Category Archives: Stories

Showdown at Vlašska

Posted on by
7

I was early for an appointment, standing on the side of the street, watching the city move. Vlašska is a narrow street. It passes in front of the US embassy, so it is more heavily policed than much of the town. A czech army truck was patrolling, its brakes emitting a high-picthed metal-on-metal scream as it eased down the street. Perhaps patrolling in a truck with no brake pads was intended to send a subtle message to the diplomats inside the building they were protecting. The three soldiers in the truck looked bored.

The street is narrow, but it is a two-way street. There is one stretch that is just plain too narrow for two cars to pass. Generally people deal with this by driving very fast, so that if someone considers entering from the other end they will think twice. That’s not how it always works, though. The army truck assumed people would back out of their way. They were usually right.

Up the hill crept a small red Škoda, being carefully piloted by an old nun. She entered the narrows and was on her way up when the army truck approached from the other end. The nun did not falter, she just kept pulling on up the hill. They met at about two-thirds of the way up. The truck beeped officiously. The nun took her hands off the steering wheel and folded them across her breast, her expression stone calm. The truck did not beep again; and after a few more seconds the soldier put his vehicle in reverse with the sound of the sound of gears grinding and backed up.

The nun continued her slow progress while the soldiers waited.

Thanks!

It’s a Living

Posted on by
7

I awoke slowly, my eyes gritty and my mouth dry. The sun was painfully bright even through my clenched eyelids. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I saw when I opened them. One thing was for sure—I wasn’t in my apartment. The distant cry of an eagle floated through the hot, still air, confirming the worst. I wasn’t even on the same continent.

I raised my hands to my eyes and levered myself into a sitting position, fighting down nausea. I discovered a short beard on my chin. I wasn’t even in the same week. I looked around the bleak landscape and tried to piece together how I had got there.

The last I could remember I was sitting in one of the swankier bars in the city, chafing at the high price of beers. It not the sort of bar I’m generally found in, but if someone wants to talk to me about giving me money I’ll meet them on the north pole.

It’s not that I’m broke, not really, and the prospect of working isn’t that attractive, but I have to put beans on the table. And sometimes a job comes along that actually sounds interesting. This was one of those jobs. Challenging yet marvelously undefined.

I had not met my new employer yet; we had only spoken by telephone. His voice had been reserved and upper-crust English, and he was not one for idle conversation. “We wish you to do some research for us,” he had said in clipped syllables. “Your Professor Grayson thought your unique combination of talents might serve us well.”

“That’s a generous way to say it,” I said. It was a very kind way to describe my inability to stick to anything. When people asked me “what I did”, the inevitable question when you meet someone in a society that defines who you are by what you do for a living, I usually just said, “a little of this, a little of that.”

I hadn’t seen the good professor in many years, and while we got along well enough I was surprised to hear he would recommend me for a job. He had thought of me as a waste of potential, or so he told me over beers. I pointed out to him that once the boulder uses its gravitational potential and rolls down the hill, it takes a lot of work to get it back up to the top for another roll. Better to wait for the right moment to roll in the first place. He thought human potential might be different than potential energy, but that’s what anyone at the bottom of the hill is going to say. He had come to rest in a nice place, a secure university job, respected worldwide by his peers, head of a close and loving family, and he had no wish to be dragged up to the top of the hill for another go.

My boulder still teetered at the top, waiting for the right moment to start rolling. Or so I told myself.

“This job is going to be a delicate one,” my potential employer told me. “We have made a discovery and we wish to have your help in understanding it. The assignment will require diplomacy and tact, as well as your documented abilities in archaeology, anthropology, and particle physics.”

Tact I thought maybe I could do. Diplomacy was a long shot. “No problem,” I said.

“Good. It is likely this conversation is being monitored by others interested in what we have found. You may assume that henceforth all your communications will be similarly monitored, and all your Internet activity will be closely watched as well. For that reason I wish to meet with you in person this evening.” He told me the name of the place.

“What’s going to keep them from having someone at the next table?”

“That is a problem for me to solve, Mr. Nolan.”

“All right then. I’ll see you there. I’ll be wearing a red carnation.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s a joke. It’s something people on blind dates do.”

“I know what you look like, Mr. Nolan. I’ll see you there.” He hung up.

Julie was going to be pissed. I dialed her number as delicately as I could, already thinking of ways to placate her. “Hi, sweetie,” I said when she answered.

There was a pause. “You’re standing me up tonight, aren’t you?”

“But Pookie, it’s for a job. A really good job.”

“Laying tile for a twelve-pack again?” She never let me live that one down.

“No, hunny-bunny, a real job. For real money.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“I know. I’m real sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

“I knew something like this was going to happen. I just knew it. Any time I make plans you come up with some excuse to get out of them. How long have we been going out?”

She knew the answer. “Two years,” I said.

“Two years. And you still haven’t met my friends. They think I’m making you up. Gloria thinks I should find someone else I have more in common with. Maybe she’s right.”

I bit my tongue. Gloria was one of Julie’s friends I had met. The last time her name came up I had said, “Gloria is a bitter woman who wants no one to be happy if she can’t be happy.” It did not go over well. Julie knew the truth about the other woman, but she was loyal to her friend. I can’t fault her for that; if she was less tolerant we would have split up long ago.

Diplomacy and Tact. “Listen, this job is different. It’s a research job.”

“What sort of research?”

“I’m not so sure, yet, that’s why I have to meet him tonight.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Couldn’t you have met with him tomorrow?”

Probably I could have. I was not unhappy about having an excuse to avoid the party. I’m not so good in crowds, and when I finally met her friends it was going to be all the worse for the delay and the stories I’m sure Gloria was spreading. “They’re in a big hurry. They only called me a few minutes ago but they want to get started.”

“I told everyone that today would finally be the day. None of them believed me, but I swore it would be. You swore it would be.”

“Look, I don’t know how long the meeting will be. I’ll come by as soon as it’s over.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Call me by nine and tell me how it’s going.”

“I’ll try.”

“Call me or it’s over.”

“I may not be able to call. There’s a lot of secrecy—”

“Call me or it’s over.”

“All right.”

“They’re all going to be laughing at me tonight.”

“No they won’t.”

“They all think I’m stupid for staying with you.”

I had to admit to myself that they were probably right. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to meet them. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Once I get this job it’ll be different. Not just the money, but you’ll be able to tell your friends you were right about me.” I hoped that was true.

“It’s my birthday.”

“I know, honey. I’m sorry.”

“I just—hold on. There’s someone at the door.”

Great, I thought. Gloria was there early to help set the party up. The rest of the conversation would have her sniping in from the background. I waited, listening to distant voices. Finally Julie picked up the phone again.

“Oh, my God, Honey, they’re beautiful,” she said.

“Uh…”

“You’ve never sent me flowers before, ever.”

That was true enough.

“They must have cost a fortune,” she continued. “I’ve never even seen some of these flowers before. What are they?”

“I, uh, don’t know, really. I didn’t pick them out. In fact—”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I know it’s more important in the long run that you finally found a good job. I’m excited for you. For us. You know what you wrote on the card?” She suddenly turned shy. “I feel the same way.”

It was not without some misgivings that I approached the bar that evening. Flowers don’t just drop from the sky. Either my new employers had predicted with uncanny accuracy my difficulty or they had been listening to the conversation and were able to get a bunch of exotic flowers to Julie’s place in minutes. Or something else. It was unsettling to say the least.

I got to the bar early, figuring to establish a little space and watch people come and go. I nursed my beer and tolerated the faint disapproval radiating from the bartender. I’m not a formal man at the best of times. I had had enough time to become afraid of all the patrons. As each came in they would look at me appraisingly, and in my head they all became spies for some hostile power. In retrospect, I may have been right.

At the appointed minute a slender, elegantly dressed man with a bowler hat entered and left his umbrella and coat by the door. Without even glancing around he walked over to me, his gait royal. “Mr. Nolan,” he said as he reached me. He offered his hand.

His withered hand was still strong as I shook it. “Nice to meet you,” I said. That was the last thing I could remember before waking up here.

I was thirsty. My hand was still running over my fuzzy cheeks, and I found that my beard was neatly trimmed. I looked at my hand, and then at my clothes. What I had been wearing was out of place at a nice bar, but now I was in silk. I had never owned tailored clothes, but these sure fit me well.
A shadow fell over me. I turned to see a mountain of a man, also immaculately dressed but not as dusty, standing over me.

“Well,” he said with a gravelly voice, “it looks like sleeping beauty is finally awake.”

Thanks!

Five

Posted on by
Reply

I sneezed – hard – for the fifth time right as the clock ticked over to midnight. Sneezes come in threes, they say, and that’s almost always true, so when you sneeze a different number it’s time to pay attention. Two times, you’re left hanging; there’s unfinished business and it’s going to come back to you some day. Four is a warning — remember what you were looking at on your fourth sneeze. Five is like two, there’s something coming, but there’s a power to five that is separate from sneezes. The fifth sneeze at the stroke of midnight, you better keep your eyes open. You’re going to be receiving a message, and you better listen. More than just your life depends on it.

I sat motionless, listening to the clock gently striking twelve times behind me. That clock loses almost a second every month, so I don’t use it for important things. I have another clock connected by radio to the atomic clock. There’s a radio station that just plunks out the seconds. If you listen real close you can hear that every plunk is different. You can know just by hearing exactly what time it is, because when the radio says the time that is the real time.

They have leap seconds, did you know that? I’ll be listening to the time march by as I lay sweating in the darkness and then whammo! an extra tick. I sit upright in bed, wondering what angel or demon put an extra second into the day, and for what purpose, and whether my tide charts will all be off now or did the tides already know about the extra second somehow?

I waited, controlling my breathing and my heartbeat as best I could, afraid even to blink lest I miss the sign. The clock on the wall chimed the quarter hour in soft musical tones, then the half hour, three quarters, and finally, just as my radio clock ticked over to 1 a.m. the wall clock chimed the hour and struck a single time. Nothing moved; the whole world was waiting. The chime of the clock faded gracefully, to be replaced by the ticking of the swaying pendulum. I turned up the time radio louder to make sure I would hear if there was any change.

Five, five, five, five…. I thought to myself as the seconds plunked past. I turned up the radio louder, listening to the gaps between the tones, thinking the message might be there, like the messages they put between the frames in a television show, but there was nothing there. Five, five, five, five… I felt myself slipping into some sort of trance, which happens sometimes when I concentrate. Some part of me heard the clock strike two, then three. I relaxed at three. It’s a powerful numer, but this wasn’t about threes. five, five, five, five…

When I heard the clock strike four from far away my heartbeat began to accelerate again. The sound of time passing was louder and louder in my ears until there was nothing else; no thought could survive that pounding. In the gaps between each tone my heart was a second clock, and as the seconds passed the clock was louder and faster until it was slamming in my chest and sweat was a river and I couldn’t breathe fast enough and the clock’s numerals glowed red and burned straight through my retinas and into my brain where they were echoed in a thousand colors and a million languages: 4:59:56, 4:59:57, 4:59:58, 4:59:59…

5:00:00 and I snapped alive, the noise quiet and my heart still as the doorbell rang.

Thanks!

Bulwer-Lytton Lives!

Posted on by
8

We stood in line, the splash of the street lamp in the chill summer fog making an island of us: there was the prostitute, chain smoking and immune to the cold in her fishnet stockings and yellow plastic miniskirt, hair in disarray and eyes only shadows; there was a young couple, junkies with colored hair leaning against each other for support, feet spread wide in a perfect square, holding each other in some half-remembered habit of intimacy or perhaps just attached by some of the hardware adorning their once-chic clothing; there was the derelict, lying in his own foul cloud, sprawled against a building in a twitching parody of death, unsure where the next bottle would come from but knowing it would come; there were the other assorted bums, lowlifes, and losers swimming to the shore of our island but moving on again after a while, lacking patience or still possessing hope; and there was me.

Thanks!

She was a writer, part 2

Posted on by
Reply

I was in a nostalgic mood the other day, thinking about the meaningless encounters in my life that, had things gone differently, would have meant something. I wrote about a woman in an airport bar in Cincinnati. I’ve thought of her off and on for more than three years; I even occasionally tried to dig up an email address for her through her publisher. I didn’t try very hard, I admit, but for me she was always out there, a person I had hit it off with but had not had time to alienate. Even as I wrote that bit I wondered if she would stumble across it.

She died in 2002.

You may have read John’s comment to the previous piece informing me of the case, and you may have read my reply. I’m embarrassed by my reaction; I tried to make light of it and ended up making her early death to be about me. I knew the moment I posted the comment I would want to delete it, but in the interest of honesty I will let it stand. You’ve all read it by now anyway. I have not seen any other replies, as I am in Slovakia and Al Gore hasn’t been here yet. (George Bush is in the capital right now, but I think he still expects someone to hand him a sandwich when he says ‘Bratislava’.)

During the drive down here I thought of her. I wonder what ended her life. I wonder if the cancer came back or if she lost her long struggle with her own self-image. Probably neither of those things. Perhaps it was a car crash. Maybe she was struck by lightning. She was thirty-nine, give or take. My memory, not the best, had munged the name of her book; for the record, her name was Lucy Grealy and the name of her book is Autobiography of a Face.

In the end it doesn’t matter. For a few hours I sat on a barstool next to a bright light. I checked out her ass. We had a nice chat. Did she already know she was dying? As we sat there was she facing her own mortality and chasing the inevitable with Chivas and Beer? Could I have made a difference? What if she died of loneliness, while I was thinking of her all along? Then again, for all I know she was happily married, and I was just some guy in a bar during a particularly tedious layover. I’ll never know what that encounter meant to her, and she’ll never know what it meant to me.

I wish now she could know I still think of her, but I have no way to tell her. Her striking eyes are dust, her figure is lost, even her deformed jaw is just a playground for the worms. And I still sit alone in airport bars.

Thanks!

She was a writer

Posted on by
3

The airport was deserted, except for the bar. Everyone got there hours early, only to discover that even the most earnest security official can only delay you for so long. I sat down, and ordered a big beer. “You can have a shot with that for an extra buck,” the bartender informed me. I looked over the booze and figured a shot of Chivas was worth almost a buck, and had that tacked on. I was sitting, contemplating which to drink first, when a woman pulled up one barstool down and ordered a Sam Adams, large. Moments later she had also ordered a Chivas, for the same reason I had.

We started talking. We both feared what was going to come next. We both thought that Bush was stupid (“lightweight” was the word I used), and that a terrorist attack was just what his administration had been hoping for.

Physically, she was striking. She had a great butt, piercing eyes, and her lower face was a wreck. She’d had some disease as a child that ate her jaw and (if hyperbolic memory has not overtaken me) almost her life. She had written a book about it, Anatomy of a Face. If memory serves. We’d had another double-round by then. She was on the NPR rolodex under self-esteem, and was coming back from an interview.

She held her hand over her face much of the time. I guess even if you’re synonymous with self-esteem you get tired of people staring. “I’m a writer,” she said. I wanted to say I was a writer, too, but it sounded pretty me-too-istic. Probably I mentioned it eventually. I still had a day job, though.

I wonder, all these years later, if she remembers the guy in the bar at the Cincinnati airport who was checking out her ass when he didn’t think she was looking, who occasionally had the courage to look into her terrifying eyes, and most of all had a great conversation about everything under the sun while a cloud hung over our nation. Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the setting, maybe it was my own slower disaster, but I will never forget her.

Thanks!

People Who In Sorrow Roam

Posted on by
6

“You ever been to the British Museum?” he asked me.

“Couple of times.” I like museums.

“There’s a tablet there. Babylonian; before the Bible. Bunch of cats exiled or something. The were called Amankandu. ‘People who in sorrow roam’. Their leader was named Ka’in.”

It made sense. Kicked out of the garden, wandering. “Banned be thou from the soil which has received thy brother’s blood,” I said.

“They’re still out there, the Amankandu. Still wandering. And when they meet, they know one another.” He raised his glass to me.

Thanks!

The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy

Posted on by
1

Bixby awoke with a start. He had been dreaming again. His stepmother had taught him to remember his dreams and record them; she said that dreams carried messages and told of the future. Dutifully he picked up his journal and turned a blank page to the moonlight streaming in the window. His stepmother insisted that he include every detail of his dreams. “You never know what will turn out to be important,” she would say. She was renowned far and wide for her knowledge of magic.

Bixby thought back over the dream. It was one he’d been having often lately. There wasn’t much conversation to speak of except for things like “Oh! Oooooooh! Yes! Yes! YES!” but he remembered the elf-maiden vividly. Not her face, so much, but the way her elf-hair cascaded over her smooth elf-shoulders, the softness of her generous elf-breasts as they defied gravity, her narrow elf-waist… Bixby set to work sketching what he had seen in his dream. He didn’t know much about dreams, but he was really hoping this one would come true.

Over the years Bixby had demonstrated a flair for sketching and drawing. His mother had always encouraged him, and if anything his stepmother was even more enthusiastic. He was uncomfortable sometimes sharing his drawings with his stepmother, but she always just shushed him. “This is important,” she would say. “Don’t be such a baby. Now, think carefully. Are you sure there weren’t two elf maidens?”

Suddenly the moonlight was broken by a shadow. He turned and was looking into a pair of beady black eyes. The squirrel regarded him, unblinking. “We know you have it,” the squirrel said. The squirrel grinned. “And we’re gonna get it.”

In shock Bixby jumped up and turned to face the creature. Had it just spoken? Was he still dreaming one of those dreams where you dream you wake up but really you’re dreaming and then you wake up and you’re confused because you didn’t think you were dreaming before? He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.

“Honey, are you all right?” came his stepmother’s voice from the doorway behind him. “I heard a noise.”

“Um, I’m fine, ma.” Sure, fine. Talking squirrels. No big deal. It must have been a dream.

“Oh, I see you’ve had another of those dreams,” she said.

Not a dream, a nightmare. He turned away from her, back toward the window desperately trying to find a way to disguise the bulge in his pyjamas gracefully. The squirrel was gone.

Bixby did not get any more sleep that night. His stepmother had wanted to sit next to him on the bed and hear about his dream right then, but he had finally managed to put her off. Between getting caught by her in that condition and the talking squirrel, he was a wreck. At first light he decided to chop some wood to work off some of his tension. Ax in hand he was stepping out the door when his stepmother stopped him. “I think we have enough wood already, Honey,” she said.

“Can’t be too safe,” Bixby said. “Winter’s only a few months away.” He dashed for the forest. It was a longer dash than it had been; Bixby had transformed the small meadow that held the cottage into a much larger clearing, dotted with the stumps of the trees he had felled and chopped into firewood. He found a stout oak and set to work with the ax. Once the tree was down he hauled it over to the woodpile. It was much easier for him to move the trunks around these days; his constant chopping had caused his body to bulge with hard, lean muscle even as he grew into his tall frame.

He split up the log in record time, climbing the tiers of ladders to reach the top of the towering woodpile where he put the new logs. He could see all the way into town from up there, high above the treetops, and he imagined them laughing and pointing his direction, mocking his mighty accomplishment. “Just wait till winter comes,” he muttered. The exercise did the trick, though. He felt much calmer. He would be able to face his stepmother now, as long as she didn’t say anything that made him think… those thoughts.

He was surprised to find the tall, thin man waiting for him at the bottom of the last ladder. People mocked Graybeard, but never to his face. He wore the long flowing robes of a man who doesn’t have to work for a living, and the tall conical hat of a wizard.

“Hullo, Graybeard,” Bixby said.

“Hello there, young man. I have something very important to discuss with you. Is there somewhere we can go where they can’t hear us?

“Who?”

“The squirrels. I see you’ve done your best to eliminate their hiding places near your house, but they can be sneaky.” The wizard looked around and lowered his voice. “I need you to do something for me. There’s a thing, see, that I need you to go find.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Shhh!” Graybeard glanced nervously at the woodpile and steered Bixby away from it. “It’s an important thing. I’m putting together a team of experts.”

“I’m not expert at anything,” Bixby protested.

“Can you chop heads as well as you can chop wood?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“There you go then. The others are gathering in a rough tavern in a rough town many leagues from here. The journey will be very dangerous, as the squirrels and their evil minions will hound you every step of the way. Keep your crackers sealed tightly.”

“Why should I go, then?”

“Oh, there you are,” his stepmother said. “Oooh, you’re all sweaty.” She ran a finger over his sweat-slicked pectorals. ‘Rarrr,”

“When do we start?” asked Bixby.

Thanks!

Cold Water

Posted on by
Reply

The faucet was activated by a foot pedal. I pressed it gently but water gushed forth from the tap and splashed off my hands and all over my clothes. I released the pedal and lifted what little of the cold water I had caught to splash my face. I took a calming breath as I felt the cold bite against my skin. I carefully set my hands on either side of the basin and hung my head. There was no mirror, but I didn’t need one to know what I looked like. The days on the road were written there, their story etched in a language of fatigue and self-reproach.

My knees wobbled, but the basin, cool porcelain anchored to the wall, it’s plumbing hanging naked beneath it, held me. Too many days, too many miles, since innocent sleep. The next sleep that held me would never let me go.

Out there, beyond the fragile wood of the men’s room door, there was a creature sitting at my table, on the plate in front of her an untouched slice of pizza. I had not known I was ordering for two, but I had not been surprised when she arrived. If you run long enough, you forget what it is you’re running from. My memory is blessedly short. She was out there now, sipping her blood-red wine, looking at her pizza with distaste, and not wondering in the least what was keeping me.

I thought, briefly, about finding a way to slip out the back, but that would have left her with the bill, and that wouldn’t be right. She knew I was trapped, that’s why she wouldn’t worry if I took a long time. I could feel her out there. I could feel the heat of her, the unnatural power she held. After all my time running, demons nipping at my heels, it was no coincidence that she chose my table to sit at. She might not have felt the levers of fate at work, but they were there. In that way the instrument of my demise might be innocent of the destruction she brings.

I had been sitting, listening to the band tune up. The bartender said they were good. I’ve learned to trust bartenders. The bandleader had carefully set his guitar in its rack and stepped up to the mike. “We’ll kick it off in fifteen,” he said before switching it off. It was a Tuesday, but the place was starting to fill. A good sign for the music, but I was beginning to feel guilty as my pizza and I dominated one of the few larger tables. I began to plan my retreat. I don’t like to take up more than my fair share of space.

“Can I sit here?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, before I looked at her. Seeing her wouldn’t have changed my answer, it would only have made me afraid sooner. My flight was over. “Have some pizza,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said and flagged down the waitress with disturbing ease. “Another plate and your wine list please.”

“We got Cab, Merlot, and Chardonnay,” the waitress said.

“Merlot, then, please,” my guest said. The fact that I knew what she was going to order didn’t make me feel any better. The wine and the plate arrived and she regarded the pizza for the first time. “Is that egg?” she asked, poking at the slice on her plate dubiously.

“Yeah. Egg, ham and peppers.” I looked at the pie. “I ate all the peppers already,” I added apologetically, indicating the stems at the side of my plate.

She started to say one thing, then said another. “Can you help me?”

Any hope I had of escape vanished when she asked me that. Trapped by some archaic sense of chivalry, the captive of my own mistaken ideas, betrayed by my own hormones, I heard the chorus offstage, beseeching me to change my path, but I could no more deny my nature than Antigone or Oedipus. The only difference was that my tragic chorus was inside my head. There was nothing left but to go through the motions, doomed from the start. All the running, all the hiding, the embrace of anonymity and the erasure that the road provides were no more. I was found, and I was made.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“Just pretend you know me.”

“I do know you.”

“What?”

“Does your boyfriend know if you like eggs on your pizza?”

“He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

I knew that. It was in the script. “Does he know?”

She looked at me for the first time. Wondering what she had got herself into, no doubt. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, then. We already know each other better than that.” I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t want to. A simple label would have undermined the intimacy. It would have, perhaps, given me a handle on her that I could have used to escape.

She reached across and took my hand in both of hers. Her cool touch sent a shiver through me. I was amazed that my hoary old skin could even feel softness like that any more, but the contact stopped my heart. Her fingertips gently explored my battered and abused hand without her direct knowledge, and the delicacy of them amazed me. I lifted my gaze from her hands to her eyes.

“Nature calls,” I choked out. “Be right back.”

Thanks!

Moonlight Sonata

Posted on by
1

He was American, that much was obvious without a second glance. That was not surprising in the least in a place like this. The second glance, however, revealed him to be much more foreign. He didn’t fit in that brash place filled with chrome and white oak, a constellation of halogen lamps in nouveau deco nouveau fixtures shining from every direction, removing even the hint of a shadow. He brought his shadow with him and settled it around himself as he sat. I watched him. He was not there by choice. His eyes tightened when the coffee grinder ran, and when the steam valve was turned on to foam up someone’s latte. I had never realized what a noisy place it was until I saw him wince and felt the needles in my own brain.

He brought with him darkness and smoke, late nights with bleary eyes, lost nights wondering what the fuck you’re doing there and why doesn’t anything make sense. He was a creature of the night, of last call and dark secrets, and he had come up to the light. His right hand, I realized, was playing, quite of its own accord, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, his fingers brushing the table with gentle assurance, the tendons standing out on the back of his hand. I watched his fingers draw the graceful, deceptively simple lines of the song. He did not play with precision, but each time his finger touched the table I heard the note, and when he struck harder I felt that too, and it was beautiful.

It wasn’t until later it occurred to me to be jealous. I am a piano player. When I saw him I didn’t know what he was, but I knew he was not a musician. But at that moment his fingers played and I was the instrument.

I am suddenly conscious of the telephones all around me. Mingled with the sounds of labor-intensive coffee there is a constant background of ring-tones, of chatter with people who aren’t there, conversations between disembodied and placeless people. Their voices are as bright and piercing as the place they are in. None of them see him. None of them will see the shadow in their midst, as if unseen, it didn’t exist. I try to convince myself that their brittle happiness is more forced, more strident that usual due to his dark presence, but I know they’re always like that.

His fingers changed their pattern; it took me a moment to recognize WoO 59, generally known by the much more romantic title Für Elise. Still just the right-hand part; his left hand was motionless, clinched white-knuckled around his forgotten mug. Between his hands was a slip of paper, smudged and creased, lying flattened out the polished table. He never took his eyes off it. His lips worked as if he was sounding out the words written there, but as I rose to get a refill I saw that the paper was blank.

While I stood in the short line I looked back at him furtively as he sat hunched forward, long stringy hair unwashed, beard too long ignored, clothes slept in, his right hand playing music he had never heard, his left on the verge of shattering his mug. He was not just a creature of the night, of the underbelly of the city that I visited for gigs, he was some mad demon prince of that realm and his presence here meant the end had finally come.

He caught my glance when I came back to my table, next to his. He looked at me through red-rimmed eyes, pulled me in despite my urgent desire to escape. I had looked at his paper, and now I owed him an answer. His right hand had reached the roller coaster moment in the music, his fingers playing the two notes back and forth, more and more slowly with increasing urgency. His voice carried a sadness that made me feel a hundred years old. “There’s nothing there, is there?” He asked.

Thanks!

The Cowboy God

Posted on by
Reply

The white sign seems to glow in the gray of the rainy afternoon. It stands at the edge of a Texas byway, alone, weeds clinging to the two whitewashed two-by-fours holding it up. COWBOY CHURCH it says in simple red letters. Below the words a red arrow points off to the right into the gloom.

My wet brakes don’t grab at first, but once they boil off the water I slow and turn off the blacktop and look down a long, straight dirt road. No doubt about which way to go. Gently I pull forward, even that little nudge making my wheels spin for a moment before taking hold. The ground is saturated; water stands in a sheet over the mud of the road.

I creep along for a mile or two, glimpsing the road ahead for a fraction of a second with each pass of the wipers before the downpour obliterates my view again. Finally I make out a structure ahead, gray like the rest of the world. In front is a large area clear of weeds; I pull into that. The building is a large steel structure, a barn with a modest steeple at the crown of the roof over the door. I park next to the only other car in the lot, a faded blue Oldsmobile from sometime in the ’70’s. One of its windows is down and water is collecting in the footwell. A Bible lies getting sodden in the front seat. I push it farther over, out of the direct rain. I open the car’s door to roll up the window, but there is no crank handle.

Already wet, I dash up the steps to the front door. In the inadequate protection of the front porch I try to scrape the mud off my shoes. The wind is tossing the rain around and I am getting progressively wetter. This is a cowboy church, I decide, they should be used to a little mud. I slip through the door and close it quickly behind me, the sound overwhelmed by the drumming of the rain on the metal roof.

I am in a vestibule partitioned off from the sanctuary by walls that don’t reach the ceiling. Carved wood doors in front of me lead into the main chamber. To one side is a folding table with mimeographed sheets in various pastels. One stack is of light blue sheets neatly folded in two, with a line picture of the church on the front. Beneath are the simple words “Cowboy Church” and a date, past or future I do not know. Finally, in fancier script it says, “It’s never too late.”

I set the paper back down and square the pile. There’s nothing left but to go inside. The door is heavy but moves easily on its hinges; I close it with a gentle click and turn to inspect the room. I am standing at the back of the sanctuary. Folding metal chairs are lined up neatly in rows across the concrete floor. At the far end of the space is a modest altar. On one side of the room is a cast-iron stove glowing invitingly, near it is a folding table with a pair of large coffee urns. On each side near the front hang long banners of red cloth depicting Jesus doing a variety of good things. The lights are off; the only light comes from a row of small windows down each side of the building and a pair of large skylights. The place lacks the soaring majesty of the great cathedrals and the simple joy of the modern house of worship. This is the Cowboy Church, all right.

I step forward into the Cowboy Church, not sure why I came, not sure what to to.

In the Cowboy Church, pray to the Cowboy God.

“Hello?” The voice comes from the back, behind the altar. There are two doors there, one on each side, leading through another partition to spaces unknown in back. The voice is small, and female. A church mouse.

“Hello,” I say. Suddenly I feel like I’m intruding. I should have knocked. “The door was open.”

The door on the right opens and a figure emerges, small and gray and lost in the gloom. “Of course,” she says. She steps forward into the splash from one of the windows. Her hair is dark and very long. Her skin is pale. She looks moonlit. “Preacher’s not here,” she says.

“That’s all right,” I say. “I’m looking for the Cowboy God.”

She takes another step forward and stops, back in shadow, but I can feel her watching me. After a moment she says, “We got the same God as everyone else.”

I nod slowly, but then shake my head. “No,” I say.

What kind of God would a cowboy create? To whom does a cowboy pray while the rain pours off his hat brim in a steady stream and all he has to look at are the filthy asses of the cows plodding in front of him? It wouldn’t be some great being promising a life of comfort and joy. It wouldn’t hold out the promise of Heaven. A true cowboy sees Heaven every day. If he didn’t he would have packed up and gone to the city long since. The Cowboy God doesn’t bring promises and doesn’t offer hope. The Cowboy God is the kind of God that sits at the next barstool, listening to Willie and sipping Bud from a long-neck bottle. He’s a little run down himself—his back is bothering him from all the heavy lifting and his knee goes out from time to time. Maybe the cowboy’s foot is broke and his shoulder takes longer to get going each morning. It’s not worth mentioning because there’s nothing to be done about it and there’s work that’s got to be done tomorrow. They’ll both be getting up before the sun, and tending to their business. It’s the hardship as much as anything else that makes the cowboy who he is; take that away and you take away his soul.

They don’t say much, the cowboy and his God; not much really needs saying. Each is a comfort to the other, a source of strength. After a couple more beers they shake hands, maybe clap a shoulder, and leave. The cowboy climbs in his truck, the manufacturer more a source of religious fervor than the God he prays to, and he wishes his God a safe journey home and feels in his heart the blessing returned. The cowboy might in a real pinch ask his God for a blessing, but he’ll give the Lord his best wishes every day. The cowboy knows what it’s like to carry a burden.

She’s taken another step forward, into the light of the next window. One eye is as gray as the day outside, the other is lost in shadow. She is trying to look into my soul. “What is it you want?” She sounds suspicious, protective, as if I might be a threat to the Cowboy God. Have I come into his lair to call him out, like some gunslinger in the old west? She stands shyly, her straight hair pushed back behind her ears, her hands clasped in front of her. She is wearing a brown skirt, her legs two pale stakes like the signposts. Over her white shirt is a brown coat that matches the skirt. She stands, afraid, ready to defend her God.

“I just want to ask him a question,” I say.

She relaxes a little but suspects a trap. “Preacher will be back soon.”

“All right,” I say, but I’m not interested in him.

“Can I get you come coffee? I just made some in the back.”

“Thanks.”

While she scuttles off to fetch the coffee I drift over to the comfort of the stove. I look out the window, to where the Cowboy God really lives. “What’s it all about?” I ask. My breath fogs the glass.

“Did you say something?” she asks, bringing me a styrofoam cup filled with steaming black coffee.

I accept the cup. By the window I see that her hair is lighter than I first thought, but here eyes are still gray, and open a little wider than seems natural. Her lips are pale, almost indistinct, and pressed together. Shadows under her eyes give her a weariness that speaks of experience and gives her otherwise youthful face a gravity that makes her age impossible to guess. I sip the coffee. It’s good and strong. Cowboy Coffee, I suppose. “Thank you,” I say. “I was just asking my question.”

“Oh,” she says. Perhaps she is distressed that I could be on speaking terms with her God, that I didn’t talk to the preacher first. More than that she is curious.

The sound of rain had faded so slowly I hadn’t noticed its absence, but now it resumes with more furor than ever. The day grows even darker outside. A clatter begins above, and hailstones thrash the land.

“Guess you got your answer,” she says, the corner of her mouth twitching upward even as she turns away, embarrassed for joking at my expense. I look at her pale profile, glowing white like the sign by the highway had. She is watching me from the corner of her round eye.

“Guess so,” I say, and I think she must be right.

She steps to the wood pile and selects a log, then opens the stove and delicately places it inside. The yellow light gives her face some life as she inspects the fire. “You should wait till the storm passes before you drive,” she says. She almost has to shout to be heard over the hammering on the roof.

1

Thanks!

The Desert

Posted on by
6

I came down through Splendor, passing the inviting breakfast shops and tourist traps, chasing the white stripes that would not let me stop, would not let me rest. Winding down through canyons of forgotten beauty I descended into saguaro country and further down onto the hard-baked bedpan of the desert floor. The sun directly overhead pounded the landscape into pure bleak flatness, robbing the land even of its shadows. The shimmering heat over the road reflected the bottomless cobalt sky, making it appear that the shoulders of the road were hanging in the air.

The white stripes paused; the road had been resurfaced here but not repainted. There was room to pull off to the side, with a rusted trash barrel standing with its plastic liner next to a picnic table sitting naked in the blasting sun. This is it. The gravel scrabbled beneath my tires as I pulled over to the side of the road. I sat for a moment, idling quietly, before I turned off the engine and felt the true silence of the desert crashing over me.

I opened the door and lifted myself up out of the low vehicle into the crackling air. I stood, listening for the whispered sigh that would announce the approach of another car, but there was nothing. There would be no one, I suspected. Not even the lizards would be coming out today.

I listened to the soft crunching sound beneath my feet as I walked around the convertible and hoisted out the nearly-exhausted jug of gatorade. I drained the last of the salty liquid and tossed the empty into the trash can. It wasn’t heavy enough to push its way down into the flimsy trash bag; it just sat at the top, peering out of the can as if rejected, hovering between the worlds of litter and trash, but unable to join either. Heaven or Hell. Just different kinds of dead. The bottle pointed North.

I adjusted my hat and turned, facing North, away from the road. The fence was down; the century-old wooden posts staggered drunkenly or lay in their final resting place as the wind slowly buried them under pale dust. Where barbed wire still clung to the posts tumbleweeds had collected, skeletons of Russian emmigrants who had done well in the new world, taming the west so thoroughly they had become icons. They watched me now with futile hostility. Their battle line broken by time and neglect, the sentries could do nothing to prevent me passing into their conquered land beyond the fence.

I turned back to the car and lifted the army-surplus duffel out of the passenger seat and hung its strap over my shoulder. It felt heavier than it should have, as if the Earth was impatient to recieve its contents. Careful not to dent the metal of the car, I pulled out the shovel. Using its long handle as a walking stick I set out into the desert. Moses beginning his exile must have felt this way.

I glanced back at the car, shimmering and ticking. Someone would be coming back for it, but I didn’t think it would be me.

1

Thanks!

New York Sucks

Posted on by
134

Added 5 years later: The inexplicably high ranking search engines give this little rant has led to a lot of comments below, including some excellent rebuttals to my original points. There are also a lot of people adding their own complaints about the city that never sleeps. All comments are welcome, but overall I find the ones who disagree with me to be more interesting, and a few are worth digging up and reading. There are definitely some things to love about the city. My favorite comments of all, however, are the ones on both sides of the fence that hide their whiny, entitled attitude behind foul language, apparently unaware of the irony.

Recently the quality of comments has been so low that I’ve considered not allowing any more of them. Semi-literate ravers, please don’t bother anymore. There’s already plenty of barely-coherent blather on both sides.

Anyway, on with the original episode:

– – –

In the unlikely event there are two New Yorkers capable of mounting a meaningful defense of their home city, I’ll publish them both. More than two, either I’ll pick the one hardest for me to rebut, or I’ll figure out a way to let the polls decide. Messages of the form “F%*$ you, you f^%#ing f$^*!” will just add to my smug belief that I am better than you are and will be deleted and mocked.

I have for a couple of years now held the opinion that New York City is filled with victims and crybabies. Everyone knew already that the city was filled with arrogant assholes.

To start with the arrogant assholes, here’s a case in point. Tonight I was sitting in a bar, and at the next table was a pair of Yankees fans. Yankees were playing the Bosox, a game with history and significance. You would expect a Yankees fan to be passionate about such a game, and these guys were. I’m OK with that. That’s why God made baseball. That’s why Steinbrenner bought it from Him.

I overheard part of their conversation early. “They’re still talking about ’98 here. Was it ’98? The Yankees humiliated them. It was a sweep.” Now, I don’t know if it was ’98 or ’96, and yes, the Yankees did completely dominate the Padres. It was a sweep. But that year San Diego won the pennant. When dad buys you a pennant every year, that may not seem so special. But when you earn it, doesn’t it mean so much more? No point explaining that to a Yankees fan.

And that’s what New Yorkers just don’t seem to understand. They seem to believe that simply being from the hive is enough to entitle them to all the respect the world has to offer. Later, the New York fans were outraged among themselves when the best TV was switched over to the Padres game. There was still a TV right in front of them carrying their game, but it wasn’t Hi-Def. “What the f@%& are they doing showing the Padres game?” one NYB asked the other (B is for bastard). Had the man been grandstanding, trying to get a rise out of the other people in the bar, I would have simply labeled him as an asshole and shrugged it off. But the simple fact was that as a New Yorker he expected to get his game on the hi-def TV. He was entitled.

New York is inexplicably proud of being a bunch of arrogant assholes. They call it “street smart” and other transparent euphemisms. When I passed through New York I was not prepared for the incessant whining and victim attitude.

I was passing from Aruba to San Diego, and because I’m a cheap bastard my return flight included a sleepover in New York. No problem, I figured. I’d just find a less-uncomfortable place to crash at JFK. Best case, I find a bar and just hang out all night. It was a naive notion, I now realize.

My first welcome as I came off the plane set the tone for my stay in the city that never sleeps. “Did you see what he just did to me?” I heard an angry woman behind me say. We made our way to an escalator and I tell you now I have never seen such concentrated uncivilized behavior. Poor little Jerry was pushed aside and every time I said, “Oh, I’m sorry” as I was shoved into someone else I was answered with “eat me” or something worse. “Screw the other guy before he screws you” was the rule of the day.

The airport was closing. There would be no crashing in the terminal, no all-nigher in the bar. The bartender was terribly appologetic. I called a hotel and they said the shuttle would be right over. It was a cold night, freezing rain, and I was in shorts. People were not looking at me with sympathy as I stood waiting for the shuttle; they were looking at me with suspicion. I watched two old men get into a fist fight over a taxi. I shook my head. The cold rain on my legs hurt far less than the anger all around me hurt my poor west-coast brain.

It turns out the signs telling me to wait for a hotel shuttle did not direct me to the place hotel shuttles were going. After freezing my ass off (proudly, stoically, without whining) I tromped back to the terminal and called the hotel again. The friendly person apologized and the shuttle was redispatched. I stood longer in the bitter New York sleet until I was finally swept away to the warmth and security of a nearby hotel. I was happy to see that guy, and he was downright nice. Maybe New York isn’t so bad after all. Pff.

Once safely installed in my room, and with the local anger fizzing in my head, I made my way with laptop to the hotel bar. There I sat and watched the local victim hour, also known as the news. Crap, can’t there be one story on the evening not spun as injustice? The weather report was “here’s how mother nature is fucking us over today.” I have never heard a more consistent, pervasive whining than I did in NYC. I have gone out of my way in this story to mention people that were not whiny little fucks who thought the world owed them something. Two were bartenders, one drove a van. Who knows what they thought when they weren’t sucking up to travelers. [Unfair – the bartender at JFK was the read deal. She was funny as hell and a true sweetheart. I would have loved to stay up all night in her bar.]

The next morning I caught the plane back to San Diego. I staggered down the jetway and heard someone say, “Oh! I’m sorry. Go ahead.” I laughed not from humor but from joy, back where we may not be intimate but we are certainly polite, and we don’t feel that the world owes us happiness. We make that for ourselves.

7

Thanks!

I See Beauty and Stuff

Posted on by
9

Moonless night now here on the upper floor of the Earth. I step out into the darkness, into the humming cloudless night, and they are all there. All the names I know, and even more I’ve forgotten. Polaris, constant enough for our sorry lifespans. Antares, heart of the scorpion, named for what it isn’t. How would you like your name to be “Not John”? Alkaid, shining at the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. The name is Arabic, and means “the base” or “the fortress”. The street I used to live on was named for that star. Osama bin Laden also took a shine to the word.

Cassiopeia lies along the Milky Way, stretching her wings across the galaxy behind. As my eyes embrace the darkness she is almost lost among the clamor and light. The bears are there, diminished in reputation by the dippers they support. Draco, I never could pick out. It seems to be all the leftover stars that couldn’t fit into any other shape.

Arching almost directly overhead is the Milky Way. I look and try to turn that mysterious band into a disk of countless stars, but it is too much for me. There are enough stars I can see already.

Across the backdrop of the untouchable infinite crosses the works of man. High above but almost close enough to touch pass the blinking rumbling jetliners, crossing the sky but not daring to leave a trail behind them. The stars will not tolerate such impudence tonight. Another light moves across the sky, brightly lit as it crosses the plane of the galaxy then quickly fading. After a few seconds I lose sight of it, but I keep trying to look sideways where I think it might be, hoping to catch a hint of motion out of the corner of my eye. Whatever it was, it was big, and far above the atmosphere. ISS, I have chosen to believe. I could look it up, but I’m not going to.

Earlier tonight, driving back from a shopping run (the store closed early), our local star had just dipped below the horizon, carelessly leaving behind a rich sky full of pink and lavender. The ponds I passed stole from that palette and shamelessly reproduced it. The grass, green and haughty and still filled with the rain I had called forth, chose to contrast the colorful solar residue rather than echo it, which just made it all the better for me. I drove too fast, choosing to skim across the tops of the washboard ruts. It was good. It was thus with fondness that I said bon soir to out giant plasmic meatball, and welcomed the night.

Alone in the dark, more air below my feet than above my head, the stars blazed forth, barely bothering to twinkle. The hum of night insects surrounded me, supplemented by the vague, uncertain alarmism of Spike, who has obviously been paying too much attention to the government lately. Better to bark and have your ass kicked than to simply have your ass kicked.

The stars, and, strangely, no planet that I could identify (except Earth), continued on their vast journeys, unaware or our ridiculous fears.

Thanks!

The Best Sound in Sports

Posted on by
8

You’ve heard me rant about what makes a real sport. This is a corollary to that discussion. Great sports make great sounds. A sound in a stadium must be simple and sharp. Maybe there are times when boot hits ball that soccer can create that visceral *thump* that sends a shockwave through the audience. Probably not, though.

American Football has a sound. It is the crash of two men clad in hardened plastic smashing into each other. In fact, the “protection” those men wear is designed more to make loud noises than to preserve the health of the players. Hundreds of injuries a year could be avoided if the league adopted quieter pads. So for me that sharp smash is a tainted sound. I can’t help but think that every collision could be the end of a career, or even a life, just to give me that sound.

And there are better sounds. There’s the sweet purity of the crack as a baseball meets the sweet spot on a bat. Fielders listen to that sound and play the hit accordingly. The sound is not just something for the fans to enjoy, it’s a critical part of the game. Should the Majors stop using wood bats, I’d stop watching. I love that sound. Subtler, but equally important, is the sound of a strike-three fastball burying itself in the catcher’s glove. POP! “Thureeeeee!” Beauty.

That’s not my favorite sound, however. In the same category as the well-struck baseball is the slap shot. Crack! Hockey is full of great sounds. There’s the schuuuus of skates at full brake, there’s the crunch of bodies at midice, there’s the blammo of bodies into into the boards, and the whistles of irate european fans. Then there’s the sharp crack when stick meets puck with a force so huge the stick sometime breaks. Bam!

But as great as that snap is, there is one sound more powerful in sport. When that enormous crack! is followed by a resonating piiiiiing! you know deep in your heart that nothing could have been closer. In a live and die world where fate is decided by the dimensions of a hard rubber disk and the arbitrary diameter of the metal that supports the net, that sound is a call to prayer. That sound will drive the fanatics of both teams mad. It is the sound of victory and the sound of loss. It is the decision of the Gods of the Bounce, against whom we will never argue but at whom we will always curse.

There is no other sound in all of sports that comes close.

Thanks!