welcome to volume 21 (May 2005) of

down in the dirt
internet issn 1554-9666
(for the print issn 1554-9623) Alexandira Rand, Editor
http://scars.tv - click on down in the dirt

Of this Wilting Michelle Greenblatt “Eulogize the mundane.” -- William Kissinger a body is trembling in the sand the color is sandy pink a little girl’s curls with ribbons head rocking for a moment with death’s seizure the man who shot her is more than a little unsorry smiling hideously upon the dawn guns drawn. the noise less of a scream than a victory whoop when the bullet shot thru a radiance the sand so opulent although dreaming is better / it would make for a good photograph & as the girl lies in the sand he peoples the murdering ruthlessness:within the tiny shot star the bullet left in his stomach he says wait i am an american which makes me & pretty much everyone else laugh in tune with the subharmonic music of shells dropping & of this wilting we read the story eating toast over newspaper talking shit over it like a bird in a cage 3.25.2005 HAPPY HOUR Chris Major Saturday night, the town centre’s litter strewn and can cluttered. Teens swagger and sway passed the fluid windows of heaving bars, underagers swilling furtive swigs from a communal can as their cig smoke hovers like steam over quenched youth. Squating, a young girl, crumpled as a tissue on the club steps; and as her boyfriend writhes on the dancefloor, she sobs, shocked by the awful noise, the flashing lights, and being shoved aside by rushing paramedics............ Dirty Jen Gabrielson Did it feel good, dirtying up the little girl who wasn’t even yours? Did it turn you on when no one was home, just the two of you? Was it exciting knowing that no one knew, and no one would for years, your little game could go on. Does it feel good now, everyone knows and it’s over for good. You can no longer have the woman who was never yours. Spanish Influenza Sharon Ellis Mrs. Carpetti says that if the flu is coming for me, it’s going to get me no matter what I do to stop it. She’s old and Italian, so when she’s gone from the hallway my father does an impression of how she talks. His voice goes up three octaves and into an irregular lilting singsong. He says, “A-coming for you,” and “A-going to get you,” but she doesn’t really sound like that. Mrs. Carpetti has hardly left the North End since 1891 when she came to this country, but that is longer ago than when my father came over from Ireland. That doesn’t matter to him. He swears he hears her Italian accent spread thick over every word, like butter over bread. He likes to do comical impressions of the neighborhood Italians in a loud voice, right here in my apartment when he comes to visit. The walls of the tenement house are thin, and I have to keep telling him that there are more Italians in this neighborhood than Irish, so he’d better watch his tongue. My father can’t understand why I stay. He thinks I should move back in with him since Shane is hardly ever here. My father says that in the rare moments when Shane is here, he is nothing but a no good drunken bum, but I tell him that I can’t just pick up and leave my husband. I remind him of my sacred marriage vows and he says, “Rubbish to your sacred vows.” I recite a quick prayer to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of fathers, and my father rolls his eyes. Except to pass me to the priest through the church doorway on the day of my christening, my father has avoided all things sacred since my mother died. My father tells me that if I don’t have the sense to leave Shane, I should at least live in familiar surroundings, among our own kind of people, but I shake off his talk as foolish. I’ve become attached to neighbors like Mrs. Carpetti, and I kid my father that the Italians are not so different from us. An Italian drunk off wine is just as good as an Irishman after too many pints. “Have some respect,” he snaps. I end the discussion saying that either way, this is a good place to live, and it couldn’t be closer to Shane’s job with the distillery. Shane works just across the street. From our small window on the second floor I can see through the shadows of the elevated train tracks running down Commercial Street to watch the men walk out into the street in the evening, on their way home for supper. That way I have a plain view of Shane’s back on the nights when he turns the other way, letting me know that he has decided to make a detour in search of gambling, or women, or drink. In all this time it hasn’t once occurred to him to glance back at my face in the window. Or maybe he is only pretending it hasn’t. This night, my father is visiting because I have invited him to celebrate Shane and my wedding anniversary. Maybe I knew all along that Shane wouldn’t come home, and that’s why I invited my father. Last year, on the day of the wedding, I was worried that January was a bad month to get married, but my father reminded me that he and my mother were married in June, and that didn’t stop her from dying from an infection after childbirth. “Besides,” he said, “you should be more concerned with who you’re marrying than when.” I was in love. My father knew as well as I did that he had a better chance of stopping a tidal wave than of talking me out of marrying Shane, but that seems like a long time ago now. Today, on my first anniversary, I think constantly about the fact that I will forever be associating my marriage with ice and snow. I worry still that I have made a dreadful mistake by getting married in the wrong month, but my father says that I shouldn’t be insulting fate by troubling myself with silly superstitions. He believes that whatever is meant to happen will happen, come hell or high water. I usually bake cakes only for birthdays, but early on the cold morning of my anniversary I rubbed my swollen belly and told myself that the heat of the stove would do the baby good. I decided on a molasses cake, but when I had the ingredients laid out on the table with the mixing bowl, cake pan, and wooden spoon, I noticed that I was short of molasses. I went to the window and called and called for the boy in the next building who runs my errands for me, but he never came. I had my heart set on molasses cake, so for about an hour I sat at the window looking across the street at the molasses tank. It dwarfed the other buildings around it like a giant tree stump in a field of delicate wildflowers. The railway sheds, the blacksmith, the fire station, even the railway tracks and the harbor itself, seemed to be gathered around the tank at attention, as though they were waiting for it to speak. In one of the increasingly rare moments in recent memory when Shane had decided to be sociable at home, he talked about the distillery’s vat of molasses. He told me with no little amount of pride, as though he had something to do with it, that the massive cast iron tank is the largest storage tank of its kind in Boston. He said that with any luck the whole lot of molasses will be made into rum just in time, before they pass, what he calls, “the goddamned prohibition.” I asked him how they do that, make molasses into rum, but he didn’t know, so he complained about my cooking. That night I had a nightmare about sinking into that vat and drowning in molasses, all warm and sticky. In the dream they didn’t notice I was in there, and I ended up trapped inside a bottle of Shane’s rum. Looking up at the tank and thinking hard of molasses cake, I willed the molasses to find its way down the street and rescue me. It was a nonsensical thing to do, like hoping for time to pass more quickly, but no more lacking in sense that not allowing myself to leave the apartment for fear of the Spanish Influenza. In the end, I sweetened my cake with sugar. Shane doesn’t come home for our anniversary dinner. My father and I both watch him turn his back and walk casually up the street away from us and out of sight. My father stiffens his lip in a gesture that is meant to tell me that he is doing me the favor of restraint, but this movement is only a disguised lecture on how much effort he has to exert in order to hold back all he has to say on the subject. I suggest to him that we celebrate my anniversary by eating the cake before our supper. My father’s expression turns itself over on its head and he forgets his opinions on Shane in his eagerness to eat dessert first. I mention to my father that it was meant to be a molasses cake, but I couldn’t go out for the molasses, and I know right away that I have made a mistake. He says, “Well, why didn’t you go out and get some bleedin’ molasses, then?” I can’t explain it. “Well?” he insists. “You know perfectly well why not,” I remind him. “I know why. It’s just a whole lot of nonsense. Spanish Influenza my arse,” He says. I know that my father will never understand. He is the kind of person who will have the speed and reflexes to jump out from in front of a speeding train, where I am the kind of person who will wring my hands worrying about speeding trains with such intensity that I will not notice the roof caving in above my head. My father says I don’t make any sense, but sense has nothing to do with it. “The longer you have that baby in you, the stranger you get,” he says. I say, “I’ll have you know that I am perfectly normal,” but I think to myself that I am not. At the beginning of my pregnancy I thought a great deal about what it would mean to be a mother. I thought about things I would never say out loud, like how I often believed it irresponsible of my mother to die so soon after I was born. I thought about the things she could possibly have done to prevent it. Perhaps she should have washed the birthing sheets a little more thoroughly beforehand, or taken better care of her health. In my mind there were a thousand possibilities. It made sense to me, while I sat awash in the glow and excitement of my maternal prospects, in the happy days before swollen ankles and back pain, that it was my responsibility to do everything possible to be here as long as I could, and to ensure that my child would be as well. I heard the stories after armistice came in November. There were boys who had fought across France as heroes and were finally on their way home, but who had died on the way of Spanish Influenza. Some right here in Boston harbor, just feet from their own front doorsteps. There was talk of people in the neighborhood who were struck down with the disease at church, or at the grocer’s, and had died within the hour. This was a bad strain, people said, the worst ever. Influenza was often accepted as something only small children and old people caught, but I heard that this time it could take anyone, no matter what age or how able. I reasoned that if I stayed as close to home as possible, I could keep my baby and myself safe. At first I kept my errands to a minimum, running out early in the morning long before even the housewives ventured out for their morning milk, and running home as quickly as I could. Soon that was not enough, and I wore a kerchief over my face when I went out. Finally, I gave in to the pull of the safety of my stuffy little one-roomed home and paid the neighbor boy a few pennies a week to do my shopping for me. Shane yelled at me on and off for two days over the extra expense, but finally caught himself up again in his other activities and forgot all about me and my fears. I fully realized how little sense it made to think that by staying home I would be immune to disease. I was willing, on milder winter days, to cast open my window and share the air with the outside. I stood face to face inside the apartment with whoever decided to visit, but I had it firmly planted in my head that as long as I remained within the four walls of my own home then no harm, no Spanish Influenza, could come to me. I tried and failed many times to explain this to my father. “What if my baby turned out to be a boy,” I said carefully to him one day, “and he was destined to be a great man, but I went out one day to buy eggs, and the man at the grocery was carrying the Spanish Influenza but didn’t know it, and as a result I died with the little one still inside me? I would have forever robbed the world of the great man my son could have been.” “Well, if he’s never born I don’t suppose he’s destined to be much of anything.” “What if it’s my job to save him?” I ask. “Believe your old man for a change when I tell you that if God wanted the child saved he would find a way to do it.” “What if he’s meant to be a great president who will stop all of the wars in the world?” “Ha!” my father laughed. “An Irish president? Not likely! It’s not too long ago, I’ll have you know, that an honest Irishman was hard put just to get work in this city. And you talk of an Irish president!” I had heard this lecture before. I sighed and told him he was missing my point. On the night of my anniversary my father and I finish the cake quickly, and he gets up soon after for his long walk home. He hugs me in the doorway and says that one of these days I’ll want to come back home without Shane, and when the day comes he’ll be there waiting with open arms. I’m glad the hall is dark enough that he can’t see me crying. Shane comes home so late that night that I have already been asleep and can’t guess the time. He has the sweet-stale smell of hours of drinking, which almost hides the stinging scent of cheap perfume. In the morning I make Shane’s breakfast without a word. He eats and leaves the apartment equally silent. I stand with the door to the hall open and lean on it while I listen to Shane’s steps fading away down the stairs. Mrs. Carpetti is there in her doorway, but I hear her before I see her and she startles me. “You are such a nice girl. Why don’t you get out of this house and find a nice Italian boy who will take good care of you?” I shake my head and smile at her as I always do when she calls out her advice. The day is warm for January, especially compared to the stinging cold of the days before. My feet and ankles are swelling with the change in temperature, so much so that by mid-morning I feel as though they are ready to burst and I have to sit down by the window and prop them up on the other chair. I breathe in the breeze from the harbor and feel grateful. My apartment may be small and dark, but the window is a luxury that makes all the difference. I know that the Carpettis don’t have one, and neither do two of the four families upstairs. I have asked Mrs. Carpetti a hundred times to come and sit by the open window with me, but she says that she has too many things to do to sit around sniffing at the air. I know she is proud and thinks of my offer as charity. Mrs. Carpetti sees herself as the kind of woman who gives charity, not the kind who accepts it. I pass the rosary through my fingers and the baby rolls around in summersaults. I listen to the sounds of the street. I hear the horses’ hooves and their drivers yelling to each other. The tracks of the elevated train hum and clang with each passing car. As it gets close to noon the workers begin to straggle out into the street, looking for a nice place to eat their lunches outside on a rare mild January day. I hear one man say to another, as he pulls a hard-boiled egg out of his lunchbox, “It’s nothing but luck to have a day like today, and that’s for sure.” His companion says, “I would say it could be almost as favorable a day as when the Red Sox won the World Series.” The first man nods so hard in agreement that he almost drops his egg. I wonder how long it will take for them to forget about that victory. It’s already been four months. I am sitting and listening for so long, and with such concentration, that I barely notice my water has broken. When I finally do feel it and see it, I look out into the street and see that the men eating their lunches have vanished. I call out a feeble and tentative, “Hello?” to the street from the window, but there is no answer. I shuffle to the doorway with my knees together in an effort to slow the inevitable, and call down the empty hallway to Mrs. Carpetti. Nothing. I drop my rosary and I am out in the street in a housecoat and stockings. I have no fear or thought of Influenza, and think only of finding help. A wagon rolls by, but the hooves of the horse pulling it pound the snowless pavement with such force and speed that the driver cannot hear or see me as he rolls past. I think that I must find Shane, but I am turned around in pain and urgency, and before know it I am running in the opposite direction from Shane and the molasses tank. All I can think to do is climb the hollow steps up to the train tracks, looking for help. Above the street, on the platform along the tracks, I find a moment of calm between contractions. When I look down there is Shane below me in the shadows behind the blacksmith’s, throwing dice. Instinctively, and without thinking that he cannot see me, I wave and call his name, but I cannot even hear my own voice over the sound of the train approaching from Battery Street. In the second before the boom, I think Shane sees me and I wave harder. There is a loud dull noise. I think at first that the vibration coming up from my feet and through my whole body is the train, but when the train is just past me the rumble grows stronger, not more feeble, and I know it must be something else. The ground seems to growl. Down below, Shane has a look of surprise on his face. I laugh for a second at his confusion before the scene sinks in. Shane disappears beneath the tide of the sticky river that rushes past me only a moment later, under the tracks and trellises beneath my feet. The thin winter sunlight grows momentarily thinner, and everything is sucked from sight by the force of the brown and bubbling beast. The firehouse is pushed towards the water, and pauses at the edge as though it is trying to decide if it will go in for a swim. Not far away from me there is a crash, and a nearby building is tossed towards me, riding high on a thick wave. It smashes into one of the tall legs of the elevated track, which buckles, bends, and breaks. The train grinds to a halt and stops just short of careening headlong into the street as the track ahead of it sinks down to the ground like a sapling under heavy snow. Horses and men shift and sink in the wave below me. I don’t know what is worse: the ones that scream as they are pushed and pulled by the boiling mass, or the ones who are sucked under quickly and silenced. Machines, homes, and hardware bob and dip below me until it all grinds slowly to a stop and all that I can see of the city is suffocated. When it becomes quiet, the unmistakable scent of molasses comes up to me in a thick and overpowering swell. People try to climb out and away, only to be sucked back down the more they struggle. The rescue squads come, but lose their boots and socks to the bog of molasses now settled silently on every street. The rescue men have to rescue each other when they struggle to walk through the mess. Horses yell and strain to move from their sticky prisons. They are quickly put down in favor of ending their pain. I watch for as long as I can before a policeman sees me and knows that I am only minutes away from parenthood. He breaks me from my trance by carrying me away in his arms as fast as he can. The baby comes only seconds after I arrive screaming at the hospital. The damage is devastating. Twenty-one people are dead, and dozens of others are injured. Tumbling metal and other debris have crushed and broken what is not smothered with molasses. When I go back to see it days later they are still hosing off the street with gritty salt water pumped in from the harbor. I stand in the sand they have spread on the street in front of my old building and look up at what I once thought of as the safest place in the world. All the windows below the third floor have been smashed in with the force of the tidal wave of molasses. I look at my window, which has been sliced in two by a long, arced piece of jagged metal. Through the hole the metal has made in the window and wall, I can see that it goes all the way back inside and is held aloft above the street by its own weight, anchored to the back wall of the room. I find Mrs. Carpetti with a neighbor. She cries when she sees me, and tells me that the day of the molasses flood she was six blocks away in her church, praying for the healthy birth of my baby. Shane is not found until the week after the accident. When they recover him they tell me that I am better off not having to see him “like that,” but I hear rumors later that when he was found both his fists were clenched tight. One held dice, and the other held a half-filled flask of rum. My father and I bury him quickly and quietly. There is ample blame after that, but nobody wants to take responsibility. The distillery blames the collapse of the vat, and ensuing flood of more than two million gallons of molasses, on sabotage, or the stress of quick changes in weather. The inspectors point to the company, and the company points back to the inspectors. Although I will later be counted among the survivors to seek and receive compensation, I never think anyone could truly be found culpable for such a thing. It seems too big a mistake to be human. Sometimes since then, on hot summer days when I walk hand in hand with my son in my old neighborhood, I can smell the distinct, sweet odor of molasses. When the familiar scent hits me I look down at my perfect son and think of one of the few things I know now for certain: if God wants a tide of molasses, he’ll have one. Still Life Phong Peter picked through the mail on the sofa. The mail oozed with credit card advertisements and life insurance pitches, magazine offers, clothes catalogs, free CD offers and coupons. “The last guy who lived here must’ve had money to burn, or else he was totally bored.” he said to his sister on the phone. The phone cord, whose coils were stretched to capacity, ran from the mounted unit on the kitchen wall to the living room couch. The mid-day sun streaked through the windows and shone on the bare, dusty floor of his apartment. As he read the contents, Peter would let the discarded envelopes fall on the ground, to populate the empty room. “I bet they were bored.” She said. “They? How do you know it’s more than one guy?” He asked. “Why are you so sure it was a guy?” “You should see the magazines he gets.” He pulled out a bottle of heart medication from his pocket and popped a few pills down his gullet. Suddenly the taut cord pulled the telephone receiver from his ear, disjoining it from its snug shoulder and firing it across the room. It raised such a clamor when it smacked the refrigerator that the whole room recoiled. “Shit. Now I need a phone.” Peter said. * * * * * A block down from his new apartment, Peter found an antique store with some old yellow chairs and a big sturdy desk in the window display. Inside, the walls of the store were covered with shelves on which rested equal portions of popular Americana and real antiques. Peter let his eyes scan across the rows of blank-eyed dolls, unlit lamps, silent radios, and stalled clocks. A full-sized statue of Elvis, bellowing into a microphone, governed one corner, facing off with a stark painting of Jesus surrounded by innumerable crucifixions. Behind a locked display, odd stones and jewels, small metal bicycles and comic book superheroes in glorified poses mingled happily. Peter inspected a coffee table with detached legs. He held up the four posts and measured their length against each other. It might be a wobbly table, he thought. Peter didn’t really want a wobbly table, no matter what its kitsch value. He glanced at the pricetag. Fifty dollars! He put the legs of the table down on the floor gently. He shuffled past the furniture, in the direction of the dishware. At the end of the aisle, he spotted a skull from behind, its cranium sharply contoured and its sutures seamlessly interwoven. Curious, he walked toward the skull. As he neared the shelf where the skull stood watch, he noticed it wore a blanket of dust, as if it were a fashion. He looked intensely at the skull for a time, now from the side, until he became self-conscious and turned away suddenly. She had certainly noticed him staring. “Can I help you with anything?” The skull asked. “Or are you just browsing?” “No.” Peter felt compelled to explain himself, “I’m not interested in antiques. I’m looking for a new phone for my apartment... and some furniture.” The skull laughed through her full-toothed smile. “Well,” she said, “an old antique store isn’t really the right place to be looking for a new phone, I’m afraid. But we do have furniture.” Peter laughed too, feeling slightly ridiculous. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I’ve never even been in an antique store before. I think the oldest store we have in Atlanta is Woolworths, and that just closed.” “So you’re from Atlanta?” She asked, surprised. Peter figured she got mostly local shoppers in an old haunt like this. “Well, originally. I moved here this weekend.” He said. “So, you work here?” “Yes. I’m sorry, my name is Cyril.” She said, grinning. “Peter.” “Pleased to meet you, Peter.” Cyril did look pleased. Peter too was pleased, but he had found it hard to smile ever since the whole ordeal with Melissa. He had thought that they would be always friends, at least. What was with this list all of a sudden? “So what are you looking for in the way of furniture. You’ll need a bed first.” “Actually, I have a sofabed. It came with the apartment. Everything else I need, though.” Peter felt awkward sharing the gritty details of his spartan life with this sweet antique-seller. Cyril directed Peter to a display of ornate chairs, a blond wood table, and a vanity table. Without stopping to look at the pricetag, Peter moved past the display to pick up some foldable plastic chairs. “I think I’ve found my home furnishings, Ms. Cyril.” They exchanged a friendly smile. “I can see that you are a man of refined taste.” Cyril commented. “I do have refined tastes.” Peter insisted, “I just don’t express it materially.” Peter picked up his things and moved toward the register. He glanced back at the skull resting atop the high shelf. She had no hair, and to the traditionalist within him this was a defect of sorts, but the smooth curve of her brow, and the subtle indentation at her temple, had an appeal to him that he could not deny. He had an impulse to pick her up and take her with him too, but he reminded himself that she worked there at the antique store, and his hands were full besides. “Listen,” Cyril said, “if you’re new to Savannah, you’ll need someone to give you the tour around town.” “Yeah, I could use the company too.” Peter said, trying to withhold his excitement. “When do you get off work?” Peter and Cyril stepped out into the spring light, a light that made the inside of an antique store feel cavernous. Together the couple walked over cobblestone streets, and under iron footbridges, settling into a lover’s lingering pace at a park uptown, where myriad mansions competed in the scale of their gothic morbidity. Cyril named all of the parks, monuments, and buildings that they passed, adding bits of history when she thought it appropriate. Both of them sensed that the topic would quickly lose its novelty. Names of places meant less and less to Peter as the places themselves grew more familiar, so that his experience of them began to be more essential than their role in such and such a movie, or in the scheme of naval history. “To be honest, Cyril, I am much more interested in the people around here.” Peter announced in the middle of their tour. “Who lives there, for example?” He pointed out a great stone-walled building with elaborately sculpted reliefs in its walls. “Oh, this is where the old Southern aristocrats have come to spend the last of their fortunes.” Cyril responded with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice. “Every one of these little hamlets is its own little Xanadu.” “You seem kind of bitter over some harmless old folks.” Peter said. “Not at all. The rotting rich are what keeps antique stores like ours in business.” Cyril said. Rows of weeping willow trees lined every street, forming a kind of ceiling to the city that made everything going on within feel intimate and comfortable. The vines that descended from the weeping willows brushed the tops of park fences and dodged one another in the breeze. Peter thought how the proximity of the trees must make their roots intercede, and what an intricate network their branches must make underground, where they are hidden from human eyes beneath that blanket of earth. That the two could walk along in mutual quiet was assuring to Peter, and he began to measure their moments together against those he and Melissa had spent, strolling the sidewalks of outer Atlanta. But the two couldn’t be compared. He had been in love with Melissa, and he and Cyril had just met. But Peter recognized the warm coil unwinding in his chest, the cords of love that wanted pulling, and which would not be satisfied until they were entwined with some other’s grappling wires. Along the waterfront, Peter and Cyril paused under the restaurant marquees, surveying the menus first for good seafood dishes, then, as they became less discriminating, scanning the menus for decent dishes under four dollars. They settled on an outdoor cafŽ where the waiters were not so attentive, and the food cheaper. “Well, this was a nice find.” said Cyril, but Peter waved his hand at her. “Shhht,” he said, pointing out toward the dock, to where his eyes were fixed, “Look at that.” Nearby, a painter had set up an easel where he looked out onto the watery horizon. He stood there slowly priming his canvas with a wash of white, then added a wash of yellow, waiting for something. Cyril sat facing Peter, Peter facing the artist, he facing the water, all of them quiet and expectant. Then, just when the sun crowned on the water’s edge, the artist attacked his canvas with a meticulous ferocity, now slashing in broad strokes, now moving the brush in fine, controlled dashes. Peter watched the performance in silent rapture, and when the spectacle was over the sun had set. The artist packed up his things and moved toward the lights of downtown. Peter would have liked to paint that sunset himself, though he hadn’t even the money to buy a canvas. Yet the blissful coincidence of that moment made him feel exalted by fate. “We are lucky to be here now, eating this lousy bread, down by the waterside, in the dark. I don’t even have enough cash to buy a grilled cheese sandwich, but it feels right being here with you right now.” Cyril had been staring at Peter for a long time. “You paint, don’t you?” She said, almost nastily. Peter nodded. “Still want to have dinner with me?” Cyril jiggled as if there were beneath her the ghostly pair of skeletal shoulders shrugging. “I’ll give it a try.” * * * * * The screen door opened and a young, freckled woman walked in carrying Cyril in her arms. “Hi Peter. This is Moira.” “Hi Moira. Hey Cyril, I am so sorry that I forgot to pick you up.” “Don’t worry about it. You shouldn’t have to worry about where I am all the time and stuff. I have friends.” Cyril smiled. Moira put her down on the corner table, by the lamp. “Do you want to stay for some coffee or something, Moira?” She shook her head gravely, and spoke in a low, quiet voice, “That’s okay. I think I’m needed back at the shop. Thanks anyway. Nice to meet you, Peter.” Moira shuffled out in her floor-length dress. She dressed darkly, even in the summer, from head to toe. Peter wondered if she was a Wiccan or Pagan or what. After she had left and the screen door shut behind her, Peter went over to stand next to Cyril. “Are you sure you aren’t angry at me or anything?” Peter asked. “I’m sure.” Cyril’s smile brought instant comfort and relief to Peter, who for his part had taken to worring about Cyril, her whereabouts, her safety. “Is this what you’ve been working on all morning?” She asked. “Yeah. What do you think?” Peter squinted his eyes, and leaned back, studying the masonite as if it were his first time seeing it. “Its gloomy.” She said. “Don’t you like painting nice things? I mean, you’re not unhappy are you? What’s wrong with painting pretty things? Isn’t art about beauty, after all?” “You don’t think it’s pretty?” Peter asked her, genuinely surprised. “Well... it’s just too... dark, you know. So many people think art has to be dreary and depressing all the time. But I think art can just be beautiful... even quaint, like a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers. Still lives.” “You don’t like it?” Peter said, disappointed but far from angry. “Hmmm...” “It’s you, you know.” Peter said, but before Cyril could argue, added, “I mean, it’s like the idea of you. It’s conceptual.” Cyril was unmoved. “I don’t like it.” She said with finality. “Hmmm.” Peter said, in response. He fished a prescription bottle out of his pocket, opened it, and gulped down a little white pill. * * * * * Peter held Cyril under his arm as he walked the stone path up to the gallery. Peter worried about Cyril falling out, and clutched her tight enough that it constricted her temples. She had joked that he handled her like a football. “Let’s wait.” Peter said, before bringing them inside. He placed Cyril on a ledge at eye level. “We should celebrate with some wine.” “Can’t you wait until we get inside?” asked Cyril. “Well, I suppose. But out here it’s just us. Inside there are people, there is mingling, and conversation.” Peter insisted. He popped the cork off the bottle, and poured half a glass. “Well, I happen to like mingling and conversation, and I don’t drink wine, and you know that, Peter!” her voice was urgent, and made Peter flush with embarrassment. “You don’t eat either, but that’s never stopped me,” he said, “but today is your day.” Peter raised his glass. “To you.” Though he turned away and chugged the wine in one gulp, he felt Cyril’s two deep sockets fixed on him in profile, and for the first time those beautiful vacancies struck him as cold in their neutrality. “To you.” Peter repeated, putting his glass down on the ledge. He lifted Cyril in his arms and stepped inside the gallery. Together they strolled through the pacific landscapes and ocean views, the colorful abstractions, the geometric configurations, whispering conspiratorial likes and dislikes to each other. Peter stopped in front of a photo-realistic painting of a man and a woman standing naked in the middle of a Japanese rock garden; comfortably naked, not defiantly naked. “What’s so special about this one?” Cyril asked him. “Nothing.” Peter replied. Then he turned them around to face a wall-sized canvas, painted so heavily that the work was almost three-dimensional. A bowl of bread, a jar of olive oil, and a tall, thin vase with fern leaves and baby’s breath flowering from its mouth shared the table with a human skull, rendered onto the canvas with russet, white, and yellow ochre. The title, Still Life with Cyril; the artist, Peter Bond. “Surprise.” Peter said. “I painted it while you were asleep.” Though the restaurant was busy at that hour, they had found a booth away from the commotion of a late evening dinner on the waterfront. Peter pleaded while Cyril sat quietly on the table. A candle in a cup lit the table with an orange tint, and made the silverware glint with reflected light. “Please, Cyril. Just tell me why you’re so upset, at least. Please, tell me?” Her quiet was penetrating, and Peter found it difficult to bear. “I just want to know what upset you so much. I don’t think that is so unreasonable.” He sat there and tested her quiet, though every second pained him. He let his silence compete with hers. “I think we’ve had enough of each other for a while.” She stated coldly. Peter poked at the food on his plate nervously, then put his fork down. “Okay, why?” He had gotten her to speak, at least. Now he challenged her with his eyes. “Do I have to say it?” “Yes.” he declared. “You’re love for me is selfish, and I don’t think I love you.” The waiter walked by, but Peter curtly waved him away. The conversations of neighboring tables provided an alm ost melodious counter-rhythm to their grief. Peter took out a pill for his heart, and dropped it in his glass. He gulped it down quickly. “See there you go again. It’s always medicine for your heart, or food for your stomache, or alcohol for your blood. I mean, you spend so much time on your body, your organs. Is that what love is to you?” Cyril demanded. “Cyril,” said Peter, “I have to take care of my body. My heart, my stomache, they are parts of me that need my attention for survival.” “Aren’t I a part of you too?” Cyril glared across the table with meaningful intensity, “Love is supposed to be a meeting of the minds... or... or a communion of souls! But what would you know about that. You spend so much time feeding yourself, replenishing yourself, that you have nothing left over but to spend making these... crass monuments to yourself.” “Would you prefer if I were dead?” Peter asked simply, reservedly. “Don’t be silly. But it’s not about that. You don’t think I’ve wondered if you wouldn’t love me more if I were a head of flesh and blood, or a whole body even? That isn’t it. It’s just that... our love isn’t healthy anymore. It isn’t good.” “Love is always good. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you are. I love you, Cyril. I’ve always loved you, and you know it.” Peter ran his finger along her jawline. “No, your attraction for me is... morbid. It’s sick. It is like my attraction to dust.” Cyril’s voice dropped off at the end, as if she spoke these words against her will-- a deeper confession than she had wanted to make. Peter sat stunned in his seat, thinking about their times together, when they first met, their promenades through the city. He remembered the thick coat of dust that lay so heavily on her head when he first saw her. It was so obvious, and he was so blind. All the time she would spend in the old library, the antique shop, the tunnel (her favorite hideaway). How else could she have loved his apartment so much, but that it was coated with layers of unswept dust? Her infidelity touched ten thousand motes of dust, and now she would not even welcome one of his embraces. He stood up suddenly, jerking the table backward, and stormed out of the room, and left Cyril sitting alone in the wan flicker of the dusty candle-cup, smiling as always, with her broad white teeth gleaming. * * * * * Peter lay out on his sofabed, popping a baseball up and down in the air. All of his possessions were packed up into two suitcases by the door, and the room was empty again. When he dropped the ball, it dribbled across the room, forcing him to leap up Peter knew where these conversations led, and he dropped it first. “Hey Pam... Can you tell me why Ma didn’t let me know about Aunt Esther’s funeral? Can you tell me that?” Pam sighed, and left the dead air lingering. “Okay. She thought it would upset you. She said death makes you uncomfortable, and that you start getting your heart palpitations when you think about it too much. She worries about you. So she said I shouldn’t say anything. I mean, I don’t want you to have a heart attack for Chrissakes.” “Hey,” he said, affecting his best paternal voice, “my heart’s okay, you hear? You have other things to worry about, Pamela. It feels great when I’m moving around, you know. It’s just when I slow down and stall for a while that my heart starts to bother me. All I have to do is just to keep going. I just can’t stop, that’s all.” Bookeater Adam Burnett My little brother has a habit of eating books. He got the idea from my mother, years ago, when he heard her mention that her brother Jack “absolutely consumes books! He can’t get enough of them.” My brother took it the wrong way. Now his lips are always black and my father can never find his copy of Newsweek. Once I had a book report due on Moby Dick so I purposely hid it between my mattress and my bed. When I came home the lump was gone. I accosted Johnny in the hall. “Johnny,” I began, but he cut me off. “Call meÉIshmael,” he said, and then patting his belly in a grandiose gesture he added “And call me stuffed.” He could tear out the pages with a blazing speed you wouldn’t believe. His hands were so small they were almost invisible. And he would always tear only one page at a time, never clumps, and in a perfectly straight line. I told him he should have been a magician and he told me “Watch: I’ll make this book disappear.” And he did. He would order books on the Internet the way others ordered pizza on the telephone. He would check the number of pages, and were they matte or stock, was it a cardstock cover or a glossy deal. Acid-free was his favorite. He said recycled paper tasted the worst. I told him that I guessed the recycling guys didn’t really have people eating the paper when the designed a scheme to save the planet but he only shrugged his shoulders and asked me if we had any sour crme. He said the best book he ever ate was this one from the seventies called The Hole Town. It began with the discovery of a pothole, and workers are trying to fill it in but the asphalt just keeps going and going Ð more holes begin appearing, seemingly bottomless, until the entire town looks more and more like a great piece of swiss-cheese. How strange. The world draining through an hourglass! Johnny said it was drivel, actually used the word “drivel”. That kid killed me. He makes me laugh so much I wanna cry. He said he ate it just so no one else would ever be infected with it’s claptrap. He said the more of it he ate the emptier he felt inside but he laughed when he said it so he might have been joking. And then he used the word “poppycock” and I damn near bust a gut. I mean, can you believe it? A little kid like that sayin’ “Poppycock” like he was sayin’ his own name. Sometimes he’d roll the pages up like little cigarettes and suck on them slowly. Appetizers he’d say if you happened to catch him. He reminded me of a dog at a bone, sucking out the marrow. He told me that not all books get better with age, though this was the general truth. Some were like cheese, and just developed mould. Others were like wine whose flavor became richer with each passing year. I told him he had some Faust on the corner of his mouth. He called the library ‘the buffet’. He’d go into Tourist Offices or Red Cross Societies and pick up a whack of pamphlets for a “light snack”. Once I made him open his mouth and there was a neon post-it note stuck to his tongue. “You have to let it settle on the palette,” he explained. He was the only kid I knew who got excited when the Jehoviah’s Witnesses came around; he’d take The Watchtower over an ice-cream sundae any day. Prop-a-licious! Once when we were driving out into the country to visit an apple cider farm we became completely lost. I was in the passenger seat, with Johnny in the back, and my mother asked me to get the map out of the glove compartment. It wasn’t there and I told her so. She told me it must be there and she pulled over onto the unpaved shoulder to took a look for herself. A minute later she turned around. “Johnny!” “The east coast was much more delectable than the west. Moist,” he said. “B.C. and Alberta were just tooÉrich. Greenland gave me a head rush: too cold. Brain freeze.” “Johnny how could you! Now we’re lost. Jesus, what the hell are we gonna do now!?!” Johnny reached over and slowly unwound his window. Then he stuck his hand out and pointed. “Why don’t you ask him?” My mother’s head craned right around and she let out a little gasp. There was a police officer standing not a foot and a half from her car, leaning over and staring her right in the face. He was wearing a pair of those sunglasses I always associated with helicopter pilots. “Some kind of problem here ma’am?” he asked, his voice rigid and humorless. My mother immediately blushed. “No officer, uh, not really. It’s just my son here, well, we got a little lost and--” The police officer, who was not blushing, cut her off. “You do realize this is a no-stopping zone don’t you? It’s illegal for you to park here.” The crimson on her face deepened. I couldn’t take my eyes off the two of them. “Well, no, actually I--” The police officer cut her off again, this time with a sharp gesture rather than words. He pointed at a sign not ten feet in front of our car. “NO STOPPING” it read. I might have briefly considered whether Johnny had ever eaten a sign before but the situation was too engrossing to run off on a tangent. “And when I came up behind you I noticed that only one of your taillights is working. That’s a hundred and ten dollar fine you know.” I watched as my mother’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, only nothing came out. The officer leaned down a little lower and took a good glance at me; I was hard pressed to suppress a shiver of unease. His head craned slightly and he examined Johnny who didn’t seem too concerned with the whole mess. I was though. A hundred and ten bucks was a lot of money. I wondered if Johnny knew that. I wondered if he would have been so cool about the whole thing if he knew just how many books that money could have gone towards. Selfish little spit I accused, but immediately regretted the thought and mentally took it back. Finally my mother resumed speech. “Listen officer, couldn’t we justÉoverlook this whole thing. I mean, it was an honest mistake. Everybody makes them, rightÉ?” The man in the deep navy uniform apparently did not agree. “Honest or not ma’am, it was a mistake. As an officer of the law I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t follow through on each and every offence I’m witness to. I’m not a judge nor a jury. I’m an officer of the law and as such it is my sworn duty to reprimand those that fail to uphold said law.” I was so in awe of this man’s control and composure that it would take days for me to realize just how rehearsed that whole speech had sounded. Johnny probably noticed right away; he was quick with things like that. “No, I don’t see how I have any choice but toÉ” He paused, mid sentence, his left hand had disappeared behind his back, but now it re-emerged, empty. He used both hands to pat his pockets, including the breast. Now it was his turn for his face to crimson. He rubbed his chin pensively. “Well, it looks like this just might be your lucky day ma’am. It appears I’ve left my citation book in my car.” He stole a quick glance off behind us and my eyes followed; his cruiser was about fifty yards back. “But make sure you get that taillight checked out. And mind the signs, eh.” “Will do officer, and thank you. I appreciate it.” He only nodded in response while his hands flitted around his uniform, suddenly nervous it seemed. He made no move to leave. After a minute or so of him just standing there, staring off into space, Johnny stuck his head clean out his window and stared up at the man. “Thank you muchly officer. You’re a credit to the institution.” I saw my mother wince slightly at this, afraid that the man would take it the wrong way, but apparently he didn’t. He only nodded ‘yeah’ and then slowly began making his way back to his car. A minute later we were back on the road. “Awwww shoot,” my mother shot out suddenly. “I should have at least asked him for directions to the cider farm.” She shook her head. Johnny’s voice arose from the back seat. “Why don’t we just call it a day mom. I’m not really in the mood for apples anyway.” My mother looked at me and I shrugged and nodded in agreement. I agreed yes, but I didn’t believe him. I had a strong suspicion that Johnny just couldn’t wait to get home. There was a new item on the menu tonight, and this was a rarer find than any old first edition. Later that night I asked him if he knew what he had done was totally illegal. He only shook his head as though he had no idea what I was talking about. “After all,” he added before walking away, “possession is nine tenths of the lawÉand as you can plainly seeÉI possess nothing.” To illustrate this point he raised his empty hands high and wide and then swept them up and down the length of his body. A moment later a small gaseous burp secreted from out of his mouth, like air being let from a tire. “Oops,” he said as he placed a small hand to his mouth. He couldn’t fool me though. I saw his cheeks lift slightly and I knew what he was really hiding under that hand; he didn’t have a chance really. Smiles didn’t come much bigger than that. The Nuclear Blast Don Berry When I was about seven my mother gave me a book called Our Friend the Atom. It was by then about fifteen years old, published in the mid-fifties, and extolled the wonders and virtues of atomic power and all it could give us to make our lives richer. My grandfather lived with us at the time. He’d had a stroke about six years before, and while he still had his faculties he’d lost the use of half his right arm and had trouble walking. He’d had to retire early from his job at the jet engine plant and now lived on a pension. My mother had told me never to show this atomic power book to him. I showed it to him. He’d taken one glance at the book and began tearing the pages out. He threw the book into a corner of the living room. I cried. He had destroyed something I thought at the time was beautiful; a book that talked in children’s terms about wonders and made me want to dream and hope and have faith in science and how it could do incredible things and make our world better in the long run. And he had ruined it. I hated him for the rest of the week and avoided him. When I saw him coming out of the bathroom in the morning or when I came home from school at night I stayed clear of him. I had told my mother what he did but she not only looked at me and said that she wasn’t surprised. “He has had some bad things happen to him, Gage. Showing him that book only brought them back.” I didn’t understand at the time how things in the past could come back at you or how simple objects like a book could bring them back. That following Saturday when he was sitting on the front porch,, which was rare because he never liked to sit in the sun or look into the cloudless blue sky, I asked what my mother meant. He asked me to sit down next to him and told me that he owed me an apology for destroying the book. “Ruining your book won’t change what happened,” he had said. He had all of my attention and he talked for about a half an hour, but it seemed much longer than that, and next to him he had a book of his own, a slim brown leather bound journal of some kind. I had never seen him with it before and it looked beaten and very old. He squinted up at the sun once in a while as he talked. “I joined the army during the war but right at the end so I never did any fighting on the ground or in the air. Not like in the TV shows. I was in a special kind of Army that didn’t fight with anybody.” He saw how perplexed I was at this. “We experimented with different kinds of weapons.” When he still saw that I didn’t comprehend he looked at me with eyes that even for a man his age looked ancient and stretched into a deep primordial sadness, as if he was trying to take on all of mankind’s worst sins. “Gage, they made us experiment on each other. Nerve gases, chemicals that made us sick, paralyzed us, messed up our minds, make us see things that weren’t there.” He saw my next question before I could ask it. “The work we were doing was supposed to save lives. Because in the next war, whatever it was, they knew these kinds of weapons were going to be used. And if we made then first and know hoe they worked we could keep our soldiers from getting killed, protect and equip them properly.” He paused and swallowed. “Then there was the atomic test. A couple of generals called me into a room one day and sat me down at a steel table and showed me pictures from the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima.” He said that I wouldn’t find any stories about Hiroshima in my book. “They dropped an atomic bomb there, to end the war with Japan, and make them want to surrender. The bomb leveled the city like a cardboard city in a hurricane. These generals showed me pictures, the aftermath of the explosion. There was one of a man, naked, burned all over, standing by a stream. He was holding something in his hand. I realized after a minute that it was on of his eyeballs.” “They told me that this is what I was getting into. This could happen to me. But they could take steps to protect me. You see Gage, they wanted to set off anatomic blast in the middle of the desert and put me and some other soldiers in a trench nearby and then see what it would do to us.” He pointed now to the sun, sitting in a cloudless blue sky. “Gage, you know that looking into the sun hurts your eyes. But even with the goggles they gave us, myself and another guy, they called him Fred, it was like looking into a dozen suns at once. When they set that thing off, the sound was like the Earth was coming apart from inside out. The vibration shook our muscles, our bones, our teeth, it was like they were being taken apart and put back together again.” “Then there was the wind. Like a hot desert wind but it was more than that. It had a form, a shape, like a gigantic ballmiles high, pushing and pulling us, like we were rag dolls. But wewere in the trench you see and maybe that doesn’t sound like much protection but somehow it was enough to keep us from getting leveled or sucked away. Did it hurt, I asked. “Maybe that was the worst of it, because no, it didn’t. Fred and I expected it to, but it didn’t. No pain. But there were voices. Fred and I both heard them. A chorus, like a million voices all screaming. I’ve thought about that part of it more than any other other over the years and I think that maybe, somehow, when you split atom open and let out all that energy its like going all the way back to where life started. It was like everything that ever lived calling out.” He leaned back and reached for a cigarette with his good arm. “I’ve read some stuff since then, and they have theories that maybe everybody’s atoms are mixed in with everybody else’s.” He lit his cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly. I couldn’t help but watch the burning end, a tiny red inferno. “The air we breathe right now might be the same air that a dinosaur, or a caveman, or Shakespeare breathed a long time ago. Well maybe that was what we were getting back then except that the blast was squeezing everything into a few moments instead of millions of years.” He paused. I knew it had taken a lot out of him to tell me all of this. And at my age it was a lot to take in. I had a can of coke in front of me and I picked it up to take a sip. The sweet syrupy fizz hit my tongue and I thought, atoms, millions of atoms, inside this beverage, in the can itself, all waiting to be smashed open, to let loose their energies, like the ones in the desert with my grandfather so long ago. “After it was over we spent a year or so in a special hospital. The did tests. And things happened to us, our bodies did start to change. I had a lot of problems with my mind, I slept a lot, sometimes two or three days straight. I had dreams, most of them were about the blast, about being there. But I also dreams about becoming transparent. Like my skin was Plexiglass. All the nerves, and veins, muscles. I could see everything. But it must have been real because one time a doctor showed me a picture of myself, my transparent body,walking around my room.” I asked if he still ad the photo, looking at the leather bound volume next to his chair. “The doctor said he wasn’t supposed to show me the picture. But that he figured that a man had a right to know if people could see into him. That doctor didn’t seem to like what was going on, the tests, the other things at this hospital. A couple of days later he stopped coming and he was replaced by a different doctor. I never saw Fred again after the blast. Although I heard nurses and doctors talking. Somehow he’d been affected differently. Maybe his mind more than his body;. It was like he couldn’t take what had happened and what was now happening to him. I think he lost his mind, Gage. Thank God that didn’t happen to me.” I asked if he was stronger than Fred, or was Fred weak. “I got the know Fred when we were waiting in the trench for the blast. He seemed as tough as me, tougher maybe. Sometime being tougher doesn’t mean you’ll make it. Maybe he was too tough to understand what was happening to him. I think I just let it pass through me, but Fred tried hard to fight it. But how do you fight something that big.” He sighed and stubbed out the cigarette on the porch floor boards. “It’s been thirty years since that day in the trench. But I still hear those voices sometimes. Millions of them. Reminding me that it happened and that I’m part of it all. Never letting me forget.” I asked him if he wanted to see a doctor now. Maybe they have some up with ways to help him, after all this time. “Gage, nobody would believe me. No one has. The Army shut the project down years ago and most people have forgotten they even did those bomb tests. The generals are all dead now and probably most of the doctors as well.” I heard my mother’s voice calling us in for dinner. I asked him if my mother believed him. “She doesn’t really know. She was a little girl when I came home that summer from the hospital. She knew I was different. I tried to explain. But she was young. Younger than you. And she is not the believer-type. Some people are. Some people aren’t.” “I believe you,” I had said, with the plain matter-of-factness of children. After we ate I did my homework and was in my room getting ready for bed when my grandfather came in. He held the copy of Our Friend the Atom in his hands. He had repaired it with Scotch tape, putting back the pages he had town out the week before. He handed it back to me. “I’m sorry for what I did to your book. I don’t agree with all of what’s in here. Just becaise it leaves out so much. But now you have the whole story. The whole story of the atom. You can make up your own mind.” He laid the book down on my bed and turned to go. Then he stopped and looked at me. “I would give anything to go back. To the desert, another blast. To feel what I felt back then, all over again. One last time.” There were tears in his eyes. The next morning he was gone. We searched the neighborhood, then called the police late that day and filed a missing persons report. We called the news stations and had his picture pout on TV. We waited for word; days, a week, then a month. We never saw him again. He had taken the leather bound book with him. My mother didn’t take it that hard. Looking back on it now, maybe she didn’t believe that his story was true. Maybe because he was old and didn’t have much time anyway, and that makes it easier for children to let go of their parents. But I knew what he wanted. And even now, I have no doubts that after that night in my bedroom he went out for the desert. Hoping to find his nuclear blast and all of the sensations and clarity that it must have brought him that first time so long ago. Nowadays people talk about moments of epiphany that they get from literature, or movies, or religion, or sexual encounters, but for my grandfather maybe the only real moments that he lived were when he was caught up in the man-made inferno. For many years now, there have been nights I lay awake next to Keira at our house in New Mexico, with the bedroom windows open hoping to hear that chorus of voices,, of all thinking an feeling creatures calling out to me across the desert and across time. And I quietly weep. Barely Legal Jen Gabrielson Six-inch heels jeans size five shirt small to expose your new silicone imitations of knowledge that were conveniently left out of that blonde head. It was peroxide, not nature, that made you the ideal image for 13 year old boys to fantasize about, hiding behind locked doors, hoping no one will catch them with their pants down, the same way their fathers do in the next room thinking the exact same thought. Bottle Cap Raud Kennedy In a tunnel, struggling to get to the far end. Family, friends await. Refuse bruises, cuts my knees. Twist off tops, ketchup bottles, things that snails live in. Anger gave me a shell, but now I’ve nothing, just the survival instinct to get to the other end. Waffles Jamie Grimes Randall, I bet even you could do the stuff he tells us to do.” me nervous. As much fun as it is watching new guys that close to pissing themselves, it really wasn’t the time. me, saying that Tito was just trying to bullshit for more time. And I tell him, first of all, that it isn’t his decision when we shelve the pleasantries, and second, that I know the difference between the look a man has when he’s bullshitting and the look a man has when he’s got the fear of God in him. If he’d killed Tito, I probably would have shot him on principle. is the steak?” he added, framing the last word with quotation fingers. I had darted Jimenez and payed off Sammy--besides, it wasn’t enough to keep him from spilling it all just before, well, you know--but if it had been me, I would have either finished the job or made myself disappear, but you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into did you?” my lighter, go ahead; it cost fifty cents. I’ve met some ridiculously moronic lackies in my day, but you, you, you may very well be one of the slowest. Who uses darts, nowadays? What kind of gimmick is that, anyways? So outdated. Now we have these things called guns. You saw what Satchel wanted done to you, and some of it may be justified. And quite honestly, I could give a shit. I’ve done some heinous shit for Satchel, but that Tito shit kinda got to me. I’m done being a waffle, man. I ain’t cutting up nobody else. Fucking done. Not quite sure what Satchel will think of that, but I think he’ll understand. I think I can deal with being raisin toast.”

what is veganism?

A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don't consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?

This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?

We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.

We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.

We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action

po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353

510/704-4444

MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:

* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.

* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants

* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking

* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology

The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST's three principal projects are to provide:

* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;

* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST's SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;

* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.

The CREST staff also does "on the road" presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.

For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson

dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

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