April 11, 2012. Issue 36. The Late Issue.
by Brent Powers
First you take the firecrackers and place them in the various holes which have opened up in your body and are running with a substance gooey and strong smelling and you stuff up these holes with the firecrackers so then you prepare to go forth. First though you must of course consult the Bahble. It is writ in the Bahble what must be done on such and such and so and so, like a calendar, see? The days are marked and the years too and hence the months also. Drop a match stick any old page and there's the words you must follow. I got something about Ezikial and acted accordingly. I mean with an accordion, ha. I don't have one so I'll use this harmonica instead.
So. M-90. Salud! That's what I always say when I'm about to go forth. I don't remember what it means. Something to do with hot days and beer, grass, a wooden dog.
I have covered myself in clothing. It is the appropriate clothing for a Sunday. For me this consists of my hospital gown and a sash and then of course the sandals for my feet in which there are holes each at the stigmata points in which I have inserted firecrackers, as instructed. I say goodbye to the cats and lock up. Go forth. Go forth.
In the world of history there is education and catastrophe. These two will suffice. I suppose I am an educator. I am of the race of Prophets who must go forth and say what needs to be said which will come from God once you know the trick. It's simple. Shut up your own mind and let in the Other Mind. No, it's more relaxing. It is a relaxing of your own mind so that it becomes like unto a vessel, a cup in which God may be poured and come out of your mouth incomprehensibly. My critics have described these as "gnomic utterances". They seem to like that figure. A gnome is a … wait. These are any of a number of dwarflike beings who are said to inhabit the interior of the earth. I know lots of people like that, don't you? Trying to reduce what comes out of my mouth into the language of midgets is what. These small minds describing our world. It all comes from under the earth, from the Shades with many a sigh and groan.
So here I am trampling along on my feet flattened by many a day and night, years, wandering the desert seeking Temptations to which I easily succumb and yet some fool in animal skins judges me fit and says, "Go on now. Get along witcha. I don't want you around here any more messing with my fantasy."
On this occasion I finds me a UPS woman. She is driving in her truck. And she stops that truck and looks at me and finds it amusing what she sees for she laughs a great deal. It is one of those hyuh-hyuh type laughs from the country. But she's obviously a suburban woman of the Drayage Caste, meaning she went at least as far as community college to learn the necessary skills. She has read some of the classics of Drayage, even a little Comedia by Shrader on the life which became a film. It's OK to talk to such people for they have some social skills and are going about self improvement in an intelligent and meaningful way. They attend meetings and do their steps. At some point they will come to Prophesy but that's a point far off in the heavens, even unto light years. The mind must travel by means of the Astral Projection for machines don't cut it, feel me? We should all know that by now only we don't which is why there is the Agency.
So this chick she says, "Why are you got up like that? What are you trying to do?"
"Well, I'm going forth," I explains.
by J.R. Rogers
The 55 foot side trawler Mary Jane prepared to sail on the high tide from her berth at the foot of the commercial docks. Moments before, Gus was still on the pier. He loosened the lines, waiting for the captain to give him the go-ahead to finish the job. He squinted through the fog of a grey Texas dawn at a dirty brown seagull diving into the oily, brackish water of Corpus Christi Bay. He wondered what the bird had found to eat in the murky slop. Up in the wheelhouse, Captain Harry Rickers was still tuning the engines, running up the revolutions then idling the massive twin Caterpillar diesels. Again, he heard the growling of the engines. Then, a split second later, the violent thrashing of displaced water as the screws bit deeply into the harbor waters. The Mary Jane shuddered and her lines went taut before Rickers throttled her back. Then the lines went slack once again. He often tuned the engines that way before shoving off. Gus knew the Old Man thrilled at the raw horsepower he commanded and never missed an opportunity to run flat out whenever he could.
"Cast off, mister," Ricker shouted finally from the open wheelhouse door.
Gus struggled to remove the lines from the large iron cleats. His amputated left thumb made grasping the thick, rough hemp lines difficult but he managed then jumped aboard the Mary Jane already inching away. There were three of them aboard, including Hector the deckhand who doubled as the cook. Up in the narrow wheelhouse Rickers pointed the vessel southwest into the bay and beyond the horizon toward Mexico. The Mary Jane surged quickly forward as the water peeled away from her bow. The deck vibrated as Gus and Hector retrieved then stowed the old truck tires hanging over the port side. With the high tide came a breeze, which sailors say is good luck. That morning it blew heavy with the smell of rotting fish, painted wood and diesel fuel. It tugged at the faded American flag displayed in regulation fashion from a jack staff on her stern. Rickers applied still more power to the diesels. Neither man looked back at the rapidly disappearing shoreline as the Mary Jane left Corpus and made for the breakwater. Moments later, she slipped into a fog bank and disappeared from view. Left behind were only puffs of black smoke lingering on the wind and the little oily waves lapping noisily at the crumbling dock.
It took almost three hours for the sun to burn off the early morning fog and by then they were alone at sea with little to do. Gus was ready to slip into his off-duty shipboard routine. He pulled off his black rubber boots in defiance of the Old Man's rules then snaked his way up to the bow. He made his way around the familiar nets and weighted footropes and floats stowed along the rail, all of the essential gear of the commercial shrimper that would sit idle that trip.
Rickers had briefed the crew last night. The Old Man climbed down the narrow ladder into their bunkroom at dinner. At first, they ignored him. They lowered their voices and continued their conversation surprised by his appearance. Rickers always ate alone up in the wheelhouse surrounded by his instruments. He liked to sit in the elevated pilot's chair holding the Styrofoam plate with the little compartments next to his stomach. He listened to the Coast Guard emergency channel while he ate, the way others watched TV. He insisted on solitude. But last night, he had set his empty plate down on the corner of their little folding sea table and interrupted their meal.
"All right you two, listen up for a minute. There's been a change in plans."
Hector looked up first.
"We get underway tomorrow at 0600 like usual. Then it's going to be different. We're getting out of the shrimping business on this run." He paused for effect, confident that he now had their attention. "Going to haul something a little different." Rickers let that sink in for a moment then cocked his left leg up on the rails of Gus's bunk. He found a cigarette in his pocket, lit it with an old, worn Zippo, then lifted his cap and smoothed his hand back and forth over his sweaty, baling pate. He waited for their reaction.
Hector drew his sleeve across his mouth, an angry quizzical look in his eyes. He crumpled his messy paper plate and tossed it into the trash can.
Gus saw the tattooed muscles on his shipmate's arm twitch.
Then Hector stood and hiked his pants. "What? No more work?" He spoke in thick accented English.
"Yeah, Captain," Gus added. He turned to get a better look at him. "Why aren't we going to shrimp?" Gus didn't like surprises. He moved his plate aside then pushed back his chair. "Seems sort of sudden, doesn't it? What's going on?"
Rickers looked at Gus. He didn't bother with Hector. He sensed a challenge to his authority. "I'm not answering any of your damn fool questions tonight," he told them irritably. "Hold them till we get to Campeche. We'll take on fuel and stores there." Then he leaned forward, stubbed out his cigarette in their ashtray and lowered his voice. He looked first at Gus then at Hector. "You two keep your lips buttoned about this if you know what's good for you," he warned them. Then he stood and reached for the ladder to the deck. "In the meantime, it's normal shipboard routine."
Gus glared at the gear as he made his way forward. He was annoyed and angry at their last minute change in plans. It was not a good sign. He found his habitual perch, atop the anchor housing and made himself comfortable. He extended his legs until they reached the leading edge of the forward hatch cover. From his vantage point, he could look out at sea, gaze at the sky and sometime just forget. Already, he wasn't looking forward to their trip. He had sailed with Rickers only once before and had found the experience tolerable. The work was good. Honest, back-breaking work hauling up the nets alive with thousands of teeming shrimp. It all helped deaden his past. The vast ocean, he thought, as he looked around. The stiff, relentless wind so full of strength and vitality. He liked to stand at the bow, his arms spread-eagle, and let the full punch of the wind try and knock him down. Afterward, he felt intoxicated. But most of all he liked the rhythm of the bow; how it lifted then fell silently through the water. It calmed him, like the motion in a rocking chair. Gus had never been to sea before, but in the Mary Jane he sensed he might have found his calling. Now this. Rickers' little chat with them. He'd heard the stories before, everybody had. Running empty trawlers south to Mexico was common enough if you were part of the shrimp fleet, but what was Rickers planning to bring back? Was it drugs? It had to be, he knew, the sinking feeling in his stomach causing him to panic at the thought of certain prison time if something went wrong. Down at the seamen's hiring hall in Corpus two months ago he was warned.
"Keep your nose clean," the official growled. "I don't owe you but one chance. That's the deal we have with the Parole Board. Lucky for you Rickers don't mind ex-cons." Then the stamped Gus's newly issued seaman's card before he gave it to him. "Pier 15. The Mary Jane."
The man's steel grey brush cut hair reminded Gus of the institutional look favored by the prison guards. Yes, thought Gus, he needed this damn job more than anything right now, but now the Old Man was being tempted by something far more intriguing than shrimp.
Gus had done his time in Attica, a maximum security prison in the backwoods of upstate New York, halfway between Buffalo and Rochester. At night, during the harshest winters he ever experienced, he remembered listening to the wind. Shrill gusts blew off of frozen Lake Erie. The wind screamed through the battlements of the old prison. The howls rose and fell and often lulled him to sleep. In his cell, pistachio-colored steam pipes and radiators hissed and clanged drowning out the grunts and moans and cries of a thousand restless inmates. Six years, two months and 19 days. Gus knew the score and he wasn't going back, not for Rickers, not for anybody. His eyes glazed over then and he was back in D block, cell 31. In the prison walls of his mind it was always late afternoon. His shift in the prison laundry done, he was lying on his bunk trying to read. Al, his cellmate in the bunk above, lost in another world as usual, rambled aloud about his childhood on a Minnesota farm. Mostly it was unintelligible because he badly slurred his words. But it was always the same verbal snapshots, the same random snippets of conversation remembered over and over again; conversations with his mother about the rain. Toward the end, Al simply curled into a fetus position and refused to move anymore. Finally, the guards and two muscular, white-coated orderlies reached up and dragged him down from his bunk. They carried him out of the cell like a bag of potatoes, drooling and weeping. Out in the hall, they bound him tightly in a canvass jacket with no arms then took him away.
Gus took a last drag and arced his cigarette butt high over the rail. It was pushed immediately aside by the wind and for a moment he was surprised and thought it might fly back to him. He sat up to better view the ocean and dropped his arms over the rail. He basked in the sunny reflection of its surface brilliance and allowed his memories of Attica to slowly recede. Moderate waves taking a more pronounced long form, ran at an angle to the Mary Jane. He judged their speed at better than 15 knots. Whatever the Old Man's scam, Gus thought, he wasn't wasting any time.
Their last night in Corpus, Gus wandered over to the Harpoon and had a few beers at the bar. He tuned out the idle, boastful conversations on either side and was grateful for the darkness in the place. He nodded at the bartender when a refill was needed. It was getting late and the stump on his amputated left thumb starting to throb again, the familiar hot white pain streaking up his forearm. He lowered his hand into the protective warmth of his lap. He called the bartender over and this time ordered a double-shot of Wild Turkey. Toward midnight, as he prepared to leave, a tall skinny blonde wandered in. She quickly scanned the place then moved purposefully behind the row of men hunched over their drinks. Quickly, she checked her reflection in the bar's mirrored wall as she headed for the far corner of the room. Gus swiveled on his stool to catch a better view of her. He was tempted to try and buy her a drink, but she seemed intent on meeting a man wearing a captain's cap sitting alone in a far booth. Rank has its privileges, thought Gus as he turned away. Later, when the two walked out he was surprised the man was Rickers. Gus chuckled at the revelation. So, Mister Rickers, human after all, he thought to himself.
The metallic screeching of the deck speaker brought Gus back to reality.
"Gus, get your ass up to the bridge, pronto," he heard Rickers bark.
Up in the wheelhouse it was hot and stuffy and Rickers' regulation Navy shirt was stained with perspiration under the arms. He slouched in his pilot's chair sharpening a knife and looked at Gus through reflective sunglasses.
"Was that you in the Harpoon last night, mister?"
The Coast Guard emergency channel crackled in the background while underfoot came the faint and faraway throb of the diesels. Through the tinted windows the blue-green ocean stretched away to infinity. In the distance, Gus watched a seagull disappear in between the ocean swells.
"Yeah, Captain. Yeah, that was me," he said. Already, he didn't like the course the conversation was taking.
"Think you would recognize her again?"
"Probably not, Captain. I mean, you know, in the dark . . ." He watched as the Captain put aside the knife and the whetstone.
"Then just forget you ever saw her with me if you want to stay healthy." Rickers lowered his sunglasses to rub his eyes, squinted in the glare and twisted around in his chair as if uncertain whether he had made his point. "Got it?" he asked.
"Yeah, sure Captain, sure. No problem. Never saw you two together. Can I go now?" The stub of his thumb ached and he wanted a cigarette, but he didn't dare light one on the bridge, at least not without the Old Man's okay. Rickers was unpredictable that way. Gus knew he could never be sure whether the Old Man would let a breach of Navy regulation slide. Rickers had been career Navy for 29 years. He managed, or so Hector had explained, to have himself promoted to Chief Petty Officer through a combination of steadfastness and luck. What he lacked in education and polish he more than made up for in nautical knowledge and devotion to duty. Now, he commanded his own ship. He drank coffee from a mug emblazoned with the seal of the United States Naval Academy, an institution he never attended, and he wore the shoulder boards of a captain, a commission he never earned. Still, everything was done by the book and the Mary Jane none the worst for it, Hector claimed. And Rickers' obsession with discipline explained many other things, too, especially his inability to retain a crew. Men were forever bridling at his authority, plotting against him or jumping ship. Gus had overheard their chatter at the seaman's hiring hall. Even Hector was of the opinion that shipping out with Rickers was a billet of last resort.
The Captain replaced his sunglasses, glanced at the automatic pilot, then looked hard at Gus. "Dismissed," he said.
Fortresses and the sea surrounded Campeche as the city gradually came into view. Several hours later they were tied up at the municipal dock basking in the tropical heat. Although located on the Gulf, and subject to its breezes, Campeche was hot. Because they had docked in mid-afternoon, no dock master or other official presented himself. The long siesta, rigorously observed in those parts, was underway. The old fortified city had the appearance of an abandoned movie set. Gus and Hector lounged in the fantail drinking warm American beer under a spread of canvass jury rigged for the occasion. Rickers had unlocked the cooler for them then gone ashore as soon as they tied up. He left them no instructions so they waited. From their vantage point in the stern they could look up at the malecon, the stone, curving waterfront promenade. Behind it, and in the distance, the tips of ancient church spires rose through the sultry afternoon. Campeche was a quiet, coastal town, not a tourist destination, Hector told Gus. They agreed Rickers had probably chosen it for just that reason. They were drinking stronger, darker Mexican beer, now. Hector had called out to a youth slumming on the docks and the two had given him some dollars. He dutifully returned with a paper bag full of cool, brown bottles and Hector tipped him generously. The rest of the afternoon they told jokes at the expense of the Captain and ridiculed his authority. Both agreed that whatever he was up to was probably plenty dirty and maybe dangerous. He and Hector cursed at the thought of what the following days might bring.
Toward nightfall, a large, creamy white sailing yacht glided into the harbor next to them and dropped anchor. Gus and Hector stood side by side under the canvass and watched with interest as uniformed deckhands moved efficiently about the deck. They could smell suntan lotion, perfume and the smell of expensive cigars.
"Can't make out her name 'cause her stern's turned the wrong way," muttered Hector.
"Damn thing must have cost a fortune," said Gus. "Look at all that brass."
After darkness fell, and the cabin lights on the yacht twinkled on, they heard the silky, well-fed sound of men's and women's voices on deck, the inviting laughs, then the music as the evening got underway.
He came around the next morning, around 11, attired in a soiled khaki uniform and wearing a cap, carrying a clipboard and wearing a holstered black pistol. Gus, lounging on deck and listening to a country and western music CD in Hector's boom box, rose to greet him. The official, gave him an informal salute with two fingers, welcomed him to Mexico then inquired about the Captain. It seemed they knew one another. Gus pointed him up to the elevated bridge.
By Captain's order, he and Hector split their shore leave so as not to leave the Mary Jane unattended. When Hector returned later that afternoon of their second day, Gus helped him aboard then went ashore. Though the city was small, cabbies at the end of the dock stood beside ancient, battered American sedans looking for fares. He ignored them and went by foot. He chose of one the colonial entrances to the old fortified city. Gus passed through the cool, thick 17th century city walls. Though crumbling in places, they blocked out the late-afternoon sun. Hector said he thought they were erected to protect the city against pirates. Inside the walls, the narrow, winding streets lined with shops and colonial buildings were poorly marked or not at all. Gus, who spoke no Spanish, merged into the colorful confluence of citizens flowing down the narrow streets. The beggars and urchins marked him at once because of his height and the caramel color of his hair. He stood easily a foot over most of Campeche. They latched on to him, demanded money and trailed him all the way into the town zocalo with its red poinsettias, benches and the old cathedral to one side. Gus settled into a wrought iron chair at a deserted outdoor terrace. The soft pink facades of the buildings were turning dark as sunset neared. He lowered the table umbrella to capture the last weak rays of the sun. After a beer, he chose his dinner by pointing to a number on the paper mat his waiter had set in front of him. Behind him, there was already a crowd inside at the bar. The locals chatted noisily and drank and watched TV. Several of the men wore uniforms and the women all had long, dark hair. Outside, the service was pleasant and efficient as darkness fell.
As he finished his dinner, and called for another beer, Gus noticed a small boy watching him. He stood against the outside wall of the cantina, scratching himself occasionally but otherwise immobile and silent. Gus had no idea how long he had been standing there. After the waiter had left, Gus turned and waived the boy over. There was no immediate response. Gus gestured several more times and then, reluctantly, the boy emerged from the shadows. His hair was dark and he carried a small parrot, or macaw, perched on his shoulder. Gus wasn't certain of the distinction between the two species, but he recognized the curved beak and the long tail. The bird's brilliant plumage was a marked contrast to the boy's dirty tee-shirt. He padded silently forward, barefoot, then stopped several feet away. "That's quite a bird you got there, buddy."
There was no response, though there was a visible twitching of the feet, as if an impulse was being checked.
"Hey, come on now buddy. I don't mean you no harm." Gus gestured again, turning briefly aside to take a quick swig from his beer. "Let's take a look at that parrot you got there. Trying to sell him, maybe?" He had not addressed a child in years and could not remember the last time he had. Before Attica, surely. He remembered vaguely the children of Brooklyn where he had once lived with his wife. Back then the kids were everywhere. On every floor of his apartment building, racing up and down the halls, spilling out into sidewalks. And in the summertime, when the city crews opened the hydrants so the kids could cool off, you could hear them splashing and screaming for blocks. Gus shook his head at the gauzy memories so vague and indistinct he wondered whether they had even been real. The sultry evening settled in around him while his mind wandered and from some corner of the zocalo he heard pulsating guitars and marimbas. Gus stood, ready to leave. He reached into his pocket and overpaid his tab leaving behind bills slipped under the tip tray. Then he turned and approached the boy. Gus squatted and offered him his last bill because, unlike the beggars and urchins, he had not asked for it. The boy's large, brown eyes tracked Gus's every move and when he didn't take the money, Gus slipped it between his fingers. "Nice knowing you, buddy," he said softly.
For a second, there was a flicker of something across the little, brown face, but then it vanished quickly. The boy's fingers tightened around the bill.
"Thanks for the company," said Gus laughing. He patted the boy several times on his arm, careful not to disturb the bird, then waved a silent goodbye before turning away.
He is asked to draw a picture of a home and so he draws a cave because that is where bears live. He knows this because he wants to be a bear and he takes out all the books he can about bears from the library. Many of them are overdue and his mother doesn't like to pay the fees. She doesn't like a lot of things, but she likes him. She calls him Little Bear and so he draws a cave because then she will be able to find him if he runs away. And the teacher asks him where the door is and he says bears don't need doors. They don't need windows. They don't need kitchens or sinks or bathrooms either. The teacher says all of this is true. She too loves bears, the kind you find at craft shows and flea markets, holding up signs about friendship and love and teachers, of course. She says he is supposed to draw a home and a cave is too cold to be a real home. Even bears want to live inside she says. Just like in Goldilocks—all bears want a home. The teacher asks if he can put a door on that cave at least. Make it look like someone lives there. He disagrees and says doors just give you a way to leave. And everybody leaves.
The teacher smiles and turns to another student, but that night she tries to call her fiancé. She tries to call her mother. She tries to call her sister-in-law, but nobody will answer. Eventually, she reaches a Chinese delivery service and asks if the man on the other end of the line will listen to her cry. She says something about bears, but he can't understand a word she says. He's only been in the country for a week. And so he listens to her sob and says they have a forty minute guarantee on delivery. She says that is good enough. She says she will leave the door wide open.
She doesn't mind the breeze.
by Ken Poyner
It is not easy being served. I sit for a long time, my feet buffing the foot rail running along the outside of the bar, watching the bartender move back and forth serving other customers, before he finally can no longer avoid me and asks what I am having.
"Bourbon and ginger", I intone. The two patrons nearest me lean in and look down the bar to where I lean confidently back, the two of them wisely smiling a sick, we-know-what-is-coming smile. They expected me to order a Shirley Temple, or at worst light beer.
They know hard liquor will make a chicken sick, and they know the bartender will spice the drink with an extra splash just to make that point. They think a show is coming, and they want to watch and be out of the way.
I fold one wing around the slippery glass and toss back almost half of its contents in the first gulp. No one expected that. Having no teeth, I cannot chase the drink with proper food, but I've been swallowing small stones all day and now I can peck at the finger food, break off a pretzel stick or two. With a fist full of munchies in my gullet, the alcohol might stay down.
The bartender is quick to figure out my plan. He slides the plate of free beer mix across to the other side of the bar, out of even my extended reach. A man with pleasantly fat fingers dips into the communal bowl and picks up where I left off.
The drink has made me quickly woozy, but I think I will hold it down. I beaked quite a bit of the mix before the bartender discovered there was method in me. He now knows I am not just any rooster, not some chicken fresh out of the coop who wants to come in and experience the bar hopping life. No rube, this chicken. I know my weaknesses; I know where my felt-feathered brethren make their mistakes. I am going to do better.
Two girls by the slot machine are lilting side to side in short sheath dresses that prove their legs go all the way up. I have no idea how they can stand in heels so high, but I like it. One is sort of straight lined, with little in the way of hips and no bust to speak of, though she tries to show it off with a dip in the shirt; the other girl, however, has the curves of a good rock-islander. She has more fold and round to her, a spread that could keep a serious clutch of eggs warm. I feel my coxcomb spreading; my tongue is as rough as cheap chicken feed along the underside of my beak.
Much of the bar has stopped looking at me. You always get that reaction. A chicken walks into the bar, and everyone watches as he makes his way to the counter, sits down at the tallest stool. The patrons grow bored as the bartender ignores him. A few minutes later, no one notices the chicken sucking the air out of his Shirley Temple. When you have seen one chicken avoiding the hardcore, you have seen them all. It is not the life for me.
Once I make an entrance, I want to keep the party going. I flutter my coxcomb. I peck at the counter when I want attention. I spread both wings at the same time, jostling good-naturedly the other patrons. I leave feathers on the floor.
But now I am thinking, those two girls are alone. The half bourbon and ginger is working its way through my avian metabolism and I am getting to think I am not so different from these other patrons. We all want the same thing, we just go after it differently. I think the girls have latched on to me, and I can see one looking at me from behind her drink, vision shifted to the tops of her eyes. One of her legs is kicked slightly back, as though she had been scratching the floor, is ready to drag out something worth following.
I slide carefully off my stool. Low, so only the nearest people can hear, I lean forward and let simply out a "brrock", and soon another, though more pointed: "brrock!" and both girls look over to me and smile.
Then I make the mistake of tossing back the remaining half of that damned bourbon and ginger. By the time I am almost across the floor the fire hits me in the chest and I know at the same instant that the music just starting has a beat I can dance to, that the rhythm is in my neck and I could scratch love songs in the smoke and perfume filled air that either species could recognize; but I am already leaning forward, beak down, preparing to prove the stereotype of all of my breed right here on this very floor tonight.
by Kim Farleigh
The children drew box houses, slanting roofs, picket fences, ice-cream clouds, happiness indicating triumph, not talent: cows, farmers, machinery, paths, roads, cars, tanks, corpses, flames: The seen reproduced without insight.
But Hashim's blue universe "echoes" boomed with chance, his bird-wing gas clouds checked by yellow, red disappearing into yellow, red reappearing around purple, a cloud-shell cosmos in permanent creation, like a mind, the universe a work of abstract expressionism.
Boys fought: Imitation, creating limited entertainment, quickly gets substituted with boredom, a Viennese girl recoiling as Hashim returned her pencil that the fighting boys had knocked off the table.
A teacher screamed; real vehemence halts flippant combat.
The Viennese girl and her Albanian parents, visiting Kosovo just before war had broken out, got herded, without documents, into the camp, the girl's dignity strained even further by that "subnormal doing weird drawings."
Hashim's next blue wash looked impenetrable, like logic, a final-state serenity of immeasurable depth.
Hashim's camp became focussed on one tent upon this background of serene azure. The world outside this tent – our story – is chaotic, most tents blurred.
The Viennese girl indicated madness by pointing to her head. But Hashim worked on. He acknowledged my stamping foot. People thought he was deaf; but he detected sounds. The Viennese girl hadn't noticed my experiment, her stick-leg depiction of a sheep giving her more intrigue.
Hashim's peaks split open slope skin, individuality defying restriction, fate making him defy limits.
*
A girl, whose mature anguish belied her limited years, possessed a lugubrious curiosity bereft of the innocent fascination that five-year-olds usually have.
Jordi's black-follicle flames stood out in the hospital's whiteness behind her.
"Buenos días, señor," I said.
Jordi's full-moon, dyed-azure eyes never blinked, always gaping with startled alertness. His mouth's tightness didn't reflect bitterness, but was an unconscious reflection of his desire to listen. He had seen and heard extraordinary things, and he expected to repeat this.
"Sit," he said. "What's up?"
"There's a kid here," I said, "who seems deaf. But he detects sounds. The problem?"
"Ear-bone deformities cause hearing distortions," Jordi replied. "Why?"
"Can it be cured by an operation?" I asked.
"In Geneva. Why?"
"He painted this."
I opened a cardboard tube. Jordi's inhaling whistle finished with: "Vaya!"
"And this, too."
Jordi's eyes were like a cat's eyeing a target.
"He is," I said, "eight years old."
"My God," Jordi whispered.
"You must show me everything," he added, like a plea for justice.
"No problem," I replied.
The girl's artificial legs swung, like awkward pendulums, between the crutches she was using to support herself, her parents walking watchfully on either side of her as they went back down the hill, the silence full of nature's parental patience. I clenched my teeth. My throat hardened.
"A mine," Jordi said, patting me on the back.
She refused to be carried as she went down the hill.
*
People were on tarpaulin before their tents. Red peppers on tent ropes were vibrantly iridescent against white canvases, like the brilliant brushstrokes. The wind, whining between tents, reflected the yearning underpinning the refugees' thoughts. Shrills and wallops swished-rushed, exploding between lilts of blustery breeze. Soporific light created abeyance, immobility emphasising the wind's melancholic agitation.
"Prepare yourself for a miracle," I said.
Zyrafete's amused eyes glowed doubtfully. She was eighteen. She spoke English perfectly without ever having even been in an English-speaking country. Her curiosity calmed me; it made her look sincere and trustworthy – in my eyes.
"I didn't know," she replied, "that miracles existed."
"And life isn't a miracle?"
"The only one."
Her joyous smile was like a silent eruption in space.
We heard Hashim's cackling coming from the cradle of his father's lap. Hashim's father's beard was gleaming in sunlight. Gratitude for just being alive – for being a part of this "miracle" – had been imbued into both father and son. I felt uplifted when I had surprising information. And that day I felt uplifted.
A cooking pot sat in flames in front of Hashim's tent. The surrounding peaks exuded the serene impartiality inherent in nature's longevity, like the secret feelings of gifted people. The heat was intense, as if steam was rising up through cracks in the earth. I felt alive, buoyed by thermals of warmth. No material object could ever have given me this feeling of being so switched on, as if I had tapped into pure life. It was the purest feeling I'd ever had. I had even forgotten about women. I didn't even care if I was going to have another relationship or not; I didn't even know what day it was – and I didn't care.
Hashim's father sat crossed-legged. His waterfall openness was consistent. Our smiles indicated good news. Expectation hummed like spring. Clouds' shadows glided, like the released spirits of the dead, across the slopes. Saw-toothed, summit jaws, facing the sky, were consuming the eternal axioms in the heavens' great plate, as if the earth was dining on the delicious morsels of truth that nature provides to the observant and the intrigued.
"The UNHCR have agreed to fly Hashim to Geneva for an operation," I said. "You can go with him."
A circle in Hashim's father's facial hair opened; from this gap came yelping stupefaction. He slapped his hands together. His wife wrapped her arms around his neck. Hashim's green irises, under his milky-straw follicles, resembled emerald fires.
"The UNHCR," I continued, "does this in special circumstances, and these circumstances are special. Your son is probably the most artistically gifted child in Europe."
Zyrafete stopped translating; her head spun to face me.
"Go on," I said.
She spoke. Hashim's father put his hands up to his face. His wife put her arm around his waist. Their wet faces smiled with crazed bliss. They formed a huddle, Hashim in its core – a human statue of tearful joy.
Hashim's father's features quivered like guitar strings as he wiped the tears from his face. His Adam's apple wobbled. Choked "thank you's" emerged from his quivering mouth.
"And soon," I said, "he'll be speaking to you for the first time."
Zyrafete had to wipe a tear from her face.
"This is a miracle," she said.
Hashim's father said something that Zyrafete told me meant "incredible."
"There's a doctor here," I continued, "whose father is an international art dealer. You will never have to work again."
Hashim's father stared with gob-smacked bliss. His wife and child leapt upon him. Paramilitaries had burnt down their house. All their work had gone up in smoke – literally.
*
Jordi removed the bandages, exposing Hashim's swollen ears.
"Hello, Hashim," Jordi said.
Sound! I could imagine Hashim saying from what I saw in his eyes. And with unimaginable clarity! A sharpened auditory jewel, like pulsating red, like poppies in spring fields, each syllable a flower in grass-green space! Tongues painting in living-air canvas! Poppy sounds, like vibrant brushstrokes; trees singing, ears transformed so that the brain could hear the sounds it was supposed to hear. A gift!
His mother stroked his brow. His lips spread. His mother's blue eyes matched the sound emerging from her mouth, the sound that blue should have.
"I took pictures," Jordi enthused, "of Hashim's paintings. I emailed them to my father. He showed them…how do you say in Ingleesh...the people controlling a museum?"
"Curators," Zyrafete said.
"And," Jordi continued, "they want to see more!"
"Who?" I asked.
"The Picasso Museo."
Hashim's father's hug lifted me off the ground. Journalists were filming and taking photographs. The regional imagination had been set ablaze by the "new Picasso".
Hashim's eyes radiated contentment. His straw hair was tinted orange – embraced by the arms of a late-afternoon star.
He said our names. His voice, older than I had imagined it would be, had surprising volume, like an announcer's. Zyrafete's wide mouth expanded with chuckling amazement. She bent down and kissed Hashim on the cheek, clutching the side of his head.
She and Jordi followed the prodigy into the tent. I stayed outside, observing the displaced victims of war who covered the slope that the camp was on. The girl with the artificial legs was down there, bearing the burden of the memory of when she could play and run, a victim of fate's vicious grandeur. Her life had been ruined by war, while Hashim's had been lifted out of its obscurity by the upheaval that was going to re-draw the region's map, likely that his talent would never have been discovered had the major powers not decided to stop his people's oppression; but, I thought, the girl's story is going to disappear like dust. Such are war's fortunes.
Vapour from cooking pots disappeared into nothingness. The facing mountains fell into green fertility. The details light revealed disappeared under marshmallow-cloud shadows that glided over cornfields and sugarcane, obscuring them. People, in front of their tents, were watching these changes that got magnified by sound's absence, as if quietude exaggerates the drama of visual transformations.
Conversation hummed upon the slope. People's tragedies and pleasures, I thought, can still be saved, transformed by genius into beauty.
White, misty islands floated in sea blue. Sudden light revealed the colours of rocks on the facing slopes. I felt so elated that I didn't need to share in other people's elation. The beauty on the facing uprisings was enough for me.
The laughter coming from the tent emphasised my self-contained lightness. Until then, I hadn't realised how private elation could be. I felt as if I didn't need anything – as if I had done it all – as if I'd won something vital – had broken records – had defied vast odds – had transformed perceptions, had ploughed into a treasure chamber that was sparkling with great rewards. The light flashing on the ground from the cameras behind me possessed the intensity of illumination that was flashing in my mind.
Becoming a part of history bloats your existence, associating your name with a layer in the accumulating tiers of consciousness, as if your existence has found a way to live on amid the eddies of hype. And it happens by blooming-blue chance – not by design.
One day, I ran into a volunteer called Ruud who had worked with underprivileged children. I said: "Imagine it; his parents heard him speaking for the first time! It was…it--"
"Ohhh," Ruud replied.
His chin rose; his mouth shot open; his head rotated with wonder. Astonishment, in the shape of an invisible cylinder, had been inserted between his lips.
"There isn't enough…mun…ee…"
"Ohhh," Ruud marvelled.
"Nothing," I gulped.
"I know, I know….,"
*
Hashim was having his photograph taken by a journalist. A TV camera faced Hashim's tent. Lighting shone from silver-backed, florescent bulbs. Hashim's father was speaking into a microphone. His son's hair was ringed by light.
Hashim smiled when he saw the Viennese girl. Elation, like a candle of delicacy and strength, sparkled in his eyes as she waved – shyly – a slight movement of the hand. Her yearning eyes looked remorseful. He waved back. The uncritical sheen in his emerald irises surprised her. He looked handsome. The unexpected gravity of the events made her feel as if she was experiencing a miraculous shock. Something talismanic in his forgiving magnanimity had smoothed out the wrinkles that troubling considerations had laid upon her soul, her awkwardness evaporating under the warmth ejected by those emerald disks that randomness had inserted into the eyes of the acclaimed.
Her pale skin was flushed red. Ebony follicles cascaded onto her shoulders. Her eyebrows – like streaks of carbon – highlighted her skin's translucence.
He indicated that he wanted her to sit down next to him. Her rising eyebrows suggested that this might have been an intrusion; but he insisted, his smile exaggerating his cheeks' unforced prominence. He was amused by her diffidence. A journalist asked her to join us. Confidence defeated timidity in her struggling mind. Hashim's father waved her on. Fortune was giving her the chance to bridge a seemingly unbridgeable gap.
She sat on a cushion, crossed legged, her elbows on her knees, her white teeth in a cherry loop of lips.
She whispered: "Sorry."
Hashim's lips stretched with charming ease. The black cascade of her hair, falling past her alabaster neck, contrasted with the paleness of her skin – and with the bone whiteness of her blouse, the contrasting hues enhancing each other.
"Love begins with hate," Hashim joked.
She giggled. His voice resonated with felicitous irony.
"Your voice is beautiful," she said.
"Yours is more beautiful," he replied.
Cameras flashed.
"We're going back to Vienna tomorrow," she said. "I'll never forget this – never."
Her eyes watered with unexpected loss.
"I, I….," she tried saying, "….hated this place; now I don't want to…to….leave."
The TV cameras rolled. Fraught gasps came from her mouth. Forehead lines appeared above her raised eyebrows. The sudden surprising distance between her eyes and her eyebrows was filled by ovals of white delicacy that resembled the insides of shells.
She rested her head on Hashim's shoulder. He put his arm around her.
"Never," she gasped.
Hashim's mother placed her arms around the clutching children. Silence engulfed this intimacy as the cameras rolled. Tears wet the girl's face. War victims don't realise how shocked they are until they get time to reflect. The spring's hard events were returning as tears and art on humility's waves.
You might forget a beautiful street in a medieval village, but you never forget a refugee camp.
*
Rumbling chatter was coming up the slope. Above our fenced-off sanctuary was the hospital. Light shone from the windscreen of a Jeep in front of the hospital's canvas door. Jordi was putting something into the Jeep; light burnt a white hole into the Jeep's black windscreen. Radiance, like arms, emerged from the starry luminosity. Jordi looked humble and secure against that flame of ivory effulgence.
Altruism exists. Benefit isn't intentional – not the goal. It's incidental – a bi-product.
"Jordi," I asked, "can you ask Zyrafete to ask the girl who lost her legs if she would like to be a model for Hashim?"
Jordi's chin rose, his eyes so vast that white ringed his irises, like azure islands in a milky sea.
"Great idea," he said.
*
The facing slope above the valley's fertility resembled a canvas upon which solar brushstrokes altered perceptions of reality.
Hashim's father was smiling at Hashim's responses to a journalist's questions. Reading was helping Hashim connect sounds to words.
The girl was carried from Jordi's Jeep by her father and placed on a seat before the canvas that Hashim had placed on a stand.
The girl's chin was down, her mouth closed; but her eyes were bright with gratitude. Gone was the despair I had seen before. The current situation's strangeness made her focus on the moment – like young children should do – loss on hold.
Her lips parted when a photographer held her hand and started speaking. Everyone else was listening, still and focussed, the girl's eyes wide, calcium in the triangle of her open mouth.
The girl's mouth widened, her brown irises being pulled out of their white enclosures by the gravity of the photographer's speech; then Hashim started painting.
The photographer's shutter swished. The girl's father stroked the back of her neck. His lips were turned down, but he wasn't scowling, his demeanour too pleasant for that.
Tingles danced on my neck. The sounds from people's mouths, and the faint whispering of Hashim's brush on his canvas, and the rumbling of conversation on the slope, seemed blessed with tranquillising sedation. The world's repetition's felt new, each minute like a stroke from a soothing hand.
The girl's face was being re-born; and so was she, someone else's talent flooding hope back into the dry valley of her life. She now had a future – gripped by absorbed forgetfulness.
"What did the photographer tell her?" I asked Zyrafete.
"That she was going to be linked forever with greatness," Zyrafete replied. "That millions were going to want to visit her; that her name was going to get etched into art history. Amazingly, she understood."
"This is my favorite nipple."
Joshua took the tip of the rosy circle on Lindsay's right breast into his lips. A little kiss became a little nibble, and she laughed. He made a low contented noise that rumbled from his torso into hers.
"No! How could I be so foolish? This nipple is my favorite."
And now he shifted his attention to the other, and Lindsay tingled, ready to give herself to him all over again. Her leg slid up beside his, and he obliged her by sliding a hand down it. She hadn't shaved it in four days, and he didn't care.
In this little loft above the driver's seat of the camper, they had been stark blooming naked for the last three hours. Except when other people were around, they were nearly always stark blooming naked. It had been that way for two months now and Lindsay saw absolutely nothing wrong with it. They were both 20 and so damned blessed to have found each other. He had grown beyond awkward high school sex, and she had triumphed over shame and blossomed into self-knowledge. The very first kiss had been wild and giggly. Their lips didn't just touch, they played with each other. Their first time together had been one discovered delight after another – that funny patch of fine light hairs on his chest, the curve of her bottom that he couldn't keep his hands off of.
Now, countless times later, his attentions tricked a quiet moan out of her, and he gave a wicked chuckle in reply. He rolled off her, and sat up half-way against the corner of the loft so he could finally straighten his spindly legs. He was too tall for this space – to be on top of her without banging his head on the ceiling he had to bend his legs outwards, while keeping his torso poised over her just so. They called this faux-Kama Sutra position The Frog Boogie. Lindsay was growing to love The Frog Boogie.
Joshua watched her, her flushed chest rising and falling, and savored the sight for a moment more. She met his eyes, and for a moment it seemed like something would be said. Then he turned away and looked at the narrow strip of floor a few feet below them. He was already thinking about their undergarments, far out of reach down there. Dane would be back from his hike soon, and getting clothed was a natural courtesy for him, because he owned the camper.
Then a smell floated up off the floor and smacked Joshua in the nose. "Oh, GOD, he did it again!" Suddenly unconcerned about anything else, he climbed down and threw open the pantry door.
A poof of black and white fur looked up at him, made a matter-of-fact "Mrow!", and trotted out, leaving behind two little turds on the floor behind him.
The sight of them made the smell worse. Lindsay hid her nose under the bedsheet and started giggling uncontrollably.
They had picked up the cat three days ago on their way out into the desert. There had been four vehicles in their caravan – a big gang of school friends, friends from home, friends with benefits and friends who liked the possibility of gaining benefits by coming along. Stopped for gas and water at one of the last outposts of civilization, they'd been stretching their legs when that cat had approached from nowhere, jumped into Dane's camper, and curled up on the passenger seat for a nap.
Dane saw it first, went over to stroke it. It had no collar or tags, and when pet, it looked up at Dane and made that same "Mrow!" It wasn't urgent or begging or mistrusting, it was conversational, even assuming familiarity. It was about as close to "Oh, hello there!" as a cat gets.
The gang asked everyone they could find at the gas station and the café what they knew about the cat. Nobody knew anything – it had walked into the kitchen four days before, pooped on the floor, and rolled onto a pile of tablecloths and shed a whole layer of fur into them. It was Dane, who rarely asserted anything in large groups, who had insisted the cat come with them.
The other friends had gone home yesterday. Dane, Joshua, Lindsay, and the cat had stayed – Dane because he was enjoying long hikes with his camera, and Joshua and Lindsay because camper sex was proving so excellent. The cat hadn't shared its reasons.
Joshua reached into the tiny bathroom to grab a wad of toilet paper. Lindsay's continued giggling made him grin. "You think this is funny, huh?"
She giggled louder. The giggle even contained a few snorts. Lindsay's ability to not care about her flawed sinuses around Joshua was more intimate than their nudity.
It was an absolute requirement that it be this moment and not any other, with a naked Lindsay chortling under the blanket, and a naked Joshua squatting on the floor with a wad of toilet paper and kitten droppings in his hand, that Dane opened the door.
He might have stood there for three days without ever changing expression. It was probably more like four seconds, though. And he just shut it again and spoke evenly from the other side: "Can you just give me a holler when you're ready?"
Lindsay fell silent. Containing the laugh made her face quiver violently.
Joshua scrambled to flush the poo. Then, because he was about to pick up underwear, he washed his hands. Part of him imagined his mother would be at least proud of that very specific action amidst everything else. He shouted towards the door: "Shit, Dane, we're sorry. I got distracted, this damn cat took another dump on the floor."
"Just be glad he hasn't learned how to take a dump in the sky" was Dane's response. He said things like that.
***
They had this giant, plastic kid's bat with them, and anyone who mentioned school would get swatted in the buttocks. They had foot-long camp matches, and would rapidly pass the bong around, seeing how many round-robin hits they could get out of the flame of just one of them. With only three people left, one match was plenty. The desert was cooling in the late afternoon, the wind was strong, and they sat under the awning with beers and each other. Just sat.
To Lindsay, smaller and more deeply stoned than the boys, the late colors in the sky were riotous. A purple could flare into view and form itself into a mountain she'd glimpsed on the horizon from the back seat of the family car as her parents drove her to her aunt's thirteen years ago while they were fighting. And then the mountain was a picture in a children's book she had read in a doctor's office the day she got a shot. And then the children's book picture was a shape she'd glimpsed in the attic, where she wasn't supposed to be. It could transform endlessly.
The oranges were all deliriously lickable, and dark clouds appeared in the distance like blossoms pushed open by the wind. She thought, if she closed her eyes and perked her ears far enough, she might hear the sun burning, so many many miles away. Why not, if she could see it; if she could feel it cup her face like hot hands?
She felt Joshua's fingers brushing her dress. In her state every detail of it was hypnotizing – the fabric folding over itself, the way he drew little idle shapes. Maybe they weren't just shapes, but a language, an ancient language summoned up from the subconscious; even now he was tracing its alphabet into her, and she couldn't dare move lest she lose the shape of one letter, or stir him out of his connection to that forgotten place.
Dane stood, shuffled through the sand in front of them, and then lit a fire in the pit. The crackling sound matched the electricity in Lindsay's brain. She squeezed Josh's hand, in a profound mood. They looked at each other, smiling; on the verge of something.
Dane turned around. "Uh, guys?" The words took awhile to make their way through the air. "I think we have nothing for dinner."
Joshua was the first to grasp what this meant. Back at home, food was always just a few steps away – wonderful, government-approved food prepared by others. If it wasn't in the cupboard it was in the fridge. If that was empty, the housemates had snacks. And a few times a day, the hunger was enough to go outside to purchase something that could be served in a warm tortilla. Some guys at his frat even cooked. It represented a distressing shrinking of the Universe that something so basic or necessary as food might suddenly be limited entirely to what could be squirreled away in a small camper in the spaces not allocated to clothes (clean and stinky), beer, condoms, illegal fireworks, toilet paper, Dane's camera equipment, towels, pillows, playing cards, water canisters, electric gadgets, cigarette-lighter-adapted power cords for electric gadgets, blankets, a book, a bong, flashlights, a Frisbee, a recorder Joshua was remarkably adept at playing, cat litter, and a cat.
We will not starve, Joshua accepted. He rolled his head around as he watched Dane, who was still standing in front of them.
Dane spoke again to interrupt the crackling fire. "I mean, there's marshmallows and coffee and the road snacks and stuff." He took a deep breath that took his whole torso up and down. He seemed anxious to be saying so much. "It's just there's no hamburgers or anything, so, um…"
Instead of finishing the sentence, he looked down at the ground and suddenly made fast steps to go inside the camper.
We will not starve, Joshua thought again; slowly, for accuracy. He prepared himself to offer steadfast reassurance to Lindsay along these lines if it happened she hadn't had the same realization.
"I'm hungry," she said. "Shit. All I can think about now is food," she said at an agonized pace. And it was true – her tongue was aching for the juice of a steak, drips of butter (ANYTHING buttered) – little explosions of individual crystals of salt. Sugary treats. Her stomach moaned.
Joshua slipped his feet out of his flip-flops to scrub them on the sand. "I think we've got some beef jerky, peanut butter. It's just 'till tomorrow, anyway. We can stop at that place on the way back."
"I'll get an ice cream sundae." Lindsay turned and looked at him with the widest and most sincere eyes. "Do you think I could eat ice cream off your cock?"
As they looked at each other, it took a long time for them both to consider, silently but in perfect unison, whether or not she was serious, whether or not it mattered, how such a feat might be logistically accomplished, whether this would actually be pleasurable for him or just a ridiculously unnecessary discomfort, and whether even if the latter were the case their lives would ever again be complete without them having at least tried this.
And then they laughed a whole holy hell of a lot.
The camper door opened again, and Dane stepped out. The kitten could be seen in the doorway, sniffing at the air as if to see whether the air was suggesting a stroll. The air apparently told it that a nap indoors was the ticket.
Dane had a bag with him. The bag had a picture of a cat on it. Dane was munching something from inside that bag.
"You guys ever tried this stuff?"
No persuasion necessary, Joshua and Lindsay joined Dane in eating the cat food. It was crunchy and weird.
Joshua asked: "Are you going to take some pictures of the sunset, Dane?"
Dane looked around the horizon. "I don't know. Maybe. Got some okay ones last night. What – are you guys horny again?" He exhaled, sputtering his lips, and pushed his hair around awkwardly.
"It's not like that, it's just pretty right now, is all."
Dane seemed to relax. "Yeah. I'm glad we stayed". Then his face changed, as if re-evaluating the sunset. "Uh, guys? Those clouds are suddenly really big."
The clouds said "Brooooooom" – which is how big, dark clouds announce themselves.
Lindsay came out of a reverie: "What?" She turned to follow Dane's gaze.
"Brooooooom" repeated the clouds.
Joshua assumed the role of authority. "We should, uh, we should get inside maybe."
***
The camper was besieged by tiny wet hammers. Lindsay tried to pick up the kitten to calm it, but it had fastened itself to the floormat with tiny claws.
"Does this thing leak?" Joshua asked.
"I've never dunked it in water before," Dane replied. He said things like that.
At this moment Lindsay was strangely grateful for the breed of marijuana they had selected. Although she was imagining far more horrible possibilities than were likely to happen, she wasn't driven to panic by any of them. Fatalism had never felt so delightful. "It can't carry away the camper, can it? Like a flash flood?" she asked.
Joshua looked out the window – which told him nothing. "I don't know. I think it would have to go on for a long time for that to happen."
"How long has it been going on?"
"I don't know, two hours?"
To Lindsay it felt like it had been a month. She wanted to etch lines in the wall to mark time, like prisoners in solitary. "Should we sleep? Would that be safe?"
Dane was too polite to remind them that they were still in the middle of a card game, and it had been Lindsay's turn for twenty minutes. It didn't mean this didn't bother him.
Joshua looked back at her. "Hey. Remember earlier? How we ate cat food?"
For some reason, that broke the spell on her – and she adored how he knew that it would. She grinned: "We did! We all ate cat food!"
Then the flash flood carried away the camper.
***
The camper most definitely leaked. It also tilted, turned, and lurched crazily with the water. Everything they had tucked away in closets and cabinets was sliding and tumbling out in the open. They were still upright, but the storm had made the case that it could change this.
Joshua saw the cat run straight up the wall and into the loft, where it squeezed itself against a corner, eyes big and round like buttons. It seemed like the right idea. "Let's get in the loft!", he said. Neither Lindsay nor Dane waited for him to argue as to why.
He helped her up first, then followed, scuffing the walls with his feet. He looked at Lindsay for a second, thinking about how cozy it could be with just the two of them up there, and what they had been doing the last time they were there.
"This is my first crisis," she said in a soft voice.
Memories cycled through Joshua's brain – that time someone dared him to crawl through an underground pipe at a construction site and he'd nearly got stuck, that time he had found a wasp's nest…no, they did not belong in this category. It was his first crisis, too.
He was proud of himself so far.
He turned and offered his hands to Dane, who was pressing himself between the walls, trying to keep himself still. Instead he broke a closet door. He looked at it sadly, like he was thinking the insurance adjuster was definitely going to know the rain didn't cause that, and take it out of the claim check. Finally, he took Joshua's help.
Together up in the loft, they tried bending themselves into compatible puzzle pieces any time the storm wasn't tossing them around too badly. Limbs always ended up dangling out over the loft's edge. Finally Lindsay held tight to Joshua's lapels, and nuzzled into his chest. "Josh," she asked, "is that your hand on my ass?"
"It's mine," said Dane with a kind of honk. "I don't mean anything by it. I'm afraid if I move I'll dislocate my shoulder."
"Yeah, don't worry about it then," replied Lindsay. "Can anyone see the cat?"
The camper stopped suddenly with a slam and a crunch, and did not move again.
Joshua rolled out of the loft to investigate. The floor was already sloshing. The side was buckling. He saw the obstacle through the passenger window: "It's a Joshua Tree."
"It's a what?" Lindsay called down.
Joshua poked his head up over the loft's edge to repeat himself. "A Joshua Tree."
She was grinning: "A what?"
And then he remembered a stupid, stupid joke from three days ago: "It's a Me Tree."
"A You Tree? Why don't I get a tree?"
"I'll give you a tree…" Joshua didn't really land the punchline, but at least he smiled.
Dane interrupted: "Uh. Are we dying?"
Joshua looked out the window again at the Him Tree. "We're stuck on here. I don't know for how long. I think we're kind of lucky the whole camper wasn't smashed."
Dane spoke again after a silence: "I know this seems weird, but would it make more sense if we went out and hung onto the tree?"
Joshua knew very little about Joshua Trees, except that they could get very old. If they could do that, they weren't in the habit of letting storms rip them out of the ground. "Yeah. Let's do it fast."
***
Lindsay had taken the longest to coax out. Dane was wrapped on his own tree limb, while Joshua kept Lindsay enveloped in his arms. She felt blessed that he had such long arms. They shivered as the storm pounded down on them, and they saw shapes flowing past in the dark – branches and shrubs and who knows what else.
The weed had evacuated Lindsay's mind, and real mortal awareness was taking hold. She had this feeling that it was profoundly important, no matter what, not to stay silent.
"Josh?!" She shouted over the storm.
"What?"
"I think I love you!"
That sentence knocked a few things into line in Joshua's head. "I think I love you too!"
"Oh my God, Josh, I love you!" She felt his arms tighten around her; and she shuddered more from the release of that feeling than the freezing soak.
"I take pictures of you guys when you're doing it!" Dane shouted in an anguished voice.
Whatever had lined up in Joshua's head got knocked all sideways. It took a second to rediscover the path from the brain to the voicebox. "What?"
"Just for the past few days. When I went out, I was only hiking the first time. Then I got back early and saw you by accident and you just looked really great together and it started from there. I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
And as surely as if someone had turned a giant spigot, suddenly the rain dropped down to a trickle; and soon stopped.
It was unbelievably quiet.
All three of them shivered, and slowed their breathing down one heave at a time. Not one muscle relaxed one grip on the tree.
Finally, Lindsay turned her head and looked into the eyes of the young man she loved. He took it in, then turned to Dane, and offered the only possible response.
"What the fuck, Dane?"
"I know! I'm sorry! I'll erase them all. I swear, I wasn't going to put them up anywhere or anything."
Lindsay turned her head further, so she could throw a few words past Joshua's shoulder. "Is this like, you wanting a threesome with us?"
"No! I'm not even into guys. Or threesomes. Whatever. You're just, like, all cute and awesome. Shit, I don't have the right words for it."
Joshua had dialed up a fair amount of testosterone for whatever was going to come next. It was readily available in the wake of the storm. But, hearing the tone in the voice of the young woman he loved, he deferred action until her signal.
Lindsay thought about it for a relatively long time.
"I think…I think I'm okay with that."
This time it was Dane confused. "What?"
"I mean, you shouldn't do it again. I don't want to be always wondering if you're watching. But if you seriously promise you don't want a threesome, and you seriously promise you're not, like, sharing them with the world or selling them, and you're never going to, like, follow us wherever we go or try and be in the room with us…"
Dane gave the appropriate nod or head-shake with furious energy to each condition.
Lindsay continued "I mean, if Josh isn't completely, 100% okay with it then forget it, but if he is…I think I'm okay with it."
She looked back at Joshua: "Really. I don't have a problem with it."
Joshua found this stunning; but it was a moment where he found himself remarkably open-minded about the petty complaints and hang-ups of life that happened outside of flash floods and love. He did his level best to come up with an objection, and was amazed, though honest, in finding none.
"Yeah, I guess it's cool this time, Dane. Like she said, don't be stalking us. And please don't do super-creepy things with the pictures."
"No. Nothing creepy. I mean, I know the whole thing is a little creepy, but it isn't like that. I'll erase them all if…" and then he looked at the camper. "Shit…I just realized they're all gone anyway. My camera must be soaked right through."
It was Lindsay, first of all of them, with the insight to realize that the topic was as dealt with as it could be. "We're going to have to walk back, aren't we? At least until we can get a phone signal and figure out where we are."
A day ago the very idea would have been terrifying; and yet they considered it now with resolved confidence.
"Yeah." Dane took another deep breath, and shook some water out of his hair. "I'm going to carry the cat with us, if that's cool."
Janet had to decide whether or not to get married - and quick - before the Saudi Arabian prince came back. This was going to be hard for her. Well, getting married was going to be easy. No doubt about that. She had suitors up the ying yang. An established stained glass artist had just asked her to move in with him.
But she'd be mad at herself for getting married only because she didn't trust herself. Like a person who's afraid of heights, even though she's firmly on the safe side of the balcony, she didn't trust herself one little bit.
During her affair, before the Saudi Arabian prince moved back to Saudi Arabia from Manhattan, she thought she might get married to the prince. But she was disappointed when this didn't happen. He had three other wives and what was she expecting? He couldn't leave them. The prince even told her that: what were you expecting?
So, when he moved and she lacked a job, a lover and an apartment, she decided to move to upstate New York. This way she could be near Manhattan if she needed to be and away from it as long as she wanted. Her life would simply be easier.
So she moved. Upstate. Her dad was disappointed. As hell. But as she was forty she really didn't give a shit.
"Upstate? All your friends are in Manhattan. What about your career?" her dad said.
"Dad, I'm not modeling anymore. I haven't modeled in ten years."
"But, you're an artist. Like Twiggy."
"I'm not an artist. I'm just ready to settle a little bit"
And that was that. She moved and waited on tables in a vegetarian restaurant. Then she met this dude on a nude hike named Kevin who had graduated from MIT. He was sweet, and Chinese, and looking for some kind of life. He had gotten divorced three years earlier and moved upstate out of depression, he said, not to mention a psychic, who he met on a nude hike, told him he'd find his true love in Woodstock. He bought a house in the middle of the boom and told Janet he was a tiny bit depressed that the market was falling. They hooked up after he offered her a free massage and had now been dating for six months.
Then the bold, bloody e-mail came. She could almost hear his Saudi Arabian accent. "I'm coming back to New York. My father is moving his business there from Saudi Arabia to Rockefeller Center. I miss you too much." The Saudi Arabian prince had been in Riyadh and was moving with his second wife to an apartment near Union Square.
In the e-mail he told Janet how much he cared for her, how much he missed her and how their relationship was much more than simply sex to him. Could he see Janet again?
She wanted to. Sex with the Saudi Arabian prince was the best sex she ever had. She had even gotten a urinary tract infection, like a cat on a commercial, the last time was so intense. But the other three wives threw emotional baggage at her like poltergeists. She knew if she got married, that would be the end of the prince, like the artist formerly known as Prince. The end. She knew the prince would never have an affair with a married woman. It was against Allah or someone.
But she thought this was a lame excuse simply to get married. I mean, shouldn't she marry for love and not because she felt weak she thought? This is why Janet had to decide to get married and had to decide it soon. It was May, the month of love and maypoles and daisies. The prince would be back three weeks from today. If she was going to do this, marriage, she'd have to make it happen now.
All of these thoughts were running through her head like fusilli corkscrew pasta as she was doing her country western line dancing with the regular bunch of aging hippies at The Oakey Dokey.
Kevin looked over at her. He looked like a little country mouse with his squinty Chinese eyes and slight buck teeth. The filthy wooden floor echoed as the aging hippies stomped their feet and did their grapevines with their cowboy boots. The stomping rattled several neon beer signs.
Kevin and Janet never bought any drinks or nachos or frozen margaritas, they just showed up for the free line dancing like everyone else. It was rumored the place was going out of business, probably because no one ever bought anything. Either that or the name The Oakey Dokey was just too stupid.
The instructor, an aging cowboy with bowed legs and matching rattlesnake skin belt and boots, was calling the various moves with a microphone attached to his ear. "And shuffle to the right. Two, three, four. To the left. Two, three, four."
Janet looked over at Kevin again. He was doing a flawless shadow box and she knew she loved him immensely, if one could love another in that way. He was fine for her. She could marry him.
The problem was also she was too worried about falling in love with him. She didn't want to get married for love, she wanted to get married for support. The love would come later and if she needed sex, she could always get a lover.
The prince, with his arrogance, his flowing-head-cloth-tie-thingy-m'bob and his robes would be back in three weeks, and Janet could either see him or get married.
The song Here I am in Dallas, Where in the Hell are You? in the round dance hall came to a halt.
"Let's take a short break, shall we?" said the announcer.
The aging hippies dispersed and went to eat the free Oreos and Twix bars. The bartender stood, forlorn, hoping and praying someone would buy a beer. Everyone was either too poor or too cheap.
"You're getting really good." Kevin was sweating even though the dance was clearly anaerobic.
"Thanks, I had some dance in college." Janet was fanning herself even though she wasn't hot. She always made an excuse when someone complimented her.
She needed a sign, like the neon beer signs in the bar. This was how she was going to decide to get married. But would the sign tell her yay or nay? Decision making was something difficult for Janet. Honestly, she couldn't even decide what to wear in the morning without flipping a coin.
She had gone to one of the aging hippie astrologers who told her the exact same thing. "You beat everything to death. You think about things way too much. Just make a decision. You can always change your mind later."
He telling her this didn't make it easier. The music played in the background. Waa-too-doo, waa-too-doo.
Kevin said, "Yeah, I've brought a few other girls here, but they couldn't keep up. But you. You're terrific."
Janet smiled again. Thoughts going through her head like, what should I do? I just want to see the prince. Why is Kevin being so nice? If he just wasn't so arrogant and he if he just didn't have a wife. Well, three wives. Why can't Kevin be a dickhead? Then I wouldn't feel guilty?
She had lost a great guy in New York because of the prince: John Goodfriend. He was a Jewish trust fun baby who had really liked her. But, he was on major anti-depressants and sweated too much. He had caught her in a lie when she had gone to see the prince and, with the help of his therapist, dumped her immediately.
Now here the prince was coming back into her world, like Tony Danza's career came back to Hollywood. Disrupting it. Throwing it around like a migrant worker would a bunch of sugar cane with a machete.
Not this time. Not this time damnit.
When the prince called, she'd ignore him, she decided. Oh, she was too weak to do this, she knew.
Waa-too-doo. Waa-too-doo.
"Do you want a drink? Some water or something?"
"Oh, no. I'm good," She knew Kevin hadn't worked in five years and was living off the money that he made as a patent lawyer. She knew he watched every single bleeding dime.
He said, "Yeah, I think there's some bottles in the back there I can take to the grocery store. For some you get seven cents back, not just the five cents."
She still couldn't believe she went out with someone who was so cheap he took bottles back to the grocery store that he found in bars called The Oakey Dokey.
She could just take a day trip to Manhattan. Just to see the prince once. But then she'd never be rid of him. Never get on with her life. And here she was living it. In addition to country western line dancing, she did tai chi with Kevin, they also did square dancing and saw movies together.
At the same time, who was she fooling? She was forty not sixty. Everyone in Woodstock was retired. What kind of life is this? She needed goals. Short and long term. Not movies.
"What's your major goal in life?" she had asked Kevin once.
"To enjoy myself," was his response.
"But don't you think this country's gotten too apathetic?" she replied, "I mean everyone just wants to enjoy themselves."
"I don't really care. I just want to enjoy myself."
And enjoy himself he did. He did nude hikes, sexual intimacy workshops, bondage and spanking classes and was a member of every nudist organization on the East Coast. She wasn't sure if this was the right life for her.
Her head was swimming. She just needed to make a decision. A choice. Where was that sign?
Then she saw it. A beer called Janet Brew plopped down on the bar. No one here ordered beer. Ever. Then Janet Jackson came on the jukebox. It was clear. It was clear what she must do. She must make herself happy. She must put herself first. It was healthy and it even said that in the book Co-dependent No More.
She wouldn't marry Kevin or, if she did, she wouldn't force it right away. She wasn't going to live her life from fear.
The rest of line dancing was breeze. She two stepped, she bucket jumped and twirled like she was the Sugar Plum Fairy in the local ballet production of The Nutcracker. She practically floated. The aging hippies congratulated her afterwards. One even said she reminded him of his departed wife, a professional Hindu dancer.
When Kevin dropped her off at her two story wooden home that she was renting from the gay couple in Worchester, she turned on the lights to see a red blink on her cell phone. She looked at the phone number and sure enough it was the prince. Had he been thinking about her the way she had about him?
She imagined him coming down a long and important hallway towards her, like Get Smart. His flowing-cloth-head-tie-thingy-m'bob waving in the wind. Coming towards her and making her decide to get married or not.
But now she knew she didn't have to decide on someone else's terms. She was emotionally healthy. She picked up the cell phone and dialed the phone number. Her hands were shaking.
"'ello." It was the prince. It was now or never. Words rattled in her brain like a shaman's medicine ball. Tell him. Tell him you're not married, but that you don't want to see him anymore. Be strong, girl.
He said, "Janet, how nice to hear from you. I miss you. I want to see you again. Desperately."
Janet thought a minute and then paused. "Okay, that's no problem."
After she hung up she couldn't believe how weak she was. If she drank, she'd have a martini.
"I'm such a wimp," she said to herself.
Image credits as yet unknown.