Something Clever

Can you believe the latest piece by Wadworth? I can’t believe the magazine would publish such rubbish.  The man paused at his self-professed delightful rhyme as he spread some marjoram on a piece of perfectly toasted bread.  Give me documentaries any old day- the real world is so much better than the mental playthings in some men’s minds.  Did you see the one featuring baseball?  It was wonderful, simply wonderful.

I, for one, can’t believe the author would use such a blase and trite character to make a point, his companion offered, pouring himself a cup of Earl Grey tea. 

I dare say he used a hammer when a feather would have been more fitting- and the metaphor, Good Lord the metaphor.  The only thing he extended was my patience.  At this, both fell into the Cambridge laughter esteemed world-wide for its haughtiness.

A figure appeared in the doorway.  More tea, sir? the complacent yet tired voice echoed across the large room.

Why yes, Williford, that would be resplendent.  The butler approached and began to place the piping hot tea on the table.  No, Williford, not like that- do it like the butlers do it in Oxford.  Must I show you everything?  Then, to his companion’s great delight, the man stood up and held the tea, bending over perfectly while placing it on the table.  Remember not to make eye contact, Williford- it’s quite rude to stare at your master during a public gathering.

Yes, sir, the butler said, before disappearing to scrub the kitchen.

Help is so difficult to find these days the man apologized, I dare think I’m clever enough to survive on my own without any help.  Wouldn’t that be scandalous? 

If any man could do it, it would be you his companion stated before attempting to sip his tea in the most clever fashion possible.

Words that meant nothing continued to float throughout the room for the better part of an hour- criticisms of artists long dead, remarks made about Shakespeare’s tragedies- too sad by half- and a defense of the camera as being far superior to any painter’s brush- give me realism any day- these paintings that amuse a handful of people are worthless- burn them all and take a picture of it and I would hang it in my chateau!  This continued until the man clunched his paunch- are you feeling ill- why I’ll kill that Williford the man can’t cook eggs to save his life.

Williford! the man shouted Williford.  A figure quickly- perhaps too quick- appeared in the doorway.

Yes, sir. 

Fetch the physician at once- I don’t feel right at all!    

I don’t think that will help, sir- you’ll be dead within five minutes, due to the poison in your system.

Poison?

You poured it yourself, sir?  Remember?  A grin spread across the butler’s face. 

Ye Gods what have you done the man said, fumbling around on the ground now, his face in his hands.

Oh don’t worry, the butler said, I’m sure you’ll think of something clever.

Truth Be Told

Why do we come here every six months? she said, staring out the car window at the dilapidated tin building.  Every time we visit there’s less and less people selling weirder and weirder things.

I think it’s neat he said, one day this place will be gone and we’ll be able to tell our kids about it.

That would be the worst story ever she said, but I guess we have to have some awful stories if we’re going to be parents.

They entered the building- an old manufacturing plant that had been abandoned years before before being saved by trinkets and elderly people hawking God knows what- and wandered down the hall into a large room that still smelled of industry.  There were a handful of old people standing behind old jewelry cases or sitting in lawn chairs, desiccating in the stagnant air.  Box fans from his childhood whirred unapologetically and stung the silence.

They browsed as best they could, trying not to make eye contact unless forced.  Old coins, magazines and jewelry crowded the display cases; vases and larger items sat on top, gathering dust.

Let me know if I can help you, one ancient woman said, staring down at the cement floor.

Within ten minutes they had come to the last booth- a rail thin man sat on a folding chair.  Cardboard box after cardboard box sat upon table next to him.

You’ve sure got a lot of records, he said.

Ain’t no records here, the man said, I got pictures.  Hand-drawn.

He began to leaf through the boxes.  The man in the chair just stared blankly ahead.  Hey look he said, this is one of the swinging bridge.

Not bad she said, peering over his shoulder.

How much is it? he asked.

The man’s head turned as if on a stile, his expression unchanging.  That one?  Two dollars.

Two dollars he thought, that’s crazy.  How’s this old man making any money selling pictures for two dollars?

You could frame it she said, still picking through the boxes.  It’d be nice in your office with the right frame.

Hey look at this one she said she looks just like me.  He tore his eyes from the man and looked at the picture she had practically thrust in his face.  It was of an older woman who bore a striking similarity to his wife.  The nose… the eyes… the only real difference was that age had touched her face, making her ten years older.

The sick feeling in his stomach didn’t occur until he realized that the woman was posing in a hallway, with a smaller picture behind her.  It can’t be he thought, taking the drawing from her hand and bringing it inches from his face.  The swinging bridge picture- the same damn picture I’m holding in my other hand- is hanging on the wall in this one.

I think we should go he said slowly to no one in particular, placing both pictures on top of one of the boxes.

You should check the last box first the old man said.

The Weeds

Nothing held more magic for me growing up than the woods near my house.  In the era of 4 channel television- my parents sprung for the twenty-odd channels cable offered at the time somewhat late in my development- talk shows and soap operas could not compete with the great outdoors, and I spent the majority of the summers with the sun shining on my face.  (This was back when there were true “summer” vacations, and the luxurious time stretched for miles and miles in the bristling heat.  Only Labor Day threatened to usher us back into the classrooms.)

I was blessed to be surrounded by other children around my same age on my half-mile street.  So we would gather and play ball in a neighbor’s lot or wander the street or jump on a friend’s trampoline or discuss the intrepid dangers of walking all the way around the block for hours at a time. 

But most of all, we would take to the woods.  We had three choices in all- a stand of old growth near the Interstate, where the dirt road took you to an attorney’s billboard; the “sand pit,” an undeveloped lot covered in scraggly pine trees and four-wheeler trails; or “the weeds,” a house lot in the middle of the street so long ago abandoned that it had become overtaken with ten to twelve foot tall vegetation.  (What our descriptive powers lacked in verbosity they more than made up for in accuracy.)  Due to its relative proximity, we spend most of our time in the weeds.

We would hack our way through the weeds with machetes kids our age should not have handled- long, sharp tribal weapons that made short work of the brush as we swung back and forth.  Though unspoken, we imagined savages at every turn.  We would set snares in the hopes of catching a swamp rabbit, but our knots were amateurish and ineffective. 

The main trail, three feet wide, led to the heart of the weeds where a natural clearing existed.  From there- like bees- we created smaller tunnels and trails to other, more dense, parts of the lot.  (Toward the back of the lot, briars became more prevalent, and it was a mark of courage to traverse the lot from street to street.) 

In June blackberries would grow wild in spades and we would eat our fill, staining our clothes and fingers.

I will forever look upon those days with fondness- to tell more bears repetition, and too much examination destroys the memory, and it is one I very much wish to keep alive. 

I did drive down the street on occasion years later, when the youth had fallen from me.  The lot is still for sale and still losing a battle with nature.  However, the house next door is now occupied and the man who bought it mows the portion of the trail we blazed, preserving it expertly in time.  It curves into the depths of what we once considered a jungle.  Perhaps his kids play there, as we once did. 

I have thought of stopping one evening and walking it in the moonlight, but some things are best left as they were.

We Are Not The Flame, But The Tinder.

Words are clunky things, and stringing them together in a seamless stretch is far more difficult than one can imagine.  Our thoughts are free; unregulated in time and space and thus they need no form or fashion to make absolute sense within our minds.  But to pluck them from the mental ether and pin them to paper almost always removes their luster and vibrancy, reducing them to dusty moths and frail ribbons at the county fair.

This is why writing is so difficult- no writer is satisfied with their work, in that their work can never be satisfactory.  We can cover the corpses with make-up, pose them and pretend that they breathe, but they do not.  We have the breath of God within us, it would seem, but something is lost when we breathe out.

Our only hope, then, is that the words that fumble from our minds retain their shape enough to be revived by the reader- thus the dusty moths become freeze-dried, waiting for the day when a reader’s experience relights them with a fire never known by the author.  Thus a new thought is formed in the reader’s mind, as alive and quick as the words used to be.  Words are forever dead, but in their death they can create new life- this is the power of writing.  And then the cycle continues.

It is in our connectivity that the magic happens- an unread story means nothing; an story read lazily with leaden eyes might just mean less.  There is nothing in halfway- no glory, no memory, no satisfaction. 

Stories are merely exercises in exploring the distance between two points, those invisible expanses that define everything and anything in this universe.  Take a boy and his dog- the story is not in the boy, nor in the dog, but in how they interact, grow, and learn together.  Can you capture that relationship in a bottle and clearly define it?  Not without the boy or the dog, but the boy and the dog are ancillary to the subject.  So how does one carve from the ether an invisible statute that is clearly there but impossible to see?

There is yet another problem.  The best writers cannot merely say what they see, because then stories would be but one sentence long.  If I were to say, “The boy loved the dog,” that may be technically correct but the heart of it is gone, and therefore does not do justice to the tale.  That love had a birth, perhaps a death, and a great many things in between.  It is a hallmark of becoming an adult that one realizes that not all love is the same.

However, if I were to relate how the boy placed food out for the dog every night, and occasionally snuck him into bed to sleep beneath the threadbare sheets when the wind howled- because the dog feared it so- then a picture emerges.  Even then, though, this picture only points at a possible love.  It is a reaction or reflection of the love itself, because the love can never be seen.  A writer must attempt to define the relationship through these interactions, because that is all the writer has.

And then- one day, if the writer is lucky- a reader stumbles across the story and remembers a childhood pet they had and the story disappears for the briefest of moments and becomes transubstantiated in the reader’s mind.  The emotions well and for a second the reader is twenty years in the past, playing fetch with a long-lost friend.  The weights of daily life are lifted- worries such as the mortgage, money and all the riff-raff that accompanies human breath evaporate, and the reader finds joy.  That is where words find their glory- not on the paper, but in the minds of a reader.  What writers create- the best writers, at least- is the opportunity for the reader to create something themselves. 

We are not the flame, but the tinder.

Short Story Contest #1

I have submitted three short stories to the Indiana Review’s 1/2 K Fiction Contest.  (Each story had to be less than 500 words.)  I think it will be awhile before I find out the results.

I hope to have additional short stories up soon.

None of Those Above

The windshield wipers beat out a slow and steady rhythm, trying in earnest to keep time to the 70s rock ballad that blared from the radio.

A flash of blue appeared ahead and he instinctively slowed.  He felt ___________ .

A.    excited

B.     anxious

C.     surprised

D.     nothing

Soon a red flash appeared as well- must be an accident he thought, turning down the radio.  A bone white ambulance was parked in the right lane, its lights spasming in the twilight.  A police officer held his hand up to stop his car as oncoming traffic paraded ever so gently past the sight.  I bet it’s _________

A.     gruesome

B.      horrific

C.      tragic

D.      nothing

he thought, watching as the last car rounded the bend.  The officer waved him through, and he eased off the brakes and slowly made his way past the ambulance.  It was hard to see- the light was fading fast and he mostly kept his eyes on the road- but it was apparent that two vehicles had collided head-on.  Firemen and paramedics gathered around what was left of one of them- a smaller green sedan?- intent on forcing it to birth out whoever it held inside.

On the opposite side of the road, a woman clutched something tight to her chest and let out a scream that the rain couldn’t dare drown- a banshee wail declaring death down the rural road.

He wished above all that he could somehow _____________ .

A.    help

B.     find out who had died

C.     take a picture

D.     care

He passed her now and came to the second car.  This one was abandoned, save for two blue sheets covering something on the ground.  They whipped in the wind- and the rain did him no favors- but he thought he saw a flash of pallid flesh.  His heart felt _____________ .

A.      pity

B.       numb

C.       sadness

D.       nothing

He finally pulled away, left with nothing but the memories of the moment.  They spilled over him and bounced throughout the car, fighting with the windshield wipers and clinging to his hair and fingers before melting into the upholstery.  He turned back on the radio.

As he drove through his neighborhood, he tried to shake the images he had seen from his head.  The radio screamed in futility, desperately trying to match the raw emotion the woman on the side of the road had displayed.  He turned it off.

As he pulled into his driveway, he noticed that his next door neighbor’s car was not in the garage.  That’s funny he thought, that son of a bitch is almost always at home.  How else can he have time to borrow my lawn mower and then complain when I don’t cut my grass? He went inside and turned on the TV, realizing after a time that his neighbor drove a small green sedan.  He went outside- the rain has definitely picked up- and walked to the edge of his porch, peering through the storm.

Just then, he saw his neighbor’s brake lights flash in the garage.  He felt _____________ .

A.     relieved

B.      saddened

C.      cold

D.      nothing

Thoroughfare

Ginger ale is, in my opinion, one of the finest drinks ever envisaged by man. A man seated to my left held a murky glass in the air and watched the amber bubbles drift slowly to the top.  That said, a shot of bourbon doesn’t hurt. He paused for the briefest of moments before saying What brings you to this hellhole, mister?  You don’t look the type.

Just passin’ through I reply, staring down at my beer.

Just passin’ through, huh? he parrots back at me.  Not the first time I heard that one.  But then again, not much else to do here but pass through.  Nearest town being so far away and all.  If it weren’t for the gas station across the street, I’m not sure this bar would get any business at all.

I don’t reply, instead choosing to nurse my beer.

Anything else for you? a waitress asks the stranger to my left.

No thank you, doll, he replied, I think I’m just going to finish this one off and then hit the road. She fake smiled nervously before turning to me. How about you?  You want another?

Sure, why not? I sigh.

You know, the stranger began, I like your style.  Not much of a talker, are ya?

Not much of one, no sir.

Fair enough. He watched the waitress place another bottle in front of me.  I’ve often wondered why I talk so much.  Maybe I just need to hear my voice more than most.  Perhaps I want to feel important.  Who knows?  Never done much of anything too interesting, so maybe I think that if I talk enough people’ll give a damn when I’m gone.

Makes sense to me, I respond, but did you ever think of maybe just doing something interesting instead? The words tumble out like river rocks on the wooden bar.

Too old for all that.  Besides, what could I possibly do?

I sigh and grab a napkin from the bar and begin to doodle absentmindedly.  You know I asked myself that very same question one time?  What could I possibly do?  I suppose every man asks that question at some point in their life.  I suppose I’d pity the men that don’t.

The stranger put his empty glass down.  Well, I’d better be getting on my way.  Abilene won’t be coming to me.

If I’m right, I’d suggest you sit tight for a few more minutes.

No sooner had the stranger said and why is that? when the multiple sirens of police cars began to wail in the near distance.

I crumpled up the napkin and tossed it in his direction.  On that napkin is a map to some cash I buried in the mountains north of here.  Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.  I’m only telling you this because I might die in the near future, and the thought of that money turning to dust makes me sicker than I care to admit.  That said, I suggest you get there first, because if I survive, it’ll be long gone by morning.

I stand up and walk calmly toward the door.  The sirens stop and I hear tires sliding in the gravel outside as I remove an old pistol from beneath my shirt.  I kiss the barrel and close my eyes.  The stranger says something but his words are lost in gunfire as I kick open the door.

Losing the Battle

Chapter One

I picked the wrong day to quit smoking I thought as I watched the masked man pace nervously back and forth in the bank.  Seventeen hours, twelve minutes, and forty-five seconds to be precise.

Abruptly, he fired yet another short burst- five or six shots- into the ceiling before screaming I said shut up! and pointing the gun at the four of us huddled in the corner.

They had been afraid at first- standing either behind the counter or in the line, waiting to cash a check or make change.  The first shattering staccato burst, the screaming, the instinctive falling to the ground- the blood rushing and brain pulsing and not knowing the odds of your own life and death.

That had been hours ago.  The fear was still there, he supposed- somewhere below the surface- but sheer monotony had taken its toll.  There’s only so many times some masked whackjob can threaten you with a gun before the threat is spilled out on the floor for all to see he realized, twirling a pencil between his lips.  Damn I need a cigarette. He had no doubt the man would likely fire if one of them were to charge or attempt to leave, but the pulling of the trigger would be a reflex, not the conscious decision of someone who wanted to take a life.

The phone rang for the eighteenth (or was it nineteenth?) time and the man backed up to the counter and picked up the receiver.  Yeah.  Alright- the man said with a gratuitous smirk- we’ll be waiting as he hung up the phone.  Good news, kiddies, the food will be here in a few minutes. He sauntered over, the gun slung over his shoulder.  He leaned over, hands on his knees as he stared at the brunette with her face buried in my shoulder.  Everybody just sit tight and this will all be over before you know it oozed from his mouth, dribbled over his lips and ran down his neck.

If I could just…

Three knocks on the door- I’m a bit actor in a really bad stage play I surmise to myself- and the man stands up straight and takes two steps back.  You he points, staring at me with the barrel of his gun, go get our food.

I nod, place my hands up- palms out- and slowly stand up.  He motions with the gun and I begin to walk toward the lobby door.  I can see a stack of four white pizza boxes just inside the outer door.  There’s something on top- a pack of Marlboro Lights. I stare, dumbfounded, even though over half the city’s police force is just outside and some lunatic has a fully automatic weapon pointed at my back.

What are you doing? I can sense the man fidgeting around grab the pizza.

I bend down and grab the boxes and pack of cigarettes.  Put ‘em over there he waves toward one of the desks off to the side.  Throw me the smokes.

I feel the cellophane in my hands slipping over the corners of the box.  If I ask him for one he’ll probably shoot me I then I think hell, this guy might just give me two- he is crazy, after all.

I don’t chance it.  The pack arcs beautifully in the air, hitting the floor (making more sound than you’d expect) and skidding to a stop inches from his feet.

He looks down at them.  I want to kill him, sit on his body, and smoke every last cigarette while he grows as cold as the marble floor. He chuckles to himself and I realize I’m the most unstable person in the room. There’s a man with a gun threatening to kill us and I’m contemplating murder in order to get my hands on a cigarette.

I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I almost don’t hear the gun fire four times followed by click, click, click, click and confused silence.

I see the pack glowing white in his hands and begin to scream.

Fair Game

So you wanna play checkers?

I guess so.  Where’s the board?

Inside.  I’ll get it- hold on.

Solomon sat on the front porch and watched the bats dance in the dusk.  A beer appeared to his left.

Red or black?

Red. He looked down and rubbed a callous on his index finger. You know, I was driving home from work yesterday and saw the damndest thing.

What’s that, Carl asked, arranging his checkers on the board.

I pass this cemetery everyday, right?  And most of the time I don’t notice- just a blur of gray on my left as I roll up to the stop sign to take my right.

Was the cemetery fenced or not?

You gonna let me tell the story?

Sorry, sorry-  go on.

A quick twist and the beer sighed in his hands.  Thank you.  So anyway, I’m pulling up to this cemetery and I see a vulture-

Vulture or a buzzard?

Solomon put down his beer.  What in the hell is the difference between those two anyway?  I never could figure it out.

How should I know?

Then why did you ask?

I don’t know- just making conversation, I guess.

You’re killin’ me, you know that?

Fine.  You gonna line up your pieces?

After the story.  So anyway, there’s this vulture or buzzard or some kinda big damn bird just sittin’ right outside the fence, right?  And it’s just starin’ at God knows what through the chain links. Another drink from the bottle- this time deeper.  He starts arranging his pieces on the board.

Carl leans back in his seat and crosses his arms.  That the whole story?

Looking up, Solomon says Well, yeah, you want the buzzard to start talkin’ or something?

That’s not a story.

Look, I know it’s not like a story story, it was just something weird I saw.

Carl grabbed his now empty bottle and stood up.  So it was just starin’?

Yeah.  Crazy, huh?

The bats had disappeared in the night.  Just like before, a full bottle appeared, as if by magic, on the table before him.

You get a picture of this thing?

Nah.  I always say I’m going to carry my camera around with me, but I always forget.  Probably never see that again.

Carl glanced at the neatly aligned pieces but didn’t move.

Anybody been buried there recently?

How would I know that?

You know, they put those blue tents up and stuff…

Looking down, Solomon said Uh-huh.  Nothing like that.

Huh.  I was just wondering if they could like smell the body or…

Yeah, yeah, I get it.  Thanks for the image. Solomon turned and looked back toward where the bats had been.  What I couldn’t get is why not sit inside the fence and watch whatever in the hell he was watching?  Why stay outside?

You know that’s odd?  I don’t make it my business to spend a lot of time in graveyards, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a bird in one.  I can’t even recall seeing a squirrel, now that I think about it.

I think I have, Solomon said as he slid his first piece across the board, but now I’m not so sure. Your move.

Fear

Nothing makes much sense now- the heat and fear and spite envelop me like a wet cocoon, sickeningly sweet.

I hear drums in the distance.  They are close now.

My left arm raises out of instinct and I stare at my bare flesh, as if the watch they had stolen would somehow appear if I stared long enough.  It does not.

The moon chides me with its silence as I wash the grime from my forehead.  I have to do something.

I start to rise and a twig goes off in in the quietness like an atom bomb, blowing away the heat and fear and spite roughshod from my flesh.  I am an animal now, bursting through the underbrush chasing the fear because it keeps me alive.  To lose that would be everything after losing far too much.

I hear shouts.  There is no stealth now- no jaguar stalking its prey- only bloodlust and crashing and screams splitting the night air.  These are hunters intent on the hunt.

Individuality is my only strength- their communal nature keeps them roughly linked as they briefly pause to monitor my movements.  I run where I can, never stopping, clawing my way through brambles and thorns and God knows what.  The earth is sloping now and I am birthed out into a rocky beach on a river I’ve never seen.  No matter.  I dive in and begin to swim toward the far shore, enveloped once again.

A spear lands five feet to the right of me, knifing effortlessly through the water.  I have caught my fear now and it chokes me.

Almost there now.  I hear a splash behind me and excited screams.  They have found their prey.

My feet strike the rocky bottom and I trudge through the water, my fear somehow succumbing to sheer exhaustion.

I turn and look back, and see seven men standing on the far shore.

I think to myself but there were eigh- an arm snakes around my throat and drags me to the ground.  I reach up and began to claw, poking, scratching and punching at anything I can find.  He twists me violently and my arm, seeking balance, stumbles across a sharp rock.  Instinct reigns and I grab it, thrusting it again and again into my accuser’s unseen face.  He releases after three blows and falls back.  I turn and continue to bash the rock against his skull fourteen more times.

I look up.  The seven men are still there, watching, waiting.

I’ve killed one of them now.  They will never stop.  But they pause for a moment, both to honor their friend and let me drink in the kill, his blood glowing black in the moonlight.

The rock and my fear tumble from me and I stare at their silhouettes, praying their eyes meet mine.  I scream at them and nothing all at once.

I turn and dart into the woods.  I hear their splashes as I disappear into the darkness.  They do not scream.