We’re sitting at a home-made pond of this subdivision inside this other subdivision, watching a brood of ducks. Funny how out of all the places they could rest on their journey south ducks choose places like this sponge-bob-ville.

It’s five am, it’s July, when the sky is becoming more brave and brightening. Sue points to one duck and says, “See that duck? Yes, that duck. Watch her. She’s slutting.”

I watch the duck, the slut duck, pedal circles in the pond. She doesn’t quack. She keeps raising her hiney over and over again. She teases even the dawn.

Three other ducks are following her, as best they can, bumping into one another and into the reeds and the edge of the pond. It’s bumper ducks. Honk honk. Bump bump.

Sue says, smiling some, quaint morning eyes, “She’s got balls. The duck’s got balls.”

 END

A Play

Three Acts

Setting:

There’s an old man on a porch somewhere inside the city and the porch is on the third or fifth or seventh or some higher seemingly imperceptible floor. The porch is ten foot by 6 foot, with a metal rail. Behind him are the sliding patio doors and the curtains are open, and inside it is dark and quiet with just a hint of the light from a television screen flickering. The old man is sitting in a worn overstuffed chair. Next to him is a metal TV tray, and on the tray is a glass filled with ice and whiskey and water. The ice is half melted, and the glass is sweaty and the tray moist. There’s a remote control next to the glass, and next to the remote is a paper pad with a pen. In one of his hands he holds a stone, and the stone is worn too, from his rubbing the stone with his thumb.

The old man watches the city, his eyes slowly glazing but still with a sliver of what they call ambition when a man is young then later called pride and sometimes mixed in with hope then later still after ambition and pride and hope there’s something else that still is energy in a man and still comes through his eyes…

Act One

The old man puts down the stone and picks up the paper and pen and writes:

We were fishing but not catching any fish. When you’re fishing and not catching any fish you’re wondering ’bout lots of stuff, after a while, besides why you’re not catching fish. After a while it doesn’t matter anymore whether you’re catching fish or not. And when you put on a few years and haven’t got a grandchild to share sitting next to the river bank with, you make one up and put him there beside you so to be able to tell the stories that you thought would come. Maybe you make up the stories too, then, of what coulda’ been and how once, when you were young, too, you looked upon living a life differently than what it comes out to be.

The old man exhales through his nose, scratching out the words, then scribbles…

Still, any old man like me deserves his right to go fishing with his grandchild and catch whatever he dreams up, or none at all, doesn’t he?

Lights fade.

Act Two

Lights rise. The old man is still in the same overstuffed chair with the same posture and instead of holding the paper and pen or the stone, in that same hand he now has a fishing pole. Behind him is a forest of young pine, and sitting next to him is a small child, presumably his grandchild,  also holding a fishing pole. Both are sitting on the bank of a small creek.

“When we were very very young your Grandma and I would walk to the pine forest as early in the morning as we could and pretend we were way far away. All of the trees were pine, that almost bushy sort, really soft looking, a lot like these behind us, and their needles made for a thick covering on the ground. A pillow sort of covering. Later in life now I pass the “forest” I have to chuckle. Now it’s a retirement center. A big tall one. Really all it was was a piece of property out back of the shopping mall which some developer had secured and would sell or build on some day for a handsome profit, so just planted those pines in the meantime. But back then it was our forest and our home and where we both stole away to. I think then you were born, even though we were just as little as you, I think then is when the first glint of you in our eyes came into the world. The lineage. I remember…”

The old man’s eyes close, lights dim, leaving the boy and the old man in silhouette, while off to the side lights rise on a young girl and boy sitting underneath pine boughs. The young girl and boy act and speak as the old man continues his tale, speaking the narration.

“Did you bring the peanut butter, Childress?”

“Yes!” I placed my pack on the soft needles and zipped it open and placed the peanut butter jar next to Lacey. Lacey reached into her pack and pulled out a jar of jelly, the bread, a butter knife, two plastic plates and two cups and a water bottle.

“Let’s set them in the kitchen.”

Under the covers of the pine boughs we chose rooms, natural sort of cubby-hole-looking areas for rooms, the bedroom, livingroom, kitchen, bath. Lacey set the items in the kitchen, arranging them alongside one of the walls in the cupboard, what we knew was the wall to the kitchen and the kitchen cupboard.

After she had arranged the items just right, she closed the cupboard door, the imaginary cupboard door, and said, “There, now, you’re to leave to go to work, OK. And then I will start dinner for us.”

I went off for a little while and made noises in the forest, pretending to work. There were many lower limbs that no longer held the pine needles, and I would snap them off and make a pile. Once the pile looked large enough, I returned, and put the stack of small branches outside the front door to our home.

Lacey came to the front door, what we imagined the door to be, opened it, and said, “Childress! My Childress! Dinner is almost ready, dear.”

Lacey had the table set and a peanut butter sandwich for each of us set on the plates. In the cups she had poured the water.

“How was your day, dear?” Lacey said, sitting cross-legged, “I hope you like the dinner tonight, Childress.”

“It looks wonderful, Lacey.”

We began eating the peanut butter sandwiches, and Lacey all the time more content looking than usual. I wasn’t hungry of course because I’d just ate breakfast but still I pretended to enjoy the dinner Lacey set for us.

Lacey’s eyes didn’t dart about as they normally would, looking for the next task that needed to be done. And she was more quiet than usual, too. 

Finally, she blurted out, “Tomorrow, Childress, our baby will come!”

I was finishing the peanut butter sandwich, chewing it into the smallest bits I could, because as I said I wasn’t all that hungry. I remember looking her way, then, and seeing the glow on her face. It was a glow that I’d experience later in life on several occasions with a woman. A completeness. A reason. A calling. Sometimes I’d experience this look of a woman when, well, when a man and a woman share an important moment together, sometimes when later like it was with Lacey that day when she’d inform me we were to have child; sometimes in spontaneous moments, from where out of the blue a woman would become all surreal looking like, and feel a sense of overwhelming pleasure.

“But first we need to make the baby, Childress. We need to kiss.”

That’s when I nearly choked on the last bite of the peanut butter sandwich. Kiss? I turned red, and felt a quick fever.

“Come on, Childress, I’ll clear the table, you go have a beer, and then we’ll sit together for a little while, and we need to kiss, so the baby will come.”

I remember I was happy with the way things were, and why would we need to take anything further? And I didn’t drink beer. And I told Lacey this, muttering it really.

“If I’m to be a mother you need to go have a beer. That’s what my Mom says, about my Dad, how babies are made.”

Lacey poured the last of the water into my cup, and said, “There, now there’s your beer. Go drink your beer outside in the garage, then come back in when you’re finished. And then we’ll kiss.”

I wasn’t sure where the garage was but I picked up the cup with the beer anyway and left the house and went to what I pretended was the garage. I drank the beer and returned, and Lacey, instead of sitting cross-legged, now lay on her back.

“Come here, now, Childress.”

I was frightened beyond belief. Lacey’s eyes then closed so then I had a little more nerve, so went over to her and layed next to her.

“Now kiss me, Childress.”

I reached over and kissed her real quick, blushing all the time. I’ll never forget the feel of her lips on my lips. They were wet and gooey.

“Once more now, just in case, Childress.”

In case? I hesitated.

“We need to make sure the baby will come, OK.”

So I reached over her again and it wasn’t as quick and it felt more natural the second time. It took a little longer. And I could feel even Lacey felt something…something different. Her eyes opened. But they welcomed me. No, they craved me. But then we were scared, especially Lacey, ’cause we didn’t really know what we’d done. But it was a funny feeling and I could feel we both shared it and were taken by it which made us feel OK but still it was scary.

The next morning we met and walked into the forest to our home and went inside and sure enough Lacey pulled a baby out of her pack. It was all pink and didn’t have any clothes. It had eyes that moved up and down when she sat it up or laid it down, and a string on the back that, when she pulled it, the baby said, Mommy! Daddy! Lacey layed the baby down and put clothes on it then placed the baby in my lap. The eyes bobbed up at me.

“Isn’t she wonderful!” Lacey said. “Now I’m going to take care of the baby and do laundry and make us dinner, Childress, so you need to go back to work, OK?”

Laundry? I handed the baby to Lacey and smiled, Lacey smiled, we kissed, and though I’m sure it wasn’t that kind of kiss, I still wondered about it when I went out to work. I passed the garage and that’s when I noticed I’d forgotten to take the empty cup back into the house the day before. I picked up the cup and instead of going to work I went to the back of the mall, running as fast as I could, and filled up the cup at the spigot at the one of the loading docks. I drank the beer as fast as I could, right there, then filled the glass again and drank that one much more slowly. After a while I returned to the forest and to our home and to Lacey and the baby, and when I went through the front door, our dinner was set.

“Where are the sticks?” Lacey asked. I had totally forgotten to collect the small branches. I muttered something like the pile of sticks was still in the forest, and I’d bring them afterwards. Something like that. But Lacey went on with the baby, rocking her, and you know what she said?”

“What, Grandpa?”

“She said, ‘The baby is beautiful, Childress.’”

Lights fade on the two young children and rise on the old man and his grandchild. The old man makes a short tug on the pole, waits, then relaxes. He picks up a stone and begins to rub it with his thumb.

“Like I said  the forest is gone now and there’s that tall retirement center they built on it. It’s an ugly place for sure, for many who end up there, though you wouldn’t know it, the way it’s played up. It was the pine forest where things began, and it’s the pine forest I’d hoped we’d always return to.”

“Grandpa?”

“Yes?”

“What’s lin…age?”

“Lineage. Lineage?”

“Yeah.”

The old man reels in the line to check the bait and it looks alright so he swings the line back out into the creek.

Lights fade.

Act Three

Lights rise.

The mood appears darker now on the porch with the old man in the overstuffed with the television tray and the light is not as intense. The light from the television inside still flickers. He sets his paper and pen down upon the tray and picks up the drink and swallows the remainder. He sets the drink back down and picks up the stone and instead of rubbing the stone, holds it  in a gently closed fist. He closes his eyes and his head drops down, his chin resting on his chest. After a short while his hold on the rock loosens, the stone drops and hits the porch floor, then keeps dropping, its sound fading as it keeps hitting porch floors below.

Lights fade, and all that is heard in the dark is the fading sound of the dropping stone.

END

I say, “Walking…”

She interrupts, saying, “From where?” walking toward the Dairy Queen.

I start to say, “Started in Madison, Wiscon…”

“What! You’re kidding! Why?!”

I stop, look at her as deep as I can in the eye across the ten yards or so, and say, “To get out of the house. What are you doing?”

She hesitates, then says, “Well, goin’ to work at Dairy Quee…”

“Why!?”

She stops and turns toward me.

I just stand there and she just stands there and she goes to turn back then hesitates some more, then sort of stammers something like, “I open up in the morning…It’s very important people get their ice cream cones…It’s important to ensure this Dairy Queen meets the highest standards possible…got bills to pay…jobs aren’t easy to find…if I meet the quota for the month…”

It’s not quite nine in the morning. There’s the flutter of birds as they scrounge the Dairy Queen parking lot. Tweet, tweet, tweet. A car zooms by. Zoom zoom. I look for my shadow; I look for my shadow when I’m feeling uncertain, like now. It’s easy when I roll out of the sleeping bag in the morning when I’m groggy and don’t want to make any major decision so just follow my shadow because I’m going West…

Then suddenly she screams, “You know what!?”

“What!?” I scream back, fluttered, waking from my thoughts.

She takes off the Dairy Queen cap and throws it straight down onto the parking lot, and mashes it with her foot, twisting it into the pavement. “I worked here over thirty years ago! In high school! I’m not going to take this anymore!”

My eyes go sort of wide.

“I’ve had it! This is nuts! I’ve got a wagon, too!”

Ten miles later we’re approaching the next town. We’re both, curiously, craving a Dairy Queen ice cream cone. But she says, “I’ll get over it. Just watch. Do you know they get three-and-a-half bucks for one of those little fuckers and it only costs’em twenty-three cents?”

We choose to stop at a convenience store instead, and go for the Nutty Buddys.

END

It’s not often, but often enough, when he refers to the womb, with that gleam in his eye and that slight grin of his, that it means more than one first suspects. George lives in an old once-abandoned building that somehow survived the flood back in ‘sixty-four and over the last twenty years since he arrived back in twenty-ten he’s inhabited without fixing it up much. Just lettin’ her be, keepin’ her simple. She is what she is. 

The building is an L-shape one-story, takes up a lot and a half on this small town corner, and on the remaining half lot is a courtyard area that’s shaded and secluded with a fence made of sotol where he gardens vegetables and where a small fountain is nestled in one corner and next to the fountain a stone table and chairs where he has his coffee in the morning.

George is in his late sixties, now, is never without wearing coveralls, always with a few tattered holes and some splattered paint, walks slow and somewhat stooped but with a masculine grace, his lips formed always in a sort of content, knowing smile.

George came into Stillwater one day some twenty years ago when the Amtrak stopped to let off Mary and her daughter who were moving back home from Houston and George was looking out the window at the time and thought, Hey, this doesn’t look half bad. The Amtrak had recently left Del Rio and was on its way to El Paso. On its approach to Stillwater the train had dipped into an area where several dry canyons come together, not large canyons, but old and long-worn canyons, with ancient bluffs at their peaks. A quiet area, George saw immediately, looking out the window.

Down the block from where the train waited for Mary and her daughter to depart were a row of bungalows, some kept well, some not, and a long stone building fronting the street with large “Hacienda” letters painted on it. The paint was aged.

George stood, stretched, and picked up his bag. He walked the length of the car to where the train steward was pulling up the steps. “Hold it! One more!”

The steward, a little surprised, said, “Sir, there’s no train station here any more. You’ll need to call Amtrak when you need to go onto El Paso.”

George smiled at the man, then stepped off the train. 

George had wandered the town for several days, keeping to himself, waving when others would wave, which was often, and then one day came upon an old, grisly-looking man out front of the one-story building on the corner not far from the tracks. It was the building with the “Hacienda” lettering.

“Do you own this building?” George said.

“Own ‘er! Since before you were born, young man! Come here, let me show ‘er off!”

George right off got the feeling that, if the building had wheels and a hood, the old man would be opening the hood to show the engine.

The old man looked like Santa Claus, with a long frizzly white beard. Most of his face was filled over with whiskers, and he even wore a red baseball cap. He was slight of build, though, and his suspenders were necessary to hold up his jeans, not for show.

The two men walked into the building through a side double-door. Inside smelled of stone and dust and wood, and the past. It had been a pool hall for most of its life. Most the floor was hard-packed dirt, the rest a solid hardwood, and off to the corner there was a section of walls that held the kitchen and bath areas. Otherwise, the inside of the building was one very large room, and large sturdy rafters held the ceiling above.

“I’m into releasin’ ‘er if you’re willing to take care of ‘er! Look around, take a good long look. I’ll keep ‘er open for you all day, to visit! Take your time, get the feel of ‘er!”

The old man then extended his hand to George and George shook it and the old man said, “I’m Mr. Sanderson, Bill Sanderson! I know what it’s like with old buildings, they’re like old Chevys, burros. Takes the right mix when one takes one on—takes on responsibility. Like a marriage. That’s what’s important. Takes two to build character, ya know, the buildin’ and the occupier!”

George spent most of that first day sitting outside in the courtyard area. He tipped back upright one of the stone benches and sat at the stone table and did some writing, some thinking, and felt the wind slide into the courtyard. This might just be place, he thought. The building sat one block away from the tracks, and now and again the train would pass and once when George heard the train approaching he quickly went into the building and sat on the floor in the middle of the large room and felt the vibration of the train under him, and noticed the building held firm, and the train sounded earthy, almost surreal, through the thick walls. The sound of the passing train through the walls, George believed, was part of the building’s character. If it weren’t for the trains, George figured, there’d be no building in the first place.

That day, sitting in the courtyard, George imagined himself walking up through the canyon and up and over the bluffs, just to see what lay out there above and away from the small town. So he could come back walking to the town and see it anew from a distance, and from a view on the bluff on his return. He wrote:

Nature fills a vacuum. It’s all an unconscious act, the way Nature survives. From the pebble to the mountain from the ant on up, it’s Nature’s greatest ambition, it is, to fill in the voids. I am curious so I walk out here into this desert amongst these cactus scattered, seemingly, helter-skelter, but they’re not. There’s a lizard here, then another lizard over there, no two lizards in the same place. Above is the one sun and near the horizon a piece of a daylight moon. Each one has their place. There are the hills and the hills roll gentle and seemingly spontaneous. If it weren’t for that hill over there, what would be there? Simply something else. If it weren’t for the cactus here near my feet, what would be here? Simply something else.

If it weren’t for me being here, who would be here? Simply somebody else? Is there a true choice for us humans when we think we’re seeking but rather finding a calling, a friend, a marriage, a thing to do, a place to be, when perhaps all we truly are are drifters?

Is there really a choice when we arrive from the womb?

I drift back to the bluff and sit and look back down on the tiny town. There it all is in a nutshell. It’s no more than a square mile. Coming from the South a train appears from around the bluff on the canyon’s floor and crawls ever so silently along its path along the houses and comes to pass right there near where I viewed “Hacienda.” The train horn blows, and swear to God it’s screaming, “There! There! Right there, you silly silly fool!”

The very next day is when George walked back toward the building and there was the old man again, leaning against his pick-up, chewing on a weed. The old man had a spark in his eyes, and already knew what George would do. George, walking toward the old man, had the strangest feeling he’d already known years ago what would take place today.

Without saying a word, George came to the old man and the old man said, “The title’s all free an’ clear! Won’t be no trouble at all, no trouble at all.”

Anyway, that’s how George tells it today.

I came to know George, how one can know George, not long after the first day he moved into the building. I was passing by the building along the sidewalk, on my usual morning walk, and when I came to the opened double doors I looked in and there he was, sitting in the middle of the floor, his legs crossed Indian-style. It wasn’t until I  waved I noticed his eyes were closed. I stopped for a moment, just watching him. The light was low from the morning sun streaming into the large room and most of the room had a warm, freshly lighted look. I’d seen this building hundreds of times before and never thought twice about it. It was just an old abandoned building, nothing more. Empty, silent, for many years.

I said, “Hi, neighbor.” George opened his eyes, looked my way, and smiled. He nodded and rose, and walked over toward me.

He said, “George,” shaking my hand. I said, “Terrance.”

“Pleasure, Terrance. Are we neighbors?”

“I live in the house behind yours, my wife and I. Kids are grown, they all  moved out and away as soon as they could.” I smiled, he understood right off. “Our daughter though Mary and her child just moved back.”

George described the woman and child he’d followed off the train. “Was that your daughter and grandchild?”

“Sounds to be them! Do you have children?”

“Nope. Never did. It wasn’t in the plan, I guess.”

“Yes. Do you have plans for this place?”

“Hard to say. Nothing…well…concrete. It depends if the place has plans for me, I guess, if you know what I mean.”

I knew right away what George meant that day; I knew without yet knowing George. Isn’t it funny? All that time the building was empty I’d pass it and felt a certain character to it, and that character, then, was meant to be empty. It was like when we were children and took what was for granted; everything is simply what it is. I’d known the building long enough to know who George was the day he moved in. That’s been the pleasure knowing George, now,  these past twenty years. No matter he’s eccentric, lives in the building alone, he always comes across as that’s exactly where he’s suppose to be, that this place was meant to be there for George and only George. His womb, as he calls it. There just simply was never any doubt.

When I go to visit George I always knock even though the doors are most always open. Above the double doors  is still the original weathered lettering “Hacienda,” and I spy in, and whether George is there or not, the building now is never empty. When George is there, and when then he does wave me in, I swear, no matter it’s all nearly as empty as the day he arrived, George takes up that entire large room.

END

“It’s the bible. Can’t you see that?”

I stare at George for a brief moment, then look back at the canvas. I can’t see anything that resembles a bible. I look back at George who is looking intently at the canvas. His eyes are glassy. In his hand is a brush and the brush is filled with black paint and the canvas is covered in black. On the floor are puddles of black and his hands, too, are most all black. There’s even smears of black on his cheeks, both ears, and across the room I see black hand prints on the open window, where a light breeze blows into the room.

“Well, anyways, once it did look like the bible, felt like the bible, I swear to God it was the bible, once, when it started out, hours ago, but then I guess I overworked it a little…too much, perhaps?”

I don’t nod, and keep silent. I wait for George to answer his own question. Beads of sweat cling to the creases on his forehead.

George shrugs and reaches the brush to dab the canvas with the black paint once more. “There, now, for Christ’s sake, it’s the bible and be done with it.”

END

Yesterday we had arrived shortly before the noon whistle had blown, and when the workers at the large plant would take their break. We felt like we had come away from death. That town, we knew, was no longer there but we didn’t need to speak of it to one another so to confirm it. We arrived in the back of a farmer’s wagon, hidden amongst large burlap bags of cantaloupes that smelled very ripe. We smelled very much like the cantaloupes when the farmer backed his wagon behind the warehouse, first, allowing us to sneak out of the wagon and walk, with eyes darting, across the small alley and into the older warehouse, the one no longer used.

In this warehouse we didn’t speak, but knew what we should do. We walked along the sides of the large wooden floors, right next to the walls, so the boards wouldn’t creak. Sylvia was one footstep ahead of me, and I had my hand on her back, right in the middle. Right up near her neck. The further we stole into the abandoned warehouse the darker it became and the less anxious we were.

Sylvia opened a large wooden door, and inside it was very dark. We could just see the beginning of the stairs, leading up. We climbed the stairs, came to a landing, turned, and climbed more stairs. We did this several times. Then Sylvia stopped, and then I placed both hands on Sylvia’s shoulders. Through my hands I felt it, I know I felt it, isn’t it funny? I felt Sylvia being reassured. Secure. Just by my hands. Something, maybe she moved just a little bit, maybe she made a small noise. But I felt myself helping in some grand way, just by a simple touch. It was all I could do then but I felt it was very much.

We stood for several minutes in the dark. It felt safe. Then Sylvia slowly pushed on the door and the door silently slid back and we entered a room half of sunlight and half of deep shadows. Very deep shadows, shadows that welcomed us. We walked over to one of the deep shadows and followed it back into a large alcove where the shadow became deeper, almost pitch black.

The whistle blew again and we knew the workers would be returning to the plant to work. We heard no voices, but imagined them returning in long, solitary lines, heads down, feet shuffling. Some kind of calling. Following each other. Being sure not to break the line. Sounding very far off we heard machines begin to whirr. And then a pounding, mechanical, in a cadence. Boom. We would count three breaths. Then boom again. Just like that. It never changed. On and on. Boom. Three breaths. Boom.

We crouched against a wall, then when our ankles got tired we slid further down the wall resting against the wall still with our knees up near our chins, and our arms tangled. We rested there and our eyes adjusted to the dark some and we could see the room was very large, very empty, except for a few broken pallets along one of the walls. Scattered here and there across the floor were small, cylindrical pieces of metal. Tubes. Shell casings. In some strange, warped way, was this from where the shells came? Our eyes became tired, and we dozed.

When Sylvia was a little girl, she once told me, she had a secret place to go to where, she said, “Was where I kept a set of two tea cups, two saucers, two spoons. I would keep them on a small shelf inside the tiny room and when I’d come to visit, to get away, carrying a carafe of Kool-Aide, I would reach for them and arrange them on the dirt floor and pour the Kool-Aide into the two tea cups, and believe then I would not be alone. Not the alone I felt back at the house, with Mother and with Father, Father who rarely was there anyway, always at the plant, and my brother.  Across from me sharing the Kool-Aide would be whoever it was I wanted it to be there with me. Sometimes it would be my husband. Sometimes just a friend, without a face. A make-believe friend, you know. But always there was someone there with me.”

We came awake when the final whistle blew for the day. Already the light inside the abandoned warehouse was dimming, and we knew we could take a risk to search the room. That is when I found the old blankets, dusty and smelling of something ancient. I shook them carefully, walked them back to the shadow, and layed them down, one by one over the top of each other. Sylvia sat down on the blankets, her legs bent at an angle tight beneath her, and waited for me to sit down alongside her.

END

one halloween night i took a photo of dave, with towel, one of the owners, and travis, in costume, outside the pub along state street in madison, wisconsin. from that photo i drew the scene pictured here.

The Turtle Suit is green and thick a lot like a furniture pad, with a scalloped-type weave, and has what looks like wide arms and wide legs that contain the most velcro, to wrap and secure around those limbs, and are for the inmates who are experiencing “incarceration difficulties.”

Turtle Suits are also called Suicide Suits, depending on the mood or situation, I guess.

A half-dozen of us are led through hallways and up and down elevators from the jail area toward the “justice center area” (court rooms) and instructed “three per room” to enter holding cells prior to our court appearances.

It’s Tom, Harold, not their real names of course, and myself, George. Tom is dressed in a yellow jumpsuit, which normally signifies the “Misdemeanor” block. Harold is in an orange jumpsuit, one step up from yellow, one step down from stripes. Stripes are violent offenders, and pedophiles. I’m in a blue jumpsuit, for trustee (Funny, isn’t it, color-coding inmates…I won’t go into an entire other story here, in which the jail we were set up in was so modern, so organized, so secure, so “bar-coded” functional that even idiots could run it by simply pushing color-coded buttons…).

It isn’t long before we learn Tom’s yellow jumpsuit is for public appearance only.

“When they first threw me in the cell, I went fucking nuts. I was completely naked. There wasn’t a toilet. I pissed and vomited right there on the floor.”

“…I told’em, I wouldn’t wear that fucking turtle suit no way. I’m not crazy! They threw me into a cell then I went crazy. Who wouldn’t? I’ve been here before. They knew I guess what to expect. But man I didn’t go nuts till they treated me as nuts.”

Tom went on talking about the meth “industry” in the area. “All over here! It’s everywhere, man! Everywhere! It’s on your back porch it’s on your front porch! But I’ve been straight now for two months — I’m twenty, I got my whole life ahead of me. I’m thinking maybe marrying a girl, she’s pregnant.”

A little later, “…drugs and women, that’s what screws it all up…”

“But I hate that suit. Hey, you work with the kitchen trustees, right? Could you tell’em please, please fill up all the little spots in the container to the rim, and don’t mush it, it’s always all mushed. I don’t get a spork, gotta eat it with my hands. You know how that feels?”

Harold is nodding the entire time. He’s in for failing to pay some fine; that, and failing to pay child support. “It’s a technicality why I’m here. It’s crazy, really. But I’m here. Got pulled right out of the car at the Wendy’s drive-up. Cop behind me was getting his lunch and recognized me. Snatched up. Should have seen the dude, man, acted like it was an earth-shattering event. Like he was on stage. Even called a back-up. But it’s a technicality. I’ll get right out.”

Tom is now wandering the three feet of free space at the door. Back and forth, back and forth. He’s thin some but still muscular. He moves like a leopard at the zoo. “What do they expect? Hey, they’ve had me on meds since I was a little kid, before school. I’ve been on meds all my life. Take me off’em, guess what’s gonna happen when I don’t get’em? Then I go — nuts!”

Tom then went on explaining a variety of ways to take meth. At his mention of some “cocktail” his eyes grew real large, his body stood more rigid, and “Whoowhooie! That’s the one!”

“But hey you take my story right here and you put it on NBC or whatever — it’s a million dollar baby. Worth a million. All these kids on drugs — whadya expect — they’ll always ingest drugs ’cause that’s what’s fuckin’ normal man! Is that too simple or what?”

At times it wasn’t easy listening to Tom. Subjects would change quickly, as would intensities. And these intensities, in even one sentence, could go both ways, both good and bad, both positive and negative. But how can’t one empathize? It’s simple human nature to empathize — to look past “fabricated” Tom and be patient and be watchful for real Tom. Tom outside the Turtle Suit. Where are the natural humans when Tom needs them?

They’d of course put Tom in the yellow jump suit for the public court appearance. These Turtle, or Suicide Suits are not meant for public display.

Tom’s appearance and Tom’s record over his few years as now an adult are public information. But it’s certain, listening to Tom, it’s not the whole story…if not the wrong story altogether. Not sure what happened at his appearance in front of the judge. Whatever happened, even if released, what could anyone expect to happen?

My appearance lasted an entire thirty seconds, case dismissed, a ruling after two weeks incarceration after a nine-year “on the run” from a trespassing charge I had known nothing about. Woken one morning on railroad property, inside my sleeping bag, with a gun pointed at my head, who wouldn’t eventually bitch later? Who could trust anyone nowadays with a gun pointed at your head, whether they’re a cop or the president? I guess it wasn’t until after I’d bitched I’d received the trespassing ticket, after I’d already moved out of state. Nine years ago. Nothing on my record since.

One of the other trustees said, one day while we were working the laundry, “It’s not justice, it’s an industry. Once you have an industry set up and the production line going you gotta keep the production line going to meet the quota. Hello? That simple. That’s why you’re here. That’s how lots of get here. That’s how lots of us return. Swear to God it’s all set up just to be able to take us in to spit us out again and not help us whatsoever just to get us back in again. We’re they’re bread and butter, man.”

I went outside, carrying in a Shopper Chopper bag the few items I was allowed to bring with me, two hundred miles from where they had picked me up.

END

Give a man a little hill and he’ll defend it with his life.  As long
as someone’s trying to kill’em to get his little hill.

Anonymous

They were somewhere west of that last town, somewhere east of tomorrow’s. They’d walked twenty miles as the crow flies, so it seemed. The road, straight and narrow, simply went on and on over hill and through dale, crossing several creeks, stretching always just beyond their foosteps toward the horizon. Always to the tip of the next horizon.

They chose camp a short walk from the road, just up from one of the creeks on a slight knoll, where the prairie rose up to an oak grove. The oaks were scattered about, and the grasses long and layered. In the twilight when the sun had dipped below the land and the sky turned amber red all the grasses looked to be swirling up and around and down the trunks of the oaks. All the colors and all the flowing grasses gave a warm, soft, comforting glow.

“Is this amazing?” said the one Traveler. “My God, it settles you, this hill, the shadows, watching the moon drift in. Has its own tune.”

They scrounged walked around the camp, scrounging up wood for the fire, and getting a feel for the place.

“Some other tune, for sure,” said the other Traveler, breaking a small limb in two. “Ain’t tuned into what a television tunes into. Not here.”

“Yeah, seems real nice and peaceful here. Welcoming. Let’s call it Pillow Hill.”

Even a squirrel off somewhere near, on some evening prowl, seemed to chuckle. Like it knew better.

Soon they’d put into the buffet, into “that ratty ‘ol pot”, what they could. What they had. Some ham, carrots, a few chunks of beef even. “Dumpster stuffing,” so they called it, and even a few pears “to give it something fruity.”

“Hell, if nothing else, the body needs’em.”

They watched the flames and the moon while they ate, in this dark silence, with the moon ever so slowly, ever so quietly, rising, brilliant and brave. Some stars far off, way past it all, shone and flickered, arranged themselves in no true pattern, random and genuine.

“It’s just another test, I think,” said the one Traveler, biting into a soft carrot, “being born right now…into this tiny window of time..upon this planet. Some other kind of soldier, I think. Something different than the way my Grandpa described it.”

“Soldier, I’m not so sure,” said the other Traveler. “Some kind of slave maybe.”

“Soldiers…slaves…perhaps one of the same.”

In the silence there arose a type of melancholy, a sadness, but a reverence, a relationship with the moment in which what is just is. An accepting and a forgiveness. All expectations futile and fateful. A slippery footing. But a footing nonetheless.

The one Traveler scraped his plate clean, and set it beside him. “My Grandpa used to tell us about a hill like this, I think. I think it mighta’ been, coulda’ been, a hill like this. He’d said, ‘It wasn’t exactly home, you know, but you defended it like it was. Where for a few hours at least in the night you could take your helmet off and feel secure, and get some shut-eye. You’d come to respect and to honor such a tiny place wherever it was, like it were your castle, your kingdom,’ he’d said. And ‘You’d learn like hell to defend it, no matter if it were the scrawniest hill on the planet.’ At least that’s how I remember what my Grandpa said.”

“Your Grandpa still alive?” said the other Traveler.

“Ain’t heard such stories like’em for years, nope. He’d passed away long ago, not long after he’d told the stories…quite a while before, well, like now, when I’d finally come around to think about’em, Grandpa and his stories, more.”

“Yeah, don’t hear stories like that no more.”

They cleaned the dishes and put what gear they had where it needed to be for when they’d go to sleep, and where they’d need it to be when they awoke again in the morning. They sat by the fire, rolled smokes, and were silent for a while.

“Think if it were necessary we’d be as brave as your Grandpa back then,” said the other Traveler, “if we needed to defend this hill?”

The one Traveler flicked the rest of his cigarette into the fire. “Grandpa never talked about being brave, necessarily…seems it didn’t have anything to do with being brave, I don’t think, listening to Grandpa. Now that you ask, now that I think about it.”

“No one marches in the streets no more. Wouldn’t that be being brave? Maybe now we’re all soldiers and we’re defending hills and we don’t know it,” said the other Traveler. “Maybe, even, we’re soldiers without a hill.”

“What’s brave, being these other sorts of soldiers, today, soldiering without a hill.”

“Yes, indeed…”

“‘Fraid to even march in the streets anymore.”

“‘Fraid of one another, now.”

“‘Fraid to march to the next town, even.”

“Just what some things feed on. On fear.”

“Is being brave fear?”

“Is fear being brave?”

“Not just from without–from within.”

“Coulda’ been between you and me, even. This new kind of fear. This being brave.”

“A fear that sells soap.”

“Bubbles.”

“Bubbles of hills, bubbles of fear.”

“Bubbles burst, yes.”

They slid into their sleeping blankets, and the moon crept further through the sky, shrinking as it rose. They brought the blankets up close around their chins. A light mist came out upon each breath they took.

“‘Tis nice here,” said the one Traveler to the other.

“Yes, it is,” said the other Traveler, “this Pillow Hill.”

END