I finally got around to joining Twitter last month... February 2012. I'd heard about it for years (of course) but the whole concept of Twitter seemed rather foreign. I've belonged to Internet discussion groups since 1998 and I joined Facebook in 2008 or thereabouts if my new timeline is correct, but Twitter? I didn't want to be limited to tweets of 140 characters... most of my sentences are longer than that.
Anyway... I told myself that this is the year I'm going to break out of my comfort zone and do more socializing... at least on the Internet. I figure that's a good place to start before branching off into the real world and actually talking to other people. See... if I had my way I'd probably sit in front of this keyboard composing stories most of my waking life.
Fortunately (or unfortunately whichever the case may be) no one thinks my stories are good enough to buy so I have to work in order to keep the electric turned on and the Internet connection functioning, otherwise I receive threatening letters in the mail. Not good, that. So I work part time in the real estate field trying to convince people to buy over-priced properties in an under-valued market... or is it the other way around? I sometimes get confused about it all. Luckily, if I put on a suit and tie people tend to think that I know what I'm going on about, otherwise...
So I took the Twitter plunge and joined up... at first I thought... who am I going to follow? I don't know anyone that twitters. So my account sat dormant for six or seven days while I contemplated Twitter suicide (is there such a thing?) and other scenarios that might alleviate or at least placate the feelings growing in my mind that I was utterly lost and alone in the Twitter universe, other than the Internet prostitutes who were nibbling at my Twitter feed.
By and by, though, I discovered other writers who were twittering... tons of them! Ah! I thought to myself... now that's why I joined Twitter. So I followed one writer, and then another, and pretty soon I started to feel I was part of something a lot bigger than I imagined it being.
It has come as a pleasant surprise that I am learning so much about the craft of writing. My only regret is that I wish I would have joined years ago. I do have a few concerns as my list of people that I follow grows... it seems rather difficult to keep up with all the tweets from everyone, and I'm only following 117 people at the moment. How on earth do people manage to follow thousands? I guess I'll figure that out as the time goes by... or not.
Either way, it's been fun! Thanks everyone!
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Thaumaturge - chapter 2
The truck creaked and groaned down the road in the mid morning glare of the sun surrounded by the greenery of the trees and the twittering of birds nesting there. The troupe steered clear of larger cities preferring to camp outside villages and small towns who welcomed the distractions from a hard life that a band of Gypsies offered. They’d stopped for the better part of a week by Penza, making camp a mile out of town, setting up tents and stringing ribbons and posters with pictures on each proclaiming the sights to be seen inside. Torches were made ready. The women took their best dresses stored in trunks and aired them out on ropes that they strung between trees before dressing in them. And then a group of the prettiest girls and women among them journeyed into town walking the rutted dirt road lifting their long dresses so as not to muddy them.
"I don't like those people looking at you." Ivan didn't want Yelena to go. He sulked like a pampered child the night before and when Yelena put his hand on her breast he drew it away… something he had never done before. "I can't help it, Yelena… you are my wife. I cannot stand the thought of men who you don't know looking at you and wanting you the way strange men are apt to do."
"Then I will stay here with you," Yelena proclaimed, although she knew when the morning came things would be different. She said it because she loved him and she said it because it made him happy. "You are the only man I'll ever love… my grandmother told me so. Another man—any other man—looking at me has nothing to do with our love… nothing at all now that I have you. There is only you and I and our love… all other people in this world are but ghosts to me. If I have to go to town with the other women, it means nothing. We are Gypsies… this is our life."
When she placed his hand upon her breast again, he kept it there, fondling her the way she had taught him. She arched her chest under his touch waiting for him to mount her. When she came she shuddered violently clutching at Ivan never wanting to let him go.
"Get up, Yelena, and go with me," Anastasya said, coming to their tent early the next morning and calling to her. Her sharp tone sounded more a demand than a request. "You are a woman of our troupe now… we must all do our part to draw the townspeople into our camp. Our coffers are low and we have many miles to travel before we reach our destination."
The townspeople always seemed delighted to see the arrival of the Gypsies. For them, it meant a festival had come unannounced. Spontaneous celebrations broke out throughout the town with much drinking in the streets and tables brought from inside homes out of doors and laden with good food for all to partake. It was as if the wandering nomads brought a sense of revelry with them into each town they visited, reminding the people that life was more than the drudgery of day to day living.
Yelena suspected that the wisest people who live in the towns where the Gypsies stopped knew they were being fleeced. But they either didn’t care or perhaps they thought giving up a few of their hard-earned rubles for a night’s entertainment was worthwhile. Young teenage boys ran alongside the Gypsy women asking to see their ankles and when one of the women raised her dress to her knees the boys ran away giggling and laughing and pushing one another. Yelena knew from experience that she’d see the same boys at the Gypsy camp later that night carrying coins in their pockets and hopes in their hearts of seeing more than just ankles.
“I don’t like to think of you dancing for anyone but me,” Ivan said when the women returned to camp having spread the word in town about the Gypsy carnival. “Can’t you do something else?”
“My grandmother taught me how to read palms,” Yelena said, knowing her young husband was jealous and loving him for it. “If you help me, we could set up a tent. People like to have their fortunes told. They’ll pay for it. We could make a sign like my grandmother used to have nailed to the side of her wagon… a palm with an eye in the middle of it.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon scavenging white-washed boards from a barn wall behind an old tumble-down farmhouse nearby nailing them together with bent square iron nails they straightened with a hammer on a rock and finding a brush and paint among the jumbled assortment of junk that had accumulated in the old barn lop-sided lee side west but still standing behind the farmhouse. The paint was blood red. The palm and eye looked black in the light of the full moon as it rose first low on the horizon then higher in the sky as the townspeople began trickling into camp migrating first to the torch-lighted tents where pretty Gypsy women danced and tapped their tambourines and later to Yelena’s outlying tent where they plunked down coins, holding out their left hands for her to peer into.
“You were very good tonight,” Ivan praised Yelena later when the crowds had gone and they were alone in their tent and naked in each others’ arms. “I liked how you rolled your eyes back in your head when you were telling fortunes. It looked so real.”
“What do you mean?” Yelena asked, puzzled. She didn’t remember rolling her eyes back.
“When you reached out and took people by the hand, sometimes your eyes went white,” Ivan explained. “I was standing there watching. And you’d speak in a strange voice telling people who they would meet and when they would marry and how many kids they’d have.”
“I don’t remember doing that… all I did was to look into their hands reading their palms.”
“Yes, but then you would touch their hands. That’s what made it seem so real. A shudder would go through you. I could see it from where I stood. It must have made quite an impression on the people as well,” Ivan said, counting the coins in the hat they’d put out. “We made a lot of money tonight, Yelena. More than I can remember ever making.”
“Do I ever speak in a strange voice when I touch you, Ivan?”
“Only when you’re coming very hard,” Ivan laughed.
“I’m serious,” Yelena giggled, punching him playfully. “Sometimes I get impressions from you that I don’t like to think about. Do I ever say anything strange?”
“You tell me not to go. I don’t know what you mean, though. When I ask you where I am going you only say it again… Don’t go, Ivan. Don’t go. I think you might be having a dream but your eyes are open. You don’t seem to hear me though…”
Yelena drifted off to sleep that night with a vague sense of foreboding. She dreamed that she was separated from Ivan, from everyone in the Gypsy troupe with whom they were traveling, and though she searched the countryside calling out for someone, anyone, to answer, no one did. She was alone.
The next morning she was awakened by Russian soldiers rumbling into the camp riding in trucks and carrying rifles. They pulled everyone out of their tents making them stand in a row covered only by blankets while a man who seemed in charge walked down the line with a wooden rod in his hand pointing out men and boys who were immediately pulled out of line and placed in the back of one of the trucks. And then they drove away. That was the last time Yelena ever saw Ivan or his brother Igor. The women and children who were left behind wailed and pulled at their hair.
Finally, Anastasya the Gypsy leader came to Yelena proclaiming this calamity was her fault… that before she had come to live with them their luck was good. Now it had turned ill. She stood pointing a crooked finger at her saying was Yelena’s fortune-telling that brought bad luck to the entire troupe. And that she was no longer welcome to journey with the troupe.
"But I told you we should not go this way," Yelena argued through her tears. "I warned you… but you wouldn't listen… no one would listen… and now look what has happened."
Anastasya walked up to Yelena slapping her face as she cursed the girl. They left her standing by the road with only the handmade dress on her back and the coins in her pocket she had earned the night before. Anastasya knew nothing of them or she would have demanded the money be given over. Yelena was fifteen years old and alone in a world in which she’d never been on her own.
"I don't like those people looking at you." Ivan didn't want Yelena to go. He sulked like a pampered child the night before and when Yelena put his hand on her breast he drew it away… something he had never done before. "I can't help it, Yelena… you are my wife. I cannot stand the thought of men who you don't know looking at you and wanting you the way strange men are apt to do."
"Then I will stay here with you," Yelena proclaimed, although she knew when the morning came things would be different. She said it because she loved him and she said it because it made him happy. "You are the only man I'll ever love… my grandmother told me so. Another man—any other man—looking at me has nothing to do with our love… nothing at all now that I have you. There is only you and I and our love… all other people in this world are but ghosts to me. If I have to go to town with the other women, it means nothing. We are Gypsies… this is our life."
When she placed his hand upon her breast again, he kept it there, fondling her the way she had taught him. She arched her chest under his touch waiting for him to mount her. When she came she shuddered violently clutching at Ivan never wanting to let him go.
"Get up, Yelena, and go with me," Anastasya said, coming to their tent early the next morning and calling to her. Her sharp tone sounded more a demand than a request. "You are a woman of our troupe now… we must all do our part to draw the townspeople into our camp. Our coffers are low and we have many miles to travel before we reach our destination."
The townspeople always seemed delighted to see the arrival of the Gypsies. For them, it meant a festival had come unannounced. Spontaneous celebrations broke out throughout the town with much drinking in the streets and tables brought from inside homes out of doors and laden with good food for all to partake. It was as if the wandering nomads brought a sense of revelry with them into each town they visited, reminding the people that life was more than the drudgery of day to day living.
Yelena suspected that the wisest people who live in the towns where the Gypsies stopped knew they were being fleeced. But they either didn’t care or perhaps they thought giving up a few of their hard-earned rubles for a night’s entertainment was worthwhile. Young teenage boys ran alongside the Gypsy women asking to see their ankles and when one of the women raised her dress to her knees the boys ran away giggling and laughing and pushing one another. Yelena knew from experience that she’d see the same boys at the Gypsy camp later that night carrying coins in their pockets and hopes in their hearts of seeing more than just ankles.
“I don’t like to think of you dancing for anyone but me,” Ivan said when the women returned to camp having spread the word in town about the Gypsy carnival. “Can’t you do something else?”
“My grandmother taught me how to read palms,” Yelena said, knowing her young husband was jealous and loving him for it. “If you help me, we could set up a tent. People like to have their fortunes told. They’ll pay for it. We could make a sign like my grandmother used to have nailed to the side of her wagon… a palm with an eye in the middle of it.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon scavenging white-washed boards from a barn wall behind an old tumble-down farmhouse nearby nailing them together with bent square iron nails they straightened with a hammer on a rock and finding a brush and paint among the jumbled assortment of junk that had accumulated in the old barn lop-sided lee side west but still standing behind the farmhouse. The paint was blood red. The palm and eye looked black in the light of the full moon as it rose first low on the horizon then higher in the sky as the townspeople began trickling into camp migrating first to the torch-lighted tents where pretty Gypsy women danced and tapped their tambourines and later to Yelena’s outlying tent where they plunked down coins, holding out their left hands for her to peer into.
“You were very good tonight,” Ivan praised Yelena later when the crowds had gone and they were alone in their tent and naked in each others’ arms. “I liked how you rolled your eyes back in your head when you were telling fortunes. It looked so real.”
“What do you mean?” Yelena asked, puzzled. She didn’t remember rolling her eyes back.
“When you reached out and took people by the hand, sometimes your eyes went white,” Ivan explained. “I was standing there watching. And you’d speak in a strange voice telling people who they would meet and when they would marry and how many kids they’d have.”
“I don’t remember doing that… all I did was to look into their hands reading their palms.”
“Yes, but then you would touch their hands. That’s what made it seem so real. A shudder would go through you. I could see it from where I stood. It must have made quite an impression on the people as well,” Ivan said, counting the coins in the hat they’d put out. “We made a lot of money tonight, Yelena. More than I can remember ever making.”
“Do I ever speak in a strange voice when I touch you, Ivan?”
“Only when you’re coming very hard,” Ivan laughed.
“I’m serious,” Yelena giggled, punching him playfully. “Sometimes I get impressions from you that I don’t like to think about. Do I ever say anything strange?”
“You tell me not to go. I don’t know what you mean, though. When I ask you where I am going you only say it again… Don’t go, Ivan. Don’t go. I think you might be having a dream but your eyes are open. You don’t seem to hear me though…”
Yelena drifted off to sleep that night with a vague sense of foreboding. She dreamed that she was separated from Ivan, from everyone in the Gypsy troupe with whom they were traveling, and though she searched the countryside calling out for someone, anyone, to answer, no one did. She was alone.
The next morning she was awakened by Russian soldiers rumbling into the camp riding in trucks and carrying rifles. They pulled everyone out of their tents making them stand in a row covered only by blankets while a man who seemed in charge walked down the line with a wooden rod in his hand pointing out men and boys who were immediately pulled out of line and placed in the back of one of the trucks. And then they drove away. That was the last time Yelena ever saw Ivan or his brother Igor. The women and children who were left behind wailed and pulled at their hair.
Finally, Anastasya the Gypsy leader came to Yelena proclaiming this calamity was her fault… that before she had come to live with them their luck was good. Now it had turned ill. She stood pointing a crooked finger at her saying was Yelena’s fortune-telling that brought bad luck to the entire troupe. And that she was no longer welcome to journey with the troupe.
"But I told you we should not go this way," Yelena argued through her tears. "I warned you… but you wouldn't listen… no one would listen… and now look what has happened."
Anastasya walked up to Yelena slapping her face as she cursed the girl. They left her standing by the road with only the handmade dress on her back and the coins in her pocket she had earned the night before. Anastasya knew nothing of them or she would have demanded the money be given over. Yelena was fifteen years old and alone in a world in which she’d never been on her own.
American Jesus
Jesus ached.
He hadn't a clue to where he was… when he opened his eyes the darkness remained. He remembered running away from Massa… he remembered being caught once and whipped and hobbled… and caught again by a mob of ghosts…. turned in by someone he thought of as a friend seeking silver coins paid for run-away slaves… but happened between that moment and this particular one was a blur.
He tested his limbs discovering he could not move at all. He sensed uprightness to his situation rather than being prone but what held him in place seemed a mystery he hadn't strength to solve. An odor of rotting leaves penetrating his nostrils informed him he was out of doors… most likely in a forest or at least at the edge of one.
He wondered for an instant how he had come to end up here… he wondered if he might be dreaming but he couldn't wake up. A fragment of memory from his youth floated into his mind.
"Jesus… you gonna make Massa whip all the black off your hide," he remembered mami warning him. He might have been all of four years old. Mami wasn't his mother… the woman he took to be his real mother had been sold off a few months prior. Her distressed wails at being taken from him were stuffing for his nightmares.
He squalled a little to see her go his tears flowing down his cheeks wetting the dust at his bare feet… and Rachael Massa's daughter who was perhaps ten years older than him felt sorry for the little slave child suddenly bereft of mother. She took his hand bringing him into the horse barn to read him passages from her bible. What started out as a way to salve his angst at losing his mother became a regular pastime for them both… each morning after chores Jesus sneaked away to meet Rachael in the horse barn.
He had no way of knowing such things were strictly forbidden by Massa until mami came across the two of them on a rainy autumn morning huddled in a warm stall with Rachael reading in a quiet voice the parables of Jesus from Luke.
"Was Jesus white?" Jesus asked Rachael, unaware that mami was eavesdropping in the dim recesses of the horse barn.
"No… Jesus was a Jew," Rachael said. "His skin was probably brown."
"Brown like mine?"
"I don't know," Rachael told him. "Probably not as dark as yours but it might have been. No one knows for sure though."
"Child… you better be comin' with mami right now," the old woman said, erupting out of the shadowy stacks of hale bays and hanging saddles like a bad dream coming true. "Miss Rachael… you knows better than to be reading to this here little colored boy… Massa don't allow no learning amongst his slaves… you knows that. If he catches you all in here like this he's like as not to have hisself a fit."
"But it's just the bible, mami… pa wouldn't mind Jesus learning a bit of scripture, would he? After all, he named him Jesus. Why did he do that?"
"What Massa names his slaves is none of mami's business, Miss Rachael. I suspect he liked the name's all. It is a good name. That don't mean Massa won't put a whupping on this boy's rear end if'n he catches you two in here reading from that there book… likely's not he might be putting one on yours too, Miss Rachael."
Mami took hold of him by clamping her thumb and forefinger onto his left ear compelling him out of the barn. He saw the old woman look both ways at the door before exiting as if checking to see if they were being watched. That was the end of his bible lessons with Rachael. But the fire had been stoked and once the coals were burning it was impossible to quench the tiny flames of curiosity springing up in his mind.
"Those who have ears let them hear," Jesus told his congregation. He was seventeen years old… the other slaves had taken to coming to the barn Sunday morning before chores to hear Jesus speak. They were a mottled collection of young and old, toothless from both age and lack of it, and they all sat rapt listening to the teenage boy as he stood atop of the broken Chuck wagon seat Massa kept in there, out of the rain and safe from thieves. Jesus spoke with his eyes closed… he was shy standing in front of so many of the others though he knew them well… and he sensed them all crowding around him rather than saw them.
"This seed is the word of God," Jesus said, holding up a handful of dried corn. He tossed it into the air with the yellowed kernels landing all about… some on the ground, some on the wooden slats that served to hold the hay up off the floor to keep it from molding, some on the people themselves. "To you it has been given to know the secrets of heaven. Faith in the Lord is the way to wisdom… let these words grow in your hearts and flourish throughout the land."
"What's this I hear about you preaching in the barn on Sunday mornings, Jesus?" Massa asked Jesus, looking at him in a way that demanded an answer. Jesus knew better than to look Massa in the eye so he kept his head low staring at the mud caking Massa's shoes. "Is this true?"
"Yassuh… I say a few words… peoples they seem t'like my talking to 'em. Don't know rightly you'd call it preachin' though."
"Well… I'm not sure I approve," Massa said. Jesus could see him stroking his chin whiskers the way the man was apt to do but he didn't dare lift his eyes. "Where is it you learned to preach, Jesus?"
"Can't rightly say, Massa," Jesus said. "The words they just kinda come inta my mind and I opens my mouth and out they tumbles."
"I hear there are colored preachers over Memphis way rousing their people to demand their freedom. I don't like it. I treat all you people good… better than most."
"Yassuh, you surely do," Jesus proclaimed. Hate for Massa began forming in his heart but Jesus knew better than to let it show on his face.
Two days later a man came to the cotton plantation to take Jesus away. Massa had decided to sell him. Jesus rode in the back of the man's wagon until they came to a spot where they had to ford a creek at which point he jumped out and let the current carry him away. Jesus felt as if he were being baptized.
They caught up with him on the side of the creek where he lay drenched and panting. The man put a chain on his ankle securing the other end to the seat of the wagon as he drove Jesus back to Massa, demanding his money back.
Massa whipped Jesus that night. The bull whip sang sweet in the cool night air delivering its poisoned touch to his pristine skin, flaying it away in angry swaths that glowed angry red in the flickering firelight. Massa demanded Jesus be tied to a post in the center of the courtyard and saw to it all the other slaves gathered around to view the punishment inflicted on one of their own.
Massa decreed that night that Jesus be left hanging at the post and in the morning he had his kitchen help take a sharp knife to cut the hamstrings of Jesus so that he could no longer run away. They hauled him from the shackles of the post depositing him in the dirty barn where he lingered in a bed of straw, near death for many days, until his wounds healed and he once again found strength in the Lord.
"If a kingdom be divided against itself it cannot stand," Jesus said, standing uncomfortable in front of the crowd of people who gathered on a stormy Sunday morning down by the creek. He was a man now… no longer the boy who shied away from speaking by refusing to look at his congregation. He stood crookedly bent, high above them on a rock with his eyes wide and wildly open and his voice loud against the silence. "No one may enter a strong man's house and take his goods unless they first bind the strong man… then they may plunder his house. We's not cattle to be bought and sold… we's God's own men and women under blue heaven waiting to be free.
"One day Massa say to us… this tree bears no fruit… cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? I say to him, leave it alone, suh. We hunger for righteousness and freedom. I say to him… we's patient, suh… but we's not that patient. If'n Massa wishes to cut down the tree of freedom then I say we must bind him… we must bind the strong man as the Lord so sayeth and take what is ours. Are you's all with me here'n?"
"Yassuh…" the congregation all called out, their cries filling his ears. "Yassuh… we is with you till the end. We'll fight with you, Jesus. We'll bind that strong man and we'll plunder his rich house and we'll take our freedom for our own!"
*****
But one man crept away unseen. Massa paid this man an extra share of food to report all he heard when Jesus spoke. In a short while a white mob dressed in sheets came for Jesus, pulling him from the rock, calling for his blood, stripping him naked, stoning him with fist-sized rocks until he lay dazed in the sunshine pouring down from blue heaven above. They took Jesus and they gouged out his eyes so he couldn't find his way to his God, and carrying him away they spread-eagled him nailing his arms and his ankles to a tree at the edge of a black forest that grew in the shape of a cross while Massa watched in the distance high on a hill atop his white stallion that pranced under him like Satan chomping at the bit to carry him into hell.
*****
Jesus ached.
He hadn't a clue to where he was… when he opened his eyes the darkness remained. He remembered running away from Massa… he remembered being caught once and whipped and hobbled… and caught again by a mob of ghosts…. turned in by someone he thought of as a friend seeking silver coins paid for run-away slaves… but happened between that moment and this particular one was a blur.
He tested his limbs discovering he could not move at all. He sensed uprightness to his situation rather than being prone but what held him in place seemed a mystery he hadn't strength to solve. An odor of rotting leaves penetrating his nostrils informed him he was out of doors… most likely in a forest or at least at the edge of one.
He wondered for an instant how he had come to end up here… he wondered if he might be dreaming but he couldn't wake up. A fragment of memory from his youth floated into his mind.
"Jesus… you gonna make Massa whip all the black off your hide," he remembered mami warning him. He might have been all of four years old. Mami wasn't his mother… the woman he took to be his real mother had been sold off a few months prior. Her distressed wails at being taken from him were stuffing for his nightmares.
He squalled a little to see her go his tears flowing down his cheeks wetting the dust at his bare feet… and Rachael Massa's daughter who was perhaps ten years older than him felt sorry for the little slave child suddenly bereft of mother. She took his hand bringing him into the horse barn to read him passages from her bible. What started out as a way to salve his angst at losing his mother became a regular pastime for them both… each morning after chores Jesus sneaked away to meet Rachael in the horse barn.
He had no way of knowing such things were strictly forbidden by Massa until mami came across the two of them on a rainy autumn morning huddled in a warm stall with Rachael reading in a quiet voice the parables of Jesus from Luke.
"Was Jesus white?" Jesus asked Rachael, unaware that mami was eavesdropping in the dim recesses of the horse barn.
"No… Jesus was a Jew," Rachael said. "His skin was probably brown."
"Brown like mine?"
"I don't know," Rachael told him. "Probably not as dark as yours but it might have been. No one knows for sure though."
"Child… you better be comin' with mami right now," the old woman said, erupting out of the shadowy stacks of hale bays and hanging saddles like a bad dream coming true. "Miss Rachael… you knows better than to be reading to this here little colored boy… Massa don't allow no learning amongst his slaves… you knows that. If he catches you all in here like this he's like as not to have hisself a fit."
"But it's just the bible, mami… pa wouldn't mind Jesus learning a bit of scripture, would he? After all, he named him Jesus. Why did he do that?"
"What Massa names his slaves is none of mami's business, Miss Rachael. I suspect he liked the name's all. It is a good name. That don't mean Massa won't put a whupping on this boy's rear end if'n he catches you two in here reading from that there book… likely's not he might be putting one on yours too, Miss Rachael."
Mami took hold of him by clamping her thumb and forefinger onto his left ear compelling him out of the barn. He saw the old woman look both ways at the door before exiting as if checking to see if they were being watched. That was the end of his bible lessons with Rachael. But the fire had been stoked and once the coals were burning it was impossible to quench the tiny flames of curiosity springing up in his mind.
"Those who have ears let them hear," Jesus told his congregation. He was seventeen years old… the other slaves had taken to coming to the barn Sunday morning before chores to hear Jesus speak. They were a mottled collection of young and old, toothless from both age and lack of it, and they all sat rapt listening to the teenage boy as he stood atop of the broken Chuck wagon seat Massa kept in there, out of the rain and safe from thieves. Jesus spoke with his eyes closed… he was shy standing in front of so many of the others though he knew them well… and he sensed them all crowding around him rather than saw them.
"This seed is the word of God," Jesus said, holding up a handful of dried corn. He tossed it into the air with the yellowed kernels landing all about… some on the ground, some on the wooden slats that served to hold the hay up off the floor to keep it from molding, some on the people themselves. "To you it has been given to know the secrets of heaven. Faith in the Lord is the way to wisdom… let these words grow in your hearts and flourish throughout the land."
"What's this I hear about you preaching in the barn on Sunday mornings, Jesus?" Massa asked Jesus, looking at him in a way that demanded an answer. Jesus knew better than to look Massa in the eye so he kept his head low staring at the mud caking Massa's shoes. "Is this true?"
"Yassuh… I say a few words… peoples they seem t'like my talking to 'em. Don't know rightly you'd call it preachin' though."
"Well… I'm not sure I approve," Massa said. Jesus could see him stroking his chin whiskers the way the man was apt to do but he didn't dare lift his eyes. "Where is it you learned to preach, Jesus?"
"Can't rightly say, Massa," Jesus said. "The words they just kinda come inta my mind and I opens my mouth and out they tumbles."
"I hear there are colored preachers over Memphis way rousing their people to demand their freedom. I don't like it. I treat all you people good… better than most."
"Yassuh, you surely do," Jesus proclaimed. Hate for Massa began forming in his heart but Jesus knew better than to let it show on his face.
Two days later a man came to the cotton plantation to take Jesus away. Massa had decided to sell him. Jesus rode in the back of the man's wagon until they came to a spot where they had to ford a creek at which point he jumped out and let the current carry him away. Jesus felt as if he were being baptized.
They caught up with him on the side of the creek where he lay drenched and panting. The man put a chain on his ankle securing the other end to the seat of the wagon as he drove Jesus back to Massa, demanding his money back.
Massa whipped Jesus that night. The bull whip sang sweet in the cool night air delivering its poisoned touch to his pristine skin, flaying it away in angry swaths that glowed angry red in the flickering firelight. Massa demanded Jesus be tied to a post in the center of the courtyard and saw to it all the other slaves gathered around to view the punishment inflicted on one of their own.
Massa decreed that night that Jesus be left hanging at the post and in the morning he had his kitchen help take a sharp knife to cut the hamstrings of Jesus so that he could no longer run away. They hauled him from the shackles of the post depositing him in the dirty barn where he lingered in a bed of straw, near death for many days, until his wounds healed and he once again found strength in the Lord.
"If a kingdom be divided against itself it cannot stand," Jesus said, standing uncomfortable in front of the crowd of people who gathered on a stormy Sunday morning down by the creek. He was a man now… no longer the boy who shied away from speaking by refusing to look at his congregation. He stood crookedly bent, high above them on a rock with his eyes wide and wildly open and his voice loud against the silence. "No one may enter a strong man's house and take his goods unless they first bind the strong man… then they may plunder his house. We's not cattle to be bought and sold… we's God's own men and women under blue heaven waiting to be free.
"One day Massa say to us… this tree bears no fruit… cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? I say to him, leave it alone, suh. We hunger for righteousness and freedom. I say to him… we's patient, suh… but we's not that patient. If'n Massa wishes to cut down the tree of freedom then I say we must bind him… we must bind the strong man as the Lord so sayeth and take what is ours. Are you's all with me here'n?"
"Yassuh…" the congregation all called out, their cries filling his ears. "Yassuh… we is with you till the end. We'll fight with you, Jesus. We'll bind that strong man and we'll plunder his rich house and we'll take our freedom for our own!"
*****
But one man crept away unseen. Massa paid this man an extra share of food to report all he heard when Jesus spoke. In a short while a white mob dressed in sheets came for Jesus, pulling him from the rock, calling for his blood, stripping him naked, stoning him with fist-sized rocks until he lay dazed in the sunshine pouring down from blue heaven above. They took Jesus and they gouged out his eyes so he couldn't find his way to his God, and carrying him away they spread-eagled him nailing his arms and his ankles to a tree at the edge of a black forest that grew in the shape of a cross while Massa watched in the distance high on a hill atop his white stallion that pranced under him like Satan chomping at the bit to carry him into hell.
*****
Jesus ached.
Monday, March 12, 2012
A Better Place
I have a simple goal in life: To make the world a better place. There are many ways to do this and no one way is necessarily better than another. I tell myself how much I care about making the world a better place and then something like this happens…
She gets about seven hundred dollars a month courtesy of Uncle Sam... her widow's benefits. They take a part of that for Medicare so she has about a hundred fifty bucks a week to live on.
She's often lonely so when she sees the "OPEN" sign lit at the real estate office she'll stop in to say "Hi" and to grab a couple pieces of hard candy I keep in a big glass jar on the reception counter. I suspect she must have been very pretty many years ago and she still takes great pains to put her makeup on just the right way and to keep her hair dyed and fixed up nicely.
Time has its own way of winding down a body though and anyone can see she is slowing winding down. Her mind is sharp but I notice of late that she repeats herself more and more or perhaps she's simply refining her stories, recalling in each telling more and more detail until the stories come alive once again in her mind. When her hands tremble she turns away as if to hide a terrible flaw but she keeps talking.
Her name is Ana, short for Anastasya. She came to America from the Ukraine and from Russia before that. When I listen closely I hear a lilting trace of accent in her voice. She tells me that her journey to America took place just after the Great War. They'd gone to an art fair in Kiev, her and her mother. Her mother had met an artist exhibiting at the fair and they had fallen in love. The artist married her mother and brought them both to America to live in a little brown house at the edge of a large blue lake. She talks often of that period in her life so I've come to understand it as one of the happiest times in her memory.
Some time later she would marry a man who beat her and punched her in the stomach when she told him she was pregnant. She miscarried on the cold tile of the bathroom floor in the apartment above an old rundown Laundromat where they lived. She tells me of how she could smell the exhaust from the dryers below and how some time after that, her husband Donald became very ill and died before the doctors could figure out what was wrong with him. She tells the story as if it happened to someone else and then she skips back to telling me again of her childhood.
They lived on boiled potatoes and beets when she was very little and the beets stained the potatoes red and she fussed to her mother about it. She smiles at the memory. One day her mother brought home a goat named Lila. The neighbors all laughed when they saw Ana's mother feeding the goat lollipops and Tootsie Rolls but when she drank the milk Ana could taste the sweetness. She never liked the taste of goat's milk before or since. "Oh, you should have tasted it!" she exclaims as she helps herself to coffee and donuts that I bring into the office for customers who happen to show up on Saturday mornings.
The day is bright and sunny but it's bitterly cold. Ana seems to stop into the office quite often on such days. "I was born in Russia," she confides to me. "When I was very little the doctors told my mother we should move south to the farm belt. I was so scrawny. The doctors said only a diet of good farm food would fatten me up properly." She laughs. I see she has forgotten her teeth today, or perhaps her gums are bothering her again.
She lives kitty-corner to my office in a rough, weather beaten gray-shingled bungalow wedged in between an Ace Hardware called Stephenich’s and a gas station with a large brightly lit sign that flashes 'MARCLEY'S' over and over and over throughout the days and nights. Her front yard is concrete and she says her water tastes of turpentine. She mentioned to me once that her roof leaked. One day I bought a large blue tarp and spent an afternoon draping it over her roof and trying to secure it by tying it down to the rusted gutters but the wind soon blew it flapping loose.
She named her only daughter Zoya. She was born much too early and only lived a few minutes.
"In Russian, 'Zoya' is spelled with only three letters but it's pronounced the same," she informs me, between bites of donut and sips of coffee. "Something inside me was busted after Donald beat me that time and I couldn't have babies after that," she says matter-of-factly looking at my cup before pouring herself more coffee.
"I'm sorry," I stammer, embarrassed at being privy to such an intimate story.
She just giggles.
"I dreamed of goat's milk last night. I used to dream of it all the time when we first came to America but not for a long time before last night," she says, her eyes looking wistful and losing some of the hardness that wears around their edges. "Mother had a little hand bell she would ring and you know what?"
She looks at me expecting an answer but I just shrug. She takes another bite of donut and licks the chocolate from her fingertips.
"That goat would just come a running whenever my mother rang that bell, no matter where she was," she said, looking at me for some kind of approval. I nod and smile and sip my coffee.
About that time the bell above my door tinkles eerily as if it heard us talking of bells. A fat man wearing a heavy parka and blue jeans walks into the office followed by a fat woman wearing heavy overalls and a red scarf: Customers. Ana rises silently and dangles a hand over her shoulder as she exits out the back door.
A couple days later when I open up the office in the morning I look out the window and notice police cars sitting across the street in front of Ana's, along with an ambulance. There seems no particular hurry. I stroll over. A policeman meets me in front of the little bungalow, asking my business. I give him my card and tell him I know the woman who lives here. He says she is dead. He says that the postman knocked on the door two days in a row and no one answered so he informed the authorities.
The police went in and found her dead in the garage. She was living there since the house was uninhabitable. The roof had leaked so badly that all the drywall had fallen off the ceiling followed by the insulation. He says come on in so I follow him into the house. Standing in the living room you can see the hard sky. I shake my head. I cannot believe what I'm seeing and hearing.
"It looks like she froze to death," the policeman says as we watch two men dressed all in white roll out a gurney cart with a black bag on top of it the size of Ana. "We found a half bottle of vodka next to the lawn chair where she was sleeping. I guess she just drifted off."
I walk back to the office and turn on the open sign. I think to myself how misplaced our priorities as a culture have become. As long as someone has enough, they really don't care about anyone else. I jump at the sound of the bell above my office door tinkling yet I see that old blue tarp on top of Ana's roof blowing in the breeze and never give it a second thought. How many others noticed? It was a hard thing to miss.
Is my goal in life merely something to which I pay lip service? Is my goal something that I keep in mind only when it suits my own purposes? What's it say of a culture that lets an old woman die all alone in a country half a world away from her home? We're all part of the same hypocrisy I suppose. I pour a cup of coffee and vow to do better in the future. But inevitably I find I am too busy to remember the vow, working to fulfill the wants and needs of my clients and customers and myself. I forget about things like old women and goats eating lollipops and blue tarps blowing off roofs to let the rain in. I forget to care about important things.
Quality comes a knocking and I say, "Go away, I'm waiting for Quality." I find that I need constant reminding to care for others. Perhaps we all need that...
She gets about seven hundred dollars a month courtesy of Uncle Sam... her widow's benefits. They take a part of that for Medicare so she has about a hundred fifty bucks a week to live on.
She's often lonely so when she sees the "OPEN" sign lit at the real estate office she'll stop in to say "Hi" and to grab a couple pieces of hard candy I keep in a big glass jar on the reception counter. I suspect she must have been very pretty many years ago and she still takes great pains to put her makeup on just the right way and to keep her hair dyed and fixed up nicely.
Time has its own way of winding down a body though and anyone can see she is slowing winding down. Her mind is sharp but I notice of late that she repeats herself more and more or perhaps she's simply refining her stories, recalling in each telling more and more detail until the stories come alive once again in her mind. When her hands tremble she turns away as if to hide a terrible flaw but she keeps talking.
Her name is Ana, short for Anastasya. She came to America from the Ukraine and from Russia before that. When I listen closely I hear a lilting trace of accent in her voice. She tells me that her journey to America took place just after the Great War. They'd gone to an art fair in Kiev, her and her mother. Her mother had met an artist exhibiting at the fair and they had fallen in love. The artist married her mother and brought them both to America to live in a little brown house at the edge of a large blue lake. She talks often of that period in her life so I've come to understand it as one of the happiest times in her memory.
Some time later she would marry a man who beat her and punched her in the stomach when she told him she was pregnant. She miscarried on the cold tile of the bathroom floor in the apartment above an old rundown Laundromat where they lived. She tells me of how she could smell the exhaust from the dryers below and how some time after that, her husband Donald became very ill and died before the doctors could figure out what was wrong with him. She tells the story as if it happened to someone else and then she skips back to telling me again of her childhood.
They lived on boiled potatoes and beets when she was very little and the beets stained the potatoes red and she fussed to her mother about it. She smiles at the memory. One day her mother brought home a goat named Lila. The neighbors all laughed when they saw Ana's mother feeding the goat lollipops and Tootsie Rolls but when she drank the milk Ana could taste the sweetness. She never liked the taste of goat's milk before or since. "Oh, you should have tasted it!" she exclaims as she helps herself to coffee and donuts that I bring into the office for customers who happen to show up on Saturday mornings.
The day is bright and sunny but it's bitterly cold. Ana seems to stop into the office quite often on such days. "I was born in Russia," she confides to me. "When I was very little the doctors told my mother we should move south to the farm belt. I was so scrawny. The doctors said only a diet of good farm food would fatten me up properly." She laughs. I see she has forgotten her teeth today, or perhaps her gums are bothering her again.
She lives kitty-corner to my office in a rough, weather beaten gray-shingled bungalow wedged in between an Ace Hardware called Stephenich’s and a gas station with a large brightly lit sign that flashes 'MARCLEY'S' over and over and over throughout the days and nights. Her front yard is concrete and she says her water tastes of turpentine. She mentioned to me once that her roof leaked. One day I bought a large blue tarp and spent an afternoon draping it over her roof and trying to secure it by tying it down to the rusted gutters but the wind soon blew it flapping loose.
She named her only daughter Zoya. She was born much too early and only lived a few minutes.
"In Russian, 'Zoya' is spelled with only three letters but it's pronounced the same," she informs me, between bites of donut and sips of coffee. "Something inside me was busted after Donald beat me that time and I couldn't have babies after that," she says matter-of-factly looking at my cup before pouring herself more coffee.
"I'm sorry," I stammer, embarrassed at being privy to such an intimate story.
She just giggles.
"I dreamed of goat's milk last night. I used to dream of it all the time when we first came to America but not for a long time before last night," she says, her eyes looking wistful and losing some of the hardness that wears around their edges. "Mother had a little hand bell she would ring and you know what?"
She looks at me expecting an answer but I just shrug. She takes another bite of donut and licks the chocolate from her fingertips.
"That goat would just come a running whenever my mother rang that bell, no matter where she was," she said, looking at me for some kind of approval. I nod and smile and sip my coffee.
About that time the bell above my door tinkles eerily as if it heard us talking of bells. A fat man wearing a heavy parka and blue jeans walks into the office followed by a fat woman wearing heavy overalls and a red scarf: Customers. Ana rises silently and dangles a hand over her shoulder as she exits out the back door.
A couple days later when I open up the office in the morning I look out the window and notice police cars sitting across the street in front of Ana's, along with an ambulance. There seems no particular hurry. I stroll over. A policeman meets me in front of the little bungalow, asking my business. I give him my card and tell him I know the woman who lives here. He says she is dead. He says that the postman knocked on the door two days in a row and no one answered so he informed the authorities.
The police went in and found her dead in the garage. She was living there since the house was uninhabitable. The roof had leaked so badly that all the drywall had fallen off the ceiling followed by the insulation. He says come on in so I follow him into the house. Standing in the living room you can see the hard sky. I shake my head. I cannot believe what I'm seeing and hearing.
"It looks like she froze to death," the policeman says as we watch two men dressed all in white roll out a gurney cart with a black bag on top of it the size of Ana. "We found a half bottle of vodka next to the lawn chair where she was sleeping. I guess she just drifted off."
I walk back to the office and turn on the open sign. I think to myself how misplaced our priorities as a culture have become. As long as someone has enough, they really don't care about anyone else. I jump at the sound of the bell above my office door tinkling yet I see that old blue tarp on top of Ana's roof blowing in the breeze and never give it a second thought. How many others noticed? It was a hard thing to miss.
Is my goal in life merely something to which I pay lip service? Is my goal something that I keep in mind only when it suits my own purposes? What's it say of a culture that lets an old woman die all alone in a country half a world away from her home? We're all part of the same hypocrisy I suppose. I pour a cup of coffee and vow to do better in the future. But inevitably I find I am too busy to remember the vow, working to fulfill the wants and needs of my clients and customers and myself. I forget about things like old women and goats eating lollipops and blue tarps blowing off roofs to let the rain in. I forget to care about important things.
Quality comes a knocking and I say, "Go away, I'm waiting for Quality." I find that I need constant reminding to care for others. Perhaps we all need that...
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Pearl Ann
“What is this?” I asked, when after our marriage and at my urgings Billy and I moved from his apartment back into my house. All he brought was a suitcase. It lay open on my bedroom. An old bible lay on top of the clothes it contained. “Is this yours?”
“Yes… it belonged to my father… and to my mother after he left us. My father left it with me but I didn’t want it. I gave it to her. He used to keep pictures in there. It’s the only thing I have from my parents… or from my childhood for that matter. I used to hate it when I saw my mother coming at me with it in her hands… it meant I was in for one of her long reading sessions from the Old Testaments. I thought about throwing it away more than once, or at least hiding it from her. Now I’m glad I didn’t.”
I picked up it up thumbing through the tissue-thin pages. It was chock full of old pictures. I picked one out at random… a little boy maybe eight years old wearing a cowboy hat and a holster with a toy gun with his arm around a little girl a few years younger who was dressed like an Indian. They both stood smiling self-consciously into the camera. I looked from the picture to Billy and back at the picture.
“Is this you?” I wondered, showing it to him.
“I think so…” he said, turning the picture over. The year 1983 was written on the back. “I don’t know who that little girl is though… she seems so familiar…”
“You were such a cute kid,” I laughed, taking the picture from him and placing it back where it came from. “And my God but how you’ve grown into such a handsome man! You have a way of making my toes quiver, Billy Austin.”
“I remembered who that little girl was in the picture you showed to me,” Billy told me later that night while we lay tangled in each other’s arms and legs and blankets. “She was my sister.”
“So you have a sister!” I said, sitting up to look at him. “What’s her name?”
“Her name was Pearl… Pearl Ann… that’s what I would call her when she aggravated me… little sisters can do that, I suppose.”
“Where is she now?” I wondered.
“She died when she was seven years old. She got sick and never recovered. My parents didn’t take her to the doctor… I guess they didn’t have the money… or maybe my mother thought prayer would heal her. She was a very religious woman… she believed that the power of God resided in everything and if a person was devout enough, God would take care of them.”
“I’m sorry, Billy,” I told him. “That’s so sad.”
“I used to take care of her when she was little. I wasn’t much older than her but no one else would do it. I tried to make sure she had clean clothes to wear to school. I had to wash them out by hand in the sink and hang them up to dry. I didn’t care so much about my clothes but I knew how I got teased for wearing dirty stuff to school and I didn’t want her to go through that.
“We’d have to be careful around my father. He’d get drunk and the tiniest thing would set him off. We used to hide in closets and play games… just the two of us. At night we slept in the same bed and we’d whisper each other to sleep… at least I whispered her to sleep. Most nights I couldn’t get to sleep. I’d just lay there staring up at the ceiling thinking that there must be some kind of magic in the world and if I could only learn how to do it I might be able to wish us both away to somewhere warm where there was plenty to eat and no one was ever mean to anyone else.
“She got sick one day. At first I thought she just had a cold… it was the dead of winter and the place we lived was never warm… the old radiator pipes rattled like something was inside trying to get out but whatever was in there sure wasn’t heat. My mother put Pearl to bed. At first she seemed to get better but then she started to cough. She couldn’t stop. She coughed so much that she vomited. I heard someone knock at the door and I thought it might be a doctor but instead a group of people all carrying bibles came into the bedroom and started praying over Pearl. They all looked up at the cracked ceiling like they could see God up there.
“While they were all praying I snuck off. I remember it was very cold outside… the wind was howling and snow was blowing sideways. I didn’t have a coat to wear. I put on several shirts and my jacket and my two pairs of pants and I walked eight blocks to the nearest drug store. The only stores in our neighborhood sold liquor. When I walked into the store there was a mean-looking woman behind the counter. She stared at me as if she knew I didn’t have any money. I walked around looking at kid stuff… you know… candy and toys and things like that… until another customer came in and distracted her.
“I went to the medicine aisle and stuffed bottles of cold and cough and flu remedy down my pants. I would have asked the lady if I could just have it but I thought she’d say no and I didn’t know of another drug store close by. I couldn’t take the chance. I walked home. By that time the snow had worsened and it was even colder. When I got home I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet and my nose and ears felt like bees were stinging them. I didn’t care. I just hoped the medicine would help make my sister well.
“All the prayer people were gone. No one noticed that I was missing… I heard my mother and father arguing in the kitchen… I couldn’t hear their words but they both sounded mad. I went to our bedroom. Pearl was breathing funny, like she had something in her throat and couldn’t cough it up. I warmed up the medicine by holding it against my stomach and then I gave her a spoonful like it said on the label. She was so weak she couldn’t raise her head. The medicine didn’t help. By morning she was dead.”
“I can’t believe your parents didn’t take her to the hospital,” I said, shaking my head. I had heard stories before of parents letting their kids die while trusting in the power of prayer but it never made sense to me. “They should have been arrested.”
“My father left a few days later, right after the funeral. I remember they didn’t have the money to buy a coffin. I heard someone pounding on something in the shed behind our apartment. When I peeked inside it was my father. He was drunk. He was using old plywood piled against the wall to build a coffin for Pearl to be buried in. He saw me and said come here you little son of a bitch. He always called me that. He made me hold the boards in place while he nailed them. He told me how my sister would be buried in a little graveyard just outside of the city in a small town where he had grown up… where his parents were buried and one of his brothers. He said to remember where it was because there was a grave waiting there for me too. He said that was the one thing I would need in life.”
“What a horrible thing to tell a little boy,” I said. There were tears in my eyes… I was shaking… I realized for maybe the first time that I wasn’t the only one of us who had a rough childhood… who had been terribly abused. “I’m so sorry, Billy.”
He pulled me close wiping away the tears rolling down my cheeks with the back of his hand. I laid my head on his chest, feeling it rise and fall like the ocean outside our window; listening to his gentle heart beating… neither of us said anything for a long time. I thought he had fallen asleep when he spoke again, very low, almost in a whisper, as if he might have thought I had fallen asleep too.
“I’d always been frightened of my father,” he said. “He never called me by name… he’d say get over here you little bastard… most times it was to give me a beating. I remember the last time I saw him… he came into my room with that old bible in his hands. I acted as if I was sleeping… I thought he might hit me with it. He stood by my bed for a long minute… I lay very still, not daring to move a muscle. And then he laid the bible down beside me and left. I never saw him again. I didn’t want the damned thing. I gave it to my mother. Sometimes I dream about that night, only I don’t act like I’m sleeping. Instead, I sit up and I say goodbye to him. And he says goodbye Billy.”
“Yes… it belonged to my father… and to my mother after he left us. My father left it with me but I didn’t want it. I gave it to her. He used to keep pictures in there. It’s the only thing I have from my parents… or from my childhood for that matter. I used to hate it when I saw my mother coming at me with it in her hands… it meant I was in for one of her long reading sessions from the Old Testaments. I thought about throwing it away more than once, or at least hiding it from her. Now I’m glad I didn’t.”
I picked up it up thumbing through the tissue-thin pages. It was chock full of old pictures. I picked one out at random… a little boy maybe eight years old wearing a cowboy hat and a holster with a toy gun with his arm around a little girl a few years younger who was dressed like an Indian. They both stood smiling self-consciously into the camera. I looked from the picture to Billy and back at the picture.
“Is this you?” I wondered, showing it to him.
“I think so…” he said, turning the picture over. The year 1983 was written on the back. “I don’t know who that little girl is though… she seems so familiar…”
“You were such a cute kid,” I laughed, taking the picture from him and placing it back where it came from. “And my God but how you’ve grown into such a handsome man! You have a way of making my toes quiver, Billy Austin.”
“I remembered who that little girl was in the picture you showed to me,” Billy told me later that night while we lay tangled in each other’s arms and legs and blankets. “She was my sister.”
“So you have a sister!” I said, sitting up to look at him. “What’s her name?”
“Her name was Pearl… Pearl Ann… that’s what I would call her when she aggravated me… little sisters can do that, I suppose.”
“Where is she now?” I wondered.
“She died when she was seven years old. She got sick and never recovered. My parents didn’t take her to the doctor… I guess they didn’t have the money… or maybe my mother thought prayer would heal her. She was a very religious woman… she believed that the power of God resided in everything and if a person was devout enough, God would take care of them.”
“I’m sorry, Billy,” I told him. “That’s so sad.”
“I used to take care of her when she was little. I wasn’t much older than her but no one else would do it. I tried to make sure she had clean clothes to wear to school. I had to wash them out by hand in the sink and hang them up to dry. I didn’t care so much about my clothes but I knew how I got teased for wearing dirty stuff to school and I didn’t want her to go through that.
“We’d have to be careful around my father. He’d get drunk and the tiniest thing would set him off. We used to hide in closets and play games… just the two of us. At night we slept in the same bed and we’d whisper each other to sleep… at least I whispered her to sleep. Most nights I couldn’t get to sleep. I’d just lay there staring up at the ceiling thinking that there must be some kind of magic in the world and if I could only learn how to do it I might be able to wish us both away to somewhere warm where there was plenty to eat and no one was ever mean to anyone else.
“She got sick one day. At first I thought she just had a cold… it was the dead of winter and the place we lived was never warm… the old radiator pipes rattled like something was inside trying to get out but whatever was in there sure wasn’t heat. My mother put Pearl to bed. At first she seemed to get better but then she started to cough. She couldn’t stop. She coughed so much that she vomited. I heard someone knock at the door and I thought it might be a doctor but instead a group of people all carrying bibles came into the bedroom and started praying over Pearl. They all looked up at the cracked ceiling like they could see God up there.
“While they were all praying I snuck off. I remember it was very cold outside… the wind was howling and snow was blowing sideways. I didn’t have a coat to wear. I put on several shirts and my jacket and my two pairs of pants and I walked eight blocks to the nearest drug store. The only stores in our neighborhood sold liquor. When I walked into the store there was a mean-looking woman behind the counter. She stared at me as if she knew I didn’t have any money. I walked around looking at kid stuff… you know… candy and toys and things like that… until another customer came in and distracted her.
“I went to the medicine aisle and stuffed bottles of cold and cough and flu remedy down my pants. I would have asked the lady if I could just have it but I thought she’d say no and I didn’t know of another drug store close by. I couldn’t take the chance. I walked home. By that time the snow had worsened and it was even colder. When I got home I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet and my nose and ears felt like bees were stinging them. I didn’t care. I just hoped the medicine would help make my sister well.
“All the prayer people were gone. No one noticed that I was missing… I heard my mother and father arguing in the kitchen… I couldn’t hear their words but they both sounded mad. I went to our bedroom. Pearl was breathing funny, like she had something in her throat and couldn’t cough it up. I warmed up the medicine by holding it against my stomach and then I gave her a spoonful like it said on the label. She was so weak she couldn’t raise her head. The medicine didn’t help. By morning she was dead.”
“I can’t believe your parents didn’t take her to the hospital,” I said, shaking my head. I had heard stories before of parents letting their kids die while trusting in the power of prayer but it never made sense to me. “They should have been arrested.”
“My father left a few days later, right after the funeral. I remember they didn’t have the money to buy a coffin. I heard someone pounding on something in the shed behind our apartment. When I peeked inside it was my father. He was drunk. He was using old plywood piled against the wall to build a coffin for Pearl to be buried in. He saw me and said come here you little son of a bitch. He always called me that. He made me hold the boards in place while he nailed them. He told me how my sister would be buried in a little graveyard just outside of the city in a small town where he had grown up… where his parents were buried and one of his brothers. He said to remember where it was because there was a grave waiting there for me too. He said that was the one thing I would need in life.”
“What a horrible thing to tell a little boy,” I said. There were tears in my eyes… I was shaking… I realized for maybe the first time that I wasn’t the only one of us who had a rough childhood… who had been terribly abused. “I’m so sorry, Billy.”
He pulled me close wiping away the tears rolling down my cheeks with the back of his hand. I laid my head on his chest, feeling it rise and fall like the ocean outside our window; listening to his gentle heart beating… neither of us said anything for a long time. I thought he had fallen asleep when he spoke again, very low, almost in a whisper, as if he might have thought I had fallen asleep too.
“I’d always been frightened of my father,” he said. “He never called me by name… he’d say get over here you little bastard… most times it was to give me a beating. I remember the last time I saw him… he came into my room with that old bible in his hands. I acted as if I was sleeping… I thought he might hit me with it. He stood by my bed for a long minute… I lay very still, not daring to move a muscle. And then he laid the bible down beside me and left. I never saw him again. I didn’t want the damned thing. I gave it to my mother. Sometimes I dream about that night, only I don’t act like I’m sleeping. Instead, I sit up and I say goodbye to him. And he says goodbye Billy.”
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Allison Johns
The ocean changed its face as she drove north on the coastal highway… the peaceful Malibu Hills beaches giving way to craggy shorelines ravaged by raging waves. Allison had borrowed mom’s red Mercedes convertible and she drove with the top down, smelling the sea breeze and sometimes feeling the spray of water breaking on rocky cliffs. She drove slowly. The day started out splendid blue with patches of white clouds tinged gray at the edges turning cloudier as she made her way north.
She stopped at a High Tech Burrito joint for lunch. The girl behind the counter asked if that was her red Mercedes convertible in the parking lot. Allison said, “No, it’s my mom’s.” The girl seemed disappointed. A little later in the afternoon she felt tired and in need of a drink, stopping at the Costanoa lodge just outside Ano Nuevo. She called from the parking lot to make a reservation. Yes, we have a room available, the woman who answered told her. When the valet asked her if it was her car, she said yes, it is. He seemed impressed. She liked the look in his eyes. She told him to be careful with it and handed him a twenty dollar bill. He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and after unloading her luggage and taking the keys from her he drove it away, slow.
Once she settled her luggage in her room, she went to the bar. She was the only customer. The bartender asked to see her identification. He was very good looking with black wavy hair and a twinkle in his dark eyes. He said he was sorry but he didn’t want to be arrested for serving a minor. She laughed and handed him her driver’s license.
“You take a nice photo,” he said, handing it back to her. “What will it be?” She ordered a vodka martini with an olive. The bartender said they all come with olives. Allison blushed.
“I don’t go to many bars. I usually stay home and drink.” The bartender said that his name was David and that it was a good idea to stay home if you were going to drink. He said if she needed anything to just call to him and he walked to the other end of the bar and started wiping glasses and putting them upside down in a rack that hung from the ceiling.
She stayed a week at the Costanoa lodge. She tried to sleep with David the bartender on the fourth night she was there but he got angry when she told him he’d have to wear a condom and he lost his tiny erection, got dressed, and left, calling her a ball busting bitch. After that, she ordered room service and drank on the veranda overlooking the ocean. The sun seemed to melt orange into the waves as it set and the nights were chilly.
One morning she saw a familiar figure walking across the road to the tennis courts. He wore a white polo shirt and white shorts and carried an expensive-looking tennis racket. There was a beautiful girl walking alongside of him, their arms intertwined. She was positive it was Alex. She knew his walk… she knew the lines of his body even from a distance. But when she walked across the road and approached the couple now playing a lively game of tennis she realized she was mistaken. It might have been Alex’s twin but it wasn’t him… not unless he’d suddenly grown a few inches taller. The man, whoever he was, had noticed her watching him intently and took her interest to mean something else. He smiled at Allison and winked while the tennis ball struck him square in the chest. Allison couldn’t help laughing. As she walked away she noticed the man’s pretty playing partner apparently saw what was going on, walking to the net with words for the man that Allison couldn’t hear but she suspected they weren’t pleasantries.
“How’s the vacation going, sweetie?” mom asked when Allison called her as she had promised.
“It’s fantastic, mom… I’m staying in Ano Nuevo but tomorrow I’m driving north again. I love this coastline. It’s nothing like the beaches in Malibu Hills.”
“Me and Jamie are taking a break too,” mom told her. “I wanted to let you know we’ll be at the Downstream Casino in Laguna Beach. We’re driving down tomorrow. So if you get home and we’re not there, don’t worry.”
“I’m not going home for a while yet either, mom… I’m going to travel up the coast. I’ll call you again in a couple days.”
Allison drove a few hours stopping in Gualala at the North Coast Country Inn. The food was good but not like the dinners Jamie made. It tasted as if it had been prepared ahead of time and reheated. She only stayed the night there, preceding north on the coastal highway the next morning. She was hung over from having drunk way too much the night before and the motion of the car made her ill. She pulled off into a roadside park overlooking the ocean, got out of the car, and vomited into the weeds.
Kneeling in the sand the sun seemed much too bright, her head hurt, and she wished she had brought something along to drink. But she hadn’t. Looking down the coast she saw a brown two story building perched on the side of the ocean with what looked like a Budweiser sign lighted in the window. She got back in the Mercedes and steered it in that direction. She was right… it did say Budweiser in the window, and above the door a sign read Twenty Nine Katz Bar and Grill. What an odd name for a bar, she thought. But she needed a drink and this seemed as likely a place to get one as any. It was only ten in the morning but the place was open and she was thirsty.
She noticed a dark-haired woman looking at her from the back of the tavern… she was extremely attractive, older than Allison by a few years but that only added to her allure… she found herself wanting the woman terribly. Allison had never been attracted to the same sex before so it came as a bit of a shock to her that she could feel that way. Allison hoped she might see the woman inside as she parked the car to enter the tavern.
It was dim inside the tavern and it took Allison’s eyes a few moments to adjust from the sunshine outside. The place looked immaculate, as if it had been professionally renovated recently. A short older man stood behind the bar polishing the bar top. He nodded to Allison when she sat down on a bar stool.
“Could I have a Bloody Mary, please?” she asked the man.
“Hello, miss… I’ll need to see your identification first, please.”
Allison already had her driver’s license at the ready, handing it to the man.
“Allison Johns… twenty two years old,” the man said handing her license back to her. “I can’t be too careful… the local police are always sending in underage cadets to try and buy booze… and I must say, you don’t look your age, Ms. Johns… one Bloody Mary coming right up.”
As he prepared her drink Allison went to the restroom and brushed her teeth. She could still taste the vomit in her mouth. When she came out her drink was ready and the bartender had moved to the other end of the bar. He was still wiping down the counter. She tasted her drink wishing she had ordered a double… it was very weak. As she pulled the celery stick from her glass putting it to her lips to suck the juice from it the woman from out back walked into the tavern through a door in the rear.
She was even more beautiful close up… and Allison noticed the woman looking at her too, especially when she turned away. She was standing down the bar from Allison polishing glasses. The bartender nodded to the woman calling her over and he said something Allison couldn’t hear before disappearing through the same door in the rear of the tavern. She raised her glass to her lips and drained the last of her beverage.
“Hi… my name is Lisa,” the woman said as she walked up to Allison. “Can I get you another drink?”
“Hi Lisa… my name is Allison Johns… and I would love another drink… thank you. Could you make it a double this time?” Allison held out her hand hoping Lisa would take it. She did… and it seemed as if neither of them wanted to let go of the other’s hand. It was the longest handshake Allison could ever remember and yet when they did finally let go she thought how it didn’t last long enough.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Lisa
We closed on our home in the middle of August. Richard was able to transfer to a terminal about an hour from Little River. He planned on driving for another six months… then the lease would be up on his semi truck and he’d look for work closer to home.
“Won’t you be afraid to be in this big old house all alone?” he asked me the first night we were there. I laughed and told him no.
“And besides, I won’t be alone… I’ll have little Jem here with me.” We rented a trailer to haul furniture and belongings from our apartment and spent the first day there unloading and unpacking. All our furniture barely filled one corner of the enormous living room. Richard laughed and said how we would have to go around town looking for unwanted furniture sitting on curbs just to fill up the room.
We set up our bed and dresser in a bedroom on the second floor. I insisted on putting little Jem’s bed in our room too. Richard said she could have her own room now but I wanted her with us for a little longer. “At least until she’s a year old,” I told him. He said that was fine as long as she didn’t mind him ravaging her mother. She won’t mind, I assured him as I peeled off my tee shirt to show him that I wasn’t wearing a bra. He chased me around the bedroom while Jem squealed and giggled watching us. He caught me and tossed me on the mattress. I covered my breasts with my hands and told him nope… he’d have to wait until Jem’s nap. He said, “Girl, you sure are cramping my style!” as he picked her up and bounced Jem on his knee. I wished I had the camera.
I spent the days Richard was gone scrubbing floors and washing walls. The heating and air conditioning people were installing a new furnace and an electrician we hired worked at replacing the old cloth-covered wiring. The plumber said we were lucky… the well had been replaced a few years ago and most of the plumbing too. The old pipes Richard saw in the basement were no longer connected… they just hadn’t bothered taking them out. I took Jem shopping with me and on the way back I saw an old mower for sale in front of someone’s house. It was cheap so I bought it and they helped me put it in the trunk. I set Jem up on the porch in her car seat where I could keep an eye on her while I started mowing the yard. I hadn’t realized how big the yard was when I bought the mower or how tall the grass. But over the next three days I managed to knock out the front and get a start on the back. I liked sitting on the porch with Jem in the evening admiring my handiwork and smelling fresh-cut grass.
I discovered the ocean in our back yard… we knew our property was on the coast but it was so grown up with brambles and scrub brush and trees gone wild that we couldn’t see the shoreline. I took Jem with me one day exploring the outbuildings. We found some hedge trimmers and a saw to cut tree branches, so I loaded her up in her stroller and took her into the back with me where I proceeded to lay siege to the overgrown jungle growing there. By the time Richard came home I had cleared a path to the ocean. It was dark and Jem was asleep but I made him wake her up and said for them to come with me. The moonlight was pouring down and we all three sat together on a blanket holding each other for a long while watching the waves rolling in, crashing endlessly, receding, and then rolling in again. A lone light shined way out on the horizon… a passing ship… and the night sea breeze smelled of salt and of cleanliness. I thought how it was a moment worth remembering.
The police showed up at the door a few nights later. I’d gone to sleep and when the knocking started thought I was dreaming. It grew louder and more insistent. When I turned on the porch light and saw two policemen standing there I thought at first that it must have something to do with my father and mother. I don’t know why I thought that. One of them asked if I was the wife of Richard Roberts. I said yes. And I knew something was wrong. The one who seemed in charge asked, “Ma’am, could we step inside?” so I held open the door for them and said please. They took off their hats and held them blue in their hands rocking back and forth on their polished shoes ever so slightly. The one who had spoken said maybe I wanted to sit down so I did. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath and the room was spinning out of control.
He said there had been an accident. Richard’s truck had hit a train somewhere in Nebraska and he was dead. I shook my head and said, “I don’t understand. What happened?” He said how sorry he was to have to tell me this as he fumbled with his hat and kept looking at his silent partner. He gave me a business card with the name and number of the coroner in a small town in the middle of Nebraska and said I should call in the morning… that the coroner would have more information… that it was an ongoing investigation and that he didn’t know the exact details of the accident. They both said how sorry they were and did I have someone I could call to come stay with me and then they were gone. I wondered if I might be dreaming.
At the funeral I thought how I could count our days together and not reach a hundred. Richard had no family… his parents were dead and he was an only child like me. Louise Evers showed up and a few people Richard worked with. I sat by the casket for hours with little Jem in my lap. The preacher asked if anyone else was coming and I said no, I didn’t think so… to go ahead with the service.
“Our nothing in nothing, nothing be your name. Your nothing come, your nothing be done, on earth as it is in nothing. Give us this day nothing, and forgive us nothing, as we also have forgiven nothing. And lead us not into nothing, but deliver us from nothing.”
As the preacher talked, my mind wandered. I thought how the coroner told me that Richard must have fallen asleep behind the wheel and drove his truck right into the side of a freight train. There were no skid marks before the train crossing. He died providing for us. And I remembered that after my mother passed away with very little life insurance Richard had insisted on buying a policy on himself that would not only pay off the house but give me something extra to live on if something should happen. The preacher said amen. The next day we buried Richard by the ocean. He was twenty nine years old.
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