Fiction Daze: Short Story of the Day

Moratorium

2004-07-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

No, this is not the title of the story. I just got super busy with work this week. No stories this week.

C.A.R.E. (Part II)

2004-06-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

As a member of the editorial staff here at Fiction Daze, I'm proud to announce that Wendy has submitted the rest of her story. Or at least the part that's been completed so far — it's an excerpt from a longer story. If you didn't catch the first part, you can read Part I here.

C.A.R.E. (Part II)
By Wendy Fritzke

Spring Fling

Two weeks later was one of the semi-annual “big events” held at the Senior Center, the dinner-dance extravaganza known as the Spring Fling. Hugh had a full load that night. In addition to Mrs. Chen, Miss Gracie, Mr. Jack, and Mr. Turner, he also needed to pick up Mrs. Barrett.

Mrs. Barrett was a retired schoolteacher with a beautiful garden, full of flowers and birds. She still lived in the house where she grew up, just like Hugh, though she did move away for quite awhile and only came back when her parents passed away. Still, Hugh felt she understood his dread at leaving the place where he’d always lived. He felt more at ease with Mrs. Barrett than probably anyone else, other than his mother, of course, and was pleased whenever he saw her name on his ride sheet. Mrs. Barrett was a meteorologist, with a degree from Stanford, before becoming a schoolteacher, which paid a lot more money than telling the weather back in her day, she told him. She told Hugh long stories about how she was drafted out of college to go overseas and tell the weather for the Army during WWII. Hugh had never thought about such a thing before. But it made sense, once she explained it to him, how the weather was an important part of military strategy. Mrs. Barrett was often telling him interesting things he’d never thought of before.

Tonight, she looked very distinguished and elegant, her white hair swept up, with clip-on pearl earrings and a matching choker around her neck. She was wearing a dark red dress with matching jacket that made Hugh look down nervously at his own crumpled khakis and faded sweater. She was carrying an umbrella, since the winds were from the East and the barometric pressure was falling, she explained, as she locked up the house and Hugh escorted her down the steps. Sure signs of rain.

Hugh didn’t have to stay at the Senior Center. He could drop them off, make sure they were safely received by the women standing at the doors, then retreat to the video store or his room for the intervening hours between soup and the final waltz. There was nothing compelling him into that low-ceiling building with its faded linoleum floor and over-loud big band music blaring through cheap speakers. Nothing to force him to face those innumerable strangers, the women at the door, the inevitable food servers, the player of loud records.

But Mrs. Barrett asked for his arm walking to the door. Mr. Jack was right behind, continuing his one-sided argument with Hugh about the merits of pipe tobacco over cigarettes. Hugh hesitated at the door, then went in. He helped Mrs. Barrett with her coat, then became flustered, looking around for a place to deposit the wrap, now that he had it in his hands. He felt the old familiar tightening in his chest and his hands started to dampen the coat.

“I can take that from you,” one of the greeting women was talking to him. He turned and saw a rather pretty, somewhat plump woman in a calico dress smiling at him and holding out her hand. Hugh, with a somewhat dazed expression, handed her the coat. She had light brown hair which had been permed into tiny waves falling to her shoulders. But it was the fitted bodice of her dress that was most distracting him. He blushed and started to turn away. She had taken the coat, but now Hugh saw she was still smiling at him and extending her hand.

“Hi, I’m Ilene,” she said. Hugh noticed she was wearing a silver unicorn around her neck, the single horn pointing diagonally into one breast.

“I’m Hugh. I drive for C.A.R.E.” He motioned vaguely around at his regulars, all struggling with coats and canes. He retrieved Mr. Turner’s metal cane from the lobby floor and handed it to him. Mr. Turner grunted his thanks and started in toward the big room, where long tables covered in white paper tablecloths had been set up along both sides, little vases of silk flowers poking up festively at regular intervals.

“Yes, I’ve heard all about you,” she said, startling Hugh into looking round at her again. To his surprise, she seemed a bit flustered herself, and looked down at the coat she still held in her hands.

“You have?”

“Oh, yeah, Miss Gracie talks about you all the time. And Mrs. Chen. And Mr. Jack. Well, they all do. They just love you. They say you’re the best driver they’ve ever had.” She blushed.

Hugh was silent. A large part of him wished that he was at home watching the evening news with his mother. But then he heard some strange, foreign part of himself speaking, chatting, it seemed, with Ilene.

“Oh, they’re a great bunch of people themselves,” this stranger said with awkward enthusiasm. Then, astonished, Hugh heard him continuing. “Uh, do you need any help here? I mean, can I help you with anything? I don’t have to leave. I usually do. Leave I mean, go home or to the video store or… But I could stay…if you need any help here, that is.”

Ilene smiled at him again. “Yeah, that would be great. Thanks. If you could take the coats from the rest of your guests, then help them get seated, that would be super.”

Hugh felt the acrid burning at the back of his throat start to recede. With great relief, he turned to Mrs. Chen, who was struggling to hold her hat and her purse and remove her heavy black coat at the same time. Hugh took the hat and helped release her arm from the stubborn sleeve. Relief washed over him as she took his arm and he helped her into the dining hall.

“Ilene nice girl, yes?” Mrs. Chen said loudly as they were making their way across the carpeted lobby. “Good girl for Hu-boy.” Hugh looked down at her, feeling himself go red again. She was grinning broadly.

Hugh’s heart gave a small leap, but it wasn’t a leap of fear. It was more like the rush he felt when he went into the store and saw that there was a new Shaw Brothers shipment waiting to be entered into the computer and lovingly shelved. The box held promise of excitement, adventure, escape, and the possibility of a new all-time favorite. He glanced back over his shoulder at Ilene, who was still busy greeting people at the door. She looked over just then and smiled at him again. Hugh quickly turned back around and hurried Mrs. Chen into the hall.

After Hugh had seen each of the regulars safely deposited in a folding chair, he was a bit unsure how to proceed. He could slip away now and come back in a couple of hours for the pick up. Then again, he could stay and eat the mashed potatoes and pork roast. Hang out for a little while longer. As he hesitated, one of the volunteers stopped the music and started an official welcome into a screeching microphone. Hugh slipped out of the hall. He was almost to the door when he heard his name.

“Hugh?” He wheeled around and saw Ilene coming out of a side door, where Hugh assumed she’d been stashing more coats. “Hi. You leaving already?”

“Uh, well, yeah. I mean…I was just going to go out for awhile. I need, um, to go check on something at the, ah, Video Vault. But I’m going to come back. Why? Did you need me to help with something else? Or something?”

“Oh. No. I mean, I was kind of hoping we’d be able to talk a little bit more. Like I said, they’ve told me so much about you. But, it was super to meet you. I’m surprised we never ran into each other before. But I just started helping out here about six months ago, so maybe that’s why. After my nana passed away. She died of a stroke, all of a sudden one afternoon while she was watching TV. I looked after her. I was in the kitchen washing the lunch dishes, when I heard this thud in the living room. I came rushing back in, still carrying the dish towel, but it was too late. She went really peacefully, at least. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers slowly. Her talk finally died out, and the two stood in silence. Ilene staring off, Hugh looking down at his feet and rubbing his palms up and down his pants.

“So, I started working here,” Ilene started up again brightly with a smile, “a few months after that, to help out, you know. I have a lot of experience. And I really enjoy the elderly. They have such fascinating stories to tell, don’t you think?”

She paused again. Hugh’s heart pounded and his ears throbbed, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. “That’s nice,” he finally managed, then breathed a ragged breath. “So, I better get going,” he said and headed to the door again.

“Oh. Well. OK. See you around,” Ilene called after him.

Back in the van, Hugh sat with his hands shaking on the steering wheel for a long time. Then he turned on the radio. The classic rock station was playing “Feels Like the First Time.” He flushed with sudden anger and turned the radio off. Hugh started the car and drove up the street. His head felt like he’d been knocked up side the head with one of those big punching bags they had in the school gym. He wasn’t sure where he was going. He kept hearing Ilene’s voice in his head: “I’m so happy to meet you.…I’ve heard so much about you….You’re the best….” And miserably, his own inane replies: “Great bunch of people” — Stupid. “Don’t have to, uh, leave, that is, if you need anything, I mean…” — Moronic. “Gotta go check on something” — Dumb. And the worst, his idiotic parting remark after she’d told him about her grandmother dying and all: “That’s nice.” That’s nice? What kind of a person says “That’s nice” after hearing about someone dying?” A stupid moron, that’s what kind. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Miserably, Hugh looked around and saw that he was, in fact, parked in front of the Video Vault. He slowly opened the door of the van and went inside. Ralph was helping two teenage kids in baggy jeans at the counter. Hugh wandered over to the Kung Fu section, behind the stacks in the corner. He stared at the vintage poster of Jane Fonda as Barbarella, which Ralph had framed and hung prominently on the back wall. Her breasts were huge, round balls popping out of a tiny top. They made Hugh think of Ilene’s breasts, the soft flesh punctured by the unicorn horn. He imagined that necklace around Jane Fonda’s neck. He stared to reach up and touch the poster, right where the unicorn would press into Barbarella’s tight balloon breasts. Then he stopped, embarrassed, and looked around. He looked at his watch. 6:00. Still another hour at least before things would be done at the Senior Center. Maybe even two.

When the teenagers had gone, he went up to the counter and plopped onto the extra stool behind the counter. “Hey, what’s up?” Ralph asked.

“Nothing,” Hugh replied and stared up at the television, where Ralph was playing Cat Women of the Moon. Waiting to pick up the old people.”

“Oh, right.” Ralph replied, then returned his attention to the video and to eating the pepperoni pizza he had picked up from next door.

Hugh’s head felt like it was splitting apart. One part of him wanted to rush back to the Center and prove he wasn’t such a complete moron. He wanted to look at those breasts again and hear Ilene’s voice say nice things about him. He could say he’d finished what he needed to do and had come back to help out. Maybe dance with Miss Gracie, have coffee with Mr. Jack. He could ask the old people some questions about Ilene, since they obviously knew her well enough to talk about him with her. At this memory, his face flushed again, and he shifted uncomfortably on the vinyl stool, rubbing his wet palms on his wrinkled chinos.

Ralph looked over at him squirming on the stool. “Want some pizza, dude?” he asked, pushing the box toward Hugh.

Hugh took a slice and held it in his hands, staring at it blankly. Yeah, he could do that. That would seem natural enough. But just when he had resolved that this was exactly what he would do, he wavered. The other side of him wanted desperately to never show his face at the Senior Center again. He was mortified. He had run away, yes, but better that, than to stay and continue making a fool out of himself. He wondered if he could go home and get his mother to do the pick up. Would she believe him if he feigned sickness? He was feeling ill. His stomach was churning, his head was pounding, and his face was covered in a dry sweat. She would take his temperature and send him to bed. The image filled him with momentary happiness. But then he may never see Ilene again. He groaned.

“What’s wrong, man? You don’t look so hot,” Ralph asked.

“Nothing. I’m late. Gotta go. Thanks for the pizza.” Hugh put the uneaten slice back in the box and backed awkwardly out from behind the counter. “See ya,” he said and plunged out the door back into the cool night.

Hugh drove the van over to the Senior Center, but just as he was signaling to turn into the parking lot, a new wave of embarrassment swept over him and he kept driving. He drove around the block for 20 minutes, trying to get up the courage to go back inside. Finally, it was 7:00 and he knew he would have to go in soon. He parked the car and walked up to the door with a shaky step, half-hoping, half-dreading that Ilene would still be watching the door.

He didn’t see her through the glass door as he made his way up the sidewalk. He went in. The music was a nearly deafening polka. He stuck his head in the door of the rec hall. The tables had been pushed against the walls, and old people were bobbing madly around the room. He scanned the room for a familiar face. There was Mr. Jack and Mrs. Barrett, sitting in a corner. He went over to them.

“Well, hello there Hubert,” Mrs. Barrett said as he came up to them. Blessedly, the polka music stopped and a more subdued waltz took its place. “Mr. Jack and I have just been enjoying some dessert and coffee. Why don’t you join us?” She gestured to a nearby metal chair, which Hugh pulled over in front of them.

“We’ve just been sharing old war stories,” Mrs. Barrett said, and smiled up at Mr. Jack.

“Did you know, boy, that we were in France at the exact same time?” Mr. Jack exclaimed. “Imagine that.”

“We may have even seen each other in a coffeehouse or passed each other on the street and never knew it,” Mrs. Barrett added.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Mr. Jack said with a twinkle. “I would have made sure to introduce myself to a lovely lady like yourself,” and he raised his coffee cup in a small toast to Mrs. Barrett and her loveliness.

“So, Hubert, what have you been up to this evening? I didn’t see you during dinner,” Mrs. Barrett asked.

“Oh, I had to go run some errands,” Hugh said. His eyes had not stopped scanning the room since he came in, but he saw no sign of Ilene.

“So, I noticed you were talking to that pretty Parsons girl on the way in.”

“Nice girl,” Mr. Jack said. “But she talks a bit too much for my taste.”

“Yeah, I met her. We talked a bit,” Hugh said. “But I had to leave, and she said she wanted to talk to me. You haven’t seen her, have you?”

“Oh dear,” I believe she left after dinner,” said Mrs. Barrett. “She must have only been scheduled for the first shift. What did she want to talk with you about?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t really say she had something specific to talk about. Just that you all had maybe mentioned me to her and she was looking forward to meeting me or something.” Hugh blushed deep red and faltered.

Mrs. Barrett reached over and patted his clammy hand. “Well, I’m sure you’ll run into her again. She’s a very nice girl. She volunteers here at the Center at least once a week, I’d say.”

“There you go, boy. Chin up. Got to keep on fighting, you know. A good woman is worth hunting for. Nothing like a beautiful woman to lighten a man’s heart.” Mr. Jack offered his own encouragement. “Speaking of which, Mrs. Barrett, I believe you promised me another dance?” With this, he hoisted himself to his feet, handed Hugh his cane, and offered Mrs. Barrett his arm.

Hugh watched the old people shuffle about on the floor. Miss Gracie was dancing with, or rather around, Mr. Milberry who was in a wheelchair and therefore not on Hubert’s route— the van not being equipped with a chair lift. Mr. Turner was stiffly leading Mrs. Voeghts in a two-step. Hugh sat and tried to calm himself down. Ilene wasn’t there. That meant that he didn’t have to face her again tonight. That was good. But it also meant that he couldn’t talk to her again. Would maybe never talk to her again. That made him feel ill. How he wished he’d just dropped the regulars off at the door and gone home. He could be watching TV with his mother right now, with nary the blip in his blood pressure, enjoying a bowl of ice cream or maybe some pie. Instead, he was sitting here miserably.

After another waltz, a foxtrot and a final polka hurrah, the dancing was done and the exhausted guests ready to be shuttled home. Hugh was able to learn a bit more about Ilene on the way home without having to embarrass himself again, as Mrs. Chen especially was all too eager to talk. Apparently, Ilene had been her grandmother’s live-in help until she died last year. About the same time my father died, Hugh thought. Since then, she’d been working as a nurse’s aide at one of the retirement homes and volunteering at the Senior Center. She seemed to enjoy talking a lot and had a “chilly disposition.” This last statement puzzled Hugh until Mrs. Barrett clarified. Yes, she did seem to have a “cheery” disposition.

Hugh was greatly encouraged by the information the regulars had provided him about Ilene. Living with your grandmother was even weirder than living with your mom. Wasn’t it? He was certain most people would agree with him on this point. He felt a growing fondness for Ilene, thinking of her difficulties at having to find an apartment on her own, after living with her grandmother for so long. He imagined the suffering she must have endured over having this awkward and difficult task thrust on her by the untimely death of her “nana.” His heart filled with empathy and kinship.

When he got home, he found that he was suddenly quite ravenous. He consumed two huge bowls of Corn Chex, while watching Jay Leno with his mother. The evening was fine. Yes, he was fine. No, nothing very interesting. Hugh found he suddenly had little interest in this nightly ritual of theirs, and he retired to his room as soon as he’d finished eating.

He searched through the stacks of records lining two shelves in his room. Where was it? Where was it? Yes. There. His fingers shook slightly as he eased the vinyl out of its sleeve and positioned the record on the turntable. He moved the needle over the first track and let it fall slowly to the spinning disk. Then he lay back on his bed, arms bent under his head and enjoyed the words to their song:

I would climb any mountain, sail across the stormy sea
If that's what it takes me baby, to show how much you mean to me
And I guess that it's just the woman in you, that brings out the man in me
I know I can't help myself, you're all in the world to me

It feels like the first time, feels like the very first time
It feels like the first time, it feels like the very first time

He fell asleep to a dream of riding a white unicorn over a mountain of soft earth that gave with each hoof fall.

Unicorn Horn Penetration

Hugh had hoped that the previous evening’s torment would be resolved by a good night’s sleep. But it wasn’t to be. He was destined to be miserable, apparently forever. As he woke up, his first thoughts were of Ilene. He wanted to see her again, to smell her, to watch the unicorn on her breast and listen to her talk about anything in the world, for as long as she wanted.

He ate his morning cereal without enthusiasm, helped his mother with the dishes, then tried to distract himself with a Nintendo game until it was time for his shift at the video store. But it was no good. He felt itchy, restless. He pulled on a jacket and told his mother he was going out for a walk before work.

“Are you alright dear?” his mother asked from the kitchen table, where she was clipping coupons. “You don’t seem yourself. Are you upset at something?”

“No, no. Just a bit restless. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

Hugh wandered the streets, musing. I wonder which retirement home she works for, he thought to himself. Maybe, I could volunteer to drive for them or something. They must need volunteers. Maybe I could read to the residents. He determined to get more specific information from the regulars as soon as possible.

Over the next few days, Hugh found that his route took him past the Senior Center more and more frequently. Each time, he slowed and peered through the glass door, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ilene’s curly hair. So far, he’d been unable to bring himself to ask for more information from his regulars, but he would soon. He was getting desperate. His waking moments were filled with fantasies about himself and Ilene — having witty and interesting conversations, watching a movie, taking a walk, going on the C.A.R.E. rounds together. He imagined touching her, and the electricity that shot through his stomach took his breath away.

One afternoon the following week, he picked up Mrs. Barrett for a hair appointment, and found himself driving slowly past the Senior Center. Suddenly, his heart gave a painful leap. He thought he saw a head of wavy brown hair through the glass. Could it be? He pulled into the parking lot.

“Hugh, what are you doing?” Mrs. Barrett cried out. “We’re not going to the Senior Center. I have an appointment at the beauty parlor.”

“Oh, sorry,” Hugh said. “Just got a bit confused for a minute.” He sat dumbly, making no attempts to leave the parking lot.

Mrs. Barrett looked at him carefully for a minute. Then, quite casually, she said, “You know, Hubert, now that we’re here, I was wondering if I might pop inside for a moment. I want to pick up an activities schedule for next month. I won’t be but a minute. I’m sure we have time. Do you mind terribly much?”

“No, that’s fine.” Hugh turned off the car and came around to help her out of the van. Since there was just the two of them, she was sitting up front next to him, which was nice, but the steps were harder to handle.

“Thank you, Hubert, I’m fine,” Mrs. Barrett said as Hugh offered his arm to her. She started up the sidewalk, then turned back to Hugh, who was standing, unmoving next to the van. “You know, on second thought, it would be lovely if you’d help me to the door. My hip is hurting me a bit today.”

Hugh took Mrs. Barrett’s arm and headed up the sidewalk. He was sure he was shaking more than she was as they got closer to the door. When they got inside, Mrs. Barrett thanked him and disappeared down the hallway. But Hugh barely noticed. Ilene was standing up on a chair in front of the big bulletin board on the right, a stapler in one hand, crepe paper flowers in the other. Ilene frightened him more than anything or anyone he’d ever run from in his entire life. More than Mr. Turner. More than strangers. More than finding an apartment and living on his own. Yet here he was, drawn to the place where they’d met, and incredibly happy at finding her there.

“Hugh? Hi!” she said, scrambling down from the chair. Today, she was wearing jeans and a pink t-shirt. Hugh looked hopefully for the unicorn necklace.

“Hi.” Hugh stood rocking back and forth a moment, hesitating, with a nervous grin, staring at Ilene. “Nice job,” he finally said, pointing over to the bulletin board.

Ilene looked around at the green-covered board. “Oh, thanks. Just putting up some new decorations. Help things look fresh. Springy.” Silence fell between them.

“It was nice meeting you—” they started in near unison. Hugh faltered, embarrassed. “—the other night,” Ilene finished, laughing, then looked down, shy and pretty. Hugh’s heart started pounding harder.

“So, what’s it going to be?” Hugh asked, gesturing to the bulletin board.

“Oh, a Spring meadow, I think,” said Ilene, turning back to look at her work. “And look, here, I’ve made a unicorn to add to it,” and she held up a prancing paper unicorn, much like the one Hugh remembered so well. “I love unicorns. Such beautiful creatures, don’t you think? I modeled it after this one,” she said, pulling the necklace out from under her shirt. “I wear it all the time. It’s my good luck charm.” She held the unicorn between two fingers, pressed it lightly to her lips, then let it fall.

“Yeah, beautiful.” Hugh stared at the silver unicorn, imagining where it had just been, under her shirt, touching her lips. He wrenched his eyes away from the charm and back to the paper unicorn Ilene still held in her hands. “Better be careful there. That horn looks awfully sharp. Looks like it could hurt someone,” he said suddenly. Hugh winced to hear the corny joke coming out of his mouth. Oh no. Not again. He was going to end up sounding completely ignorant and ruin this.

“Hmm, I wonder?” Ilene joked back. She playfully stuck her finger onto the end of the paper horn, then pulled it away quickly. “Ouch! You’re right!” she laughed and stuck the finger with the imaginary wound in her mouth, sucking away the imaginary blood.

Hugh was enthralled. She wasn’t wincing at his pathetic attempt at humor. She was laughing and joking and doing something very sexy with her fingers. He wanted to pull the offended finger from her mouth and put it in his own mouth and suck it and lick the wound closed.

Ilene laughed again and climbed back up on the chair. “So, maybe you can help me put this dangerous guy up on the board,” she said to Hugh as she positioned the unicorn among the flowers and the construction paper grass. “How’s that?”

Emboldened by his previous success, Hugh tried again. “Um, maybe a little further to the left. Don’t want that horn getting too close to the sun. That could really be a mess. Sunshine oozing everywhere. Ruin the entire display.” Hugh felt that sunshine oozing throughout his body right now, causing complete havoc.

Ilene giggled. “Hugh, you’re a riot. OK, how about there?” and she slid the creature a few inches to the left, away from the yellow circle at the top of the board.

“Yes, that’s it. Much better.” He was on a roll now, totally confident with no stuttering and almost no sweating.

“Can you hold it for me while I staple it up?” Ilene asked, peering over her shoulder.

“Sure.” Hugh’s heart raced as he moved over to the bulletin board. As he reached out to hold the paper in place, one of his arms brushed Ilene’s breasts. He felt his groin go hot. The sweet musky smell of her filled his nostrils. He looked down and stared hard at the paper flowers to keep himself from turning and burying his head in her thick-smelling warmth.

Ilene stapled the unicorn all around, then put a hand on Hugh’s shoulder and jumped down from the chair. She seemed a bit shaky. “Thank you,” she said, stepping back from the board a pace. “Well, what do you think? How’s it look?”

“It looks wonderful.”

“Yeah, it does.”

They were silent again, tired from the emotional and hormonal surge the stapling had required. They heard a noise down the hall. Mrs. Barrett was slowly making her way back to the foyer.

“Well, it looks like I’ve got to go,” Hugh said. “It was nice talking with you again.”

“Yeah, I’m really glad we ran into each other again,” Ilene responded. She bent down and fumbled in a box on the floor, then pressed a paper flower into Hugh’s hand just as Mrs. Barrett reached them. “A token of my appreciation,” she said, with mock seriousness. “Hi Mrs. Barrett. Look, Hugh has just helped me finish the bulletin board. What do you think?”

“Very lovely, my dear. Quite festive,” Mrs. Barrett replied. “Well, Hugh, shall we go? I’m afraid I might be a bit late if we don’t get going. Goodbye, Ilene. Nice to see you again, dear.”

“Bye,” Hugh said, longing already starting to rise in his chest. He pushed the door open, holding it wide with one arm for Mrs. Barrett to pass. Then he held out his arm for her, the crepe paper treasure in his other hand.

“Ilene is such a sweet girl,” Mrs. Barrett said as they made their way to the van. “How lucky you two ran into each other again.”

Hugh drove Mrs. Barrett to the beauty parlor, then went back out to the van to wait. He felt uncomfortable amidst the hairsprays, hairdryers, and curious, gossiping women inside the shop. Besides, he needed some time alone to think over what had just happened.

He picked the white and green flower up from the dashboard and twirled it in his hand, remembering with a smile her response to his dumb joke. He absently turned the flower in his hands, as he relived those few magical moments. He looked down and his heart stopped, then roared into his ears. She had written something on the back of the flower.

“Call me sometime! 426-9098 ☺”

Hugh was thunderstruck. He sat dazed for a moment, then let out a “Whoo-hoo!”

Never, in his 38 years, had a girl whom he liked willingly given him her number. He stopped and stared at the writing on the back of the flower again, reassuring himself that it was real. Something amazing was happening. She laughed at his jokes. She lived with her grandmother. She had beautiful sweet-smelling breasts. And she had given him her number. His head was humming.

Everything seemed cut in sharp relief. He could see the distinct outline of every leaf, the clear edges of each blade of grass. The world was suddenly crisp, as if it had been out of focus his entire life and only now was the lens adjusted so that he could see clearly.

Putting his newfound confidence to work, Hugh jumped out of the van and marched boldly into the Quik Qurl. He scanned the room for Mrs. Barrett, oblivious for once to the curious eyes upon him. He finally found her, sitting under one of those huge hairdryers that look like space helmets. He rushed toward her, upsetting a cart full of little multi-colored plastic rods. The woman using the rods looked at him with annoyance, then shooed him away with long purple nails when he bent over and started clumsily scooping up the plastic and replacing it in the bin. He hurried on to the hairdryers.

“Mrs. Barrett,” he said with agitated excitement. “Look!” and he thrust the flower in front of her.

Mrs. Barrett looked up, startled. She hadn’t noticed Hugh, what with the noise of the hairdryer and all. She pushed the dryer up from her head awkwardly, to shut the machine off. “Well, now, what’s this?” she asked, taking the flower from Hugh.

“Ilene gave me her number,” Hugh beamed proudly. “She wants me to call her.”

“Hugh, that’s wonderful. Ilene is such a nice girl. When are you going to call?”

“Um, I don’t know.” Hugh’s confidence started to waver a bit. “Maybe tonight?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, his old demon started whispering. “So, now you actually have to call her,” it said. “What will you say? What if someone else answers the phone? It won’t be the same as it was today. You’ll just end up sounding stupid again.” It droned on and on. Its familiar rhythm reached his inner ear and made him pause for a moment. A blanket of familiar dullness started to cloud the world.

He remembered the sweet, deep smell of Ilene as he stood close to her and the thrill when his arm grazed her breasts. “Not this time,” he said aloud. “She gave me her number. And I will call her. Everything’s different,” he muttered to himself. He could feel himself staring his fear down, the rush of happiness returning, and strengthening his resolve. Felt it in his limbs and his shoulders, as they unhunched and straightened. He was a desirable person. Right now, in this moment, not some fantasy future, a real-life, attractive woman found him attractive.

He looked back at Mrs. Barrett. “Yes, tonight. I will call her tonight.”

Flight

2004-06-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

When I was much younger, I considered this my favorite short story. When I read it again recently, I remembered what I like about Steinbeck — he's an engaging storyteller who brings his characters to life — and I remembered what I dislike about Steinbeck — he can push his bizarre world view at odd angles. I still enjoy this story.

Flight
By John Steinbeck

Out fifteen miles below Monterey, on the wild coast, the Torres family had their farm, a few sloping acres above a cliff that dropped to the brown reefs and to the hissing white waters of the ocean. Behind the farm the stone mountains stood up against the sky. The farm buildings huddled like the clinging aphids on the mountain skirts, crouched low to the ground as though the wind might blow them into the sea. The little shack, the rattling, rotting barn were gray-bitten with sea salt, beaten by the damp wind until they had taken on the color of the granite hills. Two horses, a red cow and a red calf, half a dozen pigs and a flock of lean, multicolored chickens stocked the place. A little corn was raised on the sterile slope, and it grew short and thick under the wind, and all the cobs formed on the landward sides of the stalks.

Mama Torres, a lean, dry woman with ancient eyes, had ruled the farm for ten years, ever since her husband tripped over a stone in the field one day and fell full length on a rattlesnake. When one is bitten on the chest there is not much that can be done.

Mama Torres had three children, two undersized black ones of twelve and fourteen, Emilio and Rosy, whom Mama kept fishing on the rocks below the farm when the sea was kind and when the truant officer was in some distant part of Monterey County. And there was Pepe, the tall smiling son of nineteen, a gentle, affectionate boy, but very lazy. Pepe had a tall head, pointed at the top, and from its peak coarse black hair grew down like a thatch all around. Over his smiling little eyes Mama cut a straight bang so he could see. Pepe had sharp Indian cheekbones and an eagle nose, but his mouth was as sweet and shapely as a girl's mouth, and his chin was fragile and chiseled. He was loose and gangling, all legs and feet and wrists, and he was very lazy. Mama thought him fine and brave, but she never told him so. She said, "Some lazy cow must have got into thy father's family, else how could I have a son like thee." And she said, "When I carried thee, a sneaking lazy coyote came out of the brush and looked at me one day. That must have made thee so."

Pepe smiled sheepishly and stabbed at the ground with his knife to keep the blade sharp and free from rust. It was his inheritance, that knife, his father's knife. The long heavy blade folded back into the black handle. There was a button on the handle. When Pepe pressed the button, the blade leaped out ready for use. The knife was with Pepe always, for it had been his father's knife.

One sunny morning when the sea below the cliff was glinting and blue and the white surf creamed on the reef, when even the stone mountains looked kindly, Mama Torres called out the door of the shack, "Pepe, I have a labor for thee."

There was no answer. Mama listened. From behind the barn she heard a burst of laughter. She lifted her full long skirt and walked in the direction of the noise.

Pepe was sitting on the ground with his back against a box. His white teeth glistened. On either side of him stood the two black ones, tense and expectant. Fifteen feet away a redwood post was set in the ground. Pepe's right hand lay limply in his lap, and in the palm the big black knife rested. The blade was closed back into the handle. Pepe looked smiling at the sky.

Suddenly Emilio cried, "Ya!"

Pepe's wrist flicked like the head of a snake. The blade seemed to fly open in midair, and with a thump the point dug into the redwood post, and the black handle quivered. The three burst into excited laughter. Rosy ran to the post and pulled out the knife and brought it back to Pepe. He closed the blade and settled the knife carefully in his listless palm again. He grinned self-consciously at the sky.

"Ya! "

The heavy knife lanced out and sunk into the post again. Mama moved forward like a ship and scattered the play.

"All day you do foolish things with the knife, like a toy baby," she stormed. "Get up on thy huge feet that eat up shoes. Get up!" She took him by one loose shoulder and hoisted at him. Pepe grinned sheepishly and came halfheartedly to his feet. "Look!" Mama cried. "Big lazy, you must catch the horse and put on him thy father's saddle. You must ride to Monterey. The medicine bottle is empty. There is no salt. Go thou now, Peanut! Catch the horse."

A revolution took place in the relaxed figure of Pepe. "To Monterey, me? Alone? Si, Mama."

She scowled at him. "Do not think, big sheep, that you will buy candy. No, I will give you only enough for the medicine and the salt."

Pepe smiled. "Mama, you will put the hatband on the hat?"

She relented then. "Yes, Pepe. You may wear the hatband."

His voice grew insinuating. "And the green handkerchief, Mama?"

"Yes, if you go quickly and return with no trouble, the silk green handkerchief will go. If you make sure to take off the handkerchief when you eat so no spot may fall on it."

"Si, Mama. I will be careful. I am a man."

"Thou? A man? Thou art a peanut."

He went to the rickety barn and brought out a rope, and he walked agilely enough up the hill to catch the horse. When he was ready and mounted before the door, mounted on his father's saddle that was so old that the oaken frame showed through torn leather in many places, then Mama brought out the round black hat with the tooled leather band, and she reached up and knotted the green silk handkerchief about his neck. Pepe's blue denim coat was much darker than his jeans, for it had been washed much less often.

Mama handed up the big medicine bottle and the silver coins. "That for the medicine," she said, "and that for the salt. That for a candle to burn for the papa. That for dulces for the little ones. Our friend Mrs. Rodriguez will give you dinner and maybe a bed for the night. When you go to the church, say only ten paternosters and only twenty-five Ave Marias. Oh! I know, big coyote. You would sit there flapping your mouth over Aves all day while you looked at the candles and the holy pictures. That is not good devotion to stare at the pretty things."

The black hat, covering the high pointed head and black thatched hair of Pepe, gave him dignity and age. He sat the rangy horse well. Mama thought how handsome he was, dark and lean and tall. "I would not send thee now alone, thou little one, except for the medicine," she said softly. "It is not good to have no medicine, for who knows when the toothache will come, or the sadness of the stomach. These things are."

"Adios, Mama," Pepe cried. "I will come back soon. You may send me often alone. I am a man."

"Thou art a foolish chicken."

He straightened his shoulders, flipped the reins against the horse's shoulder, and rode away. He turned once and saw that they still watched him. Emilio and Rosy and Mama. Pepe grinned with pride and gladness and lifted the tough buckskin horse to a trot.

When he had dropped out of sight over a little dip in the road, Mama turned to the black ones, but she spoke to herself. "He is nearly a man now," she said. "It will be a nice thing to have a man in the house again." Her eyes sharpened on the children. "Go to the rocks now. The tide is going out. There will be abalones to be found." She put the iron hooks into their hands and saw them down the steep trail to the reefs. She brought the smooth stone metate to the doorway and sat grinding her corn to flour and looking occasionally at the road over which Pepe had gone. The noonday came and then the afternoon, when the little ones beat the abalones on a rock to make them tender and Mama patted the tortillas to make them thin. They ate dinner as the red sun was plunging down toward the ocean. They sat on the doorsteps and watched a big white moon come over the mountaintops.

Mama said, "He is now at the house of our friend Mrs. Rodriguez. She will give him nice things to eat and maybe a present."

Emilio said, "Someday I, too, will ride to Monterey for medicine. Did Pepe come to be a man today?"

Mama said wisely, "A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man:"

Soon afterward they retired, Mama in her big oak bed on one side of the room, Emilio and Rosy in their boxes full of straw and sheepskins on the other side of the room.

The moon went over the sky and the surf roared on the rocks. The roosters crowed the first call. The surf subsided to a whispering surge against the reef. The moon dropped toward the sea. The roosters crowed again.

The moon was near down to the water when Pepe rode on a winded horse to his home flat. His dog bounced out and. circled the horse, yelping-with pleasure. Pepe slid off the saddle to the ground. The weathered little shack was silver in the moonlight and the square shadow of it was black to the north and east. Against the east the piling mountains were misty with light; their tops melted into the sky.

Pepe walked wearily up the three steps and into the house. It was dark inside. There was a rustle in the comer.

Mama cried out from her bed. "Who comes? Pepe, is it thou?"

"Si, Mama:"

"Did you get the medicine?"

"Si, Mama"

"Well, go to sleep, then. I thought you would be sleeping at the house of Mrs. Rodriguez." Pepe stood silently in the dark room. "Why do you stand there, Pepe? Did you drink wine?"

"Si, Mama"

"Well, go to bed then and sleep out the wine."

His voice was tired and patient, but very firm. "'Light the candle, Mama. I must go away into the mountains."

"'What is this, Pepe? You are crazy." Mama struck a sulfur match and held the little blue burr until the flame spread up the stick. She set light to the candle on the floor beside her bed. "Now, Pepe, what is this you say?" She looked anxiously into his face.

He was changed. The fragile quality seemed to have gone from his chin. His mouth was less full than it had been, the lines of the lip were straighter, but in his eyes the greatest change had taken place. There was no laughter in them anymore, nor any bashfulness. They were sharp and bright and purposeful.

He told her in a tired monotone, told her everything just as it had happened. A few people came into the kitchen of Mrs. Rodriguez. There was wine to drink. Pepe drank wine The little quarrel — the man started toward Pepe and then the knife — it went almost by itself. It flew, it darted before Pepe knew it. As he talked, Mama's face grew stern, and it seemed to grow more lean. Pepe finished. I am a man now, Mama. The man said names to me I could not allow."

Mama nodded. "Yes, thou art a man, my poor little Pepe. Thou art a man. I have seen it coming on thee. I have watched you throwing the knife into the post, and I have been afraid." For a moment her face had softened, but now it grew stern again. "Come! We must get you ready. Go. Awaken Emilio and Rosy. Go quickly."

Pepe stepped over to the corner where his brother and sister slept among the sheepskins. He leaned down and shook them gently. "Come, Rosyl Come, Emilio! The Mama says you must arise."

The little black ones sat up and rubbed their eyes in the candlelight. Mama was out of bed now, her long black skirt over her nightgown. "Emilio," she cried. "Go up and catch the other horse for Pepe. Quickly, now! Quickly." Emilio put his legs in his overalls and stumbled sleepily out the door.

"You heard no one behind you on the road?" Mama demanded.

"No, Mama. I listened carefully. No one was on the road."

Mama darted like a bird about the room. From a nail on the wall she took a canvas bag and threw it on the floor. She stripped a blanket from her bed and rolled it into a tight tube and tied the ends with string. From a box beside the stove she lifted a flour sack half full of black string jerky. "Your father's black coat, Pepe. Here, put it on."

Pepe stood in the middle of the floor watching her activity. She reached behind the door and brought out the rifle, a long 38-56, worn shiny the whole length of the barrel. Pepe took it from her and held it in the crook of his elbow. Mama brought a little leather bag and counted the cartridges into his hand. "Only ten left," she warned. "You must not waste them."

Emilio put his head in the door. " 'Qui 'st 'l caballo, Mama."

"Put on the saddle from the other horse. Tie on the blanket. Here, tie the jerky to the saddle horn."

Still Pepe stood silently watching his mother's frantic activity. His chin looked hard, and his sweet mouth was drawn and thin. His little eyes followed Mama about the room almost suspiciously.

Rosy asked softly, "Where goes Pepe?"

Mama's eyes were fierce. "Pepe goes on a journey. Pepe is a man now. He has a man's thing to do."

Pepe straightened his shoulders. His mouth changed until he looked very much like Mama.

At last the preparation was finished. The loaded horse stood outside the door. The water bag dripped a line of moisture down the bay shoulder.

The moonlight was being thinned by the dawn, and the big white moon was near down to the sea. The family stood by the shack. Mama confronted Pepe. "Look, my son! Do not stop until it is dark again. Do not sleep even though you are tired. Take care of the horse in order that he may not stop of weariness. Remember to be careful with the bullets-there are only ten. Do not fill thy stomach with jerky or it will make thee sick. Eat a little jerky and fill thy stomach with grass. When thou comest to the high mountains, if thou seest any of the dark watching men, go not near to them nor try to speak to them. And forget not thy prayers." She put her lean hands on Pepe's shoulders, stood on her toes and kissed him formally on both cheeks, and Pepe kissed her on both cheeks. Then he went to Emilio and Rosy and kissed both of their cheeks.

Pepe turned back to Mama. He seemed to look for a little softness, a little weakness in her. His eyes were searching, but Mama's face remained fierce. "Go now," she said. "Do not wait to be caught like a chicken."

Pepe pulled himself into the saddle. "I am a man," he said.

It was the first dawn when he rode up the hill toward the little canyon which let a trail into the mountains. Moonlight and daylight fought with each other, and the two warring qualities made it difficult to see. Before Pepe had gone a hundred yards, the outlines of his figure were misty; and long before he entered the canyon, he had become a gray, indefinite shadow.

Mama stood stiffly in front of her doorstep, and on either side of her stood Emilio and Rosy. They cast furtive glances at Mama now and then.

When the gray shape of Pepe melted into the hillside and disappeared, Mama relaxed. She began the high, whining keen of the death wail. "Our beautiful — our brave," she cried. "Our protector, our son is gone." Emilio and Rosy moaned beside her. "Our beautiful — our brave, he is gone. " It was the formal wail. It rose to a high piercing whine and subsided to a moan. Mama raised it three times and then she turned and went into the house and shut the door.

Emilio and Rosy stood wondering in the dawn. They heard Mama whimpering in the house. They went out to sit on the cliff above the ocean. They touched shoulders. "When did Pepe come to be a man?" Emilio asked

"Last night," said Rosy. "Last night in Monterey." The ocean clouds turned red with the sun that was behind the mountains.

"We will have no breakfast," said Emilio. "Mama will not want to cook." Rosy did not answer him. "Where is Pepe gone?" he asked.

Rosy looked around at him. She drew her knowledge from the quiet air. "He has gone on a journey. He will never come back."

"Is he dead? Do you think he is dead?"

Rosy looked back at the ocean again. A little steamer, drawing a line of smoke, sat on the edge of the horizon. "He is not dead," Rosy explained. "Not yet."

Pepe rested the big rifle across the saddle in front of him. He let the horse walk up the hill and he didn't look back. The stony slope took on a coat of short brush so that Pepe found the entrance to a trail and entered it.

When he came to the canyon opening, he swung once in his saddle and looked back, but the houses were swallowed in the misty light. Pepe jerked forward again. The high shoulder of the canyon closed in on him. His horse stretched out its neck and sighed and settled to the trail.

It was a well-worn path, dark soft leaf-mold earth strewn with broken pieces of sandstone. The trail rounded the shoulder of the canyon and dropped steeply into the bed of the stream. In the shallows the water ran smoothly, glinting in the first morning sun. Small round stones on the bottom were as brown as rust with sun moss. In the sand along the edges of the stream the tall, rich wild mint grew, while in the water itself the cress, old and tough, had gone to heavy seed.

The path went into the stream and emerged on the other side. The horse sloshed into the water and stopped. Pepe dropped his bridle and let the beast drink of the running water.

Soon the canyon sides became steep and the first giant sentinel redwoods guarded the trail, great round red trunks bearing foliage as green and lacy as ferns. Once Pepe was among the trees, the sun was lost. A perfumed and purple light lay in the pale green of the underbrush. Gooseberry bushes and blackberries and tall ferns lined the stream, and overhead the branches of the redwoods met and cut off the sky.

Pepe drank from the water bag, and he reached into the flour sack and brought out a black string of jerky. His white teeth gnawed at the string until the tough meat parted. He chewed slowly and drank occasionally from the water bag. His little eyes were slumberous and tired, but the muscles of his face were hard-set. The earth of the trail was black now. It gave up a hollow sound under the walking hoofbeats.

The stream fell more sharply. Little waterfalls splashed on the stones. Five-fingered ferns hung over the water and dropped spray from their fingertips. Pepe rode half over his saddle, dangling one leg loosely. He picked a bay leaf from a tree beside the way and put it into his mouth for a moment to flavor the dry jerky. He held the gun loosely across the pommel.

Suddenly he squared in his saddle, swung the horse from the trail and kicked it hurriedly up behind a big redwood tree. He pulled up the reins tight against the bit to keep the horse from whinnying. His face was intent and his nostrils quivered a little.

A hollow pounding came down the trail, and a horseman rode by, a fat man with red cheeks and a white stubble beard. His horse put down his head and blubbered at the trail when it came to the place where Pepe had turned off. "Hold up!" said the man, and he pulled up his horse's head.

When the last sound of the hoofs died away, Pepe came back into the trail again. He did not relax in the saddle any more. He lifted the big rifle and swung the lever to throw a shell into the chamber, and then he let down the hammer to half cock.

The trail grew very steep. Now the redwood trees were smaller and their tops were dead, bitten dead where the wind reached them. The horse plodded on; the sun went slowly overhead and started down toward the afternoon.

Where the stream came out of a side canyon, the trail left it. Pepe dismounted and watered his horse and filled up his water bag. As soon as the trail had parted from the stream, the trees were gone and only the thick brittle sage and manzanita and the chaparral edged the trail. And the soft black earth was gone, too, leaving only the light tan broken rock for the trail bed. Lizards scampered away into the brush as the horse rattled over the little stones.

Pepe turned in his saddle and looked back. He was in the open now: he could be seen from a distance. As he ascended the trail the country grew more rough and terrible and dry. The way wound about the bases of great square rocks. Little gray rabbits skittered in the brush. A bird made a monotonous high creaking. Eastward the bare rock mountaintops were pale and powder-dry under the dropping sun. The horse plodded up and up the trail toward the little v in the ridge which was the pass.

Pepe looked suspiciously back every minute or so, and his eyes sought the tops of the ridges ahead. Once, on a white barren spur, he saw a black figure for a moment; but he looked quickly away, for it was one of the dark watchers. No one knew who the watchers were, nor where they lived, but it was better to ignore them and never to show interest in them. They did not bother one who stayed on the trail and minded his own business.

The air was parched and full of light dust blown by the breeze from the eroding mountains. Pepe drank sparingly from his bag and corked it tightly and hung it on the horn again. The trail moved up the dry shale hillside, avoiding rocks, dropping under clefts, climbing in and out of old water scars. When he arrived at the little pass he stopped and looked back for a long time. No dark watchers were to be seen now. The trail behind was empty. Only the high tops of the redwoods indicated where the stream flowed.

Pepe rode on through the pass. His little eyes were nearly closed with weariness, but his face was stern, relentless, and manly. The high mountain wind coasted sighing through the pass and whistled on the edges of the big blocks of broken granite. In the air, a red-tailed hawk sailed over close to the ridge and screamed angrily. Pepe went slowly through the broken jagged pass and looked down on the other side.

The trail dropped quickly, staggering among broken rock. At the bottom of the slope there was a dark crease, thick with brush, and on the other side of the crease a little flat, in which a grove of oak trees grew. A scar of green grass cut across the flat. And behind the flat another mountain rose, desolate with dead rocks and starving little black bushes. Pepe drank from the bag again, for the air was so dry that it encrusted his nostrils and burned his lips. He put the horse down the trail. The hoofs slipped and struggled on the steep way, starting little stones that rolled off into the brush. The sun was gone behind the westward mountain now, but still it glowed brilliantly on the oaks and on the grassy flat. The rocks and the hillsides still sent up waves of the heat they had gathered from the day's sun.

Pepe looked up to the top of the next dry withered ridge. He saw a dark form against the sky, a man's figure standing on top of a rock, and he glanced away quickly not to appear curious. When a moment later he looked up again, the figure was gone.

Downward the trail was quickly covered. Sometimes the horse floundered for footing, sometimes set his feet and slid a little way. They came at last to the bottom where the dark chaparral was higher than Pepe's head. He held up his rifle on one side and his arm on the other to shield his face from the sharp brittle fingers of the brush.

Up and out of the crease he rode, and up a little cliff. The grassy flat was before him, and the round comfortable oaks. For a moment he studied the trail down which he had come, but there was no movement and no sound from it. Finally he rode out over the flat, to the green streak, and at the upper end of the damp he found a little spring welling out of the earth and dropping into a dug basin before it seeped out over the flat.

Pepe filled his bag first, and then he let the thirsty horse drink out of the pool. He led the horse to the clump of oaks, and in the middle of the grove, fairly protected from sight on all sides, he took off the saddle and the bridle and laid them on the ground. The horse stretched his jaws sideways and yawned. Pepe knotted the lead rope about the horse's neck and tied him to a sapling among the oaks, where he could graze in a fairly large circle.

When the horse was gnawing hungrily at the dry grass, Pepe went to the saddle and took a black string of jerky from the sack and strolled to an oak tree on the edge of the grove, from under which he could watch the trail. He sat down in the crisp dry oak leaves and automatically felt for his big black knife to cut the jerky, but he had no knife. He leaned back on his elbow and gnawed at the tough strong meat. His face was blank, but it was a man's face.

The bright evening light washed the eastern ridge, but the valley was darkening. Doves flew down from the hills to the spring, and the quail came running out of the brush and joined them, calling clearly to one another.

Out of the corner of his eye Pepe saw a shadow grow out of the bushy crease. He turned his head slowly. A big spotted wildcat was creeping toward the spring, belly to the ground, moving like thought.

Pepe cocked his rifle and edged the muzzle slowly around. Then he looked apprehensively up the trail and dropped the hammer again. From the ground beside him he picked an oak twig and threw it toward the spring. The quail flew up with a roar and the doves whistled away. The big cat stood up; for a long moment he looked at Pepe with cold yellow eyes, and then fearlessly walked back into the gulch.

The dusk gathered quickly in the deep valley. Pepe muttered his prayers, put his head down on his arm and went instantly to sleep.

The moon came up and filled the valley with cold blue light, and the wind swept rustling down from the peaks. The owls worked up and down the slopes looking for rabbits. Down in the brush of the gulch a coyote gabbled. The oak trees whispered softly in the night breeze.

Pepe started up, listening. His horse had whinnied. The moon was just slipping behind the western ridge, leaving the valley in darkness behind it. Pepe sat tensely gripping his rifle. From far up the trail he heard an answering whinny and the crash of shod hoofs on the broken rock. He jumped to his feet, ran to his horse and led it under the trees. He threw on the saddle and cinched it tight for the steep trail, caught the unwilling head and forced the bit into the mouth. He felt the saddle to make sure the water bag and the sack of jerky were there. Then he mounted and turned up the hill.

It was velvet-dark. The horse found the entrance to the trail where it left the flat, and started up, stumbling and slipping on the rocks. Pepe's hand rose up to his head. His hat was gone. He had left it under the oak tree.

The horse had struggled far up the trail when the first change of dawn came into the air, a steel grayness as light mixed thoroughly with dark. Gradually the sharp snaggled edge of the ridge stood out above them, rotten granite tortured and eaten by the winds of time. Pepe had dropped his reins on the horn, leaving direction to the horse. The brush grabbed at his legs in the dark until one knee of his jeans was ripped.

Gradually the light flowed down over the ridge. The starved brush and rocks stood out in the half-light, strange and lonely in high perspective. Then there came warmth into the light. Pepe drew up and looked back, but he could see nothing in the darker valley below. The sky turned blue over the coming sun. In the waste of the mountainside, the poor dry brush grew only three feet high. Here and there, big outcroppings of unrotted granite stood up like moldering houses. Pepe relaxed a little. He drank from his water bag and bit off a piece of jerky. A single eagle flew over, high in the light.

Without warning Pepe's horse screamed and fell on its side. He was almost down before the rifle crash echoed up from the valley. From a hole behind the struggling shoulder, a stream of bright crimson blood pumped and stopped and pumped and stopped. The hoofs threshed on the ground. Pepe lay half stunned beside the horse. He looked slowly down the hill. A piece of sage clipped off beside his head and another crash echoed up from side to side of the canyon. Pepe flung himself frantically behind a bush.

He crawled up the hill on his knees and one hand. His right hand held the rifle up off the ground and pushed it ahead of him. He moved with the instinctive care of an animal. Rapidly he wormed his way toward one of the big outcroppings of granite on the hill above him. Where the brush was high he doubled up and ran; but where the cover was slight he wriggled forward on his stomach, pushing the rifle ahead of him. In the last little distance there was no cover at all. Pepe poised and then he darted across the space and flashed around the corner of the rock.

He leaned panting against the stone. When his breath came easier he moved along behind the big rock until he came to a narrow split that offered a thin section of vision down the hill. Pepe lay on his stomach and pushed the rifle barrel through the slit and waited.

The sun reddened the western ridges now. Already the buzzards were settling down toward the place where the horse lay. A small brown bird scratched in the dead sage leaves directly in front of the rifle muzzle. The coasting eagle flew back toward the rising sun.

Pepe saw a little movement in the brush far below. His grip tightened on the gun. A little brown doe stepped daintily out on the trail and crossed it and disappeared into the brush again. For a long time Pepe waited. Far below he could see the little flat and the oak trees and the slash of green. Suddenly his eyes flashed back at the trail again. A quarter of a mile down there had been a quick movement in the chaparral. The rifle swung over. The front sight nestled in the v of the rear sight. Pepe studied for a moment and then raised the rear sight a notch. The little movement in the brush came again. The sight settled on it. Pepe squeezed the trigger. The explosion crashed down the mountain and up the other side, and came rattling back. The whole side of the slope grew still. No more movement. And then a white streak cut into the granite of the slit and a bullet whined away and a crash sounded up from below. Pepe felt a sharp pain in his right hand. A sliver of granite was sticking out from between his first and second knuckles and the point protruded from his palm. Carefully he pulled out the sliver of stone. The wound bled evenly and gently. No vein or artery was cut.

Pepe looked into a little dusty cave in the rock and gathered a handful of spider web, and he pressed the mass into the cut, plastering the soft web into the blood. The flow stopped almost at once.

The rifle was on the ground. Pepe picked it, up, levered a new shell into the chamber. And then he slid into the brush on his stomach. Far to the right he crawled, and then up the hill, moving slowly and carefully, crawling to cover and resting and then crawling again.

In the mountains the sun is high in its arc before it penetrates the gorges. The hot face looked over the hill and brought instant heat with it. The white light beat on the rocks and reflected from them and rose up quivering from the earth again, and the rocks and bushes seemed to quiver behind the air.

Pepe crawled in the general direction of the ridge peak, zigzagging for cover. The deep cut between his knuckles began to throb. He crawled close to a rattlesnake before he saw it, and when it raised its dry head and made a soft beginning whir, he backed up and took another way. The quick gray lizards flashed in front of him, raising a tiny line of dust. He found another mass of spider web and pressed it against his throbbing hand.

Pepe was pushing the rifle with his left hand now. Little drops of sweat ran to the ends of his coarse black hair and rolled down his cheeks. His lips and tongue were growing thick and heavy. His lips writhed to draw saliva into his mouth. His little dark eyes were uneasy and suspicious. Once when a gray lizard paused in front of him on the parched ground and turned its head sideways, he crushed it flat with a stone.

When the sun slid past noon he had not gone a mile. He crawled exhaustedly a last hundred yards to a patch of high sharp manzanita, crawled desperately, and when the patch was reached he wriggled in among the tough gnarly trunks and dropped his head on his left arm. There was little shade in the meager brush, but there was cover and safety. Pepe went to sleep as he lay and the sun beat on his back. A few little birds hopped close to him and peered and hopped away. Pepe squirmed in his sleep and he raised and dropped his wounded hand again and again.

The sun went down behind the peaks and the cool evening came, and then the dark. A coyote yelled from the hillside. Pepe started awake and looked about with misty eyes. His hand was swollen and heavy; a little thread of pain ran up the inside of his arm and settled in a pocket in his armpit. He peered about and then stood up, for the mountains were black and the moon had not yet risen. Pepe stood up in the dark. The coat of his father pressed on his arm. His tongue was swollen until it nearly filled his mouth. He wriggled out of the coat and dropped it in the brush, and then he struggled up the hill, falling over rocks and tearing his way through the brush. The rifle knocked against stones as he went. Little dry avalanches of gravel and shattered stone went whispering down the hill behind him.

After a while the old moon came up and showed the jagged ridgetop ahead of him. By moonlight Pepe, traveled more easily. He bent forward so that his throbbing arm hung away from his body. The journey uphill was made in dashes and rests, a frantic rush up a few yards and then a rest. The wind coasted down the slope, rattling the dry stems of the bushes.

The moon was at meridian when Pepe came at last to the sharp backbone of the ridgetop. On the last hundred yards of the rise no soil had clung under the wearing winds. The way was on solid rock. He clambered to the top and looked down on the other side. There was a draw like the last below him, misty with moonlight, brushed- with dry struggling sage and chaparral. On the other side the hill rose up sharply and at the top the jagged rotten teeth of the mountain showed against the sky. At the bottom of the cut the brush was thick and dark.

Pepe stumbled down the hill. His throat was almost closed with thirst. At first he tried to run, but immediately he fell and rolled. After that he went more carefully. The moon was just disappearing behind the mountains when he came to the bottom. He crawled into the heavy brush, feeling with his fingers for water. There was no water in the bed of the stream, only damp earth. Pepe laid his gun down and scooped up a handful of mud and put it in his mouth, and then he spluttered and scraped the earth from his tongue with his finger, for the mud drew at his mouth like a poultice. He dug a hole in the stream bed with his fingers, dug a little basin to catch water; but before it was very deep his head fell forward on the damp ground and he slept.

The dawn came and the heat of the day fell on the earth, and still Pepe slept. Late in the afternoon his head jerked up. He looked slowly around. His eyes were slits of weariness. Twenty feet away in the heavy brush a big tawny mountain lion stood looking at him. Its long thick tall waved gracefully; its ears were erect with interest, not laid back dangerously. The lion squatted down on its stomach and watched him.

Pepe looked at the hole he had dug in the earth. A half-inch of muddy water had collected in the bottom. He tore the sleeve from his hurt arm, with his teeth ripped out a little square, soaked it in the water and put it in his mouth. Over and over he filled the cloth and sucked it.

Still the lion sat and watched him. The evening came down but there was no movement on the hills. No birds visited the dry bottom of the cut. Pepe looked occasionally at the lion. The eyes of the yellow beast drooped as though he were about to sleep. He yawned and his long thin red tongue curled out. Suddenly his head jerked around and his nostrils quivered. His big tail lashed. He stood up and slunk like a tawny shadow into the thick brush.

A moment later Pepe heard the sound, the faint far crash of horses' hoofs on gravel. And he heard something else, a high whining yelp of a dog.

Pepe took his rifle in his left hand and he glided into the brush almost as quietly as the lion had. In the darkening evening he crouched up the hill toward the next ridge. Only when the dark came did he stand up. His energy was short. Once it was dark he fell over the rocks and slipped to his knees on the steep slope, but he moved on and on up the hill, climbing and scrambling over the broken hillside.

When he was far up toward the top, he lay down and slept for a little while. The withered moon, shining on his face, awakened him. He stood up and moved up the hill. Fifty yards away he stopped and turned back, for he had forgotten his rifle. He walked heavily down and poked about in the brush, but he could not find his gun. At last he lay down to rest. The pocket of pain in his armpit had grown more sharp. His arm seemed to swell out and fall with every heartbeat. There was no position lying down where the heavy arm did not press against his armpit.

With the effort of a hurt beast, Pepe got up and moved again toward the top of the ridge. He held his swollen arm away from his body with his left hand. Up the steep hill he dragged himself, a few steps and a rest, and a few more steps. At last he was nearing the top. The moon showed the uneven sharp back of it against the sky.

Pepe's brain spun in a big spiral up and away from him. He slumped to the ground and lay still. The rock ridgetop was only a hundred feet above him.

The moon moved over the sky. Pepe half turned on his back. His tongue tried to make words, but only a thick hissing came from between his lips.

When the dawn came, Pepe pulled himself up. His eyes were sane again. He drew his great puffed arm in front of him and looked at the angry wound. The black line ran up from his wrist to his armpit. Automatically he reached in his pocket for the big black knife, but it was not there. His eyes searched the ground. He picked up a sharp blade of stone and scraped at the wound, sawed at the proud flesh and then squeezed the green juice out in big drops. Instantly he threw back his head and whined like a dog. His whole right side shuddered at the pain, but the pain cleared his head.

In the gray light he struggled up the last slope to the ridge and crawled over and lay down behind a line of rocks. Below him lay a deep canyon exactly like the last, waterless and desolate. There was no flat, no oak trees, not even heavy brush in the bottom of it. And on the other side a sharp ridge stood up, thinly brushed with starving sage, littered with broken granite. Strewn over the hill there were giant outcroppings, and on the top the granite teeth stood out against the sky.

The new day was light now. The flame of the sun came over the ridge and fell on Pepe where he lay on the ground. His coarse black hair was littered with twigs and bits of spider web. His eyes had retreated back into his head. Between his lips the tip of his black tongue showed.

He sat up and dragged his great arm into his lap and nursed it, rocking his body and moaning in his throat. He threw back his head and looked up into the pale sky. A big black bird circled nearly out of sight, and far to the left another was sailing near.

He lifted his head to listen, for a familiar sound had come to him from the valley he had climbed out of; it was the crying yelp of hounds, excited and feverish, on a trail.

Pepe bowed his head quickly. He tried to speak rapid words but only a thick hiss carne from his lips. He drew a shaky cross on his breast with his left hand. It was a long struggle to get to his feet. He crawled slowly and mechanically to the top of a big rock on the ridge peak. Once there, he arose slowly, swaying to his feet, and stood erect. Far below he could see the dark brush where he had slept. He braced his feet and stood there, black against the morning sky.

There came a ripping sound at his feet. A piece of stone flew up and a bullet droned off into the next gorge. The hollow crash echoed up from below. Pepe looked down for a moment and then pulled himself straight again.

His body jarred back. His left hand fluttered helplessly toward his breast. The second crash sounded from below. Pepe swung forward arid toppled from the rock. His body struck and rolled over and over, starting a little avalanche. And when at last he stopped against a bush, the avalanche slid slowly down and covered up his head.

David's Haircut

2004-06-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

If Norman Rockwell wrote instead of painted, this is the kind of story he would have written. Sweet. Not for everyone. (Also, in case you haven't noticed, I have strayed from posting my favorite stories to posting short stories that I like.)

David's Haircut
By Ken Elkes

When David steps out of the front door he is blinded for a moment by the white, fizzing sunlight and reaches instinctively for his dad's hand.

It's the first really warm day of the year, an unexpected heat that bridges the cusp between spring and summer. Father and son are on their way to the barbershop, something they have always done together.

Always, the routine is the same. "It's about time we got that mop of yours cut," David's dad will say, pointing at him with two fingers, a cigarette wedged between them. "Perhaps I should do it. Where are those shears Janet?"

Sometimes his dad chases him round the living room, pretending to cut off his ears. When he was young David used to get too excited and start crying, scared that maybe he really would lose his ears, but he has long since grown out of that.

Mr Samuels' barbershop is in a long room above the chip shop, reached by a steep flight of stairs. There is a groove worn in each step by the men who climb and descend in a regular stream. David follows his father, annoyed that he cannot make each step creak like his old man can.

David loves the barbershop — it's like nowhere else he goes. It smells of cigarettes and men and hair oil. Sometimes the smell of chips will climb the stairs along with a customer and when the door opens the waiting men lift their noses together.

Black and white photographs of men with various out-of-fashion hairstyles hang above a picture rail at the end of the room, where two barber's chairs are bolted to the floor. They are heavy, old-fashioned chairs with foot pumps that hiss and chatter as Mr Samuels, the rolls of his plump neck squashing slightly, adjusts the height of the seat.

In front of the chairs are deep sinks with a showerhead and long metal hose attached to the taps, not that anyone seems to use them. Behind the sinks are mirrors and on either side of these, shelves overflowing with an mixture of plastic combs (some plunged into a glass bowl containing a blue liquid), shaving mugs, scissors, cut throat razors, hair brushes and, stacked neatly in a pyramid, 10 bright red tubs of Brylcreem.

At the back of the room sit the customers, silent for most of the time, except when Mr Samuels breaks off from cutting and takes a drag on his cigarette, sending a wisp of grey-blue smoke like the tail of kite twisting into the air.

When it is David's turn for a cut, Mr Samuels places a wooden board covered with a piece of oxblood red leather across the arms of the chair, so that the barber doesn't have to stoop to cut the boy's hair. David scrambles up onto the bench.

"The rate you're shooting up, you won't need this soon, you'll be sat in the chair," the barber says.

"Wow," says David, squirming round to look at his dad, forgetting that he can see him through the mirror. "Dad, Mr Samuels said I could be sitting in the chair soon, not just on the board!"

"So I hear," his father replies, not looking up from the paper. "I expect Mr Samuels will start charging me more for your hair then."

"At least double the price," said Mr Samuels, winking at David.

Finally David's dad looks up from his newspaper and glances into the mirror, seeing his son looking back at him. He smiles.

"Wasn't so long ago when I had to lift you onto that board because you couldn't climb up there yourself," he says.

"They don't stay young for long do they, kids," Mr Samuels declares. All the men in the shop nod in agreement. David nods too.

In the mirror he sees a little head sticking out of a long nylon cape that Mr Samuels has swirled around him and folded into his collar with a wedge of cotton wool. Occasionally he steals glances at the barber as he works. He smells a mixture of stale sweat and aftershave as the barber's moves around him, combing and snipping, combing and snipping.

David feels like he is in another world, noiseless except for the scuffing of the barber's shoes on the lino and the snap of his scissors. In the reflection from the window he could see through the window, a few small clouds moved slowly through the frame, moving to the sound of the scissors' click.

Sleepily, his eyes dropping to the front of the cape where his hair falls with the same softness as snow and he imagines sitting in the chair just like the men and older boys, the special bench left leaning against the wall in the corner.

He thinks about the picture book of bible stories his aunt gave him for Christmas, the one of Samson having his hair cut by Delilah. David wonders if his strength will go like Samson's.

When Mr Samuels has finished, David hops down from the seat, rubbing the itchy hair from his face. Looking down he sees his own thick, blonde hair scattered among the browns, greys and blacks of the men who have sat in the chair before him. For a moment he wants to reach down and gather up the broken blonde locks, to separate them from the others, but he does not have time.

The sun is still strong when they reach the pavement outside the shop, but it is less fiery now, already beginning to drop from its zenith.

"I tell you what, lad, let's get some fish and chips to take home, save your mum from cooking tea," says David's dad and turns up the street.

The youngster is excited and grabs his dad's hand. The thick-skinned fingers close gently around his and David is surprised to find, warming in his father's palm, a lock of his own hair.

The Beggar

2004-06-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

No time this morning to write about this story from the famous freedom writer, Guy de Maupassant. Maybe later.

The Beggar
By Guy de Maupassant

He had seen better days, despite his present misery and infirmities.

At the age of fifteen both his legs had been crushed by a carriage on the Varville highway. From that time forth he begged, dragging himself along the roads and through the farmyards, supported by crutches which forced his shoulders up to his ears. His head looked as if it were squeezed in between two mountains.

A foundling, picked up out of a ditch by the priest of Les Billettes on the eve of All Saints' Day and baptized, for that reason, Nicholas Toussaint, reared by charity, utterly without education, crippled in consequence of having drunk several glasses of brandy given him by the baker (such a funny story!) and a vagabond all his life afterward — the only thing he knew how to do was to hold out his hand for alms.

At one time the Baroness d'Avary allowed him to sleep in a kind of recess spread with straw, close to the poultry yard in the farm adjoining the chateau, and if he was in great need he was sure of getting a glass of cider and a crust of bread in the kitchen. Moreover, the old lady often threw him a few pennies from her window. But she was dead now.

In the villages people gave him scarcely anything — he was too well known. Everybody had grown tired of seeing him, day after day for forty years, dragging his deformed and tattered person from door to door on his wooden crutches. But he could not make up his mind to go elsewhere, because he knew no place on earth but this particular corner of the country, these three or four villages where he had spent the whole of his miserable existence. He had limited his begging operations and would not for worlds have passed his accustomed bounds.

He did not even know whether the world extended for any distance beyond the trees which had always bounded his vision. He did not ask himself the question. And when the peasants, tired of constantly meeting him in their fields or along their lanes, exclaimed: "Why don't you go to other villages instead of always limping about here?" he did not answer, but slunk away, possessed with a vague dread of the unknown — the dread of a poor wretch who fears confusedly a thousand things — new faces, taunts, insults, the suspicious glances of people who do not know him and the policemen walking in couples on the roads. These last he always instinctively avoided, taking refuge in the bushes or behind heaps of stones when he saw them coming.

When he perceived them in the distance, 'With uniforms gleaming in the sun, he was suddenly possessed with unwonted agility — the agility of a wild animal seeking its lair. He threw aside his crutches, fell to the ground like a limp rag, made himself as small as possible and crouched like a bare under cover, his tattered vestments blending in hue with the earth on which he cowered.

He had never had any trouble with the police, but the instinct to avoid them was in his blood. He seemed to have inherited it from the parents he had never known.

He had no refuge, no roof for his head, no shelter of any kind. In summer he slept out of doors and in winter he showed remarkable skill in slipping unperceived into barns and stables. He always decamped before his presence could be discovered. He knew all the holes through which one could creep into farm buildings, and the handling of his crutches having made his arms surprisingly muscular he often hauled himself up through sheer strength of wrist into hay-lofts, where he sometimes remained for four or five days at a time, provided he had collected a sufficient store of food beforehand.

He lived like the beasts of the field. He was in the midst of men, yet knew no one, loved no one, exciting in the breasts of the peasants only a sort of careless contempt and smoldering hostility. They nicknamed him "Bell," because he hung between his two crutches like a church bell between its supports.

For two days he had eaten nothing. No one gave him anything now. Every one's patience was exhausted. Women shouted to him from their doorsteps when they saw him coming:

"Be off with you, you good-for-nothing vagabond! Why, I gave you a piece of bread only three days ago!

And he turned on his crutches to the next house, where he was received in the same fashion.

The women declared to one another as they stood at their doors:

"We can't feed that lazy brute all the year round!"

And yet the "lazy brute" needed food every day.

He had exhausted Saint-Hilaire, Varville and Les Billettes without getting a single copper or so much as a dry crust. His only hope was in Tournolles, but to reach this place he would have to walk five miles along the highroad, and he felt so weary that he could hardly drag himself another yard. His stomach and his pocket were equally empty, but he started on his way.

It was December and a cold wind blew over the fields and whistled through the bare branches of the trees; the clouds careered madly across the black, threatening sky. The cripple dragged himself slowly along, raising one crutch after the other with a painful effort, propping himself on the one distorted leg which remained to him.

Now and then he sat down beside a ditch for a few moments' rest. Hunger was gnawing his vitals, and in his confused, slow-working mind he had only one idea-to eat-but how this was to be accomplished he did not know. For three hours he continued his painful journey. Then at last the sight of the trees of the village inspired him with new energy.

The first peasant he met, and of whom he asked alms, replied:

"So it's you again, is it, you old scamp? Shall I never be rid of you?"

And "Bell" went on his way. At every door he got nothing but hard words. He made the round of the whole village, but received not a halfpenny for his pains.

Then he visited the neighboring farms, toiling through the muddy land, so exhausted that he could hardly raise his crutches from the ground. He met with the same reception everywhere. It was one of those cold, bleak days, when the heart is frozen and the temper irritable, and hands do not open either to give money or food.

When he had visited all the houses he knew, "Bell" sank down in the corner of a ditch running across Chiquet's farmyard. Letting his crutches slip to the ground, he remained motionless, tortured by hunger, but hardly intelligent enough to realize to the full his unutterable misery.

He awaited he knew not what, possessed with that vague hope which persists in the human heart in spite of everything. He awaited in the corner of the farmyard in the biting December wind, some mysterious aid from Heaven or from men, without the least idea whence it was to arrive. A number of black hens ran hither and thither, seeking their food in the earth which supports all living things. Ever now and then they snapped up in their beaks a grain of corn or a tiny insect; then they continued their slow, sure search for nutriment.

"Bell" watched them at first without thinking of anything. Then a thought occurred rather to his stomach than to his mind — the thought that one of those fowls would be good to eat if it were cooked over a fire of dead wood.

He did not reflect that he was going to commit a theft. He took up a stone which lay within reach, and, being of skillful aim, killed at the first shot the fowl nearest to him. The bird fell on its side, flapping its wings. The others fled wildly hither and thither, and "Bell," picking up his crutches, limped across to where his victim lay.

Just as he reached the little black body with its crimsoned head he received a violent blow in his back which made him let go his hold of his crutches and sent him flying ten paces distant. And Farmer Chiquet, beside himself with rage, cuffed and kicked the marauder with all the fury of a plundered peasant as "Bell" lay defenceless before him.

The farm hands came up also and joined their master in cuffing the lame beggar. Then when they were tired of beating him they carried him off and shut him up in the woodshed, while they went to fetch the police.

"Bell," half dead, bleeding and perishing with hunger, lay on the floor. Evening came — then night — then dawn. And still he had not eaten.

About midday the police arrived. They opened the door of the woodshed with the utmost precaution, fearing resistance on the beggar's part, for Farmer Chiquet asserted that he had been attacked by him and had had great, difficulty in defending himself.

The sergeant cried:

"Come, get up!"

But "Bell" could not move. He did his best to raise himself on his crutches, but without success. The police, thinking his weakness feigned, pulled him up by main force and set him between the crutches.

Fear seized him — his native fear of a uniform, the fear of the game in presence of the sportsman, the fear of a mouse for a cat-and by the exercise of almost superhuman effort he succeeded in remaining upright.

"Forward!" said the sergeant. He walked. All the inmates of the farm watched his departure. The women shook their fists at him the men scoffed at and insulted him. He was taken at last! Good riddance! He went off between his two guards. He mustered sufficient energy — the energy of despair — to drag himself along until the evening, too dazed to know what was happening to him, too frightened to understand.

People whom he met on the road stopped to watch him go by and peasants muttered:

"It's some thief or other."

Toward evening he reached the country town. He had never been so far before. He did not realize in the least what he was there for or what was to become of him. All the terrible and unexpected events of the last two days, all these unfamiliar faces and houses struck dismay into his heart.

He said not a word, having nothing to say because he understood nothing. Besides, he had spoken to no one for so many years past that he had almost lost the use of his tongue, and his thoughts were too indeterminate to be put into words.

He was shut up in the town jail. It did not occur to the police that he might need food, and he was left alone until the following day. But when in the early morning they came to examine him he was found dead on the floor. Such an astonishing thing!

A Haunted House

2004-06-21T05:19:00.000-07:00

What could be more appropriate on summer solstice than a horror story by Virginia Woolf?

A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure — a ghostly couple.

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."

But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it," one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling — what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. "The Treasure yours."

The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning—" "Silver between the trees—" "Upstairs—" "In the garden—" "When summer came—" "In winter snowtime—" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."

Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years—" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

The Round Tuit

2004-06-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

As editor of Fiction Daze, I failed miserably to coax Wendy into finishing her story. She used a broken computer as an excuse. Robert has failed thus far to send me Les Deux Bobs and other stories, so I had to pull out one of my old Friday stories. I like the story, and it's short.

The Round Tuit
By Bob Bringhurst

Sister Christiansen experienced childlike giddiness for a brief moment in 1982. Her husband, Kirk, carried the first family VCR into the house. Before Kirk took the VCR out of the box, he called the family together and declared that he was the only member of the household entitled to rent videos. While Kirk warned the wife and children of the filth included in all R-rated movies and many of the PG-rated movies, Sister Christiansen feared that she might disobey him. Indeed, her fear was realized in the spring of 1983, when she rented The Parent Trap from Bob's Video Store a few blocks north of the BYU football stadium. She meant to return the video the next day, and again the next, but if there wasn't one thing, there was another. The video remained in the Christiansen home through two more childbirths, three home entertainment centers, one dog's life, and nine Christmases. Everyone in the family assumed that they owned the video, even though it was enclosed in a hard plastic case, but the wife knew that one day she must face the shame of returning the video and paying the late fee, which she figured to be anywhere between five and one-thousand dollars.

There was always something to distract her.

There was the preparing of baked goods for the Relief Society; there was the bearing of a child, and then the last; there was the home study course in Victorian poetry at BYU; there was the purchasing of tennis balls and wrist bands; there was the clipping of coupons; there was the endless list of thank-you notes to be written.

On a sabbath day in the summer of 1992, a Sunday that seemed like any other, Sister Christiansen was inspired to return the video. Her inspiration came in the form of a church lesson. The Relief Society instructor presented a lesson on procrastination in which she passed out Round Tuits and said, “Now you can never say, 'When I get around to it,' because you all have a Round Tuit!” As Sister Christiansen looked at the Round Tuit sitting on the Book of Mormon in her lap, she told herself that she would humble herself, confront her fears, and return the video the next morning. She even wrote it on her Do-It list. Here is what the source of her inspiration looked like:

___
/ ( TUIT )
\____/

After buying groceries at Food-4-Less the next day, Sister Christiansen forgot what her next chore was. In fact, for a brief moment she forgot which town she was in. The dull light shining through the windows of the Suburban made her dizzy, as if she had stood up too quickly. To her left and right cottonwood trees stood still on the breezeless summer morning; ahead of her a red signal dangled in front of the mountains; behind her glared the menace of slowly approaching cars. She closed her eyes. Nothing.

She opened her eyes and stared at the back of her hands. Her hands were the hands of an adult — leathery skin, dark freckles, protruding veins. On one of her fingernails she noticed a little white spot. All her life, she paid close attention to these little calcium deposits, as if they were participants in a race which began at the cuticle and finished at the end of the nail.

Her mind flashed images of her teenage years, when these little white spots seemed to take longer to make their way across her nails. When summer started after her 5th grade year, a particularly memorable white spot emerged from her cuticle, one that looked as majestic as a medieval jousting horse. Before her childhood calcium deposit could make its way to the end of the fingernail, she visited her maternal grandparents in Bountiful, where her grandmother taught her to mark the scriptures with color-coded tags, the home where she and her extended family sat around the breakfast table and prayed and read holy scriptures before the sun had risen, the home where she watched the carcass of a dead horse burn in an open field beneath the setting sun. She visited her paternal grandparents in Heber City, the town where she and her cousins jumped from a loft in the barn down into a haystack, the town where she collected telephone pole incinerators near the railroad tracks, the town where she took a mental snap shot of Darlene, her first and only real love, swinging her angular body on a rope above a dammed river, creating an image that would remain clear and accessible to her all her life. She learned to swim sidestroke. She was grounded for two weeks because she and Darlene floated down the Provo River on a Sunday. She returned to Bountiful to see her grandmother's corpse planted reverently in the earth. She started sixth grade and listened to Mrs. Johnson read Black Beauty to the class. She cross-stitched with her mother, who mentioned that her fingernails were getting long, at which time the girl who was to become known as Sister Christiansen clipped the last half — the hind legs — of the white spot.

Now 45, Sister Christiansen sat parked in front of a green light, looking at her most recent calcium deposit, wondering where on earth she was going. This white spot reminded her of nothing. A mere blob. Empty promises. Horns honked. She ran through her mind everything that had happened since the white spot first appeared on her nail. She attended church twelve or thirteen times. What else? She cleaned the refrigerator. What else? She did thirty or forty loads of laundry. What else? She took the girls to piano lessons a dozen times or so. What else? She cooked many, many meals. What else? She watched her husband win a tennis tournament in the 45-55 age division. Oh, and the Hansen's party! What else? She wrote a letter to Darlene that she never sent. What else? She aerobicized to the Jane Fonda videotape 43 times.

What else? What else? What else?

“The videotape!” she said. She looked down at the video in the back seat of her Suburban. There it was. Finally, this stupid thing will be off her mind forever. She drove with purpose now, past the shopping center, across University Avenue, right on North Canyon Road. Her eyes blinked as she passed in and out of the shadows of the cottonwood trees. Her heart pounded hard. She approached the place where she had rented the movie some nine years ago, easing the Suburban into a parking stall. To her alarm, she discovered that Bob's Video Store no longer existed — Don's Dry Cleaning had taken its place.

Sister Christiansen left the video on the doorstep of Don's Dry Cleaning and drove away. It was time to go home.

Beware of the Dog

2004-06-17T04:44:00.000-07:00

Reading this story was a pleasant surprise to me. I knew that Roald Dahl wrote more than children's stories, but I didn't know how good these stories were. Here's one of his more serious efforts.

Beware of the Dog
By Roald Dahl

Down below there was only a vast white undulating sea of cloud. Above there was the sun, and the sun was white like the clouds, because it is never yellow when one looks at it from high in the air.

He was still flying the Spitfire. His right hand was on the stick, and he was working the rudder bar with his left leg alone. It was quite easy. The machine was flying well, and he knew what he was doing.

Everything is fine, he thought. I'm doing all right. I'm doing nicely. I know my way home. I'll be there in half an hour. When I land I shall taxi in and switch off my engine and I shall say, help me to get out, will you. I shall make my voice sound ordinary and natural and none of them will take any notice. Then I shall say, someone help me to get out. I can't do it alone because I've lost one of my legs. They'll all laugh and think that I'm joking, and I shall say, all right, come and have a look, you unbelieving bastards. Then Yorky will climb up onto the wing and look inside. He'll probably be sick because of all the blood and the mess. I shall laugh and say, for God's sake, help me out.

He glanced down again at his right leg. There was not much of it left. The cannon shell had taken him on the thigh, just above the knee, and now there was nothing but a great mess and a lot of blood. But there was no pain. When he looked down, he felt as though he were seeing something that did not belong to him. It had nothing to do with him. It was just a mess which happened to be there in the cockpit; something strange and unusual and rather interesting. It was like finding a dead cat on the sofa.

He really felt fine, and because he still felt fine, he felt excited and unafraid.

I won't even bother to call up on the radio for the blood wagon, he thought. It isn't necessary. And when I land I'll sit there quite normally and say, some of you fellows come and help me out, will you, because I've lost one of my legs. That will be funny. I'll laugh a little while I'm saying it; I'll say it calmly and slowly, and they'll think I'm joking. When Yorky comes up onto the wing and gets sick, I'll say, Yorky, you old son of a bitch, have you fixed my car yet? Then when I get out I'll make my report and later I'll go up to London. I'll take that half bottle of whisky with me and I'll give it to Bluey. We'll sit in her room and drink it. I'll get the water out of the bathroom tap. I won't say much until it's time to go to bed, then Ill say, Bluey, I've got a surprise for you. I lost a leg today. But I don't mind so long as you don't. It doesn't even hurt. We'll go everywhere in cars. I always hated walking, except when I walked down the street of the coppersmiths in Bagdad, but I could go in a rickshaw. I could go home and chop wood, but the head always flies off the ax. Hot water, that's what it needs; put it in the bath and make the handle swell. I chopped lots of wood last time I went home, and I put the ax in the bath. . . .

Then he saw the sun shining on the engine cowling of his machine. He saw the rivets in the metal, and he remembered where he was. He realized that he was no longer feeling good; that he was sick and giddy. His head kept falling forward onto his chest because his neck seemed no longer to have any strength. But he knew that he was flying the Spitfire, and he could feel the handle of the stick between the fingers of his right hand.

I'm going to pass out, he thought. Any moment now I'm going to pass out.

He looked at his altimeter. Twenty-one thousand. To test himself he tried to read the hundreds as well as the thousands. Twenty-one thousand and what? As he looked the dial became blurred, and he could not even see the needle. He knew then that he must bail out; that there was not a second to lose, otherwise he would become unconscious. Quickly, frantically, he tried to slide back the hood with his left hand, but he had not the strength. For a second he took his right hand off the stick, and with both hands he managed to push the hood back. The rush of cold air on his face seemed to help. He had a moment of great clearness, and his actions became orderly and precise. That is what happens with a good pilot. He took some quick deep breaths from his oxygen mask, and as he did so, he looked out over the side of the cockpit. Down below there was only a vast white sea of cloud, and he realized that he did not know where he was.

It'll be the Channel, he thought. I'm sure to fall in the drink.

He throttled back, pulled off his helmet, undid his straps, and pushed the stick hard over to the left. The Spitfire dripped its port wing, and turned smoothly over onto its back. The pilot fell out.

As he fell he opened his eyes, because he knew that he must not pass out before he had pulled the cord. On one side he saw the sun; on the other he saw the whiteness of the clouds, and as he fell, as he somersaulted in the air, the white clouds chased the sun and the sun chased the clouds. They chased each other in a small circle; they ran faster and faster, and there was the sun and the clouds and the clouds and the sun, and the clouds came nearer until suddenly there was no longer any sun, but only a great whiteness. The whole world was white, and there was nothing in it. It was so white that sometimes it looked black, and after a time it was either white or black, but mostly it was white. He watched it as it turned from white to black, and then back to white again, and the white stayed for a long time, but the black lasted only for a few seconds. He got into the habit of going to sleep during the white periods, and of waking up just in time to see the world when it was black. But the black was very quick. Sometimes it was only a flash, like someone switching off the light, and switching it on again at once, and so whenever it was white, he dozed off.

One day, when it was white, he put out a hand and he touched something. He took it between his fingers and crumpled it. For a time he~lay there, idly letting the tips of his fingers play with the thing which they had touched. Then slowly he opened his eyes, looked down at his hand, and saw that he was holding something which was white. It was the edge of a sheet. He knew it was a sheet because he could see the texture of the material and the stitchings on the hem. He screwed up his eyes, and opened them again quickly. This time he saw the room. He saw the bed in which he was lying; he saw the grey walls and the door and the green curtains over the window. There were some roses on the table by his bed.

Then he saw the basin on the table near the roses. It was a white enamel basin, and beside it there was a small medicine glass.

This is a hospital, he thought. I am in a hospital. But he could remember nothing. He lay back on his pillow, looking at the ceiling and wondering what had happened. He was gazing at the smooth greyness of the ceiling which was so clean and gray, and then suddenly he saw a fly walking upon it. The sight of this fly, the suddenness of seeing this small black speck on a sea of gray, brushed the surface of his brain, and quickly, in that second, he remembered everything. He remembered the Spitfire and he remembered the altimeter showing twenty-one thousand feet. He remembered the pushing back of the hood with both hands, and he remembered the bailing out. He remembered his leg.

It seemed all right now. He looked down at the end of the bed, but he could not tell. He put one hand underneath the bedclothes and felt for his knees. He found one of them, but when he felt for the other, his hand touched something which was soft and covered in bandages.

Just then the door opened and a nurse came in.

"Hello," she said. "So you've waked up at last."

She was not good-looking, but she was large and clean. She was between thirty and forty and she had fair hair. More than that he did not notice.

"Where am I?"

"You're a lucky fellow. You landed in a wood near the beach. You're in Brighton. They brought you in two days ago, and now you're all fixed up. You look fine."

"I've lost a leg," he said.

"That's nothing. We'll get you another one. Now you must go to sleep. The doctor will be coming to see you in about an hour." She picked up the basin and the medicine glass and went out.

But he did not sleep. He wanted to keep his eyes open because he was frightened that if he shut them again everything would go away. He lay looking at the ceiling. The fly was still there. It was very energetic. It would run forward very fast for a few inches, then it would stop. Then it would run forward again, stop, run forward, stop, and every now and then it would take off and buzz around viciously in small circles. It always landed back in the same place on the ceiling and started running and stopping all over again. He watched it for so long that after a while it was no longer a fly, but only a black speck upon a sea of gray, and he was still watching it when the nurse opened the door, and stood aside while the doctor came in. He was an Army doctor, a major, and he had some last war ribbons on his chest. He was bald and small, but he had a cheerful face and kind eyes.

"Well, well," he said. "So you've decided to wake up at last. How are you feeling?"

"I feel all right."

"That's the stuff. You'll be up and about in no time."

The doctor took his wrist to feel his pulse.

"By the way," he said, "some of the lads from your squadron were ringing up and asking about you. They wanted to come along and see you, but I said that they'd better wait a day or two. Told them you were all right, and that they could come and see you a little later on. Just lie quiet and take it easy for a bit. Got something to read?" He glanced at the table with the roses. "No. Well, nurse will look after you. She'll get you anything you want." With that he waved his hand and went out, followed by the large clean nurse.

When they had gone, he lay back and looked at the ceiling again. The fly was still there and as he lay watching it he heard the noise of an airplane in the distance. He lay listening to the sound of its engines. It was a long way away. I wonder what it is, he thought. Let me see if I can place it. Suddenly he jerked his head sharply to one side. Anyone who has been bombed can tell the noise of a Junkers 88. They can tell most other German bombers for that matter, but especially a Junkers 88. The engines seem to sing a duet. There is a deep vibrating bass voice and with it there is a high pitched tenor. It is the singing of the tenor which makes the sound of a JU-88 something which one cannot mistake.

He lay listening to the noise, and he felt quite certain about what it was. But where were the sirens, and where the guns? That German pilot certainly had a nerve coming near Brighton alone in daylight.

The aircraft was always far away, and soon the noise faded away into the distance. Later on there was another. This one, too, was far away, but there was the same deep undulating bass and the high singing tenor, and there was no mistaking it. He had heard that noise every day during the battle.

He was puzzled. There was a bell on the table by the bed. He reached out his hand and rang it. He heard the noise of footsteps down the corridor, and the nurse came in.

"Nurse, what were those airplanes?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I didn't hear them. Probably fighters or bombers. I expect they were returning from France. Why, what's the matter?"

"They were JU-88's. I'm sure they were JU-88's. I know the sound of the engines. There were two of them. What were they doing over here?"

The nurse came up to the side of his bed and began to straighten out the sheets and tuck them in under the mattress.

"Gracious me, what things you imagine. You mustn't worry about a thing like that. Would you like me to get you something to read?"

"No, thank you."

She patted his pillow and brushed back the hair from his forehead with her hand.

"They never come over in daylight any longer. You know that. They were probably Lancasters or Flying Fortresses."

"Nurse."

"Yes."

"Could I have a cigarette?"

"Why certainly you can."

She went out and came back almost at once with a packet of Players and some matches. She handed one to him and when he had put it in his mouth, she struck a match and lit it.

"If you want me again," she said, "just ring the bell," and she went out.

Once toward evening he heard the noise of another aircraft. It was far away, but even so he knew that it was a single-engined machine. But he could not place it. It was going fast; he could tell that. But it wasn't a Spit, and it wasn't a Hurricane. It did not sound like an American engine either. They make more noise. He did not know what it was, and it worried him greatly. Perhaps I am very ill, he thought. Perhaps I am imagining things. Perhaps I am a little delirious. I simply do not know what to think.

That evening the nurse came in with a basin of hot water and began to wash him.

"Well," she said, "I hope you don't still think that we're being bombed."

She had taken off his pajama top and was soaping his right arm with a flannel. He did not answer.

She rinsed the flannel in the water, rubbed more soap on it, and began to wash his chest.

"You're looking fine this evening," she said. "They operated on you as soon as you came in. They did a marvelous job. You'll be all right. I've got a brother in the RAF," she added. "Flying bombers."

He said, "I went to school in Brighton."

She looked up quickly. "Well, that's fine," she said. "I expect you'll know some people in the town."

"Yes," he said, "I know quite a few."

She had finished washing his chest and arms, and now she turned back the bedclothes, so that his left leg was uncovered. She did it in such a way that his bandaged stump remained under the sheets. She undid the cord of his pajama trousers and took them off. There was no trouble because they had cut off the right trouser leg, so that it could not interfere with the bandages. She began to wash his left leg and the rest of his body. This was the first time he had had a bed bath, and he was embarrassed. She laid a towel under his leg, and she was washing his foot with the flannel. She said, "This wretched soap won't lather at all. It's the water. It's as hard as nails."

He said, "None of the soap is very good now and, of course, with hard water it's hopeless." As he said it he remembered something. He remembered the baths which he used to take at school in Brighton, in the long stone-floored bathroom which had four baths in a room. He remembered how the water was so soft that you had to take a shower afterwards to get all the soap off your body, and he remembered how the foam used to float on the surface of the water, so that you could not see your legs underneath. He remembered that sometimes they were given calcium tablets because the school doctor used to say that soft water was bad for the teeth.

"In Brighton," he said, "the water isn't . . ."

He did not finish the sentence. Something had occurred to him; something so fantastic and absurd that for a moment he felt like telling the nurse about it and having a good laugh.

She looked up. "The water isn't what?" she said.

"Nothing," he answered. "I was dreaming.

She rinsed the flannel in the basin, wiped the soap off his leg, and dried him with a towel.

"It's nice to be washed," he said. "I feel better." He was feeling his face with his hands. "I need a shave."

"We'll do that tomorrow," she said. "Perhaps you can do it yourself then."

That night he could not sleep. He lay awake thinking of the Junkers 88's and of the hardness of the water. He could think of nothing else. They were JU-88's, he said to himself. I know they were. And yet it is not possible, because they would not be flying around so low over here in broad daylight. I know that it is true, and yet I know that it is impossible. Perhaps I am ill. Perhaps I am behaving like a fool and do not know what I am doing or saying. Perhaps I am delirious. For a long time he lay awake thinking these things, and once he sat up in bed and said aloud, "I will prove that I am not crazy. I will make a little speech about something complicated and intellectual. I will talk about what to do with Germany after the war." But before he had time to begin, he was asleep.

He woke just as the first light of day was showing through the slit in the curtains over the window. The room was still dark, but he could tell that it was already beginning to get light outside. He lay looking at the grey light which was showing through the slit in the curtain, and as he lay there he remembered the day before. He remembered the Junkers 88's and the hardness of the water; he remembered the large pleasant nurse and the kind doctor, and now the small grain of doubt took root in his mind and it began to grow.

He looked around the room. The nurse had taken the roses out the night before, and there was nothing except the table with a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches and an ash tray. Otherwise, it was bare. It was no longer warm or friendly. It was not even comfortable. It was cold and empty and very quiet.

Slowly the grain of doubt grew, and with it came fear, a light, dancing fear that warned but did not frighten; the kind of fear that one gets not because one is afraid, but because one feels that there is something wrong. Quickly the doubt and the fear grew so that he became restless and angry, and when he touched his forehead with his hand, he found that it was damp with sweat. He knew then that he must do something; that he must find some way of proving to himself that he was either right or wrong, and he looked up and saw again the window and the green curtains. From where he lay, that window was right in front of him, but it was fully ten yards away. Somehow he must reach it and look out. The idea became an obsession with him, and soon he could think of nothing except the window. But what about his leg? He put his hand underneath the bedclothes and felt the thick bandaged stump which was all that was left on the right-hand side. It seemed all right. It didn't hurt. But it would not be easy.

He sat up. Then he pushed the bedclothes aside and put his left leg on the floor. Slowly, carefully, he swung his body over until he had both hands on the floor as well; and then he was out of bed, kneeling on the carpet. He looked at the stump. It was very short and thick, covered with bandages. It was beginning to hurt and he could feel it throbbing. He wanted to collapse, lie down on the carpet and do nothing, but he knew that he must go on.

With two arms and one leg, he crawled over towards the window. He would reach forward as far as he could with his arms, then he would give a little jump and slide his left leg along after them. Each time he did, it jarred his wound so that he gave a soft grunt of pain, but he continued to crawl across the floor on two hands and one knee. When he got to the window he reached up, and one at a time he placed both hands on the sill. Slowly he raised himself up until he was standing on his left leg. Then quickly he pushed aside the curtains and looked out.

He saw a small house with a gray tiled roof standing alone beside a narrow lane, and immediately behind it there was a plowed field. In front of the house there was an untidy garden, and there was a green hedge separating the garden from the lane. He was looking at the hedge when he saw the sign. It was just a piece of board nailed to the top of a short pole, and because the hedge had not been trimmed for a long time, the branches had grown out around the sign so that it seemed almost as though it had been placed in the middle of the hedge. There was something written on the board with white paint, and he pressed his head against the glass of the window, trying to read what it said. The first letter was a G, he could see that. The second was an A, and the third was an R. One after another he managed to see what the letters were. There were three words, and slowly he spelled the letters out aloud to himself as he managed to read them. G-A-R-D-E A-U C-H-I-E-N. Garde au chien. That is what it said.

He stood there balancing on one leg and holding tightly to the edges of the window sill with his hands, staring at the sign and at the whitewashed lettering of the words. For a moment he could think of nothing at all. He stood there looking at the sign, repeating the words over and over to himself, and then slowly he began to realize the full meaning of the thing. He looked up at the cottage and at the plowed field. He looked at the small orchard on the left of the cottage and he looked at the green countryside beyond. "So this is France," he said. "I am France."

Now the throbbing in his right thigh was very great. It felt as though someone was pounding the end of his stump with a hammer, and suddenly the pain became so intense that it affected his head and for a moment he thought he was going to fall. Quickly he knelt down again, crawled back to the bed and hoisted himself in. He pulled the bedclothes over himself and lay back on the pillow, exhausted. He could still think of nothing at all except the small sign by the hedge, and the plowed field and the orchard. It was the words on the sign that he could not forget.

It was some time before the nurse came in. She came carrying a basin of hot water and she said, "Good morning, how are you today?"

He said, "Good morning, nurse."

The pain was still great under the bandages, but he did not wish to tell this woman anything. He looked at her as she busied herself with getting the washing things ready. He looked at her more carefully now. Her hair was very fair. She was tall and big-boned, end her face seemed pleasant. But there was something a little uneasy about her eyes. They were never still. They never looked at anything for more than a moment and they moved too quickly from one place to another in the room. There was something about her movements also. They were too sharp and nervous to go well with the casual manner in which she spoke.

She set down the basin, took off his pajama top and began to wash him.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said. She was washing his arms and his chest.

"I believe there's someone coming down to see you from the Air Ministry after breakfast," she went on. "They want a report or something. I expect you know all about it. How you got shot down and all that. I won't let him stay long, so don't worry."

He did not answer. She finished washing him, and gave him a toothbrush and some tooth powder. He brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth and spat the water out into the basin.

Later she brought him his breakfast on a tray, but he did not want to eat. He was still feeling weak and sick, and he wished only to lie still and think about what had happened. And there was a sentence running through his head. It was a sentence which Johnny, the Intelligence Officer of his squadron, always repeated to the pilots every day before they went out. He could see Johnny now, leaning against the wall of the dispersal hut with his pipe in his hand, saying, "And if they get you, don't forget, just your name, rank and number. Nothing else. For God's sake, say nothing else."

"There you are," she said as she put the tray on his lap. "I've got you an egg. Can you manage all right?"

"Yes."

She stood beside the bed. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes."

"Good. If you want another egg I might be able to get you one."

"This is all right."

"Well, just ring the bell if you want any more." And she went out.

He had just finished eating, when the nurse came in again.

She said, "Wing Commander Roberts is here. I've told him that he can only stay for a few minutes."

She beckoned with her hand and the Wing Commander came in.

"Sorry to bother you like this," he said.

He was an ordinary RAF officer, dressed in a uniform which was a little shabby, and he wore wings and a DFC. He was fairly tall and thin with plenty of black hair. His teeth, which were irregular and widely spaced, stuck out a little even when he closed his mouth. As he spoke he took a printed form and a pencil from his pocket, and he pulled up a chair and sat down.

"How are you feeling?"

There was no answer.

"Tough luck about your leg. I know how you feel. I hear you put up a fine show before they got you."

The man in the bed was lying quite still, watching the man in the chair.

The man in the chair said, "Well, let's get this stuff over. I'm afraid you'll have to answer a few questions so that I can fill in this combat report. Let me see now, first of all, what was your squadron?"

The man in the bed did not move. He looked straight at the Wing Commander and he said, "My name is Peter Williamson. My rank is Squadron Leader and my number is nine seven two four five seven."

2004-06-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

Today is Bloomsday, which celebrates the day when James Joyce met his beloved Nora Barnacle. June 16, 1904 was also the day on which Ulysses is set. So let's celebrate James Joyce by reading a story from Dubliners. While "The Dead" is one of my all-time favorite stories, it's probably too long to read online — although I reserve the right to post it one of these Thursdays. I wrote a paper in college on the sense of paralysis in Dubliners, and I did what all good critics do — I extracted from the stories all evidence that pointed to paralysis, ignored everything else, and wrote a paper. But you have to admit, this story is about paralysis.

Eveline
By James Joyce

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it — not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field — the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

"He is in Melbourne now."

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"

"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married — she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages — seven shillings — and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work — a hard life — but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.

"I know these sailor chaps," he said.

One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.

The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh.

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:

"Damned Italians! coming over here!"

As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being — that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:

"Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!"

She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

"Come!"

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.

"Come!"

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

"Eveline! Evvy!"

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Unknown

2004-06-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

I know very little about this story. I don't know who wrote it, I don't know it's title, and I don't even know whether it's a complete story. I like it, and it's short.

Unknown
By anonymous

The father closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. He said, "I like Jell-O pudding because I like a good hearty meal after a brisk walk on a winter's day — something to really warm me up."

The boy giggled and the girl giggled.

The father looked confused. "This is the Jell-O pudding contest, isn't that what you said?" he said. "Well, okay then, he said. "I like Jell-O pudding because it has a tough satin finish that resists chipping and peeling. No, no," he said, "I mean, I like Jell-O pudding because it has a fruitier taste. Because it's garden fresh," he said. "Because it goes on dry and protects me from wetness longer. Oh, Jell-O pudding," the father said. "I like it because it's more absorbent than those other brands. Won't chafe or ride up."

He opened his eyes and saw his son leave the room. The sound that had made the father open his eyes was the pen that the boy had thrown to the floor.

"You may already be a winner," the father said.

"Yes, I like Jell-O pudding because it's the one thing to take when you really want to bufficate a headache. Or when you need to mirtilize bad breath, unless you want your bad breath to mirtilize you."

This time the sound that brought him around was the sound of his car keys swinging on their chain. His daughter held the keys. She said, "Daddy, come on. You'll be late."

"That's what I told you, didn't I?" the father said. "I said, 'Don't make me late for my apointment.'"

He followed his daughter out to the car. "Did I tell you the thing about Jell-O?" he said.

He closed his eyes again. "You know," he continued, "most pudding makes me edgy. But not Jell-O pudding. That's because it has no caffeine. Tastes right — and is built to stay that way."

The Lottery Ticket

2004-06-14T05:30:00.000-07:00

Time for another story by Chekhov. Apart from "Gooseberries," which I already posted, and "The Kiss," which I'll post one of these Thursdays, I don't really have a favorite Chekhov story. A common occurrence for me is to start reading a Chekhov story, think to myself that this is so simple that I could write it, and then get sucked in by some master stroke. "The Lottery Ticket" is one of many such Chekhov stories.

The Lottery Ticket
By Anton Chekhov

Ivan Dmitritch, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an income of twelve hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his lot, sat down on the sofa after supper and began reading the newspaper.

"I forgot to look at the newspaper today," his wife said to him as she cleared the table. "Look and see whether the list of drawings is there."

"Yes, it is," said Ivan Dmitritch; "but hasn't your ticket lapsed?"

"No; I took the interest on Tuesday."

"What is the number?"

"Series 9,499, number 26."

"All right . . . we will look . . . 9,499 and 26."

Ivan Dmitritch had no faith in lottery luck, and would not, as a rule, have consented to look at the lists of winning numbers, but now, as he had nothing else to do and as the newspaper was before his eyes, he passed his finger downwards along the column of numbers. And immediately, as though in mockery of his skepticism, no further than the second line from the top, his eye was caught by the figure 9,499! Unable to believe his eyes, he hurriedly dropped the paper on his knees without looking to see the number of the ticket, and, just as though some one had given him a douche of cold water, he felt an agreeable chill in the pit of the stomach; tingling and terrible and sweet!

"Masha, 9,499 is there!" he said in a hollow voice.

His wife looked at his astonished and panicstricken face, and realized that he was not joking.

"9,499?" she asked, turning pale and dropping the folded tablecloth on the table.

"Yes, yes . . . it really is there!"

"And the number of the ticket?"

"Oh yes! There's the number of the ticket too. But stay . . . wait! No, I say! Anyway, the number of our series is there! Anyway, you understand...."

Looking at his wife, Ivan Dmitritch gave a broad, senseless smile, like a baby when a bright object is shown it. His wife smiled too; it was as pleasant to her as to him that he only mentioned the series, and did not try to find out the number of the winning ticket. To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!

"It is our series," said Ivan Dmitritch, after a long silence. "So there is a probability that we have won. It's only a probability, but there it is!"

"Well, now look!"

"Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It's on the second line from the top, so the prize is seventy-five thousand. That's not money, but power, capital! And in a minute I shall look at the list, and there — 26! Eh? I say, what if we really have won?"

The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in silence. The possibility of winning bewildered them; they could not have said, could not have dreamed, what they both needed that seventy-five thousand for, what they would buy, where they would go. They thought only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and pictured them in their imagination, while somehow they could not think of the happiness itself which was so possible.

Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to corner, and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming a little.

"And if we have won," he said — "why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation! The ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend twenty-five thousand on real property in the shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate expenses, new furnishing . . . travelling . . . paying debts, and so on. . . . The other forty thousand I would put in the bank and get interest on it."

"Yes, an estate, that would be nice," said his wife, sitting down and dropping her hands in her lap.

"Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces. . . . In the first place we shouldn't need a summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an income."

And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and poetical than the last. And in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy, felt warm, even hot! Here, after eating a summer soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back on the burning sand close to a stream or in the garden under a lime-tree. . . . It is hot. . . . His little boy and girl are crawling about near him, digging in the sand or catching ladybirds in the grass. He dozes sweetly, thinking of nothing, and feeling all over that he need not go to the office today, tomorrow, or the day after. Or, tired of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or to the forest for mushrooms, or watches the peasants catching fish with a net. When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and saunters to the bathing shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare chest with his hands, and goes into the water. And in the water, near the opaque soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and green water-weeds nod their heads. After bathing there is tea with cream and milk rolls. . . . In the evening a walk or vint with the neighbors.

"Yes, it would be nice to buy an estate," said his wife, also dreaming, and from her face it was evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.

Ivan Dmitritch pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold evenings, and its St. Martin's summer. At that season he would have to take longer walks about the garden and beside the river, so as to get thoroughly chilled, and then drink a big glass of vodka and eat a salted mushroom or a soused cucumber, and then — drink another. . . . The children would come running from the kitchen-garden, bringing a carrot and a radish smelling of fresh earth. . . . And then, he would lie stretched full length on the sofa, and in leisurely fashion turn over the pages of some illustrated magazine, or, covering his face with it and unbuttoning his waistcoat, give himself up to slumber.

The St. Martin's summer is followed by cloudy, gloomy weather. It rains day and night, the bare trees weep, the wind is damp and cold. The dogs, the horses, the fowls — all are wet, depressed, downcast. There is nowhere to walk; one can't go out for days together; one has to pace up and down the room, looking despondently at the grey window. It is dreary!

Ivan Dmitritch stopped and looked at his wife.

"I should go abroad, you know, Masha," he said.

And he began thinking how nice it would be in late autumn to go abroad somewhere to the South of France . . . to Italy . . . to India!

"I should certainly go abroad too," his wife said. "But look at the number of the ticket!"

"Wait, wait! . . ."

He walked about the room and went on thinking. It occurred to him: what if his wife really did go abroad? It is pleasant to travel alone, or in the society of light, careless women who live in the present, and not such as think and talk all the journey about nothing but their children, sigh, and tremble with dismay over every farthing. Ivan Dmitritch imagined his wife in the train with a multitude of parcels, baskets, and bags; she would be sighing over something, complaining that the train made her head ache, that she had spent so much money. . . . At the stations he would continually be having to run for boiling water, bread and butter. . . . She wouldn't have dinner because of its being too dear. . . .

"She would begrudge me every farthing," he thought, with a glance at his wife. "The lottery ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of her going abroad? What does she want there? She would shut herself up in the hotel, and not let me out of her sight. . . . I know!"

And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his wife had grown elderly and plain, and that she was saturated through and through with the smell of cooking, while he was still young, fresh, and healthy, and might well have got married again.

"Of course, all that is silly nonsense," he thought; "but . . . why should she go abroad? What would she make of it? And yet she would go, of course. . . . I can fancy. . . . In reality it is all one to her, whether it is Naples or Cologne. She would only be in my way. I should be dependent upon her. I can fancy how, like a regular woman, she will lock the money up as soon as she gets it. . . . She will look after her relations and grudge me every farthing."

Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they heard of the winning ticket, would begin whining like beggars, and fawning upon them with oily, hypocritical smiles. Wretched, detestable people! If they were given anything, they would ask for more; while if they were refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them every kind of misfortune.

Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at which he had looked impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and hateful.

"They are such reptiles!" he thought.

And his wife's face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger surged up in his heart against her, and he thought malignantly:

"She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she would give me a hundred rubles, and put the rest away under lock and key."

And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She glanced at him too, and also with hatred and anger. She had her own daydreams, her own plans, her own reflections; she understood perfectly well what her husband's dreams were. She knew who would be the first to try to grab her winnings.

"It's very nice making daydreams at other people's expense!" is what her eyes expressed. "No, don't you dare!"

Her husband understood her look; hatred began stirring again in his breast, and in order to annoy his wife he glanced quickly, to spite her at the fourth page on the newspaper and read out triumphantly:

"Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!"

Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to seem to Ivan Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small and low-pitched, that the supper they had been eating was not doing them good, but lying heavy on their stomachs, that the evenings were long and wearisome. . . .

"What the devil's the meaning of it?" said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to be ill-humored. 'Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one's feet, crumbs, husks. The rooms are never swept! One is simply forced to go out. Damnation take my soul entirely! I shall go and hang myself on the first aspen-tree!"

C.A.R.E (Part I)

2004-06-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Wendy wrote this story a couple years ago, but didn't send it out to anyone because she didn't like the ending. I convinced her to publish the first half of the story, right here on Fiction Daze, and get the ending ready for next week. I really like this story, with its light tone and quirky characters. And it's funny. Here's part I. You'll have to wait till next Friday to read part II.

C.A.R.E. (Part I)
By Wendy Fritzke

A Dog by any Other Name

“Bandit,” the old man shouted as he answered the door.

“Um… OK. Hi Mr. Jack. Ready to go?” Hubert — or Hugh, as he liked to be called — was confused, but knew from experience that it was best to not press Mr. Jack into explanations too quickly. Besides, not quite understanding what was going on around him was a typical, though nonetheless uncomfortable, position Hugh had found himself in for years. Pretty much since puberty.

“No, come on in boy. I gotta get my stick.” Mr. Jack always called Hubert “boy,” though he was well into his 30’s and would have better been described as pushing 40, a fact that neither occurred to nor troubled Mr. Jack.

“Bandit,” Mr. Jack repeated as he moved aside and motioned for Hugh to come in. “That was the name of that dog. Not Astro.” He said this with mild accusation, as though he were chastising Hugh.

“Oh, right. Yeah, I thought it was something like that. So you remembered.”

Mr. Jack was a retired Air Force pilot who now spent most of his days watching classic cartoons and 70’s game shows. For the last few weeks, he and Hugh had engaged in an on-going debate about the name of the dog from Johnny Quest, which had been, after Speed Racer, Hugh’s favorite boyhood cartoon. Mr. Jack had insisted the dog’s name was Astro, but Hugh was sure that wasn’t it, though the actual name seemed always to slip his mind. Raja or something like that, he thought. But then again, maybe that was the name of the Indian boy on the show.

“You bet I remembered. The old ticker might be going, but this here’s still in tip-top shape,” Mr. Jack pronounced, tapping himself on the side of the head. He gathered up his cane and patted his jacket pockets, satisfying himself that pipe, keys, and handkerchief were all in place for their outing.

“Well, boy, you ready? We better get going. Don’t want to keep the doctor waiting.”

Hugh moved out onto the stoop again and stood politely aside while Mr. Jack locked the door, thinking it a little sad that the old man was always so conscientious about being punctual, since the doctor almost always kept him waiting a good half hour.

Mr. Jack was one of Hugh’s “regulars,” the men and women he picked up almost daily as part of the C.A.R.E. program — Car Assistance for the Retired Elderly. He’d been driving his mother’s Dodge van for almost a year now, gathering up old people from around the valley and driving them to doctor’s appointments, the pharmacy, the church, the beauty parlor.

After his father’s untimely death, suffered, ironically enough, on his way to his yearly physical, his mother had signed up as a volunteer driver for C.A.R.E, “to keep that from happening to another family.” But when she fell last summer, tearing several ligaments in her knee and breaking her wrist, Hugh had reluctantly taken over the route. Now, though his mother had long since started driving again, Hugh continued making the C.A.R.E. rounds. It had become part of his life.

If pressed, he might admit to liking it, though the experience had initially filled him with dread. Old people. Strange people. Driving around who knew where. It was all, well, rather, uncomfortable and unknown. He much preferred the solid comfort of his routine life. The bedroom he’d had since he was five, decorated much as it was when he left high school, twenty years before. His job at the independent video store on the corner, where he could spend most of his time watching Hong Kong kung-fu films, his fantasies of drop-kicking an opponent interrupted only rarely by other cult film freaks who came in looking for obscure Japanese animation clips or early Bruce Li copies.

A Bird in the Hand

“Hubert, telephone,” his mother yelled from downstairs. “I think it’s Mrs. Chen from C.A.R.E.”

Hubert took off his headset, which continued blasting “Tush” into the bedspread, and picked up the receiver from the bedside phone. “I got it,” he yelled, his fingers pressed over the mouthpiece.

“Hello? This is Hugh.” He heard a clunk as the kitchen receiver was replaced.

“Hello? Hu-boy? This Miz Chen. You come quick. Belly sick. Must go doctor right way!”

“Mrs. Chen? Sorry. What? You’re sick?”

“No. Bunnie belly sick. Must go doctor right way. Hu-boy come now. Please!” And with a final distressed “Quickly! Come now!” Mrs. Chen hung up. Hugh looked around his bedroom, somewhat disoriented, then pulled on a misshapen green sweater and went downstairs to the kitchen.

“Uh. Mom, I guess I’m going to take the van out a little early. Mrs. Chen is sick or something and needs to go to the doctor.”

“Oh, dear. I hope it’s nothing serious,” his mother replied as she put her cheek out for a kiss without pausing her page-flipping of the latest Better Homes and Gardens. “Tell her hello for me.”

Before his father’s death, there had been some pretense, a kind of family game they played, that Hugh was going to move out, was on the verge of packing up his Foreigner and Kansas and ZZ Top albums, his football pennants and Dungeon and Dragons figurines, the green belt and tiny trophy he’d won in a karate class when he was ten, the tattered paperback set of The Lord of the Rings he’d read until the pages were soft with fingering — in other words, the memorabilia and artifacts of a life well-lived — and get an apartment of his own. As soon as he had saved enough money. As soon as he could find a good, clean place his mother thought fit to live in. As soon as rents fell to a level that his father felt wasn’t highway robbery.

Since his father’s death, this pretense had been wholly discarded and Hugh and his mother lived a pleasant routine. The comfortable day in, day out, buttered toast and cereal, sandwiches and soup, casserole and salad kind of routine built up between son and mother over years of practice, when there is enough genuine affection and temperamental compatibility to allow for worries and gentle nagging and household chores and a level of boredom to cover a person like an old wool coat, heavy but not suffocating, comfortable in it’s weight and familiarity.

Hugh parked the van in front of Mrs. Chen’s assisted living apartment complex and went into the lobby. It was filled with mailboxes, a fake green plant or two, and some overstuffed furniture in striped gold and beige. Hugh wondered why Mrs. Chen hadn’t called her oldest daughter, Marlene, whom he knew lived nearby. He’d actually met her once or twice when Mrs. Chen had forgotten to call and cancel her regular pick-up. Hugh always dreaded such awkward social encounters, and had thus developed a habit of approaching Mrs. Chen’s door with trepidation. Luckily, Mrs. Chen was often down in the lobby waiting when the van pulled up, and he had only to hop out and help her with the doors and the two steps up into the van. But today she wasn’t waiting, and he had to go up to her apartment. As he got closer to Mrs. Chen’s door, Hugh felt his heart starting to beat a bit faster and his palms getting just a little moist. He told himself this was irrational and there was no way anyone else would be in the apartment. It helped a little. He rang the bell.

Mrs. Chen’s tiny apartment was filled with the cages of a dozen or so birds, all busily chirping and cooing and making a generalized bird racket. The cages circled the walls of her living/dining room and marched down the hallway toward the back. Mrs. Chen had named each of the birds after one of her grandchildren, and had placed a picture of each child above the appropriate cage: Jin-a, Mi Jean, Charlie, Iris, Toe-me, Alice, Li Ann, Danny, Timmy, Dong-wu (affectionately known as “Bongo”), Bunnie, and a pair of peach lovebirds for the new twins, Johnny and Janice.

Mrs. Chen nearly flew at him as she opened the door. “Oh, Hu-boy. Thank goodness you here. Quickly, must go. Bunnie belly sick.”

She was already wearing her black wool coat with the black fake fur collar and the smart, matching fur-trimmed hat she always wore when going out. She clutched her purse in one hand and thrust a tiny bird cage at Hugh with the other. The cage was covered with a small blanket she’d pinned around the sides of the cage. Looking down into the top of the cage, Hugh could see one of Mrs. Chen’s little white canaries, lying on it’s side on the bottom of the cage. It looked quite dead.

“Mrs. Chen? I don’t think…I mean…Are you sure the doctor’s going to be able to help Bunnie?”

“Yes, yes. Doctor say come right way. Must go, Hu-boy. No more diddle-dally.”

Hubert drove Mrs. Chen and the canary to the veterinarian, where, thanks to Mrs. Chen’s hysterical, nearly incoherent insistence, they were given special emergency preference over the basset hound and the fluffy white Persian. Nonetheless, the vet took one look into the blanketed cage and declared the bird DOA. Nothing he could do. He was so sorry.

Mrs. Chen wailed. She screeched and pulled at the thin gray hair on either side of her face until her smart fur-trimmed hat was wildly askew. She was completely inconsolable for the entire twenty-three minutes it took for Hugh to drive to the pet store and purchase her another white canary. Once this new, healthier bird was perched in the cage — the blanket and dead Bunnie having been discarded at the vet’s — she cheered up considerably.

“This Bunnie Too. She very good. Everything Okey-dokey now. Now real Bunnie be safe. Not die now. Hello, Bunnie Too, pretty birdie.” Mrs. Chen chuckled and cooed at the bird, extremely pleased, then looked up at Hugh. “Bunnie bird die, things very bad. But now have good, strong bird, not get sick. My little Bunnie OK. This Bunnie Too. She healthy. Live very long time.”

Hugh was completely confused, but happy that Mrs. Chen had stopped crying and pulling at her hair. “Um, yes, this bird looks very healthy,” he finally responded, trying to keep up his end of the conversation.

“No, Hu-boy not understand,” Mrs. Chen said crossly. “Bunnie girl sick. Bird die bad omen.” She said this last word slowly, drawing out the long “o” and looking at Hugh with deliberate patience, as if she were trying to teach a simple logic problem to a slow child.

“So, your granddaughter was sick too?” Hugh asked, more confused than ever.

“Yes, yes, belly sick. Long time. Grammie sacred for her little Bunnie. Things belly bad when Bunnie bird die. But not scared now. Now everything nice.” She murmured to the bird in her lap, trying to stick her tiny fingers through the even tinier bars of the cage.

“So, now Bunnie’s doing better?” Hugh asked doubtfully.

“Now she be great,” Mrs. Chen said emphatically. “Now have healthy Bunnie bird.”

Hugh was still not sure he understood the relationship between the various Bunnies, human and avian. But he didn’t think further questioning would help enlighten him. Interrupting Mrs. Chen’s cooing, he asked “Mrs. Chen, I’m sorry, but I’m running a bit late. Do you mind if we stop and get Miss Gracie and Mr. Turner before I take you home? They are due for a pick up in fifteen minutes.”

“OK, No problem, Hu-boy. Show friends Bunnie Too. They be belly happy.” Mrs. Chen fell back into her motherly reverie with the bird.

Grace and Vinegar

Miss Gracie was a lively old lady who wore only purple and grew daffodils and tulips in pots on her front stair. She seemed to have a personal relationship with various television personalities, most notably Regis and Kathie Lee, but now that Kathie Lee was gone, she was struggling to bond with “that new Kelly girl.” As Hugh helped her up into the van, she was talking of their upcoming trip to the Bahamas, apparently a theme show taking place next week.

“I just hope Regis remembers to wear enough sunscreen. He’s not a dark man, you know, and he’ll burn to a crisp in that hot sun. And that Kelly girl. You should have seen what she had on today. My, was it scanty. But cute too, I suppose. That girl’s got a real cute figure for wearing that short stuff girls like these days.”

Miss Gracie herself was decked out in her best purple polyester/rayon blend dress with ruffles down the front and an enormous white straw hat with fake gardenias.

“Well, now, Mrs. Chen. I wasn’t expecting you. How are you, dear? Now what’s that you have there? A little canary? How sweet. You two coming to cards with us tonight?”

Mrs. Chen related the afternoon’s drama to Miss Gracie’s appreciative “ohhs” and “my-my’s” as Hugh drove to Mr. Turner’s.

“Where’s old Mr. Vinegar, old Turned Sour, Hubert?” Miss Gracie called out from the back.

Miss Gracie liked to joke that Mr. Turner had “turned” to vinegar, cackling heartily at her own joke. The lavender-tinted hair and purple clothes combined with the open-mouth laugh to produce an effect akin to craziness. Hugh was not sure this was a completely inaccurate description of Miss Gracie. But he smiled and made a little chuckle sound through his nose, so he wouldn’t seem rude. Besides, even Hugh could see there was some legitimate basis for Miss Gracie’s comparison. Mr. Turner was not the friendliest passenger. To be honest, he scared Hugh a bit.

Mr. Turner was stiffly making his way down the sidewalk to the van when Hugh pulled up to the curb. “You’re late,” he complained, as Hugh came around to open the door for him. Hugh apologized nervously, explaining that he had an emergency with Mrs. Chen. “Hmph!” Mr. Turner responded by rearranging his dentures on his gums, poking them out of his mouth a bit and sucking them back in with a quick movement. He maneuvered the two steps up into the van awkwardly, pushing Hugh’s hand away, then lowered himself slowly onto the seat next to Miss Gracie.

Miss Gracie always joked and teased with Mr. Turner every week when they rode together to the Senior Center for cards. She lit on him as soon as he was settled next to her in the van.

“Why, Mr. Turner,” she said, “what do you think of my hat? My grand-niece brought it to me last Easter. Isn’t it just divine?” She swished her head from side to side, so he could get a more complete view of the gardenias.

“Ugh,” Mr. Turner grunted, moving his head as far away from the encroaching brim of the hat as possible, then sneezing several times into an enormous blue plaid handkerchief.

“Well, Mr. Turner, do you think I’ll be the big winner again tonight?” she cackled, slapping a spotty hand down on his bony knee.

Mr. Turner winced, half from the arthritis in his knee, half from the memory of his recent run of bad luck on Wednesday nights and Miss Gracie’s immodest success. He had few pleasures left in life and this woman seemed set on ruining one of the rare chances he had to get out and enjoy himself. He hoped they were early enough that he could secure a table far from this purple chatterbox.

Hugh helped Miss Gracie out at the Center, explaining that he would return at 7:00 for their pick up.

“Wish me luck!” Miss Gracie chimed as she floated away toward the building. Mr. Turner hobbled after her as quickly as he could.

After Hugh made sure Mrs. Chen and the new canary were safely deposited in her apartment, he cast around for something to occupy himself for the next two hours. Maybe get a chicken dinner — dark meat, extra biscuit — at KFC. His mother had her weekly bridge game tonight and would not be expecting him for dinner. Maybe go by Borders and browse through the new fantasy paperbacks. Maybe stop by Video Vault and see what was happening. He swung through the KFC drive-through, then headed to the video store.

Hugh pushed open the door of the Video Vault and looked around. The store looked empty. Ralph, the evening guy and part-owner, must be in back. Hugh went behind the counter and looked through the videos tossed on the shelf next to the VCR. He popped 5 Fingers of Death into the player, then sat back on the stool to watch Lo Lieh kick some butt while he ate his dinner.

“Oh, hey, dude,” Ralph said as he appeared from the back, around one of the horror racks. The sweet smoky smell of ganja hung on him like a permanent perfume. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just hanging out. Gotta do my C.A.R.E. run again in awhile.”

“Oh, right. The old people thing. You still doing that, huh?” Ralph gathered up a bunch of videos to be reshelved and headed over to the New Releases wall. “I don’t know how you deal with all those old folks all the time, man. I woulda been outta there in about five minutes. Old folks are so freakin’ heavy, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Hugh shrugged uncomfortably and turned up the volume on the TV.

When Hugh made the pick up at the Senior Center at 7:00, he found Mr. Turner in as close to a good mood as Hugh had ever seen. At his house, Mr. Turner pressed a quarter into Hugh’s hand as he allowed himself to be helped from the van.

“There you go, Hubert. That’s for you. Thanks for the ride.”

Hugh tried to give the coin back, explaining that he couldn’t take any money, it was against policy. Mr. Turner chose to ignore him as he gruffly shuffled up the sidewalk, his cane tap, tapping. Hugh stared at the coin, then sighed as he got back in the van and dumped the quarter in the ashtray.

“He was quite a big winner tonight,” Miss Gracie explained. “Went out at least four times, if you can believe that. I usually do better myself than I did tonight. I must have been distracted. I’m a bit worried about that trip Regis and Kelly have planned for next week. It gets awfully hot in the Bahamas, you know.”

(to be continued . . .)

Sunday in the Park

2004-06-10T05:31:00.000-07:00

Here we come across my very favorite sudden fiction story. It's short, exciting, and moving in an awful way. (Read it before you read my discussion, and then come back if you want.) It reminds me of several encounters I've had in which I want to discuss a matter of disagreement rationally, to settle an affair through the medium of forensics, only to discover that fellow with whom I am in disagreement merely wants to knock my dick in the dirt. It feels awful enough to back down from a fight, and then when there's a woman involved — we're talking serious emotional pain that's far greater than any physical pain that would result in fighting. The woman's reaction at the end of the story is wonderful and awful. Her reaction is a perfect exemplification of the idea that women say they want a kind and sensitive man, but on another level, they want something else. It's a cautionary tale to all us wimps — take your beating like a man.

Sunday in the Park
By Bel Kaufman

It was still warm in the late-afternoon sun, and the city noises came muffled through the trees in the park. She put her book down on the bench, removed her sunglasses, and sighed contentedly. Morton was reading the Times Magazine section, one arm flung around her shoulder; their three-year-old son, Larry, was playing in the sandbox: a faint breeze fanned her hair softly against her cheek. It was five-thirty of a Sunday afternoon, and the small playground, tucked away in a corner of the park, was all but deserted. The swings and seesaws stood motionless and abandoned, the slides were empty, and only in the sandbox two little boys squatted diligently side by side. How good this is, she thought, and almost smiled at her sense of well-being. They must go out in the sun more often; Morton was so city-pale, cooped up all week inside the gray factory-like university. She squeezed his arm affectionately and glanced at Larry, delighting in the pointed little face frowning in concentration over the tunnel he was digging. The other boy suddenly stood up and with a quick, deliberate swing of his chubby arm threw a spadeful of sand at Larry. It just missed his head. Larry continued digging; the boy remained standing, shovel raised, stolid and impassive.

"No, no, little boy." She shook her finger at him, her eyes searching for the child's mother or nurse. "We mustn't throw sand. It may get in someone's eyes and hurt. We must play nicely in the nice sandbox." The boy looked at her in unblinking expectancy. He was about Larry's age but perhaps ten pounds heavier, a husky little boy with none of Larry's quickness and sensitivity in his face. Where was his mother? The only other people left in the playground were two women and a little girl on roller skates leaving now through the gate, and a man on a bench a few feet away. He was a big man, and he seemed to be taking up the whole bench as he held the Sunday comics close to his face. She supposed he was the child's father. He did not look up from his comics, but spat once deftly out of the corner of his mouth. She turned her eyes away.

At that moment, as swiftly as before, the fat little boy threw another spadeful of sand at Larry. This time some of it landed on his hair and forehead. Larry looked up at his mother, his mouth tentative; her expression would tell him whether to cry or not.

Her first instinct was to rush to her son, brush the sand out of his hair, and punish the other child, but she controlled it. She always said that she wanted Larry to learn to fight his own battles.

"Don't do that, little boy," she said sharply, leaning forward on the bench. "You mustn't throw sand!"

The man on the bench moved his mouth as if to spit again, but instead he spoke. He did not look at her, but at the boy only.

"You go right ahead, Joe," he said loudly. "Throw all you want."

She felt a sudden weakness in her knees as she glanced at Morton. He had become aware of what was happening. He put his Times down carefully on his lap and turned his fine, lean face toward the man, smiling the shy, apologetic smile he might have offered a student in pointing out an error in his thinking. When he spoke to the man, it was with his usual reasonableness.

"You're quite right," he said pleasantly, "but just because this is a public place. . . ."

The man lowered his funnies and looked at Morton. He looked at him from head to foot, slowly and deliberately. "Yeah?" His insolent voice was edged with menace. "My kid's got just as good right here as yours, and if he feels like throwing sand, he'll throw it, and if you don't like it, you can take your kid the hell out of here."

The children were listening, their eyes and mouths wide open, their spades forgotten in small fists. She noticed the muscle in Morton's jaw tighten. He was rarely angry; he seldom lost his temper. She was suffused with a tenderness for her husband and an impotent rage against the man for involving him in a situation so alien and so distasteful to him.

"Now, just a minute," Morton said courteously, "you must realize..."

"Aw, shut up," said the man.

Her heart began to pound. Morton half rose; the Times slid to the ground. Slowly the other man stood up. He took a couple of steps toward Morton, then stopped. He flexed his great arms, waiting. She pressed her trembling knees together. Would there be violence, fighting? How dreadful, how incredible. . . . She must do something, stop them, call for help. She wanted to put her hand on her husband's sleeve, to pull him down, but for some reason she didn't.

Morton adjusted his glasses. He was very pale. "This is ridiculous," he said unevenly, "I must ask you. . . ."

"Oh, yeah?" said the man. He stood with his legs spread apart, rocking a little, looking at Morton with utter scorn. "You and who else?"

For a moment the two men looked at each other nakedly. Then Morton turned his back on the man and said quietly, "Come on, let's get out of here." He walked awkwardly, almost limping with self-consciousness, to the sandbox. He stooped and lifted Larry and his shovel out.

At once Larry came to life; his face lost its rapt expression and he began to kick and cry. "I don't want to go home, I want to play better, I don't want any supper, I don't like supper. . . ." It became a chant as they walked, pulling their child between them, his feet dragging on the ground. In order to get to the exit gate they had to pass the bench where the man sat sprawling again. She was careful not to look at him. With all the dignity she could summon, she pulled Larry's sandy, perspiring little hand, while Morton pulled the other. Slowly and with head high she walked with her husband and child out of the playground.

Her first feelings was one of relief that a fight had been avoided, that no one was hurt. Yet beneath it there was a layer of something else, something heavy and inescapable. She sensed that it was more than just an unpleasant incident, more than defeat of reason by force.. She felt dimly it had something to do with her and Morton, something acutely personal, familiar, and important.

Suddenly Morton spoke. "It wouldn't have proved anything."

"What?" she asked.

"A fight. It wouldn't have proved anything beyond the fact that he's bigger than I am."

"Of course," she said.

"The only possible outcome," he continued reasonably, "would have been-what? My glasses broken, perhaps a tooth or two replaced, a couple of days' work missed — and for what? For justice? For truth?"

"Of course," she repeated. She quickened her step. She wanted only to get home and to busy herself with her familiar tasks; perhaps then the feeling, glued like heavy plaster on her heart, would be gone. Of all the stupid, despicable bullies, she thought, pulling harder on Larry's hand. The child was still crying. Always before she had felt a tender pity for his defenseless little body, the frail arms, the narrow shoulders with sharp, wing-like shoulder blades, the thin and unsure legs, but now her mouth tightened in resentment.

"Stop crying," she said sharply. "I'm ashamed of you!" She felt as if all three of them were tracking mud along the street. The child cried louder.

If there had been an issue involved, she thought, if there had been something to fight for. . . . But what else could he possibly have done? Allow him to be beaten? Attempt to educate the man? Call a policeman? "Officer, there's a man in the park who won't stop his child from throwing sand on mine. . . . " The whole thing was as silly as that, and not worth thinking about.

"Can't you keep him quiet, for Pete's sake?" Morton asked irritably.

"What do you suppose I've been trying to do?" she said.

Larry pulled back, dragging his feet.

"If you can't discipline this child, I will," Morton snapped, make a move toward the boy.

But her voice stopped him. She was shocked to hear it, thin and cold and penetrating with contempt. "Indeed?" she heard herself say. "You and who else?"

Dinner Time

2004-06-09T05:40:00.000-07:00

Here's another fine story from the American Sudden Fiction collection. The story's humor reminds me of watching Three Stooges episodes in a Shakey's Pizza restaurant when I was a kid. A group of guys used to laugh hysterically while others stared in disbelief. I don't mean to imply that this story has the same artistic value as The Three Stooges. There's more to this story than idiots clunking each others' heads together.

Dinner Time
By Russell Edson

An old man sitting at table was waiting for his wife to serve dinner. He heard her beating a pot that had burned her. He hated the sound of a pot when it was beaten, for it advertised its pain in such a way that made him wish to inflict more of the same. And he began to punch at his own face, and his knuckles were red. How he hated red knuckles, that blaring color, more self-important than the wound.

He heard his wife drop the entire dinner on the kitchen floor with a curse. For as she was carrying it in it had burned her thumb. He heard the forks and spoons, the cups and platters all cry at once as they landed on the kitchen floor. How he hated a dinner that, once prepared, begins to burn one to death, and as if that weren't enough, screeches and roars as it lands on the floor, where it belongs anyway.

He punched himself again and fell on the floor.

When he came awake again he was quite angry, and so he punched himself again and felt dizzy. Dizziness made him angry, and so he began to hit his head against the wall, saying, now get real dizzy if you want to get dizzy. He slumped to the floor.

Oh, the legs won't work, eh? . . . He began to punch his legs. He had taught his head a lesson and now he would teach his legs a lesson.

Meanwhile he heard his wife smashing the remaining dinnerware and the dinnerware roaring and shrieking.

He saw himself in the mirror on the wall. Oh, mock me, will you. And so he smashed the mirror with a chair, which broke. Oh, don't want to be a chair no more; too good to be sat on, eh? He began to beat the pieces of the chair.

He heard his wife beating the stove with an ax. He called, when're we going to eat? as he stuffed a candle into his mouth.

When I'm good and ready, she screamed.

Want me to punch your bun? he screamed.

Come near me and I'll kick an eye out of your head.

I'll cut your ears off.

I'll give you a slap right in the face.

I'll break you in half.

The old man finally ate one of his hands. The old woman said, damn fool, whyn't you cook it first? you go on like a beast — You know I have to subdue the kitchen every night, otherwise it'll cook me and serve me to the mice on my best china. And you know what small eaters they are; next would come the flies, and how I hate flies in my kitchen.
The old man swallowed a spoon. Okay, said the old woman, now we're short one spoon.

The old man, growing angry, swallowed himself.

Okay, said the woman, now you've done it.

Playing Iwo Jima

2004-06-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

Here's my favorite super short story, which reminds me of dirt clod fights we used to have in the orange groves on the way to school in Riverside, California. It reminds me of World War II battles we used to wage in our Papillion, Nebraska backyards in late June and early July, when we'd pick Army men, set them up on a mound, and then throw firecrackers at our buddy's men until one of us blew up all the soldiers, or we both ran out of firecrackers. Then we'd scrounge up some soda bottles, return them to the store, and head off to one of the fireworks stands. But what am I talking about? Oh yeah. Today's story, which shows the insecurity, the cruelty, and more than anything the joy of being a young boy. Frog lovers beware!

Playing Iwo Jima
By Chris Spain

What I am doing now is I am butt-welded to a John Deere 4020, unzipping the earth west of Muleshoe, lifting her dusty dress. I am probably alone out here, only who knows? I will put it together for you the way I put it together for myself. There is heat waving off my tractor's fenders, dust devils jumping the farm to market road, and Sarah waiting in the turn row with a bag full of Ogallala water. Sarah waiting in the turn row is the only part of this that is for sure a lie. There is no question I am plowing the beaches of Iwo Jima, turning up bones from Frog Wars fifteen years ago.

The rules were that there weren't any rules, but if you got frog on you you were dead. I had no arm, Harold called me woman, so mostly I was dead. When they picked armies, Jap and Marine, I was last — last to go, even after Sarah. The Japs defended the milk barn, Iwo Jima, and the Marines waded ashore through the cotton. You combated with a pocket full of black cats, a pocket full of frogs, and a punk between your teeth. The punk's glow gave you away, but when you torched that fuse it was like pulling a pin. Stick a finger-thick black cat in old frog's mouth, make him look cigar-smoking, torch that fuse, and hurl the frog grenade across the West Texas sky. Last-ditch assaults were pure carnage, frog bombs dropping everywhere. When you got a direct hit, you would say, "Take that, fuckhead, I frogged your ass!" And if they got you, you would say, "Oh fuck, I been frogged!"

In a House Besieged

2004-06-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

Several readers have been complaining about the length of the stories. I usually like to ignore my readers in a willful, almost arrogant manner. However, in this case, I suppose the criticism is valid, especially in light of the fact that if you wanted to read a long story, you'd probably prefer pulling out a book to staring at a computer monitor. So from now on, I'll feature super short stories, like "In a House Besieged," Monday through Wednesday. On Thursdays, I'll feel free to post a longer story. And on Fridays, as always, I'll post stories by the relative unknowns. (Wendy, get your story ready for Friday.)

In a House Besieged
Author unknown

In a house besieged lived a man and a woman. From where they cowered in the kitchen the man and woman heard small explosions. "The wind," said the woman. "Hunters," said the man. "The rain," said the woman. "The army," said the man. The woman wanted to go home, but she was already home, there in the middle of the country in a house besieged.

Leaving

2004-06-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Robert Raleigh and I shared a WordPerfect office together back in the early '90s. We both wanted to get better at writing stories, so we challenged each other to submit a story every Friday. We would use our fancy new electronic mail (e-mail) programs to send our Friday stories to each other, and to a few other friends. Some of these stories were written hurriedly on Friday morning. Others were crafted over time. Some have been published. Most have not. But here's the thing. I always enjoyed reading Robert's Friday story, even the hurried ones. Here's a story that reminds me of something Ann Beattie would write. (I had to convert it from WordPerfect format.)

Leaving
By Robert Raleigh

After dinner I tell Andrew I'm going for a walk.

"That sounds nice. Can I come?" he asks.

I had decided, as I was finishing up my dinner, not to let him come, but suddenly, looking at his enthusiastic face, I feel weak about this. I want him to be with me, to stay with me, tonight, next week. Sometimes in what I think of as my weakest moments, I want him to stay with me my whole life. I love to imagine us together as old people, drinking tea, puttering in the garden, straining to hear one another speak. This fantasy of the Geritol versions of Andy and me is a recent development, and one I attempt to suppress, because it seems so foolish.

"No, I'd rather be by myself," I tell him.

"Okay," he says, and smiles at me. He has mu shu sauce on his chin. I resist the urge to point at my own chin.

"I think I'll go visit a few people I still haven't said goodbye to, then," he says.

I've been amazed by how many friends he has. I've met most of them over the time I've known him, but now that he's leaving he's been visiting and being visited by friends in droves. I don't really understand it. I have maybe three real friends — college girlfriends — and it's all I can do to keep these fragile relationships alive, particularly since two of them are now long distance.

I know it's going to be chilly down by the water, so I put on a sweatshirt and gloves, then walk out without saying goodbye. Andrew, of course, will not be offended. Occasionally I am bothered by his seemingly endless patience. I tend to think of it as a kind of emotional constipation — eventually all that shit will poison his system or something. I think the surgeon general should warn people: BEING NICE MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH. It amuses me to imagine bringing it up with him: "Don't be so understanding," I tell him, and he, of course, nods understandingly.

I walk down the long wooden flight of steps to the lake. There is a slight mist over the lake, but not enough to block the reflection of the moon, which is nearly full. I love living here. I come down to the lake all the time to think, to write, to read, to sit and watch the birds, clouds, trees, sunlight. I never get tired of it. It makes me sad to think it will all be over in less than two months.

I have been housesitting for the parents of one of my three friends, Chloe. Chloe's parents are missionaries in Australia for the Mormon church. Chloe hasn't told them that I'm living in their house with a man, and worse, a man I'm not married to. I was worried about this at first, because I thought the neighbors might rat on us, and I didn't want something so pleasant to come to an unpleasant end. Chloe assured me that her parents hadn't lived there long enough to really make any friends. The neighbors, she said, could tell them after it was too late to do anything about it.

This sense of living in a beautiful house but knowing that it's only temporary, that it's really someone else's good fortune, is the same sense I have about Andrew sometimes, particularly now that he's leaving. He's finally getting his chance to work with a development organization in Chad. He applied for it, as he keeps pointing out, before he ever met me. And it is, he keeps pointing out, only for a year.

I keep wanting to point out: what if he likes it, and decides to stay longer, or indefinitely, or what if he falls in love with another woman, or gets killed? But I don't say any of these things. Instead I say, "That's great" and "I'm happy for you." Sometimes I mean it and sometimes I don't, and sometimes when I don't, he can tell, and sometimes when he can tell, it bothers him. So I figure, at least something bothers him.

Suddenly I hear someone behind me and this startles me. I jump, and my heart suddenly starts beating more rapidly.

"I'm sorry," she says, as she approaches. "I didn't mean to scare you." It is June Rasmussen, an older woman I often see, and occasionally talk to, when I'm by the lake.

"That's fine," I say. "I just didn't expect anyone to be out here in the cold this late."

"Isn't it chilly? It's the dampness that really gets to you." She hugs herself to show that she is cold.

"It does make it seem colder," I say.

She says, "In Arizona it actually gets colder at night, but it doesn't seem so cold. I mean, the temperature is actually lower—"

She sees me nodding and trails off. She often talks that way: she explains something, then begins to explain it again in a slightly different way, and then she realizes what she's doing and breaks off, often in mid-sentence.

I imagine an impatient husband telling her, "June, you just got through telling me this, so don't start again. You know how you are." And in response she smiles that pleasant smile of hers that seems to hide so much. It's a smile that reminds me of my mother, which makes me feel a certain combination of daughterly affection and annoyance that has nothing to do with June. Maybe one of her own daughters — she told me she has two — responds to her in a similar way, so that my mixed feelings are familiar to her.

"It's a beautiful night," she says, and sighs.

"It's always beautiful here," I say.

We sit silently looking out over the water. Then I look over at her and see that her cheeks are wet. I've never seen her show anything but her controlled, public exterior, so this private display of emotions surprises me. Perhaps she thinks I can't see her face in the dark.

For a moment I hesitate, afraid to invade her privacy, but then I say, "June, what's the matter?"

She lets out a small laugh of embarrassment and wipes the tears from her cheeks with her hand.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says.

"Don't be sorry," I say.

"It's my son's birthday today."

"I didn't know you had a son."

"He would have been forty."

I don't know what else to say. I don't want to force her to describe her son's death to me, so finally I say, "I'm sorry."

"He died in a car accident."

I can see that she has already begun to regain her composure. She wipes the tears from her cheeks again and then takes out a handkerchief and blows her nose and dabs her eyes. She puts away her handkerchief and pats her hair. Then she apologizes to me again.

"No need to apologize," I say to her. "It's hard when someone you love dies."

I feel like I should reciprocate by telling about the death of someone I loved, and the grief I felt, but no one close to me has ever died. Except for a hamster I once had. This doesn't seem like an appropriate incident to bring up, though, so I remain silent.

June says, "Thank you for being so patient. I don't mean to unload my problems on you like that."

"Please, don't be sorry," I say.

Then we sit for a while again without saying anything.

Finally, June says, "I think I'm going to go inside now. I'm starting to feel the chill." She gets up and starts to walk away.

"Good night. I'm sorry about your son," I say.

She looks back at me for just a moment, smiles politely, and then turns and goes.

Not long after June leaves, I begin to feel the chill too, so I start the walk back up the stairs to keep myself warm.

When I get back to the house it is still dark. I think of it as a metaphor, which is something I often do when I'm feeling down. To cheer myself I go around the house and make a game of it: I leave water running and try to cut some paper with very dull scissors. I put on a Velvet Underground record and poise the needle just barely above the spinning vinyl.

After a while I am satisfied. I turn off the water and let the needle drop. I get a beer and turn out all the lights and curl up in an overstuffed leather chair. I indulge myself by being irritated about the length of Andrew's absence. I figure I might as well get it over with before he comes home, so I won't be tempted to quarrel. I don't want one of my last nights with him to be ruined by bickering over something so small. Especially when there are so many bigger issues to tackle.

I'm kidding myself, of course. I'm not going to tackle any issue, big or small. Issues are going to run around the house naked and wet, singing Gershwin songs off-key, and I'm not going to even give them a second look, much less wrestle them to the floor. It's just my way, or at least that's what I tell myself. My therapist would look at me sternly for saying such a thing, which is probably the main reason I'm no longer in therapy.

I hear Andrew's footsteps on the porch, then the jingle of his keys, then the weatherstripping at the bottom of the kitchen door brushing against the tile.

"Hello," he says loudly. I don't respond. He hears the music and comes into the living room and turns on a lamp.

"Oh, there you are," he says, and smiles. He looks tired.

I say, "How was your visit?"

He says, "It was okay."

"Just okay?"

"It was Colin. You know how Colin gets. Well, tonight, he was really on one. This time he's being persecuted by the entire Latin American Studies department."

The record ends as he says this, so I get up and turn it over.

Andrew says, "How was your evening?"

"It was kind of strange, actually."

"What do you mean strange?"

"Do you remember that woman I told you about that sort of reminds me of my mother?"

Andrew shakes his head no.

"There's this woman who lives over by the pier. Actually they just summer here. But anyway, I run into her a lot when I'm down by the lake. Her name is June Rasmussen."

Andrew yawns and then gets up. "I think I want some tea," he says. "Do you want any?"

"No," I say.

He walks toward the kitchen and says, "Don't stop. I'm listening."

"No, I'll wait. I don't want to shout."

"Come in here, then."

So I go in and sit down on one of the slatted kitchen chairs. It's a little cold. Andrew turns and looks at me, waiting for me to continue.

"So she was down by the lake tonight. Actually she scared the shit out of me. I didn't expect anyone to be down there. But anyway, we were just sort of sitting there when I noticed that she was crying."

"She was crying?"

"Yeah. It was weird. I mean, she's one of these country club matron types who always seems so proper and everything."

Andrew brings his tea over and sits across from me. He pushes the tea bag beneath the surface of the water with his spoon. I imagine that he is drowning it, and this makes me smile.

"What?" says Andrew, noticing my smile.

"Nothing. So anyway, I asked her if she wanted to talk, and she told me that her son died, and I guess it's his birthday today."

Andrew slurps some tea off his spoon and begins pushing at the tea bag again.

He shakes his head and says, "That's sad."

"The funny thing was that the whole thing lasted only about two minutes. I mean, it was like this little window that she opened up, sort of accidentally in a way, because I'm sure she didn't expect anyone to be down by the lake either, and then she closed up the shutters and went away."

Andrew smiles at my metaphor. He likes to tease me about my metaphors.

I say, "Oh, the thing I remember I wanted to tell you was that after she was done, I felt like I should tell about someone who died, just to sort of put us on an equal footing, and the only thing I could think of was about this hamster I had."

"A hamster?" says Andrew.

"Yeah, it was when I was a kid. My hamster died. Fluffy. That was its name."

"You told her about your hamster?" says Andrew, incredulous.

"No, I didn't say it. I just thought about it."

Andrew begins to laugh. In the slightly higher pitched voice he uses to impersonate me he says, "I once had a rodent I loved, Mrs. Rasmussen."

Then we are both laughing and Andrew spills his tea on his pants. As I sit across from him, laughing and watching him wipe his pants with a napkin, I can almost forget that a week from now I will be missing him like crazy, wishing he were here with me instead of halfway around the world, trying to save people he doesn't even know.

A Poetics for Bullies

2004-06-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

I had read this story and a few others by Stanley Elkin, and I considered him to be one of my favorite writers. When my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told her I wanted books by Stanley Elkin. Then I recommended one of those books — The Macguffin — for a book club that I was in. Only a couple of people read it, and the book club never met again. Why do I mention this? No idea. But this short story has it all.

A Poetics for Bullies
By Stanley Elkin

I'm Push the bully, and what I hate are new kids and sissies, dumb kids and smart, rich kids, poor kids, kids who wear glasses, talk funny, show off, patrol boys and wise guys and kids who pass pencils and water the plants — and cripples, especially cripples. I love nobody loved.

One time I was pushing this red-haired kid (I'm a pusher, no bitter, no belter; an aggressor of marginal violence, I hate real force) and his mother stuck her head out the window and shouted something I've never forgotten. "Push," she yelled. "You, Push. You pick on him because you wish you had his red hair" It's true; I did wish I had his red hair. I wish I were tall, or fat, or thin. I wish I had different eyes, different hands, a mother in the supermarket. I wish I were a man, a small boy, a girl in the choir. I'm a coveter, a Boston Blackie of the heart, casing the world. Endlessly I covet and case. (Do you know what makes me cry? The Declaration of Independence. "All men are created equal." That's beautiful.)

If you're a bully like me, you use your head. Toughness isn't enough. You beat them up, they report you. Then where are you? I'm not even particularly strong. (I used to be strong. I used to do exercise, work out, but strength implicates you, and often isn't an advantage anyway — read the judo ads. Besides, your big bullies aren't bullies at all — they're athletes. With them, beating guys up is a sport.) But what I lose in size and strength I make up in courage. I'm very brave. That's a lie about bullies being cowards underneath. If you're a coward, get out of the business.

I'm best at torment.

A kid has a toy bow, toy arrows. "Let Push look," I tell him.

He's suspicious, he knows me. "Go way. Push," he says, this mama-warned Push doubter.

"Come on," I say, "come on."

"No, Push. I can't. My mother said I can't."

I raise my arms, I spread them. I'm a bird — slow, powerful, easy, free. I move my head offering profile like something beaked. I'm the Thunderbird. "In the school where I go I have a teacher who teaches me magic," I say. "Arnold Salamancy, give Push your arrows. Give him one, he gives back two. Push is the God of the Neighborhood."

"Go way. Push," the kid says, uncertain.

"Right," Push says, himself again. "Right. I'll disappear. First the fingers." My fingers ball into fists. "My forearms next." They jackknife into my upper arms. "The arms." Quick as bird-blink they snap behind my back, fit between my shoulder blades like a small knapsack. (I am double-jointed, protean.) "My head," I say.

"No, Push," the kid says, terrified. I shudder and everything comes back, falls into place from the stem of self like a shaken puppet.

"The arrow, the arrow. Two where was one." He hands me an arrow.

"Trouble, trouble, double rubble!" I snap it and give back the pieces.

Well, sure. There is no magic. If there were I would learn it. I would find out the words, the slow turns and strange passes, drain the bloods and get the herbs, do the fires like a vestal. I would look for the main chants. Then I'd change things. Push would!

But there's only casuistical trick. Sleight-of-mouth, the bully's poetics.

You know the formulas:

"Did you ever see a match burn twice?" you ask. Strike. Extinguish. Jab his flesh with the hot stub.

"Play 'Gestapo'?

"How do you play?"

"What's your name?"

"It's Morton."

I slap him. "You're lying."

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me Hard went down to the lake for a swim. Adam and Eve fell in. Who was left?"

"Pinch Me Hard."

I do.

Physical puns, conundrums. Push the punisher, the conundrummer.

But there has to be more than tricks in a bag of tricks. I don't know what it is. Sometimes I think I'm the only new kid. In a room, the school, the playground, the neighborhood, I get the feeling I've just moved in, no one knows me. You know what I like? To stand in crowds. To wait with them at the airport to meet a plane. Someone asks what time it is. I'm the first to answer. Or at the ballpark when the vendor comes. He passes the hot dog down the long row. I want my hands on it, too. On the dollar going up, the change coming down.

I am ingenious, I am patient.

A kid is going downtown on the elevated train. He's got his little suit on, his shoes are shined, be wears a cap. This is a kid going to the travel bureaus, the foreign tourist offices to get brochures, maps, pictures of the mountains for a unit at his school — a kid looking for extra credit. I follow him. He comes out of the Italian Tourist Information Center. His arms are full. I move from my place at the window. I follow for two blocks and bump into him as he steps from a curb. It's a collision— The pamphlets fall from his arms. Pretending confusion, I walk on his paper Florence. I grind my heel in his Riviera. I climb Vesuvius and sack his Rome and dance on the Isle of Capri.

The Industrial Museum is a good place to find children. I cut somebody's five or six year-old kid brother out of the herd of eleven- and twelve-year-olds he's come with. "Quick," I say. I pull him along the corridors, up the stairs, through the halls, down to a mezzanine landing. Breathless, I pause for a minute. "I've got some gum. Do you want a stick?" He nods; I stick him. I rush him into an auditorium and abandon him. He'll be lost for hours.

I sidle up to a kid at the movies. "You smacked my brother," I tell him. "After the show I'll be outside.

"I break up games. I hold the ball above my head. "You want it? Take it."

I go into barber shops. There's a kid waiting. "I'm next," I tell him, "understand?"

One day Eugene Kraft rang my bell. Eugene is afraid of me, so he helps me. He's fifteen and there's something wrong with his saliva glands and he drools. His chin is always chapped. I tell him he has to drink a lot because he loses so much water.

"Push? Push," he says. He's wiping his chin with his tissues. "Push, there's this kid—"

"Better get a glass of water, Eugene."

"No, Push, no fooling, there's this new kid — he just moved in. You've got to see this kid."

"Eugene, get some water, please. You're drying up. I've never seen you so bad. There are deserts in you, Eugene."

"All right. Push, but then you've got to see—"

"Swallow, Eugene. You better swallow."

He gulps hard. "Push, this is a kid and a half. Wait, you'll see."

"I'm very concerned about you, Eugene. You're dying of thirst, Eugene. Come into the kitchen with me."

I push him through the door. He's very excited. I've never seen him so excited. He talks at me over his shoulder, his mouth flooding, his teeth like the little stone pebbles at the bottom of a fishbowl. "He's got this sport coat, with a patch over the heart. Like a king. Push. No kidding."

"Be careful of the carpet, Eugene."

I turn on the taps in the sink. I mix in hot water. "Use your tissues, Eugene. Wipe your chin."

He wipes himself and puts the Kleenex' in his pocket. All of Eugene's pockets bulge. He looks, with his bulging pockets, like a clumsy smuggler.

"Wipe, Eugene. Swallow, you're drowning."

"He's got this funny accent — you could die." Excited, he tamps at his mouth like a diner, a tubercular.

"Drink some water, Eugene."

"No, Push. I'm not thirsty — really."

"Don't be foolish, kid. That's because your mouth's so wet. Inside where it counts you're drying up. It stands to reason. Drink some water."

"He has this crazy haircut."

"Drink" I command. I shake him. "Drink!

"Push, I've got no glass. Give me a glass at least."

"I can't do that, Eugene. You've got a terrible sickness. How could I let you use our drinking glasses? Lean under the tap and open your mouth."

He knows he'll have to do it, that I won't listen to him until he does. He bends into the sink.

"Push, it's hot," he complains. The water splashes into his nose, it gets on his glasses and for a moment his eyes are magnified, enormous. He pulls away and scrapes his forehead on the faucet.

"Eugene, you touched it. Watch out, please. You're too close to the tap. Lean your head deeper into the sink."

"It's hot, Push."

"Warm water evaporates better. With your affliction you've got to evaporate fluids before they get into your glands."

He feeds again from the tap.

"Do you think that's enough?" I ask after a while.

"I do. Push, I really do," he says. He is breathless.

"Eugene," I say seriously, "I think you'd better get yourself a canteen."

"A canteen, Push?"

"That's right. Then you'll always have water when you need it. Get one of those Boy Scout models. The two quart kind with a canvas strap."

"But you hate the Boy Scouts, Push."

"They make very good canteens, Eugene. And wear it! I never want to see you without it. Buy it today."

"All right, Push."

"Promise!"

"All right, Push."

"Say it out."

He made the formal promise that I like to hear.

"Well, then," I said, "let's go see this new kid of yours."

He took me to the schoolyard. "Wait," he said, "you'll see." He skipped ahead.

"Eugene," I said, calling him back. "Let's understand something. No matter what this new kid is like, nothing changes as far as you and I are concerned."

"Aw, Push," he said.

"Nothing, Eugene. I mean it. You don't get out from under me."

"Sure, Push, I know that." There were some kids in the far corner of the yard, sitting on the ground, leaning up against the wire fence. Bats and gloves and balls lay scattered around them. (It was where they told dirty jokes. Sometimes I'd come by during the little kids' recess and tell them all about what their daddies do to their mommies.)

"There. See? Do you see him?" Eugene, despite himself, seemed hoarse.

"Be quiet," I said, checking him, freezing as a hunter might.
I stared.

He was a prince, I tell you.

He was tall, even sitting down. His long legs comfortable in expensive wool, the trousers of a boy who had been on ships, jets; who owned a horse, perhaps; who knew Latin — what didn't he know? Somebody made up, like a kid in a play with a beautiful mother and a handsome father; who took his breakfast from a sideboard, and picked, even at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, his mail from a silver plate. He would have hobbies — stamps, stars, things lovely dead. He wore a sport coat, brown as wood, thick as heavy bark. The buttons were leather buds. His shoes seemed carved from horses' saddles, gunstocks. His clothes had once grown in nature. What it must feel like inside those clothes, I thought.

I looked at his face, his clear skin, and guessed at the bones, white as beached wood. His eyes had skies in than. His yellow hair swirled on his head like a crayoned sun.

"Look, look at him," Eugene said. "The sissy. Get him, Push."

He was talking to them and I moved closer to hear his voice. It was clear, beautiful, but faintly foreign like herb-seasoned meat.

When he saw me he paused, smiling. He waved. The others didn't look at me.

"Hello there," he called. "Come over if you'd like. I've been telling the boys about tigers."

"Tigers," I said.

"Give him the 'match burn twice,' Push," Eugene whispered.

'Tigers, is it?" I said. "What do you know about tigers?" My voice was high.

"The 'match burn twice,' Push."

"Not so much as a Master Tugjah. I was telling the boys. In India there are men of high caste — Tugjahs, they're called. I was apprenticed to one once in the Southern Plains and might perhaps have earned my mastership, but the Red Chinese attacked the northern frontier and . . . well, let's just say I had to leave. At any rate, these Tugjahs are as intimate with the tiger as you are with dogs. I mean they don't keep them as pets. The relationship goes deeper. Your dog is a service animal, as is your elephant."

"Did you ever see a match bum twice?" I asked suddenly.

"Why no, can you do that? Is it a special match you use?"

"No," Eugene said, "it's an ordinary match. He used an ordinary match."

"Can you do it with one of mine, do you think?"

He took a matchbook from his pocket and handed it to me. The cover was exactly the material of his jacket, and in the center was a patch with a coat-of-arms identical to the one he wore over his heart.

I held the matchbook for a moment and then gave it back to him. "I don't feel like it," I said.

"Then some other time, perhaps," he said.

Eugene whispered to me. "His accent. Push, his funny accent."

"Some other time, perhaps," I said. I am a good mimic. I can duplicate a particular kid's lisp, his stutter, a thickness in his throat. There were two or three here whom I had brought close to tears by holding up my mirror to their voices. I can parody their limps, their waddles, their girlish runs, their clumsy jumps. I can throw as they throw, catch as they catch. I looked around. "Some other time, perhaps," I said again. No one would look at me.

"I'm so sorry," the new one said, "we don't know each other's names. You are?"

"I'm so sorry," I said. "You are?"

He seemed puzzled. Then he looked sad, disappointed. No one said anything.

"It don't sound the same," Eugene whispered.

It was true. I sounded nothing like him. I could imitate only defects, only flaws.

A kid giggled.

"Shh," the prince said. He put one finger to his lips.

"Look at that," Eugene said under his breath. "He's a sissy."

He had begun to talk to them again. I squatted, a few feet away. I ran gravel through my loose fists, one bowl in an hourglass feeding another.

He spoke of jungles, of deserts. He told of ancient trade routes traveled by strange beasts. He described lost cities and a lake deeper than the deepest level of the sea. There was a story about a boy who had been captured by bandits. A woman in the story, it wasn't clear whether she was the boy's mother, had been tortured. His eyes clouded for a moment when he came to this part and he had to pause before continuing. Then he told how the boy escaped, it was cleverly done, and found help, mountain tribesmen riding elephants. The elephants charged the cave in which the mo — the woman — was still a prisoner. It might have collapsed and killed her, but one old bull rushed in and, shielding her with his body, took the weight of the crashing rocks. Your elephant is a service animal.

I let a piece of gravel rest on my thumb and flicked it in a high arc above his head. Some of the others who had seen me stared, but the boy kept on talking. Gradually I reduced the range, allowing the chunks of gravel to come closer to his head.

"You see?" Eugene said quietly. "He's afraid. He pretends not to notice."

The arcs continued to diminish. The gravel went faster, straighter. No one was listening to him now, but he kept talking.

"—of magic," he said, "what occidentals call 'a witch doctor.'" There are spices that induce these effects. The Bogdovii was actually able to stimulate the growth of rocks with the powder. The Dutch traders were ready to go to war for the formula. Well, you can .see what it could mean for the Low Countries. Without accessible quarries they've never been able to construct a permanent system of dikes. But with the Bogdovii's powder" he reached out and casually caught the speeding chip as if it had been a Ping-Pong ball. "They could turn a grain of sand into a pebble, use the pebbles to grow stones, the stones to grow rocks. This little piece of gravel, for example, could be changed into a mountain." He dipped his thumb into his palm as I had and balanced the gravel on his nail. He flicked it; it rose from his nail like a missile, and climbed an impossible arc. It disappeared. "The Bogdovii never revealed how it was done."

I stood up. Eugene tried to follow me.

"Listen," he said, "you'll get him."

"Swallow," I told him. "Swallow, you pig!"

* * *

I have lived my life in pursuit of the vulnerable: Push the chink seeker, wheeler dealer in the flawed cement of the personality, a collapse maker. But what isn't vulnerable, who isn't? There is that which is unspeakable, so I speak it, that which is unthinkable, which I think. Me and the devil, we do God's dirty work, after all.

I went home after I left him. I turned once at the gate, and the boys were around him still. The useless Eugene had moved closer. He made room for him against the fence.

I ran into Frank the fat boy. He made a move to cross the street, but I had seen him and he went through a clumsy retractive motion. I could tell he thought I would get him for that, but I moved by, indifferent to a grossness in which I had once delighted. As I passed he seemed puzzled, a little hurt, a little — this was astonishing — guilty. Sure guilty. Why not guilty? The forgiven tire of their exemption. Nothing could ever be forgiven, and I forgave nothing. I held them to the mark. Who else cared about the fatties, about the dummies and slobs and clowns, about the gimps and squares and oafs and fools, the kids with a mouthful of mush, all those shut-ins of the mind and heart, all those losers? Frank the fat boy knew, and passed me shyly. His wide, fat body, stiffened, forced jokeishly martial when he saw me, had already become flaccid as he moved by, had already made one more forgiven surrender. Who cared?

The streets were full of failure. Let them. Let them be. There was a paragon, a paragon loose. What could he be doing here, why had he come, what did he want? It was impossible that this hero from India and everywhere had made his home here; that he lived, as Frank the fat boy did, as Eugene did, as I did, in an apartment; that he shared our lives.

In the afternoon I looked for Eugene. He was in the park, in a tree. There was a book in his lap. He leaned against the thick trunk.

"Eugene," I called up to him.

"Push, they're closed. It's Sunday, Push. The stores are closed. I looked for the canteen. The stores are closed."

"Where is he?"

"Who, Push? What do you want. Push?"

"Him. Your pal. The prince. Where? Tell me, Eugene, or I'll shake you out of that tree. I'll burn you down. I swear it. Where is he?"

"No, Push. I was wrong about that guy. He's nice. He's really nice. Push, he told me about a doctor who could help me. Leave him alone. Push."

"Where, Eugene? Where? I count to three."

Eugene shrugged and came down from the tree.

I found the name Eugene gave me — funny, foreign — over the bell in the outer hall. The buzzer sounded and I pushed open the door. I stood inside and looked up the carpeted stairs, the angled banisters.

"What is it?" She sounded old, worried.

"The new kid," I called, "the new kid."

"It's for you," I heard her say.

"Yes?" His voice, the one I couldn't mimic. I mounted the first stair. I leaned back against the wall and looked up through the high, boxy banister poles. It was like standing inside a pipe organ.

"Yes?"

From where I stood at the bottom of the stairs I could see only a boot. He was wearing boots.

"Yes? What is it, please?"

"You." I roared. "Glass of fashion, model of form, it's me! It's Push the bully!"

I heard his soft, rapid footsteps coming down the stairs — a springy, spongy urgency. He jingled, the bastard. He had coins — I could see them: rough, golden, imperfectly round; raised, massively gowned goddesses, their heads fingered smooth, their arms gone — and keys to strange boxes, thick doors. I saw his boots. I backed away.

"I brought you down," I said.

"Be quiet, please. There's a woman who's ill. A. boy who must study. There's a man with bad bones. An old man needs sleep."

"He'll get it," I said.

"We'll go outside," he said.

"No. Do you live here? What do you do? Will you be in our school? Were you telling the truth?"

"Shh. Please. You're very excited."

'Tell me your name," I said. It could be my campaign, I thought. His name. Scratched in new sidewalk, chalked onto walls, written on papers dropped in the street. To leave it behind like so many clues, to give him a fame, to take it away, to slash and cross out, to erase and to smear — my kid's witchcraft.

"Tell me your name."

"It's John," he said softly.

"What?"

"It's John."

"John what? Come on now. I'm Push the bully."

"John Williams," he said.

"John Williams? John Williams? Only that? Only John Williams?"

He smiled.

"Who's that on the bell? The name on the box?"

"She needs me," he said.

"Cut it out."

"I help her," he said.

"You stop that."

"There's a man that's in pain. A woman who's old. A husband that's worried. A wife that despairs."

"You're the bully," I said. "Your John Williams is a service animal," I yelled in the hall.

He turned and began to climb the stairs. His calves bloomed in their leather sheathing.

"Lover," I whispered to him.

He turned to me at the landing. He shook his head sadly.

"We'll see," I said.

"We'll see what we'll see," he said.

That night I painted his name on the side of the gymnasium in enormous letters. In the morning it was still there, but it wasn't what I meant. There was nothing incantatory in the huge letters, no scream, no curse. I had never traveled with a gang, there had been no togetherness in my tearing, but this thing on the wall seemed the act of vandals, the low production of ruffians. When you looked at it you were surprised they had gotten the spelling right.

Astonishingly, it was allowed to remain. And each day there was something more celebrational in the giant name, something of increased hospitality, lavish welcome. John Williams might have been a football hero, or someone back from the kidnapers. Finally I had to take it off myself.

Something had changed.

Eugene was not wearing his canteen. Boys didn't break off their conversations when I came up to them. One afternoon a girl winked at me. (Push has never picked on girls. Their submissiveness is part of their nature. They are ornamental. Don't get me wrong, please. There is a way in which they function as part of the landscape, like flowers at a funeral. They have a strange cheerfulness. They are the organizers of pep rallies and dances. They put out the Year Book. They are born Gray Ladies. I can't bully them.)

John Williams was in the school, but except for brief glimpses in the hall I never saw him. Teachers would repeat the things he had said in their other classes. They read from his papers. In the gym the coach described plays he had made, set shots he had taken. Everyone talked about him, and girls made a reference to him a sort of love signal. If it was suggested that he had smiled at one of them, the girl referred to would blush or, what was worse, look aloofly mysterious. (Then I could have punished her, then I could.) Gradually his name began to appear on all their notebooks, in the margins of their texts. (It annoyed me to remember what I had done on the wall.) The big canvas books, with their careful, elaborate J's and W's, took on the appearance of ancient, illuminated fables. It was the unconscious embroidery of love, hope's bright doodle. Even the administration was aware of him. In Assembly the principal announced that John Williams had broken all existing records in the school's charity drives. She had never seen good citizenship like his before, she said.

It's one thing to live with a bully, another to live with a hero. Everyone's hatred I understand, no one's love; everyone's grievance, no one's content.

I saw Mimmer.

Mimmer should have graduated years ago. I saw Mimmer the dummy.

"Mimmer," I said, "you're in his class."

"He's very smart."

"Yes, but is it fair? You work harder. I've seen you study. You spend hours. Nothing comes. He was born knowing. You could have used just a little of what he's got so much of. It's not fair."

"He's very clever. It's wonderful," Mimmer says.

Slud is crippled. He wears a shoe with a built-up heel to balance himself.

"Ah, Slud," I say, "I've seen him run."

"He has beaten the horses in the park. It's very beautiful," Slud says.

"He's handsome, isn't he, Clob?" Clob looks contagious, radioactive. He has severe acne. He is ugly under his acne.

"He gets the girls," Clob says.

He gets everything, I think. But I'm alone in my envy, awash in my lust. It's as if I were a prophet to the deaf. Schnooks, schnooks, I want to scream, dopes and settlers. What good does his smite do you, of what use is his good heart?

The other day I did something stupid. I went to the cafeteria and shoved a boy out of the way and took his place in the line. It was foolish, but their fear is almost all gone and I felt I had to show the flag. The boy only grinned and let me pass. Then someone called my name. It was him. I turned to face him. "Push," he said, "you forgot your silver." He handed it to a girl in front of him and she gave it to the boy in front of her and it came to me down the long line.

I plot, I scheme. Snares, I think; tricks and traps. I remember the old days when there were ways to snap fingers, crush toes, ways to pull noses, twist heads and punch arms — for the old-timey Flinch Law I used to impose, the gone bully magic of deceit. But nothing works against him, I think. How does he know so much? He is bully — prepared, that one, not to be trusted.

* * *

It is worse and worse.

In the cafeteria he eats with Frank. "You don't want those potatoes," he tells him. "Not the ice cream, Frank. One sandwich, remember. You lost three pounds last week." The fat boy smiles his fat love at him. John Williams puts his arm around him. He seems to squeeze him thin.

He's helping Mimmer to study. He goes over his lessons and teaches him tricks, short cuts.

"I want you up there with me on the Honor Roll, Mimmer."

I see him with Slud the cripple. They go to the gyro. I watch from the balcony. "Let's develop those arms, my friend." They work out with weights. Slud's muscles grow, they bloom from his bones.

I lean over the rail. I shout down, "He can bend iron bars. Can he pedal a bike? Can he walk on rough ground? Can he climb up a hill? Can he wait on a line? Can he dance with a girl? Can he go up a ladder or jump from a chair?"

Beneath me the rapt Slud sits on a bench and raises a weight. He holds it at arm's length, level with his chest. He moves it high, higher. It rises above his shoulders, his throat, his head. He bends back his neck to see what he's done. If the weight should fall now it would crush his throat. I stare down into his smile.

I see Eugene in the halls. I stop him. "Eugene, what's he done for you?" I ask. He smiles — he never did this — and I see his mouth's flood. "High tide," I say with satisfaction. Williams has introduced Clob to a girl. They have double-dated.

* * *

A week ago John Williams came to my house to see me! I wouldn't let him in.

"Please open the door. Push. I'd like to chat with you. Will you open the door? Push? I think we ought to talk. I think I can help you to be happier."

I was furious. I didn't know what to say to him. "I don't want to be happier. Go way." It was what little kids used to say to me.

"Please let me help you."

"Please let me," I begin to echo. "Please let me alone."

"We ought to be friends Push."

"No deals." I am choking, I am close to tears. What can I do? What? I want to kill him.

I double-lock the door and retreat to my room. He is still out there. I have tried to live my life so that I could keep always the lamb from my door.

He has gone too far this time; and I think sadly, I will have to fight him, I will have to fight him. Push pushed. I think sadly of the pain. Push pushed. I will have to fight him. Not to preserve honor but its opposite. Each time I see him I will have to fight him. And then I think — of course. And I smile. He has done me a favor. I know it at once. If he fights me he fails. He fails if he fights me. Push pushed pushes! It's physics! Natural law! I know he'll beat me, but I won't prepare, I won't train, I won't use the tricks I know. It's strength against strength, and my strength is as the strength of ten because my jaw is glass! He doesn't know everything, not everything he doesn't. And I think, I could go out now, he's still there, I could hit him in the hall, but I think. No, I want them to see, I want them to see!

The next day I am very excited. I look for Williams. He's not in the halls. I miss him in the cafeteria. Afterward I look for 'him in the schoolyard where I first saw him. (He has them organized now. He teaches them games of Tibet, games of Japan; he gets them to play lost sports of the dead.) He does not disappoint me. He is there in the yard, a circle around him, a ring of the loyal.

I join the ring. I shove in between two kids I have known. They try to change places; they murmur and fret.

Williams sees me and waves. His smile could grow flowers. "Boys," he says, "boys, make room for Push. Join hands, boys." They welcome me to the circle. One takes my hand, then another. I give to each calmly.

I wait. He doesn't know everything.

"Boys," he begins, "today we're going to learn a game that the knights of the lords and kings of old France used to play in another century. Now you may not realize it, boys, because today when we think of a knight we think, too, of his fine charger, but the fact is that a horse was a rare animal — not a domestic European animal at all, but Asian. In western Europe, for example, there was no such thing as a workhorse until the eighth century. Your horse was just too expensive to be put to heavy labor in the fields. (This explains, incidentally, the prevalence of famine in western Europe, whereas famine is unrecorded in Asia until the ninth century, when Euro-Asian horse trading was at its height.) It wasn't only expensive to purchase a horse, it was expensive to keep one. A cheap fodder wasn't developed in Europe until the tenth century. Then, of course, when you consider the terrific risks that the warrior horse of a knight naturally had to run, you begin to appreciate how expensive it would have been for the lord — unless be was extremely rich — to provide all his knights with horses. He'd want to make pretty certain that the knights who got them knew how to handle a horse. (Only your knights errant — an elite, crack corps — ever had horses. We don't realize that roost knights were home knights; chevalier chez they were called.)

"This game, then, was devised to let the lord, or king, see which of his knights had the skill and strength in his hands to control a horse. Without moving your feet, you must try to jerk the one next to you off balance. Each man has two opponents, so it's very difficult. If a man falls, or if his knee touches the ground, he's out. The circle is diminished but must close up again immediately. Now, once for practice only"

"Just a minute," I interrupt.

"Yes, Push?"

I leave the circle and walk forward and hit him as hard as I can in the face.

He stumbles backward. The boys groan. He recovers. He rubs his jaw and smiles. I think he is going to let me hit him again. I am prepared for this. He knows what I'm up to and will use his passivity. Either way I win, but I am determined he shall hit me. I am ready to kick him, but as my foot comes up he grabs my ankle and turns it forcefully. I spin in the air. He lets go and I fall heavily on my back. I am surprised at how easy it was, but am content if they understand. I get up and am walking away, but there is an arm on my shoulder. He pulls me around roughly. He hits me.

"Sic semper tyrannus," he exults.

"Where's your other cheek?" I ask, falling backward.

"One cheek for tyrants," he shouts. He pounces on me and raises his fist and I cringe. His anger is terrific. I do not want to be hit again.

"You see? You see?" I scream at the kids, but I have lost the train of my former reasoning. I have in no way beaten him. I can't remember now what I had intended.

He lowers his fist and gets off my chest and they cheer. "Hurrah," they yell. "Hurrah, hurrah." The word seems funny to me.

He offers his hand when I try to rise. It is so difficult to know what to do. Oh God, it is so difficult to know which gesture is the right one. I don't even know this. He knows everything, and I don't even know this. I am a fool on the ground, one hand behind me pushing up, the other not yet extended but itching in the palm where the need is. It is better to give than receive, surely. It is best not to need at all.

Appalled, guessing what I miss, I rise alone.

"Friends?" he asks. He offers to shake.

"Take it. Push." It's Eugene's voice.

"Go ahead. Push." Slud limps forward.

"Push, hatred's so ugly," Clob says, his face shining.

"You'll feel better. Push," Frank, thinner, taller, urges softly.

"Push, don't be foolish," Mimmer says.

I shake my head. I may be wrong. I am probably wrong. All I know at last is what feels good. "Nothing doing," I growl. "No deals." I begin to talk, to spray my hatred at them. They are not an easy target even now. "Only your knights errant — your crack corps — have horses. Slud may dance and Clob may kiss, but they'll never be good at it. Push is no service animal. No. No. Can you hear that, Williams? There isn't any magic, but your no is still stronger than your yes, and distrust is where I put my faith." I turn to the boys. "What have you settled for? Only your knights errant ever have horses. What have you settled for! Will Mimmer do sums in his head? How do you like your lousy hunger, thin boy? Slud, you can break me but you can't catch me. And Clob will never shave without pain, and ugly, let me tell you, is still in the eye of the beholder!"

John Williams mourns for me. He grieves his gamy grief. No one has everything — not even John Williams. He doesn't have me. He'll never have me, I think. If my life were only to deny him that, it would almost be enough. I could do his voice now if I wanted. His corruption began when he lost me. "You," I shout, rubbing it in, "indulger, dispense me no dispensations. Push the bully hates your heart!"

"Shut him up, somebody," Eugene cries. His saliva spills from his mouth when he speaks.

"Swallow! Pig, swallow!"

He rushes toward me.

Suddenly I raise my arms and he stops. I feel a power in me. I am Push, Push the bully, God of the Neighborhood, its incarnation of envy and jealousy and need. I vie, strive, emulate, compete, a contender in every event there is. I didn't make myself. I probably can't save myself, but maybe that's the only need I don't have! I taste my lack and that's how I win — by having nothing to lose. It's not good enough! I want and I want and I will die wanting, but first I will have something. This time I will have something. I say it aloud. "This time I will have something!" I step toward them. The power makes me dizzy. It is enormous. They feel it. They back away. They crouch in the shadow of my outstretched wings. It isn't deceit this time but the real magic at last, the genuine thing: the cabala of my hate, of my irreconcilableness.

Logic is nothing. Desire is stronger.

I move toward Eugene. "I will have something," I roar.

"Stand back," he shrieks, "I'll spit in your eye."

"I will have something. I will have terror. I will have drought. I bring the dearth. Famine's contagious. Also is thirst. Privation, privation, bareness, void. I dry up your glands, I poison your well."

He is choking, gasping, chewing furiously. He opens his mouth. It is dry. His throat is parched. There is sand on his tongue.

They moan. They are terrified, but they move up to see. We are thrown together. Slud, Frank, Clob, Mimmer, the others, John Williams, myself. I will not be reconciled, or halve my hate. It's what I have, all I can keep. My bully's sour solace. It's enough, I'll make do.

I can't stand them near me. I move against them. I shove them away. I force them off. I press them, thrust them aside. I push through.

There's a Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella

2004-06-02T05:31:00.000-07:00

I first came across this short story in the Sudden Fiction collection. The American version of Sudden Fiction is my favorite. The International version in which this story is found is also excellent. The third in the series, Sudden Fiction (Continued) is the worst of the bunch. The editors decided to let graduate students select the stories. This is a huge mistake. Most of the stories seem to have been selected for their political themes. Harumpf. Piffle. Indeed! Piffle, I say! Anyway, I got a bang out of this story.

There's a Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella
By Fernando Sorrentino
Translated by Clark M. Zlotchew

There's a man in the habit of hitting me on the head with an umbrella. It's exactly five years today that he's been hitting me on the head with his umbrella. At first I couldn't stand it; now I'm used to it.

I don't know his name. I know he's average in appearance, wears a gray suit, is graying at the temples, and has a common face. I met him five years ago one sultry morning. I was sitting on a tree-shaded bench in Palermo Park, reading the paper. Suddenly I felt something touch my head. It was the very same man who now, as I'm writing, keeps whacking me, mechanically and impassively, with an umbrella.

On that occasion I turned around filled with indignation: he just kept on hitting me. I asked him if he was crazy: he didn't even seem to hear me. Then I threatened to call a policeman. Unperturbed, cool as a cucumber, he stuck with his task. After a few moments of indecision, and seeing that he was not about to change his attitude, I stood up and punched him in the nose. The man fell down, and let out an almost inaudible moan. He immediately got back on his feet, apparently with great effort, and without a word again began hitting me on the head with the umbrella. His nose was bleeding and, at that moment, I felt sorry for him. I felt remorse for having hit him so hard. After all, the man wasn't exactly bludgeoning me; he was merely tapping me lightly with his umbrella, not causing any pain at all. Of course, those taps were extremely bothersome. As we all know, when a fly lands on your forehead, you don't feel any pain whatsoever; what you feel is annoyance. Well then, that umbrella was one humongous fly that kept landing on my head time after time, and at regular intervals.

Convinced that I was dealing with a madman, I tried to escape. But the man followed me, wordlessly continuing to hit me. So I began to run (at this juncture I should point out that not many people run as fast as I do). He took off after me, vainly trying to land a blow. The man was huffing and puffing and gasping so that I thought, if I continued to force him to run at that speed, my tormenter would drop dead right then and there.

<2>

That's why I slowed down to a walk. I looked at him. There was no trace of either gratitude or reproach on his face. He merely kept hitting me on the head with the umbrella. I thought of showing up at the police station and saying, "Officer, this man is hitting me on the head with an umbrella." It would have been an unprecedented case. The officer would have looked at me suspiciously, would have asked for my papers and begun asking embarrassing questions. And he might even have ended up placing me under arrest.

I thought it best to return home. I took the 67 bus. He, all the while hitting me with his umbrella, got on behind me. I took the first seat. He stood right beside me, and held on to the railing with his left hand. With his right hand he unrelentingly kept whacking me with that umbrella. At first, the passengers exchanged timid smiles. The driver began to observe us in the rearview mirror. Little by little the bus trip turned into one great fit of laughter, an uproarious, interminable fit of laughter. I was burning with shame. My persecutor, impervious to the laughter, continued to strike me.

I got off — we got off — at Pacifico Bridge. We walked along Santa Fe Avenue. Everyone stupidly turned to stare at us. It occurred to me to say to them, "What are you looking at, you idiots? Haven't you ever seen a man hit another man on the head with an umbrella?" But it also occurred to me that they probably never had seen such a spectacle. Then five or six little boys began chasing after us, shouting like maniacs.

But I had a plan. Once I reached my house, I tried to slam the door in his face. That didn't happen. He must have read my mind, because he firmly seized the doorknob and pushed his way in with me.

From that time on, he has continued to hit me on the head with his umbrella. As far as I can tell, he has never either slept or eaten anything. His sole activity consists of hitting me. He is with me in everything I do, even in my most intimate activities. I remember that at first, the blows kept me awake all night. Now I think it would be impossible for me to sleep without them.

<3>

Still and all, our relations have not always been good. I've asked him, on many occasions, and in all possible tones, to explain his behavior to me. To no avail: he has wordlessly continued to hit me on the head with his umbrella. Many times I have let him have it with punches, kicks, and even — God forgive me — umbrella blows. He would meekly accept the blows. He would accept them as though they were part of his job. And this is precisely the weirdest aspect of his personality: that unshakable faith in his work coupled with a complete lack of animosity. In short, that conviction that he was carrying out some secret mission that responded to a higher authority.

Despite his lack of physiological needs, I know that when I hit him, he feels pain. I know he is weak. I know he is mortal. I also know that I could be rid of him with a single bullet. What I don't know is if it would be better for that bullet to kill him or to kill me. Neither do I know if, when the two of us are dead, he might not continue to hit me on the head with his umbrella. In any event, this reasoning is pointless; I recognize that I would never dare to kill him or kill myself.

On the other hand, I have recently come to the realization that I couldn't live without those blows. Now, more and more frequently, a certain foreboding overcomes me. A new anxiety is eating at my soul: the anxiety stemming from the thought that this man, perhaps when I need him most, will depart and I will no longer feel those umbrella taps that helped me sleep so soundly.

Cat in the Rain

2004-06-01T03:48:00.000-07:00

Whenever I read a story by Hemingway, the author's name is a major part of the reading experience. In my mind, each story bounces off Hemingway's idea of wanting to be a man. I say "wanting to be" rather than "being" because, like so many of his characters, Hemingway falls short of the idealized men he writes about. The mystique of Hemingway is so strong that I expect his characters to be Iron John types who have their way in the world. And then I read one of his stories, like "Cat in the Rain," and I'm struck by its tenderness.

Cat in the Rain
by Ernest Hemingway

There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the sea. It also faced the public garden and war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colors of the hotels facing the sea. Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain. The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the cafe a waiter stood looking out at the empty square.

The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on.

"I'm going down and get that kitty," the American wife said.

"I'll do it," her husband offered from the bed.

"No, I'll get it. The poor kitty is out trying to keep dry under the table."

The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.

"Don't get wet," he said.

The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. His desk was at the far end of the office. He was an old man and very tall.

"Il piove," the wife said. She liked the hotelkeeper.

"Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather."

He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotelkeeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.

Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in a rubber cape was crossing the empty square to the cafe. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along to the eaves. As she stood in the doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.

"You must not get wet," she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her.

With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her.

"Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?"

"There was a cat," said the American girl.

"A cat?"

"Si, il gatto."

"A cat?" the maid laughed. "A cat in the rain?"

"Yes," she said, "under the table." Then, "Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty."

When she talked English the maid's face tightened.

"Come, Signora," she said. "We must get back inside. You will be wet."

"I suppose so," said the American girl.

They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed reading.

"Did you get the cat?" he asked, putting the book down.

"It was gone."

"Wonder where it went to," he said, resting his eyes from reading. She sat down on the bed.

"I wanted it so much," she said. "I don't know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain."

George was reading again.

She went over and sat in front of the mirror of the dressing table looking at herself with the hand glass. She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. Then she studied the back of her head and her neck.

"Don't you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?" she asked, looking at her profile again.

George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy's.

"I like it the way it is."

"I get so tired of it," she said. "I get so tired of looking like a boy."

George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn't looked away from her since she started to speak.

"You look pretty darn nice," he said.

She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark.

"I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel," she said. "I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her."

"Yeah?" George said from the bed.

"And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes."

"Oh, shut up and get something to read," George said. He was reading again.

His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees.

"Anyway, I want a cat," she said, "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat."

George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square.

Someone knocked at the door.

"Avanti," George said. He looked up from his book. In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoise-shell cat pressed tight against her and swung down against her body.

"Excuse me," she said, "the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora."

Through the Tunnel

2004-05-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

When I first heard this coming-of-age story by Doris Lessing on Sunday afternoon radio, I was captivated. I wasn't able to hear the ending (or even find out the name of the author or story). I was delighted to find this story later in a collection called Beach. The situation in "Through the Tunnel" reminds me of a blow hole in Hawaii that fills up with water whenever a wave comes in. When the wave goes out, brave kids swim through the hole where the water comes in and goes back out to sea. The hundred-foot swim is too far to make in one wave, so the swimmers must grab the wall and hold their breath in the black water, waiting for the ebb of the next wave to carry them out. That swim is easy compared to what young Jerry sets out to do in this — dare I say it? — bildungsroman.

Through the Tunnel
By Doris Lessing

Going to the shore on the first morning of the holiday, the young English boy stopped at a turning of the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay, and then over to the crowded beach he knew so well from other years. His mother walked on in front of him, carrying a bright-striped bag in one hand. Her other arm, swinging loose, was very white in the sun. The boy watched that white, naked arm, and turned his eyes, which had a frown behind them, toward the bay and back again to his mother. When she felt he was not with her, she swung around. "Oh, there you are, Jerry!" she said. She looked impatient, then smiled. "Why, darling, would you rather not come with me? Would you rather-" She frowned, conscientiously worrying over what amusements he might secretly be longing for which she had been too busy or too careless to imagine. He was very familiar with that anxious, apologetic smile. Contrition sent him running after her. And yet, as he ran, he looked back over his shoulder at the wild bay; and all morning, as he played on the safe beach, he was thinking of it.

Next morning, when it was time for the routine of swimming and sunbathing, his mother said, "Are you tired of the usual beach, Jerry? Would you like to go somewhere else?"

"Oh, no!" he said quickly, smiling at her out of that unfailing impulse of contrition - a sort of chivalry. Yet, walking down the path with her, he blurted out, "I'd like to go and have a look at those rocks down there."

She gave the idea her attention. It was a wild-looking place, and there was no one there, but she said, "Of course, Jerry. When you've had enough come to the big beach. Or just go straight back to the villa, if you like." She walked away, that bare arm, now slightly reddened from yesterday's sun, swinging. And he almost ran after her again, feeling it unbearable that she should go by herself, but he did not.

She was thinking, Of course he's old enough to be safe without me. Have I been keeping him too close? He mustn't feel he ought to be with me. I must be careful.

He was an only child, eleven years old. She was a widow. She was determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion. She went worrying off to her beach.

As for Jerry, once he saw that his mother had gained her beach, he began the steep descent to the bay. From where he was, high up among red-brown rocks, it was a scoop of moving bluish green fringed with white. As he went lower, he saw that it spread among small promontories and inlets of rough, sharp rock, and the crisping, lapping surface showed stains of purple and darker blue. Finally, as he ran sliding and scraping down the last few yards, he saw an edge of white surf, and the shallow, luminous movement of water over white sand, and, beyond that, a solid, heavy blue.

He ran straight into the water and began swimming. He was a good swimmer. He went out fast over the gleaming sand, over a middle region where rocks lay like discoloured monsters under the surface, and then he was in the real sea - a warm sea where irregular cold currents from the deep water shocked his limbs.

When he was so far out that he could look back not only on the little bay but past the promontory that was between it and the big beach, he floated on the buoyant surface and looked for his mother. There she was, a speck of yellow under an umbrella that looked like a slice of orange peel. He swam back to shore, relieved at being sure she was there, but all at once very lonely.

On the edge of a small cape that marked the side of the bay away from the promontory was a loose scatter of rocks. Above them, some boys were stripping off their clothes. They came running, naked, down to the rocks. The English boy swam towards them, and kept his distance at a stone's throw. They were of that coast, all of them burned smooth dark brown, and speaking a language he did not understand. To be with them, of them, was a craving that filled his whole body. He swam a little closer; they turned and watched him with narrowed, alert dark eyes. Then one smiled and waved. It was enough. In a minute, he had swum in and was on the rocks beside them, smiling with a desperate, nervous supplication. They shouted cheerful greetings at him, and then, as he preserved his nervous, uncomprehending smile, they understood that he was a foreigner strayed from his own beach, and they proceeded to forget him. But he was happy. He was with them.

They began diving again and again from a high point into a well of blue sea between rough, pointed rocks. After they had dived and come up, they swam around, hauled themselves up, and waited their turn to dive again. They were big boys — men to Jerry. He dived, and they watched him, and when he swam around to take his place, they made way for him. He felt he was accepted, and he dived again, carefully, proud of himself.

Soon the biggest of the boys poised himself, shot down into the water, and did not come up. The others stood about, watching. Jerry, after waiting for the sleek brown head to appear, let out a yell of warning; they looked at him idly and turned their eyes back towards the water. After a long time, the boy came up on the other side of a big dark rock, letting the air out of his lungs in a spluttering gasp and a shout of triumph. Immediately, the rest of them dived in. One moment, the morning seemed full of chattering boys; the next, the air and the surface of the water were empty. But through the heavy blue, dark shapes could be seen moving and groping.

Jerry dived, shot past the school of underwater swimmers, saw a black wall of rock looming at him, touched it, and bobbed up at once to the surface, where the wall was a low barrier he could see across. There was no one visible; under him, in the water, the dim shapes of the swimmers had disappeared. Then one, and then another of the boys came up on the far side of the barrier of rock, and he understood that they had swum through some gap or hole in it. He plunged down again. He could see nothing through the stinging salt water but the blank rock. When he came up, the boys were all on the diving rock, preparing to attempt the feat again. And now, in a panic of failure, he yelled up, in English, "Look at me! Look!" and he began splashing and kicking in the water like a foolish dog.

They looked down gravely, frowning. He knew the frown. At moments of failure, when he clowned to claim his mother's attention, it was with just this grave, embarrassed inspection that she rewarded him. Through his hot shame, feeling the pleading grin on his face like a scar that he could never remove, he looked up at the group of big brown boys on the rock and shouted, "Bonjour! Merci! Au revoir! Monsieur, monsieur!" while he hooked his fingers round his ears and waggled them.

Water surged into his mouth; he choked, sank, came up. The rock, lately weighed with boys, seemed to rear up out of the water as their weight was removed. They were flying down past him, now, into the water; the air was full of falling bodies. Then the rock was empty in the hot sunlight. He counted one, two, three . . . .

At fifty, he was terrified. They must all be drowning beneath him, in the watery caves of the rock! At a hundred, he stared around him at the empty hillside, wondering if he should yell for help. He counted faster, faster, to hurry them up, to bring them to the surface quickly, to drown them quickly - anything rather than the terror of counting on and on into the blue emptiness of the morning. And then, at a hundred and sixty, the water beyond the rock was full of boys blowing like brown whales. They swam back to the shore without a look at him.

He climbed back to the diving rock and sat down, feeling the hot roughness of it under his thighs. The boys were gathering up their bits of clothing and running off along the shore to another promontory. They were leaving to get away from him. He cried openly, fists in his eyes. There was no one to see him, and he cried himself out.

It seemed to him that a long time had passed, and he swam out to where he could see his mother. Yes, she was still there, a yellow spot under an orange umbrella. He swam back to the big rock, climbed up, and dived into the blue pool among the fanged and angry boulders. Down he went, until he touched the wall of rock again. But the salt was so painful in his eyes that he could not see.

He came to the surface, swam to shore and went back to the villa to wait for his mother. Soon she walked slowly up the path, swinging her striped bag, the flushed, naked arm dangling beside her. "I want some swimming goggles," he panted, defiant and beseeching.

She gave him a patient, inquisitive look as she said casually, "Well, of course, darling."

But now, now, now! He must have them this minute, and no other time. He nagged and pestered until she went with him to a shop. As soon as she had bought the goggles, he grabbed them from her hand as if she were going to claim them for herself, and was off, running down the steep path to the bay.

Jerry swam out to the big barrier rock, adjusted the goggles, and dived. The impact of the water broke the rubber-enclosed vacuum, and the goggles came loose. He understood that he must swim down to the base of the rock from the surface of the water. He fixed the goggles tight and firm, filled his lungs, and floated, face down, on the water. Now he could see. It was as if he had eyes of a different kind — fish eyes that showed everything clear and delicate and wavering in the bright water.

Under him, six or seven feet down, was a floor of perfectly clean, shining white sand, rippled firm and hard by the tides. Two greyish shapes steered there, like long, rounded pieces of wood or slate. They were fish. He saw them nose towards each other, poise motionless, make a dart forward, swerve off, and come around again. It was like a water dance. A few inches above them, the water sparkled as if sequins were dropping through it. Fish again — myriads of minute fish, the length of his fingernail, were drifting through the water, and in a moment he could feel the innumerable tiny touches of them against his limbs. It was like swimming in flaked silver. The great rock the big boys had swum through rose sheer out of the white sand, black, tufted lightly with greenish weed. He could see no gap in it. He swam down to its base.

Again and again he rose, took a big chestful of air, and went down. Again and again he groped over the surface of the rock, feeling it, almost hugging it in the desperate need to find the entrance. And then, once, while he was clinging to the black wall, his knees came up and he shot his feet out forward and they met no obstacle. He had found the hole.

He gained the surface, clambered about the stones that littered the barrier rock until he found a big one, and, with this in his arms, let himself down over the side of the rock. He dropped, with the weight, straight to the sandy floor. Clinging tight to the anchor of stone, he lay on his side and looked in under the dark shelf at the place where his feet had gone. He could see the hole. It was an irregular, dark gap, but he could not see deep into it. He let go of his anchor, clung with his hands to the edges of the hole, and tried to push himself in.

He got his head in, found his shoulders jammed, moved them in sidewise, and was inside as far as his waist. He could see nothing ahead. Something soft and clammy touched his mouth, he saw a dark frond moving against the greyish rock, and panic filled him. He thought of octopuses, of clinging weed. He pushed himself out backward and caught a glimpse, as he retreated, of a harmless tentacle of seaweed drifting in the mouth of the tunnel. But it was enough. He reached the sunlight, swam to shore, and lay on the diving rock. He looked down into the blue well of water. He knew he must find his way through that cave, or hole, or tunnel, and out the other side.

First, he thought, he must learn to control his breathing. He let himself down into the water with another big stone in his arms, so that he could lie effortlessly on the bottom of the sea. He counted. One, two, three. He counted steadily. He could hear the movement of blood in his chest. Fifty-one, fifty-two . . . . His chest was hurting. He let go of the rock and went up into the air. He saw that the sun was low. He rushed to the villa and found his mother at her supper. She said only "Did you enjoy yourself?" and he said "Yes."

All night, the boy dreamed of the water-filled cave in the rock, and as soon as breakfast was over he went to the hay.

That night, his nose bled badly. For hours he had been underwater, learning to hold his breath, and now he felt weak and dizzy. His mother said, "I shouldn't overdo things, darling, if I were you."

That day and the next, Jerry exercised his lungs as if everything, the whole of his life, all that he would become, depended upon it. And again his nose bled at night, and his mother insisted on his coming with her the next day. It was a torment to him to waste a day of his careful self-training, but he stayed with her on that other beach, which now seemed a place for small children, a place where his mother might lie safe in the sun. It was not his beach.

He did not ask for permission, on the following day, to go to his beach. He went, before his mother could consider the complicated rights and wrongs of the matter. A day's rest, he discovered, had improved his count by ten. The big boys had made the passage while he counted a hundred and sixty. He had been counting fast, in his fright. Probably now, if he tried, he could get through that long tunnel, but he was not going to try yet. A curious, most unchildlike persistence, a controlled impatience, made him wait. In the meantime, he lay underwater on the white sand, littered now by stones he had brought down from the upper air, and studied the entrance to the tunnel. He knew every jut and corner of it, as far as it was possible to see. It was as if he already felt its sharpness about his shoulders.

He sat by the clock in the villa, when his mother was not near, and checked his time. He was incredulous and then proud to find he could hold his breath without strain for two minutes. The words "two minutes", authorized by the clock, brought the adventure that was so necessary to him close.

In another four days, his mother said casually one morning, they must go home. On the day before they left, he would do it. He would do it if it killed him, he said defiantly to himself. But two days before they were to leave - a day of triumph when he increased his count by fifteen - his nose bled so badly that he turned dizzy and had to lie limply over the big rock like a bit of seaweed, watching the thick red blood flow on to the rock and trickle slowly down to the sea. He was frightened. Supposing he turned dizzy in the tunnel? Supposing he died there, trapped? Supposing — his head went around, in the hot sun, and he almost gave up. He thought he would return to the house and lie down, and next summer, perhaps, when he had another year's growth in him - then he would go through the hole.

But even after he had made the decision, or thought he had, he found himself sitting up on the rock and looking down into the water, and he knew that now, this moment when his nose had only just stopped bleeding, when his head was still sore and throbbing — this was the moment when he would try. If he did not do it now, he never would. He was trembling with fear that he would not go, and he was trembling with horror at that long, long tunnel under the rock, under the sea. Even in the open sunlight, the barrier rock seemed very wide and very heavy; tons of rock pressed down on where he would go. If he died there, he would lie until one day — perhaps not before next year — those big boys would swim into it and find it blocked.

He put on his goggles, fitted them tight, tested the vacuum. His hands were shaking. Then he chose the biggest stone he could carry and slipped over the edge of the rock until half of him was in the cool, enclosing water and half in the hot sun. He looked up once at the empty sky, filled his lungs once, twice, and then sank fast to the bottom with the stone. He let it go and began to count. He took the edges of the hole in his hands and drew himself into it, wriggling his shoulders in sidewise as he remembered he must, kicking himself along with his feet.

Soon he was clear inside. He was in a small rock-bound hole filled with yellowish-grey water. The water was pushing him up against the roof. The roof was sharp and pained his back. He pulled himself along with his hands — fast, fast — and used his legs as levers. His head knocked against something; a sharp pain dizzied him. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two . . . . He was without light, and the water seemed to press upon him with the weight of rock. Seventy-one, seventy-two . . . . There was no strain on his lungs. He felt like an inflated balloon, his lungs were so light and easy, but his head was pulsing.

He was being continually pressed against the sharp roof, which felt slimy as well as sharp. Again he thought of octopuses, and wondered if the tunnel might be filled with weed that could tangle him. He gave himself a panicky, convulsive kick forward, ducked his head, and swam. His feet and hands moved freely, as if in open water. The hole must have widened out. He thought he must be swimming fast, and he was frightened of banging his head if the tunnel narrowed.

A hundred, a hundred and one. . . The water paled. Victory filled him. His lungs were beginning to hurt. A few more strokes and he would be out. He was counting wildly; he said a hundred and fifteen, and then, a long time later, a hundred and fifteen again. The water was a clear jewel-green all around him. Then he saw, above his head, a crack running up through the rock. Sunlight was falling through it, showing the clean dark rock of the tunnel, a single mussel shell, and darkness ahead.

He was at the end of what he could do. He looked up at the crack as if it were filled with air and not water, as if he could put his mouth to it to draw in air. A hundred and fifteen, he heard himself say inside his head — but he had said that long ago. He must go on into the blackness ahead, or he would drown. His head was swelling, his lungs cracking. A hundred and fifteen, a hundred and fifteen pounded through his head, and he feebly clutched at rocks in the dark, pulling himself forward, leaving the brief space of sunlit water behind. He felt he was dying. He was no longer quite conscious. He struggled on in the darkness between lapses into unconsciousness. An immense, swelling pain filled his head, and then the darkness cracked with an explosion of green light. His hands, groping forward, met nothing, and his feet, kicking back, propelled him out into the open sea.

He drifted to the surface, his face turned up to the air. He was gasping like a fish. He felt he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock. Then he was clutching it and pulling himself up on it. He lay face down, gasping. He could see nothing but a red-veined, clotted dark. His eyes must have burst, he thought; they were full of blood. He tore off his goggles and a gout of blood went into the sea. His nose was bleeding, and the blood had filled the goggles.

He scooped up handfuls of water from the cool, salty sea, to splash on his face, and did not know whether it was blood or salt water he tasted. After a time, his heart quieted, his eyes cleared, and he sat up. He could see the local boys diving and playing half a mile away. He did not want them. He wanted nothing but to get back home and lie down.

In a short while, Jerry swam to shore and climbed slowly up the path to the villa. He flung himself on his bed and slept, waking at the sound of feet on the path outside. His mother was coming back. He rushed to the bathroom, thinking she must not see his face with bloodstains, or tearstains, on it. He carne out of the bathroom and met her as she walked into the villa, smiling, her eyes lighting up. "Have a nice morning?" she asked, laying her head on his warm brown shoulder a moment.

"Oh, yes, thank you," he said.

"You look a bit pale." And then, sharp and anxious. "How did you bang your head?"

"Oh, just banged it," he told her.

She looked at him closely. He was strained. His eyes were glazed-looking. She was worried. And then she said to herself, "Oh, don't fuss! Nothing can happen. He can swim like a fish."

They sat down to lunch together.

"Mummy," he said, "I can stay under water for two minutes — three minutes, at least."

It came bursting out of him.

"Can you, darling?" she said. "Well, I shouldn't overdo it. I don't think you ought to swim any more today."

She was ready for a battle of wills, but he gave in at once. It was no longer of the least importance to go to the bay.

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The Albania of My Existence

2004-05-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

Friday is when I'm supposed to publish stories by unknown writers, but Neal Pollack isn't exactly unknown. He's published collections of stories, and he's even made an appearance on The Daily Show. I have three reasons for breaking from the "unknown writer" rule today: (1) Neal Pollack gives the feeling that he's an unknown writer, (2) I can't find anyone else's stories since I got my new computer, and (3) Neal Pollack cracks me up in that orange-juice-out-the-nose way.

The Albania of My Existence
By Neal Pollack

I've been going to bed lately on a pile of jagged stones covered only by a thin cotton blanket half-eaten by moths. This is one of the worst possible sleeping arrangements I could imagine. Sometimes I wonder how things got this way, but I have to remember that I am a journalist, novelist, radio producer and poet, and I am here in Albania to find out what life is really like for a family in the poorest country in Europe. I have personally borne witness to much human suffering. People here are beset by unwanted refugees, obscure diseases, and limited opportunies to express themselves through fashion. I must tell you: Things are not good.

We had dirt for lunch today. All 23 of us. Jumanji, the patriarch of this family, is a short, bald, armless man who looks older than his 87 years. He tells me that dirt has been of short supply in Albania lately, and he worries about his family's diet. I have tried to make our food taste better using some of the skills that I learned at the Culinary Institute of America, but with no success. My considerable abilities seem useless here; I am a Rhodes Scholar, but no one in Albania has even heard of Cambridge, much less of England.

Although this family's house has no plumbing, consistent heat source or exterior walls, they do have satellite television. I was tired today from all my reporting, so I relaxed by watching CNN's Eastern European Entertainment Minute. I saw that a good friend of mine had won a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, which made me think about the awards and honors I've gained in my life, the trophies, the ribbons, and the cash. In the face of this Albanian poverty and hopelessness, they all seem somehow trivial now. Do you know what I mean?

***

I wake up early this morning and watch the village children play soccer with the bloated carcass of a cat. I've been here so long that this kind of thing doesn't bother me anymore, so I join in. I score three goals and make a game-winning save. The children gather around me and ask about my life in the more bohemian sections of Brooklyn. I show them a picture of my girlfriend.

"She is very beautiful," says one of them.

"Yes," I say, "and very wealthy. She is a human rights activist who has also written three prize-winning novels."

Later, a man is impaled on a stake in the town square, while a desperate, ravaging mob tears at his clothes to wear as their own. I want to ask: for what crime was this man sentenced to die? But I do not speak Albanian.

I am leaving tomorrow. The town has pooled its remaining money together, three dollars, to throw me a farewell party. I hug Grandma Ninotchka, my favorite family member, for a long time. She works 20 hours a day, six days a week as a plutonium miner to feed her family, and spends her precious free time, what little there is, as a volunteer grave digger.

"You have brought a beacon of hope into our dark and miserable world," she says. "And god bless you for not stealing my oatmeal like the man from The New York Times."

I am not prepared for the immense wave of emotion that I am experiencing. Nothing I went through in college, not even having dinner with two presidents, could have possibly prepared me for this. I cry silent tears, and pray for the people of this sorrow-ridden country, and for myself.

First published in McSweeney's.
Purchase this story and others in The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature.

The School

2004-05-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of post-modern fiction, which more often than not strikes me as self-indulgent and show-offy. But Barthelme can pull it off some of the time. Let's suppose I read 60 stories by Donald Barthelme. I'd probably adore 4 or 5 of them. Let's suppose I read 40 stories by Mr. Barthelme. I'd probably still adore 4 or 5 of them. I don't know why that is.

The School
By Donald Barthelme

Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that…that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.

It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes--well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that…you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren't too disturbed.

With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably…you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe…well, I don't like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander.., well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags. "

Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they're belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.

We weren't even supposed to have a puppy.

We weren't even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede's truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as 1 saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then... And that's what it did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all, there's some kind of regulation ,about it, but you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar---that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, "Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!" Then they'd laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn't had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew what was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.

And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid s name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn't have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the school, particularly, I've seen better and I've seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier this year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.

The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they're excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a strange year.

I forgot to mention Billy Brand’s father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.

One day we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don't know, I don't know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of--

I said, yes, maybe.

They said, we don't like it.

I said, that's sound.

They said, it's a bloody shame!

I said, it is.

They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.

I do like Helen but I said that I would not.

We've heard so much about it, they said, but we've never seen it.

I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out of the window.

They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.

I said that they shouldn't be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door, I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.

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Hunters in the Snow

2004-05-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

What I love about this story is that it's first and formost a story. A ripping yarn that makes you laugh, wince, and need to know what happens next. Experience the hunting misadventures of Frank, Kenny, and Tub:

Hunters in the Snow
By Tobias Wolff

Tub had been waiting for an hour in the falling snow. He paced the sidewalk to keep warm and stuck his head out over the curb whenever he saw lights approaching. One driver stopped for him but before Tub could wave the man on he saw the rifle on Tub's back and hit the gas. The tires spun on the ice. The fall of snow thickened. Tub stood below the overhang of a building. Across the road the clouds whitened just above the rooftops, and the street lights went out. He shifted the rifle strap to his other shoulder. The whiteness seeped up the sky.

A truck slid around the corner, horn blaring, rear end sashaying. Tub moved to the sidewalk and held up his hand. The truck jumped the curb and kept coming, half on the street and half on the sidewalk. It wasn't slowing down at all. Tub stood for a moment, still holding up his hand, then jumped back. His rifle slipped off his shoulder and clattered on the ice, a sandwich fell out of his pocket. He ran for the steps of the building. Another sandwich and a package of cookies tumbled onto the new snow. He made the steps and looked back.

A truck had stopped several feet beyond where Tub had been standing. He picked up his sandwiches and his cookies and slung the rifle and went up to the driver's window. The driver was bent against the steering wheel, slapping his knees and drumming his feet on the floorboards. He looked like a cartoon of a person laughing, except that his eyes watched the man on the seat beside him. "You ought to see yourself," the driver said. "He looks just like a beach ball with a hat on, doesn't he? Doesn't he, Frank?"

The man beside him smiled and looked off.

"You almost ran me down," Tub said. "You could've killed me."

"Come on, Tub, said the man beside the driver. "Be mellow. Kenny was just messing around." He opened the door and slid over to the middle of the seat.

Tub took the bolt out of his rifle and climbed in beside him. "I waited an hour," he said. "If you meant ten o'clock why didn't you say ten o'clock?"

"Tub, you haven't done anything but complain since we got here," said the man in the middle. "If you want to piss and moan all day you might as well go home and bitch at your kids. Take your pick." When Tub didn't say anything he turned to the driver. "Okay, Kenny, let's hit the road."

Some juvenile delinquents had heaved a brick through the windshield on the driver's side, so the cold and snow tunneled right into the cab. The heater didn't work. They covered themselves with a couple of blankets Kenny had brought along and pulled down the muffs on their caps. Tub tried to keep his hands warm by rubbing them under the blanket but Frank made him stop.

They left Spokane and drove deep into the country, running along black lines of fences. The snow let up, but still there was no edge to the land where it met the sky. Nothing moved in the chalky fields. The cold bleached their faces and made the stubble stand out on their cheeks and along their upper lips. They stopped twice for coffee before they got to the woods where Kenny wanted to hunt.

Tub was for trying someplace different; two years in a row they'd been up and down this land and hadn't seen a thing. Frank didn't care one way or the other, he just wanted to get out of the goddamned truck. "Feel that," Frank said, slamming the door. He spread his feet and closed his eyes and leaned his head way back and breathed deeply. "Tune in on that energy."

"Another thing," Kenny said. "This is open land. Most of the land around here is posted."

"I'm cold," Tub said.

Frank breathed out. "Stop bitching, Tub. Get centered."

"I wasn't bitching."

"Centered," Kenny said. "Next thing you'll be wearing a nightgown, Frank. Selling flowers out at the airport."

"Kenny," Frank said, "you talk too much."

"Okay," Kenny said. "I won't say a word. Like I won't say anything about a certain babysitter."

"What babysitter?" Tub asked.

"That's between us," Frank said, looking at Kenny. "That's confidential. You keep your mouth shut."

Kenny laughed.

"You're asking for it," Frank said.

"Asking for what?"

"You'll see."

"Hey," Tub said, "are we hunting or what?"

They started off across the field. Tub had trouble getting through the fences. Frank and Kenny could have helped him; they could have lifted up on the top wire and stepped on the bottom wire, but they didn't. They stood and watched him. There were a lot of fences and Tub was puffing when they reached the woods.

They hunted for over two hours and saw no deer, no tracks, no sign. Finally they stopped by the creek to eat. Kenny had several slices of pizza and a couple of candy bars: Frank had a sandwich, an apple, two carrots, and a square of chocolate; Tub ate one hard-boiled egg and a stick of celery.

"You ask me how I want to die today," Kenny said. "I'll tell you burn me at the stake." He turned to Tub. "You still on that diet?" He winked at Frank.

"What do you think? You think I like hard-boiled eggs?"

"All I can say is, it's the first diet I ever heard of where you gained weight from it."

"Who said I gained weight?"

"Oh, pardon me. I take it back. You're just wasting away before my very eyes. Isn't he, Frank?"

Frank had his fingers fanned out, tips against the bark of the stump where he'd laid his food. His knuckles were hairy. He wore a heavy wedding band and on his right pinky another gold ring with a flat face and an "F" in what looked like diamonds. He turned the ring this way and that. "Tub," he said, "you haven't seen your own balls in ten years."

Kenny doubled over laughing. He took off his hat and slapped his leg with it.

"What am I supped to do?" Tub said. "It's my glands."

They left the woods and hunted along the creek. Frank and Kenny worked one bank and Tub worked the other, moving upstream. The snow was light but the drifts were deep and hard to move through. Wherever Tub looked the surface was smooth, undisturbed, and after a time he lost interest. He stopped looking for tracks and just tried to keep up with Frank and Kenny on the other side. A moment came when he realized he hadn't seen them in a long time. The breeze was moving from him to them; when it stilled he could sometimes hear Kenny laughing but that was all. He quickened his pace, breasting hard into the drifts, fighting away the snow with his knees and elbows. He heard his heart and felt the flush on his face but he never once stopped.

Tub caught up with Frank and Kenny at a bend of the creek. They were standing on a log that stretched from their bank to his. Ice had backed up behind the log. Frozen reeds stuck out, barely nodding when the air moved.

"See anything?" Frank asked.

Tub shook his head.

There wasn't much daylight left and they decided to head back toward the road. Frank and Kenny crossed the log and they started downstream, using the trail Tub had broken. Before they had gone very far Kenny stopped. "Look at that," he said, and pointed to some tracks going form the creek back into the woods. Tub's footprints crossed right over them. There on the bank, plain as day, were several mounds of deer sign. "What do you think that is, Tub?" Kenny kicked at it. "Walnuts on vanilla icing?"

"I guess I didn't notice."

Kenny looked at Frank.

"I was lost."

"You were lost. Big deal."

They followed the tracks into the woods. The deer had gone over a fence half buried in drifting snow. A no hunting sign was nailed to the top of one of the posts. Frank laughed and said the son of a bitch could read. Kenny wanted to go after him but Frank said no way, the people out here didn't mess around. He thought maybe the farmer who owned the land would let them use it if they asked. Kenny wasn't so sure. Anyway, he figured that by the time they walked to the truck and drove up the road and doubled back it would be almost dark.

"Relax," Frank said. "You can't hurry nature. If we're meant to get that deer, we'll get it. If we're not, we won't."

They started back toward the truck. This part of the woods was mainly pine. The snow was shaded and had a glaze on it. It held up Kenny and Frank but Tub kept falling through. As he kicked forward, the edge of the crust bruised his shins. Kenny and Frank pulled ahead of him, to where he couldn't even hear their voices any more. He sat down on a stump and wiped his face. He ate both the sandwiches and half the cookies, taking his own sweet time. It was dead quiet. When Tub crossed the last fence into the toad the truck started moving. Tub had to run for it and just managed to grab hold of the tailgate and hoist himself into the bed. He lay there, panting. Kenny looked out the rear window and grinned. Tub crawled into the lee of the cab to get out of the freezing wind. He pulled his earflaps low and pushed his chin into the collar of his coat. Someone rapped on the window but Tub would not turn around.

He and Frank waited outside while Kenny went into the farmhouse to ask permission. The house was old and paint was curling off the sides. The smoke streamed westward off the top of the chimney, fanning away into a thin gray plume. Above the ridge of the hills another ridge of blue clouds was rising.

"You've got a short memory," Tub said.

"What?" Frank said. He had been staring off.

"I used to stick up for you."

"Okay, so you used to stick up for me. What's eating you?"

"You shouldn't have just left me back there like that."

"You're a grown-up, Tub. You can take care of yourself. Anyway, if you think you're the only person with problems I can tell you that you're not."

"Is there something bothering you, Frank?"

Frank kicked at a branch poking out of the snow. "Never mind," he said.

"What did Kenny mean about the babysitter?"

"Kenny talks too much," Frank said. "You just mind your own business."

Kenny came out of the farmhouse and gave the thumbs-up and they began walking back toward the woods. As they passed the barn a large black hound with a grizzled snout ran out and barked at them. Every time he barked he slid backwards a bit, like a cannon recoiling. Kenny got down on all fours and snarled and barked back at him, and the dog slunk away into the barn, looking over his shoulder and peeing a little as he went.

"That's an old-timer," Frank said. "A real graybeard. Fifteen years if he's a day."

"Too old," Kenny said.

Past the barn they cut off through the field.s The land was unfenced and the crust was freezing up thick and they made good time. They kept to the edge of the field until they picked up the tracks again and followed them into the woods, farther and farther back toward the hills. The trees started to blur wiht the shadows and the wind rose and needled their faces with the crystals it swept off the glaze. Finally they lost the tracks.

Kenny swore and threw down his hat. "This is the worst day of hunting I ever had, bar none." He picked up his hat and brushed off the snow. "This will be the first season since I was fifteen I haven't got my deer."

"It isn't the deer," Frank said. "It's the hunting. There are all these forces out here and you just have to go with them."

"You go with them," Kenny said. "I came out here to get me a deer, no listen to a bunch of hippie bullshit. And if it hadn't been for dimples here I would have, too."

"That's enough," Frank said.

"And you--you're so busy thinking about that little jailbait of yours you wouldn't know a deer if you saw one."

"Drop dead," Frank said, and turned away.

Kenny and Tub followed him back across the fields. When they were coming up to the barn Kenny stopped and pointed. "I hate that post," he said. He raised his rifle and fired. It sounded like a dry branch cracking. The post splintered along its right side, up toward the top. "There," Kenny said. "It's dead."

"Knock it off," Frank said, walking ahead.

Kenny looked at Tub. He smiled. "I hate that tree," he said, and fired again. Tub hurried to catch up with Frank. He started to speak but just then the dog ran out of the barn and barked at them. "Easy, boy," Frank said.

"I hate that dog." Kenny was behind them.

"That's enough," Frank said. "You put that gun down."

Kenny fired. The bullet went in between the dog's eyes. He sank right down into the snow, his legs splayed out on each side, his yellow eyes open and staring. Except for the blood he looked like a small bearskin rug. The blood ran down the dog's muzzle into the snow.

They all looked at the dog lying there.

"What did he ever do to you?" Tub asked. "He was just barking."

Kenny turned to Tub. "I hate you."

Tub shot from the waist. Kenny jerked backward against the fence and buckled to his knees. He folded his hands across his stomach. "Look," he said. His hands were covered with blood. In the dusk his blood was more blue than red. It seemed to below to the shadows. It didn't seem out of place. Kenny eased himself onto his back. He sighed several times, deeply. "You shot me," he said.

"I had to," Tub said. He knelt beside Kenny. "Oh God," he said. "Frank. Frank."

Frank hadn't moved since Kenny killed the dog.

"Frank!" Tub shouted.

"I was just kidding around," Kenny said. "It was a joke. Oh!" he said, and arched his back suddenly. "Oh!" he said again, and dug his heels into the snow and pushed himself along on his head for several feet. Then he stopped and lay there, rocking back and forth on his heels and head like a wrestler doing warm- up exercises.

Frank roused himself. "Kenny," he said. He bent down and put his gloved hand on Kenny's brow. "You shot him," he said to Tub.

"He made me," Tub said.

"No no no," Kenny said.

Tub was weeping from the eyes and nostrils. His whole face was wet. Frank closed his eyes, then looked down at Kenny again. "Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere," Kenny said, "just everywhere."

"Oh God," Tub said.

"I mean where did it go in?" Frank said.

"Here." Kenny pointed at the wound in his stomach. It was welling slowly with blood.

"You're lucky," Frank said. "It's on the left side. It missed your appendix. If it had hit your appendix you'd really be in the soup." He turned and threw up onto the snow, holding his sides as if to keep warm.

"Are you all right?" Tub said.

"There's some aspirin in the truck," Kenny said.

"I'm all right," Frank said.

"We'd better call an ambulance," Tub said.

"Jesus," Frank said. "What are we going to say?"

"Exactly what happened," Tub said. "He was going to shoot me but I shot him first."

"No sir!" Kenny said. "I wasn't either!"

Frank patted Kenny on the arm. "Easy does it, partner." He stood. "Let's go."

Tub picked up Kenny's rifle as they walked down toward the farmhouse. "No sense leaving this around," He said. "Kenny might get ideas."

"I can tell you one thing," Frank said. "You've really done it this time. This definitely takes the cake."

They had to knock on the door twice before it was opened by a thin man with lank hair. The room behind him was filled with smoke. He squinted at them. "You get anything?" he asked.

"No," Frank said.

"I knew you wouldn't. That's what I told the other fellow."

"We've had an accident."

The man looked past Frank and tub into the gloom. "Shoot your friend, did you?"

Frank nodded.

"I did," Tub said.

"I suppose you want to use the phone."

"If it's okay."

The man in the door looked behind him, then stepped back. Frank and Tub followed him into the house. There was a woman sitting by the stove in the middle of the room. The stove was smoking badly. She looked up and then down again at the child asleep in her lap. Her face was white and damp; strands of hair were pasted across her forehead. Tub warmed his hands over the stove while Frank went into the kitchen to call. The man who had let them in stood at the window, his hands in his pockets.

"My friend shot your dog," Tub said.

The man nodded without turning around. "I should have done it myself. I just couldn't." "He loved that dog so much," the woman said. The child squirmed and she rocked it.

"You asked him to?" Tub said. "You asked him to shoot your dog?"

"He was old and sick. Couldn't chew his food any more. I would have done it myself but I don't have a gun."

"You couldn't have anyway," the woman said. "Never in a million years."

The man shrugged.

Frank came out of the kitchen. "We'll have to take him ourselves. The nearest hospital is fifty miles from here and all their ambulances are out anyway."

The woman knew a shortcut but the directions were complicated and Tub had to write them down. The man told them where they could find some boards to carry Kenny on. He didn't have a flashlight but he said he would leave the porch light on.

It was dark outside. The clouds were low and heavy-looking and the wind blew in shrill gusts. There was a screen loose on the house and it banged slowly and then quickly as the wind rose again. They could hear it all the way to the barn. Frank went for the boards while Tub looked for Kenny, who was not where they had left him. Tub found him farther up the drive, lying on stomach. "You okay?" Tub said.

"It hurts."

"Frank says it missed your appendix."

"I already had my appendix out."

"All right," Frank said, coming up to them. "We'll have you in a nice warm bed before you can say Jack Robinson." He put the two boards on Kenny's right side.

"Just as long as I don't have one of those male nurses," Kenny said.

"Ha ha," Frank said. "That's the spirit. Get ready, set, _over you go_" and he rolled Kenny onto the boards. Kenny screamed and kicked his legs in the air. When he quieted down Frank and Tub lifted the boards and carried him down the drive. Tub had the back end, and with the snow blowing in his face he had trouble with his footing. Also he was tired and the man inside had forgotten to turn the porch light on. Just past the house Tub slipped and threw out his hands to catch himself. The boards fell and Kenny tumbled out and rolled to the bottom of the drive, yelling all the way. He came to rest against the right front wheel of the truck."

"You fat moron," Frank said. "You aren't good for diddly."

Tub grabbed Frank by the collar and back him hard up against the fence. Frank tried to pull his hands away but Tub shook him and snapped his head back and forth and finally Frank gave up.

"What do you know about fat," Tub said. "What do you know about glands." As he spoke he kept shaking Frank. "What do you know about me."

"All right," Frank said.

"No more," Tub said.

"All right."

"No more talking to me like that. No more watching. No more laughing."

"Okay, Tub. I promise."

Tub let go of Frank and leaned his forehead against the fence. His arms hung straight at his sides.

"I'm sorry, Tub." Frank touched him on the shoulder. "I'll be down at the truck."

Tub stood by the fence for a while and then got the rifles off the porch. Frank had rolled Kenny back onto the boards and they lifted him into the bed of the truck. Frank spread the seat blankets over him. "Warm enough?" he asked.

Kenny nodded.

"Okay. Now how does reverse work on this thing?"

"All the way to the left and up." Kenny sat up as Frank started forward to the cab. "Frank!"

"What?"

"If it sticks don't force it.

The truck started right away. "One thing," Frank said, "you've got to hand it to the Japanese. A very ancient, very spiritual culture and they can still make a hell of a truck." He glanced over at Tub. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know you felt that way, honest to God I didn't. You should have said something."

"I did."

"When? Name one time."

"A couple of hours ago."

"I guess I wasn't paying attention."

"That's true, Frank," Tub said. "You don't pay attention very much."

"Tub," Frank said. "what happened back there, I should have been more sympathetic. I realize that. You were going through a lot. I just want you to know it wasn't your fault. He was asking for it."

"You think so?"

"Absolutely. It was him or you. I would have done the same thing in your shoes, no question."

The wind was blowing into their faces. The snow was a moving white wall in front of their lights; it swirled into the cab through the hole in the windshield and settled on them. Tub clapped his hands and shifted around to stay warm, but it didn't work.

"I'm going to have to stop," Frank said. "I can't feel my fingers."

Up ahead they saw some lights off the road. It was a tavern. Outside in the parking lot there were several jeeps and trucks. A couple of them had deer strapped across their hoods. Frank parked and they went back to Kenny. "How you doing, partner," Frank said.

"I'm cold."

"Well, don't feel like the Lone Ranger. It's worse inside, take my word for it. You should get that windshield fixed."

"Look," Tub said, "he threw the blankets off." They were lying in a heap against the tailgate.

"Now look, Kenny," Frank said, "it's no use whining about being cold if you're not going to try and keep warm. You've got to do your share." He spread the blankets over Kenny and tucked them in at the corners.

"They blew off."

"Hold on to them then."

"Why are we stopping, Frank?"

"Because if me and Tub don't get warmed up we're going to freeze solid and then where will you be?" He punched Kenny lightly in the arm. "So just hold your horses."

The bar was full of men in colored jackets, mostly orange. The waitress brought coffee. "Just what the doctor ordered," Frank said, cradling the steaming cup in his hand. His skin was bone white. "Tub, I've been thinking. What you said about me not paying attention, that's true."

"It's okay."

"No. I really had that coming. I guess I've just been a little too interested in old number one. I've had a lot on my mind. Not that that's any excuse."

"Forget it, Frank. I sort of lost my temper back there. I guess we're all a little on edge."

Frank shook his head. "It isn't just that."

"You want to talk about it?"

"Just between us, Tub?"

"Sure, Frank. Just between us."

"Tub, I think I'm going to be leaving Nancy."

"Oh, Frank. Oh, Frank." Tub sat back and shook his head.

Frank reached out and laid his hand on Tub's arm. "Tub, have you ever been really in love?"

"Well--"

"I mean _really_ in love." He squeezed Tub's wrist. "With your whole being."

"I don't know. When you put it like that, I don't know."

"You haven't then. Nothing against you, but you'd know it if you had." Frank let go of Tub's arm. "This isn't just some bit of fluff I'm talking about."

"Who is she, Frank?"

Frank paused. He looked into his empty cup. "Roxanne Brewer."

"Cliff Brewer's kid? The babysitter?"

"You can't just put people into categories like that, Tub. That's why the whole system is wrong. And that's why this country is going to hell in a rowboat."

"But she can't be mroe than--"Tub shook his head.

"Fifteen. She'll be sixteen in May." Frank smiled. "May fourth, three twenty-seven p.m. Hell, Tub, a hundred years ago she'd have been an old maid by that age. Juliet was only thirteen."

"Juliet? Juliet Miller? Jesus, Frank, she doesn't even have breasts. She doesn't even wear a top to her bathing suit. She's still collecting frogs."

"Not Juliet Miller. The real Juliet. Tub, don't you see how you're dividing people up into categories? He's an executive, she's a secretary, he's a truck driver, she's fifteen years old. Tub, this so-called babysitter, this so-called fifteen-year-old has more in her little finger than most of us have in our entire bodies. I can tell you this little lady is something special."

Tub nodded. "I know the kids like her."

"She's opened up whole worlds to me that I never knew were there."

"What does Nancy think about all of this?"

"She doesn't know."

"You haven't told her?'

"Not yet. It's not so easy. She's been damned good to me all these years. Then there's the kids to consider." The brightness in Frank's eyes trembled and he wiped quickly at them with the back of his hand. "I guess you think I'm a complete bastard."

"No, Frank. I don't think that."

"Well, you _ought_ to."

"Frank, when you've got a friend it means you've always got someone on your side, no matter what. That's the way I feel about it anyway."

"You mean that, Tub?"

"Sure I do."

Frank smiled. "You don't know how good it feels to hear you say that."

Kenny had tried to get out of the truck but he hadn't made it. He was jackknifed over the tailgate, his head hanging above the bumper. They lifted him back into the bed, and covered him again. He was sweating and his teeth chattered. "It hurts, Frank."

"It wouldn't hurt so much if you just stayed put. Now we're going to the hospital. Go that? Say it--I'm going to the hospital."

"I'm going to the hospital."

"Again."

"I'm going to the hospital."

"Now just keep saying that to yourself and befor eyou know it we'll be there."

After they had gone a few miles Tub turned to Frank. "I just pulled a real boner," he said.

"What's that?"

"I left the directions on the table back there."

"That's okay. I remember them pretty well."

The snowfall lightened and the clouds began to roll back off the fields, but it was no warmer and after a time both frank and Tub were bitten through and shaking. Frank almost didn't make it around a curve, and they decided to stop at the next roadhouse.

There was an automatic hand-dryer in the bathroom and they took turns standing in fron to it, opening their jackets and shirts and letting the jet of hot air breath across their faces and chests.

"You know," Tub said, "what you told me back there, I appreciate it. Trusting me."

Frank opened and closed his fingers in front of the nozzle. "The way I look at it, Tub, no man is an island. You've got to trust someone."

"Frank--"

Frank waited.

"When I said that about my glands, that wasn't true. The truth is I just shovel it in."

"Well, Tub--"

"Day and night, Frank. In the shower. On the freeway." He turned and let the air play over his back. "I've even got stuff in the paper towel machine at work."

"There's nothing wrong with your glands at all?" Frank had taken his boots and socks off. He held first his right, then his left foot up to the nozzle.

"No. There never was."

"Does Alice know?" The machine went off and Frank started lacking up his boots.

"Nobody knows. That's the worst of it, Frank. Not the being fat, I never got any big kick out of being thin, but the lying. Having to lead a double life like a spy or a hit man. This sounds strange but I feel sorry for those guys, I really do. I know what they go through. Always having to think about what you say and do. Always feeling like people are watching you, trying to catch you at something. Never able to just be yourself. Like when I make a big deal about only having an orange for breakfast and then scarf all the way to work. Oreos, Mars Bars, Twinkies. Sugar Babies. Snickers." Tub glanced at Frank and looked quickly away. "Pretty disgusting, isn't it?"

"Tub. Tub." Frank shook his head. "Come on." He took Tub's arm and led him into the restaurant half o the bar. "My friend is hungry," he told the waitress. "Bring four orders of pancakes, plenty of butter and syrup."

"Frank--"

"Sit down."

When the dishes came Frank carved out slabs of butter and just laid them on the pancakes. Then he emptied the bottle of syrup, moving it back and forth over the plates. He leaned forward on his elbows and rested his chin in one hand. "Go on, Tub."

Tub ate several mouthfuls, then started to wipe his lips. Frank took the napkin away from him. "No wiping," he said. Tub kept at it. The syrup covered his chin; it dripped to a point like a goatee. "Weigh in, Tub," Frank said, pushing another fork across the table. "Get down to business." Tub took the fork in his left hand and lowered his head and started really chowing down. "Clean you plate," Frank said when the pancakes were gone, and Tub lifted each of the four plates and licked it clean. He sat back, trying to catch his breath.

"Beautiful," Frank said. "Are you full?"

"I'm full," Tub said. "I've never been so full."

Kenny's blankets were bunched up against the tailgate again.

"They must have blown off," Tub said.

"They're not doing him any good," Frank said. We might as well get some use out of them."

Kenny mumbled. Tub bent over him. "What? Speak up."

"I'm going to the hospital," Kenny said.

"Attaboy," Frank said.

The blankets helped. The wind still got their faces and frank's hands but it was much better. The fresh snow on the road and the trees sparkled under the beam of the headlight. Squares of light from farmhouse windows fell onto the blue snow in the fields.

"Frank," Tub said after a time, "you know that farmer? He told Kenny to kill the dog."

"You're kidding!" Frank leaded forward considering. "That Kenny. What a card." He laughed and so did Tub. Tub smiled out the back window. Kenny lay with his arms folded over his stomach, moving his lips at the stars. Right overhead was the Big Dipper, and behind, hanging between Kenny's toes in the direction of the hospital, was the North Star, Pole Star, Help to Sailors. As the truck twisted through the gentle hills the star went back and forth between Kenny's boots, staying always in his sight. "I'm going to the hospital," Kenny said. But he was wrong. They had taken a different turn a long way back.

Purchase "Hunters in the Snow" and other Tobias Wolff stories

Gooseberries

2004-05-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

No finer author to start with then Chekhov, and no finer story than "Goosberries." Ivan Ivanovitch lights a pipe and begins telling his traveling companion a story about his brother, but it starts to rain. As they search for shelter, we get images of rain, wet horses, a shaking dam, a beautiful woman. Am I the only boy to have fallen in love with a beautiful girl in an apple orchard? With this backdrop, Ivan tells the story about his brother, a bureaucrat who scrounged and saved money -- and did an awful thing -- so that he could return to the country life of his youth. And be happy. Read the story:

Gooseberries
By Anton Chekhov

The whole sky had been overcast with rain-clouds from early morning; it was a still day, not hot, but heavy, as it is in grey dull weather when the clouds have been hanging over the country for a long while, when one expects rain and it does not come. Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, and Burkin, the high-school teacher, were already tired from walking, and the fields seemed to them endless. Far ahead of them they could just see the windmills of the village of Mironositskoe; on the right stretched a row of hillocks which disappeared in the distance behind the village, and they both knew that this was the bank of the river, that there were meadows, green willows, homesteads there, and that if one stood on one of the hillocks one could see from it the same vast plain, telegraph-wires, and a train which in the distance looked like a crawling caterpillar, and that in clear weather one could even see the town. Now, in still weather, when all nature seemed mild and dreamy, Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin were filled with love of that countryside, and both thought how great, how beautiful a land it was.

"Last time we were in Prokofy's barn," said Burkin, "you were about to tell me a story."

"Yes; I meant to tell you about my brother."

Ivan Ivanovitch heaved a deep sigh and lighted a pipe to begin to tell his story, but just at that moment the rain began. And five minutes later heavy rain came down, covering the sky, and it was hard to tell when it would be over. Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin stopped in hesitation; the dogs, already drenched, stood with their tails between their legs gazing at them feelingly.

"We must take shelter somewhere," said Burkin. "Let us go to Alehin's; it's close by."

"Come along."

They turned aside a nd walked through mown fields, sometimes going straight forward, sometimes turning to the right, till they came out on the road. Soon they saw poplars, a garden, then the red roofs of barns; there was a gleam of the river, and the view opened on to a broad expanse of water with a windmill and a white bath-house: this was Sofino, where Alehin lived.

The watermill was at work, drowning the sound of the rain; the dam was shaking. Here wet horses with drooping heads were standing near their carts, and men were walking about covered with sacks. It was damp, muddy, and desolate; the water looked cold and malignant. Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin were already conscious of a feeling of wetness, messiness, and discomfort all over; their feet were heavy with mud, and when, crossing the dam, they went up to the barns, they were silent, as though they were angry with one another.

In one of the barns there was the sound of a winnowing machine, the door was open, and clouds of dust were coming from it. In the doorway was standing Alehin himself, a man of forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or an artist than a landowner. He had on a white shirt that badly needed washing, a rope for a belt, drawers instead of trousers, and his boots, too, were plastered up with mud and straw. His eyes and nose were black with dust. He recognized Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin, and was apparently much delighted to see them.

"Go into the house, gentlemen," he said, smiling; "I'll come directly, this minute."

It was a big two-storeyed house. Alehin lived in the lower storey, with arched ceilings and little windows, where the bailiffs had once lived; here everything was plain, and there was a smell of rye bread, cheap vodka, and harness. He went upstairs into the best rooms only on rare occasions, when visitors came. Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin were met in the house by a maid-servant, a young woman so beautiful that they both stood still and looked at one another.

"You can't imagine how delighted I am to see you, my friends," said Alehin, going into the hall with them. "It is a surprise! Pelagea," he said, addressing the girl, "give our visitors something to change into. And, by the way, I will change too. Only I must first go and wash, for I almost think I have not washed since spring. Wouldn't you like to come into the bath-house? and meanwhile they will get things ready here."

Beautiful Pelagea, looking so refined and soft, brought them towels and soap, and Alehin went to the bath-house with his guests.

"It's a long time since I had a wash," he said, undressing. "I have got a nice bath-house, as you see -- my father built it -- but I somehow never have time to wash."

He sat down on the steps and soaped his long hair and his neck, and the water round him turned brown.

"Yes, I must say," said Ivan Ivanovitch meaningly, looking at his head.

"It's a long time since I washed . . ." said Alehin with embarrassment, giving himself a second soaping, and the water near him turned dark blue, like ink.

Ivan Ivanovitch went outside, plunged into the water with a loud splash, and swam in the rain, flinging his arms out wide. He stirred the water into waves which set the white lilies bobbing up and down; he swam to the very middle of the millpond and dived, and came up a minute later in another place, and swam on, and kept on diving, trying to touch the bottom.

"Oh, my goodness!" he repeated continually, enjoying himself thoroughly. "Oh, my goodness!" He swam to the mill, talked to the peasants there, then returned and lay on his back in the middle of the pond, turning his face to the rain. Burkin and Alehin were dressed and ready to go, but he still went on swimming and diving. "Oh, my goodness! . . ." he said. "Oh, Lord, have mercy on me! . . ."

"That's enough!" Burkin shouted to him.

They went back to the house. And only when the lamp was lighted in the big drawing-room upstairs, and Burkin and Ivan Ivanovitch, attired in silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, were sitting in arm-chairs; and Alehin, washed and combed, in a new coat, was walking about the drawing-room, evidently enjoying the feeling of warmth, cleanliness, dry clothes, and light shoes; and when lovely Pelagea, stepping noiselessly on the carpet and smiling softly, handed tea and jam on a tray -- only then Ivan Ivanovitch began on his story, and it seemed as though not only Burkin and Alehin were listening, but also the ladies, young and old, and the officers who looked down upon them sternly and calmly from their gold frames.

"There are two of us brothers," he began --"I, Ivan Ivanovitch, and my brother, Nikolay Ivanovitch, two years younger. I went in for a learned profession and became a veterinary surgeon, while Nikolay sat in a government office from the time he was nineteen. Our father, Tchimsha-Himalaisky, was a kantonist, but he rose to be an officer and left us a little estate and the rank of nobility. After his death the little estate went in debts and legal expenses; but, anyway, we had spent our childhood running wild in the country. Like peasant children, we passed our days and nights in the fields and the woods, looked after horses, stripped the bark off the trees, fished, and so on. . . . And, you know, whoever has once in his life caught perch or has seen the migrating of the thrushes in autumn, watched how they float in flocks over the village on bright, cool days, he will never be a real townsman, and will have a yearning for freedom to the day of his death. My brother was miserable in the government office. Years passed by, and he went on sitting in the same place, went on writing the same papers and thinking of one and the same thing -- how to get into the country. And this yearning by degrees passed into a definite desire, into a dream of buying himself a little farm somewhere on the banks of a river or a lake.

"He was a gentle, good-natured fellow, and I was fond of him, but I never sympathized with this desire to shut himself up for the rest of his life in a little farm of his own. It's the correct thing to say that a man needs no more than six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man. And they say, too, now, that if our intellectual classes are attracted to the land and yearn for a farm, it's a good thing. But these farms are just the same as six feet of earth. To retreat from town, from the struggle, from the bustle of life, to retreat and bury oneself in one's farm -- it's not life, it's egoism, laziness, it's monasticism of a sort, but monasticism without good works. A man does not need six feet of earth or a farm, but the whole globe, all nature, where he can have room to display all the qualities and peculiarities of his free spirit.

"My brother Nikolay, sitting in his government office, dreamed of how he would eat his own cabbages, which would fill the whole yard with such a savoury smell, take his meals on the green grass, sleep in the sun, sit for whole hours on the seat by the gate gazing at the fields and the forest. Gardening books and the agricultural hints in calendars were his delight, his favourite spiritual sustenance; he enjoyed reading newspapers, too, but the only things he read in them were the advertisements of so many acres of arable land and a grass meadow with farm-houses and buildings, a river, a garden, a mill and millponds, for sale. And his imagination pictured the garden-paths, flowers and fruit, starling cotes, the carp in the pond, and all that sort of thing, you know. These imaginary pictures were of different kinds according to the advertisements which he came across, but for some reason in every one of them he had always to have gooseberries. He could not imagine a homestead, he could not picture an idyllic nook, without gooseberries.

" 'Country life has its conveniences,' he would sometimes say. 'You sit on the verandah and you drink tea, while your ducks swim on the pond, there is a delicious smell everywhere, and . . . and the gooseberries are growing.'

"He used to draw a map of his property, and in every map there were the same things -- (a) house for the family, (b) servants' quarters, (c) kitchen-ga rden, (d) gooseberry-bushes. He lived parsimoniously, was frugal in food and drink, his clothes were beyond description; he looked like a beggar, but kept on saving and putting money in the bank. He grew fearfully avaricious. I did not like to look at him, and I used to give him something and send him presents for Christmas and Easter, but he used to save that too. Once a man is absorbed by an idea there is no doing anything with him.

"Years passed: he was transferred to another province. He was over forty, and he was still reading the advertisements in the papers and saving up. Then I heard he was married. Still with the same object of buying a farm and having gooseberries, he married an elderly and ugly widow without a trace of feeling for her, simply because she had filthy lucre. He went on living frugally after marrying her, and kept her short of food, while he put her money in the bank in his name.

"Her first husband had been a postmaster, and with him she was accustomed to pies and home-made wines, while with her second husband she did not get enough black bread; she began to pine away with this sort of life, and three years later she gave up her soul to God. And I need hardly say that my brother never for one moment imagined that he was responsible for her death. Money, like vodka, makes a man queer. In our town there was a merchant who, before he died, ordered a plateful of honey and ate up all his money and lottery tickets with the honey, so that no one might get the benefit of it. While I was inspecting cattle at a railway-station, a cattle-dealer fell under an engine and had his leg cut off. We carried him into the waiting-room, the blood was flowing -- it was a horrible thing -- and he kept asking them to look for his leg and was very much worried about it; there were twenty roubles in the boot on the leg that had been cut off, and he was afraid they would be lost."

"That's a story from a different opera," said Burkin.

"After his wife's death," Ivan Ivanovitch went on, after thinking for half a minute, "my brother began looking out for an estate for himself. Of course, you may look about for five years and yet end by making a mistake, and buying something quite different from what you have dreamed of. My brother Nikolay bought through an agent a mortgaged estate of three hundred and thirty acres, with a house for the family, with servants' quarters, with a park, but with no orchard, no gooseberry-bushes, and no duck-pond; there was a river, but the water in it was the colour of coffee, because on one side of the estate there was a brickyard and on the other a factory for burning bones. But Nikolay Ivanovitch did not grieve much; he ordered twenty gooseberry-bushes, planted them, and began living as a country gentleman.

"Last year I went to pay him a visit. I thought I would go and see what it was like. In his letters my brother called his estate 'Tchumbaroklov Waste, alias Himalaiskoe.' I reached 'alias Himalaiskoe' in the afternoon. It was hot. Everywhere there were ditches, fences, hedges, fir-trees planted in rows, and there was no knowing how to get to the yard, where to put one's horse. I went up to the house, and was met by a fat red dog that looked like a pig. It wanted to bark, but it was too lazy. The cook, a fat, barefooted woman, came out of the kitchen, and she, too, looked like a pig, and said that her master was resting after dinner. I went in to see my brother. He was sitting up in bed with a quilt over his legs; he had grown older, fatter, wrinkled; his cheeks, his nose, and his mouth all stuck out -- he looked as though he might begin grunting into the quilt at any moment.

"We embraced each other, and shed tears of joy and of sadness at the thought that we had once been young and now were both grey-headed and near the grave. He dressed, and led me out to show me the estate.

" 'Well, how are you getting on here?' I asked.

" 'Oh, all right, thank God; I am getting on very well.'

"He was no more a poor timid clerk, but a real landowner, a gentleman. He was already accustomed to it, had grown used to it, and liked it. He ate a great deal, went to the bath-house, was growing stout, was already at law with the village commune and both factories, and was very much offended when the peasants did not call him 'Your Honour.' And he concerned himself with the salvation of his soul in a substantial, gentlemanly manner, and performed deeds of charity, not simply, but with an air of consequence. And what deeds of charity! He treated the peasants for every sort of disease with soda and castor oil, and on his name-day had a thanksgiving service in the middle of the village, and then treated the peasants to a gallon of vodka -- he thought that was the thing to do. Oh, those horrible gallons of vodka! One day the fat landowner hauls the peasants up before the district captain for trespass, and next day, in honour of a holiday, treats them to a gallon of vodka, and they drink and shout 'Hurrah!' and when they are drunk bow down to his feet. A change of life for the better, and being well-fed and idle develop in a Russian the most insolent self-conceit. Nikolay Ivanovitch, who at one time in the government office was afraid to have any views of his own, now could say nothing that was not gospel truth, and uttered such truths in the tone of a prime minister. 'Education is essential, but for the peasants it is premature.' 'Corporal punishment is harmful as a rule, but in some cases it is necessary and there is nothing to take its place.'

" 'I know the peasants and understand how to treat them,' he would say. 'The peasants like me. I need only to hold up my little finger and the peasants will do anything I like.'

"And all this, observe, was uttered with a wise, benevolent smile. He repeated twenty times over 'We noblemen,' 'I as a noble'; obviously he did not remember that our grandfather was a peasant, and our father a soldier. Even our surname Tchimsha-Himalaisky, in reality so incongruous, seemed to him now melodious, distinguished, and very agreeable.

"But the point just now is not he, but myself. I want to tell you about the change that took place in me during the brief hours I spent at his country place. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook put on the table a plateful of gooseberries. They were not bought, but his own gooseberries, gathered for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nikolay Ivanovitch laughed and looked for a minute in silence at the gooseberries, with tears in his eyes; he could not speak for excitement. Then he put one gooseberry in his mouth, looked at me with the triumph of a child who has at last received his favourite toy, and said:

" 'How delicious!'

"And he ate them greedily, continually repeating, 'Ah, how delicious! Do taste them!'

"They were sour and unripe, but, as Pushkin says:

" 'Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts
Than hosts of baser truths.'
"I saw a happy man whose cherished dream was so obviously fulfilled, who had attained his object in life, who had gained what he wanted, who was satisfied with his fate and himself. There is always, for some reason, an element of sadness mingled with my thoughts of human happiness, and, on this occasion, at the sight of a happy man I was overcome by an oppressive feeling that was close upon despair. It was particularly oppressive at night. A bed was made up for me in the room next to my brother's bedroom, and I could hear that he was awake, and that he kept getting up and going to the plate of gooseberries and taking one. I reflected how many satisfied, happy people there really are! 'What a suffocating force it is! You look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying. . . . Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there is not one who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their silly nonse nse, getting married, growing old, serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. . . . Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition. . . . And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It's a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him -- disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer; the happy man lives at his ease, and trivial daily cares faintly agitate him like the wind in the aspen-tree -- and all goes well.

"That night I realized that I, too, was happy and contented," Ivan Ivanovitch went on, getting up. "I, too, at dinner and at the hunt liked to lay down the law on life and religion, and the way to manage the peasantry. I, too, used to say that science was light, that culture was essential, but for the simple people reading and writing was enough for the time. Freedom is a blessing, I used to say; we can no more do without it than without air, but we must wait a little. Yes, I used to talk like that, and now I ask, 'For what reason are we to wait?' " asked Ivan Ivanovitch, looking angrily at Burkin. "Why wait, I ask you? What grounds have we for waiting? I shall be told, it can't be done all at once; every idea takes shape in life gradually, in its due time. But who is it says that? Where is the proof that it's right? You will fall back upon the natural order of things, the uniformity of phenomena; but is there order and uniformity in the fact that I, a living, thinking man, stand over a chasm and wait for it to close of itself, or to fill up with mud at the very time when perhaps I might leap over it or build a bridge across it? And again, wait for the sake of what? Wait till there's no strength to live? And meanwhile one must live, and one wants to live!

"I went away from my brother's early in the morning, and ever since then it has been unbearable for me to be in town. I am oppressed by its peace and quiet; I am afraid to look at the windows, for there is no spectacle more painful to me now than the sight of a happy family sitting round the table drinking tea. I am old and am not fit for the struggle; I am not even capable of hatred; I can only grieve inwardly, feel irritated and vexed; but at night my head is hot from the rush of ideas, and I cannot sleep. . . . Ah, if I were young!"

Ivan Ivanovitch walked backwards and forwards in excitement, and repeated: "If I were young!"

He suddenly went up to Alehin and began pressing first one of his hands and then the other.

"Pavel Konstantinovitch," he said in an imploring voice, "don't be calm and contented, don't let yourself be put to sleep! While you are young, strong, confident, be not weary in well-doing! There is no happiness, and there ought not to be; but if there is a meaning and an object in life, that meaning and object is not our happiness, but something greater and more rational. Do good!"

And all this Ivan Ivanovitch said with a pitiful, imploring smile, as though he were asking him a personal favour.

Then all three sat in arm-chairs at different ends of the drawing-room and were silent. Ivan Ivanovitch's story had not satisfied either Burkin or Alehin. When the generals and ladies gazed down from their gilt frames, looking in the dusk as though they were alive, it was dreary to listen to the story of the poor clerk who ate gooseberries. They felt inclined, for some reason, to talk about elegant people, about women. And their sitting in the drawing-room where everything -- the chandeliers in their covers, the arm-chairs, and the carpet under their feet -- reminded them that those very people who were now looking down from their frames had once moved about, sat, drunk tea in this room, and the fact that lovely Pelagea was moving noiselessly about was better than any story.

Alehin was fearfully sleepy; he had got up early, before three o'clock in the morning, to look after his work, and now his eyes were closing; but he was afraid his visitors might tell some interesting story after he had gone, and he lingered on. He did not go into the question whether what Ivan Ivanovitch had just said was right and true. His visitors did not talk of groats, nor of hay, nor of tar, but of something that had no direct bearing on his life, and he was glad and wanted them to go on.

"It's bed-time, though," said Burkin, getting up. "Allow me to wish you good-night."

Alehin said good-night and went downstairs to his own domain, while the visitors remained upstairs. They were both taken for the night to a big room where there stood two old wooden beds decorated with carvings, and in the corner was an ivory crucifix. The big cool beds, which had been made by the lovely Pelagea, smelt agreeably of clean linen.

Ivan Ivanovitch undressed in silence and got into bed.

"Lord forgive us sinners!" he said, and put his head under the quilt.

His pipe lying on the table smelt strongly of stale tobacco, and Burkin could not sleep for a long while, and kept wondering where the oppressive smell came from.

The rain was pattering on the window-panes all night.