So this is from the first exercise, I was going to write the scene that came up for the exercise but this came out instead, but I reckon this will lead to the scene that came up in the exercise. Or not. We'll see.
The cousins, Ferdi and Nando were born 3 days apart, both of them named for their Tito Ferdinand, who was simple, however out of his fifteen siblings— each of whom regarded the others on an emotional scale that ranged from antipathy to mildly tolerated— Ferdinand was the only one they could all agree to be generally likeable. Which probably had more to do with the fact that his lack of intelligence barred him from becoming a factor in family decisions. He never asked for anything, never desired to eat more than the family could afford to feed him. He lived at his parent’s farm his entire life. He was a good worker, a hard worker and had an almost post human connection to the carabao that worked and tilled the family rice fields.
He judged none, and spoke only in platitudes. His face was the only part of him where the truth of his age would allow itself to take residence. Ferdinand would always be, the Ferdinand he always was and this made him impregnable to the insufferableness the Barcado family would grow to have for one another. To them, Ferdinand would always be a child and in some ways each member of the family, in their own way, took to shielding him from the trifling quarrels that had infected them to a point where it would be as prominent as its family name.
However Ferdi and Nando’s parents did not name them after Ferdinand because they wished to shield them from everything that was in ugly in their world or because they foresaw raising young boys who would never learn to wipe their own ass properly or would sleep in their parent’s bedrooms until the age of 15. They dreamed of young boys who had a question for everything. Who would always see the world as something new. They dreamt of sons with something of a passionate familiarity towards the world. Or was it desire? Something that pulled them towards movement, towards looking at anything with even the slightest bit of care. It was everything they imagined they were once, believe that they still can be, and yet, have fallen frustratingly short of time and again.
And all hopes, they would pin on Ferdi and Nando. Who by all accounts, were decent boys growing up. But those hopes would become implausible benchmarks. They would become more or less the reason why Ferdi and Nando’s names would be spoken by their parents in resigned tones. “This is my son,” followed by deeply inhaled sigh, “he collects comic books and has worked at the same office for 4 years and has never once received a promotion” or “This is my son, he’s 27 and has had 2 girlfriends and none have lasted more than 4 months” or “This is my son, he has no real goals, he graduated college with a degree in history, however he has no real opinion on anything.”
And it wasn’t that Ferdi and Nando grew up to be stupid. They weren’t. They were just kind of there. Nando still lived at home with his parent, while Ferdi rented out a one bedroom in-law that belonged to a family friend. They knew things that were completely inconsequential for anyone to know and would often rattle off inane pop culture related questions in an attempt to stump the other. As it stands the current count is Ferdi: 235 and Nando: 247. The cousins never bothered to learn their native tongue, as it was, Ferdi’s father during family parties would often proclaim loudly and drunkenly in tagalong— that no, they weren’t stupid at all, they just were really stupid about things.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Monster
Jo's eyes were laughing, although squinted from the glare off the hood of her Chevy truck, as she pulled down the gravel driveway of her family's small ranch. The blue tarp, which secured her dorm room belongings, rustled and hissed in the hot air as she passed the arena, sending the sheep and three of the four horses running and snorting in aggravated circles. To further mark her indignation at having been startled, the youngest of the horses, Coco, kicked violently and let out a high-pitched RRRRIIIPP!! from her rear. The fourth horse, Monster, who did not run, merely raised his large head and let out a roaring snort, which he directed more at the flighty mares than the noisy truck. The muddy-red edges around his brught blue eyes, once white, quickly vanished behind the greying, droopy eyelids, and he sleepily shook out his short mane.
Coco, Otto, and Dotty, seeing that Monster was not alarmed, lowered their heads and tails, and walked, embarassed, back toward the shaded pens. Following behind them, ears bobbing in vacant exuberance on either side of his head, the sheep, Lambo, took long strides to keep up with his much larger herd-mates.
Jo met the horses and the sheep at the gate of the arena, digging in a garbage can that served as a feed barrel for a fistful of the rich, sweet, Equine Senior kernels for a treat. The three mares nipped at each other and shoved their way toward the gate to be the first to receive their treats, and soon the wiry whiskers that stuck through their velvety lips were tickling the palm of Jo's academically-softened hand. Jo ignored the gutteral bleats from Lambo, and called to Monster, who lingered pensively in one of the nearby pens, half-watching, half-dozing. Monster obeyed the call only after Jo put another fistful of Senior into an empty coffee can and shook it gently for him to hear. Only then did Jo realize that the thirty-year-old gelding was beginning to get a little hard of hearing. Still, Monster pushed the mares aside, and while they rolled their eyes menacingly and nipped at the air around his neck and shoulders, they stepped aside when he pushed them with his broad shoulders. Jo held out the coffee can, and Monster stuck his nose in, his loud, puffing snorts echoing inside the cylinder of aluminum. Jo scratched him behind his ears, surreptitiously peering inside for evidence of mites or some other potential cause of what seemed, to her, to be such a sudden loss of hearing. Seeing nothing overtly sinister, however, she scratched his forehead, smiling tenderly as her fingers scooped in and out over the goose-egg-sized dent in his forehead, near his right eye--a birth defect that made him look much goofier than he really was.
With a powerful shove with her left arm, Jo slid the tack room door open, straining her reach with her right arm to do so, as Hootie had not yet finished the last kernels in the bottom of the can. When Jo could feel that he was no longer picking up kernels but licking the can with his smoothe tongue, she pulled the can out of his reach and tossed it into the feed barrel. A small cloud of flies had escaped from the newly-opened tack room. An exasperated sigh slipped between Jo's lips and curled into the dim room. A good quarter of an inch of dust covered every up- or outward-facing inch of leather, and Otto's bridle was missing altogether. The red mare's ornate bridle, with its white, braided reins with red-knot accents, and the engraved floral plates of silver were undoubtedly at her aunt's house, being dismantled and reassembled improperly by Jo's younger cousin. Monster's simple bridle, dark sienna-hue leather with a widow's peak headstall, studded with pewter, and sporting an easy-going three-bar snaffle, was always left alone--not pretty enough to attract the attention of little girls. The reins were as black as Hootie in the summertime--soft, well-worn and braided cotton that was still curled from the places where the reins rested in Jo's hands--stuck in the same shape from years of sweaty palms and finger-creases holding them the same way. Monster's dark saddle was as pale as the arena sand from the layer of dust that coated it, and the saddle blankets, still upside down over the top of the saddle so that the sweat could dry, were enameled with cobwebs and fly corpses.
Bitten by black widows so many times that the poison no longer affected her, Jo grabbed the saddle and blankets from the rack without pause, and in a single motion, stepped out of the tack room and flung the load over the top of the fence. A stirrup fell down the other side, balancing the weight of the old saddle on the narrow fence. Jo pulled down the blankets, one by one, and shook them out over the gravel at the entrance to the tack room. In all three blankets, only one black widow emerged; it had been a cooler year than normal. The hole at the base of the saddle horn, usually Widow-City, was barren--even of cobwebs. Having been sheltered by the blankets, no small creatures had managed to find entrance to the spacious and dry saddle-cavern. Jo wiped down the saddle with the corner of one of the saddle blankets, revealing the old-fashioned and lavish leatherwork that rarely existed in saddle-making anymore, and then shook out the blanket again. She stepped back into the tack room, snatched up the grooming bucket and Monster's bridle, and slid the door shut behind her. When she turned to face the arena, she was smiling.
Monster had been eyeing the saddle with interest, and seeing her with the brushes and bridle as well, he turned and headed into the nearest stall, his ears moving happily around in circles, finding every sound that they could manage. Jo tossed the headstall of the bridle over the horn of the saddle, grabbed the saddle through the hole at the base of the horn with her free hand, and followed Monster into the stall. As she picked his feet, curried, brushed, and combed, Jo could feel Monster smiling. His legs smiled back at her with ticklish twitches in all the familiar places as she rubbed them down and stretched them. His coat smiled at her as she brushed it with a few more strokes than absolutely necessary, admiring the gleam of the perfect blackness, and the velveteen whiteness of the heart-shaped spot of white on his shoulder, and across his belly. His black was blackest, his white whitest, in the summertime. When every other 'black' horse shed his winter coat to reveal amber dapples beneath the black, Monster only grew blacker in the summer--the fluffy winter fuzz having left him with unique, watery sheen. Jo noted his toes--a little longer than they should be. By the looks of them, the farrier was due any day. She felt the wieght of the hooves in her hand, testing the shoes with her fingers. That she could not wiggle them was no indication that they were not loose, but at least there were no glaring concerns. Just to be safe, she wouldn't ride too far.
Monster swayed lazily, side to side, as Jo secured his saddle. Even without excercise, he managed to maintain his weight more steadily than any horse she'd ever known. Although his body changed shape--his withers stuck out more, his hips protruded slightly, and his legs grew slimmer and lost much of their muscular bulge, all from lack of excercise--the cinch always reached to the same notch. A crease had been worn so well into the cinch that it shined an even darker hue than the rest of the leather--polished to a glassy gleam from the steel loop that secured the leather strap to the main body of the saddle. The Native American blankets--black, red, and white zig-zags on the top layer, turquoise and brown stripes on the second, and navy, black, and purple stripes on the bottom--made Monster look as if he belonged on the frontier of two centuries before--a feather in his mane, and red arrows and circles painted onto his already "painted" coat. His bright blue eyes were wide as Jo swung herself into the saddle. Her Justin ropers weren't as dusty as they had once been, her hands not as coarse, her hat band not as clean, but anyone could tell that her thighs had not forgotten the spine and flanks of her horse, and her hands still knew the intimate tug of the reins against her fingers. Jo ducked the roofing as they left the stall, and with the confidence of a pro--as if no more than a day had passed since their last ride together, Monster navigated the turns and side-stepping so that Jo could open the gate. In tandem, they closed the gate behind them, and Jo breathed the air from her high place on Monster's back. With only a few more feet of elevation than normal, the air was still cleaner and looser than the air when she stood on her own two feet. They passed her truck, its bed still loaded with dorm room supplies and covered with a bright blue tarp, and strode easily down the driveway. The other horses called and called in shrill neighs of panic as they watched their companion leave the arena behind. The sheep bleated at nothing, peering up at the horses and then after Monster's vanishing rump without the slightest inkling of the source of his herd-mates' anxiety.
The smoothe clip-clip, clip-clip of Monster's shoes against the asphalt grated against Jo's eardrums more than she had expected. The sound was familiar, but sharper than she remembered, and they had gone nearly half a mile before she was finally able to dismiss it and pay attention to the absense of sound everywhere else. Monster's ears stayed pricked and alert for the first mile, his head high and anxious with the novelty of being outside the arena for the first time in so long. Although his confident and fluid stride betrayed that he recognized everything and was unafraid, Jo spent several minutes repeatedly stroking his neck and gently teasing his mouth with the reins to release the tension. After a mile, his head was lowered; his body extended and his rump rocked in easy swoops from side to side.
After only a mile, Jo noted the glossy dampness at Monster's shoulder where the sweat had begun slick down his coat. She reached behind her to the edge of the saddle blanket, recoiling her fingers in slightly repulsed surprise upon feeling the frothy mass protruding from beneath the blankets. Jo twisted in the saddle to see the ochre foam of sweat and dirt that had been unearthed by the heat and pressure of the saddle blanket--much more sweat than she had been expecting. Scraping with her fingernails and the pads of her fingertips, she scooped away as much of the mucky mass as she cood, and reined Monster in a little, although he gave no indication of wanting to slow down his easy step. Jo breathed a sigh of relief as they rounded the turnaround. Just over a mile until they were home again. In the back of her mind, she resolved to water Monster's legs more thoroughly than usual, and give him some bran to settle his old-man's tummy after so much excercise. A minor pang of guilt sidled through her chest and across the base of her neck--too much excercise too fast for a horse that was too old--a friend deserves better than that. The guilt faded; Monster was happy to be outside. He pulled a little, wanting to follow the longer route, rather than take the first turnaround, but Jo goaded him homeward, knowing his heart easily outstripped the stamina of his legs.
The first turnaround brought them to a familiar gravelly road. Monster's hooves sank into the sand beneath the stones, and the tiny rocks rattled and even clanged against his hooves. They had been on the gravelly road only a few minutes when Jo noted that there should not be a clang. She held her breath and forced every sound out of her ears, straining to measure the tones the rang from Monster's hooves. Churrrh-churrh, churrrh-cling, churrrrh-churrh, churrrh-cling. The unmistakable bell-tones of a loose shoe pulled on Jo's ears, sending electric buzzing up through her thighs, hips, spine, and shoulders with every painful clang. She knew that Monster was not in pain, but a loose shoe meant that it would only get looser, and the stirring and chafing of the nails as the shoe rotated against the bottom of the hoof, could shred the outer wall of a hoof--potentially laming even the best of horses. She cursed the farrier for sloppy craftsmanship, and halted Monster alongside the road. Knowing the rhythm of Monster's steps, it only took a few paces for Jo to discern which shoe was loose. She dismounted quickly and walked to Monster's rear. Tapping his rump and sliding her hand down his rear leg, Monster lifted his hind leg for her to examine. She tested the shoe with her fingers; she was still unable to move it. With only a hoof pick handy, she had no way to remove a shoe that was still secure enough to not be removed by hand. She wriggled the hoof pick out of the back pocket of her Levi's and scraped a small pebble that had become lodged at the base of the frog. As she examined the rest of Monster's feet, she muttered a quick and anxious prayer that the loose shoe would not cause any damage while they were out. The resolve to carry metal-clippers with her whenever she went on a ride passed through her mind, but in the space between examining the last two hooves, she cast the resolve aside. If they had a farrier worth his salt, she wouldn't have to.
Jo considered walking the rest of the way--Monster would follow--but she knew it would make no difference. 1500 pounds of horseflesh on such a small surface would not be much affected by an addition 130 of human weight, placed largely on the front of his body. Despite this knowledge, she mounted more delicately than she had before, and made a conscious effort to sit farther forward in the saddle. Placing as much of her weight in the stirrups as she could, Jo and Monster continued.
Soon, gravel gave way again to asphalt, and the soft cling of the loose shoe against gravel became a sonorous and Fury-like clang. A long stretch of fence, built from gnarled Eucalyptus branches by the owners and secured with simple notch-work began off to their right. Jo counted the posts, and after the sixth, she nudged Monster into a sidestep and halted him beside the rails. She leaned down and lifted one of the rails, placing it across her lap. With another nudge, Monster turned to face the fence and she felt the usual derailing of rhythm and funny vibration through his shoulders as he stepped over the lower rail.
On the other side of the fence, great, tall, lily-pad-leafed weeds sprouted all around in a cloudy green knot. Jo felt Monster's feet sinking into the gopher hole-perforated earth, and she reined him in. The ground was tentatively held together by the shallow roots of the weeds, but only inches beneath the surface, a thriving metropolis of gopher tunnels weakened the support. Monster's weight would linger momentarily above ground, and then with a barely audible thud, his body would drop several inches until his ankles were fully submerged in the dirt. Jo felt her horse lifting his legs in a crude prancing motion as he tried to step out of the mulchy, weak earth, which muffled the ringing of his loose shoe. Despite the risk of twisted ankles and pulled muscles in the unpredictable earth at Monster's feet, the reprieve from the jarring knell of the horse's loose shoe was a gentle relief for Jo.
The wash ahead, twenty feet deep and almost fifty feet across, did not stop the lily-weeds from growing just as thick. Even looking straight down from the saddle, Jo could not see so much as a speck of the red earth. As the level earth dropped off into a steep hillside, smaller, emerald thistles and the powder-green, fibrous stalks of milkweed shot up through the clouds of lily-weeds. Jo leaned back in the saddle as Monster took his first steps down the deep-sanded wall of the wash. Only a few steps in, and not only had the sinkholes of gopher tunnels not decreased, but the loose shoe began to toll against the rocks that were lodged in the hillside from the last rain. Against the matted mess of lily-weed, thistle, and milkweed, the ground was completely shielded from Jo's eyes. Monster's ears, pricked forward and occasionally swooping a few degrees from side to side as the weeds shivered from a startled gopher. His hind legs, supporting most of his weight now, sank deep into the soft wall of the wash—almost halfway up to his hocks. As he stepped out of a deep sinkhole, his hind hoof clanged noisily against a larger rock, sending a handful of hunched crows cawing aggravatedly into the air. The shuffle of black, glossy feathers against the twisted eucalyptus branches sent the cicadas in every tree whirring into a droning, rattling hiss.
The cacophony of horseshoe-clangs, caws, rustling of leaves and feathers, and rattling of cicada shells tightened Jo's legs against Monster's flanks. Monster, almost completely deaf to the sound, was only able to pick out the rattle of the cicadas, and his head shot straight up in irritation, tossing his mane. His eyes fixed on the oak on the far bank of the wash, and he let out the same roaring snort as when Jo had first driven down the driveway and startled the other horses. Jo stroked his neck and clucked to him, anxious to get out of the precarious wash and not spend one second longer than absolutely necessary outside the soft, friendly sand of the arena. Somewhere in the back of her mind, somewhere in the vicinity of her ears and entirely deafened by the chaos of clanging, cawing, rustling, and rattling, it occurred to her that she ought not to rush him—not when he was irritated with his surroundings and undoubtedly increasingly aware of the loose shoe on his hind leg.
The clanging grew louder with every step as the rocks got bigger and bigger toward the bottom of the wash. Still, the thickness of the weeds had not abated, and she was forced to allow Monster to choose his way by feel. She'd trusted his Montana feet his entire life, and she had never known him to stumble. Even now, with a loose shoe and invisible earth beneath them, he was not surprised by a single rock or sinkhole.
They had reached the bottom of the wash, and the clanging was aggravatingly louder. They no longer sank into the earth, as the ground was now nothing but rock and an unpleasant home from gophers. Jo cringed as each step sent grinding and ringing sounds of steel, rock, and hoof scraping against one another. Each step made her wonder more and more how much damage the hind hoof had sustained with the nails straining against the wall of his hoof. She nudged her heels into Monster's sides, urging him forward to the far wall of the wash. The far wall bore only sparse thistles and a few lily-weed sprouts. The earth was softer and richer, and the hardy milkweed preferred only the coarsest and shallowest of earth. Monster picked up his pace, and Jo felt a pang of guilt as his hooves slid and sheared themselves against the rocks. Just the same, she could tell that even Monster was anxious to get out of the rocky wash and launch himself up the smoothe, black wall of the wash.
Jo leaned forward in the saddle and lifted the reins so they rested halfway up Monster's neck, tangling her fingers a little in his mane. Monster's first lurch into a steep gallop sent out a terrible ring of steel against coarse stone, and a rattling, ripping sound from his hind foot that drowned out even the noisy cicadas. The silence that followed lasted the eternity of a nano-second, as Monster tucked his head down and lifted his hind leg in pain. Together, Jo and her painted horse somersaulted against the steep, black earth of the wash. Jo did not cry out, or even feel the impulse to do so as she pressed herself as tight to Monster's neck and shoulders.
Monster's screams and snorts aroused enough distress in the neighbors that paramedics and animal control arrived within a little less than an hour. The source of the problem was immediately recognizable in the shredded hind hoof and a bent horseshoe gleaming on a nearby rock. The leg was bent in a U-shape above the fetlock. When Monster had been euthanized and lifted away in an attempt to rescue the motionless body beneath him, the body moved with him. Jo's sternum had been punched through by the saddle horn, against which she had pressed herself, and her neck twisted and broken by the weight of the horse's falling neck pressing her face into the ground while the rest of her body faced forward, bound to the saddle—sternum to saddle horn, her feet still facing forward and her heels pressed downward in the stirrups, and her hands reached around and resting on the black chest.
Arrangements for the funeral included large pictures of Jo and Monster together. The only picture not included—Jo's favorite—was of her leaning forward in the saddle, her arms draped around to rest on the horse's chest, and her head pressed affectionately against his neck, her chest resting peacefully against the saddle horn.
Coco, Otto, and Dotty, seeing that Monster was not alarmed, lowered their heads and tails, and walked, embarassed, back toward the shaded pens. Following behind them, ears bobbing in vacant exuberance on either side of his head, the sheep, Lambo, took long strides to keep up with his much larger herd-mates.
Jo met the horses and the sheep at the gate of the arena, digging in a garbage can that served as a feed barrel for a fistful of the rich, sweet, Equine Senior kernels for a treat. The three mares nipped at each other and shoved their way toward the gate to be the first to receive their treats, and soon the wiry whiskers that stuck through their velvety lips were tickling the palm of Jo's academically-softened hand. Jo ignored the gutteral bleats from Lambo, and called to Monster, who lingered pensively in one of the nearby pens, half-watching, half-dozing. Monster obeyed the call only after Jo put another fistful of Senior into an empty coffee can and shook it gently for him to hear. Only then did Jo realize that the thirty-year-old gelding was beginning to get a little hard of hearing. Still, Monster pushed the mares aside, and while they rolled their eyes menacingly and nipped at the air around his neck and shoulders, they stepped aside when he pushed them with his broad shoulders. Jo held out the coffee can, and Monster stuck his nose in, his loud, puffing snorts echoing inside the cylinder of aluminum. Jo scratched him behind his ears, surreptitiously peering inside for evidence of mites or some other potential cause of what seemed, to her, to be such a sudden loss of hearing. Seeing nothing overtly sinister, however, she scratched his forehead, smiling tenderly as her fingers scooped in and out over the goose-egg-sized dent in his forehead, near his right eye--a birth defect that made him look much goofier than he really was.
With a powerful shove with her left arm, Jo slid the tack room door open, straining her reach with her right arm to do so, as Hootie had not yet finished the last kernels in the bottom of the can. When Jo could feel that he was no longer picking up kernels but licking the can with his smoothe tongue, she pulled the can out of his reach and tossed it into the feed barrel. A small cloud of flies had escaped from the newly-opened tack room. An exasperated sigh slipped between Jo's lips and curled into the dim room. A good quarter of an inch of dust covered every up- or outward-facing inch of leather, and Otto's bridle was missing altogether. The red mare's ornate bridle, with its white, braided reins with red-knot accents, and the engraved floral plates of silver were undoubtedly at her aunt's house, being dismantled and reassembled improperly by Jo's younger cousin. Monster's simple bridle, dark sienna-hue leather with a widow's peak headstall, studded with pewter, and sporting an easy-going three-bar snaffle, was always left alone--not pretty enough to attract the attention of little girls. The reins were as black as Hootie in the summertime--soft, well-worn and braided cotton that was still curled from the places where the reins rested in Jo's hands--stuck in the same shape from years of sweaty palms and finger-creases holding them the same way. Monster's dark saddle was as pale as the arena sand from the layer of dust that coated it, and the saddle blankets, still upside down over the top of the saddle so that the sweat could dry, were enameled with cobwebs and fly corpses.
Bitten by black widows so many times that the poison no longer affected her, Jo grabbed the saddle and blankets from the rack without pause, and in a single motion, stepped out of the tack room and flung the load over the top of the fence. A stirrup fell down the other side, balancing the weight of the old saddle on the narrow fence. Jo pulled down the blankets, one by one, and shook them out over the gravel at the entrance to the tack room. In all three blankets, only one black widow emerged; it had been a cooler year than normal. The hole at the base of the saddle horn, usually Widow-City, was barren--even of cobwebs. Having been sheltered by the blankets, no small creatures had managed to find entrance to the spacious and dry saddle-cavern. Jo wiped down the saddle with the corner of one of the saddle blankets, revealing the old-fashioned and lavish leatherwork that rarely existed in saddle-making anymore, and then shook out the blanket again. She stepped back into the tack room, snatched up the grooming bucket and Monster's bridle, and slid the door shut behind her. When she turned to face the arena, she was smiling.
Monster had been eyeing the saddle with interest, and seeing her with the brushes and bridle as well, he turned and headed into the nearest stall, his ears moving happily around in circles, finding every sound that they could manage. Jo tossed the headstall of the bridle over the horn of the saddle, grabbed the saddle through the hole at the base of the horn with her free hand, and followed Monster into the stall. As she picked his feet, curried, brushed, and combed, Jo could feel Monster smiling. His legs smiled back at her with ticklish twitches in all the familiar places as she rubbed them down and stretched them. His coat smiled at her as she brushed it with a few more strokes than absolutely necessary, admiring the gleam of the perfect blackness, and the velveteen whiteness of the heart-shaped spot of white on his shoulder, and across his belly. His black was blackest, his white whitest, in the summertime. When every other 'black' horse shed his winter coat to reveal amber dapples beneath the black, Monster only grew blacker in the summer--the fluffy winter fuzz having left him with unique, watery sheen. Jo noted his toes--a little longer than they should be. By the looks of them, the farrier was due any day. She felt the wieght of the hooves in her hand, testing the shoes with her fingers. That she could not wiggle them was no indication that they were not loose, but at least there were no glaring concerns. Just to be safe, she wouldn't ride too far.
Monster swayed lazily, side to side, as Jo secured his saddle. Even without excercise, he managed to maintain his weight more steadily than any horse she'd ever known. Although his body changed shape--his withers stuck out more, his hips protruded slightly, and his legs grew slimmer and lost much of their muscular bulge, all from lack of excercise--the cinch always reached to the same notch. A crease had been worn so well into the cinch that it shined an even darker hue than the rest of the leather--polished to a glassy gleam from the steel loop that secured the leather strap to the main body of the saddle. The Native American blankets--black, red, and white zig-zags on the top layer, turquoise and brown stripes on the second, and navy, black, and purple stripes on the bottom--made Monster look as if he belonged on the frontier of two centuries before--a feather in his mane, and red arrows and circles painted onto his already "painted" coat. His bright blue eyes were wide as Jo swung herself into the saddle. Her Justin ropers weren't as dusty as they had once been, her hands not as coarse, her hat band not as clean, but anyone could tell that her thighs had not forgotten the spine and flanks of her horse, and her hands still knew the intimate tug of the reins against her fingers. Jo ducked the roofing as they left the stall, and with the confidence of a pro--as if no more than a day had passed since their last ride together, Monster navigated the turns and side-stepping so that Jo could open the gate. In tandem, they closed the gate behind them, and Jo breathed the air from her high place on Monster's back. With only a few more feet of elevation than normal, the air was still cleaner and looser than the air when she stood on her own two feet. They passed her truck, its bed still loaded with dorm room supplies and covered with a bright blue tarp, and strode easily down the driveway. The other horses called and called in shrill neighs of panic as they watched their companion leave the arena behind. The sheep bleated at nothing, peering up at the horses and then after Monster's vanishing rump without the slightest inkling of the source of his herd-mates' anxiety.
The smoothe clip-clip, clip-clip of Monster's shoes against the asphalt grated against Jo's eardrums more than she had expected. The sound was familiar, but sharper than she remembered, and they had gone nearly half a mile before she was finally able to dismiss it and pay attention to the absense of sound everywhere else. Monster's ears stayed pricked and alert for the first mile, his head high and anxious with the novelty of being outside the arena for the first time in so long. Although his confident and fluid stride betrayed that he recognized everything and was unafraid, Jo spent several minutes repeatedly stroking his neck and gently teasing his mouth with the reins to release the tension. After a mile, his head was lowered; his body extended and his rump rocked in easy swoops from side to side.
After only a mile, Jo noted the glossy dampness at Monster's shoulder where the sweat had begun slick down his coat. She reached behind her to the edge of the saddle blanket, recoiling her fingers in slightly repulsed surprise upon feeling the frothy mass protruding from beneath the blankets. Jo twisted in the saddle to see the ochre foam of sweat and dirt that had been unearthed by the heat and pressure of the saddle blanket--much more sweat than she had been expecting. Scraping with her fingernails and the pads of her fingertips, she scooped away as much of the mucky mass as she cood, and reined Monster in a little, although he gave no indication of wanting to slow down his easy step. Jo breathed a sigh of relief as they rounded the turnaround. Just over a mile until they were home again. In the back of her mind, she resolved to water Monster's legs more thoroughly than usual, and give him some bran to settle his old-man's tummy after so much excercise. A minor pang of guilt sidled through her chest and across the base of her neck--too much excercise too fast for a horse that was too old--a friend deserves better than that. The guilt faded; Monster was happy to be outside. He pulled a little, wanting to follow the longer route, rather than take the first turnaround, but Jo goaded him homeward, knowing his heart easily outstripped the stamina of his legs.
The first turnaround brought them to a familiar gravelly road. Monster's hooves sank into the sand beneath the stones, and the tiny rocks rattled and even clanged against his hooves. They had been on the gravelly road only a few minutes when Jo noted that there should not be a clang. She held her breath and forced every sound out of her ears, straining to measure the tones the rang from Monster's hooves. Churrrh-churrh, churrrh-cling, churrrrh-churrh, churrrh-cling. The unmistakable bell-tones of a loose shoe pulled on Jo's ears, sending electric buzzing up through her thighs, hips, spine, and shoulders with every painful clang. She knew that Monster was not in pain, but a loose shoe meant that it would only get looser, and the stirring and chafing of the nails as the shoe rotated against the bottom of the hoof, could shred the outer wall of a hoof--potentially laming even the best of horses. She cursed the farrier for sloppy craftsmanship, and halted Monster alongside the road. Knowing the rhythm of Monster's steps, it only took a few paces for Jo to discern which shoe was loose. She dismounted quickly and walked to Monster's rear. Tapping his rump and sliding her hand down his rear leg, Monster lifted his hind leg for her to examine. She tested the shoe with her fingers; she was still unable to move it. With only a hoof pick handy, she had no way to remove a shoe that was still secure enough to not be removed by hand. She wriggled the hoof pick out of the back pocket of her Levi's and scraped a small pebble that had become lodged at the base of the frog. As she examined the rest of Monster's feet, she muttered a quick and anxious prayer that the loose shoe would not cause any damage while they were out. The resolve to carry metal-clippers with her whenever she went on a ride passed through her mind, but in the space between examining the last two hooves, she cast the resolve aside. If they had a farrier worth his salt, she wouldn't have to.
Jo considered walking the rest of the way--Monster would follow--but she knew it would make no difference. 1500 pounds of horseflesh on such a small surface would not be much affected by an addition 130 of human weight, placed largely on the front of his body. Despite this knowledge, she mounted more delicately than she had before, and made a conscious effort to sit farther forward in the saddle. Placing as much of her weight in the stirrups as she could, Jo and Monster continued.
Soon, gravel gave way again to asphalt, and the soft cling of the loose shoe against gravel became a sonorous and Fury-like clang. A long stretch of fence, built from gnarled Eucalyptus branches by the owners and secured with simple notch-work began off to their right. Jo counted the posts, and after the sixth, she nudged Monster into a sidestep and halted him beside the rails. She leaned down and lifted one of the rails, placing it across her lap. With another nudge, Monster turned to face the fence and she felt the usual derailing of rhythm and funny vibration through his shoulders as he stepped over the lower rail.
On the other side of the fence, great, tall, lily-pad-leafed weeds sprouted all around in a cloudy green knot. Jo felt Monster's feet sinking into the gopher hole-perforated earth, and she reined him in. The ground was tentatively held together by the shallow roots of the weeds, but only inches beneath the surface, a thriving metropolis of gopher tunnels weakened the support. Monster's weight would linger momentarily above ground, and then with a barely audible thud, his body would drop several inches until his ankles were fully submerged in the dirt. Jo felt her horse lifting his legs in a crude prancing motion as he tried to step out of the mulchy, weak earth, which muffled the ringing of his loose shoe. Despite the risk of twisted ankles and pulled muscles in the unpredictable earth at Monster's feet, the reprieve from the jarring knell of the horse's loose shoe was a gentle relief for Jo.
The wash ahead, twenty feet deep and almost fifty feet across, did not stop the lily-weeds from growing just as thick. Even looking straight down from the saddle, Jo could not see so much as a speck of the red earth. As the level earth dropped off into a steep hillside, smaller, emerald thistles and the powder-green, fibrous stalks of milkweed shot up through the clouds of lily-weeds. Jo leaned back in the saddle as Monster took his first steps down the deep-sanded wall of the wash. Only a few steps in, and not only had the sinkholes of gopher tunnels not decreased, but the loose shoe began to toll against the rocks that were lodged in the hillside from the last rain. Against the matted mess of lily-weed, thistle, and milkweed, the ground was completely shielded from Jo's eyes. Monster's ears, pricked forward and occasionally swooping a few degrees from side to side as the weeds shivered from a startled gopher. His hind legs, supporting most of his weight now, sank deep into the soft wall of the wash—almost halfway up to his hocks. As he stepped out of a deep sinkhole, his hind hoof clanged noisily against a larger rock, sending a handful of hunched crows cawing aggravatedly into the air. The shuffle of black, glossy feathers against the twisted eucalyptus branches sent the cicadas in every tree whirring into a droning, rattling hiss.
The cacophony of horseshoe-clangs, caws, rustling of leaves and feathers, and rattling of cicada shells tightened Jo's legs against Monster's flanks. Monster, almost completely deaf to the sound, was only able to pick out the rattle of the cicadas, and his head shot straight up in irritation, tossing his mane. His eyes fixed on the oak on the far bank of the wash, and he let out the same roaring snort as when Jo had first driven down the driveway and startled the other horses. Jo stroked his neck and clucked to him, anxious to get out of the precarious wash and not spend one second longer than absolutely necessary outside the soft, friendly sand of the arena. Somewhere in the back of her mind, somewhere in the vicinity of her ears and entirely deafened by the chaos of clanging, cawing, rustling, and rattling, it occurred to her that she ought not to rush him—not when he was irritated with his surroundings and undoubtedly increasingly aware of the loose shoe on his hind leg.
The clanging grew louder with every step as the rocks got bigger and bigger toward the bottom of the wash. Still, the thickness of the weeds had not abated, and she was forced to allow Monster to choose his way by feel. She'd trusted his Montana feet his entire life, and she had never known him to stumble. Even now, with a loose shoe and invisible earth beneath them, he was not surprised by a single rock or sinkhole.
They had reached the bottom of the wash, and the clanging was aggravatingly louder. They no longer sank into the earth, as the ground was now nothing but rock and an unpleasant home from gophers. Jo cringed as each step sent grinding and ringing sounds of steel, rock, and hoof scraping against one another. Each step made her wonder more and more how much damage the hind hoof had sustained with the nails straining against the wall of his hoof. She nudged her heels into Monster's sides, urging him forward to the far wall of the wash. The far wall bore only sparse thistles and a few lily-weed sprouts. The earth was softer and richer, and the hardy milkweed preferred only the coarsest and shallowest of earth. Monster picked up his pace, and Jo felt a pang of guilt as his hooves slid and sheared themselves against the rocks. Just the same, she could tell that even Monster was anxious to get out of the rocky wash and launch himself up the smoothe, black wall of the wash.
Jo leaned forward in the saddle and lifted the reins so they rested halfway up Monster's neck, tangling her fingers a little in his mane. Monster's first lurch into a steep gallop sent out a terrible ring of steel against coarse stone, and a rattling, ripping sound from his hind foot that drowned out even the noisy cicadas. The silence that followed lasted the eternity of a nano-second, as Monster tucked his head down and lifted his hind leg in pain. Together, Jo and her painted horse somersaulted against the steep, black earth of the wash. Jo did not cry out, or even feel the impulse to do so as she pressed herself as tight to Monster's neck and shoulders.
Monster's screams and snorts aroused enough distress in the neighbors that paramedics and animal control arrived within a little less than an hour. The source of the problem was immediately recognizable in the shredded hind hoof and a bent horseshoe gleaming on a nearby rock. The leg was bent in a U-shape above the fetlock. When Monster had been euthanized and lifted away in an attempt to rescue the motionless body beneath him, the body moved with him. Jo's sternum had been punched through by the saddle horn, against which she had pressed herself, and her neck twisted and broken by the weight of the horse's falling neck pressing her face into the ground while the rest of her body faced forward, bound to the saddle—sternum to saddle horn, her feet still facing forward and her heels pressed downward in the stirrups, and her hands reached around and resting on the black chest.
Arrangements for the funeral included large pictures of Jo and Monster together. The only picture not included—Jo's favorite—was of her leaning forward in the saddle, her arms draped around to rest on the horse's chest, and her head pressed affectionately against his neck, her chest resting peacefully against the saddle horn.
Hum Drum (by Rosa)
Her day usually went like this… She heaved herself out of bed, heavily sliding first one leg, then the other over the side, stifling a groan, then pushing herself up with her hands. She walked to the bathroom, scuffing her heels on the worn, but smooth, wooden floorboards. She brushed her teeth. She considered flossing. For a long time. But instead, she padded to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. For breakfast, she ate oatmeal and scrambled eggs, her cat nuzzling the bottoms of her cotton pajamas, too short from being dried on high heat. By then she would have the energy to check her e-mail. She obsessed over e-mail. No, she obsessed over the possibility of certain acquaintances e-mailing her. She dressed. She fed the cat. She stared at the box by the door, filled with odds and ends Matt had yet to pick up, a month after he’d moved out. Then she left for work, tugging the rain-swollen door behind her like an action movie heroine, with casual violence, then shrugging her shoulders into her coat more comfortably, flipping her dark hair out behind her. She took BART into the city, getting off at New Montgomery, steadfastly ignoring the bum who never pulled his pants up, holding her breath as she went by, wondering what he had looked like as a child.
At work she steadfastly ignored her colleagues, and concentrated on transcribing reporters’ stories, then working them into unimaginative, dull briefs she then posted on the radio station’s website. She spoke to no one, save the woman next to her, who periodically poked her head over the short cubical wall and asked in a fake lisp: “Do ya wanna thsee thsomethin’ cute?” She always agreed, forcing her lips into as genuine a smile as she could muster. She rolled her chair sideways so she could see over the divider and surrendered to the fact that she was the victim of a seemingly endless slide show of fuzzy kittens, baby chicks, muddy elephant infants, and human babies with electrified hairstyles. “Oh, ho, ho, ho,” she chuckled, on cue. “That one is really cute.”
She lunched by herself, picking up a sandwich from Safeway and eating it quickly on a fancy metal bench outside a bank, so no one at work would know she bought and ate sandwiches from Safeway. They all flipped money out of their wallets with abandon come lunchtime, and ordered in a group: Chinese, or Thai or elaborate sandwich and soup combinations from all corners of the city. But she was not full time. Two hours short. And besides, she had no motivation to spend money anymore.
After drowning herself in words for another four hours, she trudged the ten blocks back to BART, hating her decision to look more professional by wearing heeled shoes. She gave a wan smile to the guitarist at the bottom of the stairs, who nodded at her, his voice rising and falling in powerful jazzy tones, in rhythm with his strumming. Every time she saw him, she remembered how last year, for Christmas, she had made him a necklace of delicate beads and rocks strung on fishing wire, wrapped it, and dropped it in his open case on her way home from work. Every time she saw him, she grew curious if he remembered, if he knew the necklace had been from her.
At home, she cooked pasta under the harsh, blue-white fluorescents in her apartment’s kitchen. Almost always pasta. Extra thin spaghetti. Sometimes rice. Sometimes, she wouldn’t even have the energy to put sauce on the pasta. Instead, a bit of butter, a small mountain of fake parmesan cheese. Corn or peas from the freezer. It tasted like bland, warm comfort.
Then, back in the soft cocoon of her bed, she would watch television shows she had no interest in; comedies that did not make her laugh, dramas that did not rend her heart, crime shows that failed to make her cringe. Her cat, Xena, foraged in the covers for something she always wondered about. Why all that sniffing and nibbling? Why the kneading, her claws clenching and unclenching, searching for, grasping at… what?
Then she would click the television off, roll onto her side, disrupting a dozing Xena, and invent melodramatic stories, of which she was the star, until the stories faded into absurdity, and then nothing. At some point during the night her teeth would feel strange. So strange she felt an overpowering urge to touch them—tug on them, push the points of her incisors into the pads of her thumbs. Every tooth she touched fell out, and then the rest crumbled, like saltine crackers crushed between her fingers, the sound of grinding growing louder and louder, filling her head, vibrating in her toothless gums until she woke gasping, groped her way to the bathroom, fumbled with the light switch and stood in front of the mirror, making a ghastly smile. She pulled back the edges of her mouth, running frantic fingertips over her teeth, shivering as the light breeze from the cracked window ran over her naked body, chilling the sheen of sweat on her back, her breasts, her thighs.
But today, was different. Today was her day off. So Kendra didn’t drag herself out of bed. She stayed there until noon, amazed at how she could probably doze a few hours more, in pure gluttony. In the kitchen, still naked, she made a banana-strawberry-ice-cream smoothy for breakfast, leaving the pink-stained blender in the sink without even rinsing it out. She sauntered into the living room. She flopped onto her pale yellow couch and let the sun from her tall windows warm her skin.
A knock on the door startled her. She looked for a place to set her glass amid the jumble of papers, magazines, spaghetti sauce encrusted plates, and cat toys on her living room table. She settled on the floor, and skittered into the bathroom. She threw on her terrycloth robe, checked herself in the mirror, regretted her unbrushed teeth, and strode to the door. It must be Matt.
But no, it was her sister, Isobel.
“Did you just get up?” Izzy accused, eyebrows raised.
Kendra choked back an unexpected urge to cry. She shook her head at Izzy, shrugging her shoulders as her stomach tensed, as a hot nausea crept up her throat, flushing her face. She half giggled, half sobbed, “Yes. I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”
“Jesus!” Izzy pushed in the door and wrapped her arms around Kendra, smoothing her hair away from her face. “Did something happen to Xena? Is it Matt?”
“No, no,” insisted Kendra, rubbing her tears away with a sleeve. “I just… Maybe it’s P.M.S.”
“Have you been taking the
“Yes,” she sighed more than said. “Why are you here? Did we have plans?”
“No, I was in the neighborhood and decided I was going to haul that box of Matt’s junk to the Good Will. I’m dropping some of my own stuff off anyway.”
“You can’t do that! You can’t just give his stuff away!”
“He’s left it here a month, it’s not like he’s coming back for it.”
“He is,” insisted Kendra tightly. “Imagine how pissed you would be if someone just tossed your stuff without asking.”
“Fine. I’ve got to run. See you at Mom’s next weekend?”
“Yeah.”
“You should open some windows. It smells stale in here.” Isobel yanked the door shut after her.
Kendra listened to her sister descend the stairs outside in that stomping way of hers. She stared at Matt’s box, her teeth starting to ache. Terrified, she slowly lifted her fingers to her mouth, feeling her teeth. She swore one wiggled. In the bathroom, she pulled down her bottom lip, then pushed up her top lip. They were all there. Intact. And she was awake. She guessed the dreams were from grinding her teeth during the night. She really had to stop that, she told herself. She really had to stop a lot of things.
And that was all it took to motivate her to clean her disastrous apartment. Because Kendra was the type of person who let things get to a drastic state, and then flung herself into a project wholeheartedly. She did it because minor changes didn’t impress her. There was no challenge, no sense of accomplishment at the end. So even though she’d planned to not do much of anything, she threw on a pair of paint splattered, ratty jeans and a disintegrating T-shirt and got to work. She blared R.E.M. as she tackled the kitchen, switched to Third Eye Blind for the living room, then Toad the Wet Sprocket for her bedroom and the bathroom. The entryway she saved for last, avoiding Matt’s box as long as she could. Looking down at the top, the flaps tucked under themselves perfectly, she wondered what was inside.
Bending down, she wrenched the thick, stiff flaps apart. A beanie. An old frying pan. Gas canisters for his camping stove. Worn hiking boots. Chopsticks. The scarf she’d knitted him for his birthday. Shoving down the familiar searing sensation of loss in the pit of her stomach, she calmly walked to the living room and tore a page from a notebook. In fat black marker she wrote FREE and taped the sign to the side of the box. She hefted it and awkwardly opened the door. Going down the stairs, the corners of the box gouged into her arms, rubbing and making them itch. She hoped they left a mark. Some tiny hint of evidence of what she’d been feeling inside.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Yellow-Painted Room
He tells me I have this inscrutable ability to excel in anything I pick up…a golf club, a soccer ball, a few pages of a composition for class, a handful of wild flowers arranged in a clear glass vase, decoration on a sugar cookie, a pan of baked spaghetti, a zipped up coat with the pocket threading half gone. I am one of “them,” he tells me, as is he. His voice drifts over me as we lay side by side on the ripped up twin mattress with no sheets. I understand what “them” means…a collective entity of abilities, one of the special ones, the chosen ones, the ones who are meant to be great in this world. “You are one of “them,” Bird. The night he tells me this, I am floating into dream. I am in an empty room, devoid of all furniture, with its yellow-stained walls and no windows. The door is shut and bolted. His small form crouches against one wall, his four baby brothers spread out in different corners of the room. I can smell the dull malodorous stench of feces. The boy’s body is there, but his mind is traveling through a parallel world. I watch the small immobile body, his smooth brown skin. “Share my worlds, Bird, share my worlds.” He is a deer in that other world. A deer venturing out from its Winter home, its short, sleek hair hung close to its body-everything in earth tones. Slim, strong, beautiful legs, pausing and looking up with wary, gentle eyes. These are the eyes of his people. “Bird, this is what a writer does. We, dreamers. We have the ability to see through physical boundaries of fleeting lives, to suspend time. We have the ability to capture worlds, and the power to convey, makes the writer great.” “Yes, Penguin, you are right. We have that telepathic energy to see things that are far removed from us.” “Bird, I am one of them, the chosen ones. The ones without rest, without peace. I am one of five. Do you understand that?” I nod in my sleep. “My past, Bird, there is a little boy in my past who is lost. That little boy is capable of destroying you. This is what my family has given me.” In the dream, I am standing in front of his crouched form. I can feel his bowel movement, the strain of his small body. A body is being thrown against a wall. I can hear the sound of a baby crying. His littlest brother. And the shout of a man, his father. I can hear his mother being suffocated by strong, dark hands. The veins that are now bulging out from underneath his skin. The rage of a man with limbs swelling. The little boy in front of me can see him too. He sobs against the wall. “Who put you in this corner?” He doesn’t answer. He is not aware that I am in the room with him. His crying grows more urgent, and I spin around in a dervish jig, trying to find a way out for more air. It is too hot in here. I am confused. He always told me hell was cold. I see again, the form of a man, and the naked form of a small boy. I can see the man relieve himself on the boy, grunts emitting from that dark cavernous hole in his face, the shuddering body of the boy, now, tired and spent. The child in front of me wretches on the floor, his body going into convulsions. He wipes his bare hand down there where it aches. I take his hand from himself, and see there, a large bulbous blood clot. I look around for something-anything. There is nothing but the pissed stained walls. I have to puncture the clot…before it spreads. The alarm of it spreading makes me scream. In the end, I use my thumb, breaking the thin coating of coagulated blood, till it tosses and spills, dark purple, a warm pulpy mass, over my hands.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Toby's contribution
Toby Wendtland
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Ricardo Montalban pushed the stick forward and the helicopter dove forward at a forty five degree angle. Ricardo’s walkie crackled to life, “Suspect is driving a white Ford Bronco, heading south on the 405.” Leveling his descent, Ricardo spotted the vehicle he was searching for tearing past the other vehicles on the road. “Got him,” said Ricardo out loud, though no one was with him. Up here in the free airs Ricardo was liberated to pursue his life’s passion, reading magazines from back to front as he idled in hover above the world below. Beside him in the cockpit were several copies of Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly, all were lying face down in the passenger seat.
Down below the white Bronco sped up and the law enforcement helicopter began to lose ground. Ricardo accelerated the chopper, both gyros near maximum output. Still the Bronco gained ground on him. “He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I’ll chase him ‘round the moons of Nibia and ‘round the Antares Maelstrom and ‘round Perdition’s flames before I give him up!” Below, several police cars had joined the chase and were trailing behind the Bronco. “Oh not all at once,” said Ricardo and he positioned himself right over the speeding car.
The radio crackled to life again. “Suspect has contacted police and is willing to turn himself over…escort him along the freeway…non lethal force.” Escort, Ricardo thought to himself, escort? “No, you are in a position to demand nothing. I am in a position to grant nothing.” The police cars now made a cavalcade behind the white Bronco and Ricardo saw that it looked like a v of flying geese.
Ricardo sat back in his pilot’s chair and then looked over at the seat next to him at the stack of upside magazines. He knew something had to be done, but what? But then he knew. Chronology. Chronology was always the bitch of these situations. The landscaped faded from outside the helicopter and Ricardo saw a long line of events involving the man in this Ford Bronco. They stretched out before him thanks to the sight that had been given him from years of cultivating his magazine reading habits that started with the last page and ended with the first. “This cannot stand,” yelled Ricardo and he pushed the stick all the way forward.
The helicopter accelerated at terrible speed and ate up the distance between itself and the Bronco in a heartbeat. Ricardo made his aim true and then unfastened his safety harness. To the Bronco in front of him Ricardo said, “To the last I will grapple with thee…from Hell’s heart I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!”
A barn swallow flew through the airs beside the freeway enjoying the perfect California weather. He felt compelled. Yesterday another swallow, his good friend Jimmy, had shows him a new game where if you flew straight at a car on the freeway, a small jet stream would bounce you over it and you’d escape unscathed. The barn swallow veered to his left and flew across the first lanes of traffic to get into the oncoming traffic. The barn swallow flew at a height of fifty and saw his target, a green Jeep. The barn swallow accelerated and flew down, headed straight for the Jeep, he hit the jet stream and was thrown up in a moment of exhilaration, but then he saw it. In front of him he saw a helicopter crash right on top of a white Ford Bronco, both passengers looking terrified. The barn swallow flew away as fast as he could. “Wasn’t that Khan and the Juice?”
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Ricardo Montalban pushed the stick forward and the helicopter dove forward at a forty five degree angle. Ricardo’s walkie crackled to life, “Suspect is driving a white Ford Bronco, heading south on the 405.” Leveling his descent, Ricardo spotted the vehicle he was searching for tearing past the other vehicles on the road. “Got him,” said Ricardo out loud, though no one was with him. Up here in the free airs Ricardo was liberated to pursue his life’s passion, reading magazines from back to front as he idled in hover above the world below. Beside him in the cockpit were several copies of Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly, all were lying face down in the passenger seat.
Down below the white Bronco sped up and the law enforcement helicopter began to lose ground. Ricardo accelerated the chopper, both gyros near maximum output. Still the Bronco gained ground on him. “He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I’ll chase him ‘round the moons of Nibia and ‘round the Antares Maelstrom and ‘round Perdition’s flames before I give him up!” Below, several police cars had joined the chase and were trailing behind the Bronco. “Oh not all at once,” said Ricardo and he positioned himself right over the speeding car.
The radio crackled to life again. “Suspect has contacted police and is willing to turn himself over…escort him along the freeway…non lethal force.” Escort, Ricardo thought to himself, escort? “No, you are in a position to demand nothing. I am in a position to grant nothing.” The police cars now made a cavalcade behind the white Bronco and Ricardo saw that it looked like a v of flying geese.
Ricardo sat back in his pilot’s chair and then looked over at the seat next to him at the stack of upside magazines. He knew something had to be done, but what? But then he knew. Chronology. Chronology was always the bitch of these situations. The landscaped faded from outside the helicopter and Ricardo saw a long line of events involving the man in this Ford Bronco. They stretched out before him thanks to the sight that had been given him from years of cultivating his magazine reading habits that started with the last page and ended with the first. “This cannot stand,” yelled Ricardo and he pushed the stick all the way forward.
The helicopter accelerated at terrible speed and ate up the distance between itself and the Bronco in a heartbeat. Ricardo made his aim true and then unfastened his safety harness. To the Bronco in front of him Ricardo said, “To the last I will grapple with thee…from Hell’s heart I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!”
A barn swallow flew through the airs beside the freeway enjoying the perfect California weather. He felt compelled. Yesterday another swallow, his good friend Jimmy, had shows him a new game where if you flew straight at a car on the freeway, a small jet stream would bounce you over it and you’d escape unscathed. The barn swallow veered to his left and flew across the first lanes of traffic to get into the oncoming traffic. The barn swallow flew at a height of fifty and saw his target, a green Jeep. The barn swallow accelerated and flew down, headed straight for the Jeep, he hit the jet stream and was thrown up in a moment of exhilaration, but then he saw it. In front of him he saw a helicopter crash right on top of a white Ford Bronco, both passengers looking terrified. The barn swallow flew away as fast as he could. “Wasn’t that Khan and the Juice?”
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Expiration Date
“Shit! You didn’t go to the grocery store?” Hank was hissing, trying hard to keep his voice quiet. He pulled Francie’s arm, dragging her into the kitchen. He didn’t want his parents in the guest room across the hall to overhear. “I told you we needed milk!”
“I didn’t have time. I do have to work, you remember? Would you prefer that I be late for their arrival? That they sit outside the building and wait in their car?” Francie stared at Hank, her eyebrow raised, a smirk playing on her lips. The fluorescent lighting and the reflection from the avocado green cabinets made her face look sickly. “Besides,” she asked, “Why didn’t you go if it was so important?”
“I thought you were going! You should have called me!” Hank’s voice edged a few decibles louder.
“You should have told me it was so important!”
“Well, what do we do now?” Hank’s fists were clenched.
“Hank, I don’t understand why—“
“The milk expired four days ago!”
“What do you mean? It’s expired? I just used it for that potato recipe the other night…”
“The other night, Francie? The other night? That was last week! I can’t have my father putting expired milk on his cereal in the morning! You know he has cereal every morning.”
“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it tonight. One of us will just have to get up early in the morning and go get fresh milk before they wake up.” Francie smiled up at Hank.
“Francie. My father gets up early.”
“Well, he’s not going to eat without everyone else, is he?”
“He always eats as soon as he gets up. I shouldn’t have to always tell you this shit!”
“Alright. We’ll just go tonight. There. Problem solved.” Francie was using her cutesy- you’re-such-a-silly-willy for having this wittle pwoblem voice.
“Francie. Honestly. You are so fucking clueless sometimes. It’s fucking Christmas Eve. I don’t think there’s a store open anywhere in this country after seven on Christmas eve.”
“You don’t have to be an ass, Hank. I’m trying to help.” The smirk was gone from Francie’s face.
“It would have been helpful if you’d gone to the damn store like I fucking told you.”
Francie turned her back to Hank and rolled her eyes, speaking at the mustard yellow fridge. “Maybe the milk is fine. Four days isn’t much. They put those expiration dates on there just to be safe, you know.”
She pulled open the fridge door, bending at the waist. She looked back over her shoulder, hoping to catch Hank staring at her ass, but he was looking up at the ceiling, his mouth clamped. She sighed and grabbed the milk carton, glancing at the date. Sure enough, it read 12/20. She opened it and turned towards Hank at the same time. Deliberately, she stuck her nose deep into the carton’s mouth and inhaled. “Smells fine,” she said.
“Taste it then,” Hank said.
Francie paused, deciding whether she was really confident enough to taste the milk. “Fine,” she said. “Hand me a glass?”
Hank stepped toward the sink and grabbed a glass from the dish rack. Francie took it with an ironic smile and poured a millimeter’s worth of milk into it.
“Looks fine,” she said.
“Taste it.”
Francie raised the glass to her lips, keeping her eyes on Hank’s face. She sniffed one last time before opening her mouth and swallowing.
“It tastes… it tastes a little funny, maybe. I don’t know. I think it’s fine.”
“God damnit! It is not fine.”
“I’m just being paranoid. It tastes fine.” Francie took another sip, just to prove her point. It definitely tasted a little funny.
“I can tell from your face it isn’t fine,” Hank sneered. “You aren’t fooling me. You’re so fucking cheap! I can’t give my father rotten fucking milk! And don’t think I don’t know that if your parents were here, you’d have gotten new milk.”
“I’m not going to continue this conversation. This is ridiculous. Just tell your father that we ran out of milk. In fact, let me make it easier.” Francie pushed past Hank to the sink, dumping the open carton straight into the Dispos-All, leaving the carton there to drain. “There,” she said. “Problem solved."
“I didn’t have time. I do have to work, you remember? Would you prefer that I be late for their arrival? That they sit outside the building and wait in their car?” Francie stared at Hank, her eyebrow raised, a smirk playing on her lips. The fluorescent lighting and the reflection from the avocado green cabinets made her face look sickly. “Besides,” she asked, “Why didn’t you go if it was so important?”
“I thought you were going! You should have called me!” Hank’s voice edged a few decibles louder.
“You should have told me it was so important!”
“Well, what do we do now?” Hank’s fists were clenched.
“Hank, I don’t understand why—“
“The milk expired four days ago!”
“What do you mean? It’s expired? I just used it for that potato recipe the other night…”
“The other night, Francie? The other night? That was last week! I can’t have my father putting expired milk on his cereal in the morning! You know he has cereal every morning.”
“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it tonight. One of us will just have to get up early in the morning and go get fresh milk before they wake up.” Francie smiled up at Hank.
“Francie. My father gets up early.”
“Well, he’s not going to eat without everyone else, is he?”
“He always eats as soon as he gets up. I shouldn’t have to always tell you this shit!”
“Alright. We’ll just go tonight. There. Problem solved.” Francie was using her cutesy- you’re-such-a-silly-willy for having this wittle pwoblem voice.
“Francie. Honestly. You are so fucking clueless sometimes. It’s fucking Christmas Eve. I don’t think there’s a store open anywhere in this country after seven on Christmas eve.”
“You don’t have to be an ass, Hank. I’m trying to help.” The smirk was gone from Francie’s face.
“It would have been helpful if you’d gone to the damn store like I fucking told you.”
Francie turned her back to Hank and rolled her eyes, speaking at the mustard yellow fridge. “Maybe the milk is fine. Four days isn’t much. They put those expiration dates on there just to be safe, you know.”
She pulled open the fridge door, bending at the waist. She looked back over her shoulder, hoping to catch Hank staring at her ass, but he was looking up at the ceiling, his mouth clamped. She sighed and grabbed the milk carton, glancing at the date. Sure enough, it read 12/20. She opened it and turned towards Hank at the same time. Deliberately, she stuck her nose deep into the carton’s mouth and inhaled. “Smells fine,” she said.
“Taste it then,” Hank said.
Francie paused, deciding whether she was really confident enough to taste the milk. “Fine,” she said. “Hand me a glass?”
Hank stepped toward the sink and grabbed a glass from the dish rack. Francie took it with an ironic smile and poured a millimeter’s worth of milk into it.
“Looks fine,” she said.
“Taste it.”
Francie raised the glass to her lips, keeping her eyes on Hank’s face. She sniffed one last time before opening her mouth and swallowing.
“It tastes… it tastes a little funny, maybe. I don’t know. I think it’s fine.”
“God damnit! It is not fine.”
“I’m just being paranoid. It tastes fine.” Francie took another sip, just to prove her point. It definitely tasted a little funny.
“I can tell from your face it isn’t fine,” Hank sneered. “You aren’t fooling me. You’re so fucking cheap! I can’t give my father rotten fucking milk! And don’t think I don’t know that if your parents were here, you’d have gotten new milk.”
“I’m not going to continue this conversation. This is ridiculous. Just tell your father that we ran out of milk. In fact, let me make it easier.” Francie pushed past Hank to the sink, dumping the open carton straight into the Dispos-All, leaving the carton there to drain. “There,” she said. “Problem solved."
Monday, February 9, 2009
Welcome
You first post is due Tuesday, March 3, before class begins. Choose one of the exercises you began in class and develop it in to a 2-5 page scene. It could be the beginning of a story, a scene in the middle of a story, or even a complete short short (if you're so inclined). These are expected to be works in progress, not finished products, though I do expect you to clean up the typos and make your exercises presentable.
Feel free to post more than 5 pages if you like, but please limit yourself to work that was inspired by one of the exercises I've assigned.
Feel free to post more than 5 pages if you like, but please limit yourself to work that was inspired by one of the exercises I've assigned.
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