NASCAR (Pennsylvania 500  at POCONO, July, 1998)

To:   Governor Tom  Ridge of Pennsylvania, giving  a guest politician's dull monotone delivery of the command, "Gentlemen, — start — your  -  engines," at the start ofthe Pennsylvania 500  at Pocono  –

From:   the young  freckle-shouldered man on my right, wearing an old black Darrell  Waltrip tank top, holding his second  half-quart of Bud –

"He just doesn't fucking get it, does he."

It's a gathering of Americans from New York,

Boston, Rochester and

the South,

an uncountable crowd

of over one hundred  thousand, come to celebrate

the thrill of freedom we feel in working, saving up

for a car,

settling into the seat and sensing the weight of driving  a steady 70, tank after tank of gas, across the country

on the Eisenhower

Interstate System.

We come in a brotherhood and sisterhood

of things we know how to use

every  day –

and we flip the finger to sissy

computer-enhanced

thrills

and to those who

just don't understand the tradition

of outrunning the law.

We come to celebrate our country's ways — R and D in a smudged spiral notebook,

Terry  and Bobby's proud mother

signing her autograph in the pits,

and men

great enough

to thank the Lord for winning

a race and then dance destruction

into the roof

their car.

NASCAR racing

is the common  poetry of hardworking America's

industrial and corporate roar, that lets

each of us live the tingling thrill of being one

in a river of many, swirling around together with deafening power.

I have led a long, charmed life – parents who gave me freedom and a love for wide open spaces, a wonderful job where they let me do what I wanted as long as I did it well, good grown-up kids I keep learning from, a fine wife and a few good friends who've helped me become me through many sad and happy times.

Six weeks after the funeral, the preacher watched his wife pull on a black dress to wear to church. He said, “I’ve missed you.”

His wife turned away from him. In silence, she pulled the hem of the dress from around her waist down to her knees. He wanted to shake her and scream snap out of it. He was sick and tired of coming home to find his wife sleeping, curled up like a giant fetus, huddled with her grief in their darkened bedroom. He’d hammered her for weeks to shake off the depression and step back into her role as the preacher’s wife. His dreams would never materialize if she didn’t put the past in the past and stand by him.

Since the funeral—since burying their son in the pale blue outfit she’d bought for his fourth birthday—she had pulled the leftover pieces of her heart into herself. A blanket of silence darkened their home, suffocating her with sorrow, extinguishing the light in her eyes. Today, though, the preacher felt the deep, unmistakable pull of his faith; he felt a rush of excitement, a thrill, a miracle in the making. After a vivid dream he’d had several nights in a row of making love to his wife on the church altar, he had prepared a sermon especially for this day. It was time to reclaim his wife and move into the future.

The preacher’s wife struggled with the back zipper. She’d lost weight. Still, she was a lovely woman with brown eyes and dark hair that fell in soft curls to her shoulders. The preacher reached for the zipper, but his wife whispered, “No.” She took a few steps back.

He knew he’d been hard on her in recent days, but it had been for her benefit. She’d wallowed in pity too long. They’d delayed ordering a headstone for the small grave in the cemetery behind the church because she said she needed time. Time! She’d had more than enough time to mourn and pick herself back up. It had been six weeks. He didn’t understand his wife’s prolonged grief; their son was dead and buried, and nothing could bring him back. It was time to put a headstone on the grave and let go of the past.

The preacher pulled a paisley tie around his neck, and said, “It won’t be easy for you today. Eli started attending services as soon as he was released from the hospital.”

He waited for her response. She gave none.

He knotted the tie. “Every Sunday he sits on the third pew from the altar, on the right side of the sanctuary. I really don’t know how in the world Sister Jody can play the piano with that freak sitting so close to her, polluting the place like he does. He stinks. It’s distracting.”

He waited again for a reaction from his wife; it did not come.

The preacher adjusted his tie, inspected it in the mirror, and said, “Eli’s face hangs paralyzed on one side, and when he speaks, he slurs his words like a sorry drunkard.”

He searched her reflection for a response etched in her face, but found it empty. Brown eyes remained sunken and expressionless, buried inside the hollow grave of her face.

He slicked back his thick, dark hair and sprayed it stiff. “He sits there every Sunday unashamed of his scarred face. Looks like the doctor was drunk when he stitched the pieces back together.” He turned this way and that, admiring his physique in the mirror. “He’s a constant reminder that our boy didn’t survive. Eli is nothing but a freak and he’s turned my services into a freak show.”

He’d expected a reply of some sort: an acknowledgment—a verbal agreement from his wife that, yes, it must be painful for him to preach with Eli present. Instead, she refused to even face him. His words disappeared as soon as they left his mouth, evaporated before reaching her ears.

She pulled up her long, auburn hair, pinning it in a neat bun on her head, leaving wisps around her sad, comatose face. She picked up her purse and said, “Then let’s go if you’re ready.”

He drove past thirsty fields of tobacco with wilted leaves browning on the stalks. For days, clouds had moved through, threatening rain, yet never delivering more than a few sprinkles. The preacher tried to draw her into a conversation, but he soon tired of his wife’s dead responses and drove on in silence, a cemetery of unspoken words spread between them.

His mind wandered back to Eli. The local media had reported that he’d risked his life to save the boy. From his hospital bed, Eli had told the Sheriff how he’d heard the boy’s cries while he was picking up aluminum cans on Granger Road; how he’d followed the screams to the deserted junkyard; how he’d tried to pull the Rottweiler, her tits swollen with milk, her newborn pups nearby, off the little boy.

In another attempt at conversation, the preacher cautioned his wife that every Sunday Eli would limp his way down the aisle to a seat near the front of the church, his vulgar, scarred face visible and frightening to the children. He said, “The freak scares the kids.”

The preacher’s wife snapped her head around, her pained eyes slicing into her husband’s face. She asked, “Who’s complained about Eli frightening the children?”

He described vicious red scars that distorted Eli’s face, pulling the flesh, mangling it into a mask, and explained to her the repulsive, raw scars had to spook the children even if nobody had complained.

His wife sighed, turned to the window, touching the glass with a solitary finger. She said, “Just as I thought. Nobody has complained. You imagine things. And I bet you’re the only one who calls Eli a freak.”

The preacher’s face burned feverishly, his jaw locked in anger, coffee-stained teeth grinding in his mouth. His hands gripped the steering wheel, painting his knuckles white. How dare his wife reproach him! She’d accused him of imagining things, yet she’d been the unstable one—swallowing sleeping pills during the day, crying, holding their son’s teddy bear. His wife had no place defending the freak. Eli hadn’t saved anybody except maybe his own self. Before long, his son would be nothing but a faded memory while Eli would live out the rest of his life as a hero. Because of the freak, the town would never stop talking about the death of his son. He choked the steering wheel with such force that his knuckles popped.

From his king-sized chair in front of the choir, the preacher looked out into the congregation, examining his wife’s face as Eli shuffled in, his raw, jagged scars magnified and dazzling under the overhead lights. Her face softened into a one-sided grin as she turned to the freak. The preacher hadn’t experienced that kind of tenderness from his wife since their boy died. He gripped the arms of the chair and watched as his wife motioned for Eli to sit with her. A slow burning stain moved up the preacher’s neck, covering his face. His heart hammered out an angry drumbeat.

She reached over and squeezed Eli’s scarred hand with her small, soft one, continuing to hold it in her tender grip as the choir rose to sing. How dare that idiot sit next to his wife—hold her hand—his scars exposed to the church like the scars on the crucified Christ. It was blasphemy.

As the singing ended, the preacher strutted to the pulpit, confident that a halo of fire burned over his head, ready to offer the sermon that would change his wife and bring her running back to him. She’d know after this sermon that he was on fire, anointed, and the future was theirs to grab.

He placed his bible on the podium and said, “Open your bibles and turn to John, Chapter 11.” He cleared his throat. "Verse 39.” He read: "Jesus saith unto her, take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of his that was dead, saith unto him, Lord by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days."

The preacher saw his wife stiffen and rear up her jaw. He’d expected encouraging eyes; instead, she stared motionless, her mouth tight, at the three crosses hanging on the wall in the choir loft. He reminded himself that she must feel trapped sitting so close to the freak. He’d tried to warn her this morning, but she’d sulked and accused him of imagining things. Well she could suffer through the service. She’d chosen to sit with the freak and she would have to deal with the emotional consequences of her decision.

He ripped into the sermon, imagining himself as a televangelist with the cameras rolling. “Lazarus had been dead for four days, but Jesus was about to restore his life.”

The preacher slammed the Bible shut and tossed it onto the podium. He loosened his tie and said, “With enough faith, nothing is impossible. Nothing is too big for God.” His voice rose, booming, echoing off the ceiling beams. "He is lord of all. Death cannot stand in his way. 1Just imagine the stench that must have filled the air when the stone was moved. The smell of rancid meat.”

Increasing the volume of his voice, he instructed the congregation, “Inhale. Inhale right now and imagine the odor of decomposition rising from Lazarus’ corpse."

The pastor sucked oxygen into his lungs, demonstrating to his congregation that he expected them to follow his instructions. "Inhale again."

With the exception of his wife, every member of his congregation inhaled at his command, vacuuming up all sound from the small church. Even Eli drew in clumsily through his misshaped mouth and nostrils.

The preacher thundered on. "His flesh had been decaying for four long days. By now, Lazarus' heart was rotting. The kidneys hadn’t worked for days.”

Sweat dripped down the preacher’s face and dropped from his chin. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Maybe the flesh had already begun to fall from the bone. Imagine it. Imagine what it was like inside that tomb when the stone was rolled back. It wasn’t a pretty scene. Close your eyes—picture it—smell it."

The preacher looked at Eli who was sitting trance-like beside his wife, his eyes half-closed as though he were hypnotized. His wife’s chalky face stared at the crosses in the choir, her colorless lips quivering. Maybe next time she’d listen to him.

He yelled, his words wet with spit, "Picture the scene. Lazarus is wrapped in the cloth of the dead. He's been in the heat for four hot days and the tomb reeks of a pungent odor."

He paused, wiped the sweat from his face, and demanded, "Inhale." And his congregation—except for his wife—inhaled again. A rushing intake filled the church.

The preacher rushed over to the podium. He picked up the Bible, ran his finger down a page, and said, “Verses 43 and 44.”

He cleared his foamy throat and began reading. “And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus sayeth unto them, Loose him and let him go.”

He slammed the Bible shut and yelled, “The lungs hadn't breathed for 96 hours. But hallelujah—praise the Lord—his lungs breathed again at the command of the son of God.”

The preacher unbuttoned the coat to his three-piece suit, pulled it off, and flung it onto the first pew. He parked his hands on his hips and glared at his congregation before calling out, "Not even death can stop Jesus. No miracle is too big for him. With the faith of a grain of mustard seed we can raise the dead. At his command, the soil will fly up and the caskets will break open. The dead will sit up in their burial clothes and climb out of their coffins, out from the cold, dark earth into the light of a new day. Nothing—and I mean nothing— is impossible with God."

In a breathless, panting voice, he cried out, "Can I hear somebody say amen?" Spittle oozed from the corner of his mouth.

His flock cheered, "Amen."

Eli crossed his legs. Uncrossed them. Released the preacher’s wife’s hand. Sat forward. Gripped the pew in front of him. As the preacher continued, Eli looked up at the ceiling and nodded. He rose from his seat and pattered down the aisle and out the double doors.

As the door closed behind Eli, the preacher leaped onto the altar, glared with burning, fevered eyes at the congregation of seventy-five men, women, and children, and shouted, "Is that as good as you can do? Now let me hear you shout amen!”

His flock cheered louder than ever, “Amen!"

The preacher’s spirit soared; he snorted like a devil blowing out smoke. He felt the fire burning both inside him and over his head. In a craze, he felt it lifting him, lifting him higher and higher to greater things. He was no longer of the world.

With renewed energy, he preached in a hoarse, cracked voice about the power of God and the resurrection of Lazarus. He sprinted down the aisle, up and down, up and down. Twice he ran the length of the church, yelling his sermon to a congregation hungry for miracles. With fiery eyes, he searched the faces of his flock. The preacher took several long, quick, deliberate steps toward a woman near the front of the church. Her graying hair hung like Spanish moss down the trunk of her back. He placed one hand on the woman's forehead and pushed her head back. Her frantic gaze scratched the ceiling. He called out, "Receive thy blessing."

A slow tremble took hold of the woman’s hands and arms, slithering over her body, rushing through her. She cried out in unknown tongues, a delirious language of the Holy Ghost. Tears streamed down her face and dripped from her smiling lips.

The preacher seared with wild madness, rushing from one member to another, laying anointed hands on their heads, igniting their souls as they spit out the miracle of unknown tongues.

Satisfied, after pulling sobbing prayers, the language of unknown tongues, and loud cries of praise from his members, the preacher strutted back to the pulpit. He wiped sweat from his face and spit from his mouth, whispering, “Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus.”

As he brought the service to a close, the pianist rose and walked to the front. As she played, Just As I Am, the door opened and Eli stumbled in, his pants and shoes covered with red clay. In his arms, wrapped in his dark coat, he cradled a package. He limped down the aisle, dragging his injured leg, leaving a trail of fresh dirt on the red carpet. The preacher watched the freak gimp past his wife, past the seat on the right where he sat every Sunday, all the way to the pulpit. He didn’t stop until he was at the altar, a couple feet from where the pastor stood.

Eli looked up into the preacher’s face and smiled, lifting his facial scars upward, his eyes shimmering with faith. With his right hand, he pulled back the coat, revealing the blue bundle cradled in the crook of his left arm.

The preacher froze, his eyes fixing on the blue outfit. As he recognized the birthday suit, a roaring noise detonated inside him. He shook his head, as though trying to shake off a snake that had landed on him. A blast reverberated in his brain and screamed like a runaway death train plowing through his ears. The preacher’s face burst into a brilliant, shocking shade of purple. He fought to breathe, his fingers clawing at his neck, yanking at his chest. He burned from the inside out as though he’d swallowed the halo of fire that had hung over his head.

Eli dropped the coat to the floor and took a step forward, lifting the tiny corpse to the preacher’s face, offering it up for a miracle. He slurred out one word: “Lazarus.”

Brenda Sutton Rose is a visual artist and writer who grew up barefoot and poor in southern Georgia. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination and other publications. She writes a blog, "Sweet Tea in Southern Georgia."

Little John was on his cell phone. His 7 teeth flashed in the sun.“Hey, Donny,” he said into the phone. “What’s up? Where you been?”

He looked at me through our open windows and gave me the thumbs up.

“What?” he said. “No, no, man…Hey, is Jay there?… Where is he?…Don’t fuck around man, I’m completely out, I mean

I had a couple of buds stashed away for an emergency but those are gone now and…What?…No, hey, you know me, man, I can’t live like this. I AM A MAN WHO NEEDS HIS WEED! Ray? Ray? Hello?”

Little John looked at me again. “Fucker hung up,” he said. “He’s blowing me off, man. But I’ll get to him if I have to drive this fucking taxi all the way to fucking Yuma.”

Little John was 5’6” and weighed 245 pounds. He had bad arches that caused him to walk with a stiff-legged lurch, but he hardly ever walked, he mostly remained behind the wheel of his cab. He was most comfortable there, and had the appearance of being a physical part of the vehicle. He was 47 years old with over-washed salt and pepper hair that fell down his neck and onto his Neolithic forehead. A wart poked its nipple-like head out of his right cheek and he had the habit of rubbing it while he talked.

"Don’t smoke pot before you come to work,” the boss told Little John one time.

“Be reasonable,” Little John said.

“Well, don’t smoke at least 3 hours before work.”

“One hour.”

“Two and a half.”

They settled on two hours but Little John smokes throughout his whole shift anyway. He goes home and smokes a joint and then he’s back in his taxi, or he just smokes in his taxi.

But today he ran out of weed for the first time in years.

"I can't live like this," he said. "I've got to work, I've got to drive this fucking taxi, I've got to make money. I've got to deal with these people, all these mother fuckers…"

"Easy," I said. “God is listening."

"Fuck god," Little John said. "God didn't get me no weed."

"You hear me, mother fucker?" he said, leaning his head out his cab window and looking at the sky. "Fuck YOU!"

He brought his head back inside the cab and looked straight ahead with a sigh. He sat there for a second. Then he gave me a worried look, and put his head back out the window.

"Just kidding," he said to the sky.

Just then a black van pulled into the bus station parking lot. The hot sun reflected off the shiny black paint. The van stopped and a muscular tattooed white guy got out the back. Then the driver got out, a fat white guy in a white shirt. He ran around the van and grabbed the first guy and started beating him in the face with his fist. He hit him about ten times, rapidly, and the guy crumpled onto the ground. Then the guy got back in the van and drove off.

Little John jumped out of his cab and ran over to the guy on the ground. A couple of other cabbies wandered over too. Little John bent down and helped the guy up, and then the guy tried to hit him. Little John pushed him off and the guy stood up and stumbled away toward Broadway.

Little John walked back to his cab, defeated.

“Some people just don’t want help,” he said.

“Did you ask him if he had any weed?” I said.

“Don’t joke about it,” he said.

“Something will come up.”

“Easy for you to say,” he said. “You’re a drunk. All you have to do is go to the store.”

“Except on Sundays,” I said. “On Sundays I have to wait until ten o’clock. We’re living in a police state.”

“Poor baby,” Little John said. “Poor god damned fucking baby.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Shit, I got to get out of this city. I got to get back to the country. I was raised in the country, you know.”

He lit a cigarette.

“We used to have chickens, goats, pigs, all that,” he continued. “That was the fucking life, better than this shitty city. This place is fucking dirty, man, and full of assholes. Plus, in the country you can grow your own weed.”

“So what’s stopping you?” I said.

“I don’t know, I’ve got my apartment. Besides, how would I get money?”

A Greyhound bus pulled into the station and emptied itself of people. A few of the cabs in the front of the cue got fares, and pulled away. Then the whole cue moved up and everyone got in their cars, moved 30 yards up, and parked them again.

“I had this one little chick,” Little John said, “on the farm. “Little fuzzy yellow thing, and she grew attached to me. I named her Peepers. Damn, she was cute, man, you should have seen her, she would follow me around everywhere I went.”

“How old were you?” I said.

“I was like 8 or 9 I think, yeah. Shit, Peepers, I haven’t thought about her in a long time. But it’s sad though, because one day we were running through a field, and I was running real fast, you know, and I guess she just couldn’t take it and she stopped. I felt bad and went back and bent over her and she was breathing real heavy and kind of twitching in the grass. Jesus, I started crying. And then you know what happened?”

“What?”

“Her heart exploded! It fucking exploded right out of her chest. Right out of her little fucking chest.”

I gave him a look.

“I’m serious, it did, exploded right out of her chest, there was blood on the ground, it was terrible.”

Little John seemed to go into another world and a tear fell down his cheek. He looked away and wiped it.

“Maybe you should just stay here in the city, big fella,” I said.

He shook his head up and down but he couldn’t talk anymore. The cab cue was dead.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ve got a personal.”

“Ain’t you lucky.”

I pulled out, to the delight of the cab driver behind me. Everything starts with moving, just keep moving and the luck would change. It was like death just sitting there.

I drove over to the Food City by Randolph Park and got a hot dog at an outdoor stand. A Mexican guy handed it to me and it was loaded: beans, ketchup, mustard, mayo, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese and bacon.

I was standing there eating the hot dog next to my cab in the bright sun when I saw a man running toward me across the Food City parking lot, waving his arm. He was lugging a suitcase and it was obvious he needed a cab. Come to papa, I thought. He was running like his heart would burst from his chest.

I was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1970 and have lived in Tucson, Arizona for the past 14 years. I love it here, love the desert, love the Mexican culture (most of it), and I love the heat. I have one full-length book of poetry out called DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN by Interior Noise Press and another called HE TOOK A CAB from New York Quarterly Press. I have had over 500 poems and stories published since 1993 and I am currently working on a book of prose.

http://www.nyqbooks.org/author/matherschneider

“Glad to see you, Mrs. Taylor. You’re looking well.”

“Thank you,” she answered, and wondered, as she was enveloped by the sweltering heat outside, how she had come to be where she was at this very moment.

She walked slowly. A group of children played in a lot behind the Gulf station on the corner. Decisions had shaped her path, caused her to be out this afternoon on a busy street in South Charleston that went for miles past warehouses and factories, and led finally into the hills, where she knew the smoky haze of the valley would be left behind. But everyone made decisions.

She continued on her way, deep in thought. She was a thinker; the years of isolation in her big house had, if nothing else, caused her to spend many hours and days thinking. But more often than not she felt as if she were in a maze, and that thinking only led her deeper into it. So it was now as she thought of her life. And what her mind told her, what it showed her about her life, was not much: only that every thought she had ever had and that every decision she had ever made placed her, at this very moment, on this dingy street in the midst of the stinking chemical factories of Charleston, West Virginia.

Then she was at the door of the big, white house. It was too large for her to take care of anymore. Once it had served a purpose, providing the room for her several children, who were now pursuing their own lives. One of them, the oldest, had become a doctor; another was an engineer. But they had all but forgotten her. The letters came seldom if ever, and the visits had stopped long ago.

As she opened the heavy, wooden door and entered the old house, her thoughts were of the farm and the joy she had felt as a child growing up there. She ate, and after sitting for an hour or so, mentally exploring what she could remember of her childhood, called her sister.

“Hello, Myrna. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. But it’s so hot.”

“I was thinking…I’m going for a ride to cool off. Would you like to come?”

“What a grand idea.”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up.”

She grew excited as she drove to Myrna’s. At least, she thought, she was breaking the monotony of her routine, that sameness that made up her days. As she wheeled the old Chrysler through the familiar streets she suddenly pictured her wiry, mustached father riding the plow along behind the horses.

Myrna was waiting on the porch. When she was in the car she suggested, “Let’s drive up to Cane Creek and see the Johnson’s.”

“No,” Violet answered quickly, “Let’s go down to the river.”

“What river? The Coal or Kanawha?”

“No. Our river.”

Myrna looked confused. “You mean down to the farm?” she exclaimed.

“Yes. That’s our river. Wouldn’t you love to see it again?”

“I don’t think so…you know what Daddy said before he died. He said never go near there. It’s all grown up and there never was a road built past the farm.”

Myrna was silent as they started the ascent into the hills. At one curve a goat sat on a rock ledge overlooking the road. She was glad they were in the country and, besides, she knew she couldn’t change Violet’s mind once it was made up. “Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll go, but only because…because I want you to see how foolish you are, always talking about that desolate, old farm.”

Violet liked to see the cabins along the creeks, the saw mills, and the people. She even liked the dingy, skeleton-like remains of the coal mines – at least they reminded her of things she had known when she was young. The city had no memories to give her, she thought, envying the people who sat on their porches in the shade of huge trees and who had mountains for back yards.

All afternoon they drove through small towns, coming closer to the farm their father had homesteaded after the Civil War. In the distance, Violet saw a string of engines laboring their way out of the hills with a line of coal cars trailing behind and a memory flashed: She and Myrna and Perry had just come down the wagon trail on their way to school. They had to wait for the train to go past on its way to the next siding, which was near the school. Perry ran alongside one of the cars, and jumped for the ladder, intending to ride to school. But he slipped as his foot hit the frost-covered rung. After he had recovered from the near fall, laughter took the place of his fright, and clowning, Perry hung from the ladder with one hand to show his sisters he wasn’t at all scared. Then came the jolt. Perry fell and the car skidded along the slick rails, severing his legs. He writhed on the gravel for a few moments before he lost consciousness, and when Violet reached him, his blood-spurting stumps were covered with cinders. “Get Mamma!” she cried to Myrna who stood in tears where she had been when Perry fell.

“Look out!” Myrna cried as the car veered into the other lane on a curve. Violet jerked the wheel to the right and barely missed a car. When they were on a straight stretch of road, Myrna said, “Let’s turn back.”

“Turn back! Why, we’re almost there.” She had to see the farm now, if only for a moment. She had to see the spot where Perry had died in her arms. She had to see things as they had been.

Violet drove several miles south along the Tug River until they came to the bridge to Kentucky. There she stopped at a combination gas station and church. “Hello,” she said to the man who came out. “Can you tell me the best way to Larson Creek?”

He looked to his feet and stirred the gravel with first one foot and then the other. Brushing his matted hair back, he squinted into the car. “What business y’all got there?”

“We used to live there. How long have you lived here?”

“Not long.”

“Oh,” she said, and since he had nothing of the past to share with her, asked again about the way.

“You kin go a mile or so down the Kentucky side,” he said pointing to the bridge, “and walk the river on the foot bridge. Or you kin go behind the place here and take the railroad utility road.”

She thanked him, and they started along the cinder road along the railroad. Shacks lined the bank. Many of the buildings were deserted. In the inhabited ones, families sat on the lopsided porches watching Violet’s Chrysler intently. Barefoot children ran along behind in the dust until they were shouted back. Violet stopped at a shack that had a “Barber Shop” sign on it. Two men sat on the porch drinking beer. She got out of the car to ask directions and the men walked out to her. She looked closely at the taller of the two. “What’s your name?” she blurted.

“…Oapie.”

“Oapie…Oapie Watson!” she said upon associating the name with the man. He looked surprised.

“I’m Violet Taylor…Don’t you remember me?”

He stretched his neck forward. “It’s been a long while, ain’t it?”

“It’s been so long I don’t even recognize much here,” she said looking around. “We’re looking for Larson Creek. As I remember, it should be right around here.”

“About fifty yards further. You can’t see it. It’s all growed over.” He pointed down the tracks. “Right where that big tree limb sticks out of the growth. That’s where Larson Creek goes under the railroad.” The other man went back to the porch where he carefully placed his empty bottle in the top beer case.

“Does anybody still live up the creek where our place was?”

“No, ain’t nobody been up there for years.”

“Well, we’re going up and look around,” Violet said, and turned to Myrna, who sat looking straight ahead. “You remember Oapie here, don’t you? Imagine, after all these years, Oapie’s still here!” Myrna sat still, her lips drawn tight.

Oapie stepped forward as Violet turned to get in the car. “You don’t want to go up there. Snakes all over the place.”

“I used to live there. You can’t scare me with your snake stories.”

“Ain’t wanting to scare you. But the stripmine does it – they stir up the snakes and they come down here. I kilt one right here under the porch t’other day.”

“Well, I’ll take my chances,” she said, getting into the car. “Thank you, Oapie,” she called as she drove away.

“Let’s leave, Violet,” Myrna said. “I’m scared of these people. They aren’t our kind anymore.”

“Nonsense.”

Myrna looked back. The other man had joined Oapie at the road where they stood staring after the car. “What are they staring at, then?”

Violet parked the car in front of an abandoned shack and grabbed her cane off the back seat. “Are you coming?” she asked as she got out of the car.

“No, I don’t want to see it.”

She picked her way up the railroad bed, crossed the tracks, and stood looking down the eroded bank of the creek. The water was muddy with traces of orange running through it. Trees grew on the wagon road her father had cleared. She looked ahead to the hill, before which would stand the cabin. At the top were great bare spots, and scattered down the hillside were huge rocks and piles of debris. Briar patches, stunted trees, and weeds covered the fields her father had farmed. After a couple more minutes she could see the chimney, which she found was the only part of the cabin still standing.

She heard a train whistle in the distance and stopped. The river was visible below. A junked car protruded from a shallow spot. There was a graveyard on the far bank. A fire had destroyed the cabin. The barn still stood, but most of the siding had rotted away. She had expected to find things much as she had left them, but saw now that time had done its work.

Then she saw the spring and started towards it to get a drink. She stepped over a charred log and felt something sharp tear at her leg. She thought it was a briar or a piece of barbed wire, but then she saw the copperhead. Drops of blood oozed out the tiny holes in her calf. She flung the snake away with the cane and went on to the spring. After a long drink she started back.

She wasn’t worried that she had been bitten; it wasn’t her first snake bite. But she felt dizzy after a few steps. She sat down on a large rock between the spring and the chimney. Feeling very tired, she lay down on the grass, aware of the spoilage and waste that lay all around. Yet she was glad to be here, and for the first time in many years, felt at peace. As she lost consciousness she was a girl of ten helping her father feed the animals late on a summer evening, and the cool breeze that had picked up at the coming of dusk was welcome after the heat of the day.

Myrna had started to follow Violet, but turned back before she had gone far. The train had come suddenly and she had stood at the bottom of the wagon road waiting for it to pass. As the heavy carriages rumbled past, she heard Violet screaming. What? “Get Mamma!”

Shaken, Myrna made her way back to the car. She watched for Violet to return along the creek bank until it was too dark to see anything. As night sounds and evening mist surrounded the car, Myrna began crying softly. She felt the cool air blowing down from the hills and smelled wood smoke, and wondered how she had come to be where she was at this very moment.

 Hill Tide was first published in 1976 in The Mountain Call out of Kermit, West Virginia, and again in Apple Magazine of Mansfield, Ohio, in 1978.

William Trent Pancoast's novels include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His short stories, essays, and editorials have appeared in Night Train, Solidarity magazine, and US News & World Report.

“Would you say,” said the man now ashing his cigarette, smoke staining his words, his eyes toward the rain, “that I am very brave?” He then looked at a woman, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes tight against the chill, her body frail with age and labor, her hair winced gray by days. She tightened the blanket across her shoulders, leaned against a wall—faded white paint, cracked and spotting.

“These days?” she said, and looked now at the rain, sighed as if she knew it only came to wash her off the land, to hoist their home from its foundation in a torrent toward the death of it—nature ravaging its boards and bones to splinters and shingles and scraps and refuse that would toss wildly in the breath of flood until it came to rest unrecognizable. She closed her eyes. Turned from the man. “I wouldn’t even call you handsome.”

These days the couple bickered, made fights from moments others might let pass silently, but in the past they would hold hands until the warmth of their palms birthed a slickness from sweat, but even then their fingers stayed clasped through the damp. They’d speak cute phrases to each other—the man warmly cooing her name, the woman smiling when she heard him coo it. But that music had faded from them.

 The man looked at the woman, nodded, said, “I’m ugly,” he said, “but ugly men can live bravely.”

 “They can,” said the woman, and she stayed silent a moment so only the sound of rain filled the room, and she looked at the man, lazily blinked her eyes, smiled so slightly only she could sense it. “But I’ve never seen it.”

 The man shrugged. He ashed his cigarette mildly. He turned back toward the rain. They didn’t speak for a long time.

Brian Allen Carr's debut collection Short Bus is out with Texas Review Press, and his next book, Vampire Conditions, is out soon with Holler Presents, and it will play card tricks for you and hide your keys. He teaches at University of Houston-Victoria, and he wants you to visit. 

The night sweats through the humidity,
our humanity exhausted on the porch
collapses from the draw of breath
through the thick Autumn air.
Steam and mosquitoes, blood and bile
are mingling with the mist
of burning crosses, churches, forests
as our spirits are paved under
by carpetbagging revenuers
who worship at the font of progress
while drowning our children in the water
meant for the improvement of man.

The morning breaks at eighty degrees
as the sun strains through ancient oaks.
Pavement gravestones
mark the memories of generations
blanketed in tar and steel and concrete
over the coquina sands of our ancestors
fed by the silent Aucilla and cacophonous swamps.
Old men cypresses are slaughtered for clocks,
their knees cut out from under them, choking
as their blood is leeched for another suburb
where timed rain beats the four o’ clock downpour,
and waters the evergrowing asphalt.

The day beats in volcanic reality,
smothering all intention and thought.
The freoned tinted castles lord on,
the strapped Earth begging for a hurricane
more crafty than the newest building codes,
they continue in their oblivion
as the alligator stalks the cul-de-sac for another poodle,
and another child swims for the final time
as the marcite reflects the sun onto his face,
waiting for mommy to return, arms full of bags
to wonder where the housekeeper has gone
as her favorite soaps blast into the windows.

The evening drifts up from the glazed streets
after cars disappear into cement caves.
Bare feet step out into drying sand
to pick ripe tomatoes for dinner.
The sun sinks behind Spanish moss
and a last ray dances through Depression glass
to kiss the simple ring that reaches over the stove
to the spices that will kiss the wrinkled recipe
that has defied the swell of the growing years
and retains the taste of sinking into the freshest dreams.
Every native who has loved the soil and the salt
prays for peace with each day’s passing.

Rawhide

Stray dogs are ripping widowed paper bags.
Nearby lies a broken heel; a leg out of place;
a skirt, hem slung around; a mouth that sags:
a hole in a yellow, faded, made-up face.

A mongrel tears a strip of rawhide free
from a faded bag. His teeth sink in the soft skin
as bitter drops fall from the balcony
where a girl is wringing out her clothes again.

His ears twitch, hit with the brown sinkwater
that pours from dirty panties. He turns his tongue
to lap the steady stream. The girl drops her
wet rags, coughing. He gnaws at the blood and dung.

The mongrel drops his skin in the filthy light.
Her love is coming home to stay tonight.

G.M. Palmer preaches, teaches, and wrangles children on an urban farm in Northeast Florida. His criticism and poetry can be found throughout various blogs and magazines, both in print and online. His children can be found throughout the neighborhood or at their
grandmother's house. His notes can be found on legal pads and spiral notebooks. His business cards can be found with neat little poems on the back of them.

Gina Williams  lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys poetry, fiction and photography. She is a perpetual student, working towards a degree in Rough Arts from Life University. Writing, she has found, makes it possible for her to breathe.

My poetry has appeared in The Northern Virginia Review, MayDay Magazine, 2River View, Oyez Review, The Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere.

I’m naked to the waist.  The first blow comes in low and fast.   I weave left, but his fist catches my right oblique.  I spit blood onto bare feet and uppercut with my right.  I miss.  His jab catches my chin.  The room blurs and I step back.  The cross lands hard against my temple.  I feel the wall at my back.  I feel glass breaking against expensive art.  I feel the floor rise up to my knees.  Leaning forward, my sweaty fingers grab at the edge of the rug. The woolen threads feel soft.  My face presses against hardwood and glass.  I smell bourbon.  The man buttons down his cuffs and leaves the room.  It’s our first living room, the one before all the divorces and the step-this and half-that.  I have this dream every night.  Sometimes the man is my father, sometimes it’s Mason.  Most times I can’t see his face.  Either way, we go at it bare knuckles.  This morning, I wake up with bruised hands.

Round 2:

I duck down, stepping back and blocking with my fists. He comes in fast.  He lands two jabs, an uppercut, and finishes with a cross.  I’m blinded by sweat and blood.  I cover my face, peering between fingers.  It’s Dad tonight.  No, now it’s Mason.  The dream is always like this.  I shut my eyes.

            Mason lets me stay in his room the first night at the University.  Dad forgot to send boarding fees.  No one knows where he is.  The guy assigned to live with Mason never shows up, so things work out.  Mason and I have been best friends since middle school. His hair turned gray senior year, so I started calling him Governor.  Then everyone did.  It was as much for the hair as for his politics.  He wants to be JFK.  He keeps our room white-glove clean.  Mason’s father, who drove up for welcome weekend, gives Mason an Oxford English Dictionary.  He wraps thick, hairy arms around our necks and says Sewanee will make men of us.  I hear him remind Mason that his scholarship requires at least a 3.0.  Mason reminds his father that he was valedictorian.  The father gives Mason twenty dollars. Through the crack of the bathroom door, I watch them hug.

The dorm is coed.  I walk the breezeway overlooking the courtyard.  Heather steps out of her room in flip-flops with a towel over her shoulder.

“Have you taken the swimming test?” she asks.

Heather braids her ponytail and looks at me with huge green eyes. A black bathing suit shows through her t-shirt.

“A test?”

“The University says every student has to swim 50 yards.”  She spins goggles on a finger. “They don’t want us to get drunk and drown in one of the lakes.”

“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

“The lakes are everywhere. Little death traps when they freeze under the snow.”

“I swim all right.”

“I’m going now. Wanna come?” Heather taps painted toes. She smiles.

“Sure. I think so. Is the test in a lake?”

“Of course not. The cold would kill you.”

“But it’s only September.”

“Are you coming or not?”

Round 3:

I try a jab-cross combo but the man is quick.  The cross leaves me open and the man drives a straight to my ribs.  I hear the stitching rip in his starched white shirt.  I pull up, lift my fists.  He uppercuts to my jaw.  Blood fills my mouth.  I can’t catch my breath and I can’t see clearly.  The man turns blurry and his next hit lands across the bridge of my nose.  I step back.  I hold out my hands in surrender.

I’m packing for Montana.  Dad said no, but I’m going.  Heather’s going too.  My canvas bag looks like a split potato with clothes popping from the seam.  I slide my fly rod into an aluminum tube and fill a plastic box with Pheasant Tails, Zug Bugs, and Hoppers.  Mason comes in from a mid-term and sits on his bed.  A poster of JFK is taped to the wall over his shoulder.  Next to it, his autographed photo of George Stephanopoulos. Our beds lie four feet apart in this tiny dorm room.  He rubs a hand under his jaw line.

“My throat is killing me.”

“You probably pulled something studying last night.  You should fix it up with a fifth of whiskey and dirty sex.”

“Seriously, it hurts.”

“All that reading will do you in.”

“Grades equal money.”

“How long has it hurt?”

“A week now.  Are you going to hang that shirt up?”

“Does my nose look ok?  Took a soccer ball in the face.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“You should talk to the nurse about that throat.”

“I’ll see my doctor at home.” Mason picks at the hem of his khakis.

“What about the beach?”

“Cancelled.”

“What?”  I turn from my clothes and face him.

“I feel like shit.”

“Shake it off.  Be a man.”

“Bite me.”

Mason picks up my shirt and hangs it in the closet.  He opens our mini-fridge and grabs a coke.

“Whiskey, Governor.  Not coke.  And I’m packing that shirt.”

“I thought Montana was off?”

“Why don’t you ever drink?”

“What about your Dad?”

“Who gives a damn. It’s not like he’ll remember in a week.”

I turn back around, put my knee into the clothes, and press down hard enough to zip the bag.  My ribs throb with pain.

Round 4:

Heather stands between us.  She lifts both arms, palms out.  She pushes off my chest.  I move back.  But the man grabs her hand and twists Heather to the ground.  I watch his boot twist into her shirt as he comes after me.  I put everything into a straight and knock Dad’s teeth out.  But he gets up.  He sits in a Windsor chair and gums a bloody cigarette.  Heather disappears from the dream.  It happens sometimes.

Dad says, “Got me good, did ya?  But you’ll never get away.  Look at that hand.”  I look down at one of Dad’s eye teeth jutting from my knuckle.  I pick it out and toss it to him.  In the dream, he pops it back in his mouth.

On the east bank of the Blackfoot river, Heather and I sit on a fallen hemlock. We’ve fished through the cold morning.  Warm sunlight finally breaks over the tree line as I light two cigarettes.  I pass one to Heather.  She moves to the water’s edge and balances at the edge of a flat rock.  She flips up the creel lid and looks inside.  Two browns and a brook trout slosh in the frigid water.

“Should we release them?” she asks.

“I thought they were dinner.”

“We bought steaks.”

“Fine by me.”

Heather lifts trout one at a time.  She cradles their slick bellies underwater until instinct reminds them to swim.

“We should get a dog,” I say.

“What kind?”

“The big kind.”

“Like a Boxer?”

“No.”  I rub my thumb against my index and middle finger. “Pound dogs are free.”

“You worry so much about money.”

“That’s because I don’t have any.”

“You’re rich.”

“Dad is rich.”

“What would we name it?” Heather throws the empty creel onto the bank and finishes her cigarette.  She grinds the butt against a rock and thumps it at me.

“Blue,” I say.

“Why Blue?”

“Why does he have to be such an asshole?”

“Booze.” Heather pulls a six pack from the river.  She hands me one.

“Blue is a good name for a dog.”  I drink from my beer. “So when are you going to ask me about the fighting?”

“What fighting?”

Patches of sunlight flit across my hands and the cuts are harder to see.

“Yeah,” I say. “Blue.”

Round 5:

The man lands his first punch.  I shake it off, skip right, and work a combination.  My jab nicks his chin.  He side-steps the cross.  Then he lands three for three and I’m spitting blood.  I try to call the fight, but my swollen tongue won’t produce sound.  I duck under the harvest table and stay to the shadows.  Broken glass litters the cold floor.  It smells like bourbon.

Mason’s not at the dorm when I get back, but the room is immaculate.  I unzip my bag and throw every single piece of clothing on the floor.  I check the machine.  Two messages from Mom and then it’s Mason:  Hey Ben. I’m still at home. I’m sure I’ll be back in a day or two. How was fishing? Call me.

I pick up the phone and dial.

“Governor.”

“Ben.”

“Got your message.”

“Yeah.  It’s not good.”

“What’d they say?”

“They did a biopsy on the lymph node in my neck.  Hurt like god-almighty.”

“Shit.”

“It’s Cancer.”

I say nothing. I scratch at the back of my head and look around the room.  Fishing gear on the bed, skis in the corner, and my bike hangs from the ceiling. Mason hardly owns a thing.

“Hodgkin’s Disease.  That’s what they called it.  Said it’s treatable.  No sweat.”

I tap the phone against my ear.

“You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.” I struggle for words. “Sorry, Gov.”

“It’s fine.  I’m fine.”

“I’ll come down there.  It’s only a couple of hours.”

“Seriously, I’m fine. How was fishing?”

I tap the phone against my ear.

Round 6:

I move in and uppercut to his stomach with my right.  The man staggers back, bumping into the silver tea service and toppling the sugar bowl.  He spits to the hardwoods.  I see blood.  He’s angry now, but I still can’t see his face.  This time he throws a haymaker.  I’m off my feet and falling fast.

Dad leaves the cabaret.  The highway is dark.  He steers with his left hand and drinks ’82 Lafite Rothschild from the bottle with his right.  “Hothouse,” he says. “Hell of a place.”  The wet blacktop glitters under stray pockets of lamplight.  Dad finds the replay of the game on the radio.  The Cubs are up by one at the top of the ninth.  He listens to the Reds strike out as the right tires of the Mercedes stutter on center markers.  The car drifts into the right lane.  He taps his thumb against the steering wheel and closes his eyes.  The shoulder gravel vibrates the car and Dad wakes.  He overcorrects left.  The car crosses both lanes and dips into the grass median, popping over the muddy ditch and climbing the other side.  Dad looks into the glare of oncoming traffic as his car leaves the median.  All four tires leave the ground.  The Mercedes’ front bumper hits first, shattering glass and bending metal on the rear door of a tan Buick.  Both cars spin off the shoulder and into the weeds.

A highway patrolman is first on the scene.  He calls in the ambulance and checks the Mercedes with a flashlight.  Blood runs from Dad’s forehead into his open mouth.  He taps the steering wheel with his thumb.

“Hey hey, Cubbies,” Dad says.

“Sir, are you all right?”

“Chicago wins again.”

“Do you know where you are, sir?”

“I’m in Alafuckingbama you little shit.”

“I see you’ve been drinking.”

“The ’82 is every bit as good as the ’59.”

“Don’t move Sir, paramedics will be here soon. I need to check on the other car.”

The patrolman jogs to the Buick.  He checks with a flashlight.  The woman in the driver’s seat slumps forward.  The child in the back screams.  The patrolman feels for a pulse on the woman, then turns to wave the ambulance in.

At least, this is how I imagine it happened.  I’ve talked to the cop.  I feel sure I have it right.

Round 7:

I come at him swinging.  I’m hyped up and punching hard.  The man dances around my swings, grinning.  He bobs side to side, then lands a cross to my jaw.  The sting of it flicks a switch in my head and I rush him.   I shove him to the ground and kick his ribs.  The man curls into a ball.  I kick his face and sides, the back of his head.  I jump down and grip his shoulders.  I spit in his face.  The man keeps grinning as Heather pulls me off.  Even this close, I have no idea who he is.

Mason lies back in the ICU, head elevated by pillows.  A ventilator breathes for him. Vaseline has been slathered in his eyes.  I’ve been told it’s a lose-lose situation.  They can’t treat the Hodgkin’s for a virus in his heart and they can’t treat the virus for the Hodgkin’s.  The waiting room is crowded with family and friends, but the doctor only allows us to say our goodbyes one at a time. Mason’s sisters and mother talk us through it.  The older sister says, “He can hear you, so say whatever you want.”  I don’t know what to say.  On the nightstand, the mother tears open a white sugar pack for coffee.  Her hands tremble and less than half finds the cup.  She tears into another.  The younger sister looks up to me, then turns to Mason.  She says, “Time to go play in the clouds, Bubba-cat.” At this, the mother cries.  I start to ask why she calls him Bubba-cat, but don’t.  I realize it’s time.  Mason’s mother hugs me, but cannot speak.  I stare over her shoulder at the spilled sugar.  Mason’s mother kisses my cheek.  I move to the table and brush the granules into my hand.  I make sure I get them all.  Then I nod to Mason and step out through the curtain so the doctors can turn off the machines.

Round 8:

I land two jabs and a cross.  The man takes one step back, then drives forward with a straight to my nose.  I fall backward onto the antique butler’s tray.  Bottles of wine shatter under my weight.  I look up from the floor and see the man picking through the shards.  It’s Dad.  He lifts a piece with the label still intact and reads from it.  “Intensely flavored with cassis, spice, and wood.”  He drops the glass and stands.  He crosses his arms. Heather steps in from the kitchen and rushes over.  She kneels in the wine and presses two fingers against my wrist.  She’s saying something, maybe even yelling, but I can only see her lips move and chin tremble.  I can’t hear a thing.

Dad gropes the sheets with shaking hands.  He kneads folds of thin fabric, releases, then kneads again.  Blood soaks through a bandage on his forehead where the ’82 Rothschild pierced his skull.  I’m the only one here.  I sit on a metal folding chair and look at the dull monitor screen, blipping without rhythm.  I glance at my hands, three band aids on the left, four on the right, then down to my leather boots.  I bought the boots years ago.  Just like Dad’s.  Same brand, same size.  A scuff on the right toe matches one on the left heel where I kick them off.  I dig the right toe in between the leather and sole, sending the left boot to the floor.  Left boot, then right. Always in that order.  Dad does the same. The monitor squawks and I look up.

“Horrible wreck,” the doctor says. “He may not make it through the night.”

I look at the doctor, expressionless, then back at my father.   The tubes mumble and pulse.  I can’t think of anything to say, and instead, I begin to hum softly.  My voice grows stronger as the humming becomes words.  It’s an old blues ballad by Blind Lemon Jefferson:

Just one kind favor

                        I’ll ask of you

I sing loose and smooth, imitating Blind Lemon as best I can. The nurses peer at me with sidelong glances. They pretend not to notice.

One kind favor

                         I’ll ask of you

I keep singing.  I forget myself and sing loudly, loud enough that I think Dad might hear.

Lord, it’s one kind favor

I’ll ask of you

The monitor emits a constant beep that I remember from movies and dreams. I produce the last line with air from deep within my lungs.

See

                         that my grave

                         is kept clean.

The doctor moves to Dad and checks his pulse.

“Sorry,” He says. The doctor clips the heart monitor back on to Dad’s finger.  “False alarm.”

The machine resumes even beeps.

“Christ,” I say.

“These little clips are tricky.”  The doctor makes a routine check of vitals, and turns to me smiling. But then his face changes.  His eyes open wide.

“You’ve got a hell of a nose bleed.”

I look down at my shirt, my pants.  Blood covers everything.  I lift my head and hold my nose.

“Nurse,” he says. “Bring me some gauze, a towel.”

I stare at the ceiling.

“Don’t worry son, your father’s turned the corner. He’s a real fighter.”

“Christ,” I say.

I ball my hand into a fist.

Round 9:

Mason goes down in a single punch, but I’m not sure I threw it. He falls back, opens his eyes and says, “Look at Bubba-cat now, he sure ain’t the Governor.”  He won’t get up.  I scream at him to get to his feet, but he lies sideways on the floor.   He reaches for a blanket on the couch and pulls it over his face.  Tables, chairs, paintings, and lamps lie in pieces around the room.  There is nothing left unbroken.  Heather stands behind me, so I turn to her.  She opens a new pack of cigarettes and pulls two out.  She lights them with a match.  Music begins to play from somewhere unseen, distant and muted.  But it’s enough.  Heather drops the match into spilled bourbon as we walk through the door.

I say, “I’ve never left this room.”

Heather says, “You have now.”

 ***

I stand outside our crumble-stilts house, ten years since Mason died.  Crickets edge between blades of grass, hidden, clicking and chirping the night song we all know.  My toes yawn out, pressing into the cool and damp.  Alabama moonshine falls across the lawn and my hands slip into cotton pajamas for a cigarette and match.  Blue sniffs invisible trails, tail wagging and head down low.  His muzzle turned gray last winter, and it’s hard to believe we’ve had him this long.  Heather drove us straight from the funeral to the pound.  We sat on folding chairs in a little square room and a woman brought puppies to us, one by one.  Blue had the biggest paws.  Today is his birthday.

We’ve just moved in to this house.  We’ve unpacked our boxes and we’ve done the cleaning.  We do not feel like strangers in this house.  My grandfather built it.  The Childress River winds along the back yard and disappears south.  Dad jaundiced when his liver gave way to tumors last year.  He survived the wreck, but not the drinking.  He left all his money to a wife somewhere, but we don’t know her.  Blue goes to the door and looks back to me.  His shoulders sit almost as high as the doorknob.  Above Blue, I see Heather through the screen.  She no longer smokes.  It’s harder for me.

The moon is closer to the Earth than usual.   The night is clear and I look up at the craters, piecing together eyes and a mouth.  I can’t make out much of a nose, and only when I squint does he take an appropriate shape.  In this light, my hands appear ivory white.  No cuts, no bruises.  Leadbelly calls out to me from our window.  It’s Four Day Worry Blues.  I’m not sure if I’m awake, so I wiggle my toes.  The grass feels real.  Crickets drop layered chords into our song.  I glance down at the silhouette of garbage at the curb, boxes and bags of Dad’s clothes and cracked glasses.  With all his belongings inside, the house felt cluttered and dirty.  So I threw them out.

Looking back to the moon, I say, “Goodnight Governor,” and take a deep breath.  I put out my cigarette and walk barefoot to the house.  Blue follows me in.  Heather is already asleep, and I slip into bed without waking her.  I watch her eyes dart side to side under closed lids.  It’s warm here and I’m tired, so I make a fool’s wish.  I put an arm around Heather.  I shut my eyes.  I wish to sleep without dreaming.

Murray Dunlap's work has appeared in about forty magazines and journals. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, as well as to Best New American Voices once, and his first book, "Alabama," was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. He has a new book,  a collection of short stories called "Bastard Blue," that was published by Press 53 on June 7th, 2011 (the three year anniversary of a car wreck that very nearly killed him…). The extraordinary individuals Pam Houston, Laura Dave, Michael Knight, and Fred Ashe taught him the art of writing.

When fireflies … get the act together… right? Teaching rainbows,
jelly fish, meteors' moons and tides: how to fluoresce in light years.

A hypothalamic filament that crackled ( zzzzzzzzzzzt ) when cordite
split the banyan: ablaze from heights of light, a candle made of years.

I wonder if Sagan or Hawking knew how loneliness felt to a comet
in Orion's belt, humping its own tail; oroborus for a million light years.

Yes, all the rage, all the rage when men begin to gauge distance via
Time; as dotted lines on a freeway flit … in endless fits of white years.

In other words what angels say, sotto voce, tangled up with hopeless
recidivists: in one ear: LIGHT; the other might take many, many years.

Dennis Mahagin is a poet from eastern Washington state. His writing appears in Exquisite Corpse, 3 A.M., 42opus, Stirring, Absinthe Literary Review, Prime Number, Juked, Smokelong Quarterly, Night Train, Pank, Storyglossia, and The Nervous Breakdown. He's also an editor of fiction and poetry at Frigg Magazine.