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Maxed Out   Sue Ellis
Little Dragon
 
David Erlewine
I'll See Myself Out
 
D. E. Fredd
My Ave Museo  
Loretta Giacoletto

The Man Who Tried to Listen  Eric D. Lehman
The Funeral
 
Diane Payne
Gift
 
Michelle Reale
Thoughts from the Big Sky
 
Jerry Vilhotti

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

                                                             

Maxed Out                                                                                                                    

by Sue Ellis

 

race sprayed vinegar-water over the  glass show case and wiped it down with paper toweling.  She looked up as Mac, her landlord, entered.

"Good morning, Mac.  How can I help you?"  She tried to smile away the twin furrows she could feel forming between her well shaped eyebrows.

She'd been in business for two years and still hadn't managed to break even.  She'd built an excellent customer base, but the rent was exorbitant.  She'd nearly thrown in the towel two months before, but Mac offered to lower the rent by five hundred dollars a month temporarily, "to keep my favorite tenant in place."

Fat chance.  Grace knew his building had sat empty for a year before she, an inexperienced sucker, had come along.

Mac laid a parcel on the counter between them.  It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string; something that might have come from a storage trunk.  It lay in stark contrast to the sparkling jewelry and evening bags that were displayed in the glass case below.

"What's this?" she asked, knowing she wouldn't like the answer.

"My late wife's dress."  Mac leaned nearer, his pungent aftershave an assault to her senses.  "Here, let me show you."  As he reverently untied the string, Grace couldn't help but wonder what he was up to this time.  Mac lifted the dress by the shoulder pads and swept it off the counter, holding it to one side like a matador's cape.  The dress was a nineteen-forties vintage cocktail dress—black crepe with diagonal lines of beadwork on the bodice.  Small tarnished buttons trimmed each cuff on the long sleeves.  "I saved this because it was a favorite of mine.  Naomi was about your size.  I'd like to see you in it on Friday.  I could come by in the afternoon."

Incredulously, Grace gaped at him for several seconds before responding.  "It's a beautiful dress, but I couldn't— really.  Not my style—you see?"

"Nonsense.  You can pull it off.  Sweep your hair back for the day.  I've brought a comb too."  Mac reached into his tweed jacket pocket and produced a silver comb embellished with rhinestones.

"No, thank you."  Grace's could feel her cheeks becoming hot.

Mac held his hand over his heart in mock dismay.  "I might see my way clear to reduce the rent for an extra month . . ."  He let the sentence dangle like a baited hook.

Insufferable old goat.  She'd been fool enough to chat with him before she knew his true character.  Told him how much the boutique meant to her—that her heart and soul were wrapped up in the enterprise.  Angry tears glistened in her eyes as she aimed the spray bottler directly at Mac's forehead and carefully enunciated the words, "Take a hike."

 

 



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Little Dragon                                                                                           

by David Erlewine

 

y son Jonathan thrusts the paper in my face.  “Dragon!”  I nod, looking over the rustling paper at the TV.  Carol’s parents gave him a washable marker set at his birthday party today.  They also gave him flimsy-looking coloring paper.  A sneeze could probably tear the stack in two.

“ESPN Classic” is showing the 1991 game where Kevin Walker destroyed Bo Jackson’s hip and ended his football career.  The past few minutes I’ve watched Bo dragged down again and again.  I still can’t decipher the precise millisecond where things ended for Bo.

No one at the bar that day even realized he was hurt.  We just laughed at Bo getting caught from behind by “Walker”.

Four years later, Jonathan was born, ten weeks premature.  Later that afternoon, after both sets of grandparents had come and gone, a vein in Carol’s left leg clotted with blood, and while I was getting a cup of clam chowder from the hospital cafeteria, she lost consciousness. The official diagnosis was something called “pulmonary embolus”  Three days later, my mother sat in the passenger side, her hand on my shoulder, as I drove Jonathan home.

Now, “Eight years ago today” is the headline ESPN Classic runs across the top of the screen as Bo remains on the ground.

“Dad, the dragon!”

I pause the game.  The little dragon breathes red and yellow fire.  Its tail swings off the side of the page.  Its eyes are bigger than headlights.  The boy can draw.  I remember laughing the night Carol, early in her first trimester, dragged down a shoebox from the attic to show me pictures she had drawn in high school.  One had a tall, bug-eyed owl springing from a CD player while young girls on a couch pointed and pushed to get away.

“Great job,” I tell Jonathan.  He just stands there.  “It looks real.  Why don’t you draw another one.”  As soon as he's gone, I watch Bo get dragged down again, though there's no point.  It will always look like a routine tackle.

I turn the TV off.

Carol was so nervous showing me that shoebox, telling me it was no big deal.  She just wanted me to see.  I made a joke about the pregnancy doing weird things.  I said she better not cut off one of her ears.  She smiled and took the box back up to the attic.
 
In the play room, Jonathan sits at a table, his back to me.  His little chair looks on the verge of cracking.

I sneak up to the attic. He won't believe the things that his mom drew.

 



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I'll See Myself Out                                                                  

by D. E. Fredd

 

t is cold for November in Massachusetts.  Beryl and I are waiting at the bus stop with Donnie.  He is autistic and epileptic.  She had him with the presently incarcerated Carl Ndricim.  She thinks Donnie’s that way because of the poor diet during pregnancy in her native Serbia.  She also blames food cooked in aluminum pots.  The fact that Carl’s part time job, once they made it to America, was breaking into every Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts pharmacy, coming out with trash bags of various drugs, which they both washed down with Southern Comfort, is beside the point.

The special needs bus is late.  Donnie is a creature of routine.  He wears a football helmet and begins banging his head against a utility pole.  Beryl hugs him to her chest.  He immediately quiets down.  It’s like petting an alligator’s stomach.  She asks me to go back into the apartment building and get him a scarf as well as her brown turtleneck.  There are three other mothers waiting with us.  They are all from Serbia and start talking to Beryl in her native language.  I don’t speak it that well, but gather they are congratulating her because, for the past month, she has had a man, an American no less, to share her bed.

Halfway to the front entrance, Beryl yells for me to bring back some Marlboros as well.  I’m glad to get out of the cold.  The crisp air has cleared my sinuses, but now that makes the building’s cooking smells that much stronger.  Why anyone would fry onions at 7:00 AM is beyond me.

I sprint up three flights and take a break.  I’m way out of shape.  Last April I ran the Boston marathon, but, since taking up with Beryl, I’ve let myself go.  Cambridge streets are dangerous for night jogging, especially in this neighborhood.  I keep promising to use the stairs as my personal exercise machine but never do.  Magda Coveliski lives on this floor.  Beryl hates her.  It has to do with something back in the Balkans.  Magda is from Montenegro which seems to be reason enough to have enemies.  As many times as Beryl has explained the political situation to me, I can’t remember why Serbs hate the Croats who, in turn, hate the Herzegovinans.  Everyone hates the Bosnians.  And don’t even get her started on religion.

I also suspect that the ill-will she bears Magda is because the perfect Montenegrin revenge would be for Magda to lure me away from her.  As if on cue, Magda opens her 3A apartment door and adopts a sultry pose in the doorframe.  Her burnt-orange robe gaps enough to display plenty of cleavage.  I must admit lusting after her.  She asks if it’s cold out.  I tell her you can almost see your breath.  She beckons me nearer.  A few weeks ago I told her I was originally from Vermont.  Now she lies in wait to show me something from that state.  Today it is a small bottle of maple syrup which she bought for eight dollars.  She displays it in her palm as if it were the Holy Grail.  She proudly points to its Grade “A” Dark Amber designation while ineffectually holding her housecoat closed.

“Look—for pancakes which I’m practicing making Vermont American way.  You want to sample now, no trouble?”

I take the bottle from her and study the label.  She cozies up next to me and re-emphasizes “Made in Vermont” on the label with several fingers of her French manicure.  Fresh from the shower, her bottle blonde hair combed straight back to air dry, she begins to shiver.  The cold air outlines her erect nipples.  She has two teenaged children.  God knows where the father is.  She has mentioned more than once that they are normal (a slap in Beryl’s face) and do well in school.  I hand the bottle back and suggest a pancake rain check.  She looks puzzled until I explain what the expression means.  I turn and go up the next few steps.  She yells after me that she’s taking an educational course with the H and R Block peoples.  If she does well, she can do income taxes for her countrymen living in Cambridge.  There is a suggestion that I might be able to help her out with some English words, a tutoring type of thing.  She would find a way to repay me, maybe in pancakes.  She says “pancakes” in a voluptuous way and cocks her head inviting a reply.

I tell her I’d be glad to help out a little bit, but stop in mid-sentence because I hear screams.  Magda thinks it’s probably someone’s TV or that new family from Skopje who beat their kids.  Her face twists in hate as if, back in the Balkans, they would be marked for extermination for such a crime.  I wave goodbye and zip up to the fifth floor.  When I open the door, I have trouble remembering what Beryl wanted so I grab mittens, scarves, hats and sweaters.  I’m about to shut the apartment door, hoping that Magda isn’t naked on all fours on the landing, when I hear more commotion outside.  I go back into the apartment and look out the front window.  Donnie is lying in the snow.  Beryl is bent over him.  About ten feet away another woman is on the ground.  A crowd has gathered.  I drop the clothes and head down the stairs two at a time.  When I get to them police cars are pulling up.  I kneel next to Beryl and ask what happened.  She screams “Where were you!” and then, while pushing me away, begins comforting Donnie in Serbian.

The super’s daughter speaks decent English and tells me that two black boys rode up on bicycles and fired their shiny guns into the crowd.  At first she thought they threw firecrackers, but people fell down and there was lots of blood.  More police arrive. I am pushed back until I tell them that I live with the boy on the ground.  One woman is probably dead and her little girl, no more than six, is bleeding from her mouth.  Donnie was grazed in the arm and head.  His helmet protected him so he just got stunned for a moment.  He’s thrashing around so it is probably a seizure that’s the main concern.  He is given a shot by an EMT to calm him down.  Beryl is out of control, lashing out at everyone.  The medic threatens to sedate her if she doesn’t stop.  She sees me and recommences her attack.  “Where were you?  What took you so long?”

I start to explain and see that Magda, an overcoat thrown over her bathrobe, has joined the bystanders.  Beryl sees me glancing at Magda and goes nuts, pounding on my chest with closed fists before launching an all-out Magda attack.  I put her in a bear hug and drop to the ground, hoping that my weight will eventually calm the struggle by tiring her out.  With everyone else attending to the dead and wounded, we are left alone to fight our private battle.  Magda stands over us like a wrestling referee.  Both women are shouting at each other in totally different languages.  Beryl seems to be losing energy although that could be a ruse to have me let up and then she will go all out.

Suddenly someone shouts that they see one of the shooters across the street on his bike.  The young black boy, no older than Donnie, drops the bag of chips he was eating and speeds off, slashing between buildings where he disappears among the rabbit warren of empty lots and alleys.

When the shooting first happened all represented Balkan countries were drawn together.  They formed a united front against the slow police response time and the ambulance crew which left the little girl untreated while they tended to another victim.  As things sorted themselves out, they looked for different targets.  The super’s daughter says this would never happen in her homeland.  “People are killed because they are hated, in America it is for fun.”

It is considered suspicious that, after I disappeared, the shooting began.  Perhaps, as the outsider, I’m involved.  Everyone at the bus stop is looking at me, wondering if I am part of a criminal plot or just a man out for a good time with their women.

Beryl promises to behave if I let her up.  She wants to go with Donnie in the ambulance.  I tell her I’ll stay here, lock up the apartment then come to the hospital.  I get off her and she runs toward Donnie on a gurney.  He’s been knocked out and strapped down.  His forearm flesh wound has been taken care of by a gauze pad and bandage.  Beryl asks for her sweater.

“I forgot it.”

“You were gone for fifteen minutes and came back empty handed!”

I offer no excuse, but Beryl glances at Magda and begins shouting at her in Serbian.  Magda shouts back, pointing to her breasts and grabbing her crotch as she delivers a verbal counterattack.  Hand gestures are made.  Both women make the universal throat slashing sign.  This cannot be good.  Fortunately Beryl and Donnie pull away in the ambulance.  Magda is quickly at my side, hoping that Beryl will see us close together.

A cop comes up and wants a statement.  I detail the bus stop events.  Then the personal questions begin.  I am Beryl’s boyfriend. I teach ESL at the Barnabus Center.  That’s how we met a month ago.  She’s on welfare.  I’m not.  Neither of us is on drugs although there is plenty of traffic in the building.  I’m asked for names but really don’t know who is involved.  I’m not aware of any gang activity in the building, but in this Cambridge neighborhood I suspect any one from the Balkans would be considered an intruder.  As the interview finishes white flakes float down.  It takes me a few minutes to decide it’s snow flurries and not industrial ash.  I’m sure I’m suspected of something by the police as well as the building residents.  I’m given Lt. Heffernan’s card.  I’m to call if I want to tell him anything.

I head to the building’s front door.  Magda is no longer around.  It would be easy to sleep with her now, but I’m not in the mood.  I wonder how I can get by her third floor lair, but there is no way.  I take my time on the first two flights.  Stealth is everything in defeating Magda’s radar and sonar.  I speculate as to why I’m doing this.  Couldn’t I just walk away as I usually do?  But I’d have to leave my laptop, clothes and some library books.  So it’s probably worth my effort to go upstairs.  Just before the third floor landing I begin a world-class sprint.  I’m almost make it.  She must spend hours by the peephole.  She is fully dressed—a tight green sweater, black skirt, no stockings and strapless high heels.  She wants to know what “fiduciary” means.  She has a textbook tucked under her arm.

“It’s someone who holds something in trust for another.”

“What is “trust” meaning?”

I yell over my shoulder that I’ll explain it tomorrow.  She begins to climb the stairs after me, but I’m much quicker to the apartment, let myself in and shut the door.  She knocks.  I lie and tell her I’ve got to pack things for Donnie and get to the hospital.  She wants to know if she can help me.  I thank her but say no.

I grab my backpack and toss clothes into it.  Some may be Carl’s.  He’s in jail for at least another six weeks, but I’ll sort out any mix-up later.  I find my library books and drop them into my laptop case.  All my worldly belongings can be carried in two hands.  This is either very sad or a good thing.  I slip my jacket on and check the peephole for Madga.  She’s either off to the side or gone back downstairs.  I debate whether I might quickly assuage both our sexual urges, but Beryl would have to live with the aftermath of Magda’s gloating.  Beryl deserves better than that.  No, it’s best to leave cold turkey, like ripping a bandage from an old wound.  I think about the boy on the bike, the supposed shooter, how he melted away.  Invisibility takes years of practice, I suspect.  Right now I’ll settle for a five block walk, and then hop on the Huron Avenue bus to any place where I, women notwithstanding, can live in peace.

 

 



                                                                                                        
 
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My Ave Museo                                                                                             

by Loretta Giacoletto


race yourself, Olivia.”

Lorna, the drama queen.  My first impulse is to hang up the telephone.  Instead I play along with, “Please don’t tell me Mom’s still tossing garbage over her balcony.”

“Okay, I won’t.  Now she’s flushing it down the toilet.  Her landlord had to call a plumber.  Not once, twice.  ‘One more time and she’s out,’ he told me.  I was so mortified, I could’ve had myself committed.”

I sigh, loud enough for Lorna to hear.  “Maybe we should consider some type of assisted living.  For Mom, I mean.”

“Get real,” Lorna replies.  “Have you forgotten how she terrorized the hospital staff after her stroke?”

“The doctor called her recovery miraculous.”

“Next time, be very careful what you pray for, Olivia.  Trust me, Mom cannot live alone.  It’s just that simple.  I’d take her in a heartbeat but she and Greg never did get along.”

“So punish me for Arthur’s myocardial infarction,” I counter.  “I’m the struggling widow; you’re the one who lives in mansion Mom can’t stop bragging about.  That and your incredible cooking.”

“The woman eats like a sparrow and you know it.  This is not about who’s got the most space, even though my kids are still in high school and your Mandi is… well, need I say more.”

“Mandi’s out of rehab.  She took a job in Chicago.”

“Well you could’ve said something before now.  After all, I do care about your only child.  Since she’s functioning in the real world again, perhaps you could redirect your boundless energy toward our ailing mother.”

“Lorna, pu-lease.  Between this cramped condo and my museum responsibilities, I can scarcely find time to breathe.”

“So liberate yourself, forget that never-ending project.  It’s time to move on, for your sake and the family’s.  If you can’t bring yourself to call The Salvation Army, just say the word and I will.”

Under no circumstances will I abandon my museum work.  The collection is as much a part of me as my DNA.  After poor Arthur’s unforeseen death I downsized to this condo and hired a handyman to convert the larger of two bedrooms into my personal tribute to shoes.  My Ave Museo, I christened my hail and farewell museum.  Custom-built shelving, calligraphy signage, and recessed lighting pay homage to my love affair with footwear.  I arranged the vast collection in chronological order and catalogued it on index cards, along with Polaroid photos and pertinent information such as date and place of purchase, original versus discounted price, and special occasion, if any.  I estimate my shoe count to be well over two thousand, which only averages out to a pair a week for the past forty years, starting with the black suedes acquired when I was a mere fifteen.  Mom paid four dollars at a St. Louis factory outlet for the 5AA, classier-than-anyone-else’s penny loafers.  From the moment I slipped my Cinderella foot into the lined interior, I was hooked.

Securing quality shoes at bargain prices has evolved into a lifelong passion.  From warehouse bins to end-of-the-season overruns, I never pass up a bargain.  With eyes half-closed, I can navigate one hand through a clearance pile and discover the softest of leather shoes, so lightweight my feet barely acknowledge their presence.  My criteria for purchasing include style, comfort, and price—variables that fluctuate with my mood, weight, and current finances.

Lorna has upset me so I wander barefoot through the maze of shelves until I reach the early years section.  Pressing a pair of clear plastic sling backs to my breast, I conjure up memories of my first date with Arthur, who was twelve years my senior and climbing the corporate ladder.  I wore the sexy heels with an ankle bracelet and strapless sundress.  Arthur caressed my tender instep with his tongue and suggested modeling as a possible career for me.  “Unfortunately, my narrow foot and high arch don’t fit the standard for American shoes,” I explained before letting him make love to me.

I married Arthur in white linen, three-inch T-straps; sentimentality prevented me from ever wearing them again.  After years of trying, we finally conceived.  Every Sunday during that dreadful pregnancy he escorted me to St. Jerome’s, where I gave thanks for the alligator pumps that soothed my swollen feet.  Mandi’s birth was unremarkable, except for those horrid slip-ons covering my feet in the delivery room.  To my regret, the adorable child never developed into much of a shopper.  Even as a little tot she threw tantrums at the sidewalk sales.  I finally gave in and left her at home with Arthur.  They bonded while I shopped, not that I’m complaining.

Only once did I pay full retail, from the brown and green sirens that called to me from the window of Vogue Boot Shop in St. Louis, a premier store that met its demise during urban renewal.  Although the open-toes patchwork design only complimented a few outfits, I justified the expense as a confirmation of my worthiness.  Most of my shoes reside in their original boxes, marked with the retail price and the discount actually paid.  Orphaned shoes are displayed in clear plastic containers, not out of disrespect but for Ave’s pleasing conformity.  Some of the orphans represent the crème de la crème, those incredible bargains from Italy—the slenderest of heels, the pointiest of toes.

“What’s with you American women and your love affair with all things Italian?” my orthopedist once grumbled while he examined a throbbing joint protruding below my big toe.  “American women have no business trying to squeeze their gun boats into shoes designed for Italians.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said.  “My grandparents came from Torino.”

After going under the knife for a bunionectomy, I endured a nasty recovery that lasted as long as my promise to avoid further involvement with the Italian leathers.

By that time Mandi was starting high school so I set aside my everyday Keds and went back to work part-time.  Within the year my job with an incentive travel agency evolved into a full-time career that took me around the world, enabling me to acquire shoes in every color and heel style.  My practical blacks in assorted heel heights suffered the most wear and tear; burgundy could easily have qualified as basic, if only I’d found them at a decent sale price.

“Be sure to wear cushioned walking shoes,” I warned my traveling clients, not that I always followed my own advice.  Bold European women who pounded their stiletto heels on unforgiving cobblestones inspired my sense of fashion, even though the soles of my feel often rebelled.  After touring Beijing’s rain-soaked Tiananmen Square, I deemed a pair of tattered sandals unworthy to return home, a rare but necessary decision to accommodate new purchases from Hong Kong.  Thinking one of the hotel maids could use my castoffs, I set them on top of the wastebasket.  The next morning the sandals had been returned, so clean and polished I felt obligated to give them a reprieve.

The black athletic Nikes that rubbed silver dollar blisters on my heels resurrected a memorable evening in Amsterdam when I hiked two miles to the government-approved Blue Light District.  Teen-age prostitutes wearing lacy underwear posed like bored mannequins in display windows, offering their bodies to eager tourists.  Or pathetic druggies.  I was more curious than shocked.  If only I’d been aware of my own daughter’s spiraling descent.

When Mandi got pregnant, I demanded a proper wedding and was determined to find the perfect mother-of-the-bride shoes.  Over a three-week period I bought ten different styles, two of which were wedding appropriate but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the others behind.  I finally settled on the sequined paisleys for Mandi’s wedding.  They pinched my toes throughout the day, an omen I should’ve recognized as disastrous since the marriage ended four months later, right after God took Mandi’s tiny newborn.  Then Arthur died.  A series of depressions followed.  Years of therapy, setbacks, and recoveries still haven’t resolved issues too painful to contemplate.

What I really need now is closure, but not before a good stiff drink.  Or two.  I mix a batch of margaritas, pour a generous dose over crushed ice, and put the glass to my lips.  Closing my eyes, I let the salty sweet combo trickle down my throat.  After a while I pick up the telephone and punch in a series of numbers. I sip some more, and wait for a click on the other end.  The familiar hello sounds sleep.  Not a good sign.

“Brace yourself, Mandi.”

“Mom, you’re such a drama queen.  Please don’t tell me Grandma’s still tossing her garbage over the balcony.”

“Okay, I won’t.  Now she’s flushing it down the toilet.  Naturally, the landlord wants her out.  Your Auntie Lorna thinks I should take her.  But as you know, I’m so cramped for space I can hardly breathe.”

“Why don’t you sleep on the sofa and give Grandma your bedroom?” she purrs.

“Mandi, pu-lease.  I need a clear head to catalogue my Ave collection on the computer.  I’ve been thinking, maybe you could—”

“Maybe you could teach Grandma to use the computer.  Or, if she can’t handle the computer, how about giving her my old job—dusting all those damn shoes you can’t live without.”

What does Mandi know, her and those ridiculous German clogs she insists on wearing.  “Like hell,” are my final words before I hang up.

I check the clock. It’s two in the morning, another plus for having a personal museum.  My Ave Museo never closes

.

First published in The Powhatan Review, Winter 2006. 

 



                                                                                                        
 
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The Man Who Tried to Listen                                                                                                             

 by Eric D. Lehman

 

ater, his mother would blame herself.  She had used primitive speakers to soothe her baby in the womb, and upon his birth immediately placed a stereo near his crib, playing old albums of The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Joni Mitchell.  The baby responded with glee, stretching his tiny arms toward the sounds, twitching with magical waking dreams.  He seemed to have been born for a musical life.

At age three, the delighted mother bought her son a toy piano, but he showed no interest.  As he grew, she tried other instruments, buying him lessons and tutors, but he showed no aptitude at all.  The teachers shrugged and told her that he was meant for other things.  The baffled mother finally gave up, seeing in her son a contradiction too great for her understanding.  How could her precious boy love music so much, and yet not be willing to play it?  She consulted psychologists, who said that such problems were not serious enough to warrant their attention.  The mother gave up, piling unused instruments in a closet, trying to accept her son’s strange, sponge-like behavior, wondering what his future held.

One evening, while searching the miraculous dial of the radio, loving each sound that seemed born of the air, the boy happened upon a classical music station, and heard Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy.”  What was this?  A new kind of music, a happy sound too complex for his untrained ears to immediately absorb.  He listened to the piece several times, loving every second.  Suddenly, he knew what he would do when he “grew up.”  He would listen to everything ever composed for the human ear.  It was simple, really, and shocking that no one had ever attempted it.  Perhaps they lacked the necessary commitment.  He would be the first, famous or anonymous, right or wrong.  He had found his calling.

So, the boy spent his childhood exploring the radio.  When sent on play-dates to houses without music, he would cry and refused to be mollified.  He sulked through schooldays and listened to music from the moment he returned home until the time his worried parents told him to sleep.  He begged for a set of headphones for his birthday, and the grudging parents obliged.  When forced to leave his bedroom, he wore the headphones at every opportunity, shunning schoolmates and activities, amazed by the supernatural progressions of notes, the way they pulled feelings from his body that had not existed a moment before.

As a teenager, he stole through school, earning an “A” only in Music Appreciation.  Graduating high school at the bottom of his class, he made sure that he could wear earphones at his new job, loading trucks at the local warehouses.  The money he earned went directly to CDs and the occasional concert.  He attended these alone, in the very back of the theatre, closing his eyes as vibrations traveled along his arteries.  Sometimes in his new apartment he would listen to several pieces at once, and the dissonance of the various compositions seemed to fuse and separate.  As he silenced one after another, the harmony would emerge, the melody would clarify, and one strand of eternal beauty would trumpet across the world.

As technology improved, so did opportunities to integrate music into his life.  He downloaded thousands of songs and symphonies from all corners of the earth. He found new ways of acquiring music, using whatever legal or illegal methods available.  He cut out all but the cheapest foods in pursuit of his hobby.  Inevitably, he lost his job loading trucks, having caused one too many accidents through inattention.  When his manager told him that he needed a job he would enjoy, he shrugged.  There were simply no jobs that involved listening to music, except “critic,” but he had no understanding of that.  All music was magical, all music was good.  So, he lived on welfare, taking small checks from the government and spending them on rice, oatmeal, and sound.

When the listening man woke up, he ate a bowl of soggy meal and put on headphones.  Later in the day, he took them off and cranked up the speakers of his beloved stereo system.  He became known to a small number of music lovers who interacted on the internet message boards.  They sent him rare pieces whenever they could.  He tried not to repeat songs, knowing that he must be dedicated to reach his goal:  becoming a repository for all sonic art.  Sometimes he became frustrated upon finding a new genre or a new composer.  But after a few weeks he would listen for more, his ears tuned in to beauty that the computer seemed able to force from the ether.

On a summer day, one of the music lovers mentioned that he had recently seen thousands of manuscripts in a European museum, music that had never been recorded.  The internet conversation turned to this subject, and the small group of music-lovers bemoaned the fact that millions of such pieces existed, most of them tucked into libraries and museums, the vast bulk of them simply lost to the ages.  They had learned these simple details in school long ago, of course, and were only repeating them out of their own frustration and helplessness before the universe of sound.  Sadly, no human being could possibly catalog or listen to every piece of music.

The man who tried to listen stood up and turned off the computer, searched the racks of CDs on the wall, and found Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy.”  As it blasted on the stereo, he went to the small gas stove on which he boiled his rice, and turned a knob.  Time passed, the notes each seemed distinct and special, the dissonance of voices cohered in harmony, pure life echoing in every true and happy sound.  The fantasy swelled to a conclusion, thunderous applause broke out, and the man who had tried to listen lit a match.

 

 



                                                                                                      
  
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The Funeral                                                           

by Diane Payne


hen my father was dying of lung cancer, he started to display his greatest enthusiasm to want to live.  Most of his life, he had lived rather recklessly and seemed to welcome the idea of a quick, unexpected death.  By the time his lung cancer was diagnosed, it was already stage 4, and the prognosis was rather bleak.  He chain smoked the majority of his life, yet seemed enraged at the tobacco companies for not warning him that he may get lung cancer from smoking.

“Dad, you’ve known for years that smoking causes cancer,” I muttered during one of his rants.

“I wouldn’t have smoked then.”

“As a kid, I was always begging you to not smoke while we were eating.”

Dad laughed. “Remember how I’d always put the chicken necks on your plate?”

“I’ll probably never forget.  Remember how you’d use my plate as your ashtray?”

He laughed again, denying that he’d ever do such a thing.

Yeah, right.

We lived in separate states, so we usually spent a few days at each other’s homes during our visits.  Every visit, he warned my teenaged daughter and I that he’d probably never see us again.  My daughter would look at me, uncertain what she was supposed to say or do.  Then he’d talk about how his wife, my stepmother, wanted to be cremated because it was cheaper, but he didn’t want to be burned.  “Ain’t that what the Hindus do?” he asked my daughter because her father is Hindu.

“I think so,” she told him.

“Nothing wrong with that,” he said, but I sensed he thought there most definitely was something not quite right, and feared he’d say more.  “It’s definitely cheaper.  What do you want to do with your body when you’re dead?” he asked me.  Both my daughter and I were in the process of getting ready for school, not really prepared for this urgent farewell discussion.

“I’d be happy just left in the woods somewhere.”

“Your mom’s weird.  You know she’s serious, don’t you?” he asked my daughter, who looked sickened.

After a year of pondering what to do with his body, Dad decided to be cremated and pre-paid for the funeral and the food for the reception.  Dad seemed happy to know the ham sandwiches were paid for and he had two cemeteries prepared for his ashes.  He wanted half of his ashes next to my mother, who had been dead thirty years, and he wanted his wife to do the same with half her ashes when she died, the other half would be placed in a cemetery near where he lived and his wife’s family had been buried.

The hospice nurse thought she’d know when Dad was about three days from death, and I’ve been a hospice volunteer, so I knew guessing when one would actually die is a bit of a crapshoot, but my sister and I lived in separate states from my father, and were hoping we would have time to fly there so we could be with him once we got “that call.”  We got “that call” in the middle of the night, and I got on the phone to arrange airline tickets, but by morning, Dad was dead.

My sister and her kids, and my daughter and I met at the airport and rented a car for the three-hour drive to Dad’s house.  While we were flying, my dad’s wife and our brother started hustling, really hustling, and the day after we had arrived had been set for the memorial.  “It’s cheaper not embalming your dad,” his wife explained.  I couldn’t understand why she’d have him embalmed before cremating, but said nothing.  My sister and I had the task of filling several large poster boards with pictures of our dad.  His wife hauled out about fifty photo albums.  Most of the pictures were of a time we saw little of our dad because he was perpetually drunk.  Our children kept asking who all those people were in the pictures that were surrounded by whiskey and beer bottles.  “Where are pictures of us?” the kids kept asking.

“Keep looking, you’ll find them,” I said.

His wife kept laughing remembering the good times when my dad was able to drink like a fish.  “Put that picture up there,” she said, “they’ll probably be there tomorrow.”

My sister and I discovered that there was a surprise awaiting us at the funeral home.  After all Dad’s talks about his funeral plans, and finally agreeing upon being cremated, we were led to this broom closet, and there was unembalmed Dad, three days dead, lying beneath a green sheet, looking absolutely dreadful.   “I wanted you girls to have a chance to see your dad,” his wife explained.

Neither of us said anything.

“Doesn’t he look good?” she asked.

I figured she was suffering from fatigue and stress.  Three days dead.  The green sheet.  The gurney shoved in a closet.  Ugh.

The funeral director had us sign legal papers regarding this viewing that he did not support.

Then she noticed my dad’s brothers and sisters and ushered them toward the closet.  The funeral home director intercepted her, and reminded her it was illegal to have an unembalmed body out for viewing.

“We paid a lot of money for this funeral,” my brother intervened, and started pushing our dad’s body to the room where the memorial was about to take place.  People were already seated.  The funeral director chased him with legal documents that needed to be signed and kept saying, “It’s illegal to do that in our state!”

Non-relatives were shaking their heads, laughing.  My brother continued pushing the gurney, and my aunts and uncles dutifully walked up to see my dad lying on the gurney, and declared that “he sure looks good,” and I wanted to point out he looked a whole lot better in most of those pictures lining up the wall.  The funeral director looked miserable.  I’m sure he wished we would push our dad’s body outside and just finish the service anywhere but inside his funeral home.

Finally everyone sat down, and I don’t know who the man was that got up so say a prayer, I think he was my brother’s fishing buddy slash preacher friend.  People stood up to tell drunken stories of my dad, except his brothers and sisters said more serious things because their other drunken brother had died the year before, and the remaining siblings were not drinkers, except for the one who kept saying weird things in the lobby and drinking out of a flask, but he didn’t get up to say anything, and our step-mother kept leaning over to my brother, sister, and I, pleading, “Don’t you want to say anything about your dad?”

For once, the three of us did the same thing.  We just stared straight ahead.

There was no more to be said.

 



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Gift                                                                                                   

by
Michelle Reale

 

  meet them at bars.

I lit my first cigarette and was savoring my scotch and water when I noticed her knocking one back.  “Looks like you need a friend,” is what I said, as I slid onto the stool next to her.  It’s usually what I say to people as I move in on them.  They don’t think it’s as corny as it sounds to me, because the truth is, it is exactly what they need.  I hone in on it.  She looked at me like I was crazy, but I hung in there.  Hit the payoff.  Eventually, I put her in my car, brought her home.  Strong coffee usually helps them balance after I’ve coaxed them to spew their emotional garbage.

My husband is in the kitchen, pulling his hands out of the dish water.  He places his dripping, sudsy hands on his hips.  “I give up,” he says with a sigh.  But really, he’s used to it.  I give him the quick 411:  “Husband died 3 months ago.  Long illness.  Has 5 grown kids, babysits for strangers.  Irish, I think.”  His eyes roll.  I settle the gangly woman onto the kitchen chair.  I motion to the French press sitting on the countertop.  “Babysits?  She’s drunk!  Christ,” he says.  He gets the coffee made anyway.

My husband pours a steaming mug.  The woman lifts her head from where it had been cradled on her long arms and says, “cream, two sugars,” then settles her nose into the soft wool of her sweater.  My husband shoots me a look. I shake my head “no.”  Black coffee is what she needs, but in fact, never gets around to drinking.  She passes out at the kitchen table.  I hate when that happens.  I cover her with the old granny square afghan draped over the back of the couch, the one that has comforted more than a few.  I have one last cigarette in the kitchen beside the woman sleeping off her drink.  My husband mentions her family, her children.  I wave him off.  “If they cared so much, they should have prevented her from hanging out at bars in her emotional state.”  My husband considers this for a moment, shrugs.  “In the morning?” he asks, tips his head.  “Oh, well, you know” I say, rubbing out my cigarette, becoming tired despite the nicotine rush.  “She’s on her own then.”  I say this carefully, because he needs to know my limits.  “Right,” he says, turning out the kitchen light, his left foot dragging with fatigue.

Heading upstairs, I see a shadow in the hallway, the soft ruffle of a nightgown.  Our daughter is afraid of the dark.  Again.  “Mommy,” she calls, and I wince.  My head is starting to ache and I need to get off my feet.  I glance at my husband, and give a small pout, point to my head.  He scoops our daughter into his arms and I wave the slow wave of the weary to them as I head to the bedroom and shut the door.  Really, I’ve done what I could for today.  Strays are my thing.  I comfort them.  It’s a gift.

 

 



                                                                                                        
 
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Thoughts from the Big Sky                                                                 

by Jerry Vilhotti



rofessor Nietzsche for one tried to kill God, as if He were an addiction like he himself  plowing his sister in the dark like a deranged father knocking up his daughter in a cell in his big house, saying religions were going to be slave masters out to control the poor inhabitants of "Aqua" by perpetuating their fear of death and the unknown to making minds become so warped that little or no thinking would go on to any depth; then, he added vehemently that greed would slaughter God in attempts to find a self worth and indeed become their mad-off god. 

The philosopher was countered by Professor Gilgamesh who said the womb was more powerful than the brain and wanted an "un-chosen" people to write a book of their beginnings—hanging gardens and all— to see if it would be stolen and then other fictions added—just for fun.   philosopher Pessimistic Shaupenhauer could not agree more saying Nietzsche was a mad man off his rocker trying to create supermen among self-haters!

 At this point others on the panel begin to interject some of their ideas like Benny Zoroaster insisting a Son of Light should be introduced with twelve apostles to see where that would lead while Doctor Agnostic said that since even they themselves did not know their origins it would be a sadistic game to play on inhabitants still living in caves or not very far from the ones they recently left conquering to some extent their fear of lightning and thunder.

Professor Heron, the machine guy genius, said he could make one thing that would have people visiting "holy places", his voice indicated the sarcasm of it all, to inject a coin into the machine and that weight would make a lever go down to produce just enough "holy water" to cleanse them of the dirt they felt which to their minds would become a miracle and then overwhelm them with huge doors opening to the tune of thunder—making the business of religion flourish until a real cure came along if indeed they had it in them to find real cures and not pseudo panaceas to lessen the fear in their hearts and take away the stain on their souls.

Doctor Shrub and his father Mister Cheeeny suggested to make many of the inhabitants be very very poor like childs dying of hunger yet able to work for the super rich like one percent and then see if they could survive in tents which could be called Shrub Tent Towns.   Mister Hoover Damn agreed vehemently by slamming his GOP on the table sighting a compassionate way that that would indeed test their mettle and make sure a great war could happen between a great leader wearing a mustache and doing a little freaky dance while a great city called Paris was burning with fire emanating from her genitalia and his pupil Mister Boner and Mister Turtle Face put their little Gops up on the table standing on their toes to show agreement, compliance and followship.           

And so the experiment on a new discovered planet began and all the scientists and super elite of the planet Control—a galaxy away— awaited excitedly like little children being presented with a new toy on the morning they called The New Fourth Order.

 

 


                                                                                                      
  
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