much did they eat? Brandon has no more answers. We have to find something else.

33

M. Guendelsberger We come back to our desks a little after 10:30 and Raj’s desk is empty.

It’s unusual for him to miss a day. No one has really talked to him in the past few days but there has been an unspoken understanding between all of us that he probably knows too much; he could rat us out to Human Resources whenever he wants. How could he abandon this idea so easily? He has made himself our enemy by trying to back out, by trying to say he isn’t involved. It was his idea, wasn’t it? He’s the one who put this in our heads, who suggested it in the first place. Tina frowns at his empty desk and looks as if she wants to say something but does not. She goes to her cube and picks up the phone and talks in a low voice.

The Word goes out at 11:17—it’s what we’ve all been expecting: the layoff has arrived. People are called down to Human Resources. Most of the design department is cut. Production will be outsourced. In forty-five minutes, thirtyeight people lose their jobs. We find out through Tina, who found out through her administrative assistant friend, that Jim Frederick is one of them. Like all the others, he has one week to finish out his work and then he’ll be gone.

There’s something else, the assistant tells Tina. Jim has saved his vacation.

He’s not going to bother with another week. Today will be his last day. He’s happy, says Tina, and after thirty years the company took damn good care of him. They told him a few days early, the assistant tells Tina, because they figured he might want to do just that. Maybe he’ll take some time for himself before he looks for another job. Maybe he’ll take the family on a nice vacation overseas. He thanks the assistant, appreciates all her work these last few years, and wishes her good luck in her future endeavors. And with that, he’s gone.

Tina doesn’t know what else to say and Brandon is furious. “He knew about us. That’s the only reason he’s cutting out of here early. He knows we’re close.”

“Do we search his office again?” Ben wonders.

34

M. Guendelsberger “No.” Brandon rubs his chin and stares at his desk. “He would have taken everything. We’ll come up with something. No way I’m letting him get away with this.”

At 1:30, Raj appears. We had forgotten he was missing. Dan, this guy everybody knows from the IT department, follows him with a four-wheeled cart.

Dan loads Raj’s monitor, his computer, and phone and pushes the cart away.

Raj puts his personal items into a cardboard box.

“You get the axe?” Ben asks.

“I’m moving,” Raj says and looks at us. “They’re putting me on the other side of the floor because I’ll be closer to some of my other project teams. That’s what they tell me.”

“Good luck,” Kelly says but nobody else adds anything. We watch him go.

We don’t plan to talk to him anymore.

The day drags. Jim is gone. Raj is gone. We have given up hope that we will find any sort of answer. We do our actual work—the emails, forms, and spreadsheets we’ve been neglecting. In a way it’s nice to be focused again, to see results, and have a purpose. Then Brandon sends an email and we’re off and running again. Meet at the McDonald’s parking lot Sunday night, the email says. Wear dark clothes. 9:30. We don’t question it. We nod to one another, delete the email, and go back to the mundane tasks of work.

Everyone shows up in the parking lot. We’re dressed in black pants and black shirts. We don’t discuss our weekends. In fact, we barely say anything to one another. Brandon has an SUV that we’ve never seen before. He rented it, he explains, specifically for this endeavor. Once we’re inside, Brandon explains.

“I did some checking. Garbage gets picked up Monday mornings in their neighborhood, which means they’re setting that stuff out tonight. We’ll find it, whatever it is.”

“How will we know?” Kelly asks but Brandon doesn’t answer. He starts the big vehicle and we head out into the night.

The Frederick house is dark when we arrive and Brandon slows the SUV. “They must go to bed kind of early,” Ben says but nobody replies. We go down 35

M. Guendelsberger two more blocks, park the car under a tree, and out of the yellow halos of the street lamps. Brandon tells us to wait a while and we do. The SUV ticks as the motor cools. At ten past ten, Brandon opens his door and we follow him out into the night. To avoid suspicion, we split up into two groups. Tina and Ben run across the street and make their way toward the house. The rest of us stay on our side of the street. At the Fredrick driveway, Brandon pauses and looks up at the dark building. He waves to Tina and Ben across the street and then goes up the driveway, hugging the shadows created by the walls. We find the trashcans in a neat row back by the garage. It’s almost surprising that no motion lights snap on to flood the driveway in yellow light. Brandon gets to the trashcans first and he is not taking his time. He’s not being quiet about it. The rest of us exchange looks as he tosses the first metal lid aside. He roots the trash and the rest of us aren’t sure what to do. Ben pulls a wine bottle from the recycle bin and offers it to Brandon. “It’s too obvious,” he says, apparently forgetting the word he circled and underlined on the take-out menu. Brandon moves on to the next can, the metal lid clanging to the ground. We watch him, backing down the driveway, and Ben still holds the wine bottle by its neck.

Lights are coming on in houses. Another lid is tossed aside. He’s on the last trash can, but a light comes on up on the second floor of the Frederick house.

“It has to be here,” Brandon says, looking for an answer we know doesn’t exist.

He’s not bothering to whisper. Brandon sees us and runs down the driveway toward us. “It’s in the house. They’ll throw it out in the morning. They have to.

We can all call in sick tomorrow. We’ll follow the truck to the dump and then we’ll know.” He takes off down the street and we follow him, if only because he is our ride home.

36

Louis Staeble

Louis Staeble

Sun Filter

37

Lindsey Walker Lindsey Walker

Bubamara Somebody water the telephone pole— the line’s gone fuzzy.

Hitch half a car to the yoked mules, its floor rusted. Their ears twang to one side, clamber up the yowl of a violin string.

Spill the rakia—we’re all blind drunk on the Drina’s bank.

Shuck the skin off an onion— old men eat them raw from the fruit stalls: the apple-crunch, cold fire wetting their chins.

We talk ghosts of mothers walled into the bridge, while every color of chicken hurls itself: feathers, spurs, flightless frantic, over the powder dirt, while girls in boleros swing their feet off the arc. Missile-wrecked castles dangle from mountainsides; for sale signs on their gatehouses, upskirted in the wind, bang against stone walls. When night comes, it roars full-throated. We close our eyes into each other’s shoulders and hear.

38

Marc Berman Marc Berman

Teeth When I was nine my grandfather would visit on Saturday leaving my grandmother back in the Dorchester apartment of their sad disappointing old age.

He slept in my room, the other twin bed, a night table between us, our water glasses side by side.

Mine for thirst at night, his containing pink-gummed false teeth.

One night, eyes closed, adrift in some kid’s dream I reached over, drank from his glass, his teeth tinging against mine, water the faint flavor of cooled chicken broth.

At breakfast I spooned my Froot Loops, he unwrapped his whole whitefish, dissected it like a specimen, sucking tiny Yiddish bones from between those teeth.

He had no car to get home to that wife of his.

We’d drive him back into the city before noon, past the synagogue, his union hall, to the park where he’d sit and read

39

Marc Berman till he checked his watch, walked home to Sunday dinner, chicken waiting.

40

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Can’t See You 41

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Silence 42

Roy Bentley

Roy Bentley

Fans Listening to a Boxing Match Over the Radio, June 22, 1938 “Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or WPA, and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions – or on mine.

I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too.”

—Langston Hughes A friend from Detroit, Butch Thompson, once said that being black in America is an art. He said you practice it the way some paint or learn how to box.

In a photograph at the New-York Historical Society they’re listening to the Louis-Schmeling rematch— a barroom of faces, mostly black men in skimmer hats, a woman in a Juliet cap, before a portrait of Joe Louis.

An aproned bartender has a hand on the dial of a Philco cathedral radio as if what most men, some women too, want between watered drinks is murderous syncopation for the soundtrack of our curses when peace doesn’t cut it.

Joe Louis must have drawn a crowd like someone giving away what we forgot we wanted. The woman at the bar is years away from dying of a cerebral hemorrhage or broken heart or the umpteenth lungful of foul city air.

If there’s an art to being black, as Butch said, we see it in group photographs in rooms like this, the dark gloss of humanity become a face among other faces. I was about to say A happy face and then caught myself— see the hatless man, head turned and staring straight into the camera. That’s not the face of a happy man.

In a land of thieves, the usual sawed-off under the bar isn’t there for regulars. It’s there because, well, because.

If history has a center, it’s here. In a bar in New York in the nineteen thirties. Ask the staring man, standing as if aware this is his shot at eternal anything. Ask him if it’s the damage Louis is doing binds them together.

That he’s destroying a Nazi poster boy doesn’t hurt.

43

Alex M. Frankel

Alex M. Frankel

Just Icy Filament Caking Into a Wrinkled Palm1 I loved him because he was nineteen, athletic, confident, deeply closeted.

I loved him because he rode around Barcelona on a Vespa. I loved him because he could skateboard and ski and play soccer. I loved him because when we made out, he’d run his tongue over my upper gums and my face would become ensnared as if by a pale, voluptuous sea animal which marine biologists had as yet no name for. I loved him because he came from a family of average, unremarkable shopkeepers (I am drawn to those of the unexamined life). I loved him because he was a bad boy and smoked. I loved him because he always smelled soapy-clean and freshly scrubbed. I loved him because, starting the first night, when he informed me he had to be home by 11 p.m. and wouldn’t be able to see me for another week, I could pick up the perfect scent of distance, independence, self-sufficiency. I loved him because we had nothing in common. I loved him because I sensed how thoroughly he loved himself.

Sometimes I rode with him on his Vespa as he ran errands around the city. He was boyish and strong as he guided his fat white bike through traffic, wove between cars. I felt his warmth and it was unbearably good, but he would scold me for my timid attempts to touch him in front of people.

Sometimes we would arm-wrestle; he’d always win. Those sessions showed us what a weakling I was, so I’d lie back as his face approached with its lips and tongue and mouth; I’d lie back and let him pump badly needed strength into me. In a way, we were compatible.

My American accent in Spanish was not just noticeable, it was atrocious, bordering on comically atrocious. Most Spaniards, when they heard my pronunciation, would say, “You ought to speak our language better!” José Luis was no exception. Sometimes he’d start laughing: “Your Spanish is awful!” he’d say. “Seems like I’m not helping you one bit.”

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From the memoir A Birth Mother’s Kiss

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As the months went by, I couldn’t help noticing that I was less his ideal than he was mine. One day in the shower, when I knelt down before him so he could wash my hair, he commented, “My God you’re half bald!”

He could only see me once or twice a week. The days we met up I felt happy and privileged. What was our best time? The night I had no electricity!

They wouldn’t be able to restore light until the next day. I struggled to find my way by candlelight, half-drunk with Rachmaninoff tunes. He arrived around midnight with a bagful of Chinese take-out. We ate at the little round dining room table lit only by candelabra. It was July, hot and sultry, and we got some relief with the wide-open French windows facing the street and the open frosted-glass windows that gave onto the interior staircase, which by day would echo with the loud, complaining voices of old ladies lugging up their groceries.

The five candles made for lurid light and shadow in that room. I turned on the boombox and played Rachmaninoff as we ate and drank. In José Luis’s presence I felt reassured—why was I doubting him so much? He’d never looked so fresh and solid and young, and he was eating with a healthy appetite. How could he be so hungry? I hardly ate, had lost ten pounds since the day we met.

His Vespa was parked outside on the sidewalk, his straight friends and his straight parents and straight brothers were sleeping—but he was mine! A slight breeze passed through the room and the flames sputtered. I loved our ghoulish candlelight in that brown-painted room. It was such a Spanish moment. Never before had it felt so good to be spending my life in Spain, in spite of my bad accent. After half a bottle of wine we fell on my bed—I call it “bed,” but I was a bohemian in those days, so it was just a mattress on the floor. José Luis said, “I love you.” I’d known him a while and he’d never said such a thing. “And you?” he went on. I couldn’t answer. Back in New York someone had counseled, “Never show your hand, never let someone know how you feel about them.” I didn’t speak. “And you?” he asked again. “You don’t love me back?”

“Sure I do,” I answered finally, but casually, trying not to betray much. From the other room Rachmaninoff drama and lushness wove in and out of our 45

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words, so that from then on it became our words, it became José Luis and me as we were at that moment in the ’80s, both of us young in the candlelight on that muggy Spanish night; we became that gentle descending theme for strings and woodwinds, simple but extravagantly tender, craggily romantic but unsentimental. José Luis, what happened? Of course I loved you, but I couldn’t tell you that, because then you might leave . . . Tonight as I type these words thirty years later, on the west coast of the U.S.A., I again hear the gentle theme for strings and woodwinds—I hesitate to call it “our” theme since he wasn’t aware of it—and I’m transported back to that night of no electricity but much candlelight.

One day a Hallmark card arrived from America. On it my father had written, “See what your classmates accomplish!” Folded in the card was a newspaper clipping, an article about Ethan Canin, the tallest, smartest, most popular, most confident boy in high school; he had just published a book called Emperor of the Air. Canin complained that some authors wrote the same story over and over; Canin complained about authors and anger. He stated, “Look at me! I don’t write in anger. What do I have to be angry about?” His book was a bestseller; he was becoming a Somebody in the U.S.A. I tore up the article as well as my father’s card and even the envelope it had come in. I hadn’t written a word since New York, so none of that mattered anymore. Done with posing, done with the infantile need to be remembered in seven hundred years, I was living and loving. I’d even gotten rid of most of my books. Life before José Luis: teaching, eating out, going to Thermas baths, seeing a movie now and then. What was my life now? Waiting by the phone for José Luis to call, living for moments with him.

Without him, I had no me inside me.

I kept wondering about ways to improve my posture, my complexion, my hair, my wardrobe. I was all right looking, not beautiful. I slouched, had thinning hair, still had pimples, wore mismatched clothes. Couldn’t I use the time away from him to effect some sort of makeover?

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During breaks between classes at the London Language Centre I would retreat to the teacher’s room and sit by the window and think about José Luis.

Once, someone came in and said, “Who cast a spell on you?” I smiled politely, did not reply, looked out the window. * José Luis, never punctual even in the beginning, was starting to arrive later and later. One night I waited until after three and finally went to bed. As I fell asleep I heard the buzzer from downstairs. I buzzed him into the building and listened eagerly as he took his time climbing five flights.

I rested my head on his arm as we lay on our backs in bed. Still dressed, he was smoking and looking at his watch when he told me he’d only be able to stay until four.

“I’ve ruined your night again,” he said, exhaling smoke and looking up at the ceiling. “How many hours did you wait?”

“Only two.” “‘Only’? I wouldn’t have your patience. If I were you, I would’ve been done with me a long time ago.”

“It’s three thirty-seven. We’d better hurry.”

He put out his cigarette. “Not tonight. It’s late.”

“You sure?”

“Madre mía, Marcel, you are obsessed!”

What was our worst time? Maybe that night, waiting all those hours—for what?

I turned on my side so I could get a view of his face fresh and luxuriant with late pubescence; I took in the pale skin, the short curly hair, the very full lips and long lashes. I’d never seen anyone so sweet and seductive, so strong and sure of himself. I brought my face close to his lips; his tongue easily came out for me. I reached into his pants and felt him stiff in my hand. We made out and I was happy and home. We made out and I heard his moan under my lips.

“Gracias,” he whispered. “Didn’t think I had anything left in me.”

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Fifteen minutes later he was gone. I got dressed and walked the streets.

Now I probably wouldn’t be able to see him for at least four days. I walked half a mile to the Rambla de Catalunya. A young man was leaning against a streetlamp. “How much?” I said.

“Five thousand pesetas.” Less than fifty dollars in those days.

We went to my building. His name was Miguel; he told me he was married and had a daughter.

“Married!” I said. “I don’t believe it.”

“I have no reason to lie to you.” He was tall, with red hair and a long, coltish face. Miguel kissed almost as generously and endlessly as José Luis. I undressed him and we lay on my bed for a full hour. “I like you,” he said. As we lay there, I started telling him about José Luis, how he could only see me once in a while. “Is he married?” Miguel asked. I smiled: “No.” I went on about José Luis, I could have spent another hour or two talking about being in love, with angelic Miguel as my audience. It was awkward for me, later, to hand him a five thousand peseta bill, since I had never before paid someone.

After he was dressed again, I asked, “Doesn’t it scare you, to stand out on the street like that?”

“Sí,” he replied, simply. “It does, sometimes.”

I wondered if our session would have been as exciting if he’d admitted his fear before I brought him home.

Miguel! Thirty years have gone by and he’s probably a grandpa. I never saw him again. Miguel, who for a little over an hour helped me forget.

After that night I was unfaithful most nights. Sometimes I paid. Since I felt José Luis steadily pulling back, I counted on strangers to help me, the same way Miguel had. * Early in August José Luis said to me, “I’m leaving for the coast with my family. I’ll be gone for a month.”

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“I see!”

“What will you do without me?”

Not sure whether that question was meant as rhetorical or not, I said nothing, just smiled and nodded.

They say only the rats stay in Barcelona during the month of August. I took a ferry to Ibiza, found a room in a hostel, spent nights in the bars and days on the beach.

Ibiza is known as a party island now, but back then you could still find cheap little restaurants with marble table-tops and men sitting by themselves in a corner reading Bertrand Russell or Anthony Trollope. I walked up and down the winding streets of the old town hoping for a moment of serenity, a moment free from thoughts of José Luis. At night British and German and Scandinavian men with deep tans crowded into artsy bars, drank lager, and looked at other men under loudspeakers blasting Culture Club and Alaska y Dinarama and Divine: “There ain’t nobody better than me! Can’t you see? Look at me!” And the men chatted and drank and laughed and approved: “You’ve gotta believe that I am beautiful! I’m so beautiful! Can’t you see? Look at me!”

One night, after failing to pick up anyone in the bars, I walked all over town. No one was around and it felt good to cry, cry for close to an hour, all the way to the lighthouse at dawn. I watched the rough waves crashing against the rocks, but when the sun hit my face I suddenly had an overpowering need for breakfast and sleep. I walked back toward my hostel and sat in an outdoor café where people were beginning their day. One of the waiters couldn’t stop reciting the name Pedro Almodóvar, either because it was a beautiful name to repeat or else because the Spanish director had gotten so much press lately that he was becoming as popular as the king himself. The waiter in black and white kept saying the name, as if he were trying it out, feeling how it tasted in his mouth, but also with a certain amount of resentment for the celebrity’s fame, or maybe just plain bigotry: Pedro Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar. . .

When I next got to see him, José Luis looked shorter and had a scab on 49

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his forearm from a skateboarding mishap on the coast. He’d already been back in the city for a week before he phoned me. I lay on the bed and watched him stand over me peeling off his shirt. I watched him take off his shoes and socks, drop down his pants till he wore only briefs. Then he jumped on the bed and placed his face over mine, so close I could almost sniff saliva. “You know,” he whispered, “we ought to stop having sexual relations.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of the remark, hoped I’d misheard. My mouth opened, I reached my tongue up in search of his. He looked annoyed. “You didn’t understand what I said? Forgot your Spanish in England?” (I’d told him I’d been to London, not Ibiza.) “I’m spending the night,” he announced, impishly slipping under the sheets, “but just to sleep. Be patient, soon you’ll get used to just being my friend.”

He allowed me to rest my head on his arm. Completely at peace, he drifted off.

Quietly I turned and in the semidarkness studied his face, cocky even in sleep. And his body, it was so pale and Spanish in its paleness. I looked at his hands; they were thick, a little fat.

I hated that he slept so deeply, not only tonight but since the first day.

José Luis—he didn’t belong to me anymore, never had, but at least before tonight I’d been allowed to touch him. Now he was making this blunt, clumsy transition to “friendship”: from now on I wouldn’t be able to feel his skin any more than I could reach out for the texture of a masterpiece at the museum or the fur of caged animals at the zoo. Now he was being re-absorbed into impersonal worldness—he would become just a face among thousands of faces at an airport. * I went to Kiss, I went to Martin’s, Monroe’s Gallery, Gris, Paris-Dakar, above all I went back to Thermas, where it was easy to grab hold of workingclass youths. When they were done with me, they walked away. Sometimes I paid them. None of them were curing me, none of them were helping me forget.

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Alex M. Frankel

Everything around me looked so drab, everything was so pointless. School started, I lost my temper in class, was reprimanded by the director of the London Language Centre. The next day I shocked him by quitting. Then I traveled around Barcelona and negotiated a leave of absence from all my other part-time jobs. My mother, I told them, had just died, and I needed at least a month.

I lost weight and listened to Rachmaninoff, in whose old-fashioned romanticism I found comfort but no answers. If only I’d been a bit younger (instead of twenty-five), a bit more manly, with better posture, then José Luis might have stayed. I hated my hair. I went to beauty salons to try to regrow hair. If only I’d been more muscular. I joined a gym to try to build muscle. If only I knew how to ski and ice-skate. I began to take skating lessons and planned to learn how to ski. If I built myself up, I might appeal to somebody.

I wandered the streets and ruminated. I stopped in every bar and had a beer. I journaled compulsively. Even though I didn’t write anymore, I began a novel about José Luis called I Love My Vespa. One afternoon I heard firecrackers and hundreds of honking horns in the street. Someone told me Barcelona had just been awarded the Olympic Games. This meant nothing. I went to Thermas, needed mouths, legs, hands, holes, the smell of hair and neck. How many had there been already in life? Hundreds? Thousands?

One day on the sidewalk a dead animal suddenly looked straight at me.

I’m still not sure what it was, a rat? cat? a discarded piglet from the market?

The body was half-demolished but the dead eyes locked into mine and I recoiled, so startled I shrieked. Of course I couldn’t see my own reaction, but I noticed a man watching me as he sat in his parked car. His face showed surprise, concern, and a kind of naked, childlike curiosity and expressiveness that you rarely see beyond the Mediterranean countries.

I never answered my phone, fearing it might be Him. Once I inadvertently picked up the receiver when the phone rang and heard José Luis talking to me, asking how I was. I hung up, ripped the cord out of the wall, and hid the phone 51

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under a blanket. He didn’t try to call anymore after that. I never ran into him again in all the years I still had left in Spain.

I couldn’t stand the sound of my voice—not my tape-recorded voice, I mean my regular voice the way I heard it every day from inside my head, even when I spoke English. I hated my reflection: I hated the sight of that pimply, balding, skinny man with unfortunate posture. One night I went to the opera believing I was going to see Carmen, but it turned out not to be the opera at all, but a flamenco version with guitars, castanets, and stomping feet. My neighbors fanned my face when they saw the sweat pouring out of it, in the heat of the balcony section. I almost passed out, then left during intermission.

The worst time was waking up: it was as if someone were tearing open my chest with the claw of a hammer, and then it would take an entire afternoon and night of ruminating—reviewing every moment of our months together—to finally release some of the garbage in my head and make room for sleep. Four a.m. was the sweetest hour, the only sweet hour.

Everything around me appeared hopelessly drab. I lost so much weight I needed a new wardrobe. When a lightbulb had to be changed, I lacked the strength to change it. Crumpled papers littered the floor; so did tiles coming loose and starting to crumble, disintegrating British-English textbooks from schools I’d long since left, dust bunnies, bags full of putrefying food vibrant with maggots.

Sunday evenings seemed to have been expressly created so lovers could linger in dark doorways for hours on end. I went by many lovers one Sunday night. I walked all the way to the Sants train station. On my way back, I passed under the walls of the notorious Centro Penitenciario de Hombres de Barcelona, otherwise known as the Modelo Prison. A police van patrolling the area came into view in the distance, and, disliking the police and not having any legal status in Spain, I crossed the street. A few minutes later I was being held in their van, in back, with no passport, no documents to show. I was questioned for twenty minutes, sitting in the dark backseat. I didn’t care what 52

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they did with me. If they deported me, or locked me up in the Modelo itself, it didn’t matter. Later, I again passed lovers in doorways. Sunday evening is the time for hot lovers in the dark doorways of a Catalan city. * I thought of his insides, warm and good as my birth mother must have been before she let me go the day I came out of her (who was that mother-stranger who’d left at the very beginning?). I thought of his teeth abusive in their whiteness. Now I was nowhere near his hair, and what would I do? Not a whiff of him now, no relics, not a single hair, nothing from his shorts and sandals, no souvenir of his eyes. No sleep, or bad sleep. New tenants moved in upstairs. What if they played instruments or had children? Driving nails into walls, or, even worse, the opening up of walls! Not a single hangnail in the blankets left over from José Luis. No earwax. Not even a receipt fallen from his pockets. The distinguished business of his movie-star eyebrows, the secret life of his armpits, the naïve machismo of his collegiate voice—it went faster and faster, whipped up good . . . till my hand was draped in white batter, fingers cats-cradled and bridged with icy filament caking into my wrinkled palm. * Brisk weather settled in like a frisky dog slapping its tail against furniture and sticking its wet snout in my ear. Late one afternoon thick snowflakes fell from the clouds over the Calle Casanova and collected on my balustrade. I put on a hat and gloves and a scarf and went outside to experience the spectacle of snowfall in Barcelona. Children got out sleds, traffic was snarled, the citizenry gazed up in wonder at the sky. I strolled down a whitened, wintry Las Ramblas, sat down by the window of a tourist trap and ordered a paella meant for two, which turned out to be the heartiest meal I ever had. I was the only one by myself. People often feel sorry for you when they see you in a restaurant alone; and yet when they see you sitting with others, they are never happy for you or come over and congratulate you. That day I felt so pleased with life I didn’t care what anyone thought. As I returned home, the 53

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sun came out and melted most of the snow. That night I finally put away Rachmaninoff and discovered Mozart.

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Louis Staeble

Louis Staeble

One Out of Three

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Wendy J. Fox

Wendy J. Fox

Motorcycles Use Extreme Caution When the man puts his motorcycle down, Joel and I are coming out of our apartment building’s parking garage. It happens very quickly, just as the lip of the door has risen over my car’s hood. I am driving so I am paying attention, and I am closer, so at first Joel doesn’t see what I see. What I see is a body loosed from the centrifugal gravity that grips it to the bike, and what I see is a body taken by ordinary force to the pavement. I see the edge of the bike’s tires still turning though they have lost traction, and the man is in a slide along the rough edges of the street that is torn up from construction.

I jam my brakes and Joel lurches forward. I stutter at him to call 911, and he dials without even looking up, though by the time his mobile is connecting, the scene is clear and he is opening the car door. He is going to the man.

In general, neither Joel, my husband, nor I trust easily, but our match is made out of being good at different kinds of problems. Send me to deal with the bureaucracy or to the hardware store. Send Joel for the negotiation of human trouble.

When I manage to park the car in a semilegal way and get out, the man from the motorcycle is staggering in the road. I think I couldn’t have heard the crack of his skull when the bike went down, but the blood is clear, in three distinct trails down his face. By the time I take a breath, and because we live only a few blocks from a fire station, sirens are wailing.

There are two ladies from Oklahoma, tourists to Denver, who had been walking our downtown neighborhood and who have encountered the man. They are trying to calm him. One is a nurse, she says. The man is ignoring her, brushing her off. She is working at it, but she is flustered. Whatever her specialty is, this is not it.

There is no other traffic in the street because it is closed for roadwork, except to local access. The blacktop has been sliced down to grooves for 56

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resurfacing, like how they do it on the highways sometimes, when there is that sign that says, Motorcycles Use Extreme Caution. Between 18th and 19th, just one residential block, there are some cones but no warning placards.

“Well, he’s in shock,” the Oklahoma nurse says to her friend as she is pushed away for the final time.

The man has righted the bike, and though there is debris around him like a reef, he is begging us not to call anyone, and Joel, who is bolder than the nurse, Joel, whom I always say is comfortable with conflict and he says something like this isn’t even conflict yet, tells him that we have already called.

The man wipes some of the blood from his face. He looks at Joel like he is a liar.

“Don’t go,” Joel says. “Just wait. Hey, man, we got you,” he says. Joel is good with people, including people in crises, but the motorcycle’s accelerator is already revving in a wild way, the bike groaning after being toppled, and the man is leaving.

As he speeds away, he has left a shoe, a shattered Bluetooth headset, a very large and partially smoked joint freed from a crushed case, and some plastic pieces from his bike. We pile these things on the sidewalk as we shout directions to the ambulance that has just arrived, and to the firemen, who appear immediately after. To the firemen Joel hands over the man’s wallet, also collected from the street. The ambulance heads down the street in pursuit. The fire engine stays parked in the lane.

Now there is a small crowd, and we talk to the firemen for a while. We meet some people from our building, drawn out by the commotion. The women from Oklahoma ask if they can go, and they are given permission. Joel gives the firemen his card, and then we get back into the car to finish our errand. We drive to the market, where we get steaks and wine and wonder if maybe the rough road from the work being done on our street should have been better marked, and we wonder if maybe we shouldn’t have called because maybe we have just accidentally busted this guy. We decide he would have gotten busted 57

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anyway, driving with one shoe on and one shoe off and a gash in his head, his hair parted from the impact of collision.

Helmets, one of which he was not wearing, are not required in Colorado. ~ On Labor Day Joel and I go to his cousin Chris’s house. Even though it’s less than two miles, we are running late and so we take the car; because we drink too much that night, I will walk to retrieve it the next morning. Chris and his wife, Nikki, are making margaritas with serrano peppers, and the day is pretty, the kind that people love about Denver, when the sun is clear and gentle and the Rockies are snow-sparkled, and everything glows metallic, silver and bronze.

We are celebrating a three-day weekend, but we are also celebrating Chris’s mother’s new condo, which is only a few blocks away. We are all happy, even if the condo means something we aren’t talking about: It is a downsize, after her husband has died.

There are close to a dozen of us, all family by some connection or another—blood or marriage or love—and taking our drinks, we decide to pad around the corner to get a look at the digs, the ice from our margaritas rattling, chatting as we link arms, feeling a little boozy and a lot lucky, remarking on the short distance from Chris’s house. You will get to see the boys—her grandkids—so much more, we say. Chris’s mother, Candi, tells us she has already promised to keep the refrigerator stocked with chocolate milk for them, a treat that is heavily rationed at home. We love this, because everyone remembers their own grandma’s sweets.

I know I am a part of this family because my husband is a cousin, but they call me cousin too. These are the kind of people whom I could call in the middle of the night with any vague or real emergency. For years I have called this the “friend test.” The right answer is, “I’m already in the car.” I know every single one of them would pass, before the words would even be out of my mouth, they would be on their way over, even though so far I have never had to 58

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make this call.

At the condo, we can’t go inside because Candi doesn’t have keys yet, but we skirt the perimeter of the building. A woman on the first floor sits on a deck chair among her geraniums. She has a bird in a cage. We find this odd and oldfashioned, but she says hello and we say hello back. The bird chirps and flits, doing bird things. Above us there is the railing of Candi’s future top-floor balcony. In our compliments, we openly admire its ample size.

And then Kevin, one of our group and Candi’s youngest son, has turned around, and he is walking quickly, reaching for the phone in his pocket. Go back, he says.

I don’t understand. I think he is being dramatic about the keys we don’t have and I am about to remind him that his mother has closed on the condo, it is legally hers, when he says it more firmly. Go back.

I am between Candi and Joel’s mother. We had been trailing so Candi and I could smoke a cigarette. Joel’s mom didn’t mind. We turn around, tentatively, not knowing what we are turning from.

There is a body.

There is a body hanging in the stairwell.

There is a body in the stairwell that leads to the parking garage, a hanging.

This time Kevin makes the call, and again there is the quick peal of sirens. His husband’s hand is at his back. I check Candi’s face. The place was supposed to be her new life—the grandkids!—the chocolate milk!—but before her keys are even on her ring, we have made this memory.

Cut him down, the dispatcher instructs on the phone, but we can’t, we don’t. It’s too late, Kevin says to the dispatcher, he’s gone.

Nikki looks, Joel looks, Kevin and Chris look. I am not sure if Kevin’s husband, Alan, looks. Joe, Joel’s dad, looks, but I do not look. Candi does not look. Joel’s mother, Sharon, does not look.

The woman with the bird does not look, but she turns ashen. She has 59

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been missing a friend. It is not until later, the next day, when Chris and Nikki go to say hello to her, to check on her, that we learn it was not her friend. Her friend was found; he was just out for a walk. This person swinging on a rope in the stairwell of Candi’s new condo was someone unknown to any of us.

Candi is okay about it all. We are worried about how she will feel, but she doesn’t believe in omens. She says she believes things happen for a reason.

She says, Maybe we were meant to find him, so that someone who loves him didn’t have to see it, you know what I mean? We know what she means, but no one knows if this is for better or for worse. ~ Since Dick, Candi’s husband, has died, there have been events.

I am talking to Kevin. On the phone he tells me he thinks it is following us. I don’t have to ask him what he means by “it.”

If his dad were alive, his mom would not have gotten the condo, because she would be with her husband in their home. And then none of us would have ever seen the body.

When Kevin says this, I decide not to tell him about the man on the motorcycle, even though I am pretty sure that guy lived. I am also pretty sure he was arrested.

It is late, past midnight. Kevin lives maybe twenty minutes away, but we are on the phone anyhow because we are both more than a little drunk and neither of us wants to organize a car so we can meet up. We are guzzling wine and chain smoking on our respective patios, our respective views failing to twinkle because of city light pollution.

He tells me about seeing a man collapse outside of Union Station, the newly renovated train terminal downtown. I can’t tell if he is projecting or exaggerating, but I am listening.

And he tells me about one of Chris’s kids, one of the chocolate-milk grandsons, who has a friend who fatally overdosed on his own Ritalin. I have heard this already and I know this one is terrifyingly true.

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“On purpose?” I ask, but Kevin doesn’t know.

“Dude,” he says, “it was just after my dad died. I’m telling you.”

I think that maybe all of it can be attributed to normal life tragedies, the things that can happen to anyone who leaves the house, to anyone who feels, to anyone who skips a physical, to anyone who rides their crotch rocket high and without a helmet, but Kevin is right. All of it is amplified by losing his father, by losing Dick.

Even though I do not offer up any more evidence, like Kevin I do start to wonder who is next.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I tell him.

“Me neither, Cuz,” he says. “I love you.” ~ At first I thought Joel would be next, because this was the worst thing I could imagine. Then I thought it would be me, but I am wrong.

The next one is another cousin who swallows every pill in his house and chases it with vodka; when he finally passes out, facedown and alone in his Florida apartment, he cannot wake up.

And the next-next one is Aunt B, who is arrested for a hit-and-run after she has a seizure (an event not unknown to Aunt B) and loses control of her car. She is angry at all of us for letting her spend the night in jail, but we are relieved because it could have been much worse. No one is hurt. We think the authorities should have taken her to the hospital instead of keeping her in the clink, but she is safe—damaged cars but no broken bodies.

I worry, though, because I think that if anyone could break a spell, it would be this one, who paints and prays and makes her own soap. Not much sticks to Aunt B. ~ I didn’t know Dick as well as any of the rest of them. I am his nephew’s spouse. I come late into his life, but the first time I meet him I didn’t know how late I really am. The first time, he and Candi treat me like family. We are 61

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family, by circumstance, by mine and Joel’s vows, but they, in their home, make it real.

I am meeting them for the first time and they are hugging me.

I am meeting them for the first time and they are giving me beer and gossiping.

I am meeting them for the first time and gossiping over beers and they are saying you know what I mean and No shit, Joel and rolling their eyes in not the how could you have married this guy way but in the you married this guy; you must know way.

We are throwing darts until our arms are sore with them and their son Danny, the brother in between Kevin and Chris, who is visiting from California, in their mostly finished basement that has fishing net strung through the rafters and is weighted with rocks and shells and mementos laced through it.

They, this family I barely know yet, are bringing me into their circle with a tender collusion against my husband.

Joel takes it all with a grin, and he ribs Dick for something that goes back to a time when I didn’t know any of them. We miss many bull’s-eyes but mostly laugh.

Remember when…

I don’t remember, but I can imagine because I have my own father and mother and cousins and friends. Joel’s family is bigger than the one I come from, but I feel it pulling together. All of them are ours, are his, are mine.

It is very cold in the Colorado December, so we smoke our cigarettes in the garage, but the air still bites.

It is tempting to write that we already knew how little time we’d have left with Dick and that we made the best of every minute. Sometimes that is true.

Sometimes it isn’t.

That first night we complain of icy roads and praise good cooking, lament the busyness of the holidays, toast family and friends who are far away.

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late, we pop another beer, toss another dart. ~ A few days before Christmas, Joel and I are coming out of Humboldt County’s winter haze where we have been visiting my brother and our sister-inlaw and one of our nieces.

Intentionally, Joel and I have no children of our own, but we are grateful to be aunt and uncle, godparents to a group of four, spread between friends and family. About being godparents, we like to joke that no one should really put us in charge of a child’s spiritual education, but we also take our little people seriously. We visit them and when we are apart we show off photos to coworkers and strangers.

We understand the joy of children, and we might even have one, if it were not for me. I’ve lived my life with a link to my own childhood, and am still unable to cross over. When people ask about it, I talk about it in terms of time.

Oh, I can’t both write and work and raise a baby, I say. And neither the writing nor the work is going to give—but it’s not truly this. I know that people can make time for anything if they want it enough.

We land to make our connection in San Francisco, and Joel takes the call that Dick is in the hospital.

We eat something; we have a beer. By the time we get to Denver, it is clear we should head directly to ICU. At the airport we get into Joel’s car, and then we drive. Only four years have passed since I first met Dick. I can’t tell if it is really so cold or if it is just cold after California or if I am feeling another cold.

In the room the family has made a ring around Dick. He is going softly, but not quickly. He is being stubborn, which has meant he has held on longer, and no one is surprised by this. It is very late and his grandchildren—the boys who have Candi’s chocolate milk in her condo in their future—sleep on the waiting-room sofas; they could have gone to their mother’s, but they refused.

Someone gives Dick a marijuana edible because it is legal in Colorado 63

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and because he has asked for it and because the nurse agrees it is not a bad idea. The care has gone very quickly to palliative, but still, he breathes in a heavy way.

I am the nephew’s spouse, a cousin, and I am welcome, but there is the current of something so personal, of something that belongs to blood, to my husband’s department.

I feel like I should leave, but Dick holds my hand. The fingers still have a grip. He says my name.

He had held everyone’s hand but that was how he made people feel, using his last breaths for you, using his last strength for you, like you were the only one. You are trying to say good-bye and he has his fingers laced in yours, not letting you go, because he isn’t ready.

Eventually I do go home, but Joel stays.

Later, many hours later, when I am in our apartment, Joel calls to tell me that Dick has passed.

“I think he was waiting,” Joel says.

Three children, all grown men, and a long, happy marriage. Still, waiting, waiting to touch as many people as he could, waiting for morning—one last clear Colorado day with the mountains shining in the distance and the sun beating at the windows—waiting for the boys to wake up, waiting for a moment alone with his wife, waiting for the place that none of us can parse until we are there.

Christmas comes but we ignore it and wake him for close to a week. We stay in his home, camped out on couches and air mattresses.

We drink the last of his beer and use his barbecue. We throw darts again. We hug his grandchildren and his twin brother and his wife and each other. We wear hats from his extensive collection. We spend an hour on the carpeted stairs with a whoopee cushion, dug out by Joel’s brother’s son, my godson, who screams in laughter every time the rubber erupts. Luca is not even two and he will never get to know Dick, but we know Dick would have 64

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loved this, a child interrupting the mourning of adults with fart sounds.

We tell stories while Chris writes the obituary in the basement. We cook and drink boxed wine. The snow starts, terrifying the relatives from California.

Two of the sisters sleep with Candi so she can be in the middle of the bed and not wake to an empty half.

When we stand at Dick’s service, winter has truly come and has turned desperately cold. We are in our long coats, our noses raw. We huddle close because we are freezing and because we are family.

It is a lovely service. His sons offer a remembrance, and we all have been crying for days but we try not to cry because it will only make us colder.

At the end, I look away from the urn—and maybe everyone does— because I want to remember the warm feel of Dick’s palm against my palm, I want to remember the flush of his cheeks, I want to remember his jokes, I want to remember his crassness, his kindness, his way of being.

I look away because we are in this place, a military cemetery alive with grief, but we are all together.

I look away because I want to remember the first night, the darts and the beers, and that first intersection of my life and his.

I look away because I want to remember him alive.

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Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Butterflies of Oldman 66

S. Bennett

S. Bennett

Ailes de Pigeon

The pigeon’s wing dangles, filthy feathers and one leg drags.

A broken bird on the concrete in Central Park.

Hikers and trekkers, bikers and trikers— the audience glances, turns away.

Now on its side, left wing extended, beak scraping cement.

Red claws scratch the air.

The working leg thrusts in final arabesque.

Then the dark moment when swans submerge.

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Allen Forrest

Allen

Forrest

Bird Watcher

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Lee L. Krecklow

Lee L. Krecklow

Vacant Lot the footsteps in the hallway so it’s almost time closer and closer clench my eyes force the sound from my mind why aren’t you up yet I don’t want to come get you again you’ll be late and you’ll make me late “What time is it?” Hank grumbled.

“Where are your glasses?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll get you your pills.”

“What time is it?”

“Find your glasses.” four eyes coke bottles Hank shuffled down the hall after Ethel and went to the kitchen and found his glasses on the bread box. Ethel had his pills lined up on the counter.

One two three four five six.

“You need to shave,” she called from the bathroom.

Hank rubbed his face, then went back to the bedroom and looked out the window at the derelict lot next door. Tall grass and weeds, long tangled fingers of it, catching trash. Huge insects rising from it and falling back into it, cavorting.

It had been a year since that house burned down. The debris was hauled away immediately after the investigation, which found amateur wiring as the cause, but the foundation, that massive hole in the ground lined with cinder blocks, remained for months, until it too was removed. The blocks were pushed in with a backhoe, then dug out with the same machine. Then that gaping, open mouth of earth was clogged with dirt. One morning mid-winter someone drove by and planted a sale sign, but now, months later, late into summer even, the only thing it’s become is an eyesore.

“Are you getting dressed?” Ethel called.

Hank said nothing. He closed his mouth and his ears and his eyes and went elsewhere. quiet she said to me sit still on page 439 is the picture of 69

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Magdalene I was told I took the bible from the pew rack just listen she said to me look at her shape someone has drawn a moustache on her “Are you getting dressed?” came Ethel’s voice again, from inside the room now.

Hank said nothing.

“Are you ill?” she said.

“I’m well enough.”

“Are you getting dressed?”

“I don’t think I am.”

“Well … well aren’t you coming?”

“I don’t think I care to.”

“Why on earth? Well, what should I tell pastor? He’ll ask.”

“Why don’t you not go? Stay home.”

“I won’t do that, Hank. I’ve already readied myself. Besides …”

“You know we live next door to a damn jungle?”

“Did you say you ‘don’t care to?’ Is that what you said?”

“Did you make toast?”

“What on earth? What will I tell people?”

“Just stay home. Don’t go.”

“I’ll make you toast.”

Hank sat on the end of the bed and pulled on his trousers and socks and a sweater and waited for the smell of coffee to lift him, to wake his fogged head. the sound of the percolator mothers hands wrapped around her tin mug fall air tall grass sand earth horses in the field there’s father in the distance In the kitchen Hank said, “Did you check the computer mail this morning?”

“It’s acting strange.”

“Was there mail?”

“No, it’s Sunday, Hank.”

“On the computer. Was there mail on the computer?”

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“No, it’s acting strange.”

“Then I’ll call Matthew.” and Matthew said to me he didn’t want to kill anything what did he think we were there to do he killed the game but I cleaned it he’d done enough by pulling the trigger he did it and hated me for it blood on my hands now blood on my watch he shot it but I kept the blood on my hands “What will I tell pastor?” * Hank set his chair in the driveway facing the street and set his table next to it, and his radio and his coffee and a can of nuts too, all on the table. While he did these things he wondered what she will say to the pastor “Good morning, Hank.”

“Hello,” Hank said, suddenly aware of the man walking down the road with his dog, wondering for a moment at the man’s name, then not wondering.

He’d never say more than ‘good morning’ anyway. Always rushed. Pompous.

Hank waved and watched as the man let his dog shit in the vacant lot, then walk on.

Was that the phone? No. There’s nothing on the radio.

He stood and went into the garage and came out with a shovel and a paper bag, and he went down to where the man’s dog shit and he shoveled it up. From there he could see even more clearly how the grass and weeds and rocks had captured so many dead leaves and so much trash and held it all there. Such an eyesore, he thought. And nothing new will ever come here. come out of that hole Matthew and David I hear Ethel yell their shoes are caked in mud mud tracked back to our yard the new construction is such a playground for them such a headache for Ethel to be young to be young to be young Hank waded into the tall grass, where there was once a fresh hole dug for a new home, and he looked more closely at how that hole had been filled in and grown over with grass and weeds, all so tall. He touched the seeded tops with his fingertips.

He wondered what she’d say to pastor.

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A few pieces of garbage were matted directly under his feet and he picked it all up -- an empty bag of chips and a juice box and a cigarette butt -- and he put it all in the paper bag along with the shit and went back to his chair. Still nothing on the radio. She’ll be home soon anyway.

“Morning!”

“Hello!” Hillary. Hillary she’s called. Walker. Fit. “Hillary!”

“Yes?” “What do you think about that mess over there?”

“It’s a little messy I suppose but it’s kinda nice not to have any neighbors, right?”

“Mhh.” “Have a good day, Hank. No church today?”

“Bye bye.”

Matthew. He thought again of calling Matthew and remembered he hadn’t done it yet. He’d call Matthew and have him come today with the kids, and the kids could help clean up that lot, maybe even listen to baseball while their dad fixed the computer. He finished his coffee and watched cars driving by too fast, then he went into the house with his empty mug and dialed the phone.

Answering machine.

“Matthew. It’s your dad. I need you to call me right away today. Bye bye.” dad you have another grandchild it’s a girl another one yes dad a girl it’s a girl she’s beautiful with mom’s eyes another girl huh Back in the driveway he sat and sipped more coffee and munched on nuts and looked over at the lot again, observed the menace of it, the gloom it cast on his own property.

In the garage was the still-nostalgic smell of old wood in summer heat.

He pulled out from the back corner his work gloves and another garbage bag and his shovel again, and he went back to the lot. He started again with the garbage: a plastic bag caught in the thistle and the empty soda cans faded by 72

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the sun and the empty packs of cigarettes, wet inside, and fliers and advertisements blown off doors and snagged by the overgrowth. And there was more shit. While he did all this he still thought about Ethel, alone in church and driving alone, which he’d always hated, and he wondered what she’d say to the pastor, and he wished that she’d just stayed home. why can’t you just stay I asked her she said that she could not after what I’d called her she came home again in the morning that morning the look in her eyes or the look that was not in her eyes Ethel at last drove by the lot, so slowly, and when she saw Hank there on his hands and knees she stopped the car in the middle of the road and rolled down the window and said, “what are you doing?”

“Don’t stop in the road.”

“Why aren’t you wearing your old slacks?”

“Pull into the driveway.”

“Your chair is in the way.”

He turned and looked, then stood and walked through the tall grass and onto his kept lawn and pulled his chair and table off to the side. Ethel pulled the Buick in and while she rolled into the driveway with her window still down Hank said, “What did you say to pastor?”

Ethel stopped the car and said, “I told him you didn’t feel well.”

“Pull into the garage.”

“What were you doing out there on your knees?” she said once she’d parked and exited the car, waddling atop old legs so stiff from church and kneeling and driving.

“Why did you tell pastor I was sick?”

“What on earth should I have said?”

“I don’t owe him anything.”

“I got ham and rolls for lunch.”

“Did you get enough for Matthew and the kids?”

“Are they coming?”

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“Don’t know. I had to leave a message.”

“Where is he?”

“I’ll call again.” * Sweat soaked his shirt and burrs stuck to the legs of his trousers, and still Hank crawled around and pulled at weeds and pushed rocks onto the curb and flattened clumps of dirt with his shoe. His skin was red from the sun and from his effort; he shuffled back to his chair to take a break. Ethel had put out a sandwich and a beer and those things sat on the table next to his can of nuts and his radio. The Brewers were about to throw out the first pitch, just a few miles down the road they were, and it was a strike, but still he thought to himself that he’d never live to see them contend again. He sipped his beer. where is your mitt I asked I don’t know he said he cried you need to take care of your things I said back through the stands to the bathroom there it was in the stall thank God nobody took it you’re lucky we’re missing the game let’s go He called toward the house, “Matthew call back yet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well did he or didn’t he?”

“I didn’t hear the phone ring….”

“Why the hell doesn’t he call back?”

“You should put a hat on.”

Back in the lot Hank worked at a chunk of cinder block, flipping it end over end toward the curb, breathing hard and pushing back at the sweat that dripped into his eyes. His legs cramped and his knees were grinding and his head was light. He stopped to look at a pair of boys walking past, each sucking on bottles of soda the size of their heads and staring into iPods or phones or whatever glowing devices had burrowed wires into their ears.

“Hello!” he said.

The boys said nothing.

“Can one of you put that thing down for a minute and help?”

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The boys said nothing.

“You’re gonna get hit by a damn car if you don’t pay attention. My luck, I’d be the one to do it.”

Then they were past and gone.

He’d been watching those boys for years, watched as their behavior and manners eroded. Everyone that age, for that matter. No wonder the lot was still empty. Who would make a start in this place anymore? This place, which he started himself when it was all fields. All of it.

He bent over again and pushed at the cinder block some more and ignored the pain in his arm and the shortness of his breath because in the daylight there were too many eyes around to see him wince. He figured that it was probably best that he rest again.

“Ethel!”

“What?” she called from in the house.

“Could you find me an aspirin?”

“Why didn’t you put on your hat? I set it on the table?”

“Two aspirin.”

“Eat your sandwich?”

Inside the house, he took the aspirin his wife set out for him and drank a glass of iced water and picked up the phone and dialed Matthew. The day was getting away fast. The phone rang.

“Why don’t you rest? Your face is so red. Where’s your hat?”

“Why doesn’t he call back? Jesus!”

“Do you feel okay?”

“He’s going to miss dinner.”

“Did he say he was coming?”

“Maybe David knows where he is.”

“Don’t call David.”

“I’ll call him if I need to call him. He doesn’t need to talk to me but he can tell me where his brother is.”

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“How would he know?”

The beer can felt so good pressed to his head, feverish now, and sore, too, but he could feel the aspirin working, and the beer would help too. There was still the pain in his arm, though, and it crawled slowly around in his chest and neck, but there was no sense in saying anything about it unless he needed to. There was a pitch and a ground ball to right field where that Isuki, that import, had been playing. Small man. Good speed. No power, of course. Fast but weak.

He turned around in his chair and looked at the lawnmower in the garage and then looked at the lot. It didn’t look like he’d be getting help from Matthew any time soon.

The mower took a few pulls to fire and his arm fought him each time he pulled, and his breath left him quickly, but it finally did start. He pushed it across his own lawn to the overgrown lot and started to hack at the mess. The motor choked on the long wet stalks, but if he pushed slowly it was working, and he needed to push slowly besides. He’d have to rake when it was done, too.

Pushing through the grass was like pushing through sand.

While the blades hacked and the machine smoked and hollered, grasshoppers and flies and mosquitoes scattered and buzzed about him, in his ears and on his arms, even in this heat they buzzed. stay still stay down these fucking bugs are killing me those bullets will kill you stay down stay quiet stop moving I’ll get malaria before I get a bullet there’s no malaria here shut your mouth you’ll get us all killed Ethel was in the driveway now, watching, hands on her hips and waiting for him to kill the engine. Hank pushed on. She stepped toward him and into the yard and waited in the same way, and Hank pushed on, so she stepped into the lot and waved at him and he stopped the motor.

“What are you doing out here? Why don’t you rest inside where it’s cool?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re acting so strange. Why would you not have gone to church 76

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today?”

“I need more aspirin.”

“Why don’t you sit with me and have a cold drink?”

He pull-started the mower and felt the pain from his arm move further into his chest and into his head, but still he pushed the mower and Ethel stood and watched. By the time he reached the back of the lot he was drenched with perspiration and spotted with grass and dirt all over his arms and face and clothes, and his shoes and the bottom of his trousers were green. He looked back over the lot and saw the clumps of cut and mangled growth everywhere, a hundred tiny rows and piles and clumps.

A rest. But the game was over now. The Brewers lost and it sounded as though there were trade talks late in the season. Out with the old and in with the new. What are the names? Who are they trading? Say the names the team is leaving the city and going to Atlanta what a terrible thing the greed of it all so greedy what a waste of the stadium He listened some time for the score. Just say the damn score.

From inside Hank could hear Ethel talking. He stood and went inside and saw her on the phone and heard her tell someone that he’d been grabbing his chest and acting so strange.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Matthew.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“He just called.”

“What took him so damn long?”

“Your father wants to know why you didn’t call back sooner.”

“Just put him on speaker.”

“I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Matthew?”

“Yeah, Dad.” “Where have you been all day?”

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“Dad, what’s wrong with your chest? Mom said you’re grabbing at it.”

“Did your mom ask you about the computer?”

“No, Dad, what’s wrong with your chest?”

“I’m just damn tired. I’ve been working all day.”

“Yeah, mom told me.”

“Are you coming over for dinner?”

“I think you need to call a doctor, Dad.” “I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, I’m coming over. I’m going to pack up the kids and come over.

Just let me talk to mom a minute.”

“Of course, fine, talk to your mom.”

“It’ll just take a minute.”

“You sound like your brother now. A ladies chat.”

“Okay, bye, Dad.” Hank left the house and found a rake in the garage and went to work again. The mowed down grass and weeds balled up and rolled over into bigger, taller rows as Hank pulled at it. Hank at times stopped and leaned on the rake handle, feeling more and more certain now that he may in fact be in some sort of trouble, but not yet certain enough to call attention to himself. So he continued on, raking and resting and pulling and resting and only stopping to breathe and look at his work. There was a transformation there, and he could see at last the good he was doing with the tall grass gone now dried out and fallen over in the fall that place that hid our naked bodies in the tall grass now gone all that’s left is this dry rug there is next summer too when I’m back so don’t be sad always more to look forward to I will live forever this moment will echo in time He was resting, leaning on the rake and hoping to God that the stabbing pain in his arm and in his chest would just stop, when a car he didn’t recognize pulled into his driveway. He could see through the driver side window that it was Pastor.

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“Hello, Hank,” Pastor yelled and waved as he walked across the lawn.

Hank just waved with his good arm. He hadn’t the breath to yell back.

“Hard at work today?” Pastor was in the vacant lot now, wearing his collar still, and carrying his worn, dog eared bible in one hand and a leather pouch in the other.

“I suppose so.”

“Sorry to just drop in on you like this, I hope it’s okay.”

“Mhh.” “Ethel inside?”

“She is.”

“I see. She said you were not feeling well this morning so I thought I’d come by and say a prayer with you and offer you communion. Sure didn’t expect to find you out in the heat.”

“Can I get you anything? Water? Beer? The game is over. We could have listened to the game.”

“No, nothing to drink, thank you. But let’s sit. You look awfully red.”

“I’m fine.”

They walked together toward the chairs in the driveway, Hank gritting his teeth, both at the uninvited guest and at the pain, which didn’t seem as though it would leave him. His leg now was not working as it should and he worried Pastor might notice as they walked together.

The chairs scraped the driveway when the men fell into them, Hank not having the strength to lower himself gently, and Pastor being particularly heavy for as young as he was.

“Strange of you to be working as you are if you’re ill.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well I doubt that. If you were fine I would have seen you this morning, I’m sure. Something must be wrong.”

“I don’t owe him anything. I’ve made my point.”

“Excuse me?”

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As Hank shifted his weight and straightened his leg another man came walking up the driveway, and now Hank was becoming more aggravated by his pains and feeling so much less tolerant.

“Hank, I’m Dave, Joshua’s dad,” the man said you named Matthew and now I’m choosing David if it’s a boy you can choose the name if it’s a girl but my father’s name was David and I will have a son named David “I don’t know a Joshua.”

“He’s a thirteen-year-old boy. Lives down the street. I see you have company. Can I have a word with you in private?”

“I just sat.”

“That’s okay, Hank,” Pastor said as he stood. “I’ll give you a minute. I’ll go say hello to Ethel.”

Hank’s every breath was a chest full of flames.

The man said “Joshua told me you threatened him.”

“I did no such thing.”

“He told me you said he should step in front of a car.”

“You should go home.”

As he said this another car pulled into the driveway and parked behind the pastor’s. The door opened and it was David who got out get out not if that’s the way you feel about it I have enough problems without you making more for me I don’t want to be spoken to like that in my house this is not your house anymore if that’s the way you feel about it go live your godless life you selfish bastard “What’s the problem, Dad?” “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Matthew called and said you needed to be checked on.”

“Where the hell is Matthew then?”

“He’s coming. He called me because I’m closer.”

“Everyone needs to mind their damn business.”

“We’re not done talking yet, Hank,” the neighbor said.

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“I just told you to mind your damn business.”

“Who are you?” David said to the neighbor.

“I live down the road …”

“Ethel!” Hank yelled from his chair, his face so red and his eyes bulging with pain and madness, his head throbbing with countless voices and with panic and confusion, and a knife was in his chest now, and he felt no air in his lungs and wasn’t sure at all if he was breathing or not just settle down and breathe dad said to me but I was so confused I settled down and the wind came back to me but where did the skateboard go it kept going down the hill don’t tell mom “I’m with Pastor, he’s looking at the computer mail for us,” Ethel said.

“You need to tell me where you’re hurting, Dad. You look terrible.”

“Look at that lot over there. Looks better, doesn’t it,” Hank said to the neighbor, turning sideways in his chair and pulling his leg up toward his chest.

“Mom, call 911.”

“Is he okay?” The neighbor said to David.

“For who?” she called back. “What’s wrong?”

David pulled the phone from his pocket and dialed himself.

“My God, what can I do to help?” asked the neighbor.

“Look at that lot, is what you should do,” Hank said. “I was with her in that grass once but now the house is gone. What about that import, huh?”

A minivan pulled up and parked on the road, and at the same time Pastor and Ethel came from the house, and Hank listened to his son describe into the phone his age and his position in the chair, listened as he talked about his hatred of him after so many years, and Matthew jumped from the driver’s side and ran to the crowd, and Ethel went to a panic when she saw the color of her husband and the anguish in his eyes, and Hank thought she never looked so beautiful and he embraced her and lifted her veil and kissed her, and the minivan doors opened again and kids came out, but Matthew turned and yelled, “I told you to stay in the car,” and they stopped in their tracks, and 81

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David said, “why the hell did you bring them?” and Matthew said that there was nobody to watch them, and Pastor stood over Hank and said, “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” and Matthew said “let’s get him out of the chair and lay him down,” and David said, “get the kids out of here, Matt, they shouldn’t see this,” and while Hank was on his back and looking up into the clouds I was on a plane and looking down upon them for the first time, a sea of them, like mounds of the whitest snow all the way to the horizon in the distance I heard the sounds of a siren I said to dad to hang on just a minute longer until help came but he didn’t answer I remember not expecting him to believe he could be helped because I wasn’t sure of it myself.

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Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

Touch of Self-Knowledge 83

Jeffrey N. Johnson Jeffrey N. Johnson

Things Boys Bury

His limbs were shattered from war games so I buried his plastic parts under a rock in the back yard.

Years later I showed the grave to my son, then only a boy, and yes we agreed, we must dig him up.

He turned over the rock and uncovered a pasty white lizard in hibernation entwined in the remains of the dead GI. We’d better let him sleep, he said, gently replacing the rock over the tomb.

In Iraq my son made travel safe by camping on rooftops with his scope.

Young men digging by the road were shattered by the draw of his index finger, while families below huddled together wondering where their children were.

Now he lives in Texas with his bride riding through school on the GI bill.

When he is able to sleep, he dreams only of paralysis, but in the spring he will awaken to the birth of a son who will bury things in the back yard, as all boys do.

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Contributor Bios S. Bennett's writing appears in a number of literary magazines, including Alecart (RO), The George Washington Review, Metropolitan, The Nassau Review, Paris Transcontinental (FR), The William and Mary Review, and upcoming in The Wisconsin Review. The poem, "Ailes de Pigeon," is from a collection entitled ANTONIA'S ARABESQUE.

Roy Bentley is the author of four collections: Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama, 1986), Any One Man (Bottom Dog, 1992), The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana (White Pine Press, 2006), and Starlight Taxi (Lynx House Press, 2013) which won the 2012 Blue Lynx Poetry Prize. He lives in Pataskala, Ohio.

Marc Berman is a business executive from western Massachusetts. He began writing on planes during business trips. His work has appeared in various journals and publications throughout the USA, Canada, and England.

Andrew Bertaina currently lives and works in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in more than twenty publications including: The Three Penny Review, Hobart, Fiction Southeast, Literary Orphans,Whiskey Paper, Eclectica, Prick of the Spindle, Bayou Magazine, and Catamaran Literary Reader.

Allen Forrest, graphic artist and painter, was born in Canada and bred in the U.S. He has created cover art and illustrations for literary publications and books. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection. Forrest's expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.

Wendy J. Fox is the author of The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories (Press 53, 2014) and the novel The Pull of It (forthcoming, 2016, Underground Voices). Her fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Tampa Review, The Missouri Review, and The Pinch, among others.

Alex M. Frankel’s first full-length poetry collection, Birth Mother Mercy, was published by Lummox Press in November, 2013. He also has a chapbook called My Father’s Lady, Wearing Black (Conflux Press). He's working on a memoir about being adopted and his attempts to reunite with his birth parents.

M. Guendelsberger is a novelist and short story writer who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife, daughter, two cats, and a basset hound. His novel, An End to Something, was published in October 2014.

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Daniel M. Jaffe is author of the novels, THE GENEALOGY OF UNDERSTANDING (Lethe Press, 2014) and THE LIMITS OF PLEASURE (Bear Bones Books, 2010), and the short story collection, JEWISH GENTLE AND OTHER STORIES OF GAY-JEWISH LIVING (Lethe Press, 2011). His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Jeffrey Johnson’s debut novel, The Hunger Artist, was a Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award finalist. His poems have or will appear in Birmingham Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, Red Rock Review and Gargoyle, and his stories in The Sewanee Review, Connecticut Review, Lake Effect, Evansville Review, and Wisconsin Review.

Lee L. Krecklow is a writer living in the Milwaukee area. His short fiction has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Gravel, The Madison Review, The Tishman Review, 100 Word Story and others. His first novel, The Expanse Between, will be released by Winter Goose Publishing in 2017. Please visit him at www.leelkrecklow.com.

Michael McInnis lives in Boston and served six years in the Navy chasing white whales and Soviet submarines. He has published poetry and short fiction in numerous little magazines and small presses.

Mohammad Ali Mirzaei was born in Tehran, Iran and holds a BA in the field of News Photography from the University of Culture & Art Isfahan. His work has appeared in various festivals in Iran, including: first place from the "National Festival of Iranian people", "Women and urban life", and winner of Best Collection in “Festival of Film & Photo Young Cinema.” His work was chosen for the Fereshteh Prize (Tehran 2015) and has appeared in the Midway Journal (Issue 10, Vol 2).

Michelle Morouse is a Detroit area pediatrician. Her work has appeared previously in Oxford Magazine, and in The Southeast Review and Alimentum, among others. She is a member of Detroit Working Writers, Springfed Arts, and Poetry Society of Michigan.

Louis Staeble, fine arts photographer and poet, lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in Agave, Blinders Journal, Blue Hour, Conclave Journal, Elsewhere Magazine, GFT Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Four Ties Literary Review, Inklette Magazine, Microfiction Monday, Paper Tape Magazine, Qwerty, Revolution John, Rose Red Review, Sonder Review, Timber Journal, Tishman Review and Your Impossible Voice. His web pages can be viewed either at http://staeblestudioa.weebly.com or http://lstaebl.wix.com/closeup.

Lindsey Walker studied English/creative writing at Seattle University. She works as a travel writer and teaches Women’s Creative Writing at King County Jail. Outside of work, Lindsey is probably drinking bourbon, globetrotting, and working on her left hook. Visit her derelict site chock full of broken links at https://lindseywalker.wordpress.com/.

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