When the Walls
are Paper Thin

We are all Turkeys!

It was the night before Thanksgiving
and all through the mall,
not a shopper was stirring, just
a few under paid clerks, some
rent a cops with machine guns
in hand, and the corporate
bosses counting their swag

The shelves were spilling over
with every deal to be made,
TVs and consols, blue jeans
to toys, coffee machines, mix masters
and more, oh boy, just about everything
on sale for Black Friday’s Thursday
early shopper deals

With hours from opening the
hordes at the doors building
anticipation to tackle the floor
of thirty to fifty percent off their list
and a few seventy percent surprises
they never much even knew exist

So with a push and a shove
the masses stormed into the stores
grabbing the items like professional
thieves, making the racks empty,
unlike carrion of homeless asleep on
the streets,

No one notice not a child in sight
fighting broke out and two were shot
the images of Ferguson shown on
every tv screen, is there a right-way
or wrong-way of fulfilling our needs
the philosophers pondered both scenes
of Amerika’s steal

And soon the malls emptied all
was spent, not a nickel was left
to give to the poor, the homeless
the hungry have nothing but ills
while big corporations make well
of the swill

Another great capitalist scam
could be heard in the distance
as sirens wailed, taking poor
and non spenders, off to their
over spent jails

Woody Guthrie Plays the Nibelungenlied

I wonder at Dalton Trumbo
At Joe Bonham as imprisoned
Self
About the dying being not proud
Slipping away to Styx, still jingoist, re:
Red whites and their blues;
Recall Sesame Street
(The Electric Company?)
Old animate joke of
“We’re out of sweet rolls”
Whether or not human persons lie dying
From jackboot kicks
Of fascist guns recoiling
Dying having all the good songs, but
Dying, burning in snow or mountain pass
Stuffed doubled-candied sweet taters, as
Fucked as Thanksgiving turkeys,
Has what to do with Any ideology
Or glorious, spattered epiphanies
Out of whatever inclusive mouths
Of whatever babes

John Reed’s brethren, are eggshells, too
Your blood doesn’t taste sweet
Because your mind is open

Drones:
The sound r/c planes made in the 60’s Reality

The thingiebobbers work, all right
But make such a fucking racket
The “noise pollution” volk are out in force
Some people wind up hearing impaired
So, no deliveries before 11:00 A.M.
But, not everyone works the same hours
As you know, so,
As our world, as you know
Wasn’t set up for 3^rdM/font> shift people
They all have to register
Like sex offenders

Poseidon Dies Like A Fool
In The Modern World

A psychic whore left him stoned
in a dilapidated motel room
on the edge of a chasm
on the gray brink of a vast abyss

There remained 4 short lines of cocaine
on the night stand
like hammers for rusty, crooked nails
awaiting inevitable dense black clouds

The worms of earth would not
take his body and the sea threw it up
on shore like the trash of humanity

And the air ate it away gradually,
much akin to the putrid gas of betrayal eating
away the pure innocence of tenderness

untitled (muse)

O you
grey mountain muse,
lamp as
fingers in mist,
pour through passes,
rise to graze
the high meadows.

Juvenile Ballet

I liked being flesh. I liked its impermanence
and because we were barely loved,
we had found each other—
open to touch and pleasant to opposing eyes.
Moonlight seemed always near and I enjoyed
how we could unmake a bed together,
elevated by another’s ending—
the measured awkwardness of juvenile ballet.

Pearl Skies Lying

Above the irregular valleys of Pennsylvania
swinging out of this morning’s mist,
the deepest yellow sun
can’t remember its ancient colors
before planets and all the rest
started following it around like needy pets
begging the elements of life.

Character actor in a cosmic picture—
the sun can’t recall its earliest bit parts
in white and blue,
portraying anger, sadness, resignation;
waiting for its breakthrough role—
to illume what I perceive at this moment;
your sensual currents
and the pearl skies lying below.

Brian Forrest Bio:

    Born in Canada and bred in the U.S., Brian Forrest works in many mediums: oil painting, computer graphics, theatre, digital music, film, and video. Brian studied acting at Columbia Pictures in Los Angeles, digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and Digital Video Production.) He works in the Seattle, WA area in design/media/fine art. Influenced by past and current colorist painters, Brian’s raw and expressive works hover between realism and abstraction.

Mobservation #7

More and more people used the new way
of becoming experts:
                              by
standing up and saying they were experts
                                                                  And
as their ‘expertise’ often went unchallenged,
they adopted an unspoken slogan:
who says declining standards are a bad thing?

the scream of the butterfly

    it was late afternoon & this rock across the yard was the last ground in the sun. i walked to the rock & saw a yellow butterfly resting on it, the color of the inside of a lemon. it took to the air when it saw me. i sat down on the rock in the sun to think & drink. the yellow butterfly was back before my ass was warm. it landed on my head. it wasn’t screaming, but i guessed it had something on its mind. we sat there, the butterfly on me, me on the rock – in the same sun in the same spot on planet earth. then it flew into the maples. i got to feeling guilty. i didn’t come to the sunny rock to feel bad about stealing real estate so i stood up & walked away. i stopped & turned: the rock was in the sun & i waited . . out of the maples danced the butterfly, small yellow and fragile. it landed gently on the rock.

innocence & experience

he fucked his daughter
he fucked my girlfriend
there was a time when i didn’t know how evil
the world was and there is a piece
of that kid in this poem
and a couple of dead kids, in this poem

elizabeth and i shared a table in 4^th grade
me and elizabeth nightengale and another kid
her penmanship was
so beautiful i looked at it every day
and she sat upright
while the other kids talked
about her

elizabeth nightingale had short blonde hair
she made me nervous and happy
every day
the most beautiful girl
i had ever seen
talking, the two of us talking

i began to ride my bike across the highway
to elizabeth’s house
after school

we walked and talked
between bursts of energy
i was always catching up to her
mind and she ran
faster than me

we climbed a tree
and straddled a great branch
face to face
and she said:
“do you want to hug?”

the leaves hid us
she was warm and solid
in her denim coveralls
and i felt her body
my first experience with a woman

in 5^th grade
they put elizabeth in one class
they put me in another
they separated us
there was only one smart class
in that elementary school
and they knew damn well
she was brilliant

i saw her now and again
in class with the average kids
i noticed her body
she was different
she had grown up
and had little interest in school
she didn’t talk, aloof and closed
and i saw kids give her space

in 6^th grade, elizabeth did not show up

her family had left town
elizabeth was pregnant
the father was her father or
her stepfather was the father

someone mentioned a southern state

Taps

    Romantic and sympathetic in its genre, a perfect stand in for the cold and the dead that someone, somewhere, must have loved. Some smidgen of peace it may bring and peace it must keep with them that mourn, their hands clasp away from the necks of those who pipe its tune.
    But the dead are more than deaf to its call, the majesty of bursting bombs in air as o’er the ramparts the romantic, gallant, heroes serve up the day’s conquest for the suits at their well laid tables, a place far remote from the stretched and curled ones, never hearing the anthem that pied them to their end, as it laid those tables fair.
    Memorials, as the day, are also done, folded flags to bosoms held, shuffled steps to somewhere beyond the blurry vision of it all, go those who will know the dirge anew and never tell.

Charles Hayes bio

    Charles is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. Born and raised in the Appalachians, his writing interests centers on the stripped down stories of those recognized as on the fringe of their culture. Asian culture, its unique facets, and its intersection with general American culture is of particular interest. As are the mountain cultures of Appalachia.

a Sense of Sepia

Confronting the house
where I was born,
so much older now, sadder
(world weary like me);
a poor copy of memory’s
bright front door,
opening up shadowy corners
of the mind

Quite alone in the road
I used to play,
all but empty now, quieter
(time-trodden, like me);
a poor copy of hide-and-seek
and go-karts sure
to bring life to laughter lines
on the brow

Football stadium, home
to comic strip heroes,
looks different now, better
preserved than me
where once shabby red fencing
would sneak me in
to get up a sweat for sandmen
in muddy shorts

Here it was, I would dream
about growing up,
doing things, going places,
being someone else;
a livelier, kinder, inspiration
to mind, body and spirit
than this poor copy preserved
in shades of sepia

Ah, but less of this standing
on time’s misty shore,
letting its fast, outgoing tide
get the better of me...
Rather, I shall bid my ghosts
a fond farewell,
let the Here and Now count
and colour me in

A Lesson from the Zen Masters

I have been breathing lately
and it’s as if I had never taken a breath before
I’ve been drinking in the air
and feeling the richness of it
and the thirst that it satisfies.
I’ve been breathing with the fullness of my being
and feeling strange connections.

Somewhere deep inside,
I think, I know,
I remember life came to me with my first breath,
a silver flute, silent and pure,
and I’ve been breathing ever since,
silently humming eternity’s hymn,
a continuous connection between me and the cosmos,
a spider’s thread to eternity.

And it feels good this breath awareness
I’ve borrowed from the Zen Masters.
It makes me feel I’ve grown wings
and soon I’ll know how to fly.

When the walls are thin

When the walls are thin
you can hear the bed heaving
under the sex-laden mattress,
you can hear the neighbors arguing
in violet liquor tones
while the baby cries hysterically
in his cardboard crib.

When the walls are thin
you can feel the hunger of children
in Somalia, or Bosnia
or the ghettoes of L.A.
broken bones around the hearth
and a cold wind under the door.

When the walls are thin
everyone’s problems
become your own
a large wooden cross
over the bed
and a statue of Mary
on the night table.
You must learn to swim
or you drown.

When the walls are thin
you’d better be quiet
or the neighbors will hear you
writing your poetry
in the middle of the night.

Jay Frankston Biography

    In 1972 he gave up law and New York and moved himself and his family to Northern California where he became a teacher and continued to sculpt and write.

    He is the author of several books and of a true tale entitled “A Christmas Story” which was published in New York, condensed in Reader’s Digest, translated into 15 languages, and called a Christmas Classic by many reviewers.

    El Sereno, his latest novel, is a short epic set in Spain with authentic historical background. It took ten years and two trips to Madrid to complete.

Tyrone Leon Jackson Johnson

Impress me.
Dress me.
Work me;
Creatively.

Our life all a farce.
You had a loyalty fetish
Or so you said.
“I will always be with you no matter what.”

As narcissistic as you wanna’ be,
You wined me, dined me,
And fucked me
Literally.

You cheated on me
        While you left your loyalty with me.
I raised our son;
You gave me grief;
I made you dinner,
You gave me shit.

I brought my heart to bear
Holding it in my hands
Arms extended for days, months, years
Until my arms shook.

Whenever you came home,
It was always temporarily.

You brought hate,
A virus, which denies love-
Hate for our family
For our son
For me
Our happy home destroyed
Because you avoid
Love for you and us.

You took a sledge hammer
And smashed
The sofa
And broke the windows
You broke my heart-
Shaped box
The only thing left intact
Is the freezer which kept your frozen artificial heart in
Next to the chilled beer steins
And old freezer burned ice cream.
Way in the back your heart pulses faintly
As it grows tainted in the coldest, deepest part.

You came home with a virus of heat
Ready to kick us out and fire us
As your family
As your life.
Your substance abuse,
Your cheating,
Your lying,
Created the disease once referred to as the gay cancer
Which grows within you.
You fucked us once,
But we don’t want to get fucked again,
Because we will inherit the HIV-the AIDS
Which are your awards
For your self-loathing
And hatred for us.
You destroyed
And continue to.
RIP my love who is now dead to us
And alive
At the same time.

Christopher Davis Bio

    Christopher Davis is a poet, teacher, and photographer. He holds a BA. In English and in Pan African Studies; M.A in Education; and an Ed.S in Education. .He has written thousands of poems about life. He is the author of book of poetry entitled Only, If: Volume 1? available for download at the Apple iBook store.

A Cloudy Ending

The humidity transformed the air
Into contact cement
Sticking to the skin
Seeping into your pores

Changes in the atmosphere
Were palpable
Transforming our DNA

Tropic of solar plexus
In no uncertain terms

We were young
Anointed for a mission
To change the world
With peace & love
And force, of idealistic will

At best
We made a small dent
Near the chink, in the amour
The rank & file
Bucked the power
They paid the price

There are no warning signs
There are no boundaries

Hymie and Nat

Hymie and Nat, ran the local delicatessen

During the summer, they wore short sleeve shirts
The delicatessen, didn’t have air conditioning
Everyone could see, the numbers, tattooed, on their wrists
The brothers had been interviewed, on a local news station

Hymie was a compact, positive, bundle of energy
Happy, smiling, quick with a joke
Extending credit, to anyone that bothered to ask
Nat wasn’t so lucky
He was out of it, grim, never smiled

Who knows what nightmares, haunted Hymie?
His wife and son died, in the camps

Hymie and Nat closed up shop, about ten years ago

They took part of the neighborhood’s character, with them

Inconvenient Facts

When alone, listening to
Chopin’s, Nocturne # 8 in D Flat Opus 27 # 2
I sincerely believe

If man can imagine and invent
A grand piano
Compose this piece of music
Perform, and most preciously, record, it

Then we do have marvelous potential
Redeeming qualities, well worth cultivating

Yet the Nazi’s, were kind to animals
Loved this music too
When listening
It’s easy to momentarily, forget
These inconvenient facts

The Krafft-Ebing Poems

Case #106
when she was about ten years old
    she thought that her mother no longer loved her

so she put matches in her coffee
    to make herself sick

that she might thus excite
    her mother’s affection for her

Case #88
on account of his impotence     the patient applied to Dr. Hammond

who treated his epilepsy
    with bromides

and advised him
    to hang a boot over his bed

imagine his wife to be a shoe
    and to look at it fixedly during intercourse

Case #8
    as a child he was not affectionate
and was cold toward his parents

    as a student he was peculiar
and retiring, preoccupied with self

    he was well endowed mentally and given to much reading
but eccentric after puberty
    alternating between religious enthusiasm
and materialism

    now studying theology
now natural sciences

    at the university his fellow students
took him for a fool

    for he read Jean Paul
almost exclusively

Case #89
on his marriage night
    he remained cold

until he brought to his aid
    a picture

of an ugly woman’s head wearing a night cap
    whereupon coitus was immediately successful

Case #36
    she must stand at the window
awaiting him with her face done up

    and on his entrance into the room
complain of severe toothache

    he is sorry for her
asks particularly about the pain

    takes the cloth off
and puts it on again

    he never touches her
yet finds complete sexual satisfaction in this act

Case #55
on their wedding night
    he forced a towel and soap into her hands

and without any other expression of love
    asked her to lather his chin and neck as if for shaving

the inexperienced young wife did it
    and during the first weeks of married life

was not a little astonished to learn
    the secrets of marital intimacy in this way alone

Case #102
    the patient in a circle of erotic ideas
grows more and more peculiar

    he avoids the society
of women

    associates with them
only for the sake of music

    and only when two witnesses
are with him

Case #83
his dreams are filled
    with aprons

This poem appears in Incompetent Translations and Inept Haiku
(Cervena Barva Press 2013) and Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015).

of independence
                or freedom

So it seems you cram us in here
like we’re sardines.
How many of us have you crammed in here
before you send us on our way?

Strap us in, make sure
we don’t get any strange ideas
of independence or freedom
(‘cause really, you wouldn’t want us

to think for ourselves)...

Strap us in, compartmentalize us —
but the thing is, you thought
I was just like everyone else,
that I’d just sit back and take it.

These sardines around me
seem totally complacent —
what have you told them
to make the so subservient?

Well, maybe you didn’t get it before
but I’ll take a sledgehammer to your plans.
I’ll shatter that glass ceiling
and that two-way mirror

you watch us through.

I don’t care where you think
you’re taking us,
and I no longer care
if you’re sending us away.

I didn’t sign up for this ride,
and being crammed in here
is making me nauseous.
Don’t make me throw up

before I start my revolt,
because whether or not
you think we’re sardines, and want
cram us away like we’re nothing,

just remember:

I’m bigger than my ego lets on
and I’ll take whatever makeshift
weapon I can find, to break free
of how you think we should be.

untitled 6/11/15

ever leave me

if death ever consumed you
if your soul were ever to leave

if there was something out there
insidious enough, evil enough

to snuff you from this earth
and force us to go on without you

well, what would I do

as you departed, I would hold you
until your heart stopped beating

and then I would hold you tighter
until your brain no longwr functioned

because I would want
your thinking mind to know

that I would hold you fiercely
and never let you go

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    From January 2010 through August 2015 Kuypers also hosted the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the open mic’s weekly feature / open mic podcast (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc& hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed.

Glossolalia

Even the donkeys and elephants
Study ballistics now.

They donate our money to
Global executioners
Who have encrypted their own
Blood spatter mission statements
And appear even to each other
As wolfish believers
Rolling ecstatically down
Empyrean highways
Etched into the drought
Of gaping white fences
That once ruled plain folks
Dreams.

Our brains now pirouette
To the tune of addiction
And the pain of being.

They speak in tongues
And call themselves
Our masters.
They believe
We can’t hear,
  But we know they
  Can be
  Easily interpreted
As they tremble and yowl:

We don’t need you anymore.

Christmas in Switzerland

    Was something drawing me back to the country for another family Christmas, and to enjoy the memory of Christmases past? I couldn’t decide whether it was the anticipation of seeing the Alps, enjoy a quality of living I had never experienced, or getting away from the life I was leading in England. Other than the visits to North Wales over the weekends to climb and scramble on the peaks of Snowdonia National Park, I was slowly becoming jaded and tired of work and the effect it was having on me. So a break was just I needed, and where better than the land of efficiency and where a plan is always essential, almost a Swiss tradition?
    When I flew into Switzerland I was treated to a fantastic view of the mountains in the distance prior to landing in Zurich. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the Swiss Alps. It was Mont Blanc in France. The airport has grown in recent years with a new terminal and excellent facilities. This should be no surprise to anyone who has visited the country (only the best in Switzerland). The airport has its own railway station, which is located underground (something you might see in a James Bond film), and is connected to Zurich and the majority of the larger Swiss cities. As soon as you stepped of the plane, efficiency was in the air, even the weather was on time.
    On this occasion, I was driving from Portsmouth to Zurich via the Channel Tunnel to spend Christmas with my family. My grandparents moved to Zurich twenty years ago, and we held a family Christmas there for the past eight years.
    I’m not sure if it’s British stubbornness, but why oh why can’t everyone drive on the same side of the road? Throughout my time spent on the continent, I had to contend with stretching to the left had side of the car whenever I had to pay parking fees and tolls. However, I was lucky on the drive down, because the French toll booths were free. The workers who manned the booths were on strike, and taking an extended Christmas break. They were standing by the booths holding an enormous banner and waving me through. Having seen the GB sticker on my car I was treated to a demonstration of various French hand signals.
    The Channel Tunnel runs from Dover to Calais, from which I traveled to Paris on the ring road. The road didn’t offer many views of Paris, although I did glimpse the Eiffel Tower from a distance. I left Paris, heading east to the French/German border at Strasbourg, and then south to Basel and, finally, heading east to Zurich.
    At the Swiss/German border, despite my car being full up with Christmas gifts in varying boxes and packages, I was not stopped. The mere thought would have sent a shudder down the spine of a Swiss Customs official. Oh no! One got through! However, it appeared that their attention was drawn to a van belonging to a reputable Swiss bank (well, Swiss bank) trying to return valuables to their Jewish owners.
    I had arrived and was looking forward to the world-renowned Swiss hospitality. Even though I had been there before, it took a while to locate my grandparent’s house in Zurich, even though it was close to the Opera House. To say their place was big is a major understatement. At the front door they sold maps, and looked for a generous donation to the ‘Not So Well off Swiss Bankers Association’. What was most annoying was the number of tourists who would ring the door bell asking if we had any spare rooms available, especially at Christmas. However, the family didn’t plan to spend much time there, especially on the weekends, in which we would put on our hiking boots and travel to the mountains to hike, eat rosti and down a beer or two.
    I quickly hauled my suitcase and gifts up to my room on the third floor. The room came with the option of a financial advisor to plan my spending during my visit. My grandparents employed a landlady/concierge who was helpful and would prove to be extremely useful when dealing with the bureaucracy for which Switzerland is world famous. This included a visit to the local police station to determine whether I was financially viable to be able to park in a metered road.
    Every week my grandparents sent the landlady to Germany with a shopping list as the food is cheaper over the border. Strangely enough, my second cousin Hans used to come to Switzerland every week to do his shopping. He would walk into the closest grocery and claim that unless he got some service, he would send in the Panzers. He is current receiving treatment at one of Switzerland’s finest sanatoriums for the delusional and the generally over optimistic.
    When travelling in Zurich on the trams and local trains, you realize that death and taxes are not the only two things that can be guaranteed in life. The other is that Swiss trains would always arrive and depart on time. It was a badge of honor, and I believe the word “late” is one of those words adolescent Swiss boys look up in the dictionary to find out what it means. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that train engineers had thrown themselves off the nearest alp if their trains were 30 seconds late.
    We gave a watch to our cousin Fredrick, who, upon opening the present, rushed out the door and raced to the train station to synchronize his watch to ensure it was set at the right time. He was determined not to be the laughing stock of this school on return from the Christmas holidays by being the only one with an inaccurate timepiece.
    When visiting other countries you come across interesting activities. One celebration that focuses on the common standards of different nations is the Swiss/Japanese train drivers club, which has vowed to ensure that trains run on time. The club is made up of train drivers and conductors. It is the only club I know in which “kamikaze” is in the membership terms. One Christmas, the train delivering club members to Zurich was late by five minutes. Before you could say “bonsai” the train carriage was a blood bath with the club members fulfilling their sacred duties of dying rather than be an accomplice to delayed public transport.
    The first year our family met in Switzerland we brought a tree so big we needed the fire service to put the star on the top of the tree and needed a machete on Christmas morning to get to the presents. It wasn’t until we chopped it down on January 6 that we discovered there were still a number of gifts that weren’t opened. Placing the lights on the tree was a monumental effort, taking a team of experienced Sherpas two days to scale the heights of the lower branches and pave a way to the higher branches of the tree. Then, with some trepidation, family members were sent up one by one. It became one of the most famous ascents in the history of Christmas trees. On the way down, we found a bird nesting for the winter and a couple of squirrels protecting their nuts.
    As well as the overly decorated Christmas tree, one tradition that I brought over from the UK was the grand tradition of leaving two mince pies (fruit, not meat, for those not in the know) and a glass of whisky for Santa. This backfired one Christmas, when we left the bottle. We don’t know who drank the bottle dry, but the individuals looking like death at six in the morning with a headache was a strong candidate. The best way to recover was taking a walk to breathe in the clear Swiss air, and relive last night’s meal.
    While I had studied German, any attempts to use the language were usually met with a response in English. This always astonished me. Not that the Swiss could speak English, but the surprised tone in their voice that I had made it out of Britain and traveled as far as central Europe. This was usually expected of the Germans. I put it down as their surprise I could live without a fish and chip shop for any length of time. The pride one feels in being able to speak a foreign language is limited by the ability of the foreigner to listen to you struggle and destroy their language. The English approach appears to be the classic, speak loud and slowly, and then everyone will understand you.
    The tradition of carol singing was as prevalent today as it has been for many years. However, the response tended to be more negative; including the throwing of water, hurling of abuse, and if they were really bad, money so that they would go away. What a wonderful way to raise money for those in need, including failed Swiss bankers. One year, when the carolers arrived, we positioned them over the cellar door in the garden and when we had too much, we pulled a leaver and they fell like a brick into the cellar. We would threaten to release them on an unsuspecting town. My family was given the key to the city.
    The key to a good Christmas is the food. There are many Swiss traditions and local delicacies to enjoy; and many more if shopping in Germany. It really is cheaper. My grandmother would spend the days leading up to Christmas baking, which included plates full of biscuits. The biscuits would be the shape and pattern of Swiss currency. They are so life-like that they have become legal tender in some of the more remote valleys of Swiss Alps.
    Crisp new layers of snow would welcome hikers, climbers, along with the cold weather denial club. They meet every year to snowboard and ski with nothing but a small slip of material, generally wrapped around their heads. I believe they defined the phase, “freezing your nuts off.” Although a few squirrels may lay claim to that saying.
    The abundance of snow makes the Christmas holidays much more special. You could take a sleigh ride or go snow shoeing or launch yourself down a hill with two pieces of wood strapped to your feet, a common activity. The snow does not bring traffic chaos as you see in other towns in other countries. In fact, every September cars line up to have their tires changed from summer to winter, up to the point that the local law enforcement ensured that tires have been changed or the full force of the law will be on you. However; there is a lot to be said about a stay at a Swiss prison. Run like a well funded hotel, the guests (inmates) are given complementary slippers, robes and three substantial meals a day. Also, long-term inmates are given the opportunity to buy their own cells.
    And finally, as they say on the news, for foreigners in Switzerland, there are a variety of experiences, none more so than during the Christmas holidays. So enjoy your stay there and be amazed to the point of incredulousness.

Elmer

    The guy was a total asshole in every way. He was our thirteenth acting manager in eighteen months. This was his last chance. He had been bounced out of everywhere else for his temper and irrationalities.
    There was no way to ever get through to him. He would make up his mind about things, no matter the facts. There was a severe disconnect in his mind. It was your fault no matter what.
    He was a short little man with a very heavy Asian accent. He seemed to barely understand English at times. No matter what anyone said, he was outraged. If he asked you a question, he gave the third degree with a high pitched;
    “HUH?! HUH?!” Ear shattering.
    He screamed at everyone daily, often hourly, no matter how hard they worked. It was a culture of fear and bullying. Supervisors scurried to try to satisfy his fantasy demands. Union stewards prepared grievance after grievance. Costs were mounting.
    Everyone counted down the days until he was gone. It couldn’t come too soon.

    I was on light duty with severe injuries to my foot and ankle. Surgery was likely. Every step was pain. I still hustled, and was as fast as everyone else at things I was able to do. The acting manager screamed at me for having said injuries, threatening to fire me repeatedly.
    Short on vehicles, I was stuck in the office with nothing to do. It was hell. I had to look busy. There was no escape.

    The acting manager gathered the supervisors and clerks, and began screaming at them. His accented screams echoed the building to headache inducing levels. I was to his back, so he couldn’t see me as I pretended to have work to do.
    On and on he screamed to faces of concrete and sorrow. What a life. What a job. Where do we go so wrong as to face such a horrible fate?

    And then...
    “and every time I try to talk with you, you running around like rabbits!”

    Think about that with such a heavy accent...
    “Wunning awound wike wabbits?!”
    Our acting manager was Elmer Fudd.

    I had to fake a sneezing attack and go outside. I made it less than ten feet before exploding in laughter. I hated to make fun of his accent, but in the context of his screaming at people, combined with that phrase, it was too much to bear.
    I was laughing too hard to breath. I saw Bug Bunny “wunning awound.” I saw Elmer Fudd chasing him.
    I saw the acting manager, when he was lurking around looking for someone to scream at, as saying “Be wery, wery quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.”
    On and on I laughed. Tears actually began showing. I could hardly breathe.
    I hid under the dock, choking on the smoke I had lit, still laughing.
    “Wunning awound wike wabbits.”
    “Kiww the wabbit, kiww the wabbit, kiww the waaaaaaabbbbbiiitttt.”

    Hahahahahahahaha

    Eventually I got my composure. I went inside the building. The screaming was over. I rushed to my case and pulled paperwork out and prepared to do more pretend work.
    A voice rang out.
    “MERCER!”
    There he was, full of fury.
    “It’s you TOO, you know.”
    “What’s that?” (Yeah, I almost said “What’s up, Doc?”)
    “It’s you too. Every time I try to talk with you, you’re wunning awound like a wabbit.”

    I began my fake sneezing attack. It was the only way. The only way...

    “What’s a matter? You sick?! HUH?! HUH?! Always sometime with you. Always something.”
    He walked away shaking his head.
    A clerk walked up to me smiling. She saw that I was laughing.
    “Are you ok?”
    I smiled to the point of laughter.
    “Yeah, I’m just one of us wascally wabbits. Hahahahahahaa”
    Barely subdued laughter exploded.
    It was another day in the life of a working class wabbit being hunted by Fudds.

Lake City

    It was a miserable neighborhood. Drugs and thugs ran around everywhere, but only for a three block radius. Outside of that circle, everything was fine, even kind of nice. Yet, there we were, living smack in the middle of misery.
    The place was the now ex wife’s idea. What she wanted, believe me, she got. There would be no arguing. She needed drama. Lived for it. Not even her own family dared to take her on.
    The only time there was no misery was when I was at work. I counted down the hours until I’d get to return to work.
    It had been a long road back to getting on our feet. Our restaurant had failed. Largely it was because she had decided to not run the place. The restaurant had been a gift from her wealthy father to her, hoping she’d become grounded enough to settle down and stop being as insane.
    With the restaurant having lost so much money, I ended up in bankruptcy. I took that hit myself, willingly, rather than not being able to live the down horrible conditions she endured. Putting it all on myself would partially keep her off my back. I had escape in mind. Escape from the miserable marriage. The only way to appease her and her family in that eventuality was to take the hit myself.
    Doing so meant giving up my car. I had depended on it for mileage payments. Those payments were fully half of my income. We were poor. Dirt poor. I saved four hundred and found an old Honda Civic on Craigslist with low miles. It was old and rotted. Parts would fall off as it drove. My route was over three hundred miles a day. That meant a lot of parts falling off on the freeway. It was the only way to restore our income.

    I dreadfully headed home one night. I knew her fury awaited. Not exactly a religious man, I found myself praying for help to get through the night. I turned on to a side street. A guy who obviously was high on something staggered out in front of my car. I stopped well in time. He passed by, giving me the finger.
    I took a long, deep breath before making the right turn onto our street. Fuck. Here we go.
    Just before I turned into the driveway of the apartment building, flashing lights went off. A police SUV roared up behind me. I pulled over just five feet from the parking lot entrance.
    A tall, muscular cop came to my window. There was a giant sneer across his face.
    “Keep your hands where I can see them. What’s your name?”
    I looked at him puzzled and told him.
    “How many warrants are out for you?”
    I looked at him more puzzled.
    “None, of course. Why would there be warrants for me? I’m just coming home from work. I still have my uniform on.”
    “Yeah. Heard it all before. License and registration. NOW.”
    I handed him my license first, then registration. His flashlight reflected off both and lit his increased scowl. His eyes of rage showed clearly.
    “You HOPE there’s no warrants! I’ll find them, then you’re DONE!”
    His tone set me off.
    “There are NO warrants on me. I actually work for a living. See for yourself.”
    After a long, long while, he came back to my window. Now his face was pure hate and rage.
    “Here’s your fucking shit back. Don’t you EVER let me see you here again!”
    “I live right here. I’ll be here every day, coming home from work. Every day.”
    “Not if I catch you.”
    He stormed back into his vehicle and tore off.

    The parking lot was full again, so I would have to park a few blocks away and walk the dangerous streets, all in order to get bitched at all night by my wife. Great. What a great life I had found my way into.
    I parked the old beaten up car along a side street. At least the damn thing was dependable. A Honda, after all. I got out of the car, and turned. A staggering drunk came up and demanded my wallet. He had a knife. Before I could answer, he tried to come at me and fell. He began puking, and then fell in it all. I walked past grumbling about asshole cops never being around when needed.
    Shouting erupted a half block away. A huge man appeared behind people that were running from him. He was well known in the neighborhood for getting fucked up and doing crazy things, whether throwing shit or even shooting his guns at whatever.
    People scattered as bullets fired. I jumped back and hid behind my car. All the vehicles along that street where getting shot up, including mine.
    “You think you’re safe now? I have my other one here too!”
    More shots seemed to go everywhere. On and on.
    I lit a smoke. Fuck it.

    Eventually he went back inside, yelling profanities about how lucky we all were that he ran out of bullets. I quickly walked home, only pausing to take a deep breath to brace myself before facing the real hell that awaited me.

whacking off heads

    WHACK!
    WHACK!
    WHACK!
    “What is that I hear, Luca?”
    “Fred, what you hear is the Islamic State whacking off heads.”
    “It seems that we too are standing in the line of the whacked.
    “Indeed we are, Fred. The last whack we hear will be the knife decapitating us.”
    “Since you are in line just before me, Luca, I’ll be cognizant of you being whacked, but you’ll be beyond that & won’t be conscious as I’m whacked.”
    “That seems to be so, Fred.”
    WHACK!
    WHACK!
    WHACK!
    “They’re getting closer, Fred.”
    “Yes they are, Luca. Prepare to meet thy maker.”
    “I’m going to give Him a piece of my mind, Fred. This is a shitty way to go.”
    “I wonder how many of us get to pass pleasantly in our sleep, Luca.”
    “That’s a moot question, Fred, at least for the likes of us.”
    “I wonder how many of our fellows truly likes us, Luca. I think most just don’t give a shit that we’re whacked or not. It’s kind of like seeing the garbage removed. We appreciate it, but it’s not like a good quiz show. We’re whacked, but so what?”
    WHACK!
    WHACK!
    “How do you feel now, Luca? They’re almost upon you. You can even smell the blood.”
    “I wonder if I’ll have a split second to smell my own blood, or if it’s all over as soon as the blade penetrates.”
    “I doubt if you’ll have time to inform me, Luca, but it may be a quick call.”
    “If you have anybody to call, Fred, you’d better do it now. Did they leave you your cell phone?”
    “I never had a cell phone.”
    “Then you’d better shout as loud as you can, Fred.”
    The Islamic State arrives, big head cutters with sharp knives bleeding at their sides. They position Luca with his head sticking out. He is gasping & whimpering as he should. This isn’t child’s play. They are singing patriotically like, “Give me a head to whack. I’ll put it in a sack. It will rot black, & stink to holy Hell. We wish him well, but he won’t come back, but give no slack. Say goodbye & give him a whack,” & in that sad condition, he’s off for perdition. Bye-bye, fool, you smell like the stool you shit in yr pants. Now here come the beetles & the ants, as you become a ghoul. Bye-bye, fool.
    Over & over they sing this song, & before long, they cut off yr dong. Bye-bye, fool! They bury you in yr stool. Bye-bye, ghoul!
    NEXT!
    That’s me!

hanging from the bridge

    “Well, what’s that hanging from the bridge?”
    “Look twice, Luca. They’re people.”
    “They’re wearing uniforms, Fred.”
    “American uniforms. They’re army, maybe marines.”
    “So who hanged them?”
    “People who don’t want us here.”
    “But Fred, aren’t we saving them from themselves?”
    “Not anymore.”
    “Aren’t we going to cut them down?”
    “Of course, & send them home to their loved ones in the states.”
    “Then what?”
    “We’ll send them more Americans to save them from themselves, & they’ll hang them from other bridges.”
    “Those aren’t bridges to peace, Fred.”
    “No, they go straight to Hell, paved with good intentions, Luca.”
    “That’s what counts.”
    “I’m glad it counts, Luca. All I count are eight hanged Americans.”
    “So what can we do, Fred?”
    “We can look on this divine comedy until they hang us too.”
    “Who’s laughing at the comedy?”
    “God the divine.”
    “Then shouldn’t we be laughing too?”
    “If it turns you on, Luca. Laugh yr guts out until you too swing from the bridge. When they send yr death notice back home to Mommy & Daddy, they can say you were laughing till the final curtain. Then they’ll get a special package of yr bones.”
    “Will they still be laughing?”
    “Why not? What else can they do?”

Cargo

    In the quiet pre-dawn darkness along the Seattle waterfront, a cloaked and covered lone figure scans the harbor like a spy from a bygone day. The fedora is his one capitulation to eccentricity. The trench coat, still a common sight in this town, belonged to his father. Back when he was young and a new immigrant he adopted the hat and took on the coat after he became hooked on old Humphrey Bogart movies. That was nearly thirty years ago and many times since then these things have served well as his umbrella. And, unlike an umbrella, they are not easily forgotten when temporarily laid aside. Never married, Bo Chen spends most of his time and efforts on a small business and apartment in Chinatown but, sadly, it doesn’t keep him from being lonely. The melancholy nature of the empty bay seems to match his own mood as forlorn thoughts creep around in his head.
    At the nearby wharf, under large spotlights hanging from the overhead cranes, the container ship from Shanghai is secured and readied for unlading. Bo has been tracking it and his container of expensive green jade figurines for the past two weeks. Several purchases at his shop hinge on this delivery, not to mention the investment he has in it.
    Mental calculations tell him that the container with his merchandise should reach his warehouse in about two days. Logging this into his smart phone calendar, he turns to leave, then notices that the rising sun over the Cascades is about to set aglow the whole wharf area. Brilliantly painted cranes, reaching out and canted over the ship’s length, turn a fiery color, like a row of red mantis ready to feed. The scene lifts Bo Chen’s heart. Doing business in Seattle is a pleasure. Once the unlading begins he knows that it will continue around the clock until it is done. It is still early and all is as it should be. Tugging his fedora, Bo Chen heads for the public market along the seawall. He still has time to have some tea and one of Sum Lee’s steamed pork buns before opening his shop.

    A loud hiss of air brakes makes Bo jump when the diesel rig backing his container stops just shy of the warehouse loading platform. This is the big day he has looked forward to. Anticipation, combined with his efforts to make sure that there are no mistakes right up to the end, have his already high-strung nerves more on edge than usual. After inspecting the bill of lading and checking the container locks and seals Bo approaches the driver.
    “Everything seems to be in order, you can unhook and drop it right here.”
    The driver seems a little surprised. “Don’t you want to open it up and check the contents?”
    “I’ve been doing business with these people for a long time,” Bo says. “The locks and seals are good. It’s fine. I’ll do the inventory later. You can go.”
    The driver shrugs his shoulders, hops down from his cab, quickly unhooks and drops the container on its fore pods, then heads back to the port to wait in line for his next container.
    Bo watches him disappear into the commercial So Do traffic before starting to unlock the container and break the seals. Finally he has possession of his wares. In his excitement he fumbles and bangs the first lock several times while removing it. Reaching to remove the second lock, he freezes when he hears tapping inside the container. His heart pounding in his ears, Bo doesn’t move for many seconds. The tapping comes again. Bo quickly gathers himself, taps out a simple cadence, and waits. Almost immediately the cadence is repeated. Rattled and scared, Bo uses his sleeve to wipe his sweaty brow before he removes the final lock. Cautiously, he disengages the latch and pulls the doors open. Immediately he is repelled several feet by the stench. But not before he sees a person lying on a thin pad in the space nearest the door. Also there is what appears to be the bottom part of a 55 gallon oil drum that has been cut off and made into a toilet. It is half full. An almost empty plastic container of perhaps 15 gallons has been used to hold water. Food wrappers litter the rest of the vacant space except for one large cardboard box that contains a few unopened wrappers of some kind of jerked meat and a few rotting fruits and vegetables. Boxes of jade figurines occupy all the rest of the shipping container and have been more or less walled off with mesh from the small area near the door. Except for some dried feces that must have splashed up on the boxes near the toilet, all seems to indicate that the cargo shipped undisturbed.
    Still scared, Bo stares at the unmoving figure lying near the door. Dressed in filthy clothes with what looks like a large bloodstain on the front of the trousers, it is hard to tell if it is a man or a woman. Not knowing what to do, and unsure about getting involved, he finally decides that he should get closer and try to see if this person is injured. But before he can do this the prone figure suddenly raises an arm over their eyes, blocking the light, turns their head toward him, and says in Chinese accented English, “Do you have some extra pants? I forgot to bring tampons.”

    Hau Ming, in her mid thirties, was born in Shanghai to parents who later died from abuses that they had suffered during the cultural revolution, leaving her to be raised and educated in a Catholic orphanage. As she grew and matured Hau showed great promise with her catechism as well as her academic subjects, prompting the nuns to send her on to be educated in one of the better Shanghai universities. There, near the end of her studies, and to the dismay of her patrons, she met and married another bright student. They produced one child, a girl, not long after they wed. Tragically, however, one night during the Lunar New Year celebration a large van loaded with fireworks exploded during the traditional New Year’s Lion and Dragon Dance. Several in the crowd were severely hurt. Three were killed outright, including Hau’s husband and little girl whom had been standing next to the van. Hau Ming was just returning with refreshments and was further away from the blast. She received serious burns to her right arm and a lesser burn to the right side of her face. The intense flash of heat singed and burned most of her clothes, leaving her lying and smoldering in the street like a freshly doused fire log.
    When her wounds healed and the grief for her loved ones became less painful, she decided that life was too short to wait for the auspicious. Now was the time to risk a new life. Her old one was surely gone.

    The aroma of the roasted teriyaki chicken from Dong Chang’s Barbecue Shop tells Bo how hungry he is. His mouth waters as he climbs the steps to the apartment over his shop via a separate outside entrance. Sniffing the sweet smoky smell of the barbeque, he wonders if he should have bought two. Hau Ming, a few pounds lighter than before, has not failed to clear her plate for the past two days—ever since he brought her home from the container. It was not hard for him to do the right thing for someone in such a helpless position. He was always big hearted despite the face he put on during his business actions. Bo Chen gave over his bedroom and most of his bath and slept on the couch. Falling asleep while watching TV had always been easy for him anyway. That was the easy part. Getting her clothes was a little different. With no experience buying women’s clothes, he had to rely on sales help from the people at the little used clothing store down the street. When Hau first appeared in fresh clothes Bo plainly saw what an impressive and feminine person she was. The cloth and cut of the Asian apparel accented the intelligent bone structure of her face and complimented her willowy figure. A little taller than Bo, she looked nothing like the starved figure he had first seen on the floor of the container. Almost immediately he began to feel a little change in his moods as well. Helping her pleased him.
    After knocking on the door at the top of the steps, Bo unlocks and enters the apartment. Still preoccupied with his thoughts about the pleasant changes in his moods, he at first doesn’t recognize his own place. The scent of a sandalwood joss stick accompanied by the soothing twangs of pipa music stroke his senses. Discarded on a small seat in the bay window that overlooks the street, Bo notices the jacket to one of his old lute albums. Obviously Hua Ming has mastered his ancient turntable stereo. And the apartment looks so much neater and cleaner than he ever keeps it. On the small dining table there is a fresh bowl of steamed rice, a platter of stir fried bitter melon with scrambled egg, and a steaming pot of tea. Smiling broadly, Bo sets the roasted chicken down and admires the laid out table. When he looks up Hua is leaning against the kitchen doorway, watching him.
    “I hope you like bitter melon,” she says, “I was surprised to find it.”
    A bit alarmed when he hears this, Bo knows that she must have gone out to get the bitter melon. For her to wander the streets of Chinatown alone, and so soon, was a little unsettling. He remembers when he first set foot here and how nervous he was. He couldn’t help but admire her gumption, however. Very quickly he is learning that she is a remarkable woman. And probably would be good at business, he also quickly concludes.
    “I do like bitter melon,” Bo Chen replies. “You must have gone out. Where did you get it?”
    “At the vegetable market on top of the hill,” Hau said, nodding toward the commercial square nearby. “I think the area is called Little Saigon. I had only a few Chinese Yuan but when I explained in Mandarin that I was out of dollars they were very nice and eager to change my Yuan. Probably they will use them at their ancestral shrines.”
    “Yes, I know the market,” Bo said, “they are Vietnamese-Chinese, nice people. And prosperous too.”
    Hau remembers the stories her parents used to tell her when she was very young. About being prosperous, then stripped of their possessions and sent to the countryside for agricultural labor. They had warned her of the dangers of being prosperous. So long ago that was. She rarely recalls such lessons. It surprises her a little that Bo elicits such deep memories, and at the same time, a long dormant kind of curiosity.
    “Is it important for you to be prosperous, Bo Chen?” Hau asks.
    “I suppose so,” Bo replies. “That is why I left China. It’s not everything and I know it will not buy happiness but it’s something.”
    They silently exchange looks, and then with their own thoughts, ride the notes of the pipa coming from the stereo. After a few moments Hau suddenly laughs for the first time and says, “And it’s good for business, right, Bo Chen? Sit down. We will have our dinner.”

    Except for a small clump of rice and chicken bones, the dinner dishes are bare. Not much had been said as they ate. Most of that time had been spent eating. And with full mouths, it would have been hard to understand each other anyway. Bo was helping with the cleanup until Hau shooed him away.
    “I can do this Bo Chen. Go to your couch and rest. It has been a long day and you must be tired. Did your jade customers follow through on their orders?”
    “Some of them did,” Bo replies, “all the ones that I notified. I am confident from their reactions that I will do well by the shipment. Are you sure you don’t want my help with the cleanup?” Bo didn’t like such chores before but sharing the task with Hau was different. He wonders how long it will last, how long should it last.
    “You go on now, relax and watch your news. I can finish here,” Hau insists.
    She notices the difference in Bo from many of the men in China. He doesn’t seem to mind helping in the kitchen. She had heard that Americans, even Chinese Americans, could be like that. Interesting. Before her mind can roam more a field about such things she turns to the task at hand. However, these thoughts about Bo that she puts aside are not new to her.
    The TV news is all about the immigration issue. People are complaining about foreigners sneaking into their country. Bo wonders how they would feel if the shoe was on the other foot. Then he smiles and has to admit that, in a smaller and smaller world, and its many issues, many Americans feel that they only have one foot. And, quite naturally, this leaves them crippled. However, this thought is getting to close to politics for Bo Chen. Recalling the graffiti he had seen scrawled on a railroad coal car, “I am a free man. I do not vote,” he will just stick to his own business. And helping Hau.
    After the news passes and the crazy reality shows begin, Bo turns the TV off and begins to make his couch, wondering what is taking Hau so long in the kitchen. Then he notices that the kitchen is dark. Under his bedroom door he sees that the light is on. Hau must of gone to bed while he was watching the news. That didn’t seem like her, not saying goodnight. But no big deal. It had been a long day. Dressed down to his underwear, he is just about to switch the end light off when his bedroom door opens. In a very pretty Chinese bed dress, framed by the doorway and the shadowy interior of the bedroom, Hau leans against the door jamb, lifts one hand to her hip and boldly stares at Bo for what seems like a very long time. Then with her face still as blank as the Chinese mask of calm, she almost whispers, “Bo, you don’t have to sleep on the couch, you know.”
    Bo Chen admires the dress and the lithe figure of Hau that it reveals. Long gently curved legs end in bare feet with painted toenails. The allure that Bo Chen suddenly feels is not new to him, but the honesty of its pedigree with Hau is unknown. And exciting. Bo stands and slowly joins her, feeling the give of the wooden floorboards with each step.

    Intimate talk about their union wanes to a thoughtful silence and the shared pleasure of being spent. So serene is the silence that talk just seems not quite good enough. After a while Hau finds the will to break the silence.
    “I enjoy being with you Bo. There are things about you that a woman needs to have in a man. Things that are not all that common.”
    “Hau, I could say the same thing about you,” Bo replies. For him there is a kind of relief that these words bring to his soul. “You are still young and I am very happy that you can still like me. I want to do what is right. For me. For you. I admire you and what you have risked to get here. I don’t want to do anything that would hurt that.............it all seems pretty complicated when I think about. You’ve never even mentioned what you went through to get here and I promised myself I wouldn’t ask.”
    Hau smiles and looks down to the bed covers for a moment, then looks up at Bo.
    ‘You didn’t know it but you were helping me before you ever saw me. I knew who you were and I guessed what kind of person you might be. I would probably not have tried such a dangerous stow-a-way if I hadn’t known some things about you.”
    “You must of met my exporter, Sun Chan,” Bo says, “he is the only one I know where you come from.”
    “Yes, I have known him a long time. He was a good friend of my husband’s. He set up the whole thing because he thought I might have a chance with you.”
    Bo Chen smiles, “I’d say that you have got me pretty good. I’m weak as a kitten.”
    “Not that way, you,” Hau Ming, says as she slaps him on the shoulder.
    “That just happened with a little push from me....sooner rather than later. Sun Chan said that he knew you as a sensible, decent person. Someone who didn’t take advantage of people. He didn’t tell you about me because if something went wrong he didn’t want you to have any knowledge of it. No money was passed or even discussed. He felt that it was something he could do to honor the dead by helping the part of them that lived.”
    Bo Chen feels humbled in his own uncomplicated way and simply nods as tears flood the eyes of Hau Ming.
    “I’ll never be able to repay you for what you’ve done,” Hau says. “You have shown me that I can care for someone again. I am more alive because of you. And now I need to find work and carve out my existence in this country. Like you once did.”
    Bo Chen’s stomach does a flip flop when he hears this. Was she now going away? He doesn’t like the fear that suddenly possesses him and pushes it aside in ways not unlike the way he pushed aside his loneliness.
    “Do you want to leave? I suppose there are better opportunities out there somewhere, but you should plan carefully. Of course I will help you if that is what you want.”
    “It doesn’t matter what I want. It would be nice to stay with you but you must know that I need to get a hold on my life and that can only come with work.”
    Bo Chen does understand. Its not like something that he’s never done. But with him it was all within the system. This is much different. Searching his mind, he takes a deep breath.
    “I have a suggestion. My trade in the jade market is really going to take off. And when it does it will require my full attention. There will be no time for the other parts of my business. If I don’t hire help I will have to shut them down and I don’t want to do that. You could work in my shop and take care of that. There is a small kitchen, bed, and bath in the back of the shop that you could use for your own if you want. And I could pay you for you work as well.”
    Bo pauses and looks at Hau. Moments pass as Hau thinks about what Bo has just said. She sees the utility in the whole set-up at once. And help beyond any she had ever expected. Plus they could see which of the many ways their relationship might go.
    “That could work, blessed be you Bo Chen,” Hau Ming says, “but we must be very careful. I have a Chinese passport tucked away so I can get back to China if I have to. But my real name and who I am must remain secret, else I could be detained and deported. That would be very unpleasant.”
    Bo and Hau discuss their plans far into the night. They create a believable story about Hau’s background and determine that, at least to begin with, their true relationship will remain secret. But even if it becomes known such things are not that unusual to begin with. They can handle it. Life will be good.

    Month after month, with Bo and Hau working hard and providing good customer service, the tourist shop in Chinatown, now newly named The Jade Emporium, brings in good profits. Because they work close together, careful though they are about their relationship, some people eventually begin to see the little signs of a deeper attachment between them. Signs like a fleeting soft look or a little consideration between employee and employer that is just a bit beyond the normal. But like they had both expected, such recognition is no big deal. People have lives to live and they live them. Who has time to make judgments about people that are not directly involved in their own lives? Live and let live.

    Dong Chang, American born and still relatively young, rents the shop space directly across the street from Bo Chen’s Jade Emporium. Not really a part of any neighborhood in attitude, Dong is arrogant and self-centered in the little interaction he has with others. Consequently, his barbeque business is marginal at best. Bo and a few others shop there occasionally and they have learned to just go in, fill the order, pay for it, and get out. Along with his unpleasant manner, Dong Chang is also nosey and quick to deliver up gossip, seeking opinions on its worth. But despite these business problems Dong owns a nice house in Bellevue, drives a new car, and never has much trouble paying his bills. Even when he falls short with his barbeque business, which is most of the time. Ironically, this is due to his past trouble with the law. As a way to get his criminal drug charges dismissed and get started in a lawful business with funds from the government, Dong agreed to become an informant for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. Paid monthly for his spying and reporting on Chinatown, Dong brings in a good income as long as he can keep ICE happy and deliver up illegal immigrants. Dong Chang, in simplest terms, is a rat.
    On the way back from the Post Office with his box mail, Dong Chang stops on the sidewalk and admires his cover. The rows of barbecued chickens, hanging from hooks under the bright warming bulbs in his shop window, form an eye-catching display. Chickens of teriyaki brown staggered with chickens of soy sauce white, like the dark and light squares of a checkered tablecloth, capture the eye long enough to stir the digestive juices. After unlocking the shop door Dong turns the “Back In A Minute” sign back to “Open” and tosses the mail on the counter beside the register. Immediately his eyes fall on one particular envelope with the United States Seal on it. It must be his monthly check from ICE. Quickly, Dong grabs the envelope, looks to the door to make sure he is alone, and tears open the envelope. Sure enough, there is the check. Dong smiles and considers closing his shop. Who needs to work when they get nice checks like this. That’s when he notices that there is also a note in the envelope. This is rare, usually the nondescript treasury check is all that he receives. As he reads the note a frown comes over his face. It informs him that it has been three months since he has delivered up anyone to ICE. And that this will be his last monthly check if this continues. Dong drops the note on the counter then looks past his barbeque display directly into the glass front of The Jade Emporium across the street. He can clearly see that Hau is helping a couple of customers while Bo Chen is absent. Dong has had his suspicions about those two across the street and he has heard the gossip. Only, when he tries to get any further tidbits from his few customers, they are not forth coming. Dong has been a rat for some time and he has learned the little telltale signs of concealment. He has suspected that there might be something there for him to exploit. And there are no penalties from ICE for being wrong. Having detainees, innocent or guilty, gives both him and ICE relevance. He knows that many of the Chinese immigrants have some things hidden in their closet. A warm body is what he needs now.
    The jingle of the front door bell calls Dong away from his schemes as the local vagrant, known simply as Jack, enters his shop for a cheap box lunch of chicken thigh, steamed rice, and a tiny packet of soy sauce. Jack is a peaceable older white American that hangs around Chinatown when he is not at the nearby mission, where he gets most of his meals and a place to sleep when it becomes too cold on the streets. Pretty well known by the shops in Chinatown, he is courteously tolerated, even when he has no real money to spend. Bo Chen and Hau know and treat him with respect when he sometimes comes in to marvel over their jade ware and engage in a little conversation about how it is on the streets. But other than a place to get his box lunch when he can scrap together a little money, Jack has no use for Dong Chang. Dong treats him poorly, always taking his little money as fast as he can, then shooing him out into the street. Today is no different. Dong rudely slaps down the box lunch on the counter, grabs the money and starts shooing him away. However, Jack doesn’t move. He wants a small bag to keep his lunch warm until he can eat it. Now fuming, Dong grabs a plastic sack and rakes the box into it, then shoves it over the counter, pushing it into Jack’s chest. “Now get moving,” Dong says.
    “My money not good enough for ya,” Jack grumbles as he takes the bag, and leaves the shop.
    Walking down the street a short distance to the Hing Hay park, Jack takes a seat at one of the tables in the Grand Pavilion, a memorial to those Chinese-American veterans killed in World War Two. People about the park gather to practice Tai Chi, play chess, or just relax, as Jack pulls his box from the sack and begins to eat. While he is eating he sees, stuck to the bottom of the box, a slip of paper with some sort of fancy seal on it. Curiously inspecting it, he discovers that it is the notice to Dong Chang from ICE saying that he needed to deliver up an immigrant or lose his check. It was not signed but simply noted, “Your Agent.” Your agent, thought Jack. What the hell does that mean.
    Jack had noticed the arrival of Hau to Bo Chen’s business and he had wondered the same things as the others around the neighborhood but it had seemed too ordinary to give any thought to. But this slip of paper is something out of the ordinary. Putting the note in his pocket, Jack finishes his lunch and heads back up the street to The Jade Emporium to look at the nice figurines and have a chat with Bo or Hau. He likes them, they are nice to him, maybe they will be interested in his little piece of trash.

    When they discover the real business of Chang’s Barbeque Shop Bo Chen and Hau Ming move quickly. Hau can not risk being detained and losing her anonymity. So far there is no trace of her existence in America. After quickly moving their valuables to storage they use Hau’s secreted Chinese passport to purchase a one way ticket for her to Shanghai. With his US passport, Bo buys a visa and round trip ticket on another airlines for two days later. Sun Chan will assist Hau until Bo arrives. All along Bo and Hau had considered that it might come to this so they are OK when they kiss goodbye at the Seatac International Airport and Hau boards her flight. Two days later Bo temporarily closes The Jade Emporium and follows.

    Looking like support for a military infantry platoon involved in an urban attack, the armored personnel carrier and its accompanying jail vans roar to a stop in the street between The Jade Emporium and Dong Chang’s Barbeque Shop. Dong watches through his front window, smiling as if he has just won the lottery.....until he sees the armed and helmeted squad that spews from the armored personnel carrier turn toward him instead of The Jade Emporium across the street. Like a fire team rushing an enemy bunker, these men burst into his shop, breaking the latch on the door, knocking the tiny doorbell to the floor, and waving their automatic weapons in his face before rushing to the back kitchen and office. There oven doors are torn from their hinges, pots and pans scattered helter-skelter, and files dumped to the floor as they “search” his shop. When he tries to stop them the squad leader pushes him against the wall, shoves a search warrant in his face, and says, “This is 107 South Market Street isn’t it?”
    In horror Dong sees his address on the warrant instead of the 106 South Market Street address of The Jade Emporium across the street. So scared he is hardly able to reply, he says, “Yes but that address....”
    Dong doesn’t get to finish his statement before the squad leader shoves him aside and says, “Just stay out of the way and you will not be harmed. It’s a woman we are looking for.”
    Before Dong can reply the man is gone to the back of the shop with the rest of them. Completely shocked, Dong is planted against the wall near the door until a man dressed in regular clothes walks in, looks him up and down, then says, “Are you Bo Chin, the owner of this shop?”
    “No,” Dong replies, “I am Dong Chang. This is my shop. You have the wrong address. Bo Chen’s shop is across the street.”
    When this mistake is realized the raid is immediately called off. But not before Dong Chang’s shop is wrecked and unfit for business.
    An internal review later determines that no evidence exist that any illegal activity has taken place at The Jade Emporium. And other than Bo Chen, a United States citizen, there is no one who lives on that property.
    Dong Chang, suspected of providing false information in order to keep his monthly check, is no longer of any use to ICE. He takes his personal stuff from the barbeque shop, gets in his car and drives back across Lake Washington to his home, never to be seen in Chinatown again.

    Following a simple signing marriage service at the local Office of the Civil Affairs Bureau in the West Nanjing Road district of Shanghai, Bo Chen, Hau Ming Chen, and Sun Chan hail a taxi just off the start of the famous pedestrian street. In the hubbub of Shanghai’s premier shopping street the well dressed threesome stand out among the mass of humanity strolling to and from the many stores of the area. Mixing with the crowds is a small electric engine pulling crowded covered booths on its circular route up and down the 3.4 mile long street. Rather than squeeze in aboard this miniature train to the Jing’an Temple Park at the street terminus, Sun Chan has wisely chosen to take a taxi the short distance in order to outflank the crowds. Once they reach Jing’an Park they let the taxi go and enter the green refuge, quickly fading into its quiet interior. Bo and Hau, taking their first married walk, guided by Sun Chan, meander along the various paths and beautiful lotus filled ponds. Smiles, light conversation, and breaths of fresh air are mixed with the more complex talk about their new business arrangement. When Bo Chen returns to the United States and his jade import business Hau will manage the Shanghai end of the business until a spousal visa for her is approved. This will give Hau time to gain experience in the overall business. Meanwhile, Bo Chen, who is already quite prosperous from the jade business, hopes to expand to more emporiums in the Seattle area. It is expected that when Hau arrives in America she will become the general manager of these Seattle operations. Eventually, the hope is that an internationally renowned business, owned and managed by the three, can take a good share of the jade market.
    Their light, optimistic mood is partially put on hold by delightful awe when they emerge into a clearing among willow trees, small waterfalls, and glassy ponds, with a beautiful Balinese restaurant as the center piece. Here Sun Chan runs ahead, spreading his arms, and laughing.
    “You two remain here,” he yells back over his shoulder, “and enjoy the view. I know the people here. I will go ahead and set up your first meal together as a married couple. I know just the thing.”
    When Sun Chan calls them, Bo and Hau join him at a table with a nice view of their natural surroundings. A red color, the symbol for good fortune and joy, is seen throughout the dishes spread over the table. From Peking Duck, with its cooked red hue for fidelity and happiness, to the red lobster of celebration, to the long stranded noodles for longevity, served with vegetables and the sea cucumber of selflessness, it’s all there. Followed by red bean soup for its sweetness of life and happiness. The smells, tastes, and sights, all compliment the forward looking threesome on this auspicious occasion. An occasion that Hau had given up on and one that Bo Chen though would never come. Sun Chan is just happy to be there and have such good friends and business associates. He can feel, with the proven insight of the prosperous, the auspiciousness of this event.
    After dinner and a couple of glasses of China’s fine Dragon’s Hollow wine the mood is languid and light until the final toast by Sun Chan.
    “May prosperity and happiness follow you all the days of your life. And may those days be as long as the noodles that we sip between our lucky lips.”
    Bo and Hau laugh and drink from each other’s glass while Sun Chan has a sip of wine then goes into his pocket for a key card. He extends the card across the table to Bo Chen.
    “You Bo Chen and Hau Ming Chen are registered at the Crown Plaza Hotel, the penthouse, Shanghai Harbor City. The address is on the card. Just show it to the taxi driver. At the gate you will find a golf cart waiting to take you to the main road where your taxi is waiting. Now go on and enjoy each other like there is no tomorrow. I will call you in a day or two. For now, I will remain here a while, perhaps have a drink with my friends in the kitchen.”
    After sincerely thanking Sun Chan and returning all his good wishes, Bo and Hau slowly walk along several small waterfalls to a gate where their cart and driver awaits. Dusk is falling quickly and the lights of the city grow larger as they motor along the paths back toward the main road. As soon as they arrive a taxi pulls up. Bo follows Hau into the backseat, shows the driver the address, then leans back in the seat with Hau, contented, as the brilliant, colored neon lights of Shanghai whiz by, like tracers from a fireworks show.

    Having truly enjoyed each other and slept, Bo and Hau stand at the suite’s glass wall overlooking the Harbor. In the unusually clear dawn it seems as if all the earth, with its lands and seas, stretches before them.
    “I never dreamed that life would give me this path to tread.” Hau quietly reflects. “I hope that I fulfill your life, Bo, like you are fulfilling mine.”
    Amazed at Hau’s ability to capture the moment for both of them Bo replies, “You do....to the brim.”
    Leaning against each other, sensing the feeling and thoughts that envelope them, there is no need for more words as they gaze down on the many ships anchored below as well as those sailing out to sea. Suddenly Hau becomes rigid, goes to her toes, and points to a container ship about to leave the harbor.
    “Look Bo, that ship, that looks like the..............”
    “I know,” Bo says as he puts a finger over her lips, “I saw it. And this is as close as you will get to it or anything like it.......ever again. Wherever you are will always be the best of all possible worlds.”
    Both their eyes well up as Hau relaxes and puts her arm around Bo. Turning a little toward him and searching his face, Hau says, “Really, Bo Chen?”
    “Really, Hau Ming,” Bo replies, “I love you.”

Feral Boy Meets Girl

    Mum has banished me from the kitchen to prevent me from pilfering raw meat from the cutting board again—I have come far in acclimating to the demands of polite society, but am not immune to temptation. I slink out the doorway and slump into the papa-san chair in the sunroom, the rich cow-blood smell still tickling my nostrils.
    With nothing else to do, my eyes drift toward the sparrows’ nest just under the awning, the little pointed beaks emerging from the bound mass of twigs and grass. It is a perfect spot, the baby birds snug and safe from the sun and wind. It would be so easy to climb up the gutter and pop each soft, juicy thing into my mouth, silence the desperate wiggling with a little crunch, and slide it down my throat. But after last year’s mess Mum made me promise not to do so again, and I mean to keep my word, if I can.
    “Sweetie?” Mum calls from the kitchen, as if anticipating my temptation. “Could you go water the bushes while I’m cooking?”
    My trance breaks. I swear the woman is psychic. “Sure,” I call back, and head for the front door.
    I have reached the point in my reintegration at which I am allowed outside unsupervised. Gone are the days when I would bolt across the street for the elms at the edge of the country club, or urinate on the tricolor beech in full view of the neighbors. I can be trusted. Just a normal thirteen-year-old boy doing normal thirteen-year-old boy things.
    I unwind the hose from its roller, kick off my buckskin slides—a compromise between my contempt for shoes and my occasional need to wear them—and begin misting the newly-planted rosemary and sand cherries along the front walkway. Since I was “civilized,” my feet have become soft, uncalloused, the nails trimmed and pink, and I feel every groove in the walkway beneath them. It feels good.
    Then I look up and see a girl about my age running down the sidewalk past our house—tall for her age, with round, soft features and sandy-blonde hair done up in a long braid. She is wearing a lavender sundress and white sandals that hug her toes, and clutching a long black case to her chest.
    About half a block behind her are two more girls: one plump with straight, greasy black hair, in a ripped black T-shirt and holey jeans, the other a tall freckled redhead in tight black jeans and an equally tight camisole. They are running after her, shouting names omitted from my education, but clearly not complimentary. The blond girl’s lips are scrunched, her eyes wet and shimmery. The big plump girl runs up behind her and tries to snatch the case from her arms. None of them seem to notice me.
    “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” the blonde girl pleads.
    “Because this is too much fun,” the plump one says, and grabs the case.
    “Stop it!” says the blonde girl, pulling back.
    “Make me,” the fat one says, and she and her accomplice try to wrestle it away.
    Mum and Dad have warned me to avoid confrontations with other children, lest the neighbors see me as a threat. So though I recognize the injustice, I pretend not to notice. The blonde girl crumples to the sidewalk in a fetal position trying to protect her parcel. But in moments she will lose, and its contents will be ruined. She looks up, stares me right in the eye. “Please help,” she pleads through tears.
    And that is all I require.
    I turn the hose to its fiercest, sharpest setting and blast the fat girl in the face. Hair and clothes soaked, she screams and falls to the pavement. I blast her again. The freckled redhead opens her mouth to shout at me and receives a mouthful of cold water.
    “You little prick!” the fat one shouts, picking herself up from the sidewalk. “I’ll...”
    I blast her once more. “Go away now,” I say softly, resisting the urge to bare my teeth, “or I’ll shoot you in the eyes. It will hurt.”
    She spits out a mouthful of water. “When I tell my brother, you’re dead.”
    I raise the hose once more, as threateningly as I can. They flee, shrieking epithets as they run. I recognize a few—Dad is an angry driver.
    I approach the blonde girl, but leave plenty of space. I have never been so close to a girl my own age. Even a few feet away I can smell the strawberry shampoo in her hair. “Are you okay?”
    She nods, picks herself up off the sidewalk, wipes her wet eyes. “Thank you.” For a second or two she stares at me as if she recognizes me. “I haven’t seen you at school. Do you go to St. Joseph’s?”
    “No,” I say. “Homeschooled.” I have never had a proper conversation with a girl before.
    She dusts herself off, picks up her case. “Oh. Well, thanks for helping me. Those girls are such bitches. I’m Katie, by the way.”
    “Jeremy.” It still feels strange bending my mouth to say my own name.
    I watch her smooth calves tense and relax as she runs home.
    I slip my clogs on, go back inside, wipe my feet on the rug in the breezeway. Mum has lost her tolerance for dirty footprints on the linoleum.
    “Hi sweetie,” Mum calls from the kitchen. I can still hear her chopping, smell the cooked bacon. “What took you so long?”
    “I just saved a girl from a couple of bitches.”
    The chopping stops, and Mum comes charging out of the kitchen, seizes my arm, drags me to the sink. I dutifully swish with soapy water, and once I’ve spit it down the drain she stands behind me, arms folded, face scrunched as if she’s just eaten a lemon.
    “Young man, where did you ever hear that word?”
    I tell her about everything but the hose—she might not understand. Her hand goes to her mouth and in a moment she is hugging me so tight I can barely breathe, her black Kiss-The-Chef apron pressed over my nose and mouth. She stops smothering me but holds me out at arm’s length. “Never say that word again. Understand?”
    I nod.
    Mum switches gears in an instant. “Set the table, will you? Your father will be home in a few minutes.”
    I gather up the silverware and plates, and as I am laying them out on the table I catch a glimpse of Katie out the dining room window, pedaling her bicycle along the sidewalk. She has changed from her sundress into a pink camisole with spaghetti straps and white shorts. She looks toward our house and smiles.
    Though she can’t possibly see me, I smile back.

    The next morning, after helping Mum plant petunias along the walkway, I am stuck going over my endless math and reading homework while the stereo plays muffled Mendelssohn in the living room. Surely a real school must be more stimulating than this. Soon, with Dr. Zbryski’s blessing, I might find out. I wonder if Katie and I will be in the same class.
    I glance outside while Mum is dusting; the baby sparrows are getting too big for the nest. A strong gust could blow them right onto the patio, alone and vulnerable. Out of habit, I lick my lips.
    “Back to your homework,” Mum says, and I snap out of it. Psychic, I tell you.
    After “school” I pull weeds from the cocoa-scented mulch along the front walk and driveway—idle hands and baby birds are not a good mix. I let the beetles and ants pass over my gloved hands and bare feet without popping a single one into my mouth, nutritious though they may be. I am sometimes appalled at the restraint this new life requires; when I was small and still in the woods, one ate what one could, when one could. Fuzzy-mum was adamant about this.
    They say she might have been a lynx, maybe a cougar, though neither has been seen in this area for years. I will never know for sure, since she disappeared when I was very young, barely able to climb a tree. From my perspective, near the ground, she was a pair of bright yellow eyes and warm gray fur hugging my whole body on cold mornings. Mum encourages therapeutic snuggle-time with Clarence, our big black Persian, who spends most of his time catatonic on the back porch. But it’s not the same.
    Just after 3:00, when my chores are done and it’s time for a little quiet reading, the doorbell rings. Mum answers.
    “Sweetie,” Mum says in her most precious voice. “You have a visitor.”
    I look up from my birdwatchers’ guide: Katie is in the foyer in a periwinkle tank-top and white capris, hair loose and lustrous over her shoulders, round wire-rimmed glasses dangling over the edge of her nose. In her hands is a foil-covered plate.
    I stand up.
    “Hi,” she says, smiling. “I brought these to thank you for helping me yesterday.”
    “Jeremy,” Mum says coyly, “Aren’t you going to invite her in?”
    “Come in,” I say, my voice weak and strangely high.
    She enters; I am determined to be civilized, so I pull out a chair for her. “Sit down. Please.”
    “Thanks,” she says.
    “I’ll leave you two alone,” Mum says. I hear her creaky footfalls on the stairs.
    Katie pulls the foil away from the plate, revealing a dozen or so monstrous cookies with chocolate chips, nuts, and M&Ms. “I baked them last night. I call them my ‘everything’ cookies. Try one.”
    I do, and it’s good. I munch slowly; too much sugar and I’ll be climbing the curtains and hanging off Mum’s decorative rods. I smile and nod.
    “I’m glad you like them,” she says. “And really, thank you.”
    I finish chewing before I speak, like a civilized person. “It’s okay.”
    Then she says something I wish she hadn’t. “My mom says you lived out in the woods until you were five.”
    “Six,” I correct her, still chewing. “Hard to say.”
    She laughs. “My mom used to put her hand over my eyes when we drove past your house, in case you were running around the yard naked.”
    I feel my skin go hot and red—the first time I have ever been truly embarrassed at my past behavior. “I don’t do that anymore.”
    She giggles again, high and sweet. “I know that. She said you were still...what did she call it? Feral. Like, dangerous. But you’re not.”
    I shake my head as I chew another bite of cookie. “Not anymore,” I say. “I might even get to go to school in the fall.”
    “That’d be great,” she says. “Then I can introduce you to everybody.”
    We talk for about an hour more, polishing off half the cookies between us while she tells me all about school and its endless possibilities: math and reading and civics and basketball and soccer and dances, so many things one could never be bored or lonely.
    Finally, close to five, she gets up. “I have to go home now,” she says. “My mom will snap if I’m late for dinner. But thank you again. See you tomorrow after school?”
    “Yes,” I say, my mouth full of cookie.
    I watch her get on her bicycle and ride away, her laughter ringing like a bell in my brain.

    Dad gets home at five-thirty, and once he’s changed out of his charcoal suit and into his pink polo and khaki shorts, it’s time for dinner—chicken-noodle-broccoli casserole with American cheese melted on top. Mum says she makes it for sentimental reasons—she and Dad lived on this when they were young. It tastes like salted mucous. I eat it anyway.
    We eat in silence for the first few minutes, our forks making little ringing sounds on the plate, followed by Dad slurping beer from his mug. Mum finally breaks the silence.
    “Guess what, Dan,” she says. “Jeremy made a friend today. A girl.”
    “Really?” he says, raising a sharp silver eyebrow. “Is she cute?”
    I do not know how to respond—the question seems strangely invasive. So I shrug.
    Mum answers for me. “She’s very pretty. Jeremy saved her from some bullies yesterday.”
    “Is that so?” Dad’s face loses its bemused expression and turns serious. “You didn’t get in a fight...”
    “No,” I insist.
    He sighs, long and loud. “Thank God,” he says. “That’s the last thing we need. So what’s this girl’s name? Have I seen her before?”
    “Katie,” I answer. “She lives a few blocks down.”
    His face is blank, devoid of its usual sloppy grin. “You like this girl?”
    I don’t wish to answer, but I dutifully say, “Yes.”
    Dad leans over with his thick, hairy arm and pats me hard on the back, an aggression born from his career as a Buick dealer. “That’s good to hear, son,” he says in his low cigar-and-whiskey voice. “A boy your age needs friends. Just...you know. Be careful.”
    “What are you saying?”
    He rests his huge hairy hand on my forearm. “I’m not saying anything. I’m glad you made a friend.”
    “Okay.” I grab my plate and slink away, unable to ignore Mum and Dad’s eyes on me. As I go upstairs to my room I hear them whispering, softly enough they think I can’t hear. But fuzzy-mum taught me to listen hard and hear everything.
    “I thought we wanted this for him,” Mum says. “It’s important.”
    “I know, Miriam,” comes Dad’s reply. “I just worry something will go wrong. Even a little misunderstanding...”
    Mum is louder this time. “And just what do you think he’s going to do?”
    “Nothing, probably. I just worry.”
    It is hard to listen. Mum and Dad keep telling me I can be normal if I want to, that I’m very nearly there. I wonder if they have been lying.
    I splay out flat on my Star Wars bedspread—I am not a fan of Star Wars—and lay silent for a while; somewhere along the line I fall asleep, and in the morning my shoes are off and someone has draped the spare comforter over me.

    Katie walks past the house just after three, in denim shorts, white sneakers and a purple tank top. I take my time pulling weeds out of the mulch so I can be outside when she passes.
    “Hello,” she says sweetly. “More gardening, I see?”
    “Just about done,” I say, pulling up the last plantain leaves I have been saving until her arrival. I cannot think of anything interesting to say, so I point at the black case in her hand. “What is that? I see you carrying it around all the time.”
    She sets down her backpack and opens it. It is a long black tube, pointed at one end with a slight bell at the other, covered in an intricate network of chrome keys. “It’s an oboe. I’m in band.”
    I have never seen such a thing in person; my musical education is limited to what Mum plays on the radio while I do my homework. She has a ragged upright piano in the living room, but she only plays it on New Year’s Eve, when I am in bed and my parents and their friends sing drunken songs downstairs.
    “Are you any good?”
    “I’m first chair,” she says, though I don’t know what that means. “Miss Klepsh thinks I should be a music major when I go to college.”
    “Play something,” I demand. We sit on the front porch; Katie straightens her back, takes a deep breath, and plays. The tone is low and mellow, and while I am no critic, the melody is simple, elegant and lilting. I resist the urge to sway.
    “I like that,” I say. “What is that song?”
    She stops playing and looks at me with one eyebrow raised high. “You’re kidding. That’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”
    I shrug.
    “You mean your mom never sang that to you when you were little?”
    I shake my head. I was six when Mum and Dad found me, naked and shivering in the rotting husk of a tree trunk, too old for such things.
    “What else don’t you know about?”
    I shrug again. “Play something else,” I plead.
    She begins, but after a few seconds her eyes dart to the street and she stops. “Oh boy,” she mutters.
    I look up; two blocks down I see Janice, the fat girl from a few days ago, and a boy of about seventeen in a torn black sleeveless tee shirt, a backward black baseball cap, and gray plaid shorts. He is scowling.
    I lean over to Katie. “Who is that?”
    “That’s Max. Janice’s brother. You should go in now.”
    But it’s too late. I see Janice point at me; the boy throws his cap on the ground and begins to march toward us. I feel the tiny hairs on my forearms and neck rise.
    “You the little fucker that sprayed my sister with a hose?” he spits, pointing at me. He is a head taller than me and twice as thick.
    I stand up. “Yes.”
    “Leave him alone, Max,” Katie pleads. “He didn’t do anything to you.”
    “Shut up, twat,” he says, glowering just a few feet from us. I don’t know what that word means, but the sound of it is ugly.
    I am determined to be civilized. “That wasn’t very nice,” I say.
    Max repeats it back mockingly. Then he stares at me for a second. “Hey, aren’t you that kid they found fucking gophers out in the woods? Or was it squirrels?”
    “Go away,” I say.
    He smirks, lets out a mirthless laugh. “Or what? You’ll hump my leg?” He gives me a shove and I fall back on the porch.
    I feel something swell up in my chest and throat, Katie’s and Janice’s screams muffled and distant. There is only this boy standing over me, his blank stupid face in mine. My lips retract over my teeth, my fingers curl into claws, and then I am on him. We tumble together to the concrete walkway; I land on top of him, my right arm pinning his head to the ground, my canines poking into the flesh at the side of his neck. A little bite and the blood will spurt, and that will be the end of this. He moans, loud and desperate.
    Then Max goes limp, lays his head back against the grass, arms flat at his side. Without a thought I release him. He sucks in a breath, rears his fist back; I feel a dull impact against my left eye, and find myself on the ground. He runs away, pressing his hand against the teeth marks in his neck.
    From inside I hear Mum shout. I turn to Katie, but she is standing still on the porch, her oboe hanging from her trembling hands, her eyes wide and unblinking.
    “I should go home,” she murmurs.
    Before I can say anything Mum is outside, helping me up and leading me back to the house. Behind me I hear Katie pedaling away, fast as she can.

    Mum is pressing a plastic bag full of ice to my eye when Dad comes home. “What’s going on?” he asks.
    Mum sighs. “Our little angel got into a fight with the Henkel boy.”
    “What?” Dad says, his voice flat and humorless. “What have I told you about getting into fights?”
    Mum raises a hand to silence him. “Just wait, Dan. We need to talk.”
    He follows her into the kitchen, turning once to point at me. “Don’t you move a muscle, mister.”
    I nod.
    I hear them bickering for a half-hour or more, Mum trying to explain what happened, Dad interjecting the risk in any physical confrontation.
    “They didn’t call the cops, did they?”
    “I don’t think so,” Mum says. “That boy would have to explain what he was doing here.”
    “At least there’s that,” Dad says.
    He comes out a few seconds later. I dutifully remain on Mum’s blue floral couch, remove the icepack from my eye.
    “Leave it,” he says. He looks me over carefully. “That’ll be quite the shiner in the morning.”
    I wait for his explosive baritone, but he just looks at me all sad and weary, as if he’s dreaded this day for a long time.
    “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I try to explain. “He pushed me and...”
    “Your mother told me. You could’ve killed that boy.”
    “I wouldn’t,” I say. “I didn’t even hurt him.”
    He sits down next to me on the couch. “Fighting doesn’t solve anything. It just gets you into trouble. Especially you. It was years before Social Services left us alone. One more incident like that and they might come for you.”
    I have never heard such worry in Dad’s voice; I feel a little moisture well up at the corners of my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I insist. “But what was I supposed to do?”
    Dad sighs, sinks into the cushions. “I don’t know. Just not...that.”
    My eye is so cold I can’t feel it. “Then what?”
    He thinks for a second, staring down at the floor. Then he looks up at me like he’s just had the greatest idea in the world. “I’ll teach you how to box,” he says. “Just...no more trying to rip people’s throats out. It doesn’t sit well with the neighbors.”
    I nod. “So it’s not okay to do what I did, but it is okay to punch him in the face.”
    He thinks about it for a second, then shrugs and says, “Yeah.” He pulls his creaky body up off the couch and heads into the kitchen for his beer. “We’ll start Saturday.”

    Later, as Mum grills pork chops in the backyard, Dad shepherds me into the garage. We are both bare-chested in gym shorts and sneakers, our hands stuffed into oversized padded gloves, my head wrapped in padded vinyl. The rubber mouthguard is loose over my teeth.
    “If you’re going to defend a girl’s honor,” Dad says, “best learn to defend yourself.” He begins to shuffle on the concrete floor. “Keep moving,” he huffs. “Don’t stand still. Jab with your left...” He pauses to demonstrate, “...and come at ‘em with your right.” He throws a variety of combinations in the air until, two minutes later, he seems winded, sweat beading in his iron-gray chest hair. “Okay,” he says, beckoning me with a gloved hand. “Let’s see what you got.”
    I put my fists up and start moving. He jabs; I dodge, effortlessly.
    “Come on,” he says through the mouthguard. “Don’t just dodge. Hit back.”
    The idea of punching him is alien to me, but I rear back and punch his hairy belly. The blow hits like a soft slap.
    “Come on, little man,” he taunts. I feel a gentle tap on my forehead as he hits me with a light jab. “Hit me! Hard as you can.”
    So I do—a left to the gut, a hard right to the side of his head, and he flops face-first on the concrete.
    I bend to help him up, expecting his wrath any second. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to.”
    “S’okay,” he grumbles, slowly hoisting himself up. “You’ve got this covered.”

    Mum and Dad are under the impression that Katie and I have ridden our bikes to the Dairy Dreem for ice cream; but instead we are at the state park where I was found seven years ago. They have forbidden me to come here alone, for fear I might vanish into the forest and never come out. Once they’d have been right. The woods are deep, twenty square miles of forest to hide in, a little creek to drink from, rabbits and grubs and birds to eat—all I could ever need.
    We abandon our bicycles at the first picnic area and start walking. The woods are a warm hug to my senses: the smell of decayed leaves; hot dogs cooking at a campsite; the sound of cicadas, frogs, red-winged blackbirds. I am home.
    “This is where they found you?”
    “Yes.’ I point to the hollow log, now collapsed, where I slept. “Right over there.” I stare for a moment, remembering the feel of moss and warm fur against my bare skin.
    “Are you okay?” Katie says, startling me. “You’re crying.”
    Only then do I notice the tear streaming from my right eye. I turn from her.
    “We can go back to my house if you want,” she says softly.
    I wipe my eyes. “I’m fine.”
    Once I’ve pulled myself together we go deeper in. I show her every nook where I used to hide. We kick off our sandals and go wading in the creek; I snatch crayfish and little shad off the bottom to show off, then—against my better judgment—let them slip back into the brownish water. Finally we reach the massive beech tree where I used to hide and watch the campers and hikers, its leaves a thick cone that could conceal anything.
    She stares at the top. “You climbed all the way up there?”
    I nod. “It’s easy. Just don’t think about it.” I run for the tree, beckon to her. “Come on—I’ll show you how.”
    “It looks really high,” she says, stepping into my cupped hands to grab the lowest limb.
    I climb right beside her, pointing out each safe handhold. In a few minutes she catches on and her fear is gone. Before too long we’re near the top, perched on the last two safe branches, our arms hugging the trunk. “My dad would kill me if he knew I was doing this,” she says.
    “So would mine.”
    We stay up there for a while, staring down at the canopy, the cars and RVs pulling into the park.
    She smiles. “This is nice. I could stay up here forever.”
    Her hand touches mine; I feel its warmth. She smells like sweat and strawberries. I lean toward her, and she toward me. Her lips meet mine, quick and soft. Then she looks away, blushing. “We should probably go back,” she says with a guilty smile.
    We slink down the tree, me a foot or two beneath her in case she slips, then track down our bicycles. On our way home we do not speak.

    When I get home Mum and Dad are waiting for me at the dining room table. Their faces are grim.
    “You were supposed to be home half an hour ago,” Mum says.
    “Sorry.” I pass them and grab half a watermelon from the kitchen, plunge my canines in. “Got distracted,” I mumble, mouth full.
    Dad stands up, pulls out a chair. “I think we’d better have a talk.”
    Mum gets up and quietly leaves. This does not look promising.
    I sit. We stare awkwardly for a minute. “Jeremy,” he finally says, “When a boy and a girl really like each other...”
    I suddenly feel about to gag. “Dad,” I interrupt, “I know what sex is.” I saw a lot from that beech tree: birds, animals, men and women, men and men. And then there’s late-night cable after Mum and Dad are asleep.
    “Well,” he says, “it’s a little more complicated than on TV.”
    “What are you saying?” I demand.
    He rolls his eyes. “Jesus, you’re going to make me say it. Your mother and I need to know you’re not gonna force yourself on her.”
    I feel my eyes go wide. “You mean rape her? How could you even think that?”
    “I’m sorry.” His palms smack the table. “I just want to know you can handle this.”
    “And not rape her. I get it.” I get up, shove the chair back under the table despite Dad’s warning, run upstairs to my room and slam the door. I hear arguing downstairs, muffled. I don’t even try to listen.
    I climb out the window and quietly slink down the gutter. Halfway down I stop; the sparrows’ nest is at eye level, the baby birds fully-feathered, mouths reaching up to me. So easy. Mum wouldn’t notice just one missing. But I have given my word.
    I run to Katie’s, see her silhouetted in her bedroom window. No one is around to see, so I climb up.
    She’s a bit startled when I knock on her window, but lets me in.
    “My Dad’ll kill you if he finds you in here,” she says. “You know how to use a doorbell, right?”
    “Yes. Sorry.”
    “What’s the matter? You’re shaking.”
    I look down at my hands; I can’t keep them from quivering. I tell her what Dad said. I don’t know why, but I feel like I should.
    “That’s silly,” she says. “You’d never do that.”
    And all at once the weight falls from my chest.
    “Your dad really hurt you,” she says, cooing as if over an infant.
    I nod.
    “I’m sorry.” She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes hard. “If it helps, my mom and dad don’t have a clue either.”
    We stay like that for a minute, until she finally releases me. “You should probably go before you get caught.”
    I drape a leg out the window.
    “And call next time?”
    I nod again. We laugh for a minute, before I plunge back into the evening sun. I sneak back unnoticed, and for some reason I can’t stop smiling.
    “Everything all right now?” Mum asks when she summons me to dinner.
    “Yeah,” I say, with an impregnable grin. “Everything’s fine.”

    Katie and I are heading home from the Dairy Dreem on our bicycles, steering one-handed, the remains of our chocolate malts in the other. My sugar rush is in full swing; head abuzz, I watch Katie’s ankles as she pedals ahead of me.
    I hear a car with a bad muffler behind us.
    It pulls even, hugging the curb, and slows to keep pace. I turn to see Max in the driver’s seat of an old hatchback, his face contorted into a stupid mocking smirk. Another boy, scruffy and greasy-haired in a “Megadeth” T-shirt is in the passenger seat; in the back seat is a girl in a tube top, a crude butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder. She is the only one grinning.
    “Leave us alone!” Katie cries out.
    “Look at me, squirrel-fucker!” Max shouts out the passenger-side window, nearly smothering the other boy, a cigarette clenched in his teeth. I don’t. Then I feel a quick, hot sensation on the back of my neck, hear the cigarette butt fall to the pavement.
    “Hey, man, don’t do that,” the other boy protests, but Max isn’t listening.
    I could be civilized, ride home, let Dad call the police. I could also leap through the car window and maul him. Neither response seems appropriate.
    I rear back, estimate the trajectory, and hurl my malt cup. It misses his passenger entirely and hits Max square in the face, spattering him with chocolate-espresso ice cream. The brakes screech. The other two are laughing at him. He flops out of the car and starts to chase us, but we’re long gone.
    It does not seem safe to go home, so we make for the park while Katie calls her parents to come retrieve us. “My dad’s calling the cops,” she says, breathless, flipping her phone shut. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.” We find the nearest picnic table and sit, our backs straight and tense. The park is mostly empty, not even a ranger in sight.
    I hear Max’s car before I see it.
    “Run,” I tell her. “Into the woods.”
    The hatchback skids into the gravel lot. Max gets out first, teeth bared, face taut and scowling, the remnants of my malt still splattered on his shirt. I once saw this look on a badger who invaded our hollow log. No amount of growling could dissuade it, so fuzzy-mum had to fight until it left. I spent that night licking her wounds clean.
    The other boy and the girl get out as well, slowly. Both look frightened.
    “Come on, Max!” the boy shouts. “Leave him alone.”
    But Max isn’t listening.
    I stop, plant my feet and put up my fists the way Dad taught me—we will have at it like civilized men.
    Then he pulls a knife out of his pocket.
    I turn and run.
    Katie is twenty yards ahead of me; I catch up to her in seconds, Max’s footfalls crunching the dead leaves behind me. “I’ll go easier if you don’t run,” he calls to me.
    We run until we reach the beech tree. “Keep running,” I tell her, and start to climb. Halfway up the tree, I don’t see her anymore. But Max is upon me, standing at the base of the trunk. Ten seconds later I’m all the way up, beyond his reach.
    “Come on down,” he says.
    “No,” I call back.
    He hacks at the bark with his knife. “I can wait here all day.”
    So can I. He stares up into the branches, calculating whether he’ll make it. He won’t. He slips the knife into his pocket and climbs. He is slow, clumsy. Branches crack under his weight.
    Deeper into the woods I hear Katie’s voice, high and desperate as she talks to the 911 operator.
    I inch higher, Max a few feet beneath me. A branch breaks in his hand, and he tries to grab another. I am close enough to reach down and guide him to the nearest sturdy limb. It would be the civilized thing to do.
    He reaches for another handhold, but the green wood snaps in his hand and he falls.
    His body bounces off the lower limbs like he’s made of soft rubber, flipping end-over-end until he lands face-first on an exposed root. He doesn’t move after that, and his head is turned too far to the left. His eyes are open but there’s nothing behind them.

    It takes about ten minutes for the police to find us, five more for the paramedics. From the treetop I watch as they load Max onto a gurney and slide him into the waiting ambulance. Katie looks away. I do not come down, even though the policemen say they know what happened, that it isn’t my fault, that I’m not in any trouble. Then Mum and Dad arrive, saying the same thing.
    “It’s okay,” Katie calls to me. “It’s over now. Please come down.”
    I try to explain why I can’t, but language fails me. She starts to climb up the tree—I would be fine with that, just her and me up here, away from the world. But her father pulls her away. “Come down,” she says again.
    I don’t. I won’t.
    Slowly, the crowd peels off—first the ambulance, then the campers. After a while Katie’s father drags her away. She looks up at me once and gives me a sad little wave. And then it’s only Mum and Dad and a few policemen.
    Mum and Dad take turns telling me to come down, because it’s safe now and they love me. I barely listen. Somewhere, right about now, Janice and her parents are finding out about Max and are grieving for him; one of them, no doubt, will swear revenge, maybe with fists, or a baseball bat, or a gun. Maybe they’ll get it; maybe I really will rip someone’s throat out. There seems no point in coming down.
    I can wait them all out up here if I have to, until morning and the next day and the next, until even Mum and Dad give up and go home. It will break their hearts, but it’s all for the best—sooner or later it was bound to come to this. And then, when I’m finally alone, I’ll creep down, climb up to Katie’s window in the dark. I’ll take her hand and lead her out into the night, and we’ll set out together into the woods, deeper than we’ve ever been, where everything is simple and wild and clear.

Bad Time to Be in Love

    There are no eyes in the carpet, Christopher Andersen tells himself firmly. There is no one following me.
    It’s his first time there alone, and no one is following him as he walks into the dark, echoey foyer of the theater—no one, just his shadow, sliding across the thick mauve carpet behind him, faint in the chandeliers’ weak light.
    He and his shadow find a seat in the sixth row. Chris sits, and his shadow coils itself around his feet, shifting lazily.
    They both wait for the movie to start. Chris thinks of Sara, of the way she would sit next to him in her little red dress, leg curled onto the seat beneath her and elbow touching his. He remembers the glow of her eyes in the screen’s light, the way she would smile, or frown, depending on what the actors onscreen were feeling, her mouth mirroring theirs as though no one were watching. Her smell: leather, vanilla bean. The softness of her hair on his neck. Her long fingers absentmindedly twisting the red fabric of her dress. He inhales deep and tries to find any remnant of her scent, but it’s gone.
    Chris’s shadow thinks about Sara too.
    The eyes in the carpet blink slowly: open and shut, open and shut.
    The doors sigh closed and darkness falls, total for a brief second. Chris feels like he’s alone with Sara for a moment, just the two of them, just like old times. He’s not, of course. There’s smoky blacker-than-blackness pooling around his feet.
    Then the film reel starts and a grainy Barbara Stanwyck with a voice like dust enters the theater. She meets a man, as women in movies did back then. It’s love. Barbara walks through the city with her soon-to-be husband, and everyone can see her surety in her tilted-up chin and leveled-back shoulders. Her leisurely gait, her unruffled poise. Chris sees Sara up there, hips swinging as she walks down the street, a decorous distance from him. Everyone watches the woman in red.
    Chris’s shadow does not see Sara, not now—but it doesn’t see Barbara either. It sees a woman in love. A woman about to be married. It sees Annie, her wide mouth and small teeth. Her thick gold band on her left ring finger, matching Chris’s exactly.
    So there’s Barbara and a man, in love. And everything’s fine until a second man enters the picture, all at once and flickeringly, as damaged spots appear in the old film and the sound is replaced for a moment by an empty hiss. This man is desperately in love with Barbara. Chris hears the small sympathetic whimper of a woman three rows behind him, almost lost in the projector’s uneven hum. Who will Barbara choose? Her steady, strong fiancé—husband, nearly!—or this interloper. This new fellow. This narrow-framed, passionate-eyed would-be lover.
    And it’s only now that Chris’s shadow thinks of Sara. It sees Chris twisting his ring absentmindedly, no doubt habit. Chris’s ring is shinier on the inside than it is on the outside, a sign of all those days with it off and nights with it on—and, eventually, nights with it off, too.
    And there’s the difference: Barbara keeps an appropriate space between herself and her second man, even when she joins him on his yacht. She is all demure smiles and grace. Reproachless.
    The shadow writhes beneath Chris’s velvet seat, shivers up his legs. It remembers other scenes.
    It has evidence, and jumps to no conclusions, but others do.
    As Barbara descends furtively from the yacht, the skirt of her red dress bunched in her hand, the innocent wrongly accused, something happens—there’s a tendril of darkness coiling around Chris’s neck. It squeezes unfeelingly, calmly, like it is something it has always meant to do.
    The last thing Chris sees as he lurches sideways is the cold wet eye, all whites and no iris, gazing at him from the ground. Then it’s over and his own eyes are empty and fixed, his mouth gaping open. There’s a creak as his weight shifts in his chair, and then silence. No one notices as his shadow slides into the base of his seat, wrapping itself around wrought-iron roses. No one notices until quite a bit later that there’s a corpse in the sixth row. The film plays on.
    “Who was the woman in red?” Barbara’s husband demands, a damaged frame of film temporarily obscuring his face. He is suspicious and yet oblivious. “I know she was on the yacht. People saw her. Who is she?”
    “I don’t know,” the second suitor insists. Over and over. “I don’t know.”
    “I don’t know,” Barbara says, later. “I’m telling you, I’ve been here all day. It wasn’t me.” She smoothes the skirt of her red dress over her knees self-consciously.

    Sara doesn’t go to Chris’s funeral. After all, why should she?
    “We’re just friends,” she’d insisted to the policemen. Over and over. “We’re just friends.”
    They kept asking her questions, though. Sara didn’t call a lawyer.
    Why were you always at the club at the same time?
    “A girl can have a tennis partner, can’t she? She can be friends with him, can’t she?”
    Why did he leave you money in his will? Is that common among tennis partners?
    “I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re just friends.”
    And Where were you last night between the hours of six and nine p.m.?
    “I was at a party. Plenty of people saw me there. You can check.”
    “We will,” the policeman had assured her at that point.
    It didn’t matter. She hadn’t killed him, and they knew it.
    But that didn’t matter, either—she’d said it enough, and now she believed it. We’re just friends. We’ve never been anything more than friends.
    The last she’d heard was when the police had called her up and (grudgingly) informed her that the death had been declared a result of heart trouble, and she was no longer under suspicion. No, that wasn’t the last thing—the last thing was a week ago, when one of her coworkers had told her the date of the funeral.
    “Okay,” Sara had responded coldly.
    “I’m sorry,” the woman had said, and Sara could have strangled her to get rid of the pity that was staining the woman’s face. Disgusting.
    She’d settled for a sharp “Why are you sorry?” instead.
    “Well... you were seeing him, weren’t you? That’s why the police—” She broke off as she saw the look on Sara’s face and rushed to apologize. “I mean, not that—I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business. I just... never mind.”
    “We were just friends,” Sara spat as the woman hurried away.
    They were just friends, Sara told herself, and she was well shot of him now. It had been fun at first—glances from the other side of the room, meetings in the men’s restroom, words whispered in the silent empty theater—but he’d gotten suddenly much too serious, and there were younger, better-looking men that watched her when she went down the street, anyway.
    She kept seeing him, of course, but she was detached. She watched him coldly, cataloguing his every glance, every subconscious movement. The more she thought about him, the more she hated him. She took a vicious sort of pleasure in watching him play tennis, his movements frantic, disjointed, uncontrolled. He was utterly graceless.
    She always won.
    It was all right, though—until he’d brought a stack of forms to a weekend rendezvous. “I want to divorce Annie,” he’d said.
    Was he proposing? Sara had been appalled. They’d fought, and she’d left, and she didn’t think of him again until the police called her with questions about a murder that she hadn’t committed.
    She had a new boyfriend now, a guy named Jake, who wore orange pants and thick-framed black glasses that he didn’t need. The tech startup he founded was going places, everyone said. Sara insisted on meeting him at his apartment before their dates, because he lived with four other guys and she loved the way they looked at her when she wore her tallest heels and shortest dress.
    It’s a Tuesday when she and Jake go to Linfield Park. He’s made sandwiches, and they sit on the grass to eat them. They talk, but Sara is distracted. She looks left, again and again, again, until Jake asks her gently if she knows someone there.
    She starts to deny it—but then nods an assent, and leaves him sitting there while she walks over to the cemetery. She hadn’t known it was right next to the park, but there it was, and she knew it was the one where Chris had been buried, somehow.
    Everything goes quiet once she steps past the stone fence. She picks her way carefully across wilting flowers and mounded dirt until she spots Chris’s grave—and of course, it’s just her luck, isn’t it? There’s already someone there.
    It’s Annie, in a black sweater and gray pants. She’s sitting in front of his headstone, clutching a bunch of roses, her head bent, dark hair falling in front of her face.
    Sara looks at her figure and a wave of contempt passes over her. She remembers Chris’s eyes on her, always her, his fingers short and flat and ringless. She looks at Annie and thinks, fool, he didn’t love you.
    She almost leaves the cemetery then (if only she had!) but she doesn’t—she lingers. But she feels no remorse, no regret—no, she remembers Chris’s small eyes, frantic tennis swing, the way half his face always seemed to be in shadow. She watches Annie and she thinks, fool, you can have him. She tosses her hair over her shoulder contemptuously.
    It’s only then that she sees the headstone—with Chris’s name engraved carefully and expensively, no doubt—and the bloodless eye right in its center. The veins in the marble throb coldly and the pale staring eye looks at her emptily—but it’s alive, she can tell.
    It blinks.

    Annie’s no fool. She knows about Chris, and she knows about Sara. And she knows Sara is standing behind her right now, staring with pity or contempt or perhaps both.
    She knows this without looking, her head bent, eyes closed, tears still drying on her cheeks. She loved Chris despite herself, and it is unacceptable that this woman watch her now as unsympathetically as she does.
    Sara tosses her head. She’s decided to move on.
    And Annie sees this too. She sees everything, without watching, her eyes still closed—but the marble eye in front of her very much open.
    Sara sees Annie then. She really sees her, for a terrified, disgusted second, before fleeing to the safety of the street, walking fast, holding the end of her long dress out of the way of her frantic footsteps. Everyone watches her as she walks.
    Everyone watches the woman in red.

Broken Glass

    As soon as he steps onto the crowded bus, Rosie knows—he’s the one, he’s her destiny.
    She sees his jaw, sharp enough to slice the crusts off a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich; she sees his eyes, rich enough to break a chocolate-lover’s heart; she sees his hair, messy enough to make even a strong hairbrush weep in despair.
    As soon as she sees him glance around the bus, she knows what’s going to happen. He’s going to walk in slow-motion toward the empty seat next to her. He’s going to say carefully, “Anyone sitting here?”
    Rosie will shrug a composed, casual no, not really. Marry me.
    He’ll smile then, and sit.
    As soon as his eyes—still scanning for a seat—catch hers momentarily, Rosie knows what’s going to happen. It’s like an iPhone filter drops in front of her eyes suddenly, and through the damaged sepia of Brooklyn™ she sees the two of them sitting and laughing. She sees a phone number on a slip of paper. She sees artisan coffee in a ceramic mug, him wearing these thick-framed glasses, her in a loose wool sweatshirt. And, eventually, two shiny, shiny rings. The chocolate of his eyes melting as he says, “I do.”
    Yes, as soon as he steps on the bus, Rosie knows what’s going to happen.
    Here’s what happens: he steps on the bus. Scans the empty seats. His eyes catch Rosie’s for an instant, meaninglessly, before he walks to a girl three rows behind her, plants a quick kiss on her cheek. She chatters animatedly to him as Rosie turns to face the front of the bus unseeingly.
    Not again, she thinks.

Dove Keeper

    The new girl showed up in Ms. Wilson’s homeroom class on a hot September morning in 1958, three weeks into my junior year at Hamilton County High. A transfer, the teacher informed us, from nearby Red Bank, Tennessee. Due to her late arrival, the new girl was forced to sit in the first row of desks—a zone most students avoided like the plague—and, as it happened, directly in front of me. Her shoulder-length hair was so blond it was almost white, and fine enough to stir with whatever meager and infrequent breeze found its way in through the open classroom windows.
    When she was introduced as Peggy Fulks, a spate of laughter erupted from the back row of desks, populated mostly by members of the varsity football squad.
    Ms. Wilson looked up sharply. “That’ll be enough of that,” she said. “We’re glad to have you join us, Peggy. I hope your experience here at Hamilton High will be a good one.”
    Peggy smiled at the teacher, and then to my surprise, she turned in her desk and cocked an eyebrow at the back row.
    When the bell rang for classes, I sat for a moment and watched Peggy gather her books and glide toward the hallway. She wore a thin white blouse and a tight black skirt that cupped her bottom like a pair of hands. From one corner of the room, the football boys ogled her, grinning and snickering. In another, a gaggle of girls smirked, rolled their eyes, and whispered in each other’s ears.
    I felt sorry for the new girl, wondering how I might feel saddled with such an unfortunate last name. I imagined it wouldn’t so bad for a boy, might even be an asset.
    When I reached the door, Peggy stood in the middle of the hallway, students scurrying past her in both directions. She looked first one way then another. I angled through the current of kids and stopped at her side.
    “I’m Joe Maynard,” I said, “from behind you in homeroom?”
    “Hi, Joe.” She showed me a scrap of paper with 138 scrawled on it. “I don’t know where to look for my locker. Can you help?”
    “Sure.” I pointed down the hall. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
    At her locker, she dumped some books and kept a math text and three-ring binder. “You’re a life saver, Joe. Maybe we’ll have some classes together.” She squeezed my arm. “I’ll have to find a way to thank you.”
    I was about to reply when I spotted Sophie Reed walking down the hall toward us, books clutched to her chest, talking with her best friend, Nancy Edgerton. Sophie was the girl of my dreams, both literally and figuratively. I had fallen deeply in love with her my freshman year in first-year algebra class. Fabulously gorgeous, smart, and popular, she was as yet unaware of my undying and unrequited affection. Something I vowed every year, every month, and every week to remedy, only to chicken out at any and every potential opportunity.
    She caught me staring and awarded me a little finger wave.
    I waved back, dropping my history book and notes in the process. By the time I picked them up, both she and Peggy were gone.

...

    In the weeks that followed, my life went on pretty much as usual. I continued to mope around in the hope Sophie would suddenly recognize me as her soul mate, the football boys still stared and snickered when Peggy walked past, and the upper crust girls still whispered behind her back. Peggy and I did have one other class together—The History of Western Civilization—and we sometimes sat together in study hall, where I helped her with the Applied Math course she was taking.
    “I’ll never be able to go to college,” she said, “so I can’t see why I should kill myself taking algebra.”
    “You could do anything,” I said, filled with youthful ignorance, “if you wanted it bad enough.”
    She looked at me with a weary smile that seemed to suggest both resignation and regret. “You’re good at math, Joe, but you don’t know everything.”
    As the study hall period neared its end, Sophie flounced prettily into the room with a sheaf of mimeographed papers for the teacher. Peggy watched me staring longingly and said, “When are you going to ask her out?”
    “I ask her out every day in my dreams, but I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.”
    This time her smile was genuine and her green eyes danced with amusement. “You could do it if you wanted to bad enough.” She placed her hand on mine. “I bet you could go out with anybody you asked.”
    I must have blushed because I felt my neck and cheeks getting hot, but then the bell rang and Peggy and I rushed to make our last period classes.

...

    In late October, I inherited a beat-up ’53 Chevy from my aunt that I drove to and from school when I had the money to pay for gas. It was on a Thursday afternoon I turned out of the school parking lot and saw Peggy walking down the road loaded with textbooks. I slowed the car, pulled over to the shoulder, and rolled down the passenger side window. “Need a ride?” I asked.
    Peggy propped her books on the door and leaned in. “Thanks, Joe, but I can walk. It’s not that far.”
    “How far is ‘not that far’?”
    She shrugged. “Couple a miles, I guess.”
    “Hop in,” I said. “I got nothing else to do.”
    She got in and placed her books on the seat between us. “My mom usually picks me up, but she’s been sick a lot lately.”
    I couldn’t help observing how her skirt rode up just above her knees when she sat. There was a crispness in the air that promised an early winter, but her legs—long and smooth— were still honeyed by summer. I briefly chided myself for noticing such a thing when my heart belonged to another. “Tell me where to drive, my lady. Your chariot awaits.”
    We talked easily while I drove. I wondered why it as so easy to chat with Peggy but so hard for me to approach Sophie. After a while Peggy said, “That’s the driveway over there.” She pointed to a graveled and rutted turnout off the main road. “Just let me out here. I can walk the rest of the way.”
    “No sense in that,” I said, turning into the drive over her continuing protests. “The sooner I get home, the sooner I have to start doing homework.”
    I rounded a curve in the driveway and Peggy’s house came into view. Dumb as I was, I understood immediately why she’d suggested I let her out. The small house was constructed of concrete block, painted a sickly, pale green. The front porch—hardly more than a stoop— had part of the railing missing, and the rusty screen door hung by one hinge. Several roofing shingles were gone, showing black tar paper sheeting underneath.
    “Home sweet home,” she said softly.
    We sat there in silence for a moment, her brow creased. Then the frown softened and her eyes lit up. She grabbed my hand and said, “C’mon, Joe, as long as you’re here, there’s something I want to show you.” We left the car and she placed her books down on the crumbling front porch. “It’s around back. Follow me.”
    I did, and picked my way through foot-high grass and weeds to the rear of the house. Sitting a few yards from the back door was a five-foot-high structure made of wooden two-by-twos and chicken wire—a square cage mounted on four posts, with a small door in the front held shut by a metal hasp. Inside, half a dozen fat birds perched on dowels attached between the sides or pecked at seed in aluminum pie plates placed along the bottom.
    “What is that, a pigeon cage?” I asked.
    “It’s a coop, not a cage. And they’re Rock Doves, not pigeons. I brought them with me when we moved here.” Peggy stepped over and stuck a finger inside the cage. One of the birds hopped toward her. She stroked its head, then reached inside and grasped the bird with both hands. After reclosing the coop door she brought it over and showed it to me, still stroking its head. Its eyes were like tiny obsidian beads of glass. A pulse beat firmly in its neck.
    “These are my babies. This one’s named Joe.”
    “What?” I said. “Did you—
    A quick, jerky grin played at the corners of her mouth. “That’s for me to know, and you to find out.”
    “What do they do?” I asked.
    “Mostly they just sit around and eat.”
    “Huh,” I said, not knowing what else to offer.
    “But watch this,” she said, and tossed the bird into the air. It flapped its wings ferociously and climbed quickly into the late October sky.
    I watched, more or less open-mouthed, as the dove soared higher and higher, circling the yard, then expanding its range, and finally disappearing over the treetops.
    I shielded my eyes from the sun, watching and wondering why Peggy would let one of her “babies” escape. After a few moments, I said, “I’m pretty sure that bird is gone.”
    “Just wait,” she said.
    We did, and, much to my surprise, the dove reappeared a moment later, late sun glinting off its wings, and fluttered to a stop within a few inches of Peggy’s feet. She picked it up and put it back in the cage. “They use them in ceremonies, you know, or for funerals. It’s like the dove symbolizes the spirit going off to heaven or something.”
    She came over and stood in front of me, looking up into my face, squinting a little because of the sun. “You know what they say, don’t you? If you love something let it go. If it really loves you, it’ll come back. If it doesn’t—I guess you’re shit outta luck.”
    I thought of Sophie, and was about to say I wasn’t sure if that applied to something you’d never had to begin with when the back door of Peggy’s house banged open and a woman dressed in a ratty housecoat leaned out. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she held a can of Old Milwaukee in one hand.
    “Where you been, girl?” the woman shouted. “I need you to start supper right now.”
    “I’m sorry, Momma,” Peggy said. “I’ll be there in just a minute.”
    The woman glowered for a moment and then turned and closed the door behind her.
    Peggy sighed. “Thanks for the ride, Joe. I got to go.”
    I watched her as she hurried inside. Then I watched the birds for a moment longer. Then I left.

...

    “I don’t know, Joe. You have some stiff competition.” Nancy Edgerton plucked a Lay’s Barbeque Potato Chip from the bag she held and bit off a tiny piece.
    Still not confident enough to actually approach Sophie directly, I had summoned up the courage to sit beside her best friend during lunch period and ask if there was a chance Sophie would go out with me. There was also the possibility that my heartthrob might herself appear at our table with a lunch tray.
    Nancy took another small bite. “I mean, at least half the guys in our class want to go out with her.”
    “Is she actually dating anybody?” I asked.
    “Uh-huh, mostly senior boys, but no one special.” She took a dainty sip of milk and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “Yet, that is. Clyde Rawlins took her to the movies last weekend—The Long, Hot Summer. That Paul Newman is such a dreamboat. Clyde looks a little like him, don’t you think?”
    Clyde Rawlings was the quarterback for the Hamilton High Mustangs, drove a ’57 Ford convertible, and could probably have any girl he wanted. My heart slumped in my chest, but I was determined not to give up.
    “Does she have a date for the Homecoming Dance?” It was still two weeks away. Maybe if I asked her today...
    “Not so far. I mean, she’s got offers, but she hasn’t decided yet who she’s going with.” Nancy leaned closer. “You’ll never know unless you ask. Stop mooning around, staring at her and ask her. But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s not doing your image any good hanging around with that slut from Polk County.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I have a friend who goes to school up there. She says the girl lives up to her name.”
    “Her name is Fulks,” I said, pronouncing it slowly and distinctly. “She can’t help what it sounds like.”
    Nancy got up from the table and gathered the remains of her lunch. “She sleeps around. My friend says everyone at Polk County knew about it. Not to mention her clothes—wearing the same skirt and blouse two or three times every week? Definitely low-rent.”
    I watched Nancy dump her trash and head for the door just as Peggy entered the cafeteria. Nancy glanced at her, then stopped and looked back at me. She mouthed the word “slut” and continued out into the hallway. Peggy spotted me and waved, her face breaking into a smile as she started for the serving line. I gathered up my own tray and left before she could join me.
    Sophie’s locker was not far from mine, and she and Nancy were huddled there when I stopped to get books for my next class. I took a deep breath, tried to slow my thundering heart, and walked over to where they stood.
    “Hi Sophie,” I said, my voice quavering. “I was wondering if you had a date for the Homecoming Dance yet.”
    She reached over and stroked my arm with her soft, warm hand. It was the first time we had actually touched, and it sent chills charging up and down my spine. “Oh, Joe, I do. I’m so sorry. Clyde Rawlings just asked me to go with him and I accepted. But my dance card’s not full yet. I’ll put you down for a slow one, okay?” She exchanged a glance with Nancy and said, “Actually, I’ll put you down for two.”
    I went back to my locker filled with a mixture of hope and despair. I had been too late to get the date, but she was going to dance with me twice. Slow songs. Her luscious body melting into mine. Who knew what might happen after that?

...

    The following Friday, Peggy asked me for a ride home and I somewhat reluctantly agreed. I waited around, sitting in a bathroom stall for a while until most of the students had left, then met Peggy by the doors to the parking lot.
    “My mom’s sick again,” she said, by way of explanation.
    We had spoken little during the week, mostly on account of my avoiding her. We rode in silence for a few minutes and then Peggy said, “If you wanted to, we could go somewhere and park for a while.” A blush of rose lit the flesh under her chin. “And make out a little, I mean. If ... if you wanted to, that is.”
    “Uh, I’ve got lots of homework to do. I’d better not.”
    “It’s all right, Joe. I understand.”
    We continued the drive in silence, and when we reached her house, she got out and closed the door and went inside.

...

    The night of the Homecoming Dance a moisture-laden breeze conjured up miniature whirlwinds from the late fall’s dead leaves. I had just washed and waxed my Chevy earlier in the day, but even the threat of impending rain had not dampened my spirits. I was going to slow dance with my Sophie. All sorts of possibilities swirled through my head. Maybe she and Clyde would have an argument. Maybe when we danced, she would finally realize the two of us were meant to be together. My body thrummed with the night’s prospects.
    The high school gym was festooned with crepe paper streamers and banners proclaiming Go Mustangs, Beat Bradly County Bears. Snack and soft drink tables occupied one corner of the room, a disc jockey’s platform another, and shoes were lined up just inside the gym’s big double doors.
    I looked around the huge open space, hoping to catch sight of my future dance partner. Most of the girls were clustered around the DJ’s platform, while the guys—many still wearing Mustangs green and gold letter jackets—scavenged from the snack table. Then the DJ, a local radio personality, hopped up onto the platform and cranked up “The Bristol Stomp.” Almost immediately, the polished wood floor filled with students. While the music reverberated through the gym, I settled back against one of the folded-up bleachers and continued to eye the crowd.
    I found Sophie and watched as she gyrated in and out of my line of sight, wearing a peach-colored sweater and a black felt skirt that swirled around her legs as Clyde Rawlings’ showed off his dance moves. And, every so often, when the DJ announced he was going to play a slow song, my heartbeat quickened, wondering if this dance would be mine.
    At some point, I caught sight of Peggy dancing with one of senior basketball players. They seemed to be hanging out together, and I wondered if she was his date. If so, she hadn’t said anything to me about it, not that we’d talked much since the last time I’d taken her home. I hadn’t even known she was coming to the dance.
    As the evening wore on, my hopes and dreams gradually faded. Not only had I not been sought out for a slow dance by Sophie, she had danced only with Clyde. Sometimes it wasn’t so much dancing as it was the two of them locked together barely swaying to the music. I guessed maybe her dance card had been forgotten.
    Around ten o’clock, I decided to leave. I had stopped by the drink table for a Pepsi when I felt a presence beside me.
    “Things not working out like you’d planned, Joe?’
    Peggy held a cup of punch and wore a pale green corsage on her wrist. She had on a green skirt and matching sweater. I recognized the clothes from school and now realized they were some of the few she owned. But her lips glowed with soft pink lipstick, and in the dim gymnasium lighting, she looked as pretty as I’d ever seen her.
    I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could while trying not to let her see my misery. “Not really.”
    She slid her hand into mine and said, “Come with me.” We walked to the exit and stepped out under the aluminum awning suspended just over the doorway. The rain had started, and in the distance, silver spears of lightening pierced the sky.
    “Where’s your car?” she asked.
    I pointed toward the Chevy parked in the second row.
    She tugged at my hand, and we set off across the lot, shielding our faces from the rain. Peggy opened the door and dragged me into the back seat. We were both breathing hard.
    “Peggy, I ...”
    “You don’t have to say anything.” She took my face in her hands and pressed her mouth to mine, and I could taste the lipstick and the punch and a sweet film of perspiration on her upper lip. Then she was fumbling at my belt and hiking her skirt up over her hips and guiding me inside her. The windows fogged over and raindrops rattled against the car windows like volleys of buckshot. At some point she said, “I love you.” Or maybe I said it. After a while it was hard to know whose voice I was hearing.
    When we were done, she rearranged her clothing and got out of the car. I did the same, but by the time I caught up to her, she was almost to the gym door. The basketball player waited, arms crossed over his chest, under the awning.
    “Where the hell were you?” he asked.
    Peggy said nothing, just swept past him and went inside. He shot me a nasty look before following her. I stood there in the downpour for a while, then walked back to my car and left.

...

    Peggy wasn’t in school the next Monday, or the day after, or the day after that. I wondered if she was ill or maybe just embarrassed by what had happened. On Thursday, I drove down the rutted gravel driveway and stopped in front of her house. The screen door flapped in the wind and knee-high brambles dragged at my jeans as I crossed the yard to the front porch. My knock produced no response. I peered through one dirty window but saw nothing more than a bare kitchen table and two straight-back chairs. The house looked and felt deserted. I went down the cracked steps and around to the rear. The coop was still there, but its small door stood wide open and all the birds were gone.
    In the days following, rumors spread throughout the school. Most of the girls thought Peggy had gotten herself pregnant and been sent away somewhere to have the baby. Most of the guys, I guess, just missed seeing her glide down the hall sparking their fantasies. No one really knew, of course, and as far as I know, no one ever found out.

...

    Sometimes now I go to the park on my lunch break and feed the squirrels and pigeons scraps from my sandwich. Occasionally, a dove will show up, too, and I can’t help but think about Peggy, who probably knew more about life than any of us. For a time, I held out some hope that, like the Rock Dove she’d named Joe, Peggy might one day return to me. But it never happened.
    And I often wonder now if there’s anything more naggingly painful than wishing you had a second chance with someone ... and knowing you never will.

Sex Trumps Dignity Every Time

    Being drunk at 2:30 in the morning and with few options for sexual release, Tom went home with one of the leftover barflies who often inhabit urban drinking centres. This barfly was named Nancy and she weighed 355 pounds. The whiskey made him overlook the numerous rolls of flesh but cumming sobered him up enough to notice. He jumped out of bed after the last drop of sperm left his penis and he pulled on his pants.
    Shame sat in a chair in the corner looking at him, shaking its head. Are we finally done? Can we go now? You really are an asshole. You convinced her you thought she was hot. Liar. Bastard.
    “Shut up,” he said, pulling on his shirt.
    “What?” The obese barfly asked.
    “Not you. Sorry. My brain doesn’t work too well after I cum. I was just mumbling to myself.”
    That’s right. Tell her another lie. You’re such a fucking prince.
    Tom stared at Shame. It stared back at him with a sour expression and disdain in its eyes.
    “I gotta go,” Tom said. “Have to get to work in the morning.”
    Oh! Another lie!
    “But tomorrow is Saturday. No one works on Saturdays. Sleep here,” Nancy said.
    He stared at her, her large frame consuming the queen-sized bed. No! screamed his brain.
    “Nah, big project coming up,” he said.
    You’re good. There’s no project. You know it and I know it and I just bet that deep down inside, she knows it. Oh, she won’t admit she knows but she does.
    Tom picked his coat up off of the floor. “Thanks, Nancy. I’ll call you later. I promise.”
    She smiled at him but it wasn’t a real smile. It was the kind of smile a person smiles when they really want to cry. And after he walked out the door, she would cry but she didn’t want to do it in front of him. It might scare him off.
    “Tomorrow?”
    “Yeah, maybe. If I get home early enough. Bye,” he said, sprinting out of the house.
    He walked out into freedom and Shame was with him. It was always with him – an ever-clinging barnacle of guilt that would never let go.
    I hope you feel good. You know she’s back there crying. You saw her eyes filling up with tears. I don’t know why you pick up cows only to fuck them. Such a dick move. They have feelings, Tom. I mean, can’t you just masturbate and not fuck someone you’d be ashamed of being seen with in public?
    “Shut up,” Tom said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
    It isn’t her fault you can’t find a woman you’re not embarrassed by. So she’s a little fat. Big deal. She likes you. The thin women don’t. Face it, you’re no prize. You’ve got pockmarks on your face and you’re broke more often than not. Who are you to judge?
    “I said shut up.”
    No. I won’t. You apparently have no pride. And you certainly have no respect for her. You couldn’t even look at yourself in the mirror back there.
    “Stop trying to make me feel guilty. It isn’t going to work. Leave me alone. You’re always talking and talking and talking.”
    Of course it won’t. You’re an asshole. And I’m not going anywhere. I’m an asshole, too.
    The wind, hearing the argument, slapped Tom in the face. Dick! The wind was a feminist, an elemental Boudica, and hated mistreatment of all females. She sought revenge for Nancy, and all the other females who had been hurt by drunken, horny men. She hoped a small speck of dust or sand would lodge itself into Tom’s cornea and scratch it, making him very uncomfortable for a few hours or, if she was lucky, a few days. Maybe he’d get an eye infection! Whoosh! Whoosh! Boudica screamed.
    He ignored the wind and the Shame and stayed inside his own head. He could still smell her on him as he walked home. The wind, sensing this, flew up the legs of his jeans and forced Nancy’s aroma out of the waist band. Her scent drifted up into his nose and danced inside his nostrils. I need a shower. The shower is my priest and will absolve me of all sin. I’ll be clean again.
    He arrived home, opened the door and slammed it in the wind’s face. Shame managed to slip in behind him and followed him to the bathroom and sat on the toilet.
    You really think this will make everything all right? It won’t. You know what happened. No shower will erase the memory of having sex with a fat chick you despise. Nothing will change that. The shower can be as hot as hell and it won’t erase the memory of what just happened. We both know this.
    Tom undressed and stepped into the shower. The sound of the water and his own humming blocked out Shame. He wanted to stay in the shower forever so he wouldn’t have to face Shame. Shame never shut up. Its vocal chords never tired out and it always had an opinion.
    He lathered himself from head to toe and rinsed off. Her smell went down the drain and into the sewers below. The rats would be happy. They loved the aroma of dank fish. He was clean again and Shame had left the room. He shut off the shower and grabbed a towel.
    He walked from the bathroom into the bedroom. Shame was sprawled out on the bed, nude and ready for sleep.
    She texted you. She wants to know if you got home okay and wanted to remind you to call her tomorrow. Are you going to reply?
    “No. I’m going to bed. I’m tired. Now, move over.”
    Tom slipped into bed and shut out the light. Shame rolled over on its side and propped its head on its arm, staring down at him.
    You really aren’t going to answer? You’re such an asshole!
    Outside, the wind hit hard against the window. The pane shuttered and shook in fury. Shame kept talking in Tom’s ear. There would be no sleep for him that night. There would be only an angry element, chattering Shame, a skull full of cotton, and the memory of his penis entering and exiting the hole of a large woman. Despite everything, at least he got laid.

Natasha Cabot Bio

    Natasha Cabot is a Toronto-based Canadian writer whose work has been featured in many literary journals including, but not limited to, MiCrow, Wilderness House Literary Review, Gone Lawn Journal, Ginosko Literary Journal, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She has a degree in English Literature and encourages you to get a degree in something useful lest you become an office drone.

The Grandmother; or, Arguments by Selective Observation

    The grandmother decided to wear her Sunday best even though it was only Tuesday. She squeezed into a breezy and sleeveless yellow summer number and on tiptoes plucked a violet sun hat from the dusty top shelf of the closet. Around her neck she clasped a string of pearls that came to rest in a lustrous arc above the faded lace of the dress’s neckline. She examined her form in the mirror, smoothing and adjusting herself here and there, plucking unraveling threads in the airless room. Knowing the day would warm, she ignored the morning chill. The grandmother left the house happy, her eyes and silver curls shaded by the hat’s wide brim. Main Street, she thought, had never been brighter.
    The doctor couldn’t see her because she arrived before her appointment and he had other patients to look after. She thumbed through well-worn glossies until she was too shocked by immodesty to continue. Once in the doctor’s office, she sat patiently as he inspected her. The doctor was a gaunt man, as if born from an age of austerity and want, with a mantelshelf brow and a skeptical pout. The grandmother worried about him. She thought he was too concerned with life, too rapt with the consequence of skin and cells.
    “It appears to be gone,” he said, stretching and poking the skin of the grandmother’s upper arm. He leaned back on his stool and stroked his chin. “Odder things have happened, I guess. Let’s be cautiously optimistic for now.”
    “Didn’t I tell you, doc?” the grandmother asked. “Eczema one day, a sundress the next! Looks like my guardian angel dropped by just before the heat turns fierce.”
    “Well there’s still the issue of the cancer,” the doctor said.
    “Don’t you go pooh-poohing on my miracle, now!” the grandmother said, smiling and shaking her head and jabbing the air in front of the doctor’s chest. Her pearls sashayed and glinted under the brilliant light of the examination room.
    The doctor sighed and closed his eyes. At this signal, the grandmother snatched a lollipop from the front pocket of the doctor’s white coat, patted him on the shoulder, and headed for the exit.
    The grandmother observed the effects of summer as she pranced down Main Street. Shops advertised their icy offerings. Window units above the sidewalk cast moisture onto the heads of unsuspecting ramblers. On side streets children in colorful bathing suits dashed and leaped through the forceful jets of fire hydrants. As she walked she remembered the doctor’s concern but decided that the day was much too magnificent and wondrous to be bothered by such a petty and earthly affair. She’d think on that tomorrow, she decided, or perhaps on the following day.
    In front of the tailor’s shop, the grandmother stopped and peered through the glass. He sat with his back to her, hunched over his machine, his halo of white hair stark beneath the shop’s fluorescent lights. Two industrial fans framed the old man and his work. The grandmother tapped on the glass with her finger, wanting to show off her hat, the bow of which the tailor had just last week repaired. The old man worked on a garment the grandmother could not see. She tapped again, this time with her knuckle. She determined that the fans must be loud and went on her way.
    The cool of the bank brought relief from the day’s ballooning warmth. Being a weekday, the grandmother didn’t have to wait long. After some minutes, she heard her name and looked up to find the advisor beckoning her over. They made small talk—the weather, the shaky onset of the new composting program, the coming Innovation Fair—before settling on the day’s business.
    “It’s not looking good,” the advisor said. She kept her eyes focused on the open file in front of her. A recent émigré from the City, the advisor was young and lean with straight chestnut hair and a graduate degree and the knowledge that men other than her husband hoped to sleep with her.
    “Give it to me straight, now,” the grandmother said. She unsheathed the lollipop.
    “You have six months,” the advisor said. “That’s the best I could do. I’m sorry, but that’s it. I’d get you more if I could. Really I would. But this is it.”
    “My oh my,” the grandmother said.
    “You’ll need to be out by then I’m afraid,” the advisor said. “Completely out. All your personal items, too, if you want them. They’ll auction whatever you leave behind. But look. You don’t need to pay anymore, and you won’t owe a cent. We’re prepared to take the loss. You have family nearby? A place you can go?”
    “What’s that?” the grandmother asked. “You’re telling me I don’t have to pay? That I don’t owe anything at all? Is that what you’re telling me, dear?”
    “That’s right,” the advisor said as the grandmother started to smile and clap and laugh. “But listen, please. The date is firm. It’s been sold, but I’ve negotiated six months for you find a new arrangement.”
    “Well wouldn’t you know it!” the grandmother said. “Just this very last week I was asking the ladies at the First Baptist luncheon for their prayers because I’ve been in a tight spot since Martin passed, bless him, and well, you know, the money doesn’t last forever. And now you’re telling me I don’t need to pay at all?”
    The advisor looked at her in astonishment, taking her time in composing her response until she had no time left.
    “Just this very last week!” the grandmother said. “Wait until I tell the ladies.”
    She shuffled around the desk and hugged and kissed the advisor. In the still of the bank her cries of gratitude echoed. On her way out the grandmother sang:
    When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
    When sorrows like sea billows roll;
    Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
    It is well, it is well, with my soul.
    It is well, with my soul,
    It is well, with my soul,
    It is well, it is well, with my soul.
    Outside, heat punished the town. Hat in hand, the grandmother stood in front of the bank, dabbing the sweat from her brow and temples. She dried her glistening jowls and considered her options. Earlier in the day, before the sun had risen, she had planned on visiting her grandson, but she now wondered if the walk to the detention center was more than she could bear under such conditions. She retraced her route, taking shaded paths when she could.
    The grandmother trudged up the steps to her house. Once inside, she opened the windows and turned on as many fans as she could find. Her dress was heavy and damp, and she chose to cool off in her slip and brassiere. In the refrigerator she found lemonade and a piece of stale cake left over from last week’s luncheon. She served herself and sat on the couch, her weary legs steadied by an ottoman, her bare and swollen stomach cooled by the bottom of the glass of lemonade. She turned on the television.
    An off-screen host described the faraway scene in otherworldly terms and phrases—category 5, irreversible damage, millions displaced and fatalities rising, homes submerged at best and washed away at worst, poor luck for an already poor nation—and the grandmother watched as a windblown mother cried and screamed in a foreign tongue and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. The camera cut to a brown baby found still and face down in the mud.
    My oh my, she thought, what a world we have here.
    A breeze swept through the room. The grandmother decided that the cake tasted just as good as the day it was made.

Christian and the Santa Claus Bums

    Christian is a five-year-old boy who lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He has only one problem. Christian is sometimes a little too smart for his own good.
    One winter morning Christian was on his way to kindergarten with his mother. They passed a building with a big window. Inside Christian saw 20 or 30 men dressed as Santa Clauses. They were all eating breakfast.
    “Mommy! Mommy! Why do they have all those Santa Clauses?”
    Christian’s mother was just as surprised as he was. Why indeed did they have all those Santa Clauses?
    “I guess they’re all having their breakfast,” was all she could reply.
    “That’s no answer!” said Christian. “I asked you why they have all those Santa Clauses. I thought there was only one Santa Claus.”
    “You’re right, Christian. There is only one Santa Claus.”
    “Well who are those guys in there eating breakfast?”
    “I don’t know who they are, Christian, but I can tell you one thing. None of them is Santa Claus.”
    That answer seemed to satisfy Christian for a few minutes, but when he got to school, he told his friends what he had seen.
    “I know who those men are,” said Adam.
    “Who are they?” everyone wanted to know.
    “They’re bums!” shouted Adams. “That’s who they are!”
    “Bums?” everyone asked. “Bums? Then why are they dressed up like Santa Claus?”
    “No one had an answer for that one. When Christian’s father picked him up from school that evening, Christian told him about the Santa Claus bums.
    “Christian, don’t call them the Santa Claus bums.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well, it isn’t nice to call someone a bum.”
    “If it isn’t nice, daddy, then how come you do it?”
    “Well, the guys I call bums are real bums. Remember that guy who tried to clean our windshield yesterday? He was a bum.”
    “That’s no answer!” said Christian. “If it’s not nice to call one person a bum, then why is it O.K. to call another person a bum?”
    “Christian, when you are older, then you will understand things better. But right now I don’t want to hear you call anyone a Santa Clause bum. All right?”
    Christian knew he’d better pretend to agree with his father, so he didn’t say anything. He just nodded “yes”.
    His parents had pretty much forgotten about the Santa Claus bums, when, just one week later, Christian and his mother were on their way to kindergarten. Well, can you guess what they saw? That’s right! There were about 20 Santa Clauses walking across the street, and then getting on a bus.
    Christian began to shout. He forgot his mother was standing right next to him. He forgot what his father had told him.
    “Those guys aren’t Santa Clauses! They’re bums! They’re just dressed like Santa Clauses. Those are fake beards. They have pillows under their coats. Those guys are Santa Claus bums!”
    Christian’s mother was shocked, but most people passing by stopped and laughed. One man knelt down to talk to Christian. He was wearing a business suit under his coat. He told Christian, “You’re right, son. Those men are bums. I want to thank you. You’ve made my day.” Then he shook Christian’s hand, stood up and walked away.
    “Christian! How could you say such an awful thing?” asked his mother.
    Christian was confused. Nearly everyone had laughed. The man had told him he was right and even thanked him. But now his mommy was mad at him. And he had a feeling that when his daddy heard about this, he would be madder than his mommy.
    Now remember that Christian is a very smart little boy. Christian thought to himself—“Hmmmmm. Mommy’s mad. She’ll talk to daddy. So I better do what they told the president to do when he did something bad and everybody yelled at him. I think they called it ‘damage control,’ whatever that means.”
    “Mommy,” Christian said, “I’m sorry I called those men bums.”
    His mommy just looked at him.
    “Hmmmmm,” Christian thought. “She’s not going for that excuse.” “Mommy, why do those men dress up like Santa Clauses?”
    “That’s a good question, Christian. Those men in Santa Claus suits go all over the city to raise money for poor people.”
    “Really? But aren’t they poor?”
    “Well, yes, Christian. I think some of the money they raise goes to help them as well.”
    When he got to school, Christian told all his friends what happened. Everybody laughed and laughed when he yelled again and again: “Those guys aren’t Santa Clauses! They’re bums!”
    His teacher overheard Christian and felt very bad. Mrs. Grady had lived in the neighborhood for many years and she had seen the men dressed like Santa Clauses every year during the weeks just before Christmas. They always made her sad because she knew they were really poor men who dressed up like the real Santa Claus, and stood outside on the streets all day ringing bells, and saying “Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas,” over and over again, asking passersby to give money to the less fortunate.
    Mrs. Grady knew it couldn’t be very pleasant work and she often wondered what these men did the rest of the year, where they lived, and if they had families. She also knew that Christian and his friends didn’t mean to be cruel. Children are basically very honest, and they were just telling each other what their parents and other adults said to themselves—that these were not real Santa Clauses, but only poor men, or as Christian called them, “bums,” dressed up as Santa Clauses.
    So Mrs. Grady decided she would have a talk with all the children about the Santa Clauses. “Children! Children! Is everybody ready for a story?”
    Of course they were. Everyone stopped what they were doing and sat around Mrs. Grady. When everyone was settled, she began.
    “A long time ago there was a musician with a very funny name. His name was Offenbach. He had moved to a city that he loved very much, and he wrote a song about it. The first two lines went like this:
    ‘Winter has come to the city.
    The pavements are icy and cold.’
    “Offenbach wrote those words a long time ago. But they could describe what New York is like right now. The streets are so cold that no one is outside who doesn’t have to be. But on the Bowery there are still a lot of people who stay outside. Do you know who lives on the Bowery?”
    “Drunks!” “Drunken old men!” “Bums!” called out most of the children.
    “That’s right! They are very sick men. And very poor. And they are all out there in the cold. While everyone else is in their nice warm homes.”
    “Don’t they want to be out there? Someone said on television that they like to be out there,” said Beth.
    “Would you like to be out there, Beth?” asked Mrs. Grady
    “Nooooooooo!” answered Beth, hugging herself.
    “Would any of you like to be out there all day and all night in the rain and snow?”
    “Nooooooooo,” they all replied in a chorus.
    “Well then,” said Mrs. Grady, “I guess they don’t want to be out there either.”
    “Aren’t there places for them to go?” asked Ricky.
    “They call them ‘shelters,’” said Christian. “We used to live near one. There were drunks on our block all the time.”
    “That’s right,” said Mrs. Grady. “Ricky and Christian are both right. They can go to shelters. Have any of you ever been inside a shelter?”
    Nobody said anything. Most of them just shook their heads. They were waiting for Mrs. Grady to tell them what it looked like inside a shelter.
    “Well, to be truthful, I’ve never been inside a shelter myself. But from the pictures I’ve seen of them in the newspapers, I don’t think I’d ever want to sleep in one. They are usually in very large buildings, with row after row of beds all in one big room.”
    “Do any of the men snore?” asked Amy.
    The children started to giggle. “My daddy snores,” volunteered Ricky, “but then my mommy pinches his nose, so he stops.”
    Now everyone was giggling, even Mrs. Grady.
    “Well, I’ll bet,” she said, “that most of them snore. In fact I’ll bet they all snore so loud that you’d think the whole building would fall down!”
    Now everyone was laughing. Several of the little boys started to make snoring noises. This went on for a couple of minutes. As it began to die down, Mrs. Grady asked the children, “Now how many of you would like to sleep in a shelter?” Only Ricky raised his hand.
    “I don’t mind snoring, Mrs. Grady. I don’t think anyone could snore louder than my father.” A few of the children giggled at this.
    “Well, how do you think all those poor homeless men feel? They can’t go to the shelters because they can’t get any sleep. So they have to take their chances sleeping out on the street.”
    “But it’s so cold out there,” said Anthony. “Especially when it snows,” added Beth.
    “Why would anyone want to sleep in the snow?” asked Christian.
    “That’s a good question,” replied Mrs. Grady. “Why would anyone want to sleep in the snow?” she asked. “Unless he had to. Unless he didn’t have any place to go.”
    “I’m glad I don’t have to sleep in the snow,” said Jennifer.
    “Me too! Me too!” echoed the other children.
    “That’s right,” said Mrs. Grady. “None of us has to sleep outside in the snow. Do you know why we don’t have to?”
    “Because we have mommies and daddies,” said Adam.
    “And our own homes,” said Ricky.
    “I have my own room,” said Jennifer.
    “So do I!” echoed most of the other children.
    “I have to share my room with Kathy. She’s my sister,” whined Danielle.
    “Well,” said their teacher, “that is still a lot better than sleeping out in the snow, isn’t it Danielle?”
    “I guess so, Mrs. Grady.”
    “Well then, children, do you understand why these men have to sleep outside in the street, even when it snows?”
    They all nodded their heads.
    “Actually there are other things that are very bad in the shelters. Some of them are very dirty.”
    “Dirtier than the street?” asked Amy.
    “Yes Amy, even dirtier than the street. Now that’s pretty dirty, isn’t it?”
    Everyone agreed.
    “And some of the shelters are very unsafe. So a lot of the men are afraid to go there.”
    “Aren’t there ladies out on the street?” asked Christian.
    “Yeah,” said Adam. “They’re shopping bag ladies.”
    “There’s this lady who stays down the block from us,” added Jennifer. “Boy, does she stink!”
    This made everybody laugh. A few of the children held their noses. “Peee-you!” yelled Ricky.
    When they finally calmed down Mrs. Grady continued. “There are a lot of poor women who live on the street. And the reason they are called shopping bag ladies—”
    “I know! I know!” yelled Adam. “Because they keep all their stuff in shopping bags!”
    “That’s right, Adam,” replied their teacher. “These women keep all their things with them because they are afraid someone will steal them. Everything they have in the world is in those plastic bags.”
    “Why don’t they go to the shelter?” asked Amy. “Because of the snoring?”
    “Maybe the snoring bothers them, Amy, but I think it’s mainly because they’re afraid they’ll be robbed in the shelters.”
    “Why don’t they move someplace else?” asked Christian.
    “There isn’t any place they could afford. Remember that they are very poor. Do you know how expensive it is to live in New York?”
    “My daddy says it cost a thousand dollars to live in New York,” said Beth.
    “That’s cheap! A thousand dollars! You know what my mommy says? You can’t get a hole in the wall for a thousand dollars!” exclaimed Danielle.
    “Children—a thousand dollars is a lot of money. And none of these poor people has a thousand dollars. If they did, they wouldn’t be poor. Anyway, they don’t have enough money to live anywhere, except out on the street. So now you know why these people have to sleep out on the street even when it snows.”
    They all nodded their heads.
    “This makes me very sad,” said Jennifer in a very soft voice.
    “Me too!” said Ricky.
    “Me too! Me too!” said all the other children.
    Mrs. Grady waited until they all quieted down. When they finally did, she said, “Well, then, we all agree that it is very sad that these people have to sleep out on the street, even when it snows ... Now I want to tell you about some people who are trying to help all these homeless people. Would you like to hear about that?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Grady!” all the children exclaimed.
    “I’m going to ask Christian to help me. Christian, do you know the street where all the Santa Clauses live?”
    “Santa Clauses!” yelled Ricky. There is only one real Santa Claus. Everybody knows that!”
    “Children! Ricky has made an excellent point! There is indeed just one real Santa Claus. So let’s see if we can find out why all those other men are dressing up to look like the real Santa Claus.
    “Christian, do you know the name of that street where you saw all those men?”
    “It’s the wide street with the big church. Maybe three blocks from here. Not far. They have a whole big pile of those Santa Clauses—well they’re dressed up like Santa Clauses. I saw them eating breakfast.”
    “They’re bums! They’re Santa Claus bums!” some of the other children shouted.
    When they finally quieted down, she said to them: “I’m going to tell you something very sad. Are you ready?”
    It was so quiet you actually could hear a pin drop.
    “Those men who dress up like Santa Clauses are very poor. But they are not bums. Those men put on their Santa Claus costumes and they stand out on the street all day. Do you know what they do?”
    “They ring bells. Like this—ding-a-ling! Ding-a-ling!” said Anthony. “And they say, ‘Ho, ho, ho!’”
    “That’s right, Anthony. But why do they stand outside all day ringing their bells and saying ‘Ho, ho, ho?’”
    “I know! I know!” yelled Danielle. “They ask everyone for money.”
    “You’re absolutely right, Danielle! Now here is the hardest question of all. Is everybody ready?”
    Everybody was ready.
    “Very well, then. After they collect all that money, what do you think they do with it?”
    That was a very hard question. Even Adam, who had an answer for almost everything, could not think of one. He just shrugged his shoulders.
    “Do they take it home with them?” prompted Mrs. Grady.
    “I don’t think so,” answered Beth.
    “Good!” replied Mrs. Grady. “Now if they don’t take it home with them, where do they take all that money?”
    “I know! I know!” shouted Christian. They bring it to that building where they eat breakfast.”
    “That’s right! That’s where they bring it!”
    “But what do they do with it?” asked Amy.
    “Now that is a very good question. Doesn’t everyone think that’s a very good question?” All the children nodded “yes”. Well, what do you think they do with all the money?”
    Again, everyone just sat there trying to figure out the answer. Finally Jennifer blurted out: “They >give it away to poor people!”
    “That’s right! Jennifer’s right! They give away the money they collect to poor people.”
    “But those guys are poor!” objected Ricky.
    “They are,” said Mrs. Grady. “So they get to keep some of the money they collect.”
    “Why can’t they keep all of it?” asked Beth.
    “Because they are collecting to help a lot of poor people — especially the homeless people you see sleeping out in the street. It wouldn’t be fair for them to keep all the money for themselves.”
    ‘But if they are collecting so much money, how come there are still so many people out on the street?” asked Ricky.
    “Because, children, the men dressed as Santa Clauses can’t collect enough money to help all of the people out on the street. Do you know why?”
    “I know! I know!” yelled Amy. “It’s because people don’t give them enough money. Sometimes my father throws a quarter into the chimney.”
    “My mother throws in her change from her purse,” said Danielle.
    “I put a dime in once,” said Beth.
    “Well,” said Mrs. Grady, “It is good that you and your parents give money to those Santas to help the poor, but it isn’t enough to help everyone. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who have no place to live, and not enough to eat, and no warm clothes to wear.”
    The children grew very quiet and very sad. Finally Christian spoke up. “I think we should help them.”
    “Yes!” everyone agreed, “Let’s help them!”
    “Let’s be the Santa Claus’s helpers,” said Adam. “We can help them collect money!”
    “And we could dress up like Santa’s helpers,” added Amy.
    “My mommy can make me an outfit on her sewing machine,” said Danielle. “She made Dracula costumes on Halloween for me and my sister.”
    “It’ll be as much fun as Halloween!” exclaimed Christian. “Besides, I was sick on Halloween and I couldn’t go out trick-or-treating.”
    “This time,” said Mrs. Grady, “you’ll be collecting money for poor people.”
    “That’s better than getting money and candy and stuff for ourselves, isn’t it, Mrs. Grady?” asked Christian.
    “Yes, Christian, it certainly is!” she replied. “Now that you have decided to be Santa’s helpers, the next thing is to see that everyone gets their outfits to wear. That’s very important, you know. Those Santa Clauses you’ve seen have very good costumes, and if we’re going to be Santa’s helpers, we will need very good costumes indeed.”
    “My mommy will make my costume,” said Danielle.
    “And my mommy will make mine,” said Adam.
    “Here’s what we’ll do,” said Mrs. Grady. “I will give you each a letter to take home with you this afternoon. And in the letter I will ask your parents if they can make you a Santa’s helper costume. Or buy one for you. I even know the name of a couple of stores in the neighborhood that sell them.”
    “Mrs. Grady,” said Jennifer, “when everybody has a costume, will we go out and help Santa collect money?”
    “That’s right, Jennifer. With all of us helping Santa, we’ll be able to collect a lot of money to help all the poor people who have to sleep out on the street. O.K. now, I’m going to write that letter and you can all go back to playing.”
    A few days later, when everybody had a costume, Mrs. Grady explained to the children how they would work as Santa’s helpers. “Tomorrow afternoon we’ll all be going to help one of the Santas. The school has made all the arrangements. Right after lunch a bus will pick us up and take us to Park Ave. Does anyone know where Park Ave. is?”
    “Is that where Central Park is?” asked Beth.
    “It’s a parking lot!” exclaimed Christian.
    “How can you have a park and an avenue at the same place?” asked Ricky.
    “That’s were all the rich people live,” said Amy. She was very sure of this because her father had said this many times.
    “That’s right, Amy! A lot of very rich people live on Park Ave,” replied the teacher.
    “And they’re going to give us a lot of money,” said Anthony.
    “I hope so, Anthony. Now does everybody understand what we’re going to do tomorrow?”
    Everyone nodded. The children knew that tomorrow they would all be going to Park Ave. They would all be dressed as Santa’s helpers. And they would collect a lot of money from the rich people and give it to the poor homeless people.
    The next day right after lunch, a yellow bus pulled up in front of the school. The children all got on the bus. So did Mrs. Grady and two parents. They were the only ones who weren’t dressed as Santa’s helpers.
    It was a beautiful afternoon. The pale winter sun shined as the bus made its way uptown. Pretty soon they arrived at Park Ave. Everyone saw the man dressed as Santa Claus ringing his bell. But even though they knew he wasn’t a real Santa Claus, no one said anything. One by one, they went up to him and introduced themselves. He patted each one on the head, and said, “Ho, ho, ho! How are you today?” He even told them that he wasn’t really Santa Claus and that his name was Bill. He learned everyone’s name and could make funny faces.
    Mrs. Grady handed each child a little chimney and reminded everyone to say,
    “Please give to the homeless. Please help the homeless.”
    “And what do you say when they put money in your chimney?” she prompted.
    “Thank you!”
    “Very good,” replied the teacher. Now I want everybody to stay very close to Santa. All right, children?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Grady!” they shouted.
    Soon a whole crowd of passersby had gathered around Santa and his helpers. A very well dressed man knelt down and said to Ricky, “I haven’t seen any of Santa’s helpers around these parts. I’ve seen plenty of Santa Clauses, but never a Santa’s helper. How are you helping Santa?” he asked.
    “We’re collecting money to help the homeless.”
    “Are you homeless, young man?”
    “No!” Ricky laughed. “Not me! But I’m collecting money to help all the poor homeless people who live out on the street.”
    “In that case,” said the man straightening up and reaching into his pocket, “I’d like to contribute.” He took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and put it into Ricky’s chimney.
    Just then a red faced lady in a mink coat got out of a chauffeured limousine. “Wait right here, James.” Then she saw the Santa Claus and all the children. “What’s all this?” she asked.
    “We’re Santa’s helpers,” Jennifer replied. “We’re giving the money we collect to the homeless.”
    “What a good idea! “Here’s a nice shiny new penny. And with that she went over to each of the children and put a penny in each of their chimneys.
    Jennifer made a face behind the woman’s back and so did some of the other children. They knew that a penny wasn’t very much to give. But their teacher saw what was going on, and she asked all of the children to gather around her. She wanted to talk to them.
    “Now children, we have to remember why we are here.”
    “To collect money for the homeless!” said Adam.
    “That’s right, Adam. Now we’re here to collect money. Even if it’s a penny. Every little bit helps.”
    “But she could have given us more than a penny, Mrs. Grady,” protested Jennifer.
    “Yeah,” added Danielle, “did you see her car? And that soldier she had with her?”
    “That man isn’t a soldier, Danielle. He’s her driver. And I agree with Jennifer that she could have given more than a penny. But if we make faces at the people who give us only a penny, then other people will see this, and they may not give anything at all. O.K.?”
    Everybody said “O.K.”
    “Good!” said Mrs. Grady, “Now children, let’s collect some more money for the poor homeless people.”
    For the next hour the children collected money from the passersby. When they were finished, they emptied out their chimneys into Santa’s big chimney.
    “All of you have been a very big help,” Bill said. Then he said “Ho, ho, ho—have a merry Christmas! ... Oh, I almost forgot!” And he gave each of the children a piece of candy.
    All the way back downtown to the school, the children chattered excitedly about what they had done. Everyone remembered the woman who gave them the pennies. But most of all, they talked about the poor homeless people who would have to spend Christmas out on the street.
    When they got back to the school they took off their Santa’s helpers outfits. They would be using them the next day and the day after that. Mrs. Grady had made arrangements for them to help a different Santa every day for the rest of the week.
    Soon it was the day before Christmas, a very cold afternoon. The weather report said it might snow. But the children were very sad. Even though they would all be getting toys and other presents, they knew that there would be poor people out on the street tonight with no place to go.
    When their teacher said that the bus was waiting for them, they all picked up their little chimneys and went outside. Today they would stand in front of Macy’s — the largest store in the world.
    Mrs. Grady understood why the children were so sad. On the day before Christmas, children are usually very happy. But she knew that they were thinking about all the poor homeless people, and that this afternoon would be the last time they would be helping Santa.
    The whole city seemed like one big traffic jam. Many people were doing last minute shopping. Others were trying to get home early. Everyone was trying to get someplace else and was in a big hurry.
    The children introduced themselves to the Santa Claus. His name was Charlie. “Pull my beard,” he told Christian, “but not too hard.” Christian pulled it.
    “It’s real! It’s real!” he squealed. Now all the others rushed up to Charlie and pulled his beard. It was real all right. They were so busy pulling Santa’s beard, no one noticed that a television camera crew had set up and was taping all the Santa’s helpers pulling Santa’s beard. Of course Mrs. Grady noticed and she told the reporter who was with the camera crew that the children were helping Santa collect money for poor homeless people.
    “This would make a wonderful human interest story! Would it be all right if I interviewed the children?”
    “Are you kidding?” asked the teacher. “I’m sure the children would be delighted! Let’s tell them!”
    “Children!” she shouted. “This is Mary Beth, a television reporter. And guess what! She would like to interview you.”
    “Will we be on the six o’clock news?” asked Christian.
    “Well,” said the reporter. “I certainly hope so. I can’t give you any guarantees, young man, but I will try to get all of you on the six o’clock news. Now I want each of you to tell me your name and what you’re doing here today right in front of Macy’s.”
    “My name is Christian, and I’m helping Santa Claus collect money to help poor people.”
    “And my name is Beth. I hope that all the poor people have some place warm to stay tonight.”
    Mary Beth told them that they were doing a great job, and then she asked Amy if she had anything to add.
    “My name is Amy, and I think that everyone who has money should give some of it to help poor homeless people.”
    The interviews continued until each child had been introduced and had told the reporter something about helping the poor. The camera crew continued taping as the children went back to work collecting money. After about half an hour Mary Beth asked the crew to pack up. Then she told the children that they had to rush back to the studio. “I can’t make any promises,” she said, “but all of you might be on TV tonight. At least you will be if I have anything to say about it.”
    The mood on the bus ride downtown was a lot better than it had been just a couple of hours earlier. It had even started snowing, so there it would be a white Christmas after all.
    When their parents came to pick them up, the children excitedly told them they were going to be on the six o’clock news. All the way home Christian told his mommy about that afternoon, the reporter, the TV cameras, and he tried to remember what he had said to the reporter. “Anyway,” he concluded, “we’ll be able to see it in a few minutes.”
    Christian’s daddy came home just before six o’clock, and they put on the TV. They watched and watched, but there was nothing about the children, nothing about Macy’s, and nothing about Santa Claus except for an advertisement with a guy dressed like a Santa Claus screaming about a store named “Crazy Eddie’s.” Just before the news ended, one of the reporters announced that there would be a special program about Christmas at eight o’clock that everyone should watch.
    “Maybe we’ll be on that program.” said Christian. He didn’t really believe this. He just didn’t want to give up hope.
    Christian’s parents said he could stay up since it was the night before Christmas. So they sat down to have supper, but this time Christian didn’t want to talk about what had happened outside Macy’s.
    At eight o’clock they turned on the TV. The announcer said that instead of the regular program, they were going to show a special Christmas program. It would be about poor people and how they would spend their Christmas.
    The first scene in the program was their own neighborhood, then the Bowery, a shot of some shopping bag ladies, a men’s shelter, and then 20 or 30 Santa Clauses walking across a street. Christian almost blurted out, “Look!” Luckily, he caught himself just before he added, “the Santa Claus bums!”
    Then the announcer came on again. “There are estimates that over 50,000 New Yorkers are homeless, and many of them will have to spend their Christmas out on the street. And while the snow continues to pile up, most of us are together this evening with our families inside our nice warm homes.
    “But there are thousands of people in this city with no homes to go to, and no families with whom to spend the holidays. This program is about these people, and it is also about those who are trying to help them. One group that is helping is composed of five-year-old children.”
    “That’s us!” shouted Christian. “We’re going to be on television!”
    And sure enough, there they were! “Our camera crew found this scene in front of Macy’s this afternoon,” he continued. “Mary Beth Jorgensen had a chance to interview these five-year-olds, who have been working every afternoon as Santa’s helpers.
    First Christian went. Then Beth. Then Amy. And the next and the next and the next. Until everyone had been interviewed.
    “Mommy! Mommy! They did the whole class! Everybody! Even Ricky!”
    Christian had never seen himself on TV. After all, how many five-year-olds were even on a kiddie show? There were pictures of the whole group with their chimneys, of Charlie the Santa Claus, of Mrs. Grady watching over them, and then there were pictures of people putting money into their chimneys. There was even snow falling. He hadn’t noticed it was snowing until they were all back on the bus.
    “In place of commercial messages, there will be listings posted of the agencies that help poor and homeless New Yorkers and their contact information. Please help them help those in need.”
    After the first listing, the announcer was back again, and there were clips of homeless shelters and of people sleeping in cardboard cartons on the icy sidewalks. There were scenes of soup kitchens and food pantries, and of the lines of people waiting to get inside.
    Toward the end of the program, there was another clip of Santa and his helpers in front of Macy’s collecting donations from passersby. And then the announcer closed with these words: “What these children are doing is what all of us should be doing this holiday season. We should be helping those less fortunate than ourselves. After all, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
    “So let me extend my thanks and those of Mary Beth Joregensen, her camera crew, and all the folks here at our station to Santa’s little helpers who worked so hard to make Christmas a lot better for the City’s poor people. And may you all have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!”
    Well we’re just about the end of our story. We’d like to say that as a result of that TV special and the efforts of Santa’s helpers, millions of dollars poured in to help the poor people of New York City. And who knows? Maybe next Christmas everybody in the City—even the poorest New Yorkers — will have a nice warm place to stay.

Hillary and Saul

    If Hillary runs for office and is elected, the Nanny State will be further entrenched increasing our dependency on the government. This leaves little doubt that as Obama exits the White House a super care-giver Nanny could enter and preside over the Nanny state. (FP Christmas Edition 2014 John Amendall)

    Most Americans have never heard of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) but Hillary Rodham Clinton has. He was a communist/Marxist, who through his books, lectures and correspondence, helped establish the tactics of infiltration into a capitalist state. His relevance deserves serious attention because of his influence on President Obama and in particular Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.
    In Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals he invoked the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves. It is a challenge to perceive Hillary (Wellesley, Yale Law School), Barack Obama (Occidental College, Harvard Law School), Michelle Obama (Princeton University, Harvard Law School) and Saul Alinsky (University of Chicago) as Have-Nots. What is wrong with this picture?
    A standing president and presidential candidate have assumed the roles of Have-Nots undermining the Haves which they actually belong to. By affecting this underdog role they’re attempting to represent the Have-Nots against the Haves as they strive to impose a socialist government on the nation. Obama clearly wanted to move America to a larger version of England’s socialist society.
    His supporters including impartial broadcasters of major systems adamantly denied this. This makes them seriously suspect as to their intelligence or integrity in regards to Obama’s blatant message.
    In his books Alinsky identified levels of control necessary to create a social state. Some historians opined that Alinsky was a poor man’s Vladimer Lenin simplifying a scheme for world conquest by communism, under Russian rule. Stalin considered Lenin’s converts as Useful Idiots. Obviously we resisted this through World War II and beyond but are now facing a new run of Useful Idiots for socialism.
    According to Alinsky the most important level of control is health care. If you control health care, you control peoples lives. Simple as that. A retired acquaintance of mine visiting England experienced an accident with minor injury. After receiving hospital treatment he was surprised to learn he wasn’t billed for medical services. He was amazed. Thought it was wonderful. My first thought was that English tax payers were paying for the medical treatment of an American capable of affording a round trip to England including room and board and other activities. How seductive that was for a person who had worked hard all his life paying taxes assuming responsibility for his livelihood.
    Another level of control involved poverty. Increase poverty level as high as possible. Poor people are easier to control and will not resist as long as the state provides everything for them to live.
    Still another level of control involves raising the national debt to an unsustainable level. This requires raising taxes producing more poverty. So poverty increases and tax paying Haves must up the ante for the Have-Nots.
    Gun control was another Alinsky favorite. Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. You are able to create a police state. Stalin was certainly successful at this.
    Implement extensive welfare programs. The Government should control every aspect of their lives (food, housing, income). I’m still waiting for welfare programs to move generations of indigents to productive citizens. We’ve long lost control of welfare programs where monitoring efficiency and productivity and enforcing legitimate qualification is deemed offensive to recipients.
    Another insidious control involved education. If you control what people read and listen to you take control of what children learn in school. There is no need for a Department of Education. While recognizing that some states are more committed than others, this responsibility should be assumed at the state level.
    This was an important item for Alinsky. Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools. Religion is the opium of the people (Karl Marx). Flies in the face of: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ? The United States is numerically represented by Christianity (70%). This status coexists with other religions (Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, et al). Alinsky would have none of this, but he’d be pleased that the number of unaffiliated has increased in the last ten years.
    Another Alinsky dictum. Engage in class warfare. Divide the people into the Haves and Have-Nots. Thus causing more discontent making it easier to tax the Haves to support the Have-Nots.
    Does any of the above sound familiar as happening in the Unites States?
    Let’s see. The Affordable Care Act was not supported by the majority of the people. Caries a fine for failure to comply. Medicare is being raided to pay for Obamacare.
    Forty-five million Americans currently qualify below poverty guidelines. Hasn’t appreciably changed since 2010. Obama has attempted to expand the level of qualification thereby increasing the number of Americans below the poverty level depending on Government support. In another one of his numerous executive orders short circuiting congressional approval Obama significantly increased the number of food stamps immediately after his second election. During his second term he expanded the period of workmen’s compensation on unemployment from 90 days to 180 days.
    In regards to class warfare no president in the 20^th ?century has ever been as divisive as Obama. He demonized Governor Romney as an unrepentant rich man vilifying Haves against Haves-Nots. Coincidentally he named John Kerry one of the most wealthy members of congress as Secretary of State. Based on wealth why was Kerry so acceptable in a position of such influence compared to Romney?
    The national debt was $10 trillion when Obama took office in 2008. In 2015 the debt is $18 trillion and may reach $20 trillion by term’s end. In the face of a $10 trillion debt Obama imposed the largest social program (Obamacare) since LBJ’s Great Society Program. The latter co-opted the Social Security retirement trust into the general trust to pay for his program. So the Obama administration has increased the debt by 80% requiring higher tax rates for Haves to pay their fair share of taxes for the Have-Nots.
    This is the direction the nation has taken. Alinsky’s influence on Obama’s programs, executive orders, and appointment of socialist program czars has been enormous.
    In the immediate future 2016 we will elect a new president. FDR started us down the road to socialism with his New Deal; and LBJ expanded this thrust with his Great Society; and Obamacare has moved us much closer to socialized medicine, what might we expect from Alinsky’s protégée Hillary Clinton?
    In addition to her senior thesis on Saul Alinsky, we now know there was a significant level of correspondence between the two. Hillary should be seriously challenged during her presidential run about the level of Alinsky’s radical views on her future proposed programs.