Exercise # 17

The novel begins in a field outside a town of red clay roofs and checkerboard pastures. You find yourself on the dirt road – your shoes are worn – the soles thin, the leather black in places where your feet press out, the bony parts, from the inside. You haven’t brought your sweater, because no one has told you what to expect. You notice you are at the crest of a hill, the road slopes down towards the town.
The impulse is to follow it so you do.
The first cottage is whitewashed but chipped in places, cracks spreading like vines, you realize as you get closer. There are matching chickens in the yard – white with red crests. They peck at red worms. Is this one of the themes, then? Red and white? You wonder what meaning lies in this color scheme. You look down at your clothes – black worn trousers – pine green flannel shirt. Perhaps you are mistaken. Must there even be a theme? But this is a novel and you’ve walked five minutes within it so far finding no meaning.
Perhaps the point of the story is this emptiness you feel.
Now you smell the brown warm honey-ed aroma of roasting meat. You realize you are hungry. When is the last time you ate? You have no memory beyond finding yourself standing on the dirt path. No memory to direct you – no theme to dictate your choices – only the road stretching forward. You follow it.
The second cottage is freshly whitewashed. Instead of chickens scratching in the dirt, you notice a soft mossy lawn, it grows up to the sides of the house and lends a storybook feel. The wafting aroma of roasting dinner you have been following is emanating from the many-paned window, thrown open in what you now decide seems like a cheerful manner. Smoke curls from the chimney – a goat – its udder pink and full and many-fingered, bulging with milk – grazes by a tree laden with fruit – round golden orbs that are not immediately recognizable to you. But this is the house – you feel the only guidance you are being given – this quiet inner urge – telling you to stop here. Yes, perhaps this is where the story will begin – followed by the rising action – the climax - the denouement – will all happen behind this self-satisfied plump-looking structure.
The door is thatched – as you approach you feel the spring of the moss under your tired feet. Your knuckles rap against the thatch – a muted sound. How does one make his presence known with a door such as this one? You are about to knock again but the door opens – a round pale face with a neat linen cap – you notice the eyes – blue like a sky with no end – before anything else. These are eyes that will stay with you – again that inner intuit – these are eyes that are going to mean something to you – though still, at this point, as the door is pushed open wider to let you in, you are aware that you are poised on the threshold of many things. Not the least of which is, how it will come to be that these eyes, as you are now sure they will come to do – will destroy you.
“Annika?” The voice from within the cottage is deep and harsh. The pale moon round face still looking at you deeply flushes pink as if stained by the spill of wine. Now another face appears, dark skinned with the ravages of sun, wind-burned, like leather. Similar eyes though these are without the sense of endlessness. Some kind of knowledge has hardened these eyes so that a balloon traveling up through the stratosphere would hit a ceiling. A place beyond which nothing travels anymore. Where did you come up with this image of a balloon bobbing and bumping against a smooth blue ceiling, you wonder, standing on this strange doorstep, following an inner prompt to remain standing there, even with nothing familiar to hold onto.
The man, Annika’s father, you guess, is glaring now.
“What do you want?”
Many possible answers race through your head: I want to be in the place where I can find myself again. I want to feel safe and your daughter’s eyes have promised me that. I want to close my eyes and feel nothing for awhile. But most of all: I want to go home.
If only you knew what that meant.
“Can you spare some supper and a corner and blanket for the night?” This is the first time you have heard your voice. It sounds like wood, firm and strong. You feel a bit more confident.
You look directly into the dead-end eyes. Perhaps sensing your newly found firmness, they seem to soften. Though infinitesimally, it is enough. The door is swung open.
Inside the cottage is as cozy as you sensed it would be when you stopped.

Next post due Tuesday, May 5

This will be your last post. I'm still missing the April 21 post from a couple of you, so please catch up if you're behind. To the rest of you, I've really enjoyed what you posted.

On Tuesday, May 19th, your final portfolios are due: these will consist of revisions of 5 of your exercises (3-5 pages each). Please bring these in to class and provide a SASE if you'd like them returned with a few comments.

Thanks.

Forty's

(from Exercise #13)

All of this happened at a really tough time in our lives. Rocco’s old lady just got knocked up, meaning he’d have two kids and a lazy-ass wife to take care of. Slim Jim had finally gotten a job——actually found someone who’d take a shot on him. And I, well, shit…life was always hard on me but I ain’t pointin’ fingers.

This shit went down on a Thursday night. We’d gotten off of work and headed over to Forty’s for some beers. The week had been long but good and it was almost over. We didn’t want to wait for Friday. Not when the weekend was practically here.

We came in, one by one, since we all worked at different spots and got off at different times. I was the first one there and nursed some beers so I wouldn’t get shitty before they even showed up. To my surprise, Rocco was already drinking by the time he stepped in. When he sat next to me at the bar, he nudged me in the side, opened his denim jacket that always reeked of cigarettes, and showed me a flask. He’d taken a few pulls from it in the parking lot.

Slim had been tossed out of the bar a couple of months back for some bullshit so Rocco and I snuck off to the bathroom like fucking kids, trading a pull or two from the flask——Canadian whiskey. We were playing it smooth, drinking beers at the bar, watching the game, stepping out for a smoke and a pull or two from his flask. We called it “drinkin’ on the cheap” and I needed it since I was still temping at the warehouse, not getting paid the big bucks that a full-time forklift operator would rake in.

Fucking Slim showed up after 8 o’ clock——must have been around that time since the game was in the 3rd period. When he took a seat next to us at the bar, I could tell something was bothering him. Right away, he ordered a shot of Cuervo and some scotch on the rocks to chase it, standing and looking over at the bartender like he needed his drinks bad.

He comes around to tell us that he was sure he was gonna lose his job. Big wigs corralled everyone up in a meeting, saying that they shouldn’t be surprised if they’re let go in a couple of weeks. Seems like the guys heading the construction job were thinking of pulling out, since they couldn’t find companies interested in leasing the offices they were planning to build.

“They kept telling us, ‘If we build it, they will come.’ My fucking ass they will! No one’s stickin’ their neck out in this economy. No one’s gonna lease that space so why are they gonna keep payin’ us to build it?” Slim said before he downed his shot and started to drink from his scotch. “Just when I was thinking of buying a new car. The one I have now is goin’ to pieces.”

Slim got shitty in a hurry. We were all getting shitty real quick since Slim and Rocco kept sayin’, “Come on, come on. Drink with me.” I couldn’t say no to my buddies.

Before long, the bar was getting packed with all the kids, just off of sucking their momma’s teats, laughin' and goin’ on too damn loud about “Oh my god! Why is he texting me?” or “I shouldn’t be having this, but hey, my parents are paying for my car, so why not?” We couldn’t stand them but what could we do? The only other bar in town was Tiki’s Lounge, and we wasn’t about to get caught alive in that shithole. I mean, who drinks at a place called “Tiki’s Lounge”? Sounds like a place where a bunch of hot shot fruitcakes from the city go to “get away” or have a “power lunch”. Tiki’s Lounge…shit. All I’d wanna do is tinkle all over that goddamn place until it was yellow from piss. The one time I went in there were a bunch of old fogies, hunched over the bar, rotting away. I ain’t about to become one of them—ever. Rather deal with the fucking kids that go to Forty’s on Thursdays before they head up to the city on the weekend.

So what happened is this. Rocco was sittin’ at the corner of the bar, playing one of those video games where you have to touch the screen and if you do good, you get to see a picture of this hot-ass naked chick on the screen. I don’t know why the fuck he was doin’ that, since he could actually go home and get laid unlike me. Slim and I were standing at the bar, in front of our stools, watchin’ SportsCenter when a dart bounced off the wall, glancing off of Slim’s jacket. We turned and heard these punk kids, standing there pretending like nothing happened, while one of the skirts was turned away, her face beet-red because she was trying so hard to not laugh at us.

“The fuck’s a matter with you?” Slim said to them, his arms out.

That’s when we heard that dumb girl laugh and Slim pushed the closest guy. Just, pushed him. And that’s when one of his buddies clanked Slim on the face and we had no choice but to show ‘em who was boss. We were just defending ourselves. We weren’t the ones who started the whole deal. All we did was just react. And if we did that too well—busting their heads, breaking one of their jaws, beating the fuck out of them—then I guess that’s our only crime——that we were too strong, that we were too good at something.

But it’s what they deserved. They started it. I don’t see why our asses had to get hauled in when all we did was defend ourselves too well. Those fucking kids, thinking they’re all better than us because they got better rides with their fancy deskjobs, braggin’ about how they’re gonna live in the big city someday. What they learned that night is that all of that don’t mean shit when it’s man to man, our fists to their faces. We’re on a more level playing field there. And we may be stronger men then they’ll ever be but that doesn’t stand for shit these days now. Not when we’re tossed in the clank for just being more of a man.

Mr. Table’s Demise

by Xochitl M. Perales

After the lamp industry collapsed, only Mr. Table’s Fine Edible Lamps managed to turn a profit, and even that was short-lived. The obvious reason for their brief rather than long foray into post-collapse profitability had less to do with the razor-sharp lime green or hot pink tassels hanging down the edges of the umbrella-shaped velveteen shades sitting atop every single one of Mr. Table’s Fine Edible Lamps, and more to do with the looming extinction of electricity from Planet Earth once the space travelers from Planet Yamfrost introduced a previously unheard of light and energy source stemming from the saliva of white-faced capuchins, but only those less than a year-and-one-month old. This saliva-based light and energy source spawned an innovative movement, called the “new and improved lamp industry,” whose main promotion of itself declared slogans such as, “Out with the old lame lamp designs, and in with the new super cool and modern ones.”

The travesty of this scenario, in the opinion of most non-Earthlings, is that humans could not completely let go of their dependence on electricity and fossil fuels when they discovered renewable and solar energy sources on their own, because there were too many trillions to be made in the oil and coal industries. This is why Yamfrostians finally felt it incumbent upon themselves to visit Earth, to put a stop to, or at least severely curb, the human tendency of wreaking environmental havoc on their own planet, because this in turn affected Earth’s solar system, which also affected other solar systems and galaxies and so on and so forth, in a great big domino or ricocheting effect with consequences of gargantuan proportions.

Even now, humans still retain a certain dependency, however minimal, on electricity and fossil fuels in a number of sectors, although not nearly as much as before the first Yamfrostian landing. But at least humans have finally managed to entirely relinquish their use of all variety of old lame lamps, last of all Mr. Table’s Fine Edible Lamps, even if the demise of old lame lamp production had more to do with a loss of profitability in the old lame lamp industry and subsequent dwindling on the supply end, than a lack of demand due to human concern for planetary, solar systemic, galactic and farther-reaching environmental degradation. For this reason, Yamfrostians had a habit of shaking their heads in frustrated perplexity any time the words “Earth,” “Earthlings,” or “those really dumb beings on that planet whose name I don’t feel like naming” were mentioned.

More than a few parents could breathe a huge sigh of relief over the final curtain call of Mr. Table’s Fine Edible Lamps, because there were far too many cases of overly curious toddlers cutting themselves on the razor-sharp tassels hanging off of the lamp shades while visiting the home of a childless friend, neighbor or relative. In one particularly notorious case, a little boy (age three) believed that he was in the presence of a lamp with strings of apple-flavored (because they were the lime green tassels) candy dangling off of the lampshade’s rim. (To give the boy credit, he had seen the commercials proclaiming these lamps to be “edible” lamps. But he did not pay attention to the warning at the end: “Although these are, indeed, edible lamps, only the top 1/3 of the lampshades are, in fact, edible. And please do not touch the tassels, for they are razor-sharp and can cause extreme bodily harm.”) The boy first grabbed a handful of these supposed apple-flavored candy strings, screamed in pain when they sliced his hands, then, in order to comfort himself, he shoved the strands into his mouth. Subsequently, he spent months in the hospital undergoing relentless hand and mouth surgeries.

Mr. Table himself did not concern himself with the dangers that his Fine Edible Lamps posed, even to children, for he did issue a warning at the end of his commercials, after all. However, he did fall into a deep state of depression when it was finally time to close down all of his factories down. So bad was his depression that his remaining family members (remaining not because they were the only ones alive, but because they were the only ones who could stand to be around him, given his nasty disposition) wondered if he would attempt to kill himself. And, to everyone’s great mortification and satisfaction, he eventually did. Kill himself, that is. By overdosing on white-faced capuchin saliva, ironically enough.

"Intervention" or "The Anonymous Frotteur"

Shh. Shh. Everyone be quiet. Do you hear that, is that someone on the steps? Yeah, it is. Shh. Shh. Shh.

Here he comes, that’s his keys. Shh. Shh.

Surprise!

No, no. This isn’t supposed to be a surprise. Well, it is supposed to be a surprise, but it’s not like a party or anything. No, sit down Merman. Sit. Yeah, forget about getting settled, somebody will get your coat, somebody will get you a glass of water. Yes, go.

Now then, Merman. We’re gathered here to.

Is that a new rug? No? How come I’ve never noticed that before?

Ahem. Now we’re gathered here to.

Where did you get that lamp? Really, how much? Do you think they’ve still got it in stock? How long ago did you get it?

Ahem. AHEM. Focus, people. Ahem. Merman. We’re gathered here because we all love you very much and because we care about you and we think you have a very serious problem.

No, sit down, you’re not going anywhere. Everybody please just stay seated.

Yes, we’re well aware of your uh compulsion, Merman. We’ve seen the way you look at strangers on buses, on the metro, on the street. Many of us have been on the receiving end of your rubbings and gropings and frictions. Oh yes, we’ve noticed. And we know it was you. Yeah, that’s right. We’ve narrowed it down. By process of elimination, Merman. And also because none of us remembers it ever happening at any of those get togethers that you weren’t invited to or that you didn’t show up to.

You, sir are a Frotteur. Yep, we looked it up. It’s right there on the internet. Let me just look at what I jotted down here. Ahem. “yadda yadda specific paraphawhatsit which involves the nonconsensual rubbing against another person to achieve sexual arousal.” Yeah, that’s you all over.

Merman we love you very much but we don’t love you quite enough to have you rubbing all up against us all the time and we think you need to go seek hel—

“It wasn’t me.”

What’s that? Don’t be stupid, don’t be contradictory we know it was you. This is an intervention, sir.

“No, I’m serious. But I have felt somebody rubbing against me at some of our get togethers too. Once or twice.”

No you haven’t.

“Yes. Yes I have. How exactly did you guys ‘Narrow it down’ to just me?”

Well we all. Well we all started talking and we narrowed it down. Yeah, and we purposefully got together and didn’t invite you one night to see what happened and sure enough, nobody was going around being all frotteury.

“But if you all talked about it with everyone else but me, how do you know that it’s not just one of you all being a liar?”

Uh.

“I mean, maybe whoever it was just stopped rubbing against people and grabbing their junk because they knew you all would be watching and they wanted to frame me instead.”

That’s just stupid now. We’ve narrowed it down.

“Whose idea was all this, anyway? Who organized it, who got you all together? I bet that’s who it was.”

Well Larry was the one who stole the spare key from your nightstand that one night. But look, he’s not even here he had to be somewhere else?

“Okay okay who were the first two to discuss it, to put forth this idea of a half-assed intervention?”

I don’t know, haven’t we all been talking about this for a while? Was it you Ted? No, I think it might have been Jessie. Hey no, it wasn’t me. What are we doing, are we pointing fingers here? Hey, all be right back I’ve got to take a piss. Hey Merman, do you have anything to eat around here? I think maybe you’re right, it was Jessie. Like some chips and dip or like some crackers and cheese or olives or I don’t know, anything? Hey wasn’t it Jim who was complaining to Charlynne about that New Years gig? Alright, shut up everyone, somebody just grabbed my ass.

CLASS CANCELLED TODAY, APRIL 21

Dear students,

I have the flu and won't be able to make it to class or office hours today. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll see you all tomorrow hopefully for my talk.

Thanks,

Eric

29NOV1987IN2D

Things took a turn for the worst. I'd been putting off coming through that damn door for two weeks, and now--here I am--I've gone through. Of course, when I look back, the door is still there, hovering just above the grass. The doorknob, a brassy little ball flush against the wood, is just the right size to fit into my hand, but when I reach for it, my palm is flat on the door, covering an image of the doorknob only, with nothing to turn. I realized then that the door itself had become flush with the grass--grass that doesn't tickle my toes, but layers like scales without texture. there's no leaning against the trees, which are just as flush with the grass as the door.
I can hear a stream nearby; I'll check it out after I've taken a nap; I'm exhausted.
I slept a little longer than I planned, and, I confess, I dawdled a great deal before going to explore the stream. I can't get over being able to touch clouds and sky. The closeness of everything--everything smooth and flush agianst everything else. It's a little smothering, really.
I went toward the sound of the stream; I was surprised how long it took me to get here. The stream rushes along without any depth. The water is cold, and yet, my hand doesn't go beneath it. I doesn't become flush with the surface of the water either, like it did with the door. My hand just--flickers. Feather- and bubble-shaped flickers of silver and blues--water colors. Little bits of my hand vanish and reappear and mix with the water until it becomes only a hand-shape, more part of the water than of me. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I panicked when I realized that my hand wasn't my hand anymore. The sensation of cold was as real as the stream-sound--like a poorly-dubbbed movie, where the sounds and lips are right, but the sound is coming from somewhere else.
It's taken me most of the day, (though it hasn't even begun to get dark yet, which I find very strange), to calm down my nerves about the near-loss of my hand to the depthless stream, and continue my exploration. I decided, for the sake of not getting lost, o follow the stream itself, keeping a safe distance. My hand seems to be okay, but who knows what would happen if I fell into teh stream, with littl ebits of me vanishing and reappearing and shimmering and flickering. Still, I don't think I have much of a choice but to press on.
I seem to have reached--a waterfall, I think. The stream widened a great deal as I was walking along beside it, and then it began to roar. The water colors ended in a great smear of white that stretches on into a cloud of mist, neither below nor ahead. The scaly grass, of course, has ended as well, and horrible jagged shapes of blackish grey and mossy green extend on either side of the white-streak waterfall. They fade into the mist as well. If I were to leap, I wonder if I would fall... Would I just be suspended, the way the door through which I came is suspended? neither up nor down? If thte stream could make my hand vanish and reappear in such watery ways, surely this white, roaring mass would shred me to pieces, like Osiris--thousands of little pieces scattered to every corner of this place--with no corners... There's a lazy appeal to it, I suppose.
I decided, after giving it a great deal of thought, that jumping woul dnot be wise, and it might not even kill me. I did decide, however, to turn back and see if there were anything on the other side of the door, (assuming I didn't have to go through it to get to the other side). I turned around, and, to my complete and utter shock, everything was dark. the sky was poked through with more stars than I've ever seen. The horizon--that's what I've decided to call the end of what I can see--didn't glow with distant lights, but vanished completely in blackness.
I was so terrified that I couldn't more for a long time. I turned around to see if there was any light behind me, and suddenly, it was daylight again! Everything was as bright as high noon, which, only frightens and confuses me more.
It took me several turns and many more deep breaths to be able to face the darkness without panicking. Facing the way I had originally come, I realized I was engulfed in total blackness, with nothing visible but stars. Facing the way I was originally headed, I was in daylight again. I tried to walk back the way I had come--in the darkness, using the sound of the water as my guide. Twice, I slipped and fell in, and was nearly carried away by the current. When I crawled back out of the river for the last time and sat on the grass, I must have sat there for hourse--or even days. There was no way to tell, of course.
I've begun to notice that little bits of me are missing. I'm not in any pain, but I'm missing parts of me. Funny-shaped holes and faded places, undoubtedly from falling into the stream. I keep thinking about the waterfall. At least it's light that way. I could turn and face the darkness, and jump...

Collective sigh

Exercise #13




We hung out at the beach that summer. Lily, Arn Cad and me. It seemed then that never before had so many languid moist cloudless days been strung together for anyone’s enjoyment. We were kings. Lily was our queen. The sand was as clean and fresh as brown sugar. We were the first beings to set foot in this cove. The water was cool and green and clear like a forest at dusk. Mostly the boys took turns throwing Lily into the waves and each of us, like a collective sigh, fell in love with her.
It took all four of us to love her wholly. We each had our own piece of love, like a slice of Arn’s Aunt Jilly’s rhubarb pie. My wedge was tremulous and aching and painful to the touch. I loved in anguish at night in the bed I’d lain in since I was a boy. I sweated sorrow until my sheets were like gauze stretched across festering wounds. I wept in dreams of sand dunes blown smooth by late August winds that smelled of snow and early winter.
Lily loved each of us. This is what kept it going. A suspense story that we couldn’t put down until the end was revealed. Who would she choose? Quiet thoughtful stringy-legged Arn, our sinewy dingo of the sands. Always the first, in the mornings, into the surf, sprinting across the still-cool purple foot-sized troughs of sand, springing off the top of his toes from the last edge of wet sand, flinging himself carelessly, a pale tangle of arms and legs, into the ocean.
Me. I trembled sometimes, on my towel, watching her come up from a dive, her light brown hair slicked back like a seal. Pale skin, wide, round little-girl eyes. A thin careful creature of the sea.
I didn’t realize I was growing up that summer. Lengthening and broadening – my smooth skin a light golden hue that made me seem to glow. When Lily looked up at me, it was as though she was seeing someone else. I loved but I couldn’t catch up with myself fast enough, then, to keep her.

Cad was out leader. He had been since as long as any of us could remember. He believed in the good in all people and he had freckles and shiny blond bangs to match his earnest faith in humanity. We put our trust in him because with Cad there was no question of misstep.

Lily loved him first.

We had come up from the water – the tide was coming in – the waves curling on top of each other softly, the ocean shining like dark metal in the slanting late-afternoon light. The sand smelled of the sun it had soaked up all day and was now releasing. We lay on our towels shifting and pushing at the granules till they formed hollows and mounds that held our bodies as we dried. Cad reached out and pulled Lily to him. No words – Cad didn’t like words – first he was pulling on her long tanned arm and then his hand was firm under the base of her hair. I heard the sound of their lips, at first dry, then wet, working like muscles, pulling each other in until Lily made a small noise in the back of her throat.
Arn and I watched them, peeking through the private hot caves of our elbows, lying on our stomachs, arms folded at the tops of our towels, our faces pressed against our forearms. We didn’t look at each other. We didn’t have to. It was as if we had both known, somehow, that we would be lying here like this.
Lily’s back was to me. I watched the place where her bathing suit ended before the curve of her thigh began, a half-moon of pale buttocks that had pushed free of the prim yellow sea-shell print. Her skin here, covered by light blond hair.
Cad’s fingers were still at her neck. That was Cad. Patient. Sure. He didn’t need to be greedy. That was what made Cad our leader. All came to Cal in good time.
Arn and I had our seats. For the first time in my life, I felt I could be patient too.
They pulled apart and rolled onto their backs. Lily reached over and took Cad’s hand. Cad’s eyes were closed, Lily’s open, she was looking at the sky.
“My turn,” Arn said into his forearm and Lily laughed. I rolled over, too, looked at her face quickly then at the sky, as if there was something up there I needed to find.
Even in that glimpse I could see: She was smiling, glowing. She was ridiculously happy. She was in love with Cad. Obviously. We all were.
The hardest thing about being Cad was he didn’t have himself to look up to. He shouldered all of our hopes and dreams.

the exercise with 'we'

The shipment had arrived. The armored truck looked both conspicuous and ridiculous making its way through the bands of cacti, its guns loaded and manned. The shipment could be hijacked at any moment. We could not take any chances. Once the unlabeled vehicle passed the three security checkpoints, we waved it up the drive with broad smiles.

Dr. Belmondo entered the code to unlock the hatch. He was the only man--aside from the Chief of Staff--that knew the combination and thus, came with a high price. We could not afford to let him out of sight. Belmondo spent his days with a microchip embedded in his pelvis (the Government had deemed his arms too easy to detach) and his nights with two permanent bodyguards, one posted under his window and one on his living room couch. For a few nights, he would be able to enjoy the luxury of sleeping without bodyguards while at the complex. We had great respect for Belmondo and all confidence that our respect was earned. We had measures in place to ensure that this was the case. He would never desert us.




Belmondo entered the main reception area, and we greeted him with a Styrofoam cup of water, a cordial nod, and his briefing packet for the week. And suspicion. We have been told by them that suspicion is our greatest asset in this line of work. Everyone must be treated with absolute suspicion.

The steel crates were unloaded, and the process of decontamination was begun. Everything had to be decontaminated: the crates, the drivers, even the tire tread. There could be no traces of the outside world in the complex or vice versa. We sat down with Belmondo at a long conference table in the south wing for routine questioning.

"Well, how did the transporting go?" we ask.
"Very well, very well," Belmondo grins, "we only had to 'eliminate' two snakes and one lizard on the way."
"Good," we answer, not so charmed by Belmondo's ease with Government terminology, " we don't like for there to be a lot of elimination going on around here."
Belmondo, fiddles with his pencil, twirls it between his teeth, obviously takes the point.
After a pause, we ask, "When do you expect production to begin?"
"Not for a while," Belmondo leans back in the office chair, "maybe four months? This stuff takes a while to, you know, age to perfection. Think of it like cheese or wine."

Another joke fell flat. We were not interested in the refined processes of gourmands. We were not interested in food beyond the necessary sustenance it provided.
"This is nothing like cheese," we respond thoughtfully, tracing the contours of Belmondo's face with our eyes.
"Well," Belmondo swivels in the office chair, wipes his hands slowly and methodically on his government-issued trousers, and stands up, "a cheesemaker is a sort of scientist, isn't he?" He grins again as he moves slowly toward the door, "If you'll excuse me, I've had quite a day, what with transporting highly reactive substances for the government, I think I could use a little rest."
"Yes, of course," we watch him open the door, step into the hallway, "we will speak again soon."




Nights in the complex are difficult to adjust to at first. There are the routine tests and inspections being carried out at every hour. A small lull around 0200 provides about an hour and a half of uninterrupted sleep, but the activity picks up again toward the early morning hours. We all had a hard time at first, but as with any new place, you get used to it.

We are waiting for Belmondo when he hurries into the Central Corridor for the morning’s briefing. “I’m a bit rusty on these codes,” he says, and hold a crumpled piece of notebook paper above his head, “all except one, of course.” Belmondo takes his seat next to the Chief Lab Tech and stares at the screen, blinking.




“Welcome, comrades,” the automated voice begins “to day 764 in complex… Z… 3… D… A… 6…” We take this opportunity to look at Belmondo who has promptly and quietly fallen asleep, still upright in his chair with his hands folded on the metal table. The voice continues, “As such, today, we will have a special presentation from Doctor Hector Belmondo at 1000.” The automated voice spells out each syllable of the Doctor’s name with care.

Exercise 13

We get into the club successfully. There was much debate outside as to how to pass off those of us who aren’t 21 as 21. Some of us thought that to look 21 meant to look slutty while the rest of us thought it meant to look sophisticated. It’s hard to look either of those in jeans and Chucks. Most of us have little make-up on, another heated debate. We couldn’t collectively decide if lesbians wear less make-up to show they are above trying to attract somebody by covering their faces or if we as newly out homos should wear more war paint to assert our femininity in this viscous battleground, Rain, only of only three gay clubs in town. At least those of us who are already 21 only had one look to decide on.

The club was small; perhaps those who built it figured there aren’t that many of us. We split up. Those under 21 head for straight for the bar while the rest of us assess our surroundings. The dance floor is small, way too small for this type of club. We’re gays, we need to dance. The DJ pounds out the classics: Mariah Carey’s Fantasy, Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel, and the goddess of the gay male, aside from themselves, Cher. Before we can head to the porch, the crowd pushes us towards the left corner of the club. They are waiting. We, not completely sure of the traditions of this club or the rituals of our people, wait too.

The rest of our group joins us, drinks in hands.

“What are we waiting for?” Meredith asks.

“We don’t know,” we say.

“Is that a stripper pole?” Jill points out.

We look to where she’s pointing, and it is indeed a stripper pole surrounded by a cage.

The DJ comes on over the speakers. “Ladies, butches, and queens, welcome to Rain’s Sunday night amateur strip night! Think you got the balls? Think you got the moves? Think you got those Calvin Klein’s tight enough? First prize is 100 bucks!”

We look at each other, trying to hide the blood rushing to our cheeks. The first contestant gets up on the small stage and after sliding down the pole, he begins to clumsily take off his white t-shirt and jeans. There are scattered cheers from the crowd until he is only in his underwear.

“Well, if I ever needed proof I’m gay,” Jill says.

We laugh in agreement.

“I’m going up there,” Meredith says, downing the rest of her drink.

“You can’t go up there,” we tell her, half hopeful she’ll ignore us.

“If I win, drinks on me,” she shouts back as she walks up to give the DJ her name.

Justin Timberlake comes through the speakers and Meredith walks confidently to the pole.
We send out our catcalls and whistles, watching her slide out of her shirt as Justin claims to bring sexy back. The rest of the crowd joins us. We forget the 100 bucks, thinking only that we, too our up on that stripper pole, naked for everybody to see.

Perspective

We plan the party to coincide with the full moon, on the hope such a detail will lure our friend Jasmine and some of her woo-woo sidekicks. There are no quibbles as to whose house. Jason and his wife Leanne are the only ones who have their own place, a spacious two-bedroom house in the hills with a backyard hidden from neighbors, a deck, and a cedar hot tub under a weeping willow tree.
The first of us arrive early, around six to help Leanne in the kitchen and Jason at the bar-be-que. We light candles claiming to keep mosquitoes away, and hang Leanne’s string of tiny Japanese lanterns over the picnic tables at her request. We marinate meat. We break into the white wine, saving the red for dinner and afterwards. We stare at the hot tub, assuring ourselves that this time, we will stay late enough to take a dip. (A soak in the hot tub is never offered before 2 a.m.) We check our cell phones to see if any of our friends have cancelled or confirmed or gotten lost. The men among us set the phones to vibrate and stuff them in our pockets. The women turn the sound up, changing the ringtones to the most hip-sounding, most likely to receive kudos ringtones we can find.
We filter in, a light sweat clinging to our skin from driving in warm weather. Lacey Krous waltzes in with a man none of us have ever seen. He looks like he’s walked off the cover of Details, dark gelled hair, a loud collared shirt, dress pants, and penny loafers. Those of us far enough away not to be noticed exchange meaningful glances. Glances that all say something to the jist of “Lacey’s got a new boy toy, eh?” Lacey glows, partly due to the fact that she and Mr. Details shared a joint in the car before coming in, partly due to the fact that her moisturizer creates a sheen, and partly due to the fact that she has not yet been intimate with Mr. Details and is reveling in anticipation.
We pretend to have serious conversations as Leanne, Todd, Jack and Susan bustle in and out of the kitchen. Kids, careers, lovers, ailing parents, spirituality, philosophy. Are you happy though? Are you really happy? Is this what you really want to be doing with your life? We drink in the atmosphere, the aromas, the heightened (in some cases, faked), enthusiasm.
“How many are we expecting?”
“I think this is it,” Leanne says, glancing over the crowd. About 14 of us. No Jasmine. Yet. We all silently observe this fact, but assure ourselves she’ll turn up later.
We fork chunks of steak, grilled salmon and garlic chicken into our mouths, watching their juices slowly spread across our plates. We savor ripe melon, sip strong wine, bite into soft bread rolls, and try, but fail, to daintily eat corn on the cob. By the end of the meal, the warm afterglow of the summer evening has slipped into chill. We stuff our hands into our pockets, rub our arms, hunch up our shoulders, or dash back inside for a sweater or coat. Jasmine shows up as we begin to clear the outdoor picnic tables, dumping the remnants of wine bottles into each other’s glasses.
“Hello? Hellllllllllllo!” Jasmine calls from the doorway, eliciting smiles. We greet, we exclaim. We greedily drink in her pronouncements: “Mary, your aura is just overwhelming! You’re shining, like a star! Joe, you’re in love, I can tell. And is that Edie? I had the strangest dream about you last month. We were…” She’s even thinner than we remember, almost skeletal. She’s brought four friends, three in paint splattered clothes, one in a loose linen shirt and black yoga pants. Leanne grabs a stack of clean plates from the cupboard and carefully arranges leftovers for the late guests. “Are any of you vegetarian? Vegan?”
“So what have you been up to?” we ask Jasmine. We all live vicariously through her artsy, flamboyant, spur of the moment whims. Envy her for refusing to be tied to a steady job, just one lover, a firm living situation…
“Well, I’ve taken up painting. Actually, we’re all just coming from a class. Gale here,” she points at the lean woman in yoga pants, “is a nude model.”
We turn on music. It’s discovered that Mr. Details has a hefty stash of E, and if you allude to the existence of this stash he will give you a pill, and politely accept any cash you’re willing to offer for it. Nearly all of us make our way over to Lacey and her new beau and procure ourselves a little bliss. The music is changed to a salsa mix and Jasmine insists on teaching anyone who will indulge her, the basics of the dance. We stand in a line, laughing and stumbling over each other, trying to keep up with the beat. Time slows and speeds. People start trailing their fingers over things—skin, the back of the couch, clothes, their hair. The painters start eyeing Jason and Leanne’s living room critically.
“What a beautiful room.”
“The light from the chandelier and that lamp in the corner are making amazing shadows. See? Look at that, by the bookcase.”
“The set-up is quite nice too.”
“Get a figure on that table, and you’ve got a lovely backdrop.”
“We need to paint this.”
“Definitely.”
“Certainly.”
We’re all in a pretty good mood when Jasmine announces the painters want to hold an art class in the living room. Gale has volunteered to model. They’ve got extra canvases and at the very least, large sheets of white paper we can all draw on. Why the hell not?

(obviously, this scene is in progress – not done yet!)

The Golden Woodpecker

Isaac Smith
Craft Friction
#13
The Golden Woodpecker
We watch from afar, the lights, cracking, invisible. Our eyes closed and the heat from each blast pushing us back, just a bit. “It’s like surfing,” someone says, “or standing next to a freight train.” We’ve come from rural and urban ghettoes, from doublewides and mountain passes, from single mothers and marbled mansions, from mac and cheese and chicken teriyaki, from cakes and cookies and bare cupboards littered with mouse shit, from overbearing fathers to ghost papas and stepdads, from great vast expanses of silence and from the immense din of siblings and hungry dogs racing down dirty hallways. From everything piled into a garage sale: jeans frayed and weak in the crotch, books ear marked and unfinished, black graduation gowns folded in clear plastic, highchairs yellowed and cracked, cassette tapes with the white worded titles partially worn away.
Now we are in the war. “The shit” is what we like to call it, sometimes literally, sometimes sarcastically, and sometimes with great enthusiasm. “The shit! This is the shit!” We’ve had dreams, as children of being here, in this very place, with our baby cheeks pressed against the heat of battle. “It feels good doesn’t it? Like putting your face against the microwave while the potato pops and faintly sizzles.” But this is better, we all agree, silently to ourselves. Some of us get erections, in honor of the shit, the war, our prepubescent dreams of sweating in the jungle with death trying to dry hump us around every dip and turn. With erections we feel immortal and take each distant blast like a mini orgasm. We even hold hands with each other and laugh. We call each other gay and punch each other hard whenever the opportunity arises. Sometimes we even fall in love with each, muscled behind the softness of a glance and we cry with long letters home because we know nothing will be the same.
We point towards the explosions and say, “In a few hours we’ll be where those blasts are right now.” We feel ready like specialized rats, trained to maze through the distinct body memory procedures. Inside we might loose our shit but outside our body will surface and perform, like a refined dancer, spinning little shards of death. We all wear the same thing, called a battle dress uniform or b.d.u. for short. The same color- digicam, a series of squares with different shades of green and tan. Our clothes fit loosely around our arms and legs. We like the familiarity of knowing how we all feel with our b.d.u.’s on. The way they stick and cling to certain parts when the sun stands dead center and beats at our brains like a bloated golden woodpecker.
Sometimes we say weird things when we’ve been waiting a long time for orders. “Doesn’t the sun just look fuckable today?” “God I’d like to shoot one of those rat ass kids. Right in the head. Always begging for our water. What? Their country didn’t have water until we came? Fuck them and fuck their shit smelling country.” We joke a lot. It’s how we pass the time. We play with dead puppies, trap each other in the shitter, and take lots of pictures of corpses. Lots of pictures. They become our screensavers, our proud little psuedo-family photo albums. “This is maggot face Joe.” “This is headless bloated man.” “This is Crispy. Notice his big smile.” “Shit man he must had a good death.” “Yeah, maybe I should call him Crispy the Masturbating Clown.” We get letters from third graders in North Dakota who say, “Thank you for keeping America safe.” Usually they spell safe without the e and a few times they use a k instead of a c in America. We joke about sending them back a bunch of our corpse photos as a way of saying thank you. We all pretty much hate kids. American or otherwise. It’s because most of us are still kids ourselves. We misspell some of the same words as the third graders. The kids like to call us heroes in their letters but we don’t think about being heroes. Mostly we think about not getting shot in the dick. That’s a big fear among us all, getting shot in the dick would be the worse. Sometimes we have nightmares about getting shot in the dick. We wake up holding ourselves and whimpering about our dicks. “Is it missing?” We ask? “Shut up! You were just having a nightmare. You douche bag.”
We don’t give a fuck. We’ve come to kill the golden woodpecker and everything else. And at night when we are about to fall asleep we even admit, that we secretly fantasize about our own death. Death is righteous. “Death is the shit.” “Bam!” We point our fingers at each other and say, “Bam!” We pretend to be comfortable with death. We have words penciled under our breath for the moment when we expire (hopefully not from a shot in the dick). Simple words, like “fuck you death.” We can’t lose. And if we do, the flags go half staff and bullets will be wrapped in velvet boxes for our weeping mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, children, pets, cousins, hometowns, first kisses, coaches, all the third graders in South Dakota and lastly our weapons. The metal we so seriously cuddled and babied when the world seemed completely crazy like anything could happen, anything, absolutely anything.
We always want to leave but we never want to leave the company of each other. Even the guys we call, “Retards” and “Semen Shots.” We are those men and in the end we all look up at the sun, the golden woodpecker and think, “It’s looking pretty fuckable today. Wouldn’t a say?” “Yeah.” The answer is always the same.

Cream Sauce From Three People

“Damn it to hell!” He threw the fry pan into the sink. The burnt garlic hung bitterly in the air as he washed out the inside of the pan. The warm water sizzled as it hit the metal. He put the pan back on the stove, with three turns of olive oil to heat.
Again he pulled cloves from the head and smashed them free of their skin. Dicing them finely, he could feel slivers of garlic under his fingernails, the smell tart and sharp in his nose. The garlic sizzled when it hit the pan, and this time he stayed by the stoves edge. The small bits of white turned a pale yellow in the olive oil and browned as he stirred them gently. The sharp sent in his nose becoming smoother and sweeter. He threw in the onions, sprinkled on the salt and lowered the heat. His eyes watered as the onion hung burning in the air.

The fry pan soaked up the olive oil wishing for more. Always wanting more fat and more salt. The well-worn handle shone from the traces of oil the cook had on his hands and slid easily against the cooks skin.

She came into the kitchen and smiled at his back. He scratched his head as he looked down. She fought the urge sneak up behind him and slip a limp strand of onion from the pan. Closing her eyes she imagined the translucent sweet and salty bite slid down her mouth. When she opened them he still stood with his back to her. “Get out,” he said and there beside the cutting board on a saucer was a small pile of sautéed onions.
She stepped forward and took the plate. It scratched against the marble counter as she watched his back twitch. “I said…”
“Yeah yeah, I’m going.”

He held onto the fry pan until she was gone, with his free hand hanging loosely at his side, then he sliced a thick slab of butter from the stick on the counter. The knife grated against the edge of pan as he slid it in. The light yellow melted into the onions and the garlic in a shinny base, gleaming up at him.

Ready ready ready, ready for more. “Pancetta now please,” it screamed. “Give it to me, give it to me,” and then it sizzled, “yeaaaahhhh,” as the cubed meat hit it. The black bottom let the onions meld with the pancetta as it browned. The sweet scent of the onions became nutty with fat.

He let the pancetta brown, stirring it back and forth to keep it from burning. He watched as the small pieces became smaller, curling in on themselves. He took deep breaths and rolled his neck back and forth, letting himself become fully engulfed by smell. With his eyes closed, he let the browning start to pop.

She looked longingly at the empty saucer on the coffee table. With her feat tucked underneath her she bit her upper lip. The smell of pancetta browning hit her. Richer, nuttier then bacon. She flipped on the TV as a loud grumble erupted. She ran her hand over her stomach and flipped mindlessly. Sports center, Mariner’s vs. A’s. The M’s were down 7. Law and Order. Apparently there was another murder. There was always another murder. Another grumble and she turned up the volume. Friends, Chandler laughing at his own most recent joke. Pearl earrings only $19.99. Who would buy pearls on an infomercial anyways?

It was time and the pan settled into the lower heat. It accepted willingly the thick cream as it streamed into it. The cream splashed slightly up the sides before sliding down into the base of the pan, small trails of it remained running down the rim. The simmering cream bubbled lightly and the pan held it with care.

He stirred the liquid as it reduced. The onions and pancetta smell dissipating under the heavy cream. Dipping his little pinky into the thickening liquid he lifted his finger to his tongue. Pepper. More pepper.

She landed on Sponge Bob. She wondered what a Crabby Patty tasted like. Would it be too soggy to eat because it was underwater?

Little pinky in the cream again. Taste. Lots more pepper. Reduce.

As cream swirled around the pan it came to a stop and simmered again. The pan needed more salt. It needed it and wanted it. It bubbled for it.

Middle finger. Taste. Definitely salt. Reduce.

The hidden black bottom settled down, and the thick cream sat warming.

It was ready. He knew it was ready and he let it sit a second longer, enjoying the sight of the reduced liquid. Imagining the cream sauce coating his mouth. Then he tipped in the cup of defrosted peas and stirred them into the cream.

Those Crabby Pattys were starting to look awfully good.

He spooned the ravioli from the boiling water into saucepan almost as an after thought. “It’s ready!” he called. He stirred the carb vessel throughout the cream and spooned it into deep pasta bowls.

Next post due April 21

Dear class,

Just a reminder that your next posts are due Tuesday, April 21, before class. You can post a brand new exercise or expand one you've already posted, so long as you create 3-5 pages of new material.

I've very much enjoyed the posts so far; keep up the excellent work.

Exercise #12 "The Whore Who Spat"

WARNING:
Very lowbrow-caution-do not judge the writer-not good to view if you are faint of heart

Sick Bird, he said...
Some guy is lying in the street with a nubile tart on his dick. Licking that long wet rod, pumpin' it in her hand and playing merry go round with her tongue. Before he gets to cum out a wad, his face turns red, blue, purple, as a boulder of a truck goes over his legs and cuts both appendages off...until there are two bloody indistinguishable pulps. His pulps pump blood just as his bladder lets go, and the cum valve shuts off in order for the spew of hot steamy bloody piss comes shooting out, and immmediately after-ladies and gentlemen-his bowels lose all control, so that two steamy pieces of shit shaped like diamonds poke their way out of his ass like a new born's crowning head. Following these events, he loses all control because he is gurgling and foaming at the mouth from the pain (the tart is still holding onto his penis whilst all the pain and wrought agony upon his face, sensations a man should never be conscious enough to feel. God gave him no mercy and left him conscious until the tart whacked him a good one over the head as he began to beat on his own chest and making a futile effort to knock his own head into the ground-a fine paste on this fine day. Before, and within the seconds and minutes of agonizing eternity, he gave himself two seconds to finish off (much like a defiant bolter of which he was), he shot two slews of sticky white cum, unfettered by gory blood, which exhaled itself onto the glittery asphalt road. The tart called an ambulance, but it was too late for former VP Dick Cheney.

Controlled revision:

Sick Bird, he said.
Some guy is lying in the street with a nubile tart on his person. She went the rounds of his body, using her tongue to measure distance between each body part. Before he gets to finish, his face turns red, blue, purple, as a boulder of a truck goes right over his legs and severs both appendages off…until there is nothing but two bloody gaps where his legs used to be. His bladder lets go, and he relieves himself-sweet agony giving way to searing pain. Immediately after, ladies and gentlemen, his bowels lose all control, and he is forced to relieve himself in front of company. Following these events, he loses all control because he is foaming at the mouth from pain (the tart’s body bows over his in an attempt to distract him from what is happening to his physical being and gave him a good punch in the head to deter him from beating on his own chest in a futile effort to knock himself unconscious, for no man, good or evil, should be granted no mercy in such a way). Before, and within the seconds and minutes of agonizing eternity, he gave himself two seconds to finish off (much like a defiant bolter of which he was) he released the boiling tension in masturbatory display onto the glittery asphalt road. The tart called an ambulance, but I was too late for former VP Dick Cheney.

Counterpoint Characters

*This is a scene that I was already toying with writing for my novel and when we talked about Counterpoint Characters, I realized what an opportunity it might be. Hopefully it works. And hopefully it makes sense even though it comes about 200 pages into the novel. Sorry it's so long and takes awhile to get into.*

It was a good farm before all this, that much is plain. But now there ain’t a thing of farm about it except the house with its sleeping porch and the barn with its weathered grey plank fences chewed into crescent moons. All around, spilling out of the house and the open barn doors are ragged men, sprawling, filling any shade, lying under tents put up quick to make more. The boys outside, they ain’t the worst ones but they don’t look none too good, they got wounds needing tending and from the looks of it some of them need letters written and prayers said. I can’t help myself. I am looking at their faces, looking for a face I know I ain’t ever seeing on earth again and then I catch myself or there ain’t a hope for me doing a thing more in this day.
Will he is already up the steps to the house and seeing him walking in I think on how I ain’t been inside a proper house since I left home. Course, soon as I make my way up those steps and inside that door I see how even this don’t count as a proper house, not when the rooms and all the furniture are being used for boys and even the hall floor is already stained with things that ain’t ever scrubbing out. The moaning inside, it is worse than the noise of the boys outside. In here, in the darkened house, it is close and hot and there is crying and from somewhere at the back there is a sound worse than crying and shrieking put together. Will, he is moving down the long hall, moving closer to those sounds I don’t want to hear ever again, poking his head inside the rooms opening out from it. I ain’t looking inside, there ain’t a thing I want to see inside one of these rooms, this ain’t the right place for me but Will is here, and he is the only thing I got to follow.
The last room, right where I’d be putting a sitting room if I were thinking on making a fancy kind of house, that’s the room Will turns into. I walk to the doorway and stand myself inside it, looking in. It ain’t the surgeon’s room, it ain’t where the screaming is coming from, I can tell now that is across the hall at my back. This room, it ain’t got much furniture left in it, just walls and two tall windows open and looking out over fields, and some chairs pushed to the corners. The boys are lying on the floor in rows, one row along each side of the narrow room, and one row down the middle, putting me in mind of the Armory Hospital. Most all of these boys here are missing something, legs or arms or hands or feet, or else those parts are shattered so bad it don’t take much looking to know soon they’ll be missing too. There is whimpering and moaning and praying too, but I try to put it out of my mind so it don’t call up things I don’t want to think on.
Will, he has walked halfway down the long side of the room and he is talking to a woman who is kneeling to run a hand across one of the boy’s forehead and she is the first woman I seen being womanly and wearing skirts anywhere near the battle and it makes me stop in my tracks to see a woman like that here. A buzzing runs through my head and shivers down my back and I think she is Jennie Chalmers and I almost hope for it to be her.
That thought don’t but last a moment and then I am seeing how this woman ain’t a thing like Jennie. She might be my Mama’s age, and she is short, even when she straightens up and moves to the next patient. I see her dark hair pulled back in coils at the back of her head, and I am thinking my hair used to be like that, I wore it like that on my wedding day, and then I am walking quick down that row of awful bandages and dirty wounds, walking right to Will and that woman. He is talking to her only I don’t hear the words I just march myself to Will’s side and I look at her wide face and round cheeks and her dark-circled eyes and then I am just talking right over Will.
You got to give me something, I say. I got to have a something to do.
She looks at me straight on, an eyebrow raising letting me know this lady if she ain’t ever been a teacher then she missed a calling.
I’m working alone, she says, and she stoops over the next soldier. The surgeons are kept in constant work.
I ain’t got to work with no one, I say. Just that if you got things you know need doing, I got the need to be doing them.
There’s a room full of needs here, she says. And the barnyard out there. She is checking the soldier’s bandage and when he groans at her touch she presses the back of her hand to his forehead.
We only got our canteens, I say.
We want to be helping, Will says. Better than what else we got to do.
She looks at us again and lets out a short breath through her nose, like a sheep before it charges. You, she says, pointing at Will. You take both canteens and give those boys in the yard water. They must be thirsty and there hasn’t been a spare moment for me to see to them. And you, you stay here. These boys need bandage changes and water. There’s water there, she points to a sidetable, pushed against the wall by the doorway. I’ll leave my supplies, she adds, pointing at a basket of bandages and lint. Then she lifts her skirts and steps past us, saying, From the sounds of it, the surgeon must be needing my aid.
You need anything, you come get me, Will says.
I can do this, I say and I take my canteen and give it to him. I got to be doing something.

***

Across the soldier’s shallowly rising chest, the woman looks at me hard. The man, he is young, a bandage wound around his head.
He hasn’t woken since being found, she says. Every time I look on him, he is even more wan than before.
I must look at her blank because she says, He’s getting pale, and then she presses her hands together and bows her head, her lips barely moving and the words coming in a whisper. So sudden I don’t even feel it coming, there are tears spilling out of my eyes and I bow my head to hide it but all I am doing is thinking how I ain’t even thought to say these words and the tears come fast.
She finishes saying the last rites and it is silent so long I think she has moved to another patient, but when I look up, she is looking at me, like she is finding something in me. I keep looking back at her. I don’t like the looking, so I say,
You got kin fighting here?
Every man fighting here is my brother, she says.
I see she’s got a way of making me go silent. You been a teacher? I ask.
A small smile curves her lips and she says, Is it that plain?
You got that way about you, I say.
I suppose we all get marked by our past, she says and then she is looking at me hard again. I take my eyes away, shuffle to the next patient and crouch back down, checking his bandage, trying to smile, offering water. We make rounds like that, checking the boys lying in each room of this house, each room with its furniture pushed along the walls, making room. All the tables been dragged to the room the surgeon is using, but I ain’t let to see that room.
Sometimes I go through all the rooms never seeing her, and I know she is in with the surgeon doing things I can’t even begin to think on. Sometimes Will comes inside, his eyes searching for me like he ain’t believing I am still in here, and then soon as he sees I am, slipping back out. Or he comes looking for supplies, which the woman doles out from chests she’s got by the main door, finally leaving them open for either one of us to dip into as we need.
It is almost dusk now and the boys are twisting and curling on their thin beds of blankets, like coming lonely dark is already making the hurt greater.
When I come across her again, I ask, You ain’t got kin here, how you get the Army to let you come?
I don’t take no for an answer, she says. Or they finally had enough need of aid, they’d take even mine, she smiles, but it ain’t a joke. Maybe I shamed them enough. Or they saw I could do what I said.
You got a name, I ask.
Clara, she says. Clara Barton. And you?
Ross, I say. Ross Stone.
You aren’t fooling everyone, you know, she says.
I ain’t sure what she’s meaning and my hands just go still over the soldier whose arm I’m binding. I wait to feel my heart jumping, but it don’t and I see I ain’t nervous at all if she sees what I am so I just up and say, I don’t got to fool nobody no more. I don’t got to be staying here now, but I ain’t got a thing else to do.
And soldiering is the thing you want to do? she asks. Is it your best service to offer?
I ain’t ever been so free as I been here. There ain’t a person I got to ask now, waiting for a no to turn to a yes, I say and it is the truth. And then I see how there ain’t a place else for me to go but with this army and there ain’t a name I can be but Ross Stone.

Bush Meat

I love chompin' on some bush meat. Whether it is gorilla brains, giraffe tail, monkey paw, what have you. But by far, the delicacy of all bush meat is the scrotum of Koala. I know you are probably thinking, at this point, "No." but that is merely because you have never felt the salty, stringy gristle bursting as you masticate. Heaven.
Now, if you are going for texture and want something a bit more suitable to top a pizza or put inside a sandwich, say a panini, with a garnishing of pesto aioli, maybe, then try the gorilla brains. Giraffe's tail is great for a stew; use carrots and celery, diced, combine in a small mixing bowl. Monkey paw, I don't have any suggestions for. I find it too gamey. But I know a guy with a confit recipe he swears by, so remind me later if you are interested.
Koala scrotum is different. Special. And I frequently eat it very simply, because of its natural taste, perhaps boiled with a side of edamames.
One thing you don't want to do with bush meat, even for a second, is think about where it came from. That is what people say. Affection for the animals and what not... And, I must confess, I have had my own dreary moments of deep guilt, myself, as a result of my passion for bush meat. But I think that everytime this seems to be happening to you, it is a result of picturing these animals as ideal creatures, frolicking majestically across an open plain, singing Disney songs, and advertising toilet tissue. I suggest that in order to get past such irrational sentimentality, you instead picture these creatures trying to eat their own feces, or attacking their own child, or sodomizing a girl scout. Such sentimentality is not good for a person.

Wisconsin by Toby Wendtland

While my grandfather lay krausening in his mother’s belly, she knew nothing of the dangers of alcohol and kept herself three sheets to the wind during the final five months of the pregnancy and the fact that my grandfather demanded the bottle over his mother’s tit was attested to by the drunken afterbirth that stumbled out behind him into the midwife’s arms and leered at her before throwing up on her smock. But I’m getting ahead of myself and a story should be told in the proper order. When the Lord God looked down on his creation and saw how wicked they had become, He unstitched the unseen sutures that held up the water canopy above the earth and unsluiced the Deluge that would cover the world for forty days and nights, irrevocably changing the topography and climate of the earth for in the days of Peleg the continent of the earth was divided into many and all borders were changed, the Flood receded and Noah set down on Ararat. Meanwhile, it has been told that the glaciers came and ground up the new continents, shaping them as we know them to be today, but this is not true. For though ice certainly formed as the Flood waters receded, they did little but to cool the lands for a brief time and quickly were gone and dissolved into clouds. The tumult and upheaval of the Flood itself reshaped a great many things and nowhere was this destruction more terrible than in the so called glaciated regions of the world where the old was scraped away and the earth made new once again. But whereas much of northern America was resettled, one area remained untouched; the driftless area. Located in southwest Wisconsin, the driftless area is the last remainder of the Paleozoic Plateau, a holdover from the Pleistocene epoch where once the mammoth and the dinosaur roamed in the tropical paradise that is now called Wisconsin. For the rivers that flowed there and flow there now, flowed in the time of Adam, spilling their banks during God’s righteous wrath and returning to their proper size when the Lord’s hot head had cooled, leaving behind a small reminder of what Eden surely must have looked like. And here is where my story now returns to my grandfather, in the year 1913, the year of his birth. My grandfather, Erwin Arthur Wendtland, was born in La Forge, Wisconsin, on the banks of the Mississippi River, the unwitting witness to the great riverboat fire of the Julia Swain.
La Forge, long the home to the Sauk tribe until they were driven into the western frontier, was first settled by the lumber barons who swept the forests clear off the lands with the help of Paul Bunyon’s axe and the sweat of Babe’s hocks. When the lumber barons had run down to but a few trees, these they felled themselves and built grandiose houses in the center of town, retiring into a quiet life of politics and scandal. Like metal filings to the magnet, farmers were drawn into La Forge for its ample open spaces, and thanks to Babe, fertile soil. My grandfather was born on such a farm. The farm was located at the base of Grandad’s Bluff and had been settled by my great grandfather Carl Fred A. Wendtland who had immigrated to these lands from Prussia in order to escape religious persecution, but seeing as the Lutheran Church was just as strict in Wisconsin about the evils of alcohol as it had been in Prussia, in this way my great grandfather never really escaped persecution. My great grandfather arrived in New York, stumbling from the passenger ship and swearing the local officials up and down in German. When he sobered up he found himself on a westbound train, sharing a boxcar with a group of Holsteins and two Guernsey’s who would have nothing to do with the rest of the cattle and used my grandfather as a kind of barrier between the two classes. In payment my great grandfather drank from their swollen teats.
When the train pulled into station in Milwaukee, the railroad officials found my great grandfather spitting buttermilk over the side of the railcar while he masticated butter to be stored up in his cheeks for what he expected would be a lean winter. The railway officials expelled him from the railcar and my great grandfather cashed in his winter stores early at the local grocery for a pint of their cheapest. It was at this moment that he met my great grandmother, a buxomy young lass of sixteen who wore two girdles sewn together to reign her in to modest proportions and was having trouble carrying her groceries to her horse drawn carriage. The omnipresent opportunist that my great grandfather was, he imposed himself upon her to help with the groceries. My grandfather was conceived not an half hour later, before even the double girdle had been undone, for you see, we Wendtlands are famous for fast beginnings and unfulfilled endeavors. So it was for my great grandfather’s farm, for word had reached him of cheap land out west by the Mississippi and in two weeks they were married and Laura Wendt took on a husband and lengthened her last name by forty acres.

A Little Coaching Encouragement

“Again,” Saki shouted from under her visor.
I picked up my body from the ground, leaving a sweaty imprint behind me.
“You’re gonna go till you get a stop,” she rocked back and forth on her heals as she squatted low.
My labored breath came in sharp cuts to my side as I walked back to the free throw line. I watched the ball release from the coach’s hand over my head to the front of the waiting line. I ran towards Maija and broke down into a stutter step stance as she caught the ball. She pump-faked. I jumped. She took off and scored.
Saki leapt into the air and tore her visor off her head in one swift movement. “You call that defense.” Her round face grew cherry red like she was drunk and the slits of her eyes appeared as though they were closed. “You think you can beat Santa Clara like that,” she screamed, spit coming from her mouth as she pounded her feat towards me. “Hu?” Her chest bumped into my stomach, as she stared up at me. “YOU,” one finger pound to the sternum, “THINK,” two finger pounds to the sternum, “YOUCANPLAYDEFENSELIKE,” and she turned to where the line of girls stood with their lips pinched together, “THAT?” As she swung back to meet my gaze, a fresh layer of spit splattered my face.
Don’t laugh, just don’t laugh, I kept telling myself. I could see the bumps of hair from her ponytail, like black mountains across her head.
She lowered her voice then and grabbed my practice jersey in her fist. “If you,” she cooked her head, “do not,” she released my jersey, “sit like this, then.” This is where she smiled and this is where I told myself not to cry. “Then,” she said again, “you will walk like this,” her size 5 feet marched with a high knee exaggeration toward our imaginary bench. She turned around and looked at me, “and sit like this.” She pretended to sit in an imaginary chair, which she quickly sprung up from and sprinted back to where I stood. Apparently, she hadn’t made it clear the first time. She tapped me again, lighter this time, “if you do not sit like this,” now her mock defensive stance included wide flung arms, “then you will walk like this.” She didn’t walk though, she ran back to her imaginary bench. It seemed odd to me that she would say walk and then run. “And sit like this,” she said again. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes Saki,” I said.
“Do you all understand this?”
One of the assistant coaches coughed. “Yes,” the girls mumbled, a few of them turning away, raising their hands to their mouths.