Category Archives: ShortsOnSurvival

“A River in Egypt” by Dr. Les Cohen

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So I made a mistake, one stupid mistake, and now I’m payin’ for it. There must be some way out of this mess. Better just concentrate on driving, following directions. Gave myself plenty of time in case I got lost.

Over-caffeinated as it is, I’m too jumpy. Got to calm down. Compose myself. Think it through again.

No, I’m sure … definitely no. I’d never known a medical colleague who was a drunk or junkie. Maybe I’d always had my eyes closed, thought the best of people. Sure, we had access to samples, could write prescriptions, self-medicate … but never outside of an occasional sleeping pill or tranquilizer, getting tipsy at a college party or wedding reception, or a shot or two of whiskey just to take the edge off after a hard day.

No, definitely not. We were cautious, conservative people—too intelligent, rational, self-disciplined. I knew that our profession was not immune to life’s temptations, that some had character flaws. I’d read newspaper stories of greed, insurance fraud, sexual abuse of patients. They were rare. But … never alcohol or drug abuse.

So I thought, until I became a newly christened alcoholic.

It’s her fault, dammit. She’ll come to her senses ‘n come back, I’m sure. Give her time then everything’ll be fine again, like it’d been for twenty years. My life’s been a nightmare since she abruptly walked out. It’s been a month since she abandoned me and the kids. I’ve been a mess; frequent crying spells, up every night worrying about the kids, unable to concentrate in clinic or the hospital. I can’t go on like this. Maybe I’ve taken a pill or drink at night to get to sleep. Some nights a bit more, I think. Yeah, a bit more. Then that afternoon
when Mankin, her lawyer called. I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. Legal terms I  couldn’t understand.

Veiled threats that I was going to lose everything! The kids, the house, my savings. I had to get a lawyer to protect me.

I was crazy with fear and downed a big glass of sherry to calm my nerves before the night’s clinic session. Just sherry, that’s all. Not the hard stuff. Within an hour my sodden emotional collapse at work did me in. Somebody must’ve had it in for me and called the chairman. I didn’t even make any medical mistakes that hurt my patients. That’s all there was to it. Nothing more.

The next morning Dr. Finch, my department chairman, a dour man I’d known for years, with the hospital’s counsel seated alongside, allowed me just five minutes. He didn’t ask for any explanations or details. No compassion or forgiveness was shown. How could he do this to me? After all my accomplishments, what I’ve done for the department? Probationary medical leave, termination of admitting privileges, a report to the Board of Registration in Medicine. Late that night a medical colleague urged me to promptly sign an impaired physician contract with the Physicians Health Service, a branch of the state medical society, to protect my license. I was scared and called them next morning, and signed up. Though I’m not one of those Bowery bums or smack-addled criminals, I knew was in trouble, big trouble.

It was a three-year contract: random urine tests for drugs and alcohol twice a week for ninety days, then weekly thereafter; two 12-step meetings a week; a breathalyzer test before each clinic session; regular visits with an AA sponsor and psychiatrist, and monthly reports to the medical society that were forwarded to the Board. That’s all. Three goddamn years. I needed  a lot of help, legal help, but not this.

~

It had been a long, confusing ride – over an hour of wrong turns, almost giving up and turning back several times – to find the Medical Society building. Though I had made notes of the directions–my handwriting seemed as jumbled as my mind – it was difficult following the secretary’s instructions.

“His name is Charlie,” she said, “He’ll meet you in the lobby. Be there by seven twenty-five. The meeting starts at 7:30 sharp.”

“Hello doctor, I’m Charlie,” he said, offering his hand. A gray-haired man in his 60s, with a soft voice and sad, knowing eyes. I tried to appear cool, as if attending a department meeting. “I’m glad you made it. Your first meeting can be a tough one. You’ll soon get to know everyone.” He handed me a card with phone numbers on the front, and a Serenity Prayer on the back.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not, or into praying. You can never tell when it may help you through a rough time. We can talk about it later, but, if you wish, I can be your sponsor, son.”

“Sponsor? What’s that?”

“It’s our term for a mentor, a guide, a helper in emergencies. Something like that. Instead of picking up a drink or a pill, pick up the phone and call me. Come on in, it’s getting late.”

We walked briskly through the lobby into a large boardroom. He showed me to an empty seat at a polished oak table, and softly patted me on the shoulder.

“If you’re hungry you might want a snack.” I shook my head. My appetite had vanished weeks ago. There was a coffee urn, platters of sandwiches and cookies, stacked Styrofoam cups, plates and napkins neatly arranged on a side table. I warily looked around. Who are these people? Nobody I knew, thank goodness. There were about fifteen or so standing around talking: mostly men, a few women, looking my age. Two were quite young. Medical students? house staff? A grizzled few looked much older. Several wore sports coats and ties like me.

On the walls were long rows of formal photographs of Society presidents: serious faces of exemplars of probity and rectitude. Sitting low in my chair, looking down at the table, I felt them staring down at me in judgment.

I heard Charlie’s voice, “OK, let’s begin,” and looked up. All took their seats.

“As you know our tradition is to maintain total anonymity, and what you see here, what you hear here, stays here. We are here to share our experience, strength and hope.” He scanned the room. “Anybody counting days?”

A somber, young man in a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt raised his hand. “Yeah, I’m Mark. I’ve been offa crack for three months now, that’s about ninety days … no it’s  more if you count rehab it’s five months. A hundred and fifty days. The halfway house sucks but I get time to study, and I’m hoping to get back in school next fall. Fingers crossed.”

“Anybody counting anniversaries?”

One old-timer nodded. “I’m Greg ‘n it’ll be fourteen years of recovery next Wednesday, but who’s counting? A crooked smile. “I didn’t even toast the Sox win in the World Series with my old drinkin’ buddies. How’s that?” Everybody chuckled.

Charlie was looking at me.

“Since we always have new members introduce themselves first, if you feel up to it, briefly tell us why you’re here.”

I hadn’t counted on this. Mouth dry, palms sweaty, voice quavering, I began.

“Hi, I’m Les, and … I … really don’t know if I belong here. I don’t think I’m an alcoholic. I . . . ”

No one stirred. All were looking at me.

I couldn’t say it. I wasn’t one of them.

“Hi, Les,” the group cheerfully responded.

Hesitating at first, I spoke slowly, carefully measuring out words, then sped up.

There was much to say; many details that I needed to get right to show them what I’d been through. I had to make clear that it wasn’t my fault. I was crying, rambling, not making much sense. After a few minutes, Charlie gently interrupted.

“Thanks for sharing, Les. You’re in the right place. We hope to see you regularly from now on. Let’s go ‘round the table, then, as planned, we’ll do Step Four.”

Embarrassed crying my guts out in front of strangers, I quickly dried my eyes on my coat sleeve. I had just begun. Over the past several weeks I probably had worn the patience of close friends and colleagues telling and retelling my story. Now I had to try to pull myself together, calm down and listen.

Charlie nodded to a prim, red-haired woman seated beside him.

“Hi, I’m Beth, and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict,” she said matter of factly.

“Hi, Beth,” the group answered.

”It has been one tough week. First the group medical director called me on the carpet. My productivity numbers weren’t as high as he wished, then my daughter’s teacher called, and it really shook me up. My kid hasn’t been doing too well at school, and my son’s been hanging out with a bad crowd. I’m worried. I had to go to a meeting that night to get centered. I felt lonely and very shaky. You all know what I mean. And … well, it helped, as usual. Still clean and sober, thank you.” A forced smile.

Nobody was looking at me. I tried to appear as if I were paying attention. My mind was elsewhere. Time passed … I’m not sure how long.

Suddenly a stentorian voice snapped me out of my fog.

“Hi, I’m John, just a garden-variety drunk.” A thin, balding, bespectacled man in customary physician garb–-blue blazer with gold buttons, starched white shirt, and crimson silk bowtie.

“Hi, John.” The chorus of greeting.

“You know, I’ve never been the religious sort, but there must be a higher power for me to thank. When my chairman asked me to present Medical Grand Rounds I felt nervous, very nervous. Sure, in my day I’d given plenty of them, but none since my fall from grace seven years ago. He had stuck by me—a true friend. No, I didn’t have my usual pre-lecture double shot of Jim Beam this time, or my post-lecture one either, or my celebratory couple when I got home. They all said it went well, very well, I’m happy to say.”

The chubby, curly-haired man sitting next to John flashed a wide grin.

“Hi, I’m Bob. I’ve been a drug addict for over twenty years. That’s almost half my life.” Laughing softly, he shook his head, as if in amazement.

“Hi, Bob,” all chimed in.

“There are times when I feel I could have been a professional actor instead of a sawbones. I could play any role, con any ER doc, put on the face of a migraneur, the limp of a sciatic. When I’d choose to  roll around with renal colic I’d have to prick my finger in the men’s room. Five to ten drops of blood into the urine cup usually was enough to fool them. Fake almost anything to get what I needed. Percocet was my drug of choice, but I’d settle for Vicodin. Sometimes I’d drive as far as fifty miles to get to an ER. Of course I’d rotate them, carefully choosing their busiest hours, use a whole stable of names, pay cash. Pretty foolproof, eh? I’d even keep computer records, so I’d not repeat myself. You know the drill. Somebody must’ve tipped them off. Then the DEA dropped into my office almost eight years ago, took my computer and handcuffed me. That was it, the end of my acting career. Let me tell you, the jail and rehab stint were a bitch, and it took forever to get the license back. But, now I’m doing pretty well. Glad to be here.”

On Charlie’s other side was the last speaker, a fashionably dressed, graying woman. I hoped I could get out of here soon.

“Hi, I’m Jan, an alcoholic, drug addict, bi-polar and workaholic. How’s that for a mouthful?” A matronly lady with a soft voice, an ingratiating smile.

“Hi, Jan.”

“It’s been a good month. I’ve just come back from a vacation, my first in 12 years. It was difficult getting away, but I did it and I’m very proud of myself. A Caribbean cruise with a friend – also in recovery. I feel so relaxed now. I used to work 18 hours a day, and sleep in my office. Anything to keep from going home. That was after I lost my husband and children. Now’s not the time to go into the whole story. Charlie, maybe I should lead a meeting, it’s been a while. Anyhow, a long time ago I was caught stealing Demerol from one of my patients and washing it down with Scotch. That was my bottom. It’s all been going well since. I’m glad to be back and see all of you.”

I sat stunned by what I’d heard; the starkness of their revelations, the unimaginable sadness they experienced.

Charlie passed around several copies of a well-worn book. “Let’s turn to Step Four.”

Each of us read a paragraph, just like a Passover Seder, then passed the book along until the Step was completed. Then there was 15 minutes of discussion. The Step had something to do with a “searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.” I felt I’d already done that on my own. I had nothing to say.

“OK, next week Step Five, and Jan, you can take the lead.”

Everybody then stood, heads bowed, holding hands and recited the Lord’s Prayer. I’d forgotten everything except “Our Father who … “

I walked out of the boardroom alongside a tall, thin young man. Maybe he had spoken … I wasn’t sure. I noticed his striking gold and orange T-shirt—a large decal of the pyramids and sphinx.

“Did you get that in Egypt?” I asked, “I’ve read it’s an interesting place.”

“Nope, picked it up off a the Internet. I can tell you the website.”

On closer look I noticed the large print running across his shirt:

“DE-NIAL AIN’T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT.”

I shook my head, puzzled what it meant.

 

 

Dr. Les Cohen has taught and practiced Internal Medicine in Boston for many years. His short stories have been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, Hospital Drive, and in 2000, 2001 and 2005 he won the Journal of General Internal Medicine’s Creative Award for Prose.

“Funeral Home” by Robert Flanagan

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He looked up and down the darkened street before climbing onto the porch of the funeral home. A lone street light provided weak, yellow light as he climbed the four concrete steps.

He had waited until the sun was down before making his move, so that the only people, who might see him  might be police, so he kept a sharp eye out for them.

Izzy Bolo was homeless and drunk, but he knew things.  He knew where the bodies were buried.  He loved that saying, especially as he snuck onto the porch of an undertaker.

He made his way over to the corner, getting as far away from the street as he could, and lay down on the piece of cardboard that he had stashed in the bushes.  He used the cardboard, because although he stunk of liquor and had not shave, or bathed in days, he had been upset when he had come to last week and discovered that he was covered with dust and dirt–most of it from lying on the Sweet’s Funeral Home’s porch at night.

Izzy had gotten to his feet and brushed himself off. It had taken him all of the way to the shelter to get the dust and dirt off.

He got some cold cereal and milk for breakfast up at the shelter.  He was homeless, but he knew he had to eat something.  An old rummy had told him that.

“Hey, Izzy.  You ok?”

That was Jacky, the morning man at the shelter.  He was a big guy, but had been out on the streets himself, so knew that underneath a lot of these guys’s insistence that they were ok, he knew that many of them were barely hanging on.

He was used to coming into the shelter in the morning and hearing about this or that one, who just was no more.

Jacky had also been one of the dead men walking before he came into the shelter for more then a meal.

The shelter had programs, and he wished a guy like Izzy would get involved.  He looked at Izzy, and for the first time thought he saw the signs of wet brain.

Izzy was a short, skinny white guy, but he had always seemed to have it together.

Nowadays, Izzy was much dirtier and unkempt then Jack had ever seen him.  He wondered where Izzy was crashing, because he was not on the list of regulars at the shelter.

Izzy ate silently and then went outside and wandered down to the Avenue, where he would bum change and get a half pint of vodka.

He would drink half of it fast to get the edge off, and then sip it until dinner time back at the shelter.

He sat on the steps of the park sipping his bounty, and thinking soft thoughts. If and when his pain in the ass mind would ask him why he didn’t get off of the street, he would take a sip and the thought would go away.

At dinner time, Izzy went up and sat in the park across from the shelter.  He would cross the busy street and get in line for a meal when they started letting people in.

The shelter was across a street, but between the booze and the speeding cars, sometimes it seemed a lifetime away.

There were times when he could barely manage to get to his feet to wait patiently to cross the street. Saying “Fuck It” was but a breath away.

“Izzy, man.  How you doing?” asked Jackie, spotting the small, man in the back of the line and making a point to walk back there.

The line of homeless men went out onto the sidewalk these days.  There was something about Izzy that interested Jackie.

Izzy was white and Jackie was black, but one alcoholic recognized a kindred spirit.

“I’m fine.” Izzy said, looking at his shoes.

“You know, they got good things here for a fella like you and me.”

“Yeah.”

Jackie walked away, feeling the melancholia that seeing so much misery, yet being able to do jack-shit about it made a man feel bad, but there were too many of them to dwell on only one.

Still, he wondered what was driving Izzy.  Izzy was a smart man underneath all of that booze.

Izzy ate his meal just as he had done earlier.  He ate alone, never asking someone to pass the plastic bowl, with slices of bread to mop up some of the sauce from the spaghetti and meatballs.

Afterward, he disappeared and went back down to sit alone and then much later, he slept.

“No, please, no.  Oh, God.  Stop……No.”, he groaned at one point.

Even though he was terribly uncomfortable on the cement porch of the funeral home, the dream came.  Izzy was not aware, but felt hung over in the morning and took a swallow of booze.

He had been sleeping down by the tracks and had been awakened by the noise.

After the men had done what they wanted to do with the girl, they had come running by where Izzy was.

Izzy had opened his eyes a bit, but he soon resumed his vodka infused sleep, but not before seeing who one of the men were.

Izzy went up to the shelter as usual, but this time when Jackie came wandering around, he asked in his friendly way, “hey, Izzy.  How you doing?”

“I’m ok.”

“Where you crashing, man?”

“Around.”

“You know, we got room.”

“I’m ok.”

“Somebody said a few guys were hanging around Sweets.”

“I wouldn’t know.” replied Izzy.  His heart thrummed in his chest.

“Hanging around a funeral place would give me the creeps.”

Izzy looked up into the face of the man.

Jacky had undergone a remarkable transformation in the past few years.  He was clean shaven and was wearing nice clothes.

When they found Izzy’s body, they had initially thought he had frozen to death, as it was January by that time.

When Izzy was assaulted, he was anestitized, so did not feel the thrusts, nor hear the voice, which said, “sorry, man, but I can’t risk you remembering”

As he drifted off, Izzy heard his father screaming at him, but that was before he heard nothing.  Some slightly irate citizen called the police the next day.

“You people have got to do something!  I was out for a walk and saw this dead body on the porch of the funeral Home.

It was lying on the porch of a funeral home, for Christ’s sake!

Turning the body over, that the two patrol cops saw the puncture wounds, and later, as they drove away, Officer Joey Claiborne began talking to his partner about the TV show his old lady had been blabbing about.

“They started out talking about how a tiger can’t change its stripes….”

“Who started out?” asked William, his partner.

“The great show. The one I was telling you about, dummy.”

 

Robert Flanagan has been in recovery for a number of years. For awhile, he lived on the steps of a funeral home.

“Dumplings” by Mary McLaughlin Slechta

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My sister The Beautiful One has always eaten our parents’ food like an indiscriminate tourist. Not only obvious dishes either, like meat patties that get the lines started at cultural fairs. Even food no sensible child would like she still hankers for in adulthood. For example, a dumpling, no matter its origin, should not rap like a brick against a counter top.

But for every major American holiday, The Beautiful One would like them made exactly this way: too much flour, too little water, a stingy pinch of baking powder, and frayed strings of salty cod fish. Our father’s dumplings. The Beautiful One insists on tradition, even if she has to create and sustain it single-handedly.

I contemplated writing my father’s mother. Were there actual, living Jamaican children who had to gnaw like puppies on their dumplings? I thought of asking her help in securing an accurate recipe, but loyalty to my parents prevented this. A child intuits plenty from overheard conversation and rambling aerogrammes. I suspected Grandma-in-Jamaica would have felt my father’s dumpling was a good-enough dumpling for a family that stole her only son.

“Let them feel a heavy load in them chest,” she might have grumbled of us, “and think of me aching heart.”

My father tried too hard. There’s no other explanation for the overworked dough. Like my Southern-born mother, I know a dumpling doesn’t require kneading and stretching.  The perfect dumpling swells like a golden orb below the oil. It has the good sense to turn itself over and pop up like a ball to sit on the surface. My mother’s dumpling nicely waits, as she lines a platter with paper napkins, to be lifted and drained. It’s mostly round like a little head, but there are extra limbs and bumps to make it more giraffe and elephant than human. Inside is airy with tiny chips of fish.

The Beautiful One is not opposed to our mother’s dumplings. The trouble is she doesn’t
discern. She wants these too, and as often as the others. But how many dumplings can
one household tolerate? How many cooks in a kitchen on a busy holiday morning? If any
particular dumplings are to be eliminated, one ought to begin with those raised for
sentimental reasons. Or so I once believed.

My father is incapacitated now. No taste, save minted mouth swaps and minuscule portions of toothpaste, crosses his lips. If he somehow swallowed that one single tear that
sometimes squeezes from his remaining eye, it could cause him to aspirate. The skin above his navel has hardened around a feeding tube. He couldn’t use his left hand to make the right one dust the counter with flour.  With a recipe he concocted from imperfect memory, he made The Beautiful One’s dumplings and even this he never wrote down. And the other family dumpling?  Before my father’s accident, in the period now remembered as laden with omens, my mother’s last pot turned against her.  Unblended water exploded in the oil, shooting up a pasty comet trailed by grease.  The instant my mother saw it sticking to the ceiling, it dropped back down and stuck to her face.  Mercifully, the fleshy, pink scars have disappeared, but she too is done with making dumplings.

So in the end, all our dumplings are leavened by memory as well as sentiment: the light ones as well as the leaden.  Someone has found the very last one, hidden under an inverted plate, and eaten it for appetite or meanness.  Something is over for all time, but it takes months or maybe years for this fact to be understood.  From feast to slow-growing famine, you might say.

The Beautiful One has no one left to prepare her dumplings.  I won’t make them for her, but I see she doesn’t starve from their absence.  She’s moved into other people’s households: Chinese, Thai, Czech.  She continues to eat anyone’s dumplings, that one.  She has no particular allegiance, no devotion to good taste.  I give her credit for one thing.  She makes our father happy when she reminisces about his cooking adventures with dumplings.  She describes a gold I can’t personally recollect, a softness inside the crunchy outer crust, the tingle of spring water rinsing the salty tastes.  She reinvents holiday mornings waiting for the juices to run clear in some heavenly pheasant or turkey. Munching a dumpling, she insists, could keep your stomach from tearing itself apart.

The truth is my father’s dumplings sheared the roof of my mouth like rocks. I watch him in The Home, rolling his tongue round and round in his mouth. His struggle revives in my own mouth the pain that followed each bite after the injurious one. Round and round goes his tongue, reenacting my own compulsion to explore the contours of the inflammation. Of course, I never completely stopped eating. The pleasure of any good food was mixed with the pain of reinjuring the bump at the roof of my mouth and a brief memory of what had initially caused it. I promised myself over and over, “never again,” “eat more slowly,” “be
cautious.” Lessons I haven’t learned to this day.

I worry about my father. I worry that his tongue reminds him of the tastes of metal, glass, and plastic collapsing around him at tremendous speed. I worry because there can be only pain in whatever memory he locates in his mouth. I’m afraid that each time his tongue surveys its shattered cave, he returns to the intersection of two familiar roads. And crosses.

The Beautiful One thinks she knows everything. She says our father’s tongue is trying to
remember the good taste of things.

“You were the best dumpling maker in the world,” she assures him, as though he was wondering just that.  She’s a good storyteller.  She almost convinces me that I too enjoyed our father’s rock hard dumplings: I gobbled so quickly they tore my mouth; as girls we wrestled for the last ones; I, not she, was The Greedy One; I still haven’t learned to share.

That last is an out and out lie. I always give The Beautiful One what she most wants from
our father.  What we all miss more than dumplings. When she smooths his hair behind his ears and tells him her lies, his eye widens in something like disbelief. I open my own bruised mouth and laugh.

 

 

Mary McLaughlin Slechta‘s fiction has appeared most recently in The Gihon River Review, and it
represents Connecticut in Ballyhoo: Fifty States Project.  She’s published a book of poetry about grief, Wreckage On a Watery Moon (FootHills Publishing) and two chapbooks.  She’s also an associate editor for The Comstock Review in Syracuse, New York.  This is her first appearance in r.kv.r.y. and we welcome her with great enthusiasm.

“Letter from Haiti: ‘Jesus Was a Zombie?'” by Annie Nocenti

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Jesus is dragging his feet. It’s not his fault; his legs are long and the beast he rides is squat. It’s scorched-earth hot, and hard walking for a mule in wet sand, weight of Christ on his back. They say mules are stubborn, but maybe they’re just resigned. Draped in a white sheet, slumped bareback on the burro, Jesus sweats.

“Who’s that on the donkey?” Caco asks.

“It’s Jesus,” I answer, but my thought is: Black Jesus. Down here in Haiti, kids see a white Christ in their Christian missionary picture books, but a black one in Haitian paintings and processions like the one that drifts by us now. I want to ask Caco what he thinks of this black/white Jesus thing, but it might be rude. We’re on a beach south of Jacmel, watching the lazy parade stumble by: a flock of girls in pink dresses, a litter of boys in blue uniforms.

“Who’s Jesus?” demands Caco.

“You know Jesus,” I insist. Then I wonder. “Don’t you know who Jesus is?” Caco looks glum. He’s only eleven years old. I love how he can fold his limbs up and collapse his body like a folding chair. “The son of God,” I explain.

“God has a kid?” Caco’s amazed.

“He had one,” I say, “but his kid is dead now.” My Kreyol is pathetic, Caco’s English not much better, so even passing my Kreyol/English dictionary back and forth, we end each sentence with a headache. There’s a guy next to us pattering away on a small drum, sliding his thumb hard on the drumskin, bending notes. His English is decent, and he tries to help us communicate, but mostly I think he gets his kicks laughing at our gibberish.

A woman on high, fat green heels, in a green dress, probably a teacher, walks at the end of the crucifixion procession. We watch her and she watches us. A few of the girls from the flock of pink dresses pause before us, whispering. One breaks away, runs at us, hesitates, reaches down, touches my toe, dashes back to her girlfriends. They squeal at her bravery. A soccer game is in the direct path of the procession, and the parade cuts
right through the middle, but no one seems to notices. The boys adapt their kicks and passes, the two groups mix together then pull apart and move on. The kids dragging the cross stumble and drop it, splashing Jesus but he barely looks up. The burro steps over the cross and keeps going.

“Yeah, that’s the story, God had a son,” I say, piecing together a halting sentence that’s half pantomime. “He died for the sins of man, whatever that means. They nailed him to a cross till he was dead, buried him, but he rose out of his tomb on Easter. That’s what this parade is about. It’s Palm Sunday, or something like that.”

“Jesus was a zombie?”

A zombie is no B-movie undead joke sticking pins in dolls; a zombie is a real deal in Haiti. Apparently people do get cursed and die and rise undead from the dead, but a zombie can be kept at bay with rhymes and incantations. Religion in Haiti is deceptive. Vodou worshippers were persecuted, and so they cloaked their worship in a veil of Christianity to hide their real beliefs. Now it’s hard to tell who believes what. But zombies attained a terrifying status when the tyrannical duet of Papa and then Baby Doc Duvalier had their personal militia, their death squad ghouls, the Tonton Macouté, wear dark clothes, dark sunglasses to hide their eyes, and speak few words- a kind of zombie mystique, a murderous dictatorial fashion statement.

“Yeah,” I tell Caco, “Jesus is a zombie. They put his body in a cave with a rock as big as a house blocking the entrance, and he rose from the dead and rolled that rock away like it was nothing.”

“Zombie!” Caco is up and kicking aside imaginary boulders. I’ve been teaching Caco and his friends karate on the beach, and they’ve been teaching me such Haitian essentials as proper machete hacking technique when splitting a coconut. Caco’s buddy Jean Bernard joins us. Jean Bernard is pissed at me. I’ve been painting their watercolor portraits, and Jean Bernard says I got his nose wrong. He took a pen and drew himself a bigger nose, but he’s still insulted. I think my mistake was painting him as a boy when he wants to see himself as a man.

The boys leap into a karate zombie game- their spinning kicks are right out of chopchop movies, but they kick with such gusto they topple with each kick. I’m trying to teach them balance, but they think falling is a small price for high drama. I lurch toward them, ghoulish and undead; my zombie based on American ’40s horror films like “I Walked with a Zombie,” but the boys scream and run anyway.

I like hanging with the Haitian kids because they haven’t quite figured out yet that us pale-skins that jet in from imperialist countries are somehow the source of all their problems, which are overwhelming. Haiti was country founded on the only successful slave rebellion in history, and yet, or maybe because of that, small acts of opposition are squashed and bravery is considered suicidal. Caco doesn’t connect all this with US sanctions and coups and hundreds of years of European colonialism but the older Haitians, sometimes they stare at us “blancs” with open hatred. Or perhaps I’m just paranoid. It’s hard telling not knowing.

Now Caco and Jean Bernard are holding hands and laughing, and the beach drummer explains “They’re making fun of your date.”

“I don’t have a date,” I protest.

The drummer and Caco talk in fast Kreyol, which makes them impossible to understand since they’re also laughing so hard. Finally the drummer translates: “You made a date with the old man that’s fixing the roof.”

I remember the roofer, a sturdy Haitian, somewhere in his sixties or seventies; so weatherworn it’s hard to tell. He was on the roof all day, laying palm or banana or coconut fronds, I don’t know which, in beautiful, fanning rows. I watched him casually use his machete to scratch his back. Once, he used it to swat a fly on his cheek. I told him how much I admired his skill. I do remember saying “oui” a lot, but “yes” is the new linguistic  tick that peppers my speech whenever someone rattles Kreyol at me so fast it whizzes by in an unintelligible stream. Apparently, with one of those polite “yeses” I agreed to a date.

“When did I say I’d do this?” I ask the drummer. “You’ll know it when it happens,” he shrugs, as if to say, whenever. This is Haitian time, it’s not that different from slacker or surfer boy time. Whenever.

~

Jessica struts out to the beach in camo capri pants, blond hair tucked into a red kerchief. The boys stare at her bandana. It’s only later that I read in a book that a red kerchief signifies a vodou worshiper.

Jessica is perfect. Cultured, funny, beautiful. Everywhere we go Haitians gaze at her. With what emotions, I don’t know. Lust and disgust? Awe or intimidation? Curiosity? Jessica’s a fashion photographer, just in from a Miami shoot, on a detour jaunt to Haiti for “artistic inspiration,” on her way to New York. I met her poolside at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince.

Port-au-Prince is a city built for 200 thousand that holds millions. The rich Haitians speak Parisian French and live in gated mansions with sniper security guards on their roofs and attack dogs on their grounds. There seems to be a small middle-class, but the majority live in slums; crowded acres of cinderblock, tarpaper, and corrugated tin shacks with no electric, water or sewers. Even where there is electricity, it’s only for a few hours a night, so people buy food frozen. That’s their refrigeration.

Flying into the Port-au-Prince airport is nightmarish, a gauntlet. First, you have to navigate through a swarm of men with “official” badges that want to carry your bags and get you a taxi. Then there is an exit-area, a green-metal rod pen, a kind of holding tank, with a mass of men pressing against the fence bidding for you to choose their taxi. Like a goat in a livestock pen, up for sale. Luckily, I see the friend I came to visit waving from his jeep. The drive into town is over so much rubble, with so many men at work piling rocks, pounding rocks, dragging wood, it’s hard to tell if the city is being built or destroyed. There is garbage burning everywhere, and kids squat roadside selling gasoline by the gallon out of plastic jugs. A tap tap, one of the beautifully colorful buses of Haiti, almost plows us off the road, and as it drives off I see the smile of Tupac Shakur, painted on its backend.

The Oloffson is a great hotel to stop at just long enough to get confused. The Rhum Barbancourt flows, the country’s insanely hopeless political situation is discussed and plans are made to go into town and mix with “the people” or go to the disco, but in the heat of the day no one wants to leave the oasis of the hotel. There are few tourists. Mostly the bar crowd is journalists, health workers, embassy officials, missionaries, art dealers, drug
dealers, white hippie women pretending to be vodou priestesses, and men who are hiding from something. There are displaced, angry foreigners who lurk in the hotel for months at a time, ostensibly to do “good things” for Haiti, like bring in shipments of condoms. Everyone sits out on the veranda, where the walls surrounding the hotel are just high enough that all that can be seen of the city’s chaos is the occasional bundle that floats by, balanced on the head of an unseen woman, or the tip on an uzi from passing military.

The waiters at the Oloffson are wise sadists. They make you wait too long, then bring you the wrong drink, to see if you will get rude. They test you. If you are fine with whatever they bring you, whenever they bring it, they become excellent waiters . One American has become so bitter and entrenched at the hotel, and is so rude to the waiters, that everyone’s convinced they piss in his drinks. Even he knows this, but he doesn’t care. “I’ve drunk worse,” he claims.

Strangers meet at the bar and talk easily. Conversation swings from hope to hopelessness and back again, over and over. The malaise and intense heat breeds rumor and distortion and fear. Any news is nurtured until it’s “true” and then later dismissed as a “lie.” News ripples through the hotel: a woman was killed, a riot started. Paranoia rises. There’s a rumor that the airport is closed, no one can leave town. They’re burning tires in the street, making blockades. When will it be safe? The embassy is closed, Thursday will be bad. Oh, fuck it, have another drink. Sunday will be a good day to fly the hell out of Haiti.

Aristede, now exiled but then still president of Haiti, is discussed endlessly. He’s beloved, he’s inept. He’s a poet, he’s corrupt. He speaks in wise but futile parables. He sold out. He’s built a swimming pool and taken a light-skinned mulatto wife. It’s all lies, he doesn’t have a swimming pool, he’s a savior. He’s taken money from the wrong people, he poses for pictures with Duvalierists, he’s the best the people can hope for. Whatever is true, at least Aristede believed people should have a say in their own affairs, something no other leader allowed.

In a few crazy days, one can learn just enough about Haiti to know you’ll never understand anything. I get drunk with a so-called missionary until he pulls out his standard repertoire of “missionary position” jokes. I meet a handsome man who casually “spills” the contents of his wallet, taking his time before picking up his many I.D.s, each showing a different identity, just so I’ll know “he isn’t who he seems to be.” This must be something that gets
him laid a lot or he wouldn’t be doing it every time a pretty girl joins the table. I meet a beautiful young botanist who tells everyone how some sharks have two penises and two uteruses and the babies eat each other in the womb until there is only one left. She holds the attention of all the men at the table with that story, the journalists musing at the metaphoric possibilities of incorporating self-devouring shark babies into the stories they were supposed to file about Haiti months ago. As the night gets later and drunker, the guys start talking about going to town; there’s a new military-themed brothel, where one can do it airborne, ground combat style, or choose naval-op sex. Everyone speculates on what kind of props and rigs the brothel could have to accomplish all this.

The terrific vodou/rock house band RAM plays, led by the hotel owner and his wife, which someone brings us to a hungover dawn. I travel south with my friend, a filmmaker, and the fashionable Jessica, bouncing with the bad roads, in the loud jeep. We pass stores with names like “There for the Grace of God Haircuts” and “Wait for the Lord Cleaners Expedient Laundry.” Last night, sweat slick from dancing, I remember taking air on the veranda and meeting a little girl who introduced herself as “God Willing.”

~

We spend a few days in huts on the beach, getting to know Caco and all the other boys. I want to meet some of the girls, but while the boys seem to have time to hang out, the girls have chores and are shy. Jessica, gazing out at the ocean, decides her upcoming New York shoot will have a sexy revolutionary theme: tattered Che Guevera T-shirts with red brassieres showing underneath, red kerchiefs and low-slung hip-hugging camo pants. She
demonstrates all this by pulling and tugging at her clothes and vamping with her body until Caco’s jaw drop like a cartoon. I turn away to watch a woman drag a brown pig into the ocean and wash it. I don’t want to go anywhere in the heat, but Jessica keeps chirping: “Come on, let’s go to market and shop for lingerie! I want red, pink, crimson, I want magenta! It’ll be fun!”

The outdoor marketplace is wonderful and disgusting and seems to sprawl for miles. A bustle and stench of life, a mass of swarming, haggling. Everything for sale, from gasoline to pineapples, garlic to shoes. Hunks of uncooked meat lie in the scorching heat; red slabs covered in flies. At the edges of the market, men stand in the shade with wheelbarrows, offering to cart anything anywhere. I see a little boy in a dress, a girl wearing a sandal on one foot, a sneaker on the other. Jessica takes it all in, and I imagine these fashion accidents transformed into fashion statements in the pages of Vogue next month.

We buy some fruit. The paper money has been in circulation so long it feels made of dirt. Bargaining is expected, it’s a sport, and a way to get to know people. Jessica, of course, speaks French, so she can understand a bit of Kreyol. A woman with enormous breasts sells root lumps; she squats on the ground in a “Hooters” T-shirt, her twisty roots neatly wrapped in newspapers and spread around her like rubble. I’m on a mission to find the  right herbs for a neighbor’s bad blood pressure, but I’ve forgotten to ask if it’s too high or too low blood, and the herbalist woman laughs at me and tells me to come back tomorrow. A girl who looks to be no saint wears a New Orleans’ Saints shirt. A skinny schoolboy slouches against a pole in an FBI T-shirt. Sparse electricity, few roads, no clean water, but plenty of American T-shirts, the flotsam of some defunct relief program.

Jessica and I are the only whites as far as the eye can see and we’re shopping for leopard underwear. Jessica is so self-possessed she seems oblivious to the irony. I’m in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere shopping for candy-red push-up bras.

~

Dinner is always an event, and Jessica sure can throw a dinner party. That night she whips up mango margaritas, makes a yellow pepper and melted anchovy sauce for pasta, then adds beets and the whol e dish turns a brilliant orange. She has the boys drag the long dinner table right into the ocean, where we eat with the waves lapping at our feet, red lanterns in glittering competition with the stars above. She tells a fabulous rags-to-riches story about a Vietnamese busboy who rose to the top of the trendy NYC restaurant scene by swallowing gold and bringing it into the US. When Jessica breaks into song, belting out titillating lyrics from Eartha Kitt’s “It’s Fun to be Evil”, out come the drums.

The boys pour rum onto their hands, rub it on the drums and strike a match; the blue flame dances in their palms and as the liquor burns off it somehow tightens and tunes the leather skin of the drum. Little Man, nicknamed for his small stature and mature face, writhes in what seems to be possession by a good spirit, while the rest of the boys play bandito, taking turns trying on Jessica’s red kerchief. Little Man has loose limbs, and they dangle and jitter as he shuffles, swing as if broken or boneless. He wears a huge white shirt and nothing else, and when he moves it billows like a sail against the dark ocean. He puts one hand on his belly, the other  outstretched wide, begins to lurch and careen as if tugged by invisible strings, flinging himself to the sky, to the earth, into the water,
crawling in the sand, then springing up to spin some more. All the while his eyes are closed, but somehow, with the aspect of being open wide. The thin-boned blond dogs writhe in the sand, the ecstasy of possession contagious. The boys use sticks on wine glasses for added percussion. They play so hard the glasses shatter.

That night, the little boys crawl onto my mattress with me, and soon their limbs jerk and kick from chase dreams that in turn cause the stray dogs that prowl outside to howl. The moon is high when I see a Haitian cowboy standing silhouetted in the doorway of the thatched, open-air hut, beckoning.

It’s the old roofer. My “date” is wearing a cowboy hat and boots, machete holstered to hip. He nods and turns his back to allow me to pull on more clothes.

We walk east along the coast for a long time, then head into the hills. I wonder where he’s taking me, but conversation is impossible without my Kreyol phrase book. We climb until we top a mountain, as I try to remember the course home in reverse: down mountain, find the ocean, turn right.

I hear drumming, and eventually we step into a clearing ringed with chairs. There’s a makeshift structure like half a gazebo, an altar wrapped in white cloth, with a center pole. Trees bloom with colorful red papers and hanging lanterns. Women in red kerchiefs holding red flags and wearing red and blue dresses squat on the ground with bags of cornstarch, drawing delicate, lacey white curlicue patterns on dark ground-vévé, they call it. I try to make myself as invisible as possible, and watch the quiet, industrious preparations for what I assume will be a ritual or party. Everyone is busy decorating the clearing, but stop when they see me, I hear the familiar whisper: “blanc, blanc,” and know something isn’t right.

The Cowboy Roofer gets into a fight with a few elders; it is clear that he should not have brought me. I make an apologizing gesture, and turn to leave. Two men block my way. Finally, a man who knows a bit of English explains to me what I suspected; whites are not really permitted at vodou ceremonies; I have to leave. I tell him I’m sorry, I’m happy to go. He tells me it’s not safe for me to go back alone. He glances at some mountain homeboys-on-the-plateau slouched in the corner. I take this to mean he doesn’t want to point fingers, but alone in the woods I might become prey.

The drumming starts, hypnotic. Abruptly, violently, the Cowboy Roofer is spinning and flailing with what seems to be premature possession. Unlike Little Man’s visiting spirit, this one doesn’t appear benevolent. At first the others just keep an eye on him, but when he angrily un-holsters his machete and begins slicing the air around him, the men jump on him, restrain him, and take him away. It’s not his fault; I learn later that when a spirit  inhabits a prepared vessel, the actions of the possessed are not theirs, but the spirit’s. I assume it was a violent spirit that entered my date, perhaps Baron Samudi, who I later read is one of the first to show up at a vodou ritual, and tends toward violence. A long conversation follows, with much pointing at me. They tell me that the roofer has been “thrown off the mountain,” and I hope that’s just a figure of speech. I try to make it clear  that I can find my way home and will take my chances with banditos, but again I’m blocked from leaving. They tell me I’m to stay for two hours, then I must go. It’s clear that once I stepped into their domain, I handed over my free will.

I’m not afraid. There are women and children here. The ritual builds slowly, but build it does, the drumming, the swaying, the electricity in the air. Women saunter around carrying sex in their eyes. Everyone writhes and sweats. I see a woman dance low until she is rubbing her face in the sweat of a man’s chest. They slap each other, spin, dance again. When someone falls out of possession, they are hugged and cradled as the spirit leaves.
An ancient woman who looks like a collapsed bundle of sticks, so brittle if she were to move she’d break, does move. But then, she surprises me by rising, not like an old woman but graceful as Martha Graham, with a youth and power that is startling. She is given great berth and respect, and as she swirls into possession, she sees me.

Our eyes lock. I panic. Of course she can see deep into my soul, I think, and she’ll see whatever rot is there. I’ve been unsettled this week by how the children won’t believe I don’t have my own kids, and how sad they get about it. They tell me the only women they know with no babies are witches. I imagine the grand mambo sees all this, my missing babies, what a fuck-up I am for forgetting to have kids. She dances over to me, clutching a bottle of yellowish water. None too gently, she yanks my head back and pours. I gulp down the sweet honeyed liquor, which must be clarin, the sugarcane moonshine everyone drinks. I think of dysentery and dengue and dyspepsia and dystopia or whatever microbes lurk in the water. I drink obediently, knowing it’s an insult not to. To my total shock, she kisses me full and hard on the mouth. Then she smiles.

Suddenly the mood shifts, as if I’ve gotten the kiss of acceptance by the mother of all mambos, which I hope is what just happened. A chair is brought for me. Someone offers me some seeds cupped in their palm. People are shoved out of my line of vision, so I can see the dancing. Every once in a while someone approaches with a bottle. They jerk their chins up, over and over, till I tilt my head back and accept a drink. There is an intoxicating
fear and ecstasy one can experience in this country, often in the same moment. I decide I’d better resist nothing, not even abuse. Children come up to me and pinch my arms till I give them a few gourdes. Men begin to collect, one puts his arm around me and I see some women snicker. I’m getting drunk. I want the man to take his arm off me, but I’m scared to ask. He keeps saying “fouk” or “defouk” and I think he means fuck, but later someone tells me he was probably saying something like “crotch, open-crotch.” Which I guess is the same thing. One of the women comes over and tells me that when a man touches me, just hit him. She demonstrates by hitting whatever men happen to be standing around her. It works, they back off quickly. In the distance I can see new Haitians arrive, protest my presence, then relax when they are whispered something. I never find out what. All through the night various kind Haitians come up to me with offers of food or drink, or to ask if I am okay. “Mwem kontan, mwem kontan,” I say, over and over. I’m content, I’m happy. Bel, bel, everything is beautiful.

A great sound comes up the mountain. A ra ra approaching, a music parade that travels the countryside in the spring, blessing the land. The band and all its followers move like a sinuous centipede. If you encounter a ra ra on the road, they swarm your car and won’t let you pass without giving some money. Now they seem to be swarming over the whole mountain. The cowbells, drums, scrapers, long bamboo horns like digeridoos, and  whistles all combine to make a crazy sound as the procession slithers up the mountainside. They undulate. Every body movement seems to echo and ripple and repeat in all who follow. The bells and whistles give the music the aspect of a disco. The two ritual dances, ra ra and vodou, intersect in libidinous waves, mix, take hours to finally part and
move on. By now I’ve been forgotten. Something larger sweeps over the night, and I can move about as I please.

The devil arrives in a red sequined jacket, all hip swagger and cocky eyed, possessed by the sexiest of spirits, and the dancing gets downright dirty. There is a fight, the devil is subdued. I’m lifted into a dance, and the rest of the night is a blur that seems to go on for five years or a minute. I wake up very late, in my bed. Someone made sure I got home safely.

The next day a big wind rises. The smell of charcoal cooling and the dark clouds that cover the sky create a foreboding uncertainty in the air. During the night, a dog got accidentally closed in a room, and he has eaten his way out, leaving a hole in the hut. The rum hangover, a rumor of civil war, blockades made from piles of burning tires, it all descends like a shroud. I know I’ve fallen in love with Haiti, a country of terror and ecstasy,  mystery misery and joy, even though it is a country that I could never hope to understand.

I go to the beach and see a little boy dragging a tiny puppy by a palm leaf leash. The puppy is shivering. The boy digs a hole and buries the puppy in the sand. I squat next to them and try to tell the boy the puppy is sad, tris, sad. The boy smiles, unburies the dog, only to drag it down the beach and bury it, again, far away from me.

When I leave Haiti I will leave my hat on the bed. It’s bad luck everywhere else, but in Haiti, it means you’ll be back some day.

 

Annie Nocenti is a writer and editor living in New York. “Jesus is a Zombie?” was previously published by Counter-Punch.

“Grace” by Bob Mustin

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I noticed him half a block ahead, sitting on his haunches at the intersection
of Peachtree and Marietta, a grubby gargoyle beside a blue mailbox. He
glanced over his shoulder at a honking cab, then inhaled from his cigarette
and tucked its red ember inside a cupped palm against the November wind.

I slowed, Melinda tugging at my arm. “You have to be there by eleven, Alan.
That’s eight minutes from now.” Her thin lips moved to my ear. “I showed
you the letter. They said they’ll take the house. If we lose that, I don’t know
what I’ll do.”

Walking again, I saw the man twist his half-gone smoke to death on the
sidewalk, drop the butt into his shirt pocket, rise and rub his knees. Thumbs
now slung from his side pockets, the fingered-back pompadour reminded
me of ho-daddies I had seen on California beaches after my tour of duty.
We neared, and I made out the grit in his hair, the lines on his face
unmistakable. Equaling my six-foot height and decaying proportions, he
had to be very nearly my age. He grinned and nodded, gave a tentative
wave. The hand began to quiver, then dropped limp at the wrist.

Melinda steered me past and into the street, her voice rising to the brassy
tone she saved for her most insistent moments. “Alan, listen to me. You
have to remember, make eye contact. Be confident.”
I nodded, adding a soft grunt. Her liturgy usually didn’t require much of a
response.

“You can’t afford to let them think you’re having second thoughts.
Remember last time?”

The man looked so familiar. If she had asked, I could have described him in
detail. But then there had been so many like him.

“Just be candid. You mustn’t let them think you’re holding back anything
important.”

“Candid.”

“Exactly,” she said, gripping my arm tighter. “Put a positive spin on why you
were last laid off. And keep mentioning your assets. You’re a hard worker.
Dedicated. Willing to work long hours. Tell them about your experience,
how easy it is for you to adapt to a new work environment. That’s important.”

We’d be there in a few minutes, and I’d hand them my résumé and a stack
of recommendation letters, and they would note my age and the bum leg,
the occasional career lapses. I would tell them there hadn’t been any
recurrences of depression or respiratory problems in the last five years,
that I owned a home and worked with disadvantaged kids on weekends,
when I could. Then they’d smile, stack their papers, shake hands.

“We’ll be in touch,” they’d say, the death knell to any interview.

I almost tripped at the opposite curb, recoiling at the hand on my shoulder.

“Excuse me,” the man said, “your name’s Alan something, right?” He
snapped his fingers as if to jar loose a memory, then shifted his stance to a
loose at-ease, an old pair of dog tags clunking softly beneath the worn, too-
big khaki shirt. His boots were scuffed but still laced according to regulation,
all the way up. He smelled musty and smoky, the way you would in the
Central Highlands after a couple of weeks. I noticed the morning beer smell,
too, but it wasn’t the sour reek of a street drunk. Then we moved up the
curb and he gave us an engaging smile, one I thought to emulate for the
interview.

Melinda glanced to her watch and groaned. “Please,” she said, “not again.”

The man slipped ahead, facing us, pedestrian traffic swirling to either side
and passing on. “You were in the Nam. We know each other, right?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, not a completely honest answer.

“Sir,” said Melinda, “we’re going to be late.” Her fingernails dug into my
wrist. “Come on, Alan.”

“I was up in I Corps,” he said. “Hue to Khe Sanh. Mostly Khe Sanh.” He
looked down and shook his head. “What a mess.”

“I was in the delta. Pacification team.” I rubbed my bad leg, then gave him
an I’ll-make-it look. “Someone set off a mine while I was taking a leak.”

He stepped back, glanced at my graying crew cut, then offered a hand.

“My name’s Jerry, brother.”

Melinda stepped away, one shoe’s toe slapping at the sidewalk. I didn’t
look, but I knew she was assembling one of her strained smiles.

“Just Jerry? No last name?”

“Just Jerry.” He nodded to the street. “Nobody out here cares about last
names.”

“Look, Jerry, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

He squeezed my hand, then his tremulous, nicotine-stained one dropped to
his side. The smile became wide-eyed.

“Tan Son Nhut, that’s where it was. Everyone went through there. You were
on your way home, and I was due in Hue in a couple of days. We did a few
beers together.” A cautious glance to Melinda. “Picked up a couple of
mama sans and some weed. Partied all weekend.”

A bus ground to a halt beside us, spewing passengers, as if into a hot
landing zone. Its tail pipe coughed, a dark effluent settling around us like
the ground haze of a late morning firefight. “Jerry, I really have to go.”

He nodded. “I understand, man. I do. I just wanted to say hello. For old
time’s sake.”

Melinda’s lips were against my ear again. “Don’t waste this opportunity,
Alan. You know I don’t want a divorce, but if I lose the house, well, mother
says I should come home.”

I took her hand, patted it and squirmed away, drew a ten-dollar bill from my
wallet and held it so Jerry could see it. Then I stuffed it into a pants pocket.

“Alan, I meant every word. Let’s go.”

Again his smile, and I squinted to see what lurked beneath. “You still a
drinking man, Jerry? You have holes in your arms?”

“No, no,” he said, his face suddenly that of a chastised child. “Oh, I snorted
a little smack in-country, but I got over it in rehab. Don’t drink any more,
either.” Then he laughed. “Not much, anyway. Doctor’s orders. Orange got
me. They laid that shit all over Khe Sanh. Wind blew it away, then blew it
back, day after day. I see things, can’t think straight sometimes. Didn’t slow
down Uncle Ho’s guys, though.”
“Orange,” I said. “I got a dose of that. By then we were at An Loc.”
He nodded. “Rubber country. Did a recon hitch out of there. Cambodia.”

Just thinking about the Agent Orange, I couldn’t breathe. And on such a
nice fall day.

“You get treatment?” he asked.

“Not really.”

He lifted both hands to meet his downcast gaze. “I shake a lot.”

“I saw.”

“It’s not bad right now. You?”

The clock struck and Melinda nudged me. “Okay, we’re officially late.”

“All right,” I said. “Here’s a ten. Will that help?”

“Alan, that’s our lunch money you’re giving away.”

With one deft move he took the bill and jammed it into a front pocket of his
grimy trousers. “Thanks, brother,” he said, casting a wary look to see who
was watching. “I’m a little down right now, but I have something working. He
repeated it, “Something working,” the words now a whisper. Then the
faraway look I knew so well.

A chill hit me – it happens that way, sometimes. The only thing that helps is
keeping your situation simple – hole up somewhere, close your eyes, try to
think of better things. Maybe this afternoon, in the garage, with a few beers.
“I’m very late, Jerry. I have a job interview. I don’t want to miss it.”

“Well, hallelujah,” said Melinda. “Come on.”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t know.” He bounced on the balls of his feet and began
to move away. “Hey, good luck with that. Don’t end up out here like me.”

I nodded, fighting the urge to follow.

He turned and strode off, through the other pedestrians, as if he were on
point, half a klik to the firebase. A shower, a shave, clean fatigues, a few
beers and a card game, that’s all we needed back then to get us back in
the pink.

“Honestly, Alan, why do you have to be such a patsy? He’s just a bum. I’d
think after all this time you’d set your sights a little higher.”

I had tried a couple of times to tell her what it was like, how we felt so alone
in the bush waiting for the ugliness to end, only to realize when it was over
that we were all one thing, going our separate ways at just the wrong time. I
held back for a moment, Melinda pushing through the revolving doors. Jerry
ducked into a building farther down the block. I saw a sandwich shop there,
and a package store next to it, but I couldn’t tell which he entered first.

 

 

Bob Mustin has been a North Carolina Writers Network writer-in-residence at Peace College under Doris Betts’ guiding hand.  In the early ’90s, he edited the a small literary journal, The Rural Cooweescoowee, Under The Sun, and at thesquaretable.com. Another fiction piece is forthcoming in Reflections Literary Journal. His novel, A Reason to Tremble, was published in 1997.

“Guitar” by Louis E. Bourgeois

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You’ll never play the guitar again, I was told right after they took my arm, forever.  In fact, at the very moment they told me, the arm, my arm, was being taken outback to the hospital crematorium to be burned to ash as if it never existed as a part of me at all.  I asked to at least be given some of the ash but they wouldn’t let me have any of it saying it was against hospital policy and probably against state law.  Think about it, they wouldn’t even give me the ashes of my better and former self, which they took without my consent—they said they had to amputate in order to save my life, that bodily life that was left to me in fragments and I say, all right, fair enough I suppose, you had to take some of me in order to have any of me left for my parents and for society at large, but now that you have these fragmented remains of me, what on earth are you going to do with me now that I can’t play the guitar or fish and swim like I use to?  I’m alive all right, too alive, like some kind of post-post modern self, in more honest times they would have called that self a monster or at the very least a cripple, now what?  I’m more alive now than ever, then you’ll ever be able to deal with—extreme mutilation brings a person to life all right—you’ve never seen some one so greedy for life and so arrogant just to be alive at all, some weird elitism—I demand all things at once right now, but back to the guitar—we mustn’t forget our thesis here!  It was a beauty of a guitar that my rich uncle bought for me when I was 9 years old and he paid something like $1,000 dollars for it and it was on sale at that, $1,000 dollars, at that age and at my socio-economic level, I thought that was all the money in the world—finally, they let me go home, I guess they got tired of me, or, finally realized I didn’t have any money to pay them for taking my arm—I had to go home with nothing in my left sleeve and needless to say I felt a little awkward about that, a little horrified really…I was a beautiful child and now I was still beautiful but in a totally different way that would take a little getting used to you might say…there was nothing to hold my left sleeve together, no arm to feed it, you might say—Mama drove me home of course, silently, then talking about Chinese food for reasons unknown, poor Mama.  It was her fault she now had a crippled son, no, at least not completely her fault, but God’s fault too, but little did she know there’s no God only darkness, that’s what I discovered when I died 4 times and lived to tell about it, no God only Darkness, the self is nothing but darkness, dig…when we got home I immediately went to the closet to play the guitar, for I was dedicated to the guitar on moral principles alone and was literarily addicted to playing chords and notes, but quickly I realized the hospital people were right, I couldn’t play the guitar in any traditional sense.  Perhaps I could learn how to play with my feet like that armless guitarist did when he played for the Pope and brought real tears to the Pope’s eyes, but, no, I’m not that smart or talented, so it was time to accept the gruesome fact that I’d never be able to play my exquisite guitar again.  I just got drunk for a long time and left the guitar to collect dust in the closet until about a year or so later when I took the guitar out of the closet, which was still in the real leather guitar case, and walked deep into the swamp; walked further into the swamp then I’d ever had, and that’s a long way because I was raised rural my friend…in any case, I found a little hill of dry ground and opened the case and placed the guitar on top of it and poured gasoline all over it and dropped the match on the thing I loved more than anything in the world and watched it go up in red and orange flames. The warblers and sparrows in their evening bushes twittered and tweaked as if nothing was happening at all.

 

Louis E. Bourgeois

“Easter” by Louis E. Bourgeois

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She, my cousin, sat next to me as children looked for plastic and real eggs in hidden places in the backyard of our rich uncle’s house. She stared hard at the empty sleeve and deep lacerations on my forehead and along my neck, the result of an automobile accident; 23 broken bones, a crushed skull, partial mutilation of the left ear, innumerable cuts and perforations from windshield glass and shards of fiberglass and mirror and metal, etc., an arm missing from the shoulder down, a crushed testicle— she had a good look at me for the first time since the wreck—it was a sunny day and all the bodily damage was now revealed for the outlandish display that it was—it was a bright day, the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, after two days of absolute Death…I lived in her father’s shed, my uncle’s shed, self-imposed exile where I had taken up systematic reading of religious and anti-religious books, the Bible and Sartre for example—the family, my maternal aunt and her husband, wanted me to live inside their warehouse of a house—with all the other strays she picked up over the years (my aunt herself was a cripple—a severe nerve condition that tangled up her legs, in which she could only get around with a 3 pronged cane or a 4 legged walker) but I refused their generosity—the place for me was outside the house, outside house civilization, house culture; I had to come to terms with my new ugliness—my new crippledness, my deep fleshy scars and amputations of dozens of bones; books allowed me to forget about my body, especially religious texts and philosophy—my cousin didn’t read, didn’t like books, thought anyone who read as much as I did must be a Satanist, no matter what they were reading, and I was already suspected of Satanism long before the accident because the music I listened to was hard and fast with band names like Storm Troopers of Death, Methods of Destruction, Cromags, Volvex, Venom, Megadeth, Obituary, Death Angel, but that was all just for fun, now I really was straight from Hell, or, at least looked like it, which amounts to the same thing—my cousin was illiterate, therefore she could see that my eyes revealed something far beyond her world of backyard parties, television, and hanging out at the mall on weekend nights—I had taken to drinking lots of rum in those days, especially on religious holidays like this one, this was my first Easter as an amputee, I was already drunk and was still drinking beyond even the outer extremes of drunkenness, just to see what would happen, still pushing myself further and further to the brink of sanity, and somehow the worst always happed to me, not usually, but always, the Worst; the rum drunk was now almost as Transcendental as the morphine drip injected straight into my heart for 6 full weeks in the hospital, there’s nothing like it in this whole goddamned emptied out world—and she wouldn’t stop staring me up and down—I thought she was making sexual advances at first—one of the little girls in the Easter egg hunt cut her hand badly on a sliver of broken mirror in the tool shed, and the 3 year old began screaming as badly as I did once I woke up in the hospital after being in a coma for weeks—I was quite drunk, yet lucid, that’s always been my problem, I can never lose myself entirely and I reached out to touch my cousin’s long thick blue-black working class teenager hair and then she screamed louder than the little girl who flayed open her palm—my cousin then pushed me so hard that I feel off the bench entirely and hit the lawn hard, she ran—I sprang up from the suburban grass and ran after her—then it was as if the whole family, this tribe of people who had raised me all my life and who had made me who I was, now they wanted nothing more than to erase me from their lives, because I, Lucas Jeanfreaux, the first born and the most handsome to have ever been born to them, now was hideously deformed, something re-sent to them from their worse nightmare, a nightmare made tangible in the form of my body, eat from it, and drink from my blood as if it were wine, wine from Galilee—aunt, uncle, mother, brother even, were coming at me from all angles to stop me from pursuing my peasant cousin and pouncing on her, this cousin who had the nerve to stare down my infirmities and further to push me, the first born, off the bench and I ran well past my cousin and through the backyard gate and I kept running for blocks, that quickly turned into miles until I reached the outskirts of town— hours later somehow, I awoke on side the road—my step-father and only mother looking down on me—telling me it was time to go, to find a new home, and never to come back.

 

Louis E. Bourgeois

“Joy Despite the Cracks” by Pamela Knight

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A  huge, sparkling “8” adorned the roof of Star’s restaurant.  “Wow,” thought Joyce, Star’s and I have the same anniversary. Eight years sober.  A slight smile crossed her lips as she remembered the stargazer lilies her friend Marie gave her to celebrate the occasion.  Stars again.  It’ll be good to see Marie this weekend. Thank God for friends.

The twangy voice of the radio D.J. hummed in the middle of a skit that Joyce was not following. “Crackpot!“ his edgy voice squelched.

“Crackpot, crackpot!” Brenda and Bobby, ten and twelve, seized the word excitedly, trying it out in various insulting forms. Laughing and poking each other.  They were delighted with their new word.

“Your kids are such all around kids !” one friend had gushed. “Not afraid to talk or laugh or enjoy things.” Admittedly, Bobby delighted his basketball team. Brenda drew balloons to herself like a magnet.

Joyce was less enchanted to hear a word that so rawly summoned up /images of substances.

“Crackpot means crazy or a sham,” Joyce explained before drifting back to her self absorbed reverie. “A lot like my last relationship.” Despite Joyce’s  best intentions not to think about Paul and to move forward, she slid into the pain of their recent breakup.

The pain was gnawing and obsessive. Paul made her feel complete even though Joyce knew no one “completes” you. Day dreaming about him and how it would be when she was with him — how it would be when they got married —  had been distracting.  Had been sufficiently numbing to keep her from dwelling on her mother’s health, unpaid bills and Bobby falling asleep in class at school. Now that the relationship was over her thoughts prefaced each illusive longing with “if only, if only.”

If only we could have had a life together like the day we went down the Cape — a day that as a microcosm of life with Paul Joyce dreamed of.  The phone conversations leading up to the date purred gently and suggestively. The kids were spending the weekend with their father. Paul pulled up to Joyce’s home early with his van and loaded her bike beside his. The early summer sun shone.

The tentatively defined couple drove to the Bourne Bridge. Parking the van, Joyce thrilled to be doing something with someone who shared her drive for exercise. Happily, surrounded by breezy salt scented sunshine, they began the seven mile scenic ride along the Cape Cod Canal. Once they stopped and rested on a park bench and ate the snack Paul had thoughtfully prepared.

Afterwards, calmed and invigorated by the bike ride, they continued flirting. Joyce knew she was falling in love despite Paul’s reminders throughout the eight month relationship to keep things casual. They traveled further down the Cape to Dennis Beach and found a secluded sand bar. Paul read his novel, comfortably settled in a webbed lounge chair, as Joyce, fantasizing of many days to come like this one read the newspaper contentedly.

Topping the day off, the two stopped at Joyce’s parent’s house and Joyce proudly introduced her new boyfriend. The perfect day was rounded out with a meal out and a visit to a local AA meeting. Sleeping together ended the ideal day.

But Paul called a few weeks later, stumbling over, “it’s too soon after my divorce for me to be serious.” Joyce reeled.  She was still stunned, empty and grieving as she journeyed to the Recovery Convention.

Joyce pulled into the parking lot of the Sheraton Tara where she and the kids would spend the weekend. She was looking forward to attending workshops but was not to the nitty gritty settling requiring trips back and forth for the cooler and luggage.  Getting the kids to help remained difficult.

“Mom, this is too heavy,” Brenda whined, struggling to hold up her end of the cooler.

“Ma, can’t we just go swimming? Can’t we do this later?” Bobby definitely would prefer to shirk. “We could have just bought drinks here anyway.”

“Honey, you know I’m trying to save some money by bringing our own.” Joyce wrestled with two suitcases and a backpack.

Once again her thoughts strayed to Paul and why he would leave her.  Why she didn’t have a partner to help with stuff like this.  She remembered what her counselor advised: don’t ask why. Ask how. How can I live my life happily or at least serenely? God please help me. She remembered to ask for help with these aching, annoying continuous thoughts. Thoughts of something, outside of her, that owned her- Paul rented space in
her head and seemed permanently lodged in her heart.  It was impossible to evict him.

“Joyce!”

“Marie, I’m so glad to see you.”

“Hi Bren, hi Bob, how’re you doing, kids?”

“Good,” they chimed. Small grins appeared. Marie’s teenagers were here. Sometimes they swore, and while Mom denigrated this behavior, Bobby, especially, commended it.

“Come, guys, you can make it though you do look a little overburdened. Let me take something.”

Try as she might to relax after they settled in, Joyce could not. Bobby and Brenda monotonously echoed “Crackpot, crackpot,” as they cannonballed into the pool. They barely noticed as Joyce left to go to a workshop.

“Thanks a bunch, June,” she called to Marie’s sixteen year old daughter who joined in with the antics of Bobby and Brenda as Joyce left the pool area.

“Crackpot. What is this crackpot crap?“ Joyce heard June ask as she left. She felt mildly free and told herself to be grateful for the small blessing of having an hour to herself.

The title of the workshop listed on the program was Joy Despite the Loss of Our Dreams. The topic resonated with Joyce. Becoming absorbed in the sharing as she sat in the room Joyce was prompted by something the speaker said to remember her brother who died in his early twenties. After a few minutes of sadness, she realized she may not have had these feelings when he died ten years ago because she had been drinking and drugging.

She thought of that eight ball they had as kids. The one they’d ask questions of and wait impatiently as the answer slowly slid into focus. It was just like that.  Her brother Ed slid into view. She was nineteen and he was fifteen. They’d hopped into the VW and traveled up to Vermont. After smoking the joint she brought, they lay in sleeping bags beside a country road. Side by side they watched shooting stars cascade into the deep, wide indigo sky.

The speaker was saying, “despite the loss of my dream of staying with my wife, I am grateful to have my kids in my life, to be sober, and to be a productive member of society. Every day I ask God for help. The losses in my life are scars. Today I plan to turn my scars into stars.”

Everyone clapped to hear the positive spin.  It was Serendipitous that she’d been thinking about stars (and scars) at the same time as the speaker. Synchronicity or coincidence nurtured her faith and hope. It helped her trust that being a single mom and working full time must be God’s will. Marie always suggested that God’s will was wanting what one had and appreciating it. Joyce had been journaling and recording all the synchronistic events that had occurred, proof if she needed it that life played on key. She would read a
character’s name in a book and then someone with that name would appear in her life.  She marveled at these happenings and wondered what message the universe was trying to convey to her.

People in twelve step programs call this type of coincidence God-incidence. For Joyce it helped to show that a Power Greater than Herself was working in her life. One day she took a walk while on vacation, not really knowing where she was going.  At the end of the walk she came across a dingy with her initials painted on it. Another time she took her teenage nephew to see Ozzie Osbourne. Wondering, even as she was there, if
this had been the right thing to do, Joyce opened the Anita Shreve book she hoped to read during the chaos and found it dedicated to Ozzie. At these moments, Joyce felt in the right place, sure of God’s blessing.

Leaving the workshop, Joyce mulled over all she wanted to tell Marie. Briefly she thought of Paul but remembered to stay present with herself, here and now. Marie was walking to the pool.

“Marie, Marie!” Joyce called.

The two hugged.

“You look a little better,” Marie observed. . Marie knew how badly Joyce had been taking it since Paul broke up with her.

“I am. That meeting was really good. I thought of my brother; I felt the pain- deep original pain, so to speak, and then I remembered a wonderful day with him and by feeling it and grieving and then having the good memory, I think I released some of the pain.”

“That’s right, girl. Its okay, it’s going to be okay,” Marie encouraged.

The pair hurried into the pool area. Suddenly happy to be with her family Joyce grandly greeted her children, “My stars, my stars!” she called as she saw them.

Used to their mother’s whims and grandiosity and what they called ‘recovery crap’ such as the Easy Does It but Do It bumper sticker their car sported, they grimaced good naturedly but answered, “Hey, Mom.”

“You’re coming to the big meeting tonight,” she reminded them. “How’s the water?

“Great. Real warm,“ Brenda spluttered. “Can I go in the Jacuzzi?”

Joyce and Marie exchanged glances. Kids always pushing limits.

“How about we check out the paddle boats?”

“Okay,” everyone agreed.

The paddle boat experience bonded the two single parented families together. Only an occasional joking affront of “crackpot” was uttered by the younger members of the group. By now even June was throwing the term around. Joyce explained how the word had come over the air and how the kids had become obsessive about it.

“Crackpot is a funny word, I have to agree,” Marie told the kids. Then, to Joyce, commiserating, she added, “And gratitude, patience and acceptance are funny words, too.”

That night, refreshed from the outdoor entertainment and a nice meal of Asian food, the group went to the ballroom to hear the main speaker of the convention. Usually the keynote speaker was clever and engaging, able to make the audience identify and laugh.

“Let me tell you a Zen story,” Loretta began, “that has to do with character defects and not being fully present for our realities. There were two pots that were being used to carry water.   One pot was broken and dripped along the path; the pot was not perfect. The cracked pot went to the Zen master and complained about its condition. But, look behind you, the Zen master said. I put seeds in your path and every day the crack in your side allowed the water to seep out and nourish the plants. Look at the beautiful flowers you have grown!” Loretta laughed. “And you know I am just an old cracked pot! But that’s okay, because God has been with me every step of the way.”

Joyce became mindful that she had not thought of Paul for five hours and that she was enjoying life exactly as it was right now. Tears filled her eyes as she felt the grace of another serendipitous moment. Cracked pot. Crackpot. She put an arm around each child and gave a warm squeeze. A full, wide smile emerged on Joyce’s face as she turned to see if Marie had caught the coincidental gift. Marie nodded.

“I really, really want what I have,” Joyce whispered.

Brenda and Bobby rolled their eyes. Silently they mouthed a word to each other.

 

 

Pamela Knight has worked as a subway mass transit driver for the MBTA in Boston, MA, for the last twenty three years. She has published two pieces in Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul Daily Meditations. Residing by Nantasket Beach, she lives with her two teenage children and three cats. She enjoys her book club, gardening and bird watching.

“Cargo” by Nathan Leslie

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Dear Susan,

I have no idea when I might be able to send another letter to you. The strangest events have unfolded here. Now David, Josh, and I are the only ones left. We spent the last week scuffing out an existence from our p-boat, floating aimlessly in these waters. Luckily, we became adequately effective at catching whatever fish swam in our direction, mostly or spearing them with sharpened laths from our p-boat, or shooting the ones that approached the surface  (though we are loath to use what scarce ammo we have). We are simply lucky—lucky to have made it this far, lucky to have escaped the fate that befell most of the others.

You can probably guess that food wasn’t our greatest problem. It was water. So many of the survivors simply died of thirst, even with our method in place. What did we do? We discovered we could boil the water and catch the steam in the empty barrels of our automatics, if we angled them just so. It was enough to keep us alive. It’s a shame we didn’t discover it before.

I even became used to the taste of raw fish. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw me. I would whack their heads against the side of the p-boat, scrape their scales against the corner of the craft, and dig in. When you’re that hungry eyeballs, scales, gills, guts, none of it bothers you.

Where are we now?  Well, that’s why I’m writing you today. We reached land two days ago.  We are currently on the shore of some small island in this part of the Pacific. We just found a fresh water source and nearly drank ourselves sick, collapsing in laughter and semi-delirium by the boulders of the creek. We feel as if we are the luckiest souls on the planet.  Yesterday we even managed to shoot two birds, which we were able to roast over an open fire. The birds tasted gamy, but they were at least a change from our recent diet.

I miss you and the boys. Please send my love to everyone including that no-good brother of yours.  I wonder how much he’d like to be in my shoes now. I think it’s possible that my thoughts of home have kept me alive. I dream of you and all the times we have shared, and I feel even more fortunate each day I survive. But then I start thinking of the soldiers I saw wither before my eyes. It is something to see a man dry out like a prune. Many times I have closed my eyes and thought of a big Sunday pancake breakfast with you and the boys flanking me. God willing, I will do that again.

Love,

Charles

 

 

Nathan Leslie has published four collections of short fiction include Reverse Negative (Ravenna Press, 2006) and Drivers (Hamilton Stone Editions, 2005).  Leslie’s work has appeared in over 100 magazines including Shenandoah, South Carolina Review, North American Review, and Cimarron Review. He is fiction editor for The Pedestal Magazine. His website is www.nathanleslie.com

“The MacMurray Method” by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

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First thing I do is check the television. They said it had cable.
Yep, punching the remote from the dark orange quilt on the
queen size bed, it’s got cable. Fred MacMurray stares out at me
from TVLand for a split black and white second before I click it off
again.  I don’t need to watch.  I just like knowing Fred and his
family are still there.

This time, it’s the Desert Moon Motel with its strange
unwrinkleable quilt; the air crisp – the way motel rooms always
get once the air conditioner starts. Hell, it’s still like 90 degrees
Fahrenheit at least outside, but in here, in here it’s just fine.

Like the All-American TV dream come true.

Then, right before I know what I’m doing—dozing, thinking,
whatever—it all comes back to mind. Summertime. 1976. I was 13.
There was no cable yet, but that was okay—the re-runs were still
on from 3 to 6 every day after school. All day, on some channels,
during the summer vacation…

Hot afternoons soaked in warm stale sticky cheap empty cans of
beer come floating back through my mind. The stump of wood I
crushed them on, crushed them with an eroded sledgehammer
that used to be my grandfather’s. The stump stunk like a bad old
drunk.  My hands stunk. And my t-shirt, where quarter-full cans
sprayed up lukewarm—sometimes hot—dregs, stunk. The big
black garbage bag I dragged out from the hot garage, full of
empty Lucky Lager or Black Label cans, stunk.

The cans on the bottom were sweaty with the stuff that dribbled
out of the cans on top. Those were my grandmother’s cans. My
father drained his dry. Every son of a bitch’s got one decent thing
to be said for them, right? My father drained his dry.

The blasting heat of those California July days worked like some
sort of unholy incubator: the cans emerged wet and warm, like
little alive things. Little alive belching dripping slimy hot things that
came back day after summer day to be crushed.

Hit straight down on top was the best way to crush them.  Struck
on the side still meant the edges had to smashed in –that took
three swings as opposed to one, but the sledge hammer –it stunk
of hot beer, too—was heavy and there was less of  a chance of
missing that way. When I was done with the bag, I could go in and
watch TV.

I got exactly nothing for doing that, I remember. That was my
keep. My duty. My work. Everybody had to pull their own weight—
even if they never asked to be there. Even if my father kept
saying ‘shut up’ with a backhand when I asked what weight he
pulled. Kept saying ‘mind your own business, you don’t know the
first thing about jack, why … don’t … you …just … shut … the …
hell … up’. That was his keep.

My father had more important things than weight to pull.  He was
an artist, which meant that he was special, even if only him and
my grandmother knew it. He could draw tattoo flash of both the
Jimmies: Page and Hendrix, and the Hank Williams Jr. logo too.
Freehand. So special.

That is, that’s what he did when he did anything. Like all great
artists he could only work when he was inspired—to expect him to
get a real job (not mailing art to tattoo magazines and hanging
with some guy who airbrushed pictures of Jesus on lowriders, but
a real job like the real dads did on the shows) would be an insult.
And to insult him was to insult my Grandmother.  Because
Grandma believed in him.  Loved him.

I figured if she loved him, she would have wanted the best for him.
Maybe even for his kid. Yeah, right.

She called me a stool pigeon when I told her about my father
smoking pot all the time.  I was 13, I figured she’d make him stop,
make him better, make him like the other dads I knew, the way
dads were supposed to be.  The dads on TV.

I saw them every day.  Dads were like Mr. Brady. Sheriff Taylor.
Mr. Douglas. Even a dad like plain old Ed Johnson who wasn’t on
TV but who rented a light blue-sided ranchette across the street
from Grandma. She said that the whole Johnson family was just
plain white trash because they didn’t own that house. But I
watched Mr. Johnson go to work every morning.  His kids wore
real Levi’s and got driven to school in a clean tan Malibu station
wagon, with bumper stickers.  They had a color TV too.

But, after I told her, she didn’t make my dad stop smoking pot;
she just stopped liking me, instead. Put her television set in her
bedroom, where I wasn’t allowed to go.

I’ve got to stop laying here, on this cold bed, and try and get
some rest now.  Because I have to stop thinking now and turn on
that TV — any channel – find Fred MacMurray,  and my
Marlboros, and what’s left in my coffee cup or I’ll never make it to
that meeting in the morning.  And I have to make it.

I have to keep making it. That’s what I do.  I make it.

Like they do on TV.

 

 

Juleigh Howard-Hobson‘s writings have appeared in various journals, including Flipside Magazine and the anthology Undertow.