2012 Draws to a Close

Two human heads poked out of the sand in the distance. At least they looked like human heads – I was still over a hundred yards away, and I couldn't make out any fine details. As I drew closer, though, I realized that I was walking up to the heads of two humans about five feet apart – presumably men, owing to the short hairstyles and the deep voices that I heard coming from them. I was approaching them from the rear, and could not see their faces. They had no idea that I was there. I was about to call out to them and ask them if they needed some help in getting out of their predicament before the tide came back in, but held my tongue when I heard their conversation.

“Eating like a caveman is what you need – my dietary therapist has me on a paleo-diet,” said the one to the right. “I only eat things that are in accord with the diets of neanderthals and cro-magnons. Raw meat. Nuts. Fruits. Then I run after buses as though I were chasing woolly mammoths.”

“You're an idiot” contended the one to the left. “What you should be doing is concentrating on avoiding gluten. My crystal- and reiki-practitioner has me eating seventeen small gluten-free meals each day, followed by rubbing my each of my chakras with a rose quartz crystal. EACH of my chakras.”

“RAWWWWWWRRRR!!” cried the one to the right, craning his head back against the sand as far as he could. “That is a paleo-roar, and it releases my aggression so that it doesn't ball up in my small intestine and cause a blockage. I do that four times a day. Then I kill a small, furry mammal and eat it raw while squatting next to a fire while wearing a loin cloth. A Lycra loin cloth. One must make some concessions to modern conveniences, you know.”

“Gloo-pee-lee ommmm...” chanted the one to the left, swinging his head in a slight circle. “Gloo-pee-lee ommmm...”

“Idiot,” said the one to the right.

The tide was coming in, but the two didn't seem to care too much. I cleared my throat.

“Leave us the hell alone,” they said in unison. “We are discussing dietary habits.”

I pulled out my hip flask and took a long swallow of gin. I shoved the flask back into my hip pocket and started walking up the hill to the shore road. I could hear the tide coming in, and the sound of the two men arguing about complete proteins.

Happy fracking New Year. You'll never get it.

Divine Justice

Resthig was a dog-eater, pure and simple.  I suppose you know that was the cause of my vendetta against him and all of his web-footed clan.  I would stand at the entrance of the arroyo with my crossbow and wait for one of those dog-eaters to approach.  I'd stick a poisoned bolt right through the evil heart of every single one of them if I had my chance, but I never had such satisfaction as when I stuck that pig sonafabitch Resthig himself.

When that dog-eater came around the corner of a rock outcropping in the arroyo, I was standing there with my crossbow leveled at his heart.  He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me, bastard that he was.  He smiled at me through his flesh-encrusted grill and tried to make a move for his sidearm.

The bolt went clean through the place his heart might have been, had that soulless bastard dog-eater had a heart.  He dropped like a load of wet kibble onto the ground.  Duke, my Australian Shepherd, gave a cheerful, playful bark.

"Go on, pal...go ahead," I said to Duke, who dashed over to Resthig and emptied his bladder.

Duke and I walked home to a fine dinner and an evening of disc golf.  He tried to let me win again but my aim just ain't what it used to be.

How to Train a Boyfriend (as told by Sally) or, "Self Improvement in Rural America"

(Excerpted from The Pultenham County Sketchbook, by Tom Andrews)

"Waitin' on that pea picker again, Sally?"  That was all my momma could say when she walked inna' the house and seen me jes' sittin' there on the front porch.  She didn't think t' tell me nothin' else and I guess I kin hardly blame 'er...I guess.

We done had so many good times, but Momma couldn't stand him, on account of his family, I s'pose, but probably more 'cause he'd messed around with meth and ever'one knew it.  He'd be hangin' out in Cotton City by that quick-mart and he'd be drinkin' pop one after 'nother, and ever'one mostly knew it.  And shit, all the money he ever and never made (tho' he said he did sometimes), well, hell...he jes' mostly spent it so fast he never really ever done seen it no how.  He loved me tho', I know it.  We was gonna' have a baby and then he'd get his life sorted out.  I jes' know it.

But hell, when Momma walked inna' the house and jes' said "waitin' on that pea picker again," she already know'd what had happened and she didn't let on.  She waited for me to hear it myself.  'Course, I heard it from some others right away.  About how he was all tripped out and musta' thought he was home or somethin'.  But he laid right down on the tracks 'tween the rails.  Our neighbor who works for the railroad told me that it's somethin' like a standard ten and a half inches o' height, and that plow of the train sits like another four inches...but he said that the wind from those boxcars jes' gets to blowin' and pretty soon yer' body would jes' get sucked up in there and rolled around in the wheels and stuff.

That's prolly' why they found parts o' him for about a hunnerd' yards down the track.  It was bad.  Real bad.  And I miss him in the worst way.  But I think I'm still gonna' have a baby.  That'll help me get my life sorted out.  I jes' know it.

Author, Author

“Wherefore art thou, Violet?” Precious Martin had a habit of asking this every time she walked into the nursing home. She would ask it even before the urine and fecal matter bouquet assaulted her nostrils. She would ask it even before the sight of that bent and crooked frame made the color empty out of her face. She would ask it and care not the least if anyone heard.

On a very typical day on that very typical street in that very typical Midwestern city, Precious walked once again into the residential care facility that had been her daily destination since her sister was admitted to the Alzheimer's unit some three years ago. “Wherefore are thou, Violet?” she called out, almost audibly. She smelled the onion and fish-stick melange from the kitchen even before the urine and fecal matter. “Wherefore art thou, Violet?”

It was a small thing, to be sure, the brief visits, but maybe they meant something to Violet. They sure as hell meant something to Precious – they meant a dread fear that she would end up in the same place in a few years. Precious was the baby of the family, and she watched the onset of her oldest sister's disease for years. And Precious tried so hard...so very, very hard to keep the wolf of that disease at bay. That bastard wolf that took the mind and left the body – the neutron bomb of diseases. Take your fish oil capsules. Eat the leafy greens. Plenty of water and exercise. Best of luck, Precious.

“Wherefore art thou, Violet?” Her voice was just a little sing-songy today. She knew this visit would be different, though, and it seemed right to sing a little bit. The onions and fish sticks were less noticeable now, she thought. Other aromas had crowded them out as she neared Violet's room.

It is amazing, Precious thought as she looked at her sister, how similar the teeth look to the fingernails. Not so much in color as in composition. A little washcloth had been rolled up and tucked under her sister's chin to keep it from curling tightly against her chest, and her mouth was open a little bit, allowing Precious to make this observation about her teeth.

It had been several hours and already the effects were evident. Death comes quickly and keeps on working, she thought. Efficient. Thorough. Violet's skin was already appearing kind of waxy and foreign – nothing like the skin of the sister with whom she had grown up and laughed and lived and cried and joked and grown up and grown old. The skin on this corpse was just that – skin on a corpse. A husk. A rind, more or less. Precious would wonder about this over a big glass of gin four days from now after the family had gathered to say goodbye. She would swallow a chewed up olive and want to vomit it all over the floor of that banquet hall. Rind. Skin. Husk. Violet. All that was good mingled with all that was bad and all that was scary and all that would never again be and she would just want to vomit all that right up onto the floor.

“Would you like her eyeglasses in the bag or do you want to just take them with you?” The nursing assistant broke the silence and Precious lifted her eyes away from her sister.

“Thank you. You've been so good to her. I'll take them with me. Thank you.” Precious hardly knew what else to say. The eyes on the face above the chin that was propped up on the rolled-up washcloth were not fully closed, and even though they no longer needed the eyeglasses, Precious could almost feel them looking at her. The nursing assistant obliged and closed the door behind her as she left. No hint at all of onion or fish stick was in the room.

“Wherefore art thou, Violet?” Precious sang out in a tiny, tiny voice.

Sirenum Scopuli Gulch

There was a thumb-twiddling wine-label artist who used to live out of his car, “somewhere up on the highway” as old Brenda Dent used to call it. The lecherous thumb-twiddler would draw all night by the lights of passing cars and the occasional satellite flying miles overhead. The satellites would course through the edge of outer space and emit their lonesome beeps and chirps while the lecherous thumb-twiddler would draw the dreary facades of French chateaus that never were. Oh how lonely is the edge of outer space.

As that often-overlooked place “somwhere up on the highway” was beyond the veritable edge of the universe as far as the inhabitants of the nearby town were concerned, there was little reason for anyone to go there, aside from the thumb-twiddler himself. Afternoons would find him chasing bison across the praire – running them into arroyos and listening to the thunderous cracks as their necks broke when they hit the bottom. With a whooping war cry the thumb-twiddler would remove his Italian silk necktie and wear it as a headband, sometimes using it to hold in place an array of pigeon feathers. In the evenings he would play Lithuanian carols on hambone. On and on he would play, until his thighs and chest were red and swollen.

It was on such an evening of hambone and freshly harvested okra that the thumb-twiddling wine-label artist met the love of his life. Across the arroyo he heard a voice singing in the cool dusk, “It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go...”

He raced away from his car toward the arroyo, yearning to lay eyes on this veritable siren. When he reached the edge of the gulley, he saw her. She was clothed in a floor-length evening gown made out of raw, sliced onions, and she wore a live but heavily sedated badger upon her head. The strains of that venerable music hall standard poured out over the prairie as the sun sank beneath the horizon. The sky turned a deep, deep violet. The thumb-twiddler swooned and instantly rushed out toward the edge of the arroyo.

With the sound of satellites chirping and beeping and blinking their pensive lights at the uncaring ether somewhere high over the edge of the atmosphere, and with thoughts of French chateaus that never were coursing through his imagination, the thumb-twiddler felt himself suspended in what he thought to be a cloud of blackstrap molasses – a cloud that held him fast and gave him ample time to imagine himself in one of those chateaus that never were. He would bow to the lord of the manor, and the woman in the sliced onion evening gown would curtsey. The lord of the manor would clap his hands to summon the string quartet and clap them again to start the music. The thumb-twiddler and the woman in the sliced onion evening gown would dance minuets and quadrilles until the wee hours of the morning. Afterwards he would carry her out to the waiting carriage that would spirit them away to a secluded place that was far, far away from the satellites and the passing cars.

The bottom of the arroyo was hard and unforgiving. The thunderous crack of his neck brought an abrupt end to the woman's song and to a delicious dream that died “somewhere up on the highway.”

On the Third Floor

That plastic is ever so soft, ever so clean, and it makes you think about the water in a small inlet on a secluded Caribbean island, doesn't it? It is blue, as well, which completes the image ever so nicely.

Go ahead...go ahead, honey child, and put the wig on your head. It feels good, doesn't it? You know that wig is made of 98% post-consumer waste, so it is what we in the early twenty-first century used to call “green.” No, no, sweetie...it is definitely not green in color – it is only “green” in the sense that it makes people feel good about reusing non-renewable resources to satisfy their vanity. Go ahead, put it on your sweet little melon.

There. Isn't that nice? Let me tell you a little about that particular wig, honey child. This particular wig was woven and crafted from the spun fibers of recycled Frisbees. Well, to be on the safe side in regards to copyright law, I suppose we should say that it is from the spun fibers of recycled flying discs. These were hand-picked flying discs, though, selected from among a wide variety of flying discs harvested on disc-golf courses across southern California. Only blue discs were harvested. You can almost smell the patchouli on the fibers, can't you? Those disc golfers are such ecologically-sensitive athletes, you know. I am sure that the patchouli oil was made from only organic, free-range patchoulis that were spared any laboratory testing and whose fat was rendered using low-temperature boilers so as not to require the purchase of carbon offsets.

Wig hooks? No, of course not, honey child, this wig does not require the use of wig hooks. My, my, my, no...this particular wig is held in place by a detachable iron framework that can be anchored to titanium stanchions implanted in the wig-owner's cranium. It is a swift, painless procedure, performed under the administration of only a local anesthesia. If one prefers, one can use this dedicated epoxy in lieu of the framework and stanchions, but it is a less-permanent option. If one plans on being in high winds or becoming inverted during the wearing of the wig, one should opt for the framework and stanchions, of course, honey child.

The life-expectancy of wig-wearers? Of this particular wig? Well, honey child, I do have to inform you...that is, it becomes my duty to inform you that there is a slight issue with the life-span of one who might select this wig as one's own. It is a challenging problem at this point. Most owners of this particular wig will find themselves permanently unable to perform metabolic functions within 3 to 5 years from the time of purchase and subsequent wearing of said wig. Metabolic functions? Well, that is to say, they die. We believe, or rather, doctors who have been studying the matter believe it is due to a combination of carcinogenic elements contained in the fibers of the wig as residue from the manufacturing process and the use of steel pins tipped with depleted uranium to anchor the wig to the scalp during wear. No, these are separate from the iron framework and titanium stanchions. The pins serve only as a positioning aid. You will understand how they work once you begin wearing the wig yourself. Yet these are all very minor issues when you consider what a stylish wig this is, would you not agree?

Thank you so much, honey child. Here is your receipt.


(Originally appeared in Weirdyear, 11 May 2011) 

Dreamdriver - III

It really looked pretty normal at first, thought Bill, if this was death. 'Nothing like he had expected. No going out with a bang, no misery, either. Just closing his eyes on one room and opening them on another. He would have to tell Knuckles, his brother, all about it at some point. Then he realized that the next time he might see Knuckles it would be no mystery to him anymore. Knuckles would know all about it - firsthand - by then.

If there was anything odd about the whole experience, it was the food. Bill had always liked a nice buffet from time to time, but this was like nothing he had ever seen. The catfish and the fried chicken certainly were finer than anything he had ever had before, but the amazing part was the availability of Asian foods at this particular buffet – General Tso's Chicken, Sweet and Sour Pork, Tangerine Beef, you name it. There were also a good number of dishes he could not identify, and which Bill, out of habit, avoided. He was making a trip up to the buffet for a third serving of spare ribs, when he heard a voice behind him.

“You find that odd at all?”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Bill, turning to face a nondescript male in his early thirties.

“The pork spare ribs. Do you find them odd?”

“No, I think they're pretty good. Kinda' like my Aunt Barbara used to make. She would pressure cook them or slow cook them or something first, and then put them on a brazier or a grill or something just to finish them off. She'd put the barbecue sauce on afterwards so it didn't burn on the grill.”

The stranger nodded and stared at the buffet. “It's just that there are so many different people here. Is it to teach some kind of lesson or something?”

“Well, this is heaven though, isn't it?” asked Bill, wondering if there was something wrong with the spare ribs on his plate.

“Oh heavens, no. No pun intended, of course. This isn't heaven.”

“Well, where are we?”

“We're at a buffet, and an awfully good one. I just wondered that since the whole heaven thing hasn't happened yet, there might be people who don't know the whole story and they might be offended by the spare ribs. The shrimp might pose a problem, too.”

Bill thought about the shrimp that were also on his plate...right next to the spare ribs. He saw nothing wrong with either food item, and fully intended to eat them. If this were the waiting room for heaven, then God must be picking up the tab at this buffet, and he figured if God is having them served at his very own buffet then there could hardly be anything wrong with them. Bill put an extra shrimp on his plate, in fact.

The stranger moved off and Bill watched him for a little while. The guy didn't seem to have a very big appetite, even for as slender as he was. He managed to put some flatbread and some broiled tilapia on his plate, just as he struck up a conversation with the elderly couple from Poughkeepsie who had succumbed to carbon monoxide inhalation during a power outage last winter. Bill had the chance to meet them earlier that day, and they found that they had shared a keen interest in genealogy and steam engines. “'Nice couple,” he thought.

He watched the nondescript fellow move through the people at the buffet and smiled to himself. “Such a nice fellow. I hope we get to chat again.”

Bill sat down at a clean, round table, gave thanks in prayer and dug into his spare ribs.

“You're welcome,” came a cheery voice from somewhere near the buffet.

Dreamdriver - II

David read the news of Bill's death over a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, and as he slowly chewed the sweet little nuggets of crispy, fruity goodness he tried to imagine what the man had been like. That was one of David's favorite pastimes, you know – reading the obituaries of people he did not know and trying to construct a personality for a complete stranger. The only hobby he had that he enjoyed more than that was the construction of scale models of urban settings using household items, caulk and tempera paint. He had once re-created the entire central business district of Durango, Colorado using dried pasta, matchboxes and shot glasses, and his great dream was to use a pair of kitchen colanders, out-of-date desk calendars and dental floss to construct a diorama of downtown Albany, complete with that wonderful Mexican restaurant just off of Swan Street . Next to these undertakings, David loved his post-mortem identity creation more than anything.

As he read of Bill's life and his family and his service to the school board, one corner of the newspaper dipped slowly into the rice milk with the remnants of Fruity Pebbles floating in it. Like a wick, the newspaper took up the rice milk and before David was aware of what was happening the whole corner of the newspaper was soaked through. He noticed that he could read the advertisement on the back side of the page he was reading, and so through the life story of Mrs. Edna Kimmer he saw a great deal on slab-cut bacon at the local Food-Rite. Mr. William Storey, late of Stethem Street, had a backwards “$2.98 / lb.” across his black and white, half-toned forehead. David found this somehow strangely prophetic in a retroactive sort of way...as though he were a priest of some ancient culture, pulling through the innards of a stag to divine the future, yet rather he looked through newsprint soggy with rice milk and chemical flavorings to read the past of freshly-dead humans.

“Worthless! Worthless!” cried David, upending the breakfast table and sending a multi-hued shower of crisped rice across the kitchen. The Fruity Pebbles flew in an arc through the air, creating a veritable rainbow. A dozen super-heated memories went screaming through his brain, and his body shivered with each face that passed before his mind's eye. He had been told a long time ago that when a person shivers for no reason at all it means that someone is walking across the ground where your grave will one day be. He thought about this now, and he shivered again...he thought about where that ground might be, and he wondered why people were walking there right now. Memories of his father's funeral shot past thoughts of the last time he went to confession as a young man in Schenectady. The sound of Mudhoney bounced off of memories of his trip to Eugene, Oregon before the war.

“The only way out of this mess called life,” he shouted, “is through the grave and gate of death!” It had been trampled, trampled, trampled down, but the images of a burnt-to-a-crisp Iraqi in the back of a white pick-up truck sure looked a lot like death was alive and well. Alive and well and living in suburban Chicago, if the undertaker is to be believed.

David spent the next eight minutes cleaning Fruity Pebbles off the linoleum. By the time he looked back at Bill's obituary, he saw that the rice milk had soaked clean through. “Two for one” could be read clearly through the words describing a life so well lived.

Macaroons and Sprayvy

“I had to laugh when you told me it was a macaroon,” exhaled a nervous Sheila Day.  “I thought perhaps it might have been a windmill cookie, and for goodness sakes, NO ONE eats windmill cookies anymore.”  Neither did anyone sharing her public space in the small city park take note of the macaroons.

Sheila Day outweighed her companion by a good 200 pounds – those pounds being mostly comprised of adipose tissue that very likely had been placed upon her swollen frame by a good number of macaroons and the ubiquitous windmill cookies.  Eat them furtively, Sheila – no one sees you.  Hide in your Sheila-forsaken closet and cram those windmill cookies into your mouth.  “Wrap your rosies around them,” as my father would have said had he ever known you.  Sheila wore that hot-pink jumpsuit with an attitude.  It would forever be 1983 for Sheila, and hot pink jumpsuits would forever be the rage.  As classy as the paint-spatter mini-skirt she could no longer fit into.

“No, they’re just macaroons, and I like ‘em.  But I like windmill cookies, too,” replied a forever-scared Tony.  Tony had been scared since 1983 – the year in which Sheila was eternally residing.  It had something to do with the threat of the Soviet Union’s missiles, unemployment, the second coming and that sprayable gravy in a can that Tony was never sure actually existed.  Tony was genderless.  That is, Tony never knew if Tony was a man or a woman.  In 1982 Tony had been taken to the doctor in the middle of Tony’s 9^th grade year (freshman? freshtony?), and Tony’s family doctor had to finally admit that something had gone really, really wrong.  Tony had no gender…no discernable sexual organs.   Tony’s anatomy below the belt resembled that of a G.I. Joe or a perhaps that of a Barbie…somewhere kind of in between, in fact.  To cover all the bases, Tony tried out for the football team and the pom-pon squad that year, being selected for neither.  Tony then just settled into life as a member of the forensics team and a bit-part in the spring performance of “Equus.”  Life was never quite the same after the diagnosis, but finding an open changing room at the local Fashion Bug was a whole lot easier.

“Well, if I ever saw anyone eating a windmill cookie, I'd have to just laugh aloud.”  Sheila reached for a macaroon, and nearly tipped off the park bench as she leaned forward and her center of gravity shifted.  “My dad used to eat windmill cookies and he would dunk ‘em in his coffee, until they got all soggy and soft.  I remember the little chunks of windmill cookie in his coffee cup when I would do the dishes.  I hated that.”

“I hate coffee,” shot back Tony.  “You can stick your coffee up your ass.  And leave my macaroons alone.”

“Geez…why so touchy?  It’s just a cookie.  I’m not even drinking coffee, anyway, it’s a mocha.  Geez.”

“Well, just don’t eat all my macaroons.”

“I won’t.  Now tell me about your new job.  You like it?”

Tony just kind of stared off into space and ran the soft bits of macaroon between tongue and palate.  Tony could feel the tender little bits of coconut once the rest of the cookie had dissolved.  For a second it was the late 1970’s, and Tony was in grade school again, eating a macaroon in the school lunch room, thinking about the episode of “Welcome Back Kotter” that was on last night, wondering who would get picked first when they chose up sides for kickball after lunch.  Tony never got picked first.  Hell, Tony barely ever got picked.  Tony would end up watching the kickball game from the sidelines half of the time, half-heartedly watching, and with the other half of the heart thinking about going home to the family dog after school and playing out in the backyard that Tony’s mother had insisted be turned into a concrete topiary playground.  Rotten concrete gazelles eternally staring at concrete gnomes who in turn stared eternally at anthropomorphic concrete pigs.  A great yard to come home to.

“So you like it? Do you?” Sheila prodded Tony with her plastic drinking straw, and left a tiny droplet of mocha on Tony’s arm.  “Sorry, whoops,” offered a genuinely repentant Sheila.

“Well, if I didn’t have to talk to anyone, it would be a whole lot better.”

“But Tony, you’re a morgue attendant.”

“Yeah.  I know,” Tony replied, “except we prefer the title ‘Post-Human Mass Storage and Retrieval Specialist.’  Now keep your filthy hands off my macaroons.”

Across the street from the small park a group of school children were just beginning a game of kickball.

Dreamdriver - I

The last time I saw Knuckles Pittinger, he was mourning the death of his kid brother. That is really not all that unexpected or unusual, as the funeral was only yesterday and I took a long hard look at old Knuckles – I looked long and hard when he was not looking at me. I kind of saw right through that overweight, bald-headed senior citizen with the diamond earring and the wife with no legs. Who on earth wears a pair of shorts to his brother's funeral, anyway? Knuckles Pittinger, that is who. And “mourning” is a quaint word for what Knuckles engaged in. In certain parts of the world I think they describe it, rather, as “kvetching.”

Old Knuckles called himself an old Spam-jockey – a pug-faced man who flew transport planes into Greenland or Iceland or North Dakota or some other God-forsaken place that the Army Air Corps or the Air Force or someone had sent him. I suppose that he called himself a Spam-jockey for the usual reason.  A good portion of his cargo had been rations for some Army or Air Force base. Spam-jockey. Spam-jockey. Right after I heard the word I thought what a good name it would make for a band, so I filed it away for future reference. Knuckles just kept droning on and on about all the people he hated, and I just found it painful. I even offered a suggestion - “maybe let go of the hate, Knuckles,” I suggested. He just kept droning on and on and his wife with no legs sat there in her wheelchair and smiled and nodded her head. Don't get your hair too close to those candles, Esmerelda...all that hair spray and your bouffant would go up like the freaking Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity.

So Knuckles, you just droned on about all the people you hate, and your poor dead brother's ashes just sat there on a little rickety table and you could have cared as much if it would have been an ashtray in the cockpit of that old transport plane you flew. I just wanted to slap that bald little head of yours to stop the kvetching, honestly. Or was it the mourning that I wanted to stop? Oh yes, I forget. They are one in the same.

I couldn't help notice, though, that there was something unique about old Knuckles – something about him had changed, and I did not stop to ask him why. There was a small triangular scar below his right ear, and every time he spoke there was a hesitation around words beginning with the letter “b.” Boy oh boy. You had better bet. You better believe it. Another Bourbon?

Finally, as the day drew to a close, looking deep into the dusty beams of light filtering into the funeral chapel, with a look that was a thousand miles away and decades distant, old Knuckles Pittinger cried a single tear and shook like one of those tin spring wind-up toys we used to get for fifty cents at the discount store next to the abandoned radio tower. Wind it up, set it down, watch it shake, shake, shake. Shake like Knuckles Pittinger when he looked at that urn of ashes that used to be his kid brother. For a second he didn't hate anyone anymore.

"Oh Bill...my little brother!”

Taps Will Blow Tomorrow for an Old Soldier...

...and so I am frantically racing east across I-70 and I-79 and I-68 and I-just don't know anymore, taking in the landscape and fueling myself with cheap coffee.  I hope to make it to Arlington National Cemetery and say goodbye, before turning the rented car around and heading west again.  I pray the coffee gets better in Virginia.

Just a Passing Thought

I drove out into this grey Thursday thinking that death came quickly and mercifully for a friend and that Thursday came quickly and with an attitude for me. Never hoping, never wishing, never wanting, never waiting. Just sitting and looking at that same grey horizon, that same grey sky, that same grey air that I pull into my lungs more slowly each and every day.

What is it that makes a single day different from another and yet leaves it exactly the same as the one before, the one after and every other day that there ever has been? No idea, I realize – I have no idea, and I only know that this grey, grey, foggy grey Thursday is soon going to be a Friday and my friend will still be dead. No different.

The more things change, the more they change. I used to have a teacher - a long, long time ago - who always used to repeat that hackneyed verse, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Hogwash. The more things change, the more they change. While every day is in a sense no different than the last, all the things that occupy our life continually change, and they really never stay the same. Even the things that stay the same are bound to have little changes within them. People age. The love between a husband and a wife grows stronger with each passing year. The same menu at the same restaurant has the same dishes day in and day out, and those same dishes are made with the same ingredients. Different raw materials used each day. A different cow slain for each new beef wellington, a different head cut off of a different chicken for each and every new mess of fried chicken you might ever hope to eat.

What am I saying? I am no philosopher – just a guy with a martini and a pen who is looking at grey skies and thinking about a friend who died on Sunday night.

Iraq Rolled

Peter looked real hard at the sand in the palm of his hand. It was funny looking – not like the sand back home on the shores of Lake Michigan – this Saudi sand looked like like tiny balls of light-colored mud. Pete imagined being real small and kicking the little mud-balls around. “Hrrmph,” he thought to himself, aloud. A lot of his thoughts these days were coming out as single-syllable grunts.

Dumping the sand from his palm, Pete held his rifle with both hands again and lifted up his head to peer out over the berm. Nothing. That song kept going through his head...

“Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you”

“Uggh. Rick Astley,” he thought to himself. He rolled back down the berm a little , popped his canteen and took a drink. He thought about the first time he had heard that song – it was his last year in the dorms at college, most likely, and there was that guy down the hall who wouldn't stop playing it...over and over and over. It seemed like that tape was the only one he owned. If he made it back to the States alive, Pete thought, he would buy a copy of that album.

He crawled back to the top of the berm and strained his eyes to see what, if anything, was going on around that little shack near the intersection of two roads – maybe it had been a gas station or something at one time. Now there were just some Iraqis holed up there and laying down suppressing fire for their pals scurrying across the road to a drainage culvert. “Hrrmmph,” Pete thought out loud again. He shouldered his rifle.

A bang and a “shush” of an old-school M72 LAW from somewhere down the line made Pete turn his head. When he looked back, the Iraqis were not firing, only smoking. The squad to his left was getting up from behind the berm and advancing. Pete the Marine smiled and sang quietly to himself,

“Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you...”

It looked like it might be a long day. Thank God for that.

A Nice Tie-Tac

Chico Bowden (not his real name) stood a lot taller than my father, and my father was not a short man. There were many things in Chico's closet, I am sure – things that we speak of figuratively as being in his closet, or perhaps more accurately as his “baggage” – but when I think of Chico (or “Mr. Bowden” as I knew him when I was a child) and I think of closets, I then think of polyester and I think of checked patterns and I think of leisure suits. You have that in the thinking part of your melon, now, don't you ? Polyester leisure suits in checked patterns. If I mention sideburns, glasses with large lenses and heavy frames and open collared shirts, I trust you will paint in very accurately all of the rest of the image of Chico Bowden that you might ever need.

Chico sold insurance. Or cars. Or real estate. Or time-shares. I don't think it could possibly matter what it was that he sold – he was a salesman, as it were. 'Nothing against salesmen, of course – I used to be one myself (perhaps I still am, in a way – aren't we all?). Chico sold. Chico sold himself as a product, and we all eagerly watched as he ran the commercials on the small screen of his life. “Hey hey...Ange the Man...Ange the Man,” he would poke at my father when he saw him, “badda bing...how are those kiddos of yours, you old Ange the Man?”

Dad had been called “Ange” in the Navy – contraction of “Andrews,” of course. Sometimes I think he hated being called “Ange the Man,” but I never asked him about that.

Chico was perhaps the only person I ever heard use the phrase “badda-bing” in real life, with no acting. The other person who might have used it was Kip, whom I knew in college, but he had begun using it as a humorous tool in speech, and it eventually just became part of his unconscious vocabulary. More on Kip later.

The Chico of my childhood aged over the years, of course. The grey, wrinkled man that I saw at my father's funeral was really not much different than the man in the casket, in fact, aside from the fact that he was still breathing and talking and doing all of the things that the deceased no longer bother doing. I got no "badda-bing” from Chico that evening, no sales pitch of any sort, and Chico was no longer in polyester. He wore a tasteful dark suit, a crisp white shirt and a rather tasteful tie.

As I marinated my liver in a second martini, wrinkled old Chico shuffled over to me. He spoke through his tears for a short time, and I longed all the while for this relic from my childhood and my father's youth to refer to my dad as “Ange.”

Aztec Bard...Straight, No Chaser.

On the day that Dan Dretzka fell through the ice there was a breeze that whispered “spring” to those who were listening. Mike Stencil wasn't listening. Nobody was, really – they were all too busy thinking about the high gas prices and wondering what this thing called “disco” was all about. The Dretzka family didn't think too much about disco, to tell the honest truth, and neither did the Stencils. They didn't think too much about listening for the things that a winter breeze might be saying that dark, dark day, either.

First of all, Dan Dretzka (not his real name, but it sure sounds a lot like his real name if you must know) fell through the ice and was drowned. It was winter, and we were always told to stay away from the shoreline of that big old body of water that was so big and frightening and laid there cold and ominous all winter long. It is one of what we call the “Great Lakes," children.  Seeing as part of this vignette takes place in Milwaukee and part in Chicago, you can guess which Great Lake it is. We were told to stay away from the shoreline during winter when all of the ice built up into great sheets that stretched out over the surface of the water, agitated and weakened by waves until pockets of loose ice formed – deadly little holes that would swallow anyone who put his or her weight on them. Down, down the unsuspecting person would plunge into the icy water. Getting out of there would be next to impossible.

Dan went walking out on the sheets of ice one winter day, and as a friend of his watched in horror he broke through a hole in the ice and snow and plunged – down, down into the icy water. He was not seen again until sometime in spring. Dan made the news twice that year. Those of us who were schoolchildren at the time took our parents' warnings very seriously the next winter.

Mike Stencil did not know Dan Dretzka. I didn't know Dan Dretzka either. I don't know anyone who knew Dan Dretzka personally, and a Google search incorporating his (real) name and the words “Milwaukee,” “ice, “drowning,” and death turn up nothing. I am not surprised, I guess – it was a long time ago, and Dan was just a young kid in junior high school. At the same time that Dan was plunging down, down into the icy waters, Mike Stencil was sitting in a coffeehouse, reading bad poetry. His own bad poetry. Luckily he was reading it silently and to himself.

“Aztec bard scratches belly through guitar;

honey-liquor honey-pot and rasp of sand

look at those damned black eyes of yours

and tell me you lie.

just say it.

tell me.

damned Aztec bard.”

The grey-blue ice and the cold steel-colored waters lie a whole lot less than any Aztec bard, Mike. Just ask Dan Dretzka if you could – you can't, but he would tell you. The ice and the water and snow and the sky and the cold, cold air that he longed to breathe. They told the truth in 1973 and they probably tell the truth today.

Bards always seem to lie – damned Aztec bard.

But Everything Tastes Like Chicken

On Tuesday I sat down in the dentist's chair, and suddenly I was at a monastery in upstate New York. Strange as that may be, there is occasionally a wool sweater than takes me from wherever I might be to a concourse waiting area at Orly airport in Paris.  Bam. Just like that.  And every now and again I step out of my office and I am stepping out of the Cherry Court Hotel near Victoria Station in London.  Whammo.

Smells.

Amazing, aren't they?  There is a type of low-lying ground cover that, when it is run over with a mower, will transport my wife from wherever she is back to her grandmother's house.  The smell of chlorine takes me back, of course, to high school and the pool that I loved so much.  My friend John has the opposite reaction to chlorine:  the smell of it can produce a panic attack as it sends him right back to swimming lessons during grammar school - bad memories of some sort rush to the surface and make him sweat, get all cotton-mouthed and start coughing.

I guess we start associating smells as soon as we notice them, and if the emotions or whatnot are strong enough at the time, something sticks. I am obviously not a student of cognitive science or anything close, as you can tell from that description, but I do know this - scent is powerful...

***

Mike Stencil was about 23 years old when he smelled the burning flesh.  "Sweet," he thought to himself.  Sweet like a sugary, caramel-ly, sweety meaty stench that nearly made him retch.  Not sweet as in "a sweet deal."  You know what I mean.

Gasoline and human flesh and hair and vinyl seats and a windy day made for a roaring conflagration.  The smoke pouring out from the auto accident carried with it that unmistakable fragrance, and Mike paused to say a Hail Mary.  "God," he thought to himself.  And that was all this young guy who would one day be a priest could think at that moment, "God."

The smoke seemed a lot thicker than smoke he was used to seeing from barbecues and campfires and it was a lot thicker and sweeter than the smoke that would pour from the incinerator that Mike would have to use to burn rubbish for his boss at the shoe store.  Mike didn't know about that smoke yet, though...the shoe store would be ten years off in the future. Today's smoke was thick and dense and sweet as any smoke he'd ever smelled.  "...now and at the hour of our death. Amen," concluded Mike, as he sent the Ave wafting heavenward.  "God," he repeated in the confines of his thoughts.

It would be just a few months later that Mike would be driving down a country highway in the middle of a beautiful autumn, paying no real attention to what he was doing and loads of attention to the fall colors.  As he raced down a long sloping hill, he gave no thought to the oncoming eighteen-wheeler in the distance, and so he was taken quite by surprise at its presence as he skidded into its lane in the low right-hand curve at the bottom of the hill.  Wet leaves and loose gravel aided his car in its slide and Mike in his loss of control. "God..." was all he could get out as he faced the oncoming truck, now wildly blowing its horn.

A fortunately-placed dry patch of road that was free of gravel and leaves grabbed Mike's front left tire, and he shot back into his lane, missing the truck by what seemed like feet but were likely yards.  He coasted to a stop and sat in the driver's seat, shaking and panting, noting an unfamiliar loose feeling in his bowels.  He rolled down the window and took in some air...praying that his heart wasn't going to come pounding right up through his throat.  As he breathed in the cool autumn air he noticed he was being watched by a man on the front lawn of a beautiful farm house.  The man was burning leaves and looking at Mike.  The smoke from the leaf pile was on the breeze and it wafted in through Mike's open window.

"Sweet..."