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Sneak Peeks |
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Just Joe: Baseball's Natural |
By Thomas Perry |
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$17.95 |
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Understanding Mr. and Mrs. Joe Jackson isn’t easy, but if you’re going to try, start in 1939. Joe
always
said his greatest sorrow was not that he was thrown out of baseball, but that we did not have any kids.
Mine,
too, because it accounts for a lot of this silence around the house just now. All swept, dusted and
tidied up,
and open windows let in the breeze of an early spring morning. But it’s empty except for the footsteps of
an
old woman echoing off hardwood floors.
McDavid Jackson was Joe’s favorite nephew, and years before there had been talk among the family about
us
adopting the boy as our own. I felt barren. And selfish, wanting my man for myself even when I knew this
would
make him happy. “He won’t be ours by blood, but he can be the son I couldn’t give you, Joe.”
“You’re always first in my heart, Missy,” I heard him say, and was even more ashamed of
myself. I
remember looking up at him and smiling through my tears.
“I know, I know,” was all I managed, and pressed tight against him. Thinking all the while,
‘But
he’s what I couldn’t give to you, and I hate myself for it!’ My sobs were lost in the white cotton shirt
he
wore.
Can’t remember what stopped it all, but it never happened. He was a good boy, stayed close to his
Uncle
Joe, and the two of them were a sight together, walking the downtown streets on a Saturday evening,
sharing a
bag of lemon drops and quiet conversation.
Anyway, McDavid finds him a nice girl in Miss Lila Hunt, and the two of them were married in ‘39. Like
I
said, you have to understand all this if you’re going to understand my man Joe. October of next year,
they’re
expecting a baby, and Uncle Joe is running around town buying this and that for the child’s nursery.
Seeing Lila grow big with that child, and McDavid with a smile brighter than a harvest moon, made me
think
again, and bitterly, of what Joe and I never got to feel. Wasn’t very becoming at all, especially when my
man
was so genuinely happy for them. But sometimes we get lucky enough to realize how wrong we’ve been, and
have a
chance to set things right.
Joe was at their house one day, putting a coat of primer on the nursery wall. His favorite stop was
Breazeale Hardware, couple of doors down from our store in West Greenville, where he and Mr. B. had
already
mixed up two cans of paint, one light blue and the other of course light pink. He bought stencils of
lambs he
was planning to color in white after he painted the walls. At lunch, I picked up two BLT’s and vanilla
shakes
and drove over to share a meal with that hardworking loveable man. Not long after I drove up, here comes
the
happy couple.
“Uncle Joe! Aunt Katie!” McDavid yelled, spun me around and hugged me, then grabbed Joe in a
bear
hug. Lila stood smiling at us, walked over, held my hands and kissed me on the cheek. She was always so
sweet
that way. Like I said, it was me that needed changing, not that lovely little girl whose face was framed
by
rings of black hair. The men had gone back to the kitchen for something, and Lila spoke to me.
“Katie, would you like to feel the baby? He’s moving and kicking to beat it all, raring to
go!” I
wanted to offer a short ‘no, thank you’, but couldn’t do it, couldn’t turn away from her dark eyes filled
with
so much kindness.
“Yes, yes I would,” and was more than shocked at my willingness. Still, I drew back when my
fingers
were only an inch or two from her belly.
Afraid of what?
Of touching what I could never offer my own husband?
No, more than that. Of having to knock down the wall, open up and share their joy. Give up my
self-
pity and really mean it when I said how happy I was for the both of them. Not faked, like so many times
before.
“It’s okay, Aunt Katie,” and she smiled when I looked up at her. First time she ever called me that.
“Won’t hurt him a bit.” She took my hand and laid it on her belly. Think my heart about beat
out of
my chest when I felt the child kick hard. Lila gasped and bent over a little, those bright eyes closing a
bit
as she winced.
“No doubt he’s a boy,” she laughed. “Little girls couldn’t kick that hard.”
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The Last of One |
By Stephan Solberg |
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$14.95 |
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Prologue
…The old man is dreaming again.
It is a dream from long ago that he’d had many times over the years, more years than most people live
to
remember. Each time it is a little different, but each time he thinks it is exactly the same. He is
sixteen
years old and lying in the middle of a field of tall, green wheat. It is June, and the seed on the wheat
is
full and ripening, the sun is high, and the air is thick with the smell of life. Lying next to him is a
woman he has always and only loved. Her name is Helen, and her dark eyes look lovingly into his as he
touches
her hair that reminds him of the color of prairie grass in autumn. They’d just made love, and he now
caresses
her stomach as they laugh and talk and imagine a life together. He picks a red poppy that is growing in
the
wheat and tenderly places it behind her ear. It echoes the color in her cheeks and lips. She smiles and
kisses him. They look out towards the lake named after the Indian word for ‘big water.’ This is in their
hometown in Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Michigan, and, on a day such as this, the sky and water become
one.
A rumbling sound is now heard in the distance, like an approaching storm. As he looks across the field,
he
sees four horses running straight at them. Though the field looks the same, he isn’t back home anymore
but is
now in France, in the Marne Valley. The year is 1918. The horses are wearing masks that cover their
eyes
like big bubbles and their mouths and noses with dark canvas bags. They are terrified because they can’t
breathe, and they run in fear as it’s the only thing they know to do. He sees them and tells Helen to be
still and stay with him as the horses will run around instead of over them, but she panics and starts to
run
away through the tall wheat towards the woods in the distance. He yells for her to stop, but she doesn’t
hear, and the field has gotten bigger and never seems to end as she keeps running. The horses pass him,
but
he watches in horror as they come upon Helen and quickly trample her. He screams and runs to her; tears
begin
to blur his vision and panic stifles his breath. Before she dies, she looks at him in confused sadness,
as if
she doesn’t recognize him, says she is sorry, and then closes her eyes forever. He clutches her to his
face,
but he is unable to kiss her. He’s wearing a mask, too, and he struggles to remove it but can’t. It’s a
gas
mask, and he chokes and screams inside of it as the field fills with a deathly fog. The horses have
continued
running toward the tree line when gun fire erupts from the dark wood. They crash to the ground and
writhe in
death throes as machine guns open up from every direction. Men crawl out of the dead horses’ bellies and
continue on toward the forest. They are masked soldiers just like him so he runs to join them as they
all
disappear into the tangled growth.
Suddenly he is in a trench with seven other men. They are identical, but he knows they are his men,
his
squad, and they fire their machine guns, but instead of bullets, a bright beam of light blazes forth and
makes
the enemies put down their weapons, turn around and walk back home. He can see the backs of hundreds of
men
in dark grey uniforms just walking away like nothing happened. When he turns around, and to tell his men
this, they are all gone, and he is left alone. He stands up out of the trench and looks in all
directions,
but no one is there. The land is grey, torn, and deathly quiet. An icy wind begins to blow. He walks
down a
dirt road that seems to go on forever. The sky is dark and purple, and the silhouettes of dead trees
desperately reaching are the only things that break the barren landscape. A column of soldiers is
approaching, and, as they pass him, he sees that people he knows are marching with them, family, friends,
but
no one looks at or recognizes him as they pass and continue over the hill. It’s as if he didn’t exist,
and he
is puzzled by this.
He sees a baseball on the ground and stoops to pick it up, and when he stands again he’s back in more
recent times at the city park where he’s worked so many years. He knows it’s his park, though it looks
different, and he doesn’t recognize anyone until he gets to a monument. Sitting on a bench and looking
up at
the war monument is his old friend Ernie, whom he’d met during the war. Ernie’s still young and
handsome
like he was then, and now he sits and writes and doesn’t see the man (who is now an old man) approach
him.
Next to Ernie, leaning against the bench is a shot gun. He sits down next to the gun, and Ernie says,
“’Bout
time you got here. I was ready to leave without you.” He doesn’t know what that means. Just then a
pigeon
flies above them as both watch. It dives and turns and finally lands on the statue of the soldier atop
the
stone pedestal. They gaze in wonder at the bird which they know to be the last of its kind. As it flies
away, Ernie takes his gun, aims carefully, and blows it out of the sky. “Why did you do that?” the old
man
asks, horrified. “Nothing lasts forever,” his friend explains.
A young boy in the park finds and picks up the remains of the dead bird. He wordlessly cries and
walks
away. The old man sees this and tries to run to the boy to console him, but he can’t move. He recognizes
this
boy, but the boy doesn’t see the old man. “Tommy!” he calls in his sleep.
Then the old man awakes...
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Unusual Circumstances |
By Various |
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$13.95 |
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Dead Aim
Bryan Steven Follins
Jesse Green had begun his nightly check of e-mail. There were 26 new messages in the mailbox. One
message
had an attachment. The title of the message read: One Hundred Different Ways to Cheat On Your Spouse. A
mile-wide grin spread across Green's face, as he rapidly scrolled down to the e-mail. Cynthia, his wife,
would not be in for another hour, so he was going to enjoy reading THIS MESSAGE. Green opened the e-mail.
It read: "Here are some foolproof methods to help you establish an airtight plan on how to cheat
on
your spouse. This demo is free, so you do not have to worry about pulling out your credit card. Feel
free to
click on the attachment."
A wider grin crossed Jesse's face.
He clicked on the attachment.
The screen turned black.
Next, a pulsating white circle appeared in the middle of the monitor. The circle became larger
and
larger.
Then a voice said: "The first step to cheating on your spouse is to blind them."
At this point the light pulse flashed ten times brighter than the sun, and Green was blinded.
Then the voice said: "The second step is to make them deaf."
Now, a high-pitched whistling sound erupted from the file. Green grabbed his ears. The
whistling
became louder and louder, and then, silence.
Jesse realized he could no longer see or hear. He panicked and tried to stand up, and he tripped
on
his chair. He fell to the floor, and lay there in a state of total shock.
Then the voice said: "Now that they can neither see nor hear, there is nothing they can do to
stop
you."
Now there was a grinding noise on the computer. A message flashed across the screen saying:
"System
hardware failure." The screen went blank, and Jesse was blank.
While all of this was going on, Cynthia had entered the room. She was feeling proud. Her newly
developed e-mail virus had worked.
She had to get changed, for she had a date an hour later.
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A Collection of Friends |
By Thomas Sheehan |
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$17.95 |
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Parkie, Tanker, Tiger of Tobruk
Hardly with a hop, skip and a jump did Frank Parkinson come home from Tobruk, Egypt, North Africa,
madness,
World War II in general. A lot of pit stops were made along the way where delicate-handed surgeons and
associates did their very best to get him back into working order. From practically every vantage
thereafter
we never saw, facially or bodily, any scar, bunching of flesh, major or minor skin disturbance. There was
no
permanent redness, no welts as part of his features, no thin and faintly visible testaments to a doctor's
faulty hand or to the enemy's angry fragmentation. For sure, it was as if he were the ultimate and
perfect
patient, the great recovery, the risen Lazarus.
But he was different, it was easy to see, by a whole long shot.
Parkie. Tanker. Tiger of Tobruk.
It was the end of some trying times for my friend. One lazy afternoon we sat looking over the sun
looking
over Lily Pond, and I noted some things about him for the first time. A redness glared on the pond's face
as
bright as an ache. This was the pond face we had skated on for almost twenty years. Here we had whipped
the
long hand-held whip line of us and our friends screaming and wind-blown toward the frosted shore on
countless
coffee and cider evenings. That afternoon I realized Parkie had come home to die.
The September sun was on for a short stay. We had bagged a dozen bottles of beer and laid them easily
down in
the pond, watching a flotilla of pickerel poking slowly about when the sediment settled. Their shadowy
thinness pointed, like inert submarines or torpedoes, at the bags.
Our differences were obvious, though we did not speak of them. The sands of North Africa had clutched at
him
and almost taken him. Off a mountain in Korea I had come with my feet nearly frozen. Under skin they
often
felt like graceless pieces of marble, thinking they might have been blown off the same quarry where
unknown
sculptors had once farmed torsos.
I had kept no souvenirs, especially none of Korea and its craggy mountains, and had seen nothing of his
memento scenery. But once I saw a pair of tanker goggles hanging like an outsize Rosary on the post of
his bed
at Dutch Siciliano's garage. That's where he roomed on the second floor, in three small rooms, dusty and
cluttered and strongly odored. You could smell oil and grease from below. You’d swear along with them
you
could smell acid-like cosmoline and spent gunpowder. It was like the residue of a convoy's passing still
hanging in the air, telling of itself at the nostrils with sharp reminders, rising right through the
floorboards.
Most of us left our wars behind us. As much as we could. But with Parkie it was different…pieces of it
hung on
as if they were on for the long ride. I don't mean that he was a flag waver or mufti hero, now that he
was out
of uniform. But the whole war kept coming back to him in ways he had no control over. There are people to
whom
such things befall. They don't choose them, that's for sure, but it's as if they somehow get appointed
for all
the attendant crap life gets filled with.
And Parkie had no control over the visitations.
I don't know how many times we had been sitting in the Angels' Club, hanging out, the big booms long down
the
tubes, when someone from Parkie's old outfit would show up out of the blue. It was like Lamont Cranston
appearing from the shadows. There'd be a guy standing at the door looking in and we'd all notice him, and
then
his eyes and Parkie's eyes'd lock. Recognition was instant; reaction was slower, as if neither one
believed
what he was seeing. There would be a quiet acceptance of the other's presence. They'd draw their heads
together and have a beer in a corner. Parkie, as sort of an announcement, would speak to no one in
particular
and the whole room in general, "This guy was with me in North Africa."
He never gave a name. All of them were odd lots, all of them. They were thin like Parkie, drawn in the
face,
little shoulders and long arms, nervous, itchy, wearing that same darkness in the eyes. A sum of darkness
you'd think was too much for one man to carry. They would hang on for days at a time, holing up some
place,
sometimes at Parkie's and sometimes elsewhere. They'd drink up a storm, carouse, and one morning the
stranger
would be gone and never seen again. Some guys said a ritual had taken place. A solemn ritual. Apparitions
almost from the slippery darkness! Dark-eyed. The nameless out of North Africa and whatever other place
they
had been to and come from. Noble wanderers, it seemed, but nameless, rankless, placeless, itinerants.
Parkie never got a card or a letter from any one of them. Never a phone call. Nothing. He never mentioned
them
after they were gone. That, to me, was notice he knew they would never be back. It was like a date had
been
kept, a vow paid off. It wasn't at all like "We'll meet at Trafalgar Square after the war, or Times
Square, or
under the clock at The Ritz." Not at all. The sadness of it hit me solidly, frontally. I had had some
good
buddies, guy's I'd be tickled to death to see again if they walked in just like his pals did, and I knew
that
I'd never see them again. Things were like that, cut and dried like adobe, a place and a job in the world
and
you couldn't cry about it. Part of the fine-tuned fatalism that grows in your bones, becomes part of you,
core
deep, gut deep.
The sun's redness shivered under the breeze. Pickerel nosed at the bags. The beer cooled. Parkie sipped
at a
bottle, his eyes dark and locked on the pond, seeing something I hadn't seen, I guess. The long hatchet-
like
face, the full-blown Indian complexion he owed great allegiance to, made his dark visage darker than it
might
have been. With parted lips his teeth showed long and off-white or slightly yellowed, real incisors in a
deep-
red gum line. On a smooth gray rock he sat with his heels jammed up under his butt, the redness still
locked
in his eyes. Like some long-gone Chief, I thought, locked in meditation of the spirits.
For a long while he was distant, who knows where, in what guise and in what act, out of touch. This
really
wasn't that unusual with him before, and surely wasn't now, since his return. Actually it was a little
eerie,
this sudden transport, but a lot of things had become eerie with Parkie around. He didn't like being
indoors
for too long a stretch. He craved fresh air and walked a lot, and must have worn his own path around the
pond.
It went through the alders, then through the clump of birch that some nights looked like ghosts at
attention.
It coursed down along the edge where all the kids fished for kibby and sunfish, then over the knoll at
the end
of the pond. There you'd go out of sight for maybe five minutes of a walk, and then it went down along
the
near shore and came up to the Angels' where we hung out.
Most of the guys said when you couldn't locate Parkie, you knew where to find him.
He talked to me from his crouch, the bottle in his hand catching the sun, his eyes as dark as ever in
their
deep contrast.
"Remember that Kirby kid, Ellen Kirby. When we pulled her out of the channel on Christmas vacation in her
snowsuit and she kept skating around for a couple of hours, afraid to go home? We saved her for nothing,
it
seems, but for another try at it. I heard she drowned in a lake in Maine January of the year I went away.
Like
she never learned anything at all."
Parkie hadn't taken his eyes off the pond. Stillness still trying to take hold of him. He sipped and
sipped
and finally drank off the bottle and reached into the water for another. The pickerel force moved away as
quickly as minnows.
Their quickness seemed to make fun of our inertia. If there was a clock handy, I knew its hands would be
moving, the ticking going on, but I seriously wouldn't bet on it. We seemed to be holding our collected
breath. The sun froze itself on the water's face, the slightest breath of wind held itself off. There was
no
ticking, no bells, no alarms, no sudden disturbances in the air, no more war, and no passage of time. For
a
moment at least we hung at breathlessness and eternity. We were, as Parkie had said on more than one
occasion,
"Down-in deep counting the bones in ourselves, trying to get literate."
"We just got her ready to die at another time." The church key opener in his hand pried at the bottle cap
as
slow as a crowbar and permitted a slight "pop." He palmed the cap in his hand and shook it like half a
dice
set and skipped it across the redness. The deliberate things he did came off as code transmissions. I had
spent hours trying to read what kind of message was being carried along by them. They did not clamor for
attention, but if you were only barely alert you knew something was cooking in him.
"You might not believe it," I said, "but I thought of her when I was in Korea and swore my ass was ice. I
remember how she skated around after we pulled her out with that gray-green snowsuit on and the old
pilot's
cap on her head. She had the flaps down over her ears and the goggles against her eyes and the ice was
like a
clear, fine lacquer all over her clothes. I thought she was going to freeze standing up right on the
pond."
Parkie said, "I used to think about the pond a lot when I was in the desert. At Tobruk. At Al Shar-Efan.
At
The Sod Oasis. At all the dry holes along the way. But it was always summer and fishing and swimming and
going
bare ass off the rock at midnight or two or three in the morning on some hot-ass August night. Those
nights we
couldn't sleep and sneaked out of the house. Remember how Gracie slipped into the pond that night and
slipped
out of her bathing suit and hung it up on a spike on the raft? Remember how she told us she was going to
teach
us everything we'd ever need to know?"
His head nodded two or three times, accenting its own movement, making a grand pronouncement. The recall
was
just as tender and just as complete as that long-ago compelling night. He sipped at the bottle again, and
tried to look through its amber passage, dark eyes meeting dark obstacles of more than one sort. As much
a
fortuneteller he looked, peeking into life.
All across the pond a stillness made itself known, a stillness as pure as any I've known. I don't know
what he
saw in the amber fluid, but it couldn't have been anything he hadn't seen before.
I just got the feeling it was nothing different.
When I called him Frank he looked at me squarely. His thick black brows lifted like chunks of
punctuation, his
mouth formed an Oh of more punctuation, both of us suddenly serious. It had always been that way with us,
the
reliance on the more proper name to pull a halt to what was about us, or explain what was about us. He
drank
off a heavy draught of beer, his Adam's apple flopping on his thin neck. The picture of a turkey wattle
came
uneasily to mind, making me feel slightly ridiculous, and slightly embarrassed. Frank was an announcement
of
sorts, a declaration that a change, no matter subtle or not, was being introduced into our conversation.
It
was not as serious as Francis but it was serious enough.
His comrades from North Africa, as always, had intrigued me. On a number of instances I had searched in
imagination's land for stories that might lie there waiting to get plowed up. Nothing I had turned over
had
come anywhere close to reality, or the terrors I had known in my own stead. No rubble. No chaff. No field
residue.
Perhaps Parkie had seen something in that last bottle, something swimming about in the amber liquid, or
something just on the other side of it. He turned to me and said, "I think you want to know about my
friends
who visit, my friends from North Africa, from my tank outfit. I never told you their names because their
names
are not important. Where they come from or where they are going is not important either. That information
would mean nothing to you."
For the moment the silence was accepted by both of us.
Across the stretch of water the sun was making its last retreat of the day. A quick grasp of reflection
hung
for a bare second on the face of the pond. It leaped off somewhere as if shot, past the worm-curled
roots, a
minute but energized flash darting into the trees. Then it was gone, absolutely gone. None of it yet
curled
round a branch or root. And no evidence of it lay about... except for the life it had given sustenance
to, had
maintained at all levels. It was like the shutter of a camera had opened and closed at its own speed.
Parkie acknowledged that disappearance with a slight nod of his head. An additional twist was there. It
was
obvious he saw the darkness coming on even before it gathered itself to call on us. I thought another
kind of
clock ticked for him, a clock of a far different dimension. He was still chipping away at what had been
his
old self. That came home clean as a desert bone; but where he was taking it all was as much mystery as
ever.
The beer, though, was making sly headway, the beer and stillness, and the companionship we had shared
over the
years. The mystery of the sun's quick disappearance played with what we knew of the horizon, the thin
edge of
warmth it left behind. And it played with all those strange comrades of his. They had stood in the
doorway of
the Angel's Club, framed as they were by the nowhere they had come from, almost purposeless in their
missions.
They too had been of dark visage. They too were lank and thin and narrow in the shoulder. They too were
scored
by that same pit of infinity locked deeply in their eyes. They were not haggard, but they were deep. I
knew
twin brothers who were not as close to their own core the same way these men were. These men had
obviously
leaned their souls entirely on some common element in their lives. I did not find it as intense even with
reconnected battle brothers who had lain in the same hole with me while the Chinese used old German
76'ers.
Not even when the shells screamed and slammed overhead and all around us, the shrapnel routed in the
awful
trajectories.
The flotilla of pickerel nosed against the bags of beer. Parkie's Adam's apple bobbed on his thin neck.
He
began slowly, all that long reserve suddenly beginning to fall away.
"We were behind German lines, but had no idea how we got there. We ran out of gas in a low crater and
threw
some canvas against the sides of the three tanks that had been left after our last battle. If we could
keep
out of sight, sort of camouflaged, we might have a chance. It got cold that night. We had little food,
little
water, little ammo, and no gas. It was best, we thought, to wait out our chances. If we didn't know where
we
were, perhaps the Jerries wouldn't know either. Sixteen of us were there. We had lost a lot of tanks, had
our
butts kicked."
He wasn't dramatizing anything, you could tell. It was coming as straight as he could make it. Whatever
was
coming, though, had to be pretty wild, or exorbitant, or eerie or, indeed, inhuman. The last option came
home
pretty cold to me. The hair on the back of my neck told me so.
"We woke up in the false dawn and they were all around us. Fish in the bottom of the tank is what we
were. No
two ways about it. Plain, all-out fish lying there, as flat as those pickerel. They took us without a
shot
being fired. Took us like babies in the pram."
"All day they questioned us. One guy was an SS guy. A real mean son of a bitch if you ever met one. Once
I
spit at him and he jammed me with a rifle barrel I swear six inches deep. Ten times he must have kicked
me in
the guts. Ten times! I couldn't get to his throat, I'd've taken him with me. They stripped our tanks,
what was
left in them. That night they pushed us into our tanks. I saw the flash of a torch through one of the gun
holes. You could hear a generator working nearby. Something was crackling and blistering on the hull or
the
turret top. Blue light jumped every which way through the gun holes. It was getting hot. Then I realized
the
sounds and smells and weird lights were welding rods being burned. The sons of bitches were welding us
inside
our own tanks. A hell of a lot of arguing and screaming was going on outside us. The light went flashing
on
and off, like a strobe light, if you know what I mean. Blue and white. Blue and white. Off and on. Off
and on.
But no real terror yet. Not until we heard the roar of a huge diesel engine. And the sound of it getting
louder. And then came scraping and brushing against the sides of our tanks. Sand began to seep through
the gun
holes and peep sights. The sons of bitches were burying us in our own tanks! All I could see was that
rotten
SS bastard smiling down at us. I saw his little mustache and his pale green eyes and his red nose and a
smile
the devil must have created. And his shining crow-black boots."
I couldn't talk. I couldn't ask him a question. A stunned sensation swept clean through me. First,
disbelief,
a surging block of disbelief, as if my veins had frozen in place. The dark pit in his eyes could be read;
the
darkness inside the tank, the utter, inhuman darkness that had become part of Parkie and part of his
comrades.
The imagined sense of it hit me slowly. It crept within me. I knew a sudden likeness to that feeling. It
was
peering over the edge of a high place. The ground would rush up to meet me and then fall away. The long
descent, the torturous fall, would become part of me... in the veins, in the mind. A shiver ran through
every
part of my body. And then hate welled in me, stark, naked, unadorned hate, hate of the vilest kind.
Parkie put his hand on my knee. His grip was hard.
"I never wanted to tell you, none of you. We all had our thing. You had yours. I had mine. I'm so sorry
your
feet are screwed up. I wish nothing had happened to you. But a lot of guys've had worse."
"What happened?" I said, letting his hand carry most of his message, letting my own small miseries fall
away
as if they did not exist. Not by comparison anyway. My feet had iced up practically in my sleep. I knew
the
ignoble difference.
"The sand was almost over all the tank, and the noise inside the tank started. Screaming and cursing and
crying. Cries like you never heard in your life. Godawful cries. I know I never heard anything like them.
And
coming out of guys I'd known a long time, tough guys, valiant guys, guys with balls who had gone on the
line
for me. I heard some of them call for their mothers. There was screaming, and then whimpering and then
screaming again. And curses! My God, curses that would raise the friggin' dead. The most unholy of
curses.
Everything dead and unholy and illegitimate raised from wherever they were being brought against the
Germans
and that little SS bastard. He was castrated and ripped and damned and denounced to the fires of hell.
You
have not heard profanity and terror and utter and absolute hatred all in one voice at the same time. The
volume was turned way up. It filled the tank. It filled that makeshift and permanent vault. And it filled
our
useless and agonized banging barehanded against the hull of the tank. Knuckles and fists and back-handers
against the steel. And the outside noise drowning all of it out."
I was still reeling, kept shaking my head, kept feeling the old glacier-like ice in my veins. And the
heat of
hatred coexisted with that ice. I was a mass of contradictions. Parkie kept squeezing my knee. The
pickerel
kept nosing the bags, hung up in their own world of silence. Silence extended itself to the whole of
Earth.
The quiet out there, the final and eventual quiet out there, after the war, was all around us.
"Suddenly," he continued, "there was nothing. The sand stopped its brushing and grating against the steel
of
the tank. Then the diesel noise grew louder, as if it was coming right through us. And powerful thrusts
came
banging at the tank. I didn't know what it was. And then we were being shoved and shaken, the whole
structure.
And I heard curses from outside and a lot of German on the air, and we seemed to be moving away from our
hole
in the ground. Whatever it was was pushing at us. And then it went away and we heard the same banging and
grinding and grunting of the engine nearby. Then the blue and white light again as a torch burned around
us
and the tank heated up, and lots of screaming but all of it German. And there were more engine noises and
more
banging and smashing of big bodies of steel. Finally the turret was opened and we were hauled out and
canteens
shoved in our faces and the other tanks were being opened up and guys scrambling out, some of them still
crying and screaming and cursing everything around them."
He reached for the last bottle in one of the bags. The bag began to drift slowly away in wavy pieces.
The
pickerel had gone. The bottle cap snapped off in his hand. I thought of the tank's turret top being
snapped
open, the rush of clean air filling his lungs, a new light in his eyes.
"Then I saw him," Parkie said. "The minute I saw him I knew who he was. General Rommel. He was looking
at
us. He looked me right in the eye, straight and true and bone-steady and no shit at all in it. I didn't
think
he was breathing, he was so still. But I read him right off the bat. The whole being of that man was
right in
his eyes. He shook his head and uttered a cry I can't repeat. Then he took a pistol from another guy,
maybe
his driver, a skinny itchy little guy, and just shot that miserable SS son of a bitch right between the
eyes
as he stood in front of him. Shot him like he was the high executioner himself; no deliberation, no
second
thought, no pause in his movement. Bang! One shot heard round the world if you really think about it. He
screamed something in German as if it were at the whole German army itself, each and every man of it.
Perhaps
it was lifted to whatever God he might have believed in because it was so loud, so unearthly. Then he
just
walked off toward a personnel carrier, not looking at us anymore or the SS guy on the ground, a nice-
sized
hole in his forehead."
He drained off the last bottle. He mouthed the taste of it for a while and wet his lips a few times. I
thought
he was remembering the dry sands, the heat, the embarrassed German general walking away on the desert. Or
this
parched earth being an ultimate graveyard for so many men, for so many dreams.
"They gave us water and food, the Germans did. One of them brought up one of our own jeeps. It was beat
to
hell, but it was working. One German major, keeping his head down, his eyes on the sand, not looking at
us,
pointed off across the sand. We started out, the sixteen of us, some walking, some riding, some still
crying
or whimpering. Some still cursing. The next day we met some Brits. They brought us to their headquarters
company. We were returned to our outfit. Some guys, of course, didn't get to go back on line, but were
sent
home as head cases. Can't blame them for that. I kept thinking about General Rommel, kept seeing his eyes
in
my mind. I can see the Germans now, the look on their faces, the shame that was in them. It was absolute,
that
shame, and he knew we knew. It was something he couldn't talk about, I bet. If he could have talked to
us, we
might have been taken to one of their prison camps. But he knew he couldn't do that to us. Make amends is
what
he had to do. He had to give us another chance. Just like we gave Ellen Kirby another chance at
drowning."
In his short flight he had circled all the way back to the Kirby circumstance and all that played with
it.
Frankie Parkinson, tanker, survivor of Tobruk and other places in the northern horrors of Africa, who
walked
away from death in the sand on more than one occasion. Parkie, who might be called Rommel's last known
foe,
who rolled over three cars on U.S. Route 1 and waged six major and distinct bouts with John Barleycorn
thereafter in his time. He was a man who got to know the insidious trek of cancer in his slight frame. I
loved
him more than any comrade that had shared a hole with me. He hurt practically every day of his life after
his
return from Africa, and hung on for twenty-five more torturous and tumultuous and mind-driven years. They
found him one night at the far end of the pond when nobody knew where he was for two days. A handful of
damp
earth was squeezed into one fist, and the metal crypt, perhaps, was long gone, just as perhaps were the
days
of Africa.
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...in God's Flower Garden |
By Colin Pip Dixon |
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$17.95 |
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The Fall of a Sparrow
"Thank you for seeing me," Steven said, entering the young priest's office. Father John wasn't very
fatherly
yet. He was in his mid-thirties with short, red hair, and a fresh, clean face. He was tall and athletic
and
had been a priest for only two years. His office was modest. There was a simple, wooden desk with a
plain,
wooden cross on it. On the wall, behind the desk, Andrei Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity. A
bookshelf
filled with well-worn books. A photocopy machine. And not much else.
"Sit down, sit down Steven. I'm always happy to see you."
Steven sat down at the desk, folding his hands and leaning forward tensely. His face was intense and
beautiful. Very intelligent. Sandy, straight hair. He was small and in his early twenties. On the left
side
of his neck there was a large red mark, from hours he spent each day with his violin.
"I wanted to do a confession with you," he began, smiling.
"I know, you told me."
"And I have a rather long..."
"Yes, that's why I suggested we do it here." Father John was open, natural, very likeable, with an inner
light
shining from him.
"Thank you," Steven said nervously.
"Shall we begin then?"
Steven nodded.
"In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, we kneel before you,
and
your child, Steven comes before you in honest desire to be reconciled with you. Before we continue I
affirm
that you, Lord, denied your forgiveness and your love to no one." Steven opened his eyes discretely and
watched Father John for a minute. He appeared so sincere in his prayers. "Nothing can separate us from
your
love, no matter how terrible it may seem to us. May your voice speak through your child, Steven now, to
bring
to his conscience all that you would have him speak here. In the name of Christ, your Son. Amen."
"It is a rather long story, I hope you don't mind," Steven began, eyes lowered.
"Take your time."
"You’ve heard me play at church, so you know a little, but I don't know what... what I mean to
say is
that I've felt for several years that... I feel funny saying it, but that God had given me a gift, with
the
violin, I mean." Steven blushed and the young priest laughed.
"You don't need to tell me that," Father John assured, "Everyone in the church feels that."
Steven
looked down bashfully.
"It's true that since I went on that pilgrimage to Lourdes I feel that something more comes
through me
when I play."
"I understand. It's beautiful to hear your testimony. It's important."
"No. No. But it's not enough!" Steven suddenly slapped his hand uncharacteristically against
the
desk.
"Excuse me?" the priest said, surprised.
"I'm sorry. I mean to say – why would God give me a gift, to communicate with music, to
transcend,
but not the gift of, well, of virtuosity? The gift to be able to technically realize what my musical
heart
does so easily?"
"What do you mean exactly?" Father John wanted to understand.
"I mean that in the profession there are certain things you need to be able to do with the
instrument,
and a certain repertoire you should be able to play. There is a technical level, a consistency and an
ease you
have to attain as a violinist if you want to be taken seriously. Artistically I am there, even above.
But
not the rest, not the rest. And..." he trailed off, looking up at the ceiling.
"But you're being hard on yourself, aren’t you? Can't you work on that?"
"Yes, yes. I can. I did. I searched for the right teacher. I thought, if I find the right
teacher who
understands me, it will fall into place." Steven spoke distractedly.
"And did you find...? Is that your current teacher?" Father John asked.
"Yes. I found her. Here, in New York. And it was perfect. The first week, I remember, I was
able
to do things I never did before on the violin, with ease now. She took me aside once and said, 'You are
very
special. You are very spiritually developed, that's why you were led to me. I can hear what you will be
capable of doing in the future.'"
Father John shook his head, "Spiritually developed?"
"Yeah, she's slightly New Agey."
"I see." Father John laughed.
"But I was glad, so happy to have a teacher who recognized that God had given me a gift, who saw
that
it was more than just ordinary talent. Steven sniffled and pulled a used tissue out of his pocket.
"Yes, I can see how that could be important, very important."
"And she believed in me. And I believed in her system."
"Her system?"
"Yes, her method of teaching, her technique, it made sense to me. For the fist time in my life I
enjoyed working on scales and exercises. It was something... I was constructing something now, a
framework.
Pure technique became something artistic, really, in the sense that I was creating a hand that moved
beautifully, like a dancer's body does. It was artistic because now I sought perfect intonation –
perfect
intonation not just to please musician's ears, but to find a perfect vibration, something celestial which
resonated more fully. I was creating sound."
"I think I understand," Father John said, furrowing his young brow, which resisted furrowing.
"And she was going to make a great violinist of me. She understood me. She loved me," Steven
continued, a little nervously.
"I take it this changed, from the way you're talking?"
"There was a French violinist in her class: Serge. He was younger than me and I didn't think too
much
of him at first. He was shy and withdrawn." Steven slammed his hand again on the desk, as if he
couldn't
help it. Father John jumped but tried to look calm.
"What is it?" he asked kindly.
"I don't know why, or how it happened," Steven continued as if Father John hadn't said anything.
"But
Serge started improving at an incredible rate. He took off. Soon he was playing Brahms Concerto and it
was..." he stammered, "it was good. I mean," his voice became low, "it was really, really good." He
became
silent. Father John felt that something was seriously the matter now. He couldn"t tell where this was
leading, but there was some-thing dark in the air.
"Lord, help me to be your instrument here for Steven," he prayed quietly in his mind as he
continued
to listen, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is..."
"And I became paralyzed. I was stuck in the same place. Serge became the genius of the class.
He
played... it wasn't just that it was good, but – oh, God, I hate, I hate to admit it – it moved me too.
And
he was funny too. Everyone in the class loved him. He even made me laugh! It wasn't even his own
language he
was speaking. Here I was speaking my own language and I couldn't make anyone laugh at all and he just
had to
say one word with a funny gesture or movement and the whole group was on the floor. And it was natural
and
wasn't annoying, though it annoyed me twice as much because of it! And when he played – God, it was
passionate, alive and perfect, so perfect. And my teacher would have long private talks with him about
international competitions that she wanted him to apply for and..."
"Are you interested in doing international competitions?" Father John asked, leaning foreword.
"No. Yes. I don't know. It's not the point. I want to at least be asked, you know. But it
was
many things, tête à tête conversations with him about music, about... anyway, it's not important."
Steven
became disturbingly silent and seemed to withdraw deep, deep into himself. Father John continued his
silent
prayers.
"What are you leading to, Steven?" He tried to say in a fatherly voice, but he felt too young.
He
felt intimidated. "Where do you feel that you've strayed from God." He envied Steven's passion, but
didn't
quite understand it either, or his whole world of music. Partly, he longed to be his friend. They were
close
in age and he often felt alone. Here was someone who had a strong faith, like him. He would have liked
to be
able to confess to him, to confide in him his own fears and weaknesses – to simply talk. But God asked
something else of him. God asked him to sacrifice personal desire in order to be something more. But
how his
heart pounded at the thought of talking – just talking – with Steven in a coffee shop, about everything.
It
was necessary, however, to maintain a separation, a distance.
"What am I getting at? Hum . . . Yeah. Well. Well. It's rather a theological question in the
end.
Does God choose people?" He said with a slight smirk.
"How do you mean?"
"Did God choose you for the priesthood, for example?"
"Yes," the young priest answered peacefully. Steven was annoyed by his calm assuredness. It was
perfectly unaffected, but it bothered him all the same.
"I felt the same way for me. But why would he choose me, give me a certain gift, lead me to the
one
person who could help me to fulfill this gift and then – sorry, shift, too bad, you're not the one
anymore!
Serge took my place and yet he wasn't chosen as I was. I was cheated out of something."
"Well, I don't..."
"Yes! Don't deny it. And I felt that God had played a twisted game with me. But I continued to
pray.
I shouldn't leave it there, I thought. What is it that's getting in my way of fulfilling God's plan for
me?"
Steven coughed. "And the more I looked, it became clear that there was only one thing. I needed my
teacher to
believe in me. I needed that support to push me ahead. Since Serge had arrived, I lost her belief in
me.
So..." He smiled a strange smile, the corners of his mouth lifted, but his eyes remained dead, without
the
slightest smile in them.
"So?" Father John felt involved now. He wanted to know where this was going even though he felt
frightened.
"So, I killed him," Steven said flatly.
"What?" Father John smiled back and began to laugh.
"I killed him."
Father John laughed nervously. "You? You mean – What?" Steven looked back at him silently and
Father
John stopped abruptly. They stared at each other eye to eye, wordlessly, for a long, long moment.
"What are you trying to say to me here?" Father John spoke finally, his voice dropping to a
deeper
place, all social mannerisms completely extinguished. "Are you..." he swallowed, "speaking
metaphorically? I
hope... I..." He knew he was supposed to be the instrument of God's love, of his pardon, but he didn't
know
how to speak, what to say, it was all too strange.
Steven cracked his knuckles. "Of course not! What do you think? I was just kidding, what I want
to..."
"God!" the young priest sighed deeply, not even listening to the rest of Steven's sentence.
"But I wanted to kill him," Steven cracked his knuckles again. "Didn’t Jesus say that if you so
much
as think about killing someone, you’ve killed them several times over in your heart?"
"Yes. But there's a difference. He wasn't – there's a difference."
"But I really wanted to kill him. And I thought – yeah, I actually thought – perhaps God wants
me to
do it. Isn't that funny?" Steven smiled bashfully, as if he revealed something very personal.
"Ah, I don't think it's very funny at all Steven. I find it kind of upsetting." He felt false,
like
an automated priest. But he couldn't feel natural, he could only fall back on easy clichés.
"No, but seriously. Maybe God brought me to this point, he gave me everything, the talent, the
teacher, then – you get it? And then, well, a block. A wall. But he gave us our will as well. Maybe it
was
part of his plan that I...?"
"What on earth are you saying? What kind of twisted..." Father John burst out vehemently.
"But Judas! Judas! He had to betray Christ. It had to happen. There would be no Christianity
if it
hadn't!" He bolted up out of his chair.
"That's not necessarily true."
"Yes it is. If there were no death? No resurrection? No horrible suffering and betrayal?"
"And if they had all just accepted and followed his teachings?" The young priest said earnestly,
like
a child.
"That’s heresy. You can't say that. If he hadn't gone through the entire human condition, if he
hadn't known the worst – in any case, if God hadn't willed it, if it wasn't the will of God, then, in
fact, in
reality, God did abandon his son, leaving him prone to another will. You yourself said in a sermon – you
said
– I remember it well, it was an impressive idea – you said that Judas' great sin wasn't the betrayal of
Christ, but his suicide. In doing that, and I quote from the great Father John now," Steven laughed, "In
doing that, Judas rejected completely the possibility of Christ's love."
"I know what I said."
"What if he hadn't killed himself? He may have ended up as one of the greatest apostles. After
all,
Peter denied Christ three times and Paul persecuted him."
"It's not the same."
"There is a special providence in the falling of a sparrow, don't you believe that?"
"Yes, I do."
"Perhaps God really wanted me to kill Serge." The young priest became very silent. "I really
believe
it was the right thing to do."
"But," Father John said very quietly and deliberately, "but you said that..."
"I said what?" Steven leaned foreword. The young priest stared at him intensely, into his eyes,
trying to understand.
"You said that you had wanted to, but that..." the priest spoke extremely quietly now, he felt
his
heart thumping so loudly he was sure that Steven could hear it. He felt a perverse, irrational desire
arise
in him, a desire to cry out 'I forgive you, Steven, I forgive you, let us be friends, forget whatever has
happened', but he couldn't.
"Aren't you required to keep my confession secret?" Steven asked, fiddling with something in his
jacket pocket.
"Yes, I... of course. I... Steven," the priest felt his mouth getting dry and his voice cracked
like
an adolescent's. Then, slowly, taking all of his effort:
"Did you kill him?"
"Yes."
"Oh my God." Father John tried to collect himself. I am here as the instrument of God's love...
he
repeated over and over in his head. But his knees started trembling.
"It was like out of one of those old movies," Steven began to laugh, "I slipped something in his
coffee – yes, his coffee." He suddenly became animated. "I really had a great time doing the research,
in
fact, learning about the different types of poisons, their effects, which ones could pass undetected, and
so
on, it's fascinating."
Father John stared at him. He felt paralyzed. Strangely he felt closer to Steven than ever
before. He
wanted more than anything to be his friend. Yet, at the same time, he knew in his head that he should be
horrified, but he didn't feel much of anything. Only an intense weakness throughout his body.
"Don't worry. I know that it was wrong, evil, whatever you want, I know. But I think God also
wanted
it. It was his time to die and my time to excel – and I repent, and now I am asking forgiveness.
But..."
"What arrogance!" The priest burst out. Steven stopped his words and all movement. "I can not
give
you absolution just like that. You must have true repentance and..." He suddenly cried out, "Ah! God!
What
are we saying! You didn't? This isn't true. You killed him, Steven?"
"You are the arrogant one! To think that you can deny me the forgiveness of Christ! Are you
Christ?
He who welcomed the thief into paradise and protected the adulteress as others were stoning her? You..."
his
face contorted with vehemence.
"I can't... this is serious. I need... No! No more theology, Steven, you are not well." Father
John
stood up now. "We must pray for... "
"Then God must stop me if he doesn't want it. You must give me your absolution and..."
"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be... " the young priest began praying loudly, in a firm
voice.
"You're so freakin' pious and good," Steven shouted over him. "All the women in the church are
in
love with you and your wisdom and – I pray at least as much as you do, I am more intelligent than you and
God
is just as – Stop praying and listen to me!" Steven shouted. The priest opened his eyes and saw that
Steven
held a small gun in his hand and he was pointing it at the priest. Father John stared at him pleadingly,
silently. Lost.
"God wants me to kill you too," Steven muttered.
"No... " the young priest was barely able to say.
"He will stop me if He doesn't want it. He will certainly stop me. He wouldn't let me kill such
a
devoted, beautiful servant of His if He didn't want it. Don't you believe? Don't you believe that He
will
protect you, Father?" He said 'Father' bitingly. "Where's your faith, young priest?"
"Steven, I..." He was trembling.
"Don't worry. He will stop me. And if He doesn’t, it's either that He wants it or that..." and
then
Steven whispered, "He doesn’t exist."
"Steven, He... I... love... "
Steven pulled the trigger. A loud shot. The priest thrown to the ground, his head
cracked
open, blood sprayed against the back wall and streaming along the floor next to his body. Steven let out
a
big sigh. He stared at the picture before him in disbelief. He couldn't believe that the young priest,
whom
he admired and envied and despised, lay shattered on the floor in front of him. It had been so easy. He
felt
filled with energy, exhilarated. He felt free, as if all his inner barriers had been broken down and he
could
finally breathe freely, deeply. He put the gun back into his jacket pocket, and, without looking again,
opened the door to the office and left standing tall.
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Shadow Play |
By Jeffrey B. Burton |
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$12.95 |
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Entitlement Cuts
Goddamned Styrofoam cup. Granger had set the cup, steaming with coffee, between his thighs as he made a
right
turn onto 3rd street. Hot sugared coffee had sloshed up through the mouth flap and splashed onto
Granger's
inner thighs. He choked back a profanity and steered the agency's car to the side of the road. A lady
in a
Ford Bronco gave him an impatient tap of her horn just as Granger edged off the blacktop and onto the
gravel.
What the...! Granger whipped his head sideways; shot her both a stern glare and the one finger salute as
she
sped by. This jerking movement caused more steamy coffee to splash up and spill out onto Granger's
lap.
How much longer did he have to put up with this endless shit? Although Granger was on time for his ten
o'clock appointment, he felt like bagging it and heading home. But then he would miss the incentive
bonus,
and he was so close to completing the next level. Granger's interim performance appraisal had been, well,
satisfactory. You will never soar with the eagles if you attain a mere "meets requirements" performance
rating. And that damned Renke! That goddamned Renke? Here they have Granger driving all over backass
creation for out state appointments while Renke gets the posh metro accounts. And the fartskull
overseers
blindly wonder why Granger only "meets requirements." Renke will win the Hawaiian quota package, hands
down,
while Granger gets to drive through endless armpit country. Granger gets to wreck his eyesight squinting
at
the connect-a-dot lines on the county map that constitute the pot hole filled roads in the grim grid that
represents his territory.
And now these very same government bureaucrats have lowered the quota demographics to eighty. That meant
a
mountain of more work stacked high atop of Granger's currently uncompleted pile. Granger's anger had
grown
during the quota meeting last week. He had gently informed his superiors that his plate was full, and
that
his current client load kept him jumping. But then Renke had interrupted, cutting him off at the knees,
by
telling the bean counters that he didn't foresee any difficulties in attaining the new goals set by the
regional management. Granger sat and burned as the overseers smiled and patted Renke on the back. He
wanted
to wipe that smug look off Renke's face right then and there. Give me the metro run, Granger thought,
and
I'll take the Maui package every goddamned year. One of these days, in the not too distant future, a
team of
proctologists would have to surgically remove his size thirteen from Renke's ass.
Granger pulled into the parking lot. He glanced through the overdue O'Reilly account. Granger put on
his hat
and walked quickly into the complex. He didn't stop by the receptionist's station as O'Reilly’s file
gave
Granger the correct suite number. Granger took the steps up to the third floor and stood outside room
314. He
looked down the hallway in both directions. Not much activity going on today. He paused for a second
and
peeked into the room. An elderly man in a robe and pajamas sat on a bed propped up by numerous pillows.
The
television was on with the volume set annoyingly high.
"Are you O'Reilly?" Granger entered the room.
"What?" asked the elderly gentleman.
"Are you Eugene O'Reilly, born December 12th, 1909?" Granger had to shout above the roar of the TV.
"Yes, I'm Gene. Who are you?"
"Could you please turn the television down?" Granger shut the door.
"Sure will young man." O’Reilly dug about his bedspread for what seemed to Granger like an eternity.
Upon
finding the remote buried under one of his many pillows it took a lesser eternity for him to find the
volume
control and turn the television down to a whisper.
"Thank you," Granger said as he stooped by the door as if to tie his shoe. "I'm the regional account
representative from the Social Security Office. You're one of my cases."
"What?" O'Reilly asked again, "Who are you?"
"I'm the regional account rep from the United States Social Security Office." Granger crossed the room
and sat
in the visitor's chair across from O'Reilly. "We’ve been wondering just how long you thought you'd be
able to
pull it off?"
"What?" O'Reilly sneezed into the sleeve of his robe.
"How long did you think you were going to be able to pull all this off?"
"Pull what off, Sonny?" A puzzled O'Reilly shook his head, "My social security is taken care of by Mrs.
Johnson in administration. You need to see Mrs. Johnson in administration."
"You know, Eugene, I've had a bad day. I almost got lost finding my way here, and then I spilled hot
coffee
all over my lap. Any future kids of mine are gonna need skin grafts."
"Ouch," O’Reilly gritted his dentures.
"Look Eugene," discussions like these were not part of Granger's job, actually they went directly against
agency policy, but he felt a certain bedside manner was called for, "The Wright brothers were at Kitty
Hawk
when you were born. You retired in 1972. You've been in this nursing home since 1988. Enough is enough,
Eugene. Just how long did you think you were going to get away with it?"
"I'm not sure I know what you mean young man," O’Reilly was becoming irritable, "but I'm going to call
for..."
Granger grabbed the bed frame and wheeled it, O'Reilly included, away from the assistance cord.
"Frankly,
Eugene, every time you fart Medicare gets a bill for five K. You had to suspect it wouldn’t last
forever."
"Listen," O'Reilly was now enraged, "I have no idea what you’re talking about. I paid into social
security.
That’s my money."
"You never paid into Medicare, Eugene. And your piddly contribution to Social Security dried up at the
teat
when peanut farmer ran the circus. Hell Eugene," Granger chuckled, "You’ve been living off welfare for
over
twenty years now. You're like one of them teenage moms."
"I want Mrs. Johnson in here immediately. She takes care of rude young men like you. I'll make sure Mrs.
Johnson files a complaint with your office regarding your insolence."
"You know, Eugene, I look at my pay stubs and see how much they deduct in social security. I know full
well
that I'm never going to see any of it," Granger mused. "Yet my generation is forced into indentured
servitude
in order to support a bunch of fossils like you. Honestly, Eugene, how long did you think it'd be before
we
found you out?"
"But it's my money, Sonny-boy. Roosevelt made us a promise," O'Reilly protested, "Roosevelt promised."
"Well, at least FDR was thoughtful enough to check out before he turned into a blood-sucking leech on the
nation's economy. Hmmm, blood-sucking leech, that sound like anyone we know, Eugene? What'd you expect,
that
about fifty of us would continue to whistle while we worked overtime just so you can sit here on your
hemorrhoids watching 'The Price is Right' into the next millennium?"
"I've earned everything I've gotten, you rotten little bastard," O'Reilly's face had turned beet red. "I
served in the military. I fought in the big war."
"I've read your silly ass file, Eugene. You were too old for combat so they put you in the mess hall. I
bet
they called you Cookie. You probably spent World War II drinking after-shave and screwing Filipino
girls."
Granger glanced down at his watch. "That was probably the best time of your life."
"That's not true!" O'Reilly wheezed and reached for his cane, "I'm going to get Mrs. Johnson and she's
going
to call the police. I don't know who you think you are, but I'm...”
"Oh no, Eugene, no," Granger shook his head mournfully, "I'm sorry. I know it's not your fault. It's
them
D.C. bastards, always raccooning into crap that'd be better off left alone. Geez, Eugene, you’re one of
my
few lucid clients. I was hoping to sit, rest my dogs awhile, and chew the cud, but here I go again
ruining
it. It's pretty much the same reason the missus left me. Well," Granger walked over and took the cane
out of
O'Reilly’s liver-stained hands, "I really must be going. Unfortunately you're not my only appointment
today.
I've got a one o’clock in some other Podunk down the road a stretch."
"From now on you do all your business through Mrs. Johnson." O'Reilly coughed and leaned back in his
bed. "I
don't care to ever see you again."
"Can't say as I blame you, Eugene. It's just crazy how much cost is involved," Granger reflected,
"Absolutely
mind-boggling. It finally reached the crisis point for them D.C. bastards I was telling you about. You
see
I'm from a sister branch of the Social Security Office, Eugene, one that never makes the headlines or TV.
And
I'm afraid to inform you that your account is past due. Sorry 'bout all this buddy. Time for the old
glue
factory."
"What?" O'Reilly caught his breath, "What do you want from me?"
"Your ghost.”
“My ghost?"
Granger shrugged, "As an account rep from the United States Social Security Office, I've come to help
facilitate you in the giving up of it."
"What?" O'Reilly's eyes grew wide. Realization sank in as he stared into Granger's un-budging grin.
Granger grabbed a pillow with both hands and pressed it against O’Reilly's face. Granger glanced at the
door
to double-check the wedge he had set in place denying access to any potential meddlers. He pressed
O'Reilly
down to the bed and waited. O'Reilly put up a slight struggle, but it was useless against the force of
Granger's full body weight.
Granger felt the familiar stirring in the front of his trousers. And, in a moment of almost spiritual
clarity, Granger realized that it was the job, the goddamned job, which kept him coming back day after
miserable day. It was the rush he always felt; the pride and gratification that came from doing the job,
and
doing it right, that allowed him to put up with the endless driving, ridiculous work quotas, bogus
incentive
plans, smug co-workers, and the mediocre evaluations.
It was the job...
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Best Bet in Beantown |
By G.S. Rowe |
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$17.95 |
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Prologue: Game Day
He stands there, naked, holding his brown, leather-tough hands out before him, palms down, examining his
fingers, a craftsman critically assessing the tools of his trade. League records list him as 5' 9" and
160
pounds. If he is, it is only when he is wearing his kangaroo leather playing shoes with their steel
plates at
toe and heel, and at the beginning of the season. Now, early in June, in the third month of the National
League schedule, his weight is closer to 150. And, naked here, he looks like he'd have to rock up on his
toes
to reach 5' 8". His skin where the sun has not roasted him nut-brown is doughy-white and his hair, which
he
wears short, is fair. His broad face, more open and accepting than handsome, sports a half dozen thin,
pale
scars, reminders of fielding errors or quirkily-bouncing balls. There is something about his compact and
muscular physique and his quick, fluid motions, that proclaim him an athlete. His eyes, faded blue,
almost
gray, but alert and confident, convey the same message. And why not? Hell, he is an athlete. A very good
one.
And, he's proud of that.
He lets his eyes drift to the heavy wool uniform hanging in his cubicle. He's worn the white blouse with
its
gothic scarlet B of the National League's Boston Beaneaters for seven years now. And the Boston nine has
been
pennant winners in three of those seasons. They're in contention again this year. To play professional
base
ball in 1897 is a remarkable accomplishment; to play shortstop as he does on a championship caliber
National
League squad is, well, even more remarkable, he thinks. People in Boston know Herman Long. Cheer him.
Cranks
around the League roast him, but concede he is a formidable opponent, sure-handed in the field, swift on
the
base paths, surprisingly powerful at bat. Not bad for a son of struggling German immigrants. Few of his
chums
from his old neighborhood have come as far.
He examines his uniform. Unlaundered for several games, it is more dirt-brown and sweat-gray than white.
The
shirt collar, so useful in keeping the sun from his neck, is rimmed black with sweat and grime. Yet, he
knows
that once he pulls it on later that afternoon and trots onto the grass of the South End Grounds under
sunny
skies, it will seem to him as brilliantly white as the first time he'd worn it. It is a thrill he
experiences
each game.
Herman Long—mates and opponents alike call him "Germany"—returns to his study of his fingers. They are
battered and crooked, two nails swollen dark blue and purple and clotted with blood. He turns his left
hand
over, his glove hand, and examines the puffy yellow-purple knuckles. He probes the knuckle of his index
finger
and winces at the soreness there. He works his left thumb, discovering again what he already knows: he
can't
flex the joint. Quickly losing interest in his thumb—hell, he hasn't been able to bend the little finger
on
this throwing hand either for four years now; it hasn't stopped him—he continues his medical inventory.
He
studies his pins. The oil-colored bruises covering his ankles and shins don't bother him any more than
the
large contusion on his thigh where recently he was hit by a pitch. Of greater concern is the angry cut
below
his right knee that hasn't fully healed. He was spiked during a double play attempt more than two weeks
ago
and the wound hasn't closed completely. Fifteen stitches and it still leaks puss. And pains him. He'll
have to
watch that rascal, watch that the redness doesn't spread in thin lines up his leg. But of even greater
importance to him at the moment is his right ankle that has ballooned. He rolled it badly the previous
day and
knows that without treatment he'll have trouble playing today.
And playing today is critical. The team is finally doing better, largely because of his play, and that of
his
infield chums. In past weeks they've thrown up a stone wall against opposing batters. His absence from
the
lineup could kill the team's momentum. He pushes at the swollen ankle and feels the dull ache there creep
up
and meld with the sharper pain from his knee wound. He realizes he's clenching his teeth hard enough to
make
his jaw throb.
Five minutes later, he completes his tally of wounds and afflictions, and sighs deeply. Just another day
in
the life of a professional base baller. He pulls a tub holding a block of ice noisily across the planked
floor, and begins to stab at the ice with a pick, shattering the block into hundreds of glistening
shards.
Satisfied that the tub is ready for his ankle, he puts down the pick and wipes his hands on a towel. He
is an
efficient man, on and off the field. Concluding that it will be a waste of time doing nothing but nursing
a
bad wheel, he hobbles toward a shelf holding a half dozen books that provide escape for players.
He's barely pulled a well-thumbed copy from the shelf and turned toward the tub when he senses movement
behind
him. He twists to see who's joined him for pre-game medical treatment. Before he can greet—or even focus
on—
the newcomer—what feels to him like a sledge hammer crashes into the side of his skull, bringing with it
searing pain and the rush of muddied colors: dirty-yellows, varigated blues, purple-oranges. It is as if
all
of his bruises have become one and have sucked him in, enveloping him in pain. Then, blissfully, there is
nothing but blackness for Germany Long of the Bostons, jewel of League short stops.
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Head Full of Traffic |
By Brian Ames |
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$12.95 |
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SPOOKY TREE
"There he is, kids."
They strain against their seat belts, craning to see out the rear window. "Spooky Tree!" they squeal,
simultaneously, with delight. "Spooky Tree!"
The tree, or what's left of it, is an old oak in the center of a pasture. It's been topped so many
times, and
the bark fallen away, it looks like the hoary figure of a headless giant whose trunk might, at any
moment,
split and rise to walk the earth. Torso, neck, arms — all chopped off.
"Tell us how he got his name," my boy demands from the back. "Yeah, tell us," my daughter agrees.
"Someday," I promise. "When you're older."
More than a hundred years had passed and the valley looked very much the same. The sun still rose over a
near
ridge and cast light down on morning fog. The stand of trees to the north had grown up and the solitary
oak
in the center of the field was twice as large. No indication remained that a battle had taken place here
except that the surrounding acreage was listed on the National Historic Register and, once in a while,
developers nearby would find lead balls in the soil. Bones of soldiers rested in graves beneath the
valley,
forgotten.
Hiram and Mike sprinted through high grass toward the old oak that nestled their tree fort.
Hiram was
black, Mike was white. Because of this, they weren't supposed to play together. They did, though, and
the
fort they had built together beckoned. No other pair of boys Hiram or Mike knew had anything to compare
with
it.
The construct was reached by ascending a ladder of small crosspieces nailed directly to the oak's
stout trunk. Mike climbed the ladder quickly; it was harder for Hiram, who weighed about thirty pounds
more.
But once they were up, inside, they both were equally at ease. After all, the fort was the most
significant
thing either of them had accomplished – their domain, over which they had total control. This was
especially
important to Hiram, whose daddy was always drunk-punching on his mama's face, who got hassled all the
time by
cops or truant officers for swiping smokes from Bandy's or skipping school. Hiram thought most of his
teachers were pricks because they made no secret they thought he was unresponsive and slow. Sometimes
Hiram
was jealous of Mike, a kid who brought home great report cards to happy parents with no effort at all.
Mike
always seemed to have the upper hand on things that mattered. And he was the most fantastic smoker Hiram
had
met since he moved out from Charleston.
When the boys reached the top, the ground looked a lot further down than the fort had looked up in the
tree.
Articles that would be impossible for a boy of twelve to carry up the ladder could be transferred from
ground
to tree with a rope hanging from a small hatch in the fort's floor. They’d pulled diverse items up into
their
nest: two old chairs from a dinette, a length of mildewed carpet, a stolen boom box.
"Hey, here's the surprise I promised ya," Mike shouted. He reached in the pocket of his jeans
and
produced a pack of non-filter Camels.
"Lemme see 'em," Hiram demanded. "No filters!" You tryin' to kill me?"
"You pussy!" Mike laughed. "You gonna tell me you're not smoking with me, your best buddy, just
cuzza
no filters?"
"Uh-uh." Hiram liked to sneak smokes, and he was not a pussy.
The pair sat in opposite chairs and exchanged looks across a busted table. The pack of Camels
sat
open in front of them and Mike reached for the pack to withdraw two smokes. Rolling one to Hiram, he
struck a
match to his own, then held it out for Hiram to get a light.
They puffed deeply, inhaling. Hiram hadn't used to inhale because it gave him huge headaches,
but he
had learned to after Mike explained that only pussies didn't inhale. Mike had a number of cool smoking
tricks, including smoke rings and inhaling through his nose. Hiram could almost blow rings but whenever
he
tried to inhale through his nose it hurt so much he’d usually just about puke from coughing so hard.
"Pussy!"
Mike would laugh.
"Look!" Hiram said, "I did it!" A perfect ring of smoke floated over to Mike, slowly turning out
on
itself.
"Not too shabby, Hi. That was as cool a ring as I ever seen."
"Well, now for my surprise," Hiram announced, reaching down below the table. He pulled his
pants-leg
back over his calve and withdrew a dirty magazine from his tube sock.
Mike grabbed the mag from Hiram's hands and immediately turned to the foldout. "Hmmm. Looks
pretty
neat." He thumbed through the rest of the magazine, tossed it back over to Hiram, who had already seen
it.
Hiram scooted over and added it to a stack of skin mags growing in the corner.
"Ya know, I think we should rip off some old mattresses or something for this place," Mike said.
He
secretly hoped that Hiram would soon agree to lift the ban on bringing girls to the fort.
"What the hell for?" Hiram misunderstood Mike's suggestion as an idea for a sleepover in the
fort.
Since he wasn't allowed to play with Mike, he couldn't imagine the reaction of his parents if he were to
ask
whether he could sleep out with "that white boy."
"T'bring up chicks, ya dipshit!" Mike answered, as if the intent was obvious.
"Yeah, buy ain't no chicks comin' up in our fort," Hiram vowed, closing the issue.
The Hiram remembered what he was going to show Mike, something truly amazing and un-pussy enough
to
impress him. "Hey, check this out what my cousin showed me." He crawled over to the hatch for the rope
transporter, cleared it. Hauling up the rope was hard, since it was thick and long. "Gimme a hand, ya
wimp,"
he demanded. Mike crawled over and started pulling too. In a few seconds, the entire coil lay at their
knees. Hiram found the end and held it up in front of their faces. "This is how to make a hangman's
noose,"
he announced.
Hiram began to work the thick rope in his hands, doubling the rope back on itself, wrapping the
knot
once, twice... thirteen times. Then he fed the loose end through the smaller loop and pulled taut, his
arms
outstretched. The knot was complete.
"Well, shit. That's the coolest thing I ever saw," Mike adjudged. "Show me how."
"Nope."
"Aw come on. Don't be a prick, Hi."
"I just did it in front of your face — can't you even see?"
"Just show me again. Come on."
"All right," Hiram capitulated. "Just don't show anybody else." He undid the noose and began
again.
"Now ya take the rope and make a loop, and when you done that, ya wrap it real tight thirteen times,
because
that's the unluckiest number. If ya don't wrap it thirteen times, the person ya hang will come back as a
ghost and..."
"Oh bullshit, Hiram, you think I'm a pussy? Believin' in ghosts?"
"Don't matter whether you believe or not, that's just why there's thirteen loops — OK, then you
take
this loose end, feed it through the little hole and pull tight. Then when you put it on the person's
neck,
you take up the slack on this part here, see? It slides through the loops and the rope goes tight. And
then
you hang 'im."
"Who?"
"Anybody you wanna."
"OK, lemme try now."
"Here ya go," Hiram conceded, tossing the noose at Mike's eager hands. He undid the noose, made
his
loop, began to wrap it and was on the ninth twist when Hiram first sensed something odd. Mike finished
the
thirteenth loop, fed the loose end through and pulled taut. "First try," he bragged as Hiram caught
another
flash kill him from an unknown source.
"Hey. You OK, Hi?" You look like you just seen the ghost you was talkin' about."
"Yeah. I'm all right. I just felt kinda weird for a second, like someone was tryin' to talk at
me
but it wasn't you. It was here though..."
"Where?"
kill him
"In the fort." Hiram was tuned into something urgent, confusing.
"Whatever," Mike shrugged, pulling the loop around his own head. "Hey, look at this — it
fits."
"Hold the knot and pull up on the rope," Hiram advised.
Kill him
Mike complied and fully received the noose. He stood, as best could be managed with the low
ceiling,
now proud at his achievement. "Whaddaya think?"
"Excellent."
Kill Him...
Hiram was stunned. It was too much for him to comprehend. He wanted badly to understand, but
could
only kneel agape.
It was the goddamned tree! He felt himself start to get dizzy, barely managed to croak, "Hey Mike... no
shit,
somethin's happening, somethin's wrong with me I think..."
KILL Him... like it had more to say.
"What's wrong, Hi. You look like crap. Let's get down OK? OK?"
KILL HIM before he KILLS YOU!
Hiram understood.
"What the fuck's wrong with you Hiram? Why you lookin' at me like that. What'd I say?"
But Hiram didn't answer. Instead, he exploded from the crouch and thrust his hundred and twenty
pounds against Mike's smaller frame. Mike flew backwards into the wall, which failed, exploding outward
with
the sickening crunch of splintering wood, and the plywood burst like cracking eggshell followed by Mike,
noose
wrapped.
He arced out in a sort of whirlwind of wood chips and plywood glue and rope, and the rope
uncoiled and
grew long like a copperhead, then struck, and its fangs buried themselves in his neck. He dangled there,
swinging.
It was a long time before Hiram descended. When he did, he stood in front of Mike, who had long
stopped swinging. Hiram lit one of the Camels, looked at Mike's popped tongue, blue lips, eyes like
marbles.
"Pussy," he spat. Tears coursed his cheeks.
"See kids, Spooky Tree comes after children who have misbehaved. You can be laying there in your beds at
night, thinking you've gotten away with something, that maybe me and Mommy don't know about it."
I was just kidding them, watching them wide-eyed in the rear-view mirror. My boy six, my
daughter
ten. Some sense of humor.
"You might hear a little tap against the window, or some scratching outside, like a mouse trying
to
get in."
"Sure, Dad," my daughter pips. She's old enough to know bullshit when she hears it.
"Sure enough," I nod. "Step over to the window and see what it is. If you don't mind those
slimy,
rotten, woody limbs crashing through the glass and pulling you out, carrying you off to wherever haunted
trees
hang out..."
My wife will kick my ass if they tell her I've been teasing them like this. They already have
trouble
staying in their beds all night, always coming in our room in the early hours.
The day following the skirmish dawned like most others: gray dew and mist blanketed the valley's trough.
The
only difference, really, was the stench and the bodies. Birds and small animals started making their
morning
sounds, and shafts of sunlight filtered through lean spots in the fog. Dewdrops sparkled like little
jewels.
A pack of wild dogs rooted around some of the bodies, taking exploratory bites.
The footsoldier woke unharmed. His ears rang; he’d been knocked unconscious by the concussion
generated when a Rebel shell exploded on the other side of a horse next to him. The horse had borne a
sergeant. The footsoldier had been lucky, just sprayed with horse and sergeant guts when the shell hit.
He
knew it was just as likely that it could be he who could be in a state of anatomical disarray like that
of his
fellows. The falling of a shell had a cold sort of randomness to it.
He rose, aching, surveyed his surroundings. Every few yards lay another soldier wrapped around
torn
canvas strips, under cots, bedrolling. Broken muskets and swords. The horses were grazing over to his
left;
they had moved away from two that had been hit by errant fire.
As the silver fog cleared, he was better able to appreciate the full extent of the skirmish. It
must
have been huge, he thought. There were hundreds of corpses and pieces of abandoned artillery littering
the
valley floor. Lasted for hours. But he could only remember the first few minutes. He thought about
this a
moment, then sank to his knees and bowed, offered a prayer.
When he rose and re-examined his surroundings, he realized most of the corpses were dressed in
blue.
The North had lost this engagement. His stomach dropped at the realization; there might be Confederate
troops
patrolling the area right now.
"Best be gettin' the hell outta here, I guess," he muttered to those fallen around him. He
offered a
mock salute. "Be seein' ya," he said, then turned for a copse of trees to the west, beyond a large,
solitary
oak. This direction took him away from where the Rebels had harried his regiment on the east.
As he neared the big tree, his fears of being discovered by a Southern patrol multiplied. Being black,
he
knew they would kill him, or at least torture him before sending him south.
He stepped over a gray-clad soldier, noticed a yellow glint in the morning halflight, a firefly
of
color in his peripheral vision. He looked again, square on.
A gold tooth shown from the soldier's mouth, and he weighed his fears of detection against the monetary
possibilities. Finding that the potential for money won out, he stooped to excise the gold. The foot
soldier
drew his knife, cut into the gums adjacent to the prize. He peeled the gums back, revealing the root and
jawbone. His fingers worked the tooth, wiggling it back and forth, but it wouldn't dislodge. He rose
and
stood over the corpse, slammed a rifle butt down onto the jaw, and the dead soldier watched him through
stupid
eyes. The tooth came loose; he bent to retrieve it, then held it in his hand, smiling. Then he heard a
voice
say, "Hey, what you doin' there, boy?"
The gold tooth dropped from the footsoldier's hand, spinning slowly, from a great height.
He started to turn.
"Turn slowly, I got rifles all over you. Raise your arms."
The footsoldier complied, turned, saw a dozen Confederate cavalry. He pissed himself.
Laughter broke out among the men. "Ha! He's pissed hisself!" The group roared. "Nigger, y'all
smell awful this morning," spoke one, their captain, he presumed.
He was conscious that he had begun to sweat through his blue uniform. The fabric, of which he
had
once been so proud, was soaking through at the armpits, at the small of the back. A dark, circular stain
had
spread on the front of his trousers. Now, this morning, the uniform was a symbol of his own demise.
Either
way, he wasn't getting out of this one: He knew they would never let him go. And he knew he would never
return to work the Southern farms. The wool clutched his skin like talons and its weight pulled him down
in
the grass, next to the dead soldier, the wreckage of its mouth. In rejoinder, the footsoldier's mind
weighed
the likelihood of escape against the cost he knew he must now forfeit for the terrible conduct he'd
visited on
the Rebel soldier's body. He glanced over and a fly lit, walking in the sticky pulp that had once been
lips.
A shot wracked his body, spun him over and down. Lying on the ground, he realized he'd taken a
wound
in the shoulder. The Rebel patrol dismounted its horses, towered over him.
"Get up, dead man," their captain demanded. He struggled to rise, his back in agony, left arm
dangling, half covered in mud. His breath came in gasps.
"Let's give you a ride on the captain's mount, huh?" They pulled him to his feet, threw a rope
over a
low-hanging limb. "Get on the horse," the captain commanded.
The black man was no longer afraid, only sad. He thought of making love to his wife, of holding
his
baby child, of the embrace of his mother when he was a small plantation boy. He thought of sun and
springtime
and honeycomb as he slid his foot in the stirrup, mounted the animal. He held his chin high and fully
received the hastily tied noose, one wrapped a couple of times around a slip knot. The horse whickered;
the
sound comforted him. He whispered a Sweet Jesus prayer and felt the horse move under him.
They thought the black Union footsoldier was dead when they pulled him down. Truth is, he was
probably
close. But he moaned, so they brutalized him and desecrated his body like savages.
Then they began to dig graves for the fallen Confederates. But they let the Union soldiers lay
out in
the sun, and it shown down like justice, and a lone crow watched from the branches of the oak. The
putrefaction rose in septic layers, and the crow stared out at it, and cawed a long reprimand.
"Mommy, we can't sleep," croak our little ones through dry throats. They have collaborated in their
unease,
come down the hall to disturb our sleep. There is strength in numbers. How one of them summoned the
courage
to rise from his or her bed, alone, out of the nest of covers, out from the sacristy of blankets pulled
overhead, is a mystery.
"Why honey?" my wife inquires through half-sleep, of the eldest, our daughter. "What's wrong?"
"It's Spooky Tree," my son says.
"He's outside," agrees my daughter.
Their eyes are as large and wide as silver dollars.
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