When My Father Was a Son

When my

father was a

son, he wrote letters to

my children. I have read

those letters, they

are drawn

and discarded

in every word he speaks.

All conversation is correspondence.

If I

could give you some

thing, I would bury and

seal my father’s letter to you

from me.

The Flapping Thing

It was a flapping thing.

Under the bright, full moon, he’d not switched on the outdoor light nor had he lit lamp or candle and somehow from the shadows, the thing flapped across the wooden, upper-story deck.

It was a black thing. It was a black, round thing shot through with glittering flashes of metallic yellow. It was a round thing, no more than three inches thick in its middle and thinned considerably out to the edges of its round body, a foot wide, two feet wide. Maybe less. Its rectangular body. Its ovoid body. It seemed to be changing as it flapped itself across the boards.

‘What is that?’ David thought, and he rose from his deck chair to get closer though he didn't light a lamp or use the flashlight.

“What is that?” David asked aloud though no one inside, not Janet in the kitchen finishing the dishes, not Andy in his room “on his computer,” not Sarah gone so far, it seemed, she had become past tense even when present.

“What is that?” he again asked again knowing no one would hear him.

David reached down and with his right forefinger, touched its glittering blackness, its sandpapery, shark-skinned, slimy, slick, dry, and scaly wing and the pain was instantaneous and of a kind he could only describe as “exquisite,” a precise and high-pitched pain that pierced him completely from that small contact with his fingertip to the farthest limits of his being, each nerve in his body whining the same razor needled song, each synapse in his brain snapping down with a clearly audible and synchronized click. As he snatched his fingertip away from the flapping black thing’s horrible skin, David knew he’d been poisoned, that the rot and suppuration of first his finger, then his hand, then his arm, then his heart and his head would not kill him, but it would, instead, change him and he sat back in his deck chair.

He reached for his glass with his left hand and took a small swallow of bourbon and melted ice water. He felt the infection, the invasion, the transformation of his physical self moving methodically through the flesh of his right arm. He felt the poisonous thoughts begin to well up inside his envenomed brain.

David leaned his head back and looked at the sky, at the night sky, at the few stars that penetrated the thick layer of suburban light pollution, and he wondered at the sudden clarity with which he could perceive the anti-constellations formed not from the stars or planets themselves, the few that he could see, but from the emptiness between them.

The black flapping thing paused and became just a black thing. If it had eyes, it, too, may have been looking at the sky.

‘Maybe,” David thought, ‘it sees with something different than eyes.’

He could clearly see the shapes in the sky, wondered how he’d never seen them before, the negative space between the heavenly bodies patterned and embodied. The Leech, The Nailed Pig, The Hungry Man, The Flayed Swan, The Wound—all new constellations seemed to step forward from the background of the sky, from behind the stars and planets scattered there, to become a new kind of zodiac, one that David could clearly understand and read.

It didn’t look good.

The black thing became like a starfish or an anemone or a chrysanthemum and it stood itself up on the points of pseudopodia, but the exact number of legs is extended was unclear. It was better not to look at it directly, David decided, but instead to watch it through his peripheral vision where it seemed to gel something with into a more understandable image. It legs, its pseudopodia, its fingers, whatever they were, pushed the black thing’s thicker middle up and up until it stood as high as David sitting down.

“What is that thing?” he asked again just as the first wave of corruption hit his chest, strangled his heart, pushed the air from his lungs, and possessed him. David’s mind folded into itself many times as his body ratcheted into a new form until what was left was not really David at all anymore in any conventional sense. Whatever it was whatever David had become and extended and at least one and probably no more that six glittering black phalanges to first envelope and then bring to David’s glittering black pseudo-mouth the last swallow of bourbon and water.

The other black flapping stretching thing began to sing and David instantly understood the meaning of that song, could feel the click as its meaning fell into new shape of his new brain and he wondered what and for how long Janet and Andy and Sarah would think as events unfolded, as his pseudo-voice began to harmonize with the other black thing, with the new formations in the sky, with his black glittering future.

Painting the Golden Gate Bridge

I think of him every day,
my father,
and always on my drive to work,
and I think of his,
my father’s,
work painting the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was the only job he,
my father,
ever had;
27 years in the rigging with brush and buckets of
Golden Gate paint
(orange vermilion called "International Orange"),
enough Golden Gate paint
to float an aircraft carrier or
an armada of small sailboats
each with a happy family aboard,
enough Golden Gate paint
to raise a family and buy a house,
to send two kids to college
and another to art school,
enough Golden Gate paint
to start three families
who bought three houses
to fill with grandchildren
and a divorce or two
and dogs barking in the yards
and barbeque grills for Saturday cookouts
with the whole family.

He,
my father,
painted every day, all day,
the endless job of painting the Golden Gate Bridge;
from north to south on the bay side
and then from south to north on the ocean side
and always to begin again,
north to south,
every day in all weather and never finished,
a möbius strip of painting
that kept him,
my father,
smelling of acetone and benzene and Golden Gate paint
until the day the knot slipped,
until the day the link snapped,
and he,
my father,
toppled backward into the sea
accompanied by a smooth, gliding arc of Golden Gate paint,

And so, yes, today, like every other day,
I tie the knot and snap the link,
take my bucket of Golden Gate paint and my brush
and lower myself down to
pick up the job where he,
my father,
left it.

When the Sun Shines Even Though It’s Raining

It was Saturday morning about 9 o’clock and Pop came in off the porch.

"Any of you kids ever see the ocean?” he asked us. We were still in our pajamas watching some Saturday cartoons on the beat-up old black-and-white with the coat hanger for an antenna. Nobody said a word and, instead, watched the poorly drawn animals beat each other up on the screen.

“I said,” Pop continued, raising his voice to the “someone better answer me” level. “I said, ‘Any of you kids ever see the ocean?’”

“No, sir,” I answered, assuming my role as eldest and spokesman. “I don’t think any of us ever seen the ocean.”

The ocean was actually the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico was about 25 miles south or maybe west of us and where we were living. I’d heard about it and plenty of kids at school had seen it and told about it but I was pretty sure I’d never been there. I was pretty sure that none of us had been more than five miles from that house in our lives and I was 9 at the time and WalMart was, I estimated, about five miles away from our house because it had taken me about two hours to walk back from WalMart last year when Pop said I was acting like an asshole in auto parts and just left me there.

“Then we’re going to see the ocean today,” Pop announced. “Marie! Marie! Where the hell are you, Marie?”

We all just stared at the television knowing full well that Mom was still laid up in bed after the Friday night they’d had. I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to walk back and forth from WalMart five times. I figured it would take me ten or eleven hours and that was how far away the Gulf of Mexico was, ten or eleven hours of walking and it might as well have been Ding Dang Dong in China.

“Goddammit, Marie,” Pop muttered as he went off to look for her as if he had no idea where she was. “We got us a car to pack up.”

It took the family three hours to get ready to go to the ocean. We had to find all the things Pop said we’d need—towels, bug spray, shorts and t-shirts because none of us had a bathing suit, the old Polaroid to take photos to document our trip and paste into an album we didn’t have, peanut butter sandwiches for lunch in the sun, toys so we could play in the sugar sand Pop said the ocean was beached up with. Mom sat at the kitchen table drinking cup after cup of instant coffee and smoking Virginia Slim Menthol 100s one after the other. Pop was in charge of his refreshments and us kids did everything else under his direction. Connie started crying which wasn’t unusual since Connie cried at least once every day and that day she cried twice. The first time was for I don’t know what and the second time was when Pop smacked her face to get her to stop crying the first time.

“Get you a little shovel and a pail for digging in that sugar sand,” he said and off we went looking for such things.

“Can’t find no little shovels or a pail,” one of us told him.

“Goddammit,” he answered and ended up shoving a broken up garden spade and a plastic flowerpot into the trunk of the Ford. “Gotta do every little goddamn thing myself.”

“Get you one of those blow-up rings for swimming,” he told us.

Later, one of us came up and told him the bad news.

“Can’t find no blow-up ring thing for swimming.”

“Goddammit,” he answered and ended up shoving some black plastic garbage bags into the growing tangle of beach gear filling the Ford’s trunk. “Kids got no sense at all. Garbage bag’s like a big balloon anyhow. Blow one up and paddle around all day.”

It took us about three hours to fill up the trunk with all the stuff Pop said we should take to have fun at the ocean and then it took another half an hour to get Mom in travel shape. She got herself dressed, filled up one of those convenience store plastic mugs with about half-a-gallon of instant coffee, and shoved an extra pack of cigarettes into her purse. We all climbed into the Ford, kids in the back and grown-ups in the front with a mug of coffee between her legs and a can of beer between his, and Pop started driving us to the ocean.

By my reckoning, we’d gone about seven and a half miles or about a 90-minute walk when the left rear tire blew out. Everybody stayed real quiet and then Pop got out of the car and slammed the driver’s side door so hard the rearview mirror cracked. It was just one more thing.

About that time and even though the sun was still beating down sort of smoky hot and fierce, it started to rain a bit and the drops that hit him made little dark circles on his t-shirt. Pop just stood there in front of the Ford getting wet and saying “goddammit” over and over again.

“When I was a little girl, you know what we used to say when it would rain like this when the sun was still shining?” Mom finally said.

“No’m,” I answered. Connie was sniffling beside me.

“Us kids used to say that the devil was beating his wife.”

Diminishing Form #34

Cesarean and Scoliosus
work the phones and bones
and go out late at night
to fuck the men
who call them on the phone to come over

And it’s hotels and motels and holiday inns
and they are always blond
because that’s what they want
the men who want the blond girls

And it’s babies at home
and grandmas and girlfriends
and boyfriends going to jail

There are all of us
under the downtown lights

exchanging currency we made up in our heads

Our Barbies, Ourselves

We were sitting on the porch, Stephanie and I, drinking glasses of ice-cold water and eating saltine crackers. They both hit our spots. Crickets were chirping in the gloaming nightfall and we could hear the kids, one block over, trying desperately to milk one last inning of softball from the gathering darkness.

"I can see," yelled Cinnamon. "I can still see perfectly. Just pitch the motherfucking ball, alright?"

"Such a mouth," giggled Stephanie.

I took a long drink and put another cracker in my mouth. Across the street, the Anderson's living room window changed from blue to grey to blue again as they switched channels from Entertainment Tonight all the way over to A Current Affair. Those Anderson. I could set my watch by them and their ever so regular viewing habits. And I did. Eight-oh-three.

"You're out!" shrieked Jasmine in the middle of the play. "Stop running, you running cunt! I tagged you three fucking years ago. You're out!"

"Fuck you!" came Lilac's retort.

Can that Lilac retort? I think so, and Stephanie does, too.

"If I'm still moving, you're still losing. Tag this, you stupid little whore!"

Stephanie and I both smiled, separately though simultaneously, to imagine little Lilac's gesture. There, in the kind of darkness that encloses us when that kind of darkness falls, we could see the dim forms of catfish on the lawn. They walked, in the kind of way they walk when they walk across our lawn, slowly and without rhythm. Like catfish.

Lilac's voice rose an octave. The fish paused then redoubled their motile thrashings. Stephanie and I both smiled, separately though simultaneously, to imagine little Lilac's distress. We could hear the dull sound wood makes, Louisville Slugger wood specifically, when it hits girl flesh. I put a saltine cracker on my tongue and closed my mouth. It, the cracker, began to dissolve.

"More ice cold water?" Stephanie asked.

"Mmm-mmm," I answered around the cracker. She filled my glass until the water bulged, trembling, against the rim of the glass. We could hear the shrieks of the girls floating toward us and the gentle shiver of breaking glass.

In that moment, hung against the twilit paint of another evening's end, the girls came pounding across the Mitchell lawn with sports equipment akimbo.

"You girls," Stephanie smiled at them.

"How was the game? You girls?" I asked them all through the paste in my mouth, the remains of my saltine cracker.

It Seemed Harmless

It seemed harmless at first, and so we just let him keep doing it and he sat there for hours on the porch cutting pictures and photographs of animals from any newspaper or magazine or pamphlet he could find and it seemed like the only time he wasn’t on the porch cutting out pictures of animals was when he was out looking for more pamphlets, newspapers, or magazines and from which he cut more pictures and photographs of animals or, if he wasn’t doing that, he was pinning with straight pins all those pictures and photographs of animals on the walls of, first, his room and when it was clear that he’d finished in there, pictures and photographs of animals spilled out into the hallway and down into the living room and kitchen not to mention the tattered leftover newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines fluttering around the porch and rolling across the lawn, each more-or-less complete except where pictures and photographs of animals had once been printed and he had cut them out to pin inside the house and were now a negative space, a silhouette of an empty nothing shaped like a tiger or a walrus or a ladybug or a basket full of cute baby kittens and just because he was doing that and because of the way the yard and porch and the inside of the house started looking, they took to calling us all names and whatnot and that, I believe, is not fair at all.

One-Handed

“Kee-rist,” the Old Man’d say when he settled into his chair, some kind of cheap fake Laz-E-Boy recliner maybe even from the Salvation Army or, like he said it, “Salivation Army.” If anybody’d ask him, “Say, Pop, just where did that chair come from? Where’d you get it, Pop?” he’d just say “Watch a you seff” and that was that. Maybe we’d laugh about it, you know, but not so’s he could see.

The Old Man liked to do things one-handed; boy I remember that, whether it was splitting the tax stamp on a pint of Jim Beam or, like he said it, “Mr. Bem” like that, or lighting a match for a usable White Owl stump or giving one of us a crack on the back of the head with those thick, hard knuckles of his. It used to bug me a bunch, but I think I know why he liked to do it, why being able to do things with one hand like that made him feel like he knew what he was doing and it showed when he could do it. The Old Man loved it when he’d catch one of us trying to do something one-handed. He’d grin, you know, he’d be “bemming” from ear to ear.

Came in handy, too, that habit, when the Old Man got one of his paws jammed up in his lathe, split it down the middle like a codfish and in those days they weren’t trying to save nothing, they weren’t sewing nothing back on. It was, like, “There you go, Mister, there’s your hook and there’s a couple grand, too. Send one of your boys around when he’s big enough to stand in your spot and do what you did for the rest of his life.” Even those days a couple a grand didn’t go too damn far and when it was gone, it was just gone and that was that.

Anticipating Steak

Toward the end of the summer of 1966, Pop decided to build a brick barbecue grill in the backyard. One weekend, he took me to the public library and parked me and Tanya, my big floppy doll, in the children’s section while he looked through various how-to kinds of books and Sunset Magazine pamphlets until he found a plan that he liked. Pop checked out his books and I checked out mine. I’d had my own library card since first grade.

A couple of evenings during the next week, after he’d finished his shift and come home from the plant, we’d go out back with the tape measure and the beam level and plan it out. Pop did some experiments; he stood at the spot he would be standing if that were the spot we decided to build the barbecue.

“Okay now, son,” he said. “Go in the kitchen and pretend to bring me a big platter of T-bone steaks.”

I’d go inside through the sliding glass door, count to ten, and Tanya like it was the Melmac platter piled up with meat. Pop would watch me carefully while my mom would watch us both through the kitchen window. He watched how I came out and where I was walking.

“How was that?” I’d ask him after serving him Tanya.

“Pretty good, pretty good,” he’d answer. “I think a few more feet back and maybe over toward the willow some.” Pop wanted the layout to be efficient, to not require waste in travel time. He’d move and we’d repeat the experiment.

“Nadine,” he’d call to my mom. “Nadine. What do you think about this spot?” She’d wave her hands through the glass and he’d move an inch or two in that direction and then I’d go back into the house with Tanya for another dry run.

“Hey, these steaks are going to be good,” Pop told me as he pretended to cook them.

The weekend after, we went to the brickyard with a list of materials, mostly bricks and mortar, that we’d need to build the grill. The parking lot was full of other pickup trucks.

Pop took his list and started looking at the piles of bricks in the yard. All different sizes, shapes, and colors, they formed what to me looked like a small city with streets and alleys. I sort of tagged along behind him, wandering this way and that, while Tanya sort of drug in the dirt behind me. I liked the way it smelled there.

Up ahead of us, I saw my father stop and start talking to one of the other men looking through the bricks, a man named Fisher Martin who worked at another factory but his kids went to the same school as me, a boy in the third grade like me and twin girls in sixth. I kept wandering but let myself gravitate toward where they learned against a pile of cinder blocks. They were smoking cigarettes.

After just a little while, there I was right next to them, knee level, and looking up.

“Hey, Mr. Martin,” I said.

He just looked down at me for a moment.

“Well, hey there,” he finally said.

“Is Nelson here?” I asked him in reference to his boy.

Mr. Martin just kept looking at me and I noticed he was also looking at Tanya a bit and I got embarrassed. I mean, I was a little kid and all, but not too little to know what some people thought about me dragging a doll around.

“He’s playing ball,” Mr. Martin told me.

“Umm.” I made that noise because I was sure out of things to say and pretty much wished I hadn’t said anything. Pop was looking at Mr. Martin and I felt pretty bad for him there in the brickyard with me and Tanya.

“You ever play much ball, son?” Mr. Martin continued. “I mean, I don’t see you too much down to the ball fields. You ever think about playing ball?”

I started feeling even worse then. Pop wasn’t saying anything at all and I really wished I’d left Tanya at home. I just wasn’t thinking. Mr. Martin didn’t like all that quiet and had to fill it up.

“How old are you?” he asked me, but he was looking at Pop. “I mean, how come I never see you playing with the boys and such? And just what is that you’re dragging around behind you? It ain’t a big old doll, is it?”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say to answer him. He’d asked too many questions and the answers weren’t lining up in my head to give him. I just looked down into the brickyard dust.

There was a flurry of quick movement in the corner of my eye and the next thing I knew, there was Mr. Martin down there in the dirt. I was a little surprised to see him there.

“Whoa, Fisher,” I heard Pop say and he was leaning down to pull Mr. Martin up to his feet. Mr. Martin was red and wheezing and Pop just sort of handled him. “You oughta be a whole lot more careful. Looks like you slipped or something there.”

Pop leaned Mr. Martin up against the cinder blocks and patted some of the dust off him.

“You better just rest a minute there, Fisher,” Pop told him. “Think some about safety.”

He had Mr. Martin’s cap in his hand and whacked it a few times against his thigh before he set it back on Mr. Martin’s head. It was a little crooked up there and Mr. Martin was still wheezing, his eyes were wet looking, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

Pop reached down and took my hand.

“Come on, son,” he said. “Let’s let old Fisher Martin catch his wind here and we’ll go get us some bricks.”

Cool Turtles I Have Known

Okay. This is me and I want to tell you guys some stories I know about turtles; some of these are true stories about turtles, some are stories I only heard about turtles and some are maybe stories I made up about turtles.

Number One

I have a cousin and we’ll call him Gary because that’s what his mom and dad, my aunt and uncle, named him. His name is Gary and when he was a little boy, somebody brought a turtle over to his house and showed it to him. Gary didn’t know it was a turtle and he said “COOKIE!” really loud and he snatched the turtle up and he put it in his mouth.

Nobody got hurt. The turtle was okay and Gary was okay. Still, it was an important day for everybody that was there. We all heard about it later. It’s the kind of story that families tell over and over and over again. I don’t know what happened to the turtle.

Number Two

There was a turtle named Maybelline because she had such beautiful eyes because Maybelline is a kind of eye make-up that girls wear sometimes. Anyway, she lived here and there around the Rio Grande in New Mexico until one day a kid snatched her up and put her in a box and then drove her up the bosque into Albuquerque. For a while, Maybelline lived in the pet store that where the boy sold her. Then the pet store sold her to me.

It was pretty good when Maybelline came to stay with us. We had a bunch of pets then and she just fit right in and became part of the family.

Then, one dark night a terrible storm blew in to Albuquerque and, while the lightening flashed blue and the thunder rolled heavy, a strong blast of wind opened up the screen door. In her fright, Maybelline slipped out that open door and nobody noticed until it was too late! We looked and looked for Maybelline that night. We got some flashlights and we looked under the bushes and, even though it was a silly thing to do, we called out, “Maybelline! Oh, Maybelline! Where are you?”

And we were really sad when we didn’t find her. We stayed up extra late that night and got up extra early the next morning, but we couldn’t find Maybelline.

Well. One whole year went by and we sure missed Maybelline. We managed to get by, somehow, but we often thought of her and how her beautiful eyes would sparkle when she saw a tasty strawberry.

Here comes the good part. After all that time (remember, we waited one whole year) a friend of ours called up on the telephone.

“You guys like turtles, right?” he asked us.

We said, “Of course. You bet. Sure thing. No problem.” And then we asked him, “Why do you ask?”

He said, “I found this really good looking turtle in the middle of a very busy street so I stopped and I picked her up but I don’t want to keep her so I thought I would call you and see if you guys together would want to see that she gets a good home.”

“Sure. Of course. You bet. Sure thing. No problem.”” we said. “You bring that good looking turtle right over here as quickly as you can.”

(Have you guessed it yet?)

When that guy, our friend, came over with the turtle he had found we took one look and we knew right away that it was Maybelline. Who else would look at us with such beautiful eyes?

Number Three

When I was a really little boy, long before I could ever read a book by myself, I had a little turtle with red cheeks that lived in a bowl with a plastic palm tree on a plastic island in the middle. I named that turtle “Rockla” and it was the same kind of turtle with red cheeks that my cousin Gary thought was a cookie when he was a little boy.

Number Four

Just the other day I read in the newspaper about a man who called the emergency line in his home town, that 911 number, and said, “I hab a turdel ond by dose” and all the emergency operators thought he was joking until the paramedic guys showed up and had to take it, a real life turtle, off his, a real life guy’s, nose with some pliers.

Number Five

When I was a little kid I had some friends who were boys and who were brothers and they had a big turtle but I can’t remember what that turtle’s name was. Anyway, one hot summer day when little boys like us, my friends and me, start getting sleepy and turtles like theirs just start getting energized, that turtle that they had decided to go swimming and that’s the last we ever saw of that turtle and we all remember how the grown-ups that summer kept making fun of us because we let a turtle run away. They’d act like they were acting like us and talk in funny, slow-motion voices and pretend to run in slow-motion calling, “Cooommmme baaaaaack, tuuuuuurtle” in slow-motion voices.

We looked everywhere for that turtle but we could never find him.

Number Six

They told us one time that some people think the whole entire world rests on the back of one big big turtle and I remember thinking then, at that time, that if anybody could hold up the world, a turtle probably could. It might make a little, soft noise and it might make a little, soft tear, but you can bet that turtle would never let the world drop. No way, turtle!

Number Seven

On time when it was spring, we went to visit our friends Peter and Anne and they live way up in Taos, New Mexico. When we got up in the morning and they were making up the breakfast that we were going to eat, there was this big scratching sound from a big box they had. At first, nobody knew what it was and then we knew right away what we had heard. It was the turtles waking up. They had been sleeping all winter long in that cardboard box and then, that morning, they decided to wake up and look around.

We all went outside to eat our breakfasts and we watched the turtles blink at the sunshine they hadn’t seen in so long and then start taking big bites out of the daffodils which they hadn’t eaten since last year and we all kept taking big bites of pancakes and saying, “Good morning, turtles! Good morning, sleepyheads!”

Number Eight

One time a turtle saved my life. I was just going to college for my very second semester of my very first year and I was just walking down a very flat road in Sarasota, Florida, where my college was when I saw a sparkle in the bushes. I was much younger than I am now then and so I decided to go over and see what was sparkling there by the side of the road. It was a turtle in the weeds by the side of the road and the reason that turtle’s eyes were sparkling was because there was this crazy driver coming up behind me and he would have hit me unless his headlights had hit that turtle’s eyes and led me off the flat road to safety

Number Nine

Our latest turtle is really cool. We named her Cookie after the turtle my cousin Gary almost ate that time. This new Cookie got real sick one time and we had to take her to the veterinarian. The doctor told us all sorts of things we didn’t know about turtles. She told us they need Vitamin A for their eyes. She told us a vitamin shot every once in a while sure wouldn’t hurt them. She told us how old Cookie was by looking at one of her scales under a microscope. It turns out that Cookie is 6 years old.

Right now, Cookie is asleep in the garage in a box full of blankets and newspapers. That’s how she’ll spend the winter. When springtime comes, she’ll wake up and we’ll all be so glad to see her.

“Good morning, Cookie!” we will say. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Accidental Seabirds: A Play

The Cast:

Natural Forces, male or female
Thing One, youthful male or female
Thing Two, youthful male or female
A Blacksmith, male
Mom, adult female
Dad, adult male
Junior, adolescent male
Sis, adolescent female
Little Bit, female child
A Booming Voice, male or female
The Crowd, male and female
(certainly, some of these roles may be played by the same actors)


[Pitch black stage. The sounds of movement--whispers, scuffles--grow to become audible but not nearly overwhelming enough to demand attention. Lights snap full on to bare stage with NATURAL FORCES way off to the back at the side. S/he speaks.]

NATURAL FORCES:

I am called Natural Forces and I will be hovering around the edges of things this evening. As you may recall from what you’ve called your educations, I am usually symbolically and always only dimly understood.

It is easier for your teachers to talk to you with puppets than to tell you the truth. They will tell you the sun is an orange in the sky and it is easier for you to conceive the sun an orange than otherwise. Your teachers will show you a few nuts and seeds; these will be called planets and set to turning around the orange sun. And it is fixed in your heads that you can imagine the solar system. There are so many people who think the sun is an orange surrounded by walnuts glued to thread and that is how they live.

They have shown you filmstrips about anthropomorphic subatomic particles, and have fixed in your heads the notions of emotive protons and neurons with subatomic attractions and repulsions and uncontrollable excitments and personal subatomic names on their subatomic sweaters. A molecule is conceived of as an arrangement of teeny weenie Styrofoam balls and toothpicks. And there is a glimmer in your heads of how the world is bent and stopped and started again every fraction of every instant and that glimmer is wrong.

There is no more comfortable way to see disease, the way in which the body falls apart to senselessness and rot, than to make it a cartoon, grimacing animunculus under Van Louenhook’s glass, little Disney germs in army helmets fighting against the little good guy germs of health and hygiene.

These illusions are better, make life much easier, than it would be facing the workings of my machinery. You may not perceive my motives; you are not equipped to see my consequences.

[dismissively]

Anyway, ‘nuff said. Check it out.


[Music of some sort. Nothing cheesy--a small ensemble of woodwinds or a gamalon or talk radio tapes played backwards.

THE CROWD filters onto the stage and NATURAL FORCES blends in with their activity, is quickly lost from sight. THE CROWD works in a friendly, cooperative fashion to construct a modular set that, at first, resembles some sort of medieval village. As the set is quickly completed, THE CROWD begins to assume roles within the context of the actions to follow; i.e. in one sequence, a particular CROWD member may assume the role of cafe patron while the principals emote and strut and, in another sequence, slip into the role of policeman. Etc.

THE CROWD breaks into small groups and begins to arrange itself in the manner of townspeople--shopping, selling, gossiping.

Enter two youths wearing THING ONE and THING TWO sweatshirts.]


THING ONE:

Oh, Thing Two. This whole Middle Ages stuff is absolutely terrible. I am getting absolutely, terribly sick and tired of alchemy and astrology. I ache for chemistry and astronomy. I need physics and biology. I want to read books written in a vernacular tongue. I want to grind lenses so that we can see some different things. I need to send and receive messages over great distances. I’m tired of talking to priests


THING TWO:

I’d like to go to Italy and sit in the sun and invent a machine, a machine mind you, that could fly. I would use it to find Prestor John in his Asian kingdom. I would fly to Africa and see the palace of She Who Is To Be Obeyed. I would like to visit the moon.

THING ONE:

Okay. That’s the idea. I think you’re on the right track. But rather than posit a future, I would rather take this time to dwell on the misery of the present.

You know. Cathedrals. Crusades. The Plagues. No cable. I really think we were born in the wrong century.

THING TWO:

Oh, yes, Thing One, I must agree. If we had lived in the Age of Philosophy or with the Noble Romans, think how we might have flourished! Think what possibilities for change may have existed for us. With what we know now, we could have constructed Pliny’s zoological garden. With the machines I may invent from linen and bronze, we could collect the griffen and giraffalope and those little pygmy guys with one eye in their tummies. We could do it, Thing One. We really could.

THING ONE:

Well, yeah. We could do that, too. But I thought more to think of things more new. To try to think of things not yet imaginable, to name a color unseen, to watch a sun blaze a dawn that is yet to be novaed into existence.

I was lamenting, Thing Two, our place in history when so much past and so much future weigh so heavily on this feeble slip called our present.

And we here, Thing Two, we rot in an Era of Closed Minds when change of any nature is viewed as heresy.

THING TWO:

Or the future! When things untold exist yet still in the minds of men unborn. Some earthly heaven yet to be terrestrial. The future time when all humors become equal within the tides of men; when angels return to earth to guide our hands upon the plows of Utopia.

[A member of THE CROWD steps slightly forward to insinuate his role into the consciousness of the audience. Things like this should happen periodically throughout the play; i.e., it would not be untoward for a member of THE CROWD to go offstage to retrieve, open, and drink a beverage. However and for sure, this time, THE CROWD member steps forward to announce...]

BLACKSMITH:

I am a character in another play altogether written by a friend of the author of this play and his name, the guy who wrote the little play within a play that I am in, is named Perry Novelli. I don’t know what the name of the play within a play is but I am the Blacksmith. I have a little part and it goes something like this:

[clears throat; THING ONE and THING TWO have become secondary, at least, and tertiary if possible. They fade while the BLACKSMITH takes his place]

[music/chorus/revolutionary opera]

Turkey and ham
Turkey and ham
The wind don't grow no
Turkey and ham

[lather, rinse, repeat]

[THE CROWD retreats to pantomimed applause as THING ONE and THING TWO casually wander back to their prominent marks]


THING ONE:

Ahem. Harumph.

Anyway.

Have you ever even thought about economics? I mean real economics, something beyond a tangible barter, something more than trading an animal’s skin for a bag of corn? About buying on credit? About the possibility of buying on a margin? About bankruptcy and rollovers and mergers and stock splits?

I’m just asking...

[THING TWO looks downright puzzled.]

And what about knowledge? What if everyone could read? What, Thing Two, if you can imagine, what if everyone could write? What new stories would we hear? What new languages would we learn? What kingdoms lie there dormant in those yeomen’s brains waiting to be structured and expressed through syntax? What empire of mind and soul is destined for some other aspirant’s grasp? And here we languish, dear Thing 2, in the Land of the Iron Sausage, under gentle dukedom’s hand, while even our poor local library has been sealed as tightly as the fists of our merchants and the knees of their glassy-eyed daughters.

[Some townspeople have begun to throw the two sidelong glances as the content of their conversation has become clear.]

THING TWO:

Perhaps our mouths should mimic our fellows’ minds and fists and knees. This broadcast of such sentiments might quickly be misunderstood.

THING ONE:

Hmm? Oh, piss on these, on these, on these...people!

[People have really started to notice now, have stopped what they are doing to listen, have even taken a few steps toward the two.]

Oh, God in Heaven, if only some wheel would turn; if only there did exist a lever and for that lever a fulcrum from which to start this dear world turning once again. And in which direction would such rolling take? I swear to you, Thing 2, that I would not care if this darkened rock climbed up toward some brighter light or teetered even further back toward the dung-heap from which it surely was once plucked. I wouldn’t give two snaps as long as we were moving.

THING TWO:
(anxiously)

I beg you stop this speculation and stop it in such a public manner in such a public place.

[THE CROWD is seriously interested in the conversation now and has begun to comment amongst itself. They mumble, “Peas and carrots. Peas and carrots.”]

THING ONE:

If there could only be a cleansing rain, a deluge of baptismal waters--or, of fire, if needs be must--to wash or burn or somehow scour these rusted armors of idiocy from the limbs of the brains in our heads. I crave the giddy liquor of potential, of chance, of uncertainty, and of transformation! I would drink most deeply from the cup of he who would offer me an unfamiliar draught.

THING TWO:
(emphatically)

Would you just shut the fuck up....

[As THE CROWDbegins to move in a concerted and menacing manner toward THING ONE and THING TWO, NATURAL FORCES steps forward to high visibility.]

NATURAL FORCES:

Pardon me; excuse me. The Mongol hordes are here.

[Stage goes to deep black. A single voice says “Oh, shit.” Again, there is the sound of shuffling. The lights slowly rise.]

[The village has been slightly modified and now looks more or less like a theme park. Fakiness is somehow emphasized, commercialism and product marketing can be reflected in the type and nature of visible advertising, souvenir-oriented “Shoppe” names, etc. Shopping type “musak” grows to an audible but unobtrusive level. THE CROWD settles into roles of park-goers, big animal characters, concessionaires, etc.]

[A family unit--DAD, MOM, SIS, JUNIOR, and LITTLE BIT enters. Costume cues should read tourist without screaming. Please no cliché Bermuda short, camera snapping, hideous sunglasses, etc. They are on vacation but they are more or less realistic.]

DAD:

Okay? Where exactly are we now? Who’s got that map. The one with all the zones in different colors. What zone is this?

[MOM pulls LITTLE BIT closer to her side and begins to dab at the child’s face with a tissue.]

MOM:

Spit.

[LITTLE BIT emits muffled, whining grunts of discomfort and embarrassment.]

DAD:

For Christ’s sake, who’s got the map? Junior? Come here, son.

JUNIOR:
[timidly]

I don’t know. I gave it to Sis.

[SIS is suddenly aware of the action and she freezes for an instant. Quickly though increasingly frantically, she inventories her pockets, bag, and immediate surroundings. No map.]

DAD:
[quiet, yet extremely menacing.]

Goddamn it. I gave it to you. Come here, son.

JUNIOR:

Honest, Dad. I gave it to her and she said she’d give it back and she didn’t and it’s not my fault, Dad. Honest.

[MOM looks up sharply at the sound of her son’s urgency and glances at her eldest daughter. LITTLE BIT has turned stiff.]

SIS:
[taking a hesitant few steps toward her father, a step back, another forward]

No, Dad. He’s right. It’s my fault. I used it to sit down on the curb and forgot to pick it up. I can get another.

DAD:
[doesn’t turn around, still stares calmly at JUNIOR]

Stay out of this, missy. Now, son, where is the map I gave you?

MOM:
[a gesture of reaching aborted; a glance at each of her children]

Frank?

DAD:
[as calmly as you please]

I said that all bitches should back the fuck off.

[They do, glancing at each other and at LITTLE BIT.]

JUNIOR:

No, dad, really, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry dad oh please I’m sorry I’ll go get another one right now.

[Passersby have begun to notice that something is wrong with the scene but it is not clear what the tension the family generates might mean]

MOM:

Frank? Please.

DAD:

I asked you a question, son. Where’s the map?

[NATURAL FORCES emerges from amongst the other park-goers. She looks at the family, the rage on one face, the fear on another, the loathing both self- and otherwise upon another. She gestures first to the audience and then to the family itself, an introduction of sorts.]

NATURAL FORCES:

An aneurysm, I think.

[S/he waves his/er finger around until it stops on MOM who drops like a rock, boom, as the lights go pitch black. A single voice says, “Whoa. Did you see that lady pass out?” More shuffling as the sets are once again modified. After a while, the small noises fade as the sound of rain rises. After sufficient duration, a lightning flash and a peal of thunder should startle everybody. The lights grow though only enough to simulate a dark, windy, rainy, thunderstorming night.]

[Dark. Wind. Rain. Thunder. And a figure against what we can now see is the parapet of a castle. Another figure carrying a flashlight or a lantern or a torch or something approaches from behind.]

THING ONE:
[sotto voco]

Thing Two! Thing Two! Is that you?

THING TWO:

Of course it is. Be quiet!

THING ONE:

Thank God! I’ve been out here for hours.

THING TWO:

Oh, Thing One, be serious. You’ve been out here for fifteen minutes at the very most.

THING ONE:

Well, it sure seems a lot longer than what you just said.

[pause]

Are you sure they’re asleep?

THING TWO:

They were. If you keep making so much noise, they’ll probably wake up.

THING ONE:
[whining]

Okay,. okay. I’m sorry.

[They move together closer to the edge of the stage and off to one side.]

THING TWO:

There, now. Do you feel any better.

THING ONE:
[drawing his jacket or cloak or space blanket or what ever closer about himself]

Yeah. A little.

[sniffles]

Okay. You start.

THING TWO:

All right.

[pause; deep breath]

All right. I like to pull the plug on the bathtub but then stay inside laying as flat as I possibly can and feel the sensation as the water drains away and the temperature changes and the texture of the change between bath water and air feels heavy like the gravity that follows the waterline to surround my limbs again with their own weight.

THING ONE:

Ooo. I like that. Do another. Do another.

THING TWO:

Very well, but just one. I like it when I am far away from the ocean, miles inland, days inland, with no trace of salt mingled in the atmosphere and I see a gull. There, somewhere near some pile of garbage, to see an ocean bird...it’s like being two places at the same time. The sound the bird makes.

THING ONE:

That was even better than the first. I like the ones about water. Do another one. Do another one with water in it.

THING TWO:

No. It’s your turn. You do one now.

THING ONE:

But you do them so well. I want to hear another of yours.

NATURAL FORCES:

I think not.

[Lightning crashes and strikes THING TWO dead. The stage, of course and once again, goes pitch black.]

A BOOMING VOICE:

That’s it, you two. I want you back in bed and asleep in five minutes or I’m coming down there.

[Again and of course, there is the usual scuffling and shuffling. The sounds of set rearrangement, so familiar and so comforting, again insinuate themselves throughout the theater.]

[Eventually, the house lights go up and everyone (audience, actors, staff) goes home.]

And, Yeah, We Found the Money. So What?

I couldn’t believe what the old man said.

“Say that again,” I told him.

“I said, ‘If you want money so goddamn bad, go get you some.’ Go dig up some of that money in the basement if you want money so goddamn bad, goddamn it,” he snapped. The old man snapped, barked, hollered, and yelled a lot. His volume knob never seemed to go below 8.

“What money? You’ve got money in the basement?” I asked.

“Hell, yeah, I got money in the basement. Buried in the wall behind that big old clown painting of your mother’s. Been there for years.”

I just stared at the twisted up old fuck, that knot of wasted human life just too furious to do anything other than rage. And drink. And use drugs. And fuck around on the mother. My old man was quite a guy in quite a few ways, but money-stasher was a new one on me.

“How much money are we talking about?” I asked.

“Twelve fucking thousand bucks,” he answered. “You little shit.”

“You have $12,000 buried in the basement? What the fuck for?”

“So you, your retard brother, and that nightmare corpse of your mother’s upstairs couldn’t never get your greedy fuckin’ paws on it.”

“So why are you telling us now?”

The old man clamped his mouth shut, his face collapsing around the toothless hole.

“Seriously, old man. Why are you telling us now?”

“I got my reasons.”

“Such as…? I mean, how long have you been sitting on this little stash of cash?”

“Long enough,” the old man answered. “And I got my reasons. That’s all you need to know.”

And, yeah, we found the money. Down in the basement in a hole in the wall behind one of the clown paintings the mother had done in her paint-by-numbers days right where the old man said it would be. Or, rather, what was left of it—a rotten, rat-shredded, moldy wad of slimy scraps and fiber. If you ever want to know what $12,000 looks like, do not ask me. All I can tell you about is what $12,000 looks like after my retard drug-addict old man hides it in a wet, dirty hole in our cellar’s wall and doesn't tell anybody about it for ten or eleven years. That’s not all we found, of course, but finding those sludgy lumps of cash pudding was awfully disappointing. The mother had died, chocked to death in her slum-queen’s bed on a chicken bone, and this was very much more disappointing than that. We never told anyone she'd died because, really, who would care? She’s still up there rotting away, though, in case any of us wants to visit with her for awhile and that doesn’t help the generally odiferous nature of our home much. I think the old man thinks she’s still alive.

Toby stood there for a moment looking at the money-slop and the rest of it; then he just bolted upstairs. I mean, he spun around and he was pounding up the steps and the next thing I heard was his heavy boots thumping across the floor above and the meat-sounding smack of his close-fisted blows to the old man.

“You stupid, worthless piece of shit,” Toby’s voice, though muffled, was clear and the space between each word was filled with the sound of another blow. “You…insane…piece…of fuck…shit.”

Stuff like that. I couldn’t hear much of anything from the old man, but that was not in any way unusual. I can’t remember the last full sentence I heard him speak aloud before tonight and I’d stopped reading his little notes years ago. They didn’t make sense anyway when I did read them. “Cancer dog at the back door,” I remember one of them said; “Claws and beaks are all you eat,” was another one. They were like fucked-up fortune-cookie fortunes or something.

So, I just stood there in the basement leaning on my shovel, listening to my brother beat the crap out of our father, and staring at all that ruined money and the skeletonized remains of one of my childhood classmates. Sierra Lebonowsky disappeared when we were in the 8th grade, her folks moved away a few years later, and she slipped away from my memory. But I instantly recognized her sweater; it was not a particularly noteworthy sweater other than that I remembered it as hers. A cardigan thing with a belt, it had a geometrical pattern in gray and cream colors. I could see her wearing it while she waited at the bus stop in the morning, steam from her warm breath pluming away from her mouth. Obviously synthetic, it hadn’t deteriorated much in eleven years. Sierra had, but the sweater hadn’t.

Toby came stomping down the stairs from behind me.

“Asshole cocksucker,” he announced. “Fucking useless perverted toothless piece of shit.”

He was talking about dad.

“What’s he doing?” I asked Toby.

“Fucking bleeding, man,” Toby answered. “Sitting there in his fucking Laz-ee-Boy recliner, crying like a bitch, and bleeding.”

“Did he say anything?” I asked.

“How the fuck should I know?” He answered my question with a question and I hate that.

“Did you know about any of this?” I asked him.

“About the money or about Sierra?” Again with the question for a question.

I gently poked her ribcage under the sweater.

“Any of it.”

“No,” he said, almost indignant.

I poked a little bit more.

“Then why did you ask?” I wanted to know.

“Why did I ask what?” Toby was having trouble answering me straight on.

“I asked you if you knew about any of this,” I explained to him. “You asked me, ‘About the money or about Sierra?’ If you didn’t know about this, why did you ask which one?”

“Why did I ask which one what?” This was getting painful.

“Why did you ask me which one—Sierra or the money?”

Toby just stood there, blinking and thinking, while he tried to figure out what to say next. He already knew it was too late and the shovel in my hands was connecting with his nose, splitting it open with a gush of crimson, before he could adequately frame his next question. Toby sat down hard on his ass on the basement floor next to the pile of worthless cash and what was left of Sierra Lebonowsky.

“You fuck,” I told him. “You fucking knew. Didn’t you?”

“Glub?” Toby answered through his already blackening, swelling lump of a nose and the gush of bright blood. “Glub glum glub?”

“Stop answering my questions with more questions, you asshole,” I told him and smacked the top of his head with the flat blade of my shovel. It made a dull ringing sound and vibrated in my hands.

“Ooowww,” Toby moaned and at least that sounded like a statement. My family had a suddenly renewed interest in beating up each other.

I thought about Sierra Lebonowsky for a second. A flood of quick memories followed my recognition of her sweater: Sierra on the school bus sitting next to Debbie Skinner and talking about boys; watching her dance with another boy at a school sock-hop about 6 weeks before she disappeared; Sierra in 5th grade crying when she got 2nd place in the science fair because she had worked on her project entirely by herself and the winner, Mike Tullman, had so obviously gotten help from his dad. I remember thinking it wasn’t fair. I hadn’t gotten any help from my dad, of course, but my project sucked. I can’t even remember what it was, maybe some last minute thing with lima beans or food color or something. I couldn’t believe Sierra had been in my basement this whole time. And I had almost forgotten about her.

Toby was curled on his side on the dirt floor.

“Anything else I need to know about?” I asked him, ready to kick him if it even sounded like he was going to ask another question.

“Nobe,” he straightforwardly answered me. “Nuh-ting else.”

I looked down on the little corpse and damned if it didn’t appear as if there were tooth marks on the long bones of her little legs. The old man hadn’t always been toothless; before the meth fucked up his mouth, he’d had quite a set of choppers.

“You sick motherfucker,” I told him and then, realizing what I’d just said, had to smile a little bit. Fighting wasn’t all this family did with each other.

*

“Tommy has a girlfriend, Tommy has a girlfriend,” Toby, chanted while he danced circles around his big brother.

Tommy lunged at the gadfly, narrowly missing a grab at the boy’s winter coat.

“Shut up, brat,” the older boy commanded, though futilely.

“Tommy and Sierra, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Toby sang as he dodged a punch-kick combination. “First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes Tommy pushing a baby…OW!”

Toby rubbed his thigh where his brother’s boot had left the beginnings of a good-sized welt. Tommy was able, in general, to land only 1 blow in every 6 attempts, so he tended to make them count when he could. It was the same strategy their father used to raise his boys.

All the way to their home, the younger boy limped in front of, behind, and along side his older sibling in a manner both mocking and defiant though he made no further vocalization. Tommy scowled, though not at his brother’s teasing. In fact, Tommy scowled because he did not have a girlfriend and that Sierra Lebonowsky specifically was not his girlfriend. Toby’s teasing reminded Tommy of that fact and, since he truly wished that Sierra was his girlfriend, that the two truly were k-i-s-s-i-n-g, in love, getting married, pushing baby carriages, and since Tommy knew that something like that was never ever going to happen, Toby’s teasing ignited a slow red fire in his head and in his heart that, once smoldering, would be hard to dampen. What had started as love was already becoming rage.

“I HATE HER,” he roared at his brother as if that would stop the frolicking.

The boys slammed into the house, dumping their coats and backpacks onto the jumbled pile of clothing, sports equipment, and assorted detritus next to the kitchen door. Walking into the house was walking into a wall of overheated, moist air heavy with the odors of cat-piss, stale cigarette smoke, rotten food, old grease, and unwashed bodies. Those smells were just one of the reasons Tommy would remain without a girlfriend; among many other things, the way those smells clung to the boys was off-putting to their peers. The boys jealously suspected that other households hid secrets just as foul as their own. The only difference, they hoped in their impotent squalor, was that other households merely applied Lysol to the stink with more vigor. And for that, the boys hated those other households and the children reared in those households for having the luck, if not the blessing, of good hygiene and the USDA food pyramid. The boys could have accepted and lived with the foul secrets, for foul secrets were part of all the life they’d ever known, but good food and clean clothes would have made a difference and to be denied such simple amenities infuriated the boys.

“Where’s the fat bitch?” Tommy asked his brother as he looked inside the barren refrigerator.

“Probably stuffing her fat face,” Toby snickered.

“I’d like to know with what,” Tommy said. “And then I’d like some, too.”

“Fat chance,” Toby laughed. “Get it? ‘ Fat’ chance?”

Tommy reached behind to idly swat at his younger brother.

“I get it, asswipe.”

“Got any money?”

“You wish.”

“No shit, I wish.”

“Well, shit in one hand and wish in the other. Watch which one fills up first.”

“Quit trying to talk like the old man. It doesn’t fit you.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

Tommy closed the refrigerator door. His stomach was knotted with hunger and shame, his feet burned in his stinking boots and unwashed socks, his hair hung in greasy ropes across his crusted eyes. He honestly didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Later in his life, Tommy would be sadly surprised to look back and see just how much more it had been.

*

To stand there looking at $12,000 and a perfectly good girl wasted like that just made me madder and madder. All those macaroni and cheese dinners right out of the box with no milk or butter; all those rotten socks and gray underwear 2 sizes too small; all those empty Christmas stockings, forgotten birthdays, and that sick fuck upstairs had been sitting on 12 grand, letting it rot away rather than spend a dime of it on his kids.

He’d apparently kidnapped the object of my schoolboy desires and, at the very least, chewed on her legs though I know that’s not all he did, and he didn’t even tell me or ask me if I wanted some. Like I was ever going to get another chance to be with a girl like Sierra Lebonowsky no matter how long I lived. Just looking at her bones wrapped up in the remains of her clothes was giving me a hard-on.

I kicked my brother again.

“You asshole,” I reiterated before climbing the stairs into the kitchen.

I sat down at the table in front of a cold cup of instant coffee. I could see through the doorway, past the dining room, and into the living room. The old man was sprawled on his recliner, blood was trickling out of his mouth, and whether he was alive or dead did not matter to me in the least. I brought the mug to my lips, blew upon the liquid as if it were scalding, and took a sip.

“That hits the spot,” I said to no one. “Nothing like a good cup of coffee to really hit the spot.”

*

The hungry boys roamed through the bottom floors of the house searching for something to eat or money with which to buy something to eat. Toby carried the sugar bowl with him, dipping his finger into its hardened, darkened crust and licking up the grains that stuck. Tommy puffed away on long butts rummaged from overflowing ashtrays. If they didn’t find something soon, they’d have to go into the garage and huff gasoline. No matter how hungry they got, a few lungfuls of gasoline vapor put them in a drooling stupor in which food had no place. The headaches could be fierce, but everything was always a trade-off.

They could hear the television from upstairs.

“I wonder if she’s awake,” Toby said.

“Go and find out,” Tommy answered.

“You go.”

“I’m not going. You go.”

“I’m not going.”

If the mother was asleep, they might be able to swipe some food from the debris in her room. If she was awake and saw them, she would either scream at and vilify them or wish them closer so she could slobber upon and touch them. Neither prospect appealed to either boy at the moment.

“Shit,” Tommy muttered as he headed for the garage and the gas can. Toby followed behind, silent and limping.

*

I’m not sure how long I sat at the table. The old man never moved and Toby never came upstairs. It could have been hours. It could have been five minutes. I just kept thinking about the money and about Sierra Lebonowsky, about what I could have done with either or both.
I’ve often wondered how it is possible for me to stand such a cruel life surrounded by such cruel people acting with such cruelty. I search my own interior for that same cruelty and, rather than dismay, greet it with joy when I find it. As fucked-up as the family may be, we don’t get to choose our relatives and I would rather fit in with my own blood than be a stranger in the world. I can’t imagine how lonely it would be for someone to not have blood kin, people who aren’t just like you but are actually part of you and you are a part of them.

We talk about blood a lot amongst each other.

“It ain’t no gaddamn cliché,” the old man used to say before his brain melted. “It’s just true. Blood is thicker than water and thicker than mud and that means they ain’t no kind of binding or any kind of holy oath that’ll put you closer to another human being in this world than the blood you share in your veins. That’s why I married your mother and that’s why the blood inside you boys is holy.”

That last part doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the first part rings true. Even monsters have mommies. Even if their mommies are also their aunties or maybe their big sisters, it still counts.
I remember being real little, just probably 2 or 3 years old because, in my memory, all the furniture and stuff is really big. I remember standing in the hallway and looking into the big bedroom and watching the old man and the mother go at it in a sexual way. Now I know she couldn’t have been much more than 15 herself, but at the time she seemed old as water and about that solid; she was just sort of a wispy, misty old woman even when she was still a kid. It wouldn’t be too much longer before she got real fat but back then she was still just a skinny little thing. She was probably pregnant with Toby though how would I have known? The old man was doing her and it was either really good or it hurt her something bad because she was making all sorts of noises and you know how sex is—sometimes it sounds like people killing each other. I never knew the mother’s mother, the old man’s wife before they had my mother, but I know her name was “Jeanette” because that’s what the old man would grunt when he was fucking his daughter and that isn’t the mother’s name. The mother’s name is Dumpling and he never grunts
“Dumpling” when he’s fucking her. That’s kind of weird, I think.

Anyway, I remember standing there in the hallway and being just a little kid but still having this vision of how we are as a family, how we are like a silver ring or a group of interlocked silver rings and no matter which ring you set to follow out of the group, you always loop back and find yourself tangled up in someone else’s silver ring. That’s the family for sure. The reason the rings are silver is that gold doesn’t tarnish.

The range of her cruelty had been limited by only and both her lack of intelligence and poverty and I thanked heaven every day that she was both stupid and poor.

One of her favorites was to make me wear a dress and watch as she fucked the old man or one of her tricks. She’d stand me on a chair and she’d suck cock and take it in her smelly pussy and her dirty ass and she and the old man or the trick would laugh at me there crying in a dress on the chair watching the mother fuck strange, drunken men including but limited to the old man. She would be drunk, too.

She must have known what she was doing. How else to explain why she’d punish me with bare-bottom spankings while jerking my little prick. She must have known stuff like that would have long-term consequences. Why else would she make me stand naked in the bathtub, flick burning matches at my crotch, and all the while whisper how she was going to cut my penis off and make me into a girl?

Toby was still moaning downstairs. I was sitting in the sick heart of the rancid rat’s nest we called our home and I was just sick of us all, tired and sick and bored and infuriated and deeply saddened by our lives. There I was surrounded by illness, decay, and deviance with a pile of rotten cash and the corpse of my childhood sweetheart down in the basement and I just didn’t know what to do anymore.

The old man was making some choked, wheezing sounds from the living room, so I guessed he wasn’t dead, that Toby hadn’t killed him. Yet. Of course, my own boots felt like having their own chat with the old man, so he was by no means finished with the evening’s entertainment. I was just waiting for him to rise to a suitable level of consciousness so that my efforts could be properly rewarded. In the mean time, sipping my ice-cold coffee, I turned back to my mental family scrapbook.

*

We were having one of those father-to-son heart-to-heart talks I’d learned to love so well.

“When the fuck are you gonna get you some pussy, boy?” the old man asked me. “Don’t you like girls? Are you a little faggot? I’m not having no cock-sucking, ass-fucking faggot in my house, you know.”

It was at times like these I wished at least one of the television sets piled in the living room would work. I could watch Dialing For Dollars or The Match Game and pretend the old man was talking to someone else.

“I’m talking to you, boy,” he reminded me. “I’m talking to you, you little faggot no-pussy-getting boy. Jesus fuck Christ, I had kids in school when I was your age.”

I was 15 then, which meant that if the old man was telling something even a little bit truthful, he’d been since he was 10 or 11 and that seemed almost reasonable.

“I reckon you know what pussy is, don’t you?” he asked while peering at me. I think he thought he was making a joke. He was drinking something white and caustic out of a cracked, milky ceramic coffee mug in between hitting his glass pipe. They’d just invented crack and the old man loved that shit. “I mean, you seen pitchers of pussy, ain’t you?”

I’d indeed seen pictures of pussy and I’d seen the real thing between the mother’s legs and was still confused how the one could look so tantalizing and beckoning and pink while the other looked dark and ravenous and foul. I kept that thought to myself.

“Do I have to go out there and drag some pussy in here for you?” he asked but I was pretty sure the question was rhetorical. But, thinking now, perhaps it wasn’t. “Do I have to go out there and buy some fucking pussy for you to stick that little wizzer you call a dick into? Do I have to hold it for you and push your bony ass up and down, up and down?”

That was a thoroughly ugly thought and I pushed it quickly from my head.

“I know girls,” I said in a moment of weakness.

“You know girls. I’ll bet you know girls,” he cackled. “But do girls know you? Huh? Do the girls know you?”

I know I blushed. I hated myself for doing it, but the old man had me pegged. Sure, I knew girls from the neighborhood and from school, but not a one of them even looked at me. How could they with me in my dirty clothes, dirty hair, and smelling of this madhouse reek? How could I even approach them? I wasn’t totally resigned to a sex life of the mother’s intermittent blowjobs delivered while she wheezed and pinched my nipples until they bled, but I was getting there. I wasn’t happy about it, but that’s what resignation is all about; I’d give up even the hope of happiness and holding hands and sharing sodas and making out in the back seat of parents’ cars and resign myself to the fully awful sexual ministrations of the mother. She’d flop over amidst the filthy detritus of her bedclothes and hiss.

“In mah ass, boy,” she’d rasp. “Stick that dinker of your’n in mah ass.”

And I would.

*

I could hear Toby start to stumble up the stairs and I had no idea what his intentions might be. I could hear the old man starting regain his senses in the living room. I wondered which one I’d have to beat senseless first.

When he made it to the kitchen door, Toby leaned against the jamb, blood dripping down the front of his shirt.

“Whadda gonna do now?” he asked me around the mess on the front of his face.

“You’re asking me?” I answered and felt good to give him a question instead of an answer.

“Yuh. Whadda gonna do?”

“Well,” I said and raised the coffee to my lips. “I’m going to sit here until the old man wakes up enough so’s I can go back in there and kick the shit out of him all over again. You got a good start, brother, but I’m going to finish the job.”

“Buh whadda gonna do den?” His busted nose sure made him talk funny.

“You know, I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. Maybe I’ll call the cops and they’ll throw us all in jail where we belong. Maybe I’ll take some of that $12,000 and go to El Paso.”

“Bud thad muddy no good,” he answered me for once. “Ain’d no good fer nuddin.”

“Well, dear Toby, we’re aren’t much good for ‘nuddin’ either.” I was wishing the mother was still alive so I could upstairs and kick the shit out of her, too. “So, I guess it sort of works out the way it was supposed to work out. Maybe I’ll join the army and kill people legally. You might want to try it yourself.”

“De arby?” he moaned. “I d’wanna go inna arby.”

“Okay. No army for Toby. Maybe you could be a cop. You’ve got the temperament for it.”

“I don wanna beeda cob,” he moaned again and I think he may have been crying. It was hard to tell.

The old man was stirring in the living room. I heard him fall out of his chair and I got the beginnings of a plan formed. I stood up to go back in there and stomp his head open, grind what was left of his evil brains into the scarred woodwork of the dirty floor and, if I still felt like it afterward, I would walk out the door and keep on walking and never come back. I felt the intense need for new blood in my life and I figured it was about time to spawn. I was going to look for some pussy. Some real pussy.

Making Green

He is careful. He uncoils the hose so there are no knots or kinks that could lead to disaster; he threads the brass connectors carefully, mindful of their grooves and how easily they might be stripped. He loops one section around his forearm, stoops to turn the faucet there emerging from the house, and water flows. It is a perfect thing. His thumb covers the outlet in such a way that the spray is diffused, is distributed into an even fan of moisture, just the right amount to cover without beating the flowers and bushes with which he begins his watering.

This is perfection, he thinks. He moves his arms in gentle patterns to cover everything growing against the side of the house. All the lilac, the last of the tulip, the rose, the forsythia, and the lobelia hidden all receive their droplets in measured doses. Each is satisfied and none denied. This is perfection, he thinks.

A light goes on in a window near where his plants are. The new illumination confirms his efforts. The greenery is practically stretching to gather his gift, the blessing moisture, into its tendrils, petals, fronds, leaves, roots. Earthworms themselves rise to the softening surface to gasp and to gather. The light goes off and he turns his back to the satiated.

"I'll be back," he whispers. "Be patient. Just wait."

And then the lawn, an expanse of green (he knows it is green though no moon shines against, no light reflects from its manicured blades) waits expectant and trembling in anticipation.

"Hello," he says. "Are you thirsty?"

His thumb moves the precise fraction to change the flow, to allow the arcs of water distance and coverage. His arm swings faster, more forcefully, and more potent to cover the eager.

"This is for you," he tells it. "This is all for you."

Another light goes on, a door opens, and a thin voice calls from the doorway. "Dad? Dad?"

He snaps a coil of hose behind him, takes up all the slack, and moves to another thirsty section. He avoids wasting water on asphalt or concrete.

"Dad?" the voice enjoins. "Dad, are you coming in?"

Behind the voice there are noises of ice in glasses and he knows that until that ice is melted, there will be no water there.

"Dad? What are you doing?"

He trails the long, green hose with its reptile-patterned skin behind him as he stalks the lawn and he can imagine the rising sun and the way rainbows will spark from the smooth sheets of clear water that erupt from his hands.












Originally published in Blue Mesa Review 4
Albuquerque, New Mexico 1992
http://www.unm.edu/~bluemesa/