Burned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gabriel Shanks

laughed when she saw where I landed.

That rat was the size of a full-grown

cat.

And then Joe ’ s screaming.

“Freya! Table four is waiting on their nachos and the guy with the scotch looks pretty damned hot about it. ”

Oh great, I’ m thinking while Alva ’ s leaning against the wall near the door by then, getting ready to light an unfiltered Camel even though any other waitress would be afraid of being fired if she broke the no smoking in the kitchen rule.

“You want me to take that table, Freya?” After that, Alva ’ s the one thing in my otherwise dim life that shines.

For a town where the bulb and filament were perfected right in a lab on the main drag, Fort Myers surely is no bright light. Coltrane ’ s is smoky, blue-gray haze hanging over tables of desperate out-oftowners over-paying for cocktails. No jazz, despite the restaurant’ s pretentious name. The usual night’ s entertainment is some group of overweight bikers doing bad covers of Dylan songs. There ’ s always some girl channeling Janis Joplin, throwing back Southern Comfort and showing her navel ring to a bunch of guys who would probably rather be taking each other home.

“Just like every one else around here—a real riot, ” Alva commented to me the day we saw the photos: Edison on a camping trip, Edison on the porch sipping lemonade, Edison fishing with one of his six children. Tie and jacket, pressed pants and straw bowler hat present in every shot.

It was my idea to tour the Edison and Ford estates. The only place I knew well was Jersey. I wanted to be a tourist when I was off work. Alva had lived in Fort Myers all her life, never bothered with the city ’ s stars: Edison, Ford.

“You ’ re a decent sidekick, Freya, ” Alva told me. “But sometimes you have the strangest ideas of what constitutes a good time. ”

Then she came into Coltrane ’ s one night and told me what I catalogued as one of her bigger whoppers.

“He ’ s no biggie, ” she told me the fifth time I harangued her about how important T. Alva E. was. “Only really important thing he ever did was me, indirectly, I mean. ”

She had me, I admit, though all I did was raise an eyebrow.

“Oh. Didn ’t I tell you he ’ s supposedly my illegitimate grandfather?”

I thought she was humoring me. All either of us really wanted to do was get the highball glasses dried and put away before the first set started and the customers were screaming for service. It was the end of a particularly draining week, the chiropractors and Barcalounger salesmen in town at the same time for their conventions.

“No shit, your grandfather?

“No shit at all, ” she said.

“Well, that just sounds good to me; I would give one of my flabby arms to be able to claim kin other than the ones I own. My grandfather? His last stroll down the proverbial aisle ’ s what got me down here. Too bad you couldn ’t have

Burned

by Gabriel Shanks

A course of action: to not think about that. Instead, find a recipe, one that calls for flour, salt, wounds, and tiny daggers.

In a mixing bowl, sift until snowfall covers the sinkhole entirely, in bitter perfection. While it bakes, catch your breath. Think of swampland.

Wait an hour, silently; when the sunken submersible of dignity rises from the deep, stick a pin in it. Inhale heat and its flavors.

While waiting, sponge and scrub countertops. They won 't be clean, but good enough. Place in the window to cool. Eat with your hands.

Gabriel Shanks lives and works in the New York City area. An award-winning poet, playwright and stage director, he was one of the creators of The Village Fragments, which received a 2007 OBIE Award. His poetry has been published in From Now On, Spark, Chopin With Cherries (2010) and elsewhere; theatrical recognitions include the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award, the Southern Young Playwrights Award and the Theatre Project Honor for Outstanding Vision. He was recently named a "New Arts Leader " by the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.